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The Current Transcript for June 19, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Moving forward with the Trans Mountain expansion and investing the profits in our clean energy future, we're doing exactly that. Environment and Economy.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: And with that announcement Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signalled his political attempt to please those in both the economic and environmental camps lined up around the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Within hours other leaders were seemingly in agreement that he had done neither. In the run up to a fall election, in the midst of ongoing polarization on pipelines, economy, environment, employment, our panel of political watchers prepares to parse that pipeline politics. That's in just a moment. And then if you see Neil Harbisson walking down the street you are likely to do a double take. He's got what looks like a wire stem arching from the base of his neck, over his skull, to hang over his fourth head. It is a surgically implanted device that allows him to see colours, making him a pioneer who has moved beyond wearable technology.

SOUNDCLIP

I don't feel that I'm wearing technology or that I'm using technology. I feel that I am technology.

AMT: We first met Neil Harbison in 2014. In half an hour we will hear the colours he cannot see. And remember Paul Salopek, the man who set out to walk around the world?

SOUNDCLIP

What I plan to do is recreate the first successful global diaspora of the anatomically modern Homo sapiens out of Africa.

AMT: We've been checking in with him for the last six years, vicariously taking in his travels, hearing who he meets, what he learns here my final check in with Paul Salopek in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Pipeline debates a sign of polarizing election campaign to come, says columnist

Guests: Susan Delacourt, Graham Thomson, Kathleen Martens

SOUNDCLIP

Today I am announcing that our government has newly approved the Trans Mountain expansion project going forward. The company plans to have shovels in the ground this construction season.

AMT: If that feels like deja vu you can be forgiven. After all we heard a similar announcement from Justin Trudeau when his government approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion more than two years ago. It is the latest turn in a long running fight that is certain to shape the fall election. So to look at the implications of the direction that Trudeau government has signalled, we've got our rotating national affairs panel standing by with me this week: Susan Delacourt, national columnist and Ottawa bureau chief for The Toronto Star. She's in our Ottawa studio. Kathleen Martin's an investigative reporter with APTN the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network is in our Winnipeg studio. And Graham Thompson former political columnist for The Edmonton Journal, now contributes to CBC politics and Alberta Views. He is in our Edmonton studio. Hi everyone.

KATHLEEN MARTENS: Good morning.

GRAHAM THOPSOM: Good morning.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Good morning.

AMT: Susan, let's start with you. What do you make of the government's decision on Trans Mountain?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Well it was a little bit like watching a rehearsal or a miniature election campaign yesterday late in the day in the National Press Building. We saw the prime minister speaking for 25 minutes. Then Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh, Elizabeth May. And what we saw beyond just the the issue of this was an example of how, this issue especially, but I think many others over the campaign are going to be as you mentioned in the intro very polarized. There, Justin Trudeau, it was like watching a man sort of walking on a trapeze or a wire trying to say that this is where the middle exists in this incredibly emotional high stakes pipeline debate. And then the opposition leaders one by one got up to tell him exactly why he's not in the middle of this.

AMT: And, Graham, of course there are many tentacles to this politically. So shovels in the ground this construction season, how realistic is that? What's being said in Alberta?

GRAHAM THOPSOM: The thing is there's a lot of cynicism out here. You've got Kenney, his reaction of course the premier of Alberta who won the election this year defeated the NDP. He's saying I believe it when I see it and he's giving no any sort of pattern back to Trudeau because Kenney is all about right now campaigning against Trudeau in favour of the federal Conservatives. So in Alberta this isn't going to help Trudeau really at all in Alberta. It wasn't never really about helping him in Alberta because this province tends to vote Conservative. It's about him trying to find that balance and I think that Susan is right. He's looking for that middle ground right now. And you saw yesterday he's saying the Conservatives are about all about the economy and the other parties and the NDP and greens are all about the environment. He's trying to find a middle ground. And also when he approved this pipeline yesterday, in the background there's this idea that he first gave approval to the pipeline in 2016, thanks to what the NDP was doing in Alberta. And that was bringing in Climate Leadership Plan which included a carbon tax and a cap on emissions from oil sands. That was blown up by Kenney who won the election. He scrapped the attacks. But the federal government then of course is saying it's going to impose a federal carbon tax on Alberta plus the cap on emissions. Looks like Kennedy will keep that cap on emissions. He calls it a moot point. So they do have that idea whether liberals are going to try and balance the economy with the environment and most people it seems in Canada want the pipeline to go ahead.

AMT: Now, Kathleen, we were reminded again yesterday that the indigenous community, Indigenous leaders, do not speak with one voice on this.

KATHLEEN MARTENS: Absolutely they're not a homogenous group. Different cultures, language, opinions, politics. They're all on their own different sides of the pipeline with some indigenous groups wanting to buy parts of it. Others can't wait to dig in and oppose it.

AMT: And part of the reason the court quashed the previous approval was because of a lack of consultation. What is the sense of how the consultation has been handled since then, Kathleen?

KATHLEEN MARTENS: Well yesterday the number of leaders in B.C. lined up to say that again the consultation was not what it should have been. They signalled they're going back to court. They're going to appeal. If anybody knows how to go to court and hold the Government to account its Indigenous leaders. There say they're going to be joined by the City of Vancouver, the city of Burnaby. Even I noticed the governor of Washington state weighing in saying he was pretty upset about Canada approving this pipeline. So interesting who the allies are going to be coming together helping indigenous leaders with their fight against the government. But it's not only going to be in court. It's going to be on the ground too, as they say, this is going to help them in their resistance now.

AMT: Kathleen, am I right in understanding there is going to be a new round of consultations that it's supposed to be with First Nations to allow them to benefit?

KATHLEEN MARTENS: Yes that's what the Prime Minister said yesterday, as well the National Energy Board has a number of boxes that the government has to tick: ocean's, fisheries and the Indian Act. So there are a number of areas there that as well have to be checked off. But there has to be a way for indigenous groups, business groups, communities to see if they want to participate in the pipeline.

AMT: And, Graham Bill, Morneau the finance minister is scheduled to be in Calgary today to speak to business leaders. What's the oil sector saying?

GRAHAM THOPSOM: Well again you know they're happy. They're happy this is actually going to go ahead. Of course there is that idea cannot be delayed again. The prime minister talking about getting you know shovels in the ground this season, this construction season. But the fact that Morneau's here and know he sees this as being something defensible and of course I'll Calgary will be very happy with this. Kenney, again you get Scheer and Kenney both saying, well, when will construction start? And they're not convinced it was going to go ahead this year. But there is that sense of relief in Calgary that it's going to go ahead. The problem is of course for the Alberta economy. There's still languishing especially in Calgary. This isn't going to help this year. This pipeline won't be going in actually producing or pumping oil and bitumen for another two or three years. So this is a sign that things will get better and may be a sign that, you know as Kenney keeps saying, Alberta is open for business, Canada's open for business. But there's a sense right now there is relief that it's getting done. But they're still in the back of mind of Albertans as we've been told many times. This is going to go ahead and it always seems to be delayed at some point.

AMT: I have a clip here of the Conservative leader Andrew Scheer let's listen to his response yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

I doubt his sincerity because he hasn't actually done anything. Show me the pipeline. Where is it? He announced last year that it would be operating this year. And it's not. I don't believe he actually wants it built. He doesn't support our energy sector. I take him at his word when he travels around the world and talks about phasing out Canada's energy sector.

AMT: Susan ,what do you make of that?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Again. It tells me what kind of an election campaign we're going to have. With all respect Mr. Scheer It's a pretty ad hominem attack. It's. It's talking about the fact that you can't believe Justin Trudeau. And he says he has good reason to believe that. But it is true that Justin Trudeau's government at some political risk in fact [unintelligible] the pipeline. It's remarkable the ways in which that that decision has not bought the government any credibility or given any goodwill points in the last as Graham has been laying out. So it tells me that this election is going to be fought, as many elections are, but I think this one's going to be particularly nasty about the character and personality of leaders.

GRAHAM THOPSOM: On this point going back to what Susan was saying was Scheer, a year ago yes and there's hope that the pipeline would be going ahead, but it wasn't Trudeau who delayed it. It was a federal court of appeal. What's going to happen this election coming forward, a lot of nasty attacks. But you've got the conservatives are twisting things around saying Trudeau delayed it, while the Federal Court of Appeal delayed it. And this is something we're seeing an echo of what actually was the election campaign in Alberta where the Conservatives took on the NDP and said it's all about the economy. And of course the Conservatives defeated the NDP. And you're seeing Scheer use some of the same language that Kenney has used in attacking the anybody opposed to the pipeline, also attacking the carbon tax. But I don't think you can actually take what actually happened in Alberta and use it too as a template to predict the election in the federal arena because the economy is doing quite well Canada's.

AMT: I'm wondering as well where Elizabeth May is on what's going on, Susan.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Oh that was a fascinating press conference to watch. You know by the end of it there was only everybody had run off to file. But Elizabeth May, it was quite a powerful demonstration of emotion. She said Justin Trudeau was her friend. He had disappointed her. She was rattling off all the ways in which this was a really bad decision. She portrayed it to the reporters there as a personal betrayal for her. She represents a constituency out there. She said that will be affected by it. Where we are with Elizabeth May is a really interesting place too. She's been having a very good year. Yesterday she was not calling a good day for herself. But the Greens have been making slow and steady advances. And if we are going to have an election about climate change, she is a leading voice in that. And we've seen the Greens becoming the opposition in Prince Edward Island. They've got a foothold now at Queen's Park. They've been coming sometimes higher in the polls than the NDP.

AMT: They've got the balance of power in B.C.

SUSAN DELACOURT: And the balance of power in B.C.

AMT: Is that what she's looking for federally?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Definitely yes. One of the things but Elizabeth May is she says exactly- you know any amount of power will probably hammer this out of her - but right now she says exactly what she's thinking in In Scrum. So she's been laying this out that she would like there to be a minority government. And she would like the Greens to have enough MPs to hold the balance of power. And on decision like this would be interesting to see if that scenario had played out a year from now, let's say, what a Prime Minister Scheer or Trudeau or thing would have done with that if the Greens had been holding the balance of power.

AMT: There's so many different sides to all of this, Kathleen, here are now three Indigenous consortiums, are there not, that actually are looking for what? 51 percent ownership?

KATHLEEN MARTENS: Well I had to check that because that was what I thought too but I could only confirm two, but that's on me. The two groups yesterday were of course very pleased to be able to continue their lobbying. And I know they've been in Calgary working hard trying to get as many first nations on their side as possible. You know we've heard a number of numbers that they represent up to 43. One group says we've got 43 bands along the route. Another says we've got 28. Then we have some private industry as well that's going to come on with us to set those groups up to buy the pipeline, part or all of it. As you mentioned earlier the Federal Court said that has to be part of this next round of approving the pipeline. So they feel they're in a good position. We haven't heard any numbers yet or where they're getting all of their money. But they yesterday said - we played some video clips from them - very much happy with the decision.

AMT: It's really an interesting time I'm because I'm also reading that some there are there are two cases with pipelines going east, with Enbridge that that are related to Michigan and Minnesota where the courts are holding up things. So we're in a really interesting point in time in terms of how much power the politicians have to move things forward versus the people who had to court, Graham.

GRAHAM THOPSOM: Yes. This has been a problem of course in Canada. You go back to 2016 when the federal government said yes we're giving conditional approval to the pipeline. That should have been it. The one authority in the country to get trans provincial pipelines built is the federal cabinet. But things have been tied up in other ways because courts and First Nations and the duty to consult with First Nations. These are all issues that are coming in delay pipelines and caused problems. And you mentioned the pipeline is heading south, as the Enbridge Line 3 replacement and the Keystone Excel. These are both into the U.S. The thing about pipelines and more pipelines is you're seeing now the growth curve start to go down for the oil from Alberta. So if we get those three pipelines, two to the U.S. and one to the west coast, that might be all we need. Even though of course politically they'll be the conservatives fighting for more pipelines, Energy East and bring back Northern Gateway. But moving forward might see a lot less pressure on governments to get more pipelines built because of demand over the next few decades it's going to start dropping.

AMT: So Susan is this going to be a climate change pipeline election?

SUSAN DELACOURT: I have my doubts. I very much compare it to health care in as much as people say that it is a huge concern to them. But we've never had really a health care election. I think it's going to be as I said at the outset, it's going to be a symbol of the polarization that's taken place in Canadian politics. We saw it on all kinds of other issues even SNC Lavalin earlier this year, that there is a people are either absolutely convinced that they're right and everybody else is absolutely wrong. And I'm not sure that's a great thing for politics. We've reached a remarkable time in which the middle is the scariest place to be in Canadian politics. That it's the toughest place to occupy and we're seeing that with the prime minister right now. He's is damned if he does and he's damned if he doesn't.

AMT: Which brings us to the people dress like bananas. What is happening?

SUSAN DELACOURT: So this is a group called Canada proud we've heard of them they're a third party lobby organization very much opposed to Trudeau. And they advertised earlier this week for people to pay people to dress as bananas, and I guess roam the streets of Ottawa with the dressed as a bananas or in banana T-shirts saying Trudeau is Bananas. I'm not sure what that accomplishes, especially in Ottawa where people tend to have their political minds made up. But it was to me another indication of how silly this election could get when people are dressing as fruit on street corners.

AMT: Well you and I guess that speaks to the polarization, right? Because if you can do the pithy half a line you don't have to talk policy.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Yes. I don't know what Trudeau is Bananas actually means but I I take it is not the last time we'll hear it.

AMT: And Kathleen, in terms of the Indigenous vote, the same problem in the wider Canadian society exists on the divide, but how is this going to affect Mr. Trudeau do you think in the election?

KATHLEEN MARTENS: Well you know yesterday I watched we carried all of those news conferences that Susan was referencing we query them on her Facebook page and I love to watch the comments and the emojis fly by. And that was the first time I'd seen so many people talk about voting Green or Orange. And so I kind of tuned in a little bit more because, you know, probe researchers looked at how indigenous voting patterns work and they find largely those who do vote, vote Liberal. So it is of interest to me and with Elizabeth May, like I saw some people quoting her, I think she used really strong emotional words saying things like she was personally hurt and deeply disappointed and I saw that, on being parodied on this Facebook stream.

AMT: So I guess we see how that actually translates in the voting booths as we go further. We haven't really talked about the NDP yet, Susan.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Yes. Again Mr. Singh has been trying his level best this week to get out there and punch through the noise. He released a health care platform, a huge health care platform, in Hamilton on Sunday, unfortunately the same day as the same weekend that basically all of Canada was caught up in the Raptors, so it kind of disappeared. I don't - after all these years - I never count anybody out but it's taking the NDP is finding it difficult to find a place right now as as Kathleen was mentioning. A lot of people are looking at the Greens right now.

AMT: And Graham, Andrew Scheer releases his own climate statement today.

GRAHAM THOPSOM: Yes this sounds like he'll be doing a follow up to what Jason Kenney did in Alberta and that to scrap the carbon tax and then and then have your own carbon tax on large heavy emitters, which is taking a step backwards when it comes to fighting climate change. But it plays well to the electorate in terms of, 'hey guys, don't worry you to pay any carbon tax. Will make the big companies pay for it' when in fact you know we collectively are huge emitters when it comes to us driving ourselves to work and commuting. But this is all about politics right now. So we'll see Scheer come out with a plan that's going to sound like Kenney's and we're seeing the Conservatives federally trying to run a campaign much like Jason Kenney did in Alberta this year.

AMT: We have to leave it there. Thank you all of you for weighing in.

GRAHAM THOPSOM: Well thank you for having me.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Can I just say, as a panellist, not as a panellist but as a listener Anna Marie I'm going to miss you.

GRAHAM THOPSOM: Yes absolutely.

KATHLEEN MARTENS: Awe.

AMT: Thank you all, I'm going to miss you guys too. Thank you. That is Susan Delacourt, national columnist and Ottawa bureau chief for The Toronto Star. She's in Ottawa. Graham Thompson, former political columnist for The Edmonton Journal contributes now to CBC politics and Alberta views. He's in Edmonton. Kathleen Martens is an investigative reporter with APTN. She joined us from Winnipeg. The CBC News is next and then we revisit one of my most colourful and musical interviews with Neil Harbisson. He's a self-declared cyborg. He has a surgically implanted device that allows him to hear the sound of colours. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Anna Maria Tremonti's most memorable interviews: Neil Harbisson, the cyborg

Guest: Neil Harbisson

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come I've been in conversation with one of my favorite guests on The Current. I'm going to be back in conversation with him. The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek started walking across Ethiopia out of Africa and around the world six years ago retracing humanity's journey and collecting people's stories all along the way. My final check in with Paul takes place in half an hour. But first I'm told there's something I'm told I should listen to.

SOUNDCLIP

CHRIS HADFILED: Hi Anna Maria. It's Chris Hadfield. I've been lucky enough to speak with folks on the radio all around the world and even from spaceships. And there occasionally is someone that you speak to that really gets it that when you talk to them you actually learn stuff about yourself. And every time I've spoken with you that's happened.

SAM NUTT: Hi I'm Sam Nutt and I am the founder and president of War Child Canada. One of the things I've always admired so much about your coverage is that you have been on the ground and you know what it's like and you've seen those realities, and you brought an exceptional humanity to your journalism which was something I always admired and appreciated. Frankly I think you're among the best foreign policy reporters that exists.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: This is Lawrence Wright. I think the first time I was on your show was after my book The Looming Tower came out. It was like talking to someone that I've known for a long time with an intimacy you rarely have on that kind of formal interview. Sometimes your questions were so insightful that I had wished that I had talked to you before I wrote the book. But let's not go into that.

BESMA MOMANI: I'm Besma Momani, professor at the University of Waterloo and senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. A decade of taking my children to school at 8:30 in the morning I can tell you there are some near grown adults now who can say Anna Maria Tremonti, so easily just rolls off the tongue so thank you for being a permanent fixture on our morning commute. Thank you for asking all of the hard questions during the Arab Spring, enormous pain and suffering that Syria has endured. You always ask the most sensitive honest questions helping inform Canadians about our role in the world and what is really happening out there.

SAM NUTT: Congratulations Andrea on an extraordinary career.

BESMA MOMANI: We are going to miss you terribly.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: And I wish you great success in the next stage of your journey.

CHRIS HADFILED:

For the past many years on The Current. Thank you very much and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

AMT: No fair. They're going to make me cry. Thanks to all the listeners who taken the time to write in and say goodbye to me it's overwhelming and thank you for those clips I just heard. Tomorrow is my final show. We will be with an audience in the atrium of the CBC broadcast center in Toronto. The tickets are free but they are all now booked up. And if by any chance you booked one or two and you can't make it anymore, please let us know so that we can now use that ticket again to make room for others. There will be a limited overflow area available if you don't have a ticket. You can take your chances if you're in the Toronto area, and space permitting, still come down here and be with us. If you don't mind standing. Come early to secure a spot. We're asking our audience to be at the CBC in Toronto as of 6 a.m. We go to air just past 7:30 Toronto time for our listeners in Atlantic Canada of course. And if you cannot make it happen in person of course you can always listen as you always do on radio, online, on our app, on podcasts. Of all the interviews I've done in the past 17 seasons there was only one of them with a cyborg and that cyborg is Neil Harbisson. If you meet him you'll see right away that he wears what he calls an eye Borg. It's a surgically implanted device that has given him a sixth sense, the ability to hear color. His efforts to fuse technology into his very being raise opportunities and some really hard questions as well. So here is my 2014 interview with Neil Harbisson in me.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Anna Maria, nice to meet you. This is Neil.

AMT: [To Neil] Nice to meet you. Fantastic. Well, come with us.

AMT: Neil Harbisson doesn't know this yet but I've seen him before.

AMT: [To Neil] If you walk into the cafe [unintelligible] about two weekends ago, a Moroccan cafe.

NEIL: Probably.

AMT: [To Neil] I saw you.

AMT: [Laughs]

AMT: A couple of weeks before this meeting I was in New York City sitting in a cafe with a couple of friends. In a city of eight million people passers-by come and go without anyone remarking. But Neil Harbison stands out. And trust me when I say you're going to want to see what he looks like. We posted pictures of him on our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Neil Harbisson is a cyborg. That's what he calls himself. The give-away and what attracts all the attention is the tiny camera dangling in front of his face. It hangs from a flexible metal antenna that looks sort of like a little book light. And what I feel to notice on that first chance encounter is that the antenna is wired into a hard metal chip that's fused into the base of his skull.

NEIL: Yes, basically an antenna that comes out from the back of my head. It's been drilled inside my bones. So it was all osteo-integrated. So the antenna goes inside the skull and then it took like two months for the antenna and the bone to unite when it fixes permanently in the skull.

AMT: So this is no mere whim. As part of our series By Design, I wanted to get to know a man who thinks the future of humanity lies in taking control of our own design, using technology to enhance ourselves. Neil Harbisson had that antenna surgically implanted in his bones so he could experience color. He was born with a chromatopsia, a condition that affects about one in every 33000 people and leaves them unable to see colors. So Neil Harbisson's camera records the colors and translates them into sounds.

[Beeps and tones]

AMT: Each color has a distinct tone one that resonates differently through his skeleton so he can experience colors by hearing them. So when he looks at grass he hears a note somewhere in the range...

NEIL: Between G, G sharp and A and sometimes B flat. But it's usually A basically.

AMT: And when he looks at a bright blue sky he hears:

NEIL: C sharp. So the sky is C sharp when it's clear day.

AMT: Neil Harbisson calls the camera his eye Borg and the mechanics of how it works are actually quite simple.

[Beeps and tones]

NEIL: So it's transposing light frequencies to sound frequencies. A color is a light frequency and each color has a different light frequency. So the chip is simply picking up this frequency and scaling it down to sound so that I can hear that note, the note of the color and I can hear the sound through bone induction. So visual sounds are throught bone conduction and then the audio sound are through air conduction.

AMT: Let me explain the difference here. Most of our hearing happens through air conduction, sound vibrates through the air until it hits our inner ear. Then those vibrations are converted into electrical signals and sent to our brain. But we also hear through bone conduction. Ever wonder why a recording of your voice sounds so different from what you hear in your head? In addition to hearing your voice as it travels through the air you're also hearing your voice resonating through the bones in your head, only that doesn't show up on the recordings. That's bone conduction. And so for Neil Harbisso, it means the way he experiences color stands apart from the way he hears all other sounds in his life.

NEIL: Yes I see there's a completely new stanza a new sensation, it's not like other sounds. It feels like a different type of sound. So it's a different type of sense to me. It doesn't necessarily need to be connected to sight or to hearing, it's connected to bone conduction to me.

AMT: And just like you and I can't turn off our eyes to shut out the colors coming in, Neil Harbison can't turn off his new sense either. Unless you go somewhere that's completely dark, he's constantly bombarded with sound. And even in a dark room he hears tones from near infrared and near ultraviolet light, frequencies well beyond what you or I can see. So what I really want to know is what happens when he walks into a room full of bright colors.

NEIL: While it can be very stimulating because it's music basically. It's electronic music wherever I look. So a place like this would be a supermarket.

[Noise]

NEIL: Supermarkets are very stimulating because they're full of color. The light is usually very bright so you can really hear the colors. [beeping tone] And I mean if you walk around, it's just like hearing music. It's like going to a nightclub because it's electronic music in every single aisle.

[Sonic music]

NEIL: The cleaning products aisle is the most exciting one because it has very unexpected colors usually.

AMT: Who knew laundry soap and floor cleaners could be so compelling. I should mention too that Neil Harbisson has embraced his sonic appreciation of color in the way he dresses. When I meet him he's wearing a bright orange blazer and he often coordinates his outfits in color blocks, designed to produce pleasing tones. It's something he also does with food.

NEIL: You can compose music with salads specially good salads have lots of different colors. So he could have salads that sound like Justin Bieber for example and then maybe children would eat more vegetables.

AMT: [Laughs] That's very poetic. What's your favorite salad then?

NEIL: Well I like the ones that have red, orange, yellow. So if there's carrot and there's tomato then you have F an F sharp and then you have the green of the lettuce which is A and olives as well also A. It is [unintelligible] low to find blue or turquoise food. So it's sometimes you have to avoid using that note C or C sharp.

AMT: So when you're in a room having a conversation how do you concentrate? How do you navigate that?

NEIL: While it doesn't really interfere goes I'm perceiving color through bone conduction and the other sounds like I mean through air conduction. So it does really feel like a separate sense. I don't feel it interrupts.

AMT: Can you remember the first time you experienced color with that?

NEIL: Yes. It was March 22nd 2004 and it was in Music Studio One, at Darlington College of Arts in England. So his was all in as an art project. During my university's studies in England and it was the color red that I was first able to identify.

[Tone]

NEIL: It was very special because for the first time I was able to feel on detect the color without having to ask someone which was something the doctor said it would be impossible for me to perceive color.

AMT: You do produce art and both, in terms of art we look at and art we listen to, with what you sense. Tell us about some of your projects?

NEIL: Well basically Id o color concerts now so I don't I no longer need to play an instrument so to play music. I can compose music or create music by looking at things, looking at colors. So I connect the antenna to loud speakers and then I create music by looking at colors or I can do by looking at faces sometimes. So I look at the audience's face. They cue and then I can start composing music by adding layers of sound, the sound of the eyes, the lips, the skin, the hair. And this creates the kind of atmosphere of electronic music created by the colors of the audience. And then what I do is also the opposite. I paint what I hear. So if I listen to Mozart I can transpose each note of the piece into its correspondent colors. So then it's like having a color score of music.

AMT: I want to ask you a little bit about your work with a choir and a string quartet in Barcelona on a composition. You wrote.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

AMT: How did that come to be?

NEIL: Well I was as to do a project and they asked me if that could do something that I had never done before, and I said I would really like to ditch a choir a string quartet to play color. Instead of playing a score, a normal score, I would like them to learn how to play colors and then they would perform. Instead of performing a score, they would perform the lights that I would shine on them. So that I would be the light technician. And depending on the color that I shine on them beamed on them, then they would play that note and we trade this and in the end it worked. And I composed the music from the colors of the building. So this was in Palau de la Musica in Barcelona which is a very colorful building. For a few weeks I picked up the sound of the building by the colors. When I transpose the colors into sound they sounded great and especially the glass, the ceiling was perfect. And then I created the composition and the musicians performed the score by looking at the light, basically.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

NEIL: So music was- It had to be slow because you had to change. I mean the musicians needed time to see the change of color. So I couldn't really create quick rhythms, otherwise they wouldn't pick up the color. So it was slow music with different chords that kept changing. So there was like the choir was divided in four sections. So there were four different lights. If I shine four red lights they all sang F. If then I changed one of the four lights in the green, then they would be singing F and A. And then if I had this a blue light then they would be singing C. So then we would have a different chord. So I was playing with lights and then different chords were being created. So it was very simple but to me it was very very special this moment, because they were singing the colors that they were seeing and this was very special.

AMT: What was it like watching a roomful of people experience that relationship between color and sound?

NEIL: To me it was very [unintelligible] and all because this has been a world that has been closed in my head basically for like 10 years. So being able to share this and seeing other people perform colors was very emotional for me.

AMT: Neil Harbisson partnered with Vodafone firsts for that project. We've linked to a video of the performance from our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Now you remember that in addition to being an artist and a musician he's also a self-described cyborg. It's hard to avoid the science fiction connotations that go along with that word and the cautionary tales about what happens to humans who manipulate technology to become menacing, world dominating robots. But step out of the Bee Movie for just a minute and listen to how he sees it.

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NEIL: Well to me cyber is a feeling basically I feel that I am technology. Basically I don't feel that I'm wearing technology or that I'm using technology. I feel that I am technology and there isn't really a word I think to define this. I think the closest word is cyborg because cyborg comes from cybernetic organism. It comes from the union between organism and cybernetics. And this is a feeling that I started having from the very beginning. After five months of hearing color permanently I started to feel a union between the cybernetics and my brain. And I started to feel no difference between the software and my mind. I know that this word has been used in very different ways especially in the 20th century in a way that it might be a very science fiction. But I think that this word will slowly become more normal and we'll see that more people will start feeling like this.

AMT: So he sees a future in which more and more people will choose to become cyborgs, choose to enhance their census and their perception of the world with technologies that are built into their bodies. And he doesn't buy the idea that this would make us any less human.

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I think it's completely the opposite. I think that actually technology is a human creation so becoming technology is something extremely human. It can only be human.

AMT: And to further his goal of promoting cyborg-ism Neil Harbisson, along with another artist named Moon Rebus, has started the cyborg Foundation. Its mission:

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NEIL: To create an organization that would help people become a cyborg so that they can add or extend or create new sensors and apply them to their body. And it's also intending to promote cyborg-ism as an art movement because if you create new senses then you have the whole new possibilities of expressing yourself through new senses. So you can create art that has never been created before. And I also would defend the cyber rights, so the right to become technology basically.

AMT: Well you actually had to fight for the right to have a passport photo with this.

NEIL: Yes. So I my photo was rejected by the UK government because there is a law that says that you're not allowed to be with electronic equipment. And then I replied saying this was not an electronic equipment. This was a new part of my body, an extension of my census and that they should allow it. And then in the end they allowed me to appear in the passport. So this helps a lot because when I travel, the main problem is airports.

AMT: I was going to ask you about that.

NEIL: So having it on a passport is what solves any kind of problem.

AMT: And as for what else might be possible, how about an extra sense that tells you if someone is sneaking up behind you?

NEIL: By adding small infrared at the back of our head that vibrate whenever this presence, this is going to allow us to awake the back of our body.

AMT: Like the idea of eyes in the back of your head, but think you're not quite ready for cybernetic implants?

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NEIL: We've created a pair of earrings that do this. So you have a sensor at the back of the the ear that vibrates whenever there's someone behind you.

AMT: No sense of direction? Try this.

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NEIL: A compass that vibrates whenever you've faced notes. This can be implanted.

AMT: Worried about earthquakes? Neil Hobisson's colleague Moon Rebus is test driving something you might find interesting.

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NEIL: We've developed the seismic sense. It's a small sensor that vibrates whenever there's an earthquake in the world. And she has an elbow. So if there's now an earthquake in China her elbow vibrates in the Richter scale of the earthquake.

AMT: Neil's own eye-borg can be used to perceive things other than just color.

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NEIL: We've actually develop antennas for blind people. So instead of sensing color you can use the same system to sense other things such as distance or words. So instead of translating a book into Braille you can use a camera that takes the words and then gives you a spoken word of the text.

AMT: Overall Neil Harbisson says we need to stop thinking about building apps for our smartphones and start building them for our bodies.

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NEIL: Yes. I think it's just the very simple change. Basically now we are giving everything to machines and we're not really giving much to ourselves. Humans don't really sense much. If we compare our senses with with other animals. We have very undeveloped senses, so we could really extend our perception of reality by using cybernetics as part of us.

AMT: If we take hold of our own design, as human beings, it's not clear where we could end up with. Do you worry about unintended consequences?

NEIL: Well, it's in old kind of subject. You can always use things in a bad way and it's happened with all subject I guess. They can actually create knives and then these knives can be used to cut bread or they can use to do other things. You can also create mobile phones to communicate with people or you can use them to activate bombs. And in the same way any type of technology applied to the body could be used in a bad way. But in this case you wouldn't be separating the crime from the criminal, which is if you are the technology, you are the tool. And you wouldn't really want to use yourself in a bad way because you're not separating one from another. So I don't think it would happen as much. If you want to commit the crime you would use an external technology, not a part of you.

AMT: It's fascinating to talk to you. Thank you for being here.

NEIL: Thank you.

AMT: Okay. After that whole conversation what did I forget to ask. How do you sleep without I Borg coming out of the back of your head? I still don't know. Neil Harbisson is a musician, a visual artist and a self-described cyborg. I spoke with him when he was in Toronto in 2014.

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[Music]

DEB GRAY: Hi Anna Maria, it is Deb Gray here checking in from the West Coast. You are one of those people that is recognized somewhat by your face, but mostly because of your voice. So I think you and I share that. I could try and get away with this by saying Hello my name is Anna Maria Tremonti. And they'd say, nah, couldn't be you're Deb Gray. You are one of a kind. You're a legend and congrats again on your long career with The Current. And we wish you well with your podcast.

BOB RAE: Hi, Anna Maria, it's Bob Rae. I've been on your show a few times, always what I would describe is unforgettable experiences because you usually in fact inevitably know more about what I'm talking about than I do, which is a humbling not to say humiliating experience for anyone on your show. You have given an exceptional amount of courage and receptiveness and an intelligence to what you've done that I think is a credit to you. It's also credit to The Current and it's a credit to the CBC. You are a voice for truth and you are a voice for integrity. And may you long thrive on whatever podcast or whatever future you have in this crazy world of ours.

TIM POWERS: Hi Anna Maria. It's Tim Powers here. I've been both a fan and a guest. It's a wonderful program. And the thing I've liked most about working with you is you work hard to get all of the voices and perspectives on your show. And in an era when your professions, times and credibility is being challenged, you were straight and solid and a guiding light and best of all as a Newfoundlander and Labradorean I can say this: you like to laugh and nothing beats morning radio that has lots of information, lots of laughter, and leaves you feeling like you've had a good start to your day. Thank you for everything. It's been a great pleasure to work with you and I hope to do so on a go forward basis. Have a great day.

Thank you. Thank you. We've got one more edition of The Current that's tomorrow a live show with an audience in the CBC atrium. Not quite done yet. Coming up in our next half hour, remember Paul Salopek? Walking around the World? Checking in with him next. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Anna Maria Tremonti's most memorable interviews: Paul Salopek the pilgrim

Guest: Paul Salopek

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Paul Salopek first join me on The Current in 2013. He has spoken with us several times since then, but he's never been in the same place twice because throughout all that time he has been on a journey. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and he's on a walking expedition around the world. He has planned to recreate the human journey out of Africa from 50 to 700,00 years ago. So he started walking in Ethiopia. He traveled through Eurasia, made his way to South Asia. He plans to eventually finish his walk at the southernmost tip of South America. And by the time he gets there he will have traveled almost 34,000 kilometres on foot. He's talking to people along the way, writing about their lives, reviving or maybe even inventing what he calls the art of slow journalism.

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PAUL SALOPEK: You know the notion of slow journalism I think it taps into this yearning that people may not even have a name for, finding more meaning. We have lots of information at our fingertips more than ever before. It's beautiful. I'm delighted to be alive in today's world because of that. But what often makes it difficult is when you're assaulted by all of this information. It gets harder and harder to tease anything out of it. The beauty of walking slowly through big themed issues, complicated issues, nuanced issues is that walking through them you get to see them at a granular level. You get to live with the people who inhabit those issues who inhabit those headlines and come out with a deeper understanding that hopefully can be shared in a meaningful way.

AMT: Well we're going to catch up with Paul one more time in a few moments, but first this is part of our conversation from December of 2014, about a year into his trip. He had made his way through eastern Africa and the Middle East and was struck by the scale of human displacement that he saw along the way. He told us about meeting a Bedouin family from Syria in a refugee camp in Jordan.

SOUNDCLIP

PAUL SALOPEK: And we were coming in at dusk and we saw tents, illuminate from the inside, at a distance may look like these kind of domes of light glowing in the darkness. And inside were people displaced by the Syrian civil war. They were incredibly hospitable as poor as they were. I mean we're talking about refugees who are hiring out their muscles for the equivalent of eleven dollars a day to pick tomatoes. And the meal that night was everything they could conceive to give us in traditional Bedouin hospitality and much of it revolved around variations of tomatoes. There were raw tomatoes and green tomatoes. There were red tomatoes. There were fried tomatoes and pickled tomatoes and they were joking that we only dream of chicken. I think this is something that is a recurring theme of people who have at least, you know, often tend to share the most. It was very poignant.

AMT: You know we're talking about Syrian refugees you also saw for yourself the devastation along the Turkish Syrian border and the refugee camps there. What were they like?

PAUL SALOPEK: Amazing thing about this last year, amazing and sobering and enheartening at the same time, is I occur to running into masses of dislocated people put up in gigantic refugee camps. I visited one camp that had 14000 people in it but far far greater numbers are just scattered among the general Turkish population. And one day I heard that people were coming over the border on nearby. It was enormous numbers. And when I got there I saw thousands of people pouring across the barbed wire fence that had been knocked down. And the numbers are just incredible. We're talking upwards of 100,000 people in three days. It was just one of these nights that will stick with you for the rest of your life.

AMT: One year later in 2015 I caught up with Paul again this time in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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PAUL SALOPEK: What's lovely about this process, what's organic about it is that you were talking your way across the world and listening your way across the world. I am engaged not just in a walk for the next seven eight nine years, I'm engaged in a seven eight nine year long conversation with total strangers and there's something amazing about this. It really is heartening because it connects you to humanity at a very grassroots level. And it gives me great heart to continue.

AMT: What a great way to put it. And what a nice image. Not just walking but talking and listening. So who are some of the people you have met this way?

PAUL SALOPEK: It's ranged from Ethiopian pastoralists, who are moving herds of sheep across the Great Rift Valley of Africa, you retired Saudi generals who come along and walk, to a Saudi prince who who liked the idea well enough that he in his helicopter came one day in the middle of the Hejaz desert and landed next to our camp to have lunch with us, Syrian refugees, to Bedouin nomads, to Israeli bards who sing. I walked through Turkey with the brilliant Turkish photographer. I walked through Georgia with a 19 year old recent high school graduate, as well as a fellow writer. So it just it's really potluck and that's part of the great wonder of it. Who am I going to end up with next. But you also develop these muscles that I believe all of us have to maneuver your way through the human landscape to find the right people. My Turkish walking partner said to find another crazy person who will see the object in the beauty of taking a long walk.

AMT: It's so worth remembering too because you have walked through areas of great turmoil and conflict, and yet, for all the bad that's out there in use what you're finding as there's a lot of good.

PAUL SALOPEK: That's right. There is a lot of bad news in the news because bad news attracts our attention. It's human nature. But even walking through war zones, even walking through for example a place like the West Bank, it was like an extended picnic and friendly people. Did we come across. Flash points of human anger and despair? Of course we did. That's part of the story. We got stopped at checkpoints on occasion. We stumbled by accident into a battle. But 90 percent of the time it was a West Bank that would be unrecognizable to most of the Western audiences because people went about their daily jobs. They commuted to work. They took a lunch hour. They took their kids to the park. It was normal.

AMT: Now the last time I spoke to Paul Salopek was this past October when he was in Chennai India. We talked about the breathtaking natural beauty he saw as he travelled from Afghanistan down to Pakistan.

SOUNDCLIP

And let me just lay some names on you. And just these names are redolent of wild raw mountains: the Pamirs, the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram. These are three of the four mountain chains that I walk through from Central Asia south into South Asia, and that route took me through a finger of Afghanistan that almost no outsiders ever go to. It's extremely remote. It has one dirt road it has no mobile phone service, no Internet, no electricity. People who live there are farmers or nomadic pastoralists who live a preindustrial way of life and they're only about 15000 of them. And this finger of land is a giant alpine valley that goes for about 150 or so kilometers, pointing towards China. And walking up this alpine valley, hemmed on both sides that by mountain peaks that were 7000 metres tall, was for me one of the most exhilarating parts of this five year journey. Because it seemed as if the mountains radiated this pale Alpine light and cupped light and cupped time in the same river valley. And it was a river valley of apricot orchards. It was a river valley of farmers using oxen, driving them in circles to thrash wheat in the old biblical way. Thousand year old technology. It was a river valley of water mills pushed by glacial melt, grinding out wheat into flour using millstones that weighed 300 kilos carved by hand. It was a river valley of villages where everything visible in those villages was handmade from the doorknobs to the door jams to the hand tools. Everything was made by hand including the iron forged by hand. It was just intoxicating in its beauty. It had a hallucinatory sort of clarity to the light. And the people were both extraordinarily tough and heart-crackly generous.

AMT: Paul Salopek with his poetic descriptions of the landscapes and the people he has encountered. He is a National Geographic Fellow and principal Pilgrim of the Out of Eden Walk. Paul Salopek joins me once again from north east India. Hi.

PAUL SALOPEK: Hi Anna Maria it's good to talk to you again.

AMT: I'm just wondering what kind of memories are stirred up as you listen to our conversations from the past?

PAUL SALOPEK: Well it's been a long conversation going on for more than six years now. I think it's six and a half years as we speak. There are lots and lots of stories since I left Ethiopia all those years ago. Certain themes keep coming back and you know there themes that honestly keep me going - I never expected that the project would take this long. Right. When I first talked to you I was projecting this project to last seven years I would be reaching the finish line down in the tip of South America after seven years. And here it's coming on seven years and I'm just barely scraping halfway.

AMT: But what a journey it is. Paul where exactly are you right now?

PAUL SALOPEK: Right now I'm in the state of Assam, up in this finger of Indian territory that juts between Nepal, Bhutan, China, Bangladesh and Myanmar. And it's a part of India that people who come to visit India don't really associate with India. It's very Himalayan. It's very Southeast Asian. It's got a very interesting and complicated ethnic mix. More than 200 different ethnic groups up here. The landscape varies from, you know, you see snow-capped mountains in the distance, the Himalayas Malia's, and down here in the valleys it's like tropical rainforest. So what I've been walking through the last couple months are pretty muddy forest trails or back roads between villages where almost everything is constructed of some form of bamboo.

AMT: You've written some powerful posts about the women you have met. What are you learning about women's lives in the rural communities that you're walking through?

PAUL SALOPEK: Yes. You know that's been one of the great parts about walking through India. India is so vast. And because travelling around on foot here is relatively easy, India is still a pedestrian society in the countryside. It's still a society where foot pilgrimage is very important for religious reasons. It's easy for me to fit into this flow of people moving around on foot and that includes women. Something that by the chance of my route I haven't had always the best opportunity that I would have wished to mingle among the women of the cultures that I'm walking through. The first few years of my walk was through the Islamic world where there is another layer of gender divide to get through. But India's been wonderful in the sense that I've been able to access that half of the human experience much more than I have in the past. So I've had more walking partners who are women in India than at any other of the 17 countries that I've walked through so far and it's been delightful. And it's opened my eyes, as I've written Anna Maria in the past, about what I'm seeing at boot level being kind of the most widespread, the most universal injustice in the world today as we move into the 21st century. And at least as I'm seeing it out here on the walking trails and beside roads and walking through villages and cities at five kilometers hour, it's not the ethnic or racial divides that are often flaring in the news. It's not the politics or the extreme ideologies that are throwing sparks in the headlines. It's kind of the universal and more subtle and often overlooked inequality between genders. I think almost in every place I've been women get the short end of the stick, economically, politically, in sense of family power, in sense of things like land ownership. That has emerged now almost seven years in as the most consistent form of human injustice along the trail of the ancestors so long ago.

AMT: So can you give me some specifics? What are you seeing like in the agricultural world with women where you are?

PAUL SALOPEK: Well India is still you know very powerfully agricultural. What I'm seeing is two things one is men are leaving these communities to seek work in the cities because farming is getting harder and harder to do as a sustainable practice in India. But the women being left behind end up assuming the duties that the men used to, both in terms of like just the hard field work, but also in managing farms. They've kind of- I remember walking through a community in Rajasthan where in several of the farms it was women running the operations. The men were away working in cities, doing kind of manual labor jobs, they would communicate by phone now and then, but the women were pretty much calling the shots. They had taken over this whole agricultural area and there was like almost a de facto matriarchy. Now that sounds interesting and I think it is interesting and it's cracking open kind of old barriers and norms to give women more maneuvering space economically in India. But if you look at land ownership, then it's a sobering sort of tug backwards because they own very little of the land. I think it's down in the low double digits. So they do the work, migration has forced upon them more responsibility. I think they've embraced it with relish, the ones that I interviewed, but when it comes to actually owning you know the capital, the earth, it's still mostly in the hands of men.

AMT: And as you are going through these areas, you know, we don't hear a lot or enough about the water crisis in India and the impact of climate change. What can you tell us?

PAUL SALOPEK: Oh it's sobering. It's so overwhelming that you know the natural impulse is to try to close your eyes. I mean denial is a powerful way of kind of shutting out a looming catastrophe in this part of the world. The Indian government itself, one of its main think tanks, published a study I believe it was last year where they pointed out that 600 million people in this country - that's about half the population - live in some form of a water crisis, whether it's just a sheer shortage of access to water, to you know heavily polluted water. And many of the biggest cities in the world here in India are going to be zeroing out there their groundwater supplies very shortly by the next five or 10 years. So you're going to have literally tens of millions of people living in urban areas that no longer have access to the water that's required to keep them alive and to keep these cities alive. Where's that water going to come from? Nobody really knows. The groundwater pumping is forging ahead madly. There are farms. There are watersheds that I've walked over where the farmers have said: 'Paul, our water table has dropped not five, not 10, not 20, but hundreds of feet. And not in a century but in 15 or 20 years', because the Green Revolution as good as it was is growing cheap food has given access to the technology to pump this kind of lifeblood of the earth groundwater out to create enormous amounts of food, but it's finite. And so you know the green revolution, the bill to pay for it is coming due. And I think India is still grappling with what to do they're talking about everything from redesigning river systems, basically terraforming India, moving 36 or 37 major rivers around it or linking them on these massive public works projects. And that's very controversial. This issue is going to be facing over a billion people here, and any government, not just the Indian government, can I guess at a human level be blamed for like averting its eyes and trying you know to try to push back at the margins, because what can you really do to transform an entire society this big to get it off these unsustainable forms of agriculture, this massive pumping program. It's just the scale of things here. Everything is bigger in India. It's just dizzying.

AMT: It's interesting on the scale of that combined with the scale of what you are doing, that slow journalism where you, actually because you're walking the path, you see it for longer just doesn't glide by from a train window or even a car. You have to walk through it.

PAUL SALOPEK: And its iteration. It's like that bell that rings again and again and again. I can't tell you how many hundreds literally hundreds of communities, villages I've walked through, that when I ask them what is your main concern the first one is water. It's a mega problem here in India. And walking through it has been kind of the background noise of my entire journey.

AMT: It's interesting. I'm wondering how as you report on these things you think about how you used to report, like when you think about the difference in the conversations that you're having now on these big issues.

PAUL SALOPEK: Yes you know I think the way I I'm thinking of it now. it's almost seven years in, is like in the past when I was a conventional foreign correspondent flying in, I was kind of a pointillist painter right, like a dab of paint. Here's a dab a color here in India. Then the color would change if I go to Afghanistan. And I would kind of write tidy little boundaries around each story. That's the way the media works. You have a tidy beginning, a middle and an end because the technology forces that you to do that. And then your program, your story, is one among millions that appear that day. But what walking has emphasized to me as a continuum of storytelling is that all these boundaries that you and I and our colleagues in the media put around these stories are more or less arbitrary. Because if you just tug hard enough on any story in the world, no matter whether it's in Manhattan, or in Toronto, or in a village in Ethiopia, it's connected to another story that is itself connected to another story. And that's what walking is done. Walking has slowed me down enough. That has exposed not only kind of the grassroots reportage, the slow journalism that I've been talking about for years, what walking really has done and powerfully for me is it's revealed the integumentary tissue between story and story B, and how they're all tied together in that you can never really separate water issues from gender rights issues. Because if you have a farm that's stressed, and you can't make a living and the men go to work in the city, and the woman then get left behind, and that changes the gender dynamic you see it's all strung together. And that has come out more and more powerfully as the time has gone on the trail.

AMT: And as you've recognized this how have you changed over the years?

PAUL SALOPEK: You know I think I've just become more and more patient with information. I used to be a glutton for information as a conventional reporter I would do data dumps. I would read books I would talk to experts. I would do interviews et cetera et cetera. Now it's like, no, the research is never ending. The research is life now. So it's given me a kind of a long way view of how information itself is connected.

AMT: How has your view of people changed?

PAUL SALOPEK: It's becoming- my reporting even when I was a war correspondent has always gravitated towards civilians and people stories. I didn't do too many interviews with generals or politicians because I got something from them and this was what I got, that even in a war zone people can lead normal lives. They love each other. They have romances. They have break ups. They go to their jobs. They dress their kids for school. They have normal lives even the middle of mass violence. And that always fascinated me. So what I'm seeing on this walk is the amazing resilience of homo sapiens to adapt to almost any extremity. This has been reinforced in the last seven years of walking because I've walked through a lot of areas that by economic definition are quite poor. But by other metrics, the ones that are more intangible about the meaning in life, about the power and strength of communities, these were very rich communities and the walk has reinforced that.

AMT: How many kilometres have you walked now?

PAUL SALOPEK: I don't know exactly. I think it's approaching maybe, a total travell I think is 17000. I think it's somewhere around that 15 or 17 thousand.

AMT: Do you have days where you just don't want to move?

PAUL SALOPEK: Sure. Absolutely. And you know days that I just want to stop for, not just one day, but you know for maybe a week. And I do. But what I've discovered something that just kind of happened organically on this project is that there's this nice rhythm where I walk for two or three or four days, I'm gathering string on stories kind of subconsciously or consciously, whether it goes into my notebook or not it's in my head. And then just as my body's getting tired I'm saying, you know what Paul, I've walked a 100 kilometers, 120. Let's stop and think you know relax for a couple of days. Let the body bill itself back up. That's when I start processing these loose strings of narrative in my head and nodding them together into stories and then I'm ready to go again. There's a recharge. And off I go. It's that kind of an organic cycle.

AMT: Well it's such an important journey, Paul, what you're sharing with all of us. It's been great to follow you along for these last six and a half years.

PAUL SALOPEK: Well it's been wonderful. I mean one of the great artifacts of this journey is the longevity of relationships. I mean the very nature of walking through people's lives as you stay in their lives longer. And ironically you and I have never met in person but we have a digital interaction that's always very rewarding and it's just wonderful that we're still in touch. And I hope we can continue to do that.

AMT: I do too myself, a chance to catch up and maybe even walk with you at some point. Paul a delight to talk to you again, really important to hear what you're finding and what you're learning. Some of it pretty sobering. Thank you.

PAUL SALOPEK: Thank you so much Anna Maria. Until next time.

AMT: Paul Salopek. Two time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. A fellow with the National Geographic. He has been walking around the world on foot, retracing the journey of our ancestors from Ethiopia to the southernmost tip of South America. It is called the Out of Eden Walk and we will link to his site from our own cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today's. Stay with Radio One for Q jazz musician Kendrick Scott is on the show. Remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app free from the App Store or Google Play. We're going to give the last word today to some more well-wishers. I'm going to hear this for the first time as are you. I'll be back again tomorrow for a special live audience final program. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Hi we're Barenaked Ladies. Congratulations Anna Maria for moving on from The Current. I mean they're a small little tiny chewy berry and finally after 47 years of hosting The Current you're moving on. Congratulations. I find The Current kind of tart as an ingredient. So I'm glad you're moving on. I want to wish you luck. Besides you can only be current for so long. It's time to be future. Good luck. Love you. Bye.

[Song: It's all been Done by Barenaked Ladies]

Wednesday June 19, 2019 Full Transcript

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