The Big Story

We don’t have to look as far as New Zealand to find examples of how the battle against COVID-19 can be won. We have a success story right here in Canada, where the so-called Atlantic Bubble has held up very well over the past several months, and where life is mostly back to normal. There is even hockey, with fans in the stands and everything. So how can the rest of Canada follow the Atlantic Bubble's example? Is it even possible for larger provinces? How have they managed to stamp out COVID-19, and what kind of price have they paid for doing so? GUEST: Greg Mercer, Atlantic Canada reporter, The Globe and Mail We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

You have heard plenty of dire predictions and seen hundreds of horrible photographs. The Earth is in trouble, there's no doubt. But when coverage of climate change always focuses on so-called "disaster porn", it can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. How can reporters covering the very real danger we're facing avoid fostering a sense of inevitability among the people we need to make changes? GUEST: Sheril Kirshenbaum, host of NPR's Serving Up Science We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Our neighbour is in trouble. Whatever the results of the American election on November 3, there's only a small chance they won't be contested. The upheaval could last for months. It could get violent. It could fracture America. All of this obviously impacts Canada, so what are we doing to prepare? What should we be doing? How can our government gameplan for whatever happens in the coming months, and what are the best-case and worst-case scenarios for Canada if chaos reigns to the south? GUEST: Balkan Devlen, senior fellow at McDonald Laurier Institute, Superforecaster for Good Judgment, Inc. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Many of us take pride in Canada's diversity—but not all of us embrace it. And critics cite large numbers when discussing immigration policy. What that does is take the power of individual stories out of the equation. A new podcast examines the refugee journey through one man's harrowing journey across borders and an ocean to his new home, and what it can tell us about our country and what drives the Canadian Dream. GUEST: Shayda Omidvar, host of The Hopeful We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

In mid-September, commercial fishers began to protest and threaten First Nation lobster fishermen who were exercising their treaty rights to make a moderate living out of season. Traps were cut, boats burned and flares were fired. But it's not a new story. This is a decades-old problem that's never been solved. Why is a supreme court ruling from more than 20 years ago still largely ignored? Why do Indigenous communities face so much anger over such a relatively small catch? And what are the authorities—from the fisheries department to the RCMP—doing to protect a group that's just trying to take what Canada's courts have already granted them? GUEST: Trina Roache, APTN Investigations We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

The federal government may not be working towards decriminalization of banned substances, but if you follow the proper procedures, as some churches have, you can receive permission to import and use them. Recently a church in Winnipeg became the latest organization to receive permission to use daime tea, a psychedelic substance also known as ayahuasca. How did they receive permission? What is the drug and how do they use it? And what does the growing number of these exemptions say about the future of Canada's drug policy? GUEST: Rachel Browne We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

If all goes well, sometime in the next six months, one of the many Covid-19 vaccine candidates will receive approval for human use. It will be a day to celebrate. The end of the pandemic will at long last be in sight. But what happens next? Who gets the first doses? The second batch? How do you actually vaccinate billions and billions of people, quickly and safely? A vaccine isn't the end of the road, as today's guest will tell us, it's more like an off-ramp. GUEST: Danielle Groen We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

You're a good citizen, so you probably toss your plastic into the recycling bin. Especially if it has those little recycling arrows on it. Why wouldn't you? Public service campaigns have been telling you to do this forever. But what if those campaigns were a lie, designed to make you feel better about the plastic you use? What if plastic recycling was never going to be effective, except at selling more plastic? GUEST: Laura Sullivan, NPR News investigative correspondent We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

September was a month for rising COVID-19 case counts in British Columbia. October will be a month for an election. Why now? That depends on who you ask. The NDP claim they need a mandate to govern more responsively during a pandemic. Their opponents say it's a power grab because the NDP's poll numbers are high. What will British Columbians think? Will they punish the NDP for forcing them to the polls? Will they lock in a government they appear to approve of? And how do you run an election in a pandemic anyway? What will be different about this one, and how can other provinces learn from what happens in B.C. this October? GUEST: Liza Yuzda, Legislative Reporter, News 1130 We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Cases are increasing exponentially. Hospital admissions are beginning to follow them. The doctors who oversee ICUs are nervous. And the public is looking for clear rules they can follow—only those seem to vary by public health unit. Dr. Michael Warner runs an ICU in Toronto. He can see the line from his hospital's COVID-19 assessment centre stretching down the road from his office. Along with other doctors and epidemiologists, he's been sounding warning bells about how close COVID-19 is to being out of control all over again. So what needs to happen now? GUEST: Dr. Michael Warner We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

They played zero games in Toronto. They spent the first three weeks on the road. They lost their best hitter for half the year. Their ace welcomed a baby during a pandemic. They were written off as young but not ready. They ended up in the playoffs, by clinching a spot that had never existed until this season. The Blue Jays are a bunch of talented kids of former big leaguers, a South Korean ace and a handful of fireball arms out of the bullpen. They are flawed, but they don't care. They're not supposed to be here and they don't care about that, either. This is an unlikely team in the most unlikely of circumstances. So what do they do with it? GUEST: Arden Zwelling, Senior Writer, Sportsnet We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

If you think that parents are nervous about Back To School, imagine how the kids are feeling. You’re going back to school, or maybe trying to learn from home. You’re not allowed to hang out with your friends except with masks and at a distance, yet you’re still supposed to share rooms with them. Your teachers are masked. They’re measuring space between your desks. You're worried about a virus you could spread to your parents and grandparents. And you’re supposed to go on with your school year as best you can. That’s...not easy. So how are kids coping? We spoke to one, and got some advice. GUEST: Andy Binau We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Last week, an unlikely research project made a startling discovery: Phosphine gas in the atmosphere of Venus. That's something that, as far as we know, is created by living organisms. Our efforts to find signs of life on other worlds, and a lot of our space dreaming in general, tend to focus on Mars. But all of a sudden we need to take a closer look at our other planetary neighbour. So how can we find out if there's really life right next door? What do we know about Venus and why has it been so hard to figure out so far? What else could possibly cause the presence of Phosphine and what would it mean, to space exploration and everything else, if this is really true? GUEST: Neel Patel, space reporter, MIT Technology Review We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Because the coffee bean is in danger. A rapidly spreading fungus is threatening both the plants themselves and the farmers who make a living from them. The fungicides that used to stop it no longer work in many cases and climate change is making life easier for the fungus every day in areas where coffee grows. How long until there's a coffee shortage? Or until we start losing some of the more unique varieties? We don't know, but there is still time to fight the problem. GUEST: Maryn McKenna, science journalist and author We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Quebec police estimate threats made against public officials are up about 400 percent. Most of the people arrested for making those threats show evidence of believing in conspiracy theories. In fact, belief in these theories, as well as distrust in the mainstream media, is rising quickly in the province. And not all of these theories are coming from the United States. Some of them are coming from inside the province. So what should police and governments be doing? Because things seem to be getting dangerous quickly. GUEST: Jonathan Montpetit, CBC Montreal We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It’s not Donald Trump’s fault. He’s just an accelerant. America has been churning towards a crisis of democracy for decades. Our guest today created a model that predicted the 2020s would be the ultimate test for the future of America. The crisis point is here, so how will America respond? And what does it mean to Canada if our neighbours fail the democratic test? GUEST: Jack Goldstone, George Mason University We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

On this show, we usually talk to experts—and that means during Covid-19 we've been speaking with doctors and infectious disease specialists, researchers and scientists, pundits and journalists, but not very often with average Canadians. Fortunately, someone has been. A new documentary that airs tonight follows several Canadians through the past six months, and takes us into their homes and virtual offices, giving us a glimpse of how all the big issues we discuss on The Big Story end up impacting folks who are just trying to live their lives in these "unprecedented times". GUEST: Pat Taney, Reporter/Producer, CityNews We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

In 1988, Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby represented the family of a young man named Michael Wade Lawson. Though neither Ruby, the family or anyone else involved at the time knew it, it’s a case that's had a profound impact on how police forces in Canada’s largest province do—and don’t—hold themselves accountable. Michael Wade Lawson, you see, was 17—a young Black man who was shot and killed by the police. After his death, amid a public outcry, Ontario's Special Investigations Unit was created, to investigate cases of police misconduct that resulted in injury or death to civilians. And that’s where today's story begins. GUEST: Clayton Ruby We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

This November, accused killer Alek Minassian will face trial for the 2018 Toronto van attack that killed 10 people and injured 16. In the aftermath of that attack, we learned that Minassian subscribed to the incel ideology—which has been linked to mass killings around the world. Incels entered the public consciousness as lonely people obsessed with other people's sex lives. But in recent years they've become increasingly deadly. How do young men find themselves radicalized into the incel subculture online? Where are they slipping through the cracks? And how can we respond more effectively to signs of violence before it happens? GUEST: Katherine Laidlaw We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

There are a lot of things that provincial back-to-school guidelines don't cover—because they can't. Every school is different, and so are the neighbourhoods they serve. And as students return, teachers and administrators often need answers, quickly, to problems they couldn't have foreseen. This is where a new program led by hospitals and doctors in Toronto's east end comes in. Each school is matched up with a doctor or hospital worker who can take their unique questions and come back to them with solutions. How can we do safe screenings with hundreds of kids and little outdoor space? How do you get toddlers to wear masks? What if physical distancing is impossible in my classroom? And at what point do we have to worry about uncontrolled outbreaks and school closures? GUEST: Dr. Janine McCready, infectious disease physician, Michael Garron Hospital We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It's been 25 years since the Ipperwash crisis and the killing of Dudley George. Long enough that there's a generation that doesn't remember it—but they have plenty of examples of modern-day land defenders standing up against the government. But the original protesters, who took back land the government had promised to return to them 50 years ago and won? They're still there. Still living at Stony Point. Still waiting for the military to clean up the mess it left behind. Still holding out hope of returning the land to its lush former glory. And in the meantime, they're trying to live on what the government left behind. GUEST: Cristina Howorun, CityNews We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Are you addicted to the news? Don't lie! It's understandable. This year has been hard, and everything feels like a crisis sometimes, and some of us can't look away. Not knowing what's happening in the world at all is not an option, but what if we don't have to know everything absolutely immediately? Is it possible to regulate the way you consume the news without missing out on the things that matter? Is it possible to go cold turkey for a little while to break the habit? GUEST: Peter Laufer, James Wallace Chair Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon, author of Dreaming in Turtle and Up Against the Wall: The Case for Opening the Mexican-U.S. Border. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It's been a chaotic and eventful—and still not yet close to done—return to schools across Canada. A majority of parents have chosen to return their kids to the classroom. Other have opted for remote learning either by necessity or preference. And then there are the private pods—small bubbles of a few families, taught by a teacher hired to work privately. Of course, having the means to afford private instructions for your kids is a privilege. It's a sign of inequality in education access. And if the pandemic lingers and drives more families to this solution, it could potentially undermine the school system. But should any of that matter to parents whose first job is to keep their children safe in the best environment possible? GUEST: Matt Gurney, National Post, Code 47 We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

In a large house, in a very nice area of Toronto, in the 1970s and 80s, there lived a normal family: Mom, dad, kids. Roughly thirty kids, actually, most of them adopted from all over the worlds. Thirty kids with different languages, needs, dreams and personalities. Why did they do it? What happened when they did? What kind of legacy does the Simpson family leave behind today in a city and country they helped build just be being a normal, loving, ever-growing family? GUEST: Nicholas Hune-Brown, Toronto Life We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

When SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy took off from a NASA launchpad this year, it marked a new era of manned spaceflight, one in which private businesses have as much of a stake in success as government space agencies. But have we stopped along the way to think about the ramifications of that? What rules do companies like SpaceX have to follow once they are out on the final frontier? If they break them, who makes sure they pay for it? And as technology evolves at a rapid pace and these partnerships become more common, who or what stops space from becoming the new wild west? GUEST: Michael O'Shea We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

A lot of Canadians are obese. That's a fact. But a lot of the things you think you know about that fact—why they're obese, how they could lose weight, what they need to hear from their doctors—just aren't true. Last month Canada unveiled a new set of guidelines for treating obesity, and the biggest headline among the recommendations was: "No dieting." But the guidelines don't stop there. From an acceptance of surgery as a solution, challenging the biases of doctors and looking at obesity as a science-based problem, they call for a dramatic change in approach to the problem. Will they work? Will we follow them? GUEST: Dr. Sean Wharton We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It was a program created at unimaginable speed under incredible circumstances. And it has helped millions of Canadians. But six months later—two months longer than initially planned—the federal government is ending the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. So what’s next? Expanded EI qualifications, new programs for those who don't qualify for EI and other efforts aimed at supporting workers still impacted by COVID-19. Who qualifies? For how much? How quickly and for how long? And what do you need to prepare to apply? We've got a guide to post-CERB Canadian government help. GUEST: Rosa Saba, business reporter, Toronto Star We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

One of the goals of the movement to defund the police is to limit a police force's ability to acquire expensive, military-style equipment. Even if that movement is successful, however, the police have other ways of funding their purchases. It doesn't get much attention, but police foundations across Canada have in recent years used money given to them by corporate donors to help police purchase everything from a patrol boat to an armoured vehicle and a drone program. None of those purchases needed the approval of city hall or the public. None of them was open and transparent. And none of them would have been stopped by defunding the police department. In fact, as defunding the police gains momentum, these foundations will become more attractive to police departments and more outrageous to people who worry about preferential treatment for donors. GUEST: Martin Lukacs We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It's already something some people try to avoid—and the thought of spending hours in a courtroom with others, masked or not, doesn't make jury duty any more appealing. But jury trials are returning this month, and so jury questionnaires are already on the way to mailboxes. But what's being done to keep jurors safe? To make it worthwhile for them to serve? And to mitigate that added burden on any disruption to work or home life that comes with COVID-19? Should we be trying to make jury trials function well enough, or take this opportunity to rethink jury duty forever? GUEST: Mark Farrant, CEO of the Canadian Juries Commission We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

The practice of solitary confinement in Canada had been found to violate inmates' human rights. The government had been given a year to fix it, and last December, the year was almost up. Since then, a lot has changed in the world. But it seems not a lot has changed in our prison system. And if anything had really changed, we likely wouldn’t know, because the government won’t tell us. It won't even tell the panel it appointed to watch over its work. Why? GUEST: Justin Ling We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It sucks to think about cold weather and flu season when BBQs and beaches are still on the menu, but that’s the life of epidemiologists during a global pandemic. School starts next week. Fall is almost here. We’ve learned a lot about Covid-19 since February but have we used that knowledge to prepare for an inevitable second wave? And when that wave does come, how bad will it be? GUEST: Dr. David Fisman, epidemiologist We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

We're bringing you a special episode of our sister show, Black Tea. In this one, Mel and Dalton talk to Celina Caesar-Chavannes, a former Member of Parliament, about how a lack of political will directly harm Black communities. We hope you'll listen. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

A special episode of the Big Story looks at what has happened in sports over the past 48 hours and asks a question: If it isn't business as usual, and talking won't get things done, what will? GUEST: None. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

You’ve probably lived most of your life with rising income inequality. The rich steadily get richer while the rest of us just try to keep up. It’s difficult sometimes to keep in mind that it wasn’t always this way; that this is a choice we made—maybe not us, but the people we put in power. What Covid-19 has done to steadily rising inequality is, basically, the equivalent of throwing gas on a fire. We're getting dangerously close to a tipping point. What happens when we reach it? GUEST: Bruce Livesey, investigative reporter and writer We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

He loves Top Gun, but he admits he's not Maverick. He courted the social conservative vote, then turned around and made a play for moderates. He wants a more inclusive Conservative Party of Canada, but he won't budge on the carbon tax. How did Erin O'Toole pull off the upset victory? What's his vision for the party he now leads? Where did he come from and is he just boring enough to put a real scare into Justin Trudeau and the Liberals? GUEST: Marie-Danielle Smith, Maclean's (Read Marie-Danielle's profile of O'Toole right here.) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It's perhaps the worst news you can imagine getting—and the only way to make it worse is to get it via videoconference in the midst of a pandemic. COVID-19 has forced sudden changes to the medical system, and created a flood of new health questions for anyone at risk. But do we have the answers? How do we give patients the care they need for life-threatening illnesses, and the support they need to fight through them, when we're still learning about a new virus? GUEST: Anne Borden, writer, host of Noncompliant. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

The past six months have featured a lot of speculation about what the pandemic has done to the average workday for those lucky enough to have a job that can be done at home. Now we have some real data on how the lives of millions of workers have changed. Are we working more or less? Are our meetings getting longer? What are we missing about the office? How can companies adapt to what their workforce needs? And which strategies that we're learning now will stick around? GUEST: Jeff Polzer, Professor of Human Resource Management, Harvard Business School We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Anne With An E is a reimagining of Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables tales. It ran for three seasons, and then got cancelled. And the fans took it personally. This isn’t a conversation about Anne With An E, though, it's a conversation about what happens when popular culture becomes a political identity. GUEST: John Semley We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Since Monday, the nation’s federal government has seen a high-profile resignation, a historic appointment, a prorogation of parliament in the middle of a pandemic, the release of 5,000 pages of documents concerning the government’s latest scandal, the promise of a reset and the threat of a fall election. Just another lazy August weekend in Ottawa. So why did the Liberals prorogue parliament? What will happen when it returns? Did Bill Morneau resign or was he fired? And what will Chrystia Freeland include in what is expected to be an ambitious plan for economic recovery? GUEST: Cormac Mac Sweeney, parliament hill reporter We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

You probably first heard it from the mouth of a losing coach or player—but that's not where it came from. You may have noticed that US President Donald Trump used it to brush off 150,000 dead Americans, and everything that happened afterwards. It's a phrase that means almost nothing, yet is used to describe everything. So why has it become so ubiquitous? When we say "It is what it is", what are we trying to convey? How versatile is it and how much depends on who's using it? And when we do use it, what precisely is the "it" we're referring to? GUEST: Miles Klee, MEL Magazine We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

In most places, restaurants can reopen for indoor dining—with a whole lot of restrictions. But with limited seating available, it's going to be impossible for most places to sustain their business on diners alone. And most of us don't feel great about going right back to a restaurant anyway. So...what next? As awful as COVID-19 has been for the hospitality industry, it has merely accelerated some longtime trends like to move to delivery and takeout, the phenomenon of Ghost Kitchens and other, more creative, ways of doing business. So what will the restaurants that survive the pandemic look like when life returns to normal? GUEST: Corey Mintz, food reporter We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Tracy Moore took over as host of Cityline 12 years ago, the first black woman to host a Canadian daytime lifestyle show. The reaction to her debut was…ugly. But 12 years later, Tracy is still here, and has been talking fashion and health and recipes and everything else you’d expect for more than a decade. But now, she’s also talking about anti-racism and white supremacy. On a lifestyle show. In a space that’s traditionally been considered out of bounds for anything political or uncomfortable. So how is that working out? GUEST: Tracy Moore, host of Cityline We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

What the Toronto Raptors are attempting has never been done before—they're trying to shed a superstar and get even better. When the reigning champs begin the NBA Playoffs Monday against Brooklyn, they'll do so with a better winning percentage than they managed with Kawhi Leonard shutting down opponents and filling the bucket. What makes this group so special? How do they go about winning games against teams that feature Hall of Famers at the top of their rosters? What will they have to do to thrive in a star-driven playoff series? What's their biggest weakness? And can they really, actually win another NBA title? GUEST: Michael Grange, Sportsnet We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

There are lots of reasons schools should open in the fall. From parents' sanity and productivity to the fact that without the childcare schools provide, working parents are basically screwed and economic recovery is impossible. But there's another assumption that we make when discussing sending kids back in September: That going back will be the best thing for their mental health. What if that assumption's wrong? School can be a source of anxiety and stress for kids at the best of times, never mind how it feels when it comes with fear of contracting Covid-19 and bringing it home to make a parent or grandparent sick. Classroom learning doesn't work for some kids, even without teachers in masks and socially distanced. Maybe we should have a more nuanced conversation about what school in a pandemic could look like, instead of assuming it's either in-person or a boring, glitchy Zoom call. GUEST: Dr. Tyler Black, suicidologist and emergency psychiatrist in B.C. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Should you drive, take the train or fly? Where should you stay when you arrive? Can you use public bathrooms—and how do you do it safely? Are airlines still enforcing social distancing inside planes? Do you need to wipe down your tray table? Can you ride in a car with another family if you all wear masks? Travel is about getting outside of our comfort zone—which means something much different in 2020. But for those of us with loved ones in other cities, provinces and countries, it might be a necessity, either due to an emergency or just for our own mental health. So, how do you assess risk when you're on the road? And if you are going to travel, how do you do it safely? We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Ontario's premier won a landslide election in 2018, but by the end of last year his approval rating was underwater. It's fair to say that when COVID-19 began, Ontarians were skeptical of his leadership. Six months later, though, Ford's approval is sky high. So what happened? Did Ford rise to the challenge or just beat low expectations? Has he really changed minds or is this just a crisis bump? What did Ford do right and wrong over the past six months? And what's next for a leader who could be right back on shaky ground if his plan to reopen schools ends in disaster? GUEST: Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Maclean's We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Dead sea lions turn up from time to time on beaches in British Columbia. That's not unusual. Recently though they’ve been found missing their heads. And yes, that’s the strange part. But not the strangest part. What or who, took their heads? Before or after they died? Why? What happened to the heads after they were severed? And what does this whole strange saga tell us about the delicate balance of predator and prey … and working fisheries on our west coast? GUEST: Wanyee Li, Vancouver Bureau, Toronto Star We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It’s worth looking, every so often, at the stories of 2020 that haven’t gotten much attention because of the...raging global pandemic, furious protests against police brutality and racism, the never-ending saga of Donald Trump somehow being President of the United States and the general 2020 news like murder hornets, plane crashes and catastrophic global warming. It’s been a busy year and some things slip through the cracks. Little things, you know? Aliens, stuff like that. Wait! Aliens? Yup. Aliens. It's that kind of year. GUEST: Marie-Danielle Smith, Maclean's We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

When they're going through elementary and high school, nobody asks these children and teens about their immigration status. That's policy in our system. When they graduate however, even if they've got straight 'A's, post-secondary education is just about impossible. So some of our brightest young people leave school, and take up under-the-table jobs in factories and bakeries, putting aside their dreams to keep themselves and their families safe in Canada. Is there a better way? Meet Canada's 'Dreamers'. GUEST: David Bruser, Investigative Reporter, The Toronto Star We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

There's a ton of good news about various Covid-19 vaccine trials moving to Phase Three. What does that actually mean? Some companies might even begin production now, hoping for positive results, in order to meet global demand should the vaccine be proven to work. Politicians keep touting early 2021 as a target, but... What do we still need for these vaccines to be proven effective? Who makes that call and what goes into it? What role will politics play? Can we even hope to make enough to treat everyone? And what if some people refuse to take a vaccine that's been cleared for use? GUEST: Ivan Semeniuk, Health Reporter, The Globe and Mail We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky