Attending to words both written and spoken, Passages attempts to preserve the strengths of each, drawing together the heft of conceptual thinking and the flexibility of conversational exchange.
Season 1 is devoted to philosophy and classics, with season 2 turning to democracy and politics.
Authors discussed include Herodotus, Plato, Augustine, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Harold A. Innis, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and more.
Passages was produced and presented by Mark Dance in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 2024-2026.
Contact: dance.d.mark@gmail.com.
S2E08 - ORGANIZING AND PARTICIPATING - Dave Meslin
For more than 20 years, Dave Meslin has been a community organizer focused primarily on three topics: sustainable transportation, visual communication in public spaces and electoral reform. Or, as Meslin poetically puts it, his focus has been on bikes, billboards and ballots.
While these topics might appear disconnected, Meslin thinks there’s a common thread, which is giving voice to groups that are being systemically excluded by a dominant force: he writes, “Roads designed exclusively for cars, invasive corporate signs, and a cartel of prehistoric political parties–each of these suffocates other voices. In each case, there are elite forces at work maintaining the status quo. And in each case, those forces can be overpowered only by effective political advocacy.”
Dave Meslin’s book is called Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/533225/teardown-by-dave-meslin/9780143197058). It’s part handbook for organizers, part memoir of his decades of work for a better democracy, and part philosophical manifesto about what human beings and communities can do when given the chance.
Meslin’s work has been adapted for television by TVO, in a series called Unrigged (https://www.tvo.org/programs/unrigged).
Music for this episode from Uppbeat (https://uppbeat.io/t/moire/new-life). License code: 2CWHTEVPITF6KWEO.
15 May 2026
S2E07 - PUBLIC BROADCASTING AND THE BIAS OF COMMUNICATION - David Cayley
Canadian historian Harold Innis devoted the years before his death in 1952 to the question of communication–its bias, its relationship with empire, its capacity to foster thought styles so dominant as to entrain "all minds and set them running in predetermined 'grooves.'"
Those last words belong not to Innis but to David Cayley. Cayley is a writer and broadcaster, whose decades of work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation–the CBC–ranged in subject matter from history and philosophy to criminology and current affairs. On CBC Ideas, his voice and style were instantly recognizable.
Drawing on that background, David Cayley’s newest book is called The CBC: How Canada’s Public Broadcaster Lost Its Voice (And How to Get It Back) (https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/product/the-cbc/). In it, Cayley pushes his reader to develop the recognition, humility and humour that he thinks might constitute "the first step to a responsible practice of media."
This episode draws on passages from the following CBC Ideas series produced by Cayley:
The Legacy of Harold Innis (https://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/category/Legacy+of+Harold+Innis)
Turning Points in Public Broadcasting: The CBC at 50 (https://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/2016/11/26/turning-points-in-public-broadcasting)
The Origins of the Modern Public (https://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/category/Origins+of+Modern+Public)
Music for this episode from Uppbeat (https://uppbeat.io/t/moire/new-life). License code: 2CWHTEVPITF6KWEO.
27 Feb 2026
S2E06 - SEASONAL AGRICULTURAL WORK AND RESISTANCE - Ed Dunsworth
To lift oneself up against the gravity of common sense, it takes a probing mind and searching spirit. It takes focus and scope, it takes dialogue with people who have real experience, and it perhaps also takes some acquaintance with history.
Ed Dunsworth is a historian of labour, migration, and politics at McGill University. His 2022 book is Harvesting Labour: Tobacco and the Global Making of Canada’s Agricultural Workforce (https://www.mqup.ca/Books/H/Harvesting-Labour2). It’s an intricate and ambitious look at how global trends and trajectories have passed through the prism of one specific sector in one specific county, just off Lake Erie in southern Ontario.
Harvesting Labour undermines our default understanding of agricultural work in Canada, not least by showing farm workers of many eras and origins organizing, resisting, and asserting their own dignity.
This episode also discusses Dunsworth’s 2023 book, Harvesting Freedom: The Life of a Migrant Worker in Canada (https://btlbooks.com/book/harvesting-freedom), co-authored with Gabriel Allahdua.
Music for this episode from Uppbeat (https://uppbeat.io/t/moire/new-life). License code: 2CWHTEVPITF6KWEO.
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2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 26 / 100
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YouTube
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