It was one of the strangest scandals in recent Canadian history, located right at the spot where the housing crisis collides with the climate crisis. From allegations of political corruption and RCMP investigations to endangered species and Las Vegas massages. Every Monday for the next three weeks, The Big Story, in partnership with The Narwhal, will take you into the heart of the Greenbelt scandal that rocked Ontario, speaking to the people who broke the story and people who lived it. If...

Amir Omidvar left Iran during the revolutionary crisis in 1982. For twenty months after leaving his home, Amir did everything he could to cross the Atlantic ocean. While taking refuge in Spain, he made three failed attempts to enter the US; a fake passport in Heathrow, a Mexican jail, and a beating by customs officers […]

In 1994, a small church next to Toronto Pearson International Airport suddenly became one of the city’s “Top Tourist Attractions”. Why did millions of Christians flock from around the world? Was something truly supernatural happening? 25 years later, join Tara Jean Stevens as she revisits the unusual spiritual movement she was a part of as […]

A secret war, a secret deal, and a scandal that threatened to destroy Ronald Reagan’s presidency–until it didn’t. The Gravy Train team is happy to bring you the first episode of Fiasco: Iran-Contra. From the co-creators of Slow Burn comes a podcast documentary about politics, power, and uncertainty. Host Leon Neyfakh transports listeners into the […]

Toronto never got the chance to reelect Mayor Rob Ford. Nor did it get the chance to kick him out of office. It wasn’t the ending anyone wanted, it’s just what happened. And over the next few years, it would become clear just how profoundly Rob had changed politics, at home and around the world.

More than a year after the first stories about a ‘crack video’ broke, and months after the mayor admitted he’d tried the drug ‘during one of (his) drunken stupors’, Rob Ford admitted to the public that he had a substance abuse problem, and that he needed help. And he went to rehab. For a few […]

Mayor Rob Ford publicly admitted to smoking crack “in one of my drunken stupors” on Nov. 5, 2013. And then all hell broke loose.

The whole world was talking about whether or not Toronto’s mayor smoked crack. You might think that the mayor would change his behaviour following the headlines about his drug use. But he didn’t. We know this because the police were watching him with a secret investigation named Project Brazen II.

After months of absences and whispers and rumours, all of Mayor Rob Ford’s private life started to go public. It began with one story, which led to more, and more. The mayor’s response was denial—and to paint the media as the enemy and attack them by name. There’s a reason this strategy has become so […]

As Rob Ford began his term as mayor by ending taxes and cancelling transit plans, his colleagues on city council and the reporters who covered them were starting to gossip. As his first weeks turned to months, Ford was around less and less, and people were starting to wonder: What was going on with the […]

Episode 2: Rob Ford’s colleagues laughed off his campaign for mayor. They shouldn’t have. They assumed the numerous scandals he’d already suffered through, and the fresh ones that would dominate his campaign, would crush his chances. They shouldn’t have. They ran traditional campaigns and counted on Torontonians to make a relatively traditional choice, the kind […]

He was a joke. And then he won. He was a trainwreck. But it didn’t matter. He was a drug user and an alcoholic. But a lot of people loved him anyway. And most of all, Rob Ford was a sign of things to come—in politics, in the media and around the world. Welcome to the Gravy Train.

Episode 1: This is the story of how our subject goes from the outskirts of the city to a seat in the building at the heart of its power. Before he was the Mayor of Toronto, and before all the insanity that came in the years following that, Rob Ford was just a young man […]

He was a joke. And then he won. He was a trainwreck. But it didn’t matter. He was a drug user and an alcoholic. But a lot of people loved him anyway. And most of all, Rob Ford was a sign of things to come—in politics, in the media and around the world. Welcome to […]