Well That's Cool Ben Fast

Hello fellow isolators!

Welcome to a special season-ending bonus episode. It is March 17th today, which makes it one year since a state of public health emergency was declared here in Alberta. That’s right, one year of COVID quarantines, a year with an overarching sense of fear (among other feelings), and a year quite different from those we’ve experienced before. I started this podcast about a week after we all started working from home. It’s a weird feeling of almost not being able to remember what that was like, as well as thinking it was only yesterday.

I thought I would start a little project where I talked with cool people about cool things they were doing as a way to practice some podcasting, connect with people outside my apartment, and keep me busy through what was supposed to be a short disruption. Well a year later and I think the show has done just that, so it is a fitting time to wrap things up and take a break for a while. But, before I do, I wanted to have one more conversation with someone who has experienced at least part of this year doing something most of us could hardly imagine doing in a good year, let alone in the middle of a pandemic.

In this special bonus episode, I talk with Edmonton’s own cyclocross star, Sidney McGill. Sidney had just come back from a winter riding bikes in Belgium, and I wanted to know more about racing in a pandemic, how her sport changed with COVID precautions, and how exactly a young Canadian takes part in elite world-level events.

If you want to learn more about Sidney’s riding life, follow her on Instagram @SidneyMcGill. You can also learn more about her teams and sponsorships with Pedalhead Bicycle Works and Liv Cycling.

And that about wraps up Season 1 of the Well That’s Cool podcast. I’ve had a great time taking you with me as we explored stories from the Netherlands, Scotland, and now Belgium, as well as life on the road with Engelbert Humperdink. I also want to thank the five authors who joined me live this fall and winter for the Book Club series, as well as the two who talked with me about writing with autism and making Mennonites funny.

It has been a crazy year, and this podcast has been a distraction, a motivator, and just a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed the adventure too, and I’d love to hear what you thought about it. You can reach out to me by email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com or on my website, benfast.ca. I’m also on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at well_thatscool. I don’t have solid plans for a season 2 yet, but feel free to send me a suggestion and I may pop back into your feeds occasionally this spring as the fancy takes me.

In the meantime, I’m still making my model airplane kits, trying to read more regularly, and now thanks to Sidney I’m thinking of putting the wheels back on the road and stretching the cycling legs as the temperatures are rising. I may not be getting muddy and tearing up the local park like Sidney does, but I love that feeling of freedom and exploring that comes with pushing on the pedals. We’ve all been cooped up inside for a long time, why don’t you join me for a ride sometime, wherever you are, and get some much needed and very soothing fresh air. That’s my plan for getting out of this pandemic winter!

Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! And as we count down the days of final week of people experiencing first-time pandemic birthdays, stay well, and happy isolation reading!

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Well That’s Cool podcast!

One of the things about this podcast’s origin was I didn’t really know what it was going to become. I started the show as a way to talk with cool people doing cool things during the pandemic. As the fall and winter of 2020 came around, things naturally evolved into a Zoom book club, a monthly chance for me to talk with authors, poets, and people working in the literary sphere. Let’s face it, those people are cool, and they’re pretty decent at communicating, since it is their day job. I hosted five club meetings and was very happy to have a small but mighty regular virtual audience join me, making the episode recordings both a fun time with friends and a cool way to keep the podcast going. As we’re heading towards one year living with this pandemic, and one year since I started this podcast, and with the temperature rising and people starting to find ways to live a bit more normally again, I’ve started thinking about wrapping up Season 1 and taking a break from the Well That’s Cool idea. We’ve had some great book club meetings, and they were – I hope – a useful and fulfilling activity for both the attendees and you listeners during the dark winter months.

To wrap up Season 1, I decided to have one more conversation with an author, this time with someone who spends his time satirizing my very family history. If you listened to some of my earlier episodes you’ll know I spent a few weeks in 2019 traveling to Scotland to find out more about my mom’s side of the family tree. Well, part of my dad’s are Mennonites, coming to Canada most recently from the Ukraine, or what was then the Russian Empire, and going further back through Prussia and the Netherlands. I was also raised attending a Mennonite church and I have many Mennonite friends across Canada and the US, so it’s been an important identifier for me growing up, maybe even more ingrained than my interest in and connection with Scottish history that started a few years ago.

For my guest on this episode, Andrew Unger, author of Once Removed and the man behind the website The Daily Bonnet, satirizing Mennonites comes from a deep family and personal connection to the Mennonite experience as well. His writing features more Mennonite references than I can catch, his subjects cover all aspects of Mennonite life through the ages and into today. Using that Mennonite history and culture that shaped his perspective of the world as a lens to look back on Mennonites and look at the outside world provides him with ample material to draw on, and a great opportunity to share a chuckle with Mennonites – and everyone else – along the way.

In our conversation, we explore Mennonite history and culture, how to write (and teach) satire, just why his character Timothy Heppner is fighting to preserve heritage, and how articles about Mennonite sex positions are not as controversial as you may think!

My thanks to Andrew Unger for talking with me about all things Mennonite, as well as his writing and approach to satire. I really enjoyed both my conversation and his novel Once Removed as a way to connect with and laugh alongside a part of my family story and my own identity. As Andrew mentioned, you can find his work at AndrewUnger.com or at dailybonnet.com.

Now I said off the top that this interview was going to wrap up Season 1, but I actually have one more special episode left, which will drop on the one year anniversary of the first lockdown restrictions coming into effect here in Alberta. The first case was reported on March 5th, but on March 17, when total cases had already reached 97, the province declared a state of public health emergency. You know the rest of the story, it’s been a year to remember since then, or a year to forget I guess. At times it feels like the longest year, and at times I am amazed that a full year has already passed. To…commemorate? Acknowledge? I dunno, on

Hello fellow isolators, and welcome to the fifth edition of the Well That’s Cool Book Club!

For our February meeting, we had the first poet to make a special guest appearance at the Well That’s Cool Book Club. Jenna Butler is more than just a poet, however, she is also an essayist, professor, and organic farmer.  Jenna’s writing includes the poetry collections Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; a collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail; and the travelogue Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Revery: A Year of Bees, is her latest work, and features essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery. It is now out from Wolsak and Wynn.

In this episode, Jenna and I talked about poetry, prose, emotion, writing as social justice, farming, climate change, and publishing. It was quite the discussion, one that helped me understand poetry and its role in conveying different messages, from hope for the future in a challenging world to the experience of watching the summer solstice. Our conversation really brought forward the passion Jenna has for her work and the world around her, something I think you’ll hear throughout the episode.

Jenna’s recommendations to the live audience included Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree.
Thanks again to Jenna Butler for bringing such passion and interesting experiences to the Book Club this month. I loved hearing about those direct, personal experiences dealing with and taking action against climate change, as well as nerding out on poetic Svalbard adventures. I know a number of the club’s members this month went right out and bought copies of Jenna’s work, and if you want to learn more you can find them at jennabutler.com.

For me, I’m halfway through Once Removed by Andrew Unger (more on that below) and have started Spitfire by John Nichol. This is a history book about “Britain’s greatest warplane” that jumps through the story of the Spit with little vignettes and excerpts about the people who worked on and flew the great airplane. I’m not sure I can define the style of popular history, it really does seem like Nichol put all the little bits he could find in archives together independently rather than using them to put a narrative together like you might expect. It’s not a bad effect, and nice to be able to read in short chunks. What are you reading these days? You can send me a recommendation on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.

As for this podcast, it is amazing to think I put out the first episode 11 months ago, back at the end of March 2020. This show was going to be my little experiment in podcasting for fun, finding cool people doing cool things and sharing their stories with cool people like you. When I started I really didn’t know where this COVID thing would go, how bad it would affect me personally or the people around me, and how our lives would be shaped by it in the weeks, months, or, worst case, years to come. We’re almost a full year in now and here in Alberta things have been…well not amazing but not the worst in the world. I’m very lucky personally not to have experienced medical issues, but am definitely feeling the impacts of the isolation and lack of socializing that came with everything. The way this podcast evolved into a book club this fall helped connect with friends and keep that curiosity flowing through the dark winter weeks.

But what next? Well, future plans and interest in hobbies have fluctuated just about as much the temperature this week or our moods this year. With a year fast approaching since the first Well That’s Cool episode was published, I’m going to wrap up season one next month. I’m really excited to have one la

Hello fellow isolators, and welcome to the fourth edition of the Well That’s Cool Book Club, and our first meeting of 2021! Things are getting cold here in Edmonton so what better time to curl up with a good book and get reading? Or in this case, to get on Zoom with some friends new and old to talk about books!

In this episode, I talk with author and communications scholar, C.J. Lavigne. C.J.’s debut novel, In Veritas, was published in May 2020 and is already getting rave reviews. This novel explores the nature of truth and the complexities of human communication, all within a rich and imaginative fantasy version of Ottawa and with a character who experiences synesthesia.

Our conversation explored writing speculative fiction (which, as I found out, is an umbrella term for lots of work you might call fantasy or “genre”), how In Veritas was constructed over eight years, and how Verity’s world of synesthesia and a magic-adjacent Ottawa shapes C.J.’s exploration of human communication.

There was a LOT of book talk in this episode as well, including some great questions from our virtual audience. Just some of the titles C.J. mentioned include Premee Mohamad's Beneath the Rising, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic, and Sarah Gailey's The Echo Wife, along with C.L. Clark's The Unbroken and Tamsyn Muir's Alecto the Ninth.

As for my monthly reading update, along with finishing the last few chapters of In Veritas, I’m halfway through The Museum of Forgotten Memories by Anstey Harris, a book my mom gave me for Christmas, but with the temperatures dropping here in Edmonton I might need to pull out another Antarctic exploration book to brush up my cold-weather survival skills. I’ve got a biography of Roald Amundsen looking pretty good for that!

Do you have any new year reading recommendations for me, or any good books you got for Christmas? You can get in touch with the podcast on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.

I am excited to announce that the Book Club is getting extended into February! Join me on February 18 at 8 pm Mountain Time for a conversation with poet, environmentalist, professor, farmer, traveller, and writer Jenna Butler. We’ll be talking about everything from bee keeping to boating in Svalbard – it could be one of the biggest episodes yet! Register at https://www.benfast.ca/cool/bookclub.

Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!

Hello isolators! It’s me, Ben Fast, with another bonus mini episode!

I’ve been talking with authors a lot on the podcast recently. In the first episode of the Book Club series I’m running this winter, one of the live studio audience members was herself a writer. Keara Farnan is the author of I Only See in Black & White, a memoir about living with autism and the way that shapes her experiences in everyday life.

I know a little bit about autism from my work in museum education, I was fortunate enough to run a sensory-friendly event at the Copperbelt Railway and Mining Museum in Whitehorse back in 2016. At that event I learned a lot about how autism and other sensory spectrum disorders challenge how people of all ages interact with the world around them. I know some great educators here in Alberta or back in my home province of BC who are making those museum spaces and programs welcoming to people who may not experience their environment the same way you or I do.

But with that said, I’ve rarely actually talked with someone who lives with autism, or who can communicate that life and their own experiences in a way that makes sense to me, let alone who has written a book about it. Keara was happy to talk with me about her life and writing the book, and I’m excited to play it for you here.

My thanks to Keara Farnan for talking with me about her book, I Only See in Black & White. Here in Canada it is estimated that 1 in 66 children are on the autistic spectrum, with 50,000 autistic teens yearly losing support as they move out of school and into adulthood. There is much that is misunderstood about living with autism and it was great to hear Keara’s book is having an impact by sharing her story. If you want to get a copy for yourself, or for someone you know, visit Keara’s website at kearafarnan.com, or search for I Only See in Black & White on Amazon.

There are lots of cool things coming with the podcast, including the next Book Club meeting with special guest CJ Lavigne on January 21. Visit benfast.ca/cool for more info. Until next time, thanks for listening to this bonus episode, a Happy New Year to you all, and stay well out there!

Hello fellow isolators! I hope you are all doing well on this strange Christmas Eve. I know many people are not seeing family or having to change plans to keep everyone safe, as well as dealing with new restrictions in some provinces. As these played out in mid-December, it seemed another perfect time to have a second socially-distant book club meeting! As usual, I was joined by a special guest and a live studio audience on Zoom for an evening talking about reading, stories, and all things books.

A quick note: Normally I host these book club meetings from my home in Edmonton, but this episode is a bit special. I have travelled home to BC and I recorded this interview during some time in self-isolation in a very cute little tiny home in Campbell River. This is not just a vacation: I made the trip to help my mom move (and will be working remotely from here for a month), so I did my utmost to travel safely and stay healthy. I would like to acknowledge that I hosted this live podcast interview as a visitor on the traditional territories of the Laich-Kwil-Tach, Klahoose, and K’omoks First Nations. 

Thank you to the live virtual studio audience who have signed on a bit earlier than normal for this event, it was good to see you and good to connect as our provinces go into stricter phases of restrictions across Canada to help stop the rapid rise of COVID-19.

I was very excited to talk with my third guest on the Well That’s Cool Book Club, Mark Zuehlke. I have had the chance to meet Mark a few times over the past 7 or so years, including at book releases, talks, and when he was a guest speaker for a course I was taking at UVic. Mark is an award-winning author generally considered to be Canada’s foremost popular military historian. His 14-book Canadian Battle Series is the most exhaustive recounting of the battles and campaigns fought by any nation during World War II to have been written by a single author. In recognition of his contribution to popularizing Canadian history, Mark was awarded the 2014 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: The Pierre Berton Award. He is also an award-winning mystery writer, a battlefield tour historian, and a former journalist! 

My conversation with Mark explored three areas of his work: the life and work of a popular military history writer, the process of writing Canadian battlefield histories, and some of the stories he’s discovered over the years. Mark recommended a couple good memoirs of Canadian soldiers who became well-known writers after the war, including Farley Mowat’s And No Birds Sang as well as George Blackburn’s The Guns of Normandy and The Guns of Victory.

My thanks again to Mark Zuehlke for talking with the small but regular group of Book Club members this month. If you want to learn more about Mark and his Canadian Battle Series or other writing, visit Zuehlke.ca. 

That’s it for the Well That’s Cool Book Club for this year! That’s right, we’ve made it to the end of 2020! I’ll be back for another book club meeting on January 21 at 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time for a conversation with speculative fiction writer and author of In Veritas, C.J. Lavigne. You can register for that meeting here.

As for the latest update on my reading list, I’ve temporarily dropped A History of Scotland by Neil Oliver and just finished History of the Glider Pilot Regiment by Claude Smith. This was a really hardcore history with lots of regimental information and not too much action, though those parts were best when they came around. What a crazy bit of military history! Now I am back to a light sci-fi read with The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi. It is the second book in The Interdependency series and I listened to the first one as an audiobook read by Wil Wheaton. The audio book was good enough, but I think I’m enjoying reading it without an excited Wesley Crusher doing all the voices!

Do you have any new year reading recommendations fo