Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

The AIH Transcript for February 14, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Karen Gordon

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

KAREN GORDON: Good evening. I'm Karen Gordon, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

KG: Tonight...

CO: What's in a name? The people blocking trains to protest a pipeline on Wet'suwet'en territory call themselves land defenders. But our guest, a CEO whose company depends on a healthy oil industry, calls them eco-terrorists.

KG: Lights, camera, adjourned. As the jury prepares to deliberate in the Harvey Weinstein case, we hear from a reporter who's been in the courtroom every step of the way.

CO: Youth in advertising. The vaping company Juul has always insisted it doesn't market its e-cigarettes to kids -- but the attorney general of Massachusetts disagrees, and she says she's got the proof to back it up.

KG: Explosive allegations. After an American B-52 bomber exploded over Spain in 1966, hundreds of soldiers were deployed to help clean up. Now one of those veterans tells us how it feels to join a class action lawsuit against the government -- one of the first of its kind.

CO: Trouble date. A woman in Massachusetts went out with a man she met on a dating app and ended up being the unwitting accomplice in an armed bank robbery.

KG: And rewinding history. A woman is reunited with a mix-tape she lost 20 years ago after the cassette washes up on a beach almost 2000 kilometers away. As It Happens. The Friday Edition. Radio that knows if she wants to revisit her musical memories, she'll have to find a Walkman To Remember.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Blockade business

Blockade business

Guest: Murray Mullen

KG: Indigenous environmental activists continue to blockade rail lines, and business is beginning to pay the price. The protests were launched after the RCMP removed Wet'suwet'en hereditary leaders who had been blocking construction on a natural gas pipeline in northern BC. They're now stopping everything from oil shipments to everyday commutes. And the Mohawk activist Ellen Gabriel says that's the point.

SOUNDCLIP

ELLEN GABRIEL: Our laws are being trampled on. Our human rights are being trampled on. What would you do if your human rights were being trampled on? You would want to do your best to protect it. And the people have been doing it in a peaceful way. We have been inconvenienced for over 500 years. And I understand what people are saying about being inconvenienced. But I want to say that we have the right to protect our land. It is our homelands. It is our right to protect our lands. And the government is the one that is not being reasonable because after 30 years, I see the same thing that is going on because governments refuse to respect our rights.

KG: That was the Mohawk activist, Ellen Gabriel, speaking to the CBC this afternoon. Murray Mullen is the CEO of the Mullen Group, which does trucking for the oil sectors in Canada and the United States. We reached Mr. Mullen in Victoria.

CO: Mr. Mullen, you just heard Ellen Gabriel ask the question, what would you do if your rights were trampled on? Would you not protest? What's your answer to her?

MURRAY MULLEN: I can't put myself in their shoes to be honest with you. But this is a struggle that has been going on, as they said, for 500 years. So how do we resolve it? Are we going to do it for another 500 years? I can tell you from my perspective what I'm seeing happening and how it's going to inconvenience and cause a lot of challenges in the supply chain for a lot of Canadians.

CO: The inconvenience -- what's the price for that in business terms?

MM: It's going to be an inconvenience in the short term to a lot of individuals, to a lot of travelers on Via Rail. It's going to be a tremendous inconvenience to anybody that relies upon the rail. And then it's going to turn from an inconvenience to a real harm if we don't get our heads around this and get this resolved relatively quickly, which I think is a federal...this is a federal government issue. This has nothing to do with industry or whatever else. This is much bigger than just pipelines, as you heard it. This is about the movement. This is about our lands. This is about something that's been going on for a long time. But if you have the blockades and you have rail traffic in eastern Canada, particularly going to be blockaded, you're going to find that it's going to really impact the supply chain. You're not going to be able to move things to people that need it every day. We rely upon it as society. There's a lot of product that just cannot move other than rail. So I'm thinking, how do you get propane and how do you get certain product to consumers? I mean, there could be significant consequences.

CO: Andrew Scheer says that the RCMP should be sent in to sort this out, to shut down these protests -- the blockades. What do you say?

MM: Man, this is so complicated. I wish we could do it through consultation. Honestly, I think every Canadian would say, can we not resolve this? But you're not going to resolve the issue, in my view, through blockades. You're not going to resolve the issues you know, 500 years of issues over one -- nobody can be held hostage on that.

CO: What else can you do? I mean, what else do you do at this point when no one is listening to you, when you're sending in the RCMP to break up a barricade instead of sitting down and talking to people -- so what else can you do at that point except protest?

MM: Well, I don't have the answer to that. But, is it okay for small interest groups to hold the whole country hostage after the rule of law has been applied?

CO: You call this small interest groups that are doing this.

MM: Well, the hereditary chiefs is a very small interest group.

CO: Well this has gone beyond hereditary chiefs. These are different groups of Indigenous people in different movements across the country. This is a general call for people to rally in support the Wet'suwet'en.

MM: So how many people? Let's break it down. Is it everybody or is it some? Because you cannot say it's everyone, if most of the ones that were impacted by this, have all signed on and said, you know, this makes good sense for our people, it's opportunity, it's a way for us to get ahead. And the elected chiefs have all done it. They represent the majority. So, yes, there's always going to be special interest groups that tie into any movement. But is it fair to say that every First Nations person in this country is against every development? That is not fact.

CO: Well, we've talked to a woman who does support the coastal gas link, but she also said that she wants to see the hereditary chiefs respected, have them listened to, have them sit down with them.

MM: That's why I say to you, I'm hopeful, although I wouldn't be optimistic that you can sit down and say, well, what is it? There is no solution in my view. There won't be a solution. Other than, this is my land, you can't come across it. Well, what about the other folks that are on the land that are First Nations and want those jobs? That's their land. No, it's not. It's my land. I don't have the answer to that. I think it's much broader than the pipeline. That's what I'm saying. But the pipeline has brought it to a hit.

CO: You said elsewhere that the blockade you regard as a new form of eco-terrorism. What do you mean by that?

MM: Well, think about it. I mean, they're going to be able to hold the country to hostage because they don't get their way. So you can consult, I don't get it, therefore I say. But in a rule, in a democracy, the majority, that's what you do. The majority gets to set the policy. You will never get 100 percent of the country to agree on any issue, but you still have to move the country ahead and that's what makes democracy work.

CO: Terrorism -- those are extremists who use violence to achieve their goals. Do you regard them in that light?

MM: No, I said there are groups that will do that. And we've seen that across many many countries. I've already heard some of the some of the people say they're not coming across, we will use whatever means are required. Well, that's not consultation.

CO: Where have you seen violence, though, in the Canadian movement?

MM: Well, we'll find out. I think if the RCMP go in, will that lead to something?

CO: Hasn't yet. Woah woah...excuse me.

MM: ...that's what I was saying. It could lead to anything because it gets out of hand. Right? That's what happens in these situations, if you can't sit down and negotiate.

CO: But there has not been -- just to point out. The police have gone in, there hasn't been violence to the whole "Idle No More movement." Police went in, there was no violence. In all those cases, they were strong, but they were nonviolent protests. So I just want to know where the evidences that they are potentially violent.

MM: Well, I think any situation -- so that was just my view was that it could, when you take a look at what's happening around the world, things can happen and when you get these movements. I'm not saying they're going to do it. I'm saying it could happen...that's what could happen. There are not just First Nations people that are protesting today. Protests gather lots of people that really have their own ax to grind and they use this as their platform.

CO: We'll have to leave it there Mr. Mullen. I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

MM: Excellent.

KG: Murray Mullen is the CEO of the Mullen Group. We reached him in Victoria.

[Music]

Weinstein trial update

Guest: J. Clara Chan

KG: He's been vilified, ostracized, and his many accusers helped spark a movement. But soon a jury will decide whether Harvey Weinstein is criminally guilty of sexual assault. For the past five weeks, Mr. Weinstein has been in a New York courtroom charged with sexually assaulting two women. He has pleaded not guilty. Today, closing arguments wrapped up and the jury could begin deliberating early next week. J. Clara Chan is the media and politics reporter for The Wrap, an online entertainment news source and has been covering the case. We reached her in New York.

CO: Clara, you have been there in court throughout this case. What was the mood like during closing arguments and as the trial finally wrapped up?

J. CLARA CHAN: Well, it's been it's been a long time coming today for the closing argument. The prosecution, I think, did a pretty good job of weaving together the testimonies of the women who are at the center of this case and making the ultimate argument that Weinstein was essentially a predator who preyed upon all of these women. You know, it's certainly a serious accusations that are being made against him. And I don't think anyone in that room did not feel that.

CO: Just what you're talking about here -- there are six women who testified though he faces charges only in the cases of two of those women. Can you tell us a bit about what kind of case the prosecutors made about those women?

J. CLARA CHAN: Sure. So as you were saying, two of the women, there are accusations from the basis of the charges -- so that's Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann. And then there are three other women allowed testify to help the prosecution bolster its case.

CO: And what's the story? What is the story that the prosecutors were telling -- using the testimonies of those women?

J. CLARA CHAN: Essentially they were saying, you know, these six women spanning over several, several years, they don't even know one another yet all of them shared in some ways this harrowing experience with Harvey Weinstein. They pulled together elements of their testimonies that contain similarities in terms of, you know, some of the violence that they alleged in their testimonies. Similar sentiments of fear that the women expressed while testifying that they could see through lines for. So at the end of the day, for the prosecution, what their picture is or what they're trying to convince the jury of is that for these six women, Weinstein was a predator and he assaulted all of them.

CO: Okay. And the defense is making the case that these are women who knew what they were getting into. They had consensual sex with Mr. Weinstein, that they went to hotel rooms to meet him voluntarily. These were all part of things that they willingly did as adults. And so describe a bit more about how they made the case of the defense.

J. CLARA CHAN: So what they used heavily through many of their, you know, cross-examinations as well, but especially in their closing argument were the number of e-mails or messages between some of these women and Harvey Weinstein, that seemed friendly in nature. And they would often use sort of rhetorical questions like if indeed this person raped you, why would you be emailing him the next day or and saying nice things to him? Why would you be agreeing to meet him again? So using sort of that kind of rhetoric. But something to note there is that the prosecution brought on an expert witness to kind of counter that framing of these witnesses behaviors. She was a forensic psychiatrist. And one of the things that she mentioned was, you know, it's not uncommon for survivors of sexual assault to communicate with the person who may have assaulted them after the case. It's not uncommon for them to try to appease them or try to seem friendly to them. These are not, you know, unexpected behaviors for survivors.

CO: And one of Mr. Weinstein's defense lawyers, Donna Rotunno, she has been criticized following an interview with The New York Times where she was asked if she'd ever experienced a sexual assault in her own life. And she said, I would never put myself in that position. Did that kind of tone and tenor make its way into her defense of Mr. Weinstein?

J. CLARA CHAN: Yes. She made this argument that the prosecution in their sort of own ironic way are becoming producers of their own production or whatever. And in this universe that they've created, they've essentially made a place where women are not responsible for their actions or shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. So, you know, her claim essentially through that is these women made choices, they were adults and they went into this knowing what could happen to them -- and so that kind of falls into the similar line of her interview with The New York Times podcast.

CO: How is Mr. Weinstein? How what was his demeanor throughout this trial?

J. CLARA CHAN: If you've seen the pictures, he's been coming in with his walker and he's taking notes diligently throughout a lot of the proceedings. But also at times, he's been seen dozing off. He's eating candy as well. So it's a bit varied.

CO: And how are the women who testified? Because they really opened up, didn't they? So how did you find them as they finished their testimonies and the cross- examination?

J. CLARA CHAN: You know, none of the woman who testified were subpoenaed to do so. So they were also there on their own volition and talking about very private things that had happened to them. I think sort of the most perhaps memorable, I'm not sure it's the right word, but Jessica Mann -- she endured sort of a three day process of testimony and cross-examination, which was the longest for any of the women. And certainly there were moments where we had to break because things were getting very emotional for her.

CO: And Jessica Mann, she was an aspiring actress coming from a small town in Washington, said that he raped her in a hotel in Manhattan in 2013.

J. CLARA CHAN: Yes. That's correct.

CO: Any sense of where the jury might go with this?

J. CLARA CHAN: It's kind of difficult to say. I mean, it has to be unanimous decision. There are sort of five felony counts that are being charged against Weinstein. And the jury will have to go through each of them and decide whether to convict or acquit. And, you know, if there is even one person who is a holdout in either way, that could lead to a hung jury, I mean, I think it is possibility.

CO: Clara I appreciate your reporting and I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

J. CLARA CHAN: Yeah, thank you.

KG: J. Clara Chan is the media and politics reporter for The Wrap and has been covering the Harvey Weinstein trial. We reached Ms. Chan in New York.

[Music]

Juul lawsuit

Guest: Maura Healey

KG: The attorney general in Massachusetts is smoking mad. She and her office contend that Juul was marketing its e-cigarettes to children even as the company maintained its producers and its products are only for adults. The AG has filed a lawsuit against Juul charging that the e-cigarette giant targeted young people, even advertising on cartoon networks after it launched in June 2015. We reached Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in Boston.

CO: Attorney General Healey, Juul says it's always meant for its vapes to be for adults. Why do you believe they're not telling the truth?

MAURA HEALEY: Well, it's clear from their own documents and what we uncovered in our investigation that that is not true. Juul was not about getting adults to stop smoking. It was about getting kids to start vaping. And they did that at the very outset with their first ad campaign. They'd actually rejected a proposed ad campaign that was targeting older people and instead decided to go with an ad campaign that targeted young people. They chose models and images that really appealed to young people. They tried to recruit celebrities and social media influencers that were really popular with teens. They even went so far as to buy ad space on websites for kids like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. And finally, they sold and shipped e-cigarettes to kids under age through its website. So Juul unfortunately, was really effective in its ad campaign because, you know, now the rates of teen vaping are just off the charts.

CO: We know that the idea of the vaping e-cigarettes was a form of harm reduction, that it's still considered better than letting up a cigarette. So how many of those young people would have been smoking cigarets if not for vaping?

MH: You know, we polled and asked that question. 80 percent of them never would have started. 80 percent. An overwhelming majority of these young people, of teenagers, say they never would have picked up a cigarette. They only vaped because they thought it was cool. Others were doing it. They also thought it was harmless. And so that's the sad fact. I mean, one of the reasons that Juul and others have used flavors is because flavors, you know, with names like mango and mint flavors and cotton candy and, you know, there are any number of flavors out there. The reason that they use these flavors is because they know that teens and young people like them.

CO: Can you describe some of the ads you're talking about and how they targeted youth?

MH: Yeah. The ads were really meant to convey that vaping was cool. It was a really popular thing to do. The ads themselves use people as models who look really young -- definitely teens. They also really tried to use images that teenagers could relate to. A lot of focus Juul made on trying to recruit these influencers, you know, on social media that a lot of young people follow, like Cara Delevingne and Luka Sabbat and others. And they were targeting, you know, kids in huge ways. You look at the ads that they were going to use with old people and then you look at the ads they ended up using, and you just know that this was a company that was looking to create a whole new class of consumers. And there are real questions about the harm, because, you know, we've had vaping illnesses, even deaths in the United States due to vaping. And we need to know more about the issue.

CO: And we don't. We don't know what exactly. They are still get investigating -- what created that. I mean, I just wonder if they haven't already sort of changed their ways. Your lawsuit says this happened till early 2016. Did the Juul stop at that point?

MH: Well, they've stopped marketing to young people, we believe or at least they've represented that. We have yet to affirm that, though. But here's what's important. They have continued to benefit from the market that they created -- the market of young people. And one of the things that our lawsuit does is just demand that the profits that they made, you know, 3.3 billion in one year alone, we need that money in our states to help treat young people who are nicotine addicted. We've got -- and I've talked to so many pediatricians who are treating kids now who go to sleep at night with a vaping device under their pillow, who can't concentrate in school, who have major anxiety as a result of Juul-ing, just super addicted and need help and treatment. And that's part of what our action is about, getting money and making penalties. You know, we've got to make companies pay. We've got to make them held accountable because it's just wrong. No one should profit off of getting kids addicted.

CO: But hasn't all the noise that's been made about this by the law and by health professionals already turn this around quite a bit? I mean, Juul has announced it's pulling its flavored vape pods, which are popular -- (amongst) teenagers in Canada as well. The other e-cigarette companies, including Juul, are telling lawmakers in Washington, they're changing their policies. They're not going to appeal to underage smokers. Haven't you already accomplished what needed to be done?

MH: Well, I think we have accomplished a lot. You know, we've made a big effort at educating the public about the harms of vaping. And it's true, in a state like Massachusetts, we recently passed a law that banned the flavors. And so that's a good positive development. But, you know,. in the vast majority of the country flavors are still available. It remains the case too I'll say that the US government and the Food and Drug Administration hasn't done its job. It needs to be more active. It needs to get a better handle on these things. But in the meantime, you know, as a matter of public health and public safety, as an attorney general, I'm proud of the work of our team. What we've uncovered and we're going to continue to seek to hold Juul accountable in court for the harm that is caused to, you know, hundreds of thousands of kids all across this country.

CO: Attorney General Healey I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

MH: Great to speak with you.

KG: Maura Healey is the Attorney Heneral of Massachusetts. We reached her in Boston. In a statement Juul said the company is working, quote, "Cooperatively with attorneys general, regulators, public health officials and other stakeholders to combat underage use and transition adult smokers from combustible cigarets." The company also outlined the actions it's taking, such as removing flavored vape pods from retailers.

[Music]

Mixtape

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all, you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.

KG: That's John Cusack or I guess his character, record store owner Rob Gordon in the film High Fidelity.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: You gotta kick it off for the killer to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch. Then you've got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway, I've started to make a tape.

KG: By the time that film came out, Stella Wedell hadn't long finished her mixed tape and lost it. Of course, she had no idea back then just how delicate an art her compilation would prove. The year was 1993 and the 12-year-old Ms. Wedell, who's from Berlin, was on holiday in Spain. Of course, sge took her carefully curated mix tape along with her. She'd loaded it up with her favorite artists from a C.D. called "Best of 93." It included a range of artists, Bob Marley, The Pet Shop Boys, UB40, for instance. And somewhere along the shores of Costa Brava or on the island of Mallorca, the tape got lost in the sand and was carried away by the waves. Fast forward to last summer, Ms. Wedell is again on vacation, this time in Sweden. She walks into an art gallery in Stockholm. And in a touring exhibition called Sea of Artifacts, she spots it: a beat-up cassette tape with its tracklist displayed. "When I was reading the tracklist, it seemed very familiar to me," she told The Guardian. "I always made tapes to listen to them with my Walkman, especially for the holidays." Mandy Barker, the British artist behind the exhibit, had found the tape on the island of Las Palmas. She had it restored to playable condition and well, you know the rest. It just goes to show you how easy it is to lose tracks of time.

[Music]

Part 2: U.S. veteran sues military half-century after classified Cold War disaster

CRA scam arrests

Guest: David Common

KG: If you have a phone, chances are that you've received "that" call. You know, the one. It's the Canada Revenue Agency and they're going to arrest you unless you pay them a large sum of money and fast. Two Canadians, police say are involved in the elaborate scam were arrested this week in Brampton, Ontario. The married couple face charges related to fraud and money laundering. The RCMP say the couple were acting as what they call "money mules" between victims and sophisticated scam call centers in India. CBC Marketplace has done several investigations into CRA scams, even going to India to report on the call centres. David Common is a host on CBC Marketplace. We reached him in Toronto.

CO: David, you know as well as anybody just how resilient these CRA phone scammers are. So how big a deal is it that these two Canadians have been arrested?

DAVID COMMON: Well, I think it is both a big deal and then part of a bigger picture. And the bigger picture is that this is a game of whack-a-mole. These call centers, which operates almost exclusively out of India, can shut down and restart very very quickly. So, you know, taking out people on the other side of the world actually does have its advantages because there's fewer of them. You're striking the scammers right in their wallet. And these are two people who allegedly were moving money from victims, Canadian victims, who have lost millions of dollars when you count everybody up and sending it to these organized criminal groups in India. And so striking them is, at least in theory, a much bigger impact than just taking out a call center.

CO: You were there when the RCMP moved in on this couple in Brampton, Ontario. How long had they been tracking this couple before they moved in?

DC: They've known about this couple for just shy of a year since last March. And they've had them under surveillance for a good chunk of that time. The actual arrest themselves, it's actually quite something watching how they work. It was really early in the morning when this man left for work. He works at a factory and about 20 minutes drive away from his house. The moment he stepped out of his home, they were on him and it was two or three unmarked police cars, constantly changing position, calling it on the radio where he was driving, how he was driving, the speed he was at, all the way until he got to this parking lot, pulled into the lot. They don't think he had any clue because the moment he pulled into the space, three RCMP vehicles pull around him. He gets out of the vehicle. So do six officers. He's under arrest and in handcuffs within seconds. Senior officers call his wife and say, we've got your husband. He's in custody. We need you to come to the police station. And if you don't come, you're going to be arrested. Little did she know she was also under surveillance. There were people right behind her talking the whole time.

CO: So these two are arrested. But the connection is back in India. So what role did they play in this scam?

DC: So they're what's called super money mules or money mule managers. There are a number of ways that Canadian victims hand money over to these scammers. There once was a time that gift cards were the thing. But, you know, drugstores and other places that sell gift cards have put up signs saying if this is to pay your taxes or something, get away -- you're being scammed. And so they've gone back to sort of tried and true, cash. And sending cash to P.O. boxes and being picked up by various people. These people are alleged to kind of be the supervisors, the highest level people perhaps in Canada sending that money back to these organized criminal syndicates back in India. And this is an interesting little tidbit that the RCMP led on, that a number of the people they've been speaking with are actually here as international students. And they were either, the RCMP tell us, brought here specifically to be these money mules or were recruited once they got here as money mules. Either way, the RCMP and the Canada Border Services agency are now looking to send a lot of those people back home.

CO: Yikes. And so, I mean, for people -- just to connect with what the public might remember and know about this from the kinds of calls that we get. Just characterize the kinds of calls people are getting and where those are coming from, how the whole scam actually works.

DC: These are calls that have plagued and annoyed and victimized Canadians for years. They started with duct cleaning. They went under the CRA tax scam. They've done other things like the sin card scam -- that's the newest one. Bank investigator scam. But they're all basically the same. They call you. They threaten you. They say you've done something wrong. You have a limited window of time to fix it. And it's going to cost you. You need to pay up right away. They give you a way to pay up. And some people don't fall for it. Some people do. And it has cost millions of dollars. And if you're one of those people who says, hey, I'd never fall for it, I just yell at these guys when they call me, just recognize that these guys are getting a lot better at what they do. They're much more sophisticated. They know more about the people they're calling. They're able to sound much more convincing and legitimate than they once did. And they can call spoof so they can make it look like someone else is calling you like the actual police.

CO: The RCMP said you're expose -- the CBC Marketplace expose -- on these CRA scam calls that highlighted the issues. Is that would finally provoke the RCMP to act on something that we have been aware of for some time?

DC: You know, I'd love to toot my own horn here and I will I suppose. But the RCMP were the ones who quite explicitly have told us, including today during this news conference, that they likely would not be where they are now, were it not for the attention brought by an investigative report that we did. And I think really the key to that was we tapped into something that is a universal annoyance. Even if you've not been a victim, there's a societal impact. So many people don't pick up the phone anymore because of these scams. And that's a big cost. And I think the RCMP were busy on other things and not really considering just how much of an annoyance this was to so many Canadians.

CO: You also showed people -- you interviewed people who had lost their life savings. And what impact did that have on them?

DC: You know, the people who often are most impacted by this are those who can least afford to handle it. I really think back to some people who I've sat with who have felt so alone and felt dumb, felt really really awful. And their lives have changed profoundly. There's one guy who lost more than a 100,000 dollars -- and that that wasn't everything he had, that was more than everything he had. He went to the bank and pulled a line of credit. He borrowed $5000 from his son. Took out money on his credit card. He borrowed money from his employer. He's going to be paying this back for years. And this is not a young man. And there are so many people whose lives have been permanently and profoundly impacted by this scam. So for all of those who see it as an annoyance, it is that. But there are some who I can't get their faces and their tears out of my mind. It's life altering in a terrible way.

CO: David, thank you for your reporting and thanks for speaking with us.

DC: Thank you.

KG: David Common is a host on CBC Marketplace. We reached him in Toronto.

[Music]

Steve Winter

KG: As the CEO of the Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Commission, it was Steve Winter's job to buy fine wine on the province's dime. But a new audit shows he bought up to a third of that wine through his son's company. The audit released yesterday by the province's auditor general includes a "rush order" for 96 bottles of wine through his son's company with an average retail price of $539 each. Only four of them have sold. According to Attorney General Julia Mullaley, Mr. Winter may have, quote, "breached his fiduciary duty to the NLC." Today, Mr. Winter denied those accusations to host Jamie Fitzpatrick on the CBC St. John's Morning Show.

SOUNDCLIP

STEVE WINTER: From a perspective of the legislation in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador -- I did not commit any crime or breach. My position [inaudible] duty was same conflict of interest. And I mean, whether she likes the act or not, the act was the act and that's what governed my behaviour.

JAMIE FITZPATRICK: Doesn't look good, though, does it?

STEVE WINTER: Well, listen -- somewhere along the way, somebody has decided that they wanted to make Stevie Winter look bad.

JAMIE FITZPATRICK: But at somewhere along the way, shouldn't you said Steve I don't know like, shouldn't we be bringing other people in here to act as a middleman or something? This does not look like a great business relationship to anybody looking at it.

STEVE WINTER: Hang on though. This whole process is being put out there by somebody who is trying to accomplish something and it's not necessarily being depicted in the right way. I didn't buy wine from my son for the purpose of Bordeaux Futures. I dealt with about a dozen negotiations in Bordeaux, France, who I bought the wine from. I didn't buy them from Greg Winter, I didn't buy them from Rob Collinwood or anybody else who may have represented -- the business was out of Bordeaux. I dealt with the Boredaux negotiations directly. And I'd done a little bit of homework on this since this became public. And over the six years that he was involved with his business and represented in the negotiations, he would not have gotten any more than 25-30 thousand dollars in commission. I don't know the exact numbers. I didn't know he was getting commission in the first place. But I've made it my business. I've try to understand more so I can defend myself and him. People think just because there was millions of dollars bought, that he paid millions of dollars. Well, this is absolutely distorted.

JAMIE FITZPATRICK: He got paid, though, didn't he?

STEVE WINTER: Well I just told you. He made 25 to 30 thousand dollars over six years. This is not a big deal.

KG: Steve Winter speaking to CBC St. John's. Mr. Winter is the former CEO of the Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation. He's been criticized in a new report by the province's auditor general, who says Mr. Winter may have, quote, "breached his fiduciary duty to the NLC."

[Music]

Spain bombs class action

Guest: Victor Skaar

KG: When an American B-52 bomber exploded over the small town of Palomares, Spain, in 1966 -- not many people knew about it. It was the Cold War. And the US Air Force kept the explosion a closely guarded secret. But hundreds of soldiers were deployed to clean up the area. And those soldiers were exposed to pulverized plutonium from four hydrogen bombs that were on board. Now, more than half a century later, one of those men has managed to get his lawsuit certified as a class action against the Department of Veteran Affairs. But Victor Skaar says it's too late for many of his fellow veterans. Mr. Skaar is a retired chief master sergeant with the US Air Force. We reached him in Las Vegas.

CO: Victor, how did it feel to find out that after all these years, your class action lawsuit against the Department of Veteran Affairs has been certified?

VICTOR SKAAR: When I received the call, I teared up. It's that simple. I just couldn't believe it. It was fantastic news.

CO: And we're thinking of something that happened way back in 1966 that this is related to. How did you and the other Air Force personnel ended up being exposed to this radiation?

VS: So it was an aircraft accident during the ugly but peaceful Cold War. The Strategic Air Command in United States Air Force kept loaded bombers in the air. And that's no secret anymore. But this was a normal refueling over the coast of Spain. This little village was selected because of its remoteness. And 30,000 feet while they were lining up for refueling, the boom of the tanker made contact with the vital spot of the B-52 bomber and broke the bomber open.

CO: Did the plane crash?

VS: Oh, gosh, yes. The fire immediately went up into the tanker. They loaded the fuel, obviously, and it just ignited. Four people on that aircraft perished. There were seven men on the bomber -- four of them survived and the others were perished. And four of the H-bombs dispersed and the high explosives exploded upon impact.

CO: But just to clarify for people who think that the four hydrogen bombs landed, they were not actually carrying a nuclear detonation, right?

VS: Oh, they're ready, but they're not armed. They're never armed until they are told to go to war.

CO: Good thing.

VS: Oh yeah. [Chuckles]

CO: What they did have was a lot of plutonium on them, right? So that became the big issue that needed to be cleaned up.

VS: Oh absolutely. Upon that explosion those warheads broke open. And then they dispersed that plutonium, which is something, you know, we can't even see it. But it has a half-life of 26,000 years. So that element was dispersed on the ground and in the air. And our job was to find it and then decontaminate and dispose of it.

CO: So there were many hundreds of troops scrambled together by the Air Force to cleanup, which must have been a very large debris site with a lot of plutonium laced material, right?

VS: Yes. Absolutely. My job was to be in that measurement detection phase of it. It took 62 days from the time we started until the time that we had the last of fifty four hundred barrels filled with contaminated material sealed and quality controlled and ready to go to the beach, to go to the Navy for dock transport to the United States.

CO: And during all that time, you and the others were exposed to this plutonium, which is not something -- the way it enters the system I understand is, you can inhale it. Very small particles of this can get into your system. Were you given protective gear? What kind of clothing or supplies were you given to protect yourselves from the plutonium?

VS: We went there with minimal respiratory protection. But that which we had, which was the old gas masks, was totally inappropriate for the work that we had to do. So people ended up using doctor's surgical masks. Well, they have a purpose in a laboratory or in a hospital, but not for what we expected. So there was no adequate protection. We were military sent to do a job. We had to do that job just like men going into the battle have to do their job.

CO: At what point did you find out that you personally had been subjected to exposure that might be affecting your health?

VS: I retired from US Air Force in 81. In 82, I started noticing a blood disorder. So then I some submitted a claim to the VA. In 82 and 84 they denied it. They denied it because there were no records available. That's a quote. I decided I'm going to fight this sucker. So I've tried to get my medical records. I wasn't after anybody else's except mine. And under the Freedom of Information Act, I should be able to get that. They said these records do not exist chief. And that's when I told them, I know they're there and I want to find them. Within two months, I got a letter back: Your records will be made available to you shortly or something like that. When I finally got my records, I found that I had submitted six assessments. First one was after about two weeks or so after I was there, I had 25 percent of the life permissible dose in 24 hours. So it is there.

CO: And then you found out what was on your record was that you weren't alone. There were others.

VS: Yeah there were others. When I got my records, the Air Force also provided me 25 others, I guess, by clerical accident or something. So I not only got mine, but I got the same information for 25 others, and I immediately contacted them and informed them that their records were available.

CO: So how many people do you know who have already succumbed to cancers and illnesses that you believe were related to that work?

VS: My two closest comrades were senior to me, were nearest to that weapon all the time -- both of them died within the first 10 years after they left. Subsequently, just in '95, I contacted these 25. I got some communications back from them and I've since gotten letters and telephone calls from three widows of comrades that I'm now speaking to widows rather than my friends.

CO: So it's terrible news that you're getting. But at the same time, you can advance this class action suit. This has now been approved. So at this point, you feel, though, you might be able to help those who have survived. You might be able to get them justice. Is that what you're thinking?

VS: Absolutely, ma'am. Through folks like you and others that are willing to put this information out before enough people. The Air Force needs to get involved. They're the ones that are supposed to have the records.

CO: But you need to find it because they need to find the people that were...

VS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

CO: Victor, I hope you do find them. It's just an extraordinary story. And I do appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

VS: Thank you. And God bless your Canadian Air Force also.

CO: Thank you very much.

VS: All right. Thank you very much.

KG: Victor Skaar is a retired chief master sergeant with the US Air Force. He was in Las Vegas. In a statement to The New York Times, the Air Force maintained its assessment that the Palomarez troops had not suffered harmful exposure to radiation. You can find more on this story on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

First Dates

KG: First dates. Ugh. I know, right? You never know what to expect. What if you don't have anything to talk about? What if they don't look like their profile picture? What if they make you the unwitting accomplice in a felony? Okay so you probably don't have to worry about that last question, but maybe you should. Because that's what happened to a woman in Massachusetts. And her nightmarish story has been detailed by the Bristol County DA's office just in time for Valentine's Day. The date starts normally. She picks up her guy at his parents house. Okay, so maybe he can't afford his own place. Might explain what happens later. She drives and he's drinking wine in the passenger seat. That one's probably red flag. But hey, maybe he's just nervous. He asks her to pull over outside a bank. Five minutes later, he's back covered in sweat, wearing a hat and sunglasses. And in case you haven't guessed yet, Mr. First Date is clutching a gun and a bunch of cash. "Go," he screams. And probably a few other words. Panicked she hits the gas and drives until she hears police sirens closing in. That's when she pulls over in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot. The date finally ends with police dragging him away, kicking and screaming. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced this week to five years in prison. No charges for the getaway driver, though, because even the police agree a first date from hell is punishment enough.

[Music]

Counseling services

KG: Depression. Anxiety. Suicide. At post-secondary institutions across Canada, students are struggling with their mental health. And the University of Ottawa is no different. At least five U of O students have died since January 2019. University president Jacques Fremont calls it a mental health crisis. He says the school has added extra services for students who need help. But Hayley Elliot says it's not enough. The third year environmental science student is joining thousands of her fellow students to demand better mental health supports on her campus. Here's Ms. Elliot on CBC's Ottawa Morning, talking about her own struggle to get access to the help she needs.

SOUNDCLIP

HAYLEY ELLIOTT: I've tried to access mental health resources numerous times at U of Ottawa, through the U of Ottawa clinic. Just in this past month, I've been denied twice from having counseling because the waitlist has been too long. I deal with depression, anxiety, and specifically PTSD. So having a counselor that is specifically able to help me with PTSD is extremely extremely important. But U of Ottawa doesn't seem like they're able to provide that with me -- for me right now. I need a sociologist, I need a therapist. And I know U of Ottawa provides so many numbers and online resources, but that's unfortunately not what I need. It's very hard for me specifically to open up to someone. So the person to person in session therapy is so much more beneficial for me and I really really do need that.

HALLIE COTNAM: CBC has reported -- and the university has said this, that it has added six new mental health counselors. You're shaking your head.

HAYLEY ELLIOTT: I'm not sure where those were implemented or when they were implemented, because from my personal experiences, the timeline for the waitlist has been only going up and now it's been completely cut off.

HALLIE COTNAM: So you haven't seen any improvements since they brought in...

HAYLEY ELLIOTT: No, absolutely not.

KG: That was University of Ottawa student Hayley Elliott talking to Ottawa Morning guest host Hallie Cotnam this week about her difficulties accessing mental health supports on campus. If you or someone you know needs help, call the Canada Suicide Prevention Service at 1-833-456-4566.

[Music]

Part 3: This New York woman built her own rotary cellphone

Presumed consent advocate

Guest: Myles Lynch

KG: Myles Lynch is 22 years old and he's already had eight different lungs. Mr. Lynch was born with cystic fibrosis. In 2014, he had his first double lung transplant. Since then, he's had two more. And now the Ontario man is working to change the rules so more Canadians can benefit from organ donation. He's launched a petition calling on Ottawa to consider an opt out system that means patients who die are presumed to consent to organ donation, even if they haven't registered as donors. He plans to present the petition on Parliament Hill. We reached Myles Lynch in Toronto.

CO: Myles what was your life like before you had your first lung transplant?

MYLES LYNCH: So with my native CF lungs, breathing is pretty difficult. I had plenty of reoccurring infections and a lot of daily treatments, quite a bit of effort trying to keep up physical activity is pretty exhausting. But trying to make it my every day is more and more of a struggle as I approach to getting a transplant. My life expectancy was around...I was eleven when I was told I had two years to live. So that would bring it to 13.

CO: You got put on the transplant list when you were 16. Is that right?

ML: Yep. June 2nd of 2014. And later on that year, I would have had the first transplant done at SickKids Hospital.

CO: So what was it like after the operation, after your lung transplant, when you were finally able to get up and try them out? What was that like?

ML: It was a phenomenal feeling. I could have these deep breaths with such ease of inhaling and exhaling. I thought, wow, this is what the average person breathes. They don't even really notice that they're breathing. They just do it.

CO: We take it for granted. Being able to take that deep breath into your lungs and just enjoy that pleasure. What was it like even sort of doing a flight of stairs or going -- could you run? Could you play?

ML: Yeah, playing tennis, shooting hoops with my friends. I tried to keep active as much as I could with the CF lungs. But after the age of about seven, I couldn't run anymore. And it was around 8 or 9 months after the translated lungs were inside me is when, I ran the Pan Am torch and I was running which...I didn't really think I'd ever do again. But it was a good feeling.

CO: And then at what point did those transplanted lungs start to fail you?

ML: About a year after the transplant, what it was, was chronic rejection. So the difficulty of breathing is a little more and a little more as the weeks go on. So it's a very slow and steady deterioration that you foresee as though your antibodies are slowly attacking the cells and causing more scar tissue so it does become hard to breathe. Unfortunately, that's what happened in my case.

CO: You're 22 years old now. And since those first lung transplants, you've had two more transplants. Is that right?

ML: Yeah. Yeah. So three double lung transplants in total.

CO: What's it like to be on those lists and not just for you, for your family, for the people around you? What's it like for people who wait to see if they're going to be given that gift of life?

ML: Yeah, there's a level of anxiety that I think everyone involved will have. Your organs could fail you any day since you're kind of an end-stage organ failure. So although it is quite scary, the transplant itself gives it a lot of hope.

CO: The reason I was speaking with you today is because of this petition you have launched. You're asking the government to look into an opt out or presumed consent system for organ donation. What would that accomplish if you could get that to happen, to get a law of that nature? What would that change?

ML: In theory, you would reduce the wait times for people on the transplant list. Then it would save quite a few lives. And I think that's a good argument right there. It's something that'll save lives. So that's why I want to get the petition rolling and into legislation.

CO: We all know what it is to get the organ donation card or to agree to donate your organs should you die. But the point is, is that this reverses it -- means that you have to actually file to say you don't want to donate your organs. Is that right?

ML: Yes. So the opt out program presumes everyone to be a potential donor and allows those who do not wish to be a donor opt out.

CO: And you're trying get this in Canada and the federal government, because we know provincially they are moving in this direction, aren't they?

ML: Yeah. Preventatively Nova Scotia is going to set up the opt out program in the later half of this year.

CO: You know, people and families who have lost someone waiting for organs, is that right?

ML: Yeah. Yeah. I've gotten close to those. Yeah. Remembering a few that come to mind who you know used the message and talk. And then unfortunately, they did not receive the lifesaving organ on time. And those people that come to mind, they stick with me. And to think -- there's a select few that I know. But for the people who are really close to someone personally waiting in the list for an organ transplant, that's who I want to help. And the opt out program gives a little more hope for them to have their loved ones receive a lifesaving organ.

CO: What do you want to say to Canadians? To people listening to this about why they should care. Why should they feel this is important for them?

ML: I mean, I could reiterate the numbers. Over 260 people died while waiting on the list last year. But I think maybe just taking a focus point on someone you care about, a friend, a sibling, a parent. If they or you required a lifesaving organ, then you'd want a system in place that can help that loved one continue on with their life. Is that something that should end their life when we have the opportunity to save their lives through implementing these different policies to help -- to give them a lifesaving organ in time?

CO: You've had your third double lung transplant last spring. How are you feeling?

ML: Right now, I'm feeling great. I'm active -- pretty good.

CO: Myles it is good to talk to you.

ML: Yes. Thank you.

CO: We'll be following your story. Thank you.

ML: Thanks.

KG: Myles Lynch is a three time double lung transplant recipient. We reached him in Toronto. Mr. Lynch has a petition calling on Ottawa to consider an opt out or presumed consent system for organ donation.

[Music]

Tom Cheney

KG: There are plenty of fish in the sea, although they're not as plenty as they used to be. But this story is about a few fish in a whole other body of water. Photographers in Nova Scotia have documented wild salmon spawning in a brook, which is located where an Australian company is hoping to build a gold mine. The two photographers spent 10 days on McKeen's Brook on the eastern shore of Nova Scotia. They were filming a project for the Nova Scotia Conservation Group to show just how sensitive they say the habitat is. Tom Cheney is one of the producers for the film. Here he is on CBC's Information Morning today talking about one of his favorite shots from the project.

SOUNDCLIP

TOM CHENEY: The piece that we're most proud, shows a female Atlantic salmon. She's found her ideal spot for a nest and she's turning over on her side and using her powerful tale to sweep away smaller rocks. And what happens is that builds a pit, really, and they can be several feet wide and several feet deep. And she uses her tail to move away the smaller rocks. And what are left are, you know, larger kind of fist sized rocks. And then those provide the substrate into which she lays her eggs and then afterwards she covers it all over. So she's moving hundreds of pounds of gravel with her tail. It's very impressive.

PORTIA CLARK: And where is the male during all this?

TOM CHENEY: He's lurking nearby [laughter]. And then he comes in kind of for the main event.

PORTIA CLARK: So what was it like for you to witness this happening -- to actually see what maybe you'd only imagined to this point going on in the Brook?

TOM CHENEY: You know, salmon are such popular sport fish. And we talk about how beautiful, how powerful they are. And everybody flocks the rivers to fish for them through the season. And then the fishing season ends. And we kind of forget about Atlantic salmon. But they have swum 4000 miles roundtrip from Greenland and back -- not to give us a chance to catch them. They've come back to the very gravel in which they were born to spawn. And it's a truly magical thing. It's very secretive. It's very intimate, and it's beautiful.

KG: That was Tom Cheney speaking with CBC host Portia Clark today. He's one of the producers who videotaped Salmon preparing to spawn in Nova Scotia for a conservation group.

[Music]

Rotary smart phone

Guest: Justine Haupt

KG: Phone's ringing and it's the 1970s calling. Justine Haupt is like most of us. She carries around a smartphone every day. But unlike most of us, she built her own phone. And it's enough to make your hand spin. By which I mean it incorporates phone technology and design from yester-year that would baffle most millennials. We reached Justine Haupt in Long Island, New York.

CO: Justine what's special about this phone you've created?

JUSTINE HAUPT: It's a rotary dial cell phone. And it's as un-smart as it can be intentionally. I am kind of anti-smartphone. It doesn't operate as a smartphone. There's no touchscreen display. There's no advance display. It has an e-paper display, if you know what that is. But you can't browse the Internet. It can't text. And all that is intentional because I have a problem with how hyper-connected everyone is nowadays. So I wanted to downgrade even more and I decide to make myself this thing.

CO: Okay. Now, how old are you?

JH: I'm 34.

CO: Okay, so you did not grow up in the era of rotary phones?

JH: No, no. But my grandparents had them around the house. I was able to make calls as a young kid. So he was aware of them.

CO: For those of us who grew up and had to do business with rotary phones [laughs] we thought we'd died and gone to heaven when we got rid of them.

JH: [Laughs] Right. It would be a lot of effort to have to use a dial for every single call. So the people I call most frequently have their own dedicated hardware buttons, mainly my husband and my mother. And I'll be working more contacts into it as I continue to develop it. It's still quite new.

CO: And as you learn what it is to put your finger in there and destroy your nail every time you have to dial someone who's got more than three zeros in their number.

JH: Oh, that's okay. [Laughs]

CO: But this is a portable phone. This is a cell phone. It is incorporated with a smartphone, is that right?

JH: Yeah. So it's a smartphone. It's connected to 3G cellular network, but it's not incorporated with a smartphone. It's an entirely standalone piece of hardware. I'm an engineer, so I had fun, you know, in designing my own electronics for this. And it leverages some open-source hardware that's available from a company. So that's good. Various other bits and pieces have come together to make it work.

CO: You say it has an e-paper display. What does that mean?

JH: So if you ever use a Kindle, it's just this display that looks remarkably like paper. There's no backlighting. It's black text on white background and it's by static, which means it does need power to display a continuous message. So I have one of these worked into the back of it as an added kind of neat feature for, you know, displaying contact. "Phyllis Smith calls" things like that.

CO: You get text with that?

JH: In theory, I could if I worked out the programing to use the rotary dial for texting, but I was [laughs] intentionally trying to avoid texting. So no. Right now, no.

CO: How big is your phone?

JH: Oh, that's a good question. So the point here is I want it to be usable as my primary phone. So I made it to be small enough and thin enough to fit in a pocket. I'm measuring it as we speak. It's about 10 centimeters tall and a little more than seven wide and a few thick. I designed everything around it to be as compact as I could make it so it fits in a pocket.

CO: Okay. And how much of the actually the rotary -- the dial part of it takes up the phone? How much of the space on your phone is just that?

JH: It's mostly the dial. [Laughter]

CO: How do people in New York react when you are using this rotary portable phone?

JH: Well, honestly, I haven't had too many reactions yet because this is only day three. I just finished this and I'm super surprised that it's gotten in this short time any attention at all. I just posted design documentation on my personal portfolio website. So I haven't gotten too many reactions yet. Just coworkers who just love it.

CO: Right. I mean, do they love it because of not just what it looks like -- the sort of retro appearance of it, but because of why you've made it, because of how you feel about how connected you are?

JH: Well, I haven't been in conversations had too much of an opportunity to get into the philosophy behind why I did it. But I hope people appreciate that. I mean, it's a device that I truly own. Most smartphones you know, you don't really know what's going on behind the scenes. It's all very finicky to me. I really get driven crazy by modern touch interfaces. And I just wanted something where I had complete control of it. I know how it works and what it can do. And so yeah.

CO: But you can't get directions to the restaurant on this.

JH: No. [Laughs]

CO: You can call the restaurant -- but you can't directions. What else can you do with it? [Laughs]

JH: [Laughs] That's basically it. It's for making calls and receiving calls and voicemail of course. But that's it.

CO: Because I think probably there are a lot of people who share your sort of frustration with this how connected and how we are staring at these phones, these screens. How common do you think your philosophy is now among people who are looking for something like that?

JH: I think probably my mentality is more common than you might realize. But I don't know if people feel like they're empowered to do anything about it. And, you know, you can make your own phone. It's a thing that people can...it's possible to do this. It's just that it's just not very common.

CO: So this would actually mean that you are not under corporate surveillance anymore. You can actually go about without somebody knowing or some algorithm knowing exactly what you're doing, where you're going, who you're doing it with.

JH: Right. Right. Right.

CO: And after only three days, though, are you feeling that you could enjoy having less technology in your pocket?

JH: Oh, absolutely. I mean I'm obviously, you know, I'm proud of this as a personalized creation. And I'm hoping this will become my primary cell phone. So we'll see how that goes a year from now you know.

CO: Justine it's good to talk to you. Thanks.

JH: Thank you very much.

KG: Justine Haupt is an engineer and the creator of a rotary dial mobile phone that's a smartphone too...sort of. We reached her in Long Island, New York. And if you want to see a picture of that, go to our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

The Pale Blue Dot

KG: The photo is grainy and kind of dark and the subject is so far away, it's just a faint speck. But once you know the story behind it, you realize it is truly out of this world. It was taken 30 years ago today by a traveler who is out exploring yet the space probe, Voyager 1. And the speck in the photo is our planet. The astronomer Carl Sagan called it The Pale Blue Dot. And it was actually his idea. He asked NASA to have the probe turn its camera to snap one last shot of Earth before leaving our solar system. And then he wrote a book by the same name. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of that image, Mr. Sagan's successor as the host of the TV show "Cosmos" read a passage from The Pale Blue Dot. Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson.

SOUNDCLIP

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: If you look at Earth from space, you see a dot that's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you ever heard of. Every human being who ever lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings. Thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager. Every hero and coward. Every creator and destroyer of civilizations. Every king and peasant. Every young couple in love. Every hopeful child. Every mother and father. Every inventor and explorer. Every teacher of morals. Every corrupt politician. Every superstar. Every supreme leader. Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust. Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumphs, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point: a pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It's up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and I might add, character building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot -- the only home we've ever known.

KG: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reading from Carl Sagan's "The Pale Blue Dot." Carl Sagan was once a guest on this show. In 1973, he shared some of his thoughts on extraterrestrial life. He began by telling former As It Happens host Harry Brown why he felt humanity was ready to try to contact other worldly life forms.

SOUNDCLIP

CARL SAGAN: I think this is the precise first moment in the history of mankind when we are ready. It's the time that all of the earth has been explored, where there are no new places to find. It's the time when societies are becoming homogenized so that there will shortly be one planetary wide culture. And it's also the time when our technology has, for the first time in the history of our planet, reached the point where we're capable of interstellar communication. I think this is not only the right time technologically, but I think it's the right time in terms of the human spirit.

HARRY BROWN: I suppose before we launch into it, we should have some kind of evidence that there's something out there to communicate with.

CARL SAGAN: Well, that's a very tough one, because if we had some good evidence that there were other societies out there in the dark, then we would, of course, be I think right in the midst of a program to communicate with them. But we're at the moment before that, that is where we have the capability of communicating. But no communication has occurred yet. And so all the arguments are inferential. We know that there are a great many stars. It seems very likely from the astronomical evidence that there are a great many planets. We know something about the origin of life and all that we've learned on that score in the last 20 years seems to suggest that the origin of life is easy in the sense that under the most general planetary conditions, the building blocks, the molecular building blocks of life are made extremely easily and are joined together in a very easy manner. And finally, we know that we have a great deal of time. We've heard about four or five billion years here on the Earth. There are other stars and other planetary systems which are twice as old. And therefore, we have a lot of places for life. We think the origin of life is relatively common and we know that there is a great deal of time for life to evolve. Putting all that together makes a, I wouldn't call it persuasive, but at least an exceptionally provocative picture of a populated galaxy.

KG: Astronomer Carl Sagan on As It Happens, in 1973. When the Voyager probes took off, they each carried a gold plated phonograph record known as The Golden Record. Dr. Sagan led a team of curators who compiled a selection of pop and folk music from around the world, including a recording by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

February 14, 2020 Episode Transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode