The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Where Did That Microchip Conspiracy Theory Come From?

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Potpourri Thursday brings five pretty interesting stories from microchips, to why we hate micromanaging and why Covid may end it, to the new tattoo craze.   Enjoy.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Thursday, that means potpourri Thursday. Coming right up. A can of pet food, where every ingredient matters. Some companies like to brag about their first ingredient, but the A Can of Pet Food team is proud of their entire bag. That's because every recipe has been thoughtfully sourced

and carefully crafted with the highest quality ingredients, starting with quality animal ingredients, balanced with whole fruits and vegetables. A canana pet foods are rich in the protein and nutrients your dog or cat needs to feel and look their best. Available in grain-free, healthy grains, and singles for sensitive dogs. Acana, go beyond the first ingredient. Yes, hello there. Peter Mansbridge here. Potpourri Thursday. I love Thursdays because it gives us an opportunity to catch up on a few things, give you a few stories that perhaps we hadn't been thinking of or we hadn't heard of in the last little while. It's that one day in the week where the pile on my

desk of potentially interesting stories grows during the week. On Thursday, I get a chance to share them, talk about them a little bit. Let me tell you first, because this relates to the first story I'm going to tell you. As some of you know, I do a couple of documentaries a year for the CBC, one-hour documentaries. Last year, we weren't able to travel in different parts of the world, and therefore those documentaries did not happen. But the first one this year is coming up on September 10th. So that is the night before the 20th anniversary, 20 years already since 9-11. And this documentary that's going to run on September 10th,

I'm not going to tell you anything about it yet, other than the fact that it obviously relates to 9-11, and it deals with an issue that has had very little discussion. And so we will be telling that story. Now, it once again involves limited travel, but it hasn't limited the number of interviews. We've done a lot of interviews for this story, and we've had to do them in a socially distanced way. But nevertheless, they're gripping and quite interesting. Now, where did I do a lot of these interviews? Well, I did them at the

CBC in Toronto. We used that as home base for me, and the people we were interviewing were in different parts of the world. Now, that meant me going into the CBC for the first time in, well, more than a year. And it was an eerie feeling, and I guess it must be the same way for a lot of offices around the country. Because basically, there's nobody there. It's a pretty empty building. Some of the key technical people are obviously at their workstations, and some of the key editorial people are at their workstations. I think, gee, even some management in key positions are in their offices occasionally. But for the most part, the building's empty.

So it wasn't hard to find places where we could shoot my end of these interviews. And the places we went to and looked at and ended up using were huge offices with dozens of desks with nobody in them. And many of them left the way on the condition they had been in in the day that the lockdown started back in March of 2020. And so it is eerie.

You walk by desk after desk and there are pictures of families and just stuff on the desks. But it raises, once again, this question of, gee, what's it going to be like when people come back to work? And as you know, I've done a number of stories on this over the months and questions about how things are going to change and if they're going to change as a result of an eventual return to work.

And there have been a lot of different theories about that. You know, was it easier to work at home than it is in the office? Is there going to be some kind of hybrid situation where some days will be home days and some days will be work days and on and on? Well, I saw something in the last few days that is a whole different discussion and argument about the return to work. And it's in Newsweek. And, well, let me just read a couple of lines from it.

As employers recall their workers to the office in the coming weeks and months, expect fireworks. Not fireworks to celebrate employees or the end of COVID, but rather a wave of people quitting after the shock of reintegration into a physical workspace and the vice grip of command and control leadership. So this piece is actually arguing that thousands of people are going to quit their jobs because they've had it with what was normal. Because normal, according to this article, was really normalized burnout, micromanagement, lack of diversity and inclusion,

lack of learning and development, and frankly, a lack of meaningful care for employees. That's pretty heavy-duty stuff. Over the last 15 months or so, Newsweek says, hundreds of millions of employees around the world have had hundreds of days to reflect from home on whether their work is serving their human needs. When it comes to career progression, skill mastery, learning and development, financial and family goals, among others, a very large percentage of them have come up lacking.

The unfortunate reality is that the vast majority of companies and leadership teams have never been forced to see things from the employee perspective, even if they send regular engagement surveys and do weekly team Zooms. I'm just going to read a little more because I find this a fascinating description of what is going to be happening in workplaces around the world and obviously around Canada. People relied on whatever professional development their employer offered with its own interests and adverse incentives and blind spots, whatever their Alma Matters Career Services Department recommended, usually outdated or irrelevant, or what their former classmates or friends were doing to get

ahead in life. COVID-19 brought a sea change to this equation, shifting the professional landscape under employees' feet. With many more potential dream jobs suddenly available remotely and more time spent at home without commutes and away from micromanaging bosses, people have more time to second-guess their career trajectory and current workplace. Employees can now find the time to learn new skills, take online courses, start side businesses, and otherwise create or seek greener pastures. That's all true. And I've heard many examples of that. And we've talked about some of them. The question is, will people take action as a result of what they've witnessed over the last 15 months in terms of how they feel it impacts their own career. There's a consistent thread through there and through that article,

and it's this discussion of micromanaging. And the way management runs in some places. You know, I've always had this. I used to get frustrated at times. Listen, I loved the CBC. I worked there for 50 years. You know, I benefited greatly from my time at the CBC. But micromanaging was an issue.

Managing was an issue in more general ways. I always felt there were too many managers there. And what happens when there are too many managers there. And what happens when there are too many managers to justify too many managers, they have too many meetings and journalism is not about meeting, meeting, meeting all the time. Journalism is about getting out and doing stories, talking to contacts, developing contacts. You know, as I've said before, there were those who said there are no stories in the office. And there aren't. There are no stories in the

office. You've got to get out. And sitting in constant meetings about whatever does not benefit journalism, nor does all the money that's tied up in those meetings. Anyway, I digress. Here's story number two. Remember just yesterday on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth,

Bruce was talking about one of the conspiracy theories out there that if you take a vaccine, it's going to put magnets in your head and your keys could stick to your forehead. And we had a little fun with that one. But listen, conspiracy theories are a way of life, sadly. And one of them is based on this theory that there's some kind of microchip being implanted in your body at the same time you take a vaccine.

This is the anti-vaxxers, or some anti-vaxxers are pushing that line. Well, good piece in The Verge. Where did the microchip vaccine conspiracy theory come from, anyway? Because it's out there. And, you know, they talk about all the different conspiracy theory groups and all the anti-vaccination groups and some of the stories that they pursue. And the impact that they've had.

And there's no doubt there has been an impact, more so in the States, I think, so far than here, because we continue to charge along on vaccine. What there were yesterday, like another day of more than 400,000 vaccines given. So we're doing really well on that front. The Americans have really backed off the number of vaccines. I mean, they charged ahead, brilliant vaccine distribution, certainly for the first four or five months of this year, but things have really slowed down there,

and so they're starting to worry about what rate, you know, what percentage they're going to get to and fully vaccinated. You heard the Minister of Procurement, Anita Anand, say the other day right here on the bridge that Canada would reach 80% by the end of July. That's a stunning figure. Okay, let's get back to this issue of how did they come up with this theory about microchips? Because more than a few people believe this.

Jordan Dow, who works at Kings County, a large public hospital in Brooklyn, about a mile from where I heard the microchip rumor, this is in The Verge again, he said he was hearing a variant on the microchip conspiracy in his emergency room. Dow said that of the hundreds of patients he was giving COVID-19 nasal tests to every day, one in five would ask about a tracking microchip on the end of the swab. I'd just look at them and I'd say, come on, this is no time to play.

Most would laugh and go on with the test. Others would refuse. A Sergo survey, that's a research firm, found that 1 in 14 people believe a tracking chip might be planted with the vaccine. 1 in 14. A poll from Axios Ipsos, also from March, asked 1,000 American adults

if the COVID-19 vaccines contained a tracking microchip. More than one in four said they didn't know. That's the equivalent of 70 million people said, I don't know. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not true. I don't know. So where did this microchip thing start? This is a long article, so I'm just going to refer to this one part.

Because this gives you, here's how things kind of start. It was March of 2020, right when we all suddenly realized what we were getting into, that Bill Gates, okay, Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, whose foundation had pledged $1.75 billion towards international pandemic aid, logged on to a Reddit, asked me anything to answer questions about the pandemic.

In the chat, he predicted that one day we would all carry a digital passport for our health records. He didn't suggest a microchip. They did suggest some kind of e-vaccine card that people would carry and flash before going into a business. Well, that's where it started. Because within months, the whole conspiracy theory network

and the anti-vaxxers, some of them, were pushing this line. And within a short period of time, the headline became, Bill Gates will use microchip implants to fight coronavirus. So it had gone from a card you carry in your wallet to a microchip you carry in your body. And then that was pushed by more and more influential people. And finally, Roger Stone, Donald Trump's buddy, in a television interview, talked about the same thing.

And by then it was off to the races with the microchip theory. Some social media platforms are trying to, you know, fight this in different ways. YouTube offered a statement saying the platform had removed 900,000 misleading videos about the coronavirus, including 30,000 just about the vaccines. The video platform even has an explicit policy banning videos that claim there are microchips in the vaccine. TikTok pointed to a policy that prohibits medical misinformation, including vaccine misinformation. So there you go. As I said, there's lots in this piece, and you might want to read it, theverge.com.

And the headline, once again, is where did the microchip vaccine conspiracy theory come from anyway? Segment three of the Thursday potpourri. This one talks about journalism, and I know this is an issue that, well, quite frankly, a lot of journalists worry about, as well as a lot of people like you who depend on journalism. And it's the use of anonymous sources. And there's been an attempt to try and determine just how much their anonymous sources are used. And the latest study that's been done by the Pew Research Center, and we've talked about Pew before,

has been in particular, since the Biden administration took over, how many stories are using anonymous sources? And what conclusions, if any, can be drawn by that. So Pew on their own website, pewresearch.org, they've got this story. Roughly one in 10 news stories about Joe Biden's early days as president cited an anonymous or unnamed source, according to a study the first 60 days of the administration. And fewer than 1% of the stories relied solely on anonymous sources. So one in ten, so about 10%, actually I think the actual figure is 11%, but roughly one out of 10. Relied on at least one anonymous source.

Now, different news organizations have different policies regarding anonymous sources. And the concern has always been, what's in it for them? Why do they want to be anonymous? Is it a serious issue of trying to protect their job? Because if their names were known, they'd get fired? Is it a piece of information that really just benefits them? Or does it benefit the public at large in the fact that it has been publicized? So that concern about anonymous sources,

allowing someone to speak under the cloak of anonymity makes it more likely that a source may say something negative. So that became part of the question here that Pew was trying to find out in terms of these stories that were done on Biden. And they actually found that, not surprisingly, more of the stories were negative than there were positive. I don't think that's a surprise. But this issue of how the public feels about anonymous sources is a serious one it all falls into what we've talked about many times on this podcast over the last months is the trust factor

in terms of journalism and it is one of the areas where some people say I don't trust them anymore because they keep using anonymous sources. Well, as Pew says in an early 2020 Pew survey, most Americans said they see some value in the use of anonymous sources, but only to a limited degree. Roughly 2 in 10 said the use of such sources is never acceptable. 15% said it's always acceptable, while the majority, about 70 percent, so roughly seven out of ten, said anonymous sources are appropriate in special cases. In that survey, 68 percent of Americans said anonymous sources in a story had a great deal, 21%, or some, 47%, influence on how they evaluated a story's credibility. So interesting, right? And I know many of you have views on, you know,

any number of different things about journalism, but sourcing and anonymous sourcing is one of them. Now, obviously, in the length of career I had, there were more than a few times that I was either directly involved or indirectly involved in stories that we used that quoted anonymous sources. And it was always an issue internally and sometimes externally. But we wanted to address internally that whole issue of why is this person asking for name protection?

And we had to be convinced there was a legitimate reason. And the reporter who had been dealing with that source would obviously have been convinced that it was worthwhile and would be arguing on that behalf. And others would play the devil's advocate to try and challenge that, to see whether or not we could go ahead on this. So we had a pretty strict policy. And I assume it's still the policy of the CBC. Doesn't happen often. Don't use anonymous sources a lot and shouldn't. No news organization wants to do that, or at least no reputable news organization wants to do that. All right.

A couple more interesting Thursday potpourris. But this first. Peter Mansbridge back with The Bridge, the Thursday edition. It's the potpourri edition. You're listening to The Bridge either on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or you're listening from wherever you download your podcasts. Wherever and however you're listening, welcome back to the bridge. You know, every Thursday, somehow,

I've got to say something about an airline somewhere. The first airline to have an in-flight magazine. Well, let's talk more generally. One of the first airlines to have an in-flight magazine was American Airlines. And you can probably guess roughly what era we're talking about when you realize that in that magazine they call flight attendant stewardesses. there were a lot of kind of things you likely wouldn't see anymore. I talked about business travelers and those who flew business class or first class, and they'd say, do you think your wife is jealous sitting at home in the kitchen? So this was not 2021 we're talking. No, the year was 1966.

And that was American Airlines in Flight Magazine. Well, American Airlines has canceled their in-flight magazine. So just as the way things were written in 1966 tells you what that era was like, the reasoning behind the cancellation tells you something about 2021. Forget about the pandemic. Forget about how airlines have had a real struggle. They're not dropping the magazine because of that struggle. They're dropping the magazine because, for the most part, they say people don't read

them anymore. They have other options when they're sitting there on the plane. And the magazines actually do cost a lot of money, and they tie up a degree of staff, and they've gone from a 15, 20-page flyer to some cases, you know, 100-page magazine with, you know, it's all glossy and there are some, you know, substantial articles in some of these airline magazines, in-flight magazines. So where is this article from? It's from USA Today. Let me read a couple of lines from it.

American Airlines, it's cancelling their magazine, now offers 600 movies and television shows available to everyone sitting in their seat on that little screen in the seat in front of you. America now offers 600 movies and television shows. They recently added a new lifestyle channel that includes free language lessons from Rosetta Stone. Well, that's handy.

You're flying from New York to Paris, and you can learn French on a seven-hour flight. So when you get off the plane, you're bingo. Oui, hello. Comment ça va? You're ready to rock. Passengers can stream all this stuff to their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other electronic devices for free. It's really just keeping up with our customers and their preferences

and how we can offer them the most content, said an American spokesman. At the same time, the popular travel information passengers sought out at the back of the magazine, and I still do this. I love looking at the maps with all the here's where we fly stuff and the breakdown of the plane you're on and, you know, all the different planes they have in their fleet. I love looking at that stuff. And it would be handy, too, when you're flying into an airport you're unfamiliar with,

they often have little maps of the airport layout so you know how to kind of get around. Anyway, that kind of popular travel information sought out at the back of the magazine airport maps, in-flight food and drink menus, movie listings, and more are now available on airlines' websites, mobile apps, and in the case of airlines offering seat back screens, the seat in front of them. So what do you need a magazine for and the spokesman for american airlines says this too to appeal to those who are on the green side of things said the move will play a small role in helping the environment as it uses, this is their airline alone, 2 million pounds of paper for the 4 million copies printed each year.

Bet you didn't know all that. That first American Airlines in-flight magazine in 1966 had 22 pages. The latest one has 122. The world turns and things change, right? Now, here's something. I'll tell you a quick story first about it. As my mother approached end of life in her mid-80s. She lived in London, Ontario.

And occasionally I would drive down from Toronto or Stratford to have lunch with her. And as things got closer, and we all knew it, she was brave and bold and never lost her class. But I came down one day for lunch. And I said, Mom, I got a surprise for you. And I rolled up my sleeve, and I showed her a tattoo on my arm. And it was a heart, you know, with Mom written across it. And now, my mom, Canadian since 1959, but still in her heart very British and very stately, was shocked. She went, you know, one half of her, she was like emotionally very excited about it all. Because it said, mom showedshowed My Love for Her.

And on the other hand, a tattoo. My God, what are you doing? Now, of course, it wasn't a real tattoo, but she didn't know that at the time. She thought it was real. It was one of those ones that you can kind of stick on. I got to tell you, it looked pretty real. And it was fun. It was nice. It was a nice moment.

I thought of that when I was reading this story from Vox. And the title is, Tattoo Artists Are Booked and Busy. Apparently, there's a craze, a new craze for tattoos because of the pandemic. Apparently, there's kind of bottled up emotions about artistic freedom and there's a desire to get inked.

Whether it's to memorialize what's happened in the past year or so, or something else, we don't know, but there are more and more people getting tattoos. Now, Vox.com is mainly an American magazine, so these stats are American, but they say there are more than 30,000 working artists in the United States, tattoo artists, and about 20,000 studios in the United States, tattoo artists. And about 20,000 studios in the United States. That's a lot.

That's a lot. And here, listen to this stat. This may or may not surprise you. How many Americans do you think have at least one tattoo? Take a guess. What percentage do you think? 10%? 10%? 20%?

30? 40? 50? Okay, lock in your answers. Push down your button. The answer is 30% have at least one tattoo. That generates around a billion dollars a year in revenue to tattoo artists. 50% of U.S. millennials have some form of body art.

I almost got a real one when I was in the Navy in 1966, because it seemed like the Navy thing to do, but in the end, I didn't. Anyway, it's a thing. It's a thing now. Tattoos. Hey, why not? What we've been through in the last year, maybe there's some special way that we want to mark that.

Does it have to be a tattoo? Of course not. But maybe it is a tattoo. That's Thursday. Tomorrow is the weekend special. If you've got something you want to say about anything, get me that note now. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Next week, the last week before we go on a hiatus, that means we will be doing one show a week on Wednesdays for a few weeks until the election campaign is called, and we'll be back at it. So we're taking a kind of breather, a pause, charge up those batteries, take a bit of a break. Let's hope we all have the right conditions for that break. So we'll talk to you tomorrow on the weekend special,

the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Drop us a line. That's it for today. Thanks for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.