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The AIH Transcript for January 25, 2018

Hosts: Helen Mann and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

HELEN MANN: Hello, I'm Helen Mann sitting in for Carol Off.

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

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

HM: Brownout. After two women accused him of sexual misconduct, Patrick Brown abruptly resigned as the leader of Ontario's Progressive Conservatives — leaving a power vacuum just months before a provincial elections.

JD: Show of farce. Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson resigns from an international panel set up by Myanmar's government to address the Rohingya crisis, saying it was no more than a whitewash.

HM: At rock bottom. One minute a B.C. truck driver was zipping along the Trans Canada and the next his rig was buried under a rockslide, ending with a falling boulder he says was bigger than his truck.

JD: Breaking the bank. While giant institutions went unpunished for their roles in the 2008 global financial crisis, one tiny bank faced criminal indictments. And now a documentary about Abacus Bank is nominated for an Oscar.

HM: Cool, calm and collecting a man and his wife have an obsession with amassing pop culture bobbleheads, and it's serious enough that they've written up a contract to set a round figure on the number of roundish figures.

JD: And…Unarmed rubbery. It is tiny and it has no limbs — but a new robot is bouncy flexible and a promising medical development. And our guest hopes that, eventually, we will jump at the chance to have it jump around inside us. As It Happens: The Thursday Edition. Radio that finds hope springs internal.

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Part 1: Patrick Brown Resigns, B.C. Boulder Truck, Funko Pop Contract

Patrick Brown Resigns

Guest: Ginny Movat

JD: Not that long ago at all, Patrick Brown looked like the Ontario premier in waiting. That all changed last night and early this morning, during a lightning fast news cycle. First there were the allegations of sexual misconduct against the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, which Mr. Brown addressed in a hastily called and shaking news conference.

SOUNDCLIP

PATRICK BROWN: First, I want to see these allegations are false — categorically untrue — every one of them. It’s never okay, never okay for anyone to feel they've been a victim of sexual harassment or feel threatened in any way — let me make this clear. And no one appreciates that more than I do, I’ve got two younger sisters who are my best friends, I've grown up in a family that has taught me good values. It's not my values, it's not how I was raised, it's not who I am.

JD: Three hours after that news conference was held, Patrick Brown announced his resignation as leader of the Ontario PC Party. And with about five months until the provincial election it leaves the Tories in damage control mode. Here's how the party's deputy leaders and MPPs Sylvia Jones and Steve Clarke responded today.

SOUNDCLIP

SYLVIA JONES: Clearly it was a shock. None of us knew about what the allegations were until last night. We need an opportunity to have those conversations internally. But absolutely it was a shock.

STEVE CLARKE: So we have to move forward, we have to — we've got to get our caucus together, we've got to have that discussion. We've got to meet with the party officials, we've got to consult the members and we've got to move forward.

JD: The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Caucus will meet tomorrow morning where they are expected to announce an interim leader. Ginny Movat is a former Ontario PC Party campaigner and a staffer. She is now a senior consultant with Crestview Strategy. We reached Ms. Movat in Toronto.

HM: Ginny Movat, we heard earlier from the deputy leaders of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and how they characterized what's been happening. What do you make of what's changed for the party?

GM: I'm sad for my party. I'm glad he resigned. That was the right thing to do and I'm glad that the senior leadership people around him pushed him to do so and resigned immediately when they heard what the allegations were. They’re very, very serious allegations, but I'm sad that our party is without a leader five months out from an election campaign. But I'm hopeful that there will be leadership candidates who emerge who impress people and that we can get moving, reenergize the party and fight an election campaign in June.

HM: Let's talk a bit about last night, this press conference by Patrick Brown was hastily called it ended up lasting no less than a minute and a half. He was clearly shaken, he appeared to be on the verge of tears and denied the allegations of sexual misconduct. What do you think of the way he handled himself?

GM: What immediately struck me that the leader was alone. And then once he started speaking it became immediately clear why he was alone. I don't think that was a well thought out press conference. I think he convinced himself, maybe a few people that close around him, convinced him that there'd be an opportunity to survive this. I think this idea of referencing the fact that you have sisters as somehow a reason why you might not have committed the actions he's alleged to have committed, that's not really an excuse, it's not an explanation. So that is grossly inadequate and a bit mind-boggling and as soon as it ended my immediate thought was ‘I’m not sure how he lasts the night as the leader,’ and ultimately he didn't.

HM: One of the two women says she was in high school, the other in first-year university. They both say they were drunk when these incidents allegedly occurred — Mr. Brown was not. As you heard about those accounts, what did you think, what did you feel?

GM: I felt upset, I mean, immediately I felt sad for the victims and impressed with their bravery at coming forward. You know, there are few areas that people look to now for what is acceptable behaviour particularly of elected officials. One is, what is the age of the person that is making this accusation or what was their age at the time? Was there a power imbalance and was there a consent element? In this circumstance, all three of those categories, the leader appears to be accused of having been offside.

HM: As, you know, overnight, today again on social media and elsewhere, political observers, members of the media have suggested that these allegations were an open secret. If that is true, how could Mr. Brown's senior staff or other members of the Conservative caucus not have known about them?

GM: I think it's irresponsible and not altogether fair to imply that the allegations themselves were an open secret. So were there rumours, almost certainly. But there were no media outlets that came forward with these allegations until last night, because I think there was a lot of work that went into proving and making a case for their veracity. It was a really strong report and I believe that they were all quite shocked.

HM: Is that good enough though, for a party if there was rumours around about their leader, to wait for the media to expose something? Should parties not be more proactive perhaps in finding out whether those things are potentially true?

GM: Yeah, I think it's incumbent upon political parties. Look there's no doubt that the circumstances in which politics occur — on the Hill, at Queen's Park — I worked at Queen's Park, I've been there as a young woman, in fact, and there's no doubt that the circumstances there lend themselves to inappropriate behaviour.

HM: What do you mean?

GM: The nature of people coming into an abundance of power very suddenly and those power imbalances being very stark. There's a culture in political social life where there's quite a bit of drinking often. There are all sorts of circumstances that create a situation where we see it coming out and I think it's a good thing. I think sunlight is probably the best disinfectant.

HM: Are we going to see more of this come daylight from the Ontario legislature do you think?

GM: I do, yeah, I do. I think that victims will feel emboldened, as they should, and it will further undermine and push out those abusers who've been hiding in the system.

HM: Your party is five months from an election, they need a leader. What kind of conversations do you think are going on right now within caucus?

GM: So caucus is electing an interim leader tomorrow morning. But it's clear our caucuses do not elect our leaders. So there's been some discussion of having a caucus elect an interim leader who would then see us through an election, and we wouldn't have a formal leadership process until after the election. I think that would be a mistake. There are all sorts of caucus members that I would entrust with that job.

HM: Like who, because that was what I was going to ask you next. I mean, who do you think should steer the ship for the next four-and-a-half to five months.

GM: Vic Fedeli has put his name forward, I think he's very, very strong. He's a smart, a guy good person.

HM: Any women?

GM: Yeah, look I'm really excited about a couple of women. I think Lisa Raitt currently is a member of the federal caucus, a strong Ontario connection. I think she'd make a great leader and I'm really excited about Caroline Mulroney. I mean, she was a star candidate that the party was able to recruit. She could go toe-to-toe with the Premier and with the NDP Leader Andrea Horvath and it really give them a run for their money on relatively short notice, which, unfortunately, we have short notice.

HM: People are pointing out today that Patrick Brown managed to grow the party membership significantly — 200,000 members — built largely on his personality. He was slapped on the cover of the platform, he was all over television ads. How do you then take that platform and move forward without someone who's been so identified with it?

GM: Certainly the people’s guarantee as it were, the branding of the platform is a little bit heavy on the presence of Patrick Brown. But it's not hard to imagine a process whereby a new leader could look at those policies in the raw and make sure those policies are sort of repackaged, make sure those policies fit with the sort of values and style of the new leader, and then repackage them. Rebrand them and present them in sort of a coherent easy to get message to Ontarians.

HM: Should Patrick Brown try to recapture his own seat in June or do you think he'll be persuaded not to?

GM: I hope he'll be persuaded not to. And if he is not, he'll face a reckoning in his riding. I trust Ontarians to do the right thing. I think it has less to do with the threshold of evidence in court and more to do with the standard to which we hold elected officials, which thankfully in 2018, I think is a lot higher than it used to be.

HM: It's understandable that key party members, politicians, brass would try to put a brave face on situations like this. But really, are you nervous? Do you fear that your party's thrown away what looked like a good chance to govern again?

GM: I am nervous. I've been through a few losses so I'm sort of hardened to it. You know, there have been shorter paths to victory in politics — but not many. And it could be appealing for a few candidates. You know, some of the bigger name candidates who maybe wouldn't want to commit ten years to trying to become a leader and a premier, this is one of the shortest paths to possible victory that we've ever seen in provicial politics. Five months is not a long time so I'm optimistic, I'm sad, I'm sad, but I'm but I'm optimistic.

HM: Ms. Movat, thanks very much for talking to us.

GM: Thank you for having me.

HM: Okay, bye.

GM: Bye.

JD: Ginny Movat is a former Ontario Progressive Conservative Party campaigner and staffer. She is currently a senior consultant with Crestview Strategy. We reached her in Toronto. And Patrick Brown is not the only politician facing sexual misconduct allegations. This afternoon, Kent Hehr resigned as the Federal Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities after being accused of harassing women when he was a member of the Alberta Legislature. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Mr. Hehr would be placed on a leave of absence pending an investigation into the allegations. And yesterday, in Nova Scotia, Progressive Conservative leader there, Jamie Baillie resigned after news broke that his party was investigating him for quote “allegations of inappropriate behaviour.”

[Music: Upbeat Gospel]

B.C. Boulder Truck

Guest: Matt Ruscheinski

JD: Matt Ruscheinski drives semis in British Columbia, and last week he was driving his tractor trailer on a Trans-Canada Highway by the community of Spences Bridge. Everything was fine — and then he noticed some falling rocks — and then things got worse fast. We reached Matt Ruscheinski in Langley, British Columbia.

HM: Mr. Ruscheinski, do you feel lucky to be alive right now?

MATT RUSCHEINSKI: Yeah, definitely.

HM: How are you doing physically?

MR: Still pretty sore. You know, it took a bit of a toll on the body with the with the impact but all in all, you know, there's nothing broken, a couple of bruises a couple of small cuts and mostly just muscle sore.

HM: Where did you get the bruising?

MR: I took it to the left shin. The dashboard hit me in the leg and then I've got a little bit of bruising along kind of the left side on the small of my back. But it's clearing up pretty good but I think that was just from the seatbelt.

HM: All right what do you think caused the cuts?

MR: Oh, it was glass. The windshield on the driver's side it just basically exploded.

HM: Take us back to the moments before this impact. And, I mean, a lot of people are probably not familiar with this section of highway. Can you describe what it normally looks like and what you encountered that day?

MR: It's pretty much the small stretch I was in it was just a straight stretch. But it's, you know, it's a rock wall on one side and it’s a drop off down to the bottom by the river and railroad tracks on the other side. It’s the Fraser Canyon so canyon kind of spells it all out really.

HM: You're driving along and I gather you see some of the smaller rocks start rolling down the hill. Tell us what you saw?

MR: I saw a about four boulders about the size of beach balls and they started coming down off of the side hill and falling towards the edge of the road. And there was no other traffic coming towards me so I moved more to the centre of the road to avoid some of it in case it was going to bounce out on the road. And just as I came up to where they were falling the whole hillside just gave way and fell right in front of me.

HM: Describe for us what that looked like to you in that moment?

MR: It was, It was so fast. It was just — all I saw was giant rocks, that was it. And it happened like it was literally in the blink of an eye. I'm pretty sure I never even got a brake application in, I don't think you would find a skid mark there.

HM: And when you describe, you know, giant rocks, give us a sense of what we're talking about in terms of the size and the weight we might be looking?

MR: Size-wise, the rock was much larger than my truck — larger than my semi. And there was about four of them that size and then just tons of smaller stuff and other sized boulders and whatever.

HM: What does that sound like when that's happening?

MR: Honestly, I've been outside a whole bunch of times, I honestly — I couldn't even explain what the sound was like. It was just, it was almost like drawing a blank. It was just this big crash and there was a bunch of dust and smoke and steam and stuff and I just grabbed my stuff and had to try and scramble my way out.

HM: Where did it hit the truck?

MR: Well, it hit right on the front of the truck basically, and more to the driver's side. That was why the the windshield basically just shattered in front of me. There's not much left of the windshield anymore on the driver's side. It caved the front of the truck in, it broke the motor, broke the transmission, it basically just caved the front end of the truck in.

HM: And now you said you grabbed your stuff. Do you have any idea how fast that process was getting out of the truck?

MR: It was, it was just seconds. I checked first to make sure that, you know, all my limbs were still attached and I grabbed my phone and grabbed my bag quick because I wasn't sure if the truck was going to catch fire or what was going on, so I just grabbed my stuff and managed to wedge my way out of the driver's door because it was jammed and just made my way to the side of the road and sat down because it was just, it was kind of — I don't know — I've never, never been in any kind of an accident or had an impact like that before, so it was, it was, it was different.

HM: What was going through your mind as you were there in those moments right afterwards?

MR: I don't know, I just I knew, I knew I needed to call 911. And then I called my family right away and told them that I had been in an accident because they were all, they all knew what time I would be home roughly. And so if I'm not home usually somewhere close to that time they start phoning because, of course, they know what they know what it's like for truck drivers and for anybody that travels the highways, anything can happen. So I didn't want anybody to worry.

HM: So you're, except for those bruises and scratches, pretty much okay. What about your truck? Where is it now?

MR: Sitting in our yard here in Langley. It's, it's not in nearly as good a shape as I am.

HM: Is it salvageable?

MR: No.

HM: And this is not your average truck, I'm told this was a particularly customized vehicle.

MR: Yeah, yeah. We custom build them for what we do. It took me about two months to find a truck that would that would work for what I wanted to do, and then it took another two-and-a-half months to build it.

HM: And insurance won’t cover that?

MR: I don't know yet, they haven't gotten back to me yet. I'm still waiting.

HM: Okay. You know, you have to think after being through something like this, it has an emotional toll as well. Do you worry about driving again, especially along a stretch like that?

MR: No, the driving part I'm not worried about. It's just, you know, it's more just the financial aspect of it and getting back to work. I've had other, you know, kind of close calls and stuff over the years, I've been doing it for a long time and it's not really — this isn't really phasing me too hard. I'm more worried about getting back to work and, you know, so I can pay my bills and take care of things at home because right now I'm sitting, I'm an owner-operator so I have absolutely no income now. And I just started this whole thing.

HM: I'm sorry about your truck and the affect it's having on your business. But it's really great that you're able to tell us the story in the condition that you're in now. Thank you for talking to us.

MR: Yeah, no worries thank you very much.

HM: Okay, bye-bye.

MR: Bye-bye.

JD: Matt Ruscheinski is a truck driver in Langley, British Columbia. And that is where we reached him.

[Music: Guitar]

Funko Pop Contract

Guest: James Bouhuys

JD: They're bound by marriage — and they are also bound by a contract. It is not a prenup, and it is not a joint financial plan — exactly. Actually, it is most likely the first contract of its kind. And it came about because James Bouhuys and his wife Amanda have an obsession rather with the pop culture toys or statuettes called Funko Pops. An obsession so potentially all-consuming that they had to agree to terms vis-a-vis the acquisition and the collection thereof. We reached James Bouhuys in Revere, Massachusetts.

HM: Mr. Bouhuys, can you tell us about you and your wife’s Funko Pop collection, what have you got?

JB: So my wife and I have been collecting probably since late 2013. We have somewhere around 1,000 Pop figures, but around 1,400 Funko items in total. Myself, I personally collect, or try to collect certain lines. I collect the WWE line, some horror movies. I collect Batman Pops in the 90s. My wife tries to stick with Disney Pops, Harry Potter, minions or anything else she wants because I'm not going to say no to her.

HM: And are they all on display in your home?

JB: They're all somewhere on display at our home. We don't have any sitting in storage. We keep some of them in box, some of them out of box, but we have all the boxes for those that are out of box — just a matter of space.

HM: Now you say you've been doing this since 2013. What's the source of this obsession? How did it get started?

JB: So when I first saw one of the wrestling ones, my favourite wrestler at the time was CM Punk and I happened to see his Pop figure in my local Hot Topic store and saw it and I immediately needed to buy it. I had seen Pops before and thought ‘Okay, they're kind of cool, they're neat, they look a little weird.’ But once they saw that wrestling one I said ‘Okay, I need to continue buying new wrestling ones,’ bought them all. And then my wife started seeing some Disney ones and said ‘Oh these are cute,’ and, you know, surprise her with a few and it kind of spiraled from there.

HM: Cute seems like the appropriate word. I mean, these things have oversized heads and kind of almost baby like characteristics. Do you think they're cute? Is that what the attraction is for you?

JB: I don't think they're cute. I mean, for me the attraction is just that there's so many different licenses that Funko has, that we can find anything that matches you know my personality. They’re great talking points, so we have friends over my friends come in and say “Oh, wow look at, you know, the ones you just got. Look at all the new ones.” You know, it's putting my personality out there and on display.

HM: Now you and your wife actually ended up signing a contract regarding Funko Pops. Give us the story behind that.

JB: All right. So we got married in July of 2016 and on our honeymoon, probably like most couples, we talked about finances and moving forward and what we're going to do in our future. We had talked about, you know, possibilities of getting a dog and our collection had already been over 1,000 at that point. So we said we pretty much needed to slow down on it. And by ‘we’ she meant ‘I.’ So I said ‘Okay, well let me make a contract and say that I’ll only spend a certain amount of money each week on Pops.’ And she kind of joked about it and laughed it off and think I would do it. Well, I don't sleep much, so one night sitting there she's sleeping and I'm sitting here typing away on my phone. I decided to make a ‘Pop-tract’ you know using Pop instead of a contract word — where I allotted myself $30 per week to spend on Pops and the amount of money I'd get per month depended on how many Fridays fell within that month. So the issue with that was that I allowed myself so many exceptions. San Diego Comic Con is one of the biggest comic conventions in the United States and that happens every July. That was actually occurring while we were away on our honeymoon. So I had to have some friends go and get some Pops, or I tried to stay awake at 3 a.m. Eastern time so I could try to get them online. If you don't get them then you end up having to pay eBay prices, which we weren’t about to do. So I made so many exceptions on this contract that it excluded any San Diego Comic Con or New York Comic Con or Boston — any of those conventions. So I did not need to go over the limit and could still get those limited edition items for myself or for her.

HM: And did she sign this, does she agree to those terms, especially given all these exceptions?

JB: She thought it was a little crazy, but she did, she did sign it, nevertheless. She said she hoped that it wouldn't get to that point and it wouldn't, you know, using 120 or 150 per month, but she did sign it.

HM: So how you done, have you lived up to it?

JB: I would say probably for the first few months, probably until about January of last year. I was writing every single Pop down, following it to a T, you know, if I had gone over by a few bucks take it off the next month. But one of the issues we came across was two things, actually. One, oftentimes I would buy things for friends or I would pre-order Pops. Some of them you preorder them on websites, they don't charge you immediately. So I kind of became lost in ‘Okay, do we charge it for, you know, December or do charge it for January when it comes in stock?’ So we kind of lost track there and then Funko started producing more and more each month that either of us wanted. So we had to look through our collection and cut it down. So we got rid of about 500 Pops at that time.

HM: Now, I have to ask, I mean, you've laid out basically the terms of what you're allowed to do. What does the contract say if you actually don't live up to the circumstances, is there a punishment?

JB: So the punishment would have been to have the money that I've gone over deduct from the following week. So if I had gone over my $15, the following week and or a month, it would be $15 less.

HM: So this isn't like, you know, a be-all-end-all kind of prenup. It's not going to end the marriage you started blowing more money on these things?

JB: No the entire thing was made satirically and she loves Pops just as much as I do. If not, at this point, more, especially with all the Disney ones that she has. But it is definitely not a situation where we’re going to end up in a courtroom divvying out Beanie Babies.

HM: Mr. Bouhuys, thank you very much for talking to us.

JB: No problem. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

HM: Okay, bye-bye.

JB: Bye-bye.

JD: James Bouhuys owns an enormous Funko Pop collection with his wife in Revere, Massachusetts and we would reach Mr. Bouhuys in Revere.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Rohingya Panel Resignation, Tiny Robot

Rohingya Panel Resignation

Guest: Bill Richardson

JD: He once considered the de facto leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, a friend. Now the former governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, says he is probably on her enemy list. Yesterday Mr. Richardson resigned from an advisory board on the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar. The board was called The Advisory Commission Board on Rakhine State, and he is publicly rebuking both the panel and Ms. Suu Kyi, herself. Governor Richardson has just returned from Myanmar. We reached him in Santa Fe.

HM: Governor Richardson, why have you steps down from this advisory board?

GOVERNOR BILL RICHARDSON: Two reasons. One, I think it's a whitewash operation that does not want good, sensible advice about what to do about the Rohingya and Rakhine. And secondly, because I think Aung San Suu Kyi has lost trust in me and I have lost trust in her. So for those two reasons, mainly that I felt this board was not going to give the advice that was needed to improve the situation, human rights situation.

HM: What were you hoping that the board would accomplish when you agreed to participate?

BR: Well I've known Aung San Suu Kyi for 30 years. I've always supported her and she told me this board was going to make recommendations, basically, to give credibility to reforms that she was going to make on the whole refugee human rights issue. And then I find that the board is basically validating Myanmar's positions, which I believe are very negative on refugees, on human rights, on participation at the international community. It seemed that the discussion was everybody's against us, the UN, human rights groups, the international press, Bangladesh, we’re doing the right thing but everyone does not appreciate what we're doing. And there's international condemnation of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and the actions they are taking. There are mass graves, there are rapes, there are refugees being killed. There's just massive, massive dysfunction.

HM: You know the government of Myanmar has been denying for months now that it's had a targeted campaign against the Rohingya, it rejects these labels from the United Nations that they are involved in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Might you have anticipated that that would be their response when you joined the board?

BR: Well, I felt that — I've known Aung San Suu Kyi — and she knows I'm very candid. And the board composition, there are five of us, I thought because we've had international experience, a Brit, a South African, a former Thai foreign minister — and I think all of these individuals have stature and could really give concrete and good advice. But that advice was not solicited and it was emblemic — the first day of our meetings with Aung San Suu Kyi — when I said we need an investigation of the mass graves. We need to deal fairly with these two journalists that have been detained unfairly because they discovered the mass graves. This is not a good start. And instead of saying ‘Well at least we'll look into it,’ she lashed out at me and said “Well this is not the mandate of the commission.” And I said “What is the mandate of the commission? To ratify some of the policies that you've been following that are not working. So I it did not start well.

HM: We've covered on this program that ongoing detention of those two Reuters journalists, and you know, there's a push internationally within journalistic rights groups to get these reporters freed. Do you have any sense of why she reacted so strongly?

BR: Well, I think she felt that this was not an agenda of the advisory board, that was one. And secondly, she just doesn't like criticism. She doesn't like any situation that conflicts with the military. And this is the military perpetrating these acts, detaining these individuals, probably framing these individuals with false information, and these individuals came across these graves, these mass graves. So they were detained, they could be in jail for 14 years, and it's totally unjust. And my point was that you have to have a free press. You can't just detain people.

HM: You said you considered Aung San Suu Kyi a friend for some time. Do you think she's changed or that the perception of her was incorrect all this time?

BR: I believe she's changed. I've supported her when I was in the Clinton cabinet and I'm the one that pushed for sanctions on the military, I tried to get her out of house arrest. I think she's changed and it's power. What does that mean? It means that people that get in power — and I admit maybe I had some of this when I was in the cabinet — you feel that you know everything, you get people around you that tell you what you want to hear, that don't tell you bad news. I think the people around her don't tell her the truth and she doesn't want to hear bad news and she doesn't want to confront the military. So it's a combination of factors. Obviously our friendship has been seriously damaged, but my hope is that my resignation, maybe, will be a wakeup call for her to at least look at things a little more objective. But I'm not terribly optimistic.

HM: If this is how a person like Aung San Suu Kyi is behaving, a woman who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What does all this mean for the Rohingya people, is there any hope?

BR: Well, I think there's got to be a concerted international effort, stronger than has taken place, and by the way I commend Canada for its efforts. You've had envoys there, I've talked to your embassy there. I think more countries need to get involved. And here's I think the Trump administration has taken the right position. They sought the release of the journalists. Secretary Tillerson has been out there and push for investigations. What else? It's really — this is why I accepted this position. Aung San Suu Kyi can be the biggest agent of change to make things better there, not to fix the entire problem, they’re so massive. But when she refuses to listen to new ideas and criticism, there's not much hope in the long or short run.

HM: And meantime the leadership in Myanmar says the country is ready for a gradual repatriation of these many thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh. Do you think Myanmar is really ready to receive them back?

BR: Myanmar's not ready. I mean, Bangladesh has already delayed sending these refugees because there are no measures of safe transit, there are no measures of protection, there's no guarantees of citizenship. The homes of these individuals have been destroyed. They don't want to leave because they fear for their lives they want to take in Bangladesh. The steps for this transition have not taken place and it's a combination of better management, better leadership, but also the fear of the military, that the military is going to continue committing some of these atrocities. So, no, it's not ready. And what bothered me about Myanmar was they said well this is Bangladesh's fault. They have a presidential election coming up and they want to look tough and not send the refugees. It is just — it's everybody's fault but their own.

HM: Governor Richardson, it's good to talk with you. Thank you very much.

BR: All right. All the best.

JD: Bill Richardson is the former governor of New Mexico and the former United States ambassador to the United Nations. We reached him in Santa Fe.

[Music: Ambient Woodwinds]

Doomsday Clock

JD: It looks like a prop from an old game show, but it was definitely not fun and games when the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists rolled a giant novelty clock onstage at a press conference earlier today. The panel of scientists and scholars announced that they were pushing the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds. Last time the clock inched this close to the apocalyptic midnight was during the Cold War. Here's what Rachel Bronson, President of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, said about the decision to increase the level of a nuclear threat.

SOUNDCLIP

RACHEL BRONSON: This year, the bulletin approached its discussion knowing that the Doomsday Clock was edging ever closer to midnight. With this in mind, the board weighed events of 2017 and its relationship to 2016 and the past 70 years. In this year's clock discussions, Nuclear issues took centre stage yet again. To call the world's nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger — and its immediacy. We considered the ossified state of arms control negotiations and non-proliferation agreements, as well as new testing undertaken by North Korea, nuclear exercises built into Russia's military plans and an enhanced commitment to nuclear weapons in Pakistan, India and China. We considered, at length, the lack of predictability in how the United States is thinking about the future and future use of its own nuclear weapons — an unpredictability that it is has embodied in statements and tweets by the president of the United States. It is with reference to what I said earlier, and other key factors that are spelled out in our clock statement, that we’ve come to a grim assessment. It is with considerable concern that we set the time of the 2018 Doomsday Clock and offer a plea to rewind the Doomsday Clock. As of today, it is two minutes to midnight.

JD: Rachel Bronson, President of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, speaking at a press conference earlier today. The non-profit group announced their decision to move the doomsday clock forward amid increased nuclear threats around the world.

[Music: Hip-Hop]

Tiny Robot

Guest: Metin Sitti

JD: People have compared it to Gumby — but if you saw it you would likely think stick of gum before you thought robot — but it is a robot. And that tiny flexible piece of rubber is capable of all sorts of movements, including rolling, jumping and swimming. And researchers in Germany are hoping that one day it will be used — in humans for medical purposes. Metin Sitti is the author of a new study on this robot. It was published online in the journal Nature yesterday. We reached Mr. Metin Sitti in Stuttgart.

HM: Metin Sitti, what inspired you to make a tiny little robot like this one?

METIN SITTI: We are inspired by very small organisms because they can move in very complex environments with very diverse behaviour. And we wanted to learn from these organisms and build a new creature, a new robot for us.

HM: So what kind of organisms did you look at?

MS: We are inspired by caterpillar as jelly fishes and some larvae, which are all soft bodied and they do very diverse behaviour.

HM: So how small is it?

MS: It is for four millimetres long and one millimetre wide and it's a thickness is around 0.1 millimetres and it's a rectangular-shaped soft tiny robot.

HM: It's very cool when you see it moving on video. Can you describe the different things it can do?

MS: Yes, the robot first, can move on solid surfaces and on surfaces. On a solid surface, many organisms, and also our robot can walk, as the first modality and then it can roll really fast when needed, and when it sees an obstacle the easiest and most efficient way is jumping over it, which our robots can do. Like some caterpillars also do. And then when it sees any very small confined environment what it does is it crawls inside like a worm or like a snake. It can crawl inside the tubing type of environment and then you can reach this watery or liquid surfaces by diving onto the surface. It can swim on the water's surface, it can dive inside and it can swim underwater like a jellyfish or like a spermatozoa type of undulation-based swimming, and then it can come back to the surface and repeat the behaviour. And we can, in total, achieve seven different behaviour on solid surfaces, on water and underwater.

HM: How do you manipulate this? What powers it?

MS: So the robot is powered by external magnetic devices, which we build for medical applications. So in that sense, the power of an actuation comes from outside the body of the robot where we apply magnetic fields on the robot's area in a uniform way, but then we change the field’s magnitude and direction in time, which creates the body deformations and all these locomotion behaviours.

HM: What have you tested the robot on so far?

MS: So far we've tested on a synthetic stomach model, which is very similar softness and texture and also mucus layer on the surface that is used for surgical training. And our robot can easily move on the mucus surface and also in liquid areas, because in the stomach we also have fluids. And it also can jump over with complex stomach tissue when needed. As a second surface we used the chicken tissue that we just bought and used as a demonstration to show that in a real biological tissue the robot can also move if it is dry or if it is filled with fluids it can also swim inside. We also showed that to get close to real medical applications.

HM: You've basically suggested it could be used for, I guess, gastric procedures. Are there other medical uses that you envision for the future?

MS: We have many different ideas. The very first one we will try will be in the digestive system and also your nervous system, which have the right dimensions for our robot at the moment. And the function, we will deliver drugs in the right location in controlled doses. And also we'd like to heat our robot remotely, which is possible because of the magnetic particles we have. And then we can stop bleeding or we can kill cancer cells using remote heating function of the robot. And we will also miniaturize our robot to get smaller so that we can access the vascular system and other much smaller systems inside our bodies, so that basically we can reach almost anywhere inside of the body when it gets really tiny.

HM: If you were to use it to deliver drugs, how would you get the drugs in? Would it be impregnated or would it carry the drug with it?

MS: There are multiple ways, as you mentioned. One of the first ways is embedding the drug on the body of the robot because it's a polymeric rubber, which we can easily absorb drugs and then release it when we come to the right location by changing the shape. But more interesting ways where we can use a shape change more directly, is when we have a pocket on the robot, which we already showed in our study, we can put inside the pocket the drugs and then close it. And during the normal locomotion or motion navigation behaviour the pocket never opens, but when it comes the right place we make a specific shape change that opens thr pocket and relieves the drug at the right location.

HM: It sounds like it has extraordinary potential. How soon do you think it is that we might actually see it able to be used in humans?

MS: We have some definitely more development needed in animal models first, which we will do in the next two to three years. And we’d like to have the first human testing in four to five years, which we can do with the animal experimental developments. And then getting it into real clinics and into hospitals will take three to five years more because of all the approvals from the FDA and all the agencies. I can say that within ten years we could see this kind of technology in real clinical use for some of the applications that are easier.

HM: Well Mr. Sitti, it's a pretty incredible sounding and it's fun to watch the thing moving on the video as well. Thank you very much for talking to us about it.

MS: You're welcome, thank you very much.

HM:Okay, bye-bye.

MS: Bye-bye. Thank you.

JD: Metin Sitti is the director of physical intelligence at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. That is where we reached him. And if you'd like to see some video of the robot in action visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Plucks]

Camel Botox

JD: In the King James version of the Bible, Jesus says quote “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God” unquote. Now I can't address that with any real authority — but I can say this. It is apparently easier on the eye for a needle to go into a camel, when a rich man in a kingdom enters it into a beauty pageant. And now I will try to make sense of what I just said. In the kingdom of Saudi Arabia there is an annual camel beauty contest. It started in 1999 as a way to celebrate an animal of great importance to a Bedouin people. It has since expanded enormously — the contest that is. Every year more people go to see more camels try to win more money. In total this year the equivalent of 40 million Canadian bucks is up for grabs. Now there are specific rules to ensure no one cheats, but when it comes to getting a championship trophy and a huge jackpot there's many a slip twixt the lip and the cup. So far this year a dozen camels have been disqualified from competition, in some cases because of veterinarian artificially prettied up some of the competitors — with Botox. Apparently the judges want camels to have big lips, small ears and a big nose. So this vet had performed surgeries to make his patients naturally beautiful ears conform to some ridiculous human ideal of camel beauty. He also injected botox into their lips to plump those up. And now, because of their beautiful ears, those 12 innocent camels are out on them. And because some greedy humans paid lip service to the rules while paying for lip service that was against the rules. All of which really puts the drama in dromedary.

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Part 3: Beaufort Sea Methane, Encore: Abacus: Small Enough To Jail Documentary

Beaufort Sea Methane

Guest: Kathryn Sparrow

JD: Kathryn Sparrow has extracted a little bit of good news from our warming Arctic waters. Dr. Sparrow is an oceanographer who did her Ph.D. at the University of Rochester, and she has just published a paper that challenges the conventional wisdom about an ancient kind of methane gas. In colder times it was kept frozen inside the sediment beneath the Arctic Sea. Now that sediment is melting and the conventional thinking has been that the gas would rise up into the atmosphere to heat everything up a little more. But that isn't what Kathryn Sparrow found when she started pulling methane out of the Beaufort Sea. We reached Dr. Sparrow in Los Angeles.

HM: Ms. Sparrow how exactly does one go about pulling methane samples out of the Beaufort Sea?

KATHRYN SPARROW: Well, we've collected a pretty non-traditional type of methane samples. We pumped seawater aboard a small research vessel about, 30,000 litres of seawater, in order to extract all of the gas out of that water.

HM: Now you somehow used some big balloons?

KS: Yes, yes, we take all the gas out of the seawater and fill a 400-liter bag, that looks like a large balloon, with this gas and then we compressed it into a small cylinder to take back to our lab in Rochester.

HM: Where do you find a bag that large?

KS: It is custom made bag.

HM: Is it cumbersome to deal with the bag filled with that much water?

KS: That much gas, yes it is. They take up a lot of space, especially a small boat like the ones that we were on in Prudhoe Bay in the U.S. Beaufort Sea.

HM: But what's that like being out on the Beaufort Sea with a bag of gas?

KS: It's super cool. You know, we had some different conditions. There's a lot of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and we were out at a pretty great time of year so that we were able to navigate a very small boat in these coastal waters with lots of ice floating around. It's tough work but it's also really, really rewarding to be out there and every oceanographer really lives for the fieldwork — at least I do.

HM: Is it dangerous work?

KS: Somewhat, yeah, I mean we had some storms come up while we were sampling and we went to sample as long as possible because boat time is really valuable. And so in one case we were chased off by a storm and had to get all of our equipment out of the water as the storm came up and it was quite rough seas. There is some danger but in the hands of a great captain you're in safe hands.

HM: So when you got down to analyzing the samples, how much ancient methane did you find was actually making it to the surface?

KS: Yeah, so we analyzed the radiocarbon signatures so it your listeners may have heard of a radiocarbon dating. And so we radiocarbon dated the methane to see how much ancient methane was in each sample. And we found that there is ancient methane in the sea. That was the first time this has been done, but we found that that ancient methane largely does not survive to surface waters at the shallow depths of about 30 metres depth, so most of that methane was instead composed of modern methane.

HM: So is that what you expected?

KS: We expected to see that as we moved into deeper waters that there would be less ancient methane reaching the surface waters. That was our hypothesis, but we did not expect that the removal of methane that we can observe kind of indirectly, was so effective. We know that it can be very effective in deeper waters, hundred metre, thousands of metres, but seeing it happen, seeing those ancient sources not survive to surface waters and 30 metre deep water was what was the big, one of the big findings of this study.

HM: So what is happening to the methane that it isn't rising to the top?

KS: So as methane enters the seawater it is made available to microorganisms who can consume the methane. So it's a microbial removal of methane in seawater and as well, the methane can be swept away to other areas by currents where it can also be consumed.

HM: So what does all of this tell you, why is it important?

KS: The bigger implication of our work is there's a lot of methane in the sea floor of the world ocean. And in the Arctic we have these two sources, that are ancient, of methane hydrates and we also have Subsea permafrost and terrestrial permafrost that can come off of land and into the ocean. And as warming is occurring, with ongoing climate change, the stability of both of these sources decreases. So we were expecting to see more methane entering the system. But what this study shows is that even in very shallow water, depths of 30 metres, that very little of that methane can reach the surface waters and the atmosphere where methane contributes to climate change.

HM: So that does that mean that your research provides cause for optimism or caution?

KS: I'd say it is a cause for optimism, looking at the way that the natural environment is responding to ongoing climate change. But the story with climate changes and its ongoing nature is definitely not a good news story. That's definitely what we need to work on as civilisation.

HM: Ms. Sparrow, thanks for sharing your research.

KS: Thank you.

HM: Bye-bye.

KS: Bye.

JD: Kathryn Sparrow did her Ph.D. in oceanography at the University of Rochester. We reached her L.A..

[Music: Piano Ballad]

Encore: Abacus: Small Enough To Jail Documentary

Guest: Steve James, Vera Sung

JD: It didn't win Best Documentary, in fact, it wasn't even nominated. And the academy's failure to honor Steve James’ classic 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams has long been considered one of the biggest snubs in Oscar history. Now, two decades later, both the Academy and Mr. James have a chance said vindication — because this year the director finally did get a nomination for his latest film Abacus: Small Enough To Jail. The film follows the aftermath of the 2008 mortgage crisis. In 2012, 184 criminal charges were brought against Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a small family run bank New York City's Chinatown. It was the only financial institution that was criminally indicted after the crash. The documentary follows the Sung family and their surprising decision to fight the charges. In this clip we will hear Abacus founder Thomas Sung and his wife Hwei Lin watching the 1946 Christmas classic It's A Wonderful Life.

SOUNDCLIP

THOMAS SUNG: First time I saw it, It’s a Wonderful Life, I had tremendous respect for George Bailey, who is the main character. He did so much good for the community.

[Sound: It’s a Wonderful Life plays]

TS: George was lending money to the community to buy houses. And that's exactly the same purpose that when we started the bank, it was our motivation to help a lot of people, a lot of immigrants.

[Sound: It’s a Wonderful Life plays]

HWEI LIN SUNG: This movie touches me so much. The family, the friends. I always watch it every year. I watch… that makes me cry. [Sound: It’s a Wonderful Life plays]

TS: I wish this story could end the same way as It’s a Wonderful Life. But in reality it is not that simple.

JD: That was a clip from the documentary Abacus: Small Enough To Jail. Earlier this week it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. And last September Director Steve James and Vera Sung, one of the directors of Abacus Bank, joined Helen in our studio. Here's that conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

HM: Ms. Sung, we heard a clip of your parents at the beginning of the documentary, we see them watching It’s a Wonderful Life, a movie so many of us have seen over and over again. It has particular resonance for your folks though. Can you tell us what it is about the film, and what it is about your father that drove him to start the bank?

VERA SUNG: Well ever since I was growing up my father always told us that whatever we decide to do in our life and the future, for our career, we must always think about our community and helping the community. So that's one of my earliest memories of my father in terms of guidance for me in my adult life. When he started off as an attorney, he was actually an immigrant himself. He immigrated here and wanted to therefore help other immigrants gain legal status here in the United States. And he realized as he was helping immigrants get their status here, by their homes, it was very hard for them to be able to get loans. He himself encountered the same issue where he himself couldn't even get a loan either. He would deposit money, as well as the rest of the Chinese immigrants would deposit money in the banks. But when it came to borrowing money, they weren't able to do it, for one reason or another. Either the language issue, or a lack of credit. And so he really wanted to help others to be able to get mortgages to be able to buy their homes, which is one of the most important things for a Chinese immigrant.

HM: Obviously he recognized a need because it became a great success, didn't it?

VS: Yes it did. What we did was wherever there was a cry from the community to open, or a need to open a branch, that's where we were so Flushing has an Asian community and Queens, Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn, we were the first to open there. That also has a large Asian community there as well.

HM: So what was the particular incident that triggered this crisis, this investigation that embroiled the bank and your family?

VS: So I was handling a closing for the bank, and this one particular borrower asked their attorney during this closing “What are these checks these extra checks that the loan officer is asking for?” And that's Ken Yu, who is in the movie. And so the bar’s attorney came up to me and asked me what are these extra cheques. And I really didn't understand what this was for. I questioned Ken Yu. He wasn't giving me correct answers and seemed to be hedging and wanting to hide something. I called my sister who's the present CEO and she questioned him herself, didn't like his answers, and she stopped the closing.

HM: So you shut down that mortgage.

VS: Exactly.

HM: And then he lost his job shortly after.

VS: The bank fired him right afterwards.

HM: And then he reported it to regulations.

VS: Yes. And to the law enforcement as well.

HM: Right. Now as we know, we learned through the film too, that that is not the end of the story. Steve James, what was it about the Sung family and the Abacus bank that made you think this would be a good documentary.

STEVE JAMES: Well it's a great story, number one. But it's also I think, a really important story. We've seen a lot of films and books written about the 2008 mortgage crisis and all the frustration about the lack of justice around all that, with the big banks. And then here comes this story that virtually no one knows about unless you're fluent in the Chinese American press, hardly anyone hears about it. And it's and it's sort of like the mirror opposite. You know, you have a small bank with a fraction of the assets of those banks. You have a case where they discovered the fraud, and they reported. And not only did they report it, they actually initiated their own private investigation to root out further fraud, which they did. And they have one of the lowest default rates of any bank in the country. And so this is the bank that that gets brought to “justice” and put on trial.

HM: And as someone standing outside of the family, outside of the bank, why do you think that was? Why did they get indicted for mortgage fraud when none of these other big players did?

SJ: Well in the film, Cyrus Vance Jr. who's the D.A. of New York, he's in the film, he answers for himself on a lot of this. In his view, fraud is fraud, and they felt like they saw that there were some systematic fraud going on at the bank, that the bank was supporting and they needed to be brought to justice. Now I don't share that view is that it was that simple for them. I think that, in this case, this is in his backyard. This is a community bank in his backyard, his jurisdiction. And I think that he saw this as an opportunity to make a mark. And I think, part of what makes me think that, and not just me think that, is the way in which it was all handled. The indictment the day of the announcement of the indictment was quite a spectacle, with chaining together low level and ex-loan officers in a little a chain gang, and marching them down the corridor for the benefit of the press.

HM: That was a shocking image to see. And it was it was in the news in New York as well. What was it like for you, Vera, to see your employees chained together and being marched through the hallway before the media this way?

VS: Terribly upsetting. My sister Chanterelle actually was there. Jill and I and my father were back at the bank trying to handle matters, and Chanterelle reported to me that she had never seen such a spectacle before in her life as a prosecutor. She was actually working in the office, and she called and was in tears. She was literally in tears to see that.

HM: Steve James, what was the broader context for the indictments in terms of they’re making an example of this particular bank. But it's also affecting the culture of people around it. It's affecting a community. Can you give us a sense of how that reverberated?

SJ: Well I mean, it's what we observed, that this bank was really a central part of this community. They, for 30 years, they had been a big part of helping to build the community. And we certainly felt it very palpably whenever we walked around the community especially, with Mr. Sung, he was like the mayor of Chinatown and such. Like people would greet him and thank him. And during the course of the trial, there's a scene in the Barbershop, where he's getting his haircut, where the barber is just talking about how upset he is about what's going on, and what has been going on for literally for five years.

HM: Yeah there are some of the employees who were indicted actually decided to take plea. But your family seemed stoic from the start, that you were going to take this on, you were going to fight it. Was there ever any question that you would do that?

VS: You know it's so interesting that for the actual indictment the D.A. said that you must plead guilty to a felony and you must pay a fine. So at that point, how can you plead guilty when you know you're not guilty and there's no evidence per se to show that you're guilty. We all knew our direction, where we had to go. We had to go to trial. There was no way that we were going to take a guilty plea.

HM: Steve, when we look at, who the victims were supposed to be here, it's hard to find any isn't it?

SJ: It does seem hard to find. In fact, Fannie Mae is the victim of record for the trial, because the mortgages were sold to Fannie Mae, the mortgages that were accused of being fraudulent were sold to Fannie Mae so they are the alleged victim here. And it was a real struggle I think for the prosecution in the case to make that stick because I think Fannie Mae was quite reluctant to be even perceived as a victim because they had actually made hundreds of billions of dollars off these loans that had performed and they were also aware of the unique sort of circumstances of how the bank needed to operate in their community. And you know, in the closing argument, the defense lawyer makes note of a letter from Fannie Mae, saying that we look forward to working with you and your in your own unique ways in which you need to serve your community. So yeah I mean, who was the victim besides the Sung family?

HM: When you were making the film though, how confident were you of the outcome?

SJ: Not at all. This is a film in which we are clearly with the Sungs. We have cast our lot in with them because we believe them to be innocent. It doesn't prevent us though from articulating, I think throughout, the case against them. And we really went to great pains. So all that's in the movie but they were the ones that took the real risk in allowing us in, because not knowing what the outcome is, for them to take that risk with us and say they believed so much in their cause, and what they were doing that they were willing to have us film was quite a statement there.

HM: Vera, the juror who speaks in the film and talks about his feeling that you were innocent, alludes to the fact that some of the members of the jury wanted to make an example of you and your bank, not because of the actions of Abacus, but because of the entire mortgage crisis. And yet your bank never got involved in subprime mortgages. It sounds like you played it pretty straight and narrow role when it came to the kind of mortgage, the kind of business that you did.

VS: That's correct. We… our default rate has been consistent throughout before, during, after, indictment, trial. That has never changed. And as a matter of fact, when most banks were doing subprime loans, our loan volume went down, because we were not partaking in any of that. My sister Jill and my father were adamant that this was wrong and they would not invest in those loans either. So yeah, the whole point about being made an example was something that we were very much aware of when we are going into trial, that jurors potentially would have that feeling.

SJ: I was kind of amazed though that the judge, right before he sent the jury off to deliberate, he made a point to say to them, you are not to assess this case based on what didn't happen with the big banks, essentially, that that that you are only to look at the evidence of this case against this bank and make your judgment. And yet at least one juror just did it anyway, and was the the principal holdout eventually, that caused the deliberations to go on as long as they did.

HM: “Small Enough to Jail” Remind us why that title… why was that so resonant?

SJ: Well it comes from an interview in the film near the beginning from the journalist Matt Taibbi. He says it near the beginning of the film, “Too big to fail turns into small enough to jail.” Referencing obviously, the big banks that did not face any criminal prosecution as institutions, but yet Abacus does.

HM: I have to ask about Ken Yu, who was the bank official, the bank employee who was fired when you had those suspicions that something was going on. He ultimately was the main witness against you. Is that not true?

VS: Yes you would say that he was the star witness.

HM: And this was someone who had been caught taking bribes essentially, or rewards from some of the people who got mortgages.

VS: Correct.

HM: So what does that feel like? How do you deal with knowing that when you're going through all of this?

VS: It's actually shocking. You question why would the prosecution be putting this person as a witness against you, when this is somebody you discovered was doing something wrong and then you did the right thing by immediately firing him. And then you start self-assessment, and he is the one that they're using as one of their main witnesses to testify against you. It's really shocking actually.

HM: Did you ever have any self-doubt? Did any of your sisters, your father have any moments where you questioned whether you should have known what he was doing this?

VS: You know, it's a question that comes up all the time amongst ourselves. Wondering, was there anything in his attitude that could have clued us in. Any way that he spoke to us or whatever would clus us into what he was doing. The person we saw on the stand is not the person we saw who was working for us. The person who we had working for us was a charming individual, a very co-operative team player. No indication that he was doing this, you know, for that period of time. And then when this all happened, I remember that day in the closing, I was angry, I was upset, I was shocked. I still didn’t even know what actually he had done, you know what was he doing. But I knew he was doing something not correct.

HM: I want to go to the day the jury returned to the verdict, after all of these months. All the tension, all the things your family had been going through. What actually happened that day?

VS: June 2nd, when the jury…oh boy… I think everything is a blur of that day. I do remember that my father was not present. He was out taking a continuing education class. And he didn't, he had to make his way over, so that took time, and the judge didn't want to waste anybody else's time. So we actually had to hear all of it that day. The “not guilty, the not guilty, how say you? Not guilty, not guilty.” And the judge told us not to have any emotional reaction. And I told my mother, you can't make any sound or show any emotion. But she started, you know, sniffling as they were saying “not guilty.”

HM: And after the fact she was still afraid to speak because she was worried she would ruin things for you.

VS: I seem to remember, our court reporter was crying. Even her attorney cried. And then my dad came in, after the four ladies said “not guilty on 80 counts.” Then the clerk has to repeat it, and that's when he came in, to make sure that that is what, in fact, their verdict was. So I remember that.

HM: Can you just describe the emotions of the moment, the actual feeling that went through you when you started hearing those verdicts?

VS: I don't even know how to describe it. It's almost numbing when you hear this, because it's a verdict that you know is correct and you know you're not guilty for such a long time, but you have other people now who have heard the case, and now are agreeing with you. And it's such a relief. But at the same time there's still a lot of anger, residual anger, that this has happened, and why, and what we must do to prevent this from happening again. Not just us, but other people in the community, in this country’s criminal justice system you know really needs reform in that respect, because we're not the only one who is been wrongfully accused of a crime.

HM: The film premiered yesterday at TIFF. What did you make of the response? How did it go?

SJ: Oh it was OK. [Sound: laughter] It was fantastic. It was really great. I mean it was a really beautiful premiere. I think that theater seats 700 people. I think every seat was full. And you know the movie has a lot of humor in it. It's something that may not be clear from our conversation, but there's a there's a lot of humor in the movie. And it comes from bearing witness to this very entertaining passionate family throughout. And of course mom gets off a few zingers throughout the movie without question. So the audience was with the movie the whole way, and then at the end when we brought up the Sung family, you know there was a sustained standing ovation. You know I've been to a lot of film festivals over the year with films, and standing ovations often happen when subjects come up at the end of films. It's an audience's way of thanking them for what they've been through or what they've done. This one was different. It went on and on and on. It was not the sort of you know rote stand for a minute and then sit down and do the Q&A. They stood and clapped and clapped. We had to actually quiet them down so that we could get to the Q&A. So it was it was quite a beautiful thing. And especially to see their reaction to the Sungs as a family and what they had been through and come through.

HM: Vera, there's a moment near the end of the film while the verdict hasn't happened yet. Your mother is speaking through speaker phone from home, urging you to get your father fed dinner and send him home. She says through the phone to him “You're old.” He never looks old in the film. He looks much younger than his age. He seems so strong and so steady. But I am wondering about the effect you think this might have had, this whole experience, on him and on all of you emotionally and physically.

VS: Yes I think my father has always... I've watched him and admired him obviously. That's not, you know it's pretty obvious, but that I do hold my father in such high regard. But I asked him, quite the same question and you asked me. I wanted to know you know, did you have any concerns, and how come you were able to act very calm? And he told me that he knows inside, he knows the truth. And he knows that he's not done anything wrong. And when you have that faith, that's what carries you through something as stressful as this, as painful as this. Of course I think we were watching the film, and we're looking at ourselves, and it's also another interesting thing to look at yourself, you know in the past going through all of this. And people were commenting that oh you look better now. So I have a feeling this stress does wear on you physically in terms of how you look. You know all of that. And emotionally speaking, what doesn't like you just makes you stronger.

HM: What did you take from that crowd yesterday at TIFF? I get emotional when I think about it, Steve. I really do. It's hard for me to talk about it, but I just feel so grateful.

HM: I'm very grateful just to meet you both. It was a really wonderful film. I appreciated it very much. Thanks for coming.

VS: Thank you.

SJ: Thanks for having us.

JD: That was documentarian Steve James with Vera Sung, a member of the family that founded Abacus Federal Savings Bank. That conversation originally aired back in September of 2016. This week, Abacus: Small Enough To Jail was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar. The Ninetieth Academy Awards air March 4th.

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January 25, 2018 episode transcript

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