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The Current Transcript for January 11, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

DONALD TRUMP To all of my wonderful supporters, I know you are disappointed, but I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning.

MATT GALLOWAY In the days since rioters stormed Capitol Hill on Wednesday, everyone from those who are trapped in the building to Arnold Schwarzenegger have weighed in on what should happen now. Donald Trump remains president for another week-and-a-half. In 30 minutes, what are people most worried about in those next ten days? And what are the realistic options for removing him from power, now?

MATT GALLOWAY Also, who exactly were those people who smashed into the Capitol? Inside crowdsourced efforts to figure that out.

MATT GALLOWAY And later:

ROMAN MARS This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

MATT GALLOWAY Through his wildly popular podcast and new book, Roman Mars tells us the fascinating backstories of the things instrumental to our daily lives that we might not give a second thought to. From barbed wire and curb cuts and sidewalks to the plaque on that bench or statue you walk by every single day. In an hour, he's here to talk about the benefit, especially in this moment, of slowing down and looking around.

MATT GALLOWAY We begin, though, with a question. What could we do right now to crush COVID in Canada? Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

1

Doctors weigh in on how to get COVID-19 Under control in Canada

Guests: Lisa Salamon, Matthew Oughton, Neeja Bakshi

DOUG FORD Folks, I just can't stress this enough, please, please, just follow the protocols. We're in a desperate situation, and when you see the modelling, you know you'll fall off the... Fall off your chair.

MATT GALLOWAY Ontario Premier Doug Ford with a dire appeal to Ontarians as the number of daily cases edges towards 4,000. He's expected to release that new modelling tomorrow, along with new safety measures.

DOUG FORD This is getting out of control. We have to do whatever it takes. And, again, I know I say it all the time, but everything is on the table right now. Again, folks, this is so, so serious. Matter of fact, this is the most serious situation we've ever been in ever, ever since the beginning of this pandemic.

MATT GALLOWAY That this is the worst of the pandemic could be said beyond Ontario as well. Facing high numbers, Quebec just brought in a curfew. And outside of the Atlantic provinces, much of this country is still living under the strictest measures we've had since the spring. Increasingly, though, doctors are calling for even more restrictions. And so we've invited three of them to join us this morning, starting in Ontario with Dr. Lisa Salamon, an emergency room physician at the Scarborough Health Network in Toronto. Doctor, good morning.

LISA SALAMON Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY The premier of Ontario is calling this a desperate situation. What does that look like in your hospital?

LISA SALAMON Yeah, I mean, it definitely is a desperate situation. And I heard him say it's getting out of control. It's not getting out of control. It is out of control right now. In my hospital, we are seeing so many really sick patients with COVID. The last I checked, at the end of last week, we had over 160 patients with COVID admitted to our hospital, and over 30 in the ICU. And we're constantly transferring patients to other hospitals, and even outside of Toronto because we don't have that. And in the emergency department, every single shift I do, we are seeing numerous sick patients with COVID, and often resuscitating patients as well.

MATT GALLOWAY What can you tell me about those patients? I mean, if you take a look at the overall picture, what strikes you about the patients who are coming into the hospital now?

LISA SALAMON So a lot of them now are coming in quite late. So a lot of patients we're seeing go straight to the ICU. They're quite short of breath. Their oxygen saturations are low. And they're having a hard time breathing. Or if they're not going to the ICU, a lot of them end up in the ICU within a couple of days.

MATT GALLOWAY How old are they?

LISA SALAMON They range in age. The youngest one I saw a couple of weeks ago was 28. I see patients... And I resuscitated her in the emergency department, and she went to the ICU.

MATT GALLOWAY Twenty-eight, 28 years old?!

LISA SALAMON Twenty-eight, yeah, yeah.

MATT GALLOWAY Wow!

LISA SALAMON I had a patient wave one who is in his mid-40s, who is otherwise healthy, who came in with COVID, ended up in the ICU, and unfortunately, he passed away a few weeks later. Patients in their 50s and 60s. We see patients all the way from the young to the elderly who are coming in from long-term care.

MATT GALLOWAY So you heard the premier at the beginning of this saying that, you know, the new modelling that he's going to unveil tomorrow is, in his words, going to make us fall off our chairs. CBC has learned that some of this is going to show that the ICUs will be full in Ontario by February. What are you most afraid of?

LISA SALAMON I'm most afraid that we're going to be in a situation like New York City. And for me, where I'm working, I'm concerned that that's coming sooner than February. We are seeing the number, the ICU numbers grow exponentially, even faster than the modelling shows. As of yesterday, I believe there are over 400 patients in the ICU with COVID in Ontario. And that is higher than the original modelling numbers showed. So I'm really scared that we are going to be in a situation like New York City had in wave one.

MATT GALLOWAY Dr. Salamon, stay with us. I want to bring in Dr. Matthew Oughton. He is an attending physician in the division of Infectious Diseases at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, also an assistant professor of medicine at McGill University. Doctor, good morning to you.

MATTHEW OUGHTON Good morning to you as well.

MATT GALLOWAY In Quebec, what is it like in your ICUs and E.R.s right now?

MATTHEW OUGHTON It's certainly quite busy, and there's, I think, a lot of people holding their breath because the modelling projections that have been put out by this province have shown that later on this month, we now have over 50 per cent chance that our hospital capacity for COVID-dedicated beds will be... will be overrun. And we're already seeing some of the effects similar to what we were just discussing. There's already movement of patients either underway or being discussed to try to offload some of the heavier hit hospitals, mine included.

MATT GALLOWAY What does that mean for patients who come in with things that aren't related to COVID, that need treatment?

MATTHEW OUGHTON That's an excellent question. [clears throat] So certainly, just because there's a pandemic underway doesn't mean that heart attack stops, that the cancers don't form, that people don't get into car accidents. And as time goes on, as the numbers of people who require care for COVID are getting hospitalized, either in ward beds or in the ICU, then consequently we have fewer and fewer beds, fewer and fewer nurses and therapists, fewer and fewer hospital resources to dedicate towards everything else. So, as a result, you wind up... it almost feels like we're going back in time to the first wave, where you have to start to scale back on all of your other activities, which inevitably creates a backlog. We were already dealing with the backlog from the first wave, and now we have this on top of it. And I'm certain that that's going to wind up, in the long run, being detrimental to patients, because if your cancer gets detected later rather than early, there's a greater chance that it will have spread, that you'll need more invasive measures, that you'll need longer stays in hospitals. This is creating a larger and larger debt of care that at some point is going to become... is going to be coming due.

MATT GALLOWAY Ontario is expecting new measures in the wake of its modelling. Quebec brought in a curfew that started on Saturday night. What was that like?

MATTHEW OUGHTON It was certainly unusual to see how... how quiet the streets were starting at 8:00. And, I mean, we're only two days or two nights into this, planned for a month. So it's certainly far too early to know whether this is going to have any effect. We're really going to have to wait almost, I would think, two weeks before we start to see the reflection in the numbers of new cases.

MATT GALLOWAY Do you think... do you think... do you think it will help?

MATTHEW OUGHTON That's complicated. I... I myself am somewhat concerned that what this is going to do is concentrate people's day-to-day contacts, those face-to-face contacts that are the fundamental basis on which COVID spreads into the remaining 15 hours of the day. Because people have to rush to get to the grocery store after a day's work, and they only have a few hours now in which to do it. So if that increases the population density in those centres over that time, then I would think that that might actually increase the risk. So you might just be shifting the time of day that people are getting exposed rather than really making a big change in the numbers.

MATT GALLOWAY One last point on this, just briefly. I mean, I was speaking with somebody in Montreal on Saturday, and they were saying that the parks were full at 3:00 in the afternoon, and the streets were empty at 8:00 p.m. But also, schools are reopening in parts of the province today, right?

MATTHEW OUGHTON That's correct. So the primary schools are opening up today. And the secondary schools will be opening up a week from today.

MATT GALLOWAY Do you find that to be consistent with the idea of bringing in a curfew?

MATTHEW OUGHTON I think this is a difficult situation. Certainly, we have two very different approaches adopted by Quebec versus Ontario. And I personally believe that schools are part of the contribution towards community spreads. So not only are they being affected by community spread, which they most clearly are with the numbers of cases that have been connected to classes, a number of classes have had to be shut down. But I think there's increasing evidence that there's actually transmission happening in schools. And then children, even if they're not sick, are bringing it home. And I think that's part of why we're having this perpetuation of... of transmission. So it's not the approach I would have liked to have seen. But given that that's happening, I would like to see maximum protection for all of our children, including things like having all children of all ages in school wear masks throughout the entire day, which at the present time is not the case.

MATT GALLOWAY Let me bring one more doctor into our conversation. Dr. Neeja Bakshi is a doctor on the COVID ward at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. Doctor, good morning to you.

NEEJA BAKSHI Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY How busy is your ward right now?

NEEJA BAKSHI We're steady. You know, we in Alberta, we hit a peak in December with our hospitalizations, actually even up until last week. Only in the last 48 hours have we started to see a plateau in our hospitalizations, plateau of our ICU cases. But certainly, we're not out of the woods yet.

MATT GALLOWAY Is that a hint of good news?

NEEJA BAKSHI I think so. I think there is some optimism even within the medical community about this, but I think we're also very worried that Albertans will take this as really good news and start to ease up on their restrictions. You know, we've only seen in the last couple of days where things have started to steady out, and we're about a month into our most recent restrictions. So I think it's too early to celebrate. It's too early to loosen up on restrictions. And I am a little concerned that with the perpetual idea that we'll flatten the curve within 48 hours, we're running into... we could run into some problems.

MATT GALLOWAY One of the problems could be that, you know, the province has detected a case of this variant from South Africa of the virus. Are you worried about that?

NEEJA BAKSHI Yeah, that's right. We know, as these new variants come, as we have limited information on it and limited testing on it, I think there is a big concern about what this could mean for new cases that pop up, and how infectious this case... these cases might be.

MATT GALLOWAY Dr. Salamon, as you listen to your colleagues across the country, what goes through your mind?

LISA SALAMON Oh, it sounds awful where they're living and practising as well, but it sounds... they're very similar stories to what we're experiencing in Ottawa. And, you know, I think we all need to work together to advocate to our respective governments to make the appropriate decisions, and also to help one another and learn from each other's experiences.

MATT GALLOWAY So let's talk about those appropriate decisions. What could be done to stop COVID now, at least to slow down its growth? You talked about exponential growth. What do you think, Dr. Salamon, could be done to... to, you know, put the ice on this now?

LISA SALAMON So I think that, you know, in our province, Doug Ford needs to make definitive decisions early. You know, on Friday, he commented, oh, just wait until you see the modelling, and we're going to show it to you on Monday or Tuesday and make a decision. Well, he should of made a decision on Friday. He knew what the numbers looked like. And every time he delays by a day are more and more deaths, more and more patients being admitted to hospital. And so there's a perpetual effect. I think we need stricter measures. I think we need to go back to what we did in wave one. And I think there needs to be a consistent messaging from everybody that people need to stay home, that people can't get together, and not to make exceptions. Because I think that people aren't trying to break rules, they're not having, well, most people aren't having big parties and trying to get together in big groups. But everyone says, I just want to see my family for Christmas. I just want to see my family for New Years. And I think people really need to understand how that impacts others, how that impacts those who are getting sick, and how that impacts what we're seeing in our hospitals.

MATT GALLOWAY Do you think a curfew would help?

LISA SALAMON I also worry... I also worry potentially about a curfew that people will just do earlier in the day and congregate earlier in the day or even in the evening, go inside to people's houses. I'm not sure I'd like to see a little bit of what happens in Quebec and whether it works or not. I have mixed feelings about a curfew.

MATT GALLOWAY Dr. Oughton, I think people are looking for... there's been, you know, musings around this idea of "COVID-Zero", or "Canadian Shield", that would... that would stop this thing in its tracks. What do you think specifically could be done to... to... to put the brakes on this?

MATTHEW OUGHTON I think there are a lot of models that we can certainly follow. So we look to what some other countries have done that have been successful or even within our own country, we can certainly look to the Atlantic bubble to see what they've done. And I think the commonalities are that, usually, that involves a more intense period for a shorter time, whereas what many provinces have adopted are, I guess, what I would call partial restrictions enacted over a longer time. I mean, in Quebec, we've had the concept of red zones and the restrictions to come along with them since the beginning of October. Here we are now, almost the middle of January. So we're talking now getting on to three-and-a-half months. And it... I think it's clear the numbers demonstrate that what we've done so far have not been sufficient. So I would suggest that we rip the bandage off and really try to get a tight control achieved over a limited period of time. And then when we know that we've actually got things under control, then that's when you move into a phase of monitoring to make sure... I mean, again, look what they've been doing in in Nova Scotia, for example, where even though they've, as of yesterday, for example, they had zero new cases, they're still doing, in my opinion, a very good job of testing and screening to make sure that they're aware of the very early start of new cases so that they can get them under control and stop a little spark from flaring up into a bigger and bigger fire.

MATT GALLOWAY And so just, I mean, briefly, you talk about ripping the bandage off. What specifically would that mean? I mean, there's a curfew that's in place in Quebec. What else could be done?

MATTHEW OUGHTON But although that's a relatively extreme measure, the question is how much that contributes? I think we have to be... I think we have to have good real-time data and follow the data. The data of where the outbreaks are in... In Quebec really show that it's focussed in workplaces, businesses, schools, care facilities. So it would make sense to target those areas particular. I mean, I talked already a little bit about how I think that all school children should be masked, not just those present in this province grade five and above. Another thing that we're not doing is allowing a lot of flexibility in terms of distance learning, which means that our classes are more full, which again means you have more people sharing the same airspace over the course of the day. If you had the option for parents to have the children distance learning, you could probably offload some of that. Then, another thing is we've had lots and lots of these, literally over a million of these, rapid tests that have been sitting and not being used so far. We have another week before our secondary schools start. We could follow the model of Slovakia and use those rapid tests, screen all of the students, all of the teachers in secondary school once or twice this week to pick up those who are asymptomatic, stop them from going back into class. And that, I think, would do a big contribution towards preventing the transmission that's happening in schools.

MATT GALLOWAY Dr. Bakhshi, you were very cautious in saying that what's happening in Alberta right now should not be seen as... as, you know, a sign of success in terms of the efforts that were put into place because you're worried that people will take their foot off the gas. One of the reasons that people might do that is because a lot of us are feeling the strain of living under various degrees of lockdown. What would you... people can't see the finish line. What would you say to Canadians about the place that... that we're in right now?

NEEJA BAKSHI You know, I get it. We're all fatigued, not just health care workers. I think the whole... the whole country, the whole world is tired of COVID and what the restrictions mean. I think that there is some hope on the horizon. I think with the vaccine, I think that we see that there is an end in sight at some point. You know, it may not be three months from now, but I think by the end of this year, I think hopefully we will see some improvement in our overall transmission, a little bit more towards herd immunity. So I think there is hope on the horizon, but the longer we take our foot off the gas pedal, the longer we have to deal with these restrictions. I think by having these short-term, we call them circuit lockdowns back in November and December here in Alberta. The longer that we have not very significant lockdowns or not significant restrictions, we're going to be dealing with a kind of a crumbling effect of COVID for a longer period of time. I think by having these lockdowns now and having the restrictions in place and really putting our mind to it, we can try to slow this thing down. And therefore, hopefully, see some normalcy by the end of this year.

MATT GALLOWAY It's people like you that, as you mentioned, are right there on the front lines and are as exhausted, more exhausted than than all of us. What would you say to your colleagues, Dr. Bakhshi?

NEEJA BAKSHI You know, my colleagues and I are trying our best to stay as resilient as we can, but we are... we are very exhausted. And I think the vaccine provided a little bit of light to us. And I think, you know, these last couple of days, we've seen hospital numbers go down has been a little bit of good news for us. But I think that we all need to continue to lean on each other to get through this. You know, one of my concerns here in Alberta is we... we started our lockdown here back in beginning of December. But we had the luxury of the holidays. Kids were not in school. Generally, during the holidays, businesses slow down anyways. And so I'm a little concerned about what's going to happen in the next few weeks here when we start to get back to some sort of normalcy. Kids are going back to school. Businesses are opening again. What's going to happen?

MATT GALLOWAY Dr. Salamon, we just have a few seconds left. What would you say to your fellow doctors on the line right now?

LISA SALAMON Yeah, just I understand what you're experiencing. You know, like you said there, a light at the end of the tunnel with the fact that we're starting vaccinating everyone. I think we need to vaccinate people quickly, encourage our governments to get as much vaccine as possible, and really encourage people to stay home. You know, we have.. we're almost there. And once we put vaccines in as many arms as possible, I'm really hoping that we can get to an end of this pandemic and get back to our normal lives. So I think we need to just try to be optimistic and be hopeful and look towards the end. I think I could see the finish line. But we still have a ways to go, you know, we're sort of three-quarters of the way through the marathon. And I... you know, we all just need to support one another and... and just keep treating patients and just hope that we can get that vaccine in those arms.

MATT GALLOWAY I really appreciate all the work that you're doing on those front lines. And I appreciate you taking some time to speak with us this morning. Thank you very much.

LISA SALAMON Thanks, Matt.

MATTHEW OUGHTON My pleasure.

NEEJA BAKSHI Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY Dr. Lisa Salamon, an emergency room physician at Scarborough Health Network in Toronto. Dr. Matthew Oughton is a doctor in the division of Infectious Diseases at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. And Dr. Neeja Bakhshi is a doctor in the COVID ward of the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton.

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MATT GALLOWAY Your CBC News is next. And then, we'll head to the United States and talk about what to do about Donald Trump.

2

Identifying U.S. Capitol rioters, and whether Trump could be removed from office in his final days

Guests: William Inboden, David Priess, Giancarlo Fiorella

MATT GALLOWAY Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

MATT GALLOWAY Still to come, 99% Invisible host Roman Mars explains why he didn't want his fabulous and wildly popular podcast about design to use that word, design.

MATT GALLOWAY But first, reining in Trump, rioters.

[Music: Theme]

COLIN POWELL We've got to get Mr. Trump clearly out of this entirely. He's got to be gone, one way or the other, by next week. And the sooner, the better. Whether it is just a relief he takes for himself, or it's a impeachment, or just leave, resign, retire.

MATT GALLOWAY Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell speaking with CNN host Fareed Zakaria yesterday. The calls to get Donald Trump out of office as soon as possible are intensifying, and they'll no doubt gain momentum now that Nancy Pelosi has laid out the Democrats' plan. That party has given Vice President Mike Pence 24 hours to declare Trump unfit to continue as president. Or tomorrow, the impeachment process will begin. The Democrats, as well as some of Trump's former allies and enablers, are worried about the damage that he could do in his final nine days in office. William Inboden is the executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas in Austin, and a former National Security Council member during George W. Bush's presidency. William Inboden, good morning.

WILLIAM INBODEN Good morning. Good to be with you.

MATT GALLOWAY Great to have you here. Have you, just briefly, have you wrapped your head yet around what happened on Wednesday?

WILLIAM INBODEN We are all still processing this here in the United States, both in terms of, you know, the reports, trying to figure out what exactly happened, what went wrong? But more importantly, as a country, we're just really wrestling with the meaning of this. I mean, it's been deeply traumatizing. You know, only further fuelling the divisions and the demoralization we have here... here in the U.S. And it's going to take quite some time to process this, even as we also need to be taking some, you know, immediate and then future steps to try to heal our country and make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

MATT GALLOWAY What message does it send about American national security that police and security forces were unable to stop something like this from happening, even when people knew that it was coming?

WILLIAM INBODEN Yeah, it's a... it's a catastrophic breakdown. I mean, amongst many other things, a catastrophic intelligence failure, you know, perhaps on par with the September 11th attacks or others in terms of missed signals that then led to a catastrophic attack on the heart of our government. And I, you know, I worry that a number of America's adversaries are already exploiting this in some different ways. We're seeing some malign moves by Russia and China and Iran and North Korea in different ways. But also, it's just to their advantage for the United States to be divided and demoralized. And have really squandered a lot of our... our moral capital and reputational capital, as you know, supposed to be the leading democracy in the world, but certainly not acting like it right now.

MATT GALLOWAY Is there anything in place to ensure that something like this wouldn't happen again? I mean, the inauguration happens on the 20th of January. There will be another opportunity for an enormous demonstration and perhaps worse. So is there anything in place to... to prevent something like this from happening again?

WILLIAM INBODEN Well, I think and hope those steps are being put in place. I mean, one thing we can point, you know, of the American security system is when we do have a catastrophic failure, we react, sometimes even overreact, pretty... pretty... pretty strongly. And so there's worries about another major wave of protests on January 17th and, of course, the inauguration day on January 20th. And I guarantee you that a number of the different departments and agencies who collectively are responsible for this last failure, you know, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Capitol Police, D.C. National Guard, have all had a major shock to the system and are going to be taking some very strong steps to make sure that this doesn't happen again. You also have the Secret Service getting involved even more this time. They were there in a small presence because of vice president Pence on January 6th. But, of course, January 20th, the Secret Service, you know, involving a presidential transition will be in the lead. And they are very, very capable.

MATT GALLOWAY There are people, I mean, we've all seen the images and the footage of people, you know, marauding through the Capitol, looting through people's offices. Are their immediate national security concerns from the fact that these people were inside Congress, inside people's offices, perhaps grabbing whatever they could get their hands on?

WILLIAM INBODEN Yeah, you know, I haven't seen any credible reporting about classified documents being taken, partly because there are not many classified documents actually held at the Capitol. The only ones there would be in the secure rooms of the Intelligence committees and the Armed Services committees. For the most part, there's no indication any of... any of those were breached. You know, there was the worry about the box with the Electoral College ballots actually being taken. But some, you know, quick-thinking staff grabbed those and kept those away from the... away from the terrorists, which is really how we should describe these people. There were a couple of reports of laptops being taken from congressional offices, but I don't think there would have been anything horribly sensitive on those in terms of national security documents.

MATT GALLOWAY People are worried about what happens now? Donald Trump remains in office until just before noon on the 20th of January. What do you think of the Democrats plan to remove President Trump from office?

WILLIAM INBODEN Well, I... I'm Republican, and I would support anything we can to remove this man from office immediately or as soon as possible. There's really four options, none of which is terribly palatable. The first would be somehow Trump would just resign. He's clearly not going to do that. The second would be the 25th Amendment option, which looks like Speaker Pelosi is going to be demanding today that Vice President Pence invoke, for your listeners, that would be the vice president and a majority of cabinet members voting to remove Trump. Pence has signalled that's extremely unlikely. Now that a couple of cabinet members have resigned who otherwise would have been votes for that, that makes it even less likely. The third would be impeachment and removal. I think the impeachment part is very likely this week for the Democrats doing that. And again, I'm supportive of that. But the removal part would be up to the Senate. And for a number of complicated reasons relating to Senate procedure and timetable, that would be almost impossible to do in the next nine days. And so it seems that the removal, you know, the trial of him in the Senate might not take place for a few more months after he's out of office. But that'd be more important for making sure he doesn't run again, for the historical record, things like that. You know, the fourth option is, frankly, the one that we may be most likely to see over the next nine days, which is that Trump retains the title of president United States but is effectively sidelined. That Vice President Pence is the one de facto running the show in terms of Vice President Pence is the one that the national security adviser and secretary of state and acting secretary of defence and others actually look to for guidance, and more or less decide to ignore anything they hear from Trump. That is a highly unorthodox and really, you know, bizarre situation, to be honest. But I think that's what the most likely outcome for the next nine days is going to be.

MATT GALLOWAY Just before I let you go, I mean, one of the reasons why people are trying to game this out is because he's still president and has enormous power over the next nine days.

WILLIAM INBODEN Yeah.

MATT GALLOWAY Nancy Pelosi said that she's been exploring ways of stopping Trump from using nuclear weapons while he's still in power. Is something like that possible to try and, you know, keep him away from... From the football, as they call it?

WILLIAM INBODEN Yeah. So, again, in this crazy realm we're in, anything is possible. So I don't want to dismiss any... any eventuality there. That said, going back to what I was saying earlier about Vice President Pence being the one who's effectively in charge. The American military knows that they are duty-bound to disobey any illegal orders. And if Trump were to give an illegal order to launch a nuclear attack or something, you know, truly lunatic like that, the military would not carry it out. And Pence, of course, would step in and make sure that they knew not... not... not to carry it out. Again, that's not the way things should... should usually run. But when we have a broken chain of command at the very top, that seems to be the kind of makeshift things that we have to rely on to get us through these really awful next nine days.

MATT GALLOWAY William, great to talk to you this morning. Thank you very much.

WILLIAM INBODEN Thanks, Matt. I enjoyed it.

MATT GALLOWAY William Inboden is the executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas in Austin.

PAT TOOMEY So, I think the president did commit impeachable offences. There's little doubt in my mind about that. I'm also not at all clear that it's constitutionally permissible to impeach someone after they have left office. So there may not be a viable impeachment route at this point. But certainly, he could resign, and that would be a very good outcome.

MATT GALLOWAY That's Pat Toomey, Republican senator from Pennsylvania speaking with CNN yesterday. My next guest is David Priess. He's a chief operating officer of the Lawfare Institute. It's an independent think tank dedicated to national security issues. And his latest book is "How To You Get Rid of a President" David, good morning to you.

DAVID PRIESS Good morning, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY So as the author of a book called "How To Get Rid of a President", what legal options exist at this point to curb or curtail the president's powers?

DAVID PRIESS Yeah, we've heard about most of them in the last few minutes, but essentially what's left is impeachment and removal, which is in the hands of Congress. We have an invocation of the 25th Amendment, which would declare the president unable to perform the duties of the office, which is in the hands of the vice president, along with a majority of the cabinet. And then we have something that is not formally in the US Constitution but has been done before, including within this very administration, which is a level of insubordination at worst or slow-rolling at best, by which the president effectively loses his power because others within the executive branch simply don't execute what he says.

MATT GALLOWAY And so he says to do something and people, as you say, slow roll it, they just take forever to get it done. And by the time they might be ready to get it done, he's out of office?

DAVID PRIESS That's right. And there are examples of this from the late days of the Nixon administration when things were spiralling out of control then. But we also have examples from the Trump administration when some advisers were doing things like taking papers off of his desk that he had asked for, hoping that he would forget, in the hope that he would not return to them and sign them. That's the kind of thing that the U.S. system does not imagine happening, but it does happen within administrations.

MATT GALLOWAY Pat Toomey, we just heard, a Republican senator, says that he believes the president has committed impeachable offences but doesn't know if they could impeach given the timeline. There are concerns that the first few weeks, for example, of Joe Biden's administration as president could be consumed by an impeachment trial. Do you think that timing is a factor in what happens over the next couple of days?

DAVID PRIESS Timing certainly is a factor, Matt, but there's a little bit more flexibility than Mr. Toomey relates there. On the 25th Amendment, that could be done immediately, as soon as the vice president and a majority of the cabinet deem that the president is unable to exercise the duties of the office. As soon as they transmit that to the leadership of Congress, the vice president is the acting president. At that point, the president has been stripped of his power temporarily. So that could happen immediately. The impeachment and removal process, yes, according to the rules currently in the House and the Senate, would take quite some time. And in fact, it would be unlikely, even if everybody had the will to do so, that under the current procedures that President Trump would be removed by the Senate before inauguration. But the key there is that's under the current rules, the House and the Senate can change their rules at any time. And if the Senate really wanted to get him out of office because he is a clear and present danger, they could easily adjust their rules to change the timing and all of the pomp and circumstance that we saw with President Trump's first impeachment a year ago. And they could come up with a system for an expedited trial that would allow the president a defence but still allow a verdict and a removal very quickly.

MATT GALLOWAY What's the value in impeaching a president if he only has a week-and-a-half left in office?

DAVID PRIESS The value is twofold. One is that it puts on the historical record that this president was unfit for office, and that really is the procedure for judging a president unfit, meaning committing treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanours and therefore not being worthy of the office. The second is that an impeachment and removal does something that no other method, even resignation, does. It can prohibit the president from running for office again. The Senate not only has the ability to vote him out and remove him from office, but the Constitution allows the Senate to say that he is prohibited from holding any office of the United States again.

MATT GALLOWAY John Bolton, Donald Trump's former national security adviser, has been arguing against using the 25th Amendment, as you have been raising that issue. Take a listen to what John Bolton has had to say.

JOHN BOLTON Imagine this. In the last 13 days of the Trump administration, you could have two people both claiming to hold the powers of the presidency? Do you think Donald Trump will right... will back down when he gets a letter from Mike Pence? Think again. So are we better off with two presidents competing with each other in the last 13 days? I think you risk making the situation, which is bad as it is, far worse.

MATT GALLOWAY David Priess, what do you make of that argument?

DAVID PRIESS With any due respect to Mr. Bolton, [Matt chuckles silently] he does not understand the 25th Amendment process. It is quite clear that when the vice president invokes the 25th Amendment's fourth section, that he is the acting president. And President Trump can appeal that to the Congress, but there is no question that President Trump is no longer President Trump, as such. He is stripped of his power temporarily. And all of those powers and duties go to the vice president. Everyone in the chain of command in the United States would understand that the powers and duties of the presidency come from Mike Pence and there would be no conflict about who the president is.

MATT GALLOWAY Are there other ways to limit the potential damage? You mentioned Nixon. I mean, Nixon was pressured to resign. Could something like... I don't know whether that would work with Donald Trump? [chuckling] But is something like that possible [David chuckles] where people go to him, and they say, listen, it's... it's done. This is going to get worse. You need to go now.

DAVID PRIESS It is possible. That it is in the realm of all possibilities, Donald Trump could get a delegation of those senators, representatives and perhaps media figures that he still respects who convince him that somehow it's in his best interest to resign, that he would be going out on top in a blaze of glory. But I think it's unlikely. And it's really because of that comparison to Richard Nixon. Listen, Richard Nixon had his flaws, some very serious ones, but he had served in wartime in the U.S. military. He had been a senator. He had been vice president for eight years under Dwight Eisenhower, one of our more respected presidents. Even when he tried to use the instruments of government for his own personal benefit to shut down the Watergate investigation, Richard Nixon, at his core, was still a patriot. And when it came to the end, he had the choice of fighting it out and burning everything down or leaving and saving the institutions of government. He chose the latter. Very few people have faith that Donald Trump is cut of the same cloth.

MATT GALLOWAY John Bolton also said, just put him on Air Force One and send him to his... his estate in Florida to play golf. Is that... [both laughing] I mean, I know you criticized John Bolton earlier about the 25th Amendment, but is that something that perhaps would work?

DAVID PRIESS Uh, I understand his feeling about that, which is perhaps the president would not do anything if he's happily playing golf at Mar-a-Lago down in Florida. The problem is the presidency travels with the president. Air Force One is fully equipped to help the president exercise the powers and duties of the office. It doesn't matter if the president is sitting in his bedroom tweeting, as he has been doing most often for four years --

MATT GALLOWAY Not any longer! [chuckling].

DAVID PRIESS Or he's on the golf course. If he wants to do something as president, he issues the order, and it gets done typically. So sending him off on Air Force One to a lovely location does not really remove the danger of this moment.

MATT GALLOWAY David Priess, good to speak with you. Thank you.

DAVID PRIESS Thank you, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY David Priess, chief operating officer for the Lawfare Institute. It's a former CIA... he is a former CIA intelligence officer, as well as the author of a book called "How To Get Rid of a President".

[Sound: lots of cheering and banging.]

MAN He's got a gun! He's got a gun!

MATT GALLOWAY You can hear rioters there trying to bash down a door inside the Capitol building. Moments later, a woman was shot and killed by police. It's just a small part of the hundreds, if not thousands, of videos, photos and live streams from that day, most from the rioters themselves. Now, a number of groups and individuals are putting in time trying to collect and archive that footage, preserve the record of what happened, and potentially help identify the people who stormed the Capitol. Giancarlo Fiorella is a senior researcher with Bellingcat, an open-source research firm working to collect and store images from that day. He's based in Toronto. Giancarlo, good morning to you.

GIANCARLO FIORELLA Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY Thanks for joining us. How is Bellingcat going about archiving all of the video and images from that riot and sifting through things? Tell me a little bit about what you're doing?

GIANCARLO FIORELLA We have issued a call through our Twitter account for anybody who has found footage or images of this event on any social media platform to submit them to us so that we can keep them in a database that we have also made accessible to the public. And so the idea there is that we have crowdsourced the collection of digital evidence for the purposes of archiving so that the people who filmed that evidence, many of them, the perpetrators themselves, even if they were to delete these videos and images from their social media profiles, we would still retain them and they would remain accessible as part of the historical record of what happened on that day.

MATT GALLOWAY We just heard some of the footage there from people bashing at one of the doors in the congressional building. Bellingcat worked specifically on trying to piece together the circumstances around that. And tthe circumstances that led to the death of Ashli Babbitt, who was part of the group that stormed the Capitol. How did you go about piecing that together?

GIANCARLO FIORELLA So what we've done in this case is what we do in other high-profile events that are captured on open-source information and shared online. We monitor developments live as they happen, and that involves doing things like just watching Twitter feeds, seeing videos come out of the Capitol as they were being posted by the people who were there. And in this particular case, the first reports that we heard and the first evidence that we saw of Ashli Babbitt's shooting were images of her being wheeled out of the Capitol. She was receiving CPR on a stretcher. And so, based on that, we began to scour social media for any video, any mention of a shooting, any images that might have captured that moment. Once we identified them, we were able to piece them together to build an account of what happened at the speaker's lobby door inside the Capitol.

MATT GALLOWAY In doing that, you learn about the moment. But how do those videos and photos help create a larger narrative around the day, about, for example, how organized this all was?

GIANCARLO FIORELLA So what we can do through the analysis of open-source information online like these videos is build a full account of exactly what happened by following the people who stormed the Capitol from the moments that they were at the Trump rally, to the march to the Capitol, to the initial scuffles with the police at the perimeter fence, to the running up the stairs, breaking in through the different doors and windows of the building. And that is... that is something that we can do by tracing and by collecting all of these videos that people have captured, and by putting it together in chronological order so that we can build a fuller picture of what happened from beginning to end.

MATT GALLOWAY And again, you started doing this just in the hours after this unfolded, right?

GIANCARLO FIORELLA Yes. We were watching this develop online, as I think a lot of people were. And once the storming occurred is when we sort of kicked it into high-gear and decided that this was a significant moment that was going to produce a substantial amount of open-source information and that we were going to need the public's help in collecting that and archiving it.

MATT GALLOWAY A number of the people who have been seen in these photos and videos have been identified. And police have been making arrests as well. How much do you think police rely on the work that you and others are doing?

GIANCARLO FIORELLA I think they rely on it quite a bit because it's, as shocking as it may sound, there are hundreds and hundreds of hours and hundreds and hundreds of, potentially thousands of, images online that the people who were committing these crimes themselves recorded and proudly shared on their Facebook accounts and on their Twitter accounts. It's really shocking to see. But, you know, there were people taking selfies of themselves inside congressional offices. There's high-resolution footage and images of people beating up police officers, and that's all available online for anybody to find. And so I'm sure that the authorities in the United States have individuals who are devoted to finding these images and... and identifying them, connecting them to names, sometimes quite easily, because, again, the name is on the Facebook account that shared it. And that could be the person who recorded the video themselves.

MATT GALLOWAY What risk, though, when you are crowdsourcing this information and helping to figure out who was involved in this. What risk is there of people being misidentified online?

GIANCARLO FIORELLA There's a significant risk there for sure. What tends to happen in these situations is that people tend to get, I think, overzealous. And there's sort of a crowd mentality that can form on online platforms like Twitter or Reddit, where people think that, you know, somebodies ears in a picture look sort of similar to the ears of a person that they found on Facebook.

MATT GALLOWAY Right.

GIANCARLO FIORELLA Or they might say that their eyes are sort of similar. And so somebody will make a match, and then they'll run away with that. We saw that with the Boston Marathon bombing, and there's other examples of that as well.

MATT GALLOWAY So what do you do to... what do you do to avoid that?

GIANCARLO FIORELLA So the process of identifying individuals, of matching their images at the Capitol to a potential match on Facebook, for example, that work has to be very, very deliberate. It has to be conducted very thoroughly, very slowly. The last thing you want to do is make those sorts of decisions on the fly. And also, you're not looking just for matching eyes or ears. You want to be able to match very clearly things like scars, tattoos, freckles, any unique identifier that an individual will have. And once you have a series of those identifiers, then you can make the determination that there's a high probability or a certainty that somebody in a video from the Capitol is the person that you found on Facebook.

MATT GALLOWAY Giancarlo, good to speak with you about the work that you're doing. Appreciate your time this morning. Thanks.

GIANCARLO FIORELLA Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY Giancarlo Fiorella is a senior researcher with Bellingcat. He's based in Toronto. Your regional update is next. [Music: Theme] And then, you ever wandered around your city or your town and you noticed something that tickled your curiosity? Maybe it's a building that looks a little out of place, a street lined with different lampposts. Maybe it's the stamps that say the dates that the sidewalk was poured. If this sounds like you, you will be a fan of my next guest. Roman Mars has explored the hidden world of design for years on his podcast, 99% Invisible. He's turned some of this knowledge into a new book, and he's here in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

3

99% Invisible’s Roman Mars on the benefits of slowing down and looking around

Guest: Roman Mars

MATT GALLOWAY Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

MATT GALLOWAY If you're a fan of podcasts, like I am, chances are this is one of those familiar sounds that brings a bit of a smile to your face.

ROMAN MARS This is 99% Invisible.

MAN Hey, I can't find that on the radio.

ROMAN MARS I'm Roman Mars.

MAN You'll turn to that station.

MATT GALLOWAY In the ten years since it launched, 99% Invisible has become one of the most popular podcasts around with more than 475 million downloads. If you have never heard it, host Roman Mars uncovers the surprising stories behind everyday objects from the stamps you see on sidewalks to those funny-looking waving inflatable men outside of [slight chuckle] used car lots. He and longtime producer Kurt Kohlstedt have bundled together many of those stories, and some new ones, into a new book called "The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design". Roman Mars joins me now from his home in Berkeley, California. Roman, good morning.

ROMAN MARS Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY Thank you for being here. I'm reaching you in the midst of a pandemic, and you're in California. And I know things are grim there. What is life like for you these days?

ROMAN MARS We've kind of taken it seriously, like, in this household and in this region for quite some time. So even though there's been various stages of... of lockdown and... and sort of relief, it's always been kind of a whole lockdown for me. [laughing] And so... so things are really rough in Southern California. We're hoping for the best here.

MATT GALLOWAY Your dad died in November of COVID?

ROMAN MARS He did. He... he... he... he lived in Ohio, which was also overrun, especially during that time period. So, yeah, this is real serious. It's affecting us very gravely. And I'm really hopeful that people take care and do what's right, so it gets over with as fast as possible.

MATT GALLOWAY I'm really sorry for what you've been through.

ROMAN MARS Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY And I know, I mean, this is just not what you talk about on the podcast at all, but I mean, given what you've been through, and you say you hope people take it seriously, we're seeing, I mean, vaccines are starting to roll out, but there are way too many deaths on both sides of the border. What is your sense as to how those who are in charge are handling this virus right now?

ROMAN MARS Well, I think most of those in charge are not handling well at all. I mean, it's a truly preventable crisis. It's... a lot of behaviour can mitigate the effects and the spread. It was not taken seriously. And, you know, for the most part, I'm going to be eager for when our government transitions to people who believe in government and believe that government has a role in the public health of the nation. And I think that will only improve things.

MATT GALLOWAY It's so personal for you given what you've gone through. But like many of us, you're spending so much more time at home these days in lockdown. What has lockdown meant to you? I mean, how is it practically how has it changed your life?

ROMAN MARS I mean, I work a lot, so like it mainly affects work. I have the kids around a lot [chuckling], you know? Like, so you have to sort of be a kind of a teacher and guide to them in a different way. But, you know, a lot of the, you know, the editing and writing of a show and attending the meetings, those are kind of the same. But they're just remote, and they feel a little bit more distant. I miss my staff. It's been real and odd. It seems like I've gotten kind of used to it. The double dose of things is when it really sort of weighs on me. Like, so we had wildfires in California in, you know, August and September. And when I was stuck inside, it was bad, but when I was stuck inside, and I couldn't open the windows because of air quality, that was when I was really losing it. But, you know, things moved on from there.

MATT GALLOWAY In some ways, I mean, a book like yours, and your podcast, is perfect for this time because they're both about seeing things with different eyes in some ways. And I just wonder whether, I mean, it's your sense that, you know, the pandemic is kind of unlocking a new way of seeing for some people because of where we are and where we aren't?

ROMAN MARS I mean, it obviously wasn't written for this moment. I mean, it was turned in right before the... the lockdown started here in the U.S. in sort of mid-March. But it is sort of this strange book of the moment because it is about recognizing the cool stories behind everyday things that are right outside your doorstep. And it's a... It's a field guide to those things. And so in this moment when we can't go to far-flung cities and other countries and marvel at the cool things that they have there, you really can look at the everyday things right outside your door and... and marvel at those instead.

MATT GALLOWAY Outside your door or inside your door after.

ROMAN MARS That's right [laughing].

MATT GALLOWAY In March, after the first lockdown began, you did an episode that was recorded at home, where you went around your house and described what you saw. [slight chuckle] Let's take a listen to some of that.

ROMAN MARS I'm starting in my bedroom. I'm sitting on a Casper mattress. This is not an ad. We eat our own dog food in the podcast business, so I have a Casper mattress. But I digress. As I look around, I see I have five windows in this room. Now, if I were in England, or France, or Ireland, or Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries, I would probably not want this many windows. That's because back then, the more windows you had, the more tax you paid. This was all variable from place to place and over time. But the principle was that a window tax was a good stand-in for a progressive income tax. The bigger the House, the more windows, the higher the tax you paid. All right, so there is the toilet. There is an extremely common misconception that the toilet was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper. Crapper, you know, was a sanitation engineer and entrepreneur in the UK in the late 19th century that held a few patents. And he's credited with improving indoor plumbing for toilets. He was a good businessman and by all accounts, a consultant told a lot of plumbing supplies with the name Crapper and Company. While we're here in the bathroom, let's wash our hands. There was a very good explainer on soap recently in The New York Times by Ferris Jabr. Soap molecules look like little sperm with a head that loves water and a tail that hates water. So when you put soap and water on your hands, these little soap tails find things that aren't water and they dig their tails into trying to get away. This breaks up bacteria and viruses cell membranes, and surrounds any debris with soap molecules and makes them easy to rinse away when more water and friction are applied. For the sake of your own health, and for everyone else's, wash your hands regularly for at least twenty seconds. That is longer than you think. So pick a song to keep you on task.

[Sound: Running water].

ROMAN MARS [singing "So Much Beter" by Evan Olson] Long before I had you in my dreams, you came and captured my imagination. Though somethings are never what they seem. I never have to worry because I know you are better than the Venus de Milo in a G-string. Better than the promise of a good one-night fling. Better than a big book of Bettie Page pictures. Even if it comes with a year's subscription. Better than... [fades out].

MATT GALLOWAY [both laughing] Is that the first time that you've sung on the podcast?

ROMAN MARS Yeah, but I was moved by this really remarkable episode of "Reply All" where they dissected that sort of lost hit. And so it was on my mind when I was recording it. [laughing]

MATT GALLOWAY Are you surprised that it took you this long to... to give a guided tour of your house? I mean, it sounds like a normal episode in some ways of 99% Invisible. [both laughing]

ROMAN MARS It's funny because so much of the origin of the show was inspired by the book "At Home" by Bill Bryson, which is essentially that, you know? [chuckling] But more learned and better written. And so, you know, it did make sense. It just was like, you know, the lockdown happened. So much was happening in the world. And now there are a bunch of people work on it and not just me. It's really a show made by humans, and you can feel it. And if something's happening in the world, we try to reflect it. And there was this moment where it just felt like the thing we had slated for the next week, even though it usually takes us, you know, six to eight weeks to make an episode, was just inappropriate. And I... and I wanted to reflect the time, and... and give people kind of comfort and have a fun moment, because we were all kind of locked in our homes, and maybe we could enjoy that space and encourage people to stay in.

MATT GALLOWAY And let me ask you something else about giving people comfort. A lot of us are, you know, dealing with anxiety and stress in the midst of this. And I had heard that people were listening to the sound of your voice to help them fall asleep during the pandemic. [both laughing].

ROMAN MARS Yeah.

MATT GALLOWAY Is this true here?

ROMAN MARS I hear that a lot. You know, I think it's true. [both laughing] You know, the show has a calm tone. I've always wanted the show to sound like it was a friend or kind of a voice inside your head. And I think that is comforting to some people.

MATT GALLOWAY You mentioned some of the roots of this. And this started a decade ago as a project of KALW, public radio, and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. What were you trying to do? I mean, what was the elevator pitch for 99PI?

ROMAN MARS You know, I was working in the news department at KALW, and the general manager, Matt Martin, you know, called me in the office with... With this idea that the AIA wanted to kind of have a little drop-in to play during Morning Edition here in the U.S. radio in the States. And it would be about a local building. And would I be interested and what... what I would think of that? And immediately, I wanted to expand it to the broader concept of design, like not just a cool building, but, you know, a curb cut, a sewage grate, you know, something like that. And it evolved from... from there.

MATT GALLOWAY And that's what, I mean, that's what the title means, 99% Invisible, right?

ROMAN MARS It sort of alludes to two things. Actually, you know, that came out at a meeting I sort of called of different types of designers when I was planning the show. And there was like a landscape architect and a product designer and a building engineer. And I was like, what's a unifying thing that you all do besides the word design? [chuckling] I didn't want the word design in the title at all. For some reason, I was very against that. And, um, the sort of consensus was that what they do, when they do it right, it's 99% invisible. And I loved that idea. It was really evocative to me.

MATT GALLOWAY What's wrong with... what's wrong with the word design?

ROMAN MARS It just was I just didn't want to be tied to it in this weird way. I found it, um, I don't know, ugly or cumbersome. I like the word design just fine. And I use it all the time. We have a design bell in the office, so sometimes we get pitches that are very far afield of, you know, maybe our original purview, and but we sort of cover them anyway. So when one is very design-y, we ring the design bell in the office. [both laughing] But besides that, I just... I kind of wanted it to be more poetic than the word design.

MATT GALLOWAY You've talked about this being a mindset that, and these are your words, allows you to go out armed with the type of curiosity and questioning so that you notice these things and can support the good ones. Tell me more about that. What does that mean?

ROMAN MARS It's pretty easy. And, you know, our brains are made this way on purpose, to ignore the things that we see every day so that we notice the changes like, you know, the tiger that's coming at us, you know? [chuckling] And so what I like about the sort of the project of the show over ten years is I know this is how it's worked on me, this curiosity of the every day, and paying attention to it, and noticing that these things are choices made by usually smart people to make our lives better. Is like a lovely way to navigate the world, because it's... it's... it's really easy to get caught up in the bad design and the things that aren't working and ignore that 99 per cent of things that are working really well for you and making life better. And... and also, that there are stories behind those decisions. And those stories are interesting. And it just makes the world more delightful.

MATT GALLOWAY I mean, delight is one of my favourite words. [Roman chuckles] And delightful is kind of perfect for this. Is it difficult, though, to spark that delight in something as banal as a sewer grate or a bench until you tell somebody there's a reason why there's an arm in the middle of that bench so that somebody can't lie down, for example?

ROMAN MARS Yeah, you know, I think it can be hard, but that's just what we do. Like, that's the, [chuckling] you know, that's the place I've staked out. And at this point, I think it works. Like, the people who are on board for the show are on board for it. It's pretty fun to have those moments of connection and to talk about a thing in a new cool way and make you, you know, sort of enjoy it or get angry about it. Just notice, just care. And either of those things I'm looking for.

MATT GALLOWAY I want to play a little bit of one of my favourite episodes. This... and you talk about connections, this is such a great example of you kind of pulling together design and politics and culture. This is from Episode 124 of 99% Invisible. It's called Long Box.

[Music: Glassy guitar riff]

ROMAN MARS I went to graduate school in Athens, Georgia, which is a great place to be from the ages of about 18 to 25, if you like going out to bars and listening to live music. Even though Athens is a fairly small college town, it's had a huge and important music scene for decades. And the most famous band to come out of the Athens scene undoubtedly was REM.

[Music: "Disturbance At The Heron House" By REM]

MICHAEL STRIPE [singing] When I got to the house and I called you out, I could tell that you had been trying, crying.

ROMAN MARS To be provocative right from the start, I'm going to say that REM's "Out Of Time" is the most politically important album in the history of the United States. And this provocateur is reporter Whitney Jones. This isn't one of those. Oh, it's a soundtrack to a generation or anything like that. "Out Of Time" made such a huge impact because of its packaging. The Box that "Out Of Time" originally came and led to a bill being passed in Congress and an actual concrete law.

BILL CLINTON As I said, I have long supported the idea of "Motor Voter". I'm pleased to be able to keep the promise today that I made on this Rock the Vote card, which still has my signature back in New Hampshire.

MAN Shaking his hands after the bill signing, we identified ourselves as "Rock the Vote". He said you guys got this passed, and it was really one of the most surreal moments of my life.

MATT GALLOWAY Roman Mars, what exactly is that? I love that episode, but for people who don't know what what is the connexion between REM, I mean, and your hometown of Athens, Georgia and Bill Clinton?

ROMAN MARS At this time period, CDs were in their ascendancy. And the packaging of CDs was this long cardboard box because you could fit two of them upright in the old bins were vinyl records used to go. And so that was the package that you put a CD in a long box that more than doubled the sort of surface area of it so it could stand upright when you're flipping through the bins. And REM was an environmental, environmentally-minded group that did not like these cardboard wasteful boxes. And so they made a deal that if you put the CD in a long box, they designed these coupons to register to vote in the "Rock the Vote" campaign. And because of that, that widespread, they would send in it would send in support for this bill. They were overwhelmed by it, congress was. And it led to the passing of the "Motor Voter" bill. And so it was a strange thing where morality and ethics of the band hit this sort of design of the packaging and changed a law. And it was a really kind of fascinating story.

MATT GALLOWAY What do you love about that story in terms of what it is that you're trying to do with the podcast?

ROMAN MARS I love that sort of you know, that that intersection of the mundane and something profound. You know, like that. There's a there's this little thing... that a decision made because of the shape of a bean to to to put a record in led to the shape of the CD that needed to stand upright. [both chuckling] And then they had to deal with that. And, you know, and that the record company just could not abide the fact that a CD would be released without a big cardboard piece of packaging and the way they dealt with it. And that led to a law. It's that cascade of decisions that have a story behind each one of them that lead to something big. I mean, that's just like our bread and butter. We love that stuff.

MATT GALLOWAY OK, so I want to ask some questions about things that these are things that you talk about, but things that I have been musing about as well. Weird nerdy type things like stamps and sidewalks. So in our neighbourhood, there are stamps that say when the sidewalk was put in. And I sort of became obsessed with looking at those stamps because it tells you the date. Some of them are from 2019.

ROMAN MARS Right.

MATT GALLOWAY One goes all the way back to 1960. Why is there a piece of sidewalk from 1960? Tell me about what you've learnt about the stamps that we see on sidewalks?

ROMAN MARS Depending on the area, they're standardized in different ways. But often when new construction is done and the sidewalk is put up, the construction company in charge of that project puts in the sidewalk. And then they... then they stamp it with their.... with, you know, kind of basically an ad for their construction company. And I love these things as well. Like, they're all over the East Bay where I live. And... and you can sort of mark the the the date of the neighbourhood through these construction projects. You can even follow there's this one company called Schnoor, which was a concrete layer in the neighbourhood. And you can follow these from the, you know, the very early, like, 1900 to the 30s and 40s, and the mark on them, says Schnoor. And that, says Schnoor and Sons, and that says Schnoor Brothers. [Matt laaghs] And you can follow the... the the evolution of, like, this company called Schnoor. You bring the sons into the business. Dad retires, and the [chuckling] Schnoor Brothers, you know, company. And you can watch this over decades. And it's... It's this information layer about a local business that is, you know, right there underneath our feet that you can read.

MATT GALLOWAY Great example of paying attention. Another example of that is the plaque. Always read the plaque is what you say. And these are, you know, historical markers. These are plaques on the sides of buildings or on a bench or in front of someone's home. What... what do you think people can learn by reading the plaque?

ROMAN MARS Again, it's right there. There's like an information layer about the built world that's sitting right there in front of you. And I think they're always worth reading, even though they are absolutely incomplete, you know, because they can't tell the whole story on a plaque. But they just tell you something to get you started and get you intrigued. And they're worth interrogating. Like, you should always read the plaque, but you shouldn't always, like, believe everything on the plaque.

MATT GALLOWAY You wonder whether I mean, that takes even greater significance after the summer that we've had with Black Lives Matter protests.

ROMAN MARS Yes.

MATT GALLOWAY And people paying attention. Why is that statue there, and who is that statue of, and why is it in this neighbourhood in 2019 or 2020?

ROMAN MARS Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that's really important about historical markers in particular is that they're as much, even maybe even more, a reflection of the time that the plaque was erected rather than the time that they're depicting. You know, like a lot of the, you know, the Civil War monuments in the American South are, you know, were erected in the 20s and 30s as a really a tool of oppression, even though they're commemorating a time in the, you know, 1860s.

MATT GALLOWAY I was pleased to see notice in the book of our in Toronto, our beloved pandas, [Roman chuckles] the raccoons that we love to hate or hate to love. And the innervate of so-called "raccoon-proof" compost bins and the city of Toronto somehow cooked up. When you take a look at those bins and the raccoons, what's the bigger story there?

ROMAN MARS It's really just a design story about our values and the war we have with the synanthropes that have thrived in our cities. You know, that one was is kind of fun more than anything, you know? [both laughing] Because what I love about Toronto's relationship with a raccoon is it's kind of fun, love/ hate. And it's, you know, it's a nice sort of cold war of escalation of the arms race of these really, really clever animals, and all the things we have to do to make it so that a latch is still usable by... by humans and can be unopenable by these clever little creatures with creepy little hands. [laughing] And... and so to me that... that is... is hilarious.[laughing]

MATT GALLOWAY It's their city. We just live in it. [Roman laughs] You have a section, and I've been thinking about this as well, talking about the nameless places in cities. You know, the patch of grass maybe between highways or the little spots that it's hard to define what exactly they are, but they're still part of the urban fabric. Do they offer a way to think about space differently? What should we be thinking about when we see, you know, you're in the car and you're driving by, and you see this little patch of green somewhere?

ROMAN MARS Yeah, I think giving it a name just gives you a way to, like, grab onto it as a concept and not think of it as just dead space that you ignore, so that like that little triangle that's created by an onramp into a highway. This fellow named it a freeway eddie. And it's just sort of like poetic and evocative. And it makes you think about it as a space, and think about all the times you've seen spaces like that. And therefore, kind of use it. There's a lot of dead space in cities that could be used in interesting ways. And it's just kind of fun to engage with that in your mind, even if it's just, you know, just to engage with it.

MATT GALLOWAY Well, one of the ways people use it is to walk over it. You talk about desire paths. For people who don't know what that phrase is, what does that mean?

ROMAN MARS So, for example, if you could imagine a park and there's walkways that are, you know, like sidewalks that have concrete on that are planned by the designer. But if... if they aren't efficiently laid out and, you know, there's a 90-degree turn coming up or that's the concrete pathway, and you just want to get across, often people like, you know, walk across the grass and create a little diagonal cut through. And... and when somebody sees that piece of grass tramped down, you know, they also tramp down on it. And it sort of creates the sort of dirt path. And those desire paths are, you know, they're just kind of people voting with their feet as to how they want to use space. And I find them fascinating because they are this intersection and a conversation about what public space, like, how it was designed versus how it's used. And it's worth paying attention to desire paths because we could learn how to use the spaces better if we pay attention to the people that use it.

MATT GALLOWAY Do you worry about how cities are going to change because of this pandemic? I mean, we aren't out there walking in those public spaces. We're staying home. And people worry about where people are going to work, where people are going to live? You know, people... whether they'll feel comfortable in taking transit, for example. Do you worry about the future of cities?

ROMAN MARS I do. And I don't. I don't have a, like, existential worry about the future of cities. Cities have always been through lots of changes. And I do think that cities will survive. And people, you know, being together and creating culture together is like a, I think, a fundamental need of ours. Um, you know, around here, even though I think we're taking the lockdown pretty seriously, there's more people walking in my neighbourhood than ever before. [laughing] You know, like like they're out all the time. They're just not gathering in bars and stuff. It'll be interesting to see what sticks. And I guess it kind of depends on if this is part of a wave of pandemics that's going to be in our future, which some people predict or not. But what I found interesting about the moment was all the rapid changes that happened so quickly to cope in a city, like all the plexiglass that went up almost instantly. Like, I don't even know where you get a ten-foot piece of plexiglas, but it showed up in the corner store, you know, like affixed to the ceiling so quickly that I was sort of amazed by that. And the tape on the floor that gives you a guidance as to where to be, which actually I kind of enjoyed that one. And I kind of hope that one stays, you know?

MATT GALLOWAY Why?

ROMAN MARS Because, you know, like I find [chuckling] navigating public spaces can be kind of just anxiety-inducing, and knowing where to stand, knowing if you're in the right line or whatever, and there's an information layer like available, you know, to space on the floor, it's available to you to provide so much guidance that is rarely used. And I kind of found it cool. And like, you know, like maybe it won't be, you know, I hope it's not dire and you need to stay six feet away from people. But I do kind of hope that, like, the floor is used to guide you through a single serpentine line so you can efficiently get through a register. Like, that would be pleasing to me.

MATT GALLOWAY We've been forced to slow down. I mean, part of it is you see those things and you see them in a different way. But you're also I mean, people aren't travelling as much, and so... hopefully they aren't. And so you're spending time walking around your neighbourhood or walking around a community and learning about the streets that you've been around for a long time. What happens when you're able to unlock that kind of curiosity in people, do you think?

ROMAN MARS I think it makes the world look a little bit better place because you recognize the fact that there are a lot of things that are working for you, even when things in the world seem broken. I do a show for ten years where I've talked about how great, you know, roads and bridges and these municipal projects that we all get together and build the things that we can't build on our own. And aren't they sort of marvellous? And... and sometimes they're really beautiful to look at. But, you know, if I'm in my car and I'm, you know, being, you know, thwarted to where I want to get to because of construction, I can get impatient and I can get angry and I can be like, why is... why... I can't deal with this right now, whatever. And then I have to slow down and go, hey, you talk about how much you love these things. They have to be made some time. [both chuckling] You know? Like, and so just chill the hell out, just chill the hell out, and just take the moment of recognizing that the world is trying to be made better for you. And I think it just it resets my mind a little bit to think about the care that goes into making the world. I become, you know, a much more optimistic person through the production of this show just because of that, just noticing that, you know, people care, they're trying hard and they're making stuff, and they're making stuff for me.

MATT GALLOWAY It's made me see my world differently, which I love. It's a real pleasure to talk to you, Roman, and thank you.

ROMAN MARS Oh, it was my.... I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much.

MATT GALLOWAY Roman Mars is the host of the podcast 99% Invisible, and co-author of the book "The 99% Invisible City". Also a founder of the podcast Collective Radiotopia. He spoke with us from Berkeley, California. And that's it for The Current for today. Q is up next with guest host Talia Schlanger. You'll hear some new music from a new collection of songs sung by the late Chris Cornell, one of the great frontman in rock. That's coming up on CBC Radio One. I Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take care, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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January 11, 2020 Episode Transcript

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