Tag Archives: Folk U

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Reality 102: Realistic Responses To Today’s Problems

The podcast and article that follow expresses opinions not necessarily shared by the Cortes Radio Society, its board, staff, volunteers or membership.

Editor’s note: Reality 102 with Rex Weyler was the conclusion of a two part series at Cortes Island’s Folk University. This session was recorded and broadcast over Cortes Radio in the regular Cortes Currents slot on November 13, 2019. Rex asks what are realistic responses to the problem of overshoot. He asks the same question in the article below; the embedded podcast is Rex’s Folk U presentation.

At the University of Minnesota Dr. Nate Hagens teaches an honours course called “Reality 101: A Survey of the Human Predicament.” Hagens operated his own hedge fund on Wall Street until he glimpsed, “a serious disconnect between capitalism, growth, and the natural world. Money did not appear to bring wealthy clients more well being.” Hagens became editor of The Oil Drum, and now sits on the Board of the Post Carbon Institute and the Institute for Integrated Economic Research.

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Reality 101: Overshoot

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The podcast and article that follow expresses opinions not necessarily shared by the Cortes Radio Society, its board, staff, volunteers or membership.

Editor’s note: Reality 101 with Rex Weyler was one of the lunchtime lectures at Cortes Island’s Folk University. This session was recorded and broadcast over Cortes Radio in the regular Cortes Currents slot on November 6, 2019. The theme is overshoot, and what this means to the future of humanity and our planet. Rex also writes about overshoot in the article below; the embedded podcast is Rex’s Folk U presentation.

I’m in Vancouver, riding the skytrain, the metro-region’s elevated and underground public transport system. In a crowded cabin, I gaze above the seats and see this advertisement: 

“By 2050 sea levels have risen. Would you rather: 

  • A: Build higher dikes to fight it?
  • B: Develop underwater transit technology to embrace it?
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Health

Drug Literacy

Today, I woke up and much of the day I spent thinking about how I was going to get my drug-of-choice packed up for my upcoming trip. How much do I need? What could I leave behind in order to fit my drug-of-choice into the one little bag that would last me a month? What would happen if I ran out? My drug of choice happens to be a particularly fine earl grey tea and why I like to think I am not addicted, when I think about going without the warmth and ritual of my morning cup, my heart starts to race and I snap at my children. There are few people I know that aren’t dependant on some sort of drug as part of their daily routine: caffeine, tobacco, marijuana, alcohol or the harder-to-get and less acceptable ones that are prescribed, gotten on the streets, or otherwise come by illicitly. I’ve noticed in my life, it’s often the people who once struggled with illicit drug use themselves that have the most nuanced understanding drug literacy and the varying relationships people have with psychoactive drugs.

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Education

Reading Between The Headlines WIth Rex Weyler

From Folk U: Reading Between the headlines – How to get more truth out of today’s media

It’s hard to navigate the world today for while information has never been so accessible, misinformation has also never been so accessible. Although, I find it helpful to remember that half-truths and alternative facts and falsehoods are not new. I was taking a class once where we read an author many hundreds of years past who was bemoaning the difficulties of easy information and half-truths obscuring the actual truth. 

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Arts, Indigenous Nations History

These Are My Words

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As an immigrant to Canada, I was shocked to learn about the Canadian legacy of residential schools. I had no idea growing up in the U.S. that such things were happened and had happened just north of the border. The indigenous residential schools operated in Canada starting in the 1870s with the last one not closing until1996. Children as young as four were taken—often against the will of their families or with coercive techniques such as threatening jail time—and it is estimated that over 150,000 Indian, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential school. I was reminded that it is a  legacy that continues to shade aspects of Canadian culture and identity for all Canadians this year when I became a citizen. At the ceremony, the judge encouraged all of us new Canadians to make the act of reconciliation personal and spoke about how she was doing that in her life. 

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