Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2018

The Current Transcript for August 8, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: This is a human. This is what we look like. This is what we act like. This is what I am. I'm a throwback. I'm here. I've got the fire of human liberty. I'm setting fires everywhere and humans are turning on everywhere.

LAURA LYNCH: By his own description, Alex Jones is a firebrand. But the man who called the Sandy Hook school shootings a hoax, who claims students who survived the mass shooting at a Florida school were actors and who flaunts many more conspiracy theories is being silenced, at least on some parts of the internet. It's unclear why Facebook, Apple and YouTube waited until now to try to dampen the flames. And it's also uncertain what effect it will have. That's first. After that.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's a very frightening thing to think that a medication that could rescue you from a life-threatening situation is not available.

LL: Jackie Duffin learned that EpiPens, the devices that deliver adrenaline to those facing severe allergic reactions, were suddenly in short supply. She not only sympathizes, the university researcher wasn't surprised after discovering just how bad the problem of drug shortages in Canada has become. Also today, the search for the perfect shade.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Colour is something that really does keep shifting. Colour is not something that materials have or own, it's something that they're doing at any given time. It's like a dance.

LL: The pursuit of the perfect colour takes place in quiet nature parks and in science labs. Recently, a brand new blue caused a stir, but there's nothing quite as elusive as the ideal shade of red, a colour that's associated with everything from vice to virtue. Anna Maria Tremonti's conversation about one particular pigment is coming up in our last half hour. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Back To Top »

Banning Alex Jones, Infowars could 'backfire,' tech journalist says

Guests: Brennan Gilmore, April Glaser

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: This is 21st century warfare. It's happening right now and it's designed to silence the American people and other populist movements around the world, who are trying to struggle free from this corporate totalitarianism.

LL: Alex Jones is complaining because he's being silenced by a growing number of media outlets. Facebook, Apple, Spotify, YouTube and even Pinterest are removing content featuring Jones. All cited violations of Terms of Service, including spreading hate speech. Jones is the host of InfoWars, a far-right daily broadcast that's laced with conspiracy theories. The moon landing was faked. Prominent Democrats were holding sex slaves captive at a Washington D.C. pizza parlor. Jones also claimed the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. Veronique De La Rosa's son, Noah Pozner, was killed at Sandy Hook in 2012. She's one of several bereaved parents now suing Alex Jones for defamation. I spoke with her back in May.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We've had to move a couple of times. We're now in a gated community and there have been you know vicious retaliatory things done online. And comments made, veiled threats because they truly believe that we're part of a vast, you know when I say they I mean the listeners of his program, that were part of a vast conspiracy to undermine the Second Amendment. Free speech only goes so far right. Free speech stops where you trample on other people's rights.

LL: Now you heard Ms. De La Rosa refer to the Second Amendment there. It is of course, the right to bear arms. Ms. De La Rosa and her husband Leonard Pozner released a statement yesterday about the social media bans. It reads in part: "Today, for the first time in 2063 days, our son will not be defamed, his memory desecrated and his very existence monitized to build an audience and line the pockets of a monster. This doesn't remove the thousands of posts Alex Jones followers have created or the harassment that we continue to endure at his behest, but it's a good start." In a moment, we will look at why tech companies are taking action against Jones now. But first I'm joined by Brennan Gilmore. He is also suing Alex Jones because he too knows firsthand what it's like to be the subject of one of his broadcasts. He joins me now from Washington, D.C. Hello.

BRENNAN GILMORE: Good morning.

LL: Now you became a target of Alex Jones after you posted a video of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last year. What did you film?

BG: I filmed a car attack, a terror attack by one of the white supremacists on a crowd of anti-racist protesters.

LL: And then you decided to post it.

BG: I did. I was conflicted about doing so I thought it might be used for propaganda or further incite an already dangerous situation, but I was hearing from friends outside of the area that people were suggesting that the core incident had been an accident because he was fleeing from a crowd or something. But for those of us who had seen it with our own eyes, it was very clear what had happened. And I thought it was necessary to share for that reason.

LL: What happened after you posted the video?

BG: Within about 24 hours, I was notified by my sister that there were these conspiracy theories on the internet that suggested that I was a CIA operative who had been paid by George Soros to organize Charlottesville or to overthrow the president. And so you know that was 24 hours after. Within 48 to 72 hours, Alex Jones and InfoWars had picked up these conspiracy theories and were broadcasting them to a much, much broader audience.

LL: And was Alex Jones simply rebroadcasting what he was seeing or was he making other specific claims about you?

BG: He was making the other specific claims about me, which we outlined in the defamation suit against him. And almost immediately you know there were consequences. My accounts were, there were hacking attempts on my accounts. I received countless death threats. They doxed my family and our address and it just created a long chain of negative repercussions in my life.

LL: Were you scared?

BG: I was very worried, yes. I mean you know I had just seen an incredibly traumatic event in Chartlottesville and when this happened all of a sudden I'm worried about my family's safety because this person is pushing these lies, these dangerous lies that are you know having real life consequences and negative attention. So yes that was a pretty hellacious when this first broke.

LL: Were there actual death threats against you and your family?

BG: There have been death threats against me and my family starting in the days after Charlottesville and continuing over the last year. I've had people post just in the last few months that my body is going to be found at the bottom of a river, which runs near my house.

LL: Now why do you think you personally were targeted in this way?

BG: Well you know the conspiracy theorists looked at my background. I've served as a diplomat for the US government and I've worked in Democratic politics. And from those sort of vague from those data points they constructed this vague conspiracy theory about me, but I essentially think those that aspect of my background was something that they didn't like. And they wanted to undermine you know the video that I had shown and a lot of times when you don't like the truth about a matter, it's a method of sorry a tactic of undermining the credibility of the witness.

LL: Did you ever try to respond online to the claims against you?

BG: After about a week of reading all this stuff, I did do a piece for Politico Magazine called, "How I Became Fake News," cause I wanted people to understand my side of the story. I had seen you know this tremendous spread of this conspiracy theory about me and I thought it was time to write the truth and show my side.

LL: And that helped or hurt?

BG: I think that helped in some ways. You know by that point, my profile had been so high I think it was important for me. You know I mean I think most of America, certainly all those around me never fell prey to these sort of conspiracy theories, but a lot of people did.

LL: Now you're suing InforWars for defamation. Why did you decide to take legal action?

BG: Well I thought it was important to set a precedent because the next person who's going to be in my shoes sees something and feels like they have a civic duty to bear witness to it, may not do that. Because they see what has been the negative consequence for a number of people like me in the past few months and we need to have some type of protection on that. So I want to make sure that Alex Jones doesn't do to someone else what he's done to me.

LL: Alright. So what do you think of the decision then by Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify to ban InfoWars?

BG: Well you know I heard what the Pozner family had said about it and I think it's basically the same way for me. You know today lies about me that Alex Jones has said, which have negatively impacted my life are not on the YouTube channel. So I think that's a good thing.

LL: Were you surprised that they took the action?

BG: I wasn't surprised. I mean you know there are very few restraints on the first amendment and we're arguing that Alex Jones crossed those and that we're going to take him to court on that. Now the considerations of a private company could be quite different, but we think you know not only did he violate the terms of YouTube or wherever it is, but he also violated the law.

LL: But there are those who believe that this is a free speech issue. I mean even the American Civil Liberties Union came out with Mr. Jones yesterday saying that these gigantic platforms for the speech of billions means they should resist calls to censor offensive speech. What do you say to that?

BG: Well you know again, I think Alex Jones broke the law. I think the restrictions on free speech are very, very limited and when you break them, you break them.

LL: Isn't it a better way though perhaps some say, to use defamation instead of trying to censor speech?

BG: Well I'm taking a defamation case against Alex Jones so I think you know that's the path that I saw. But you know these are private business decisions essentially.

LL: Do you think if a ban like this was in place last year, you would have been subjected to the same level of threats?

BG: I do think if a ban had been placed, the threats would have been less. Yes.

LL: Now given what you've experienced as the target of online conspiracy theories, how do you think his followers are going to react to these bands?

BG: I'm absolutely sure they will not like it.

LL: What would they do?

BG: I'm not sure.

LL: Brennan Gilmore, thank you.

BG: Thank you for having me.

LL: Brennan Gilmore is suing InfoWars for defamation and we reached him in Washington D.C. Now calls to remove Alex Jones from mainstream platforms aren't new. To look at why tech companies have taken action now and the dilemma of dealing with misinformation online, I'm joined by April Glaser. She is a technology writer for Slate magazine and she is in Oakland, California. Hello.

APRIL GLASER: Hi. Good morning.

LL: What's your reaction to what you just heard from Brennan Gilmore?

AG: Well it sounds like he's had a terrible experience having to navigate the aftermath of the most famous conspiracy theorist on the internet forwarding quite frankly you know lies and misinformation about his experiences and his reality that Alex Jones' followers have picked up and made subsequent videos about. And it's very difficult to kind of be in the world when a large subset of people believe things that are not true about you.

LL: Now what do you make of the move now to ban Alex Jones from these various platforms?

AG: You know I do think that in this case it was probably the right move because what Alex Jones was doing was causing real world harm as your previous guest had described. The issue though and as you alluded to at the end of your last interview, is that when all these platforms do it together, at the same time, it could backfire because you know this kind of will play into a Alex Jones narrative that he's being censored by this liberal cabal of you know Silicon Valley powerful companies. And the truth is that there are only a few companies that control the majority of you know mainstream internet platforms. So when they all act in unison at the same time, that could lead to more conspiracy theories.

LL: Now I want to come back to that, but first I wonder if you could explain for us what exactly are the various platforms banning Alex Jones for?

AG: Well in this case they're saying they're banning him for hate speech right. They're not necessarily saying that it's for misinformation. They're saying that it's for harassment, for violating their community standards. They're not even that clear exactly, what about their community standards or what exactly the hate speech was. So there's not a lot of transparency there, but they're saying it is about hate speech and harassment for the most part. And you know I'm talking about Facebook, YouTube, Apple here. And I think it's important to note that it's very difficult to police misinformation and to police you know what is and is not true. These are cases that have you know made it up to the Supreme Court for many, many years. This is not an easy question to solve by any means. And they've leaned on the idea that hate speech is what they're going to ban people based on.

LL: But why now? Why do you think these companies all decided to boot InfoWars at the same time and do it now.

AG: Well there's been really a public reckoning of these incredibly powerful internet companies, over the past year I'd say and it really came to a boil with the Cambridge Analytica scandal in Facebook. But since the 2016 election and before then, people realized that there was just a deluge of fake and false information circulating on these incredibly powerful you know quite frankly media companies, these social media platforms that were misleading people. And then we found out that you know Russian operatives were using these platforms to try to sway the election and show divisions in American politics. And you know people are starting to feel incredibly skeptical about these companies that we've entrusted to shepherd information to us and to keep us informed so that we can vote meaningfully in elections. When now in 2018, two years after the 2016 election, we have another election season coming up this November in the United States. And people are saying, well what are you guys doing now? You've had two years to fix this, what are you doing now? You know we're a few months now after Cambridge Analytica. People are just you know really scrutinizing these companies and asking them you know, well if you're serious about false news, then why does Alex Jones still have a verified account labeled as a news site on your platform, where he's able to peddle in quite frankly lies that have led to real world harm. Journalists have been asking about this. They finally decided to do something about it last week and or the week before last, taking a few videos down and then this Monday really the dam broke and whole channels were taken down.

LL: And yet Twitter this morning is making it very clear that it is going to leave Alex Jones on its social media platform. Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Twitter said, "We're going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one off actions to make us feel good in the short term and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories." What do you think of that?

AG: You know Jack Dorsey also said that it's really up to journalists to debunk this and that it's not the role of Twitter to kind of debunk conspiracy theories. And while it's true, it's not the role of Twitter to debunk conspiracy theories or say what is true or isn't true necessarily. These social media platforms have a flattening effect right. And so you know we have a New York Times story that has verified reporting that's deeply fact-checked, you know at the same level as somebody telling you what they had for breakfast this morning. At the same level in the mix of an Alex Jones lie conspiracy theory. It's very hard for individuals often to know like what is true and what isn't true. And it's really allowed people like Alex Jones to amass this massive platform with the help of these social media sites that have allowed his conspiracy theories to gain so much traction. And really the media wouldn't have to be debunking these things that would have been much more fringe had Alex Jones not been able to get so popular on these sites. Now you know Sandy Hook conspiracy theories from Alex Jones are still on Twitter. So it's really hard to know if Dorsey is essentially saying that he is OK with these things being on there, even though they've caused real world harm. But if this is the beginning of Twitter enforcing their policies around how they're going to police misinformation or harassment on the site and they do it consistently and transparently, I could see this being the start of something that starts to make sense. If this is really the policy that they have. But as of now it's not entirely clear how Jones is not violating a hate speech policy or how Jones is misinformation is not causing real world harm. If they do indeed ban that.

LL: Let's talk a little bit more about potential backlash. What impact could this banning of Alex Jones on these platforms that he's being banned on, what impact could it have on his influence? Well it could certainly make him more difficult to find. I mean one of the ways, as I said, that Alex Jones has been able to gain so much influence is by being available on mainstream social media. And if it's harder to watch an Alex Jones video, it's going to be harder for people to believe what Alex Jones says. That said, it also could backfire in that it will harden people's beliefs that there is a deep polarization in the country and that the media is run by people who are left wing in some way or who have a liberal conspiracy theory against you know these fringe right figures. And it could turn people to distrust the media even more. And you know already immediately after Alex Jones did experience multiple bannings on Monday, he declared on his personal website, the war on your mind is happening right now. He also actually started calling for an antitrust action. He began to implore and kind of beg Donald Trump to take action against these large companies, saying that they're really violating a kind of free speech. That this is an act of censorship. Of course that's not correct because free speech in the United States really applies to the government, not censoring you. Private companies can of course kick out whoever they want.

LL: But of course that's not stopping him from framing this as a free speech censorship issue and there is a second Unite the Right rally planned in Washington D.C. this weekend on the one year anniversary of a Charlottesville rally we just talked about. What are your concerns about the timing of the bans on InfoWars.

AG: It's true, we have the sequel of the Charlottesville rally happening this weekend. And while a lot of people were saying that they didn't expect this rally to necessarily be as vitriolic as last year and in fact as dangerous and deadly as last year, is really a terrifying event. Now that there's so much media attention and it's such a huge issue that Alex Jones' fringe right thinker who I'm sure many of the people who attended last year's rally are fans of and consumed his thinking. And media will have a new reason to be even more angry and demonstrate because they feel like they're being demonized.

LL: OK. Here's the tough question April. What's the solution?

AG: Well you know it's easy to connect the dots in hindsight, right. So it's easy for me to say well what they should have done in the past is actually enforce the policies they had on the books. Because I mean the great irony of all of this is that Facebook and YouTube and Apple, them taking this action now is something they could have done years ago because they're enforcing policies that they've had on the books for a long, long time. And Alex Jones has been able to become so popular because he's been espousing these lies for so many years and nobody has done anything to stop them. From that you know if they are going to change course and fix this now, I mean they're already kind of in a public relations disaster, but they're going to have to be incredibly transparent about when they remove people's speech, when they take something down, why they do it. How it violates the policy. They can't just simply say this violates our community standards and then send a link to their community standards, which have vague language about hate speech. They need to say what the person said that was actually hate speech and provide transparency here because you know when a company as powerful as Facebook decides that you're not going to be able to use their platform, they're essentially shutting you down from having a media empire because it's very impossible to have a media company and not have a Facebook page.

LL: OK April, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you.

AG: Thank you.

LL: April Glaser writes about technology for Slate magazine. We reached her in Oakland, California. We reached out to both Apple and Facebook for comment, but didn't hear back from either of them. The CBC News is next. Then, life-saving EpiPens are in short supply at the moment. We'll hear from a researcher who thinks Health Canada could and should do more to prevent potentially dangerous drug shortages. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Recycling injectors could help solve EpiPen shortage: researcher

Guest: Supriya Sharma, Jackie Duffin

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and this is the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come. Red may have been one of the first colours used in prehistoric art, but artists and scientists are still searching for the perfect shade. We'll find out why it's so elusive in half an hour. But first what happens when the pens run dry.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It was a reaction to peanuts.

VOICE 2: To shrimp.

VOICE 3: A bee sting.

VOICE 2: I'm always careful to avoid my allergen.

VOICE 3: But suddenly.

VOICE 1: I couldn't breathe.

VOICE 3: But I had it with me.

VOICE 2: And used it immediately.

VOICE 1: My EpiPen auto injector.

LL: As that cheery commercial suggests, they are literal life savers, but right now they're in short supply. EpiPens provide adrenaline to people suffering allergic reactions, providing a crucial lifeline until medical help arrives. But the government is warning the public about a shortage of EpiPens across the country. Christine Connolly's nine-year-old daughter has a serious egg allergy. She learned about the shortage on a visit to an allergist.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I actually called seven different pharmacies, before I was able to find one that had an EpiPen available. I do still need at least one other. I would like to have a third because she needs to have one on her. One needs to be kept in the office at her school and I would like to have one at her grandmother's house, where she goes after school for afterschool care. You know it shouldn't happen. If we can't get the medication, I feel like somebody owes us an explanation of why we can't get this medication. You know there's just a general lack of information about what's going on and if and when it will be available. If and when anything else is being pursued. Are there other manufacturers that could potentially get this back into the system?

LL: Christine Connolly in St. John's. And she's not the only one looking for answers. Dr. Supriya Sharma is the Chief Medical Advisor at Health Canada. We've reached her in Ottawa. Hello.

SUPRIYA SHARMA: Good morning.

LL: Dr. Sharma what is your reaction to what you just heard from Christine Connolly in St. John's?

SS: Well first of all, it's absolutely understandable that she's concerned because EpiPens are life-saving medications that are used when people are having very serious allergic reactions. So if there is a shortage, absolutely people are concerned about not having them. A couple of things though. First of all, when we're talking about the shortage that we're facing right now, it's the adult version of EpiPen that's in shortage. The junior version or the one for children for kids that are under 30 kilos is in short supply, but it's not in a complete stock out situation that we're dealing with in terms of the adult medication. Second of all, when we're talking about having EpiPens, you know we know that people often have backup copies and they have them in different locations. During this time, when we're in this shortage situation, we're asking people to not get those backup copies.

LL: Why are we seeing a shortage of EpiPens in the first place?

SS: Well there's a couple of factors that go into the shortage that we're dealing with right now. Firstly, we have a manufacturer who's been having issues. And so there's been some issues that have been going on for the past few months and then just recently there's been another manufacturing delay. So there was a shipment that was supposed to come out, be sent out across Canada at the beginning of August and there wasn't a supply to send out. And that's really what we're dealing with right now. So we're in this few week period where there may not be any supply in pharmacies.

LL: But there are similar devices to the EpiPen that are produced by other companies. Why can't Canadians get access to those?

SS: Yeah that's right and actually even approved in Canada. So sometimes we have issues with products that are not yet approved in Canada and there's a process to get that through the system. But in Canada, we actually have four other companies that have approval for auto injectors, but they've also had issues in the past with manufacturing delays. Back in 2015, we had the allergic product that was recalled because it had issues around the functioning of the actual auto injector and these are products that need to work 100 per cent of the time. So we have companies that have, they're making business decisions about where they're marketing the products. There's been some changes in the companies as well, but also there's been issues around manufacturing, sourcing ingredients. So this group of products has had a lot of challenges in terms of being able to market those products anywhere, but especially in Canada where we're more vulnerable because we only have one product that's marketed.

LL: I'm confused. They've been licensed by Health Canada, correct?

SS: That's right. So that means they have the ability to sell the product in Canada, but they've chosen not to. They still have to go through the process where they manufacture it. They do the quality assurance checking and then they supply and distribute it in Canada.

LL: Why license them then? It's almost like rewarding them for nothing.

SS: Well they come to us in Health Canada and provide all of the information to support the safety, the effectiveness and the quality of the product. So we look through all of that information and often takes up to a year to do that and then they get their license to market in Canada. So that's a really important step to make sure that these products are safe and effective, but then they have to make the decision to actually produce it and actually bring it to Canada and sell it here.

LL: So the reality is Canada is dependent on a single supplier for EpiPens and so the question is, why wasn't Health Canada better prepared for the possibility of shortages?

SS: Well in this situation, this is often the case if you only have a single supplier. So sometimes we see it because products haven't been marketed. Sometimes we see it because when pharmacies or provinces let contracts, they only have that contract with one provider. It's really unusual to have all of these things lined up, so that you don't have another supplier and you're having manufacturing delays. So it's a really unfortunate situation, but what we're working at really hard right now is to look at not only a short term solution to this issue that we're dealing with, but a longer term solution. So we are talking to companies to try to get more information about why they haven't come to Canada or marketing in Canada. And at the same time looking for companies that potentially have other supply elsewhere in the world that they can bring into Canada in the short term.

LL: Oh that's interesting. So you're talking about trying to encourage those other licensed companies to start providing the product to Canada. What could you do to I guess lure them here, would you offer incentives? What's the plan?

SS: Well you know interestingly the incentive is often around the review time. So incentives for companies that say that we would waive the fees for that review or shorten the review. In this case, we already have companies that have them marketed. So right now it's really to show that there is a business case to bring that product here. You know there is demand. If there's anything we can do on the regulatory side certainly we're offering that up, but right now because there really have been impacts globally on the supply. It's something that everyone is dealing with.

LL: So there are some who work in and around this industry including Marc-Andre Gagnon at Carleton University, who suggested that a government agency or corporation could fill the gap when we have a drug shortage. I'm wondering if Health Canada has looked at the possibility of producing these kinds of products itself.

SS: The issue with the products is that you know you need an entity that obviously has all that information about the product. That has the manufacturing facilities. That it's able to source the raw materials. That can manufacture it, that can distribute and supply for Canada and then continue to monitor these products once they're on the market. So that's traditionally not an area that the government has been in. It's obviously something that private industry is in. That would be a huge switch for us.

LL: But is it a necessary switch, given what's happened?

SS: Well I think we have to look at the global supply right now. So when we're looking at medications, this is one medication obviously we're focused on right now because it's in shortage. But the way that medications are made in the world, it's very much a global operation. So you'll see active or the raw ingredients, the active pharmaceutical ingredients sourced in one part of the world. You'll see part of manufacturing happen in another part of the world. You'll see packaging happening potentially somewhere else and then products are brought to the different countries and distributed. So it's a really complex global supply chain. And so you know it's an idea that we would produce here in Canada, but I think we have to take a look at the feasibility of doing that and what the consequences would be if we actually tried to do that ourselves.

LL: You talk about this being the one drug, but there's very little data out there on medication shortages and how they affect patients. What's Health Canada doing to actually monitor the effects of this shortage?

SS: So I think part of the reason that we don't see the effects of drug shortages is part and parcel of the way that we work together. So we work with, Health Canada works with, you know all the different stakeholders, the health care professionals, patient groups, provinces and territories and industry to see if there is an issue. You know to try to make sure that that actually doesn't get to the patient level. So the vast majority of issues, whether it's around supply or a temporary decrease in the availability of medications because each shortage has its own sort of character. So we're working with areas where we try to provide information about not having sole source contracts for example. So we don't have shortages because one person or one pharmacy or one group of pharmacies is only contracted with one company. We're working with companies to make sure that they have all of their quality manufacturing systems in place. We're working with the health care system to make sure that we have appropriate use of the medication. So you know the demand side is there as well. But it's really complicated and that's why you can't say kind of globally that this is the effect of all shortages. Each one really has its own kind of character.

LL: We spoke to a Toronto emergency room doctor who says the government does a poor job of communicating with doctors about drug shortages and I'm wondering how you respond to that.

SS: Well when we have a drug shortage, we actually have a group of people that we bring together and we absolutely have medical associations, physicians associations on those calls if it's around a specialty area. So if it's a neurologic drugs for example, we'll have associations that are there. We have the pharmacists on the calls as well to share that information, so we bring everyone together. The patient groups, I think are really important in terms of speaking to other patients and other caregivers across the country. So we do that. It's not something that we necessarily say publicly that we're having those meetings, but as soon as there's something in those meetings or something we find out about a drug shortage that needs to be communicated, like in the situation with EpiPen when there is going to be a stock out. We do communicate that as well.

LL: So what is your message to Canadians who rely on EpiPens in case of emergencies?

SS: So I think what we're trying to do is really get through this kind of critical period when there may not be any supply in the pharmacies. So we're telling people to get their EpiPens. Take a look at them and to know a couple of things. One, there's a small window on the EpiPen where you can see the fluid that's inside. And so to make sure that that's clear. So if it's cloudy or discoloured, you're not, you shouldn't be using that EpiPen. Secondly, we're saying take a look at that EpiPen and know what the expiry date is. So we have a reminder that the expiry is actually at the end of the month. So if it says August 2018 on that expiry date, it means it expires at the end of the month. Second as we said, if you're looking to get a second or third or a backup copy of your EpiPen, please just hold off for the next few weeks to try to maintain the supply that we have. And we're also saying that in that situation where you have nothing else and all you have is an expired EpiPen and you're having a serious allergic reaction, go ahead, use that EpiPen and call 9-1-1 immediately. The other thing is that we, there are other forms of epinephrine that are approved in Canada. So they come in little vials and those are the vials glass viles that they use in hospitals or emergency response. So in those situations, if you have nothing else, you can go to a pharmacist and get them to draw up a dose of epinephrine into syringes and you can take those home and you can use those in emergency situations. Or if you're able to draw medications, you can actually draw it up yourself. We normally don't say you know to people to use that because in an emergency situation obviously people can be panicked and you know we don't want mix with doses and of course we're working with needles as well. So with this sort of practical kind of advice, we're really hoping that we can get through the next few weeks and then I think from the longer term, we're really working with a number of different companies to see if we can get as we said a sustainable alternative supply. So in the future if there are issues with any medication that has epinephrine in it, in the future there's an alternative to go to in the short term.

LL: Dr. Sharma, thank you for your time.

SS: Thank you for your interest.

LL: Dr. Supriya Sharma is the Chief Medical Advisor at Health Canada and we reached her in Ottawa. My next guest says there's a lot more Health Canada could be doing to protect Canadians from drug shortages. Dr. Jackie Duffin is a professor emeritus at Queen's University and the researcher behind the blog CanadaDrugShortage.com. She's also the co-author of a CD Howe Institute study published in June that looked at this country's growing struggle to keep its pharmacy shelves stocked. And we've reached Jackie Duffin in Lac Megantic, Quebec. Hello.

JACKIE DUFFIN: Hello.

LL: You've been listening to my conversation with Dr. Sharma. From where you sit, how worried should Canadians be about this EpiPen shortage?

JD: Well I understand the anxiety for people who need EpiPen. It's a very frightening thing to think that a medication that could rescue you from a life threatening situation is not available. I think her recommendations for what to do in the short term are very sensible. What I am disappointed in is her explanation of the reasons for it. We could learn a lot more about drug shortages and Health Canada could take the lead on that, but it is not doing so.

LL: How could we learn more and why isn't Health Canada doing it?

JD: Well first of all, Health Canada has never measured the drug shortage in Canada. It's never measured the number of drugs, the number of shortages per year, nor has it characterized whether it's pills or injectables or what kind of diseases are mostly affected. That was the topic of the study that we published with CD Howe in June. But it's really crazy that an ordinary old doc like me and a couple of students should be measuring Canada's drug shortage over the last five years. What we found is that there are at least a thousand products in short supply every year and possibly more because we use the only publicly available sources that are out there and we know that those are imperfect. So EpiPen is very frightening because of its uses, but the shortage of EpiPen typifies all the other 1000 shortages that we see each year.

LL: But why, so why isn't Health Canada doing this, tracking it?

JD: I wish I knew. I've been asking them since at least 2011. And I think Health Canada is the entity that could do it because Health Canada knows as Dr. Sharma so beautifully explained, which products are licensed to be able to be marketed, which products are actively marketed. It also knows which products have only one manufacturer and it is only Health Canada who really has a handle on that. So why not give an annual report on the status of drug shortage in Canada. Just a few weeks ago listeners would have heard about the problem, a shortage induced by a manufacturer acting responsibly, taking it off the market because of a potential contaminant. But Dr. Sharma's explanation for the EpiPen shortage is very mysterious. She said the company has "issues." Issues is not an explanation.

LL: So you're suggesting that Health Canada needs to do a lot more to inform Canadians about what the problem actually is.

JD: Yes I think there needs to be more accountability and more transparency in the health, in the pharmaceutical product marketing industry. We are content as Canadians to let private pharmaceutical industry look after our products. We don't have pharmacan as you were kind of alluding to with her.

LL: The idea of the government itself trying to supply these drugs?

JD: Not necessarily the government, but why doesn't the government, not Health Canada, but perhaps Industry Canada encourage the creation of generic manufacturing entities in Canada. Canada used to have a lot of pharmaceutical manufacturing and that has declined over the years for reasons that economists can explain to you, but why not. We're a well-off country. We've got a lot of human capital, a lot of intellectual capital. The generic products, the recipes are available. So why not get busy and make them and encourage manufacturers and entrepreneurs to consider making them here in Canada.

LL: Now most shortages aren't for drugs that are meant to treat acute medical needs as the EpiPen, for drugs that treat chronic medical conditions such as high blood pressure, epilepsy, mental illness, what's the effect on drug shortages on those patients?

JD: I do not want to minimize the effect of the EpiPen shortage on the consumers of EpiPen, but I also want to emphasize that any one of these drug product shortages can induce severe harm. First of all, there's a tremendous anxiety of getting stabilized on a reliable product for your very high blood pressure, for your epilepsy for example and also for your arthritis. And when you can't get the drug that works for you, at the dose that works for you, things go all out of control. In addition, we use substitute drugs and of course doctors and pharmacists are left scrambling all the time because they have very short notice when these products will go in short supply and then they land on a substitute. They offer the substitute to a patient and some of the patients have blogged at my website, they end up with dreadful side effects.

LL: Do you have an example of that?

JD: If your listeners go to my website and look at patients' story number 15. They will see the story of a woman who relied regularly on an antibiotic for management of her kidney stones. That antibiotic went into short supply and she was given a substitute, which is a reliable old drug. I have used it my entire career, but that drug in very rare cases is toxic to the eighth cranial nerve, which is the auditory nerve. She ended up deaf and without any balance and she had to give up her work. I would also contend there are a lot of people in Canada who are affected by the drug shortage, but don't even know it because for example the doctor says, oh the drug you've been on is no longer available. But we can give you this one, which is a brand name drug and it's more expensive and the patient might have a drug plan and thinks great, it costs more, but I'm not bothered by this and they don't realize that the reason they've been switched is because the product they were on is no longer available. This will induce a cost either to the person herself who buys the drug or to the insurance company or to the taxpayer, should the patient happen to be elderly, on welfare or in the hospital.

LL: Is it possible to predict a drug shortage?

JD: I don't think in most cases it is possible, but that's partly because I'm not sure what causes them all. As Dr. Sharma clearly explained, there are many different factors and at my website listeners can find 14 different possible causes like Health Canada finds a manufacturing problem and tells the company that it can't sell any more product until it fixes the problem. Like the company can't get raw material, like the cost is so low for a certain product that the company eventually just discontinues it. And so some of it has to do around pricing. As she said it's extremely complicated, but that doesn't mean that we can't get busy and understand it better.

LL: You write about this, idea of an essential medicines list. What is that? And what difference could it make?

JD: Well that is another thing that I think Health Canada could take the lead on. With the help of practitioners in all sorts of domains, 117 other countries have adopted essential medicines lists as recommended by the World Health Organization. But Canada has not. What these are and there's a generic one posted at the World Health Organization, are medications that are designated as absolutely essential to maintain health and quality of life in any given country. So we might not need a lot of tuberculosis or HIV AIDS drugs, as do some countries in Asia and Africa, but we do need drugs for controlling heart disease, epilepsy, etc. And it would be a negotiated list that should be revised every two to three years and would contain roughly four to five hundred different medications. What listeners need to understand is that there are about 8000, possibly more, medications that are licensed for marketing in Canada. No doctor and no pharmacists can be on top of all of those, nor should we have to fret about 8000 drugs, but it wouldn't be too difficult to fret about four or five hundred of them. Be especially vigilant if there's only one supplier. Be especially vigilant on where they are. Be especially vigilant on where we would get a substitute should a shortage arise and we would be better prepared, even if we don't get a whole lot of notice when a shortage happens.

LL: And has that been seen to make a difference in other countries that have an essential medicines list?

JD: Yes we published a report in the CMAJ back in 2016, that alluded to some evidence that it does make a difference in those countries.

LL: Now this is the third EpiPen shortage in the last year. If we don't make changes in how Canada tracks and reports drug shortages. If Canada doesn't build its support for doctors and pharmacists, if it doesn't invest in generic drug manufacturing in the country, where are we headed?

JD: Well it seems to me right now, we're headed to more and more shortages of more and more products. The mystery around EpiPen in particular, is very peculiar. Dr. Sharma pointed out that epinephrine itself, the contents of the EpiPen are available in vials and that hospitals have it. So it's not EpiPen that's missing, it's the injectors that are missing. Why isn't that known? Why isn't somebody looking at how many EpiPens are actually used in their lifespan? I suspect more are not used because as she explained so well, they do expire. So if they expire and it's the injectors that we need, why isn't there some sort of mechanism for returning them through a pharmacy so that they can be used over again so that we can get creative in solving this specific problem. But as she said, and I agree with this, each problem has its own characteristics and we need we need to be much more transparent and accountable about what exactly the problems are and how we can fix each one as it comes along.

LL: Dr. Duffin, thank you.

JD: You're most welcome.

LL: Dr. Jackie Duffin is a professor emeritus at Queen's University and we reached her in Lac Megantic, Quebec. Coming up in our next half hour, whether it's scarlet, ruby or crimson, the colour red has had a prominent place through history. It's the colour of nobility, revolution, danger and passion. But despite its role in history, the search continues today for the perfect shade of red. We will hear from a colour hunter after the break. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

The race for the perfect red: Why we still haven't cracked the colour of love, excitement and blood

Guests: Mas Subramanian, Amy Butler Greenfield

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and this is the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Sound: Various songs incorporating the word "red."

LL: It's not surprising that musicians so often sing about "red." It's the colour of love, passion, blood and death. And people have been on a quest throughout history to create the colour red as far back as prehistoric times. People used clay as a pigment for red body paint. Over time people have made red from insects such as beetles, substances such as mercury and a wide variety of plants. Today there are modern artificial reds as well, but many of the pigments produced now for paints, plastics and all sorts of other applications, tend to fall short. They're either not bright enough or they fade too easily or they're still made with substances considered to be toxic and that's why Mas Subramanian is searching for the next red pigment. He is the Milton Harris Chair Professor in Materials Science in the Department of Chemistry at Oregon State University. Earlier this season Anna Maria Tremonti spoke to him about his quest, but the conversation began in another part of the spectrum.

AMT: So before we get to red, we have to start with your new blue. You ended up discovering a new blue pigment. What is it? What you're trying to do?

MS: Well, in 2009, my research group at Oregon State University was conducting research that focused on the discovery of some exotic materials that we thought might find use in electronics. In fact, the project was nothing to do with the discovery of a colour pigment. For this we made a series of compounds by combining three ingredients. We heated them together at very high temperatures and studied their magnetic properties. After a day, I was in the lab, and a student pulled the samples from the furnace, and I noticed they came out stunningly intense blue powders which I did not expect. Imagine my surprise because we started with materials that were white, yellow and black in colour. Out came this brilliant blue colour. So I immediately I recognized these compounds may be useful as a blue pigment because they were heated to very high temperatures and changing the colour when exposed to high temperatures, water, mild acid, or alkaline condition. So immediately we filed a patent. So it is a serendipitous discovery or what we sometimes call a happy accident. In fact, many breakthrough discoveries in science happen when one is not looking for it.

AMT: So Inman Blue.. it's a brilliant blue? Is it like a cobalt blue? Give me an idea of what blue I would be looking at.

MS: It is actually more vivid than cobalt blue. And it is as vivid as a lapis lazuli or ultramarine. But it is very, very stable, so this is the first blue pigment in 200 years. The last one was cobalt blue, which was discovered in 1802.

AMT: So if you apply it to paints and things like that it won't fade, it's much more stable, it stays that brilliant colour?

MS: Yeah, that's one of the reasons the company Shepherd Color Company in Ohio tested it in various places. And they find there's no change in the colour, even exposed to too bright light – sunlight. Even in very hot conditions like in the California desert or in Florida, where it’s is more humid. So it is definitely the first new blue pigment which is very vivid and very stable.

AMT: So this became an accidental quest for you. You got a blue; now you're looking for a red?

MS: Yes. You know blue one of the favourite colours; I know that. but just like blue had some issues. You know look at the other blues like a Prussian blue or Egyptian blue, they were not as vivid as the one we discovered. So again the same there are some issues with the red pigment. If you look at the red pigment, most of the red pigments available today - especially the ones which are very stable based on inorganics - they contain toxic elements such as mercury, lead and cadmium. I'm sure you have heard cadmium red, which is very popular. Since now we know how to make blue, so we are trying to see whether we can tweak the chemistry to create a very stable red pigment, which would be really breakthrough because most of the now red pigments are based on organics, just like original red, which comes from insects. I know it's not easy to design a pigment. So hopefully by knowing the chemistry of the blue already well, we may be able to come up with the next red.

AMT: And how much progress have you made on that?

MS: We have made an orange, which is a deep orange pigment, which does not have any toxic elements. So, hopefully, we can tweak the chemistry further to make it more vivid red.

AMT: And how important is this in the world of colour? Like, if you if you get the red that doesn't fade, that isn't toxic, that is that brilliant red, how lucrative is that?

MS: If you look at the paints out there, you don't see that much red because the red pigments are not very stable. So if they can make a vivid red which doesn't have any toxic elements, definitely it is breakthrough for the paint technology. And also even in the cars, for example, they use some of the organic pigments now, so they don't have an organic red pigment they can use which is not toxic that can be used on automobiles. So it's definitely a leap forward if we can find a better red than what we have today.

AMT: And you make the point that you discovered Inman blue by mistake. Is there a race on for this stuff now? Are you you're part of a race?

MS: No, you know the one of the issues with the pigment discovery is you can't go to the lab and say I'm going to make the next to red today. We can make things that are known before, but it's difficult to make something which is not known yet. So it is difficult to predict which component will give you this red colour. So you know I think most of the pigments are discovered by accident because it is difficult to predict the colour of the material before you make it in the lab. So we tried to understand the chemistry behind them, try to trick them them to see whether we can modify the color as much as possible what we desire. For example, when we made the Inman blue, we could substitute one element like manganese by copper we can make green. Or by adding zinc and titanium, we can make purple. So then we can tweak the chemistry to the colour you desire. We're into kind of exploratory research, which has to be done in the lab to verify whether it will work or not.

AMT: But it's opened up a whole new world to you, hasn't it?

MS: Yes, it changed my life quite a bit after this discovery because I made several discoveries in my life and 35 years of my scientific career. And I also have over 57 patents. This blue discovery is very special because it does involve interesting science, and very much appreciated my peers. What is different with this discovery than what I done before either it attracted tremendous attention from general public with diverse interests like artist, hobbyist, fashion designers, gallery enthusiast, even schoolchildren because Crayola introduced a new blue inspired by or discovery.

AMT: Oh, is that right. And your wife is an artist I understand.

MS: Yes.

AMT: So you have appreciation at home as well.

MS: Yes, personally, it brought a lot of joy to my family life because my wife is a chemist and also an artist. And she loves to visit museums all over the world. I used to hate going to museums, and tried to avoid it as much as possible. After Inman blue discovery, that changed. To my amazement, I started looking at every painting that contained blue like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, or “Irises”, or Monnet’s “Blue House in Vandam”, and wondered what blue pigment artists may have used. I may or may not become rich with the discovery, but it does not matter as the discovery has enriched my life in so many ways.

AMT: Well, what a beautiful art. Thank you so much for speaking with me, and for your work. Thank you.

MS: OK. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

AMT: That is Mas Subramanian, he’s the Milton Harris Chair Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Chemistry at Oregon State University. Now scientists such as Professor Subramanian are busy in their labs trying to concoct a new red pigment. But for one Toronto artist, the search for colour takes him outside.

[sc]

JASON LOGAN: I'm Jason Logan, the founder of the Toronto Ink Company, and we're just working our way into Tommy Thompson Park. My tagline is that I make colour from anything, but mostly I harvest pigments and colours from the city in Toronto.

[/sc]

AMT: Our producer Alison Masemann went out with Jason Logan last week on one of his regular trips to a lakeside park to gather some of the raw materials he uses to make inks, which he sells to other artists.

[sc]

JL: There’s some beautiful rust in this area. I don’t want to walk through that; it looks a little mushy. But look at those big chunks of metal rusting there. Oh, maybe we can go in. Do you want to go in? Red is definitely one of the holy grails of the ink maker. It's a difficult colour to get a pure red. And it's also just a bright, glorious colour, so people are attracted to it. So people are often wanting to buy a red ink. I have many approaches to try to make it a red ink naturally, and it's difficult. I would say the classic red art material would be some kind of iron-based. Iron kind of humans’ first use of red. I often use rusty nails. I use rocks that have a lot of iron in them, pounded down into dust and then I use that as an ink. There are also a few berries that make a nice red ink. Probably the best is when called pokeberry. Civil War soldiers would write their love letters and pokeberry ink. It's a kind of almost a magenta… between pink and red. In the world of red, there's a lot that varies between sort of orangey-red like rust, or a purply-red like a wild grape or a pokeberry. It's very difficult to get that pure red colour. And in the ink world, if you look at the ink box of Egyptians - and they were kind of some of the first ink makers - they usually did have a red, a blue, and a black. And their red, they used Iron pigments that were in rock. But how they got that pure, perfect red, I'm still sort of on the search for that.

JL: We found our way to the apocalyptic beach. What we’re looking at is just a jumble of pieces of concrete, pieces of brick, some nice chunks of metal. I’ve got a nice piece of irony here rusting away. You can see that it gets that kind of deep red-black colour, and then it gets a bright almost fluorescing orange colour to it. There's lots of rebar. All of this would have been part of the buildings of Toronto that got knocked down and turned into this this beautiful park. I might take a few pieces back with me today because this rust when it's steeped in an apple cider vinegar becomes like a very intense Iron-water, which used on its own, will make a kind of orangey-red colored ink. And when used with oak gulls or anything with tannins in it, will make one of the most historically important black inks.

ALISON MASEMANN: With oak gulls?

JL: Oak gulls, yeah. Oak gulls are these little homes that the oak gull wasp baby lives in. The wasp stings the oak tree, the tree reacts to it, the baby wasp lives inside this little sort of puffed up ball for the winter, comes out in the spring, and leaves this hardened little… sometimes they're called oak apples. It's like a tiny, little like a grape-sized little bubble. And that little grape-sized bubble called a gull when crushed up and added to Irony makes like a very, very important what's called a registrars ink, or oak gull ink. there's lots of pieces of brick. I can see one here. I can almost show you by rubbing it against a rock here. But this to me is like a classic Toronto brick colour. This is sort of a redy-orange colour, and if you kind of rub it against it… this is actually quite hard. I don’t know if I’m going to get a pigment out of this one. But some of the softer ones should give you a softer or better yet, if you are to have a mortar and pestle, you can kind of grind it up and add it to water and put some kind of binder in there. You'll get a brick-based ink.

JL: I think when I started out I just wanted a toxic kind of ink that I could use with my kids. And I was curious about a couple of the trees of Toronto, and that was sort of it. And as it's evolved, I've come to understand that there's a really complicated dance between the toxic and the non-toxic. You know nature and manmade. And inside all of that is the question of what makes colour? And I've come to realize that colour is something that really does keep shifting. Colour is not something that materials have or own. It's something that they're doing at any given time. It's like a dance.

[/sc]

AMT: Artist Jason Logan, on the shores of Lake Ontario. He has a book coming out this fall, it's called “Make Ink: A Foragers Guide to Natural Ink Making”. And artists are not the only ones who've been captivated by the mysteries of colour. In her book, “A Perfect Red” historian Amy Butler Greenfield explains how in the 16th and 17th centuries red became the most fought over colour on the planet. The fight involved monarchs, buccaneers, artists, scientists, spies, even poets Amy Butler Greenfield joins me from Oxford, England. Hello.

AMY BUTLER GREENFIELD: Good morning.

AMT: Just listening to our last guest foraging for colour. What do you think?

ABG: Oh, that was fascinating to hear because I think what he's echoing is a lot of the searches that humans have made for thousands and thousands of years - saying that he was still searching for a really bright red. I think that's been echoed from time immemorial. We've been able to get those purplish colours, been able to get those orangish colours from the Ions, getting that really bright scarlet of blood red. That has been the tough task, and you know it continues to be not a simple thing to do.

AMT: Why has red been such a desirable colour over centuries?

ABG: That's the big question. I think it does come back to the fact that red is the colour of our blood. It's a biologically important colour. We have a physiological reaction to it. It's very small, but measurable when we see red our pupils will dilate a little, our heartbeat quicken. We respond to this in a very basic way. Most colours have different connotations and different colours. The meaning of blue is very different culture to culture. If you look at yellow, the same thing - many colours are that way. Red, however, has a certain universality. And culture after culture, you will see it's identified with heat, and passion, and excitement. Now how you happened to see those things whether those are good things are bad things may change how red is viewed in that society. But there's still a thread there and that probably comes back to biology, and biology has a lot to do with why we find it desirable.

AMT: So at some point, Europeans start fighting over red. Tell us what happened? The Spaniards find it, right? The Aztecs are using it.

ABG: That's right. There are a number of different reds that people are using in Europe. And they all have problems. They are either - as has been stated by both the forager and your scientist - there's this dance between what is really toxic and what is really bright and beautiful. And Europeans had tried to find different compounds that would work - had found some solutions. But then comes news when the conquistadors come in to Mexico and they find in the marketplaces there that there is a wonderful new red. And the red is called cochineal. And it had been bred. It was an insect that had been bred by people in the southern Mexican highlands in the area around Oaxaca. And now these people had actually created the insect. When I say bred, they really did have a breeding program; they were very good with insects. And they had taken what is wild cochineal, which you can find in South America all the way up to the American Southwest. And they had worked on it over centuries to create a bigger and better insect with more dye - a more potent dye. And it was the most potent, brightest red dye that was available in the world. It still is the brightest natural red dye. Spain, having found this, knew it had a market for it. Red was incredibly valuable in Europe, especially at that time it was valuable. In the church, monarchs wore it, judges wore it, anyone in the aristocracy wanted to wear it. So they clamped down on this right away. They make it so that there's a death penalty for exporting the stuff. They want to make sure that it can't get out. So for gold, for silver, and for this little insect there is a death penalty for taking it out without Spain's permission.

AMT: So, in other words, this is where we get into the buccaneers and the pirates because the stuff is coming back and the holds of ships, right? And people start to try to take it.

ABG: That's right. It's very difficult to get in to the Spanish colonies without permission. It's even harder to take the live insect out because it just withers and dies very quickly. It has very specific temperature requirements and humidity requirements. So people just cannot get it out. However, in order to make money from it, the Spaniards have to bring it from Mexico all the way back into Europe in ships. And that makes them vulnerable. They have to bring the fleets back - they have a certain schedule each year. And the pirates and buccaneers years from England, from the Netherlands, from France would just wait there to prey on these ships.

AMT: And John Dunn - the poet - gets involved.

ABG: He does. When he is 25, he's known as Jack Dunn. It's a little hard to imagine him that way. But at one point, he was known as Jack Dunn, and he signed up for a voyage with the Earl of Essex. And they were going hunting for any Spanish treasure that they could get. And actually it was a miserable voyage. He had a terrible time. He wrote poems later about what a terrible time he had. But very late on the voyage - in late September - they managed to take some Spanish ships. And this redeems the voyage completely because the ships are loaded to the gills with cochineal. They have about 50,000 pounds of cochineal, and that probably amounted to somewhere close to a fifth of all the cochineal that Spain was bringing home that year.

AMT: We're almost out of time, so before I let you go, is cochineal still in use?

ABG: Yes, it is still in use. It's a very important food dye now. Much of it is produced in Peru. And it is still used a little bit in the textile world, but not very often anymore.

AMT: Amy Butler Greenfield, it's fascinating, and we're going to end it there. But thank you.

ABG: You're very welcome thank you for having me.

AMT: Amy Butler Greenfield, a historian, novelist and the author of “A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire.” She joined us from Oxford England. We have a little bit of John Dunn to get an idea of how red became part of his poetry.

[sc]

SPEAKER: As pirates, which do know that there came weak ships with cochineal. The men board them and praise as they think well their beauties. They the men's wits both are bough. Why good wits nar wear scarlet gowns, I thought. This cause these men men's wits for speeches by women by all reds which scarlets dye.

[/sc]

LL: So it's not every day we get to hear a 16th century verse on The Current. That segment was originally broadcast in May of this year. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Adam Pally will talk to Ali Hassan about playing a slacker musician in his new movie, Dog Days. The actor and comedian will discuss some of his biggest roles including Dr. Peter Prentice on the Mindy Project and Max Blum from the much loved sitcom, Happy Endings. That's on Q today at 10:00 a.m. 10:30 in Newfoundland. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. That's free from the App Store or Google Play. In the introduction to the interviews about the search for the perfect shade of red, we played snippets of some of the more famous songs featuring the iconic colour. It seems unfair to only play a few seconds of Prince, when the whole song, "Little Red Corvette" is such a masterpiece. So Prince gets the last word on the show today. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Song: "Little Red Corvette" by Prince]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Aug. 8, 2018 episode transcript

More Stories Like This