The Sunday Magazine for November 15, 2020
This week on The Sunday Magazine with host Piya Chattopadhyay:
MAID in Canadian prisons: In his latest annual report, Canada's prison ombudsman called for a temporary moratorium on all medically assisted deaths inside federal prisons, which he says breach the prison system's ethical and legal obligations. But Adelina Iftene, an expert on prison health law at Dalhousie University, believes the larger issue is why any inmate who qualifies for MAID is inside a prison to begin with. She tells Chattopadhyay that without access to compassionate release when they're terminally ill, a growing number of inmates might choose MAID simply as a way out.
READ: Compassionate release should be prioritized over MAID in Canadian prisons, says expert
Peter Mansbridge on extraordinary Canadians: Ask Peter Mansbridge who his favourite interview has been in his decades in journalism and he won't answer with famous figures like Margaret Thatcher or Pierre Trudeau... but instead, people who no one knows about. The veteran CBC broadcaster speaks with Chattopadhyay about his new book Extraordinary Canadians, written with fellow former CBC journalist Mark Bulgutch, and why it's important to him to surface stories of lesser-hailed people in medicine, engineering, sports and beyond.
The future of the U.S. with or without Trump at the helm: Since Joe Biden was declared U.S. President-elect, the Trump administration has refused to legitimize the election results, mounted legal challenges and declined to communicate with the Biden team. American historian and culture critic Ruth Ben-Ghiat has seen this behaviour before and she has a word for it: authoritarianism. She speaks with Chattopadhyay about her new book Strongmen and what the history of authoritarianism tells us about the future of the U.S., with or without Trump at the helm.
William Prince on the clashing comfort of gospel music: It's been a difficult, tumultuous year. And for Indigenous singer-songwriter William Prince, the only music that makes sense right now is gospel. It's the music he grew up singing with his father, a preacher. And now he's returning to it on his new record Gospel First Nation. He speaks with Chattopadhyay about gospel's ability to comfort us amid grief and provide hope for tomorrow, and why he believes there's still power in it despite the fact that Christianity and gospel were historically colonizing tools.
