Conversations That Matter

Will the 2020’s be a decade of rage? - Alec Ross

Oct 1, 2021

Ep 367 - Will the 2020s be a decade of rage?

Guest: Alec Ross

 

Are we on the cusp of a paradigm shift? “Hopefully,'' says Alec Ross. “If we don’t, the 2020s and beyond may well be known as the decade of rage.” The source of that rage is a symmetrical distribution of wealth to the rich and the rest of us.  In his book, “The Raging 2020s,” Ross points out that “over the past 30 years, the top 1 percent have grown $21 trillion richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown $900 billion poorer, and the middle class has stagnated.”

 

The source of this inequality, says Ross, is rooted in a philosophy espoused by Milton Friedman – that being “shareholder capitalism” versus “stakeholder capitalism.” According to Friedman, any company that was not maximizing profits was poorly managed. That philosophy led to wave after wave of assault on legislators in the US to loosen laws that hampered unrestricted corporate growth. 

 

As Ross points out, “Shareholder primacy melded perfectly with the Reagan and Thatcher eras, providing an intellectual cornerstone for deregulation and trickle down economics” – an economic approach that was crystallized in a line from the movie Wall Street, where the character Gordon Gekko says, “Greed is good.”

 

Fast forward to today and the power and influence of multinational corporations goes beyond the power of the state to control them. Ross says that “the social contract has been broken” and that greed is not good – in fact, it has taken us to the brink of rage.

 

We invited Alec Ross to join us for a Conversation That Matters about rewriting the social contract between business, governments and we, the people.

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Every Child Matters: Michael Downie

Ep 366 - Every Child Matters -  The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack

Guest: Michael Downie

 

On January 19, 2022, Chanie Wenjack would have turned 67 years of age. He died in 1967 at the age of 12 after running away from a residential school in northern Ontario. He tried to walk close to 400 miles in the cold weather to get back home. 

 

Chanie was a member of the Ojibway and he was attending the Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School in Kenora, Ontario. He became lonely and ran away. He died trying to get home to see his father. His story is heartbreaking. It is one that Gord Downie of Tragically Hip shares in “Secret Path,” the beloved singer's last solo musical and video release.

 

Downie said, “I never knew Chanie, but I will always love him. He haunts me. His story is Canada’s story. We are not the country we thought we were.” In his last on-stage performance, he called out to Prime Minister Trudeau to fix the problems in northern Canada, saying, “It’s maybe worse than it’s ever been, so it’s not on the improve.”

 

According to the “United Nations Index on Human Development - Quality of Life,” people who live on band or reservation lands in Canada have a standard of living that is ranked 63rd in the world. The rest of Canada is ranked 6th. According to former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Perry Bellegarde, “6th versus 63 is an enormous gap in the standard of living. It’s a gap that represents a disproportionate number of First Nations people in prisons; it represents the high youth suicide rate, which is four to five times the national average; it represents 40,000 indiginous children in foster care and it represents a cap on education funding that is close to half of provincial averages.”

 

Micheal Downie, the Tragically Hip singer’s older brother and the filmmaker who produced “Secret Path,” carries on the work of the foundation the two set up, the “Downie Wenjack Fund.” The fund calls on Canadians to build a better country and to see the people we’ve been trained to ignore.

 

Stuart McNish invited Michael Downie to join him for a Conversation That Matters about the need to build awareness, advance education, and enhance connections between all peoples in Canada.

 

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Corporate Farmers: Who Are They?: Adrienne Ivey

Ep 365 - Corporate Farmers - Who Are They?

Guest: Adrienne Ivey

 

Adrienne Ivey asks you to close your eyes and form an image of a corporate farmer – a corporate farmer with a board of directors who has shares and receives dividends, a corporate farmer that owns a large 10,000-acre ranch with  1,000 head of cattle, a corporate farmer that runs the business based on the numbers, and who sells products into a food production network, not at farmer's markets. 

 

She then asks you to open your eyes and look at her, a mother in her 30s who, along with her husband and in-laws, run their corporate ranch. The shareholders are her family – a business that has a succession plan, a succession plan  to pass on ownership to her children.

 

Ivey says, “We're not alone. We’re not outliers in agriculture.” More than 95% of farms of consequence in Canada are family-owned and -operated businesses. Ivey is a strong and proud rancher who says, “We’re worried that Canadians are being told to fear me. I’m not to be trusted, I’m to be feared, that I don't care for the land or the animals that I raise, that I’m only in it for the money.”  

 

She says, "Look at me. Is that what you see?" Adrienne Ivey says the images that others are using to promote their products at the expense of people like her and her family are wrong. So she decided to stand up, and in the words of Paul Harvey, "Tell the rest of the story."  

 

Stuart McNish invited blogger, speaker, and one of the voices of ranching in Saskatchewan, Adrienne Ivey, to join him for a frank Conversation That Matters - Food for Thought episode about cattle ranching. 

 

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Power for All: Julie Battilana

Ep 363 - Power for All

Guest: Julie Battilana

 

“Power is one of the most misunderstood and therefore vilified concepts in our society,” says Julie Battilana, the founder and facility chair of the Social Innovation and Change Initiative at the Harvard Business School. Battilana goes on to say, “Most people assume power is predetermined by personality or wealth, or that it is gained by strong-arming others.”

 

According to Battilana, the myths associated with power stand in the way of access to it for the vast majority of people who are unaware of the structure's power. In her book, “Power for All,” she and fellow author Tiziana Casciaro, a professor at the Rotman School at the University of Toronto, point out that we all have access to power if we understand the dynamics of power.

 

Battilana points out, “Power is not a dirty concept to be vilified and it is not a zero-sum game.” 

 

We invited Julie Battilana to join us for a Conversation That Matters about understanding power and how to develop it so that you can gain control over your life.

 

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Is Data Mapping a Crystal Ball: Will Caddell

Ep 362 - Is Data Mapping a Crystal Ball?

Guest: Will Cadell

 

Maps – try to go anywhere without them. You can get to places for sure, especially if the terrain is familiar. However, venture outside of your familiar neighbourhood and then your journey is one of trial and error. You wonder what is over there or over there or there and with each foray, you discover something new – new, but not necessarily helpful.

 

Data is a form of mapping; so is remote satellite imagery. Now combine the two and your understanding of that place expands exponentially – not just the place as a static point in time, but minute by minute. Imagine the power to retailers, governments, insurance companies and others in knowing not just the place, but the place and minute-by-minute historical activity. It’s as if Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle” suddenly became certain, namely you can now know the location and speed of an object.

 

The power of the information also arms the holder of it with prescient knowledge – in other words, the ability to predict what will come next. It’s a mind boggling concept and if Sparkgeo, a Prince George, British Columbia company, continues to deliver on the promise of marrying low earth satellite imagery with trillions of bits of information into powerful diagnostic tools, then the holder of that information will be armed with a reliable looking glass.

 

Stuart McNish invited Will Cadell to join him for a Conversation That Matters about the power of accurate time-, space- and velocity-based intel.

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Leadership Inside Out: Susan Ney

Ep 361 - Leadership Inside Out

Guest: Susan Ney

 

The topic of leadership is confounding. There are so many theories and concepts and guidebooks and textbooks that contradict one another and create confusion. Do I stand tall and lead from the front, or do I lean in or support from the sidelines?

 

It’s easy for me to say I have no idea what it means to be a leader. I really don’t. I’ve just had to trust my gut that somehow I was doing the right thing. I know quickly enough when I’m doing the wrong thing, that feedback is immediate. But the right thing, the evidence unfolds slowly, it’s effect is incremental at best and mostly it is invisible.

 

I was relieved recently when Susan Ney published her book, Leadership Inside Out. “It’s a book about unearthing the leader inside you and changing your world for the better”, says Ney.  Getting to that place of self discovery and confidence is a journey she goes on to say, “is a journey filled with awe, wonderment, a tinge of sadness and disappointment but ultimately it is about developing an appreciation of who you are and the confidence that comes with it.”

 

Stuart McNish invited author, speaker, HR Professional and philosopher Susan Ney to join me for a Conversation That Matters about leadership from the inside out.

 

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Is today finally hydrogen’s day? Guest: Jessica Verhagen

 Is today finally hydrogen’s day?

Guest: Jessica Verhagen

 

To say hydrogen’s day has been coming for a long time is an understatement. It was discovered by Henry Cavendish in 1766 and it was quickly identified as the most abundant chemical substance in the universe – the entire universe. In other words, there is no “peak hydrogen.”  We can use the stuff forever and we can use it to store energy and to fuel transportation. And maybe, just maybe, today is the day hydrogen takes centre stage as the fuel of choice.

 

In transportation, the electrification of heavy vehicles and service vehicles like taxis and police cars and delivery trucks just isn’t practical. The practical alternative is hydrogen. Practical is so many ways such as storage, storage capacity in the vehicle, the fact that hydrogen and gas mix. Heck, hydrogen and methane mix and so does hydrogen and diesel.

 

And the sources of hydrogen are ubiquitous – they are everywhere. With that said, in a world that is endeavouring to lower GHGs, green hydrogen is treasured. That means the electricity used to produce the hydrogen is, well, green.  Well, what about waste by product hydrogen – the hydrogen you can produce using landfill waste? Not only do you reduce methane emissions from landfills, but you also create clean burning hydrogen.

 

It’s an exciting new world. But wait – there’s the challenge of switching vehicles from diesel or gas to hydrogen. That can be costly. And who do you turn to and how does it work? Enter British Columbia-based Hydra Energy, which offers hydrogen to trucking fleets as a service.

 

Stuart McNish invited Jessic Verhagen, the CEO of Hydra Energy, to join him for a Conversation That Matters about hydrogen’s role in a low carbon world.

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Social Media and Food Guest: Sylvain Charlebois

According to Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, one of the most important changes in the food supply network is social media. “Consumers,” he says, “finally have a voice and they're using it. They're talking a lot about food and where to buy it.” Previously, the food relationship was a push from manufacturer to grocer and then to consumer. But he says, “Now it's a pull in the other direction. And this, in essence, is putting tremendous pressure on the food industry in Canada.”

Charlebois says it's democratizing the supply chain and it's giving everyone a chance to establish direct relationships between producers and consumers. And according to him, “Big-name producers like PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Gordon Food Services, and Sysco – to name but a few – are now selling directly to consumers.” This shift in the relationship is also introducing food choices that didn't exist before, and that's because small or specialized producers couldn't access the market. Charlebois, who consults with food startup companies, says, “You will now see more and more small specialized producers connecting online with consumers and offering them a wider range of products.”

Stuart McNish invited food specialist Dr. Sylvain Charlebois of Dalhousie University to join him for a Conversation That Matters, Food For Thought episode about the dramatic changes underway in food production and supply thanks to consumer empowerment.

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COVID-19: Where did it come from? - Nicholas Wade

The hunt is on for the source of the coronavirus. Was it a natural leap from animal to human via another host animal or was it a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? To date, we don’t know. And the answer is vitally important to a large swath of people and the Chinese and American governments.

 

Early in the pandemic, we were heavily influenced to believe it was a natural emergence. The reason we were nudged in that direction was statements from two significant scientific groups – statements that, according to science journalist Nicholas Wade, “were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.”

 

On February 19, 2020, The Lancet published a statement that said, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

 

Wade says, “Contrary to that assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab-invoked accident, not conspiracy – it surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists.”

 

We invited Nicholas Wade to discuss his investigative work to have a Conversation That Matters about what we do and don’t actually know about the source of COVID-19. ---

 

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SHOW LESS

Does Context Matter? Guest: Vince Taylor, author of “Beyond the Blindfold: Harnessing the Secret Power of Context”

Does context matter? It’s an odd question to ask, especially of yourself. After all, isn't your point of view yours and therefore it’s correct? So who cares? Well, Vince Taylor cares. He cares so much he wrote a book about his journey of self-discovery.

 

Taylor says, “Before I really understood context, I understood nothing.” If you sit back for a moment and think about Taylor’s assertion, it seems implausible that you could be so far off base because you haven’t taken the time to consider the context. According to him, “Context is the most powerful, naturally occurring interruption of the conscious mind I have ever experienced – a neural concoction so influential that even the best and brightest suffer from incredible and inexplicable bias. The result is that now, to consider my opinions ‘right’ and other opinions ‘wrong’ has become preposterous and embarrassing.”

 

In fact, he was so moved by what he learned, he spent ten years writing a book that, should you read it and absorb the messages, you too will challenge yourself and your perspectives and biases. And if you decide to travel on that journey – one that Dr Scott Peck calls the “Road Less Traveled” – well, put on your seatbelt and wear a helmet because the road is bumpy and long.

 

Stuart McNish invited Vince Taylor, author of “Beyond the Blindfold: Harnessing the Secret Power of Context,” to join him for a conversation that matters about a path to enlightenment that is humbling and rewarding.

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs  Watch this episode on YouTube and on CHEKNews