The Sunday Editionwith Michael Enright

Mikhail Rykov is a computer engineer who grew up in the Soviet Union, playing banned cassettes and his guitar. After the Soviet Union collapsed, he made his way to Canada and eventually to Jerry Golland's ESL classroom in Ottawa. The two men found a "secret chord" that still connects them. David Gutnick's documentary is called "All of Us Are Sputniks.”

The playwright and actor shares how he began writing and the influences on his work.

Seventeen years after the U.S.-led invasion that ended Saddam Hussein's regime, peace, prosperity, stability or good government still have yet to come to the Iraqi people. And now they find themselves in the middle of the US-Iran conflict. Yanar Mohammed is an Iraqi-Canadian feminist who was in the thick of anti-government protests that filled Baghdad's streets last year, and she knows well the fears, frustrations and hopes of Iraqis as they nervously await Iran's and the U.S.'s next moves.

Listen to this week's episode with host Michael Enright.

Lawyer Amanda Ghahremani talks about the federal government’s obligations to Iranian-Canadians who lost loved ones, and the role it can and should play in investigating the plane crash. She specializes in international criminal law, access to justice and redress for survivors of atrocity crimes, and makes the case for reinstating diplomatic relations with Iran.

Ervand Abrahamian, perhaps the pre-eminent historian of modern Iran, argues that the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani has strengthened the hand of Iran’s theocratic government. He says the fallout from the assassination will include more anti-Western hardliners and right-wing populists being elected in Iran’s upcoming elections.

For several days, it looked like Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani had the effect of quelling anti-government sentiment inside Iran. But now that Iranian authorities have admitted that their own military shot down an airliner and killed dozens of their own people, all that has changed, according to Nader Hashemi, an Iranian-Canadian political scientist and the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

In a special one-hour broadcast on the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, The Sunday Edition explores why Iranians rose up against the shah in 1979, and what became of their dreams for a freer, democratic nation under Ayatollah Khomeini.

The food industry is excited over new gene-edited products altered to have longer shelf life or produce less fat. But it will have to avoid the pitfalls of GMO foods, the last foray into genetic engineering, which were a financial success, but a public relations disaster. Ira Basen's documentary is called The Splice of Life.

Publishers are struggling to meet the burgeoning demand for audiobooks of Canadian titles. We speak with Ann Jansen, who left CBC Radio in 2017 to become the director of audiobook production at Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the country. And Canadian actors Braden Wright and Tess Degenstein share the challenges and joys of audiobook narration.

John Crosbie, who died on Friday, was one of the most prominent and trusted — and certainly most colourful — cabinet members of Brian Mulroney's governments and served as the Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland from 2008 to 2013. We’ll pay tribute with excerpts from Michael’s 1997 interview with him.

Listen to this week's episode with host Michael Enright.

"The American researcher Paul Zak has spent a career studying how the brain reacts to certain chemical releases. He discovered that the neurochemical oxytocin when delivered and synthesized by the brain makes us more compassionate, more generous and more sensitive to the needs of others. He calls it our 'moral molecule.' It also makes us react by crying."

The U.S. assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani has the entire region on edge, while the rhetoric on all sides becomes more bellicose. British security expert Paul Rogers discusses the escalating conflict and its broader security and geopolitical implications.

Michael emcees another edition of our hilarious game of word play, where three panelists invent credible-sounding definitions for obscure words from the dictionary.

An evolutionary biologist, a psychologist, a city planner and authors and journalists talk about how walking isn't just good for our bodies, it's good for our souls. It connects us to our surroundings, our humanity and to each other.

Listen to this week's episode with host Michael Enright.

It's hard to think of a more tumultuous or disorienting decade than the 2010s — the forces of climate change, migration, technology, social media, in addition to political turbulence made the world a very different place in 2019 than it was in 2010. On the final Sunday of the 2010s, in a special three-hour program, we will take the measure of the past ten years and how they have changed us and the world.

For the last ten years, the very foundations of the current political order seem to have been tested and found wanting. We watched the old consensus of liberal democracy crumble while populist movements gained a foothold. we saw some of the largest progressive protests and social movements in years and, at the same time, saw some of the most right-wing governments in recent memory elected. Our discussion of the 2010s will begin with two observers of the turbulent and contradictory political currents that shaped the decade: Jennifer Welsh, a professor and the Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University. And Jeet Heer, National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation magazine.

McGill University law professor François Crépeau served as the UN's Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants from 2011-2017. Crépeau looks back on a decade of mass migration and its political and social repercussions, and he outlines a new vision for the decades to come.

The past ten years have brought profound shifts in the earth's climate, in the nature of environmental activism and in the scientific community. Katharine Hayhoe is the director of the Climate Science Center and a professor of political science at Texas Tech University. The renowned Canadian climate scientist is also the winner of the UN's highest environmental honour, the Champions of the Earth Award.