Podcast
The Big Story
Episodes — page 82
- The strange origin story of psychedelics in Saskatchewan
In the 1950s, before they fuelled the acid-trips of the '60s, psychedelics were being passed around the Weyburn Mental Hospital in Saskatchewan. And not just among the patients—as…
- Is a vaccine tax ethical? And how will we know when Omicron has peaked?
With hospitals under stress across the country, governments are pulling out all the stops to keep the health care system working. Ontario will allow internationally educated nurses…
- The long fight to bring a miracle drug to Canadians
It's called Trikafta, and people living with Cystic Fibrosis describe it as a true game-changer. It can treat symptoms at the source rather than manage them endlessly every day. It…
- What is virtual learning doing to Canadian kids?
This is not an episode about whether or not schools should be open. We've had that conversation. This is a discussion of what two years of on-again-off-again in-person schooling ha…
- Not even a pandemic can stop escalating CEO riches
A fresh annual report shows that by January fourth the average CEO of a top-100 Canadian company had already made the annual salary of the average Canadian worker. This shouldn't s…
- Wild pigs are one of the world's most invasive species. They're spreading across Canada.
It begins a couple of decades ago, with a Saskatchewan farmer spotting some black shapes sniffing around his crops. Today these wild pigs number in the tens of thousands and may ev…
- One year after Jan. 6, is America headed for a civil war?
Last year's attack on the Capitol building by supporters of former president, Donald Trump, was a shocking scene. But it was merely a visual representation of the problems that hav…
- How close to the breaking point are our hospitals?
At least one group of hospitals has called a "Code Orange" this week as health care workers battle a tsunami of Covid-19 admissions. That's a protocol usually reserved for mass cas…
- Should humans try to dim the sun?
It's called solar geoengineering, and it's an idea being researched right now. If we can't blunt the impact of global warming with the measures available to us, eventually time wil…
- Tracking a Killer: The Cold Case of Elizabeth Bain
In June of 1990, 22-year-old University of Toronto student Elizabeth Bain disappeared. Her body has never been found, but police say it was a homicide. Elizabeth’s boyfriend Robert…
- The Reheat: The world of celebrity sex tapes
Whether a publicity stunt or revenge porn, the celebrity sex tape has long been a salacious and voyeuristic fascination for the media and its subjects' fans. But when it comes to m…
- Inside the Hallmark holiday movie empire
If you're a Christmas movie person, then you already know Hallmark is a behemoth. But you might not know just how it became so dominant. It's a long story, born from a collision of…
- A holiday thank you, from us to you
As The Big Story takes its annual (and long overdue in 2021) holiday break, the team answers some questions from Jordan and shares their memories of a very strange and very tough y…
- BONUS: What do small businesses need to survive?
If you've heard any of our bite-sized interviews with small business owners, then you know they've faced closure so many times during this pandemic it's become part of their lives.…
- Lookahead: Will 2022 be the year of worker power?
From the great resignation to rising wages and the comeback of unionization, this was a year in which workers realized they don't have to take inhumane conditions and poverty-level…
- Lookahead: Does Canada have a strategy for China?
It will be the biggest foreign policy question of the next year, and so far our government doesn't have a concrete answer. Canada will not send diplomats to the Beijing Olympics, b…
- Lookahead: What will year three of the pandemic bring?
Hopefully, an ending! But we have hoped all along that the end was right around the next corner, only to be disappointed. It looks like we will enter 2022 riding a new wave of Covi…
- Lookahead: Was 2021 a horrible fluke for BC? Or a preview of 2022?
The staggering toll on people and infrastructure over three separate climate disasters in British Columbia this year was highly unlikely, even considering the degree of warming the…
- Eating disorders are rising rapidly as the pandemic puts the lie to kids' 'resilience'
We've told ourselves this whole time that our children are resilient. Every missed event, virtual school session or socially distant celebration, we've clung to that thought. But a…
- A terrifying new kind of fentanyl is spreading across Canada
It's referred to as "benzo dope", or even as "robbery dope" because it leaves its users vulnerable to theft or worse. It appears to be both more harmful and addictive than regular…
