Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2022

The AIH Transcript for June 10, 2022

Hosts: Tom Harrington and Chris Howden

TIM HARRINGTON: Hi there. I'm Tom Harrington.

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

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

CH: Tonight.

TH: Blow by blow accountability. As Washington begins hearings into last year's riot at the Capitol. A Republican tells us he hopes it's a moment of reflection and shame for members of his party who've defended Donald Trump.

CH: More proof that everything is going south. It doesn't get much more remote than Antarctica, so it's not remotely good that researchers have discovered microplastics in the snow of an isolated icefield.

TH: At ease with disease. A London museum hopes people will overcome their discomfort to visit an extensive exhibit on cancer, which looks to inform, inquire and ideally inspire.

CH: An on-nest day's work. A popular webcam proves it's not just rare birds who want to watch rare birds. And our guest hopes the worldwide interest in a pair of nesting curlews could be life saving.

TH: Tying up Lou's ends. Never before heard recordings of a young Lou Reed are beginning to see the light, thanks to an exhibition of material from his personal archives.

CH: And taking charge. A climate activist has been driving around in an electric car that she built herself out of an old jalopy, which makes her an ideal person to offer big polluters some constructive criticism. As it happens, the Friday Edition. Radio that figures anyone who makes their own electric car deserves a plug.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Jan. 6: Republican, Handmade electrical cars, Lou Reed archive

Jan. 6: Republican

Guest: Gunner Ramer

GUNNER RAMER: You know, what really stuck out to me is just sitting there scrolling through Twitter and you would see video of these insurrectionists beating up on the doors and beating up on Capitol Police officers and roaming the halls of Congress. It is completely chaotic and stunning. And, you know, as someone that identifies as a registered Republican, identifies as someone that's conservative, I can't think of anything more damaging to the Constitution than trying to undermine a free and fair election. And last night, I was reminded about how I felt that day and how angry I felt with the Republicans who let this all happen.

TH: The vice chair of the panel is Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming. How significant do you think her involvement is when it comes to presenting the committee as a bipartisan investigation?

GUNNER RAMER: The thing with the impeachment proceedings regarding Donald Trump is that, you know, Republicans were able to say it's a partisan witch hunt or whatever. But Liz Cheney is leading this investigation. She is showing what it means to be a conservative Republican that cares more about the Constitution than appealing to Donald Trump. That is brave, that is courageous. That is something rarely seen in our politics and to have, again, a bipartisan committee. And Representative Adam Kinzinger is also doing a great job in that committee. But to have Liz Cheney lead, it gives it a lot of credibility. And her performance last night was excellent.

TH: How closely do you think Republicans or even Republican voters are actually going to follow these hearings?

GUNNER RAMER: I think it depends on what kind of Republican voter we're talking about. Are we talking about the sort of, you know, MAGA thinks that Antifa is responsible for the January 6th insurrection? I mean, they were probably watching Tucker or Steve Bannon and never, never even saw what happened yesterday. But there are also the types of Republicans, maybe traditional Republicans, that are turned off by, you know, a stop the steal big lie type of candidate. And, you know, maybe they caught it watching local news last night. And it reminds them just how extreme a majority of the Republican Party has become and all the candidates running for office across the country. They may not have all gotten Trump's endorsement, but they have almost all endorsed Donald Trump and his America First MAGA agenda.

TH: Amongst the revelations last night, which was eye catching, I thought, was the suggestion that a number of Republican congressmen, including Scott Perry, who was named, sought presidential pardons for their roles after January 6th. What type of accountability do you want?

GUNNER RAMER: Well, I just say it is unsurprising that Scott Perry, who was trying to install people at the Department of Justice that were all supportive of the election being stolen, that he tried to seek a pardon from Trump. I think what that says is that he felt guilty for what he did. That led up to January 6th. And, you know, the January 6th committee is going to outline that, I'm sure, in greater detail. And I hope that all of these people are held accountable. And I also hope that the Republican leadership that have tried to whitewash everything that happened on January 6th feel deep shame in how they have responded post January 6th. I mean, people like Kevin McCarthy were at Mar-a-Lago just two weeks or so after, you know, saying that the president bears some responsibility for January 6th on the House floor. So I hope that all of these people, Donald Trump, the people around Donald Trump, are held accountable.

TH: One of the lines that many people are quoting today came from Liz Cheney, addressing members of her own party who supported the election fraud lie when she said, and I'm quoting here, "there will come a time when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain". We're more than two years away from the next presidential election, but right now, most observers in the U.S. seem to suggest that Donald Trump is the likely nominee for the party. What do you think of that prospect?

GUNNER RAMER: We do focus groups with Trump voters. They, by and large, support Donald Trump to run again in 2024. And I will just say, you know, a name that comes up sometimes is Ron DeSantis. It's not like Ron DeSantis is not trying to stoke culture wars all the time and get in fights with Disney or whatnot. Running and doing his best Donald Trump impersonation. All these candidates are running and trying to out [inaudible] each other. And we see polling. Maybe it's 65 or 70% of Republicans want Trump to run again. And we ask ourselves, okay, what about the other 30 or 35%? Well, good amount of those Republicans do still like Donald Trump. They maybe think he's a bit too old or that the Democrats stole the election from him in 2020. So he can't win again. But they still like him. They want him to be a kingmaker within the party. So that's why, you know, it just does not seem to me that Trump's grip is loosening at all with the Republican Party.

TH: Gunner, good to talk to you. Thanks so much.

GUNNER RAMER: Thank you.

CH: Gunner Ramer is the political director of the Republican Accountability Project, a Republican backed group opposing former President Donald Trump. We reached Mr. Ramer in Washington, D.C. and you can find more on that story on our website, cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Jazz instrumental]

Handmade Electrical Cars

Guest: Rosemary Penwarden

CH: With the price of gas these days, it's no wonder lots of people are considering an electric vehicle for their next car purchase. But of course, that usually means dishing out tens of thousands of dollars to people like Elon Musk. And there was no way Rosemary Penwarden was going to do that. So she built her own electric vehicle from scratch and she's been driving it around for nearly three years. Rosemary Penwarden is a climate activist. We reached her in Dunedin, New Zealand.

TH: Rosemary, what inspired you to build your electric car?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: Oh, it's quite a funny story, Tom. It happened because I'd spent many years protesting against the big oil companies who were planning to come down and do deep sea oil drilling off the coast of where I live, at Dunedin. And the Great South Basin and spent many years... And whenever I went to a protest, I'd hear people say, you know, that really silly argument that doesn't actually make sense. Oh, I suppose you came in a petrol car and like, if I wore any clothes that were fossil fuel derived, it was like, Oh, you're a hypocrite, you're a hypocrite. So that was the story that you actually can't push for a better world while you're still in this one, which did not make sense to me. But at the same time, I had a friend who had actually converted his RAV4 and... I said, Hey, why don't we just convert our own car and just to show that it can be done and to show those oil companies that they've motivated us to get off oil completely.

TH: So what kind of car is it?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: So it's a 1993 Honda City. So it's very small.

TH: And very old.

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: And very old. Yeah. And I will admit, I had to get rid of some rust. I've told people this before. There's two things you need to be able to do. To do this stuff, you need to have the right people around you. The other thing is you've got to be a little bit mad and I fit the bill for both.

TH: [chuckle] And how much work was it for you to do this?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: It was a lot of work, a lot more than I expected. But the funny thing is, like people have said this to me. Would you do it again if you really knew what was involved? And I would say hell yes, it was incredible. I learnt so much.

TH: What did you use? What elements do you use to make an electric car out of a car with no engine at all?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: Yep. So we've got some really smart people down here in Dunedin, a friend... Somebody called Glenn and I wish I had the name of his company in South Dunedin actually built the [inaudible] plate that went onto the old gearbox. And then from there it's got a motor... a Curtiss AC 35. It's 144 volt motor from California, from EV West, that's attached to the adapter plate. And I've got some 72 MPower, they're called chem 72s and they're lithium ion phosphate batteries. I've got 84 of those in the front and in the back. And we were able to rebuild this one with all electric and it was under the original weight. So that was brilliant. It only weighs 860 kilos.

TH: Wow. So rather than buy an electric car, you've repurposed this one. How much money have you saved? How does it work out financially?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: Well, it doesn't really work out financially when you take into the cost and the time of building it. It cost me all up to build about $24,000... New Zealand dollars. But I've been driving around now for two and a half years and we've calculated that I've saved six tonnes of CO2 from going into the atmosphere. So that makes me happy.

TH: And how does the car get charged?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: I plug it in with a three point plug and that goes directly into my house, which is directly connected to 27 solar panels.

TH: Just curious about how fast the car goes and how far you can go once it's charged on a drive?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: Sure. At the moment, I've got a limit of about 120 kilometres. I'm not going all the way up to 120 kilometres because I'm still working on it. I'm going to be putting in a little battery management system that my friends developed and actually are selling all around the world at the moment. And that will give me a few more kilometres and I can easily get up to 100, which is the speed limit here. I try not to break the law, so...

TH: Yeah, sure. Go ahead.

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: But I must say, my friend has taken it above 100 kilometres per hour.

TH: Wow. That's pretty good. That's a good speed.

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: It's very peppy. It's very, very peppy. Yeah. One of my favourite things is dragging off the cars at the traffic lights. [laughter] I shouldn't do it.

TH: So some fella sitting next to you in a gas guzzler, and you hit the accelerator and you leave him behind.

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: Yeah. I mean, the torque is so good in these electric cars.

TH: That's amazing. You know, I read that you once were arrested for locking yourself to the pipes on a ship because you're opposing offshore drilling. And we've talked a bit about how you've been many years of fighting against the big oil companies. What's the message to people about what they as an individual can do to fight climate change from this effort by you?

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: My big message is get together, join a group, find a climate movement, find a group and work together. Because together it's amazing what you can do. And here's an example of as an individual... A coal train drives past, drives through my city of Dunedin and every day taking coal to the biggest... one of the biggest dairy factories. The coal wind burned from that one train in a single day is 180 times the emissions of the six tons that I've saved. So it's just an example of how we as individuals. Can do all these things, and we must. But the big message is. That's not enough. We've got to stop the biggest polluters and we've got to stop them as fast as we can if we want to save a future for our kids.

TH: Rosemary. Delightful to talk to you. Thank you so much.

ROSEMARY PENWARDEN: Thanks so much. Thanks for calling.

CH: Rosemary Penwarden built her own electric vehicle. We reached her in Dunedin, New Zealand.

[Music: Techno]

Lou Reed Archive

Guest: Don Fleming

CH: As the leader of the Velvet Underground and a solo artist, he kept his head held high, taking on taboo subjects in his lyrics, ushering in a new age of rock and roll with sonic experiments, and creating a dark and uncompromising persona for himself in the press. The story of Lou Reed's life has been told many times, which is why new discoveries from his private archives, including never before heard recordings, are a real gift to fans who visit "Caught Between the Twisted Stars". A new exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at the Lincoln Centre. Musician Don Fleming is an archivist for the Lou Reed Estate and one of the curators of the exhibition. We reached him in Montclair, New Jersey.

TH: Don, one of the items that's getting a lot of attention in this exhibit is a set of demo recordings Lou Reed made back in 1965. And they were discovered in a sealed envelope on a shelf. When you started the work of building this archive, what was it like opening that envelope for the very first time?

DON FLEMING: Well, it was pretty wild to first just find it on the shelf as a sealed tape and just try to get our heads around like what we were looking at. I mean, we could see right away he'd mailed it to himself at his parent's house on May 11th, 1965, and it was sealed. And it had all the indications of someone who was trying to do a self copyright, which is when you do that... you do a certified envelope and mail it to yourselves and then don't open it. And it proves that the songs in there from before that date. We eventually opened it and we're kind of stunned to hear what was on it.

TH: Let's listen to a little of what you found on the tapes. This is Lou Reed and his future Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale with a very early version of "I'm Waiting For The Man".

[SOUNDCLIP: I'm Waiting For The Man by Lou Reed and John Cale]

TH: Don, there's some folk sounds there as if Lou is channeling Bob Dylan. What does the recording tell us about where Lou Reed was, at least creatively, before The Velvet Underground?

DON FLEMING: Well, that's just it. When he was in college in Syracuse, he saw Bob play there and was playing those songs then with a sort of like a band that he had in college. I mean, before that as a teenager, he played doo-wop music. He loved doo-wop you know, that was... For years that was his thing. And then when Dylan came along, there's a quote from him where he says, Like everyone said, this is the real thing. You can write about real things. And so that's when he started writing. But he was writing I'm Waiting for the Man in Heroin, which, you know, in 64, you know The Beatles were writing, I Want to hold your hand. So, you know, and now for the first time, we hear it in the way that he was doing it then. We knew that he and John had sort of busked on street corners, gone and played different street corners during this time period, but no one had ever heard what that actually sounded like. It makes sense. This is what it sounds like, you know.

TH: You mentioned the doo-wop phase, the very first record he ever recorded himself. That's a 45 he did when he was still in high school with a band called The Jades. We're gonna listen to that now.

[SOUNDCLIP: So Blue by The Jades (1958)]

TH: That's Lou Reed's first recording ever with The Jades, "So Blue" from 1958. And he's not the lead singer there, but he wrote the song and he sings the backups there. So, Don, what has the doo-wop influence meant to Lou Reed?

DON FLEMING: Well, he grew up just loving doo-wop. He learnt it on the radio. He would listen to Alan Freed, who had a station coming out of New York and just grew up on that sound. But, you know, this was his first experience in a studio and getting a record made. And it was kind of a whirlwind thing that came out of nowhere. They were actually just like... they played the varsity show at the high school as the Shades, and then they ran into this guy who wanted... He took them into the studio, was kind of starting up a label and he changed their name to The Jades because there was already a Shades around. Apparently.

TH: Lou Reed had a bit of a reputation for being a notoriously tough guy to interview. This is Lou at a 1974 news conference with Australian journalists.

[SOUNDCLIP: REPORTER: You're a man of few words why is this?

LOU REED: I don't have anything to say.

REPORTER: Do you like meeting people, talking to people?

LOU REED: Some.

REPORTER: Do like talking to us.

LOU REED: I don't know you.

REPORTER: Do you like press interviews in general?

LOU REED: No.

REPORTER: You shun publicity?

LOU REED: No.]

TH: [chuckle] Okay then... Look, I know you've gone through a lot of Lou Reed interviews over the years. How did they compare to that one?

DON FLEMING: Well, you know, there are definitely... It's actually a smaller minority of them that Lou just turns off to the person he's talking to. It was kind of a surprise. We had sort of expected that as we went through interviews to find Lou being confrontational with people. But most of the time, he's not. Most of the time, if he likes the person and he's interested in what they're asking him, he'll really go deeply into it and often go beyond what they expected. But then, yes, occasionally he runs into somebody and it's just not working and he can't be bothered to pretend that it is. So that's just one of the... Lou was very real. If he didn't feel it, you know... It was a lost cause and you could tell with that poor guy, that journalist, like, yeah, it was a lost cause. I mean, did you ever interview Lou?

TH: I never did, no. That would have been a [inaudible] but no never had the chance.

DON FLEMING: We always ask journalists. We've been talking to journalists about this for a while and like we always ask them and a lot have and they always have a story. So I feel like that's a whole other project is just talking to all the journalists who interviewed Lou and get their stories.

TH: Well, there's an old saying in our business that there are no bad guests, just bad questions. So, listen, the items in this exhibition are part of the permanent collection of the New York Public Library, and they were donated by Lou's longtime partner, Laurie Anderson. Anyone with a library card can dig in, which is pretty cool. Really. Why was it important for the Lou Reed estate that this material ended up there?

DON FLEMING: From the beginning. We wanted to find a home for it in New York. It just made the most sense because everything about Lou is so New York. And really, our first choice of who to reach out to was the library for performing arts. It's part of the New York Public Library but it's at Lincoln Centre. It's not in the main library building which really celebrates people who are performers, but they hadn't, you know, they didn't have anything quite this rock and roll, but they embraced it and they have embraced it. And I think, you know, and what's really great is Laurie from the start, wanted it just to be available to the public with no restrictions. You know, a lot of collections end up in these places, and you still have to kind of talk to the estate and get permission to look at things. But from the beginning, we were like, let's make it as available as we can. We have so much audio and video that you can listen to and look at there in the research centre. And I would encourage anyone from Canada who wants to come down. There's a bunch of shows that we did in Canada that are in the collection. So there might be a show you were at.

TH: All right.

DON FLEMING: So we've got stuff from, like, Massey Hall in '74 and '75 going on up to St Denis Theatre in Montreal and different places. So I think there's kind of something for everyone who wants to come spend a day kind of exploring the collection.

TH: Don, good to talk to you about this. Thanks so much.

DON FLEMING: All right. Thank you.

CH: Don Fleming is an archivist for the Lou Reed estate and one of the curators of the exhibition "Caught Between The Twisted Stars" at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. We reached him in Montclair, New Jersey.

LOU REED: "I'm Waiting For The Man''. Words and music. [SOUNDCLIP: I'm Waiting For The Man, Demo version]

CH: Lou Reed and John Cale with the recently discovered demo version of I'm Waiting for the Man recorded in 1965.

TH: We were about to take a short break, but the Friday edition of As It Happens will be right back.

CH: When we return, a particular particulate problem. Researchers from New Zealand visit a remote icefield in Antarctica and find that even snow in the middle of nowhere is contaminated by microplastics.

TH: They're excited. And yes, they do have to spell it out for you. Before the first in-person Canadian National Spelling Bee final since 2019. Two competitors share their approaches to the imminent war of words.

CH: Stay tuned. I'm Chris Howden.

TH: And I'm Tom Harrington.

[SOUNDCLIP: Music continued]

Part 2: Antarctica microplastics, Cancer exhibit

Antarctica Microplastics

Guest: Laura Revell

TH: Hi again. And welcome back. I'm Tom Harrington.

CH: And I'm Chris Howden. This is, As It Happens, the Friday Edition - part two.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Coming up.

TH: War correspondents. After receiving a trove of wartime letters. The head of a Canadian veterans group is addressing the issue of who exactly they were all addressed to.

CH: They couldn't believe our eyes. Researchers showed people an optical illusion that tricked them into thinking they were seeing an expanding black hole and found their minds reacted, but so did their pupils.

TH: And a fragrant violation. Residents of a California city were in a serious funk after a whale died, and that funk got much more serious when it started decomposing. Stay tuned.

[Music: Theme]

CH: When it comes to purity, the so-called "driven snow" kind of sets the bar, sort of like Antarctica sets the bar for remoteness. But microplastics seem to have a way of polluting just about every place on Earth. So when a team of scientists from New Zealand decided to test the spread of those minuscule bits of human manipulated hydrocarbons, they figured Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, a remote place within a remote place, was the perfect site. Laura Revell supervised the project. Professor Revell teaches environmental physics at Canterbury University. We reached her in Windwhistle, New Zealand.

TH: Professor Revell, what did you and your Ph.D. student find when you took a look at this snow from one of the most isolated places on Earth?

LAURA REVELL: Yeah, we found microplastics in every single sample. So in total, we collected 19 snow samples of fresh snow, a fresh snowfall event from across the Ross Island region of Antarctica. And yeah, they all contained microplastics. Overall, we identified 13 different types of plastics. And because it was a fresh snowfall event, this tells us that plastics are being carried around in the atmosphere down in Antarctica, which is how they reached the sites that we sampled.

TH: Now you do study microplastics for a living, so how did it feel to you to learn that they were in the snow in Antarctica?

LAURA REVELL: Yeah. Initially I was really surprised. It was back in early 2020 when we first started analysing the samples and at the time the field of airborne microplastics was still very new and I was shocked that we had found them in such a remote site. I mean, looking at the body of work that has been undertaken in the last few years, it's not so surprising because we know that microplastics are spiralling the globe, they're in the atmosphere, they're in the oceans. They can bounce between the two environments and just be transported around the earth with the winds. So it is disappointing that we found them down in Antarctica, but I guess this just... this is a consequence of human society today and the plastics that we use in our daily lives.

TH: Where else that might be considered unusual, have microplastics been found around the world?

LAURA REVELL: So the first, I guess, surprising place they were found back in 2019 was in the French Pyrenees in a remote mountain catchment. They had previously been found in Paris, but the amount that they found in the French Pyrenees were present in similar amounts to what they collected in Paris, which was the first indication that might... sorry, that was the first indication that microplastics can be transported over large distances. Later that year, they were found up in the Arctic in snow samples collected by a team up there. And then closer to where you guys are there was a paper out in 2020 where the researchers had looked at not snow samples, but they just collected the atmospheric fallout from conservation areas across the United States and they found microplastics in all of those. So these studies and others are building up our understanding that they are a pollutant that is transported on global scales.

TH: Why is the discovery of these things in Antarctica such an important development, do you think?

LAURA REVELL: Antarctica was one of the few places left on Earth where we hadn't found microplastics before, and it's considered a really pristine location and one that we like to think of as untouched by pollution. And so showing that, you know, Antarctica is not immune from atmospheric transport of microplastics is important. They have previously been found, of course, down in Antarctica and in the sea and in ice. But this is the first study finding them in snow, which is an indication that they are being transported in the air.

TH: In previous research you've done, you've studied the power of microplastics to trap heat in the atmosphere. As you say, they're flying around the globe. So what might they do to the snow and ice in Antarctica?

LAURA REVELL: Yeah, well, a lot of the microplastics that we find have quite dark colours, so we see lots of dark blue and black ones. For example, when these dark particles get deposited on bright surfaces such as snow and ice, they absorb sunlight and so accelerate melting of these snowy and icy regions. So that is one way in which microplastics might contribute to climate change, because otherwise the snow and ice is pretty reflective of solar radiation. So we don't want that melting by human induced pollution.

TH: What do we know about the microplastics that were found on the Ross Ice Shelf and actually where they came from?

LAURA REVELL: We examined two potential sources because we can't say definitively where they came from. So the first route that we looked at was atmospheric transport. I mean, there was definitely some degree of atmospheric transport involved, but it just depends on how long the scales are. We did modelling to track the air masses back in time that... Where that snowball event had come from and that didn't indicate any obvious source such as another scientific base on the other side of Antarctica. Our models showed that they could have come out of the sea and been transported through the atmosphere over thousands of kilometres. It's definitely plausible that that would happen. But we also did an inventory of the clothing types in use down at Scott Base, which is the New Zealand Scientific Station, and catalogued all of the gear that the scientists use when they're out in the field there. And the compositions of what we found did match up with what they're using and the gloves and the jackets and tents and so on. So it's probably very likely that the microplastics are originating from the human activities down there. They're getting out into the environment. They're blowing around with the winds. And so they could be deposited in the snowfall that we then collected.

TH: These samples were collected more than two years ago. I assume it's safe to assume they've been landing in Antarctica ever since. So I wonder, what does that mean for the long term prospects of the environment there?

LAURA REVELL: Yeah, well, we know that microplastics are damaging to organisms when they're ingested. And for human health, obviously, we know that they're not... That they're damaging to lung tissue when inhaled. But for the organisms that live in Antarctica, that are very unique to this continent, I think we need more research to really understand what the impacts are on them. And I'm sure that that research will be carried out in future years.

TH: Professor Revell, good to talk to you. Thank you.

LAURA REVELL: Thank you.

CH: Laura Revell is an associate professor of environmental physics at Canterbury University. We reached her in Windwhistle, New Zealand.

[Music: Percussion instrumental]

MB Premier Skips Pride

CH: Across Canada this month, people are celebrating Pride, which means all kinds of 2SLGBTQ+ events in cities everywhere, including, of course, Pride parades. But notably not including herself in Winnipeg's Pride Parade on Sunday was Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson. She spoke at the rally, but then left blaming a scheduling conflict and miscommunication between her staff and Pride organizers. But many were unconvinced by that excuse, including Barry Karlenzig, the president of Pride Winnipeg.

BARRY KARLENZIG: [SOUNDCLIP: If you're going to take up space at the rally and talk and show support, you should be able to walk and show support as well. it's hand in hand, it makes sense. If she does not want to walk, she's not welcome to talk, plain and simple.

FAITH FUNDAL: Why is walking such an important part in taking part during Pride?

BARRY KARLENZIG: Pride started as a protest. Pride is still a protest to this day, there isn't equal rights for everyone. And by our civic leaders, our provincial leaders and our federal leaders. Walking hand in hand with those who are in the march, it shows that they truly are a supporter of all Manitobans. Words are words without action, and that's just it. If you're saying you're a supporter, but then using the excuse you do today saying, oh, you know, and I didn't know that that was a requirement when we had talked to not one, not two, but three different meetings and over eight of her staff. I'm sorry, but that message is not going to get lost with eight different staff individuals, especially when on Friday morning I was getting a call from her staff confirming the speakers list. And even Sunday morning at the rally, our VP of Community Engagement, who was the emcee, confirmed with her individuals that were there saying, Your lineup is here, you're good to go. And they confirm. When stuff like this comes out, it is our duty to the community that we serve to call out public figures when they're not doing what they said. It was as simple as had, she said on the Friday saying, Look, I'm double booked. I can't do the walk if there's something else I can do instead... we would have worked with our civic leaders and we would have worked with our provincial leaders. Premier's office today said, I apologize to Pride Winnipeg as chair of the board. I have not seen a single apology. I've seen a lot of stuff on the news, never seen an apology, never got a phone call, nothing. But it's not just us. She has to apologize to the community that she served for. If she truly wants to make change and truly feels that an error was made and she wants to make it right, then she needs to sit down with not just pride but our other 2SLGBTQ+ organizations and apologize face to face at those organizations and hear the harsh criticism and build that trust back with our community in order to walk in the parade again. I've been with pride for ten years. I've been with pride for a decade. I've gone to multiple mayors, multiple premiers, federal leadership. I feel like I'm personally lied to. So I had the wool pulled over my eyes up until the morning of, saying, yup, yup, no problem, whatever. And to me it's like sitting back and thinking, okay, you know what, new premier. Same old tactics. Pallister did the same thing. Now we've got Stefanson doing the same thing, and I'm... To me, it's just. It's an insult. I don't tolerate liars. I don't like liars. You've lied to not only myself and my board, but you've lied to the community. You've lied to the public that you were voted to serve.]

CH: That was Barry Karlenzig, the president of Pride Winnipeg, speaking with the CBC's Faith Fundal. His organization banned Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson from future Pride events after she failed to walk in the parade in Winnipeg on Sunday.

[Music: Calm guitar instrumental]

Cancer Exhibit

Guest: Katie Dabin

CH: Two in five Canadians will get a cancer diagnosis in their lifetimes. But still, it's not typically something we like to spend a lot of time thinking about, and it's certainly not something many people would choose to spend an afternoon learning about. But a new exhibit in London, England, is looking to change that. It's called Cancer Revolution: Science, Innovation and Hope, and it's taking place at the London Science Museum until next winter. Katie Dabin is the museum's curator of medicine. We reached her in London.

TH: Katie. I can hear it now. Hey, everybody, let's go to the museum and see the cancer exhibit. How do you get people interested in seeing something like that?

KATIE DABIN: Well, I mean, cancer is a tough sell for a family day out. But what we hope to have done with "Cancer Revolution: Science, Innovation and Hope" is put together a really welcoming space that's full of really fascinating stories, some very personal, some really curious stories about the science of cancer care and to really sort of hopefully invite our visitors to re-examine their perceptions of cancer and to leave them feeling much more hopeful than they might expect.

TH: There are a lot of elements to this exhibit. What are some examples of what people will see?

KATIE DABIN: Well, what we've tried to do is include a wide range of different personal stories. For me, one of the most I think, powerful objects we display in the exhibition are the beads of courage of a young man called Ted. So at the age of six months, he was diagnosed with a form of leukaemia and he received treatment for two years. And when he left hospital, the family were given a very sort of cheap winner's medal, which was a nice intention by the hospital. But I think his family always felt that it didn't at all represent the experience he'd had with his treatments. And so what they did was set up that the Beads of Courage UK charity. And what we've displayed is this about, oh, it's about six or seven metres worth of beads. Each bead represents a moment on Ted's treatment journey. So that's something like 600 beads representing his days in isolation, the red beads representing blood transfusions, white beads for chemotherapy. And it just visually gives a sense of that journey that he and they went on as a family. But there's also sort of a wide range of really different sort of curious objects. So one of the things we wanted to address was that, you know, cancer isn't a modern or distinct human disease. It affects all multicellular life. So for instance, we'll see examples of plant cancers, things that will transform... When you visit the park, you'll suddenly start seeing trees with these very knobby growths called "crown galls" that are essentially plant tumours. So we display some of those and even, you know, we even display a dinosaur tumour. So yeah, there's a wide range of sort of objects related to how we've come to treat the cancer in the way that we do. So lots to do with radiotherapy and surgery and some really beautiful and powerful art installations as well that really sort of get to the heart of what it's like to live longer with cancer as treatments are helping more people than ever before to live longer and better with cancer.

TH: You also have a 19th century cast of the jaw of someone named Robert Penman. What's his story?

KATIE DABIN: Yeah, I mean, Robert Penman's story is extraordinary. So on display, we have this incredible cast taken of this young man aged 24, a few years before he noticed his jaw lines swelling and growing with a bony growth. And increasingly, it really began to distort his face. So by the age of 24, when you see it, you know, it is an extraordinary sight. And the surgeons, James Syme, an Edinburgh based surgeon, he took a massive Robert's jaw a face before he conducted a surgery to remove that... with the tumour growing on it. This is in a time back in the 1820s, so in a time before in anaesthetics, before sterile surgery. And so, you know, Robert underwent 24 minutes of surgery without any anaesthetic, but he survived and went on... Certainly went on to live at least for another 20 years because we know James Syme actually bumped into him in the street once and Robert had grown a beard to sort of cover the facial scarring, but yeah, he had survived the surgery and survived yes... So that length of time.

TH: I understand your mother was diagnosed with cancer while you were actually working on getting this exhibition together. What was that like for you?

KATIE DABIN: Yeah, it was a strange and unsettling experience. You know, absolutely was testament to the fact that there is brilliant cancer care and treatment available when it's diagnosed early enough. So my mum is really fortunate that her breast cancer was diagnosed really early. She underwent surgery and is doing really well.

TH: The exhibit was previously opened, I understand, in Manchester now it's been opened in London a couple of weeks. So who are the kind of people coming to see it?

KATIE DABIN: You know, families, people, you know, visitors with very little understanding of cancer. Three individuals in active treatment have all been to visit. So there were various points in the show where visitors are able to share their own stories and experiences. And so through anecdotally, through the use of messages, we've seen people really sharing their in-experiences or reflections about the exhibition. It's been really remarkable. Like even within the first weekend, there was a family who had brought her daughter who was receiving treatment. And they, you know, they were just talking about that they wanted to come and learn as a family together. And yeah, we've just had so many people just say that they were really surprised about the experience and how warm it felt in the gallery and how interesting it was. So, you know, we're really thrilled.

TH: Why do you think we need exhibitions such as this?

KATIE DABIN: Well, I think we need to create spaces where people feel equipped to have conversations with their friends and family about experiences that, you know, ever increasingly happening to us. I mean, the fact that more of us are experiencing cancer is in some ways a weird success story, that more of us are living, living longer and living, you know, better, because, you know, we're not being affected by other diseases or anything like that. So. And up until fairly recently, you know, outcomes haven't been great. But in the last 30, 40 years, there really has been a huge difference where more than half of individuals diagnosed with cancer live for ten years or longer. You know, often cured of cancer. There is hope there and people are, you know, more people than ever before surviving. So it's really important to create the space, to have hope and to have these conversations.

TH: Katie, good to talk to you about this. Thank you so much.

KATIE DABIN: Thank you so much.

CH: Katie Damon is the curator of medicine at the London Science Museum. We reached her in London. And you can find more on that story on our web page at cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Guitar instrumental]

Ottawa Spelling Bee

CH: In these lazy days of spellcheck, these students are maintaining the lost art of getting letters in the right order, using only their minds and even turning it into a sport. This weekend, the Spelling Bee of Canada will hold its national competition, which will be livestreamed on CBC Sports. It's the first time the competition will be held in person since 2019. The CBC spoke with 7 year-old Eric Hiremath and 14 year-old Tristan Scarlett, both from Ottawa, about going to the Bee. Here they are, starting with Tristan.

TRISTAN SCARLETT: When we were in the championship rounds, when we were both... There's only two of us left and we were both spelling words that we hadn't heard before. I'd say the most difficult one that neither of us got was "orecchiette", a type of pasta, I believe. Ore-cch-iette.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: That's a tough one. Eric, how about you? What was your experience like with the regional spelling bee?

ERIC HIREMATH: It was weird.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Why was it weird?

ERIC HIREMATH: Because you might just feel a little nervous when they tell you the word. Even when you know how to spell it's never as easy. Because sometimes, even though if I know how to spell the word, I just get it wrong because I say it too fast.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Yeah. That would be really nerve racking. What do you do when you get nervous?

ERIC HIREMATH: I just take a deep breath. And then I tried to spell the word. What was the big word for you, Eric, at the end of your regional competition that made you win? Tinge.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Tinge?

ERIC HIREMATH: T-I-N-G-E

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: How do you train for the spelling bee, Eric?

ERIC HIREMATH: My mom asked me some words to spell and I spell them.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: And I understand that you made it to last year's finals as well. They weren't in person. They were over the computer. But what was the word that you had to spell in that one, Eric?

ERIC HIREMATH: That was nestling.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Nestling. How do you spell that?

ERIC HIREMATH: N-E-S-T-L-I-N-G.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Wow. Did you think it was hard or was it pretty easy for you?

ERIC HIREMATH: Pretty easy because I read a lot of books.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Eric, what is your favourite word to spell?

ERIC HIREMATH: You know, all of the words I spell are my favourite.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: I know you love dinosaurs. Is there a particular dinosaur word you love to spell?

ERIC HIREMATH: Yeah. Archaeopteryx. A-r-c-h-e-o-p-t-e-r-y-x.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Wow. What kind of dinosaur is that? Is it a meat eater or is it a vegetarian, herbivore?

ERIC HIREMATH: It's actually a kind of a bird, but it has teeth in its beak.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: So maybe a bit related to the pterodactyl.

ERIC HIREMATH: Well, it had feathers. Well, pterodactyls. Only some of them had feathers.

CH: That was Robyn Bresnahan, host of Ottawa Morning, speaking with 7 year-old Eric Hiremath and before him 14 year-old Tristan Scarlett. They're both competing in the national finals of the Spelling Bee of Canada, which are being held in Toronto this weekend. You're listening to As It Happens on CBC Radio One and on PRX. You can also find us on the CBC Listen app, along with all kinds of other CBC radio programming, live and on demand. And that is a free download from the App Store or from Google Play.

[Music: Upbeat instrumental]

Part 3: Northern Ireland curlew camera, Optical illusions

QC Sword Attack Sentence

CH: Today, Carl Girouard was sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Girouard is the man who on Halloween 2020 began attacking people in Quebec City with a sharpened sword. He killed two people and left five others with terrible injuries. The cellist Rémy Bélanger de Beauport was amongst the injured. As It Happens, reached Mr. de Beauport his rehabilitation facility a few weeks after the attack.

REMY BELANGER DE BEAUPORT: What I saw was this guy wearing a costume and then he's got the big, big sword. Then he left the sword up and I thought, he's a drunkard. He's going to pretend to hit me. He's going to find it funny that my reaction is to be all fearful. And so I thought, I'm not going to react to any of this. But then it was all real and the first hit was so bad, he really beat me up. Oh, and I'm sorry for your listeners, this is all really graphic. I'm not going to go into too much details, but I think... I really think he beat me up with the sword, using it like a baseball bat. Like this guy is no professional for sure, because otherwise I'd be gone. I mean, I was really close to... I spoke with the police who saw video evidence of what happened and they couldn't believe I was there standing in front of them.

CAROL OFF: Something else I want to ask you is the feelings you have and had about your attacker. Can you describe that for us?

REMY BELANGER DE BEAUPORT: So as I was in the ambulance for me, it was clear that I'd forgiven the guy because... I don't... Right now I'm just speculating. But I don't think anything of the guy was left in the body that I met. I met a violent body in crisis. And I feel like whoever this guy is, he wasn't there. And you know what? I want to know who he is. I can't have any hate towards this guy, for all I know. I think he's a broken soul, and I really wish him all the best.

CH: That was cellist Rémy Bélanger de Beauport speaking with our former host Carol Off a few weeks after he survived a sword attack in Quebec City on Halloween in 2020. Today, his attacker was sentenced to life in prison for murdering two people and injuring five.

[Music: Piano instrumental]

AB/SASK War Letters

CH: For Al Cameron history isn't just in the past, it's also his present and future. Mr. Cameron is the founding executive director of Veteran Voices of Canada, a Canadian non-profit that documents veterans stories. About a month ago, he received a call about some wartime letters. Now he's received more than 100 of those letters alongside some 100 photos. All of them are dated between the 1920s and the 1950s, and they're addressed to a person with the last name, "Allan" from Kerrobert, a small town in west central Saskatchewan. Now, Al Cameron is searching for the family of that man who he says may have been a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

AL CAMERON: The person that dropped him off to me, she had said that if I wasn't taking them, they're probably going to go in the garbage and that was not going to happen. It's pretty amazing... This is history in your hands. I mean, this is World War II, pre-World War II and post World War II. So, again, to look at... To read every one of these letters, it would take a crazy amount of time to do it. But I can only imagine. Some of the stories that are going to be coming from these letters once the family reads them again. For me, this isn't the first time that this has happened. I'm a collector of military as well. My uncles were North Nova Scotia Highlanders, and so I collected the North Nova Scotia Highlander memorabilia for the longest time. Probably ten years ago, I came across the Silver Cross. And that is awarded to families of personnel who were killed during service. And this gentleman was killed in Holland in 1945. And I found out that he... his family lived in Spirit River, Alberta, which is quite a lot... it's probably 6 hours away from where I live. So I contacted them and made sure that they received that as well. So I went up there, up to Spirit River. We had a bit of a ceremony. I presented that to them and they were ecstatic, happy tears. Just so happy to get something like this. A connection to, in her case, her father, which is pretty amazing. So I can only imagine there's going to be a similar kind of a response when they receive these letters and read them, it's going to be pretty amazing to see. With these kind of things, if anybody comes across the letters, even if they're not wartime letters, don't throw these things out. This is history. It's family history. And it's really easy these days to connect these types of things with the family, families who are interested in the family history. You know, just don't throw things out. History is so important to be kept.

CH: That's Al Cameron, founding executive director of Veteran Voices of Canada, speaking to the CBC.

[Music: Country instrumental]

Northern Ireland Curlew Camera

Guest: Katie Gibb

CH: Every night, people around the world tune in to a special channel to watch hidden camera footage, which sounds creepy, but the footage isn't salacious or voyeuristic. It's ornithological. They're watching a pair of nesting birds, curlews, which were once common in Northern Ireland. But now they're under threat. And for the second year, running or flying, conservationists are giving people a window into their lives by livestreaming a pair of Curlews in Antrim Hills. Katie Gibb is a conservation officer with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. We reached her near BallyClare, Northern Ireland.

TH: Katie, when people turn on the live stream of this curlew camera, just so you know, I have, but what exactly are they seeing?

KATIE GIBB: Yes. So, this is a live streaming camera of a pair of curlew that we have in the Antrim Hills window into the secret lives of a pretty cryptic species.

TH: They're cryptic. But what do you mean, cryptic?

KATIE GIBB: Cryptic. So they blend in really well with their environment and a lot of their behaviour tends to make it very hard to monitor them because it's all about staying as stealth as possible.

TH: What's so fascinating about these birds, you think that people would be willing to sit down and watch them live their lives?

KATIE GIBB: Well, I like to call them wonderful weirdos, but the curlew are a red listed species here in the U.K., pretty much due to a massive population decline that we've been seeing since about the late '80s. And so this bird is a pretty uncommon bird around this area. And so it's just a really wonderful look into a bird that, you know, is entranced into the UK folklore and soundscapes that we know so well. So the curlew is really well known, but as I said before, it's a pretty cryptic bird, so you don't get to see it that often.

TH: The family that you're watching through this camera, I understand, kind of have their own story and personalities. Who are they? What are they like?

KATIE GIBB: Yeah. So these have been called Luna and Bill. They've been named for their... the shape of the bill is very much like a crescent moon and they are absolutely wonderful parents. The female Luna will incubate during the day and the male will switch over and do the night. And the male is absolutely wonderful. But he's an absolute pain to monitor because he'll actually display over a different area to where the nest is. So very cryptic and frustrating.

TH: And how many in the family or potentially in the family?

KATIE GIBB: Well, this is a really unusual nest. This one actually has five eggs in it. So normally they will only have four. And yeah, so all of the eggs are viable. So we're due to hatch on Sunday. So we're getting really excited.

TH: You installed these cameras last year initially, what kind of reception did the livestream get?

KATIE GIBB: Last year was absolutely brilliant, so we got 14,000 views over the three weeks that we had at live and it just really took off. You know, I don't know how many of my colleagues did work during that time because it seemed to be on everyone's monitors. And I know it went quite far throughout the U.K. and we had viewers from Denmark all the way to New Zealand, so it was pretty wonderful.

TH: Curlews are red listed. There are less than 500 of them now left in Northern Ireland. What caused the population to decline so dramatically?

KATIE GIBB: Yes. So they're near threatened. So the UK holds about a quarter of the global population of the Eurasian curlew. And here in Northern Ireland the declines that we've been seeing in the UK are just escalated. So since the late '80s we have actually lost 82% of our population. So that's about... we estimate about 250 pairs a year now. And these declines are due to poor breeding success alongside the loss of breeding grounds. So predation of the eggs and chicks by junior list predators are a really massive threat and then also the intensification of farmland.

TH: I understand that the curlews have cultural significance in Northern Ireland or in the UK. What role do they have in folklore?

KATIE GIBB: Yes. So the curlew. They had a bit of a bad name stretching back for quite a while because the call is so mournful and haunting. They used to be the bringers of bad luck. But there is a really wonderful Welsh folktale about Saint Bueno and how a curlew rescued this abbot's sermon book from the sea and guarded it until the abbot returned. And as thanks, he made it hard for curlew nests to be found.

TH: The camera was set up as part of a conservation effort. Given the circumstances of the curlews, what do you hope will come of all this attention?

KATIE GIBB: I think bringing light to the massive amount of work that we have in front of us with the conservation of curlew. And also just to get, you know, people to see what incredible species they are and really help support us going forward with what we will need to do.

TH: And when those chicks, I guess, are born, what happens then?

KATIE GIBB: So Curlew are very much like ducklings do. They come out of the egg almost fully ready to go, and they will stay around the nest for a couple of days. We're hoping for everyone's viewing pleasure and then they will move off to better pastures full of insects that they can feed on and they will take just under... just over a month until they fledge. So the parents will stick with them and move them around from field to field, getting them nice and big.

TH: Got to get more cameras.

KATIE GIBB: Yeah, yes. Yeah. I don't know how many of the farmers would let us install those around the farms.

TH: How long are you going to keep the livestream going of Bill and Luna?

KATIE GIBB: So their livestream will go until pretty much they leave the nest protection fence. So one of the eggs is a little bit younger, which often happens with a five egg nest so hopefully the mother will stay around and incubate until that last one's finally hatched. So once they've gone and there's nothing left to say. We'll turn it off.

TH: Good to talk to you about this. Thanks so much.

KATIE GIBB: And I thank you so much.

CH: Katie Gibb is a conservation officer with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. We reached her near BallyClare, Northern Ireland.

[Music: Percussion instrumental]

CH: Before 2020 it was known as "Generation Z", but since 2020, some people have started calling it "the COVID generation". Over the grinding course of the pandemic, a lot of teenagers have worried that their coming of age has already come and gone. The coronavirus itself has been a constant threat, but studies from around the world also tell us the social isolation has been devastating, not to mention the time spent online, which skyrocketed to the point where it's being referred to as "social media disorder". On IDEAS tonight, contributor Mary O'Connell talks to teenagers in various countries about their journeys. 15 year old Charlise Bruchet and her mother Nina, live outside Calgary. They tell Mary what happened when Charlise's infection developed into long COVID.

CHARLISE BRUCHET: I mean, I was pretty worried just because I didn't know anything about COVID. Right. It was such a new virus. I didn't know how I was going to react with it, especially since a lot of people weren't reacting well. I was isolated in my bedroom for two weeks. It was rough. I'm not going to lie. I had a lot of chest pain, breathing issues. I had a high fever for over two weeks. I just slept like a lot. I didn't really get out of bed at all, super groggy, so I couldn't stand up. And I lost 10 pounds. Oh, yeah. The province wasn't vaccinating kids my age yet, so that's probably why I was hit hard. After the initial bunch of symptoms, I started to get better. In terms of underlying health issues I had absolutely none. Then I'd go out for a run and got chest pain. My joints would hurt and I was just 15. My family doctor basically told me, just push through it. Last summer, 2021, I tried to do quite a bit of sailing. I felt some fatigue, but it wasn't too bad. Then Grade 10 started up and I joined the volleyball team. Yeah, I was trying to return to my normal self, my normal life. But I started crashing. I was breathless and exhausted. I had a lot of pain in my legs. It was like my life had suddenly fast forwarded to a 90 year-old woman. They wanted to give me anti-depressants.

NINA: I became Mama Bear looking for answers. Many doctors didn't believe Charlise, nor did they believe me. You know there's surprise. And then I think there's denial. Some of them feel threatened when they don't have an answer, when they don't understand. They can get defensive. And I don't think they like to say the words. I don't know. They just don't believe kids getting this enduring kind of COVID exists for paediatrics. It's like it's taboo. You can't get a referral. We still don't have long COVID paediatrics. Why? A cardiologist told me to stop taking my daughter to any remaining appointments after she prescribed her heart medication. To be honest, I've joined a lot of long COVID support groups around the world, and I've been listening to conferences globally and they've been my doctors and guidance.

CH: That's from a documentary called "The COVID Generation". You can hear the full episode tonight on IDEAS with Nahlah Ayed after As It Happens.

[Music: Piano and guitar instrumental]

Optical Illusions

Guest: Shoaib Nabil

CH: Our minds sometimes like to be tricked, at least when there's absolutely nothing at stake. That's why optical illusions are so popular. Take the illusion, set up not long ago by a team of psychologists. At the centre is a black oval. Its edges blur and fade outward. It sits on a white background dotted with small black ovals. And when most people look at the central black oval, it appears to expand. Well, that optical illusion is more than just a party trick. The researchers think their experiment explains something about how we perceive the world around us. Shoaib Nabil is one of the authors of the study. We reached him in Oslo, Norway.

TH: Nabil, how would you describe the sensation of looking at this optical illusion?

SHOAIB NABIL: So when people saw those images with some kind of illusion in it, their first response was definitely their physiological response, which is the dilation of their pupils. So just by looking at the black holes, participants perceived that it is expanding. It's just like for an example, they are entering into a dark tunnel or a dark cave sort of thing. And when we are in a dark space or in a dark room, for an example our eyes, our pupil gets expanded and generally our pupil size gets bigger and bigger so that we let more light to enter into the pupil so that we can see more. You know, it's kind of a very basic evolutionary predictive behaviour.

TH: So most of the 50 people you tested, 86% who saw that black oval thought it was growing larger. I did. When I looked at it started to expand in my eyes. So when people's eyes dilate like mine did or the people in your study, what does that tell you?

SHOAIB NABIL: When our pupil size gets bigger, it takes quite a lot of things. I mean, when we are getting aroused by anything, for example, like even we are sexually aroused our pupils get dilated. So also when we have a lot of cognitive load, the same thing happens and so on. It's kind of a reaction, our bodily response, which is out of our conscious control. Although there is the interesting fact that few people can actually manipulate or they can control their pupil dilation. I mean, they can dilate their pupil just by their will. But let's not talk about that.

TH: Well, that's quite fascinating when you talk about people can control their dilation that's...

SHOAIB NABIL: it's kind of a superpower if I'm not wrong.

TH: So let's talk about why people's brains respond this way. Most people's do, but some don't. But why do people tend to respond to the stimulation this way?

SHOAIB NABIL: Okay. When we are perceiving darkness, it's a basic thing. Like human eyes wants to adjust to the environment, you know, like it wants to let more light into the eyes. It's on to predict the future to minimize the risk of something bad, unpleasant or harmful happening. It's kind of a defence mechanism, I must say.

TH: And that's evolutionary?

SHOAIB NABIL: Yeah, of course.

TH: Now in your study, I mean, a small minority of people, about 14%, didn't see the optical illusion. Why do you think that might be the case?

SHOAIB NABIL: Yeah, that's a good question. Actually, we don't have any solid answer to that question. Maybe it is because of their past experience. I mean, they didn't perceive that initial images as three dimensional, which most of the people did. Actually both images are two dimensional and they perceived it. Right.

TH: We tend to think of optical illusions as, you know, the brain playing a trick on us, that we're being fooled by our mind in a way. How do you see it?

SHOAIB NABIL: That's a very good question. And I think it's kind of a philosophical thing as well. I mean, whatever we call reality, is that actual reality or it is just our perceptions about our environment or about our surroundings. If we turn our conversation in this point or in this direction, then whatever we are feeling, it is just our perception from our sensory organs, right. So nothing of the illusion in that sense. Whatever we are perceiving, whether it is in our environment or not, that makes us. It's all about our perception and our consciousness.

TH: Nabil, thanks for talking to us about this.

SHOAIB NABIL: Yeah.

CH: Shoaib Nabil is the co-author of a study on an optical illusion published in the Frontiers of Human Neuroscience. He was in Oslo.

[Music: Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John]

Beached Whale

CH: There's a lot to be said for the restorative effects of sea air. A deep lung full can make you throw up your hands and cry. Hello, vast ocean. But on rare occasions, it can just make you throw up. That was the case in Richmond, California, recently, where an 18,000 kilogram blue whale washed ashore. And it was, of course, sad, but pretty quickly that melancholy air was replaced by putrid air. As one resident put it, I mean, to the point where if you're downwind of it, you're going to be gagging. So yesterday, after two weeks of enduring the terrible stench, the city was finally able to hire a contractor with an excavator to bury the rotting giant. A moment everyone awaited with breathless anticipation. Doris Sheppard probably remembers that stench all too well. In 2014, she spoke with our former host Carol Off about a blue whale carcass that washed up in her town of Trout River in Newfoundland. Here's part of their conversation from our archives.

DORIS SHEPPARD: It's not too bad at the moment because there's lots of wind. But I was down there just 10 or 15 minutes ago and I didn't smell anything until I got right up to the front of it.

CAROL OFF: And so what can you see? What does the whale look like now?

DORIS SHEPPARD: It's really starting to decay now and it's like a deflated tire now.

CAROL OFF: Because some of the pictures showed it... Just the belly was ballooning up full of all the gases, I guess.

DORIS SHEPPARD: It has been ballooning out for the past week. I mean, it was really tight that there was a reporter standing on top of it a few days ago. But you're not able to do that today. And you can see there is blood oozing from it. Because it's cold. It's not decaying as fast as it would be. But when it warms up, it's going to really be bad. And it's dangerous. The kids are down and, you know, are curious and they want... they've seen people up on it and they want to do it. I mean, if one of those kids goes through it.

CAROL OFF: They're playing on top of the whale?

DORIS SHEPPARD: Yes, they're standing on top of the whale. Kids are doing it. Adults are doing it.

CAROL OFF: But getting up on top of it, I guess you don't want to be in the belly of a whale, especially one that's been rotting for a few days.

DORIS SHEPPARD: Oh, my goodness. If that breaks, it's going to be a mess.

CAROL OFF: Now, it's also this... It must be kind of sad, too, because these are magnificent creatures when they're out in the water.

DORIS SHEPPARD: It is so sad. It is so sad to see that. It is a magnificent creature. And people flock to Newfoundland to see whales. And I've never, ever seen one as big as that.

CAROL OFF: How big is the whale that's on the beach?

DORIS SHEPPARD: It's. It's 81 feet long and about 180 tons.

CAROL OFF: Is this one of the... Because we were doing this story a few weeks ago about these nine blue whales they found that got crushed by the ice off the coast. Is that probably one of those whales?

DORIS SHEPPARD: I'm pretty sure it is. Pretty sure it's one of the ones that were trapped here. I know that more than a week ago, as you're driving into Trout River, you've got to come down over a hill and you can see right out in the ocean. And we could see from probably five kilometres away this big blown up thing out in the ice. It was in the ice at the time. My husband thought it was a boat out there first because it was so big like a ship, but the shape of it was not like a ship. So we were curious. And then a couple of days later, the ice came in and that whale came with it.

CAROL OFF: What are you going to do with it now? What's the town going to do? Because I guess it can't stay there, can it?

DORIS SHEPPARD: It just can't stay there, no. We have people here now from Calgary and we have people from Saskatchewan. And tomorrow we get somebody from Italy coming and like they've never seen a whale before, live or dead. And it was interesting for them, but it will not be in a few days when that is rotting on the beach like our beach is so beautiful and we have a nice boardwalk that our guests love to stroll on in the evening. And it would not be pleasant to have that sitting there rotting and nobody doing anything about it. We are a small town. It will cost money to have that towed out to sea. And we need help.

CAROL OFF: And that's what... is that the suggestion that the only thing that you can do is you can't bury it... You have to drag it out to sea and see if it will sink?

DORIS SHEPPARD: Oh, yeah. Our best hope in the beginning was that the tide would take it out, but it beached before the tide could take it out. So now it's stuck up on the rocks, and it's there until somebody physically moves that. We need an excavator to come and push it off and some kind of big boat to come and tow it away.

CAROL OFF: If it just stays on the beach and continues to decompose, is there also a danger... Some are saying that it was just getting so puffy with gas that it could actually explode.

DORIS SHEPPARD: Well, it's toxic gas. If that explodes. And you got a big mess there. I mean, it is so close to the boardwalk and our fishermen's... It's right about 10, 15, 20 feet at the most from our fishermen's museum. That wouldn't be pleasant.

CAROL OFF: No, it'd be quite a mess.

DORIS SHEPPARD: And we have a restaurant and we have a store, a grocery store there and the boardwalk and all the fishermen got their stages there. Definitely, it's not a pleasant thing.

CAROL OFF: Well, we'll keep in touch with you Doris to see what happens. And it's good to talk to you.

DORIS SHEPPARD: All right. Thank you.

CAROL OFF: Bye.

DORIS SHEPPARD: Have a good day.

CH: From our archives, Doris Sheppard speaking with Carol in 2014 after a dead blue whale washed up in the Newfoundland and Labrador town of Trout River.

CH: And that will take us out for As It Happens for this Friday, June 10th.

TH: As It Happens, was produced this week by Sheena Goodyear, Chris Harbord, Sarah Jackson, Kate McGillivray, Lara O'Brien, Morgan Passi, Kevin Robertson.

CH: Olsy Sorokina, Kate Swoger, Chris Trowbridge and Aloysius Wong. Our technician is Reynold Gonsalves. The show director is John McGill.

TH: The writers this week are Chloe Shantz-Hilkes and Chris Howden. Austin Webb is the senior producer of As It Happens and the executive producer of As It Happens is Robin Smythe. Leslie Amminson is our intern.

CH: We'd also like to thank some other people who helped us out this week. Mary-Catherine MacIntosh in Halifax. Susan McKenzie in Montreal. Andreas Bellemare, Tim Lorimer, Nick Purdon, Alex Redekopp, Brandie Wiekle and Luke Williams all in Toronto. Suzanne Dufresne in Winnipeg. Donna McElligott in Calgary and Anne Penman in Vancouver. I'm Chris Howden. Have a great weekend.

TH: As It Happens. Will be back on Monday. I'm Tom Harrington. So long for now. Ideas is up next.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

June 10, 2022 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This