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The Current Transcript for July 30, 2018

Host: Megan Williams

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's so long to recover from what I've been going through. It's A long, long, long way home.

MW: The long way home for Nathalie Provost began after she was shot nearly 30 years ago. She survived the Montreal Massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique, that killed 14 women. Later today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will lay flowers at a makeshift memorial along Toronto's Danforth Avenue, as 13 victims of last week's shooting begin their long recovery. This morning I'll speak with Ms. Provost and a teacher shot at a school in La Loche, Saskatchewan two years ago, for their insights into the survivor's painful journey forward. Then.

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VOICE: When patients tell you you're incompetent, there's a good chance that they could be wrong, but when they tell you that you're not kind, that hurts because they know kindness. Everybody knows kindness.

MW: Dr. Brian Goldman goes on a global quest to learn about the healing power of kindness. And in our last half hour.

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VOICE: Guys was saying, hey, congrats, congrats and I wonder what's up. Plastic bags have been banned. And I was like wow, this is so good. Now the question was, will it be successful? Will it work?

MW: After lobbying the Kenyan government to ban plastic bags, it became a reality. Now as Canada moves to do away with plastic straws and bags, we go to the front lines of the world's toughest ban on plastic bags. But first, rebuilding lives devastated by guns. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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'We don't know all those stories': Impact of Toronto shooting hard to capture, Montreal Massacre survivor says

Guest: Charlene Klyne, Nathalie Provost

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VOICE: This whole community is grieving. Two families have lost daughters and there are many other survivors who have to deal with this fallout from this senseless and tragic event.

MW: Byron Abalos' cousin Danielle Kane was seriously injured in last week's mass shooting in Toronto. 10-year-old Julianna Kozis and 18-year-old Reese Fallon were killed in the attack. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Toronto Mayor John Tory will be among the mourners at Ms. Fallon's funeral later today. Thirteen people were also injured in the attack. My next guest knows intimately about what it means to survive a shooting and how profound the lasting impact can be. Charlene Klyne was shot in the face and chest in La Loche, Saskatchewan in January of 2016. It was a winter day when a 17-year-old went on a shooting spree at a school in the small northern community. He killed four people and injured seven others. The shooter has been convicted and last May he was sentenced to life in prison. Charlene Klyne and her family have been living in La Loche for almost 16 years. On the day of the shooting, she and her husband were in the school. He was vice principal and she was working as a substitute teacher. Just a warning, some of what you're about to hear is disturbing.

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CHARLENE KLYNE: We were wondering what was going on because I hadn't seen really anybody in the hallway and we had our one student show up and then I had a teacher slam our classroom door shut and I just sort of went what was that all about.

VOICE 1: The RCMP have responded to a shooting at the Dene High School building, which is now under lockdown.

VOICE 2: I'd seen him pull out that gun and I ran back inside. I told everyone to run. He has a gun.

VOICE 3: About six seven shots before I got outside, but I was told that there were still people inside.

CK: We're sitting there talking about why was it so dead in the school. You know like why was nothing happening and all of a sudden I saw movement in front of the classroom door. Recognized the student and I thought, okay well you're not on my student list, you need to go to your classroom and motioned for him to leave. I saw a motion again, turned back and the motion was the gun being fired towards me. And my thought was, oh my God, I'm dead. And like I'm not going to get to say anything to my husband and my boys and this is it. I really hurt. I thought it was blood running in my eyes and I guess it was the pellets that had penetrated my eyes. I was losing my vision. And I sat there for a few seconds and I said, I think I've been shot. I was with Marie Janvier and she got up and came over to me, turned my chair and she started crying and cause I'd known her as a student. She'd been a neighbour for years. And she says, Oh my God. Oh my God. I guess she went to the door and she was going to go for help and when she got to the door, he had come back down the hallway and ran into her. And she's from the community. I guess she had a argument with him and asked him why he was doing this and that he should stop. And then he raised the gun and shot her. Basically point blank and killed her instantly and then the student that was in the room told me what happened cause I heard him crying and whimpering on the floor and I say what's wrong. And he says he came back and he killed her. And I says were is he? And he goes I don't know. And I says is he in here and he says no and so then my next thing was I was still sitting in that chair at the desk and I thought well, if he comes back and sees me still sitting here, he may fire at me again. So I threw myself on the floor and then I got the student, I says, if you feel safe, crawl over here on the floor to me and we'll hide behind the desk. And I had him dialling 9-1-1. Had him call my husband and it took like four hours before they came to get me out of the school.

MW: So you were lying there behind the desk for four hours?

CK: Yeah.

MW: What were those hours like, waiting?

CK: Long, cold, frightening cause you don't know what's going on.

MW: Now Charlene, this took place two and a half years ago now. Have you been back to La Loche, since that day?

CK: Never. No. No. The only one on my family that's gone back is our youngest son. He went and he got a trailer and loaded it up and hauled everything he could back.

MW: And why haven't you been back?

CK: I've heard, like Marie Janvier's mother has told me it's really difficult to go out in the community cause you run into his family members. And plus there's like the care that I need and the doctors. I have 11 doctors that I see on a regular basis. Like I'm waiting for a cornea transplant. So I have two opthalmologists that I see here quite often.

MW: How's your eyesight?

CK: Well I can see light and that's pretty much it and it's, everything is gray. It's not good. And I have pellets in the lining of my heart, in my arms and 13 areas in my neck. That's what happens when you pack your own shotgun shells.

MW: Now you're facing pretty horrendous physical challenges. What about emotionally? Has the impact of this terrible act of violence, has it dissipated over the years?

CK: No I find actually that when I go see my psychologist and her and I talk, she's noticed that it's almost gotten worse. There's lots of times we'll walk into a store and you know how when they're stocking shelves and they're moving stuff around and there's stuff banging, I just look at my husband and I just say like and he goes, you're vibrating. I says yeah, it's time to leave. I can't handle it and just not feeling up to having to deal with people.

MW: Now, you must have been following the mass shooting here in Toronto.

CK: Yes.

MW: A week ago. What's that like for you to have to hear about these shootings again?

CK: It's unnerving to have a guy just walking down the street shooting people for no reason. And I just don't understand why these things happen. It's sad. You know like the two young lives were taken.

MW: And others like you, injured as well.

CK: Yeah. I heard that there was you know three that are in serious condition. And I just like oh my God. You know what they're going through and I know when they do get out of the hospital, they're going to be scared to go anywhere.

MW: Charlene I wanted to ask you, you know these mass shootings are all too common now, as we all know.

CK: Way too common.

MW: What was your reaction to the one in Florida?

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VOICE 1: It began as an ordinary school day and it was almost over when gunfire erupted this afternoon.

VOICE 2: Just as a school day was ending, the shooting started. This cell phone video captured the gunfire and the screams of the high school students trapped inside their classrooms.

[Police radio chatter]

CK: Oh. When I first heard about it, I honestly wanted to go there and be with them. And the first few days after, I don't sleep well and so we go to bed and I'd have the TV on and I'd lay there all night listening and going, oh my God, you know like these poor kids. A lot of people think that, oh you'll get over it and I'd like to say that yes you'll get over it, but I can't see. So I'll never really get over that fact. You know like you're going to hear certain noises are going to trigger off certain feelings and you're going to be scared. You have to learn to be aware that not all the noises are from a gunshot. You know, it's not necessarily because they're yelling because there's a shooter. You have to learn to adjust to that. I'd like to tell people that you will survive. You are a survivor. But just to be there to you know hold a hand and give a hug.

MW: Charlene Klyne was injured in a school shooting in La Loche in 2016. She is now in Saskatoon. Now go back to December 6, 1989. A day of horror this country will never forget, the shooting at the Ecole Polytechnique, where 14 women were killed in what came to be known as the Montreal Massacre. Nathalie Provost survived the attack. She's the spokesperson for PolySeSouvient. In English, Poly remembers. Nathalie Provost is in Montreal and she's been listening to Charlene Klyne. What's going through your mind as you listen to Charlene?

NATHALIE PROVOST: I'm crying now. She's so true. It's so long to recover from what she's been, she's going through and what I've been going through. It's a long, long, long way home.

MW: Did you recognize things that she said in your own story?

NP: Oh yes. Yes. And I believe her when she's saying that it's on an emotional side it may be worse now than it was. The mind, the soul cannot cope with everything at the same time. So we go to the first thing first and physical injuries are the first we are trying to recover from. And then we can take care of ourselves more emotionally and we can take care of our souls. So from in my own story began to be fragile, two year and a year after Polytechnique. I was I felt strong right after. But in 1992 then everything began to collapse inside of me. So it's a long process.

MW: You were shot four times and one of those shots was to your forehead. Can you tell me about your injuries?

NP: The one at my forehead? That's My miracle. Marc Lepine used bullets that you know they were slight cut, at the beginning, at one head of the bullet.

MW: Like the front of the bullet?

NP: Yeah. So when it smashes hard things, so like bones, it opened and blow. So the bullet on my forehead just smashed enough to have a fracture du crane. So my cranium has been a bit broken above my eyebrow, but not enough to completely blow away because I would have died. And I didn't know then, but all the, when they did the scan at the hospital right after and they were all amazed that, oh she has this injury, but not that bad. And that's crazy. It went under my skin, just above, you can see below my eye brow the entry and you can see above my eyebrow, the exit of the bullet. And that's crazy. And I have two other ones that went into my thighs and a fragment in my foot.

MW: Did you at the time, did you believe you'd survive? That you'd get through it?

NP: Survive physically, yes. But I was, I began to cry when I heard your first guest because she told me, oh I will die or I'm dead. And I remember having that thought, that oh that's I will die. That's it. That's, in a second. And I remember in French we say lacher prise. I remember to just let, totally let go the will to live. Being so sure that in the next fraction of a second I will be dead.

MW: And how long did it take you to physically heal from the attack?

NP: I would say three four months to have the feeling that I can walk almost normally. But the feeling to recover is it took me five years. I physically, emotionally with my relations with others too that's from, in my story that was not an easy topic because it's tough. I was working as an engineer and I was shocked because I was studying engineering and I was shocked because I was a female engineer. And so when I began to work as an engineer with many male engineers, I was confused and my relationship were not easy.

MW: Can you tell me about that? What kinds of things came up and what kinds of things triggered these feelings?

NP: It's a bit caricatural, but my feeling was that if I was working with a man who's having problem with women you know there's, we have so many issues and we still know them now. I have the feeling that I have a sixth sense to be aware of that. So I felt they were more picky on me and I was more picky on them. So that was not easy to work together and to do jobs. But after a while I began to be more to use humour with it and to calm down. So everything was more easy, but I was aware. I have a sense of real awareness with those men.

MW: Wow, that's fascinating. Now you mentioned that it was about two and a half years after the shooting that you had something of a breakdown. That the emotional impact of the violence really hit you hard and that's where Charlene's at right now. All these years later, are there still things that trigger you? Are there still things you have to be mindful about careful about so you're not.

NP: Yes. She talked about the noise. That's still true. I remember my fourth kid. So it was almost 12-13 years after Polytechnique and he was a baby and he was playing in a cupboard and sometimes he dropped some pieces of the dishes that was very heavier and those noise were crazy. You know on ceramic it's crazy. It's really noisy. And once, I realized, imagine I was mad at him and I had to explain that mama is not mad at Michael, mama is mad at the noise. But he couldn't understand he was too small, but that was true for me and I just became stressed. You know my heart beat changed. I sweat a bit, but it's instinct.

MW: Yeah I understand. I mean were you, did you get to a point where you were, where your children were able to understand that?

NP: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MW: I guess when they're a bit older.

NP: The older were able to explain to the younger, take care mama will be OK, but I realized that even small quotidiennes activities.

MW: Everyday activities.

NP: Everyday activities. It can happen and you don't know when it will.

MW: Right a sense of not having control over it.

NP: A door, a slamming door, may make, can make me crazy too.

MW: Even today?

NP: Oh yeah, even today.

MW: I'm speaking with Nathalie Provost. The gunshot wounds we're talking about, happened nearly 30 years ago at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. Nathalie is now a spokesperson for PolySeSouvient, a group of Polytechnique students and graduates for gun control. The CBC News is next. Then we'll hear more from Nathalie about her long recovery and her insights for the victims in Toronto. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

MW: Hello. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. Still to come we'll go to the front lines of the war on plastic bags, Kenya, where one year after a ban, they're seeing some unintended consequences. Also, the world needs more kindness. Dr. Brian Goldman went on a global search for empathy and he'll share what he learned about the power of kindness. But first, living with the wounds long after the shooting stops.

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MW: 13 people are recovering from their injuries after last week's shooting in Toronto. Before the news, I was speaking with two women who survived separate mass shootings in Canada. Both were seriously injured in the attacks. These women have been sharing insights about surviving gun violence and what happens to the body and mind, long after the initial wounds appear to have healed. Nearly three decades ago Nathalie Provost was shot four times, when she was an engineering student at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique. 14 of her fellow students were killed. She's been speaking with me from Montreal. Nathalie how do you think you're a different person because of what happened?

NP: It's difficult to determine how different I am because I don't know what I would have been. But I'm, I think I'm more sensitive and for sure it transformed the way my adult life built. It was not that easy to find a job after Polytechnique. The market was tough in 1990, but the employers were not that keen to hire somebody who's been shot and they publicly, everybody knows that I did it at the time. So they weren't really interested by me and then I went through all these difficult years. So you don't progress professionally at the same beat or on the same pace or with the same ambitions. You know, I'm pretty proud of what I did and I don't have any regrets, but I know it's different.

MW: Well you should be proud. And I don't want to sound pollyannish, but did anything good come out of it for you?

NP: Oh yes, a lot. Oh yes. In French I would say that, I will try to translate. There's some flowers that can grow in mud. You know, so I met some extraordinary people even at the hospital. In Montreal, I think a lot of people know the chef Martin Picard. We met, Martin and I met when we were at school at the secondary level. And so he came in my hospital room right after Polytechnique and he told me a recipe he created in the memory of my classmates and me.

MW: Oh wow.

NP: And I don't know if you've ever seen him on TV or I met him once, he's that giant and he was using those poetic words to express his feelings with a recipe. That's an extra ordinary memory. That's one, but there's so many flowers in my life because of Polytechnique.

MW: Wow. Now, not everyone at Polytechnique that day was shot and yet there are a lot of people who consider themselves survivors of the shooting. How do you define survivor?

NP: I think that everyone who needs to name himself survivor is. You know there was a girl in my class that wasn't there when Marc Lepine came in the class. She's a real survivor. She was not there, but she survived Marc Lepine. If she would have been in the class, she might have died. So I think that there's so much more victims. So much more survivors than the number we can count. You know in Toronto, we will never be able to count the number of people that will survive what happened and that we feel that they have survived. They will have met on the street, they will have cross him. We don't know all those stories, but that will be an incredible number of people.

MW: We've just heard from Charlene Klyne that she wanted to go to Washington, D.C. this year for the March of Our Lives rally after the Parkland, Florida shooting where there was this incredible gathering of survivors and supporters of survivors. Now she wasn't able to make it and you did manage to go, why was it important for you to be there?

NP: Oh. It was my way to express my support. My support to them. But being there I realized that I needed it myself. And that was mainly for me, finally that I did it. You know, when we gather people concerned by gun control in Canada, we are a bunch of people. Are we a hundred? Are we 200 people in Canada really involved in gun control. And then I was with if you count everywhere in the States, everywhere in Canada, everywhere who are millions of people involved in gun control, believing it's important to get involved for a better security for us and for our kids and for our little kids. So it gave me hope. It gave me courage. It gave me strength to stand up again and try to fight right now.

MW: Now before the Ecole Polytechnique shooting, Canada didn't grapple with the experience of mass shootings and I'm wondering what you think the lessons are that we've learned since or perhaps lessons we haven't learned?

NP: I think we haven't learned enough. I think we tried to learn after Polytechnique, but the world is changing quite rapidly and I don't know why, but the gun lobby is more and more strong. Gun marketing is more and more aggressive and the weapons are more and more sophisticated and dangerous. So we are more in a confrontation world.

MW: More of a divided world.

NP: Divided world. Yes and we have more strong opposition than we had 20 years or 30 years ago, so it's very difficult now to engage in a social discussion about that to improve our security.

MW: Right, now as you say, it's been almost 30 years since the Montreal Massacre, why is it still important for you to keep the story of the massacre alive?

NP: I'm not sure my ideas are totally clear, but you know Polytechnique was a cornerstone in woman history in Canada. For engineers and the history of gun violence too. So keeping this story alive is keeping memory of who we are and what we can learn from stories. It's not at the same level, but we don't want to forget the Shoah. We don't want to forget the second world war because it's a part of what we are now. So and when we forget what we are, we don't know how to build our world.

MW: I'll ask you the same question that I asked Charlene. Is there anything you want to say to the survivors of the Toronto shooting?

NP: First, for all people who lost family, who lost friends, all my sympathy. It's awful, unjust, unfair and I know how long and how difficult it is to lose somebody you love. And for those who are in the same position that I was, try to find in your self the way to connect to something greater in you. I wouldn't use the word to pray, but it's something like that. That helped me a lot. I discovered my faith going through Polytechnique and I think that it helps me to be able to stand up and to make my way.

MW: OK. Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much.

NP: Merci.

MW: Nathalie Provost is a spokesperson for PolySeSouvient and a survivor of the Ecole Polytechnique mass shooting in 1989. She's in Montreal.

[Song: "L'apres-Monde" by Couteau Papillon]

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How empathy can transform healthcare: Dr. Brian Goldman

Guest: Brian Goldman

MW: I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. Out of tragedy, often come extraordinary stories of heroism and kindness. We just heard a couple of anecdotes in my last conversations and we saw last week in Toronto when people rushed to the aid of strangers injured in the gun rampage on Danforth Avenue. But often we see kindness in more subtle ways and sometimes we don't see it much at all. But when violent attacks hit close to home, our need for even small, everyday acts of kindness seems to grow. In April, Anna Maria Tremonti spoke with this about Dr. Brian Goldman. He's an emergency physician and the host of CBC Radio's White Coat, Black Art. He went on a quest for empathy around the world and wrote a book called, "The Power of Kindness." Here's his conversation with Anna Maria.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What made you want to better understand what it means to be kind and empathetic?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: I think kindness and empathy are things we take for granted. And I think there's an expectation that physicians and paramedics and nurses and social workers are kind and that's why they want to be health care professionals. But through much of a long career I think — well I had some indications that I had lost some of that capacity for kindness and that I wasn't the kindest guy I thought I was. And you know I was a guy who you know as a child as a 2 or 3-year-old preschooler, I was considered a breath of fresh air and that kid doesn't exist anymore of course. I hope that kid is still inside me and I wanted to try to rediscover him.

AMT: Can you give me an example of a time when you thought you failed to be empathetic?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Thought or knew? In some cases I knew. I think the most important signal was a conversation I had with the husband of a woman I'd seen in the emergency department and she had a degenerative disease. She was in the end stages. Her family had tried to take care of her in a very loving way and it was long enough ago that the resources that exist today you know the emphasis on palliative care it just didn't exist back then. And so this family in their duress brought her to the emergency department with the expectation that she'd be admitted. And that got my back up because as an emergency physician I want to be able to make my own decisions I'll decide myself and I think a lot of us are like that. However I'm not a fool. I did the correct thing. I referred her to the internist on call to be admitted, she was admitted to a hospital, there was an exchange maybe an hour or two later. I found the family to be pushy and I guess it made me defensive, but I didn't know it at the time. I wouldn't call it that — anyway. One of the daughters asked me did you make the referral and I snapped at her. And I said I did. I did what you asked me to do but I wasn't kind. And time passed. She was admitted to hospital. She eventually passed away and then her husband reached out to me and he sent me a note and then invited me to a meeting with the extended family, like all the adult kids and their spouses, and basically told me that I was unkind and you know when patients tell you you're incompetent, there's a good chance that they could be wrong. But when they tell you that you're not kind, that hurts, because they know kindness, everybody knows kindness and that's what set me on the road.

AMT: That's quite the story. What are the consequences of losing empathy?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: The consequences of losing empathy are for the person to whom you could be empathetic but are not. They suffer. There are so many people in health care for instance who feel as if they're getting our eyes and they're getting blood tests and they're getting chemo and they're getting radiation but they're not getting care. They're not getting a hug. They're not being told...

AMT: They feel like they're on an assembly line.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yes. And there's speed. Yeah the speed of health care is breathtaking and frankly I think a lot of us are addicted to speed. We like it because it makes us look important because we bounce from one patient to another down the hallway and back. So it's not good for our patients. They don't comply with their doctors’ recommendations, their medications, and their prescriptions if it's not handed to them kindly with empathy. There is evidence that their blood pressure goes up, that their heart rate goes up, that they don't do as well with cancer treatment, and that's the patient and that's the family. And how many family members walk away from an encounter and say “What the heck was that all about?” Like they just have this sick feeling inside. It's bad enough that their loved one died but that somehow what they got was something that wasn't kind. It's also bad for the health professionals, and I'm talking about health professionals it's bad for everybody. You know in your heart when you could have been kind but weren't or when you could have tried to empathize but you didn't. You were sitting inside your own skin but not theirs. You didn't try to imagine what it was like to be them. But know this when we aren't kind to somebody else we walk away diminished emotionally, physically. Our heart rate goes up, our stress hormones go up, and our blood pressure goes up. I think that lack of kindness is like the death of a thousand cuts. And that's one of the reasons why people who are in high intensity jobs like being a paramedic or lawyer or whatever burnout in mid-career.

AMT: So let's talk more about this quest as part of your research you underwent your own personality tests in a lab at the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University. You scored low on being psychopathic.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: In fact I was told I was a cuddly kind of person which is 15 percentile for cold heartedness.

AMT: OK. We’ve got a clip here. This is neuroscientist Derek Mitchell with some of your other results.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: So the Machiavellian egocentricity is 86 percentile. And your social influence is 86 percentile. So you're high on those elements and those would correspond to the ability to get people to do what you want them to do, you see yourself as capable of, and you're probably adept at it.

AMT: OK Brian Goldman what did you think when he scored so high on the Machiavellian scale?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Derek was looking for a look of shock and surprise. And I had to say no I wasn't surprised at all. I said to him immediately after that I wouldn't be a very good medical journalist, I wouldn't be a very good host if I didn't have some ability to influence people to come on the show and bare their souls and say some really deep and meaningful things that I hope I can remember intellectually could harm them. I think journalists have to be adept at that. So I wasn't surprised.

AMT: Are there times then when that impulse gets in the way of your ability to empathize? You could argue that that was to empathize to make people understand what they're going through, but another example where you think that gets in your way of having empathy.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Oh absolutely it does. These characteristics — it's important to say — that Mitchell revealed to me this is a psychopathic personality inventory that is not used to test psychopathy or Machiavellianism. It's used to test ordinary people in the community who have these traits. There's a difference between the trait and the personality disorder. But a lot of us have these traits and that's what makes us interesting. We're collections of these traits. If you had the full blown disorder of Machiavellianism or narcissism or psychopathy or you're a psychopath by definition you are almost unable to empathize with other in any circumstances. But let's get back to me and the trait. Empathy is an option at the highest level of executive function. It's a choice. It's a choice between my interests and yours, between my interest and my family's, between me and my family's interests, and somebody else, a stranger, a homeless person's interests. And we're always weighing these. And the older we get the more we have these conflicts that make it really, really difficult to know what to do.

AMT: So let's continue on this quest because it takes you to Japan where you interview a robot. Why?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Because I think that roboticists and computer programmers, people who are into AI right now which is just everywhere right now, they are manufacturing empathy and kindness. And I figured that if they are trying to create robots and androids who can respond empathically in the moment that they've probably thought more about what it takes to be empathic than you and I. That's the reason why I went.

AMT: So you met Erica the android.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: I did.

AMT: Tell me about her — it — her.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: No. No, her. She'll never be an “it.” And that's the thing. And that's something I learned it's called…which is the Japanese word for presence, a soul. They believe that every inanimate object, even a rock, even this cup of coffee in front of me has a soul. And I can tell you that from the moment I laid eyes on Erica she was a person. She was situated in a lab that looked like a bar and I walked up to meet her. And you know she had red hair. She had like a pageboy cut. The first thing I noticed was that as soon as I walked into the room she turned to look at me and that was the moment that I realized wow I was in the presence of a being of some kind and then I started to talk to her. I guess in some ways it started to fall apart. But that's the reality.

AMT: Well we got some of that tape. Let's listen, Brian.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: My name is Brian. What's your name?

VOICE 2: Nice to meet you James.

VOICE 1: James. My name's Brian.

VOICE 2: What country are you from?

VOICE 1: I'm from Canada. Where are you from?

VOICE 2: Wow that is quite far away. It's pretty cold there, eh? Anyway as you probably already know I'm from Japan, much like many other advanced androids and robots. My name is Erica.

AMT: OK James [laughs]. A little glitch.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Little glitch and interesting Dylan Glas, her papa, the Roboticist who's the creator of Erica, was just like a parent reframing and explaining his child's mistake. But I have to tell you later when she called Dave the museum curator and I got to see another exchange, she called him Dave and she called me Brian James and the first thing I thought of it took me right back to bars and singles dances when I was in college and that sort of thing happened to me before. So it just seemed like it was destined to happen with that.

AMT: So it's not necessarily Android, it's about you. We're going to get to Dylan Glas in a second but to have a conversation with a robot who you see as a person, tell me a little bit more about that. You're having some kind of an interaction. What are you thinking? What's that like?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: I was enthralled. Her responses were a little slower than I would expect from a human being. But they were appropriate. This is a robot that has the ability to sit with a half a dozen people and know by tone of voice and by volume who has the floor and follow a conversation. It's rudimentary, how far, how many levels, how many questions I could ask that could trip up Erica. You saw that Erica was tripped up in the first moment.

AMT: But she says "Eh" at the end is something. You say you're Canadian and so she right away can do that.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yes.

AMT: Flip to a little idiosyncrasy of Canadian language.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: And beyond as Erica develops, she'll be able to listen to emotional tone and know whether you're sad, you know whether you're happy or unhappy, whether you're anticipating, and so you know whether you want to call that real empathy or simulated empathy, she's taking us closer to that Turing test. You know the Turing test, the computer that you can have a conversation with, a five minute conversation and 30 percent of the population will believe you're talking to a human being. The Turing test has been passed two or three times in the last the last little while. And I have no doubt that there will be androids that can pass that test.

AMT: OK so let's talk about Dylan Glas. He is one of the creators of Erica. Here he is.

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VOICE 1: If you're having a social interaction it's not just a one sided thing. It's not a robot are moving around blocks on a table. You're interacting dynamically with a person who has their own intentions, their own desires. And so once we get to that kind of high level of planning it's going to be absolutely necessary to also model the intentions and desires of the person. And this is where we get into that sort of cognitive empathy or whatever you are saying where the robot now has to kind of infer what a person wants. Are they getting what they want? Are they you know frustrated or excited? You know like if you can understand their emotional state it can try to piece together a model of their intentions desires and therefore plan its own actions accordingly. So we're definitely not there yet but that's kind of the direction we're trying to push into.

VOICE 2: So you're actually thinking more about what it takes to be empathetic than most of us?

VOICE 1: That's probably true. Yeah I think that we think a lot more about what it means to be human than probably most people do on a day to day basis because it rose questioning. I'm always questioning you know why do I do these things I do? Why do I say these things in this way? Why do I gesture like this? And then sometimes I get very, very self-conscious and like why do I avert my gaze while I'm saying this? You know because you know we're programming a lot of the stuff at a low level and I'm trying to figure out how it works.

AMT: So what lessons did you take away from Dylan Glas on the role of empathy and communication?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: That one way or another you have to use your powers of observation to look at other people, how are they behaving, and try to deduce what their state of mind is. And Dylan Glas also did a lot of research into a robot called… has been situated on a street and has learnt to look at passersby to see who's lost and approach them and ask if you need some help. That's just circuitry and just deducing by the pattern by way which a person walks back and forth on a street that they look like they might be lost which we do in the blink of an eye. So that's what I learned. There's also an amazing illustration of the power of empathy with a new approach to treating patients with dementia. We’ve got more tape.

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VOICE 1: Nirry-tally-spoo…

[Sound: Laughter]

AMT: What's happening there?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: What's happening is Star a wonderful caregiver is is working with a woman named Jeanette and what she's doing is she's mirroring her and it is a graphic demonstration that if you want to empathize with somebody who has dementia don't force them, yank them into our world where they may be completely disoriented. Go into their world. And that's what she's doing. It's not mimicking. She's saying whatever you do you lead I'll follow. And by doing that she's on an elemental level she's making Jeannette feel comfortable and less agitated and people who have that kind of approach, people with dementia who have that kind of approach need less restraint, less sedation, and they're happier, and they're more composed.

AMT: This is what's called validation therapy.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: It's called validation developed by Naomi Feil a remarkable therapist, a social worker and psychologist who escaped Nazi Germany with her parents in the late 1930s and lived in a nursing home for I guess 12 or 13 years until she grew up. Imagine living in a nursing home where your roommates are seniors with dementia and other forms of infirmities at the Montefiore nursing home in Cleveland, Ohio. And she had the most amazing epiphany. She had a best friend who is 62-years-old. She's 12 and her best friend is 62-years-old. Her name is Florence Lu. And Florence Lu shared her diary that showed the pain of emotional abuse, emotional cruelty from her mother. She had a pet rabbit, like a toy rabbit named Creaky, her father made it, it had wheels and when she wilted it made a creaky creaky creaky sound and mom had told Florence as a little girl never take that to school. She did. Mom followed her to school and yanked the rabbit Creaky and threw it into one of those circular wastepaper baskets and Florence confided to Naomi that’s the day she died. And when Naomi went off and studied social work and psychology, went back to the nursing home, now no longer a resident, now a therapist, and who does she run into but Florence in a geri-chair, strapped to a Jerry chair saying “pray, pray, pray, pray, pray.” It was the last day of her life and Naomi looked at her with a furrowed brow and said creaky and that was her aha moment that this woman with dementia at the end of her life was not disoriented. She was in the here and now, but in the past, she was living in the past and living the worst moment of her life and she knew it, Naomi, because she had been there, had read her diary.

AMT: So she could validate her as opposed to thinking like crazy lady just saying something she understood that that's what we need to do. There's another example here that we have. Let's listen.

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VOICE 1: One woman was always kissing her hand and she was diagnosed severe dementia. And when I said you love that she looked at me and says oh…Her hand was a baby smaller baby. It was symbolic. I found out about symbols that way that people use parts of their body in order to express their feelings that they haven't expressed. Now this particular woman I found out she had lots of children. She was almost 50 when she had this last child. And she didn't pay enough attention to it and she felt guilty but she never told her daughter when she was younger. You know I'm sorry. And now in her old age she had to use part of her body to express it so she could die in peace.

AMT: She's intuitive and empathetic.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yeah, off the charts empathy. And where does it come from it comes from her loneliness as a child. She was lonely and out of that loneliness came in empathy for others who were lonely and who were misunderstood.

AMT: It didn't have to be that way though. I mean she could have gone a different way. Could she not have? What made her go to the empathetic side?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: Well I think the pain you know and that's one of that’s one of the common themes that I've found. Some people are born empathetic and other people have it thrust upon them by circumstances, disability, loneliness, disappointment, deep disappointment, failure, shame, and the most empowering thing I can say that comes out of the research I did for the book and in my own life is that if you have pain use it because it will make you stronger and you will find people, you'll find your community, people who are going through the same thing you're going through. You can empathize with them because you have been there.

AMT: What are some of the most surprising benefits of showing empathy?

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: You'll be healthier. You'll be happier. On every day, you know if you're disappointed that you didn't get the job, you didn't do as well in the interview, you know you didn't get the prize, you know this didn't happen, that didn't happen, you will walk away being happy in a way and satisfied in a way that you would not dream possible. We tend to think of this as like easy peasy stuff. It's not. It's not hard. It's not hard to give yourself time to do it. But if you do you will feel better and more fulfilled in your life perhaps than you have ever felt before.

AMT: Brian, thank you.

DR. BRIAN GOLDMAN: My pleasure.

MW: Dr. Brian Goldman is the host of CBC Radio's White Coat, Black Art and the author of the Power of Kindness. He spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in April. Coming up, in our next half hour, we go to the front lines on the war on plastic. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Jail time for using a plastic bag: Is Kenya's strict ban helping or hurting its people?

Guests: Caro Rolando, James Wakibia

MW: I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. It's a battle on many fronts, towns cities and countries around the globe are facing up to the problem of plastics. In Canada, many companies are phasing out plastic straws and plastic bags. The material has been targeted by some of our biggest cities. Vancouver has announced it will ban plastic straws. Montreal is the first major Canadian city to prohibit single use plastic bags. Victoria, B.C. just followed suit this month and is calling on the province to ban plastic bags as well. But it has been nearly one year since the world's toughest ban on plastic bags was enacted and that was in Kenya. Freelance journalist Caro Rolando went to Kenya to see how people are being affected. This is her documentary, From the Frontlines: The War on Plastics.

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VOICE 1: I'm driving by taxi through Nakuru, a city best known for the beauty that surrounds it. It's nestled in the heart of Kenya's Great Rift Valley. It boasts a national park with leopards, lions and giraffes and a lake that's home to thousands of flamingos. Today though, I'm seeing a different side of Nakuru. Where I'm headed, well it's smelly.

VOICE 2: I'm taking you somewhere, a place you can be able to see the dumpsite nicely.

VOICE 1: Yes. You heard correctly. Dumpsite. I'm on my way to the Nakuru landfill. Accompanying me is a young environmentalist and photographer.

VOICE 2: My Name is James Wakibia.

VOICE 1: James grew up in Rongai, a rural town about 30 kilometers west of here.

VOICE 2: From this point we'll be able to see the dumpsite.

VOICE 1: He spent his childhood outdoors, tending to his parents cows and sheep and helping with the corn and bean harvest. He's a passionate activist.

VOICE 2: Having my love for environment comes from the fact that I love indulging with nature.

VOICE 1: When James moved here to the city in 2011, to study journalism, he realized that this, one of the biggest urban centres in Kenya, was not quite as pristine as the land he grew up on. His commute to university took him past the local garbage dump and all around it he would see loads of plastic bags and every time he saw about litter, he would have the same reaction.

VOICE 2: I would feel offended by the sight of plastic litter. Then one day, sat down and said this dumpsite's biggest problem is plastic. Plastic bags.

VOICE 1: As it turns out, his frustration over the massive plastic waste was shared by members of the Kenyan government. In 2007 and then again in 2011, it tried to ban plastic bags. Both efforts failed. So James decided to take matters into his own hands.

VOICE 2: So from 2013, I've been making noise. Something I woke up thinking under sleep thinking.

VOICE 1: James put his journalism skills to use.

VOICE 2: I took pictures. Got angry about, I tweeted, I posted on Facebook. I wrote opinion articles to mainstream media houses and if they wouldn't publish my content, I published on Facebook and my blogs anyway. And anybody that allowed me to post it on their blogs, I would.

VOICE 1: He even targeted strangers.

VOICE 2: So I would meet random people in the streets. I would tell them my name is James Wakibia. I'm a photographer. I'm doing this campaign about banning plastic bags in Kenya. If they think it's good that Kenya bans plastic bag. If they said yes, they would take a picture.

VOICE 1: And for every one of those pictures, James would ask those random people to hold up a sign. It read #ISupportBanPlasticsKE. He'd then post the photos on Facebook and Twitter, always tagging them with the same hashtag.

VOICE 2: All over the country people were talking and every time would talk about #BanPlasticKe or #ISupportBanPlasticKE, my name would appear.

VOICE 1: It went viral.

VOICE 2: As it was trending, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Judi Wakhungu tweeted back and said she supported ban of plastic bags.

VOICE 1: Her declaration was thrilling for James, but the occasion paled in comparison to what would happen about a year later. He was out in the forest.

VOICE 2: Around February in 2017, I received a phone call. They called me and asked, "Hey Wakibia, hi. Is it true that Kenya has banned plastic bags?" I told them, I'm not sure. Let me check. So I open my Facebook account and I see notifications, so many. Guys was saying congrats, congrats and I wonder what's up. Plastic bags have been banned.

VOICE 1: It was true. On August 28th, 2017, Judy Wakhungu and her government introduced a sweeping ban on single-use plastic bags in Kenya. And I was like wow, this is so good. Now the question was, will it be successful? Will it work?

VOICE 1: In less than a year after the government banned the production, manufacturing, sale, distribution and use a plastic bag, it's a question many are still asking. Is the planet's most drastic plastic bag ban helping or hurting Kenyans?

VOICE 3: Terrible. Terrible. It's terrible indeed. When it was a shock to most of us. My name is Atuti Akelo, an employee of, former employee of Packaging Industries Limited.

VOICE 1: Atuti was the department head of PIL, a polythene bag manufacturing company, based in Nairobi. Producing bags for all kinds of products.

VOICE 3: So we used to manufacture carrier bags, packing tape, one for bread, we had a variety of products.

VOICE 1: Then in September of last year, less than a month after the ban came into effect, the company laid off hundreds of employees and Atuti was one of them. Losing his job was a big deal for Atuti. He'd worked at PIL for over 13 years. Now without that salary, he tells me his family has had to move to the slums.

VOICE 3: We had to come down. That's automatic. We had to move to slums and that's where we can afford the standard of living.

VOICE 1: The family moved from an apartment in a bustling middle-class neighbourhood called Umoja to Lunga Lunga, an informal settlement in Nairobi. Atuti shows me around. He points out an area that was burned down in a fire, a few years ago and it's with obvious pride that he suggests taking me to the building where he used to work. Atuti's trying to make the best of the situation, but it's not easy.

VOICE 3: Even food becomes a problem. Even parents supporting you, our parents becomes a problem. Explaining them this is what has happened, it takes time for them to understand. I was living somewhere then I changed to the status.

VOICE 1: Atuti beckons his kids over. He teases them, suggesting they might want to go to Canada. I asked him how his wife and kids are adjusting.

VOICE 3: They are finding it is very hard. Getting three meals a day becomes a up by you task. So I cannot be able to provide three meals a day. The kind of life they were living, the kind of schools they were going, they would not to get to them.

VOICE 1: I was reading that you went to university in Canada.

VOICE 4: Yes, I went to Acadia.

VOICE 1: I'm in Karura forest, Nairobi's largest urban green space and a symbol of Kenya's environmental movement. I've just sat down to speak with the woman responsible for bringing in the plastic bag ban.

VOICE 4: My name is Professor Judi Wangalwa Wakhungu. I'm the former immediate Cabinet Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kenya and I'm now Kenya's ambassador to the French Republic.

VOICE 1: She's dressed more for a UN convention than a park. She's wearing an elegant black dress, heels, large sunglasses. With us are Steve, her personal assistant and two bodyguards, who sit quietly at some picnic tables close by.

VOICE 1: One of the concerns that had been raised by some members of the public when I instituted the ban, was that many jobs would be lost and the numbers of jobs were actually exaggerated. You know at one point they were saying it was 600,000 jobs would be lost. But then when we checked with the industry and did an audit, you know we realized that was an exaggeration. Today the Kenyan Association of Manufacturers claimed that as many as 100,000 jobs have been lost. Judy Wakhungu has no regrets. She describes how urgent the problem had become.

VOICE 4: In many places in the country, if you just looked at the landscape, the country is beautiful, but if you looked at the landscape and you looked at the trees, what you saw was plastic bag litter everywhere. In one county, in Isiolo, they even referred to the plastic bags on the trees as the Isiolo flower.

VOICE 1: But she's quick to point out that plastic waste has more than just an aesthetic effect on the environment. It also affects people's livelihoods.

VOICE 4: For The fisher folk, those living around the lakes and the rivers, the fisher folk were complaining that when they threw their nets or their hooks into the water, 50 per cent of the time what they were getting was plastic bags. To me this was a national disaster and I was determined we were going to get rid of the single-use polythene bag.

VOICE 1: It's a windy day in Mombasa and a tall man in khakis and a fluorescent safety vest walks up and down the side of the highway, selling fruits and vegetables to passing cars. He waves them down, some honk back, others pull over. They pointed the exact bag of produce they want and rummage through their purses for change. This is how he makes his living. He sells tomatoes and he tells me about this day last year when he was arrested for selling his produce in plastic bags.

VOICE 5: On that day he woke up and as usual, he picked his bags and the fruits, April fruits and he was going to sell them. But as he was talking to a customer in a car, he got arrested.

VOICE 1: He was handcuffed and put in a patrol car. His arrest came about a month and a half after the ban was implemented and he was not alone. He was arrested along with ten others in Mombasa.

VOICE 5: He was shocked cause at first he thought it was a joke. Then he realized that the ban was already being implemented. He was taken to the police station and he was taken to court the next day.

VOICE 1: He knew about the ban. He had heard all about it on the radio, but he admits he didn't really take it seriously. Plastic bags were relatively cheap. Using them meant he could earn about nine dollars a day, but if he switched to cloth bags or nets, the alternatives put forward by the government, he estimated his daily earnings would be reduced to about six dollars a day. His decision to ignore the ban ended up costing him a lot more than that: a night in jail and the confiscation of all of his fruits and vegetables.

VOICE 5: Yeah the conditions at the police station were not nice. Because it was their first time being arrested and they were quite scared during the night. Yeah but they made it to the morning.

VOICE 1: And in the morning.

VOICE 5: Yeah they were taken to court and the judge pardoned them cause it was their first time. But with a harsh warning that if they ever used plastic bags again, they are going to be jailed and they're going to be fined.

VOICE 1: After meeting with another fruit seller in Mombasa, I asked Judy Wakhungu about the penalties for violators. So I spoke with some gentleman in Mombasa who sell fruit on the side of the road and I think they were among the I think 11 folks arrested in October for using plastic bags. And they said they so some critics have said that sort of the consequences are quite dire and maybe shouldn't be so.

VOICE 4: Draconian.

VOICE 1: She's good enough to find me the word I was looking. Yeah, Especially for folks like them who maybe have less access to information or that kind of thing. What do you say to critics who.

VOICE 4: You know we have in Kenya, people who like to take shortcuts. You know the law is the law. There was enough information. It was discussed, it has been discussed for years. They therefore had six months notice you know, to find alternatives and the alternatives are there. This is dire. And so therefore the penalties must be high. Two to four years in jail. The maximum penalty is four years in jail and a fine of $38,000.

VOICE 1: And that's in U.S. funds. In Canadian dollars it's closer to $49,000. That applies to anyone illicitly distributing, selling or using plastic bags.

VOICE 4: This is enough to force everyone to comply. So far I would say as of today, about 80 arrests have been made.

VOICE 1: One Of the major critiques of the ban is that it disproportionately affects Kenyans with lower incomes. I met many fruit and vegetable vendors who told me they had lost money cause their customers could not afford to pay for cloth bags. .

VOICE 4: I never intended to target the small shopkeepers. I never intended to target them, but as users, they know what the law states.

VOICE 1: And there was more unexpected fallout. James Wakibia admits there was kind of an awkward adjustment period. He says the ban was enacted so quickly, people didn't quite know what to do.

VOICE 2: From if you went yesterday, like yesterday there was plastic, today you went to the same supermarket, there was no single plastic. People were wondering what to use. Some were carrying their shopping with their hands.

VOICE 1: For others the transition was not only surprising, it was infuriating. Some challenged the ban in court, but their efforts were overturned.

VOICE 4: I think the reason why people were so surprised, is that my predecessors had tried this before, but it had not worked and I was just determined to see this through. So I was very careful, in terms of the timing and in terms of also the advice that I sought and following the legal procedures to the latter.

VOICE 3: It's not something one at one time. It should allow ban in phases. That is today we are phasing out this after year or three years, so that even manufacturers they would have got time to change their business so that people cannot be rid of.

VOICE 1: Atuti disagrees with the narrative that plastic is a terrible material. In fact, he kind of believes the opposite.

VOICE 3: The use of plastic is marvelous. Why? Plastic doesn't lose its quality. Its quality remains.

VOICE 1: He thinks the ban could have been prevented, had the government put in an effective recycling program instead.

VOICE 3: The issue is education. People were not made aware of how they should dispose of this waste.

VOICE 1: When I spoke with Atuti earlier this year, he was yet to find another job. He was still hoping his old company would rehire him, if it can restructure.

VOICE 3: They promised that if they changed the structure of the company, they would give first priorities to former employees. So we believe in them, we trust they will do the same.

VOICE 1: Judy Wakhungu insists people are adapting and that they're creating new opportunities.

VOICE 4: People now are beginning to invest in reusable bags. We've also seen many women's groups that used to make our traditional baskets from natural fibres, you know like palm leaves or banana leaves, they've been extremely pleased because their industries are thriving once again and there's demand for these products.

VOICE 1: But while some alternative businesses may be getting a boost, she concedes others are trying to cash in on the black market.

VOICE 4: Because our borders are porous, we do suspect that bags that are being used in a clandestine manner in the markets, are coming from neighbouring countries and there's going to be more surveillance in our borders to ensure that no more bags come in.

VOICE 1: Is Kenya an example for the world? I ask her.

VOICE 4: Well. We have a long way to go. You know, I think that as Kenyans, we're innovative. You know we take chances. We don't see ourselves at least I'm not seeing ourselves as a world leader., I see myself as being courageous enough and I see Kenyans as concerned citizens. Are we a world leader? Not yet, but if we continue to, we can be.

VOICE 2: Some may argue that by banning plastic bags so many industries were shut down. Something bad for them and I fear for them, but it's one environment. You cannot go urinating on one corner of a swimming pool and expect the other corner to be clean. I am proud of Kenya. Proud of the Government for facing the plastic problem head on. I am hopeful that more nations will emulate Kenya.

MW: We have been listening to the documentary, From the Frontlines: The War on Plastics. It was produced by freelance journalist Caro Rolando and The Current's documentary editor, Joan Webber.

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MW: I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. And I have a moment to tell you about a story coming up this week here on The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: No pilot at the controls, terrifying right? Boeing announcing today, its plans to start testing pilotless planes.

VOICE 2: The aviation industry is due for a revolution. Major manufacturers are racing to develop the artificial intelligence that will one day allow flying taxis and yes pilotless planes. Airbus is a fundamental part of that.

MW: Yes, several aircraft companies are developing the new technology. They're aiming to get pilotless planes off the ground, thanks to radical advances in artificial intelligence. Proponents of the idea believe the technology has the potential to make air travel safer and cheaper than it is now. But so far, the skeptics outnumber the believers. Captain Eric Moody for one does not see pilotless planes on the horizon. He has the distinction of having landed a Boeing 747 with 268 people on board. That's after a massive engine failure over the Indian Ocean. It was British Airways Flight 9, June 24th, 1982.

SOUNDCLIP

Well we had a display of a wonderful phenomenon, known as St. Elmo's Fire. It's an electrical discharge that on this occasion it developed into small dashes of lightning rushing up and down the windscreen and towards the end, it was like tracer coming off the nose. There were sparks coming off the nose and it caused the engines to light up from within. You could see black smoke coming in and I could smell this electrical burning smell. I thought we had a fire maybe in the electronics or electrical bay. My engineer, he was very, very quick to notice it, but he noticed that number four engine, he called out number four engine's failed and then he wasn't content. He then said number three is gone, number two is gone and got something, oh goodness me, we've lost the lot. There we were, the proud possesors of the world's heaviest and largest ever glider. I had a total electrical failure and we were at 37,000 feet. And it was a really black cold, dark cold night outside. It was, there was no moon whatsoever. I mean you can, they can build as many pilotless aircraft as they like, but I think they'll probably be passengerless as well. I can produce scenarios and my incident is one, where if the human element is taken out of that equation, you will die.

MW: Hear Captain Eric Moody's full story and an aviation safety consultant who disagrees, when we take on the future of pilotless planes. That's ahead this week here on The Current. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Ali Hassan speaks with comedian, Bo Burnham, whose first feature film, Eighth Grade, is getting rave reviews for its sensitive portrait of early adolescence. Earlier in the show, we heard from Dr. Brian Goldman about kindness and well being kind in the medical field is very important, it's not the only profession that calls out for kindness. British folk singer, Billy Bragg, wrote a song about a hero of kindness who often gets overlooked. Here is Billy Bragg with the "Milkman of Human Kindness." I'm Megan Williams. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Song: "Milkman of Human Kindness" by Billy Bragg]

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July 30, 2018 episode transcript

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