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The AIH Transcript For February 03, 2022

[hosts]Carol Off, Chris Howden[/hosts]

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

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

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

CH: Tonight:

CO: Vanished -- but not without a trace. While the Taliban continues to seek international recognition, a British journalist links the regime to the disappearances -- and, often, the deaths -- of women in Afghanistan.

CH: Serving papers so it can serve dinners. Brookings, Oregon tells churches it can only serve two meals a week to people experiencing homelessness -- but one church refuses to swallow what the city is dishing out.

CO: A paper for a paper. The Malheur Enterprise newspaper is up for sale -- but if you're interested, you can't just write a cheque -- you have to write a convincing essay as well.

CH: Ahead of the game. She endured a lot more than locker-room talk to get locker-room interviews -- but the late hockey reporter Robin Herman insisted on the same rights her male colleagues had.

CO: Shrilly you jest. For months now, a high-pitched sound has been irritating residents of a French town -- and now, local authorities are stepping up their search for whatever's whistling while they work.

CH: And… excess prevents access. Jeff Bezos's new boat is so gigantic that the city of Rotterdam has agreed to dismantle a historic bridge so it can physically get to the sea -- and a city councillor is among those feeling yacht and bothered.

CH: As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that figures if a bridge can't fit a boat, the boat should be abridged.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Afghanistan Taliban Women Disappear, Rotterdam Bridge, Oregon Newspaper For Sale

Afghanistan Taliban Women Disappear

Guest: Charlie Faulkner

CH: Women in Afghanistan are disappearing at an alarming rate. While Taliban officials have been holding talks with foreign governments about aid and official recognition, women are vanishing in Afghanistan. Some have been found dead. The Taliban has been accused of kidnapping at least six women's rights activists -- and there are increasing calls for their release. Charlie Faulkner is the Afghanistan foreign correspondent for The Times of London. She's been unearthing stories of disappearing women. We reached her in Kabul. And a warning, the will be discussing disturbing details about abductions and killings.

CO: Charlie, the details in your report are just horrific. And I want to ask you, first of all, about one woman named Fariba. It's not her real name, but can you tell us why she got this visit from the Taliban?

CHARLIE FAULKNER: Yeah, sure. Fariba had… fariba's family… so, Fariba is mother, a widowed mother. Her family had been experiencing intimidation tactics by the Taliban forces in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, and they'd been visited a few times, told… and they believe they were targeted because her son was a police officer during the previous government. They told him to stay in the house, and they would offer protection. They came knocking and said that the family should have to give up the house to the new authorities. And they also said that the son was hiding weapons in the home, which is an allegation the family completely denied.

CO: How did she respond to all of that?

CF: She… she was…. she was pretty feisty, from what I've been told. You know, she refused to let them come into the house. She refused to talk to… you know, her response was, I'm a widow, I'm a mother. What should I do if I have no home? You know, you're not taking my home? And then one afternoon, they… according to the people who have given me information about this case, the Taliban authorities in the city arrived at the door and told her that actually, they were going to… to help her. They were going to dismiss her son's case. And they lured her out. And then, a few minutes later, the family never heard from her again. The following morning, the children found her body in a hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif.

CO: You have documented that this is not an exception. This is not unusual. This is happening to a number of women, and you spoke to the staff at the Mazare Sharif Regional Hospital. What have you learnt?

CF: Yes, I spoke to a number of medical staff at the hospital. The picture that they told me, you know, corroborated one another's version of what was going on there, which is that they're getting a number of bodies coming in each month that are brought in by the Taliban. They don't know who is responsible for the deaths, but the Taliban are bringing them in. They are… the staff are not allowed to carry out post-mortem examinations, and they're not allowed to register the deaths. They say that from what they have been able to see of the bodies that they're usually… they have gunshot wounds to the head or chest or both. And they are largely women. But… but they are both men and women that are coming in.

CO: But most of them are women?

CF: Yeah, that's… that's what I was told at the hospital, yeah.

CO: In fact, some of the cases you have there were they… people called the police when they found that a woman had been shot, and the same car that had done the shooting returned to do the… to take the body away.

CF: Yes. So that's what one witness in the area told me that, yes, they'd heard gunshots. They'd gone out to see what was going on, and they saw a police ranger speeding away from the scene of where a young woman was lying dead on this patch of land. They called the police… somebody called the police, and the same ranger returned to collect the body. And another worrying part of what's going on up in Mazar-i-Sharif as well is this what seems to be acting outside of judicial process. So another example was that there was a lady that was found to be in a room with three men, and the accusation was that she was a sex worker. We have no idea whether that was the case, but the Taliban were called, and so was a local community leader. And a witness to that incident explained that the Taliban who arrived had been given instructions to kill the woman. And luckily, this community leader managed to convince them not to. But that is extremely disturbing, the fact that that there was, you know, no judicial process and no… no going through the court system. Just… just immediately decided that she was guilty and needed to be killed for it.

CO: There's another woman who shared a very distressing video of someone screaming for help as the Taliban arrived. Can you tell us about that?

CF: Absolutely, she was one of the sort of main organizers, I believe, behind a protest this month… in January, last month, sorry. A few weeks, about three weeks ago now. And her, and I think it was her three sisters, and another female protester disappeared two weeks ago today, in fact. So [she] put out a really distressing video at the time that what she says the Taliban security forces were banging on her door. And further reporting that's been done since then, we've… we've seen that witnesses say that men who looked… armed men who looked like Taliban entered the apartment and arrested [her] and her three sisters. And we've heard nothing about these ladies since. The Taliban have completely denied any involvement in the disappearance, and they say they've got no idea where these women are. And there has just been total silence now for two weeks.

CO: Now, just one final question about you. because I know you… your focus is on the stories of these women who are disappearing, but you are a woman, one of the few remaining foreign correspondents working in Afghanistan. How dangerous is it for you?

CF: Being a foreign journalist puts me in a hugely privileged position. We're not treated the same in any way compared to… to Afghans. Being a woman certainly does mean that I face more restrictions than my male counterparts. But overall, because of being international, because of being a foreigner, we have much better treatment and are given far more access. And we have… we face far less risk than… than… than an Afghan journalist would. For example, trying to cover a protest a few weeks ago, my colleague and I were entirely blocked by the Taliban, but they spoke to us very politely. Whereas the way they spoke to the women trying to protest, and the way they spoke to my Afghan driver, was really pretty awful. So we are certainly being treated very, very differently. But that's not to say that, you know, we shouldn't be mindful of the risks involved.

CO: Charlie, we'll leave it there. And so, take care of yourself. I appreciate speaking with you, though. Thank you.

CF: Thanks very much, Carol.

CO: Bye-bye.

CH: Charlie Faulkner is a foreign correspondent for the British newspaper The Times. We reached her in Kabul, Afghanistan.

[Music: Acoustic guitar]

Rotterdam Bridge

Guest: Stephan Leewis

CH: [sigh] Don't you hate it when your megayacht is almost finished, when you realize, to your extreme disgruntlement, that there's a huge, stupid obstacle preventing your multi-hundred-million dollar plaything from getting from the shipyard to the ocean? If you know that exact feeling, you're only one person: billionaire Jeff Bezos. And now, Mr. Bezos has successfully lobbied the City of Rotterdam to dismantle a historic bridge so that his ludicrously enormous megayacht can pass through. Mr. Bezos says he'll pay to have the bridge rebuilt. But regardless, the plan is not sitting well with Rotterdam residents. Including city councillor Stephan Leewis. We reached Mr. Leewis in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

CO: Stephan, what was your first reaction when you heard about the plan to dismantle the Hef Bridge?

STEPHAN LEEWIS: Disbelief. I really couldn't believe that we are dismantling -- even the temporarily -- one of these great monuments we have in the city.

CO: This bridge has a great history and a great connection to people in Rotterdam, doesn't it?

SL: Yeah, it does. It's a very old bridge, at least according to Rotterdam standards. We are not that old a city. It's from the 1880s, and it's the first train bridge that was built in Rotterdam. It's a really nice industrial bridge. It's no longer in use because the train now runs through a tunnel under the… the… the River Nieuwe Maas. But the bridge is kept because it's just such a nice looking bridge, and it's now… it's a monument to… to a past that is now gone.

CO: Mr. Bezos says that he will pay for dismantling it and reassembling it, but he just… I mean, his boat won't fit under it.

SL: Yeah, it's true that he's paying for it. But I think your listeners wouldn't like… like the sound of the Tower Bridge being dismantled just because the boat of Mr. Bezos doesn't fit through it. It's something like that. The bridge has the same feeling for… for most people in Rotterdam as the Tower Bridge for… for many, many people in London.

CO: But I mean, this is a harbour that it's going into from a river. So there must be… there must be many boats that are quite large or sailboats that are tall that have to have that bridge lifted. So what do you know about this boat that Mr. Bezos has had built that means that it can't fit under that bridge?

SL: Yeah, it's an extreme superyacht. Actually, it's one of the five biggest yachts in the world. There are a few companies within our area that have been specializing in the building of these types of yachts. But yachts as of themselves are going bigger and bigger. And then, this is the result. That now, they have built such a large yachts that it can no longer fit through this particular bridge.

CO: So it's a three-masted sailboat yacht.

SL: Yeah, yeah.

CO: Can you… do you have any idea what that looks like?

SL: I've seen some, some pictures. It's… it… it looks like a regular yacht, but then given steroids.

CO: [laughing] It's a super-sized yacht. Okay, so the reason why it has to pass through there is that it's built in a shipyard in Rotterdam, right? And so, is that their speciality? Are they… they building these kinds of boats?

SL: Well, actually, it's built in a shipyard outside of Rotterdam in another municipality, and they are specializing in these types of yachts. The Dutch ship builders are actually getting quite renowned for building these yachts. Unfortunately, I would say.

CO: but unfortunately, why? Why unfortunately?

SL: Well, I find these… these kinds of superyachts are quite a waste of both capital and materials. They are usually only used for a few days a year, while they cost… this yacht will cost around 500 million euros, and a lot of materials are used in it just for a few days of fun for Mr. Bezos.

CO: That is wild.

SL: And I find that… I find that an absolute waste in a time in which sustainability is becoming much more important.

CO: And so, do people in Rotterdam share your view?

SL: Well, of course not all of them, but a lot of people are at least pretty mad about the bridge being dismantled for more than a week, yeah.

CO: But, okay, before this shipyard began to build the boat, by the time it was commissioned, they must have known that they would have to dismantle that bridge to get it out, right?

SL: Yeah, I would guess so. But this is actually the first time we are hearing about it. So maybe the shipbuilder thought, well, we're going to gamble, and they're probably not going to say no. Or, already there was some communication with city hall. I don't know. I've asked for the data in the city council next week. So then I'll know how… how did this happen? But for now, I have a lot of questions about that particular issue, yes.

CO: What are your questions?

SL: Well, when did this come up? And how did this construction, this… this type of deal? How did it come together? I've heard the city will not be paying for it. Mr Bezos or the shipbuilder will be paying for it. But will he only be paying for the work that needs to be done on the bridge? Or will he also be compensating the people that live around the bridge because their houses just directly next to the bridge will be having night work, and… and a lot of noise around their houses?

CO: Obviously, there are jobs that come with this. It's an industry now to… to build these superyachts in the area around Rotterdam. That the people would go along with it because it's… it's an industry. It's… it's a business that they… that they want to encourage.

SL: Yeah, I think that is the argument. It's at least the argument that has for now come out of city hall that… that such a large amount of jobs are… are made by… by making these types of boats that it's… that it's okay to do this. Yeah, I want everyone to have a job, but you have… I have serious questions about if… if those jobs have these kinds of effects? Because just now for the ship of Mr. Bezos, what I'm questioning is id Mr. Bezos has this ship, then probably another billionaire will want to have another ship that is a little tiny bit bigger than this ship. Are we going to dismantle this bridge every half a year or something like that?

CO: Well, that can't… it was built in the 1880s. Even if they put it back together, it can't be good to keep taking this bridge apart?

SL: No, no. No, it can't be.

CO: Stephan, we will leave it there. And I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

SL: Yeah, thank you as well.

CO: Bye-bye.

SL: Bye.

CH: Stephan Leewis is a city councilor in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. After we did that interview, the New York Times reported that officials have backed off their approval of the dismantling -- saying in a statement that the city had not yet approved the plan.

[Music: French court piano]

Ottawa Women’s Shelter

CH: The protests disrupting downtown Ottawa have been going on for about a week now. And as long as they do go on, Amanda Johnson will continue to worry about the effect they're having on her shelter's clients. Ms. Johnson is the assistant manager of Cornerstone Housing for Women. Today, she said the situation downtown has prevented women from accessing services they need -- and made them feel unsafe. She spoke about the preparations the shelter made ahead of the protest.

SOUNDCLIP

AMANDA JOHNSON: We did make sure that there was meals that we had prepped ahead of time, just so that the the women were able to, you know, have food and everything. Because we were concerned about being able to get the food in as we just have moved back to the shelter. And right now, we're having food delivered in. We ensured that we had security that would be coming to help support the women and offer rounds around the shelter. We also had preparation to have extra staff come on, just to make sure that if staff couldn't get in or if they needed extra support, that we had that, as well as having management on standby to be able to come to the shelter and support women and frontline staff as needed.

HALLIE COTNAM: Amanda, can you describe what's happened to some of the women who've gone outside? What… what kind of experience they've had?

AJ: Yeah. So, I know for some of the women, they've really run into people getting in their face, yelling, they just don't feel safe in general. I think it's just the loud noises that are a lot. I know for some women, you know, they've run into not feeling comfortable, you know, being able to go down the street, get to, you know, even Tim's to be able to get their coffee in the morning. To being able to, you know, get a bus because they're uncertain if the bus is coming. They're uncertain what path to take or where to go. So I think, you know, going outside for the women, they really, really struggled with just uncertainty, feeling safe. You know… you know, a lot of women have significant trauma and PTSD and all that other stuff that comes with it. So the loud noises make it very uncertain for them to be able to go outside. And when they do, they're worried about being accosted. And some of them have been yelled at. Protesters have been in their faces, so, you know, they've really struggled with that.

HC: Understand that at least one of the women connected Cornerstone has had to go to the hospital because of this. Can you explain what happened?

AJ: So just for full transparency, I wasn't on shift at that time, so I don't want to fully speak to it. But I know that she, speaking with other supervisors, she went to the hospital. She checked herself in because the loud noises were just too stressful for her, and she wasn't able to… to mentally, like, handle it. So she checked herself in to get supports and to make sure that she would be able to be okay.

CH: That was Amanda Johnson, assistant manager at Cornerstone Housing for Women, speaking with the CBC's Hallie Cotnam today on Ottawa Morning.

[Music: Indie rock]

Oregon Newspaper For Sale

Guest: Les Zaitz

CH: The Malheur Enterprise is a newspaper based in the small town of Vale, Oregon. And it could be yours. It's seeking a new owner. But you can't just show up with a cheque. You have to prove that you know a thing or two about how to make a sentence… be… good for reading by… by people. Potential buyers must write an essay explaining why they should get a shot at taking it on. Les Zaitz is the owner, editor and publisher of The Malheur Enterprise. We reached him in John Day, Oregon.

CO: Les, why an essay? What are you hoping to discover about potential buyers of your paper?

LES ZAITZ: Well, I want to see two things. I want to see a passion, a passion for… for local journalism, a passion for improving journalism, and a passion for serving people with good information that can be trusted. And I'm looking for ambition. I'm looking for someone that sees the potential for local news that is so much a part of the conversation in journalism circles these days that they're ready to embrace some of the innovations and maybe funding streams to help propel the enterprise to the next level.

CO: And so, an ideal buyer, what would they say? What would they write in their essay to convince you they had that passion and ambition?

LZ: Where do I mail the cheque? [laughing] Well, what they would describe for me is their own skill and experience. It would show an understanding of the state of journalism in the United States. And particularly, I'm really going to be looking for an understanding of the issue of trust in the media. That's going to be absolutely critical.

CO: When you say… I know you're only partially joking. The answer would be, where should I send the cheque? But you're looking for that commitment, too, right?

LZ: Well, yes, this is what makes this opportunity extraordinary. So our… our family is willing to sort of be the bank for the right person. We understand that journalists typically are not venture capitalists, aren't passing around funds from a hedge fund. That… that they have a notebook and a laptop. So for the right person with the right ambition and the right approach to journalism, we were going to help make the transition and the purchase as… as easy as possible. But we're not going to give it away. This is not a give us a dollar, and you get the keys deal.

CO: And so, would you sell the paper to anyone who represented a chain or a newspaper group?

LZ: No, we've decided not to do that. And it's unlikely… even if we wanted to, I think The Enterprise is too remotely located, and it's too small to fit the business model of most groups and national chains. And we think that our community will attract the type of owners we're looking for that will be deeply committed to the community and not just deeply committed to the bottom line.

CO: Can you give us a sense of the pitch you've made? Because it's written down, you've described what the paper has done, what they've… what you've accomplished. Some of… and one of them in particular. Maybe you could tell us about the time that you got the community to pitch in money to help access public records?

LZ: Last year, I think it was, a local government that we have been reporting on pretty relentlessly hit us with a pretty sizable fee for getting government documents that ordinarily we would never be charged for. But I decided to engage our readers in the community. And I went to the community online and in our paper and said, here's the situation. This government wants this amount of money. We can't afford it. We think these documents belong to you. You need to see this information. Can you help us pay this bill? And we were stunned that within three days, we had 65 people or more who contributed a total of about $4,000. That type of relationship with the community is just invaluable.

CO: What you're describing is something that's just the envy of every news operation, especially in small places. If you don't have that loyalty from the community, you can't keep it, can you?

LZ: No. You survive because of that community. And, you know, any news operation has to be very, very finely attuned to its responsibility to the community. I can tell you, you know, regularly we get contacted by people who say, well, I'm coming to you with this tip because I understand you aren't afraid to go after a hard story or a controversial story. And it isn't that we just… we're not scandal mongers. We are just getting under the hood of government, so to speak, to see what's really going on.

CO: You've won a bunch of awards for your investigative reporting, too, right?

LZ Yes, I've had a very fortunate career. I've been… I'm coming up on 50 years of this profession. And so, my skill set is a result of those who've gone before me and who turned around and shared back what they learned. And that's kind of where I am with The Enterprise is I've been the beneficiary of a lot of really good training and good experience. And now, it's time for me to turn around and hand it to the next person on the rung behind me.

CO: But aren't you going to miss it?

LZ: No, look --

CO: [laughing] Are you sure?

LZ: Well, you know, none of my friends believe me for a moment when they… they think I will retire entirely. But no, I won't miss it because I've accomplished everything that I want to accomplish professionally. I think that journalism is at a pivotal point in history. And I think it's really time to turn… turn this work over to folks who have a longer trajectory remaining in their careers than I do.

CO: What do you think that the big newspapers and the big, I guess, hedge fund-funded organizations [chuckling] could learn from a paper like yours?

LZ: Well, I think they have to go back to what's their purpose? So I think the lesson really is that you have to pay attention to your market, be relentlessly focussed on delivering the best, highest quality content you can to that market, and no one else can replicate. And I think we've seen that across the country, across the continent, where… where newspapers have thinned down. They've… they've continued to jack up subscription prices for less product and think that readers haven't noticed. Well, that's… that's just a foolish business model. Readers do notice, and they're walking.

CO: Les, I think you have the passion to own this paper. [both laughing]

LZ: Well, I've never been accused of being subtle.

CO: I wish you luck finding someone, and a good person, good group to run your paper and own it. And good luck and have a happy retirement.

LZ: Okay. Thanks for your time.

CO: Bye, Les.

LZ: Bye.

CH: Les Zaitz is the owner, editor and publisher of The Malheur Enterprise. We reached him in John Day, Oregon.

[Music: Folk]

Part 2: Oregon Church Meals, Robin Herman Obit

Oregon Church Meals

Guest: Father Bernie Lindley

CH: Over the past two years, food insecurity has become a major problem everywhere. So, in a lot of places, community groups, aid agencies, and churches have stepped in to provide help. Sometimes by setting up free food programs. You'd think that kind of generosity would be welcomed. But in the small city of Brookings, Oregon, the local council passed an ordinance preventing churches from serving people experiencing homelessness more than two free meals a week. If that seems small-minded to you, St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Brookings agrees. And now, the church and its diocese are suing the city. Father Bernie Lindley is the pastor at St. Timothy's church. He's in Brookings, Oregon.

CO: Father Bernie, what did you think when the city ordered your church to scale down its meal services to twice a week?

FATHER BERNIE LINDLEY: It kind of came as a surprise. We didn't expect to have the city try to limit the people that we could feed and when we could feed them. And because, you know, we can obviously feed parishioners during coffee hour after a worship service. But to… you know, on a Sunday afternoon. But… or a Sunday morning. But to say that we can't feed people on a Monday afternoon that are hungry and, you know, experiencing some sort of… some sort of food insecurity, it surprised me.

CO: Now… but you have been doing -- your church has been doing -- this for decades, right? So what changed? Why… why was there a problem now?

FBL: Well, it had to do with some different things about the pandemic. Back in 2020, so when the pandemic kind of came into, you know, when the lockdowns and things happened back in March and April of 2020, the city of Brookings had asked us if we were willing to host up to three cars for car camping in our parking lot, and they made that… they made that option available to all the churches in town. There's 15 churches in the city limits, and they extended the invitation to all 15 of those churches. And we were the only ones who applied for that permit. So we had three different people who were living in their cars, and that went on for several months. You know, it went on for over a year. And what happened was people were experiencing flare-ups in their emotional and mental stability. It would get kind of rambunctious at times. And sometimes, into the evening, they would be yelling at each other. And it made things… it was worrisome for the people who lived across the street.

CO: Right.

FBL: We're certainly sensitive to that. And so, we stopped the car camping.

CO: but city council, Brookings City Council, decided that this had to be reduced to only feeding people twice a week. And you had to get a permit to do that. And so, what… what… they had complaints, right? A lot of complaints from… from people, residents in the neighbourhood. Is that the case?

FBL: Yeah. So this all stemmed from the car camping. When the car camping stopped, we had solved the chaos. The chaos problem was… was mitigated. And so, to go forward with trying to limit the number of people who come to our church building was trying to, like, solve a problem that had already been solved. That's my opinion.

CO: But they said the complaints from people apparently were that there were… there was trespassing and littering. And I guess the noise you said was mitigated with helping those… those women. But there were other issues that they had complained about, right?

FBL: Yeah. So when it comes to… I haven't seen the littering that they talk about. When it comes to the trespassing, you know, I don't know much about that either. But we're working with the city police department to make sure that people obey the laws. And certainly, when people are on our church grounds, if they misbehave, we have them trespass from the church grounds. So, you know, we do what we can in order to mitigate the impact on the neighbourhood, for sure.

CO: But you're obviously doing what you can in order to feed people. And so you… I understand some of the other churches that we're sort of sharing this responsibility because of all the restrictions, they reduced or stopped doing it. So it really became St. Timothy's that was the centre for this kind of helping people who didn't have… or had food insecurity, right?

FBL: Yeah. So we feed… so at the time, there's four churches that are involved in the feeding ministry here because we're trying to do seven days a week so that everybody can have access to a prepared meal every day. And so, the… what happened, of course, was the pandemic made it so that some of the… two of the churches had to stop feeding. The Brookings Presbyterian Church continued all the way through to feed on Thursdays. But we had already been feeding four days a week, and so we just picked it up to six days a week. And then, eventually, the Roman Catholic Church started feeding again, and so did the Lutheran Church here in town. And so we went back to four days a week again. So we were able to distribute the responsibility again at that point. But, you know, when the city said, well, we want to limit you to two days a week when we're already feeding four, that wasn't something we could comply with.

CO: How did you come to decide that you're going to sue the city because of its attempt to reduce meal service for people?

FBL: Well, they passed an ordinance. You know, the city council passed an ordinance saying that what we were doing was illegal. And, you know, if we fed more than two days a week… we had to apply for a permit, you know, in order to feed two days a week. And we didn't want to apply for that permit because we're feeding four days a week. And not only that, we don't feel that a municipality should be trying to tell us how we serve people in the name of Jesus. We feel like that… that should be something that our faith dictates to us. So, we… we were very reluctant to go along with that. And so, we didn't apply for the permit. And so, on Friday, January 28th, we were in violation of that ordinance because we fed that day without the permit. And that's the day that we filed our lawsuit in federal court.

CO: Right. And you filed the suit under the… under the argument that it was… that the actions of the city were reducing your religious freedom or the religious freedom of the church. Can you explain that?

FBL: Well, the way that we live out our faith is through feeding people, through… we also offer our shower is available to people to come and use during the week. We also try to help people obtain birth certificates when they've lost them, and ID cards, and we help people with rent if they're getting ready to be evicted from their home or whatever. We help people with their electric bills. The expression of our faith is to try to reach out and… and ease the burden of people who are suffering and create stability in their lives. At least a little bit, at least to the extent that we can. And this is… this is… this is how we express our faith. This is how we live into what we think Jesus Christ is calling us to do.

CO: All right. Well, I'll let you get back to work then. Father Bernie, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

FBL: Well, thank you. I appreciate you taking time to interview me.

CO: All right. Bye-bye.

FBL: Bye.

CH: Father Bernie Lindley is the pastor at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Brookings, Oregon.

[Music: Ambient]

FOA: Leonard Pletier Release

CH: For 45 years, American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier has been behind bars, convicted of murdering two FBI agents. Despite the fact that many, including the prosecutor who tried his case, say the evidence to convict him was never there. Last week, Mr. Peltier tested positive for COVID-19 and went into isolation in a Florida prison. He's now 77, and his supporters say he qualifies for release to home confinement. When Leonard Peltier was convicted in April 1977, Barbara Frum spoke with his lawyer, Kenneth Tillson, on As It Happens.

SOUNDCLIP

KENNETH TILLSON: I think the court in Fargo evidenced, even before trial, a predisposition to believe the allegations of the prosecution. And throughout the trial, this evidenced itself in some of the most remarkable rulings on admissibility or inadmissibility of the evidence.

BARBARA FRUM: What is this evidence that you feel would have helped Peltier that wasn't admissible?

KT: Well, there was a great deal of it. And I can only give you a suggestion, almost a smell, of some of the things that took place. The only testimony placing Leonard at the scene was the testimony of an FBI agent that he saw Leonard through a telescopic lens of a high-powered rifle at a half-mile distance. The defence forced the government to produce the rifle and took the… measured out a half-mile in each direction, placed people they knew at each direction a half-mile away and looked through the telescope. At which point, you could see substantially nothing. That is, you could see there was something there, but whether it was a male or female person, let alone somebody who you did not know, who was running on profile, and who you were to later pick out from… allegedly picked out from a large group. Now, we attempted to get the court to introduce that rifle in evidence to let the jury look through it. Because it was as apparent to any juror who would have looked through it, as it would be apparent to anybody in the world looking through it that no identification could be made from a half-mile or about a half-mile. And probably not from a distance with that telescope and that particular rifle, we had the very instrument he used, from a half that distance.

BF: All right, Mr. Tillson, surely that was the only evidence against Peltier that would have brought a unanimous conviction?

KT: That was the… well, I could tell you a few others, depending on the amount of time you want to take. But let me say that that was the only critical evidence placing him at the scene.

BF: What is going to be the basis of an appeal?

KT: Many, many, many things, primarily dealing with the admissibility in evidence. I just want to add one… one thing, and sort of to tie this point up. Generally, the case against Leonard Peltier was substantially nonexistent. And consisted of a web of tissue paper, which by reason of the… of the rulings of the court, was made to appear as though it was… it was this kind of unbelievable testimony that was considered proper. And any effort on the part of the defence to combat it was considered improper.

CH: That was Leonard Peltier's then-lawyer, Kenneth Tillson, speaking with the late Barbara Frum in 1977.

[Music: Uke!!!]

Robin Herman Obit

Guest: Melissa Ludtke

CH: One of the first things you notice about Robin Herman's career is all the firsts. She was in the first class of women admitted to Princeton University. She was the first female sports reporter at the New York Times. And in 1975, she was one the first two women reporters allowed in a hockey locker room -- giving her access to interviews that her male colleagues had long enjoyed. Robin Herman died this week after a long career as a journalist and author. She was 70 years old. Her friend Melissa Ludtke was a pioneering sportswriter in her own right -- taking Major League Baseball to court in the late 1970s to secure access to locker rooms for female sportswriters. We reached Ms. Ludtke in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

CO: Melissa, first of all, I'm sorry for your loss.

MELISSA LUDTKE: Well, thank you so much, Carol. It's a loss for… for so many of us. I've gotten a lot of calls from maybe the 10 of us, 12 of us who in the 1970s, as Robin did, really became sort of firsts and onlys in sports writing.

CO: But you get… but you're getting… you're getting these messages. I mean, not just because you were part of that group, you and Robin and a few others who are sort of the pioneers. But… but sports… women sports journalists of today, the ones who benefited from the efforts that you and others… what's it like for you to see that?

ML: Oh, my goodness! It's extraordinary. And it's great to see them out in numbers. And it's wonderful to see them not only as firsts, but the most important thing is to see seconds, thirds and fourths. And have us no longer talking about each of the steps forward as firsts. But I will say, at the same time, that because I'm exposed to their experiences through social media, I have perhaps the disheartening opportunity to see the way that they are treated, the misogyny that they face. So, there's a wonderful side of seeing many more of them out there. There's a very disheartening and sad side to seeing what so many of them are going through still to try to do this job.

CO: And now, of course, there are… of course, there are the women in the locker rooms who are going in, who are doing the stories. In the 1970s, there were not, right? When you pried open the doors of those places, not because you wanted to get in to be with the boys, but because if the male reporters were there, then you had to be there to do the stories, right?

ML: We absolutely did. We absolutely did. And I think you have to almost divide the 70s in half. You have to almost take the first half of the 70s, up until when Robin really makes the first foray. And not by her intent on that particular evening. That was in Montreal, and it was an All-Star game. And her entry into the locker room that night came about not because of the kind of private conversations she'd been having, but it came about because a male sportswriter thought it might be funny to ask a question that day of the two coaches. So I think they had the attitude wouldn't this be funny? And what happens in Canada will stay in Canada. And the coaches looked at each other and said, fine. Yeah, sure. The gals can come in. [CO chuckles] And that meant Robin Herman and a radio reporter from Montreal, Michelle Saint-Cyr. I'm hoping I'm pronouncing her last name right. And so, Robin understood what this might mean in terms of the kind of chaos that it would cause for her to come in. She wanted the access. She had pushed for it. But she also had been very careful and, in this case, went to the two coaches and said, I am begging you, I am asking, you go and talk to the players. Let them know that this is going to happen. Prepare them for it. They never did. And so when she did enter the room, as she predicted, chaos, shouting, embarrassment that came both from the players as well as from her fellow sportswriters, who turned on her and made her the story.

CO: The other woman was, I think, was Marcel Saint-Cyr.

ML: Marcel, I'm sorry.

CO: No. But those two women, it was… it was horrible for them, wasn't it? Because they just wanted to do the story, and they became the story. And that's not… never what you want to happen. But she also had, Robin, I understand, had issues where she was interviewing a hockey player, and then another player tore his towel off.

ML: That was Dennis Potvin. Yes, you're exactly right. It was the first, but it wouldn't be the last time that another player who thought it was very funny would come and, you know, undo the towel and have it fall down while a woman was interviewing a male player. That became a fairly standard stunt.

CO: And now, the… she wrote herself, Robin Herman, wrote a piece for the New York Times after that, and titled it "Let Them Wear Towels". Pointing out that it really wasn't difficult to try and figure out a way for the players to be able to have their privacy and for the women to come in with the men to do the coverage, right?

ML: No, that was exactly right. And she had a wonderful, both witty and cynical, somewhat voice about it. As though, is this so difficult? Well, you know what? It turned out that culturally, it was a challenge because you have to remember that the men basically viewed us as invading what was their space. And so, it was… it was a larger piece than just whether we would go in the locker rooms. It's whether we would become part of a sports culture that did not want us to be there in the first place. So when… when my case happened in baseball, for example, and we were actually in a federal court having this argument, and it was the judge who asked baseball's attorney, well, couldn't they wear towels? [CO chuckles] Or she had other ideas. Couldn't you put a curtain over the cubicle? And basically, what baseball responded is, this is part of the tradition of the game. The men have the right to walk naked in their locker room, and their privacy should outweigh, basically, the women's, you know, equal rights protection. Robin didn't have to take it to court because the NHL sort of worked it out with her as one of its guiding forces, and my, what she had at the age of 23 to to deal with all of this. Because after that night in Montreal, even though the commissioner of the NHL did send a memo to the other team saying, by the way, you may have noticed we have women covering our sport, and it's only fair that you treat them, you know, with fairness, and you treat them equitably. And the NBA was the same thing. And by… so by '76 or so, both in the NBA and the NHL, their policies were an equal access policy.

CO: And it's… when you mentioned Montreal being the first, sort the breakthrough for… for Robin Herman, but at the same time, [chuckling] pride in Canada is limited because the last NHL team to allow women into the locker room was, of course, the Toronto Maple Leafs. And that was… that was 1987.

ML: Um-hmm.

CO: And, of course, the team's owner was the most misogynist of all those owners, Harold Ballard. Who famously, or infamously, said that women would be allowed into the locker rooms if they took off all their clothes before they asked questions.

ML: Well, that was… those were… there were very many cartoons along that same theme. I had a cartoon that named me by name and had a player holding out, you know, a pair of… a towel for me. And saying, get comfortable and we'll talk to you, you know? So, Ballard was certainly in the rhythm of the day with that. I think it speaks to the fact that changing rules and regulations, and in my case, having laws changed in court, is one thing. But changing the attitudes and changing the culture takes a tremendously longer time. And I would argue that we're still in a place, even as Robin leaves us, where that cultural shift has not totally happened. It takes a long time. It takes a long time. But Robin's legacy with this, and her absolute grace by which she, you know, kind of led all of us through this is something that, you know, will live on through her always. And she just was a great, great friend. Generous, kind, full of grace and amazingly courageous, so.

CO: Melissa, I really appreciate you helping us give us salute to this extraordinary woman and what she did for women journalists. And thank you.

ML: Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

CH: Melissa Ludtke is a journalist who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was a friend of journalist Robin Herman, who died this week at the age of 70.

[Music: Vocalization]

SOD: French Town Noise

CH: You close the curtains in your home, in the small town of Wizernes, France. You put your cocoa within reach, and settle down on the couch with a cat in your lap to read some poetry. But before you're halfway through the first stanza, there's a strange interruption.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: A whistling sound… we heard this in Brooklyn and San Fran, right?]

CH: It might last forty seconds. It might last half an hour. It might come in the day. It might come in the night. And no matter what you and your neighbours do, you cannot figure out where the sound is coming from. According to French media, officials in Wizernes are now stepping up their investigation into the mystery sound, which was first heard back in October. The mayor of the northern French town says the plan is to painstakingly go business by business, to see if any of them could be behind it. And in the meantime, I predict a lot more high-pitched whining.

[Music: Jazz]

Part 3: Chez Cora Kidnapping Trial, Ice Age Remains

Chez Cora Kidnapping Trial

Guest: Paul Cherry

CH: The jury in the Chez Cora kidnapping trial says it can't agree on a verdict. But maybe the cannabis will help. Chez Cora is a Quebec-based chain of breakfast restaurants. A failed franchisee named Paul Zaidan is on trial for allegedly kidnapping the company's president, Nicholas Tsouflidis. The trial's had all sort of twists and turns. But the one that caught our eye came after all the evidence had been heard. As the jury's deliberations stretched on, The Gazette's crime writer, Paul Cherry, reported that they'd sent some requests to the judge. One thing they wanted was a dictionary.

That was denied. But they got the okay for cannabis and cigarettes. We reached Paul Cherry in Montreal.

CO: Paul, why do you think the jury wanted to have a dictionary as part of its deliberations?

PAUL CHERRY: That, they… they did not reveal anything about that. It might be something in the judge's instructions that they didn't understand and wanted to define a word. But because the dictionary was not part of the trial, wasn't part of the evidence, it's something actually the question does come up quite often with juries, and judges just don't… simply don't allow it because it was never part of the evidence at trial.

CO: Wow. And so it's very strict about not having a dictionary. But what did you think when you learned that requests for cannabis and cigarettes were granted?

PC: That was… that was very strange. I mean, when I went… started to write this story, it was just going to be a story of, wow, this jury has asked for… for… cannabis. You know, marijuana, legal marijuana, and cigarettes. Two vices. But as I was writing it, I thought about the irony of how they were allowed these two things, but they couldn't be [cuckling] allowed to have a dictionary. [CO chuckles] I thought that was very ironic. [laughing] I've been wondering if these types of questions were never supposed to be brought to the judge? They're questions that are put to the special constable who is assigned to supervise the jury while they're sequestered. And that the special constable can… can deal with those issues without even having to bother the judge. But maybe on the issue of whether they could have had access to cannabis, they wanted to be sure.

CO: Well, what did you think the judge had to… to take into consideration when deciding whether they should be able to get some dope?

PC: The defence lawyer put it very succinctly. He said, look, it's not a big issue for me because it's legal now. They wanted marijuana from the government-run store. [chuckling] So he said, he compared it to alcohol. The jury is allowed to have alcohol, a drink or two after their deliberations are done. And in some cases, I… I would understand why they would want it after a long day of debating [both chuckle] with 11 other people.

CO: Now, this trial began in November. And so, what do you think it is that… that has snagged them? What would be… you're not in the room, but… but you've… you've seen all the evidence presented. You know what the arguments are. What do you think is giving them difficulties?

PC: What the defence has done very well here is they picked on certain points. The first two witnesses to testify were Nicholas Tsouflidis and then his mother, the founder. She's very popular here in Quebec. Everyone knows her face. But the defence found this odd thing in the family that there was this profit-sharing that went on within the family. It's a totally family-owned business. And there were payouts made to Nicholas Tsouflidis, who ran the company and spent a lot of time on it, one of his sisters, or his sister, and one of his brothers. But his brother received much less. Like, everyone in the profit-sharing got $200,000. This brother, this other brother, only received $50,000. And the defence found out about this and really highlighted it when both Nicholas Tsouflidis testified, and then his mother. And they just kept hammering away and asking, why? Why did you only pay this guy $50,000? What's going on here? They never alleged that the brother pulled off the kidnapping. Never. They just highlighted that there was this problem within the family. And both the… Nicholas Tsouflidis and his mother, they had difficulty testifying about it. It is obvious they didn't really want to talk about. It was a very personal, obviously a very personal thing within their family that they didn't want to air out. So that to me, I think, that helped actually create doubt. The defence just kept hammering at that.

CO: So the suggestion is… is that there possibly could have been others who might have kidnapped Nicholas Tsouflidis because of family internal matters, right? Internal conflicts within the family, and not this man who was an owner of one of the franchises of Chez Cora?

PC: No one in the defence ever said, you know, where was your brother on that night? Nothing like that. It just kept being implied. Hey, there was a problem within the family. There was a… something was going on. It's implied. It helps to create reasonable doubt. The other thing is, the Crown has no direct evidence that Paul Zaidan was actually involved in the kidnapping, especially physically involved in the kidnapping on the night. There was never any point where Nicholas Tsouflidis said, you know, the guy here in the court? I recognize him. He's one of the men who… who abducted me. He was not… he was not able to say that. There's no evidence at all that he even, actually, took part in the physical abduction and that he was there when Mr. Tsouflidis was held against his will. So there's no direct evidence. It's all circumstantial evidence. It's very strong, very strong circumstantial evidence. I'm convinced that… that he did kidnap Mr. Tsouflidis. But there's no direct evidence.

CO: And so, just to remind people, again, this is Nicholas Tsouflidis, this was… dragged from his home outside Montreal by a group of men who put him in a car, demanded, I think, $11 million, right?

PC: That's right.

CO: And then, realizing that he's been able to keep his cell phone and had called 9-1-1, they dropped him off in a ditch on the side of the road before they were caught. Is that the case?

PC: That's exactly right. And the first thing is, is that… another thing that it might be putting a doubt in the jurors is that the whole thing kind of sounded farcical, except for the part where Mr. Tsouflidis said, someone put a… pointed a gun at my face. The rest of it sounds farcical. It sounds like a comedy. He describes the handcuffs that he was put in as… as if they were from a joke store, from a Halloween store. They're like toy, like, handcuffs. And at one point, it sounded like… like happy hour. While they were holding him in this unfinished basement in a home in Laval, they offered him drinks. And I think he had up till like three or four… three or four drinks [laughing] with… with the… with his abductors. And the defence just kept going who on Earth does this? What kind of a kidnapper does this? So that's what made it get a little strange.

CO: So, well, get a little strange. There have been so many strange moments, and not least of them to know jurors are holed up in the hotel room with cannabis, cigarettes and without a dictionary.

PC: It has been. Overall, it has been one of the stranger trials I have ever covered.

CO: Well, Paul, we will await the conclusion and read your coverage of it. And I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

PC: Well, thank you.

CH: Paul Cherry is a crime reporter at The Montreal Gazette. We reached him in Montreal.

[Music: Horns]

Montreal Barista Leaves Job

CH: It's been a long, long two years for service industry workers. Take Montrealer Chloe Peel. At a certain point, she noticed that her colleagues were quitting, one by one. She says conditions at the Montreal cafe where they worked were getting worse -- a perfect storm of stressed-out customers and shifting COVID rules that were up to staff to enforce. Ms. Peel had been working as a barista throughout the pandemic, trying to balance her job with her university classes. And then, on her way in for a shift this past fall, it all caught up with her at once.

SOUNDCLIP

CHLOE PEEL: So, I was walking over. It's honestly a ten-minute walk. And, you know, my breathing just got really heavy. I just felt really panicky. You know, my mind is going through, like, I can't do this. I can't do this anymore. I don't have a choice. I have to go into work, but I just can't do this anymore. But I don't have any other options. And I ended up having a burnout. I was told by a psychiatrist to stop work and school in order to recover. Things at work had been getting worse with… I mean, I'm completely for the vaccine passport. But, I mean, it was put in place in the midst of a staffing crisis that we're already dealing with. So we didn't have the staff to do our minimum functions. And therefore, we didn't really have staff to enforce a vaccine passport. And it was all just, you know, all of these different things just kept piling up on top of everything that had already been piling up for the past year and a half. I went back to work for a week, and it was… we had no staff. There was just so much confusion with enforcing the COVID measures and who was allowed to what? And, I mean, clientele was just still really… you know, there's just still this lack of understanding and empathy. And, I mean, after two years of it, it's so hard to come back to a job and just try to gently bring yourself back into the workplace when there's nothing… there's nothing gentle, and there's no systems of support.

CH: That was Chloe Peel explaining why she's left her cafe job. She spoke with our colleague Laura Marchand from CBC Montreal.

[Music: Banjo]

Lacey & Flynn Have Sex

CH: Lacey and Flynn are going to try to have sex. But there are some complications. They're busy raising two kids; they've been together a long time; and -- on this particular night -- they're not feeling terribly passionate. It's a pretty common story. But the difference for Lacey and Flynn is that they have a microphone with them.

SOUNDCLIP

FLYNN: Um, well, you're going to have to go ahead and get me aroused first.

LACEY: Yeah, it’s not --

FLYNN: Do you understand how it works?

LACEY: It's not looking… it's not looking aroused. I think part of me is resisting the actual intimacy of connecting right now. So I'm just like, if you just… if we do this --

FLYNN: Why do you resist me?

LACEY: Canonical… I don't know?

FLYNN: Let's be honest, we're both like --

LACEY: We’re both a bit awkward.

FLYNN: A bit tired and weird.

LACEY: I’m not… I don’t feel tired. I just feel strange.

FLYNN: I feel a bit tired. We've been working a bit hard lately.

LACEY: The kids are banging around. I can hear them. Um… [deep sigh]

CH: Spoiler alert: Lacey and Flynn have sex. Although it's not much of a spoiler, considering their podcast is called Lacey & Flynn Have Sex. Both are sex and relationship coaches living in London, England. But Lacey Haynes is originally from Nova Scotia. And this week, she called up the CBC morning show to explain the project.

SOUNDCLIP

LACEY HAYNES: You know, it's something totally new. It's not sex education as we've received it in the past. It's not pornography designed to titillate. It's a real glimpse into a relationship of 10-plus years, with two kids, of people who are very dedicated and very interested in being kind of radically responsible for ourselves. So, you know, we take responsibility. And when one of us is having a hard time, we're willing to talk about it, and the other person is willing to listen. You know, it might be wild when you kind of hear it out of context, but when you understand it at its core, and what it… what we're doing, which is normalizing this part of life that everybody's participating, we're all here because… you know, because of sex, because of intimacy. And so, we're shedding light on this part of life that often gets stigmatized and people have so much shame around, especially if it's not going well. Often, we want to turn away from what's happening because it's painful, and it’s uncomfortable, and it's awkward. And it's really easy to blame one another and to kind of enter into these habitual patterns in the relationship. So, the first thing is to really get honest with yourself, and then to get honest with one another. And a level of maturity is required to have these kinds of conversations. And, you know, something we talk about a lot in our work is you almost have to not take things personally. You have to be able to hear somebody's dissatisfaction. Or maybe they're not enjoying sex. Or maybe they're not feeling turned on. And you have to be able to hear that and not make it about yourself actually listen to them and witness them. So, it's really beginning to show up in a new way and develop, you know, a more robust ability to communicate on these challenging topics.

CH: That was Lacey Haynes, co-host of the podcast Lacey & Flynn Have Sex, speaking with Portia Clark on CBC's Information Morning.

[Music: Ambient]

Ice Age Remains

Guest: Danielle Schreve

CH: While digging out the land for a housing development on the outskirts of Plymouth, England, workers stumbled on a previously unknown cave system. Inside which, archeologists discovered the remains of a woolly mammoth and a trove of animal remains dating back to the Ice Age. Danielle Schreve is an Ice Age expert with the University of London working on the excavation.

CO: Danielle, I know you have actually been inside these caves. Can you give us a sense of what it's like to be in that space?

DANIELLE SCHREVE: It was an extraordinary thing to be able to experience, actually. So, first of all, to be able to go into a cave that was completely unknown, that had been sealed off for millennia, that's already rare enough. But I think to squeeze inside, you know, to… to move down inside into the chambers and see the bones of all these megafauna just scattered about in the stones on the floor of the cave was absolutely jaw dropping. It was extraordinary.

CO: How was this discovered?

DS: So the site is actually on a major new housing development. There's more than 5,500 new homes being built as part of a new town, lying just to the east of the city of Plymouth in Devon. So that's down in the southwest of England. And it was during construction work, so there were some foundations being put in and a mechanical digger went straight into the top of the cave. It was almost like taking off the top of a boiled egg. And that exposed the chamber, and… and everything else sort of followed on after.

CO: Wow! And so, at what point did they call in the experts to see what they had?

DS: Luckily, we have a system in the U.K. where when there are major developments going on, there is an obligation for the developer to pay for archaeology. So we were lucky that there was an archaeological team already on the site, obviously because of all the housebuilding that was going on. And in that team, there was a very experienced caver. His day job is as an archaeologist, but he's an extremely experienced caver. He was able to get into the cave. And he knew straight away that it was something really significant. And from there, it snowballed into obviously involving appropriate authorities. And I was invited into to be the specialist, the palaeontologist for the site.

CO: What exactly have you found in that cave?

DS: So there's an incredible diversity of animal species in quite a small area within the cave. I mean, it appears to be quite a large cave system. But the types of things that we could see straight away, remains of mammoth. So there's tusk, there's molar tooth, there's large bones of mammoth. There's also woody rhinoceros. So a partial skull and a beautiful jaw with the teeth still present. There are lots of bones, reindeer, of wild horse, of bison and also some carnivores. There's a whole skeleton of a wolf. And also, I can see now that I'm starting to unpack all the crates back in the laboratory there are some remains of hyaena as well.

CO: And how old do you think these bones are?

DS: So based on the composition of the fauna, because we… we have obviously the different climate periods between warm and cold, going back hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years, they cause the fauna to change through time. And based on the composition of the fauna, we get things like mammoth, woolly rhino, horse and so on in Britain, in the middle of the last Ice Age. So between about 60,000 and 30,000 years ago.

CO: And… but all these different kinds of animals. Some of them, some of them prey, some of them, some of them carnivores. Were they all living together? Was it… was at different times, did you have a sense of this was some… some transit point for all these creatures.

DS: So I think what's happened based on what I've seen so far is I think that this is a place of accidental death. It's a pitfall trap area. We have precedent for this. So 80 years ago, there was another site found that showed the remains of very large mammals, such as elephants and rhinos falling through a crevasse, through a hole in the ground surface and essentially perishing in the cave below. I think this is what's happened here because of the completeness of the remains and the type of things that we're finding. But equally, I think the… the carnivores, the wolves, the hyaenas may well have followed those carcases down. And themselves got into difficulties and met a sticky end in the same way. Certainly, from what I've seen so far, there's no evidence of gnawing. For example, things like spotted hyaenas produce very characteristic gnawing on bones. There's no evidence of that. So I strongly suspect that it's not a carnivore den, but it's a place of accidental death.

CO: And so this age, the Ice Age in Britain, [chuckle] is so ironic that there is this housing development, 5,000 homes being built on this, to think that this was a place where all of these animals lived. Can you just describe what this might have looked like 30,000 or 50000 years ago?

DS: This time period, it's overall a warmer part of the last Ice Age compared to the very end, for example. But it's characterised by really rapid climate change. So every few thousand years, the climate goes into a savage cold climate period and then comes out to be still cold, but slightly less bad. [chuckling] So as you would have looked out, you would have seen a huge open dry sepic grassland. In fact, it's often called The Mammoth Step. The geography of Britain is also different at that time because globally sea levels are about 120 metres lower as a result of locking up the water for ice sheets that are occurring elsewhere in the northern hemisphere. It would have reconnected Britain to the continent, so exposing the southern part of the North Sea as dry land. And would have allowed animals and early humans to… to crisscross that area. The number of herbivores that were around at the time is massive, huge herds of mammoth, woolly rhino, horse, bison, reindeer and, of course, the carnivores as well. So packs of hyenas, wolves, but also brown bears, lions. So it's a very rich but now disappeared ecosystem.

CO: And now, it’s to be a dense housing development.

DS: [laughing] Yeah, it’s certainly going to look very different today.

CO: Danielle, it is… sounds really, really exciting. And I'm sure we will be getting more news about this and following it. So I will thank you for telling us about it today.

DS: Thank you so much, Carol.

CO: Bye-bye.

DS: Bye-bye.

CH: Danielle Schreve is an Ice Age expert and the Head of the Department of Geography with the Royal Holloway University of London.

[Music: Folk]

Lost Prosthetic

CH: Chris Bond was sure the mystery of his missing leg had been solved. Mr. Bond is a two-time wheelchair rugby gold medallist from Australia. Last November, he was playing with his daughter at a beach in Queensland when he was knocked over by a sudden wave. By the time he recovered, one of his two waterproof prosthetic legs was gone. So locals pitched in to start searching for it. And recently a shopkeeper named Eve Clifford spotted something very promising. She sent Mr. Bond a photo. Ms. Clifford says, "he messaged back going 'oh my God, it actually looks like mine." Unfortunately, when Chris Bond had a chance to review it more closely he realized the prosthesis Eve Clifford had found… wasn't his. Which raises questions. Among them, the one Mr. Bond himself asked. Quote: "What are the chances of two missing legs at Kings Beach in three months?" Unquote. I mean are high-priced prostheses just dropping out of thin air? Well: sometimes. Just ask Chris Marckres. In July 2020, the Vermont double amputee jumped out of a plane for his first sky dive. And as he floated to the ground, he made a discovery.

SOUNDCLIP

CM: I didn't actually realize until maybe 20 seconds before I landed that I had even lost the leg. I think I lost it very early in the jump. And I think my adrenaline was so high that I just never even realized it until I actually looked down and saw I was missing it.

SB: So once you got on to solid ground, and you knew you were safe, what was going through your mind?

CM: That's when the emotions kicked in. But they were a little bit different emotions. I was a little more frustrated with myself, you know, for even wearing the legs during the jump because I had the option not to. It's about a 20-thousand dollar bill that I would have been responsible for if we had not found it to replace that. And my quality of life goes down severely once I'm in a wheelchair all the time.

SB: So you put out a call on Facebook asking for help, searching for this leg.

CM: Yeah, just a basic lost and found post.

SB: How did Joe the soybean farmer find your leg?

CM: Joe happened to see one of the shared post on Facebook. His exact words were, I just felt like I needed to do something to help a fellow American. And he got up and went outside and started searching his soybean fields. A few hours in, he had kind of given up and was headed back to his vehicle and caught something out the corner of his eye, and walked right onto it.

SB: What shape was the prosthetic in?

CM: Ninety-five-hundred free fall from the sky, and that leg was in perfect condition. When I met Joe, he handed me the leg. I reached down, put it on and stood there on the leg and visited with him for an hour, got in my truck and drove home with it.

SB: I understand that skydiving was a bit of a bucket list wish for you. What spurred you to jump out of a plane?

CM: In all honesty, I probably, to start with, I have probably the best ex-wife in the entire world. I've recently been diagnosed with end stage kidney failure, so my bucket list has now become a little bit more of a priority list to me. And she, knowing this, purchased me a gift certificate to skydive for Christmas last year.

SB: And now, I understand your new friend Joe the farmer might join you in a jump.

CM: Yeah, I had offered up a pretty trivial, I mean insignificant, reward on whoever could locate my Leg, and Joe refused it. Flat out, I am not taking any kind of reward. And I kept insisting and finally he agreed. And the deal was he is going to put it towards his... He wants to skydive, and he's going to put it towards his first jump as long as I agreed to go with him and jump the day he jumps as well. So I think Joe and I are probably going to have a pretty good future as pretty good friends here.

CH: From our archives, that was Chris Marckres, of Hyde Park, Vermont, speaking to As It Happens guest host Susan Bonner in July 2020.

[Music: Diner music]

Casio MT-40

CH: When he first saw the keyboard, Noel Davey must have been upset . It was 1984 and he was a young musician in Jamaica. When his friend returned from the U.S. with a synthesizer, Mr. Davey was expecting a fully programmable synth. Instead, his friend showed up with a Casio MT-40 keyboard -- fully-loaded with cheesy factory preset sounds.’

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Ah, the music of gamers. I love it]

CH: It wasn't until his fellow musician, Wayne Smith, accidentally triggered a rock bassline preset that something magic happened. And triggered a new wave of reggae music.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: “Under Mi Sleng Teng” by Wayne Smith]

CH: That Casio MT-40 preset is now fondly referred to as the "Sleng Teng" rhythm. It has become one of the most popular samples in reggae music -- providing the rhythmic backbone for hundreds of dancehall records. Now, Wayne Smith's first use of that sample in his classic hit "Under Mi Sleng Teng" is well-known. But little was known about the original programmer at Casio who created the stock rhythm. Only now, 37 years after the song was released, is Okuda Hiroko finally getting her flowers. Ms. Hiroko joined Casio fresh out of college, after seeing Bob Marley perform for the first time in Japan in 1979. As she told Nippon.com: "In those days, my head was full of reggae. Even when I was trying to come up with a rock beat, I think it just naturally came out as something that would work in reggae... That the rhythm I made spread around the world and is still loved today by so many people is one of the great joys of my life."

February 3, 2022 Episode Transcript

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