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The Current Transcript for January 3, 2018

Host: Geoff Turner

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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WOMAN: Hi.

MAN: Welcome to the world.

[Baby cooeing]

GEOFF TURNER: That's the cry of a baby being born in a rain forest stream. Her mother is part of a community of parents who believe in something called free birthing. That means no medical professionals attending. But the stillbirth of a California baby in the fall has raised serious questions about the practice. In half an hour. We'll hear from a woman who chose an unassisted birth. And from an OB/GYN who warns against them. Also: In a polarized world cable news is home to a lot of strange arguments. Take Bill O'Reilly on the question of white privilege.

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I'm a really white guy. When I was in Hawaii last week I couldn't go in the sun. If I was in the sun for three minutes, my ears would fall off.

GT: Did you find yourself arguing around a dinner table this holiday season looking for a way to win those arguments next year? Will it might be time to consider math. In an hour, mathematician Eugenia Chang on how mathematics can lead you to the art of logic in an illogical world. But first up.

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He was unconscious and gargling. He wasn't reading anything is terrifying. I used a naloxone kit. He gargled a little bit and then started breathing again. It is amazing to hear that he was okay.

GT: That B.C. teen took a course in using the overdose reversal drug naloxone, and just hours later she saved a life. As new numbers show the opioid crisis deepening, naloxone plays a crucial role on the frontlines of the fight against overdose. But the drug has a complicated and fascinating history. Today we're taking a deep dive into naloxone. And just a warning, this segment contains language that might not be suitable for younger listeners. I'm Geoff Turner in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

Her husband invented naloxone, her son died from overdose, now she advocates for harm reduction

Guest: Joy Stampler Fishman

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[Sound: Sirens]

GT: As 2018 drew to a close some disturbing numbers began to emerge in British Columbia, the average life expectancy just decreased for the first time in decades, and not because folks are smoking too much, and not because they're skipping that trip up the Grouse Grind.

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VOICE 1: The 2017 date reflects the most tragic year ever.

VOICE 2: Nearly four people dying a day from illicit drug overdoses in B.C. last year.

VOICE 3: We've been working with mental health providers trying to get those numbers down. But this is a crisis. This is an epidemic. It's now raising its head in every province in the country.

VOICE 4: Unfortunately new numbers out today show it is in no way slowing down.

GT: The B.C. Coroners Service estimates that nearly 1500 people died from drug overdose last year. That was enough to pull the life expectancy dial back a full month. And while B.C. is being hit hardest, the opioid crisis is spreading. Just before Christmas, Statistics Canada revealed that 2066 people died of opioid related overdose between January and June of 2018. And as shocking as those numbers might be they could be a lot worse if it weren't for a very special drug. It's called naloxone. And the story of naloxone is fascinating, not just because of its inherently amazing chemistry, but because of a dark irony linked to the invention of the drug. The chemical was first isolated and patented by two scientists, Mozes J. Lewenstein And Jack Fishman in the early 60s. And like so many drugs naloxone was a bit of an accident. Lowenstein and Fishmen weren't looking for a way to save overdose victims. They were actually trying to remedy constipation in patients receiving opioids for pain relief. But it turned out to have a very different and very surprising interaction with opioids. Throughout your body, your brain, your spine, your digestive tract and scattered everywhere else there are opioid receptors. They're like little buttons and when they get pushed by the right chemicals they tell you to relax, to feel good. And in case you've never experienced opioid painkillers, we spoke to Daniel Beeverstock to describe what it's like. He's a peer support worker at a safe injection site on Vancouver's downtown east side.

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DAN: I would say that - Jeez I don't want to turn you on to the drug - the one way that I've heard many people describe it is it's like a nice warm hug. Like when I first heard the Jackson, 20 some odd years ago, it was like a warmth crept up my body from my feet up. And it also removed any anxieties that I may have been experiencing.

GT: So that gives us a sense of what it feels like when opioids are going through your bloodstream. And most often in an opioid overdose what's happening is that the opioids keep pushing on those receptors. So the body keeps saying 'things are fine, slow down a little bit more'. And your breathing gets slower and slower until the muscles that control your lungs just stop moving altogether [Long beep]. Well the human brain lasts about six minutes without oxygen. So the trick to saving someone's life when they're overdosing is getting them to breathe again. And naloxone can do that. What naloxone does is it bumps the opioids off those feel good buttons and it takes their place. The good feelings. Your brain realizes that you've slowed things down way too much. And if all goes well, you're jolted awake and start breathing again. Now as I mentioned, Jack Fishmen was the cocreator of naloxone and he sadly died in 2013, right at the beginning of the deadliest part of this current opioid crisis. So he never got to see the full potential of His creation. But I did manage to get in touch with his widow, Joy Stamler Fishman who now lives in Miami. I reached her at home and bear with me because the phone line wasn't great. But I asked her to describe her husband Jack.

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JOY: A genius to not be humble about him. He was able to come up with a formula that reduces the effect of an opiate. In fact not only reduces it but completely removes it out of your system in a matter of seconds and therefore we've got naloxone. And when he started he was not in a position to patent it and take it all the way. He didn't have the money or the resources at the time. So it just [unintelligible] for a while until it was started to be used in emergency rooms. And now that we have this amazing horrendous opiate epidemic, the drug is becoming almost a household name. Many people that I know including myself we carry it on us, in case we would see somebody on the street that look like they were in the [unintelligible] of an overdose and could very easily save a life.

GT: Now you might be surprised to hear about a 70 something Floridian carrying the lock zone just in case. But when you hear again from Joy in a few minutes you'll understand why this matters so much to her. And safe to say that her notion of being prepared with naloxone at all times- well it's already very evident in B.C. It's not at all unusual to see fresh faced teens with naloxone kits hanging from their trendy Herschel bags. And in case you think those little black and white kits are just some kind of perverse fashion accessory, well you should meet Reign Thompson. Reign as a teenager in Victoria B.C. and a few months ago she'd been hearing a lot about the opioid crisis, and she decided that she needed to take a naloxone course and get herself a kit. Well she did. And here's what happened seven hours later.

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I was walking with a friend and we saw a bunch of people, like huddling somewhere where you couldn't really see where it was from the street. And they seemed like they were really panicking. So I walked up and sure enough there was a guy laying there and he was unconscious and gargling. He wasn't breathing or anything. It was terrifying. No one had called 911 at this point and he stopped breathing and it's very terrifying. I called 911 immediately. I got the Naloxone kit out because it just [unintelligible] about it so I was like 'I'm going to use this whether she's on [unintelligible] or not'. And I used the Naloxone kit. I gave him one shot and waited two minutes. Another shot. Waited two minutes, and then another shot. He was still unresponsive and then I gave him three more eventually. And then I started CPR and he gargled a little bit and then started breathing again. And it was like- it was amazing to hear that he was okay and then five minutes later the ambulance got there and before he knew it, it was over. It was like a flash and it just all happened.

GT: Now it's hard to imagine what it feels like to bring someone back from the edge of death in that way, but even harder to imagine what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that lifesaving injection. Now earlier we heard from Dan Beaverstock. He described what an opioid high feels like. Well Dan has been pulled out of heroin overdose dozens of times. And here's what he remembers from his first time.

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DAN: Well my first experience was kind of frightening. My friend had taken a large amount of opiate and put it in a cooker. And he bought a gram and a half. He cut it all up and he split it amongst three [unintelligible]. And so the three of us get our injections and I started to walk down Hastings Street. And my legs start to get wobbly and I dropped to my knees and I tried to stand back up and then I was out. I could hear like a dream my friend is screaming, 'Somebody get help. Somebody get help. He's fucking dying. He's gonna die'. And then that's all I remember and then I remember waking up and seeing the firemen, the reflective stripe of the firemen's pants to the right of my head. And I remember how annoyed I felt because there was something beautiful about the feeling- It's not like a blackness. It's not like-- For me it wasn't like a blackness or are just a blackness or just being out. You know there was something really nice and comforting and warm about that overdose. And so, yes, I felt annoyed and maybe a little bit upset at the fact that they had revived me.

GT: Now it might sound crazy to be resentful at having been brought back to life. But if you're addicted to opioids and you were feeling dope sick before that near lethal injection, well naloxone snaps you right back to that awful sickness and craving you had before you ingested the dose. Even still Dan eventually comes around to the gravity of it all.

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DAN: You know when I realized exactly what was going on-- You know, a moment of thankfulness. You know these people brought me back from the brink of death. You know it comes a point where you realize that, 'hey I was going to die there and these people just saved my life'. So I was thankful for that.

GT: Dan now revives people every day but he actually really doesn't like using naloxone.

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DAN: We have three different stages of overdose. So we have stage one, is where often we just give them some oxygen, you know, help them work through the hum. We don't give them any naloxone.

GT: He waits as long as possible before delivering naloxone. He knows firsthand what he feels like and what it feels like to have that taken away. And he knows what drives people to get high in the first place. But also what they probably went to score and to get high and he doesn't want to take that away from them unless absolutely necessary. Not that long ago naloxone wasn't an available option to people like Dan Beeverstock. The drug was created in the early 60s and first manufactured in an injectable form in 1971. But it wasn't until a Chicago harm reduction activist by the name of Dan Big took up the cause that Naloxone really hit the streets.

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For 25 years after that hit the market, we never gave it to people who are most likely to be around overdose. So with the help of some medical friends, we began obtaining, creating teaching programs and distributing naloxone in Illinois. And we started hearing very quickly about people saving lives. We have over 12000 reports of those reversals to date, over the last 21 years. And it's caught on. There's a huge number of people and this is a glorious fact about harm reduction. People love to help people stay alive and healthy. And the number of people I have heard from, countless parents calling to say, "My son is alive because of the stuff that you gave me".

GT: Dan Big tragically died of an overdose himself in March. He was alone with nobody close by to intervene with naloxone or otherwise. But in large part because of his work, Naloxone is a frontline tool in the fight against opioid overdose and that's why teenagers in Victoria are able to walk around with the Naloxone kits, ready to save a life. Which is not to say that there is no resistance. Harm reduction measures of all kinds typically come up against community pushback. Often the argument is that in reducing the harms he might be encouraging drug abuse. A case in point is this report from KSL News in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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VOICE 1: There is new concern tonight about naloxone, that drug that counteracts an opiate overdose. It could be used in what the DEA is calling Narcan parties. Explain what Narcan parties are.

VOICE 2: It's a trend DEA officials say they are seeing across the country. They believe the counteractive drug plastered on billboards like this one being used at parties where people are doing drugs, pushing their limits, thinking that if they overdose so will save the day.

VOICE 3: DEA agent Brian Besser says naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of an overdose, has become so prevalent, but lately not for the reasons intended.

VOICE 4: We're hearing them call 'Narcan parties, Narcone parties, Lazarus parties' raising someone from the dead. And to me it would be no different than someone saying 'hey let's have a jump out of the plane party'.

GT: I asked around among some overdose prevention experts as to whether there was any basis for the idea of a Lazarus party. And I got firm 'no's all around. So despite that kind of resistance, Naloxone is winding up in the hands of those people Dan Big talked about, people who want to save lives. Now as we learned earlier one of those people is Joyce Templer Fishman. She's the widow of the creator of naloxone, Jack Fishman. And Joy has worked hard to advocate for greater training access to and use of naloxone. But it's not just because of her marriage to Jack Fishman. To understand what motivates her you need to know about her son Jonathan.

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Well my son Jonathan was unfortunately a heroin, he started at about age- I would say about age 17. It was a very difficult period for us. And at that time, which was many years ago, the only thing that we parents were taught to do was tough love. If you've ever read anything about tough love, it's really kind of mean. Where you just kind of disassociate yourself from your loved one and you tell them to get out of your life until they clean up. That was the basic philosophy 25 years ago. And that's the philosophy that I sadly endorsed at the time. He went in and out of rehab programs and was able to ultimately stay off the drug for about four years. And he did what they call 'one last time'. And the 'one last time' resulted in a overdose and his death. And it seems that the dealer, when they saw him going into this overdose, they drove him to the hospital and they dumped him on the front of the emergency room. They were afraid to go in, afraid that they would be arrested. So they just left him outside in front of the emergency room. That's how he got there.

Jonathan died long before the public debate about naloxone. And to Joy, if the dealer had had naloxone, if the hospital were able to administer it right away, her son might have lived. Joys now is harm reduction advocate herself. She travels to conferences. She meets with politicians. She tries to get naloxone into the hands of as many people as possible. As she told me that, thanks to all this work, it didn't take long for her to rethink all her ideas on tough love. And she calls her connection to naloxone and her son's death: the irony of her life.

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JOY: I say that-- that was so horrendous. The irony of it and it kind of took me into a state of inactivity. I didn't go. I didn't get involved in the epidemic at all until many years later when I recognized that it became almost my citizen's duty to go public with my story and the story and the irony of my life. I've learned to forgive myself and I would embrace my son at this point with much more tenderness caring and love. And even I would ensure that he would get heroin that was free of any poison, clean heroin, and I would ensure that he would have a safe place to inject it, until the time came when he was ready to try rehab. So I'm totally against tough love. I'm totally the opposite of pure love and giving all the substance users their dignity and the love that they deserve.

GT: I'll bet you would have made sure he was carrying naloxone too.

JOY: Well I would have made sure that I was carrying naloxone, and I would make sure today that every drug dealer has naloxone. And I think that's where we're headed.

GT: That's Joy Stamler fishmen whose life is tragically intertwined with the history of naloxone. And as she mentioned earlier, her husband Jack Fishmen did not hold the patent for naloxone. He had a very successful career but he didn't get rich from naloxone. In fact the patent for the drug expired a long time ago. But you won't be surprised to hear that there's still a lot of money to be made. Because of the expired patent companies that manufacture the drug make most of their money on the delivery system of naloxone. It's sold under names like Narcan and Evzio and naloxone is available as an injection kit. It looks like a case for your sunglasses. There's a nasal spray. And there's even something called an auto injector.

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[Buzz]

AUTOMATED VOICE: If you are ready to use, pull off red safety guard.

GT: It actually talks to you and walks you through the steps.

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AUTOMATED VOICE: To inject black end against outer thigh.

GT: Of course all those high tech lifesaving options come at a price.

[Music]

GT: In this way the opioid epidemic has been something of a boon to the pharmaceutical industry. According to data provided by the healthcare analytics firm IQVIA, sales of Niblock zone increased from 21.3 Million in 2011, to 274.1 million in 2016. Just a note, we will be doing more coverage of the opioid crisis in coming weeks, including a look at a new experiment in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver that will be exploring the use of low barrier safe supply for addicts. I'm Geoff Turner sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

'Just let your body do its thing': Why some women are forgoing doctors and opting for freebirth

Guests: Rixa Freeze, Lisa Felstein, Brenda Wagner

GT: Hello I'm Geoff Turner sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

GT: Still to come: Looking to perfect your debating skills this year? Mathematician Eugenia Cheng has just the right equation. How the art of the argument may be a numbers game. In half an hour. But first, free birth.

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We are here to support you in exploring and claiming sovereignty in birth and in your life. Free Birth Society is an unwavering feminist company that is pro-choice, pro-women, by women, for women. Always. We trust you to make your own decisions, whatever that may be.

GT: That's Emilee Saldaya, the founder and co-leader of the free birth Society, a group that promotes unassisted birth. They're part of a movement called Free Birthers. They reject medical intervention during birth. No doctors, nurses or midwives and sometimes no prenatal care at all. Many women who free birth do it in the comfort of their home. But some even go to remote or wild places to give birth. In October a California woman involved with the free birth society delivered a stillborn baby after six days of laboring at home without any medical help. That case has put a spotlight on the safety of free birthing. My next guest chose to deliver one of her children at home, unassisted by a doctor or a midwife. Rixa Freeze is a visiting professor of English at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana and she studied unassisted free birth for her Ph.D. thesis in philosophy. She joins us from Crawfordsville, Indiana. Hello.

RIXA FREEZE: Hi. Thank you.

GT: Rixa, I'd like to know just off the top why did you decide to have an unassisted birth?

RIXA FREEZE: My choice is probably unusual from other women who choose to have an unassisted birth in that it was the first of my children. Often women come to an assisted birth having given birth before with a midwife at home or in a hospital and they come to it because there is something unsatisfactory about their care that they received. For me it was my first baby I hadn't had any previous trauma or does satisfactory care with a midwife or with the hospital. I was really drawn to the choice. In part I was researching on assisted birth academically. I was doing my Ph.D dissertation at the time about unassisted birth in North America. And I just felt like this was the choice that I wanted to make. I would say that my choice is somewhat unusual even among people who give birth unassisted in that I came to it the first time around.

GT: How many children do you have now?

RIXA FREEZE: I have four children all of whom were born at home. The last three I had a certified nurse midwife caring for me right.

GT: So what was different about those other deliveries that made your choice different?

RIXA FREEZE: There wasn't such so much different about how the birth went between my birth and my last three which had a midwife present. Because by time I'd had my first baby unassisted, which was a fantastic experience. I don't regret any part of it. I really knew myself and I knew my body and I knew the way I gave birth. And I was very fortunate to find a midwife who was quite understanding of my desire, still, to do this birth myself and to have a very autonomous undisturbed private birth. So I had her the last three times around. One of the times she didn't make it to the house on time, so I gave birth unassisted but we call that an unplanned unassisted birth.

GT: As a father of a couple of kids I know there's a lot involved in preparing for birth. How did you prepare for that first and unassisted birth?

RIXA FREEZE: For the first one? Again I was in an unusual situation in that I was researching maternity care and childbirth academically as well as personally. So I'd been reading hundreds of books. I'd been training along with midwives. And so I had felt quite prepared to give birth because of all of my other work academically as well. And I don't want to say this that you have to train academically to have a baby because birth is a physiological event that's very very instinctual. And that's actually something that was both surprising and affirming at the same time, when I went through it the first time around. It really is a process that you just go along for the ride. So I did prepare quite a bit by figuring what I would do in certain situations. I was aware of what situations would require transport or referral and it just went from there. But you know largely, once you start Labour and the process goes along, a lot of it's just a matter of getting your intellectual brain out of the way and letting your body take over and do what it needs to do to get the baby out.

GT: But you must have been well aware of everything that can go wrong and sometimes terribly wrong. How did how did you weigh the medical risks for you and your child against the reasons you had established for wanting an unassisted birth?

RIXA FREEZE: Yeah you know I was aware of certain things like you know you have risk of A, B or C happening. And actually with my unassisted birth that happened - the unplanned one, where the midwife was on her way but didn't get there on time - my baby was born and needed help breathing. And one of the things I had done to prepare to give birth was to learn how to neonatal resuscitation. I took a certification course. So I simply gave my baby mouth to mouth rescue breathing as one does, if the baby needs help coming around. And so some of the things I did on purpose to prepare for such as getting trained in neonatal resuscitation, I think one thing I want to say is that it's easy to talk about this a birth in terms of medical risk. You know is this a safety or danger question. But there's so much more about childbirth than simply the medical aspect of it. And of course you know it's easy to sensationalize these outlier cases right where something goes wrong, and then we all get our talking heads on and we talk about is it safe is it dangerous. But birth is a very complex event. It's a family event. It's a social event. It's a sexual event for some people. It can be a medical event for some people. And by only focusing on the medical aspects of childbirth I think we lose something. We lose the complexity of what this means to women and their families.

GT: We mentioned in the introduction that still born death, that tragedy in California, and with regards to that, Dr. Jennifer Gunter, she's a Canadian born OBGYN who works in the States. She tweeted the following. She said - and I quote: "I believe in choice but it is not the choice without all the information. If you hear all the risks and decide they're worth it to you, that is choice. Without hearing the risks you are being misled. Online communities who encourage uninformed choice are dangerous". What role did online communities play in your own decision to have a free birth?

RIXA FREEZE: Well it's hard to separate the role that the online communities played because I was also immersed academically in this as well. I was in the middle of writing my dissertation. A lot of my research was coming out of these online communities. So I don't think I would go to the online communities for statistical medical advice. I'm an academic and a researcher as well as a mother, and so I think everybody knows. It's the internet. You get good you get bad you get whatever.

GT: But do you worry at all about people who aren't maybe as qualified or as critical thinkers as you are out there making maybe poor decisions based on information they're finding on the Internet?

RIXA FREEZE: Well let's hope that people are aware enough that the Internet is not the source of all truth. But I think most people are pretty savvy about that right. I think it's a little bit insulting to women to assume that if they choose an unassisted birth they probably are misinformed. A lot of women come to unassisted birth - and this is me speaking academically now - because of previous trauma, because of the system that they had given birth and before failed them in some way. And I think we have to realize that there are really strong motivating reasons that these women choose to give birth outside of medical care or even midwifery care. And to paint this as women blithely going off and having unassisted birth because something they read on an internet forum is probably oversimplifying the issue, and not giving women enough credit for the thinking they do about this choice and the careful thought and time and consideration they likely put into that choice.

GT: I know that you studied the unassisted birth movement for your Ph.D. thesis in philosophy. What did you find was driving mothers to be? What did they tell you specifically about their choice to have unassisted births?

RIXA FREEZE: A lot of women came to unassisted birth because of a previous experience giving birth that was traumatic. Some women also come into it because of a deep philosophical belief in childbirth as an inherently safe process or a belief that they want a birth that's very family centered and that's very private. But I think we can't ignore the role that previous trauma and previous abuse or coercion and previous negative experiences have in pushing some women towards this choice. And I I'm really mindful of this because - as much as I had a fantastic experience giving birth unassisted - I don't want anybody to be cornered into this. I don't feel like it's a good thing if women have to choose unassisted birth because that's the only way they can get birth naturally in their system. You know if they have twins or breech baby or have had a previous caesarian section, a lot of hospitals won't give them any choice but to have a C-section. And so what I want to see is a system that gives women a wide range of choices in hospitals, in birth centers, in homes so that the women who are running away from negative traumatic experiences have a place to go besides just unassisted birth .

GT: Rixa Freeze, thank you so much for your time today.

RIXA FREEZE: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

GT: Rixa Freeze has had one planned for rebirth. We reached her in Crawfordsville, Indiana. And just a note, we reached out multiple times to the free birth society and we did not hear back.

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[Sound: Water trickling]

IS the baby's face in the water?

[Woman panting and chatter]

No it's not in the water. It's okay. Coming... That's it...It's okay... Welcome to the world.

[Sound: Baby crying]

GT: That's Simone Thurber giving birth outside in the Australian Daintree rainforest. She goes into the river. She squats down and delivers her baby with just her husband and her other children by her side. The video has been viewed over 77 million times on YouTube. Ms. Thurber's says she and her husband made the choice to give birth in nature without a doctor. And her baby was fine and so was she. But what if things do go wrong? Our next guest says there are a number of potential legal issues with unassisted births. Lisa Feldstein is a health lawyer focusing on family health law and she's also an adjunct professor at York University. She joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

LISA FELDSTEIN: Hi there.

GT: Here in Canada is it legal to do what we just heard there, to give birth outside a hospital or in some cases in a forest or in their backyard?

LISA FELDSTEIN: So there is nothing illegal about having a baby outside of a hospital or technically in a forest or a backyard. The liability can arise if something goes wrong with respect to the baby and the parents don't provide for the child. So in Canada it's a crime to fail to provide the necessaries of life.

GT: What if a mother didn't know there was a problem with her unborn baby and chose not to get medical help? How does the law deal with that situation?

LISA FELDSTEIN: So I I've have not heard of cases in the criminal system with respect to the free birth movement where a woman doesn't know. I mean it would certainly be more challenging, but I choosing to give birth far away from the medical system means there is an acknowledgement that risk, that something could go wrong.

GT: What about partners or other family members who might be involved in an unassisted birth? We heard in that situation the father was there, the children were there. What what legal risks might be at stake for those people?

LISA FELDSTEIN: There are certain health services that only authorized health professionals can perform because they are somehow risky or invasive. One of those in Ontario, under the regulated health professions act, is actually managing labor or conducting the delivery of a baby. And there is an exception for emergencies because sometimes babies don't arrive as planned, but that's in there as a controlled act. So I would have concern that a partner who is actually delivering the baby could be exposing themselves to some liability because they are performing an act that only certain health professionals are authorized to perform.

GT: Now by the sounds of it, to some degree, this free birth movement people are being exposed to advocacy and promotion of the idea online. What sort of legal concerns do you have around people who might may or may not have any sort of expertise, medical expertise around birth advocating these practices?

LISA FELDSTEIN: So I think there is a similar concern with respect to the leaders of the movement and people involved in the movement as I have with partners, in that if someone is sharing information that could be perceived as medical advice or a midwifery advice, without the appropriate licence, they may be exposing themselves to liability. There's a reason we have regulated health professionals and a licensing system where individuals have to attend school and pass exams and have licenses with regulatory bodies. All of that is to keep the public safe. One thing that we have in Ontario, that other jurisdictions have parallels of, is a duty to report a child in need of protection. So if someone is present at a birth or aware of a birth where a child may be in distress and the parents are not seeking treatment, just that knowledge and failing to report it could potentially expose individuals who are aware of that child in need of protection, if they don't report, they may actually be exposing themselves as well.

GT: Now in the case of the baby that was stillborn, that case in California, it's been reported that allegedly there were messages, exchanges on social media via attacks between the mother and members of one of these online free birth groups that was she was getting reassurance that everything was fine. Would that be legal in Canada here to search out or to give that kind of advice?

LISA FELDSTEIN: So I think that's where people are getting close to the line and it's possible these regulatory bodies would consider that to be medical advice.

GT: What sort of legal rights does the infant have in these situations?

LISA FELDSTEIN: So in Canada a fetus is not a person. So there are no legal rights during pregnancy for the baby. And that's actually why we do not have penalties for women who smoke or drink during pregnancy for example. They don't have a duty to their fetus. Once a child is born and is here as a human being that child does have rights. So that's why there is a duty to report a child in need of protection. And there is a duty on whoever - usually it would be the parents - to provide the necessary life.

GT: Now of course most women do choose to have either a doctor or a midwife involved with their delivery. But what rights do women actually have to determine the circumstances of labor and delivery?

LISA FELDSTEIN: So they actually have a wide range of rights. And I think maybe there are some women that don't know that they are empowered to have the birth of their choosing. So with respect to treatment decisions for example there's a right of informed consent. Sometimes that conversation that informed consent discussion doesn't happen as it should. So there is some merit to the criticism. I believe there's some merit to the women who feel their rights have not been respected. That's probably true in some cases and sometimes women just need to know they actually do have that right to refuse, for example, an epidural. Perhaps some women don't actually know they really are empowered within the health system and with midwives outside of the hospital to actually have some of the kind of birth of their choosing. I think more of that may be possible than some women realize.

GT: Lisa Feldstein, thank you so much for your insights on this.

LISA FELDSTEIN: You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me.

GT: Lisa Feldstein is a health lawyer and adjunct professor at York University and she was in our Toronto studio. Now Dr. Brenda Wagner advises against free birthing but she also wants to see a shift in the culture around birth. Dr. Wagner is a OB/GYN at Richmond hospital in British Columbia and she joins me from Ladner, B.C. Hello.

BRENDA WAGNER: Hello.

GT: What did you think, listening to our first guest, especially talking about the choice to have an unassisted birth? What was coming to mind for you?

BRENDA WAGNER: Well I guess my first feeling was sadness. Partly sadness because I'm part of a system that contributed to failing women, and the system which some women have experienced as traumatic or abusive or coercive. And a deep desire to say I'm sorry and want to bring about change so that women would experience the health care system differently.

GT: What worries you most in medical terms about the idea of a woman delivering without any sort of assistance?

BRENDA WAGNER: I think what worries me most is the fact that there is risk, and that most births- The vast majority of births I completely agree is a normal process and if you leave it alone it will go well and then there's that small subset of births where there is risk and you do need intervention. So some of the risks might be, for the mom, infection, bleeding and labors that aren't going smoothly because the babies not in the right position, or the mom's pelvis is too small. And then there's the risk for the baby. I think our first guest had an ability to train in neonatal resuscitation. Most unassisted birth families don't have that opportunity. So those moms and fathers or other partners don't have the ability.

GT: Why do you think women are still making this choice?

BRENDA WAGNER: Well I think your first guest spoke about how the system failed women and I agree that the system failed women and the feeling that a hospital birth is going to result in a loss of autonomy, or the experience that a hospital birth did result in a loss of autonomy is a huge motivator for women. I think another motivating factor for women is they believe that birth is very natural. It's very instinctual. But there are times when it does not go well when it's left alone. And the risk of birth is large when you don't have access to antibiotics, medications that can control bleeding, interventions that can help support women if the baby's not coming into the birth canal properly and not delivering properly. And so those risks are real. But I do believe that we also need to not have birth be in a culture of fear because fear does not work well for birth. And that's part of why we're seeing rising caesarian section rates as we've created this medicalized fearful experience for women. And we have to find a happy medium.

GT: I know that you've worked to lower a C-section rates at the hospital where you work? How did the culture have to shift to make that happen?

BRENDA WAGNER: Well I really believe the culture had to shift by trying to come around the woman and putting the woman first and the family first. So using family centred maternal and newborn care guidelines that are published by the Public Health Agency of Canada is a very good way to start making those changes. We also created a culture where we've tried to flatten the hierarchy - that's a patient safety term but it also has a very good way of ensuring that all care providers involved in birth get to bring their expertise to the table. So I'm a big proponent of women giving birth on a birthing stool and that's something I've learned from my midwifery colleagues. I've had small women push out very large babies, with an epidural, but on a birthing ball, in a hands and knee positioned on the bed so that baby could just fit into the right place in her pelvis and be delivered naturally. And those are experiences that I've had because I've learned from my colleagues, and I've grown from their input into what's the best care for women.

GT: I know you've spoken sympathetically to the experience of women who have suffered some kind of trauma or negative experience with the medical system, whether it's birth or otherwise. But I wonder what you make of some of the language around these communities. The term I've seen used a few places is 'obstetric rape' for example to describe the use of forceps and procedures related to that. What do you make of that kind of language?

BRENDA WAGNER: Well I think we need to remember that women's experiences are their experiences and we can't change that. And we have to work with them to help them overcome that. And that's a sometimes neglected. Part of postpartum care is asking women about their birth experience and helping them to process that. The other piece that I'd say is that when women are in labor sometimes they actually have a hard time expressing their deep felt choices. And I do think that many obstetrical care providers forget to have those conversations about choice with women when they're not in labor and document those conversations. So that when situations like a choice between a caesarian section and a forceps delivery come up, a woman who's expressed very strongly that they don't want forceps before delivery, that might not be known to the person that's actually putting on the forceps and that would of course become very traumatic for the woman because she's having something that she deeply felt was wrong for her.

GT: So what message would you have for any women out there that might be considering an unassisted birth?

BRENDA WAGNER: My message would be please look into all of the options for birth where you are where you live. Particularly in Canada, home birth is often an option with a midwife. There are midwives that will sit in the corner and let berth go the way that you want it to go, unless something is not going well and then they will step in. Go and see a care provider and ask them how they feel about choice. Have conversations with them about their beliefs and their feelings around birth. You can exercise autonomy by choosing to go to a birth provider that's going to support your best birth. But also look at the risks and realise that there are risks associated with not having prenatal care and with birth that's unintended and we want you to have the best birth for you. But we also want to have the safest birth and we believe that that's done with registered trained attendant such as a midwife or a family doctor.

GT: Thank you so much for your insights on us and for taking the time with us.

BRENDA WAGNER: You're very welcome. It's my pleasure.

GT: Dr. Brenda Wagner is a OB/GYN at Richmond hospital. And we reached her and Ladner, B.C. let us know what you think. You can find us on Facebook. Tweet us @The CurrentCBC or go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. Coming up in our next half hour, the political landscape for 2019 is looking as if it might be more polarized than ever. But Eugenia Cheng's says she's found a way to bridge the chasm and it has nothing to do with politics. It's a new way of doing math. I'm Geoff Turner sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

The power of logic: How math can help you win your next argument

Guest: Eugenia Cheng

GT: I'm Geoff Turner sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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[Music]

[Arguing]

VOICE 1: Why is it so easy to buy a gun in this country?

VOICE 2: It's not easy Hiraldo.

VOICE 1: Why don't you have mandatory training? Why dont you have?

VOICE 2: It's not easy.

VOICE 3: Let's just talk about people as Americans. Asian-Americans. That's the term.

VOICE 4: No you're not going to police my language. They are Mandarin. It is written in Mandarin.

VOICE 5: You're not answering my question now. You're not answering my question in the moment.

VOICE 6: I am answering your question John.

VOICE 5: Don't take me back to some before the war crap, I want to hear what you're saying to the coworkers you work with now Jeffrey. Answer the question now. I don't want to hear about stuff from 50 darn damn years ago.

GT: That's the kind of arguing we see a lot of on cable news these days, particularly in the United States. It may even sound like the debates around some dinner tables during the holidays. We're surrounded by debate and political polarization ... people trying to make their case in an increasingly divided world. It can feel hard to bridge the political divide and engage with those who disagree with you. But our next guest argues there is a simple tool to help us do just that math. Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician and Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She's also the author of "The Art of Logic in an Illogical World." Anna Maria spoke with her in September. Here's their conversation.

AMT: Do you ever get a headache listening to people try to win an argument?

EC: Oh I do. And it can be very depressing and it can feel very futile. And so I cling to the fact that I do think there is a better way.

AMT: Well in a world where we are surrounded by what we just heard and all of that angry debate, how can mathematics or logic help us argue better?

EC: That might seem counter-intuitive I think because mathematics can be thought of as something that's very removed from real life, especially abstract mathematics. The very word abstract makes it sound like it's nothing to do with real life, but the whole point about maths is not that it's about solving specific equations or numbers and things, it's really a discipline for having clear arguments. And mathematicians have been developing the techniques for having clear arguments for thousands of years. So we are actually very well practiced in just that and those techniques can translate into real life very well.

AMT: And let's just get to a definition here, what do you mean by logic?

EC: Logic is a process of justification that we use in mathematics all of our mathematical results are based on logical justification where you show that one thing follows from another and then another thing follows from that just by kind of intrinsic definitions and principles. But then of course you have to assume something at the beginning because you can only use logic to deduce something from something else. And what it means is that we're forced to be very clear about our basic starting points and I think that's something that doesn't happen nearly enough in political arguments.

AMT: And that's why you're saying logic is a powerful tool to help us reach some common ground, as opposed to just scream at each other?

EC: We can disagree with somebody else and feel very emotionally upset and insulted by the things that we're saying. But if we take a step back into the logic of what they're saying and trace back their logic, I think it actually helps us empathize with them because we can see where their thought processes are coming from without having to agree with them or emotionally understand why they think that.

AMT: If much of the world doesn't behave logically though, how do we use logic to understand the world? I think that's it tempting to say that everyone who disagrees with us is not behaving logically. And the thing is that they're not behaving according to our logic, but they are behaving according to some logic. There is something that is causing them to do that and I truly believe that it's more helpful to understand why they're thinking those things that seem illogical to us and why they seem logical to those people, rather than simply say those people are not behaving logically. I don't think there are that many people who would just say, oh yes I don't behave logically at all. I think that probably most people think they behave logically, it's just that we have different starting points and different ways of using logic and different ways of weighing up different factors in a situation, so that we come to a very, very different conclusions.

AMT: OK. So I want to talk about a few examples. Let's start with this one. This is ex-Fox News host Bill O'Reilly arguing with a guest about white privilege on his now canceled show.

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VOICE 1: I'm a really white guy. When I was in Hawaii last week, I couldn't go in the sun. If I was in the sun for three minutes, my ears would fall off. Alright, now I'm from Levittown as you might know, out of Long Island and my parents didn't have a lot of money. All right. Do I have white privilege? Am I privileged in any way under this banner?

VOICE 2: Yes, because none of the things that you, none of the things that you indicated, speak to the issue of white privilege. White privilege isn't whether your skin pigmentation is strong or weak, it isn't how much money you have in the bank. It is you are the beneficiary of years of whites having an advantage in this country, based on.

VOICE 1: But I don't experience that when I worked in Carvell painting houses, cutting lawns.

AMT: So what do you make of Bill O'Reilly's argument?

EC: Well first of all, he does lots of shouting over the person he's talking to. That's not the issue. What we have here is a classic example of somebody using what isn't quite the right definition and or perhaps I should be less biased and say that the two people involved are using different definitions of white privilege and that's where the disagreement is coming from. Now I think that what Bill O'Reilly is doing is what's called a straw man argument. At least it used to be called that, but I don't like the gendering of it, so I like to call it a straw person argument, which is where you take something that isn't the real argument that's much easier to knock down and then you knock it down. But what you've done there is you've defeated an argument that nobody was even making in the first place. And so his error is that he thinks that white privilege means that all white people are rich and don't have to struggle, but that's not what it means. White privilege means that if he had all the same characteristics and the same amount of income in his family when he was growing up, but was also black, instead of being white, then he would have been even worse off. It's that disagreement between what white privilege means. Some people think, perhaps willfully, just to aggravate everyone else or maybe they just truly don't understand. They think that white privilege means that all white people are better off than all black people and that's just the wrong definition of white privilege, I think.

AMT: And so what do you make of the argument of the guest. That was Reverend Jacques Degraff by the way.

EC: I think he made a valiant attempt at refuting the argument and he started pointing out that that, the things that Bill O'Reilly was saying was not actually anything to do with the issue of white privilege. But I don't think he very clearly explained why those aren't to do with white privilege. He started saying that white people are the beneficiary of years and years of white people having an advantage, but he didn't really explain what that consisted of. And why, in what sense that gives them the privilege. And I think with all of these arguments it's important for us to say in what sense people are privileged and what sense they are not. And it's true that there are white people who are poor and who struggle and who don't feel like they have any of the benefits of the supposed white privilege. And so in that sense, they are not privileged. But then there's another sense in which they are privileged, which is that if they were also black, then they would be even worse off.

AMT: What kinds of mistakes and logic do you hear the most when you listen to current political debates?

EC: I do hear a lot of straw person arguments, where people simply take a different definition of the same thing and then defeat it. So for example, in the Black Lives Matter argument, people argue against it by saying all lives matter. But that's a straw person argument because the people who say black lives matter aren't claiming that other lives don't matter. All they're claiming is that black lives matter, but they are currently treated as if they don't matter as much as other lives. And so if you claim that they're saying that other lives don't matter, you're replacing their argument with one that they're not making and then you're defeating an argument that nobody is making. So you haven't actually achieved anything.

AMT: So what does a logical argument look like?

EC: I think that a logical argument involves a careful unpacking of what people were saying, back down to their fundamental basic principles. So instead of just yelling at each other that we disagree about the conclusions and the other person is wrong, we should be trying to understand how the other person came to that conclusion and this is what we do in mathematics. If two people think they've proved things that contradict each other in mathematics, we have to unpack their proof very carefully and try and find the exact place where we differ. And I think that we could very much stand to do this more in social and political arguments, as well. Instead of focusing on trying to show that the other person is wrong, it would be very productive if we could try and focus on understanding how the other person got to that point, so that we can understand the sense in which they have a point and the sense in which we have a point and then the exact place where we disagree.

AMT: I'd like to get your feedback on another example. There's been much debate around universities providing a forum for controversial speakers and not long ago, The New Yorker dropped ex-Trump staffer Steve Bannon from its Festival of Ideas. He was still scheduled to speak at the Munk Debates in Toronto. So we asked for a little help from some people who spent a lot of their time arguing or debating. The Ryerson University Debate Association agreed to help us out by presenting both sides and I want you to listen to the first argument.

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VOICE: My name is Jamie Fotak. I'm vice president of the Ryerson Debate Association and I'm studying philosophy. Let it be resolved that Canadian universities should not only refuse to ban controversial speakers from their campuses, but also provide the necessary support for them to be able to present their ideas. Freedom of Speech illuminates all ideas, inconsequentially bad will be exposed and the good ones further are appreciated. In providing an isolated space free from mentioned, let alone criticism, schools are allowing bad ideas to permeate. It is far more harmful to a speaker who is spewing falsehoods for their ideas to be disproven in public and to be presented with the clout they are currently given when their talks are being shut down before the zipper on the costume can be exposed. Freedom of speech is the capitalism of ideas, only the strongest survive.

EC: Eugenia Cheng, before I go to the other side, what do you think of that argument?

EC: So first of all, there's the issue of whether we're talking about banning speakers or just not providing them with a forum in the first place. So it's true that banning them can create publicity, which then gives them even more of a platform in a way, but if we just simply didn't invite them in the first place that would be different. So perhaps we should have started by being clearer about which of those we're talking about. And so the next thing is something that comes up a lot in political and social discussions at the moment, which is this question of freedom of speech. And the thing is that I think freedom of speech really means that the government can't prosecute you for saying something because of freedom of speech. It's not about whether every institution should allow you to say everything you want. And so I think that a university not providing you with a platform doesn't actually violate freedom of speech, unless the government then arrests you for having said the thing that you're saying.

AMT: OK well that's, it's good to hear what you have to say on that. Let's hear what Jamie Fotak's debating opponent said in response, arguing against the resolution.

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VOICE: My name is Mclain Weaver. I am a fourth-year economics student at Ryerson University and I am president of the Ryerson debate association. This whole idea of a crisis of freedom of speech on university campuses is a fallacy, it's not happening. What the real situation is that there's a couple individuals who want to come to campus and there's been large protests and the costs of security has made it prohibitive for these coming to campus. I think they're a huge waste of student resources, student time, student energy to invest in this when we could invest this money in other places that would be more productive, such as their education.

AMT: OK. What do you think of that counter-argument?

EC: Well he did try to refute the first argument, but I definitely honed in on the phrase, it's not happening. He said there's a crisis of freedom of speech, but it's not happening and that doesn't really constitute an argument. That's just a statement that hasn't had any justification. So that was an issue in the first place. I think the main point is that he missed the more nuanced parts of this argument, to do with whether having somebody speak at a university is more about giving them a platform or more about giving the university an opportunity to rationally refute their ideas. And I think that's a much more interesting and nuanced argument and it's almost like a question then between the rhetoric that those controversial speakers are wanting to put out against the idea that rational arguments can defeat that rhetoric.

AMT: OK. It's really fascinating to hear how you take us through this. I want to go a little further now. Let's break down some of the steps to arguing better. You talk about the first step being to move from the real world to the abstract world. Tell us more about that.

EC: Mathematics lives in the abstract world because that's the place where logic really works. And in order to move there, you have to forget some of the details that get in the way. And this might seem like it takes you away from the real world, but what it does it really is it takes you to the heart of an argument, the essence of an argument that's making it true. And if you try to justify something, using a general, what sounds like a general argument, you can use abstraction to show that someone's argument isn't right. For example, they might say that they don't believe that you should pay for something that only benefits other people. So some people say that every university, people should pay for their own university education because they're the ones who are benefiting from it and therefore they should pay. But then you can try transferring that to another situation and see whether it's still true. So for example, elementary school education. Are they the ones benefiting from the elementary education? Do we make them pay? No we typically don't. And so that shows by taking it to an abstract level and finding another example, we can then say that their argument wasn't really, that wasn't really their argument. And then we have to get to the basis of is there something different between university education and elementary education. And maybe that's a question of people choose to go to university, if they want to, but everybody has to go to elementary school education. And then there's the question of do people really choose to go to university though. There's so much pressure on people to go to university, if they want to go into certain jobs that they don't really have a choice to get certain jobs, you simply have to have a university degree. So we get to see that the argument is much more complicated than the one liner that we tend to get these days because we have tiny attention spans. We need mic drops, we have tweets that only have 280 characters and so on.

AMT: What's another key step to arguing better?

EC: Another key step is to develop the capacity for following long chains of arguments. So small children can only really follow one step of an argument, so they think that they are hungry and they need food or they want ice cream and they want it now and they can't see something more long term, such as if all they eat is ice cream every day then in 20 years time they won't be very healthy, for example. And as we grow up, supposedly one of the things we develop is the ability to put together chains of argument so that we can get a bit further than that. And most of the arguments that we're trying to have in politics and things at the moment, are quite complex and I think that if we try and simplify them to one simple justification, then it's always going to be an oversimplification where we end up disagreeing with each other. But we need to be able to say, under these circumstances this is true, but under these other circumstances this is true. Now let's weigh up these two circumstances and so on and it goes on for a while and a short argument or a meme or a tweet, simply isn't long enough to do that.

AMT: You need a starting point, do you not, to be in an argument, people have to be arguing in good faith.

EC: Yes that is a big problem these days and I think that when people are not arguing in good faith, it's very difficult and perhaps what you have to start with is to try and persuade them to argue in good faith. And one way to do that is to be very sure that you are already arguing in good faith yourself and this is hard. And I catch myself doing it often and I've been really concentrating on stopping myself, especially in the last two years where I discovered that I'm simply trying to show that someone is wrong and then I pause and think wait, I should try and understand why they think that. And it's a discipline that I impose on myself every day. I always read articles I disagree with to make sure I understand why people think things I disagree with and when I read an article I agree with, I always read the comments to make sure I can see what hateful things people are saying in opposition, so that I can understand what the opposition thinks.

AMT: When people are passionate about something or upset, they seem less rational, less logical. How do emotions and logic intersect?

EC: I think it's important to remember the emotions and logic are not in dichotomy with each other. They are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes people and I must say it's often men, accuse women of just being emotional and not being logical. And I think that women sometimes feel emotions so strongly that they worry that they're not being logical, but I think that emotions and logic work together. I know that I am extremely logical. I'm a professional research mathematician. I also know that I'm extremely emotional and I have emotional responses to things very quickly and very strongly. And that doesn't mean I'm not also being logical and the thing is that I can use logic to unpack where my emotions are coming from. So for example, if I'm completely terrified of something, then I can work through that to see where that terror is coming from and if someone has really upset me, then I'll be very upset, but that I can gradually work back through it to see why I'm so upset about it. At the same time, I can use emotions to help understand other people's logic because I can try and understand where they are coming from, rather than imposing my own logic on them all the time. And so empathy kind of helps me access their logic, which then helps me empathize with them even more.

AMT: What are the limits of logic? Where does it fall down as a tool to make sense of the world?

EC: Logic alone will never persuade people. People are emotional beings and unless we get to the heart of their emotions, we won't be able to persuade them. And I think that is why in the arguments between scientists and science deniers, the more the scientists argue about logic rationality and evidence, the more the anti-science people dig their heels in because they're not going to be persuaded by any of those things. And so instead of simply going on and on about evidence and calling the other people irrational, we need to understand that they are probably afraid of something and that that fear is overcoming their ability to understand rational logic and evidence.

AMT: The truth seems a casualty of a lot of public discourse. What happens when facts do not matter to the person with whom you're arguing?

EC: I think we need to be careful about saying that because I think that everybody thinks facts matter. It's just that they have a different idea of what facts are and actually if we're completely honest with ourselves, how do we define a fact? How do we define a truth? I don't actually think there's any such thing as truth. What there is is different ways of justifying what we think is true and different disciplines in academia have different ways of accessing truth. So mathematics uses logic, science uses evidence and so on. I don't think that we should overstate the matter. I don't think that there is something that is absolutely true. If you think about something that's true in the news. How do we actually know it's true? We think it's true because it's been reported by some source we consider to be reputable, but that depends on their reputation. So these things are still somewhat contextual and I think that if we overstate how true they are, then we're opening ourselves up to being defeated in arguments. Instead we should say, here's a framework for how we believe in accessing truth and then we can ask the other people, what is your framework for accessing truth? What methods are you using for determining that this thing is true? And importantly, what would persuade you that it wasn't true? Because a good framework for accessing truth, also has a framework for saying when something isn't true.

AMT: Before I let you go, I think it's worth just mentioning as you discuss this in your book, you make the point that you know people have a certain view of mathematics and you make the point this is not about the memorization of numbers and tables. Mathematics is about learning to think.

EC: That's right. So there is a traditional view that mathematics is about numbers and equations and solving problems and that it's very useful for things like building bridges and flying planes and developing computers. And that's all true. But if we think that mathematics is limited to that, then it gives some people the opportunity to say that they don't need to do mathematics. That they are grateful that someone else does it, but I don't need to do it because I don't use it in my daily life. And the thing is that mathematics is more math. It is about a discipline for thinking clearly and if we think of it like that, then I hope everybody wants to think more clearly. I certainly wish that certain people in the world at the moment would think more clearly and I think if we show that mathematics is about thinking clearly then that shows that it is relevant to everyone who thinks.

AMT: Thank you for your time and for your thoughts and your ideas. Thank you.

EC: Thank you very much.

GT: Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician and Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the author of "The Art of Logic in an Illogical World". Anna Maria Tremonti spoke with her in September. And a big thank you again to the Ryerson University Debate Association for being such good sports and letting us pick apart their arguments. I want to take a moment to tell you about a story we have coming up on the Current. This is a story that touched a nerve with many of you after we first played it. It's about two people in different parts of the country brought together by tragedy. When Pat Loder's 20 year old son Jeff died by suicide in 2016, his liver, his lungs, and his heart were donated to patients in need. She set out to meet the people who received her son's organs. And in 2018 she met the man who has her son's heart. Anna Maria Tremonti spoke to both of them this fall. That story tomorrow on the Current. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Guest host Ali Hassan talks to Oscar winner Sally Field. And remember, you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally, for many people January 2nd marks the official start for New Year's resolutions. Yesterday being a day of recovery of course, allowing a final freebie for vices before resolutions kick in. And so today we want to leave you with some wisdom from Otis Redding. Here he is with Carla Thomas and their 1968 hit New Year’s Resolution. I'm Geoff Turner in for Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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[Song: New Year’s Resolution]

Wednesday 3 January, 2019 Full Transcript

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