Guest: Richard Warnica, Senior Opinion Writer

In this episode, we explore Richard's recent visit to Texas as a vivid microcosm of Trump's current America. He reports on cratering trust in vaccines, increasingly aggressive ICE arrests that are cleaving families apart, and the dismantling of public media meant to help citizens understand their world. His conversations with advocates, lawyers, and local leaders highlight a landscape shaped by disease, cruelty, and deliberate ignorance — all unfolding alongside climate-driven disasters like the recent deadly flood at Camp Mystic girls summer camp, where grief still lingers in the air.

PLUS: Hear Texas House Representative Nicole Collier speak about how Republican action inspired her to sleep two nights on the Capitol floor, in protest.

Produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Paulo Marques and Sean Pattendon

Guest: Ed Keenan, Toronto Star city columnist

Toronto has always been a contradiction; a city people fall in love with and get fed up with, often at the same time.

This year, the Toronto Star explored those many shades in our Toronto the Better series, digging into the cracks, complexities, and questions around how to actually make the city better.

Now we want you to join the conversation.

We're launching One Great Idea — a project asking for your bold, beautiful, or just plain weird ideas to help fix Toronto.

If you could change one thing about this city, what would it be?

And what kind of ideas could actually turn Toronto into the place you want it to be?

In this episode, city columnist Ed Keenan talks about the project, the city's identity crisis, and why even the most frustrated Torontonians show up to cry and cheer together during a Blue Jays playoff run.

Have a great idea of your own?

Send it to onegreatidea@thestar.ca in under 200 words or drop it in the comments below. We'll be publishing a selection soon and letting readers choose which ones are worth championing.

Audio sources: Youtube, CP24

This episode was produced by Sean Pattendon

Guests: Sean Menard, Toronto-based filmmaker and director of 'Run Terry Run' and Kirsten Fox, a director at the Terry Fox Foundation and Terry Fox's niece.

Terry Fox is a Canadian institution.

His crown of thick brown spirals, heathergrey 2.5 inch shorts, 'Marathon of Hope' shirt and prosthetic walking leg he fashioned to support athletic capacity are legendary markers of a truly extraordinary human being.

But there's so much more to Fox than just these instantly recognizable symbols.

Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope is an incredible feat that has captivated Canadians young and old for decades, but who was he really when the media vans dispersed and the crowds went home? Sean Menard's newest documentary 'Run Terry Run' aims to show viewers the human behind the hero using 45-year-old footage that hitherto sat unseen in a Fox family storage locker.

Today on This Matters, we speak with Toronto-based filmmaker and a director at the Terry Fox Foundation, Sean Menard as well as Terry Fox's niece, Kirsten Fox, to discuss Terry's prevailing legacy, the tech-primitive world of the 1980s and what 'Run Terry Run' taught Kirsten about her late uncle.

This episode was mixed by Paulo Marques