The Sunday Magazinewith Piya Chattopadhyay

Lorian Hardcastle says it's time to start taking a harder look at this country's chief medical officers of health. They are imbued with powers, but politics seem to be keeping them on the sidelines more often than not. The associate professor of health law and policy at the University of Calgary weighs in on whether the country is approaching a tipping point when it comes to who should run the pandemic response.

Globally-renowned soil scientist Rattan Lal joins Piya to discuss his mission to make soil (don't call it dirt!) top of mind in the fight to save the planet and its inhabitants. For Lal, soil is a living thing and it deserves the same rights and protections extended to animals and other life forms. Lal will take us through his 50-year career, which has spanned four continents, and tell us what makes soil so special, what role it can play in combatting climate change, what needs to happen to protect it, and how to balance all the demands we put on the ground beneath our feet.

The COVID-19 pandemic is turning everyday life into an exercise in constant risk assessment. Philosophy professor Mark Kingwell says it’s also showing us just how unevenly risk is distributed in our society. He speaks with Piya about what this time is showing us about the changing nature of risk, and why we need to reckon with it to build a truly just world.

Dr. Jillian Horton's medical career started in the midst of the SARS epidemic. Now, 17 years later, she’s ringing the alarm about the toll the COVID-19 pandemic is taking on doctors who were already putting their burnout on the back burner.

Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections, speaks with Piya about how the way we think about truth has shifted, the complexities of correcting the historical record and what it means to apologize or make amends for wrongdoing.

Are we in the midst of a "psychedelic renaissance"? University of Saskatchewan’s Erika Dyck shares the homegrown history of psychedelics research and why these drugs are seeing a resurgence today.

Piya Chattopadhyay speaks with Dr. Jillian Horton, Erika Dyck, Allan Bartley and Danielle Evans.

Piya Chattopadhyay speaks with Adelina Iftene, Peter Mansbridge, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and William Prince.

In his latest report, Canada’s prison ombudsman Ivan Zinger called for a temporary moratorium on medically assisted deaths inside prisons, which he says breach the prison system's ethical and legal obligations. But Adelina Iftene, an expert on prison health law, believes the larger issue is why any inmate who qualifies for MAID is inside a prison to begin with.

The veteran CBC broadcaster speaks with Piya Chattopadhyay about his new book Extraordinary Canadians, written with fellow former CBC journalist Mark Bulgutch, and why it's important to him to surface stories of lesser-hailed people in medicine, engineering, sports and beyond.

Since Joe Biden was declared U.S. President-elect, the Trump administration has refused to legitimize the election results, mounted legal challenges and declined to communicate with the Biden team. American historian and culture critic Ruth Ben-Ghiat has seen this behaviour before and she has a word for it: authoritarianism. She speaks with Piya Chattopadhyay about her new book Strongmen and what the history of authoritarianism tells us about the future of the U.S., with or without Trump at the helm.

The Indigenous singer-songwriter speaks with Piya Chattopadhyay about gospel's ability to comfort us amid grief and provide hope for tomorrow, and why he believes there's still power in it despite the fact that Christianity and gospel were historically colonizing tools.

Piya Chattopadhyay looks at division in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, and speaks with Saadia Sediqzadah and Harold McGee

The 2020 United States presidential election sent at least one clear message: Americans are deeply divided. To better understand the discord — and how to overcome it — Piya Chattopadhyay speaks with three people who've studied voters and division.

Dr. Saadia Sediqzadah, a psychiatrist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, works primarily with patients who experience psychosis. Her work today is informed by her efforts to support a beloved family member with schizophrenia. She shares how her family’s experience shapes her approach to building trust with her patients and her position on the role of police in mental health calls.

Piya Chattopadhyay speaks with Robert Reich, Chilly Gonzales and Michael Ungar

Michael Ungar, director of Dalhousie University's Resilience Research Centre, speaks with Piya Chattopadhyay about his research on the nature of resilience during the pandemic, and how it plays out differently depending on your community and generation.

Following last week's hour-long exploration of hope, we hear from listener Sally Armour Wotton about a storytelling project she spearheaded during the pandemic in an effort to bring comfort and hope to people in long term care homes and others living in isolation.

Piya Chattopadhyay speaks with Maria Hinojosa, Yuval Noah Harari and Katie Stockdale, and takes a closer look at the power and perils of hope.