The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - A Mix of John Le Carre and The Marx Brothers

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Brian Stewart uses that comparison to talk about the latest bit of skullduggery and intrigue we discover inside the story of the Ukraine war.  Plus BR Ian's take on the latest version of the Pentagon Papers -- what happened and what did we learn? Plus, an endbit on the power of the nap.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, a mix of the spy-thrilling author John le Carre and the comedic team of the Marx Brothers. Yes, that's quite a mix, but it's one that Brian Stewart talks about today in his regular commentary on Ukraine. And hello there. It's Tuesday. That means Brian Stewart, the award-winning foreign correspondent, war correspondent, and his Tuesday talk about the war in Ukraine. This one's got some really great stuff in it. You're going to, you know, enjoy seems the wrong word to use about the war in Ukraine, but there are some elements of this discussion today that will really get you thinking.

But first, a little story about Canada's icebreakers. And Canada's icebreakers are truly important to Canada's Arctic, especially. Not just the Arctic, there are icebreakers along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. But to the Arctic, they are truly a lifeline. Opening up areas for communities, getting in and, you know, looking after situations where ships, other ships have been frozen in the ice. So there's a historic story of the legends of the Canadian icebreaking service through the Canadian Coast Guard.

Finally, these have been aging icebreakers for some time. Finally, the government seems to really be pushing ahead with a new icebreaker scheme. They're going to spend billions. The timelines are kind of up in the air as they often are in the shipbuilding business. Even the designs are still being hammered out. But they are said to be on their way. It's going to happen. I've been lucky enough to have been on a number of Canadian icebreakers. In the Beaufort Sea, where one overwintered, which is very unusual. A little more than 10 years ago, I was up there just before Christmas. Flew in, landed on the ice, spent time,

I can't remember how long, three or four days, on one of the icebreakers. I was on an icebreaker during the search for the Franklin. And I guess the trip that I'll always remember the most is on the Louis S. Saint Laurent, kind of the main ship in the icebreaker fleet, built more than half a century ago. It's been plying Arctic waters since then. But I was on the Louis for a week.

We traveled through the Northwest Passage. And we broadcast live, never been done before, broadcast live from inside the Arctic Circle as the ship was moving through the Northwest Passage. It was an amazing trip. I can remember there were times because the ship was moving. It wasn't stationary. Even when you're kind of locked in the ice,

you're moving because the ice is moving. And that made trying to link up with the satellite to broadcast live made it an incredible challenge because you're moving. And you're going to say, come on, Peter, it can't be true. This is true. We had a couple of super technical people with us from Raja Canada in Montreal had come on board because they looked after this particular dish we were using to connect with satellites orbiting the Earth to send our signal down to Toronto. And they literally held that dish. It was one of those big dishes, satellite dishes.

They held that dish in their hands and moved it tiny little measures of, you know, centimeters to stay on track with the satellite orbiting above. Now, I don't know the technical terms, so I'm sure some of you who do are saying, no, no, no, that's not right. What is right is they had to move the dish to make the connection. And it worked. And so, you know, I did the national live from the deck of the Louis S. Saint Laurent. And to commemorate that, if you ever get a chance to go on the Louis

and you look through the sort of, you know, hallways on board, you will see near the officer's mess a plaque on the wall that says, 2006, the CBC and Peter Mansbridge did live broadcasts of the National from this ship inside the Arctic Circle. So a little piece of my broadcasting career and the CBC's broadcasting career hanging on the wall inside the Louis. Proud of that fact. Always will be. Okay. Enough with Mansbridge babbling on about

the past. Let's get to the present and some amazing stories connected to the war in Ukraine. It's Tuesday, as I said, and that means Brian Stewart's with us. And Brian has some great stories today. So let's get at it. Brian Stewart joins us right now. So I should explain that, you know, every week when we do this program, you know, as we get closer to it, we wonder,

well, is it going to be enough to talk about? And then every once in a while, this mother load of stuff comes in. And this is one of those weeks where, boy, everywhere you turn, there's another great story as it relates to the Russia- Ukraine conflict. I want to start not with the, what I'm calling the Pentagon Papers version two, which is an incredible story and has a Canadian angle to it. But you know me, I love these sort of stories of intrigue, and there's clearly one in terms of Slovakia. They got a lot of attention some time ago when they said they were going to offer up some of their fighters to Ukraine.

Well, they did, but there's a catch to the story. Take us through it, Brian. There is, and it involves, once again, the dirty arts of espionage and intelligence. Yeah, the Slovakians really cheered the Ukrainians a great deal a little while ago when they promised 11 of their Soviet-era MiG-29s, which are old planes made really for the 70s and 80s, but still very good, especially when upgraded with all the bells and whistles of modern air combat. So the Slovakians, of course, wanted to get the planes upgraded, and they called in technicians to work on them.

They've been working on them for months, in fact. Seems it turns out those technicians, however, were freelance Russian technicians who were experts in the big 29s. And well, they certainly had all the know-how. They certainly seemed to know one end of the plane to the other. And they worked away, beavered away for months on end. And then the big headlines are going to Ukraine, and it turns out the 11 May 29s have been, surprise, sabotaged. They are able to fly and get off the ground and stay in the air for a bit, but they can't go into combat. They can't fight because all the modern weaponry systems is almost too complicated to

understand for lay people were broken broken by it appears these same technicians and so the Ukrainians and NATO across NATO people are scratching their heads saying how is it possible that Slovakia thought you would bring in Russian technicians to upgrade fighter planes so they could fight against Russian fighter planes in the Ukraine-Russia war without expecting consequences? But this story is like sort of a John le Carre mingled with the Marx brothers, you know, just half of it's very serious and score one for Russian intelligence. We've certainly pointed out at times when they haven't done very well or they've been completely off base or backwards, but this one seems to have been a successful hit. And seriously, it robs

Ukraine of a desperately needed squadron full. That's 11 may 29s would have been absolutely invaluable right now because ukrainians are down to fewer than 70 planes and fortunately they're getting some more big 29s in from poland but they haven't gotten nearly enough and boy those 11 would have been sorely needed now in time the ukrainians will probably be able to fix the sabotage damage, but that's going to be probably a lot of time and not ready in time for the big offensive that everybody's waiting for. It's mind-boggling still. I'm just trying to think, who is the guy who made that first phone call?

Okay, we've got to get these things fixed. I know a good place. It's in Russia, but let's give them a call and see if they'll come and fix these planes. It is mind-boggling, but it's a great story. And as you say, great mix of Le Carre and the Marx Brothers in the telling of that one. Okay, let's get to the story that has kind of rocked the intelligence world over the last few days. And that is how, you know, a good number of highly classified Pentagon material

ended up basically on the internet and was available to read. I mean, before we get into some of the particulars, and especially one that relates to Canada specifically, what is your theory on how this could have happened in the first place? Well, there's no question that the documents, for the most part, appear legit. There's secret intelligence briefings from inside the Pentagon on all number of things related to the war. Some, however, have been doctored by our friends over

in Russia. Again, the Russian intelligence have been busy and have doctored some of the valid leak ones to throw into the mix as well, just to confuse things. But what we have is 50 leaked documents. And I have to say right off the bat, I'm a bit surprised if anybody is too surprised that the Americans are leaking again. I mean, the Americans leak like a sieve. I mean, go back over the whole lineup of WikiLeaks in 2014, Snowden, Deep Throat, you know, the Pentagon Papers originally

during the Vietnam War. They just are always leaking, not to mention their chiefs of staff, the defense staff, tend to come out all the time with amazing quotes that shouldn't be said by anybody sort of in public. But this is serious stuff. It's the other thing I would mention, I think we have to think of first, is it's incredible they got out. But most of the documents are from five weeks to a month ago. There's very few key military movements that are

involved here. So a lot of it's already outdated. It's a snapshot in time, but it will be useful intelligence for the Russians. It will be useful coals on the fire for those who've got a beef against the United States for meddling because, you know, it shows a lot of things. It shows that not only are the Americans doing a lot of very, very extremely talented spying on the Russians, getting amazing breakthroughs and equipment, but they're also spying on allies, allies including the Ukraine and Israel and South Korea. But again, I have to say, is there anybody out there really that surprised that the Americans are spying on their allies yet again?

Every seven or eight years or so, they get caught. They sort of slap their own wrists and say, oh, bad on us, bad on us. We mustn't do this again. We won't. And then a few years later, they go back to spying. The details. Do you want to get into some of those? Yeah, we will.

And we're going to start off in the Canadian one. But just the last point on should we be shocked the Americans spy on their friends? No, we shouldn't. And wasn't it Obama's CIA who was tapping the phone of Angela Merkel in Germany? So there's a history of this going on, and I'm sure there's a certain degree of it going the other way as well. Oh, absolutely. We all suspect the French do a fair bit of spying on their allies,

and I wouldn't be too surprised if the British didn't as well, and many others. It really is quite astonishing in that regard. Yeah. Okay, let's move into the big revelation, or at least one of them, the one that's getting a lot of attention, and not surprisingly so, that involves Canada. Once again, nobody's sort of out and out confirming this happened, but then again, nobody's denying it either. But the headline is basically, a pro-Russian hacking group may have targeted Canada's energy infrastructure. Now, that's pretty serious stuff.

And they're claiming to the Russian intelligence they've actually done it and they've been successful. This is a pro-Russian hacking group called Zarya, which reports and does work for the FSB, which is the old KGB, right? It's the foreign intelligence of Russia. They claim that they targeted quite successfully a crude oil pipeline in British Columbia, natural gas flowing to the United States. And what they did was they got the IP address and they had the ability, they claim, to go in and start meddling with the pressures and the pipelines and the actual flow and the safety measures and the alarm systems and the rest of it. And they further reported back to the FSB, which was, of course, picked up by the CIA and the Pentagon, that they were able to cause a major explosion in the Canadian pipelines.

And in fact, the Russians were reading the media waiting to read about a major explosion in the Canadian pipelines. And in fact, the Russians were reading the media waiting to read about a major explosion in the Canadian pipelines. I am sorry to laugh at any of this, it's very serious stuff. But we've had no confirmation it actually happened. Our own communications security establishment, which is really our second most important and maybe most important, in fact, intelligence service, hasn't confirmed or denied anything. guard against some form of corporate intrusion or cyber terrorism coming directly out of the Russia-Ukraine war. So they're saying, well, we gave warnings, but they're not confirming that anything here happened. The Americans are...

However, I mean, what it does do, especially with them not denying this, it underlines the potential vulnerability of something we just considered like so safe. We've got a pipeline running through parts of British Columbia and there should be no problem. Now, there have been demonstrations at times, as you look back, in terms of the pipeline wars that exist within Canada itself. But this is something very, very different and could, you know, if true,

cause serious consequences. And as I said, underlines that vulnerability possible. Well, very serious. A couple of things here to mention. The American report said it would be the first time, Mark, the first time that their community, their American intelligence has, quote, observed a pro-Russian hacking group execute a disruptive attack against the Western industrial control systems. Against Western industrial control system. The first time they've ever observed a Russian attack. That singles Canada out is we're kind of special. I mean, we're the first country that Russia decided to do this on. And I mean, they seem to, in these statements, to be pretty sure of their intelligence. They also, it's interesting that this attack has been taken seriously enough in Washington

that the New York Times saw fit to give Canada a kind of a shout out for its strong role in this war. Again, I have to quote this. Canada, quote, a strong ally of the United States and a NATO member, has been among the most fervent critics of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, imposing sanctions on more than 2,400 Russian individuals and entities. to say raises the question to me, why this special status for Canada? Could it possibly have anything to do with those statements by our foreign minister back when the war first began? That this support of Ukraine could lead to the fall of the Russian regime, which the Russian regime made a point of immediately countering, saying this is against all the rules of diplomacy to be talking about regime change like this. And I think Canada has done an excellent job often of supporting Ukraine,

but surely there can be not too much surprise in Ottawa to think that maybe the Russians have us marked up as the special, let's get even with countries. Canada is right up there near the top. We've given money, we've given weapons, and we've actually called for, thanks to our foreign ministers' outburst, the fall of Putin and his regime. Yeah, the regime change comments were Melanie Jolie, the foreign minister, made those. And she's spoken very firmly on the Ukraine story.

She's been in Ukraine at least once, if not twice, in terms of visiting Kiev. And not unlike Chrystia Freeland, the finance minister and deputy prime minister, who has been also very strong in her criticism of Russia, to the point where Russia's banned her, right? Isn't she a persona non grata inside Russia? Yes, indeed. Absolutely. She can't visit Moscow. So I think Canadians should be well aware in terms of this story,

what it signals if it's true. And once again, there's no reason yet to believe that it's not true. Nobody's denying it yet. They're being very careful about what they say. But it should signal to Canadians that we are looked on very firmly by Russia in terms of an enemy of their particular government of the Putin regime. And consequences can fall from that. We talk and we've talked many times over the last year of all the money that has moved from Canada to Ukraine, all the arms and weaponry that has moved to Ukraine, and the actions that Canada has taken, as you just mentioned, in banning certain Russians from coming to Canada and also freezing some of their assets in Canada.

So I think it's important, as you have said all along, to point that out, that we're not a bit player in this. No. I think we're number four of all the nations. We're number four after some biggies. The U.S., U.K., Germany, comes Canada, you know, which is a significant help. I mean, Canadians tend to downplay perhaps things like the training sessions and the logistical support given, but the Russians know that's extremely important stuff.

Okay, there's lots more in these papers that have been landed on the internet. We're going to take a look. See, that's a crowd cheering. They want to hear more. I don't know where that noise came from, but nevertheless, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll keep up our coverage with Brian Stewart on the Pentagon Papers No. 2, I like to call them.

Back in a moment. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode with Brian Stewart. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Scotland this week, but enjoying our discussions every day as always. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. All right, Brian, that's the Canadian angle. Move us forward. What's next on your list from what we've seen from these documents that landed on the Internet? Well, we've certainly seen evidence again to support what we've known really basically since the war began. And that is the amazing insight the United States intelligence has got into the Russian military. Some of the documents deal with their ability to intercept Russian targeting plans

so that when they're sending over cruise missiles and drones and that to attack Ukrainian thermonuclear power plants and electrical stations and all that, the Americans can pick up the target before the Russians even take off. And they, of course, pass them on immediately to the Ukrainians who can relocate some of their anti-aircraft abilities to intercept those, which they've been doing a remarkably successful job of, sometimes shooting down 80 to 90 percent of the incoming. This maybe explains part of that. They're also showing how Americans have been able to read how the Russians use their tanks in such a way. They've been able to coach

the Ukrainians on exactly what kind of firing zones they need, one, two, and three, and what firing zones for this tank or that tank. And they really read the Wagner Group, the mercenary force under Prokhorosian, very well. In fact, they've got a lot of communications going between the Wagner Group and the Kremlin itself and the Russian military. The big problem here, of course, for the Americans and the Allies is this tips the Russians off and the Wagner group where they're leaking, they're leaking and where they can shut off that flow

of information. So this getting out infuriates the Ukrainians who've been, you know, counting on this information continuing. So that's gotten out. You certainly have evidence of the Americans spying on Israel. They've been following very closely U.S. efforts to talk the Israelis into handing Ukraine some of the most sophisticated anti-aircraft systems they've got, the Iron Dome and the rest of it. And they followed also the South Korea debates over whether to give weapons to Ukraine as the Americans put more and more pressure on them. But I think some of the, one of the things that makes us very hesitant here is that some of these documents, and again, I want to say one thing, this was only 50 documents.

This was 50 documents. That's a serious leak. Let's remind ourselves that the WikiLeaks leak back in 2013 was 700,000 documents. So it's a blow, but it's not the kind of Mike Tyson body blow that the wikileaks gave them but one of the things that causes a lot of scratching of heads right now is that one of the documents takes the report of russian casualties the the americans are estimating the russians lost 220 000 casualties including 43,000 to 50,000 killed in action, where the Ukrainians have lost much fewer. One of those, that document has been altered to show Ukrainians losing an enormous number of more casualties than the Russians, up to 71,000 Ukrainian dead compared to only 17,000 Russian dead.

And there's no way that could have been in a U.S. intelligence report because all of the Western reports from the Ukrainians to the Germans to the Poles to the British to the French and to the Americans are estimating the Russian casualties as extremely high, well over up to 200,000 total casualties killed and injured. So that has been doctored. So what we're seeing evidence of in some of these papers is disinformation, which the Russians make a real talent of. They like to drop reports and get the allies arguing amongst themselves. Like, you know, they want to get the Israelis angry at

the Americans. They really want to get the South Koreans super angry at the Americans for not only trying to pressure them into arms for Ukraine, but then embarrassing them before the world by, you know, revealing actual conversations in the South Korean government. And now, you know, with the casualty figures, they want to get intelligence services of the West fighting amongst themselves. Who leaked this stuff? People will be saying, now, how did this ever get out? Did the Americans share their intelligence with too many people, hundreds of people, thousands of people? Did it come from just a source wanting to brag about the work they were doing? Or did it come from pro-Russian sources inside this Pentagon stream of documents?

Or did it come from an ally, one of the Five Eyes? Did it come from possibly Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand? So Canada will be looking, like all the others, feverishly to try and find out, is there anything in these documents that could have come from our own foreign policy or our own military? Well, and as we know from the Edward Snowden case, it only needs one person, right? Exactly. Who has access.

And a lot of people have access. WikiLeaks was one person manning yeah private manning exactly um okay the last question on on on this leak and i think it's worth pointing out uh with all the attention being placed on this you suggested uh to me that, in fact, a lot of this stuff was kind of out there, and we've talked about it before over the last months because of – well, you explain it. You tell me. Yeah, actually, that's a good point, and I'm glad I didn't forget that.

You know, a lot of this stuff, the first reaction is, well, this isn't all that new, is it, really? I've read about that. I've seen it on media broadcasts weeks and weeks ago, months ago. I mean, I heard about it on the bridge, the man's bridge to the bridge. So clearly what this underscores, I believe, is what we've often talked about and that is the amazing um everywhere ness of intelligence these days the open source intelligence a lot of this stuff was probably picked up even before the americans by open source intelligence and reporters have been reporting a

lot of extraordinarily accurate bits of information. And you keep wondering, how could they possibly have got that? That's coming from really high-level sources. And we know the Ukrainians are not giving out much voluntarily of the information we want to get from them. So it's coming out from various sources. Many other nations have very good intelligence services. To say the least, the British have been getting a lot of it out there as well. So it just, I think, to me, underscores the fact that, you know, nothing's going to remain secret for long anymore.

You know, self-important politicians will blurt it out, or chiefs of the defense staff will blurt it out, or somebody working in the interim sanctums of the intelligence service will want to brag it to a couple of his buddies that, look at this, what we managed to pick up from the Wagner Group. Yeah, that's great. That'll be out there soon. And so it goes. So I think you have to operate on the fact that a lot of intelligence is spun.

It's, as you pointed out, it could be altered, made up, faked. And a lot of the intelligence is just inevitably going to be out there. Okay. There is something that really has worried me reading through this as a major story that hasn't really been dealt with enough by the media. If you read through the American estimations of Ukrainian strength and their ability, getting ready for that big offensive we've all been waiting for, what strikes me is nervousness on the Americans' part. I believe this shows that inside the Pentagon and inside the American government, there is real doubt that the Ukrainians have

enough troops in their shock brigades that are going to try and crash through the russian lines has enough of the right equipment has enough training yet needs to mobilize a lot more people and the problem here is very much on the american mind if that offensive doesn't work and we talked about this on the bridge i think a month or so ago if it doesn work, we're into a whole new story, because that's going to really question the willingness of the Americans and the weak to stand in there for the long term. Because one of the quotes in these reports are that the Americans feel the Ukrainians won't be successful enough and a stalemate will persist throughout all of 2023.

These are scary words for much of Europe that is, you know, pushing itself to what it sees as pretty well its limits to keep going behind Ukraine. The thought of, boy, what if the Ukrainians don't win? What if they don't break the lines? What if they don't really smash the Russian defenses? Then who's going to keep spending the billions upon billions of dollars coming up with all the ammunition, which we're not able to produce enough of as it is over a long term?

And so that's fine for us to fret about. Russia reads this. They get the same message. And what it tells them is just keep going. You know, let the Ukrainians batter their heads against our lines, knock themselves out, realize they can't get through. They're either going to have two choices. They're going to have two choices, not either. They're going to have to talk to us and start negotiating on our terms, or they're going to have to fight on until they're even more exhausted and even give up even more. But all we have to do is just keep at it.

So this is bad news on many, many levels. Okay. I want to close it out with something that's not bad news. Something that underlines the resolve of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian government in how it can deal with things. I mean, we spent a fair amount of time in the last month or two talking about Russia's attempts to knock out the power grid in Ukraine. And with some success, there have been times when much of Ukraine was in the dark as a result of those power grid attacks. But interestingly enough, there's a story about the electrical output of Ukraine that's going to surprise a few people.

So surprise us, Brian. I think it's going to surprise a few people. So surprise us, Brian. I think stun a few people. We all remember those, as you put it, those incredibly bleak, awful days of darkness across Ukraine when the West was trying to rush in enough generators to keep apartment buildings and hospitals and medical centers going. It just looked like they were hanging on a thread. And the constant Russian attacks were sure to beat them down. Well, the big story coming out of Europe right at the moment about Ukraine's economy is that, guess what?

Ukraine's about to restart exporting electricity to the West. They've so managed to patch together all those battered grids and lines and terminals and you names it, that they can actually now start making real big money by exporting electricity to the West. And the West is just looking at this agog and saying, oh my gosh, we've seen some comeback kids, but this is really, it takes the cake. I'm going to add one PS to that story. There's another story in agricultural circles that have a lot of Russian, European countries right now are saying, we've got to stop these Ukrainian exports of grain. We thought there would be no exports, but they're pouring their grain out. The farmers in Ukraine, despite all the threat of farming that magnificent Ukrainian farmland under these

conditions, are now exporting more grain than Europe wants to see exported because they're, of course, crashing the prices in Europe. So that's a comeback story that has few parallels in modern times, I think. You know, I started off today saying there are weeks when we wonder what we're going to talk about on this special Tuesday programming. This was one of those Tuesdays where we didn't have any trouble at all finding all kinds of fascinating parts of this story. Brian, thanks as always for this and look forward to talking to you again next week. Okay, my pleasure. Thanks a lot. Brian Stewart with us, as he is every Tuesday,

with sort of nuggets of gold on the story of the Ukraine war, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. All right, we have time for an end bit. We love our end bits here at the bridge. And one thing we've talked about a number of times in the three-year history of the bridge is the power of a nap. A nap, right? A midday nap.

You know, we talked about how Churchill used to have a nap during the Second World War. He'd lie down in the afternoon, no matter what was going on, he'd lie down for whatever it was, 20 minutes, half an hour, and he'd come back powered up and ready for a long day and well into the night as he used to. I think I've mentioned that back in the day when I was doing the National,

it was a long day. I mean, those days when you're anchor, you can make the day as long as you want or as short as you want. I mean, some people feel, well, that's not much of a job. You arrive, you know, 10 minutes before airtime, you do the show, and then you leave. Well, I suppose you could do that, but journalists don't do that. And when I was doing the national, you know,

the first meeting of the day was at 9 o'clock in the morning. And that was 12 hours before the show went to air with its first edition. So that can be a long day. Now, I never went into the office till about 11, 1130. Those early morning meetings were done as conference calls. But then most of the day I would, you know, be in various meetings. As I said, you can make of what you will in that job. I was as much hands-on as I could be.

However, I didn't ignore the nap potential, and I used to take a nap in mid-afternoon. I'd either take it in my dressing room or I would go home, which wasn't far away, and, you know, lie down for not long, 15 or 20 minutes. So in an era where the accepted wisdom is you should sleep seven to eight hours a day, most people don't, right? They sleep less than that, which is not good. Lack of sleep, say the experts, and here I'm referring to an article that I saw in the last couple of weeks in the New York Times.

It's headlined, Can a nap make up for a bad night of sleep? And I think we all think of that at different times. Well, I'll just take a nap. That'll make up for the fact I of sleep. And I think we all think of that at different times. Oh, I'll just take a nap. That'll make up for the fact I only slept five hours last night. Well, it doesn't. First of all, what's the consequences of not sleeping the seven or eight hours? Well, the sleep experts who were contacted for this article say that a lack of sleep is associated with a range of increased health risks,

including obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and mental distress. So if you weren't concerned about a lack of sleep before this, you probably should be after hearing that list. Not only is the length of time, says the times you sleep, important for health, but also the quality of that sleep, which is determined by how much time you spend in its different stages. Okay, here's where we dived and dived deep down into the mechanics of sleep. When we sleep throughout the night, we pass through several sleep cycles of about 90 minutes each. Each is composed of four stages.

The first two are considered light sleep, where your muscles relax, your body temperature drops, and your heart rate and breathing slow as you doze off. The next stage, known as deep sleep, is when your eyes and muscles fully relax and you do the important work of repairing and building bone, muscle, and other tissues, as well as strengthening the immune system and consolidating and processing memories.

Rapid eye movement, or REM, is the last stage of the sleep cycle. It's not as deep as the third stage, but it's when you're most likely to dream. And it's thought to be associated with learning, storing memories, and regulating mood. So that's what's supposed to happen, right? These various stages of sleep. Now, it's normal to have a poor night of sleep every now and then, but if you don't consistently pass through all of these stages, says the Times, every night, that can

lead to a range of health conditions. Naps can't compete for that, is the conclusion of those sleep researchers who helped put this story together. Even though a few hours of sleep at night and a nap during the day might add up to six or seven hours total, the health benefits don't add up in the same way. Short naps of less than 90 minutes typically only include the lighter phases of sleep, not the deep restorative sleep that you usually get throughout the night.

However, there are some instances where short naps can be helpful, said one of the researchers. When you haven't gotten a great night of sleep, napping can really help improve things like reaction time and memory if you need to be working. If you usually work during the day, for instance, a 20 to 30-minute nap can restore alertness

without leaving you groggy or disrupting your sleep the next night. Well, if you're working during the day, you must have a really good boss if you can go, oh, I'm just going to go for my nap now. I do know that for me, back in the day, when I took those, and they were short, like 15 or 20 minutes, the difference between if I had a nap and I didn't have a nap, I could tell at 10 o'clock when we went to the edition of the National that went to Central Canada, Quebec and Ontario. We did the first one at 9 o'clock, which went to Atlantic Canada.

The second one was to Central Canada. And if I hadn't had a nap, I could feel it at 10 o'clock. I really had to sort of gear up for that. Now, if there was a story changing through the night, you keep doing it every hour, at least in the day when I was doing the program, you kept doing it every hour. But most nights, the 10 o'clock one was the last one you did,

and then it was on tape. I mean, I like to make the argument. Some people used to say, you know, let's have different items in each hour. And I was going, you know, it's not called the regional. It's called the national. And that's why you have the same program, the design, unless there's a changing news story. The design is to have the same program go to each region.

Anyway, there are arguments about that and good arguments. Some people don't believe that, others do. I did. Anyway, straying away from the topic, which is the nap. So I still have, I still, you know, I was obviously trained during those 30 years I was doing that program to have that mid-afternoon nap, a short one. And so now I often do the same thing. Here in Scotland, I walk a lot.

Certainly a lot more than I was walking at home. I'm getting thousands of steps in every day, walk the beach, walk the trails. The weather's been great here, fantastic, and getting ready to head back home. But it's been a great trip, as it always is here. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this day. but it's been a great trip as it always is here. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this day. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, if you've got letters, you've got comments on anything you've heard this week,

please send them in now, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's for Thursday's Your Turn edition, plus the Random Ranter returns after his Easter break. We'll see what he's got to say. Friday, of course, Good Talk with Chantel Hébert and Bruce Anderson. Set a record last week, I think there was over 21,000 downloads for our last episode of Good Talk. If you recall, we did it a day early on Thursday last week because of Good Friday. Anyway, that's it for now. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.