The big news in Canada this week has been The Globe and Mail editorial board’s admission that the industry and the paper bungled the unmarked graves story from 2021 — that this in fact constituted a journalistic failure.

In light of this, we are bringing you an episode of Tara's media criticism podcast with The Hub, Full Press, from last week, which took stock of how we in the Canadian media got this story so wrong. This is an especially important conversation, now that the Senate human rights committee has voted to criminalize residential school denialism, with a penalty of up to two years in prison.  (UPDATE: The Canadian Senate as a whole has now voted to reject the criminalization of residential school denialism, voting 41 to 32 against it.)

Thanks for listening, and thank you to The Hub for giving us permission to re-air this episode.  

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

You wouldn’t think that a woman declaring that she is into men would a subversive act — but at some point during recent years, this became the case in certain circles. Particularly online feminist circles. Our guest on the program this week has written a new book on female heterosexuality and she says it’s time we acknowledge that the vast majority of women are, in fact, straight.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a Toronto cultural critic. She is the opinion editor for The Canadian Jewish News and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her new book is The Last Straight Woman — On Desiring Men.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Most of us are aware that the digital age we are living through is a time of incredible transformation. But we may not have contemplated what we’d like to see preserved — things like free speech. Some years ago, our guest on this week’s program began investigating political censorship. What he found was bigger, more all-encompassing, and in fact more interesting. In his new book, he argues that we have entered an entirely new political epoch, that of the information state.

Jacob Siegel is an American journalist. He is the special features editor for Tablet Magazine and co-host of the Manifesto! podcast. His new book is The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Canada’s immigration system was once the envy of the world. And for decades, the country enjoyed a bipartisan pro-immigration consensus. But during the Trudeau years, that consensus fell apart. Our guest on the program this week delivered the 2025 McGill Max Bell Lectures on this topic. His new book explores where we went wrong.

Tony Keller is a columnist at The Globe and Mail. His book is Borderline Chaos: How Canada Got Immigration Right, and Then Wrong. It has been shortlisted for the Donner Prize, which will be awarded tomorrow night in Toronto.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

We know that young women are increasingly unhappy — with high rates of depression and anxiety — and our guest on the program this week says there’s good reason for that. In her new book, she argues that girlhood has dramatically changed in the Internet era and that young women have been transformed from people into products.

Freya India is a British writer and commentator, and a staff writer at Jonathan Haidt’s newsletter After Babel. Her new book is GIRLS: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything. 

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

What does it mean to be a man? Our guest on the program this week has published a book that examines that very question. It is part memoir, part meditation on masculinity, and part detective story — as he unearths the secret life of his charismatic alpha male father and forges a new version of manhood, putting himself and his family back together on the page.

Tom Junod is an award-winning American journalist and a senior writer for ESPN. The film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is based on an article that he wrote for Esquire. Tom’s new memoir is In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In recent years, viewpoint diversity has become a loaded term. But our guest on the program this week says it is vital that we renew our commitment to dialogue, especially across lines of difference. He has edited a new book that brings together prominent professors and journalists to make the case for free speech, intellectual humility, and societal pluralism — in higher education, politics, and the literary world.

John Tomasi is an American political philosopher and the president of Heterodox Academy. He is the editor, with Bernard Schweizer, of the new book Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

There can be no doubt that we are living through politically charged times — and this is especially true at North American universities. My guest on the program this week has spent the past decade making a documentary about unrest on campus. She says many faculty and students are now afraid to debate the big issues of our time, and she worries that we are losing the ability to speak across differences.

Ric Esther Bienstock is an Emmy Award-winning Canadian filmmaker. Her new two-part documentary, Speechless, is available for streaming now on CBC Gem.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

We are at a pivotal moment in Canada, as we reflect on our past and try to forge a more unified future in the face of tensions with the United States. Our guest on the program says now is a good time to reexamine our key institutions. This week, he has published an entertaining new book about the office of Governor General, just as speculation abounds that we may be about to get a new one.

John Fraser is a veteran Canadian journalist, an author, and an academic. He is a former Master of Massey College, and the current executive chair of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada. His latest book is The Governors General: An Intimate History of Canada’s Highest Office.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In the United States right now, a group of feminists is taking stock of the movement — where it is at and where it’s gone wrong. Our guest on the program this week is one of those feminists. Her new book argues that our problem is we’ve bought into an idea of radical autonomy, which is not possible for human beings. It is, in fact, disconnected from physical reality.

Leah Libresco Sargeant is an American writer. She runs the Substack newsletter Other Feminisms and her latest book is The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com