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The Current Transcript for September 21, 2016

Host: Anna-Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

There have been cases of HIV on reserve in Saskatchewan where people have died of AIDS never getting an actual diagnosis.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: They are dying of HIV/AIDS in Saskatchewan at a rate four times higher than the rest of Canada. They are contracting HIV at a rate twice as high as the rest of Canada. Indigenous people are disproportionately affected. Even though entire First Nations communities are believed to be underreporting. Saskatchewan doctors who treat those with HIV say this is nothing less than a public health emergency. We will hear the concerns in just a moment. And it took four years and a whole lot of fish.

SOUNDCLIP

We would always come loaded with Norwegian salmon to Havana. Up to the point where we were being called persons who were doing the Norwegian salmon diplomacy.

AMT: Dag Nylander used every diplomatic trick he knew to ease the tension, and edged the Colombian government to end its decades-old adversary FARC toward a peace deal. All of them camped out in a Havana compound. Eventually the cool diplomatic guidance of this Norwegian succeeded in disrupting a conflict as old as he is. We will meet Dag Nylander in half an hour. And you know Stephen Colbert speaks with true truthiness.

SOUNDCLIP

STEPHEN COLBERT: Guys like us, we're not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We go straight from the gut. That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut.

AMT: Well, the science has caught up with the comedy. New research suggests those who trust their guts and pay attention to how they feel when making a decision may be more profitable and successful. Trust your tummy, and your ears, and listen to that in an hour. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti,this is The Current.

Rising HIV rates in Sask. push doctors to call for state of emergency

Guests: Danita Wahpoosewyan, Dr. Ryan Meili, Ken Monteith

SOUNDCLIP

And I remember the house was just quiet. Nobody was there but me, and I remember falling on my knees and just crying, and putting my hands out praying, praying to the creator to give me the courage to walk forward and keep on with life.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: That's Krista Shore, a young First Nations woman from Saskatchewan. When we first met her here on The Current, back in 2010, she told us about the suicidal despair she experienced when she first learned she was HIV positive. We were speaking with Krista then as part of our coverage of Saskatchewan's sky high HIV rates. Fortunately, Krista Shore has thrived in the years since. Unfortunately, Saskatchewan's HIV rate has only gone up.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: According to Health Canada, Saskatchewan reserves have an HIV rate 11 times the national rate. Dr. Mona Loutfy is an infectious disease specialist from Toronto, who runs clinics on [unintelligible].

DR. MONA LOUTFY: Those are incident rates that are equivalent to an African country such as Nigeria.

AMT: Well that's part of a CBC News report about a Saskatchewan reserve last year. Now a group of 30 doctors who work in the province is saying enough is enough. This week the doctors urged the government of Saskatchewan to declare a public health state of emergency. Danita Wahpoosewyan is a peer mentor for people with HIV in Saskatchewan. She sits on the board of the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network. And she joins us from Regina. Hello.

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Hello. Hi.

AMT: Well, first of all tell me about yourself. How long ago were you diagnosed with HIV?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: I was diagnosed approximately 11 years ago.

AMT: And how did you react?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: I was devastated. I was in shock, total shock, denial and very angry.

AMT: And what about the people around you Donita? What was the reaction of your family and friends?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: At first my family didn't understand HIV. I didn't understand HIV. They didn't know how to talk to me about it. So it was kind of like kept silent for a while. But I disclosed my status, I was open about it actually very quickly.

AMT: Mmhmm.

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yeah, the person that I told to be confidential. But my status, she told the rest of my family, and so everybody knew right away, so I became open right away.

AMT: And how did people react? Were they afraid of you at first? Like how did they react?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yes, because people don't understand, not being educated, yeah, there was some within my family I felt I didn't feel very comfortable. I felt hurt. There was an instance where my own daughter had told me that I wasn't allowed to kiss my grandchildren anymore, and I have nine grandchildren. And because she wasn't educated, but today she's very educated and we have a better relationship now.

AMT: And you are managing?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Oh yes, yes. I got on my meds right away and been on them ever since. I took a couple of holidays, but that didn't go too well. But I am undetectable my CD4 count is quite high. So I'm very healthy.

AMT: Has anyone else in your family gone through this with different results?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yes. Just within my immediate family, I think we contracted it around the same time. I lost a niece two years ago and she had HIV, but she had other things too wrong with her. Like she had pneumonia, I think she just found out she had cancer. So all of these infections in her body led for her to pass away.

AMT: How old was she?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: She was a couple of days short of being 21.

AMT: Mmm. And how long ago was she diagnosed? How old was she?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: She was 13 years old when she got diagnosed.

AMT: And did she get the drugs she needed?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: See that's the thing with the health care system. A lot of people that go to doctors, go to hospitals, they're mistreated very poorly. I think she was one of the people that fell through the gaps. She did not want to go to the hospital even though she was encouraged by many. She decided not to go to the hospital.

AMT: Mmm. You work with helping other people with HIV, you're a peer mentor. What does that mean, what do you do?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Basically what I do is I give support and I advocate for these ladies. I take them, I go to court, I've been to court with one of them. I help them do their shopping. I've taken them to their medical appointments, and if they ever need to talk I just, you know, go for coffee.

AMT: And so you help them kind of live a normal life?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yes, yes.

AMT: And help them understand like about the kind of treatment they can get?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yep. I also educate them on HIV, if they need any questions that they're unsure of and they usually do.

AMT: You're in the Indigenous community, do you find that people are afraid of this. That they're not aware that there are now people living long lives even though they’re HIV positive?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yeah. They don't understand that, you know, we can live very healthy lives, you know, and as long as, you know, we take care of ourselves, we can live like normal people.

AMT: But you have to know, right?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yes you do. You need to know, you need to get that test and you need to find out.

AMT: And is there is still a reluctance to get tested?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yes, there is very much so. I know of people that they possibly know that they have it, you know, they’re pretty darn sure they have it, but they won't get tested. They just don't want to know. I've asked them why and their attitude is like, well, if I find out, I'm going to die anyways and they don't want to know. So they just continue with their lifestyle. And some people who really think that they have it, they just continue on. They’re living a very high-risk lifestyle, so they continue.

AMT: And if they reach out to get help do they always get the help they need?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: No, not all of us. There's barriers that they face, like the racism and health care violence, people's attitudes. Yeah, they just sometimes they don't receive what they should.

AMT: What's healthcare violence?

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: To me it's like, for example, I had to go to the hospital, I got gallbladder issues, so I was going to the hospital until they finally took my gallbladder out. I was going to the hospital in an emergency quite often. Because I was a recovering drug addict, they couldn't find my veins, they had a hard time finding veins to give me the medicine. And then you end up not getting the help you need. So I got sent away for speaking up, telling them that I did not, you know, certain stuff I did not allow.

AMT: Yeah, I understand what you’re saying.

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: Yes.

AMT: Danita, I've got a doctor who's concerned about this issue waiting in the wings, so we'll go to him next. But thank you for sharing your story with us.

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: OK.

AMT: Goodbye.

DANITA WAHPOOSEWYAN: OK, thank you, bye bye.

AMT: That's Danita Wahpoosewyan, she's a peer mentor for people with HIV in Saskatchewan. She sits on the board of the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network. She's in Regina. Our next guest is one of the doctors calling for the government to declare a public health state of emergency. Dr. Ryan Meili is a family physician in Saskatoon. And that's where we've reached him today. Hi Dr. Meili.

DR. RYAN MEILI: Good morning Anna-Maria.

AMT: What are you thinking as you listen to Danita?

DR. RYAN MEILI: I have lots of thoughts as you listen to somebody be so brave and tell their story to the whole country that way. That's a kind of courage that I really respect. That people in Danita’s circumstances sharing their story are really heroes of mine, because they're helping to overcome the stigma, helping others in the same situation to recognize that they can get treatment. There is a life even with an HIV infection.

AMT: Why do you want the government to declare a public health state of emergency?

DR. RYAN MEILI: So, a couple of main reasons. One is just that the situation is as bad as it is. Over the last decade we've had the highest rates in the country, we've had over 1,500 people diagnosed with HIV in the province in that last 10 years, and not just diagnosed but people getting sick and dying. So me and my colleagues are losing patience and hating to see that. Now, we saw the numbers start to trend down, but we're seeing them spike again. In 2014, there 114 new cases, in 2015, 158. So an increase of about 50 per cent.

AMT: And why are people dying?

DR. RYAN MEILI: Why are people dying. Well, it's related to the challenges that people face in their lives. We have people living very difficult lives, living in poverty, living in lives that are quite chaotic, which makes it difficult for them to access care. And then, we just don't have the type of a plan necessary to reach the whole population, and that's the second reason we're calling for a state of emergency. I had several meetings with the Ministry of Health, putting out a plan put together by all the people working in this field. We’ve have had offers of support from BC and other places with more experience but we’re really getting nowhere through the official channels, and that's where we've needed to take our case to the public.

DR. RYAN MEILI: We did speak to Dr. Denise Werker, the deputy chief medical health officer for Saskatchewan, and listen to what she said about this.

SOUNDCLIP

Work underway in Saskatchewan on HIV aligns very well with the goals of 90-90-90 and the UN itself says that these are very ambitious goals to achieve by 2020. So the first 90 is about diagnosing HIV infections. We continue to strengthen HIV testing. At the beginning of 2009, there were no point of care testing sites. In 2012 there were 20, and in 2016, as of September, there were 59 sites.

AMT: OK, she's talking about the UN 90-90-90, which is they want 90 per cent of people diagnosed, 90 per cent of people on antiretrovirals, and 90 per cent of people treated to the point where they are not infectious, correct?

DR. RYAN MEILI: Exactly.

AMT: That’s the UN goal, and she says there, well you want that, you heard her answer, what do you think?

DR. RYAN MEILI: It's very interesting, because that's the first time I've heard her speak about that. And one of the things we've been really asking for is the provincial government to commit to reaching that goal, and they haven't done so yet. We have heard the federal government and Minister Philpott commit to that goal. We’ve also heard First Nations leaders like Perry Bellegarde talking about that same goal. And that's exactly what we want to achieve. It's been our struggle here, where we've been asking people in the provincial government to take that made in Canada treatment as prevention approach, which if we were able to achieve it, it would really result in the end of AIDS and almost no new cases of HIV. So, if our provincial government were able to sign on to that goal and put in place the resources and plan that would actually make us achieve that goal, well we wouldn't have to be having this conversation, we wouldn't be asking for a state of emergency. But to date, they haven't been willing to do so.

AMT: We know the rates are disproportionately affecting Indigenous communities. You heard my last guest talk about the concerns and also the way people are treated, maybe, when they come forward looking for treatment. What concerns do you have?

DR. RYAN MEILI: Absolutely. We've recently completed a study here in Saskatoon looking at some of the experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS, and what happens when they go to access health care. And there still are a lot of issues around stigma with this illness, but also the way that people who are First Nations or Métis are treated within the health care system, or people living in poverty. And really that's where this illness thrives, is among people living in poverty who have greater struggles. And we need to make sure that our healthcare system is able to respond to them with sensitivity and care, and make sure that they're getting treated well. The story that Danita shared with people, choosing not to seek healthcare, going on to die because they are afraid of how they'll be treated when they come to a hospital. That as a physician absolutely breaks my heart.

AMT: So what do you need to hear to know that you can get some help in bringing these rates down?

DR. RYAN MEILI: I really think we should have a response from the provincial government that agrees that we're in a state of emergency. That was what we saw in BC in the mid-nineties, which really allowed them to turn the corner and have the resources invested to bring the cases, and the costs, and the human cost under control. We need a commitment to 90-90-90, and not just an empty commitment but actually a commitment to follow the ten steps that we've put forward as what would really achieve that goal. And one of those steps that could be achieved tomorrow, and which I really don't understand why our provincial government hasn't made this decision yet, but would be to simply pay for the medications. Make sure that everyone who wants to be on treatment has the coverage. It's just unthinkable that with a disease, an infectious disease, the transmission of which can be prevented, that we would put barriers in the way of those who would want to take that treatment and be able to prevent transmission, as well as improve their own lives.

AMT: Dr. Meili, thanks for your time today.

DR. RYAN MEILI: Thank you.

AMT: Dr. Ryan Meili, family physician. He's in Saskatoon. We asked for an interview with the Saskatchewan’s Minister of Health. He declined our request. This crosses jurisdictions, the Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott was also asked for, she's unavailable. Her office sent us a statement that reads in part, the government is deeply concerned about the rates of HIV/AIDS infection in Saskatchewan. Minister Philpott had a productive call with the Saskatchewan Minister of Health recently, and committed to working collectively on this important issue. We don't know what recently means. For a wider perspective on how Canada does when it comes to HIV, I'm joined by Ken Monteith Executive Director of an organization which is a coalition of community based organizations in Quebec. Ken Monteith is in our Montreal studio. Hello.

AMT: I just don't want to mispronounce it. What's the name of the organization?

KEN MONTEITH: COCQ-Sida.

AMT: And you have been listening in, how are you reacting?

KEN MONTEITH: Well, I think I've been aware of what's been happening in Saskatchewan as well, and worried that that is a situation that could reproduce in any other province. Part of the problem there is about remoteness, and about jurisdictions. Because on reserve the federal government has responsibility, off reserve it's the province. And people move, people are mobile.

AMT: So people fall into cracks depending on where they live?

KEN MONTEITH: Well, we're asking vulnerable people to navigate between two completely different systems, when the governments themselves have not been able to negotiate a smooth transition and a continuity of care.

AMT: Mmm. And what about the issue of antiretrovirals, because they clearly have been of great benefit to people who are HIV positive.

KEN MONTEITH: Yes. And each province has its own system for how they are distributed. Which doesn't help, and doesn't help when people move from one province to another either. But they ought to be generally available to everyone who's living with HIV who wants to be treated.

AMT: Now just last weekend the prime minister attended a major fundraising conference in Montreal aimed at addressing HIV/AIDS abroad. Is there something we can take from that?

KEN MONTEITH: Well, I think that we were all glad to see Canada step up and take its place and contribute to the worldwide fight against HIV and AIDS. But we, particularly in Quebec, but across the country I think we all think there are other things that need to be done at home as well. We don't in any way begrudge the Canadian contribution to the international efforts, but we think we need to pay some attention to things at home, which are not all about money. I have a short list--

AMT: [interposing] Go ahead.

KEN MONTEITH: Of things. First of all, we need to re-examine and come back on laws C-36, which is about her sex work. And the law which was rejected by the Supreme Court and then re-enacted in practically the same form puts sex workers at risk, and distances them from the healthcare system. Supervised injection services and other harm reduction interventions. We need to do a lot more work on those. Canada is the champion per capita in the world of criminalizing people with HIV, around the issue of nondisclosure of HIV status. Which is, you know, the way our law works does not respect the UN AIDS position of, you know, the criminal law is only an appropriate instrument as a last resort for deliberate transmission of HIV.

AMT: Right. So what you're saying is there are laws that Canada can enact, but also deal with the changing jurisdictions to help. We have to leave it there, we are out of time. Ken Monteith, thank you for your time today.

KEN MONTEITH: Thank you.

AMT: Ken Monteith, Executive Director of COQ-Sida, a coalition of community based organizations in Quebec. Stay with us, the news is next. And when we come back, disrupting conflict in Colombia with a Norwegian in Cuba. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, you are listening to The Current.

Inside 4 years of secret negotiations to reach Colombia's peace agreement

Guests: Dag Nylander

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come we've got another one of your personal moments of disruption.

SOUNDCLIP

I went to sleep that night feeling that happy glow of life is good right now.

AMT: What happened that night changed Jill Goldberg's life forever. Her story in half an hour. We'll also look into the science of trusting your gut feelings. But first, disrupting a conflict that lasted more than half a century.

[Music: The Disruptors Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

This is the first day of peace I have ever known. I was born in 1973, nine years after the official appearance of the FARC guerrillas. And over time I have seen this war fall to ever lower levels of inhumanity and degradation. As the news broke that after four years of excruciating negotiations, a peace agreement between the government and the rebels had been finally reached, my first thought was of my daughters. They will not have to live in a country at war.

AMT: That's the Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez reflecting on the historic nature of the peace deal that was struck last month between the Colombian government and FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It heralds the end of one of the world's longest running and deadliest conflicts. 220,000 people in Colombia lost their lives because of that conflict. Millions more were displaced. In fact, the conflict is all that many people including Juan Gabriel Vásquez, who you just heard, have ever known in their lives. Yet finally peace is on the horizon. The deal will be put to a nationwide vote on the 2nd of October. It took a Norwegian to disrupt the pattern. And since we're focusing on disruptors this season, we wanted to talk to him. Dag Nylander is the Norwegian special envoy to the police process in Colombia. He and his team spent four years in Havana with negotiators from both sides to get this deal. Dag Nylander joins me from New York. Hello.

DAG NYLANDER: Hello, how are you? Thank you very much for this invitation.

AMT: Well, you know this conflict is essentially as old as you are isn't it?

DAG NYLANDER: It's more than five decades old, so yes it has been a very long running conflict in Colombia.

AMT: And so how intimidating was it for you to know that when you walked into the room to start those negotiations?

DAG NYLANDER: Well, Norway had some previous knowledge of the Colombian conflict. We have been working in Colombia for several decades on peace and reconciliation. Personally, I got engaged in Colombia back in 2006, when we were part of the peace negotiations with the ELN, the smaller Colombian guerrilla group. And running up to the launch of the formal peace negotiations with the FARC, we had a extensive period of secret meetings in Latin America, which led to six months of intensive talks in Havana — also in total secrecy — which eventually led to a framework agreement that was launched in Oslo in October of 2012.

AMT: When you talk about secret negotiations, how difficult is it to negotiate secretly?

DAG NYLANDER: It's difficult because first of all, you have to trust that the persons that you are meeting with and that are negotiating are able to maintain that secrecy, and without being able to keep the pre-talks secret, the talks would easily have been derailed.

AMT: So, for those of us who aren't familiar with those kinds of negotiations, when you say secret, did you check into the hotel as somebody else? How do you fly under the radar, like, physically what do you do?

DAG NYLANDER: Well, without going into the details there were very limited communication, and the meetings took place where it was possible to maintain that secrecy. So evidently, we were not checking into hotels.

AMT: So you're still being secretive. [laughs]

DAG NYLANDER: [laughs]

AMT: Is this a tried and true formula? Norwegians are known for their negotiating skills.

DAG NYLANDER: I think one of the things that we manage pretty well on the Norwegian side is exactly that. That part is in conflicts around the world. Know that we are indeed able to fly under the radar.

AMT: So let's talk a little bit more about these talks in Havana. First of all, did you think you would be at it, the official talks for four years?

DAG NYLANDER: No, I did not. These negotiations took much longer than what we anticipated. But we understood this relatively soon when we entered into the talks.

AMT: And what was it? What made you realize that?

DAG NYLANDER: The two first agenda items, land reform and political participation really goes to the roots of the conflict. This is really why the FARC, back in the sixties, took to weapons. And these two issues of course being at the root of the conflict, it took some time for the parties to talk their way through the history to understand the perspective of the other.

AMT: When you’d gone into those negotiating sessions, what did you realize about the personalities that you had to sort of massage as you went along?

DAG NYLANDER: You know, these guys are Colombians and they have a shared history, a shared culture. So it was relatively easy for them to find issues to talk about and establish a working relationship on a more personal level. And then of course, there were personalities. We're talking about human beings here. And some people are more, what should I say, diplomatic than others and whereas others might need some more time to warm up before they're able to find constructive solutions.

AMT: So how do you as a negotiator try to figure that out and figure out what makes each side tick, so that you can find a way to bring them together? What's the process like for you?

DAG NYLANDER: We were convinced from the outset that the parties themselves should be in the driver's seat. Because remember, if you have a negotiations where you have a strong mediator, it is very comfortable once in a while or rather quite often, for the parties wherever they meet a problem, big or small, to lean back and look at the mediator. That did not happen in this. Only exceptionally did Norway and Cuba, which was the other country helping to facilitate this peace talks, only exceptionally did we go in actively to suggest a way forward for the parties.

AMT: Were you guys living in a compound? Were there other things you tried to do to try to break the ice with them, sort of more informally? How does that work?

DAG NYLANDER: We were basically living in a compound. The Norwegians had one house, the FARC had a house, and the Colombian government had a house. And in that compound we were all living around a small lake in the outskirts of Havana. It was beautiful, it was green and with water and it was possible to run, or if you had a bicycle you can bicycle around the lake. And there you would meet members of the two delegations. So in the first six months there were a number of informal exchanges. We did on a number of occasions, you know, try to bring the parties together in informal settings. And we would always come loaded with Norwegian salmon to Havana. Up to the point where we were again being called persons who were doing the Norwegian salmon diplomacy.

AMT: [laughs]

DAG NYLANDER: So at some point, we needed to reduce the amount of salmon we were serving the parties.

AMT: Good thing I like salmon, isn’t it? [laughs]

DAG NYLANDER: Oh yes.

AMT: But let me ask you, how important are those little things though in getting people just to kind of take a deep breath and look at something maybe just a little bit differently?

DAG NYLANDER: They are important. But I would say you shouldn't put too much emphasis on that either. But it's of course extremely important that the logistics of the place that you are negotiating are conducive to informal exchanges. Because we all know what happens when you set people down around a table with a formal agenda. People become very formal. So we need to open up that space, and the layout of the surroundings of the meeting room is is extremely important. Letting people have the opportunity to exchange histories about where they are from, what sort of family.

AMT: So you're all living in this compound. How often would you meet there? How often would you go back to your home bases?

DAG NYLANDER: Well, the FARC would be in this compound permanently.

AMT: We should just point out, I guess, the FARC of course couldn't just hop on a plane because they would be arrested. They don't want you to know where they are, right? So they stayed in Havana. Is that what you’re telling me?

DAG NYLANDER: That's correct. Of course in Colombia they are an illegal organization. The police and the military of course would at any time be after them.

AMT: Now, there were times when violence back in Colombia threatened to derail the talks, what happened?

DAG NYLANDER: Yes, that's true. It was extremely important to try to shield or isolate the talks in Havana from whatever was going on politically or in the field, in the conflict with the FARC. And that would not always be possible. If I could just mention two examples of that. One was when back in 2014, a Colombian general was for the first time during five decades of conflict, taken hostage by the FARC. The peace talks were suspended for some time. But luckily there were willingness on both sides to try to find a solution to this particular problem as soon as possible. So we were able to travel to Colombia, into the Colombian jungle, and secured the release of this general for the peace talks to go forward.

AMT: And there was also a FARC negotiator who’d been at the table with you who was killed?

DAG NYLANDER: That is true. I believe it was April of last year when there was an escalation of violence between the FARC and the Colombian government, where what started this was really the killing of 11 Colombian military personnel by the FARC. And as a result of that, the Colombian president reinstated the aerial bombing of FARC camps. And a large number of FARC guerillas were killed, including two persons that had been participating and have been sitting at the peace table in Havana previously.

AMT: Why do you think talks continued in spite of those setbacks?

DAG NYLANDER: First I would say that it was thanks to a peace process that was very well designed. It was difficult for the parties to unilaterally end the talks. You had two parties that were committed to finding a negotiated solution. And at the point where these two incidents happened, they had been negotiating for a while already. So they were very much invested in the talks and a positive outcome. And in addition to that, you had very strong support from the international community.

AMT: So walk us through the major points that were eventually agreed on.

DAG NYLANDER: I mentioned the two main issues land reform and political participation. And on those two particular issues, it is basically an agreement to redistribute land in a more equal manner in Colombia. And then, political participation. Really broadening up the spectrum to allow the left of Colombian politics that has been historically marginalized, but also the part of the left that has been marginalized as a consequence of the fact that parts of the left did take up weapons in its time. Broadening the Colombian democracy is really at the core of political participation. And then there is an agenda item on drugs, particularly on the growing of coca leaves, and the production of cocaine, which of course has been one of the drivers of the conflict, a source of income. So basically, how do you provide alternative income for poor peasants in the rural areas of Colombia? This is one central part of it. And also to cut off the links between, what should I say, the established forces in Colombia and this illegal economy. And thirdly, for the FARC to renounce and stop any dealings with drugs and drug trafficking in Colombia.

AMT: Whose idea was it to bring victims from both sides to the peace talks to tell their stories?

DAG NYLANDER: This was a key element of the peace talks. The parties agreed very early on in early 2012 that victims should be at the centre of the efforts. On a number of occasions, I think it was five times where we brought delegations of victims to Havana.

AMT: How did that affect you, listening to those victims?

DAG NYLANDER: The meetings with the victims were probably the meetings that made the strongest impression on both us, the Norwegians, and also on the parties. These were mothers and fathers who had lost their children. These were people that were maimed by anti-personnel mines. These were people that had been subject of kidnappings. These were people that had been the subject of sexual violence. Just listening to these victims explaining what they have been through was something that made a deep impression on all of us. But the most important thing that we took away from these meetings were the demand of these victims to find a political solution to the conflict, and really to opt for the path of reconciliation. So it was very powerful when a victim would say that I am willing to compromise, I'm willing to reconcile. And you the parties should also be willing to do that, do not give up.

AMT: You know, I have a clip here that I want to play for you, it's Ingrid Betancourt. She was the presidential candidate who was captured and held hostage by FARC rebels in the jungle for six years before she was freed. And when the deal came together in Havana, she gave an interview to CNN. She has mixed feelings. Let's listen to her.

SOUNDCLIP

INGRID BETANCOURT: I have been very happy for Colombia. It brings hope, but at the same time it is true that because I have lived what I have lived, it comes with mixed feelings. For more than four years I was chained by the neck to a tree, I was subject to violent treatment too. To I would say psychological torture. Of course I could be dwelling in thirst of revenge, but I think that my country needs us and the victims, those who have suffered the war to be greater than our suffering, and to be able to be generous in order to have future generations living in peace.

AMT: Dag Nylander, listening to her, do you have any mixed feelings about the deal that was struck?

DAG NYLANDER: No, not really. I wouldn't say mixed feelings. I think Ingrid Betancourt is a very good example of victims opting for peace. Any peace agreement will be a balance between different interests. And I think this particular peace agreement is a very fine balance between different interests. And really what Colombia needs to take that step into the future and modernize itself and put an end to the armed conflict. Of course, not everyone will be 100 per cent satisfied with all aspects of a peace agreement. And one particular issue which has been criticized and will continue to be debated is the issue of justice, of transitional justice. But I really strongly believe that this is really what the victims have been asking for.

AMT: What will it be then, the transitional justice. What will it look like?

DAG NYLANDER: Well, the transitional justice will take into account a number of elements. Truth is a central part of it. You really, the parties and the Colombian society now really needs to get all the truth on the table. That's a central part of it. So anyone who has committed an international crime, a grave crime, will have to tell the truth and to take responsibility, and to repair its victims. The perpetrator will still receive punishment, a sanction, a restriction of liberty. Not necessarily jail, but some sort of restriction of liberty. And for the ones that are not telling the truth or taking responsibility for crimes committed, they will be subjected to up to 20 years of regular prison sentences.

AMT: So in other words the truth really will set them free.

DAG NYLANDER: Yes, eventually, yes.

AMT: Eventually, yes. [chuckles] The day that the negotiators came to the final agreement and inked the agreement that now needs to be voted on, I heard there was singing. What was it like in that room? What were they singing?

DAG NYLANDER: Well, of course, everyone in the room were very touched and emotionally moved by the fact that they had reached a final agreement. But I would say, you know, what I really took away from that day in August when the peace agreement was reached in Havana, was the sense of it was difficult to fathom. It was difficult to understand that we really had reached a final peace agreement. So personally, it took a couple of days before it it did sink in sufficiently for me to, you know, light up the cigars and open the champagne bottles.

AMT: But you did.

DAG NYLANDER: Well I did at least light up a cigar or two, yes.

AMT: [laughs] They were singing the Colombian national anthem, weren't they?

DAG NYLANDER: Oh yes, absolutely they were. That was a very very very touching moment, when everyone stood up and were singing the national anthem of Colombia.

AMT: How did you respond?

DAG NYLANDER: It was, you know, it was a very touching moment. It was difficult to understand that this was real. And yes, it sort of gets you thinking. Because after having done this for such a long time 24 hours a day, seven days a week for more than four years, five years probably, it becomes part of your everyday life, that once in a while you are reminded of the profound importance of your work, and the profound the importance of the parties being able to reach that agreement.

AMT: So it must have been gratifying for you to see that moment of singing together.

DAG NYLANDER: Absolutely. Very gratifying.

AMT: You're still doing the follow through now, you have to kind of shepherd it to its completion.

DAG NYLANDER: That's right. We have the formal ceremony with the presence of heads of states and foreign ministry in Cartagena, Colombia, where the FARC, where the leader of the FARC, Timochenko, and President Santos will formally sign the peace agreement. And then following that on the 2nd of October, the referendum where the Colombian people will give its support to the peace agreements.

AMT: And do you get nervous about all of that? Because we have seen in other places peace deals that take so long to get. But if they are not embraced by the individuals who are the population of the country, they can't work.

DAG NYLANDER: Absolutely. I agree. Without the support of the Colombian population, the peace agreement won't work. That's absolutely true.

AMT: And how does it work, as someone who does the job you do. Does the boss in Oslo have another assignment for you waiting or do you get a break, what happens?

DAG NYLANDER: Well, that's a conversation I need to have with my boss, the foreign minister.

AMT: [laughs]

DAG NYLANDER: But I think I'll probably have a short break at least before I do something else.

AMT: It's not an easy job you have.

DAG NYLANDER: No, it's not. But at the same time, you know, it's very giving, it's very rewarding to work with these kinds of issues.

AMT: Well, Dag Nylander, thank you for sharing some of the behind the scenes with us.

DAG NYLANDER: Thank you very much for having me.

AMT: Bye bye.

DAG NYLANDER: Bye bye.

AMT: Dag Nylander, Norwegian special envoy to the peace process in Colombia. He spoke to us from New York City. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is also in New York at the United Nations to present the deal to world leaders ahead of the formal signing in Colombia. Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion will be in Colombia for that signing as a show of support for the peace process. Stay with us. Coming up in our next half hour, if there is a big decision looming in your life you may want to turn off the mental chatter and go with your gut. We'll meet a former stock trader turned neuroscientist, whose research into the benefits of going with your gut could help you reap dividends. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, this is The Current on CBC Radio 1, Sirius XM, and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Extro]

How a haunting home invasion changed the course of Jill Goldberg's life

Guests: Jill Goldberg

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, and this is The Current. In a few minutes, we'll explore the science of gut feelings. But first...

[Music: The Disruptors Theme]

AMT: Well, as part of our project the disruptors this season, we are also bringing you personal stories, personal moments of disruption. We've already heard a few of these stories about life-changing moments, and we're on the lookout for yours. Today we have Jill Goldberg's story. The moment that forever changed her life came late one night ten years ago, when she was living in Montreal and a stranger entered her apartment. This is Jill Goldberg's moment of disruption.

[melancholy guitar music playing]

JILL GOLDBERG: Before the event, life was quite normal. I lived in an apartment that I loved. It was on St. Viateur Street in Montreal, and I used to call it the St. Viateur palace, which was slightly ironic because the apartment was small and old and creaky. But I loved it because I was close with my neighbours, and it really felt like home, I felt like I had a very cozy community around me. So it was Tuesday, March 21st of 2006. And that evening I spent the evening alone in my apartment. And it couldn’t have been more cinematic, because I spent the evening reflecting on how I was enjoying my life at that time. A few years before, I'd been through a terrible breakup and had some difficulties at work, and it seemed like things had really turned around. And I went to sleep that night feeling that happy glow of life is good right now.

[guitar music changing into dark electronic sounds]

JILL GOLDBERG: I woke up at 2:45 in the morning to the sound of footsteps, and I lived alone. And although the floor was very creaky, the noise was way too loud for it to be my cat. But fairly quickly I figured out that this was not a good situation, that there was definitely somebody in my apartment walking down the hallway coming towards my bedroom. And in that moment I felt a kind of terror that far exceeds anything that I normally had experienced, just that sensation of something very menacing is on its way to my room. And knowing what I knew about women who find men in their apartments in the middle of the night, I really felt that I could be within minutes of being raped, harmed, possibly even killed. And I felt paralyzed, but I managed to mobilize and get out of my bed. I even tried to pull the covers over my bed to make it look as if I had never been there and I hid in my closet. I waited there. It seemed like forever.

[music increasing in intensity]

JILL GOLDBERG: The closet door didn't close all the way, so I could see out by an inch or two, and soon enough a man appeared in the doorway of my bedroom. I'm five foot two and of a fairly small build, yet there was this man certainly six feet or more, hovering in my doorway. And I thought to myself, OK, I'm going to kill him before he kills me. [laughs] Which thinking about it seems totally improbable, but I made that decision and I think that decision helped me. At the same time as he was hovering in my doorway, I was also saying goodbye to my family. I couldn’t tell in the dark if he was holding a weapon. He went from my bed. He pulled back the sheets and he really touched every part of the bed as if looking for me, looking for where it might have been warm and then he walked around the bed and he came to the closet. He opened the door and the first thing that he did was to go through my clothes, he touched my clothes one by one, and then he squatted down reached into the closet and he found me. He grabbed a hold of my leg and at that time I decided it was time to fight. And so I jumped up out of the closet. I believe I might have made fists and I yelled at him. I asked him who are you, get out of my apartment.

[music stops]

JILL GOLDBERG: And as I was racing for the door, he answered me which I thought was a very peculiar thing to do, but he said I just want to touch you. You don't know me. I live two doors down. That was what he said. And I was tearing out the door. I ran to the door. I ran down the stairs, all the while I still wasn't sure, did he have a weapon, was he going to come after me, is he going to shoot me from behind? I ran down the stairs, I ran down the block and on my street is of course the all night bagel store on St. Viateur. And I tore in there and I ducked behind the counter and I don't remember what I said, but I said there's a man in my apartment. They called the police right away. They comforted me and the police came pretty soon after that. And they took me from the bagel store back to my apartment and of course the guy was gone. I told the police, I filled out a report. I told them what he had said about being my neighbour from two doors down. And eventually he was arrested.

[brooding electronic music playing]

JILL GOLDBERG: There was a long period where I kept saying to everyone I don't want this to affect me. And so I was very surprised that it did. And that eventually I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and eventually I found that I couldn't sleep. And if I did manage to fall asleep I would almost inevitably have a nightmare in which a man comes into my room to attack me and then I would wake up screaming. And that would happen sometimes three, four, five times a night if I managed to sleep. And very often I couldn't sleep at all. The emotional effects really lingered for a very long time. And even today, it's been 10 years, I often feel as if my life was cleaved in two. And even today, I have a sensation that the old me, the person I was, the things I had before, died. And I grieve that loss.

[music stops]

JILL GOLDBERG: I began to write stories. And eventually I put together a portfolio and that portfolio got me into this MFA program. And that MFA program, which I'm almost done, I just finished a draft of my thesis, which is a novel, has been just about the happiest thing I've done in my adult life. And it makes me very uncomfortable to say this, but I do wonder would I have found that if all of these other terrible things hadn't happened. And I hate the expression everything happens for a reason. I think it's trite and not true. But I will say that something meaningful has come from that event. That from all of the suffering I've been lucky in that I've found something that has let me grow and maybe exceed the person I was before it happened.

[somber guitar music playing]

AMT: That is Jill Goldberg, a writer living in Vancouver now. Offering up her personal moment of disruption. We want to hear your story about a moment that disrupted your life. You can email us your story by going to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. You are listening to the current on CBC Radio 1 and Sirius XM. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti.

What does gut instinct have to do with being a successful trader?

Guests: John Coates, Shabnam Mousavi

SOUNDCLIP

I know it sounds crazy, I sound crazy. You think I don't know that? It is crazy. But I don't care if anyone believes me. I am not going to stop looking for him until I find him and bring him home. I am going to bring him home.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: The character of Joyce Byers on the Netflix series Stranger Things is no stranger to the power of gut feelings. Pure intuition along with some supernatural help fueling her conviction that her missing son is still alive. Whether you call it a hunch, a sixth sense, or just a gut feeling, the sensation is hard to explain. But a new Cambridge University study published in the journal of Scientific Reports has attempted to understand it by focusing on one specific workplace.

[stock exchange bell ringing]

[traders yelling]

AMT: According to this study, stock traders who are more attuned to their own bodies and follow their own gut feelings make more profitable trades and even have a longer careers. The lead author of that study is John Coates, a Canadian neuroscientist and a former Wall Street trader. And John Coates is in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

JOHN COATES: Hi.

AMT: How do you define a gut feeling?

JOHN COATES: Well, the term gut feeling is a colloquial expression for a more technical term in physiology called interoception. Our sensory apparatus is divided into two, well, three branches one is exteroception, that's sight, sound, for example, how we monitor the external world. Other branch is called proprioception, and that's our awareness of body position and joint angle. But a third branch, which hasn't been studied as much as the other two is interoception. And that's the sensory apparatus we have for monitoring our internal visceral world. So what we call gut feelings can in fact be information or signals coming up from our body that could be coming from the gut, the heart, the lungs, the immune system, muscle tension, pretty well any tissue in our visceral body.

AMT: So it's a physiological response?

JOHN COATES: Yes it is.

AMT: OK. So what did your study set out to learn?

JOHN COATES: Well, we had done studies before where I'd been tracking the physiology of traders. Originally, we set up this research program because we wanted to understand what was causing irrational exuberance. Why traders on a winning streak blew up, but also why credit crises and financial crises would become so intractable. And my hunch, having worked on Wall Street, was that a lot of this behaviour was driven by our physiology rather than our psychology. So in a previous study, we were looking at how the stress hormones of traders reacted to volatility and risk. We found this extraordinarily high correlation between cortisol, which is the main stress hormone, and volatility in the market. And what was curious about the finding, was that on the one hand, the psychological reaction of the traders to the volatility and risk was not tracking their physiological reaction to the risk. In other words, the psychology in the physiology weren't correlated, they were just going in opposite directions. And the second thing we found was that the physiology was a much more accurate reflection of the risk than the psychology. So we would give them questionnaires at the end of the day asking them, you know, about their trading, if they were stressed and everything, and the information of the questionnaires was absolutely valueless. It just tracked nothing that we could see of any importance. But their physiology was tracking the risk tick for tick, and they were unaware of that. So then we asked the question, if the physiology is giving us such a valuable trading signal or risk management signal, is it possible that traders who are more sensitive to physical changes while they trade would make more money? So we set up this study to test that hypothesis, and the data that was just, you know, mind blowing.

AMT: OK, so I want to hear a little bit more about it. Traders, men and women, or just men?

JOHN COATES: We could have had men and, it was all men. The trouble with getting women traders involved in these studies is that there are so few of them that we'd never have a large enough sample to get statistical significance. So we have done work in other studies with women asset managers. But this type of trading, high frequency trading, it's almost exclusively male.

AMT: OK, so you talk about the cortisol reflecting the volatility. You looked specifically at heart beats.

JOHN COATES: Yeah, so there's many different tests that medics use. They use these tests because patients with anxiety disorders are sometimes overly sensitive to signals from their body, and they can sort of lead to panic attacks. They have a number of different tests to get people to find out how sensitive they are to signals from their body. And we used a very basic one. The one that's been used the most, because it's the easiest to use and it's got the most research behind it. And that’s just quite simply how good you are at sensing your own heartbeat. So we'd give them like random periods of time 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45, whatever, and a heart rate monitor would record what the real heart rate was. And they had to sense how many heartbeats there was and give their estimate, and how accurate they were was giving us a measure of how sensitive they were to signals in their body.

AMT: And then what did you do from there?

JOHN COATES: Well, we had performance data on the traders, and how long they had survived in the markets. And so we took this measure of their score on this heart beat awareness task, and found first of all, that they were much more sensitive to their body than the general population. In fact, they were about a standard deviation higher in score. Which are scores that you normally only find in elite athletes. So it looked like the trading population does in fact, may enjoy higher gut feelings than the population at large. But then within the cohort of traders, we found that it was predicting the relative profitability, and strikingly how long they were surviving in the markets. So we think the financial markets might be selecting for this trait, and yet nobody is aware of that.

AMT: So you're making the point that they are more sensitive to their gut feelings. Can you tell if the choices they made, they reacted to their gut feelings?

JOHN COATES: Yeah, we all do. It's not an option. We can't actually make decisions in these sorts of situations without signals from our body.

AMT: But you make the point that the cortisol stress is high when it's volatile, could it be stressful because they know they're taking a huge risk and they do it anyway? Like, their body is telling them this is a huge risk and they do it?

JOHN COATES: Well, the weird thing was that that cortisol response to volatility didn't matter whether they were making or losing money. They didn't even really have to be trading. They just had to be the in the presence of this information. You know, when volatility goes up it’s because uncertainty has gone up, because there is more new information coming into the market, so people are no longer certain about what's happening. And as long as they were just looking at the screens, they had this incredibly powerful physiological reaction to the volatility.

AMT: OK, and so what's the bottom line? What do you take from all of this? You know, we live in a culture, really in the financial worlds to a great extent, where we think that what we should be focusing on is the end products of conscious discursive reasoning. So there's a lot of programs being used in the financial world and in the intelligence world, where they try and debias people from the mistakes they're making and conscious reasoning. But we think that the real drivers of high performance aren't to be found at the psychological level, they're being found to be found deeper down in their physiology. So we're trying to redirect attention away from the psychology of high performance to the physiology, even in the workplace.

AMT: Mmm. And can you take what you're learning and apply it with other workplaces?

JOHN COATES: Oh yeah. In fact, I'd say the majority of the interest in this research is coming from fields outside of the financial world.

AMT: Uh huh. And can we apply it, like, generally, to beyond, again, you looked at men only so what am I supposed to take from this?

JOHN COATES: Well, we were using this, you know, the heartbeat awareness task that we’re using it’s got a very, you know, pretty deep research behind it in both men and women. And they don't differ significantly in their ability to detect heartbeat.

AMT: And so where do you go from here with this research?

JOHN COATES: There's a lot of interest, as I say, out of like the financial world, the law world or the intelligence community, particularly out of the sporting community, and even out of health care, in understanding what goes wrong with decision making. And I think they're just now realizing that they have to take a look at the physiology behind the decision making as much as the psychology. So there's some really interesting work being done applying this. Applied physiology right now is a really hot field.

AMT: OK, well John Coates, thank you for sharing your results with us.

JOHN COATES: Well, thank you.

AMT: John Coates, Canadian neuroscientist, former Wall Street trader. He joined us from Ottawa. After that study your gut may be telling you you should rely on it more often. Shabnam Mousavi has studied gut feelings as a decision making tool as an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. She is also a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. That's where we have reached her today. Hello.

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: Hello.

AMT: So, tell us a little bit more about what you have seen. First of all, did you look at men and women in what you were looking at?

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: Yes, as John said there is no real difference between men and women and using their guts when they are making decisions. Moreover, I agree with him that in most cases unless we really try and practice to force ourselves to go against our guts, whether we want to admit it or not, we are actually going with our guts.

AMT: OK. So how do successful people use their gut feelings to make decisions?

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: That is a very good question. Let me first give you the bigger picture in response to what John was saying. So, I admire his effort of adding physiology to psychology when it comes to doing economic studies. The main problem however, goes back to what he was talking about, debiasing techniques. And the idea is that we are psychologically biased towards doing certain things, but again as he said, when the situation is very volatile, that is when variance is very high not the bias. And in the studies that I'm involved, we have shown that when a situation is very volatile, bias might actually be very helpful for you. The other thing that we understand is that when you look at the psychology, you have to use proper tools in order to learn something from your studies. What behavioural finance and behavioural economics have been doing so far was using the tools of economics, which as John was correctly talking about, rely on reasoning, mathematics, statistics and logic. And therefore that tool wouldn't allow them to show how gut feelings can be good. They use the heuristics that are successful, tease out the elements of success, and then study intuition or gut feeling as just another tool in our toolbox for decision making. So when is an intuition a good thing to follow? When you have to make a very quick decision, when time is pressing you. When you can't really collect more information, or maybe you can collect more information but it doesn't really change your situation that much. Like when you are choosing your next partner. So infrequent decisions. The other thing that I want to add here is that since psychologists have been using the tools developed by economists based on math and logic in order to make sense of biases that humans are subject to, and therefore they make irrational decisions, they have failed to see that there is a direct way of going about understanding when heuristics are successful.

AMT: OK, so let me just stop you for a minute so I understand. In some ways, you talk about volatility and how people react. I think of the term fight or flight, when people make instant decisions.

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: Yes.

AMT: That's what you're talking about, like, when you actually feel something within yourself that forces a decision.

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: That is part of it. So when I talk about a heuristic as a tool to deal with your problem or your situation, you can use a heuristic that have been generated inside you as a result of evolution. And those are the ones that fight or flight sense would trigger. It can also be based on training. So experts have a certain set of tools in heuristics and rules of thumb, without being able to necessarily describing why they are doing a certain thing. But it also goes beyond this. So my research is focused on, is it really the case that only when I have familiar and simple situations I have to use my intuition? And my answer is no. In fact, when I'm thinking about very uncertain situations, when I don't know where to get the information. We all know again in our guts that what comes to our rescue is imagination. And what do we use when we are imagining more than our gut feel? This gut feel would fill into the blanks of what is not knowable to us much better than any other technique of reasoning that we have developed over times. Economists have been limited, because the economic man, the model of man that they have designed has no body. So there is no physiology, has no soul, so no psychology, has no guts, basically.

AMT: OK, so this is why you say they failed to see it. They're looking at the mathematics and the logic and they're not considering the gut, the soul, the person, the emotion.

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: Even the mainstream behavioural econ and finance is failing to do that. So what I'm suggesting is to use the systematic study of heuristics as a framework to tease out the elements of intuitive success, and then it will be even teachable. In fact, just last hour I was at a meeting with a group that are coming from sports. And we were specifically talking about how to sit down and study sports players and coaches, in order to see what kind of rules of thumb and intuition they are using that is good and successful, and then bring it up to the conscious and then train the new players and coaches based on those.

AMT: It's interesting, because there is a sort of, the view from a long time ago that the thinking, the intelligent, using the mind is more masculine and using the emotion intuition is more feminine.

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: In fact, Aristotle famously was associating wisdom with masculinity and emotion or intuition with femininity. And always feminine was below masculine. So, relying on your reason was in at least Western tradition, always the superior way to go about everything. And that is what we still feel the residual for. So whenever we make a decision we feel obliged to talk about why is it so reasonable to do so? The other side of it is that we want to save ourselves from liabilities. So we become very defensive. As long as I have a protocol that I have followed, then I am safe in making my decision. But if I just come out and say, well I did it because it felt right, and then it fails, then I probably am done for in that job. So lots and lots of opportunities are just being wasted in many organizations at the corporate or national level when people are afraid of relying on their guts and they go for the safe or defensive method, solution, or proposal.

AMT: OK, I understand what you're saying. So we have to actually own what we feel with our guts as well, for liability purposes anyway. [chuckles] Anyway, we have to leave it there. Thank you for your insights.

SHABNAM MOUSAVI: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

AMT: It’s a pleasure to talk to you. That is Shabnam Mousavi, an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. She's also a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Go ahead, weigh in on this. Can you tell what messages your body is sending you? Do you listen to your gut, your intuition? Has it helped you make a right choice or lead you astray? Tweet us we are @TheCurrentCBC, post a comment on the story on our Facebook page, email us by clicking on contact cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: Extro]

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