The Sunday Editionwith Michael Enright

The past century has been an often painful and bitter one for Kurds. They’ve been denied a homeland that was promised them. They’ve been massacred by Saddam Hussein. And now they’ve been abandoned by Western allies once and fallen under military attack yet again.

A few years, a man calling himself Brian Bilston scribbled a short poem and posted it on Twitter. He hadn’t thought of himself as a poet, but three books and almost 70,000 followers later, he’s become known as the unofficial poet laureate of Twitter and the Banksy of poetry. His poems are whimsical, serious, poignant, funny and, sometimes, visual, and he’s been called "the greatest English anti-hero of our time, with a black belt in procrastination."

It's been said that he read everything. And he seemed to remember everything he read. And he wrote about more of it than just about anyone. Harold Bloom — the most important and best-known literary critic of his time — died on Monday at the age of 89. We revisit Michael Enright’s 2005 interview with Professor Bloom — about literary greatness, mortality and the search for wisdom.

For the first time, Canadians who have been living abroad for more than five years are able to vote in the federal election for the first time. Our largest ex-pat community is in Hong Kong, home to more than 300,000 Canadians. Three Canadian citizens active in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement discuss their thoughts about the election and the role Canada could play in safeguarding democracy and the rights of Canadians abroad.

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

To crime novelist Elmore Leonard, their use is ‘a mortal sin.’ Graham Greene said they were ‘beastly.’ They have been called ‘the lazy tool of a weak mind.’ Drugs? Pornography? Vodka shots? None of the above. These and other illustrious writers were talking about adverbs and adjectives. Horror-meister Stephen King warned, ‘the adverb is not your friend. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.’ The critics have been joined by no less than Pope Francis.

The church and state officially are quarantined from each other in this country. But God, and what He or She would think of the issues, keeps creeping into our elections in debates about abortion, immigration and religious symbols among other things. Michael Enright discusses whether we can — and whether we should — keep religion out of our politics, with Trinity Western University professor Janet Epp Buckingham and author Michael Coren.

At the height of the Second World War, trapped inside a Singapore prison, Ethel Rogers Mulvany gathered fellow starving women to dream up imaginary feasts. The CBC's Alisa Siegel speaks with Ottawa historian Suzanne Evans about how the women's make-believe dishes became their tool for survival.

It’s not the biggest issue in this election, but the rhetoric around asylum-seekers and immigrants has often been heated and divisive. University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin, one of Canada’s foremost experts on migration law, will dissect the myths and misperceptions of immigration in Canada.

In the 2015 election, the Syrian refugee crisis was the focal point of debates about immigration. In 2019, irregular border crossings have become the focus. The Sunday Edition spoke to two Syrian-Canadians who will be voting in 2019 for the first time, and to two border town residents about what's happening in their communities.

A hundred years ago this past week, the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds met in an infamous World Series. Eight White Sox players conspired with gamblers to fix the Series and were later banished from the game for life. Jacob Pomrenke of the Society for American Baseball Research’s Black Sox Committee details how the villains, victims and tragic heroes (think Shoeless Joe Jackson) may not be who we think.

Michael found himself in a spot of bother seven years ago when he betrayed his ignorance of Cornish pasties — what they are, what’s inside them and how to pronounce them (they rhyme with “nasty,” not “tasty”). Indignant letters from expatriate Brits swiftly ensued. Dr. Andrew Pocock — then the British High Commissioner to Ottawa — set Michael straight in this rollicking interview from January 2012.

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

In light of the sentencing of James Sears, editor and publisher of a hateful publication, Michael Enright reflects upon freedom of the press in Canada and the roles of journalists globally.

John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons during one of the most volatile periods in British parliamentary history, is stepping down this month.

Politicians say they're committed to it, indigenous leaders and activists demand it, and Canadians hope for it. But what exactly do we all mean by reconciliation? And how will we know when — and if — we've achieved it? Michael’s guests are: Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society; Cheryl Ward, Executive Director of Indigenous Cultural Safety and Strategy with BC' Provincial Health Authority; and Cowboy Smithx, a filmmaker and founder of the Elk Shadows Performing Arts Clan and the Noirfoot School For Cinematic Art.

What can history tell us about a president who is utterly unprecedented? As Donald Trump flails and blusters his way toward possible impeachment, Beverly Gage — a professor of 20th Century American politics at Yale University — compares the ignoble end of Richard Nixon's presidency to Trump’s conduct and discusses whether history can help predict the fate of the Trump presidency.

Stéphane Larue had the least glamourous job at a restaurant: a dishwasher. But it gave him an inside look at the hard-living characters working in frenetic, stress-filled kitchens. He turned those experiences into a novel, The Dishwasher, that takes the reader into the demi-monde of restaurant kitchens. It became a sensation and a big award-winner in Quebec and has just been translated into English.