Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Matt Galloway: Toronto Mike'd #125

Episode Date: June 9, 2015

Mike chats with CBC Metro Morning host Matt Galloway about how he ended up at the CBC, how Andy Barrie is doing, how Metro Morning is produced, the future of the CBC, the lack of diversity in Toronto talk radio and his favourite cycling trails.

Welcome to episode 125 of Toronto Mike's, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is CBC Metro Morning host Matt Galloway. Welcome Matt to the Toronto Mike studios. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Nice shirt. Thank you. Yeah. My wife bought me this because she knows I love the exploding pizza. The old retro CBC logo. Classic CBC. Yeah. And I wore it through. I took a trip to Rome recently and I wore it throughout Rome. It's like a beacon for other Canadians because like if you know the symbol, you come up and go, hey, you're Canadian.

I'm Canadian. It's like a kind of a quiet dog whistle to find out who else is Canadian in there. I was in the middle of the desert in Arizona this summer, no, spring, pardon me, and was riding a horse in the middle of the mountains and had a CBC shirt on. And it turned out that some of the folks who were there were from Oakville of all places and clocked me because of the shirt, which was fun. It's really fun because if you're not from Canada, you have no idea what it is. It's just a nice shirt. But if you are from Canada, it's like there's one of us and it's just like a conversation starter. I hope so. Like a connector or something. Yeah. So firstly, right off the bat, I want to say in my humble opinion, Metro Morning is the finest morning

show this city has to offer. You're very kind to say that. Thank you. And I don't tell it. You can listen back. It's not a line I throw in. You tell that to all the people in your basement. That's right. And I feel bad telling the great Matt Galloway this, but you really got to be right on the mic because I get these angry notes from people. I'm moving it forward. You almost got to make out with this thing.

I'm moving. Oh, much better. We have the most important person on our show is a guy named Kim Holmgren, who is our technician, and he rides me on being too close to the mic often. We have mics that allow us to kind of wander around a little bit.

So I'm not used to being this close, but I'll be right there. You know what? Do the opposite. Whatever you were told there. Is that Kim? Kim, yes. Whatever you were told, do the opposite because I got, most professionals are used to mics. They can kind of go off on, but mine, you got to be right on it.

All right, here I am. I couldn't afford those good mics. No, no, no. It's like even more intimate. So before we talk Metro Morning, I just want to set the table. Please tell me, how did you end up at the CBC? In university, I was working at the university radio station at York University, CHRY, which just recently went off the air or was changed to a different format. was hosting a program there, had listened to CBC my whole life. And somebody told me that Brave New Waves in Montreal, which is a program that I grew up listening to, that if you sent them, you know, a demo tape or some information, the fact that you actually knew what you were doing,

occasionally they would hire people to come in and work at CBC. And so I sent something off with the tape of the program that I was doing. They sent back a note and said, would you like to come and produce the show for a couple of weeks, work on the show with us? And that was my very, very first entry into the CBC. Very cool. Now, I knew I first came to know you as host of Here and Now. So how do you end up, this is, I think, 2004 you started off. So that was a long time. That was well before that. I ended up doing a little bit of stuff with Brave New Waves and then wrote for Now Magazine for a number of years, was doing some freelance stuff on CBC Radio,

some more freelance stuff, and said I wanted to do more on the radio and wasn't sure what exactly was going on. And it was kind of being in the right place at the right time. There was a guy that I was talking to, Nick Davis, who, in addition to being an incredible radio producer, knows more, I think, about basketball than just about anybody else in the right place at the right time. There was a guy that I was talking to, Nick Davis, who, um, in addition to being an incredible radio producer knows more, I think about basketball than just about anybody else in the city. Um, he's a coach of a lot of great players who are now playing in the NBA in the States. Uh, and he said, well, you should talk

to that guy over there. He's the producer of here and now, and he's always looking for fill-in hosts. And so I went down, I ended up doing a demo, I think maybe a week or two after that, just thrown in and did kind of a practice show and didn't hear anything back. And then was busy. My daughter was born. I think right after my daughter was born, I got a note saying, congratulations on the birth of your daughter. And we'd love if you came in and filled in on the show. And from there, it kind of just spiraled. Beautiful. Yeah.

So you're at Here and Now, and you were excellent as hosting Here and Now. And then Andy Barry, who was a host of Metro Morning for a very long time. 15 years. Right. And who is fantastic, by the way. Legend in radio.

When he announced he was leaving, I guess at the end of February 2010, you were the natural successor and it was just a perfect transition. That's nice of you to say. I mean, it's hard. He has been doing, had been doing radio for longer than I was alive and was like an icon in the city, but also just in a lot of other places, a natural interviewer, incredibly conversational to follow somebody like that is, um, daunting and terrifying and exhilarating and all of those things rolled into one. And it was, I, I was very lucky to get that job. I think a lot of people, um, perhaps, I mean, I was younger, green, uh, relatively green at the time. Uh, I think a lot

of people perhaps could have picked somebody older, more experienced, or just more experienced, and they took a risk on me. Do you keep in touch with Andy? I do, all the time. Last I saw him, we had lunch at Kaplansky's not so long ago, but we email back and forth all the time. We have similar interests in things.

How is he doing? He's doing really well. People may have seen, there's an incredible little short film that was done about him. I saw it. It was fantastic. Yeah, about deep brain stimulation, which is an operation that allows you to kind of turn the dial back on Parkinson's disease. And he had that, and it's night and day.

He is, I mean, he's always been sharp as a tack, and that part of him was never affected. He is still incredibly witty and quick and can ask the incisive question. But some of the other functions that he had walking and other matters were affected by the disease. And this has dialed it back. He's great. He's in great form. And for those who are unaware of the disease he has, it's Alzheimer's, right? Parkinson's. Yeah. My apologies. Yeah. So it's progressive. But the neat thing about this, it's not a cure. It's just, as I say, it's kind of like you turned it back. And in this documentary, which people should find. Yeah, you got to find this dog.

It's actually, I just, I think I saw a link on Reddit of all places, and they said, you got to see this. And it was, yeah, great documentary. If you're curious how Andy's doing these days, you got to seek it out. And he's still got the voice. Yeah, that's it. You know, the voice. That's what I was missing.

That's why when I applied for this Metro Morning position, it didn't even get considered. I was missing the voice. Yeah, that's it. You know, the voice. That's what I was missing. That's why when I applied for this Metro Morning position, it didn't even get considered. I was missing the voice. You were missing the voice? He has that voice. He has just, he's one of those people that you can be anywhere and you hear his voice and you know exactly who it is, right? And that, I don't know, there's something so warm about hearing him come out of the radio. Whenever we have him back on, and we do regularly for whatever he's up to. People love that. They just love to hear his voice again. Oh, absolutely.

He can read the phone book, and I'd tune in. Don't give him any ideas. I don't know that that's... It would be an interesting show. Just read the phone book. If you ever have, I don't know, a writer's strike, and you need some content. The BBC had a news reader that was retiring, and a program that I love called PM thought it would be great to just have the news reader read the dictionary.

And so that, because they thought she could do anything. And so that's what they would do is just have her read the dictionary and then they would play it occasionally. Just the sound of her reading the dictionary. You know, their voice is like that. Like I'm thinking like Morgan Freeman,

for example, he could read the dictionary. I've listened to that. Yeah, absolutely. So great. That's great to hear about Andy. And to Metro Morning, just this morning, I heard you chatting up John Torrey, for example. Yes. So I just want to give you some kudos as well that when Rob Ford was

making the rounds and he was being interviewed by a number of people in the city, in my opinion, these interviewers were giving him a free pass and and it seemed like you were the exception so i think you you played it fair but i i feel that you you didn't let rob ford off the hook like so many other interviewers in this city did which i found rather frustrating and it was nice to see somebody call him out uh fairly on some of the things he was saying that's nice of you to say i mean again i someone like someone like Rob Ford was a difficult person to interview. He didn't come on our show a lot. No, I don't think he liked the CBC very much.

I don't know whether he liked the CBC or not, but he didn't come on our program very often. So when he did, it was a big deal, and you wanted to make sure that you addressed things that were in the news. And one of the big times we had him on was during the middle of all of the commotion at City Hall. And there were big questions that he had to be asked about telling the truth and not telling the truth. Right.

About why people should trust him. And so, yeah, when you get somebody in the studio, if you don't ask those questions, I mean, you can tell because your phone catches on fire and, you know, Twitter lights up. But also you just feel like you're not doing your job. And he's a tricky guy because he says things that may or may not be true. It's easier to fact check things in print than it is when someone's just saying, yeah, real time. You're right. Absolutely. So you got to be on your game. And I had an amazing, we worked really hard. I mean, it wasn't just me. I mean, my team, we worked for a couple of weeks to try and figure out what we wanted to talk to him about and pulled together what I think was a pretty amazing plan for the interview. And then it's up to me to make it work.

Now, I'm curious about, you mentioned the team. So I would call Metro Morning, as opposed to some other morning shows in the city, I would say it's definitely not overly scripted, but I would say it's heavily scripted. scripted but i would say it's heavily scripted tell me like how many people are working on this show and how does the research team kind of work with you on on your on the day because it's all very uh sort of uh bang bang succinct and kind of action-packed if you will like it just seems it's just so tell me like how many how many people work on this show we have a handful and i mean it's uh five six seven people maybe depending if you roll in other folks who are there uh including technicians and and and that um but there are people i mean from you know a senior producer to segment producers to gourd my incredible

director who gets there two o'clock in the morning uh and everybody works really hard to make sure that a we have a show that as you said is, is action packed and kind of moves like a bullet train. Um, but that I'm as well prepared as possible for someone like John Tory, when he comes in this morning, he's talking about big, serious issues. Um, I can do a bunch of research, but I'm only as good as what I get from the rest of the people. And so there, in no way, is it my show and, um, in no way, uh, should it be looked at like that.

They are as much of a part of the success of the show as I am. I think the optics, talking to people, I think the optics are, it's your show. I think that's something some people don't realize, that you actually have this team of researchers. You're the voice, and of course you have to react to what John Tory says in real time at the moment. You have a difficult job, and you do it very well.

But you have a great support system in place. John Tory wouldn't be on the show if somebody didn't book him, if somebody didn't help come up with some really good information about what was going on and then figure out what was going to be on after John Tory and what was going to be on after that. I mean, as I say, it's a huge undertaking to put something like that on three hours a day. And you need crackerjack people. And I'm lucky. There are people who have been there for a short period of time.

And there are people who have been there from long before I was there. And they're amazing. They know everything. No, it's good to have people. You know, I need those people on this show. I think that's what I need. It's like, yeah, being made smarter is an amazing experience. That's awesome.

Because something on that note, when it came to light that the opening essay is read by Gian Gomeschi on Q, I think everybody assumed Gian kind of woke up this morning, got on his keyboard and wrote an opening essay, and then he'd read it. And then it came to light, oh, by the way, most of those were written by the great research people and the writers for Q. And I think that was one of those like, oh, wait a minute. Maybe the voice doesn't always come up with the creative. No. And I mean, I'm not, I wouldn't want to pass it off. I'm very open and clear. We talk a lot about who works on the team and why the team

is so important. I wouldn't pass off any of their work as my work. They're much smarter than I am. I just happen to be able to be the person who pulls it together on the radio. No, and it all works very well. No, I mean, yeah, as I said, I'm very lucky. They're awesome. They are amazing. How interested are you in PPM results, like the actual ratings for the show? So how significant is that to you when the book comes out as a public broadcaster um you want to make sure that what you're doing actually connects with people i think that's really important um obviously if you're a private

broadcaster it's much more important because you're selling ads based on how many people are listening but for us we have we have your money at play, right? You pay us, you own us. So if we aren't using your money in a way that is being heard by a number of people and is reflecting and connecting with people, then maybe you need to rethink what it is that you're doing. Ratings are ratings. You can get caught up in the minutiae of it um but you want to see it's it's the one way that you have to measure uh in a in a defined way um whether what you're doing actually connects with people but normal normal uh stations that sell advertising you know to earn revenue they always have a target demographic okay so i don't know the sports radio might want men 18 to 54 or something and then you might have a station like chfi or something

that wants you know woman and this is the only demo they actually care about when i talk to radio professionals it's like this is the demo i care about i don't care about everybody else so what is the targeted demo for a station like cbc is it everybody yeah so basically everybody so i mean and i totally honest i mean i have never worked in private broadcasting so i don't know that much about you know what demographics people are targeting in that world. But in our world, yeah. I mean, you want as many people to listen as possible. You want to be as valued and appreciated or at least enjoyed or heard by as many people as possible if you are a public broadcaster. And if you're not doing that, if you're not bringing those people in and telling their

stories and reflecting who they are, then you're kind of not doing your job, I think. And so that's why we're trying to do that. And it's not easy and it doesn't work all the time. But when it does, you feel like you're kind of reaching it across and that's as wide as possible. So how does Metro Morning measure up against other morning shows in the city? In terms of what? Like, could you make a statement like, you're the top-rated morning program in Toronto?

Yes. Okay. So that's essentially, is that basically, according to these PPM results, there's more ears on your morning show than on, I, I don't know, Roger, Marilyn and Darren. That's the quantifiable result, right? If you base it on that, then yes, a number of times Metro Morning has been the most listened to morning show in Toronto. I mean, they changed kind of month by month. And so that's what it is. But if that's what you're measuring things against, then yes, Metro Morning is at this moment the most listened to radio program, morning radio program in the city. And that reassures you that you're on the right path.

You've got more listeners than anyone else, so you must be serving them with the… No, but that and other stuff too. I mean, I think one of the – I'm out all the time. I spend a lot of time all day out in the city, and I talk to a lot of people about what's going on in the city and what we're doing. And it doesn't mean that you're at the center of the conversation. You hope you're part of the conversation. You hope that when the mayor comes on your show, that that can be kind of an agenda setting discussion. But at the same time, it's one of many interviews that he did this morning.

So you have to understand that as well. Ratings are ratings. And yes, to people well above me, they're really important. But at the same time, you have to trust in what you're doing and feel it in your gut that what you're doing actually connects with people. Very good. Now, some people, and this is, I think I asked Twitter, I said, what would you ask Matt? And somebody wanted to know about the music. So I have a little theory here. I have a theory because you don't run ads. Sure, you have your news breaks and traffic breaks, etc.

But throwing on a tune lets you reset, right? It lets you prep for the next segment or whatever. Like, is it basically a means to give you four minutes to prepare the next part? Or is it like, I guess I wonder why play the music and how do you choose the music? I don't choose the music. We have a music producer who chooses the music on the program. But the music is played to, it's played very strategically. It's played because it tells in many ways the same stories that we're trying to tell.

And so the music that we're playing, people will say, well, why is it not top 40 music? that we're playing, people will say, well, why is it not top 40 music? Why is it more focused on multiculturalism and the cultures that are in the city? Well, those cultures, A, their music is rarely played on wide radio. It might be played on so-called ethnic radio, but not broadly. But the other part of it is that we look at it like programming, like we do look at it like the choosing of the stories. You look at it through the same lens, we do look at it, like the, uh, the, the choosing of the stories, you look at it through the same lens that if you're trying to tell stories about, um, different cultures in the city, different communities in the city, reflecting it back. Um, you can do that through the guests that you have. You can do that through the stories you

tell, and we do it through the music as well. And you don't need to play the latest Miley Cyrus hit because if anyone wants to hear that there's 10 other stations. You can also play things that people are in town. You're a fool if you ignore the fact that some giant show is happening in Toronto and that's what everybody's talking about. Right, okay. At the same time, you can balance it off by turning people on to other stuff,

but also, as I say, using it in the same sort of means to try and tell those stories about the city that we're in. Now, the question from Twitter to quote it is, do people complain about the music? No one's complaining about the music, right, Matt? Come on. People complain about all sorts of stuff. People complain about the music. People complain about me. People complain about the interviews. People complain about our news being too dour. Why

don't you tell better news stories? Yeah, people complain about all sorts of stuff. And I mean, one of the great things is, again, I get it all the time. So I'm in the grocery store buying radishes yesterday, and somebody comes up and goes after me about an interview that we had on the program yesterday morning about the Gardner Expressway. And why did you have this person on? And I can't believe you didn't ask them this. I can't believe you didn't ask them that. Part of the thing about public radio is people feel an ownership. Sure. So they pay me, they come up and they tell me, You work for them, yeah.

Yeah, I like this, I don't like that. 99% of the time, it's nice. There's that little sliver in which people say things and you're like, why would you say that to somebody in person? I can't believe you would actually say that. But people have that right

because we're in public broadcasting. It's a weird thing. Yeah, absolutely. That's a weird thing. Yeah, absolutely. That's a very engaged listener. Anyway, somebody who would stop you in a grocery store and talk to you about an interview, that's an engaged listener. That's not a passive listener. No, but that's what you want.

That's good. Part of it is you're trying to create, hopefully, radio that makes people engaged. It's not background listening. It's foreground listening, ideally. You recently introduced a camera into the studio. Five cameras. There might be more my son's in the morning i walk him to daycare and before that he likes uh the cbc kids stuff some good stuff they're the mr rogers one whose name eludes me what's that cat's name uh uh there's anyways mr rogers neighborhood there's a new anyway cbc runs in the morning you cat

no it's not a cat it's a cat see my expert i talk like a 40s uh hipster there but uh it is a tiger daniel tiger's neighborhood i got this no i'm sorry he is a cat actually he's a tiger that is a cat see okay thank you all right i did that on purpose don't worry everything's on purpose here it's a highly scripted show here uh but daniel tiger Neighborhood is one of my son's favorite, but it comes on after Arthur, of course. Anyway, CBC Kids we listen to, and sometimes if he wakes up earlier and I put on my CBC for him, you're there.

So how have things changed since the camera showed up? It's brighter in the studio. There are like TV lights, which is and it's only on from 6 to 7, but they're on often, uh, throughout much of the rest of the program as well. Um, it hasn't really changed much to be honest. I think there were some worries that it would become a TV show and that hasn't really

happened. It's still very much a radio show. We're not looking at the cameras and playing off anything like that. Um, but you wear makeup now. No, I don't. I mean, and't. I mean, maybe I should dress better or something like that. No, I want to speak about that for a moment. So did you dress like this before the camera showed up? Yeah. You're going to work, right? You're such a stylist. In my opinion, I couldn't pull this off.

This is pretty cool style. I like dressing well. And it used to be that your announcer who would wear like a tuxedo or something like that, the joke is that we have a dress code or that if you look good you'll sound good um but that's not um required um people you know know that they're going to be seen so maybe they will dress a little bit better but we're still a radio show the cool thing is that we can do interviews that then um are almost immediately well a they're seen on television but then immediately because there are cameras in the studio can end up in other places so we did an

interview with um one of our reporters about the whole phenomenon of women reporters being out and being shouted at and used while they are doing live hits uh in the field and that interview as it was being shot was then later taken and put online and went all around the world i mean she was incredibly poignant in talking about how upsetting and distressing this is and disgraceful and the reactions of people around her as this is unfolding and a lot of people connected and now they could have heard it uh on the radio they could have listened to it again on the radio. But by putting it up on YouTube, it has a completely different life.

And that's kind of what you want. And that's how Q broke, right? Because the interview with Billy Bob Thornton, that's spread by YouTube, not by audio. So the point being, it doesn't really change what we're doing. But if we can do something that other people would want to see, an interview with the mayor,

a conversation with Des Cole about his carding article um again throw it up on youtube that just there's a different life to it which is uh which is a good thing no absolutely but and you were already dressed for it anyways i don't know you know what i see i see for radio and i have clothes for television you're being been humble here you you have a face for radio and I have clothes for television. You're being humble here. Literally, there's a handkerchief coming out of a pocket square. Only once in my life did I wear that for my wedding. That was it. I love pocket squares. I can't pull it off. Yeah, it's cool.

Pocket squares and bow ties and little things like that add a little kind of snap to life. So what made you fall for that particular style? I mean, I don't know that there's any style. We had a kid on. I'm wearing Roots sweatshirt, and then I am wearing the retro CBC shirt, but this is my style, which is styleless, I'd say.

The absence of style. We had a guy on, a kid. He's 13 years old, and he makes and sells bow ties. Oh, wow. And his line, which I thought was great, was you wear a necktie because you have to, you wear a bow tie because you want to. Nice.

I like that. I don't know. It's a little that's cool extra little pop nice you know um let's talk briefly here about the uh the cbc so there's been many many uh cuts lately to our really yeah did you notice there's been layoffs yes yes of course in fact i don't know if i one of the recent numbers i saw was i think the goal was to downsize by like 25% by 2020 or something like that. And I think the quote, I took it and I put quotes on it, is that the strategy in downsizing and reducing costs is digital first. What are your thoughts on the digital first strategy? Well, that was what I was just talking about in a way is, I mean, taking what we're doing and then you pump it out into other venues and stuff like that. The reality is there is less money. And so as a public broadcaster with fewer dollars, you have to figure out how to use them.

I don't make those decisions. And it's probably a good thing that I don't make those decisions. But I think you have to figure it. Somebody has to figure out how you're going to spend the fewer dollars that you have. Now, the reality also is that the CBC compared to other public broadcasters is grossly underfunded. The figure is something like $34 per capita, where in other places you're looking at double that or more. And so to me – and I said this after the last round of cuts, I said it on Twitter, and I think I said it on the radio as well. Now is the time to have the gut check conversation, Canada.

Do you want a public broadcaster? And if so, what kind of public broadcaster do you want? Because it's easy to bemoan cuts and people get upset and say, I can't believe that this person is leaving, that that person's leaving, that once again a show is shrinking or there are more repeats on the radio. You have to figure out what you want and you have to figure out how you're going to pay for it.

And I don't know what that answer is, but I think the folks who own it, us, need to have that conversation. Do you feel it's become politicized in that I... Well, it's always been politicized. It's always been politicized. But yeah, essentially, if you're, I don't know, a Stephen Harper conservative voter,

you don't want the CBC. But the great line is, great, but the line is that the liberals cut the CBC deeper than Stephen Harper. Interesting, isn't it? I don't know. I mean, your job as a journalist is to ask tough questions and nobody likes that. And I'd like to think, and I know that we as a show ask tough

questions to governments of all stripes. That doesn't mean that you have favorites. That doesn't mean that you have friends. That could upset people maybe, but I think it goes beyond politics. You're wearing the shirt. You're talking about this being like a connector, right? It's more than a logo to people. No, absolutely. It's something about who we are or were as a country, who we are as a country. Does this mean things to you?

Do you want it or not? And if you do, what do you want out of it? And that to me is a huge discussion and it needs to happen. No, absolutely. We'll see where it comes out of. But I mean, we hear from, again, we hear from all sorts of people who, you know, have just arrived in Canada, use CBC through an ESL class to learn English, use CBC as a way to figure out what the country is,

how they kind of navigate around the country, that kind of stuff. That's a huge value to it. Aside from all of the other things that you were talking about in terms of ratings and who's being attracted to the country, that kind of stuff. That's a huge value to it, aside from all of the other things that you were talking about in terms of ratings and who's being attracted to the service. But the country needs to, you know, people need to have that discussion. Now take out your crystal ball for me and tell me, will we one day wake up and hear ads on CBC Radio 1?

No. I don't think so, but again, I don't make these decisions. When that's announced, I'm going to pull that clip. Yeah, you probably will. I don't think so, but again, I don't make these decisions. When that's announced, I'm going to pull that clip. Yeah, you probably will. I don't think so, but I don't know. I mean, I would think that one of the things that makes a program like ours distinct is that we don't have ads on the radio. It's my favorite one, I shouldn't say. No, it's a great program regardless, but it's a wonderful thing. But I mean, that doesn't take away from programs that do have ads, but I think there is a difference.

Now, would you hear sponsorships? Would you hear like uh you know public radio in the united states this program is brought to you by whatever or whoever um maybe that's the model that they would choose in future i don't know but i to me i mean i listen to the bbc a lot and i love the bbc um and i listen to a lot of different radio from from around the world, they don't have ads on their radio service. And that is a huge attraction to a lot of people. So will that happen down the road? I don't know. My crystal balls have been easy.

Your crystal ball, it's not working today. I hope not. I just wonder if that's where we're going here. I hope not. But, I mean, again, a lot of it depends on people deciding what they want. Well, I heard even the, I mean, I heard, I think it was said

by whoever makes, making these calls, but that the front street headquarters isn't even safe. Like there was talk that potentially that could be sold off. Well.

Like you'll be recording from home soon. But you have to. In my basement, potentially. In your basement? Would you like that? In my own basement. In your own basement.

Similar to this, but I don't know that I have space in it for a studio. Again, it's with public dollars. You have to figure out what you're going to do with them. That building used to be, when I started at CBC, I mean, it was full of people, right? And the public broadcaster has become smaller.

And so in that building, there are fewer people, and now it's been kind of hived off. There are different parts of it that are being used for other purposes, not just for CBC. So I don't know. Do you fear a reduction in, you mentioned the number of fine people working on Metro Morning. Do you fear that that number will get smaller and smaller? Well, it has in past. Everybody has to, I mean, when you cut, you have to cut across, you know, different boards

and you have to figure out how best to use that money. So how much can you do with fewer people? different boards and you have to figure out how best to use that money. So how much can you do with fewer people? Do you still want to do the program that you're doing? Everything has cost in terms of making those cuts. It would suck.

Because we have really great people and often what happens in these situations is that you end up losing some of the younger people who are the most eager, who are the most creative, who, like me, have grown up wanting to be in public broadcasting, wanting to work at the CBC. It would be a real drag to deny somebody that opportunity and deny us, being listeners and viewers, uh, their amazing talents. The CBC recently made a decision that, uh, journalists couldn't do paid gigs. I think the Amanda Lang, uh, controversy causes. And so I'm curious if that affects you at all. Uh, I don't like doing speeches, uh, and I don't really give speeches. I don't give speeches to

be honest. Uh, no, to be, I get up at three o'clock in the morning so um that's my next question the things that i do uh i do uh you know somebody would ask me to interview them on stage about a book or something like that uh or moderate an event um and beyond that i don't really do any of that i still do a lot of that stuff and i've done you know i would say the overwhelming majority of it uh continues um but it's all about time for the most part sure like i just i just i have two young kids at home i get up really early in the morning um no i'm great i mean i'm grateful that you're this is not this is in the morning i mean if it was at eight o'clock at night i'd be in bed or if it was at four o'clock in the afternoon so you don't get to see like a minute of like the stanley cup playoffs for example.

No, unless it's something I really, really, really, really, really, really want to see. Maybe at game seven you would consider it. Yeah, and it would be the first period and a half. That's right. That would be it. No, I can imagine. That's an early wake up. The next series of questions here,

I'm going to start off with a question that will set the table for these questions. Okay. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you identify as a black man. A mixed race man. Mixed race man. Yes. I recently had on this very show Amber Giro, who spent 14 years reporting for, it was CFRB,

and then it became News Talk 1010. Okay. And she came on the show recently and I want to say went off, but basically she had some very interesting arguments about how not your station actually, but most talk radio stations in Toronto, especially in the AM band, we're not reflecting the city in which they broadcast during weekdays. The cast of hosts were all white and mostly male.

I think we found one exception. Barb DiGiulio has a show on 1010 and she is a female. So I was wondering, did you, what do you think about Amber Giro's thoughts that the, the AM talk radio host steam party is far too male, far too white and not reflective at all of the diversity in Toronto? If that's true, then she is right.

Then it's not reflective of the diversity in Toronto. And I'm not going to say that it's true or not, because to be honest, I don't know enough to say whether that's the case or not. But I think her point is well taken, that does media reflect the city in which it's operating? Absolutely not. Has it been a huge priority for us?

Absolutely. I mean, the show that I do, before I started 12 years ago, went under this huge transformation, very controversial, written about in Toronto Life, people called it Metro Morning, M-O-U-R, like the show had died because the show was completely changed in part to make it sound and look much more like the city that we were in. The big thing to do. It's a lot of work, but the payoff was huge.

Why haven't other people done that? I'm not sure. That's up to them. But I think it's really important. I mean, I think if particularly for us and again, private broadcasting is private broadcasting in terms of a different model. Not better or worse, just it's a different model. But for us, if we take your money and you don't see yourself reflected in what it is that we're talking about. I just came across town because it was raining.

I was going to ride my bike and then I thought it was going to rain, so whatever. I came in a cab. Talked to the cab driver. Cab driver listens to us. He was talking about how, um, we, uh, were doing stories about the Arab spring. He's Egyptian. Um, and do you know this? Do you know what's going on in Egypt now? That to me is really important. I mean, it's not technically a Toronto story, but there are a huge number of people from that part of the world who are here,

who are watching that you can talk about it or you can talk to them about it. And we talked to people like that from that community about what was going on. That is a testament that you're kind of connecting with those other people. So at the CBC, is this organic or is it sort of mandated? Bit of both. I mean, I think you have to have a strategy. Things don't happen on their own. And when you do things like this, you have to make tough choices. You have to figure it out. I mean, some things will go and some things will stay. You have to be hiring people strategically. You have to choose, you know, a lens to kind of focus on and to kind of tell stories through. But if you do that, then it becomes organic. But I think we're seeing this in the business world right now. We do a lot

of stories about the glass ceiling or the rainbow ceiling and how to change the complexion of boardrooms at big companies. Companies need to put it into their pillars. Banks put it into their pillars and say, this is a key thing that we're going to do. Because otherwise, if you just kind of let it, well, it'll happen on its own, it won't actually happen on its own. Right, right.

Eventually it will, but you have to set up the structures for it to happen. So for us, it's been a hugely important thing. And we measure ourselves on it all the time. But it's the kind of thing that changed the show. I mean, the show went from being much lower in the ratings, if you want to talk about ratings, to much higher in the ratings directly because of that. It's now a model for other broadcasters around the world in terms of how they are trying to reflect and represent their audience. And I don't know, I love Toronto.

I mean, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's going on in the city, and you want to be able to tell as many of those different perspectives and stories as possible. Now, Amber and I, fair enough that you can't speak to this because you don't know it to be true, except Amber and I actually went through the lineups. We took 640,

for example, which is a talk radio station in Toronto, and we went through all the hosts, daytime hosts, and not only are they all older white men, to be honest, but they were all from a certain part of Europe. They're all from Ireland, Northern Ireland, or England. And

we were trying to discuss, because she had a great certain part of europe they're all from like ireland northern ireland or england uh and and we were trying to discuss because because she had a great uh grievance with this and uh she she feels that uh am talk radio should do what you mentioned there which is sort of not necessarily make mandate or make make it conscious of decision to try to reflect better the listenership in the city of Toronto. Well, I think, I mean, again, certainly not telling people in talk radio on the AM side of things or in private radio what they should do,

but you would think there's a great business opportunity there as well. This is a city that half of the population was born outside of Canada. We are, if not the, then one of the most multicultural cities on the planet. Right, For sure. From a business perspective, wouldn't you want to make sure that those people feel like they

are part of your conversation? Just again, from our thing, I was speaking in Germany about this. There was a bunch of us that went over to Germany to talk to broadcasters and people in the media about the importance of diversity. And it's kind of like this us and them sort of thing. In Germany, they had a real we, the Germans, and then everybody else. And I told this story about how during the World Cup, because Canada's terrible.

Canada's never in the World Cup, but Torontonians will have everybody else's flag up. And they couldn't believe that. Why would you have a Canadian have a German flag or a Polish flag or Ukrainian flag or a Ghanaian flag up? And I said, that's the us and them sort of thing. There's not that divide. It's more us and kind of being more inclusive and being more welcoming. For us, that's the trick that we're in is to try and figure out how to maximize that. But also, as I say, if we're not doing that as a public broadcaster, then turn the lights

out because we're not doing our job. For the privates, I would just think that there's a good business case to be made there. Why they're not doing it, I don't know. I mean, it's easy to... Change is hard. Change is really difficult. And it can be messy. And the sentiment from some people can be that you're dumbing things down,

that you're going to exclude some people when you do that. And to me, it's a way to actually be much more reflective of the place you're in. Are you excited about the Pan Am Games? I'm curious about the Pan Am Games. I wonder what the city is going to do. It's a big chance in the city to have like a big celebration here's the thing okay so like yourself i like you know i love the city too and i'm and we're gonna talk in my last couple minutes i do want to talk to you

about you know some cycling and some running and some cool stuff like that but uh i'm waiting for i keep thinking it might hit but it's feeling i'm feeling like the best word i could think of to borrow a line from sloan is I'm underwhelmed. The Pan Am Games to me is I think of it as not the Olympics. If the Olympics were coming, I know I'd buy in. I love the Olympics and it's the world's biggest stage for the world's greatest

athletes. The Pan Am Games to me is not the Olympics. I can't get into it. I don't have any excitement for it. I think having gone to several Olympic Games, one of the things that happens is often um people will have the same sentiment in london and vancouver people could care less about the olympics coming people were upset it's going to ruin the city there's going to be no way to get around blah blah blah something happens uh the torch arrives or in london people started to win medals and the city went insane, but just lost. But it was the Olympics. But it was the Olympics here for a couple of reasons.

One is, um, I think people in the city are genuinely suspicious of something like this arriving in town because of how terrible the commute is. And, and you know, the strains already on, on finances,

et cetera. What's this going to do to us? But also, um, people don't know the athletes. I mean, there's, it's not the big famous

uh gold medal winning athletes that are coming it's kind of the next generation so i think what will happen is a lot of people will leave town um a lot of people will stay some people will come canada will start to win things and then people will get excited about it i hope i hope i think because it's great i hope too i just uh you're there's a real... I'm not as hopeful as you. We were talking about this the other day. I think there's a real kind of, you know, right now. Did you follow the Pan Am Games in, was it 2011, the last one? Like, no, not at all, right?

I couldn't tell you. Did you follow any of the Commonwealth Games in Scotland that just happened? No. Yeah, see, this is my thing. Those two are very similar. But they're here. They are here. That's the're here. They are here. That's the one thing.

They're here. And the other cool thing is, I mean, I've seen sport at like the highest level at Olympics. You go and watch swimming. You go to see Michael Phelps and set some records. It's unbelievable when people do that

and they're competing for a medal. That is the kind of thing that hopefully will get people excited. I hope that they sell tickets. I hope people go. We keep saying we're going to buy tickets and we bought a few, but we're kind of stalling on some other stuff because of scheduling. But we're going to go and see a bunch of things.

Okay, cool. I was going to ask you if you were going to buy tickets. My kids are super up for it and I want to go and see things as well. And I'll go and watch the road races and watch the marathon and stuff. But I hope people get excited about it. But I think there's a real chance that people may not. I think the story of these games will be unsold tickets. That's what I think is going to happen.

I know we have a lot of time. Well, we don't have that much time, but we have weeks left, and maybe there'll be a lot running up. But I just suspect the big story will be the 800,000 unsold tickets or whatever we end up with. I mean, when does Toronto have a big, huge event like this? No, I know.

But when does Toronto ever support something that's not like... The Toronto Maple Leafs? Yeah. Your flag on the wall? Right, so I can remember how long it's been since well before my life. But you're right. I mean, the Grey Cup comes here and the CFL always complains and says that people don't get as excited as they would in China. No, because it's not the NFL.

Toronto Rock do really well and nobody outside of the people who love that team. And there's a lot of people who do, but it's hard for them to get a lot of attention. I just wrote an entry about like cities that have longer championship droughts in Toronto. Because there are some, including, you know, Cleveland and Oakland, who are now playing for the NBA championship. And I actually, for the purposes of this research, I had to politely say I'm not counting CFL and I'm not counting lacrosse. Like, so this is, you know, and then, yeah, because we don't, for better or worse, those two are not considered major league sports in this city. Yeah, it's not even a hockey town.

It's a Toronto Maple Leafs team. No, absolutely. I don't think we'd ever support an OHL team. Oh, boy. I mean, Marlies, people don't go. We would go, but it's not a huge go-ahead. But only because, oh, that prospect will be a Leaf in a year. Like, that's what draws you into the Marlies.

Which is a shame. Again, there's a lot that's going on. But people will tell you, not just in sports, but in any other. And we've talked to the head of the Pan Am Games about this as well. It's hard to get people's attention and hard to get people's money, but really hard to get people's attention. There's a lot going on. I would have rather had the Women's World Cup than the Pan Am Games

because I'm actually excited about that. Yeah, I would have. Well, I'm not saying that I would Yeah, I would have. Well, I'd say that I would. And I watched that entire China game. And when Christine Sinclair scored in the penalty in the extra time, I jumped out of my seat like it was Crosby scoring at the Olympics. I am bummed that there's not a Women's World Cup game here.

It would have been amazing to go down. Oh, can you imagine? That would have been fun. It would have been really, really great. Do you have a personal policy for tweeting? I noticed not only are you great on the Metro Morning, but you actually are a very informative tweeter. And you're tweeting in hours when you'd think you'd be unplugging

and chilling with family. I use it as kind of an extension of the show, but also things that I think people who listen to our show might be interested in. I don't tweet about family, really, but also things that I think people who listen to our show might be interested in. I don't, if I don't tweet about family really, or anything like that, unless it's about something else that larger that's going on in the city

that people can relate to. And to me, it's amazing. I mean, social media is, has changed our show in a number of ways. We get questions from people. We had John Tory on this morning.

I woke up this morning and I don't know, there's 200, 300 questions from people. As the interview is going on, people are commenting away. People will feed you information all the time. People will tell you about things, tip you off to stuff, critique you on things. It has created this dialogue where before it was just me talking into a microphone. Oh, it's amazing. My voice coming at your radio. Now there's this kind of interchange, which I love. It's completely changed the way I watch live sports. Completely.

Like I can no longer imagine a live sporting event without sharing it with my Twitter feed. But I can also get around the city and show people things in the city. People can show me things that I could describe on the radio and I would describe, but here I can just send you the picture as well. And that to me is really exciting.

Like the Queens Quay bike trail that's been shut down for so long while they do the renovations. It's opening soon. Yeah, opening very soon. But just like every week I make the trip to kind of the one young street, if you will. My wife happens to work there, so I'll meet her for lunch. And I take photos of like, you know, tweet it. This is what it looks like now. Like it's any day now this is going to open up.

But absolutely. And it's not even social media to me. I think it's Twitter. Like Twitter is the social media engine, the real-time engine. Yeah. I mean, I'm not on Facebook. The show is on Facebook, but I personally am not on Facebook. So we use that as well a lot.

But for me, Twitter just allows me to be, I mean, it is truly instant. In the middle of the show, I can send things out. I can ask people ideas. We can get things back. And you tweet from Matt Galloway, CBC. That's you. Yes. And Metro at Metro morning.

Is that the team? Me and the rest of the team. Okay. So it's you, you and others. Yeah. Okay, cool. Almost out of time. I got to talk to you quickly.

You have, are you doing like a personal project? I think you call it 365 days of running. Is that ridiculous? Tell me about this because tell me uh because i always thought of you as like a cyclist which i'm going to talk to in a minute but uh i can't run i tried to run and in 2007 i had a like a running injury that sports doctors haven't been able to figure out so i literally like get deep pain at three kilometers so i don't run at all it's like an it band thing or something it's not that but it's something like that and

i've had i've been to like sports docs and i don't want to bring. It's like an IT band thing or something. It's not that, but it's something like that. And I've had, I've been to like sports docs and I don't want to bring this down that road except to say we can't figure it out. And if I run 3K, I can't walk up the stairs the next day. And it is terrible, but I don't run. I really just have a no running policy. I do lots of walking, lots of cycling, but tell me about your 365 days of running.

I ran a little bit. I never ran at all until I went and stood out in the pouring rain and watched some people run a marathon. And I thought, what are you getting out of this that I don't understand? I couldn't figure it out. And so I started running after that and ran a 5K and then stopped running and then picked it up again, back and forth, back and forth. And then last year was running a bit more and decided what I like things to focus on. Um, I have all day to do stuff and it's easy to get tired and sit in a chair and then you could fall asleep.

So I baked bread for a year and kind of became obsessed with baking bread. Cool. Um, I don't know, learned to play the ukulele. Uh, that was amusing. Um, and I thought running would be fun for a bunch of reasons. One is it would give me focus and something to focus on, but also it would keep me in really good shape. And I wanted to push myself and see what I could do, you know, at or beyond the limits of my abilities. And so, yeah, I run every day. So you haven't missed a day? I haven't missed a day. I don't know how many days

it is now, but it's into the sixth month. So it's every single day. See, I do similar things. Like I'm on my quest for 2015. I want to bike 5,000 kilometers. Amazing. And that's my number. I did 4,500 last year and I know I can do 5,000, but that is my number. And it's like, Michael, I measure it with my app and everything. And yeah, and I'm on pace by the way. Tell me about cycling. Like, do you have some, what are your favorite trails in this city? Like for like, I should point out real quickly that I cycle every single day. Good for you. And my kids are avid cyclers.

My oldest two. My third kid does not cycle yet. He's 13 months. But my oldest two kids, soon. Soon, soon. Very soon. I was thinking of buying one of those trailer things, but I don't know.

But my oldest two and I, I've got them doing easily. They can go on a 30-kilometer bike ride. And even my little 10-year-old daughter is a fantastic cyclist. That's amazing. So tell me your favorite trails. I love, I ride to work every day.

And that's just on my, my commuting bike. And I ride a road bike on weekends and I will ride past here to Oakville, out towards, we kind of loop up near the airport or around through Mississauga. My favorite place in the city to ride, I've said this before, but is the Humber Ravine through the Humber Trail. We come in up near Dundas

and then down through by the old mill. Yeah, okay, yeah, great. ATM Brulee Park, they call that part there. And when you come out the mouth of the Humber, we did it, friend Sean and I, Great. ATM Brulee Park, they call that part there. And when you come out the mouth of the Humber, we did it, a friend, Sean and I, and the UK representative here in Toronto rode it a couple of weeks ago. He wanted to go on a bike ride.

And when you come out by the mouth of the Humber, I mean, he gasped. I mean, it is, to me, the most beautiful view of the city. There's the bridge that's there, which is incredible. But when just popping out, and there's the city that's laid out in front of you there's this beautiful river that's there the people are kayaking and the lake is right in front of you uh that to me is spectacular you're you're preaching to the choir that is that is a fantastic so and yeah there's

like a it's king's mill i think i'm trying to remember the names but there's a king's mill and then it when you're now when i'm talking when you're heading north, King's Mill goes into A.T. and Brulee. And then you end up, you got the James Gardens. And that's all. Sometimes I'll just get on and I'll go, you know, I'll head east until that where you're talking about the bridge, the Humber Bay Bridge. And then I'll start heading north through the trail.

And it's a fantastic rut bike ride. I love that. I mean, and one of the running things that's neat is I run a lot now through ravines and had walked through them for years. But I love the city and I love being in the middle of the city. I also love disappearing from the city. And it's even better to do that in the city itself, where you can just kind of go over a bridge and down a few steps and you're in the heart of the city, but you're not. You're absolutely right.

The ravine system in the city is amazing. It's like you're not in a city at all. And it sounds corny, but it is true. You're right in the city and not in the city. It's silent and there's you and deer and some people who happen to be walking their dogs. You've encountered the deer. My mom and my brothers have met the deer in 18 Brulee Park, actually. I started doing morning rides.

Now I do lunchtime rides. I was doing morning rides in a quiet ravine area going up to James Gardens just to see deer. I've never seen deer in Toronto. Go up the Don Valley. I'm not going east enough. In the Don and through the Rosedale Ravine under the bridge is one of the easiest places. One of my goals is to see a deer in the

wild in Toronto. Yeah. Without having to go to like a high park zoo. There are a lot. But that to me is physical fitness is one um but it's that to me is it's yeah physical fitness is one thing but um it's like my moment i don't take a phone i don't have any contact it's like no gps measurements well i wear my watch my running watch um but there's no contact with the real world essentially uh and it just allows you to kind of bliss out and it's the best yeah it's nice i'm impressed you biked uh sorry you were running all year because I was trying to bike through February.

And I did a pretty good job, actually, considering worst month I can remember in my entire life. Yeah, we were at a friend's cottage. I guess it was the family day weekend. And I think it was about minus 32 or more than that with the wind chill. And my face was frozen. My eyelashes were all frozen. But once you get going, it's invigorating. And there's kind of a little bit of hurrah, I did it sort of thing to it as well.

Sure, sure, sure. Which is nice. And you don't have to worry about your break lines seizing up like I do in minus 25. No, no, no. It's just your knees stop working and you might slip on ice. Just your knees. Okay, a couple of rapid fire things. I know I've hit it.

What's your favorite neighborhoods in Toronto? Loaded question right there. Wow. I live in Christie Pits. In that neighborhood, I've lived there for about 18 years. I love the fact that on my street, we went out of our way to try and meet our neighbors, invited a bunch of people over on our block, essentially, to have dinner. And it was either going to work or it was going to be a knife fight.

And everybody now is best friends. Cool. And so you sit on the front porch and people are going to come by and say, hello, we trade food back and forth, bread, whatever like that. Somebody's cooking,

somebody's made sausages. I love that about my neighborhood. Jane Jacobs would be proud. That's beautiful. It just feels like a small little town. And I have a couple of young kids who can now go out in the city through the neighborhood and walk around and go to their friend's house. And I know that the eyes kind of of the community are on them.

How old are your kids? 12 and 9. I have a 13 and 10. Yeah. Just ahead of you there. It's pretty great. Yeah. Amazing ages.

And I'm very lucky. I mean, my work is my work. And the rest of my life is equally awesome or even better. And what time do you leave the CBC? Because you start start you said super early i'm there by shortly after four and i leave 11 30 12 that's the latest yeah and then you know i gotta go and do stuff but i'm on kind of all afternoon as well so reading things in contact with the crew etc who's your favorite interview so far? That I've done? That you've ever conducted? That's a good question.

Some of the most amazing people are people that you would never expect. And it's not favorite, but things that you remember. Just people that stick with you, that you can feel like you have the entire city kind of listening along. We did an interview with, um, with a guy, it's a terrible story, um, but it was about a year ago. His wife had gone up to the top of the city to take her car in or something like that to be serviced. And she, uh, took care of, of they fostered dogs.

So she was out walking the dog and a car jumped the curb and hit her and killed her and then um it was awful a terrible terrible story they had young kids um and we talked to the husband about her because he wanted to talk about who she was and about um how he was going to try and move forward and she did a lot of stuff with the kids uh this is a really depressing story but it's it's wonderful in terms of in terms of the contact and so he had to kind of learn how to be the single dad and how to learn the things that she had done um for the family getting lunches ready getting them ready for signing permission forms for uh for for class trips and stuff.

And he was really, I mean, I said to him at the end of the interview, I couldn't have done what you did. I couldn't talk to me. I wouldn't have answered the phone. I can't believe where you are right now. But you could feel the city kind of listening to him and listening to every word and kind of pulling for him. And it was this amazing moment.

Radio is like, look how close I am to the microphone. It's this amazing little intimate thing, right? Nobody, the majority of people who were listening had no idea who this guy was. They'd never met her before, but all felt like they knew her at the end of it. That to me was one of those moments. I mean, you can talk to,

interviews with politicians are really fun. And it's, yeah, the Rob Ford interview was great. It was an amazingly successful interview to talk to somebody about issues that he didn't want to talk about and call him out on those issues. But there are very different kinds of interviews. That one to me was like one of those things. It just stuck with me. I thought about it for months after about what it would be like to be on the other end of the phone doing that interview, being asked those questions, but also hearing back from all these listeners who said the best compliment, which was I stopped what I was doing. I couldn't believe what I was doing. And that's what I love about radio, moments like that, just real moments like that. We heard from somebody who he was making tea,

and he had the kettle in his hand, and he was going from where the stove was to where the tea cup was. And he stopped in the middle of it and suddenly realized that the kettle was burning his hand and dropped the kettle. The kettle smashed on the ground because he just got caught up in the interview. That's amazing. Right? And so that's like to be able to be like the extension cord between that guest

and the people who are listening is a blessing. Is there anyone out there you have not interviewed yet but would love to interview? Like maybe who's on top of that list? That's a good question as well. I bring the good questions, Matt. You do. These have all been excellent questions.

I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's a number of people that I think I should probably interview, powerful and famous. I'm just curious. For example, I would like Eddie Vedder on my show. I have questions for Ed. I want to have a heart-to-heart with Ed on this show. That would be great. Could you hook that up for me?

I cannot, but I'll see what I can do. I don't know. The big gets, of course, there's an election. It would be great to talk to Stephen Harper. That would be really fun. Don't you find politicians read from a script? Don't you? You don't get the real,

you're not interviewing Stephen Harper. So then it's your job to knock them off the script. It's your job to figure out. Get them off point. Well, to ask them the questions that, we have a very different culture. I was talking on the radio about this the other day. We have a very different culture of accountability

than some other places like the UK, where if the prime minister came on, he would be knocked off the script in a heartbeat and he would be asked incredibly tough questions in a very forceful way. We don't have that here. We're too polite. Well, we are, right? But at the same time, there is a chance, I think, to be able to ask pretty pointed questions

of people across the spectrum. So yeah, that- To me, it's similar to interviewing an athlete. They're all reading, like you get the same kind of cliches and, uh, but then it's your job to ask questions. And on that note, really quickly,

and I purposely didn't want to make this interview an episode of like Metro morning. If people want to hear, you know, stuff about carding or the gardener, obviously you guys have a chock full of that good stuff on 99.1 in the mornings. But,

um, I was going to, uh, ask you, well, tell you or share with you one of my frustrations, which is when a politician like John Tory comes on. There might be 10 subject matter experts who have sort of issued reports on the Gardiner East of Jarvis. Okay, let's say 10. I'm making up numbers now. Nine of them might have a million reasons why it's better for the city if we tear down the Gardner East at Jarvis. And one of them might have a couple of lines about why we should keep it up

or whatever. And then everyone will sort of cherry pick the line from the report that backs up their political, their opinion, if you will. And then you got, so you got, to me, it's very frustrating. 10 subject matter experts, nine of them are now erased because one said this and that's your headline in the sun today i walked my kid to daycare and the sun's screaming about you know i don't know two million man hours stuck in traffic or some crazy hyperbole because one ryerson person said it's then it's my job i mean we yeah and to try and what is the truth sure and that's like you did a rob ford you were the only one i found you actually i don't know one of the only ones but i truth? Sure. And that's, like you did with Rob Ford, you were the only one I found to actually, one of the only ones.

But I think, I mean, that's the job. And it's hard. I mean, we're talking about fact-checking. To fact-check somebody live on the radio, as we're talking right now, is really difficult. Because you have to have things in front of you, you have to be able to go really quickly. I mean, we had somebody who said on our show the other day,

and it doesn't, it's not applicable to this. She was talking about other matters, but she used the phrase decision-based evidence-making rather than evidence-based decision-making, which could apply to any number of situations right now. I mean, we live in an era of spin where people, talking points are talking points. And as you said, athletes have them, politicians have them, business people have them. Right. And those are guests I have less interest in because I'd rather hear from the subject matter expert. But those are often the guests

that are the most important. They're the ones that are making the decisions. So it's your job to figure out how to knock them off the talking point, how to realize what a talking point is,

but also get that talking point exposed. Should we tear down the gardener east of the Jarvis? East of Jarvis? By the way my youngest son is named jarvis you know so it's fun when jarvis is in the news because it's like hey there's there's jarvis i have no opinion on anything no good idea because it'll taint everything we

hear from now on i don't i have no opinion on anything uh i i have no opinion it's fine that's it's probably safer for you to have no opinion no it's actually my job is that yeah no i know once you come out on opinion, everything will be regarded as biased or slanted. There are policies where you need to, and people would say, well, of course he has an opinion. I don't, to be honest.

And people have no idea, hopefully, what I think on things, how I vote on things, whatever like that. Impartial. You try and be as impartial as possible. It doesn't mean that you don't have a perspective on things, but no opinion. Will TFC finally make the playoffs this year?

Do you have an opinion on that? It seems like they will, but I gave up my season tickets a long time ago. I found them incredibly frustrating. David Miller did the same thing, didn't he? I think... Did you guys do it together? David gave up some,

but I think he still has his tickets. I couldn't, I couldn't in good faith keep paying money for tickets that, for a team that I didn't think was getting any better. Now, apparently they look really good, so. Yeah, my buddy Elvis, who has season tickets in the supporter section, says he thinks maybe this year we're actually going to make the playoffs for the first time ever. There were, I think there were about 30 of us who bought tickets at the same time in the supporter section. And now.

Which is the only place to go. Now just a handful of them have the tickets still. Such is life. And I jokingly asked if you could get Eddie Vedder on my show, but could you do anything to get Peter Mansbridge on this show? I'd like to have Peter. That's doable, right? Peter.

His wife went to my high school. If that helps me with Indian or not. He is the voice of authority. And a very funny man as well. Peter would be great. I got to get Peter. We're going to see if you have any contacts that can help me out.

I have no poll, but I have his email address. Oh, that's a start. That's a start. And that brings us to the end of our 125th show. You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike and Matt is at Matt Galloway CBC. See you all next week.