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A giant teddy bear riding a motorcycle. Someone delicately performing surgery on a banana. Too many teens pranking their unsuspecting moms to count. That’s some of the funny, irreverent humour you can find on TikTok.

The social networking platform typically serves up a series of light-hearted, 15-second clips generated by its users. And in 2019 it blew up among young people, boasting 1.5 billion downloads.

But over the last few months, TikTok’s been in the news for other reasons, raising questions around the Chinese-owned platform’s collection of user data, and whether the company censors content seen by U.S. users.

Amber Mac, co-host of The AI Effect, joins the show today. What is TikTok? How did it get to be this big? And why are people becoming so suspicious.

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Secret intelligence records obtained by Global News show that Russia is one of the hostile foreign states that targeted Canada in recent “cyber influence” campaigns. Documents labelled “Secret: Canadian Eyes Only” say that then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland and Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan were among the Canadian targets.

Host Tamara Khandaker is joined by Global's national investigative journalist Sam Cooper on what he found. They shine some light on where this disinformation campaign started, and how it fits into Russia’s larger play for influence in the west.

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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced Monday that Russia has been banned from all international sports for the next four years — including the next summer and winter Olympics, as well as the 2022 World Cup. They say that the Russian anti-doping agency failed to cooperate during investigations into state-sponsored doping in Russian sports.

Today on the show, a refresher on how we got here, and what this means for Russia as a presence on the international stage. Rob Koehler, former WADA deputy director general, joins us.

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Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was described as a “one-woman WikiLeaks.” For years, she’d been reporting on government corruption in Malta, and towards the end of her life, her work took her to the heart of power.

And then, on October 16, 2017, she was murdered in a car bomb explosion.

For two years, her family heard nothing. But now, embattled Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is stepping down and Malta has been thrown into crisis over investigations into Daphne’s death. Her sister, Corinne Vella, is on the show today to talk about her sister’s legacy, government corruption, and what this all means for Malta, and more broadly, the EU.

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There was some pretty awkward tension at the NATO summit over the weekend, stemming from a hot-mic video that has surfaced of a conversation between Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in which they seem to be ridiculing Donald Trump. The video, and Trump's response (calling Trudeau two-faced and leaving the summit) underscore some of the challenges NATO faces today. Our guests are David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and Deborah De Lange, a professor in the Global Management Studies program at Ryerson University.

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About five years ago, a man named Tarekh Rana landed in Canada and started putting down roots in Ajax, a city just east of Toronto. He started a development company, and as his company grew, he managed to make a name for himself.

But some people started asking questions.

Host Tamara Khandaker is joined by Global News investigative journalist Stewart Bell. This is a story of identity, trust, and what can happen in an age when anyone can put your name and photo into a search engine and come up with results that raise some pretty uncomfortable questions.

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“You throw a stone in Houston these days and you find a Canadian.”  

Global Calgary’s Dallas Flexhaug recently travelled to Texas to tell the story of Albertans leaving Canada’s oil industry for opportunities across the border. 

While Albertans are used to the booms and busts of the energy sector, the oil and gas industry has been struggling to recover since oil prices dropped in 2014. More and more Albertans are moving Texas, which is working hard to entice Canadian companies with incentives such as fewer regulations and low corporate taxes.

Host Tamara Khandaker is joined by Dallas on her three-part series on Alberta’s energy exodus.

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Last week, former NHL player Akim Aliu tweeted that Bill Peters, the now former head coach of the Calgary Flames, used a racial slur against him 10 years ago, back when they were both in the minor leagues. His tweets had an immediate impact. Since then, more and more players in the hockey community have been speaking out about their own experiences of racism and other kinds of abuse.

This arrives on the heels of Don Cherry’s firing from Hockey Night in Canada following divisive comments about new immigrants not wearing poppies.

Host Tamara Khandaker is joined by ultimate hockey dad Karl Subban, author of How We Did It: The Subban Plan for Success in Hockey, and sports writer Shireen Ahmed, co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast.

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Recently it’s felt as though every time the phone rings it’s a scam. Fraudsters pretending to be from the CRA, Chinese Consulate, or police — filling up your voicemail inbox and wasting your time. It’s become such an issue that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has demanded that all Canadian telecoms update their systems by Dec. 19 to limit these types of calls.

Host Tamara Khandaker is joined in studio by John Wunderlich, a privacy and security consultant at John Wunderlich & Associates, and board member of MyData Global. They discuss the uptick in phone call scams, and if there’s any way to actually stop them.

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Halima Alari sat before a Canadian refugee judge and tried to explain why her husband didn’t kill her.

“If he really wants you to be gone, why doesn’t he just kill you?”

That was the question she received during her hearing with the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) in April. The refugee judge then rejected her claim, saying that she wasn’t a credible witness. 

Host Tamara Kandaker is joined by Global News investigative reporter Brian Hill. They look at inconsistencies in our refugee determination system, and how guidelines meant to protect the most vulnerable claimants are not properly being applied.

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