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The Current Transcript for March 22, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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[Sound: Non English speaking language]

TRANSLATOR: My eyes were trying to adjust to see who was there, but I could see a hunter's rifle pointed at me, and I remember thinking to myself, 'There's no way that they could be this ruthless’.

LAURA LYNCH: At just 23-years-old, Shakila Zareen has already seen too much ruthlessness in her life. Her sorrows begin before that fateful night in Afghanistan. Her story turns both painful and inspiring has been one of dashed hopes and dreams and new promise for the future. She lives in Canada today a million miles from the situation she fled back home, and to Shakila, every mile on that journey has been hard fought. She joins me today telling her story for the first time in the country she now calls home. Then, what are your favourite emojis to use when you text with your friends? And could there ever be any confusion about just what they mean? As frowny-faces, dancing girls, and martini glasses make up more and more of our text messages, it's starting to cause confusion in our courts. Just ask this lawyer.

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VOICE 1: It was a sexual assault case and the complainant herself, during the course of what she says was an assault, was texting, and using emojis. The judge wanted to know more of what emojis meant, how certain things would be defined.

LL: Emojis as Exhibit "A" — in half an hour from now. And also today, all too often young people are drawn to hate groups by a particularly powerful form of propaganda and learn to hate through hateful music like this former skinhead did.

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VOICE 1: I didn't know what a Jew was at 14-years-old, I'd never met one. But the music was very attractive to me because it was aggressive and it was inspiring, and every lyric was about white supremacy and promoting violence.

LL: How to control hate music online in the age of YouTube. That's in an hour from now. I'm Laura Lynch in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

Shot in the face by her husband in Afghanistan, former teen bride starts anew in Canada

Guest: Shakila Zareen

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[Sound: Non-English speaking language]

LL: It's tea time, for Shakila Zareen. The 23-year-old is sitting down for tea and dates with her mother and sister. It's a peaceful moment, at her home in the Vancouver area. But there was a long, and almost unimaginably difficult journey, on the way to this peaceful life for Shakila. As a 17-year-old, in Afghanistan, she was married off. Her husband, she says, was violently abusive. And though she sought help first at home, and then abroad it proved very hard to come by. Today, Shakila is living in Canada with refugee status, together with her mother and sister. But her story, which she's sharing with us today, is a very painful one at times. So I'll warn listeners that some may find our interview disturbing. Shakila Zareen is with us from the Vancouver area. Hello.

SHAKILA ZAREEN: Hi.

LL: Shakila, we will talk to you about how you got to Canada shortly. But I just want to start at the beginning about when you got married. Tell me what your life was like with your husband.

SHAKILA ZAREEN: [Non-English speaking language]

TRANSLATOR: I was very young. I was only 17 when I was given off to my aunt's son who I never even met in my life. And it was my brother-in-law who was the one who gave me away. And it was him who came with a knife and the man who came to be my husband and said that I have to marry him. And I cried and I cried a lot. And I said no I want to study. I want to learn. But then they ended up coming with 20 men and surrounding the house and all of a sudden everybody just started putting makeup on me and telling me that I have to get married. And they basically said that if I don't marry him they're going to kill my entire family.

LL: So then you married him and tell me what that was like for you being married to him.

TRANSLATOR: From that first night when I was taken to his house he told me to go and bring tea and he got very upset at me because he realized that I didn't really know how to do these domestic things. And from right then and there he began to beat me on that first night and he raped me. And I can't even tell you because I didn't even realize anything. I didn't realize what it means to be married. This became my normal regular reality.

LL: Did you tell anyone what was happening to you?

TRANSLATOR: There was no one around me. There was no one to tell. It was his family there.

LL: Eventually you went to the police. Tell me what happened when you went to the police.

TRANSLATOR: What ended up happening is that when I went to the police I was really bruised and battered. They could tell that I was beaten up and the police said to me it's your husband and he hasn't done anything really that awful to you. He hasn't cut off your ear. He hasn't cut off your mouth. He hasn't cut off your nose.

LL: How did you feel when the police said that to you?

TRANSLATOR: I had zero hope at that point. I really had nowhere to go and if I can’t turn to the police I really thought to myself I have no one that I can turn to.

LL: And so you went home to your mothers and then your husband showed up. If you don't mind tell me what happened.

TRANSLATOR: Right after the police station that night I went to my mom's. I remember I was in the house. I was sitting on the ground and my mom was praying. And my sister was in the kitchen. And I could hear footsteps at the door. I could hear my husband and my brother-in-law and some other men — I don't know who they were. My eyes were trying to adjust to see who was there but I could see a hunter’s rifle pointed at me. And I remember thinking to myself there's no way that they could be this ruthless. But I got very scared and I said, “Please God, don't let them hurt me.” And then that's all. That's all I remember. It went black. I thought that I was dreaming. I just remember begging my mom to wake me because I was in so much pain and I wanted the dream to be over.

LL: Was it in fact your husband who shot you in your face?

TRANSLATOR: Yes. Yes it was.

LL: If you are just joining us now I'm speaking with Shakila Zareen who is a young woman from Afghanistan who's been given refugee status in Canada. She is telling us her story of how she came to this country. And a warning again to listeners some of you may find the content of this interview disturbing. You survived. And then the Indian government flew you to New Delhi for a series of surgeries — reconstructive surgeries. Tell me what that was like for you to go to New Delhi and to be helped.

TRANSLATOR: When they told me that India was going to help — I actually found out over the radio that I was being taken to India — and it gave me hope for a new life and hope for a future.

LL: Shakila, do you mind describing for me what the injuries were that you suffered?

TRANSLATOR: The bullet that hit my face basically took half of my face off. It was gone the entire half of my face. My nose, my eye, my mouth, my teeth, my jaw.

LL: Your brother-in-law who married you off to your husband has denied your claim against your husband shooting you when he was talking to The Guardian newspaper. What would you say to your brother-in-law and to your husband?

TRANSLATOR: He is a coward. That's what I would say to him. These people are famous fighters. People know them very well in my country and that's why they don't believe me. In India they also threatened me — always. They always threatened me and that's why I finally spoke out. They are nothing but liars and cowards. How could I have possibly shot myself in the face?

LL: Shakila, I want to press ahead a little bit. So you go to India. You go through nine reconstructive surgeries. The United Nations grants you and your mother and your younger sister refugee status. And then in 2016 the United States gives you conditional acceptance to move to the U.S. When you found out you were going to go to America, how did you react?

TRANSLATOR: When I was in India I didn't feel safe, as I said, I was also being threatened there. And the UNHCR recommended me to America. And after a while the U.S. actually accepted me and I really thought to myself that for the first time I have a chance at a new life and a new beginning.

LL: But then what happened? You didn't go to America. What happened?

TRANSLATOR: We didn't go because of Trump. I was told because of Trump that I was told that the U.S. doesn't like Muslims anymore and I cried and cried and cried and I said "Why? Why would I possibly not be allowed into any country?" I fell into a very, very bad depression actually.

LL: I understand that's what you think and your rejection letter said it was for security related reasons. Could it be that your husband and brother-in-law had some sort of connection to the Taliban?

TRANSLATOR: Maybe. I mean maybe it's true. Maybe because my brother-in-law has connections or maybe because my husband has connections. But they are the ones who hurt me. They are the ones who took half of my face. They are the ones. Why are they taking my rights away because of what they did to me?

LL: Then a few months after that, Shakila, you get an invitation to go and see Canadian officials. Tell me what happened.

TRANSLATOR: What ended up happening is that I was recommended to go for an interview at the Canadian embassy.

LL: And what happened? Tell me what happened?

TRANSLATOR: When we went for the interview they were so nice to me there. I cannot explain to you how comfortable and just smiling. Everybody was always smiling at me and I felt so happy and comfortable there. I had never felt more comfortable than when I was sitting in that interview. Maybe a couple days after I was told to pack my stuff and get all my stuff together — I can't believe this that I was on my way and I was being given a visa to come to Canada.

LL: What was the first thing that entered your mind when you were told you were coming to Canada?

TRANSLATOR: One of the first things that came into my mind is how proud I was going to be and how much I really wanted to become a citizen of this country and I really want to be able to tell the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that to his face. Not only for me, but on behalf of a lot of women of my country and women around the world and all of the things that this country does for them.

SHAKILA ZAREEN: And in fact I know that you think it was just a couple of days but it was actually a few weeks before Canada said yes to you although that is very quick in terms of normal times for immigration. And you ended up arriving in Canada at the end of January. Tell me how life has been for you since you arrived in Vancouver.

TRANSLATOR: I had the feeling of being extremely happy. Since we came here before we were in India for four years and I never opened my eyes and I never exposed my full face for people to see. I would always cover my eye and I wore a bandage over it. But since arriving here I have opened my face and I walk proudly. No one looks at me here funny. No one makes fun of me and that is the thing that has given me the most security.

LL: Do you feel safe?

TRANSLATOR: So far yes.

LL: What, Shakila, do you want Canadians to know about what life is like for girls and women in Afghanistan?

TRANSLATOR: I want them to know that life for Afghan women is very hard. Even though I also want them to know that Afghan women are very, very strong. We go through a lot of suffering. We don't have the right to learn. We don't have the right to work or go to school. Everything has to come from our family or our husbands and we suffer a lot. Every day I was there I would see people. I would see people whose facial features were cut out — by people I mean women. Missing noses, missing ears, missing mouths, missing limbs. Till when? Till when are we supposed to go through this? We want this hatred of women to stop.

LL: What would you like Canada to do?

TRANSLATOR: I want them to help those who can't help themselves. For the women who can't study or those who suffer at the hands of their husbands or their families and who really have nowhere to go. I want somehow the government to be able to protect them, to give them rights, to protect them from all these types of coercion.

LL: Shakila, I have one more question for you. On the table beside your bed you have a picture of yourself in Afghanistan from before you were shot. And I'm wondering why you have that there?

SHAKILA ZAREEN: I can answer the question. I am strong. I look at it and I think to myself what I was. I want to see what I was and what I am today. And I think ‘what type of man would do this to a woman? What type of man would hurt somebody like me?’ I'm sorry I can't go on anymore.

LL: Shakila, I'm so sorry to have made you cry. I can only wish you a great life ahead. And I want to thank you very much for talking to us.

SHAKILA ZAREEN: Thank you very much. I really want to thank you Laura for allowing me to tell my story. I also want to say that women are strong and that we will defend ourselves.

LL: Shakila, goodbye. Thank you.

SHAKILA ZAREEN: Goodbye. Thank you so much.

LL: Shakila Zareen left Afghanistan after being shot in the face by her husband. She is now a refugee in Canada, with her mother and sister. She spoke to us from the Vancouver area. Shakila Zareen still needs more reconstructive surgery on her face. Translation was provided by The Current's Samira Mohyeddin. We did ask U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about Shakila Zareen's application. They said they could not comment on specific cases due to privacy laws. But the State Department sent us a statement that read in part: "The United States is committed to supporting the Afghan people's efforts to achieve peace, security, and prosperity for their country, including the rights of women... U.S. assistance efforts in Afghanistan continue to focus on addressing issues such as violence against women and girls, economic empowerment, and access to education. However, we know the road ahead is long. There is still much more to be done to achieve further women and girls' empowerment."

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LL: I have a moment now to let you know about a story coming up next week on The Current. Maria Cioffi was only 11-years-old when the Bosnian war broke out. She was living near Sarajevo and escaped to Croatia with her family when the city came under siege. As a child she remembers seeing the blue helmets of the UN peacekeeping soldiers and the Maple Leaf flags on the uniforms of men and women from Canada. To many of those soldiers, Bosnia was a short, frustrating and disturbing deployment. They felt like they couldn't really make a difference in the war that raged around them. Of course, Maria Cioffi couldn't have understood that at the time, but years later after she had moved to Canada she saw something on TV that brought back a lot of memories.

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VOICE 1: Right around Remembrance Day last year, there was a documentary on called Sector Sarajevo and it just caught my attention because Sarajevo. And I thought ‘oh I should watch this. It should be interesting’. And it basically followed a group of Canadian peacekeepers. They were one of the first to go to Sarajevo during the war. And you know they share their experiences and what happened there. And there was one peacekeeper in particular Scott Casey and I just watched him and he talked about his experience there and I could just see it in his eyes. It affected him so much and you could tell that he was still suffering 20 years later. And it just — I had to find him. I had to contact to let him know that you know don't suffer. You should be happy and look you helped me. Look how much my life has changed and I just felt I had to reach out to him and make him feel better and let him know that you know what he did a good thing and I know it was bad and we can't control that. But you've helped so many thousands of other people like me. And I thought that maybe if I could find him and just write him a letter that maybe would help him feel better.

LL: Maria Cioffi did write that letter and it had more of an effect than she could have ever imagined. CBC Reporter Hannah Thibedeau tells Anna Maria the story of war and healing next week on The Current. The CBC News is next. Then, just what do you mean by that winky-face emoji? The more we pepper our texts with emojis, the more they perplex our justice system, by just what they mean. Are emoji translators in court the solution? That discussion right after the CBC News. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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Emoji evidence is causing confused faces in courtrooms

Guests: Elizabeth Kirley, Ari Goldkind, Gretchen McCulloch

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LL: Still to come, online platforms like YouTube are struggling to contain the spread of hate-filled music. It's the kind of musical propaganda groups like skinheads have used to spread their message and recruit new converts for years. But the digital age means it can spread further and faster than ever. Coming up in half an hour from now, we'll hear about a BBC investigation into hate music on YouTube. And we'll hear from a former skinhead who says removing it outright, may not be the answer. But first, emojis may be the hieroglyphics of the 21st century. But there's no Rosetta Stone.

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VOICE 1: I don't know what this guy is called but he's line eyes, line mouth — that is my top emoji. I use that in almost every situation. “Thinking” — I mean that is an all-purpose emoji. I absolutely love that guy too. You would use that guy in a situation where you are pointing out a tweet or something that's a little suspect you could just send that — no words needed just hmm really? [Laughs] It's not a science. I feel like everyone is just winging it really.

LL: That's Stephanie Johns, of Halifax, discussing a few of her go-to emojis. The small digital images we all send alongside or instead of words in our text messages can be a lot of fun. They can say a lot, in a little icon. But of course, they can also cause confusion. As Stephanie said there, lots of us are just winging it when it comes to just what we mean by the emojis we use. And as they become a more and more regular feature of the way we communicate, they're adding a new layer of complexity to court proceedings. This trend is the topic of study by my next guest. Elizabeth Kirley is an adjunct professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School and Chair of Law Science and Technology at Deakin University in Australia. She's also co-author of a paper called The Emoji Factor: Humanizing the Emerging Law of Digital Speech. It will be published next month in the Tennessee Law Review. Elizabeth Kirley is in our Toronto studio. Hello.

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: Good morning.

LL: How is it that the images are turning up in cour rooms these days?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: Well people are doing what they shouldn't do perhaps which is to vent with using emoji, to send a message in a great hurry where a picture will do, rather than words, or to use emoji to deliberately get back at someone or to send a message that could be frightening or it could be defamatory or could be scary. So that's what's ending up in court.

LL: So you study this. What jurisdictions did you look at?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: We looked at Canada and we looked at the United States and we looked at Australia and we looked at one recent case out of Israel.

LL: And so tell me about those countries. Why are emojis creating complications in courtrooms in those countries?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: In Australia it appears that the judiciary is more aggressive. Well actually the police I guess are more aggressive first of all in laying charges when they suspect that someone is being stalked or harassed. And then once it gets into court judges are taking it upon themselves to see if they can find some intent on the part of the sender that will meet the legal bar, meet the legal test, for a crime being committed or a civil tort being performed.

LL: In other countries that you studied...

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: Canada is a bit of a question mark at the moment. I was hoping to dig up some cases for you this morning. But I think generally what's happening with Canada is that we're cautious. And these judgements when they occur or these decisions are not being reported. And so Canada is a bit of an unknown at this point. But the U.S. of course is very active and so it's quite a case study in itself.

LL: So from a legal standpoint why do emojis pose a particular challenge?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: Because they're ambiguous I would say more than anything. So if you choose this morning to send me a text and you decide that a particular face or a dancing woman for example would just round off your message and just really drive home the particular emotion that you're after, that message or that emoji for a number of reasons might be interpreted by me as a completely different type of punctuation to your message. And so that's the problem. That's what we're after.

LL: So can you give me an example of a case where an emoji was involved?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: Oh several. The easiest case I suppose that judges have determined are cases where only emoji are involved. So no text, just emoji. And an example — an American example — is a message that was sent that was comprised of a fist and then a finger pointing to the third emoji which was an ambulance. So the message the judge thought in that case was pretty clear: I'm going to punch you out so badly that you're going to end up in the hospital. So that's a pretty clear example of a use of emoji. But there are others that have us scratching our heads. For example a winky emoji as some scholars have said, have decided, they act as almost a countermeasure to a message. So you might send a message that says, “I'd really like to meet you in person. Let's go dancing Saturday night,” and you end that text message with a winky face; for the recipient that's very confusing and ambiguous. Does that mean just kidding? Does that mean we're going to have a really good time? Does that mean let's get it on? Could it be a salacious or a very flirtatious message? So it adds confusion in that case and that's what the courts end up asking for help with.

LL: Right. So given all of that then how much weight do emojis have?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: Well in the example with an emoji only message, they have 100 per cent weight because there's nothing else to go by. How do you decipher intention from those little innocent looking pictures? And more and more judges are beginning to ask that the emoji be presented to a jury or to the bench along with the text message, not verbally, but in a written form. So the judge or jury can take a look at that. They can look at the text, they can look at the emoji, and try to determine for themselves what is the main thrust of the message.

LL: How often do these cases involve young people because quite frankly I don't really speak or read emoji myself — I'd have a tough time with it. So how often is it young people who are involved?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: I would say with the cases we studied, well over 50 per cent. And generally the highest social media range is between the ages of about 18 and 29. But tweens and teens are using emoji at a rate we can't keep track of. And they essentially have their own culture. I think if we were to take a look at — if they would let us — at what they are using in their texting and their emojis we wouldn't really have much of a clue what they were saying to one another. It's really a code. Like an adolescent code.

LL: Ok. I want to bring another guest into the conversation. Ari Goldkind is a criminal defense lawyer. He's also with me here in our Toronto studio. Hello.

ARI GOLDKIND: Good morning.

LL: How often are you seeing emojis in Canadian courtrooms?

ARI GOLDKIND: They're becoming very common place and the subject of much discussion hence why we're here. But what's interesting when people talk about emoji is you have to go back a step and realize why are we talking about emojis? Because language changes and over the course of centuries and decades language changes. And when the court comes into it, what courts look at particularly for the kinds of cases we're talking about — you were just discussing with Elizabeth — are what peoples words and actions mean. Let's go back to brass tacks and there's a lot of discussion about do you need experts? Do you need people with degrees and doctorates and experts? Because the courts in my view are too filled with experts. What we're trying to figure out basically in a very simple way of putting it: What did somebody mean when they sent that emoji? And as Elizabeth just mentioned judges and juries are entering that fray as they should because the function of a judge and jury and I'll pause here is simply to determine what facts were in dispute and emojis convey meaning. It's that simple.

LL: You recently used emojis as evidence in a sexual assault case.

ARI GOLDKIND: So it was a very interesting case and it was before a jury and there was some discussion of what the emojis meant. And very simply put my client was on trial for sex assault. The actual matter of fact of that allegation was very, very interesting. But suffice it to say a young lady propositioned my client — a male — wanted to come to his place in the middle of the night. He was reluctant. She then went to the police because something in the night went bad because he didn't allow her to sleep over and made a complaint about sexual assault. And when she testified over and over that she went there against her will, he was pressuring her, etc, I said well wait a minute I have all the text messages from their phone, from their [unintelligible] you know Tinder the way it is these days. You put that up before the jury and everything that she's texting including emojis with smiley faces and winky faces and as Elizabeth mentioned salacious and other things, that was so important to the jury and so important to the judge that the plain ordinary interpretation of her word showed her to be not somebody worthy of belief. Interestingly, because it very rarely happens in Canada, the judge removed that case from the jury because he thought it would be such a miscarriage of justice if her original story when you combine with what she did that night was left before the jury.

LL: Ok so you said words there. But what role did the emotions play?

ARI GOLDKIND: The emotions were very significant as most people listening to this because you know again you mentioned quite rightly there is a gap here between people over 50, over 40 vs. under 30, etc. Smiley faces, winky faces, sexual sorts of emojis which do exist if you go further into the emoji selection on your phone. There is basically an emoji for everything. And the bottom line here is as much as some try and make the emoji issue complex, when somebody sends that emoji they don't think they're going to end up in court. They're trying to convey meaning. All that happens in reverse is when you end up in court you're just trying to reverse engineer what they meant. And it's usually quite clear.

LL: Elizabeth Kirley, what's your reaction to what Ari Goldkind is saying?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: I think that he is on the ground. He works in the courts every day. He sees a lot of this come before the judge and a lot of it might seem not nearly as serious as other cases that do need attention. So it's very easy to make a quick judgement about what these symbols mean and then to withdraw the charges or to convict and move on. I am not suggesting that there's any miscarriage of justice going on but what I'm saying is we should stop and think about that because often the message that is being conveyed is more complicated. It is more complex. It's more ambiguous and that is both on the part of the sender and on the part of the recipient. So then what steps Canadian courts should do to deal with what is obviously in court already? These emojis are being dealt with in courts.

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: Yes, I can appreciate Ari saying that he really doesn't think we need any more experts. Our paper proposes is that in fact it would be a very good idea because we have people who are specialists in many disciplines, who can be brought together, who are writing about this. We've got linguists, people who study semiotics, people to look at human computer interactions, law, and even within those disciplines people are beginning to cross over into other areas. I'm doing that myself as a chair of law and technology because you can't just any more talk about the law of technology. You've got to bring in artificial intelligence and other expertise. We're not there yet but I'm suggesting this might be a very good start.

ARI GOLDKIND: I don't see it that way as somebody who's in the court room every day later on this morning and I'll tell you why. Because the more you put experts in, the more you take away from a judge or jury the rule of common sense. And remember why does this matter? It's not really emojis. Everything we do these days is on our phones. We're all addicted to our phones. Anybody who says they're not I think they're not telling us the straight story. And when you are using your phone without thinking it's going to end up in court. A lot of phones end up in court now. Police seize them. Those messages are important. You're not writing something to somebody else to try and trick them or to try and confuse them or to be ambiguous. So when you add more experts into the court just for people listening you want to have an expert when there's DNA and something that you and I have no idea how DNA works. And if I leave a little bit of my finger nail…

LL: But I don't have an idea of how emojis work.

ARI GOLDKIND: But here's why it matters because you're talking about adding an expert to do what 12 ordinary average people in the jury room should discuss or argue about which is what did person intend? What does that emoji mean? If they have a doubt about it or it's not clear, I am very uncomfortable with a 75-year-old expert in linguistic emoji technology coming in and saying here's what the penis emoji meant when she said it. To me an expert shouldn't be somebody that I think an 11 or 12-year-old or a 13-year-old is going to know more about what a emojis mean than most scholars. And I mean that respectfully because you're talking about something that's used by younger people to convey emotions. You can't go back and ask somebody who's out of touch with that to say here is what the young men meant.

LL: Elizabeth Kirley, we only have a few seconds left. I'm going to give you the last word. What is at stake here if we don't address this issue in the courts?

ELIZABETH KIRLEY: What's at stake is people like Trump making hand signals, thumbs up, and using those emoji on his phone, not knowing completely unaware that down under in Australia and New Zealand those signs mean “get stuffed.” So there is a great deal of complexity here and I say we really need to bring in the experts.

LL: Thank you to both of you for coming in and using words today. I really appreciate it. Elizabeth Kirley is co-author of The Emoji Factor: Humanizing the Emerging Law of Digital Speech. She is an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. Ari Goldkind is a Toronto criminal defence lawyer. They were both in Toronto. The first emojis were in invented in 1999 in Japan by a software developer there. And year after year, new emojis are developed all approved by the Unicode consortium, the international non-profit responsible for emoji standards. By the end of this year there will be more than 2,800 emojis in total, including new ones that represent mosquitoes, bagels and bald men — which gives us plenty of scope for confusion. A company called highspeedinternet.com did a survey last year about how people interpret emojis. And here's their list of the top three most confusing emojis.

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VOICE 1: Number one: the hugging face. A face with an open hand gesture. About a third of people said it means “that's cool.” Another third think it's a hug and the final third say it's a funny shrug. Number two: the neutral face. A face featuring neutral eyes and a straight closed mouth. Almost 40 per cent of respondents say that means “unamused,” while the rest thought it meant either bored or neutral. Number three: the face savouring delicious food. A smiley face with the tongue sticking out the side. Almost 40 per cent think this means “silly.” 30 per cent think it's saying “yum,” and 20 percent think it means “joking.”

LL: My next guest has studied the way we use emojis to communicate. Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist and the co-host of a podcast called Lingthusiasm. We reached her in Montreal. Hello.

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: Hello.

LL: What do you make of what we were just hearing about the legal concerns over how we interpret emojis?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: It's a really interesting question and I think it's something that's going to be coming up you know more and more as people are using emoji and informal written communication all over the place.

LL: How much variation is there in the meanings that people attach to various emojis?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: There are definitely some emoji that have an obvious meaning. Like the winky face seems to correspond to what you would do with a regular wink. But there also are a bunch that aren't necessarily intuitive. You know the eggplant emoji, there are lots of stories of you know people's parents at grocery stories texting them the eggplant emoji and the millennial kid having to say “look mom, look dad, that's not an eggplant, that's used suggestively these days.”

LL: I'm sorry, if it's not an eggplant, what is it?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: It's a phallic symbol.

LL: I see. Ok.

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: Yeah. So you know watch out for that one. Another one I think is particularly interesting is that the Maple Leaf emoji can be used to stand for both Canada and marijuana.

LL: Ok. So is it meant to do both? Is that how it's come to be interpreted?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: Well you know that's an open question. The description for it in Unicode is Maple Leaf. But because the Japanese maple has a bit of a different shape to its leaf than the kind on our flag the Japanese Maple Leaf looks a little bit more like a marijuana leaf and when device manufacturers display it like the Japanese maple it definitely bears a resemblance.

LL: The confusion can easily arise. I haven't heard about this Unicode before that is setting these standards. But we don't have a dictionary that tells us what we're doing. And so it seems to be natural that confusion would arise.

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: And even if we had one, I mean, do you consult the dictionary before you say every single word?

LL: Right. But I guess it's the equivalent of learning a language isn't it?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: Well I think emoji are more like gesture because you know a lot of them specifically the popular ones are face and hand emoji. But even the ones that are particular you know idea like the shape of a Maple Leaf or the eggplant or I think of the gun emoji. You know there's a gun hand shape that you can make with your hands and it can have meanings from you know “I'm bored. Get me out of here,” to “I'm threatening you.” And that's something that courts have had to deal with on the hand shaped side, on the gesture side, before. And I think that's a good framework for thinking about how we interpret emoji.

LL: And how much of the confusion that arises is generational? Well you talked about the eggplant already which seems very generational. How much of it is about that?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: It's partly generational. It's also partially you know how much time you spend on the Internet and how much communication you do with texting, who you're talking to, just as much as the year were actually born yourself. So two 30-year-old or two forty-year-olds could have very different experiences depending on what they do with their communication.

LL: What is research telling us though about the role that emojis play overall in our communication compared to words these days?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: What we found when I've looked at this is that people aren’t using emoji as a substitute for words. People are using them in addition to words. So a lot of people think of the emoji particularly you know people who are used to using them and they think that they're kind of like those puzzles that you might have done as a kid you know. Where you have like a bumblebee for to be or not to be and you're trying to figure out what the words are based on what the picture sound like. And that's not how people use emoji. People use them in addition to words generally at the end of a phrase or as a reply to indicate I've seen this, I acknowledge, and I think that they're best understood in context of gesturing. You can point to things. You can add context with your gestures. We haven't had a way of representing gestures in writing, in any sort of well-developed sense before this. And so emoji really add this extra layer of representing gesture just like how punctuation can kind of represent your tone of voice in addition to the words you're saying.

LL: You heard our previous discussion. I'm wondering what you think of emoji say about people's intent?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: I think they can say a lot. It can definitely depend. So you know if you're saying “that's fine” and you put a smiley face, whereas if you say “that's fine” and you put like the upside down smiley face which has a very complex interpretation.

LL: What does it mean?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: Everyone that has explained it to me and I agree with this interpretation — the most common explanation that I get refers to a particular cartoon which is this dog that's sitting at a table with a coffee cup and saying “this is fine,” but the room that the dog is in with a coffee cup surrounded in flames.

LL: Ok.

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: So it's a way of saying I'm not reacting to this. I'm being stoic about this. I'm not screaming, right? Because the dog is just sitting there with his coffee cup at the table. But the room is on fire. And it's a way of that tension. You know you have the smiley face which is happy but it's upside down

LL: That is a lot of interpretation. Let's go through a couple of other quick points here. Can you tell if someone is lying when they use emojis?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: I mean can you tell if someone is lying, in general, right? I think that's a bigger question than emoji can answer for us.

LL: You don't maintain there is any difference between lying with words and lying with emoji?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: I think you know lying is a difficult question right. It would be nice if there was a bulletproof way of telling people were lying. I don’t think emoji are going to give it to us.

LL: And sarcasm... Is it always clear when someone is being sarcastic?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: I think emoji can help contextualize sarcasm and they can help make it clear that someone is being sarcastic. If I said to someone “I hate you” with a smiley face, you'd know that's clearly a joke. That's not saying I actually hate you. That's me adding to this intention you know I'm joking around about this.

LL: And just quickly what do you think of this idea then of having emojii experts who could advise a court?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: I'm surprised no one's called me yet.

LL: You're ready. Do you think it's a good idea?

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: I think it has a lot of potential because certain emoji have multiple meanings for this and I'm just as worried about having some 70-year-old interpreting emojis for teens. I think that would be a bad idea. But I think what you need from an expert is someone that is data-driven; that can say I've done a corporate study of something or I've done a...

LL: We'll have to leave it there. But I thank you very much Gretchen.

GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: Thanks.

LL: Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist, and she spoke to us from Montreal. Coming up in our next half hour, what to do with the surprising amount of hate music circulating on websites like YouTube? Some are trying to flag and remove it. But after the break we'll hear from a former skinhead who says that's not necessarily the answer to the problem. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

This former white supremacist says hate music is recruiting alienated, angry youth

Guests: Mike Wendling, Tony McAleer, Paul Resnikoff.

[Music]

LL: We're not playing the lyrics of that track or identifying the band that plays it because, it's hate music. And it's available on YouTube. Of course with the volume of videos on YouTube, you might expect some hateful music to slip through the cracks. But that track is actually one of many examples on the site. Music that glorifies violence and killing. Music that calls Muslims, Jews and other groups "sub-human." And just as it has been for years, this type of hate music isn't merely for the entertainment of extremists. It's a powerful recruitment tool that can lure in the angry and disillusioned. YouTube, for its part, says its Community Guidelines prohibit hate speech, but a recent BBC investigation revealed just how difficult it can be to get those guidelines enforced consistently. Mike Wendling is the editor of BBC Trending, a unit of the BBC that investigates social media trends and websites. And a warning we are talking about hate music, the content may be disturbing to some listeners. Mike Wendling is in London. Hello.

MIKE WENDLING: Hello.

LL: What did you set out to do in your investigation?

MIKE WENDLING: Well we've been looking at I suppose the far right presence on the web ever since there was a lot of news attention on it particularly after the events in Charlottesville, Virginia last year — the violent events there. What we found on YouTube specifically is that while other social networks, music websites had been scrubbing this neo-Nazi music, this hate music, from their platforms. It still existed on YouTube and it existed on YouTube in a big way. I mean I probably don't need to tell you and your audience that when it comes to music YouTube is the giant in the room right. You go there and watch all sorts of music videos. New clips, old clips. And what's true of mainstream music is also true of neo-Nazi hate music. We found actually thousands of these kinds of tracks on there. We picked out 100 links that were particularly offensive either illegal in some countries or against YouTube's own terms and conditions which prohibit this kind of stuff. And we reported it to YouTube.

LL: Ok. Just step back for a second. How do you define hate music?

MIKE WENDLING: We've spoken to experts who will say that some of it is a judgement call but when you have stuff that calls for genocide that is clearly hate music. When you have stuff that glorifies violence and particularly the killing of Jews or you know says that Hitler did a great job then that is the kind of stuff we're talking about here.

LL: All right. Can you give me some examples of some of the material you reviewed as part of the investigation?

MIKE WENDLING: Yes. So like you mentioned in your intro there were songs that were calling people sub-humans - ethnic groups or specific nationalities. We don't really want to sort of get into the exact lyrics because some of them can be very violent. A lot of the actual music is from the sort of punk or hardcore genre. Now of course we don't want to label all that music neo-Nazi. Most of it isn't. And a lot of it is you know even anti-racist. But of course those genres have been popular in the white nationalist movement. And there have been white nationalist bands and neo-Nazi bands that have grown out of that movement sometimes even in opposition to sort of the more I suppose left wing or mainstream punk or hardcore music.

LL: So as you said you reported it to YouTube. What was YouTube's response?

MIKE WENDLING: So interestingly we reported it not as journalists but using the public facing reporting mechanism at YouTube. So anybody out there can see something on YouTube and say, "hey you know what? I don't think that's quite right. That's against the rules or that’s illegal,” and report it to YouTube." We did this to sort of you know give a bit of a test as to whether our complaints would be taken seriously. Of the 100 links we reported seven were taken down. Another few dozen were actually Geo-restricted meaning that in the UK or in other countries particularly in Europe, particularly Germany, because of that country's past the videos cannot be seen. But in the majority of cases initially when we were using that public reporting function YouTube didn't take any action at all

LL: And you say initially because you went and revealed yourself to YouTube.

MIKE WENDLING: That's right. Because in the course of reporting the story we later went to YouTube and we asked for explanations why most of those tracks were left up. We had specific examples of lyrics — some of the ones that we've been alluding to. And eventually after we identify ourselves as journalists from BBC Trending all of the links were either taken down or restricted in various countries.

MIKE WENDLING: How difficult is it though for YouTube to monitor this material? There must be so much.

LL: Yeah. And YouTube has a broader problem with extreme content of all sorts’ right. When it comes to say Islamic State propaganda, child protection, these kinds of stories have come up again and again. YouTube late last year said that it's upping the number of moderators but they don't have enough people to monitor the content that's appearing. It’s hundreds of hours every minute that are uploaded to YouTube. So it really relies on people like you and I reporting this stuff for them to them. But it calls into question the whole system when in a case like this we had very legitimate and clear violations of YouTube's guidelines or in some cases the law in some countries. We flagged it up using that system which they encourage users to use. And in most cases no action was taken.

LL: Well then what does that say to you?

MIKE WENDLING: That says to me that again YouTube has an issue and it's not restricted to hate music or you know far right content. It's a number of different categories. It's what you might call YouTube's content problem. They just don't have the resources to be able to filter this. It would be very interesting to know and YouTube actually hasn't sort of revealed the mechanics of how it moderates these things. And in this case they sent us a statement. They said that they must do more. So they admitted that they are working on the problem and that they haven't been in this particular case sort of on top of the issue. But the details of that are a little bit fuzzy about exactly what they're doing to try and you know stem the flow of extreme content on their website.

LL: Are you going to keep track of this going forward?

MIKE WENDLING: Yeah absolutely

LL: It's almost like you're doing YouTube's job for them.

MIKE WENDLING: This hasn't been the first investigation like this we've done at BBC Trending. Like I say we have in the past looked into ISIS propaganda, into stuff that could put your children in danger in terms of pedophiles commenting on videos. And we find again and again there are some serious holes in YouTube's system.

LL: Really interesting, Mike. Thank you.

MIKE WENDLING: Thank you.

LL: Mike Wendling is the editor of BBC Trending. He was in London. We reached out to YouTube to invite them for an interview. They declined, but they sent a statement which reads, in part: "Hateful content that promotes violence has no place on YouTube. We've worked hard to develop responsible guidelines to make clear what content is unacceptable and YouTube has clear policies that outline what content is not acceptable to post. We remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users. We work closely with many law enforcement groups to understand local context and so that we can understand where artistic expression escalates into real threats. We're committed to continuing and improving our work on this issue to make sure YouTube is not a place for those who seek to do harm." My next guest is deeply familiar with the neo-Nazi movement and the music that drives it. Tony McAleer is a former organizer for the White Aryan Resistance and served as a skinhead recruiter. He was also the manager of a rock band that produced music with racist and hateful messaging in the 1990s. Today, he is the co-founder and board chair of Life After Hate, a non-profit created by former members of violent far-right extremist movements who help individuals that want to leave that life behind. He's in our Vancouver studio. Hello.

TONY MCALEER: Good morning.

LL: What were you thinking as you were listening to how YouTube responded to that investigation by BBC Trending?

TONY MCALEER: Well I think it's the difference between YouTube and say something like Spotify where Spotify chooses the music that it curates on the site. The challenge is with everybody uploading endless streams of content. And even if you take it down it'll pop up again under a different channel and it's like playing whack-a-mole and I think all of the social media platforms sort of struggle with that and they're dealing with ISIS and things like that. So I don't know that you can ever get rid of it you know as much as we may want to.

LL: Well I want to ask you more about your views on how the music should be managed. But first can you tell me what drew you into the white supremacist movement yourself?

TONY MCALEER: Well I think I was feeling you know a little bit alienated, angry, you know, things that were going on in my life and it gave me an easy framework to blame others what was going on in my life. I truly believe that the level to which we dehumanize other human beings is a mirror reflection of how internally disconnected and dehumanized we are.

LL: How old were you when that was happening?

TONY MCALEER: 16, 17.

LL: Quite young. Where did you make your first connections into that world?

TONY MCALEER: When I was going to boarding school in England. At that time the skinhead youth subculture was mainstream. It was only very political at the outer sort of edges of it. You know bands like Madness or the Specials and anti-racist bands were part of that mainstream as well and it was regular youths subculture and phenomenon. But about a year or two after I came back from England I came across the single by Screwdriver — White Power. And at the same time Hail The New Dawn was their first LP. And those were the first tracks that really kicked off the racist music scene in and amongst the punks mostly skinheads.

LL: So what appealed to you about the music?

TONY MCALEER: I was angry and the music was angry so it vibe with me. I think depending on where you are as a young person growing up, you know, you have songs that just resonate with you. And I was already into the punk thing. I was a British kid living and growing up in Canada. So the ultra-nationalist part of the skinhead thing really appealed to me and I was someone who was kind of bullied at school so the songs about fighting and you know being tough and dominating the enemies and stuff like that really attracted to me. I was attracted to the fantasy of violence.

LL: So that's the way you got involved in it and then you were also involved in a band yourself. So you are qualified to answer how important music is as a recruiting tool for these groups.

TONY MCALEER: It was a huge recruiting tool because once the music started you could see how quickly it spread and bands emulating Screwdriver were popping up all over the place and it became a huge music genre from one single. And when you've got kids that are you know feeling disaffected and they're looking for a framework to make sense of it all and particularly someone else to blame so they don't have to look inside, the music is a perfect remedy. And it was on the edge. You know part of what made it also attractive was like, ‘oh my god I can't believe these guys are saying these things’. It was edgy and you know young people are drawn to the edginess of it.

LL: Let's go back to the BBC’s investigation. How do you think that YouTube should manage this?

TONY MCALEER: Well like I say it's tough because of the sheer volume of it and I'm not sure that censorship is the wisest choice because I think when you take these bands that are making a career out of it you know not just stuff that was from the 90s ; if you force them to censor their lyrics and there were bands at the time that did then they make it sound more mainstream right. And if you make the rhetoric sound more like Richard Spencer and less like you know the ravings of an angry lunatic you actually end up the same bands putting out the same music with softened lyrics that meet the requirements of YouTube. But now it's actually more attractive.

LL: Tony McAleer, I want you to stand by for a moment while I invite someone else into this conversation. Shortly after the 2017 Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Digital Music News published a list of 37 white supremacist musicians streaming on Spotify. These videos had been flagged as racist hate bands by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the publication of the list caused a stir in the industry. Paul Resnikoff is the founder of Digital Music News and the journalist behind that story. He is in Los Angeles. Hello.

PAUL RESNIKOFF: Hey good morning.

LL: Can you describe the kind of music or bands that you found on Spotify?

PAUL RESNIKOFF: Surprisingly it wasn't as overt as I imagined it would be. And this might go back to some of what Tony was speaking about. A lot of the music I found was clearly hate music. But sometimes the lyrics are difficult to hear in the case of some death metal. In other cases you know everything was said except for you know the explicit racist statements that would clearly constitute it as hate music. So it required quite a bit of research to figure out exactly what constituted hate. But once you identify it you know you get a pretty clear picture.

LL: What happened when you published your story? What did Spotify do?

PAUL RESNIKOFF: Well there was a step in-between which surprised me. The story ended up getting picked up by New York Times, Wall Street Journal, pretty much everybody at BBC as you know noted. So within about 24 hours there was kind of this avalanche of attention that sort of stem from the story. Spotify to its credit their reaction was pretty swift. They went in and they started removing bands, issuing statements, and I think they really had the right intent to do that. And they started cleaning things up.

LL: You then did a follow up article where you looked at YouTube. Tell me how the reaction to that story was different.

PAUL RESNIKOFF: Right. So a colleague of mine Daniel Sanchez who is our resident YouTube expert tapped me on the shoulder and he said “This issue is about 10,000 times more serious on YouTube, I'm going to do an article there.” And it was unbelievable how the reaction was almost non-existent. YouTube didn't even get back to us. We couldn't even get a response from them on it. It seems like our queries just kind of went into a black hole. The reaction also was fairly muted. And you know I got sort of puzzled thinking like well why is this? You know this issue is at a fever pitch you know in the United States and in the world, why don't people care as much about YouTube? And I think there might just be this resignation about how out of control and vast and uncontrollable YouTube is. And it wasn't really until the BBC stepped in that YouTube itself started making changes.

LL: Try to explain to me how much easier it was for Spotify to respond to this than for YouTube and tell me why.

PAUL RESNIKOFF: Well I think there are a couple of reasons for that. Ok. Think of Spotify as a far more controllable orderly platform. So Spotify does have millions tens of millions of songs on its platform. However it has a limited number of distributors that can upload music onto its platform. So who knows how many — maybe thousands. So they can fairly easily identify what's going on throughout their system and make changes pretty quickly. They're also you know I believe as Tony was mentioning or Mike was mentioning earlier there's a fair amount of curation on the platform as well. So there are people who are able to control what's going on and make changes. The last part to that is I didn't get the sense that there was really a hate community in Spotify. And the reason why the play counts around hate music weren't really soaring. They were there. But they just didn't seem to be a big community there.

LL: Why do you think that is?

PAUL RESNIKOFF: Well when you get on to YouTube there's everything. So there's you know Screwdriver or you know whatever hate band and everything. But there are also messages. So they'll be you know a video from a white supremacist or they'll be you know a pro-Aryan documentary. You know there's just everything there. So you know this community aggregates much more easily on a platform like YouTube.

LL: Paul I'm wondering you heard Tony refer to trying to deal with this on YouTube as being like whack-a -mole. Have you got any ideas about how to deal with this? It's fair if you don't.

PAUL RESNIKOFF: There are additional steps that YouTube can make and they have started to make changes. Cynically I would note that I really didn't notice YouTube making changes across the board for hate, ISIS videos, whatever it is. I didn't notice them really leaping into action until advertisers started having a huge problem. You had Tide saying, ‘wait wait we don't want to be associated with this white supremacist video and we're removing our ads now’. So that's a lot of money. That's millions of dollars. Now what? Then you started to see YouTube take a lot of action. But I think there's a sort of convenient lead back that you know you see from YouTube executives you know like Robert Kinsell and Lyor Cohen and they tend to say ‘well you know it's so uncontrollable we can only try our best and we can only really do the best we can and hire more people’. I think there's a lot that they aren't saying which is that you know their platform leads people to other content in an affinity way right. So if I watch a video, a white supremacist band, then the next couple of videos I'm going to see are a pro-Aryan video and then that's just one after another. So what is going on with those algorithms?

LL: Paul, thank you very much for your time.

PAUL RESNIKOFF: My pleasure.

LL: Paul Resnikoff is the publisher of Digital Music News. He is in Los Angeles.

LL: Tony McAleer back to you. What do you think of the action Spotify took? Is that the way to go?

TONY MCALEER: Well Spotify is in a totally different situation where they control you know their catalogue. And they can look at the revenue stream from that music and say you know it's not worth it to us money wise, it's easy to get rid of it. But when every person on the planet has the ability to upload to YouTube it's a completely different ballgame. Spotify has control over their catalogue. YouTube doesn't.

LL: So again what should YouTube do when they're weighing their decision on how best to tackle it?

TONY MCALEER: It's a tough question because again you know I tend to air on the side of free speech. I was in England in ‘76 or ‘77 when God Save the Queen came out and they banned it. And it became number one because of it you know…

LL: The punk version of God Save the Queen.

TONY MCALEER: Yeah the punk version by the Sex Pistols right. And so banning music I think makes it more enticing. I'm not convinced that it's — in our sensibilities we just want to make the ugly stuff go away.

LL: So does that mean that education is the answer?

TONY MCALEER: I think working on the resilience of young people and education is the answer and I think you should take the most offensive music and have it there so you can look at it and have it in the open. Most people that come across well some of those tracks that you saw on the BBC will be horrified with. The ideas are so outrageous that they're not going to find traction. We have a fear that they will find traction. But I remember a time when that music was first coming out in the ‘90s and it was almost a competition who could come out with the most outrageous lyrics. And they're singing to the drunken mosh pit and the mob and I think today's young people they're not listening to that.

LL: Yeah and Tony you got out of the skinhead movement after your child was born and sort of switched your worldview on things. Your work now focuses on helping people turn away from the hateful views you once shared. And we just got 30 seconds left. What is the best way to do that?

TONY MCALEER: So in terms of the free speech thing I would tell people to go to wecounterhate.com and that was a way that we countered hate speech on Twitter without censorship. And we basically countered the message with a message saying if you read tweet this tweet we're going to give a dollar to Life After Hate and it's reduced the tweets by 70 per cent and cost the author to delete it 20-25 per cent of the time and there is effective ways to combat that. Tony McAleer thank you very much for coming in to talk to us

TONY MCALEER: Thank you.

LL: Tony McAleer is the co-founder and board chair of Life After Hate. He was in our Vancouver studio. And now for a word from the team that put the show together this week...

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: Hello I'm Danielle Carr the intern here at The Current. This week the show was produced by: Alison Masemann, Saman Malik, Howard Goldenthal, Pacinthe Mattar, Idella Sturino, Julie Crysler, Kristin Nelson, Liz Hoath, John Chipman, Rosa Kim, Samira Mohyeddin, Karin Marley, Suzanne Dufresne, Mary-Catherine McIntosh, Jessica Linzey. Special thanks this week to Anne Penman in Vancouver, and Laurene Jardin in Montreal. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our digital producer is Padraig Moran. Transcriptions are provided by Rasha Shehata and Nikhil Sharma. Our technical producer is Gary Francis. Our senior producers are Willow Smith in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The acting executive producer of The Current is Joan Webber.

LL: That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today on the show actor Joshua Leonard landed his first acting gig in a micro-budget movie called The Blair Witch Project. It launched him head-first into a career he wasn't sure he wanted. Now, twenty years later, he's carved out a niche as a go-to guy in some of cinema's most daring experiments such as Steven Soderbergh's new movie, Unsane, shot entirely on an iPhone. Joshua Leonard will talk to guest-host Laurie Brown, coming up next on Q. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in just a few seconds. You can search for stories you missed or want to hear again, or listen LIVE to your local CBC station, right from your smartphone or tablet. Hear the day's top stories; even make your own playlist of your favourite stuff to listen to later. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

March 22, 2018 Episode Transcript

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