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The Current Transcript for February 19, 2018

Host: Catherine Cullen

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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VOICE 1: I just spent the last two hours putting the burial arrangements [together] for my daughter's funeral, who is 14. President Trump, please do something.

CATHERINE CULLEN: The anguished cry from a mother who lost her young daughter in last week's high school massacre in Florida. As the number of school shootings increase, some are wondering if showing the graphic images of the dead might be the way to shock politicians into finally working to stop the carnage. That's first up. And then...

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VOICE 1: Our memory is our identity because we are what our memory tells us we are. We are what we remember about our past.

CC: We look at how you can jog your memory by exercising your mind. Also today…

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VOICE 1: There are so many like needles and tubes attached to my body, and weirdly I really felt like the presence of God.

CC: Kate Bowler used to believe that God had a plan for her life. Then she was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. Kate Bowler tells us how it changed her understanding of her faith and what life is all about. That's in an hour. But we begin with revealing the true face of horror at mass shootings. I'm Catherine Cullen sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you are listening to The Current.

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'We don't see the reality of what bullets do to bodies': Should images of school shootings be public?

Guests: Veronique Pozner, Nicole Dahmen, Kathy Shorr

CC: Just a warning as we start. We are talking about school shootings this morning and the impact of graphic images in the aftermath of the killings. The content may be disturbing to some listeners.

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VOICE 1: This is not acceptable. This is something that is completely unacceptable and that we need to take action on. We can say all these great things. Condolences and saying we're so sorry for your loss is obviously important. But what we need is not to say that anymore because there shouldn't be any more children that die. We need to take action.

CC: That's David Hogg, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He was at the school last Wednesday when a gunman opened fire killing 17 students and staff. He's not the only person calling for action. Students, teachers, politicians adding their voices to the call for change. But what would it take for change to actually happen? The Florida school shooting is the 18th school shooting in the U.S. this year. Some argue that it's time to start showing more graphic images from shootings like this to show people what it's really like for someone affected by this kind of gun violence. Kamala Harris is a California Democratic Senator. Here is her plea after last week's attack.

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VOICE 1: As a prosecutor, for years, I had to look at autopsy photographs. When you see the effect of this extreme violence on a human body, and especially the body of a child, maybe it will shock some people into understanding our babies are being slaughtered.

CC: Senator Harris isn't the first person to call for more graphic images to be shown. Following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, former Attorney General Eric Holder said the power of these images could have forced changes in the law.

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VOICE 1: If the American people had access to those pictures and seen what happened to those little angels, the calls for reasonable gun safety measures would have been passed.

CC: Veronique Pozner knows firsthand about the power of images and gun violence. Her six-year-old son, Noah, was one of the 20 child victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. We've reached Veronique Pozner at home. And once again a reminder, that this conversation may be disturbing to some listeners. Veronique Pozner, hello.

VERONIQUE POZNER: Hi, how are you?

CC: Good. Thank you very, very much for your time today. My most profound condolences for your loss. I wonder as you're hearing the news coming out of Parkland over the past week, what has that been like for you?

VERONIQUE POZNER: Well it's been extremely difficult, excruciating even, because it re-triggers all of the feelings, the emotions, and the distress of that time. So it's been very difficult to process.

CC: Your family has pushed for change in the wake of the shooting in Newtown and we're talking today about catalysts for change. When your son died, you actually took the governor of Connecticut to see his open casket. Why did you do that?

VERONIQUE POZNER: Because I felt that it was a way for him to process the enormity of what had happened and be able to see firsthand that the permanence and the horror of it. So I felt that in his position as a lawmaker that he would be able to somehow impact change.

CC: We're more than five years now from the shooting and I wonder do you think that moment had the effect that you hoped it would on the governor?

VERONIQUE POZNER: I know there have been some significant changes in the law in the state of Connecticut. Making it more difficult to procure these military style, military grade weapons. I think what we're looking for, what we would hope for, are changes on the federal level as well because it's just not good enough to go state by state. As the events of last week have shown this can happen just about anywhere and there's no predictability as to when the next soft target might be: a school, a movie theatre, or a church. We've seen this firsthand. A shopping mall could be next. It could be just about anywhere. So it's not good enough to have measures that are tightened by state. It really needs to be on the federal level.

CC: So to put more pressure on federal officials, public officials generally, what do you think of the idea of more graphic images being released in these kinds of school shootings? How would you feel about that?

VERONIQUE POZNER: That's a very, very difficult subject to tackle. I think there might be some benefit to releasing them to perhaps a small circle of lawmakers. I don't know that there would be any benefit for them to be released for public consumption. I think it may appeal to some of the more ghoulish elements in our society. You know with access to the internet, I mean pictures and images of violence are just not difficult to come by. And we have such a short attention span as a nation. The news cycle moves so quickly and people move on so quickly that it might be sort of like the effects when there's a fatality on the highway and everybody slows down to see what's going on. And after they've seen, they move along. They don't preoccupy themselves with, 'oh how we're going better the seat belt laws or the cause of the accident'. It's more of a momentary appeal to the darker sides of our nature to consume some of that. And I think human nature also, it's that sense of, well it didn't happen to me. So there is always “we know” or “someone I love.” And I think that's really part of the difficulty here is that once mass shootings become so commonplace that everyone just like with opioid crisis or with cancer has somebody they know or have been personally affected by it, that's when you're going to start to see change. Because when you have a large portion of the public that says, 'well it happened. But it never happened to me. It hasn't touched me personally'. The emotional investment is not there.

CC: Unfortunately it's widespread in the United States, certainly from our perspective here in Canada. We talked about 18 school shootings this year. So I guess the question becomes how widespread does it have to be to get action?

VERONIQUE POZNER: And we don't have the answer to that. There's going to be a tipping point I'm sure of it. But when 20 babies and six educators are slaughtered in a school — these children were six and seven-years-old - that didn't do a whole lot at least on the national level to change. As a matter of fact there was an uptick in gun sales after the event because people were panicking that something was going to happen and they were not going to have the same freedom of access. Again people are not willing to look at shades of grey. You're talking about guns and they become very monolithic. They put everything in one basket. But in fact we're talking about these military grade assault weapons that inflict maximum damage in the shortest amount of time and the maximum loss of life. Those have absolutely no place in any enlightened society except in the hands of a very select few who are trained to use it.

CC: OK. Veronique Pozner, thank you very much for your time today.

VERONIQUE POZNER: Thank you.

CC: Veronique Pozner lost her six-year-old son Noah in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012. The dilemma of publishing the graphic consequences of violence on the human body is something media has long struggled with. Nicole Dahmen studies the ethics of photojournalism. She's just published research looking at the kind of imagery that newspapers publish in the aftermath of school shootings. She's an Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. We reached her in Eugene, Oregon. Hello.

NICOLE DAHMEN: Hello. Thank you for having me today.

CC: Thank you for being on the show. I want you to tell us about your research. But I know Sandy Hook was one of the three schools that you actually looked at when you did this research. So I wonder if you have any thoughts about what we just heard from Veronique Pozner?

NICOLE DAHMEN: Yes, absolutely. And let me just begin by saying that I'm a mother too. I have two children in elementary school. I'm a teacher. I work with hundreds of college students every term and that's why I do this work. I absolutely refuse to accept our children being gunned down in their classrooms as our new normal here in the United States. And Veronique Pozner's voice matters in this conversation and I absolutely agree with much of what she said.

CC: Let's about what your research found. You looked into three school shootings as I said including Sandy Hook in the United States and the images that the newspapers used. What did you find out?

NICOLE DAHMEN: So I looked at 5,000 photographs from three school shootings, one of which was Sandy Hook. And we are not seeing graphic images of school shootings. Absolutely, school shootings and mass shootings are sanitized in this country. Of these 5,000 photos only five percent could be characterized as graphic in nature. Those were visibly injured victims at the scene and those were always outside of the scenes, so being loaded into ambulances. We are not seeing that carnage and the reality of what bullets do to bodies.

CC: And what if we were to see that do you have any sense of how that might affect the public?

NICOLE DAHMEN: And again that is a really thoughtful question and it's one we absolutely need to talk about. And it is one that we've talked about in journalism for a long time, right? To what extent should graphic images be present and how can they effect change? So it is that emotional connection with news that leads to changes in opinion and action. And images can provide an emotional connection. As we know images can have that visceral impact on audiences. They really can hit us in the gut in a way that words can't necessarily always do. And so because of that we do have this conventional wisdom that maintains that images and especially those that are graphic if we look to like Vietnam or the civil rights movement can sway public opinion and move leaders to action. But here's the key point on that and it's that power that emerges potentially have is limited. So what we tend to see are these short-term limited emotional reactions because images by themselves cannot change the world. A photograph no matter how emotionally shocking and no matter how horrific can only do so much.

CC: I was wondering about the potential impact on families if we were indeed to start publishing these more graphic images?

NICOLE DAHMEN: Yes, I mean these images could be a catalyst for action. But we absolutely have to think about what would be the value particularly in releasing those images from inside of Sandy Hook. I mean those images may be the most horrific and most powerful photos ever taken. You know there would be no unseeing them once we see them. And as Ms. Pozner said there is a lack of think about here. The first concern really is for those families, right? Continuing to invade their privacy and adding to their already unthinkable grief. I also think too, she said about audiences, right? I mean we are so just overrun today with horrible images, with all these difficult news. My concern is that those images will not be given the respect and attention they deserve by the American public, right? We might feel that horror for a second and then we get caught up in whatever else we had going on.

CC: I want to bring someone else into this conversation. Kathy Shorr is a freelance photographer and her latest book is called Shot. It features portraits of 101 survivors of American gun violence. Many of the photographs graphically depict the permanent aftermath of gunshots, disfigured faces, missing limbs and scars. We've reached her in New York. Hello.

KATHY SHORR: Good morning.

CC: Good morning to you. Why did you want to make public these images of people who had survived gun violence? What was the point of showing things that are somewhat graphic?

KATHY SHORR: The first thing is that I felt that the people who had survived were just statistics and there were no faces attached to this group of people. So I felt that we should see them and with the permission of the survivors I photographed scars and damage that guns did and this is one of the things that makes a difference between what I did and versus someone running through a scene of carnage and just taking images of people laying there helpless. My project was a collaboration between survivors and myself. And they were empowered by what they showed to me to photograph. They wanted people to see what the guns had done to them. So that's the slippery slope. I felt absolutely that people should see what damage guns do to people but only with the permission of the survivors. Most survivors said that they wanted to show their scars. But a few said, "No. I have gone through enough I don't want to put that out there for people to see." So it was a respectful collaboration. But again I felt it was needed for people to see both the faces and the permanent damage that happened by gun violence.

CC: In the moments after these shootings like we've seen in Parkland and Sandy Hook, it's clear you don't want to revictimize people who have been affected. But do you think that there's more that we could do? Whether it's shock the public or draw them in to try to get them more engaged and particularly political leaders as well?

KATHY SHORR: Well I think that Veronique made a very good point about showing lawmakers and Congress, people like that who are controlling the dialogue of gun violence. Let them have a presentation of these images so that they can see them because they are the ones that are controlling the dialogue. I think you have to be careful about a commodification of violence. We have that in our society now where all of a sudden image after image, whether it's in movies or in video games, that people have been numbed and anaesthetised to violence. So it's just consumed by people. We don't want this to happen. The thing is that now there's so many of these horrific shootings that it's just like another, 'oh another one of these things happened'. People hear it and they kind of turn it off. They hear where it was and say, 'oh OK. Another one'. The names of the locations the and the amount of people that have been killed just kind of go into our history. I think we have to be really careful if we do put out these images for public consumption that they don't just become something that you just look at and go 'oh yeah that's terrible'. And not really to see or to experience what you're looking at. It's just something that's consumed. We have to be really careful about that. But I do think that lawmakers it's perfect for them to see what they are partnering with and what they are controlling for American people.

CC: OK. Nicole Dahmen and I want to bring you back in here. What do you think that journalists can do to get people and particularly lawmakers to engage with these stories a bit more profoundly?

NICOLE DAHMEN: Right. So one of the things that we're seeing right now is just this endless media routine and images become sensationalized on cable news and they've become very trivial in a social media news feed. But what we're seeing right now is really something interesting from Parkland and it's something that we haven't seen before in this really difficult cycle and unfortunate cycle that we're in. And it's these images of resistance, right? We have these high school students standing up and showing us courage, resilience, and resistance. And it may be that these images of their voices of holding elected leaders accountable may end up being far more powerful than any graphic image because as we've said these graphic images are just sort of lost in a sea of trauma.

CC: Kathy Shorr, you took great lengths with your project to try to talk to people who are all victims of gun violence but some of them are gun owners themselves, trying to find a bit of a middle ground in the conversation. I wonder how much optimism do you have for a broader conversation like that in American society?

KATHY SHORR: I have optimism because it's possible. I've done it. The project includes 101 survivors from every race, many ethnicities, ages eight to 80, high and low profile shootings, gun owners, and there's even an NRA member in the project. This is America speaking. We have a binary dialogue now. As was said before there's so many shades of gray to this. Most gun owners want responsible gun laws. The NRA has controlled the dialogue and the politicians who are pocketing money from the NRA are doing this to America. If you talk to any American; I've been all over the country, in the west part of the United States, where people have guns because it's culture. They go hunting and it's part of their culture. They want responsible gun laws. We shouldn't have to be even thinking about taking away people's guns and I don't think most people are.

CC: OK. OK. Thank you very much. Nicole Dahmen is an Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. She was in Eugene, Oregon. Kathy Shorr is a freelance photographer. Her latest book is called Shot and it features portraits of 101 survivors of American gun violence. We have featured some of her pictures on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's also where you can send us an email. Tell us what you think, should the public see more graphic photos after gun violence? You can tweet us as well @thecurrentcbc or find us on Facebook. The CBC News is next. Then, before we forget, science takes on memory loss. From cutting edge implants, to tips you can use today. I'm Catherine Cullen, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

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Give your memory a workout: Scientists explore high-tech and low-key ways to improve recall

Guests: Michael Kahana, Peter Reiner, Jennifer Heisz, Colin MacLeod

CC: Hello, I'm Catherine Cullen, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

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CC: Still to come…

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VOICE 1: All I want are snacks, hugs, maybe like every now and then a little scripture from the Psalms in a non-bossy way

CC: Finding the things that matter when you're young and facing mortality. But first, how brain implants and a little electricity are helping people with memory loss remember.

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CC: Thirty-six million and climbing. That's the number of people worldwide who have Alzheimer disease and dementia. In Canada, 25 thousand new cases are diagnosed each year. Those sobering numbers have researchers around the globe racing to come up with new ways to help the brain fend off memory loss. And there is a growing range of scientific study into improving memory in people old — and young — from simple mental exercises and lifestyle tips to increasingly high tech and machine learning advances. Michael Kahana is one of the brains behind new cutting edge technology that could change the way degenerative brain diseases are treated. He's a neuroscientist in the department of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. And joins us from Philadelphia. Hello.

MICHAEL KAHANA: Good morning Catherine.

CC: Good morning to you. Now your latest research is getting a lot of attention. This concept of a brain implant to boost memory. So what are we talking about when we say a brain implant?

MICHAEL KAHANA: Well what we're envisioning is that people would have a fully implantable device in the brain kind of like a pacemaker for your heart. This would be a smart type of pacemaker for the brain. But what we've tested in our experiments involves patients who are undergoing surgery for another disorder — epilepsy.

CC: Just before we get into your experiment. I just want to get a bit of a better sense of what this brain implant would look like. How big are we talking here?

MICHAEL KAHANA: It could be as small as a wristwatch and it would be potentially implanted either in the cranium or in the chest and would have electrodes penetrating into the brain that would decode signals in the brain and determine when and where and how to stimulate.

CC: And you tested the possibility of something like this by, as you were saying, working with people with epilepsy. So tell me a bit about how you did this experiment?

MICHAEL KAHANA: Exactly. So these are patients who have intractable epilepsy. Their epilepsy is not controlled by medication. It can be quite severe. And there are potential surgical avenues for treatment in which doctors implant 100 to 200 electrodes. These electrodes record brain activity. The purpose of putting in the electorate is to figure out where seizures are coming from. But along the way my team would go to the patient's bedside and have them play memory games and try and do two things. First decode whether or not the memory system is functioning properly, whether or not memories are being stored correctly and retrieved correctly. And then use that decoder to determine exactly how we might be able to stimulate the brain ideally to improve memory function.

CC: So basically when you found that people were having trouble recalling or when you were able to predict that someone might have trouble recalling a piece of information you were able to give them a little electric shock. Is that right?

MICHAEL KAHANA: Very small. Very mild safe electrical impulses that would be delivered immediately when the brain was detected to be in a moment where it would lapse in its ability to encode new information.

CC: Would the patient feel anything?

MICHAEL KAHANA: No, not at all.

CC: And so what did that do? Where did you find in terms of the impact on memory?

MICHAEL KAHANA: It resulted in a 15 percent improvement in memory when the impulses were delivered both at the moments when memory was predicted to fail as well as in an interesting part of the brain, the lateral temporal cortex, which is a region in the brain that is just behind your left ear. And it turned out that in that region we were able to consistently improve memory with this type of smart stimulator.

CC: OK. Now you were using as you said people with epilepsy because they were already having these electrodes attached. But who would you hope would benefit from this kind of technology moving forward?

MICHAEL KAHANA: Well ideally patients with Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairments or other disorders, other neurological disorders that affect memory or traumatic brain injury.

CC: But how far are you from that right now? I know there's a lot of excitement about what you found with this particular experiment. But it was 25 people, right? And I imagine there's a lot more work to do.

MICHAEL KAHANA: A lot. Yes.

CC: So far out are we do you think? [Laughs]

MICHAEL KAHANA: I think the key next step is that in order to safely test this in individuals who have diseases such as Alzheimer's disease we would need to create a very safe implant — a fully implantable device. We would not be doing it in the setting of a neurosurgical procedure where patients are in a hospital bed for weeks. You would actually want to create a system that's fully enclosed within the body. Patients can wear it, go home, do their acts of daily living, and then hopefully demonstrate that their memory has improved. So to do that a tremendous effort needs to be undertaken in terms of building out the technology and doing the clinical tests.

CC: So we're talking years or decades. Is there any sense?

MICHAEL KAHANA: No. I think with the right effort put behind this this could be within a small number of years to go to a clinical trial. And then based on the regulatory process, several more years. If it works, to have it in the hands of physicians.

CC: OK. Now the Department of Defense is funding your research, in part, and I wonder why they are interested in what you're doing?

MICHAEL KAHANA: Yes. So in the United States the Department of Defense project that funded our work was very much concerned with coming up with novel innovative treatments for patients who have traumatic brain injury. And of course as we all know in warfare soldiers often suffer severe brain injuries — traumatic brain injuries — from explosive devices and the hope was to have something in the repertoire of the medical community that could help these patients. And traumatic brain injury affects many aspects of cognition, including memory.

CC: Obviously this is going to provide a lot of hope for some people when they hear about the prospect of improving their memory through these kinds of devices. But other people I think might be a bit reticent about the idea that this essentially an algorithm is figuring out when to shock your brain. Do we want devices in there? What are the risks associated with it? What would you say to the people who are raising concerns?

MICHAEL KAHANA: Well as we discussed before it's a number of years off. And there would need to be very strong evidence from clinical trials that this is very effective. But assuming that were the case I think the only issue is to mitigate the surgical risk which is already very low and is dropping each year. So I don't think the surgical risk is more significant than many other common surgeries that people have all the time for conditions that are not severe or life threatening but do involve some surgical risk.

CC: The fact that this is our brains though that is being affected, any trepidation people might have about that, do you have anything to say?

MICHAEL KAHANA: Yeah. I think if you are really having trouble functioning because of cognitive loss I certainly personally would have no trepidation myself. I would want the device. Losing one's ability to function in terms of cognition is one of the scariest things imaginable. And the idea that you could get a safe, implantable device that could potentially help with that shouldn't really deter us. I mean if you're talking about healthy individuals who might want to better improve their memory then that would be a very different story. And there is a whole wide array of ethical issues that would come up in that situation. But for people who have a significant memory disorder I don't have trepidation.

CC: It is fascinating work. Thank you for taking the time to tell us about it.

MICHAEL KAHANA: Thank you so much, Catherine. Have a good day.

CC: You too. Michael Kahana is a neuroscientist in the department of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was in Philadelphia. While Michael Kahana's work is groundbreaking, it does raise some ethical questions. Peter Reiner is the co-founder of the National Core for NeuroEthics at the University of British Columbia. He's in Vancouver. Hello.

PETER REINER: Good morning, Catherine.

CC: Good morning to you. So how much promise do you think these implants holds? Cognitive implants.

PETER REINER: Well this work is really super interesting. It's kind of a novel approach towards what's called memory enhancement generally. And this is something that scientists have been pursuing really for decades with only marginal success. So at the level of basic science it's really an exciting advance. It's a great study.

CC: With every advance of course comes ethical questions. What do you think the ethical concerns or questions might be around this?

PETER REINER: Well when you think about the ethics of deploying something like this more widely, it turns out that we have the advantage about 15 to 20 years of debate about the overall ethics of cognitive enhancement. And this has been mostly in the pharmaceutical arena with drugs like Ritalin and Adderall and even caffeine arguably the most popular drug on the planet. And that usually plays out something like this. So some people say that it's a great idea for people to enhance themselves whereas others are mortified. It doesn't really matter whether we're talking about people with disease or not. And I've spent quite a bit of time exploring the attitudes of the public towards the issue and they're pretty moderate in their views. The most useful insight we can take away from the debate as a whole is to consider what might already been mentioned which is the balance between the benefit and the risk.

CC: What is the risk though or the concern? Where is the ethical red flag here?

PETER REINER: Well so everything depends on context in the sense. And if we're talking about an invasive procedure like putting electrodes on the surface of the brain, which is really what they've done here, but still within the cranial cavity then you'd want to have a pretty good benefit to justify the risk. And so he's already talked about how debilitating disease such as Alzheimer’s would probably fall into that category. I think some people would be very enthusiastic about having electrodes implanted in their brains if they were facing that consequence. But others may not. And certainly everybody is a little bit squirrelly about the idea of electrodes being put inside your brain.

CC: And squirrelly to what end do you think? Is that just squeamishness adapting to the idea of new technology?

PETER REINER: I think it is just squeamishness. There's something in ethics that's called the “ick” factor.

CC: [Laughs]

PETER REINER: It's kind of funny but we all have it. You know we hear about something and we go, 'that doesn't sound so good'.

CC: So the “ick” factor is the technical term? [Laughs]

PETER REINER: It is. And it's mentioned often in the [unintelligible] is the “ick” factor.

CC: OK. If we look ahead. If we are optimistic. Of course this is just research, I'll go ahead and say, in its infancy. I'm not quite sure if that's the right way to categorize it. But still there's much work left to be done. But if we jump ahead. If we assume that we're in a world where cognitive implants are a real possibility for helping people deal with their memory. Are there concerns around that and how it might provide perhaps some people who have access to the technology an advantage? Or is that less of a concern here in Canada for instance with public healthcare?

PETER REINER: Well certainly the costs are something that would need to be considered. I think whether you have public healthcare or even private healthcare the costs of caring for dementing patients is really exorbitant. And so if early on in the disease you could make a significant difference in the quality of people's lives and their ability to manage their activities of daily living, I think that the actual cost benefit analysis in that case would be pretty straightforward and that it would be worth pursuing. But any time that you have technologies like this people pretty quickly move towards something that was already mentioned here which is enhancing people who don't have cognitive defects and then things get a little bit more complicated.

CC: OK. We're going leave it on that little bit more complicated note. Thank you very much for your time.

PETER REINER: OK, thank you.

CC: Peter Reiner is the co-founder of the National Core for NeuroEthics at the University of British Columbia. He is in Vancouver. We've been focused on the cutting edge technology that is being developed, but there are, say, more practical ways to boost your memory. And Jennifer Heisz has one suggestion. She is a cognitive neuroscientist and assistant professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. And that's where we've reached her. Hello.

JENNIFER HEISZ: Hello.

CC: Now we already know that exercise is good for us. But you and your team have come up with a potential other reason that we might want to exercise which is that exercise could improve our high interference memory. So what does that mean?

JENNIFER HEISZ: Well interference memory is something we use every day. For example if you're trying to find your friend's face in a crowd of other people or we've all been in a parking lot and tried to find our car among the other cars and the ability to find that specific car or that specific face we're looking for relies on high interference memory.

CC: OK. Now tell me a bit more about your experiment. How did you go about researching this connection between exercise and high interference memory?

JENNIFER HEISZ: So we recruited 95 sedentary young adults. So these were students at McMaster University and we enrolled them in a new exercise program for six weeks. So the exercise was hit or high intensity interval training. And what this meant was that they worked out at a high intensity for one minute and then they had one minute recovery and they did that ten times. These people were pretty low fit when they came into the study so a high intensity for them was to get their heart rate up but they didn't need to be working as hard as someone who was like an elite athlete for example. So it was personalized.

CC: OK. And you say they did this for six weeks. What did you learn about how it affected their high interference memory?

JENNIFER HEISZ: What we found is their memory improved by about 10 percent and they actually started noticing improvements in their everyday life when they were studying and taking tests. So for students this was such a positive message and experience for them. Typically they forego exercising to study. But what they were learning in this study was actually that might be counterproductive and instead taking the exercise breaks may actually help them perform better academically.

CC: Were you surprised by those results?

JENNIFER HEISZ: I was surprised by how large the change was. A 10 percent improvement in the memory of young adults is pretty impressive. But it does make sense because of what we know from animal models. So exercise is thought to promote new brain cells in this brain region called the hippocampus which is critical for learning and memory. And so we thought that exercise would improve memory but we didn't realize how much it would.

CC: You mentioned that the group you were looking at. They were students. They were young adults. And I'm sure a lot of people listening are going to wonder can we say anything about those of us who are not young adults and what the impact might be?

JENNIFER HEISZ: Yes, so this is our next step. We've run a study with older adults in the same protocol and the same vigorous high intensity protocol. And our preliminary results are not published yet. But it suggests similar effects for older adults. And we find this to be very exciting because we hope that this exercise program through improving our memory can be a way to prevent dementia.

CC: Does it matter whether we need to start exercising earlier on in life or as we see the onset of these problems? Are you at the point where you can say anything about that?

JENNIFER HEISZ: It suggests that the earlier you start the better. And this keeps the brain healthy as we get older. But it's never too late to start. And we've seen especially in our older adult studies, we take older adults who haven't been exercising. So there'll be 65-years and older and we bring them into the study and they see improvement. So it's never too late to start.

CC: Now you did mention that first study you did. I believe there were 95 participants. That's a relatively small group of people. How much more work do you think needs to be done to say something definitive about this connection between exercise and high interference memory?

JENNIFER HEISZ: Right. It's one study that we've done. But this is represents a collection of studies. So we've run several other studies in the lab to replicate this finding and some other research groups have also replicated that. So we feel very confident in the effects of exercise on memory.

CC: The advice here seems pretty clear, right? Get out there and exercise. Is there anything more specific that you would recommend to people who are particularly interested in what you're looking at?

JENNIFER HEISZ: What I might recommend is getting out, getting active, and trying to push yourself a little bit. Just even speeding up your walking pace, or taking the hills, or taking the stairs. These additional boosts of high intensity work may be what is needed to improve your memory.

CC: Very interesting. Thank you very much.

JENNIFER HEISZ: Thank you very much.

CC: Jennifer Heisz is a cognitive neuroscientist and assistant professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. And now, one last non-surgical tip for all of us needing a little memory boost. And this is a method that you may want to think twice about using when you are on that first date. Colin MacLeod is a Psychology professor at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario. Hello.

COLIN MACLEOD: Hello.

CC: So what is your tip, Colin MacLeod?

COLIN MACLEOD: So we've been studying a phenomenon that we call the production effect. And put very simply, saying things out loud improves your memory.

CC: OK. So how does this work? Give me an example of how I might use this?

COLIN MACLEOD: So in a recent study we had people read some words silently and other words aloud and then we tested their memory and they remembered the words they read aloud significantly better — about 10 to 15 percent better.

CC: OK. And so does this mean that we should just start talking to ourselves all the time if we want to remember things? [Laughs]

COLIN MACLEOD: That's exactly what I meant. [Laughs]

CC: [Laughs]

COLIN MACLEOD: No, it's not that simple. But for example if you were studying I think it suggests reading the important stuff out loud.

CC: Because there's a danger as I understand it if we were to just read everything out loud, the effect doesn't work, right? Can you talk me through that?

COLIN MACLEOD: Right. So if you're going to read everything out loud you essentially have no distinctiveness. What we think is important about reading out loud is it makes things distinctive. So of course if you read everything out loud, nothing is distinctive.

CC: OK. You talk about students and studying. But I wonder is this a tip that you use yourself? How does it move beyond those who might be out there cramming? How can the rest of us use it?

COLIN MACLEOD: Well I do. And you can even use it in kind of short-term settings. So for example the old story of getting up at the dining room table to go to the kitchen to get something and you get there and you don't know why you're there. If you had just stood up and said "I'm getting the serving spoon," you will be much more likely to remember why you went for it. So a very simple way of doing that. But studying is certainly an example. I think it's kind of an active. Production is an active act. So in a way it relates to your previous interview about physical activity.

CC: In social settings, is it useful as well? I will confess here on air that I'm not always great with names. Just repeat the name over and over is that the idea?

COLIN MACLEOD: Certainly. Certainly that's a good idea. And obviously do that sub-vocally. You can do it in your head. And in fact we know that imagining saying something out loud actually helps.

CC: Really?

COLIN MACLEOD: Not quite as actually saying it out loud. But it does help.

CC: Oh, that's really interesting. We've been talking this half hour about the range of work that goes into memory. And I just wonder broadly what do you get excited about in this field when you hear about potential advances, understanding it better, and maybe improving memory?

COLIN MACLEOD: Well I'm a major memory fan. I think I get excited about all of it. I mean listening to Michael Khana, he was a student at the University of Toronto — I knew him then — fascinating work. And I think the physical work we've learned over the years that we used to say, 'do crossword puzzles, play games’. That sort of thing. It's important. But we now know it may maybe even more important to be physically active. So I find all that work exciting. And I think it comes together. And you know these 10 to 15 percent improvements those are big improvements.

CC: I mean you and I are talking about this in every day setting, social setting, studying. But for people who are afflicted with dementia and Alzheimer's, is this work equally relevant?

COLIN MACLEOD: I don't know the answer to that question. We haven't tested people under those conditions. We have tested older people who are not afflicted with those conditions. And they benefit as do younger people.

CC: OK. Thank you very much for your time today, Colin McLeod

COLIN MACLEOD: You're most welcome.

CC: Colin MacLeod is a Psychology professor at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. And now over to you, what's your best trick for remembering, well just about anything. Tweet us at @TheCurrentCBC or find us on Facebook, or email from our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up in our next half hour, what an incurable cancer taught a woman of faith about God, love and family. I'm Catherine Cullen sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

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'Does cancer not care I have plans?': Terminal diagnosis forces author to grab hold of life

Guest: Kate Bowler

CC: I'm Catherine Cullen, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current. Coming up, how cancer challenged a religious scholar's faith in her beliefs. But first, it's week two of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. There's lots of excitement. We're seeing Canadians on the podium, and records shattered, and as always, some controversy. Last week we looked at the four new Olympic events in these Games and heard about sports pushing to be included in future Olympics. The one that sparked the most lively debate was the suggestion that e-sports be added to the Olympics. Yes, I'm talking about competitive video games. That's something the International Olympic Committee is considering for Paris 2024. Here's Michael Heine, Director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western University, telling us why the IOC would add e-sports to the games.

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VOICE 1: It wouldn't surprise me at all because the IOC is very aware of the fact that global audiences for e-sport ballooning they are probably at around, what? 400 million viewers this year. It's hugely popular in particular among young people and the IOC as a media presence on the international stage has very significant aging problems as it were.

CC: Well the IOC may be interested, but the idea of Olympic e-Sports did not get a lot of love in the Twittersphere. Broose Tulloch writes: So now you want to celebrate sedentary lifestyles? There is not a single athletic component to video games, so there shouldn't even be a discussion. Just entertaining the idea is an insult to our Olympians. Martin Wiltsey writes: The games should be restored to basic athletics, summer and winter. Any sport that is judged subjectively should be eliminated. The Olympic Games have become too all-encompassing and cumbersome. And from Daniel AJ Sokolov: Maybe start with #Squash before we add computer gaming to the Olympic Games. There were some e-sports defenders out there though: Philip Moscovitch writes: I know a couple of young people in e-sports — a player and a coach — and can easily see this as a legitimate event. And we got plenty of suggestions for non-traditional additions to the Olympics. Y2skot writes: Seriously? How about laser tag? At least one's not sitting in a chair. Schreiber tweets: No to video gaming at the Olympics. Yes to checkers, Parcheesi, and Clue. Sidon Cohen writes: Not all the "games" should be in Olympics! How about Lego or Bingo! And finally this also from Broose Tulloch: 1, 2, 3, 4. I declare a thumb war! #thumbwrestling #2020olympicse event. Let us know what you think. We're on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC. You can find us on Facebook or send us an email from our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. If you missed the discussion about Olympic events on Friday, you can listen on our website, or on the CBC Radio App, which, if you don't have it, is free from the App store or Google Play. I'm Catherine Cullen, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current. Kate Bowler was just 35-years-old when she got the news that would change her life. She had a loving husband. A young son. A successful career as a professor at Duke Divinity School. A life full of promise and enriched by the Mennonite faith she learned growing up in Manitoba. Then came the diagnosis. The pain in her belly was not her gallbladder. It was Stage 4 colon cancer. There was no cure. Since then Kate Bowler has been on a journey that is not only about facing illness but confronting in a new way the spiritual questions that have driven her life's work. Kate Bowler has written about all that in a new memoir called, Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved. She joins us from Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi Kate.

KATE BOWLER: Hey there.

CC: I want to start by just asking you how you're doing right now? How are you?

KATE BOWLER: Thanks. I'm OK. I mean I'm moving from the acute intense crisis management of cancer to the kind of chronic in which the hope is that treatments will continue to be successful. But I still have to live scan to scan. So I've got another one next week. It's really scary and it keeps sort of the present a real question mark in my mind. Like how do you live right now when everything stays a little bit terrifying?

CC: It's been more than two years since you got that diagnosis is that right?

KATE BOWLER: Yeah, that's right.

CC: Can I ask you for a minute because it changed so much for you. Can you take me back there for a minute? Do you remember what was going through your mind as you learned this news that you were suddenly so sick?

KATE BOWLER: I'm sitting maybe I don't know not that far away from where I got the phone call. And so I feel like I live on the stage where there was Act One and Act Two.

CC: Wow.

KATE BOWLER: So I'm perpetually reminded of this like weird way that my life was before and after. I was in that, I don't know if everyone in their 30s is like this, but the sort of hungry, ambition, just trying to set up your life phase where you feel busy and just a little stressed out all the time. And so I was working hard and I was in my office just trying to get through some new research and I got a phone call from this woman. It sounded like she had like a lot of phone calls to get through [laughs]. And she just told me flatly that the test came back and that I had Stage 4 cancer and that I needed to come in. I understood that she was talking but I couldn't make the words make any sense. Like there's no cancer in my family. I mean all I said was "But I have a son." And I don't know if everyone has that. But it gets right down to the studs. Like what is it that makes that thought impossible? And for me it's like not just 'oh I'm so special. It couldn't possibly just be me'. But I have so much that I love. And that's what made this whole thing feel impossible.

CC: And you've noted that you felt it was a bit ironic. You had just put out this book that you were so proud of. It's called Blessed, right?

KATE BOWLER: [Laughs] yeah.

CC: You live this life that was ensconced by all these questions around faith and you were particularly interested in this question of the prosperity gospel and I wonder if you can just explain to people what that is?

KATE BOWLER: Sure. So I am a scholar of the prosperity gospel which is the belief that God will grant health and wealth and happiness to any person with the right kind of faith. And that faith is like positive words spoken aloud. And I had realized as I don't know maybe like a 23-year-old that no one had written a history of it. And as I am nerdy by nature and both my parents work at the University of Manitoba, I was like 'oh someone is going to figure this out and it will be me’.

CC: [Laughs]

KATE BOWLER: So I got devoted. There's like a fine line between stalking and researching. And so that's what I did feel like a whole decade is I tried to understand why millions of North Americans believe that God has granted them more. And it wasn't just like hope for a Mercedes though some people wanted that. But they believe that God offered them certainty, a way to guarantee that everything would work out. And so I thought I'd done a pretty good job at being the empathetic explainer of the history of this movement. But the second I got sick that was one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind after like “Where is check-in?” in the hospital. I walked outside and I was on this stage of the life I had built - this Duke University moment — and I was like 'oh crap like I just wrote a book called Blessed. And maybe I was a little more invested in thinking everything was going to work out than I thought'.

CC: You weren't an adherent, let's say, prosperity gospel. You were looking at it from something of - you're an academic — an academic standpoint. But you start to realize that maybe you had glommed onto some of these ideas in a way. Talk to me about that.

KATE BOWLER: Oh, that's a perfect word — glommed on exactly. Like when was this [unintelligible] belief secretly getting in there all the time. As a historian I'm in the archives but I was also a participant observer doing an ethnography which meant that I spent years going to healing rallies and travelling around with televangelists and doing interviews and sitting with people in pews and in hospital rooms. And I think I just thought I was trying to explain and understand the nature of their hope. And then once I got sick I did start to wonder if perhaps it's just like the hubris of any human mind is you do always imagine that things are probably going to work out. At least I did. And some of it too I think is just being middle-class like you assume that maybe with some hard work that you can make progress. But the outrage I felt like it was at the randomness I think of cancer. Like cancer does not understand that I have plans? That I have things I love and hopes? Does cancer not care about the fact that like I've really tried to be a good person? That was really hard to wrap my mind around like maybe who I am really doesn't matter in the face of like that much terrible?

CC: People seemed to — they don't want to let go of that idea, right? Though as you're going through this you do have people who are approaching. You write about your husband. Somebody, a woman, who comes to the door and says everything happens for a reason to him. He has a hard time processing that [laughs].

KATE BOWLER: Oh, I love him [laughs]

CC: I mean what do you say to people when even now they say to you, "Well there's a reason for everything. Perhaps this is part of God's plan."

KATE BOWLER: Well I mean it's not that I want to take away anyone else's certainty. Like there's a real beauty in feeling like there's a good explanation. And sometimes I just want to like stand on a mountaintop and look down on my life and say ‘show me the way this adds up. Show me the matrix by which I can see these like invisible causalities at work’. And so part of it is I think it's really tempting to want to say like I can not only understand but explain to you why this is happening to you. But there is a real cruelty to it especially when your life is not just altered but devastated. Tell me a mom who loses their kid who doesn't wish that they could go back. Like there are some things you just can't say that after is better and trying to force those platitudes on those people. It dishonours just the nature of love, right? Like love is so particular. Love loves like the little granular things. In my life, I love one particular kid and one particular man and one particular life, and I might lose it. And that's terrifying.

CC: What has come into that space that used to seek that sort of this idea that you worked hard and good things will continue to happen? What's filled that space since then in terms of your beliefs? You're still a woman of faith?

KATE BOWLER: Maybe that was one of the weirder moments. And it's funny to be talking to you about this because like I wrote this book so I wouldn't have to say stuff out loud. Like I wrote all my secret thoughts and like horrible feelings.

CC: You didn't consider the book tour? [laughs]

KATE BOWLER: I was like 'oh is everyone going to read this? [laughs] I'll admit I didn't fully think this through. I thought I was going to die. So like maybe I just figured like posthumously everyone can take a look. But one of the more I don't like embarrassing things was that when everything was the worst. I was in the hospital. There's a lot of like rough cotton gowns I'm wearing. There are so many needles and tubes attached to my body and weirdly I really felt like the presence of God and I'm a really academic cerebral type. I am very Jesusy. But more in an intellectual way. And the fact that I just felt a sense of presence and intense love. I was like 'one, this can't be normal or a rational thing to think because my life is terrible. Why would I feel almost grateful?' And it's a funny thing. Someone said to me recently that like pain sometimes digs out something in you that joy can fill. And I think I felt that almost immediately like a divine sense of connection with both God and other people. And that was a revelation to me.

CC: Now it's not just everything happens for a reason that you've experienced in terms of people's reaction to what you're going through. Can you perhaps give people a little bit of advice about some of the other things that people have felt compelled to share with you and say to you about your experience that you have thought 'could you just keep that to yourself perhaps?'

KATE BOWLER: Oh sure. That happens all the time [laughs]. Yeah that's a 10 times a day thing. Well because I think partly it's the desire to put my pain in perspective and that's like an intense minimizing. Those are people who usually start any sentence with the words at least. And that's always a little awkward. Only because I do think Stage 4 cancer is pretty bad. There is no Stage 5.

CC: Like at least everyone around you doesn't also have cancer or something like that?

KATE BOWLER: Sure, well like at least you have your husband. At least you had a kid. There's a lot of “at leasts.” At least you're on a good drug. At least you lived near a research hospital. At least you have the intellectual resources to handle it. And like someone said the words “at least” to me as I was pleading for help with a bill collector problem I was having because there had been just a misfiling of my insurance and everything just came apart and I was asking for help to figure that out. And like the first thing somebody said on Facebook was like "Well at least you have the intellectual resources to handle it." You don't get to “at least” my bill collector right now. That is off limits to you.

CC: It shouldn't be surprising I suppose that you're so funny and the book is quite funny. It is sort of striking in the face of the momentous challenges that you're dealing with.

KATE BOWLER: I honestly think humour and absurdity are like best friends, right? They're like right up against each other. So the more surreal my life gets, the more I find myself like laughing or crying in the face of it. And like a lot of it too is you feel like you're living this heightened human drama. I'm in a pre- surgery moment and like there's just so much intensity. And I find myself saying like everything I'm actually thinking — it might be the drugs too [laughs]. You do you think like 'oh I will pull no punches. I will really go for it this time'.

CC: Overall how do you think that this experience has changed your outlook about God and spirituality?

KATE BOWLER: Well I guess maybe the fundamental thing is I feel like I don't have to try quite so hard.

CC: What does that mean?

KATE BOWLER: I don't know maybe faith wasn't about me trying to be better or working to achieve Gods you know “not of approval.” Like there's no earning I think maybe in faith. There is just trying to be attentive to the love of God and open to the pain and joy of other people. And I feel so much more cracked open to everybody else's pain and just terribleness and the overwhelming fragility of everyone's life is so obvious to me now that my life is just so ridiculous. So yeah there's room there for me then to experience God and also just the joy of life church and community because I need a lot of help. So I need everyone to come alongside and like fill in all the gaps.

CC: Beyond your faith, what you were just talking about, where are the other places that you find meaning in your life right now?

KATE BOWLER: I love work. Oh I love work like intellectual hard work. It feels good like partly cause with cancer it threatens to eclipse everything. And I love finding that experience of exertion. I'm not athletic so I imagine maybe athletes feel that about like using their bodies. But it feels like that for me when I get to like rev the mental engines. So like this conversation I love it. I love that I get to try to think harder and more clearly and live a little more bravely than I might have had the courage to do otherwise.

CC: Live bravely.

KATE BOWLER: Yeah. Yeah. Just try it. Like this book. Like why would I write a book about my secret feelings when I'm a historian? You know like historians write very serious you know very detailed books and all of this is like I don't know cancer made me feel like I was just inside out. And I just had to be more honest about who I really am and how much I'm struggling and then hope that leaves me in a place where other people can say, ‘yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Me too’.

CC: What's most important for you? You don't know how much time you have left? But what's most important for you in that time? Are there things you want to do? How do you look at that time?

KATE BOWLER: No. No. Not like that. It's funny. I'm very anti-bucket list. I'm like I'm very strongly anti-bucket list. Well it's checklists. It's just like me going right back to the way I was before where I'm like, ‘what might achieve?’ You know ‘which mountain to climb?’ I don't know. I think there's a real pleasure in achieving things and setting goals. But I mostly try to think about the day. Like what in the course of a regular day is brave and big and also like small and snuggly. So I do a lot more like I wake up in the morning. I've got a little kid. Little kids are absurd. This morning he thought a dinosaur had peeked in the window and seen him [laughs]. I feel like he teaches me a lot about like ‘oh wouldn't that be fun’. I try to slow things down a little more and then find a place where I can like intellectually sprint a little and do something interesting and then just try to realize that my life was already full of beautiful things and just not to take that for granted.

CC: I just want to finish by taking it back to the central idea in your book that this everything happens for a reason. For people who aren't experiencing the incredible challenges that you are right now. What do you want them to know about that idea? Do you think they should just disabuse themselves of it entirely?

KATE BOWLER: No. I mean I think it's so beautiful to look for meaning and sometimes even in patterns in our life. Like we can learn so much about ourselves. But I just want maybe people to take a breath before feeling like that explanation is going to explain away the suffering of others and just know that like their presence in the life of other people like me who are just barely keeping it together, like their presence is enough. Like all I want are snacks, hugs, maybe like every now and then a little scripture from the Psalms in a non-bossy way. And this sense that I am not altered. I am not so unrecognizable in this different life that I can be seen and loved. Like that would be enough.

CC: Kate Bowler, it was lovely to meet you.

KATE BOWLER: Oh my word. Thank you so much.

CC: Kate Bowler is the author of Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved. She is in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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CC: Let me take a moment to let you know what Anna Maria has been up to. She hosted a town hall in Halifax, which you'll hear on Wednesday. It was the first in a series we're bringing you called Facing Race. The Halifax forum focused on the legacy of Black racism in Nova Scotia. Anna Maria talked to people who say they're victims of environmental racism, of being overlooked in the wider discussion about women and girls in this #MeToo era, and of discrimination when neighbourhoods gentrify. Melinda Daye is a former chair of the Halifax Regional School Board. Here's some of what she told Anna Maria about the racial tensions as neighbourhoods gentrify, and why some feel left behind.

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ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Melinda Daye, How long have you lived in the North End?

MELINDA DAYE: I'm a lifelong resident of the North End. Grew up on the streets of Creighton street.

AMT: How have you seen your community change?

MELINDA DAYE: Aw gosh. Creighton Street is another one of those communities. You know when folks came from anywhere across the province and they needed to come to Halifax they ended up on Creighton street. And I grew up in a place called the [unintelligible] and for those of us that know Creighton Street and know the history of the [unintelligible] then we know that sense of each one looking after each one. We were there with and for one another. But now I looked over the community and I wonder you know the way they sometimes wanted to paint our community and paint our picture was that there was there was drugs and there was violence and nobody wanted to come to Creighton's street and nobody wanted to come to Gottingen Street. OK. You didn't want to come there. You didn't want to say that you lived on Creighton Street so you changed the name to what Northwood Terrace. That didn't just happen. So we knew that things were happening in that community. That there was their sense – us and them – their sense that this wasn't a place where I wanted to be associated with. But that's not what we knew. That's not a sense of who we were. And now what I'm saying you ask me: “So what happens?” Now you see this change. This shift. I want to live on Creighton Street. I want to live on [unintelligible] street. I want to live there so much so that I may have to move you out. And there's that feeling of now the homes that were once boarded up for many years. We know from this community [unintelligible]. We live here. Homes that were boarded up for years have now been renovated and remodeled but not for you to live in.

CC: Tune in Wednesday to hear the town hall recorded in Halifax, Facing Race. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. The Big Sick is a romantic comedy about an upstart comic, and what happens when his new girlfriend suddenly falls sick and into a coma. The movie is based on the real-life relationship of its star, comedian Kumail Nanjiani, and his wife Emily Gordon who wrote the screenplay together. Tom Power will talk to the couple about mining humor and humanity from their shared near-tragedy. That's on Q, this morning at 10, 10:30 in Newfoundland. I'm Catherine Cullen sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, Thanks for listening to The Current.

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February 19, 2018 Episode Transcript

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