The Decibel

Siphe November is one of the most talented ballet dancers of his generation. At just 23, he’s the National Ballet of Canada’s youngest principal dancer and only the second black principal dancer in the company’s 70-year history. His ballet technique, the passion he brings to his performances and his magnetic pull both on stage and off make him a worthy star. With his popularity on Instagram , his...

Last year, a heat dome in B.C. led to the deaths of 619 people . It’s the deadliest weather event in Canadian history. Temperatures rose to above 40 degrees and stayed high even at night. On Tuesday, the province’s coroner service released a report with recommendations to prevent deaths in the future. Frances Bula is a frequent Globe contributor who reports on urban issues in British Columbia. She...

Boris Johnson has been called the Teflon prime minister, because no scandal seems to stick to him. He has a long history of being at the centre of scandals, dating back to his time as a journalist when he was fired for fabricating a quote. As a politician, he’s been criticized for lying several times but he has somehow managed to get out of all of those unscathed. Globe’s Europe correspondent Paul...

As we learn more about Canada’s worst mass shooting, the families of the people killed are so frustrated with how the inquiry’s going that they’ve started to boycott the proceedings . Senior RCMP officers have been spared cross-examination as they detail the series of missteps they made in April, 2020. The Globe’s Greg Mercer has been following the inquiry, and he tells us how the RCMP didn’t beli...

You may know Rollie Pemberton by his stage name, Cadence Weapon. He’s the Edmonton-born rapper, who won the Polaris Music Prize in 2021, is known for his music with a political bent. Though he’s long been a writer of poetry – he was Edmonton’s poet laureate in 2009 – he’s now adding a new title to his list of accomplishments: non-fiction writer. In his new book, Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on H...

Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976. Now, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the state to jail someone for life with no reasonable hope for parole. That includes mass murderers, like the man who pled guilty to killing six worshippers at Quebec City mosque in 2017 . The recent ruling has raised questions about where the rights of prisoners and victims’ fami...

On Wednesday, a jury sided with actor, Johnny Depp in his defamation case against his ex-wife, Amber Heard. The verdict follows a six week-long trial (which aired live on Court TV) that captured the public’s attention. It spawned hashtags with billions of views on TikTok, memes and even a skit on Saturday Night Live. During the trial, intimate and often ugly allegations about Heard and Depp’s rela...

On May 26, Canada’s Minister of Employment, work force Development and Disability Inclusion, Carla Qualtrough said the Liberal government plans to retable the Canada Disability Benefit before the end of June. Disability advocates had been calling on the federal government to table this bill since it was introduced last summer. The legislation would help support people living with disabilities and...

Netflix recently reported their first loss of subscribers in over a decade. In the first quarter of 2022, 200,000 accounts left the company. That was just in the first quarter of this year – they’re forecasting a drop of 2-million more subscribers in the second quarter. Netflix is not alone. While streaming services and subscription services more broadly (like fitness apps, grocery delivery, and m...

Today we decided to take a bit of a reprieve and head down to a park, very early in the morning, to hear the dawn chorus – the symphony of birdsong that happens at daybreak. Since the pandemic started, more and more people have taken up birding as a way to escape the day-to-day and engage with the natural world. Globe columnist Marcus Gee found that he too has been enjoying the relaxation that bir...

It’s been one year since Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation announced they had found 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Dr. Kisha Supernant is one of the people at the forefront of the effort to look for unmarked graves. She’s a Métis archaeologist and chair of Unmarked Graves Working Group with the Canadian Archaeological Association. She explains how she does...

The United States is grappling with another mass shooting. At least 19 children and two adults were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas , on Tuesday. This marks the 27th school shooting and the 213th mass shooting this year in the U.S. The tragedy has set off another round of partisan arguments with each side blaming the other, leaving many with a sense of despair that these events w...

A new report from Human Rights Watch found that some online learning platforms are tracking children in ways they say actively or passively infringe on a child’s privacy rights. The trackers buried in a website or an app can monitor a kid’s keystrokes, searches and doodles, as well as their physical location using GPS. Hye Jung Han is a children’s rights and technology researcher, an advocate with...

Journalist Connie Walker has been reporting on Indigenous stories for most of her career. From missing and murdered women to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she has covered on some of the biggest stories in Canada in the last few decades. But it wasn’t until last year that she decided to look into her own family’s past.  The urge to dig into her deceased father’s past appeared after her b...

As a bonus episode today, we're bringing you an episode of  Stress Test , a podcast about personal finance from The Globe and Mail, hosted by Rob Carrick and Roma Luciw. Many millennials and Gen Z’s have done everything “right” - they’ve graduated, found good jobs, are paying off their debt and saving money. So why is it so hard to live the middle class lifestyle their parents and older peers had...

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says he will resign as leader of the United Conservative Party following the results of his leadership review. He received support from 51.4 per cent of party members.  Carrie Tait , a Calgary-based reporter in The Globe’s Alberta bureau, explains that while a few frontrunners have emerged to replace Kenney, uniting the right in the province remains a difficult road. ...

On May 11, a prominent Palestinian-American journalist was shot and killed in the West Bank while reporting for Al Jazeera. Her name was Shireen Abu Akleh. She was widely respected for her work and had over 25 years of experience covering the region. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blames Israel for her killing. Israel initially said Palestinian gunmen may have been responsible but now say it...

As this year’s deadly avian flu spreads from poultry to wild animals, there are reports of birds suffering from neurological symptoms, dropping dead from trees and twitching uncontrollably. Nearly two million birds have already died from the avian flu this year in Canada alone. Wildlife pathologist Dr. Brian Stevens joins us to explain how this strain is different, what experts are watching out fo...

Global markets are not doing well. And people are losing a lot of money. Even big technology companies like Netflix are starting to suffer. Their stock is down by nearly 70 per cent this year. And that has some wondering … is the market bubble bursting (a pandemic pop) for real this time? Report on Business reporter and columnist Tim Kiladze is on the show to explain why there’s so much uncertaint...

Universal health care is a point of pride for many Canadians, but the system has had flaws for decades. One big issue is getting in to see a doctor. The Commonwealth Fund estimated that 56 per cent of Canadians waited more than a month to see a specialist in 2016 or simply to get an appointment with a family doctor – if they even have one. Dr. Robert Bell has worked in healthcare for over 40 years...

Indigenous women are still being forcibly sterilized in Canada. That’s one thing that Sen. Yvonne Boyer wants Canadians to know. The senator, who is Métis herself and was formerly a nurse and a lawyer, has been fighting to raise awareness of this issue. She is also a part of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights that is currently examining the issue. Sen. Boyer discusses how her background...

Even 75 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitic crimes are still happening in Canada. And their presence highlights why education is still important, and uncovering family history is a powerful way to learn about the past. The Globe’s western arts correspondent, Marsha Lederman , joins us to talk about her new book Kiss the Red Stairs and the responsibility she feels to share her family’s stories...

Several of the atrocities happening in the Ukraine war are being linked to a mercenary organization called the Wagner Group. The Kremlin-linked mercenaries have operated in countries in the Middle East and in Africa as well, and are often trailed by allegations of human rights abuses. Sean McFate , former mercenary and now senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, explains how this group o...

The podcast turns one year old today! And in our first year, a lot happened: Russia started a war in Ukraine , thousands of unmarked graves were found at some residential school sites in Canada, Justin Trudeau won another federal election , inflation became a very hot topic and the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread, especially with the arrival of the Omicron variant. In today’s episode, we loo...

Canada’s international airports have experienced major delays getting passengers on and off their flights, as people begin returning to air travel in numbers not seen since before the pandemic. The staff that get travellers through all those lines at the airport – security screening, customs, baggage drop-off – have not returned to the airport in enough numbers to stave off long lines. Transportat...