As It Happens

00:00 If you're listening to this, I already know you have great taste in podcasts. But maybe, if you're like me, you still wonder if you're missing out on the best stuff. That's where the Sounds Good newsletter can help you out. Every other Thursday, the audiophiles at CBC Podcasts highlight one must-hear show and lots of other new and noteworthy titles. They do conversation starters, they do hidden gems, and they also tell you about the stuff they love that they didn't make. Go to cbc.ca slash soundsgood to subscribe. 00:31 This is a CBC Podcast. 00:34 Hello, I'm Rebecca Zanbergen, sitting in for Neil Cooksall. Good evening, I'm Talia Schlanger, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is As It Happens. 00:50 Tonight, power imbalance. As UN experts condemn new US sanctions on Cuba, we reach a woman in the countryside who tells us the ongoing blockade has made an already unreliable power system virtually untenable. 01:04 Adding fuel to the fire. People in Spokane, Washington had already been grappling with devastating wildfires. And now police say a man has admitted to lighting one of those fires intentionally. 01:17 All bets are on. Prediction market site Kalshi plans to let people place bets on the outcomes of some late-stage clinical trials. A father whose young son is undergoing cancer treatment calls that a dangerous and outrageous misstep. 01:32 And look before you sleep. A television anchor in Memphis, Tennessee, was so exhausted from mom duties that she had a nap live on air. But viewers don't appear to mind her sleeping on the job. As it happens, the Friday edition, radio that brings you all the latest snooze. 02:02 Cuba's power grid is failing, and a group of U.N. experts say U.S. sanctions are largely to blame. It's been six months since the Trump administration imposed an oil blockade on the Caribbean nation. Its grid had already been unstable for decades, but now Cubans are lucky if they have more than a couple of hours of electricity at a time. And just yesterday, the country experienced a nationwide blackout in the midst of a heat wave. Annabelle Cantarero owns and runs Finca Tungasuca, a farm in Caimito, Cuba, a town about 35 kilometers southwest of Havana. 02:39 That's where we reached her. 02:42 Annabelle, how many hours a day do you actually have power right now? 02:47 Well, at the moment, around 5 to 10. That depends. 02:53 You never know. 02:55 How are you caring for your family, cooking meals under those circumstances? 03:01 So after a couple of years here in this part of the island in the west side, we have experienced long blackouts more or less since after the pandemic, since 2021. 03:16 So basically, we kind of had time to prepare a little bit for what's happening now in Havana, which is, you know, in the past months, it's been aggravating. 03:31 And basically many people, especially here in the countryside, had switched totally into charcoal or wood. 03:40 So, of course, it's very different from the main town, Caimito or Havana, because we have backyards, we have farms or patios. But, of course, since this year started, it's been totally, totally chaos because even the charcoal prices has increased so much. 04:01 So basically, it's totally a disaster because if it rains, you don't have other choice if there is no electricity. You need to cook in charcoal. 04:13 What about running water? Do you have running water? 04:17 They pump water like once a week. But for example, last month, we had no water for more than four months because, of course, everything is like a chain, right? With no electricity, there is no pumping because, of course, the pumps are electric or diesel. And, of course, since the beginning of the years, the government didn't have diesel to run the generators or the pumps for the water wells. 04:45 And also with the instability of the electric grid, many, many electric items are broken now, which was what happened last month. with our water pump. But of course, now it's like the second or the plan B and the plan C are not working anymore. 05:05 Yeah, I know we're seeing some of that play out in Havana where people are struggling to have running water and electricity and you have family there. What have you been hearing from them? How are they coping? 05:15 Well, exactly. The coping in the past with this situation with the electricity has become a Very difficult because normally in Havana, well, maybe you wouldn't have in your neighborhood every day pumping of water. And, well, people figured it out. 05:33 They put a tank, a water tank, or even if they had cistern in their buildings because they couldn't pump water to the buildings in the high floors. But the problem is, like, for example, in the case of my father-in-law, is that there is no water getting into the system for several weeks. So, of course, they're running out of water. And many people today in Havana in the past weeks, it's like the situation has deteriorating very quickly, I will say, because they rely sometimes in rainwater. 06:08 And people is really literally praying for it because it's the way they will have at least water to clean their houses, water to They might have to buy or find other sources for drinking water, which is becoming very expensive. Not expensive, basically... unaffordable for many families. 06:27 You know, Cuba has largely relied on tourism over the years, and I know right now we've seen hotel chains pull out of Cuba. It's hard to get a flight to Cuba right now. In fact, the Canadian government suggests non-essential travel should be avoided to Cuba. So you are a farm that operates largely on tourism, and you rely on tourism, I understand. So what does that mean for your business? 06:50 Yes, thank you for asking. 06:53 One of our main activities here in the farm is ecotourism. The first two months were still, despite the situation, of course, where kind of tourism was running. We even had volunteers come in on their own from Europe, from different other countries, even South America. But the worst part came, arrived on March, when really there was a total stop. 07:19 from foreign tourism. And we rapidly found ways to manage to have other sources of income. As a farm, we have already a large production of fruit plants, but of course it was so difficult to bring our products out of the farm to the markets or to our clients. because of fuel prices and basically that there was none also. 07:43 You know, Annabelle, I have to ask, because just this week, UN experts condemned this latest round of sanctions from the U.S., calling it an attempt to force change on a, quote, a sovereign state through threats and coercion, said the international community must act to prevent a, quote, silent Gaza in Cuba. Do you feel like the international community is paying attention to what's going on right now in your country? 08:09 Honestly, in the past months, a lot of people feel like the response is very slow. Very slow. There is a lot of misinformation about what can you do, how you can help. A lot of people is afraid of how to help Cuba. But... Everything is changing so quickly. Everything is happening so fast that a lot of people kind of feel abandoned. Especially, I won't say only in Havana, because of course, Havana is a special situation. It's the main city. 08:40 It makes sense. But in the countryside, it's been like this, especially in the eastern side of the Havana. And people kind of have been yelling at the world that, okay, we have been in this very bad situation for more than before... the year started. So yes, it's like, there is no other way you can look away. I mean, when you walk around Havana, the disaster hits you in the in just is just in front of your eyes, like, we cannot look away. 09:12 Are you hopeful there's a way out? 09:15 Well, the The problem these days, the conversations that we are having with Cuban friends, Cuban colleagues and everyone is that it doesn't look like very helpful because there is so much uncertainty. It's like people kind of feel also betrayed by the government. It's the first time I really see people in general, especially here in the countryside, the elderly, totally hopeless. 09:44 Annabelle Cantarero, I appreciate your time. Thank you for speaking with us today. 09:48 Thanks to you. 09:50 Annabelle Cantarero owns and runs Finca Tungasuca, a farm in Camito, Cuba. That's where we reached her. 10:08 Hurricanes, wildfires, and now clinical trials. Kalshi, the prediction market website, recently launched a pilot program it says will allow people to bet on whether late-stage clinical trials will be successful. That comes after the platform, alongside its rival Polymarket, began allowing wagers on which medications the U.S. Food and Drug Administration might approve. Right now, the pilot program does not include clinical trials that exclusively enroll children, but Joshua Pedersen fears someday it could. 10:44 His 12-year-old son is currently going through a novel treatment for cancer. We reached Mr. Pedersen in Watertown, Massachusetts. 10:53 Joshua, how would you feel if people were betting on your son's clinical trial? 11:00 It would be incredibly disheartening. 11:04 My son's in the fight of his life right now, and we're all feeling, I mean, he's feeling a remarkable amount of strain, and just the difficulties involved in that are already pretty substantial. And then just to imagine somehow that a person might be out there betting against us for money is, I don't know, it's unconscionable to me. 11:25 And so far, just so we're clear, that's not happening yet with your son's particular treatment, right? Yeah. 11:31 That is correct. 11:32 Okay. 11:33 How concerned are you that that could be something that you'll see in the future? 11:38 I take the Kalshi CEO at his word. He said in interviews that he wants to make every single difference of opinion wagerable. So they seem to be expanding pretty rapidly. So I mean, I, hey, who knows, right? 11:53 But it seems a very plausible thing. This is a pilot program that they're trying right now. And that implies to me that they would like to expand it in the future. 12:00 You know, Kelsey has also, its CEO, has been very vocal about the reasons why he thinks these markets are a good thing. One is that you get past the spin, in particular of this case, of trial sponsors, maybe letting the public make informed decision based on those sorts of opinions. What do you make of that argument? 12:22 I certainly understand that drug trials are big political, financially incentivized things already. Some of them are. But for me, and hey, I'm not an expert. I'm just a dad. 12:34 The alternative that he's presenting doesn't strike me as particularly convincing. The number of people who have an educated opinion on whether or not his trial will succeed or fail would probably fit in a very small room. So the idea that adding tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of uninitiated bettors to that, adding their opinions in would somehow give us better information strikes me as ludicrous. 12:58 So there's no way you would have turned to see what the polls were showing if that existed when your son was set to be enrolled in one of these clinical trials? 13:07 Oh my gosh, no. 13:08 There are doctors, critics who are concerned about what this could do to undermine the drug development process and the results, you know, may be compromised is a suggestion here. What is, I know you're not a doctor and you say you're just a dad, but what is your sense of the risks that we take if we allow betting on these clinical trials? 13:28 the only analogy I can think of is that professional sports leagues tried to keep betting out for so long because they knew that it was possible that the proliferation of sports betting would cause players to throw games, right? 13:41 And that has happened. You've seen that as sports betting has become more ubiquitous. You've seen, you know, games get thrown more often or insiders use insider information to bet on games. And so, It strikes me, that's the analogy I'm working with. And if that happens in a Mets-Phillies game, that's one thing. But if there is a perverse incentive for somebody within a trial to change the results of that trial for some sort of financial incentive, I don't know how likely that is. But if it's likely at all, that strikes me as a really good reason not to do this. 14:14 Because these drug companies, the ones who were hosting these trials, are often looking for funding to continue too, right? 14:21 I mean, as I understand it, And certainly in the United States, the search for funding is more and more difficult as time goes on. 14:28 Tell me a little bit about your son. We haven't talked about the guy at the center of your concern here. Tell us about him. 14:35 Yeah, absolutely. 14:38 My son, he's 12 years old. He's in the middle of middle school. 14:42 He's the sweetest kid I've ever met, although you might not know it because he's also a pretty reserved guy. It takes him a while to trust people and to warm up to them, but once they do, he's just the most polite, kind, sensitive person. He loves to draw. He's a budding artist. He loves Transformers. He builds Legos until the sun goes down. 15:05 He's the best. 15:06 He beat cancer once already, right? He was declared cancer-free and it came back. 15:11 Yeah, it did. 15:13 How is he doing? What's his day-to-day like right now? 15:17 It's okay. He's The trial he's on right now has him in the clinic about five days out of every three weeks. Those five days are pretty hard. Once he's outside of those five days, he's living a relatively normal life. And for that, we're extremely thankful. So, you know, we've been able to take some trips this summer and that's good. 15:37 What are your own doctors and the researchers who are part of this clinical trial telling you about the likelihood that it will be good and it will work for your son? 15:48 Oh, I mean, I think they have to be very... We have a lot of hope, but we're aware that trials are trials for a reason, and a lot of them don't work. So we're hoping and praying that ours does. I think our doctors are pretty realistic about the chances of 16:11 And why are you so upset about the potential of people betting on a clinical trial like your sons, that you're willing to talk to me about it, you're writing op-eds about it, like you want people to know that this is not the route society should go? 16:24 I've been following with lots of other people the rise of betting and the rise of these prediction markets. I've just kind of been troubled myself about them, just but in a theoretical way up until now. And, you know, I mean, I guess it's a sad thing that when something hits home, that that's when it spurs you to action. But that's what happened for me. So I was kind of theoretically opposed to this type of thing. And then it became very, very personal for me and my family. I don't know. I guess I'm speaking for people who who are directly affected by this right now, because there are some. 16:55 So and if they're feeling anything like I'm feeling, if I can lend my voice to their cause, that seems like a good thing. 17:01 And if you had the ear of the CEO of Kelsey, what would you say? 17:07 Oh, my. I mean, certainly shut down betting on drug trials and clinical trials. That seems just... I certainly have tried to understand the theory behind what they're doing, why they think they're doing. Man, I don't know why he's going here right now. 17:23 You know, we're thinking about your son and thinking about you. Thank you so much for joining us. 17:28 Thanks for giving me the opportunity. I appreciate it. 17:31 Joshua Pedersen's 12-year-old son is participating in a cancer clinical trial. He's in Watertown, Massachusetts. 17:51 Finishing high school is a time of excitement and nostalgia, the end of one era and the start of another. And perhaps the best way to commemorate that special moment is to stick a bunch of stuff in a Tupperware container and bury it. That's also how the graduating students at the École Sir John Franklin High School in Yellowknife felt back in 2001. Adrienne Cartwright was one of them. And 25 years later, she's part of an effort to retrieve said time capsule. 18:24 But there's one problem. 18:26 She can't find it. We reached Ms. Cartwright in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. 18:32 Adrienne, what do you mean you can't find it? 18:36 We have a mysterious case of a missing class time capsule. 18:41 So the time capsule supposedly buried in the floor of Sir John Franklin High School in Yellowknife is not in the location that it's supposed to be. 18:53 There was a special spot for it too, right? 18:56 Yes. While we were all in high school, the building underwent a pretty significant renovation. 19:04 As part of that, there was a little committee from our cohort who had input on how they wanted the building to look and be, and they designed a little spot to put a time capsule into to commemorate being the first class to graduate from this brand new school. So we knew where it was supposed to be. And then when we went to check the spot, it was empty. 19:33 This is all very suspicious, isn't it? 19:36 Well, it's, yeah, a little. 19:39 It should be there. I mean, what was the reaction? I know you weren't the first to discover that it was missing, but what was the principal's reaction when he realized it was gone? Yeah. 19:48 So I had reached out to Peter Curran, the vice principal at Sir John, because as the former grad class president, I was informed by some fellow alumni that it was my job to oversee getting this thing open and organizing an event. So I contacted Peter. He said, can we just take a peek just to make sure before we plan anything? I said, yeah, that's a good idea. 20:12 A couple weeks later, I get an email with a photo and it's just this empty space. But he's like, I think we need to keep looking for this. 20:22 And how big is it and what's inside? 20:25 It's sort of your average sized plastic storage bin, the type of thing you'd throw into a closet. We know it contains some letters from some of the students from our grad class. 20:38 Pretty sure there's a mixtape or two in there, maybe some photos or videos. I honestly can't remember what I put in there, which is why I'm really hoping to find it. I'm curious to see what 17-year-old me had thought would be important in 25 years. 20:55 Yeah, and so you've been recruited to try to find it back now, right? Now, you were already supposed to organize the event, but now they're like, okay, this is on you. Find it? 21:05 Apparently, yes. And I mean, I'm willingly taking it on. It's been a fun process. You know, I've been able to connect with former teachers, former staff, and a lot of classmates. Yeah. Many of whom have their own theories about what might have happened to it. It's been a lot of fun. 21:22 Oh, theories. What are the theories? 21:25 Everything from, you know, I got a very cryptic message from a former grad from the rival high school swearing up and down that they had nothing to do with it. To, you know, whispers that, you know, a member of our grad class who's now a federal cabinet minister maybe knows something and doesn't doesn't want it to, you know, wants it to stay buried. Who is that? Who? 21:53 That would be the Honorable Rebecca Alte was a class of 2001. 21:57 Okay, you should take it all the way up the chain and find out if she knows. 22:03 We've been in touch. You have? Excellent. 22:07 Are you just going through your yearbook and contacting anyone you still have contact with? Pretty much. 22:12 I mean, and things like social media make connecting with people a lot easier now. You know, I've had so many people getting in touch with me who I haven't spoken to in years, you know, saying, oh, oh, I hope you find it. Or have you talked to this person? 22:26 And what was the last sighting? 22:29 The last confirmed sighting we have was one of the school secretaries, and he remembers exactly where he saw it, in a little room off of the main office. People remember putting things in, but nobody remembers it actually being placed. 22:46 I honestly suspect it might just be hiding in a cupboard somewhere. One of the other admins also mentioned that because of the renovations, there are tons of little spots, little tunnels and things that it could be placed in. 23:01 And do you have the green light to start ripping up floorboards wherever you think it might be? 23:07 Well, when I was talking to the vice principal, he seemed pretty enthusiastic about a full-on treasure hunt. So who knows what state the floors will be in when the kids go back to school in September. I did hear from a couple of the exchange students who said they have their own time capsule that they allegedly put under a different floor. We're following up on that lead, too. 23:30 You're a true detective here at this point. 23:33 If all else fails, I don't know. I think we would just have an event anyway. It might just be fun to get together and reconnect and go over all our theories about where it might be hiding. 23:43 But what is on the mixtape? What songs do you think would be there? And if you're having a dance, what do you play? 23:50 Oh, my goodness. 23:51 I mean, the late 90s were pretty angsty. 23:54 Yeah. 23:55 They were, yeah. 23:56 All that Y2K dread that we were all, you know, feeling. 23:59 So who knows? Well, the best of luck. Keep sleuthing. Adrienne, thank you for chatting. Thank you. 24:07 Adrienne Cartwright is looking for the time capsule her graduating class made in 2001. We reached her in Yellowknife. 24:29 We're going to take a short break now. When we return, sticking with it. 150 years ago, Charles Darwin had a hunch that one particularly sticky plant he'd studied was actually carnivorous. For years, that theory went unconfirmed. Until now. Stay tuned. I'm Talia Schlanger. 24:48 And I'm Rebecca Zandbergen. 25:04 Okay, so there are millions of podcasts, and maybe you're cool to stick with the ones you already know you like. But if you're just a little paranoid about missing out on the best new stuff, we can help. 25:18 Every other Thursday, the Sounds Good newsletter will bring you one must-hear show from CBC Podcasts. And because we're true audio nerds, we'll also tell you about shows that we love that we didn't make. Go to cbc.ca slash soundsgood to subscribe. 25:36 The city of Spokane, Washington and its surroundings are reeling in the face of wildfires and in the face of new information about how those fires may have started. Three blazes have forced some 67,000 people to evacuate and burned down over 700 buildings so far. And now police say the man they arrested in connection with the Old Trails fire, the most destructive one, has confessed to starting it on purpose. 26:07 Matthew Kincannon is a resident of Spokane whose home burned down in the Old Trails fire. He's also a freelance journalist for the media outlet Faves News. 26:18 We reached him in Spokane. 26:20 Matthew, you know police say this man confessed that he started this fire deliberately. How do you even begin to process that information? 26:30 Yeah, so I've been following that, too. And with this, like when I first found out about him, I felt anger and I expressed it in my own way. But I just tried to make sure that I did not let that pain dominate my heart or let my anger distract me from all the good and all the love I've been receiving and seeing these last several days. 26:58 And there will come a time where I will forgive him and not let this pain weigh so heavily on me. 27:05 And for him, I hope he one day finds the light and feels remorse and looks for forgiveness. 27:14 I want to go back to when this began for you. When did you realize that you had to flee your own home? 27:21 I got an instinct to start preparing when I saw the fire jump the river, and that's when I started packing. 27:30 I knew I had to rush to get out of there when I saw billowing smoke coming from behind my neighbor's house across the street. 27:37 It went from just being a cloud to just knowing that the fires were right there. 27:43 I grabbed whatever I could left. And initially when I was heading out, I made a turn towards to head south west. 27:53 But there was a huge line of cars, and I knew that was not the right way to go because I literally saw flames on the sidewalk. I just made a split decision to turn around and head straight to my parents' house that was five minutes up northeast on Indian Trail area. Initially, they weren't under evacuation, but within the time that I got there, they were then put under evacuation order. 28:20 And we all packed what we could and went up north towards Deer Park to go be with my uncle. 28:28 I was terrified. I was shaking. I wasn't exactly sure what to do. 28:34 And I just thought, if I stay here going down this one street, I don't know if my car is going to survive. 28:43 I just thought, I just need to get away from the flames. So I turned around to go be with my family. And I was also just praying that the fire would not spread to my neighborhood and that maybe it just stops where it was at. 28:58 I think that within 30 minutes to an hour of me leaving my home, it had already caught on fire. 29:06 And as me and my family were all rushing to pack, we were just praying that this would just be a thing that only lasts for the evening. We'd be back at home by midnight and everything. 29:19 But when the evac notices did not change and the flames just grew, we just realized the gravity of the situation. 29:29 And when did you learn that your home had been destroyed? 29:33 It was Sunday at 2 a.m. I was just struggling to sleep, so I went through Facebook to look for any updates of what was going on. 29:44 I saw a video of somebody driving down in the direction I initially went. 29:49 On the right side of where my neighborhood was, I saw everything was gone. 29:56 When I showed it to my dad, he initially said, well, we don't know if that's your neighborhood. We can go out and go check that right now. 30:03 We drove down to my neighborhood and sure enough, the place that I saw that was gone in the video was my neighborhood. 30:16 We actually also could not find where my house used to be. 30:20 The only thing we saw that told us where my driveway was was a small green utility box that was out in front. 30:29 Knowing that your neighborhood has forever changed, what was that like for you driving down that road? 30:35 It was surreal. It was devastating. And it was just complete shock. 30:42 I got to know my neighbors, one neighbor that lived down the street, her daughters in Girl Scouts, and she would come by to see if I wanted to buy cookies. 30:53 Just across the street from me, A family had just moved in a couple months ago. They were wonderful. We greeted them. We had a block party to just get to know everybody, and my next-door neighbor would bring baklava to me during Christmas and other goodies. 31:11 Now I realize I'm not going to be able to do that with them again. It just broke my heart. We were a community, and now that's changed forever. 31:22 It does sound, though, as though you have a community that is still supportive of one another. You said you have been feeling so much love in these moments. Tell me a little bit about that. 31:33 Yeah. So that all started when my editor at Faves News, she asked if she could start a GoFundMe for me. 31:41 Next thing I know, there is this flood of donations for it, and I'm seeing so many names of friends, people I knew in high school, college friends, people I've interviewed over the years, citizens of the indigenous community. 31:57 And these were not small amounts either. There are people that gave $200, $100. Some people even specifically sent me $10 to rebuild my DVD collection because I owned 1,100 films. To know that people were reaching out to help me and help me rebuild my life, whether it was just through money or through love or prayers or offering to take me out for a meal or offer a spare room they had to me. 32:28 It floored me. 32:30 Everything that you've learned about this fire, what we've learned this week from police about it being deliberately set, allegedly, what does justice look like for you? 32:42 Justice to me looks like setting a plan to make sure that, one, we learn what caused this. We address pyromania. We follow the leadership of the Indigenous tribes of how to care for the land and protect it. 32:58 And just see, like, what we can do to ensure that in the coming years and for future generations that live in Spokane, that they do not have to go through this tragedy either. 33:10 No one should have to see the rubble of their home at midnight. 33:15 Thank you for speaking with us today. And our thoughts are with you as well. Thank you. 33:20 Of course. Thank you. I hope you have a great day and you take care. 33:23 You too. 33:25 Matthew Kincannon is a resident of Spokane, Washington, whose home burned down in the Old Trails fire. We reached him in Spokane. 33:47 Landing a plane in Antarctica in midwinter is no easy feat. But Louise Robertson did what she had to do. She's a pilot with Sky Traders, an Australian airline that specializes in flights to Antarctica. And recently, she and her colleagues were called upon to evacuate an American expeditioner experiencing a medical emergency there. That's a stressful situation in any condition. But as Ms. Robertson told the BBC, these were some of the harshest she's ever encountered. 34:22 The Antarctic conditions... 34:25 Probably the most inhospitable for aircraft or people or operations in the world. Not only cold and dark conditions, but strong winds and weather conditions were very likely. So we had to collaborate with the forecasters to make sure that we were getting the best possible weather window and make sure that also the runway would be available after a large snowstorm that occurred the day before we were due to go down there. And then for the actual operation and arrival, we were battling with the minus 40 plus degree temperatures, which meant there are a lot of calculations and corrections for our heights and altitudes for our approach. 35:09 Why does the extreme cold affect your flying in such an extreme way? 35:14 There's limitations on the minimum temperature for the aircraft to do with the fuel temperatures and operating temperatures. And then because the air is so cold, it's so dense, the aircraft is then actually flying at a lower altitude than what we would expect it to be. The aircraft may be aiming for, say, 3,000 feet, but in reality it's more like 2,500 feet. So we apply the correct temperature correction to make sure that we're actually at 3,000 feet. 35:45 And I guess, I mean, the whole time you must be having to balance, is this flight feasible? Is it getting to the point where it actually may be dangerous for us to embark against the fact that you're trying to respond to a medical emergency? 36:00 Yeah, we have a very strict set of guidelines that we follow as a company that we've set up over the many years that we've been operating to Antarctica. If the weather approaches any of those limitations, then we will not continue the flight and we'll turn around and go back to the mainland. 36:17 Tell me about the people who had to prepare the runway, because I guess the conditions on ground must have been absolutely miserable. 36:26 Yeah, they did a phenomenal job. They're the crew at McMurdo Station that are there for the winter. It's a compacted snow runway, so it's a three kilometre long runway surface that they groom to give not only a flat surface, but also it has to have a certain amount of friction so it can't be ultra smooth because otherwise it's too slippery for our aircraft to land on and break. So there was a snowstorm on the day before we went down and they had to get their groomers out and go and do about six hours of work to make sure the runway was operational for our arrival, which at minus 40 plus degrees, strong winds and snow showers was a fairly incredible feat for them to complete in that time frame. 37:12 And the other pilots, this is your husband. 37:14 My husband was in the cockpit with me when we did the landing. It's a small team at Sky Traders, so we do all tend to fly together fairly regularly. And we're both captains with the airline, so quite often we can sit in either seat and fly together. 37:28 And how's your patient doing? Do you know? 37:30 We're not up to date, except that we've heard he's recovering well. 37:34 Louise Robertson is a pilot with the Australian airline Sky Traders. She was speaking to the BBC's Tim Franks. 37:54 If you're out wandering around the alpine regions of southwestern China, you may come upon the Saxifraga candelabrum. Like many plants, it's intriguing to look at, whimsical and delicate even. But if you look long enough, you'll see signs of a tiny massacre. 150 years ago, renowned naturalist Charles Darwin did exactly that and suspected something sinister was afoot. And now, scientists from China and the United States have proven Mr. Darwin's theory. 38:29 The plant is carnivorous. Doug Soltis is a botanist and co-author on the new study. We reached him in Tucson, Arizona. 38:40 Doug, you proved Charles Darwin right. How do you think you'd react to your study? 38:45 Well, I hope he'd be really excited and wanted to give us a big high five or two thumbs up, you know, way up, something like that. Yeah. It's really an honor to be involved in a study that really has something to do with Darwin like that and confirms something that he thought of so long ago. So I'm imagining him smiling right now. 39:05 Yeah. Describe these plants for us and what Darwin noticed about them. 39:11 Yeah, so that's a great question. They're smallish plants, so we're talking about things that are generally less than a foot tall. They have a cluster of leaves at the base, down at the base near the ground, and then stems when they flower. And yeah, those leaves and also the stem are covered with these very short millimeter or two hairs, and they have a real sticky tip. Each one of those hairs, a sticky tip at the end of each hair. And that is what fascinated Darwin. 39:45 Many members of the same plant family have those. And Darwin was really focused on a few members of this genus, Saxifica, that he thought might actually be carnivorous. 39:56 Right, because he did notice what about these plants? 39:59 Well, if you notice these plants and some of their relatives in the field, they are often covered with insects. You can just see small insects, very small, are just stuck to these hairs. They hit the... 40:15 The substance that's secreted by these hairs is very sticky, kind of sugary. And yeah, so you'll just see insects plastered to the leaves and stems of these plants. And so it just makes you wonder, what are they doing with all those insects stuck to the bodies of these plants? 40:33 And so what were you able to prove that Darwin could not? 40:38 Well, now we have abilities to do things that, of course, you couldn't do at that time. And so one of the key things that you have to show if you're going to document that a plant is a carnivore or carnivorous is that they can actually, okay, it's one thing to have an insect stuck to you, but can you actually then digest that insect? And I should just really stress that what these carnivorous plants are doing is they're after nitrates. They occur in very poor soils, nitrogen-poor soils, and so they want nitrogen. 41:12 They're nitrogen-sarved. They can photosynthesize. They're not eating for the same reason that we are. They don't need carbon. They're able to make that, but they really need nitrogen. And so that's what they're trying to extract from these insects. 41:27 And then how did you prove that that's what these plants were doing? 41:30 Yeah, so the first thing you do, and of course you notice this, as Darwin did, in the field that they are covered with these insects, but then you can do a lot now in the laboratory. You have to show that materials inside the insect are then moved into the plant and then distributed throughout the plant. plant body. And you can do that today with various types of substances that can be used as almost like a dye or a marker. You can have an insect eat a radioactively labeled substance, very small, tiny, tiny amounts. 42:07 It would be done inside, not in the field. And then you can actually, much as you would do in medicine, trace where those materials are flowing throughout the plant or even are they going into the plant? And in this case, they definitely went into the plant and a lot of them were actually concentrated up near the flowers. So they were moving through the plant body. So that was pretty exciting to see. And that's a key step in showing that something is a carnivorous plant. 42:34 I assume it's not only one kind of bug that's getting trapped on this plant, but are they only consuming one kind of bug? 42:41 That's a great question. So I should just fall back a little bit. When you test this in the lab, what people usually use are fruit flies because they're readily available. You can manipulate them. But in nature... 42:54 You can actually document, working with people who study insects, what the typical prey items are. These are not really big. The little hairs that have these really sugary tips on them are not very large because people are often wondering, well, okay, what about pollinators? They still need pollinators. So they trap a smaller type of insect and then larger insects that are the pollinators are not really affected by these hairs. they're big enough that they are not going to be trapped or captured. 43:28 And so the plant in that way is able, in a way, is sort of able to partition between what it wants to trap and what it wants to have pollinated. 43:40 You know, what's interesting is Charles Darwin wrote to a friend that he cared more about sundews, similar to these plants, than, quote, the origin of all the species in the world, unquote. And I understand you have been studying these particular plants for four decades. So I would argue you sound a little like Darwin in your obsession. Yeah. 43:59 Oh my, what a compliment to be placed anywhere near Darwin. But I think as a botanist, many of us are just fascinated with certain plant groups and I've long been fascinated with this entire family. But thank you. It's very exciting. And I like that statement from Darwin because it shows a couple of things. You know, he's really a plant lover, but it also shows, you know, people are just really fascinated by carnivorous plants. It's amazing to think of, you know, plants kind of turning the tables that, you know, now they're the carnivores. 44:37 And I think people have always found that just kind of an amazing thought. 44:42 So you've been able to confirm this carnivorous species. It's the first time in the saxophraga family that it's confirmed that it's carnivorous. So will he be looking to prove this in others? 44:52 As we discussed, you know, there's a little bit of work involved in documenting this characteristic. 44:59 And there are lots of plants that have hairs on them and a lot of plants that have some sort of what we might call a sticky hair. So I think there are more of them out there and hopefully it'll be a stimulus to get other people to look and carry out the necessary experiments to test these kinds of situations. But yes, there are a number of them that I have wondered for a long, long time. What are they doing with all those insects on them? So hopefully there'll be others that we can take a look at. 45:31 Get some more high fives from Darwin. 45:33 Yes, that would be great. Yeah. 45:36 Doug Soltis, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. 45:39 Oh, thanks for your time. And thanks so much for your interest in this work on plants. We really appreciate that. 45:46 Doug Soltis is a distinguished professor at the University of Florida and a co-author on a new study on a newly discovered carnivorous plant, published in the journal Nature Communications. We reached him in Tucson. 46:09 This is not a morning show. Everyone who works on As It Happens gets in at a respectable hour, hopefully after a good night's sleep. Our colleagues who work on morning shows aren't so lucky. It's a wonder they even stay awake. Earlier this week, Good Morning Memphis anchor Dominique Dillon had an on-air moment that's going viral. And now it's our sound of the day. 46:34 It's a matter of days to make all of this happen. 46:47 Let's turn to the forecast. We have a heat advisory for parts of Northwest Mississippi this morning. But meteorologist Brittany DeBose, she shares more. 46:56 You look like a perfect little angel taking a little nap. All right, so outside we're dealing with some spotty showers on radar across the 47:05 With our sound of the day, that's Good Morning Memphis anchor Dominique Dillon falling asleep on air. Later, she said she could not believe it happened, but that her eight-month-old had kept her up basically all night long. She also shared this Arnold Schwarzenegger quote on social media. Every morning, you have two choices. Continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them. 47:39 You've been listening to the As It Happens podcast. Our show can be heard Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1, following your world tonight. 47:47 You can also find our show on demand at our website, cbc.ca slash AIH. Thanks for listening. I'm Rebecca Zandbergen. And I'm Talia Schlanger. 48:16 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.