Podcast
Discussions dedicated to exploring faith, spirituality, arts and culture.
EPISODE 1: HEROES AND VILLAINS IN SOCIETY & CULTURE
This is the first episode of a new podcast series exploring the concept of "heroes" and "villains" in society and culture, war and conflict, news and politics, stories and literature, and in history. In this episode our host Charley is joined by guests GEORGE DUTCH (playwright, dramaturge, and actor with a Masters in Cultural Studies) as well as MARITA SMITH (pediatric nurse and sexual health educator). Together, they discuss heroes and villains as a social construct, childhood development in understanding the world, putting people on pedestals, and the courageous undoing of classifying others into simple categories.
EPISODE 2: HEROES AND VILLAINS IN HISTORY
In this episode, our host Charley is joined by guests BREANNA DOYLE (theatre artist who has also studied history, anthropology, art, English and cinema studies) as well as JOHN ROBSON (National Post columnist with a B.A. and M.A. in history from UofT and a Ph.D in American history from University of Texas Austin). Together, they discuss the ever changing analysis of who's a hero and villain in history, the role of history in shaping culture and story, the controversial reclaiming and renaming based on values of today judging values of yesterday, erasing or preserving history, and the importance of understanding our history to navigate our future.
EPISODE 3: HEROES AND VILLAINS IN STORIES & LITERATURE
In this episode, our host Charley is joined by guests KAT IRVINE (theatre artist with a Degree in Performance Creation and Research, Minor in English, and a specialization in New Play Dramaturgy) as well as ADAM BARROWS (theatre artist and a professor of English Literature at Carleton University). Together, they discuss the need for heroes and villains in fiction for framing morality and ethics and in setting apart good and bad behaviours, heroes and villains that are clear in stories and those that are ambiguous, the anti-hero and our need to understand and even cheer for them, the difference between empathizing with a character's back story and justifying their current actions, and underrepresented people groups and minorities in stories and how they're portrayed over time.
EPISODE 5: HEROES AND VILLAINS IN NEWS & POLITICS
In this episode, our host Charley is joined by guests DARREN EMERY (theatre artist with education in Global & International Studies, Computer Science, and Video Design & Production) as well as MARGOT WRIGHT LINKE (retired journalist and former CBC radio producer). Together, they discuss the role of journalists in telling a news story and exposing a "villain", black and white thinking and personal bias when it comes to politics, current affairs, and historical figures, trust in the media and how to win it back, the limitations of seeing politicians as heroes to save us and villains to save us from, and the challenges and benefits of disagreeing respectfully about contentious issues in divisive times.
EPISODE 4: HEROES AND VILLAINS IN WAR & CONFLICT
In this episode, our host Charley is joined by guests CATHY NOBLEMAN (theatre artist with a Degree in French Literature and Masters in Journalism) as well as DR. RICHARD FEIST (tenured associate professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Saint Paul University). Together, they discuss the concepts of morality, responsibility and ethics, justifications in conflict and the notion of a just war, the changing landscape of war and how that might affect ethics over time, the role of the media and state in shaping narratives for the masses, as well as the way propaganda is used by all sides for the recruitment of "heroes" to fight for a cause and the creation of "villains" to fight against.
EPISODE 6: HEROES AND VILLAINS IN CRISIS
In this episode, our host Charley is joined by guests DR. ROCHELLE EINBODEN (Associate Professor of the School of Nursing at the University of Ottawa and CHEO's Nursing Research Chair) as well as ASHA-KAYE (poet and somatic therapist with vocational experience working in trauma and emergency medicine). Together, they discuss the archetypes of heroes and villains and how they are inextricably linked, how nurses were celebrated as heroes during Covid and why that's problematic, the dignity of patients in care, theatrical violence and trauma in health care, ideology and rituals in crisis, the creative art of nursing and the need for the human touch, loss of trust in medical science and its practitioners and how to earn it back, and the need for vision and imagination moving forward in how we care for one another.
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Check out Dr. Einboden's article "SuperNurse? Troubling the Hero Discourse in COVID Times"