The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Amanda Gorman - Overnight #1 Bestseller!

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

How amazing talent and five minutes on national TV can make you a huge star. Just one of the items in today's potpourri podcast.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge it's thursday of week 45 how are you feeling today? Is it a different day? Did a different day dawn for you this morning when you woke up? Were things kind of like calm? You didn't reach for the TV remote or the radio switch to find out what was the latest crisis in the White House? What did the president do now? I don't know, I think a lot of people woke up that way today

and are carrying on their day without sort of wondering what exactly may have just happened. Now, you know, things aren't going to return to some sense of pre-Trump normalcy. But I think there's kind of a hope for that. You know, it was funny watching that, bits and pieces of that TV epic last night out of Washington, hosted by Tom Hanks. And, you know, every star who's ever been a star was,

and currently a star, was on there celebrating the Biden ascendancy to number 46 in the list of presidents in the United States. And you got to hand it to them. That was a heck of a TV production. And ironic in a sense because the last guy was supposed to be the brilliant TV mind. He knew how to make television work for him. Well, in more than four years, there's never been anything like that out of Washington that I saw last night.

Culminating in that, you know, like amazing fireworks display. And, you know, most people enjoy good fireworks display. And most people enjoy a good fireworks display. They'd rather be at it in person than watching it on television. But if you're going to watch it on television, that wasn't a bad one to watch. I shudder to think how much that costs to pull that off. And who exactly paid for it? I think inaugurations are paid usually by the campaign, the winning campaign.

But yesterday morning's sort of debacle at the Andrews Air Force Base, when the former president left, when 45 disappeared in the history of numbers, that one was paid for by the public. But there were a lot of funny tweets last night, a lot of funny memes going around. The one I think I may well have enjoyed the most was the fellow who tweeted, I don't know who's organizing this fireworks display,

but they should put them in charge of the vaccine rollout like right now. They're probably right about that. If you can organize a show like that one, maybe you can organize something that's going to make everybody feel a lot more comfortable and a lot more confident in the way the vaccines are being rolled out. So we're into new times, but I wouldn't get too comfortable with this. I mean, let me assure you, if there's one thing you can be confident about in terms

of the future is there are going to be good days and bad days, just as there are for any new administration. And so while you might have liked getting up this morning to not hear some huge controversy in Washington, there are going to be those days, and they're probably not that far away. And a lot happened yesterday, aside from the fireworks and the great speeches and that amazing performance by the young woman, Amanda Gorman, the poet. You know, like most people, I'd never heard of her before. But it turns out she has two books that are out there, books of poetry. And within hours, literally within hours, her two books,

which weren't even ranked before this happened yesterday, were suddenly number one and number two on the Amazon book list. Now, I know what book lists mean. Extraordinary Canadians, the book Mark Gobolgich and I wrote, came out at the beginning of November last year and has had a great run, still on the top ten bestseller list here in Canada. And it was number one, I think, for four weeks or five weeks. the top 10 bestseller list here in Canada. And it was number one, I think, for four weeks or five weeks.

And that's wonderful. That really does mean something when you're able to publicize number one instant bestseller. Look at Amanda Gorman now. She goes, she rockets into stardom She may have been the biggest star yesterday She may have been bigger than Joe Biden And Kamala Harris She went from like nowhere on the book list

To number one and number two for her two books So good for her I mean that really is Terrific As I said Lots of things happened yesterday And In terms of substantive stuff

And Not the least of which Were the executive orders That Joe Biden signed, which in many ways erased a good chunk of the Trump record. Like with the stroke of a pen, he signed executive orders that signaled that the United States would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, would halt construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. Would undo the Muslim ban.

Stop the withdrawal from the WHO, the World Health Organization. Rescind the 1776 Commission, the so-called, it's a highly controversial panel that Trump had established in response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. And the list goes on. I think there were 13 in all. Including one that stopped construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. So, lots happened. Some of those things will become controversial. The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is not happy about the Keystone decision. But he says he'll accept it because it was a campaign promise by Biden.

So he's fulfilling his promises. But there's going to be a lot of pressure that Canada should take a tougher stand than that. But we'll see. So for day one for Biden, good day. But there will be day twos and further on, and the whole idea of democracy is that people get a say and can debate and argue, and that will happen in the days ahead. And he'll win some and he'll lose some. And he'll win some and he'll lose some within his own party. So it isn't going to be smooth sailing all the way.

Starts off nicely, kind of in the honeymoon period. Let's see how long that lasts. For those of you who've listened to this podcast from the beginning, you'll know that every once in a while I like to try and catch up on stories that didn't necessarily make the front end of the news, but they're still interesting and they still tell us something about the world in which we live. And so I like to touch base on those, a kind of potpourri day where I catch up on a lot of different things. And that's one of these days. Because what I do is I save these things when I see them,

put them aside, and the stack has been getting bigger and bigger lately as we focus on one or two things each day for the last while, given the news. I mean, we're not a newscast, but we try to stay current. So let me do some catch-up. And the first one is about Biden and one of the ways he stays fit. I mean, here's a guy in his upper seventies and you've got to, if you're going to stay fit, you've got to apply yourself. I know like a lot of people, I put on the pandemic weight Eating too much, not exercising enough

And while I've tried to work at that We decided as a family before Christmas That for Christmas this past year, you know, a couple of weeks ago We'd get sort of one gift for all of us. And we were persuaded by some friends who had one to get a bike, to get an indoor bike, a training bike. And we fell for one of the most popular ones we've talked about on this podcast before, the Peloton.

So we get the Peloton. And let me tell you, it's hard work. For me, anyway, it's hard work. It's hard enough just putting the shoes on and clipping them in. It's not as simple as, you know, you put on an old pair of sneakers, you get on the bike and you ride it. It's not that simple. I end up sweating just getting the shoes on and clipping them into the proper position.

Anyway, Joe Biden has one as well. He has a Peloton. But the Secret Service is concerned about the Peloton. The new president's Peloton. And a story I read on CNBC suggested he may even have to ditch it. Certainly he may have to modify some of its features. The popular stationary bike connects to the internet and includes a camera and a microphone that could create a risk of being hacked.

All right. I'm telling you, they sure wouldn't want to see the videos of me trying to do a 15-minute bike ride up some mountain somewhere in New Zealand or wherever it is that I last tried. In this article, it says Peloton has seen a surge in demand during the pandemic as Americans look for safer alternatives to the gym and invest in exercise equipment for their homes. And they're doing that with a lot of different companies. Obviously, Peloton has done well because of the pandemic. Its share prices have more than quintupled over the past year, giving Peloton a market value of more than $46.2 billion.

So here's one of the things that's been determined about Peloton that Michelle Obama has one. And her security people got concerned about this whole issue of the camera and the microphone. And while nobody's talking, it's assumed that they have disconnected both. Excuse me. They've disconnected both the camera and the microphone. So I'll have to keep that in mind.

Now, here's the next story. My continuing observations on the airline industry as the bridge watches airline news. American Airlines, wholly owned regional subsidiary PSA Airlines and the budget carrier Frontier Airlines plan to resume pilot hiring this year. A positive sign for an industry ravaged last year by the coronavirus pandemic, but now preparing to ramp up flying. That's a Reuters story. You know, obviously the airlines cut back dramatically,

and so did the number of flights by 80, 85% in the United States over the last, you know, as soon as the pandemic hit. But now a sense that things are turning around, and one of the greatest examples of that is watching the number of pilots who come back into the system. Reuters says that American, for example, expects over 11,000 pilots to reach the mandatory retirement age of 65 between 2021 and 2041, with 455 expected

to retire this year alone. So that's creating space, right? American furloughed 723 pilots and 323 flight attendants last October when the initial COVID relief plan for airlines expired. Employees were recalled last month following a fresh $15 billion in government aid. But now, as they're looking at the possibility of how the vaccine is taking hold slowly over this spring and into the early summer, airlines, some anyway, are looking at the likelihood that their business is going to increase. And as a result, they got to get pilots back. So that's happening. Money Sense, a good online site, is warning you about fraud as it relates to COVID. And they've announced their top three COVID scams to avoid.

You get a notification somehow in an email or a phone call that you've been in contact with someone who has COVID-19. But this isn't like your COVID app. This sort of is coming from suspicious places. The recipient's told he or she has been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, should therefore fill out an attached form and return it to the sender, who usually claims to be a public health authority,

as part of a contact tracing effort. These forms typically request name, address, phone number, and sometimes banking information. You get an email like that, delete it. Ignore it. And if you can tell from the title, don't open it. Because they're usually riddled with various kinds of malicious software. According to the authorities, this isn't new, this type of scam,

but its pervasiveness has increased greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Number two, EI and CERB fraud. A record number of Canadians have sought financial assistance from the government in the past year, which created a prime opportunity for criminals to exploit the personal and banking information of applicants. Anything that's asking you for banking information, please just ignore it. If your banker wants to talk to you, they will contact you in some legitimate form, and you can challenge them to ensure their legitimacy. In August, according to this article in Money Sense,

the CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency, temporarily shut down its online service after a pair of cyber attacks compromised more than 11,000 accounts. Even their system wasn't safe. An ongoing Service Canada scam involves an email, text message, or phone call from a third party, at times posing as the government of Canada, offering to help complete the application process for EI or, until it expired in September, CERB. Similar to contact tracing scams, with this kind of fraud, recipients are asked to fill out a form, click a link, etc., etc.

Don't fall for it. Delete or ignore. And finally, bargain basement online retailers. The ongoing enforcement of social distancing and its impact on our ability to spend time outside our homes means online shopping is more attractive than ever, says MoneySense. StatsCan reports e-commerce sales in May of this year were 110% higher than in May of 2019. With more time on their hands and perhaps less savings in their bank account, consumers have been seeking out new and cheaper alternatives to popular online stores. Same thing.

You don't recognize that online store? Or there's something fishy about the advertisement that you're seeing online? Ignore. Delete. There are lots of stores of people ordering things online, giving out their credit card, never seeing anything in return except a debit on their card. The Australian Open, one of the great tennis features of one of the great tennis features, one of the Grand Slam tennis events, is due to start.

Down under. And boy, are some of the athletes upset. And this may be something to keep in mind in terms of what may or may not happen for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Why are they upset? Well, for the most part, players arriving, and I'm reading here from a CNN piece actually, players arriving in the Australian state of Victoria have been placed into a 14-day quarantine ahead of their Grand Slam matches. Most have been allotted five hours each day to go out and train in strict biosecure bubbles.

But 72 players have been unable to leave their hotel rooms and cannot practice under strict quarantine rules after passengers on their flights tested positive for COVID-19. Some stars have expressed anger and frustration at being kept cooped up. Novak Djokovic, eight-time Australian Open men's singles winner, put forward a list of proposals that would loosen the restrictions on the quarantining stars, including moving players to houses with courts, better food, and reducing the number of days in isolation. In response, the Premier of Victoria State said, people are free to provide lists of demands, but the answer is no.

Vasek Pospisil, the Canadian player, was a passenger on one of the three flights into Melbourne that had a handful of positive COVID-19 tests the other player, was a passenger on one of the three flights into Melbourne that had a handful of positive COVID-19 tests the other day of those on board, meaning he's barred from going out to train during quarantine. He told CNN that the level of risk of an entire group on a flight having to undergo strict quarantine wasn't properly communicated to the players ahead of time, a claim the tennis Australia authorities refute.

So the same may well happen in the Tokyo Olympics, right? As players head to Tokyo and are quarantined. So it's something to keep in mind and something to watch for. I mean, I understand their frustration, but this is a pretty pampered group of people. Why they shouldn't have to obey the same rules the rest of us do is beyond me. Okay, a couple of things here.

They'll tell us more about our world and what you've been doing for most of the last year. What do you think is the most popular streamed television program in the last year? In other words, and it's not just really the last year, it's now the most powerful force in streaming overall. You got your guessing hat on there? Well, the most popular force in streaming is a program that hasn't been on the air in terms of new episodes for more than five years. I think it's seven or eight years now. It's The Office.

The Office was by far, and I'm reading here from Quartz, the online magazine. The Office was by far the most watched series across streaming last year, according to a report by Nielsen. The sitcom, about a nondescript paper company, which aired on NBC from 2005 to 2013 and was available on Netflix in the U.S. up until a few weeks ago, still available in Canada,

had more than 57 billion minutes streamed. This is just last year. In 2020. I'm looking at the list of the top, I don't know, 10? I think it's 10, 10 or 12. Shows the office is like so far ahead of anybody else. 57 billion minutes streamed. Grey's Anatomy is next, less than 40 billion.

Then Criminal Minds, Ozark, NCIS. Guess which is number six? This is all time across the U.S. in 2020. Number six, Schitt's Creek. Go, Canada, go. I mean, even the crown is below Schitt's Creek.

And at the bottom of your list of I mean, even the crown is below Schitt's Creek. And at the bottom of your list of top 12, I guess it is, Tiger King. I thought he was going to get pardoned the other day. So that tells you something about what we like to watch on television, that the most popular thing, at least in the States, and I assume it's pretty good in Canada too, hasn't had a new episode in almost a decade. And listen, it's been great for Netflix. It's been so great for Netflix. It was streamed on Netflix on NBC.

NBC sold to Netflix. But NBC now has pulled back the Office and is using it and streaming it on its own streaming service called Peacock. You can't get it in Canada. That's why you can still get The Office on Netflix Canada. You can't get it in Canada. That's why you can still get The Office on Netflix Canada. You can't get it on Netflix US. Because Netflix, the Peacock service, which will compete with Netflix, is not available in Canada.

Only in the States at the moment. So that's where The Office will go to try and bump up the NBC Peacock service and its streaming numbers. So most of us grew up in this world, my generation, the next generation, and the generation after it, grew up with the most important aspect of our youth culture and the most popular aspect of it all was music, right? Well, Sean Monaghan has a piece in The Guardian that says, those days are over. Video games have replaced music as the most important aspect of youth culture. Video games.

Now, new video games were popular, but that is a huge, significant move in our generational differences, right? And the first hint of this came apparently in November of 2019. I didn't know about this, and I never heard of this name at that time, nor today, which shows how out of touch I am. Have you ever heard of PewDiePie? PewDiePie.

This is a very controversial YouTube star. But in November of 2019, Morning Consult, the big polling operation in the U.S. And sort of, they describe themselves as a consumer intelligence firm. So they're telling you what consumers are thinking about various things. So they wanted to come up with a question among Gen Z American men. And to do that, they threw a bunch of names at those who they were researching. LeBron James was among that list.

So was PewDiePie. Guess who was number one? That's right, PewDiePie. Guess who was number one? That's right. PewDiePie. How many of you have ever heard of PewDiePie? Be honest. And if you answered, never heard of them. Talk to your son or your grandson.

And ask them who PewDiePie is. The short answer is he's a Swedish YouTuber who reviews video games. Teens like to watch videos of him playing. Now, this shift from music to gaming was corroborated last spring when Adweek reported that the gaming industry's revenue at $139 billion a year had outstripped the NFL, the NBA, MLB, and the NHL combined. By this December, lockdown life further flattened the industry. The global gaming industry is set to take in $180 billion when all the numbers for last year are calculated, a 20% increase in revenue more than sports and movies worldwide.

All that from the Guardian. All right, here's the last one for today. I like this one. I never would have thought about this. This was in the Washington Post. I mean, how are your feet doing through the pandemic? Especially your toes. Have any of you broken a toe during the pandemic? Here's the headline in the Washington Post, a piece written by Elizabeth Chang.

A pandemic of broken toes. How life at home has been painful for feet. So Elizabeth Chang talked to John Keeling. He's an orthopedic surgeon in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Orthopedic. Got it on the third run. He estimates the number of broken toes seen at his office has tripled or quadrupled. There's a pandemic of broken toes, says John Keeling.

Ben Pearl, a podiatrist who's practiced at Arlington Foot and Ankle, said he has absolutely seen an increase in broken toes. And the short reason is that with the pandemic, people are spending more time at home. Who knew? The only time I ever broke a toe, I can remember it as clear as a bell. It was 2003.

I'd just returned from a week or 10 days in Afghanistan with a lot of, obviously, international travel, a lot of weird flights and flights in the middle of the night and what have you. And I arrived back in Toronto to our little condo there, which was a two-level condo. And, you know, I can't remember what time of day I got home. I think it was somewhere around supper time, but I was totally exhausted. So I went to bed and I fell asleep. But not surprisingly, I woke up in the middle of the night.

I had no idea what time it was or anything. And I sort of groggily got up and I thought, man, I got to have a drink of water or something. So I went downstairs. And as I was walking downstairs, I lost my balance, tripped, and snapped on a toe. So I always blame that one on Afghanistan. The stress of my visit to Afghanistan. So that was my only time with a broken toe.

But apparently, according to all these orthopedic surgeons and podiatrists, we're in an epidemic of broken toes, a pandemic. So one of them says, In late October, I'd stubbed a toe on a chair in my kitchen as I rushed around packing baskets and coolers with food so we wouldn't have to go out to shop during a short hiking trip in West Virginia. I was so focused on protecting us from the coronavirus that I wasn't paying any attention to guarding my feet from what turned out to be quite common factors

leading to this rise in broken toes. These experts, you know, that one was our friend, the orthopedic surgeon in Chevy Chase, John Keeling. He also points his finger at Zoom meetings. Poor Zoom. Zoom was like the great savior. Now it's blamed for everything, including broken toes. Keeling's implicated Zoom meetings and online school.

He's also seen an increase in broken toes among kids for some of the breaks. Whatever his patient's age, they're going around with either stocking or bare feet, and in the haste to get to the next meeting, they bump into the furniture. Well, Elizabeth Chang fesses up and says, That was true in my case. I was dashing around my house, which was more cluttered than usual because of the packing and various pandemic projects I've been trying to get done. And I was also barefoot because my family follows the Asian custom

my husband grew up with in Hawaii of leaving shoes outside the home. Other potential factors. Furniture might be in different places, thanks to all the workstations we've set up, for at-home jobs and school. Or in an effort to improve our spaces, we might be moving furniture or carrying boxes of dedicated items or packages of online purchases,

which we drop on our toes. People are dropping bottles of wine on the big toe, says our friend the orthopedic surgeon. A bottle of wine or a heavy jar seems to be a big killer for the great toe. Okay, I can't take any more of this. It goes on and on. There's like pages of this piece. You want to read it?

It's in the Washington Post. It was a couple of weeks ago, actually. And it's headlined, A Pandemic of Broken Toes. As I said, who would have thought it? This is what we've come to in our continuing study of how we're living with a pandemic. We've reached the broken toes story. I'm only laughing because I haven't broken my toe yet in the pandemic. But I am sloppy about what I wear.

As I think I said a few weeks ago, I've only worn dress shoes, I think, once or twice at the most during the pandemic. Every day it's either sneakers or not barefoot. I usually wear my socks at least. But I'm continually being told by my wife or my son, your shoelaces are untied. You're going to trip and fall. And they're right.

And I'm wrong to allow that to happen. So watch your toes, please. And I'll watch mine. Okay, that's it for Thursday's The Bridge. What an enlightening program. I know you're sitting there saying, I didn't know that. I'm so glad I heard that.

Tomorrow, it's the weekend special. That means your questions and thoughts and comments. And what we've tried to focus you on is your line of the week. And it probably came out of yesterday. It might have been from Biden. It might have been from Amanda Gorman. It might have been from Bruce Anderson. It might have been from me. It might have been from Bruce Anderson. It might have been from me.

It could have been from anybody this week, and it didn't have to be just yesterday. We had a fascinating interview with Lisa Barrett, the doctor from Halifax, about how Nova Scotia, especially of the Atlantic provinces, has done so well in terms of dealing with life with COVID. So you pick your line of the week and defend it,

and I'm happy to read some of those tomorrow on the weekend special. Just write me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And that's where we're going to leave it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back again in 24 hours.