Hour 1

Bradley Manning

Private Bradley Manning, the man who stands accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in May of 2010 and has been held in custody since then.

His supporters have complained that he's been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment while he awaits trial. Although he is allowed occasional visitors, he has not spoken with journalists. Much of what we know about Manning's methods and motivations came from the ex-hacker who turned him in to the FBI.

Earlier this month, the most detailed personal profile of Private Manning was published by New York Magazine. The piece was written by Steve Fishman and this morning, via Skype, he joins us from his office in New York.

Death of a Salesman

One of the most evocative speeches in English theatre, Linda Loman's plea for her husband in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."

It falls to Linda to voice the tragedy at the heart of Miller's play, the desperate need to be noticed amid the banalities of a shopworn life. In the end, it is only Willy's wife who really understands him. Which makes Death of a Salesman as much about the strained intimacies of Willy and Linda's marriage, as it is about Willy's personal demons. And it is gripping drama.

Last fall Joseph Ziegler played the part of Willy Loman in the Soulpepper production of Death of a Salesman in Toronto. Two weeks ago he won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for best performance by a male in a principal role for that portrayal.

During the play's run in November, Joseph Ziegler and Nancy Palk, who played Linda Loman and also happens to be married to Joe Ziegler, talked to Michael about their on-stage and real-life partnership.

Hour 2

Cornelia Oberlander

A few years ago Cornelia Oberlander was asked what is your motto.... your philosophy of life.

"Just keep going," she said. And that's what she has always done.

For 60 years she has worked to put her profession on the map. Cornelia Oberlander is a landscape architect. In fact, she has been called the grand dame of landscape architecture.

For most of her professional life, she has lived and worked in Vancouver, creating the outdoors that surrounds some of the great modern landmark buildings of the west coast. The Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Robson Square in the heart of Vancouver. Buildings that wouldn't be nearly as great as they are without the landscape that surrounds them.

She also designed the landscape that surrounds the magnificent new Canadian embassy in Berlin.

Last week, Cornelia Oberlander was given the highest international award in her profession in recognition of her lifetime achievements. She just came back from the ceremony at the International Federation of Landscape Architects World Congress in Zurich and she joined guest host Jim Brown from our studio in Vancouver.

Did My Mom Ever Run?

One Sunday morning last fall, two very fit middle-aged women were hard to spot in a sea of thousands itching for the gun to go off at the Goodlife Toronto International Marathon.

The first time the two runners faced the starting line together the world was very different. Just the idea of a woman in a marathon was considered radical, even dangerous.

Coaches said that women didn't have the strength or stamina to go the distance. Doctors warned of future child-bearing complications. Critics said it was unfeminine.

But on a cool Toronto morning in May 1967, Catherine Switzer was itching to race. She was a headstrong university student with something to prove. She would go on to become a running icon; an elite marathoner, a global advocate for women's running, and a driving force behind adding the women's marathon to the Olympics. That morning, she was fresh off a dramatic run in Boston.

Maureen Mancuso was 13. Shy, unassuming, and a long distance running prodigy. She had trained hard, and the longer she ran, the stronger she got. That morning, the Grade 8 student was aiming to run the marathon faster than any woman ever had.

On May the 6th, 1967, Catherine Switzer and Maureen Mancuso slipped in behind a huddle of men, the only women a field of thirty runners. It turned out to be a hugely important leg in a remarkable long-distance journey.

Here's the story in their voices. A repeat broadcast of the documentary, "Did My Mom Ever Run?"

Hour 3

Ian Tyson

The classic "Four Strong Winds" was recorded by, among others, Judy Collins, John Denver, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and the Kingston Trio - and, of course, Ian & Sylvia.

The song was born on a rainy fall afternoon in 1962, in a dingy New York flat where he'd camped out to try his hand at songwriting.

Ian Tyson was so inexperienced he says he wouldn't have known a metaphor from a prairie gopher....but he wrote the song while nursing a crush on a beautiful woman who'd bruised his heart...out of which came lyric magic.

"Four Strong Winds became Ian and Sylvia's best known, and best loved song.

Ian Tyson's been a songwriter for over half a century...and a cowboy for longer than that. Since putting his first song on paper he's indulged his second passion as a cowboy. It was a bug he caught early and has never lost.

His memoir, The Long Trail , My Life in the West came out last fall. Here is MIchael Enright's conversation with Ian Tyson.

Personal Essay

As they say, now for something completely different. Brought to by the mother of male teenagers.

Need we say more?

If Patty Smith wanted to give her essay a title, it could be...Hot Potato.