The Sunday Edition for May 3, 2020
Listen to this week's episode with host Michael Enright:
A COVID-19 confinement chronicle: week seven — Michael's essay: "The largest banks in the U.S. gave special treatment to their richest clients applying for federal aid. Everything is first class, while the small business owners applying for aid were stuck in steerage. I think that's called socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest."
Grieving for the dead and caring for those left behind during the pandemic: COVID-19 is not only changing how we live, it has also fundamentally changed how we die — and how we act in the face of death. We're now isolated in mourning, unable to gather for rituals to mark the passing of our loved ones. Michael Enright speaks to Thomas Lynch, who has long ruminated over dying, bereavement and the importance of funeral rites to honour the dead and the living — both as a small-town funeral director and as an award-winning poet and essayist. His latest book is The Depositions: New and Selected Essays on Being and Ceasing to Be.
Living with anxiety and panic — before the pandemic: In the age of the coronavirus, we think of anxiety, fear and panic as almost global emotions. COVID-19 has taken an awful toll on life and health, and it has also messed with the psyches of millions if not billions of people, all over the world. But long before the current crisis, people had panic attacks, often without an obvious cause. Our own Pete Morey was one of them. His essay is called The Wave.
Managing a public health emergency and moving beyond left, right and centre: It doesn't matter where you are on the political spectrum — since the pandemic hit, everyone seems to be in favour of big government. We want a strong and resilient public health care system, of course. And now, millions of Canadians are effectively on the government payroll. Henry Mintzberg, the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University, is one of this country's most provocative thinkers about management and the balance between the public and the private sector.
Delivering a better deal for restaurants and food couriers: In a way, there couldn't be a better time to launch a restaurant delivery service that works through an app on your smartphone. Of course, there are lots of them already. And with restaurant dining off-limits during the pandemic, they're doing a booming business. But Radish is a new Montreal venture that wants to upend the business model of the giants in the field — it's a co-op. Amanda Klang's documentary is A New Entrée.
A mother's story of mourning in isolation: The news has been full of heartrending stories of people who couldn't be there to comfort a loved one dying of COVID-19 — people unable to grieve in the physical presence of family and friends to mourn the victims of the gunman's rampage through Nova Scotia. And other epidemics continue apace in these times, like the opioid epidemic. Mary Fairhurst Breen knows this all too well. Her essay is called Grievous Injuries.
Calls are down to women's shelters in the pandemic, and it's not good news: Calls are down to women's shelters in the pandemic, and it's not good news: Fewer women are escaping from domestic violence, but shelter directors believe they likely are facing more abuse during this stressful time. Stephanie Taylor is the executive director of Regina Transition House — a safe harbour for women in the province with the highest per capita rate of domestic violence in Canada.
Some people don't know what they don't know (reprise): It's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect — ignorant, incompetent people being overconfident in their expertise. When social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger first wrote about it in 1999, it wasn't taken seriously. Now it's seen as a phenomenon that is having a very real impact on world events, from the 2008 financial crisis to the election of Donald Trump. And Dunning himself sees it in action now with the number of pandemic experts out there without medical training. We'll replay our interview with Dunning from February, 2019.
Pandemic reading, Part 3: Since the pandemic hit our shores in earnest, and Canadians have been hunkering down in various states of isolation — we've been asking lovers of literature what books they're turning to in this unsettling moment, and why. This week: reflections from two Canadian writers — Randy Boyagoda and Lorna Crozier.
Music this week by: Georg Friedrich Handel, John Stetch, The Pixies, Ahmad Jamal, Chet Baker, The Washington Saxophone Quartet, Fanny Mendelssohn, Maurice Ravel, Ólafur Arnalds, Anagnoson & Kinton, Jerry Orbach and Hank Mobley.
