Latest

Join Piya Chattopadhyay as she launches The Sunday Magazine

Starting Sept. 13, Chattopadhyay will present a smart mix of long-form conversations that cut deep and mine the forces driving our society, politics and cultures today. The program will take time for deep exploration, but always make space for music, surprise, delight, and fun

The Sunday Edition for September 6 , 2020

Listen to this week's episode with guest-host Kevin Sylvester.

Latif Nasser on being 'the ambassador to the most childish part of your brain' in his new series

Mississauga, Ontario’s Latif Nasser has a PhD in the history of science and made his name as a science journalist with the groundbreaking and wildly popular podcast, RadioLab, and another podcast he hosts called The Other Latif — about a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who shares his name. He brings his infectious sense of wonder and energetic curiosity to his latest project: Connected, a documentary series on Netflix that explores the dizzying interconnectedness of things in our world.

A thank you dinner for the 'forgotten' migrant workers who pick Canada's food

Migrant farm workers from the Caribbean and Latin America toil in the blazing sun, but live largely in the shadows. Except when a businesswoman in Leamington, Ont., throws them a party — a feast full of the tastes and sounds of home. Alisa Siegel takes us to that 2019 party in her documentary "The Forgotten Ones."

In conversation with Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was a renowned and sometimes reviled journalist, essayist, polemicist, committed atheist and contrarian. He eviscerated dictators, fundamentalists, fanatics of all stripes, racists and charlatans. Mother Theresa, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II all felt the pointy end of his prose and rhetoric.

The Sunday Edition for August 30, 2020

Listen to this week's episode with guest-host Kevin Sylvester.

Searching for another Earth while putting down roots on this one

Exploring the galaxy for exoplanets that have the ability to support life is the least complicated part of Sara Seager's life. The Canadian astrophysicist and MIT planetary scientist explores her complicated childhood, the untimely death of her husband and raising two young boys, while searching the stars in her new memoir The Smallest Lights in the Universe.

'The fiddle is laughing': How this teen and 83-year-old keep Ti-Jean Carignan's music alive

Maxim Bergeron is a teen violin virtuoso from Berlin. Gilles Losier is an 83-year-old Acadian pianist from New Brunswick. The bond between them was forged by the music of legendary Quebec musician Ti-Jean Carignan.

The Sunday Edition for August 23, 2020

Listen to this week's episode with guest-host Kevin Sylvester.

Major League Baseball isn't doing enough to combat systemic racism says Black sports columnist Shakeia Taylor

From the batting cage to the pitcher's mound, young Black baseball prospects face racist stereotypes and recruiters throughout their training and scouting. Baseball columnist Shakeia Taylor believes that even though the MLB puts on a good show of acting as though it cares about racism, the league is not doing nearly enough to change racist attitudes and provide Black players with equal opportunities.

We guard more secrets about salaries than about sex, and employers want to keep it that way

Those in a hiring position know what everyone earns, but employees are in the dark. That’s because asking people how much money they make is a cultural taboo. Melanie Simms, a professor of work and employment at the University of Glasgow, believes it would be not only helpful, but subversive, if we were transparent about our salaries.

Writer Joan Didion says the only way she can deal with grief is to write through it (reprise)

Novelist, screenwriter, playwright and journalist Joan Didion experienced two horrific losses in less than two years: the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne, then the death of her daughter Quintana. Michael Enright spoke with her after the release of her book Blue Nights, a rumination on motherhood, frailty, ageing and loss.

The Sunday Edition for August 16, 2020

Listen to this week's episode with guest-host Laurie Brown.

How our relationships with work, others, and ourselves are inextricably linked

In his book, The Three Marriages, poet, philosopher and organizational expert David Whyte argues that it’s critical to nurture all three of these relationships and to recognize how much they affect each other. It’s a reality that has come into clearer focus with the pandemic, as so many of us are negotiating the blurring of work and home.

Political junkies shouldn't mourn loss of U.S. party conventions: David Shribman

The next two weeks were set to fill our television screens with the political spectacles of both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, but the pandemic put an end to those plans. The party faithful and much of the media may be disappointed, but Pulitzer Prize-winning political journalist David Shribman has been to a dozen conventions and believes that the centuries-old tradition is well past its expiry date.

Renée Fleming's journey from wallflower to one of the world's most celebrated sopranos

Aside from commanding the world’s great opera houses, Renée Fleming sang Amazing Grace at Ground Zero in New York and You'll Never Walk Alone at the 2009 Inauguration Concert for former U.S. President Barack Obama.

The Sunday Edition for August 9, 2020

Listen to this week's episode with guest-host Laurie Brown.

How the pandemic and the movement for racial justice are re-shaping the music industry

It's a very different world now for musicians — one without live performances and in the midst of a reckoning with racism and inequality. It’s leading many artists to think that a repertoire of relationship songs just doesn’t cut it anymore.

'Part of living is being willing to bear other people's pain': Aislinn Hunter on witnessing and grief

Aislinn Hunter’s new novel The Certainties, entwines the fates of two very different refugees and explores what it means to bear witness. Deeply informed by her own life, Hunter blends history and fiction in a story where past and present calamities collide.
The Sunday Edition

'Born strange,' and a remarkable 25-year friendship with a puckish parrot

Tuco is a mischievous, multi-talented African grey parrot with a diabolical sense of humour, who served as a personal guru for writer Brian Brett during their 25-year relationship. Brett recently won a BC Book Prize for his memoir, Tuco: The Parrot, the Others and a Scattershot World.

The Sunday Edition for August 2, 2020

Listen to this week's episode with guest-host Elamin Abdelmahmoud.

Noor Naga on moral decisions, millennial Muslims and modern love

Noor Naga chats with Elamin Abdelmahmoud about longing, loneliness, faith, transgression, writing contradictory characters, and the role of technology in modern love. She is the winner of the 2017 Bronwen Wallace Award and the 2019 RBC-PEN Canada Emerging Writers Award.

Senator Murray Sinclair says dismantling systemic racism will be a long fight

One of Canada's most respected Indigenous rights advocates has faced many setbacks over his decades-long career, fighting for justice for Indigenous peoples. As the country faces calls to defund the RCMP, he warns that gaining justice for Indigenous people will be a long, drawn-out process.

Naomi Klein says this changes everything

Although the pandemic has caused more than 600,000 deaths worldwide and has disrupted life around the world, Mother Nature has breathed a giant sigh of relief. It is the kind of relief author and activist Naomi Klein called for in her bestselling book This Changes Everything. We present a reprise of her conversation with Michael Enright, from the fall of 2014.

The Sunday Edition for July 26, 2020

Listen to this week's episode with guest-host Elamin Abdelmahmoud.

now