The Rundown

In "Playing Shylock", an actor starring in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" is interrupted and told the show has been cancelled. From there, we get a monologue about having difficult conversations through art, Jewish identity, and spending a lifetime on stage. The actor is none other than Saul Rubinek.

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The BRICS – named after the five founding nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – started as a forum for the world's five largest emerging economies. Now, it's expanding into other parts of the globe and courting countries traditionally allied with the U.S. What is behind this impetus for expansion, and can it disrupt the current western-dominated global order? Steve Paikin asks: Kerry Buck, (Former Canadian Amb. to NATO), Rohinton Medhora, Professor of practice at McGill Univ.), and Seva Gunitsky, (Assoc. Professor of Political Science at the Univ. of Toronto).

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In "How to Lose a Country", Turkish political thinker Ece Temelkuran examines the rise of populism and nationalism around the world. And given the international climate of late, we thought we'd invite her on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, to discuss her book and the themes that are so resonant today.

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From the Egyptians and Persians to the Romans and even Alexander the Great, the island of Cyprus has been ruled by a revolving door of empires. Today, it is partitioned between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. How did we get here? What caused this island to be carved into two? And why does it remain divided? With animated maps and guest Major-General Alain Forand, this episode of Forgotten War digs into the millennia-old history of Cyprus and the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974 that led to its partition. This video was made in partnership with Canada Company.

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Star Trek has never been more popular, with five series made since 2018 and another one focused on Star Fleet around the corner. The continued popularity of the series remains rooted in its long-standing formula of strong character development, visually stunning space exploration and a quest for a better future. A look at the legacy of the franchise and why it remains relevant more than 50 years after the premier of the original series, with Robert Picardo, who played the Doctor on seven seasons of Star Trek Voyager.

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The first study into a high-speed rail corridor between Toronto and Montreal was released in 1970. Now, 54 years later, the federal government says that a high-speed option is being "seriously considered". In the years in between, dozens of studies, reports and surveys have evaluated different costs and business cases based on varying routes, speeds and stops. But after all this time, is there not enough information to decide whether to move ahead, or not, with such a massive project. And if there is a case, what are the challenges and obstacles preventing its approval by government and use by the public?

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The terms "competition" and "productivity" have filled the minds of policy analysts and economists in recent years. But, what does it all mean for Canadian consumers? Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar wrote about how capitalism has actually hurt consumers in their new book, "The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians." They join Steve Paikin to discuss more.

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After several decades of interviews and research, journalist and filmmaker Roxana Spicer is finally telling her mother's story. In her new book "The Traitor's Daughter: Captured by the Nazis, Pursued by the KGB, My Mother's Odyssey to Freedom from Her Secret Past," we learn what her mother kept hidden about her time in the Red Army and beyond.

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These are difficult times to be a student at one of Ontario's colleges or universities. The provincial government is contributing less, it's frozen tuition for more than six years, and the federal government has cut way back on international student visas, depriving the system of hundreds of millions of dollars it was counting on to keep the lights on. If you've got a kid in post-secondary or are a student there yourself, what are the implications of this perfect storm? David Agnew, who's been president of Seneca Polytechnic since 2009, joins Steve Paikin to discuss.

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The unrelenting chase for the perfect body is on the rise in young people today, in females and now in males and non-binary youths as well. Join former ballet dancer Victoria Gracie and mental health expert Kyle Ganson as they explore the deep emotional impact of body and muscle dysmorphia disorder in young people and what we can do to start to help them.

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