The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - A New Caution About AI Health Advice

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

It's an End Bit Wednesday special with a series of news you can use stories: from a new caution on health advice originating from AI, to a two-minute program to add longevity to your life, and the latest from Florida and the impact of a lot fewer Canadian snowbirds. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. It's Wednesday. It's time for a little end bits, a little news you can use. That's coming right up. And hello there, welcome to the middle of the week. It's hump day. It's Wednesday.

We're heading towards another weekend. And I don't know where you are in the country, but the weather is starting to actually look like it should look. At the end of April, beginning of May, You know, there are rain showers, that's fine. Remember what your mom used to say. April showers bring May flowers. And all that seems to be happening.

At least it is in this neck of the woods. I know in some areas it's been going like this all winter. Hello, Victoria. And other areas, well, there's still snow on the ground. I was in Calgary last week, and there was still snow. And it was gold and windy. Where we're heading in the right direction. All of us.

So that'll be nice. All right. Wednesday is an N-Bits day. It's kind of news you can use, as I said earlier. There's a lot of things here that are interesting. And worth keeping track of. Worth noting. And certainly the first one is that a time when there's so much

information available online. And we, you know, we ask Google or whatever search engine you've got what to think about certain things. And now we ask AI through chatbots. And we can ask them, you know, in some cases really complicated questions. Well, here's the headline that struck me. And this is on NBCNews.com. AI chatbots gave people alternatives to chemotherapy study finds.

Now, this is where things get dicey, right? So the subheadline here was popular artificial intelligence programs told users where to find alternative potentially dangerous treatments for cancer and other health scenarios. So this is kind of a beware AI article. Okay. It's written by an NBCNews.com writer by the name of Khan Oskine. So let's see what's written here. Artificial intelligence chatbots will tell you where to find alternatives to chemotherapy,

if you ask them a new study finds. Okay. That's not surprising, right? You can ask it anything. and it tends to give you some kind of an answer. But as the article goes on, at a time when influencers and political figures on social media increasingly promote bogus treatments for cancer or other health problems,

and as more people rely on AI for health advice, the new research suggests that some chatbot responses could be putting patients' lives at risk. Researchers at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor UCLA Medical Center evaluated how AI chatbots handle scientific misinformation through a series of questions about cancer, vaccines, stem cells, nutrition, and athletic performance. They tested free versions of Google's chatbot Gemini, the Chinese model, Deepseek, meta-AI, chat GPT, and Elon Musk's AI app GROC.

That's a real lineup of chatbots, right? In February of 2025, they asked the chatbots questions related to medical science in areas where misinformation proliferates. The queries were intended to push the bots into giving bad advice, a method the author of called straining. Questions included whether 5G technology or antiperspirants cause cancer, which vaccines are dangerous, and whether anabolic steroids are safe. Nick Tiller, who is the lead author of the study and a research associate at the Lundquist Institute at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center, said the prompts mimic the way people ask questions. when they already have an answer in mind.

A lot of people are asking exactly those questions, he said. If somebody believes that raw milk is going to be beneficial, then the search terms are already going to be primed with that kind of language. In the study published just last week in BMJ Open, Tiller and his team found that nearly half of the bots responses were problematic. Of those, 30% were somewhat problematic, and 19.6%, almost 20%, almost 1 and 5, were highly problematic. Somewhat problematic responses were largely accurate but weren't fully complete, and they would fail to provide adequate context. Highly problematic responses

provided inaccurate information and left room for considerable subjective interpretation. according to the study. Just a little bit more from this. The quality of responses was generally similar among the bots, though GROC performed the worst the research found. The study is the latest to show that AI responses to medical questions and scenarios can be misleading. Bots can pass medical exams but often fail in clinical or emergency scenarios.

around one third of adults use AI for health information and advice, according to a recent poll. Now, there's more in this article, and you can find it on the NBCNews.com website. But caution is the advice here on this, right? Okay, something different. And this isn't going to surprise you. This is a different kind of health care. This is, you know, looking for the sun.

in the winter and, you know, taking it easy. But the headline on this story, which you can find on CNN Travel, their website, CNN.com, but the travel section, the headline is A Chill on Tourism in Florida's Little Quebec. Now, this is not going to surprise you, right? We all know about the chill that we've caused. Well, we didn't cause it.

we were prompted to react to going to the states by certain comments and actions taken by the current U.S. administration. So Terry Ward writes this piece in CNN Travel. Let's read a little bit about it. It comes out of Hollywood, Florida. On a sunny and warm late February day at Richards Motel in Hollywood, Florida. And this motel looks like one of those classic from the 50s kind of place. I don't think it is. It just happens to look that way in the picture.

You know, with the side of the road, you know, the motel kind of laid out there with the rooms stretched out along the highway and the pool in front between the hotel or motel and the roadway. But modernized, okay, it looks, it looks, it doesn't look like a dump. It looks like going nice. So it's a sunny and warm, late February day at the Richard Motel in Hollywood, Florida. Gas are mostly from Quebec and Ontario.

They're dipping into the swimming pool, gathering for morning coffee and conversation. In a courtyard, the hotel's Quebecois owner calls the Friendship Park. I'll keep reading here. The motel's aesthetic mixes Florida and the Far North. Here are a snowman statue And wooden fence Covered with Canadian license plates

And it sees they got a picture of it And man They got license plates They got them from all over All the provinces Territories They've got them There's a sea turtle statue

And a tiki bar Only one thing seemed off On this balmy high season morning A vacancy sign illuminated to the right of the motel's office door. Come winter, beach towns like this one, dotting the Atlantic stretch of Florida surrounding Fort Lauderdale, have long brimmed with French Canadian tourists and other snowbirds who arrive for warmth and sunshine. Alongside Florida's famous beaches, they enjoy Canadian-owned restaurants,

serving some of their favorite foods, shows featuring some of Quebec's biggest homegrown stars, who fly in to perform and other glimmers of home that have sprung up in the area. Not this winter. This winter wasn't what Richard's motel owner, Richard Clavey, and other hoteliers in the area had hoped for. Destinations like Greater Fort Lauderdale, long a draw for those seeking a winter warm-up, illustrate how conflicted many once-frequent Florida visitors feel about visiting now, and what a decline in visits means for local businesses. Over the years, I've seen a lot of issues, and surprisingly,

we were expecting the Trump administration to come in, more prosperity. Everything will be going great, said Clavei, who's a dual Canadian and U.S. citizen, who said he voted for Trump in 2024. February 25 was one of his busiest months at the seven motels and extended state properties that he owns in the area that largely target French Canadians.

But when the tariffs on Canadian goods took effect in early March of last year, Clavey said that, Cancellations started rolling in, including from repeat guests, who come April often reserved for the following winter before they even started, their drives back north to Canada. A lot of people started to cancel and they stopped reserving. A lot of them were, I would say, polite and not necessarily saying their reason for canceling,

saying they got sick or they were making excuses. But some of his past guests were more honest about their motivations. One of them canceled, and we called them back and said, sir, you're leaving $1,000 on the table, the $1,000 deposit. And he was very firm. He said, I'm not going over there with that dictator of yours, said Clavey, who called last spring a disaster due to all the canceled bookings at his properties. So this is the story in more direct terms than we've been hearing it, right?

We've heard that travel is way down, but here we're, we're seeing it directly as it impacts one one hotel anyway. Just to close it out, this is what he said. The impact of Trump's policies or the perception of them

was enormous last March and April. This winter too saw a storm of cancellations as well as loyal guests from years past failing to rebook, said Clavet, with some opting to vacation in places like the Dominican Republic, and Mexico instead. Now, as I said, you can find this on CNN.com in their travel section.

It's a much longer article. It's about four or five times longer than that. With all kinds of examples. And listen, it's not just Florida hurting, right? There's a lot of border states hurting. Saw the senator from New Hampshire last week going over attacking Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary for the things he said about Canada, you know, like Canada sucks.

And that was just some of the nice things he said. So he's now being targeted by some of the senators who are going after him saying, look, your insults are killing us. New Hampshire obviously depends a lot on Canadian tourism dollars. But they're tourism dollars they're not getting right now. So you get the problem. picture. It's not a pretty sight. Okay. One of the things we like to do on NBits is we look for

for things that will help our health. Right? Here's one. Where is this from? It's in one of those. Oh, it's in the Washington Post. Here's the headline. Just two minutes a day of this type of exercise may help you live longer. Two minutes a day. I think we can all afford that? If it really is going to make us live longer? Right? And this is a column by a doctor.

Dr. Jordan Metzey in the Washington Post, so it's got to be real, right? The sub-headline is getting older doesn't have to mean slowing down. In fact, turning up the intensity, even very briefly, can transform long-term health and improve longevity.

So the good doctor wrote this in response to a question he got from one of his readers, and the question was, what can I add to my daily routine to improve my fitness and longevity without a huge time commitment? So let's see how he responds to that, because I think we'd all like to do that.

Give me something short, just a couple of minutes a day. It's going to make me live longer. Well, the doctor has an answer for that. Here's what he writes. Joan, a 64-year-old patient, came into my office, frustrated. She was walking every day, staying active and taking care of herself, but she still felt stiff, tired, and not nearly as strong as she used to be.

I thought I was doing enough, she told me. It's something I hear all the time, says the doctor. For decades, we've told people that moving more is the key to better health, and that's true. But it's only part of the story. increasingly, research shows that how you move matters nearly as much as how often. In particular, brief bursts of higher intensity activity can have an outsize impact on health, fitness, and longevity.

A recent study in the European Heart Journal looked at people who didn't engage in formal exercise and found that just one to two minutes a day of vigorous activity accumulated in short bursts was associated with a significantly lower risk of chronic disease and death. Okay, this is where you get my attention, right? You don't need to do all this. Go to the gym stuff. You just need a couple of minutes of intense action per day. At least this is the argument here.

So read on, Peter. Not a workout class, not a training plan, just everyday life done with a bit more intensity. Exercise physiologists call this vigorous physical activity or VPA, sometimes refer to as vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity or VILPA. It includes things most people don't think of as exercise. climbing stairs. Now, how often do you climb stairs? In our Stratford home, we have many flights of stairs,

you know, to the basement, to the attic, to this, to that. In Toronto, where we have a small condo, no stairs, and an elevator. So you don't get any of that action. But you certainly get it in Stratford, and we get it in Scotland. Stairs. Climbing stairs. Now, not just climbing stairs, but climbing stairs. stairs quickly, carrying heavy groceries, walking uphill with purpose, or hurrying to catch a train.

So do you do a walk? Do you do a daily walk? I try to do one as often as I can. But if you can find in your daily walk, no matter how long it is, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, if you're going to find part of that walk that's uphill. Not even like massively uphill, but clearly uphill. You feel it. That would be good.

Right? That would be very good. So, okay. I'll read a little more. These moments are brief, but they matter. Huffing and puffing, even for short periods, can shape long-term health. Two minutes.

can sound almost too simple. But physiologically, it makes sense. When you push your body harder, even briefly, you activate systems that don't get challenged during lower intensity movement. Your heart rate climbs. Your muscles recruit more fibers. Your mitochondria, which are like the battery packs to yourselves,

proliferate, and your metabolism shifts. These adaptations drive improvements in cardiovascular fitness, strength, and resilience. Think of it this way. A leisurely walk is good for you. But at a few short bursts of speed or hills, and that same walk becomes far more impactful. The challenge is that many people, especially as they get older,

shy away from intensity. There's a widespread belief that aging means slowing down, taking it easy, and avoiding anything that feels too demanding. Some of that instinct is understandable. People worry about injury or overdoing it, but avoiding intensity altogether can accelerate the very declines that people fear. As we age, we need more intensity, not less. We lose muscle mass, power, and cardiovascular capacity over time.

Those losses are not just about performance. They affect balance, independence, and quality of life. The ability to climb stairs without getting winded, react quickly if you trip, and carry groceries without strain, all depend on having a higher capacity for intensity. Okay, I'm going to stop reading because I'm getting exhausted. No, I'm not, but I do recognize this.

As I've told you before, I'm 77, approaching 78, And a lot of this has suddenly started familiar to me in the last couple of years. And so I'm trying to deal with it by walking more stairs, by finding areas there's an incline on my daily walk, carrying groceries in from the car, doing it and recognizing why I'm doing it, and recognizing that, you know what, this didn't used to feel stressful. now there is an intensity to it that's good,

but it also shows that I need to be doing it, right? All right. There's lots more to that article. As I said, where did I say it was from the Washington Post? Two minutes a day for a longer life. Come on, we've all got the two minutes a day. All right. time for our mid-show break.

We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. It's your Wednesday hump day show. It's an N-bit special news you can use. Things that you can think about, no matter how old you are,

what kind of shape you're in, how much time you have. You can listen to this program for all kinds of little things that are going to help you through life or tell you something about life. That's what our next piece has. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

We're glad to have you with us. This one's in the New York Times. It's a long article, and I'm not going to read it all. I'm just going to read a little bit of it. Here's the headline. Why fashion suddenly love. older women. Subheadline, representation of women of a certain age has never been higher. What's going on? Vanessa Friedman wrote this piece last week in the New York Times.

This month, Vogue did something that had never done before. Something most people thought it would probably never do. It put two 76-year-old women on its cover. Now, they weren't just any 76-year-olds. They were Meryl Streep and the Vogue Overseer and a Wintour. And they were there in a meta way to discuss the mythology around the devil wears Prada too, in which Ms. Streep plays a version of Ms. Wintur, but still, 76. Actually, groundbreaking went one comment on the magazine's Instagram post.

The irony is that in breaching the age of... barrier, Vogue actually made itself seem not old, but of the moment. These days, as Ms. Wintour wrote in the magazine, I feel age is actually an advantage, or so it's beginning to seem, in fashion. The most recent round of fashion shows, which ended last month, were notable not only for the almost total lack of size diversity on the runway, but also for the fact that they were, at the same time, taking one giant step forward when it came to another aspect of inclusivity. Age.

The Chanel show opened with 50-year-old Stephanie Cavalley, who was one of 15 models over 40 on its runway. Bottega Veneta had nine older models. Tom Ford, nine, women and men. Javansi 8. And the list goes on here. And there were some famous older models like the 52. year old Kate Moss, 57-year-old Jillian Anderson, and 79-year-old Ming Smith, 52-year-old Amy Sherald. You get the picture here.

Put another way, according to data from the fashion search engine tag walk, 5% of the top 20 brands included at least one curve or plus size model in their runway shows. but 100%, 100% included an older model. So let's cut to the quick here. This is a long article, as I said, and you can find it. As I said in the New York Times. But what's the reason? Well, very deep in the article is this. According to the Federal Reserve,

more than 70% of all the wealth in the United States is concentrated in the over 55 age group, which is also responsible for the more than 45% of consumer spending. Aha. Well, then that makes sense, doesn't it? Here's another story. You know, we talk so much about television and the changing television landscape

and how people aren't watching conventional television anymore. They're watching things like YouTube. Well, change is happening in radio too. The divide, and this is in something called Barrett Media. It's a Media Watch website. So they're talking about a new tech survey, and it says, AM FM radio listening hits an all-time low as digital surges to 44%

and what do we mean by digital? Well, everything from, you know, podcasts to, you know, stuff you get off your phone. So let me read a little bit of this. The divide between traditional AM FM radio listening and digital consumption of radio station content is shrinking. And new data from the Jacobs Media Tech Survey of 2026 makes that trend impossible.

to ignore. For the first time in the survey's history, broadcast listening has fallen to 54% of total time spent with a listener's favorite station, while digital platforms now account for 44%. That's a 10-point gap down from 15 points just one year ago. There's a trend here. Broadcast is still ahead, but not by much. Last year, broadcast was five points higher, and digital was five points lower, so there's been meaningful movement this year. The longer view is even more striking. Back in 2013, when Jacob's media first asked this question in its current form,

85% of P1 listening happened on traditional radio. Digital sat at just 14%. It's not that long ago. You know, it's a dozen years ago. there's been a 71 point gap. Today it's 10. This chart tells a powerful story, and they show a chart here, the Jacobs Media President said in 2013,

the gap between broadcast and digital was 71 points. As we said, today, it's just 10. So it ain't just television that's changing. I had lunch today with two high-powered television executives. Are we talking to me about the challenges they're facing And they're all facing it Doesn't matter which station, which network, which company So much change on the part of the listening and viewing habits of consumers

That executives can't move fast enough to try to counter it Okay, we've got time for a couple more This one I find it like, I find it interesting, but at the same time, it's kind of morose in a way. It was in the Daily Mail in Britain. Here's the headline. Simple tests can predict if a person will die within 24 hours. Doctors claim it's 95% accurate.

That's by the health reporter, Jonathan Neal, of the Daily Mail. Now, here's the issue. for some of us, we've all been there in the final days or the final hours. And doctors and nurses will tell you the most common question they get from those family members who were there is, how long could this be? Well, the doctors and the nurses have different ways of trying to determine the answer to that question. But there's a new test they talk about, at least some of them, that is pretty accurate.

So I'm not going to read all of this because it's too depressing. But it comes out of palliative care places, which are some of the most remarkable people in the world work at palliative care. They're there to be comforting those who are about to pass. And they are about to pass. and they wheel you into palliative. It's a one-way trip. Anyway, let me read a little bit of this.

A simple bedside test could help doctors predict whether a person is likely to die within 24 hours. The technique involves checking the corneal reflex, the automatic blink response that happens when the surface of the eye is gently touched. scientists found patients who had lost this reflex were far more likely to die within the next day, raising hopes the method could help families prepare

for a loved one's final hours. Experts said recognizing when death is close is one of the most difficult parts of end-of-life care. Yet one of the questions relatives ask most often is how much time remains. The study published, in one of the palliative care magazines was led by Dr. Yang Hun Kang,

director of the hospice center at a National University Hospital in South Korea. He said family members often place great importance on being present at the moment of death. That often leads to difficult and urgent questions about how much time remains. Doctors and nurses already look for signs that a patient may be nearing death,

including changes in breathing, bluish skin caused by poor circulation, and reduced consciousness. Previous research suggests identifying these warning signs can indicate a 95% probability of death within 48 hours. But the new study suggests the corneal reflex may narrow that window further. Researchers monitored 112 hospice patients with advanced cancer who had been judged to have only one to two weeks left to live. Nurses checked the corneal reflex three times a day by approaching from the side in order to avoid triggering a visual response and gently touching the cornea with a sterile cotton, wisp, or strand of gauze.

Responses were recorded as intact, diminished, or absent. Of the 112 patients, 110 died within seven days. Those with an absent corneal reflex were more than five times as likely to die within 24 hours than patients whose reflex was still present or only diminished. The 24-hour mortality rate among patients with no reflex was 70%. You know, as I said, there's, that's a tough one to read, but, you know, I know. I've been in the situation. I've talked to many friends who have been in the situation. And the situation is you want to be there. You want to be there.

And being there 24 hours a day every day for two weeks is not an option. So this is one of the ways that they're looking at. Okay, something different. Still coming from the Daily Mail. Still written by Jonathan Neal, the health reporter. Here it is. It's our last one for this Wednesday. The headline is this. This is what happens when you quit coffee for two weeks.

Scientists reveal surprising effects on stress, sleep, and memory. That's quitting coffee for two weeks. So here we go. Quitting coffee for just two weeks may make people less impulsive and less stress and switching to decaf could improve sleep and memory. study suggests. Scientists tracked 62 healthy adults to examine how coffee affects the body and brain. The group included 31 regular coffee drinkers and 31 who did not drink coffee. At the start of the study, all volunteers gave blood, urine, and stool samples. They also completed questionnaires

on mood and behavior as well as memory and cognitive tests. The regular coffee drinkers were then told to stop drinking coffee entirely for two weeks. After that, they were randomly assigned either caffeinated coffee or decaf for a further 21 days. 16 received caffeinated coffee, 15 were given decaf. Researchers then compared how participants changed during the withdrawal and reintroduction phases. They found regular coffee drinkers experience more impulsive behavior and emotional reactivity than people who did not drink coffee. But after coffee drinkers gave up their habit for a fortnight, both measures fell.

Alongside the behavioral findings, scientists also discovered that regular coffee drinkers had a distinctly different gut microbiome from non-drinkers. That refers to the trillions of bacteria and other microbes living in the digestive system. Scientists increasingly believe it may help shape digestion, immunity, metabolism, mood, and even brain health. Some of the bacterial patterns seen in coffee drinkers

began to shift back towards levels seen in non-drinkers after the two-week withdrawal period. When coffee was reintroduced, both caffeinated and decaffeinated versions, triggered fresh bacterial changes. There's all kinds of stuff on terms of stomach inflammation. Let's try to get to where the sleep stuff is. Now, the condition on this, this was a pretty small study. There were only 62 people involved.

Some of the gains seen in memory tests may simply have reflected participants becoming more familiar with repeating the same tasks. The authors also said the sample lacked sufficient diversity and may not have been large enough to detect more subtle effects. When coffee was reintroduced, the effects defined or differed depending on the type consumed. Participants given caffeine-aided coffee reported lower anxiety and psychological distress. Those assigned decaf saw improvements in sleep quality, physical activity, and memory scores. Researchers said the findings suggest coffee may affect the body in ways that go well beyond the caffeine hit. Many drinkers rely on each morning. It was led by researchers of the University College and Cork in Ireland.

Okay, I don't know what that tells us. It's a small study. And I got to tell you, I drank coffee all my life until about 25 years ago. I want to stop coffee and only drank decaf coffee. It helped me on the issue of atrial fibrillation, but it hasn't done anything for me on sleep patterns. I'm going to tell you that.

But now I drink very little of low. decaf as well, maybe two or three times a week, max. And even then, I tend to drink iced decaf. I don't know whether that makes a difference. Probably not. Anyway, there you go. There are our N-Bits for this week. It's funny.

I got a lot of letters on N-bits. A lot of you write in to say, oh, I did this, or I tried that, or I don't agree with this, or that study was crazy. It's always great to hear from you. And we'll hear from you tomorrow because tomorrow's your turn. And hasn't asked me anything week, and we've got a whole pile of questions already.

So I look forward to dealing with those. And of course, the random ranter will be by. And I don't know what he's going to tell you. He was talking about truckers last week. He was trying to get off Trump. He's trying to wean himself off Trump for a while. Let's see what he comes up with tomorrow. Thanks for listening today.

It's always great to spend some time with you. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again in less than 24 hours. Bye for now.