Joseph Planta hosts the Eighth Anniversary of the On the Line program featuring clips from: Judyth Vary Baker, Steve Burgess, Susan Cain, Brad Cran, William B. Davis, Allan Fotheringham, Chris Gailus, Douglas Gibson, Richard Gwyn, Pico Iyer, Vikram Jayanti, Roy MacGregor, Samantha Nutt, Craig Oliver, Helen Piddington, Tom Rachman, Anthony Sedlak, Johanna Sibsrud, Micah Toub, John Vaillant, Naomi Beth Wakan, and Jan Wong.

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver at TheCommentary.ca.

When I’m on my summer break from the show in July and August each year, I take the time to look back at previous programs. As I’ve said before, it’s a chance to look back at the shows I’ve done heretofore. For three years now, I’ve put together an anniversary show. I cull clips from either important or favourite interviews, and put them together to sort of illustrate what the show is all about.

After 749 programs, I still don’t know what this show is other than it’s a chance for me to talk to interesting, fascinating, informed people about a wide variety of subjects. It’s been a chance for me over the past eight years to engage in my interests, serious and otherwise. On occasion, it’s given me a chance to meet over the telephone some fairly famous folks, some I grew up watching; some I’ve admired. It’s also afforded me the chance to engage in discussions with notable thinkers, like academics from the fields of the humanities and science.

As is the case each year when putting this show together, there are so many clips I’d have like included than there’s time for. Each year I resolve that I’ll do a show of just the novelists who’ve appeared, or just of the journalists who’ve been on. And then I’ll try to put everyone on the anniversary show, and early drafts end up with hours of clips.

I try to include favourite guests. For example on this program now, there’s a lengthy clip from a chat with the artist Helen Piddington on her childhood. It was an interview I did a couple of years ago that I really enjoyed. There might not have been time for it on last year’s show, so I’m really pleased to be able to include it now.

To allow myself a reflective moment, I hope what follows in the next 90 minutes or so, is a sketch of what the show is, the sort of people who’ve deigned to appear, and as I’ve said previously, the sort of conversations that have broken out on this program over the last eight years. I like doing this show. It’s a lot of fun sometimes. It’s also a lot of work, and unpaid at that. It’s always informative for me, and hopefully to the listener. I’ll keep doing it because of that, and hopefully you’ll continue to listen.

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