As It Happens: The Thursday Edition
Part One
Quebec Hospital Nurse Staffing
A nurse in Quebec tells us the province's plan to have Covid-positive staff participate in care is bad medicine -- and the wrong approach to getting healthcare off life support.
Publishing Scam
Throwing the books at him. U.S. authorities have charged an Italian man with impersonating people in publishing to get his hands on unpublished manuscripts. And one of his likely targets tells us the whole thing is stranger than fiction.
Moist Towelette Museum
Wiping out the competition. Not that there is any. The man who runs the world's only Moist Towelette Museum comes clean about ...why he runs the world's only moist towelette museum.
No Helmet Vikings
Moot points. For decades, we assumed Viking helmets had horns because of two particular artifacts -- but it turns out what we thought about those artifacts was arti-fiction.
Part Two
UK Same Sex Crimes
Trials and errors. Four decades after our guest was convicted of breaking a now-defunct law used to target gay men in the UK, the so-called "crime" is still on his record -- but a new development has him hoping that might finally be corrected.
Swedish Film Fest
Organizers of a Swedish film festival say their plans to hypnotize audience members at movie screenings are all about casting a cinematic spell.
Part Three
Kazakhstan Protests
Riot acts. As Russia sends soldiers to help Kazakhstan's government end days of violent unrest, a reporter in the country's capital tells us there's been chaos in the streets, and in the coverage.
Supernova Observed
Dying breadth. An astronomer who recently watched a supernova happen in real time tells us the lessons learned are boundless. All thanks to a little change of space.
Encore: WWll Friend Reunited
Ana María Wahrenberg and Betty Grebenschikoff' are now in their nineties. The families of the two childhood friends fled the Nazis in 1939, and they didn't know what had happened to each other, for eight decades. Our interview with Betty Grebenschikoff was one of our most popular interviews of the past year. So, as we look back at some of our top stories from 2021, we revisit it.
Mafia Boss Arrested
Web of lies. Italian prosecutors tracked down an escaped mob boss living under a fake identity, with a little help from Google Street View.