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The Current Transcript for September 18, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

YUVAL NOAH HARRAI: We now have the most sophisticated information technology in history and we can't talk with each other. The conversation is breaking down.

MATT GALLOWAY: At a time of information overload, Yuval Noah Harari says it's harder than ever to hear one another. In his new book, Nexis, the best selling historian, argues that algorithms that prioritise outrage over engagement on social media are only making that disconnect worse. In 30 minutes, the second part of my conversation with Yuval Noah Harari, how information bubbles have led to separate realities in the Middle East, why social media companies need to be held accountable, and why a guy who wrote a 400 page book on information networks regularly cuts himself off from all contact. Also this morning, hail the size of baseballs smashing through car windows and the roof of the Calgary Airport. A storm last month in that city has led to almost three billion dollars in insurance claims. Coming up, life in Alberta's "hail alley." Plus, Fido would like a word.

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ROBOTIC VOICE: Outside.

SPEAKER: Outside what?

ROBOTIC VOICE: Play.

SPEAKER: [Sounds: Dog panting]

MG: The Internet is filled with videos of dogs apparently conversing with their owners by pressing specific buttons in specific sequences. Now, research is showing that no, your hound can't talk, but they can learn to communicate with you. In an hour, teaching dogs and maybe even cats to tell us what they really want. But we begin with exploding pagers and the threat of a wider war in the Middle East. Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Pager explosions wound thousands in Lebanon

Guests: William Christou, Bessma Momani

MG: It was a seemingly coordinated attack. Hundreds of handheld pagers used by the Iranian backed militant group Hezbollah blew up across Lebanon yesterday, all at the same time. The explosions injured nearly 3000 people and killed at least 12, including two children, overwhelming the country's fragile health care system. Lebanon's information minister condemned the detonation of the pagers as Israeli aggression. William Christou is a journalist based in Beirut. Just a warning to our listeners, some of the details of what he tells us may be disturbing. William, hello.

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: Hi. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thank you for being here. How did this unfold yesterday? This explosion, as I said, seemingly coordinated of all of these different pagers across the country.

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: Sure. So, around 3:30 yesterday, reports started to trickle in that there was a security incident, first in Beirut, then in the southern city of Sour, and then it was clear that it was all over. At first, nobody knew what to make of it. People were throwing their cell phones away with a rumour spreading that cell phones were blowing up. Soon, it became clear that the pagers commonly used by members of Hezbollah were exploding. And it very quickly became apparent that this was not your typical attack. You know, we've become used to airstrikes and drone strikes and shelling over the last 11 months of war. But even so, the number of sirens and ambulances that we heard, you know, made it quickly apparent that this was not your ordinary incident. And Lebanon's public health ministry asked all of its employees to head to hospitals regardless of whether or not they were on duty. And they asked citizens to stay off the streets so that ambulances could reach hospitals.

MG: There is some CCTV footage that has been circulating of these explosions and what they look like. Some of it's pretty disturbing to watch. But I mean, in general terms, can you describe some of the scenes as these pagers blew up?

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: The videos are pretty shocking. You know, in one, you see a man who's shopping and women next to him, they're buying vegetables when all of a sudden, an explosion happens that has hit. People run away, and he grabs his hip on the floor screaming. And we see all sorts of videos similar to this, where people are going about their business when all of a sudden there's an explosion. You know, it was very confusing at first because it happened all over Lebanon simultaneously, and no one was sure what the cause was. I spoke to people yesterday and they told me they thought at first it might be a terrorist attack, you know, having experience with that in Lebanon. In the end, it turns out that it seems to be some sort of sophisticated, coordinated cyber attack.

MG: Who seems to have been targeted by this?

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: So, the details of this are still being uncovered. You know, the country's hospitals and administrations are overwhelmed. But pagers, you know, they're not used by most people these days. They've commonly, they're used by members of Hezbollah. And it seems that they've adopted the technology as sort of a low-tech solution for a high tech problem. Israel has been very successful in hacking phones and surveilling where members are. A number of Hezbollah commanders have been killed over the last seven months, and it's suspected that they have been hacking cell phones. So, it seems that Hezbollah had used these pagers as a way of evading those hacking attempts.

MG: The reporting in The New York Times and elsewhere has suggested that small amounts of explosives were implanted in the pagers that, as you mentioned, Hezbollah had ordered from a Taiwanese company. That they were intercepted, the explosive was planted and then the pagers were distributed amongst the population, and they went off. Is that what you're hearing? I mean, have you heard anything else about how something like this could have happened?

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: Yeah, it seems that that seems to be the dominant narrative now. Hezbollah had ordered a new batch of pagers. They came from this Taiwanese company. And what the Taiwanese company is saying that on the way, they stopped in Hungary. And similarly, that's where the explosives might have been planted. There was a small explosive planted next to the battery, and it could be remotely detonated by sending a message, a specific message to the pagers.

MG: At least 12 people have been killed, two children, as far as we understand. You went to one of the hospitals that were treating the injured yesterday. And as you said, I mean, everybody who works in health care was called in to try to address the situation. What did you see there?

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: Yeah, it was a pretty grim scene. I went around 8:30. So, we're talking about five hours after the attack happened. And I stayed for two hours. It was just a constant stream of ambulances coming from as far south as the Lebanese border and from other hospitals in Beirut that were already full. You had over 100 families waiting, unable to check on their loved ones, you know, for fear of overcrowding the operating room. All of them sad, angry. I tried to interview a few of them. Most wouldn't talk, saying they don't know who to trust anymore. So, there's a real feeling of fear and paranoia here in Lebanon.

MG: How fragile is that health care system? I mean, when something like this happens, does it at all have the capacity to deal with the scale of this and the number of injuries that would be coming in?

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: So, Lebanon has been in an economic crisis for the past five years, and that's crippled its health care sector. You've seen massive brain drain of people, of doctors and medical staff going to Dubai, for example. But thankfully, the health care sector has been preparing for this for the past 11 months. They've been preparing for a war situation, for this exact scenario. I spoke to one of the nurses who heads the response unit, coordinating all across the health care sector in Lebanon. And she told me that health care workers had been spending the last 11 months looking at Gaza, watching footage coming out of the news, looking at the types of injuries that were there, looking at triage procedures, looking at the types of ways, the obstacles in the hospitals to prepare for an event just like this. So, while some of the doctors I spoke to today were telling me it was a horrific scene, they seem to have been able to treat all the patients.

MG: Many people around the world, whether it's international officials speaking on background or the reporting, is suggesting that Israel was responsible for this. Hezbollah called this "Israeli aggression." What's the reaction in terms of what people there, where you are, are expecting in terms of some sort of response?

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: I think people are very angry here in Lebanon. Lebanon's quite a divided country, so opinions differ. But I think people are also fearful of descending into a cycle of violence. Some people I spoke to last night told me that they didn't want Hezbollah to respond, but they wanted to end the cycle of violence here. Others told me quite plainly that this event had forced them to pick a side in a war that they weren't necessarily comfortable being a part of before. And Hezbollah is the one fighting Israel, and they feel they side with them. Now, in terms of what Hezbollah's response might look like, we can look towards the past 11 months to get an idea of that. Typically, they target military and state infrastructure in Israel. You know, when Israel targeted Beirut to assassinate the former military chief of staff for Hezbollah back in July, Hezbollah responded by hitting military bases in Israel. It's likely, given the unprecedented nature of this attack, that their response could encompass bigger parts of Israel, whether it be Tel Aviv or other parts of central Israel.

MG: I just wonder how worried people are there-- and you're in Beirut-- how worried people are about the prospect 11 months in of a much wider war?

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: I think people are still in shock. I think, you know, their sense of security has been shattered. And many of them are grieving people who have been injured or even killed. And they haven't yet started to think about sort of the regional repercussions. But I don't think that anyone wants to see further violence now. Whether that means they don't want Hezbollah to respond, I don't know. There's definitely anger here and a sense of a deep sense that they've been wronged.

MG: William, we'll leave it there. Glad to talk to you. Thank you very much.

WILLIAM CHRISTOU: Thanks for having me.

MG: William Christou is a journalist based in Beirut. Bessma Momani is a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. Senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Bessma, hello to you.

BESSMA MOMANI: Hello.

MG: What do you make of this attack? There has. In the reporting of it, sophistication that is is being described in terms of these pagers beeping. Ostensibly, there was a message from the leadership of Hezbollah. People pull the pager out of the pocket and then it explodes. What do you make of that?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I mean, I think initially when we all thought it was some sort of cyber attack and so it was a software issue. I think we were all kind of marvelled at the technical capability of the Israelis because this would be quite different. No one really thought that it was sort of possible. Although the Israelis have really used, you know, similar types of situation where using things like Pegasus spyware in phones to corrupt phones. Some great work done at U of T actually by the citizen lab on some of the activities where many countries in the world are using this to really compromize mobile phones sometimes through WhatsApp. But it's not a cyber attack, which I think is a bit of a relief because that would have opened up a new gateway of conversation about what's in the realm of possible. This was more of a supply chain compromise and that's a bit different. So, the Israelis, again, presumably it's the Israelis to put some sort of explosive material inside the electronic circuit. Which again, is still very dangerous. But it brings a broader question about, you know, how safe are digital goods in an international supply chain where, again, as your previous guest noted, this is a Taiwanese product, but it looks like it might have been even manufactured in Hungary, which I'll point out is a very close ally, the government there, to the Netanyahu government. So, it also opens up new conversations about, you know, one doesn't often look at these supply chains in a geopolitical lens. So, again, that opens up a lot of new questions about, you know, digital goods and their safety. Certainly, I think that's really the the big takeaway.

MG: Just to be clear, I mean, the Israeli Defence Force hasn't commented on whether it was responsible for the major explosions, but you believe that Israel was behind this?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, we've seen some reporting in The New York Times where American officials say that they are very confident that this was Israeli. But again, I don't think anybody, any analysts out there would disagree with that pretty much.

MG: It's also interesting, I mean, Antony Blinken, the secretary of state this morning was saying that the United States didn't know about these incidents. What does that tell you?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I think that was based on an overwhelming, mostly political feeling in the region that the Americans are really not just kind of involved in the broader war, but they're kind of kept abreast in all of these activities that the Israelis undertake. And I don't think that's the case. I don't think that the Americans were involved, partly because, in fact, what we do see is a lot of American involvement in trying to de-escalate the situation. They do not want this to expand into Lebanon in particular, because the Israelis, frankly, can't take on the war by themselves. They don't have the capability. And after an exhaustion of being involved and in the war on Gaza, you know, to hold onto a second front. So, in many ways, the Americans fear that Netanyahu might pull them into a war into Lebanon. So, they really do want to de-escalate this for their own kind of interests in staying out of it.

MG: Aside from showing that something like this is possible, that you can do something like this, that you can insert explosives into pagers that are widespread and set them off remotely simultaneously. What does an attack like this accomplish? I mean, is that the point, in some ways? To show that the unexpected should be expected?

BESSMA MOMANI: Somewhat. I mean, I think they've done that before. I mean, the Israeli capability on the technical front is really, really strong, particularly on the cyber-attack. Again, this wasn't a cyber-attack, but on that side, there is great capability. They are the most advanced in the region and certainly amongst the top in the world. I mean, I think in this particular case, it looks like it might have been a part of a broader plan that the Israelis were going to use in the event of an invasion, in the event of some sort of operation in Lebanon. And it was discovered. And so, they decided to, rather than kind of waste the operation, to execute it. So, in many ways, sadly, there is no strategic value. I mean, it was a tactical success for sure, but there was no strategic value in this particular operation other than to, as crude as it sounds, not to let it, you know, be wasted in terms of already having been implanted. But just to, again, back to the point that, you know, they could put this into, you know, thousands of pagers throughout the country, be able to interrupt a supply chain, we don't know if all of the pagers were in the hands of Hezbollah operatives only. I mean, I doubt it, because that would really require it being done almost in Lebanon. And we think it probably was done in transit outside of Lebanon. And so, it was destined to Lebanon. So, it could very well be the hands of non-Hezbollah operatives, which again opens the fear factor. I think that's a really important point in what your previous guest noted is there's a fear factor now that, wait a minute, could they have done this in other digital goods? I mean, that's the kind of conversation that's happening on the ground, unfortunately, in Lebanon today.

MG: And so at that point, what sort of retaliation do you expect to see in coming days from Hezbollah?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, we've been saying this for months now. You know, I think anything is possible because unfortunately, these kinds of attacks can really, you know, lead to the unexpected. I don't know. And I think none of us know really. You know, in many ways, we've been hearing this argument that Hezbollah is restrained. And the only way to sort of get at that argument is because if we look at the number of attacks happening and strikes quite literally, the Israelis have about four to 800 strikes per month into Lebanon, and Hezbollah has about 150 almost consistently over the same time. Both have residents displaced. So, we have 60,000 in northern Israel displaced and about 94,000 in southern Lebanon. So, they're both paying a price for this continued tit for tat. But, you know, it is true that Hezbollah, I think overall does not want to enter into a war, partly because the Lebanese people are absolutely fed up and have, as Christou noted, you know, they're really at their wit's end economically, politically, socially. There's no desire for war from the Lebanese, and Hezbollah does have to factor that in.

MG: But will there be a desire for some sort of response?

BESSMA MOMANI: Certainly among Hezbollah, I think they will. I mean, you remember their second in command was killed in Beirut not too long ago, presumably by the Israelis. We saw a similar, you know, assassination against Hama' leader Haniyeh in Tehran. I mean, there is a feeling in the so-called axis of resistance that, you know, some sort of response needs to be made because the Israelis will just keep going and no one is willing to stop them. So, in some way, I think they will be pushed. These were mid-level people, so they were not senior leaders in Hezbollah. But nevertheless, I think that fear factor inside the country might just indeed push Hezbollah into wanting to again, create some sort of big show to prevent the Israelis from escalating.

MG: It just feels in the midst of, as you said, perhaps, you know, diplomatic negotiations to try and reduce tensions, It feels like there is an inevitable slow step toward something larger. And I just wonder how what we saw yesterday adds to that. Or, is there a way in the face of that for people to see, you know, a cliff face and back away from it?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I'd like to be optimistic that way. But I think what I would point listeners to is really what's happening inside the Israeli cabinet. So, Netanyahu currently, who I think really for political reasons and his own personal political reasons, wants war to continue. Whether its war on Palestinians in Gaza or in Lebanon, dare I say, because it really is the only way he stays in power. He's got many, many corruption charges against him. There's a reason why many people are out in the streets wanting Netanyahu to go and to sign a ceasefire. But he simply does not see his own political viability if there's a ceasefire. And so, this is the part that really, I think deserves our attention.

MG: And there's reporting that he is considering firing his defence minister.

BESSMA MOMANI: Exactly. And his Defence Minister, Gallant, wants to de-escalate with Lebanon. But the extremists, and I use that word very carefully, but extremists in his cabinet, want war with Lebanon. They see this as the opportune time. You know, they've said some horrific things about Gaza, about quite literally ethnic cleansing of the population. But even in Lebanon, they're calling for more war. So, you have this extremely hawkish and, again, partly extremist view inside Netanyahu's cabinet. And his personal political survival really depends on continuing war. And that is a really dangerous calculation.

MG: And so, we just have a minute left, in the face of that, who, if anybody, can turn the heat down?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, in many ways, that's why all eyes are on the Americans, right? Because they're the only ones who are the strongest ally of the Israelis and simply have all of the leverage, the carrots and sticks. Including the fact that, you know, four billion dollars of weapons goes to the Israelis every year. And now we've seen even more so. So, this is where I think many people do feel that Biden has failed. He simply does not want to exert any political power in really stopping the Israelis, particularly in pushing for that ceasefire. Even though, again, the rhetoric out there is that Biden wants ceasefire. But simply put, there's just no real carrots and sticks put because he's at the end of his term and wants to leave on his so-called high note of not pushing the Israelis too far.

MG: Bessma, good to talk to you as always. Thank you.

BESSMA MOMANI: Thank you.

MG: Bessma Momani is professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Your CBC News is next, and then we'll bring you more of my conversation with the historian Yuval Noah Harari, recorded live on stage in Toronto last week.

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YUVAL NOAH HARRAI: The algorithms discovered that if you want to increase user engagement, the easiest way to do it is to press the hate button and the fear button and the anger button in the mind.

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MG: Yuval Noah Harari on how algorithms on a Facebook feed in particular helped fuel ethnic violence in Myanmar. The role of Internet filter bubbles and what that's doing in the Middle East. And why, in the face of all of that, you might actually want to think about going on an information diet. We'll get some advice on cutting information out of your life from the Historian coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current. Stay with us.

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Why Yuval Noah Harari recommends an ‘information diet’

Guests: Yuval Noah Harari

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Today we're bringing you the second part of my conversation with the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, recorded live on stage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. His new book, Nexis: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, warns of the emerging risks of artificial intelligence. If you missed part one, you can find it on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent, or on our podcast feed. But we'll pick up our conversation with a discussion of how algorithms are helping to fuel political divides and even violence.

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YUVAL NOAH HARARI: What we see all over the world is that we now have the most sophisticated information technology in history, and we can talk with each other. The conversation is breaking down. People can't listen to each other, cannot hold a reasonable debate. And this is now all over the world. And one of the first places you saw it in an extreme form was in Myanmar in the middle of the 2010s.

MG: Targeting the Rohingya.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Targeting the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Again, there was a propaganda wave of conspiracy theories and fake news about the Rohingya minority depicting them as aliens, that they are not really from the country, they all came from outside, that they are the spearhead of some kind of global jihad, that they are all terrorists. And this led, within a very short time, to an ethnic cleansing campaign resulting in the death of thousands in the rape of tens of thousands, and an expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people. Of what the main blame for this is on the extremists in Myanmar, on the military junta there. I don't want to relieve them of any share of the blame. They are the main culprits. But the propaganda campaign that fuelled this ethnic cleansing, these massacres, it was mostly conducted on social media and mostly on Facebook. And what happened there and afterwards all over the world is that there was again, there was no evil intention, as far as I know, on the side of anybody in Facebook. Most Facebook executives never heard even of the existence of the Rohingya and definitely did not harbour any ill feelings towards these people. What happened is, in many ways much more worrying. It was one of the first big historical examples of how decisions made by AIs, by algorithms, can create huge historical catastrophes. So, this is not science fiction for the future. If this is the past, this is history. People in Myanmar began to use Facebook. Facebook gave its algorithms the aim of increasing user engagement. But then the algorithms --and that's the key point-- the algorithms by themselves made a remarkable discovery, which of course was made by many humans previously in history. But this time it was the algorithm that discovered it by experimenting on millions of guinea pigs, human guinea pigs. The algorithms discovered that if you want to increase user engagement, if you want to keep more people on the platform, more time, the easiest way to do it is to press the "hate" button and the "fear" button and the "anger" button in the mind. People in Myanmar produced all kinds of content on Facebook. There were people giving sermons on compassion. There are people giving cooking lessons. There are people doing videos of cats. And the people who created these hate filled conspiracy theories about the Rohingya. And by trial and error, the algorithms discovered that the hate filled conspiracy theories got the most engagement. So, this is what they pushed. They recommended this content more and more to people. And they also even autoplayed it. That you would watch some cooking lesson, and at the end of the video that you wanted to see, the algorithm would automatically played for you a hate filled conspiracy theory in order to keep you glued to the screen. And it worked. The user engagement went up. But it also led to this ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, again, I don't want to put too much blame on the algorithm or on Facebook. There was deep rooted causes for the hatred between the majority Buddhist Burmese and the minority Muslim Rohingya going back generations. We can say that maybe let's say one per cent of the blame, of the responsibility, was the decisions of the algorithms. Still, it's the first major catastrophe in history that was one per cent because of non-human decisions. And this was ten years ago. And now it's all over the world.

MG: So, why didn't we learn from that?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: That's the big question.

MG: I mean, you as somebody who has sold vast numbers of books and is in demand, I'm sure, are often brought into those corporations to speak.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Corporations, no. There was a whistleblower in Facebook, I think her name was Frances Haugen. [MG: Frances Haugen.] And in 2019, 2020, she kind of released this trove of internal memos and emails from within the company that proved beyond a reasonable doubt the company, by at least, I don't know about 2015 or 16, by 2019, the company knew. Some of the corporations say they have learned the lesson. They try to do better now. Some don't. You know, one of the tricks they use is hide behind freedom of speech. They say, yes, people publish all these conspiracy theories and fake news, but who are we? This is really a trick. Because the problem is not with human freedom of speech. The problem is with the algorithmic decisions.

MG: I guess the belief is that if you put all of that information out there that people will be smart enough to be able to choose from...

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: But it's the algorithms that are doing the choosing. What I would expect the corporations to do is take responsibility for the actions of their algorithms, not of their users. If a user published a hate filled conspiracy theory online, that's on the user. I really don't blame Facebook or Twitter for that. But if then the Twitter or Facebook algorithm decides to deliberately promote this content, this is not on the human. This is on the corporate algorithm and on the human managers that gave the algorithm so much authority and also the wrong goals. And basically, the algorithms are functioning like editors. And, you know, editors have so much power. Lenin before me was dictator of the Soviet Union, his only job was editor of Iskra, of newspaper. Mussolini was editor of a newspaper. You go back in history, you know, we started with Jesus. So, think how much impact the editors of the Bible had for almost 400 years after Jesus. There is no New Testament. Christians produce an enormous number of texts and prayers and prophecies and letters and stories, and there is no canon. And of course, when there is so much information, you need a recommendation list, which is the job of an editor. There's a committee in Carthage, what is today Tunisia, and they came up with this recommendation list, top "27 texts that every Christian should read." And they had all these texts and they chose. They made a decision. And for instance, there was one very popular text called The Acts of Paul and Thecla, which focused on the actions of Thecla, a female disciple of Paul, who acted as a church leader and performed miracles and gave sermons. And she was hailed as an example that women can be leaders in the church. There was another text ascribed to Saint Paul. But most scholars believe was a much later forgery an epistle, a letter from Saint Paul to Timothy, a disciple of his, in which he says that women should basically shut up and bring children up. And the Council of Carthage decided to leave The Acts of Paul and Thecla outside the top 27 recommendation list, but to put the epistle to Timothy, it's now today's First Timothy, in. And for 1500 years, this editorial choice shaped how billions of Christians thought about the potential role of women in the church and in the world in general. And now, what humans did in the Council of Carthage and what Lenin and Mussolini did before they became dictators is now being done by algorithms. They are the editors who recommend to us read this, watch this video. This is immense power.

MG: Is it hard to square the bad things that come from the algorithm with the fact that the algorithm paired you with the man who became your husband?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah, I know that it falls to my share to be kind of the doomsday prophet talking about all the bad things that technology does. Because you know that the people who develop the technology, they tell us so much about the positive. But yes, it's good you brought it up because I'm not against technology. Certainly in my personal life, it played a very important role, these new social media, because I met my husband online in one of the first social media platforms for gay people. I grew up in Israel in the 1980s, 1990s in a very homophobic society and the Internet and social media was amazing. I'm not saying stop all development of technology. I'm not saying 50 per cent should go to safety. Twenty per cent, like in other industries.

MG: You started by saying that information is not truth and that one of the things that happens, and this comes up in the book and you've argued this in past, is the truth is complicated. It's unpleasant, as opposed to lies, which can be simple and flattering. And in the book you write, I just want to read this, "An Israeli politician who in her election speeches details the miseries inflicted on Palestinian citizens by an Israeli occupation is unlikely to get many votes. In contrast, a politician who builds a national myth by ignoring uncomfortable facts, focusing on glorious moments in the Jewish past, may well sweep to power." And that could be applicable, as you say, to many nations around the world.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Every nation. It's not unique about Israel and the Jewish people.

MG: How would you apply that to Israel now> a country that you have great affection for and great concern for?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah, I think it is at a moment of historical crisis, in the history, not just of Israel but really of Judaism and of the Jewish people. And for me, the really the key question is whether the Jewish people has learned anything in the last 2000 years.

MG: What do you mean?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Because you know the origin story of Judaism as we know it today, there is, of course, the Bible. But biblical Judaism is a completely different religion. The kind of origin story of the post Biblical Judaism is about Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai, who escapes this holy city which has been taken over by these crazy fanatics. And he comes to the Roman General, Vespasian, who commands troops besieging Jerusalem that will destroy Jerusalem, and he begs Vespasian, please do me one favour. Give me Yavne and its wise people. And the Roman General agrees. And this is where ben Zaki establishes a yeshiva. A place where there are no temples, There are no sacrifices. They study. And Judaism is transformed into a religion of learning. And this is basically what Judaism is about for the next 2000 years. They are in Yavne, they study, they go to Egypt, they go to what is today Iraq. They study, they go to Brooklyn, they go to Toronto. They study. And after 2000 years, they go back to Jerusalem. And when I look at what is happening right now in Israel, I ask myself, did we learn anything? With all these 2000 years of study is-- I would like to know if I could have Netanyahu here, I would ask him, Do you know anything that Vespasian didn't already know in 70 CE? If all you care about is power and violence and be strong and be strong, we've wasted 2000 years. Yohanan ben Zakai should have just asked Vespasian, tell me, what did the Romans know? Tell me the secrets of the legion. Because if it's all about, you know, building a strong army, we could have saved ourselves 2000 years.

MG: What role do you think-- I'm just thinking-- part of this is about the issue of information and what people aren't talking about and the way that people-- this idea of filter bubbles. And this idea that people live in their own reality in some ways. You and I spoke several months ago about this and you talked about a lack of shared humanity and shared knowledge. What role do you think what people call "filter bubbles" are playing in...

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: In Israel, now?

MG: In the conflict right now, broadly?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: So, you have to kind of filter bubbles. Like you have, of course, Israel and Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, they live in completely separate realities. And also within Israel itself, the country is divided into separate realities where one camp sees Netanyahu as he's the most hated figure in Israeli history. And then you have another camp which basically sees him as the messiah. And they look at the same facts. They look at what happened on October 7th and they look at what happened afterwards and they just see completely different realities. In going back to information, you know, when the Internet just started, the main metaphor was the web, the worldwide web. Like, this web of information which will connect everybody and everybody now all over the world will know the same facts and the same truth, and tyrants will disappear and democracy will flourish. And now, the main metaphor, it's not the web, it's the cocoon. Like the web has turned on us and closed. And now people live inside separate cocoons and there is just no way to reach from one cocoon to the other cocoon. And part of the problem today in the world is that we are flooded by this extremely cynical view of humanity, which, strangely enough, flourishes on both the radical left and the radical right. It's one thing that, say Donald Trump agrees with Karl Marx that humans are only interested in power and therefore any human interaction is a power struggle. And in any human interaction, like, I say to you something, so these people will tell you there is no point asking whether it's true or not. The question is, it's a power play. Words. Information is always power. So, whose power? Whose privileges are being served? And you'll hear it both on the left and on the right.

MG: So, what do you do with that? I mean, one of the things that you've said in light of the last 11 months is that both sides in this conflict have reason to fear that their existence is at stake, in some ways. That there's no sense of a shared humanity or shared conversation. So, what do you do with that? How do you get out of that?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: If I look at the conflict back home. So first of all, I start by recognizing the very painful but truthful fact that in this sense, both sides are right. Palestinians believe that the Israelis want to completely get rid of them, and they are right. And the Israelis believe that the Palestinians want to completely get rid of us. And we are also right. They really do. It's hard in a way, to keep both both views at the same time, but this is the reality. The deep source of the conflict is that both sides are terrified for their existence, and they are correct to be terrified. And the place to start making a change-- we can, it's very difficult to change the mind of somebody else, especially in a different cacoon. But we still have some ability to change our own minds. And the place I would start is to simply recognize that the other side exists and it has a right to exist. That war, and this is true of war throughout history, war starts in the mind when you say these people, they shouldn't exist.

MG: These people?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: These people shouldn't exist. One of the really kind of appalling things about the conflict back home is that it's not just that people deny that the other side has a right, they really deny their existence. Like, you will talk to Jewish Israelis who will tell you, But there is no Palestinian people. People, in all seriousness, say it. Even people in the government will tell you, No, there is no Palestinian people. And you would hear the same thing on the other side, Palestinians telling you Jews and Jerusalem, what's the connection? I mean, there is no historical, Jews were never in this place. People say it with all seriousness. This human ability to simply deny the most basic facts of history, of biology, this is frightening. And what gives hope is that it's not true that humans are only obsessed with power. In every human being, there is a deep yearning for truth. Again, for the simple reason that if you don't know the truth about yourself and, for instance, about the causes of the misery in your life, you simply have no chance of being happy. And if you look at people who are obsessed only with power, like Netanyahu or like Vladimir Putin, they don't seem to be particularly happy individuals, even though they have so much power.

MG: So, what would you-- I mean, for a room full of people who feel as though the algorithm is manipulating them, that they're trying to figure out a way through the nonsense and see across that political divide, see the humanity that is there-- what would you say to them? What's a piece of advice for people here on how they could go about doing that?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: You know, one very old piece of advice is when you read something or hear something about some politician or some person, try to think what is kind of the best explanation you can give to it and not what is the worst explanation you can give to it. Maybe his or her words were taken out of context.

MG: Like, lead with generosity.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yes, be generous with people. And the new advice I would give is to go on an information diet the same way that people go on food diets. Because what happened to information now is a bit parallel to what happened to food. That a hundred years ago, food was scarce, so people would eat anything they could find, especially if it had a lot of sugar or fat in it. Lots of energy. Good. I'll eat it. And now, food is abundant in most places, and there are these artificially produced industrial foods which are pumped full of fat and sugar to make it addictive and which are really bad for us. And people, many people have realized it and they are very careful about what they eat. They have a food diet. And the same thing happens to information. Information was scarce. So, people consume whatever they could find. Now it's super abundant. We're flooded by it and there is these industrially artificial information pumped full of hate and greed and fear to make it more addictive. So, we need an information diet which includes also information fasts. Take time to just digest. Don't put anything more in, just digest.

MG: This is something you do. People know mean that you meditate regularly, but you also, this is a book about information. You will remove yourself from the information world. You will go on lengthy silent retreats. What do you get out of that when you do that? When you take yourself out of that information overload.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: A bit of peace and quiet so much during the rest of the time that I can use the silence and especially, you know, the mind accumulates so much junk. Again, information is the food of the mind and so much of it is junk food. And the mind gets just full of this junk and garbage and you need time to kind of clean it.

MG: Just finally, are you are you somebody who is able to see some hope out of this? Are we going to figure out a way that will allow us to get back in control of that information?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yes. I mean, again, it's-- we are still in control. I mean, we don't know how many years we have until we have these superintelligent AIs to do it. But at the present, despite the rapid development, we are still in control. And it all depends on the decisions that we make. What gives me hope is the fact, the knowledge, that all humans, they really have a deep yearning for the truth. And if we resist the cynical view that says, No, it's all just a power struggle, it's all interactions of power struggles. If we say, No, it's not all about that. Yes, power is important. Lots of power struggles, but not everything is a power struggle. And every individual to some extent also wants the truth and we should we should prioritize this, I think that there is still enormous potential in us, which we don't, we haven't uncovered yet, despite tens of thousands of years of history. AI is nowhere near its full potential. That's true. But human beings are also nowhere near our full potential. And so, it's again, it's a question of investments, in a way. If for every dollar and every minute that we invest in developing AI, we also invest a dollar and a minute in developing ourselves, we'll be okay.

MG: I hope you're right. Yuval Noah Harari, thank you very much.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Thank you.

[Sound: Applause]

MG: Recorded live on stage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors, my conversation with the historian Yuval Noah Harari. If you missed part one, you can find it on our website or subscribe to our podcast and you'll get a special extended version of the conversation this weekend. Well, coming up after your regional update, #dogbuttons.

SOUNDCLIP

ROBOTIC VOICE: Yes.

SPEAKER: Yes what?

ROBOTIC VOICE: Love you.

SPEAKER: I love you, Bunny! I love you, funny girl.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Are dogs actually trying to communicate with us by tapping buttons with pre-recorded words? Or are they just using their human as a vending machine? We will talk about new research into how dogs and even cats try to communicate with us. That's coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Stay... stay... stay...

[Music: Fades up]

Can dogs understand the words we speak?

Guests: Fredrico Rossano

MG: Hello again, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. If you are a dog lover, especially a dog lover who's on TikTok, you may have come across one particular genre of dog video.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: Press, bubba.

ROBOTIC VOICE: Chee-ah-chee.

SPEAKER: You want a chee-ah-chee? Come here, I'll give you a chee-ah-chee. Bubba, come. Come on. You're such a good girl!

MG: A dog stands in front of an array of buttons arranged on the floor and presses them, sometimes in sequence, to make sounds.

SOUNDCLIP

ROBOTIC VOICE: Outside.

SPEAKER: Outside what?

ROBOTIC VOICE: Play.

SPEAKER: Outside play?

[Sound: Dog Panting]

ROBOTIC VOICE: Now.

SPEAKER: You want to go right now? We can do that. We can do that.

MG: What exactly is going on here? Do the dogs actually understand the meaning of these particular words, or are they just well-trained animals? Federico Rossano is trying to answer those questions and is one step closer with some new research. Federico is an associate professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego and head of the Comparative Cognition Lab. And he's just published a study which suggests that dogs, yes, indeed, can understand specific words and respond appropriately. He is in San Diego today. Federico, good morning.

FREDERICO RASSANO: Good morning.

MG: We heard a little bit of these dogs in action. People might have seen this, as I said, on TikTok. The hashtag is dog buttons. Describe for people who haven't seen this what these dog button setups actually are and what's going on in the videos.

FREDERICO RASSANO: So, the device that these animals are using are usually made of buttons on which you can record your own voice. So, for example, you can record the word 'outside,' and when the button gets pushed, then you can hear the world outside. You can record 'play' and then you can hear play. And most people tend to place them on the ground. Some people like to put them on the wall. And when the dog or cat presses the button, usually they can hear that word. Part of the activity is for the humans to train the dog to respond to this buttons. And then, of course, the dog at some point start using the buttons to communicate with the humans. And our task is to assess are they actually communicating or using the human as a vending machine?

MG: A vending machine. These videos are very popular. And I mean, there are some of the dogs that are like celebrities on TikTok. This dog Bunny, which is everywhere. When you saw this, as a scientist, when you saw this, what was your reaction?

FREDERICO RASSANO: Well, fun fact, I saw Bunny when she was still a puppy and she wasn't quite as popular on TikTok. I was not on TikTok. And she was a participant in our study. And I was intrigued. I thought, hey, it looks like, you know, this dog seems to be using this buttons in potentially interesting ways. But as a scientist, I was also skeptical. I was skeptical because of what we know about previous research with this type of devices, with other animals. And I was skeptical because of course there's always the issue of potentially cherry picking clips, right? It's like you just happen to have the one clip that seems to make sense. And so, my next reaction was like, if we're going to study it, we need to have not one or two or ten dogs, we need to have thousands of dogs so that we can actually assess what is going on.

MG: How much science is there that exists right now about how dogs communicate? And how many words that we might speak, how many of them do they actually understand?

FREDERICO RASSANO: So, there is a little bit I wish there was much more. So, there's some research that has been done with individual dogs. One in particular was called Rico that got published in Nature about ten years ago, suggesting the Rico knew more than 250 words. Then there was another paper with another dog called Chaser, suggesting the Chaser could actually get to more than a thousand words. But there were always names of objects. And the evidence was that the dog was asked to go fetch it and retrieve it. There's been other research asking owners how many words they think their dog knows. And what I think is kind of interesting is that when the study was done in Hungary, the average hungarian dog knows about 33 words. And when it was done in Canada, the average Canadian dog knows 85 words. So, I don't know if Canadian dogs happened to be three times as capable.

MG: I'm not saying that the dogs here are smarter, but they might be.

FREDERICO RASSANO: They might be. So, I agree. That would be that could be. But basically, as you can imagine, just like if you ask a parent, you know, how many words does your child know? Some parents might just be a little critical and others might be a little overconfident or optimistic. And so, part of the issue was, how do we really assess what the average dog knows?

MG: Well, this is-- and this is the work that you did. But I mean, going into this, one of the things I mean, I say this to somebody who has a dog, is you can train your dog to do all sorts of things. And your dog understands, you know, the word treat, the dog understands walk, the dog understands bath, because it's trained to do that. How much of what we saw in those videos is just the dogs being trained to know that if they push this button, they might get something or something might happen?

FREDERICO RASSANO: Well, that is sort of part of the question, right? In many ways, that is exactly what's going to happen. So basically, the dog learns an association between a word and a specific sort of situation or reward. Part of the new idea or challenge here was that very often you might think that the dog understands the word treat, but really what the dog sees is you moving towards the cupboard and opening the cupboard where usually treats are and is just responding to the behavioural cues you're producing. Similarly, it could be they see you putting on shoes and your jacket and moving towards the door and they're like, oh. You said outside, but really, I don't understand the world outside. I just read your behaviour and figure out this is what's going on. So, we do believe that they do associate sounds with sort of activities. We know they respond to commands. Of course, you can train the dog to go fetch or sit or whatever, but there wasn't clear evidence that they would respond to the buttons per say. So, one of the concern was that what is really happening is that the dog is just paying attention to the humans and whatever the human gives away as a cue, that's what the dog is responding to. And second, that really, it doesn't even matter what the button says it's really the location of the button that does all the work so that you just learn association. Like, I see you're touching this and that's what you're responding to. So, we wanted to show that these animals are actually paying attention to the words. And in particular, they are responding not just to the owner producing certain cues, but to even an experimental that gives away no sort of behavioural cues.

MG: And that's the other thing is behavioural cues, right? That dogs, I mean, the belief is, and again, if you have a dog, you know this, I mean your dog can can read not just how you're, where you're moving, but how you're acting can read, for example, facial cues as well. So, how did you go about testing that?

FREDERICO RASSANO: So, this is the beauty of dogs. Dogs are amazing at understanding human communication. They're much better than any other animal we know, especially much better than chimpanzees. [MG: Really?] Yeah, absolutely. There's some very strong evidence showing that dogs understand human gestures. They understand facial expressions. They pay attention to our intonation to detect whether they should approach something or stay away from them. And we also have evidence that if they hear you cry, their heart rate changes, although they don't respond to our laughter quite the same way. They don't find the same thing we find funny, funny, which is, you know, reasonable. But basically, there's very strong evidence that dogs are almost like a neglected animal in terms of their social intelligence with respect to humans. They are very tuned in. And because of that, of course, it's not surprising that they might just learn a lot about, you know, patterns and your behaviours and realize that whenever you do one, two, three steps, then the next thing that happens is this type of reward. After all, many people might have heard of Pavlov's dog, right? It's like learning an association with a bell and then getting a food reward. So, because of that, we needed to control for this possible explanation of their responses to buttons. And so, we created a scenario in which we had two experimenters going into people's homes across the US. And what would happen is that one experimenter would put tape on top of the buttons so that you couldn't see what was written on them and then would go with the owner in a separate room and the other experimenter with headphones on would press the buttons with the tapes on and just look at the dog without knowing what they just had pressed. And then we would have other researchers that had videos of the dog responses without hearing any audio, basically annotate this and sort of see what do they think the dog is responding to and what do they think the dog is doing? And so, our goal was to see, does the dog respond in contextually appropriate ways, which would be the same as saying, if I asked you, can you pass me the salt and you actually give me the salt, I'm assuming you understand what I just did. And so, it's sort of, that's kind of the idea is. Like, we do not know what are the representations of concepts like outside, play, food. We're doing more testing right now, but we definitely know that they are responding in an appropriate manner, even though the experimenter, because they cannot hear anything and they cannot, they don't know which button they pressed, they cannot give any cue about what will be the appropriate response.

MG: So, your belief is that the dogs have some capacity to understand the words that we're saying, some of the words we're saying?

FREDERICO RASSANO: Well, at the very least, they have the same capacity that a two or three year old would seem to have when you just tell them things. Like, they produce behaviours, they seem to be in accordance to them, understanding them. So, the question is, what does it mean to understand? And if you take a behavioural point of view, if I tell you to stop and you stop, if I ask you for, can you bring me something and you bring the correct item, then I would say you understand. Whether you, you know, understand also why I'm asking you to do this right now and what are my intentions, that's a different type of question. But at the basic level of when I say outside, do you understand that we're talking about going outside of the house? Or when I say play, that there's going to be some kind of game involved and maybe toy involved. When I say food that, you know, we're talking about things you can eat. Yes. To that degree, they definitely understand it.

MG: So, you were skeptical when you started this? I mean, has your research convinced you?

FREDERICO RASSANO: I'm skeptical at the idea that what is going on is significantly more complex than what I was saying as treating others as a vending machine. And then the researchers slowly convinced me that at least for some individuals there seems to be more to it. And the reason I'm seeing this is because I see there's dogs doing back and forth with their humans in a way that we would do a back and forth when we are negotiating. Right? So, if I'm like, you know, I want outside and you're like, No, not now. And I say, Well, maybe we could do this other thing? And they say, no. Then to me, it seems like, you know, they are understanding something about what you're trying to do, including the fact that you are stalling and not getting them to do what they want to do. I also am very convinced and anybody who has a dog knows this, that our dogs understand a lot of things. You know, after all, they've been domesticated. So, we have lived with them for 10,000 years and we have selected them because they have this special ability to understand us and cooperate with us. So, I don't know if the question is, are these dogs talking? The answer is no, they're not talking. Can they use these buttons to communicate? We have research that might point in that direction, and we are confident that there's more to it than meets the eye. But again, you know, we need to do more work.

MG: They're not talking. But if they're reasoning and negotiating with us, I want to go outside. You can go outside later. Let's go outside now, that sounds like a conversation at the very least.

FREDERICO RASSANO: Right. So, the problem again is like, a lot of scientists are concerned at the idea that we are saying they're talking. They are communicating, 100 per cent . I think part of the idea of talking is the concern that we're now trying to anthropomorphise these creatures. And that's not fair. Right? So, it seems to me, though, that they have the ability to communicate and there's no doubt about it that they seem to understand responses in a way that allow them to make some basic inference, right? It's like, you don't want to go now, but I want now. So, how about if we say now. Or, you know, if I ask you to do what outside, you say play or you say pee or you say whatever else, like clearly, if you can give me different answers to these questions, they're all contextually appropriate. Well, that to me shows some level of understanding of what can you do outside, right? Which again, is like, a level of representation of what could happen to you in the future, which is novel for a lot of us. Like a lot of people think that animals are stuck in time and I don't think that's true. So, you know, if you could imagine yourself being outside playing with your human, well, that's already something, right? It's like it tells us you could imagine a future in which this thing is happening. And so, there's a lot of interesting questions that you can start to address if you can show that they understand the meaning of some of these patterns, that they can actively and intentionally select these buttons to communicate things that they want and desire. And there's another angle to it, which I think is almost more intriguing, which is we have this idea that what really matters for these dogs is can they understand commands, can they understand, you know, fetch this and go get that. And what happened when they have these buttons is that they actually initiate the conversation. So now, they're having a voice to start the communication. Right? So, they can be asking you for things instead of being responding to your needs and wants and so on. And I think in terms of, you know, empowering and giving others a chance to tell us what they think about or what they care about, I think it's, you know, it could be an opportunity to learn more about what goes on in a dog's mind and provide for them. Right? Some of my favourite examples are dogs complaining that it's too hot outside or that there's a stranger outside, which usually is the Amazon delivery guy that is just standing there trying to figure out where to drop something. Or, you know, there's-- it's too loud outside because maybe there's construction work going on or there's an ambulance passing by. All these things are things that bother them and we use, and we kind of have a sense of this, but you don't necessarily know, you know, how much it bothers them or how concerned they might be and so on. And if they can tell you this, then maybe you can address it in the same way in which they can tell you when they're in pain. And I think that's fascinating.

MG: We've been talking a lot about dogs. You can imagine people in the cat lobby who would be saying, what about cats? Are cats smart as well?

FREDERICO RASSANO: Yes. Yes. Thank you for the question. The great news is we do have 700 cats in the study and I wish we could get some more. Cats are amazing. There's research, recent work that has shown that if cats are willing to participate and to be trained, cats are almost as good as dogs. Truly remarkable, really. So, we have several that have several dozen buttons and many of them that seem to be using them in ways that are quite similar to what the dogs are doing. We have more dogs with more buttons, if you will. But I am really impressed by several cats out there and what they seem to be able to do with these buttons.

MG: Just before I let you go, I mean, you were hinting at the complexity of some of these-- whether they're conversations or whether it's just communication that we might be having with dogs. Social media is just filled with these videos. Let me play something else of dogs using different combinations of words that represent emotions. Have a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: Are you mad?

[Sound: Dog whimpering]

SPEAKER: Why mad?

ROBOTIC VOICE: Help.

SPEAKER: You want help? Help what? You want help with the toys? Okay, let's look at your toy.

MG: So, the dog says it's mad because it wants help getting the toy. What does that tell you about how complex this communication could be?

FREDERICO RASSANO: Well, again, this is the end of one, right? So, as a scientist, you need to say this is very interesting, but it's just one...

MG: One video.

FREDERICO RASSANO: One video. So, we need to, you know, be careful in how we interpret it. What I can tell you is I have seen other instances with similar situations where they would ask for help because something is stuck under the couch or is behind the door and they need the human to help. Fun fact, we have a study currently under review in which we create a situation in which the dog needs help and we see would the dog actively go to the soundboard and call for the name of the owner and push the button, Help? And if you want to know what the finding is, call me back in a few months when the paper is out. But the thing about communication that I think is important is like, when the dog push several buttons, often in a sequence, you know, the big question is, is this random? Or do they have some kind of order? And is this order just purely matching what they've been trained with or is it potentially novel? Right. So, I can say I want food and maybe that's what you're trained, but do I ever switch to want outside or want water or want toy? And if I do that and basically I've now moved on from like learning just to sequence, to actually learning what want means and substituting things that I want after that. And so, part of the open question for us, and this is again, another paper we have under review, is can we show to what degree the sequences are random or not? And I can tell you, I can give you a little piece of news. They're not random, so that's good news. But then, you know, the work needs to go into what degree are they flexible or are they always the same sequences again repeated because those are the ones that are trained by the humans? Either way, what I hope is the case and I think people who are training with the buttons should comment on this is, I do think that giving dogs and cats a chance to initiate the communication, basically having them tell you when they're hungry or tired or when they want to play or when they want outside, obviously gives them a little more of voice and control over their life. And I think, you know, if we care about them, having them tell you what they need instead of us just trying to guess it, it's hopefully a contribution to their welfare.

MG: The research is fascinating, and I look forward to hearing more about it. Frederico, thank you very much.

FREDERICO RASSANO: Thank you for having me.

MG: Federico Rossano is an associate professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, and head of the Comparative Cognition Lab.

[Music: Theme]

Baseball-sized hailstones batter Alberta

Guests: Julien Brimelow

MG: This is The Current. My name is Matt Galloway.

[Sound: Smashing]

MG: If you can believe it, that smashing sound you're hearing is hail coming down hard enough to break a house window, pile up on the living room floor. Puneet Sohal’s family home is one of many across Calgary that suffered serious damage during the hailstorm that ripped across that city last month.

SOUNDCLIP

PUNEET SOHAL: Hail started coming through, water started pouring everywhere. It started rushing to the basement. There was water at the front door and everything. Everybody was panicking. It was going on for like 30 minutes. Rain, everything. Hail. And the upstairs window is damaged, the solar panels are damaged outside. If you could go see, everything's damaged. Like, everything's changed.

MG: Across the city, the destruction was shocking. Hail, sometimes the size of baseballs, bashed in car windows, damaged ten per cent of the West Jet fleet, pierced the roof of the Calgary Airport and sent water gushing onto the concourse. The Insurance Bureau of Canada last week announced claims had reached $2.8 billion. That's billion with a B. And that makes it the second most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history. Only behind the Fort McMurray fire of 2016. Julien Brimelow is an adjunct professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Western University, also executive director of the Northern Hail Project. He's in Edmonton. Julian, good morning.

JULIAN BRIMELOW: Good morning, Matt.

MG: When you saw the price tag for the damage from last month's hailstorm, $2.8 billion, what went through your mind?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: To be honest, we were taken aback. It was a bit of a shock. We were expecting it to be a big number, but not $2.8 billion.

MG: I mentioned some of the things that happened, and if people saw the footage and some of the social media videos after, they would get a sense of it. Your researchers were looking at the damage in the immediate aftermath. Paint us a picture of the kind of things you saw.

JULIAN BRIMELOW: Yeah, that's correct. We were out for about five days following the event, doing what we call a forensic level damages survey. And, you know, it was very humbling to walk around those neighbourhoods and to see the extent and level of damage. Siding from houses were just shredded and strewn all over the sidewalks and the gardens, windows were smashed. Some solar panels were damaged, but not as many as we thought there would be. Most cars on the street sustained serious damage, you know, windshields cracked or broken, rear windows smashed in and cars just dented. Trees were denuded. They had lost all their leaves and, you know, the bark on the trees was severely damaged. So, yeah, it was extensive. And it was very impressive.

MG: How big were the hailstones? I said the size of baseballs, is that common?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: It is. We do get hailed at large in Alberta, in hail alley. Most of the hail of that storm was around about, you know, a golf ball or a bit bigger. But we do have unconfirmed reports of hail that, you know, like you said, was tennis ball or baseball.

MG: Hail alley? That's the name that people have designated where a storm like this would rip through?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: That's correct. So, it's an area along the foothills in Alberta, the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where we have a high frequency of hailstorms during the summer months. It's a short hail season. You know, it starts in June and starts to wind down in August. It's very short, but very intense. And unfortunately, we have a lot of assets in hail alley and Calgary's one of the big cities that's located in hail alley.

MG: When you go out to collect information on this, I mean, the storm might pick back up again. Do you have to take precautions so that you don't get clobbered with giant pieces of hail falling from the sky?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: Yeah, we do. You know, safety is always our first priority when we're out on a mission to sample the hail swath. So, we'll go in behind the storm when the mission lead deams it to be safe, and we'll collect and preserve the hail in special battery powered ice chests. And but, you know, if there is hail falling, we'll put helmets on. And we do have a lightning detection system in the vehicle to-- so the coordinator can keep an eye on lightning activity in the area. But yeah, you have to be very wary. Like you said, things can change very quickly and you have to have a lot of situational awareness when you're out there.

MG: This is the second serious hail storm to hit the city of Calgary in four years. Is your sense that they're becoming more common?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: We're looking into that. It's a good question and we hope it isn't part of an emerging trend. But we need to look at more data before we can make that assessment. It's, you know, it-- Calgary was on borrowed time. They'd gone a fairly long time without any really serious hailstorms. And a lot of us in the community were worried about, okay, it's just a matter of time now before we have our first billion dollar storm. And then that did happen. But not many of us were expecting it to happen again within, you know, five years. And unfortunately, some folks who were affected by the first storm in 2020 were hit again with this storm in August.

MG: So, what do you do about that? We just have a minute and a bit left. But I mean, I had read somewhere like one in five homes or more than that were impacted in the city. If you live in an area called hail alley, chances are you're expecting hail at some point in time. How do you become resilient against that?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: That's a good question. It's something also that we're working at with the Northern Hail Project. But, you know, build back better, think about fire smart with communities to try and be more resilient against fires. We're hoping to, you know, change the mindset of municipalities and government to help us do that. There are things we can do. The technology is available now. It's just a question of getting some momentum to get those new technologies implemented.

MG: Technologies like what?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: Oh, better siding, for example. Vinyl siding, which is very common out west here, is, you know, another good material to put on the side of your house. We can have impact resistant shingles on your roof, asphalt shingles that perform much better for larger hail. And you know, even something as simple as putting your car away when a storm is approaching in the summer months. And a lot of the damage from the storm was to, you know, auto, to vehicles.

MG: And if you don't have a garage or somewhere to park your car, I mean, is there a way to protect it from giant pieces of ice?

JULIAN BRIMELOW: You know, we think about this a lot, right? Just-- we need to test this. But we're thinking that just a heavy blanket over your car would make a big difference because it will help disperse the energy from the hailstones. If you have access to something like that, you know, if you're at the mall, that's obviously a problem. But if you're home, that's something you can try and do. And as soon as it starts raining, the way that the water will hold the blanket down. You know, even if it's a heavy blanket, it's not going to blow away very easily. So, something like that might help. But if anyone out there has got an idea, they can make a lot of money.

MG: Julian, thank you very much for this. Top of mind for people in hail alley and elsewhere.

JULIAN BRIMELOW: Great. Thanks for having me.

MG: Julian Brimelow is executive director of the Northern Hail Project.

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MG: And that is The Current for this Wednesday, the 18th of September. Q is up next on CBC Radio one. My name's Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll see you tomorrow.

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Wednesday September 18, 2024 Full Transcript

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