All That Matters

This week: Where can Canadians watch CanCon? Video rental stores have almost disappeared, and more of us are watching TV online, where nobody’s required to stock up on Canadian content. We ask Kevin Martin, owner of the last standing DVD rental shop in Edmonton – the Lobby – what’s kept his business standing. Then we ask the National Film Board’s Director of Digital Marketing Matthieu Stréliski what’s on their streaming site, NFB.ca. And we ask Mosaic Entertainment Chief Marketing Officer Jesse Lipscombe how his production company has tried to get the locally produced comedy Delmer & Marta out to Canadian viewers.

We see little glimpses of artists’ lives through their work. But what’s in the neutral zone: the space between being at centre stage – having everyone pay attention to your work – and your regular life? We ask Edmontonian Susan Sneath, who moved away from a life in theatre, radio and TV. And we speak […]

This week: Half Off. Why is attendance at the Art Gallery of Alberta only half of what it was when the new building opened, and what can they do about it? We speak with Edmonton City Councillor Andrew Knack why he voted against funding an experiment with free admission at the gallery. And we’ll talk […]

This week: A 360 degree look at what it means to “make it.” We talk to The Wet Secrets’ Lyle Bell about all the puddles and hard work along the way from accidentally starting a band to playing the Grey Cup. And we’ll talk to Edmontonian Sharon Bellion about working her way up from a […]

This week: What do Stuart McLean and his CBC Radio show The Vinyl Cafe mean to Canadians? You might have heard the rough news this winter that Stuart McLean has been diagnosed with cancer. While he battles it out, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on what he and the show mean to […]

This week: How do we deal with pioneers when their successors find their outlook passé? Edmonton’s had fabulous drag kings and queens over the years. But as the cultural conversation around gender and queer rights has changed, so has drag. In this episode, we speak to well-known drag performer and writer Darrin Hagen, author of […]

This week: how do artists influence medicine – how do they play into how we heal each other? We have two stories, both looking at performance artists in the healthcare system. But they come from different sides of a divide: Demmi Dupri takes the stage in art therapy as a clown, and actor Andrew Ritchie […]

This week: What would you say… you do here? Inquiring minds want to know. So this week, we’ve devoted an entire episode to answering your questions about some of those arts jobs you’ve always wondered about. What does a projectionist do now, anyway? What’s a dolly grip? What’s a best boy? What the heck does […]

This week: who decides what good behaviour looks like, and what happens when the government tries to tell us what good behaviour is? We’ll take a look at the Advisory Board on Objectionable Publications. From 1954-1973, it encouraged parents and distributors from letting kids read comic books, over fears the graphic stories would corrupt their […]

This week, the second of two FunDrive episodes recorded live at CJSR: what can art tell us about the future? We tiptoe out at night for Nuit Blanche, try to figure out why we love spoilers so much with researcher Brent Bellamy, and chat with U of A Students Union President Navneet Khinda about the […]

This week, the first of two FunDrive episodes recorded live at CJSR: what art can tell us about the past? Author, rapper and broadcaster Wab Kinew will be speaking about his new memoir The Reason You Walk. And University of Saskatchewan Professor Yin Liu will join us to talk about the surprising origins of the […]

This week: Gatekeepers. We talk to Weird Canada Executive Director Marie Leblanc Flanagan and Edmonton author Leif Gregerson about the tradeoffs for artists who want to go around labels and publishers.

This week we’re out of reach, off the map. What drives us off the grid? We talk to Marc Clarabut, who’s just embarking on a life in the wild near Ontario’s immense Algonquin Park. And we head to the West Coast to talk to Judith Wright, who’s lived off the grid for decades on a […]

This week’s episode is one of those old questions: what’s the point of suffering? We speak to Canadian author Marina Endicott about her pun-tastic novel Close to Hugh, and her characters’ struggle to figure out how we live in the knowledge of death and suffering and not collapse from sadness. Then we talk to dancer […]

This week: What’s authentic? Emmanuel Jal was born in South Sudan and became a child solider at the age of 7. He’s now become a global citizen through his work as an activist, hip-hop artist and storyteller. We talked to Emmanuel about how he tries to stay true to himself and where he comes from. […]

This week: do you know your neighbours? We take a look at a long-standing Edmonton institution whose business is all about full exposure: the Chez Pierre strip club. And we ask how the Edmonton Folk Festival keeps its neighbours happy right in the middle of the city. Festival Producer Terry Wickham and a neighbour named […]

This week: what do you do when you get to the end… and it’s not the end? We talk to Callahan Connor (aka rapper C-Command) about the frustrating charms of Super Mario Brothers. Then former Rent star Christian Mena tells us how he ended up back in Edmonton running three snappy restaurants. And LJ Tresidder […]

This week: Boot Camp Poets. How could rap or poetry help inmates at the Edmonton Remand Centre find a different life, and what roadblocks might be in their way? This is the second half of a two-part documentary speaking to inmates in the Edmonton Remand Centre’s Boot Camp unit. In this episode, John Howard Society’s […]

This week: Boot Camp Poets. How do folks end up behind bars at the Edmonton Remand Centre – and how could rap or poetry help them find a different life? On this week’s show, we speak to inmates in the Edmonton Remand Centre’s Boot Camp unit for the first half of a special two-part documentary. […]

This week: what is art worth? We headed to Edmonton’s Found Festival to ask you to compare some famous and not-so-famous artwork we dragged along. And we speak to former street artist Jamie Law about a 2012 police raid of his art show – a raid that still asks questions about how we decide what’s […]

This week: what are Edmonton’s gems – the art that makes us uniquely us? We talk to sculptor Robin Bell about his much-loved whale sculpture at West Edmonton Mall, Remedy Cafe owner Zee about how Edmontonians have helped craft his menu and the famous bathroom graffiti, and find out the backstory to Norman Yates’ mural on […]

This week: how do artists influence medicine – how do they play into how we heal each other? We have two stories, both looking at performance artists in the healthcare system. But they come from different sides of a divide: Demmi Dupri takes the stage in art therapy as a clown, and actor Andrew Ritchie […]

This week: if art is for everyone, how do we make sure everyone can access it? We wander over to the Talking Book Club at an Edmonton library, and hear the story behind CRIPSiE and the Mindhive Collective’s new show The Wedding Reception: Love in the Margins.

This week: how do we shift from being consumers of culture to becoming creators? We speak to writer Lizzie Derksen about the long road to calling herself, well, a writer. And we poke around a 3D printed sculpture at the Stanley Milner Library’s Makerspace in Edmonton to investigate whether 3D printing will transform us into […]

This week: let’s art about sex, baby. We’re asking how art can help us understand sex and sexuality on today’s show. Native Youth Sexual Health Network’s Erin Konsmo tells us why she’s been teaching Indigenous youth how to bead condoms. And we ask local model Andrea and artist Harry Abink what it means to pose […]

This week: how do we go beyond preaching to the choir? How do we open up a conversation beyond the inner circle? We’ve got two stories today – one about a cross-country project called Train of Thought aiming to get First Nations and settler people talking about the struggles we have in common. In the […]

This week: is the author dead? Does it matter what an artist intended when we’re trying to figure out what their work means? We ask Marcelle Kosman and Hannah McGregor, creators of the Harry Potter podcast Witch Please, why it’s worth reading the Harry Potter books as if author JK Rowling is dead. Then we […]

We invented the Artisan Partisan Party for our Alberta Election 2015 episode. Its triumphant slogan: Creating a Culturally Rich Alberta.

This week: what would Alberta look like if we had a government that was totally oriented around making the arts thrive? With the May 5 provincial election looming, we ask Edmonton artists Theodore Fox, Ahmed Knowmadic Ali, and Gerry Morita for their take. And we come up with a snazzy ad for our fake political […]

This week: how does stuff come to look the way it does? Our reporter Jonathan Dyck shares the agony and ecstasy every graphic designer goes through before they march out into the working world. We head down to Churchill Square to ask how residents feel the design works for them. And young federal NDP hopeful […]

This week: what can we learn from imagining the futures that might have been, but never came to pass? We speak to Art Gallery of Alberta curator Kristy Trinier and artist Alma Visccher about the shadow of Edmonton’s Future Station downtown. Then Labtop’s Colin Prothero dishes on the seductive deceptions of architectural renderings, and Dr. […]