If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford. With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some striking similarities to what we're seeing in the city today. We'll be dropping an episode in this f...
Jun 24, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast For a long time now, Toronto has been run by conservative mayors. But all the polls indicate that will change on Monday, with former NDP MP and longtime progressive Olivia Chow holding a commanding lead. Chow ran for mayor before, in 2014, and lost badly. What's different this time, about both the city and her? Whomever wins the job will have to work with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said this week that Chow would be an "unmitigated disaster" as mayor. So first, will she pull it off? And secon...
Jun 23, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's one thing when companies that exist entirely online—like Facebook and Instagram—use chatbots and emails instead of a real person as a customer service solution. That's annoying, but understandable. It's another when business like appliance vendors, airlines and shipping companies have no way to connect a customer with a problem to an actual human who can help them. But this trend has been gathering steam for years now, and the problems it creates are worth examining. What happens when busin...
Jun 22, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast A submersible intended to take five people to visit the wreck of the Titanic was missing as of Wednesday night. If the people inside are still alive, they are rapidly running out of air. A massive search is underway, but the ocean is huge, and the vehicle could be anywhere. The expedition is a commercial endeavour run by a company called OceanGate, that runs out of St. John's. Would-be explorers pay $250,000 to risk death in exchange for a glimpse of the fabled wreck more than three kilometres b...
Jun 21, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast It wasn't that long ago that airlines were slashing prices and offering huge seat sales to lure timid customers back onto planes during the pandemic. Safe to say, those days are over. For at least a year now, prices have been climbing and the summer travel season marks a new peak. A peak that likely won't last past next summer. How are seat prices set, anyway? How much of this is based on an airline's increased costs, and how much is a profit grab? What can you do to try to find cheaper fares? D...
Jun 20, 2023•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast After a fire forced their high school to close, the Toronto District School Board decided to relocate the roughly 900 students and teachers from York Memorial Collegiate Institute to the nearby George Harvey Collegiate Institute. But George Harvey wasn't equipped to absorb all those new kids, and students showed up in September to find a school that was over-crowded, under-staffed and unsafe for them and their teachers. The York Memorial fiasco isn't just a one-off, either. The school's struggle...
Jun 19, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford. With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some striking similarities to what we're seeing in the city today. We'll be dropping an episode in this f...
Jun 17, 2023•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast You know how sometimes you notice that it's eerily quiet? That's because we're so accustomed to the background noise of life in a city of any size, that sudden silence catches our attention. From cars and trucks to neighbours and kids, modern appliances to incessant TV, music or videos, we rarely have a silent waking moment. New research is beginning to discover exactly what that's doing to us, and the results are fascinating. It's not just us, either. When the world's water traffic mostly stopp...
Jun 16, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Right now, Canada is working on a process to improve our tracking and reporting of sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects. In late May, NASA and the US Department of Defence help a joint public meeting, where it was revealed that the Five Eyes—an alliance of intelligence agencies including the US and Canada—held a private forum about the sightings, which have included, specifically, metallic orbs seen all over the world. All of this could sounds like the opening of a blockbuster, or just a con...
Jun 15, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is an immigrant's story. A Canadian story. A mystery. Six months ago, Eduardo Malpica went missing after a night at a bar in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. Last week, his body was pulled from the St. Lawrence RIver. Was he hurt by men he argued with outside the bar? Did he wander off, embarrassed and drunk, and kill himself? Was his drink spiked? Nobody's sure. But Malpica came from nothing, built a life here and was beloved by so many, especially new Canadians that he often took under his wing. H...
Jun 14, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Two weeks ago, special rapporteur David Johnston said nothing would stop him from completing his work investigating foreign interference in Canadian politics. Friday, he stopped. A surprise resignation meant a weekend of confusion in Canadian politics, followed by a chaotic Monday when the house resumed. Why did Johnston quit? Will Canada now finally get the public inquiry many have lobbied for? Will Johnston's resignation satisfy opposing critics? Will anything? And ... are we gonna end up havi...
Jun 13, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, the company behind ChatGPT, has co-founded a cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin, which is currently scanning people's eyeballs using an orb and digitizing their irises for use as identification. Currently more than 1.8 million people have had their irises scanned in exchange for the promise of some Worldcoin later (it doesn't exist yet), local currency, or small gifts. This is taking place mostly in poorer countries, but not in the US or Canada, where regulat...
Jun 12, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford. With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some striking similarities to what we're seeing in the city today. We'll be dropping an episode in this f...
Jun 10, 2023•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Right now, the federal government is reviewing the laws that made recreational pot legal in Canada. Everything is theoretically on the table, even if the basics of the act are unlikely to change much. But there are things we could fix that would make the system work better—and more fairly—for everyone. From the pardon process to the makeup of the industry and who gets licenses and sits on boards, legal Cannabis has resembled the days of prohibition in one way—a lack of racial justice, and an ina...
Jun 09, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the past few years, orcas off the coast of Portugal and Spain have been attacking, and sinking, small boats. At least three boats have been completely sunk, and many more have needed urgent rescue. This behaviour doesn't occur in other orcas, and nobody can figure out exactly what's changed. There are some theories regarding trauma, or differences in their habitat. There are very real things called "orca fads"—like that time they wore dead salmon on their heads. And there is, always, humanit...
Jun 08, 2023•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the past few weeks, military analysts have been expecting a Ukrainian offensive in the conflict with Russia, one that might the tables on the Russians, break past the front lines and bring the war home to the aggressors. That offensive might still happen, but a more immediate problem emerged Tuesday—a collapsed dam releasing a torrent of water, endangering civilians, military, home and infrastructure, and perhaps even threatening a nuclear plant. As Russia's invasion of Ukraine has faltered,...
Jun 07, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the grips of a deadly emergency, Canada's health care system stood on its head. It's what the people who sign up to save lives do. But after three years of fending off both a virus and systemic problems, our capacity is at an all-time low. ERs are closing—some temporarily, some permanently. Family doctors in some places are impossible to find. In Lethbridge, AB there is precisely one OB-GYN for the entire community's pregnancy needs. The anecdotes are endless, and that doesn't even count gene...
Jun 06, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast A policy in New Brunswick that took 10 years to create, and was implemented by a Conservative government three years ago, is now being “reviewed” by that same government. Policy 713 was designed to provide safety for LGBTQIA+ kids in public schools, from washroom use to students being able to change their names or pronouns without parental contact. Premier Blaine Higgs has been vague about what that review actually entails, and phrases such as “parents have a right to know” have been used. Thus ...
Jun 05, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford. With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some striking similarities to what we're seeing in the city today. We'll be dropping an episode in this f...
Jun 03, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last week it was The Little Mermaid. The week before that, the tenth Fast and Furious movie. Soon, it will be Spider-Man and then Barbie's turn. Until the next comic book movie shows up. Reboots, remakes and familiar characters can sometimes feel like the only things on screen. They're not, of course. They just get all the marketing money. What began as a profitable sideline for Hollywood has come to consume the entire industry in a search for intellectual property. It's not about a lack of idea...
Jun 02, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast They were born in the early days of Facebook. Now they're becoming adults and have spent the past few years realizing just how much of their lives their parents turned into content—in many cases, embarrassing, humiliating content. And they don't own or control any of it. Some of these kids have convinced their parents to remove it. In some cases it has fractured the relationship. Some of them have even gone to court to try to get control of their baby pictures back, or in the cases of influencer...
Jun 01, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Canadian households owe more in debt than the total of Canada's GDP. That's first among the G7 and near the top of all the world's developed countries. And as the cost of living increases, if we can't afford to service that debt, things could get bad, quickly. How did we get ourselves into this situation? Why do we see household debt as a moral failing instead of the product of the country's economic realities? What's to blame for skyrocketing debt, and what could curtail it? And why do we spend...
May 31, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast It happened so, so fast. Less than an hour after the first spark, thousands were evacuating, and crews were racing to close thew roads behind them on their way out. One of the fastest fires the province has ever seen was just outside the city, in no time at all. Since yesterday afternoon, more than 14,000 people have been evacuated, resources have been deployed fro other provinces—at least those that hadn't already been sent to Alberta—and a State of Emergency had been declared. Now hundreds of ...
May 30, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's a rarely used program—little-known and tough to qualify for—that allows children under five to live inside Canadian women's prisons with their mothers. And a look inside those prisons at the moms and their kids offers a glimpse we don't often get inside Canada's institutions. How does this program work? Is it better for the kids than living outside prison, but without their moms? Who can qualify? And what is it actually like inside these places? Where convicted killers can be found living i...
May 29, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford. With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some striking similarities to what we're seeing in the city today. We'll be dropping an episode in this f...
May 27, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Harm reduction programs in general tend to be divisive, but safe supply might be the most controversial of them all. It involves providing drug users with, well, drugs—in the hopes they won't use more dangerous ones. The programs have been criticized by politicians, "exposed" in long newspaper features and serve as an easy target for anyone focused on "getting users off drugs" as a strategy to fight the overdose crisis. The reality is complex, and there's still a lot we don't know. But as overdo...
May 26, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast The climate is changing, so wildfires are changing too. The "unprecedented" fires of the past few weeks, won't be unprecedented when they happen again, and again. And the conditions that created them aren't going away. But we aren't helpless against them. The way we fight fires is changing, too. From earlier detection, more accurate predictions, a different approach to management and ways to get boots on the ground faster in the places where they'll make a difference, the playbook is being writt...
May 25, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Despite the controversy dominating federal politics for months now, Canadians will not get a public inquiry about Chinese government interference into our democracy and elections. That's one of the takeaways from former Governor General David Johnston's report on the affair, which was released yesterday. So why did Johnston decide it wouldn't—or couldn't—happen? What did we learn from the report he presented? What will the next few months bring? More hearings? More leaks? A reasoned, thorough an...
May 24, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's not easy to make yourself notorious among the more than 40,000 McDonald's franchises in the world—but Ottawa's Rideau Street location accomplished it. From dangerous violence, to drug use, general chaos and viral incidents that became world famous (like the raccoon fight...) the recently closed restaurant earned the moniker given to it by a former police chief. But the story of this McDonald's isn't just one of crime and online fame. It's a story about public space and who gets to use it, h...
May 23, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Right now, while controlling our own food security becomes more important than ever, Canada's farming industry is in transition. An older generation of farmers are ready to retire—but many of them don't have anyone ready to take over the family business. Meanwhile, corporate megafarms are scooping up farmland where they can and a younger generation of farmers is desperately trying to get ahold of space to grow on. Where is the next generation coming from and what are they doing differently? Why ...
May 22, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
