The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Inside The Ukrainian Resistance

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

Brian Stewart uses his weekly commentary to give us a sense of just what the Ukrainian resistance is doing to thwart the Russian invasion of their country.  While the two armies face each other the resistance fighters operate at a very different level and it's having a major impact.  And on "end bits" today, the world's oldest practising doctor!

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Just what is the Ukrainian resistance movement doing in its fight against Russia? Brian Stewart is here with the answer. Well, there was quite the story yesterday in the Ukraine war, and I'm not sure whether you heard about it, but I think it's kind of a marker. It's a first, if you will, in this war that started back in February. But what is it? Well, there was a prisoner exchange yesterday.

Nothing new about that. There have been prisoner exchanges on a fairly regular basis between Ukraine and Russia. As the Ukrainians say, every Ukrainian soldier, every frontline commander should remember this, the more Russian prisoners we have, the sooner we will be able to free our heroes. So in other words, capture Russians, trade them for Ukrainians. But what was the trade yesterday that became a first in this war? Here's the answer. For the first time since the war began, the two sides traded about 100 prisoners, all of whom were women. That's right. Now, some of these may have been fighters. Some of them may have just been prisoners.

But whatever the case is, that's all that was traded yesterday. Women from both sides going back and forth between their countries. Interesting. Russians have always been known to have female fighters. Second World War, they had a lot of dedicated and brilliant female fighters in that war. Clearly, they still have some today, and so do the Ukrainians. All right, it's Tuesday, and Tuesday we talk Ukraine. And we talk it with my good friend, and a good friend to many of you through the means of the media, and especially television. Originally started as a newspaper columnist in Montreal and then in the early 70s moved

into television with the CBC and that's where I first met Brian Stewart. We were on the same training course together. I think it was around 1972 or maybe 73, somewhere in there. And we've been friends ever since. Worked together. We were both on the Parliament Hill Bureau, the CBC. Then Brian moved to Toronto, worked for the Journal while I was working for the National. And Brian went to NBC for a while, reported for them, and there were a number of major world scoops by the man we called Scoop, because of the many investigative journalism pieces he did, first out of Ottawa and then later in covering conflicts around the world. Anyway, Brian came back to the CBC, much to the luck of the CBC,

and finished his career doing everything from in-studio hosting to covering conflicts. He's a military analyst of the First Order. He studies military situations around the world constantly and still does today. And that's why we've been relying upon him to give us the results of his studies and investigation into the conflict that's going on in Ukraine. And once again, today, that is the case. And the most interesting part of this interview, I think you're going to find, is when we get to the, and it's as a result of a question from one of you, about the resistance fight that's going on inside Ukraine by Ukrainian resistance fighters against the Russian invading troops. And there's, you know, it brings back, you know, memories of the stories of the French resistance in the Second World War and other resistance operations in different conflicts

around the world. So there are a number of questions from the audience here to, from you, our audience, to Brian. And well, why don't we get to it, right? Why don't we get to Brian Stewart? Or should we take our first break? Let's take our first break. We've got you set up. We've got you at the edge of your seats. You're all anxious.

You're all ready. We'll take a quick break, and then we'll be right back with Brian Stewart. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday edition. That means the Brian Stewart edition. You're listening on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. So let's get to it. Here we go. As I said, Brian has lots to say today. So as we say,

I'd like to say, strap yourselves in. Here we go with Brian Stewart. So Brian, you've become so popular that I get a lot of mail every week. And of course, these are all, you know, like me, they're kind of amateur historians. We kind of watch the thing unfold and we get confused on certain aspects of the story, the Ukraine story. And so who do we go to? Who do we turn to?

We turn to Brian Stewart because it's Tuesday on the bridge. And so here's the first question. Actually, it's related in a way to Ukraine, but it's about Canada. Here's the question. It comes from Denise in Vancouver. I have a question for Brian Stewart. I'm concerned about Canada's dwindling military. Seems recruitment is a problem,

and many people left around the COVID vaccine issue, both voluntarily and involuntarily. What is Canada doing about this? Is it important, or do we just rely on the U.S. military? Well, Denise is quite right to be concerned. The current chief of defense staff recently said in public that he was very, very worried about the shortfall of troops in Canada. Our Canadian forces are now down 10,000 positions below where they should be. Only one in 10 positions is now being filled. We have a double

problem in this country. These are turbulent times, we know, but We have a double problem in this country. These are turbulent times, we know, but we have a double problem with that fewer people want to stay in the military, there's a retention problem, and fewer people want to join the military. There's a real problem in getting enough recruits right now in our society. I should mention one thing. Canada has a very alarming situation, but most developed countries have the same problem these days. The United States, Britain, most NATO countries are all having trouble finding enough recruits. We run into a problem where, well, COVID didn't help, that's for sure. There was a tremendous strain on forces and on potential recruits in that period. But we have a mixed bag of problems.

We have a labor shortage generally, a smaller percentage youth population. There is a concern about youth, not only about a quarter of youth seem to be eligible for a military signing on right now. Obesity is a very big concern, certainly in the United States and in Britain. I'm not quite sure how it is in Canada, but it's a general concern throughout NATO, as is more common drug use, for instance. But we're really getting only about half of what we need per month in terms of recruits. We have certain areas of the Canadian military that are very alarming. We are short of 130 pilots, for instance, which is very worrisome given a small air force we have. We have basically a big, big shortfall in the military. And it's interesting, if I can go on about this,

when surveys are taken by the media and others as to why military seems to be becoming the less popular employment. There are many reasons for it. One is that there's a general lowering morale in the service. There have been a lot of scandals over the years, a lot of feeling that the military has been forced to be a social experimenter before all others. Now, there has to be change in the military. been forced to be a social experimenter before all others. Now, there has to be change in the military. We know that.

But militaries are often difficult to change because institutional tradition is so very strong in them. And when people change their tradition too much, there's sometimes a loss of identity. So we have a problem. We have to make reforms, but reforms themselves can cause other problems down the road. There's a great shortage of housing. People who want to join the military and families, there's a huge waiting list of thousands, apparently,

waiting for proper military housing in places, you know, from Halifax to Kingston to Toronto, you name it. That's impacting on that recruiting quite a bit. Also, I think a lot of surveys show that the forces themselves are quite concerned if equipment is old, it's tattered. Canada's reputation of very old fighter planes, for instance. Peter, you've been up in an F-17. 18, F-18.

18. I get a kick out of whenever we say they're so old. You and I covered when we bought them. It's like yesterday. I'll tell you this I sat in the cockpit of the first CF-18 or F-18 before we had bought it ever to land in Canada landed in Ottawa, I sat in the cockpit

I wasn't going up in the plane like you did, so I wasn't in any kind of gear I was just in a jacket and trousers set and that was 1978 or 79, that long ago. And, you know, that basically is still our plane. Let me ask you a follow-up on the recruitment stuff.

Because there's an irony to it in a sense. You know, we don't have the right numbers to train to get into the military because recruitment is low. And yet we're being called upon and offering our services to train to get into the military because recruitment is low. And yet we're being called upon and offering our services to train young Ukrainian fighters who are just learning. I'm actually in Scotland right now. And one of the areas that the Ukrainian soldiers are training in, because they're being trained by both Canadians and Brits and Americans

as well. But one of the areas is not far from the farmland where I'm on. And you can hear the rat-a-tat-tat of the guns going off far in the distance. But the irony of us training Ukrainian soldiers when we don't have the required number to train ourselves. It is indeed an irony. We've trained over 33,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and they'd be well above that number now because of our effort in the United Kingdom, as you mentioned. And we have a great shortage in Canada of those key sergeants positions and non-commissioned officers to do the training. A lot of our pilots are now being scheduled to train down in Texas or New Zealand because NATO countries are having to share out the training because almost all of them are short of trainers. A lot of the trainers are being put back in the air because we have so few pilots,

we have to take trainers and put them in the air. So there's a stress on there. And basically, we're dealing with a general war, a giant war that broke out in Central Europe that nobody anticipated five years ago, and also a very quickly worsening position in the Pacific of dire threats and worries about the future. So we have two giant theaters, which Canada has to be urgently thinking about where we're going to position our Navy, how many sailors will we need? When were we going to get the new CF-35 fighter planes? Probably not for at least another four or five years. What do we do in the interim?

All these things are compounding themselves. And the last time the country really had a serious survey of the needs of its military was five years ago. We're now doing an updated one in a hurry. had a serious survey of the needs of its military. It was five years ago. We're now doing an updated one in a hurry, but nothing gets hurried, as you know, in the Canadian government. It's quite extraordinary the more you look at Canadian forces, and I don't think I'm being critical of both parties here, so I'm certainly not biased,

that procurement of new weaponry and new equipment and new vehicles seems to take forever for reasons that are never clearly explained by government ministers, whoever they are. We wait forever for new ships. We wait forever for new armored cars and airplanes. The search has been going on, as you just mentioned, for decades. Really, we've been thinking about getting a new plane. It's never fully explained why it takes so long to do these critical studies in Canada. But a lot of generals retired or saying privately are saying the time for long delay is over. Canada has to move much faster, as does the rest of NATO and other countries around the world, to upgrade its basic military

defenses in so turbulent and unpredictable, unpredictable world. We can't just assume now that we could, well, we can count on pretty much peaceful uh affairs last last year in europe for another decade and the pacific will be all at peace for say another 10 15 years we can't we can't take that easeful position anymore we have to be much more rapid fire in the decisions we make and current in the positioning of our forces around the globe. Okay. I'm going to take a second question here.

This one's from Fran Wallace in Victoria, BC. Here's her question. And when we've done this, we'll get to the current situation on the ground in Ukraine, although this touches on it in a way. A few months ago, in a discussion about Ukraine, Brian Stewart talked about Ukraine's resistance forces. If I'm interpreting his comments correctly, he noted Ukraine's resistance forces were different because they had structure and support from the government right from the moment of creation, unlike most countries where resistance forces form and develop during a conflict and as the war progresses become more organized and helped by the government. I believe he also

indicated that Ukraine's resistance would be playing an increasingly involved role in the war as time progressed. There have been some devastating assaults on Russian territory in the war as time progressed there have been some devastating assaults on russian territory in the last few months the most recent involved that fire and collapse of the crimean bridge i'm wondering if mr stewart knows whether these assaults were done by the ukraine resistance or if he can give at least give us any sort of update on the Ukrainian resistance's status. Mr. Stewart means you, Brian, so you're on tap now for an answer. Okay. Well, I can certainly confirm that there have been a lot of resistant attacks within Russian-occupied zones. I wouldn't give 100% confirmation that they were involved in the bridge, but they have certainly been involved in other areas. It's known as the Free Ukraine

Resistance Movement. And what's really interesting about it, as we said, it was established at the center. Really, it's been eight years in the development from the time that Russia invaded and took over Crimea and then backed separatist pro-Russian forces in the Donbass and other areas. The Ukraine government has been building a resistance movement that would spring into operation when it was attacked and in fact there are two forces that are brought together under a Ukraine resistance and they worked very closely with this is important to lay this down with the special operations command of the Ukrainian government so there are two forces that would be working behind Russian lines. One of the special forces, you know, a bit like special forces in all Western government, very, you know, trained commandos, trained to go in and fight behind enemy lines. They've been very active and it's believed they've also been active within Russia itself.

The resistance movement grew out of local militia, local civilians who had been training since really going back to 2014 at least and 2016 more aggressively to take on invaders. They pre-positioned ammunition supplies and weapons supplies. They trained in how to operate effectively with as few casualties as possible and they've had years to work out their targets and their targets we're now noticing and there's almost an attack a day if you look at it a month by month basis their targets are they're going after collaborators with the russians those should be local police working with the Russians and local officials trying to carry out Russian commands. They're going after the bridges, some roads, power supplies, rail lines. Several trains have even been attacked.

They have night patrols that go out at night looking for isolated russian positions but a big part of their work too is is intelligence sending information back to the ukrainian forces the special forces as where they're noticing secrets hidden supplies of russian ammo in that armament the rest of it they get that back and because of the long-range precision weapons that the ukrainians now have they don't have to have the local guerrillas go in and try and attack them they can take them out using the high mars these these are remarkable long-range uh missiles and you know hit 35 miles behind enemy lines that kind of stuff um and but above all maybe the biggest impact they're having, they create chaos, the guerrilla movements do, is because the Russian forces, which were so under strength to begin with,

are trying to protect their own front lines, also have to detail troops to go back on guard duty and on anti-partisan patrols and the rest of it. And that's causing, again, a further strain on the whole Russian command. They've got a lot of method in their activities, very, very active in Zaporizhzhia region, and particularly around the city of Manitoba, where they've been extremely active on night patrols and enemy forces, and also in Kherson, which has now seen a Ukrainian advance. So yes, they're very much there. They've been long prepared before the war, and they seem to know what they're doing

the problem of course is that this is always the case with guerrilla movements when they attack the russians are quite capable the occupiers are quite capable of taking vicious reprisals against innocent civilians we've seen that in massacres and the rest of it that have been appearing in this war. So the command control of a guerrilla movement like the Ukrainian one has to take into account, if you attack this railway line, are they going to then turn around and attack the nearby villagers who live close by it. In World War II, that was always a big concern of the French resistance, for instance. If we attack the Germans at this place, will they retaliate with a massacre in the local area, which is quite possible? You know, I've been watching this incredible French series called A French Village. I don't know whether you've seen any of it yet.

It's not translated there there is um you know captioning at the bottom of the screen but it deals you know there's it's been seven or eight years of running and it's the story of a french village that was um occupied by the germans during the second world war and so much of it is about this tug between resistance and collaboration. And it's gut-wrenching. And the decisions made by the resistance fighters, knowing full well, just what you're suggesting, that if they take out that rail track, or if they kill a German officer, there's going to be huge retaliation, and it's going to come at the expense and the lives of ordinary citizens. Let me move on to the current situation

because trying to figure out exactly what's happening right now on the ground in Ukraine, I mean, there is a lot of fighting going on in at least three different parts of the country. And just what is being changed in terms of the dynamic of the conflict itself by all this fighting? Because it seems in these last few weeks, the intensity of fighting has gone up, but it's unclear whether anything has really changed in terms of the way the war is unfolding. Yes, it seems overall that there's very intense fighting

on the north, the center, and the southern fronts, but relatively little movement. Some movement in the south, the southern fronts, but relatively little movement. Some movement in the south, Kherson, but generally cautious and smaller movement than we've seen in the north in past weeks. What's really going on is the Ukrainians are having to somewhat resupply. They've been an enormous push. They want to get in major pushes, at least one, maybe two, before the winter sets in. But that means they have to bring up more troops. They have to change the troops around, bring in fresh units that are ready for combat and rest exhausted units and get ready for these major pushes that hopefully they think can get in before the wet season and military slows down so basically it's a lot of exchange of artillery

right now precision fire on the ukrainian side some precision but not much on the russian side and it's everybody's kind of holding their breath because it's very much anticipated the Ukraine's going to make at least one major, major effort in the next few weeks to try and gobble up as much land as possible before the winter sets in and movement is restricted. And also basically to take out as many Russians, to knock off as many Russian casualties as they possibly can. They know it's costing themselves a lot of casualties, but bit by bit by bit, this war is becoming more unpopular inside Russia itself. So the Ukrainians want to keep up the pressure, get as many wounded and killed and prisoners as possible on the Russian side. That is going on.

There's some very interesting movement going on in the southern front, Kherson, where the Ukrainians are moving against about 5,000 to 10,000 Russians, it's not clear, in the northern part of Kherson, who are almost cut off from supply. Their commanders wanted to get their troops out of that route to the north, basically on the west of the Dnieper River. People are following a map. But Putin said, no, absolutely not. That would be an enormous loss of face for Russian rock and do it. So we've got a lot of russians there the ukrainians think they can possibly trap

and they want to take back the city of herson the one major city that fell to the russians early on in the invasion the only really one they lost without much of a fight they want to take that back but they don't want to get involved in a big urban fight which is so costly uh and to civilians, let alone to their own troops. So they wanted to sort of circle as much of the territory as possible and get as many surrenders as possible. That'll be portrayed probably playing itself out over coming months. But that's the situation right now people holding their breath. Of course, the Russians are

firing a lot of missiles and what have you at Ukrainian cities, which is not having any discernible impact on morale of Ukrainians or determination to fight of Ukrainians. I want to take you back for a minute to something you said earlier, because it's a question that has been, has puzzled me over the last, especially the last couple of months of this, uh, of this war. You talked about the, um, what are they called? HIMAR, uh, artillery, um, operations that the Americans gave to the Ukrainians. So these, these super, um, uh, ability to fire big, uh, artillery shells, but they're very target specific, right? They know they dial in whatever the GPS coordinates and,

you know, one is a certain building 35, 50 miles away, bang, it hits that building and that building alone, not the, you know,

apartment block next to it or what have you, or at least that's the theory. Now, the reason I asked the question about these missiles is surely the Russians have something comparable where they have the ability to be very target specific. And yet every day we see, whether it's schools or playgrounds or theaters or what have you, that the Russians appear to be hitting and saying, well, you know,

we were just off the mark or something. It's hard to believe in this day and age with the kind of high-tech equipment that's possible that you can be off the mark. When we've witnessed now, and it's not like suddenly discovered or being used in the last, you know, year or so we've seen these kinds of weapons. You've seen them when you covered the both Gulf wars and other conflicts, they've been around for years,

decades now. So are the Russians just giving us a line or are they using antiquated equipment? Well, I think they using antiquated equipment? Well, I think antiquated equipment is a lot of it. Their technology is not as advanced in this area as NATO equipment. And by the way, as well as the Americans, you've also got extraordinary howitzers from France called Caesars, who have also almost exactly the same precision ability. The Russians have some precision cruise missiles,

but they seem to be running low on them. And of course, they're a cost of fortune, all of them. And they've been firing a lot of them off. And they probably want to keep some back in case this war goes really wild. So there seem to be more and more restricted in any precision weapons they may have. And they're just hurling stuff in, trying to cause as maximum casualties and destruction as possible. It is interesting, though, that one of the very experienced war correspondents with the London Times, Oliphant, noticed that a lot of the buildings being hit

were once upon a time a Soviet command headquarters. And he thinks the Russians, in fact, have some vague precision, but a lot of it's old Soviet maps that they tend to be using. A lot of these stories seem absolutely hard to believe until you get the intelligent assessments of conversations going on and Russians complaining about old equipment and tires and trucks that burst and weapons just not working properly. So I think what the Russians are faced with, they have less precision weaponry than the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are getting more and more of it almost every day.

They have to hold some back in reserve because you can never throw all your top weapons in at any given time, though counting on a real contingency coming up later. And that means they're shopping around for, you know, things like these Ukrainian kamikaze drones to use, and which are much less really effective than anything being hurled by the Ukrainian side. That seems to be the case. I mean, people, the Western military, to some extent, have been scratching their heads saying, look, the Russians can't really be this bad. I mean, the Western military, to some extent, have been scratching their heads saying, look, the Russians can't really be this bad. I mean, the worst thing you could possibly do right now is just throw missiles and artillery fire into heavily civilian areas, causing these casualties that go out around the globe on networks and television night after night after night, which is hurting our reputation for not only humanity,

but also for precision-guided anything. This is just crazy. They can only be doing that because they have no other alternative. I mean, I think they did have some have some precision guided weaponry at first which they did use against the uh the ukrainian air force to some extent and also to ukrainian air defenses and a lot of their best weaponry was used because the russian air force is very reluctant to fly into ukrainian airspace because they feel the Ukrainians still have too many anti-aircraft systems of various kinds,

missile and guided weapons. So they used a lot of their precision weapon on those specific targets. Okay. We've gone on quite a bit here today, and I feel more informed as a result of that. But I'm going to try and squeeze in one last question. You've kind of warned us before about being very careful about listening about how countries are supposed to treat POWs and not use them as sort of, you know, to parade them in front of the cameras.

But clearly, you know, countries in conflicts question POWs to find out whatever information they can get. There seems to be some stuff that has leaked out in the last little while about what some of the Russian POWs are saying. Now, once again, I sort of caution because you cautioned us to be careful about these stories and what to believe about them. But on the other hand, some of what they're saying is pretty dramatic about the kind of low morale that's on that side at the moment. Don, are we in on that?

Oh, yeah. Definitely, there seems to be a consensus of low morale that's come in from all fronts. There are very few units that have shown anything other than very low morale. In terms of listening to prisoners, my basic caution to everybody is a lot of pressure right now should be put on the Red Cross. It is the Red Cross, International Red Cross's absolute duty to check up on POW camps. And it bothers me that we don't know how many the Ukrainrainians are holding russians how many are they're holding we i don't see why we can't know that and we there are places where russians are holding ukrainian

soldiers where there have been no red cross inspections recently at all so i think you know the world should be saying wait a minute what is going on with the prisoners of war there but it's a funny thing i mean a lot of the russian prisoners of war that have been talked to by reporters and others are definitely showing signs of extraordinary low morale and that seems to be a damn near universal the one thing they're noticing uh slightly amusing the ukrainians that almost all the russians that come under surrender and come in are claiming that to be draftees they didn't want to join the army at all they were dragged over their civilian jobs and sent to ukraine where they didn't want to fight because ukrainians are good friends and why are we here a little bit of checking by the ukrainian often finds that these

guys were not draftees at all but were volunteers who joined up in recent years to be part of the Russian military. So, I mean, always have to be careful what these POWs say. They're trying to look after their own welfare, of course, and they're trying to say things that will get them into trouble one day when they're released, and they have to go home. But I think there's been general sign of torture amongst the Russians, and I would like to be a lot more reassurance from Red Cross and other humanitarian groups that the same has not occurred

on the Ukrainian side as well. I don't think it has because they have media all around them looking for signs of this. But they are keeping a lot of secrets when it comes to POWs, and that is worrisome. All I would say about the media, you know, clearly the media is getting closer to the action from the Ukrainian side than they are from the Russian side.

But the actual right up to the action, there's very little coverage. Yeah, very, very little. From on either side. We get much of the same coverage over and over and over again, which is a destroyed house and poor older folks who are left behind. It seems to be the same story is told very, very frequently. All right, we're going to leave it at that. As always, Brian, thank you so much.

Look forward to talking to you again next week. Thanks, Peter. Brian Stewart with us again. It's Tuesday. That's Brian Stewart, Ukraine Day. A couple of things to note before we leave. In our kind of end bit section for this day, first of all, earlier today,

we passed the 5 million download mark, which for a little podcast that is done out of home, basically, we're pretty proud of that fact. 5 million in the podcast world, the number of downloads is pretty impressive. As I said yesterday, there are thousands and thousands of podcasts out there, some really good ones, some very specific ones on certain areas that you may be interested in. But many podcasts, many choices, and as a result, we're very lucky to have the kind of dedication we have in terms of our listener base. And I think it's partly due to the fact we like to focus on issues and spend more than a few seconds or a few minutes on them, as we just did with Brian on the Ukraine story from a number of different angles, including some of your questions for the past half hour or so.

All right, a couple of more traditional end bits. This one comes from Yahoo News. This one, I guess in some ways I'm not surprised anymore by the way technology is offering us insights into our world that we never had a chance of doing before. This one is about how heat from fingertips can be used to crack passwords. At least that's what a certain number of researchers at the University of Glasgow in Scotland have developed. I'll read you a bit of the story. Heat detecting cameras can help crack passwords up to a minute after typing them. Okay,

a minute after typing in a new password or an old password that you're using to get into your account. They can crack it. Researchers have found this as they warn similar systems could be developed by criminals to break into computers and smartphones. Heat from people's fingertips can be detected on recently used keyboards and when thermal images were combined with the help of artificial intelligence, informed guesses of what the password could be were made by a tool developed by researchers at the University of Glasgow. 86% of passwords were cracked

when thermal images were taken within 20 seconds of typing in the secret code and put through their thermosecure system. And 76% when within 30 seconds. Success dropped to 62% after 60 seconds of entry. Man, I guess you got to get to that keyboard pretty quick. But, you know, that's interesting. Heat from your fingertips on the keyboard when you've typed in your password.

If you've got the right gadgetry, you can figure out just from the heat that hit those keys, the password keys, what the letters were. And then it's just a random attempt at putting those in the right order. Go figure, right? Okay. Here's the last one for this day. And this, this is the kind of story that can make me feel young

and feel that there's lots to go in my life. The Guinness Book of World Records has just named the world's oldest practicing doctor. And he has no plans to retire. He's 100 years old. He lives and works, practices in Ohio. Dr. Howard Tucker of Cleveland was initially certified as the world's oldest practicing doctor in February of 2021 when he was 98 years and 231 days old. Tucker, now at 100, said he continues to work full-time with his typical day lasting from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. This is a story, by the way, from UPI.

The doctor said he caught COVID-19 shortly after his 100th birthday in July. That's when I got it. But he continued to teach his residents via Zoom while recovering. What did he have to say about keeping the record? I regard this Guinness World Record title as a singular honor and look upon it as another achievement in a long, satisfying, and happy life. I'll say. The centenarian whose wife, Sue, is 89, and who is also still working, is a practicing psychoanalyst. Said he has no plans to retire. Gosh, no, he said. I believe retirement is the enemy of longevity.

Even in my younger years, I never once contemplated retirement. When you love what you do and are still capable of doing it, why would you want to retire? Well, Dr. Tucker is 26 years older than I am, but I get it when he says that. You know, my dad retired when he was in his mid-60s, and he lived another 20 wonderful years. You know, should he have kept working? He didn't think so. He wanted to enjoy those next 20 years, travel the world with my mom. Take it easy. He taught a little bit at university.

And when I hit my mid-60s, I was doing some of the best work I think I've ever done in my job at the CBC. And when I retired, as I hit 70, I thought, well, you know, I don't want to stop doing stuff. And so my son pushed me, actually, to do this, do the podcast. And it started as a hobby and just, you know, occasionally do it, talk about different things. And one thing led to another and then there was a little bidding war

by a number of places who wanted to kind of own the distribution of the podcast and eventually that's what led to the deal with SiriusXM. It managed to put it out to more people. No paywalls, the whole bit. And so that's what's happened. And I keep doing it. It keeps my mind active. I know some of you are saying,

Jesus, Peter, your mind doesn't sound too active at some points in your podcast. Well, that's true. But I have fun and I enjoy doing it. And I love information. I love talking. Well, that's true. But I have fun, and I enjoy doing it, and I love information. I love talking to people. I love doing interviews. So that's where we are, with the bridge

in mid-October of 2022. Enjoying it. But salute to Dr. Tucker of Cleveland at 100. Good for him. World's oldest practicing doctor. That's it

for this day. Tomorrow, Bruce joins us with Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. We'll see what's on his mind. Thursday, The Random Renter, plus your turn. So if you have letters, best to get them in now, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

Please remember to add where you are writing from. And it's always great to hear from new listeners, so don't be shy. Drop us a line. Keep it short. I don't run the whole email, as you probably noticed already. Just, you know, relevant parts. And that's what we'll do on Thursday.

Friday, of course, good talk. Sean Talley-Bear and Bruce Anderson with us with the political stories of the week. That's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Wow. What's that?

I guess I pushed the wrong button. That's what happens when you do these things at, you know, 74. You get a little confused by all these flashing lights. And then finally, you go, here's the right one. Push it now. Thank you.