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The AIH Transcript for May 21, 2018

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol.

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

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

CO: A time to remember 72 loved ones lost. As the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire opens, a London woman speaks about losing her two cousins and what might prevent future high-rise deaths.

JD: Start running. A Brandon, Manitoba man scrambles to safety with his kids as fire sets the apartment building they call home ablaze.

CO: Reaching out to save their teens. After 12 suicide attempts in just one month, a Nunavut hamlet appeals to outside partners for help to handle what the community describes as a deeply-rooted crisis.

JD: Fairplay. A New York mariachi musician says he has yet to regret playing at a protest outside the home of a Manhattan lawyer — a man who was recorded making threats to call immigration police on New Yorkers speaking Spanish.

CO: You snooze you ewwww. A North Carolina student discovers that compared to where chimpanzees catch their z’s, your average human bed is teeming with parasitic life.

JD: And…Saving his bacon. Ohio police suspect drunken humour when they're called about a pig stalking a man. But when the officers show up they realize the caller wasn't the one hamming around. As It Happens: The Monday Edition. Radio that promises to never stop busting its chops.

[Music: Theme]

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Part 1: Grenfell Tower inquiry, Nunavut mental health, Chimpanzee beds

Grenfell Tower inquiry

Guest: Clarrie Mendy-Solomon

JD: It has been nearly a year since a massive fire engulfed the Grenfell Tower high-rise in London. 72 people died. The grief and the anger of survivors and family members of those killed has not let up. Today the official inquiry began. The first two weeks will be devoted to the victims. Marcio Gomes was the first to testify. He and his pregnant wife Andrea escaped the fire. She was put into a medically induced coma in hospital. The couple's baby was stillborn. Here's part of what Mr. Gomes said about losing his child.

SOUNDCLIP

MARCIO GOMES: This was our little star, Logan Gomes. His due date was on the 21st of August. But instead he was born on the 14th of June. That evening I was fortunate enough to hold my son, he looked like he was just sleeping. At that moment we felt like our hearts had broken. So I held my son in my arms that evening hoping it was all a bad dream. Wish and praying for any kind of miracle, that he would just open his eyes, move, make a sound — as we know that never happened.

JD: That was Marcio Gomes speaking about losing his baby after he and his wife escaped the Grenfell Tower fire last year. Clarrie Mendy-Solomon will speak at the inquiry tomorrow. Two of her cousins died in the fire. We reached Ms. Mendy-Solomon in London.

CO: Ms. Mendy Solomon, we heard some very moving testimony at the opening of the inquiry today. What was it like to be in that room?

CLARRIE MENDY-SOLOMON: It was very emotional, very cheerful as to be accepted. Today was the first time people really had time to grieve and express the love they had for their loved ones. Describe their loved ones, their personalities instead of people just relating to them as a number.

CO: You're going to have a chance to speak tomorrow, is that right?

CMS: Tomorrow morning I’m speaking, yes.

CO: What do you want to tell the inquiry about your family, your cousins and what happened to them?

CMS: It's not about what happened to them, it's about having a tribute of their lives for the person they were, sharing their memories and letting the world know these people are human, my cousins are human, what they achieve in their lives. Today was one of the easy days because when tomorrow people start testifying that have lost six members their families, and five members of their families, including their mum and dad and their brothers and sisters. But when people start speaking of six members of their family that was killed in the tower, that's why I think it will get worse emotionally.

CO: Can you tell us a bit about your cousins, just tell us what they're like? Because this is the whole point of this is to actually think of them realize these are real people with lives that are lost to us.

CMS: Well, as you know, one of my cousins was the artist Khadija Saye, who just reached the pinnacle in the world of art and our world was just waiting for her. After the Venice exhibition she was inundated with people that wanted to put her work in galleries. All her hard work paid off and was coming to fruition.

CO: You lost her and you lost all her work. You don't even have any memory of her?

CMS: It got destroyed. Her work was in her home. Her home burnt out to a flat, including al the artwork.

CO: I mean, all the survivors are speaking of their grief. How present is that for you still?

CMS: Well, I think it could have come six months earlier because everyone’s held their grief up to this moment. Today although the survivors and the bereaved families have met each other, no one’s gone in depth to talk about the person — all we know is so-and-so lost so-and-so. Today's the first day you’re having that insight. And the effect it’s had on the family members and friends and loved ones. So today is about commemorating the person that we lost, our loved ones and giving a tribute. It’s nothing to do with what happened. The inquiry part of that is coming in a few weeks when we have the facts and look into what the cause of the fire. But these two weeks are strictly for commemorations and tributes.

CO: There were seventy 72 seconds of silence. People stood for each of the 72 people who died in the tower, is that right today?

CMS: Yes, that's become a standard practice in the community when we have the silent march on the anniversary every month for the last 11 months.

CO: I know that you have been trying to get to campaign against the kind of cladding which was on the building that allowed — it's believed the fire spread and killed so many people because of this flammable material. The official review of the fire came out a few days ago and it doesn't say that this cladding should be banned from future construction. What do you make of that?

CMS: I’m glad that the government stepped in to override that decision. I met Theresa May the Prime Minister nearly two weeks ago and we went on a humanitarian appeal. I took some relatives all together we represented maybe 25 people we’ve lost. And we appealed with them, this panel, to show some humanity. And she decided that the government are going to pay for the cost of the removal of the cladding, which comes to possibly 400 million pounds.

CO: So do you think you think Prime Minister Theresa May is committed to making the changes that will prevent another fire like this?

CMS: Yes, I definitely do. Enough groups from the area have been to see her to appeal to her and she has changed the narrative in the last two weeks. You know, globally around the world all eyes are on Grenfell. We have media here from Japan, from Australia, Germany — most countries of the world. So all eyes are on Grenfell. I think Theresa May well do the right thing.

CO: Ms. Mendy-Solomon, I hope that tomorrow brings you some relief from the grief you're experiencing and I appreciate speaking with you tonight. Thank you.

CMS: Thank you. Thank you very much.

JD: We reached Clarrie Mendy-Solomon in London. Two of her cousins died in last year's fire at the Grenfell Tower high-rise. We have more on this story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Reversed Ambient Tones]

Nunavut mental health

Guest: Marcus Wilke

JD: Leaders from the Nunavut community of Pangnirtung say it is at the breaking point, and they are pleading with the Government of Nunavut to help. Violence and suicide rates have spiked in the community. Calls to the RCMP are way up. In a community of 1,400 people, 12 young people attempted suicide in the month of February alone. Tomorrow, territorial officials will travel to Pangnirtung to hear about the crisis from council members like Marcus Wilke. We reached Mr. Wilke in Pangnirtung.

CO: Mr. Wilke, your community is describing this as a crisis. What are you seeing there?

MW: Well, it is actually an ongoing crisis. It's not just a sudden crisis. And we have kind of really reached the point where our community has really no longer the reserves to deal with the issues. And so this is where we have seen really an increase in violence and suicide attempt incidents that really think telling this story, which means we really have to get busy doing things to prevent tragedies happening.

CO: Some of these suicide attempts are very young people, children. What do you think is behind that and the violence? What do you think is causing that?

MW: It is very difficult to say. Each individual would arrive at that point in their lives for very different reasons and I think it is maybe not a single source. It is probably a long history of people having lived with trauma, with difficult situations where there's overcrowding in homes, unemployment, where there's poverty, where there's many, many stress factors. And if that is something that is there all the time it comes to a point when fewer and fewer people would have the resilience to cope with these things. And that's when we need to address what we know are underlying factors.

CO: Your community is 1,400 people and in February alone you had 12 young people who attempted suicide.

MW: That is correct.

CO: And when say you haven't got the resources, do you mean the physical resources or at some point you haven't got the sort of mental reserves order to deal with that?

MW: It is a combination of all of these things. We have in some ways not the infrastructure, buildings to help people who are in emergency situations where there's violence they need to have a safe place to go to. We have already a soup kitchen here in the community because many times and people are hungry we would like to increase the services. We also need to have an easily accessible support and counselling services like a drop-in centre. And down the road, we would really want to look at all the things that really need to happen to facilitate the healing, to address poverty, to address homelessness because these are all the underlying factors.

CO: What you’re describing is just extraordinary — the challenge that you have, because it's not just finding a way to have suicide prevention or intervention, you're describing people, you said people living with deep trauma, overcrowding, unemployment all these stress factors, violence, I'm sure the legacies of the residential school system, poverty that is profound enough that so many people don't have enough to eat. How can you possibly address that without some large intervention from outside?

MW: Yeah, well, you know what, it requires teamwork and a partnership. It needs to be the strengthening of the community so that we can build our own resources and our own services. And yes, we do require help and expertise from the outside so that we can actually do our job of becoming self-reliant.

CO: The RCMP has said that they think that there's been an increase in liquor and drugs getting into your community and that's a driver. What do you think of that?

MW: Well, it's a fact and yes, it is what complicates the situation. But we also really need to look at why substance abuse often is a symptom or it's considered a quick remedy to escape from a very stressful situation. So yes, we have to find a way how we can control and reduce the amount of alcohol that is being consumed. But really in the long run we need to really look at how we can actually reduce, and hopefully eliminate, the precursors.

CO: The Nunavut government says that it has other communities like yours who are also asking for urgent help, are also in a crisis. Do you think that your community will get the support it needs?

MW: I cannot say. The government will send their various representatives from their departments and at that time we'll know what they are able to offer and what they are prepared to offer. It's important that we are really seeking mostly to develop a partnership where we organized all our resources changing the approach to really more person seeking help oriented services rather than system driven services that are fragmented. We are looking at a more effective approach.

CO: Mr. Wilke, I'm so sorry what's happening in Pangnirtung and I hope you do get that help and support you need. Thank you for speaking with us.

MW: Thank you.

CO: Take care of yourself.

JD: Marcus Wilke is a council member from the Nunavut community of Pangnirtung, and that is where we reached him.

[Music: Ambient Synths & Piano]

Taha El Taha update

JD: Taha El Taha will not be facing his cancer treatment alone. When we spoke to the Palestinian refugee this month he was facing planned surgery and chemotherapy in Montreal without any friends or family for support. Mr. Taha told us that he had fled Beirut without his family when a terrorist backed gang began threatening his life. He made it to the United States and then walked across the border into Quebec. Then Mr. Taha described the moment that a Montreal doctor told him he had a stage-four cancer. He appealed to Canada's immigration minister to allow his wife and two children to come help him, but their visa request was denied. This afternoon though, when we reached Mr. Taha, he was waiting for his family's flight to touchdown and he was grateful that the minister had granted a temporary travel permit for his family before he goes for surgery on Wednesday. We have more on the story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Synths & Piano]

Chimpanzee beds

Guest: Megan Thoemmes

JD: Megan Thoemmes has discovered something truly disgusting about our beds. Ms. Thoemmes is a PhD candidate in zoology at the North Carolina State University. She studies the bacteria, parasites and other critters that live in, on and off of the human body. And she has just published a study comparing the biodiversity in your average human bed to what you would find in the nests of wild chimpanzees. We reached Megan Thoemmes in Raleigh, North Carolina.

CO: Ms. Thoemmes, what's it like in the nest of a chimpanzee?

MEGAN THOEMMES: Well, chimpanzees build nests in treetops and they move nightly, building them by increasing branches and placing leaves on them to make a comfortable mattress.

CO: But they change beds every night?

MT: They do. They build a new nest every night and move locations. It's unclear as to why they move. Some people believe that they are trying to prevent the build-up of fecal matter and other things that would produce a scent to attract predators, or that they may be avoiding the buildup of pathogenic species in their nest, or potentially they're just moving with food resources.

CO: How did you find this out? Were you rooting around in nests, you and your colleagues? How do you get into their beds?

MT: So we have several collaborators in Tanzania that went out to collect the microbes and arthropods from within these chimpanzee beds. And so they waited until the chimpanzees left the nests each day and would go in to sample with swabs for microbial samples, and then with a handheld vacuum to collect arthropods.

CO: Arthropods being bedbugs, basically?

MT: Yeah, they're insects and spiders and so that could include ticks or mites or any of the flying things that feed on blood.

CO: Were you expecting to find a lot of that stuff?

MT: We really were. We are anticipating to find quite a number of ectoparasites within chimpanzee beds, but we found almost none, which was really surprising. And we also expected to see a large amount of body-associated microbes. So those sourced from feces or skin or from their oral cavity. And again, we found almost none of those species.

CO: So these nests are pretty clean?

MT: They really are, yeah.

CO: OK, now why did you want to compare that to what our beds were like?

MT: Yeah there's been a lot of studies in recent years showing that the design and ventilation in human homes and buildings greatly influences the species that live around us. And a lot of that work has suggested that as we've settled into these more permanent closed-off environments, we've lost a lot of associations with a diverse group of organisms and that's had negative consequences for our health and well-being.

CO: Does that mean that we live — we're sleeping in sterile conditions?

MT: No it means that we're selecting for a really novel group of species that are less diverse than the outdoor environment so we may not be getting some exposures that we need for our immune system to develop properly. And because were not having a lot of influx of species from the environment we are accumulating the ones that fall off of our bodies. So for instance, another study done by researchers in our lab found that nearly 35 per cent of the bacteria found in human beds was either fecal skin or oral bacteria. So that's a pretty stark difference between our beds and chimpanzee beds.

CO: Yikes. So this is like we're shedding, we're drooling, we're messy. It's disgusting. Not everybody’s bed. I mean, how often were these sheets cleaned that you were inspecting?

MT: It was a pretty large study of approximately 1,300 homes so it seems to be pretty common.

CO: Well if we were changing beds every night would we be in better condition?

MT: I think honestly it has more to do with the fact that we are living in these really sealed permanent environments. So not necessarily changing bedding but perhaps reframing it to think about changing the exposure of our environment as a whole.

CO: Well, what do you mean?

MT: So when houses and hospitals are ventilated with windows for instance, there's a much higher prevalence of environmental bacteria that can come in from the outdoors and colonize the different habitats within our built spaces. And in one particular hospital study they show that the greater the diversity of environmental species that we had within hospitals, the less pathogens that we also had.

CO: So we need more microbial flora and fauna in our houses?

MT: That's what our data suggests, yes.

CO: And that would counter all the other stuff that we have that we're just shutting off of — we’re creating our own sort of horrible environment of microbial bacteria and parasites and little things.

MT: It's not horrible, it's just perhaps unique to what we have experienced in our past.

CO: OK. Well, best of luck, and don't let the bedbugs bite.

MT: Thank you.

CO: All right. Bye Ms. Thoemmes. Megan Thoemmes is a PhD candidate in the zoology department at North Carolina State University. We reached her in Raleigh.

[Music: Upbeat Waltz]

Runaway Pig

JD: The 91 call came in at 5:26 on Saturday morning. Sccording to Ohio's North Ridgeville Police Department the caller was quote an obviously drunk guy walking home from the bar. The caller admitted he was on his way home from the Train Ttation, which is the name of a local pub. But more importantly he insisted he was being followed by a pig. It was a sobering situation when officers arrived on the scene because there he was. True to his word he was coming home from the train station, although, in this case it was the literal Amtrak train station. And sure enough at his heels were the hoofs — the pig was indeed in hot pursuit. Eventually officers wrangled the animal into a cruiser and took it back to the station. Later that morning the runaway pig was reunited with its owner. Also later that morning, police acknowledged any would-be commenters on their Facebook page by saying quote “The irony of the pig in a police car. Anyone that thinks they're funny is actually unoriginal and trying too hard,” unquote.

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Part 2: Brandon Manitoba fire evacuees, NYC lawyer protests

Brandon Manitoba fire evacuees

Guest: Justin Verinder

JD: Justin Verinder and his family are at a hotel today — and Mr. Verinder doesn't know how long they'll be living there. He and his children, aged three and five, are among the more than 100 people who had to flee their homes because of a massive fire in Brandon, Manitoba this weekend. The fire swept through Massey Manor, a five-storey residence run by community groups. On Saturday, crews were fighting a fire across the street at Christie's Office Plus, it spread to other buildings in the area, including Mr. Verinder’s home. The city's mayor called the fire one of the biggest, if not the biggest, fire of the last 50 or 60 years. We reached Justin Verinder in Brandon.

CO: Justin, first of all, I'm sorry for your troubles.

JUSTIN VERINDER: Thank you.

CO: How are you and your children doing today?

JV: Well, they're still thinking of like — they think it's some kind of an adventure. But it's starting to sink in too that they don't have any of this stuff now. Like this morning too, my daughter woke up and started crying right away because our house was broken, that’s what she said. My son said “I wish this wasn't real.” And I felt so bad for him, I didn’t know what to tell him. It is real.

CO: What are you telling them?

JV: I told them that we're safe and there's a lot of generous people bringing us new stuff and distracting the kids and apparently they're trying to work out something to let us stay in the hotel until we find a new place. So they said that we could almost stay here indefinitely and they're going to help us look too, so hopefully everything will work out. And they're bringing a lot of clothes and they brought us nail clippers and shampoo and conditioner, soap, toothbrushes, razors and toys for the kids. So the kids are actually kind of adventuring right now. But it will sink in eventually.

CO: You left with nothing?

JV: I had my wallet and my phone in my pocket and my house keys. And I just grabbed the kids, they luckily had sweaters on but I didn't think to grab myself a sweater or anything. At least they got those things because some people left their cell phone, left their ID. I don't know if they're going to get it back. Nobody knows because the building is unsafe.

CO: Can you just take us back to the weekend? At what point did you realize that your building was in trouble?

JV: Kids pulled the fire alarm a lot in the building. So at first I thought it was a false alarm and then I smelled smoke. I looked outside on my balcony and you could see like this huge cloud of smoke going over the kids park. So we went outside to grab the kids’ sweaters and I just left with what I had in my pockets and we went out to the parking lot. They told us to stand across the street and wait but you could see the warehouse where Christie's Office Supply and the post office was. It was burning, the fire was blowing across the street and it was almost hitting the building the Massey Manor building. And you could tell it was going to light on fire. So we were like standing there praying and the girls were crying and the kids were scared and so I said “Let's go for a walk and get away from this,” because I don't want my kids to watch it. So we went to the gas station a couple blocks away. But there's ashes from the building falling in the parking lot of the gas station. So I warned the gas attendant that there’s cinders flying around. All of a sudden one of the guys in the gas station he came in to fill gas, but he told me that my building was on fire. So I got the kids out of there and I tried to run back to see if I could talk to someone or see what was happening. But by the time I got back down the street, like three or four buildings were on fire. We were trying to walk down Princess Avenue but I couldn't go that way. And then the police officer told us to go south instead. So we started walking south. And I was trying to hide the fire from my kid but this huge explosion came into the sky. It was like a mushroom cloud. And he can't miss that. He saw it and so did my daughter. And I saw it as soon as I saw it I was like “Start running, go faster.” So we got up the street and then a bus driver pulled over and the people from my building they were yelling at me to get on the bus. I was like “Okay.” So I went and got on the bus and we sat there and waited but then I guess the fire just kept getting worse and Massey did light on fire and then the smoke was getting so bad it was coming into the bus. So they had to move the bus and then yeah, we just sat on the bus watching our building. I kind of wish my kids didn’t see al that but they told us to stay around the bus and wait, that they were going to take us somewhere and figure everything out.

CO: Justin, do you think you can recover any of your things, anything that you know survived in your apartment?

JV: I know some things would be OK. Like I'm sure my kids Lego or dishes like forks and knives, cups could be washed. I don't know. But they said for safety reasons they can't let us back in the building and they're doing an investigation. And I don't know, I don't think I'm going to get any of my stuff back.

CO: This is this building is jointly operated by Brandon Friendship Centre, Canadian Mental Health Association and Manitoba housing — it's affordable housing, isn't it? So how difficult will it be for people who live there to find a new place to live?

JV: I don't know. I know most of them and a lot of them don't know. They've been asking the same thing. But they do have a housing coordinator that works for 7^th Street Access or I think they have two housing coordinators — but they will help us look for places. And I’m not 100 per cent sure, but I know they're collecting donations and they're talking about giving us vouchers and money and stuff to replace some of our things. I would like to start looking for a place soon. But there's also going to be a hundred other families looking for a place at the same time and I’m going to be competing with my neighbours and friends.

CO: Justin, just finally, I know you're being really strong for your kids and they need that. But how are you doing?

JV: I'm fighting the urge to cry. I keep feeling it trying to come up and then I keep pushing it back down because I won't cry in front of my kids because I don't want to make them sad. But I could feel it, it hurts inside. I don't think I've really clicked in yet or I feel so sorry, like I keep apologizing to my kids and I know it's no one's fault but I just keep saying sorry to them. My kids had a really rough start with their mother and I gained custody of them and they finally have some stability in their lives for the last couple years and then all of a sudden our place is toast.

CO: Justin, you sound like a really strong dad. And I think that's going to get to all through. I'm really sorry for what’s happened.

JV: Thank you. But people have been very generous. So that's making it a lot easier. Also the hotel here has a swimming pool — so that's a bonus. The kids are distracted, they're in and out of there playing and having fun and all their friends from our apartment building are in the same hotel. We are distracting them in keeping them busy all the time.

CO: Take care of yourself and thank you.

JV: Yes, thank you.

CO: Bye.

JD: Justin Verinder was forced out of his home by a fire in Brandon, Manitoba this weekend. Currently he is living in a hotel and that is where we reached him.

[Music: Ambient Tones]

Asia Argento at Cannes

JD: She was one of the first to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. And when Asia Argento took to the stage at the Cannes Film Festival’s closing ceremony on the weekend, the Italian actor spoke to the audience about her alleged abuser. According to the Hollywood Reporter quote “As soon as she began the room was visibly stunned. Here is some of what Ms. Argento had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

ASIA ARGENTO: In 1997 I was raped by Harvey Weinstein here at Cannes — I was 21 years old. This festival was his hunting ground. I want to make a prediction. Harvey Weinstein will never be welcome here ever again. He will live in disgrace, shunned by a film community that once embraced him and covered up for his crimes. And even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women, for behaviour that does not belong in this industry, does not belong in any industry or workplace. You know who you are. But most importantly we know who you are. And we're not going to allow you to get away with it any longer.

[APPLAUSE]

JD: Italian actor Asia Argento speaking at the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend. A spokesperson for Mr. Weinstein has previously denied quote “Any allegations of non-consensual sex,” unquote.

[Music: Piano Ballad]

NYC lawyer protests

Guest: Alvaro Paulino Jr.

JD: You may have seen the video. Last week a man was recorded telling Manhattan restaurant workers to stop speaking Spanish. Here's a bit of the audio.

SOUNDCLIP

AARON SCHLOSSBERG: Clients and your staff are speaking Spanish to customers when they should be speaking English. Every person I listen to, He spoke it, she spoke it, she’s speaking it. This is America.

JD: The speaker has been identified as a New York lawyer Aaron Schlossberg. And in that video he could also be heard threatening to report restaurant staff to U.S. immigration enforcement officials. That is, of course, an apparent attempt to suggest that they might be in the country illegally. Since that video went viral Mr. Schlossberg has been the subject of protests. On Friday night, hundreds of people showed up outside his home to hold what they called a ‘Latin dance party.’ Alvaro Paulino Jr., who plays with the band Mariachi Tapatio performed there. We reached Mr. Paulino in Brooklyn.

CO: Alvaro, why did you want to take part in the demonstration by playing music?

ALVARO PAULINO JR: Why? Well, first of all, music is my passion. And after seeing and hearing the whole rant with the lawyer — I don’t hate people, but I hate what he said what he did. It was very inappropriate, very disrespectful, which involves racism. You know I think something with racism is just nonsense. We have to find a cure for it. And I think with music and laughter it's a very passive way to get our message out there.

CO: Can you describe what it was like on Friday night, what the scene was?

AP: Well, first we got hired by a New York City company to go perform at his office location.

CO: By him you mean Aaron Schlossberg’s location?

AP: Correct at his office location. I doubt he was there because there was a sign on the front of the building saying that he was evicted, that he wasn't allowed to go back in that building. So there was a protest going on there. So we were there for about two hours. Once it was done there, they took it to his residence, in front of his apartment building. So we went over and there was a bigger crowd over there. So we get there, everybody's wait for the mariachi. And it was a magical moment. We get there and wow, it was just amazing. I do this every day, I'm a professional mariachi player there's nothing different. The only difference here is that it’s a bigger cause. We serenaded Aaron Schlossberg, the lawyer who threatened these people to go back to their country, to stop speakin Spanish. I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Brooklyn. Spanish was my first language. My father and my family are immigrants so I feel offended for his actions. But my bigger thing here is to get the message beyond him as well. You know we've got to stop it.

CO: Can you describe some of the songs, the music that you played? What selections did you choose?

AP: The songs that we selected — I know the people want us to play La Cucaracha, which means cockroach. So basically they wanted to sing La Cucaracha to call him a cucaracha. We sang El Rey, which means the king, but the king is not him, the king is our people to show him who the king is. We also played México Lindo y Querido, beautiful love in Mexico. We also played Cielito Lindo — so very popular songs that everybody knew it sounded very, very impressive, you know, because we had a five-piece mariachi, and then we had all these people behind us singing.

CO: We heard just a tiny bit of the tape beginning of our show but, I mean, the whole rant that Aaron Schlossberg delivers it goes on and on as you know. And one of the things he threatens he says to the Spanish speaking people that he is saying that they should not be speaking Spanish, he says he's going to call the U.S. immigration enforcement police to come and have them kicked out, that they are here living off of his money. He says “I pay their welfare for their ability to be here the least they can do is speak English.” These are some of the things that he is caught saying. He doesn't know, obviously, that he's being recorded. What effect did that have on people in New York in your circle?

AP: It has had a big effect on me. He just assumed just because you speak Spanish you're illegal, you're an immigrant. I know people see me in my mariachi suit some people get fooled ‘Oh, you're Mexican.’ I mean, I've been through cases like that, some small cases you know, ‘Hey go back to Mexico.’ I'm my country. I was born in Brooklyn. Don’t let my mariachi outfit fool you. My family is from Mexico but just because I speak Spanish, or sing Spanish or because I’m a mariachi doesn't mean I'm here in America illegaly, an immigrant with no papers no green card, no. I was born and raised and I still live in Brooklyn.

CO: Well, you’ve pointed out that he's been evicted from — Mr. Schlossberg has lost his office, he's been evicted. He has 25,000 people on a petition trying to get him disbarred as a lawyer, which is what he is.

AP: I wasn’t even aware about that.

CO: Yeah. So at what point do you think he will have paid for his sins? When do you think? Because he's just one person. He got caught saying this, but I'm sure he's not the only one who makes these kinds of remarks.

AP: I really couldn’t care less about what happens to him. My message — what I want to support is for racism to come to an end. If we work together as a community, as a world we can definitely cure that.

CO: What do you think you can accomplish?

AP: I just hope, I mean, he’s just careful about what he says, he’s got to learn how to appreciate other people, other cultures. Were in America, we're in New York City, we're very diverse. We all got to be brothers and sisters. Not just him, but anybody has to watch what they say.

CO: So do you think this is kind of a teachable moment?

AP: Yeah, yeah I think to teach him and many other people out there, teach them a lesson and the message is let's stop racism and discrimination.

CO: Well Alvaro, I know you're going to head out and play some more music tonight. I hope it's as festive as it was the other night and I really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

AP: No problem, thank you so much.

CO: Take care.

JD: Alvaro Paulino is a musician with the band Mariachi Tapatio. We reached him in Brooklyn, New York.

[Music: Laidback Funk]

Dolphin Soldiers

JD: When it comes to national security and international tensions, so much happens below the surface like — dolphin soldiers for example. They're real, or they were. And their story is noble and tragic — or stupid and unnecessary — and tragic. A few years ago it emerged that Ukraine had a dolphin army. Details are as murky as the depths of the Black Sea where they were most likely trained. We know they're quick studies. We know they're fast. We know they're great at echolocation, but we don't know, for example, if they were trained to shoot lasers out of their eyes or punch torpedoes. We don't know what they did. We do know what they didn't do when Russia annexed Crimea, annexing the dolphins as well. And that is according to Boris Babin they did not betray their country. Mr. Babin is the Ukrainian government's representative in Crimea. Recently he told a Ukrainian newspaper that unfortunately most of the dolphin soldiers had died since Russia's annexation, but he claimed that the dolphins hadn't died from neglect or from sheer human idiocy. He claimed that essentially, the dolphins had died of patriotism. Mr. Babin said quote “The trained animals refused, not only to interact with the new Russian coaches, but refused food and died some time later. Many Ukrainian soldiers took their oath and loyalty much less seriously than these dolphins.” Meanwhile, Russian authorities say that by the time Russia annexed Crimea all the dolphins had died of natural causes or been sold. But I think that we can all agree that entirely because of human jerks, the dolphin soldiers military service did not go swimmingly

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Part 3: John Carreyrou feature interview on Theranos

John Carreyrou feature interview on Theranos

JD: Her company Theranos was once valued at more than $11 billion Canadian. She graced the covers of magazines from Forbes to Glamour. Elizabeth Holmes was touted as the next Steve Jobs — except that her reportedly ground-breaking blood test technology didn't work as promised, and she went to great lengths to keep that information from investors regulators and the media. This revelation by John Carreyrou in the pages of the Wall Street Journal set off one of the most stunning falls from favour that Silicon Valley has ever seen. In March Ms. Holmes agreed to pay half-a-million dollars to settle fraud charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. John Carreyrou has now written a book about the Theranos saga. It's called Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. We reached him at the CBC studio in New York for a feature interview.

CO: John, welcome to As It Happens.

JOHN CARREYOU: Thank you for having me.

CO: Can you just start off by telling us what was the pitch that this company, Theranos, was making to the world?

JC: Right. Theranos was a company that was founded by a Stanford dropout named Elizabeth Holmes, and she claimed to have invented a portable device that could run the full range of lab tests off just a drop or two of blood pricked from the finger.

CO: And what would that be to replace? Why would that be something that the world would want?

JC: And in addition to being able to run the full range of tests from just a drop of blood from the finger she said — her pitch was that she could get the results very quickly at half or less of the prices that other laboratories offered. It would have been a great advance because, as you know, when you get your blood drawn usually they'll take several tubes — often as many as five tubes and they'll use the big hypodermic needle and a lot of people find that process unpleasant and avoid getting their blood drawn. And sometimes diseases and conditions get missed because people aren't getting their blood drawn and having lab tests as often as they should.

CO: And the company went even further to suggest that some point this could be something you have in your home like your thermometer, you could just do have your own blood tests, get yourself diagnosed and send a message to your doctor and you have a cure or some medication waiting for you.

JC: That's right. When she first dropped out of Stanford in 2003, Holmes had this idea for what she called a Thera-patch. It was sort of an arm band that had micro needles and the micro needles would draw your blood from your wrist and simultaneously diagnose whatever was ailing you and inject you with the appropriate drug. That vision proved a bit too futuristic and naive. So she quickly pivoted to something that she thought was more feasible, which was a cartridge and reader device. The reader was sort of like toaster-sized and it was a system that you could have in your home. And she idolized Steve Jobs and Apple and she wanted the Theranos blood testing device to eventually be in everyone's home and be ubiquitous just like Apple devices —iPhones and iPads and iPods.

CO: She, this Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes — absolute compelling personality. Her face many people have seen gracing the covers of all the big magazines and business publications. Who is she?

JC: She is — well now she's about 34 years old, at the time when she dropped out of Stanford, she was 19. She had barely completed a-year-and-a-half of her undergraduate studies. So she had no training to speak of in medicine or really in science but she was very ambitious. From an early age she wanted to be a successful entrepreneur. Like I said, she idolized Steve Jobs, and by sheer force of will and hard work she convinced a lot of people to fund her, and over the years developed three iterations of a Theranos blood testing device. And by the time she rolled out her blood test commercially in Walgreen’s stores and in the fall of 2013, she was now 30 years old and she became an instant star. And, like you said, graced the covers of Fortune Magazine, was profiled in The New Yorker, became a fixture at conferences and on television and her company in its last round of funding garnered a valuation of more than $9 billion. She had managed to keep half or more of the shares of her company so that effectively gave her a net worth four $4.5 billion dollars and made her the world's youngest female self-made billionaire.

CO: She modeled herself on Steve Jobs, as you mentioned. How did she do that?

JC: Well, she started wearing a black turtleneck around 2006. And, of course, that was the trademark outfit that Steve Jobs made famous. She also liked to drive around in a car without license plates, which is something that Steve Jobs also did. She implemented in Theranos a culture of absolute secrecy and that was also in part because it's something that that Apple was famous for. She had hired Chiat/Day, the advertising firm, and she hired them because they had worked on some famous Apple advertising campaigns. So really the mythology of Steve Jobs and of Apple really was there throughout her 12-year rise. It really was an obsession.

CO: But that magic, that sort of cult of personality that she created, attracted a lot of high profile, very impressive people. I'm looking at how you describe her board of directors — George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense James Mathis. How did she manage to bring all those people into her orbit?

JC: You're right. Her board was filled with larger than life personalities, legendary former statesmen like Secretary of State George Shultz, who crafted the Reagan administration's foreign policy and is credited by many with defeating the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War. How did she get all these people on her board? Well, she was introduced to George Shultz by someone at Stanford in 2011 and George Shultz is someone who has always been very passionate about science. And he was won over by Elizabeth's vision and her charisma and he quickly joined her board. And after that he introduced her to many of his colleagues at the Hoover Institution, which is the conservative think tank that is headquartered right on the Stanford campus. And that's how she was able to meet Henry Kissinger and people like Sam Nunn and Bill Frist and Admiral Roughead and all of these people gradually became Theranos directors and she lured them with grants of stock. Of course the stock at one point was worth a lot of money because Theranos reached a valuation of almost $10 billion.

CO: You are listening to As It Happens. I have John Carreyrou in the New York studio. Ee're talking about his fascinating book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. John, your book — well first your articles that you wrote for The Wall Street Journal and then ultimately this book — you begin with an anecdote about the company's onetime chief financial officer Henry Mosley. What did he discover about the early Theranos system that began to tweak his curiosity and his concerns?

JC: Right. In November of 2006, So Theranos by then was about a 3-year-old company, he started getting a sense that a demonstration that Elizabeth had given to Novartis, the giant Swiss drug maker, had not gone well because employees who had acompanied Elizabeth on the demo looked outright downcast when they got back to Palo Alto. So he started asking questions and eventually that day Elizabeth Holmes’ co-founder a person by the name of Shaunak Roy, who had worked with Elizabeth in the Stanford professor Channing Robertson's Lab at Stanford, came clean to the CFO that actually the demos weren't entirely real, that the result that they showed prospective investors who came by for the demos were pre-recorded because the system didn't always work and, in fact, often malfunctioned. And so they had recorded one result and that's what they showed. And he realized at that point that he had been bringing around investors for months and that they were being misled. And so he confronted Elizabeth that day in her office and told her ‘We need to stop misleading investors. We need to stop doing these demos if they're not totally real.’ And at that point she turned icy and told him that he was not a team player and fired him on the spot.

CO: He only knew that because he was he hearing it from people in the company that he was building this case. Others were hearing it or suspecting. What did you hear from other employees about what their suspicions were and why they didn't raise the alarm?

JC: Right, well the history of Theranos is one — and by the way we're now 15 years into it — is a history of tremendous turnover. Elizabeth fired people all the time. And you also had along the way quite a few people who left because they had qualms. The problem was that Theranos made everyone sign non-disclosure agreements and there was an unspoken and sometimes even spoken threat of litigation if anyone spoke up. So that's how the secret that this company was a house of cards got kept for so long. And when the company eventually commercialized its blood tests in the fall of 2013, even one of Theranos’ directors grandsons, who was working at the company at the time — and that was none other than Tyler Schultz, the grandson of the former Secretary of State George Shultz — tried to raise his concerns internally with Elizabeth and her boyfriend Sunny Balwani, who was the number two at the company, and he was rebuffed and threatened and he had to leave the company quietly. And I later made contact with Tyler about a year later and he was one of the whistleblowers who helped me expose the scandal.

CO: But as you point out, I mean, Silicon Valley is full of young people, idealistic people who see themselves above capitalism. They're trying to change the world. They think they're on a mission. It's a very zealous place. And so how come nobody blew the whistle? How come those who have little bits and pieces of this — some had larger pieces than others — why did they never expose Elizabeth Holmes?

JC: Well, this was a company that had an almost $10 billion valuation that raised almost a billion dollars from investors. It had very deep pockets. Its CEO and the COO were very intimidating and threatening, and it was very well known that they would not hesitate to go after employees who spoke up. And those threats were backed up in the person of David Boies, who is arguably America's most famous lawyer. He was the outside counsel for the company starting in 2011, eventually came to become a de facto board member in 2013 attending all the board meetings of the company. David Boies was a scarecrow that put the fear of God in many employees. They felt that if they were to go public with their concerns that David Boies and his henchmen would come after them.

CO: There's one man that you talk about, a scientist Ian Gibbons, a very a sad case of somebody who was working with Elizabeth Holmes had his concerns and died. Can you tell us about him and what happened to him?

JC: So Ian was probably the first legitimate scientist that Elizabeth hired in 2005 and he helped Theranos develop its blood tests. He had worked at several diagnostics companies over the years and Theranos is a company that he joined when he was in his late 50s. So he was at toward the end of his career and he eventually developed qualms because he realized that the diagnostic boxes that Theranos was working on were not reliable. And he also came to distrust Elizabeth and felt she was dishonest and he was also, at one point, demoted because he tried to blow the whistle on the way she was running the company to his old friend Channing Robertson, the Stanford professor who had helped Elizabeth launch her company and who was her mentor. And Channing Robertson told Elizabeth everything Ian had said, so in 2010 Elizabeth fired Ian. He was rehired the next day because a lot of his colleagues lobbied Elizabeth to rehire him, but he wasn't hired in the same capacity, he was effectively demoted. And so that blow to his pride in his career triggered the beginning of a depression, along with the fact that the company was claiming things about its systems capabilities that he felt weren't true. And eventually his depression got worse and worse and unfortunately, he committed suicide in the spring of 2013.

CO: And his widow was a very good source for you, telling you what it was like — what had been like for Ian Gibbons to be working for Theranos and for Elizabeth Holmes. What did she tell you?

JC: So I met her for the first time in the early summer of 2015, a few months before my first story came out, and she was still very much grieving Ian. I met her at a restaurant in Palo Alto and she had tears in her eyes and she felt that none of this would have happened if Ian had not worked at Theranos. She didn't know the particulars of the technological problems that Theranos was having because Ian had been prevented from going into that with her because of the NDA he had signed. But she knew, because he had told her so, that things weren't working, that the technology wasn't working. She also knew that the culture, the corporate culture at Theranos was one of fear, paranoia and secrecy.

CO: Despite such tragedies and despite all the people who had their doubts and concerned this company kept on and the though the technology was certainly not up to snuff Theranos managed to partner with the U.S. drugstore chain Walgreens. What was the deal? What did they partner to do in the Walgreen chain?

JC: Right. So the idea was they were going to do a pilot launch first in about 45 stores, a couple in California and the rest in the Phoenix area, and then they were going to expand Theranos’ finger stick blood testing services to all of Walgreens stores, which meant expanding to more than 8,000 stores through the U.S. And Theranos services would be offered in these wellness centres within the Walgreens stores. And Walgreens customers would go in and get their fingers pricked and then get results, supposedly within a half-hour and at a fraction of the prices of traditional laboratories.

CO: And did it work for anybody?

JC: Well, behind the scenes what was actually happening is Theranos was using one of its devices, the Edison, which was the second to last iteration of its technology, for only a few finger stick tests, between a half dozen and a dozen. And the rest of the more than 240 blood tests on its menus were actually performed on modified Siemens machines. So the Siemens machines were hacked by Theranos employees and modified so that they could accommodate tiny fingers stick samples and they did that mostly by diluting the blood samples to create more volume so that the Siemens machines could accommodate those samples. But, of course, diluting the blood created problems because the blood as part of the Siemens machines protocol would already get diluted within the Siemens machine. So this meant an additional pre-dilution step. And when you're diluting blood twice you're tampering with the sample and creating more room for error. The other problem was that when you were pre-diluting the blood you were taking the concentration of the analytes in the blood you were trying to measure down to levels that were below the allowed measurement range for these Siemens machines. So it was essentially an unauthorized experiment and Siemens itself didn't even know that Theranos was doing this with its machines and regulators certainly didn't either. And this resulted in inaccurate results and the results that were performed — that were obtained from the Edison for the few tests that the Edison put out, were also inaccurate because those machines were unreliable. So in the end Theranos had to void or correct almost a million blood test results in Arizona and California.

CO: And were people harmed by this? Did they get misdiagnosed and have any consequences?

JC: It's really difficult to measure the harm, but I certainly came across more than a dozen instances of patients who got questionable test results back from Theranos and had health scares or had unnecessary medical treatments. Some patients have banded together in a putative class action in federal court in Arizona alleging that Theranos committed consumer fraud and medical battery. And one of those consumers who sued alleges that a Theranos blood test failed to detect his heart disease. And that as a result the heart attack that he subsequently suffered, could have been, and was not prevented.

CO: You are listening to my conversation with John Carreyrou, who is the author of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley. And you're listening to As It Happens. John, you began to investigate, you approached Theranos to find out what they're up to. This is late summer and fall of 2015. How did Theranos react when they knew that you were questioning the system and what they were selling?

JC: I actually approached them — or they approached me they found out that I was talking to a lot of people and so they hired a an outside PR person to approach me in late April of 2015 and I would say that for the first two months the company gave me the runaround. I think that it hoped that I would just go away and in the meantime Elizabeth kept giving interviews to magazines and making appearances on TV, it seemed like I was the only reporter in America that she wouldn't talk to. So I finally told the PR person that they had to address my questions, that we had to meet and they couldn't just ignore me. So what did the company do at that point? It sent lawyers led by David Boies to the midtown Manhattan newsroom of The Wall Street Journal. And Boies and these lawyers met with us for five hours in June of 2015 and were threatening and told us that I had misappropriated Theranos trade secrets, that had to essentially cease and desist and either destroy them or return them. And it was made very clear to us that if we proceeded with the story we would be sued. Over the ensuing weeks Theranos was able to figure out who some of my sources were, including Tyler Schultz's identity, and went and threatened these sources and, I'm convinced, had them surveiled by private investigators. And one of the most shocking episodes is described in the book in chapter 20 of the book, is the ordeal that the company and David Boies’ his law firm put Tyler Schultz through.

CO: At some point Elizabeth Holmes had to actually address her staff — what she thought of these articles you were writing, your publications — how she was going to defend it. Do you know what happened when she actually addressed the staff?

JC: Yes, when the first story that I wrote came out she was in Boston. So she did an interview on CNBC’s Mad Money program, in which she essentially denied my article, and then flew back to California the next day held an all-employee meeting in the cafeteria of Theranos’ Palo Alto headquarters and told employees that the story was inaccurate and false and seeded by disgruntled employees and competitors and said that she would take on the Wall Street Journal and the reporter. Toward the end of that meeting Sunny Balwani, who is number two at the company and Elizabeth's boyfriend, led employees in an “F You” chant. They were saying “F you, Carreyrou.”

CO: So have you ever seen it get personal like that before in your investigations?

JC: I've been doing this for more than 20 years and I've certainly experienced instances where there was pushback but never anything of this scale. I mean, having sources followed and intimidated and having essentially a scorched earth campaign waged against me, my newspaper and my sources, is something that I had not experienced before.

CO: How did the Wall Street Journal respond to this? Because there was one issue that came up you learned, that well Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Wall Street Journal, was actually an investor of Theranos.

JC: Right. And I actually didn't know that before we published my first story. I heard rumors and I only got confirmation that Rupert Murdoch had invested in Theranos a year after my first story was published in October of 2016, at which point we found out that his investment was actually enormous. He had been the single biggest investor in Theranos. He had put a $125 million dollars in the company. And it was quite a surprise and a shock for me when I learned that.

CO: Elizabeth Holmes attempted to pressure him to shut down your investigation?

JC: Right. And I learned that subsequently when I went on book leave, I learned that she met with him four times before my first story was published, including once in his office on the eighth floor of the News Corp building just two weeks before my story was published and I was on the fifth floor just three floors below. And I had no idea she was in the building.

CO: Elizabeth Holmes has said that she was — in response to all this — she's devastated by deficiencies in her lab and she has settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S. on charges of overseeing massive fraud. But has Elizabeth Holmes ever admitted she did anything wrong?

JC: Never. She did use the word devastated, but she didn't admit to having done anything wrong and she never apologized to the patients that she put in harm's way or to investors for that matter.

CO: Have you ever had a chance to interview her?

JC: Never. I tried to interview her for five-and-a-half months before my first story was published. I went back and sought interviews again over the next two, three years, including for the book, and she never agreed to speak to me.

CO: And your book isn't just about her — it's principally about her and this company — but it's also about Silicon Valley and its culture and this sort of cult of personality that exists there. How everything has a bit of a bit of fairy dust on top of it that people follow that very, very important people, smart people will go into investments with seems like, with their eyes half shut. So what do you make of that? What did you earn about the culture of Silicon Valley in the course of the investigation?

JC: There's a lot of innovation, for sure, going on in Silicon Valley, but there's also a lot of pretending, there's a lot of hubris and arrogance and Theranos was a story of fraud but also of hubris and arrogance. And the front man — or front woman rather — for the fraud was Elizabeth and she had this incredible charisma. She was also very smart and she had this ability to make people suspend disbelief. As I said, her idol was Steve Jobs, and she shared with Steve Jobs this trait, which was that she had a reality distortion field. She's able to cast a spell on people and to really get them excited and enamored with the vision that she's articulating, to the point where they forget to ask, ‘Are you really able to do this?’ ‘And if you are, can you walk me through how exactly it works and how you were able to solve these problems that thousands of researchers in academia and industry have been unable to solve for the past 20 years?’

CO: But if you hadn't done your investigation, if your investigative nose hadn't twitched at some point, I mean, a lot of people were invested in this — a lot of agencies that should have been on top of this, a lot of levels government that should have been alerted. This isn't like making an app for something that's just going to make your life more fun. This would affect people's health. How do you think it was able to bypass so many checks?

JC: Well, I mean, some parts of this story are almost incomprehensible. How did Walgreens, Theranos’ main retail partner, not do sufficient due diligence and figure out that the Theranos device was but a malfunctioning prototype? Walgreens actually hired a consultant very early on. His name is Kevin Hunter and he sniffed out that things were not right during visits at Theranos in Palo Alto and also during meetings that the two companies had. And he tried to warn people at Walgreens that this was going to end badly and Elizabeth and Sunny Balwani were able to get him marginalized by telling Walgreens that they didn't want him to participate in the weekly video conference calls and that they didn't want him to be in the in-person meetings anymore. And so he continued to work for Walgreens, but he was held at arm's length and not allowed to do his job. As far as the regulators are concerned, Elizabeth Theranos exploited a loophole between two agencies. And Elizabeth was able to capitalize on that ‘no man's land.’

CO: So at this point where — does Theranos still exist as a company?

JC: Theranos still exists. Elizabeth laid off another 100 employees about a month ago so the head count is now down to about 20 employees. And she announced to investors in an e-mail that the cash of the company was going to go beneath $3 million in late July. And at that point the covenant's of a loan agreement with the private equity firm Fortress would allow Fortress to seize the assets and to liquidate them. So it seems very clear that Theranos is going to be liquidated by August and will cease to exist. Then the other thing to keep an eye on is that there's a criminal investigation that's been conducted for more than two years now by the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco. And my sources tell me that that investigation is nearing its conclusion and that indictments of Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani are a distinct possibility.

CO: John it’s a remarkable story and I’m glad that you could — the Wall Street Journal gave you the ability to do this kind of investigation, very important. And thank you for speaking with us.

JC: Thank you so much for having me.

JD: John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup is out today. It's published by Knopf Doubleday. We reached Mr. Carreyrou in New York City. And we've got more on the fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

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May 21, 2018 episode transcript

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