The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Ukraine One Year Later

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

As we approach one year since Russia invaded Ukraine, Brian Stewart looks at nine commonly asked questions about the war and gives his thoughts on the answers.  Also, a bit of history on a time when balloons were used as a weapon of war. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. One year, that's what next week will mark in terms of the war in Ukraine. Russia invaded almost a year ago now. Today, Brian Stewart with his special points about that year. and hello there welcome to tuesday on the bridge before we uh start on ukraine here's my balloon story for today we love this balloon story even though most of them weren't balloons, right? We all know that now. First one certainly was.

But I got an interesting letter. I know it's not Thursday, and I know it's not supposed to read letters till Thursday, but I wanted to read this one. Came from Sean Aiken. He's in Whitby, Ontario. Sean wanted me to ask Brian about his thoughts on spy balloons. Well, I'd love to ask him,

but Brian's out of the country. He's taking a bit of a break. So he's out of the country, but we recorded his portion of today's program over the weekend so unfortunately sean's letter came late but i'll make sure if there's still a going story when he gets back we'll ask him then however sean went on he says i'm a geography teacher retired now and always use the example of world War II Japanese unmanned bomb balloons in my discussion of the atmospheric jet stream with my high school students.

Some were found in the British Columbia Mountains, that's true, and a few Americans died as a result of the bomb balloons, and that was in Oregon, and that's correct. The Japanese basically used the jet stream to send these balloons laden with bombs across the Pacific Ocean, looking to hit the northern United States and along the west coast, start forest fires, do whatever they could. And this was shortly after the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, the American famous raid that caused some havoc on the Japanese side. So in retaliation they came up with this idea of bomb balloons.

That Oregon thing was really a terrible story. The bomb balloon landed. It didn't blow up when it landed, but a bunch of kids ended up finding it in the forest or wherever it was. And when they were fiddling around with it, it exploded. And I think about five or six of the kids were killed. It was a terrible story. However, you know, for Sean, remembering that from his school days, learning that story,

and of the events of the last, you know, 10 days or so, triggered that memory and reminded us all of that story. Well, another letter came in this week as well, but I'm not saving for Thursday because it works perfectly for today. And this had nothing to do with balloons. That's my balloon story for today, Sean's angle. This one came from Taryn Beck, and she's in the Beaches neighborhood of Toronto. And Taryn writes, I'm just guessing Taryn is a female name. And listen, if it's not, I'm sorry if I got that wrong but I'm guessing it's it's a female

name anyway um Taryn writes I've been a listener for your podcast since the start the show is my company while I make dinner now that my daughter is away at university I'm writing today about your use of the word anniversary to describe the start of the war in Ukraine last year. For me, the word anniversary denotes a celebration of some kind. The invasion of Ukraine was and is anything but a happy occasion. I believe that reframing the upcoming show as a retrospective would be more respectful of the gravity of the war and the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Listen, Taryn, I respect what you're saying. I'm not sure I entirely agree with it, but it's made me think,

and I've kept thinking about it ever since your letter arrived. I can't remember. I think it was late last week, Thursday or Friday of last week. And I kept thinking, you know, maybe there's a point there. Now, I don't think it's a retrospective. A retrospective kind of implies that it's over, right? The anniversary term is used on a lot of things, you know, 50th anniversary of D-Day, you know, 60th anniversary of V-E-Day.

There's lots of different, you know, 20th anniversary of 9-11. But maybe it's worth thinking about the use of that word in terms of these kind of stories. So I've thought about it, and I'm going to try and use this conversation with Brian to stay away from the word anniversary. And the idea behind this discussion with Brian was to, knowing he was going to be away this week, was to stay away from the things that perhaps have happened on this day, earlier today, and instead focus on the past year and some of the important things

that have happened over the past year and some of the important things that have happened over the past year and the significance of them. Some of them are kind of obvious questions, and even some of the answers are kind of obvious. But they're all part of that looking at the year gone by. So a reminder, because it's been a while since I've reminded you, especially for new listeners, Brian is not only a great friend of mine for the last 50 years, he's one of the great foreign correspondents that I've ever met.

We both worked at the CBC. Brian also worked at NBC, but has enormous respect from journalists around the world, from the BBC, from various European networks, from all the American networks. Brian is a well-known figure, a respected figure, and somebody whose commentaries on the past year on Ukraine have been listened to from around the world, and I know that because I hear from people. So let's get to it. Let's get to Brian in this sense of let's look back at the year gone by on this story.

So here we go. Here he is. Here's the man, my friend, your friend, Brian Stewart. So I've got quite a list here of potential questions, or not potential, real questions, for the way we're going to mark this one year. Let's start off with, in your view, what was the biggest surprise of the war so far?

Well, there were a lot of them, but I think that by clearly the biggest surprise that absolutely stunned military experts all around the world was Russia's abject failure of an invasion plan. The fact that they invaded across too broad a front, too many prongs over five. They didn't seem to have the supply worked out.

They didn't seem to have any kind of logistical staying power in place. They were using tanks sloppily. It's as if they sort of threw everything together on a bargain basement weekend and said, go for an invasion. And I've managed to find, looking back before the invasion, one military expert, and he was just a supply expert, that's all, supply, who said that he didn't think Russia could actually invade Lithuania.

Its rail system and its supply was so poor. So I think that was a big surprise. A lot of people expected other things to happen, but number one, I'd challenge anyone to come up with a bigger surprise than do you think Russia's going to invade Ukraine and really make a military fool of itself in front of the entire world. Why do you think so many people miscalculated this right out of the gate? Well, because the Russians are very good at holding parades in Moscow, Red Square, and massive exercises across Belarus and their western frontiers and the rest of it.

They can get together the tanks by the hundreds, and they're very good at mobilizing for the camera, and then stuff like that. And they look formidable, and they are on paper extremely formidable. It's just that they appear to have not grown at all over the last couple decades when other militaries have in terms of command and control and the officer corps. And I think really, it'd be a brave person to have looked at Russia before the invasion of last year, almost a year now, and to have predicted, you know, Peter, I think this is going to be a fiasco. Russia will invade, but you mark my words, within five or six days, it'll be seen by the whole world as a failed invasion and a fiasco. Who would have ever predicted that?

It just wasn't in the nature of looking at Russia, adding up all its pluses and minuses and pluses, and coming to so dire a prediction, which is why it leaves us still almost 12 solid months later, shaking our heads in wonder. Question number two, the biggest lesson of the war. I think we've discussed this, but it's certainly, it's the fact that there's no sanctuary now on modern battlefields because of the overhead satellites, drones, cyber intelligence, kind of electronic spy systems everywhere open source intelligence there really is no place for a commander-in-chief to mobilize his forces into

big punches big masses of thousands of armored vehicles tanks tanks and armored vehicles, artillery, and the rest of it, without every inch of the way being mapped by not only your opponents, but all the military academies around the world that pay for the satellite service now. So Russia is planning a big offensive. Yes, indeed. And it will have an offensive, but it won't be the kind of surprise over the gate offensive that we would have seen in previous years. And let us, we're very, very surprised. And that sort of has taken from modern warfare, a kind of a punch factor, which it's going to be hard for militaries to know how much to replace it with. I mean, if both sides know exactly what the other's doing at every minute of the day, night and day, it's going to make fighting to

a conclusion terribly difficult, as opposed to just fighting on in stalemate after stalemate, which is kind of where they are right now, waiting for the big moment when one of them will have an offense that will be decisive. So do we mark like 2022, 23 as sort of a turning point in the way modern day warfare unfolds? I think we do. Assuming we're talking about warfare between two advanced industrialized countries and not the United States and Vietnam or the United States and Iraq or that kind allies coming in, I think everything has to go through a different blender now and come out. Well, you know, how does China invade, 1944, the Allies managed to land 180,000 men in one day on the beaches of northern France. I mean, you couldn't do that today. They would be spotted in their trucks on the way to Portsmouth and Southampton and all the ports they sailed from. You couldn't do that today.

Now, if you have one side going against the other, the other side will be forewarned. And well, you know, it's just, someone's going to think of something, what to do about it. But right now, they're still debating what to do about it. Question number three, and this one seems like a slam dunk. This is easy. Like everybody listening knows what the answer is going to be to this, but I still want to hear you paint us the picture of the most impressive human figure of the war. Well, I think it's Zelensky by a country mile. I mean, he's just out in front, one of the most startling figures of our time. And again, surprise, surprise, who would have predicted it two or three years ago?

You know, this former comedian, he runs on a reform ticket in Ukraine. He gets elected. He's got corruption all over the place. He's trying to put together an army, and he turns out to be the modern-day equivalent almost of Churchill. You know, I don't say that in a kind of ludicrous way. I mean, in his scale, he's been absolutely remarkable. You have to wonder when the guy sleeps.

I mean, he gives an address to the nation every single night. I mean, not once a year, not once. He doesn't go into parliament once every week for question period. He gives an address to the nation every single night. Half of those nights, there's bombardments overhead, and he keeps going with enormous energy, and so far has really not put much of a foot in wrong in terms of bringing the sympathetic world on side. And you know, you say Churchill, well, you

can't compare to Churchill. I agree with that. Churchill's an extraordinary figure of all times. But remember, Churchill, in the Second World War, had giants to contend with. Roosevelt, Stalin, de Gaulle, Chiang Kai-shek in China. Zelensky just stands right out there by himself. You know, there's no Mandela around anymore. There's no Walensky. There's major figures have gone.

We don't have a towering pope quite like John Paul II. So it's Walensky is sort of the one single figure, sort of in the European context, at least, that has this greatness aura around him. And it's been a remarkable act, not act, a remarkable performance by somebody who doesn't seem to have ever lost his nerve, doesn't seem to, you know, be the kind of prone to self-doubt, can speak before Congress, the British Parliament, the European Union.

It's all as if he was, you know, going and giving a friendly chat to a school town hall or something. And he's a guy, too, who, let's remember from the first 10 days of the war, the Russians were trying to kill him. They had the commando units

heading for Kiev to find him and his guys around him and to either capture or kill him, which is why the Americans said, you know, we'll offer you a, we'll fly you out of the country if you want. And he famously said, I'm not looking for a ride, I'm looking for weapons, which was naughty of him because the Americans gave him that in private. It was a secret thing they mentioned to him.

And of course he broadcast it to the world, but he has that showman's ability. He certainly does. And, you know, it is, you're quite right. I mean, who would have thought it? I mean, this was a guy. I mean, he was a comedian slash actor. And I guess you could say that part of the aura around him, especially in the opening days and and weeks was a kind of acting

ability he was out there he knew how to play the cameras he knew how to dress the part still does uh separates him from everybody else he hasn't turned up in a suit anywhere no matter where where he's been in the various parliaments of the world. But someday when this is over, somebody's going to write a book on how this guy drew the kind of powers and the mystique that was surrounding him and how he was able to put it all together into such a dramatic figure. Because you're right, nobody will match Churchill, him and how he was able to put it all together into such a dramatic figure because um you know you're right i mean nobody will match churchill but he there's something churchillian about this

guy and the way he uh the way he's conducting himself in the year so far i mean who's no who knows what's going to happen um okay moving on i'd love to know just on him i would love to know what his inner struggles are because we knew what Churchill had his black dog, his depressions. He was very prone to severe depression. And given the stress he was under, one can hardly wonder why. But Zelensky's been under more unrelenting pressure in 300-whatever days it is now than almost any figure I can think of in history, in modern history. And does he have depressions? Does he ever have fears about his ability to carry things off?

Or is he completely calm about everything? Well, I guess we're going to have to wait for that book and see, because you're right. I mean, there's a lot about him we don't know. And I think we'll all be fascinated to hear about it when that time comes. All right, question number four. Most underestimated weapon of the war? Oh, I think the drone is.

I think I really, everyone knew drones were getting much better. And they were able to do miraculous things. But I don't think anyone quite understood how ubiquitous they were on battlefields now and how tiny they can get and how they can skim over the battlefield, carrying one grenade in their claw and then drop it into an enemy trench and all these miraculous things. And you can get sort of teenagers with a bit of a hobby skill in the front lines, you know, driving drones around and knocking whole tanks out and the rest of it. And I mean, it's again, foreign commanders, Russian commanders have had to figure out

where they can possibly hide that's deep enough so they won't get blown up by drones that keep coming over or precision weapons of other kinds. So yes, I think the drone has really proven itself on the battlefield to a degree that nothing else quite has in this war yet. And the advancement of drones is something quite spectacular. I mentioned this before, but I can remember the first time I went to Afghanistan during the war there, it was 03 or 04, and Canada had just got into the drone business,

if you will. But those drones, unmanned obviously, controlled to some degree from the ground. They would take off. They had wooden propellers at the back of the drone that launched them into the air and when they came in to land the propeller was still on and every time it landed it it would rip the the propeller apart and therefore they have to put a new one on each time so i've got they gave me one as a kind of a made presentation to me of one when I was there.

I still have it. I have it in my office in Toronto. But you look at it now, compare with the kind of drones that exist in today's world. I mean, they basically make manned aircraft damn near obsolete. I mean, you start to wonder, like, well, why would you risk a pilot in any of these kind of situations? Indeed. Anyway.

And, you know, they now have sea drones, which I hadn't much considered before now, that can sneak into harbors and blow up your enemy cruisers, you know, like you get one coming into New York Harbor one day or something like that. It's just everywhere you look now, there's a new kind of potential threat that military has to get its mind around and security has to get its mind around. Most overestimated weapon of the war. I think, and I think I'm going on a bit of a limb here, but I would say Russian cyber warfare, cyber attacks. For a decade or more, the West was really very worried about, fretting about hybrid warfare from Russia. with NATO. It would have ways of using hacking and cyber attacks to bring down communications,

make the West go completely dark, just basically mess up everything. And there was a real fear amongst the Western military that Russia would use its hybrid warfare against Ukraine and really completely muddle the place and win by just bringing everything down, including their entire electrical system and what have you. And they haven't been able to do that. The only way they've been able to bring it down is to send rockets over and drones again over. But Russian cyber warfare, hybrid warfare, which was so greatly feared, is now much less feared. And people think they oversold that in days gone by or exaggerated the Russian ability in that area. Well, one of the reasons they feared it so much was that they, in fact, had used it only once

before, but against Kiev a couple of years ago, like out of nowhere, they knocked out basically the power grid for Kiev and held it off for, you know, some time during one particular evening just to show that they could do it. And the fact they'd never been able to do it during the war, I guess tells you that the Ukrainians and others, I suppose, who helped the Ukrainians, had figured out a way to stop that from happening, from preventing it from happening. Right. The Russians would have been much wiser to not use it at all until you actually used it in a war. But that's exactly it. The Ukrainians, who were very advanced themselves in this area,

I mean, it's not as if they're amateurs, you know, learning computers and the rest of it. But no, the Ukrainians learned how to combat hybrid warfare. And they have hybrid warfare of their own now, making strikes inside Russia. So it's much more of an even contest than just one-sided the way it was feared to be. Okay, we're going to move on to question number six, but we're not going to do that until we take a quick break. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. It's our Tuesday episode. Brian Stewart is with us. And we're in a way becoming one of the first of the programs you'll be listening to over the next few weeks on a variety of different platforms, podcasts, television, radio, that is marking one year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and looking at a number of things that are associated with that war.

So, Brian, let's get back to, I guess we're calling it our top nine questions about one year of the war in Ukraine. Here's question number six. The biggest single failure. I think the biggest single failure was the Russians' failure in the first seven to ten days to take Kiev, capture Zelens lenski and wipe out his government they only clearly bet the bank on this single attack into kiev they were quite convinced they could do in about 48 hours or a couple more days beyond that and that would take out the brain of the Ukrainian nation and it would collapse. And it was completely garbled up plan where they couldn't take the airstrip they needed to take.

They found out the Ukrainians were fighting with a ferocity they didn't anticipate. They found out all their supplies were badly packaged and in wrong order. And if they had taken Kiev and if they had managed to send in their top-notch commander units, and they got some very good ones, and they had captured him or killed him and his immediate government, who knows how this war may have turned out. I mean, it's possible, and I would bet on it, that the Ukrainians would have still fought on ferociously under new leadership. It's a big country, size of France, a little bigger than France. So there'd be a lot of capturing Russia would have to do. But still, I think that was the

number one failure. When they failed to get Kiev, and they had to retreat from it, they knew where they were into a long war. They didn't know quite yet how long a war, but now they're finding out. And it is not a pleasant prospect. Question number seven, the opposite of question number six. Seven is, what was the biggest success? I think the biggest success, this may be cheating a bit, but it was Ukraine's steady eight-year-long reform of its military from 10, eight years ago. It basically realized that Russia was going to keep up attempts to grab its land. Crimea wanted

more. And Ukraine decided we're going to have to fight one day, and it's going to have to be a very serious fight, and we're going to have to have good officers, good young officers. We're going to have to have, you know, militia that come right in to fight day one, just like the Home Guard in a country when war breaks out. And they had worked on this, you know, for a long time. They had commanded endless exercise, and they had worked on this, you know, for a long time. They had commended endless exercise, and they brought in Western training,

Canadians, British, Americans, I think Norwegians as well. And this was decisive because, you know, Canada alone trained 33,000, which means every one of those 33,000 can train others. And you can have, in a very short space of time then, a real new military coming to the fore. So Ukraine more or less reinvented its entire military in that span of time. And when the action came, when it rang, when we were going into invasion and war, they were ready.

And that's quite remarkable. You know, it's really important that you point out the fact that other countries as well, but that Canada was really involved with Ukraine long before the Russians moved in last February, that in that training process and the thousands of Ukrainian troops that Canada was involved in training, a good part, as you suggest, of the reimagining of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was as a result of some of the things that Canada was helping to do through that whole process.

Not Canada alone, but definitely Canada involved in it. Very much, and it's very much appreciated for that. I mean, the knock on the Russians right now is they're poorly trained. They've had a very poor training system, except for some elite units, and the Ukrainians have been extremely well trained, not only by their own people, but by these foreigners like the Canadians. All right, this is a strangely worded question, but let me take a running at it anyway. The least expected surprise showing of all.

Okay. This, I think, really, really surprised me and surprised a lot of others. And that was the way in which the West has rallied to the cause of Ukraine behind the Americans. If you had told a lot of people two years ago, what will happen if Russia invades Ukraine, how firm do you think NATO will be? How firm do you think the European Union will be? With Brexit underway and all that kind of stuff,

they would have said, oh, they'll do the usual shuffle and find out reasons why not to do anything. And there'll be that kind of fall off. In fact, the West has been quite remarkable holding together. It hasn't lost its nerve. It hasn't let financial economic pressures from Russia and fuel and the rest of it really wear it down and make it lose focus and sight of the objective here. And I'm surprised. that Europe and North America had a better understanding than was thought at the time about when you really, when the issue is on the line in terms of freedom and the future of Europe, then there's no ducking the action at that time. You really have to come forth.

Well, you're right, because they, right, because twice before in the last decade, the rest of the world, mainly the West, had stood by and done nothing when Russia moved in on other independent countries. Right. And, you know, Crimea being the last one before this. And the West took a beating for that, and the Americans took a beating for that and the Americans took a beating for that. You talk a good game, but where were you when they needed help?

So they weren't going to let it happen again a third time. You know, and this is, you know, the pity of all this is that you have to ask yourself the what if of history. What if going back to the Crimea in 2014, the world, not just the West, but the world, had simply said, Russia, that's not on. Sorry, you're not, you can't take that. We have, since 1945, made it an absolute international law to be followed that you don't invade another country and seize it because you think that territory should belong to you or by historical rights

it belongs to you. That can't really be done. Had they done that in 2014, maybe we would not have had this war. Maybe 300,000 and more lives would not have been lost in this wretched war that has done so much, so much awful, awful harm to everybody. So sometimes the firm line, the people worry, oh, it could escalate things, you know, don't want to get Moscow too worried, too upset.

Sometimes a firm line of that, as it did really during the Cold War, can keep peace when weakness can't keep peace that well here's question number nine final question for this uh special program the easiest action to call out for but the hardest one to pull off i think the easiest action to call out for is let's have negotiated peace now let's let's start negotiating the peace now it's it's it's quite easy to say that i mean because part of our all our instincts is let's get this war over with and get on with the future and get a you know get that this done with and sacrifice and worry and the rest of it done with but it well it's easy to say we need to have negotiations

and the war the hardest thing is to come up with areas in which they would actually negotiate. What can you actually say, what do you think you can get Putin to withdraw from, to give up what he's already seized by a daring act of action in his mind, which belongs to Mother Russia and will always be part of Russia. What do you think he'll give up in negotiations? What can you expect the Ukrainians to give up of their homeland since 15 to 17 percent of it now has been grabbed by somebody else? I mean, how would we feel, Canadians, if somebody was to grab 17% of Canada and say, sorry, we think it belongs with us rather than you. You know, I mean, no laughing aside, all laughing aside here, this is hard. I mean,

yes, we want negotiations, but we're not going to see them until two sides are willing to talk. And two sides right now aren't really even close to willing to talk until it's been more has been proven on the battlefield you know your question um what would canada do it's a good well it's a good question because quite frankly that's what's happening in the arctic you know a bunch of countries are carving up the Arctic, and we're trying to stand there and say that in our particular area, this is sovereign territory to us. And not all countries agree on that, especially when they're dealing with the underwater locations.

So it's an interesting question, but the way you put it in terms of this one is the way we're looking at it right now. Listen, Brian, we never thought when we started this that we'd still be talking about it one year in. And I think that's probably why none of us are prepared to say how much longer we're going to be talking about it, because it's just too hard to tell. There's no evidence whatsoever of an early end to this. I'm afraid there's not. And one would love to be able to say, yeah, I think it'll be over by April. There's just no strong evidence there that negotiations at this stage are possible or likely.

All right, we'll leave it at that for this week. Brian will be back as we enter the second year of the Ukraine war. Thanks, Brian. Brian Stewart with us, as he has been for most of the last year. Now, I know, I know, I know what you're going to say. How could Brian Stewart get the date wrong for D-Day? It was a slip of the tongue, really. Come on. Brian and I have walked those beaches at Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer and other places along the Normandy coast more than a few times at a variety of different anniversaries,

as they call them, for D-Day. He knows full well it's June 6th, not December 6th, as he said. He'll be horrified when he listens back to that and he hears he said December 6th. He'll be pleading with me, why didn't you edit that out? Well, you know, we needed a one-up on Brian. Anyway, it was great to hear his thoughts on what this past year has been like on certain particular aspects. We've got time for a couple of end bits. I'm surprised, well, I'm not surprised, but I appreciate the number of you who write in and say,

I love the end bits, love the end bits, always gives us something extra to talk about at the dinner table. Well, here's one. I want you to think of the answer before I give it. A research company in Britain, this is according to the Daily Mail, a research company in Britain has interviewed 2,000 adults in the United Kingdom, and what they are looking for, or what they have been looking for, is the exact time of day that is most stressful to most people.

So why don't you quickly take a pen and paper and write down what time you think it is. All right, this is actually right to the minute, is the answer. I'll tell you a little bit about this study. Not surprisingly, the research was commissioned by the UK-based company Rescue Remedy, which sells, wait for it, tablets, creams, and liquids that claim to help ease stress.

Not surprising, right? So the most stressful time of the day. See whether you can get within a half an hour. Ready for the answer? You've all written down your potential answer, you have it on the tip of your tongue. The answers of 2,000 adults in the UK were averaged out and results suggested that the most stressful time of the day was 7.23 a.m. Apparently, commuting to work and getting children to school is the most stressful time of day, according to that poll. They also ranked the top 50 causes of stress. Now, I'm not going to read all 50.

I'll maybe read five. But some of them make sense. A lot of them make no sense at all. But the number one cause of stress, stuck in traffic. And that one I can see is nothing more frustrating than being stuck in traffic. And that one I can see is nothing more frustrating than being stuck in traffic, especially in downtown Toronto, which is just crazy because of all the construction.

And what follows stuck in traffic is kind of road rage. That's stressful. No kidding. The number four answer was waking up late. It's kind of coupled with number 10, which is being late for work. I get that. You know, I've only woke up late and as a result, late for work once in my life. If you read my book, my last book, off the record, you'll see the story.

In Churchill, Manitoba, I slept in when I just started in the radio business. And I was the early morning, Saturday morning radio host, where you had to be there for 6 o'clock to actually, the station hadn't been on all night. You had to switch the station on and start a record program well i didn't get there till about 20 to 7 so that being like dead air for 40 minutes i got there and i thought what am i going to do i'm the only person in the station right it's a tiny little station so i kind of started a record like halfway. I just let it drift onto the air as if everything was normal.

And I just started talking at the end of the piece of music as if nothing had happened. And as it turned out, I never heard boo from anybody. So clearly nobody was listening. Or if they were, they liked the silence just as much as the music I picked. But here's the last one that I'm going to tell you about. Now, as I said, a lot of things in this list make no sense at all. This is high on the list of the ones that make no sense at all.

Because I don't think I've ever thought about this, ever. It certainly hasn't caused me any stress. And it's the number 12 on the list. Being pooed on by a bird. Go figure. I guess when you're walking outside, there are birds up there, but that's never happened to me.

Final in bit for today, this also comes from the other side of the pond. It's on the BBC website. They're totally, well, we all are freaked by the high cost of gasoline and energy and especially so in the uk hydro bills in the uk are like out of sight so much so that the government has actually given people money back on their electric bills so this is a new thing to help you with heat in your house. Listen to this.

They're testing out electric infrared wallpaper. So forget about radiators. No more rads in your house. You got wallpaper with these little electronic strips behind them that create heat. Thin metallic sheets are hidden behind the plaster walls which are connected to the mains electricity of his house. This guy's got the example here in this article on the BBC.

The sheets emit heat by infrared waves. I don't know. Something doesn't sound right about that. Her wallpaper's got electric stuff in it. I don't know. Well, you know, those Brits, funny people. Hey, I'm a Brit. I was born in Britain. I've still got a British passport. I've got a Canadian one, funny people. Hey, I'm a Brit. I was born in Britain.

I still got a British passport. I've got a Canadian one, of course. I've also got a British one. It helps. I have two passports sometimes when you're, especially a journalist traveling in different parts of the world. You don't always want the Border Patrol to know where else you've been. So there you go.

Two end bits. Certain things that you can seem really smart at at the dinner table tonight. That's it for this day. Tomorrow is Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, it's your turn on the Random Ranter. Friday, Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson.

I'm off to Calgary tomorrow. I'll be here each day this week, though. I'm not going to miss any of the shows. But I'm off to Calgary tomorrow, and I've got a speech with, I don't know, 1,500, 2,000 teachers in Calgary on Thursday. So I'm looking forward to that. Always love to talk to teachers. Big fan of teachers.

Makes up for how poorly I treated my own teachers when I was in school. Nevertheless, that's it for this day. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.