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The AIH Transcript for April 5, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CO: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

JD: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight:

CO: Sucker punch. Former Canadian Olympic boxer Custio Clayton says Montreal police didn't pull him over last night because they wanted an autograph, but because he's black.

JD: Criminals in tent. After 25 years, Arizona shuts down the infamous "Tent City" jail set up in the middle of the desert by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, in part because prisoners actually wanted to do time there.

CO: Chemical reaction. In the wake of yesterday's deadly gas attack in northwest Syria, politics come into play and there's renewed pressure on the UN Security Council to take action.

JD: Balancing the books. When Saskatchewan makes severe cuts to their budget, the province's libraries face lay-offs and reduced services, which means, for staff and for readers, there's serious trouble on the cards.

CO: Too many celebrity cooks spoil the broth. And pretty much everything else they tell you how to make according to a new study of famous people's cookbooks and their recipes for disaster.

JD: And...the Pepsi degeneration. The soft-drink giant releases a baffling commercial featuring a sweaty cellist, an ambiguous protest, and Kendall Jenner, and retracts it after disgusted viewers give it the cola shoulder.
As It Happens, the Wednesday edition. Radio that wouldn't have thought you'd have to tell a soda-pop company what happens when you shake things up.

Part 1: Boxer stopped, Syria follow-up, Pepsi ad

Boxer stopped

Guest: Custio Clayton

JEFF DOUGLAS: Custio Clayton is not afraid of a fight. Mr. Clayton boxed for Canada at the London Olympics, and he's 10-and-oh since turning pro. But Mr. Clayton's fight tonight is with the Montreal police. In a Facebook post he put up early this morning, Mr. Clayton describes being handcuffed and humiliated, all because of one officer's intuition about a black man in a brand new SUV. But he says a search for drugs turned up nothing more than the car seats, and the stroller of a clean-living father of four. We reached Custio Clayton in Montreal.

CAROL OFF: Mr. Clayton, what reason did the police officer give you for pulling you over last night?

CUSTIO CLAYTON: Honestly, he didn't give me one reason or no reason at all. She pulled me over, all she asked me was “Can I have your papers?” I'm like “Yeah you can have my papers. Can I have a reason why you’re pulling me over?” She said “Can I have your papers.” I said “Yeah you can have my papers but can I have a reason why you're pulling me over? That's when she said “This is my third time I’m going to ask you for your papers and you’re refusing to give me your papers.” I said “I’m not refusing to give me my papers. I just want to know why you're pulling me over.” And she said “Well when a police officer asks you for your papers you give it to him.” I’m like “Well, if I asked you a reason why you pulled me over you're supposed to give me a reason too.” And then that’s when she asked she said “Can I check your papers?” That's when I just said you know what, I'm not going to get in this, just like, I just gave this paper for the car and…

CO: At what point did she put you in handcuffs?

CC: After about an hour and a half of me sitting in the vehicle by myself waiting while she and another police car came, so four police officers all together. That's what she comes back. She come back to the car and she said “Could you turn the vehicle off? Can you screw the window down? Can you give me the key to the vehicle please.” I’m like, “Is there a problem?” She’s like, “I'll tell you after you do all of these.” So I did everything she asked, and then as soon as hat she was like, “Can you get out of the car please?” I got the car and soon as I got out the car, she’s like “I’m placing you under arrest for suspicion of being a drug dealer and having drugs in the car. I believe that you have drugs in the car and if you need a lawyer you can call a lawyer you want to. But we're going to have to search your vehicle. I’m like”What?”
Like I could see… if she would have said to me, this car, there was a car like this seen somewhere, someone reported that the car was in an area where it shouldn’t have been. They believe that they were selling drugs. If she would have given me something like that, to me, I would have been like OK because things like that happen. But she said I believe that you are a drug dealer and you have drugs in the car.

CO: And she had not searched the car at that point. This is before they did their search.

CC: At that time she never searched the car, she never, like even when she put my name up in the police car, I had no conviction, I had nothing, I'd never been in trouble. So I don't think, I don't know what was the reason why I would be a drug dealer. I had two baby car seats in the car seat. I had my son’s booster seat and I had a stroller with my gym bag.

CO: And so they saw all this. They had no priors. And then she cuffed you behind your back and put you back in the car.

CC: Yeah, she cuffed me behind my back, she searched me, she put me in handcuffs. They put me in the back of the police car and searched the vehicles. Took about 45 minutes before they were done. Busy for about two hours of all that. And then after when it was all over she comes back, she’s like “I've been a police officer for 20 years and I've never ever been wrong about suspicion. When I believed that someone had drugs, I was always right.” I was like, “There’s no way you found drugs in the car.” She like “No. In 20 years. I can say that I actually thought that was drugs in the car but I was wrong. And that's when she just started, we're not going to rush you to redefine that.” I'm like “Well I already told you [unintelligible] because that's not what I do.” And then that's what she does. She’s like “You're you’re an athlete right?” I'm like “Yeah, I’m a professional boxer.” She said “Oh yeah? And that's what she started talking about boxing or whatever. But then I said to her, “I never in my life been handcuffed in my life or accused of something I never did.” I said “This is the first time for me to be handcuffed.” She’s like “Yeah, it’s not like the movies is it?”

CO: You wrote on your Facebook that it was a moment where you never felt so humiliated.

CC: No it was like, to me I felt like it was like, I was nothing like they could do whatever you want to do because they wanted. It was like, and the way they were putting the handcuffs on me, the handcuffs were tight, and it was like, not a feeling that I would wish on anybody because they're not comfortable. And the police car alone, it was hard enough in the back of the police car. It was a tight squeeze. It was very uncomfortable for me. Very uncomfortable.

CO: She said the reason why she pulled you over was a hunch. She had a feeling and she trusts her hunches, her feelings. So what do you make of that? What was it what was it based on? What do you think her hunch was based on?

CC: That's what I can’t… I don’t… that's something… My hunch was to me, as I don't like to say it but knowing that this is what’s been happening, I got to say it. Her hunch was she saw a black guy driving her 2017 Yukon Denali. That's what it was. And she probably looked at it like there’s no way why he's driving that car. Other than that, I don't know what type of hunch she could have. I don't know what reason I gave her to suspect that I was a drug dealer.

CO: I'm sure you've heard other stories like yours of people who say that they have been guilty of nothing more than driving while black or walking while black. Did you ever think this would happen to you?

CC: See that’s something something too. Like I said, all my life I've always, I've always wanted to be a boxer. So all my life I've always stayed away from the trouble. I always followed my dream and always said you know, I was like I always wanted to do something myself and I was not going to that not get in the way of me becoming a boxer. Like I said, I've been to the Olympics, I’ve represented Canada. I did all this stuff and its like no matter where you try to do the right thing, some people are going to judge you the way they want to judge you regardless. It's just the way I feel right now.

CO: You've got a big fight coming up.

CC: Yeah, I have a fight, yup.

CO: And so is this, what does this do? You say, having been cuffed like that in the back of the car, very stressful, will it affect you at all do you think?

CC: Well no, I mean, like I said I mean, right now I'm still focused on my fight next week and as of right now I mean I don't want to put too much focus on this right now. My focus right now is my fight next week and that's what I'm focusing on. But I just felt that I needed to let people know that no matter how hard you try not to be into this type of stuff that I guess, when someone feels a way about you they're gonna judge you to where they want you.

CO: Mr. Clayton, I wish you success with your big match. And just to thank you for speaking with us.

CC: Thank you.

CO: Bye-bye.

JD: Custio Clayton is a boxer who represented Canada in the 2012 Olympics. He was in Montreal. Mr. Clayton was incidentally left with a $63 ticket to pay. The officers say they found a problem with the rental papers for his SUV.

[Music]

Syria Follow-Up

Guest: Fawaz Gerges

JD: There was an emergency meeting of the Security Council at the United Nations in New York today, as international condemnation of the deadly gas attack yesterday in Syria continues to grow. Reports about the death toll vary. Most agree at least 70 people were killed, many of them children. Hundreds more were injured.
Fawaz Gerges was watching the developments closely. He is the director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics. We reached him in London, UK.

CO: Mr. Gerges, world leaders are condemning this attack. They’re calling it barbaric, unacceptable, cannot be ignored. But what are those leaders saying they're going to do about it?

FAWAZ GERGES: I don't think they plan to do so much. While the world community has made multiple statements and pronouncements on Syria, the world community has failed the Syrian people. My take on it is that this is not the first time and the last time that chemical weapons and gas weapons have been used in Syria. We have to wait and see if this particular heinous attack would really trigger a different response from the international community. I’m very skeptical.

CO: And what if this emergency meeting of the Security Council today, anything will come out of that?

FG: No, I don't think so. I think the Security Council is frozen. The Russians have used multiple vetoes in the Security Council. At the end of the day, without an understanding between the United States and Russia, I don't think the Security Council and the United Nations can do a great deal.

CO: So Russia denies that it or Syria is responsible for this chemical attack. It said that they didn't use chemicals. They said there was an airstrike. They admit that. But that it may have struck a warehouse of gas weapons belonging to rebels in the area and that's how the gas got out into the population. Is that plausible?

FG: No it's not plausible. Look, we don't have any conclusive evidence so far. We have to wait. But this is not the first time that the Assad government has used chemical weapons and gas in Syria. According to the United Nations, the Syrian government has used chemical and gas weapons on three occasions. There is plenty of evidence pointing toward the fact that the Assad government used gas in this particular incident. Even though we have to wait and see, the conclusive evidence which is very difficult to come as you know in a war torn country.
I'm not surprised by what the Russian government has done. What do you expect the Russian leadership to do? They are trying to protect Assad, trying to preserve their credibility. They have promised the international community that Assad has got rid of all of his chemical weapons. The reality is, I mean without Russian support in Syria, I don't think the international community can do much to force Assad out or even to force Assad not to use chemical weapons in the future.

CO: When you say that there is the conclusive evidence is hard to get. In a war zone we don't have that evidence yet, isn't that exactly what Russia is attempting to do with this? I mean just a little bit of cloud in the water. Just muddy the water a bit and say “Well, we can't know for sure. Let's move on.” Isn’t that all they need? They don’t need to prove that they didn't do it or to put it on another side, they just need to put a doubt in there.

FG: You are absolutely correct. I mean look, I am an educater. I need at least two pieces of evidence, that is facts matter a great deal, multiple facts. So what the Russians are trying to do, well look what evidence do you have? I mean it could be a storage room used by al-Qaida affiliate and front in Syria. So they are trying to muddy the water. They're trying to confuse. It takes common sense. Again there is a pattern in Syria. Assad has used gas and chemical weapons on multiple occasions. I mean we know Assad. He knows nowadays, impunity. He can get away with it. The international community seems to be powerless and impotent. It's not about taking military action about Assad. The question on the table is what will the international community do in order to put an end to the bloodshed? So far the international community has failed.

CO: We have a change of government in the United States since the last major chemical attack in 2013. Barack Obama said before that that it was a red line, after it was crossed, they would act. And of course United States didn't act. Mr. Trump took him to task for that today, more or less blamed Barack Obama for what's going on in Syria. Do you think the United States will do anything differently now?

FG: No I doubt it very much. I mean of course, in the past 24 hours the Trump administration has made some very powerful statements. Trump himself has threatened to take action. The question on the table is that the Trump administration is obsessed with ISIS. What Trump does not understand is that ISIS is a symptom of the wars that are taking place in Siria, in Iraq, in Yemen and other places. At the end of the day, the Trump administration needs to show us all the cards that he has in terms of offering a roadmap to find a resolution inside Syria and Iraq. So far, this administration, the Trump administration really focuses on hard power as opposed to soft power and diplomacy.
My hope is that this particular tenuous attack inside Syria could serve as a catalyst that really motivates the international community, including the Trump administration, to really accelerate the diplomatic process in order to find a political solution. I think this might happen.

CO: We spoke with a doctor last night who has been treating, was treating people yesterday. Full of despair, he said “This gas attack is just another way to kill us.” Whole families were wiped out. What message does is this this response send to them today?

FG: Well I mean I think the world has forsaken the Syrian people. In fact the international community pays lip service to the suffering of the Syrian people. The Syrian people now, they want action and this is a challenge facing the international community. It is the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since the end of World War 2. And yes basically we talk about the suffering of the Syrian people but really we have not taken any concrete actions to help them out of this particular catastrophe.

CO: Mr. Gerges, thank you.

FG: Thank you.

JD: Fawaz Gerges is the director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics. We reached him in London.

[Music]

Pepsi ad

Guest: Elahe Izadi

JD: It billed itself "a short film about the moments when we decide to let go, choose to act, follow our passion, and nothing holds us back." But really, come on, it was a Pepsi commercial, featuring supermodel and "Keeping up with the Kardashians" star Kendall Jenner. And some manner of protest. And a touching moment of unity with the police. Thanks to a can of Pepsi.
If those sound like the elements of a colossally bad ad, well, Pepsi itself has come around to that point of view. Today, it pulled the ad, and apologized for it.
Elahe Izadi is a pop culture writer with the Washington Post. We reached her in Washington, D.C.

CO: Elahe, I'm trying to imagine the meeting where the Pepsi people signed off on this. I mean what were they thinking?

ELAHE IZADI: It is very unclear what they were thinking. The company has since pulled the advertisement, but you know, a lot of these big companies, they're trying to portray an image that they stand for something, that they're bold, that they're courageous. And so I could see how the idea of utilizing some of the imagery around protest movements or something could come up in a meeting but it comes in a very tricky territory when it's just very ambiguous. You're not actually standing for anything. And it can very quickly devolve into, and what we saw, as appropriating social justice movement imagery to sell a product.

CO: Now just it's a two and a half minute little epic, little movie in this commercial for Pepsi. Just tell us, for those who haven't seen it, even those who have what's the plotline?

EI: OK so we have a random cast of characters. We have a cello player, for some reason and he comes very sweaty and then he's not funny anymore. We have our requisite Muslim woman in hijab, and we have Kendall Jenner who in real life is a model. And here we see her modeling, and all of them end up joining this big diverse group of street marchers who are out holding signs that don't really say much. There's some peace symbols, there some heart signs, there's some misspelled words and they're joining this crowd of people. They encounter a bunch of cops who are there with stern faces. And Kendall Jenner approaches one and hands him a Pepsi. And all of a sudden you know, he is thinking OK, this is a pretty good drink and everyone in the crowd burst into applause.

CO: The old cheer. And so I guess this idea that somehow the blue line has been crossed, that everyone is now friends and there is no adversity here, it is just one big happy group of people.

EI: Yeah. But again we have this moment where everyone is kind of on one side or the other. But it's very unclear what they're even there for. So, by handing this cop up a can of Pepsi, what is the message here? What are they trying to say now? A lot of people have pointed out that this evokes some photos and some videos we've seen in recent years and also dating back to the American Civil Rights Movement of cops and encountering civil rights marchers and being met with violence. And here we have this woman just handing him a can of Pepsi and somehow this is the thing that has that breaches that line.

CO: And of course it's been just a mockery made of this on social media, with all the memes showing those images from the civil rights movements and people being arrested, and black people being dragged off by police and they're trying to give the police a Pepsi in order to ease everybody and make them happy again. So this has become a complete mockery for Pepsi.

EI: Oh totally. Almost instantly. I mean, with a lot of companies it's great news if everyone's talking about your advertisement, even if it's stoked some controversy. But I have had trouble finding anyone who actually found this to be a good advertisement. And the memes are devastating, they're hilarious. I mean you even have Bernice King, who is one of the children of Martin Luther King Jr. tweeting out a photo of her father with the words, “If only daddy would have known about the power of Pepsi.” I mean it's just total mockery. Totally like doesn't portray Pepsi as cool or fun or daring at all but just as tone deaf.

CO: Where do you see the sort of more contemporary protests emerging in this in this advertisement?

EI: So this ad, we have some imagery that that kind of resembles photos we've seen during Black Lives Matter protests. I'm thinking of one very famous photograph in particular of a young woman in a flowing dress who is standing very serenely in front of officers in combat gear kind of rushing towards her. And the image of Kendall Jenner, handing this cop a Coke Pepsi by herself kind of resembles that a little bit. Also people are wondering is this supposed to be some sort of play on the resistance capital R, the protests that have emerged out of an opposition to President Donald Trump. So you have all of that and really I mean the immediate backlash caused Pepsi to yank the ad completely after they initially defended it.

CO: Now Kendall Jenner. Why do you think they would choose this model as a kind of star of this little movie and she's the one who's middle of working, she's on a shoot, or something she's modeling and then she sees the protests go by, and she throws off her wig and makeup and join them. How would they come to choose Kendall Jenner of all people to be that person?

EI: Kendall Jenner is very famous. She is a model by profession. She's also part of the whole Kardashian empire. So in all of those ways, it makes sense that you would want Kendall Jenner to be the face of your big ad campaign. The way in which it gets tricky is that she's not particularly known as like a vocally active celebrity, as someone who does stake her reputation on advocating for certain causes, and the Kardashians, you know, they’re reality TV stars who have amassed a lot of wealth and fame. So they also come under a lot of scrutiny.

CO: What do you make of the fact that this apology that Pepsi has issued what's pulled the ad, half of the apology is to Kendall Jenner.

EI: Right. I'm wondering what the conversation between Pepsi and Kendall Jenner has been, because I wonder if this just makes her look super tone-deaf and out of touch. And I don't know what those conversations are. But it is remarkable how quickly the company backed down from this ad. And I think it underscores just how poorly executed it was. And you know, when you see a two minute ad of this caliber filmed, I think in Bangkok, I mean it's not like one person made this ad, a lot of people were involved so I'm sure there are going to be some tough conversations.

CO: Elahe, it's good to talk to you.

EI: Thanks. Thank you.

JD: Elahe Izadi is a pop culture writer with the Washington Post. We reached her in Washington, D.C. And we do have more on this story on our website, cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Science politics

JD: People keep saying we've never been more divided politically. But apparently, there is one thing we all agree on right now, and it's creatures that lived two-hundred-and-some-odd million years ago. Or six thousand, I guess, if you… let's not get distracted, OK?
A group of American scientists has just published research on the science books read by liberals and conservatives. They reviewed millions of online book purchases. Drew conclusions about the buyers' ideologies from the political books they bought. And then looked at the scientific books bought by people on the left and the right.
The results are mostly discouraging. There's almost no overlap. Liberals bought books on zoology, astronomy, and physics, fairly general science-y stuff. Conservatives focused on areas like criminology and medicine, applied science.
And even if people from either side of the political spectrum bought books on the same subject, they bought books with opposite perspectives on that subject.
So right now, if you're a conservative in a room with a liberal, or vice versa, you are in opposite corners, reading science books that reinforce your worldviews, and interacting only by scowling at each other intermittently. But friends prepare to make eye contact. Prepare to smile bashfully at each other, when I say this word: dinosaurs.
Yes, it turns out one of the only subjects both sides bought books on was dinosaurs. So if that's all we have to unite us, I say let's all come together, and embrace the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Just don't expect it to embrace you back, on account of those stubby little arms, and you know, it's extinct.
Instead of digging up grievances old and new, let's collectively dig up prehistoric reptile skeletons. And let's throw each other a bone once in a while OK? Just make sure it's a fossil.
Now, please everyone left and right, join me as we all open the door, get on the floor, and please, everybody walk the dinosaur.

Part 2: Arpaio jail closing, Saskatchewan library cuts

Arpaio jail closing

Guest: Grant Woods

SOUNDCLIP

JOE PENZONE: After methodical review, I am shutting down Tent City. This facility is not a crime deterrent, it is not cost efficient, it is not tough on criminals. That may have been the intent when this facility was first opened and there was a need, but this facility became more of a circus act for the general public. Starting today, that circus ends and these tents come down.

JEFF DOUGLAS: That's Sheriff Joe Penzone, of Maricopa County, Arizona, speaking at a news conference yesterday. You may remember Sheriff Penzone’s predecessor, Joe Arpaio. He liked to describe himself as "America's toughest sheriff."
Back in 1993, he opened a jail that he called "Tent City", an outdoor jail in the middle of the desert, where he subjected the inmates to all manner of humiliations, meaning to deter them from committing further crimes.
But as you heard, Sheriff Penzone takes a different view of crime and punishment. He decided to shut down the jail, on the recommendation of his advisory committee.
Grant Woods is the chair of that committee, and the former attorney general of Arizona. We reached him Mr. Woods in Phoenix.

CAROL OFF: Mr. Woods Why did you call for this tent city jail to be closed down?

GRANT WOODS: Well the Tent City Jail was supposed to be temporary in the first place. It was put up in response to an excess of inmates in 1993. And I think the previous sheriff used it for his own political grandstanding over the years to try to prove that he was really tough on crime and tough on prisoners. The reality is that it wasn't so tough on crime or prisoners.

CO: What do you mean? Prisoners liked it?

GRANT WOODS: The prisoners actually liked being there. They were there pretty much by choice. Once they were assigned there, if they wanted to leave and go back to a regular jail facility, all they had to do was raise their hand and they'd be sent back to one. The reason they liked it is because they just rather be outdoors.
Most of the year it's pretty nice in Arizona. What about the summer when it's really hot? Well that was the trade-off. It wasn't great but they have a day room there that's air conditioned. They would go in there for hours at a time and spend some time there.
The prisoners though. So that idea that this was somehow a deterrent or that it would help on recidivism proved to be untrue. There's just no evidence of that whatsoever. So that’s why it didn't work. And it was an expensive proposition. And it just looks bad. I think it's just something… we don't like the image, we don't like anything about it so we're shutting it down.

CO: OK we'll get to the cost in just a moment. Now Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He opened this jail in 1993. It was this tough on crime agenda, and he had, he did all kinds of things that were to I guess deter crime. What were the things that he thought would make prisoners not commit crimes because of the conditions in place?

GW: They were mainl,y in my view, political stunts. So he would, you know, give them really bad food, and deprive them of whatever he could deprive them of, gress them in stripes, made them wear pink underwear. The problem is it doesn't work. It had no effect on crime. It's demeaning to the people involved, and it's demeaning ultimately to a community that allows it to be involved. The people who are in Tent City are low level offenders. These are misdemeanors. So it’s drunk driving. It's things like that. And also maybe people who’ve committed a more serious crimes but they're put on probation and have to serve some jail as a condition of probation. So these are not hard-core criminals. I don't think it would be right for them either but certainly not for the lowest level of person. We're not going to be humiliating people, degrading people in the name of fighting crime anymore in this state.

CO: Is it true, just a point that, these the meals they were given, they were meatless and they were described as slop. But they the inmates would have to watch the Food Channel while they ate their meals.

GW: Yeah that's true actually, I think. The food is pretty bad. And so they're now working on improving that. Again, that's not, there's no reason for that. You don't need to put people in conditions like that. It was even worse than the food channel. At some point in time in his jails he would pump in the Newt Gingrich tapes. The guy who was the speaker of the house, spouting very conservative philosophies. So some people thought that might be cruel and unusual punishment to have to hear some politician talk nonstop.

CO: And as far as the heat goes, because that was part of the punishment too. As you mentioned that this is Arizona we're talking about, it's very hot especially in the summer. How hot would it get?

GW: You know it's hot. I mean there's no doubt about that. You know, the highest it's been in Arizona in my time is been 122 in the summer and it always gets above 115 for many days in a row. And out there under the tents, and around the tents, it's hotter than that because it's reflective off the dirt and the gravel so it's just not right. I don't think it takes a real genius to figure out that that's not right to stick people out there in the middle of the desert when it's a hundred and fifteen plus.

CO: But it also for people in Arizona, it was a matter of, you showed them how much it's costing them. So how much money will you save by closing the jail?

GW: We think it will save about four and a half million dollars a year by closing Tent City. And the reason for that is it had a capacity of 2100. But at its peak it had 17000 inmates. But now over the last many years, it's down around six to seven hundred inmates. But the costs were the same, and I don't think that trend is going to change because what's caused that again is these are low level inmates as far as their classification. And we're seeing in Arizona and in many jurisdictions across the country, that judges and prosecutors and probation officers are looking to alternatives to incarceration like home confinement, electronic monitoring, things like that, rather than sending someone to a jail which is much more expensive.

CO: We'll leave it there Mr. Woods, thank you.

GW: OK thanks a lot.

JD: Grant Woods is a former attorney general of Arizona and the chair of the Maricopa County Sheriff's advisory committee. We reached him in Phoenix. Now as Mr. Woods mentioned in there, one of the ways that Sheriff Arpaio like to punish his inmates was to force them to listen to the right-wing American politician Newt Gingrich. As It Happens spoke to the sheriff when he introduced that policy. So from our archives, here is Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaking to Michael Enright in May of 1995.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL ENRIGHT: Sheriff, the last time we talked, let me see, I think you had done away with, you had taken coffee away from the convicts is that right? And then the skin magazines.

JOE ARPAIO: The latest move is R-rated movies. I did that to, and all movies–

ME: Right.

JA: Now I'm taking away the violence in soap operas from television. I'm pumping in Newt Gingrich.

ME: Now there's where you’ve crossed the line, Sheriff. Have you got a bit too far now with force feeding Newt Gingrich to your convicts?

JA: That's educational. But I'm going to balance that out with the weather channel and Disney Channel and government C-SPAN and that type of thing.

ME: You're going to you're going to put the weather channel in?

JA: Yes.

ME: What do these guys care about the weather?

JA: Well I just instituted chain gangs last week. So at least they'll know what the weather will be when they go out there the next day.

ME: You and Alabama now have chain gangs isn't it?

JA: Yeah. And the state of Arizona just started it. But mine are chained together. I have them out in the streets, cleaning up the streets and so on.

ME: And why Newt Gingrich?

JA: Well a reporter happened to check a news release or something and someone said there's a sheriff in Arizona that bought the video. I did about a year and a half ago. And that's what started this. But I will be showing that video next week as soon as I can get the technical situation resolved.

ME: This is Speaker Gingrich's video right.

JA: Yes. When he before he became speaker.

ME: Right.

JA: And I hear it’s a great video, has to do with democracy–

ME: History that kind of thing–

JA: And economics, hard work, free enterprise. So we have to you know, educate some of these inmates.

ME: But don't you have some of your prisoners in tents?

JA: I have over a thousand. I'm going to have room for two thousand in three months.

ME: But how are you going to show the video to people living in tents?

JA: Well we have the thousand, we have a room in the main building that they can leave the tents and go see it.

ME: Are you going to give equal time to the Democrats now or are you going to have Gephardt on or President Clinton or something like that?

JA: I don't think this is a partisan issue. When he made this he was a professor I believe.

ME: That's right.

JA: And I don't think it has anything to do with politics. Democracy, American history, and you know every party is representative when you talk about subjects like that. It’s not a Democrat Republican issue.

ME: Have the comics complained at all about getting Speaker Gingrich?

JA: Well I haven't done it yet. I'm going to do that next week.

ME: What do you expect?

JA: I switch, I turn on the switch next week.

ME: I see they getting they're going to get Newt instead of Sipowicz.

JA: And the cable.

ME: Now you had complaints about the coffee did you?

JA: Well yeah. In fact to murderers, suspected murderers sued me in a court but the judge threw it out. But that's the only problem I had.

ME: Did you have any problem when you got rid of the R-rated movies?

JA: I've had no problems. I slept in the tents two weeks ago with a thousand inmates. They didn't like me, they threatened my family, they threatened me, but I proved the point. If I can do it, they can do it. They should shut their mouth as to hard conditions in the tents.

JD: From our archives, that was Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former sheriff I should say, of Maricopa County Arizona speaking with Michael and right on As It Happens in 1995. And we have more on that story on our website, cbc.ca/aih.

SK Library cuts

Guest: Melissa Silzer-Frank

JD: Libraries in Saskatchewan are closing the door on inter-library loans. It's just one of the measures to deal with a multi-million dollar cut in the latest provincial budget. Others measures include cutting staff -- and possibly closing branches altogether.
Melissa Silzer-Frank is the only I-T person for 20 library branches. She's among those workers who received a layoff notice. We reached Ms. Silzer-Frank in Moose Jaw.

CO: Ms. Silzer-Frank, how soon will you be out of a job?

MELISSA SILZER-FRANK: I received my layoff notice and it's effective May 27.

CO: And you do understand that this layoff is directly tied to the budget cuts?

MS: It absolutely is.

CO: And so what does it mean? What's going to be different at the library with you gone?

MS: With me gone, my branches will not have technical support for all the public access computers nor the staff computers that are in these locations.

CO: We're talking about 20 branches, library branches here, is that right?

MSF: That's correct.

CO: What do people lose in the way of service when you're gone?

MSF: Well if their computers break down they may stay broken. That means no public access computers. If things don't talk well with printers, there they won't have access to printing. They won't have access to potentially any of the tablets that run. If a network crashes in one of these locations, it could be infinitely more difficult for them to restore Internet service in their location. If a piece of equipment breaks, there's no one there to look after them.

CO: And this is something people may not associate with libraries unless they use them which is that lots of people go to use computers and to go online at the library. They don't have any other access. And so how will people be affected, the ones who use your service?

MSF: Well for example let's look at I had a family. They had no car. They had no way out of their small community. They came any news the public access machine to, A, apply for financing get approval for their financing, and find a car. They did this in one day at the public library. Without the public access computer, I don't know how you achieve that.

CO: There are people who run their businesses, small businesses.

MSF: There are people looking for housing, real estate, immigrant families talking to their families back home. People are learning English. There'll be lots of us applying for EI using public access computers due to funding cuts. People are typing up obituaries for their loved ones, dealing with legal situations, doing online counseling. These public access computers ceased to exist, I don't know where these people go.

CO: The government says, well fewer people are using the library, it’s not as necessary a service anymore. What do you say to the government?

MSF: Well here's the thing. We don't typically track a lot of our programming as well as maybe we should. We don't track every person that sits down to use a public access computer. I'm not sure that we are tracking our digital resource use as adequately as we should.

CO: So if the government is looking at the numbers of library cards people have purchased or taken out, then that's no indication of what the library is doing then.

MSF: No he's saying that you know the number of library cards has decreased, and he's correct it has. Because before we went to a one province, one card system, everybody had their own circulation system and every one of the regions. So if I wanted to say, take out a book from let's say Lakelands, well I would go to North Battleford and register there. And if I wanted to take out a book in Saskatoon, I would have to have a registration with Saskatoon and the same with Palliser, in Moose Jaw. So three registrations, same person. When we went to the one province system, I now have one registration so that can't even be looked at as an argument.

CO: The people you describe, all those people who are going into use the computers, everything from immigrants communicating back home, writing their obituaries, doing their business all that, is that recorded? Are those numbers and that usage is that quantified?

MSF: No there are not. We do our best attempt to track the numbers of people, but we do not track as a public library, we do not track their use.

CO: So there really is not a gauge of how libraries are used, and how much they get used on this point. And the whole cut is nearly five million dollars. That's what it would cost to keep going.

MSF: That's right. We run very lean of public libraries. Five million dollars is a drop in the provincial budget bucket per se.

CO: Education Minister Don Morgan is pleading with the librarians not to shut down the library loans, the ones you just mentioned about that one province one library card where you could get books no matter where you are. Is that definitely going? Is that part going to be cut?

MSF: It's not feasible to run it. Everything costs money. There's career drivers. There's people to take the items off the shelf and put them in transit from one location to the other. We ran a courier between our regions. Then STC, which we also last would take our items and transfer them safe from Regina to Saskatoon and to Moose Jaw. Yeah, so we really got hit double hard.

CO: STC is what?

MSF: Saskatchewan Transportation Company. That is going to be abolished at I believe the end of May. We will no longer have a public transit company in the province.

CO: All these things are happening to consumers and citizens in Saskatchewan. One last question for you personally, what what's next for you? What are you going to do with your career and your life.

MSF: I have a love for Saskatchewan that is unparalleled. I was born here, raised here. Would love to take my final breath here. I'm not sure what our future is. My husband is a student and is graduating at the end of this month. And we may have to leave Saskatchewan. Most likely we will be leaving Moose Jaw, and that's, Moose Jaw has become home. I would love to stay but there are no opportunities here for us.

CO: I'm sorry to hear that Ms. Silzer-Frank. Thank you for speaking with us.

MSF: Thank you.

JD: Melissa Silzer-Frank is or was the I.T. specialist for the Palliser regional library service. We reached her in Moose Jaw.

[Music]

Fence code spat

Guest: Larry Zacharko

JD: Larry Zacharko is a gardener. And for decades, he's been growing produce in the backyard of his house in the Junction neighbourhood in Toronto. Recently though, something has cast a shadow over Mr. Zacharko's gardening, his next door neighbour's new fence. It's so tall that it exceeds the city's limit on fence height. And it's so tall that Mr. Zacharko's plants no longer get enough light.
And thus, yesterday, Mr. Zacharko went before the Toronto and East York and Community Council to make his case against his neighbour's fence.
Larry Zacharko is a teacher, and every year he saves his seeds and plants them with his students. And so the loss of his garden, he said, would hurt them, too.

SOUNDCLIP

LARRY ZACHARKO: As these plants grow, I have the students look through the neighborhood and find someone they think deserves these plants. And they write me and explain the reasoning. Then they write a letter to the person they've chosen and explaining why they're getting the plant on the May long weekend, and they give them that plant, that person a plant and the letter. One of the memorable reports was from a girl of a Vietnamese family who lived next door to a single woman who'd been there for three years. They were both friendly, waved and saw each other but not much more. My student wrote in her letter that she was giving the woman the plant because she had the most beautiful garden in a neighborhood.
On the May long weekend she saw the woman in the garden and so she walked over and gave her the letter in the plant. The woman opened the letter, read it and walked into her house. My student was certain that she had offended the woman. She wasn't certain what to do next. As she was about to go back home, the woman stepped out of her house. She said that she had come from Hong Kong three years ago as it is a city that was being transferred back to the Chinese Room. The plan was to leave her daughter with her mother until she could establish herself in Toronto and send for the daughter. The daughter loved gardening so the woman had been growing the garden annually in anticipation of her daughter's move. But something had happened, and the daughter died. The woman still maintained the garden. She said in all the three years that she'd been here, no one had ever said anything about her garden.
Then you know there was a bit of an emotional moment. And from then on the woman and the girl's family became more than neighbors, visit each other's house like newly discovered relatives. I could go on about the benefits of the small sliver of Earth but my neighbor put up a fence, that has taken 200 hours of sunshine from my garden. I cannot have a garden anymore if I can't have the garden, I can't have the seeds. If I can't have the seeds, my students can't grow the plants and all of my people all of my neighbors have tomato plants except for this one person.

JD: That was Toronto resident Larry Zacharko speaking to the Toronto and East Community Council yesterday. The community did decide the fence was too tall and will have to be shortened.

Part 3: Polish WW2 museum, celebrity cookbooks

SNL Complicit

JEFF DOUGLAS: For the second time in just a few weeks people are showing an awful lot of interest in the word “complicit.” Initially, it trended on social media after the March 12 episode of Saturday Night Live which featured this parody TV spot for a fictitious perfume.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

When she walks into a room, all eyes are on her. She's Ivanka. And a woman like her deserves a fragrance all her own. A scent made just for her, because she's beautiful. She's powerful. She's complicit.

JD: OK. So the word is once again in the spotlight after Ivanka Trump sat down with CBS's Gayle King yesterday in her first television interview since her father took office. After the interview, for reasons that are going to become clear to you in the next clip, Merriam Webster tweeted a link to its definition of “Complicit” and it means simply “Helping to commit a crime or do wrong in some way.” And yet, in her interview with CBS, Ms. Trump seemed to reject that definition in favor of one little more Orwellian, a little more of her own making.

SOUNDCLIP

IVANKA TRUMP: If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good, and to make a positive impact, then I'm complicit. I don't know that the critics who may say that of me, if they found themselves in this very unique and unprecedented situation than I am now in, would do any differently than I'm doing. So I hope to make a positive impact. I don't know what it means to be complicit, but I hope time will prove that I have done a good job and much more importantly, that my father's administration is the success that I know it will be.

JD: Once again, Ivanka Trump on CBS This Morning yesterday offering up an alternative perhaps definition of the word complicit in response to criticisms of her involvement in her father's administration.

[Music]

Manchester passion play

JD: This weekend the great city of Manchester, England will stage its annual passion play a dramatic retelling of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. It is not a small intimate production. It is an epic program with a cast of 120 people, a choir, and complex technical requirements, which will be filmed by the BBC. As such it is not cheap. Its budget has ballooned to about £60,000 pounds over $100,000 bucks Canadian and with just days to go organizers still have not quite raised that full amount. And so one volunteer fundraiser for the Manchester passion thought he would add his two cents. Without checking with anyone else, he added what he thought was a sure fire money-maker to the project's crowdfunding site for £750, you could endure what he referred to as "the full crucifixion experience".
Alex Stewart-Clark told the BBC, "The idea was, on the Friday when the stage was being set up, to give something tangible for people to pay for. It could be 25 pounds to have dinner with Pontius Pilate, 200 pounds to have dinner with Jesus -- or, in this case, 750 pounds to be 'crucified'. But people didn't embrace it."
That is not entirely accurate. People didn't not embrace it so much as they actively recoiled from it, because they thought it was blasphemous, potentially dangerous, and "disgraceful".
Mr. Stewart-Clark has rescinded that particular offer, and played down its offensiveness. "If people had wanted to do it, they would have been hoisted up there for a couple of minutes," he told the Guardian, somewhat petulantly. "It was just a sort of gimmick, but it was tasteless."
He's right. It was. And it proves that when you lose perspective, you can easily drift from the cross to the crass.

[Music]

Polish WW2 Museum

Guest: Pawel Machcewicz

JD: In Poland, the Second World War museum has become the flashpoint of a very contemporary political battle.
The ruling Law and Justice party has slammed the new museum. It claims the institution ignores the heroism of Poles, and focuses too much on what other countries were up to during the war. And now, a court ruling has allowed the government to take control over the museum. Pawel Machcewicz is the Director of the Museum of the Second World War. We reached him in Gdansk.

CO: Mr. Machcewicz, are you now out of a job?

PAWEL MACHCEWICZ: Not yet but certainly I will be out of my job soon. The moment when the museum of the Second World War is liquidated. This is a legal procedure that our museum will be liquidated by the merger with another one. So that moment when it is merged, I will lose my job of director.

CO: What problem does the Ministry of Culture have with this museum of the Second World War?

PM: I think that one problem is that this museum was created not by the government several years ago but people who are not close to this government, and our government seeks a sort of supremacy in the fields of public history. And the other reason is that our museum before the opening was criticized by the leader of the Law and Justice Party, Lech Kaczyński as not Polish enough, and it was repeated by other politicians of the ruling party. We were accused of being too humanistic, too universalistic, too pacifistic and not Polidh enough.

CO: I just want to ask you a bit more about what it means to be, how it could be Polish enough for the government. I mean does that Polish as in showing everything, warts and all about Poland's role in World War II? Or what is it that the government thinks would be acceptable for this museum?

PM: That is a good question. I don't know myself. If I have to guess of intentions of the government, the government would simply want to somehow minimize the attention devoted to other nations and to increase the volume of an exhibition devoted to the Polish history. I think it would be artificial because the exhibition is consistent. So I really do hope that once the Minister of Culture visits the exhibition, he will change his mind and he will somehow understand himself that this is a good exhibition and that Polish history is represented enough. The minister of course has never came to visit the museum.

CO: So the minister has never even seen it. He says it’s not Polish enough but he's never been been inside.

PM: [unintelligible] invited the Minister of Culture to the opening of the exhibition two weeks ago, and these two weeks we had almost 20,000 visitors and the dominant opinion is this is really Polish enough this is you know great lesson of a Polish history both for Poles and for foreigners. And my great hope is that the Minister of Culture at last will come to this museum now. He will treat it as the museum which he has somehow regained for the government, and perhaps he really appreciate the exhibition.

CO: One of the criticisms from other people in the law and justice party, they say that it doesn't celebrate the heroism of Poles in the war. It doesn't show enough about the resistance of Poles against the Nazis. It doesn't show them the suffering of Poles that this is what they expected of your museum. Instead you have shown what, maybe you can tell us what you are depicting about World War 2.

PM: I am absolutely convinced that we devote a lot of place in the exhibition to the Polish heroism, to the Polish suffering. The criticism was even more general. But we present a too dark image of the world. It’s too pacifistic, it’s too anti-war museum. So this is not only on the level of whether this is Polish enough or not Polish enough. Our critics say that this is too pacifistic, that the war could be a great experience shaping characters, and we did not show it. And also they want more military history. We were criticized as know we devote too much attention to the civilians. And this is true, we want to put into the center of our attention, the fate of civilians, but I am sure that was absolutely legitimate and justified. This was different from any previous wars because it affected civilians especially.

CO: Just finally you've only been open for a few weeks but when will the museum close?

PM: Now it will be formally liquidated and the new museum will be created in its place. But this new museum will take over the whole building and the whole exhibition. But I would be ousted as the director. This new museum would have different goals outlined by the Minister of Culture, and it will be a decision of Minister of Culture and of the new director, whether to keep this exhibition intact. I hope it will be kept intact or to transit. And now what is at stake, this is the integral shape, intact shape of this exhibition. And I will be fighting for it in not being the director of this exhibition. It cannot be just partly demolished or partly [unintelligible]. It could be either totally lost or kept intact.

CO: Mr. Machcewicz, thank you for speaking with us.

PM: Thank you very much.

JD: Pawel Machcewicz is, for now, the Director of the Museum of the Second World War. We reached him in Gdansk, Poland.

[Music]

Merkley on Gorsuch

JD: In politics, it rarely pays for one to develop a reputation for being all talk and no action. But U.S. Senator Jeff Merkeley of Oregon is garnering praise from his fellow Democrats for personifying that very ethos. In an epic 15.5 hour address to the U.S. Senate that began yesterday evening, Senator Merkley outlined Democratic opposition to the Republican nominee to the Supreme Court Neal Gorsuch.
Although his speech clocked in at the eighth longest since 1900 it was not technically a filibuster since he was not technically delaying procedure because he began speaking after a call to vote on Mr. Gorsuch had been made, Senator Merkeley was simply “holding the floor”. And he did so in part, by returning to the Republicans’ response to President Obama's Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland, just over a year ago.
Here is some of what Senator Merkeley had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

JEFF MERKELEY: Well the president, he has a responsibility under the Constitution when there's an open seat, and that's to nominate. And he proceeded to consult with members on both sides of the aisle. And he nominated an individual, Merrick Garland. Who had an extraordinary reputation and who essentially was considered to come straight down the main street of judicial thought with opinions that were neither labeled progressive, nor conservative. Straight down the middle. The president made that nomination on March 16^th, a month and three days after the seat became vacant. But that was the last action this chamber took. A few individuals did courtesy interviews knowing that it would lead to no committee hearing and no committee vote because the majority team in this chamber decided to steal a Supreme Court seat.
Again such a theft never ever has happened in the history of our nation. There have been substantial number of seats come open during election year. 16. There have been a substantial number of individuals who were confirmed to those 16 seats. And there were a group of individuals who were turned down by this chamber.
But in all of the 15 cases that preceded the death of Judge Justice Scalia, the Senate acted. The Senate exercised its responsibility. But this time was different. This time the majority said we intend to pack the court of the United States of America. Not by adding seats to it. That wouldn't work under a Democratic president who could then nominate more individuals. No to pack the court by taking the seat, failing to exercise the responsibility that each of us has under oath of office, of advice and consent, and send it in a time capsule into the next administration hoping that that time capsule would be opened by a conservative president who would nominate someone who was very conservative indeed to create a five four bias.
While it wasn't a bias towards We the People. It was a bias towards the powerful and the privileged.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon addressing his Senate colleagues in a 15.5 hour speech that began last night in the capital.

[Music]

Shia Laboeuf film

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

SHIA LABOEUF: He's my old buddy. We kicked in doors together. We took enemy fire. It’s just not a relationship you’d understand if you haven't been through it I guess.

MAN: Is there a reason you don't want to discuss what you saw in that room?

JD: That's from the trailer for Man Down, a film starring Shia LaBeouf. He plays a U.S. Marine suffering from PTSD, who returns from Afghanistan.
At the box office in the States, the film reportedly earned over four-hundred thousand dollars US, not too bad for a film that one reviewer called, "irredeemable." But the film's recent reception in the UK was too bad. Very too bad.
Reports say that during its opening weekend, which just passed, the film grossed a whopping seven pounds. That's around eleven dollars Canadian. This is said to be the cost of a single ticket.
Now, the film was only playing at one movie theatre, in the town of Burnley. And there has only been one showing a day. Also, it was released to that single theatre at the same time it was released on some digital platforms. So maybe people preferred to pay for an irredeemable Shia LeBeouf film in the comfort of their own home.
Someone at the BBC decided to get in touch with the people at the theatre in Burnley. Turns out that, since opening weekend, sales have indeed skyrocketed. The theatre has sold four more tickets to "Man Down", two of them today alone. And that number could double, or better, if more people show up to see its final showing tomorrow.
So not many people are seeing the movie, but a lot of people are talking about it. And some are asking about the identity of the one person who went to the cinema in Burnley to buy that one ticket on opening weekend.
As Vinnie Mancuso wrote on his website Observer yesterday: "Who is this faceless, unnamed man/woman/child/hero? What was happening in their life on that fateful day at the Reel Cinema in Burnley that ended with the words, 'One for Man Down, please and thank you'?" We're also interested. Please, if it was you, give us a call. Don't be Shia.

[Music]

Celebrity cookbooks

Guest: Katrina Levine

JD: Actress turned lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow strongly advises you to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a Swiss brand of toilet tissue that bills itself as “a miracle in the art of paper making.” She also believes that you would benefit from adding a wildly expensive herbal powder called “sex dust” to your morning smoothie. Those are both awesome tips. They're not ridiculous at all, which makes it all the more surprising that apparently Ms. Paltrow’s cooking advice is not quite as wise. A recent study found that Ms. Paltrow’s cookbook It's All Good is not, particularly when it comes to food safety. And in fact that study of 29 celebrity cookbooks revealed that where food is concerned, the famous are frequently not adequately fastidious.
Katrina Levine is the lead author of that study. She works at North Carolina State University. We reached her in Raleigh.

CO: Katrina should people think twice before getting their cooking tips from Gwyneth Paltrow?

KATRINA LEVINE: That's a very interesting question. So in terms of our study and the research, we are really recommending that people use safe food handling methods including using a thermometer when they are checking the doneness of their food. So really, we looked at about 29 cookbooks from the New York Times bestseller list in food and dining in the U.S., and yes, Gwyneth Paltrow’s book was one of the ones on that list. But we didn't look specifically at the differences between different cookbook authors, we just looked at what the guidance was showing as a whole.

CO: So how many how many recipes did you look at?

KL: From the original list, there was about 1800 recipes. And then those were using raw animal ingredients that were supposed to be cooked in the recipe. And then from that list we narrowed it down to about 1500 recipes that you could actually effectively measure the temperature with a thermometer. And so those are the ones we were primarily looking at in terms of you know obviously that risk of foodborne illness or making sure they're cooked to a safe internal temperature.

CO: And what did you find in those? How often did people give the right information that would make that a safe thing to eat?

KL: Well three key things really stood out to us. The first being related to that temperature that I mentioned. We found that over 90 percent of recipes that could have given an internal temperature didn't mention one, which we know that using a internal temperature is only science based way to get a safe dish. We also look at cross-contamination and we know that it's a big issue. It may actually be even bigger than we realize because so much of foodborne illness caused in the home goes under reported. And of over eleven hundred recipes, only about 4.3 percent mentioned that behavior to reduce cross-contamination.

CO: Like what?

KL: So washing your hands before preparing food. Washing your hands after handling raw meat or poultry or seafood and before handling or ready to eat food, so something that's ready to be served. Using a clean plate between handling raw foods, raw meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, and then transitioning to a clean plate when those foods are done.

CO: Do you find that these celebrity cookbooks by authors like Gwyneth Paltrow. I mean you looked at Rachel Ray, you know Garden the Barefoot Contessa. Were they better or worse than others at being able to tell you how you can safely handle food?

KL: Well for this study we really were looking at a group of cookbooks and authors as a whole we weren't comparing between cookbooks.

CO: Any examples? Like for instance, how does Gwyneth Paltrow tell you to make roast chicken?

KL: She did have one recipe that recommended washing chicken before you cook it. And that is not a practice that we recommend from a food safety standpoint. Washing raw meat and poultry can increase the risk of cross-contamination in your kitchen. There is actually some wonderful videos on this to explain what's happening in this situation when from Drexel University in the U.S. and they kind of show that when you wash your raw meat in the sink what happens when the water hits the surface of that meat or poultry as it causes the bacteria to kind of splash and splatter across your kitchen. So it's not a safe practice because it's spreading bacteria throughout.

CO: You’re not supposed to wash your chicken and pat it dry, like well I guess in the Paltrow recipe it says to do that, but lots of recipes say to do that.

KL: Mm hmm. And she like she she's not you know the only one that has suggested doing this. You know we're not trying to pinpoint you know specific people that are doing things wrong but we just want to open up the dialogue about including more food safety information and safe food handling preparation messages into cookbooks and recipes.

CO: You found that almost 100 percent of the recipes gave what you called subjective indicators to figure out when meat or poultry or fish was done correctly. So what's that? What's a subjective indicator?

KL: Right so subjective indicator was pretty much something that was more visual, touching the meat, looking at the juices. But essentially, they were non science based ways of telling that food was done. And over 99 percent of the recipes like you said mentioned at least one of those non-science based ways determined on this.

CO: But isn't that pretty common. I mean say for instance shrimp, as something that you cook until it was pink, or till it was changed color, you know, how else, you can't put a meat thermometer in your shrimp?

KL: I would argue that you probably could put a thermometer in a shrimp. But yes there you know there is this common practice of including a lot of those subjective indicators. You know obviously that's what our research showed and that you know we would like people to you know, not only rely on that but you know rely on that temperature as well because we do have you know the scientific evidence and really you know that's the best way we know of to reduce that potential risk for foodborne illness.

CO: So wiggling the leg of the chicken, it feels loose, it's cooked. That's not a good idea.

KL: I've actually never heard that one. But but no. I mean we would recommend definitely using that food thermometer you know checking it, you know in the thigh you know, in the thickest part of the me you know, away from the fat and the bone to get you know an accurate reading. Checking it in multiple places, and you know making sure that that thermometers reading at least 165, before you take it out of the oven.

CO: You mentioned that you think that cookbook writers should tell you to wash your hands before you prepare food. But I can't think of any cookbook I have that tells me that. Maybe I missed it but this I mean even though I don't think Joy of Cooking tells you to wash your hands before you prepare food. Where did you find anyone who did that?

KL: That's an excellent question and I don't have those specifics with me to report exactly what that would be, but I think it's an opportunity. And there are you know a lot of people out there who are just learning to cook and I think putting that in the recipe or at least mentioning it somewhere is a really great way to you know help continue that you know knowledge and share that information with people who may not already know it.

CO: And the Barefoot Contessa should tell you to wash your hands?

KL: Sure. I don't I don't see any reason why she should not tell you to wash your hair.

CO: Alright, the word is out there. Alright, Katrina thank you.

KL: You're very welcome. Thank you so much Carol.

CO: Katrina Levine is an extension associate at North Carolina State University's Department of Agriculture and human sciences. Her study was published in the British Food Journal. We reached her in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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April 5, 2017 episode transcript

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