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 Loren McGuinness, sitting in for Neil Coxall. 00:37 Good evening, I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens. 00:50 From celebration to sorrow, one person is dead after a van attack at a Pride event in Berlin. A gay off-duty police officer who was there tells us that hate is growing in Germany and he hopes fear will not win. 01:03 Burnt Out Part One. An Ontario emergency room doctor tells us she and her colleagues are totally drained. In fact, her new study finds the burnout rate for Canadian ER physicians is as high as it was during the worst of the pandemic. 01:16 Burnt Out Part Two. A fire cloud threatens to destroy several communities in southwest France. A resident tells us that the day he was forced to evacuate, the sky looked like Pompeii. 01:28 A man of fume words. Chefs love a gas stove, but a scientist tells us that if you have asthma, you're better off switching to electric. 01:37 Cheap trills. A new study suggests birdsongs share certain recognizable motifs, even across species and around the world. One of the researchers tells us he listened to thousands of hours of birdsong to reach this conclusion, and he's still not sick of it. 01:53 And all ice on me. A Polish man spends a record length of time covered head to toe in snow. And now his competition is shaking. Although, to be fair, so is he. As it happens, the Monday edition. Radio that's not sure why he did it, but I'm sure he had a perfectly good freezing. 02:26 Berlin is still in shock today. Two days after one woman died and at least 29 people were severely injured in an attack on the Berlin Pride Festival on Saturday. The 21 year old suspect drove a minivan into a crowd of pedestrians. Then he jumped out and attacked people with what appeared to be a machete. He was shot dead by police on Sunday after a manhunt that lasted almost a full 24 hours. German authorities are calling the event an Islamic terror attack. Ali Darwish is a gay activist and a police officer who was off duty when he attended the celebration. 02:58 We reached him in Berlin. 03:01 Ali, you went back to the site where the attack occurred to help honor the victims. 03:07 Why did you want to go back there? Why was that important to you? 03:12 I stood at the scene and for me it was heartbreaking. So for me as a gay man, it hit me on a very personal level. 03:22 But what also stayed with me was the incredible solidarity. I felt connected not only to the LGBTQIA plus community, but also to so many people outside of It who showed compassion and stood with us. That gave me hope in a very dark moment. So many people took flowers or wrote something down, took pictures, left something behind. And there was like many tears. And for me, it was, yes, heartbreaking to see this. 03:56 I think it's difficult to describe. You could feel the sadness, the shock. 04:02 And the silence, you could see fear in the eyes of the people. They talked about their own fears. They talked about the politics. They talked about what will happen next. 04:13 It's hard to talk about. 04:20 It really feels hard because it was so close. We was like with my friends. I was there 20 minutes before it happened. And for sure, you think about many, many things. But then you think about the whole community and the attack against the whole community and against the humanity. 04:40 Can you take us back to Saturday and the celebration and how you found out that had changed? 04:48 We started on Friday evening, so we write down a poster. We just wrote down why some people are afraid of love but not of hate. and on saturday we're getting ready we're really excited and we had a lot of fun we decided it was late and we are a little bit tired and we wanted to go to make to an after party and we wasn't on our phones and like 30 minutes after this really shocking moment we get in cold from our families and friends and get asked if we're fine and then we just checked the news and saw what happened and our mood changed directly because we felt and we just waited for more news. 05:39 We went home and when we wake up, we just checked our phones. We get more messages, more phone calls and we get the first information like a woman died. Then we get the information that it was like a Muslim terrorist or how you want to call it. I don't want to call it in the wrong term. 06:05 And for sure, me, I'm born as a Muslim, in a Muslim family, as a gay man, as a police officer. So you're forced with many, many different kind of cliches, if you wanted to say it like this. 06:21 And I have... thousands of thoughts, of questions. And will the Islamophobia be getting bigger? You have to know two months ago, my mom, she's wearing a hijab. She got attacked in a supermarket and just wanted to buy orange juice. Some men like hit her in the stomach. So with my own experience with my mom and other friends of mine that are Muslim and For me, I had the fear, or I'm already having the fear that it's getting worse and worse. 06:56 That's what I hear you gathering, these parts of who you are and these communities that you're a part of. 07:03 How are you putting those things together today? 07:07 If I'm talking about my gay perspective or my Muslim perspective or my police perspective, all perspectives... 07:16 for me, are the same feelings. For sure, as a police officer, I thought myself, but for sure, like my friends told me, Ali, you couldn't do anything. Like the police officers and the medical assistants, they tried to do their best. 07:33 And for sure, as a gay man, I was like forcing, okay, it's very difficult to be gay in this world. And for sure, as a Muslim man, I told you, my thoughts right away. 07:48 Police say the suspect had been convicted of preparing a violent act and believed he tried to join the Islamic State militant group. 07:56 Today, Germany's Chancellor Meritz said that he wondered how this man was even able to approach the site given his history. 08:06 How do those concerns land for you? Do you share those concerns? 08:10 It's a very difficult question. I try to answer it with my personal Of course, after tragedy, everyone asked what could have been done differently. I think that's normal. 08:25 At the same time, not any police force can guarantee 100% safety. 08:31 And I know how much effort goes into protecting public events. 08:37 um i know this as a police officer and unfortunately there will always be individuals maybe i think willing to commit terrible acts what do you need to see in here now to feel supported as you and others continue to grieve and to try and make sense of what's happened yeah i hope we continue to stand together i think we need honest conversations about safety, about protecting public events and about preventing violence. 09:08 But we also have to make sure that fear doesn't become the driving force of our society. 09:15 And I think our response should be more unity and more compassion and more determination to protect one another. 09:25 My biggest fear is that the hate is growing and growing and the people stop thinking of feeling and just starting hating. 09:37 Ali, it is very good of you to speak with us under these circumstances. Thank you very much. 09:43 Thank you, Loren. 09:46 I wish you the best and wish all of the people in the world the best. Thank you. 09:51 Take good care. 09:52 Thank you very much too, Loren. 09:55 Ali Darwish attended the Pride celebrations in Berlin over the weekend. That's where we reached him. 10:10 Canadian doctors are exhausted and Canadian emergency room doctors in particular are so exhausted that many are taking a big step back. A study published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reports high levels of burnout among emergency room physicians. Many are reducing their clinical hours and some are leaving the ER behind altogether. The findings are based on survey responses from more than 400 ER doctors across the country. Kirsten DeWitt is a professor at Queen's University and an author of the new study. She's also an emergency room doctor at Kingston Health Sciences Centre. 10:43 We reached her in Kingston, Ontario. 10:45 Dr. DeWitt, how would you describe what emergency room doctors are facing and going through right now? 10:52 This is the biggest challenge that emergency physicians have faced in Canada. We have been measuring the burnout levels amongst emergency physicians since the start of the pandemic. And the levels are as high as they've ever been just now. Emergency physicians are facing great difficulties and challenges and working in the emergency department on each shift. And we're seeing that emergency physicians are starting to leave the specialty. 11:20 I'm surprised to hear you say it's the biggest challenge you face. Why is that? 11:25 I think it's very hard for emergency physicians to go in every day to do their shift because they feel they can't do their job. We see patients suffering, waiting in the waiting room without being able to get into the emergency department to be seen. And we see older adults waiting for evenings, days in corridors without adequate attention. It's very difficult for us to do our job in those conditions. 11:51 I see in your research 48% of ER physicians who responded to your survey said they'd reduced their clinical hours. One in 10 left the specialty. 12:02 What are they seeing day to day that is causing them to do less and to remove themselves from the environment? 12:11 So our emergency departments are all full of patients who've already been seen by an emergency physician and have been admitted under an admitting team. 12:21 And all of those beds are taken up by patients who are really bored patients. So it means that the emergency department isn't available to emergency physicians and emergency nurses anymore. And instead, the patients that need to be seen by us who are in the waiting room are being seen either in the waiting room or in chairs, in corridors, in inadequate spaces. 12:44 That's the first challenge. And the second challenge is that people can be really quite sick and we have nowhere to see them. We can't see them. So although they've come to the hospital for our help, we're unable to help them. And it's not unusual for us to start emergency treatments a few hours later than we would prefer to have started them. And that's very, very hard for emergency physicians to see and do every day on their shift. 13:12 There's, in your reporting, something like two-thirds of your members who are enrolled in the survey reported emotional exhaustion and something called depersonalization. Can you explain what depersonalization is in that environment, in that workplace? 13:31 Yes. Depersonalization happens when you begin to lose empathy for other people. 13:38 It presents as a hardening of the emotion, less sympathy. And in the context of the emergency department, that means that emergency physicians are beginning to go into their job feeling less emotional connection with patients. And I think that could be hard for patients. And it certainly might come across that the physician cared less. And unfortunately, that's a coping mechanism when human beings are exposed to chronic stress. 14:11 I wondered if you might reflect yourself as an ER doc on how you manage the stress, especially as you're part of a team and you're seeing and hearing from colleagues about all these struggles. 14:24 Yes. 14:26 Every day when we work a shift, we try our best, but unfortunately that means that our best is often not quite as good as it should be. 14:36 We end up working faster than we would like to, so I always worry about making mistakes. We try, if we can, to send people home instead of admitting them because there are no beds on the ward, but then we worry about the patients that we send home. 14:51 We stay late at the end of our shift so we can see more patients to try and make a little dent in that large waiting room of people who are waiting to be seen. It's hard to not feel responsible for all that. 15:05 There's an obvious risk of this compounding with physicians reducing clinical hours or 1 in 10 ER doctors leaving. 15:15 What is the risk of this problem just getting worse and worse? 15:20 Every time a physician leaves, it's an incredible waste because they've had specialist training. They take with them knowledge and expertise that we lose to the specialties. 15:31 when physicians reduce their shifts or take even just a small break away from the specialty, that means their colleagues have to work harder to cover their shift. But I think those reductions in hours and those breaks in their career are so important because the most important thing is we want physicians to remain in the specialty and we want to continue to benefit from their expertise. And this working environment has been so damaging to our health But it's important that we're given the opportunity to recover and come back again. 16:05 What needs to happen to change the system, the environment, to support doctors who are considering leaving emergency medicine? 16:15 I think it was loud and clear in our survey that what needs to happen is patient care needs to be prioritized and the emergency department improved. And the number one problem at the moment is... decanting our patients from the emergency department into the hospital. 16:33 So politicians and leaders need to work out ways very quickly to start addressing that major problem. The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians has produced a report called EM Power, which gives politicians and healthcare managers solutions to this problem. So they could start by looking at that report and seeing how they could implement those measures. 17:03 I wonder if we've got you shortly after a shift or shortly before a shift. 17:10 I have just recently finished a shift. 17:12 Yeah. Okay. Well, grateful for your work and appreciate that you took the time after a shift to speak with us. Thank you. 17:19 Thanks so much. 17:21 Kirsten DeWitt is a professor at Queen's University and an emergency physician in Kingston, Ontario. That's where we reached her. 17:40 There are some sunny mornings when you think birdsong is a miracle. It's so beautiful and so complex, each species issuing its own distinctive, intricate melodies. What a wonder. 17:52 Well, you woke up in a good mood. Obviously, there are no crows outside your window, and you're not wrong about the beauty or complexity. But you're a little wrong about the distinctiveness. A new study published in the journal Science suggests that no matter how different birds are from one another or how far their habitats are from one another, their songs have similar building blocks. Researchers analyzed over 100,000 bird songs from species all over the world, and they found that there are only a few fundamental types of sound or motif that keep coming back. 18:23 The study includes this bird call. 18:38 That is the sound of the green oropendola in Brazil. Quentin Bacolet is a PhD candidate in acoustic biogeography at the University of Saint-Etienne. He led the study. We reached him in Lyon, France. 18:52 Quentin, is that sound we just heard, music to your ears or what? 18:57 Exactly. That's a really specific bird and I'm not sure you ever heard a bird like this. And here you hear a bird in Amazonia. And this bird is, in fact, my favorite bird song because it's really special, really different, and it's using really unique types of bird song. 19:18 So you have fallen in love with your work and that bird song in particular. Can you take us back to the beginning, what you were hoping to learn about bird song? 19:28 Yeah. 19:29 So the idea was... how the birds are creating their song. Because, you know, the diversity is so huge, right? And we don't really know across the world if the birds, they use the same type of songs. If there are differences, why we have them? That was a question we wanted to ask because we don't have any study that really assessed the bird song diversity at a global scale. 19:57 And so how did you go about trying to figure that out? 20:02 There is a big advantage for bird song studies. 20:06 It is because you have an online database where people are able to upload bird songs. Then we are able to use this huge amount of bird songs to really analyze there's diversity at a global scale in every continent and every country. 20:24 So what did you start noticing about the similarities or the foundations of Birdsong? 20:34 When we obtained this data, for this study, it was more than 100,000 recordings. And then the next step was to find similarities using machine learning, so AI. And with that, we found that birdsong can be organized into 8 distinct song types. And then the birds, they compose their song using these 8 types. So you could tell 8 types is not a lot, but in fact, when you pick these 8 types, you can change the order, the number of motifs, the number of song elements, so it's almost infinite possibilities to create songs from these 8 motifs. 21:18 So we call them the motifs. 21:19 In the bird song we listened to off the top of your favorite song, I heard one of the sounds I heard, and it's dynamic and complex, and as you point out, a combination of these eight motifs in a really beautiful way. But I heard a sort of glottal sound and it reminded me of a sound a raven can make, who also have, they can mimic, they have complex bird song. 21:42 But I suspect that's one of the eight core motifs. 21:47 Yeah, you are perfectly correct. And in fact, this is one we call the harmonic stacks. And this is some very specific type of motifs, because you have different pitch in the same time. So we just described the harmonic stacks, which is one of the eight motifs. But in fact, you have also three types of trills, from slow to fast trills. The trills are just repetition of the same note. 22:14 And the rhythm could be from slow to fast. Then you have the whistles, which are pure tones from really not modulated whistles, from highly modulated whistles, very fancy, very complex. And finally, you have chaotic notes, which are very rough and harsh notes. 22:33 How do you do a trill? 22:35 I could do a really slow trill, but it would be the same note at the same time, so like... This is a slow trill. And then if you want a really fast trill, I cannot do it, but it's super fast. 22:47 So I'm not really good to imitate Brad, but you have the idea. 22:52 That was quite good, and it makes the point. 22:54 Thanks. 22:56 And when you want to know which kind of motif would be used, you have to think about a trade-off. So, is it efficient to travel through a very dense Amazonian forest? And the second part is, is it rich in information? And the birds have to choose between really simple songs that are really efficient to travel through the environment, and really complex songs that are very rich in information and really efficient to attract females. 23:25 So birds from very, very different environments, from very different parts of the world, if they're making similar sounds, how much of that is physiology? How much of that is environmental? 23:38 First, there is a huge part of the genetics. because the ancestors of a given bird may use a certain type of songs, and with the genetic history, the birds could keep the same types of motifs. Then you also have the morphology. For instance, the bigger birds are using more simple songs, and the smaller birds are using more complex songs. 24:07 And finally, You have the environment. And this is very important because you could go in different tropical forests, like in Amazonia, in Africa, or even in Asia, in Thailand, for instance. And you would find the same types of motifs. For instance, the flat whistles, which are really pure tone, non-modulated. You could find them in every tropical forest. 24:32 Quentin, it is good of you to speak with us. Thank you very much. 24:36 Thank you, Loren. 24:38 Quentin Bacalé is a PhD candidate in acoustic biogeography who led a new study on bird calls. We reached him in Lyon, France. 24:54 Now I will go for the record on live radio. 24:58 First, the ice. 25:01 Okay, now we open the Mountain Dew. And now I lower my fingers into the glass. 25:10 Oh man, that's cold. Oh gosh, that's agony. Nope, I can't take it anymore. 25:17 Oh, that was incredibly brave and painful, partly because the Mountain Dew is eating away at my fingers, but mostly because of the ice. 25:24 Okay. Good news is I set a new personal record for submerging my fingers in ice liquid. 3.6 seconds. The better news is that I have an even more impressive time to aim for thanks to Damian Kasprzyk of Poland. Guinness has just certified his record for longest time spent in direct full body contact with snow brackets mail. I know what you're asking. Chris, when you say direct full body contact, do you mean direct contact? I understand what you're getting at. You can stop waggling your eyebrows around. 25:55 Yes, I do mean direct. Mr. Kasprasik appears to have entered a giant pile of snow clad only in boxer shorts. And there he lay with his head poking out for two hours, 12 minutes and 12 seconds. Three minutes longer than the classic Martin Scorsese film Raging Bull, which is slightly less punishing than two hours in ice, but not much. Mr. Kasprzyk told Guinness, over time, I discovered that bonding with the cold gives me a profound peace of mind. It allows me to test where my true limits of endurance lie. 26:27 And as a fellow endurance athlete, I know exactly what he means. People like us simply have to go through with our courageous attempts at making history, even if we get cold feet. 26:51 Amy from Saskatoon with cold feet. We are going to take a break now, a short break for Chris to warm his finger. When we return, a new U.S. study suggests that replacing gas stoves with electric can help people with asthma as much as some medications. 27:09 Thanks for mentioning that, Lauren. And over his dead body, the German anatomist behind the controversial Body Worlds exhibition in which he put preserved human corpses on display has died. And as he told this program in 1998, he was prepared to practice what he preached. Stay tuned. I'm Chris Howden. 27:26 And I'm Lauren McGinnis. 27:42 All your favorite CBC Podcasts are now available on YouTube. The best in award-winning true crime investigations, hilarious comedies, vibrant pop culture conversations, and even more audio series are all available on CBC Podcasts' YouTube channel. You'll also find exclusive video first episodes, YouTube shorts, and behind-the-scenes content from our hosts and producers that you can't find anywhere else. So if YouTube is your go-to source for podcasts, just search CBC Podcasts and hit subscribe, and you'll never miss the latest updates. 28:13 For nearly a week now, firefighters in France have been facing an enemy that is huge, fast moving and growing all the time. A phenomenon called a fire cloud has destroyed dozens of homes and burned more than 100,000 acres of land. Nearly unprecedented evacuations are taking place in southwest France, largely around Bordeaux, France's sixth largest city. More than 220,000 people in the area have been asked to leave their homes, and many of them have ended up at the Bordeaux Exhibition Centre, an enormous events hall. Julien Enchar lives in Saint-Médard-en-Jal, a suburb west of Bordeaux. 28:47 He's been staying at the Exhibition Centre since Saturday, and that's where we reached him. 28:52 Julien, I know you've stepped out of the Exhibition Centre so that this call is a little bit quieter, but can you tell us what it is like in there? How full is the Exhibition Centre right now? 29:04 Yeah, we were welcome in the first hall, in the first place in the exhibition center, but there was not enough beds the first night, so they moved us to another place where there was less beds, but it was quiet. But it's not full. There is just a lot of people and right now it's time to eat. So people are chatting together around the tables and everyone is very helpful with one another. 29:37 There are lots of people who came to help everyone and we have enough food and water. People are very nice. 29:47 I was going to say, you've got beds and food and doctors and people around you. In some ways, everything you need in the short term. 29:56 Yes. 29:57 What is hard for us is to know when we could get back in the city. Right now, Samedar is not in danger, but we are not allowed to go back. So we just need to wait. 30:17 and we don't know how long for now. 30:21 Can you take us back to Friday night? At what point did you decide to leave your home? 30:29 People were evacuated since, I think, Wednesday from the city just before us, like Saint-Hélène and Salon were evacuated hours before us. So we were prepared to be the next one. And at 8 p.m. we prepared our bag because the mayor of the city tell us to be prepared. 30:55 I call my neighbors. I went to look for them because they are old and they don't have a smartphone. So I tell them to be ready. And I'm social worker. I work with young and old people and I call them to be prepared because we should be evacuated in the night. 31:21 The alert on the phone was at 1 a.m. on the Saturday morning, 1 a.m. And we had to move. So I took my car and all people couldn't move. And we arrived at 2 a.m. and... 31:45 But there wasn't enough bed and enough chair to welcome us. So it was a bit... We didn't sleep a lot the first night. So it was quite a crazy night, a first night. 31:57 Your elderly neighbors are lucky to have you. How are they doing? 32:01 They're great. We find other people from Sameda and we create a new little community with each other to help each other. But right now it's a bit long, so... Everyone is a bit tired. 32:18 Yeah, the not knowing when you'll be able to go home and waiting for the resolution of the fire and the weather and all those things. It'll have a life of its own of ups and downs. How are you passing the time with other people? 32:33 We chat with a lot of people. 32:37 I came with my guitar, so I play, and I give it to my neighbors to play with them. I got a Rubik's Cube. 32:49 I'm a social worker, so I have a lot of things in my bag, like the juggles balls and the apostas. I play with the children a lot. So we have a great time with the children who are just playing next to us. 33:08 On the fire that has caused the evacuation and you and your neighbors and others to be together at the exhibition center, a spokesperson for the National Firefighters Federation of France told a French journalist with AFP that this type of fire is common in Canada. It's common in Australia, but it's unprecedented in France. Yes. 33:31 I said it's the first time. 33:33 So you've not seen something like this before. How worried are you that this kind of wildfire will become something more common, reoccurring problem in France? 33:44 Yeah, we spoke a lot about that because we know about climate changing. And when the fire started, everything burned very quickly and moved a lot. So there were sanders who rained from the sky before we were evacuated. I was by bike and there was like... centers in my eyes and it was like Pompeii. It was so impressive. 34:15 And so I hope that people will take this subject very on first priority because it's going to be harder and harder each summer. 34:31 I'm also thinking about the young people you mentioned, the older people that you mentioned, your neighbors and others who you're supporting. When you go back inside, who are you going to see? 34:43 I have a elder who is 70 years old and he's coming to where I work often and we play guitar together so right now I think he's eating so I know that we're gonna speak a lot more and sometimes it's a bit harsh to stay to keep the smile in front of people when you don't have enough energy for yourself. 35:15 So right now, I hope I'm going to find all the people from Sameda where we went together. 35:23 I hear you saying that in some cases you'll stay close with people that you're meeting now and that you're supporting now. And I also hear you saying that you have to take care of yourself in a way so that you can keep supporting and helping other people. So... It's a great message, and I really appreciate getting to speak with you today, and I wish you lots of rain and favorable winds and the temperature to cool off. Take good care, Julien. 35:49 Thank you. Thanks a lot. Au revoir. 35:53 Julien Enchard is a fire evacuee, and we reached him in Bordeaux, France. 36:09 After months of confusion and chaos and cross-border crankiness, the Gordie Howe International Bridge is finally open. Starting at noon today, the first cars drove across the bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan. A lot of people have been anticipating this day, but not many of them are as young as Lucas Laguerre of Amherstburg, Ontario, who's been waiting for the bridge to open since he was two years old. Lucas is now six, and today he drove across the bridge with his mother, Brittany, and his father, Matt. 36:40 See that bridge? That's the bridge you go over. Yeah, they're gonna follow the signs. We need them up a left. Oh, that car. Yeah, they're going over too. 36:53 Are you excited? Yeah. 36:56 How are you? 36:58 Good to hear you. Good? You're all set. Thank you. Have a good one too. 37:08 We're on the bridge now. We are on the bridge now. The water. Cool. Wow buddy. Look at all those cables. Oh my god. So now we're in Canada and now we're in the United States. 37:25 So that's what the flags mean. Yup, it's where the two countries bridge. Now look out your window, my side. The water! You can see the other bridge now. Oh yeah, a blue bridge. We're next to it. 37:38 I can't believe we're on the bridge, finally. Finally. 37:43 That was Amherstburg, Ontario resident Lucas Laguerre with his mother and father. And he wasn't the only one excited about the Gordie Howe Bridge. So was Gordie Howe, the grandson of the bridge's namesake. He was one of the first people to cross. 37:56 It's been frustrating for a lot of people. And so I think that makes today all the more amazing that it has actually opened today. And a lot of people are very happy. 38:07 What was going through your mind when you were crossing? 38:10 joy and amazement and wonder at the architecture of the bridge. 38:14 Overall, how is your family doing today and feeling today? 38:17 So, so happy about this. I wish more of them could have been here today. And again, it feels strange for just us to be the only people here. But I know that they're all thinking of this right now. 38:28 That was Gordie Howe, grandson of hockey player Gordie Howe, talking to reporters after crossing the new bridge linking Canada and the U.S. 38:48 When people have an asthma flare up, they don't usually blame their kitchen. But if you have asthma and you have a gas stove, it might be making it harder for you to breathe. A new study at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland found that people with poorly controlled asthma saw fewer symptoms after they replaced their gas stove with an electric stove. The project was supposed to survey more than a thousand households. But when the Trump administration cut its funding, the researchers had to shrink it significantly. Ash Saga led the study. He's a professor in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, and we reached him in Cleveland. 39:23 Professor, for years we've heard concerns about gas stoves and indoor air quality and air pollution. 39:30 What were you trying to figure out in this study that we did not already know? 39:33 So there have literally been dozens of previous studies that found a correlation between asthma and gas stoves or a correlation between asthma symptoms and levels of a compound called nitrogen dioxide, which is released when natural gas is burned and can irritate the lungs. But nobody had previously done a study where they changed gas stoves to electric stoves in the homes of people with asthma. to see what that did to asthma symptoms. So that's basically what we did. 40:05 And what did you find? What stood out for you about the results? 40:08 Yeah, so we included 85 people with poorly controlled asthma. We also measured nitrogen dioxide levels in the kitchen using an air quality monitor. We did those things before changing the stove and then again two to three months after changing the stove. And what we found really surprised us. We found substantial improvements in both asthma control and in indoor air quality. So in terms of the asthma control, the amount of improvement in the asthma symptoms was similar to or even larger than the improvements we see when we used asthma medications. 40:49 So on average, a participant in our study went from having moderate to mild asthma symptoms. 40:57 We also found that Emergency room visits and hospitalizations for asthma fell by 70%. 41:04 Missed days of work and school dropped by 80%. 41:08 And indoor concentrations of the compound I mentioned, nitrogen dioxide, which can be irritating to the lungs, decreased by 70%. 41:17 That went by quickly, but changing stoves had a greater impact as you measured it than medicating asthma? 41:26 That's right. There have been lots of studies over the years that looked at how much of an improvement we get in asthma symptoms from various medications. And to our surprise, we found that changing stoves had either the same or even larger improvements in asthma symptoms. 41:42 I note your sample size was not what you had hoped. Your study ended up including less than 100 households from the projected 1200 you had intended to study. The Trump administration terminated your grant. How did you get that news and how was that decision explained? 42:00 So our grant was awarded in December of 2024 following a very rigorous review process. So as soon as we got the award notice, we started working on the project. But then the grant was terminated five months later in May of 2025. We simply received an email from the US Environmental Protection Agency telling us that the grant objectives no longer fit with the agency's priorities. So our original plan had been to do this project for 1,200 people. 42:34 But at the time of termination, only 85 people had started or finished the study. So what we did at that point is we used our own funds to finish the study tasks for the people who are already enrolled. But we couldn't, of course, enroll any new people beyond the termination date. But what really surprised us is that we found statistically significant and clinically important improvements, even with that relatively modest sample size of 85 people. 43:03 Well, I hear you loud and clear that it helped the people that were able to see this research through and have the transition from gas to electric. 43:14 Is it possible? I mean, how confident are you in the statistical significance of your research results specifically? 43:22 Yeah, so I wouldn't want to make any sweeping recommendations just based on one study. But as I mentioned, there have been dozens of previous correlation studies that found a link between asthma symptoms in gas stoves or between asthma and nitrogen dioxide levels. So I think it would be reasonable based on our study and based on these previous correlation studies for people with poorly controlled asthma to consider transitioning from an electric stove to a gas stove, given their resources and circumstances. 43:57 I also think it would be reasonable for physicians to ask about gas stoves when they're talking to their asthma patients and educate them about potential harms. There's also something that folks could do if they didn't want to jump right into transitioning to an electric stove, which is sort of to do a little mini study on themselves, they could try not using their gas stove. In other words, only use their microwave, only use their toaster oven, only use an electric hot plate if they have one. If it looked like their asthma symptoms improved substantially, then that could be something that might encourage them to go ahead and change the stove. 44:35 On the other hand, if their asthma symptoms didn't improve, then maybe there's other things going on that are more responsible for triggering their asthma than their gas stove. 44:44 Yeah, I appreciate you leaving people with practical advice, I suppose, based on what you've done so far. What are the questions left unanswered or what's the research horizon for you given the study ended early? 44:57 So our original plan was to follow the participants for 12 months so we could look at not just medium-term outcomes but also long-term outcomes. Because of the grand termination, we were only able to follow patients for three months and that's what we're reporting in our study results. So I think what would be desirable would be a larger trial with more participants that follow people for a longer period of time. It would also be good to have a comparison group of participants that keep their gas stove so that we can say more definitively what happens if you keep your gas stove versus what happens if you change to electric stove. 45:37 I also think it would be useful to do a study like this that includes people with milder asthma so that we can see if there's a benefit for people with milder asthma. In our study, we focused on people who had poorly controlled asthma. 45:50 Professor, appreciate you speaking with us. Thanks for your time. Thank you. 45:54 Ash Sagal is a professor in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. He's in Cleveland, Ohio. 46:10 Gunther von Hagens will soon be the subject of his own life's work. In the 1970s, the German anatomist began a process he called plastination. He would replace the bodily fluids in a human corpse with liquid plastic that hardens. And then those bodies were put on display and toured in an exhibit called Body Worlds. Mr. von Hagen's thought process was that it gave the public the opportunity to see what the inside of a body actually looks like. On display... 47:04 are more than 200 real anatomical specimens, including 18 whole body specimens. 47:13 Whole body specimens means these are whole bodies, not only skeletons, befleshed bodies, which are permanently preserved by procrastination and which, as single specimens, serve as a teaching tool as instruction during this exhibition. 47:39 Well, is this for teaching or is it art? 47:42 I call it anatomy art. And anatomy art I define as the aesthetic, instructive presentation of the inner world of the human body. 47:53 Now, what you call anatomy art, some local leaders, politicians and religious leaders call sacrilege. 48:02 Absolutely. Some critics complain that the presentation of whole body specimens in an aesthetic way is against the dignity of the humans. I'm quite of the opposite opinion. 48:23 Dignity means... 48:28 I understand... i can understand dignity only in a very personal sense and everybody who is displayed in this exhibition has signed during his lifetime that he wants to be presented in a public exhibition i would rather say it might be a problem of morality but morality is not defined by a church leader or by a politician Moral is in expression of the society of the people in a democracy. 49:08 And the people have voted by their feet that they want to see this. 240,000 people have gone to this museum in less than two and a half months. 49:18 Would you do it? 49:20 Of course. And it would be a real... 49:26 And funny story, if not I, which I all accept those bodies during my life, would not be willing to be also fascinated. Of course, with pleasure, I will not allow the worms to eat me up. 49:44 From 1998, that was Body Worlds and Plastinarium founder Gunther von Hagen speaking with former As It Happens host Mary Lou Finley. Mr. Hagen has died at the age of 81. A spokesperson for Plastinarium says that his body will be plastinated, though it has not been decided where it will be put on display. 50:11 Bye. 50:18 San Diego Comic-Con always attracts stars who show up to promote their upcoming movies and are greeted enthusiastically by fans. This year, Ryan Gosling, Kiki Palmer, and Pedro Pascal showed up to general excitement. But perhaps the most euphoric response was generated by a 73-year-old man who hasn't been in a live-action movie in almost 30 years. Here's what it sounded like when Kevin Smith invited Canadian comedy legend Rick Moranis on stage to talk about the upcoming Spaceballs sequel. 50:46 Is he with us? No. 51:22 We love you, Rick! 51:25 Rick, it has been... Have you ever been to Hall H before? Have you ever been to Comic-Con before? No, this is my first time. 51:37 It seems like impossible to think of considering you are geek royalty, man. And a lot of us here in the audience, and definitely up here, you made our childhoods better, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. 51:51 It is a pleasure to be here and a pleasure to be here with this movie. 51:58 I'm so excited about this. 52:01 Rick Moranis on stage with Kevin Smith and the cast of Spaceballs 2 at Comic-Con in San Diego this weekend. 52:14 You've been listening to the As It Happens podcast. Our show can be heard Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 after Your World Tonight. 52:21 And you can, of course, also listen to our show online at cbc.ca slash AIH or on the CBC Listen app or, of course, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Neel Kirkshal. 52:31 And I'm Chris Howden. 52:34 Music 52:52 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.