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The AIH Transcript for March 2, 2018

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening. I'm Chris Howden, sitting in for Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight.

CO: Bad tempered steel. According to our guests sources President Trumps abrupt announcement about new tariffs on steel and aluminum may have been because of a crucial last minute factor — his own bad mood.

CH: Anti-hatemail. Anti-immigration rhetoric has been a key factor in the Italian election campaign —and after one far right politicians rally a mother in Milan wrote an open letter blaming his words for racist abuse suffered by her children.

CO: Triumph through loss. The Oscar-nominated documentary Last Men in Aleppo shows how the Syrian regime besieged a city and starves its civilians to force their surrender. And it’s director says that's happening right now in Eastern Ghouta.

CH: All the rage In his new book, journalist Daemon Fairless explores the anger and bloodlust that can infect men, himself included — and tonight, the former As It Happens producer joins Carol for a feature interview.

CO: The incurable Hulk. He is the oldest male northern white rhino and Sudan is also, very probably, the last one. And now that he is sick scientists are facing the possibility that his subspecies will become extinct.

CH: And…Droppings a bombshell. A previously unknown colony of about 1.5 million Adelie penguins was discovered near Antarctica after satellite photos picked up a haunting image — the poop stains of about 1.5 million Adelie penguins. As It Happens: The Friday Edition. Radio that guesses, for scientists, this is a come from behind victory.

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Back To Top »

Part 1: Trump Tariffs, Italian Election Racism, White Rhino,

Trump Tariffs

Guest: Stephanie Ruhle

CH: Donald Trump appears to have caught Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by surprise — and possibly everyone else. The US president is standing by his announcement that he will impose big tariffs on steel and aluminum from abroad, and his trade czar has already justified tariffs as necessary to protect U.S. security. But Canada's prime minister wasn't ready to buy any of that when he appeared in Barrie, Ontario this afternoon.

SOUNDCLIP

PRIME MINISTER JUSTING TRUDEAU: The United States has a two billion dollar surplus on steel with us. So we regard the imposition of any new tariffs or any tariffs on steel or aluminum between the two countries is absolutely unacceptable.

CH: Prime Minister Trudeau in Barrie, Ontario today. As I said, the prime minister is not the only one taken aback by Donald Trump's tariffs and if the announcement seemed to come fast and furious there may be good reason for that. MSNBC is reporting that the president's temper was a major factor in yesterday's decision. Stephanie Ruhle is the host of MSNBC Live. We reached her in New York City.

CO: Stephanie, are we understand from your reporting that President Trump announced tariffs on steel imports because he was in a snit?

STEPHANIE RUHLE: Wednesday was a difficult day for the president. He was rather put off. He was unhappy with Jeff Sessions, he was unhappy about John Kelly downgrading his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s security clearance and then of course he was distressed that it was announced Hope Hicks, one of his closest aides, was leaving the White House. Remember he used to have a deeper line of defense because Rob Porter, who left the White House two weeks ago amid harassment allegations with two of his ex-wives, was the deputy secretary for the president, so he was a line of defense a lot couldn't get to him. But that evening commerce secretary Wilbur Ross made his way to the president and had a plan. The president was looking for a fight and Wilbur gave him one, he said this is our time. Let's go after China and tarrifs.

CO: What you’re saying is that he was in a very bad mood about all these things. How is it finally decided that steel and aluminum would be the subject of some kind of retaliation?

SR: Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, and Peter Navarro, this had been a motivation of theirs for quite some time. And so he presented to the president tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. we're going to have CEOs from steel companies come and see you at the White House and we're going to make this announcement. Now what was stunning was there was no approved remarks for the president to make. There was no diplomatic strategy of how the president and the White House would alert our foreign allies. There was no legislation process to inform Congress. All there had been was the White House counsel's office making a legal review of steel tariffs, because that's something the president and the commerce secretary had talked abou,t but none of this had been completed. And, in fact, the CEOs who secretary Ross said were coming to the White House to meet with the president, even General Kelly didn't know what those CEO's names were. They had received the list.

CO: So is this on a whim?

SR: I wouldn't say it was on a whim because this is something the president has always cared about. But it came out of left field that the White House, the Treasury Department, the Defense Department, the State Department had absolutely no idea this was coming yesterday and they didn't have any opportunity to weigh in.

CO: So who actually was part of the decision, what players? Because, as you know, this is Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary and he has been saying that he wanted something like this, he'd actually thrown around numbers of percentages of tariffs at some point, right?

SR: Yes. Wilbur Ross and his number two Peter Navarro had wanted to do this for quite some time. But Gary Cohn, the national economic adviser of the president, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Rex Tillerson had all said no this is not a good idea, and Gary Cohn been warning President that the market would have a very negative reaction, which they did. So yesterday afternoon around 4:00 p.m. when some of those gentlemen made their way to see the president in the Oval Office, he was surprised and unhappy to see the market reaction to which John Kelly said Mr. President Gary Cohn has been warning you about this for months if you decided to do something like this and this is what's caused a lot of unrest in the White House right now.

CO: Why do you think that Mr. Trump was surprised to find out that it would have this effect on the stock market?

SR: Well that's what makes really very little sense. This is the president sort of playing to his base saying we're going to go after this, we've lost steel jobs, but it doesn't solve anything. And the market reacted so negatively under this fear that the president is going to start trade wars. I mean, today when the president said trade wars are a good thing, he simply doesn't understand because they're not.

CO: Where are the people who could advise him and tell him otherwise?

SR: They're all there and he's not listening to them. Cohn has told him this for months. And that’s why it’s been reported today that Gary Cohn could threaten to resign over this. Stephen Mnuchin told him this, Rex Tillerson has told them this, CEOs have told him this.

CO: And did Wilbur Ross tell him this?

SR: No, Wilbur Ross believes it's a good idea. Wilbur Ross thinks there won't be a trade war. Wilbur Ross thinks it’s no biggie, but Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro were on the campaign trail with President Trump when he was regularly saying China was a currency manipulator when they're not.

CO: You also talked to some people in the White House who say that the communications teams were prepared, they did know about this announcement, and that this is not true that they were caught unprepared and that everyone.

SR: I didn’t say that the communications team was unprepared. I said the Defence Department didn't know, the State Department and the Treasury Department. The communications department is always at the ready because President Trump is always surprising them. You never know what he's going to come at them with in a tweet. It is not a surprise that these are President Trumps world views, he's often expressed them. The surprise is that he would take this aggressive stance on a random Thursday in March.

CO: The things that were setting him on Wednesday, to what degree are they tied to — going back to that — what degree were they tied to his decision and what degree was he actually responding to all kinds of things that are clearly going wrong in the White House right now?

SR: I didn't speak to the president personally, but I've spoken to people in the White House who just said he's in a very bad state. They referred to him as unhinged, but they've said this has been building over the last few weeks as the pressure and the indictments around the Mueller investigation and the fact that the Mueller investigation continues on and even heats up, it's become a more uncomfortable place in the White House. Now, can I say directly, Hope Hicks quits and he decides to go with tariffs? No. But this is the point where it's a tough time to reason with the president.

CO: And we are in a situation, as you know in Canada, where we just heard our prime minister today that this is absolutely unacceptable. This is our — economies are integrated. our defense departments are in lockstep. all of these things. Stock markets are affected. people's jobs are up in the air on both sides of the border. All this dust is stirred up. will the dust settle? Will we find — will we wake up another day and a different view will be there and all this will be just a bad dream?

SR: Well it could. Because remember President Trump says a lot of things but then you don't see a lot of them enacted into policy. The markets usually ignore President Trump's rhetoric and they respond to his policies. And the market likes his policies because they like deregulation and they like tax cuts. What's different now is this is the first possible policy change that the market has responded so negatively to. And when you saw certain countries or currencies really get hit this morning, it was places like Japan and Germany, countries that are heavily reliant on exports and there's a real heightened concern that the president could cause a trade war.

CO: Is there any chance that any of this intelligence will end up in the White House and be enough to persuade Mr. Trump to change his mind?

SR: Well, that's definitely what some people working in the White House would hope, so we'll see.

CO: All right Stephanie, we will see you and I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

SR: I appreciate the invitation.

[Music: Lo-Fi Ambient Tones]

Italian Election Racism

Guest: Gabriella Nobile

CH: Now the Italian general election is only two days away and some are predicting a win for the right wing coalition, fronted by a politician who's popped back up more times than a horror movie villain — Silvio Berlusconi. But more disturbing than that, is how far right politicians have turned immigration into a central issue of the campaign. The language they've used has been alarmist and alarming. Last week Matteo Salvini, one of the leaders of the anti-immigration Lega party, held a rally in Milan. And afterwards one local mother wrote him an open letter on Facebook accusing him of stoking a climate of xenophobia, which she says has led to her eldest child becoming the victim of racist abuse. Gabriella Nobile is the mother of two children adopted from Africa. We reached her in Milan.

CO: Ms. Nobile, I'm sorry to hear about your children's experience. Can you just tell us this letter that you wrote on Facebook to Matteo Salvini, what did it say?

GABRIELLA NOBILE: I said to him that I wanted to thank him because he gave to my children a really paniced period. You know, a period of terror because for the first time they have racist attacks from adults that say to him if Matteo Salvini will wins you will go back to Africa. So I wrote this letter to him to say thanks to you my children, they are leaving in a bad period.

CO: When you say thank him you're being ironic. This is not something you're very grateful about.

GN: Yes, of course it was ironic thanks to him because I mean, he's the leader of a very important party in Italy and he has to protect my children against this kind of attack. I mean, it was not a political attack, you know, but, I mean, I really didn’t want to make a political war against him and against his party. I just want to put the attention on the tone, on the aggressive tone that they use during the electoral campaign.

CO: And you have two children. It's a 12-year-old who has had things said to him. What kinds of things are they saying to your child?

GN: He used to take a bus to football training and then when he was on the bus, it happened in the last three months it’s happened three or four times. He used to go with a bag with all his stuff inside, and maybe he pushed someone with this bag, and this person started to scream at him and say “You’re black, you nigger. You are here steal our jobs, but if Matteo Salvini will win you will go back to Africa.” and my son was really shocked. And another time an old woman said to him “You can’t sit on the bus because you are Black, so stand.” My son really was shocked because it was the first time that he had such attacks from adults. Adults have to protect children.

CO: Tell us why you're sure that these racist attacks on your child are directly attached to this campaign of Matteo Salvini?

GN: Because one of the persons said to him if Matteo Salvini will win you will go back home. I think that that part of politics really push all the people to hate Black people for immigration. They put all this attention on the immigration, that I know that is a big problem and I know that we need the solution, but all the Italian problems didn't come from immigration. I mean, we have problems because we have problems — immigration is one of the problems. But that part of politics push people to hate Black people, people who come from abroad. So in this month I think that they used really hard the words. And I had the confirmation because when I made this post and I started to have the thousands of likes and thousands of letters of people that thanked me and they say it happened the same to me, it happened the same to my children. And there was really a lot of people, a lot to people. This period is really difficult.

CO: And despite all of that support and all of the popularity of your post on Facebook, Facebook took it down because you were talking about — you were quoting people who use the N-word in relation to your children and so because you quoted the racists they said you were racist and they took the post down.

GN: I just wrote ‘N’ with a point and I post again my letter. So I start to have again thousands and thousands and thousands likes and shares. And after two days they blocked my account completely. My husband wrote on Facebook what was happening and, of course, the people tried to send I think a letter to Facebook. But after two days they wrote me an e-mail saying, “I'm sorry it was a mistake because someone pushed a button that that they shouldn’t have pushed. And we made that mistake. We are sorry.”

CO: Did your children encounter this kind of racism before Mr. Salvini started his anti-immigrant campaign?

GN: Not with adults, never. With children? Yes. But from the adults, never.

CO: Now I understand that since all of this Matteo Salvini has issued his own response on Facebook and he has asked to take you for coffee and let your children play together. What have you — what do you make of that?

GN: Well, I didn't want to be how do you say?

CO: You don't want to be used by him?

GN: Yes. I don’t want to be used by him to make pictures with me and say “You see I'm not racist. I'm out with these children.” So I really didn’t want to let him use this story for the electoral campaign. So I will answer him after the election. It's really important for me to say that it's not a political war against him. It's ethical and social war. Of course he will never invite me after the election but I will answer him and I will say ‘OK now that the election is done if you want to we can go out with our children and talk about this.’

CO: The election’s on Sunday, will you'll be voting?

GN: Yes, of course. Of course.

CO: Ms. Nobile, I appreciate speaking with you thank you for telling us this story.

GN: Thank you very much.

CO: Bye-bye.

CH: That was Gabriella Nobile she spoke to us from Milan, Italy and there's more on this story on the As It Happens website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Bass]

White Rhino

Guest: Elodie Sampere

CH: At 45, Sudan is the world's oldest male northern white rhino. He is also believed to be the last male northern white rhino — and he's sick. Sudan lives at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Nanyuki, Kenya. Elodie Sampere is with the Conservancy. We reached her in Nanyuki, in the middle of the first rains of the season.

CO: Ms. Sampere, how is Sudan doing?

ELODIE SAMPERE: Yes, Sudan's not doing well, I'm afraid. He's not moving much, today he did get up twice to feed and to drink some water. He spends most of the day laying down. I don't think we have a lot more time left with him, unfortunately.

CO: What's wrong with him?

ES: He's just old, he's 45, which in human years will probably be between 90 and a hundred years old. He's got really bad arthritis and then because he's spending so much time laying on the ground he’s suffering from what we would call bedsores, but basically just skin sores that he has almost everywhere now. And so I think he's in a great deal of pain.

CO: And we understand correctly, he is the last northern white rhino male that exists?

ES: That's correct, yeah. He's the last. There are two females left, we call them the girls — Najin and Fatu — and they're actually his daughter and his granddaughter.

CO: And he is one of four who came to your conservancy in 2009. What were your hopes at that time, did you think it was possible to save the species?

ES: 100 per cent. The animals were still of breeding age, so our hope was that moving them from the zoo environment to a semi-wild environment would stimulate natural breeding behavior, which it did. They had an instance of mating so, you know, they started mounting each other, the male would mount the female. There was some successful mating but it never resulted in a pregnancy, unfortunately. And then in 2013 Suni, the other male, died very unexpectedly, and he was much younger than Sudan. So that was a big shock. So when Suni died we realized we were really on the last leg of this project and we examined the girls and did some medical examination and realized that they could not mate naturally.

CO: I mean, was there any possibility of getting any sperm from either of the males before they died that might help you with an in vitro process.

ES: So we actually have Sudan’s sperm, we stored it a long time ago. The zoo in the Czech Republic, Dvůr Králové, actually has quite a bit of sperm from other males that they had there. The issue now, and which a lot of people don't understand, is the fact that the two females left in Kenya on Ol Pejeta are the last repository of eggs on the planet.

CO: Are they young enough to carry?

ES: So Fatu is only 18, which is very young and her mother Najin is 28, which is still very young. Unfortunately neither of them can carry a pregnancy. But our goal is to develop an embryo and put it into a southern white rhino female as a surrogate.

CO: The southern white rhino, as I understand, is relatively healthy even though it came close to extinction as well and there's now some thousands of them that through careful conservancy are still around. And so is there any chance you could ever see the northern white rhino return to those kinds of numbers?

ES: What we're doing is we're working really hard at making sure that that's the case. In order to be successful though, you know, one calf is not going to be enough. We need at least ten calves to make that a successful program. I think there's a long road ahead. It's not going to be easy, it's going to cost a lot of money. But, you know ,we certainly are not giving up that is our ultimate goal.

CO: But you think you might have to give up on Sudan?

ES: Sudan is not going to — sorry yeah — Sudan is gone. I mean, we know that, you know ,it's a matter of days now and, you know, he’s played his part and we all knew this day was coming. What we hope for him now is that he goes peacefully and that he goes without pain. That's the only thing we can hope for Sudan at this point.

CO: I don't know if there our listeners can hear but with my earphones I can hear crickets and I’m trying picture where you are in this conservancy at all Ol Pejeta and what’s it going to be like when you don't have Sudan with you?

ES: I mean, I've spent the last ten years with him, you know, I was here when he arrived. It's going to be an empty place. And, you know, what I feel most is for his keepers, the people who have been with him and who now sleep with him and who care for him and freedom and everybody is devastated right now. You know, we're just all kind of walking around wondering what we can do to make him comfortable. And it's a big loss, you know. But most importantly what I want to say is, you know, is what this represents for planet Earth and what this represents for us, is if we can let this species go extinct as much publicity and as much awareness that we've raised around these rhinos. What does that mean for the little guys, you know for the insects and the frogs and the bees? You know, we all need to wake up and realize what we're doing to this planet because of greed because of demand for rhino horn. You know, if Sudan can send the message out that we now need to wake up and stop this madness then I think he's played a really important role.

CO: Ms. Sampere, thank you very much for telling us about Sudan and about his legacy.

ES: Thank you so much for talking to me, I really appreciate it.

CO: Bye-bye.

ES: Bye-bye.

CH: We reached Elodie Sampere Nanyuki, Kenya.

[Music: Guitar Strums]

Dateline Southern California

CH: Dateline Southern California.

[Music: Dateline Theme]

CH: One local conservationist says it's Jurassic Park just a two-hour drive east of downtown Los Angeles. Now that is chillingly accurate except that the monsters in Jurassic Park sound like this.

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DINOSAUR ROAR

CH: And the monsters in Sand to Snow National Monument sound like this.

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COW MOOING

CH: According to experts, an occupying army of at least 150 feral cattle are rampaging around the lands of the monument — and they are, pardon my language, ornery varmints. This month the US Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are planning to send a team in to try to figure out some way of getting these monsters under control because their hooves are gouging unplanned trails all over the place, they're damaging grass that prevents soil erosion, they're threatening the health of native bighorn sheep and they've charged at people — including one volunteer tour guide who had to save himself by smacking a furious bull in the head with a fence post. And if that all sounds like a load of B.S. — it is, there's load after load and it's everywhere. Now obviously it's a mess and no one is siding with the cattle everyone and everything in the park wants them gone. But they're tough and they're cranky. So even if some get corralled, it's safe to say we haven't herded the last of them.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Penguin Colony, Last Men in Aleppo,

Penguin Colony

Guest: Michael Polito

CH: Number one: they needed some kind of clear sign. Number two: a lot of number two. Scientists have discovered a mega colony of more than 1.5 million Adelie penguins on the Danger Islands on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula, and they were tipped off by satellite images of the remote region — images that showed an enormous amount of penguin guano. And, as the old saying goes, where there's guano there's penguins. Michael Polito is a Penguinologist. We reached him in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

CO: Professor Polito, how significant is this discovery of these penguins?

PREFESSOR MICHAEL POLITO: Well, I think it's exciting for two reasons. One, it's kind of amazing that there's been this really large number of penguins breeding on these small islands in a remote part of Antarctica that's slipped under the radar for so long. In addition it's exciting because it's a very significant number from a global population standpoint it's probably about 20 per cent of the Adelie penguins found all around Antarctica are on the Danger Islands.

CO: And you didn't know before that these penguins were there?

MP: Well, you know, we had some clues. I had the chance to visit one of these islands for just a very short period of time in 2006, but I only had a couple hours on the island and it was late in the breeding season so there wasn't many adults on land but there was lots and lots of guano, which is the term for penguin poop. And so you could tell that there had to be a lot of penguins on the island and then so working with some colleagues analyzed them satellite imagery we could see by 2014 that the satellite imagery showed a lot of penguins there and we couldn't count the number of penguins from the satellite imagery but we could estimate how much of the island was covered by penguins, by looking at their guano, by looking at the colour of that poop covering the island. And so yeah it's been really exciting to not only be able to get there but then to get there with a long enough time to actually estimate the number of penguins breeding on these islands.

CO: And your estimate is 1.5 million Adelie penguins?

MP: Yes, so as penguin scientists we count the number of nests because the nets don't move around and we know that for every nest there's two adults. So we counted about 750,000 nests and so we can multiply that by two to get an estimate of the total number of breeding individuals, to get about a million and a half, which is pretty amazing.

CO: How come people didn't know there were so many penguins over Danger Islands?

MP: Well, they're really hard to get to and they're in a part of the Antarctic Peninsula that's on the eastern side which is very, very icy because it's right up against the Weddell Sea, which is this swirling ocean of sea ice. And so it is hard for ships to get there. So we had some anecdotal accounts, both from our own eyes and others, and it really took about ten years after my first visit in 2006 for me to work with some colleagues to put together this expedition so we could get there and have the tools and time to count the penguins. And that really required us using techniques such as small AUVs or drones to take aerial images of the Penguins and then we could stitch those images together and count the number of nests from those images.

CO: Elsewhere on Antarctica, how are the penguin populations faring there?

MP: Well, I think one of the really exciting things about this discovery is that validates our previous understanding, or at least our previous idea about how Adelie the penguins are affected by climate change. And so on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula where there's a lot more research done on these birds, we found that areas where there's been increases in temperature and decreases in sea ice we've seen very significant declines in populations of Adelie penguins. And so it's very exciting for us that now we know that on the eastern side that we see very large Adelie penguin populations and the information we have from old satellite images, we're able to actually see that it doesn't look like the populations have changed very much. That means that there's probably been about a million and a half individuals on these islands for at least the last 50 years or so and so it makes us more confident about our understanding of how Adelie penguins are affected by climate change.

CO: And why is it that this part of Antarctica is not affected as much by climate change?

MP: Well, the eastern side just happens to be right next to the Weddell Sea, which is an area of lots and lots of ice and just that proximity to this large sea of ice on the eastern side, because of the way the currents sort of concentrate ice on that eastern side, it seems like it's buffered Adelie penguins from the sort of negative effects that they've seen in other places where sea ice has declined.

CO: You have had really bad news about penguins, haven't you? I mean, on Petrels Island a colony of 40,000 was reduced just to two chicks.

MP: Oh yes. So I think that the thing that's really important to know about penguins is that when we look around Antarctica we have a lot of evidence that Adelie penguins and other penguins have had to deal with changes in climate in the past. Both in information we have over the last 50 years but also looking into the paleontological record as well. The challenge I think for penguins right now is that the rate of climate change is a lot faster than the rate of environmental change that these species have had to deal with in the past. So the question is can they adapt or can they keep up with the pace of climate change that's occurring now in the same way that they were able to adapt to maybe natural variation in climate in the past? And that's still a real big unknown. We do see, as I said before, the places where the warming is most intense and has warmed up quite rapidly we see strong declines in the species.

CO: What can you possibly do to protect the breeding grounds of this part where you have found all these penguins?

MP: There's not one solution when it comes to the conservation of penguins and other wildlife. It's important to look at things like marine protected areas and management and spatial management of commercial fisheries for things like Krill, which the small shrimp-like crustacean that penguins consume. And so things like marine protected areas I think are really good first step to conservation for these species.

CO: Are you going to get another chance to visit?

MP: I really hope so. Actually, just a month ago, I actually was able to get back to the Danger Islands onboard a commercial tour ship that happened to be able to access them and I think the exciting thing about that was we had left out some time lapse cameras and so we're really excited to look and see about all the pictures that were taken of these penguin colonies over the last two years. And so I hope to get back there and keep studying these penguins in this location because I think it's a really important part of the story of how they're being affected and how they're possibly adapting to changes in climate.

CO: Professor Polito, thank you very much.

MP: Thank you, I really appreciate it.

CH: That was Michael Polito, assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University and guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. We reached him in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And we’ve posted more on this story including photos on the As It Happens website.

[Music: 90’s Pop]

Championship belt returned

CH: It was a family treasure lost for more than 80 years. In 1936 Norman J. Downey became the Newfoundland Boxing Association champion — and with that title, came a title belt. It was made of black leather and in Downey family lore it had gold plates connected by a gold chain. On the front a gold frame holding a carving of two boxers in ivory. Before the start of the Second World War the belt was put in a vault for safekeeping never to be seen by a Downey again — until now. Last night the CBC Newfoundland TV program Here & Now did a story on the family's search for the belt. And later last night Norman J. Downey's grandson, Norm, got a phone call from Pauline Thomas. Norm told the CBC's Anthony Germain what happened next.

SOUNDCLIP

NORM DOWNEY: I started off my birthday yesterday, my 50^th, and I never expected 50 to be — my wife spoiled me during the day. We went out for supper and I got a text from this fine young lady saying Please call me.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: All right. So you got him to call you, what was the phone conversation like?

PAULINE THOMAS: I said I have something that belongs to you. And then I said I’m holding in my hands your grandfather's boxing belt, and he started to cry.

AG: That's quite a fiftieth birthday for you.

ND: Oh, I can't wait for the 75th.

[LAUGHTER]

AG: What did you tell Pauline?

ND: When I called originally I was expecting it was a customer and I said ‘You call me?’ She said yes and what she just said. I said ‘Do you realize it's my birthday? And she says no. She said ‘Well I've got a good birthday gift for you.’ And I said ‘Where are you?’ And she said ‘I'm in St. John's’ I said ‘So am I.’ I basically ran down to the east end to pick up this treasure.

AG: How do you feel when you saw it?

ND: I kissed it and I screeched and bawled. They call me a Downey for a reason because we're so soft hearted and I just couldn't believe it. Like I told her this morning when I was talking on phone she said ‘How are you feeling? I said ‘I'm on cloud nine, now throw the ladder away I'm not coming down. It was amazing. Thank you, thank you very much.

CH: Norm Downey and Pauline Thomas speaking with the CBC's Anthony Germain. Mr Downey has been looking for his grandfather's 1936 Newfoundland boxing championship belt for decades. He was reunited with it last night. It was just as he imagined it, except instead of gold and ivory the black leather belts adornments were made with brass and porcelain.

Owen Wilson Says WOW

CH: A week ago today, we told you about a group of Ozzie's who were planning an event called ‘Say Wow like Owen Wilson.’ No doubt you've been following this important story as closely as we have. But for those who might have missed it, a while ago a YouTube channel called Owenergy Studios put up a video called Owen Wilson Says WOW, to celebrate the actor's unique pronunciation of the word.

SOUNDCLIP

OWEN WILSON: Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

CH: Five million views later and that video spawned the idea for the Big Wow-in. The Facebook invitation for the event proclaimed quote. “Let's marvel at the beauty and wonder of this incredible planet we live on. And let's ‘wow’ like Owen Wilson” unquote. And sure enough this week hundreds gathered in Melbourne to let the Wows fly in unison. Here's how that brilliant moment sounded. It's our sound of the day.

SOUNDCLIP

CROWN SAYING ‘WOW’ IN UNISON

CH: The sound of hundreds of people doing their best impression of actor Owen Wilson saying wow in Melbourne, Australia last weekend. The inaugural ‘Say Wow like Owen Wilson’ event has already sparked plans for more wow-ins in Canada and around the world.

[Music: Trance Bass]

Last Men in Aleppo

Guest: Feras Fayyad

CH: Watching the documentary Last Men in Aleppo is to watch the same cycle of horror in Syria repeat itself. Day after day rescue workers from the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, listen for the sound of Russian warplanes that get closer and closer. They hear and feel the sound of a barrel bomb drop. They jump into a panel van, rush to the scene and, if they're lucky, rescue residents from under the rubble — often they're too late. Last Men in Aleppo is up for an Oscar this Sunday. It's a sobering profile of White Helmet rescuers during the 2015, 2016 siege of Aleppo. But given this week’s latest bombardment of another Syrian enclave, Eastern Ghouta, it feels more relevant than ever. Feras Fayyad is the Syrian filmmaker who made Last Men in Aleppo. We reached him in Los Angeles.

CO: Feras, we'll be watching to see if your documentary wins at the Oscars on Sunday, but all the Oscar publicity around your film, is it shining a spotlight on the war in Syria, is that what you're hoping?

FERAS FAYYAD: Yeah that's what I wish, I mean, all the media that came in to talk because information is coming in the time that the Russians bombed over East Ghouta and the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib.

CO: We have been covering the siege of East Ghouta and it does seem to be an absolute rerun of the story you covered in the fall of Aleppo. Are you seeing the same pattern in the way that Assad and the Russians are approaching East Ghouda? Are you seeing the same thing that you saw in Aleppo?

FF: Generally yes the same scenario in the same way. They are bombing in the same way that using the plan of trying to destroy the society, trying to put pressure on the people to leave. They learned more from their mistakes in Aleppo. Now and they focused the bombs over the hospitals, the media offices and their civil defense centres.

CO: When you say that they've learned from their mistakes, it does seem that that they have perfected this technique of siege, starve and surrender, as someone else has called it. Hospitals bombed, supplies cut off, people surrounded in this siege unable to get out. And they're slowly closing in on them that is what happened in Aleppo. That's exactly what's happening in Eastern Ghouta, isn't it?

FF: Exactly. I mean, from what I saw like every day from my connection with my characters and my cinematographer, the people feel this is their ground, this is their home. They will not leave it whatever happens. And I'm talking with female doctors who were leading the hospital. They are very impactful on their society and inspirational for all of the society when they saw that it’s females staying, so they feel safe about their children, they feel safe about their families. And that's the contrast between how much there is a pressure and an attack for the society and how much the people try to resist it.

CO: The women doctors you're talking about are the focus of the film you're working on right now. The film that’s nominated for the Oscar is about the White Helmets and those are the heroic men who were rescuing people in Aleppo. The Assad regime has tried to discredit them and sometimes that's worked. Many in the West have believed that maybe they aren't the good guys there. There is propaganda, there's information war, isn't there?

FF: Yes, for sure. I mean, because this is film it shows the war crimes and evidence, it shows their lies about bombing Aleppo that when they provide their official story about bombing terrorist places. And we saw where they bombed over cities and places that they killed the citizens. They accuse the White Helmets and the volunteers army as a terrorism. Those people are coming from the city, they grew up in their city. And the White Helemts — some of them are teachers, some of them students, some of them barbers, some of them construction workers and some of them are firefighters. That’s who they are, they’re Syrian. They grew up in these neighbourhoods, they try to help their neighbours, their friends, their families. The Russian propaganda is using social media as they used it with the American election to impact the general opinion through social media to make the people confused and start to build the wall between them and between the film and attack me as a filmmaker. If they destroy the trust between me and the people who come out and watch the film then they can make the people not trust in the film.

CO: What's really the most painful part of the images you captured are the children. And all the — whatever propaganda war is going on, those pictures of those kids, the chemical weapons attacks, the barrel bombs, the fear on their faces is just so awful. Why do you think it is that we could see all those images, we could we could see what's happening to the kids with your documentary, and yet there doesn't seem to be any political will in the world to end this war?

FF: Unfortunately, from my experience with screening this movie in front of many superpower decision makers, they know that the Russian are doing this crime and they know this is war should be stopped, but they don't have the courage, actually, they’re scared of Russia, unfortunately. And they don't also want to get themselves involved in any conflict with Russia.

CO: You will be on the red carpet on Sunday in Los Angeles awaiting the news about your film and whether it wins. At the same time we're probably seeing the end of the siege of East Ghouta, the collapse of the last parts of Syria, of this war. You must have very mixed emotions right now.

FF: I'll try to be optimistic with using film as I can through one of the powerful platforms to say our message and send our messages for Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, hopefully they can listen and I'm sure they will listen but they will not care.

CO: I appreciate speaking with you Feras. Good luck.

FF: Thank you so much. I appreciate you giving me this space to tell our story.

CH: Feras Fayyad is the Syrian filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated documentary Last Men in Aleppo. We reached him in Los Angeles.

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Part 3: Feature: Mad Blood Stirring

Feature: Mad Blood Stirring

Guest Daemon Fairless

CH: It can happen anywhere, and often with little warning. A man looks at another man the wrong way in a bar or two men bump into each other on the sidewalk or they find themselves supporting opposing sides during a soccer match — and suddenly things get violent. Daemon Fairless has been in fights. Usually he sees himself as the good guy standing up to protect others. But he also knows that, like many men, when confronted he feels compelled to react with violence. But unlike many men he wanted to understand this primal compulsion. So he set out to find some answers. Along the way, Mr. Fairless studied the science behind male violence and talked to violent man of all sorts, from martial artists to a serial killer. The final product is his new book. It's called Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men. Mr. Fairless is a journalist and former producer here As It Happens. David Fairless joined us in our Toronto studio. And a warning to listeners some of the content of this interview is disturbing.

CO: Daemon Fairless, welcome back to As It Happens.

DAEMON FAIRLESS: Thanks. It's great to be here.

CO: This is a remarkable book. It's just, it's, first of all, frightening, that's the bottom line. But it is laugh-out-loud funny, which is hard to understand given the subject matter — and revealing about many things, including you. I spoke with you before you set off to write this book. And I got the impression that more than going off to write a book, you were out on a journey. You were going someplace you. You had some kind of destination in mind. What was your quest, what were you looking for?

DF: Well, I was interested in a couple of things. One was I'm, you know, 99.9 per cent the time really, I think, even-keeled, gentle, friendly gregarious person. And then that tiny little percentage of the time I would find my anger overwhelming and I'd get in these really stupid fights with other guys, it was always other guys, they were always kind of bullies or, you know, aggressive guys doing something mean to people usually. And I’d end up, you know, confronting them and getting in fights, physical fights. And it was so kind of out of character compared to the rest my life that I started wondering, you know, why is this happening. I was not raised, I was raised by, you know, people who were really anti-violence, anti-macho.

CO: Very granola, Birkenstock…

DF: Very granola, my dad's gonna kill me for saying that, but yeah, yeah, fairly granola. And so I guess I was trying to understand what was going on inside of me because here I was at the time my 30s, late 30s, doing things that, you know, guys doing in their late teens. And then, you know, I was interested in trying to figure out to what extent those emotions that I found so overwhelming were common among men. So not just, you know, the fight, the kind of stupid alpha male bar fight, street-fight, road-rage kind of things. But guys do a lot of really bad things. They're responsible for all, not all, but most of the really bad things out there.

CO: But you describe some — in first chapter you describe moments of violence, of violent behaviour in yourself. It was always kind of self-righteous context, you were the white knight, you were coming to someone's rescue, you were doing the right thing. The police would take your side despite the fact that, as you reveal in the book, you knew your motives were that you got a thrill out of these encounters.

DF: Yeah, well, I mean, 100 per cent. I don't think I really recognized to what extent I was doing that until partway through the book. I mean, I think that the thing, one of the really interesting things about my kind of anger, and I think the anger that drives guys to get in fights — and not just anger but violence in general, is that there's this huge ability for guys to justify the violence they’re doing. And for me I found that the emotion like the anger and the self-righteousness and I totally thought it was in the right. I mean, there's a scene there where I head-butt a guy in the subway, that felt like the only reasonable thing to do in that moment. I think I can go back and look at every single fight I've gone into — I haven't been in tons — but, you know, a dozen or so. I can go back and absolutely objectively say there was no need to interfere violently in any of those cases, there are nonviolent solutions to most of those. Most of the time I could have just stayed out and things would have been fine. But I was escalating already volatile situations. I can say that objectively now, but in the moment subjectively, I wasn't aware that that's what I was doing. So there is this crazy motivation in me, not crazy, it's fairly normal thing and in the sense that this is a normal, or common behaviour among guys, among a lot of people — to get involved because I was both self-righteously angry and I think, kind of secretly looking for a kick.

CO: But this quest to understand what that was in yourself, what impulse was there, why it was there, led you to meet extraordinarily nasty people, not nasty, but violent. And you — the subtitle of the book Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men. You went to prisons to talk to men who had done very violent things. And one of them, I want to go to some of these scary places, for me scary, as a woman they really made me nervous for you to go into the interior lives of these men and one of them was Darryl. Can you tell us about him?

DF: So Darryl, which isn't his real name, is a convicted serial rapist, a dangerous offender who now resides at the SHU. So that's the highest max prison in Canada. There's one of them just outside Montreal. Darryl started sexually assaulting women, girls and women, when he was in his, you know, early to mid-teens. He committed his first rape, I think at age 16, he lost his own virginity raping — which is, I had trouble getting my head around. And then weirdly he’d do things after he did this, he’d apologize. He was like the most Jekyll and Hyde person in some ways.

CO: And that's the fact that actually got him caught ultimately, because the women they could connect all these rapes because this is the rapist who apologizes.

DF: Yeah, yeah. So he was, I think he was arrested once after assaulting a woman in the building that he lived with, and he was let off because he was so polite, so disarming, so sweet — if I can use that word — that the cops just didn't think he was the kind of guy to worry about, because that's how he presented to the world. And I think weirdly, that's how he presented himself.

CO: And this is something that went through all the men with whom you speak, that they have — and you mentioned it earlier about yourself, the self-justification. There's an explanation why this happened, you didn't think you're going to be doing this, and then you are doing it and then there's rationalizing of it afterwards. With Darryl, I don't get the impression you’re trying to get us to like him. What is it you want us to understand about Darryl?

DF: Well, I mean, Darryl is, I hate to use a word, but he's interesting in his own right because he's such a severe kind of aberrant case of sexual assault. So his story and understanding what makes someone kind of go to that extreme I think is important. But one of the things that I started to realize as I was doing the research and talking to him and this was before the Me Too movement but there are always stories of men committing sexual assault and rape, right. One of the things that really struck me as hugely important and I think was a big part of this chapter of the book was that guys who commit sexual assault seemed to have this ability to not just justify what they're doing but totally distort their thinking. So there's these really interesting, again I use that word cautiously, but there are these, I think, interesting and important studies that say if you ask a population of men have you ever committed rape, you'll get a very small number of people admitting that — like three per cent or something like that. But you can ask the question a totally different way and I’m going to paraphrase here, but something like ‘Have you ever continued to try to have sex with a woman despite the fact she told you no?’ And you'll get like 20 per cent, I can't remember the exact figure, but something like 20 maybe 30 per cent of the guys saying yes. It's not that they're lying. They don't understand what they're doing. They don't see what they've just admitted to as sexual assault or rape, when obviously it is.

CO: He didn't want his name used, he wanted to protect his identity. The man you talked to that you call ‘The Killer’ actually told you you could use his name, you could reveal who he is, and you obviously chose not to. Why didn't you give him, he wanted that, he wanted you to say who he was, he wanted you to reveal details about who he was, why are you protecting his identity?

DF: I'm not really concerned about protecting his identity. I made that choice because — so it's important understand ‘The Killer’ as I call him, is a clinical psychopath. So this is a guy who has very little to no ability to empathize or have compassion for people. So he doesn't get the gravity of what he did to the women he's killed — he killed three of them and sexually assaulted a few others. Every time you mention a serial killer or someone who's killed, you know, young women, their family hears that. And I thought what I was more interested in is trying to get inside this guy's head, his emotional life, his inner territory than repeating his name and having his family, you know, read or hear that name. I think it's I think it's irrelevant what his name is. I know the guy is, the facility which is at knows guy is. I mean, if people want to really do their work it won't be hard to find out who this guy is. But for me one of the decisions was that psychopaths often tend to be highly narcissistic. These guys often want press attention. I've talked to him after about my decision, he's not particularly happy about it. He would have preferred a pseudonym instead of me calling him The Killer over and over again. But he says he doesn't he doesn't care about the press, so to speak. But it just seemed to me like the whole point of trying to understand this guy's inner life, the lack of empathy, why he could do these horrendous things was the most important thing. And if I could prevent, you know, the families of the murdered women and, you know, raped women out there from having to hear his name I thought that was an important decision.

CO: But he's not a monster. You don't find him monstrous, in fact this is a line you use to describe how as you as you make this quest, this journey how would you expect to find is evil is like what Hannah Arendt describes as the banality of evil. And you say that evil schlepps along frumpy and dull. You don't you don't — these people are kind of ordinary. You can't imagine that they have caused such fear in others, and one of his victims is a woman who actually survived, she doesn't get killed. You talk to a woman who he was — he probably was going to kill you. And she survived. And her graciousness about it, her forgiveness of that is extraordinary.

DF: What I'm saying is that he's done monstrous things. I mean, he has acted like a monster. I guess what I meant by the fact that he's not a monster, is that he's part of the human race. And I don't mean that and let's, you know, give him a hug. What I mean is he is part of our species, He's a homo sapiens. And I think we have this tendency to want to try to categorize people like him as ‘others’ as not quite human. And I get that, I feel that way emotionally. I mean, that makes sense when I'm sitting across from him as dull and frumpy as he is, you cannot keep your mind from the fact that he's murdered and raped young women, and he would, you know, would have kept doing it. He said to me he would have kept doing it. So that’s monstrous there's no doubt, but my interest in trying to get us out of that categorical thinking about him, the sense that he's a different type of creature, is that I think I think that that's a little precious of us. Because a psychopath like him differs from us because he does not have the capacity for empathy. I mean, all the evidence points to the fact that this is a neurochemical biological difference between him and the rest of the human population. But if you look at our behaviour, I mean, all the stories that are covered on As It Happens, all the terrible stories about Syria and Rwanda and Yugoslavia genocides, that level of thing — what happens in those situations is that they might be led by a psychopath or a sociopath but the people doing the genocide, the people killing, wholesale slaughter are average people, they're human beings with the capacity for empathy. So what's more interesting to me is that we have this capacity, regular people have the capacity to toggle between empathy and total lack of empathy. Like people will, you know, I mean, famously I think you know with the concentration camps in World War II, people working there would kill Jewish prisoners and go home and have apple pie, maybe strudel with their with their family. That to me seemed like — looking at what happens when you have a lack of empathy and how that leads to being able to do monstrous things isn't, it's not just a portrait of this aberrant monster. It's a bit of a self-reflective exercise because we have this capacity and we have to own up to that.

CO: I'm speaking the Daemon Fairless about his extraordinary book Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men and we're in the As It Happens studio. Daemon, the one chapter, the one area you go into you describe as being, you felt most nervous around these men. And these were kind of I guess we could call them typical men with air quotes there, these are soccer fans these were the Red Patch Boys. Of all the encounters you found that the most disturbing, why is that?

DF: So the Red Patch Boys are kind of the most — the biggest and strongest fan group for the Toronto Football Club, the TFC. And individually these guys are fine, these are good guys individually. They were very welcoming, they let me in. But what made me nervous and why I wrote about them is because there is this thing that happens with groups of guys when they get together and they have a cause. And that cause can be supporting your local football team, it can be religious ideology — it can be anything really. What I was interested in is that what seems to be this kind of default state with guys, that guys particularly young guys, have the capacity to form these very cohesive bands, this kind of band of brothers idea and that those groups can quite easily I think be tipped towards violence. So the the Red Patch Boys they haven't really been violent. They haven't done kind of European soccer hooligan type things. But the point I was trying to make in the book is if you look at the inner dynamics of that group process, that forming of a cohesive band of guys, it's like watching an incipient army. One of the crazy things that caught my interest just about soccer support groups in general is just before the siege of Sarajevo when Yugoslavia started fall apart, the soccer group, some of the like big ultra-soccer groups overnight became these defacto militias. It's like groups of guys are looking for some fighting cause, some real purpose. And in the absence of a political cause or a military cause or some real just purpose they'll kind of create a miniature, and in the case the Red Patch Boys a Disney-fied, you know, cause of going and supporting their team at battle on the field. So it's not to say that they were necessarily violent, but I think what interested me is that they were pulled towards this cohesiveness and this cause without really realizing the implications that that could take.

CO: Staying with Bosnia for a moment that many people I met, women I met there, would describe how men in their own communities, men they knew became capable of the most heinous kinds of acts. They ran rape camps, they tortured people to death, but they did it in groups. There was truly a sense that men were capable of doing things in groups that as individuals they would be incapable of. There is a civilising quality. They couldn't — these men could not do what they were doing to people if they weren't in a group. What is it about that dynamic?

DF: I mean, I'd be lying if I knew exactly why it happens other than it happens. I mean, one of the one of the I guess, things I say in the book and I stand by, is I think that groups of young men are the original weapons of mass destruction. What I mean is that if you look back at historical evidence young men have been forming groups and raiding parties to slaughter others, you know, other members of other villages since before we were civilized so to speak, since before we came up with the idea of laws and cities and all that stuff. So this is a part of our behaviour that has existed throughout all of human history and the evidence is out there that this has probably existed before we were human beings. So chimpanzees do this as well. And it’s one of the most fascinating kind of lines of research I came across in this is that the work that came out of Jane Goodall's camps looking at chimpanzee raiding parties. So groups of four or five chimps would go into neighbouring territory groups, find a, you know, a single chimp from the other side, so to speak, and kill them — literally ripped them to shreds. And the thing that's compelling about that is that they look like they were getting a kick out of it — it was sport.

CO: And that does follow theories that raping and pillaging was a way of actually strengthening the species because there was more diversity in the gene pool after all the raping and pillaging was over, which is one of the theories for what drives men to do this. Which leads me to wonder, what do you want women to take away from this book? Because as a woman, a few men I know who have read it already and say gosh this is so revealing. I know as frightening as it is I get it, I understand that. For a lot of women it will be yikes. I was really hoping this wasn't the case, that this was in their being, in their blood. What do you say to women? What do you want them to know?

DF: Well I want women reading it to know that I feel honesty about the emotional lives of men is really important because all of the violent behaviour that I've talked about in the book is unalloyed and awful and horrific. But it's not — it doesn't have to happen. If you look at different societies that have different attitudes about women, the rates of violence towards women are lower. So this isn't something we can't do something about. But I don't think that we can do as good of a job as we want to without seriously examining what's going on inside men. So, you know, to the women out there who are concerned about this book, that makes a lot of sense. I'm reporting on what's happening in the world. It's extremely concerning, but I guess I'd say this, one of the things that surprised me most about writing this book is that the guys I interviewed were really willing to talk about these feelings. That's hugely important to me because I think part of part of it probably was being a guy and part of it was probably having my own violent tendencies in the form of fist fights and whatnot. But I think that it surprised me to what extent guys wanted to talk about this stuff. Because, you know, the most egregious cases, the psychopath, you know, he's not going to take ownership over his emotions. But men who have the capacity for violence, even I would argue, the serial rapist in this book, if he had had someone earlier to talk to about or community of people to talk about it, I think that probably could have been prevented. So this is really unpleasant stuff to look at, but I think that's how you grow. I mean, I think that's how you really — it's how I grew. I mean, I'm a different person after writing this book. I am not the same guy who is going to get into fights, precisely because I looked inside in a very unpleasant way. I mean, it really tore me apart to write this book. But coming out on the other side I'm better for it, I'm more in control. I am less, way less likely to justify my behaviour, rationalize it. I know, I see it coming and I can prevent. So because, you know, I talk a lot about some of the, you know, deep roots of these emotions. That doesn't mean that the behaviour is pre-determined, that's just not true at all.

CO: You’re listening to As It Happens and I have Daemon Fairless in the studio we're talking about Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men. The man you interview most in this book is yourself. You go so deeply into your own being. I don't know how you did that. It's just — not just to go there but to publicly discuss your feelings and thoughts. And during the journey of writing the book and meeting with these men you and your wife were trying to conceive and eventually a little baby girl came into your life, which is this fragile female life. I don't know how you could do that, I don't know how you could — and maybe it was necessary to see that in order to understand more. But what was going on in your own heart and head during the time of exploring this violence and bringing this life into the world?

DF: I don't know if I can articulate it. I would say writing this book and exposing myself to the extent I have, was a lot like I dismantled myself and put it all on the floor and then tried to put it back together. And I think I'm know probably left some parts out because it felt like a self-inflicted wound most of the time. So it was hard to begin with but then my daughter was born but halfway through what became the final draft and I think anyone who has a kid, you know, you look at the world differently. I was writing the chapter on sexual violence when my daughter was born. I mean, I’d hold her on my chest and, you know, review the draft that I was writing — it was it was the craziest thing, you know. And writing about that stuff is like thinking of, you know, nuclear war or plague and famine and disease when you've got a baby in your hand, you just — it elicited such deep profound awful fear in me that I kind of couldn't — it just was overwhelming.

CO: Fear for her?

DF: Yeah, fear for her, but also just like just like what. What? Why are we this way? Like, you know, it seems to be a problem that's so pervasive and big that, you know, it kind of shuts the mind down. But what did happen is that over the first year and a half, two years of her life I was really — and because I was writing about the stuff, I was really forced to look at my own behaviour because I can't control other men out there. I can, you know, tell men my opinions of their stupid awful behaviour, but I can't really, you know, I don't have any leverage to control their behaviour — but I can control myself. And so I think a huge part of having her made me realize how messed up my own behaviour was and how I was going out there telling myself I was some sort of protective force, I was going to, you know, stop the guy on the subway and stop a bully here and stop that bully there, when I was waiting an then escalating. So really if I'm going to protect my daughter, if I’m from going to protect other people from violence I had to do kind of mental jujitsu on myself to realize well you've got to protect people primarily from yourself.

CO: And you end — I'll give the ending because it doesn't ruin anything — but it's just so sweet. It ends with watching a baby girl sleep.

DF: Yeah.

CO: And what that does to the heart.

DF: Yeah, totally. Yeah, it makes you better. It makes you want to be better. And I think again, you know, the positive thing the take away from this experience is that these emotions, whatever they are, you know, for me it's been getting these stupid street-fight kind of situations. But the one thing that I think that we don't talk about much is that guys are conflicted with their own behaviour. I've met guys and I've heard stories of guys who are, for instance, beating their wives and their kids coming and trying to find help from a social worker. I'm not trying to justify their, you know — pain these guys as good guys. But what I'm trying to say is that like Darryl the rapist, who apologized after his rape, guys are conflicted with their own emotions. And if we can talk about that more you have a tool to start to get the better side of guys in control of these emotions, because they are controllable. And I think that knowing that they are controllable means that we have more responsibility to do that. Yeah, so, you know, having a kid really forced me to do that for sure. I owe my daughter more than she'll ever probably understand — at least you know until she's a lot older.

CO: Daemon, thank you for making this journey for us. You took us a lot of places that I would not go on my own and I'm glad you did.

DF: Thanks Carol. Pleasure to be here.

CH: Daemon Fairless is a journalist and the author of Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men. He was in our Toronto studio. The book is published by Random House Canada and it comes out next Tuesday, March 6th. For more on Mr. Fairless’ his work and his own violent experiences visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

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March 2, 2018 episode transcript

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