Are peanuts more precious than pretzels? Is glue more glorious than tape? Hi, I'm Steve Patterson, host of CBC's The Debaters, where Canada's top comedic minds make seemingly simple questions into something simply hilarious. Part stand-up, part game show, always fun, and our live audience picks the winner. You can find The Debaters on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Neil Kirksal. good evening i'm chris howden this is as it happens
Tonight. Rolling in the deep sea, that's the name of a new made-in-China AI chatbot that has suddenly exploded in popularity, imploding the stock values and dominance of the existing U.S. industry leaders. Exit strategy. An Anglican bishop tells us about fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo just before Rwandan-backed rebels entered Goma and about the work required to restore peace. Clearing the heirlooms, the boxes were handed down from his mother's father to his mother, to him, and now writer Tim.
Timothy Taylor will share the story of his grandfather's journey out of Nazi Germany with us. Going the opposite way of the dodo, we'll hear from one of the scientists trying to bring that flightless, unfairly maligned bird back from the dead after a few hundred years of extinction.
Shelf care, months after it was damaged by anti-immigrant rioters, Liverpool's Spello Library is open once again, thanks to a woman who believes community spaces deserve all the support a community can muster. And course correction. Fans of professional golf on TV are fed up with games they say go on way too long. And they have the support of those who believe all golf on TV goes on way too long. As it happens, the Monday edition.
Radio that's also frustrated by Sunday drivers. Its intelligence is artificial, but the chaos it's causing is very real. Today, the top free app on the Apple Store is an AI assistant from the Chinese startup DeepSeek.
It's an open source model that the company says was developed at a fraction of the cost of its competitors, like OpenAI, Google, and Meta. There's no way to confirm that, but the claim has definitely rattled the U.S. tech market. At the opening bell, tech giants like the company that manufactures chips used to develop AI saw their stocks plummet.
And when I say plummet, I mean the industry is on track to lose about a trillion dollars. The app appeared to have gone down today due to demand and what the company says was a potential cyber attack, but it's still creating a lot of anxiety about the future of the artificial intelligence industry. Shelley Palmer is the CEO of the Palmer Group, which consults on tech for Fortune 500 companies. He's also a professor of advanced media at Syracuse University. We reached him in New York City.
Shelley, I think it's safe to say many, if not most, of our listeners are hearing this company named DeepSeek for the first time. What the company has been able to do in a pretty short amount of time has stunned people right around the world. Was it a surprise to you? Well, when you say was it a surprise, every morning in the world of AI we get surprised. So what we found ourselves looking at was a piece of software that was
algorithmically efficient to a level we hadn't seen before, probably 90-ish percent cost savings with almost identical quality. So, yeah, this got everybody thinking real hard. And those two things that you mentioned are two of the main things people are pointing to when they talk about how.
This is different than what people have come to know, ChatGPT and what OpenAI does, that sort of thing. What other differences, so our listeners can sort of compute themselves what this is? So what's practically important is there are no differences. There are two kinds of models out there right now that are generally being used by, or generally people are aware of. One are large language models.
which I think everyone knows what chat GPT is or has had a little bit of opportunity to sit at a chat client and have a conversation about any subject, basically. Then there's this new class of program. OpenAI brought out 01. And rather than accomplish a single task or a single search, you know, tell me the answer to this, do this, do that.
What the Reason Engine does is thinks through a problem. So you give it a goal and it will accomplish the goal as opposed to just doing a task. Now, what's fascinating about DeepSeek is that for a very small amount of money compared to what OpenAI spends to train a model like GPT-4, call it six months and five, six hundred million dollars. DeepSeek says they trained.
DeepSeek's model in under two months for under $6 million. Now, no one knows if that's true or not, but probably is true. That is a pretty giant cost savings. And DeepSeek does basically what OpenAI's tools do. We should mention we haven't independently verified that they actually spent just $5.6 million to do this. The other thing, though, that is clearly catching a lot of people off guard is the issue of the chips needed.
to build this kind of AI. It usually comes from the US company NVIDIA. They did use chips, but less advanced ones. Is the reaction we're seeing on the financial markets so far because of that fact? Yeah, so let's talk about that for a second. The way that DeepSeq R1 was trained is supposed to have been off of
the GPT-4 model. Now, it is true they did not have the computational capability set to do this with brute force. They did it with what's known as algorithmic efficiency. They literally wrote code that would allow the model to be trained without the benefit of all of the massive amounts of NVIDIA chips that OpenAI uses to train GPT-4. This is the part that makes it cheap to do and fast to do. Now,
There's no way to verify all of this, but a lot of people are speculating that because China was restricted from having the chipsets, that we don't ship, the West is unwilling to ship certain levels of technology to China, that they were forced to do this. What I think everyone's missing today is that we've got a lot of smart people here in the West too, and the gauntlet's been thrown down. I would not have wanted to be in the room when Mark Zuckerberg was told what V3 was capable of.
because his open source model, Llama, is not capable of that and did cost an awful lot of money to train. And he's, you know, basically said, I got 60 billion going into...
60, 65 billion I'm ready to spend on my AI training next year. And all of a sudden, here's a company spending $6 million and they're taking them out to the woodshed. There's no way you wanted to be an engineer at Meta when this was revealed the other day. And I think the most important lesson today is not whether to take, is not whether we're going to need data centers, big compute, NVIDIA chips.
So that's always going to be in question. Do we need the best chip? Yes. Do we need the newest, bestest chip? Yes. Because the volume and velocity of data is increasing and will always increase. Well, it's good that you mentioned the data centers because we've talked about them on this program, the environmental concerns and the ramifications in terms of climate change. So a lot of people will look at what DeepSeek has done and said that this really changes things in terms of AI and those concerns. You don't see those concerns going away, though.
it sounds like. No, look, they're going to say that because they're going to say that. But in practice, we don't know the future. And anyone who believes they understand the future of AI through the lens of this week's events with DeepSeek is delusional.
We should also mention the company limited registrations temporarily because of a cyber attack. There were some outages on its website as well. Are there privacy or security concerns here that may not apply to other AI systems? Look, if you're Chinaphobic, if you think China's the boogeyman or if you don't want to deal with China, don't use their website and don't download their app. What we did, what we're doing for our clients, what we're doing at our company is we've downloaded the open source model.
You can go to Olama, download it, and spin it up yourself. It'll run on a laptop. The small versions will run on a laptop. It's not required that you use their website. What has your experience or your client's experience been? What are they telling you? Everybody loves this. It's just like we have clients that were spending $70,000 a month on their AI compute. They're spending calculated to spend under $6,000. Look.
This is the business we're in. It changes every day. And it is literally creating a culture that can adapt, a business culture that can adapt to new technology with ease or with minimum pain. And that's what everyone's trying to do. And that's where we are in the world right now. Shelley, I appreciate your time. Thank you. All right. All the very best. Shelley Palmer is the CEO of the Palmer Group. He's in New York City.
For years, there were boxes of documents tucked away in Timothy Taylor's family home, but he never saw what was inside. His mother kept the boxes for decades. They were filled with letters, photographs, and other documents meticulously collected by his grandfather. And together, they revealed his experience as part of a Jewish family living in Nazi Germany and his road to escaping the Holocaust.
The vast collection amounts to 10,000 pages of family history, pages Mr. Taylor only saw for the first time a few years ago. Now he's starting to share that history with the world. Today he released the first episode of a podcast about the collection called The Hidden Holocaust Papers. The release comes on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Timothy Taylor is also an acclaimed writer and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. We reached him in Vancouver.
Professor Taylor, how does it feel after the personal journey you've taken with these materials and with this archive to have at least some of it, some of that history out in the world, especially on this day? Yeah, well, I'm excited to add to a conversation about the suffering that war brings and to give it a very particular illustration, which is the life of my mother and her mother and her father.
particularly. So this archive has opened up their story in great detail to me. And I think there's value in looking at these stories in their details. You knew, as I understand it, that all of this existed, but you hadn't seen it up close. Is that right? Yeah, I was really vaguely aware that my mother had what she referred to as opa's boxes.
Opa being the name we used for my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, and she seemed a little exasperated to have these, honestly, but I was a teenager and I didn't take much notice. So it wasn't until my father passed away, in fact, that the boxes came to me, which was what my mother told my sister that she had wanted.
And my mother said that I would know what to do with them, which left me feeling rather challenged. At once, you know, maybe a little bit proud that she had that faith in you, but the pressure, certainly. I guess I was really uncertain, and so I began to reach out and speak to people who knew what the significance of a...
a trove of documents like this, what that meant. And I was able to quickly get some opinions on that, and that encouraged me to get the documents donated to the proper archive as soon as possible, because they were under my piano in banker's boxes.
And that is not a safe place to keep documents of this age. So on the advice of an archive appraiser, I took them to be looked at by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. And at that point, I knew very quickly that the papers had found a home. What was their reaction? I think they shared the reaction that the archive appraiser had. His name is Stephen Lunsford, and he said,
He just said, astonishing. He was just astonished by what he was reading. It was a two-sided correspondence, which has archival significance. Often correspondences are kept in people's attics, only one side, right? And so my grandfather had carefully kept both sides. This provided for a really granular level view of the exchange between him and my great-uncle Hans, who was living in New York City. So the men were writing letters back and forth. What did those letters...
And the detail in them, what kind of insight did they give you into your grandfather's experience during the war? I can only make a preliminary comment because they're in German, but I can say that what emerges is the...
the beginning of a profile of a person and a family who were rejected politically and they were forced to leave. They were refugees and they were lost. And in my grandfather's case, they were quite angry. And besides those letters and photographs, there's also a trove of other things. What kinds of things did he keep?
He kept everything. And the first things I noticed were that he kept sort of all the details from his path of flight out of Germany, east by train through Russia, and then by boat from Yokohama to Guayaquil.
So I had his passport, of course, with all of the stamps. I had a very detailed itinerary that he typed up. Every stop of the train was noted. It's really, really remarkable. I have menus from the dining saloon of that ship. It's a lot. You're a writer, as we've said. You're a storyteller. So they are telling you a story, all of those artifacts. But is it painful for you as well?
It's been an emotional journey and getting to know in some more detail what my mother went through during the war as she was left behind in Germany. Only my grandfather was able to escape.
That has been perhaps the most emotional part of the journey for me. I have had the experience of getting to know on a much closer basis than she was willing to share during her life the details of what she went through starting from when she was 14 and 15 and 16. And I feel almost as if I am a parent to her memory at this point. It is as if somebody had done something injurious to my own child. It's a strange feeling, honest.
Like many, many survivors, they, people just, they couldn't talk about it. They couldn't talk about it at the time. What did you read that you would want to share with our listeners today about your mother?
Remarkably enough, I discovered letters in the archive that she wrote to her father in 1948. So it has taken three years for the International Refugee Organization to sort out how they're going to reunite the family in Guayaquil, which is where my mother ended up post-war. And she said at that point to her father in a letter that she didn't want to hold.
hard feelings against Germans unless she repeated the mistakes of the Nazis. She was 18, and she was idealistic, and her father, my grandfather, was much angrier than she was, but I've had a chance to talk to other survivors, and I've been interested in the response. Some came out feeling that way, as if they really wanted to put it behind them. Others felt quite differently.
But among people close to the tragedies in question, there's a kind of respect for the young person who tried to take that stance initially and so quickly that some sort of personal forgiveness and moving on was required. At the same time, the archive represents this very complex mixture of reactions from my grandfather, from my great.
uncle and from my mother, as well as others. There are other people who have contributed to this archive. And when she indicated to my sister that I would know what to do with these documents, I think part of the job is going to be to try to net and balance these reactions and say something sensible about what this sort of tragedy means to us all today. Professor Taylor, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks so much for speaking with me today.
Timothy Taylor is a writer and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. We reached him in Vancouver. Patrons of Liverpool's Spello Library know it's a special place, and now they also know they can't take it for granted. In August, the library was damaged in the anti-immigration riots that gripped cities across the UK. The violence broke out after an attack at a girls' dance class in Southport left three people dead and several more injured.
Far-right influencers were quick to claim that the attacker was an asylum seeker. In fact, he had been born in the UK. The disorder that followed saw rioters target public buildings, including the Spello Library, where a fire was lit. Now, months later, the library has reopened to the public, in part thanks to Alex McCormick, who started a fundraiser for the building. We reached Ms. McCormick in Liverpool. Alex, what was it like for you to walk back into the library since it reopened?
Honestly, it was just so overwhelming and such an amazing thing to experience. I think seeing the way that it's transformed from that initial few days after the damage to now when it is very much open and thriving again was just incredible. Take us back to that day when it was damaged, when the books were damaged, and when you learned about what happened. What did it look like and feel like on that day?
It was just awful to say. I think it's such a beautiful space. It's got really gorgeous floor-to-ceiling windows and they'd been used as the entry point from the rioters. So initially that was kind of what you were hit with, was all that shattered glass and the fire had been started right at the entrance there where they'd managed to get in. So the pictures were really distressing. Obviously there was smoke damage all over the walls, the windows were shattered, burnt, but...
And it was just, I think it's sad to see more so because you wonder why anyone would destroy a community space like that. And then sadness for the people who use that space and for the children who would have used it over the summer holidays, who then obviously couldn't access it because of damage. You love libraries, clearly. This isn't your local one. You go to a different library.
So what was it about what you saw and what was happening in your area broadly at that time that made you not only want to visit but start this fundraiser? I just think that as a society we've got to be better than burning books and destroying libraries and community spaces. And I think it really goes against everything that I...
believe in i think we should protect these spaces they serve such a grand purpose in our community and they're so accessible for everyone young old everyone in between so it doesn't matter that it wasn't my local library i think i would have felt the same if i'd have seen those images anywhere in the world
What was it like for you to see? I mean, it was so volatile and dangerous and upsetting for anyone watching what was unfolding in the summer. What was it like for you? I just think it's so horrible to see, especially because the riots came off the back of what happened in Southport. I think we should have been able to.
grieve those little girls and really show some respect and support for their families and it was such a quick turnaround between that happening and then riots happening just down the road but then up and down the country um that we didn't really get a chance to properly process that and we didn't give those families the space to process it um and that's something that really hits hard for me that they should be so looked after and supported
in that time and for however long they need that support for so to see the shift then where people were being destructive um was just heartbreaking the destruction and those riots have ended but how do things feel now i definitely think things feel better um i think the way that people rallied around
the library and the other spaces that were destroyed in the riots. I think that is really symbolic of how most of the city and most of the country feels. And I've said this time and time again, but 11,500 people donated to the fundraiser and that was just the money donations. We had hundreds of people donating physical books as well. There wasn't 11,500 people on the street causing that trouble. So the good definitely outweighs the bad.
When you first started that fundraiser, what was your dream result? What were you thinking you would accomplish? The fundraiser purely was set up to replace the books that had been burnt. In my mind, we could replace the books. So the target was £500. I thought maybe if we go a little bit over that, it could go towards repair in the library. And I didn't ever think that we'd actually get to that £500.
And then it just obviously went out of control and people really rallied. Yeah, £250,000, that's about 450,000 Canadian dollars. One of the librarians was quoted in the New York Times as saying that, you know, this is, I'm paraphrasing, but just what an astronomical.
unfathomable number that is for any library. Yes, just absolutely crazy. And I mean, the beauty of it is that the money can be spent now on improving that space and putting on more activities for kids, for teenagers. We can do a lot more community outreach with it. And so that community will really feel the benefit of all that fundraising. And I think that'll be really exciting to see. Because wherever they are, libraries are often a community centre, a hub.
of activity and not just for books, though that's what brings many of us to them. What have library staff told you, Alex, about what these last few months have been like for them? The staff at Spello are just absolutely incredible. And I think that they deserve such praise for the way that they managed to get through everything that happened. Obviously, that's a space for them that they know and love and to wake up on that Sunday morning and see it.
so badly damaged, I think it was of being soul destroying and instead they are all so strong, they all really rallied, they've been very involved in getting the library back up and running and it's been a privilege for me to get to know them and I think through all of this that I've made people who I will be in touch with for the rest of my life so and that is such an honour. That's a lovely thing to hear Alex, I'm very glad we could speak, thank you. Oh thank you so much for having me.
Alex McCormick helped raise over $400,000 for the Spello Library in Liverpool after it was torched by rioters. We reached her in Liverpool. You've probably heard it said that golf is a good walk spoiled. In fact, you probably heard it on public radio under international law. I have to say it in every story about golf. I'm just trying to stay out of prison.
Now, people who hate watching golf might assume that there's no way to further spoil that spoiled walk, that seeing golf on TV is already like watching paint drying, while a commentator quietly remarks, if the wind picks up, the paint may dry slightly faster, but it's also possible that the paint will continue to dry at this exact rate. But these days, even golf people are losing patience with golf. Yesterday, the final group of three at the Farmers Insurance Open tournament teed off at 11.11 a.m.
and concluded their game at 4.40 p.m. That means it took them a full five hours and 29 minutes to finish 18 holes. And midway through that monotonous marathon, reporter Dottie Pepper had to say something. You know, Frank, I think we're starting to need a new word to talk about this pace of play issue in its respect. For your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasts, for all of it. It's just got to get better. Well said.
That really is a respect issue. Now, non-fans might argue that golfers could show more respect for TV audiences by not playing golf on TV. But even fans are fed up at this point. Tournaments are getting longer and longer because some golfers are taking longer and longer between shots, sometimes to the point where the light fades and organizers have to halt play.
There are growing calls for major reforms, including shot clocks and penalties for competitors who take too long. And the PGA shouldn't be afraid of going overboard, or viewers might not get overboard dumb.
Tanya Mosley didn't even know she had a sister until she went missing. Her sister Anita left home in 1987 and never returned. Now Tanya, along with the help of her sister's son Antonio, is determined to find out what happened. I'm Kathleen Goldtar and this week on Crime Story, one woman's search for her long lost sister. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.
The Democratic Republic of Congo says its neighbor has declared war. The accusation follows reports that Rwandan troops had invaded the eastern part of the country. At the same time, the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group is claiming to have entered Goma, a regional hub that's home to more than 2 million people. Martin Gordon is the Anglican bishop of Goma. He left the DRC on Saturday, and for safety reasons, he has asked us not to say where we reached him. Bishop Gordon, what were you hearing and seeing?
on Saturday that made you decide that you needed to get out? Well, the British government, along with the French and the American government, had asked all of their citizens to leave. That was on the Friday. And on the Friday evening, there was one of the power lines, and the main power lines for the city was hit. There was limited power anywhere in the city and the water shortages in some parts.
So the Rwandan troops had not yet crossed over the border into DRC. That happened Sunday morning. And so there was a lot of people trying to leave at the border post, but there wasn't a real sense of panic. There was an orderly leaving.
But in town that day, as we drove Saturday roundabout lunchtime, it was eerily quiet. So people were already starting to stay in their homes and many of the shops that should normally have been open weren't open. So there was a sense of foreboding, but at that point, a kind of orderly exit, whereas on the Sunday and then today, obviously, things change significantly for the worse. As things have changed, how has all of that hit you?
It's tough. It's tough not being there and hearing patchy information. So hearing from two of my clergy, one who just said he's hiding behind his door, terrified and trembling and hearing indiscriminate firing in his neighbourhood.
Another saying that he's with his brother hiding under the table, but his wife and his kids are safe. And knowing that they're without power, knowing that food prices have gone through the roof because M23 captured one of the key ports on the lake on Monday. And knowing that the internet's been cut, knowing that 4,000 prisoners have escaped from the main prison.
It's just difficult to know what to say to those who are left in-game, recognising that we had the means to leave. We've got friends that we're staying with outside of the country. But just knowing how traumatic it is for a part of the world and a part of the country that is already deeply, deeply traumatised.
In 2012, there was an M23 takeover of Goma, but it ended in about 10 days. There was international pressure, intense pressure on Rwanda and others at that time. Does this time feel different? I mean, there was a sense of some residents.
that we've been here before will just bunker down. It only lasted nine days and then they'll be gone. This is already feeling different. The start of the assault really was yesterday, yesterday morning. And as we speak now, it's still not clear which parts of the city are under M23 control and which parts under FARDC control. But also there has been a huge amount of political...
will and political capital spent in the last 13 years, 1912, particularly the last three or four. As President Chisikedi, when he came to office, did reach out to President Kagame of Rwanda and all sorts of bilateral deals. We had the Nairobi peace process, the Rwanda peace process, the last meeting of which was scheduled for December the 15th. President Kagame at the last minute decided he wouldn't attend. So it seems that it's difficult to know exactly where this...
will go. But I would say I'm slightly more pessimistic than I perhaps would have been had I been around in 2012, which is why we need the African Union really to step up. And I'm pleased that President Ruto has called an emergency meeting for tomorrow or the next day. But also the international community. There's a sense in GOMA of being abandoned. Why are people looking the other way?
have been highlighting and documenting the atrocities that have been committed. There's the UN group of experts report that documented very clearly all of the M23's atrocities. And there was a meeting of the Security Council even yesterday, but...
You know, fine sounding words are not going to lead to peace in Eastern Congo. It needs to be backed up by international action. And the Congolese people have been calling on the international community to impose sanctions for years. Are you worried, Bishop Gordon, I know you said this time feels different. Are you worried that it feels like war is coming, a broader war?
I mean, arguably, I mean, this is what the Congolese speaker said at the UN Security Council yesterday. I mean, there is a declaration of war. When Rwandan troops enter the territory of another sovereign country, that is a declaration of war. And I think there is a sense, certainly the Congolese response is that Rwanda has declared war on DRC.
We need to work very carefully at de-escalating all of that and to pursue all options for peace. The war is in no one's interest. Even the Rwandan representative, permanent representative to the Security Council said yesterday, we will not find a solution to this conflict through war. No one will win.
I'm hoping that with the focus of the international community, and particularly the African Union, that we can do everything we can to find a solution for peace. Bishop Gordon, I appreciate your time. Please take care. Thank you very much. Thank you. Martin Gordon is the Anglican Bishop of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For safety reasons, he asked us not to say where we reached him.
How often do you think to yourself, wouldn't the world be a better place if it still had the dodo in it? Yeah, me too. Very often. For a long time, the dodo lived a joyful and safe existence on the island of Mauritius, until that was rudely and lethally interrupted by human settlers. Now it's been over 300 years that the dodo has been as dead as a...
extinct bird. But now a group of de-extinction researchers is trying to bring it back. Beth Shapiro is the chief science officer at Colossal, a bioscience firm working on de-extinction. We reached her in Santa Cruz, California. Beth, you went from not thinking that the dodo needed to come back, you were against it, you thought it was a bad idea, to now having a tattoo of a dodo on your body. What changed?
I think the order of operations is a little off there, but I think I never thought that it shouldn't happen. I was more of a skeptic about the technology. When people think about de-extinction, what comes to mind is this idea that we're going to bring back a 100% identical copy in every way of a species that...
doesn't exist. And I am still 100% on board with the idea that that won't ever happen. So I think what really did change was the technology and the way that I really started thinking about this differently. We don't need a perfectly identical dodo if what we want is to put a bird back in the dodo's habitat and restore some of the roles that the dodo used to play in that habitat. And this is really what has shifted.
in my thinking about the extinction. And when you do think about dodos in particular, when you're looking at that tattoo or thinking about the technology and the science, what kind of feelings does this creature evoke in you? What gets you excited about this?
When I was a graduate student, I was at Oxford and we had an ancient DNA lab. This is the field of science that I was in where we extract DNA from bones and pieces of skin and stuff like that from animals and plants that used to be alive. I would walk by the Oxford dodo specimen every day on the way to our little lab. And it would always make me think, you know, we're working on all of these tools. We're trying to understand these animals that used to be around because we want to understand what kind of impact people had on ecosystems.
systems and no one even knows what kind of bird the dodo is, right? I really wanted an opportunity to take a piece of that dodo and grind it up and extract its DNA and at least figure out, you know, what kind of bird was it, right? And I did finally manage to do that. It took a bit of trickery. I was able to use the DNA that we recovered to show that the dodo is a type of pigeon. So to bring it back, how do you do that?
What is the technology and the science? So first we need to know what made a dodo look and act like a dodo instead of like other types of pigeons. And we do that by going out and collecting pieces of dodos and extracting their DNA and learning their whole genome sequence, the DNA code that makes up the dodo. And we do the same for all the closely related species of pigeons. So we're going to compare their DNA sequences on a computer and ask where the dodo has changes that are likely to have made the dodo look.
can act like it does. Then, because it's not like Jurassic Park, we're not just stitching pieces of DNA together and filling it in the middle with frog DNA or whatever they did in Jurassic Park, we're going to start with a cell from a Nicobar pigeon because they're his closest relatives. And so we have a backbone of what our dodo is going to look like. And then we're going to use the tools of genome editing. And here, what we'll do is it'll essentially allow us to cut
out of the genome, the bits that are Nicobar pigeon-like, and paste in their place the bits that are more like a dodo. So we're essentially cutting and pasting our way from a Nicobar pigeon genome to a dodo genome. Then we have to turn those cells in a dish, in a lab, into an actual bird. And this is where I think it gets really cool. So right now, we don't have tools to do genome editing in bird species. We can edit and then clone mammals.
Nobody's heard of Dolly the sheep, the most famous cloned animal. But we don't have the technology to use these same tools in birds. And the avian team at Colossal is working on exactly that. There are people who are listening who will be so excited about the prospects of what you're describing and others who will be concerned about the ethical side of things. And maybe, you know.
People will feel both things as they hear this. They can be excited and have questions, ethical concerns as well. There are those who say, you know, you could use this money to help save animals that are still here but endangered. They worry about, you know, damage to current ecosystems. You mentioned the Jurassic Park descriptions that people's minds often go to that kind of worst case, even cinematic scenario. But what do you say to those concerns?
There are a lot of concerns associated with the science and the funding, etc. And I absolutely agree with most of these. Addressing the funding in particular, we are in a period of time where there is a biodiversity crisis going on. And I really think we need to be building the suite of tools that we have to combat this crisis. The funding that Colossal has received to develop these technologies and all of these technologies as we push toward mammoths.
and thylacines or Tasmanian tigers and dodos will be immediately applicable to real world practical conservation problems. This funding did not come from people who would have supported traditional approaches to conservation. And I am definitely not saying that we should be doing this instead. Instead, I think this is a both and scenario. We need to be increasing what we can do, at least looking out and allowing ourselves the opportunity to evaluate what risks there might be. You know,
So as for the other suite of potential hypothetical risks, we as people have been manipulating the evolution of the species that we encounter for as long as we have existed. First by making things go extinct and then by taking a gray wolf and turning it into a chihuahua in a Great Dane and agriculture. All of this is using our brains to figure out how to manipulate the evolutionary process. These tools are different from that, but they are kind of the next step along that path.
And I really think it's something that if we are going to push ourselves toward a future that is both biodiverse and filled with people, we really need to explore what we can do that is in a safe and ethical approach. And how far in the future is your dodo?
do you think? That's a great question. In fact, I really always get that question and really try not to answer it. There are a lot of technical hurdles to be surmounted, and I really want to make sure that people are working toward deadlines that are aggressive but also achievable. This is a new space, and we want to be able to do it in a clear and clean and ethical way and don't really want to be pushed by artificial deadlines because, you know, the chief scientist went on the radio and said we're going to have a dodo in a couple years.
Beth, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you so much. Beth Shapiro is the chief science officer at Colossal, a bioscience firm that's working to bring the dodo back. We reached her in Santa Cruz, California. Yeah.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are returning to what's left of their homes in northern Gaza today, after Israeli forces began allowing them through checkpoints that had blocked virtually all access to the region. That follows Hamas' release of four more Israeli hostages over the weekend in exchange for some 200 Palestinian detainees. Meanwhile, the head of Israel's Shin Bet Security Service has signaled that the country's focus is now firmly on the occupied West Bank, and Mariam Barghouti is witnessing that firsthand.
She's a Palestinian writer and researcher who's ordinarily based in Ramallah. This week she's in Janine, where Israel Defense Forces recently launched what they're calling Operation Iron Wall. That's where we reached her earlier today. Mariam, can you give our listeners a sense of where you are right now and what is happening around you? Yeah, I am currently in Janine. I'm staying in a hotel just outside the city.
And there are drones in the sky 24-7. On occasion, you're hearing bangs, which is usually as a result of the explosions that is happening inside Janine refugee camp. And there's military presence predominantly everywhere in the district. So we'll see them passing every once in a while. So it is very tense here and it is very violent. We're seeing airstrikes. We're seeing the use of excessive live ammunition.
We're seeing field executions and field interrogations and torture. So the situation is very ugly. It's the ugliest I have seen. I know you haven't been able to get into the refugee camp in Janine yourself, but you have been speaking with ambulance workers who have made it in. What have they told you?
Right. So we haven't been able to enter Janine refugee camp because it's under siege. But medics and civil defense teams are saying that at this point, seven days in, the camp is nearly emptied of its residents. And what the soldiers are doing is just demolishing homes through bulldozers as well as bombs. How many people were there or are usually there?
Thousands. The refugee camp is homes to thousands of Palestinians, nearly 13,000 according to honorable records. An Israeli government spokesperson told reporters there had been, quote, no evacuation orders whatsoever, unquote, for the people of Janine. Are you seeing otherwise? Are you seeing some sort of evacuation orders being delivered?
So in the first three days of the operation, not only did we hear about the evacuation orders, but we saw and spoke with displaced families that were telling us the soldiers would tell them leave or we're going to kill you or leave or we're going to bomb your house and forcing them kind of to escape from their house. So there wasn't a formal evacuation order, but there was an evacuation practice, a very violent one.
Significant Palestinian resistance, that's historic as well. There is armed resistance there. Israel's defense minister said it is, quote, a powerful operation, what is unfolding now, to eliminate terrorists and terror infrastructure in the camp, ensuring that terrorism does not return to the camp after the operation is over, unquote. Why do you think this is happening now? So it seems that this is a punitive measure against Palestinians with a focus on Janine because it has been a resistance.
Now, the Israeli military is claiming it is targeting terrorists. But at the same time, what we're seeing is the majority of the casualties are civilians, including minors. And Israel, you need to contextualize the timing is that right now there's a ceasefire.
happening in Gaza. And there was the release of Palestinians in exchange for the Israeli hostages. So Israel is trying to make sure Palestinians are not celebrating this in any way, shape or form, and to not see the ceasefire as an accomplishment or a win. And that's why the punitive measures come in in the West Bank. In addition to the Israeli military operation, there's also...
a confrontation, it's been playing out for weeks now, a deadly one as well, between the Palestinian Authority and the Janine Brigades. What kind of conversations are you hearing about what should be done about the presence of those militant groups in Janine?
Right. So what I need to understand that this is actually a joint operation by the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority. So according to sources we have spoken with, they've been coordinating together. And again, this Operation Iron Wall was preceded by Operation Protect Home by the Palestinian Authority, which was as lethal as the current one. At least 14 Palestinians were killed in that.
So in terms of the collaboration between the PA and the Israeli military and intelligence is under the Oslo Accords, where there was a security agreement. Now, the Palestinian Authority has adhered to these accords. However... Currently, what people are seeing is that this is no longer an adherence to the peace agreement of 93-94, that the Palestinian authorities are actively going against their own people. And they're seeing them as traitors to the cause and acting as a proxy army for Israel.
Last week, UN Security General Antonio Guterres told delegates in Davos at the World Economic Forum, quote, there's a risk Israel will feel this is the moment to annex the West Bank, unquote. You live in Ramallah. Is that a concern you share? Absolutely. We're seeing unprecedented rates of outposts being erected around the West Bank. And in the last 15 months, the emboldenment of settlers.
has increased dramatically. They're even driving too deeply into Ramallah, which historically hasn't been a thing. But now we're seeing more settler presence in areas that otherwise was not there and more settler expansion at the same time. So it's a very big concern because that does seem to be the goal, the annexation of the West Bank. The Gaza ceasefire is holding at the moment. Does this escalation or...
The situation in the occupied West Bank, what does it mean from where you sit about the prospect of that ceasefire continuing to hold? I think in regards to trying to use the West Bank as a provocation to end the ceasefire is a misconception. Now, we need to also understand that the Israeli military has been trying to carry out a large scale operation in the West Bank long before October 7th, long before the ongoing war and long before the ceasefire right now.
So I don't think relating them is a smart thing to do because it makes it seem as though this is new. And I think now the focus with the ceasefire is to just adhere to the agreements placed between Hamas and Israel in which the West Bank was not discussed. Mariam, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Miriam Barghouti is a writer, researcher, and contributor to DropSite News, who's based in Ramallah. We reached her today in Janine in the Occupied West Bank.
It's been almost five years now since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And for nearly as long, there have been debates and disagreement about how governments should react to COVID and whether mistakes were made, especially in the initial response.
Three years ago, after securing an election win in Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith and her Minister of Health requested a deep dive into their province's pandemic response. And last Friday, the Alberta Pandemic Data Review Task Force released its report. Among other things, it questions the value of many pandemic restrictions. It also recommends halting the use of COVID vaccines, quote, without full disclosure of their potential risks, unquote.
Dr. Brayden Manns has been critical of the task force since long before the report was released. He's a physician in nephrology and internal medicine and a former co-chair of the Alberta Health Service's COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group. We reached Dr. Manns in Calgary. Dr. Manns, I know you've read this report in its entirety, cover to cover. What are some parts that you read that really concerned you? Well, there are snippets.
of evidence used in a few different areas, but there are a few areas that are really concerning, and the areas that I'd be most concerned about would be in the areas of vaccination, therapeutics, you know, what medications we should or shouldn't be using for COVID-19 or for future pandemics. And from what you can tell, where was this task force getting its data and information to make its recommendations?
It's an important question. The usual process of setting up a task force like this is you identify an expert committee that represents all sorts of different expertise and different perspectives, and then an independent evidence review is commissioned. So the members of the committee aren't doing the evidence review, pulling evidence from different places. There's an independent review.
You'd go out and you'd speak to the public, you'd speak to health professionals, you'd speak to people who were in ministries of health, and you'd ask them about what worked, what didn't work, what were their experiences, and then that balanced expert committee would bring all of that together. What seems to have happened here is that the conclusions seem to be written first, and then data was sought to support them. So you've got an eclectic mix of anti-science talking points, some...
many of which have been debunked by experts and fact-checkers, particularly statements around vaccinations, statements around the effectiveness of things like ivermectin. You've got screenshots from scientific journals with arrows and some words added in bright colours. You've got some data statements that are unreferenced, but when you look further at them, they certainly seem to come from social media posts that went viral in past years. There's some.
Scientific citations, it's a mix, a mishmash. We reached out to Alberta's health ministry for comment. We received a statement in response, and they say the recommendations, quote, offer a perspective on how the government can be better positioned to protect the health and safety of Albertans in the future, unquote. There are those who will look at this and look at the reporting around this report and maybe listening to this conversation who will say, who believe.
you know, those screenshots and some of the information in there and think that legitimate differences in opinion were quashed during the pandemic. And they'll say, you know, doctors are trying to hide the truth. What do you say to people who believe that the medical establishment is against rigorous debate and discussion about this?
Well, Premier Smith was looking for a contrarian view, and she certainly found it, and she certainly got that contrarian review in this report. And we do need a healthy debate. There are different perspectives on the impact of public health measures on our health system, but on people's ability to go around in a free way to visit restaurants and malls, kids to go to school. There were real negative effects of some of the different public health measures.
So it's fine that there's different perspectives, but there shouldn't be different underlying facts underlying that. You know, I was one of the co-chairs of the scientific advisory group, which made recommendations to health system leaders and to the chief medical officer of health during the pandemic. And this notion that we were trying to harm the public and that we weren't taking other perspectives into account.
or a notion that physicians are somehow out to get a certain segment of the population or that everybody is in the pockets of pharmaceutical industry. It's just, it's not accurate and really it's dangerous. The pandemic was a very confusing time and when you see a report like this, it's sitting on a government website with very polished looking figures. People, physicians, public trusts arguing about
very different figures. You know, the figure that's included is based on a whole bunch of very poor quality studies. You know, I can present a figure that just includes the higher quality studies that shows a very different result. And that must be very difficult for the public.
We should mention in April, you and Dr. Lenora Saxinger called for a review of the response to the pandemic. You were pushing for that. But we should also mention that the statement from the Alberta Health Ministry to us also said, quote, Alberta's government will review and consider this report and its findings. However, no policy decisions have been made in relation to it at this time, unquote. Do you think what is in this report will actually...
eventually find its way into government policy? Oh, I think so. Yes, I think there's the report and then there's the sentiment that goes into the report. And a government intentionally, well, in some situations, government intentionally select specific individuals with
who they know hold contrarian views, and then lo and behold, the report comes out and shares those contrarian views. They also hire consulting companies based on similar ideologies. So is it the report that affects whether COVID-19 vaccines are paid for? Is it the report that leads to changes in governance that allows local groups to make their own decisions and not to have a provincial decision made?
Or is it just the underlying perspective of the government that has put together this committee? I guess that's hard to say. But again, this report is sitting on a government website next to other reports that presumably are more balanced and have actually looked at data in more rigorous ways. But how are members of the public meant to know that?
One report has had a much lower bar for the evidence that got into it or the information that got into it. Dr. Manns, I appreciate your time. Thank you. You're welcome. Dr. Braden Manns is a physician in nephrology and internal medicine and a former co-chair of the Alberta Health Services COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group. We reached him in Calgary.
You've been listening to the As It Happens podcast. Our show can be heard Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 after your world tonight. And you can, of course, also listen to our show online at cbc.ca slash AIH or on the CBC Listen app or, of course, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Neel Kirksell. And I'm Chris Howden. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.