The Current

The Current for April 27, 2021

Today on The Current: Dr. James Maskalyk on making it easier for health-care workers to help across provincial borders; Malcolm Gladwell on the firebombing of Tokyo and his new book, The Bomber Mafia; and U.S. lawmakers try to block transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams.
Matt Galloway is the host of CBC Radio's The Current. (CBC)

Full Episode Transcript

Today on The Current

As the third wave of COVID-19 rages, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians is calling for a change to licensing rules that make it harder for health-care workers to operate across provincial borders. Dr. James Maskalyk, a Toronto ER physician, joins Matt Galloway to discuss those barriers and what he's seeing on the front lines of the fight against the virus.

Then, the firebombing of Tokyo was one of the single most destructive nights of the Second World War. But before that mission, Malcolm Gladwell says there were efforts to fight less deadly wars, and to end them faster with precision bombing. Gladwell explores those efforts in his new book, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War.

And transgender athletes, many of them children, are the target of dozens of bills making their way through U.S. government houses, that would stop transgender women and girls from playing sports on female teams. We talk to Veronica Ivy, a Canadian transgender woman athlete in the U.S., and a two-time track cycling world champion; Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a civil rights lawyer, four-time Olympic medallist and leadership member of the Women's Sports Policy Working Group; and Alphonso David, president of Human Rights Campaign, an organization fighting for LGBTQ equality.