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The Current Transcript for December 1, 2016

Host: Kelly Crowe

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Protesters chanting in Korean]

KELLY CROWE: South Koreans are furious. For weeks, hundreds of thousands of protesters have been in the streets demanding their disgraced president step down. But the political scandal has also become a flashpoint for broad public discontent. That's coming up. Plus—

SOUNDCLIP

Today is the first official day of Meatless Mondays. Who is excited? I’m excited. Can you tell I’m excited? I’m a little excited.

KC: You might not be that excited about skipping the beef on Mondays, but what if the price went up? Researchers are proposing a tax on meat. If it costs more, we won't eat as much—that's the theory and the goal is fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Taxing meat in half an hour. And finally today—

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: That’s my mouse. I didn't kill it, George. Honest. I found it there.

VOICE 2: Give it here.

VOICE 1: George, let me have it.

VOICE 2: Give it here. What do you want with a dead mouse anyway?

VOICE 1: I was just petting it with the fingers while we was walking along.

KC: The tale of George and Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Lennie is mentally challenged and Texas uses that fictional character rather than science to measure prisoners’ mental capacity and to decide who should be sent to death row. Critics are appealing that Lennie test at the US Supreme Court. That story in an hour. I'm Kelly Crowe in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

South Koreans are calling for President Park Geun-hye impeachment amid corruption scandal

Guests: Jason Strother, Kathy Moon

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Protesters yelling]

KC: Thousands of South Korean protesters rallying in the streets against President Park Geun-hye. They're calling for her resignation after an investigation into whether she allowed a powerful family friend to influence political decisions for personal gain. The mass demonstrations began five weeks ago and have been growing in size with no signs of stopping until President Park stands down.

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[Through translator] We will continue to participate because we know that the president is hoping that we will eventually give up.

KC: At the center of the controversy is Choi Soon-sil, the president's old friend. She's been charged with fraud, coercion and abuse of power—accused of using her personal ties with the president to meddle in state and business affairs. On Tuesday, the scandal came to a head when President Park Geun-hye offered to resign with strings attached.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] I will leave it to the National Assembly to decide on my resignation including the shortening of my presidential term. If the governing and opposition parties inform me of the way to minimize the confusion and vacuum in state affairs and ensure a stable transfer of power, I will step down as president according to their schedules and legal procedures.

KC: Today we're exploring the scandal that has seen South Koreans take to the streets in numbers not seen since the protests to democratize the country in the 1980s. First, I'm joined by freelance journalist Jason Strother. He's in Seoul, South Korea. Hello.

JASON STROTHER: Hi, Kelly.

KC: So there have been calls for President Park’s impeachment. Has her offered to resign changed anything?

JASON STROTHER: No, the protests still go on. There's going to be more mass demonstrations this coming weekend. The protesters aren't going to give up until she leaves office. And right now, you know after this apology that she gave earlier this week or this offer to step down if the conditions are right, the president has basically thrown the ball into the court of the National Assembly and the lawmakers there don't really seem to know right now what to do with it.

KC: Now has she been charged with anything?

JASON STROTHER: She can't be charged right now. The president of South Korea is immune from criminal prosecution, although the prosecution here that had launched this probe into the corruption— this possible corruption scandal—says that they are like 99 per cent sure that she has some part to play in it. She's been named as a criminal suspect. That's historical here in South Korea. No president has had those types of allegations lodged at their office.

KC: So this story is filled with all kinds of interesting intrigue and background connections to old you know political players, et cetera. Can you give us a sense of the landscape? Who is Choi Soon-sil and why is she so central? She's been called Rasputin-like. Give us a sense of the flavour of all that.

JASON STROTHER: Sure. Well, I mean it's an enticing scandal and the longer it goes on, the more juicy details keep coming out of it. It all goes back to the 1970s. President Park Geun-hye, her father was the military dictator here in the 1960s and seventies. His wife was assassinated by a North Korean sympathizer in 1974. And it was right after that incident that the father of Choi Soon-sil—the Rasputin-like figure here—her father, who was more or less a cult leader, he had a religious sect that some say straddled the line between shamanism and Christianity—he made his way to the presidential compound and somehow was able to gain the audience of the very young Park Geun-hye and told her that he was communicating with her deceased mother in his dreams. That she had appeared to him as an apparition of sorts. From that point on until his death in the 1990s, Park Geun-hye and Mr. Choi remained close friends. And then this brought about the friendship between Choi Soon-sil and the president. All we know right now is that the president gave Ms. Choi unprecedented access for someone who has no government detail, no security clearances. The president has admitted to giving government documents to this ally. She has edited some of her key speeches, had some input on other policy decisions—very unprecedented.

KC: This has also though swept up some of the large Korean firms like Hyundai and Samsung. They've been accused of or they have donated to foundations controlled by Ms. Choi. Tell us a bit about that.

JASON STROTHER: Right. And this is the real crux of the prosecution's investigation. They believe that President Park pressured these conglomerates—which you know control almost you know a huge portion of the South Korean economy—to give tens of millions of dollars to two foundations set up by Ms. Choi and the prosecution alleges that Ms. Choi embezzled much of that money for personal use. So they say that the president because of this special relationship she had with this woman coerced these companies to hand over the cash.

KC: And tell us a bit about Ms. Choi’s daughter’s university entrance. It’s caught up in this too.

JASON STROTHER: Well, yeah. I mean it just—in a country where education is so important, it seems that perhaps because of this close connection with the president's office, Ms. Choi was able to get her daughter pretty much through high school despite having poor grades into one of the nation's top universities when it seems that she was not deserving of such a position. And now it seems that the Education Ministry is not only revoking her high school diploma, but also going after some professors who might have been involved in kind of covering up this girl's poor grades at university. So, right. It just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

KC: But yet there's hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. I mean what has got everyone so upset?

JASON STROTHER: You know President Park was not very popular even before this scandal erupted. She was still taking a lot of criticism from people for the way she handled the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry. Many South Koreans believe that she showed a real lack of leadership during that time.

KC: This was a ferry that—a lot of children were killed.

JASON STROTHER: Almost 300 high school students were killed when this ferry capsized back in April of 2014. It's a huge tragedy that still is quite divisive here.

KC: And there were issues about corruption and issues about the ferry not being safe, et cetera.

JASON STROTHER: Exactly. And President Park more or less vanished during the first several hours while that incident unfolded. But even deeper than that let's say, there was a hope that when President Park took office that she would be pretty clean compared to other South Korean politicians. And there was hope that Ms. Park who is not married, has no children, she wouldn't be doing any favors, political favours, financial favours for relatives like many other presidents have been caught up in such scandals. But it turns out that this friendship with Ms. Choi you know was you know just as solid as a familial relationship.

KC: So just quickly, Jason, when do you think the protesters will feel they've achieved their goal? What will satisfy them?

JASON STROTHER: Well, they say they're not going to give up their demonstrations until Ms. Park is out of office. That could happen within the upcoming months if the opposition party here gets its way. They're hoping to impeach the president but it's unclear right now if they'll get enough votes. There needs to be at least 200 of the 300 lawmakers in the National Assembly here to go along with an impeachment vote. And if that passes, then the nation's top court will have to weigh in on whether or not the impeachment is constitutional. In that sense, the president you know could be forced out of office sometime early next year and new elections could be called.

KC: Okay. Jason, thanks very much for talking to us this morning.

JASON STROTHER: Sure thing, Kelly. Thank you.

KC: Bye.

JASON STROTHER: Bye-bye.

KC: Jason Strother is a freelance journalist based in Seoul and that's where we reached him. For many protesters, the scandal is only a symptom of bigger problems in South Korea. For more insight into social movements and democracy there, I'm joined by Kathy Moon. She's a professor of political science at Wellesley College and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and she's in Boston.

KC: Hello.

KATHY MOON: Hi there.

KC: How significant is it to see this scale of activism in South Korea?

KATHY MOON: Well, in my view, it is very significant but I'm not actually surprised by both the scale and the vigour—if not the venom—that the public is expressing. I mean South Korea has a history of very, very active, aggressive protests going back to the 1960s all the way up through the massive protests that helped lead to democratization in 1987, 1988. So South Koreans are used to going out and expressing their political opinions on the street. This time, it's much more personal in some ways for a lot of these people. It's political of course, but I think they feel genuinely hurt by their president. I think they feel seriously wounded by or even betrayed by her promise during her campaign to stay clean and then having this explosive scandal taint not only her but also all of South Koreans. I mean I think what's really, really sad, tragic about this case is that South Korea has touted its economic development and its rapid democratic transition and this one scandal now basically upsets so many decades of work that South Koreans have striven for.

KC: There are other things going on though besides just the outrage over the scandal itself. What are some of the other issues that are sort of fueling this?

KATHY MOON: Yeah, that's a very good question. Most of South Korea's protests are never a single issue protests. And in this case, it's also true. South Koreans are in a very difficult economic situation—especially the younger generation. There is a lot of socioeconomic discontent there, as is true in many other parts of the world. But in South Korea, you have a situation where economic reform has not been able to take place enough so that young people can actually get jobs even after they've sacrificed their early youth to get into universities. So about one-third of young people can only get temporary jobs or part-time jobs and it's not enough obviously to sustain a livelihood let alone get into a career. And in 2015, there was a study done that even those young folks who had worked for over 10 years, by the time they were in their early thirties, two-thirds of them had still been stuck in temporary jobs. So there's a lot of socioeconomic discontent. There's also a lot of anger against President Park's “imperial presidential style” that during her tenure, she has tended to be unilateral in her decision-making and also in terms of policies for example, insisting that the government chooses history textbooks for students and that history books that are not approved by the government should not be used. This should not be happening in a democratic society and people were very, very upset by this.

LC: Is there something about those history textbooks that had to do with her father, isn’t that true?

KATHY MOON: Yes. Well, it's not just her father but many of her critics charged that she wanted to whitewash her father's dictatorial tenure. He was president, dictator, authoritarian leader for about 18 years and he is also her claim to fame. She is a legacy president. And so in that sense, people were very, very upset that she might be trying to make his tenure look better than it was. He was actually very effective in terms of economic development but of course not so in terms of democratic development. But there were other issues involved and it's a complicated case, but many critics really threw eggs at her metaphorically. I think what's also important to keep in mind about her presidency is that she was not popular even before this scandal. She came into office by a very, very slim margin and it was pretty much a 50-50 split. Her opposition rival could easily have won. And so she did not have a big support when she won her presidency and then as your other guest mentioned, the ferry sinking really brought her down. And she came into the presidency with a corruption scandal following her that the National Intelligence Service—the Korea CIA—that they had manipulated or intervened in the election process to allow her to win. So there were all sorts of rumours as well as some documented evidence that the NIS had not been completely clean.

KC: So how do you think this is going to affect the situation regionally and internationally?

KATHY MOON: Well, right now it's a difficult situation as you know, especially with North Korea. The UN Security Council just passed another set of sanctions against its first nuclear test. And China is already—China, Japan are wary of actually the Trump presidency that's coming ahead in the United States. So for a lot of reasons besides what's going on in South Korea, the East Asia region is if not volatile, at least in a precarious situation. I think most people are concerned whether North Korea is going to act out in any way to take advantage of South Korea's instability and insecurity about its political future regarding the president. Of course, US military forces as well as South Korean military forces are on high alert to look out for signals. But I don't worry about anything major from the North Koreans. But I think this is making South Korea a very difficult country to deal with internationally for all involved, not only in terms of nuclear issues but economic issues. It would be very difficult to figure out how to conduct economic relations, investments and other issues with a society and a corporate environment that is right now under so much scrutiny and a political future that is very shaky. So I think economically, I think in terms of South Korea's general foreign policy situation, this just creates a lot of uncertainty which is not good for the country.

KC: Now looking ahead, how do you see this chapter of Korea’s history resolving?

KATHY MOON: Oh, that's a very good question. It's very difficult to say because as vigorous as the opposition forces in South Korea have been trying to bring her down—and many might believe rightfully so—they are divided. And so tomorrow, Friday, South Korea was supposed to have the National Assembly take a vote on whether to begin the impeachment process and the opposition forces themselves, even though they formed the majority as a coalition in the National Assembly, the three different parties in the opposition, they can't come to an agreement on what to do. They have differences of opinion about the timing of a vote on impeachment, et cetera. And so they're divided. The ruling party, Saenuri Party, also has some potential defectors who would vote for impeachment. So it's a precarious situation. I think what South Koreans need to think about is regardless of how the impeachment process or any resignation process might go, they really need to think about what kind of a national mandate they want to give and demand from the next president, however that president is selected or whenever he or she is selected or elected. I'm just concerned that whoever comes in after President Park is going to be living with this black cloud of this crisis and scandal over his or her head and that basically the new president would be tied up with the legal controversy and the political controversies that will undoubtedly continue even after President Park steps down because this is a major, major case. This affects not only the Blue House—the Korean equivalent of the White House—the constitutional court that has to decide on the impeachment ultimately, the corporate entities involved, major educational institutions, and there's also Korean pop or K-Pop actors that have now become under investigation. So this is a societal problem.

KC: You've laid out quite a complex situation so we'll have to watch and see how this plays out. Thank you very much for joining me.

KATHY MOON: Thank you very much.

KC: Bye.

KATHY MOON: Bye-bye.

KC: Kathy Moon is a professor of political science at Wellesley College and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She was in Boston. The Current also requested an interview with the Korean embassy. No one was available to join us. Tune into The Current to hear a different story from South Korea tomorrow. We'll hear about the so-called comfort women who were forced into sexual slavery during the Second World War and their quest for an apology from Japan. The CBC News is next and then—

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Sizzling]

KC: Should that sizzle in your steak get a little more expensive? We'll hear about whether a tax on meat could curb our appetite for it and save the environment in the process. I'm Kelly Crowe sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Sting]

Back To Top »

A tax on meat would reduce emissions and save lives, study suggests

Guests: Marco Springmann, Peter Shawn Taylor, Evan Fraser

KC: Hello. I'm Kelly Crowe sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

KC: Still to come, how the character Lennie in the book Of Mice and Men influences some death penalty decisions in Texas. But first, could a key to saving our planet be charging you a little more for what's on your plate?

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Right, the guide to cooking a perfect steak. Hot pan. The secret here is to make sure that we literally sear the steak.

[Sound: Sizzling]

VOICE 1: That’s the kind of noise you want to hear in the pan every time. That nice sear.

VOICE 2: Because we do so many ribs, we use a smoker so we can really do the volume. When they come off, they're going to get our dry seasoning at the end. And it's not a rub. It's a seasoning.

VOICE 3: Oh, look at that smoke. The heat in this grill is already searing the outside and that's going to give our steaks remarkable flavor.

KC: The right sizzle, the rubs, the perfect grilling temperature. But that remarkable flavour could become more expensive if the authors of a new study out of England have their way. The study calls for a tax on food, especially meat. They say it would reduce carbon emissions and save lives. The global food industry from fertilizer manufacturing to food storage and packaging is responsible for up to one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and meat production plays a significant part in that according to the United Nations. Marco Springmann is the lead author of this study and he's a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at Oxford University. He's in Nagano, Japan where he's attending a workshop. Hello.

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Hello there.

KC: So what does your study propose?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: So we propose to basically put greenhouse gas tax on food commodities to get food related emissions in check that the food system is responsible to. As you mentioned already, at the moment the food system is responsible for up to a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and projections as such that proportion would actually increase by up to 100 per cent by the end of the century if nothing really happened. So that means if we really want to limit climate change to acceptable levels, something has to change in the way we eat. And one of the clearest ways of doing that is to introduce a greenhouse gas tax. So we wanted to look at can you design such taxes from a health perspective so that people would not put at a disadvantage for their health?

KC: Now what is it about meat that gives it such a big environmental footprint?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Meat is by far the largest component in the greenhouse gas footprint of foods. It’s responsible for about 80 per cent of all the greenhouse gas emissions. If you took into account all the land use changes that are associated with meat production for example, to produce the feed.

KC: This is because of the animals, right? This is because of natural digestion in the animals.

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Yeah. A lot of greenhouse gas emissions, especially methane, are emitted in the room when cows eat and they have to digest it somehow and what comes out. They burp basically methane out and that is a big chunk of the greenhouse gas emissions.

KC: Now does grass fed meat have a lower environmental footprint?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: No, interestingly, it has actually a higher because the food that they eat is harder to digest. So beef from, let's say Latin America, is actually higher in greenhouse gas emissions than let’s say, beef from the US or Europe.

MARCO SPRINGMANN: And what kind of health impact would this have, do you think, especially in the developing world if you make food—the protein part of food—more expensive?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Yeah. It's a two-edged sword really. So we know that red meat—which includes beef and pork—is in general bad for your health. It increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases like stroke, heart disease, certain cancers, type 2 diabetes by up to a half or even double the normal amount. So eating red meat is bad in general. But what is also bad is if people don't have enough to eat. And that can be a particular problem in sub-Saharan African countries but also in India if you would introduce a food tax on all foods. So therefore we propose to compliment a greenhouse gas tax on food commodities by compensatory mechanisms that would basically compensate poor households for the income losses that they would face due to higher food prices or by making health promoting foods like fruits and vegetables cheaper so that they could compensate for that shortfall in meat consumption.

KC: Now what happens if we don't reduce the meat consumption?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Well, we would have a very, very slim chance of limiting global warming to acceptable levels. As I indicated, the projections are such that by end of the century, the food system would be responsible for all the—would take up all the carbon budget that we have to limit global warming to below two degrees centigrade. So it's clear that since meat is the biggest chunk of it that some way or the other, meat consumption has to come down.

KC: Now I'd like to bring someone else into the conversation. Peter Shawn Taylor is the author of a recent Canadian Taxpayers Federation report, Tax on the Menu: Why Food and Drink Taxes Won't Make Canadians Thinner but Will Make Their Governments Much, Much Fatter. He's also an editor-at- large at Maclean’s and he's in Waterloo, Ontario. Hello.

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Hi, Kelly.

KC: Peter Taylor, what's your reaction to this study?

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Well, I find it objectionable I guess on a practical and a philosophical basis. It's kind of you know where to begin? You want to take the practical approach, especially since we're talking about it in Canada so that's where my interests lie in the short term. You know Marco pointed out that greenhouse gas emissions are from agriculture, sort of a third of the total. But that's really a third world issue. You know in Canada, the agriculture industry as a whole consists about eight per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. So this is—it’s really—what we're talking about here is a third world problem, not a first world problem.

KC: Isn't it a global problem?

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Well, you can say carbon emissions are a global problem but the locus of this problem is in the third world.

KC: You're saying that their meat production is somehow generating more greenhouse gas emissions than the developed world?

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Hugely. Carbon intensity of beef for instance is what we're talking about. In high-income countries like Canada is about 25 kilograms of carbon emissions per kilogram of beef. In Brazil, say it's about 72. So you know there's huge differences between what's going on in the first world and what's going on in the third world.

KC: Just let me ask Marco. Marco Springmann, what do you say about that?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Yeah, I disagree with that. I mean the largest portion of meat consumption and beef consumption is in developed countries. So that means also the largest chunk of meat related greenhouse gas emissions comes from those countries. I mean I agree that you know greenhouse gas intensities differ but it's undeniable that high-income countries eat most of the beef that is produced. So yeah. You can’t get around basically tackling that. And if you then also bring into account, bring into the picture the health issue, I mean it’s clear that in Canada, beef consumption is way too high. It’s above any level, any global recommendations such as those from the World Cancer Research Fund or the WHO. So by reducing beef consumption in Canada, you would reduce emissions and improve health. So that is very clear in high-income countries.

KC: Let's talk about the actual mechanism of a tax. Peter Taylor, studies have shown that taxing tobacco has reduced consumption, so why would there not be a parallel here with beef?

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Well, I mean let's be clear: tobacco is always and everywhere a health risk. I happen to consider food to be the opposite. Food is a necessity of life. Taxing food for whatever reason is going to make people worse off. Just back to Marco's point, I mean you know this global tax on carbon emissions from food, his base case scenario it’ll raise five hundred billion dollars a year. Three hundred billion dollars of that will come from poor and middle-income countries. So the vast bulk of the emphasis of this project is focused on countries like Guatemala and Papua New Guinea and India and Honduras.

KC: He's also suggesting some income support though and also some price relief on healthier food like fruits and vegetables.

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Sure. So we're talking about taxing food based on their carbon emissions and then subsidizing food also based on the carbon emissions and giving back income supplements and changing how governments do this and the bulk of this effort will have to occur in countries like Papua New Guinea and India where they simply don't have the sophisticated tech—this would be a challenge for Canada to pull off something like this. Now we're saying for this to be a success, Guatemala has to do this? I mean it just seems beyond the pale.

KC: Peter Taylor, do you agree though that meat consumption—setting aside how this would happen— should be reduced to help the environment?

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Well, I mean as you mentioned, we're talking about removing an enormous supply of protein to the world and while they add on the sort of the health benefits, all the health benefits occur in rich countries. And this program is actually killing people in Africa and Asia because they're making food more expensive where food security is a real problem. And so you know do we need to kill people in poor countries in order to save the world? Well, I find that a very difficult moral challenge.

KC: I mean it’s oversimplifying maybe to say that a tax on meat would actually kill people, but your point is that it will make food more expensive.

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: I mean there are a large number of countries in which the health benefits are negative for this tax. Okay, there’s—

KC: Marco Springmann, what's your response to that?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Yeah, I also have to disagree with that. I mean therefore we wanted to look at that from a health perspective. I mean there are those concerns and those are valid concerns that making foods more expensive or taxing foods would lead to negative health impacts. And that's exactly what we find if we apply a tax naively on whole food groups. But if we include those compensatory mechanisms that I talked about, then we can find a specific tax designed in any country that would leave you with a health benefit. And we did sensitivity analysis looking at stunting in children, undernourishment and things like that. So yeah, saying that those taxes would kill people is not correct. And if I may also add, since Peter said you know foods are generally good, actually red and processed meat have been declared as carcinogens very recently. So they are basically in the same category now as tobacco which means they ought to be regulated because they are not good for you. And we're not talking about preventing people from eating it but making clear that eating those has a negative health impact and has a negative environmental impact.

KC: Now Peter Taylor, you said you're philosophically also opposed to the idea of a government telling people what to eat. Just talk about that a bit.

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: Yeah. I mean you know we talk about big tobacco and big soda, these sort of you know nefarious organizations. This is an example of what I like to call big public health. This is an example of this instinct you see quite often from public health institutions that we need to control what everybody does. You know we know better than everyone else, what you should be eating, what you should be doing, how you should be spending your spare time, on and on. And this is you know a global manifestation of that sort of urge, that you shouldn't be eating beef and we're going to make it more expensive so that we force you to eat less of it. It seems—the parallel here to me is the problems that the cement industry is having with carbon tax in Canada. You know everybody would agree that cement is a vital component of our modern world. But the chemical reactions of making cement produce carbon dioxide and that's a problem. I think at some point you're just going to have to live with the chemical process emissions that come from vital important aspects of life. And I think protein is important and I think we're just going to have to learn to live with the fact that creating protein produces carbon emissions, the same way we're going to have to live with the fact that cement produces carbon emissions because it's a necessity of life as well.

KC: So Marco Springmann, what do you say to this argument that it’s just the way it is, we need this meat and therefore this is how we're going to have to go forward?

MARCO SPRINGMANN: Yeah, a couple of points to that. So this protein rhetoric is completely false. I mean you can get plenty of protein from almost any plant source. For example there is proteins that you get from legumes, like beans, lentils and things like that. They're 250 times lower in greenhouse gas emissions than beef—250 times—so this is a big chunk for the equivalent protein content. Okay? And there's plenty of protein going around in any plant source so that argument clearly doesn't stick really. Then that argument about big public health, I mean there is no big public health. Public health is belittled in almost any government so you know we are not an industry at all, right? We try to sort of create the frameworks that people can live a healthy life. And again, we're not talking about restrictions here. We're talking about paying a fair price for a product.

KC: Okay. Well, it's obviously a really interesting but controversial area. I have to leave it there. Thank you both very much for joining me though.

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR: It was a pleasure.

KC: Marco Springmann is a researcher at Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at Oxford University. He was in Nagano, Japan. Peter Shawn Taylor is the author of a Canadian Taxpayers Federation report on taxing food and drink. He was in Waterloo, Ontario. Whether governments opt for a so-called sin tax on meat or not, there's a push to look at alternative proteins that are more eco- friendly and some of these options are more, let's say, alternative than others. Evan Fraser is the director of The Food Institute at the University of Guelph and a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security. He joins us from Guelph, Ontario. Hello.

EVAN FRASER: Hi, Kelly.

KC: So what do you think? Do you see a meat tax coming to Canada anytime soon?

EVAN FRASER: Well, the prime minister has signaled quite strongly that we are going to be paying for carbon and carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. So in as much as our food contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions, yeah, I think that the agricultural sector and the food and drink sector is going to have to adjust to paying for those emissions.

KC: Now let's talk about another way to do it, to change people's eating habits. What else would work?

EVAN FRASER: Well, I mean we've got the price signals obviously then there's also you know savvy marketing by entrepreneurs to produce new low input, high quality food products. And I think between the regulatory stick and the advertising marketing food innovation carrot will move towards a system that doesn't have no meat in it and doesn't involve complete vegetarianism, but will represent sort of a slow shift over time away from what we consider conventional livestock today towards different forms of livestock production and different kinds of proteins tomorrow.

KC: Okay. So when you say different livestock you're talking—these aren't four legged necessarily. These could be actually no legged.

EVAN FRASER: Yeah. Well, I mean I think that if you—and picking up on the comments that were just made, I think if you think of protein as a category, typically we think of cows, pigs and chickens as the main providers of that. But we've also of course got aquaculture, legumes and plant-based proteins. Algae is a very strong source of protein that we don't really use except in a few sports drinks right now. And what breakfast conversation would be complete without references to edible insects? And there's lots of evidence emerging both culinarily and from a food science perspective that insects may provide a low input supply of protein that meets some of our needs in the future.

KC: Okay. So really? Insects?

EVAN FRASER: Yeah. And I have to say that I have eaten mealworm truffles and cricket flour brownies in the last month. The mealworm truffles were produced by a very fine chef who works for Loblaws and cricket flour brownies were produced by a first year student in a class I teach. And both were excellent.

KC: I mean describe a mealworm truffle. I mean is it a pâté or is it—

EVAN FRASER: It's a chocolate truffle. It tastes like a chocolate truffle. It acts in your mouth like a chocolate truffle and has mealworm flour in it to bind the fat and the sugars and the cocoas together.

KC: So some of this protein from insects wouldn't be—we wouldn't actually be eating bugs. It would be using the bugs and grinding them up into a high protein ingredient that would be used in some other forms of processed food. Is that right?

EVAN FRASER: Sure. So a lot of the stuff is probably or is likely to at least enter our diet in the form of powders that get used as an ingredient in food. And so the crickets, I didn't see the crickets in the cricket brownies. It was simply the flour that was used. Instead of wheat flour, it was cricket flour and that had the benefit of being gluten free, higher in protein and rich in iron and omega 3s. So there were some nutritional benefits of eating this cricket flour brownie.

KC: Now there's also been some effort to actually make meat in a lab. Talk a bit about that.

EVAN FRASER: Certainly. So there's this technology. It's sometimes called in-vitro meat or test tube steaks. It's most developed in a lab in the Netherlands and about a year, year and a half ago, they—too much public fanfare—consumed the first lab grown hamburgers. And I talked to somebody that was part of that part of that study. It was a perfectly adequate but not exceptional—it was how it was described to me—hamburger. It was extremely expensive. Now they only had made a small number so the cost of this hamburger was about—the number that sticks in my head is £250,000. So we're a ways off of using—

KC: Wait. Two-hundred and fifty pounds?

EVAN FRASER: Sterling. As in you know it was almost a half million dollar burger.

KC: So that's not coming anytime soon.

EVAN FRASER: Yeah. So that technology is still very much in the pre-commercialization phase to put it mildly. But I've got some colleagues that are working on this that are optimistic that within the sort of five to 10 year zone, that synthesizing meat using stem cell technologies in a lab will become one part of our protein portfolio to which conventional livestock, insects and in-vitro meat all will belong to.

KC: So just explain the synthesizing. I mean so you don't need—you won't need the animal at this point.

EVAN FRASER: Yeah. I'm not a chemist so I'm not able to really parse out the science for you. But it uses that use of stem cells taken from embryos, cultures them in a lab and convinces those stem cells to take on the attributes of different kinds of muscle and fat tissues that then get merged together to create a burger.

KC: Now how easy would it be to get people to actually start eating this?

EVAN FRASER: That's a really interesting question. On one hand, we are biological creatures with you know a soft spot for fatty, protein-rich foods. And I love steak and I can't ever imagine a world where I won't be able to eat at least a few steaks a year. That said, we do acknowledge that the way we currently produce steaks causes a significant environmental—and to some extent—health toll. And in all likelihood, some combination of regulation will change that. But we really like that stuff. On the other side of the coin, we have to acknowledge that you know tastes are highly culturally determined. Our diets are highly culturally determined and so those are really a matter of choice to a certain extent. And I keep reflecting myself on the situation or the case of sushi, the sushi industry. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, sushi was being mocked on Saturday Night Live as a ridiculous, slightly disgusting thing and who could ever imagine Americans eating raw fish? Well, within ten years a cultural shift had occurred, linked to marketing and linked to savvy advertising and consumers were eating raw fish on a regular basis in North America. So for me the story of sushi or the parable of sushi is that our tastes maybe aren't as fixed as we think. And so then I had these students this last month serving me cricket flour brownies in an undergraduate class. And so I think we’re actually in a period of transition culinarily and taste wise and our tastes maybe are a little more flexible than sometimes we think.

KC: Now what about farmers in all of this?

EVAN FRASER: Well, I'll be totally honest. I look at things like prices placed on carbon and shifting consumer demand towards more healthy products and we know that protein consumption is—from a consumer’s perspective—is what's called demand elastic. As soon as prices go up, consumers find something else to buy. And I get concerned that the combination of consumer change and health concerns, environmental concerns and regulation are going to make it very hard for conventional producers, especially conventional beef producers, to weather the next 10 years in a robust way. And I've got tons of friends that work in this industry and like I said, I'm a carnivore. I like steak and ice cream so I don't want them to suffer. But I think the ones that are most adept and most adaptable will be those that differentiate themselves—move towards organic, artisanal, special occasion, high quality, high value added products. And a large number of conventional producers will find themselves shifting and having to explore how to increase the say, mix soy products with beef products to produce a lower beef or lower beef content burger.

KC: Okay. Okay. Well, thank you, Evan, very much for this. Thanks for joining us.

EVAN FRASER: My pleasure, Kelly. Great discussion.

KC: Bye-bye.

EVAN FRASER: Bye-bye now.

KC: Evan Fraser is the director of The Food Institute at the University of Guelph and a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security. He was in Guelph, Ontario. We'd love to hear what you think about this story. Do we need a meat tax in Canada and would you be willing to eat insects, algae and lab grown meat for the sake of the environment? You can find us on Facebook, tweet us @thecurrentCBC or email us through our website. Coming up in the next half hour, I'm Kelly Crowe sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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How Lennie in Of Mice and Men influences Texas death row cases

Guests: Anna Arceneaux, Patrick Turley, Marc Tassé

KC: Hello. I'm Kelly Crowe sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. The influence of John Steinbeck's Depression-era novel, Of Mice and Men, stretches far beyond literature. So far in fact that it's a crucial reference point in a US Supreme Court case this week. If you've seen the film Of Mice and Men, you'll remember this pivotal and difficult scene.

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[Sound: Woman screaming]

Don’t do that. George is going to be mad if you yell. Don’t want to hurt you but you’re going to get me in trouble. You’ve done a bad thing. I’ve done a bad thing. I’ve done a really bad thing.

KC: Lennie Small has just accidentally killed the wife of his boss's son, Curley. Lennie, of course, is intellectually disabled—a childlike giant of a man who doesn't realize his own strength to disastrous effect. Of Mice and Men was a childhood favourite of Cathy Cochran, a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. She believes someone like Lennie should be exempt from the death penalty due to his intellectual disability and went on to make a legal touchstone out of this fictional character. Judge Cochran developed what will become known as the Lennie standard—a test for intellectual disability that drew inspiration from the Steinbeck character. And so, in the state where one-third of American death sentences are carried out, the determination of mental capacity is based in part on an understanding of the character, Lennie. Critics have argued that the model plays off harmful stereotypes of the intellectually disabled and is scientifically baseless. Anna Arceneaux was in the US Supreme Court to hear the arguments on Tuesday. She's a senior staff attorney with the Capital Punishment Project with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief with the court. She joins me from Durham, North Carolina. Hello.

ANNA ARCENEAUX: Hi, Kathy. Thanks for having me.

KC: I'm sure it's more complex but really? Rally using this character to make a decision about who receives the death penalty?

ANNA ARCENEAUX: That's exactly what the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did in its Briseño decision. And in 2002, the United States Supreme Court decided in Atkins v. Virginia that people with intellectual disability—what used to be known as mental retardation—should be exempt from the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution. But it left it to the states to determine how they would implement the procedures to exempt people with intellectual disability. And in fact, Texas in this Briseño decision did rely in part on Lennie and crafting the criteria that they would use to determine in Texas who meets the definition of intellectual disability.

KC: So tell me about the case—the defendant named Bobby James Moore.

ANNA ARCENEAUX: Well, Mr. Moore is a man who was convicted for a 1980 crime in Houston, Texas. He has had a lifelong disability. It's undisputed that when he was a young man, he was unable to tell the days of the week, the months of the year. He was socially promoted throughout his schooling. It's long been recognized that he had very severe deficits. And in fact the lower court, once the Atkins decision came out in 2002, Mr. Moore went back to court and alleged that he met the criteria for intellectual disability and the lower court that heard his claim—the first court to hear the claim and hear all the evidence from the mental health experts and lay witnesses—determined that in fact, under current medical standards, he does meet the criteria for intellectual disability and should not therefore be on death row any longer. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals then reversed that decision and said the lower court was wrong to rely on medical standards and that they should have used the 1992 medical standards as well as these Briseño factors, the Lennie standard as you've referred to it. And that's how it ended up in the US Supreme Court.

KC: Okay. So go into more detail for us about the Briseño factors.

ANNA ARCENEAUX: Well, there's seven factors that the court came up with and as you said there and the brief that we've submitted to the court as a friend of the court, as an amicus party, showed that these factors are in fact based on lay stereotypes and in part on Lennie from Of Mice and Men. But some of the factors—the first one for example is whether people who knew the defendant in his childhood considered him to have an intellectual disability. Now again, there’s no clinical basis for that factor. That's not a factor that someone in the school system would consider if they were trying to determine whether someone meets the criteria for intellectual disability to be eligible for special education services. And in fact, it is a really problematic factor to consider because family members, neighbours, even teachers are often not going to know the—not going to be able to diagnose someone to have an intellectual disability. That would be left to the experts. That would be left to the psychologists, the social workers. And there's so much stigma attached with being mentally retarded, being intellectually disabled, that people are reluctant to have their loved ones identified as intellectually disabled. Some of the other factors include whether the person was able to carry out plans. And again, that's based on a stereotype of people with disability that they simply cannot do anything and these lay stereotypes that people with intellectual disability have to be institutionalized, can't read, can't write. And the fact is that people with intellectual disability can do many, many things but if they have deficits in certain areas and they have low intellectual functioning, they meet the criteria for intellectual disability.

KC: So why do you think Texas wants to be able to use this Lennie standard rather than a more scientific test?

ANNA ARCENEAUX: Well, Atkins really left it to the states to come up with their own procedures and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, to be fair to it, did say you know this is really the business of the legislature and they've called on the legislature repeatedly since the Briseño decision for over a decade now to come up with standards as they have in other settings—in the education system and determinations of who is eligible for disability benefits, those sorts of things. But the legislature has failed to act. And so I think that it was in an effort to guide courts in considering these claims. But I will note that no other court in the country, no other state with the death penalty has come up with anything like these factors in determining who meets the criteria for an exemption under Atkins, nor does Texas use these factors in any other setting.

KC: And what would happen if the court ruled in its favour?

ANNA ARCENEAUX: Well, I think that the first step would be if Mr. Moore was successful in the Supreme Court and I would say that from a reading of the argument on Tuesday that it does look good, although you never know. But the US Supreme Court would send it back to Texas and then there could be a number of different ways that that could play out for Mr. Moore. But the decision from the US Supreme Court could say something like it's improper for the Texas courts to continue using these unscientific, non-clinical standards to determine who meets the exemption for intellectual disability. And then Mr. Moore would get another chance presumably to prove that he's ineligible for the death penalty.

KC: What is the sort of overarching objective here? Not to let someone pretend to have this disability? Is that what's motivating this?

ANNA ARCENEAUX: Well, I think Texas—in the Briseño decision, Judge Cochran who you were mentioning earlier, really said that this is going to be criteria for how Texas citizens view intellectual disability. What would a Texas citizen think as someone with intellectual disability? And that's really the wrong inquiry. The United States Supreme Court said anyone who meets the criteria for intellectual disability should be exempt from the death penalty. And so I think that the effect of that has been to exclude people who have long met the criteria, who've been classified as intellectually disabled by school systems, by juvenile detention centres as intellectually disabled who have not been able to succeed under this Briseño standard.

KC: So when do you expect a ruling?

ANNA ARCENEAUX: Well, I think it's likely that there will be a decision in the next few months. We, as you likely know, have a vacancy on the court right now so the typical timing is a little off. But I think it's likely we'll have a decision in the next few months.

KC: Okay, Anna. Thank you very much for joining me.

ANNA ARCENEAUX: It was my pleasure.

KC: Bye-bye. Anna Arceneaux is a senior staff attorney with the Capital Punishment Project with the American Civil Liberties Union. She was in Durham, North Carolina. We requested an interview with the Office of the Texas Attorney General but no one was available to speak with us this morning. In a statement it wrote, “Texas’ standard for intellectual disability is constitutional and fits well within the national consensus among states about how to define intellectual disability.” Patrick Turley has been following this issue closely. He's a victims’ advocate and a retired lieutenant from the sheriff's office in El Paso County, Texas. As a sheriff's deputy, he investigated many homicides, including capital murders. He joins me from El Paso, Texas. Hello.

PATRICK TURLEY: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

KC: Thank you for being here. What do you think of the Bobby Moore case? Should he get the death penalty?

PATRICK TURLEY: Texas is a huge state and from my understanding this was a case involving a robbery gone bad, if you want to call it that. Apparently Mr. Moore is accused of—convicted of shooting an elderly gentleman who was a store clerk. And it meets the definition in Texas for capital murder as it was a murder commission that occurred in the commission of a felony—the robbery. So I understand he's been on death row for many years.

KC: If he was found intellectually disabled by some agreed upon measure, do you think the death penalty should still apply?

PATRICK TURLEY: Well, my thinking is under Texas law, the burden of proof is intentionally and knowingly that we have what's called the elements of the offence. And one of them is that the commission had to be intentionally and knowingly. And for a law enforcement officer, we are not the ones making that determination why there is an intellectual disability. That would be the court's doing whatever standard they have and that is the standard that was just explained. I think they use the Lennie standard as more of a layman's term that probably—if it's committed by someone who didn't understand the consequences of their actions, which would probably come through a capacity evaluation that the court may not convict and may be exempt from the death penalty in Texas. That's my understanding of the law. Again, I think you know it was oversimplified by calling it the Lennie standard from Of Mice and Men but nonetheless, I think that that's somewhat of an understanding that we have in law enforcement. You know if we do have somebody with that intellectual disability, we would still make the arrest and it would be up to the courts and the court system to determine the capacity to have committed the offence as a capital murder.

KC: Now you work with victims of crime. How did they typically feel about the death penalty when it might involve somebody with intellectual disabilities?

PATRICK TURLEY: One particular case in El Paso that comes to mind is David Wood. He was convicted back in the eighties for having committed six murders of young women and buried their bodies in the desert here near El Paso. And one of the family members, Marcia Wheatley—her daughter was 15 at the time, Desiree—has been following the cases as the dates that was set for the death penalty came closer. But I see her anguish and I understand her pain whenever the case has been not continued for whatever grounds. And then when the Supreme Court made the decision about intellectual disability, suddenly Mr. Wood and his defence team suddenly said he had that intellectual disability and should be taken off death row. And I understand that case is still pending here in Texas also. But that was never brought up. And you know as a sheriff's deputy, we work in the jails also. And I knew Mr. Wood in the jail and he was known as a con man there and I've seen him play chess with other inmates and interact. I would not see him as having an intellectual disability but nonetheless, he's hanging on that to get off death row. So that's my—from an advocate standpoint—that's my concern, that we would see more people claiming that they do have an intellectual disability although they were not diagnosed.

KC: So when you were considering the intellectual ability of a suspect, for example, what do you look for?

PATRICK TURLEY: Well, again we don't evaluate the intellectual capacity. We see if the elements of the offence are there and the elements of the offence again, in Texas if you commit a murder of a police officer or a public servant or a child six years and under or during the commission of a felony like a burglary or a robbery, that meets the definition for capital murder. But again, the charging instrument would be our district attorney's office. They would determine what to charge. You know we obtain a warrant, an arrest warrant. We’d be obtaining an arrest warrant based on the Texas penal code which defines what the elements of the offence are for. So we don't evaluate intellectual disability at all as an arresting officer.

KC: Right. I understand what you’re saying. That's up to the court to make that designation. So talking about the courts then, the clinical researchers say the method Texas is using is unscientific, using as we’ve talked about, this Lennie character. What role do you think science and scientific research should play in determining intellectual disability?

PATRICK TURLEY: Well, again, the court—both the defence and the prosecution—normally hire someone who is a psychiatrist to do evaluations and determine incapacity. That's beyond my area of expertise. But that decision is generally made for presentation to the courts and to the jury at the time, not only of one presenting the defence but also at the time if they're convicted for sentencing purposes.

KC: Okay, Patrick. Well, thank you very much for talking with us today.

PATRICK TURLEY: Alright.

KC: Bye-bye.

PATRICK TURLEY: Thank you again. Bye.

KC: Patrick Turley is a victims’ advocate and a retired lieutenant from the sheriff's office in El Paso County, Texas. He was in El Paso, Texas. My next guest has developed a test he says Texas should be using instead of the existing factors. Marc Tassé is a professor of psychology at Ohio State University. He's in Columbus, Ohio. Hello.

MARC TASSÉ: Hello. Good morning.

KC: Good morning. You’ve been listening to Mr. Turley. What do you think of the issues he raised about intellectual disabilities and murder cases?

MARC TASSÉ: Well, I think Mr. Turley sort of typifies a lot of the stereotypes and misconceptions that laypeople have about people with intellectual disability. We have to remember that most individuals with intellectual disability will have strengths and areas of ability and despite having significant deficits in intellectual adaptive functioning, they may have areas of abilities—things they can do. They can read, they can write, they can do simple math. They can drive cars, get driver's licence. So these strengths may at times confound a layperson or even an inexperienced professional who has limited experience with individuals with intellectual disability, that these strengths somehow negate the diagnosis of intellectual disability. So a diagnosis of intellectual disability is made through a robust individualized assessment of the individual's intellectual functioning and their adaptive behaviour. And generally if there are significant deficits in both of these areas and these deficits originated have shown to have been present during the developmental period, then the person meets the criteria for the diagnosis of intellectual disability.

KC: Are there any telltale signs that a layperson could use to make an accurate judgment?

MARC TASSÉ: No, not really. No. The condition of intellectual disability is a very broad and complex condition and people have a very wide range of ability. There are some people with intellectual disability who are unable to speak, unable to care for themselves. But the vast majority of people with intellectual disability look and talk like most people—don't have a limp, don't talk with a lisp. They're essentially invisible. The only way we can really ascertain if they have an intellectual disability is by doing this rigorous assessment.

KC: Now the Supreme Court has already ruled that in testing for an intellectual disability, states should consider a person's IQ, their age at the onset of impairment and their adaptive behaviours you've talked about. This is where the Briseño factors come into play. Texas argues that it's already meeting those three thresholds. What do you think?

MARC TASSÉ: So yeah. So Texas uses those three criteria and those criteria are based upon both national treatises here in the US: the American Association on intellectual and developmental disabilities and the diagnostic and statistical manual. However, Texas added or replaced the assessment of adaptive behaviour by these Briseño factors or Lennie factors as you referred to them, which are much more inspired and tainted by these lay misconceptions and stereotypes than a more rigorous assessment of adaptive behaviour. You know for example, they use the Briseño factors to equate to adaptive behaviour, but many of them are actually more driven by cognitive abilities such as does the crime require forethought or planning? That has more to do with intelligence or cognitive ability than adaptive behaviour. Another one is does the person respond coherently, rationally and on point—oral or written questions? Does the person wander from subject? Again, that has less to do with adaptive behaviour than cognitive ability. But these Briseño factors were used or are used to replace the more robust adaptive behaviour assessment. And again, I'm not even sure Lennie himself, were he a real person, would meet these Briseno factors.

KC: Now most would find this unusual that a fictional character were being used by a court to establish whether someone's intellectual capacity. Is there any merit to this measure at all?

MARC TASSÉ: No because intellectual disability is a clinical definition. It's a clinical condition. And although the Supreme Court did in fact leave it up to the states to define intellectual disability for the purposes of exemption under Atkins v. Virginia, they did point to the two national treatises: the AIDD definition and the DSM definition to guide their determination. And the intention is that wherever you are in the United States, if you have an intellectual disability you should be assessed appropriately and it shouldn't depend on what state you're in whether or not you're found to have an intellectual disability. And in fact, that's what these Briseno factors do.

KC: Now you've developed a test. Tell us a bit about your test.

MARC TASSÉ: So we have a test called the diagnostic adaptive behaviour scale, which is a test that will be published by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities which focuses specifically on this decision point that clinicians must make around does the person have significant deficits and adaptive behaviour in these three broad areas that we generally look at, which are conceptual skills, practical skills and social skills. And ultimately, the determination is made by clinical judgment but based on assessments and a vast variety of clinical information that the clinician collects and then presents to the court or the trier of fact in the cases of death penalty. So our test was developed really for use by all clinicians and when we talk about death penalty, that's a very small fraction. But our test is meant to diagnose.

KC: I just want to ask you specifically about your test. You talked to family and friends rather than the person themselves. Why is that?

MARC TASSÉ: So, many tests of adaptive behaviour, including ours, relies on third-party respondents for collecting information about the person's adaptive behaviour. So what has he or she learned and typically do in everyday situation when required? And how does that compare to what we expect of an individual of his or her age? And that's how adaptive behaviour is assessed. We put less weight and we recommend people to put less weight on a self-report because individuals with low IQ—individuals with intellectual disability—we know have a tendency of overestimating their skill, their ability and underestimating their areas of deficit and generally that's quite common. And you know it's not limited only to people within intellectual disability.

KC: Okay, Marc Tassé. Thank you very much for talking to us today about this.

MARC TASSÉ: Thank you.

KC: Bye-bye. Mark Tassé is a professor of psychology at Ohio State University. He was in Columbus, Ohio. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. A new Canadian film premiering at the Whistler Film Festival this weekend tells the story of a hedonistic soccer mom, who halfway through her kids soccer game decides she's had enough of her life and escapes to a sleepy Spanish island. Tom Power will talk to filmmaker John Barnard about the real-life parallels in his life. Remember you can always take The Current with you on the CBC Radio app that lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in just a few seconds. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Earlier we talked about the protests in South Korea. The last time South Korea saw demonstrations this size was in the 1980s in a nationwide democracy movement. We're giving our last word this morning to a banned South Korean folk song that became the anthem for South Korean youth protesting against the ruling government back then. This is “Morning Dew.” I'm Kelly Crowe sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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December 1, 2016 full episode transcript

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