Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2019

The Current Transcript for November 22, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: The very first thing will do, which will be putting forward a bill to lower taxes for the middle class.

LAURA LYNCH: Well, that's not quite right, Mr. Prime Minister. The very first thing Justin Trudeau did was appoint a minister for middle class prosperity and new cabinet portfolio filled by a new minister. Mona Fortier. First up today, she'll speak with us about her new post tax cuts and why the focus on the middle class. And depending on how you react to that conversation, you may need something warm to help you feel better.

SOUNDCLIP

I think we shouldn't be blind to the idea, there might be wisdom out there in traditional remedies. The challenge actually is isolating it and really defining it, synthesizing it, formulating it, testing it. That's the long road.

LL: Professor Jake Baum is talking about what appears to be the surprising medical properties of a bowl of soup. Turns out soup may help fight malaria. At the very least, it cures the common cold. Right? I'm Laura Lynch. And this is The Current.

Back To Top »

Mona Fortier, the new minister of middle class prosperity, on what her new job entails

Guests: Mona Fortier

[Music: Theme]

LL: There's been plenty of talk across the country about the new federal cabinet. Who's in, who's out? The newcomers. The familiar faces moving into new jobs. But one appointment in particular has got people talking.

SOUNDCLIP

Madame Mona Fortier, ministre de la prosperite de la classe moyen et ministre associe de finance. Miss Mona Fortier. Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance. (applause)

[Applause]

LL: Minister of middle class prosperity. That's a new one. What exactly does it mean? Well, we're about to find out. Mona Fortier joins me from our Ottawa studio. Hello.

MONA FORTIER: Good morning.

LL: What exactly is your job as you understand it?

MONA FORTIER: Well, first, I want to acknowledge the fact that it's a tremendous honour for me to join the cabinet and the prime minister's confidence for me to work with my colleagues to make sure that we put measures, concrete measures, to help build and have a strong middle class.

LL: Okay. So what exactly is your job as you understand it?

MONA FORTIER: So as you know, and during the campaign, we heard from Canadians that they expect us to work hard and deliver strong results for the middle class and make life more affordable. And to deliver on that platform and take real steps to build the Canadian economy for everyone, I've been mandated as Minister of Middle Class Prosperity, and Associate Minister of Finance, to work with my colleagues to make sure we have that lens enabling the fact that we want to put measures in to continue to grow our economy.

LL: But let's talk about definitions here. A lot of Canadians think of themselves as middle class. How do you define that term?

MONA FORTIER: Well, we know that we want a very strong economy for everyone. And having a strong middle class will entail the fact that we can continue to put measures and helping those that want to join the middle class to have access to those programs.

LL: But what's the definition? I mean, you hear differing definitions. Some people say it's a median income— the median income is $70,000 a year for a household. How do you define middle class?

MONA FORTIER: Well, I define the middle class where people feel that they can afford their way of life. They have quality of life. And they can send their kids to play hockey or even have different activities. It's having the cost of living where you can do what you want with your family. So I think that it's really important that we look at, how do we make our lives more affordable now. And that's, for me, something that we will be putting measures, and really putting efforts, with my colleagues, to have a strong economy.

LL: We heard the prime minister earlier talking about the pledging to make a middle class tax cut his government's first act of business. What can Canadians expect there?

MONA FORTIER: So as you probably have seen, during the last campaign, we had put, in the first few weeks, the idea of really reducing income tax on the middle class as the first step that we'll be undertaking. So we will be cutting.

LL: Do you know by how much? Have you got an idea?

MONA FORTIER: At this time I don't have the exact number. We have an idea, but I don't have the exact number.

LL: Well tax cuts obviously cost the government money in terms of revenue. Where is the money for the tax cut going to come from?

MONA FORTIER: I can tell you that we want to continue to invest in our economy. So we will be taking that investment to cut the middle class.

LL: Right. But where's the money for that going to come from?

MONA FORTIER: Well, I can't tell you that at this time, with all the briefings that I'll get, I'll be able to precisely tell you in maybe a few days. But I know that we have decided to move forward on some investments. And also by cutting the middle class, we will have a strong — we will give Canadians an opportunity to continue to thrive and to continue to put their money and their investments.

LL: I just want to put something to you then. David MacDonald from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives did an in-depth analysis of who benefits most from increasing a basic exemption from $13,000 to $15,000. That's an example. And in fact, he says, it's upper-middle-class families earning between $100,000 to $200,000 a year. Is that who really needs the most help?

MONA FORTIER: Well, again, if we look at a piecemeal approach, we can look at different measures that we are trying to put in to help different realities that Canadians have. So by raising to $15,000, it'll help a certain group. But then we want to also help like we did with the Canadian child benefit, help those that needed help to help for their children's different bills. So we will have different measures that will help create that possibility of bringing everyone.

LL: But you're not saying that the people who earn between— families that earn between $100,000 to $200,000 a year need more help from government, are you?

MONA FORTIER: Well, we know and we have really pledged the fact that the one per cent needs to give a little bit more. So we will put measures in to help the ones that can continue to build a strong economy and through the middle class we will be doing that.

LL: We asked Angela McEwen, who's a senior economist for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, about the planned middle class tax cut. I just want you to listen to some of what she told us.

SOUNDCLIP

It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. It's drops in the bucket for individual people. And it's a huge amount of money for the federal government, where they could spend that six billion dollars starting up universal pharmacare. Or they could put that money into affordable child care to help families who are struggling with the really high cost of childcare.

LL: Mona Fortier, how do you respond to that?

MONA FORTIER: Well, I believe that we have to realize that now that we're in a minority setting, the platform that we had proposed will have to have some ramifications. And in the next few weeks will make sure that we work with the opposition and also with our caucus colleagues to look at what can we do to continue to build our economy and some of the measures that we propose will move forward and others that we might want to look at with the opposition members. So I believe that in the next few weeks, you'll see with the throne speech and the conversations the prime minister has been having with the leaders of opposition, that we want to have the Canadians back first.

LL: Why is it a tax cut that mostly benefits people who earn more than $100,000 a year better than funding pharmacare or child care funding?

MONA FORTIER: Well, I again, we don't have a formal legislation that has been tabled yet. So we still have some time to work out what exactly we're going to do. And by working with the prime minister and with the minister of finance, we will have a legislation to reduce income tax on middle class as our first step. And hopefully then we'll have other measures that we'll propose.

LL: Including pharmacare and childcare?

MONA FORTIER: That is also on the table for conversations. Yes.

LL: According to the latest figures from Statistics Canada, one in seven Canadians actually lives in poverty. And I'm wondering whether the needs of the poor should be a higher priority than those of people who earn as much as $200,000 a year.

MONA FORTIER: Well, this is exactly why we put in the Canada Child Benefit, and also increased it in the last year. So I believe we will continue on concentrating to help those who are in more vulnerable situations to give them that push to be able to have more money in their pocket.

LL: Let's talk about that a little bit more, because the government has been praised for increasing the Canada Child Benefit. And according to Statistics Canada, again, it was a factor in lifting two hundred and seventy eight thousand children out of poverty between 2015 and 2017. And that has some saying it should be expanded into a basic income program that would lift people out of poverty, whether they have young children or not. What do you think of that?

MONA FORTIER: Well, it's an option that we have to look at. I'm not sure that we have decided exactly which will be the next measures. But it is a conversation we have to have. The opportunity that we have now in the next government is really to find ways to have a strong economy. And that is what we're going to put our efforts on.

LL: You talked earlier. You mentioned affordability being a big issue for many Canadians during the campaign. We heard a lot from Canadians who were really worried about the cost of living. Housing was big for a lot of people. I want you to listen to some of what we heard from Ateesh Chand, at our town hall in Surrey, B.C., on October 9th.

SOUNDCLIP

It's definitely been a struggle for us over the last few years. Financially is a lot of the similar things that we just talked about, so housing is definitely a struggle. We've moved back five years ago from Toronto. We actually had to move in with my mother in law, part of life, multi generation families. You've got, you know, the home that we're in - we're very fortunate that we're in a home. But if there were unforeseen costs that were going into that particular home, it'll make it that much more difficult. Right. Or if we end up with somebody not renting the basement. All right. We do have a mortgage helper currently. And if that doesn't happen. You went a few months without that, that would definitely have an impact.

LL: What can your government do to help people like Ateesh Chand who are being forced to share accommodation or carry big mortgages because the cost of housing is so high?

MONA FORTIER: Well housing is a very big issue and as you know, we put in a national housing strategy that we have to continue to work on. And just as an example in Ottawa Vanier, my riding, that was one of the most talked-about questions during the campaign and we have to move on this. We want Canadians to have affordable housing and a way of living that makes them be ready to continue to do so.

LL: What can you do about it?

MONA FORTIER: Well our national housing strategy is really one way that we will be able to increase different ways of having units available in communities and retrofits. And we have a whole strategy that we're putting forward and will continue to work on.

LL: Ms. Fortier, we have run out of time for now, but I hope we will be talking again once you get your mandate letters and start to carry on.

MONA FORTIER: Yes. Mandate letter and briefings, I will come back and have a conversation with you about this. Thank you for the invitation.

LL: I thank you for your time. Mon Fortier is the minister of Middle Class Prosperity and associate minister of Finance. She was in our Ottawa studio. You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch.

Back To Top »

Amnesty International researcher tells us why the organization believes Facebook and Google pose an "unprecedented" danger to human rights

Guest: Joe Westby

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Facebook. It's both social media like that's where I find lot of news. But then I was like messenger, of course, because that's I talk to people here. But then also, like I have family back home in the Philippines, I like talk to them, too. As far as Google, Google, it is my life. Like I used it for Google Docs, which is very nice for school. And then also just to put my email. I used to have like Yahoo! And like, I hated it. Google like it's like way faster, which I really like. But also search engine, of course, everyone's like, oh, just Google it. And like, you find like a million answers. So.

VOICE 2: I worry about my privacy because my credit cards in Google. My address is in Google. My life is in Google. So, I mean, if they were to get hacked, my entire life would be gone.

LL: Those students in Vancouver aren't alone. Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, they've all become huge parts of daily life. But there's a warning this week from Amnesty International. It's in a report. And the title makes it pretty clear what's at stake. It's called Surveillance Giants. How the business model of Google and Facebook Threatens Human Rights. Joe Westby is the lead author. He is in London, England. Hello.

JOE WESTBY: Hi, Laura.

LL: How are Facebook and Google violating human rights?

JOE WESTBY: Well, Facebook and Google's business relies on profiting from people's most intimate information, and the company's business depends on harvesting huge amounts of people's data on an unprecedented scale. We're talking billions of people all around the world and then using their algorithmic models and data analysis tools. They can know pretty much everything about you, you know. And these companies track where you are, who your friends are, what you're reading, what you're searching for. And they have been pretty explicit in that. Even a small amount of that data can reveal pretty much everything about you. And this represents a intrusion into our private lives that I think is unprecedented and can never be compatible with our right to privacy.

LL: Can you give some recent examples of a violation of people's right to privacy by Google or Facebook?

JOE WESTBY: Sure. I mean, it feels like at the moment, every week there is a news story out that shows how the company's business model is having really serious impacts on people. Just last week, there was a investigation showing how health websites in the UK were sharing highly sensitive data that people entering when they were searching on these sites, including medical symptoms and diagnoses, fatality information. That sensitive data was being shared with a whole range of ad tech companies, including, of course, Google and Facebook, who sit at the heart of this whole system. And that is the opposite of privacy. There is no way that people, when they go on these kind of websites, are consenting to that, that the intimate information being shared in this way with so many people.

LL: It's not just privacy you're concerned about. What other human rights do you think are being affected by these companies?

JOE WESTBY: Sure, well, I mean. What this situation is created is that people worldwide are trapped in a corporate surveillance machine and the initial intrusion into people's privacy actually then has a multiplier effect because the companies data analysis and algorithmic tools mean that they use data to then target people in highly granular ways, which has a huge knock on effect on lots of other rights. For example, you know, there's been well documented cases of how Google, Facebook, Facebook ad targeting platform enables discrimination. Just earlier this year, the company was forced to restrict targeting options for housing, employment or credit ads in the USA because of repeated cases of how these ads were being used in a discriminatory way, excluding people because of race or other protected characteristics. But Facebook only restricted these options in the U.S. following a settlement with civil rights groups in that country. Those options are still available in the rest of the world, so the risk of discrimination is still absolutely present.

LL: Now, we requested a comment from Facebook. They didn't respond. But there is a response from Facebook included in your report. And I just want to read an excerpt from that. This is a quote: "Our business model is what allows us to offer an important service where people can exercise foundational human rights to have a voice, freedom of expression and be able to connect freedom of association and assembly". They go on to say, quote: "There are countless examples of how people have used Facebook to advance human rights around the world". What's your response to that?

JOE WESTBY: Sure. I mean, I think that actually only serves to highlight the exact problem that we're we're facing. It is true, absolutely, that these platforms have become so dominant around the world. Social media is dominated by Facebook. Google dominates search, and a whole host of other different products and services, it is virtually impossible to engage with the digital world without coming onto that web of surveillance. But, you know, we recognize that people rely on these services everyday to express themselves freely, to realize their rights online. The Internet is know fantastically beneficial driver for human rights in the digital age, but it comes at a cost. There's now no choice but to consent in quotation marks to this system of pervasive, invasive surveillance of our most intimate lives and being trapped in this corporate surveillance machine.

LL: But Facebook and Google say that using their products is something people can choose to opt out of. What do you say to that?

JOE WESTBY: Sure. As I was saying, it just goes to the point that there were some countries in the world where Facebook is the Internet. People don't know the difference between Facebook and the Internet. The vast majority of smartphones around the world are underpinned by Google's Android operating system. And frankly, people have become so dependent on these platforms that it's not really realistic to expect these people to make a false choice between opting out of the digital world of the modern age or, you know, consenting to a system rights abuse. I think. Of course, nobody had to have a Facebook account, but I would challenge anybody to to really look at that digital lives and feel confident that they weren't coming under Facebook or Google's web of tracking and profiling and surveillance.

LL: So what is the solution?

JOE WESTBY: Well, what we're calling for is a radical overhaul of this surveillance based business model of Facebook and Google. Governments really need to now step in and end the era of self-regulation over the Internet. But they absolutely have to do this carefully and take a human rights based approach. I do think that there's an opportunity now. I think that governments and the general public are waking up to the power of these big tech giants and the kind of increasing examples of negative impacts on people's rights. Last year, Cambridge Analytica scandal, of course, really exposed. The ways in which our data can be used in unforeseen ways with real consequences in ways that might manipulate us much to influence what we see and what we think online. You know, that was 87 million people's Facebook profiles leaked to a company that nobody had ever heard of.

LL: We will have to leave it there, Joe. Thank you so much for your time.

JOE WESTBY: Thank you.

LL: Joe Westby is a researcher for Amnesty Tech and the lead author of Amnesty International's new report Surveillance Giants: How the Business Model of Google and Facebook Threatens Human Rights. He was in London, England. The CBC News is next. Then finding hope in a world facing huge existential threats.

SOUNDCLIP

The world's never safe. Problems never solved. We're just hopefully stay as innovative, as adaptive as we always have been. And hopefully that will never change.

[/sc].

LL: Bryan Walsh is surprisingly hopeful for a man who just wrote a book called End Times A Brief Guide to the End of the World. I'll talk to him in half an hour. But if you're looking for comfort, we're talking about the healing power of soup after the news. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

Back To Top »

Grey Cup, Soup

Guests: Jake Baum, Bonnie Stern, Joe Schwarcz

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, it might be bisque, borscht, consumee or chowder, whatever your pleasure, for generations, soup has been loved for its healing power. We'll find out if there's science backing up your grandmother's claims. But first, gearing up for the grid iron.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Canadian football fans are getting ready for the 107th Grey Cup in Calgary on Sunday. The Hamilton Tiger Cats face the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, but the party's already started. The CBC is Lisa Robinson dropped by the celebration in full swing.

SOUNDCLIP

BEVERLY: Hi, I'm Beverly and my husband's Patrick and we're both from B.C., Victoria, B.C. We come to them. We come to the Grey Cup every year. This is my 19th here. We are just CFL fans and we just love it. And it's such a friendly time. We all come in our colours. We're all here for them for the for the fun times and the game, of course, itself.

LISA ROBINSON: So how many Grey Cups have you gone to?

VOICE 1: 24 and I intend to be alive for Hamilton's in two years. If I have to go in a wheelchair.

VOICE 2: She's a big fan.

VOICE 3: My sister and I. We go to Hamilton in the summer for all the football games. And I said, you could come if you wanted. If you don't, I'll see you when we get home. Canadian football is the best football in the world. In the world. Forget that stuff down south. That's garbage and the camaraderie of getting together year after year in whatever city. And you get to see that city. We go to the museums and art galleries before we start the football stuff and you just see people that you've seen other years and we just meet these people from all across the country. I would never have crossed this country if it wasn't for the Canadian Football League.

VOICE 4: This is my 14th consecutive Grey Cup. It's an extremely Canadian party. And I wouldn't change anything about it for anything and I wouldn't miss anything for the world. Typically, I don't like to cheer for Western teams, but I think it's been long enough for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. And I would absolutely love it if the bombers finally got off tonight and then won themselves a great cup.

VOICE 5: We've come from Vancouver, Saskatchewan, Rough Rider Fan.

VOICE 6: B.C. Lions.

VOICE 5: I think I'm cheering for Winnipeg, but I haven't decided a hundred per cent yet.

VOICE 6: We're going to cheer for Winnipeg. Because that's where his nana is from.

LISA ROBINSON: Okay, but how did a Scotsman, Rough Rider fall in love with the B.C. Lions fan?

VOICE 5: Can I say she's cute and she loves football, so it's all good. The CFL is amazing. When you come to these events, it doesn't matter what team your cheering for, one big happy family, CFL fans.

VOICE 6: Having his party in Canada.

LISA ROBINSON: Well, welcome to Calgary. And I hope you guys have a great time while you're here.

VOICE 5: Awesome. Thanks for having us.

LL: Yep. Get the cheese ball, the chips and dip ready. The Grey Cup kicks off on Sunday. Thanks to Lisa Robinson of CBC Calgary. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to The Current. Up next, stirring the pot.

SOUNDCLIP

Most popularious is just like our chicken, not only delicious, it's nutrituios, if you like to stay healthy, go the chicken broth and beef broth. That's it.

LL: A busy lunch hour at the Soup Nutsy in Toronto. Outside, it's cold and rainy inside. People are lined up waiting for their soup to be served up from huge black vats.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I would say soup is magic. I got that. Because when you're sick, what do you want? All you really want is something warm, which is soup.

VOICE 2: Warms your soul a little bit. You kind of feel like sentimental, just makes you feel like you're at home.

VOICE 1: Vegetable soup with shredded chicken is classic in my family. Usually when it's cold out, the second cold weather hits or if anyone sick, it makes you feel cosy and better.

LL: That is a pretty common feeling about soup, it's more than just food. It's comfort, even medicine. But where's the proof that soup is anything more than just soothing and delicious? That is something scientists like Jake Baum are looking into. He's part of a team of researchers that just published a study in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, which suggests that some homemade soups might contain malaria fighting properties. Jake Baum is a professor of cell biology and infectious diseases at Imperial College in London. Hello.

JAEK BAUM: Hello.

LL: Now your work focuses on malaria. What made you decide to study soup?

JAEK BAUM: It came about actually as a conversation on the side debating what's the difference between a traditional remedy or kind of natural path type therapy and a real medicine. And it got me thinking about how actually this is a really important question in this day and age when I guess we're sort of all fighting concepts like fake news or something being bogus is something being real and, you know, anti-vaccine versus vaccine. So I sort of felt like actually there's a lot of debate about this idea of what's a real medicine. And it started out as a conversation in my family with my two kids. And then we thought, you know what? Let's bring it to the classroom and actually get kids thinking about what they're given when they're sick. And maybe this can be an exercise to actually discuss it. And you never know maybe some of those soups might even have anti-microbial properties.

LL: Well, tell me about the children you were working with. How old were they?

JAEK BAUM: So I did it with my kids school. It's a primary school which goes in the UK from five year olds up until sort of 10 or 11 year olds. Every kid was invited to bring in their own traditional broth from home. The only restriction was no lumps, no bits. But a surprising number of kids didn't listen to that. And yes. So they all brought in different soup samples. And after getting rid of those that didn't filter to well, because they had too many bits and we got down to about 55 soups. Were they from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds? I mean, they're all north London kids. But like any big metropolitan city that covers quite a diverse, you know, families from Turkey, families from the Middle East and English families and. Yes. So it was I mean, that wasn't a sampling of the world, but it was a it was a mixed sampling for sure.

LL: And when they brought their homemade soups, what kinds of soups were there?

JAEK BAUM: Actually, there were once soup, which really stood out, which was blood red. That was a beetroot soup. But chicken soup, beef broth, some kind of clear vegetable broth. And I think one kid even bought in honey and water because he said he did wasn't given soup. He was given honey and water when he wasn't feeling unwell.

LL: And I'm wondering, did you include the family recipe of your own soup in the testing as well?

JAEK BAUM: I'm particularly disappointed about how my family recipe for chicken soup fared in the experiment.

LL: Oh, my goodness. Okay, well, we'll get to that. Well, what exactly were you testing for in the soups?

JAEK BAUM: So we got the kids to spin the soups and filter them. And then we took the clarified, the clear liquid that comes from that, back to my lab, at Imperial College. And then we basically added it to two different experiments. There is an experiment where we get parasites to grow in blood, which mimics what would happen when you have malaria disease. And then the second experiment would be to add them to a different form of the malaria parasite which infects the mosquito and see whether that form of the parasite is able to develop as if it were going to infect the mosquitoes. Was sort of testing two different ideas, whether it will stop growth as the parasite in disease and whether it was stock transmission of the parasite to the mosquito.

LL: And what did you find?

JAEK BAUM: I think the most surprising thing for me was that we found variation. I think I had every suspicion that parasites, like most organisms, thrive when you give them lots of nutrients. So I figured that they probably will just grow better. And I think what was interesting is that some definitely grew better, but some really inhibited growth. And in particular, we found sort of between five and six soup samples that were very potent against blood stage growth and a couple of soups that were very potent against transmission blocking, theoretically stopping the mosquito from getting infected.

LL: And were those a certain type of soup?

JAEK BAUM: There were definitely different soups. I know for a fact that a couple of them were cabbage soups. So nothing stood out in terms of consistency, like which soup was giving, which property. But the fact that any soups had any activity was heartwarming and surprising.

LL: Well, soup is always heartwarming, isn't it?

JAEK BAUM: Yes, that's right.

LL: Those soups that seem to have the malaria fighting properties, how do they compare with the anti-malarial drugs on the market?

JAEK BAUM: I guess the important thing to recognize is that we're dealing it with an experimental set up in a lab. So how they actually compare is a very long and complicated both answer and you know, would be a very complicated road to go down. In the limited setting of the experiment, a couple of the soups were pretty potent. What does that mean? Not sure. I guess it depends what's in the soup. And I guess that's the million dollar question.

LL: And that's why you need to do more research, I suppose.

JAEK BAUM: I mean, to be honest, I do not see a future in my lab trying to really extract the magic ingredient from these soups. But there is a, I guess, a serious point about the endeavour, which is that there are natural products, you know, traditional remedies out there that certainly do contain very active potential drugs. I mean, some of the best and similarities we've ever had have come from natural products. One from [unintelligible], which is this artemisinin plant, and the other was from quinine, which is another important drug that is used to cure children for malaria, which comes from the quinoa bark. So that's two major anti malaria as that came from natural products. So I think we shouldn't be blind to the idea that there might be wisdom out there in traditional remedies. The challenge actually is isolating it and really defining it, synthesizing it, formulating it, testing it. That's the long road.

LL: I wonder if someone will do try to take this on and try to determine what elements in these suits were actually effective.

JAEK BAUM: I mean, at the moment, there's a large international community that is trying to test as many compounds as possible, both from chemistry libraries but also from natural product libraries where people have painstakingly isolated different chemicals from different plants or different sort of natural products and tried to standardize them and then test them. And that's one of the best ways of actually finding new drugs. There's an organization, Medicines for Malaria Venture, that coordinate this global push to try and find new products. And natural products are part of that pipeline.

LL: Now, you mentioned that your own chicken suit didn't fare too well, but I'm sure it still holds a place in your heart. Is that right? What is it that soup mean to you?

JAEK BAUM: Well, I guess it's if you're not feeling- I mean, that there is actually a rich literature of chicken soup against microbial infections. And there may well be some kind of elements within a hot broth that contains things that actually really do make you feel better. Putting your finger on what goes on is challenging. But I'm definitely not changing the family recipes because of one broken experiment.

LL: So when your mother fed it to you, it worked?

JAEK BAUM: I would swear by it. But I'm not about to market it for global malaria [unintelligible]. More work to be done.

LL: Okay. That's delightful. The science and also just the homemade part of it. I really thank you for your time.

JAEK BAUM: That's my pleasure.

LL: Jake Baum is a professor of cell biology and infectious diseases at Imperial College London. Now, of course, the healing powers of soup are real to many people, whether you can prove it or not. And it's something my next two guests have lots of experience with. One is a scientist. One is a chef and a cookbook author. But they are both soup lovers. Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society. His latest book is A Grain of Salt: The Science and Pseudoscience of What We Eat. And he's in Montreal. Bonnie Stern's cookbooks include Friday Night Dinners and Heart Smart. She is in Toronto. Hello to you both.

JOE SCHWATCZ: Hi.

BONNIE STERN: Hi.

LL: Joe, are you surprised by what Professor Baum found?

JOE SCHWATCZ: Not really, but I must say that I'm very pleased with the study that he did. Not necessarily because of the findings, but because of what he did for the students who learned about the scientific method and how a scientist goes about trying to solve a problem. And I think that that is very important these days. You know, in the days of fake news to teach children how to go about doing science. The results, of course, as Dr. Baum said, I mean, that's way down the road to see whether or not something active can be isolated. But certainly it's an interesting study.

LL: Bonnie, I think regardless of whether it's in a peer reviewed journal or not, we all have a sense the soup can be healing. Is that something that you feel?

BONNIE STERN: Oh, definitely. But I think it's wonderful to bring the two sides together, you know, to have the deliciousness and comfort ness of soup, but also know that there is something behind it.

LL: Right. So what do you think it is about soup?

BONNIE STERN: Well, there's so many things about soup. And I think, you know, a lot of people, when they're not feeling well, they love soup. When it's cold out, they love soup. If you have some soup in the freezer, you know, you're never going to be hungry. You know, when it's cold and you have people over and you welcome them with a little either cup or bowl of soup. It's something just such a welcome, a warm welcome. And it kind of is like the way you feel. It's like a hug.

LL: Joe, chicken soup is the go to for most people. You're a big advocate of sticking to scientific evidence. So what does science say? Is chicken soup actually good medicine?

JOE SCHWATCZ: It unfortunately doesn't say a whole lot. We do have some evidence that consuming anything hot is going to feel very soothing for the cold. But the rest is kind of conjecture. And I've been interested in this for quite a long time because I was a follower of Moses Maimonides, the 12th century physician and philosopher who first suggested the chicken soup for the common cold. And that kind of got me interested. And I started to look into the chemistry of it and see what kind of compounds can be leached out of the various vegetables that we put into the soup and out of the meat. And it turns out that, you know, one can't sort of make a case because a chicken meat contains an amino acid called cysteine, and that is a precursor for glutathione. And that's one of the compounds that is very important in the body's immune system. And there also have been some studies showing that when you consume hot beverages, especially chicken soup, it causes faster flow of mucus out of the nose. So, you know, one can kind of make an argument, and especially when you incorporate some spices, because maybe some of your listeners have heard of this salsa sniffles you know, when you when you eat them very spicy food and those runs. Well, yeah, that's actually legitimate. So if you put some spices like, you know, pepper and maybe some hot chilli into your soup, it's going to drive the virus out through the nose because of the faster mucus flow.

LL: Well, here we go. Now, before I ask you both about the soups you cook up, let's hear from another proud soup maker. This is Chef Marc Miron in Ottawa. He learned how to make soup in his mother's kitchen. It's also been a staple in his repertoire. And as he's travelled the world and cooks for the royals and the Rolling Stones, we visited his kitchen as he made a special soup with chickpeas, sweet potatoes, leeks and bacon.

SOUNDCLIP

You know, it's just a comfort. You know, you eat a soup, you're sick and you feel good because that's the way it was for years.

[Kitchen noise]

That's what happened. When you're a chef, you have too much equipment and life. Today we're doing a classic soup, which is called vichyssoise, French potato leek soup. But again, we got to make a little twist to it. I'm just going to put the leeks into two and I'm just going to rinse it so I make sure it's nice and clean. I think soup is something that from generation to generation, it was easy for the young kid to pick up when they saw mom make a soup, oh, I can do that. So we're just gonna start taking some of the garlic that's going to chop it. It's international. What are you go in Asia, you know, in the Caribbean. They all have their soup because I think it's a simple thing to do overall. And you don't necessarily need a recipe for it. You can actually make a soup out of anything. You open the fridge and say, okay, I have a bit of this, a bit of that. You open the cupboard. Oh, there's some pasta.

[Sound: Chopping and blending]

They want to pure it. So. Make sure you have enough blending power. Well, I work for the big company in Canada. And what I do is I'm the development chef, so I develop soup and meals for actually hospital long term care and retirement home. Well, soup is huge. And I, of course, as a chef, I always have an argument with the dietician because they don't want me to put this, this and that. But I always tell them it's not nourishing if you don't eat it. So what we do now is there's a big trend about protein. So, for example, we are revising a lot of soup to try to add protein because soup, when you're especially in the hospital, you're sick, is comfort food. You know, you want to have a soup. So what we doing right now is we increase the protein in the soup. So at least the patients are having some kind of decent protein put into their bodies. So that helps the healing and everything else.

[Sound: Kitchen noise]

My mom has nine, 10 with, her brothers and sister and grandma stayed at home. So, yes, mom, was a good cook. Mom cooked a lot, lots of soup and it was in the family. I have 45 cousins. Yes. It's ready. It's got a beautiful colour that comes from the sweet potato. And just smelling it is very, very nice. That's pretty good. People ask me often, you have the recipe, or send the recipe. And I always say add a little bit of love. That's the difference between. Some time to chef make the same recipe one is better is because he put more love into it. That's why.

LL: That is Chef Marc Miron in Ottawa. We are going to post that soup recipe on our website. I don't know about you, but that made me hungry, Bonnie. When you hear another chef talk about cooking with love, is that something that resonates with you?

BONNIE STERN: Well, what really resonated with me was that my mother had seven sisters and three brothers, too.

LL: Well, do you have a go to soup recipe yourself, Bonnie?

BONNIE STERN: Well, right now, I'm really and my family, too, is hung up on Yemenite chicken soup. And I was raised on Jewish chicken soup, but Eastern European or Ashkenazi Chicken soup, which is sort of the one in North America that everybody thinks about. But in Israel, Yemenite chicken soup is the one that is really popular. So I kind of took my mother's chicken soup and added all the ingredients that they used in the Yemenite version. But they serve it as a main course and I still serve it as a first class. And I add a whole bunch of cilantro, the whole thing with the stems and the roots. You have to really clean the roots, but it really adds so much flavour. And then whole garlic hose, the turmeric root, which gives it this beautiful, beautiful, deep golden colour and very good anti inflammatory effects. And this wonderful spice mix called hawaij, and that includes cumin and coriander seed and black pepper, caraway, turmeric powder if you didn't have the root and also cardamom. And it just adds so much flavour and then they serve it with a hot spicy, just as Joe was kind of saying a hot, spicy mixture called [unintelligible] and also a Greek mixture called [unintelligible]. And it's just so incredibly delicious. It's irresistible.

LL: That sounds so good. Joe, what about you? How do you make your chicken soup?

JOE SCHWATCZ: Well, for me, the real key ingredients, parsnip. I think that gives a great flavour and that sweetness, a lot of chicken bones in there and as many vegetables as I can possibly squeeze in. So the pot is just brimming with vegetables and bones and it tastes good.

LL: You actually sell it. You sell it as Dr. Joe's soup in Montreal.

JOE SCHWATCZ: Well it started as a lark. You know, I have a little store near my house on the corner and they make some prepared foods. And, you know, we were talking science and they said, OK, well, you know, let's see whether or not we can make something that tastes good and is kind of true to the science that so far has been delivered in terms of, you know, the ingredients with garlic, as you heard, and spices and people liked it. But, you know, I'm not making any kind of [unintelligible] at all. But what it does is it brings up the conversation. There are interesting things to talk about in terms of food. And that I mean, obviously, what we put into our mouth is important. Her body is composed of what we eat, right? Nothing else goes into her body except food.

LL: But there is this other aspect of it, too, that the food and soup especially seems to bring up lots of back, so many memories of childhood. Bonnie, what is it about soup that does that?

BONNIE STERN: Well, you know, there is a wonderful restaurant in Toronto called United Bakers Dairy Restaurant, and they specialize in soups and they have a different soup every day. But the one soup that never goes off the menu and they would never be able to take it off the menu if their split pea soup and its been made - The restaurant is 107 years old in Toronto from the same family. And they've been serving that soup from day one. And it's everyone's favourite. Everyone's kids love it. You know, it goes down the generations. People buy it and take it to sick friends. And I think it is the comfort aspect, you know, that it's just so wonderful to have a soup that you love so much that can bring you back to childhood, bring back memories of when you were young, what your mother made for you or bought for you, in this case. It's very homey and very wonderful. And, you know, there's also a wonderful charity that does Soup for Good. And it was started in Calgary by a woman named Sharon Hampton. And it's ten years. It's been going for ten years now, and they support domestic abuse and homeless youth. And people can get together and have a soup party either with their friends or a corporate event or something like that. And I think it's just a wonderful thing how soup and food can bring people together and do good deeds.

LL: Agreed. I don't know about you guys, but I'm having some soup today.

BONNIE STERN: And I've got some Yemenite chicken soup right beside their regard. Even though it's early in the morning.

LL: There we go. Bring it in. Bonnie. Thanks to both of you.

BONNIE STERN: Thank you.

JOE SCHWATCZ: Thank you so much.

LL: Bonnie Stern is a cookbook author in Toronto. Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society in Montreal. You can find his soup at Qualitifruit in Cot-St-Luc in Montreal, but not anywhere else, apparently. Coming up in our next half hour, I'll talk to the author of a book called End Times A Brief Guide to the End of the World. But wait. Stay with me. It is not nearly as depressing as it sounds. I mean, sure, the doomsday clock is as close as it's ever been to midnight, thanks to threats like climate change and nuclear war. But, there is still hope. Smart people are working on solutions. We will talk about those in about 90 seconds. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to The Current.

Back To Top »

This author looked at different ways the world might end. He says it's in our power to save it

Guest: Bryan Walsh

LL: Hi, I'm Laura Lynch. This is a podcast from the November 22nd edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

It's a state as worrisome as the most dangerous times of the Cold War. It's a state that features an unpredictable and shifting landscape of simmering disputes that multiply the chances for major conflict to erupt. This new abnormal is simply too volatile and too dangerous to accept as a continuing state of world affairs. Recognizing this grim reality, what we'd like to announce is that it is still two minutes to midnight. Remaining the closest to midnight that the clock has ever been set.

LL: As close as it's ever been set, this year, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, every year since 1947, this group of scientists has been assessing threats to humanity and setting and resetting its doomsday clock. For the past few years, journalist Bryan Walsh has taken on the unenviable task of thinking about the end of the world pretty much full time. He's been writing a book exploring what could happen and how people are trying to stop it. It's called End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World. And Bryan Walsh is in New York. Hi.

BRYAN WALSH: Hi. It's good to be here.

LL: The Doomsday Clock announcement describes this incredibly dire situation, but it barely made a ripple in the news. Why do you think that is?

BRYAN WALSH: Well, I think it's hard to really wrap your head around the kind of catastrophic threats that the Doomsday Clock is talking about or my book is trying to cover as well. We know on one level that something is really wrong with the world. We see climate change. We see rising international tensions, including around nuclear weapons. We see these new technologies and A.I. and biotech that we know can be quite powerful and potentially quite dangerous. But to really imagine that it could actually result in our end. I think it's just difficult. We have a sort of psychological block to that.

LL: Well, what made you want to dig deeper then into existential threat scientists are warning about?

BRYAN WALSH: Well, you know, it really grew out of the work I've been doing as a journalist for a number of years. I covered stories that was there in Ground Zero in Hong Kong, and should began to understand health threats. And then I began working on climate change for a number of years. And that really made me sort of see things through this lens of global catastrophic threats. And that's what climate change really is. And obviously, I don't think there's really anything more important than whether or not we do have a future at all. And what I also discovered was that, you know, that's up to us to a large degree. This is not you know, we're not waiting around to see what the dinosaurs, whether that asteroid will hit us or not. We actually have the power to protect ourselves. We have the power to you to use these technology in a way that doesn't result in the end of the world. And that's really what I wanted to cover. What we can do as much as what we might have to fear.

LL: Let's talk first, though, about some of the big risks that people are trying to guard against them. Tell me about the asteroid hunters.

BRYAN WALSH: So asteroids are fastening. I think when people think of a big natural end of the world, they do think about an asteroid hitting the earth. That's probably you know, we all know about the dinosaurs. That is indeed how they were forced into extinction. That's 66 million years ago when a six mile wide asteroid collided with the earth and created that terrible winter effect. But what's great about asteroids, or at least what makes asteroids different than all the other risks we face here is that we actually can do something about them and we are doing something about them. Starting really in the 1990s, we began to using, you know, scientists for NASA and other astronomers began really a dedicated program to scan the skies looking for any asteroids that may potentially be on a collision course with the earth. And, you know, we've actually been very good at detecting, tracking and surveilling the biggest ones, the ones larger than one kilometer and one. The great things about asteroids, of course, is that you can - once you know where they are - you can actually predict where they're going to go with really great precision. And so we know we're likely to be pretty safe from those big civilization killers in the decades ahead. At the same time, if that were not to be the case, if we were discover something coming out of outer space that is actually headed towards us, we actually have potentially, at least theoretically, the ability to stop them, to deflect them, to use technology, to use nuclear weapons, for instance, or a few other possibilities to actually slow down an asteroid. So it misses the earth. And that's kind of amazing. We've had this planet around for 4.5 billion years and now there's a species on it that actually protect itself from a major [unintelligible] threat. So that actually does make me feel better, even though there's still a lot more we could do around that subject.

LL: There is another natural threat. The super volcano in the world got a sense of that back in 1815. Tell me about what happened then.

BRYAN WALSH: That is causes the volcano eruption called Tiambora. That was in Indonesia. And that's the biggest eruption in known human history, at least. And it was so massive, actually, that it had global climatic effects. The year following that, 1816, was called in many parts of North America and Europe, the year without a summer. And that's because all the debris in the sulfur that was thrown into the atmosphere by this Titanic's powerful explosion actually sort of blanketed the globe and reduced the amount of sunlight coming in. It created a mini volcanic winter, maybe a volcanic autumn, if you wouldn't put it that way. And temperatures actually fell. And that had a major impact on the ability to grow crops and hundreds of thousands of people died from starvation in Asia, in Europe, here in North America, we saw huge changes around migration as people sort of moved to warmer or more hospitable areas. And this only happened there a little more than 200 years ago. So it's got a reminder of the way that, you know, these big, big events, they seem like they could never happen to us. But now we ought to go very far back to see one that did have a global effect.

LL: But are we in a better position now to deal with the threat of volcanoes erupting than we were two hundred years ago?

BRYAN WALSH: We do have the ability to monitor them. We can kind of get a sense for one when one might go, which at least gives us some time to prepare. And that might involve trying to set aside food reserves in case we do have that kind of volcanic winter effect or obviously would involve making sure there's nowhere near the volcano were to explode. So, that's a plus. But really, this is the one that experts in the field of existential risk worry about the most when it comes to natural threats. I think even more so than asteroids, volcanoes, the ones you have to worry about. And we've never experienced a super volcano. The last one to erupt was about 26 thousand years ago or so down in New Zealand. So all the ones we've seen so far are nothing compared to what could happen if the worst of the worst sort of volcano would erupt.

LL: Okay. Let's talk about human made danger. Another big one. Have a listen to this 1952 newsreel describing the testing of Britain's first atomic weapon in the Montebello Islands off of north Western Australia.

SOUNDCLIP

Thousands of tons of water, mud and sand blackened the gigantic fireball. Like a huge boiling cauldron, the cloud billowed upwards to a height of 10000 feet within two minutes, the spectacular success of the operation furthers our hopes of peace. But it seems that by the possession of such deadly weapons, peace can be maintained in this troubled world.

LL: Okay. Using nuclear weapons to maintain peace. That was a pretty optimistic takeaway. I'm wondering, how are you thinking about nuclear weapons has evolved since those days?

BRYAN WALSH: Well, it has evolved quite a bit. I mean, it's interesting to go back to that time period, the early 50s. I don't think policymakers or the public really understood the nature of these weapons. So we came very close to actually using those weapons in some of the conflicts of that time. And then I think especially as the number of warheads grew and science began to realize the global catastrophic effects that would result from a global thermonuclear war, that we began to understand the note that these far from guaranteeing any kind of peace. These weapons were, as President Kennedy put it, a sort of Damocles hanging over the head of the global population. And then you had the end of the Cold War, and then that threat sort of felt like it went away. Now it's come back. And in a big sense, I think, you know, when I talk to experts in this field, they're almost as worried about the threat of nuclear war now as they were during the Cold War, during the worst times that time period. But I don't think it's actually leaked out to the public as much as it used to. And I'm not sure why that is. It might be that people who focus on climate change, there's only one threat of the time they can focus on. But this is very real. It's the one that I worry about the most happening right now. I mean, it would not take a lot. It would just be most like a about by mistake, something happening. And then, you know, the unthinkable would follow.

LL: Why do you see it as the greatest threat humanity faces right now?

BRYAN WALSH: Because it could happen literally tomorrow. I mean, in the sense that you have a number of countries, more countries during the Cold War, they have access to nuclear weapons. You have far fewer warheads, but you have enough, we know, to make a big difference around the climate. I talked about the impact of a volcanic winter. We'd see something similar in a wide scale nuclear exchange where you'd have massive amounts of soot, debris, literally things burning that would be released in the atmosphere and you would have that again, that drastic winter effect. And I worry about it now because, you know, to be quite honest, I mean, when you look at the leaders who have control these weapons and one has less confidence in them, I'm certainly here in the U.S. where I am President Donald Trump does not seem to be as concerned about the burden of nuclear weapons as some his predecessors. But also simply, you know, the more countries that have access to those weapons, the better the chance that someone will use it. I don't think would be someone trying to fight and win a nuclear war. What would happen is, you know, it could be a mistake. We came very close to accidental exchanges during the Cold War, and I think that could still definitely happen now.

LL: Okay, so Bryan, is there any hope you can offer on this issue of a nuclear threat?

BRYAN WALSH: Well, I really hope that the public gets more involved in this. You know, here in the U.S. in the [unintelligible] you know, here in York City, we had hundreds of thousands of people come out to really call for a nuclear freeze. And it's just not really on the public radar in the same way. And I think that that needs to change for one thing. Secondarily, I really believe that we can start, frankly, with the U.S. I mean, we can't have a nuclear weapon system that is too powerful. You know, we have three methods of launching weapons. We have ICBM land based missiles. We have bombers. We have submarines. And those missiles, you know, the land based ones are particularly dangerous because they need to be used immediately. If you think a launch is happening, coming at your country, if you don't shoot them, they'll be destroyed. So do their very existence presents a risk and temptation. So, you know, we could change that tomorrow and still be just as safe as we'd be otherwise. But really, I think today what we need is the same kind of statesmanship that we saw at the end of the Cold War that led to that vast reduction in in warhead numbers. The problem is that that is not what's happening right now. You know, we're in a time where international treaties, international association seems just impossible. And as long as that's the case, I don't think we'll see an improvement in that situation.

LL: Well, in fact, the threat that that may be top of mind for most people right now is climate change, which brings us here.

SOUNDCLIP

Calving faces 300, sometimes 400 feet tall. Pieces of ice were shooting up out of the ocean 600 feet and then falling. The only way that you can really try to put it into scale with human references is if you imagine Manhattan. And all the sudden, all of those buildings just start to rumble and quake and peel off and just fall over and fall over and roll around. This whole massive city just breaking apart in front of your eyes.

LL: Now, that is from a documentary called Chasing Ice and they were describing a glacier calving in Greenland. You've seen that happen in person and you've spent a big part of your career covering climate crisis. What makes it different from the other existential risks?

BRYAN WALSH: The biggest thing that makes it different from the other risks is that it's happening right now. The other threats are really binary, which is to say, you know, an asteroid impact either happens or it doesn't. Nuclear war either happens or it doesn't. Climate change is happening now. It's been happening for some time. We are obviously seeing the effects, increased sea level rise, changing weather, any number of other impacts that are actually happening to us currently. The question really is, is how bad will it get? It can go from very bad. I'd say, too close to exponential, I would suggest. And that makes it hard to understand. Another part is that the changes we need to make around that have to be done now in the presence that carbon lasts in the atmosphere for decades and centuries. And what that means is that the warming that's built into this system now, that's a result of actions from the past. If we want to reduce warming in the future, we need to make sacrifices now. But the positive side, that will mostly be felt by future generations. And we're not very good about caring about the future when we think about the way our economic system is built. Even psychologically, we just tend not to care, especially for looking further than 10, 20 years. And it just makes this problem incredibly wicked to deal with.

LL: Well, then, how do you think we can change our thinking so that we do recognize that future danger and act on it?

BRYAN WALSH: I mean, certainly we can try to make the future real to us. Mean, personally, for me, my wife and I had our first child. And I have to say that the value that future has never really been real to me until I saw him. You know what? I'm not saying that you can't have those feelings without having children, but that's how worked for me. The other thing, though, at the same time is, you know, that's hard for us to do that caring about the future. So we have to look, I think in many ways for technological solutions that might sort of short circuit that, essentially allow us to act today in a way that doesn't require us to sort of make sacrifices and kind of get the benefits without having that kind of almost revolution. We need both politically and psychologically to really change for climate change.

LL: Okay. We have been running through a long list here, but you have identified a long list of threats. So let's look at one more. This is philanthropist Melinda Gates on her biggest fear.

SOUNDCLIP

The bioterrorism event. Definitely. Most definitely. A bioterrorism that could spread so quickly and we are so unprepared for it. Just say you bought one in New York and if you had something, could sparse spread? How many people and especially if it's what we call latent, you didn't see whatever the disease was for even 24, 48 hours. Think of the number of people that leave New York every day and go all over the world. We're an interconnected world.

LL: How compelling is her argument that bioterrorism is a huge threat?

BRYAN WALSH: Oh, I think it's incredibly compelling. This is the single one that I'm most worried about in the sort of near future. We are very close to a time period where we will be able to engineer viruses that are far worse than anything we would see in nature. And, you know, infectious disease has killed more human beings than anything else, any more than a disaster, any more than any war. But what we will be able to do using tools like crisper, like gene editing, is to create something that can be both very contagious and very deadly. And as Melinda Gates points out there, it could be implemented or released in a way that's designed for maximum carnage. And that really scares me, because that's getting easier and easier to do, which means more and more people can do it. I fear both that terrorists could use this. I mean, people who religious want to kill as many people as possible or this could happen accidentally. You know, scientists are using these tools right now to engineer viruses for legitimate scientific research. But, you know, things escape from labs that that does happen.

LL: Well, then how well are we doing at trying to prevent it or to stop one if it starts?

BRYAN WALSH: I mean, the problem with biotechnology really a lot of the risks we have is that offense tend to move faster than defense. But I'm hopeful that we'll see that technology improve as well to the point where you might be able to create a vaccine almost as fast as a pathogen and you can neutralize it in that way. I mean, ultimately, that's going to be the best defense we can have because at the same time, we don't want to abandon these technologies and we will do amazing medical work using crisper and gene editing. I mean, things will be here that have haunted humankind for all its history. But, you know, that will come with these dangers. And we just had to figure out the way to get the most out of that technology while avoiding the worst.

LL: Tell me what happened to David Evans, the University of Alberta scientist who got into trouble working on something called horse pox.

BRYAN WALSH: So he's a well-respected smallpox researcher and he wanted to basically engineer horse pox virus from scratch in an effort to create a better smallpox vaccine. And that was considered dangerous by a lot of scientists because they were you know, that essentially when he publishes that work, he's showing people a blueprint in terms of how to do that, how to essentially create something that could be quite dangerous. And that that is, you know, a really great illustration of two things. One is the abilities, new tools to create things from scratch. It's no longer that you would have to say get a sample of smallpox from one of the two highly secure labs in the U.S. and Russia, if you want to create a weapon out of it. Increasing in the future, you'll be able to actually synthesize that potentially from the ground up. That's one thing. The other is that while science tries to create norms, the reality is that, you know, individual scientists have great power. And if you one person, for their own reasons aside, this is something I think is good to do. There's not a lot that can be done to stop them. We saw that again with the crisper babies last year. That was something no scientist, reputable scientists thought should be done. But one scientist in China, one to do it, and now it's done. That's hard to control.

LL: The twin girls who were Gina that had to make them resistant to HIV. So when you pull back from focusing on these all of these threats individually, what have you learned about how we respond to existential risk?

BRYAN WALSH: Well, I've learned that we are not very good at responding to existential risk. It really challenges our imagination. And to me, that's the first thing we need to do to really begin to prepare for these risks. We need to actually able to conceive of them to understand that something that terrible could actually happen. So that's one thing. We have a sort of you know, sometimes there's a term called scope neglect, where once you start to get to really big numbers, almost of the mind shuts off. And the other is that we're very good at paying attention to risks that are right in front of us. We call that availability bias. If we see something in the newspaper, you know, and that can lead us sometimes to be more scared of things, we should be. Know we've more scattered terrorism, for instance, just because, you know, when it happens, it gets a lot of news. But the problem with a lot of these threats, all them really is that they never happened before. Obviously, we never had a full scale nuclear war. We've never had a gigantic asteroid hit us. We've never had a biotechnology pandemic. And so it's hard to take those risks seriously. And that's why scientists are trying to put that into hard numbers so we can actually put these risks against the everyday ones we face and understand that even though they're incredibly rare, the consequences are so great that we need to be doing a lot more than we are right now.

LL: Yes. You say you've talked to a lot of people who are trying to figure out how to save us from these threats. What did they have in common?

BRYAN WALSH: I think what they have in common is an ability, sort of almost depersonalized and emotional lives, this issue. You know, it's hard not to get emotional when you think about the possibility, the end of the world, but they can kind of look at the numbers, look at the real risk factors, look at the consequences and actually begin to judge one from the other. That does make me feel better to know that there are an increasing number of scientists who are working on this field in a holistic kind of way. They're not just looking at, you know, nuclear war or asteroids. They're looking at the whole picture of existential risks. And I think that's we're going to need to do increasingly in the future as new ones arise. And as those old ones are still with us.

LL: Okay, I want to ask you briefly then about a few specific people and their work. Tell me about Robin Hanson.

BRYAN WALSH: So Robin Hanson is an economist at George Washington University in Washington, DC, who really looks at how we can sort of protect ourselves if the worst happens. He has theories that, you know, one smart thing to do actually would be to create refuges. I mean, imagine them is like doomsday shelters, but just far greater and far more adorable. He actually thinks it might make sense to say keep a rotating group of people going down to these shelters, you know, for a year at a time. So if the worst does happen, there is essentially a backup to humanity, kind of a vault, as if they could come and rebuild society. And then that sounds like something from a science fiction movie.

LL: It does. Yes.

BRYAN WALSH: But when you think about, you know, it's the difference between total extinction of humankind and something close to it, but still enough humans left to restart our species is huge because if they can do that, we continue. There is still a future. If you don't do that, there's no future. And that's the worst possible outcome.

LL: All right, Brian Wilcox, tell me about him and his plans for dealing with volcanoes.

BRYAN WALSH: Brian Wilcox is a NASA scientist who is really interested in planetary defense and usually NASA that means asteroids. You know, the space agency, they look at stuff from space. But he crunched the numbers and actually found the super volcanoes were a bigger threat. And the one that he's particularly worried about, a lot of volcanologists are worried about as well is Yellowstone, the National Park in the U.S., where this is a volcano-- It's a super volcano that's exploded three times over the last 2.1 million years. And we know that if it blows, it would have. Terrible effects for North America, including Canada. It would spread around the world. It could potentially be world ending. So he has a theory that you could essentially cool down the super volcano over time by pumping huge amounts of water into the magma reservoir that's underneath Yellowstone that actually creates all those guys that the park is so well known for. You know, could we do that? I mean, it would be the very edge of what we can do in terms of drilling, in terms of human science. It would also take centuries or even longer. So it's a little hard to imagine. But I like his thinking because he is thinking in that big way. He's thinking about the future. He's thinking about what we might need to do over the course of centuries to really avert a risk like that.

LL: You say we're not bad at trying to prevent the worst from happening, but we're pretty lousy at really preparing for it. How so?

BRYAN WALSH: Maybe you understand if you're looking at some degree of natural threat, you have to think what a geologist' thinks. A geologist can look at the whole scope, the whole 4.5 billion years of this planet's history and understand that the amount of time we, human civilization, has lived in this planet is miniscule. And, you know, we've been very fortunate. We've lived in a very calm, comparatively climate, you know, conducive to life. That's why we have 7.7 Billion people spread around this planet. But that's not the way things always are. I think, you know, if we were able to actually use the tools of science to get that full picture, we'd be more worried. And if we're more worried, you know, hopefully we won't be paralyzed by that. But rather, we'd actually take steps to do whatever we can to prevent, which is, you know, quite a lot prevent or prepare.

LL: Now, there are doomsday preppers out there, the ones who build bunkers and such. Are they doing the right thing?

BRYAN WALSH: No, I don't think so. I mean, I think it's important for everyone, you know, to be prepared to deal with a natural disaster. You should have water in hand. You should have medicines, things like that, in case you need to be on your own for, say, three or four days without power, without access to modern society, essentially. But when I talk about these big existential threats, you know, a doomsday shelter is not going to save you. You know, you're not going to be able to survive on your own. Quite the opposite. We need to actually come together as a society, as a globe, to really prepare for these threats, because they do affect every one of us. And so we will only survive if we can work together.

LL: You even share some guess tips for survival in a situation like that. Tell me what role mushrooms and rats can play in life after a catastrophe.

BRYAN WALSH: Well, they could be dinner, I think, is what they would be. What a lot of these threats have in common in terms their effects is, as I mentioned, that winter effect know whether it's a volcano or an asteroid or a nuclear war. And the big impact of that is, it's very hard to grow food when there's no sun. In fact, it's pretty much impossible. And we only have maybe two months of food reserves globally, perhaps. And so there's no way to store enough food to really keep everyone going. And that's where if you can't grow food, you need to look at alternative sources. And, you know, some of it might involve microbes, algae, and we should actually be able to grow that. In that way, it could definitely involve mushrooms, which don't really need the sun and could actually grow on dead trees, of which there are probably unfortunate, quite a few. And then even looking at things like rats, they grow very quickly, you know, and can meet a lot of needs if we would actually raise them in that way. Or insects, which are actually already eaten by billions of people on this planet or which are a great source of protein. We'd have to be creative. And most of all, we need to do this beforehand, like we're very hard, I think, after the disaster. But if we invest now, I think that would make a huge difference if when the worst comes.

LL: There is one conversation you had in the course of writing the book that you say was the most startling, and it was with an ethics professor at Oxford. What is it that startled you about it?

BRYAN WALSH: So that professors named Julian Savulescu and he believes actually that we're in such great danger from these existential threats that essentially the power of what we can do as human beings has so exceeded our ability to control that power, our wisdom, essentially that our only hope is to essentially use one of those tools, biotechnology, to engineer humans that are more altruistic, that are essentially able to take care of the future better than we are now. And, you know, this is more of a thought experiment than it is something that we could do. We don't know the genes for altruism or the genes for caring about the future yet. But to me, you know, if our best option is to essentially make human beings that just are not like us, you know, that are not selfish as we are, that they care more about the future, that are more altruistic. If that's the only way we can survive. That really, I think drives home just what kind of danger we're in. And since that's not something we're likely be able to do, we're going to have to do that alone.

LL: Bryan, you are immersed in all of this. You've been talking to us about all the threats. Where do you find your hope?

BRYAN WALSH: Well, I find my hope in my son. I think, you know, I find my hope in the idea that there will be a future for humanity. I also find a lot of hope in in history. We face really great disasters. I talk about one in the book another supervolcano called Toba, 74000 years ago, that brought humanity, humanity very close to extinction. And yet we pulled through there and we pulled through for other disaster, through wars, through pandemic. So my hope is that, you know, just so we've done that before, we can do it again even when we're dealing with entirely new threats. And ultimately, I feel we will. You know, humanity tends to be kind of in a race. You know, we face new challenges around, say, sustainability. We invent new technologies that expands what we're able to do and then that creates new challenges. The world is never safe. The problem is never solved. We just, you know, hopefully stay as innovative and as adaptive as we always have been. And hopefully that will never change.

LL: Well, let's end on that hopeful note, then, Bryan Walsh. Thank you.

BRYAN WALSH: Thank you.

LL: Bryan Walsh is a journalist, an optimist, and the author of End Times A Brief Guide to the End of the World. He was in New York.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Friday November 22, 2019 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This