The Big Story

In casual discussion of the virus, the term "Long Haulers" is, generally, used to describe people for whom symptoms of Covid-19 can linger for weeks and months, long after the worst seems to be over. And that can be debilitating. But that’s not the only kind of ‘long-hauler’. There are also people, we’re learning, who recover, but continue to test positive weeks later. Even without any symptoms. How long can this virus linger inside people? What can other diseases that stay with people for years and even lifetimes tell us about what we’re seeing in these cases with Covid? What do we still not know about how all this works? GUEST: Roxanne Khamsi, science 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

Kanye's a celebrity. He lives his life extremely publicly and he's openly discussed his mental health. So many of us feel free to speculate about it, too. When we do, we're also talking about thousands of non-celebrities who live with mental health challenges—and they hear exactly what we're saying. Why do we feel so confident to discuss the mental health of celebrities as though we know them? What does calling Kanye 'crazy' or 'unhinged' do to other people with bipolar disorder who aren't rich and famous? And how can we call out Kanye for his offensive behaviour without blaming it on his condition? GUEST: Stacy Lee Kong, author of Friday Things 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 landmark ruling last week found that sending refugee claimants back to the United States under the Safe Third Country Agreement violates their human rights—and a federal judge has given the government six months to fix or terminate the policy. What does this mean for the US-Canada border? For the thousands of refugees every year that arrive in the United States then try to make it to Canada? To understand this agreement you have to go back to the months after 9/11, when immigration and border security were undergoing massive changes. And to understand why the agreement has been invalidated in court, you need to look at what's changed at the border in the years since then. GUEST: Sharry Aiken, Professor of Immigration Law, Queen's 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

There are at least 102 kids. Most of them are Indigenous. Over seventeen years their money was stolen from their bank accounts, pushing them into poverty, homelessness and worse. And nobody noticed. Nobody cared. A multimillion dollar settlement from the BC government admits that this happened, and attempts to make up for the failures with at least $25,000 per victim. But no criminal charges have been filed. No inquiry is forthcoming. And the details of how this happened gives us a look into just how unfair the system that's supposed to help these kids can be. GUEST: Holly Moore, Investigative Producer, APTN 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 began as a strange conspiracy theory in American politics. It's since become much strange, much more widespread and much more dangerous. QAnon has spread around the world and driven real-life events that put lives in danger, including here in Canada. How did this happen? What's behind QAnon's rapid spread and how can we try to convince believers that none of it is true? And what happens if we simply can't stop it and something awful happens? GUEST: Marc-André Argentino, Concordia 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

Last summer, long before a pandemic was on the horizon, the biggest story was a teenage manhunt. After discovering the bodies of Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese at one location and Leonard Dyck at another, the RCMP named an 18 and a 19-year-old as their main suspects. And they were on the run. After a nationwide sweep that involved the military and tons of media coverage, police found the killers' bodies in the brush of northern Manitoba. In a video found on site, Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky confessed to the murders and voiced their plans to end it all with a murder suicide. Now, a year later, the RCMP are preparing to close the case for good. But one major question remains: Why did they do it? GUEST: Alex McKeen, Vancouver bureau reporter for the Toronto Star, who, with colleague Douglas Quan, recently wrote about the anniversary. 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

As the nation yawns awake following a months-long shutdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19, restaurants are welcoming diners again. This once fully relaxing experience is now riddled with reminders to be vigilant: Sign-in sheets to allow for contact tracing. Strict rules about wearing face masks indoors. Tables positioned six feet apart. This is a whole new world — unfamiliar to diners, for sure, but also nearly unrecognizable to restaurant staff who’ve gone from being out of work to being frontline workers. And the tips? Let’s just say they’ve been better. As the restaurant industry adjusts to this new reality, there may well be an opportunity for fundamental change — and some advocates have put the practice of tipping on the chopping block. What’s so bad about the gratuity system? And what would a world without tipping look like? Guest: Hassel Aviles, co-founder of Not9to5, a Canadian nonprofit that empowers hospitality workers by connecting them with resources on mental health and substance use. 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 an iconic image of Canada: A Mountie, donning a red serge, Stetson hat, combat boots, standing on guard for thee, which is usually taken to mean “all of us.” But this image, as mighty as it seems, is attached to what critics call a massive, dysfunctional, paramilitary institution that can’t seem to ever hold itself accountable. Its relationship with Indigenous peoples is as strained as ever and there is quaking within its ranks, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars spent on inquiries and settlements. While the residents of Portapique, Nova Scotia took to the streets this week demanding a public inquiry into the RCMP’s response the day 22 of its residents died at the hands of a gunman, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission found the Mounties’ “command and control” approach to policing has led to “unreasonable" use of force in their response to mental health and wellbeing calls. It doesn’t help that their top official can’t answer a basic question on whether systemic racism exists in the force. Can the RCMP be truly and meaningfully reformed? Does it need to be? GUEST: Jane Gerster, a national features reporter for Global News, who has done in-depth investigative reporting on the RCMP. GUEST HOST: Sarah Boesveld 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

Radiyah Chowdhury first thought about leaving the media business when she was still in journalism school. Back in her first year classes, sitting amongst a sea of white peers, she remembers getting an introduction to the idea of “objectivity” and feeling awash in anxiety. “Objectivity, as it was presented to us seemed to be tailored for a specific type of person, one whose capacity to be dispassionate about certain issues came from a place of privilege that was unfamiliar to me,” she wrote in an essay that won this year’s Dalton Camp Award. The industry, as it is, poses a next to impossible ask for journalists of colour, wrote the assistant editor at Chatelaine. These storytellers have been tokenized and largely shut out of an industry dominated by white people. Now that the news business is being taken to task for systemic racism, will we finally see meaningful change? Or will the media cycle churn on? GUEST: Radiyah Chowdhury, assistant editor at Chatelaine and winner of the 2020 Dalton Camp Award 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

Matthew McKnight was a fixture in the Edmonton bar scene, known for partying in colourful animal themed jumpsuits and sometimes only his underwear. He’d buy rounds of drinks, distributing them to pretty young women enjoying a night on the town. In April 2016 the first — a 17-year-old girl — would report to police that she had been sexually assaulted by McKnight. Many other women soon came forward with their own experiences of assault at the hands of a man whose exploits had been an “open secret” for far too long. This past fall, Matthew McKnight pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of sexual assault against 13 different women. In January, a jury found him guilty of five of them. Now, as he awaits sentencing, the case is being scrutinized as one of Canada’s first legal reckonings of the MeToo era — a test of how the court handled a rare case of multiple charges of assault against one serial sexual predator. Can justice really be served? Guest: Jana Pruden, crime and feature writer with The Globe and Mail. You can read her feature about the McKnight case 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

By now we've become at least semi-acquainted with the idea that advertisers and social media companies scrape and use our personal information in ways we can't even begin to comprehend. But a new analysis of the ways LGBTQ people are targeted, surveilled and censored online reveals a disturbing and disheartening tool international governments are using to persecute the queer community: Data from dating apps. In a report released last week, cybersecurity company Recorded Future found dating apps like OKCupid, Grindr and Tinder collected user data, including users' exact location, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political beliefs, drug use and more, and shared it with at least 135 third party entities. The company observed multiple cybersecurity attacks traced back to Russia and other Eastern European countries as well as cases all over the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Sometimes, people were entrapped, beaten and tortured. What implications does this data collection and dissemination have for queer peoples' safety online — and what can be done to protect them? GUEST: Jane Lytvynenko, senior reporter with Buzzfeed News, who wrote about the Recorded Future report. GUEST HOST: Sarah Boesveld 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, Harper’s magazine published an open letter, speaking out against a culture of “intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” The letter was signed by 150 people. Among them, prominent figures like J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie. Once published, it created a wave of backlash, and at least two people withdrew their names when they saw who else had signed it. Today, a discussion with one of the letter’s signatories about flawed democracies, and why she felt it was important to sign the letter. GUEST: Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism 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 the Canadian Association of the Chiefs of Police announced their support for decriminalizing the personal possession of illicit drugs. Drug use and addiction, they said, is a public health issue. And simple possession should be treated with health and social service resources, rather than through the criminal justice system. It’s an idea researchers and people who work in addiction have hammered away at for decades. But it's still a shocking position for the association representing police chiefs across the country. So why now? And what does this mean for drug policy in Canada? GUEST: Justin Ling, investigative reporter. GUEST HOST: Sarmishta Subramanian 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 can joke as much as we want about it, but the reality is that we all go to the bathroom, every single day. It’s a basic human need. Yet many cities are failing at providing accessible public toilets for everyone. What will it take for politicians and city planners to take the issue seriously and address the underlying discrimination and inequality? Which cities are doing it right? How has the pandemic highlighted the need for accessible public washrooms? Could this be a turning point? GUEST: Lezlie Lowe, author of No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs GUEST HOST: Sarmishta Subramanian 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 the entire country went into lockdown a few months ago, it meant kids would be staying home and most of their parents would be too. But now, as businesses reopen and people start going back to work, parents are wondering where their kids are supposed to go. With Labour Day fast approaching, are we doing all that we can to ensure a safe full return to school and protect the educational rights of children? If not, how many parents will have to leave the workforce to provide for their kids? And can you take a wild guess as to which parent that responsibility will usually fall on? GUEST: Lauren Dobson-Hughes, gender and international health consultant. Read her opinion piece here. GUEST HOST: Sarmishta Subramanian 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 nearly a single week, three global hot spots ushered in some dramatic changes. Russia made a constitutional amendment allowing Vladimir Putin to add 16 additional years to a 20-year run. China put into effect new security law, stripping Hong Kong of its autonomy and shuttering the democracy movement. And in Israel, a looming annexation plan could take over as much as 30 percent of the West Bank. Why did all this happen now? Did the global pandemic play a part? Did an America in free fall encourage it? And what will it do to the peace and balance of power on the world stage? GUEST: Mark MacKinnon, senior international correspondent for The Globe and Mail. GUEST HOST: Sarmishta Subramanian 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 just a few weeks away from the return of the NBA, NHL and MLB. The NFL plans to join them soon afterwards. It could be a wonderful few months for sports fans ... but it's also unnecessary, risky and could end very, very badly. How badly do leagues, players and networks want the games to return? What happens as more and more players test positive? What do we know about how the plans are working so far? What would it take to shut down a single team, or a whole league? What if someone dies? It's a grim but real possibility. GUEST: Donnovan Bennett, 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 Canada is going to keep COVID-19 under control, contact tracing and tracking will have to play a huge part in it. You hear about contact tracing in every interview or article about controlling the virus—but how does the process actually work? Who are the people tasked with the often difficult job? How do they deal with people who are scared or angry to hear from them? How many cases can be missed before an outbreak looms? And as Canada prepares for a second wave...do we have enough of them to handle what's coming? GUEST: Aaron Hutchins, 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

There's another public outcry about Facebook! Shocking, right? But this time over 800 companies are putting their advertising dollars behind it, in an attempt to force the social media giant to confront hate speech and white supremacy on its platform. Will it work? Is there a dollar amount big enough to force Mark Zuckerberg to back down? And how much of a role will Facebook play in the upcoming U.S. election? Are we in for a repeat of 2016? GUEST: Jesse Hirsh, Futurist, Metaviews.ca 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 organization was supposed to distribute more than $900 million in student grants, but the reaction when the deal was announced was immediate and intense. There's now an ethics investigation and WE has walked away from the plan. What happened? Why did the Liberals agree to this, and what should they have known about the organization before announcing it would be handling nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money? GUEST: Jesse Brown, Canadaland 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

Warning bells were sounding. Some of the country's leading scientists were writing urgent emails to politicians and public health units. There was an emergency coming. It was going to get bad. We should take action now. Still, Canada waited to take steps such as closing borders, securing PPE and planning for a massive wave of COVID-19. Compared to our neighbours to the south, we've handled the crisis fairly well—but what could we have done with an extra month to plan? How many lives and millions of dollars could we have saved? Who sounded the warnings, and who listened? And who didn't? GUEST: Robyn Doolittle, 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

It's clear from the politicization of masks in the United States, and the mandatory mask policies being enacted in Canada, that we're not seeing enough voluntary compliance to impact the spread of COVID-19. So who's to blame? And how do we get where we need to be to curb the virus? Messaging on masks has been abysmal since the early stages of the pandemic, so you can't simply blame people for not complying now. And the shaming and shunning of non-mask wearers isn't what's needed to convince everyone to buy in to something that represents a huge change in everyday behaviour. So what kind of messaging works? Well, we actually do have a pretty good idea... GUEST: Dr. Julia Marcus, epidemiologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School; writer at The Atlantic 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 pandemic put a sudden stop to foreign travel, places around the world that were once overrun by tourists have had a chance to breathe. And the people living in them have started to realize what life is like without all those extra people. For some, the break has been nice — a chance to finally visit the monuments that were always just around the corner, but never empty enough to enjoy. For others, it's revealed a deep-rooted dependency on an industry that doesn't always love them back. As travel restrictions start to ease in Europe and other parts of the world, are we going to revert to our old habits or look for ways to create new experiences? GUEST: Christopher de Bellaigue, writer for The Guardian. 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

Hundreds of migrant farm workers in Ontario have tested positive for COVID-19 and three have died, leaving behind wives and children. Health officials say the workers arrived healthy and that the virus was spread locally. How do these outbreaks happen even with regular screening in place? What measures are now being put in place to control the spread? Are they enough? GUEST: Kathryn Blaze Baum, 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 may have seen the picture during one of its many trips around the internet over the past seven years. It's a honeycomb shaped like a heart, allegedly made by the bees themselves, freeform, when their keeper forgot to put the frame in their hive. It's a lovely story, and that's why it sticks around. Is it true? Not entirely. Does that matter? Maybe. But the case of the heart-shaped honeycomb provides a look inside a rapidly developing field called Internet Folklore, and can teach us a lot about the stories we tell and why some of them endure. GUEST: Steve Bryne, Folklorist 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 this special episode of the Big Story, Arash Madani of Sportsnet hosts a discussion of racism and activism in sports. The games we love have been at the forefront of many waves of social change, and they have the power to bring us together for a common cause. From John Carlos' raised fist at the Olympics to Colin Kaepernick's brave protest that cost him his job, we'll explore athletes, activism and what needs to happen now if real progress is to be made. GUEST HOST: Arash Madani, 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

In a perfect world, a "wellness check" would be exactly what it says. A person seems like they’re having trouble or are in crisis, so we call someone to check on them, to help them get well. As you probably know by now, that's not always what happens, and the results are people dead at the hands of the police. Why are police the default when a wellness check is called for? Does it have to be that way? How is a wellness check supposed to be conducted—are there protocols that aren't being followed? How are officers trained for them? Exactly how much mental health training do prospective officers get? GUEST: Uzma Williams, teaches a mental health course to students and prospective police officers at MacEwan University in Edmonton; she's also a co-editor of Police Response to Mental Health in Canada 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 Big Story turns two today. We're officially entering our toddler years, just in time to throw a tantrum at the news cycle with two of our favourite guests. This year is not yet half done and it either feels like it's been a week or a decade long. How will we remember 2020? Among the thousands of things that we've changed so far this year, which ones will last when things return to normal? How have we done, as the media, covering history as it happens? And is there ANY good news in this year? ... Anything? GUESTS: Sarah Boesveld and Fatima Syed 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 allegations in a recent lawsuit are horrifying to read. Teenagers allegedly being bullied and abused by older teammates as coaches watched and did nothing. These aren't the first stories to come from Canadian junior hockey players and they likely won't be the last. The initial reaction from those without a stake in the game, including our host, is to burn the whole system down. Is that the only way to fix it? What needs to change for the game we love to be safe for the kids who play it? Who's standing in the way of that? And what does real change look like inside locker rooms everywhere? GUEST: Brock McGillis, former OHL and pro player, LGBTQ+ speaker and advocate 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

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Air India bombing, which killed 329 people, 280 of them Canadian citizens. In the immediate tragedy, the terrorist attack was seen largely as a foreign incident. As recently as 2007, not even half of Canadians considered it a "Canadian" tragedy. Why did the largest mass murder of Canadians in the country's history remain for so long a story about India and Ireland? And how have things changed in the past decade to reframe it? GUEST: Chandrima Chakraborty, Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster 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

When we discuss how COVID-19 has changed everything on this show, there's one big topic we haven’t covered yet. It’s sensitive. It’s intimate. It’s not easy to talk about even when there is no pandemic. It’s … just messy. It’s marriage. And living together. And partnership, with kids or without. If you’re married, or partnered, you haven’t been alone through all this. So you’re lucky. But you’ve also likely spent the last few months navigating an entirely different landscape, adjusting to a new daily life and, probably, fighting. At least sometimes. GUEST: Stephen Marche, host, How Not To F**k Up Your Marriage Too Bad (Available on Audible for free until July 11) 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 might expect the world's biggest technology companies to have your data and know a lot about your life. But your favourite (or least favourite) coffee chain?! This is the story of what happened when one reporter saw a notification on his phone and followed it down a rabbit hole to find out what, exactly, Tim Horton’s knows about him—and you too, if you use their app. Also, why exactly do they need to know that stuff? And what do they do with it? And who else might be doing it? Because if your local coffee chain can compile this stuff...what’s stopping everyone else? GUEST: James McLeod, business and technology reporter, Financial Post 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 Hospital for Sick Children issued a report Wednesday that recommends children go back to school in September—even though it admits the virus likely won’t be eradicated by then. It says the risks of infection and transmission need to be balanced with the effects closed schools are having on their physical and mental health. What do we know about the long-term impacts of kids being yanked out of school and isolated from their friends for months on end? How does it impact different kids at different ages and in different situations, and how do researchers try to quantify it? What don’t we know right now? And what will be likely found out years down the line as the Pandemic Generation grows up? GUEST: Sarmishta Subramanian, Editor At Large, 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

It's a slogan gathering steam, and support--but not enough support to make it practical. Yet. What don't people understand about the phrase and the options on the table for police reform, which range from abolishment of the police, to superficial changes that advocates say won't make much of a difference? How well do we understand what needs to happen next? And what reforms can actually make a difference now? GUEST: Monica Bell, associate professor of law and sociology, Yale 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

It's been closed to all but essential travel for months, and polls show most Canadians want it closed for a good while longer. The border is the most visible symbol of the increasingly divergent paths taken by Canada and the United States—paths that began before COVID-19 struck. In the 208 year history of the "longest undefended border", the experience of crossing has changed several times, and each event has left a lasting impact. What does the future hold for the relationship between the two neighbours, the border itself and the communities that live on either side of it? GUEST: Alex Bitterman, professor at Alfred State College of Technology at The State University of New York; Contributor, The Conversation 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

Most of us have a very specific image in our minds of what country music is. It shouldn’t be surprising—that's how it’s been promoted and sold for decades. But it wasn’t how the music was born. And it’s not representative of the artists who make it today, either. So what’s the real history of country music? GUEST: Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Editor of News Curation, BuzzFeed; contributor, Rolling Stone 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 banner year for disinformation, and the past few weeks have been the worst of all. Coronavirus hoaxes and miracle cures are still circulating, but there's also been a deluge of confusion, lies and misrepresentation around what's happening at the protests that have taken over streets in almost every town and city in North America. So how do you tell the real from the fake, especially when the misinformation is sometimes coming from traditional sources of authority? What are the most common hoaxes surrounding these protests? What's the goal of them? And how close are these social media hoaxes getting to inciting real-life violence? GUEST: Jane Lytvynenko, senior reporter, BuzzFeed News 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

Three months ago, Canadians were asked to adapt to a 'new normal'. We were told to stay inside, avoid contact with others, and limit trips to the bare necessities. It was awful, and scary, but we did it. Now, as case numbers of COVID-19 decline across the country, we're opening things back up—stores, parks, salons...even daycares. And some of us are anxious about returning to the world. What has the past three months done to our brains and the levels of anxiety we live with? Why have some people struggled to cope with isolation, while others are nervous to resume daily life? What will the long-term legacy of the pandemic on Canadians' mental health look like? And what are some coping strategies we can use if we're having trouble? GUEST: Judith Law, executive director of Anxiety Canada 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 rates of COVID-19 among Black and other racialized communities in the United States and around the world are staggering. It would be interesting to have that data in Canada...but we don't have the numbers. Only recently has Toronto begun releasing COVID-19 cases broken down by postal code, and the map of where the disease is spreading is exactly what you may have expected. Even in a country with "universal" health care, racism and classism still play a determining role in far too many medical outcomes. What data do we need to do something about it? What do health care workers on the front line say is needed? Are they getting it? And how can we ensure the systems we change for the better to fight COVID-19 don't regress when the pandemic is over? GUEST: Dr. Naheed Dosani, palliative care physician and health justice advocate. 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

Several of the world's leading technology companies—including Shopify, the largest in Canada—have announced that they don't ever plan to return to full-time office work. Other companies plan to stagger the return of employees as the pandemic wanes. Some may have to refit their entire floor plans in order to maintain social distancing if they want their staff back in the office. None of that is easy, or cheap. We might not know what the future of work looks like once a vaccine for COVID-19 is found, but it's safe to say that office work will never be the same. And what we've learned in the past few months, under the pressure of an emergency in a desperate situation, is not a fair proxy for what remote work in a normal world would look like. So what do we know about 'working from home' and productivity outside of a pandemic? What data will companies use to inform their decisions about how many employees return how often? And what should employees be doing to prepare for a future that might involve a four-day work week, or a drastically different schedule? GUEST: Nicholas Bloom, Stanford 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

Right now, Canadian businesses are vulnerable. Many of them are worried they won't survive COVID-19, and that makes them attractive targets for foreign investors. In some cases, it's a win-win: Canada needs foreign capital, and these companies want to acquire assets in a stable and prosperous country. But some of these deals raise real security concerns. When a state-owned Chinese company pays millions more than anyone else is willing to for a Canadian operation...why is that? What do they think they're getting out of it? How can our government balance the need for foreign money with the risk of handing over Canadian assets and property to other governments? And how many of us are even paying attention? GUEST: Stephanie Carvin, assistant professor of international affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton 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

You may have heard the phrase this week, or even just this year, that we are living history right now. The truth is we are always living history, but some of us can afford to ignore it until it boils over. So what's the historical context for this moment in time? What can we learn from it? When racism, police brutality and the rage that comes in response to that are laid bare for the world to see, in the middle of a pandemic everyone wants to know what happens next. Where do we go from here? Is it possible to eliminate racism without dismantling capitalism? And what do we each have to do to steer the course towards a positive ending? GUEST: Andray Domise, contributing editor, Maclean's; Nathanson Fellow (History), York 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

Chika Stacy Oriuwa graduated from the University of Toronto's faculty of medicine on Tuesday as valedictorian—the first black woman in the faculty's history to receive the honour alone (Dr. Kristine Whitehead, a Black woman, was co-valedictorian for the Class of 1992). She is also the only black student in her class of 259. But thanks to her advocacy and the university's willingness to work with her, the medical school class accepted for next year has 24 Black students, the highest number in the school's history. Oriuwa's story is inspiring, but it also highlights just how many systemic barriers face Black students in Canada as they take aim at the highest levels of education. What needs to be done to fix this, and how can other schools and students follow her lead? GUEST: Chika Stacy Oriuwa, valedictorian, class of 2020, U of T Faculty of Medicine (CORRECTION: This episode states that Dr. Oriuwa was the first Black female graduate to be named valedictorian. She is the first to receive the honour alone. Dr. Kristine Whitehead, a Black woman, was co-valedictorian for the Class of 1992.) 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 natural instinct a lot of Canadians have to look at the United States and feel better about ourselves. It’s obviously not a great look for us as a country at the best of times. And right now we’re a long long way from the best of times. And anyone looking for examples of police brutality in Canada won’t have to go far. Nobody knows yet exactly what happened when Regis Korchinski-Paquet was alone with two Toronto officers last week. But she fell to her death with them there. Where does police oversight in Canada succeed or fail? What needs to actually happen to make progress, and how can it be done? What are the actual differences in process between us and the United States? GUEST: Asha James, human rights lawyer and partner at Falconers, LLP 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 images of police killing black men or assaulting protesters are horrifying and disgusting, but they are just the most visible tip of an ugly, ugly iceberg. Before we talk about how far we'll really have to go to change a culture of police brutality, we're going to talk about what each of us, especially those with privilege, should be ready to do right now. Many of us won't be in harm's way on the front lines of a protest—but we also miss the many chances we have to be an ally when it can make a difference. Today, we revisit a conversation about what keeps us quiet or still when racists, sexist and homophobic acts occur in front of us, and how we can change that. Until tomorrow, stay safe and help each other out. GUEST: Shakil Choudhury, Anima Leadership 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 January 20th, 1994, strange things started happening at a small Christian church in Toronto, Canada. Worshipers found themselves laughing, shaking, falling, rolling around on the ground. That was only the beginning. How did the church suddenly become one of Toronto’s ‘Top Tourist Attractions’? Was something supernatural truly happening? Did gold teeth miraculously appear in people’s mouths? Tara Jean Stevens was a teenager when this bizarre movement spread from Toronto to her childhood church on the other side of the country. More than 25 years later, her new podcast, Heaven Bent, searches for the truth behind the miracles and explores big questions of faith and feeling. The first episode was released today, and you can find it right here. GUEST: Tara Jean Stevens, host and creator of Heaven Bent 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

Imagine you're a Canadian musician about to go international. You've been working your way up the charts, year by year, with awards, acclaimed albums, and bigger and bigger tours. You've now got a new album on the way and a full European tour planned. You're ready for this to be the biggest year of your career. And it's February 2020... The music industry has been 'disrupted' a whole bunch of times in recent years, but never have the lives of the people who make the music and the thousands of people who make the magic happen been changed like this. When will live shows return? When would you feel comfortable at a packed concert? How do non-superstar artists survive without tour income? And how well can living room concerts replicate the intimacy of a killer live show? GUEST: Hannah Georgas, pop rock singer/songwriter 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 may have heard that lots of people saw this pandemic coming. We still weren't adequately prepared. So what do we need to do now to make sure we are ready for whatever comes next? A pandemic is a low-probability, high-consequence events—it probably won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen eventually. Every year intelligence agencies, scientists and analysts spend a lot of time figuring out which of these events may be looming. Today's episode is about what they see right now. GUEST: Garrett M. Graff, Politico 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

New infections are up. Testing is down. Contact tracing is late. People are partying in parks. A report from members of Canada's armed forces on conditions in long-term care facilities is deeply disturbing. And just a month ago it looked like the province was headed in the right direction. How did things go wrong? Were they ever really right in the first place? How does Ontario get back on track and... is a second lockdown possible now? GUEST: Dr. David Fisman, Dalla Lana School of Public Health 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

Imagine being a high-school graduate right now, deciding whether to pay your tuition for post-secondary education in the fall. How do you know what you'll be getting for your money? Do the lessons in your program even translate to virtual education? And what about the hundreds of things that aren't taught in classes but make up university life? How much of that will even be possible? Meanwhile, colleges and universities are trying to make plans on the fly, survive the sudden lack of international students and keep their enrolment numbers from dropping in a world that could look dramatically different in September. It's going to be a very strange fall term on (or off) campus. GUEST: Joe Friesen, The Globe and Mail, postsecondary education 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