The Sunday Editionwith Michael Enright

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.

It's an urbanization trend that's taking off around the world. Take swaths of undeveloped land, add steel, concrete, technology, political capital and heaps of money and voila: Instant cities — ones that promise low environmental impacts and high quality of life. Sarah Moser of McGill University talks about this global phenomenon and how well it delivers on its promise.

We pay tribute to the great Canadian historian and public intellectual Desmond Morton, who died on September 4, by digging into The Sunday Edition vaults for his insights on an issue that's as relevant as ever in this political season: Promises, and what they're really worth — especially when it's politicians who are making them.

Meat, especially beef, has been getting a bad rap in recent years for the toll it takes on the planet and our health. Hence the soaring popularity of meatless burgers that still look, smell and taste like real meat. But Jim Thomas, a Co-Executive Director and Researcher with the ETC Group in Quebec, says we should think again about whether highly-processed meat substitutes are a real solution.

Listen to this week's episode of The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright.

As cool winds set in, we are constantly reminded of the inevitability of winter. Even though September signifies darkness, it is also a reminder that summer's warmth will re-emerge again.

Kashmir, Hong Kong, Iran, Brexit, U.S. politics, the rise of the xenophobic far right across Europe, not to mention the extreme weather unleashed by climate change: Lately, it's seemed as if the world is having a meltdown. British security and geopolitical expert Paul Rogers and renowned Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan have studied global affairs at their most turbulent in the past and present, and discuss the current state of geopolitical upheaval and Canada's place is in the world (dis)order that's unfolding now.

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 party in her documentary "The Forgotten Ones."

Brian Brett is a writer and self-proclaimed rural renegade. After years of battling illness, Brett was given the bad news that he has terminal cancer. In an essay entitled “If Your Doctor Said This Was Your Last Spring, What Would You Do?”, he explores how to die with a 'rage to live'.

Pope Francis named Czech-born Canadian Jesuit priest Michael Czerny a cardinal last weekend. We revisit Michael Enright's 2015 interview with Czerny about Laudato Si — Francis's encyclical on the environment, which Czerny played an instrumental role in drafting.

On Dec. 2, 1919, a wealthy theatre impresario went missing in Toronto. His last recorded action was to deposit a cheque for one million dollars and no one knew what had happened to middle-aged man. Writer Katie Daubs chronicles this perplexing mystery, which occurred at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Listen to this week's episode with guest host Connie Walker.

Connie Walker speaks with Ashley Bach, an Indigenous youth leader, Arisha Khan, a Rhodes Scholar, and Melanie Doucet, a PhD student in social work. All three also grew up in foster care and are now working to reform the system in Canada.

Feminist writer Rebecca Traister argues that women have been taught to hide their anger. But, she says, to create political change, they must bring it out in the open and use it as fuel for action.

At the beginning of the 20th century, being a train porter in Canada was the exclusive domain of black men who laboured long hours for miserable pay. Cecil Foster is a journalist and academic whose book, They Call Me George; The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada, chronicles the story of the "Pullmen" of the Canadian rail lines, and their fight for social justice.

In the old days, there would be no debate. Father's last name. Case closed. But now that many women are keeping their own names, why aren't they represented in the names of their children? Julia Pagel's documentary is called "The Tricky One".

Novelist Patrick deWitt's latest book, French Exit, is a tragedy of manners with an absurdist twist. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Giller Prize.

Listen to this week's episode with guest host Connie Walker.

Delhi-based journalist and author Nilanjana Roy talks about what life is like at 48 degrees Celsius and how difficult it is to get climate change on the national agenda.

In 1981, Andrew McCandless, 10, was bused from his white working-class community to an overwhelmingly black middle school, where he met Robert Jarrett. More than 30 years later, he honoured his mentor.