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The Current Transcript for October 5, 2016

Host: Anna-Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Why do I not even want to like get up and get dressed and put my makeup on? You know, on weekends during the week it didn’t matter. Like, I just didn't feel basically like I wanted to live anymore.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: So many people take pills to deal with depression and now one pill, the pill along with other forms of hormonal birth control appear to be putting younger women at increased risk of depression. 16 years ago Danish researchers began tracking 1 million women and they discovered those on various forms of hormonal birth control had a higher risk of needing antidepressants, and for teens that became higher with non-oral hormonal contraceptives. What they've learned raises questions about the effects of hormones on women and on developing teenage brains. We will hear from the author of the study in just a moment. Also today, Mark and Danielle McKinnon had a farm in Zimbabwe and a place in a community they loved, until three weeks ago when they fled to Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

To go and start again in Africa so that it can be stolen from you again. No, we’re here to stay now, we’re here to build a new life.

AMT: Forced off their property and a land grab disguised as land reform, they left everything behind. Zimbabwe doesn't break into the news cycle these days, but the economic spiral and rogue violence that captured so many headlines in the last decade has not abated. Their story in half an hour. And who needs heaven or hell when you can have a digital afterlife?

SOUNDCLIP

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VOICE: Hey there.

VOICE 1: What is your name?

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VOICE: Vena 48

VOICE 1: Are you alive?

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VOICE: As we interact. I hope that you can feel that I am truly alive. This is the real deal.

AMT: Talk about a disruption. Brain science has become so sophisticated that some are now predicting a future where we will be able to copy the brain and brain consciousness, allowing a digital afterlife, and in the process changing the value of life as we know it. Hear about that in an hour. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Hormonal contraceptives linked to higher depression risk: study

Guests: Dr. Ojvind Lidegaard, Holly Grigg-Spall

SOUNDCLIP

DR. PHIL: Are you on birth control?

VOICE 1: No. We always use condoms, always protected.

DR. PHIL: Condom, condom, condom. Let me tell you, condoms break. You need to be on birth control.

VOICE 2: I was on the pill for 10 years and I experienced many serious side effects before I realized my contraception was the cause.

VOICE 3: Do you remember having any side effects?

VOICE 4: Immediately I felt myself emotionally becoming really irrational.

VOICE 5: Mood swings, almost like manic at times.

VOICE 6: I got really really depressed. I was having panic attacks every day.

VOICE 7: When the pill is suppressing the hormone that induces the ovulation, it is also suppressing the person emotionally.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: The pill. It has been described as the first medical drug designed to treat people who are not sick. But since it's first revolutionary appearance half a century ago, there have been concerns that it could be making some sick by causing mood swings and depression. You heard some anecdotal stories in that trailer to a documentary called Sweetening The Pill. So far the link between hormonal birth control and depression has been largely anecdotal, but a major new study published last week could be changing that. Scientists at the University of Copenhagen followed more than a million Danish women for 14 years. Those using hormonal birth control were more likely to be prescribed antidepressants. The increasing rate was even higher among teenagers, and the use of devices like the patch and the vaginal ring showed a higher risk again. Dr. Ojvind Lidegaard is a gynecologist at State Hospital in Copenhagen. He is also a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Copenhagen and he was the principal supervisor of this study. He joins us now from Copenhagen, Denmark. Hello.

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: Hello.

AMT: Can you take me through what you learned? What is the link between hormonal birth control and the use of antidepressants?

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: Well, that issue has actually been investigated in some minor studies before. And the usual way to assess that had been that you ask long term users how many who are depressed and then take a control group of non-users. And there have not been major differences between these groups if you make a design like that. The difference between these studies, prior studies and our study, it is that we followed women from the first day they began to take hormonal contraception and then we assessed how many of these previously healthy women, who either developed a depression diagnoses or got a prescription of antidepressants. And what we saw was that already within six months after initiating the use of hormonal contraception, the depression rate was increased by 40 per cent overall and among teenagers by 80 per cent. That was actually a surprise to us that it was so high and also that there was this increasing risk with decreasing age, so that teenagers were the most vulnerable for hormonal contraception concerning depression.

AMT: And so tell me a little bit more about those numbers, because you looked specifically at different kinds of hormonal contraception. Let’s start with oral, what did you see?

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: For the majority of the women we have investigated were users of oral contraceptives. And the figures I just mentioned it was true for all oral together. But we also found that those who used patches or vaginal ring had a higher risk about double up, compared with those taking oral contraceptives. And also women who used progestogen, only pills or hormone IUD, conferred higher risk than combined oral contraceptives. So there was differences between the different product types, but actually oral contraceptives were those who conferred the smallest increase in risk compared to the other non-oral products.

AMT: Are you making a direct link to the cause of depression?

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: Because we followed women with a daily update on the use of contraception and also daily use of antidepressants. We're sure that the use of hormonal contraception came first. We excluded from the study all women who had previously had a depression, who had previously had any kind of psychiatric diseases. So it was mentally healthy women we started to follow in year 2000. And the very temporary close connection between the start of use of hormonal contraception and development of depression points to a causal relationship. And we cannot see any other likely explanation while users of hormonal contraception should suddenly be depressed soon after starting use of these products.

AMT: And did that use of antidepressants continue over those 14 years? Did you see a change as the use of the hormonal contraceptive continued?

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: Many of women who get depressed, they stopped using contraception of course. But some women continue for years after getting depression, probably because they do not link these two events. And it is the reason if you only assess the occurrence of depression in long term users, all those who have get depressed, the majority of those have stopped using these products. So it's not very strange that if you make what you call a transectional study, then you will not see the same thing as we saw when you follow women from the beginning of their use. Long term users, they have been more healthy than the average women and those who continue for many years, they are those women who do not get depressions.

AMT: So what should we take from this study? Specifically, let's talk about women between the ages of 15 and 19. What are your concerns, what are you learning overall then?

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: There are two steps. The first step is that we have to recognize the new findings. I mean, there's no doctors today who have any awareness of these things and therefore the first step is that doctors accept that there are these risks. And the next thing is that women who are prescribed hormonal contraception should be informed about this potential side effects by the use so that if they get depressed, they know that it could be a consequence of their hormonal contraception use. I will not go out and say that nobody should take hormonal contraception in the future, because it is still a minority who develop depression with hormonal contraceptive use. But I think it's important that all statures of these products get information that could be a potential side effect.

AMT: OK.

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: And doctors should perhaps also be a little more careful by taking a history from each woman before they prescribe a hormonal contraception, in terms of getting information about previous depression or current depression, so that women who are already depressed are not prescribed products who could worsen their depression further.

AMT: OK, well Dr. Lidegaard, thank you for talking to me today.

OJVIND LIDEGAARD: You’re welcome.

AMT: That is Dr. Ojvind Lidegaard gynecologist at State Hospital in Copenhagen. Also Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Copenhagen, principal supervisor of that study. And he joined us from Copenhagen, Denmark. Well, we want a second opinion on this study and what it may mean. Catherine Monk is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. That's where we’ve reached her. Hello.

CATHERINE MONK: Good morning.

AMT: What do you think of this study?

CATHERINE MONK: Well, overall it's extraordinarily well conducted and very thoughtful. And you just heard the description, you can see how careful they were to check alternative interpretation. So overall, it's very well done.

AMT: They followed a million women and they followed their prescription use, they followed their medical records. They didn't actually talk to them, but they followed them over 14 years and of those 1 million women, 55 per cent of them were on hormonal contraceptives and that's what they looked at. Do you agree with his interpretation?

CATHERINE MONK: I do overall and I actually think his advice was spot on, in terms of it's a minority of women who are potentially at risk. The data suggests from their study that, you know, that there may be a group of women who are at risk and they need to have greater knowledge about this when it's a clinical encounter for a woman that this is a possibility. We're really in the era or beginning to be, of personalized medicine, where we think about the right treatment at the right time for the right patient. And this is important to know that for some women hormonal birth control may not be the right approach.

AMT: And we see an increase in the use of antidepressants for teenagers while on various forms of birth control. It rises with the devices, the vaginal ring, the IUD, the patch. What do you make of that? Well, that's a very important piece and actually, you know, there are aspects, I'm being very laudatory of the study, but I do have some comments to make about things we have to keep in mind. But what you just raised really speaks to the mechanism and the possibility of looking at these unique forms of hormonal contraception, and it suggests that something about the actual hormones and the delivery of them really may be what the mechanism is here. So that's supportive of their hypothesis and their findings. But I would say the fact that it's in teenagers even more so than other groups could lead to two interpretations. One is, that is a time of, as we all know, of puberty and hormonal changes. And it's the time actually when women have the first uptick in their risk for depression compared to men. So on the one hand, that would make sense from, if you will, a biological perspective of altering hormones with these contraceptive methods. On the other hand, you know, we do need to think about alternative hypotheses. And if you're, you know, choosing to go on birth control and you're going on these hormonal contraceptive methods, you potentially are in a relationship you're in a love relationship, a sexual relationship. We all know that's a risky game and we can get our hearts broken, and so we have to keep in mind of possible alternative hypothesis, again, that we find it in teenagers when that is really a time of beginning to date more seriously and get engrossed in very intense relationships, that the precipitant is having your heartbroken. And that these, unlike their counterparts, these are the women who were engaging in love, sexual relationships, and it's a bumpy ride.

AMT: Well, it's interesting because they screened for women with no prior diagnosis of depression before the age of 15. So you're suggesting that what, even without the use of a hormonal contraceptive, had they screened later they might have found others with some kind of a history of depression in there? If they had screened older or something, is that what you're saying?

CATHERINE MONK: Well, no actually, I'm trying to make the point that it's particularly going to be true for young women in this period of beginning to have romantic relationships, but of course true for all of us. You know, depression is very much associated with having a life stressor and particularly in teenagers having a relationship breakup is a really common precipitant of a depression. So just to say that the group on these oral contraceptions may be, now, you're making a good point, that well, the others maybe just using barrier methods. But this is, you know, associated with a lot of freedom and sexual activity, they may be really engaged in a lot of relationships that are giving them a bumpy ride.

AMT: So what cautions does this raise for you though? What do you take away from this? What would you be telling young women?

CATHERINE MONK: I would be telling young women, and frankly all women, that we really need to be reflective of ourselves and our own mood swings if they are there when we have our cycles. And to really know yourself and to know your own health, and to not take the approach that one size fits all for medical care.

AMT: OK, well, Catherine Monk, thank you for your time today.

CATHERINE MONK: Thank you.

AMT: Catherine Monk, Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Well, we heard some voices from the documentary Sweetening The Pill just a few moments ago, including the voice of my next guest. The film was inspired by Holly Grigg-Spall’s book of the same name. And we've reached her in Los Angeles. Hello.

HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: Hi. Thanks for having me.

AMT: Well, as you listen in and you hear about this study, what are you thinking?

HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: I think it's a very significant study. I was so glad to hear from the researcher, I think he made it clear that this is important. I really like the fact that he said that doctors need to accept this from now on as something that could be possible for young women going on to hormonal birth control, and that young women should be told. And this is something I've been fighting for for eight years or more now in my own work.

AMT: And what do you make of what Catherine Monk was just saying about sort of the mood swings of a teen?

HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: I have to say if that were true, then I think the numbers would be much higher, right? Because has anybody ever met a teenager that wasn't heartbroken? So, I think, you know, it's difficult to say that that causes depression to the point that it would be diagnosed as depression or that you would be prescribed antidepressants for it, which is what the researchers were looking at. I think, you know, there are issues with putting teens on hormonal birth control methods without question. We've had research earlier this year looking at brain development in teenagers and hormonal birth control, which points to that. And I think that the researchers properly did their work very well and considered alternative factors, and I wouldn’t think that was a serious consideration.

AMT: Now you have interviewed hundreds of women about their experiences with hormonal birth control, how does the study line up with the stories you collected?

HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: Oh, it validates them. Which is the great thing for someone like myself, who experienced depression on the pill myself, and all those hundreds of women that I've interviewed over the years and the women who've got in touch with me since my book came out in 2013, since the documentary was publicized, and since my article came out in The Guardian. You know, this is something that I hear about literally every single day, that the pill and other methods as you mentioned like the hormonal IUD, the ring, and the patch can cause depression. And also, you know, I hear about anxiety as well. And, you know, negative mental health impacts that would become more under the banner of subclinical depression that perhaps wouldn't be diagnosed. So this study is very significant, because as the research has actually noted, it probably is still is an underestimation of how many women are actually affected by hormonal birth control psychologically.

AMT: You have used the term pillsplaining to describe some of the rhetoric around birth control. What do you mean by that?

HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: I think I use it because I've got to this point where every time we get new research out about the pill or other hormonal birth control methods that has a negative slant that suggests there might be a problem, every report always includes these platitudes that come from experts in the field saying, you know, not to worry, don't be concerned, don't be alarmed, don't worry, don't stop taking the pills, don't stop using what you're using, this isn't significant enough for us to worry about. It's very dismissive. And I think it's very hard for women who have experienced this to hear. I also think it's very irresponsible, because there are women for whom, you know, when you have a study that is this good quality study, long term large scale study, we know that there are women out there who are taking something that is causing them depression, and depression that they've been diagnosed for, serious depression. And, you know, we’re putting them in that situation and telling them oh don't worry about it. When these women could actually come off that contraceptive and have their lives changed for the better and find that their symptoms have gone, which is surely a good thing.

AMT: So does the information such as this change expectations around the responsibility for birth control between women and men?

HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: I hope so. I think, you know, that conversation as we talk about the side effects of hormonal birth control more in depth in this way and draw attention to it, that women do start thinking, well, why is it that I take on the burden for avoiding unplanned pregnancy? As I said in my article in The Guardian that, you know, women are fertile for just six days per cycle, whereas men are fertile every single day. But women are tasked for the majority with avoiding unwanted pregnancies through taking medications that have side effects that can be serious like depression.

AMT: As we've just seen in this study. OK, well Holly Grigg-Spall, thank you for your time today.

HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: Thank you very much.

AMT: Holly Grigg-Spall, author of Sweetening The Pill Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control. We reached her in Los Angeles. We want to hear from you. Have you experienced depression while taking the pill? You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, find us on Facebook, e-mail us from our site cbc.ca/thecurrent, share your concerns with us. And then when we come back, we'll be talking to a couple, a farm family who has just escaped to Canada from Zimbabwe. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti this is The Current.

Zimbabwe white farmers flee to Canada after land seized

Guests: Mark McKinnon, Danny McKinnon

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, it could be the ultimate disrupter. What if after our biological life is over our minds could live on as consciousness in the cloud or a digitized afterlife? We will hear about the intriguing possibility of disrupting death in half an hour. But first, out of Africa.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Well, this next story is about a family from the African continent fleeing chaos at home and arriving in Canada to make a new life. The McKinnon family is different from most we see in the headlines, they're white farmers from Zimbabwe. They were among just a few hundred left in this southern African country. Since President Robert Mugabe first launched his controversial land reform policies in the year 2000, some 4,000 white farmers have had their lands seized. The intent was to redistribute wealth among the majority black population. But in the years since land reform, the economy has collapsed. In recent months it's been growing drastically worse. Unemployment stands at about 90 per cent, 30 per cent of the population is dependent on food aid. Political dissent is mounting and the few remaining white farmers are being driven out. Mark and Danielle, or Danny, McKinnon packed up their family and fled their farm just outside Harare, as the local sheriff and a group of young men seeking their eviction had them surrounded. Mark and Danny McKinnon are with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

MARK MCKINNON: Hi, how are you doing?

AMT: Well, how are you doing? You’ve just been in Canada a few weeks.

MARK MCKINNON: Yes, yeah. We arrived two weeks ago Saturday.

AMT: Well, tell me about your farm, what were you growing?

MARK MCKINNON: We were mainly growing row cropping soybeans, maize, but we were big into horticulture before all the problems started.

AMT: Mm. And how long has it been in your family?

MARK MCKINNON: My grandfather would have bought the farm in ‘58. And I think we moved in in the early sixties.

AMT: Your grandfather was originally from British Columbia?

MARK MCKINNON: Yes, yeah, he left just after the depression and got a job with Anglo American as a geologist and ended up in Zambia. My dad and my aunt were both born in Zambia. I think my dad was six when they left to go to Zimbabwe, Rhodesia then.

AMT: OK and you were born in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia?

MARK MCKINNON: Yes, I was born in Zimbabwe.

AMT: But you’re a dual citizen.

MARK MCKINNON: Yes. When we were born, thanks to my mother, she registered us with the Canadian embassy. Likewise, with our children when they were born we also registered them with the Canadians. We’ve always known we've had the heritage, and granddad was very proud to be a Canadian. So we kept it alive, not knowing one day how it would save our lives.

AMT: Mm. Danny, are you originally from Zimbabwe?

DANNY MCKINNON: Yes I am.

AMT: And are you from an originally, a farming family?

DANNY MCKINNON: No, I lived in Bulawayo and then met Mark, and yeah.

AMT: You became part of a farming family.

DANNY MCKINNON: I did.

AMT: So we know that in 2000 President Mugabe sanctioned the seizure of white owned farmland to try to undo the remnants of colonialism by returning land to black Zimbabweans. How did that affect your family Mark?

MARK MCKINNON: Going back to 2000, where the blame was put on the war veterans, and it was like a people's movement to give land to the landless. Wasn't the case, it was state sponsored right from the beginning. The war veterans got a bad rap if it was, they were used and there was a need, if I could say that, for land reform or something, but not the way things happened.

AMT: And when you say the war veterans, you’re talking about the black war veterans. So they were supposed to get land, but in fact that's not really what happened?

MARK MCKINNON: No, the British government had been paying for years prior to the land invasions for redistribution and there was a willing buyer, willing seller basis, where Britain were paying for land for redistribution. But unfortunately, the land wasn't getting redistributed, it was going to the big fat cats and anyone politically connected.

AMT: Mm. And you and your family stayed on your farm though, you were able to keep your farm.

MARK MCKINNON: Yes.

AMT: Why? Why did you want to stay?

MARK MCKINNON: Well, it was the only thing we owned. We carved the farm out of virgin bush, if I can explain it that way. As long as I can remember I've wanted to be on the farm and farm.

AMT: And was it a choice? Like, you kept your farm. You were allowed to keep it, like how did that happen?

MARK MCKINNON: Yes. They did acquire us in 2001, under the land reform program. So we went to the ministry and pleaded our case the small farm fell within the criteria that it wasn't suitable for land reform, and we were delisted I think.

AMT: And so, what kind of rapport did you have with the black community and with the workers that you had on your farm?

MARK MCKINNON: Oh, we had a fantastic community and a fantastic rapport with all our community. They towards the end had been fighting and lobbying the government to keep us in their community, because we were assisting a number of farmers. There was schools and an orphanage that we were also helping.

AMT: Mmhmm. And so, as things were spiraling in other places, you guys were actually, like, living in relative harmony with your neighbours?

MARK MCKINNON: Yes, our neighbours were, we also had a military base as a neighbour. They had a 2,500 hectare farm, ammunitions factory, and artillery headquarters. So we had very good communications with the army in our area, and our farm was actually part of a containment area which was exempt, should I say, from the land reform program, because they didn't want too many people moving in closer to the security area.

AMT: So you had good relations, who was unhappy with you being there?

MARK MCKINNON: Nobody. It had nothing to do with happiness or race or colour or anything, it was money.

AMT: So what was it like on the farm Danny? Like the last decade or more, what’s it been like on that farm?

DANNY MCKINNON: It’s been interesting, stressful, but amazing lifestyle for the boys. I mean, you couldn't wish your kids to grow up anywhere else but there, it was lovely. But then this last year has really taken its toll. It was yeah, it was getting to that point where we were old enough now.

AMT: And so when did things start to change though, you were kidnapped at one point weren’t you Mark?

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, that was just before the elections in 2013.

AMT: Mmhmm, what happened?

MARK MCKINNON: About 20 to 30 youth, all with very high connections to ministers and government were promised land, to go and help themselves basically to farms, plots close to Harare. One of the minister's sons was actually our neighbour and I recognized him and tried to talk to him because we were on a friendly basis. But yeah, got a bit--

DANNY MCKINNON: Out of hand.

MARK MCKINNON: Out of hand.

AMT: What happened? Danny, do you remember?

DANNY MCKINNON: No, I was at the house, he had to go down to the shed. And he was by himself, which was really scary for us at the house.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah.

AMT: And they grabbed you?

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, they wouldn't let me leave. They pushed me around a bit and everything. And then yeah, things got out of hand, but they were drinking.

DANNY MCKINNON: They used a panga.

AMT: What's that?

DANNY MCKINNON: It's like a machete knife, yeah.

MARK MCKINNON: That cut my hand.

DANNY MCKINNON: Cut hands.

MARK MCKINNON: Kicked me, and yeah.

DANNY MCKINNON: He has missing teeth and he had bad bruising all over him, big black eyes.

AMT: And how long did that last? Like how long did they keep you?

MARK MCKINNON: [sighs] Most of the day.

DANNY MCKINNON: Yeah.

MARK MCKINNON: It was most of the day.

AMT: Like hours and hours?

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah. And basically, these were young 23, 24 year-old youth.

AMT: Who grabbed you?

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah. And wouldn't let me go until, they wanted me to sign over a piece of paper saying that I’d allowed them to have a piece of the farm or something. And I kept reassuring them that I wasn't the person to give land. It wasn't my land anyway, it's the state responsibility to give land, so I just kept playing on that. Eventually, back and forth between phone calls and that to different people, we managed to get released. I think it was the police eventually came and then defused the situation.

AMT: So that was about three years ago?

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, yeah, three, four years ago.

AMT: And you stayed?

MARK MCKINNON: Yes. No, but that's happened all the time. We would have different groups of ZANU-PF come to the farm. I knew most of them because we had to deal with what's it called, the local party members.

AMT: Right, and ZANU-PF is the Mugabe supporters right?

MARK MCKINNON: Yes.

AMT: OK. Danny how many kids do you have?

DANNY MCKINNON: Four boys. We lost our oldest five years ago on the farm.

AMT: What happened?

DANNY MCKINNON: He was playing, we were actually extending our house and he was playing in a sandpit and he dug a tunnel, he was 14, dug a tunnel and the sand collapsed on him and no one knew. So by the time we did call all the boys for supper, we couldn't find him.

AMT: Oh, that’s terrible.

DANNY MCKINNON: Yeah.

AMT: And so how old are your other boys?

DANNY MCKINNON: Our second one is Steven, he's 16. And then we got Jeffrey. [voice quivering] Sorry. [long pause] You tell her how old the kids are.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, Steven’s 16, Jeffrey's, now you got me confused.

DANNY MCKINNON: [laughs] You probably don’t even know. Jeffrey’s 13 and David’s 11.

MARK MCKINNON: David 11, yeah.

AMT: And I don't know, I mean, you've had to leave that farm, that's where he died. That must have been hard.

DANNY MCKINNON: Yeah, that was difficult.

AMT: Because that’s your connection to him.

DANNY MCKINNON: Yep, that was it.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah. There's good days and bad days but--

AMT: How long ago was that?

DANNY MCKINNON: Five years ago. It’s his birthday next week.

AMT: Not long at all.

DANNY MCKINNON: No. It’s still very fresh.

AMT: What happened in the last few months to escalate things?

MARK MCKINNON: Well, it started June last year with the ministry of lands allocated three recipients, offer letters for our farm. So they rocked up at the farm with these fancy cars and everything and we basically said well, we're not moving, we were stubborn. So they took us to court, the ministry of lands took us to court. So we went, I think it was probably 14 or 15 court appearances at the local magistrate's court. Where the charges were that we were occupying state land without authority. So we challenged in court that the ministry of lands had no authority to allocate our land because one, our farm was acquired under the city of Harare as urban land. And also the fact that we were in a military containment area was exempt from the land reform program. But the magistrate ruled against us anyway, which was fine, we wanted to go to a higher court anyway.

AMT: You wanted to fight for your land within the law--

MARK MCKINNON: Yes.

AMT: As it existed and you were willing to appeal and keep moving up the courts. At some point your parents were arrested?

MARK MCKINNON: Yes. After we lost the magistrate's court, and while we were waiting, because we lodged an appeal with the High Court, appealing basically the case. The police came and arrested us because we were still on the farm, they didn’t care about our appeal. So they took my parents off.

AMT: These are a group of people who just decided they wanted your house and that you're fighting it in court, but in fact in the days when the land reform started, again, you were exempt. So suddenly this is political, that suddenly you're in the midst of all of this?

MARK MCKINNON: No, it was never a political.

AMT: Like, it's not political that they wanted the farm?

MARK MCKINNON: No, it had nothing to do with politics at all. It was about money. They wanted the land for subdivision. Our farm could be subdivided off into smaller plots where they could sell the plots off to people who were looking to buy.

AMT: OK, but who was it? It wasn't the government that wanted the land, it was these individuals who decided they wanted this land?

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah.

AMT: OK.

MARK MCKINNON: No government official ever came to our property and evicted us, apart from the one beneficiary who is the lands official in the ministry of lands, who allocated himself the farm.

AMT: Right, OK, so what you're talking about is getting lost in a place that has a lot of lawlessness.

MARK MCKINNON: Yes, when we phoned the police this last time when I told the Danny and the kids to pack a bag and we got to get out of here, Danny was in town and went to the police to report what was happening.

DANNY MCKINNON: Yeah, I went to go and pick him up and I said to them please we've got a disturbance at the house and we need your assistance. And he got ready, he got the gun, because I said to them we're not sure if they're armed or not. So he got his gun and everything and then I had to fill out a piece of paper to say where he is going to, and as soon as I put our farm name he said no I can’t help you.

AMT: What did that tell you?

DANNY MCKINNON: That we're on our own.

MARK MCKINNON: We’re on our own, yeah. That there were bigger people behind, the people that were after our farm.

AMT: And so what was the final straw? Like what made you decide to go and how did you leave?

DANNY MCKINNON: They were determined to get us. I mean, they had put Markham's folks in jail and that was traumatic. It really really was. Then on top of that they trumped up charges against our oldest son now Steven, and we actually had to put him in hiding because we weren't sure. They were capable of doing anything. And for Steven to be put in jail and seen everything that happened, we said no we can't do that.

MARK MCKINNON: And the day we actually decided to leave the farm, there was over 30 youths with an official from the courts that was basically the sheriff of the court, had come to serve us an eviction notice. So when we were in the house with the parents and everything we phoned the lawyers and everything to say what do we do, what should we do, what’s the steps and all that? And she said she was aware, because she had phoned the sheriff of the court and he said that they had an eviction notice. So she said has he served you yet? While we are in the house, and I said no he hasn't served us. So she said that’s great, pack a bag, come into town and let's deal with this, because they can't evict you.

DANNY MCKINNON: There was too many of them for us to actually there.

MARK MCKINNON: And there was too many and they were all around the house shouting at us to get out.

DANNY MCKINNON: It was a different atmosphere. We've had them in the yard before, but I don't know that day just felt very uncertain.

AMT: Tell me more about that, what were they?

DANNY MCKINNON: They were just in your face. They were coming into the house. They just felt they were--

MARK MCKINNON: They were enough of being blocked and basically the courts system was working too slowly for them. They wanted us out, didn't they?

AMT: What did you take?

MARK MCKINNON: I ran and got all our paperwork and IDs and passports and any form paperwork that I thought we would need, because I envisaged that they would trash the house. I didn't think we were going to get evicted in the manner, but I thought they are going to go in and trash the house. And then I also took all my firearms out of the house as well, we put those in the truck and then grabbed--

AMT: [interposing] How many firearms did you have?

MARK MCKINNON: Nine. I think we had nine.

AMT: Did you have a hunting, like, you had a game?

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, we've got a game park conservancy on the farm as well.

DANNY MCKINNON: And Markham shot for Zimbabwe.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, I used to shoot for Zimbabwean clay pigeon shooting. I've represented Zimbabwe for the last 16 years, the national team. We've traveled all over the world.

AMT: What did you take Danny?

DANNY MCKINNON: I got Dylan, because he was cremated, so we still have his ashes. And--

AMT: [interposing] You went for them.

DANNY MCKINNON: I went straight for it. And then I was such a good wife I packed my husband's things [laughs]. And then I suddenly thought oh I haven’t packed mine. [chuckles] No, and just, yeah, Steven went and packed all of his fishing rods. Anne packed her cats and David, our precious little one, all he wanted was his hair gel.

AMT: [laughs] His hair gel. [laughs]

DANNY MCKINNON: [laughs]

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah.

AMT: So you left and obviously you had to, like, go right by this group of people to get out of there.

DANNY MCKINNON: And they were laughing.

MARK MCKINNON: Videoing.

DANNY MCKINNON: And videoing us. And we had all our animals on the back of the truck, and it was actually quite a shock because we’ve never given in before. And it was oh, that feeling of defeat. It’s unfair.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, there was no right for them to take over a house like that.

AMT: And then what did they do to your house when you got out?

DANNY MCKINNON: Well, we locked it.

MARK MCKINNON: We locked it up and left. We haven't been back. We don't know. After they had finished evicting us out of our house and my parents out of the main house, they carried on and went to our labour and evicted our managers and all our labour off the farm in the same manner, and put their property with ours on the road. So we were busy running around organizing transport to move their property back to their rural homes and wherever they had family to move their stuff.

AMT: You came here, you've got all dual citizenship, Danny you don't, right?

DANNY MCKINNON: No, I don’t.

AMT: And how difficult was it to get to Canada?

MARK MCKINNON: Well, initially I wasn't going to come. I was going to stay behind. Now I had the CIO, the president's secret police after me, and like, because we weren't there when they broke into our strong room and safe and everything, it would have been very easy for them to plant something there and blame it on us. So we basically went into hiding. I got the folks from home and my mother, their half was really, you know, my dad’s had two hip replacements and a knee operation lately.

AMT: Where are your parents now?

MARK MCKINNON: They're in Vancouver with my sister.

AMT: So they came out with you?

MARK MCKINNON: We sent them out to South Africa.

DANNY MCKINNON: No, we got kicked off on the Tuesday, they left on the Wednesday.

MARK MCKINNON: Wednesday.

AMT: What was that like for you, Danny to get on that plane?

MARK MCKINNON: It was frightening.

DANNY MCKINNON: It was, it was really scary because we had to go through all the police checks to get to the waiting area before the plane. And it just felt like everyone was watching you. And when we finally got on that plane that relief was amazing.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah.

DANNY MCKINNON: But then flying over [unintelligible], yeah, that was that was really hard, because then that was just like your whole life was just, it was just gone. It was quite something.

AMT: You realized you were leaving it all behind.

DANNY MCKINNON: Yeah.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, all the friendships and friends that we were leaving behind.

DANNY MCKINNON: Families. I mean, I've still got family back in Zim.

AMT: Did you get a chance to say goodbye to everyone?

MARK MCKINNON: No.

AMT: Where are you living now?

MARK MCKINNON: We’re staying with my aunt, my dad's sister, in Stouffville.

AMT: Outside of Toronto.

MARK MCKINNON: Just outside of Toronto.

AMT: And what is it, what's it like for your kids right now?

MARK MCKINNON: They're loving this. We've just got them into school there and they have made so many new friends and it's yeah, they've picked it up so quickly and made new friends and loving their schools.

AMT: What do they ask you about home?

DANNY MCKINNON: It's hard, because you don't know what to say to them. You just keep saying no, we’ve got to look forward. And you've got to tell them the truth, that we're not going back, because you can't give them that glimmer of hope. It's not going to happen.

AMT: So the land reforms, you make the point, they were always suspect but they were ostensibly to write some of the wrongs of history. All these years later, the country cannot feed itself and inflation is like, through the roof. We see pictures of empty shelves in grocery stores. Until recently, you obviously still felt you had a place there as farmers, as contributing to the country. What should we make of your experience when we think of Zimbabwe?

MARK MCKINNON: It's a beautiful, beautiful country.

DANNY MCKINNON: It’s home.

MARK MCKINNON: It’s home. It's just bad politics.

DANNY MCKINNON: It will come right.

AMT: You hope to go back one day.

MARK MCKINNON: I can’t see dragging my kids back to Africa.

DANNY MCKINNON: Not twice. You can't do it twice.

MARK MCKINNON: We always said if we leave Zimbabwe, we’re leaving Africa. We're not going to move to Zambia, we're not going to move to Mozambique or South Africa for example. If we leave, we're leaving. To go and start again in Africa, so that it can be stolen from you again, no. We would rather start a new life where whatever we build it's ours.

AMT: But you are starting from scratch here.

DANNY MCKINNON: We are.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah, we are.

DANNY MCKINNON: We really are.

MARK MCKINNON: We’re still young enough, I think. We've got a few good years left in us to work hard. [laughs]

AMT: Well, thank you for coming and sharing your story, and it's important to hear your experience in Zimbabwe, we don't hear enough about it.

MARK MCKINNON: Yeah.

DANNY MCKINNON: Thank you for having us.

MARK MCKINNON: Thank you.

AMT: Mark and Danielle McKinnon. They fled their family farm in Zimbabwe just a few weeks ago with their children, arrived in Canada just three weeks ago. They joined me in our Toronto studio.

[Music: Extro]

AMT: Coming up next, there is nothing more certain in life than death. But that just makes death ripe for disruption. How technology could somehow digitize our minds and let us live forever. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Music: Extro]

Digital afterlife: Can our minds live on after death?

Guests: Michael Graziano, Sanjay Khanna

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Music: The Disruptors Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Will’s body is dying but his mind is a pattern of electrical signals. We can upload his consciousness. We can save him.

VOICE 2: Not like this.

VOICE 3: Assuming that this works, if we missed anything, a thought, childhood memory, how will you know who you’re dealing with?

WILL CASTER: I can’t feel anything. You need to get my online, I need more power.

VOICE 5: He maybe intelligent, he may even be sentient, but this is not Will.

VOICE 6: Shut it down.

VOICE 7: Shut it down? [yelling hysterically] It’s him.

AMT: Well, it’s him alright, disrupting death. That is from the sci-fi film Transcendence, where Johnny Depp's character Dr. Will Kaster dies, only to return when his consciousness is uploaded into a quantum computer. Call it a digital afterlife, a way for the mind to live on after the body falls away. As science continues to unlock the mysteries of our brain, our project The Disruptors consults with some experts who predict that the day will come when we can make a copy of our mind and essentially disrupt our own death. Michael Graziano is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Princeton University. He's the author of Consciousness and the Social Brain, and he joins us from Princeton, New Jersey. Hello.

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Hello, pleasure to be here.

AMT: Well, I'm trying to imagine what this kind of afterlife would be like, so work with me here. Say you copied my brain and I die, what then?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Well, first of all, it depends on how accurately we copy your brain. And at this point, I think neuroscientists don't have a complete understanding of what particulars need to be copied. But if we can get to this point and there there's no particular theoretical reason to prevent this, if we get to this point where we understand the details, where we understand what details need to be copied, we could essentially create a second you. Or at least a second brain that thinks it's you, has your memories, has your personality. So there's a component to this that people tend to overlook and that is, it's not good enough just to copy a brain, you have to also copy some kind of digital or virtual environment for that digital brain to live in. And that makes all the difference in terms of what experience you would have waking up as a digital you.

AMT: OK, well, before we go any further, you talk about thinking of life as being like the shape of the letter Y, can you take us through that?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: If you could duplicate a brain or a mind in this sense, what you're doing basically is creating a Y structure, so you're born at the bottom of the Y, you live and you progress up the stalk of the Y. At some point a copy is made and now there's two of you. And they start out identically, if the copy is a good one, and they start diverging because they have different experiences, there's essentially two yous. And from a philosophical point of view, it's actually not clear which is the real one, which is the more valid one. They're both you. They start from the same set of information and the stock of the Y, your experiences before your mind was copied, that's the part that kind of lives on forever in the memories, in the mind of the digital branch. Of course, there's the other branch, the biological branch that one's doomed, that one's going to die. But one branch lives on.

AMT: Right. So the biological branch dies and that the duplicate branch lives on digitally.

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: That’s right.

AMT: And that would be again, let's just talk about me here, that would be my brain in a digital afterlife.

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: That's right. It would it would be everything of you up to the point of copying you and then your totally new set of experiences will begin to kick in and shape you in a new direction.

AMT: Because my copied brain would be able to adjust?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Well, that's the idea. It wouldn't be much good if we couldn't copy the kinds of processes that learn and change with experience.

AMT: So what could I do with this digital afterlife?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Well, at the simplest level if you had a really good simulator of an environment, and I think that's probably the easy part. Then you could live in a kind of a playground, you know, a digital afterlife playground. You could effectively feel like you're in a city surrounded by people, other people who would also have been digitally copied, you could feel like you're in any environment you want. I mean, you could live in a jungle, you could live in a castle, I don't know, I mean, you could pick all kinds of exotic environments that could be digitally rendered. So this is kind of one part of it, the entertainment part, you might say.

AMT: Right, and in what ways would a digital copy of me interact with living people or living people interact with me?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Right. That's the interesting part, because that is possible of course. Because the digital you, if it say, is in this virtual environment, it thinks it's in a world with houses and rooms and buildings, well, it can sit down in front of a simulated computer monitor and Skype with the outside world. So you can have some very interesting, very weird situations like, you know, grandma passes away but she's still there and every Thanksgiving she Skypes in for Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, you could have a lot of, you could have people who don't even quit their jobs. Let's say you're an analyst for a company and you die. Well, your digital self is still there. It could Skype in on business meetings, I mean, there's a lot of weird things that could that could go on that could be maintained in this digital form of you if it's really a good copy of you.

AMT: That's fascinating. So you could have, what you're talking about is having a digital afterlife that mingles with a biological life.

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: That's right.

AMT: And the lines would blur then.

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: The lines would blur. In fact, I would imagine, you know, I can only speculate. My guess is that the biological life in that kind of situation would become gradually devalued, because it lasts for a shorter period of time, it's more fragile. I could imagine biological life, people beginning to think of it more like, kind of a larval stage. [chuckles] You know, that's where you develop your initial intuitions and wisdom and knowledge and then that gets transferred to a more robust and more permanent phase, which is the digital phase, that people begin to think of as the real, kind of the adult phase, so to speak. So we could have a really bizarre restructuring of our whole concept of human life.

AMT: OK, well, let's talk a little bit more about that. First of all the how. Are scientists able to copy a brain?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Well, I think scientists are getting to being able to copy, with fairly good detail, a neuron. [chuckles] Alright, there's about I don't know a hundred billion of them in the human brain. To copy a brain, this is really tricky. It's possible. And indeed, people can simulate neurons, people can even, and they are very close to simulating 100 billion neurons and hooking them together. The problem is nobody knows what the right connectivity is. Nobody knows how to organize that big simulated brain. And so, what you need is some capacity, some ability to scan a brain, a real brain, and to scan the details and actually measure, OK, this particular neuron is hooked to that one by this particular quirky kind of synapse. And that neuron’s connected to that other one, so you need to measure at this incredibly minute, microscopic level what's connected to what and exactly what kind of connection it is. And that's something that's totally beyond any technology right now. That's a problem of scanning technology.

AMT: Mmm. Well, then how far away in the future is this whole concept?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: I don't think this is happening anytime in the next couple hundred years. But I may be totally wrong. So building artificial consciousness or an artificial mind, building a computer that can think a lot like a human, this is one thing. This is actually much closer. But taking an actual human brain and scanning it at enough detail to copy it and produce a really high fidelity copy of that person, that's a bit farther away in the future because of this difficulty of the scanning technology.

AMT: And if and when the technology exists to simulate a brain, how could it have, what makes you believe it could have the qualities of a human mind?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Well, you know, the human mind as far as neuroscience can figure out, the human mind is information. I mean the mind is a trillion stranded sculpture made out of information, it's constantly shifting, constantly changing and everything we claim, everything we know, everything we assert, derives from information that's in that big biological hardware, the brain. So this is all simulatable, there's nothing in there that can't be copied on a computer.

AMT: And how do you define consciousness in this situation?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Well, broadly speaking, the way most scholars think of consciousness today is having a subjective experience of something that's being processed in your brain. And this is kind of interesting in a way, because there's a conceptual separation between the really complicated stuff, the information that's being processed, and the act of having a subjective experience of it. And so, you know, in terms of the content of consciousness, this is much less mysterious, like memory. We think of ourselves as partly defined by our memories. Well, people have some idea how to build a computer memory, it's not a total mystery or knowledge of self.

AMT: What about emotion?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Emotion, right. So, you know, the circuitry for emotion is slowly being picked apart. And again, that's content of consciousness. But then there's this separate question, well how do you get the subjective experience of the emotion? And that too looks like it's turning out to be information.

AMT: And now, of course, humans are more than a brain how does the digital afterlife incorporate the rest of us?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Right. There's this wonderful concept called embodiment. That your thinking and your experience depends critically on the interaction between your brain and your body and the outside world. And if you took away the outside world and the body, and just a brain floating in a vat, the experience would be radically different, at the very least radically different. And a lot of our cognitive abilities would be greatly diminished because we depend on that interaction. And this is why any reasonable simulation, afterlife kind of simulation, requires a simulated body and a simulated environment.

AMT: And how much would it cost to upload a brain?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Oh my. Oh, at this point, of course it’s not possible. But just to give you some sense, the estimates and these are really speculative estimates, the amount of information in a human brain is approximately the same as the amount of information contained in the entire internet right now across the world. So it's a vast amount of information. So computer technology would have to improve just to simulate one brain, and to simulate lots and lots of people would be unbelievably expensive in terms of processing resources, and therefore presumably in terms of dollars.

AMT: So who would take advantage of that technology?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: You know, we could have a situation where only the super rich, you know, the Donald Trumps of the world can pay for it. And they're the ones who go in. We could have a situation where, I don't know, people who are deemed super worthy, you know, the Nobel laureates get picked. But we could have really dreadful situations, where you manipulate people. I mean, just think in existing religions, by offering people an invisible afterlife that has never been directly confirmed you can manipulate people into doing what you want. In fact, into fighting wars for you. So imagine how much more powerful and coercive it would be to point to an afterlife that actually demonstratively exists and say look, you go fight my, you know, my shady war for me and I'll promise you a spot in this digital afterlife. I mean, the possibilities for abuse are kind of immense.

AMT: I was just going to ask you what could go wrong and I wasn't even thinking that. [laughs] What else could go wrong?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Oh my, lots could go wrong. I mean, the first thing that would go wrong of course, is you have to experiment with this and you copy brains and you don't do a very good job at first. And so you create these things that are kind of weird distorted messed up copies of the original. What do you do with them? I mean, are you're creating something that's in horrible pain and confusion because it's just good enough to have some kind of inner experience?

AMT: And does it have rights once you create it?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Does it have rights? Yeah.

AMT: Can you just say oh that's a bad copy, we’ll delete that or can you do that?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it basically would force a redefinition of what it means to be a person, to have identity, to be alive, to have rights. And I think that would flow back also to the living world because if you already have a copy of yourself, will people devalue the living you and say it doesn't matter.

AMT: Mmm. So given the risks, why is it worthwhile to pursue this science to disrupt death as we know it?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Oh, well, I tend not to think too deeply about whether it is worth it or not, because I think it's inevitable anyway. It's going to happen because people have this incredible urge to try to preserve themselves. I think what this would be is taking intuitions and wisdom and knowledge built up over a lifetime and preserving it so that it doesn't die, so that it remains and can benefit future generations. And that's something that in some intangible way that nobody can possibly really predict the details. That would have a totally transformative effect. We would have a technology culture and capabilities that explode.

AMT: Would you want a digital afterlife?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: No, I'm quite sure on that one.

AMT: Why are you so sure?

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: I know that we live in a society where everyone wants to live forever. And I kind of don't get that. Why?

AMT: Mmm.

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: I'm quite happy with a limited life as it is.

AMT: Michael Graziano, thank you.

MICHAEL GRAZIANO: Thank you.

AMT: Michael Graziano, he's a professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Princeton University. His book is Consciousness and the Social Brain. Well, cast your mind into a future where death as we know it is no longer the end, and it's clear to see that our very notion of death would be massively disrupted. It wouldn't just change the way we die, but also the way we live. Sanjay Khanna is a futurist and a consultant. And he's here in Toronto. Hello.

SANJAY KHANNA: Hello.

AMT: What do you think of what Michael Graziano was saying?

SANJAY KHANNA: Well, I found it interesting. And so the piece that the developments, the interconnection between advances in neuroscience and the advances in computing are almost maybe the next force of nature that will affect the world.

AMT: Well, how would having a digital afterlife change how we think about our living selves?

SANJAY KHANNA: OK, so Michael was speaking to a neuroscientific definition of consciousness. But many of the interesting experiments in understanding neuroscience are at the intersection of Eastern philosophy on consciousness, Buddhism and mindfulness, married with neuroscience that's also being conducted in labs around the world. And there the focus is on the notion of consciousness as defined by certain meditative practices, where consciousness is really the gap between thoughts. It's the space between thoughts, so you're not captured by the thoughts. So if that's the case, there might be another vision of this, where one defines consciousness differently than it's been defined by Graziano. And there are others pursuing that option.

AMT: Well, you mentioned Buddhism. What impact could this have on religious or spiritual beliefs? You know, you're going to go to heaven, you're going to go to hell. You die you get this, you get that, suddenly your brain lives on. How does that affect that religion?

SANJAY KHANNA: Well, I think it poses certain threats to religions and to the notions of the afterlife that they imagine. I think there would be some tensions, but I think there are some who would be able to imagine these things living in parallel, and others who would see them in absolute conflict with their spiritual or religious beliefs.

AMT: And how would it change the way we remember someone?

SANJAY KHANNA: Well, that's a profound thing, because even our memories of people are coloured by our experience of them. In a way this could leave people with a much more nuanced view of the people whom they remember, which is kind of, you know, interesting. You might not see them as all black or all white. If you can--

AMT: [interposing] I was just going to say no hagiographies, right? [laughs] We’ll be reminded of their flaws because you can look at them digitally. [laughs]

SANJAY KHANNA: [laughs] Well, in some of the human struggles, it may have influenced behaviours that were less than benign as well.

AMT: And how would it change the way we view death?

SANJAY KHANNA: It would be a way to mitigate loss in spite of a great feeling of loss. I think it would be very difficult to imagine that this would eliminate the natural stages of grief that human beings go through when a physical body leaves a practical and vibrant presence in our lives. And in terms of things like this idea of a life after death, people have already felt creepy about Facebook identities that have remained online after someone has passed away. And there are still people who might be posting comments on to someone's Facebook page not realizing that they've died. You could also imagine something else where artificial intelligence technologies and big data technologies behind the scenes at Facebook, allowing people to pay money to see the kinds of posts that the person would have kept putting up online were they still alive. And so, there are other sort of near-term ways to imagine what the experience would be like. So you almost don't have to go all the way out 200 years to these technologies emerging and developing. You can be sort of very close to home and imagine certain manifestations of this in the next five to ten years.

AMT: And in fact, that's already changing grieving. It's already disrupting how we grieve and that kind of thing.

SANJAY KHANNA: Absolutely.

AMT: You see business opportunities in all of this?

SANJAY KHANNA: Yes, there are real business opportunities in capturing the best knowledge in artificial intelligence and other computing technologies that capture the best of human decision making and make it available to all kinds of experts and even to individual citizens. And that's one great opportunity. And those opportunities extend in all kinds of areas, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's in consumer goods, whether it's in medicine, this is obviously, you know, a very big area, and even governments are exploring how to improve their decision making, potentially with cognitive technologies that support decision makers. So this is an area that's going to grow. The question is at the end of the day, who's going to have the resources to be able to use these technologies and will they become like luxury goods that are only accessible to those who can both understand the systems and how to build them, and how to take the best advantage of them.

AMT: And politically who makes the decision to preserve which decision makers brain?

SANJAY KHANNA: Right. Or which series of decision makers brains. Because what we're finding is the most successful decisions are made in multi-disciplinary groups and teams where different voices are heard and where different diversities are heard as well. And that's sort of the leading edge of group decision making. And I think to me that would be far more interesting, if you can help with group decision making using some of these technologies that’s fascinating where to go.

AMT: Right. But again, who makes those decisions? Who puts those, yeah, OK. Would you want to upload your consciousness and live on?

SANJAY KHANNA: No. But I would I would like to perhaps leave a book behind or leave something behind that could be preserved on archival paper or archival photographs.

AMT: You can do that now though.

SANJAY KHANNA: You can do that now. But do we have the time? Do people have time, whether it's to do it digitally, even doing digital things takes a lot of time and energy and knowledge to get that done.

AMT: OK, thanks for coming in.

SANJAY KHANNA: Thank you.

AMT: Sanjay Khanna, futurist and consultant. He was in our Toronto studio. So are you someone who would embrace a digital afterlife? Do you want to exist into perpetuity? Let us know. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, you can find us on Facebook, our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you joined us partway through, you can also download the podcast to hear the whole thing, go to the iTunes or go to our site. That is our program for today. Now finally when we talk about disrupting death by copying our minds, another question emerges. If I copy my mind, then which one is me? The clone, the original? Technology CEO Martine Rothblatt, who is actively working on a similar project has a helpful explainer. And we'll leave you with that. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

MARTINE ROTHBLATT: Another reason people have difficulty with the concept of mind clone is suddenly they say well, if I've transferred my mind to a different substrate before my body has totally died or before my mind is totally gone, then my mind is in two different bodies at the same time or two different places at the same time. But that too is something that I think us humans will get quite accustomed to. I love reading the early stories about when the telephone was first invented and the folks were on the farm in Kansas and they received a phone call [phone noises] sometimes they, you know, got onto their finer clothes before they answered the phone. They picked up the phone, they said hello, this is Aunt Sally from Los Angeles. They were shocked. How could Aunt Sally from Los Angeles be right there in their farmhouse in Kansas? Well of course, we all take this for granted now that we can actually be in two different places at one time through telecommunications, through Skype video. Ordinarily, some of us are carrying on one existence on Twitter, another existence on Facebook, a third existence in face to face life. At the same time we're conversing with people face to face, we're texting with people, we're watching something. So I have like no doubt whatsoever that humans will readily adapt to being able to be in multiple places at the same time through their mind clone existing in one substrate, while the original mind is somewhere else.

[Music: Extro]

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October 5, 2016 full episode transcript

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