The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Art Of The Pause

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

The 21 seconds of Justin Trudeau where he didn't say a word but may have said a lot more than it at first appeared. Plus -- the art of breathing. Who knew?

and hello there peter mansbridge here once again with the latest episode of the bridge daily you know people have said that i pause a lot during the podcast. Hey, well, there are pauses and there are pauses. When I used to do a lot of interviews back in my CBC News days, I used to think that you were successful in an interview if you made the other person that you were interviewing pause before they answered. Now, a lot of interviews that journalists do are with political figures or business leaders or whatever. People who've been trained to be interviewed. And they usually don't have any trouble

no matter what the questions are. They know what they want to say and they know how they're going to answer them and they spit out this kind of message track of an answer and the job of the journalist is to try and break that message track and get into a more unscripted version of answers. Well, another way of doing this is to ask questions that they clearly were not ready for.

And if they're really not ready for it, they have to pause. And usually it's just a second or two seconds. But in that moment, when you're sitting across from them, you can tell, this is great. I'm making them think. They're not just blurting out an answer that's in their head, that's been put there by a comms person or by whatever preparation they go through for the interview. But here we are in a situation where they're actually thinking through the answer they want to give. And that's an accomplishment. And I tell, you know, young journalists in journalism schools or various courses that I helped teach at the CBC, I'd say look for that pause moment.

That's when you know you've achieved something. Now, you've got to listen to what they say, because you may need to follow up. You almost certainly will need to follow up. But in that moment, you've got a bit of an advantage, because they have to pause. Well, as I said here at the beginning, there are pauses, and then there are pauses.

And we saw perhaps, I don't know, certainly the longest one I've ever seen on the part of a Canadian Prime Minister. Yesterday in Justin Trudeau's daily scrum. Well, it's not even a scrum, really. It's kind of a staged news conference. Staged is probably the wrong word, but I mean, it's an organized news conference, same time every day. We know the issue. It's COVID-19. He makes a statement.

A number of questions are asked. And for the most part, for these last two or three months, Trudeau's had an answer. You may not like the answer, but he's had an answer and it's been ready and then bang, he goes right into it. And as soon as he's finished it in either English or French, he pauses and gives the same answer again in French or English, whichever one he hadn't done, obviously, before. And, you know, I'm sure his comms people are ecstatic because, for the most part, you know, he's handled all that.

I mean, journalists might get upset that they didn't get the answer to the question they asked, but nevertheless, he has given answers. And they're being almost immediate answers. Very rarely any pauses. So yesterday, Tom Perry from the CBC, mainly CBC Radio in Ottawa, asked a question which is basically, I'll summarize it.

Tom wanted to know how Trudeau felt about what was going on in the United States and the way Donald Trump was handling it. So he finishes his question, and Justin Trudeau stands there, and you can tell he's not paralyzed. He's thinking, how am I going to handle this question? What am I going to say? Traditionally, on these Canada-U.S. things, he's blurted out, you know, we're the greatest of friends, the greatest of partners.

We have a history that goes back centuries. And we're going to keep it that way, and these are difficult times, and we have to understand each other, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not what he said. Or that's not what he did. What he did was telling in the sense that there were no words coming out of his mouth. You could see his mind was working. It was like clicking over, what am I going to say?

How do I want to say this? But that pause, which I think was like 20 or 21 seconds long, has now been around the world. Everybody plays it over the last 24 hours. So, Tom, good for you. A Tom Perry exclusive. Because to make that pause work, you've got to hear the question. So, Tom's question has been played on the air in countries around the world

throughout this day. Now, the pause itself says something beyond the fact that he was trying to figure out what to say. It said, to me anyway, that he didn't like anything he saw that's been going on in the States in these last eight or ten days, and especially the kind of leadership that's been given by Donald Trump. Now, he didn't say that, and he would never say that, because there's too much at stake in the relationship between Canada

and the United States for him to publicly say that. But I don't think there's any doubt when you look at that pause and you look at the expression on his face, that that's what he was thinking. There's no love lost between these two men, none. I'm pretty sure that Justin Trudeau doesn't think an awful lot of Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has made it clear on more than a few occasions that he doesn't think much of Justin Trudeau.

And this is a relationship, from my understanding, that got off to the wrong foot on day one, when Trudeau phoned Trump to congratulate him on his election win, which is the typical thing all leaders do for the other leader. And Donald Trump, as is his way, wants to be everybody's buddy and knows everybody and thinks he knows everybody and knows everything he needs to know about everybody got into this thing about

Justin Trudeau's father Pierre Trudeau and my understanding is that at one point in that conversation Donald Trump said to Justin Trudeau, we're talking three years ago, right? Shortly after the election. Trump says, your dad and I were great friends. We used to go bar hopping and club hopping

in New York back in the day. Really? Really? Really? Now I'm sure, I don't know what Justin Trudeau thought at that moment. I'm sure he found that hard to believe. And as somebody who covered Trudeau during those days, I find it awfully hard to believe. Because you know what? If Justin Trudeau had gone bar hopping, or Pierre Trudeau had gone bar hopping with Donald Trump back in the 70s or early 80s, we would have heard about it. We would have heard about it. We would have heard about it.

That's not to say that Pierre Trudeau didn't have an active social life. He did. But I don't think it was with Donald Trump. Anyway, the pause. I think the pause said a lot.

And I think it's very instructive for all of us, whether we're journalists or observers, to listen for the pause. Watch that reaction on the face of the pauser. Because it can often tell you a lot. Okay? All right, moving on.

Briefly, just as we've done for weeks now, when there's kind of an update on the, whether it's the vaccine or the therapy, the prevention side of things on COVID-19, we try to mention it. And there are a couple of things worth mentioning today. There's no breakthrough. It hasn't happened yet.

Everybody obviously is hoping it will happen. But there are a couple of encouraging new developments. One comes from the Eli Lilly Company. It's starting an early stage trial to test its potential treatment for COVID-19. In the world's first study of an antibody treatment against the disease, the study will assess safety and tolerability in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and results are anticipated by the end of June, the end of this month. That's a story in Reuters. That's encouraging. So is this. The Wall Street Journal reporting,

researchers are looking into whether drugs currently approved for heart issues can also prevent or reduce complications from COVID-19 and help hospitalized patients recover sooner, with treatments ranging from blood pressure drugs, blood thinners, statins, anti-platelets, and a drug to lower triglycerides. Now, the reason I find that fascinating is I'm on a couple of those things. I've got, like, millions of other people in this country. I've got high blood pressure.

And I've got atrial fibrillation, AFib. And as part of the treatment I have for those two things, it's at a minor level, but nevertheless its treatment are blood pressure drugs, blood thinners, statins. So, I don't know, somehow I read that and I thought that's good. That's good if this is true, if this is actually going to help complications from COVID-19,

then I'm ready, sort of. Well, I hope I don't get those complications. Wouldn't wish that on anybody, including myself. Okay, here's the last topic. And I found this fascinating. I read this on the weekend. And it came out of National Public Radio, but I found it on their website when I was kind of surfing on the weekend on Sunday.

And it's about one of the most natural things that we do, one of the most powerful elements in the human body. We typically take 25,000 breaths per day. Okay? Breathe in and out 25,000 times a day. That's kind of the average for a human. Now, NPR talked to and read journalist James Nestor's new book, Breath, the New Science of a Lost Art. And there are a few things in this piece that I want to read to you because I found them fascinating. Stuff I didn't know about such a natural part of our lives. Breathing.

Okay? Part of his research for his new book, he had his nose completely plugged for 10 days, forcing him to breathe solely through his mouth. It was not a pleasant experience. This is what he said. I went from snoring a couple of minutes a night to within three days I was snoring four hours a night.

He must have been a pretty popular guy. I know if I snore for 10 seconds, I am rudely awoken. Anyway, he goes on to say, I developed sleep apnea. My stress levels were off the charts. My nervous system was a mess. I felt awful. This is after having his nose plugged and only breathing through his mouth. So he says the researchers he talked to recommend taking time to consciously listen to yourself

and to feel how breath is affecting you. He notes that taking slow and low breaths through the nose can help relieve stress and reduce blood pressure. All right, slow and low breaths just through the nose. This is the way your body wants to take in air. It lowers the burden of the heart if we breathe properly and if we really engage the diaphragm. The nose, listen, get this.

I mean, what did you think your nose did? I didn't realize it did all of these things. The nose filters, knew that. The nose filters, heats, and treats raw air. But so many of us don't realize, at least I didn't realize, this is the author talking here, how inhaling through the nose can trigger different hormones to flood into our bodies,

how it can lower our blood pressure, how it monitors the heart rate, even helps store memories. So it's this incredible organ that orchestrates innumerable functions in our body to keep us balanced. Interesting, right? Now there's a whole bunch more on what the nose does and the impact it can have.

But I thought this whole idea of working your breathing by your nose and not your mouth and the impact that could have was fascinating. by your nose and not your mouth. And the impact that could have was fascinating. So I've been trying it lately. You know, I love to swim. And part of this article is also about how the best divers, free divers, control their breathing. Now, some of this stuff about free divers is fascinating. This doesn't really have anything to do with the nose as such.

Well, obviously, it partly has something to do with the nose. But did you know how long free divers, those who swim underwater but without tanks and everything, how long they can swim? How long they can hold their breath? How they expand their lung capacity to hold their breath for several minutes. You know, I used to, when I was younger, I was very proud of the fact that I could swim long distances underwater. And I can remember at my sister's pool down in St. Thomas, Ontario. I could do and did eight lengths of the pool underwater without coming up.

Now, she had a small pool. It wasn't much bigger than a bathtub, I used to say. It was actually a little bigger than a bathtub. But I used to do eight lengths. I was very proud of it. But, you know, I could do eight lengths in that pool in a short period of time. Max two minutes. Well, the world record for free divers holding their breath,

how long do you think that is? Four minutes? Five minutes. Five minutes. That's a long time. Twelve and a half minutes. Most freedivers will hold their breath for eight minutes, seven minutes.

That's amazing. Now, the author of this NPR column writes, when I first saw this, this was several years ago, I was sent out on a reporting assignment to write about a freediving competition. You watch this person at the surface take a single breath and completely disappear into the ocean and come back five or six minutes later. They conclude the piece, we've been told that whatever we have,

whatever we're born with, is what we're going to have for the rest of our lives, especially as far as the organs are concerned. But we can absolutely affect our lung capacity. So some of these divers have a lung capacity of 14 liters, which is about double the size for a typical adult male. They weren't born this way. They train themselves to breathe in ways to profoundly affect their physical bodies. So why am I telling you all this?

What's it got to do with anything we discussed? Well, hey, COVID-19 causes respiratory problems. We all know that. Infects the lungs is one of the primary issues. And one of the primary symptoms is that cough, chest issues, all of that. So what this is suggesting, work on your breathing. You know, it's not going to hurt.

You want to get that oxygen into your lungs. You have a pulse oximeter. They're not expensive. You know, I think you can get one for 30, 40 bucks. They're a great thing to have because they monitor not only your pulse, but your oxygen levels. And they're very simple.

They just snap onto the end of your finger. If you watch first responders, paramedics, when they arrive to look after somebody in some form of crisis, they'll have their defibrillator handy, and they'll start with a pulse oximeter. They'll put it on the finger to get a sense of where the situation is.

But it's not a bad thing, and many doctors have suggested that people should have one these days to get an early sign on whether or not you have issues about your oxygen levels. Anyway, I know you're all sitting there right now, and you're all breathing through your nose. I know. I can tell.

That's what you're doing. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's where you write if you've got any comments about anything we've said today or anything at all on the issues that are up for discussion this week. As you know, by Friday, which is only a couple of days away, it'll be the weekend special time, and I'll be reading your letters and your thoughts and your comments and your questions. So don't be shy. Some have already been coming in.

And you know, one of the other things we've got to discuss, maybe we'll talk about a little bit tomorrow, is it's June. This started in March. And Gary Mason, who is a great writer for the Globe and Mail, lives on the West Coast, deals with all kinds of issues. Gary was thinking aloud last night about whether or not it's time to call a wrap to the 7 o'clock, 7.30 clapping, pot banging that goes on on many porches and balconies around the country, thanking frontline health care workers. That we've done that, and we're proud of having done it. And the frontline workers are incredibly appreciative of the fact we've done that. But they too now think that, you know what?

Because many of the hospitals which still have COVID-19 patients in them also have many other patients now. And they're feeling that they've passed the worst mark of the hospital situation, not the disease situation. That's still very out there. But it may be time to focus our concerns and our thanks in other areas and find other ways to do that. So anyway, Gary was kind of thinking aloud. You know, it's June. Has that moment passed?

Well, I know that we still do it in the immediate neighborhood here. Our neighbors across the street, our neighbors beside us, we're out there every night at 7.30 clapping and cheering, and one of the fellows has drums and another one has a trumpet and we make a little bit of a racket for a minute or a minute and a half and that's it. And it's been a good thing to feel that kind of community spirit.

But maybe it's time to focus on something else. Anyway, if you have thoughts on that, let me know. The Banned Speech Podcast at gmail.com. Thanks for listening tonight. It's a treat, as always. We'll be back in 24 hours