The Big Story

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

You've probably never heard of Line 5. It's an offshoot of Enbridge's main pipeline and it moves more than a half-million barrels of crude oil and natural gas from Alberta, through the United States and back across the border to Sarnia, Ont. Unless the state of Michigan gets its way and shuts it down on May 12. The pipeline is more than 60 years old, and though Enbridge claims it's safe, a study reports that a spill could devastate the shorelines of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. So Michigan wants it shut off. But an immediate shutdown would leave Sarnia in economic crisis and hike energy prices across Ontario and Quebec as fuel would need to be moved by truck or train. So Canadian governments want the line to keep flowing. It has all the makeup of at least a legal mess, and possibly an environmental one, too. GUEST: Hilary Beaumont, freelance investigative reporter (Read Hilary's story in The Narwhal) 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

We all want this pandemic to be over. But it's not. And vaccines alone won't stop the third wave of Covid-19 that's now rolling over much of Canada. The third wave is driven by variants, and you've probably heard them mentioned many times. But what are they? How are they worse than original Covid? What stops them and what doesn't? Do vaccines work on them? And what do we need to do in the meantime to keep Canadians alive until this is over? GUEST: Dr. David Fisman, epidemiologist, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto 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

Most of us have been isolated for more than a year. Many of us, though, have been isolated for longer than that, and will feel it even more sharply when those of us who do have lots of friends and family can resume seeing them. Before there was a global pandemic, there was an epidemic of loneliness spiking in many countries around the world. And if there's one thing capitalism knows how to do, it's how to take an unfulfilled basic human need and turn a profit on it—hence, the loneliness industry. Would you like to buy a hug, or rent a friend for an afternoon of shopping? Maybe you'll eventually need your own robot buddy. Have no fear, with enough money you can do all this and more! GUEST: Brian Bethune 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