Today, from our Centrepoint series, a documentary about the future of medicare in Canada. Centrepoint aired weekly on the program Sunday Morning in the 1990s, and looked at all sorts of social issues both in Canada and abroad. On this occasion, in February 1991, it was a look at medicare on its 20th anniversary.

Close your eyes.   Listen.   What do you hear?   If you're in your car, like the motor.  Traffic.  If you're inside, the hum of the modern home - the refrigerator, perhaps a dishwasher, a TV in another room.  We don't think about the sounds around us very much.  Nor do we think about how they shape and reflect who we are.   But of course they do.  Now imagine if you lived four centuries ago.  What would you hear?  Did people even listen the same way back then? 
Radio producer Chris Brookes tries to answer that question with today's documentary.  He takes our modern ears on a sound-rich journey through the past.   Our destination:  the acoustic world of Elizabethan England.   This program was originally broadcast on CBC Radio's Ideas.  It was the winner of the 2009 Prix Marulic and the "Best of Festival" Grand Award at the 2009 International Radio Festival of New York.