A PM’s daughter remembers her time in 24 Sussex Drive

Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com.

Hello, I'm Neil Kokesl. Good evening. I'm Chris Howden. This is as it happens.

Tonight. Making a house a home, former resident of 24 Cessix, Catherine Clark, tells us she's cautiously optimistic that the vacant and crumbling official residents of the Prime Minister may be restored at last. Making a house not a home. The U.S. Supreme Court gives us. Donald Trump, the green light to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti and Syria,

panicking families who were building a life in the U.S. Catching heat, record temperatures are killing people across Europe, and the U.N.'s global chief heat officer says it is time for leaders and the voters who elect them to start thinking past the heat of the moment. Late in the game, when Jill Tucker Carlson went to a World Cup watch party to cheer on Cape Verde, she didn't expect to run into one of her former students from Cape Verde, who, it turned out, had spent decades searching for her. The tickle finger of fate, it turns out apes love to laugh, especially when they're tickled.

So researchers got busy tickling them to track the evolution of the chuckle. And that's another fine messy they've gotten us into. A huge new statue depicting soccer superstar Leonel Messi has one major problem. The phallic World Cup trophy, the sculptor, erected between his knees. As it happens, the Friday edition, Radio that is. not sure who gave that thing the groin light. Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a new plan to rehabilitate 24 Sussex Drive, the official but long vacant Ottawa residents of the Prime Minister.

So today our government is acting to renew this building, restore this institution, preserve our history, protect our heritage and traditions for generations to come. Leaders have long avoided the potentially negative optics of spending taxpayer money to repair the decaying mansion, but Mr. Carney's plan sidesteps that issue as he seeks to find donors to cover the multi-million dollar restoration. The design itself will be open to a competition with architectural and engineering firms submitting. plans to a jury of experts led by architect Moshe Safdi. Catherine Clark lived in 24 Sussex as a child when her father, Joe Clark, was prime minister. She also hosted the documentary series The Residences about that building. We reached her in Winnipeg.

Catherine, I have to admit I was quite surprised to hear this from Prime Minister Carney today. Were you? No, I wasn't entirely surprised only because our family had been made aware that there were some decisions that were in the works. And I also think that I'm not surprised because Mr. Carney is the type of person who seems fairly decisive in decision-making. And he clearly was in this case, too. There have been studies before, plans laid before. Does all of it feel different to you?

That this time it will actually lead to the rehabilitation of 24th Sussex. Yeah, I think I get the strong feeling that it will. And I think that's partly because what is being proposed in this particular case, case is also the involvement of other Canadians who are contributing what seems to be private individual funds to this process. And so my fingers are tightly crossed because, boy, this has been a long time coming. Well, that's the thing. I mean, because people have described as a political football, I mean, no one wanted, many, many leaders did not want to tackle it because they didn't want to have this expenditure, you know, and have taxpayers pay the, bear the brunt of it. But it's also

a national symbol. But this idea of crowdsourcing, that private funding, instead of, you know, taking it from tax bear money in the usual way, how does that sit with you? I think there is an understanding that this is a delicate topic in general, because we do have a difficult situation now in this country when it comes to housing. And so the idea of spending millions and millions of dollars to refurbish an official residents may not sit very well with a lot of Canadians. That is mitigated in this circumstance by asking other generous Canadians who may be able to make a more significant financial

contribution to be a part of the process. So I think that it's just a solution that seems fairly neat, but that also, you know, looks to the very best of Canadian design in terms of that part of the process too. This is going to be a competition. And I think that that's exciting. In terms of the national symbol aspect of 24 Sussex, you may have seen the headline on the New York Times story for these developments begins, quote, Canada's 24 Sussex drive is a dump, unquote. What do, I mean, obviously they want to grab attention, but I'm sure others have described it that way. But to have it described that way by a newspaper such as the New York Times, what signal does that send? Well, I think, you know, if we're being honest about it, it's kind of embarrassing. And I think that that's what we're trying to resolve with this new announcement today.

You did a documentary on 24th, Sussex, back in 2015. You were two years old when you lived there. When you look at pictures of your time there, what does that bring up for you? Well, you know, I actually do have some memories. I have memories of the pool, which I mean I think is probably not an unusual thing for a kid to have memories of the fun parts. And there were tuckerboard floors in the main entrance hall at the time as well, which I thoroughly loved. And when I look at photos of the House now, I think it's really important for Canadians to remember that as much as it is an official residence, it is also a home for the people who live in it. When you become Prime Minister, it's not your decision as to where you live.

You have to live somewhere where you can be guaranteed by the RCMP to be safe and where you can also keep. carry out official functions if and when necessary. And so I do think that the ability right now to create a brand new space to reimagine what that home will look like for future prime ministers who are themselves symbols of our country, whether you have voted for them or not, they remain the prime minister of the country. And I'm looking forward to seeing where it all leads. For the documentary you did, you spoke to others who lived there, including Margaret Richard O, who said to you that to her 24th, Essex, felt like, quote, the crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system, unquote.

What did you think when you heard that? Well, I thought it was, I mean, honestly, it's a great quote. It sure is. I probably wouldn't have described it that way, and it's possible that other spouses and family members had different experiences. I tend to think of our official residences with a tremendous amount of fondness. That's partly because I've been in almost all of them and lived in Stornoway in 24 Sussex. And I understand that they are very much a home. You know, I don't say that, you know, for any reason other than to try to illustrate that these are spaces for families as well.

My experience really was entirely positive. And I think what I also recognized, though, and this was through the documentary that we made, which was in fact based on my mother's book Residences, which was published in the 1980s, that these are also symbols of who we are as Canadians, who we were as Canadians, and now we have an opportunity to define a new symbol as to who we want to be seen as Canadians. Catherine Clark, I'm glad we could speak. Thank you for this. Thank you, Neil. Great to talk to you. Likewise.

Catherine Clark is the president of Catherine Clark Communications and a former resident of 24 Sussex Drive. We reached her in Winnipeg. 1.3 million people have made the United States home under temporary protected status. But their sense of safety was destroyed this week. when the Trump administration was granted a major legal victory. As we told you yesterday on the program, the U.S. Supreme Court has given the Department of Homeland Security the power to strip immigrants of that humanitarian status

and the protection from deportation it provides. That puts immigrant communities across the country on more uncertain ground than ever. Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, among them. The city is home to around 12,000 Haitians, many of whom are under temporary protected status. Vidas Dorsanville is a pastor and the executive director of the Haitian community help and support center and a temporary protected status holder himself. We reached him in Springfield, Ohio.

Vela's your center is a hub. People always come for help and advice. What are people saying? How are they reacting in response to this decision? I think that from what I've seen from yesterday, folks came to us with questions of, in terms of what they should do. You know, when things like this happen, especially with the extreme ruling of the Supreme Court, they ask questions if they should continue to go to work or if they can continue to hold the money at the bank, what will happen to them, what will happen to the kids. So these are questions that we got from people. And we also got questions from folks.

They ask us what they should tell the employers. Matter of fact that today, employers started telling folks not to come to work after July 1st. So it is very difficult now to deal with this type of situation. Difficult and emotional, I imagine. Yes, it's emotional because parents are afraid to see them being separated from the kids. I think this is the most fearful things from parents. But all that we tell them is to keep calm. And this evening, the Haitian Support Center in partnership with ABLE will have a Zoom call

and we ask members from our community to join that Zoom call so that they can ask question to a legal team that will be available to help them with some answers. You are an asylum seeker as well. you hold temporary protected status, what does this decision mean for you? It means everything because it has a huge impact on the work that I am doing here in Springfield that might affect as well my studies. Yeah, I think it is so, so disruptive, if I can put it that way, because TPS comes with a work permit that allow you to work and continue to do business and to buy home if you want to do anything.

But when they end TPS this way, it's as if like everything is in limbo now. How are other people in the city, in the state, responding, non-Hashans, how are they responding to what is happening and what is happening to you? I always say that the vast majority of Springfielders are Ohioans. have been so supportive of the immigrants community, not only the Haitians, but all the immigrants community in Ohio. Especially in Springfield, we have the vast majority of people who have been supporting us.

And you could see that yesterday at our rally in a short notice, so many folks came out to support to show the solidarity. So this is so encouraging to see, even though there are some decisions, that comes from the top to put us down. But at a community level, we have folks who are standing with us and recognize our contribution to the community.

Ohio's Governor, Republican Mike DeWine, has said he believes this decision is a mistake that all of the Haitians who were in Ohio legally, mainly in Springfield, are now being made illegal. and will be subject to deportation. What do you think Springfield will lose should you and other Haitians be forced to leave? It will lose a lot. Because one thing that people should know

is Haitians have contributed or have worked in every sector in Springfield. They work at the school district. They work at the school district. They work at the hospitals. they work at the factories. They work everywhere. And they are business owners.

They are homeowners. They have brought that type of vibrancy to the city. I know that will be impactful. And not only put Haitian in confusion, but also put every sector in Springfield in a difficult situation. because if the workforce goes away, I know some of the factories will have huge issues dealing with it. We've certainly covered what has been happening in Haiti over the last several years.

The U.S. State Department itself warns U.S. citizens against traveling to Haiti, citing violence, crime, terrorism, the threat of kidnapping. if you do have to go back, what would it mean for you? I would be exposed to kidnapping and torture because, you know, if people know Haiti well, they would know that if folks like me get back to Haiti right now it would have been a suicidal decision because those hoodlums, especially all those, how they call them the vivansome group,

led by Jimmy Sherry Zee and all those gangsters, the leader of those groups, they are all over TikTok and social media. They saw everything, they see everything that people are doing. They know me very well. If I go to Haiti knowing that I am the person in here, they would know that I was that executive director of that organization, maybe they would know that I would come back home with money,

and automatically I would have been a target. And this is a very, this is very concerning to me. So that's the case for so many of the Haitians. Veles, I appreciate this. Please take care. Thank you so much, Neil. Villes-Dorsenville is a pastor and the executive director of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center and a temporary protected status holder. He's in Springfield, Ohio.

The last time we spoke with primatologist Kiara de Gregorio, it was about something a little outside her typical wheelhouse, caterpillars. We promised that someday we would chat with her about her primary focus, which is, of course, primates. That time is now. Ms. DeGregorio is an author of a new study on Great Ape Laughter, specifically how the laughter of different ape species resembles and diverges from that of humans. Its goal was to uncover some hints of how laughter evolved. And to carry out that work, Ms. DeGregorio and her colleagues relied on decades-old recordings of various apes laughing, collected by researchers who actually tickled the animals. The results sound like this.

In order, the sounds of orangutans, bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas producing something we can all understand. Laughter. We reached Keira de Gregorio in Bologna, Italy. Kiaro, when I listen to that, it's impossible not to smile. What do you do when you hear those sounds? Well, smile for the first maybe 200s. And then as the analysis goes on and on, kind of look like,

oh, how many laughs are these like animals having and, you know, my face. And yeah, which ones are making which laugh, all of that. These are, we should mention these are older recordings. So you did not have the joy of tickling an ape yourself. But what do you know about what it was like for your colleagues who did do that? So, yes, basically what they do was to record when young individuals were having play for interaction with each other. So we're like playing, play fighting, all these kind of things.

That is one context of the mission. So we know that the great apes laugh in this context. But there is another context, which is the context of tickling, because as much as human children also small apes love to be tickled. And so in that case, there were familiar caretaker, so familiar individuals that will tickle them. And sometimes you can really see the animals asking for it, like really giving the hand, like, okay, tickle my feet, tickle my hand. So kind of funny, yeah.

So you tried to create sort of a sort of, an evolutionary timeline by analyzing the laughter of the different species and then comparing them to humans. What were you able to take away from that timeline? So the first thing we found is that the rhythm itself of Lasser is remarkably stable during evolution, meaning that from orangutans to gorillas to bonobo and chimpanzees and to human, we all laugh in a very regular way that we can define an isochronous rhythm, meaning that it's like the ticking of a clock or like the ticking of a metronome.

So we are all very regular in that. So in a way we could say that the rhythm that we are using when laughing dates back 15 million years. But then we also found some differences. For example, the rhythm of laughter accelerated with evolution. So this rhythm, it's like the metronome, right? It's regular, but that my metronome can tick in different tempos.

So it could be like tick, tick, tick for humans, while it's like more tick, tick, tick for orangutan. So it's lower. Is there one species that is the closest to us? So, yeah, Bonobo and chimpanzees are the one that are showing faster tempo than gorillas and orangutans, but still not as fast as we love. And they also show a little bit more variability in this tempo, meaning that, for example, for orangutans and gorilla, it seems like the rhythm of laughter is kind of hardwired. So it's like pressing a button and then they laugh in that way.

Going to Bonobo and chimpanzees, they start being a little bit more variable, meaning they could laugh like slower or maybe a bit faster. You have these recordings, obviously, and you can record people laughing now, but you don't have samples of early human laughter, obviously. So what kind of challenges does that reality pose for your work? The challenge is really trying to understand how did we evolve to have such a complex way of laughing, right? Because we're not like the other great apes that laugh just when playing. we laugh in many different situations. We laugh in a small, polite way in front of our boss that makes a joke. But then when we are at the pub with friends and family,

we laugh in a different way, maybe also crying while laughing and things like this. So why, how do we got there? And also, how could this relate to also the evolution of speech? Because it's about how we move our mouth and how we move our lips. and tongue. And this is something other animals cannot do. So having a faster laughter, a more variable laughter, a lather that can be modulate in different contexts, really tell us that at some point our ancestor developed this kind of vocal flexibility and ability that eventually probably played a role also in the evolution of human language. The last time you were on our show,

we were talking about caterpillars, if I remember correctly. And I asked you then, you know, this is you're sort of stepping away from apes. Would you go back to them? And you said, absolutely. And so I'm glad we could talk about this. But I think it's not about music or dancing and caterpillars. So what is it about these traits, these abilities that draw you in to do this work? Because, you know, also with the caterpillar and aunt, it was about rhythm.

And here again, we're talking about rhythm. So I would say that in general, rhythm, I mean, from my point of view, I've been studying rhythm for a while now. But it always offers some, you know, some curious stuff. Every time we try to understand more about rhythm, it could be lather of a gorilla or, you know, an ant doing a signal. And we always find super fascinating things because it's true. Rhythm is at the base of the way we communicate and the timing, the tempo, the pace we use to communicate is super important. and we are starting to understand more and more in the last years.

A pleasure speaking with you again, Kiara. Thank you for this. Thank you. Kiara de Gregorio is a primatologist and research fellow at the University of Warwick. We reached her in Bologna, Italy.

That is La Mosca with Muchachos, which translates to Boys, now we have hope again, an unofficial anthem of Argentina's men's soccer team that salutes Leonel Messi by name. I'm not sure why it's directed at Boys, but it's fun, and it doesn't make you feel weird and uncomfortable.

Another nice tribute was the statue of Messi they put up in India about six months ago. That looked good, and it didn't make you feel weird and uncomfortable. Because look, even if you get mad at Messi for scoring on your team, he doesn't make you feel weird and uncomfortable. But now there's a brand new tribute to Lionel Messi in Patagonia. It is 26 meters tall.

That's 85 feet. It depicts Messi on his knees celebrating a goal. In front of him is a World Cup trophy. And as you gaze up at it from ground level and take in the juxtaposition, you feel weird and uncomfortable. Now, when you see a photo of this statue, you will say, oh. You might say it like, oh, or you might say, oh, but you will say oh, because there are two related problems here, compositionally. First, the statue is bright white and its shorts are also white.

So he appears to be nude from the waist down, or as the kids say, Donald ducking it. And second, the artist has placed the World Cup trophy on the ground close to and in front of the kneeling statue's crotch. And I don't know when you last saw the World Cup trophy, but it's like it's sort of a ridged column with a rounded top. It's not unfalic. Or to put it another way, it is phallic. From any angle, this statue appears to be celebrating a goal in a way that would certainly prompt a red card. And somehow neither the artist nor anyone who greenlit his art noticed that. And listen, a lot of work went into it.

I'm not saying it's junk. I'm just saying that part of it really looks like junk. We're going to take a short break now. When we return, Eleni Mirivili's job at the UN is to help cities prepare for extreme heat. But she says politicians have ignored her many, many warnings. And that has led to deaths that could have.

have been prevented. Stay tuned. I'm Chris Houghton. And I'm Neil Kirksell. It's been said that being neighbors with America is like sleeping with an elephant. One gets affected by every twitch and grunt. Well, these days, there's a lot more than twitches and grunt. in dealing with the U.S. I'm Paul Hunter. And I'm Katie Simpson. We're reporters here in Washington, and every Wednesday will bring you a smart conversation

to help you make sense of how American politics are affecting Canada. Our new podcast is called Two Blocks from the White House. Find and follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. In Western Europe, a raging heatwave has been melting temperature records this week. But as we've heard on the show,

the effect of those temperatures can't be measured exclusively in degrees. The heat has also grounded planes, closed schools, and taken an as yet unknown number of lives. Eleni Miri Vili says we should be doing more to prevent that human toll. She's the global chief heat officer with the United Nations Environment Program. We reached her on the island of Lesbos in Greece. Eleni, what word comes to mind when you hear and see that yet again these temperatures have not just been uncomfortable. They've been deadly.

It's I guess frustration. It's both frustrating. I mean, it's unfair to say frustration. It is frustration because we're heating up much faster than we are building our adaptation, the actions and the policies that we need to make sure that we can protect people, during extreme heat and that our cities are cooler. At the same time, it's a little, there is a lot to be said

because in the last few years, there has been a mobilization from many different, both subnational and national governments in relation to extreme heat. So I am optimistic at the same time that I'm very worried because I really think that this is a new status quo. It's a new, you know, we're living in a different era, and we're not prepared for it.

You've called this kind of extreme heat a quote beast, and you're hinting at it there in your previous answer, that we're just starting to learn how to deal with it. But it has been happening over the last several years. I mean, are all of these deaths preventable? Could they have been prevented? Yes, they could have been prevented. I really believe that the vast majority of the people that were losing

due to extreme heat, if we had been more, if we've been thinking about this earlier, we could have prevented them. We could make, you know, the right kind of building codes that can create our buildings differently, design our buildings differently so that they're not ovens for the people that live in them. We could make sure that we have cities that are much, much greener. we could make sure that people that know better the dangers that they're facing when they're working or when they are in conditions where their bodies are heating up much in ways that are dangerous for their health. So yes, I believe that the truth is that we have been facing with heat waves that are longer,

that come earlier in the summers and also that have record-breaking temperatures the last 10 years more than we ever had before, right? I mean, even in Canada, it was 2021, I think, that the Pacific Northwest dealt with these absolutely crazy, crazy temperatures and the first time that the world heard about the heat dome. So I think that this is now much more common and there is pressure, there's much more pressure to do things about it.

But we've been, scientists have been talking about climate change, climate change and about global warming and heating the earth for decades. And we haven't really been listening. So why do you think, I mean, we heard this from guests in France that we've been speaking to about the temperatures there, that the politicians, while they're speaking now, aren't putting the money forward to make the schools safer for the students in this kind of heat, making the kind of changes that you were mentioning earlier in our conversation. Why do they forget this once the heat waves end?

It's a great question. I think part of the problem is that the people do not have not yet, are not putting any pressure on politicians in relation to these issues. like I don't think the politicians feel that they're going to lose votes if the politicians don't make cooler cities or if they don't create building codes or if they don't, you know, change the ratio of trees to cars, for example, in cities.

I don't think that this is yet kind of an awareness among the people. Which doesn't have to carry the same importance as cost of living. issues or pocketbook issues, those sort of things. Even though people are feeling it every day. And somehow they don't link it to something that they should be putting pressure to political

pressure. Like it almost is like something that we're taking as, you know, a greater force. Like, oh, it's the weather, you know, and oh, we, you know, what can we do about it? And oh, maybe some air conditioning. Maybe if we had more money and, you know, we could have, you know, if that's the approach. usually it's like can we have more access to air conditioning? And this is not an access issue. This is a thermal equity issue.

Like it's really, like we have to create safe cities and safe buildings. And this is what we expect from our governments. I mean, this is exactly what we need our governments to do. You brought up air conditioning. I was going to ask you about that. We hear a lot about that as a way to help people in these situations. Is that the answer? Air conditioning is not going to save us from this,

like from the trouble that we've put ourselves in. Because air conditioning is, of course, super important because it saves lives. But at the same time, first of all, it heats up the outside spaces, the public spaces. It's kind of almost a very egotistical thing because it cools up us in our house or whatever, but it heats up the public space outside because it blows hot air out. It contributes a lot to climate change and also it uses these kinds of chemicals which contribute even more to climate change when we get rid of the aircon. But anyway, right now we have, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, right now 20% of the electricity that we use globally goes to cooling. And this is because of extreme heat and because more people are able to afford air condition.

for example in India or in China. So there's like a really fast growing number of people that are using air conditioning. But this is a maladaptation when it comes to heat. Because what we really need to do is we need to create buildings that need less air conditioning. And we need to make cities that actually create less hot public spaces. So people can be outside and people can enjoy, you know, walking and enjoy eating out. out in the cafes and going out to restaurants and commerce is functioning and, you know, all transportation is possible and electricity is, you know, we do have electricity and we don't

worry so much about blackouts because the more we create the demand for cooling from energy, from electricity, the more pressure we put on the grid, the higher the possibilities of blackouts and the more we heat up the outside. So it's a little bit of a catch-22 if we really see air conditioning as the main thing that's going to save us. Eleni, I appreciate this. Thank you. All the best. Eleni Mirivili is the Global Chief Heat Officer with the United Nations Environment Program. She's on the island of Lesbos in Greece.

Katie Porter Jill Tucker Carlson started her social media post with the words, if you ever doubt how magical this world is. And the thread that followed that has now had more than a million views. It all started with her decision to attend a World Cup watch party in Oakland to cheer on Cape Verde. More than 30 years ago, she taught English to a class of teenagers there. But she didn't go to that party expecting one of her students would actually be there and that he'd been hoping to track her down for decades. We reached Jill Tucker Carlson in San Francisco and Yvonne Silva in Houston, Texas.

Ivan, let me start with you. When Jill starts speaking to you, you know, your face-to-face, how quickly were you able to figure out that the woman introducing herself to you was your former teacher? Yeah, I was a bit primed to find her because I've been looking for her. So when some of the data points were coming together, it came to me pretty quickly that it was Jill. How long had you been looking? Yeah, I moved to the Bay Area in 2000. and two and I knew she lived or worked in the Bay Area. So since then, I've been looking for Jill Tucker Carlson, and I was not sure if I had the

correct last name or anything, but I've just been emailing, social media, anything, trying to find any jails that could possibly have worked in Cape Verde in the 90s. And as you collect those data points, after all that time looking for Jill Tucker Carlson, How did you feel when you finally, when all those pieces came together and you're looking at her? It was amazing. I was overwhelmed, really. And Jill, for you? Yeah, it was very surreal.

At first I didn't believe it when he said, I was your student. I thought there's no. That can't be. How is that even possible that this could be a former student, 6,000 miles and 35 years later? and it was overwhelming. It was surreal and it was wonderful. Yvonne, how do you, in those moments then sum up, why you'd been looking for her and what her teaching meant to you?

Yeah, I told her I hope she hadn't been hiding from me because we were young and maybe we were terrible students. And she was a teacher from the U.S. and had different ways of grading, different ways of teaching from the ways we were. taught and so she stood out for sure for us but i didn't know if it was a positive experience for her as much as it was for us were they why would you have described them to oh he well it was so funny because one of the first things he said to me he apologized for how badly behaved they were

did you concur no i actually i was like no you were wonderful i loved all of you so much and then i actually stopped for a second i went oh yeah they they were sometimes not great. I mean, you know, they were, they were 13 to 15 years old. Right. But that is not what I remember of them at all. I remember how amazing and wonderful and funny and smart and brilliant. And I love them so much.

And it breaks my heart that he was looking for me and couldn't find me. And we were, once he came to Oakland, he was literally a mile away. for me. In your in your thread on social media, Jill, you described all of this as as magical. It was magical and I felt like, you know, there's so much happening in the World Cup right now. There's so many of these moments of joy and unity and and people coming together and and seeing Yvonne again after all these years. and it just felt like part of this magical moment that was happening, but obviously far more special for me. But it was something that I wanted to share.

And I think Yvonne agrees too. Like it feels like the world is hungry for these types of stories or these types of things that are happening in the World Cup that we're all experiencing, this joy and this happiness of people coming together. other. And, but for me, it was magical. It was just to have one of my students, former students in front of me. I'm not someone who believes in miracles, but I think I'm going to have to start now. I want to ask you, Jill, just you, something at the end of your thread that's clearly important to you and others. You said, you talked about the magic of this experience, but, but also, you know,

what is that kind of magic worth when there are proposed cuts to the Peace Corps in the United States right now. What is your message? What do you hope this experience sends to those who are set to vote on the future of this program? Yeah, you know, there's a proposal to completely eliminate the program. And for me, it really is about, you know, these types of experiences, the Peace Corps or the World Cup are experiences that bring people together. As you could see, you know, I am back in time. And I'm not letting Yvonne go now, now that I, he's back in my life. Now, we're... I was afraid.

And so... Yeah, you're not going anywhere, Jill. No. And we're already planning on having, like, you know, video calls with former students. But, yeah, so... But these types of experiences, you know, like the Peace Corps meant so much to me. And that's because of my students and because of my experience in Cape Verde. And the World Cup is another example of that of bringing people together.

And when you get rid of those types of experiences, the world, it shrinks into, you know, isolated little worlds of just you. And I think we've seen in the World Cup that I think we'd much rather have a world where we're sharing experiences. And I'm so glad that Yvonne was in my life 35 years ago and he's in my life now. It's beautiful. It's so beautiful. You're going to be at the game. Ivan, right? Cape Verde versus Saudi Arabia. How do you like their chances? It's looking really good, but I think we just have to keep the same work ethic, be humble and be grateful and hopefully good things happen to us.

I'll be cheering from here, but he's going to cheer for both of us in this studio. Thank you. Thank you. And then do you have like a weekly or a monthly meetup plan now? Yeah, when he gets back, we're getting together and hopefully Cape Verde will move forward and we're going to be watching all. all the games together. Yeah, there'll be Cachupa in our future soon. Oh, my gosh, I miss Cachupa so much. Tell me more. It's like the national dish.

I was going to ask you for a recipe. What is it? Tell us, Yvonne. It's like, yeah, you've got to tell what it is so good. It's a bean and hominy stew with some meats and greens all in a big old pot, cooking all day and bringing family and people together. That sounds delicious. Yes, it's like the World Cup in a dish.

What a pleasure, Yvonne, Jill. So great to speak with you. I'm so glad you found each other. Oh, thank you so much. We're so glad to find each other too. We reached Jill Tucker Carlson in San Francisco and Yvonne Silva in Houston, Texas.

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. And you can of course also listen to our show online at cbc.ca.ca.a slash A.I.H. Or on the CBC Listen app, or of course, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Neil Kirksal. And I'm Chris Howden.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.