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The Current Transcript for March 21, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

Syrians are devastated by what they see in Ukraine because no one came to their aid because no one stopped Putin. What's happening in Syria is happening in Ukraine.

MARK KELLEY: Bombing civilian infrastructure. Targeting nuclear facilities. Using banned weapons. In 30 minutes, we will talk about what the Russian military did in Syria and what that means for the war in Ukraine. And later this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

Is this the life we want to live? Is this the path we want to go down? Do we want our entire existence to be quantified? I don't think we do.

MK: Algorithms rule everything from Major League Baseball rosters to election campaigns these days. But in a world where numbers are king and we rely on computers to know everything we don't. Journalist Chris Jones says the good old gut feeling is being shortchanged. I'll talk to him about the limits of analytics and why human creativity is still worth something. But we begin this morning with a forgotten war. I'm Mark Kelley sitting in for Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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Global inaction over Yemen’s humanitarian crisis

Guests: William Cherniak, Radhya Almutawakel, Thomas Juneau

MK: For weeks, the world's attention has been fixed on the war in Ukraine, but the advent of one conflict does not stop the countless others unfolding around the world. For almost eight years now, the people of Yemen have been subjected to one of the worst humanitarian crises we've seen. What began as a civil war has escalated into a regional power struggle, with Saudi Arabia flexing its military might. Yemenis are dying by the thousands from war, but also from starvation and a lack of basic health care. A Canadian organisation is hoping its initiative to get ultrasound machines into Yemen can help ease some of that suffering. Dr. William Cherniak is an emergency room doctor at Markham Stouffville Hospital in Ontario and the co-founder of Bridge to Health. Good morning.

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: Morning.

MK: How bad is the need from your perspective in Yemen right now?

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: Yeah, I mean, I can I can't speak to the whole country, certainly, but to the place that we work in and to hospitals in a part of the country called Hadramout. And the need is quite intense. I mean, the local clinicians obviously are working to the best of their abilities, but they lack access to basic diagnostic equipment. And so and this is a way to try to empower them to understand what's going on with their patients.

MK: And tell us about what you're doing the project itself with the ultrasounds.

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: Yes. So basically, we've got a really cool device called the Butterfly IQ, and we've been partnered with that company for a number of years. But they took a really costly sort of delicate machine and put it onto a chip with a single probe that plugs into an iPhone. And what's really neat is we figured out that we could plug that device into the iPhone, as I mentioned, and then have our trainees upload scans to a cloud, allowing our team of physicians from across Canada and the United States to actually review those images remotely and then give feedback to physicians that are on the ground in country to train them from a distance on how to use the device and diagnose illness.

MK: So, so what kinds of things can you diagnose from these scans from afar?

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: I mean, it's sort of interesting. You can look at just about anything, but we're focussed on three key things for this particular grant. So we're looking at pneumonia in children, which is the leading cause of death in children under five around the world. And then we're looking at complications of pregnancy, and Yemen's maternal mortality rate is twenty times as bad as it is in Canada. And we're looking at abdominal trauma. So folks come in, you know, after some sort of traumatic event, can we look for problems inside the belly.

MK: For all the the need that there is, and then there is staggering need in Yemen, why to focus on the ultrasound?

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: Yeah, I mean, we got into ultrasound. So bridge to health, you know, we've been around for 10 years now as a Canadian registered charity, and our mission is to partner with local groups and basically form a coalition of government, civil society, academia that really empower local partners to provide care for their own populations. And so when we reached out to our folks on the ground in rural Uganda, which is where we work primarily, we found out that the key thing that they wanted to address was that not enough moms were coming during basically the antenatal period to get ultrasound scan. So we thought, Hey, we can use this really cool, portable ultrasound device to bring it into the communities to these very rural villages. And it just sort of grew organically from input and feedback from the local community. And then again, it's just everywhere we've gone. We've shown the device. We talked about ultrasound and every clinician and patient who sees it as, Wow, this is amazing. We like to have access to that.

MK: When there's so much need right now, as we were talking about, of course, Ukraine is the one that's making the headlines right now. But when there's so much need in the world, how do you decide who gets help and who doesn't?

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: I don't think there's any real answer to that. I mean, you can teach a whole ethics course on how to make those kinds of decisions. But I mean, we basically try to work in places that, A, we want to partner with us and to have a positive impact in their communities and then, B, where we see that, you know, health indicators are, you know, some of the most challenged in the world. And so certainly where we've worked in sub-Saharan East Africa fits those criteria. And then in Yemen, given the conflict, yeah, we chose to work in that zone a couple of years ago.

MK: Now, do you think that that conflict in Yemen is getting the attention it needs, the attention it deserves?

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: No. I mean, I think, of course, there's so many things happening in the world these days that it's hard to draw, you know, focus on to a particular event and, you know, especially when it's been going on for a number of years. But I think we were probably more discussing it publicly a couple of two to three years ago. But I think it's really fallen off the radar lately, but it hasn't gone away and it hasn't improved. Yeah.

MK: And and what kind of response are you getting from health care workers in Yemen to your project?

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: Oh, they love it. It's great. The two local hospitals that we work with, we've been able to recruit three of 18 physicians that will be training with us. We're just wrapping up the first group of six and we've done over 100 scans now for paediatric pneumonia. Then we have the next group for trauma than the next group for obstetrics, but they've already signalled that they'd like to expand this programme across the entire country. And so we'll be applying A Grand challenges Canada for a transition, a scale grant in the next few months.

MK: Good luck with the project and great talking to you today. Thank you for your time.

DR. WILLIAM CHERNIAK: Likewise, thanks very much.

MK: Dr. William Cherniak is the co-founder of Bridge to Health. He was in Dubai this morning. At a conference last week in Geneva, the United Nations asked the international community for over $4 billion to address Yemen's food shortages, but only 1.3 billion was raised, leaving the majority of Yemen's population in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. And as the war approaches its eighth year, there is a frustration and anger that human rights abuses continue to go unchecked. Radhya Almutawakel is the Chairperson Mwatana for Human Rights. She is in Yemen's capital, Sana'a. Good morning.

RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL: Hi.

MK: You heard little about what Dr. Chernick and his group is trying to do in Yemen to health the health care system there. Give us your perspective of the need and the challenges any group trying to help in Yemen faces right now.

RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL: Actually, the big challenge is that everything is collapsed, but whatever you do to help, it's going to be just like the minimum. For example, the health system is collapsed. Not because the crisis in Yemen is not a humanitarian crisis. It's s military and human rights crisis, and the attitude of parties to the conflict led to this crisis. So, for example, when it comes to hospitals and the health system, we in Mwatana documented dozens of attacks on hospitals that has participated to to make the whole system of health care collapsed. So these projects are very important, but it's going to make a very limited influence since the war is still going on, the parties to the conflict do not care.

MK: When you say attacks on hospital describe to us, What do you mean by that?

RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL: So hospitals was attacked, for example, by airstrikes, by the Saudi led coalition grant, shelling by Huthis in the ground and other parties to the conflict. There was a very direct attacks on personnel to the different types of attacks that happened to hospitals. Now we have documented

MK: year in the capital, Sana'a. How is the conflict being felt there now?

RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL: So the conflict has affected the whole Yemen, including Sana'a, because Yemen is now for the eight years have been, I mean, facing different types of violations by all parties to the conflict. As I said, there is the airstrikes, the ground shelling, the land mines, attacking schools and hospitals, child recruitment and above the all direct violations by all parties to the conflict. Yemenis also are facing the fact that parties to the conflict are using starvation as a weapon of war. So it's not that you do die directly because of women, but also you die from hunger or a need of a food. Or that economic system has collapsed in Yemen, and it happened in purpose because of the attitude of parties to the conflict. For millions of Yemenis, I'm not receiving their salaries in the public sectors for years since 2016 until now, and this is one of the things that really has broken the back of Yemenis. So the military and aid in Yemen is very important, but you cannot feed a nation, the Yemenis. They need not only a sustainable peace, but if the attitude of parties to the conflict has changed that, then Yemen doesn't have to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. We are suffering also from the lack of accountability parties to the conflict in Yemen. They trust impunity more than anything else, and in most of the violations that we have documented in the ground by the Saudi Coalition or the Yemeni government or the Houthi armed group and other armed and other groups, most of them are very prevented in many airstrikes and ground shelling. There were not even a military target, the people themselves. They were asking why we have been targeted where there is no even a military advantage.

MK: You mentioned starvation, and we know now that a third of Yemen's wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine, and the current conflict may restrict supply and push up food prices. What what are you anticipating now the impact of the war in Ukraine, having on it, on your dire situation in Yemen?

RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL: The situation is already horrible and people are facing the fact of starvation even before this last crisis. And now it's even worse. Whenever Yemenis think that they might be able to cope with the crisis, to survive, not really to cope, then the crisis became more. Every year it became more more and more so. Now, for example, we are suffering in the areas that is controlled by. Was this from a fuel crisis four weeks to now and all the prices was very high, and it is a very difficult and complicated situation? Well, the the source of people, they lost their source of income during the war, that it's not only the health system that has collapsed, it's the whole idea of states state the state has collapsed and now is controlled by armed groups from Sadr to Suchitra and all the different parties to the conflict. So we don't have even a stable state that tells people to get their minimal services. So it's just getting worse and worse.

MK: We mentioned at the beginning that the U.N. asked for the international community for more than $4 billion to address the Yemen's food shortages and only in only $1.3 billion was raised. Why do you think that is? Do you think the international community is ignoring Yemen?

RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL: Yes, I used to say that Yemen is a forgotten. And then from our work and advocacy and accountability, I discovered that Yemen is not to forget it is ignored. Yes, they are ignoring Yemen, and they are not doing even the minimum to help with with these kind of humanitarian aid.

MK: And why do you think that? Why do you think that is, Radhya?

RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL: It's the curse of geography. And the war in Yemen is not only civil war, it's also a proxy war. And we have Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and an Iran in the middle of this war and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They have their own allies and they are trying to control the narrative of the war in Yemen, and they are impacting the international community, not only in not only that communitarian and it's also in having a mechanism for accountability. We have been trying to push for having a community focussed mechanism for accountability in Yemen. It shouldn't be very easy. This is something that have been created in many conflict zones. But when it came to Yemen, it never happened. Not because there is no crisis in Yemen, not because parties to the conflict are not committing horrible crimes. It just because the international community doesn't want to upset some parties to the conflict, mainly Saudis and monarchies. So it's their financial interest. It seems to be in Yemen more important than the blood of innocent people.

MK: Radhya, we thank you for your time today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Radhya Almutawakel is the chairperson Mwatana for human rights. She is in Yemen's capital, Sanaa. Well, Ukraine might be geographically far from Yemen, but as we mentioned, the consequences of that conflict in Europe are still being felt in that region. For more, I'm joined by Thomas Juneau. He's an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. He's the author of the book Le Yemen on Geurre (Yemen at War). Good morning.

THOMAS JUNEAU: Good morning.

MK: You can hear Radhya's frustration coming through, you know, as we look at the world's attention and outrage, what's happening in Ukraine? She says that the war in Yemen is being ignored. What's your view?

THOMAS JUNEAU: I think she was entirely correct in saying that it is both forgotten and ignored, as she said, one of the reasons for that is geography. You know, Ukraine obviously, is in Europe. So the impact on European countries on NATO, on Canada and the U.S. is more direct. In the case of U.S., it has fewer neighbours. It's it's farther away. There are, I think, you know that that clearly has got to be one of the reasons, but there are probably others diaspora. When you think about what happens in Lebanon, for example, can have a bigger impact in Canada because of the role of Diaspora communities. In Yemen, that's not really the case. But I think she's also correct in saying that because of the role of Saudi Arabia in that war and the close relations between Canada, the U.S. and Europe with Saudi Arabia, it's a war that we're actively trying to forget, I think.

MK: Why? Because we don't want to upset Saudi Arabia?

THOMAS JUNEAU: Because Saudi Arabia, as your previous guest said, and it has, as has been widely documented in the imedia, Saudi Arabia's role in Yemen has been has been has been a disaster. Basically, the intervention that Saudi Arabia launched seven years ago did not start the war. The war had already started before that, but it made it worse. Saudi Arabia has been responsible for multiple atrocities. A number of NGOs have documented war crimes. But Canada, the U.S. and European countries, we're still close to Saudi Arabia. So by, if you know, for a country like Canada to start bringing attention to the war in Yemen, to publicise, for example, the humanitarian assistance that we offer to the U.N. for the war in Yemen and automatically, that brings light to the fact that we also sell weapons to Saudi Arabia that goes for Canada, but to varying extents. It also goes for European countries and for the U.S. So when you look at it that way for a country, for a government like Canada, whether liberal or conservative, for that matter, the political interest is in just not bringing attention to this war.

MK: Well, let's talk about political interest for a second. How has Saudi Arabia's foreign relations changed in the past few weeks because of the oil sanctions against Russia due to the war in Ukraine.

THOMAS JUNEAU: That's an interesting question, and I think its foreign relations have changed a bit. But the impact on Yemen, as far as I can tell so far at least, is really limited. Saudi Arabia now has gained a bit of leverage with the U.S. because of American and other sanctions on Russia. The U.S. is trying to get countries like Saudi Arabia, but perhaps even a country like Venezuela to increase oil production to compensate for the loss of Russian oil on the market. That gives Saudi Arabia a bit of leverage with regards to the U.S. because it basically asks something that the U.S. wants. We've probably seen an expression of that leverage about 10 days ago when Saudi Arabia executed 81 people, which is a massive number, of course. And the U.S. didn't even condemn it. So I don't know that for a fact, but I'm working on the assumption that the U.S. didn't condemn it because it doesn't want to irritate Saudi Arabia when it needs something from Saudi Arabia. So that's certainly true. The war in Ukraine has other impacts on Yemen, as your previous guest very rightly said, in terms of an increase on the price of bread and wheat, which will have a devastating impact on Yemen. That being said, on Saudi Arabia's conduct of the war in Yemen, I don't think Ukraine will have a significant impact.

MK: Give us a sense of what is the state of the war, the conflict in Yemen today.

THOMAS JUNEAU: The war is seven years old. If you start counting it. When Saudi Arabia intervened in 2015, but at a domestic level, it had started probably the year before when the Houthis, who are a a rebel group from northwest Yemen, seised the capital, kicked out the the internationally recognised government. Today, the war is not completely in a stalemate because the Houthis have become dominant. They control the key population centres in the north and the West. And so they are dominant, but they are not strong enough to win. And so the tragedy of the war right now is that the Houthis are dominant, but they can't win. So in that sense, there's no military solution. But there's also not really an obvious political solution because the Houthis feel that their dominance or they feel that any political solution should recognise their newfound power. But Saudi Arabia will- is absolutely not willing to negotiate some kind of a political settlement that would recognise the Houthis dominance. So we're in a bit of a very difficult situation now where it's a humanitarian catastrophe. There's no military solution, but the stars are just not aligned for a political solution.

MK: But but if the humanitarian situation, catastrophe, to use your word has been well-documented, why then has the international community not stepped up with that humanitarian aid that the U.N. is requiring asking for?

THOMAS JUNEAU: That's a really good question, and it's difficult to come up with a satisfactory answer to that because it, as you said, the international community simply hasn't. I think there's a number of reasons for that. None of them is satisfying in terms of giving a good answer. But these reasons are its attention is elsewhere. There are multiple crises in the world, Ukraine being another one. That's not a good reason to ignore Yemen, but it's the reality of why Yemen is being ignored. Yemen is far other countries in the West have a limited interest in that country. And as I said at the beginning of our chat, Saudi Arabia, because of our relations with Saudi Arabia, Western countries, you know, there's a massive contradiction in supporting the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, while at the same time supporting Saudi Arabia. Probably another reason, though, that that's worth adding is that delivering humanitarian assistance in Yemen is extremely difficult. As your first guest briefly mentioned, too, as is, the security security situation is extremely difficult. Transport infrastructure, which was already very limited before the war, has been ravaged by both sides, not just by Saudi Arabia. Corruption is massive. The Houthis have been massively manipulating foreign assistance for political purposes, you know, using it to fuel their war effort. So that too makes it very difficult.

MK: Thomas, good to talk to you this morning. Thanks for your perspective.

Thank you.

MK: Thomas Juneau. is an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. He is also the author of the book Le Yemen en Geurre, (Yemen at War). The CBC News is next. Then.

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None can understand Ukrainians, none of the world, but Syrians can understand them more than Syrians. All the world is repeating the same mistake.

MK: Russian warplanes bombing hospitals using weapons banned by international treaties and targeting humanitarian corridors. I'm talking about the Syrian war. In six minutes, drawing a line from Syria to Ukraine. I'm Mark Kelley sitting in for Matt Galloway. You're listening to the Current.

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Russia wants to destroy Mariupol, not capture it, says man who fled besieged city

Guests: Hamza al-Khateab, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Natasha Hall

MK: Hello, I'm Mark Kelley, and you're listening to The Current.

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MK: Still to come, the false promise of algorithms from Moneyball to predicting election results. Author Chris Jones will be here to crush the idea that numbers never lie. But first, the Syria playbook.

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MK: Well, Russia's relentless attacks on Ukraine continue. No place has been harder hit than the port city of Mariupol. It is surrounded by Russian forces who have also cut off electricity and gas. About 300000 people are trapped with food and water running out. Over the weekend, Russian missiles struck an art school where hundreds of women and children had sought shelter. They've also bombed a hospital, a church and countless apartment blocks. Officials say up to 90 percent of Mariupol buildings are destroyed. Artur Shevchenko is a resident of Mariupol. He fled three days ago. He's now in the western city of Khmelnytskyi. Good morning from Canada.

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: Hi. Hi.

MK: Artur, first and foremost. How are you doing today?

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: Well, me and my family are OK. We're in a safe zone is the worst part of Ukraine.

MK: And tell me before you left Mariupol. What did you see? Describe what has happened to your city?

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: I guess this is true that... Almost all of the city is destroyed, like, buildings, as you mentioned, the churches etc., all was bombed. And even the places where children and women were hiding, they were also hit by Russians. It was terrible. It was. It was siege, like, without any water, heat, electricity, no mobile networks. It was tough even to communicate with other family members.

MK: And who were you with at the time, with your family? And how were you surviving this onslaught?

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: I took my mother and my grandfather. He is 88 years old and he cannot walk. So we jumped in my car and we moved to the shelter and we lived there for two weeks without electricity. We got some water from the- So we tried even to melt the snow. We had a couple of days when there was snowing, and we took the snow into the baskets. But it is not really the solution because... Snow is like this water became dirty.

MK: And why did you decide to go to Khmelnytskyi?

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: It was the only choice to take because we got a lot of rumours, while we were sitting in this shelter, about some humanitarian corridors. Like we can- And it was all fake because Russians refused to make these corridors, they allowed corridors only to to Russia, saying that it is the only safe road to safe place. And it was, I guess, three days ago when a lot of people from the Mariupol took their cars and tried to leave the city to Ukraine side. It was not the official humanitarian corridor. It was more like gathering of people trying to leave the city. And we did the same.

MK: Were you afraid for your safety as you escaped?

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: Yes, sure. While we were leaving the city. We heard a lot of [unintelligilbe] hitting area. We were like driving by the sea district from the city, and we were hearing a lot of shelling in this district while we were leaving. It was, I guess, hundreds of cars, and the road was really tiny, like only one place for a car to drive through this road.

MK: Do you think you'll ever go back home?

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: Well, I dream of it, like I want to come back. But some buildings can be restored, but some buildings should be built from scratch. First of all, we were thinking that the Russians want to invade the city. But in the latest days, we understood that the Russians want to destroy the city, just to destroy it and to to push all the people from it, like by shelling or by siege, etc. So I don't know will I come back.

MK: Artur you're lucky to be alive? And yeah, and I hope you stay safe. Thank you so much for talking with us today. We appreciate this.

ARTUR SHEVCHENKO: Yeah. And I want to thank all the Western world for support because without your help, we will be like, We will be that. I would say this. Thank you.

MK: Artur Shevchenko is in Khmelnytskyi Ukraine. Well, for millions of people in a country far away, what's happening in Ukraine is eerily familiar.

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Russian tactics in Ukraine were tested in Syria, say experts

Guests: Hamza al-Khateab, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Natasha Hall

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[Sound: Bombing]

MK: That's what it sounded like inside a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, in 2016 after an airstrike hit the building. It was the beginning of the siege of the city by government forces, and while the Free Syrian Army there was fighting Bashar al-Assad and his military in principle, many of the planes dropping bombs were Russian jets flown by Russian pilots.

[sc].

[Sounds: Bombing and indistinct chatter]

MK: That is from the documentary called For Sama, directed by Waad al-Khateab. She was living in the hospital with her daughter, Sama, and her husband, Dr. Mohammad Hamza al-Khateab. For months, the people in east Aleppo lived in fear of Russian bombs, and the story was the same in other Syrian cities. This month this month marks 11 years of war in that country, and Syrians are now watching the same Russian bombs rained down in Ukraine. Hamza al-Khateab joins me now from London. Good morning.

DR. HAMZA AL-KHATEAB: Good morning, Mark, thank you for doing this.

MK: And thank you for joining us. I listen to the sounds of that airstrike on the hospital. It is chilling. You were there, you lived through this. What was it like to live through a Russian bombing campaign?

DR. HAMZA AL-KHATEAB: [Unintelligible] First of all, like she was my voice because we were like, as you said, like it was 11 anniversary of the revolution in Syria and we had a big march in London. We were joined by many Ukrainians because it's kind of like the same [unintelliglbe] every like in both countries with our military is led by like more Russians and most of the aircrafts who attacked our cities and seised Aleppo and destroyed hospitals of Aleppo, were the Russians. So it was it was really like, in Aleppo, we knew that the hospitals were the most dangerous place to live, according to civilians, knew that they that no one would live near the hospital because they would know that the the the neighbourhood would be bombed at any moment, any minute. We had some people who were refusing to be admitted at the hospital if needed, like some patients, just like we're going to take any medication outside of the hospital, but I cannot risk my life by being admitted at the hospital for five or five days. And it's so hard because, like health care, then like moves to another perspective from kind of instead of just focussing on the patients and focussing like on the best treatment and what's the best referral pathway you need to do for the patient to get the the the the the treatment for them. You focus more on just provide the minimum health care you can deal to discharge if patient, because it's too dangerous for you to to kind of have many lives under the hospital cieling in the same building. And it's so scary for for like they staff Staffy themselves. It's so scary for the workers, for the hospital, like patients, companions. Like it's just like a completely different perspective in health care, knowing that you are the main target for the Russian aircraft.

MK: And do you believe that I'm wondering, what was your understanding of the role that Russia played in those attacks on the hospitals?

DR. HAMZA AL-KHATEAB: So we in Syria, it's kind of like you can easily differentiate from like the very old air jets that are belonging to the Syrian army and the Syrian regime. And most of the aircraft, like air forces that the Syrian regime was using was the explosive barrel that was thrown from helicopters, which is usually like they cannot be literally target like one, like a specific building because it just like like a big bomb being thrown from a helicopter, like, it's kind of you're aiming to anything. While we know kind of like the direct attacks to certain in buildings, especially hospitals and schools, that would be mainly led to by Russian and conducted by Russian. We have also like some kind of communication centres that where managed to kind of like spying and listening to the signals from the airports what mission were giving. So they would definitely know, like it's a Russian aircraft heading out to Aleppo, or it is like a Syrian helicopter is heading now to the countryside of Aleppo, et cetera. That was built like by like several like university students. There was like experience and communication in it. In order to expect when, when and where the attack can happen, you can be evacuated.

MK: I'm sorry, you mentioned that the march in London. I'm wondering, do you feel a solidarity now with the people of Ukraine?

DR. HAMZA AL-KHATEAB: So personally, I'd like for you to [unintelliglbe] with the people of Ukraine, and I'm really glad that the rest of the world is also acknowledging this crisis as early as it's not going to be completely, completely honest. As Syrians, we we feel we felt abandoned, like looking at the Syrian doctor who was seised in his city with his wife and daughter and the 300000 civilians for six months that nine of eight of nine hospitals were completely destroyed in the city. And then we were forcibly displaced. And no, I'm headed for London. I completely feel abandoned by the international community. No, I'm happy that the Ukrainian people are receiving the response that. They deserve. And like, no one should live through this, and it's kind of like, I'm really happy also that the media is using also that I turned out not to use the right terms regarding like it's not like the Ukrainian war. It's not just the war. It is like to watch in war. It is like the Russian led invasion to Ukraine. Same thing with Syria itself, it's not civil war that Syrians are like fighting each other. It was a revolution. Then like the actual war, when, like Iran is supporting Hezbollah, Iranian militias are supporting the regime and also then, like the U.S. and Turkey, were not involved. But it's not the civil war that like, completely wrong impression. And unfortunately, like, I completely believe that the failure in responding and stopping the Russian war crimes in Syria for 10 years while the other countries as well. But it was like mainly in Syria, like we're more of four than 529 attack on a health facility during those 11 years, half of the population are displaced. That was a huge green light to do more work crimes and to cause more red lines for war for the Russian government.

MK: Hamza, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much.

DR. HAMZA AL-KHATEAB: Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm sorry for my voice.

MK: I know. No, no, no apology at all. Hamza al-Khateeb is a doctor and an activist. My next two guests have been listening in. Natasha Hall is a senior fellow with the Middle East programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. And Yassin Al-Haj Saleh is a Syrian writer, activist and former political prisoner. He's in Berlin. Good morning to you, both. Yassin, let me start with you. What do you think has you're listening to to Hamza?

YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: He's as emotional as Dr. Hamza, who with whom I didn't have the luck to meet, unfortunately, but I'm afraid I'm less less happy, if one can of the statement. This context that was seeing that was a ignored or what they let happen to Syrians for long years is now happening in Ukraine and in Europe. I'm afraid the influential powers are still dealing with these two struggles as separated as very different struggles. I'm a bit happy for that more people are mentioning Syria and the context of the Ukrainian, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But to be honest, I don't expect much of this.

MK: Natasha, I want to hear from you on this in terms of Russia's role in Syria. What did the U.S. and NATO's learn or fail to learn from this?

NATASHA HALL: I mean, I think it goes back even before Syria. I think Putin has been sort of testing the waters for many years now, starting with Georgia, but then into Crimea and then finally, of course, Syria. And you know, there wasn't really any kind of reaction to nearly five million people being in besieged and hard to reach areas by 2017. Not that long ago. In Syria, we saw this. We saw people killing stray dogs for food, as we're seeing in Mariupol. You know, we saw the Russians target hospitals and crowds of people, and there was not really any sort of reaction. A lot of that has to do with the way that the international system is built, the fact that Russia and China are on the Security Council. But I think we're seeing the effects of that lack of creative thinking now, unfortunately for Ukrainians who are suffering through, you know, similar unfortunately tactics of the Russians right now in Ukraine.

MK: You've seen in your writing, you said last week that Ukraine is a Syrian cause. How so explain that?

YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: Well, the same invader, the same occupation power who tested it as a military system, it has weapons systems in Syria. They boasted, shall go the defence minister of Russia that they tested successfully 320 weapon systems in Syria. Putin himself said in 2019 that they had arms contracts for sale. 51 billion dollars on 2018, they would be 55billion dollars in 2019. 85 per cent of the adoption of the commanders of Russian units were trained in Syria. And maybe not many people remember that Putin talked about the probability of using nuclear weapons against terrorists. And this went. It's strange that there were not much commentary about it, and that was troubling. So what's happening now, wouldn't have happened, or maybe it's a probability would have been less if the Russian intervention in Syria was condemned, which was not the case, maybe listeners should know that it has never been condemned by a single Western power, not the US, not the members of the European Union. So I see I see continuity between the two words, but I see, unfortunately the different, quite opposite approaches to these two struggles. We, as Syrians, we identify easily was with Ukrainian because we feel this when I was listening to the young Ukrainian guy, I thought this is very Syrian who and he talked about water, about the city, about communication, about taking his grandfather at home. that he's uncomfortable. Every single tank of these is very serious. That's why we feel it viscerally that we belong to these people who are now bombed and whose country is under the Russian aggression.

MK: Natasha, Yassin's talking about continuity there. There's another link here that apparently European intelligence claims that 40000 Syrians have been called up to fight in Ukraine for Russia. Is this Bashar al-Assad repaying his debt to Russia?

NATASHA HALL: I think he'll be paying his his debt to Russia for a long time, he's already allowed Russia the use of the naval facility in Syria for 49 years. Lease free. But but certainly, yes, that's the case. One of the things that allowed Russia to have Syria as a very low cost war only about $2 billion a year, they estimate. Whereas in Ukraine, it's he's probably spent billions and billions already is the fact that he could rely on ground forces proxy militias of Iran and Lebanon, but also Syrian ground forces and soldiers. And he's not able to do that in Ukraine up to date, so he is losing a lot of blood and treasure. So I think what we can see in the days ahead, the weeks ahead. You know, hopefully this doesn't go on for longer. But but I am pessimistic, is trying to shore up the ground troops with mercenaries, with people from Syria, maybe people from Belarus and elsewhere in order to decrease that level of at least blood and treasure on the ground. And you know, essentially as a lot of military experts have said, essentially use them as cannon fodder and just increase the number of bodies on the ground.

MK: And you see that prolonging the conflict, the war in Ukraine?

NATASHA HALL: I see it not not just prolonging the conflict in Ukraine, I see it as being extremely detrimental to to civilians, to the situation in Syria and elsewhere. I think that, you know, potentially if he's able to get those mercenaries in and decreases the cost that he sees for for Russia, then he will in all likelihood, just increase the misery until he gets what he wants to a certain degree. So I think that that we have a long road ahead if he starts bringing in mercenaries from other places. And it's really a shame because, you know, he was the one that essentially created such a desperate situation in a place like Syria that people would be willing to sign up and go to Ukraine. I don't think that this is necessarily an ideological situation. I think the situation in Syria right now is very desperate for people on all sides. And you know, if if you get $3000 a month, that's a huge amount of money right now, in Syria.

MK: And Natasha, without Russia, where would the war be in Syria? Where would be Bashar al-Assad?

NATASHA HALL: Well, I mean, when they intervened in 2015, Assad had about 20 percent of Syrian territory, he was flailing. He was not doing well. There was mass defections from the Syrian army, and when Russia came in, he saved him. He completely saved him right now. Assad controls about 70 percent of Syrian territory. A lot of governments, whether they'd like to admit it or not, are resigned to the fact that, you know, he quote unquote 'won'. And you know, I think I think Bashar al-Assad owes Putin a great deal of gratitude in that because it wouldn't have been possible without without Russian air power.

MK: I want to thank you both for talking to us today. We appreciate your time.

GUESTS: Thank you, Mark.

MK: Natasha Hall is a senior fellow with the Middle East programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Yassin Al-Haj Saleh is a Syrian writer and activist. Coming up after you regional update.

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There's this illusion of certainty and this illusion of facts that comes with numbers, you know, we're taught as children, the numbers number two plus two will always equal four. They can be manipulated and they can be used to deceive all the time.

MK: The foibles and the false promise of the analytics movement. In 90 seconds, we'll take the eye test with author Chris Jones. I'm Mark Kelly sitting in for Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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In the age of analytics, a case for human creativity

Guests: Chris Jones

MK: I'm Mark Kelley, and you're listening to The Current, well, spring has sprung, and on this side of the globe, baseball season is just around the corner. It is the perfect time to talk Moneyball.

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VOICE 1: You don't put a team together with a computer, Billy.

VOICE 2: No?

VOICE 1: No. Baseball isn't just numbers. It's not science. If it wasn't, anybody could do what we're doing, but they can't because they don't know what we know. They don't have our experience and they don't have our intuition. OK, Billy, you got a kid in there that's got a degree in economics from Yale. You've got a scout here with 29 years of baseball experience. You're listening to the wrong one. Now there are intangibles that only baseball people understand. You're discounting what scouts have done for a hundred and fifty years, even yourself. Adapt or die.

MK: And that was from the 2011 Hollywood movie Moneyball, based on the bestselling book by Michael Lewis. Billy Beane, the manager of the sad sack of Oakland Athletics, was given the task of building a team with a tiny budget. The system he turned to maths and analytics got his team to the playoffs and sparked a revolution in baseball. Chris Jones writes about Moneyball and so much more in his new book The Eye Test A Case for Human Creativity in the Age of Analytics. Chris Jones, Good Morning!

CHRIS JONES: Good morning, Mark.

MK: What do you what do you think of when you hear that scene from Moneyball. because it pretty much sums up both the movie and and the analytics movement.

CHRIS JONES: I actually love that movie and the fact that they spun that movie out of that book to me is one of the great feats of Hollywood engineering, ever. I'm on both sides of that argument, and I know that's not the sexiest thing to say in the world. But I think the scouts are making a good case, and I think Billy is making a good case, and I don't see why we would ever narrow our perspective to only one point of view when a problem is complicated.

MK: All right. And your book really drills down on that. But just so we bring our listeners into the tent when we're talking about analytics, like define the term,

CHRIS JONES: especially in the simplest sense, it's the use of data and analysis of data to make decisions. It's become much more complicated than that, where things like artificial intelligence or algorithms dictate so much of our daily lives. I think in ways that people understand, but also in ways that are invisible. I think some of the best examples we see, you know how the internet works, how you might Google. You know what you want to shop for bed frames, and all of a sudden you start seeing ads for all sorts of other bedroom furniture. It intrudes in our lives in so many ways now. It started out as sort of this rational decision making process, and it's essentially the way we govern ourselves.

MK: Well, analytics for me, I learnt about it through that, that that book in that movie Moneyball. So how did Billy Beane use analytics to make a better baseball team?

CHRIS JONES: What Billy would tell you is that he did not invent anything. He stole smart people's ideas. His argument is that analytics would have happened whether or not Moneyball happened, but it was happening. Moneyball just happened to raise it in sort of the general consciousness of the world. So what he did was the Oakland A's didn't have the budget of the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, and so he was looking for loopholes. You needed to find some kind of secret sauce that would help him field a competitive team without the same amount of money for player salaries. And he used analytics to find sort of diamonds in the rough, and it was effective. Itwas effective to a certain extent. Once the Moneyball secret came out and every team started having analytics departments, you know, the A's lost that sliver of competitive advantage. They had the Yankees and the Red Sox. The big teams started winning again.

MK: Yeah. I'm curious about that because post Moneyball, it seems like every team beyond baseball in sports started moving towards the, you know, getting an analytics person on their staff. How much has analytics now really, really permeated professional sports?

CHRIS JONES: Oh, it's a standard part of operation for every team. And when you say, you know, an analytics person, a lot of places have analytics departments, right? The Yankees have a dozen people working on stats. Baseball, sort of where it began, but you can see its influence in basketball. I mean, the entire game of basketball has changed. The midrange jumper has basically disappeared because it's technically an inefficient shot, which is why we have either three point attempts or below the basket stuff. Those are the most efficient ways of scoring in basketball, even a sport like soccer, which is fairly immune to statistical analysis. A lot of analytics has started filtering into that game, and it's not just sports, of course, it's it's gone from sports basically every facet of our lives. But there aren't many sports now where analytics aren't part of the system,

MK: but the team that has leaned on analytics. I mean, there's no guarantee of success.

CHRIS JONES: Of course not. No. And what happens with the analytics? Analytics has done a really good job. The movement has done a really good job of selling itself. One of the ways it has sold itself is it has provided this kind of illusion of control and certainty. You know, if we did this, this and this and this will happen. And of course, we all know the life doesn't work like that. Like just because your plan involves numbers doesn't necessarily mean it's going to unfold the way you want it to. And other teams have analytics. It's like, it's not like you are doing something secret. You are doing what everybody else is doing if you're doing it the exact same way as they are. So the idea that just because you make quote-unquote smart decisions does not necessarily lead to nirvana. In reality, it's just the same. If I told you that I'd made a plan using something else, would it come true? Maybe, but not necessarily. And that's that's I think there's limits to analytics that we've sort of blown past. And and the eye test for me is sort of a case for just hitting pause for a second and saying, first of all, let's recognise the limits here. And second of all, is this the life we want to live? Is this the path we want to go down? Do we want our entire existence to be quantified or to attempt to quantify our entire existence?

MK: I don't think we do. Yeah. As you mentioned, the book is called the eye test. So define that term. What do you mean when you when you when you call this the eye test?

CHRIS JONES: I'm stealing it back. Moneyball use the eye test derogatorily. So the eye test is what baseball scouts use to talk about when they were measuring a player. He passes the eye test, which basically was shorthand for he looks. It looks like a player. It looks like an athlete. And of course, what happened in some cases, in the case of Billy Beane as a player ,is that sometimes, you know, a guy with a good jawline would be, he'd be, you know, over appreciated this because he looked good. And a guy who maybe didn't look as much like an athlete or something like John Kruk would be sort of underestimated because he didn't conform to that stereotype of what a good ballplayer looks like. Joe DiMaggio would be the classic passer of the eye test. Moneyball made that into sort of like hokum. Well, as if you could judge a player based on and of course, if beauty isn't one of the objects you're measuring, that sort of eye test is useless. But what I'm saying is there's a different kind of test where someone with experience and wisdom, not someone using their gut, but someone who has an understanding of a system because they've spent a long time studying and practising that their point of view is valid. And I think we've reached this point in the analytics movement where, you know, those scouts and Moneyball are sometimes openly dismissed and they do have useful input. They found Roberto Clemente. They found Mickey Mantle. They found Joe DiMaggio. Like for a hundred and fifty years. Like the skill says they found great ballplayers. Were they flawless? No. Does analytics sometimes help us? Yes. But the idea that, you know, to use a cliche, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is like, for me, it just it's sad. It's anti-human. There's something about it that gets really bothers me.

MK: And your book shows how you know it's, you know, the analytics are being applied to so many facets of our society. And whether it's, you know, filmmaking, whether it's crime fighting, whether it's predicting the weather, I mean, really interesting things that when you start to think about it, probably a lot of people didn't realise how it's being applied. But let's talk about that in terms of the filmmaking, because there was a movie producer named Ryan Kavanaugh and here was a guy who figured analytics is going to make him a movie mogul. Tell us how that worked out.

CHRIS JONES: Not well, right?

MK: Because a lot of people are saying, I have never heard of Ryan Kavanaugh, and there's probably a good reason for that.

CHRIS JONES: So, you know, after Moneyball, there became this sort of analytics race to apply analytics to all sorts of fields where it hadn't been applied before the entertainment industry was ripe for it. Because the great difficulty in making movies is understanding what people will go see. It often seems mysterious why some movies become a massive hit and other movies that seem just as good or just as likely to become a hit don't become a hit. And as movies got more expensive to make, you know, bombs risked destroying the studios that made them so 100 million dollar gamble. The $200 million gamble people wanted some more certainty before they put their money down. Ryan Kavanaugh came along at exactly the right time when Hollywood was feeling extremely uncertain about itself and when analytics was rising as as a literal movement. And he said, I can Moneyball the entertainment industry I can I won't always hit home runs was his argument. But if I make a movie, it will at least be a single, maybe a double. And if we do that again and again and again, we make lots of money. And it made perfect sense. Like I wrote about Ryan Kavanaugh for Esquire back when he was ascendant and I fell for it because it's logical. It makes perfect sense. He was like, If you look at historical patterns and trends and you go This movie with this actor and this director on this weekend made this amount of money, then why wouldn't it repeat itself? And the problem is, he put so much faith into the machine, just trusted the computer to tell him the answers had no sense of his own taste or desire or anything like that, and he lost billions of dollars. He made a lot of bad movies. He made some good movies, but he made a lot of bad movies and he lost billions.

MK: So in terms of that example, what will the I tell you that numbers won't?

CHRIS JONES: Again, it comes down to this idea of I don't want it to be equated with God. It's not because my gut would be useless at a lot of things because I don't know what I'm talking about. And and with the entertainment industry, there are people who are pretty good judges of what people want right now. Are you still going to be surprised occasionally? Of course. But like the people in my Ted Lasso couldn't have predicted the Ted Lasso would become Ted Lasso. No wonder they hoped the people would watch it. Retroactively, I can look back and say, of course, in the middle of a pandemic, people wanted a hopeful show about good people doing good things. Of course, of course, there are people out there who have that gift. Predictably, they're just smart investors, smart politicians, smart people in entertainment, smart people in sports who can see what's coming next before most people can, and that's what you know, that's when your eyes are a real advantage because again, if everyone is using numbers and everyone's using them the same way, you know, you see these great big firms who are offering to do your analysis for you. Well, they're telling your competitors the exact same thing. But if you have some advantage that comes from years of study and practise and wisdom, that's what your eyes give you. And that's that's yours alone. That's competitive advantage. Mm-Hmm. It's like if I told you, I wrote a book about following the crowd, you'd laugh me out of the room. I mean, there's no business book in the world that's going to be like, You don't do what everyone else is doing. That's how you're going to win. Analytics is the same that everyone's doing analytics, the big game sort of new hot thing. It was an advantage for the A's when no one else was doing it. But now that it's become sort of the de facto way of building teams, having that person in the room who can say, You know what? What about this? Yes, I see your numbers. And yes, they're valid in many instances. But what about this? That's the person I would want beside me as well. That's what the eyes can give you. It's just a it's just a different perspective that might be also the right perspective.

MK: Well, you mentioned politicians and their belief in analytics. How would you describe the accuracy of analytics in predicting election results or predicting who's going to be that next ascendant politician?

CHRIS JONES: I don't think it's all that great. I mean, if you look historically, a lot of the success of the analytics movement is based on sort of singular moments of triumph. And then the idea that those will be repeated. So if we look at, you know, the American presidential race, for instance, Nate Silver with FiveThirtyEight did an incredible job predicting President Obama's election. You got a 50 for 50. We predicted all 50 states accurately. They were like, Oh my gosh, a system is infallible. And then you look at the election between President Trump and Hillary Clinton when some analytics at Princeton gave her a ninety nine point nine percent chance of winning. And what happened there? The problem is the margins have become so fine. You know, we talk about the margin of error and statistical analysis in most American federal elections now. The margin of error is larger than the margin. In reality, it's just not an effective means of predicting who's going to win anything. You know, President Biden won over Trump. People don't like to think about this, but of forty thousand votes across America sort of switched in various key states. President Trump is in his second term. And so the idea that you can predict what's going to happen on election night, again is this illusion of certainty. People want it. They will want to feel like they can see into the future. But a case like that, you just you really can't. And the other danger, of course, is that the polls then start affecting the race itself. So a state like Wisconsin President Biden was projected to win by seven points. It was snowy on election night. It was a tricky night. I think a lot of Democrats kind of went, Oh, you know, our guys got it in the bag. And then he barely eked out a victory. That's where once the numbers start becoming certain. Well, that's what's going to happen. It affects our behaviour, right?

MK: I'm speaking with Chris Jones. He's the author of The Eye Test. Chris, given that I'm wondering, can analytics blind us?

CHRIS JONES: Absolutely. They can blindness in so many ways. Principally in the sense that they're there's this illusion of certainty and this illusion of facts that comes with numbers. So, you know, we're taught as children that numbers never lie. Two plus two will always equal four. But of course, statistics can be used. They can be manipulated and they can be used to deceive all the time.

MK: You've got a great line in the book, he said. The idea that numbers never lie is obscene.

CHRIS JONES: It just really bugs me. It's like I I my voice goes up when I talk about this stuff because I get quite irritated. Like the idea that numbers yes, numbers are factual in certain contexts, but we've seen numbers being used to deceive constantly. We see it more and more than ever. I think what happens is people are scared to look like morons. You know, the analytics movement has done this really good bullying job of sort of convincing people that they're dumb. And if you don't subscribe to it, you get called an idiot, and that's not nice. So you sort of get your stay quiet.

MK: Where did where does the analytics movement get that moral authority to bully others?

CHRIS JONES: I don't know. I find it infuriating, and it's happened to me. Constantly happened to me. There's a baseball pitcher who I know personally quite well. Barry Zito. He was one of the first people I wrote about for Esquire, and he's a very he's a different kind of duck. He played for the Oakland A's, and then he went to the San Francisco Giants. He signed the biggest free agent contract the picture had ever signed. And he fell off a cliff when he went to San Francisco. And my explanation for Barry falling off a cliff is the contract itself. It was a very sensitive person. He believed in sort of being consciously unconscious. You know, he was an instrument. When he was on the mound. He was he was being played by somebody else. That's how he thought of pitching. Well, once he's getting one hundred and twenty six million dollars is really hard to be consciously unconscious. And I can make a pretty good case that the contract wasn't a bad. On track, it was a bad contract for Barry Zito. I've made that argument, you know, with analytics people who want to make it about something else, they want to make it about the size of foul territory in San Francisco or they want to make it about. Basically, I was called essentially an idiot for not for having a narrative explanation for a series of events. And I'm like, Well, why is yours any more authority? Yours is also a theory. Mine is a theory based on my understanding of how Barry Zito operates. Yours is a theory based on the size of foul territory. Why is yours any more valid than mine? And it goes back to the argument that, well, because it's maths. Maths is always more valid than narratives. And of course, on top of the pile of inaugurations that we're building this morning, the Moneyball contains this historically massive narratives in the sense that it gives all of the A's success to Billy Beane and his strange loophole signings like Scott Hatteberg. When the principal reason the Oakland A's were a good baseball team was they had three really good young pictures of the same time, including Barry Zito and the book and the movie. You wouldn't know those three guys exist because it's inconvenient. That's inconvenient information. So we'll set that aside. The fact that the Bible of the analytics movement contains a cardinal narrative sin to me is is both darkly hilarious and maddening beyond baseball.

MK: You know, we see in your book The Eye Test, it puts these to the test, the idea that analytics algorithms can have some pretty serious consequences when it comes to law enforcement. So what is the pernicious feedback loop?

CHRIS JONES: Like a lot of things, it starts out with some sort of smart and valid choice. So emergency services started using analytics to to sort of schedule shifts. So, you know, I did a story once in the Ottawa paramedic system and in Ottawa, they keep historical records of call volumes, and when it's historically busier, they put more trucks on the streets. That makes perfect sense, but that's smart. That's just rational, good decision making. That's good government. But then you start trying to use analytics as like a predictive measure; who is going to commit crime? And then you start answering sort of this fuzzy territory that's often race based in America in particular. You know, they'll say that their algorithms don't include race as a as a measure, but they will they use geography. And in American cities, of course, geography is a pretty good proxy for race. Hmm. So you say that this area has more small crime? You know, Rudy Giuliani started this movement, broken windows movement. We just stopped the small stuff, and the big stuff comes tumbling down afterwards. You send more police to these areas. They start nailing people for sort of low level crime that's going on in other parts of the city. But it's happening in this, say, historically black neighbourhood because now there's more police there. So there are more arrests. People get out of jail. They find it harder to find jobs because now they have a criminal record, they're more likely to return to crime because they don't have other avenues to get rearrested. As always, the system affects the people who can least afford to be affected and leads this vicious cycle of sort of criminalising whole population. All areas of a city become essentially criminal districts. And and of course, the police want to show that they're acting on crime. So they're going to keep sending cops to this. You know, it's like a it's a it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, this self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want to make someone a criminal, a really good way to make someone a criminal is to treat them like a criminal before they've committed any crime. And that that's that's what's happening in America in a lot of cases right now, using analytics as a predictive crime measure.

MK: In your argument for, say, we should not be, you know, so reliant on analytics, you have a great line in as a journalist. This appeals to me. You said I still believe in the moral authority of stories, and I really like that one. Explain to me what you mean by that.

CHRIS JONES: You know, even people who are deeply in analytics understand that you need a story often to convince people of something that people are driven by anecdotes. And sometimes that is a problem. You and I, we both believe certain things because one thing happened in our lives that gave us a belief that may or may not be valid. So again, I'm not saying that stories are always factual or that they lead you down the right path, either, but a good story is a really useful way of convincing somebody of something. And again, going back to Moneyball, which I love, I should say again, I love that book and I love that movie. And it's not because it's about analytics. It's because it's a great story. It's an underdog finding a new way to triumph. It's a David and Goliath story. Who doesn't love a David and Goliath story? And that's what I mean by the power of a story, I think. I think we sometimes lose sight of the value of human emotion and how important that is and influencing behaviour. And I don't know about you, but I feel like what's happening right now is is we're getting a really dim view of each other, that analytics is sort of causing us to hate each other in new ways, that social media is designed to make us angry and sad. I know a lot of. People to get on the internet and they get off feeling worse about people. And for me, there's lots of stories of the the alternative and the things that make people good or make people seem good are going to be stories. They're going to be morality tales. They're going to be fairy tales in some instances. And I feel like we're losing and I feel like the beauty of a good story and what it inspires in us. We're losing that a little bit.

MK: On the cover of your book, there's a picture of a four leaf clover in a field of tall grass. What's the what's the story behind that picture, Chris?

CHRIS JONES: It's a little enigmatic. It's a cover, I think. But the the meaning of the four leaf clover. My I have two children, two boys. My older son Charlie is 16, and he has autism. He's mid spectrum, I would say. Our other son, Sam, is 14, is younger than Charlie and is a popular jock. They are polar opposites. Everything that is easy for Sam is hard for Charlie. But Charlie has certain gifts because of the way he looks at the world, which is a supremely different way. You know, one of Charlie's interesting quirks is that if he reads something, it is true. So he believes in dragons. He believes in elves and fairies. He believes in monsters under the bed. Those are all real to him, and sometimes I've struggled as a dad to try to see the world the way he sees. But it also gives in these weird powers of observation, and one of them is finding four leaf clovers. If we ever want to try to balance the letters between Charlie and Sam, we send them out to find four leaf clovers and for whatever reason, and I've never been able to figure it out. Charlie just sees them like they're being stocks like he'll come back with mid-forties and Sam won't find one. There's something about the way a chart like his literal perspective on the world that makes four leaf clovers just jump out. And it was such an instructive thing being his dad. I mean, in so many ways, I learnt things from Charlie every day. But but I was quite a black and white thinker. I sort of believed that there was one right way of doing things and one right answer. That's why I fell for the analytics movement in a lot of ways. It told me what I wanted to believe about the world. But then you have a I have a son like Charlie who can do this strange thing magically, and it made me start wondering about perspective. And he just has a different one, and it allows him to find four leaf clover. So and and for me, Charlie, you know, you talk about the power of a story like that. For me, Charlie became sort of a metaphor for that gift of sight that certain people have in certain ways. And with Charlie, who was he was born with it, but with other people, it's earned. And I think it's beautiful. I like nothing more than watching someone who's amazing at something. Do that seem like it just makes me hopeful. And if I need a bit of hope in my day, I sincerely hope to find this important.

MK: It's a great story and and that is the eye test. Chris, pleasure to talk to you. I really enjoyed the book and and one thing I learnt is one day I hope I sit beside you at a dinner party. Can or do you have a lot of good stories to tell?

CHRIS JONES: Amongst my friends is, you know, all of my storytelling friends is the definition of a good life is who has the best stories at the end of it? So that's that's how I've tried to live. I appreciate you having me on work, and I hope we do have that dinner.

MK: Chris Jones new book Is The Eye Test: A Case for Human Creativity in the Age of Analytics? Well, that's our programme for today. Stay tuned to Radio one for q. One of the most talked about films of the year is the Hollywood blockbuster Don't Look Up in just a few minutes, director Adam McKay will be joining Tom Power on cue to talk about the film, the reaction and the future of environmental sustainability in cinema. I've been sitting in for Matt Galloway seat here for the past few days. He will be back with you tomorrow morning. And of course, the mighty Matt has already been working on a few stories. Here's a bit of what he will have for you. Later this week, a conversation with the directors of Writing With Fire. The new documentary tells the story of the only news agency in India run by women from the country's most oppressed caste.

Speaker 4: [sc]

VOICE 1: Whe started us as a social experiment by an NGO went into rural parts of the [unintelligible] and got together women and said, If you were to imagine a newsletter, what would that look like? And so the women had the opportunity to start creating something which had their own stories, which are completely missing from mainstream media in their own language. And in many ways, it was the first time they they they got empowered to tell their own stories. And so when the NGO moved out, the women wanted to continue, and so they banded together. What they're doing is is through the art and the skill of newsmaking. But what they're actually doing is the pulled a chair to the table and said, it's our time. We're going to tell our stories in our own voices. And while we do the. We are going to stand up as voices of others.

VOICE 2: You know, when we went into film in these regions, we actually were walking into media, dark spaces, villages that actually were not being covered by the mainstream at all and here was covered the area, which was a motley crew of about 25 women then who were, you know, taking trains and buses, taking rickshaws and eventually walking, you know, last mile reporting on stories that are stories of consequence, missing roads or drinking water, sanitation, school, health care. Once these women shifted to digital, they were really able to amplify their work and found like great resonance within the communities that they were reporting on.

[/sc].

MK: And from that was Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Gosh, you can hear their full conversation with Matt Galloway tomorrow. I'm Mark Kelley. Thanks so much for listening to The Current.

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Monday March 21, 2022 Full Text Transcript

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