The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Return of Trench Warfare

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

If you thought trench warfare was something for the history books, think again.  Just look at Ukraine.  Brian Stewart brings us his regular Tuesday commentary on the latest on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Also a great little story on End bits from the remotest part of the South Atlantic.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. If you thought trench warfare was something you just read about in the World War I history books, well, it's time to think again. And hello there, welcome to Tuesday. Tuesday, of course, means Brian Stewart and his latest commentary on the situation in Ukraine. And there's lots to talk about today. But before we get there, I can't resist saying something about our old friend Donald Trump, who's done the latest backflip. You know, he really should have been in the Olympics in gymnastics,

because he is amazing at how he can, you know, turn something he said into something he didn't say. How he can do this kind of reverse somersault or backflip or whatever you see in the gymnastics routines. There he was on the weekend, in his own words, in black and white, on his social media channel, saying it was time to terminate the Constitution so he could have his way. Well, that's caused all kinds of consternation among Republicans. Good grief, Republicans. Actually, some of them actually saying Donald Trump was wrong.

That's really different for Republicans. But that's what they're saying. And I looked at it and I thought, you know, what is he actually saying when he says terminate the Constitution? Terminate everything that's in the Constitution? All those amendments, like the Second Amendment? The right to carry guns? So Donald Trump is advocating, let's end the Second Amendment.

You know, everything the Republicans have been saying about the Democrats for years, that they're trying to kill the Second Amendment? Well, he's way ahead of them. He's going to kill them himself. Now, I know you Trumpies out there are saying, hey, he's walked that back, that statement. He has. He's walked it back by saying he never said it.

Well, it's kind of hard when it's right there in black and white. But that's his latest reveal on the story. Oh, I never said to terminate the Constitution, even though those are the exact phrases and words he used. But to Donald, man, he never stops giving us stuff to talk about, right? Well, that's enough on him. I'll give you a quote. I'll give you a different quote.

I saw this one this morning when I was reading up myself on the latest Ukraine story. And this is a great one. I haven't heard of this fellow before, but he's one of President Zelensky's advisors. You know, he has a number of advisors, Zelensky. And this fellow's name is Mikhailo Podolyak. And he said this yesterday. It's a great quote. Here it is. If something is launched into other countries' airspace,

sooner or later, unknown flying objects will return to their departure point. Okay. That now seems to be happening. After months of all the action being within the Ukrainian boundary, borders, suddenly things are starting to happen inside Russia. So when something is launched into other countries' airspace, sooner or later, unknown flying objects will return to their departure point. That seems pretty clear as to what's happening, but there's still a mystery to some of this stuff.

And that's just part of the discussion we're going to have with Brian Stewart on this week. Lots in this commentary today. Starting with a question to Brian that came out of your comments and your thoughts sent in to your turn. Well, enough from me. Let's get to Brian and see what he has to tell us this week. And as I said, there's lots in it this week. Here we go.

Brian, last week I got a letter from one of your fans, one of your many fans who writes into the bridge to talk about how important Tuesday is for them in terms of learning more about the various things that have been going on in Ukraine. And as a result of the Russian invasion, the question he asked though, was one others have kind of hinted at in the past too, is how does Brian Stewart know so much?

You know, you keep introducing him as this former guy, you know, this retired guy, and yet here he is, he seems to know more about this conflict than anybody, and a lot of what he ends up telling us, then we find in the next few days or the next few weeks that those things actually become true. So give us a peek inside how Brian Stewart works. How do you know what you know? Well, Peter, thanks for that. I'm a bit sorry to say a lot of it depends on a lot of years. A lot of it is based upon a

long period. I have an essay I wrote at the age of 14 in 1956, where I write, I want to be a foreign correspondent when I grow up. That was after seeing the Suez invasion. And, you know, because of that, kind of from that moment on, I realized I would have to know a lot about several things, diplomacy, but also war. So pretty much since all those years, since 14 to now I'm 80, I've been reading and studying war in various ways. I should mention also that my second great interest was humanitarian works, catastrophe, aid, and stuff like that. So I've kind of balanced off in two sections where creating order out of chaos has been sort of my study. But generally, nowadays, and I'm retired, I set out by reading, I guess, eight to 10 newspapers a day, looking especially for certain foreign correspondents and war correspondents I know are really good,

and decades of coverage behind them. But that's one layer. I don't get too much off television. TV does the best it can, but it's very restricted in the field as to what it can actually cover. You know, the Ukrainians, just like the Russians, are being very careful about letting crews near the front line and actually seeing fighting. So you get a lot of stories about the mood and the damage to civilians, all very valuable.

You have to know that. But after a while, the real story of the war, you have to dig deeper. And what I tend to do is spend a lot of time going over think tanks, like King's College War Studies in London or RUSI, the Center for Strategic Studies. There's a very famous one now, the Institute for the Study of War, that just about every journalist now has to consult with. And looking for really top names in the business, like Michael Clark and Michael Kaufman. He's a remarkable analyst who's been studying the Russian military for, I think, over a decade now and doing intensive research into where

they're strong and where they're weak and the very grave weaknesses. That's why some of the think tanks were, before the invasion actually, starting to warn that the Russians were going to be in very big trouble because of poor supply lines and bad officer corps and not enough officers and really low morale. This was showing up before the invasion. So you go down a list of not just English language think tanks, but the translations of the Polish, French, Swedish ones, all the countries really in NATO have very valuable think tanks that are made up of people whose business is studying war. They've studied it through historical study, current war studies.

And then there's another layer. The ultimate layer, in a way, is the open source intelligence. And this is a phenomenon. In a way, covering the Ukraine-Russian war is much easier than covering past wars, because you've got these satellite photographs, you've got open source intelligence, remarkable intelligence pouring in from various countries, are now available to somebody who wants to track them down. So I mean, names, hard to imagine names like Oryx and Bellingkapp are some of these open source intelligence units where you can track whole Russian divisions and battalions and Ukrainian movements and see what's actually happening and get a much better sense of casualty figures and damage to materiel and the rest.

So we're really into a new era of covering wars. And it's taking us deeper and deeper and deeper towards a kind of reality that we just wouldn't have had in previous wars. It's fascinating to just listen to you talk about the various ways that, you know, you're constantly sifting through different information. I just want to ask you one quick question. And it was something you said right at the beginning, how you read 10 newspapers a day, just out of interest.

Do you read any of them in your hand anymore, or is it all online? Oh, no. We have three online. Sorry, three in the hand, and the rest is all online. But I prefer it in the hand. And I should mention, I didn't mention magazines, but we get several of those, too. Obviously, I'm not reading all of the newspapers and magazines.

I'm reading maybe theater of the newspapers and magazines. I'm not reading maybe theater sections and certain political sections, but I am going to the political, foreign affairs and war and humanitarian. I do a lot of reading of also the humanitarian studies. I mean, you get an awful lot of information from them. Okay. One of the things I should say about how we do this every Tuesday is Brian often sends me a list of things that he'd like to talk about, that he'd like to get in. And today is one of those days where there's three or four things in particular that I found interesting. So I want you to expand on these one at a time here. You talk about the stunning revelations that are coming out of various intelligence chiefs

and U.S. military chiefs about the bloodshed and how devastating it has been so far in this war with numbers well beyond anything we could have imagined, you know, not that long ago. Talk about that for a second. It is really very sobering. I mean, we're getting figures now that, as you say, we're beyond what we would have imagined thinking about a battle between Russia and Ukraine this time last year, when the warnings were coming out. We're getting estimates from, say, the military, U.S. military intelligence, Mark Milley, the general chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Avril Haines, director of national intelligence,

that over 300, maybe 200,000 all told casualties, 100,000 Russian, 100,000 Ukraine. I am afraid that's actually an understatement. But it caused a great furor when it came out and great agony in Ukraine because Ukraine's been trying to talk down its casualties and hide them. And basically, it means 100,000 Ukrainian casualties and 100,000 Russian, which I think is more. But these were misinterpreted to mean 100,000 dead. They were not talking about dead. They're talking about total casualty. That means dead and wounded. Normally in war, you figure on somewhere between three to four injured for everyone killed. But that's still very high. We know the Russian figures are almost unknowable, but extraordinarily high, perhaps up to 70,000 killed. The Ukrainian figures have been generally

put down below 10,000, but they're now having to reveal that at least 13,000, maybe 15,000 Ukrainians have been killed since the war began. That is an amazing figure, awful figure. That's over 1,000 dead per month. They're revealing that some days they've lost 200 dead a day, and in occasional days, up to 500 dead. It is a slaughter of the kind of First World War means. I suspect the Ukrainian dead are much lower than the Russians in part because their training's better, their equipment's better, and their medical services are better. I think the Russians have been found in many cases not well looking after their injured. So they probably have a much higher level of those dying as casualties. But it's a terrible figure.

And neither side shows, even at this rate, it's ready to throw in the towel or start negotiating. Both sides appear that they're ready to go on for a whole new wave of attacks and war following the winter, maybe during the winter, but generally following the winter, which means we have no idea how many will be dead by the time this war comes to an end. I should just mention quickly, that figure does not include a US estimate of 40,000 Ukrainian civilians dead. Again, the Ukrainians are saying that can't be, no, no, no, it's not that high, but they won't reveal the real figures. And I'm afraid they are much higher than they tend to give out every day. But their morale, I have to say again, their morale seems shaken, and the Kremlin shows no signs of itself being terribly shaken by the casualties,

except for the fact that it's having trouble finding enough soldiers to replace them. You know, you mentioned a moment ago the comparison with certain aspects of the First World War, and we've discussed this before over these last months aspects of the First World War, and we've discussed this before over these last months, also the Second World War, but the First World War, it seems so distant, you know, it's more than a century ago, and yet you talk about how this war has, you know, kind of revived some old historic combat arts and invented new ones at the same time, previously unimagined ones. Talk about that. Okay. First, trenches. You know, I look at some of the photographs today,

and you swear, my gosh, there's a soldier standing in a trench. He looks like he could be an Ypres or Passchendaele or the Somme. And in fact, trenches have been around. The ones today are very similar to ones that have been around for a very long time. Really, I suppose, trench war began in the American Civil War. But by the Boer War and then the First World War, that became really serious. And of course, the First World War was dominated by a trench line that ran all the way from the Swiss border right up to the Belgian coast. Just an extraordinary thing that lasted four years. Basically, it's the introduction, of course, of machine guns and heavy artillery

being up without it being dug in. It's lethal. We have machine guns firing 1,000 rounds per minute with ranges of up to one mile. We have very heavy artillery shells of 150 millimeter, having lethal ranges of 30 millimeters and coming in at a tremendous pace that soldiers who hate digging become very enthusiastic to dig once the firing starts. And trenches are showing up very much, much along the front line, minimum of three feet deep. And that's the absolute minimum. That's earth and sandbags. But as time goes on, they go deeper and deeper, become more and more sophisticated. And we've seen now the Ukrainians digging trenches that have dining rooms and sleeping

quarters and medical centers up to 15 feet below ground. They tend to be linked, as they were in the First World War, to any nearby cellars of houses or building cellars. So you get sort of concrete defenses. The Russian, and in front of trenches, you put down minefields and bands of wire, just like they did in the First World War. And you have snipers guarding the front and behind them, you have reserves and motorized, excuse me, infantry ready to counterattack any breakthrough of the line. So it's very, very similar to First World War trench warfare until there's a major breakthrough in movement. And it's an old art, and it's, you know, I'm sure many veterans have brought back to life

from the First World War would look at the Ukrainian trenches and say, pretty well done. These are well done. We approve. Talk about the new equipment. Could I just mention one thing about that? In the trench warfare, comfort becomes terribly important when you're in winter and rainy conditions. And they're miserable places, let's face it. They're awful, they're claustrophobic, and they're miserable. And a lot's going to depend on which side looks after the troops better. And Ukrainians have a clear lead here, getting better clothing, better supplies, better medical service. And warm clothing from countries like Canada becomes incredibly important. lead here, getting better clothing, better supplies, better medical service, and warm

clothing from countries like Canada becomes incredibly important. The Russians are not getting supplies, anything like that. Sorry, go ahead. You know, the one thing you didn't mention the first time I've heard anybody talk about trenches and not mention rats, which was, of course, a major problem in the First World War, that they had to live with rats. And I'm sure if they're working and living and fighting out of trenches today, they'd probably even encounter the odd rat at the same time. But the push I wanted to get into now was the modern equipment of today,

how this war has produced and is using, even perhaps from the trenches, the new technology of today. I know this is incredible. How about hotlines? I mean, you know, never in the past war would anyone imagine that what the Ukrainians did right after the invasion, they set up a hotline and based something like a name, He Willed to Live, which was basically contacting enemy soldiers in the front lines and at home before they got to Ukraine saying, shouldn't you be making plans to perhaps save your life and surrender? Come on, these are numbers to call. We can guide you to a safe place, where to surrender, how to surrender, what to carry when you do surrender. And they're getting, these hotline operators in Ukraine are getting up to

100 calls a day, not only from soldiers and new conscripts, but from their parents and friends and boy, you know, girlfriends are calling saying, you know, I want to save my son's life, my friend's life. How can I advise him how to surrender best? And they're 24 hours a day, have a hotline handling these calls as the Russians come over. And one of the selling points is, again, pretty new to war. You come over and we will give you better clothing. We'll give you hot meals. Just imagine really hot meals, hot showers. When did you last have a hot shower, really? Clean sheets on your bed. We have sports. And, you know, in not too long, you'll be in a prison camp that's quite comfortable. And then we'll exchange you for Ukrainian soldiers. And you'll go home to your

friends. You'll be going out to drink at a local pub within months, perhaps. So why don't you surrender rather than stay there as cannon fodder? And these are going out by various... You explained the other week that I'm not great on technology, but they're going out by phone calls

and these various online sites and being very, very effective. I should mention that in past wars, there was something not quite similar, but at least in a rudimentary sense, we used to drop an awful lot of leaflets, for instance, on German soldiers from above saying, come on over and surrender. And then, of course, the Germans were sending out radio broadcasts to Allied soldiers. We were playing Lily Marlene and Tokyo Rose broadcasts saying, don't be fooled and die in combat.

Come on over and surrender. But this is personalizing the surrender invite. Come on, join us here in the camp. We'll have a nice meal waiting for you. You'll sleep in clean sheets tonight. And probably within a couple of months, you'll be home with your friends and family. I mean, that's a pretty hard thing for tired, worn out, battle-weary, and scared troops to resist. The problem becomes, how do you get across to surrender safely? You know, when Russian disciplinary brigades are were looking for people surrendering

too quickly. You know, it's, you remember my dad, you met my dad more than a few times, but, you know, he was, as I've told listeners before, he was, you know, he was in Lancaster's, he, you know, he was with the Royal Air Force, the RAF, in bomber command. So he did a lot of lethal bombing work. But in the first months of the war, in that so-called phony war in 1939 and early 1940, when they'd go up in their bombers, this was before Lancasters, but before then they'd go up in their bombers, they weren't dropping bombs.

They were dropping those leaflets that you're talking about. And they must have wondered, what is this all about? You know, we're opening our bomb doors, our bomb bays, and we're dropping paper with messages, you know, somewhat like the ones you're talking about that are being done through the hotlines today. But it's interesting that in some ways it's a similar kind of thing, but clearly much more effective because there have been crossovers from both sides for that matter,

but mainly from the Russians. Mainly from the Russians, yes. And again, the Ukrainians are very tight with their information. They won't say how many, but they seem to have an endless stream of them to exchange for their own prisoners. You know, talk about that, just how tight the Ukrainians are. And they've been successful at being tight about not sharing information, whether it's on casualties, whether it's on maneuvers, whether it's on prisoners. They just don't give out a lot of information. They're very cagey.

It's a very sophisticated officer corps. They've been working on the plans for this kind of war for over eight years, nine years since the trouble on their borders. They're very secretive in the sense that they give out just enough. They always seem to be giving out enough to keep the media kind of satisfied. But they'll sort of, uh they they will for instance build up expectations of an attack in southern uh Ukraine uh and most of the media will go for that and then they'll spring a surprise attack in the north of Ukraine you know they they that very

few um crews almost no crews really close to the front line themselves. And I think they have strategic teams that are basically sitting there spending many hours talking about what's going to be our narrative today. What narrative can we keep going? And they're very much helped by the fact that morale is good in Ukraine. If morale was really awful, and as low as it is, say, the Russian forces, and in some parts of Russian society, very different stories would be coming out. But reporters are going from one Ukrainian city, town, village, farmhouse to another, saying, what's your feeling about this war? And it seems to be enormous sense of unity about keeping it going and that helps the ukrainian um officials very much

getting the narrative out but the other thing the ukraine has to face and this is a real challenge to their their information services they have to keep giving nato allies european allies and friends the sense that they have momentum on their side. Because the moment they give a sense of slowing down, certain countries, seen as weak by others, will start saying, why don't we get in negotiations? And maybe it's time to negotiate. So they have to keep showing that they're going forwards. And that means maybe launching some offenses sooner than their best military planners would want. But so far, they've done pretty well at that.

But it's a risky game. All right. I've got two more things I want to get to that were on your list, but we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Brian Stewart right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Tomorrow is Wednesday. We'll be up on their YouTube channel as well. You can get the link on my Instagram or Twitter site, and it'll take you straight to that. That would be for Smoke Mirrors and the Truth tomorrow with Bruce Anderson

or on Friday for Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce as well. All right, back to Brian Stewart, who's with us as we talk, as we have been doing every Tuesday on the situation in Ukraine and with the Russian invasion. Now, as I said, two more things I want to get at, Brian. First of all is this latest bit of information that seems to have come out in the last 24, 48 hours, which indicates that there have been strikes deep inside Russia. For the most part, this conflict has been contained to inside Ukraine.

There have been a few things happen on Russian territory, but not much. The thing that's got people quite intrigued on this is that these were strikes deep inside Russia. It's unclear who's responsible for them, but I think we can probably take an educated guess at how this may have happened. What would be yours? A week ago, we started seeing stories coming out about bomb shelters being built or readied and places like Moscow and other Russian cities. So I think the Russians have been expecting some kind of serious retaliation by Ukraine for all the attacks it's doing on Ukrainian territory. But basically, we had two strikes on two air bases, one near Ryazan and one, the Engels air base near Saratov. These are hundreds of kilometers inside Russian territory. Both were centers of Russian strategic

bombers, the TU-95 and the TU-160. And these have been the bombers that have been carrying cruise missiles up to close to the border of Ukraine, then firing them off, then returning back so they don't face fire themselves. So there's no question that the Ukrainians here mounted an operation to go after these strategic bombers. That's become a prime target now. They tend to be grouped at only a very few bases in Russia, probably about four or five. They're big ones. They were built for the Cold War. They were built for firing and dropping nuclear missiles and nuclear weapons. So they're the big ones. They're very expensive, very sophisticated. You damage one and their days of flying are finished. So somehow the Ukrainians are going after them.

The big question for how many hours afterwards is how are they doing this? Probably drones. Drones can be very small, can carry a big package now. We know the Ukrainians have underground resistance movements inside Russia going after strategic targets. And this seems to be either mainly drone attacks, but one of them may have been a truck bomb of some kind, though nobody can figure out how they would have done this. It's a bit like the blowing up of the bridge to Crimea. But it does signal a real warning to Russia. I think the Ukrainians are sending this message to Russia and to the world that says, you can go on pounding our cities and our electrical grid.

You can be killing our civilians. You can do all the destruction and put 500 communities in Ukraine out of power. But we're warning you, we have ways to head deep inside Russia. And if the Americans won't give us weapons to fire inside Russia, which is what the American line is, we still can find ways if we need to, to go after their bases, their electrical grid, maybe their fuel lines, their railway links if we have to. We can even go after Moscow if we need to. They've had one attack already in Moscow. So I think part of this is an attack to be effective in knocking out

the strategic bombers. Maybe more important is a warning to the Kremlin that you keep this up in terms of attacks on us. We'll reach a point where we can't bear it anymore, and we're going to be coming after targets deep inside Russia. And I think the rest of the world is getting that message, oh, this would really jack the war up even higher. We better start putting even more pressure if we can on Putin to end this thing while we can before it escalates into a whole new, very risky area risky and scary okay here's the last last question for this week um this week the financial experts trying to tally up the cost of repairing what's been an incredibly damaging situation to the infrastructure around Ukraine. Everything from the power grid to apartment blocks, to theaters, to you name it.

There's been an enormous amount of damage done. And, you know, some of the figures that we're looking at in terms of what this could cost are enormous. Talk about that. Yeah. You know, Peter, you and I have seen a lot of damaged cities and countries in the past, know how hard it is to rebuild at times. Ukraine is exceptional. Last April, they were estimating up to $350 billion to repair and renovate the city after the damage. Now they're touching on $1 trillion. And that's, of course, long before the war ends. We've seen the work that's going to have to go into building back

whole lines of power and grids and buildings and cities and industries that went under, businesses that couldn't keep going, hospitals damaged. 700 medical centers are thought to have been damaged at least in this war. All will have to be repaired. So that's the other part of this war we have to continually keep referring back to, apart from the fighting, is the humanitarian part. It is a nightmare what has happened. A U.S. intelligence expert has said the attacks on the Ukrainian economy have been, quote, devastating.

They don't throw that word around that much when it comes to an ally. Devastating. So it's going to take Ukraine many years after this to rebuild when the war is over. And the friends of Ukraine, the allies of NATO and the EU and around the world are going to really have to pitch in because that's way beyond Ukraine's ability to fork out sums like that.

And one thing Ukraine's very good at is reminding the world of its responsibility. You guys have a moral responsibility, and we're not going to let you off the hook. We fought here for freedom and safety and security in Europe, partially for your sakes as well as our own, and you're going to help us out, aren't you, when this war is over to rebuild? I hope we do. Well, you know, we'll see the Americans are always at the front of the line in terms of things like this. You know, we say what we want about the Americans. And, you know, often we're right in leveling the criticism we do. But on this issue, on rebuilding, they're always at the

head of the line. It'll be another Marshall Plan. That's what it's going to take. And Biden has kind of suggested that we'll be there at the end to help rebuild, but that was months ago, and the rebuild then was considerably less than it's going to be now. It's devastatingly huge. But as you say, we'll see how the world comes together

on that first of all you gotta end the war um all right that's it for this week brian as always a fascinating conversation and you know as we always do we learn so much because of your research which you've shared with us today there'll be people scrambling to try and find out all these different areas uh so they can do some of their own research as well. But we count on you, and we will count on you again next Tuesday. So thanks, Brian. Thank you, Peter. Brian Stewart with us, as he always is on Tuesdays,

or at least so far this year. 2022 has been a remarkable year on a lot of fronts the story in Ukraine is a story that is carries much more weight than just inside that country it is a story that has been watched closely from around the world it has all kinds of implications and we're glad I mean we're proud of the fact that we've managed to convince Brian to be with us every week, but we're proud of the fact that he's been, in many ways, leading the commentary on the story in Ukraine with the information that he digs up and he researches and he shares with us. So, thank you to Brian.

Okay, got a couple of minutes left before we wrap this one up for this day. St. Helena, or St. Helena, depending on which way you choose to pronounce it. What do you know about that island? Sure, you know it's remote somewhere, right? You know probably two things about it. One, it's remote. It's a British overseas territory. Okay, Britain controls it.

It's volcanic. It's a tropical island. It's in the South Atlantic. And it's kind of, well, it's situated, you know, obviously between South America and Africa. And if you want to know the exact details of, you know, of where it is situated, look at a map. It's way down there, and it's a long way from both continents. It's so remote that flights into St. Helena occur every fortnight.

So it's not like there's hourly flights to St. Helena, or daily even. They're once a fortnight, and you've got to get to Johannesburg first of all, and from Joburg you fly into St. Helena. What's the reason that name sounds familiar from your history books? That's right. That's where Napoleon faced his second exile after his loss at the Battle of Waterloo. The British exiled him to their territory, St. Helena. And that's where he spent his dying days.

He died there in 1821 at the age of 51. Napoleon was just 51 when he died. You want to know the exact mileage? Somebody's raising their hand, say, Peter, tell us exactly where it is. It's 1950 kilometers west of the coast of southwestern Africa and 4,000 kilometers, or 2,500 miles, east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. That's remote.

No doubt about that. So it's known for Napoleon. It's known as this remote location. But it's also known as home for the world's oldest tortoise. And we have an update on this tortoise. It's named Jonathan. Jonathan, it seems, was born in the Seychelles and then was moved to St. Helena.

When was he moved? He was moved in the late 1800s. Here's what we know about Jonathan. This is from a piece we saw on Microsoft News. The world's oldest tortoise has lived through two world wars, witnessed the rise and fall of the British Empire and just turned 190 years old. It looks pretty lively. The pictures of it, of Jonathan, I mean

he looks like a pretty happy tortoise. He was hatched in the Georgian era and is the oldest known living land animal on earth and the oldest Cholonian ever recorded. I'm assuming a Cholonian is a tortoise. Am I right? I know I'll hear from any number of people if I'm wrong. Born in the early 1800s, Jonathan has lived on St. Helena, an island situated in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, since 1882.

Jonathan's age is an estimation, but shell measurements documented from a photograph taken shortly after Jonathan's arrival in St. Helena show he was fully mature and at least 50 years old when he arrived from Seychelles in 1882 although it's likely that he's even older than that the fellow by the name of Joe Hollins. He began caring for Jonathan when he worked at the St. Helena's Vet, and although now retired, he still looks after the tortoise. There's some great pictures of him in this article on MSN, okay, with Jonathan.

And I tell you, Jonathan doesn't, looks pretty good for 190. Joe Holland says, when you think if he was hatched in 1832, the Georgian era, my goodness, the changes in the world. I'll say. And he's just been here all this time, enjoying himself. He kind of hangs out with three other tortoises, young'uns. There are probably only about a hundred. He lives in the grounds of the plantation house

alongside three much younger tortoises called David, Emma, and Fred. Yeah, there you go, right? A little story that intersects so many different parts of history. Well, here's the best part. Well, it's not necessarily the best part. But if you're saying to yourself, how did they come up with the name St. Helena? Who's that named after?

St. Helena is the patron saint of difficult marriages, divorced people, converts, and archaeologists. I don't know how archaeologists got in that mix with the difficult marriages and the divorced people, but there they are. So there you go. Now you know. Who's the patron saint of difficult marriages?

It's St. Helena. Okay, I'm not going to say anything more that's it for this day tomorrow Wednesday smoke mirrors and the truth Bruce Anderson Thursday right in for your turn

the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com already got some great letters in the last couple of days so we're heading towards another one another thursday of your turn which also includes the random ranter wait till you hear the letter i got on the random ranter i love it and in friday

good talk with chantelle a bear and bruce anderson that's it for this day thanks so much for listening talk to you again in 24 hours.