A podcast about the weird and wonderful world of Canadian arts and culture, aka "Canadian Content." In hour-long episodes, Aaron and Naomi dive deep into Canadian film, television, literature, music, and more. Sometimes a friend joins them, too. Naomi K. Lewis is a writer and editor, and Aaron Giovannone is a writer and professor. Because of the dominance of the United States, Canada is a country where nearly all domestic culture relies on protectionist laws and public funding to exist. Whet ...
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the TV show The Trades (2024). [If you enjoy Sweater Weather, become a patron of the show on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/canadiansweater for details.] This week Aaron and Naomi dive into the greasy world of The Trades, a Crave original TV show co-produced by the Trailer Park Boys. The Trades is a blue-collar, workplace comedy…
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Letterkenny, feat. Marcello Di Cintio
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Naomi and Aaron are joined by author Marcello Di Cintio to discuss the TV show Letterkenny (2016-2023). [If you enjoy Sweater Weather, become a patron of the show on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/canadiansweater for details.] How are ya now, Sweater Wearers? In this episode, we’re joined by friend and award-winning author Marcello Di Cintio to discuss…
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the TV show The Littlest Hobo (1979-1985). [This is a preview of a premium episode of Sweater Weather. To hear the full episode – and for access to all our premium episodes – subscribe to Sweater Weather on Patreon. As a patron, you'll receive a brand new episode every week! Go to patreon.com/canadiansweater for details.] Th…
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Mr. Dressup
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the documentary Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe (2023). [Want more Sweater Weather in your life? Subscribe to Sweater Weather on Patreon for access to our premium episodes. As a patron, you'll receive a brand new Sweater Weather every week! Go to patreon.com/canadiansweater for details.] This week we rumage around our…
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the TV show Breaker High (1997-98). [This is a free sample of a premium episode of Sweater Weather. To hear the full episode – and for access to all our premium episodes – subscribe to Sweater Weather on Patreon. As a patron, you'll receive a brand new episode every week! Go to patreon.com/canadiansweater for details.] Ahoy,…
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the TV show Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent (2023-). [Want more Sweater Weather in your life? Subscribe to Sweater Weather on Patreon for access to our premium episodes. As a patron, you'll receive a brand new Sweater Weather every week! Go to patreon.com/canadiansweater for details.] In this edition of Sweater Weather,…
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the novel Bear (1976). Subscribe to Sweater Weather on Patreon. In this episode, we re-visit the controversial and classic Canadian novel Bear (1976) by Marian Engel. The winner of the Governor General's Award for fiction, Bear is known for its scandalous content and has sparked discussions for decades with its unconventiona…
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the film BlackBerry (2023). Subscribe to Sweater Weather on Patreon. In this episode, we dive into the movie BlackBerry (2023), starring Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton and Matt Johnson (Johnson also directed the film). The film rides a wave of early 2000s nostalgia and explores a pre-smartphone era. We reminisce about never ha…
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Naomi and Aaron discuss the documentary I Am: Celine Dion (2024). Support Sweater Weather on Patreon. In this episode of Sweater Weather, Aaron and Naomi discuss the documentary I Am: Celine Dion (2024), which is available on Amazon Prime. They explore Celine's image, her massive success, and her corny yet undeniably popular style. The documentary …
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#34—Ducks, feat. Marc Herman Lynch
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*TW: This episode includes discussion of sexual violence.* Today we talk Ducks, Kate Beaton’s celebrated graphic memoir — winner of Canada Reads, a New York Times Notable Book — about her two years working in the oil sands of Fort McMurray, where men outnumber women fifty to one. Harsh economic realities forced Beaton to leave her Cape Breton home …
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Sweater Weather Live! Talks Ducks with Marc Herman Lynch, Sun. Apr. 23 at the Memorial Park Library
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Reserve your free tickets at our Eventbrite page. Join Naomi and Aaron of the Sweater Weather podcast for their deep-dive discussion of Ducks, the award-winning graphic memoir by Kate Beaton about life in the Alberta oil sands. They'll be joined by special guest Marc Herman Lynch, a literary scholar, comics enthusiast, and novelist. This event take…
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#33—Ian Tyson, feat. Jeremy Klaszus
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Saddle up your quarter horse and grab that flask of whiskey for this ride through the life and works of country music legend Ian Tyson. Born in Victoria, BC, in 1933, Tyson’s recording career spanned six decades, from his time in the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene as one half of the folk duo Ian & Sylvia, to his years as a solo country artist …
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Reserve your free tickets at our Eventbrite page: www.eventbrite.ca/e/sweater-weather-live-talks-ian-tyson-with-jeremy-klaszus-tickets-528972780827 Join the audience for Sweater Weather Live! talks the life and music of country legend Ian Tyson. Our special guest will be Jeremy Klaszus, editor-in-chief of The Sprawl and ghostwriter of Ian Tyson's m…
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#32—Anne of Green Gables, feat. Cheryl Foggo
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In 1908, thirty-four-year-old Lucy Maud Montgomery published a novel set in the fictional Prince Edward Island town of Avonlea. Her heroine: a loveable and drama-prone red-headed orphan, adopted by an elderly brother and sister who turn out to need her as much as she needs them. The book is Anne of Green Gables, of course, a novel that made its aut…
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Join Naomi and Aaron for this live recording of the Sweater Weather podcast as they discuss the enduring appeal of the classic novel Anne of Green Gables. They'll be joined by writer and documentary filmmaker Cheryl Foggo. This event takes place Sunday, February 12 at 2pm in the salon of the Memorial Park Library in Calgary, on Treaty 7 territory. …
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In this audio documentary special, Aaron dives deep into the history of Nickelback, the most commercially successful and critically despised Canadian band of their generation. In the aughts when Nickelback dominated the air waves and sold out stadiums, bashing them publicly became a competitive sport for tastemakers and social media users. What spu…
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#21—The Kids in the Hall (Full Episode)
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In the spirit of the season, we've brought out from behind the paywall our full episode on The Kids in the Hall. Happy holidays, everyone! Support us on Patreon ~~ Inspired by the recently released sixth season of The Kids in the Hall, Naomi and Aaron discuss this legendary sketch comedy show. We follow the Kids' paths to becoming comic actors, and…
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#30—The Hockey Sweater, feat. Maxime Raymond Bock
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One fateful day in the winter of 1946, a boy in the village of Sainte-Justine, Quebec, opened his Eaton’s package to find, instead of a coveted Montreal Canadiens jersey, the dreaded blue of the Toronto Maple Leafs. That despised hockey sweater was destined for literary, if not sports, fame. That boy became author Roch Carrier, who has published so…
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#29—Sarah McLachlan, feat. Kris Demeanor (Live)
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You will remember her—singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan was born in Halifax, studied music from the age of four, started winning singing awards not much later, and was offered her first major record deal at seventeen. Throughout the nineties, she won a boatload of Grammys and Junos for her work on the albums Solace, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and Su…
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The first ever live recording of Sweater Weather is happening Tuesday, November 22 at the Rose & Crown Pub in Calgary at 7 pm. Reserve your free tickets here at Eventbrite. We'll be fumbling towards the ecstasy that is the life and music of singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. And if you're not already swooning in the arms of an angel, we'll be joine…
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#28—The Tom Green Show
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In episode 28, we revisit the antics of shock comic Tom Green. In the early nineties, Green rose to local Ottawa fame with a rap album, a radio show, and a program on public-access television. In 1998, The Tom Green Show gained a national following on the Canadian Comedy Network, and in 1999 it jumped to the American big time on MTV. Green was the …
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#27—The Sweet Hereafter, feat. Abdul Malik
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Screenwriter Abdul Malik (Peace by Chocolate, CTV’s Transplant) joins us to talk about Atom Egoyan’s 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, one of Canada’s most celebrated movies and the pinnacle of the Toronto New Wave moment. We revisit the melancholic, majestic, and morally compromised town of Sam Dent, a fictional community in BC’s interior that has l…
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#26—Are You Afraid of the Dark? feat. Tasnuva Hayden
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We've got one question for you, Sweater Wearers: Are You Afraid of the Dark? This Montreal-produced kids' horror series aired on YTV in Canada, on Nickelodeon in the US, and on networks around the world—including in Norway where our special guest, poet Tasnuva Hayden, watched eagerly every Saturday night circa 1992. We light the proverbial campfire…
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#25—The Rehearsal
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From high school improv with Seth Rogen in Vancouver, to a spot on the CBC classic This Hour Has 22 Minutes, to his Comedy Central series Nathan For You, Nathan Fielder’s comedic vision has expanded from silly, semi-cruel satire to mirror-funhouse meta-reality TV. We discuss his latest, the HBO docu-comedy The Rehearsal, and ask whether it’s "reali…
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#24—Generation X
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Today we’re talking about the novel that named a generation. In 1991, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Vancouver author and visual artist Douglas Coupland became a sleeper hit, an objet d’art that no student living room could do without. How, exactly, did this weird book manage to capture the zeitgeist of twenty-somethings struggli…
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#20—Degrassi Junior High (Full Episode)
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We'll be back with a new episode next week, but in the meantime enjoy this content from behind the paywall, our FULL episode on Degrassi from earlier this summer. --- Aaron and Naomi talk about the classic teen drama Degrassi Junior High (1987-1989) and its immediate sequel, Degrassi High (1989-1991). We discuss the show's fascinating production hi…
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#23—Alanis Morissette
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Isn't it ironic that we finally decided to cover this essential Canadian artist? Alanis Morissette was one of the most successful musicians of the 1990s, selling 33 million copies of her album Jagged Little Pill. We trace her career from child actor to international rock superstar to Instagram mom. We consider the mass appeal of her music, with its…
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Naomi and Aaron speedboat through the CBC family adventure show Danger Bay (1984-1990). We discuss the show's infinite animal menagerie, its 1980s environmentalism, and the protagonist, Dr. Grant Roberts, who is both a Professional-Class Hero and Dad of the Year. We also rehearse our favourite lines of dialogue from Danger Bay, including Doc Robert…
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Inspired by the recently released sixth season of The Kids in the Hall, Naomi and Aaron talk about this legendary sketch comedy show (1988-1995). We discuss the Kids' paths to becoming comic actors, and how the show was too dark for us to appreciate when we were kids ourselves. We breakdown some of their most notorious sketches, including Cabbage H…
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Aaron and Naomi talk about the classic teen drama Degrassi Junior High (1987-1989) and its immediate sequel, Degrassi High (1989-1991). We discuss the show's fascinating production history, our vivid memories of watching it as kids, and the labour conditions for the actors. We also dig into the details of one of our favourite episodes, "All Nighter…
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How Leonard Cohen's life and art was shaped by the Cold War-- and the political uses of his most famous song, "Hallelujah." This episode is based on an article I wrote for The Breach titled "Leonard Cohen, Cold War Troubadour": https://breachmedia.ca/leonard-cohen-cold-war-troubadour/ Support Sweater Weather: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353…
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Support this podcast. Cabins and cottages have come to represent summer in Canada-- even though most Canadians spend the summer in hot cities. What does the fascination with cabins and cottages reveal about class, inequality and colonization in Canada? This episode we welcome Tonya Davidson, a sociologist at Carleton University and co-editor of the…
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Support Sweater Weather! I’m joined once again by my friends from the Alberta Advantage podcast: Clinton, Karen and Joel. We conclude our epic discussion of FUBAR, the classic Canadian and Calgarian comedy franchise, by discussing FUBAR II: Balls to the Wall (2010) in which our protagonists, Terry and Dean, head up to Fort McMurray to work in the o…
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Support the show. This week I'm joined by my podcast comrades from the Alberta Advantage: Clinton, Joël and Karen, for a deep dive into the classic Canadian and Calgarian comedy franchise FUBAR. It’s been nearly 20 years since the first FUBAR film brought us the endearing headbangers Terry and Dean. In our discussion we appreciate FUBAR’s depiction…
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I talk to author and journalist Marcello Di Cintio about the lives of people who drive taxis for a living. He tells their stories in his fascinating new book, Driven: The Secret Lives of Drivers. This is episode 15 of Sweater Weather with Aaron Giovannone. Visit the Sweater Weather website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Donate on Patreon: http…
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On today's episode, I talk to Leah Cameron, a television writer in Toronto. She is creator, director and co-writer of The Communist’s Daughter, a comedy series loosely based on her left-wing family in Toronto in 1989, now available on CBC Gem. This is episode 14 of Sweater Weather with Aaron Giovannone. Watch The Communist’s Daughter: https://gem.…
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Literature & Social Change, ft. Tom Wayman
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Why do we need an honest portrayal of work and employment in literature? What is the point of poetry? How has postmodernism affected arts and education? Today we are visited by Tom Wayman, the author of more than 20 books of poetry and prose, as well as a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary. Today we talk about his collection of essays,…
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Capitalism & Geopolitics, ft. Radhika Desai
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This episode we’re visited by Radhika Desai, professor of political science at the University of Manitoba. She is the author and editor of several works on political economy, including Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (Pluto Press, 2013) as well as Revolutions: A Twenty-First Century Perspective, which was a special…
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The early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War produced a new consensus among western elites that it was now a good thing to do business with China and develop cultural relations. A fascinating film from 1990 illustrates this moment of history, Bethune: The Making of A Hero, starring Donald Sutherland as Norman B…
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Donate to the show: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 This is part 2 of my discussion with Dr. Stephanie Ross, associate professor and director of the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University. She is author, co-author and co-editor of several works on Canadian labour and unions, including Building a Better World: An Introduction to …
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This week I talk to Dr. Stephanie Ross, associate professor and director of the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University. She is author, co-author and co-editor of several works on Canadian labour and unions, including Building a Better World: An Introduction to the Labour Movement in Canada (Fernwood, 2015) and the book we primarily discuss…
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A Century of Canadian Socialism, feat. Ian McKay
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In episode 8 of Sweater Weather, I talk to Ian McKay, professor of history at McMaster University and director of the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History. He is the author and co-author of numerous books and articles about the Canadian left, including Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920, as well …
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Trailer Park Boys: Great Show or Greatest Show? feat. Clinton, Rory and Tyler from The Alberta Advantage
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The boys from The Alberta Advantage—Clinton, Rory, Tyler—visit Sweater Weather to gab about the boys from the trailer park—Ricky, Julian and Bubbles. That’s right, we’re talking Trailer Park Boys! It's one of the best Canadian television shows ever, and one of the few to find an international audience. And while its heyday was 2001-2007, Trailer Pa…
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Will the next federal election spell doom for the NDP, out maneuvered by the Conservatives for working-class voters? I talk to Steven C. High, professor of history at Concordia University and author of the recent article for Canadian Dimension, "Right-wing populism and the realignment of working-class politics in Canada." See the full interview her…
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How has deindustrialization impacted the working class in Canada and around the world? In what ways is deindustrialization, a side effect of global capital constantly seeking cheaper labour, shaping the politics of our time? Will the next federal election spell doom for the NDP, out maneuvered by the Conservatives for working class voters? This wee…
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Canada, Global Capitalism & Socialist Possibilities, feat. Sam Gindin
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I’m delighted to talk to Sam Gindin, co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism (2012) a modern classic, as well as the more recent but no less essential The Socialist Challenge Today (2020) both co-written with his long-time friend and colleague Leo Panitch. From 1974-2000, Sam was the director of research at the Canadian Auto Workers union, now…
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