- Missing White Women Syndrome, and why it never goes away
Wednesday, November 10th 2021
More than a decade ago, a Canadian researcher tracked local media coverage given to cases of missing Indigenous and missing white women. You can probably guess what that revealed. Since then, however, Canada and other countries have spent time discussing racial bias, and attempting to correct it. Canada even had an entire national inquiry dedicated to the travesty of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Yet in late summer, when a pretty young white woman named Gabby Petito disappeared, none of that mattered. The media was flooded with a continent-wide search for Petito while Indigenous and Black women who had vanished just as recently were barely mentioned. Why is this phenomenon so pervasive and how has seemingly nothing aside from words changed in a decade?
GUEST: Kristen Gilchrist-Salles, researcher
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- Our border with the U.S. is (finally) open! How much of a mess will it be?
Tuesday, November 9th 2021
It's been more than a year and a half since Canadians could freely drive across the border to the United States — to visit friends and family, to see a game or do some shopping. But maybe "freely" isn't the most accurate way to put it, since the crossing process will be more regulated and restricted than pre-pandemic times.
So what do you need to cross? What arrangements do you have to make? How much might it cost? What about kids? And what else do you need to know before finally heading south again?
GUEST: Cormac Mac Sweeney, Parliament Hill reporter
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- Can new defence minister Anita Anand fix the Canadian military's broken culture?
Monday, November 8th 2021
The minister who managed to secure tens of millions of Covid-19 vaccines gets the toughest job in government as a thank you. or much of the past year, barely a month has gone by without a new sexual harassment or assault scandal in the Canadian Armed Forces — and all too often those scandals have involved some of the military’s top ranked officials.
Previous attempts at reform have failed, efforts to shift the culture have barely budged it and meanwhile, recruitment has fallen dramatically. So something needed to change. Why not the minister? What challenges will Anand face and where should she start if this is to be the reform that actually works?
GUEST: Julie Lalonde, advocate and educator, author of Resilience is Futile: The Life and Death of Julie S. Lalonde
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- Are Marvel releases still movies anymore?
Friday, November 5th 2021
The Eternals hits theatres today, and will no doubt earn Marvel Studios and Disney hundreds of millions of dollars. But is it really fair to call these things "movies" anymore? They are projects that require viewers to come equipped with vast background knowledge and exist to set up the next film, and the film after that. Today we examine what has become of the modern "Super Hero Movie" through the lends of the seven (soon to be eight) big-budget Spider-Man films.
How did we get from a Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, to whatever this has become?
GUEST: Jeremy Gordon
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- World leaders unveil climate promises: "OK. But how?"
Thursday, November 4th 2021
Amid a worsening climate crisis and reports detailing the need for urgency, world leaders took to the stage at COP26 this week to ... promise to do more. There were impressive promises, to be sure, including several from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But at least from the leaders there were precious few details about exactly how these ambitious targets would be achieved. We know the goals we need to hit to keep our planet livable—the question is if we're prepared to do more than agree we should hit them.
GUEST: Fatima Syed, The Narwhal and The Backbench
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