Big Shiny Takes

Executive Director of @Wisdom2Action and @QueerMomentum and unstoppable dynamo @FaeJohnstone joins us to discuss how Sydney Sweeney's breasts fortell the death of wokeness – according to the National Post.

In a column that reads like a horny Looney Tunes cartoon, Amy Hamm, who is a nurse apparently, brings the bizarre discourse around the young actress to a crescendo.

Plugs & Recs (The Rinse)

Read The new generation of gay Conservative sellouts by Fae Johnstone
Go to +972 Magazine for news from Israel & Palestine
Buy Kenneyism by Jeremy Appel
Check out Unrigged
The Hoser's Grocery Tracker
Go read Dragon Ball, One Piece and Berserk

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

The Big Shiny Takes Institute has returned to read a real stinker of a column by Rick Bell. Rick, a traditional dumb guy with a column, seems a little upset about how mean people are being to Calgary Chief of Police Mark Neufeld.

We dig into this column (a glorified vanity piece about how the police are good, homeless people are super-criminals and everyone needs to shut up)  with friend of the Institute, Drug Data Decoded's Euan Thomson.

Plugs and Recs 

Kenneyism - Jeremy Appel
Unrigged
Drug Data Decoded

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Polite Conversations host and leading Intellectual Dark Web scholar Eiynah, a/k/a @NiceMangos, joins us to scrape the bottom of the IDW barrel.

Gad Saad, who is now a National Post columnist, is a marketing professor who fashions himself as an expert in the defence of Western Civilization.

He wrote a piece in the Post about how happy conservatives are, in which he informs the reader that he is very much not mad about the woke left.

Plugs & Recs (The Rinse)

Listen to Jeremy on Polite Conversations, part 1
Listen to Jeremy on Polite Conversations, part 2
Pre-order Jeremy's book, Kenneyism
Eiynah's Woking Up series
Check out Unrigged
The Hoser's Grocery Tracker

If you enjoyed this episode make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

For more Big Shiny Takes, sign up to our bonus feed here.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Mount Royal University academic, Al Jazeera columnist and Al Shabaka fellow Muhannad Ayyash joins us to discuss how Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek cancelled Hanukkah.

Calgary pundits lost their goddam minds over Gondek's decision to back out of at a totally apolitical menorah lighting ceremony that was billed as an opportunity to demonstrate "SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL." And according to reporting from Aryn Toombs at LiveWire Calgary, it didn't disappoint.

Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid, who joined the paper as a filthy scab in 2000, went as far as to say the mayor isn't fit for office because of her disloyalty to Israel.

Plugs & Recs (The Rinse)

Decolonize Palestine reading list
Read some of Muhannad's Al Jazeera columns
Emma Paling - CBC featured more Israelis even as Palestinian casualties rose, data shows
Vincent Bevins - If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
Tareq Baconi - Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance
The Deprogram - Free Palestine (ft. Decolonize Palestine)
James Clear - Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

If you enjoyed this episode make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

For more Big Shiny Takes, sign up to our bonus feed here.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Chuka Ejeckam joins us again, this time to discuss the ongoing horror in Gaza and how Canadian pundits have assumed the role of IDF spokespeople.

There’s no better example of this trend than Andrew Coyne, who wrote a column boasting of how little he’s learned since 9/11.

Plugs and Recs

UN Director for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Resignation Letter
The Hoser Grocery Tracker
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Tech Won't Save Us - Elon Musk Unmasked, Ep. 1

If you enjoyed this episode make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

For more Big Shiny Takes, sign up to our bonus feed here.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

The Big Shiny Takes Institute has returned after the editor (Eric) spent the last month traveling the world in search of the shiniest takes. It turns out they were all right here in Canada.

This week we return to an old favourite, the people's champion Joe Warmington, for a column about remembering police officers who passed away this year. Before you ask, yes Don Cherry is featured in the column for some reason.

This episode was recorded in late September and is a classic example of the Nightscrawler's obsession with venerating the police. Some people need heroes, other people are fully-functioning adults. 

Plugs and Recs
Jeremy at the Progress Report
The Hoser Grocery Tracker

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Jeremy and Marino are joined by The Breach co-ordinating editor Emma Paling (@emmapaling) to discuss a column from Carson Jerema, the National Post's comment editor, who in accordance with Post traditions doesn't seem to do much editing.

According to Jerema, Pierre Poilievre's shrieking about the globalistsat the World Economic Forum isn't a conspiracy theory at all. In fact, it's exactly like Chrystia Freeland's tepid criticisms of the WEF in her book Plutocrats, which Jerema adds is a Marxist conspiracy theory.

Read The Breach and subscribe to its newsletter.

If you like our work, please consider donating to our Patreon. You'll get to join our community on Discord and hear occasional bonus episodes.

Plugs and Recs (The Rinse)

Emma: Listen to the band Wednesday and read Killernova by Omar Musa.

Marino: Watch Ronin (1998), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Frasier (1993-2004) and read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.

Jeremy: Visit Banff and Jasper, subscribe to The Orchard and preorder Kenneyism: Jason Kenney's Pursuit of Power to your local independent book store.

Big Shiny Takes is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, which includes other great shows, such as Tech Won't Save Us (produced by our beautiful boy Eric), Darts and Letters and The Progress Report. 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Things are so good in Canadian media. There's layoffs nearly every week. There's talk of the Toronto Star merging with Postmedia. The Online News Act was passed and as a result Google and Facebook are pulling Canadian news content from their platforms. (The Act isn't great and doesn't help independent media that much to begin with, but Google and Facebook pulling this move is baaaad).

To celebrate the robust and healthy nature of our industry, Marino and Eric are joined by old j-school buddy Hunter Crowther (@HunterCrowther) to read some schlock from The Hub.

The Hub is a relatively new publication, but they're not breaking any new ground with their work. Now I don't want to tell any tales out of school, but the more I hear about them, the less I care for them. The Hub was founded by former Postmedia employees and has plenty of space on their site for pieces from all sorts of right wing think tanks, lobbyists, and consultants.

This week the Institute takes a long look at a bewildering column by Ginny Roth, proposing a way to solve our "National Identity Crisis (tm)", as well as our labour shortage in long-term care homes and in childcare with mandatory service.

Lol. 

We spent a little extra on this one, so we hope you enjoy. We have not been keeping up with our recording schedule lately, and we're sorry but now that Eric is one job lighter, there's going to be way more time for this show. There are so many bad pieces being published, and we want to talk about them all.

Plugs and Recs
Emma Paling - Toronto strangers turned a Twitter chat into a mayoral election force
Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom
Not My Party - The rise and fall of Canadian Tories, from Robert Stanfield to Stephen Harper
"Indian" in the Cabinet - Jody Wilson-Raybould

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

What do opinion columnists in this country think about strikes? Nothing worth reading on your own. In this episode the Big Shiny Takes Institute takes a look at an awful column on the PSAC strike that took place near the end of April and extended into May.

The conventional wisdom of punditry was that the public would not support a public sector strike, but in hindsight (and at the time) we could very clearly see how incorrect that opinion was.

Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne had some choice things to say about the strike but it was very interesting to see - in the 20+ paragraphs Coyne had to work with - what he left out. The Institute was joined by friend of the show Abdul Malik to suffer through this incredibly useless piece of writing.

Plugs and Recs

The Act of Killing
The Orchard
Hilary Agro - In defence of drug dealers' humanity
Jay Cockburn - Where did the gargoyles go? Toronto's architectural boredom is a problem
The Hoser Municipal Election Fundraiser 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

The unthinkable has happened in Canada. A public body has offered new health recommendations and people are overreacting. How will society even function on two drinks a week? According to some, not at all.

This week we are joined by author James Wilt (Drinking Up the Revolution, Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars) and co-founder of The Hoser Kevin Taghabon to read an abysmal column from Peter Shawn Taylor in the Financial Post. In this column Taylor accuses the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction, and anyone who repeats their findings of moralizing and scolding, of ignoring all the positive benefits of alcohol. Luckily Taylor is here to explain exactly how great he thinks alcohol is (very).

Plugs and Recs

Drinking Up the Revolution - James Wilt
The Hoser:  How To Reclaim Working Class Joy In The Face Of Big Alcohol - Leah Borts-Kuperman
The Hoser:  In Memory Of Angie Austin - Jacob Pesaruk
Station 11 - HBO
The Last of Us Part II

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.