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It can seem like just another trend, but people are starting to get sick. Last month, health authorities in Illinois reported that a patient who vaped died after being hospitalized with a severe respiratory illness. And while that’s the first reported death, it doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident. The Washington Post has reported that there are 354 possible cases of vaping relate-lung illnesses across 29 states.

Although there haven’t been any clusters of lung illnesses related to vaping reported in Canada, health experts in this country are watching the situation closely. The number of Canadian teens using e-cigarettes has risen quickly, up 74 percent between 2017 and 2018.

Host Tamara Khandaker is joined by Dr. Andrew Pipe of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. They talk about what we know about the situation in the U.S. so far, how e-cigarettes work, and why vaping could actually be increasing the smoking rate among young Canadians.

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On this day, 25 years ago, police found the body of Sonya Cywink. She was murdered, and her case remains unsolved. Her sister Meggie has done everything in her power to find the person who killed her sister.

National features reporter Jane Gerster of Global News tells one family’s story. Jane started talking to Meggie about four years ago. They talked often — about Sonya, about the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada, and about the successes and failures of Canadian policy attempts to prevent it from happening. This story is about Meggie’s critique of the inquiry, but also her community’s demand that the government finish what it started.

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The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off next week, and as always, the 11-day fête is expected to be a star-studded affair. But it’s not all red carpets and glitzy film premieres — in recent years, film festivals have been increasingly dealing with their own set of challenges, from representation and elitism, to questions of how to deal with the age of streaming.

Host Tamara Khandaker chats with Chris Jancelewicz, entertainment supervisor at GlobalNews.ca. He’s been covering TIFF for years. They walk through his top festival picks, celebrities to look out for, and how TIFF is adapting to the rapidly evolving film landscape.

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On Monday, Oklahoma stuck the first blow against drug makers over the opioid crisis in the States. A judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572.1 million for its role in fuelling the drug epidemic with what the state argued was misleading information. The next day, NBC reported that pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma, the makers of Oxycontin, were in talks about settling 2,000 lawsuits in the U.S. for their alleged part in the crisis.

Host Tamara Khandaker connects with Zachary Siegel, a freelance journalist in Chicago who writes about health, science, and drug policy. He helps takes her through the story of the role corporations had in creating the opioid crisis, and why these proposed settlements matter.

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Last week, American billionaire industrialist David Koch died at age 79. He and his older brother Charles Koch ran Koch Industries, one of the world’s largest privately-held businesses. At the time of his death, David Koch was worth an estimated $42 billion. Over the last few decades, he and his brother gave massive amounts of money to support right-wing and libertarian causes by funding a vast and complicated network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and politicians in the U.S.

Host Tamara Khandaker talks to Lisa Graves, director of Koch Docs, a searchable database of documents about Charles Koch and his empire. They walk through the history of the Koch family, and the way they’ve gone about exerting their influence in the political realm.

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It can seem like Maxime Bernier’s been in the news a lot lately. There was the Elections Canada warning last week that paid advertisements about climate change during the upcoming federal campaign could be deemed partisan activity because Bernier is a skeptic. And then there were the controversial billboard ads featuring a photo Bernier with the slogan “Say NO to mass immigration” popping up across the country.

On Sunday, he officially launched his party’s campaign in his own riding of Beauce, Quebec. But with the People's Party of Canada (PPC) polling nationally at around 4 percent — how much should we be talking about Maxime Bernier?

Host Tamara Khandaker connects with Global’s Rachel Browne, a politics reporter based in Ottawa. They discuss where the PPC stands currently, who their supporters are, and what’s next for Maxime Bernier.

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The Amazon, which spans 5.5 million square kilometres, is one of the best tools in the fight against climate change. But the world’s largest tropical rainforest has been burning for weeks. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research has recorded more than 74,000 fires so far this year – up 84 percent from 2018. 

At the centre of this disaster is Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. He has been widely criticized for his handling of the Amazon, and is facing increased condemnation from the international community.

Host Tamara Khandaker talks to Adriane Esquivel-Muelbertt, a Brazilian ecologist studying the effects of climate change on forests. Tamara also speaks with Canadian bioethicist and conservationist Kerry Bowman of the University of Toronto, who’s on the ground now in Brazil, researching the relationship between deforestation and Indigenous lands. They explore why the Amazon is so vital in the fight against climate change, and how the fires are affecting those who call the rainforest home.

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The RCMP raided a Manitoba home on Monday in connection with allegations that a Canadian Armed Forces member was involved in an organization that promotes hate. The Winnipeg Free Press first reported the allegations that Master Cpl. Patrik Mathews was recruiting for white supremacist network The Base.

Host Tamara Khandaker is joined by Winnipeg Free Press reporter Ryan Thorpe who broke the story, and Global’s Ottawa bureau chief Mercedes Stephenson on how deep the problem of right-wing extremism really is within the Canadian military. 

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Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong have been on the streets for almost three months now, and there are no signs of slowing down. The region is home to one of the largest Canadian diasporas in the world, but the ongoing protests have left some questioning whether or not they have a future there.

Host Tamara Khandaker connects with Global’s Jeff Semple who’s currently on the ground. They walk through the latest from the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and if the city could see a mass exodus.

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Jack Letts — known to some as “Jihadi Jack” — is a British-Canadian accused of joining ISIS as a teenager. He is being held in a jail in northern Syria after being captured by Kurdish forces in 2014. But over the weekend, we learned that the U.K. has stripped him of his citizenship, meaning that the only country he now legally belongs to is Canada.

Host Tamara Khandaker talks to extremism researcher Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor in the School of Religion at Queen’s University. They unpack the issue around Jack Letts’ citizenship and what the government should do about Canadians accused of being ISIS fighters in Syria — and if they should bring them here.

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