Jews are under attack on campuses! Actually, Zionism is, but that's good enough for Michael Geist to write about an apparent scourge of antisemitism at Canada's universities. We're joined by University of Alberta English and film professor Mike Litwack (@mikeylitwack) to take a look at a piece that purports that nobody who supports Israel can feel …

Fancying himself some sort of Judge Dredd of protecting Canadian culture, Christopher Dummitt writes in a special to the National Post how such actions as land acknowledgments or taking a plaque down in an art gallery are giving China an edge. Canadian patriot Nora Loreto joins us to explain why having a deep-seated sense of national pride probably…

"Are all these bisexuals for real? Or is this 'el gee bee tee cue' stuff just a fashionable trend? I'm just asking questions." That is about the extent of the analysis in this week's column from the Phoebe Maltz Bovy in Globe and Mail. Nevertheless, we torture ourselves and writer/pal Sarah Rieger by unpacking it. Join us for yet another incoherent…

Oakville Town Hall is under siege from a red scourge and Sun journalist Joe Warmington is on the case after a hot tip. Can the People's Champion make sense of the situation? Will anyone talk some sense into these misguided youngsters? Freelance journalist Scott Martin (@YouCaughtScott) helps us unpack what really went on that day, since Joe failed …

Stop being mean to grocer oligarchs. Stop it! We're warning you. You should be thanking them, they stock your treats and only gouge you a to a moderate degree. Everybody's gotta make a living, and besides, they're probably creating your job anyway. Toronto-based writer Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) joins us to take in the view from the National Post a…

American icon Noah Kulwin (@nkulw) joins the pod to talk about one of the most obnoxious Twitter personalities of the past several months, Joe Roberts. Roberts, co-founder of the Democratic Socialists of America - Canada and former co-host of New Left Radio, has gone full neocon since Oct. 7. So much so that he wrote a column for the National Post,…

We love whinging about the fertility rate, don't we folks? The implications are grave, lowered birth rates could mean fewer DoorDash employees to bring columnists treats. BST Institute fellow Stephen @Magusiak of @pressprogress returns to pick apart a Globe and Mail opinion piece by John Ibbitson. According to Ibby, the ever-dwindling number of bab…

Executive Director of @Wisdom2Action and @QueerMomentum and unstoppable dynamo @FaeJohnstone joins us to discuss how Sydney Sweeney's breasts fortell the death of wokeness – according to the National Post. In a column that reads like a horny Looney Tunes cartoon, Amy Hamm, who is a nurse apparently, brings the bizarre discourse around the young act…

The Big Shiny Takes Institute has returned to read a real stinker of a column by Rick Bell. Rick, a traditional dumb guy with a column, seems a little upset about how mean people are being to Calgary Chief of Police Mark Neufeld. We dig into this column (a glorified vanity piece about how the police are good, homeless people are super-criminals and…

Polite Conversations host and leading Intellectual Dark Web scholar Eiynah, a/k/a @NiceMangos, joins us to scrape the bottom of the IDW barrel. Gad Saad, who is now a National Post columnist, is a marketing professor who fashions himself as an expert in the defence of Western Civilization. He wrote a piece in the Post about how happy conservatives …

Mount Royal University academic, Al Jazeera columnist and Al Shabaka fellow Muhannad Ayyash joins us to discuss how Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek cancelled Hanukkah. Calgary pundits lost their goddam minds over Gondek's decision to back out of at a totally apolitical menorah lighting ceremony that was billed as an opportunity to demonstrate "SUPPORT F…

Chuka Ejeckam joins us again, this time to discuss the ongoing horror in Gaza and how Canadian pundits have assumed the role of IDF spokespeople. There’s no better example of this trend than Andrew Coyne, who wrote a column boasting of how little he’s learned since 9/11. Plugs and Recs UN Director for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human R…

The Big Shiny Takes Institute has returned after the editor (Eric) spent the last month traveling the world in search of the shiniest takes. It turns out they were all right here in Canada. This week we return to an old favourite, the people's champion Joe Warmington, for a column about remembering police officers who passed away this year. Before …

Jeremy and Marino are joined by The Breach co-ordinating editor Emma Paling (@emmapaling) to discuss a column from Carson Jerema, the National Post's comment editor, who in accordance with Post traditions doesn't seem to do much editing. According to Jerema, Pierre Poilievre's shrieking about the globalistsat the World Economic Forum isn't a conspi…

Things are so good in Canadian media. There's layoffs nearly every week. There's talk of the Toronto Star merging with Postmedia. The Online News Act was passed and as a result Google and Facebook are pulling Canadian news content from their platforms. (The Act isn't great and doesn't help independent media that much to begin with, but Google and F…

Jev (Despize, Hellbound, D.O.P., Dead to Rights) joins the show to talk about his love of Reading FC, football/soccer in general, and a whole lot of chat about the world of hardcore. We dive into his recent tours with Terror and other legendary bands, and hardcore in the UK and Europe compared to that of North America. Check out Despize and the res…

Big Shiny Goons is back and in a big way. New segments, new ideas, and same audio issues (sorry). Andrew (@torqpenderloin) joins the show to talk about Hum's miraculous 2020 album "Inlet" and how much it caught everyone by surprise, and how we might never ever see it toured or the band play live again. Outside of the album, it's some Chicago sports…

What do opinion columnists in this country think about strikes? Nothing worth reading on your own. In this episode the Big Shiny Takes Institute takes a look at an awful column on the PSAC strike that took place near the end of April and extended into May. The conventional wisdom of punditry was that the public would not support a public sector str…

The unthinkable has happened in Canada. A public body has offered new health recommendations and people are overreacting. How will society even function on two drinks a week? According to some, not at all. This week we are joined by author James Wilt (Drinking Up the Revolution, Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars) and co-founder of The Hoser Kevin …

The Big Shiny Takes Institute has returned! This episode, while Jeremy is in his self-imposed book-writing exile, Eric and Marino are joined by Kristen Pue and Kyla Hewson of the Pullback podcast to read a baffling column by Jesse Kline. Jesse spends valuable column space concern-trolling about the Liberal's new luxury tax on vehicles, applicable t…

Our old pal Abdul (@MarxGasol) joins us for a public policy thought experiment courtesy of UBC business lecturer Adam Pankratz in the National Post: Should we destigmatize stigma? Maybe if drug users and unhoused people simply understood that what they were doing is bad and they should feel bad, we'd all be better off! Kidding aside, this perverse …

The last Kino standing, Evan Macdonald, joins us to talk about Dr. Jordan Bernt Peterson's latest made up scandal. The College of Psychiatrists of Ontario is asking him to take social media training, because he sucks at posting. The National Post's opinion page says this the greatest injustice of our day, but do any real people actually care? Tune …

Esteemed Twitter user and Dog Island alum Andrew Neville joins us to mock one of, and I'm not mincing words here, the worst pieces we have read. The culprit? None other than our old pal, Adam Zivo. In this piece (published in the Daily Hive lol) Zivo tries to use statistics to argue that crime is out of control. The problem? It's based on an opinio…

The Big Shiny Takes Institute is back! We're joined by political researcher and new Friend of the Institute Chuka Ejeckam to read a very anti-union piece by the one and only Jesse Kline. Kline, the author of galaxy-brained takes about privatizing parks, is back and trying to frame striking workers as a malignant force threatening your children. To …

Environmental lawyer and former Liberal Party of Alberta leader David Khan joins the Institute to talk about the ongoing rehabilitation of Jason Kenney's image. National Post pundit John Ivison writes that the reason Kenney failed as Alberta premier wasn't because he was a total slimeball who pandered to the far-right but was too much of a coward t…

Luke Savage, author of the new book The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and co-host of the Michael and Us podcast , joins us to read a column from ur-smug centrist and National Observer "lead columnist" Max Fawcett. In this piece, Fawcett outlines how he thinks Pierre Poilievre is attempting to appeal to the far-right (true) and far-left (lo…

The gang invites Megan Linton of the Harbinger Media Network podcast Invisible Institutions to slog through an incredibly lazy piece by Brian Lilley. It's a column that contains much hand-wringing about masks and requirements to have them. It's also basically the same as the column he wrote the week before. Also, a discussion about a certain monarc…

The Big Shiny Takes Institute has returned! This week, Eric, Marino and Jeremy are joined by Fae Johnstone (Executive Director of Wisdom2Action, writer and activist) to read some absolutely horrendous transphobia published in the National Post. The National Post, seemingly taking their cues from the transphobes down in the US and UK (TERF Island) a…

The Big Shiny Takes Institute is reporting live from the frontlines of the climate war (Eric's living room). This episode we are joined by Mitchell Thompson from PressProgress to take apart an incoherent screed written by a senior fellow of the Macdonald Laurier Institute - Jamil Jivani. The column suggests Trudeau's cultish fixation on saving the …

The boys are back with another terrible column! This week they are joined by Alex from Haus of Decline to read another awful piece by Adam Zivo in which he makes the argument to let the police march in the Toronto Pride Parade. I say he makes the argument, but really what he does is list all the very valid reasons people don't want the police there…

The Big Shiny Takes Institute has returned! Joined by Friend of the Institute Gordon Katic the boys read a particularly awful column by Vinay Menon about the aftermath of the horrific school shooting in Uvalde. Instead of having something useful to say, Vinay decided to write a column about Matthew McConaughey's moral obligation to run for presiden…

Charlie (The Athletic, @charlieo_conn) joins the podcast to talk about The National's 2005 album "Alligator" and how it set the band up on a path to eventually work with Taylor Swift. Aside from the album, Charlie and Thomas talk about Claude Giroux, writing about and describing music, and other cool stuff. Follow the podcast at @big_shiny_goons on…

Jeremy’s Forgotten Corner co-host Scott Schmidt joins BST this week to talk about pensions and starving seniors to buy shitty fighter jets. Plugs and Recs Listen to The Forgotten Corner Go see Peace by Chocolate Jeremy - Canada’s Noxious Conservatives Are Duking It Out for Party Leadership Jared Sexton - The World They Wish To Build If you enjoyed …

If you read the latest IPCC report, you know it's time for the latest episode of Big Shiny Takes. This week, the Big Shiny Takes Institute is joined by columnist and writer David Moscrop to read an insufferably bad column from Conrad Black. Yes, we are aware that doesn't narrow it down. This temper tantrum is directed at the federal NDP and Liberal…

Good news everyone, the pandemic is over because the government said so! Everything is great! Of course, like all responsible adults, we know better than to let ourselves get tired of winning so much so we are punishing ourselves with another insipid Jon Kay column. This one was published in the Wall Street Journal. In this latest instalment of Can…

Jackson (Roxy Fever, @failsonmcdonald) is back on the pod and he brought along Minutemen's classic "Double Nickels on the Dime" for us to talk about. Outside of the album, it's about the Vancouver Canucks, listening to bands that get straight to the point, and just enjoying the good stuff.

Do you hear that horrible honking sound? No my friends, that is not the sound of freedom. It's the sound of another episode of Big Shiny Takes! This week, Canadaland Commons host Arshy Mann joined us to talk about the dumbest political action in the entire world: the Trucker Convoy. This convoy, which is not astroturfed at all, is demanding that av…

Shayna (The Athletic, @hayyyshayyy) joins the show to talk about Turnstile's massive 2021 success and "GLOW ON." Outside of the biggest boyband in the world, it's all about writing stories that answer questions, discovering music in high school, and wondering if hardcore is the music of hockey. Follow Shayna: @hayyyshayyy Follow the podcast: @big_s…

It's 2022 and things are bad! We're kicking off a new year of reading bad takes with Shama Rangwala. Shama is an Assistant Professor at York University and co-host of Replay, a new podcast on the Harbinger Media Network. The column we read this week is one of the dimmer takes in the National Post's year-end series called The Capitalist Manifesto, a…

It's the end of 2021, and instead of reading a bunch of people's favourite albums of the year, why not listen to what some past guests of BSG have to say? We got Laura Saba, Drew Fairservice, Arun Srinivasan, Sie Morley, Mike Pfeil, Maddie Campbell, and Rahef Issa, to talk about their album of the year.…

Nora Loreto makes her triumphant return to BST and she's got a new book! As the title suggests, Spin Doctors: How Media and Politicians Misdiagnosed the COVID-19 Pandemic deals with how the media created a sea of confusion that obscured the major fault lines of the pandemic. To illustrate Nora's case, we brought an absolutely reprehensible column f…

That is the question asked by a column written by Diane Francis in the Financial Post that talks about the risks Covid-19 and one Vladimir Putin both pose to our beloved economy. Yes that is a stupid question. But this is a very stupid column. Marino, Jeremy and Eric read this column on Russia's involvement in Ukraine written by the impartial obser…

Neil or "Floob" (@itlooksreal, Scorchstack) joins the show to talk about Gob's 1998 sophomore album "How Far Shallow Takes You" and how influential it was in his early years. Other than that, it's about the Calgary Flames and covering bad hockey teams; as well as the Canadian music landscape and some wrestling.…

The Big Shiny Takes Institute is back with a great episode with the incredible Aaron Giovannone. We read a lot of terrible columns, but we rarely get to take a deep dive into the psyche of one of the country's more established columnists. Aaron brought an essay Rosie Dimanno wrote in the late 90's about growing up in Little Italy in Toronto. We go …

Ailish (@ailishforfar) joins the show to reminisce about some skater girl days and Avril Lavigne's 2002 debut "Let Go". Aside from the album, they talk about girl-fronted bands, developing your music taste during car rides to hockey practice, and being a pro hockey player deciding to go into sports media.…

We are back, and have an episode for you that we recorded in person! Jeremy came back to the very nice and fun city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada for a visit, so instead of hanging out we recorded an all-timer episode. We were joined by the amazing Bronwen Tucker (@bronwentucker) from Climate Justice Edmonton and the incredible Stefan Hostetter (@Ste…

Mike (Scorchstack, @mikeFAIL) joins the show for the SECOND time and is the first return guest in BSG history. For that, he brought Thomas Alexisonfire's 2004 sophomore album, "Watch Out!". Other than the album and the artist's impact on the Canadian music scene, they discuss getting back into childhood loves, The Armed's "Ultrapop", and bands evol…

Maddie (Broad Street Hockey, @madelinecampbll) joins the show to talk about her youthful experience with Jack's Mannequin's 2005 debut full-length record "Everything in Transit". Other than that it's about attending Warped Tour, the Philadelphia Flyers beat, and discovering music in quarantine.

Future Alberta Senator Duncan Kinney (@duncankinney), whom you also may know from fellow Harbinger pod The Progress Report, joins us to talk about the hellish nightmare of Alberta's COVID response. ICUs are overflowing, people are dying, but the Edmonton Journal's David Staples — always with his finger on the pulse — wants to know what this means f…

In case you missed the 12 hour livestream telethon to raise money for Harbinger Media, here's the audio for our part of the event! Big Shiny Takes (minus Eric, he was at a wedding lol) took part in this great event. Our friends from PressProgress Stephen Magusiak and Emily Leedham joined us to read a column arguing for the platforming of fascists i…