Content
Skip to Main ContentAccessibility Help
The Sunday Magazine

The Sunday Magazine for December 29, 2024

We break down the tech stories that defined 2024, Adam Aleksic explores what the words of the year reveal about us, Connie Chung looks back on her trailblazing broadcasting career, and novelist Richard Powers reflects on finding possibility in the threats we face.
CBC Radio ·
Piya Chattopadhyay is host of The Sunday Magazine. (CBC)

This week on The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay:

Big money, big tech: The new rules of the political playbook 

As tech giants end the year by cozying up to Donald Trump, and TikTok faces the possibility of demise – 2024's biggest tech stories expose growing power alliances and global rivals in our digital and geopolitical landscapes. Tech journalists Louise Matsakis, Paris Marx and Nitasha Tiku join Chattopadhyay to explore how the year's top tech developments are transforming relationships between Silicon Valley, elected officials and society. 

From 'polarization' to 'brain rot': What the words of 2024 reveal about us

Merriam-Webster picks "polarization," while Dictionary.com crowns "demure," and Oxford University Press taps "brain rot." Linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic, known as "Etymology Nerd" online, joins Chattopadhyay to break down what various outlets have chosen as their words of the year, and reflect on what they reveal about who we are in 2024.

Connie Chung is tackling her biggest story yet: Her own

For more than 30 years, Connie Chung was a mainstay on television screens, delivering the news to millions daily. As the second woman and first Asian-American to anchor a major nightly news program in the United States, she also helped blaze a trail for a generation of young women. Chung joins Chattopadhyay to talk about her memoir Connie, which recounts the challenges, misconceptions and memorable moments she's experienced along her journalism journey. 

In calamity, novelist Richard Powers finds possibility

With his epic Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 novel The Overstory, Richard Powers earned acclaim for his rumination on the connected lives of trees, and the threats they face. In his latest novel, Playground, he explores what humans can learn from the underwater world that can seem so alien to us here on land. Powers joins Chattopadhyay to discuss its themes of climate change, technological instability and the power of awe... and why he's trying to tell a more hopeful story about the existential threats facing us today.