soulSURVIVOR

Special Guests

  • Jason R. Goode — Director of NUMB
    Jason's previous films include the award-winning short film The Hitchhiker, Pop Switch, and The Planting. His film Late was one of Telefilm Canada's top selections for its Perspectives Canada program at the Cannes Marché du Film. He also directed a production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley at Pacific Theatre, for which he received a “Best Director” nomination at the Vancouver Theatre Awards (“The Jessies”). NUMB (with an anticipated rating of 14A for some violence and swearing) is a feature thriller starring Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica, NCIS) and Marie Avgeropoulos (The 100). The film’s synopsis: When a couple in financial distress discover GPS coordinates that promise to lead to stolen gold, they must partner with a pair of mysterious hitchhikers to enter the remote winter wilderness and recover the coins. Numb is ripe with a moral underpinning. Jason R. Goode, director of Numb, has a Master of Arts in Christian Studies from Regent College and has taught Christianity and Cinema courses at a number of Bible Colleges across Western Canada. His passion is for storytelling, and he seeks to encourage and guide Christians to courageously follow the Spirit’s call to be culture makers. He also wants to equip Church communities to thoughtfully and critically engage with arts and culture. You can view the trailer here: NUMB MOVIE
    www.NUMBMOVIE.com
    Listen ← 12m:46s – 5.85 MB → Download

  • Marina Nemat — Tortured In Prison, Author of International Bestseller Prisoner Of Tehran, Human Rights Advocate

    Marina Nemat was born in 1965 in Tehran, Iran. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, she was arrested at the age of sixteen and spent more than two years in Evin, a political prison in Tehran, where she was tortured and came very close to execution. She came to Canada in 1991 and has called it home ever since. Her memoir of her life in Iran, Prisoner of Tehran, was published in Canada by Penguin Canada in 2007, has been published in 28 other countries, and has been an international bestseller. In 2007, Marina received the inaugural Human Dignity Award from the European Parliament, and in 2008, she received the prestigious Grinzane Prize in Italy. She was the recipient of the Morris Abram Human Rights Award from UN Watch in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2014. In 2008/2009, she was an Aurea Fellow at University of Toronto’s Massey College, where she wrote her second book, After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed, which was published in 2010. Marina regularly has spoken and continues to speak at high schools, universities, and conferences around the world, including University of Milan, Oxford University, Yale, Tufts, and Stanford, and sits on the Board of Directors at the CCVT (Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture) and the Writers in Exile Committee at PEN Canada, in addition to volunteering at her church’s Refugee Committee since 2010. She has a Certificate in Creative Writing from the School of Continuing Studies at University of Toronto and currently teaches memoir writing at the SCS. In 2014, she was a recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award at the School. Occasionally, she writes book reviews and opinion pieces for the Globe and Mail and is a regular contributor to the Oslo Freedom Forum.
    www.marinanemat.com

    AND

    Rev. Majed El Shafie - Tortured In Prison, Subject of Award Winning Documentary Freedom Fighter, Human Rights Advocate
    Rev. Majed El Shafie’s human rights journey started in his native Egypt. After being severely tortured and sentenced to death for his conversion to Christianity and bringing awareness to human rights violations, Majed was forced to flee his homeland. Belonging to a very prominent legal and political family in Egypt, Rev. El Shafie had tried to work within the Egyptian system to reform the country’s human rights regime. Between the challenges he faced in these efforts, his firsthand experience as a survivor of religious persecution, the work he has engaged in since advocating for religious freedom, confronting governments that violate this fundamental right, and conducting fact-finding missions and humanitarian/rescue operations, he has obtained significant knowledge and insight into the dynamics of persecution of religious minorities by religious extremists and totalitarian governments alike. He has organized and led delegations of parliamentarians and religious leaders to address minority rights and humanitarian issues with government leaders, including several cabinet ministers and other high-level officials, opposition leaders, and religious leaders among others in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Cuba. Rev. El Shafie has developed excellent relationships with members of the Canadian House of Commons, Senate, and Cabinet, and has built bridges with the US Congress in order to educate decision-makers about violations of religious freedom around the world. He has advocated on behalf of Christians, Falun Gong, Jews, Bahá’í’s, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and China’s Uyghur Muslims, among others. Leading North American and international news media have featured his work which has also been the subject of an award-winning feature-length documentary entitled the “Freedom Fighter” and subsequently the book the “Freedom Fighter” was published depicting Rev. El Shafie’s fight for “one free world”. In 2012 Rev. El Shafie was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for his ongoing work fighting for freedom of religion and the rights of minorities around the world.
    www.onefreeworldinternational.org
    Listen ← 35m:44s – 16.36 MB → Download

  • Alex Cooper — Author of Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay & That's When My Nightmare Began
    Saving Alex is an inspiring, harrowing, and brave memoir by a young Mormon lesbian woman whose captivity and escape from an unlicensed “residential treatment program” resulted in a groundbreaking battle for LGBTQ rights that has impacted society and individual lives. Two days after Alex Cooper told her parents that she was gay, they took their fifteen-year-old daughter to Utah, where they signed over their parental rights to a group of fellow Mormons who promised to “cure” Alex from her homosexuality. For eight harrowing months, Alex was held captive in an unlicensed “residential treatment program,” one of several “therapeutic” boot camps scattered across southern Utah: a virtual gulag where thousands of American teenagers have been sent by fundamentalist parents. Forbidden from attending school, Alex was beaten and verbally abused, and forced to stand facing a wall for up to eighteen hours a day wearing a heavy backpack full of rocks that literally broke her back. “God’s plan does not apply to gay people,” her captors told her, using faith as a cudgel to punish and terrorize her. With the help of a dedicated legal team in Salt Lake City, Alex would eventually escape and make legal history in Utah by winning the right to live under the law’s protection as an openly gay teenager. For the first time, Alex speaks out about her ordeal and its aftermath. Saving Alex is a traumatic yet uplifting story of identity, faith, courage, acceptance, and freedom that reveals what happens when religion goes too far, and how a group of dedicated Americans and one young woman fought for her rights—and ultimately for us all.
    *Co-author JOANNA BROOKS is a recognized expert on Mormonism and gender and LGBT issues, and is Associate Vice President for Faculty Affairs at San Diego State University. She is the author of The Book of Mormon Girl.
    SPONSORED BY Faithbooks.ca
    www.savingalex.org
    Listen ← 23m:44s – 10.87 MB → Download

LIVE! on TDMS - Devoted Souly to the Art of Music

  • This Week's Recording Artist: Sean Pinchin
    Sean Pinchin’s breakthrough 2013 release Rustbucket got music lovers attention in a BIG way: It nabbed him a nomination for New Artist Of The Year at the 2014 Maple Blues Awards, and was touted by many as "one of the best, if not the best, Canadian Blues release for 2013" (Blues Underground Network). One reviewer's description summed up many people's reaction to Pinchin's arresting brand of modern roots music: "Fresh, vibrant, and oozing with personality. The only question is where has someone this good been hiding all this time? This release should prove a career- maker”. (Eric Thom, Penguin Eggs) Sean's new release Monkey Brain is a guitar tour de force, a gritty mash-up of the history of roots guitar music torn down and built back up again. Throughout the album, Sean Pinchin delivers stories of personal struggle and triumph after living with depression for many years. Realizing that his grief could be put to constructive use, he began writing about everything that caused him pain, fear and heartache. Monkey Brain is his blues and he comes by it honestly. The album was recorded with JUNO Award-winning producer Rob Szabo, who also co-wrote the album. Like it's predecessor Rustbucket, the songs were recorded quickly with many takes done live off the floor with Pinchin playing and singing the tunes in one complete pass. Old school. He spent the summers of 2014-15 performing at many nationally and internationally renowned Festivals including Montreal Jazz Festival, Mont Tremblant International Blues Festival, Orangeville Blues Festival, Donnaconna Blues Festival, Kitchener Blues Festival and many more. Sean Pinchin has done multiple cross-Canada tours and will continue to expand his intense regional and national touring schedule in 2016-17 to bring blues fans his Monkey Brain.
    *Monkey Brain CD Release Party is March 18th @ The Dakota Tavern 7-9pm Tickets available here: Ticketfly.com
    www.seanpinchin.ca

    CHECK THIS VIDEO OUT!SEAN PINCHIN - LIVE on THE Drew Marshall Show

    Become a NEW TDMS Facebook LIKER during Saturday's performance & win a CD!
    (We will randomly pick a new page liker during today's show, then contact them for shipping details. To win you must be from Canada eh!)
    Listen ← 46m:24s – 26.56 MB → Download