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As It Happens Transcript for July 13, 2017

Hosts: Laura Lynch and Karen Gordon

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

LAURA LYNCH: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch.

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

[Music: Theme]

KG: Tonight:

LL: He lost his freedom fighting for it. Today Chinese dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer. And tonight his friend and editor remembers a man imprisoned by the system he fearlessly criticized.

KG: A magic lamp. But there's the rub. After a much heralded international casting call Disney still can't seem to find the actor to play Aladdin in a live action remake. And our guest, who auditioned himself, has some ideas about what.

LL: Nightmare in her own backyard. A Vancouver woman describes the harrowing 15 minute ordeal she suffered along with gruesome injuries when she was attacked by a vicious tenacious raccoon.

KG: Understanding the gravity of the situation. Canadian educator, engineer, pilot and astronaut Julie Payette says science and innovation will be priorities as she prepares to take over as Canada's next governor general.

LL: Larva means never having to say you're sorry. Although I'm sure caterpillar's are at least slightly apologetic when they eat a plant that releases a chemical that turns them into cannibals, and then eat their pals.

KG: And it's supposed to be a public service not self-service. Eight times in the last month pirates have interrupted the regular programming on a local radio station in England to broadcast a song about masturbation. As It Happens, the Thursday edition radio that's not comfortable with a manual transmission.

[Music: Theme]

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Part 1: Liu Xiaobo obit, raccoon attack, UK radio pirates

Liu Xiaobo obit

Guest: Perry Link

KG: He was a vocal critic of the Chinese government's one party system. His beliefs landed him in prison and eventually they cost him his life. Earlier today Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died from late stage liver cancer. He was 61 years old. Mr. Liu was widely known for his essays and poems but more significantly he was known for his activism. In 2009, he was sentenced to 11 years after penning a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08. He was granted medical parole last month after being diagnosed with cancer in late May. Perry Link edited Lou Jumbo's books of essays called: No Enemies No Hatred. He was also a friend of Mr. Liu’s. We reached Perry Link in Riverside California.

LL: Mr. Link, first of all I am very sorry for your loss.

PERRY LINK: Yes it's a sad day.

LL: How are you and other friends feeling about the death of Liu Xiaobo?

PL: We anticipated it because about 10 days ago we knew he had serious liver cancer so intellectually it isn't a shock, but emotionally of course it is. When this happens that it hits hard and we're a bit depressed.

LL: And there was also some suggestion, at least in the media, that there was going to be the attempt to bring him to the United States for treatment. So was there any optimism or hope on your part that he might live longer?

PL: Yes there was always that hope. A few days ago, a German and an American doctor saw him and the judge said it was still possible to bring him abroad and get the very best treatment that they could give, and they made that offer. The Chinese government rejected the possibility of his traveling. So it was just a matter of waiting.

LL: How did you feel about that, when the Chinese government refused that?

PL: Well that was to be expected. The Chinese government, for now two decades, has been focused on trying to throttle him. He has not said anything that the world has heard since his final statement at trial in the year 2009. And we all would love to hear what he has to say. The main goal of the Chinese government is to be sure that he cannot make that kind of speech.

LL: How did you first come to know Mr. Liu?

PL: I knew him by reputation because we both work in the field of modern Chinese literature. And in the 1980s, when he was still a graduate student, he became famous in our field for writing fiery denunciations of virtually every contemporary Chinese writer, including ones that were critical of the government. He was fiercely independent in his own thinking and he blamed anyone who wasn't fiercely independent. And for that reason I thought he was a powerful interesting person but not necessarily a deep thinker. But then a few years ago, after he got his Nobel Prize, and Harvard University Press asked me to edit a collection of his works and I read a lot of his works and was really surprised at how deeply erudite he is. An amazingly broad range of topics, everything from ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius and [unintelligible], to the condition of farmers in rural areas in China today and everything in between.

LL: Now you never met him in person, but in speaking with him on the phone, what was he like?

PL: He's blunt to put it bluntly, but he doesn't hold grudges. He never did. He's just constitutionally honest, if I can put it that way.

LL: [Laughs] It is a good way to put it. He wrote a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 0,8 and you worked with him on that and you translated it. So, with that famous bluntness in mind, what was it like to work with him?

PL: That democracy manifesto, Charter 08, he didn't begin. A number of his friends conceived it and drafted it and he joined in midstream. He became the overall editor and he volunteered to take responsibility for it. How was it with me, up until just the final days before the charter was released, he was calling me saying: “Add these words. Delete those words”, and so on. And I did, but after a while I thought: “No. I can't do this” because about 300 people have already signed this document and there's no way he can check all of these word changes with them. So, I told him I won't make any more changes. And he was a bit blunt I think in not liking that he was miffed at me for a while, nothing serious of course, but he wanted the document to be something that the maximal range of Chinese people could sign.

PL: Liu Xia, many as activists are still asking the Chinese government to bring his wife Liu Xia, to the United States. Now that he has died, do you think there is any chance that will happen?

PL: Hard to predict these things. But now that he's dead, the main fear that the government has that his intellect will spill forward, he is dead into eternity. And this relieves the pressure they feel on trying to bottle her up. But the other side of that coin, is that the only person who is able to see him, for all of the last seven years, was her. She was able to see him every month, on condition that she'd be quiet about what he said. Now if she comes out, and he's dead, what's to stop her from saying more about what he was thinking and the government in China wouldn't want that.

LL: What legacy do you think Liu Xiaobo leaves behind?

PL: Chinese dissidents in the last couple of decades. All of them of course make the calculation that I am going to speak truth to power, even if it's risky. This they have in common. But what stands out about him is he never filtered. And then of course he became famous when he got the Nobel Prize. So he with the Nobel Prize became arguably the most prominent Chinese dissident in the last couple of decades.

LL: Perhaps famous and perhaps prominent but his name has been suppressed in China for several years so that many young people don't even know who he is. How hopeful are you that they will eventually get to know who he really was?

PL: Well I don't know that because the suppression, as you know, has worked. And the ones who do know who he is keep it under wraps because it's dangerous. The more interesting question to me is the long term legacy. If you compare him for a moment with China's president Xi Jinping, they're only two years apart in age. Both of them missed their educations during the Cultural Revolution, but Xi Jinping's father was a colleague of Mao and Xi Jinping, from the beginning, used his years in the Cultural Revolution to begin building a resume that would lead him to learn the skullduggery and sycophancy that's important in rising, whereas Liu Xiaobo learned the lesson that I have to think for myself. But I mean if you asked this question 200 years from now, who's going to remember the thinking of Xi Jinping versus the thinking of Liu Xiaobo. There's no comparison. You think of the other freedom fighters in the 20th century Nelson Mandela and [unintelligible] and Burma, all of them were sent to prison for speaking the truth and trying to improve their societies. And I do think Liu Xiaobo has that prospect for having his contribution to history be well known.

LL: Mr. Link, again, my sympathies on the loss of your friend. Thank you for speaking with me.

PL: My pleasure.

KG: That was Perry Link, a friend of Liu Xiaobo’s. We reached him in Riverside, California. Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died today from late stage liver cancer. He was 61. And we've posted more about Mr. Liu on the as it happens website cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Theme]

Raccoon attack

Guest: Gina Charelli

KG: She thought it was going to kill her. Recently, Gina Charelli and her dog Rocky were brutally attacked by a raccoon in her backyard. It lasted 15 minutes and after that harrowing ordeal she was left with a dozen puncture wounds and multiple scratches up and down her legs. We reached Ms. Charelli at her home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

LL: Ms. Charelli, this story, quite frankly, it's really scary. How have you been feeling since the attack?

GINA CHARELLI: Well, I have to admit it has been a really traumatizing experience. I almost can't believe it happened. I never imagined that a raccoon could be that aggressive.

LL: Take us back to this past Saturday when you stepped out into your backyard, what happened?

GC: Okay. It was about 3:25 in the afternoon. I went out onto my deck, from my back door to where the grass area is, which is all in close. It's about 30 feet. I had just put my small fifteen pound dog down on the grass, in about four seconds, from under the deck... There's only a space at that area of about three inches. So, it's too low to the ground for my dog to get under there. And there's a raccoon that was bigger than him just came directly flying out at him and grabbed him by the head, with his teeth. I picked up the dog by his collar and lifted him into the air and the raccoon was locked onto his head and wouldn't let go. So, I was kind of like you know trying to shake them bot and hitting the raccoon. No success. And then I just started slamming both of them into the deck, trying to get the raccoon to fall off of him. And again, couldn't get the raccoon to release him. And then, finally, I don't know how long it was, the raccoon kind of released his jaws to kind of get another bite at him. And so the raccoon fell down sort of half way towards the grass and then I just lifted the dog way up into the air, really high. And that was when the raccoon just turned on me. Literally, like a crazed Tasmanian devil. Just like, like circling me, biting me, scratching me. And it didn't stop, for 15 minutes. So, the problem was that I was trying to get away from it but it was biting me, relentlessly biting me. So sometimes when I was trying to move, the raccoon was actually attached to my legs. I managed to somehow drag myself on foot to the back door of my kitchen. When I was at the bottom of the, there's a sort of three steps to go up to my little porch there, he released his mouth again and was coming towards me. I scrambled backwards up the steps. Luckily my door was open. I scrambled backwards into the door and literally almost like falling over just with my one free hand. I had the dog in the other. I just slammed the door shut, thankfully, and raccoon was racing towards the door.

LL: When you were in the midst of all of this, as the raccoon was biting down and then circling you, what was going through your mind?

GC: It's hard for me to remember really what I was doing. I don't remember anything; how I was holding that dog or what the dog was doing, I have no recollection of that. It was complete terror, madness and an excruciating pain because in fact the animal was never circling me. The animal was only biting me and scratching me the whole time. Otherwise I would have run, but I wasn't able to run from him because he was on me. I thought he was going to kill me.

LL: When you got to the hospital, how did they treat you? Did you have to get a rabies shot?

GC: They did give me a tetanus shot. They didn't give me a rabies shot because they said they haven't had a documented case of rabies in raccoons in BC, in 20 years.

LL: How many stitches did you need?

GC: I got about 10 stitches. I have about 12 puncture bite wounds and multiple scratches lacerations, all over both legs.

LL: And how is your dog Rocky doing Rocky?

GC: Actually, he had a few minor punctures and minor scratches on him. So, thankfully, I was able to you know keep him out of harm's way, to a certain degree. Certainly if, I mean, certainly he would be dead if I hadn't been able to get him away from the raccoon. That is no question and if I had been a child, that child would be dead for sure, Laura. And this is why, you know, initially I didn't want to talk about it publicly because it's so upsetting. But there are lots of children in this neighborhood. My neighbors have been very concerned and they are the ones who kind of pressed me to kind of share the story, just in terms of, hopefully, just making people aware that even if this event is not considered common, the fact that it there is a potential for this scenario to happen at all, you know, people need should be aware.

LL: Animal control officials have been to your house since the incident. Did they find the raccoon?

GC: They came with a gun. They said if they would have found it, that they would have shot it. They didn't find anything. They didn't find any evidence of babies. They didn't find any evidence of you know nests, or anything like that.

LL: Because that might have been the explanation, that the raccoon was trying to protect babies?

GC: That's what they said that that could have been the case. And also they said that that season is usually over in May. So this is a little bit late in the year, if there are babies this late in the year I don't know.

LL: Ms. Shirley I'm so sorry that this happened to you but I appreciate you being able to tell us about it. Thank you.

GC: Thank you, Laura. Much appreciate it. Bye bye.

LL: Bye bye.

KG: That was Gina Charelli, speaking about a recent raccoon attack in her backyard. She was in Vancouver. We've posted some pictures of the aftermath of that attack on our website cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Theme]

New Governor General

Guest: Julie Payette

KG: Julie Payette is an old hand at writing rockets into space. Well, today the astronaut and engineer got a taste of the very down to earth realities of Canadian politics. Ms. Payette appeared alongside Prime Minister Trudeau, this afternoon in Ottawa, as he announced that she would be Canada's next governor general. The appointment comes after calls for Mr. Trudeau to appoint Canada's first indigenous head of state, including an appeal from Indigenous members of Mr. Trudeau's own caucus. The first questions Ms. Payette was asked, was about her priorities and what she had to say to those MPs.

SOUNDCLIP

JULIE PAYETTE: Thank you for the question. I, as a 12th generation Canadian, I am exactly just that, a Canadian. And I am here to serve all Canadians of all backgrounds, of all walks of life either new or not so new. So, it will be my pleasure and I will be very open to what I think is our core value in this country; tolerance, openness and working together.

KG: That was Canada's new governor general designate, Julie Payette, speaking in Ottawa earlier today. science and technology seem like a pretty natural fit. Here's Ms. Payette, on As It Happens, after her first shuttle mission in 1999. Mary Lou Finlay was the host at the time, and she wanted to know about the sheer and utter excitement of blasting into space. But Julie Payette was cool as, well, an astronaut.

JULIE PAYETTE: That's an interesting one and it takes a fair amount inside but it's a very short ride. It's only eight and a half minutes it takes, from moment of lift off to the moment we shut down the engine once we get in orbit. That's a fairly shaky right at first, and the second part, the second stage, when we're really outside the atmosphere and that can really start accelerating because we're not impaired by the thickness of the air. Then we feel like really pushed back in our seats and feel about three times heavier. And the first very dramatic transition is actually when we shut down the engine and a half minutes later and then we go from three times heavier to weightless.

MARY LOU FINLAY: [Laughs] Weightless.

JP: And it's a quarter of a second transition. So it's a very very quick, almost brutal transition. It's very impressive.

MLF: Is it brutal? What happens to your stomach?

JP: Well, what happens is that your system has never seen this before. This is totally new. And most of us have to be careful at first not to move too strongly or you know start tumble turning, or something like that, because you just have to give your system a chance to adapt at this completely new way of operating.

MLF: Did you have trouble sleeping?

JP: Oh. On the contrary, I would say that sleeping in space was again one of these pleasures that come with weightlessness. It's fantastic. You just get into your sleeping bag and drift away and the one thing that would have been very interesting is that one has some, what are called terrestrial reflex. You know you hold your food right side up and make sure that you don't turn the packets around so it doesn't spill but it doesn't make any sense. I mean you could turn the packets around.

MLF: It’s going to spill.

JP: Things would stay that way. And the same with sleeping, first night I slept horizontal and I never did the rest of mission. Why would I sleep horizontal? There is this no mattress.

MLF: Why not sleep on your head?

JP: There's no concept of upside down, right side up anymore.

KG: Ha. That was Julie Payette in 1999, telling our former host Mary Lou Finlay about her first trip to the International Space Station. Today Ms. Payette added governor designate to her long list of accomplishments.

[Music: Theme]

UK radio pirates

Guest: Tony Delahunty

KG: One of the times I can count on not being interrupted is when I'm on air, much like I am now. Unfortunately, the radio host at the local station Mansfield 103 point two in England, can't say the same. Over the last month, someone has been hijacking their airwaves to play a song. Not Freebird or Rick Ashley’s Never Going to Give You Up. It's a song about masturbation. Here's one unfortunate example.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Music]

HOST: Mansfield 103.2 is the home of great music with little mix and no more sad songs.

[Sound: Noisy distortions]

VOICE: [Singing] I am wanker.

I am a wanker.

And it does me good like it should.

I am a wanker.

I am a wanker.

And I am always pulling my pudd.

KG: So, yes. That is not the most appropriate thing to have cutting in. Tony Delahunty is the station's managing director. We reached him in Mansfield, England.

LL: Tony when did you first notice your station was being hacked?

TONY DELAHUNTY: Laura. It happened on a Saturday afternoon. There was an ordinary music program with a little bit of sport going into it, and then suddenly this sound [Sound: Noises] and we wondering what on earth was going on. We thought: “Hey, we were losing, was the transmitter going down. And then next week there was a boy shouting with that I don't want to stay on your radio station. And then shortly after that this song called The Winkler it went out over our airwaves, and nothing we could do about it. And it went out twice before it faded. And then, our programs came back in.

LL: And what did the person who was on the air for you at that moment do?

TD: He went very white, very white indeed. Because there was nothing he could do. He was doing his job, he got on the, on what we call the bat phone which connects directly with myself and with our program director. We contacted the police. A very nice lady answered the phone and gave us crime number but said that there's nothing they can do, unless they caught the person in the act. We contacted the people who had the transmitter. They were also very sorry for us, but they couldn't do anything about it because they reckoned that the person who was hacking into our transmitter was mobile. But then we spoke to our radio authority, but they said that it would really be Monday before they could do anything, and they could only track for so long, because they have to have the person trying to do it in order to try and target and find out where they are.

LL: Now tell me more about the song. What is it called again?

TD: The song is called the Winkler song. The actual word rhymes with Banker.

LL: You can use that the other way of saying it on our radio station, go ahead.

TD: I can say Wanker?

LL: you can. Go ahead.

TD: These are in the dictionary now a days. The original song, by the way, was known as the Winkler song. And the guy who made it was called Ivor Bigun, and you can take your conversation from there. It reached 28th in the hit parade, I think in 1978, before it was taken off the airwaves. We are not blaming him by the way, the guy who made that initial song, but if somebody is taking that song, hacking it into our airwaves.

LL: Okay. Well, it's one thing to be hacked once, and I understand your shock and your attempts to get somebody to go after the perpetrator but it was just once. So that's okay, right?

TD: No, no. Oh, no no no. This is a serial hacker. It's about a dozen times now.

LL: A dozen times.

TD: Laura, it is about a dozen times. Imagine sitting there doing your program. I'm wondering even in the middle of this interview if something's going to happen, ha? Imagine. I will give you an example. We got an outside broadcast and the presenter in the studio cued in something like: “Let’s go out to our reporter, Bill Smith, out at the fair ground”, yes? And then next thing, just as Bill starts to answer and says “thanks for handing over to me Laura”, and it goes [sounds: Noises] and the word “hey, you're a wanker” comes out, ha? He carries on with his job though and he then starts talking and says “I'm going to talk to the fairground manager Robert. Robert, can you tell me...” and all of a sudden it goes [sound: Noises] “Is Robert a wanker?”

LL: Oh my gosh [laughs]. So listeners must have noticed, what are they saying?

TD: So, that to some extent is a worry. There is both a serious side to this. And we have to take it very seriously because adult children probably over the age of about 11 - 12 and their parents will, in today's world, have heard this language. The younger children, you wouldn't want your younger children to be hearing this and having the act of doing that deed described on the airwaves, right?

LL: Right.

TD: You wouldn't want that going on. But there is. I'll give you the funny side. First of all, a football team in our area wanted to borrow the song off us. And every time that somebody failed a shot at goal, or anything like that, they wanted to play the cute out you say “I am a W”, I do not want to say it too often, so the crowd could all go along with it. And I want to buy some food at lunch time, and two other people at the checkout sang this song to me.

LL: Well is it helping your advertising rates?

TD: Well, that's the most astonishing thing because that was one of our big worries that people would pull the advertising, etc., and we totally understand it. But our sales team of have more telephone calls saying: “Can you give us your advertising rates since it happened?” And we've had listeners who have sent in notes who are saying they've told their friends and we've had new listeners [unintelligible] in, sadly saying that they're listening hoping they can hear the song. That is a worry. That is a real worry. Can I go serious now? Can I go serious for a moment?

LL: Go ahead.

TD: A real worry to me, way beyond the bounds of Mansfield 103.2, is if really [unintelligible] that this president is a moron, who's doing this. He's a clown, yes? He's being silly. Just suppose you had someone of a terrorist brain, or something like that. Who wanted in the middle of the night to start putting out a message, with a convincing voice on it, telling people to move out of the township or anything like that. What about if something ridiculous saying that the hospital was closed down, when people wanted to take somebody in because of an accident, if that was actually going out over the airwaves.

LL: Is it a crime in the UK?

TD: It is a crime in the UK. At the moment, it's up to two years imprisonment and a £5000 fine. It's usually pirate radio stations. But, as I say, this one at the moment appears to be just a geeky goon getting his jollies by doing this. We wish we could do something and cut him off, perhaps in the area he sings about.

LL: Yes, I know how frustrating this is for you. I mean how does somebody go about hijacking your airwaves, exactly?

TD: You need to have an effective transmitter, that's important. It's like, Laura, if you're speaking and I was absolutely shouting eventually you cannot be heard because I'm shouting that high, right?

LL: Uhmm.

TD: If you put more power to a transmitter than the transmitter has itself, and that can be done particularly in limited area transmitters that special you only go for 10 miles, to say a localized radio station, it obliterates on that channel, the earlier station. We are getting warmer. We've got the assistance of the police and our radio authority [unintelligible]. We'll get them.

LL: Well Tony, speaking as one radio person to another, I hope you catch the guy.

TD: We do too. And I hope you don't have any of the same types of problems.

LL: Bye bye Tony.

TD: Bye bye.

KG: Tony Delahunty is the managing director of local station Mansfield 103.2. We reached him in Mansfield, England.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Aladdin casting, cannibal caterpillars

Aladdin casting

Guest: Rajiv Surendra

KG: He was a so-called street rat who overcame seemingly impossible circumstances. He became a prince, traveled around on a magic carpet and ended up marrying the girl of his dreams and sang a bunch of songs. Of course Aladdin had a genie, a supportive monkey and a magic lamp to help him reach those goals. But in real life Disney has none of those things to help it find someone to play the lead character in the upcoming live action version of the 1992 animated hit. Back in March, director Guy Ritchie launched a global casting call to find the stars for the live action version of the film. But after months of looking at actors from across the world Disney is still struggling to cast the part. And people are baffled as to why? Rajiv Surendra is a Canadian actor who auditioned for the role of Aladdin. We reached him in New York.

LL: Mr. Surendra, should it really be this hard to cast the role of Aladdin?

RAJIV SURENDRA: I really do think it should. I think that it is a testament to the standard that Guy Ritchie is setting for himself. He's not just willing to move forward with someone that “will do”. He wants to find the perfect actor for this. I'm glad that it's proving to be difficult because I went and saw Beauty and the Beast, and I have to tell you I thought Emma Watson was absolutely horrible. I thought she was phony and cold. You know they cast her because she was a name that they felt would draw in viewers and maybe that worked. But I'm glad Guy Ritchie is not doing the same thing.

LL: But according to The Hollywood Reporter the filmmakers auditioned more than 2000 people for the lead roles, and they were looking for someone of Indian or Middle Eastern descent to play the role. That…2000. Doesn’t it surprise you?

RS: Well, I don't think that's a huge number. I think they auditioned an equal amount of kids or more for the role of Pi, in Life of Pi. That was a role that I spent six years chasing after and I wasn't even considered for the part because the director attached to the project in the end, Ang Lee, wanted a real Indian schoolboy. And so he just scoured the schools in India to find a kid. And they went through thousands and thousands of kids. I don't think 2000 is a huge number, considering that the actor not only needs to be able to act but needs to be able to sing. And I have to say like you know to carry that whole movie, not just with acting but with a strong voice, is not going to be easy and easy thing to find. I auditioned for Aladdin and I was really excited to do so. I had to send in my tape. I got the notice that I needed to send it in the next day. So it's kind of a rush. But I I tell you I watched my tape back and I couldn't even finish watching it because the singing was cringe worthy.

LL: Did you find out why you didn't get the part?

RS: No. I mean they never tell you why you don't get the part. They just move on and you don't hear back from them. So that's what happened. I was I am one of those 2000 people they saw for this part.

LL: Do you think it was the singing that did you in?

RS: I have no idea. I also think that ethnically, it would be really nice if they cast someone that was Middle Eastern or Persian. One of my pet peeves is when they are doing an Indian movie, or a movie based in India and the character is ethnically south and or specifically Tamil and they cast a north Indian actor. There is that wonderful book, The Man Who Knew Infinity, and that was about his Tamil Brahmin mathematician who was this short dark man and they cast Dev Patel. And it just really really really irritated me because even while I was watching the movie there was a line that one of these professors, at Cambridge I think, there was a derogatory remark towards Ramanujam and he says “Oh that little shrimpy thing of a man”, and then they pan to Dev Patel who's cowering over this British guy that he's sitting next to.

LL: But why does someone have to be of a certain ethnic background to play that role? Why can't they be of an ethnic background?

RS: I'll tell you something, I personally feel like with the incredible ability to connect with the rest of the world through social media, instantly, you know just scrolling through your Instagram, the public is becoming more and more aware of what the rest of the world looks like. And the public is scrutinizing things that are blasted towards us from the media and asking are we seeing an authentic representation of the world. Because if you're not going to show us your 20 million dollar movie I'm just going to go back to my Instagram for you and see for myself.

LL: But does that mean that you then should never play a “white” role or a “black” role or a “North Indian role”?

RS: No. Because well what does what does that mean? What does that question mean? What is a white role? I'm not asking to play Albert Einstein. You know what I mean. I mean that's a white role. Am I asking to play the high school boyfriend of the popular girl in school? Yeah, because that role isn't specific to any ethnicity. I could be dating the most popular girl in school. Why shouldn't I? But when we're talking about characters that are from fairy tales from the Middle East, yeah we want a Middle Eastern actor to play that role. When we're talking about a German scientist, yes, we want a German man ideally to play the role.

LL: Well a lot of critics who are reading about the casting process for this movie are saying that the agent should consider Bollywood actors. I'm wondering what you think of that.

RS: I don't agree. So here's the thing is that we can, see, I am [unintelligible] on either side of the fence here, because it's a very delicate thing to have to, you know, grab by the horns and steer. And that's what I feel. Guy Ritchie is trying to do here. It's a busy movie. It has been Americanized. It has been set to the world and accepted by the world wholeheartedly, as an American made movie. I feel like casting a Bollywood actor, with an Indian accent, is too far removed from that original seed that was planted with the Disney version of the movie. Do you know what I mean?

LL: Yes, but we know Disney has been accused of whitewashing its characters in the past.

RS: That's where I feel like. These wonderful directors that are making these live action movies can pick up that paint brush, dip in some water and blur those lines, so they're not whitewashed anymore. They're transitioning from the whitewashed Disney version into a more authentic representation of what it should be, while still building on the tenants or the foundation, the strong foundation that was laid out by these animated movies.

LL: So who do you personally feel would make a great Aladdin?

RS: There's this guy. I forget his name. Other people have been talking about him too for this.

LL: Rizwan Ahmed?

RS: No. No. But I'll tell you something, you brought up Riz Ahmed. I think Riz Ahmed looks great. I think he's ethnically correct for the role as well. I just don't know how he sings.

LL: But he's a Pakistani descent.

RS: Is he?

LL: Yes.

RS: I think it's closer, though. I think the closer.

LL: [Laughing]

RS: It's closer than casting me. I auditioned for it. I knew going in, I'm like “I don't think I'm [unintelligible], but Riz Ahmed at least at least closer.

LL: Okay. Mr. Surendra, great to talk to you. Take care.

RS: Thank, Laura. Bye bye.

LL: Bye.

KG: Rajiv's Surendra is a Canadian actor. We reached him in New York.

[Music: Theme]

TPL Meeting

KG: An event at a Toronto Public Library Branch went ahead last night despite enormous opposition. It was a memorial to honor the late Barbara Kulaszka, who died last month. During her career practicing law, Ms. Kulaszka represented white supremacists and Holocaust deniers. And despite calls from local politicians and human rights advocates to shut the event down, the Toronto Public Library did no such thing. Today the head librarian Vickery Bowles told CBC's Metro Morning host, Matt Galloway, she couldn't cancel the booking because it didn't break any laws. Here's part of their conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

VICKERY BOWLES: To deny access to library spaces on the basis of the views and opinions of individuals or groups that have expressed what they've expressed in the past, it not only contravenes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it's also the cornerstone of the library’s mission and values. So, we took all of this into consideration. We spoke to the group and reiterated what our expectations were.

MATT GALLOWAY: What were your expectations?

VB: Well, that it would be exactly what. They said that it would be a memorial service and there would be no hate speech. And we were prepared. We had a protocol in place with a staff member who attended the event to shut it down and call the police and not allow this group to book a room at the library again, if hate speech took place. It would have been easier just to cancel the event, to be perfectly honest.

MG: Why didn't you?

VB: Well, because libraries have been a democratizing force in the modern world. We preserve our democratic society by making available the widest possible range of viewpoints and opinions and ideas, including those which some consider unacceptable or unconventional.

MG: One of the letters that you received was from an 89 year old man, named Nathan Leipciger, a survivor of Auschwitz. He wrote: “My entire family was murdered by the Nazi regime. I was outraged when I learned that a number of white nationalist leaders have rented space at the Toronto public library in Etobicoke. What would you say to someone like Nathan about how that decision squares with the values that he sees in this country?

VB: What he's gone through and his family is horrific. The Holocaust was a horrible blight on our history, and we fought to ensure in the second world war that democratic rights were preserved for all of us to live freely. The rights are for everyone. Even people who have opinions and viewpoints that are very offensive. But these people who rented the room are Canadian residents, who are freely living their lives.

KG: That was Toronto Public Library city librarian Vickery Bowles, speaking to CBC's Metro Morning

host Matt Galloway this morning.

[Musisc: Theme]

Cannibal Caterpillars

Guest: John Orrock

KG: I remember the children's picture book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in which the insatiable little title character chomps through all sorts of food before emerging as a butterfly? Well, let's just say that a study published in the Journal of Nature Ecology and Evolution this week would not make for such a child friendly story, despite involving very hungry Caterpillar's. Biologists found that when plants are under attack from herbivores like Caterpillar's, they can mount a defense so strong that it can cause those herbivores to change their diet drastically. We reached the study's lead author, Professor John Orrock, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

LL: Professor Orrock, plants can't exactly run away so, what are these plants doing when too many caterpillars munch on them?

JOHN ORROCK: Well, one of the things that makes plants so interesting actually, is that they can't run away. When plants are attacked, typically a cascade of events occurs, within the plant, and that causes the plant to change its chemistry. Or, even more interestingly, you know plants can receive volatile compounds from nearby plants. And so, even if a particular plant hasn't been attacked yet, if it detects the compounds that are released from a neighbor that's being attacked, then that plant will oftentimes start to defend itself.

LL: All right. So, these are chemical defenses, that the plants are putting up, is that correct?

JO: Sure. In the case of the tomato we worked with that's known that tomato chemistry changes and it creates a suite of chemicals that are effectively somewhat toxic to the herbivore. It also reduces the nutrition that the herbivore can get from the plant. So, it means bad news. From the caterpillar’s perspective, it means: “It tastes terrible!” probably. Although, you know, I've never been inside the mind of a caterpillar, but what their choices tell us from our experiments, a caterpillar would rather eat another Caterpillar than eat a plant that has turned on its defenses. And when herbivores decided to be cannibals, not only did the herbivores eat one another, so that reduced the number of animals available to eat the plant. But the herbivores once they ate another herbivore had less of an appetite for plants. So, the plant benefits in two ways which I think is really interesting.

LL: I'm wondering if you could describe briefly how you set the experiment up in order to see all of this happening.

JO: Sure. In the first experiment we conducted, we placed eight caterpillars in a container, with a plant, and that tomato plant either had been sprayed with chemicals that would be released by a wounded plant. We knew from other researchers these chemicals would lead the plants to change their defenses. And then there was a group of plants, that were a control group, that were sprayed with the solution but without the active chemical. We seal the caterpillars up in these, we call them arenas, we field them up in these arenas with a single plant and eight total caterpillars and we monitor them over eight days and effectively count the number of caterpillars as the experiment plays out.

LL: You call it arenas because what? This is some gladiator like competition? [Laughs]

JO: [Laughs] I realize I'm saying that now, but that actually sounds like part of my job, is to pit caterpillars against one another in a arena like setting. But actually the term arena is just more of a general term from behavioral ecology where it's a setting where you can observe a particular outcome. And making all this take place in a closed system, makes quantifying cannibalism relatively straightforward because they can't escape. We know that if they disappear it's because they disappeared inside the gut of another caterpillar.

LL: One thing that I'm curious about is, don't caterpillars have any defenses to fend each other off?

JO: Well, I mean yeah, when the cannibalism occurs it doesn't happen without an altercation. And from the caterpillar’s perspective, that's why cannibalism you know often isn't the first choice, because if you're going to attack a fellow caterpillar, with the intention of consuming it, you yourself might be injured. So, cannibalism can be risky business if what you're cannibalizing is anther living Caterpillar.

LL: Is a caterpillar diet bad for another Caterpillar:

JO: Is a caterpillar diet bad for another caterpillar? Well, you can imagine that if your goal as an organism is to assemble a group of compounds that are particular to your body plan in your life, you know the compounds that make up, eating those compounds directly from another organism might be an efficient way to get them, which I guess is a long winded way of saying that fellow caterpillars appear to be nutritious. And one thing that I liked about our second experiment was that that second experiment actually speaks to what you just asked. Because in that experiment, we placed individual caterpillars with leaves of plants that were either well-defended or poorly defended. And then half of those containers we either placed four caterpillars that we killed by quickly freezing them so they had the bodies of other caterpillars that they could eat, if they chose to do so. And then we had another treatment where there were no opportunities for cannibalism. Basically they were trapped in that small test arena with just a leaf and couldn't eat any other caterpillars. And when we do that we observe two outcomes from the caterpillars perspective; they start to consume the flesh of their dead colleagues.

LL: [Laughs] This is starting to sound a bit gross.

JO: They consume the flesh of their of their dead caterpillar conspecifics, is the technical term. They consume them sooner, if the plant that they're exposed to is a well-defended plant. And what's really interesting is that we show that if you choose to eat another caterpillar, you can actually recover your growth rate. So you can compensate for that low quality plant material that you happen to be trapped with by consuming another caterpillar.

LL: I sure hope there are no lessons for humans in this.

JO: Well, indeed. I mean clearly, that's always the risk is that you know humans will ask: “What should I do? Well let me think for like what the caterpillar would do right now?” [Laughs]

LL: But what is it like for you? I mean I'm obviously not a scientist but I sure don't think I would want to sit around watching a bunch of caterpillars cannibalizing each other.

JO: Sure, no, I mean I'm generally interested in how organisms interact. And I'm particularly fascinated by the choices that organisms make with regards to protecting themselves from the animals that would try to hurt them. You know, a fact of life is that many of the earth's organisms exist only because they take carbon and energy from other organisms. And typically, you know, that's not a willing exchange. So to me it's not such a, well let's be honest, it's kind of gruesome to watch, to be frank. I mean, you know.

LL: Well, I better let you get back to the lab, then.

JO: Something exciting could be afoot.

LL: Professor, thank you. Goodbye.

JO: Thank you.

KG: John Orrock is a professor of integrated biology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where we reached him. In a study published this week, he and his team showed that plants can mount a chemical defense that turns normally vegetarian Caterpillar's into cannibals.

[Music: Theme]

KG: You probably know David Mitchell as the author of such a claim to novels, as Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green. But Mr. Mitchell is also a father. His 11 year old son has autism and until Mr. Mitchell and his wife discovered the writing of a young Japanese man named Naoki Higashida, they felt that no one could truly help them understand what was going on in their child's mind. Tomorrow night we'll bring you a feature interview with David Mitchell. But for now here's a small part of what he had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID MITCHELL: It made me want to apologize to my son for not having understood earlier. It made me want to apologize for having gone along with what I thought I knew about autism, and not having credited him with all that he is capable of, and for not having seen his potential, and for not having been more patient. It did rock my world in ways that, it is still rocking my world.

KG: That was novelist David Mitchell talking about how the writing of Naoki Higashida, young Japanese man with autism, changed his relationship with his own son. Mr. Mitchell is the code translator of Mr. Higashida’s his latest book: Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight. Tune in tomorrow night to hear our full feature interview with David Mitchell.

[Music: Theme]

KG: In the early 80s two fictional characters were the most famous Canadians in the world.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Oh good day.

VOICE 2: Good day.

VOICE 1: Good Day..

VOICE 2: [Sings] Ku rookookoo koo koo, koo lookookoo.

VOICE 1: Good Day, how is it going I am Bob McKenzie, this is my brother Doug.

VOICE 2: How is it going, hey today.

[Sound: Audience laughing]

VOICE 1: We got two topics today, back bacon and long underwear.

VOICE 2: Like they are different.

KG: As the story goes, when as the SCTV moved from the Global TV network to the CBC It had two minutes more airtime to fill and the CBC and its infinite CBCness, asked the show which was written by Canadians, starred Canadians, and was made in Canada to make sure those two extra minutes featured Canadian content. Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas thought that was stupid. So they came up with the two most stereotypically Canadian characters they could, Bob and Doug McKenzie, to do [unintelligible] who wore touques, ate back bacon, drank Molson Canadian and said “eh”. They shot a bunch of two minute segments where they discussed ludicrous subjects like beer nog, inadequate parking at donut shops and long underwear. And they became an international phenomenon. On July 18^th, which is next Tuesday, Thirty sevenish years after the McKenzies were born, Mr Moranis and Mr. Thomas will bring them to life once again onstage, in Toronto. That night they'll be performing at a benefit for spinal cord injury, Ontario, and for Mr. Thomas his nephew, who was paralyzed in a snowmobiling accident. In a recent interview with the BBC, Dave Thomas talked about the all-star cast, which also includes his former SCTV cast mates: Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short, among many others. He also talked about the origins of a word that was a big part of the McKenzie Brothers dialect.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Shake off don't get that on me, hose head.

[Cross talk]

VOICE2: Merry Christmas, hoser.

SOUNDCLIP

KG: Dave Thomas told the BBC he'd invented the word “hose head” shorten to “hoser” from the verb to hose as in as he put it: “ I gave that guy ten bucks and he hosed me. I never got what I paid for.” Well whatever the opposite of hosing is it will happen to the audience to show on Tuesday. So if you managed to get tickets, congratulations but also, take off.

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July 13, 2017 Episode Transcript

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