Hal Niedzviecki built the heartbeat of North America’s zine movement — then lost it all for defending free expression.

In the mid-90s, his magazine Broken Pencil championed DIY art, radical self-expression, and underground culture. For nearly 30 years, it gave a voice to Canada’s creative outsiders. But in 2017, Hal published a short editorial questioning the new rules around “cultural appropriation,” and within hours, he was blacklisted by the literary establishment. Then came October 7th, 2023. When he defended Israel’s right to exist, he was labeled a “Zionist” and told to surrender his magazine to activists. Instead, he shut it down.

In this conversation, Hal reflects on founding Broken Pencil and the early zine scene that shaped him, the personal and professional fallout from his 2017 cancellation, and what it’s like being a Jewish writer in Canada after October 7th. We talk about the collapse of tolerance in the arts, the new moral orthodoxies gripping Canadian institutions, and what it costs to stay true to free expression in an age of conformity.

About Hal Niedzviecki

Hal is the founder and former editor of Broken Pencil. He’s the author of multiple books, including The Lost Expert, and is currently writing his memoir for Cormorant Books. His Substack, Hal, I’m Special, offers deeper reflections on writing, culture, and identity, and he recently wrote a deep dive, long form essay describing his full story in the Australian publication, Quillette.

Hal’s Links

Substack

Cormorant Press

Quillette Essay

Bad Canadians Website and Zines

Follow us on X

Subscribe on Spotify

Subscribe on Apple

Subscribe on YouTube

Opening Song: Aria 51 by MicroBongo Soundsystem, used with permission.

STEPHEN R. BOWN is one of Canada’s leading writers of non-fiction, and the winner of the 2024 Governor General’s Award for Popular History (the Pierre Berton Award). His books The Company and Dominion stand among the most vivid retellings of Canada’s origins; stories that remind us how ambition, ingenuity, and brutality often shared the same frontier.

In this conversation, we use The Company and Dominion as a foundation to explore the wider art of writing popular history: how to bring the past to life without bending it to modern sensibilities, and how to tell stories of exploration, commerce, and empire in a way that lets readers see themselves reflected in those who came before.

Stephen speaks candidly about the genre itself, the challenge of recapturing nuance in an era that demands moral certainty, and the need to return to a middle ground that acknowledges the good, the bad, and the ugly of history. It’s a conversation about balance, complexity, and how the ambitions and contradictions of the past still echo in who we are today.

STEPHEN R. BOWN is a popular historian and author of 12 works of literary non-fiction. His books have been published throughout English-speaking territories and have been translated into nine different languages; he has also written more than 20 feature magazine articles highlighting lesser-known characters and events in Canadian history. He strives to make the past accessible, meaningful, and entertaining by applying a narrative and immersive style to his writing, which blends story-telling with factual depth.

Stephen R. Bown’s Website

Bad Canadians Website

Follow us on X

Subscribe on Spotify

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe on YouTube

Opening Song: Aria 51 by MicroBongo Soundsystem, used with permission.

What hidden costs does inflation place on families, savers, and communities?

On Bad Canadians, Jared Michael sits down with Seb Bunney, Bitcoin author and educator, to unpack the ideas behind his book The Hidden Cost of Money. Together they explore how today’s debt-based monetary policy quietly shapes our lives — driving up the cost of housing, reshaping family choices, and distorting the incentives that ripple through society.

Seb makes the case for a different kind of world: one where saving is rewarded, long-term thinking is encouraged, and innovation thrives. At the center is Bitcoin, a fixed-supply asset designed to resist debasement and offer an alternative to the inflationary cycle we’ve come to accept as normal. Far from just another tech fad, Seb argues Bitcoin is a tool for human thriving — a foundation for stronger families, healthier communities, and real progress.

If you’ve heard about Bitcoin but never taken a deeper look, this conversation is a great place to start — an accessible way to understand the problem it was designed to solve.

Seb Bunney is the author of two books on Bitcoin, The Hidden Cost of Money and B is for Bitcoin. He is also the co-founder of Looking Glass Education, an educational hub for all things Bitcoin.

Seb Bunney Website

Seb Bunney on X

Looking Glass Education

Bad Canadians HQ

Follow us on X

Subscribe on Spotify

Subscribe on Apple

Subscribe on YouTube

Opening Song: Aria 51 by MicroBongo Soundsystem, used with permission.