Transcripts for KPBS 89.5 FM/KQVO 97.7 FM KPBS 89.5 FM/KQVO 97.7 FM 20180812 080000

Doubt as a fake friend boyfriend and even a husband I don't fall in love or my clients but they often fall in love with me. They're experiencing an ideal life in some ways they wish that's hard could be in real life too but it doesn't stop there one of you which is client's a single mom hi is him to be a fake father to her teenage daughter the catch is the daughter doesn't know that you which she isn't her real dad and if she ever finds out sometimes I magine what her reaction would be if she did know the truth in the best case scenario I would like to think she might thank me for taking care of us 80 percent of my magination the other 20 percent thinks that she would be devastated she might say why did you come clean Why couldn't you just keep lying to me to the end this story coming up but 1st the news. As with a b.b.c. News in the past hour the park a solar probe the spacecraft which will fly closer to the sun than ever before has been launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral in Florida 5. 3210. Lift off of the mighty Delta 4 heavy rocket with Nasa's Parker solar probe a daring mission to shed light on the mysteries of our closest star the Sun The spacecraft is designed to fly within 6000000 kilometers of the sun researchers hope it will provide new opportunities to study the stars out to atmosphere NASA sold us on just Alex Young told the b.b.c. About the probes heat shield this is a technological marvel it has a shield sitting in front to handle temperatures of 1300 degrees Celsius it's about 11 just under 11 or have centimeters thick carbon composite and it can withstand 500 times the normal radiation we see here on Earth and behind that shield it's a cozy 29 degree Celsius where all the instrumentation and sitting poles are opening in Mali for a presidential election run all following a 1st round vote which was mobbed by security concerns and allegations of fraud president. Is widely expected to beat the former finance minister Somai Lesley's a poll many from London's Chatham House to think tank has more on the 2 candidates the president even aim is more of a sort of grand national sort of populist figure he talks in a grandiose terms about standing up for Mali and national pride and he has overseen the peace process from that crisis of a few years ago whereas tonight as he says a former finance minister Dr Moore technocratic these are people who've been around the top of Mali in politics not just for years. But for decades actually And so that may explain why a turnout was only 42 percent in the 1st round Finneran each as have been paying tribute to the British Nobel Prize winner vs Knight Paul who has died at his home in London he was $85.00 Salman Rushdie said he felt as if he had lost a beloved older brother born to an Indian family in Trinidad vs NY posted it also in university going to work for the b.b.c. His best known works include a house of his to be his was and a bend in the river the writer Farrukh Dondi said that one poll would be viewed as one of history's greatest writers it was really great to get it got. The last shake. It was quite remarkable but then the. Basic insight I don't think anybody. Want to listen to live on your own civilization the world news from the baby Suri the Jordanian prime minister Omar resigns has held an emergency meeting with defense chiefs after at least 3 members of the security forces were killed in a right again suspected militants there were a number of blasts including one that destroyed a building during the operation in the town of sold the raid was carried out in response to a bomb attack on Friday in which a policeman was killed and 12 year old boy has been found alive in the wreckage of a plane that crashed in eastern Indonesia killing its crew of 2 and 6 all the passengers their craft lost contact with air traffic controllers during water supposed to have been a short flight in the mountainous province of papa on Saturday morning the plane was owned by a private charter company. 10 people have been taken to hospital following a shooting incident in Manchester in northwestern England it took place overnight you know deprived in a city area Masai the police are investigating a Caribbean Carnival had been taking place there most of the injuries are said not to be life threatening a British barrister who was accused of physically abusing boys one running summer camps for young Christians in the 970 s. And eighty's in Britain has died in South Africa John Smyth was 77 it's believed he suffered a heart attack but the details in this report from Jason Carey and 1981 report by the charity un trust not made public the 35 years found that John Smyth had taken boys attending his summer camps to his home in Hampshire and lashed them with a garden cane in his shed the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby worked at some of the children's camps as young men in the light 170 s. But he said he was completely unaware of the allegations after the claims were made public Mr Smythe was excommunicated by his local church in Cape Town where he lived his final years Jason Kerry that's the latest b.b.c. World news. Hello I'm Saskia Edwards and your with Outlook weekend it's a show that gives you an insight into the phenomenal strange extreme and extraordinary lives of people from around the world. Today where in Japan. How are you today. I'm fine how's your wife. Wife. I'm single but I have been a bridegroom about 5 times which he is she lives in Tokyo and like he says he's single despite having had around 5 weddings but you which he isn't some kind of serial divorcée or runaway groom this is his profession. Sort of financial I've been a groom in 5 feet and aside from not around $100.00 different women have hired me to be their husband which he isn't just a fake husband I've also been a father an ex lover a friend a business man a boyfriend the reason you with she has so many identities is because he runs a company called Family bromance one of a number of friend to friend businesses in Japan. It's his and his employees job to take on fake names personalities and rolls their claws and often to lie to their family and friends must often be hard to be grandparents uncles aunties nephews nieces wives mothers today we go inside the psychology of how to pretend how to reconcile with being deceitful and why someone would pay someone to live. With calling this episode husband for hire. Back in his early twenty's in which he worked in advertising and on the side he did some acting. I was in t.v. Commercial and actually in some films I was also doing some modeling I was even in a pop music video. The music video in question was for a rash one of Japan's biggest boy bands. And huge dancing in a. Hug all I can say I was dancing but I was doing something like that you're moving right to. Around 10 years ago a friend of his a single mom wanted to get her child into one of Tokyo's elite to kindergartens but she was turned away because she was a single parent. For someone fact but I felt really sorry for her next time she had an interview I said that I could pretend to be her husband this is something you've never done before so how did it go it's sort of disaster I wasn't used to being around children I was so awkward around my friend's child and I won't put in the interview the kindergarten my views of education and I didn't have a clue what to say it was a total failure but I really learned something from the experience you which she learned 2 things 1st that there was a demand for this kind of service pretending to be a friend or relative of someone in some countries these activities could be considered fraudulent but the rental relative or summer get family industry is a legit and growing sector in Japan with a number of businesses providing professional act is to fill specific roles in the personal lives of clients and secondly. If you would she wanted in on the action it was going to take practice for him to get good at it that I prepare for all these different rows by watching films family movies dramas Hollywood Rome comes things like Little Miss Sunshine The Oscar winning film about a dysfunctional family bonding on a road trip and the descendants where George Clooney plays an indifferent parent who suddenly has to embrace fatherhood after a family tragedy they help me to understand different family dynamics relationships I study these films and memorize phrases and lines or take notes on how different family members interact and communicate and what it takes to be a certain kind of father or husband in 2009 you which he set up his rent a friend business he has around 20 stuff and has over a 1000 freelances mostly all actors men women of different ages and backgrounds and they cater for almost every situation we can be guests at a wedding a party even a funeral over the last 9 years we organize $8000.00 weddings and $700.00 funerals in what circumstances would be a fake groom in a wedding why did they need a fake groom. Or sometimes my clients are single women or lesbians whose parents are putting pressure on them to get married the parents say when you get married when are you going to get married so to get parents of a case a woman might hire me as a fake fiance and have a wedding do you have her and fall in love with any of your fake wives or do they ever fall in love with you. Yes this happens a lot I don't fall in love in my clients but they often fall in love with me. They're experiencing an ideal life in some ways they wish that's hard could be in real life too this whole job is an ethical minefield but when you're lying to several families at once things can get even more complicated Have you ever being caught found out I. Know I've never been caught the most important thing in this business is not to get course but I've heard that you have to. Appearance's I've seen a picture of you in an article Don't you worry that by being public like this that one of these family members who don't know you're being paid and pretending to be a father a husband will find out who you really are. Is always a risk you get found out that way and of course I made a number of media appearances on t.v. Or in magazine articles in those situations. But when I work in my present world I use a different name so if a child who are pretending to be a father to finds out and asked why I'm calling myself Yuichi I tell them I'm an actor and I'm just doing a role for my company still that seems like quite unbelievable lie I would be quite incredulous if someone told me that do you really think that the child would buy it if you told them that while Sequoyah this doesn't happen to me as I used to be an actor I'm quite confident I could convince them. Tell me about the 1st time you met a man. It was at her house she was in her room refusing to leave. Now to man a man a is the daughter of one of you which she's clients and with manna you would she has one of his longest running and perhaps most ethically dubious roles. Man it has no new witchy as someone called Inaba for around 9 years not only does man I think you would she's name is a knob or she also thinks he is her father this is a lie it started when a dental nurse who we're calling Hiromi got in touch with you Richie she agreed to speak to us and explain why we spoke to her through an interpreter and it's the interpreters voice that you'll hear so where did you get the idea to approach family romance I've heard about them they can send somebody to be a guest at the wedding or gone they'd I started doing some research and found out that they also send someone to be a Sarah get family at this time Irani was worried about her daughter Amanda she was having a hard time at school her friends were leaving her out and the sea had no one to play with the city came very quiet very with you're on a came to a point where she was so unhappy that c. Refused to go to school and was that in part she was being bullied because she didn't have a father no it isn't so unusual to be in a single parent family but when Munna was little it was more uncommon once her friends found out that c. Didn't have a father they started of picking on her Hiromi used to be married to a man who she says was abusive towards her and soon after man I was born they got divorced I couldn't face telling her the truth that he was abusive towards me so all see knew was that he'd gone soon after she was born so see blamed herself so how did you initially try to help her I talked to the school but things didn't really improve at all that's when he wrote me called family romance hiring a fake father though it seems quite dramatic I mean was that really the only. Option that you had to help your daughter I was on the edge sees my only child and it was breaking my heart to see her soul sad and blaming herself because she didn't have a father all I could think was what he for I found a man who was nice and kind an ideal father someone who could make her feel better I became fixated with the idea it was all I could sink about and I know it's a drastic solution but it was the only way I could sink of what kind of qualities we looking for in a father for a man I wanted to have to have a kind father someone who has a gentle with a never scold her Hiromi was invited by family romance to auditions actors to pick a fake father there were around 5 hopefuls in front of her one of them you achieved I picked Mr Yuichi I found him the easiest to talk to and so I just followed my instinct So what happened next how did you prepare you achieve for the role of an arbor we had a several meetings and this is even before he met Munna my requests were very simple I wanted to do things firstly I wanted him to say sorry to man or how sorry he was that he couldn't be in her life until then secondly I just wanted him to listen to whatever she wanted to tell him so you which she became in our How did you explain to manner that her father had just suddenly turned up I told her that he had remarried and he had a new family but he wanted to connect with us I asked her if she'd like to see him . At 1st see I was in complete shock but when the realisation sunk in that c. Had a father she said that she wanted to meet him so he came to our place and at this 1st visit mana didn't want to leave her room well cos I got up. My client Hiromi said Here we go it's your father he's come to see you and she didn't that isn't so it took a while to persuade her to see me when I came into her room I saw hiding under her duty so Ryan looked around the room to see if there was anything I could talk to her about to try to relate to her and nuts when I saw the poster it was a poster of a boy band it wasn't just any boy band it was a Russian you. So you would see as a fake father gives a nugget of truth from his own real life that he was once in a Russian music video. And she quite liked that she was impressed by that sort of the most of all she said No kidding I showed her the video online and she was very impressed we started talking and gradually she opened up. But I still remember the expression when she saw me for the 1st time it was a very complex emotion that was there. How did you see manage change after you started hiring you which after a while she became much happier and outgoing c even wanted to go back to school and then I knew that things were better c. Would talk about what she was doing at school and that's when I thought. This has all been worth it do you remember one day where you came home and you spoke to her and you saw this change one time you each and I went to parents they attend school we were standing at the back of the classroom see saw us together and they kept on panning around to look at the us each time she had the biggest smile on her face how did it make you feel to see her more outgoing happy old cause it makes me so happy I know what I'm doing and sold drastic but I really really wanted to save my daughter it's not cheap hiring these services how are you paying to have you achieve act as man is father I spend $10000.00 yen almost $100.00 each time I hire him and so for me to afford it I have to cut other costs from my life. You've been pretending to be this girl's father for years have you seen her change from the scared girl hiding under the do they that you 1st met my Bob Yes at the beginning she was very quiet hesitant but gradually she got more confident and also happier I 1st used to be here with the 3 of us together but one day she said I want to go out my father just the 2 of the. Yes So I took her to Disneyland and she held my hand for the 1st time have you ever said to her I love you in the way that a father would say I love you to a daughter so. I have said that to you as a father would do that complicated for you to be telling a child you love the. Knowing that they're not your child and they are under the impression that you are their father do you have to compartmentalize that identity . But that is my external persona and switching personalities and identities are important in this job but I'm human and so of course it will be a law if I say I don't feel any emotional conflict saying I love you to that child but this is a business I have to do it and I have to keep reminding myself of that do you think the mother perhaps wishes you really were her husband well what that yes I think she does. A truth with a bittersweet reality for Hiromi do you feel like a real family yes Mother thinks of you as a real father it makes me feel like we're a real family as well and I wish we could be a real family so do you wish you could marry you Richie I think so sometimes when this 3 of us are together I feel at peace we told we laugh and we a very kind to each other I would like to marry him and become a real family have you ever told you would she how you feel about him I have told him but he also told me that he's with us because it's his job that hurt your feelings not exactly hot because I knew what his answer would be but I was. Do you date outside of you which I mean are you looking for a partner or none none at all do you have a Warri. About how this could affect a man. If she finds out about you which she not being her real father I do Ari but our relationship is going so well I can't bring myself to imagine it going wrong doesn't that seem a little short sighted though are you going to keep paying you Richie for ever I'd like to keep this relationship going for as long as possible I told Munna that her father has a new family with a wife and a children so they are still his family and he will only come to see us occasionally I think as time goes by their relationship will slowly fade out and they will see each other less often so what's your ideal situation for how this ends the worst case scenario is that my daughter finds out the ideal situation is that you see continues to think of him as a father so when she gets married I'd like to him to be at home waiting ceremony and when c. Has her own child I'd like him to act as a grandfather as well so I would like to continue the situation as long as possible and as for you Richie go or I'll keep on playing this role until she wants me to you Don't you think that a mother should eventually tell her and that perhaps this could be quite damaging for her to find out. This is one of the big issues of friends your family and family grows for instance she could get mired in the future and have her own child and that means she believe I'm the grandfather of her child or so she gets married her husband would think I'm her father so the stakes get bigger and bigger sometimes I imagine what her reaction would be if she did know that yours is a best case scenario I would like to think she might thank me for taking care of us 80 percent of my magination the other 20 percent thinks that should be. Stated she wants a Why do you come clean Why couldn't you just keep lying to me to be and talking to you Richie and Hiromi you get the impression that they're in denial about how traumatic this could be for manna if she finds out about the lie actually you which she even hopes that not only she would thank him for what he's done but that if her real biological father were to find out that he would thank him to what are they can can you for. Was Gus's the will is a very difficult question but I think of it a big support her life and I hope to become more stable maybe asking her to cut me is a bit too excessive but at least I'd like us to recognise our service how is man a doing now is she a university is she working c. Is still a student and she's learning all of our to grooming dogs grooming dogs she's a dog groomer Yes c. Will be a dog groomer my daughter isn't birdied anymore c. Is happy now and a more positive so that makes me happy to in the beginning you hired you which she to help manna But do you feel like now your more reliant on him than your daughter is of course I feel that too I sort of funk the size about our relationship that maybe we can be a real family but the relationship as it is actually helps me emotionally and mentally as well it keeps me stable do you think the fact that you do have this big secret that you had to keep from man or do you think it's affected your relationship sometimes I think what would've happened if I didn't find a Yuichi with a man to have completely hidden herself away at the age of 10 it's possible the situation could have improved by itself. But it's also possible that they could have gotten worse I think that having this big secret in our lives is actually making it better a lot of people particularly people in countries outside Japan where services like family romance don't exist probably will have a hard time understanding why you've done this particularly because there is the potential it could hurt your daughter so what would you say to them in terms of the essence of why you have done this why you've hired someone to pretend to be the father of your daughter there are so many other people who you'd surrogate fathers and mothers my she treasure isn't unique I know some people think it's foolish to pay money to lie to my own daughter and to hire a pretend father but I was desperate and I don't think that anyone can understand that horrible feeling of desperation to see your child so hot I knew it could be food each but I had to save my daughter. Why do you agree to do entities like this I've had a few interview requests but I've always tandem down but the b.b.c. Has a good reputation so I thought once full I'd like to tell what I read think about all of this to the world. Do you think that this is an industry in Japan that's just going to keep going that's going to get more and more popular Why do people want this circuits. I think particularly in Japan we aren't very good at communicating we don't express ourselves very well our pinion is all our emotion was very honest with each other we used to spec to have nots maybe a fake friends and families families are changing in Japan the becoming smaller people eat by themselves and. They find it difficult to talk to people I also think that's why there's demand for family runs Who's through the work my stuff and I do a different reality and people can communicate and be open with each other so yes I think it's helping people. Need been listening to out in the weekend with me says Q Edwards this episode has been the high. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service and the us has made possible by American Public Media producer and distributor of award winning public radio content a.p.m. American Public Media with support from c 3 I o. T. Addressing the world's most challenging problems at the convergence of artificial intelligence io t. And elastic cloud computing more at c 3 I ot dot a I. The Mona Lisa is smiling right the painting is so well known you can see it now or at least know a loose idea of what it looks like the mysterious expression dark hair mountains or something well the news can be like that too you know the story or it rings a bell but the details are a bit fuzzy when you listen to all things considered the news becomes clear here the big picture every afternoon. This is Guy rise Here's a letter I got from a listener I Salaam aleikum Mr Ross My name is a model I listen to your show from Aleppo Syria if I were an alien and listen to your program I think I'd really want to be human your show makes the world a better place sincerely I'm not a model and all of you is why I do what I do thanks for listening to this n.p.r. Station thank you for listening to K.G.B.'s radio where news matters at 89.5 f.m. San Diego b.b.c. News with nearly one as the u.s. Space agency NASA has successfully launched the Parkers solar probe it was sent off into space using 3 down to 4 heavy rockets from Cape Canaveral in Florida after its launch was delayed on Saturday by a last minute safety check the satellite is designed to fly within 6000000 kilometers of the sun closer than ever before polls are opening in Mali for a presidential election runoff following a 1st round vote which was mobbed by security concerns and allegations of fraud extra soldiers have been deployed on the streets after threats from armed groups disrupted last month's vote the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said he would allow American f.b.i. Agents into the country to help investigate the alleged assassination attempt against him a week ago President Maduro said he believed that the people involved in the plot had fled to Florida Peru and Colombia. Investigators in the United States say the man who stole a passenger plane from an airport in Seattle before crashing it into an island was an airline worker with full security clearance the man's family described him as a compassionate individual who hadn't wanted to harm anyone hundreds of students and activists have staged a rally in the u.s. City of Seanad Seville to mark the 1st anniversary of deadly clashes triggered by a white supremacist March protest as at the University of Virginia denounced the presence of Rod Police 10 people have been taken to hospital following a shooting incident in Manchester in northwestern England it took place overnight in a deprived inner city area Moss Side tributes have been paid to the Nobel Prize winning British author vs Knight Paul who has died at the age of $85.00 born to an Indian family in Trinidad vs NY Paul started it also university and worked for the b.b.c. His works include a house from his debased walls and a bend in the river. Hello everyone I'm Gareth Mitchell And this is our world technology program today Google in China and drones and assassination attempts How do you stop drone also in the program citizens using smartphones to magnesia as floodplains and Ai Yes Ai yet again to help protect New Zealand's biodiversity and its economy is just applied statistics they really isn't it Bill Thompson I was just about to say that I wasn't really predictably too easily these days we've been working together for too long in fact not long enough Bill Thompson expert with us throughout the program for those of you've not met him yet Ok now this was Google in 2010 we want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services including users in mainland China yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self censorship is a non negotiable legal requirement and with that in 2010 Google moved its search service to Hong Kong effectively withdrawing that side of its business in mainland China 8 years on and there are now reports that Google search could be on its way back to China this time through a custom Android app that's according to the intercept news website and it reports that the app will comply with censorship in China eliminating search results relating to things like human rights religion and the a.t.m. And Square massacre now Google for its part its refused to comment on those reports but people like Patrick Payne are worried he's the China researcher at Amnesty International based in Hong Kong in part for what is already been reported we don't know any other each else so how do you Google Translate would also send sensitive would not use something no we haven't got a chance to ask contacts in China to try if it is the case that Google is going into China and introducing its search tools to Chinese users what would your response be my 1st question. Into Google is Rio and they have 'd Chinese the mastic search and Janes such as the most famous line is fight do so well if Google is going to also to launch a very similar one with censorship how would they make this range from what I do is doing so they need to come to you to ask Google to explain why they think that is actually something they want to and to the Chinese market with such a condition 8 years ago Google we strew this operation in China because of the system this censorship arrangement by the Chinese of forty's so why now they decide to give in to the Chinese of forty's thigh joining force the for those who accept censorship in China is something really and we for us to understand why suddenly there's thing is something they need to do they want to do but I suppose any multinational company operating within a jurisdiction has to accept the laws of the we have questioning it's not how to follow the law but it doesn't also to content the law itself as late in 2015 the Chinese government should do is decide the security low in the law it's a lot of things the pope Matic if the companies find content that would be conceived to be having content that would be endangering national security and they would be required to report to Dia forty's so what it means by national security in Chinese contacts is very much wake and always up a tree to the fine by the Chinese the forty's and it actually it would mean that restricting people's freedom of expression so it's really a question we need to ask how we follow the role by not restricting people's freedom of expression so this may. Only a matter of while we're there you full. Well you you actually follow the international law so Google took a ethical position if you like in 2010 and pulled out and yeah that really hasn't had an effect on China's asked you to censorship of anything the scene has worsened and censorship since 2010 so isn't the argument I will google me as well be that it is a business after all you know it's not a free speech campaigning organization and Chinese users have a right to enjoy the services that Google offers even with some restrictions but the problem is how you do to strike a balance and then you assert the value of a sad thing censorship in one market would that mean that you can also it's that censorship in other market as well so if more and more such examples happen in also with China's current influence on other countries that means the Chinese mortal may be cup she too out of markets as well and then would that mean Google would also whatsapp and Arc big companies was a step they kind of stench and that actually would redefine our understanding of what freedom of expression and censorship mean that's Patrick opinion of Amnesty International we invited Google to take part in the program they declined to put some definite view but they did give us the statement they said we provide a number of mobile apps in China such as Google translate and files go we help Chinese developers and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like j.d. Dot com But we don't comment on speculation so I thought and that's us told us in its own coverage of some speculation that you know the regulator built on things are very expert. This is really quite complicated in that we have to ask yourself and say Here do we do we have a different standard for China do we do we say somehow that the the restrictions on free expression that are in place in China so different from those of other countries that a company like Google should stay away from offering said. To people in China now and also ask yourself here what motivated them to move out 8 years ago has the world changed and my view on this is sort of shifted over the years and in fact how do now think there would be anything role in google offering a service in China because they already take down a whole load of material to comply with local law in other countries you know here in the u.k. Images of child abuse are taken down and we don't consider anything wrong about that we think it's absolutely right thing to do. You know we've seen under European Union law the their right to be forgotten that people's personal data is taken down and you know again we don't think that's an absolutely terrible thing so so where do we draw that line between saying we won't talk about 10000000 square or we won't talk about you know we won't list websites that are index copyright materials where the rights holders of raise an objection and I think it becomes much more complex therefore Yeah things really good to bring the nuances out in that discussion is next if very easy to kind of be very reactionary it's like well you know this in the sense that it's terrible you know you know Committee should operate in that environment and of course as I said and point that interview there is not as if the that the regime in China has changed really that much since Google pulled out it's no it's been somebody dings it's got she got it also got worse and Google pulling out doesn't seem to affect it I don't think Google go back will affect things either and it seems to me that the issue is not whether Google should be there but whether other countries which do defend freedom of expression more robustly should be putting pressure on the Chinese government Yes not a role for a search engine right Ok thank you very much indeed for that now over the weekend the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was addressing and events to mark the anniversary of the National Guard I don't mean a sort of color film bomb are part that part of you I looked up I if I did a lot of a lot of good but after the economy in a sense then the speech suddenly cuts off as you heard there as a. Drug appears to explode overhead now this apparent assassination attempt continued with a 2nd explosion causing soldiers and spectators to panic and. It . Was 6 people have since been arrested in relation to the alleged attack in the picture of what actually did happen and whether this really was a murder attempt still pretty unclear and there's some dispute over the government's version of events now we're not going to sit here and solve it on this program of course but it is an opportunity to discuss road drones and what can be done if anything to disable them Andrew Saxton joins us he's with radio Hill technologies and it's a company that produces drone disabling devices so you have a drone busting gadget there. And it looks a bit like a gun you point at the drone and somehow it disables the drone what they're actually doing. Well gentlemen thanks for having me on what the drone Buster does that disrupts the signal between the drone and its controller and also inhibit its the drones location awareness so basically it denies the operator to continue operating the drone and then either send it back to the operator or force a controlled descent as soon as you pull that trigger on the drone Buster well that you said controlled descent was my worry that was it was just completely qsam crippled to join in it would you know kind of fall in an uncontrolled way in could injure people well and that's a that's a great distinction because well you know if the drone is there causing a threat the last thing we want to do is turn it into a different kind of threat falling records into a crowd. The goal is to improve the safety of those in the area and so bringing it down in a controlled manner helps maintain that that option and are we seeing drones now is increasingly like a serious 2 leader in assassination attempts or other kinds of this effectively terrorism really is this really you know exploding Jennings is this where it's going. Absolutely and this is not the 1st attempted assassination of a head of state using a drone modified like this pains me to say a bit of probably won't be the last what did you think Bill seeing some of these images coming from Venezuela Well I know it was quite shocking because it's something we've talked about and speculation about to actually see you know what apparently looks like drones with explosives making it to an attack it was really quite staggering one of the things that I'm wondering is if we can disable the current generation of drones all that countermeasures that can be taken those Could you design and build a drug which was not responsive to what's happened with the drone bust. Question fee their entry because that might make sense they could always reverse engineer your drawing bust it's an old it's a make drawings it means he couldn't. Say the short answer is No and I can't get into all the details of kind of how it operates but you know drones are constantly trying to improve their ability to be safe when it was you know temporarily lose control endowments and whatnot but the way we are interrupting that signal by overwhelming it's there's really not a lot of ways that consumer technology has to counter that certainly tear one military level drones are 2 different story entirely and arse our solution is not the drone Buster not designed to counter those it's really designed to counter the commercial off the shelf or modified off the shelf drones which frankly are a lot more of a problem because they're so excessive they're easy to learn they're easy to conceal you can buy them virtually anywhere and I think that the proliferation of them actually makes them quite a significant threat. And the threat I mean is also sort of then being used for deliveries to places where you might know what anybody have access to there are lots of other use cases other than just the danger of terrorist activity. Well absolutely a few years ago somebody delivered a canister of radioactive waste to the roof of the Japanese prime minister of residence in a sign of protest over the handling of the Fukushima disaster so I think you know what you have is a very simple to operate aircraft that can deliver a 2 kilogram package wherever you want it now folks like Amazon have a really exciting use case for the past technology but other folks have more nefarious interpretations of it and that's the kind of threat that we counter and is that the main way if kind of disabling a drawing then see if it signals say the drawing goes into a kind of a land mode or whatever is on there are other ways of disabling than that you're about to tell us about yeah so there are folks out there who have sort of what you know you have basically a net gun that shoots a giant net up to try to capture the drone and that's not generally favored by most military or law enforcement presence for a couple reasons it's very short range. It's very target's very directional so if you don't if you don't hit it it's very hard to bring it down it's still then Crassus to the ground and it's you have to pay for each of those nets you shoot out and so we really work with a lot of folks in the military and law enforcement and secret service type. User groups and I asked them what they want and that's what we got feedback like what we need to drown to come down on peace so we can exploit the information off there right Ok so yeah there's that aspect as well so you can get the drone in one piece as it were and then you can do lots of analysis and 3 sacks and this is fascinating we're going to have to leave it there thank you so much for joining us thanks for having us great stuff so we're going to go over there on the plight of rice farmers who really have a hard time when the rains come especially last year there was an especially wet and destructive rainy season so in a region praying to flooding there's a volunteer efforts to map the flood plain It's a task of the project organizers say has never been done before and the audience here is a using smartphones armed with g.p.s. And a data gathering app the information is all being added together and then uploaded to Open Street Map which is a collaborative mapping platform is a bit like Wikipedia but for mapping incidentally Open Street Map celebrates its 14th birthday this weekend where such a gang Ken has been hearing more about that projects to map new jazz playing from Fatima who's a geography master student and she will say advises the World Bank on the flood risk in need share I mean he didn't he say and I think you. Need to talk to Candy as a tropical climate and floods are very frequent if we take for example the capital . We're used to 2 types of floods river floods and rain floods I've been exploring this subject since my 1st year at university and the geography faculty. I looked at floods from a cartographic point of view and I launched myself into cartography through open street maps what kind of damage usually the population face during the inundation here Yami image Lindegaard this is a lesson so that in my life it city the damage is enormous 1st in the huge number of human casualties resulting from the floods then there's the psychological damage people lose their homes their families their savings after that kind of psychological trauma people have difficulty reintegrating into society imagine impact on people who live close to river banks the floods destroyed their entire agricultural land and so these families end up with nothing their houses destroyed their rice plantations and their livestock all gone are you in gauged emotionally in your project because you've given him as the city my personal saint here is easy of course this was the true reason my compassion for this vulnerable population to bring these people and their plight to the attention of the authorities with cartography the truth cannot be denied because we have geo location What was your method of collecting data is it cattle class he gave us your album I see many of us actually started even before this project in 2012 I joined the Open Street Map international community and we started to map. We organized a map of bringing young sister gather to collect the data of a neighborhood and create a database how many people can be can be involved in that my battle scenes are the result in a battle of his will to be because facilities just as you can they be. When we organize them up as we share it on social media and there are contributors from other parts of the country and even other West Africa Open Street Map communities who join us remotely here in the Army we can gather up to 20 people were using smartphones with a questionnaire and images captured by drones integrated in the app we're able to get a sense of the vulnerability of a house an idea of the materials used for construction the slope of the land and precise geo location once inside a house the investigator 1st takes the geo location with the app the image from the drawing is a good start of a follow up questions on the kind of bricks you cement Clare or marred and most importantly we need details on the number of inhabitants how many vulnerable people etc. We ask how people want to be alerted in the event of floods in the past it would have been by radio t.v. Or even Quiroz But now with the proliferation of my bar fines why not do it with an app maybe I don't buy a text message and we just get one like 11 e-mail I've actually read to you for sure because we also collect their mobile phone numbers if we have information on an impending crisis or rising river levels or a floods we send a text $2.00 to $3.00 days in advance to give them time to prepare we just finished this project and the World Bank which funded it is about to extend its whether African cities like Bamako in Mali they realized how important it is to collect data after our project which was the 1st ever study in this denying made in Africa that Fattah met her website there were translated she was talking to Sasha gunk in need there and Bill Thompson was listening and and really sort of very enthusiastic about this sort of project we talked about Open Street Map Mellie tell him so on this program over the years and it is such an important thing as as an initiative I think in many ways it's easier much more valuable to always id other open source project I can think of because it really does transform people's lives saved people's lives and we've looked at ways in which information is collected you know you know areas that might have natural disasters or might be subject to family and stuff like that where you get the data in advance and then you can move relief supplies around more effectively you can advise people and that's precisely what's happening here it's so important this project can happen and it's led by local people who understand what's going on and now they have the right tools or hands to do it they can do it reliably and much more usually is that we had heard him or that yes there is that data gathering app for instance and that's all open source as well so people designing projects have a way of sending people out into the field to gather geo located data. And I've used Open Street Map at times where the other kind of mainstream mapping services are actually quite poorly mapped in some areas and you get more on Open Street Map you do because because here is where the community cares and also the fact that you can contribute to it remotely makes a difference as well so it's the sort of thing where you know people talk about click to visit I didn't mean it really activism that's just clicking on links or soluble I petitioned or inspired by the name of this program or indeed expired by the name of this program this is actual online activism that really makes a difference because you can sign up you can take on task you can spend your time looking at satellite imagery and mapping it you know anyone can make a difference and quote to be to this sort of project and it really does help people and it saves lives great Bill thank you Well finally it's not the kind of welcome you'd want when you get New Zealand a hefty fine because you forgot about that bit of fruit in your hand luggage New Zealand's kiwi fruit industry was devastated a few years ago by a virus that had somehow come into the country and much of the country's flora and fauna is unique with a for $70000.00 native species so no wonder that New Zealand is rightly pretty strict about the food stuffs that come in so now there's a project to help biosecurity officers identify potential invasive species or perhaps to help farmers id that new wheat that's suddenly sprung up in the paddock this report from Simon Morton a new report warns an uncontrolled invasion of the Asian stink bug would devastate New Zealand's fruit vegetable and wine industries destroying more than $4000000000.00 of export value more than 100 fry moderated stink bugs from Find another story about an invasive pest reaching the shores of New Zealand and along with bugs and creepy crawlies there is a real threat from fungal bacteria as well as other organisms follower of the trover is a lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at University of Canterbury in Christchurch she's working with a change from the fields of biology computer. Sanson Vision Machine Learning to keep New Zealand paste free. The basic idea of our project is to be able to identify automatically invasive species it's made to be dangerous to New Zealand take a system if for example it comes through containers Supes or through the border control so we have built in this algorithm which can address this issue of identify and. So in practice a farmer might see a strange we growing in a field take a photo on a phone or use some images taken from a drug and then have the bio secure id system identify the species to them based on their sets of images they can beforehand and supply it in some kind of form to our researchers so we are trying to address a problem here close to call of those algorithms require a lot of images however it's not very practical in the setting of biosecurity of for example in farmers to go in the field and collect loads of it then Saddam images of plants because that's will be very cost ineffective so what we're trying to do here we are trying to build the algorithm will require only a small amount of images to be able to capture the differences between suspicious of organisms so how do you train a system to accurately identify a new species of animal or plant based on only 30 images taken in a lab so using the knowledge transfer nano study is. In there with a little bit like people learning from each other when they take a problem. Learn from another person knowledge and apply that knowledge to their problem and can't and those. Problems in the 1st place might be not. So in a similar way in the works and learn from each other and be using this technique to be able to adjust problem of small day the sense. In the from a nod in there to work. With them. Which is still in development. Work a credible. People. And then discuss. Your own networks as knowledge transfer so how accurate is the system to. Trolls with plans to look fairly similar ones that even experts have problems telling the system was 80 percent accurate and also. In terms of fame. And fame. So for example if. The board. In the fund saw the race in the. Database the potential. Career in the database extensively. And in the future of this could be used to measure biodiversity and ultimately protect places from invasive that threaten. Our ecosystem. That report from Simon more he says. It's a Wonderful World. He does does Coincidentally I'm just reading a book called flights translated by Jennifer Kroll from the talk of Shook's original and one of the key characters in it is someone who works in biodiversity in New Zealand trying to get rid of possums and other invasive species so this is incredibly relevant and really important because if we can track things down more accurately and therefore respond more speedily and also sort of more accurately to things like this you can make a real difference to it interesting enough because there are some plant recognition apps out there already this is like picture this which does use machine learning and it's all called Smart cloud which actually sends your photo of applauds to experts who are they look at it so the Mechanical Turk style that we task to identify the plant the carrots or in the garden or whatever and get back to you with the best advice because the key thing about it is you don't want too many false positives but also crucially you don't want to miss stuff and it's going to be all about the training data and making it more and more reliable that's what really counts this excellent Bell thank you for that and when you look at the time we need to leave it there that's Bill Thompson the producer's calling Grant I'm Karen Michel and we'll see you next week folks take care and goodbye. Wisconsin's primaries are next week and candidates must bring together a diverse group of voters we talk to African-Americans in Milwaukee and dairy farmers struggling to get by they export a lot of our product and that has been affected by the tariffs produce in Wisconsin Sunday and Weekend Edition from n.p.r. News. 70 9 am on K.V.'s where news matters. Take a p.b.s. Vehicle donation programs another way for you to support the great programming on k. P.b.s. Radio you can donate your used car or truck voter r.v. By calling 1877 k. P.b.s. Car or going online to k.p.s. Dot org slash vehicle this is your source for balanced news and reliable information k p b s San Diego k 206 AC La Jolla k.-q. Vo Calexico a public service of said Diego State University leadership starts here.

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