Episodes
-
If it feels like your kids are bleeding you dry, there's evidence that it's actually true.
A new story in the Walrus suggests the average amount to raise 2 kids until they're 17 is $293,000, even more if the kids attend post-secondary.
Host Kris McCusker is speaking with the writer of the piece in the Walrus, Chantal Braganza.
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
It's been one week since Pat King, one of the key organizers of the convoy protest, was found guilty of 5 of the 9 charges against him.
The verdict came as we continue to wait on rulings for two other leaders of the demonstration that crippled the capital in 2022.
So what will this first verdict mean for the other cases, and where is the alt-right movement heading in Canada amid these proceedings and a change of administration in the White House?
Host Cormac Mac Sweeney speaks with Dr. Carmen Celestini with the University of Waterloo, who researches extremism, conspiracy theories, and politics in North America.
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
Missing episodes?
-
Canada's NATO allies have called us out.
Our defence partners, especially the United States, want Canada to increase defence spending to at least 2% of annual GDP.
The Trudeau government says it has a plan to get there, but not until 2032. Is that good enough and what is the current state of our military?
Host David Smith talks to Richard Shimooka, a defence policy expert and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
The holidays are coming and times are tough. We're digging into whether the federal government's 2 month GST holiday and upcoming rebate will actually help the economy and your family.
Host Cormac Mac Sweeney is in conversation with Kevin Page, former Parliamentary budget officer and current President of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa.
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
He's not even president yet, but Donald Trump's promises around tariffs are sending shockwaves and even some panic across the country.
Are these empty threats? What comes next?
Our Mike Eppel sits down with Ian Lee, Associate Professor of Management, Sprott School of Business at 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 @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
After years of increasing immigration to Canada and record population growth, the Trudeau government has reversed course.
The Prime Minister now admits they made a mistake.. The feds have slashed Canada’s immigration target for 2025 from 500,000 to 395,000 and restricted the number of non-permanent residents who will be able to come to work or study here.
At the same time, new research shows that highly-skilled immigrants have been leaving Canada in record numbers.
Is now the best time to cut back on immigration?
Daniel Bernhard is the CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, he explains why the government might be missing part of the picture with its new policy.
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
Torontonian Henry Wolfond is traveling into space today as a paying customer aboard Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket.
He joins The Big Story with host Richard Southern to talk about why he’s doing it, what he’s paying for it, and about the Taylor Swift bracelets his granddaughter wore to the pop star's Toronto show that he's bringing with him into the great beyond.
Guest: CEO of Bayshore Capital Henry Wolfond
Host: Richard Southern, NewsRadio
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
This week marked 1,000 days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has updated Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine in response to Joe Biden authorizing long-range missiles for the Ukrainian military. Experts say the world’s nuclear temperature just went up. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is set to take back the Oval Office in January. He has threatened to pull U-S support for Ukraine entirely. He has said he will end the war on his first day in power.
The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance.
Professor Elliot Tepper is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at 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 @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
Guest: Patrick Groom, labour lawyer with McMillan 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 by calling 416-935-5935 and leaving us a voicemail
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
According to the former and future US President, Canada's water is like a 'very large faucet' that one could turn on, say, to help California in a drought, or any other Pacific Northwest state that might need it. According to scientists, it's ... not like that at all. But still, Canada has water. And increasingly, the United States needs it.
Does Trump actually intend to ask for, buy or even take Canadian water? Would it even be possible if he wanted to? What do Canadians need to know about their abundant natural resource as the climate crisis makes it scarcer around the world? How worried should we be about Canadian water?
GUEST: Dr. Jay Famiglietti, hydrologist and Global Futures Professor at Arizona State University; former Executive Director Emeritus of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
For decades, it's been the dream that children will grow up to have more opportunities and a better life than their parents did. Not many young people see that as possible anymore. Wealth and income inequality, combined with the affordability and housing crises, have created a world in which a majority of them don't believe they'll be able to own a home.
There are some who are sure that they will, though: The Jackpot Generation, a subset of Millennials and Zoomers who will be on the receiving end of valuable property inheritances, worth far, far more than their parents ever paid for them. That equity gives them a gigantic head start as they move into adulthood or middle age—and it's creating a system that's the opposite of the equality we've been striving for.
GUEST: Katrina Onstad, reporting in 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 @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
We've had an update to one of our most popular episodes -- the counterfeit toonie. Enjoy!
---------------------------------
They call it the "camel-toe toonie", and you will understand why as soon as you look at the front right paw of the polar bear on it. Since they were first discovered in circulation in 2020, estimates range from at least tens of thousands to likely millions of them reaching circulation.
But who is behind it? How do you counterfeit toonies at scale and get them into the banking system? And ... why toonies?
GUEST: Brent Mackie, creator of cameltoetoonies.ca, numismatist, treasurer of Waterloo Coin Society
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
This episode first aired on November 14, 2024 over at In This Economy?!, our sister show at the Frequency Podcast Network. The show helps Canadians understand the systems behind their money problems so they can make informed decisions about their personal finances. If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a follow!
The colder weather has finally arrived, and with it a big question: Is it time to put winter tires on the car? Climate change may have you questioning the necessity of winter tires, and the price tag is certainly not making that decision any easier. So we want to know, are winter tires worth the upfront cost? And what do they really do anyway?
GUEST: Lorraine Sommerfeld, columnist with Driving.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 @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
Many of us have a favourite garment — a sweater we've been wearing for the last ten years, or a pair of sweatpants we throw on every night before cozying up in front of some Netflix. Then there's all those other clothes, the shirts you buy on sale that are lucky to survive ten wash cycles, or the sweaters that pill up almost instantly.
Increasingly, it feels like more and more clothes belong to that second category. And it's not just so-called 'fast fashion' anymore, as the push to produce more for less drags down the quality of even the most reputable brands.
So why has it become so difficult to find a decent pair of pants that'll last more than a few months? And how do we fight back against a culture that increasingly sees clothing as disposable?
GUEST: Monika Warzecha, Digital Editor at The Walrus, where she wrote about fast fashion
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
The crime is horrific. The details are as bad as you can imagine. The woman at the centre of it, though? Exhibiting incredible bravery, under the worst possible circumstances. The rape trial of Gisele Pelicot's husband, and 50 other men, has transfixed the world. Not simply because of the crime itself, but because of the way Gisele has wrestled the narrative away from the ones the world all too often hears in the coverage and discussion of sex assault.
Today we'll take you inside that courtroom, with a reporter who has been covering the trial, to explain exactly what's happening within its walls, and within the justice system of France — but the impact of this case well beyond that, because Gisele Pelicot's bravery may change more than just narratives.
GUEST: Catherine Porter, international correspondent, The New York Times
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
We tend to see the challenge we face in terms of raw numbers and targets that need to be hit. The number of dead from extreme weather. The all-time highs in temperature set in whatever city we're living in. The emission reduction figures we're definitely not on track to hit. And it can be depressing, and demoralizing, to say the least.
But there's good news: Focusing on the numbers doesn't change the fact that a shift to a net-zero world is inevitable now, and we're just arguing over the timeline and how much damage we'll do on the way. What if there was a way to make that transition that would also solve so many of the other problems we face? What if there was a way to do it that even the billionaires who tend to oppose typical environmental regulations would sign up for?
GUEST: Dr Elizabeth Sawin, Director of the Multisolving Institute; author of Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
If the entire online ecosystem feels like it's trying to scam you these days, well, you're not alone. And you're not wrong either. The past few years have seen a truly seismic growth in the amount of money Canadians have reported as lost to fraud, and most experts will tell you that's just the tip of the iceberg.
So what do you need to know about the most popular ones to protect yourself before you get drawn in? Where did this fraud boom come from? And why do police seem powerless to stop it?
GUEST: Zak Vescera, Vancouver-based journalist focusing on white-collar crime, reporting for the Investigative Journalism Foundation
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
It's been three years now since single-game sports betting was legalized in Canada. And since that time, it's become available...everywhere. Especially on your phone, in any number of apps, 24 hours a day. At the time there were concerns about what that easy access would do to problem gamblers. And we're finally getting a pretty clear picture of just what that has wrought.
So what can we tell about the increase in problem gambling? What did the initial legislation get right and wrong, and what's changed as we've progressed? What could we still do to protect those who struggle with betting? And with the billions in tax revenue taken in, what have governments been doing to make more resources available?
GUEST: Anthony Milton, writing in 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 @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
With some already starting their holiday shopping, we bring you an episode from our vault on dynamic pricing. Enjoy!
---------------------------------
You and a friend might be given two different prices by the same website for the same item. Heck, you might be given two different prices yourself depending on where you are when you're browsing the site. It's a phenomenon that began as dynamic pricing—a computer balancing supply and demand to ensure everything was sold at a price the market was prepared to pay—but it's now gone well beyond that.
As algorithms become smarter and more advanced, and as we voluntarily offer our devices and the companies we do business with more of our information, the prices you see may take into account things like where you are, what device you're on, your shopping history and... well, everything the machine knows about you. Is this the kind of shopping experience we want? If not, what do we do about it?
GUEST: Colin Horgan, writing in The Walrus
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
-
This episode first aired on November 7, 2024 over at In This Economy?!, our sister show at the Frequency Podcast Network. The show helps Canadians understand the systems behind their money problems so they can make informed decisions about their personal finances. If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a follow!
This holiday season, about one third of Canadians are planning to either buy fewer gifts, or spend less on the gifts they do buy because they're struggling with their finances. Today, we're looking at ways to limit holiday spending without disappointing anyone.
GUEST: Shannon Lee Simmons, Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Chartered Investment Manager (CIM) and founder of the award winning New School of Finance.
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at [email protected]
Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter
- Show more