The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Put Down Your Phone -- A Wednesday End Bits Special

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

A collection of "news you can use" stories from The Bridge's end bits favourites. Why day dreaming is better than doom scrolling; why a second passport is useful -- all these stories and more today! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Vansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. It's a wonderful Wednesday. And wonderful Wednesdays mean an in-bit special. That's coming right up. Here we are, midweek. On another week in the middle of January. Hope your weather is kind of mid-January typical.

In most of the country, that means winter, cold. Snow, ice, all those nice little things. Kind of got it all here in Central Canada over the last week or so. But that's okay. You know, that's Canada. That's Canada in January. Or most of Canada. I know some of you were basking in the delights of the far west,

British Columbia, the Sunshine Coast, all of that. And good for you. I'm jealous. Okay. A couple of things before we get started with our NBit special for this day. You know, we decided to do for tomorrow's your turn and ask me anything programs. First time we've done that. And it's literally that. Send in your questions to me about whatever you want. You think I should or could answer. So there are a lot about my background and my journalism experiences.

But the main thing is, this connected, at least for this week, we have had so many letters, so many that we're calling it, calling it down, going to say, okay, enough. We've got far more than enough. for tomorrow's program. In fact, we probably got twice as many as we need. And the wonderful thing is, so many of them are from people who've never written before. People who clearly listen each week and yet don't write.

This week they did. And they're from all over the country and some great questions. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to stretch this out over a couple of weeks. there's already enough for some questions next week, but we'll keep it open for a while. But already there's a lot of letters. And have no sense of what the timing is going to be like in doing this.

It's not like the normal, just read a letter, move on to the next one. This is read a letter and then try and answer it as best I can. So we really don't know what we're dealing with and probably won't know until after tomorrow's program. But I can tell you this, at this moment, you can stop writing. You can stop writing for now. Anyway, looking forward to doing that tomorrow. And ask me anything, your turn, and the random renter, we think. He's still recovering from the flu that he had last week.

But hopefully he'll join the party. more. Okay. In-bit specials are simply that. Stories that we've kind of put aside that are worth you know, mentioning and talking about. They're interesting stories from different news organizations around the world. And we put them aside and then occasionally on Wednesdays when we're not doing an encore program, we throw together in NBITS. special. So here we go. Here's the first one. I want you to have this image. It shouldn't be hard. Here's my image that fits with this story. As many of you know, I often go to Scotland. We have a home in Scotland and I don't know. I guess I spent about five months a year in Scotland.

still do the program. It's the wonderful thing about the modern era. You're connected no matter where you are. And this is kind of about connecting. When I travel to Scotland, the way I go is I go Toronto, London, Heathrow to be specific. Toronto to Heathrow. On one of those overnight air Canada flights. And then I connect to British Airways.

and fly to Inverness in Northern Scotland. And then it's a drive to our home. The time at Heathrow in connecting, if you've been to Heathrow, you know it's a huge airport, one of the biggest in the world, has five different terminals. And you connect by bus or underground tunnels. Or in some cases the tube subway.

from one one to another. But there's a wait, and it's usually like three hours, roughly three hours between flights. So one of the images I have, I always have about that flights early in the morning. You know, it's like 6.30 or 7 o'clock in the morning when you land at Heathrow. And when you go to the area where the buses take you between terminals,

because you're still in the protection of customs, right? You still can't go outside and do what you want unless you want to start the whole process of checking in again. So you go to that area, and it's, you know, it's your basic sort of bus stop area except that has seats. And I always have this image when I get there. There's always a bunch of people sitting there already, waiting for the next bus to take them, say, from terminal.

to Terminal 5, which is the case for me. And all those people are sitting there, most of them, if not all of them, are sitting there, in their seats. And what do they got in their hand? They got their phone in their hand. And they're scrolling, right? And they're reading whatever pops up on their screen. And you look at that and you go, okay, so 20 years ago, what was, What were those people doing?

They were sitting there. They might have a newspaper in their hand. Remember those? Or they may be talking to each other, socializing. Or they may be daydreaming, just sitting there. But now they're sitting there with their phone on their hands. So you're going, all right, Peter, we get the picture. What are you telling us about?

What's the story you want? to tell us. Okay, well, so this was in the Washington Post written by one of their writers called Maggie Penman. And the headline is, why you should put down your phone and daydream instead. So let me read a little bit of this.

At any bus stop or while waiting in line, most people will have their heads down looking at their phones. Recent research found that studies suggest that if you resist that urge and let your mind wander instead, there could be some serious benefits. Giving yourself time to daydream

seems to be good for your well-being, for problem-solving, and maybe even for your relationships. Daydreaming has been a subject of scientific research for decades. We spend as much as half our time awake, daydreaming, or listening to our own thoughts. But it isn't always a pleasant experience. In one famous study, participants preferred to get an electric shock

rather than sit quietly with their own thoughts. Yikes. This is one explanation for why so many people reflexively reach for their phones during any moment of downtime. Daydreaming seems to be one route to having that kind of more meaningful, fuller life, said Aaron Westgate, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Florida. It might not be as easy as pulling out your cell phone, but there's sort of a deeper meaning to it. She compared idly scrolling on a phone to

cognitive junk food, meaning it might feel good in the moment, but it doesn't really do much for us. so much of what we've accomplished as humans has come from higher order thinking, Westgate said. Think about that, right? So much of what we've accomplished as humans comes from higher order thinking. So the next time you have a few minutes to spare, there's a couple of reasons to leave your phone in your pocket and let your mind wander instead. one, you'll probably enjoy it more than you think. Our fear of boredom is well documented, and yet in a 2022 study published in the journal of

experimental psychology, researchers found that people consistently underestimated how much they would enjoy just thinking. It's the easiest study I've ever conducted, because we didn't need anything, said one of the researchers, Ku Murayama, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Tobinjan in Germany. They asked participants to make a prediction about how they would feel sitting alone in a room for 20 minutes with nothing to do. Afterward, they were asked how it went. People tend to overestimate the boredom and underestimate enjoyment, Morayama said. This held true across six experiments with a total of 259.

participants, whether they were put in a bare conference room or a small dark space with no visual stimulation at all. Here's another reason. Daydreaming may help you solve problems. One of the most important reasons our minds wander is that this kind of free association thinking is effective for problem solving, often more so than sitting down with the intention of figuring out a solution. People do this a lot when they're driving, Westgate said.

That's true, you know, you're driving, you're focused on the road, you're focused on the proper things, but your mind's also working, right? People do this a lot when they're driving, Muscate said, showering, putting on makeup, all these kind of things where you're doing something in the external world, but it's sort of automatic and your thoughts are free to wonder. Now, I found that article in the Washington Post alongside another piece in study finds.org. Now, if you've followed the bridge for a while, you know, or read my newsletter on the weekends, you know that I like studyfines.org. Dotorg.

Because we're just a world of studies, right? There's always studies coming. You have new studies with this, that, or the other thing. And studyfines.org tends to put these together for you to have a look at, see what the latest is on whatever. So they have a piece. It just came out last week, actually.

And the headline is scientists decode sleep patterns to forecast your future health risks. Think about that. They're going to study your sleep patterns. and there will be a look at the results of that study and forecast future health risks. So I don't want to get too technical here, but let's read some of this one. Researchers at Stanford University

and collaborators trained on artificial intelligence models called Sleep FM on polysumography recordings. Sorry, that's the first time I've heard that word. But polysumnography is the gold standard sleep study that records brain activity, heart rhythms, breathing patterns, and muscle movements throughout the night. They did this study on more than 65,000 people, representing over 585,000 hours of sleep data. I'm glad somebody's getting good sleep. I'm still fighting to try and get anywhere close to seven hours a night. After analyzing these overnight recordings,

the model identified elevated future risk for 130 different medical conditions. All kinds of things, from dementia to heart attack to hearing problems, you name it, atrial fibrillation. Sleep is a fundamental biological process, obviously. and studying it can give us all kinds of indications, say some of the researchers, as to what challenges, what risks you may face in the future. The study examined sleep recordings from four major research cohorts spanning ages 1 to 100. Traditional sleep studies focus on specific disorders like sleep apnea or measure isolated metrics. Sleep FM takes a different approach by processing all.

all physiological signals simultaneously, brainwave patterns, eye movements, heart activity, muscle tone, and breathing measurements. The system breaks down sleep recordings into five-second segments, analyzing patterns across different signal types to identify which combinations predict future disease. For disease prediction, researchers paired Stanford sleep recordings with electronic health records, containing diagnostic codes and timestamps. They only counted cases where diagnosis occurred at at least seven days after the sleep study to avoid detecting existing conditions. Okay, that's fascinating. Good for them.

Here's my question. Do you really want to know the answers to those questions? Occasionally you'll read things about different studies that say, if you do this or that in terms of studying your body and your functions, we can predict how you're going to die, when you're going to die, and what if anything you can do about it. Now, do you want to know the answers to those questions? I'm not sure that I do.

You know, if it's something you can effectively do to prolong your life, perhaps. Perhaps that's worth it. But if it's simply going to tell you, oh, by the way, you're going to die on, you know, June 12th, 2057, really? Why would you want to know that? I'm not sure I would. However, that is an end bit. Okay, let's lower the temperature. and try something different. The headline for this story on NBC News, their website, is the following.

It's actually an associated press story. Viral 6-7 tops the 2025 list of overused words and phrases. Now, every year you see this story. We've talked about it before on the bridge where different studies by different groups, usually in a university, I try to find out what are the words people are phrases

that people don't want to hear anymore. They're just, they're tired of them. And that's what this story's about. But I'm confused by it. So let's read it and see whether we can make sense of it. Respondents to an annual Michigan college survey of overused and misused words and phrases say 6-7 is cooked. In other words, it's done, right?

And should come to a massive full stop heading into the new year. Have you ever heard that phrase, 6-7? I've never heard it. Maybe I'm just old and it's kind of out of it. Those are among the top 10 words on the 50th annual banished words list, released, I guess it was last week, by Lake Superior State University. The tongue-and-cheek roundup of overused slang started in 1976 as a New Year's Eve Party idea and is affectionately called the list of Queens English for misuse, overuse, and general

uselessness. Around 1,400 submissions came from all 50 states in a number of countries outside the U.S., including Uzbekistan, Brazil, and Japan. Also in the top 10 list. The reason I circle 6-7 is I've never heard it before, but these ones I have heard. These are also in the top 10 for banishment. Demure, incentivize, perfect, gift or gifted,

my bad. Yeah, I'm sick of that. and reach out. Actually, my bad and reach out also made the list decades ago in 1998 and 1994, respectively. The list definitely represents the fad and vernacular trends of the younger generation, said David Travis, Lake Superior State University President. Social media allows a greater opportunity to misunderstand or misuse words. We're using terms that are shared through texting, primarily, or through posting with the body language or tone context. It's very easy to misunderstand these words.

Few phrases in 2025 befuddled parents, teachers, and others over the age of, say, 40. I'm so old, I can't even remember what 40 was like. More than, a few phrases befuddled more than 6,7. Dictionary.com even picked it. as their 2025 word of the year, while other dictionaries chose words like slop and rage bait. But what does 6-7 actually mean? It exploded over the summer,

especially among Genzi, and is considered by many to be nonsensical in meaning, an inside joke driven by social media. Don't worry, because we're all still trying to figure out exactly what it means. The dictionaries, editors wrote So they want to ban a phrase they don't even know what it means. Each number can be spoken aloud as 6-7. They even can be combined as the number 67 at college basketball games.

Some fans explode when a team reaches that point total. The placement of 6-7 at the top of the banished list puts it in good company. In 2019, the century's old Latin phrase quid pro quo was the top request. phrased a ban from popular use. In 2017, fake news got the most foots. Alina Babbitt, or is it Bobbitt, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is unapologetic about using 6'7.

By the way, Bobbitt is a name from history. I'll say no more. Anyway, explaining why she is unapologetic about using 6-7, Alina says, I find joy in it. It's a little bit silly, and even though I don't understand what it means, it's fun to use. Jalen Bressel says a small group of his friends use 6-7 and that it comes up a couple of times each week, but he won't utter it. Never.

I don't really get the joke. I don't see what's funny about it. But banning it, even in Jess, might be a... a bit of a stretch, he said, adding that he does use other words and phrases on the list. I've always used the word cooked, Bresol said. I just think it got popular on the Internet over the past year. It's saying, like, give it up, it's over. You know, stick a fork in it.

It's cooked. Some of the phrases do have longevity. I don't think they'll ever go away, like at the end of the day, he said. I use my bad today. I feel comfortable using it. I started using it when I was young. A lot of us older people are still using it. Older people?

He's a student at university. He's 19. He's an older person. He's describing himself. Travis said that while some terms on the list will stick around in perpetuity, others will be fleeting. I think six, seven next year will be gone, he said. I love that.

They're banning a word. Nobody knows what it means. Okay. We've got a couple more for our N-bit special this Wednesday. But it's also that time in the program where we take our break. So let's do that. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back.

Peter Mansbridge here. You're listening to The Bridge on Series XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. This is our Wednesday end-bit special for this week. 6-7. whatever that means. A reminder that tomorrow, it's your turn, and we've cut off the entries for this week.

We've had so many, which is a pleasant experience, and we've had so many from people who've never written before, which is great. It's an Ask Me Anything program tomorrow. We haven't tried that before, but we're going to try it this week, and we hope you enjoy it. Okay, let's get back to a,

A couple more of these end bits. Sorry, just putting things in order. This one comes from the CNN website. The headline is, Grab What You Can, the Global Rush for Second Passports. I have two passports. I was born in Britain. It was born in the United Kingdom,

so I have my British passport. but when I came to Canada, when I immigrated to Canada in 19, well, kind of 54, 55, by 59, after five years I got my citizenship. We had a little citizenship ceremony. Justice came to the house, actually. And my younger brother who was born in Canada was already Canadian, but my sister, and I and my parents became officially Canadian citizens. When you carry

a UK passport, you get that citizenship, or at least you did in those days, automatically. But we wanted to go through the process and take the tests and do the whole bit, which we did. Anyway, having

two passports of the British and the Canadian is certainly handy for journalists. I've talked about this. before because there's some countries you go into where you don't want to show that you've been in certain other countries. So you swap your passports around. Nothing illegal about that. It's a handy thing to be able to do. It's also handy to link it back to the first story when I'm, when I go to Britain, I get through the lines much faster, waving my British passport. All right.

Here's the story, Julia Buckley at CNN, traveling from country to country without restrictions, shorter lines at the border, the right to live and work in your dream destination, or to reconnect with family roots. All that and more is the dream of those who seek dual citizenship. And that includes Monsieur George Cluny, who celebrated at the end of 2025 by acquiring French citizenship for himself and his family. Jewel citizenship, the ability to be a citizen of two or more countries, has long been popular with travelers, expats, and dreamers in a world of increasing red tape.

Who wouldn't want to skip the long lines at passport control and breeze through with locals? For those who, like Clooney, dream of living and working in another country, but don't have an employer to sponsor them, acquiring another citizenship might be the key that unlocks the door. even for those with plans, no plans to move, it can be transformative. But in the 21st century politics, the tide may be turning against dual citizenship. In 2025, several European countries tightened requirements for citizenship by dissent and so-called golden passport programs, which grant citizenship to big spenders. and in the U.S., Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Marino

has mooted an exclusive citizenship act that would ban Americans from holding any other citizenship. There are a few things you need to know if you're considering this. Now, this article, because it's on CNN, is kind of written from the American perspective, but some of this stuff applies. How common is dual citizenship? There's no way to know the precise numbers, says Peter Spiro, professor of law at Temple University.

That's because most countries don't require citizens to declare whether they hold multiple nationalities. One thing seems clear, however, dual citizenship is becoming increasingly popular. In the 2021 census of the UK's population, 2.1% of England and Wales residents held multiple passports. around double the result of the 2011 census, in which 1.1% of the population self-declared as dual citizens. And in a recent U-Gov poll of Americans, 6% self-declared as dual citizens. What kind of people hold multiple citizenships? For as long as migration has existed, many immigrants who naturalize in a new country have wanted to retain the citizenship of their origin. In recent decades, the wealthy have also embraced dual citizenship as a way to expand global mobility.

There's a lawnmour in this article, lawnmour. You can find it easily on CNN if you just, you don't push dual citizenship or global, second global passports. So I'm just skimming the highlights here. What are the main roots to citizenship of another country? most people qualify through one of three routes, dissent, investment, or naturalization. Citizenship by descent typically requires showing that your ancestors came from a particular country

with and whether an ancestor naturalizing in another country severs the line. It's not necessarily easy. I know my wife, Her family is of Italian descent, and she has often wanted to go that route of getting a second passport, an Italian one. But you really have to have the documentation, right down to original birth certificates, not of you, but of the ancestor you're claiming. So it's tricky. What are the benefits of dual citizenship?

Well, there's a lot of them. Dual citizenship can allow people to relocate to another country, open the door to work opportunities, unlock new educational opportunities for their children. If your kids are interested in working or studying in the EU, the European Union, you can do it hassle-free, says Spirol, a fellow we were quoting earlier, of the ever popular European citizenships.

Now, my UK passport, used to be an EU passport as well until Brexit. Anyway, lots in that piece if you're interested in any way. And I know some of you are because some have written to me about it over time. How are we doing on time? Speaking of time, this is kind of interesting. Those who are regular listeners know I love airline stores. Here's the headline on this one.

It's also on the CNN website, CNN travel. Here's the headline. Bottle to throttle. The precautions airlines take to make sure your pilot isn't ammered. Thank you. That's good to know, right? News you can use. Okay, let me read some of this.

That's not funny, Peter. Come on. You want your pilot to be sober. It's widely understood that drinking and operating heavy machinery don't mix. Alcohol can slow reaction time, impair judgment, cause trouble focusing, and lead to dizziness or nausea. Effects have become even more dangerous when operating an aircraft. No kidding.

And while it's rare for commercial pilots to attempt to, fly under the influence, a string of incidents in recent years has brought that issue to the forefront. Most notably, Japan Airlines came under scrutiny due to excessive alcohol consumption by two pilots the day before their flight in December of 2024. A captain from the same airline admitted to drinking three beers the day before his flight from Hawaii to Japan. After failing a self-administered alcohol test, the pilot ultimately called in sick,

setting off a cascade of delays as the airline rushed to find a replacement. I think you could accept that delay. Last July, a Delta Airlines flight from Stockholm to New York was canceled after a pilot's breathalyzer test. How would you feel? you're getting on the plane, you're watching your pilot having a breathalyzer test. Anyway, in this case, the test exceeded the maximum allowable blood alcohol content of 0.02% under

European Union law. These incidents raised the question. What safeguards are actually in place to ensure pilots are sober when they get behind the flight controls? The answer is far from clear cut, because there's a lot of. no universal law that applies to every airline. In practice, airlines rely on several layers of protection. BOTL to Throttle Rules.

Strict BAC limits. The BAC is the blood alcohol content. Random testing. Suspicion-based testing. Medical oversight. Peer reporting systems. Rehabilitation programs. And in the case of violations,

severe penalties, ranging from licensed suspensions and revocations to criminal charges. Some countries also require pre-flight breath tests. I don't know which countries those are, but pre-flight breath tests. I'm assuming they don't do that in the cockpit. It must happen somewhere back in the flight control area where the pilots check in. While guidance from the International Civil Aviation Organization prohibits licensed aviation personnel from operating under the influence of psychoactive substances, regulators and individual airlines determined the specific details resulting in a patchwork of rules.

Additionally, some jurisdictions enforce 8, 10, 12, or 24 hours of bottle to throttle referring to the time between a pilot's last drink and reporting for duty. All of these different rules can make it hard for pilots to keep track of specific thresholds when flying internationally. But for retired training captain, Pete Hutchinson, who flew internationally with Virgin Atlantic for over 20 years, the math is pretty simple. I work to a more general standard, and that is, don't even get yourself into a situation where you're quibbling about 0.01.

Hutchison said that. I think in one of his posts, he goes by the handle, Pete the Irish Pilot on Instagram. Look him up if you're an Instagram person. When he had short layovers, say less than 24 hours, he abstained from alcohol and encouraged his crew to follow suit. If he had a longer layover of two days or more, which he says it was quite rare by the time he retired,

there was slightly more wiggle room to enjoy a shingtow in Hong Kong or a glass of chenine blanc in Cape Town. We are professional people who have worked very hard to get a commercial license, and as pilots we still face unlimited public liability. We don't want anyone to get hurt. for our airline or the industry to go belly up. It's not a flying circus. It's very serious.

The U.S. has slightly more lenient regulations. The FAA requires pilots to have a load of alcohol level below 0.04. Remember, what is it in Canada driving? 0.08? Is that it? I think so. Yeah, half the legal limit. 0.04 is half the legal limit for driving a car,

and wait at least eight hours between drinking alcohol and reporting for duty. That's the minimum, though. Some airlines, including Delta and United, enforce a longer 12-hour bottle-to-throttle window. What's more, the Federal Aviation Administration recommends waiting 24 hours, warning that the legally required 8 hours may not be sufficient to reach a legal blood alcohol level. and the effects of a hangover may hamper a pilot's performance. Testing adds another safeguard in the U.S.

where alcohol screening is most often conducted randomly under reasonable suspicion, say triggered by colleagues, TSA personnel or supervisor, or after an accident. Positive tests result in actions including counseling, warning letters, fines, suspensions, and license revocations. I don't know, you read an article like that, or you listen to an article like that as you've just done in this case. I don't think you ever look at a pilot the same way again

because you're sort of wondering, right? Although these examples they've had of past incidents are so rare when you consider the number of flights that are in the air at any time and any day. I mean, I'm sure you've seen if you don't have. app on your phone that shows you all the planes in the air, in your area, in your province, in your country, in the world. There are so many thousands planes in the air at any one time. So these examples, you know, one or two a year that we are aware of anyway, are small.

And it's good to hear that there are, you know, tight regulations and that are enforced. and I don't mind the whole idea of, you know, pre-flight breath tests. Can't be too safe. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week's end bit special. And as usual, thank Mark Bullgutch for finding these different stories for us to give us something to talk about on Wednesdays when we're not running an encore edition. Tomorrow, your turn and ask me anything, something new for us. Friday is plus the random rancher hopefully tomorrow.

Friday is good talk with Shuntelli Bear and Bruce Anderson. They'll be about. Take care. Have a great Wednesday. Wonderful Wednesdays. And we'll talk to you again in less than 24 hours.