This episode was dedicated to learning if society is becoming more polarize. More extreme.
Maura and I start off with some banter about our favourite things. I do mention that I am really enjoying The Good Place. Both the t.v. show and the podcast. Maura is enjoying Acorn TV, which is a streaming service for British TV shows. I did check it out and while they have so many series, I was disappointed that there is no Graham Norton Show. It is very irritating when one pays for BBC Canada and cannot get current BBC shows. #WTH
I did check into crtc's Canadian Content quotas and in 2015 the rules did change that specialty channels are now only at 35% overall cancon with no specific prime time requirements.
We do mention the Grown Ups Read Things They Wrote as Kids podcast again. You can hear Kate here, and Maura here, and here.
We welcomed Dawn this episode. Dawn joined us previously for our Word Nerd-dom episode. Dawn works as a community disability counselor and has some great insights into the human condition.
We do tackle a bunch of topics that I'm not going to go into the greatest of detail on, but I do want to share some of the sources that we used for conversation. We talk about a WP article about Canada's polarization being because of the parties, and spend some time talking about how most people are in the middle when it comes to ideologies.
One thing that I did want to touch on a bit more in this blog than I think we did in the podcast, is on the women in politics topic. I meandered and got us all off of the topic a bit. I remembered this article about some of the women from the conservative party getting bullied a bit and dropping out of the race. I know Americans won't really understand that, but politics in Canada is usually pretty civil. We tend to stay away from personal attacks. Maura then brought up when a golf course used a cut out of our premier, Rachel Notley, as a target. ( I did remember a story about a shooting range as well but I cannot find that so I was mistaken ) The golf course did maintain that it was just a joke, but when you consider that it was just days after murder of Jo Cox in the UK by a right wing extremist, one could see it as a threat. It's concerning that Rachel Notley is the most threatened premier in Alberta's history. Is this because she is a woman? It's hard to know for sure, but a lot of the comments made online make it seem like we are still not at the point where women are seen to be capable leaders. One really just needs to look south for proof of that.
We move on to talk about why we might be polarized and look at an article from Psychology Today and Maura mentions The Axis of Evil By Andy Marlatt (not John Cleese). We do spend some time talking about how we can become more extreme by mostly engaging with those who align with our personal views. There was a study that talks about this very idea. Even though sometimes it can get my riled up, I think it's important to make sure that we expose ourselves to many different ideas as we can, even when we don't agree. How else cam we understand where someone else is coming from. Just because we don't agree that doesn't make you my enemy.
We do touch on a few more topics so be sure to check out the podcast.
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