The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - A New Way To Get A Window On The World -- That And A Lot More

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Week 21 starts after a holiday weekend with a potpourri of goodies.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily here we are tuesday of week 21. Listen, I hope you had a great weekend, a long weekend. You know, it was kind of funny here. There was a lot of rain, but it was still a relaxing weekend. And I love the way the hockey was going all weekend. Although we will not talk about a certain team. Certainly the way it played in its first game.

Beyond that, we'll just move right on. Say it was nice to have a hockey break. It was nice to see some great basketball by a great team. The Toronto Raptors. I don't know what to think about baseball anymore. I just really, I can't see it happening. Going a full shortened season, as they say. It's just crazy the way baseball operated. But you got to hand it to basketball and hockey, at least so far. They seem to have their act together on how to handle this situation

and play the sport at the same time. Anyway, week 21. And for today's podcast, you know, I saw a lot of things over the weekend that I wanted to mention, so it's going to be kind of a potpourri of information and ideas and thoughts that I saw over the weekend. Give you some things to think about and some things to write about, because I know many of you like writing on potpourri days. You like to give me your thoughts at the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com,

the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. So don't be shy. All right, first topic is, you know how I like to try and, positive's not really the right word, but I like to try and look on kind of the brighter side of things and hope for some positive news. Unfortunately, the first item in the potpourri today is not that positive. It's actually kind of depressing.

But it is a fact of life, so let's deal with it. It came out of the Financial Times. Rana Farunar writes in the Financial Times that the coronavirus-related collapse in world tourism. We've talked about the collapse in Canadian tourism and what we could all do to try and make things better for those one out of ten jobs in Canada that are related in some fashion to the tourism business. Anyway, Rona Faruhar writes in the Financial Times that the virus-related collapse in world tourism,

which represents more than 10% of global economic output, interesting, same figure, is likely to trigger the next stage of this crisis, in which we move from a public health emergency and mass unemployment to widespread insolvencies in myriad industries. When people are pared back, they're traveling, the effects would ricochet through nearly every industry and business, from manufacturing to real estate, restaurants, luxury goods, financial services, and all this could set off a raft of corporate insolvencies, high unemployment,

and a sharp downturn. Now, there is a pessimistic outlook on the impact the coronavirus is having right across the board, and so much of it related to the collapse in tourism in terms of world travel, global travel. So, I'm not sure how we deal with that. You know, we,

our family, Cynthia and I, have been trying to determine whether or not we could travel later this year to Scotland, where we go every year, and we have friends, and we also travel across Canada. And we've been trying to determine over this weekend, as we sat in the rain,

trying to decide whether or not we're willing to take some long trips. First across Canada, I have a number of trips that I need to do that are related to work. Am I prepared to do those? And whether or not we want to take a trip to Scotland later in the year, October, November.

I don't know. It's really hard to think that way as we're still in the middle of all this. You know, there are good reasons to see some of the good things that are happening in Canada in terms of the numbers going down. Another couple of good days for Ontario, under 100 new cases. And those numbers seem mind-boggling when you consider what's happening south of the border, just miles away, kilometers away. All right, moving on. I know what's front of center for a lot of people at school,

how that is going to be dealt with, and it is a dilemma because I think most of us recognize, whether we're parents, grandparents, teachers, health care workers, most of us realize that on the one hand, getting back to school is really important for kids. On the other hand, going back to school could be really difficult for kids from a health perspective. And so we're all trying to come to grips with that.

So here's a story I found, I guess somewhat interesting, on this front. Cautious over sending their children back into classrooms and feeling the struggle over balancing school at home while at work, some families are taking the initiative into their own hands to create mini-pods to teach small groups of kids within a structured and trusted environment. It's a piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Now, as you know, or as some of you know, this won't come as a surprise. We're hearing the same kind of thing being discussed by some parents in Canada as well. They're concerned about going back to the school they normally send their kids to, and instead they're almost creating their own school system with a small group of other concerned parents, hiring a teacher to work with them and their kids. Now, you can see the upside to that, but there's a downside, and it's more of a societal issue. As the Wall Street Journal reports, those supported environments are likely to exacerbate the divide between the haves and the have-nots as children without means will likely fall even

further behind. So that's the issue. If you can afford to do this, what are you saying about a system where many people clearly cannot afford to do this, operate that way? It's a challenging one for parents and for teachers. And I know of at least one teacher who has found this concept interesting for her, that she might do it. So I think you're going to hear more about this issue in the weeks heading forward about whether a parallel system of education is being set up by parents who can afford to do it.

You'll have to watch that story. This is an interesting one. It was in Bloomberg. Bloomberg finds that the pandemic shutdown has led to a staggering piece of data coming from Denmark, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. That between 73 to 90 percent, there's been between a 73 and 90 percent drop in babies being born prematurely. Though it's too early to tell exactly why this is happening, this phenomenon could eventually help us understand what causes premature birth in the first place, and thus how to prevent it.

I don't know. The pandemic shutdown has led to a staggering drop in the number of premature births. I don't think people want to go through a pandemic shutdown to ensure their baby is born at the expected due date or due time or due week. Anyway, researchers are looking at these stats, trying to figure out why. Here's another one. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, leading up to our special on masks, which was, by the way, extremely popular.

If you didn't hear it, you should go back at thepetermansbridge.com where you can get all the podcasts back to the very first one. And you can pull that face mask special down. But before that, a couple of days before that, we talked about face shields. You know, those clear plastic shields, you see them sometimes on frontline health care workers.

The Swiss government, its health department, has done a study on face shields. And they've concluded that face shields worn without face masks are insufficient in protecting against the coronavirus. After studying a recent outbreak among staff at a hotel, which revealed that all of those who were infected wore plastic face shields, while those who avoided infection wore face masks. Okay.

Something else to keep in mind. If you've gone out and bought a face shield, I've bought a few of them. I haven't used them. I saw it as, you know, I bought them quite a while ago and I thought, I should probably have some of these. You never know, we might end up going to these at some point. Well, this study at least, this one,

would suggest that the only way to wear those is on top of wearing a mask as well. Or double protection. But as a singular protection, it doesn't work like masks work. Here's good news for dairy farmers. And we've had a few on this program here's good news for dairy farmers. And we've had a few on this program.

We've written in. Or at least this would suggest, Beeson Axios, this would suggest that there's good news for dairy farmers. Even though the dairy industry is in a long-term decline, Axios shares that the pandemic increased milk sales across the board from dairy to alternatives such as almond, coconut, and oat milk, as many consumers stocked up on milk and children who were no longer having meals at school, began drinking milk at home. Now, these are American studies. But nevertheless, sales of milk were also influenced by adult consumption and baking as well.

A lot of baking going on out there. I know there's a lot of baking going on in this house. Too much, he says as he slaps his tummy. Cynthia has a gluten issue, so what she makes is gluten-free, and all her baking is gluten-free. And gluten-free products have come a long way, I would suggest, because I remember when we first started having a lot of gluten-free stuff in here,

it was almost uneatable on my part. But not so much anymore. Some of it's pretty good. Okay. That's my little baking awesome. But that's, hey, if that's true, that's great news for dairy people. Okay, and you study out of the Pew Research Center in the States,

and we've talked about this issue before, sort of where people get their news, where they consume it, and how trustworthy it is. A big new study from the Pew Research Center. You can find it online at Pew. But I'll just read a couple of the highlights of this. As of late last year, 18% of U.S. adults say they turn most to social media for political and election news.

So it's almost one out of five, right? That's where they go for their political and election news, social media. That's lower than the share who use websites and apps, which is 25%. But about on par with the percent who say their primary pathway is cable television, 16%, or local television, 16%, and higher than the shares who turn to three other pathways mentioned in the survey, network TV, radio, and print. These are not good days for network television.

I'm surprised at the radio figure. I don't think that's the case here in Canada, but this study would suggest network TV, radio, and print in the States are at the bottom of the pile of where people go for their news. And that social media is right there with cable news, you know, your news networks, CNN, MSNBC, Fox. And up at the top, news websites and apps, 25%. But it's the changing nature of the news-consuming business that we see, right?

Now, one of the other things the Pew Center tried to do in this big news study, apart from that, was try and get a sense of how many people are kind of fall victim or are interested in reading about conspiracy theories. And one of them that they tested out was this whole issue of whether or not a small group of powerful people intentionally planned the COVID-19 pandemic. You've heard these stories. You know, Bill Gates, George Soros, Anthony Fauci

planned COVID-19. All right? Now, you want a conspiracy theory, there's one. Anyway, Pew does a study on this. And it finds that about a quarter of U.S. adults who get most of their news through social media say they have heard a lot about this conspiracy theory. And about 8 in 10, 81%, have heard at least a little,

a higher share than among those who turn to any of the other six platforms for their political news. So those are pretty high numbers, which suggests that the kind of stuff you read on social media is more likely to head you in the direction of conspiracy theories than in other forms of the media. I don't know. That may be dividing up the research pie

just a little too much. But I think the earlier stats that we talked about, where people are getting their information, especially on politics and especially about the election in the states, I think those are a sign of the times in which we live and how things have changed dramatically, even in a couple of years. I mean, when I was doing daily news, network television was still right up there

in terms of where people got their news information from. It's dropped. It's dropped. It's dropped considerably. And quite frankly, the number of people who get their news from cable news operations, whether that's CNN or MSNBC or CBC News Network or CTV's news channel. First of all, they've never been as high as the media generally gives them credit for by continually quoting them and talking about them. It's like all this stuff about,

did you hear what Tucker Carlson said the other night? And you hear this on other channels. Well, really? Like, who cares what Tucker Carlson said? In a country of 350 million people, there are only two or three million who watch his show at night. So why do we care what he says? Or why do we care what anyone else in the kind of opinion side of various programs says?

Or podcasts, for that matter. I mean, if they generate your own kind of thoughts about issues, that's good. But to take what they say as if it's somehow gospel or the way we all should think, that's nuts. That's crazy. And hopefully that's not what happens. All right. Enough with the big, heavy stuff.

Here is one you can have fun with. You know, earlier we talked about travel and the impact a lack of travel will have overall on the global economy. And I talked about how I'm, you know, I can't decide myself. I mean, the big deal for me this summer was driving from Stratford to Ottawa for that break with a little fishing and a little golf and a little swimming

and hopefully I'll do it again in another week or so. That was a big deal. But talking about big travel, you know, a lot of us like to do that. Have the opportunity, if we can, to travel the world. See the world. Go to interesting places. Whether it's Europe or South America or Asia or Australia, New Zealand. We'd all like to do that. Right now, most of us can't. We're just a little too freaked out to consider that. But here's an option for you.

This one I found. It's relatively new. It was created because of the pandemic for this very reason. To give you kind of a way to travel without ever leaving your house. It's a website. And what they've done is they asked people anywhere in the world to set up their camera, like their phone or their laptop, and point it out a window of their house and frame the picture kind of with the window and what's outside it.

So the main focus, obviously, is what's outside it. But they want a certain uniformity to this and the window gives us that. And they want you to record for whatever, five minutes, ten minutes, and just download you to record for whatever, five minutes, ten minutes, and just download it to them. And I got to tell you, I didn't hear about this until this weekend, and I watched it.

There's no commentary on any of these videos. It's just the natural sound of the moment. So we've got somebody who sort of shot outside their window or from their window outside to the sea in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. And you can hear the seagulls, and you can hear the waves. And you see people, some people walking by, some people in the sea. But this is happening.

These shots are from all over the world. Central America, South America, Australia, Asia, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Europe, all over Europe, Turkey, Lithuania, Greece, Italy, go on and on. There's thousands of them. And you can sit there and actually you don't find it boring. And you control it, right, if you're kind of tired of the shot from Rome, although, really, who could be tired of a shot from Rome?

But if you're tired of the shot from Rome, you just click a button that goes on to the next one. So you're going, okay, man, just shut up. Give us the website. We'll go and we'll tell you whether we like it or not. Okay, so here it is. It's called window-swamp.com. Window hyphen, not underscore, hyphen.

Window hyphenap.com. Okay? So you try that. I loved it. And still love it. You get no airplane miles for this. You just get to sit in the comfort of your home and look through somebody else's window

at their street or their garden or their skyline view. Enjoy it. All right. That's the Tuesday, week 21 edition of the Bridge Daily. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back in 24 hours. Thank you.