The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - From Covid to Harry We've Got It All!

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

We may be titillated by Prince Harry but will we be infected by a new wave of Covid? Two interesting topics and you can count on The Bridge to do them both on this Monday. Two great guests two good topics.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Is this going to be the only program that Prince Harry doesn't do an interview on? We'll find out. Oh, well, Prince Harry's publishers must be ecstatic. You know, all book authors, or most book authors, who are lucky, really, get to do all kinds of interviews when their book tour launches. Prince Harry hit the opening day, you know, hat trick.

He got the big British show and he got two big American shows right out of the gate. And he's taken his revenge tour, 2023, to the airwaves as well as the bookstores. And he's out there trashing his beers just about everybody else in the royal family,

except his wife. And it must be selling books. It must be selling lots of books. Now, obviously, if I could, I would love to interview Prince Harry. I imagine he'll do, at some point, he'll do some Canadian broadcaster or newspaper as Canada's lucky moment with Prince Harry. I don't know when that'll be, but I assume it will happen. He's ticking off the list, the publisher at least, ticking off the list of who can have the biggest impact

on selling this book. And selling it, I'm sure they're doing. Officially, I don't think it goes on sale until tomorrow, but as we've heard, it's come out. So we're going to talk about Prince Harry today? Yep, a little later in the program. We'll go to the Bridge's favorite royal commentator, Bonnie Brownlee, Canadian, but well-versed in the ways of Buckingham Palace. Having dealt with a number of the royals over the years from both her time working for Prime Minister Mulroney, but also her time working with some of the royals.

So we'll talk to Bonnie, try and get her take on what all this means. And whether she's in any way surprised or shocked, she's worked with Harry and Will. She goes back a number of years, back to the Diana days. So we'll get her take, but that's going to be a little later. That's not how we're going to start today. We're going to start today. We're going to start today. Some of you will be happy about this. Some of you not so happy. But through the worst days of COVID in 20, 21, and 22, we had a regular Monday discussion with one of our

favorite doctors. And we had four doctors in different parts of the country, in Halifax, Toronto, Hamilton, Edmonton, about the state of the situation on COVID and the state of our health care, really. Well, we haven't done anything in 2023. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I've noticed a few things lately, more stories online about where are we exactly right now on COVID

and what about all these other flus. I've also noticed in some places at some times the reemergence of masks. Now, we're not talking about a lot of people here, but we're talking about more people than we saw a month ago. So what's going on? So for the purposes of trying to answer some of those questions, I've reached out to our friend Dr. Lisa Barrett, Dalhousie University specialist in all these areas,

for her take. So without further ado, let's bring in Dr. Lisa Barrett. Well, it's good as always to talk to you, but I, you know, I got to tell you, I'm confused about just what the situation is now. And it's these kind of headlines that confuse me. This is one of the headlines on CBC.ca over the weekend. Canada's flu season is winding down, data shows, but it may be the calm before a COVID storm.

So just when you thought, okay, I should feel good, you go, oh, no, I don't feel good now. So what is the situation? How accurate a kind of description is that headline? Is that where we are right now? My head is in the diligence, not disaster zone, if you will. Pick a different D. Unfortunately, we're kind of in a world of needed diligence detail but really the black and white

of catastrophe versus not is not really relevant or helpful anymore I don't think so where are we we've got new variants does every human on the planet out there in order to live their daily life need to know every detail about it? No, but I think you should be darn aware that this virus is still changing very quickly. We still have lots of opportunity for it to change because there's so many cases. And we could end up with a more problematic version that's either worse disease or escaping vaccines. But the key is to be prepared to know about it. So we still have to follow it. And a lot of countries and policies are not really headed in the direction of being able to keep up with the virus.

The virus is running. They're walking. Okay. You're giving me lots to talk about here. Let me start with the two things that worried me right away that you said. New variants and concern about whether the vaccines and the boosters we've got in us can 0.1, 0.5 variant, which I will refuse to call its nickname. We'll just call it a new variant. The new variant. The variant that's increasing in most places near Canada, the most. So the new variant that we have that's gotten the most airplay over the last couple of weeks, especially, is it likely that your natural immunity from having had COVID in the last six months or in your series of vaccines is going to be completely useless?

There is very much likely to be some protection against very bad disease and death still. But it is jumping around the virus in a way, and this is what viruses do, please let me mutate to move faster and better. And also, the new variant that's out there is doing what all these viruses do, which is move better, more quickly. We're not exactly certain how.

And also make itself as less visible to the immune system as it can while still retaining its ability to spread. However, your natural immunity that you may have gotten from a previous infection in the last six months with another Omicron or your vaccines, that's still likely to be useful immunity against really bad disease and death. But we don't know all the details. And I always come back when I don't know 70% of what I need to know. I take a precautionary principle to how I tell people to approach it. So not disaster, but not something that we should ignore entirely. And we're going to have to hold the fort on making sure we know what this virus is doing around the world. Well, as you know, that's hard news for a lot of people to accept, right? A lot of ordinary citizens don't want to hear that.

They don't want to hear that it's not over. We got to be vigilant. We got to be careful. We got to be this. We got to be that. And governments don't want to hear it either for fear that they're going to get themselves back in the kind of situation they were in before with masking mandates or worse lockdowns, what have you. So you seem to be concerned that all of us whether we're just ordinary citizens or you know agencies are not taking this seriously enough right now yeah and again it's not this one variant it's the idea that the virus is still running it hasn't settled into that endemic state of a little bit of change here, a little bit of change there. It's still running.

And again, coming back to that word of vigilance, I think we've grown to think of that as the things you mentioned, mandates, lockdowns. That's hypervigilance at this stage. Really what we need is true diligence, not hypervigilance at this stage. Really what we need is true diligence, not hypervigilance. And the big difference would be, yeah, keep your resources for sequencing this virus so we can see where it is and how it's looking. Yeah, test people,

even if they're not going to need to isolate because we need to know what's happening in communities faster than we did before. That's called pandemic prevention preparedness. We were really crappy at it before this. I would prefer, to be honest, that we do not regress so quickly for the sake of fatigue into just saying this is another respiratory virus.

So to me, this whole variant conversation in the last couple of weeks, I've really tried to focus on the fact that it's a flag from the virus, that it's still in the running in this marathon. And we don't need lockdowns. We don't need hypervigilance. But we can't stop doing very, very sensical preparedness stuff to keep us ahead of the game as opposed to getting behind again. And that shouldn't change anything except good respiratory hygiene, like a good respiratory hygiene culture, which we were just building for the everyday person. So what are we talking about for the everyday person the sort of washing their hands

stay away from big crowds or if you go in an area with big crowds wear a mask you see more people wearing masks now sort of going back to that i mean it's still a definite minority but there's more than there were a month ago when you go out there but is that what you're talking about? Is that what diligence is? For the person, for the individual human who wants to stay healthy and if they have people around them that they want to keep healthy or from a respiratory perspective, that's a really sensical thing to do. Washing your hands, you know, not every 36 seconds, but, but you know in the normal way um not avoiding crowds i think we're probably past that but know if you're going into those crowds right now there's going to be covid around there was flu around until recently and we haven't seen flu b yet so we're not sure if that's going to do its usual uh influenza b we're not sure if that's going to do its usual influenza B. We're not sure if that's going to do its little upswing late which it usually does.

And just know these respiratory viruses if you're going in and you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. I do because personally, I've got to tell you number one, I've got two elderly parents, a bunch of vulnerable patients and I really kind of liked not being sick for

three months a year for the last few years so I wear a mask and the testing thing does help people know if they're positive that they can stay home it's most situations even if it's not mandatory from a work perspective it's also helpful and if you're, testing still gets you to therapeutics, therapies that may be useful for vulnerable people that limit their disease. So that to me is good respiratory hygiene culture and not stigmatizing people when you see people wearing a mask. Let people do what they need to do to stay healthy.

What are you hearing about the likelihood or the possibility of either another booster or another vaccine shot? I still have trouble trying to stand with the differences here, but I've had, you know, two shots, three boosters. I think that's where I'm at right now. But it's been a while since the last one. Should we be expecting that early this year or in the spring there's going to be another one out? Not sure how that's going to go, to be frank. Immunologically, most people have this part of their immune system the t-cells that's the part that is educated and has some memory to it that protects most people against very serious

disease the antibodies are good but if you've got a very very very transmittable virus those antibodies are probably not going to completely prevent infection as we've seen that's not the goal of the vaccines nor your natural immunity how much this virus changes and what becomes the dominant strain over the next couple of months is really going to dictate what happens if there is no significant increase in the severity of this disease that's caused by this. And we know that the T cell, the other part of your immune system is pretty durable for quite some time. I'm not certain that we are going to see a huge campaign for yet another booster in the

next few months at all. If we see a huge shift, the virus really does recombine into something exceptionally different. And it's clinically a worse virus, which almost never happens. You asked me about that earlier, and I forgot to answer it. Then there's no need. But if it does shift significantly, that's when you might see another dose of vaccine. My sneaky suspicion is we may get through the next few months without needing that. Is that part of the headline true about the flu season is winding down?

It does look like the number of cases of flu we're seeing with standard respiratory surveillance, although most places in Canada have done a little more because when they test for COVID, they've been testing for flu as well. It does look like that's winding down quite a bit. That's influenza A. People may or may not know there's two big strains of flu that we always vaccinate against. Influenza A, a couple of those strains, and then influenza B.

Influenza B usually comes up later and generally in older and youngest people affects them more um weird patterns all around the world right now with flu b whether it comes up or not so we may see another bit of flu pop up but not so much in the general population but definitely uh it may affect our older and youngest so we've yet to know if that's completely gone yet and with covid bouncing back up most parts of our country right now are starting to see if they're testing um more covid coming back with some of the screen replacement through XBD 1.5. Just one last question. It's back on not COVID, but on the various forms of flu that we've witnessed over last

fall. Particularly hard hit seem to be young kids, right? Kids in the early stages of school, once I guess some of this was kind of expected that once they went back to school back to playing with their friends etc etc stuff was going to move around fairly quickly uh which it did are we past the worst of that do you think my guess is yes particularly for school-age children um they pretty much literally those were kids who hadn't been in school maybe. Their debut into school had been delayed by several years, and they all got sick altogether. Good news about most kids, though, they develop really great immunity, and although they'll

get somewhat cranky and perhaps a little bit sick, the chances that we'll see this kind of synchronous, very, very sick group of kids again, I would say is pretty low. COVID and isolation didn't ruin their immune systems. It was just that they all got educated at exactly the same time in a particularly crappy way. So I think, I hope we're not going to see that again. And yes, I do think from an influenza season perspective, the worst of it's going to be done for kiddos,

unless we see a big influenza B surge, which it doesn't seem like we're going to. Dr. Barrett, as I said at the beginning, you know, it's always good to talk to you. I've missed talking to you in one way. I haven't missed it because we haven't had to talk about some of this stuff uh every week like we did in the past um but i've missed your kind of sensibility and your easy way of talking and explaining the situation so you take care out there i know you're still dealing with it uh day, if not every hour. Thanks so much.

Thanks. It was good to talk to you. Dr. Lisa Barrett from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. And great to hear her whenever we've had the opportunity to talk to her. I know she's out on calls as we were doing this, you know, pre-recorded this yesterday. She was dealing with patients from a variety of different places, and that might explain why the kind of hollow sound on the sound. But hopefully you got the message. I certainly did.

It ain't over yet, and it's going to be a while before it is. Not over until it's over, as Yogi used to say, right? Okay, we're going to take a break, then we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about, you know whom, Prince Harry. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. A reminder that on Wednesdays for Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, and Fridays for Good Talk, we're also available on our YouTube channel,

and you can find that by just checking the bio on my Instagram or Twitter posts. All right. Prince Harry. Let's get to it. My friend, your friend, friend of the bridge, Bonnie Brownlee. Let's see what she has to say as her noted role as a royal observer, royal commentator, you name it. Bonnie has been there. So here we go.

Bonnie Brownlee. So the book actually isn't supposed to come out until tomorrow, but last week it kind of came out in Spain. I guess their calendars work differently in Spain, but whatever the case, it's kind of out there now. We've all had a chance to learn about many of the things that are in it. And before I start to ask you about some of them, why don't you tell me what you think about what you've heard and what you've read so far? I'm a little surprised and disappointed in some of the stuff that I've read. I don't know the purpose of this book. I believe that if Prince Harry, and from some of my royal sources at Buckingham Palace that I've been speaking with, if he really wanted to make a change, why are you doing

it this way? And why are you telling so many personal stories that between brothers or between a son and a father should maybe be kept behind closed doors? So I just think that there's a bit of inappropriateness to what he's doing. And I just don't understand the reason why he thinks he has to go about life this way. Well, it can't all be about money. It's not like he doesn't have enough money. He's got a big advance for the book. He's making like gazillions from Netflix. So it can't be about the money.

Maybe it was ghostwritten. Maybe the ghostwriter kind of kept prodding him and got more and more stuff and then told him, oh, no, you can't back away now. Well, I think two things. I think the publisher, I think they lured him into a safe space where he felt that he could talk about whatever and them encouraging it. I've seen Hollywood publicity teams. I've worked with some celebrities on books

in Los Angeles. I know how they can kind of get sucked into this safe vortex. And then everything that you say is brilliant, and the world would want to hear that. And I feel that they put him in that awkward comfort zone at Netflix as well, to start telling these things about his life that he really didn't need to. I mean, we can get into the Taliban later, but why on earth would anyone around him have thought that that would be an okay story to put out in a book like this? Yeah, no, the Taliban story makes no sense at all. I mean, you're risking, not only are you risking those around you,

you're obviously risking yourself by telling a story like that, that you killed 25 members of the Taliban. It just puts, if there wasn't already a target on them, there's a target on them now. Well, Peter, I'm a graduate of the National Defence College in Kingston, Ontario. I spent a year at the Department of National Defence as the Acting Director of Communications until the Kretchen government came in and actually showed me the door. I wish I'd known I was that important when I was in the Mulroney government. I would have used my power differently. But he has broken the circle of trust with military people. And I know the military issues are very important to you as well. And when I was at National Defence, I was dealing with snipers that were coming back into the country.

There are stories there I will never tell. It would be absolutely inappropriate for me to do something like that. And Harry has the Invictus games. So I don't, I'm trying to figure out if he understands that he's actually damaging his brand every now and then. Just he's hurting himself. I'm not quite sure what he thinks his brand is anymore. I thought I knew. I don't know anymore. Well, it's, I don't think it's clear to anyone.

I think you're witnessing a young man who never got over the death of his mother. Probably and for sure from what I witnessed, because I was in London the year that Diana died in the car crash. He wasn't looked after emotionally as well as he might have been in a different type of circumstance. And he does complain about that in the book. And he has enormous guilt from, you know, everything, how it was handled after his mother died. So I guess maybe it's a lashing out to some extent at a family or a father that he's been mad at,

you know, for 30 years. And this is me, this to him seems to be his way of telling his story about how angry he is. What's happened? You know, what happened? Was there a moment that happened that set these two brothers seemingly apart? It always seemed like they were, like, really close. They'd been through, obviously, so much together in the younger part of their life.

But even as they got older, it seemed that they were very close and now suddenly we're reading stories about punch-ups now like you know brothers siblings in general you can get difficult with each other at different times but a punch-up in the kitchen or wherever it was sounds like um pretty strong stuff and they were close up until it probably had something to do with him getting married. And it wouldn't have been that they didn't like Megan. I think their issue probably was that she was an American, Megan struggled a little bit with how to deal with the staff inside the palace. And this is a young, successful woman, a movie star that or a TV star that wasn't used to being told what you're going to do at 830 tomorrow morning when you cut that ribbon and how you're going to say it and what you can wear and can't wear and and so she fought back in the only way that she knew how but it didn't it didn't help the relationship um because i you know i've as i've talked to other people before about the warring

households you know from the queen's household to the Charles, to the Prince of Wales, to the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of York, their press offices do fight and they do compete. And that's the other thing that the royal family as a whole has never figured out. If I hurt you, my sibling, I take a hit too. So they're getting smarter and better at it, but they would have, you know, William is very proper. He is the Queen's grandson in every possible way and believes in his duty and his job.

William was, you know, I don't think Harry, I've never ever heard him say he felt like the spare until I saw the title on his book so that was news to me and to a lot of people that have worked within the royal households that he actually felt that way so it's just kind of like a colliding of events and you marry a woman who gives you inspiration and the strength to fight back for the first time in his life we're watching Harry and Megan being very public about all their feelings about different things, with their claims about what happened and how it happened. And then at the same time, we're watching the palace being very, very careful. Now, you're the comms expert, so I want want you trying to explain to me what they're up to

because they're the palaces you know as they always do they kind of leak a few things but they're not they don't seem to be denying anything um they're they're you know they're they're saying well you know he's he's unhappy and this is unfortunate and she hadn't said this or whatever. But they're not saying, no, no, no, that never happened. Right now, they don't have to say anything because Harry is stumbling, right? He's got some good stuff, but he's got a few stories in his book that are just going to set people back a little bit. Like why? And the Taliban is one of those situations. I think they're just going to wait for him a little longer just to see and the taliban is one of those situations i think they're just going to wait for him a little longer just to see how all these interviews play out and they may not

speak to it directly but they will speak to it over time they will manage it and they are trying now to they have a strategy laid out they're going to make changes as the days go on. They will wait for Harry to finish his interviews in the coming days. They will see what else he's got to say or how he says it, but they actually don't have to react right now. He's, to some extent, causing his own problems for himself. As we said, there's interesting stuff in the book, but there are these things that are just going to throw a lot of people off track they will be concerned they will be concerned about hair how harry is doing as a son and a brother they that love will you know always be there but dealing with it you know as they start to modernize and figure out the future

what to do about har will always be a big question that they have got to play with for a long period to come. Aside from the publisher, who must be very excited about all the publicity they've had even before the book is officially on sale, but aside from them, who's happy about all this right now? Like, who takes pleasure in the way this is unfolding? Well, Harry and Meghan have a lot of followers around the world, a lot of young people their age, a lot of racialized women in particular that feel that they've not been, you know,

has a greater career or been promoted or been successful in life or raised the families that they wanted because of the color of their skin. So they will have that audience for sure. And deservingly so. I mean, Meghan Markle has faced her own areas of racism and unfairness in her own career.

So those, this new woke culture that likes to speak out about everything and has no fear or no boundaries in what they say, those individuals I would think would be applauding Harry to some extent because they feel a sense of freedom in it for themselves. I don't think any of the family are happy. I think they're just concerned about what's going on

and you can see when you see other members of the royal family even at Christmas or lately over a few things you can see the closeness amongst all of those first cousins they are a pretty tight group and Harry was very much a part of that so he will be invited to the coronation. No matter what, he will be invited as the son of the monarch. So those types of things will continue to happen.

You know, over the weekend, there was a number of polls that were done in Britain, including a YouGov one, which seemed to suggest a fairly serious drop in support for Harry. It was already not great for Meghan, but Harry was kind of always kind of up there in support. But he's taken some real hits in the last year, and this one now, he's taking a real hit in the days since the book came out in spain um coronation is one thing does does he become just an infrequent visitor to britain as long as this kind of fallout lasts probably i mean they still have their home frogmore uh in great windsor park that they love and i think princess eugenie's been living,

or Beatrice, no, Eugenie, the last year. I'm not sure how welcome he'll be in certain spots in London. You know, the risk of going into any kind of event and being booed may not be something that he, you know, wants to experience. I think he will go to the coronation unless it just gets so difficult in the coming months amongst the family. Because it's so obvious, even when he went home for the Queen's funeral, just the discomfort around the rest of his family.

And you could see the tension amongst all of them. So, you know, he made this bed. He chose that this was his way to go. And I have to think that they're sitting in Los Angeles tonight starting to watch some of these interviews going, holy shoot, right? Like, is this really the path always believed, and as you know, there's that saying, prestige cannot survive without mystery. He's just taken all the mystery away from everything about his life because he bared way more information about Prince Harry than even I want to know. And you want to know everything. I didn't want to know about behind the pub, just saying. Yeah. No, you know, that was, we won't share that one with our listeners, but some will want to read that, obviously.

At the beginning of this interview, you talked about how surprised you were. Now, you know a lot of these people, and you've worked with the brothers, with the two princes in the past. And so when you say you're surprised at what you've witnessed, you know, because of this book and because of some of the Netflix stuff, what happened? Where did he change, or has he changed? Were we just misreading him before? You know, we may have been misreading some of him. I think just the exposure to the outside world and America and the United States and Hollywood and glitter and that there's a whole other world out there and starting to feel like a prisoner in his own environment,

which I think is unfortunate because I think he could have helped fix it. You know, is it old and is it archaic and is it hierarchical? Yes. I mean, yes, it is. But if you want to impact change on something like that, then you need to stay for a bit and just, you know, try to massage it and help it along. And I think he felt a sense of freedom to talk.

And the reason I'm a bit surprised would be anyone that's worked in a royal household or around a lot of those people, there's a lot of old-school dignity there, and this would not be the way that they would handle a situation. Princess Diana's interview with ITV is a different story in the sense that she was completely hoodwinked by the media on false papers. And they set her up terribly, her and her brother. And, you know, she did what she did, but she didn't really tell stories like Harry's telling stories. So that's why I'm surprised.

He's better than that. He is a better person than we're seeing. You know, when we think of royal stories and princes and princesses and kings and queens and dukes and duchesses and all of that, they're supposed to lead us towards some kind of a happy ending, but we seem to be getting used to unhappy endings in the stories that are coming out, especially from that royal family. Can there be a happy ending to this one? I would like there to be a happy ending for Harry and Meghan.

I wish them well. I think King Charles needs to figure out how to make it a happy ending. I think it's up to him now to help sort out his son. But also, who are you going to be now as we head into the next 10 years? What kind of king are you? And what can we expect from you? If your son's been saying all this, then somebody needs to explain a few things to all of us. And if there are apologies to be made and other sacrifices to be made by the royal households,

then it is now up to King Charles to pave a new pathway to allow William to become a king of a true modern age. Bonnie, let's leave it at that for this time. I'll let you get back to the book. Always great to speak with you, Peter. Thanks, Bonnie. Take care. Thank you. Bonnie Brownlee talking to us about Prince Harry. You know, this story's not going away.

He's done the movie, the Netflix version. He's done the book. What could possibly be next? The day is open here, Harry, if you want to join the bridge. If you want to do your podcast, your first podcast on the subject, you know where to find us. We're all ears, as your dad would say. Okay.

Moving on. We have a couple of moments left, so let's use them wisely. With NBITS. Yes, yes, NBITS. You love NBITS. You love NBITS. Each year, a university in the States, Lake Superior State University, you may not have heard of it before, but you tend to hear about it each year at this time, when they publish 10 words that they say should be banished for 2023.

They're kind of words and phrases. And I think some of these are well worth banishing because they're kind of overused. Here they are for this year. Inflection point. Gaslighting. You sick of hearing that one? Quiet quitting. Don't know that one. Moving forward. Amazing.

I use that a lot. Absolutely. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Irregardless. Never liked that word. It is what it is. I've used that one.

The phrase that really bugs me, and you see it a lot on different news stations or movie advertisements, when the phrase comes out, the thing that everyone's talking about, everyone's not talking about it, whatever it is. And that's just lazy. Anyway, those are your 10 words that are banished for 2023,

at least at that university. You can't go on campus if you use any of those phrases. Now, to a different university you probably have heard of, the Harvard Business School, I guess, because it's their magazine, Harvard Business Review. They have a column, a fairly lengthy one, called Sleep Well, Lead Better. And this is interesting because we've talked about this a number of times

on the program that people aren't getting enough sleep. And they're not. I'm not going to go through this whole column, but I'll read you the summary. Although experts recommend eight hours of sleep a night, many of us don't get that. A recent study of leaders across the world found that 42% average six hours of shut-eye or less. A couple hours less than the recommended amount. Insufficient rest leads to poor judgment, lack of self-control, and impaired creativity.

Jeez, just the three things you want in your leader, right? And the author's research shows that sleep-deprived bosses hurt their teams along with themselves. They are more likely to mistreat employees and create a workplace where people feel less engaged and may even behave less ethically. Okay, enough with the problems. What do you do about it? Fortunately, as the column goes, there are ways to get more and better rest. These include, now we've heard these before, but I don't think we listen to them carefully enough.

Sticking to a regular bedtime and wake-up time. Avoiding caffeine. It hasn't worked for me. I haven't had caffeine for 25 years. I'm a decaf guy, and I know people say, there's a little tiny bit of caffeine in decaf even. I don't know whether there is or not. Nicotine, off nicotine.

Haven't smoked in more than 30 years. Alcohol, I'm a very moderate drinker. Here's the one I do have I plead guilty to screen time before bed it's absolutely proven to me time and again if I don't pick up my phone

when I get to bed to go over the latest whatevers whether it's sports scores or news stories if I don't do that, I sleep much better. If I do do that, you know, my mind's buzzing, the blue light affects you apparently. So you've got to stop it.

Leave your phone in another room or plug it in and put it under your bed or something. Just get it away from your eyes and your brain. Track your sleep patterns. Adjust your habits accordingly. Get treatment for sleep disorders and napping during the workday. If you make sleep a priority, you'll probably be a more productive and inspiring leader.

Here's the last one for today. I love this one. Think Denmark. Okay. How many bank robberies do you think they had in 2022 in Denmark? And why? Why? The answer is they had none there was not a single bank robbery in denmark last year not one

and why do you think that is here's your answer. The answer is we're in a cashless society, and bank robberies are becoming a thing of the past in cashless Denmark. I'm reading from Bloomberg here. As the Nordic country recorded its first year of zero holdups in 2022, criminals have found it no longer pays off to walk into bank branches in search of a bag of car risk notes as falling cash use in society has pushed banks to trim costs by pulling cash services from most branches. In 2021, Denmark only had one bank robbery, according to

data from Finance Denmark, the country's largest industry group for lenders. Last year, none. Danes increasingly use cards and payments apps on their smartphones, just like we do, right? For transactions causing cash withdrawals to drop by about three quarters over the last six years. According to central banks, in total about 20 bank branches across Denmark have cash holdings, according to Finance Denmark. As cash disappeared from banks, robberies started targeting ATMs, with such attacks peaking at 18 in 2016. Those have come down to zero,

amid better surveillance and technical protection, the finance group said. So the bank robbery, a thing of the past, at least in Denmark. And cash increasingly becoming a thing of the past, right? It's just like, how much cash you got in your pocket? When's the last time you used cash or a coin? Coins. The pandemic kind of killed cash, too.

All right, that's going to wrap it up for today. A very varied show. But tomorrow, Brian Stewart will be here with his rock-solid reporting on the situation in Ukraine. We keep Tuesdays for Ukraine. And we're going to continue doing that for a while.

That story's not going away either. Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, Your Turn and the Random Ranter. And Friday, Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. So that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again.

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