Time is 'ripe' for big businesses to get behind Canadian basketball: Men's national team GM

Guests: Rowan Barrett, Mark Poyser, Jovan Milicevic

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We stayed here in downtown last night.

AMT: So you actually booked a hotel so you could be right here?

VOICE 1: Oh yeah and we celebrate happiest month of the year.

AMT: Did you stay up late and watch the game?

VOICE 2: Yeah, it was fun. It was special too.

VOICE 3: Our dad has been a season seat holder for like 20 years, so our whole lives we've been going to the Raptors games and this is just like incredible.

VOICE 4: My brother actually works for United Nations in Africa right now and he actually went out bought a satellite dish, so he's able to watch the game.

VOICE 5: I've been to over 400 games. I'll be here to see them celebrate. It's well worth missing the day at work.

VOICE 6: We got here from Montreal yesterday at 1:00 a.m.

VOICE 7: What do the Raptors mean to you?

VOICE 8: Everything. Everything. Like to see the trophy and enjoy the moment, enjoying the vibe.

[Group chants "Let's Go Raptors!"]

AMT: Some of the people who are already lining the Raptors parade route in downtown Toronto and you could hear that clanking. That's because they were on the streets before the parade barriers were even put up this morning. It is the first time the NBA championship trophy has made its way to Canada to throngs of fans from across the country. And I have three people who are sitting right in front of me who will join people on that parade route very shortly. Rowan Barrett is a former pro basketball player. He is the general manager of Canada's senior men's national basketball team. He's also a basketball dad. His son RJ Barrett is one of the top projected picks for this year's NBA draft on Thursday. Mark Poyser is a teacher at Jon English middle school and a basketball coach in Toronto, who's bringing a group of young players to the Raptors parade in downtown Toronto. And 14-year-old Jovan Milicevic is one of his players and they are all in our Toronto studio. Hello and welcome.

ROWAN BARRETT: Hello, hello. Thanks for having us.

MARK POYSER: Hey. Thank you for having us.

AMT: Mark Poyser, I'm going to start with you. Why is it so important for you to come to this parade today with the students?

MP: Well I mean students, that's my life. I've been teaching for 21 years with the Toronto school board, Jon English and I've been teaching them basketball for a long time. So you know I've been coaching and I think it's really important for all of these kids to to see what's to see what's happening you know missing one day of school you won't remember this, that you missed a day of school, but you're gonna remember that you came down to the parade, you're going to remember that you actually get to witness thisepic occasion in terms of Toronto championship teams.

AMT: What did that win mean to you?

MP: I know I sent out a lot of tweets that said, hey I'm not crying. Are you crying. So I'll leave it at that because that win was it's what it's what we waited for. It's why we coach. It's why we support a team and it's finally here.

AMT: Jovan, how are you feeling about seeing this parade today?

JOVAN MILICEVIC: I'm really excited to see the players and all the fans together supporting the Raptors.

AMT: How long have you been playing basketball?

JM: I think I've been playing basketball for six, seven years now. It's amazing. I love competing with other players and yeah.

AMT: And who's your favourite player?

JM: LeBron James.

AMT: Okay and so what was the win like for you? Where were you Thursday night?

JM: Well actually I had a tournament and we took all the teams together and we were watching the game on a screen. It was really fun all the Raptors fans supporting. There's some Warriors fans, we were hating on them a little bit, but it was really fun enjoying and watching the Raptors play.

AMT: And Rowan Barrett, you've had a few days to digest this win. What's going through your mind tonight?

RB: Wow so many things one excitement. This is if you're a lover of basketball and I've been in the game for decades now to see this kind of a crescendo kind of moment seeing people all across the country engaging. This is an amazing time to be a basketball fan and then you know obviously from a leadership perspective I look at what MSU jury has done here with Bobby Webster. This is a masterclass in leadership from what I'm seeing here. I mean he's shut out all the noise he made the difficult decisions he took all the criticism right and he changed the coach he changed DeMar De Rosen that we all loved here he knew the direction the team had to go because I think he said we have to win here in Toronto and to watch him pull this off and some of the things that he's done putting winners in the team right experienced people in the team just amazing you know on all fronts.

AMT: Tell me a little bit more about him. Was he already on your radar before he showed up here?

RB: Well I think anytime you're looking at coaches that win around the world you know you're always going to see them. And I think that when he first started here we were already well set. You know we thought with our coaching staff. But you know as the time goes on as players emerge coaches emerge you know as well. And so you know the time goes on. We've seen greatness. You know we've seen greatness here. I don't think there's anything to question you know I think it's very very clear what's there and we're excited that you know we'll hopefully be moving forward.

AMT: And of course this week starts with the parade, but this is a big week for you and your son.

RB: Oh yeah. This is a great week and not only for my son, but we have other Canadian players also that you should be getting drafted. You know this week and I think this is a win for our whole entire country. It's a win for our system. Right? It's a win for coaches like Mark you know that I've been on the sidelines grinding it away in those sweaty gyms, you know all across North America with the children with no hoopla, sometimes with no thanks. And then now you see the kids you know at the end you know you have your provincial teams right. Love your national teams you have your club teams high school teams all supporting you know these young men and now you know here you know here they are in the next step and obviously yes I am gonna be proud and excited as a father.

AMT: Tell me a little bit more about how this might affect the game at a national level in Canada.

RB: You know I think that you know anytime you see events like this I think it's well chronicled that you're gonna have an increase in participation numbers, boys and girls, I think this is great. I think we can see a little bit the overflow of that from the soccer women right from back in the Olympics and so many more girls were signing up for soccer. I think you can see much the same on the basketball side. I think what we're witnessing is the rise of a sport in a nation. And you know what I'm hoping for is to see the corporations now right start to act because I'm not sure what else you need to see. Seven million Canadians tuning in right. Half the country watching some part of that finals game. If you want diversity it's in this sport. If you want to find newcomers in this sport if you want to find wholesome programming that's good for families with great role models in this sport. It's all here. And so my hope is that the marketing firms will do a great job of telling that story and helping corporations to understand how they can get involved.

AMT: And Mark Poyser What are you seeing already in the school. Let's talk about boys and girls and how they see this sport now.

MP: Well I mean since the playoff run and even before that a lot of students were picking up a ball. I mean we do camps all through the city. And I noticed that enrolment is going up where we're turning away kids because we don't have gym space in order to facilitate all of the kids that want to get into it whether it's just to learn how to shoot whether it's just to learn what for the exercise of it as well. And I've just seen an explosion in especially at the middle school level and I'm sure the high school kids are picking it up just a lot of new basketball players that are coming around.

AMT: And Jovan, how has this changed what you want to do with your future?

JM: I really think after the Raptors won, Canada's basketball has grown a lot and the States and everyone else has seen Raptors grow and Canada basketball grow and it just pushes me to put work in the gym and that is an opportunity for anyone in Canada, not just in Canada, in the world to do and achieve their goals.

AMT: And when you started playing basketball did you want to be a basketball player professionally?

JM: Yes I wanted to play in the NBA. I wanted to play all-star, be the best on my team and represent my team.

AMT: And do you think that that since you see what's going on with the Raptors, does that feel like it's even more attainable now?

JM: Yeah. After the Raptors won it's really pushed me even harder and I'm really grinding now putting work in the lab and just doing my best every time I step on the court.

AMT: What do you and your team-mates talk about when it comes to this kind of stuff?

JM: Well my teammates, especially my team, a lot of them are Warriors fans. Which, I'm not that happy aobut it,but after the Raptors won, especially in Golden State, I really said like how Raptors are really good and how they stepped up their game and I told them that Golden State's a good team, but Raptors really proved it this year.

AMT: What can I say to that? Can we talk a little bit more. You guys are talking about the infrastructure then. When you talk about the corporations stepping up, you're talking about the ability to have more kids playing and take more things forward. What do you want to see?

RB: You know I think we're starting to see it. I think during the playoffs you know, you're seeing sponsors you're seeing commercials you know come on from companies that you know we'd never seen really before. So I think you're starting to see it. But you know the more corporations get involved the more sponsorship there are is out there for clubs you know for national team for example as well. I think is the more you can drive the sport the more can proliferate through the country. Right. The more program there can be for little girls little boys you know especially the girls side of the game. This game is growing we've got women stars now playing in the WNBA. I mean this situation is ripe you know for sponsors to jump in to support and grow grow our game more games more camps more programs. Right? And I think the visibility is very important. Right. Well we are a visual people. You put things on TV you put them on social media. People can see that they're drawn to that. And I think our our country's a month is. It's a multicultural melting pot. Right. And so you know when you when you look at this particular sport in the NBA I mean there are over 200 countries in the world the NBA is being shown. So as these athletes are coming into our country they're already coming in with a knowledge of this game. They already have a recognition of some of the stars and everything that's going on and I think with the Raptors winning now clearly there's a magnifying glass right on this particular country and these particular children and these particular athletes and how much this country embraces this game. And we've had tremendous examples even within our own national teams of and I can remember an athlete I won't share his name but you know his father was an Olympic swimmer. Right. And Pierre Trudeau in the 70s gave him passage to come and be a Canadian resident. Right. And his son many years later who eventually was able to come to Canada through through immigrate to Canada loved basketball. He had no rims where he was in Africa and he was like shooting rocks and pieces of paper into a trash can, okay and then he comes to Canada and he starts getting involved in programs and eventually ended up on our national team and won a World Championship with our team in 2017. Right? I think there's going to be more and more stories like this and more and more people coming from other nations that love this game and if I know anything about corporations right now, they're very interested in newcomers, very interested in diversity and I think it's right here in this sport and I'm really hoping as I said that corporations will jump on board.

AMT: Mark you're nodding your head.

MP: Well it's funny because I went to a, I was telling Rowan, I went to a charity golf tournament the very next day after the Raptors won the championship and there was quite a few corporations there who I don't think they normally follow the Raptors like that. And as we're golfing I mean a lot of them actually approach me because they know I coach and or the level I've coached at and what it takes to get some of these kids the way they need to go like like you know Rohan son my son. And you know they were talking to they said well what more do we need. What more do we need so that this can continue so that we can have this this sustainability and this longevity. And you know I straight up said that you know we need guys like you guys to put some money into more courts to put some money into some of those facilities that we travelled from Toronto with our kids and vans to go to some of these facilities in the U.S. where you know kids have the opportunity because there is like ten courts under one roof.

AMT: And you don't have that here?

MP: Don't have that here.

AMT: So where is your son right now.

MP: My son is at ten bonaventure and you know he has one last year and then he's going to try to do his thing as well. So he's doing quite well.

AMT: And he's in the States?

MP: He's in the U.S. Yeah, he's playing Division 1.

AMT: OK. And so really if you want to keep going through the system in school, you have to go to the States or you don't have to go to the States? You've got the infrastructure here, but you don't have enough of the infrastructure is what you're saying.

MP: We're getting it here because I mean there's a lot of things happening. We've gone down there, we've seen what's happening. We've taken note and it's been brought back here and I think there's a lot of role models and there's a lot of people who kind of understand it now that we could kind of coach and mentor guys like this young man right here your van took to try to kind of you know show them the way that rg has taken the same way that Jamal Murray and the Wiggins And you know you know the other players that have made it Tristan and so on. So you can make it from here because we now know. But I mean I think a large part of it is the States have been doing it for a long time and they have a formula that we kind of figured out.

RB: I think realistically, much like in hockey, we clearly have been the dominant nation and so what you will see is you'll see athletes coming from all over the world to come and play in the minor systems here. Right? Because the best of the best are here. And so that's what you're seeing in United States and basketball right the best of the best out there. And so are athletes quite often are going down there to play and to learn and to grow. But you know we can go in there immerse take what we need and come back here and grow and we can make it right from here. Our youth sports teams have kids going to the pros and everything else and I just share one more thing I'd be remiss if I share this. I think that Raptors has kind of been taken on as Canada's team. Right. You know the whole country drastic parks all over the place. But but but Canada's actual team our Canada our Olympic basketball team was gonna be taking the floor you know this summer and I think that you know we're excited to know that we're gonna have athletes coming from all over this country that are gonna be representing the red and white. And I'm really hoping to see some of the overflow of the fan support in the coming over hopefully into Canada Bazemore hopefully eventually corporate support you know as well because you know our boys and our girls are going to need our country behind them.

AMT: It's a real moment to really move forward. Jovan, how much time do you spend? What's your day like when you're because you're really working at this.

JM: I usually wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, I ask Poyser if I can go get some shots up at lunch, in the morning, whenever the gym's open, he always lets me go shoot around. I go with my teammates of course, sometimes by myself, with my brother then after school, not breakfast, my bad. After school I go home, homework, anything with my family a little bit then back outside or if I have any open gyms that I could find I always go put in some shots and get my shot tight for games and practices and everything.

AMT: So you're always playing? You're always out there.

RB: That's the recipe.

AMT: What's that great line about 10,000 hours.

RB: Oh yes, absolutely.

AMT: And so you see this changing a lot of things now? Just this this euphoria actually just gets some, gets a domino effect.

RB: Absolutely. Our hope is that you know it becomes easier. You know it becomes easier to access facilities as Mark was sharing you know. It becomes easier to access the ability to travel funding for travel for the kids to play and all of that. I think hopefully this will impact you know obviously participation more clubs right more opportunity when you have more participation more people you need more teams. Right. And so we're gonna need more volunteers. Right. And and if you're out there and you're watching and you're caught up in it and you're excited you might want to get out there and help some of the young kids to to play and you know it doesn't matter if you have great knowledge you know it's to help the kids when they're young. Right. They just need a positive role model. Right. That's going to be there helping them to get out get active. Have fun right and enjoy themselves. We don't need to be pressuring them to win at five years old and six years old. Right. They need to be having fun with somebody that cares and is going to show up each time and you're hoping that that's another thing that can come out of a win like this.

AMT: And the projections are for two million people to be at the parade and the rally today. So a lot of people were at. I was out just around 6 o'clock this morning. There were already people on the route. There were people who left home at 3 o'clock in the morning to make sure they got a seat and a seat along the route. Little kids there was you heard one family they actually booked a hotel so that the kids could be right there.

MP: Oh yeah.

AMT: They were there before the barriers. They were pushing them back to put the barriers in.

MP: I took the GO train in and 90 percent of the people on the GO train and this was at 5:30 this morning.

RB: Raptors gear.

MP: Raptors gear everyone. I had goose bumps because I'm like man they're supporting this thing that we've been a part of forever.

AMT: And you know I met some young women who who said they played basketball when they were younger, but of course they don't anymore. So maybe those young women too will end up playing longer and they'll see a possible career.

RB: You know I think the other thing too is like again, the minority of players are going to make it to the highest level. It's just right. I think there are 400, maybe 450 players in the NBA, right. There's 30 million people playing basketball in China alone. Right? Like it's very small amount. But you know I was speaking to some corporations this past week and when I heard them talk about leadership and I heard them talk about some of the things that they saw on the court with the Raptors, you know like staying even keeled, you know executing in the moment, right. Taking the punch and coming back bringing your best effort the next time right. These for me, these are like Canadian values right, that I'm seeing on the court and you know I think it's great that young kids who might not understand how to capture that in words they could actually just see it you know in action right. And if they grew up thinking wow this is what life is like, sometimes you take a punch, but you get back up. You know and you don't get too excited when you're doing, well you stay focused, you stay in the moment, you keep going. I think there's tremendous lessons

AMT: Lots to learn. Lots to learn. I'm going to let you guys go. I know you want to get to the parade route. Thank you for coming in.

MP: Thank you for having us.

JM: Thank you.

AMT: That is Rowan Barrett, R.J. Barrett's dad. We'll start there. Former basketball player, also General Manager of Canada's senior men's national basketball team. Marc Poyser, a teacher at Jon English Middle School and basketball coach in Toronto. And Jovan Milicevic, 14, plays basketball in Toronto. All with me in our Toronto studio. The news is next and then we're back. Stay with us. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Turn away from social media and join 'Team Human,' urges author

Guest: Douglas Rushkoff

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, we've been digging into the archives and pulling out some of my most memorable or maybe surprising interviews from the past 17 seasons on The Current. There was one voice we couldn't leave out.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound of pig chomping]

AMT: Yeah, that's Esther, Esther the Wonder Pig, chomping on a row of Oreo cookies. We are revisiting the story of Esther and her human companions who welcomed suppose a teacup piglet into their home only to watch her grow into a 300 kilogram SOW. We'll tell you more in half an hour. But first, the call to join Team Human.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Move over Google, there's another verb in town. College students across the country are "Facebook-ing" their classmates.

VOICE 2: When we first launched we were hoping for you know maybe 400-500 people. Who knows where we're going next. We're going to launch a bunch of applications, which should keep people coming back to the site and maybe can make something cool.

VOICE 3: And we have so much data about what people are doing on the site and how people are using it that it just makes it so that we can really enhance the experience and target stuff towards those people in ways that no one else has really been able to do before.

VOICE 4: Forget blogging and MySpace, if you really want to stay connected, there is a new service and supposedly it is the next big thing. It's called Twitter.

VOICE 5: Twitter lets people share moments of their lives whenever they want, be they momentous occasions or mundane ones.

VOICE 6: I'm really really excited about what technologies like this can do for government and getting more of the citizens engaged into public action and public policy.

AMT: The origin stories of two social media behemoths Facebook and Twitter in the words of their founders and a reminder that in their early days those social networks were discussed with lofty ideals such as human connection and expression. Now that those same social networks have remade our world much of that idealism has given way to concerns about monetizing our personal data and subverting our democracy. According to the writer and digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff something fundamentally anti human has been going on as those technologies have flourished and he's calling for people to find a new way to connect by joining together in something he's calling, Team Human. That's the title of Douglas Rushkoff's latest book and he's with me in our New York City studio. Hello.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Hey, good to be with you.

AMT: Nice to have you with us. What were you thinking as you listened to the founders of Facebook and Twitter in their youth talking about the idea behind those social media platforms?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: I mean I guess what what it brought to mind for me is that the moment that each of them was forced to pivot away from whatever their grand idea was for enhancing as Zuckerberg put it very enhancing humanity to enhancing the value of their stock where their investors said to them Look making a few billion dollars a year is not adequate. We need to earn 100 times or a thousand times what we put into this company and the only way you can do that is by turning away from what ever service you're offering people and instead extract data and value from people. And it was that reversal where technology became less something that people use to make their lives better. And rather something that uses people to make money for companies that that was really the the this the turning point I guess and it happened for each one of these companies sort of at different moments, but it's the same basic shape.

AMT: You were watching as the Internet and social media platforms took shape. At the time what did you see as the promise of the technology?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Gosh, from the late 80s and early 90s I felt that the real promise was the Internet changed the way people perceived the world. You know those of us raised on television and radio for the most part we understood media as this thing that was broadcast to us. And so the world seemed like a space that we inhabit but that we can't really change. You know you turn on your TV and you see the program. What the Internet did particularly for it for those of us who you know were exposed to the early kind of programmy the Internet, the Internet and computers helped us see ourselves as the people making the content. We saw the world becoming much more of what we called an open source proposition that you wouldn't just hack computers but you could hack the economy you could hack social institutions that we would become the programmers of a new world. And that was that was an exciting and exciting idea. And the other big one was that human beings were connecting up to one another as we never could before. There was a guy named James Lovelock came up with something called the Gaia hypothesis, which it's a model of of the Earth as a single big kind of living organism. And that was really inspiring to those of us who felt like we were wiring up all the human brains into one big you know collective brain for this whole planet.

AMT: So what are some of the worst examples for how technology which might have been a force for human connection has actually ended up repressing us?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Gosh, I mean, there's so many. It's really hard to pick.

AMT: The worst of the worst.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: The worst of the worst, I would say, is the more subtle effects of all of this surveillance and data- tracking and consumer profiling. So when you experience something like Facebook, say, you know and we all understand that Facebook is not there to help us make friends with one another that Facebook is there to monetize the data we leave behind. But the way they do it is really pernicious. What they really do is take data that we leave behind. They take information from our past and use it to put us in a statistical bucket. So they might know with say 80 percent accuracy that I'm going to go on a diet in the next month. And what will they do then? Well then my news feed will start to fill up with ads about dieting or ads about my health or news stories about what happens if you eat too much fat or too much starch. And what they're doing is not trying to sell me a particular group of products. What they're trying to do is to take the 20 per cent of people who were going to exercise some true human autonomy and engage in an anomalous new behaviour and shrink that 20 percent down to 10 percent or 5 percent to 2 to quite literally attempt to autotune human behaviour to get us to behave more consistently with those profiles in order to make us more machine-like and that's really why I call these networks anti-human.

AMT: Well and this goes right in line with something I was talking to Jim Balsillie about just a couple weeks ago, one of the co-founders of Research In Motion. We were talking about the role of social media and algorithms in the democratic process. I want you to hear what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's unambiguous what's happening in the data driven economy and many dimensions and we've seen what's happened in you know in the Brexit vote and the Trump elections and Eastern European and how they push extreme views because they want to capture your eyeballs and then and then they sell that to the highest bidder and then they can they have other tools to change your behaviour and influence your behaviour. And so they sell that influence to whoever will pay the most. And you know there are certain things we don't sell in this country. And I would say you know personal autonomy certainly in a non-transparent fashion. Certainly during election, it should not be for sale.

AMT: So Douglas Rushkoff how concerned are you about how technology and social media affect us not only as consumers but as citizens of democracies?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Oh very much. I mean on the one hand right there there's the argument about well who are we selling these technologies and abilities to. And as I look at it it doesn't even matter who we sell them to, that the technologies and the techniques are themselves intrinsically not just amoral but but immoral. Right. The the way technologies can most easily influence human behaviour is by reducing us to a a fight or flight primal reptilian state. The the higher faculties, our rationality and even our our empathy and compassion. Those are much harder to manipulate. So what behavioural designers do is they try to circumvent the front brain and reach right into the brain stem where that scared little reptile is just thinking, you know, "fight or flight, pray or eat or be eaten." That's not going to engender the kind of body politic that can make intelligent, informed decisions. Democracy really is incompatible with a nation of people who are living in a reptilian brain mode.

AMT: I talked to Melinda Gates, the philanthropist, former general manager of Microsoft, concerned about how few women are working in tech and in A.I. in particular. Listen to her.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We are basically baking bias into our system. And if you take just one area which is artificial intelligence into 2025, it's going to be a $400 billion industry. When I already think of how A.I. is working on our behalf or not as a society and you start to say hey less than 12 percent of researchers are females in A.I., to me that's a problem.

AMT: What do you think of what she says?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Well I mean it's not just females it's also, you know people of colour, people with with different socioeconomic status.

AMT: People who don't live in Silicon Valley.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Right, for example. The almost more pernicious thing about A.I. and machine intelligence is that because it's happening on machines people think of it as somehow pure or less biased. So you know in the U.S. judges use a proprietary algorithm you know a machine learning algorithm to determine prison sentences of the convicted criminals and. The information that the algorithm uses to determine people's prison sentences or things like. Will they be caught. What's the likelihood of them being caught again for a crime and the likelihood of them being caught again for a crime is directly proportional to their race because black people are arrested more for crimes than white people. So they end up with racism embedded in the algorithm. And then there's a feedback loop. So now now they're gonna get prosecuted more as well. And we're not allowed to know how those decisions are being made because they're within black box technologies, so they're market secrets.

AMT: You say in the book that the "uncanny valley is our friend." What are you referring to?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: What I'm trying to do in the book largely is make an argument for humans. You know, that human beings are special and that the folks, and many of them from Silicon Valley, really want us to pass along the evolutionary torch to our computer successors that human beings who really are only valuable insofar as we can keep the lights on for the machines and once A.I. really surpasses us. You know we should humbly pass into the background and I'm making arguments that no human beings are are weird and special. The uncanny valley is the experience that people have when they're looking at a simulation that's very very much like a human but not quite there. In some in some of the earlier computer animated movies they would show characters for people and they would feel uncomfortable looking at human characters that's why they ended up coming up with the movie Toy Story because now you could animate things that are not human. So when you look at a doll being animated it doesn't do that same it doesn't give you that weird experience of vertigo. And what I'm arguing is that that experience of vertigo. That's how you know that's an instinctual sense that something is not right that weird moment in a computer game or looking at a simulation or interacting with an A.I.. It's an imbalance and I think the more we can distinguish between that feeling of vertigo that rush that you can get throwing on virtual reality goggles and seeing some simulation and what happens when you just look in someone else's eyes or hold a baby and have those much more. And I don't mean this in an anti computer way, but much more organic human experience you realize Oh I see that there's a difference between these simulated effects and genuine awe, genuine rapport, genuine human experience.

AMT: Right in humanity. You know it's interesting because you have made the point that the very people who create these things are the ones who are paranoid. They're the ones who want to know where they should put their bunkers.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: I know it is, it is funny. I mean and yeah I did this talk or what I thought was going to be a talk for some you know hedge fund type people and it turned out it was just five billionaires who were peppering me with questions about where to put their bunkers and how to maintain control of their security force after the apocalypse and thinking my God if these are the wealthiest people on the planet and they're just looking for an escape route I mean, well what about the rest of us? And I really I understood that these that these guys and yes they were all guys that get to. Do you agree with Melinda on that that these guys are just trying to figure out "how can I how can I earn enough money to insulate myself from the reality I'm creating by earning my money in this way. You know these are people that are are. they don't let their kids use computers they send them off to you know Waldorf and Rudolf Steiner schools and live out in the organic you know Wi-Fi free zones of California. You know while they make the devices and pollution and and mind control apparatus for the rest of us and that should make us pause you would think it certainly made me pause and that's why I'm making this call to you know remember you're on Team human. You know that we are a collective we are a a social collaborative being that that evolution is a is a team sport it's not survival of the fittest individual. But what's the reaction when you make that point. You know many of them agree and they're. But they want to sort of have their cake and eat it too. Or they're hoping on some for some future generation to figure out how to get us out of this mess. And finally and it is interesting. And finally you know 10 20 years after I started writing about. The sort of the wrong direction. I'm finally being invited to engage with you know world leaders with you know with billionaires who kind of see the error of their ways. It's just it's too late. You know once you've got you know 100 or 200 billion dollars sitting in a fund and you think OK now I'm going to somehow pump this money back into the world in a way and undo the damage I created in the first place. You know when Mark Zuckerberg says I'm going to give back 95 percent of my money to the world, it's like dude you took too much to begin with. You can't just shove it back in there.

AMT: Well you know I mean it's kind of like King Midas, isn't it? The old story because everything you touch. Go ahead, try to live with that now. Right? Like it's what have you done? Yeah. So what are some key actions, the things people can do, to join Team human as you call it and start changing things?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: There's a bunch. I mean economically we can move towards more worker-owned businesses, what we call platform cooperatives. So rather than looking at the kind of the socialist model of how do we redistribute the spoils of capitalism after the fact we start looking at well what is it like if the workers own the company and we see some examples of that some old ones you know like you know whether it's Ace Hardware and and Associated Press are our great old co-ops or newer ones like the mantra gone co-ops or small companies you know throughout throughout America most simply it's a matter of people re-establishing basic social bonds with one another you know recognizing their local reality. You know when I when I talk to kids I tell them I'm kids I mean college students you know to learn how to make eye contact look into other people's eyes. Know the most important thing we need to do really on an individual level is recalibrate our systems towards bonding with other human beings. I feel that establishing basic rapport with other people is really a prerequisite to solidarity. It's a prerequisite to reclaiming our power. And that's just a matter of sitting with people and families I tell them. What about taking taking Sabbath take one day a week where you're disconnected from you know not just your technology and your smartphones but from buying and selling. You kind of extract yourself from consumer culture in order to reacquaint ourselves with our essential value and sanctity. You know we need to look at ourselves as having value other than utility value.

AMT: So you know you do call for a renaissance. What role could technology and social media play in the future you envision then?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: The current social media platforms may, I hate to say it they may not be able to play a role in that because they're so far gone. They're so dark. There's just such that the habits that have been anchored in them. So I do think social media can play a role but I think it will be alternative social networks. You know what it takes to build a Facebook or a Twitter or something today is much much much less than what it took 10 years ago when these platforms were developed.

AMT: Because you know like there are a lot of marginalized people who connect. There are people, like there are good connections that you know tools for organizing, tools for meeting like minded people, but you think that'll be in an alternative social media?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: I mean ultimately yeah and partly because it's so easy to do. And certainly in places like Africa, people are using Facebook in positive ways. You can if you're conscious about it and you're conscious of how you're gonna use Twitter or Facebook you can certainly use it, however compromised it may be as a platform. Yeah, for organizing, but then it's a matter of once you're organized be local. I mean I think we have to reaffy the power of our local connections our local governments and and see and see those as valid.

AMT: You say that we have to be willing to see our adversaries as if they are human. How difficult is that to do in the world we're living in right now?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: It's really hard because they're framed in such weird ways. It's funny the theme of the book you when I put it on the back covers find the others and I got that quote from from Timothy Leary who was arguing you know back in the kind of psychedelic 60s that the first thing you should do when you have these great insights is find the other people who've had those insights so that you can forge you know solidarity with them. And I mean find the others know find the human being in who you think is the other you know if you can't see the human being in the person wearing that that Make America Great Again hat then how do you expect that person to see the human being in the Mexican immigrant in the cage or across that that wall you know that that it does start with us and they are human beings they're just responding to the their fight or flight messaging of these intentionally addictive minute manipulative platforms they're just responding the other way to all of the fear that that's being pumped into their line of sight.

AMT: Which gets us back to what you said about people having to connect look each other in the eye. Talk to me kind of thing.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Yeah. And it's so powerful but so undervalued right now. You know I've been teaching at a public school public university in New York for the last five years and over those 10 semesters each semester I get more notes on the first day of class from students notes from their doctor saying "Please excuse Johnny from class participation and presentations" because you know Johnny has a social anxiety and I can't help but think because this number is going up every semester. What happened in kindergarten to 12th grade? Why was this kid put on a on an iPad? You know what happened to the teacher in the room and kids getting up and doing show and tell? The thing that we need to teach in real world embodied classrooms is that social engagement is that social behaviour but I feel like we've surrendered education to really to job preparation that our education should not be a way for corporations to externalize the cost of worker training. It should be for the opposite to grow intelligent you know open minded critical thinking human beings and to the extent that we relinquish that responsibility and and surrender education to these sort of utilitarian understanding of people that's understanding people the way we understand machines we're not competing with them they do that stuff. We do something else we bring meaning to existence and if we lose sight of that and I know it sounds almost religious but if we lose sight of that then the folks at Google are right. You know then we should just build a brain for you know to harvest human data and and continue on without us.

AMT: Well right now we're the humans and we can think and you just made us think more, so thank you.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Thank you.

AMT: Douglas Rushkoff he is a digital theorist. His latest book is called Team Human. He was in our New York City studio. Let us know what you think. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us, coming up of all the topics I have covered while hosting The Current, Esther the Wonder Pig may be the most surprising. In our next half hour, we will revisit the story of Esther, snorts and all. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

[Music: Theme]

Anna Maria Tremonti's most memorable interviews: Esther the Wonder Pig

Guest: Steve Jenkins, Derek Walter

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. This next story is about a pig with a name and a following. At 300 kilos, that is more than 660 pounds, Esther the Wonder Pig takes up a room and her online presence is pretty hefty too. At last count, she had more than 61,000 followers on Twitter. All generated from her home base in Campbellville, Ontario. Esther the Wonder Pig has changed the lives of people living near and far. Of course we know that now, but a couple of years ago not going to lie, when producer Liz Hoath said we're going to do an interview with these two guys about a pig called Esther, I wasn't sure where that was going to go. By the end of it, it went straight to my heart. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Pig grunts]

VOICE 1: Hi, Miss Pig.

[Sound: Pig grunts]

VOICE 1: Are you having a good day? Okay so far?

[Sound: Pig grunts]

AMT: Say hello to Esther. That's her, yes, grunting; slowly, reluctantly waking up from her nap. It’s a warm day, and even warmer in the barn. And Esther, a truly enormous pig, is sprawled on a bed of hay. This is from Campbellville, Ontario where we're getting this sound; outside the barn, goats and sheep are grazing, piglets are frolicking. Not Esther.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Pig grunts]

VOICE 1: Esther got up from her king bed in the house at around 9:00, came out and had breakfast, mulled around for a bit in the barn demanding more breakfast. [chuckles] And then she's put it down in the barn for a morning nap.

[Sound: Pig grunts]

AMT: Okay, she's really not a person, you may be wondering, but Esther is no ordinary pig. For one, there is the king sized bed in the house. Then, there is her celebrity-sized social media following. When her owners- they prefer to be called parents- Steven Jenkins and Derek Walter, first took Esther in, they didn't see any of this coming. They met Esther when she could fit into the palm of a hand, and they were told that Esther would be a micropig: getting no bigger than the size of a medium-sized dog. Today, she weighs in at nearly 300 kilos, or about 650 pounds. Which brings us back to rousing Esther from her nap.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: wrapper crinkling]

VOICE 1: The magic noise around the farm, you can get anybody's attention. Oreos, yes, secret weapon. What's this? Come see. Oh, come on, let's go! Let's go for a walk, Miss Pig. You want some of this?

[Sound: Pig crunching loudly]

VOICE 1: Oh, she loves her Oreos.

[Sound: Pig crunching loudly]

VOICE 1: You want to get up and go for a walk? Come on, let's go for a walk.

[Sound: Pig crunching loudly]

VOICE 1: Pigs are so smart, like, she's outweighing all of her things now. She's like, well, it's kind of humid out and it's cool here in the barn… and I only saw one row of cookies there in the bag, so it's not as big of a reward. Okay, come on Miss Pig, let's go! They're always thinking.

AMT: Well okay, she's making a pig of herself!

[Sound: All laughing]

AMT: Well, you can see Esther, and Esther with all of her charm on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter have written a book about their experience raising Esther, Esther The Wonder Pig is the name of the book: Changing the World one Heart at a Time. And Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter are with me in our Toronto studio, welcome.

STEVE JENKINS: Thank you so much for having us today.

AMT: She loves those Oreos

DEREK WALTER: Sure does. There's not a whole lot she doesn't like, to be honest. [laughs]

AMT: And you call her Miss Pig.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah, we have lots of pet names for Esther: Bubba is a popular one…

STEVE JENKINS: Monkey.

DEREK WALTER: Monkey Lips is another one.

[Sound: All laughing]

STEVE JENKINS: She's got these little lips that she pries the food away from you, but yeah, we've got lots of pet names.

AMT: And she's got that cute snout.

DEREK WALTER: Oh, she does, yeah. It's about the size of a tea saucer, it's not that little.

[Sound: All laughing]

AMT: We have a lot to talk about, but Steve, you better tell us the story about how Esther came into your lives.

STEVE JENKINS: Yes, it was a message online: Facebook of all places, actually, from a friend I had gone to school with and hadn't spoken to in years and years and years but remembered me as being an animal lover. So she wrote me and said she had this mini pig, and it wasn't getting along with her dogs, and she had just had babies, and needed to find it a new home and asked if I was interested. So I am a bit of a sucker and was immediately intrigued, and then she planted the seed very shortly after that saying somebody else wanted her, so I had to decide right away. And I hadn't had a chance to discuss it with Derek, but panicked and agreed to meet her the following morning. So it was about maybe 12 hours from initial message to picking up Esther at my office, offsite so Derek didn't see her.

DEREK WALTER: [laughs]

AMT: Okay, she had this pig. She had a micropig, right?

STEVE JENKINS: So we were told, yeah.

AMT: What's a micropig?

STEVE JENKINS: Well, they're made up, to be totally honest.

AMT: [laughs]

STEVE JENKINS: They don't exist, so-- But we were told Esther would be about 70 pounds, so this thing that people refer to as micropigs are minipigs is a breed called Juliana pig, which grows to about a hundred pounds or so; and then there's the more common pot-bellied pig, which I think a lot of people associate with pets. They're a little bigger, about 250 pounds. And then there's Esther who's, as you said, 650 pounds. So we got taken for a bit of a ride.

AMT: Regular old farm pig.

STEVE JENKINS: Regular old farm pig is what she turned out to be.

AMT: So Derek, you weren't so sure about this. How did you react to the initial presence of Esther in your home?

DEREK WALTER: Well, he tried to butter me up. He made sure that the stage was set when I got home; he made sure that dinner was made and a glass of wine was going and candles were lit.

STEVE JENKINS: [laughs]

AMT: So right away you knew something was up.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah, that was-- yeah, my stink alarm was going off for sure. [laughs] So my initial reaction: my hands were full, I had my rabbit carrier in one hand in my dress clothes in another hand- I'm a professional magician, or I was at one time. Yeah, I immediately recognised the office door was closed and it's never closed. And our two dogs were poised sitting outside the door looking in. And I just immediately flew down the hallway and into the office and there she was. And I remember just painting the house in profanity. You know, like, I was bouncing around because about eight months previous he brought home Delores, a cat.

AMT: And so you already had two dogs and Dolores, already.

STEVE JENKINS: Two cats.

DEREK WALTER: We already had a cat.

AMT: And two cats, right, okay. Two dogs, two cats.

DEREK WALTER: A roommate, and the roommate also had a cat as well, so it was a busy house.

STEVE JENKINS: It was in a small, thousand-square foot bungalow in Georgetown.

AMT: And then he brings home a piglet with nail polish on it.

DEREK WALTER: Yes.

STEVE JENKINS: Oh my god, she looked terrible.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, she-

STEVE JENKINS: She was so sad. When I first saw her, her ears were all sunburned and she was, like you said, you could hold her in the palm of your hand. So I mean, she was-- she just looked very sad. I mean, I felt for her the minute I saw her. And of course I was terrified that if I said no, I was going to take her, what would happen.

DEREK WALTER: And we were told that she was a six months old spayed micropig.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

AMT: What, was it Derek? When did you fall in love with her?

DEREK WALTER: It did not take long. I mean, she's got magnetic energy like that just draws you in real close. She, you know, I'd like to think it was about a week, because I wouldn't allow even entertain the thought of naming her. She didn't have a name.

STEVE JENKINS: It was Kijiji for a few weeks.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, I named her Kijiji, that's what I called her.

[Sound: All laughing]

AMT: As in, that's where you're going.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah, that's where we need to start posting an ad. So I had come up with the idea that we would, you know, transition her out of our house and into another house. But it didn't take very long at all, and I was like, come here, you know, come, come come come.

AMT: So what were the early days of pig ownership like? Pig parenthood like?

STEVE JENKINS: It was kind of weird, right, I mean the first little bit, that whole, I guess they call it the honeymoon phase, right, when you first got her, it was all great, it was all amazing. And it wasn't until we went to the vet, of course, that first seed of, oh no, what have we done kind of got planted, because Esther has a cropped tail. So her tail is only about an inch and a half long, and the vet said to us that's a sign that she was actually a commercial pig and from a commercial farm. And that was the first, you know, we might have a potential issue here, but he immediately said if she is six months old and all this other stuff you're telling me is true, she won't be as big as we think.

AMT: Maybe she's a runt.

STEVE JENKINS: Exactly, right. But he immediately told me there's no way she'll be 70 pounds. He said 250 if you're lucky, probably bigger.

AMT: Derek wasn't in that conversation, was he?

BOTH: No.

AMT: Just checking.

STEVE JENKINS: No, he wasn't. So I censored it a little bit and went home and explained everything to Derek about the new 250 pound maximum weight. [laughs] And went from there. So I mean, we kept holding on to this she'll be smaller than we think thing, and then litter became the biggest problem with training her. So the first few months were okay, we had her pretty good. But she got to a certain size.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, we were living with the fairy tale that she was going to remain smaller than our biggest dog.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

DEREK WALTER: And so yeah, we started litter training her, because pigs are very smart and they'll go to the same place, and so we started to litter train her. And she started growing at a pace that was, you know…

STEVE JENKINS: Like a pound a day.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, she started growing real fast and outgrew our various litter box stages till the very end…

AMT: [laughing]

DEREK WALTER: When the litter box…

STEVE JENKINS: What was the last one, a kiddie pool?

DEREK WALTER: It was like the size of the couch and it was a kiddie pool and she had it all down. She would get down, she would go into the litter box and do her business. But as she got so big, her hind end is, she's working supposed to be, but she's peeing outside of the litter box then. So once we realize that yes, we indeed did have a big girl on our hands, that we took the litter box away and we started to train her outside.

AMT: Where are you living at this point?

DEREK WALTER: So we're--

AMT: You're in a regular place, regular house.

DEREK WALTER: Regular town in the suburbs, I mean, we had a little bungalow in a subdivision. You know, we had a fifty by hundred foot lot. Neighbours on all four sides, you knew what the neighbours were doing.

AMT: And okay, so you had a couple more challenges. What else was going on? Because it wasn't all fun.

AMT: And that's to the farm that we just heard at the beginning, where you've gone to.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah.

AMT: There other animals there, too.

STEVE JENKINS: That's right.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah. So I guess at first, at that point, it wasn't a farm, that was such a farfetched dream. You know, it was just we need to get out of town and into the country. We were just going to carry on doing what we were doing, but right around that time just before Christmas, we'd started the Facebook page. So it was only a few weeks old at that point, but it went crazy and within 80 days of starting that page it hit 100,000 followers. And it was around then that we had started looking at property and came back to the page and said, you know what, you know, we're looking at farms and thinking we might open a sanctuary. What do you guys think? And the page responded unbelievably positively. So we jumped and we started a crowdfunding campaign and went out and found this farm in Campbellville. It was unreal, unbelievable.

AMT: So when we talk about Esther changing lives, she's changed your lives, as well. What is it about this pig? She keeps growing.

BOTH: Yes.

AMT: She's clearly not a micropig.

BOTH: Yes.

AMT: She's snuffling through your house, she's doing all-- and yet, you just, like, you get a new house, you get a farm. Like, you just keep on going. What is it about her?

STEVE JENKINS: She's like a four legged person. I mean, she's got so much character and personality, and she's so clever and so sensitive and funny. I think it's, I think that's the thing I find with Esther the most, I mean, she makes me laugh to this day on a daily basis. She can't talk to you, but you can almost read exactly what she's saying just by her facial expression or the noises that she makes. And she's so, like Derek said, magnetic, I guess, is the right word for her. She just draws you in when you meet her. And she likes certain people but doesn't like others.

AMT: Oh, tell me more about that.

STEVE JENKINS: Hilarious. Well, one of our friends, he'd come to the house all the time. Esther's met him God knows how many times. And it's better now, but there was a while there in Georgetown that anytime this friend of ours came to the house, she would chase him round and round and round. He could have arrived with a group of four people, the other four were totally fine. Him? Nothing to do with. Don't know why, don't know what the reason was for it, but we always thought it was hilarious.

STEVE JENKINS: Well they are, and that's-- say, when you get to know a pig, that's what was so life-changing, I think, for us, you know, was to see these animals that we thought on such a different level. And then to actually get one in our house. And I mean, just so you know where we were at, I mean, even-- when she first arrived home we were meat eaters. You know, big time, and I remember Derek saying to me one of the early days, you know, I don't think I can eat bacon anymore. I'm like, oh Derek, don't be ridiculous, she's a different kind of pig. You know, like I had that kind of mindset. And then all of a sudden to find out that she was that pig, you know, the bacon pig or the pork chop pig, and to see her have so much affection. And like I said, such this larger than life personality, and then to think of where she would have been if she wasn't with us. You know, that was the most devastating thing. And that's the big reason we kept her, you know, because where was she going to go?

DEREK WALTER: We only had one of two possibilities. It was a sanctuary, a farm sanctuary, and all of the farm sanctuaries locally to us are filled beyond belief. You know, there's no more room at the inn. And then the next best thing is, you know, the inevitable, which is slaughter. You know, that's-- anybody would want to buy her for that reason.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

DEREK WALTER: And those are the only two reasons that we were presented, you know, the only two things that we were presented with.

STEVE JENKINS: Those were our options.

AMT: What do you say to those people who go, she's a pig and she's a commercial pig.

DEREK WALTER: You've never met her.

STEVE JENKINS: You've never met a pig, you know, because we thought the same thing until we met her. You know, I was always one of those people that if anybody laid a finger on my dog, you know what I mean, you would have hell to pay. And you know, it's I think a lot of people are like that. They're fiercely protective of their pets and their companion animals. Launching campaigns about the dolphins and the dog meat festival, and all while enjoying their steak and their pork chop. I really think it's only because you don't know them. And if you, the way we learned from Esther and getting to know her, and like I said, at the same time having her in front of us and then having to think in the back of our mind where she would have been if she wasn't with us, was all the motivation that we ever needed to change our lifestyle entirely. And I think that's what's happening online with people, is that she's helping them connect to an animal that we've always discounted. I think we all look the other way when that truck goes by on the highway and we all want to ignore what's happening, and she made it impossible for us to ignore.

AMT: If you missed our conversation in our last half hour you want to find it on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. They've been talking about life with Esther, a pig, which they were told would grow no bigger than a dog. Well, Esther is not a micro-pig, as there’s no such thing. She is now about 650 pounds. Raising Esther changed everything for Steve and Derek. They have quit their jobs. They own a farm now in Campbellville, Ontario, an hour outside of Toronto, and they take in other animals at the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary. So I'm going to continue. Steve Jenkins, tell me more about what you do at the farm and the animals you take in.

DEREK WALTER: We have requests daily. I mean, the need is huge.

STEVE JENKINS: And from all over the world, right.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, from all over the world. It's not just—

STEVE JENKINS: It’s a funny situation. Because of social media, yeah, we get inundated with stuff from Asia, Mexico, the United States, Europe, all over the world.

AMT: What do people tell you?

STEVE JENKINS: I’ve got 600 pigs in Mexico that need a home. What can you do? [Laughs]

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah.

STEVE JENKINS: That’s insane.

DEREK WALTER: Or sometimes it's farmers, like, industrialized farmers that are having a change of heart. Like, where they go, I have this runt pig and I can't kill it. I know that—

STEVE JENKINS: I brought it into the house to raise it.

DEREK WALTER: I brought her into the house and I can't keep it anymore. And so we get a lot of people changing that way. So that's where some of the animals come from.

STEVE JENKINS: Which is the most mind-blowing thing too, when you think about it. These farmers that dedicate their lives to raising these animals-- and that's what they know, so, I mean, I'm not saying these farmers are bad people-- but then all of a sudden they bring one into their house that needs extra care and they rear it and raise it and then they see this personality and this character that, even them, somebody who's been working with these animals for so long, because they've never been in such close constant contact with them that they don't see those little flashes. And then when they do see them, like Derek says, they're calling a sanctuary saying, oh my god, I can't possibly do to this pig what I do to the hundreds or thousands of other pigs—

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, you know. Penelope. We can’t do that to Penelope.

AMT: And you've got another pig who lives on the farm called Bear.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah, big Bear.

AMT: Let’s listen to Bear.

SOUNDCLIP

[Bear softly snorting]

STEVE JENKINS: Hey, Bear Bear. Bear sure is a chatty boy.

[Bear softly snorting]

DEREK WALTER: So, Bear has severe arthritis in his hind legs, which means he can no longer walk. And what that means for the sanctuary is we give Bear all of his needs. We clean under him two to three times a day so he's not laying in wet or laying in his filth. He gets fresh straw. He’s got lights. He’s got a fan. He’s got a projector there so we can turn on TV and put something on so to keep his curiosity and interest alive.

[Bear softly snorting]

STEVE JENKINS: Yes. Good boy, good boy. What are you doing today? Hm?

DEREK WALTER: This is his masseuse that’s shown up today to give him his weekly massage.

VOICE: I just massage him because he uses his front end a lot more, right. So then he gets really tight in his shoulders and neck and then get circulation, I guess, more so into his back end. I just kind of do a little reflexion work, so I mobilize it a bit even though he can’t use it. But at least if it’s kind of moving a bit then I get some circulation in there too. Hey, buddy?

[Bear softly snorting]

VOICE: Hm? I know, I know.

[Bear softly snorting]

DEREK WALTER: Good boy, Bear. Enjoy your massage, buddy.

[Bear snorts]

STEVE JENKINS: Enjoy your massage. We’re out of here.

AMT: I love the snorting.

STEVE JENKINS: Their noises are hilarious.

AMT: Yeah.

STEVE JENKINS: And they’ve got so many. Another neat thing, they’ve got, I don’t even know what number it is, of different vocalisations pigs have, but they all mean something different. Like, we can hear Esther, we know which one of our animals, whether she's talking to one of the dogs and which dog she's talking to, based on the noises that she makes.

AMT: That’s incredible. And, you know, a lot of farmers listen to the radio as they do their jobs. If there's a pen of commercial pigs that catch this, they’re going to say, wait a minute, wait a minute.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah.

AMT: Wait a minute.

STEVE JENKINS: They’re telling a different tune. We want to listen to them.

AMT: Yeah, because you’re telling me how clever they are.

STEVE JENKINS: You won’t hear those noises coming out of a commercial pen, though.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah.

AMT: So how tough is it for these animals to find a sanctuary? Like, you’re taking some in.

STEVE JENKINS: It’s incredibly tough.

AMT: How much is going on like this?

DEREK WALTER: Well, so, we take—We’re in a unique position because of how much online presence Esther has and how much world presence she has, so we get you know a lot of people reaching out from different places that we might not even be in a position to help physically.

AMT: Yeah. But how do you fund it?

DEREK WALTER: We've created a charity called Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary and we just got the charity status just this past August. So it's completely funded, 100 per cent, through online donations.

AMT: It's interesting because you're talking about the people who contact you specifically about this, but you're also getting letters and you're getting contacted from people who are learning more just by watching what's going on with Esther. Tell me a little bit about...

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah. We’ve gotten so many different messages from people about different things. You know, we had one from a mother a little while ago that just said, I wanted to thank you for teaching my four-year-old son that it's okay to have two dads. You know, things like that, that you would never think we would have that type of an impact. Or a lady that wrote to say thank you for making my mom smile. You know, she's in hospital with dementia and I haven't seen her smile in months and we were watching Esther videos and she had a smile from ear to ear.

DEREK WALTER: And people come to Esther with problems too. They feel like it's a safe space to open up and they just pour it out.

STEVE JENKINS: It's interesting. You know, if a message comes through addressed to Derek and I, it's going to be a fairly standard message, but if you get a message that's addressed, you know, Dear Esther, it's where you usually have to sit down and brace yourself for something heavy, that somebody will be, I guess, opening up to Esther in a way that they don't feel they can do other people. It's very hard to explain.

AMT: How do you respond to that?

STEVE JENKINS: I usually sit and cry for a while. [Laughs]

DEREK WALTER: Yeah. We weep a lot.

STEVE JENKINS: And then we get it together and then we come up and formulate an answer. But that's been I think, for me anyway, the hardest part, is I find it incredibly overwhelming sometimes to think of the reach that she has and the level that she's impacting people, you know. It's on such a deeper and more meaningful way than either of us ever anticipated. And it's really scary, to be honest to step outside. You know, we're so busy all the time with the farm and with Esther and everything that's going on that rarely do we have a chance to step back and say, okay, what have we done? And what have we accomplished? When we do, I know for me, when I have those minutes to reflect on things, I scare myself, because so much has happened and so much is happening and I never in a million years thought that I would be controlling a Facebook page that reaches eight million people a week. Like, that just blows my mind that she's seen and known by that many people and that they care for her the way we do. Like, people are fiercely protective of her online and they're fiercely protective of Derek and I.

AMT: Do you consider yourself activists?

DEREK WALTER: Accidentally, yes, for sure.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah, didn't set out to do this or to achieve any of this. And we've done nothing but ride the wave as it's come. I think, to me, it's incredibly satisfying to know every time we get those messages from people that whether it be something about helping a member of their family smile or they've given up pork as a result of Esther or whatever it is, you know, those are huge major life changes for people and to think that we've had any part in influencing that decision is incredible.

AMT: Well, I was reading that some people have criticized you for not being strident enough. How do you…?

STEVE JENKINS: It drives us both crazy.

DEREK WALTER: We applaud small change. We realize that the end result we would love if nobody ever ate animals again. But we know that that's not going to happen overnight. And the same way that we were educated with pigs and finding out on our own and then other animals quickly followed suit. We were on our own journey.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah. Nobody ever told us to go faster.

DEREK WALTER: And to think that we would have snapped our fingers and be this different person, that's balderdash. There are mid-steps in between.

STEVE JENKINS: With Esther, right, it was because of Esther. It wasn't because we had somebody at our back saying you need to hurry up or, what I mean you're giving up pork and not cows? She helped us figure out all of that, right, and our first step for both of us was that's it, no more pork, and it spread so quickly from there to everything else because once you give up or you have that one thought, it’s triggered something in your mind. You're going to want to know more information and you go looking then for information. You go looking for these documentaries and for all the stuff that you would otherwise avoid watching for so, so long and then once you watch and once you actually want to know why people are so passionate about veganism and you see what's going on it, becomes such a no-brainer. I mean, I completely understand and, don't get me wrong, if I thought that me standing on top of your building right now screaming at everybody to go vegan would actually make a difference, I'd be up there every day. But I know it alienates a lot of people and it alienated me for years. I didn't want to watch that. I didn't want to respond to it. I’d cross the road if there was a demonstration. I didn't want to see it. Esther made me want to see it and that's what we're trying to replicate. The people that were like us, that had she not come around chances are very, very good this never would have become our lifestyle. So, that's what we're trying to do, is to get through people like us that are good-- I mean, everybody has good in them.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah. Everybody has the good intentions. They just don’t know.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

DEREK WALTER: Because it’s behind closed doors, all that stuff. And growing up I was taught that farmed animals are mindless creations of man, they’re numb, they’re mindless, they don’t have feelings.

STEVE JENKINS: They don’t feel pain.

DEREK WALTER: And they want to be food. And that couldn’t be any farther from the truth. All those animals are very connected. They experience pain and fear.

STEVE JENKINS: Happiness.

DEREK WALTER: Happiness, love, joy. They have all those emotions and we're taught just to completely disconnect from that. None of these animals have names. They don't have names. They’re food and we only see them inside of a package.

AMT: Thanks for coming in. Thanks for your story.

STEVE JENKINS: Thank you very much for having us.

DEREK WALTER: Thank you so much.

AMT: One of my favourite moments on The Current. My conversation with Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter, the owners, the parents of Esther the Wonder Pig. We spoke in June of 2016. Esther has had some health issues in the past few months. She is now free of cancer. She is however recovering from hoof surgery again. So we wish Esther the best and she may be an even bigger star soon. Her story has been sold to a Hollywood film producer. So you can watch for her on the big screen. Miss Piggy, move over, Esther is heading to the box office. If you want to see pictures and video of Esther, you can visit our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Let us know what you think about the story of Esther and how Derek and Steve ended up changing their lives for this animal and what happened since: cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. That is our program for today stay. With Radio One for Q and a look at the life work and legacy of Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau. Remember, you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse past episodes of our program and start listening in just a few seconds, free from the App Store or Google Play. Now today, they'll be dancing in the streets at the Raptors parade today and so we thought, if you can't be there, you might want to dance in the streets anyway. So we will leave you with this classic from Martha and the Vandellas. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

[Song: "Dancing in the Streets" by Martha and the Vandellas]

The Current Transcript for June 17, 2019

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Time is 'ripe' for big businesses to get behind Canadian basketball: Men's national team GM

Turn away from social media and join 'Team Human,' urges author

Anna Maria Tremonti's most memorable interviews: Esther the Wonder Pig

June 17, 2019 episode transcript

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