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The AIH transcript for December 31, 2024

PETER ARMSTRONG: Hello, I'm Peter Armstrong, sitting in for Nil Köksal.

[theme]

PA: Hand-wringing in the New Year. A man who was detained without charge at Guantánamo Bay since the day it opened is finally sent home. And a reporter tells us she can't believe she's still telling us about that infamous prison on the eve of 2025.

PA: Kwan text is everything. Author Kevin Kwan writes satirical fiction about the to-dos of the well-to-do -- and his latest book, Lies and Weddings features even more lies and weddings than usual.

PA: Tour de foreseeing. In 1925, a British scientist predicted what the world would be like in 2025 -- and his version of the world of tomorrow from many yesterdays ago is uncannily like today.

CH: As it Happens, the New Year's Eve edition. Radio that knows sometimes you feel you deserved a better gift -- but you hate to be Santa-monious.

Guantánamo Bay Transfer

Guest: Carol Rosenberg

PA: Carol, you've been covering this prison at Guantánamo Bay since it opened in 2002. Could you have ever believed then that more than two decades later, it would not only still be open but that we'd be here talking about detainees just finally being repatriated, never having even been charged?

PA: As our listeners heard in the introduction to this, there have been four transfers just in recent weeks, the most recent of which just happened yesterday. What is it that we know about this Tunisian named Mr. Yazidi?

CR: I still go down for every hearing. It gets me onto the base and gives me contact with people. And I get to see the prisoners who are in charge, who are facing charges. These are two death penalty cases going on. But I haven't stepped inside the prison zone, the detention zone, where they have the prisoners since the end of the, since they shut it down during COVID.

CR: And, and this is a policy decision. They, they consolidated, moved the so-called high value detainees into a site that we had visited often. And they said we're just going to classify the place off limits to the press. And I have not been successful in convincing them that they need to let us take a look again.

CR: By the way, President Trump said he was going to load it up with bad dudes and never added a single prisoner.

CR: The only person who sent prisoners down there was George W. Bush. You know, there's, there are a number of people there who could be at Guantánamo forever, until the day they die. And that's because the Congress has decided that no matter how small the population or the needs of those few prisoners, they don't want them stepping foot in the United States. And that they, congress likes Guantánamo Bay. The messaging, the concept, the potential use of it in the future. And they've made it impossible systematically for the administrations to shut it down. What Guantánamo is today is it's almost like this strange designer prison run by a very costly and cumbersome, rotating force of National Guard soldiers who go there on nine-month stints, cops, students, the unemployed called up for National Guard service who go down there, do their shifts, live in dorms, go to the beach, party because it's unaccompanied, and then go home. And it's become this self-sustaining operation. As recently as this month, there were 800 military and civilian employees at a detainee operation that today has 26 prisoners.

CR: You know, he hasn't spoken about it since. It didn't, it didn't come up much, if at all, in this campaign. He didn't succeed in loading it up with bad dudes. He did express disappointment with the pace of the military commissions when he was president last time. And in the instance of one terrorist suspect, decided against bringing him to Guantánamo Bay. So, I think it's really uncertain what he's going to do with it. You know, we're in the moment in this moment when there's plea deals happening that have been arranged through representatives in the, who are put in place by the Biden administration. And we don't know what the next secretary of defence and the next administration will do, if, if they can, to support, disrupt or rethink those plea deals.

CR: Well, thank you.

CR: Bye-bye.

[sombre instrumental]

CH: Encampments are cropping along Notre-Dame Street East in Montreal again -- just weeks after police officers and heavy machinery were brought in to dismantle them in early December. But with shelters at capacity in the middle of the winter, community groups say removing tents isn't the answer to the homelessness crisis in Montreal. Marie-Pier Therrien is the spokesperson for the Old Brewery Mission, a homeless shelter in Montreal. And that's where we reached her.

MARIE-PIER THERRIEN: There's a couple of encampments that are popping up again, similar spaces where they used to be before the dismantlement on December 1st. But it just shows that there was no sustainable solution offered to, to everybody in the end.

MPT: Tell us about the fact that we probably didn't offer them a real permanent solution in terms of housing or adequate solution for their needs. The municipality here and the authorities, they timed dismantlement with the opening of some warming centre, kind of saying, oh, there's going to be more places. There's a good timing. We're going to offer them places. But what we need to understand is some of the places that were added are, unfortunately, chairs in the warming centre.

MPT: So, it's fine to get some respite at night, to not get too cold, to get a shower or some food. But this is not a place where you can stay and live for days or a week. So, this is not necessarily an alternative to encampments.

MPT: Old Brewery Mission, we run a shuttle service at night, so we're able to have a clear picture of where there's places left throughout the night and to move people. So, even if it's a bit further and it's a walkable distance, for example, we can relocate them in another area of the city that might be a bit less busy. Then we pay a very special attention to highly vulnerable people. So, if we think about women, elderly people, people presenting very high level of distress or health issues. We also have some emergency spaces that we try to keep available to make sure we do not leave anyone very vulnerable outside in the street. But, of course, there might not be always a solution for everyone we turn away, unfortunately.

PA: It feels like this needs to be a multi-pronged solution. What kind of measures do you think the city could take immediately beyond just dismantling these camps? Like what else needs to be done?

PA: Right.

PA: Well, Marie-Pier, thank you for the work you do, and for making time to speak about this today.

CH: Marie-Pier Therrien is the spokesperson for the Old Brewery Mission, a homeless shelter in Montreal. That's where we reached her.

2025 Predictions

Guest: Jen Baldwin

JEN BALDWIN: You know, Archibald actually nailed some of his predictions. He was a man ahead of his times, for sure. There were, of course, some that didn't work out as well. But for the most part, most of them actually did come to fruition.

JB: So, one of the big things that he was actually known for was what he referred to as wireless service, which today we were just refer to as a television and radio control, right? Using radios for a number of different types of initiatives. Amongst that communication, but also military purposes. He was one of the first to kind of predict that we would send pictures over a signal, and be able to view people in real time. So, kind of the birth of television, again, far ahead of his years. [both chuckle]

JB: Yeah. So, one of my favorites was actually the felt one-piece suits that he predicted would be very popular. He also talked about electrically-charged water weapons, which didn't really work out. And then the one I kind of wish that had happened was a daily massage provided over radio therapy using, using light therapy and radio signals to provide a massage to everyone every morning.

JB: It would have been nice, right?

JB: Right?! Exactly! [both chuckle]

JB: The academic audience didn't particularly like him very much. He used the term professor and applied it to himself. But he was never actually academically-trained that way and never, never actually taught as a professor. So, that drew some negative connotations with other academics and his peers. But he was really focused on making science and technology really accessible to the masses. And he used PR and his literature as a way to do that.

PA: [chuckling] I see what you did there.

PA: Mr. Low passed away in 1956, I think.

PA: If he had lived to 2025, what do you think he would make of this world of ours?

JB: Just never being able to kind of stop. And it's really striking to me, I think, what he would have done with things like AI. And, you know, and how that would have changed his thinking and his development. And, you know, one of the things that he struggled with was actually finishing projects. But I think in today's world, he would have a network of people globally that were just feeding into his creativity. I think it would have been astounding to see him in today's environment.

JB: Oh, that's a great question! I think if I look back over the last 100 years of society, you know, one of the things that has happened maybe slower than some of us would like, but certainly at a regular pace is, you know, equality, especially minorities and women. I think in 100 years, that won't even be an issue anymore. That's, that's my hope for the future is that, you know, women will be considered, you know, on equal playing ground, right? And in his time, his wife actually filed for divorce at one point because he cheated on her. And that was a new thing for that period.

JB: It was very unusual. And, and not only was it socially and culturally unusual, it was difficult for women to file for divorce because the law made it very expensive and made it very difficult for women to prove that the divorce was valid versus how men had to behave, right, what men had to prove at court. They ended up getting back together. But it you know, that experience, and even his idea about women wearing, being able to wear trousers, right? That whole process of, of equality for the sexes and equality for all the, you know, diverse populations around the world, that's what I think the next 100 years is going to be about.

JB: [chuckling] Yeah, I think so. It's, you know, it's going to be the next big hit, I think, for Christmas next year is everybody's very trendy one-piece suits.

JB: Oh, thank you so much.

[elevator music]

CH: We're hours away from calling a wrap on 2024. Slap a bow on it, it's done -- onward and forward. But before we do that, we wanted to press pause on the present -- and go back to the presents -- namely, all the unappreciated, unwanted, and frankly unacceptable presents on display at Toronto's Museum of Bad Gifts. As we told you last night, the exhibit features a wide array of items collected after organizers put the call out for strange and unusually bad gifts. Shari Kasman is one of the organizers. Last night she told Peter that even she was surprised by what they received.

SHARI KASMAN: I mean, I didn't expect anyone would submit a baggie of cat nails.

SK: Like trimmed cat nails.

SK: That's, you know, that's a definite weird one.

SK: There have been a number of bids. For example, there's a dog toy that's like a purple pig, kind of looks like a hippo. And this object also makes a farting sound when you squeeze it.

SK: Yeah. And so, that has two bids on it already.

SK: So, this auction is going very well.

CH: That's Shari Kasman, one of the organizers behind Toronto's Museum of Bad Gifts.

CH: Su Penny from The Blue Mountains in Ontario sent us this email. "Shortly after I was engaged to a gentleman, he gave me a hand made ironing board for my birthday. I tested the aerodynamics of it with him present from our porch shortly after opening it, down the mountainside and it flew quite well. We didn’t marry. End of story."

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[surf rock]

Encore: Kevin Kwan

NK: Kevin Kwan, welcome to As It Happens in Studio 321.

NK: Pleasure to have you. I wonder how many destination weddings invitations you're mulling over at the moment -- if any?

NK: Come on! They, don't they, they invite you sometimes in addition to wanting you there -- of course -- because they want to do something so spectacular that they'll end up in one of your books?

NK: Yeah?

NK: And so, they, they're rewarded for their, for their ambition? [chuckle]

NK: You can tell.

NK: You know, you've said you, you couldn't have written this book or the others if you didn't have an outsider's perspective. You know so much about this world, or you watch it, you observe it, you write about it, but you don't feel that you're necessarily part of all of this meilleur.

NK: Really?! I mean, I think people think you're, you're, you're one of them.

NK: Yeah. Did you always feel that way, or does that, did that shift over time? Because I think -- for some, in the beginning -- it can be so attractive -- especially if you're adjacent to it in any way. So did that change over time for you?

KK: You know, you own conglomerates, you own countries practically. And there's so much heartbreak, so much tragedy in these families. And I guess that was my entry point into seeing -- you know -- how the other half lived. But -- of course -- I turned it into satire and comedy.

KK: But some of the pain comes through. It has to.

KK: [laughing] I forgot.

KK: No, it just came up.

KK: And I think -- you know -- I feel like I try to evolve with every book, and I try to push myself in terms of my goals as a writer.

KK: So -- you know -- it wasn't about absurdity. It was just getting lost in a story. And this -- you know -- some of the scenes are absurd.

KK: Yeah, totally.

KK: Yeah, but I'm -- you know -- I still, it's, I love when people find my books funny because I'm like, I don't know how that happens. I don't find myself to be a funny person -- first of all -- right? [both chuckle] So -- like -- how does that happen? How does it translate into comedy for people?

KK: That would be easy. That would be very easy, actually. But to, to look at it -- once again -- I think you have to be an outsider to really see the absurdities of the situation. And from that you kind of mine the humour. Because people -- when left to their own devices -- they say the most outrageous things. And -- literally -- that's what I do. I overhear conversations and I literally just put them in the books.

KK: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I don't -- you know -- I cannot make it up. You know, I do know a mother that -- you know -- had to steal hair from a prospective bride -- you know -- [NK chuckles] to get DNA testing just to make sure the bride was -- like -- up to par, you know? [NK chuckle] So it's -- you know -- truth is way stranger than fiction.

KK: It truely does.

KK: Absolutely. And I still do. [hearty laughter].

KK: You know -- I mean -- how can you not, right? Your, your basic existence is you're different from most people. But I've become comfortable with that difference. That's the different thing, right? I celebrate my difference -- as opposed to when you first move to the States at age 11. All you want to do is fit in, right? And I think there's a process one goes through that you either are in or you're not. And -- for me -- it was how do I assimilate? How do I get accepted by these people? I'm going to really give up my identity. I'm going to give up my culture. I'm going to try to be as -- you know -- American as the other kids, or even more American than the other kids.

KK: Whatever that entails, right? Because that's, that's your survival instinct -- you know -- because kids can be mean. Little kids -- you know -- middle school.

KK: Right?! So -- like -- I remember even the first day of school, I had to -- by Third Grade -- lose my accent because I, I spoke like this. I spoke like a little British boy, you know?

KK: And you -- you know -- that was like, I don't know if you know the show South Park, right?

KK: But I was -- like -- Pip from South Park. And -- like -- you don't want to get kicked [laughing] across the, the playground, right?

KK: So I had to quickly become Texan by third period.

KK: You know? And the great thing about being young is you are, you can shapeshift so easily. After a while, you get comfortable and you slowly reconnect with your core -- or you hope to.

KK: Yeah.

NK: Yes.

NK: A teacher you worked with has talked about remembering your poems and you as a student. I wonder, I think your teacher was a woman, and you've talked to also about the women in your life, your aunts, your mom. I saw a beautiful photo of them from the '50s or '60s, I think. And I wonder how they, what you learned from them? Because the women in your books are always driven, strong. They're not all nice. [laughing] They're varied. So what did they teach you?

NK: No.

KK: Yeah. I mean you, when you, you can really get a sense of the character -- I think -- based on how the brand signifiers -- just like their schools, right? And you're in this world. I mean, this all began as part of the satire of, of the first book that I wrote in this new series -- Sex and Vanity. Because I was in this world, you know? This, the book surrounds the Upper East Side New York crowd. And I remember when I first moved to New York, never until that point was there so much emphasis on your schools. Where did you go to school? You know, within the first five minutes of someone, they're trading -- oh -- I went to Harvard, I went to Yale. That became so all-important. So I really wanted to poke fun at that. So -- like -- let's just give it upfront. The minute you meet a character, [NK chuckles] you know exactly where they've been from K -- kindergarten -- all the way to their graduate degree. You know, let's put it out there.

KK: I actually notice more the universality of that. And people -- you know -- from all over the world coming to tell me how much the stories I write resemble their families -- whether they're from Pakistan, or Tel Aviv, or Croatia, or Turkey. You know, I've met Turkish writer readers who are like, oh my God! Like, you've described my family. So I think there's so much, there's so many universal themes. And the more specific you get with your family, the more people actually can relate. You know, that's the beauty of it.

KK: Paris. Yeah, that's the idea.

KK: I mean, that's always very interesting, right? Because as they say -- like -- no fortunes last three generations. So we've seen different generational conflicts in the various families. And I think I actually want to go there. You know, in the next book is to really look and see what happens when a family doesn't do too well. There's hints of it here -- of course. You know, this is about a family that's scrambling to, to stay relevant and wealthy. But what, what does happen when you truly have lost it all? And there's, there's no glass slipper at the end of the hallway to rescue you.

KK: And they don't know any other world.

NK: Still?!

NK: Growing up -- I think we're around the same age -- you know, in the '90s, there's there was a lot more representation. Then it seemed to disappear and become very homogenous. Now we have this resurgence. Does it feel lasting this time? Does it feel different than it did before?

NK: They are us.

NK: And let's go to some fantastic weddings.

NK: And reveal some lies. It really was a joy to read.

NK: A pleasure to have you in the studio, Kevin. Thank you.

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The AIH Transcript For December 31, 2024

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