Groupies Deserve More Credit

Superfans contribute just as much to culture as the male musicians they love. Why haven’t they had the shine they deserve? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

The New Residential School System

A six-year-old Gitxsan girl was removed from her community in northern British Columbia. The community brought her back | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Why Was the Lyme Disease Vaccine Tossed Away?

It was pulled from the market almost immediately after it was developed in 1998. Twenty-five years later, the painful disease is on the rise | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

The Death Dilemma: Are Hospitals Overtreating Patients Nearing the End?

An ER physician on the heavy costs of keeping patients alive when death is inevitable | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Are Quebec’s Most Beautiful Islands Doomed to Disappear?

The Magdalen Islands are being swallowed up by rising sea levels, leaving islanders with a stark choice: flee or stay | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

How Do You Make the Perfect Toy?

Fads come and go, but how to create a toy that stands the test of time is the billion-dollar question | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Why Don’t Millennials Have Hobbies?

I sought the help of an algorithm to figure out how to spend my free time. It made me question my generation’s relationship with leisure | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Fighting AI with AI: The Battle Against Deepfakes

Realistic, computer-generated faces are more widespread than ever. How do we tell what’s true and what’s not? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

What Is the Cost of a Cashless Society?

The trend toward digital payment could shortchange the country’s most vulnerable | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

The Nuclear Accidents at Chalk River

Workers who cleaned up after the disasters fear that their true effects will never be brought to light | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Twilight of the Libraries: What Gets Lost When Books Go Off-Site and Online

Libraries can't escape the push for digitization, but we still need actual books on shelves | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

In Defence of Garlic in a Jar

Celebrity chefs, food writers, and home cooks have sneered at pre-cut produce. They’re dismissing those of us with disabilities | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Doctors on TikTok: The Dark Side of Medical Influencers

Medical data is supposed to be confidential. But social media is threatening the privacy and dignity of patients | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Credit Scores Can Run–and Ruin–Our Lives

You can have a great credit history and still see your score plummet. How did the rating system become so powerful? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

On Aging Alone

In old age, I had to come to terms with the loneliness I’d felt all my life | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 1 year ago

Death 101: Life Lessons from the Country’s Only Degree Devoted to the End

Some first-year arts students are asked to write papers about Plato or Jane Austen; thanatology students need an existential sensibility | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

What Is the Point of Cancelling Russian Artists?

Scrapped tours and broken contracts won’t hurt Vladimir Putin | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

What Happened to Your Face? A Meditation on the Pandemic Beard

Status symbol, face warmer, or sign of disrepute? Facial hair trends often change alongside historical events | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

A Nineteenth-Century Pandemic May Be a Window into Coronaviruses

Experts have turned back the clock to see what the Russian flu and other epidemics can teach us | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Out of Office: The Case for More Paid Vacation Days

The pandemic has forced us to reevaluate our relationship with work and time off | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Endless Exile: The Tangled Politics Keeping a Uyghur Man in Limbo

Exonerated after four years in Guantánamo Bay, Ayoob Mohammed is still unable to join his family in Canada | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

The Gamification of Fitness: Are We Getting Played by Our Exercise Apps?

The video game elements often blamed for sedentary lifestyles are now being used to get people moving | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Canada Accidentally Helped Crack Computer Translation

A technological whodunit—featuring Parliament, computer scientists, and tipsy plane flight | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Confessions of a Bitcoin Widow: How a Dream Life Turned into a Nightmare

My husband started a cryptocurrency empire that made us rich. When he died, I learned it was just a facade | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong?

For decades, governments have done all they can to keep inflation down. But maybe letting things run hotter is exactly what we need | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

All Aboard the Metaverse: Is the New Digital Frontier Unstoppable?

It may not exist yet, but no one in tech can risk ignoring Mark Zuckerberg’s next big thing | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

The Pigeon Puzzle: How Do They Figure Out Their Impossibly Long Routes Home?

You might consider them flying rats, but their odysseys stump scientists | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Porch Cameras and Facebook Groups Are Turning Streets into Surveillance States

Our tech-driven approach to neighbourhood watch is cementing community divisions | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

We Need a Good Villain: From Ancient Lore to Pandemic Finger-Pointing

Villains have starred in our stories for eons. Is that why we want someone to blame for COVID-19? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

New Brunswick’s Mystery Disease: Why Did the Province Shut Out Federal Experts?

The provincial government’s closed-door investigation has confused experts, stoked fears, and missed an opportunity to solve a possible new brain disorder | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Design for Survival: How to Build a Better Trauma Bay

In the high-pressure world of emergency medicine, a Toronto hospital finds new ways to save lives | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

The Cactus That Came Back from the Dead

When a plant barely exists in the natural world but lives on your windowsill, is it really endangered? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

North Korea’s Mysterious Cryptocurrency Ambitions

A Pyongyang blockchain conference raises new questions about the country’s ability to evade sanctions | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Why William Gibson Is a Literary Genius

Forty years after his breakout story, “Johnny Mnemonic,” the father of cyberpunk remains one of the best writers around | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Don’t Be a Prude: The Benefits of Public Nudity

Showing skin shouldn’t be a privilege afforded only to the good looking | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

It’s Not in Your Head: The World Really Is Getting Worse

Since the 1970s, wages, infrastructure, and the pace of technology have all stagnated. Can it be reversed? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

I’m Sick of Reboots and Rewatches and You Should Be Too

We've all spent the pandemic in a pop culture feedback loop. For the love of God, make it stop | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

The shadowy business of international education

Foreign students are lied to and exploited on every front. They’re also propping up higher education as we know it | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

More Is More: The End of Minimalism

Marie Kondo's decluttering dominance is over. Make way for maximalism, where the more stuff, the merrier | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

When Positivity Turns Toxic

“Good vibes only” has become a rallying cry. But how much positivity is too much? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

What Do You Do with a Billion Grams of Surplus Weed?

Cannabis legalization was supposed to be a licence to print money. Three years on, nobody is turning a profit | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

False Positive: Why Thousands of Patients May Not Have Asthma After All

A staggering number of people are being treated for a disease they don’t actually have | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Why Olympians Are Struggling to Get Sponsorships

You can be the fastest in the world, but when you’re competing against influencers for corporate cash, athletic performance isn’t all that matters | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Empty Storefronts Are Killing Our Neighbourhoods

All over North America, speculators are raising rents and pushing out tenants. Will our cities ever be the same? | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Smell You Later: The Weird Science of How Sweat Attracts

Smell is often dismissed as the least important sense. But it’s the funk that draws us together | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Life in the Stacks: A Love Letter to Browsing

Algorithms are integral to how we find and consume art. But old-fashioned browsing still has its benefits | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

Small-Town Homes, Big-City Prices: Welcome to the Everywhere Boom

Sky-high housing prices have always been a problem in urban areas. Now, people are being priced out all over | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago

What We Lose When Literary Criticism Ends

With mainstream media uninterested in books coverage that doesn’t get clicks, writers and readers are being left out in the cold | Continue reading


@thewalrus.ca | 2 years ago