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The Current Transcript for December 23, 2021

Host: Margaret Evans

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

They really were considered kind of like a Ferrari, like it was a status symbol all over the world. And so it's especially astonishing to see Ferrari go from a status symbol such as something that we all see around us and we kind of ew.

MARGARET EVANS: Pigeons. Rosemary Mosco is talking about pigeons. We will dive in to their illustrious history and talk about how and why they used to be the pampered pets of high flying humans. That's in an hour. We will also head to Uganda.

SOUNDCLIP

This is very difficult because it's been hot enough treating people with COVID 19. What about gorillas? You know, you can't bring them in and put them on a ventilator in the hospital. You have to do everything out in the wild.

ME: Around this time last year, wildlife experts were trying to cast a protective ring around Uganda's mountain gorillas vulnerable to COVID 19, just like humans, but also dependent on tourism dollars to fund conservation efforts. There are only around a thousand left in the wild anywhere in the world. Later, we'll revisit our documentary about what's being done to keep them safe. But we begin this morning looking for a little hope in the face of a fresh wave of COVID 19. I'm Margaret Evans sitting in for Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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Spreading positive COVID-19 news ahead of the holidays

Guests: Dr. David Carr, Andre Picard

ME: The prime minister delivered a Christmas message yesterday and a present of sorts for Canadians. Justin Trudeau expanded eligibility for support programmes to help people deal with Omicron, but in the midst of an explosion of COVID cases and new restrictions and lockdown measures, sparking anxiety instead of festive cheer, Trudeau also tried to reassure the country.

SOUNDCLIP

I know people are tired. People don't want to be in this Omicron situation. I get it. None of us want to be here. We're tired of COVID. We wanted to just go away, but we know it's not going to just go away unless we all do our part. We need to prevent Omicron from overwhelming our health care systems. Canadians have shown over the past two years that we're able to step up for each other, that we are there for each other. We know what to do. We know how to wear masks. We know how to keep our distances. We know how to reduce our contact numbers. And if we do that well over the next couple of weeks, we're going to see a better winter and especially a better spring than otherwise.

ME: Not quite the sort of holiday message anyone hoped for. And yet, my next guest says there are also reasons to hope. Andre Picard is the Globe and Mail's health columnist. Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

ME: What did you take away from the prime minister's message yesterday?

ANDRE PICARD: I think he was trying to to be, you know, at once warn us that things are going to get bad for a bit, but that it is hopeful that we know what to do. We do have all the tools were much better equipped than, say, at the beginning of the pandemic or even one year ago. Last Christmas was pretty dire. And this Christmas is not as bad as I think that's an important message is to have the glass half full rather than the glass half empty, right?

ME: I mean, you seem to to think clearly we need that kind of psychological boost. You wrote earlier in the week that despite the headlines, we can't allow ourselves to give in to what you called apocalyptic despair. So what? What are you seeing that's there to be hopeful about right now?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, you know, we we see the numbers are really going up dramatically and that's concerning. But we've become a little too obsessed with those numbers, with the case numbers, and we have to look at the hospitalisations. And there's been some good studies in the last couple of days saying Omicron is a lot less risk of hospitalisation and death. So that's what we have to pay attention to. The biggest fear that hospitals that will be overwhelmed is real. The fear is real, but it won't necessarily come to pass. And again, I think that's what the prime minister was trying to convey that we do have a lot of control over this. Even though we're tired, we're sick of this. One more little push through Christmas and we can start to see the end in sight.

ME: Some of that new data you're talking about has come from the United Kingdom, and we'd heard earlier reports out of South Africa, where Omicron was first detected. Why is it significant that these reports are coming out of the United Kingdom? Is it because our, you know, our the age of our population is more similar to the United Kingdom than than South Africa, where there are so many young people?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, I think it's part of it. Part of it is demographics. Part of it is in Africa there was a lot of data that that spread that strain that we didn't have in North America. And some researchers thought was that was providing the protection that the UK is very, very different. So that's good news for us. They saw their numbers rise dramatically, but they could still handle the hospitalisations and that that's what we're hoping for in Canada.

ME: Right. But the messaging that we're hearing here in Canada is still that, with more people testing positive in this sort of high acceleration rate, we could still see our health care system overwhelmed. And we're also seeing, you know, a revision in the rules for health care workers, you know about how long they might have to stay home and isolate after a close contact. Like what's the significance of these, these two things coming together?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, there's no doubt there's going to be challenges, you know, even though we have, we could expect a smaller number of hospitalisations. If you have a greater number, a percentage means that overall we can still have a real challenge. And there's no question the number one problem in Canadian health care now is staffing. Health care workers after two years of pandemic are are totally burdened down. We're losing a lot of workers. We're not being as nice to them as we were. There's no banging of pots and pans, or it's almost contempt for health workers in many circles. So it's very, very dire on the front lines. So we have to pay attention to it. And that's all the more reason we have to really limit our our contacts to limit the chances of ending up in hospital. So these things are real challenges. But not all of them are related to Covid. These staffing shortages exist. And they've been exacerbated, and we have to take them into account, but we can't lose sight of this bigger picture that the pandemic itself, that weighs more hopeful that that we're going to come out the other end.

ME: What do you think about the ruling? Out of third doses, we're seeing some of the provinces offering booster shots to anyone 18 and over. I mean, what's the difference in thinking between the the scientific advisers between the provinces on this?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, there's really two approaches to this very different in the provinces. One is just to open it up to everyone and get as many shots into arms as you can. And the other one is continue to target, as we've done with our vaccines all along, I fall into the latter camp. I think we really have to get third doses into the most vulnerable, getting a bunch of 18 year olds with their third shots. Eight year olds who are healthy is not going to make as big a difference is getting people over 60 or 70. So we have to continue to be smart with our use of vaccines. We have a lot of doses, but we don't have an unlimited number. And again, we don't have unlimited staff and clinics. We have to have to be smart about this just as we have to be smart with testing. There's a real rush. Everybody wants a rapid tests. And again, we have to recognise there are limitations. We're not going to have them. For everyone to have to continue to use these measures could use them smartly.

ME: I mean, there were a lot of questions yesterday for the prime minister and the other ministers about preparedness and talking about the availability of rapid antigen tests. I mean, are you saying we've sort of fallen into a bit of a panic? We in the media are actually making things a little bit worse by constantly dealing with these numbers.

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, we've seen do we get really obsessed with something new? So, you know, this week it's rapid antiviral tests and these are the solution. And no one thing is the solution. That's the message we've learnt in two years a pandemic. We have to keep doing a whole bunch of boring little things all together. There's no one solution, not a magic pill, not a magic vaccine, not a magic test. We have to do all this stuff, even though it's tedious. So I think we have to be careful to not think that these tests will solve anything. They give us a little snapshot in time. They can be helpful, but they don't. They're not a replacement for doing everything else. The physical distancing, the mask wearing, the limiting of crowd sizes, all that stuff is is really fundamental.

ME: I mean, there's been a discussion about whether or not we're going to be moving closer to Covid-19 becoming an endemic virus. The World Health Organisation yesterday seemed to be suggesting that's not the case, that we're going to see more variants coming down the road before we can see this becoming an endemic. What are you? What are your thoughts on on things like natural immunity? You know, the bugaboo discussion about herd immunity?

ANDRE PICARD: Yes and no question that the more immunity there is in the population, the better. So whether we get it by vaccines, which is ideal or people getting ill or a combination of the two, which is increasingly what we're seeing, there's no doubt there'll be new variants until we vaccinate the world. But the hope is that they become a lesser issue each time. So each wave, each subsequent wave should be lesser. Have more people immunised, fewer people getting really sick? That's the goal. So it is going to become endemic. Now, endemic is a very politically loaded term. Essentially endemic for practical purposes means we're going to come to a point where we tolerate a certain amount of sickness and death as we do with, you know, influenza, for example, every other illness on Earth. We kind of see that many people die. We accept it. Whether we should or not is another question. But we're definitely moving there. And the more people who have some immunity, the easier it is to make that decision politically. So we're going there. But the question is how quickly and how tolerant are we going to be of an ongoing sickness as we are with the flu?

ME: Right? In the meantime, though, your message seems to be that you still enjoy the holidays. You've said to embrace small is beautiful.

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, I think it's very different from last year. Last year was a pretty grim Christmas. We really were told to do lockdown. There was curfews in Quebec was very dire, and this year the messages have your holidays would keep them tiny. A limited number of people open the windows, wear your mask so more often, get to make sure you get your booster shots. Maybe use rapid testing if you have access. So we're learning to manage the pandemic to live with it. So I think we can have a good holiday, but not a big, joyous one with the big parties, but with smaller parties, people who are close to us. So I think there is a lot to be hopeful there and we we should embrace that and not be, as we said earlier, be too apocalyptic about this.

ME: One other thing we've been hearing about is is the approval south of the border or pending approval of an antiviral pill for COVID 19, Pfizer or pill not approved by Health Canada. And unlikely, according to news reports, to be approved until the new year. What are your thoughts on on that? It's been granted emergency use. I think in the United States,

ANDRE PICARD: you know, again, it's just an example of something else in our toolkit better treatment, and we've gotten much, much better at treating people who do get sick. So again, it's just another positive benefit. Is Canada slow at approving drugs? Yes, it always has been for a number of reasons. So we're not as quick as the US. But again, it's not the these pills are not magic. They have limited benefit, but it's just one more thing that we can use if people are getting sick. And the new year, you know, is only a couple of weeks away. So these pills are going to be available fairly quickly.

ME: Andre Picard, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you and best wishes for the holidays.

ME: And you. Andre Picard is a health columnist for The Globe and Mail. Dr. David Carr is an emergency room physician at the University Health Network and Mackenzie Health Hospital in Toronto. He's taken it upon himself to tweet out what he calls positive advent Covid content. That's one positive tweet a day. Dr. Carr, good morning. Thanks for joining us.

DR. DAVID CARR: Good morning, Margaret. Thanks for having me.

ME: What? It's an advent calendar of positivity. What made you feel you wanted to do this? Maybe if it felt like you needed to do this?

DR. DAVID CARR: Yeah, it's probably a combination of a few things, one, we didn't get around to getting our kids advent calendars, so we didn't get to see that joy of them opening their chocolates every morning. But also, it's just been this doomsday scrolling that I've been watching on Twitter and, you know, depending on who you follow, there are just people who are so negative. And it may be on the political front or on a health front. But I just couldn't stand it anymore on the front line and I see the reality of what's going on every day, but I just wanted to share with people. There are some positives going on, too. As Andre mentioned, this is not like last Christmas. There was a there are things to be thankful about and I wanted to get that out there.

ME: Well, I mean, you talked in one of you called it looking for, you know, finding the golden nugget in one of your tweets talking about a hat trick that particular day that there were rapid tests available, boosters were going up that sort of thing. I mean, you've also talked about dark and light, and sometimes it can feel a little bit like grasping at straws.

DR. DAVID CARR: Yeah, look, it's some days it's actually motivational, because I'm like, what am I going to talk about? What am I going to tweet today that's actually positive? One day I was so stretched, I said the TTC, our local Toronto Transit Committee, is going to have the windows open on a bus. And that was my bit of good news because there wasn't a lot and maybe public transportation safer, though. And then the quest for the golden nugget is and maybe we've come closer to finding that as maybe Omicron is going to be less severe and maybe that's the golden nugget, because this will eventually end. But what pieces of information will represent that wonderful advent gift, that golden nugget?

ME: What kind of response have you been been receiving? What kind of feedback on on Twitter and other social media?

DR. DAVID CARR: I think it's mixed, I mean, I think you certainly have a lot of doctors who will call you out and say, Thanks for this, we need this because as we all know, this is certainly taking its toll and you certainly have a cohort of people who are like, Thanks for providing this information, but what's with us for the externality of this, which is also super interesting, is you have a bunch of people who don't like you or you'll have these anti-lockdown anti-science people. If you say the vaccine has been approved for kids, people will all of a sudden target you, as was mentioned with your earlier interview, is that right now, it's an unprecedented time of negativity towards health care workers. So you, no matter what you say in social media, you will have friends, but you also might have some enemies.

ME: I mean, the yeah, Andre Picard mentioned the sense that that they're actually denigrated our health care workers. And I and I wonder in the back of your mind what you were thinking about your colleagues, doctors, nurses and that feeling of burnout and exhaustion with the increase that has come. You know, it is the burnout from work. But this animosity. Is that partly what was going on between the in the behind the the advent calendar of positivity?

DR. DAVID CARR: For sure. I mean, the social media, it's a really ugly place. It's not policed. People can take shots of you. They have a picture of some Simpsons character where they don't really identify as a real person. But I find it's also an exercise as new to block, mute, block. They have to silence these people who are really just putting out terrible threads. So it's a dangerous sphere of social media. I think you have to have thick skin if you're going to be someone who publicly tweets. You know, I went from being someone who is a very academic emergency physician who's very focussed on clinical pearls and then transitioning to translating knowledge throughout the pandemic. And I've seen my follower group grow from not just doctors and residents and students to people who just want to know what's the real story here. And I think that's what we have a duty to do as physicians is translate knowledge responsibly without a political spin. My messaging is bipartisan. I don't really care. I don't say that. I don't like the mayor or the premier, the the prime minister. It's this is positive stuff. Let's try to bank on that or stay encouraged.

ME: I mean, you are also a teacher, a professor of emergency medicine. And presumably these are the same messages that you're delivering to your students. But when you're talking to them about how to develop that skin, how to remain focussed on the job and some of the terrible things that we know they have to go through holding the hand of somebody else's loved one as as they die, the emotional pressures there. How do you how do you help them cope or teach them how to get through this kind of experience?

DR. DAVID CARR: You know, there is a common thing in emergency medicine where we always said, and I think it's probably true to all professions. When I was in your stage, we used to work so much harder. We used to do so much more. We never had this. We never had that. That is what medicine is, and medicine has gone in through this wonderful transformation. I've been more looking out for people and realising that this bully culture and medicine exist. So I think that how I've educated The Current people is really stemmed from changing the way that maybe we perceived ourselves to have been educated and realise that there are differences now. There are differences in the way we teach, you know, the old ways used to be. You put people on the spot and if they didn't look, didn't know the answer. They felt shame and embarrassed and they went home and did more reading, Well, that's not the method now. And whether it's teaching core concept or whether it's teaching resiliency, you have to evolve as an educator, and that's something I've had to do. And this pandemic and certainly highlighted that.

ME: So we're we're trying to stay focussed a little on the hopeful side here. When you're looking, you're looking ahead. What what are you expecting in terms of the pandemic? I mean, is it even useful to discuss when it will end?

DR. DAVID CARR: I think no one has a crystal ball, but I think the fact is that all pandemics and full stop. So that is where we have to draw inspiration. I think when we look optimistically, we can go on the mantra of maybe Omicron is this variant that's very contagious. It seems to be appearing to be less severe. Maybe this is what we need to make this pandemic an endemic something we just live it with but doesn't wreak havoc. And I think a lot of us are positive towards that. As quickly as the curve rises in cases, it will quickly fall off in recoveries too. And I and I think when you look at countries and other nations, I think there are things to be positive about. I think that, you know, we're going to have a tough January, but I'm hopeful things will hit peak and we'll move forward. I mean, the winter has always been a tough time, whether it was influenza, we've always had seasonal viruses and this time people forget how bad 2019 was for influenza. So I think this will end. I think this will get better, and I think Omicron will be a big challenge on us emotionally, on our capacity and whatnot. But we'll move forward. We don't have a choice.

ME: Well, here's hoping for that golden nugget. Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Dr. David Carr.

DR. DAVID CARR: Thank you so much, Margaret, have a great day and happy holidays.

ME: You too. Dr. David Carr is an ER physician at the University Health Network and Mackenzie Health Hospital in Toronto. He's also an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Toronto. The CBC News is next. And then,

SOUNDCLIP

I mean, if COVID is to get into the guerrillas, you could wipe them out. You know, you could wipe them out. It would be terrible. It really would.

ME: There are only about a thousand mountain gorillas left in the wild. Now, on top of human poachers and habitat loss, they are facing the threat of COVID 19. In six minutes, I will take you on a trip to Uganda, and it's impenetrable forest to see what's being done to keep the gorillas safe. I'm Margaret Evans and you are listening to The Current.

How COVID-19 is threatening Uganda’s mountain gorillas

ME: Hello, I'm Margaret Evans, and you're listening to The Current.

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ME: Still to come, if you thought about them at all, you probably thought pigeons were pretty useless, but think again, they can play ping pong. They can tell the difference between Cubist and impressionist paintings. And let's face it, most humans couldn't do that in just under 30 minutes, just under 30 pigeons. Why pigeons have been so misunderstood and the answer to whether or not we should feed them. But first, the pandemic is threatening to upend careful conservation efforts in Uganda.

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ME: The mountain gorilla is amongst the most endangered species on this planet. They were almost driven to extinction following decades of illegal hunting and loss of habitat. And there are just over a thousand of them left in the wild. Almost half are in Uganda's Bwindi National Park, where careful conservation efforts have helped build the population back. But COVID 19 is threatening to upend it all around this time last year. I travelled to Uganda to see how locals and conservationists were coping with the new threat. This is our documentary, A Charmed Circle.

SOUNDCLIP

MARGARET EVANS: A journey to Uganda's impenetrable forest. The name alone making it sound like a quest, and so it is of sorts. It begins on a rainy runway in Entebbe. Two pilots in a 12 seater plane that in better days would before, not so in the age of covid-19. The flight to Uganda's southwest corner takes just over an hour, a full day on rough roads on the ground, descending through cloud cover towards the town of Kisoro. The bits of land that first appear seemed surrounded by a foamy sea, but their hilltops emerging through mist and the forests lining their slopes seem to hang in the air. It's beneath the canopy of those trees that you'll find the mountain gorillas nurtured back from the brink of extinction by conservationists, but still endangered. And now there are new threats on the horizon, carried as usual by man.

PILOT: Thanks for flying with us, we wish you a lovely stay.

[Birds chirping]

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: If covid is to get into the guerrillas, you could wipe them out, you know, you could wipe them out. It would be terrible. It really would.

MARGARET EVANS: Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is perhaps Uganda's best known veterinarian. She's been caring for mountain gorillas for some 20 years now. They share ninety eight point four percent of human DNA, which means they can catch many of the same diseases we do, including those of a respiratory nature. Kalema-Zikusoka's fear today is that the coronavirus will find a way to penetrate the impenetrable and so the gorillas.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: The virus easily attaches to them, just like it does to us, which means that the way that covid-19 is affecting humans is exactly the same it will affect the great apes.

MARGARET EVANS: The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park north of Kisoro is home to around 450 mountain gorillas. That's nearly half of an overall population of 1063. The rest are in neighbouring Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We are skimming the Congolese border as we drive towards Windi, the Virunga Mountain Range, where the American primatologist Dian Fossey did so much to raise awareness about mountain gorillas is clearly visible, a line of distinctive and mostly dormant volcanoes straddling the three countries. Children on the side of the road wave and shout, Hello, are our vehicle passes by. We're heading for the Kooringal sector of Bwindi to catch up with Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka, the steel and layered beauty of the landscape, a contrast to the churning nature of the roads.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: Thank you, everybody. I got a phone call this afternoon from the district health inspector. They tested 18 people today and 10 of them were positive for covid-19. Yes.

MARGARET EVANS: Kalema-Zikusoka is taking part in a seminar organised by the Uganda Wildlife Authority, talking to park rangers, trackers and porters about how to protect themselves and the gorillas from covid-19.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: Covid is spreading quickly. Community transmission is catching, is really moving fast. And so we need to be very, very careful to protect the gorillas in the moment.

MARGARET EVANS: We're joining the group as guinea pigs of sorts. One of the first public treks in to visit the mountain gorillas since March when Uganda closed its borders and shut down tourism because of the pandemic.

EMMANUEL: So once again, you're most welcome to our Starting Point. We're going to start working from here, but make sure you keep the distance from each other.

MARGARET EVANS: Our guide, Emmanuel [unintelligible] has been a ranger for eight years as we prepare to head out down steep trails towards the forest on the other side of the valley. He's armed not just with a machete, but with hand sanitiser.

EMMANUEL: Be careful, though.

MARGARET EVANS: There is no way into the forest but on foot. And it's not a trek for the vertically challenged. The elevation in some parts of the park is as high as 2600 metres above sea level. The word Bwindi means a dark place and at its edge, it looks like it might swallow you whole, the truckers have gone ahead, their voices calling in the distance. Even the crescendoing drone of insects draws you in dream like dark and hypnotic. And when the guides tell you you were with the gorillas at first, you don't believe them. The weave of the forest is so thick that it acts like a shroud. But his eyes adjust, eyes appear hair and then slowly a giant hairy arm stretches up from the forest floor to pluck at a bamboo branch. Sleeping giants coming to life.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: And under that is two females about one year old.

MARGARET EVANS: The gorilla family we're tracking has already been touched by covid-19 indirectly. Their leader, a 25 year old silverback named Rafiki, was killed by a poacher in June.

EMMANUEL: When one individual dies within the family, especially this group, after losing their head, who is called Rafiki the silverback, they had to mourn some good time.

MARGARET EVANS: The gorillas are scattered, but within earshot of each other, there are 11 in the troop and their approach to us seems to be a kind of assumed but gracious indifference.

EMMANUEL: There are many there.

MARGARET EVANS: The one black back called Tabac flicks a few glances our way before returning to his daydreaming pose, lying on his back, staring at the sky. A young mother decides to climb a tree, baby in tow, only to feel it bend all the way back to the ground beneath her weight in just a few minutes. It feels like you've known them forever. There is lots of hand sanitiser and everyone, gorillas excepted of course, wears a mask. But so thick is the jungle that social distancing is extremely difficult and staying the required 10 metres away from the gorillas isn't much help if they decide to investigate you.

EMMANUEL: Move close to the other side.

MARGARET EVANS: At one point, Tabo emerges from the Bushes to cut our party and to see soon, followed by Ramuqui, Rafiki's successor.

EMMANUEL: I've broken the law by coming to Earth. We are too close.

MARGARET EVANS: Oh, here comes the other one.

EMMANUEL: Yeah, this is the [unintelligible].

MARGARET EVANS: He leaves no one in doubt that he's in charge, stopping to give us a stare. And it's not until you see him moving on all fours knuckle walking that you realise just how big he is, how long the stretch of his forearm.

[Chatter]

MARGARET EVANS: OK, so you want to go out this way.

EMMANUEL: Yes.

MARGARET EVANS: Wendy is home to 21 different guerrilla troops, but not all of them have been habituated to humans. Rules that have are key to Uganda's tourism industry and so also to their own protection and exploitation.

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MARGARET EVANS: A role with small wooden huts is squeezed between the road and the edge of another heart stopping drop to a valley below, just opposite the Ranger station we set off from earlier in the day. They're all shuttered, safe for one. [Unintelliglbe] saw activity at the station and took a chance setting out h er wares, a collection of woven baskets, T-shirts and tiny carved gorillas. She says she hasn't had a customer in eight months.

VOICE: Since covid-19 came.

MARGARET EVANS: The death of Rafiki, she says, was a blow on top of that to anyone depending on tourism.

VOICE: We are so annoyed they playing on the people would not go back there. Policy to kill the bill was very important because everybody, when they [unintelliglbe] guns and buy everything.

MARGARET EVANS: You think tourism will start up again soon or do you think it will be another long time?

VOICE: I don't know. I don't know.

MARGARET EVANS: A Life-Size statue of Rafiki greets visitors across the way at the Ranger Station, a reflection of how important mountain gorillas are for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Gorilla based tourism funds 60 percent of their operating costs in a good year. Covid-19 changed that, says Chief Warden Nelson Gooma.

NELSON GOOMA: Is that how we lost revenue? We are not getting revenue. And so there are those requirements you need to do to manage your park. And so we started getting all the difficulties.

MARGARET EVANS: With fewer tourists and rangers in the park poaching went up, doubling across Uganda and rising by 30 percent here in Bwindi.

NELSON GOOMA: When we lost Africa, everybody got concerned. And so we had to devise a strategy to dominate the interior of the park, including that we would do what we call like hunting. The guys will come in the bush and keeps shifting from one area to another where where the hotspots.

MARGARET EVANS: Well, that's meant sending rangers out more often and for longer periods of time without the tourism dollars they've relied on in the past. Conservationists are hoping a tough sentence handed down in July to the local man who killed Rafiki will serve as a deterrent. The man who called it self-defence but admitted to hunting other animals in the protected area was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Goolma believes they have things in the park back under control.

NELSON GOOMA: We need the tourism to generate revenue for us to be able to conserve, and so we'll be able to get the balance between the two.

MARGARET EVANS: But what if the tourism industry doesn't recover any time soon? The beauty in this part of the world is profound, but so too is the poverty and the presenece of the mountain gorillas living in 330 square kilometres of protected jungle has an impact on the communities living pressed up against it.

[Music]

MARGARET EVANS: On Sundays, the sound of church music rises up through the terrorist hills surrounding the town of [unintelligilbe]. It drifts past all the signs, optimistically pointing travellers in the direction of guerrilla themed lodges and canteens are past barefooted children running along slippery paths and banana trees and small vegetable gardens and mud houses with tin roof tops covered in the usual syrupy and bikini leaves in one of them. Still in his Sunday best after church, he used to poach for a living.

MARGARET EVANS: [Foreign speech in translation] We used to hunt Bush pigs in different kinds of antelope, he says. We'd collect honey and timber from the forest and even mine for gold.

MARGARET EVANS: He was convinced to stop by an NGO called Conservation Through Public Health. It was founded in 2003 by Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka. One reason you'll find her treating human pathways along with those of the gorillas.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: We actually set up conservation through public health to improve the health of the community and the health of the gorillas together because we thought that one would always undermine the other if they're not careful. So you really can't protect the gorillas without improving the health of the communities living around. And it's one important, very important aspect of community well-being as well. You know, it's a very big health is another dimension of poverty. But just as we're improving their health, we're also finding ways to improve their livelihoods.

MARGARET EVANS: It meant convincing people like Burkina to give up one way of life for another, in his case, small-scale farming. They helped him get started by giving him seedlings. Some former poachers and their families also now work in tourism. Or they did.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: Earning a living, protecting the gorillas. And a lot of them got the opportunity of becoming porters who carry tourist bags to the gorillas. They are quite a lot compared to the other fellow community members. And that has really helped because sometimes you find that a porter is the son of a poacher. And then if the poachers sees that his son is earning a little money from tourism, he won't go into the park because he knows he's earning it because of the gorillas. And so there's a whole cycle of events.

MARGARET EVANS: The organisation also identifies health ambassadors and local towns, provides tools for learning from guides to handwashing to who to call when you need to get a gorilla out of your garden. Really. They've been known to venture out of the forest on garden rage for things they like. Sweet potatoes, for example. The Uganda Wildlife Authority has tried to dissuade them by planting tea around the edges of the park because gorillas don't like it. It's also a way for people to earn money. And at day's end, workers carry big sacks of tea on their heads up from the valley to a meeting point on the road where buyers come by with big trucks to take it to market. Sometimes Kalema-Zukisoka will intercept the workers and give them masks. She worries about contact between them and the gorillas. Given how close they are to the forest edge.

[Indistinct chatter]

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: I se you have themsome. Are they happy?

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: Like the ecosystems at work in the forest, it all feels precariously balanced. How can communities convince to transition away from hunting and cutting timber in the forest survive if the tourism industry offered in its place has ground to a halt? If covid-19 poses an existential threat to the gorillas, shouldn't we simply stay away from them? But if we did, would they and their habitat remain safe? Kalema-Zukisoka ka calls it a wake up call for the world describes tourism as a necessary evil.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: It's very delicate because the great apes generate more revenue than other wildlife species, and yet they're most likely to get wiped out by humans if they get humans, get too close and give them diseases, or if they go outside into people's gardens to because they've lost their fearful people, because they've been habituated for tourism. So it's a very delicate balance. And so many things have to be done in order to maintain this. But if it's done well, it can really help to lift people out of poverty.

MARGARET EVANS: That means guarding against the threat of genetic diseases, the ones that can jump between species.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: So I'm going to go ahead and collect a faecal sample from the nest.

MARGARET EVANS: On her treks into the forest. She collects samples of gorilla dump to test for signs of covid-19 and other diseases.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: And we collect a lot because some of it is going to be for viral analysis, some of it for parasitology.

MARGARET EVANS: If a gorilla were infected, plans would be put in place to isolate that gorillas troop from other groups. Treatment, not an easy prospect.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: Going to label it, but it's very difficult because it's even hard enough treating people with covid-19 when it's become very severe. What about gorillas? You know, you can't bring them in and put them on a ventilator in a hospital. You have to do everything out in the wild.

MARGARET EVANS: The impenetrable forest dates back some 25000 years, a refuge not just for the gorillas, but other animals, including elephants and hundreds of species of birds, butterflies, trees and flowers. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site. And there is a real sense of enchantment in its embrace. We hit the forest itself, where the protective charms being cast around the gorillas by their guardians, busy, counting up which family members have made an appearance today.

[Indistinct chatter]

MARGARET EVANS: Visitors are allowed to stay with the gorillas for no more than an hour, and in the end it is [unintelligible] who calls time gathering the family under a tree backs turning. Except for the little ones peering over shoulders. The charmed circle is closing ranks. But the glimpse in the allowed us was an act of extraordinary trust. I hope we don't betray it.

ME: That was a charmed circle, a documentary gathered in Uganda in November of last year. Since my visit, Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, the veterinarian working with the gorillas, has been awarded the United Nations Environment Program's Champions of the Earth Award in the Science and Innovation Category. It it might not feel like the happiest of holidays right now with public health restrictions back in place, but tomorrow is Christmas Eve, no matter how you mark the day. Vancouver's very own rock legends The Polars wrote this song back in 1983, but it feels appropriate today. This is Christmas is coming.

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ME: Coming up after your regional update,

Things really took a turn in New York City in the 1960s, a couple of people came down with meningitis and city officials blamed the pigeons. It was not the pigeons fault. Shortly thereafter, it is the first record of someone calling them rats with wings.

ME: So began the slandering of the humble pigeons good name. Their reputations have never recovered, but Rosemary Moscow is trying to change that. You'll hear our interview in about 90 seconds. I'm Margaret Evans and you're listening to The Current.

How the pigeon's reputation turned from the Ferrari of birds to 'rats with wings'

Guests: Rosemary Mosco

ME: I'm Margaret Evans, and this is The Current.

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VOICE 1: This may seem like a ridiculous question, but what are you doing?

VOICE 2: Oh, I'm teaching Bernice here how to play Checkers. Your move, Bernice. Bernice, your move.

VOICE 1: You're teaching a pigeon to play checkers.

VOICE 2: Hmm mm.

VOICE 1: Well, that's that's amazing. That's the most incredible thing I've ever heard of.

VOICE 2: Oh, it's no big deal.

VOICE 1: No big deal. Why? Why a pigeon that can play checkers? That's that. That must be the smartest pigeon in the whole world.

VOICE 2: Well, she's really not that smart, Ernie.

VOICE 1: Not that smart, Bert? How can you say that?

VOICE 2: Well, in the 10 games you've played, she's only beaten me twice.

ME: Our friends, Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street. They're talking about Bert Pet Pigeon, Bernice, but even Bert didn't think they were necessarily the smartest of birds. And if you ask most people, there are other stickier problems with pigeons. They've been nicknamed rats with wings associated with urban decay and dirt, and last but not least, excrement. But it hasn't always been that way. It used to be that pigeons were a status symbol. They were collected in the thousands by the rich and the powerful. And a new book argues that it's time now to reconsider the pigeon. Rosemary Mosco is a cartoonist and science writer whose book is called A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching Getting to Know the World's Most Misunderstood Bird. Good morning, Rosemary.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: It's morning. I'm so excited to talk to you about pigeons.

ME: It sounds like it. So let's start with the dark side. I mean, we we talk about flying rats, rats with wings. How does it make you feel when you hear your beloved pigeon described that way?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Well, you know, part of me definitely understands it. You know, I get that our sentiments towards pigeons have changed, albeit relatively recently. We really love them up until just a few decades ago. And you know, I understand that if people are, you know, hearing from most people around them that they're dirty or that they're dangerous, you know, or people are watching their beloved statues get pooped on. I understand the concern. So my hope with this book was to dispel some of that, some of that worry.

ME: Have you have you always felt this way? I mean, where did this love affair with pigeons begin from an early age?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, you know, I kind of think I have, which might make me a little weirdo that I, you know, I think I've always kind of loved them. So I grew up in cities, all different cities. I've lived in Montreal and Toronto and Boston and all kinds of different places. And growing up in cities and loving birds, I couldn't help but notice the pigeon. And I think early on, I would get more excited when I'd see a more rare bird. But as time went on, I started to learn more about the pigeons and get some context, and then I started to really fall in love with them. So I'm hoping to help other people get that context too.

ME: Well, they really they are a part of the urban landscape, and you either notice them or you don't, and people tend to have strong feelings against them when they don't like them. But you know what? Many people might not know is that the birds we think of pigeons are actually they're the wild or feral version of an earlier domesticated animal. Can you can you take us back to that time when these, you know, the pigeons were beloved pets to some people?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah. And this is the wildest thing. And in some cases, they still are. I mean, there are still people who just dote on their pigeons, even though other people might kind of look at them askance. So our history with pigeons goes back thousands and thousands of years. We believe they were domesticated at least 5000 years ago, probably more. We don't know when, because at this point we're bumping up against the dawn of recorded writing, so there's just no way to know. It's really, really amazing. But we know that at some point in the Fertile Crescent, after the development of agriculture there, which was around 12000 years ago, people started to bring pigeons kind of closer and closer into their world. And, you know, build a little little structures for them to live in and raise them for meat and raise them so that their poop could be used as valuable fertiliser for desert fields. And they just became really, really essential to the point that in the sixteen hundreds. Settlers in the new world brought over their pigeons. So all of the pigeons that we see here, you know, in Canada and the United States are the descendants of domestic birds that were brought over here because people thought they could not live without them. And then they went feral. And then, you know, we started thinking of them as just kind of a natural part of the world. But really, they're they're a vestige of human movement.

ME: So sort of from early on, they could be seen as sort of a symbol of wealth than they were abundance, may be, but at a certain stage they actually became real status symbols, didn't they?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Oh, my goodness, yes. I mean, there were places where only the rich and powerful were allowed to have pigeons, I mean, before the French Revolution, only the wealthy were allowed to keep pigeons. And if you were poor, you were absolutely forbidden from keeping pigeons, and this caused a lot of problems. I mean, if you've read a tale of two cities by Charles Dickens, there's a moment where a poor boy is passing away and with his dying breath, he says, You know, how dare they let their pigeons feed on our poor fields and not let us keep a single bird? And then when the revolution came, the people rising up went and tore down some of the the dive coats that the pigeon keeping structures of the rich. So they've really inflamed class tensions, and they really were considered kind of like a Ferrari, like it was a status symbol all over the world. You know, Emperor Akbar the Great would impress visiting dignitaries like his pigeon flocks flying around. They really were considered something very, very, very special. And so it's especially astonishing to see, you know, for example, like a Ferrari go from a status symbol such as something that we all see around us and we kind of go, you, you know, why is that there? It's really remarkable.

ME: Why? Why were the the poor people kept from keeping pigeons?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: I mean, I think it really was a status thing. Pigeon pigeon meat, pigeons squab was seen as as a delicacy for a while, and I think it really was just a matter of control. I mean, in England, the rich would kind of try to out-compete each other with these double coat, these pigeon keeping structures and try to build more and more fantastical ones. So it really was just a matter of resources in a matter of, you know, just picking something like a Rolex or something to use to to use to show off, which is which is just just hilarious to a lot of people now. And you could even breed pigeons to have fantastical traits. So think of purebred dogs having, you know, gorgeous codes or being able to go particularly fast or being large or being small. There are fancy pigeon breeds that match all of those and more.

ME: And then you're describing this French Revolution scenario. It was sort of like the bird version of of let them eat cake. They rose up and decided to kind of, you know, bring down the dive coats.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, and make pigeons for all. I mean, definitely it was just one of those artificial things where the rich were trying to create ways to dominate the poor, and one of them was to restrict them from keeping pigeons. It's it's just really, really silly because, you know, pigeons aren't that labour-intensive to keep. They definitely, you know, if you want a lot of food, like if you want to produce a lot of meat, a factory farmed chicken will give you a lot more. But, but, you know, ordinary people can absolutely keep pigeons and actually a lot of people do, and a lot of them are keeping them indoors as pets now. So they're not all that difficult to have. So, yeah, I was totally just a control and a class thing with the pigeons.

ME: I mean, another controversial subject, I think in the world of discussing pigeons is the relationship between a dive and a pigeon. Is it the same thing?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: It is. I think this is so funny. So pigeons and doves belong to a family called calamity, which contains all the pigeons and all the doves and some other really interesting birds like the dodo. Bird is a member of this, this scientific family. And so within that family, English speaking people have sort of culled labelled some of them dive and some of the birds pigeon. And sometimes it has to do with, you know, the more refined, tinier birds being the doves and the bigger ones being pigeons. But that doesn't always hold true. So it's sort of like a bakery of when these birds were discovered by English speaking people and kind of just we just started like randomly applying these words before we understood the relationships. So there is no one group of pigeons or one group of dogs that are all sort of interrelated. And if you look at the city pigeon, this is a bird that can be correctly called the rock dive or the rock pigeon. So. So really, you know, the city birds that are, you know, running around and eating your hot dog bun are the same as the bird that Noah threw out of the ark. You know, to try to get to try to figure out where solid land was, it's it's exactly the same thing.

ME: It doesn't sound quite as grand, though, does it? You know, the pigeon of peace compared to the Dover case. There's some nice alliteration there, but but yeah, not quite the same. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that you talk about in the book is the carrier pigeon and the messenger, and most people will know about some of the stories about the role that the rules that pigeons played during the first and second world wars and you you actually describe a number of very heroic acts by the pigeons and some real drama. There is one in particular about a pigeon. Cold share, I mean, can you can you tell me a little bit more about share me?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, absolutely. So if you take a pigeon far away from its nest and release it, it will find its way home by means that we don't entirely understand. We know a few of the clues they use. We suspect they use magnetic field or the position of the Sun or all of that. But really, they just have this incredible ability to fly home. So if you attach a little message to their leg in in a little tiny, lightweight capsule, the bird will carry the message back to its home. It only works one way they won't be able to fly back and forth. So during World War One and World War Two, soldiers would bring pigeons into battle, and they were essential military tech. So when a soldier would, you know, run into trouble, they would release a pigeon and it would fly back to base with some sort of message. So in the case of Cher Ami, this was World War One, and some U.S. soldiers wound up basically trapped behind enemy lines, and they had liberated an area early and they were finding themselves falling under friendly fire, and they were just in a lot of trouble. So they released this bird, Cher and me with a message saying, You know, please stop bombarding us and here's where we are and we need help. And Cher Ami made it back, although the bird sustained some pretty intense injuries. And so for this bird's trouble, it received a medal. And there are all sorts of other pigeons from World War One and World War Two that wound up getting medals. And these are birds that were household names. I mean, back in the day, everyone knew Cher me as this heroic pigeon, and sadly, we do not know about Cher me much these days anymore.

ME: Sounds like that would offer some real logistical challenges as well. I mean, how many pigeons are we talking about? You know, when you say they brought them into battle?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, so they would have people who were in charge of the pigeons and they were bringing, you know, I don't know how many per group, but they would bring several birds. So there was actually another bird that was released right before Jeremy, but unfortunately they had not put, you know, in the chaos of battle. They had failed to put a message around its foot. So, you know, I don't think we're talking thousands and thousands of birds, maybe maybe a handful, but they really were seen as sort of what radio or what telegraph or what internet wound up becoming. They were really, really important ways to get messages across, so they were absolutely essential to bring into battle.

ME: So from heroes to villains, what what's happened to change their fate?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, it's unfortunate it didn't take all that long. So probably there was some hate that popped up around when people started to notice that there were feral pigeons. So, you know, any time we bring a domestic animal somewhere, some of them will get out like feral cats or stray dogs or feral horses and such. So some of them probably escaped early, and those are probably looked on a little less favourably. But things really took a turn in New York City in the 1960s, when a couple of people came down with meningitis and city officials blamed the pigeons. It was not the pigeons fault, but the pigeons got blamed. And then shortly thereafter, it is the first record of someone calling them rats with wings in the papers. So this park officials said, you know, oh, they're they're just another of the many, many social ills that are affecting our beautiful urban parks. And so, you know, they became rats with wings. They became unfairly blamed for disease. And around that time as well, they were no longer useful. They were seen as obsolete. We weren't eating as much pigeon. We weren't using their poop for fertiliser, we were using factory created fertiliser. And so they sort of became like a fax machine in a way. But like a fax machine that we saw as also being this malevolent, you know, disease carrying force. So it was sort of like a one two punch there.

ME: But you, your argument is that they are in fact, masterpieces of nature. You write about what Darwin thought of them.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah. Darwin used pigeons, I would say, a lot more than even his finches. So Darwin, Darwin is a good example because he was not really into pigeons when he started looking at them and then he fell absolutely head over heels in love with them. So he was looking for some kind of creature to, you know, do some breeding experiments on and to really observe that he could just keep in his backyard. So he wound up getting a bunch of pigeons at the time. There was a pigeon keeping craze and he thought, Oh, OK, I'll get these, but I'm not going to like it. And so he built this duckcode in his backyard and kept a bunch of pigeons, and he became completely obsessed with them. And so in a lot of his works, there is so much pigeon content, and it's because he was just in love with these birds. He was observing them and he was, you know, coming up with some of his best ideas based on watching the pigeons. So I'm hoping that other people will follow suit even if you don't keep a bunch of pigeons in your backyard.

ME: But do they make good pets? I mean, how are you know, we were listening to Bert earlier with his pet, Bernice? Are they smart compared to other animals? I mean, obviously you talked about their homing instinct, but that's an instinct. What are their what are their smarts like?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: It's interesting. There are other birds where I would point to that and say, you know, that is a really brainy bird like a parrot or a raven. But pigeons surprised me when I was looking into the research. They surprised me by how smart they really are. So they're not raven or parrot smart. They have their limits. If you take a pigeons babies out of its nest and swap it with another pigeons babies, they won't really notice, but they are capable of astonishing things in the lab. So I found studies where people had taught them to play ping pong had taught them to tell Cubist paintings from impressionist paintings. Although if you flip the Cubist paintings upside down, they they can't tell the difference between right set up and upside down, which is fair. Sometimes I have that problem and they're able to tell cancerous from noncancerous slides in laboratory situations. They're really, really, really remarkable birds in terms of their sort of perceptual abilities. So I was surprised by what they were in fact capable of doing. And lots of people keep them as pets these days. I don't have any pigeons as pets. I really wish I had the space for them, but they make really good pets, especially if you buy pigeon pants for them and you give them some some diapers. Basically that, but catch the poop because they can't be as potty trained as a cat or a dog, unfortunately.

ME: I'm not sure about that one. And the next thing, you know, they'll be wearing little antlers at this time of year. You do learn a lot in this book about, you know, the life of the pigeon. I didn't know they made it for life, for instance for you. What surprised you the most during the research for this book?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Well, a couple of things, I definitely think the mating for life, things surprised me that was really amazing to me that, you know, lots of birds pair up, but then, you know, they're maybe a little bit less than faithful. Pigeons are are generally surprisingly faithful, and they're they're just real little love birds. So sometimes you'll be watching a pigeon flock and you'll notice they're separated into little pairs. So those are those are two pigeons that are absolutely besotted with each other. And then by extension, maybe the weirdest thing is that pigeons are very good at taking care of their young, and they, the male and the female, will take care of their babies or co-parent. They're both essential for raising the babies, and they do this partly by feeding their babies. Some milk that they produce in this area of their oesophagus called the crop, and they secrete this milk like substance that evolved independently from mammalian milk, but has a lot of the qualities of mammalian milk. It's stimulated by prolactin. It's got fats and proteins, so they produce milk for their babies, which is is maybe the most human. And yet, you know, since it comes from the throat, one of the most alien things that I had learnt.

ME: Laying my cards on the table as we wind down our chat. You know, I'm one of those people who has a big plastic owl and I carry it around in case I have a balcony and want the pigeons to stay away. I live in London, normally in the United Kingdom, where there's a lot of controversy over how they get the birds or the pigeons to, you know, decrease the numbers in Trafalgar Square, bringing in predatory birds, birds. I mean, what are your thoughts about that? I mean, because some people just actually genuinely, you know, parents don't necessarily want their kids surrounded by so many pigeons and pigeon poop is a problem.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah. You know, I'm very sympathetic to it, and I completely understand, and I'm not advocating that you allow the pigeons to, for example, you know, poop over your air conditioner or nest on your balcony if you don't necessarily want them to. I do talk a little bit in the book about how they're definitely not the disease carriers that we were all worried about. There are some caveats, but for the most part, they probably won't make you sick if you're just sort of walking around in their pigeons around. But, you know, if you don't want them on your balcony, that's completely OK. Your owl may not work for very long. They're pretty good at recognising whether an owl is a real owl, but there are for sure other things you can do. You can declutter your balcony so that it's less of kind of a cosy little space. And, you know, I offer some other tips, too. You can walk around on your balcony that tends to unnerve them and they tend to fly off. So I think that it's just a matter of, you know, we're their neighbours and neighbours sometimes have conflicts, and that's completely understandable. So there are things you can do to reduce those conflicts, but we definitely don't need to be terrified of them. And I think even, you know, we can still, you know, learn to love them and find out how interesting their history is and you know why maybe we should be happy that they're there just sort of generally around us?

ME: Do you think they have if they teach us something about ourselves when we observe them?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Absolutely. Because they are essentially a creature that we domesticated and shaped into what we wanted and then we forgot about them. So I think they tell us a lot about human history. And I mean, when I say we, I'm talking about people from Europe and Asia and Africa because they're absolutely not native to North and South America. So they also tell us a lot about human movement, and they tell us about our capacity to forget our very recent history and how important it is to look at the context of all of the creatures that you see around you. And I think that will wind up making you a lot more of an empathic person. And also they're just funny to watch. So that's an added bonus.

ME: Final thought question. Should we feed the birds?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Oh, this is, you know, I have about two pages about this in my book, and it was the hardest thing maybe I've ever written in my life. There are people who are very, very, very intense about feeding birds, and we'll even sneak out at night when it's illegal. I argue that the main constraint on a pigeon population is how much food they're getting. So the more you feed, the more mouths there are to feed and the more overcrowding there is. And there are other ways that you can be a really good citizen to the pigeons around you. And you know, one of the ways is to look into potentially adopting an injured pigeon as some sort of a pet. So there are other ways to help, but I'm very sympathetic to that sort of urge of of feeding the pigeons. But it's also just a lot of responsibility to feed and care for an animal, and you have to be prepared for that.

ME: Rosemary Mosco. It's been a pleasure, and I didn't think I'd say that. Thanks very much for your time.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Thank you.

ME: Rosemary Mosco is the author of a pocket guide to Pigeon Watching, Getting to Know the World's Most Misunderstood Bird. And we talked about feeding the pigeons. Not a great idea, it turns out, despite what Mary Poppins might have to say about it.

SOUNDCLIP

[song]

ME: That's our programme for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. American singer, actress and cuisine queen Patti Labelle is releasing a 20th anniversary edition of her cookbook. It's called Labelle Cuisine. Recipes to sing about Patti LaBelle will join Tom Power for a chat about her decades long legacy, making great food and music for the soul. Their conversation is up next. I'm Margaret Evans sitting in for Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current a.

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