Darts and Letters

There's a story you can tell about the post-Occupy left gravitating towards a more state-oriented kind of politics. However, this misses strong autonomous and anarchist-inflected social movements. In this episode, we examine the theory and practice of anti-statist organizing, including the Kurds within the area formerly known as Rojava.

Psychedelics have gone from the counterculture, to the mainstream. However, can you turn take such an ineffable thing -- personal revelation, cosmic oneness, spiritual enlightenment, whatever people have called it -- and make it just another commodity? We look at the deep rifts in and around psychedelic medicine, as different camps vie for the future of these drugs.

The WEF is yet another example of the scrambled ideologues of our moment. Conservatives condemn the WEF, and news organizations like Rebel cover it doggedly; at the same time, left-leaning NGOs speak there, and progressive news organizations say little. On this episode, we examine the shifting politics around our global financial elites.

What's safer than baby powder? Parents have been using it for over 100 years to powder their baby's bottoms, and they've found one brand especially trustworthy: Johnson & Johnson. Yet, numerous studies have revealed the presence of trace amounts of asbestos in this talc-based powder.

We're excited to announce Academic Edgelords. This is a scholarly podcast about scholarly provocateurs. Gadflys, charlatans, and shitposters sometimes get tenure, believe it or not. This is a leftist podcast that takes a second look at their peer-reviewed work, and tries to see if there’s anything we might learn from arguing with them. We start with the ultimate academic edglelord: Ted Kacynski, the domestic terrorist.

Could an artificial intelligence diagnosis what ails you? Medical futurists offer a techno-utopian vision of perfect personalized risk assessments, diagnoses, and treatment recommendations. Yet, recent stories belie this optimism.

Paulo Freire offers activists and academics everywhere a lesson in what it means to be a radical intellectual. He is known as the founder of critical pedagogy, which asks teachers and learners to understand and resist their own oppression. On this episode, we look at the life and legacy of Freire.

The COVID-19 lab leak theory went from being dismissed as mere misinformation, to now a credible matter of debate. What's changed, and what does this teach us about science journalism and science communication?

Online masculinity is getting weirder and weirder. Now, we’ve got bro science, ball tanning, ball eatin,’ piss drinkin,’ and who knows what's next. We ask: what's broken in the hearts of men, and how might the left fix it?

The story of the Fountain of Youth is as old as history itself. Herodatus, the father of ancient Greek history, wrote of a mythical spring that extended the life of its bathers. Today, entrepreneurs, scientists, and health influencers are still searching for that mythical spring.

From 1968 to 1975, one eighteen story high-rise was the heart of Canada's counterculture. Rochdale College in Toronto was jammed full with leftist organizers, hippies, draft dodgers, students, artists, and others just looking for a good time. Rochdale wasn't really a "college." It was something much bigger: it was a radical experiment. However, was this an experiment worth doing? We investigate.

The Darts team is working on another big episode! In the meantime, we're sharing this one from our friends at PlasticPills - Philosophy & Critical Theory Podcast. They do a great discussion of OpenAI and its implications in academia.

The idea of moving to Canada figures prominently in the imagination of many disaffected Americans. Between the mid-60s and early-70s they really did come--and in the 10s of thousands. Yet, when these Americans made their way, they did not always find the Canada they expected.

Our host Gordon and producer Marc join Evan MacDonald of Kino Lefter to discuss our latest episode - a retrospective on the 2004 documentary "Discordia".

We revisit the extraordinary National Film Board documentary Discordia, directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal. The film covered the 2002/03 school year at Concordia University in Montreal, QC. Pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police, and this event came to be know as "the Concordia Riot."

The Canadian government has recently instituted an expansive Medical Assistance in Dying regime (MAID). But many patients are seeking MAID to address poverty, not just illness. Is MAID letting the government off the hook from providing care and social services?

Many of the creative industries look like an hourglass. On the one side, you have creators; on the other, the rest of us. In the middle, Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow say there's often a 'chokepoint.'

The collapse of the crypotcurrency exchange FTX has is forcing a reckoning in the financial world, with calls intensifying to reign in and regulate these emerging technologies. It's also forcing a philosophical reckoning about the ideas that inspired their CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. SBF is a major proponent and funder of Effective Altruism.

The right attacks science, liberals uncritically defend it. But there are other ways to see scientific authority. Scientists have always served capitalism, patriarchy, and empire. So say Science for the People, a radical movement of scientists. So, they are fighting to change it. We tell the story of the groups Vietnam-era origins, and explore why it's having a resurgence today.

We speak to Paris Marx of Tech Won't Save Us on the shifting politics of Silicon Valley. We'll traverse the intellectual history of hippies-turned-arch-capitalists, and focus especially on their ideas for transportation policy. Do they have a radical vision for a different transportation future, or is it a vision of maintain the status quo?