Thanks for stopping by the podcast. This is where I try to live out a promise that I made myself to tone down the algorithmed default anger (saving the emotion for the real outrages, and there are many) and, instead, use whatever meager noticing equipment I have to make note of things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. This week’s offering:
1. Noses – thoughts occasioned by a face-to-surface encounter with the front street
2. Life sentence – I collect sentences that stop me. The latest in the collection is from Dr. Heather Young-Leslie*.
3. Leftovers – Those turkey meatballs were superb the next day!
The original music in the podcast is from Edmonton pianist and composer Brendan McGrath. If you are reading this on Thursday evening, June 29, he’s playing tonight at the Chateau Lacombe as part of Jazz City. The end bells in the podcast are courtesy of Edmonton metal artist and humanitarian, Slavo Cech.
* Here’s the Facebook post from Dr. Young-Leslie that made me see the giant neighbourhood trees, and giant scholars in our midst, a bit differently:
The Killams are the Nobels of Canada. Hokey background music aside, this is a *great* episode of CBC Ideas, demonstrating amazing, world-changing Canadian research in _health sciences_ (Pieter Cullis, UBC, for the nano-lipid delivery system that enables MRNA vaccines and cancer cures), _humanities_ (Ajay Heble, UGuelph, for theorizing how musical improvisation works, and how the deep listening required for jazz improvisation and creative writing models the skills for negotiating difference, trust, therefore for building community, pedagogy and societal change), _natural sciences_ (Sarah 'Sally' Otto, UBC, for her mathematical modelling for evolutionary biology, especially developing the math to show why species have 'sex', aka recombine genetic materials, and power the evolutionary adaptations underlying population adaptation and, essentially, life), _social sciences_ (Charles Morin, Laval, for his critical psychological analysis of sleep, stress, leading to medication-free cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia), and _engineering_ (Praveen Jain, Queen's, for his research and electronic inventions, including high-frequency switches used to regulate electric currents, thus enabling power converters that don't waste energy, eg, in cases of smallholder farmers using solar micro-inverters, but also astronauts using the Canadarm in the International Space Station).
It's hearing professors like these people (and my university colleagues here at UofA) talk about the research questions they ask, the solutions their research provide, and impacts of their research on the 'real world' that keeps me inspired to work, and committed to the academic mission and research-intensive university endeavour.
I know my university colleagues will enjoy this episode, but I wish my non-university friends would also listen, to hear what their (and our parents' and grandparents') past tax-dollars and political choices have enabled. I hope we all recognize what is at risk when we stop funding public universities, and public radio, or think of them as only job-preparation mills converting students into employable workers, and unfair competition to commercial radio.
And I hope this will rekindle some Canadian pride, an antidote to the damage created by the convoy/covidiots/Ottawa occupyers, going into Canada Day. We're not a perfect nation, but we do have a lot to be proud of, these Killam Prize winners' research, their careers and contributions included.
That CBC Ideas podcast.
