The Big Story

Picture the moment Covid-19 became real to you—when you left to work from home, or sports shut down, or someone you know got sick. How accurate is that memory? Now, what do you remember about the days, weeks and months that came afterward? When you tell these stories to your grandchildren one day, how will you frame them? The past year has been unbelievably hard, and if you've lost something it can often feel like it was needless and hopeless. But what we learn from studying memory is that those aren't the stories we end up telling ourselves about difficult struggles... GUEST: Melissa Fay Greene for The Atlantic We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

In one week, the @VaxHuntersCan Twitter account has grown from a few thousand followers to more than 85,000. By the time you read this it may be close to 100,000. And that's because the account has one simple mission: find available Covid-19 vaccination appointments in clinics, hospitals and pharmacies across Canada, and find people ready to take them. In the middle of a vaccine rollout that has been convoluted and sometimes confusing, the Vaccine Hunters have been a godsend. But what does it say about our government that they're needed at all? How did this project come together and evolve? And what have they learned while doing it that can help you book your vaccine? GUEST: Josh Kalpin, Vaccine Hunters Canada We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

In the middle of a world gripped by plague, a major scientific discovery passed nearly unnoticed. If it's verified, it means one of the most important models we use to understand particle physics is incomplete. And that would open a doorway to a world of things we can't explain yet. If you've spent that past few days gripped in a cycle of Covid-19 rage and anxiety, come and rediscover the wonder of the universe... GUEST: Dennis Overbye, Science Reporter, New York Times We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

In recent years, meditation has become a huge business in the western world—with millions of people testifying it has helped them calm their minds, improve their mood or even work through bouts of mental illness. There is no shortage of press about the positive effects of meditation on people, and there are plenty of studies to back them up. But there is also evidence—evidence that's been growing for decades—that prolonged meditation can have a drastic negative impact on some people. This doesn't make the practice bad, or invalidate the help it has given to many ... but ask yourself if you've ever heard anything about the possible dangers of meditation. Why is that? GUEST: David Kortava (Read David's piece in Harper's Magazine) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Last weekend, protesters clashed with police over the closing of GraceLife Church in Alberta. It's not the first time that houses of worship have been a flashpoint for anti-lockdown action. Why has religion, and in particular evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity been so opposed to restrictions on in-person gatherings, even in provinces run by conservatives? How have churches of all denominations handled a year of virtual worship? How do you keep faith in a time of plague, when some of your fellow Christians seemed determined to spread it? GUEST: Michael Coren, Anglican cleric, author, broadcaster We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

In the late 1990s, it became clear that Canada's health data systems would need to go digital. A thorough report was presented, the first of many to come, laying out what needed to happen for Canada to lead the world in digital health data. A national data system would track everything from outbreaks and symptoms to vaccinations and side effects. But...we never built it. Over the next 20-plus years, little was done—and nothing at all from a truly national level. Now, when we desperately need to be able to have access to real-time data on what's happening where, every province relies on a different system, and many of them are duct-taped together from the bones of what was supposed to be a world-leading piece of infrastructure. What happened? GUEST: Justin Ling (Read Justin's reporting here.) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

It increased it, obviously. But how? And what is that doing to us. A dive into the data that shows us where we spent our extra time, how it made us feel and which platforms have become indispensable and which ones we actually enjoy can reveal a lot about how the apps that live on our phones can change our behaviour. And how they can change to be more useful to us ... if that's their goal. GUEST: Rani Molla, Senior Data Reporter, Recode We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

And also... bubbles are supposed to burst, aren't they? At some point? It's been more than half a decade since house prices in Canada began to truly climb, and that climb has accelerated even through a pandemic. It's no longer just the big cities that are driving prices, either. It's the smaller towns outside them—and the towns even further down the road when those smaller towns get too expensive. What has the unending surge done to the Canadian economy? What could stop it? What happens in small Ontario towns when people from Toronto start flooding in and pushing home prices way over asking? And can we still call this a bubble, if some of the underlying factors driving it appear to be here to stay? GUEST: Economist Mike Moffatt, Smart Prosperity Institute We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Have you ever been mistaken for somebody else by a stranger? They call you by another name and you say "Sorry, that's not me." And they say something like, "Oh, I’m sorry, you look just like them." Sometimes, they might add with a smile, "Are you sure you’re not related?" And you say nope, and off you go. Today’s story is what happens when you discover that, actually, you are related. That other person is your sibling, and you should have come home from the hospital with their mother, and grown up as a member of that family. But you didn't. GUEST: Lindsay Jones, writing for The Atavist We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

It's been ... a bad year for economies, to put it mildly. The jobless rate has risen just about everywhere. Small businesses across Canada have scratched and clawed to stay afloat. Larger businesses have fared better, but have also issued layoffs to compensate for loss of revenue. And even as vaccines roll out and the end of the pandemic is in sight, there's still uncertainty as to what economic recovery will look like. But one glimpse of it can be found in the number of new businesses that have started up over the past several months. Whether they are in response to needs created by Covid-19, the result of recently laid-off workers striking out on their own or incredibly low interest rates and rental office space—or a combination of all of these—Canada is seeing tens of thousands of entrepreneurs taking a leap. And that will be crucial to the economy as the country looks to bounce back from an ugly recession. So what are these businesses? Who is starting them and why? And how many of them will make it to next year? GUEST: Matt Lundy, Economics Reporter, 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 hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter