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The AIH Transcript for November 27, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I'm Chris Howden. This is “As It Happens”.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Overwhelming and undermining. An Iran watcher says the assassination of a top nuclear scientist isn't about preventing the country from getting the bomb. It's about scuttling peace talks between Iran and the incoming U.S. administration.

CH: So close. And yet, so far. A series of setbacks have left a refugee bound for Canada stranded in Beirut. And the latest one is the most frustrating of all: bureaucracy.

CO: Sticking up for his decision to find the thing that's sticking up. Authorities in Utah didn't reveal the location of a mysterious metal monolith in the desert, but our guest stands by his choice to find it and stand by it.

CH: Attendance record. An Indigenous student in Quebec faces down police to travel to her high school in New Brunswick. The province says it's just simple COVID border rules. But she says it's discrimination.

CO: Flogging a dark horse. A Canadian professor didn't expect to win a prize for “oddest book title” for his work about animal metaphors in Indonesia. But now he's the cat who ate the canary.

CH: And... dripping with sarcasm. The tough people who've been swimming in the frigid waters of Ireland's Dublin Bay pride themselves on not putting on warm clothes afterwards. So they're scornful about some soft newcomers and their even softer robes.

CH: “As It Happens”, the Friday edition. Radio that acknowledges the robe not taken.

Part one: Iran nuclear scientist, Utah monolith, Diagram Prize winner

Iran nuclear scientist

Guest: Trita Parsi

CO: All right. Now, of course, the officials in Utah are a bit concerned about everyone heading out into the desert looking for this. Do you think that that's a reason to be concerned? Do you think a lot of visitors might not be able to get to that site safely?

DS: I feel they'll probably be able to get up to the spot where they leave their vehicle pretty safely, as long as they had an SUV. I do worry a little bit about when people go down into the canyons, that's kind of when it gets most dangerous. So I do recommend that people go with someone else if they don't have too much experience hiking, and just ask that they bring a GPS because they won't have cell phone service out there.

CO: And maybe leave the hallucinogenics in the car.

DS: [laughing] Yes, yeah, absolutely.

CO: Yeah, it sounds like quite a trip in many respects. Dave, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

DS: Absolutely. Thank you.

CO: Bye.

DS: Bye.

CH: David Surber is a veteran -- and veteran explorer -- in Utah. We reached him in Salt Lake City.

[Music: Electornic]

Diagram Prize winner

Guest: Gregory Forth

CH: If you’re feeling antsy, maybe you should try becoming a busy beaver. Pursue your passion like a dog with a bone. And if it keeps you up late, just become a night owl. Animal metaphors have multiplied in the English language like rabbits. As journalists, we pursue man-bites-dog stories and are taught to beware of red herrings. And as an anthropologist working in eastern Indonesia, Gregory Forth was interested in some of the more unique animal metaphors he encountered there. Like the one that became the title of his book, "A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path." That book — more specifically, its title — just won Mr. Forth the prestigious Diagram Prize, awarded annually by The Bookseller magazine to the book with the oddest title of the year. And awarded this year to a Canadian! We reached Gregory Forth in Edmonton.

CO: Gregory, you won this prize by a landslide. You had 49 per cent of the vote against all the other books. How does that feel?

GREGORY FORTH: Oh, well, it feels good. I'm very pleased to have won the prize, you know, regardless of the margin. As I said to somebody yesterday, I did better than, well, not quite so well as Joe Biden, but I did better than most politicians [CO chuckles] who get to become premiers or prime ministers.

CO: Right. Actually, you did have a landslide. Unlike Donald Trump, who claims to have had a landslide. You really did have one.

GF: Oh, I did even better than him. I think he got 47 per cent of the popular vote. But yeah. [both chuckling]

CO: Okay, so now you won for this very unusual prize, which is for “the weirdest book titles”.

GF: Yeah.

CO: And you were up against some very stiff competition. You had “How to Make Love to a Despot”, Lawnmowers: an Illustrated History”, Introducing the Medieval Ass”. I mean, those are three of them. I mean, your book, “A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path”. How do you think that you won?

GF: I'm really not sure. I might say, first of all, that I only heard about this prize a few weeks ago when a friend of my wife’s actually, who is a regular listener, “As It Happens”, [chuckling] heard, you know, your initial piece and got in touch with us. Otherwise, I'd never heard of it. Why it won, I don't know? I mean, it doesn't seem so unusual to me. And, in fact, the subtitle of the book, you know, goes some way towards explaining it.

CO: Right. But you didn't know you had been on the shortlist until you heard it on “As It Happens”, or somebody did?

GF: That's exactly right.

CO: The interview that you're talking about was with Tom Tivnan, and about this year's shortlist when it first came out. And here's what he had to say. We’ll just play a bit of our interview with him. Here's what he had to say about your book.

TOM TIVNAN: We don't care about what's in the books, we just go for the title. And, in fact, I mean, most of the books that we pick are quite serious academic titles. [chuckling] They’re just kind of odd to us, the layman and layperson, I should say. For example, your Canadian entry, “A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path” is a very serious look at eastern Indonesian dialects and anthropology, but it just kind of raises a chuckle to us.

CO: All right. So that's why you were on the list. Did you think your book was going to raise a chuckle with those who actually read it?

GF: well, it wasn't intended that way. I just wanted an example of one of these animal metaphors to use as the main title. I will say, though, that, yeah, it's a serious book, but a lot of these metaphors are amusing.

CO: Let's look at some of these metaphors. And, first of all, the title metaphor, “A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path”. What does that mean? What does that refer to?

GF: That means to somebody who doesn't get on with things. They start one one job, one task, but they don't finish it before skipping to something else. And, you know, the result may be that they don't finish many of these tasks at all. It does remind me, and this is something I mentioned in the book, somewhat of our English language metaphor, if I can say this on CBC, pissing about. I don't think anybody knows the origin of that English metaphor. But what interested me so much about these metaphors in the Ngaju language in eastern Indonesia was that very many people could explain them to you.

CO: Where did you find all of these metaphors?

GF: Well, you know, I've been conducting research in eastern Indonesia for, well, longer than I can remember now. But certainly among these particular people on the island of Flores, I got going in the early 1980s. I do have a special interest in human-animal relations, but yeah, partly as part of learning the language, I started to come across these things and I would, of course, note them down. And by what, a couple of years ago, I had enough to go ahead with this book.

CO: But this is not just in Indonesia. This is it's quite common, right, to use animal images as metaphors in all languages.

GF: In all languages, I would say it's universal, although, you know, that's always a hard call to prove. But yes, certainly, I mean, these are very numerous in English.

CO: Now, there's one that's really intriguing of these metaphors, monkey fooled by the sun. What’s that metaphor? What does that when you say it's like a monkey fooled by the sun?

GF: This refers to an old man who takes a young wife and doesn't survive for very long. You know, he expires or dies after a few weeks or a month. I don't know how long.

CO: There's another one that's really long because usually metaphors are supposed to be quick ways of making an analogy. But this one, it's like leaving nothing behind, having even beaten the walls and floors to remove the bedbugs and dog fleas.

GF: [chuckle] Well, you know, that's a literal translation of a long phrase. They can say it much quicker than we can in English. Yeah, that's a particular favourite of mine. And it makes a number of general points I try to make in the book. The bedbugs and dog fleas animals, to be sure, are most comparable in English metaphor to the kitchen sink. By somebody always goes on a holiday or whatever, taking everything but the kitchen sink, or another version I think is even the kitchen sink. So in this case, you have a bunch of people living in a house. They all leave and somebody says, oh, you know, they've gone even taking the bedbugs and the dog fleas.

CO: But now your book might become quite successful. Do you think it could become a cash cow?

GF: [laughing] Well now, there's a very nice animal metaphor. I'm glad you picked that one. Well, I would hope so. You know, one typically doesn't make a lot of money from academic books, at least not through sale. You know, you can get promotions at universities for writing a good book. But I'm already retired, so I've missed the boat on that one.

CO: [laughing] OK, on that metaphor, we'll leave it. Gregory, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

GF: Okay. Well, thanks for calling.

CO: Bye.

GF: Bye-bye.

CH: Gregory Forth is a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, and the author of this year's Diagram Prize winner, "A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path." It's published by McGill-Queen's University Press. We reached Mr. Forth in Edmonton. For more on this story, visit our website, at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Jazz]

Soft Dublin Bay cold swimmers

CH: It's cold in Dublin Bay. But tensions in the Irish city's sea-swimming community are heating up. A small group of people have been swimming in Dublin Bay year-round for years. And when they emerge from the frigid water, the "hardies" — as they're called — quickly wrap themselves up in...nothing. Hence the nickname. But all-temperature swimming is getting more popular. Which means more and more newbies are mixing with the hardies. And when these newbies charge, shivering, out of the Bay, they immediately raise their temperatures by throwing on a kind of giant poncho called a "dryrobe". The hardies have not warmed to this development. In fact, some have even put up signs in sea-swimming spots. One reads "By order: no dryrobes or dryrobe types!!!" Another: "Warning: beware of dryrobe wankers..." Apparently, there's more than just the one layer to this story. But the key to this new, weird conflict seems to go back to an old and familiar one. Because unlike their American cousins the "Slanket" or the "Snuggie", dryrobes are expensive — meaning, no matter how carefully fitted they are, their wearers seem too big for their britches. But maybe, in the spirit of making a hard year a little bit better, the factions will set aside their differences, and focus on the warmth of human kindness. And if they do, there won't be a dry robe in the house.

Part two: Stuck in Lebanon, Quebec/New Brunswick students

Stuck in Lebanon

Guest: Sandra Brunner

CH: Selam Nega has faced down a pandemic, a massive explosion, and now bureaucratic roadblocks...all in a quest to come to Canada. The refugee escaped domestic violence in Ethiopia, before struggling to keep her head above water in Lebanon. Then, six months ago, the word came that she and her four-year-old son had been granted permanent residency in Canada. COVID initially stopped her from getting on the plane, but the final happy ending was supposed to happen last month. Now, a clerical error on her immigration forms has delayed her once again. Sandra Brunner is part of the Canadian group that's sponsoring Selam Nega. We reached her in Toronto.

CO: Sandra, I know you have been trying to get Selam and her son to Canada for three years. So what was it like for you to hear about this latest setback?

SANDRA BRUNNER: It was devastating, to be honest. When I first got the news, it was unbelievable. And I think put all of us in shock.

CO: And what about Selam herself? How are her spirits?

SB: She was crushed, very despondent. She's particularly hopeful about most things. And it took a while for her to come around.

CO: This has been a crazy roller coaster ride for her, hasn't it? I mean, even before not even counting all the time she spent just getting out of Ethiopia. What's this latest setback? What is it, a clerical mistake has delayed her arrival to Canada?

SB: Yes, a standard document that is required for every single parent who wants to travel with a child was just not prepared for her.

CO: How do they manage not to? It's a pretty key document. So how is it that they managed not to have this document for her?

SB: I have no idea. It's beyond comprehension, to be honest. It's a huge oversight. The error meant that she couldn't apply for her exit visa, which is what she needed to get on the plane. Because when I discussed it or emailed with the IOM, the International Office of Migration, they just said to me, oh, well, she didn't get her exit visa. And the reality is she didn't even apply for the visa because she didn't have all the required documents.

CO: Do you know much about her back story? What happened to her, how she ended up in Lebanon?

SB: I do. From Ethiopia to Lebanon, she came as a migrant worker, as a number of people do, a domestic worker. She can't go back to Ethiopia for reasons I'd rather not be made public just because it would actually increase the level of danger that she's in right now.

CO: Of course.

SB: Yeah.

CO: Can you tell us anything about because the father of Danny is not with her. He's apparently in Canada. Do you know anything about that?

SB: Yes. It's a volatile situation. He's not in the best headspace emotionally right now. So she has no interest in re-establishing a connection with him. But he has made it very difficult for us to get her and Danny out of the country, he could to have three years ago sponsored them to come here, and he refused. We had to go through a legal sponsorship process.

CO: It sounds like you are her only lifeline. How did you come to be involved with Selam and her son?

SB: She connected with us through the friends of the husband because he abandoned her in Lebanon. So she wrote us and said, do you know this man? Like, I am his wife. I have his baby. He's not coming through on his promise to bring us to Canada. So because he had applied to come to Canada before he met her, and then they got married. And then when he was actually called by immigration to say, do you want to come? He said, well, I now married with a child. And they said, well, you can go to the back of the line and come as a family, or you can come and then once you're in Canada, we'll bring them over. So that was his intention or that's where he stated his intention was. But then once he got to Canada, he decided that being a single man was more to his liking, so.

CO: You get a sense in this story of just how precarious the life is of any refugee, but of a woman on her own. Without you, she must be, you say she's crushed. It’s just so difficult, isn't it?

SB: Yes, it's very challenging when you sort of start to stack all the barriers she has against her, and that she still has so much faith and strength is actually inspiring for me.

CO: What have you prepared for her arrival with Danny?

SB: We have a one-bedroom apartment that's completely furnished. And we have clothes and toys for Danny. And the kitchen is fully stocked. We have some friends in the neighbourhood that will be excited and waiting for them. Danny will be going to school with kids from another family that I sponsored. Yeah, they have a life here. They have a beautiful life waiting for them.

CO: And what do you think that moment will be like when Selam and Danny come through that arrival's door at Pearson International Airport?

CO: Oh, gosh, there will be a lot of tears. So, so much joy and just relief. And having that stress gone. I know for me, will be incredible. So I can only imagine what it feels like for them to have them finally safe, the safest Danny has ever been or will ever be, and definitely, the safest Selam has ever been.

CO: Sandra, I'm so glad that you are there for them, and I hope that day comes very soon.

SB: Oh, I hope so, too.

CO: Take care.

SB: Thank you.

CH: Sandra Brunner is part of the Canadian group that's sponsoring Selam Nega. We reached her in Toronto.

New Zealand refugee MP

IBRAHIM OMER: the chance of making it in Sudan was probably about 50/50. Lots of people don't make it. At the time, there was a shoot-to-kill policy for deserters. I took the risk. I said to myself; I would rather die trying to escape than to die a slow death in Eritrea. Weeks later, I made it. I made it across the border and handed myself into the UNHCR camp and the Sudanese authorities. And I was granted refugee status to stay in Sudan. Five years later, I came to New Zealand as a refugee. I had never heard of this place, to be honest. [laughing from the background] But an immigration officer told me it was one of the most peaceful countries in the world. That was good enough for me because I was sick and tired of looking over my shoulder. My early life in New Zealand wasn’t easy. I got a job as a security guard, but I left it after I was attacked and beaten in the middle of night. I did farm work, fruit picking and started cleaning. My low wages meant I couldn't save to study. And in order to support my family back home, I picked up more and more hours, until I was doing 80 hours a week. I got active in the union and the living wage movement and then my refugee background community and the Labor Party. I got a pay rise and decided to go to university. A few months later, one Sunday night, I was cleaning a lecture theatre. The next day, I had my first lecture, Politics 111, in that same lecture theatre. It was a very emotional moment that I will never forget. To all the millions of people displaced around the world, your courage in the face of unimaginable adversity will always inspire me. The reality is, many millions of people will not have the luck that I have had. Until the world changes, innocent lives will continue to be lost and displaced in the hands of evil and war. That is what we must change.

[lots of clapping and cheering]

CH: That was New Zealand MP Ibrahim Omer speaking in the House yesterday. Mr. Omer is a former refugee from Eritrea who became New Zealand's first African-born Member of Parliament when he was elected this October.

[Music: Electronic]

Quebec/New Brunswick students

Guest: Hannah Vicaire

CH: Hannah Vicaire faced down police today. The 18-year-old was trying to get to school. Ms. Vicaire lives in Listuguj, an Indigenous community in eastern Quebec. She's goes to school at Sugarloaf Highschool — across the border in Campbellton, NB. Or she did until the New Brunswick government introduced a pandemic order that prevents the students from Listuguj from crossing. So far the New Brunswick and Quebec governments have failed to find a solution. So this morning Hannah and a group of her fellow students defied the order and went to school. Then, on the way back they set up a protest on the JC Van Horne bridge, which spans the provincial border. We reached Hannah Vicaire on that bridge.

CO: Hannah, what is the scene at the VanHorn Bridge right now?

HANNAH VICAIRE: Right now, we just finished not finished protesting, but we're basically just on hold with the protest of what we want to do. We're planning on doing a meeting tomorrow to plan out what we want to do for the next protest on the bridge?

CO: And what was it like at the height of the protest on the bridge? How many of the students were there? What happened?

HV: I would say there was at least about 50 students there, maybe. And it first started with the protest was a-go. And we were going to walk across the bridge and do our march to the school. But then a student had an RCMP officer show up to his house and hand him a letter saying basically that we were allowed back in and to basically hold off the protest. And we come to find out that the agreement wasn't true. And it was actually a paper that was sent out a couple of years ago. They're just trying to get us to not protest. So once we heard that it was just a lie, we just basically said we're going to go and do it anyway. We're going to make a stand. And that's what we did. We came back, and we blocked off the bridge.

CO: OK, so you blocked the bridge. And I understand, some students were warned that if they did that, they might be arrested, they would face possible criminal charges and a ten thousand dollar fine. Were the police there at the bridge?

HV: There was our police, Listuguj Police Department, was there basically slowing down traffic for us. And once we got to the beginning of the bridge, a couple of RCMP cars had showed up trying to stop us. But we just kept going, and we turned them around, and they went back to Campbellton. And from there they just followed us the whole time to the school. And they stayed at the school the entire time while we were there.

Can you just give a sense of why you can't go to school? What is the central problem here? You just want to go to school like everybody else. That's what some of the others said. Why can't you?

HV: Well, there is no problem with us. Like, we don't have any cases. We only had two cases since the entire pandemic has happened. But people in New Brunswick are saying that the problem is us because we come from Quebec. But the cases aren't coming from Quebec. They're coming from New Brunswick. And they're not from here. They're from there. And they're trying to kind of push the blame onto us when it's not even us.

CO: And so it's because of that, that they said that you can't come to school. You're on the Quebec side, and they set up a remote schooling. Many people have said that this is discrimination, discrimination against the First Nations students attempting to go to school. Would you agree with that?

HV: Yeah, it definitely is. Because I mean, all these other people are allowed to cross for all these other reasons. Like, I can go to work and go to Dairy Queen and, you know, like go to Wal-Mart if I need to, for whatever essential reasons that I need to go for. But when it comes to school, only our group is excluded from going to school. If it was a COVID problem, then the entire school would be shut down. No kids would be going to school, not just us.

CO: You work at the Dairy Queen on the New Brunswick side, right?

HV: Yeah.

CO: And so you're able to go to work, but you're not able to go to school?

HV: Yes.

CO: What does that say?

HV: It says a lot, really. It's like, it's kind of saying, like, they would rather me be there to make money for them, but not to help me for what I actually need in my life. You know, like I need school in my life. I don't really need a job right now, but I'm working because, you know, money is good. But I would rather be in school than be working at Dairy Queen.

CO: What grade are you in right now?

HV: I'm in grade 12.

CO: And what's it like? Because and there's a lot of younger students, right? What's it like for them not being able to go to school?

HV: It's also hard on them because, especially like, you know, the grade nine students, you know, it's their first year. And, you know, they were obviously expecting like the year that they have been dreaming of, like, you know, meeting people from Campbellton, and meeting their new teachers, and being in a high school for the first time, and having a cafeteria, and a theatre, and, you know, and sports teams. But now that we can't even go there, we can't even experience the cafeteria or the theatre or just being in our classrooms with our teachers. And it just gives us such a big disadvantage than what our counterparts have in Campbellton. It's just not fair whatsoever. And especially, like, and even with the grade 12s, it's hard because it's our last year. We should be able to get the year that we have been working for 12 years. And it just isn't fair that only our group of people are being excluded from that school.

CO: Where do you want to take this from here? How do you want to continue your protest?

HV: We're just going to keep protesting until Premier Blaine Higgs decides to let us back in. Because even though he's premier, he doesn't have the right to say what kind of education a child is getting. The only person allowed to determine that is our parents. Our parents are the only people who can say, you know what, I think I want my daughter to go to the school, or I want my daughter to go here. You know, and he's denying our right to a proper education that we need to succeed in our lives. And, you know, like the only thing we want to do is go back to school. That's all that we're asking for.

CO: There was one of the parents of the students said, she wrote a Facebook page, and she said that this whole thing has awakened the “Mi'kmaq Mother Bear”. What message do you think she's sending with that?

HV: It's basically just saying, like, you know, like you you hurt one, you hurt us all type of thing. Like, if one of us goes down, you know, it's not just going to be one person. It's going to be all of us. We're all going to be here to take that stand. We're not just going to let one person get in trouble. You know, as Mi'kmaq people, we always stand as one and we will forever always stand as one, you know? So when it comes to our own people, we get protective and, you know, we're not going to just stand down and not do anything about it when one person is in need of our help.

CO: Hannah, we'll let you go. And we'll be watching what happens. Thanks so much for speaking with us.

HV: No problem. Thank you so much.

CO: Bye.

HV: Bye.

CH: Hannah Vicaire is a high school student who lives in Quebec, but goes to school across the border in New Brunswick. We reached her on the JC Van Horne bridge, which spans the border.

No more turkey trash

CH: That was former Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, speaking to WBUR's Morning Edition with host Bob Oakes today.

Mask innovation award

Guest: Ilaria Rubino

CH: Unfortunately, it's been a big year for masks. But Ilaria Rubino was ahead of this unwelcome trend. Ms. Rubino is a recent PhD graduate from the University of Alberta. For the past five years, she's been working with a team on a special salt-coated mask. The idea is that the salt acts as a spiky weapon to kill droplets instantly — meaning masks can last a lot longer. This week, Ilaria Rubino was recognized with an innovation award from Mitacs, a Canadian non-profit that receives funding from the federal and provincial governments, for her work. We reached her in Edmonton, Alberta.

CO: Ilaria, first of all, congratulations.

ILARIA RUBINO: Oh, thank you so much.

CO: You started this research on masks five years ago. You couldn't have known that you would be in the centre of the universe by 2020 [laughing]. Why did you begin that? What were you hoping to accomplish?

IR: So, I started working on this project as my PhD thesis. And we identified that there was a gap in the mask technology because the pathogens can survive on the surface of the mask after they’re collected. And so our goal was to develop a technology that would make the masks as effective as possible.

CO: OK, so making it effective as possible, which would mean to somehow kill the microbes so they're not sitting on the mask and so the mask can be reused. Is that right?

IR: Exactly. So having the technology that inactivates the pathogenesis, and so the masks can be safely reused without additional decontamination processes. And they're safer to handle as well.

CO: I guess the trick is to try and find a way that kills pathogens without being toxic to the person wearing it. So how did you come up with the idea that salt might be the solution?

IR: Oh, that's actually a very interesting point. Yeah, we do want the technology to be safe. And having a natural material like salt was one of the reasons we went with that. My PhD supervisor had worked previously on the research on the long-term storage of oral vaccines. And he had noticed that the sugar that sometimes vaccines are mixed with was inactivating the vaccine due to the growth of the crystals from the sugar. And since that vaccines have a similar structure to the virus, right, we thought we could develop a technology based on this crystal growth mechanism to our advantage. So to inactivate harmful pathogens such as viruses.

CO: Wow! And so [dry chuckle] is there a simple layman's version of your explanation as to how the salt coating on the mask actually works?

IR: Sure. So pathogens that are airborne travel in the air in droplets. And so, after they land on the salt coating that is on the mask, the salt dissolves into the droplet. Then the liquid of the droplet will evaporate quickly because it's a small-sized droplet, and then the salt crystals grow back. And the salt crystals grow back with sharp edges that severely damage the pathogens. And this is what leads to their neutralization.

CO: And so then the mask is still is not contaminated, and you can use it again?

IR: Exactly, exactly.

CO: That's quite extraordinary, given that's one of the biggest issues we hear now, are all these masks, hard to get hold of to begin with, and also a huge amount of trash at the end of the day. So how possible is it to actually get these salt coated masks into production?

IR: So we are hoping by the end of 2021 to have the final salt coated mask available on the market. Yes, it's a very exciting time.

CO: Will people be aware of the salt in the mask when they're wearing it?

IR: So one concern that we thought of when we started developing salt coated masks is that whether the salt coating is going to affect the breathability. So are people still going to be able to easily breathe through the mask? And what we found from our experiments is that the breathability does not change before and after the coating. And so just as easy to breathe through the salt coated mask as before, like with a filter that doesn't have any salt.

CO: And can you taste salt? Because the mask is up against your mouth. Does it taste salty?

IR: No, I don't think you should taste salt. [CO chuckles] So the coating is, you know, when we think of salt, maybe we think more so of a powder form of the salt, but we apply it as a coating. So it's basically a uniform layer of solid salt that is covering the fibres of the masks. And so it doesn't really touch easily or anything. So, yeah, I don’t think it’ll taste salty.

CO: And I guess you can't wash this mask? That would be a bad idea.

IR: Right. These are not meant to be washed. The idea is that by having this pathogen neutralization process, the masks become as safe as possible to handle and to use. As well as, you're able to reuse it pretty much as much as you’d want to reuse a mask. But at least you don't have to throw it out after just a few hours of using it, which is what is recommended to do with regular surgical masks.

CO: Just how satisfying is this for you as a recent PhD graduate, that you've actually developed something that is going to be so helpful as we go forward in this pandemic?

IR: Oh, yeah. I mean, as a researcher, as an engineer, being able to see that, you know, the product of the research we've been doing can actually help people and help overall health is really great. And it's definitely a great feeling, yeah, to be able to be a part of the solution.

CO: All right. Well, again, congratulations, Ilaria. And thanks for speaking with us.

IR: Thank you.

CO: Bye.

IR: Bye.

CH: Ilaria Rubino is a researcher in the department of chemical and materials engineering at the University of Alberta. We reached her in Edmonton.

[Music: Electronic]

SOD: French resistance fighter honour

CH: On the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War this year, French Resistance fighter Daniel Cordier said fighting Nazi Germany was the only thing in his life he was sure he would do again. Without hesitation. Mr. Cordier died last week at the age of 100. He was one of the last remaining Companions of the Liberation — the most distinguished order of the Resistance, decorated by General Charles de Gaulle. After joining the first Free French Forces, in exile in London in 1940, Daniel Cordier became secretary to Resistance leader Jean Moulin. His parents had fought in the First World War and he wanted to follow in their footsteps. French President Emmanuel Macron said, "When France was in peril, he and his companions took every risk so that France would remain France. We owe them our liberty and our honour." Yesterday in Paris, Daniel Cordier was honoured in a ceremony. It was attended by his compatriot Hubert Germain, the last surviving Companion of the Liberation. The military choir is our sound of the day.

[A choir sings "Chant des Partisans" in an acapella choir arrangement]

CH: That was the "Chant des Partisans" sung yesterday by a military choir to honour French Resistance fighter, Daniel Cordier. Mr. Cordier died last week. He was 100.

[Music: Vocalization]

playwright-in-residence award

TARA BEAGAN: It's surreal. [both laughing]

DOUG DIRKS: And you also got to pick a protege to give 25-thousand dollars to. So what can you tell us about the person you picked?

TB: Yes, that absolutely is my favourite part to get the chance to do this. Yes, Joelle Peters is a theatre artist who's from Walpole Island. She's based in Toronto now. And she's just brilliant. She's one of these young people who is so incredibly bright. And she also has that rare gift that it becomes rarer, it seems, by every passing moment. But she has such humility. And I've always admired that in her. And she reminds me to move with humility as well. And yeah, I'm just so grateful to know her. And I'm excited for all the things she's going to accomplish. And so this is a little boost for her during a time when everybody really needs one.

DD: So now, while we're on the subject of humility, though, what does winning an award like this say to other aspiring Indigenous playwrights?

TB: Well, you know, it's an exciting thing to suddenly have it to be on the radar. Even to my experience, it wasn't something I paid attention to too often because we're seldom acknowledged in this enormous realm. So, hopefully, it makes it that much easier for the ensuing jury members to choose an Indigenous artist.

DD: What has your journey as a playwright been like?

TB: Well, you know, it's an interesting journey, of course, for anybody who pursues theatre. [chuckle]

DD: Right.

TB: It has to be for love because it doesn’t remunerate them at a living wage. So in many ways, just like the enormity of this prize makes me take a look back at the 32 plays I completed and the seven that I still have in the works. And made me go, OK, now that's all paid work.

DD: Hmm.

TB: How rare is that? [both chuckle] It's really thrilling. It's, you know, it's a labour of love. And to suddenly have that acknowledged in this way is… I’ve been taking a lot of deep breaths, and a lot of walks. [both chuckling]

DD: And what so what was it that attracted you to writing plays in the first place?

TB: I come to playwriting as an actor, so I guess in the simple way that when anyone's a child, and they like to imagine themselves into worlds that are different than their own, that's something that continues to be transported for me and exciting. And it just occupied my mind in a way that was really thrilling. So once I started committing to the craft of writing, I really found ancestral stories started to speak to me and speak through me. And so, you know, I collaborate very closely with family members who hold our stories and always reach out to the brilliant artists to embody those roles as actors. And yeah, I’ve just been really blessed and just feeling the gratitude right now.

CH: That was this year's Siminovitch Prize winner, Tara Beagan, speaking with the CBC's Doug Dirks.

[Music: Country guitar]

African crested rat

Guest: Sara Weinstein

CH: If I tell you there's a rat that looks adorable, you probably still can't imagine yourself touching it. But it's true that the African crested rat is extremely cute, and fluffy — and also kind of chic. Like it's been to a stylist. But you'd still be right not to touch it. Not just because you'd wreck its awesome hairdo — but because its fur is toxic. Sara Weinstein led a study, conducted in Kenya, on the African crested rat and its unusual qualities. We reached her in Santa Barbara, California.

CO: Sara, first of all, just tell us what these rats look like?

SARA WEINSTEIN: All right, so the African crested rat, it's a pretty unusual rat. It doesn't look like the average rat you might find in your attic. They're large, about two pounds or about a kilo in size. And they're quite fluffy. So when they're calm, they just look like these big, gray fluffballs. But when they're upset or trying to defend against a predator, they actually raise up this crest of fur, which gives them these big black and white stripes and leads their name, crusted rat. And in the centre of these stripes are these dark brown stripes of a different type of hair. It's got a totally different shape to it, much thicker. And those are their poison coated hairs.

CO: Wow! Just to go back to the description, the New York Times describes them as “the lovechild of a skunk and a steelwool brush”. Does that fit?

SW: I think so, yes. Although I think they're much cuter than any progeny of a steelwool brush would ever be.

CO: [chuckling] Now, I would say cute, too. So they do look cute and fluffy even when they're angry. But they're not, are they? I mean, these guys have a bit of a swagger, don't they?

SW: Yes, they certainly have the, in my opinion, the behaviour of something that knows it's poisonous, that knows it's defended. So they typically don't move all that fast. And instead of, you know, necessarily always running away really quickly, they will stop and display, and sort of make this signal like you really don't want to mess with me. I don't need to move very fast because it's you who should be backing off.

CO: What have you learned about how the African crested rat makes its fur toxic?

SW: Well, so the first paper on the African crested rats and the potential use of Acokanthera schimperi, a tree commonly known as the Arrow Poison Tree. So this first work on this actually came out in 2011. And based off studies of one rat, they suggested that these animals are probably using this tree as a source of really potent poisons that make them very unpalatable and even poisonous. And we really wanted to confirm that finding and expand on it a little bit more so. So in our work, we're able to document this behaviour in many more animals and able to show that the animals could chew on this incredibly poisonous plant, a plant that if we were to chew on, we would get very sick, potentially even die. The rats can chew on this and they're absolutely fine. They do this, and then they go on with their normal rat behaviour.

CO: OK, so they chew on this poisonous plant. But then how do they get it into their fur?

SW: So they chew up the bark and the leaves and they mix it in with their spit, and then they sort of just turn around and groom it into their fur. So they're just using their mouth to lick and chew it into these specialized hairs.

CO: And how do these specialized hairs hold on to the poison?

SW: So the hairs themselves have a really unusual shape. And so if you were to, say, just look at a piece of your hair, it's at least not under a microscope is pretty smooth. If you were to look at one of these poison hairs, they're actually almost like a honeycomb in structure. So they've got all these crypts and holes in them. And that actually whiffs up a spit-poison-plant-mixture. And then when it dries in there, the sort of the dried spit-plant-resin-mixture is held in these really unusual honeycomb-like hairs.

CO: How often do they have to mix up a bunch of this poison potion?

SW: That is an excellent question and something we still don't really know. We have no idea what triggers the rats to sequester toxins. Because sometimes we'd offer them branches and they would ignore them completely. And other times that they, you know, immediately go for it.

CO: And when you say arrow poisons, this like something that would be used by societies to tip their arrow points with them and use them against their enemies?

SW: Yeah, this tree is a traditional source of arrow poisons. It contains really high concentrations of cardenolides, particularly Ouabain, and those have been used for eons, probably. Boiled down to make the poisons that are put on arrows and spears used in traditional warfare, but actually still currently used in poaching because they're very hard to trace.

CO: OK, so now how is it that these African crested rats don't get poisoned by their own poison?

SW: That is the million-dollar question. So that's something we're actively now working on. And before, you know, diving into that question, we really had to verify that this behaviour was widespread and didn't cause any ill effects. And now we're starting to look at the mechanisms that might underlie this really incredible behaviour.

CO: And how toxic is it for predators on the African crested rat?

SW: So it probably varies between individuals, but records from people who have observed dogs trying to attack these rats have seen animals get very sick and even die. So we know that it certainly can be fatal to predators.

CO: Right. So when you have these in captivity and you were feeding these poison plants, you weren't petting them?

SW: [dry laugh] No, generally not a great idea to pet wildlife. I think actually the bigger risk there would be, the rat would probably turn around and bite you.

CO: Yeah. What else did you observe about it, since you had these animals in close quarters, what did you observe about them?

SW: So one of the more remarkable things we actually discovered as part of this research was these large rodents, which had generally assumed to probably be solitary, actually probably aren't. As we started trapping and actually observing their behaviour, we got some evidence that they may actually potentially be monogamous or live in and male/female pairs or even small family groups, at least for part of the year.

CO: You see, these creatures are really quite endearing, aren't they, despite the poison? [laughing]

SW: Um-hm, yes.

CO: Sara, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

SW: Thank you.

CO: Bye.

SW: Bye.

CH: Sara Weinstein is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Utah. She was in Santa Barbara, California. And you can find more on this story —including some pictures of the adorable rats — on our webpage, at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: 70’s groove]

FOA SantaCon

CH: "All of the reindeer got the 'rona, so the elves have advised Santa to hold off the in-person merriment ... remain home and stay on the good list." Don't worry, that PSA isn't coming from the North Pole. As far as we know, the reindeer are fine. It's from SantaCon's website — announcing that New York SantaCon 2020 is officially cancelled because of COVID-19. The annual event may have started as a charity. But in recent years, it's turned into a drunken pub crawl where thousands of people dressed like Santa roam the city spreading anything but joy. Long before the pandemic grounded SantaCon's sleigh, Betsy Maher called for a boycott of the event. In 2014, Carol spoke with the Brooklyn bar owner — and a warning, this interview includes strong language.

BETSY MAHER: SantaCon, I guess the way it started is completely different to the way it is now. And it's just turned into this ridiculous debacle that gives people the feeling that they have an excuse to destroy things, to act like an idiot and basically just be completely disrespectful to anyone and everyone around them.

CAROL OFF: Can you describe a typical SantaCon just you know go all out and give us half the images that you can remember about SantaCon’s past?

BM: Really? Fights if you can imagine anywhere from two to twenty Santas’ fighting each other like to the death on the streets in a drunken brawl. If you can imagine them pissing on everywhere outside or in your bar on the wall, pissing themselves, vomiting all over themselves, vomiting on each other, vomiting across a communal table at a restaurant, passing out in bathrooms when they have (censored) themselves. Sorry can I say that?

CO: You just did.

BM: Poop or pee themselves, it’s gross. Actually a friend of mine, who used to work at this Irish bar in the city told me one of his worst experiences which was he had just gotten finished bartending and his bar was full of drunken Santas’ and he was like, “I'm finally done it’s 4 a.m the bar is closed, the gates are down, I'm safe and he goes to use the bathroom and he steps in something like wet his foot kind of sinks into it and there is a pair of Santa pants completely filled with diarrhea on the ground that he just stepped right in. And if that doesn't perfectly describe it, I don't know what. And then, if you want to talk about roofying girls or, you know, and sexual assault, there's that whole shebang.

CO: What do you mean sexual assault? Like these Santas are hitting on the women?

BM: No, I mean, women also come along like women also dress up and come along. I have a friend who was roofied accidentally because someone was trying to roofie another girl and not her, but they accidentally put it in her drink thinking it was another girl’s.

CO: Like, this is date rape drug?

BM: Yeah. And there have been accounts I think 2012 is probably the worst year for SantaCon. And last year the police, like, really, really like tried to tame it down. But it's just really gross. It's just this really grotesque thing. And the main reason, like, I can clean up puke, I can clean up [censored], I can deal with drunk idiots. I've done it for more than half my life. And the reason that none of us, the community board, the 83rd precinct over here, all of the bar owners, the reason that we really don't want it to come here is because this is like we're a community where a residential neighbourhood and there's a ton of little kids. And it's just I don't know, the very idea of having a kid see Santas brawling or even just like drunk and being idiots --

CO: And wetting themselves. And just --

BM: I mean, can you imagine? the guys actually?

CO: So this is during the day, too. So the kids actually see --

BM: 10:00 a.m. a.m.

CO: My gosh!

BM: It starts at 10:00 a.m. and our bars close at four a.m.

CH: Ew! From 2014, Carol speaking with Betsy Maher, the owner of Pearl's Social and Billy Club, about why she organized a boycott of New York's SantaCon. The annual event, where thousands of people dress like Santa and drink heavily, was cancelled this year because of COVID-19.

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November 27, 2020 Episode Transcript

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