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In this week’s NOW, Julia Mastroianni explores the crisis facing personal support workers, overwhelmed and undersupported by the province as they do their utmost to care for at-risk seniors in communal living situations during a pandemic that’s latest almost a year … and the crisis that awaits us if PSWs continue to leave the workforce at the current rate. Julia and Dr. Amit Arya join Norm to discuss this increasingly urgent issue.

It’s NOW’s 40th anniversary this year, and we’re looking back at some of our most memorable covers with retrospective interviews. Glenn Sumi talks to playwright and actor Michael Healey about his February 18, 1999 cover appearance for his breakout play The Drawer Boy, and how it changed his life … and how, two decades later, another NOW story changed his life once again.

Eleven months into the pandemic, and with winter depressing everyone even further, people are turning to the foods that comfort them. In this week’s NOW, staff writer Kelsey Adams talks to chefs and restaurateurs across Toronto to find out what’s working for them, and why. One of them is Marben executive chef Chris Locke, who joins Kelsey and Norm for this conversation.

Now that NOW has launched a streaming newsletter (NOW Streaming! Check it out!), Norm reaches out to Toronto writers and Substack users Kat Angus (Kat Watches Everything), Matt Elliott (City Hall Watcher) and Andrew Stoeten (The Batflip) to get up to speed on how the platform works for entertainment, news and sports. Learn along with him!

For our annual Love & Sex issue, NOW culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai asked sex workers and activists Andrea Werhun, Gwen Adora, Ana Valens, Eliza Lorde, Vixen Vu and Ellie Ade Kur to discuss the ways in which their industry has and hasn’t reinvented itself as a result of the pandemic. (Think Onlyfans.)

The Toronto Black Film Festival is back this week, and things are very different this year than they were in 2020. It’s not just the pandemic that’s changed the landscape, but the surge in Black activism and the ensuing calls for increased representation in television and cinema. TBFF founder Fabienne Colas is here to talk about all of it.

In a companion piece to her Black Futures Month cover package, NOW’s Kelsey Adams talks to Obsidian Theatre artistic director Mumbi, FoodShare Toronto executive director Paul Taylor, Sundance Harvest founder Cheyenne Sundance, Black Lives Matter Canada co-founder Rodney Diverlus and recent candidate for Toronto city council Renee Jagdeo about their work to demand a more just future.

Rodney Ascher’s new documentary A Glitch in the Matrix explores simulation theory -- specifically, the idea that our world, and we ourselves, exist inside a computer simulation so detailed it’s indistinguishable from real life. Can we trust the evidence of our own senses? And … should we? Norm and Rodney hash it out just a few hours before the film’s (virtual) Sundance premiere.

Toronto is short on the smaller, multi-unit dwellings that occupy the space between single-family homes and high-density apartments and condos. Culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai talks to realtors Phillip Kocev and Meray Mansour to figure out why, and what the city is going to do about it.

In order to counter the ever-rising tide of skepticism and misinformation about the pandemic, a group of scientists, researchers and health care providers have launched the Science Up First initiative. Timothy Caulfield and Samantha Yammine join Norm to discuss the initiative and how they’re hoping to steer more people towards fact and reason.

With NOW’s Chill Winter Guide on the stands, writers Kelsey Adams, Julia Mastroianni and Richard Trapunski join Norm to discuss their recommendations for staying connected -- to friends, family and the world -- during this latest lockdown.

Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman arrived on VOD last week, and to balance NOW’s all-male discussion of the film in a previous NOW WHAT, culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai moderates a panel discussion with entertainment reporter Teri Hart, gender justice advocate Farrah Khan, Refinery 29 senior editor Kathleen Newman-Bremang and Bechdel Tested creator Erica Shiner.

With NOW’s annual celebration of body positivity on the stands, associate entertainment editor Glenn Sumi talks to Gelek Badheytsang, Emma Hewson, Denise Mcleod, Jessie Olsen and Arianne Persaud about their participation in the issue, and what they’ve taken away from the experience.

With their award-winning show returning to CBC next week, stars Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Jean Yoon, Simu Liu and Andrew Phung join Norm for a conversation about Season 5's darker turn, shooting during COVID and what it means to have Kim’s Convenience on the air right now.

In a new story on the NOW website, staff writer Julia Mastroianni looks at how queer spaces face different financial challenges than their mainstream equivalents. Julia and Shameful Tiki’s Alana Nogueda join Norm to discuss the ways in which queer bar owners are trying to hold their community together, even as they’re forced apart.

We’d like to do something optimistic to ring in the new year, so Norm asks Kelsey Adams, Julia Mastroianni, Radheyan Simonpillai and Glenn Sumi to share one thing they hope to accomplish in 2021 … whether or not they get to leave the house.

Real estate brokers and urban planners recap rising prices in the Toronto real estate market in 2020, how the upcoming home vacancy tax and other efforts to make housing affordable meets with considerable challenges and what to expect in 2021.

NOW’s political editor Enzo DiMatteo catches up with Rechev Browne, the grocery store worker featured in our spring frontline heroes issue. Rechev revisits his experience hazarding COVID-19 while working at No Frills and dealing with people’s daily frustrations and microaggressions. He explain’s how attitudes have evolved and the sentiment celebrating frontline workers has withered away along with pandemic pay.

Santa may be on ice during the pandemic but the holiday movie season is in full effect. Wonder Woman 1984, Pixar’s Soul, Promising Young Woman and Tom Hanks in News of the World are joining movies in theatres and online like Mank, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Nomadland to compete for your holiday viewing attention. NOW’s critics Norm Wilner, Radheyan Simonpillai, Glenn Sumi and Kevin Ritchie debate all the new releases See below for time stamps if you want to skip ahead to a particular movie conversation.   Wonder Woman 1984 – 2:00 Soul – 16:00 News of the World – 23:00 Promising Young Woman – 26:30 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – 40:00 Mank – 45:30 Nomadland – 52:30

Shouldn’t we be in a lockdown by now? Norm checks in with Newmarket biostatistician Ryan Imgrund to find out where things stand right now, what Ontarians could and should be doing differently in their daily lives, and what Doug Ford ought to be doing at the provincial level.