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The AIH Transcript for November 10, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

CO: Course Correction. A controversial professor at the University of Toronto alarm's his colleagues by proposing a website he says will expose professors and courses he personally considers corrupt.

JD: Cast aside. Two years ago in Ontario artist completed a sculpture for display in the House of Commons of an MP and a First World War veteran who later killed himself. He wants to know why it still hasn't been unveiled.

CO: But seriously. It took a New York Times exposé for comedian Louis C.K. to admit that long standing accusations of sexual misconduct were true — two years after our guest hit a brick wall with investigating that story.

JD: For now it's just fingers being pointed. But after Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah in Lebanon both claim the other has declared war, our guest worries arms may be appointed next.

CO: Choice bud and bud choices. When it comes to distributing tax money from legalized cannabis, Ottawa plans a 50/50 federal provincial split, but some provinces and cities want more green from the grass.

JD: And you would buy a used car from this man. Car commercials are full of idiotic clichés, all of which a California filmmaker gleefully embraced when he made a viral ad for his fiancé’s 1996 Honda Accord. As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio that admires someone who knows what to do when life hands him a lemon.

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Part 1: Jordan Peterson website, Louis CK apology, Bill Blair on marijuana tax

Jordan Peterson website

Guest: A.W. Peet

JD: Faculty members at the University of Toronto have written a concerned a letter to administrators about a potential new website. The website has been proposed by the University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson, who has attained notoriety for railing against, what he deems, political correctness. Here's how Professor Peterson, himself, describes the site in a YouTube video posted in July.

SOUNDCLIP

PROFESSOR JORDAN PETERSON: I have absolutely no regrets about going after the post-modern Neo-Marxists as hard as I possibly can, and I'm certainly not done doing so. So one of the things that's going to happen, for example, in the next month or so, I've been working with a programmer who's volunteered his services and has already produced this. He's produced a website that enables people to enter text that will then classify the text as post-modern or non-post-modern. So you'll be able to enter coarse descriptions from universities. The course description, the professor’s name, the discipline and the university, it will tell you the degree to which the description is post-modern, and then you can decide for yourself whether you want to take that and become a social justice warrior if that's what you think your education should be about. Or if you should avoid that like the plague that it truly is.

JD: That was the University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson from a YouTube video posted in July. The U of T faculty Association says that his website quote “is designed to place under surveillance certain kinds of academic content.” Members of the Women's and Gender Studies Institute at U of T have written the school's administrators saying quote “This web site, if launched, presents a serious case of harassment, fostering unsafe work and study conditions for students faculty and staff,” unquote. A.W. Pete is a physics professor at the University of Toronto. That's where we reached them.

CO: Professor Peet, that clip was from July, that we heard from Jordan Peterson, what have you been hearing about this proposed website?

PROFESSOR A.W. PEET: Well, the idea is to ferret out university courses containing content that he doesn't like. A specific goal that he mentioned is trying to reduce enrollment by 75 per cent in just five years. As a science professor I'm not specifically targeted but I still believe this website is morally wrong. A number of students and faculty members who I'm in correspondence with are concerned about his plans.

CO: All right, and what you're referring to is he said that these are part of what he says the post-modern Neo-Marxist agenda — ethnic studies, racial studies, women's studies — and said that this kind of ideology has corrupted sociology, anthropology, English Literature, faculties of education and the faculties of law that are taught in universities. What do you understand to be postmodern Neo-Marxism?

AP: Well, he hasn't given a very clear definition of that, he’s been very vague about many of the details of his proposed website. My question is, who exactly will decide what content and which faculty members should be flagged, and why no details of this decision making process available yet? I don't trust Peterson, or indeed any one individual no matter how clever they are, to actually fairly adjudicate the question of which courses should be happening at a given university.

CO: But he says that he has developed this — somebody else is developing this website — and there is an artificial intelligence bot that will be able to identify such content and such, as he calls it ideology, in a course, in the syllabus of any program and be able to warn students about that so they can decide for themselves.

AP: I would comment just one specific thing, in this regard, and that is that an artificial intelligence bot is only ever as good as the structural assumptions that underpin it. And if the person programming it has a certain set of political beliefs, about the way society and the people in it works, then those beliefs will be reflected in the mechanisms that A.I. learns. And so I would say that it's very much pertinent who's deciding how to run this bot.

CO: Faculty members at the University of Toronto Women's and Gender Studies Institute — this is why we're talking today. They've expressed deep concern about this proposed website and they warned the administrators of the university. They believe that they will be subjected to harassment and that this could lead to quote “unsafe work and study conditions for students, faculty and staff.” What do you make of that?

AP: I would agree with them. This is part of a pattern by the way. Peterson has also recently participated in doxing students at other universities who opposed him speaking on another campus.

CO: Can you just describe what doxing is?

AP: Doxing is when people who are malevolent ferret out as much information as they can find on any forum anywhere and try to use it to harass the person and bring bad consequences upon them.

CO: How popular do you think Professor Peterson's ideas are?

AP: Well, they’re popular enough that he's been earning, last time I was able to check his Patreon earnings, he was earning over fifty-thousand U.S. dollars a month.

CO: You point out that your faculty and your discipline is not a target of Professor Peterson. What has been your experience with Professor Peterson?

AP: Well, he has used social media and other channels to invite his followers and fans to harass people who disagree with him publicly, and that has included me. I've had harassment from my telephone, text messages, e-mails, every channel that they could find, Twitter, Facebook, every method that they could find they harassed me with and a lot of it was extremely unpleasant.

CO: We interviewed Professor Peterson over a year ago. It was after he refused to use — he declared himself refusing to use gender neutral pronouns when interacting with transgender students — and that he would not support human rights legislation that was aimed at protecting gender identity against discrimination. I just want to ask you to react to one thing he said to us. We're going to play a clip of Professor Peterson as he spoke to us.

SOUNDCLIP

JP: And I can tell you one thing that I'm very terrified of and you can you can think about this. I think that the continual careless pushing of people by left wing radicals is dangerously waking up the right wing. And so you can consider this a prophecy from me you if you want, inside the collective is a beast and the beast uses its fists. And if you wake up the beast then violence emerges. And I'm afraid that this continual pushing by radical left wingers is going to wake up the beast.

CO: That was Professor Peterson from just over a year ago. What do you make of that?

AP: Those are violent words. I personally think that that kind of quote makes him come across as desperate to insulate himself from social progess. I don't think that's the hallmark of a respected public intellectual. Instead it's the whole hallmark of a scared old white man, who's terrified of his own increasing irrelevance. He also tries to blame the violence that is being incited by alt-righters, like himself, on people who would oppose fascists. And it's a very common tactic to try to blame any violence that might occur on people opposing violent people. So I personally don't take his prophecies particularly seriously, but I do take threats of violence and setting up platforms designed to unleash harassment on people he doesn't like. I do take those issues very seriously and I'm concerned about them.

CO: Just finally what would you advise the university to do at this point?

AP: It's well above my pay grade to advise my own university on how to handle the difficult case of Jordan Peterson. But I think that his behavior has been escalating, and it's escalating to the point where there's clear damage that has been done in the past, and there's threats to do more damage in the future. And I think that if Peterson wants to offer his own online university he should resign his job at the University of Toronto and see whether students flock to his online university. If he's still pulling a paycheck from the University of Toronto then using any aspect of his public prominence to set up a harassment platform against people he doesn't like, that's a very hypocritical way of looking at free speech. I mean, Jordan Peterson seems to be in favour of free speech if it agrees with him and not in favour of free speech if people disagree. That's a very insular kind of perspective.

CO: All right we'll leave it there. Professor Peet, thank you.

AP: You're welcome.

JD: A.W. Peet is a physics professor at the University of Toronto and that is where we reach them. And we did reach out to Jordan Peterson about this website and the concerns that it may lead to harassment. We have not yet heard back. For more on this story, or if you would like to listen again or share it, check out our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Reggae]

Louis CK apology

Guest: Megan Koester

JD: The second sentence in a statement from Louis C.K. today, addressing allegations of sexual misconduct made against him by five women, is these stories are true. As you may have heard on last night's program, the women's stories were published in The New York Times yesterday. Now some say that they have heard rumors about Louis C.K. for years, including Megan Koester. She once tried to investigate these rumors but her efforts were unsuccessful. Megan Koester is a writer and a comedian. We reached her in Los Angeles. And a warning this interview includes some language and content some may find offensive.

CO: Ms. Koester, what do you make of this apology from Louis C.K.?

MEGAN KOESTER: I find it respectful, and contrite, and sincere and it sort of makes me wonder why he didn't give it earlier, because if he had he wouldn't have completely ruined his career.

CO: What do you make of his statement that he said “I learned too late in life that when you have power over another person asking them to look at your dick isn't a question, it's a predicament for them and that this is power over them?”

MK: You know, male privilege is sort of a buzz word, but I think that this is definitely an instance of it being real. It only takes these things being brought to your attention for you to realize them. I don't even know how cognizant he was of how profoundly his actions affected people.

CO: And why do you think he wasn't aware, were there are no women that you know of who stood up to him or said, ‘look this isn't appropriate or you got to get your act together?’ You think there was nobody who ever warned him that he shouldn't be doing this?

MK: I think it's a matter of is that — I mean, the power dynamic is so skewed between someone who is in a position of power, like him, and someone who is not — that you don't have to violently assault someone for it to still be assault. You can have somebody tacitly give you what seems like consent, but in reality, they're just doing it because they know that if they say no there will be repercussions that you might not even be aware of, because you never have to deal with repercussions like this yourself because you are a powerful entity.

CO: And that seems to be what he is admitting to in this apology. That because he said I always asked the women first. I always thought I had permission from them to show them my penis or to masturbate in front of them. But now I realize that they really didn't have any choices and that that I was a powerful person and this is a predicament for them.

MK: Sure. Because he thinks that he asked for consent doesn't necessarily mean that consent was granted. God knows what's going on in the head of somebody that you confront with this kind of thing. You know, fear that if you'll say no he might act even more uncouthly, fear that if he say no you're completely destroying your career. It's very easy to put yourself in the mindset of someone who will just passively acquiesce and allow it to happen out of sheer fear.

CO: How often did you hear of these kinds of allegations and over the years?

MK: I mean, I've known about a number of instances that came out in the report yesterday for about five years. I’ve said that it was very open secret among the comedy community.

CO: But you attempted to investigate these rumors and make them public. Can you tell us your efforts to try and actually expose this story?

MK: I went to the Just For Laughs in Montreal with the aim of asking A-list celebrities what they thought about these accusations. Because again, I knew it was an open secret, but people wouldn't talk about it publicly. And this is when the Bill Cosby stuff was breaking pretty large. So I opened up a line of inquiry by asking how do you feel about the Cosby allegations? Everyone, of course, you know they’re horrible, pretty sure they're not allegations because so many people come forward at that point. But I would follow up with, “well how do you feel about the Louis allegations?” Everybody would just act like they had never heard what I was talking about. But by virtue of the fact that I, relative nobody, knew this to be true. I found it very disingenuous for people to pretend that they had no idea what I was talking about.

CO: And this was on the red carpet at the Just For Laughs Festival — this is 2015. You were told to stop asking these questions. Can you tell us about that?

MK: Yeah, the COO of the festival took me off the red carpet and explained that Just For Laughs was a a friendly environment. Louis C.K. was a friend of the festival, and I should be asking friendly questions on the red carpet. And if I wanted to ask a questions like this on my own turf I could do it, but I was on theirs, and as such I should act accordingly.

CO: What did you do?

MK: I left.

[LAUGHTER]

MK: Because the whole point was trying to ask this question in the first place.

CO: The founder of Just For Laughs, Gilbert Rozon, has resigned just recently just after the Harvey Weinstein allegations, a number of women came forward to say that over three decades they had allegations of his sexual misconduct. Does that seem to be part of the culture of comedy to keep these things under wraps, to sort of, to let these things fester as it has obviously been in other parts the entertainment industry?

MK: I don't think it's something inherent in comedy. Any large powerful industry these sort of things will happen. The entertainment industry just happens to be a large and powerful industry, I’m sure these sort of things happen in tech, I'm sure they happen in all sorts of industries.

CO: He's also, Gilbert Rozon, apologized. He's going to reflect as Louis C.K. has said that. Do you think that this would have happened though if some women hadn't come forward and gone to the media and said what was happening to them?

MK: None of this would have happened if women didn’t start coming forward. The reason why these things didn't come to light is because, unfortunately, the onus is always on the victims to come forward before you can do anything about it. And when the victims have been intimidated into silence they're incredibly disinclined to go forward and potentially ruin their careers or be dragged out in some sort of huge media show.

CO: What we're seeing is that this is having a great effect on people's careers — movies are being canceled, productions are stopping all kinds of consequences. Do you think that this is a tipping point in comedy and other parts of the entertainment industry that things will now change?

MK: It feels like a tipping point, yes, and I hope that this is indicative of the larger trend and I hope that it continues. But the one throughline that I've noticed with all of these stories of all of these people being publicly shamed for what they have done is the things that they had done years in the past. No one's talking about the things that people are doing now, the horrific acts that people are committing now. The fact that a statute of limitations basically has to expire before we can talk about these misdeeds, I find troubling.

CO: And you think as we speak this behavior continues?

MK: I know for a fact as we speak this behaviour continues.

CO: Ms. Koester, I appreciate speaking with you, thank you.

MK: Thanks.

JD: Megan Koester is a writer and a comedian in L.A., and that is where we reached her.

[Music: Ambient Tones]

Tom Wilson promo

JD: Tom Wilson put his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario on the map he is the lead singer of the band Junkhouse back in the 90s. He has performed solo and with Blackie & The Rodeo Kings and Lee Harvey Osmond. And his songs have also been recorded by the likes of Sarah McLaughlin, Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell. And you know parts of his story, but it turns out that Mr. Wilson didn't know the whole story himself. In his new memoir Beautiful Scars: Steeltown Secrets, Mohawk Skywalkers and the Road Home, he describes his quest to discover his true identity. And he talks about a childhood, during which, his parents tried to hide his background from him. Here's what Mr. Wilson told Carol about that.

SOUNDCLIP

TOM WILSON: Maybe I was just really aware or alive and awake as a four-year-old because I noticed that Bunny and George were older. You know, Bunny had gray hair tied back in a bun. Then I asked her straight out, “How come all the other kids have stories about the day they were born, how come the mothers and fathers are so much younger than you and dad?” And I would get shut down, I got shut down several times.

CO: She would tell you these were secrets.

TW: “There's secrets about you Tommy me that I'll be taking to my grave.”

[LAUGHTER]

TW: As a four-year-old jaw on hardwood — bang.

JD: That was musician and artist Tom Wilson in conversation with Carol about his new memoir Beautiful Scars. You can hear the full interview on Monday on As It Happens.

[Music: Ambient Hip-Hip]

Bill Blair on marijuana tax

Guest: Bill Blair

JD: Today the federal government calculated its federal tax windfall from cannabis — they will tack on no more than $1 per gram of legalized recreational marijuana — plus GST. Those tax gains from marijuana sales will be split 50/50 between the federal government and the provinces. British Columbia has already piped up, they do not think that they will get a fair share of the tax revenues. And now municipalities have concerns too — they want in. Bill Blair is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and the federal government's point person on marijuana legalization. We reached Mr. Blair in Ottawa.

CO: Mr. Blair for every gram of marijuana sold you're proposing to charge an additional one dollar plus GST. How did you come to that calculation?

BILL BLAIR: Now that number was determined after a great deal of consultation with various stakeholders including producers, on examination of what has taken place in other jurisdictions and an examination of what is known about the current street price, which is being used by the criminal market that currently exists.

CO: And how did you find that balance? Because, obviously, you need to charge a price that doesn't mean that people say well “I can get this cheaper on the street.”

BB: On the one hand we want to make sure that the price and the taxation levels are sufficiently low to enable a regulated market to compete effectively with a criminal enterprise. At the same time we don't want to mark the price so low that it creates an incentive for people to use. The feedback that we've received from those who are in the legal cannabis business, right now in the medical regime, is they believe that that's an appropriate level for them and we are convinced that that's an excellent starting point as we attempt to displace the illicit market.

CO: So do you anticipate that more people will use marijuana after it becomes legal?

BB: Well certainly that's not our intention. I frankly do not want to promote the use of this drug. It's one of the reasons we're putting in strict regulations with respect to its promotion and advertising and branding. At the same time, we've committed 46 million dollars to a public education campaign so that we can inform young people, in particular, but all Canadians, about the potential health and social risks associated to the use of cannabis. And we are acknowledging that it is a substance widely used by Canadian adults, almost a third of young adults between the ages of 18 and 35 report that they're using this drug.

CO: But other jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana have found that more people are using substances and more people are then out and about having used substances, whether they do it according to the law or do it and get into a car afterward. What tools are you going to give police — because you are a former police chief you should know how difficult this is going to be — what are the tools that you are going to give to municipalities in order to deal with the problems that they're going to confront with marijuana?

BB: I can tell you how difficult it has been for law enforcement to detect and prosecute people who are using drugs and driving their automobiles. You know, we've introduced legislation a number of years ago that enables police services to use drug recognition experts to train their officers in a standardized field sobriety testing. But they were never the resources available to ensure that enough officers were trained in that regard, and there was no technology made available to the police in order to detect that drug use. And so we've recently passed Bill C46, which creates the legislative authorities for police officers to be able to use technology to detect those drugs. We brought in new regulations and offenses for those who would use cannabis and other drugs to drive while impaired, and we’re providing the police with the technology and with the training that they've asked for for almost a decade to enable them to do that.

CO: We've heard from many people on this program who doubt that, who are very concerned about that, who say that the technology exists is complicated, it's expensive and it's darn well going to be challenged in court as being unconstitutional, that we have a lot of people telling us that they're very concerned that by the time you legalize this on July 1^st you don't have the tools in the hands of police to pose a deterrent to those who might be driving under the influence of marijuana.

BB: And Carol, I would simply disagree with those who have offered that opinion. I'll tell you that this technology has been in use in other jurisdictions — 18 European jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium, Austria and many others. Australia's been using it since 2008. The Canadian Society of Forensic Scientists is the group that provides scientific advice to the government of Canada. The Drugs and Driving committee has been examining this issue and they have set standards now for the government to approve devices for the use by law enforcement in Canada. We've made the money available to make sure that law enforcement can have access to those devices and we're going to assist the provinces in paying for it so the devices will be there. We've also put forward the money to pay to for the training of those officers. We can also tell you, Carol, that impaired driving is the most litigated law in Canadian courts, and so everything is challenged. But the importance of keeping people who are impaired by drugs off the road is paramount to us. This is a very significant change. Right now the police do not have adequate tools and training. We're making that available and it will be in the hands of law enforcement before a new regulated regime is put in place.

CO: Robert Solomon, who is a law professor and director of legal policy for Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada says that with these new measures drug impaired driving enforcement will not be at a level to have a dramatic deterrent impact on behaviour. You disagree?

BB: Yes I do. I think that when the Canadians become aware that they can be caught, when there's a real expectation that they will be detected, when we give them information that public education campaign is absolutely key so people know what the risks are. And they also need to be aware that there is a very real likelihood of being detected and prosecuted for this offense, where Canadians know that there's a greater likelihood of detection they are deterred from committing that offense.

CO: You're anticipating the tax revenue on marijuana could raise about a billion dollars a year. The provinces want a large chunk of that, and you have agreed to that. Municipalities say they're not getting enough. You say 161 million dollars to help train local police, that's a fraction of what they say they need. This conversation we're having indicates how much the police are going to have to be involved in these changes. Why don't you share more of this with municipalities?

BB: Over the last two years I've traveled across this country, and in virtually every town that I went to, I went to the mayor and I went to see the chief of police. We listened very carefully to their concerns. We took the steps to respond to those concerns and make sure that we made available the resources that they needed for the training and the technology. The requirements of municipalities as part of the ongoing consultation that will take place over the next several weeks. And I am absolutely confident it will be front of mind in the discussion that will take place between the finance minister and his provincial territorial counterparts.

CO: All right, we'll be watching very closely. Mr. Blair, thank you.

BB: Thank you, Carol.

JD: Bill Blair is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and the federal government's point person on marijuana legalization. He was in Ottawa.

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Part 2: World War I plaque/Mi'kmaq "In Flanders Fields", Lebanon politician on tensions with Saudi Arabia

World War I plaque/Mikmaq “In Flanders Fields”

Guest: Tyler Briley

JD: Tomorrow morning across this country we will gather and remember those who have died in the service of this country. But an Ontario sculptor, and a longtime firefighter, says the government is allowing one of Canada's war dead to be ignored. Tyler Briley was commissioned by the Conservative government to sculpt a bronze of a man by the name of Samuel Sharpe — Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Sharpe. He was a member of parliament, he left his seat to recruit and then to lead some of the first Canadians to fight and to die in the First World War. Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe survived the war, but shortly after returning home he took his own life. The sculpture was completed and the plan was to put it up outside the House of Commons. So far it has been sitting in storage. We reached Tyler Bareilly in Port Perry, Ontario.

CO: Mr. Briley, why is it important, in your view, to see this sculpture out in the open?

TYLER BRILEY: I think it needs to be out in the open to shed some light on post-traumatic stress. I know that we've been talking about it a lot lately but I think one of the most significant places in Canada you can have a piece of artwork is in the parliament buildings. I think it would mean a lot to those afflicted and affected by post-traumatic stress because I know from experience what it would mean to me.

CO: I want to ask you about the man who is honoured in this bronze relief, and this man is Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Sharpe, he was a member of parliament who went off to fight in the First World War and saw big, bloody battles, including one of the most terrible in history, and that was Passchendaele where he was awarded for his gallantry. What affected Passchendaele have on Colonel Sharpe?

TB: Well, I think anyone that fought at Passchendaele, regardless of what side you were on, had an incredible impact on those that witnessed it and managed to survive it. I think it was approximately six months. There were a million men killed over that period from both sides — a horrendous amount of death. And I know from my experience with death that it's just miniscule compared to what these guys experience. I feel ashamed in even comparing it to what they experienced, but the impact on the man? He lost a good friend near the end of the war and that seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I think he had seen these eleven-hundred-and-forty-five odd guys that he was involved in recruiting for the 116^th Battalion. And a lot of them he knew personally, and to see nine-hundred odd of them disappear and with various open wounds and death — it's a sobering thought.

CO: Now he was only back in Canada for a few months — he was in hospital for nervous shock and he jumped from a window at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal to his death.

TB: He was apparently, the story goes that I heard was, that he was to be observed 24/7 and for some reason one of the nurses or orderlies were called out on a temporary basis. And I guess he took the opportunity to end his life. And I think that it's called survivor's remorse. Very common amongst the military and those that serve. And they just feel guilty for surviving.

CO: There's another member of parliament who served in that war and died in combat.

TB: Yes, George Baker.

CO: And he has a sculpture in the foyer dedicated to him. Do you see that this is something important that we recognize a soldier who died of suicide and a soldier who died in battle as both having been those who died in service?

TB: Absolutely. To think these men went off, and had to experience what they experienced and then come home to no treatment — virtually no treatment. We didn't understand it, suicide was an unconscionable act, hence his treatment and very little recognition for his accomplishments. But I think it's so important that the two of them are together because, as you said, I believe it symbolizes that one injury is equal to the other injury, and that is a stigma that has been part of mental health as long as there has been mental health recognition. And unfortunately we need to bring it to the forefront. There's been great discussion and forums on it. Aaron O'Toole, the Member of Parliament was the former minister of Veterans Affairs, he is instrumental in having a Sam Sharpe breakfast every May 5^th in recognition of mental health.

CO: And he was the one who — this is Aaron O'Toole — he is one who commissioned his work when he was Veterans Affairs Minister, so why is it stuck in a closet someplace?

TB: I think it’s become political football or political hot potato. It seems that it just comes down to different philosophies I believe with the different governments. And unfortunately it's a reality of the way things are. I thought it was all cut and dried, and that it was already been approved and discussed by the three parties and that it was going up.

CO: Do you think that it's possible that there is discomfort with the idea of recognizing and honouring someone who committed suicide?

TB: The whole point of the sculpture, in the first place, was to recognize that it's a legitimate war injury and the outcome of that war injury. I don't think it's up for us to say, I think it's up to us to recognize it and treat it as best we can. I don't think it's up to us to judge people unless you've been through something like that, you have no concept. I used to think well “suicide, how can people do that?” and so on and so forth. But after experiencing what I went through, I understand. I understand the affliction of this illness and it's so important that we recognize if we’re going to send these soldiers off to war to experience what they've experienced, like these guys in Afghanistan, my God some of the stories are horrifying. Yet it's still considered a stigma.

CO: You're a retired firefighter.

TB: Yes, I was on a heavy rescue truck for almost my whole career.

CO: Mr. Briley, I hope that you see this work where it should be. And I appreciate speaking with you, thank you.

TB: You're very welcome.

JD: Tyler Briley is a sculptor and a former firefighter. We reached him in Port Perry, Ontario. And every year at this time we remember those who have lost their lives fighting for our country. And for many of us that means taking a minute or two to listen to or to read John McCrae's In Flanders Fields. Flanders Fields makes Bernie Francis think of his uncle who fought in World War II. Mr. Francis is an author and a linguist with the Membertou First Nation. He has worked to honour Indigenous soldiers like his uncle. And now Mr. Francis has translated In Flanders Fields into the Mi’kmaq language. Tomorrow he will be reading it aloud at a Remembrance Day gathering in his community. And here is Bernie Francis reading this poem on CBC's Information Morning in Halifax.

SOUNDCLIP

BERNIE FRANCIS RECITING IN FLANDER FIELDS IN MI’KMAQ

JD: Mi’kmaq author and linguist Bernie Francis reading his translation of In Flanders Fields earlier today on CBC's Information Morning in Halifax.

[Music: Ambient Tones]

Lebanon politician on tensions with Saudi Arabia

Guest: Bassem Shab

JD: Bassem Shab has reason to be concerned. Mr. Shab is a member of parliament in Lebanon. It is less than a week since the leader of his party, the country's prime minister, resigned citing assassination concerns. Then, Saudi Arabia accused Hezbollah, the Iranian backed militants who hold the dominant position in Lebanon's coalition government, of declaring war on the kingdom. And today, Hezbollah has responded by accusing the Saudis of declaring war on Lebanon. We reached Bassam Shab in Beirut.

CO: Mr. Shab, it seems like a very volatile political situation in Lebanon tonight. Are you worried about political instability?

BASSEM SHAB: I am actually. I think Lebanon has been in the eye of the storm now for several years. The Arab Spring was all around Lebanon and Lebanon survived the Arab Spring because there was some understanding. And Lebanon escaped the Sunni-Shia tensions that were all around us, escaped Saudi-Iranian confrontation and the spillover from the Syrian civil war. We had one-and-a-half-million Syrian refugees. But the fighting in Syria did not spill over into Lebanon. But the tension was there and Hezbollah, which is a pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian regime, heavily involved in Syria, produced a lot of tension in Lebanon, which has one-third Shia, one-third Sunni and one-third Christian population.

CO: And the situation is very delicate right now, isn't it? Because you have Hezbollah, which has said that Saudi Arabia has declared war on Lebanon. At the same time Saudi Arabia says that Hezbollah has declared war on Saudi Arabia.

BS: Saudi Arabia seems to have tolerated Hezbollah's involvement in Syria, but the involvement of Hezbollah in Yemen, in which Saudi Arabia is deeply involvedand the war has been dragging on and on. For the Saudis, the involvement of Hezbollah in Yemen it poses an existential threat. And so for the Saudis the level of involvement of Iran and Hezbollah in Yemen has become unacceptable. We’ve seen escalation against Saudi Arabian rhetoric by Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah and others. This has been managed by an agreement between President Michel Aoun, who is an ally of Hezbollah, And Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who is a friend of Saudi Arabia and of the West in general. Mr. Hariri the prime minister was acting as a buffer between Iranian-Syria-Hezbollah influence on one side, and Saudi Arabia and the West on the other side.

CO: Can I ask you about this, this buffer Saad al-Hariri, the world is wondering where he is right now. Because he went to Saudi Arabia where he resigned and no one is terribly sure where he is at this point. How is and where is Saad al-Hariri?

BS: Saad al-Hariri is in his house in Saudi Arabia. There has been a lot of rumors, but in fact he had his eyes and he is in Saudi Arabia, he has been seen by the French ambassador and he spoke with the French president. The reason for his resignation, really there's a big regional component. We've heard statements from the president of Iran, saying that Iran controls the decision in major Arab capitals. It became untenable for Mr. al-Hariri, and so he submitted his resignation. Prior to that, the level of rhetoric between Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah was escalated. So this resignation did not come as a total surprise. The fear is that Saudi Arabia now views Lebanon as a state that is controlled by a very powerful non-state actor allied with Iran, and is going to treat Lebanon like it has treated Qatar, as an antagonistic state with economic sanctions and other issues.

CO: People are very concerned that Mr. Hariri is not on the stage right now. Does that not tip the balance?

BS: Yes I think it is very worrisome. You know on one hand we have American sanctions that are about to be signed by the President of the United States against Hezbollah. We have pressure from Arab countries that resent Hezbollah's involvement in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. And the person who was minimizing the effect on Lebanon and the Lebanese economy in particular was the presence of Saad al-Hariri. And so his absence is going to leave Iran-Hezbollah on one side in opposition to Saudi Arabia and the West, and Lebanon is going to become a fourth line.

CO: And that’s why so many countries are very concerned about Mr. Hariri right now. The French Foreign Ministry has expressed concern that Mr. Hariri may not be free to come and go and to say what he pleases, but you say that's not the case.

BS: No the statement by the French foreign minister actually was not to that effect. Mr. Hariri himself has said that there was a plot against his life and security issues have kept him in Saudi Arabia. But I think the major issue is not the circumstance but the regional dimension of this resignation. Unless this is addressed and handled in a very delicate way, I think we're heading to a collision course between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

CO: And where is this delicacy going to come from? We know that the United States is deeply focused on neutralizing Iran. So where do you get this delicate balance —these players who might actually bring the temperature down?

BS: Well, France is a country that has credibility surely with Saudi Arabia and with the Gulf, and has some liaison with Iran. Russia, which now is a major player in Syria, has good relations with Iran and good relations with Saudi Arabia. I think at this point it local treatment of this problem is not going to work out. It has to have major powers — superpowers — leaning on his friends and allies to minimize the tension in Lebanon, which has become a faultline.

CO: All right we will leave it there. Mr. Shab, it’s very worrisome, but I appreciate you speaking with us tonight.

BS: Thank you Carol. Thank you very much.

CO: Good night.

BS: Good night.

JD: Bassem Shab is a Lebanese member of parliament and a part of former Prime Minister Hariri’s his political bloc. We reached him in Beirut.

[Music: Lo-Fi Hip-Hop]

California Car ad

JD: This is from an ad for a fancy 2017 Lexus sedan.

SOUNDCLIP

MALE VOICEOVER: How do I explain? It was exhilarate, nimble, responding to my every touch.

JD: This is from an ad for a fancy 2017 Lincoln sedan.

SOUNDCLIP

MALE VOICEOVER: Further or faster? It's a choice that's not just about logic. In the final moment something else guides us — instinct.

JD: And this is from an ad for a fancy 2017 Mercedes sedan.

SOUNDCLIP

MALE VOICEOVER: What is intuition?

JD: OK, that’s enough of that, you get the idea. A guy with a deep voice says some profound sounding blah blah blah over some slowly building triumphant music. And meanwhile on the screen someone — usually an unshaven man — drives a fancy car with a faraway look, a smile that says “yeah.” Now picture this instead. On a black screen, a message comes up. My girlfriend needs to sell her car. To help her I made this commercial. And over the next minute we watch a woman get in the car, cuddle a cat, pour some coffee, both while driving. Bite into a sandwich while sitting on the hood overlooking the ocean at sunset. There are some close up shots of wheels and some sweeping aerial drone shots. Graphics tell us that the car has 141,955 miles on it and that you can buy it quote “starting at $499.” The ad sounds like this.

SOUNDCLIP

MALE VOICEOVER: You, You’re different. You do things your way. That's what makes you one of a kind. You don’t need things, you're happy with who you are. You don't care about money — you have everything you’ve ever wanted. You don’t do it for appearances — you do it because it works. And this, this is not a car, this is you. It’s a lifestyle, a choice — your choice. Introducing a 1996 Honda Accord, a car for people who have life figured out and just need a way to get somewhere. Luxury is a state of mind.

JD: That ad was made by a guy by the name of Max Lanman to promote the eBay auction of his fiancé’s 1996 Honda Accord. But after that ad got millions of views in a week, bidding went so high Ebay cancelled the auction. Mr. Lanman and his fiancé put it back up on eBay at the original asking price of 499 bucks — Ebay cancelled the auction again. Probably out of concern for what it has called illegitimate bidding. Still, you do have to give Max Lanman credit. He perfectly captured the combination of profound nonsense, manipulative music and breathtaking visuals that typify car commercials. Now that has generated a lot of impressed conversation. Although his fiancé is probably hoping for less talk more auction. And we have tweeted this ad go to @CBCasithappens to see it.

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Part 3: Nigeria infant deaths, big beaver

Nigeria infant deaths

Guest: Roland Hodler

JD: We know that oil spills in Nigeria have caused incredible environmental damage, and now we know how that environmental damage is hurting people — because new research suggests that those spills pose a grave danger to pregnant women and to their unborn children. A new study says that infants in Nigeria are twice as likely to die in their first month of life if their mothers were living near an oil spill before becoming pregnant. And that grim statistic applies even if the spill happened long before those women became pregnant. Roland Hodler is an economics professor at the University of St.Gallen — he led the study. We reached him in St. St.Gallen, Switzerland.

CO: Professor Hodler, what prompted you to study the effects of oil spill pollution on women and unborn children?

PROFESSOR ROLAND HODLER: Well, I have long been interested in the effects of natural resources on local economies, and it was clear that the environmental pollution going on in the Niger Delta is one of the worst aspects of the international oil industry, so I wanted to study the effect on the local community and I think infants in particular because there was not yet studied before for.

CO: And what do you make of it? What was your reaction to the results that you got?

RH: I was shocked. I mean, we were expecting to find that oil spills would increase infant mortality, but we didn't expect that that the share of newborns who died within the first month would double — that was a surprise, a negative surprise.

CO: Describe the environment — describe where these babies were born, where they lived that contributed to this? What was the environment like?

RH: So basically we are having a survey of many, many mothers, more than two-and-a-half-thousand mothers across Nigeria, in principle, that are all born within 10 kilometres from an oil spill that happened over the last eight years. So many of these mothers live in the Niger Delta, but some also live along pipelines that go up north within the country, and many of them are living in rural areas. These are mostly relatively poor families. And then an oil spill happens and we compared to siblings that were born and conceived before the spill and those afterwards. And we see that those born afterwards have this much higher mortality rates.

CO: And there's a question that comes from that a very crucial one, but I want to ask you, just first of all, what are the pollutants, what are the actual environmental hazards or chemicals that are affecting these babies?

RH: So hydrocarbons are very complicated products. Crude oil consists of hydrocarbons and there are many hydrocarbons. The medical in clinical studies don't really know that much about what each single of these hydrocarbon products would cause. But it's clear that local residents — they do have skin contact with crude oil, they drink contaminated water, they eat contaminated fish and crops, they may inhale smoke from fires. And these are all likely to have severe adverse health effects.

CO: And where there are oil spills in Nigeria, which are very common, I mean, there is an estimate of 240,000 barrels of crude oil spilled in the Niger Delta every year, so a lot of contamination. And so how vulnerable are these people? Where are they situated that they're able to, not only have it in their food, have it in their water, to have it in the air? How close are they to these spills?

RH: Some live very nearby right. Many of the oil spills — typically these pipelines are along the main roads — many people also live along the main roads and so they live very, very close to them. Some of them and others live a bit further away, but still some of the oil spills are rather minor but others are just huge and destroy a relatively large area.

CO: You mentioned that these babies, this mortality, infant mortality rate with babies who are born to women at some earlier point exposed to these oil spills, but not women exposed to them while they're pregnant. Is that correct?

RH: Yes, that's what we find. So we don't only find that we more generally find that it's kind of all of that happened even three or four years before conception, they still very large affects. So it seems that some of these negative health effects are building up over time, but it's actually worse to give birth in an area that was exposed, has been exposed to an oil spill already quite some time ago, rather than a place where it happens late in your pregnancy, so it's much worse if it happened in the first trimester, but if it it happens later in the pregnancy it is actually not as bad.

CO: What did you find with women who are exposed to oil spills while they were pregnant but hadn't had previous contact with them? Did you have any group that you could study that had those experiences?

RH: We had some of them. So within these groups we find that it's if it's after the first trimester the effect is not terribly strong. It's actually not.

CO: But what does that tell you then about how these pollutants affect the unborn?

RH: So we think that it partly implies that the negative effect in the parents build up over time. And there's also some evidence that, actually the father’s exposure to crude oil could increase the risk of genetic malformations in the unborn, which then could contribute of course to higher newborn mortality rates. But it is not something that we studied but that has been suggested by some medical studies.

CO: So what does all this add up to? What does that tell you about what women are going through in the Niger Delta?

RH: I mean, it is in general I guess a rather horrible place to live. I mean, there has been poverty, environmental pollution and conflict for many, many years, mostly maybe not exclusively, but mostly due to oil spills and in general the oil industry operating there and the oil industry not taking care about the local community, the Nigerian government not taking care of the local community.

CO: And Nigeria has been extracting oil for decades, hasn't it? I mean, these oil spills some of them are that have been there for a very long time. And the international companies, how have they reacted? Do they take responsibility for the health conditions of these who are living near the spills?

RH: No I think they don't. So it's the Nigerian government that does not really properly enforce regulation and does not really properly control oil companies as the Nigerian government should. And any international oil company seem to make use of that and are less careful when it comes to maintenance and when it comes to cleaning up polluted areas. So I find it actually quite shocking that they behave so differently in Nigeria than they would in say Norway or Texas.

CO: Do you think it's possible that that the companies and the government will respond to your study and actually do something?

RH: I'm not so optimistic that it will change much on the ground. But I mean, poverty, conflict and environmental pollution have been there for a long time and oil spills have been one of the major causes for a long time of all these ills. And they both haven't done much. I mean, I would very much hope so that they respond. But I'm not extremely optimistic.

CO: All right, very distressing report. Professor Hodler, thank you.

RH: Thanks a lot.

JD: Roland Hodler is an economics professor at the university St.Gallen in Switzerland. And we reached him in St.Gallen.

[Music: Ambient Chimes]

Silver Cross

JD: Tomorrow at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa Diana Abel will lay a wreath at the National War Memorial. The Royal Canadian Legion has chosen her as a sure Silver Cross Mother to represent all mothers who have lost children in the military. Ms Abel’s son Corporal Michael David Abel was killed in an accident in 1993 while on a peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The CBC's Jessa Runciman spoke with her about her son and about his time in Somalia, which is a mission the Canadian military would rather forget.

SOUNDCLIP

DIANA ABEL: He was on a U.N. sponsored mission that was peacemaking and humanitarian. Their job was to deliver food to the starving people that were coming in from Ethiopia. He died on May 3rd 1993. It was an accident. The soldier was asked what they call dry firing his rifle, which means they take the clip out and they fire it because of the sand getting into the barrel. And they were sitting chatting because they were two weeks out from heading home and he went to leave. So he put the clip back in because they had to have their arms on them all the time. But then he sat down again they started chatting again and he fired the rifle, this time with the clip in. And my son was sitting laying on, like a picnic bench just across from him. And at that moment he decided to sit up. Michael was 27 but he's still my baby boy. And that's the first thing I said to my husband, “Our baby boy isn’t coming home.”

JESSICA RUNCIMAN: I’m so sorry. What did it mean for you to be reached out to by Michael's former regimen and to hear that they wanted you to be in this role this year?

DA: It made me very proud. It also showed me that they had a lot of respect for my son. They named their base in Bosnia — they left for Bosnia in September after coming home from Somalia they went to Bosnia — and they needed their base, base Abel. So yeah, they've shown me over the years, and now with this just how much they liked Michael. He was a good guy.

JR: The mission in Somalia is one with a complicated history. A lot of people, if they do think back to that mission think of the teenager, the Somali teen that was beaten to death and two Canadian soldiers were charged with second degree murder, torture. Military officials lost their jobs over this. How would you say you feel that mission is perceived today?

DA: That was not the whole mission, that was two people that did something very, very wrong and they have paid the price for it. All those other men and women, they did the job that they were tasked to do under very difficult circumstances. But they did it, I feel very bad that they came home under a cloud that wasn't fair because of two people.

JR: What are you hoping people are going to think about by seeing you participating in this very important role?

DA: Well, I'm hoping that they'll stop and think that there are a lot of mothers right across the country that won't see their son or daughter again, but they sacrificed in the name of their country. A lot of people think of Afghanistan, but 25 years ago we had soldiers under fire. And we last one, it was an accident, but we still lost one.

JD: Diana Abel is this year's Silver Cross Mother. Tomorrow she will lay a wreath at the National War Memorial in Ottawa for Remembrance Day.

Manitoba big beaver

Guest: Graham Young

JD: People often contact Graham Young to see if they have found something historic. Mr. Young is the curator of geology and paleontology at the Manitoba museum. Now most of those finds don't turn out really to be anything rare. Recently however, it was a different story when a man brought in some items found in a gravel pit in Manitoba. We reached Graham Young in Winnipeg.

CO: Mr. Young, first of all take us back to the day when this man came into the museum. What did he think he had found?

DOCTOR GRAHAM YOUNG: He thought it was possibly a pig. I think his colleague had actually found it and they'd looked at it among themselves and it was a weird looking jaw with a large tusk like tooth in it.

CO: How significant is the specimen that he brought in?

GY: Oh, I think this is very significant. We're talking about a creature that was widespread in North America in the Ice Age but it's generally a rare thing and it's been found in three places in Canada before and this would be the first occurrence in the prairie provinces. So it's filling in a very large piece of the map effectively.

CO: And what is it — or was it?

GY: Well, it's commonly called the giant beaver, its scientific name is Castoroides. We think it's Castoroides ohioensis, and it's a very large beaver-like creature. It's not identical to our modern Canadian beaver, it's not just a scaled up version of our modern Canadian Beaver, it's a different member of the beaver family.

CO: And how big was this beaver?

GY: This beaver was the size of a decent sized bear. It was two to three hundred pounds. So like a modest sized black bear or, I think we could say, the size of a large football player.

CO: And you say it's not like our modern beavers, so is this, I mean, the same kind of industrious beaver who is rearranging the landscape, building dams and lodges?

GY: The evidence seems to be, from what I've read and talking to people, is that it probably didn't build dams, but it probably built some sort of a lodge. I think other members of the beaver family besides our Canadian Beaver build lodge type structures. So it probably did build some sort of a structure but there isn't evidence that have built dams. Suggestions from people who are studying the chemistry, the isotope chemistry of these things, are that it probably had a different diet to the beaver so they could co-exist. So this this probably ate more marsh plants rather eating tree material.

CO: But the picture I'm looking at has a great big tusk or tooth there, so what was that used for?

GY: I suspect it could have worked very well for digging if you think about the fact that a lot of the nutrition in those plants is in the roots and in the lower stalks and the roots, then then a big tooth like that could be very useful for digging. There are quite a lot of creatures that use big teeth for digging, so it doesn't have to be for chopping down trees.

CO: This giant beaver did it have a big flat tail?

GY: Suggestions are that it didn't. You don't often get preservation of soft tissue, of course, in fossils and a lot of that is soft tissue. But the experts seem to suggest that it probably had a rounded tail rather than a flat tail.

CO: How do you think this beaver specimen is — this piece of a beaver?

GY: This is where it gets tricky, and I've just been corresponding with some people with a lot more expertise this morning, and we do have dates on wood from gravel pits in this part of Manitoba that suggest a date of 44,000 years. But you're getting back deep in radiocarbon dating and dates. I think the statement someone said to me this morning was dates become open ended at that point. So chances are it's probably 50,000 years or more.

CO: So before people showed up?

GY: It's before people showed up in this part of the world, yes.

CO: Now how significant is this discovery? Have you had others like this?

GY: Well we've not had any ideas of this particular species. We're looking at an area of Manitoba where Ice Age things occasionally show up in gravel pits, and they're usually showing up from beneath the gravel pushed by the glaciers. So what we seem to be getting is a little bit of a window into a time in this region, one of the warmer spells in the Ice Age. And we also have things like mammoths, Mastodon, step bison and muskox in the same general part of the province.

CO: Have you found evidence of this giant beaver in Manitoba before?

GY: We have not seen any evidence of it. So in Canada this is the first occurrence between Toronto and the Yukon.

CO: We had one done in the Don Valley didn’t we?

GY: Yeah.

CO: Now why did they die off? Why did these giant creatures, why did they become extinct?

GY: We don't really know the answer without a time machine. But they became extinct at much the same time as a lot of other big creatures in North America. So they became extinct about the same time as North American horses, as the mammoth, the Mastodon, the short-faced bear, the big ground sloths all those really cool, big Ice Age creatures became extinct in about the same interval, and that was at the time when the glacier was really receding from much of North America. So there was a lot of landscape change, climate change, plant populations were moving, there was a lot of stress. People talk about this being an evolutionary bottleneck for some species that went through. So some species that went through survived but perhaps got down to small numbers. Other species did not get through. And there's also the added factor in North America of people starting to appear in numbers at that time. And we know from experience, we are very good hunters and we take advantage of the things that are easy to hunt with a lot of meat on them, and some of these creatures would have fed your family for quite a while.

CO: Just finally, where is this fossil now?

GY: Right now this fossil is in our collections storage at the museum, which is a climate controlled space with quite high humidity. And this is because these bones, if you can imagine they've been below the water table for probably tens-of-thousands of years so they're incredibly saturated. They're stable being saturated with water and we have to dry them out extremely slowly and carefully.

CO: All right we'll leave it there. Mr. Young, thank you.

GY: Well, thank you very much.

JD: That's Graham Young in Winnipeg. Mr. Young is the curator of geology and paleontology at the Manitoba museum.

[Music: Ambient Bass Tones]

John Hillerman obit

SOUNDCLIP

TOM SELLECK: I'm sorry you lost your Grandiflora Queen Elizabeth's over this.

JOHN HILLERMAN: Thank you Magnum the gesture is appreciated it. But I suppose that when one works, as we do, for someone as eccentric and as anarchically impulsive as Mr. Masters, we must expect the unexpected and we learn to live with the somewhat absurd vagaries of his work.

TS: You're right Higgins. I guess you and I will be doing this for a long time too huh. You know, together.

JH: Yes, as a matter of fact, always.

JD: Tom Selleck and John Hillerman in a scene from Magnum P.I. or rather Thomas Magnum and Jonathan Quayle Higgins the third, better known as just Higgins a persnickety estate caretaker in Hawaii. Higgins was the quintessential Englishman, all the more impressive because the man who played him was born in Texas. But wasn't just the impeccable accent that earned John Hillermann a primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe. Jonathan Hillerman died yesterday in Houston. He was 84 years old. Before he started acting Mr. Hillerman served in the U.S. Air Force for four years. During that time he worked with the theater group. After he was discharged, he moved to New York to work in theater and it would be more than a decade before Jonathan Hillerman got his first film credit in 1971, and later he appeared in Peter Bogdanovich films including The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon and What's Up, Doc? He was a fixture as a character actor on television in the 1970s. And then in 1980 he got the role he was most famous for.

SOUNDCLIP

JH: Oh my God.

JD: For eight seasons he played Higgins, a pompous, lovable windbag, who either manages the estate of a millionaire novelist named Robin Masters or is Mr. Masters. John Hillerman did his first film at the age of 39 — that's later than many actors. And in an interview with NBC 5 entertainment reporter Bobbie Wygant he reflected on his career and on Magnum P.I..

SOUNDCLIP

JH: It is wonderful, I love doing the show and I think I've been acting 30 years, as you know, we started out together. And Higgins's the best part I've ever had, I love doing it, I never get tired of it. Tom is terrific to work with. He's just — in all my years one of the best people to have ever worked with. I love working with him. So you're looking at a happy actor, there aren’t many of us around.

[LAUGHTER]

BOBBIE WYGANT: John, as far as getting this role, it seems like through the years of talking with actors very often the part that makes them the happiest, maybe they got almost by a fluke or maybe they almost didn't get it or had turned it down originally or something, did that happen with you and Higgins?

JH: Yeah, and it gives me a chill when I think about it. I was up for a very large role in a new feature film, a comedy. And my agent read the script, I read the script we both said this is going to be the hit of the season. And I wanted the part very badly and Magnum had been offered to me. And had I gotten that part I would have turned Magnum down. The film was one of the biggest flops of the season.

BW: Will you tell me?

JH: Yeah, it was First Family with Bob Newhart. And there was just nothing. And I look back on it and think Buck Henry was directing it and Buck’s a friend and he was just on the fence. He couldn't decide whether he wanted to go with me or another actor who was a totally different type. And finally he made his decision and my agent called and said you’ve got to make a decision. John has this pilot for a television show. So Buck said, “I think I'm going to go the other way,” and I look back on that now and I get a chill. So I'm always amused when I hear actors talk about how they plan their careers.

[LAUGHTER]

JD: That was the late actor John Hillerman speaking with NBC 5 entertainment reporter Bobbie Wygant. Mr. Hillerman, an accomplished character actor best known for playing Higgens on Magnum P.I., died yesterday. He was 84 years old.

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November 10, 2017 episode transcript

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