The Public Practice

The Public Practice Podcast is about the craft of public innovation: the skills, the strategies, and the conditions that let real change happen. We dig into it through conversations, case studies, and stories from the field, all centred on the actual work it takes to make public systems run better. Nick and Jason have done versions of this work themselves, in Canada and abroad, and that shows up in every conversation. Each episode follows one guest’s path. How they got into the work, what nearly stopped them, and what they’d tell someone standing where they once stood. We care about the texture of it: the mandate that landed without a plan, the right person showing up at the right moment, the memo that finally got read. We treat public service as a craft, change as real labour, and reform as something built slowly by people who keep showing up. Nick and Jason interview as peers, because they’ve done versions of the work too. It feels less like a reporter running a Q&A and more like two senior staff comparing notes with a third. We assume our guests know things worth learning, and we ask like it. Public sector reform moves slowly, and a lot of what makes it work lives only in people’s heads. When a seasoned practitioner retires or moves on, that knowledge usually walks out the door with them. This show is our way of catching it, making sense of it, and handing it forward. We publish biweekly during active seasons, with breaks for production and research. Trust in institutions is low right now, and a new generation is just arriving. The people who’ve done this work before deserve to be heard on their own terms, and the people about to start deserve to hear them.