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The AIH transcript for July 22, 2025

For more episodes of this podcast, please click this link.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Hello, I'm Megan Williams, sitting in for Nil Köksal.

ACEY ROWE: And I’m Acey Rowe, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[theme]

AR: Tonight:

MW: Hunger pains. A mom in Gaza tells us she can only provide one meal a day for her and her four children -- and she says that makes her one of the lucky ones as more than a dozen people die of starvation in the last 24 hours.

AR: Early harvest. We hear from a reporter who uncovered a pattern of nightmare scenarios involving the premature collection of organs, following changes to the organ-donation system in the U.S.

MW: Getting out while they still can. The entire staff of a human rights group in El Salvador flees the country, after their high-profile colleague is arrested and put in prison.

AR: A dark day for Black Sabbath fans. Ozzy Osborne -- the band’s lead singer -- has died. A lifelong fan tells us about meeting the heavy metal icon at his last concert just weeks ago.

MW: And…welcome to the big leagues. Late night host John Oliver offered to re-brand a minor league baseball team. We hear from the former team president of the Erie SeaWolves about how it feels to head up the new Erie Moon Mammoths.

AR: Plus...Name droppings. A whiff of controversy permeates the Toronto Transit Commission as fare inspectors are rebranded as Provincial Offences Officers -- or P-O-Os…POOs, for short.

AR: As It Happens, the Tuesday Edition. Radio that hopes they uncover the responsible potty.

[theme]

Part 1: Gaza Hunger, Salvadorian Group Relocates, Ozzy Osbourne Obit

Gaza Hunger

Guest: Salma Altaweel

AR: Gazans are dying -- not only from bullets and bombs -- but from starvation. In the past day, Palestinian health officials reported 15 deaths from malnutrition. Included in the toll are three children and one six-week old infant. The starvation deaths come as people continue to be killed while trying to get food from distribution centres run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The UN estimates that, since May, more than 1,000 people have died trying to get aid. Yesterday, Canada along with dozens of other countries, released a statement calling Israel's aid distribution system "dangerous." The signatories included David Lammy, the U.K.'s foreign secretary. Here he is speaking to the BBC today.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID LAMMY: Appalled, sickened. I described what I saw yesterday in Parliament as grotesque. These are not words that are usually used by a foreign secretary who's attempting to be diplomatic. But when you see innocent children holding out their hand for food, and you see them shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days, of course, Britain must call it out. Of course, Britain must lead others in the statement, as I did yesterday, to call it out. Of course, we must get on the phone, and we must urge Israel to think again, as I again did yesterday. And we will continue to pressure. We will continue to add. We will to continue urge this Israeli government to listen to 83 per cent of its public who are urging them now to move to a ceasefire so those hostages can come out.

AR: That was the U.K. foreign secretary on the BBC today. Salma Altaweel is a support manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, and a mother of four children. We reached her in Gaza City.

MW: Salma, do you have enough food for your children right now?

SALMA ALTAWEEL: I'm talking to you right now, and I don't have even one gram of flour in my home. I'm sorry to say that I don't have enough food for my kids.

MW: So, how are you managing?

SA: For me, I consider myself one of the lucky ones who can feed their children at least one meal a day. But even that meal is not enough. Sometimes they ask, why is this happening to us? And why do other children around the world eat everything they want, and we can't? And, as you know, from the social media, they are aware what the people around the word are eating. How much they live in luxury. Why we are not eating, not like before, but not like the others around the world?

MW: So, what do you tell your kids when they ask you that question?

SA: Usually, I ask them to be patient and to wait. Good days will come, inshallah, soon. And all of this will end. But for me, I'm not convinced by my answers, because I'm not convinced how much this world is unfair. The whole world is not acting well to support us, or to do anything for us. This starvation is the third one that we are suffering from. And it's the worst one. My eldest son has lost 30 kilograms of his weight, and the other one, 15 kilograms. And they are still kids, children. He lost most of his weight.

MW: You say, though, that you're one of the lucky ones. Can you tell us about other parents you know who are not able to feed their kids?

SA: Yes, I know parents that are not able to feed their kids for many days. One lady told me that she ties the stomachs of her kids at night to make them sleep. Others are trying to eat anything, things that we were not able to eat like the leaves of the trees. Other people are falling, literally, they are falling in the streets.

MW: And some people have died of starvation in the last 24 hours or so. What do you know about those people?

SA: Yes. Yesterday, 14 were died from the starvation. I saw their photos, and their bones are clearly visible in the pictures, or in the photos. It's very hard to hear that people are dying from starvation. And we didn't imagine that we'll reach to this point at any time.

MW: The food that is getting through, it's getting into Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. We've seen many deaths, including from Israeli gunfire, of people trying to get to that food. What needs to change to get Gazans the food they need?

SA: The way they are entering the food totally should be changed. Few people are able to go to this GHF. So, the people in the north are not able to receive such food. They should go back to the old mechanism through the UN agencies and other NGOs that were delivering the food to people in dignity and in fair way.

MW: Yesterday, Canada was one of 25 countries that signed a joint statement condemning what they called, quote, the drip feeding of aid and inhumane killing of civilians. The statement also called on Israel to lift the restrictions on aid. What more would you like to see from countries like Canada to help bring an end to this crisis?

SA: They should push more to open all the crossing points. And they are putting so many restrictions on the types of food that is entering. For my kids, they didn't eat meat for more than one year. They didn't eat fruits for more than one, one year. The kids that are two years old, they do not know what's banana, what's an apple. They don't know the texture of those fruits. And they cannot even imagine what's inside this yellow thing, the banana. You know, can you imagine that? It's only lentils, flour, and beans. That's all. We don't have any other kinds of food. We don't have rice. We don't have eggs, milk. Even for the newborn kids, there is no diapers. There is no milk. The mothers, they are trying to feed their kids only water without any milk. There is no milk for the newborn children.

MW: Salma, you've been through so much in this war, and your children have, too. We've heard about the ongoing talks for ceasefire. You said you're not really hopeful of change, but do you have any hope that the talks in Doha right now might move forward towards an agreement?

SA: Believe me, all Gazans lost this hope. We were hoping, maybe before two months we were hoping. But now, we are not able to hope, or we cannot, we see that all of those talks are, they are lying on us. We are not able to believe anything after what is happening with us. They say that there are talks is that we were reached to a ceasefire. At the same time, you see an evacuation order, or relocation order for a specific area. So, we lost the trust of this world and of all the people in this world. I'm sorry to say that, but this is what we are feeling now.

MW: Salma, thank you so much for speaking with me now.

SA: This is very much appreciated. Thank you.

AR: Salma Altaweel is a support manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council. We reached her in Gaza City.

[nylon string guitar]

Salvadorian Group Relocates

Guest: Noah Bullock

AR: Only one staff member of the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal is still in El Salvador. And that's because she's behind bars. Ruth Lopez was arrested this May -- one of several prominent critics of the President Nayib Bukele's government who've been jailed. Many other Salvadoran activists, lawyers and journalists have fled the country to avoid the same fate. Among them -- Ms. Lopez's colleagues, including Noah Bullock, the executive director of Cristosal. We reached him in Guatemala City.

MW: Noah, how difficult was it for you and your team to leave El Salvador?

NOAH BULLOCK: Well, the organization has been there for 25 years, so the short answer is very difficult. Some of our key leadership is in prison, others have been threatened directly, and those people have left the country with the awareness that they can't go back, at least in the short term. And others of our colleagues have made a decision of conscience and conviction, that they want to continue on the work with the organization. So, you know, in that there's a million stories, individual stories of families, life projects left behind, material loss. You know, exile is a form of political violence.

MW: Your anti-corruption and justice director, Ruth Lopez, was arrested in May on corruption charges. She denies the allegations. And at the hearing where she was sent to prison, she shouted out, I am a political prisoner. Why do you believe authorities jailed Ruth Lopez?

NB: Ruth is a person who in El Salvador has a large public presence, is a very credible person as a professional. She's recognized internationally for being an expert in electoral law. And in her free time on weekends, she would be out in communities and at churches doing workshops on democracy and transparency. So, she has a strong following, and that makes her very uncomfortable to the regime. One of the things that surprised people when they actually captured Ruth is that they were able to do that, that they were willing to do that. Because I think people felt like if they can capture Ruth, then they can capture anybody.

MW: So, why not stay and fight for her release and for other Salvadorans your group has been fighting for, as you say, for 25 years now?

NB: The decision to relocate is directly linked to our ability to continue defending Ruth. We're not any good to anybody if we're all in prison. Our priority is protecting our people, our organization, and Ruth and her defence. And so, we felt like we would better serve our people and the victims that we've worked with from abroad.

MW: Did you think it was a question of time before you might be arrested?

NB: Some of our colleagues' names have appeared on lists. There's these rumours of black lists, and people are being contacted from the government that their names are on lists of people who will be detained. Some of my colleagues receive visits at night by police officers who stay then outside their homes and monitor them. So, there's a general environment of terror, and a clear knowledge that the Salvadoran government can detain anybody they want and disappear them indefinitely into prisons. Eighty-six thousand Salvadorans have been detained in three years without due process. And their family members don't know if they're dead or alive. So, there's a real reason for people to fear, I guess I'm answering you in a broad way [chuckling] that, yes, we all have that fear.

MW: Yeah. Now, those 86,000 people who have been arrested or disappeared you just mentioned, that has happened since President Bukele declared a state of emergency more than three years ago. And he says he's cracked down on gangs and crime, and cites the fact that the murder rate is down drastically. And he seems to be very popular. Is the president just doing what people want?

NB: Well, our perspective is that the Salvadoran people deserve something better than living subjected to gang violence or dictatorship. And the population, when they're consulted about, you know, when public opinion polls, the majority say that they give a job approval to the president, but similar majorities also say that they would be afraid to express an opinion that's not aligned with the president or his party. So, you have a population that says they support the president but also says that they will be afraid to tell you if they didn't. And so, I think that that's an indicator of the authoritarian climate that people are living in.

MW: Now, a few months ago, U.S. President Trump called Bukele one hell of a president. How emboldened do you think Bukela is now with Trump in office in the U.S.?

NB: Well, the U.S., prior to the Trump administration, was definitely an ally of Democratic actors in the world. And with President Trump, they've withdrawn from that space. And so, I think that Cristosal's exile and Ruth's detention, these are all symptoms of an emboldened autocrat. And also, a vacuity left in the word with what world powers are willing to exercise their leadership to defend human rights, civic space, and democracy. I think that that's a big question left open.

MW: Are there any countries or regions that you're turning to, or you hope to be able to turn to, European Union or other entities that might fill that gap?

NB: You know, Megan, when we've done dialogs with Nicaraguan exiles, or Venezuelan exiles, they all tell us that the international community is not going to save you. This is a moment for a human rights movement. We can't depend on governments or political power at this moment to protect us, or to continue to advance a vision of a world based on respect for human rights and dignity. It has to be among people, solidarity among groups, and I think that's part of the transition that's happening geopolitically around the world.

MW: Interesting. Noah, how long, I know this is a difficult question, but how long do you think it will be until your staff might be able to go home again?

NB: The night that Ruth was captured, when the police began to kind of be rough with her, she told them to have decency because this won't last forever. And we believe that. We believe that. I know lots of exiles in Central America from other moments in history that, sooner or later, have been able to go back home. For us, in order to reestablish operations in El Salvador, we need to be able to have some level of legal security. That there's rule of law and not the rule of an individual, of a man, who can dictate how life will be, who will be free, who will be detained?

MW: Noah, thanks so much for speaking with me today. Best of luck.

NB: Thank you, Megan.

AR: Noah Bullock is the executive director of the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal. He was in Guatemala City.

[fiddle!!!]

Ozzy Osbourne Obit

Guest: Luke McDonnell

AR: Just weeks ago, Ozzy Osbourne took the stage for the final time. On July 5th, the Godfather of Heavy Metal reunited with Black Sabbath for one last gig in his hometown of Birmingham, England. The show reportedly raised more than $190 million U.S. -- Which would make it the highest grossing charity concert of all time. It was quite a send off for a band that is credited with creating heavy metal music. What we didn't know at the time is that it would also be a send off fitting of the Prince of Darkness. Ozzy Osbourne died this morning, at age 76. Here is Mr. Osbourne speaking before the last song of that concert.

SOUNDCLIP

OZZY OSBOURNE: Unfortunately, we've come to our final song for ever. Your support over the years has made it all possible for us to live the lifestyle we live. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Go be crazy; it's the last song.

[Paranoid by Black Sabbath/metal]

AR: This is the sound of Black Sabbath playing their song Paranoid, just after Ozzy Osbourne spoke at their final concert on July 5th. Luke McDonnell was there. He was commissioned to create an oil painting backstage, to be auctioned off for charity. We reached him in Buckinghamshire, England.

MW: Luke, what's it like to hear Ozzy at his final concert, knowing what we now know?

LUKE MCDONNELL: It's it's pretty unbelievable, right? Um, you know, the difference between seeing the guy perform on stage and then meeting him just afterwards, like, it was almost two different people. And to hear that clip just then it's like man, the energy. Like, he literally, I think, he drew on whatever he had left to give it that that, you know, final incredible performance.

MW: Do you remember the first time that you heard a Black Sabbath song?

LM: Yeah, I was about 12 years old, I think. I got given a, I got given Paranoid by my uncle. And he said take this home and listen to it on repeat. And that's exactly what I did. I used to go to bed with it. And the sooner, you know, the first time I ever picked up a guitar, Paranoid was the first song I ever learned. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful memory. So, I mean, I'm 38 now. So, I've never been brilliant at maths, but it's a long time.

MW: Well, it's amazing you actually fell asleep [chuckling] listening to that before you went to bed.

LM: Oh yeah, all my teenage years.

MW: What did it make you feel?

LM: It was deliciously naughty. It felt like I'd found some sort of forbidden fruit. Um, and it was like I almost couldn't tell my parents about it. Um, it was just one of the most exciting things as a teenager. And, you know, to go and share that with your friends and be like oh my god, we have to start a rock band. You know, I just did my best to follow in his steps.

MW: What was it about the music that felt like forbidden fruit?

LM: I don't think you have the language as a kid, as a teenager, to understand fully what it is that you're experiencing when you listen to this kind of music. You know, there must have been some sort of wonderful amalgamation of, you know, the lyrics, the distorted guitars, you know, it was unlike anything I'd heard before. I mean, you know, we grew up with the Spice Girls and stuff around us. [MW chuckles] So when Black Sabbath hit, it's like a punch in the jaw.

MW: Now, can you take us back to that night, just a couple of weeks ago now, when you met Ozzy Osbourne in the final performance? I mean, what did it mean to be asked to be part of his last concert?

LM: Yeah, well, of course, it was the greatest honour. And, you know, as soon as that phone call came in, I chewed their arm off straight away. I had to be there.

MW: And I understand you got to meet Ozzy. What was he like?

LM: He was so wonderful. As I said at the beginning, just a totally different character to the guy who was performing on stage, who was this still youthful rock star at heart, albeit him being strapped to a throne for the performance. He was full of fire. And then you meet him afterwards, and it's like going to see your own granddad. He's gentle and soft and quiet. You know, still full of humour and loving. And he was very gracious and said, you know, shared some lovely words with me about the painting and raising money for charity. And we got to shake hands, and that was like his final bit of the night. He went off, I assumed, to his hotel after that.

MW: Mm-hmm, lovely. Now, I understand you got news of his death just before seeing this painting that you made for the last time. And I guess you were shipping it off. What was it like then to look at this painting you made at Ozzy Osbourne's final show as you get news that he's passed away?

LM: Yeah, the coincidence is pretty unreal because it must have been three weeks ago that it was painted. And we'd always planned to bring it down to a gallery and get a final photo of it before before shipping. It's going to New Zealand. So, it was it was up for auction for three charities which was Cure Parkinson's, Acorns Children's Charity, and Birmingham Children's Charity. And, yeah, the winner is from New Zealand; he bought the painting. And we were like this is our last opportunity to get a snap of it, and ideally raise some more money for the charities because from these photos we can potentially produce some prints.

MW: And can you describe the painting for us?

LM: Yeah, so the painting is of the devil that is on either side of Black Sabbath's logo. So, you see this devil with these big wings and horns, and he's holding onto this star. And I took that iconography and sort of put my own spin on it. And the idea was that it's based in 1960s Birmingham, 1968 to be precise, above the Aston Villa Stadium with all of the houses that they lived in in the background and the factories that they worked in. So, you've got this big skyline going on. And then from the smoke that emanates from all of those chimneys comes the devil, comes Henry himself. So yeah, the title of the piece is The Rise of Henry.

MW: Wow! I'm pulling it all together there. Now, Ozzy Osborne had a pretty storied career and was an absolute hero to metalheads all over the world. But just personally, what kind of mark did he leave on your life?

LM: He changed my life entirely. I went away and I never did artwork as a kid. I wanted to be a rock and roll star. [chuckle] So, I learned to play the drums, and I went for 20-25 years touring the world and making albums. So, he had an absolutely enormous effect on me. Obviously, it's heartbreaking to hear it, but I think that man got the most tremendous send-off I think I've ever seen, surrounded not only by his family, but all of his friends. You know, I think that's something that every human could aspire to. So, I'm gonna look at it in a very happy way.

MW: Pretty good send-off.

LM: You got it.

MW: Thanks so much, Luke.

LM: That's OK, not at all. Thanks for speaking with me.

AR: Luke McDonnell was at that final Black Sabbath concert. We reached him in Buckinghamshire, England.

[lounge jazz]

Part 2: Premature Organ Donation, Erie Moon Mammoths Debut

Premature Organ Donation

Guest: Brian Rosenthal

AR: For the recipient, a donated organ can mean the difference between life and death. And for the donors - it's a final act of goodwill - one that can help grieving families see at least some good come from their loss. But a disturbing pattern has emerged in the rush to harvest those organs across the United States. A recent federal investigation and new reporting in the New York Times has uncovered incidents across multiple states where organ removal was attempted prematurely. In some cases -- people who had been pegged as donors ended up surviving, and -- in at least one case -- making a full recovery. This week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an initiative promising to reform the organ transplant system. Today, a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on the issue.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN JOYCE: For every doctor, one of the most important tenets in the doctor-patient relationship is, above all, do no harm. But what happened in these cases fractured the doctor-patient relationship, and saw patients subjected to pain and suffering that should never have occurred.

AR: That was the committee's chair, Congressman John Joyce of Pennsylvania, speaking today. Reporter Brian Rosenthal was there -- and his New York Times reporting was cited repeatedly in the questioning. We reached him in Washington, D.C.

MW: Brian, what did you make of what you witnessed at the Congressional Subcommittee today?

BRIAN ROSENTHAL: Well, it was a very interesting discussion. It was a vey heated discussion. Clearly, this is an issue that struck a nerve with a lot of members of Congress, and they were eager to have some reform.

MW: Did the organ donation officials seem to have good answers to the questions that the members of Congress had for them?

BR: I would say that the members of Congress were not satisfied with all the answers that they got. I think some of the transplant system officials were saying that they still needed more time to investigate, to look into cases, to make potential reforms, and there were members of Congress that were not happy about that. I think at one point, one of the transplant system officials said something to the effect of he didn't have the documents in front of him, and one of the congresswomen said, well, I'm sure that's a great comfort to the families of the victims that you don't have the information in front of you.

MW: Help our listeners understand this issue. From your reporting, what story stands out most in your mind, where things really went off the rails?

BR: Well, for me, the story that struck with me the most is about a woman in Alabama who was authorized for organ donation. She had choked while eating and fallen into a coma, and her mother had decided to take her off of life support because she didn't want her daughter to be suffering anymore. And so, she was removed from a ventilator. She was declared dead. And then the surgeons went in to do the organ recovery operation. And after they had started the operation, they found that the patient's heart was still beating, and she appeared to be breathing. And something had gone horribly wrong, and it was just devastating to talk with the family of that patient about what had happened.

MW: Can you tell me what you're hearing from family members of people who endured, you know, something terrible like that, a botched or premature attempt to harvest organs?

BR: Well, obviously, people are very upset and confused, and they want answers about how this could possibly happen. I think it's also just, it's complicated. This process that we wrote about, donation after circulatory death, is something that I think a lot of people don't fully understand. And even the people who've been affected by it still have a lot of questions.

MW: I want to talk to you about what's known as circulatory death donations. And this means people no longer need to be in an irreversible brain-dead state to be considered as donors. What's the protocol now, and how is this potentially contributing to these nightmare scenarios.

BR: Yes. So, the gold standard is to do donation with patients who are brain dead. And that is really the only type of donation that occurred for years when the transplant system first began. But lately, they have increasingly been pursuing donation after circulatory death. And it's just much more of a subjective practice. You know, brain death can be confirmed with scientific tests. Whereas if you're going to pursue donation after circulatory death, you need to come to some subjective determination that the patient is not going to recover from the injury that they have if they're in a coma or something like that. And people do recover from comas, of course, all the time. And so, it takes a lot of very careful work to make sure you're monitoring the patient, so there's no chance that they might be improving. And what we found in our reporting is that is just not happening. And once they've made the decision to pursue somebody for donation after circulatory death, they kind of get blinders on, and they keep going even when there are signs of possible recovery.

MW: And why is there this rush to procure these organs?

BR: Well, in the U.S., we have a waiting list of more than 100,000 people who need transplants. But it's also a situation where the government has put a lot of pressure on these organizations to increase their numbers, and it's become much more focused on numbers and focused on just getting as many transplants as possible.

MW: Can you tell us what you found in your reporting regarding doctors or other medical staff at these facilities? I mean, did you find that they were intervening or standing back?

BR: Well, the doctors are absolutely supposed to continue to treat these patients even after they have been approved for donation. They're supposed to treat them until the moment they die. But what we found is that a lot of times these hospitals are dealing with budget cuts or budget constraints, or they're just trying to turn over cases quickly. And they're really letting the organ donation folks affect treatment decisions.

MW: Now, the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations did issue a statement saying it was solely up to hospitals to make decisions about patient care and declarations of death. And they warned that focusing on a relatively small number of negative stories paints what they described as, quote, a frightening, inaccurate, and unbalanced view of our system. What do you make of that concern and the fear that people might be scared off from donating organs that, as you say, are needed to save lives?

BR: I mean, I think what we heard in our reporting, which is all that I can tell you, is that these are real problems in the system, and they are happening increasingly to donors. And we felt that the public deserved to know about it. And it's kind of as simple as that. As journalists, that's our responsibility. To tell the people what is happening.

MW: Brian, thanks very much for speaking with me today.

BR: Thank you.

CH: Brian Rosenthal is a reporter with the New York Times. We reached him in Washington, D.C.

[R&B]

FOA: Etan Paz Conviction

AR: In the late 70s and early 80s, Etan Patz's face was everywhere. In 1979, the six year old went missing while walking alone to school in New York City. He was one of the first missing children featured on the side of milk cartons. But for decades, his case remained unsolved. Until, 2017, Pedro Hernandez was convicted of Etan Patz's murder. He had confessed to luring the boy to a basement and attacking him.

Then, on Monday, a federal appeals court ruled that Mr. Hernandez should receive a new trial because the jury did not receive proper instructions. Before Etan Patz disappeared, there was no national system in place for authorities to coordinate when searching for a missing child. And so, in 1981, the boy's mother, Julie Patz was fighting to have one put in place. She spoke about it on this program. Here is part of that interview, From Our Archives.

SOUNDCLIP

JULIE PATZ: My six-year-old son disappeared two-and-a-half years ago. I saw him out to the sidewalk in front of our home, watched him walk half a block. He had an additional one block to walk to the bus stop. We could see parents and children waiting there for him. The street was very busy with our friends going to work and the local businesses functioning. He was never seen at the bus stop. He never got to school, and we have not seen him since.

ELIZABETH GRAY: There is legislation in the United States; there is a Missing Children's Act.

JP: There is a bill currently in the House and the Senate in the United States Congress which would do a number of things. One would be to eliminate all waiting periods in reports of missing children.

EG: What are the waiting periods?

JP: For anywhere from 24 to 72 hours, police wait before beginning a search for a reported missing person. It is also currently at the discretion of the police officers to decide whether or not the child should be considered a runaway because of age. The bill would eliminate that discretionary power. And without concrete evidence to indicate that a child is a run away, they would be assumed missing and in danger.

EG: Is the kind of information network that I gather that you are anxious to establish, would that be something that will cross state lines?

JP: What it will do, currently, if a child is missing and is located dead in another part of this country, there is no central point with information on missing children where that body can be identified. They're buried anonymously. If a child was found alive, again, there is not central information point on missing children such that that child can be identified and returned without going to every single town law enforcement agency in the United States. That's tens and hundreds of thousands. So, the child very often never gets back where he belongs.

EG: Do you think that there are enough policemen in the United States of America to implement the kind of investigative work that you want to see happen?

JP: Yes, with education, with training, and with caring. It's a matter of getting back to caring, to realizing that the children of the country are the future of the county. And if we continue to allow them to be exploited, our future looks pretty grim.

EG: Have you given up hope of finding your son?

JP: No, there's no way I can do that. I have known him as alive and only alive. And until I have concrete evidence that he is dead, if that is the case, I will not give up.

AR: From 1981, that was Etan Patz's mother, Julie Patz, speaking with As It Happens host Elizabeth Gray.

[brisk piano]

Erie Moon Mammoths Debut

Guest: Greg Coleman

AR: Naming a sports team is an art... one that many organizations have fumbled. Consider the Memphis Grizzlies. There are no grizzly bears in Tennessee. None. And Utah — a state not generally known for its jazz scene — is home to the Utah Jazz. Okay, to be fair, both of those names were inherited from Vancouver and New Orleans, respectively...but that doesn't excuse all the Tigers! Tigers in football. Tigers in baseball. Inexplicable tigers for all! Which is perhaps why comedian John Oliver decided to intervene. On his show, Last Week Tonight, he invited minor league baseball teams to submit themselves for a full rebrand. And he announced the winning team on air.

SOUNDCLIP

[stadium organ music]

JOHN OLIVER: As hard as it was, we did pick one of the 47 entries, and we're excited to get to work. The team we've selected is... [music swells] The Erie SeaWolves in Erie, Pennsylvania. They wrote to us with a list of 11 good reasons to pick them, one of which was the SeaWolves play baseball nowhere near the sea, which, yeah, that's a problem, Eerie. [laughter] We can help you fix that. So, congratulations to the SeaWolves. You're about to be called something else.

AR: Okay, name competition is actually surprisingly stiff in the Minor Leagues. Take the Rocket City Trash Pandas. Or the Montgomery Biscuits. The Amarillo Sod Poodles. Or the Sugar Land Space Cowboys! So now, the Erie SeaWolves are no more. And on Saturday, the city was introduced to…ba-ba-ba-ba…the Erie Moon Mammoths. Who are represented by a giant, purple, mammoth-resembling...thing! Greg Coleman is the team president. We reached him far from the sea, in Erie, Pennsylvania.

MW: Greg, when you first heard the team name Moon Mammoths, did you think home run, or was it more of a swing and a miss?

GREG COLEMAN: I thought it was a home run, but I had to understand the back story first. I thought right off the bat there was imagery that I thought would make sense. I just needed to understand exactly why it was relevant to Erie, Pennsylvania, and in about a minute they explained it to me and I said, yeah, home run.

MW: So, what were the reasons they gave?

GC: Well, back in 1991, a local diver named George Moon had found remains of a wooly mammoth in Lake Pleasant in Erie County, Pennsylvania. It was, at the time, really one of the most significant findings. About 80 per cent of the skeleton was there and intact. That's what's relevant is that you don't necessarily think about mammoths in Northwest Pennsylvania, but darn it, we had one. [laughing]

MW: Wow. So, what was the atmosphere like during Saturday's game? I mean, how did the crowd react to the name change and the big purple wooly mammoth?

GC: It was electric. It was a wonderful experience. John Oliver, he basically worked the crowd from beginning to end, from the very first pitch of the night to helping to count down the fireworks at the end of the game. So, the fans really responded. They loved how accessible and involved he was in the game day presentation. The mascot was well-received. You know, we don't normally bring our mascot out to smoke and fire through a large tunnel, but that's what happened with Fuzz E. Mammoth. And I give all the credit to the Last Week Tonight staff. They helped us put together a first-class event.

MW: Now, we heard John Oliver mention that the SeaWolves, your old name, play nowhere near the sea. But why did you want to answer this contest in the first place?

GC: Well, you know, I thought the odds were not very good. [MW laughs] Obviously, there were going to be a lot of teams that were putting in for it.

MW: You didn't think you'd win? [laughing]

GC: Well, yeah, that's certainly part of it, but no, I think my intention when I submitted was that we wanted to be a part of the show on minor league baseball. We've done a lot of great things in Erie, Pennsylvania. We were not one of the things mentioned in the initial show, and we didn't want to be left out of the party, so to speak. So, that was the intention was to make sure that they knew what we were about. And if we got selected, then great. We like the SeaWolves brand. I know we say that it's nowhere near the sea. We are 10 blocks from Lake Erie. So, we do have a pretty nice body of water that's not too far away. But I think even though we like what we have done, I think we had to be open to the possibility of that there's something better, that we might be able to do something that's more fun and more successful. And depending on how this whole thing ends up, we may find that, or we may have just had a really fun promotion.

MW: Right. Now, John Oliver, he mentioned that you had a pretty good pitch. That you had 11 reasons, and one of them was you're nowhere near a sea, with the old SeaWolf's name, but can you name a couple of other reasons that were on that list?

GC: Yeah, there were several. One of the things that was, I think, a great selling point was that our head of our local tourism board, Visit Eerie, his name is also John Oliver, [MW chuckles] so that was one of those things where I'm like, it's Kismet, this is something that we have to make happen. But I also indicated that we had done some things that had taken some chances. One of the promotions we had several years ago, I don't know that we could do it today in today's climate. We had done a promotion called Alternative Facts Night, which was kind of rooted in popular culture.

MW: Post-truth from the Trump first administration.

GC: Right, that inauguration. So we took that term and we ran with it, and joked that we had won the championship the year before, and had issued championship rings. [MW chuckles] And we scheduled it on the weekend that we played the actual champion, and we had indicated that we'd won all of our games and went 138-0 that season. And it was very fun, and it also something we had poked fun really at both sides of the political spectrum. So, it wasn't something that was, we weren't picking on any one particular party.

MW: As I'm sure you've heard, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, they've announced it's going to be canceled, and John Oliver called it terrible, terrible news for the world of comedy. And I wonder how important do you think these shows are, and comedy in general, when it comes to help Americans look at themselves in a comical way, but also in a critical light?

GC: I think it's important. I think there are a lot of voices. I think voices need to be heard. And I think, you know, there's a lot, I don't know, I'd say negativity out there that exists. And to be able to look at something, to be a laugh at a situation, to laugh at ourselves, I mean honestly, that's a big part of what we're doing here is we wanted to do something that we thought was going to be fun. And if we took a few shots along the way, because our team plays nowhere near the sea, we can take that. But we just want to try to make people smile. And we realize, look, comedy, different people have different opinions about what's funny. But we definitely want to make sure that opinions are shared and available and there for people to enjoy what they believe is humorous.

MW: Right. Well, I love the spirit of this. Thanks so much for speaking with me, Greg.

GC: My pleasure, this has been fantastic.

MW: Take care.

GC: Thanks.

AR: Greg Coleman is the president of the Erie Moon Mammoths, formerly the Erie Seawolves. We reached him in Erie, Pennsylvania.

[electronica]

POO On TTC

AR: From now on in Toronto, every bus will be the number two. And every streetcar and subway train, will be two, too. Let me explain. Fare dodging is an expensive problem. And so the transit authority is rebranding its fare inspectors in an effort to boost their authority. As of this past weekend, fare inspectors are now known as "Provincial Offences Officers" -- or P-O-Os. People were quick to comment on the unfortunate acronym, with one post on X reading "Just spotted some POO’s on the street. (Did ANYONE workshop this?)" Now, I admit I'm not very up on poop culture, but this does seem like the Toronto Transit Commission has stepped in it. And yet, the TTC is pooh poohing the public outcry. In a response to that post on X, TTC Media Relations pointed out that "POO" existed in Ontario’s legislation “long before” the TTC began using the new acronym. Saying, quote, "We thank the snickering, puerile 12-year-old boys who dominate the internet for their insights. However, it does not negate the fact that fare cheats face fines of hundreds of dollars – which is no laughing matter." Unquote. Now, no one likes to be the butt of jokes...And, from the TTC's perspective, they're just...doing their business. But, I really do think its not only puerile 12-year-old boys who might find this amusing. It's puerile people of all ages!

The AIH Transcript For July 22, 2025

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