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The AIH transcript for June 23, 2025

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

NIL KÖKSAL: Hello, I'm Nil Köksal.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[theme]

CH: Tonight:

NK: Going underground. A non-proliferation expert says no matter what Donald Trump says, there's no way to know if U.S. bombs actually destroyed Iran's nuclear program. But he says they did make it more likely that Iran will pursue a bomb in secret.

CH: Rooms for improvement. An advocate for Arab residents of Israel tells us too many of their communities have too few of the reliable safe rooms that are commonplace in Jewish-majority cities across the country.

NK: Unbound and determined. A Belarusian opposition leader is free after five years in prison. His wife -- who took up the leadership in his absence -- tells us about their reunion, and their shared drive to get back to work.

CH: Freedom and speech. Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is released after over 100 days in ICE detention. We'll hear some of what he told the crowd that gathered to celebrate his return to New York.

NK: The fast and the furriest. A triathlete is doing okay after a black bear ran in front of his bike during a race this weekend -- at which point he ran into the bear.

CH: And...emission statement. One of the scientists who discovered little sea spiders that eat methane says the tiny creatures are playing an outsized role in the deep sea ecosystem.

CH: As It Happens, the Monday Edition. Radio that warns: they may be compact, but they're gas-guzzlers.

[theme]

Part 1: Iran Nuclear Analysis, Belarusian Oppo Leader Free, Methane-Eating Spiders

Iran Nuclear Analysis

Guest: Daryl Kimball

CH: Iran called it a mighty response to "America's aggression." This afternoon, the country launched missiles toward a U.S. military base in Qatar, where they were reportedly intercepted by air defence systems. That attack comes after U.S. bombers hit three Iranian nuclear sites on the weekend -- using heavy "bunker buster" bombs to target the underground enrichment site at Fordow. Today, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on social media that, quote, "The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it." Unquote. And Later this evening, Trump posted again that Iran and Israel had agreed to a quote "complete and total ceasefire". Still, it remains unclear how much those strikes have set actually Iran's nuclear program back. A lot of analysts fear they've only added fuel to the fire. Daryl Kimball is the executive director of the Arms Control Association. We reached him earlier today in Washington.

NK: Daryl, before we speak about the nuclear sites specifically, I did want to ask you about the latest developments, Iran's attack against the U.S. base in Qatar today. The U.S. president saying that there was some warning given to them about this. What do you think Iran is signalling with that particular attack?

DARYL KIMBALL: Well, Iran was in recent days under attack from Israel and the United States. Iran's leaders, I think, felt a need to show a response. This was a calibrated response. They pre-notified the countries that were under fire. So, I think, this would be a good point at which the United States and Iran should cease further. Exchanges of fire. It's also important that Israel is called upon to halt its assault on Iran, and therefore, Iran to stop retaliating against Israel.

NK: As you know, Daryl, the U.S. president is claiming that the United States, quote, obliterated these three nuclear sites, and he's today been posting on social media, railing against the media for reporting what experts have been saying, and again, underlining that he feels everything was, quote totally destroyed. What is your assessment of what has happened at these sites?

DK: Well, at this hour, it is impossible for the United States government, even the president, to understand the extent of the damage from the recent U.S. strikes on the Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz nuclear sites. The IAEA is not there. Until the IAEA inspectors are able to return, it will really be difficult to get a real assessment of how damaged, how set back the Iranian nuclear program is. It'll also be very difficult without the IAEA inspectors back in Iran to understand where their highly enriched uranium has gone. So, while the military mission may have been successful in dropping the bombs in the places that they were meant to go, that doesn't mean that Iran doesn't still have a substantial residual capability to enrich uranium, and a supply of enriched uranium that could be further enriched to bomb grades, uh, for a secret weapons program. So, uh, the president is flat out wrong. Uh, he's engaging in hyperbole. Uh, and as many of us predicted before, you can't bomb a program this extensive, nor the knowledge out of existence.

NK: Iran has claimed that it moved 400 kilograms of enriched uranium to an undisclosed location before these strikes were carried out by the United States. That kind of a stockpile for the country, for Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon. How instrumental is that?

DK: Well, you can't build nuclear weapons without the raw ingredients. And that uranium enriched to 60 per cent is the raw ingredient. It would have to be enriched again up to 90 per cent. That would provide raw materials for about 10 to 12 bombs worth. So, the problem now is that because of the strikes, we know even less about the whereabouts of this material. They were under IAEA safeguards. Now, we don't know. It is possible that Iran has other sites where it can enrich uranium; where they have machines that can do this. They do have a residual capacity to manufacture more of the machines, the centrifuges, to enrich uranium. So, this is very worrisome. In my view, the essential next step is to get the International Atomic Energy Agency back in there so that we can understand the location of this material so it can be accounted for as soon as possible.

NK: And the head of the IAEA, just to let our listeners know, in the aftermath of the U.S. Strikes, you know, they stressed again that attacks on nuclear sites should never take place, obviously for safety reasons. Just in the last little while, Daryl, across the wires, they're quoting Iran's Tasnim news agency, saying that Iran's parliament approved a plan to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. That adds another level of concern when we're talking about protecting that program and those connections.

DK: Yes, that's very disturbing, but it's not surprising. The Iranian parliament is trying to demonstrate that they believe that the IAEA should stay away while the fighting goes on. They notably are not calling for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which would be a further step I would argue they should not pursue. But as I said, getting the IAEA inspectors back into Iran is important. These moves by the Iranian parliament are not going to make it easier to accomplish. But until and unless we do, no one, including Donald Trump, is going to be able to say with certainty whether or not the Iranian nuclear program has been obliterated.

NK: Yeah, I was listening to an interview with another expert in this field, and they said even if they were to actually destroy the program, the anger and what this leaves in Iran will build to other things, whether it's nuclear capability or not.

DK: Well, yes, we've been cautioning before the strikes began that military action could tip the scales of the debate inside Iran about whether or not to pursue nuclear weapons. Up until this point, the supreme leader has not made the decision to tell his scientists and engineers to pursue a program, to bring all of the elements of their nuclear program together to actually build nuclear bombs. But this war could be the action that tips the scales in the wrong direction.

NK: Daryl, I'm really glad we could speak. Thank you for this.

DK: Thank you very much.

CH: Daryl Kimball is the executive director of the Arms Control Association. We reached him earlier today in Washington.

[newsy theme]

Belarusian Oppo Leader Free

Guest: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya

CH: Siarhei Tsikhanouski is finally free. The Belarusian opposition leader has spent the last five years behind bars in his homeland, most of it in solitary confinement -- never knowing whether he'd die in prison, like Alexei Navalny in Russia. Then, on the weekend, he and 13 other prisoners were suddenly released. Belarusian authorities took them to Lithuania. There, he was reunited with his two children and his wife -- who contested the 2020 election against President Alexander Lukashenko in his place after he was thrown in jail. We reached Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Warsaw, Poland.

NK: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, what was that moment like when you finally saw your husband again?

SVIATLANA TSIKHANOUSKAYA: You know, it was something fantastic because it was the moment I had been waiting for so many years. And really, 'till the last moment, I couldn't believe that now I will see my husband, you know, I will hug him. And it was more fantastic to see how my children met him. You know, that my daughter hasn't recognized her daddy because he changed so much. So, but now, I'm so happy that he might contribute into their lives, you know?

NK: She's nine now, your son is fifteen. So, I mean, she in particular was very small five years ago, right, just four or five years old at the time.

ST: Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, the fact is that, you know, all these years, we watched Siarhei's video, his pictures, you know, in our apartments everywhere, but he has changed so significantly that I, I myself just thought about not recognizing him. But no, I know his voice. I know how he's moving. So, it was really astonishing to see how prisoners are changing after, after the tortures and prisons.

NK: He was kept in solitary confinement. He lost, as I understand it, more than 100 pounds. Can you describe what he looks like now?

ST: [sigh] He looks like a real skeleton with grey skin, no muscles, because they don't have enough food there. And he got used to speak to himself, actually, because there was nobody around him to speak to in prison. You know, he read a lot in prison, so he quoted different writers and poets. And he came with so many ideas, you know, what to do, how to contribute, how to act. So hopefully, he will dive into our democratic movement, and it will stand together to release other people and to bring our country to changes.

NK: You were in our studio, just sitting across from me just a few months ago, and you were carrying Siarhei's picture with you, as you always did, and you told us about why it was important to do that. And even at that time, as much as you were pushing, it did seem impossible. So, why do you think this happened now?

ST: First of all, the release of people is not, like, merit, or goodwill, or humanity of Lukashenka. It is a result of our joint efforts with our democratic partners, efforts of democratic people of Belarus, you know, keeping this pressure. Lukashenko's regime made him look for ways how to get out of this situation. He wants to legitimize himself. And any meeting like this that happened with General Kellogg was so important for him that he just decided to release some people. But of course, we don't have to forget that it's only these 14 people that are released. It's only 1.5 per cent of all the people who are behind bars at the moment. So, the mission is not over.

NK: Keith Kellogg, just for our listeners, is Donald Trump's, the U.S. president's, envoy for Ukraine, and he met with Lukashenko. These prisoners were freed just hours after that meeting. What do you think the trade-off might have been? What is in it for him? Is it for Lukashenko to try to ease the tensions, or the relationship?

ST: Of course, you know, Lukashenko is looking for more cooperation with the democratic world. Because on the one hand, he's blaming this rotten West. On the other hand, of course, he seeks for legitimacy. He wants to look like a political player, but everybody knows that he fully supports Putin, supports the war against Ukraine, and he's Putin's puppet. On the one hand, we welcome any effort to release political prisoners, and we are grateful to President Trump and General Kellogg. But on the other hand, we must maintain firm, consistent policy until real democratic change is achieved.

NK: You'd be forgiven if you wanted to just take a break and disappear, given what's happened, but you are going to the NATO summit now. Is all of what you just said why it's important for you to still be there?

ST: You know, my husband and release of my husband, of course, it was my private pain. And now, it's my like private joy. But not for a moment I forgot about humanitarian and political disaster in Belarus. That outcome of the war in Ukraine is crucially important, you know, for Belarus as well, and we have to deliver these messages again, again, and again.

NK: It's remarkable for you to do the work you're doing even still, but also what you said about Siarhei. Just released, so many ideas, so much passion still for the work. Did that surprise you, given what he's been through?

ST: No, actually, I knew that he always was very energetic. And now, he understands he's very tired physically. He's exhausted emotionally. But he understands that now, he is released. His comrades are behind bars. And he immediately has to start working for the next ones. He had gone through all these atrocities, through all the tortures. And he realizes that people behind bars, they are going through the same things. And he will not let himself even to relax for a day. Also, actually, he came out of prison. He was sure the world doesn't remember. This is the messages that regime sends to political prisoners That's why they keeping them isolated; the world has forgotten, nobody cares. And when he was released, he saw this way of solidarity. He saw that Belarus is important. It also boosted, you know, his energy twice more.

NK: I wonder, though, as someone who wants him to get better, did you even try to say, okay, just relax for a little bit? Just rest and recover.

ST: No, [NK chuckles] I told him, tomorrow is press conference. [NK chuckles] You have to shout to the whole world about atrocities. You know, we are going to meet Belarusians, because Belarusians have been waiting for you for all these years. So, [chuckles] you have work. I have to relax, but, of course, my work also has doubled.

NK: I hope you do, all four of you, get time to take a little bit of a break together, Sviatlana. I appreciate this. Please take care.

ST: Thank you. Thank you so much for your attention. Bye.

NK: Bye-bye.

CH: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is the exiled opposition leader of Belarus. She's in Warsaw.

[international]

Mahmoud Khalil

CH: After three long months, Mahmoud Khalil has been released from ICE detention. As we've told you before, Mr. Khalil is a permanent resident of the U.S. He was the first pro-Palestinian student activist to be detained under President Donald Trump's crackdown on campus protestors. His arrest and subsequent detention sparked demonstrations and outrage across the country and beyond. And then, on Friday, a federal judge ruled the government had, quote, "clearly not met" the standards for detention. During his detention, he missed the birth of his first child. Shortly after his release, Mr. Khalil was reunited with his wife, Noor Abdalla, and their son. Yesterday, the couple led a rally just outside the Columbia University gates. Here's part of Mr. Khalil's speech.

SOUNDCLIP

[cheering and drumming]

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Well, well, here I am! Here I am with you! I'm grateful to be standing freely next to you all. I'm very grateful to my wife, Noor, whose support, love, and care has kept me upright. I want to honour especially my friends at Columbia University. [cheers] Especially those who are currently battling expulsion and suspension for their consciousness stamped. Even today, Columbia University refused to allow this press conference and rally to be held at the gates. [cheers] Who is Mahmoud Khalil? That's what the administration has tried its best to portray me as someone who's violent. Mahmoud Khalil is a human rights defender. Mahmoud Khalil is a freedom fighter. Mahmoud Khalil is a refugee. Mahmoud Khalil is a father and husband. And above all, Mahmoud Khalil is Palestinian. [cheers and drumming grows] It's often hard to find patients in ICE detention. The centre is crowded with hundreds of people who are told that their existence is illegal. And not one of us knows when we can go free. At those moments, it was remarking a specific chant that gave me strength: I believe that we will win. I found myself literally scratching this into my bunk bed, and looking at it as I fell asleep and as I woke up. I find myself repeating it, even now, knowing that I have won, in a small way, by being free today.

CH: Mahmoud Khalil speaking at a rally in New York City yesterday.

[international]

Methane-Eating Spiders

Guest: Shana Gofreddi

NK: Shana, it's impossible to miss, in one of the interviews you gave, you described these creatures as, quote, extremely adorable. What is so adorable about them?

SHANA GOFREDDI: Yes. Okay. So firstly, [NK laughs] I think they look pretty adorable because they have that very big nose. Scientifically, it's called a proboscis. So, there's a lot going on there. There's a mouth with lips and there's little teeth in there. And that's, of course, how they have this very strange nutritional strategy. [NK chuckles] But I also think they're pretty adorable because they're really good dads. The males carry around egg cases that the females, well, the females give them eggs. The male will cement them into these egg cases, and then he wraps them around these special appendages like little bracelets, and he will carry them around until they hatch.

SG: Okay, good. And you know what's also very cool is he provisions, he gives the baby spiders that hatch from his little purses, his little bracelets, he gives them the symbionts that will grow on their exoskeleton that they will farm for the rest of their life. So, there's a little paternal transmission of the food source that they need.

SG: Yeah, so we had a project funded by the National Science Foundation in the U.S. to actually explore regions where methane is bubbling up from the seafloor. And we were very interested in how methane could possibly nourish the deep sea. But we didn't specifically set out to study sea spiders, or even find them at all, let alone new species and new ways of being. But because we were doing our due diligence with every specimen that we collected in those early days, we actually had analyzed their tissues, and they turned out to be extremely unusual. So, they had a signature in their tissues that got our antennae up for sure. So then, we were really excited about them, but we had no way of accessing them again because we had visited them one time. We need to get funding to go launch another expedition. But we were able to actually do it, and this was a high priority for us. So then, we were extremely interested in setting up experiments that might actually prove that they were using methane as a food source, which was the indication from those early analyses.

NK: I mean, at those depths, collecting such small little creatures and difficult to see. How did that go?

SG: Yes! [chuckling] So, that was tricky. So, I was in the submersible, and I was scouring the sea floor with my eyes. I could not see a single sea spider. And so, I was very dejected about it. And I had sent some of those samples up on an elevator. So, we call this a gear elevator that can go up and down between the sea floor and the ship. And when I had returned to the sea surface at the very end of my dive, at like 5:30 at night, I was very disappointed because I got out of the submersible and I was like, we didn't see any, we don't collect any, but the scientists on board had already been processing a whole bunch of sea spiders that we had collected. [both laugh] And so, we all cheered like we got them. And so, it was a very happy, happy moment. [chuckling]

NK: Sounds like it. How do these spiders use bacteria to convert methane gas into something they can draw sustenance from?

SG: [chuckling] Oh, that is such a mean question, I've got to say! [NK laughs] So, I really love the yeti crab. It was a discovery that we made way far south in the Pacific Ocean, and it is another one of these sort of very peaceful farming crustaceans. It's white and hairy, and it waves its arms back and forth, so it does a little dance. And it's actually nourishing filamentous white bacteria that live on its arms. And it has a special feeding appendage, like your grandfather's old comb, it will scrape those filaments and use it for nutrition. And that's actually its sole source of nutrition. So, I really love these farming arthropods. [chuckling]

NK: Yeah, well, you paint such vivid images just in our conversation, Shauna. I'm really glad we could speak. We'll be Googling yeti crabs momentarily, like many people might be.

SG: Yeah, I hope you do! [chuckling]

NK: But very glad we could speak. This was fun, Shana. Take care.

SG: Great. Okay. Wonderful. Thanks for having me.

CH: Shana Goffredi is the chair of the Biology Department at Occidental College. We reached her in Los Angeles.

[hip-hop]

Part 2: Arab Israeli Bunkers, Triathlete Hits Bear

Arab Israeli Bunkers

Guest: Ilan Amit

CH: Donald Trump's announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran this evening came after another day of attacks back and forth between the two countries. Israel launched new strikes on Tehran and other Iranian cities; Iran attacked U.S. air bases in the region; and further Iranian strikes set off air-raid sirens in communities across Israel. Except in the communities that don't have sirens, or shelters for people to retreat to. These are largely Arab-majority cities and towns, with few of the public protections afforded to most Jewish-majority communities. They include places like Tamra -- where just 40 per cent of homes have a safe room -- and where the safe rooms that do exist are often inadequate. Earlier this month four members of a single Arab family were killed by an Iranian airstrike in Tamra, even though they'd taken refuge in one such shelter. And this morning, Ilan Amit told members of the Knesset that Israel must do more to keep communities like theirs safe. Mr. Amit is the co-CEO of the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation. We reached him earlier today in Jerusalem.

ILAN AMIT: We live in Jerusalem in a four-story building, and there's a public bomb shelter in my street. It's about four floors down and then 100 metres run and then another floor down, which is quite challenging with the kids in the middle of the night.

IA: But when I'm down there, I feel completely safe. My thoughts are with my friends and colleagues and partners who don't have a bomb shelter where they live. Not a public one, not one in their house; no ways to protect themselves at all, yeah.

IA: So, the majority of Arab citizens in Israel, 21 per cent of the population, has close to zero shelters in the majority Arab local authorities. That's also the case in Tamra, a town with over 30,000 residents. And people have literally nowhere to run. They sit in their house and pray to God, hope for the bombs not to fall next to their house. Those ballistic missiles are much bigger and stronger than the ones that were shot by the Hamas in Gaza. Those ballistic missiles are capable of taking down whole buildings, as we've been seeing in Tel Aviv and in central Israel. So, there's no point in running if you don't have a bomb shelter, they just sit in the house. We're focusing in the past week mostly on the Bedouin population in the south, specifically on a bit over 100,000 citizens of Israel living in unrecognized villages. Those are villages in the Negev, in the desert in the south of Israel, that have zero shelters, no public shelters, no domestic shelters, no mobile bomb shelters, no way to protect themselves while missiles are falling. And unfortunately, that population exactly, the Bedouins in the unrecognized villages, live adjacent to Israeli air bases, which means that the Iranian rockets are focusing precisely on those areas.

IA: So we've opened up the Emergency Response Center for the Bedouin Society in the Negev, which is the third time we've been opening up the centre. The first was in COVID, the second was on October 7th, on which, unfortunately, we've also lost our co-founder, Vivian Silver, who was a Canadian, who died from the Hamas attack on our house. We're currently focusing on purchasing mobile bomb shelters. Those are huge pieces of concrete, basically, and placing them next to clinics and schools in those unrecognized villages. Today, we had two meetings with the government in which we presented the protection gaps in those villages. We're pushing the government to solve, first of all, the protection gaps next to the clinics, those are four regional clinics serving tens of thousands of citizens of Israel in the Negev, and try to get public life back on track in those communities and save lives.

CH: Ilan Amit is the co-CEO of the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation. We reached him earlier today in Jerusalem.

[wistful instrumental]

Air India Anniversary

CH: Forty years ago today, Susheel Gupta's father woke him up to tell him his mother had died. Ramwati Gupta was one of 329 people on the Air India Flight 182, which plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland, after bombs exploded on board. There were no survivors. The flight had left Vancouver International Airport and was en route to India after stops in Toronto and Montreal. Investigations found that the bombs had been made in British Columbia. But only one person was ever convicted in the case. It's considered the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history; the RCMP says that its investigation is ongoing. Susheel Gupta was twelve years old at the time. He's now the director of the Air India Flight 182 Victims Families Association. He told the CBC about what he remembers from the days after the bombing.

SOUNDCLIP

SUSHEEL GUPTA: There were approximately a thousand victims' family members from around the world who were converging on Cork, Ireland. There was U.S. government officials, U.K., France had officials, India, of course, but there was no Canadian officials. It wouldn't be until nine days after we arrived that a Canadian official would show up and ask my father, how is it going? And my father lost his temper. Here's a tragedy. A majority were Canadian citizens, 268. And there's not one Canadian official could even bother. That's how the country treated it.

STEPHEN QUINN: What does this anniversary mean to you today?

SG: [sigh] Stephen, I've got two little girls. And not a day goes by that I wish my mom were alive so they could meet her, so she could meet them. But it's a day to remember her and honour her as well as all the other victims.

SQ: And today, you're a senior RCMP official. You work in the area of counterterrorism. And you specialize, in fact, in mass casualty incidents. Tell me about coming into that particular line of work.

SG: Thankfully, I had a few mentors. A few of those mentors guided me towards if there's a way to deal with the frustration of how we were treated and what happened. Part of my roles and responsibility is to pre-plan for and prepare, and then respond to, the needs of victims of terrorism. And so, that's part of my work.

SQ: You were in Vancouver recently to help the police with the survivors of the Lapu Lapu incident. You've also attended the scene of school shootings in the United States and elsewhere. From your point of view, I mean, it must be incredibly difficult to do this kind of work?

SG: It is hard, Stephen. Like many who work in this area, we become a sponge. We absorb that grief, but it's meaningful and it's worth it, because I don't want any other victim to go through the experience that we had.

CH: That was Susheel Gupta, talking to Stephen Quinn, host of The Early Edition in Vancouver today.

[lo-fi]

Triathlete Hits Bear

Guest: Matteo Agostino

CH: There are many things for which a triathlete must be prepared. Cold water in the swimming part of the race. Flat bicycle tires. Cramps. Blisters. Dehydration. Discouraging lists of potential triathlon problems. And as a seasoned amateur triathlete preparing for his first competition of the season in New Hampshire, Matteo Agostino was ready for all of that. What he wasn't prepared for was a giant black bear running at him in the middle of the cycling portion of the race. We reached Matteo Agostino in Beloeil, Quebec.

NK: Matteo, how fast were you going when you hit this bear?

MATTEO AGOSTINO: So, approximately 45 kilometres an hour in my triathlon bike, yeah.

NK: What was that moment of impact like?

MA: Um, honestly, I, like, I remembered a whole situation, but it happened so quickly. I, I barely had time to, like, see the bear from my blind side left eye. And yeah, fraction later, I was hitting him on his side and, uh, yeah, got ejected from my bike right away. So yeah, I didn't even have time to, like, pull my brakes or anything like that.

NK: Yeah, where did it come from? Have you been able to piece together that picture yet from what people saw?

MA: Yeah, like, it came from the left. I was going, like, it came from my left, to the left side from my right side. I was, like, in the right lane and it came from the other lane. But yeah, it just came from the left side, and I don't know if it got scared and, like, started running faster because it saw me.

NK: Oh no.

MA: But him running faster just made it even worse because I didn't even have time to see him and yeah.

NK: What does that, I mean, did you feel the bear's fur? It's force, certainly, you felt, but can you even put into words what that moment was like?

MA: So, what I remember is, like, my front wheel of my bike just, like, ramming on, like, his ribs and to the, like, the lower half of this body. And him, like, just shrugging it off, kind of. And me, like, just got ejected, like, at least 10 to 15 feet in the air, and just everything went flying, and yeah. But I don't think he, I hope I got his ribs good or something. But yeah, I think he won that battle.

NK: How are you doing? What kind of injuries did you sustain?

MA: Yeah, so at first, I was kind of a bit scared, but I went to the hospital right away, got some scans and x-rays, and got really well taken care of. But yeah, turns out I have no fractures, no broken bones, my head is good, so kind of relieved about that, pretty banged up with a lot of, like, road rash and skin a bit peeled off everywhere.

NK: Sure.

MA: And my left shoulder is kind of, yeah, mobility in my left shoulder, arm, is kind of not great for now. But it's only been 48 hours, so trying to stay positive and kind of do what I can to, yeah, recover.

NK: Were there other competitors close by, or organizers?

MA: Yeah, there was a couple of cyclists going the other way from the Olympic race, Olympic distance race, that we're starting a bit later in the morning. So, there was, like, two cyclists that actually kind of saw the whole thing because they saw the bear cross in front of them going on the, like, the other side. And yeah, they stopped and took care of me, saw that I was, like, kind of doing okay, but just kind of in a whirlwind of emotions, of, like, pain, of, like, this, like, just sad. I was leading the race at that time. I was in first place. I was almost done with the bike, yeah.

NK: So, you're about to, you had done the swim, you're finished, you were about to finish.

MA: That was about kilometre 77 of the bike of 90, so there was, like, 13 kilometres left, so not a lot. Yeah, I was heading back to transition and ready to run and win this thing, but yeah.

NK: You were done after that.

MA: Life decided otherwise.

NK: And just finally, Matteo, I mean, you're recovering okay. It's been 48 hours, as you said, but I mean do you think something like this would really rattle anyone, so will you be able to focus, do you think, on the road? Or will you constantly be wondering what could come across my path?

MA: Yeah, that's funny. I thought a bit about that. But you know, when you're a kid and you fall down on your bike and you get up and you got to go again, the probabilities of that happening ever again are kind of zero. If it happens again, I'm retiring, that's for sure. [NK laughs] But no, you just gotta, yeah, you fall seven times, you get back up eight. And that's how I was brought up. And that's how I'll keep moving forward.

NK: Well, good luck out there, Matteo. Thank you for this.

MA: No problem. My pleasure.

CH: Matteo Agostino hit a bear while he was competing in a triathlon this weekend. We reached him in Beloeil, Quebec.

[international]

FOA: Munich Catfish Shot

CH: We'll never know how long it sat there stewing as strangers came into its house, day after day, gallivanting around half-naked and stirring things up. Is it any wonder it finally lost its temper and started biting them with its big catfish mouth, because it's a big catfish? When I say it was big, I mean it was over two metres long and weighed more than 90 kilograms. If you still think in Imperial, that's over 6-and-a-half feet long and over 200 pounds. So, it's fair that people swimming in Lake Brombach, Germany, did not like it when it bit them. But it's also fair that it bit them. They were, after all, annoying intruders who were easily punctured. Unfortunately, having made its point, the giant catfish didn't swim away. It hung around, scaring everyone, to the point where emergency services felt they had to shoot it. And so goes the latest in a series of takedowns of catfish vigilantes in Germany who threatened the status quo. The most famous of which...is Kuno. For years, Kuno lived in a lake in the western German city of Moenchengladbach, where he frightened swimmers and boaters. Especially when he made the publicly unpopular, and strategically unwise, move of eating a puppy. In 2003, Kuno was found dead. That's guest host Kelly Ryan spoke with Uwe Heil -- a local who'd written a song about Kuno. And was, frankly, skeptical about his death.

SOUNDCLIP

KELLY RYAN: Mr. Heil, tell me a little bit about Kuno, how did he get so famous?

UWE HWIL: I think Kuno will get famous because it's the only fish in the world who have eaten a small dog. And one woman sees the situation in this moment when the head of this big fish is coming over the water and eats this small dog.

KR: And this fish ate the dog whole, all in one bite?

UH: Yeah! No, no, whole, he eat it.

KR: And how did people react? Did people want to kill Kuno?

UH: Now, some, one-half of the people want to kill Kuno and said, oh he's a murderer; he has to die. And the other half of people said, oh poor, poor Kuno; he, he have to live, please take care of him.

KR: But now, he is apparently dead. Is that right?

UH: I think not it's right. We think it can be that Kuno is alive. For this, we make a new song and this song is called, in English, Let the Legend Ever Live.

KR: Can you sing a little of that song for us?

UH: Mm, no.

KR: Come on!

UH: I can't sing it in English because it's in German.

KR: That's okay, sing a little for us in German.

UH: Okay, you must think the music now. [chuckling]

KR: Okay, I'm thinking.

UH: This is the song, the new song, of Kuno. It's the story of the legend of Kuno. And we want that the legend ever live.

CH: From our archives, Uwe Heil speaking with guest host Kelly Ryan about the death of the legendary catfish Kuno. And here's an excerpt from the English-language version of that song, The Story of the Legend of Kuno.

[Spanish guitar]

NB Horseback Grad

CH: Kenzie Simmons didn't just walk across the stage at her New Brunswick high school. She practically floated, thanks to her horse Blondie. The St. John teenager had a tough time in high school. So, to make the ending a little sweeter, her mother asked the school if she could ride Blondie up to the stage to get her diploma. Here's what that sounded like.

SOUNDCLIP

[horse feet clopping]

KENZIE SIMMONS: So, watch out for that grate there. Easy.

MS V: And to conclude the third cohort, Kenzie Simmons.

KS: Easy! [clapping] Good girl. You can do it, girl. Good girl. You can do this. I don’t know. We’ll see. Where do you want me to hop off at, Ms. V? Good girl. Whoa. Hop right off here. Whoa. Whoa. [chuckling] Oh my god, my feet from riding. It hurts. Thank you. Thank you! We made it. Woo! That was nerve-racking, but very, very fun. Oh, Blondie! It was like the best feeling ever, though. It was just, oh, I don't know how to explain it. Just the best feeling knowing I'm done high school, I can be do this with my horse. I had a rough high school, my anxiety and my autism did not help. I was not a big fan of the crowds. And now, I've kind of gotten over that with her here.

GRAHAM THOMPSON: What are you doing in your life after this?

KS: Um, I think I'm gonna go into dog grooming. I think I'm gonna try. I don't think I could do veterinary. It's a little too sad for me. [chuckling] I'm just gonna fix your reins here, girly. I'm sorry.

[Blondie sputters]

CH: Kenzie Simmons and her horse Blondie speaking with CBC New Brunswick videographer, Graham Thompson.

The AIH Transcript For June 23, 2025

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