May 23, 2010: Can Gareth Thomas really be the world's ONLY gay rugby player? - Canadian actor, Diego Matamoros - A Rare Musical Treat
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Listen to Hour One:
Hour 2: A Conversation with the great Canadian actor, Diego Matamoros - Canadian theatre actor Diego Matamoros was here to here to talk about thespian leaps made by him, and other tools of his acting trade
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Hour 3: A Conversation with Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader - Bernhard Schlink's novel, The Reader was one of the most popular and highly acclaimed novels of the last twenty years.
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Elsewhere on show - never ending car wars, some of your mail and in our final hour a rare musical treat; Renee Rosnes and Bill Charlap are two of the best jazz pianists anywhere. And they happen to be married to each other. We'll have them play us a couple of tunes for you.
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Music
Song: Blues Walk
Artist: Joe Sealy and Paul Novotny
Album: Duel Vision
Michael's Essay
Michael talks about the War on Cars.
Music
Song: True Blue
Artist: Songs
Album: Joe Sealy and Paul Novotny
Can Gareth Thomas really be the world's ONLY gay rugby player?
He has been called the world's bravest athlete in a sport that has been called war minus the shooting. Gareth Thomas plays rugby; in fact he is one of the world's best players. And one of the toughest. He has broken his nose five times, fractured both shoulders and has lost a handful of teeth. But his courage has nothing to do with his play on the field.
Gareth Thomas is the only professional athlete now playing to declare to the world that he is gay. Now, It is not unusual when a prominent person says he or she is gay. We have gay politicians and gay actors but not one professional athlete on the planet has come out of the closet. Except Gareth Thomas.
Given the ubiquity of professional sport in North America----hockey, football, baseball, basketball,--- it is a safe bet that some or many of these athletes are gay. Thomas is a legend in Welsh rugby, the most macho player in that most macho of sports; a man with a shelfful of trophies.
Last December, when he declared his homosexuality, the British sports community was shocked. It was a difficult step for him to take, but his teams, his parents and his ex-wife Jemma have supported his decision. Gareth Thomas was in the BBC studio in Werexham, Wales.
Music
Song: Madrona
Artist: The Rakish Angles
Album: The Rakish Angles
The Maker's Hands - Documentary
"Of many Arts, one surpasses all."
When the Dutch composer Jakob Van Eyck wrote these words in the mid-1600s, he wasn't talking about music or oil painting, but about lace making. Lace was a commodity prized for its beauty and extravagance, so revered [at one point] that in France, by law, only the nobility could wear it.
A few hundred years later, lace has all but disappeared. Gone from Bruges and Chantilly, from Honiton and Bedfordshire, lace no longer builds towns, and only a smattering of artisans still use needles and bobbins to create the intricate patterns by hand.
A cluster of lacemakers ply their trade in a most unlikely place: the fabled temple town of Cape Comorin, in India's southern tip. A sacred meeting place of three seas, Cape Comorin is a famous Hindu pilgrimage site, it's also one of the last places anywhere in the world to still make fine, European handmade lace.
The spectacular pieces created by this cottage industry end up in boutiques on Madison Avenue and at dinner parties and wedding ceremonies half a world away.
This is not a modern story of outsourcing: Lace making has quietly survived In Cape Comorin for nearly 200 years. Indeed, in the hands of these poor Indian women lie the last vestiges of a quintessentially European art.
In The Maker's Hands, Sarmishta Subramanian brought us their story, and the tale of am anachronistic commodity fighting for its existence.
Music
Song: Le Bisou
Artist: Sultan's of String
Album: Yalla! Yalla!
Music
Song: La Mer
Artist: Ron Davis
Album: My Mother's Father's Song
Disease Dollars Again
In British Columbia, the Government has decided to stop paying for eye exams and has said that getting glasses shouldn't require an eye exam or a optometrist's prescription...just go into an optician or eyeglass dispenser and ask for what you need. You can even dpo it on-line. Optometrists are outraged and warn that increases in blindness from glaucoma are inevitable.In Ontario, the Government has decided that the cost of prescription drugs is out of whack so they are changing the way pharmacists get paid by setting limits on the cost of generic alternatives to patent drugs. Pharmacists are outraged and claim that patients will be affected by the reduced services that pharmacists will be able to provide.
And all across the country MS suffers are demanding that governments fast track a controversial new treatment developed in Italy but not yet tested through clinical trials. Governments say they need proof that it is effective, suffers and their families are outraged and say that people will die horrible deaths if Governments don't act.
more and more health care decisions are being made based on economic calculations. You can hardly blame the governments...there are predictions that health care costs might soon absorb 50% of all budgets and there are doom and gloom predictions that as the baby boomers age, health care costs will shoot through the roof...some jeremiahs are suggesting that health care for baby boomers will bankrupt western democracies. But surely economics have always been at the heart of the health care calculation.
That would be the view of Professor Robert Evans. His entire care has been in the field of health economics. He is on the faculty of economics at UBC and a founding member of the Center for health services and policy research. He is the author of numerous papers and books, including "Strained Mercy: The Economics of Canadian Health Care".
Professor Evans was in a studio on the campus of UBC.
Music
Song: Delivery
Artist: The Rakish Angles
Album: The Rakish Angles
Mail Pack
Last week on the program, Michael opined that we discriminate too much and too freqently against the overweight among us.
Also on last week's program, he spoke to two historians who have been trying in vain to get access to the RCMPs files onTommy Douglas, They spied on the man for pretty much all of his political life. And even though he has been dead for more than two decades, "National Security" has been invoked to keep the files sealed.
We have had a couple of interviews on the program discussing the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. And in particular we've spoken about what it means for possible oil drilling and exploration off our own shores.
Thanks to all of your out there for keeping me on my toes every day. Do write to us.We love to hear from you about anything you hear on the program. You can email us or you can write us a letter at: Box 500, Terminal A, Toronto M5W 1E6.
A Conversation with Diego Matamoros
A couple of weeks ago, I went to theatre. It was the opening of Irish Brian Friel's play Faith Healer by Toronto's Soulpepper company.v It was one of those theatrical experiences that stays with you for a very long time. In large part because of Diego Matamoros, the actor who plays the faith healer's manager, Teddy.
It's just the latest acting challenge Diego Matamoros has had in a career of taking characters on a page and bringing them to life with power and nuance. In his thirty year career he's taken on Shakespeare, Chekov, Albee, Beckett, Pinter, Ibsen to name a few. He has won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards and a Gemini. He is also a founding member of the Soulpepper Theatre Company, now one of the most respected in the world. We welcomed Diego Matamoros to our studiofor the show.
Music
Song: Rhythmathon
Artist: Ron Davis
Album: Best Seller
Music
Song: Guiro
Artist: The Rakish Angles
Album: The Rakish Angles
A Conversation with Bernhard Schlink
How does one live in the shadow of the worst crimes in human history? And how does one write about it? These questions are at the core of Bernhard Schlink's new book, Guilt About the Past - a collection of essays based on the Weidenfeld Lectures he delivered at Oxford University. Using the Holocaust and postwar Germany as an example, he looks at how history affects a nation's future, and its impact on the writers who try to grapple with genocide and other atrocitites. What is the difference between individual and collective guilt? What of the children and grandchildren whose relatives were somehow involved in these events...are they also guilty of the sins of their predecessors? Can we achieve truth and reconciliation? Is culpability finite?Professor Schlink teaches law and was a judge - but he's perhaps best known as the author of the immensely popular novel, The Reader, which has been published in 37 countries and became an Academy Award winning film in 2008. The Reader takes place in Germany after the second world war - a teenage boy has an illicit affair with a woman twice his age. The boy discovers his lover has an ugly past...as a concentration camp guard who committed horrible crimes. The Reader is, in essense, about truth and reconciliation, and about how one generation comes to terms with the crimes of another. These are themes that imbue much of Benhard Schlink's writing.
Bernhard Schlink joined Michael in our Toronto studio.
Music
Song: Pentamento
Artist: Manteca
Album: Fun Fun
Album Feature
Michael spoke with jazz pianists Renee Rosnes and Bill Charlap.
Music
Song: Chorinho
Artist: Renee Rosnes and Bill Charlap
Album: Double Portrait
Music
Song: Cool
Artist: Renee Rosnes and Bill Charlap
Album: Double Portrait
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