The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Shakespeare Was Inspired By A Plague -- Can You Be Too?

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

A new contest for a free signed copy of Extraordinary Canadians calls for your inner Shakespeare! And a lot more.

and hello there peter mansbridge here the latest episode of the bridge daily it's thursday of week 40 and this is a bit of a grab bag the old potpourri podcast on this day. We got a lot of stuff, actually, a lot of really interesting stuff. Let me get started by, first of all, thanking you. A lot of comments came in overnight thanking us for the David Axelrod. The Axe was on the podcast yesterday, and sounds like it was a pretty popular podcast. People really listening in to hear what the Axe had to say about various things happening in the U.S. right now, obviously all surrounding the election of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, swearing in January 20th, and the departing, kicking and screaming and trying to tie himself to the Roosevelt,

or the Roosevelt, the Resolute desk, unsuccessfully, I assume, Donald Trump. Anyway, thank you for all those comments. And if you haven't heard the acts from yesterday's podcast, you might want to rewind and get back there because it's pretty good. All right. The other thing I wanted to mention is I had a couple of emails last night saying, hey, you didn't tell us what the contest would be this week. I really want to get that book, Extraordinary Canadians, signed by you and delivered to my house before Christmas. You're right, I didn't announce a new podcast contest for this week. I'm a little worried about getting stuff delivered to any and all

these days with the post office's swamp. There's no question about that, as it usually is around this time of year. Even more so, I think, this year, because people are staying at home, and as a result, they're sending gifts and they're mailing cards and doing whatever else they need to use the post office and various delivery services for. So I caution you on that. The bookplate requests are still coming in by the boatload, and I am turning them around as fast as I can. But at this point, Thursday of the week before Christmas,

I can't guarantee you're going to get them in time. I'll do my best. I'll put them in the mailbox. You know, the last request came in about an hour ago, actually, and I've already put it in an envelope and sent it along its way. But once again, you can assume if you've written you're going to get one. I just can't guarantee when you'll get it. Now, the contest for this week.

Falling to popular demand. This only gives you one night, basically, tonight. Today, tonight, and early tomorrow morning, uh, to send in a entry. And I think what, what I'm going to do, you know, there's so much trashing of 2020 and Hey, I've been a part of it too. It's been such a brutal year on so many different scores. So those are the easy descriptions of 2020. Awful, you know, it was trash, it was brutal, it was this, it was that.

I'm looking for something more innovative, more descriptive, more of a literary quality to describe this year that we have just about got through. So what do you think of that? You could describe it in one word, or you could describe it in a phrase, or at most a couple of sentences. Not looking for the, you know, six-page letter here. We're looking for concise, focused, smart description of 2020. How would you, and if you want to personalize it, personalize it. That's okay. And like last week, when

I asked for, let's get new writers, there are a lot of great writers out there. And some of you have been kind of sitting on the sidelines, letting others do the writing, and there have been some great letters from people across the country, many on a regular basis. But last week I was looking for new writers, and new writers came through. Great. I'd like for new writers and new writers came through. Great.

I'd like more new writers this week. But don't hesitate. If you've got a thought on your mind about how best to describe 2020, then you do it and you write it. Okay? Don't be obvious. See what you can come up with. Because, you know, times like this inspire great writers. They do. And you want to know one of the best ever

was inspired by a pandemic, by a plague? Of course, you're right, William Shakespeare. Great piece in The Guardian the other day, and gosh, I just happen to have it here with me, written by Vanessa Thorpe. And it's about that very fact, about how Shakespeare, remember, he was born in the mid-15th century. Well, I guess it was the 16th century by that point. He was born 1564, which was right in the middle of the plague.

In fact, in the register of baptism in Stratford in 1564, the year Shakespeare was born, Vanessa Thorpe points out that there's the name of an 11-year-old weaver's apprentice, and by a note of his death it says, hic incipit pestis. I don't know if that's the way you pronounce Latin properly. I was terrible in Latin at Glebe Collegiate Institute in Ottawa in the early 1960s. And Mr. Westinghouse used to take me to task for it. And of course, he managed to slip in. Why can't you be like your sister? She was so smart.

Thank you for that. Nevertheless, hic incipit pestis, if that's the way it's pronounced, is Latin for here begins the plague. Apparently 200 people died in Stratford very soon, very quickly during that period, which was about 6% of the population then. So what influence did this have on the young Shakespeare

as he was growing up? Well, you know, the writers of The Guardian point to any number of examples. Shakespeare used the time in the later years of that century to write poems like Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrezia. But when it came, or Lucrece, apparently you can pronounce that either way. But when it came to writing Lear in the 1600s, after all that death, again in 1603,

Shakespeare could not give the audiences a happy reconciliation between the king and his daughter, Cordelia. Plague taints, and I'm reading here from the Guardian piece, plague taints the language in the plays, shaping metaphors and curses such as the potent and infectious fevers mentioned in Timon of Athens. It also provides an occasional plot device, as in Romeo and Juliet, where a messenger carrying the news that Juliet faked her death is quarantined and so unable to deliver it. Anyway, if you're into Shakespeare and if you're into theater and you're into the connection between the plague and Shakespeare's writing, then go to The Guardian and find it. Vanessa Thorpe is the writer.

But I quote that today because, obviously, he was inspired by difficult times and inspired in a way that here we are hundreds of years later still reading some of the greatest literature of our lives. That written by William Shakespeare, influenced by the plague. So who knows? This letter to me that you're going to just about sit down and write as soon as the podcast is over for today could be like that. It could be something that lasts centuries, as you describe the year 2020. Here's my next story. I can remember in my early days of journalism,

late 60s, early 70s, mainly during the 70s when I was in Winnipeg and then in Ottawa. And something that happened more often in those days than it certainly does today, you know, terrible commercial airliner crashes, okay? A plane would go down at one of the major airports in the United States or in Europe. And it always was the major story of the day for a couple of days. And as people started having kind of handheld cameras that you could have in those days even before smartphones,

you started to get pictures of some of these planes going in, and it wasn't pretty. However, one of the debates that we used to have, and it wasn't much of a debate, but the topic always did come up, was, hey, there are tens of thousands of flights every day that safely take off and safely land, and nobody says a boo, right?

There's no story on The national or some newscast saying well united airlines flight 724 took off safely from la guardia today and landed safely in san francisco five hours later that's not a story but you take out the landed safely and say crashed, bingo, big story. So the issue became, is that fair? Is that right? Is it in context? Well, it wasn't much of an argument. Obviously, when dozens or in some cases hundreds of people die in a plane crash, that's news. Because news is what's different.

What's changed about the day? What's good or normally what's bad about what happened on that day? Well, a plane crash is bad and it's different for the very fact that most planes take off and land safely. So that was a short argument. But there was an echo of that argument in the last 24 hours. And you wonder, I leave it with you to determine this, whether it's different. Yesterday it was determined that in Alaska, one of the healthcare workers had a terrible reaction

to the new vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine. This healthcare worker was a known person who had an allergic reaction to certain things. Well, clearly, they had a reaction to the new vaccine, and they were in rough shape for a while until it was dealt with. And apparently, they're fine now, a day later. But it got tremendous coverage.

There have already been tens of thousands of vaccines given in the United States without incident. This one gets the coverage. So is that right? So you may recall last week, we read bits and pieces of an article by Dr. James Hamblin of The Atlantic. He's their staff writer, deals with a lot of medical issues. So last night he told CNN's Oliver Darcy, who's one of the writers for, you know, kind of a media review column that comes out every night. Hamlin told Darcy,

he's got extreme concerns. The concern is always that narratives are set by stories of individual outliers. There's no headline about the uneventful vaccinations. And here's the rest of that quote. I think as with so many things, the issue is the pressure for breaking news. We need to step back and look for patterns in who has reactions and how bad they are. We need to keep a and look for patterns in who has reactions and how bad they are. We need to keep a close eye on them.

We need to make sure the CDC, Centers for Disease Control, and the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, are living up to their promise of closely monitoring side effects and adverse reactions. But it does a disservice to highlight individual cases unless they're really telling us something we didn't know was possible. Context is key, according to Dr. Hamblin. And, you know, I get it. I hear his argument. And it's, in some ways, the same argument that we used to play out on plane crashes. But once again, news is what's different.

News is what's changed. News is what's good or more normally what's bad about what happened that day. Those are kind of the basic descriptions of news. So on this one, it was worth mentioning. Was it worth mentioning in a kind of seemingly over-the-top way that it was, especially for the first half of yesterday? I'd love to hear what you have to think about that. You won't get a free book signed for your answer, but I still wouldn't mind hearing from you.

Speaking of airplanes, you know I love airplane stories. On Monday, Boeing's inspections of assembled 787 aircraft found that some areas where fuselage segments are joined were potentially not as smooth as required. The engineering specifications at issue. Now, listen to this. Okay, where the fuselage, different parts meet each other. They want them to be absolutely exact, right? How exact? The engineering specifications at issue are roughly equivalent to the width of a human hair.

Really? Really. That's pretty small. But Boeing engineers and U.S. air safety regulators agree the newly discovered problem doesn't pose an imminent safety hazard, the official said, but the new issue is likely to ramp up the Federal Aviation Administration review of 787 production safeguards, sparked earlier by some other defects. The width of a human hair.

Man, I wonder who, it's a good thing they weren't using me to make that test. I got to tell you, you wonder who found that. You know, when you're driving in the, it's usually in the country, and you see the big wind turbines, and they're huge, right? They look, you know, they don't look that big when you're 10 miles away, but when you get right up close to them, they're huge. They're big. Well, here's something I did not know. Did not know this.

Remember when Johnny Carson used to say that? I did not know that. Veolia Environment SA has struck a deal with General Electric to shred the fiberglass blades of its wind turbines into a material that can replace coal, sand, and clay at cement manufacturing plants. 90% of those blades will be used. Now, I never realized that there was an issue with blades, or that there was a lifespan. This is in Our Daily Planet. Most of the turbines can be reused except for the blade, and researchers estimate the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years.

720,000 tons. This recycling program will both remove ample waste, but also contribute to new clean energy jobs that impact rural communities. Well, think of that the next time you're driving down the highway. Right? Where do we go from there? Where do we go here? The financial Times. It's an interesting story in the Financial Times. It made me think because it's been a long time since I've thought of the brand name Panasonic.

Now, it used to be right up there with Sony. Remember, there was the great battle between Sony and Panasonic over whether it was your radio or your television or your Walkman, whatever. And they both had difficult times over the last years. But Panasonic has kind of disappeared from our vocabulary. So what happened there? Well, Panasonic came along when television started going to wall TVs. Panasonic came along with the first, I think it was the first, one of the first

plasma televisions. And it was a big deal. But they were like really expensive. I think the first ones came out around somewhere around like $20,000. I remember being down in Seattle and doing an interview with Bill Gates at Microsoft. And I'm guessing here somewhere in the early, early 2000s. And in his house, he had like 20 Panasonic plasmas. And I was fascinated by these

because when they weren't turned on to a television station or watching a movie, they were turned on to like a painting, like a famous painting and it looked like a painting on the wall. Looked like the original. You know, Andy Warhol or whomever. Right?

Anyway, as prices started to come down, I ended up buying one. My wife said I was crazy. It still cost thousands of dollars. And, you know, the picture was good. Nothing compared with the kind of picture you can get now for considerably less. But it was, for its time, was the best. Anyway, so the funny part of it was when we upgraded to a bigger monitor,

because these weren't that big, 42 inches or something. They seemed huge at the time. But Will, our son, and me were pressuring, we've got to go bigger. We've got to go bigger for hockey, for football, basketball. Anyway, so bottom line is, I guess about a year ago, I decided, okay, we've got to get rid of these Panasonic plasmas and they cost a fortune, so they must still be worth a lot of money. No, apparently not.

I think I got like 50 bucks for one of them at an auction. So why am I telling that story? Well, this is why. The Financial Times provides an interesting take on the management challenges for the new CEO at Panasonic. Eight years ago, when Kasuhiro Tazuga took over as CEO of Panasonic, he claimed his first mission was to return one of Japan's greatest consumer brands to a profitable, normal company. So what did he do right away, out of the gate?

He stemmed a record loss by pulling out of plasma television and aimed to reposition the company as an automotive and housing conglomerate at the core of that transmission was a bold five billion dollar battery manufacturing tie-up with Tesla, signed in 2014. So that's what happened at Panasonic. They went out of the plasma business and they went into the battery business, hooking up with Tesla. Panasonic's newly appointed CEO, Yuki Kasumi, said last month that the group could achieve growth if it could find businesses that excelled among its diverse portfolio, which stretches across 520 subsidiaries.

So Panasonic's far from disappeared. It's just diversified. And it's out of what we kind of grew up watching with it. But Kasumi stopped short of naming where those strengths were and neglected to feature the automotive division he's running. He's a Panasonic lifer. He'll be inheriting a company that will have to continue delivering profits, but a taste of Tesla-like boldness may be needed to revive the group.

How things have changed. When you think of, if you're anywhere near my age, if you're part of that generation, we grew up with certain brand names we thought would never disappear. Whether they were in products, whether they were in stores, the thought that Eaton's would disappear. And we used to wait every year for the Eaton's catalog. It was a big deal.

It was like getting a new book. And sure, some of us used to, you know, tie it to our legs to play goalie in lieu of hockey pads. But we never thought Eaton's would disappear, and sure enough, it disappeared. I was in the Eaton Center the other day in downtown Toronto. And most of the stores are closed because of the lockdown. But I had to pick something up at one particular store that was open. And you had to go through all the protocols to get into it. But fortunately, I was in and out of there in a short period of time. But it's empty like that Eaton Center on the week before Christmas at high noon, empty, like nobody there.

And Willie came with me. We walked down there lunchtime and I looked up into the, to the ceiling. We're down on the main floor, looked up under the ceiling and there were those, I pointed, I said, Willie, you see those? to the ceiling. We were down on the main floor. I looked up under the ceiling. And there were those, I pointed, I said, Willie, you see those? And he sort of looked up and it was in a kind of dark, wasn't even very well lit area of one corner. I said, those are Canada geese. And when the Eden Center opened in whatever year that was, I can't even remember. Was it 20 years ago, 30 years ago?

It was a long time ago. And those Canada geese were put up there. That was a huge deal. I said that was almost as important as the Eaton Center itself opening. Because it was, you know, it was an architectural design feature. It was a big deal. And people took pictures of it. And there were newspaper stories written around the world about these Canada geese hanging from the ceiling.

And he sort of looked up at them. And I told him that. And he looked at me and went, really? Seriously? I said, yeah. I said, that was a big deal. Now you don't even know they're there. And they're not even lit.

Now that may be because of the lockdown. But they're not lit up. They're probably covered in dust and dirt and grime. And it's no big deal anymore. Because things change. Generations change. What's important to people changes. But I'll tell you, it's still pretty important to me

and it's still quite a sight even in the darkness and the gloom and the doom of 2020 don't steal that line alright

that kind of wraps it up for for this day. As I said, it was a grab bag of stuff, but some interesting things there to keep in mind. Don't forget, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's where you send your thoughts, your entry into the free book for this week contest, signed,

delivered to you. Don't know whether it'll get there before Christmas, probably not. But you will get it. And the question is, the challenge is, you tell me in a sentence or a phrase or at most a couple of sentences what or a phrase, or at most a couple of sentences. What best describes 2020? Once again, be innovative. Don't go for the easy line.

Let's see what you can come up with. Challenge convention, right? And if you're going, I don't know what to buy for Christmas for my friends. Well, I got an idea for you. Extraordinary Canadians, great book. Mark Bulgich, Peter Mansbridge, author of this. Amazing look at 17 Canadians with incredible stories to tell, all very different from different parts of the country.

It's very popular. Five weeks it's been out there now. It's either finished first or second every week of those five weeks in the Canadian Nonfiction Department in the rankings that come out every week. And we're proud of it, and we're happy that so many of you have liked it and have written for book plates. But you can find it. I know it's sold out in a number of places. I think Amazon is still trying to figure out how to get more into its operation.

But Indigo, with the exception of a couple of stores I think, and that's probably been filled by now, you can get Costco, Kmart. Is it Kmart? Walmart. Kmart doesn't exist anymore, I don't think, in Canada. Walmart, Costco, Indigo, either in the store or online, Amazon. And your independent bookseller.

You know, buy local. If you can go to your independent local store, go there. They'll have some too. I'm sure they'll be. They'll have it in the window. Because it's a bestseller. A number one instant bestseller, says Simon & Schuster in their latest ad campaign. That's nice.

That sounds great. Anyway, it is barely a week away. So tomorrow is the weekend special, and we'll highlight the best letters that I get tonight. And I'll take a peek at some of the letters that have come in over the last few days, but if they were for last week's contest, it's a little late for that. Anyway, we'll have a look and look forward to talking to you, as always, on a Friday afternoon. And once again, if you didn't hear David Axelrod's podcast yesterday

with Bruce and I, then is it Bruce and I or Bruce and me? With me. Bruce and me. Then you can dial it back and get it. That's the beautiful thing about podcasts. They're there forever. All right, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been the Bridge Daily.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back again in 24 hours. Thank you.