The Sunday Magazine

The Sunday Edition for July 21, 2019

Listen to this week's episode with guest host Peter Armstrong.
(Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images; Eric Tanner; Penguin Random House; Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA-EFE)

The Sunday Edition for July 21, 2019 with guest-host Peter Armstrong:

How the internet turned from a tool for democracy to a threat against it:  The early promise of the internet was that it would empower citizens, but it has now become a threat to democracy. What went wrong? And can it be reclaimed again for the democratic good? Peter Armstrong speaks to Astra Taylor, Pia Manici and Elamin Abdelmahmoud. 

The late Howard Engel remained a prolific writer, even when he could no longer read: Former CBC colleague and the author of the Benny Cooperman series of crime novels died this week. In 2005, Howard Engel spoke with Michael about how he wrote another book after a stroke left him able to write, but unable to read. 

Novelist Taffy Brodesser-Akner on marriage, divorce and how we're all unreliable narrators: In Brodesser-Akner's new novel, Fleishman Is in Trouble, middle-aged Toby Fleishman ends his 14-year marriage and expects to enter a new era of freedom. Then his ex-wife drops their kids off and disappears, and he's forced to reconsider the story he told about their marriage. 

Boris Johnson, who promoted Brexit, may have to walk it to the finish line: On July 22, we will know whether the voluble, brash British MP and former London mayor is the new head of the Conservative Party and the new prime minister. Michael Enright spoke with Boris Johnson in 2012, about his memoir Johnson's Life of London.

Aren't you too old for that? The late life plunge into a PhD: Universities across the country are reporting an uptick in the number of older students who come to PhD programs. Meet atruck driver who's studying the history of tea smuggling, an Indigenous activist who turned to the law, a bartender researching linguistics, and a legal guy consumed with 14th century Italian art. Donya Ziaee's documentary is called "A Life I Really Wanted."

Think walking 10,000 steps every day will keep you fit and healthy? Think again: Fitbit wearers around the world are pounding the pavement in the fervent belief that the magic number 10,000 will protect them from the ills of too much sitting. Dr. Catrine Tudor-Locke begs to differ.