Alberta Advantage Podcast Team Advantage

What can we learn about the ongoing pandemic and how it's been handled? How's the whole global public health infrastructure, campaign for clean air, and renewed push for workplace going? Does this bode well for future pandemics and crises, and how can we learn from what's happened so far to shape our future demands?

Israel is on a genocidal rampage through Gaza. Team Advantage, joined by intrepid independent journalist Jeremy Appel, examine the historical roots and basic assumptions that underlie Zionism, and discuss a few light topics, like discourse-policing, denouncing Hamas, antisemitism, and settler-colonialism.

In late September 2023, Canadian Parliament clapped for "Ukrainian hero" Yaroslav Hunka, who fought with the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a unit in the Nazi German military. 
Why did Canada let so many Ukrainian Nazis into the country after WW2, and how did this wave of right-wing Ukrainian nationalist shape Canada's Ukrainian diaspora? Team Advantage digs into the working-class origins of Ukrainians in Canada, Canada's efforts at post-war anticommunism, and the Canadian government's careful management of "multiculturalism."

The area burned by wildfires in Canada this year exceeded 18 million hectares and burned 1,740 megatonnes of CO2, roughly three times Canada's human-made emissions from 2022. As fire season winds down, Team Advantage examines this new, fun, half-year-long weather phenomenon, and considers the role of fossil fuels and the end of "cheap nature." 

Further reading:
John Vaillant - Fire Weather
Edward Struzik - Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future
Alex Callinicos - The New Age of Catastrophe
Jason Moore - Capitalism in the Web of Life 

Support this podcast! Rachel Notley led the Alberta NDP to their second major electoral defeat in Alberta's latest general election. What does this election say about Albertans and our political culture? How might we make basic social democratic values popular? How should we organize as we anticipate Premier Danielle Smith? And what's next for the Alberta NDP? 

Support this podcast! What link is there between pushing Indigenous people off land, into reserves, into residential schools, and into forced treatment? How are conversations about "public safety" and policing being mobilized to harm vulnerable people? How has the politicization of the opioid epidemic obscured what's needed to address increasing drug poisoning deaths? Harm reduction advocate Euan Thomson joins Team Advantage to discuss the realities of Alberta's drug poisoning crisis.

Follow Euan @elsthomson and subscribe to his Drug Data Decoded newsletter.

Listen to our 2020 episode on this topic with Garth Mullins and Jeremy Appel.

Mentioned in this episode is Dustin Godfrey's video essay "Is Vancouver Dying? A definitely non-exhaustive review." Also mentioned is a recent B.C. Federation of Labour resolution to lobby the B.C. government for safe supply.