Tokyo is the most populous city in the world, and is growing just as quickly as Canada's largest cities. Yet unlike Canadian cities, Tokyo's housing is still (shockingly) affordable, its transit is fast and reliable, and it's teeming with small businesses and entrepreneurs trying their hand at restaurants, cafes, book stores, and all variety of niche services. So how did they do it? And what lessons can we learn about our own cities from Tokyo's experience? Joe McReynolds, co-author of Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, joins us on this episode to explain.

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BMO Capital Markets Chief Investment Strategist Brian Belski feels pretty good about where the stock market is headed this year. He joins us on this episode of Free Lunch to explain why he's bullish, the sectors and stocks he likes right now, and why he thinks turning off the news is one of the best things you can do for your portfolio.

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Adam Seaborn from Playmaker Capital joins us to talk about recently announced plans by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. to launch a sports streaming bundle, what it means for the sports media business, and who wins and who loses when streaming takes over the sports world. Plus: What makes the NFL such a great television product?

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New year, new supply chain disruptions. Between conflicts in the Middle East impacting shipping in the Red Sea, drought paralyzing the Panama Canal, or the ongoing war in Ukraine, we are not done with supply chain disruptions just because the pandemic is behind us. Polly Mitchell-Guthrie is with Kinaxis, a Canada-based supply-chain management platform, to share with us how businesses are responding to the latest wave of supply chain disruptions.

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One of the big factors driving our housing affordability crisis is that it's become much more expensive to build new housing than it used to be. But why? To get an overview of what's driving growth in housing costs, we're joined by Russell Hixson, the editor of SiteNews, a trade outlet covering Canada's construction sector.

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There are a lot of exciting developments happening in the neurotechnology space that could dramatically improve how we detect, prevent, and treat cognitive decline and conditions like dementia and diseases like Alzheimer's. On this episode, one of the world's foremost neuroscientists, Dr. Allison Sekuler, joins us to talk about her work in this field, some of the innovations she's most excited about, how innovations in AI and AR/VR will be applied to brain health, and what it's going to mean for how we age. Also: We get her advice on how to keep our brains working well into our old age. 🧠

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This time last year, not many people were predicting the economy would look like it does today. Many big name economists predicted that we would need to endure years of high unemployment to get inflation back down to a more manageable level. So why were those forecasts so off? And what lessons should we draw from what happened last year to inform our predictions for the economy this year?

Roger Aliaga-Díaz is Vanguard's Global Head of Portfolio Construction and Chief Economist for the Americas. He joins us on this episode to talk about his outlook for the economy in the year ahead and how the last cycle is shaping his thinking.

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And we're back for 2024. On this episode, Daniel Foch, real estate investor and co-host of the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast, joins us to break down the state of Canada's housing market heading into 2024 and his bets for the year to come.

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The Free Lunch gang and Brett Chang from The Peak Daily podcast see how their forecasts from last year fared and make some new calls for the year to come.

Thanks for listening, and see you back in the new year.

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Adin Wener is one of the owners and founders of Henderson Brewing Company, one of the largest craft breweries in Toronto, and he joins us today to explain the ins-and-outs of the craft beer business, from supply to chains to hardware innovation to product development.

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