Perfect Strangers
This week, Out in the Open asks: What's behind the kindness of strangers? Piya speaks with people who share their homes, time, bodies... and bodily functions... all for the greater good of others.
Here are the stories from this week's episode:
'There's always someone who needs the money more than I do'
Julia Wise has been called an "extreme altruist" for giving 30 to 50 per cent of her family's income to charity each year. Piya finds out how her small, daily quandaries about spending money on frills encouraged her to make people in need a line item in her life.
Meet Canada's certified super-pooper
Debashri has a very special gift. She's one of a handful of people with excrement so excellent, she donates it to science. She tells Piya what motivates her to share her offering... and why she needs to protect her identity while making her deposits.
The complicated kindness of rescuing pets
How could anyone take home a puppy from a breeder, knowing there are poor doggies at shelters just waiting to be saved?! Rescue pets may seem like the obvious, good and 'kind' way to go. But animal lover John Katz says the pet saviour complex can be a misplaced kindness.
Through one man's death, two strangers forge a connection
When Kate Perkins noticed a young man slumped on a bench outside her office, she called paramedics. That man was Bailey Townsend, and he'd died of a drug overdose. When his mom Cindy Stuyt heard the news, she knew she had to find the woman who found Bailey to thank her. Kate and Cindy share their stories, and speak for the first time about what the act meant to each of them.
The pain and pleasure of being a surrogate mother
Sarah Jarvis loved being pregnant and wanted to help families that wouldn't otherwise be able to have had a child on their own. So she became a surrogate... twice. But her expectations and those of the prospective parents didn't quite see eye-to-eye. She tells Piya about the complicated experience of sharing life.
'It really made me feel a little hopeless for society'
Sunny Fong tells his story of calling an ambulance to help a man in distress at a transit stop… and receiving a cold response from inconvenienced workers and travelers around him.
This episode originally aired on May 7, 2017