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Trust in legacy journalism is plummeting, and after years working inside the CBC, Tara Henley has a good idea why. The author of the new book, The Trust Spiral: Why the Media Needs Objectivity, discusses with Brian how broad-mindedness in newsrooms was ruined by the emergence of an urban and elite class of group-thinking journalists combined with a revenue crisis that discouraged the risk of nonconformist perspectives. Making things worse, Henley argues, is that government subsidies have corrupted market signals that could force badly needed discipline on media owners. But the answer isn’t internet outlets that are even more one-sided, she explains: media need to relearn the tools they once used to keep themselves more honest. (Recorded July 10, 2026)
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Detractors like to say that House of Commons decorum has never been worse than it is today, but don’t be so sure. Charlie Feldman is author of the new book, Unparliamentary: Tales from Canada’s Colourful Unparliamentary Past. He joins Brian to recount stories of foul-mouthed, rowdy, drunken and altogether misbehaving MPs and senators from all the way back to Confederation right up to Justin Trudeau’s “elbowgate” that make today’s cohort seem tame by comparison. Along the way, Feldman explodes some fabled stories as myth, surveys a surprising scarcity of sex scandals, and uncovers some things we might have preferred not to know, from the story of the salmon hidden inside an MP’s pants and why feces were once thrown in the House. (Recorded July 14, 2026)
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Civilizations die from suicide, not murder, as a famous historian once said. And Canada’s in the process of administering MAID on itself, says author and professor Gad Saad. He discusses his new bestselling book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, with Brian. And he explains the fatal flaw of excessive empathy — and how Canada is rapidly succumbing to it. Radical values imposed by our institutions, embodied in the extreme by the last prime minister, frame our history as shameful. They have led us to embrace immigrants who reject us. And they have made us tolerate the intolerant. It’s why Saad says he’s moving out of Canada, although he explains how our government isn’t making it easy for him to leave. (Originally recorded for a Toronto Sun video, June 26, 2026)
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British politics has become a farce, with Andy Burnham now the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade. And no one knows what he really stands for or if he’ll even outlast the last six, as Daniel Hannan, head of the Institute of Economic Affairs and independent member of the House of Lords, tells Brian. They discuss the reason why so many prime ministers keep falling, and what the new Labour leader’s chances look like. They also get into the fates of Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, and why Hannan thinks they both need to take an important lesson from Canada’s Conservative party to beat Labour and start cleaning things up in Britain. (Recorded July 23, 2026)
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As unit commander in the largest homicide squad in the country, Hank Idsinga has seen more than most people would ever want to. He discusses with Brian what it’s really like in blue, the many things that are done right, and the many things done wrong, including the recent exposé of corruption by some Toronto officers. The author of the new book The High Road: Confessions of a Homicide Cop, Idsinga reveals the vitriolic antisemitism he saw on the force, and discusses the “abysmal” handling of anti-Israel demonstrators in Toronto. He also busts myths about purported low crime rates and politically popular gun bans, and explains how real policing is nothing like those shows on TV. (Recorded July 23, 2026)
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