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The AIH Transcript for October 31, 2019

Hosts: Megan Williams and Karen Gordon

Prologue

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Hello. I'm Megan Williams, sitting in for Carol Off.

KAREN GORDON: Good evening. I'm Karen Gordon. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

KG: Tonight...

MW: For oil intents and purposes. The Canadian oil-patch giant Encana says it's not moving its HQ to the US because of politics -- but the company's founder says Justin Trudeau is partly to blame.

KG: Instead of "go team" -- the team's going. The website Deadspin covers more than box scores -- so when the new management ordered riders to stick to sports, they told the management to stick it.

MW: Follow the misleader. Facebook shuts down three networks that were interfering in African politics -- and our guest says they were clearly cooked up by a Russian oligarch known as "Putin's chef."

KG: Splatter-day night fever. An engineering professor shares his findings on the physics of Jackson Pollock's technique -- and hopes his work paints an appealing picture of the science.

MW: Haunter-gatherer. A journalist visits the most haunted town in Britain and finds something scarier than phantoms: grumpy locals who are fed up with people asking about the stupid ghosts.

KG: And it's like taking candy from a baby. And giving it to the baby the next day. In the face of nasty weather, Montreal postpones Halloween till tomorrow -- and one local woman regrets suggesting the rain check. As It Happens. The Thursday Edition. Radio that's usually a big fan of costume drama.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: How researchers linked 'Putin's chef' to Facebook pages meddling in African politics

Encana leaves

Guests: Gwyn Morgan

KG: Encana was a Canadian giant. The oil and gas company's name was short for Energy Canada -- and its roots go back to the early days of the country. But today Encana announced that it will be changing its name to Ovintiv -- and moving its headquarters to the United States. Encana's CEO says the move has nothing to do with Canadian politics. But Gwyn Morgan isn't so sure. Mr. Morgan is the founder of Encana. We reached him in Tel Aviv.

MW: Mr. Morgan after all the years you spent at Encana how does it feel for you to hear they're moving to the United States?

GWYN MORGAN: Well, I guess you start with your personal feelings. As you said, I spent 30 years doing this. And my motivation for building the company to where it got to especially when it was a big merger with the Pan Canadian group was because there were a lot of companies in Canada being taken over by foreign investors and foreign companies, especially from the United States. And so I felt maybe we can build a company that's the biggest, strongest oil and gas company headquartered in Canada. Which we did. And therefore, we have no chance, really no chance of being taken over. But what I didn't, of course, anticipate is that through government policy that actually debilitated the industry, it would find it necessary to kind of export itself, if I could put it that way. In other words, rather than somebody else taking over the company and moving the headquarters, it did it by itself. And that's because, you know, it felt it had no choice with the business climate here in Canada for that industry.

MW: What kind of blow is this for the Canadian oil patch?

GM: Well, you know, they had so many blows. Over the last few years they've had so many blows. I think they understandably feel universally pretty much throughout -- not the oil patch -- but most Albertans generally (feel) that they've had a government, central government, that is against their very reason for being. So this is unfortunately another big kind of blow that they're enduring. And it's heartbreaking.

MW: Encana's CEO Doug Suttles was asked this morning whether the decision had anything to do with the current political climate. And he said, quote, "The answer is unequivocally no." He says that this is about opening the door to US investors. Why don't you believe him?

GM: Well, I guess because I built the company from scratch to a 60-billion dollar market value company with shareholders around the world, including in the United States. And you know the reality is that we never had any problem at all accessing capital. But that was because there was a really positive business climate in Canada and because we were a successful company with a lot of opportunity and growth. And I'm not going to criticize Doug because I know what he has to do. He has to be kind of correct about -- we still have an operation in Canada he can't come out and overtly say exactly what the reality is. But the reality is that the business climate has forced -- in Canada over the last few years -- to build assets in the US, reduce assets in Canada with sales in Canada purchases in the US, and move people. And of the capital program -- we had at one time like a 3-4 billion dollar a year program in Canada. Every year. It has moved south because if you can get the product on stream and if you're dealing with what you believe is a hostile policy climate in a country, you have no choice but to do that. So I'm not going to criticize him for using his rationale, but I don't believe it.

MW: Conservative leaders made a lot of promises to the oil and gas industry. But Justin Trudeau has the Trans Mountain pipeline under construction. Isn't that going to help raise the price of Canadian exports and protect the industry in someway?

GM: It's a small thing, you know. It's important but it's small. And who knows when it's good actually be on stream. But the fact is that the combination of the business climate, of all the actions of the government by killing our three other pipelines some of which would have been on stream and one of which would have actually taken oil, to displace that [inaudible] coming up to St. Lawrence. So when you look at that you say okay this is a country that is basically negative about that industry. And so if I'm an investor and for a large company like Encana, one of the first criteria that an investor look at the business climate and that has to do with the political climate as well. And if you develop a reputation as a country and as a government for being negative to a given business, investors simply are not going to invest. So Doug Suttles is right in the sense that he has to move the domicile to get access, better access, to the investors. But it's not because, you know, somehow or other there's more investors down there than up here. It's all because of the investment climate.

MW: Well could it also be because it's cheaper to produce a barrel of oil there than it is in Alberta?

GM: It doesn't do a whole lot of good to be cheaper if you can't move it. Alberta has a very efficient operation. In fact, Alberta can be totally competitive on a production basis and profitable with the United States. That's for sure. But it's all the business climate. We're talking about investors. When I was running the company, I would go around the world talking to people in Singapore and Asia and had investors in the UK and in France and Switzerland and all around the world. It was just one of my jobs. And, of course, the United States. And first of all, they were interested in you know what your plan was, how you're going to build the company, and how you're going to be competitive. We had no problem with that. And also Canada at the time was thought of as being a really safe, secure, and solid place to invest. It's the second part that's disappeared, not the first part.

MW: Now when you link the business climate -- what you call the hostile business climate to the Liberal government. And yet 65 percent of Canadians voted either for parties committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels or more specifically for parties investing in alternative energies. Is it not the government's responsibility to reflect the priorities of the majority of Canadians?

GM: Well, it depends on what you tell them. I mean the reality is that fossil fuels are going to continue to increase in use in the world. So all Canada's doing by destroying its own industry is giving those production barrels and that opportunity to countries that are quite frankly not nearly as -- they don't have, both, the ethical system and they don't have the human rights system and they don't have even the production efficiencies of Canada.

MW: Okay. Mr. Morgan we're going to have to leave it there. Thanks very much for speaking with me.

GM: Okay. You're welcome.

KG: Gwyn Morgan was the founder of Encana. Today, the company announced that it's changing its name and moving its headquarters from Calgary to the United States. We reached Mr. Morgan in Tel Aviv.

[Music]

Katie Hill

KG: Katie Hill is leaving Congress. But she's not going quietly. Today, the first term Democrat from California gave her final speech in which she lashed out at those she says launched a smear campaign against her leading to her resignation. Ms. Hill recently stepped down in the face of an ethics probe into an alleged sexual relationship with a congressional aide. Which she denies. She has, however, apologized for a relationship with another person, a campaign staffer. Her resignation comes as she's going through an ugly divorce and has been dealing with the publication of explicit photographs. And her final remarks came shortly after she voted to formalize the next steps of the impeachment investigation into US President Donald Trump.

SOUNDCLIP

KATIE HILL: I am leaving now because of a double standard. I am leaving because I no longer want to be used as a bargaining chip. I'm leaving because I didn't want to be pedaled by papers and blogs and websites used by shameless operatives for the dirtiest gutter politics that I've ever seen -- and the right-wing media to drive clicks and expand their audience by distributing intimate photos of me taken without my knowledge, let alone my consent, for the sexual entertainment of millions. I'm leaving because of a misogynistic culture that gleefully consumed my naked pictures, capitalized on my sexuality, and enabled my abusive ex to continue that abuse this time with the entire country watching. I am leaving because of the thousands of vile threatening emails, calls, and texts that made me fear for my life and the lives of the people that I care about. Today is the first time I've left my apartment since the photos taken without my consent were released. And I'm scared. I'm leaving because for the sake of my community, my staff, my family and myself, I can't allow this to continue. Because I've been told that people were angry when I stood strong after the first article was posted and that they had hundreds more photos and text messages that they would release bit by bit until they broke me down to nothing. Well, they used my faults and my past to distract from the things that matter most. I'm leaving because there is only one investigation that deserves the attention of this country. And that's the one that we voted on today. Today, I ask you all to stand with me and commit to creating a future where this no longer happens to women and girls. Yes. I'm stepping down. But I refuse to let this experience scare off other women who dare to take risks, who dare to step into this light, who dare to be powerful. It might feel like they won in the short term, but they can't in the long term. We cannot let them. The way to overcome this setback is for women to keep showing up, to keep running for office, to keep stepping up as leaders, because the more we show up the less power they have. I'm leaving. But we have men who have been credibly accused of intentional acts of sexual violence and remain in boardrooms, on the Supreme Court, in this very body, and worst of all in the Oval Office. So the fight goes on to create the change that every woman and girl in this country deserves.

KG: Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill today in Washington making her final speech before stepping down.

[Music]

Disinformation campaign

Guest: Shelby Grossman

KG: His nickname is "Putin's chef." Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prighozin started his career as a hotdog vendor. He eventually wound up doing the catering for the Kremlin. He became a billionaire businessman who maintains close ties to Vladimir Putin. And he may be most notorious for funding and overseeing the Internet Research Agency -- the Russian operation that medaled in the 2016 US election campaign. Now, researchers say he's also behind a vast online effort to meddle in the politics of eight different African countries. This week, Facebook announced it had shut down three networks of accounts it says are associated with Mr. Prighonzin. Shelby Grossman is a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which helped uncover the online influence campaign. We reached her in Stanford, California.

MW: Ms. Grossman how vast was this online influence campaign that you uncovered?

SHELBY GROSSMAN: My team at the Stanford Internet Observatory uncovered one set of the operation which was an operation that was targeting Libya and that included 12 Facebook pages. But Facebook had previously already been investigating other pages tied to Yevgeny Prighozin. And the operation in its entirety included dozens of pages. And we analyzed 73 of them. The operation targeted Libya, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Central African Republic.

MW: So how did that campaign compare to say what you saw in the United States --those efforts to meddle in the US campaign in 2016?

SG: So in some respects, they're similar and in some respects the strategies are different. So some of the strategies that we saw being used in the operation against Africa included not just Facebook pages, but also the creation of new websites in Sudan that were employing actual Sudanese reporters. They created telegram groups. There was a WhatsApp group. There was actually a contest on one of the Mozambique pages. There were Facebook live videos. And like what we saw the Internet Research Agency doing in the US in 2016, we also saw the creation of seemingly original country specific memes. But I do think one thing that's important to note and we saw this happening in the US as well, I think sometimes we have this idea in our heads of social media users uncritically just absorbing this information and what we saw happening in a lot of these pages were Facebook users actually calling out stories as being untrue.

MW: That's interesting. So what were some of the messages that were being disseminated through these networks?

SG: So it really varied across countries. The 12 Libya pages included two pages that are best conceptualized as Gaddafi nostalgia pages. So these were pages that tried to remind ordinary Libyans about how great things were under Gaddafi. And then every once in a while, they would throw in posts that were supportive of one of Gaddafi's surviving sons, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who's considered someone who might run for president one day. So that's an example of some pages that weren't necessarily fake news, but we're hyper partisan and existed to support a particular individual. And then there were also pages that did share fake news and existed around a specific election. So the Mozambique pages were created just last month and they existed to bolster the ruling party, which won elections two weeks ago.

MW: Were the influence campaigns always necessarily aligned with the same politician or political side of the equation? Or did they did they move around and or switch sometimes?

SG: Not necessarily. So some of the pages were clearly aligned with Russian-state interests. For example, the Libya pages. But then there were pages like the Sudan pages where they were very confusing and it was hard to figure out really what the agenda was. And then there were pages that seemed to actually go against Russian-state interests. So it seems possible that in some of these instances, Prighozin-linked entities were maybe working on behalf of the Russian government and in others maybe they were working on behalf of Prighozin's commercial mining interests in Africa. So it was probably a mix of both.

MW: Right. And how did you actually manage to link all of this to Prighozin?

SG: There were two strategies. So for the set of the Libya pages, the Dossier Center shared with us a leaked internal Wagner Group document. The Wagner Group is a company linked to Prighozin. And in that document, Wagner employees were boasting about having created these 12 Libya Facebook pages. And Facebook confirms that those pages are linked to Prighozin entities. And then for the rest of the pages we are relying on Facebook's attribution using -- whatever standards they're using.

MW: Right. Well tell me more about Prighozin. I mean what is his interest in doing this kind of thing in Africa?

SG: Prighozin is famously Putin's former chef. He is a Russian businessman. He through the Wagner Group has sent mercenaries to fight in Libya and to train militaries in other African countries. And he also has mining interests throughout African countries.

MW: What you discovered -- I'm curious what kind of insight you think it gives you and people doing the kind of work you're doing into how Russia might leverage disinformation or propaganda campaigns in other parts of the world?

SG: I think the most important takeaway that this research provides for other countries is that what we see happening is essentially the franchising of these disinformation campaigns. So there is some evidence that these Prighozin entities hired 18 Egyptian digital marketing firm to manage the Libya pages. And so it's really hard to imagine how any ordinary Libyan citizen would have looked at these Libya pages and been able to find any links to Russia. If you were to have taken advantage of Facebook's page transparency feature, you would just see a plurality of admins located in Egypt. And so I think its strategy is like that that we might see them using more going forward. And I think that's important because these strategies actually make it really hard to identify disinformation campaigns and the actors behind them.

MW: Right. And your organization, of course, worked with Facebook on uncovering these operations. And Facebook has now removed them from the platform. But how proactive do you think the company really is being about dismantling disinformation networks?

SG: I think they are being proactive. To emphasize you know we found one of these Libya pages which then led to the discovery of the other Libya pages that they had previously been investigating -- dozens of these that were related. So I think they're actually being quite proactive.

MW: Thanks so much for speaking with me.

SG: Thanks Megan I appreciate your time.

KG: Shelby Grossman is a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory. It's just published a new report on Russian linked online influence campaigns in Africa. We reached Shelby Grossman in Stanford, California.

[Music]

Halloween date change

Guest: Andrea Haid

KG: If you're a kid in Montreal tonight, you might feel like you're living in some alternate universe. While the rest of Canadian kids go door-to-door trick-or-treating, Montrealers are being told to stay home and delay Halloween by a day. That's because the weather has ignored treat entirely and gone for trick. There's pounding rain in the forecast and lots of it. Some parents are outraged at the idea. Postpone Halloween? That's preposterous. But others like the idea. In fact, Andrea Haid was one of the parents who suggested it in the first place, and now she feels guilty. We reached Andrea Haid in Montreal.

MW: Andrea does it feel a bit strange to celebrate Halloween in November this year?

ANDREA HAID: It's unorthodox I guess. [Chuckles] But you know Halloween is not moving. I think the only thing that got requested to be changed is just the trick-or-treating aspect.

MW: And this isn't of course some Halloween hoax, correct? I mean tonight in Montreal there really is no trick-or-treating?

AH: As far as I know I hope everybody got the message.

MW: So what prompted you to suggest the idea in the first place this week?

AH: Well, I have always loved Halloween and I have a little boy and he loves it too. So we made a costume for him together in advance and it's half made out of cardboard and paper. So I know that it's supposed to be really rainy tonight. So yesterday I was just checking the weather like I typed in Montreal Halloween rain. And one of the first articles that I see is that in another city in Quebec, they've postponed the trick-or-treating. And I thought, well why can't we do that too? Then we wouldn't all have to be trudging through the mud and bumping our umbrellas together and just be miserable. Like why not do it the next day?

MW: So changing it from tonight to tomorrow night.

AH: Yeah. The weather forecast is saying that tomorrow is not supposed to be quite as bad as today. And I don't believe that rain is being called for tomorrow night.

MW: So what did you do? You tweeted that actual suggestion of moving it (ahead) one day?

AH: Yeah. I kept it short and sweet. And I tweeted the mayor. And I did put some hashtags on there in case anyone wanted to find it.

MW: And I guess people found it, did they?

AH: Yes. A reporter called me to start talking about it. And then he called the mayor as well. I can't imagine that I'm the only one who suggested it to her. But I guess the request got to her and then she sent out tweets and started contacting the news to share this information.

MW: How did you feel? What was your reaction?

AH: Immediately I was happy and surprised.

MW: Surprised because it happened so quickly?

AH: Well, it happened quickly. But it's also quite amazing that you can put out one tweet and then actually people answer it and listen to you. It doesn't feel like it happens every day.

MW: There are plenty of people out there who are saying that this just isn't right, that it changes the natural order of things. Some people are saying it's like postponing Christmas. What do you say to that?

AH: I can sympathize because if anyone has made plans and then that gets disrupted, you know, that's a little bit too bad. But I don't think it's comparable to postponing Christmas at all because we don't send kids out in costumes to go trick-or-treating on Christmas. You know we stay inside.

MW: We are also Canadians. And some of the criticism about changing it because of the weather is that it's kind of wimpy. Lots of people have trick-or-treated in sub-zero weather. So why can't kids handle a bit of rain?

AH: Okay. So I can remember trick-or-treating when I was a kid and it snowed and I had to wear my jacket and I didn't like that very much, but nothing was going to stop me from trick-or-treating. But the weather report is calling for up to 90 kilometer winds and quite a bit of rainfall and possibly flash flooding. So I understand going out if the weather's not great. And I would. But if there's flash flooding in my area, I don't think anybody is going to be interested in going out. And then it's just going to be a case of nobody gets to trick-or-treat.

MW: You've also expressed regret since you made your suggestion on Twitter. Why do you have regret?

AH: Oh simply because if people have made plans or if they're working on Friday night and if they can't take their kids out -- like if it causes disruption in people's lives, I can sympathize with them.

MW: Do you think some of the kids will try to double dip -- go out trick-or-treating tonight and tomorrow night?

AH: I wouldn't be surprised and it doesn't bother me.

MW: Okay. Now you have a kid. And how does he feel about all this?

AH: I think he's pretty excited to put on a costume and get a lot of candy. And I think beyond that, it doesn't bother him. I bought a big box of candy today, so no matter what he's going to have some treats and I think he's going to be happy to watch some Halloween specials on TV and maybe bake some cookies or go trick-or-treating or whatever it is that we do. He's going to be happy.

MW: And what is he dressed up as this year?

AH: He is dressing up as "Yoshi" -- which is a character from the "Mario" games. And his version of Yoshi will be dressed up as "Poochy" which is a little dog that Yoshi hangs out with in some games that he plays.

MW: Well, Andrea thank you so much for speaking with me and Happy Halloween.

AH: Thanks. You too.

KG: Andrea Haid lives in Montreal and that's where we reached her.

[Music]

Part 2: Why this Deadspin reporter and her colleagues are quitting the site in protest

Deadspin staffers quit

Guest: Laura Wagner

KG: Deadspin was nominally a sports site, but even if you went there to read about football, you'd wind up reading cultural commentary, a reverent political analysis, or whatever else moved its talented staff to write. Earlier this week, Deadspin's interim editor-in-chief was fired for disobeying a directive from the site's new management -- a directive that essentially ordered writers to stay in their lanes. Now a majority of Barry Petchesky's staff have followed him right out the door. Until yesterday, Laura Wagner was a staff writer at Deadspin. We reached her in Brooklyn.

MW: Laura there's a lot to unpack in terms of what's been going on at Deadspin, but I want to start with a memo that went out on Monday. What did it say?

LAURA WAGNER: So the memo basically told all of Deadspin staff that we were to stick to sports and only post work on the site that directly related to sports. So while I do think that can be broad umbrella, it also really limits the scope of what Deadspin has always done and what makes Deadspin-Deadspin.

MW: So what happened after you were told to stick to sports?

LW: We decided that we were going to post blogs on the site that didn't have anything to do with sports -- a sort of a direct action we take to push back against this mandate. But then once we did put stories, both old and new on the site that were not directly related to sports our interim editor-in-chief Barry Petchesky was fired.

MW: Deadspin is a sports website first and foremost. So why was the dictate so objectionable to you and other writers that you had to stick to sports?

LW: Well, we don't see it as a sports site first and foremost. I mean mostly what Deadspin is, is a place where writers can write about whatever they care about. I think saying that it's a sports site is kind of missing the scope of what Deadspin is.

MW: So can you give me a sense of the kind of Deadspin content that falls outside the purview of sports? I mean, you mentioned a little bit -- but what kind of stories have you done and others?

LW: So I think some of the stories are comical. You know like one of our columnists who also resigned today, Drew Magary, for example every year writes a story called "The Hater's Guide to Williams-Sonoma" where he kind of cheerfully mocks the various linens and peppermint bark that Williams-Sonoma sells in their catalog. And it's something that readers email us about for weeks leading up to Christmas, being like, oh when are we going to get "The Hater's Guide to Williams-Sonoma." We also do a lot of politics writing, which has become even more important since Great Hill -- the parent company shut down our company's politics sites "Splinter" just a few weeks ago. And then besides that, we do a lot of post that has nothing to do with sports at all, like writing about food and just kind of whatever strikes our fancy on a given day.

MW: Now, in a statement issued today, Deadspin's parent company G/O Media says that non-sports content simply isn't successful on the site. In fact, the statement claims that posts that weren't about sports accounted for less than 1 percent of traffic in September. What's your response to that?

LW: That is a completely inaccurate statement. The way that they are classifying sports posts and non-sports posts is totally opaque to everyone who read that statement. One of the examples that they gave in the statement as a non-sports posts was actually explicitly about sport. So I think that the idea that non-sports posts don't do well and that they're a small fraction of the site -- they're kind of picking and choosing their statistics there. I have internal data from a few months ago that showed that the posts on the Concourse -- which is the non-sports sub vertical of Deadspin, far outperformed the posts that directly are about sports.

MW: Can you tell me what some of the other issues were that you were objecting to and that led to so many of the writers resigning or quitting?

LW: Going back to August -- I wrote a big report about how Jim Spanfeller -- the CEO -- took over the company and then immediately went about hiring a bunch of his old cronies from mid-2000s Forbes without posting the jobs publicly. So we wound up with a lot of people who are not qualified to do the job and were incompetent which I wrote about in my report.

MW: Now this is Jim Spanfeller who is of the private equity firm called Great Hill Partners -- this all started, when he took over back in April?

LW: Yes.

MW: And what kind of people was he hiring?

LW: Well he hired Paul Maidment who is the editorial director who has done nothing to stand up for the newsroom. Jim Spanfeller also hired a stable of sales managers over very successful women who had been at the company without even interviewing those women for the position. And beyond that, he's just shown a complete lack of awareness about how the company functions and what type of people are needed to lead it and have it be successful.

MW: Laura there seems to be a total breakdown of trust here. What does this whole saga tell you about the direction of digital media, the digital media landscape right now?

LW: I think this scenario is just another example of how private equity is degrading digital media. The whole playbook here is for the private equity company to buy an asset, to try to suck all of the money they can out of it, and then sell it. I think it's pretty clear that this was why they wanted to have this stick to sports mandate because it allows them to present Deadspin as a clean asset when they go to make their sales pitch for future buyers. So I think it's another depressing example in a long series of how private equity is destroying media.

MW: Your fired editor-in-chief tweeted today that it's been like, quote, "getting to watch the eulogies at your own funeral." What have the past couple of days been like for you?

LW: It's been really sad. Deadspin is the best job I'll ever have. It's tough because you know for someone like me who doesn't have a family or a mortgage -- it was a tough decision. But for my coworkers who have kids you know it's a whole different calculation for them. So I just am feeling very grateful that we could all stick together in this time. And I'm hoping that everyone lands on their feet.

MW: Laura, thanks very much for speaking with me. And best of luck to you and your colleagues.

LW: Thank you.

KG: Laura Wagner quit her job at Deadspin yesterday, along with virtually all of the website's editorial staff. We reached her in Brooklyn.

[Music]

Impeachment inquiry

KG: According to both Democrats and Republicans, it was a sad day today in the US House of Representatives. Although they wouldn't agree on what exactly was sad about it. Broadly speaking, they both say the source of the sadness was the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Today, the House voted to formalize the inquiry and make it public. So far, that process has taken place behind closed doors which has caused much consternation for Republicans. But this vote allows for public hearings to take place and allows the opposition to call witnesses and issue subpoenas. No House Republicans voted in favor. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on them to defend the Constitution. Here's part of what she said after the vote.

SOUNDCLIP

NANCY PELOSI: Today, we move further down the path in our inquiry by putting forth our procedures which are very transparent and open -- and frankly -- more transparent, more open, giving more privileges to the president and his argument than were given in the past. So the argument that they're making on the floor is not real. This is a sad day. It's a sad day because nobody comes to Congress to impeach a president of the United States. No one. We come here and do the work, make the future better for our children, for America's future, we take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution -- and that's what we cannot ignore. And we will not ignore when the president's behavior indicates that that investigation, that inquiry, is necessary. This isn't about anything personal with the president. It isn't about politics. It isn't about partisanship. It's about patriotism. It's about patriotism. And I would hope rather than protecting the president personally, all of our colleagues would choose to honor their oath of office. To protect and defend not the president, but the Constitution of United States.

KG: But Republicans fired back at Pelosi, reminding her that it wasn't just Republicans who voted against the measure. Two Democrats did as well. Here's Minority House Leader Kevin McCarthy.

SOUNDCLIP

KEVIN MCCARTHY: In March of this year, Speaker Pelosi said this about impeachment: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path because it divides the country. Today, the country just witnessed the only bipartisan vote on that floor was against. And all the hearings there's nothing compelling, nothing overwhelming. So the speaker should follow her own words on what bipartisan vote on that floor and in the sham that has been putting this country through this nightmare. That's exactly what this vote shows today.

KG: That's Republican Kevin McCarthy speaking after a vote that approved formalizing and making public the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

[Music]

Jackson Pollock physics

Guest: Roberto Zenit

KG: When you think of some painters, you imagine them in a beret sitting on a worn stool, calmly mixing colours on a pallet while appraising a bowl of exotic fruits. That's not the process you imagine for Jackson Pollock. Not sure about the beret, but even just sit there. The American artist was known to lay his canvas on the floor, he'd stand over it -- pouring or splashing paint down. Roberto Zenit has studied how Mr. Pollock painted. And now the Brown University engineering professor and his colleagues have released a paper about the physics of the artist's technique. We reached Professor Roberto Zenit in Providence, Rhode Island.

MW: Professor Zenit, why did you want to find out from a physics perspective how Jackson Pollock painted?

ROBERTO ZENIT: Short answer is just curiosity. If you work in the subject of fluid mechanics like I do and you see a Jackson Pollock painting because he is very well documented, it's impossible not to think about it in technical terms. Again, the peculiarity about these painting technique is that he manipulated the fluids in an expert way to produce the textures that Pollock is famous for. So for me it is a natural thing to do, just to inquire: what was he thinking? What was he doing? He must have known something deeply about the physics of the liquids even though he was not conscious about it because he did not have a technical training like we do as engineers.

MW: Right. So walk us through your study. What were you looking for?

RZ: Basically, what we wanted to identify was the set of conditions under which Jackson Pollock painted. If you look at the videos, you see that he moved his hand at a certain speed and the hand is separated from the canvas which is horizontal at a certain height. And given the range of viscosity and densities of the fluids that he used then the traces must have a certain characteristic shape. And that's what we did. We went and measured from the historical videos these action conditions -- what we call the action is the speed and height. And we just assumed a certain value of viscosity. And we found that under those conditions, the lines that he was drawing were essentially straight knife which is somehow unexpected because if the fluid is very vicious when it lands on a horizontal surface, it normally coils. I don't know if you have ever observed honey dripping on top of toast. When it lands it tries to flow but it is too vicious that instead of just oozing down it twists around -- it coils. And this is a very well-known flow. It's called a coiling instability.

MW: It makes those little loops.

RZ: Exactly. Exactly. Those loops are very characteristic. But what we found is that we concluded that Pollock actually did his painting such that the loops would not appear.

MW: So somehow he managed to avoid coiling instability. I'll forever think of those honey loops [laughs] that way. So how did he do this? I mean was there some technique or bodily movement he engaged in to avoid the coiling instability?

RZ: Exactly. So what we interpreted is that he probably like most artists, most painters, he went through a process of empirical testing and experimentation to refine the technique. And he would just do this in a certain, again, repetitive way until he found the right conditions for him to paint the way he wanted. Because one of the peculiarities of Jackson Pollock is that he was very vocal. He liked to talk about his work and he was interviewed many many times. And he wrote about it. And he claimed that he had control of the paint, of the technique, that nothing was accidental. And again, that led us to conclude that he knew exactly what he was doing.

MW: You're not the only researcher to study the physics of Pollock's paintings. As unbelievable as that seems, there has been research done on Pollock in the past, but they found something different from what you did or something of opposing actually that there is coiling and stability in Pollock's paintings. How do you explain the difference in your findings from previous research?

RZ: Yes. Again like most scientific studies, you always have to refer to what has been done before. And this is what we did. In order to be certain of what we found, we in addition to measuring the action movements of Pollock, we conducted a supplementary experiment. We simulated the painting action in the lab. We set up a device instead of a hand. We had a syringe. And we move the syringe at a certain rate as such that we could replicate the conditions that Pollock used to paint. The previous studies had conjectured that the paint filaments will coil. But by this new experimentation and the new measurements of the painting action we concluded the opposite result.

MW: What about authentication of art? Have you gotten any calls from art experts saying that they want to employ you to see if they have real Pollock's?

RZ: Not yet, but yes for sure. So if you see a painting supposedly by Jackson Pollock that has too many coiling features then it's probably not made by Pollock.

MW: How do you hope your research changes the way someone will look at a Pollock painting the next time?

RZ: [Chuckles] That would be amazing. If anything I do has a positive influence to anybody looking at art then my job is accomplished. What I would like it to be is that the people realize that physics is not as boring as they think it is. The view of science being hard and mathematical and not interesting, but in fact everything that surrounds us is dictated by the laws of physics. And you know, even art, especially art, if you read the article. So if you realize that if you understand physics, you can understand many other things -- in this case, art -- then my job's done, I have exposed this idea to somebody who probably didn't care much about physics before. If they made that realization then I would be super happy.

MW: Professor Zenit thanks so much. I'll certainly be looking at art in a different way from now on.

RZ: If you do, then I will be very happy. Then I accomplished something. [Chuckles]

MW: Best of luck.

RZ: Thank you very much.

KG: That was Brown University engineering professor Roberto Zenit in Providence, Rhode Island. He's one of the authors of a study on the physics of Jackson Pollock's painting technique. It was published yesterday in the journal PLOS One. If you'd like to see a video of coiling instability that he was talking about visit our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Pluckley

KG: On this Halloween night, I offer a tale of inexplicable terrors in the small British town of Pluckley. A town whose bright charms concealed dark apparitions: the phantom schoolmaster; wailing spirits lost forever in the forest; and a spectral highwayman seeking revenge on the living. Yet there is another, more earthly horror in this tale: social discomfort. Recently to mark All Hallows Eve, the website Kent Online sent its intern, Rebecca Tuffin, into that cauldron of the supernatural. After all, 30 years ago, Pluckley was named the most haunted village in Britain by Guinness World Records for a full dozen ghosts were said to wander around screaming within the town's borders. So bravely did Ms. Tuffin make the journey to Pluckley. And in her article for Kent Online, she describes her eerie encounters with the tormented souls in that village of the damned. I don't mean the vengeful specters. I mean the vengeful residents. A grumpy butcher told her, it's all just stories people have made up. An elderly woman said, it's a nice village and these stories ruin it and give us a hassle we don't need. And a woman Rebecca Tuffin described as "slightly younger" than the elderly woman complained, People let their imagination run wild and we are left having to deal with the reality of it. In the end, Ms. Tuffin and came away most haunted by her interaction with a grumpy living rather than the dead. And even though she went on to write about ghosts, she's probably wishing she hired a ghostwriter.

[Music]

Pat Martel

KG: You may have heard Pat Martel's voice on "As It Happens" before. Or, if you're on PEI, you may have been interviewed by him yourself. Today, after more than 30 years, the CBC reporter is retiring. He's covered many real and important stories, as well as doing an April Fool's hit from what he said was a naked protest in downtown Charlottetown. But one story in particular stood out to us. In 2016, Mr. Martel spoke with John Lister -- a 90-year-old farmer -- about his day-to-day life. Doesn't seem like that would make great radio. But you haven't heard Mr. Lister speak.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN LISTER: I don't believe in retirement!

PAT MARTEL: Why not?

JOHN LISTER: Well what would I do? That is people's problem. They retire and do nothing till they get a box and put them in.

PAT MARTEL: And you're not ready for that?

JOHN LISTER: No. I'm not ready for that. I check the bull at 6 o'clock. I don't rush out with beef cattle. I don't have to.

PAT MARTEL: And then what do you do?

JOHN LISTER: Have breakfast.

PAT MARTEL: And you make your own breakfast?

JOHN LISTER: Oh yeah. I make all my own food. I don't eat out.

PAT MARTEL: Because?

JOHN LISTER: There's too much chemical in the food.

PAT MARTEL: How hard is it to feed the cattle all by yourself?

JOHN LISTER: How hard? It's easy. Use a tractor.

PAT MARTEL: How much help are you getting here on the farm?

JOHN LISTER: Help? I don't have any help. You can't find help. There is no help. They all went down west.

PAT MARTEL: They're coming back though.

JOHN LISTER: Oh I know they are coming back in a big way.

PAT MARTEL: What's the best part about living alone at your age?

JOHN LISTER: The best part -- well just living alone. I am not going to a nursing home.

PAT MARTEL: Because?

JOHN LISTER: I've no time for them. That's not my life -- living in a nursing home.

PAT MARTEL: How would you describe your life here?

JOHN LISTER: I'm happy. Nobody bothers me. I never see anybody week to week.

PAT MARTEL: That must be hard though.

JOHN LISTER: No, I like it that way. I have got lots to do. I have my weekend paper to read and my book to read. I cook and do my own baking.

PAT MARTEL: And what do you bake?

JOHN LISTER: Depends on what I fancy. I don't think about myself as being 90 you know.

PAT MARTEL: Well, how old are you then?

JOHN LISTER: I feel probably around 60. I haven't changed for years.

PAT MARTEL: And you're happy in this house?

JOHN LISTER: Oh yeah. If I wasn't I'd do something about it.

KG: That was PEI farmer John Lister speaking to CBC reporter Pat Martel back in 2016. From one of our listeners, that tape was more than delightful. It was inspiring. So inspiring that Keith Dundas in Calgary turned Mr. Lister's words into a song.

SOUNDCLIP

[Keith Dundas "Farmer John Lister"]

KG: That's the music of Keith Dundas in Calgary, who was inspired by hearing John Lister on As It Happens. Pat Martel, the CBC PEI reporter who brought that and many other stories to our attention, is retiring today after more than 30 years.

[Music]

Part 3: Fecal transplant case

Fecal transplant case

Guest: Elizabeth Hohmann

KG: Fecal transplants have been heralded as a wonderfully simple cure for a nasty illness. The transfer of healthy stool into patients with c. difficile -- a debilitating and sometimes deadly infection -- has an almost 100 percent success rate. But a group of doctors in Boston are speaking out about missteps they made with the procedure that led to a cancer patient's death. They've published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine explaining how the patient was inadvertently given a fecal transplant containing E. coli bacteria. Elizabeth Hohmann is the lead author and an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. We reached her in Boston.

MW: Dr. Hohmann why did you want to publicize the details of how this patient died?

ELIZABETH HOHMANN: Well, we had noticed in online commentaries and other venues that people were perhaps not understanding all the fine points related to this serious problem, and we wanted to both make sure other physicians and microbiologists understood the problem that we encountered, why this happened, and how perhaps to prevent it in other individuals.

MW: Can you take me through how the patient died -- how the mistake was made?

EH: Well, my laboratory is what we call a core laboratory for FMT capsules. And as part of review of a totally separate independent research project, we were asked by the FDA to add screening for this kind of organism going forward as part of a new project. When we got that request, we said sure we'll do that right away. And we also extended that additional safety testing to all of our other projects as well. The one thing we did not do was we did not go backwards in time and screen retrospectively. So materials that we had collected and frozen, we did not discard those materials and we did not go back and retest those materials.

MW: So the fecal microbiota transplant capsule that you gave this patient -- what did it have in it that proved to be fatal?

EH: It had an E. coli organism, which is what we call a commensal bacteria. It's something that we all have in our intestines. It's something that we would expect to be transferred when we do an FMT from a donor to a recipient. But the unfortunate part here was that the one that we transferred also had these antimicrobial resistance genes which we wouldn't want to be transferring. We didn't know they were there because we hadn't done this screening on the saved materials. So in the setting of immunosuppression and other serious medical illness in these patients, the bacteria escaped the GI tract and got into the bloodstream.

MW: When did you realize something had gone wrong?

EH: When the patients became ill. Which happened not exactly contemporaneously but close in time. And we went back and realized that both of these patients had received capsules from the same donor. And it seemed like a bit of a coincidence that they would have a very similar bacteria in their bloodstreams. We also then did some very sophisticated genomic sequencing of those bacteria. And we're able to conclusively show that these are one in the same from this donor stored sample and in these patients bloodstreams.

MW: Right. The second patient didn't die but got quite ill with pneumonia as a result. Can you describe these two patients to me? What were you treating them for? Trying to treat them for?

EH: You know the other patient was admitted for pneumonia. What he did end up having was this bacteria in his bloodstream. And he was cured of that with intravenous antibiotics.

MW: And the other patient who died -- what was their health problem?

EH: The other patient probably had the same bacteria in his bloodstream. And he was admitted to an intensive care unit at our hospital here. He was already in the hospital for his bone marrow transplant. So he was transferred to the intensive care unit but did die of complications of that infection.

MW: How difficult has it been for you to examine this patient's death with the responsibilities that you must feel on some level?

EH: Yeah it's been very difficult for everyone involved in this -- our entire research team and laboratory team. It's been very difficult. And of course we're very remorseful and regret this unfortunate event.

MW: How did the families respond?

EH: We're very lucky that both of these families were understanding. Both of these patients had agreed to take part in these research studies. There are risks in every research study, particularly for as serious a condition as both of these patients had -- serious malignancy and end stage liver disease. So, you know, this is pushing the envelope of science and there are risks. I think that's one of the take home messages that we wanted to convey as part of the publication, both to physicians and patients doing research like this, that even despite your best intentions things can happen. And the human microbiome is thousands of bacteria. We don't know them all. We can't know them all. We screen as best we can. But screening is also an evolving activity.

MW: Yet some people have great hopes for fecal transplants as a treatment and not just for c. difficile, but for other ailments like colitis or Alzheimer's. As you can understand, some may be quite desperate for that treatment. What advice would you have for them?

EH: I think the biggest message I would have is we need to do this work in formal research studies where we make every effort to minimize the risks and learn and be able to understand how best to do this and learn from our successes and our mistakes.

MW: Dr. Hohmann thanks so much for speaking with me and for being so candid.

EH: Thank you.

KG: Elizabeth Hohmann is an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was in Boston.

[Music]

X-37-B

KG: X-37-B. A name that doesn't sound like much and that's probably on purpose. X-37-B is NASA's secret space plane. So we don't know much about its secret space mission, but we do know that it landed back on Earth on Sunday after 780 days in orbit. Well mysteries have abounded around X-37-B since its launch in 2010. We do know where it was after its first launch because a Toronto man found it. Here's part of Carol's conversation with Ted Molczan from May 2010, in which he describes what the secret plane looked like from his balcony, from our archives.

SOUNDCLIP

TED MOLCZAN: It just looks like a star -- moving star.

CAROL OFF: How were you able to figure out where to look for it in the sky?

TED MOLCZAN: It's a bit of detective work that we do. If you picture what you're trying to find is the orbit of something around the Earth -- and we all know that in orbit you can visualize in orbit as a sort of an imaginary ring around the Earth, there are two things: Where is that ring? And then where in the ring is the satellite? But the first step is where is that ring in relationship to the Earth? And how does that ring angles with respect to the equator? Does it go right around the equator or does it go over the poles or somewhere intermediate? Well, we know from where it was launched -- in this case Cape Canaveral in Florida, that it probably was going to be more equatorial than polar. The other very useful clue that we get is several days before anybody launches a rocket, there has to be published something called a NOTAM -- notice to airmen or notice to mariner. And these things give the coordinates out on the ocean where the rocket stages are going to fall during the ascent of the launch. Well, with a little imagination, you can see how that could be useful to us because that tells us the direction in which the rocket is going to go.

CAROL OFF: The Pentagon has said that it's not a weapon. It won't be used for space weapons. So what do you think that this spacecraft codenamed X-37-B -- what do you think it's for?

TED MOLCZAN: I'm inclined to pretty much believe that it isn't a space weapon. What they've said it is, is or what they intend to use it for mostly, is a sort of a flying test bed for developing new instruments. Nobody really knows for sure why they're using it. I doubt it's for anything really militarizing space specifically. Probably something to do with reconnaissance.

KG: That's Ted Molczan speaking with Carol back in 2010. The space plane he's talking about landed back on Earth on Sunday after its fifth mystery mission.

[Music]

Sound of the day: Live Brain Surgery

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Sea. [Zap sound] Star. [Zap sound]. Clouds.

KG: It may be hard to tell exactly what's happening in that clip, but it has nothing to do with the sea, stars, or clouds. That is the sound of 25- year-old Jenna Schardt undergoing brain surgery. She's reading words off an iPod as surgeons probe around in her brain to avoid the areas that affect speech which isn't actually the unusual part. What is unusual is for thousands of people to be watching the procedure as it's live streamed on Facebook. The Dallas woman said she hoped the live stream of her surgery would be educational. And it looks like it was. People tuned in from all over to have the chance to ask the hospital questions about what was happening. Here's more of what it sounded like.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hello. [Zap and buzzing sounds]

KG: That was from a Facebook livestream of a patient undergoing brain surgery. And it's our Sound of the Day.

[Music]

Musician fund

Guest: Catharine Saxberg

KG: Alan Doyle has described it as a, quote, "safety net for musicians who really don't have another one." The former Great Big Sea frontman was speaking to the Toronto Star recently about the Unison Benevolent Fund. That's an organization that provides counseling and emergency financial support to people working in Canada's music industry. But the organization itself says it needs financial support and is appealing for funds outside the music industry. Catharine Saxberg is one of the founders of the Unison Benevolent Fund. We reached her in Toronto.

MW: Ms. Saxberg when you reflect on the conversations that you've had with people who have used the Unison Benevolent Fund, what is it about their stories that stands out for you?

CATHARINE SAXBERG: I think what stands out to me about the stories from people who call Unison is that they're usually calling us and one of the worst days of their lives. And sometimes one of the things we have to help them do is unravel that problem to figure out the best way to be able to provide some sort of assistance. And that process of unraveling in some ways is as valuable as any of the other assistance we provide going forward.

MW: Some of the musicians have publicly shared their stories of why they reached out to the funds and how the funds helped them. Can you share with us some of those personal stories?

CS: Yes. We work in an industry where the rewards for a few are great and the costs for many are high. And the mental health issues in particular for people who work in the music industry I think are disproportionately higher than in the general population. So we get a significant number of phone calls every year from people who are considering taking their own lives. Those are heartbreaking. And it's humbling to know that we are able to provide a service that help people when they are faced with the method of their own destruction in one hand in a telephone and the other that they choose the telephone. And that we are there to be able to provide them with some help. Some of our clients have been victims of assault and sometimes quite violent assault. We're not equipped to provide long term care, but what we can do is provide the short term resources to be able to stabilize people's lives and get them counseling and the therapy they need. Dental issues are a large part of our support. I mean a root canal can render a musician homeless because generally we're dealing with people who don't have benefits plans or safety nets or savings accounts. So a large unexpected expense for something like a root canal can be the difference between being able to pay three months rent or not being able to pay three months rent. We also have a number of regular applicants who are seniors. It's very difficult to live on Canada pension in this country if you don't have any other additional savings. And so we have a number of clients for whom we are regularly providing grocery cards.

MW: You mentioned assaults. Are those assaults related to the profession of being a musician?

CS: In some cases. And it's important to stress that Unison doesn't just help only musicians, but also anybody that makes their living in the music industry. So we have had cases where people have been in bars where they have been there working -- attending to see an act that they are supporting in some way and have had something slipped in their drink. And the next thing you know they've ended up finding themselves in a dangerous situation. Repetitive stress injuries are also rampant within the music community. And again, to end up with a repetitive stress injury in your hand if you're a guitar player, renders you unable to earn a living.

MW: Can you take us back 10 years ago? What need did you see in the Canadian industry then that launched you into action?

CS: Roughly 10 years ago, a dear friend of mine Haydain Neale, who was the frontman for a band called "jacksoul" was involved in a catastrophic accident and subsequently died a couple of years later. And at that time my colleague and friend Jodie Ferneyhough and I were having a conversation about how we could possibly provide some sort of support for people for whom support was so lacking. There had been a number of other incidents. At the time there was another woman who had worked in the music industry who died at a very young age of pneumonia after a bout of homelessness. So we'd had a number of these very dramatic circumstances within our own community and we thought, well, how can we provide some sort of assistance? And at another point in my life, I had worked in the advertising industry and there was an organization that was started in the early 80s called the National Advertising Benevolent Society. And so I put it to Jodie that perhaps we could create something like that for the music industry. Our initial ambitions were much more modest. And I would say by comparison, we are still a modest organisation, but we are delivering some very valuable assistance to people who would otherwise have no way of being able to solve the problems that they're facing.

MW: The fund right now is supported through donations and fundraisers, but what other kinds of challenges are you facing to do with that recently?

CS: Well, what we're finding is that the demand is outpacing the resources. When we set up the fund we wanted to make sure that we were building something to last. And so we didn't start providing financial assistance until we were sure we had, by the standards of charitable organisations, a relatively modest amount of money in an endowment fund. So we've built a safety net for Unison. But what we really try to do is every year raise our operating costs and the costs of the services that we provide so that we don't have to dip into the savings, as it were. What we are hoping is that music lovers will be motivated to support music makers. Typically we've done all of our fundraising within our own community, but as Alan Doyle who used to be the front man for Great Big Sea likes to say, when somebody runs into trouble, when the house burns down, people phone the band first and the fire department second because they're already arranging the benefit. So the music industry has a reputation for being extremely generous and looking after people in our communities. Whenever we get a call, it's where we'd like to step forward and be able to help. And we're hoping that people will feel likewise inclined to help continue to keep people making music in this country.

MW: We'd like to play some music by your late friend from "jacksoul" Haydain Neale. What would you like to hear?

CS: I'd like to hear "Somedays." It's a song about a person that's no longer around. And you know Haydain -- it was a huge loss to our community. In some ways, Haydain had business partners and people within the community who stepped up and provided support for him and his family at his time of need. But not everybody has that. And I miss him. I miss him terribly. And I'd like to think he would be proud of what we've accomplished and proud of what he inspired.

MW: Ms. Saxberg thank you so much for speaking with me today.

CS: Well, thank you so much for your interest.

KG: That was Catharine Saxberg in Toronto -- a co-founder of the Unison Benevolent Fund. She's also the vice president of international relations for SOCAN -- the Society of Canadian songwriters, composers, and music publishers.

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October 31, 2019 Episode Transcript

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