The academic, writer, and former journalist Andrew Potter discusses his new book On Decline (Biblioasis, 2021), with Joseph Planta.

On Decline by Andrew Potter (Biblioasis, 2021). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: On Decline

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

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

Field Notes is a series of short books published by Biblioasis, conceived by its founder Dan Wells. They range in rhetorical essays, longform journalism, polemics, case studies, or anything in between. The series began last fall with the publication of Mark Kingwell’s On Risk, and continued in the spring of this year with Rinaldo Walcott’s On Property. In the summer, they published On Decline by Andrew Potter, who joins me now to discuss the notion that the West is in decline. That for all our faith in the enlightenment, and reason and progress, we’re on the way down. I’ll ask Andrew what decline is, because I tend to think that means extinction. He’s got a clever line in the book that we didn’t progress upward, going up a ladder through accomplishment and achievement, rather we stumbled into a buffet. There’s a lot of thoughtful stuff in the book, and then when he gets to how our society and culture has been affected by COVID-19, well, a lot of what he’s thought about has come to pass. Inequality has made sure the affects of COVID aren’t shared equally. It’s an often-entertaining book, one that makes a lot of sense and that doesn’t foretell the best of us. Andrew Potter is an associate professor at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He was managing editor then editor in chief of the Ottawa Citizen between 2011 and 2016. Before that he was a columnist in Maclean’s magazine. He is also former Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. He is author of The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves, which he was first on the program with when it when it was published in 2010, and with Joseph Heath, he co-authored The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed. He’s not on Twitter, and I’ll ask him about that. Please welcome back to the Planta: On the Line program, Andrew Potter; Professor Potter, good morning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (20.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS