How the Maori rights movement grabbed the world’s attention
Plus: What’s behind the string of cheese heists bubbling up pretty much everywhere. Also: The Verge’s David Pierce on Bluesky’s big week.
Episodes
As It Happens
Nightly news that’s not afraid of fun. Every weeknight hosts Nil Köksal and Chris Howden bring you the people at the centre of the day’s most hard-hitting, hilarious and heartbreaking stories: powerful leaders, proud eccentrics and ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. And plenty of puns too. Find out why As It Happens is one of Canada’s longest-running and most beloved shows.
Episodes
A strike shows how much small business counts on the mail
Plus: LOL hell breaks loose. A new study suggests people who text using abbreviations are perceived as less sincere. Also: Tom Forrestall’s paintings may have a realistic approach, but a friend and curator tells us the late Canadian artist wasn’t afraid of bending the rules -- including using canvases of all shapes and sizes.
An ex-prosecutor on the “absurd” choice of Matt Gaetz for AG
Plus: A Scottish town learns a marble head being used as a doorstop in a shed, is actually a bust of their founder that's worth millions. Also: Ottawa says a decades-old report about Second World War criminals who came to Canada is still too hot to release, but the founder of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network says we all deserve to see the Nazi secrets of decades past
Catherine McKenna from COP29: “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it”
Plus: An enormous diamond necklace that may have played a role in the downfall of Marie Antoinette sells for a commensurately enormous price. Also: Médecins Sans Frontières says a recent attack against an ambulance and patients in Haiti raises serious questions about their ability to provide care in the country.
Ontario gets in early on Trump-style trade rhetoric
Plus: Scientists reappraise a 1986 NASA flyby of Uranus…and come up with new theories about possible life there. Also: A month after warning Israel to increase aid to Gaza or risk losing military support, US officials say they won’t limit arms transfers because progress is being made. But a former state department official calls that decision shameless.
A doctor in Beirut on the unfolding crisis in his hospital
Plus: Neuroscientist Michael Brecht’s fascinating findings about a Berlin Zoo elephant who loves to shower…and her roommate who has other ideas. Also: A high flying doctor from Yukon with a penchant for paragliding narrowly survives a storm in the Himalayas…and lives to tell us the tale.
Remembering Sergeant Tyson Bowen
Sergeant Tyson Bowen was a frequent guest on Mainstreet over the years. He gave fourteen years of his life to the Canadian Armed Forces, including two combat tours of Afghanistan. He was a champion and an advocate who fell prey to his inner demons and died on September 3, 2022. Lest We Forget
As the lights go out in Cuba, a farmer wonders what’s next
Plus: The sole-baring story of Anton Nootenboom, who walked – barefoot – from Los Angeles to New York. Also: John Bolton -- former advisor to the current U-S President-elect -- tells us what a second Trump administration might mean for Ukraine, NATO, and Canada.
Why kicking TikTok out of Canada may do more harm than good
Plus: A researcher tries to crack the mysterious recipe of “baseball mud”. Also: Potential gubernatorial candidate Jon Bramnick sees an opening in Trump’s surprisingly close result in New Jersey.
Kamala Harris concedes, and what’s next for Canada
Plus: A Welsh art gallery doubles down on nudes after getting a warning about “pornography” on display. Also: Canada’s Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne; newly reelected Montana state legislator Zooey Zephyr and more
Checking in on the PA city that “picks the President”
Plus: “One vote, one beer”. We reach a A New York bar that’s one of many businesses across the country with an election day reward for voters. Also: By means ferret or foul... A cloned black-footed ferret has given birth -- bringing back a bloodline that had gone extinct and sparking hope for the future of the critically endangered species.
Tanya Talaga on what Murray Sinclair leaves behind
Plus: A Wales man on why he chose to promote men’s health…not by growing a moustache…but by creating a giant “phallus” map using the Strava app. Also: On election night, Kamala Harris will watch the results roll in at her alma mater: Howard University. And the student newspaper's editor-in-chief tells us there's a palpable energy on campus today.
A Pennsylvania pastor gets ready for a divisive day
Plus: A retired Scottish police officer’s quest to find a home for his collection of thousands and thousands of bricks. Also: Why giant rats (wearing tiny backpacks) may be the next frontier in sniffing out smuggled goods.
How the conflict in Sudan escalated to horrific proportions
Plus: The strange saga of Quasi, a giant hand-shaped sculpture that divided Wellington, New Zealand…and is now on its way out of town. Also: Beloved Montreal political cartoonist Terry Mosher pays tribute to John Little – the painter who immortalized Quebec winter streetscapes.
Caught in Spain’s deadly and devastating floods
Plus: A Calgary man manages to up the ante on Halloween, challenging his own home’s structural integrity by giving away thousands of 2L pop bottles. And: New York officially legalizes jaywalking, a term Gersh Kuntzman of Streetsblog NYC says you shouldn’t even use.
What Israel’s move to ban UNRWA means for Gaza
Plus: It’s a nay from them. A new crop of British MPs challenge “bobbing” and other (frankly strange) parliamentary traditions. And: A petition filed to Ecuador's copyright office makes an unprecedented request to recognize one of the country's forests as the co-creator of a newly released song. Writer Robert Macfarlane tells us it's only natural.
Former Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron
Plus: A short piece of music written on a tiny card appears to be a lost work by Frédéric Chopin. And: In Lebanon, displaced people find shelter and support in the country's historic old movie theatres; and with Georgians on the streets of Tblisi a politician who led a team of EU observers tells us about the “democratic backsliding” taking place.
Marc Miller defends Canada’s new immigration targets
Plus: A team of Belgian ultrarunners set a truly punishing record by running a 6.7 kilometre loop every hour ... until they just can't anymore. And: Samar Abu Elouf sits down with Nil in studio. The Palestinian photojournalist and New York Times contributor was honoured this week by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
A critic weighs in on Canada’s new immigration targets
Plus: A Tory MP is fighting to have the classic Cockney dish “pie and mash” given protected status (but you can hold the eel). Also: A Canadian artist debuts his giant biodiversity jenga tower sculpture at the UN's COP16 climate conference.
MPs confront Justin Trudeau behind closed doors
Plus: A researcher was so frustrated by the lack of data on women that she scanned her own brain 75 times. Also: Two years after a foiled attempt on Masih Alinejad’s life, US prosecutors charge a senior official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in the plot. The activist tells us threats to her life won’t stop her from speaking out.
David Herle on a pivotal meeting for Trudeau and his party
Plus: A Harvard scientist describes “S2”, which has a pretty boring name for an event that once boiled oceans and levelled mountains on earth. Also: More than a hundred women soccer players sign an open letter, calling on FIFA to drop its sponsorship deal with a Saudi company. Canadian captain Jessie Fleming says FIFA is choosing money over women’s safety and the safety of the planet.
Guilty pleas and a fistfight in a BC courtroom
Plus: We check in with food writer Jonathan Bender, as Kansas City gets set to open its Museum of BBQ. Also: The father of a murdered woman discovers his late daughter's name and image used to create an AI-powered chatbot; and after a major cyberattack Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle tells us it's all part of a chilling set of attacks on library systems around the world.
A surprising and rancorous campaign wraps up in BC
Plus: We reach US attorney Martin Estrada for more on the case of Ryan Wedding, the Olympic snowboarder authorities allege became a drug kingpin. Also: Italy's new law criminalizing surrogacy abroad is sparking outrage among LGBTQ+ advocates; and we head to Kansas City for the 40th annual Lineman’s Rodeo.
Sinwar’s death and a brief moment of “euphoria” in Israel
Plus: A conversation with Liberal MP Sean Casey, whose call for Justin Trudeau to step aside may be gaining steam. Also: Finnish conductor and composer Leif Segerstam was as well known for his musical creativity as he was for yelling alongside his orchestra. His agent tells us he was a true artist.
A former CSIS manager on Trudeau’s testimony
Plus: As the very last Kmart gets set to close, a superfan – tattoo and all – makes her final pilgrimage. And: As time starts to run out for Robert Roberson, we reach The Innocence Project’s Vanessa Potkin for more on a case many say science, law and medicine got wrong; and we check in on early voting in Georgia.
A former UN peacekeeper on a “difficult moment” in Lebanon
Plus: Scandal rocks the World Conker Championship, with the newly crowned King Conker accused of using steel chestnuts. Also: A New York Times report casts China’s panda breeding program in a light that’s anything but black and white; and what a K Pop scandal means for some of the world’s most popular music.
A new level in Canada’s diplomatic row with India
Plus: Ratatouille – the movie – inspires a Tik Tok creator to do the "stupidest thing" she’s ever done with her engineering degree. Also: UNICEF’s James Elder on Israel’s latest strikes in Gaza and an imperilled polio vaccine campaign; and we reach a relief worker in North Carolina dealing with storm damage…and misinformation.
Political and legal fights over clean water on First Nations
Plus: What the Hubble telescope is revealing about Jupiter’s “crimson vortex”, a gargantuan 100-year-old storm. Also: Tampa Bay Times reporter Ian Hodgson on covering the hurricane that toppled a crane onto his newsroom; and UnESCO recognizes Halifax’s historic Africville neighbourhood.
An MSF worker in Gaza on an increasingly desperate situation
Plus: On the eve of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, we speak to the brother of last year's winner, Narges Mohammadi, who remains behind bars in Iran. Also: Researchers put together a pretty spicy experiment using hot sauce to test how the human brain processes pleasure and pain.
Special Episode: R. Renee Hess
Nil Köksal sits down with the author to talk about her new book, “Blackness Is a Gift I Can Give Her: On Race, Community, and Black Women in Hockey".