Exponential with Amanda Lang

This week on Exponential, Ilana Ben Ari is the founder of a company called 21 toys…its first product was a toy designed to help people learn about empathy…its latest, aims to teach failure. I asked her when she landed on the idea of teaching concepts like these through toys.

This week on Exponential, when most people hear the words “sex trafficking” they think of foreign countries. But the truth is, the young women forced into the sex trade are predominantly Canadian-born. Toronto’s Covenant House has become a major advocate for young people caught in this life…Julie Neubauer is the manager of Anti-Human Trafficking Services.

This week on Exponential, recently the US-based business roundtable made an important announcement. This group, which represents the biggest US companies, said that no longer should pure profit be the ‘purpose’ of a corporation…but rather, it should consider other things, like the environment, employees and customers. Nell Minnow is a globally recognized expert on business and governance and Vice Chair of Value-Edge Advisors. I asked her what the ‘purpose’ of a corporation is.

This week on Exponential, Amanda talks with Julian Brass, Entrepreneur, Public Speaker and author of “Own your Anxiety”, about how anxiety can be a positive influence in our lives.

This week on Exponential, you may have heard of the charity “WE” or “Me to WE” – it’s a global powerhouse, operating in scores of countries. So it’s easy to forget that WE has humble roots. Its founder, Craig Keilburger, was just 12 years old when he started it. We talked recently and I asked him to take me back to the beginning.

This week on Exponential, Canada has a national housing crisis. In big cities, home prices are running away from most people, making home ownership increasingly out of reach for many. Meanwhile, a lack of social housing in just about every urban centre is a real problem. The federal government has what it calls a ‘national housing strategy’…David Hulchanski, a professor and researcher at University of Toronto who has spent his career looking at housing asks “is it enough to meet the need?”

This week on Exponential, you may have heard of Catalyst as an organization that works to promote the advancement of women in the workplace. But along the way the folks at Catalyst realized something…the experience of women of colour was different than that of white women. It lead them to a new area of research.

This week on Exponential, James Rickards is the author of “Aftermath; Seven Secrets of Wealth Preservation in The Coming Chaos”. Jim has spent decades in financial markets, observing, describing and participating. Rickards knows a thing or two about how markets work. His latest book aims to explore what happened after the 2008 financial crisis.