The Sunday Magazine for January 5, 2025
This week on The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay:
What history can teach us about contending with Trump's tariff threat
With just weeks to go until Donald Trump's inauguration, the U.S. president-elect's tariff threat on Canadian exports continues to tax politicians and the public alike. Asa McKercher is the Research Chair in Canada-U.S. Relations at St. Francis Xavier University. He joins Chattopadhyay to contrast the strategies employed by recent prime ministers on the cross-border relationship, and explore how that history can help inform our approach amid ongoing upheaval in Ottawa.
Want to thrive in 2025? Oliver Burkeman says embrace imperfection
Despite any New Year's Resolutions you've made, 2025 won't likely be the year when you finally get on top of your to do lists and crush all your goals. And Oliver Burkeman says that's ok! The writer's books have been described as self-help books for people who hate self-help books. His latest, Meditations for Mortals, draws on wisdom from the Ancient Greeks, Carl Jung, Haitian proverbs, and beyond to make a case for taking a breath, acknowledging our limitations and embracing imperfection. He joins Chattopadhyay to help us set up a mindset for success (and inevitable failure) in the year ahead.
Malcolm Gladwell returns to The Tipping Point – this time, from a darker side
When Malcolm Gladwell released his debut book The Tipping Point in 2000, only three people showed up to his first publicity event. But it didn't take long for the Canadian journalist's exploration of social epidemics and their impacts to catch fire... and soon, reach its own tipping point in the zeitgeist. Nearly 25 years later, Gladwell has returned to his seminal work – this time, from a darker perspective. At a recent on-stage event hosted by the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, Chattopadhyay spoke with Gladwell about his latest book Revenge of the Tipping Point, in which he warns that the same tools we have used to make positive social changes can also be used to thwart them.