Wiretap - Greed (Pt.7 of Seven Deadly Sins)

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

We explore what has been called the root of all evil, the mother of all sins: greed. A man thinks he's struck gold with a new career cycling tourists around New York City, and Jonathan is greedy for experience as he tries to cram 7000 years of history into a 3 day visit to China.

Hi, everybody. I'm J.B. Poisson and I host Frontburner. It's Canada's most listened to daily news podcast. Just the other day, we were in a story meeting talking about how we can barely keep up with what's going on in Canada and the world right now. And like, it's our job to do that. So if you are looking for a one-stop shop for the most important and interesting news stories of the day, we've got you. Stop doom scrolling. Follow Frontburner instead. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and you're listening to Wiretap on CBC Radio 1, today's episode, the final installment in our series on The Seven Deadly Sins, Greed, in which Tim Hortons is courted, China is devoured, and as always, M.C. Hammer is discussed. When Dave Hill was a kid, his mother always left her purse on the kitchen counter. So whenever he needed money, he'd help himself to lose change.

The way Dave explains it now, it was a don't ask, don't tell, sort of thing. He didn't ask for the money, and he didn't tell her he took it. As long as her purse weighed about the same as when she picked it up the next time, Dave says. It was never an issue. But when he became an adult, Dave was to learn that getting money meant getting a job. Problem was, there was never any that really spoke to him. I recently met up with Dave on a warm spring day in Union Square in New York, the city where he suddenly discovered his calling.

The year was 2003, and Dave was wandering the streets of Midtown Manhattan, thinking about how he didn't have a job or money or any of that other stuff that tends to be helpful when you're a grown man living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, when suddenly, as if on cue from the gods, a petty cab stopped right in his path. Petty cab, to the uninitiated, sort of a mix between a taxi cab and a horse-drawn carriage only without the glamour convenience of either, really. It's basically like a rickshaw, but instead of someone pulling a cart, they're peddling the cart behind them.

But I saw these things, and I thought that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And that's the job for me, peddling around, taking people's money. I had visions of just peddling home at the end of my shift with just money spilling out of the back of my cart, like I was a pirate or something. So Dave phoned the number on the side of the petty cab, and a man named Terry answered. He told Dave to come down to his office.

And his office ended up being in a parking garage, and it was really not so much an office. as it was, a bunch of paddy cabs just sort of clustered together. And I got to sit in a paddy cab during the interview, which was really cool. I was excited, I'd never even written in a pedicab before. So it was all happening so fast. First of all, he's like, you know, most people, they never make it past two shifts. You know, this is not for...

It was one of those things where he was trying to talk me out of it, like saying, are you sure you've got what it and I said, yeah, I was born, I was born ready, Terry. And at this point, were you doing a lot of bicycling? No, not at all. I mean, I hadn't ridden a bicycle in years. I didn't even own a bicycle. No matter, Dave saw himself 20, 30 years into the future

being king of the pettycabs. One day, Dave thought, Terry will be working for me. The next day, Dave showed up ready to hit the streets, but Terry said that first there was training, which consisted of riding around the parking garage in figure eight. The big thing is you have to remember that you have a huge cart on the back of your bike, which I had a tough time remembering, and that cart really slams into stuff if you forget that it's there.

I started running that cart into every, I hit other. cars with it. I hit like parking garage tendons with it. I had pillars, but I didn't mind the extra training that Terry put me through because I thought when I'm, you know, sleeping on a mattress stuffed with $20 bills, it seemed like it was all going to be worth it. I just couldn't wait. So once training was complete, Dave took to the street. I just thought, you know, I probably won't make it a block before someone just jumps into the back of my cart. And I went a few more blocks and a few more blocks after that. And then eventually, I was sitting on a light and someone just jumped into my cab, and

that was my first fair. It was this couple who appeared to be tourists, and I thought, this is it. Game on. But as Dave soon learned, Petty Cab peddling on the street was different than it was in a parking garage. The other petty cab drivers were unfriendly. Cab drivers seemed anxious to kill him, and the streets of Manhattan, which had always seemed pretty flat,

now felt like a urine and exhaust-scented version of the Himalayas. Plus, with actual passengers in the cart, Dave felt like he was dragging a dead rhinoceros behind him. At the end of the day, he had only made about $15, but he still wasn't ready to give up the dream. So the second day, he hit the streets again, and after not too long, a fare hopped into his cart without warning. It was a plus-sized businessman, rushing to an appointment a few blocks away.

Peddling around this giant man felt like paddling uphill for miles and miles and miles. It felt like my legs were going to snap off. My lungs were going to burst. I was fading in and out of consciousness practically. I didn't think I was going to survive. I thought I was going to have to say, look, I'm really good. concerned here, that I'm going to have an aneurysm or something, and why don't we just call it even, you know? I mean, he was, he looked at me like, you know, I think he was actually

a little concerned. Somehow, Dave eventually delivered him to his destination, and after the euphoria of having just earned 20 bucks, while not having to be pulled onto a gurney in the middle of 57th street subsided. He crashed hard. He returned the petty cab to the garage and went home. Later in the day, the phone rang. The call display read, Terry. I didn't know what to do. I thought, you know, do I tell him? I quit. And so I decided to take the low road and not even answer the phone, just let it go to voicemail. And then decided it was time to update my resume and scrolled down to the end of my work experience section, and I wrote August 8th to August 10th, 2003,

pedicab driver. I mean, it's a cliché, I guess, but I guess I learned like you really, you make money by working hard, and there's no easy way around it. At what point does ambition become greed? At what point does our desire make us, as my mother would say, too big for our britches? How do we know when we're the exact right size for our britches?

When we see a bird pulling worms from the earth, we know that bird doesn't have to ask himself whether he's being greedy or not, whether he should leave some for the other birds. He's just surviving. Us humans, on the other hand, are constantly asking ourselves the moral question of when is enough, enough. Islam nails it when it defines greed. And what it says is that a man needs just enough to allow him to stand upright. More than that is a sin. If he's got too much, he's bent over with the burden of it.

If he's got too little, he's bent over with the lack of sufficiency. And if you think about it, it's exactly what greed is. It's wanting more than it takes for a man to walk upright. This is Phyllis Tickle, who wrote a book called Greed, and in it she explores the nuances of this complex sin. Of the seven deadly sins, greed is the one that has a really positive side. Without greed, we would never get out of bed in the morning. Adam Smith, classically and very famously said, it's not for love of bread that the baker bakes, which was his way of saying that the baker bakes for the sake of money.

for the money. Or if we weren't greedy, we wouldn't store stuff, we wouldn't worry about tomorrow. We wouldn't – all the things that make life go depend to some extent upon greed. So how would you define greed? When does just desire or will slip over into greed? Almost all of the major world faiths would say that when there is not love beyond oneself, then it has slipped over into the sin. If it is an exercise in love, then it remains not a sin, but something close to a virtue or at least a survival skill. Now, that sounds really lovely.

The problem is that when you get right down to applying that nicety, always there's the taint of self-interest. We are probably greediest as parents than in any other role in our lives. I can look at myself. I'm reluctant to give away a good deal of money that I know in my heart I probably should be giving. And then I think about my children and my grandchildren. And I think, but in a way, that's theirs. And I become the victim of Mistress Greed. So is Greed just an extension of Darwin's survival of the fittest? Yeah. And, you know, Darwin comes in and begins to push human guilt somewhere. back beyond theology, back beyond private responsibility. And so much of the impetus for Darwin was that pursuit.

How come a good God allows all these awful things to happen? Why are we greedy? Why are we basically sinners? And the best way to solve that was to push the origin of greed into pure biology. We are greedy because we had to be greedy in order to survive as a species. Would you consider yourself a religious person? I would consider myself a dangerous epistemian, yes, very devout and observant Christian. So do you think that someone who believes in an afterlife is likely to be less materialistic?

Definitely, because if there's anything that radical Christianity teaches you, or that being radically persuaded by the Christian message, is that everything you own, burdens you. The less you have, the freer you are. And go thou and sell thy goods, you know, and give it to the poor, and come and follow me. Disincumber yourself is the theme. And when you disencumber yourself with things, you are able to go wherever the kingdom demands. You're able to love more freely. You have nothing to lose. You don't spend energy defending that, which you don't have. and there is enormous generosity

and it comes from being less encumbered. If you're absolutely loving your summer read and don't want the book to be over, your experience doesn't actually have to end when you finish reading. I'm Matea Roach and on my podcast bookends, I sit down with authors to get the inside scoop

behind the books you love. Like, why am Adonohue? you is so fascinated by trains, or how Taylor Jenkins-Reed feels about being a celebrity author. You can check out bookends with Mateo Roach wherever you get your podcasts. I'd always hope that one day I'd get a chance to travel. Real travel. Fanny pack full of travelers' checks, $12 sticks of Nugget at the Eiffel Tower Bon Bon Con counter, flipping through an English-Italian dictionary for how to say, I can't eat boar's testicles because I'm kosher, but I just never got around to it.

So when a travel magazine offered to send me to Hangzhou, the capital of the Zhijang province in eastern China, I really wanted to go. I was just so busy with the radio show that I didn't see how I could. But it was hard to say no to a free trip to China. I'd get to stay in fancy hotels and have my own personal tour guide. And so I wrote the editor. back saying that if I could do the trip over a long weekend, I was in. And then, to my surprise, the editor replied saying that that could be the story. 72 hours in China, a Chinese vacation for the man on the go. And so, I now find myself on a flight to China, where I will greedily suck up as much experience as I can.

7,000 years of culture in three days. Friday, 8 p.m. Penjing is the ancient art of creating miniature versions of grand natural landscapes. My tour guide is a man named Peter Chang, and he will be the Penjing artist of my trip, if you will. The man curating my limited time here. Peter is a fit man in his mid-50s, who tells me. tells me that when he was a boy growing up before the cultural revolution, all he wanted was three things, a bicycle, a wristwatch, and a sewing machine. And now I have all three, he says. I was

rewarded. Phyllis Tickle might say Peter was twice rewarded, for he's a man who has just enough to stand upright, free from the burden of greed. In the car ride from the airport, I complained to Peter, about the crick in my neck from having fallen asleep face first on my dinner tray. And so he takes me to Hu Ching Yutang, a famous pharmacy of traditional remedies. Standing before shelves of elixir's and powders, I'm faced with an age-old dilemma. Should I buy the Tibetan worms or the seagull saliva? I decide in favor of the antler essence. It's supposed to regulate the vital channel, and whose vital channel can't use a little regulating.

And who knows, it might even help with my jet lag. Friday, 10 p.m. Peter drops me off at the hotel, where I decide to treat myself to a traditional Chinese massage before bed. When I step into the hotel spa, I'm presented with an array of treatments and told that the foot massage is the most popular. I'll take the body massage, I say.

Foot massage? The masseuse asks. Yes, I say, but a foot massage for all over my body. To my thinking, more flesh equals more experience, and that, after all, is what I'm here for. Saturday, 4.30 a.m. Half awake, I'm being led up a mountain in the dark, to a Buddhist temple, where I peer into the illuminated entrance way and see about two dozen monks in yellow robes and dark brown sashes praying. I enter and stand off to the side, my hands behind my back. Without a thing to do, I inevitably end up feeling like the temple's foreman. Peterson, chant like you mean it. Rosenberg, get your back

into that bell ringing. Maybe they've got time to lollygag and meditate, but with only two days left in China, I need to get my spirit-enriched pronto. Saturday, 8 a.m. There is a collection of ten scenic spots around Hangzhou's famous freshwater West Lake, and I intend to tick them off like a grocery list. Breeze-ruffled Lotus and Chuyang Garden in summer? Too early in the season for that. lingering snow on the broken bridge in winter, too late in the season, three pools mirroring

the moon, too early in the day. Eventually, I settle on riding around on my rented bicycle as fast as I can, taking great delight in scaring off school children with my bell, and all the while hungrily snorting snootfuls of good, fresh mountain air. Saturday, 12 p.m. The Empress's Kitchen for lunch. Peter and I eat something called beggar's chicken, which is a hen wrapped in lotus leaves and cooked in a bag for four hours. Traditionally, the chicken is wrapped in mud

and cracked open with a hammer, but fortunately we are not being that traditional. Peter asks if I'd like a beer, and I say sure. Cold or warm, he asks. I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding the question, but when he sees my look of confusion, he explains that he can never understand why Westerners would drink a cold beverage on a cold day.

So let's have it warm, I say. Lord knows, I don't want to look like a tourist. A beer mixed with jet lag can turn listening to a foreign language into a kind of inkblot test. Though Peter is probably chatting with the waiter about the food, to my ears, the phonemes stringed together to form phrases like hearty-party rabbit stew, peanut wonder wheel, and, curiously, Goldstein stinks. At home in Canada, I spend most of my time feeling like a fool, but in China, the feeling is

justified. It's been a relief to admit I don't understand anything. The language, the customs, how to operate a toilet. Evidently, it's accomplished with the pulling of a chain. Saturday, 2 p.m. I'm at Meiji A. Wu, an historic tea farm hidden away in a secluded valley. The farm has a 600-year history of producing some of China's most famous green tea. I ask Peter if the leaves are plucked fresh off the branches and dumped directly into the teapot, and owe how he laughs and laughs. And so I laugh, too.

though I'm not exactly sure why, mostly, I guess, to be convivial. It turns out that this tea is sorted and heated by hand and that the tea have been drinking back home is essentially garbage water and an international laughing stock. Each leaf must be as flat as a sparrow's tongue, Peter says. I've never seen a sparrow's tongue, but I take his word for it that sparrows do have tongues and that they are indeed flat. I knock back a cup in two quick gulps as time is of the essence, for I've a Chinese opera to catch.

Tasty, I slur from out the side of my scalded mouth. Sunday, 11 a.m. It's my last morning in China. The waitress at Hangzhou House doesn't speak English. But by pointing to the menu and then to my ma, I attempt to sign the words, Put whatever in my mouth. When the waitress brings me my food,

I realized that I've unwittingly ordered dinner for two. I tried to savor as much as I can, and with each insatiate slurp of kanji, I am bitterly aware that this is my last chance to taste it in its motherland. Could there ever be a more comforting dish than kanji? Eating it is like sinking your face into the perfumed cushion of someone you love.

Sunday, 3 p.m. The bullet train to the Shanghai airport hit speeds of up to 437 kilometers an hour. And as we jet along, I try hard to take in the last bits of China through the train's window. Trees and roads whizz by so quickly I can't take in very much at all.

everything is a blur and so instead I turn my gaze away from the window towards a couple in their 70s sitting opposite me the woman pulls out a thermos of tea and as she pours steam rises from small

plastic cups after patiently waiting for it to cool the man takes a small sip and then another and then slowly he leans back like he's got all the time in the world

Hello. I'm very excited. I couldn't be more excited. Why are you so excited? I read about the CBC's transition to commercial radio. That's good news to you? This is the big break I've been talking about for years that you've been fighting. Are you aware that it's only CBC Radio 2 that's considering this option?

The point is they've gone commercial. Once you start this, it's like capitalism in China. You can't stop it. The wall is coming down, and it's me and you dancing on the top with sledgehammers, knocking out the bricks, going, let the money flow north. I got you some sponsors. Gregor, there's no sponsorship on CBC Radio 1. One, two. What do you think happens after they figure out that they're pumping in $100 billion a year on CBC2?

What do you think happens to CBC 1? You show your bosses that you have some moxie. You say, I'm out in front of this. You guys are opening the floodgates? I have a river behind me, a river of product placement deals. product placement on the radio. This is not I Love Lucy where you take a break and talk about Ovalteen. It's going to be so seamless you're not even going to feel it.

You'll do your monologue like Monday. Couldn't catch a cab. Mabes because I had on brown shoes and a black belt that I purchased that Canadian tire. You see how I worked that in? Did you even notice it? Completely seamless. I'm talking about reach and frequency, Johnny. Who's going to be the next face of Tim Horton's?

Imagine you woke up tomorrow next to a box of Tim Horton. Donuts for free. You didn't pay for them. So what if you had to change your name to Timothy Horton? Nothing Goldstein's a stupid name. You're listening to Wiretap with Timothy Horton. They can make some new friends and be like, hi, I'm Timothy. Care for some free donuts and delicious coffee?

Yeah. They could bring your show some cachet. And by cash, I mean cash, eh? Look, Gregor, I don't even like joking about this stuff. I mean, it makes me very uncomfortable. Okay, let me make you comfortable because my job is to make your job easier. Oh, yeah. I got one option for you that's so unobtrusive, you're not even going to feel it.

You know how they do the crawl on CNN and Fox News and all that stuff? The bottom of the screen, you mean, with the news? Yeah, exactly. Just quietly in the background in a subtle, very classy way. You have some ads running. Watch. I'll show you how it works. Go ahead. Give me some of your monologue.

I really don't like this. Just do it. Do your stupid monologue. Monday. I'm taking my mother to the doctor's appointment. I hope you are. It's the Nike Athletic Department 4% polyester and its machine washable. That is ridiculous.

Your monologue? Your advertisement crawl. You mean you noticed it? Yes, I noticed it. Johnny, this is a meritocracy. If you earn people's attention, they're going to pay attention to you. If they want to watch the ads instead of the show, then you've got to step up your game, blah, blah, blah. Gregor, that really, really not.

Too intrusive, I've got an easier one. Here, watch. Do your monologue again. I'll show you how we do it. I don't know why I'm going. Okay. Monday. I'm taking my mother to her doctor.

of pain. Looking for a dermatologist? Check out plaquesnar associates. They'll snip your bookkeys and tuck your fat gobs all while you wait. Go ahead, continue. When was the last time you had your cholesterol check? She asks. With the bestor, I've never felt better. It keeps my cholesterol in check and allows me to live the healthy, active lifestyle I want to live. Keep on. A couple years ago, I say, I hope you're not eating too much McDonald's. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Johnny. Hold it right there. You can't talk about it. McDonald's are you out of your mind why because first of all it's a conflict of interest if you're gonna have a title sponsor from Tim Hortons and second of all if you want to have MC Hammer as a guest and he's got some sponsorship for his tour McDonald's is not gonna let him on the show and also instead of your mom's doctor's appointment it would be better or more advantageous if you made it something like we were on the way to see a movie it's heard a lot of good critical buzz on Picklesworth proper the new romantic comedy starring Miss

Picklesworth you told me you stopped representing that celebrity pig no we're still in touch. Okay. Look, I'm putting my foot down with this. People tell you sound adenoidal. Come in for a free adenoid consultation today. Please, please stop doing that. Why don't people respect you? Could it be because of the shoes you wear? Really? Can't sleep at night? Hate yourself? Miserable all day long? Crank you to deal with? Get a new mattress. On Wiretab today, you heard Gregor Ehrlich and Phyllis Tickle, whose book Embracing Emergence Christianity is due out in June. You also heard Dave Hill telling a version of his

Petty Cab story from his book, Tasteful Nudes, which is due out May 22nd, but can be pre-ordered now. Wiretap is produced by Mirabirtwin-Tonic, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.com.