The Sunday Edition for March 15, 2020
Listen to this week's episode with host Michael Enright:
The silent Spring of COVID-19 — Michael's essay: "Closure is a commanding word. Schools in this country are closing. The cities, towns and churches of Italy are closed. In fact the entire country is closed. Arenas, baseball parks, community centres — all closed. Broadway is dark. We are facing a silent spring. One that none of us has seen before."
Ethics, the law and a public health emergency: Canada is contending with a response of unprecedented scale to a public health emergency, and Canadians face enormous disruption to their lives. As events evolve at dizzying speed, Michael Enright speaks with Colleen Flood — one of Canada's leading experts on public health policy and a Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa — about the ethical, legal and civil liberties dimensions of some of the drastic measures to slow the spread of COVID-19.
How Israel's politics and peace process became so stalled: Yet again, neither Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, nor Blue and White leader Benny Gantz have been able to fashion a coalition government after the third general election within a year. Author Yossi Klein Halevi, one of the country's wisest and most even-handed political analysts, discusses Israel's protracted political gridlock, and the uncertain future of the peace process and two-state solution, as Netanyahu's trial on corruption charges looms next week.
Think again: how much water do you really need to drink? We've all heard the message countless times: You should drink eight glasses of water a day. These days, drinking lots of water is touted as a near-miraculous fountain of wellness — promising everything from clearer skin to better weight control. Dr. William Clark, a kidney specialist at Western University, casts a critical eye on the eight-glasses-a-day formula and where it came from in the first place.
Reprise: 'We must go on living': Anton Chekhov for the 21st century: In times of unease and uncertainty — when we all feel like we're trying to navigate turbulent, uncharted waters — it can be a great comfort to read the great writers of the past. After all, they've already imagined and written about just about everything humans have ever confronted. Now, as the world is dealing with rapidly evolving disruption and panic, we revisit one of the most popular literary specials in 20 years of The Sunday Edition: "We Must Go On Living: Anton Chekhov for the 21st Century."