He’s taking on OpenAI for the Tumbler Ridge families

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Tonight. The consequences of their inaction, the families of the victims of the mass shooting in Tumblr Ridge are suing Open AI for not alerting authorities to the shooter's troubling use of its chatbot. Slow your scroll. Manitoba Premier Wab Canoe is vowing to ban AI chatbots and social media for anyone under the age of 16. He'll tell us how he's planning to make that proposal work, IRL.

Home at last, a journalist and activist is finally free after being held in a labor camp in Belarus. A colleague tells us what it was like to lay eyes on his friend for the first time in years. First name basis. After discovering a touching letter to a granddaughter left in a book, a Washington, D.C. woman goes to great lengths to track down the recipient, she knew only as Jackie. She didn't miss a bleat. A farmer tells us she definitely knew her you, Timo was pregnant,

but she had no idea just how pregnant. And a nasty piece of work. A surprising study reveals that urban birds react differently to different genders and for some reason are noticeably more frightened of women. As it happens, the Wednesday edition, radio that serves up the surly bird special.

The families of the victims of the mass shooting in Tumblr Ridge, BC, are taking open AI to court. Today in California, lawyers announced seven different lawsuits filed by the families of the six victims who were killed and one seriously injured survivor, 12-year-old Maya Gabala, who's still in hospital. hospital. The lawyers wrote that they'll be pursuing, quote, landmark damage awards, unquote. The lawsuits allege that the shooter talked to chat GPT about planning violent scenarios and that Open AI executives knew about that. They alleged the conversations were flagged by 12 employees on Open AI's safety team who recommended the shooter be reported to the RCMP, but that executive leaders decided not to. Jay Adelson is the lawyer leading the U.S. legal team that's taking on the case. We reached him in New York City.

when you talk about this case pursuing, quote, landmark damage awards, unquote, what would that look like and mean for the families of these victims? Well, the most important thing for the families is that there's real accountability. Sam Altman and OpenAI have put out what we think of as very empty statements, apologizing, but not make any concrete promises to change things. Open AI, the leadership team made intentional decisions to not tell the authorities. And because of that, 12-year-olds were gunned down at close range.

Maya is lying in the hospital right now fighting for her life. The town is devastated. What we'll be asking the jury for is to send a message that Open AI has to have real accountability. that we're well aware Open AI is going to be worth more than a trillion dollars by the time we get to trial. They've made a lot of money

out of keeping the public from the knowledge of how ugly their system is and how much damage they've caused and we'll be asking the jury to award an appropriate amount that actually has an effect on a trillion dollar business.

Maya's mother, Sia Edmonds, wrote a letter to Sam Altman, and near the end of it, she writes, quote, every person in our community is now forced to look forward while grief stands still in time. Bloodstains in our school, now black and oxidized remain. A whole community lost. And to think, a simple phone call could have prevented this. You make phone calls every day, Sam, don't you? Why were you so scared to make this one? Unquote.

part of this lawsuit is about the allegations of this failure to report. How do questions of the chatbot's responses, how does that factor into the suit? Yeah, it starts with the chatbot itself. From everything we've seen from public reporting, it seems clear that the shooter was discussing plans for future violence. and a chat bot should not be engaging in that type of behavior, in that type of communications. But what we're going to do with the jury is we're going to put them in the room that the hours that OpenAI was making the decision, do we let the authorities know or not? We're going to have them hear testimony from the 12 people on the safety team who are jumping up and down saying we need to warn the authorities. We need to call the cops or something horrible.

is going to happen. And then we're going to make sure to hear from the leadership team that overruled their safety team and said, no, we've got to keep this quiet. That is going to be the most difficult part of the trial. Open AI refused your requests for chat logs. If you do eventually get them through the courts, what might they reveal? This is, you know, Open AI can keep running from these lawsuits, but it can't hide. At the end of the day, the victims are entitled to get the chat logs and we will get them. We've read dozens of chat logs over the last year, and we're confident this is going to be the worst yet because we have never seen the situation where internal safety employees were saying we need to alert the authorities. So we've seen

a lot of chat logs where there's the same type of red flags that the system was pinging on the chats, discussions about violence, for example. But we've never seen a situation where we're so bad that internal people were saying we've got to go and tell the authorities. So we think there's a reason that Open AI is refusing to provide them to us and to the public, and we look forward to getting them in the litigation. The families are also working with Canadian lawyers. They told CBC News that it would likely be more challenging to take this case to court here in Canada. What else was behind the decision-making, Jay, to take this to court in California? You know, the reason that we're filing in California, there's a few reasons. One is that we were sure

Sam Altman was going to argue that the Canadian court didn't have jurisdiction over him, and that would have allowed open the eye and Sam Altman to delay us getting to trial, something that's unacceptable to us. The families need justice. and they need as quickly as possible. We also think it's really important that the people who know him best are the ones that are on the jury, and that's his neighbors in San Francisco.

They're the ones who can assess his credibility, assess the moral responsibility and the legal responsibility that Sam and this company have in this case. And that's why we're bringing it in federal court in San Francisco. CBC News, of course, reach out to Open AI.

to request an interview with CEO Sam Altman. The company declined and responded in part, quote, we have a zero tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence. As we shared with Canadian officials, we've already strengthened our safeguards, including improving how Chad GPT responds to signs of distress, unquote. Sam Altman, his company, and they've come up against legal action lawsuits before. How are you preparing your clients for the legal battle ahead? You know, unlike Sam, we went to Tom Miller Ridge.

We met with them individually. Some of the most difficult days in my professional career. They understand what's in front of them. This is communities have been devastated, but they're also very resilient and they're angry, and they want accountability and justice. The idea that OpenAI has a zero tolerance policy is really offensive. I think we're up to about 30 lawsuits now on behalf of victims of Open AIs, chat, GPT. And if they really had a zero tolerance rule, you'd think at the least some people would be fired from this, and nobody is.

This is all just corporate double talk, and they've never taken any real accountability. Jay, I appreciate your time. Thank you for this. Thank you. I appreciate it. Jay Aidelson is a lawyer and the founder of the law firm Aidelson PC. We reached him in New York City. Later on, Neil will talk to Manitoba Premier Wab Canu about his proposed youth ban on social media and AI chatbots.

Today, Andre Pochaboot woke up a free man for the first time in five years. In 2021, the Polish-Belorussian journalist and activist was arrested and sentenced to prison on charges of inciting ethnic hostility and undermining Belarusian security, charges that have been internationally recognized as bogus and politically motivated. Since that arrest, Mr. Pochaboud has been held at a labor camp in Belarus, where his health has deteriorated. But yesterday, he was released as part of a 10-person prisoner swap with Poland that involved negotiations with seven different countries. Bartascholinsky is the deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta Viborcha, the Polish newspaper where Mr. Pocha-Bootchabut worked. He picked up his colleague from the Belarus-Pol and took him to the hospital. We reached him in Warsaw.

Bartaj, I know you were at the hospital earlier today. How is Andre holding up? Well, he's amazing, but he's fine. He's quite in quite a good shape, and he's recovering. his family members moved from Belarus to the Warsaw to Poland to be with him. So he's with his wife, with his son. Daughter and mother visited him yesterday and returned to the Grotna to Belarus. And he's in best spirits, I'd say.

This is amazing. I expected that he'll be somehow, you know, broken, well, living with an internal pain, know, you know, kind of traumatized, but, well, I'm not the specialist, of course, but I don't see anything like that when I talk with him, but physically he's, well, was a nourished person. I've seen him and I was devastated. It was when I saw him for the first time during the exchange. There was, yeah, there's a, you posted a photograph. He looks, he looks thin.

And what was it like for you to see him back with his family after so long? Well, I'm extremely grateful that that worked and I'm very happy and I'm relieved. I'm totally relieved because that was kind of nightmare for the last five years living with a thought in your mind that each day he could be, he could just perish in that camp he was imprisoned in Belarus. So he could just die due to violence or due to disease. He's, well, he told me yesterday that the treatment he receives in the hospital, the first real treatment he receives in the last five years. If we go back to yesterday, it was your role to pick him up at the border. What was it like?

Where were you as you waited, hoping that this was actually going to happen? The entire process went very, very smoothly. I was led by one of the eight Polish agents at the border. I was awaiting that Andrei would appear. And my role was to determine if the person who is approaching us is real Andre Puchabut. And to convince Anjai Potsabut to cross. The person appeared, get closer. I started to recognize his face.

And, you know, I turned on my memory trying to recall him. And then he approached very closely, you know, a dozen of meters and I was almost sure that this Pachobudena spoke him asking if he is recognizing me. And he said, you bet I do. And I heard his voice, you know, and voice doesn't change. The first question he asked me is, will I be allowed to go back someday? Of course, you are. Yeah. Because that's his homeland. That's his word. That's his we know. country. Was it emotional? Or is it just a blur at that point? Well, he was scared and unsure. And then he was, you know, enthusiastic and euphoric rather. Prime Minister was relieved, of course, because there was, you know, the process that lasted for

almost three years, negotiating the exchange with many parties, creating, well, the scheme of this exchange, convincing Belarusian was extremely hard, you know, and there were some several attempts to do it before earlier, to do it last year, and it backfired. So I was not sure till the last moment, and I was standing under the border facing, you know, Belarusians and hoping that that will be dead, that day, that Sanse Pachabut will be free. And well, yes. Did he believe that he would be released? didn't want it to go, actually.

He had his times of release. He wanted to be acquitted and sent back home to his house in Grodna. And it went in a different way. And I feel that slightly he's not quite happy with that. Is it safe for him to go back? When he said to you, I want to go back. No, no, of course, no. Of course, he wants to go back, but it's not safe.

And I'm not sure if he would be allowed in, because the Belarusians, they didn't want to kill him, they wanted to ask him to be out. and live in the exile and that's what's the fate he would share with members of Belarusian opposition living in exile. But if he manages to get back, if we try to sneak in that he will be severely punished, I don't doubt that that would be the point. But I think at least he'd like to try officially. The thing he was holding in his hand, there was a thing which also struck me on the moment of the exchange, I noticed a guy wearing a sport clothes very thin and he was holding something blue, a blue piece of cardboard.

And I recognized, you know, a minute later that that was the Belavision passport. And he was holding it like a, like, I don't know, like a pass, like a lifeguard, like a safety, you know, pin, something which is extremely important for his survival because he wanted to have his passport in his hand because with that passport, he could theoretically return to Belarus. And that was such an important item. He didn't have anything. The clothes were taken from here. He got some personal belongings.

I don't know, few things which you could take from a prison cell. And this passport. And I think there was the most valuable thing he was possessing at the moment. He was holding it firmly in his hand. Bartol, I appreciate this. Thank you. Thanks. Bartosh Varlinsky is the deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta Viborcha.

We reached him in Warsaw. When Katie Slocum of Washington, D.C. opened up her copy of Ann Patchett's State of Wondering. She found herself in a state of Wondering. Tucked between the pages was a letter written over 20 years ago. On its two pages, an anonymous, doting grandmother, pays tribute. to her granddaughter, whom she refers to only as, my dearest Jackie. And following that is a delightful moving letter. The sort of treasured possession Ms. Slocum reckoned had to have been misplaced.

So she decided to track Jackie down. We reached Katie Slocum and the now adult grandkid in question, Jackie Roche in Washington, D.C. Katie, what was it about this piece of paper, this letter, as lovely as it is, that made you want to take that next step and try to find the Jackie? in this letter? I mean, the way that Jackie's grandmother described her just made her seem like such a special, wonderful, lovely person. And honestly, besides the fact that I wanted to make sure that Jackie got this wonderful letter that her grandmother wrote her, I also just wanted to meet her.

I wanted to see this person who was being described as a rare bubbly champagne and somebody who lights up and, you know, uplifts the person in front of them. But, you know, apart from the handwriting, which it might be similar to others and maybe that kind of turn of phrase, there's no, it didn't come with an envelope with a stamp and an address on it. So where did you, where did you start? Yeah. So our community is full of excellent resources for connecting across, you know, neighborhoods and within neighborhoods. And so I have a buy nothing group that I'm a member of. So I went there first because the Little Free Library is in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. And the Little Free Library is where you got the book that this letter was in in the first place. But years before, it sat on your shelf before you even flipped through it and found it, right? Absolutely. And so, you know, Little Free Libraries are all over the city and you can pick up a book in one and replace it into a different one.

And so I didn't even know if the person who had put the book in the library was from the neighborhood or was still around. I posted on a couple of DC-based subreddits on Reddit. And then I also used a local blog called Prince of Petworth. So you used the social media in the best way possible for this kind of connection. How long before you got a response, let alone the right response? Within 24 hours of it being posted on Prince of Petworth, Jackie saw it. And you found each other. And then we have Jackie on the line as well.

Jackie, were you just scrolling one day and then saw your grandmother's handwriting? That is exactly how it happened. I came home from work, exhausted on a Friday, and I was flipping through. I look at Prince of Petworth all the time, and I was just scrolling, and I saw this picture, and I paused the screen, and immediately. I mean, I saw my name. I know my grandmother's handwriting, and I shouted out, like, that's me. That's my letter. And it's a really surreal moment because I look at it all the time. You don't expect to be the person they're talking about. And did you even, you recognize it, but did you remember it?

Oh, absolutely. You just don't forget a letter like that. And I had it since I was 16. I've carted it around with me. I've moved to many different places. and it's something that was always with me. So I've turned to it in other times. I know the stationary.

I know my grandmother's handwriting. And so I absolutely recognized it right away. And you just didn't realize that you had left it in the book when you donated it? No. And so what I'm thinking, I'm an avid reader. There's no way I used that letter as a bookmark. I use wild things as bookmark, but it's not. important sentimental letters. What I'm thinking is that really important things sit in my

nightstand. And, you know, when you're moving, your whole life is disorganized. And so I must have slipped it in or I must have come like into the book in between the pages somehow. But I didn't even recognize that it was gone. Can you read it for our listeners? Absolutely. It begins, my dearest Jackie, I would like to tell you about the Jackie I know. The day you were born, you put smiles on everyone's face. You were just beautiful. As you got older, we all enjoyed your performances on cue. You even enjoyed it then. It was center room at the time. When you were older, I could see the loving, caring, and sweet person you were becoming. As a teen, you bubble and sparkle, like a rare vintage champagne.

You make the time anyone spends with you fun. You give of yourself, and that's a wonderful thing. It's a rare gift. I know, oh, my goodness, sorry. Getting a little emotional. I don't usually read it out loud. It's hard not to. I hear you read it.

I know whatever life gives you, you will take with both hands and keep on dancing. I am so proud to be your grandmother, love you with all my heart. Is your grandmother still with you? She is. I'm so happy to say that. Oh, I'm happy to hear it.

She just celebrated her 90th birthday in January. Bravo. What does she think of all of this? Her and I have been having the best time with this. We cannot believe it. We're completely overwhelmed and shocked by the whole story. We've had tremendous laughs and so many fun conversations about this. Katie, what was it like finally to meet in person?

It was just like, it was so easy. It was, you know, she came to my neighborhood and it was so fun. We got to have, you know, a nostalgic recollection of the times that she spent in the neighborhood when she lived there and just talking about all of our favorite spots and all the things that we had in common. And I think we stood at the curb of the Mount Pleasant Farmers Market for like 20, 30. minutes just just chatting and and being astonished with each other about how this all came to be. Jackie, where's the letter now? It's still in my nightstand.

I've placed it away from any books. I will keep it. It's just a force of habit. I don't know if it's because like my nightstand is right next to my bed, important things that are easily accessible. like keep in there. And so I am more conscious, but it's still there. Katie, Jackie, a pleasure speaking with you both. Thank you for this.

Thank you for having you. Thank you so much. We reached Katie Slocum and Jackie Roche in Washington, D.C.

Leave no black plume as a token of that lies. thy soul has spoken. Leave my loneliness unbroken. Quit the bust above my door. Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door. Quote the raven never more. Vincent Price, reading Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, the terrifying tale of an evil bird that drives the narrator to despair through its heartless repetition of the word, Nevermore. Or, the heartwarming tale of of a pleasant bird who just wants to chill with his bud and wants the bro time to end nevermore. Look, I realize that's not what our Squaresville English profs taught us in introduction to bird poems 101 or whatever.

But guess what? That's because our profs didn't know that urban birds are big on dudes and small on women. Well, they're pretty small period. So let me be blunt. Birds might be misogynists. Researchers found men and women who were about the same height and put them in about the same clothing. and then they asked the men and women to walk directly toward birds. And they found that on average, the men got a faux meter closer to the birds before they took off.

Or to put it another way, on average, the birds fled much earlier when a woman was approaching. What's your problem, birds? I'm asking the birds, because the researchers don't know. As Professor Daniel Blumstein of UCLA put it, quote, I fully believe our results that urban birds react differently based on the sex of the person approaching them, but I can't explain them right now. now, unquote. We are talking about 37 species of urban birds here on five continents, magpies, pigeons, house sparrows, blackbirds, not a single feminist ally among them. And obviously,

there's a lot more work to be done to figure this whole thing out, but for now, for some reason all these birds keep pigeonholing women, and you'd think the pigeons in particular would know better.

We're going to take a short break now. When we return, Manitoba Premier Wob Canoe tells me why he is determined to enact a ban on AI chatbots and social media for anyone under the age of 16 in his province. And more than she bargained for, a farmer in Vermont tells us it has been a tough month, but you'd be surprised how much joy can be found from one shockingly feckoned sheep. Stay tuned. I'm Chris Outen. And I'm Neil Kerkisal.

Your team just added its 67th AI tool, and also your 67th security blindspot. 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. companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com. 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. 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.ca.com slash sounds good to subscribe. Premier Wab Knew has proposed a ban on social media and AI chatbot use for kids under the age of 16. And for tech companies that don't comply, he's promising, quote, bigger fines than you've ever seen in Manitoba before, unquote. The move would be the first of its kind. in Canada. The Premier is citing youth mental health issues like anxiety and depression linked to what he calls the infinite scroll. We reached Premier Canaan in Winnipeg.

Premier, you've said these companies can either comply with what you're proposing or face fines of a billion dollars or more. What if they refuse to pay that kind of penalty? What's your move then? Well, these businesses collect and remit provincial sales tax, so I assume they have business operations that interface with our provincial government and we pursue accountability. META with Jay Jones Facebook and Instagram, as you know, just thinking back on the online news act, meta blocked all news sharing in Canada, as you know, rather than obey that online news act. They obviously have money and lawyers.

How do you and your province calibrate for that kind of fight? It's an important question. but I think it speaks to the heart of what is that stake here, which is do you want a society that is manipulated by a class of tech billionaires, or do you want a society that focuses on protecting our kids, protecting human beings? The goal of our society should be to train the next generation, not to train the next AI model. And while I would expect there's going to be,

Let's listen to a little bit of what he said. The Trump administration is troubled by reports that some foreign governments are considering tightening the screws on U.S. U.S. tech companies with international footprints. Now, America cannot and will not accept that. The AI future is not going to be one by hand-wringing about safety. It will be one by building. How does what the vice president, U.S. Vice President is saying their Premier, sit with you. And when we talk about timing Kusma talks approaching, does that factor into your thinking around this, that there could be retaliation? Well, my role is to protect kids in Manitoba. And when I say that we don't want a society in which we're being manipulated by tech billionaires.

I mean, I'm thinking about JD Vance and Donald Trump. They are the emissaries doing the bidding of some big, big forces in the tech industry, some very, very wealthy people, particularly in statements like the audio that you played there, there is a dogma in Silicon Valley and in the tech world generally. that has tried to reduce the current development of AI into a contest between the U.S. and China and in so doing, basically do fearmongering to say that anyone who opposes this opposes freedom, which is nonsense. Of course, Kuzma is important.

It's absolutely essential for our Canadian economy, but there must be a path forward to preserving the proper development of young minds and being able to maintain a trade relationship with the United States, America, not least of all, because a lot of American states are moving in the same direction to Manitoba. In terms of the legalities and logistics, even if people may agree with what you're saying, there are those even in Manitoba pointing out that this needs to be a national project. And we know the federal government is talking about this. Manitoba's PC family's critic, Jodi Byram, put out a statement saying in part today,

quote, to be truly effective, a social media ban should be a national initiative, unquote. Do you feel that Manitoba has the legal power and authority to regulate international tech companies like these ones? We do. I wasn't elected to make excuses about other levels of government. I was expected to get things done. That's why I was elected. So it only stands to reason that when we're talking about young minds, young brains that are still developing, young people who are still growing their sense of what is right and wrong in the world. But that's where we should begin the challenge of trying to rein in the excesses of surveillance capitalism as practiced by social media giant. Our listeners heard just earlier on our show from one of the lawyers representing families in Tuller Ridge, BC, who are now suing Open AI over its failure to disclose the shooter's use of chat GPT to law enforcement.

What do you believe governments should be taking away from what happened that horrific case? Do you think there needs to be from Ottawa mandatory reporting requirements on AI companies? First of all, I just want to acknowledge the tremendous hardship and tragedy for the people of Tumblr Ridge and British Columbia and for these families. Out of respect for their legal process, I won't comment on the civics. But I think there's a couple things. One, yeah, there should be a reporting report. requirement. You know, anyone in a position of power, if they see something bad happening out in the community, they're supposed to say something about it. They should have a responsibility to report,

but probably we want to start to have a conversation about is it appropriate for people to have perfect information about a society in which they operate? And if so, is it appropriate for them to do that without any democratic oversight? I think most people would probably say no. Obviously, we followed the ban in Australia, the under 16 ban. Their own E-Safety Commissioner's compliance report just from about a month ago concedes that about 70% of children are still accessing social media. What do you take away from what appears not to be working that well at this stage in Australia? Well, first of all, shout out to Australia for actually trying to do something about it.

And then, yeah, we learn. We look at what they did and we try to improve upon it and we try to iterate. I think there's no end to the amount of innovation that we're going to try and bring to bear. And, hey, if we can call out some of the nastiness that has been perpetrated on what was supposed to be a very democratic internet and bring things back to a more democratic direction, and that would be a bonus to. Premier Canoe, thank you for coming back on the show. I appreciate this.

Well, thank you for the thoughtful conversation. We reached Manitoba Premier Wab Canoe in Winnipeg. It's spring. And in spring, it's not surprising to encounter a fresh new lamb or to gambling playfully about if you live on a farm that has sheep, some of whom were recently pregnant. That was how spring had sprung for Anne O'Connor a couple of weeks ago at Clover and Bee Farm in Vermont, the farm she runs with her husband, But despite being well aware that their fin sheep, Timo was expecting, they really didn't expect what happened next. We reached Ann O'Connor in Underhill, Vermont.

And you knew Timo was expecting, but when she started giving birth that date, did everything go as expected? No, we were not expecting things to go as they went. So first of all, we were not expecting her to deliver quite as early as she did. She was about a week before we were expecting. So we were, you know, down at the barn just doing some regular barn chores. And we noticed that she was, you know, there was kind of a commotion in the field. And we went up and she was lambing.

It was a surprise just from the get-go there. Yeah. What was that commotion like? What did it sound and look like? So she was laying down in the field. And we had just noticed because we still had all of the sheep together. We hadn't separated them out, the pregnant ewes out yet. So a lot of the other sheep were, you know, kind of over there.

We heard some bleeding. And then what I heard when I got a little bit closer is there's this really special little knicker that sheep make that when they are talking to their babies. And so I heard that little kind of low-pitched, very gentle bleat. And I knew that she was lambing. So then when I got closer still, I could see that there was one lamb on the ground. and she was in the process of delivering the second lamb just as I was walking up to her. And so when I got there, there was one lamb who she had been able to kind of start the process of looking clean. And then that second lamb was on the ground. And she was actually already

laying down kind of working on number three when I got up there. And what were you doing to help that that second lamb? Yeah, so the second lamb was definitely a slow transition. So he took a bit of drigno drying and stimulating to get him going. And he was quite blue at first. But okay now? He's great now. Yeah, he's super vigorous.

And then there were more. The third one was coming, as you said, while you're helping the second one. How many more were there in the end? So there were a total of six. So three and four came just in one push right away. and number five, probably about 10 minutes thereafter. And at that point, I really thought she was well and truly done. You know, she was up.

She was doing her job, looking at them. The first one was already up and starting to nurse. And after about 20 more minutes, she lay down again. And I thought she was going to deliver the placenta. But she delivered us with the sixth lamb. And it's so funny because that lamb, they all have their own personalities. But the sixth one is the most melancholym. definitely of the six and potentially the most mellow sheep that we've ever had born on the farm.

And I just imagine that, you know, everyone else was excited about being born. And she was like, you know, well, I'll just take it easy. No rush. You have, there's Timu, of course, a Finnish name. What about the babies? Yes, we've named them for the Finnish number is one through six. So it's Ixie, Kaksy, Kolemi, Nalia. VC and Coosie is the little, the little mellow one.

I imagine that this is, it's not unheard of this many coming out at once, but how rare are we talking? So for six, it's at least one in a thousand. That was the best study I could find. I've seen other, you know, when this has happened, I think it happens every couple of years throughout the world. And so I saw another couple news articles about it in the past that have said one in a million. I'm not sure if it's quite that rare, but it is definitely not something that happens very frequently. You co-own this farm, as our listeners heard. You're also a physician. You're a doctor, ER and pediatrics.

So you're using these skills on that day, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah, it's not all that. All mammals pretty much have babies the same way, or most mammals. It's not honestly all that different. You know, that is first moments of life. It's a baby human or a baby sheep. Yeah. And like any mother, six babies would be a lot to handle.

I can only imagine. How is Timu doing? How is she getting along? Yeah. I mean, honestly, I've been so impressed by her. She's doing wonderfully. She has needed a little bit of help. So our guy who was weak and needed some help at delivery did end up pretty

quickly becoming a bottle baby and I've been giving some supplemental milk to a couple of the others but she has been you know primarily feeding five out of the six since day one you know you really really stepped up you're not just helping to feed you slept in the barn at first right yeah yeah the first uh that first week was a pretty busy week so I slept in the barn the first few nights. And I actually ended up having, so I was just diagnosed about three weeks ago with breast cancer and I ended up having surgery about three days after this happened. So I did spend the night before my surgery.

I slept in a real bed. But other than it is definitely, yeah, definitely been a lot of time down at the before and after. How are you doing with these gifts of these new lambs? but also, you know, your own surgery. Yeah. So, you know, it's been a tough spring getting the diagnosis. And honestly, having these six lambs born has just been such a vibrant show of life here on the farm.

And it's been a really beautiful counterpoint to the rather terrifying. you know the month that I've been having otherwise and and so it really has been a lovely you know reminder that life goes on and it has been it was a really really hopeful thing to have happened so I've been extra grateful that that has come into my life at this point which has otherwise been a pretty pretty difficult month and I'm grateful that we could speak and glad that everyone is doing okay. But you, please take care. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Anne O'Connor is the co-owner of Clover and Bee Farm in Underhill, Vermont. That's where we reached her.

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. H or on the CBC Listen app, or of course, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Neil Kerkissel. And I'm Chris Howden.

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