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The Current Transcript for August 1, 2018

Host: Megan Williams

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Anxiety. All day long. Cause I get to see the cardiologist today. Every time I see the cardiologist, what do we focus on? My weight. Go for an ear infection. It's cause you're overweight. Is my heart murmur because I'm overweight? No! Have had it since I was a little skinny thing.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Too big to be seen. Are the health problems of obese people overlooked because of assumptions about them? After one woman launched her accusation against doctors from the grave, we'll look at the possibly deadly consequences of fat shaming. That's coming up in a minute. And then...

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No. I think it's when you wear a tie you look more professional. You know it has been years people wearing ties, doing business. The president of the company wears a tie. It looks more professional in your job. You know I think ties are important.

MW: To tie, or not to tie-that is the question. While many men still take pleasure in the sartorial centrepiece, others say it's high time to cast off the necktie. We'll hear from one mayor who wants to loosen the laws around men's necks, and from those who celebrate the centuries old accessory. That's in our second half hour. And then...

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These are very serious allegations. Two of these women term what they went through, assault. And I think have a fair case that it would be within the conventional definitions of assault.

MW: It has been almost a year since New Yorker magazine's Ronan Farrow helped break the story of sexual assault accusations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein. Well Mr. Farrow now has a new exposé of another top media executive facing sexual misconduct allegations head of CBS Les Moonves. Stay tuned to hear Anna Maria Tremonti's conversation with Ronan Farrow on the MeToo movement, on the price and power of speaking out and more. That's in our last half hour. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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How 'fat shaming' from doctors is leading to misdiagnoses for obese patients

Guests: Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, Lisa Naylor

SOUNDCLIP

Please remember Ellen, when you next read a great book, go to a play or buy a small object of stunning beauty, we've lost a remarkable woman.

MW: Ellen was Ellen Maud Bennett. Born in Burin, N.L., she spent most of her life in Victoria, B.C. and died this past May, at the age of 64. According to that obituary, she was a creative soul who owned her own vintage clothing shop in Ottawa and went on to become a costume designer. But after a cancer diagnosis she was given mere days to live. Her obituary also contains this passage which has struck a chord with people across the country.

SOUNDCLIP

A final message Ellen wanted to share was about the fat shaming she endured from the medical profession. Over the past few years of feeling unwell, she sought out medical intervention and no one offered any support or suggestions beyond weight loss. Ellen's dying wish was that women of size make her death matter by advocating strongly for their health and not accepting that fat is the only relevant health issue.

MW: Ellen's parting message has prompted an outpouring of similar stories from people who say they have also faced stigma and discrimination from medical professionals because of their weight. And research seems to bear that out. A 2015 study in The Lancet found that healthcare providers tend to spend less time with obese patients and are more reluctant to do some screening tests. It also found health providers stereotype those patients as less likely to adhere to medications or follow medical advice. Heavier patients were found to be more likely to delay using health care services because they worry about being treated badly or being weighed. All this is familiar to Kelly Anne Boudreau. She's a mother of three in Moncton, N.B., and she has lived with chronic pain nearly all her life.

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KELLY ANNE BOUDREAU: An average interaction with a doctors is they would give me pills. Try this. If it didn't work, try something else. And the third time would be, well I don't know what to tell you try to lose some weight.

MW: Kelly Anne Boudreau says she stopped going to the doctor for some time because she felt like she wasn't being taken seriously. But after she had children, she decided to push the issue. And finally five years ago she was diagnosed with a degenerative genetic condition affecting the body's connective tissues known as EDS.

SOUNDCLIP

KELLY ANNE BOUDREAU: I'm actually very angry. I'm still getting some of the same treatment from different doctors. I did go to the hospital a couple of months ago. I have to get yearly heart checkups for my condition and the specialist mentioned my weight. And I'm like, I'm here for heart check and she goes yes but you really should lose some weight and it will help with the pain. And I said I lost a lot of weight at one time and it really didn't help. She goes, well I'm not sure if I believe that. I know how much I weigh. I know how big I am. I don't need anyone telling me that I'm a certain size and need to lose weight. I just want them to listen to their patients because you know what I put so many hours investigating my own illness. I know I'm not a doctor but I know my illness inside and out. Just listen to what I have to say and don't give a little chuckle like you know better. I'm living it. I'm feeling it. Just listen.

MW: For a physician's take on this, I'm joined by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff. He's associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute. Yoni Freedhoff is in Ottawa. Hello.

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Hello there.

MW: What did you think of what we just heard from Kelly Anne Boudreau about her experience?

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Well anything but surprise. So as you mentioned it's well known that weight bias exists in health care, and that in many cases patients are dismissed where their chief complaint is ascribed to their weight without a fulsome investigation of the other possibilities. And so this is a very common thing, it leads to problems both in the context of physicians not necessarily following through with exploring other possibilities for a person's symptoms but also may well lead patients to not seek medical care because they've experienced this in the past.

MW: It's pretty rare for people to make accusations in their obituaries. What went through your mind when you heard about Ellen Bennett's obituary?

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Well again it certainly wasn't surprise, but I'm very happy that it has led to this conversation. It's very important. Weight bias is perhaps the last socially acceptable form of discrimination. People don't seem to feel like it's important. But it is a real social justice issue that absolutely impacts on the health care of people with obesity, not just in the context of not getting proper testing, but also in the context that potentially not having access to the same care and services that patients without obesity might have. And an example of that may be fertility treatments with women. So there are fertility treatment clinics where they will not provide IVF or other treatments for women with obesity because there is yes an increased risk to both fetus and mom with higher weights, but yet they will offer treatments to people with other conditions that confer similar risks. It's nothing other than really pure weight bias.

MW: So in your experience how do doctors tend to perceive overweight patients? What are some of the assumptions that they bring to treating them?

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Well quite honestly it's the same assumptions that the population generally has about people with obesity. So the stigma and stereotypes are laziness and gluttony and sloth and all the narratives that surround those particular sort of thoughts. And we see it all the time. And that may as you've noted lead physicians to not trust their patients, to expect less of their patients, to spend less time with patients, to counsel them less seriously. This is hugely problematic.

MW: And can you tell me about the research that shows the experience of overweight and obese patients with some of these assumptions that they're dealing with in the health care system?

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Well so we know that patients with obesity are less likely to get, for instance, preventative cancer screenings. Now the question may become, okay is it a consequence of physicians not offering it to patients directly who have obesity because of their own internalized biases? Or is it a consequence of people with obesity not feeling comfortable with their physicians consequent to the bias they received in the office is not seeking those screening cases? But it's not just in regard to cancer, it would certainly be in regards to any area where a patient's medical care matters. If you delay seeking treatment or delay seeing a physician because you're afraid of how you will be judged or treated in the office, that would extend itself to every area of medicine.

MW: Since Ellen Bennett's obituary went viral there has been a lot of support online. But other people have said that you know of course a doctor should tell a patient to lose weight if she's obese to improve her health. What's your take on that?

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Well a few things. So first of all, I don't think it's wrong to note as a physician that weight may be the cause of a person's particular symptoms. So we have what's called a differential diagnosis, where there is a list of ideas or thoughts we have that might help explain a patient's present presenting symptoms. Weight is one of them in many cases, but that doesn't mean that you should not explore and investigate the other possibilities. In regard to whether a physician should tell people to lose weight or not, I'm not aware of there being a wonderful gold standard piece of advice that is going to help people do so over time so I'm not sure exactly how beneficial simply telling somebody to lose weight or some trite advice like eat less and exercise more is going to help. In fact it may further erode the doctor-patient relationship because clearly that is insufficient advice. It's about as useful as buy low sell high is to becoming a multimillionaire. It's a truism, but it's not good enough.

MW: And is that the kind of advice that overweight people are getting from their doctors generally?

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: I think in some cases for sure. You know listen there are doctors out there who have gone out of their way to learn more about nutrition and health and lifestyle. But I'll also point out something that I think is really important and that is that the vast majority of chronic non-communicable diseases, so these are diseases you don't catch from somebody: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis and so forth, the majority of these conditions are either treatable or preventable by way of lifestyle changes. We can use our forks and feet to help ourselves. But the only one of these particular conditions that we moralize about, that we say well because a person can do it therefore they should do it and if they don't do it they have failed, the only one we moralize about is obesity. And that is weight bias in a nutshell.

MW: Well maybe drug addiction as well.

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Maybe but less so. I think that there's perhaps more acceptance of the fact that drug addiction has drivers beyond personal responsibility and this notion that anybody out there whether it's drug addiction or obesity goes out of their way to you know have the issue and then purposefully is not wanting to change. I'm not sure that that is fair for any chronic non-communicable disease. The social determinants of health, the societal drivers of illnesses like these, are very complex. But yet we dumb it all down into, you should just eat less-move more and if you don't do that you've failed. And you know until that narrative changes, and I don't expect it'll will change soon, I suspect we will continue to see a weight bias not just on health care but in society as a whole.

MW: Now we're running out of time here but quickly what advice do you have for family doctors in dealing with people who are overweight?

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Well so I think family doctors can fairly ask patients if they themselves have any concerns about the impact of their weight on their health or their quality of life. If the answer is no, then I think we should respect patients and not you know run down some avenue of you must do something. I think every doctor should explore sort of the lifestyle of every single one of their patients regardless of their weights and not tie it to a discussion around weight. And certainly, doctors should be respectful of the fact that everybody who walks in their office is a human being with real issues with a complex backstory.

MW: Okay, thank you very much for speaking with me today.

DR. YONI FREEDHOFF: Thank you.

MW: I've been talking with Dr. Yoni Freedhoff who is an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute. He's in Ottawa. Our next guest is working to end discrimination against overweight people in the health care system. Lisa Naylor is an eating disorder counsellor at Women's Health Clinic in Winnipeg and the co-founder of goodfatcare.com. That's a website asking health care providers to treat patients equally regardless of their weight. She's in our Winnipeg studio. Good morning.

LISA NAYLOR: Good morning Megan.

MW: Good morning. So first of all tell me what is the purpose of goodfatcare.com?

LISA NAYLOR: The purpose is to link up health care providers with the people that need them. Health care providers that are going to treat all people of all weight, shapes, and sizes respectfully and provide them with comprehensive care, whether that's medical providers or a yoga instructor. These are people that will welcome anyone into their practice and support them and give them respectful healthcare regardless of size.

MW: Okay, so can you give me some examples of discrimination from health care professionals against overweight people that you've come across through your website?

LISA NAYLOR: Oh absolutely. Well through my years as a counsellor in a community health clinic I've heard multiple stories. I've worked with clients. I had a client who had an exercise addiction. We worked endlessly to you know help her reduce her use of exercise. But when she was diagnosed with high cholesterol, without asking any questions about her lifestyle, her doctor prescribed weight loss as the solution. That's just a typical kind of story. I myself was recommended to start an exercise program and eat healthy, in response to a condition that could have happened to anyone of any size, and again by a health care practitioner who didn't ask me anything about my exercise habits or eating habits.

MW: So the assumption tends to be that it's always linked to fat.

LISA NAYLOR: Yes we see clients frequently who are simply prescribed weight loss as a solution to whatever ailments they might be experiencing. And it's not a surprise because in 2015 the Canadian Medical Association diagnosed or decided that obesity, which is the word they use, so just being in a fat body is in itself a diseased body. By making obesity a disease, it's a pathological approach to a body size. And so the answer you know every medical practitioner wants to cure disease and so the assumption is that weight loss is now the cure, rather than looking deeper at what else might be going on.

MW: Right. Now we've heard about some of the health consequences of this kind of discrimination. You're a counsellor. What kind of damage does it do to patients on an emotional level?

LISA NAYLOR: Well emotionally there is a lot of research to indicate that there is increased anxiety, stress, depression, low self-esteem. Certainly this kind of discrimination can contribute to people developing eating disorders. So there's a lot of those emotional things. There's also people start to avoid going to the doctor's office or because of that widespread discrimination, they may feel uncomfortable being in a gym or taking some kind of fitness class that might actually increase their wellness and increase their quality of life. But that discrimination is so prevalent or that stigma that they experience.

MW: And I imagine some emotional stress just comes from the discrimination itself.

LISA NAYLOR: Absolutely. And that there have been at least one large based study out of U.S. that spoke to that in fact the stigma associated with weight may actually cause some of the negative health outcomes that are associated with weight and the culture.

MW: Similar studies have found the same thing along the lines of race too.

LISA NAYLOR: Absolutely.

MW: Critics say your website advocates unhealthy lifestyles. What's your response to that?

LISA NAYLOR: Well it's fascinating to me because the whole purpose of the website is to encourage people to find healthy and supportive health care providers. And to access that health care in a more easier, more comfortable way. The goodfatcare pledge that we ask providers to take, is all about being inclusive and respectful. We anticipate that people will still make prescriptions around nutrition and physical activity, if that's within their scope of practice, but we don't want practitioners to view a fat body as a diseased body.

MW: Well I'm just wondering is it always fat shaming for a doctor to say to a patient that she or he needs to lose weight?

LISA NAYLOR: I don't think that that's always fat shaming, but I think as Dr. Freedhoff said, I think a good starting place is to ask a client or a patient if they want to talk about their weight. If they have any concerns about their weight. One of the problems where I would say that's maybe not discrimination, but I do not think it's good care to prescribe weight loss as a solution because there is no proven, safe, long term, sustainable form of weight loss that we know about. And so often what happens is that people feel like, well now I have to go on a diet. And we have a multibillion dollar diet and pharmaceutical industry. They're ready to support that goal and almost always that fails. Well over 95 percent of the time the program fails, not the person.

MW: People put the weight back on.

LISA NAYLOR: Because our bodies are genetically coded to keep us in a zone where it wants our bodies to be. And it's almost impossible for people to sustain long term weight loss. So the next time they go back to the doctor, that starts to feel like shaming. Right. When it's like but I told you to lose weight.

MW: Lisa we have to go now. But just quickly can you tell me in a nutshell what it means to patients to go to someone who they feel is not discriminating against them?

LISA NAYLOR: Absolutely. People feel heard. They feel that they have attention for the actual symptoms that they're experiencing and safer to you know explore different options or to talk about what's going on for them. And certainly, what we always recommend to clients is to ask the practitioner to tell them what would you be recommending to someone in a thin body with this condition? And that's what I would say to practitioners. Just open your mind around that. Try to deal with your own weight bias issues because it's totally prevalent in the culture for everyone including medical practitioners, and see the person and think about the wide variety of options that are available to them.

MW: Thanks so much for speaking with us today.

LISA NAYLOR: You're welcome.

MW: I've been speaking with Lisa Naylor. She is an eating disorder counsellor at Women's Health Clinic in Winnipeg and the co-founder of goodfatcare.com. She was in our Winnipeg studio. Over to you now. I'm sure you have some thoughts after listening to this story. Let us know what you think. Head to our web site cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact button. The CBC News is next. Then, new research suggests that neckties actually cut off circulation to the brain. Suddenly a lot makes sense in the world. The argument for taking off ties for good, after the news. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Time to loosen up? Meet the mayor trying to ban mandatory neckties in the office

Guests: R. Rex Parris, David Bernstein, Pedro Mendes, Lucy Rycroft-Smith

MW: Hello, I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. Still to come CBS CEO Les Moonves is the latest media executive to face allegations of sexual misconduct. And as in the seminal case of Harvey Weinstein, it was journalist Ronan Farrow who broke the story. The Pulitzer Prize winning writer who helped give rise to the MeToo movement spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti this past spring about MeToo and also his new book charting America's declining influence in the world. Stay tuned to hear their conversation in half an hour from now. But first, cutting ties with men's ties. For an item of clothing that serves no practical purpose, the necktie has had surprising lasting power as the centrepiece of men's wardrobes for centuries. Though its grip is clearly loosening. Research by Gallup suggests that the American necktie market peaked in the 1990s and has been steadily tapering off. And as little as 6 percent of North American men wear ties to work everyday now. We hit the streets of Toronto to hear what a handful of men had to say about their ties.

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VOICE 1: I like the idea of wearing a tie to work first of all. Secondly, I went to a school wearing a uniform so I wore a tie almost every day. So it's just a habit.

VOICE 2: I do. I wear ties most days of the week. I think in a lot of industries it's good to keep up appearances for your clients.

VOICE 3: Because it's the work requirement. Work require that we wear this tie. It's a formal uniform and we have to wear them. No. I think it's when you wear a tie you look more professional. You know it has been years people wearing ties, doing business. The president of the company wears a tie. It looks more professional in your job. You know I think ties are important.

MW: The necktie may still be a part of the professional uniform that those men embrace. But that's not the case with my next guest. R. Rex Parris is the Mayor of Lancaster, California. He wants workplace rules around neckties relaxed. He has proposed a bylaw that would ban mandatory necktie policies on local workplaces. And he says he has new research published in The Journal of Radiology to back him up. We've reached him in Lancaster, California. Hello.

R. REX PARRIS: Good morning.

MW: So tell me about your byław proposal to get rid of requirements to wear neckties in the workplace, how would it work?

R. REX PARRIS: Well you know I really don't have a concern if people want to wear a necktie. What I do have a concern about is that the science seems to be coming back in the last few years indicating that it's harmful to your health to wear them. If they get a little bit too tight, it has a substantial impact on the amount of blood flow to the brain. Now I'm 67 years old. I spent an enormous amount of time doing aerobics exercising to increase the blood flow to my brain. And then to find that I put on a tie and diminish it by on average seven and a half percent. That's a little distressing to me. But on top of it that you also have to recognize the gender bias of it. You know women don't have to wear ties. If there's any indication that it's harmful to somebody's health, I don't think an employer has a right to require it.

MW: Now it's a small study with a small sample group, how confident are you in the findings of the study?

R. REX PARRIS: Well there are actually two studies. In 2010, one of the stroke journal's did the same study and they used a simulated tie which was inflated with air so they could you know monitor their pressure on the neck and found similar results. And you know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that if you put something around your neck and if it's just a little bit too tight, it's going to impair the blood flow. Now would I prefer a study with 300 people? Yeah. You always prefer a study with a larger sample size, but I don't think 30 is indicative of it being not valid.

MW: Well okay let's assume the science is valid. How much of this is about you just not wanting to be told what to wear?

R. REX PARRIS: Well you know, I don't like being told to do anything. [Laughs] But that's really not the issue here, because I do think dress codes are appropriate. I do think that employers, you know for certain jobs, have a right to tell the employee what to wear. I just don't think they have a right to tell them to wear something that could be harming their health.

MW: So is there any appropriate moment in which men should wear neckties?

R. REX PARRIS: Well I think it's a matter of choice. I really do. You know I've got enough ties up in my closet to buy a car. [Laughs]

MW: Do you ever wear them?

R. REX PARRIS: Yeah.

MW: When do you wear them?

R. REX PARRIS: Well I'm a lawyer too, so I have to wear them when I go to court. And that's what kind of focused me on the recognition that there are places that actually require you to wear one, rather than it being a matter of choice.

MW: Have you got one on now?

R. REX PARRIS: No. [Laughs] I'm not in court now.

MW: [Laughs] You don't wear them for phone calls with journalists.

R. REX PARRIS: I immediately changed the rule in my office. You know I've got 20 some lawyers working there. And I took the rule away from there and I'm taking the rule away from the city. You know it just makes sense to me. I mean there are other reasons too.

MW: What are they?

R. REX PARRIS: You've got this thing hanging from your neck that collects viruses and bacteria, and you almost never send it to the cleaners. The reason you don't send them to the cleaners, the silk ties don't come back the way you sent them. I mean it's really an antiquated custom that we probably should look at. And the overall scheme of things, it's certainly not the most important thing we should be looking at, but I think it's indicative of how hard it is for society to make changes in spite of all of the reasons not to do something we continue to do.

MW: Right. I mean I understand that. But there's a certain formality and respect that certain forms of dress convey and the tie is one of them. And there are situations in which people feel that a tie is a sign of respect and whether it's a funeral or in certain workplace situations. I mean how do you respond to that?

R. REX PARRIS: Well I think that if you want to wear a tie you should be allowed to. I just don't think that an employer has the right to force you to do it. And you know the only study I found so far in regards to the impact it has on a customer base is with doctors. And the study was to find out if patients give the doctor more credibility when he wears a tie, and interestingly enough they don't.

MW: So what sort of responses have you been getting from the citizens of Lancaster to your tieless proposal?

R. REX PARRIS: Well most of the response has been positive, because nobody really likes to wear them that I can see. There are a lot of reasons why they do, but nobody really likes to, especially in Lancaster where it gets to 120 degrees (fahrenheit). But the more conservative and the older the person the more likely they are to oppose it, is what I've been seeing. You know that shouldn't surprise me. I think you know people recognize it's just an antiquated custom that has no social utility. And it really does a tie symbolize anything other than this is more of a formal event you're attending?

MW: It's also sort of a symbol. You know it's has a phallic connotation. It's a symbol of male sexuality.

R. REX PARRIS: Wouldn't that be an uncomfortable discussion?

MW: Well what do you say to that? Let's have it. [Laughs]

R. REX PARRIS: Well I never thought of it being a [inaudible] but perhaps you know maybe psychologist would want to look at that.

MW: It seems pretty obvious.

R. REX PARRIS: [Laughs] It's obvious to you but you know it's very easy to have willful blindness.

MW: So how confident are you that this law will actually pass? That this proposed law will actually pass?

R. REX PARRIS: Well I think it's certainly probably going to pass in Lancaster. And it has statewide implications because you know we have a state courthouse here and various state offices here. And are they going to comply with it or not? And when only 6 percent of the population is wearing them. And certainly 90 percent of the people that hear this are in favour of it. I don't see that there's a lot of tolerance for using taxpayers money to go to court about it.

MW: Anyway. Thanks so much for speaking with me today.

R. REX PARRIS: Thank you. Have a great day.

MW: You too. R. Rex Parris is the Mayor of Lancaster, California. That's where we reached him. Depending on where you stand, the necktie is a dashing fashion essential or a slightly suffocating symbol of workplace oppression. We have a panel of guests standing by with some of their thoughts. Pedro Mendes is a menswear journalist, he writes at his web site thehogtownrake. He's with me here in our studio in Toronto. Lucy Rycroft-Smith is a freelance journalist, researcher, and a regular tie wearer. She joins me from Cambridge, England. And David Bernstein is the president and chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in the United States. He's in our New York studio. And unlike our other two guests today, he's likely not wearing a tie right now. We'll get to that in a moment. Hello to you all.

PEDRO MENDES: Hello there.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Hello there.

LUCY RYCROFT-SMITH: Hello.

MW: Pedro Mendes we'll start with you. How do you respond to what you've just heard from the Mayor of Lancaster?

PEDRO MENDES: Well I mean I am somebody who wears ties and loves wearing ties.

MW: You have one on now.

PEDRO MENDES: I am wearing one right now yes. But I agree with him actually on a number of things that he's saying in terms of not forcing people to wear them and if they don't want to wear them, I think there's too many ugly ties being worn in the world right now by politicians and newscasters. And it's not helping the cause.

MW: So your objection is aesthetic?

PEDRO MENDES: It's aesthetic. It's also the way people wear them. He talks about how ties have no purpose, no practical purpose. They are gloriously useless. The only purpose they serve is to add beauty. And to add beauty to the male wardrobe is something that we don't really talk about very much. Like for instance it strikes me as, in this day and age where we're talking about gender roles and gender reversals and so on, you know I have a colorful-flowery-piece of silk tied around my neck which is a symbol of masculinity in the past. I like to celebrate that. I like to celebrate how kind of useless it is and flamboyant it is because that's an element of masculinity as well. As much as all the other stuff. And the rugged stuff too.

MW: David Bernstein you've actually gone further than Mayor R. Rex Parris in his proposal. You have proposed a global ban on the necktie. Obviously you don't celebrate it the same way that Pedro Mendes does. What is it about ties that you don't like?

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Well first off they strangle you all day. So you're wearing this strand of silk tightly bound around your neck and you're uncomfortable, and in an environment in which you're trying to promote innovation among employees I think a necktie is sort of stifling. And it doesn't actually promote the kind of business culture that we're all striving for in today's marketplace. I'd also say that they are food magnets. You cannot really dry clean a tie. You take it to the dry cleaner, it comes back and you still see that same stain that was there. So they are just not practical. And I would propose to Pedro that it's time to move away from the tie to the pocket square. The pocket square is a glorious male fashion statement and is totally comfortable and not imposing.

MW: Okay. I see Pedro across from me shaking his head and rolling his eyes. [Laughs]

PEDRO MENDES: I wear both of them. But this idea of the constriction of ties. The fact that most men don't know how to wear ties and don't know how to wear shirts, is not the blame of the tie. Most men they had their necks sized when they were 17 and then they went to their grad and they haven't had them resized. And so they keep buying shirts at size 15 or whatever, even though they put on weight or whatever, and then they do up their shirts and, ah! this is so uncomfortable. And then they do up their ties way too tight because again no one really showed them how to do it like, ah! this is so uncomfortable. Right now I can put two fingers inside my collar, I mean it's a custom shirt, but I don't tie my tie so tight. So I think that whole argument is just, whatever we don't need to go into that.

MW: I see you're wearing a little pocket handkerchief. Is that enough space to express your inner fashionista?

PEDRO MENDES: I mean it's not about that. It's just expressing a little bit of beauty. A little bit of elegance. I think a pocket square is fantastic. And when I don't wear a tie, I always wear a pocket square to sort of say, I didn't forget to wear my tie. I still have you know an intention with this. I just think that a pocket square is not a replacement for a tie. And this is what has happened to men’s dress for the last 30 years. We've been taking things away, but not replacing them with anything.

MW: Right. Now Lucy Rycroft-Smith we normally think of neckties as a male accessory but you've made neckties a staple of your wardrobe. Can you explain the experiment that led to you start wearing men's ties?

LUCY RYCROFT-SMITH: Thank you Megan. Yeah so about a year and a half ago I tried wearing neckties along with lots of other menswear. So a three piece suit and shoes. Pocket square often and even occasionally a watch. For a month as just part of an experiment to see how I would feel, how other people would perceive, and how it might change my professional interactions. And the results of the experiment were particularly interesting for me. I'm still really wearing ties, and suits, and menswear professionally most of the time. And there was a change in me. There was a change in the way that I saw the world. Certainly I saw that there was a change in the way people responded to me and had a professional relationship with me in a different way which I found particularly interesting.

MW: Tell me about that. How did you change? And how did peoples reaction to you change?

LUCY RYCROFT-SMITH: Well something that I say a lot is, it wasn't just the tie. It was everything that came with it. The pockets. So the ability to locate things very quickly. Not have to carry a large bag with me. The ability to produce things like business cards and keys when I need them very quickly made a massive difference. The idea that I was comfortable but also professional, which sounds perfectly usual, but actually as a female that was very new to me. I actually found in the past, that the more professional I tried to look, the more importantly the occasion was, the more comfortable I was. I hadn't really realized that until this experiment. And it really threw me. I really thought, goodness me that's a situation where you can see patriarchy in action because actually I have all these other things going on at a time I need to focused on a professional occasion. Wearing the suit and tie made me realize actually how uncomfortable I had been up until that point. Because suddenly I had something that was really easy to dress all up or down. It was really easy to match. And also then I could just take the jacket off depending on temperature. It just seemed such a simple solution.

MW: Interesting. So none of the discomfort that David Bernstein was talking about.

LUCY RYCROFT-SMITH: [Laughs] I had some discomfort from ties very occasionally. I think exactly what Pedro was saying, the idea that people probably wear them in a way that might not conduce to comfort and that can be easily solved by wearing a different colour and doing your tie slightly differently. I think that's certainly what I found.

MW: Pedro Mendes can you give us a little historical context? How long have neckties been part of men’s formal dress?

PEDRO MENDES: Well they traced the history back to a Croatian army. In the I believe it was in the 17th century. And cravat was a slightly mispronunciation of Croat. And the French armies saw the Croatian soldiers wearing these little bits of silk tied around their neck, which was really just to signify different regiments. Part of this story is of course apocryphal and part of the details have been lost in history, but this is the story us menswear nerds tell each other. Anyway the French being French they were like, oh! that looks quite dashing. We like that. So they started wearing these scarves around their necks and eventually the scarf it just evolved over time. It started to get tied over top of shirts. It was tied to help keep the collars up. Like stiff men used to wear very stiff shirt collars and they were actually quite tall and they would push up against your chin. Talk about uncomfortable. And the tie would kind of help keep them in place. And then it evolved, it got tied into a little sort of a bow tie and then it got tied into different kinds of knots. But it wasn't really until the end of the 19th century beginning of the 20th century, that the tie that we know of, appeared. And it was very soft. It never kept its knot. People would have pins in them to make sure. But again it kept evolving and so really the tie of today has only been around for about 100 years.

MW: Okay. Lucy Rycroft-Smith given all the restrictive and confining fashion that women have to wear and have put up with over the centuries. I mean how did you react when you heard about Mayor Parris talking about ties as being discriminatory on a gender basis?

LUCY RYCROFT-SMITH: Well I have to say I totally agreed with him. He spoke a great deal of sense and the idea really for me I suppose is ironic that womens bodies have been a battleground of people trying to control them by banning things for years. And you know we've had to deal with it. And this particular issue highlights how that feels to men potentially. And it is unfair. And particularly in the sense in which people are being made to be physically uncomfortable by something that the workplace suggests is mandatory for them, that seems to be a role that fits in the same sort of category as asking people to wear high heels. There really is no good reason to do so. It should be their choice. If they wish to. Of course there is never any free choice because that has consequences. And this is about power. This is about different ideas of power play and how that relates to dress.

MW: I want to talk about power in a minute. But David Bernstein what is your sense of how other men feel about wearing ties?

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Well when I wrote that article I have to say I got a lot of messages from guys saying, thanks bro for that article because I hate wearing a tie. But I was shocked when I received all these messages from women saying we love the tie. It's so cute. It's handsome. It's sexy. And that gave me a little bit of pause I must say. So it seems that many women, obviously there's no scientific poll here, but many women actually love the necktie. And it's men, not all men of course, that don't. You know it reminds me of what the debate must have been in the 19th century over the powdered wig. I mean men were walking around wearing these powdered wigs that must have been terribly itchy. And I'm sure there were fashion columnists around who were predicting the end of male fashion because they got rid of the powdered wig. But lo and behold, they were no longer wearing powdered wigs unless you're a barrister in England. And I think people are far more comfortable and you can still look good.

MW: Now Pedro Mendes despite the efforts of ties lovers such as yourself David's side appears to be winning. I mean we hear that fewer and fewer men are wearing neckties. And more and more people are wearing casual dress which has become in itself a kind of status symbol or can be. You know a few years ago writer Alain de Botton had a now inactive site called The Philosophers' Mail and he had an article on it, on the billionaires of the tech world wearing black t-shirts with jeans. And one of his headlines was Larry Page Google CEO tortures us with his jeans. And just the concept that the casual dress conveys a message that everybody can be a billionaire. And it gets rid of that clear aspirational message that a tie and suit gives. What's your response to that?

PEDRO MENDES: Well I think that yes, I mean a lot of the battle against formal wear and mens formal wear does stem from our attempts for egalitarianism over the last 50 years. I have no problem with that. But we are fooling ourselves into thinking that this is actually changing anything fundamental. Because what has happened is, it used to be yes, you could kind of tell who was the the banker, the high street lawyer or whatever based on how they dressed. Now, you know because people are saying even the mayor was talking about how the tie symbolizes this power and oppression and patriarchy and of sort of stuff, maybe it did 50 years ago 60 years ago, but now what it is all these guys are wearing like cashmere hoodies and 400 dollar jeans. And they're hiding in plain sight basically. They're still just as powerful. They're still just as oppressive, we still have so many problems even though we're not wearing ties, what do you know? The tie was not the root of the issue. It was not the root of the problem and that's why I feel all this effort being put into getting rid of ties, we're missing the point. We're missing what we should really be digging down deeper into is like, how do we perceive ourselves as men and women in our society or other? And how is power actually held? And how is it abused? Getting rid of the tie is not going to do any of that. That said, I mean it is a tide that I can't fight.

MW: Okay thank you very much for coming in this morning. And thanks to all of you for taking part in this discussion on the necktie. Pedro Mendes website is thehogtownrake. He was with me in studio in Toronto. Lucy Rycroft-Smith is a writer and researcher in Cambridge, England. And David Bernstein is the president and chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in the United States. He was in our studio in New York. [Music] That's Justin Timberlake with Suit and Tie. Coming up in our next half hour Anna Maria Tremonti's interview with journalist Ronan Farrow. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Trump is creating a world of empty embassies and risking global stability, says Ronan Farrow

MW: I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Just a few hours the CBS board of directors will meet to consider the fate of their CEO, Les Moonves, after allegations of sexual misconduct by at least six women. The women spoke to Ronan Farrow in a piece for The New Yorker. Moonves issued his own statement saying in part throughout my time at CBS we have promoted [Fades out].

MW: Earlier this week another media executive facing allegations of sexual misconduct and another MeToo bombshell from journalist Ronan Farrow. The allegations against CBS CEO Les Moonves came about a year after Mr. Farrow first published his exposé of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in The New Yorker magazine. That reporting along with a similar investigation by The New York Times opened a floodgate. Emboldening women everywhere to speak out about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment in different industries. And it earned Mr. Farrow a Pulitzer Prize, which he shared with two New York Times reporters. Today Ronan Farrow is best known as an investigative journalist. But he had a career before that, working in the U.S. State Department. Specifically, he worked for the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. That was during the Obama years. Of course there's a new U.S. President now.

SOUNDCLIP

You have three thousand five hundred security personnel and thousands more diplomats embassy staff civil servants and administrative personnel all of whom collectively play a vital role in advancing the safety liberty prosperity and all good things of the United States, very important people great people. As President Eisenhower said in 1953 make no mistake. The reason we have representatives around the world is to protect American interests.

MW: That was Donald Trump last May at a ceremony swearing in his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. But despite his praise for the State Department's people and work in the world there are serious concerns inside the organization about its ability to do that work under President Trump. Ronan Farrow joined Anna Maria Tremonti the day after Mike Pompei swearing in. They talked about MeToo, American influence in the world, and his new book War On Peace. Here once again is their conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: Ronan Farrow. Hello.

RONAN FARROW: Hello Anna Maria. Good to be here.

AMT: Well congratulations on your Pulitzer.

RONAN FARROW: Thank you so much means a lot. It's something that I don't at all take for granted partly because that story was so beset by so many obstacles. And I really just constantly come back to the bravery of all those sources and I'm grateful their stories were heard.

AMT: You won the Pulitzer for exposing Harvey Weinstein, so I think a lot of people would be surprised to see your new book is a detailed analysis of American diplomacy. So let's start there. How do you square what President Trump said in that clip we just heard about the importance of the State Department with how his administration has dealt with the institution?

RONAN FARROW: Well I think what he said is absolutely correct. You know the work of America's diplomats is indispensable for American citizens and for our close neighbours in Canada and for our allies all around the world. You know these are the people who help keep the North American continent safe. You know they screen countless visa applicants who could potentially be dangerous. They pull American citizens out of dangerous situations and those can also often be situations that embroil Canadian and other citizens. This is work that matters for the world and for global safety. And of course at the top level these are also the men and women who have the most expertise in creating the deals that overt global conflict, to make sure that we as a nation as a nation that significantly shapes the fate of all nations have non-military options at our disposal. To your question about how you square it with what has actually happened under the Trump administration, there is no easy answer to that. This is a moment of unprecedented attack on the State Department where countless career diplomats have been purged from their jobs, where the prestige and power of the diplomatic profession has been badly eroded and undercut and where - at the top level of the State Department - there is utter chaos that obviously culminated in the very recent and unceremonious firing of Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo's predecessor.

AMT: And so now Mike Pompeo, former CIA chief, is the new secretary of state. He has a reputation as a hawk. What do you think a Pompeo State Department will look like in world affairs?

RONAN FARROW: Mike Pompeo has matched the president's saber rattling and his threats to dismantle the Iran deal for instance. He seems not to be particularly concerned about preserving the large scale diplomatic accomplishments of recent history. He is legendarily a hawk and in a world where increasingly the problem is that America has the capacity on the military side and not on the peacemaking side. There are a lot of questions amongst career officials at the State Department as to whether he will be the kind of leader who exacerbates that trend and puts still more power in the hands of military and intelligence leadership. Or whether he is someone who can pull out of what has really become a nosedive in American diplomacy.

AMT: You spoke to every living secretary of state for your research. What were some of the concerns they raised about the state of the State Department under President Trump?

RONAN FARROW: Many of them have grave concerns and Colin Powell was incredibly uncensored here saying you know the Trump administration has ripped the guts out of American diplomacy, that we are in the midst of mortgaging our future, is one phrase that he used. And he's right in a sense you know that the damage that's being done to America's capacity to negotiate and make peace is something that isn't going to be fixable overnight. You can bring in leadership that really prioritizes large scale diplomatic endeavor and that's important but it's going to take years to reinstate the flow of talent into the department, to make sure that we have the young ambassadors in waiting coming into the system in the first place so that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we don't have a world of empty embassies which is what we're looking at right now.

AMT: Well let's look at some of the fallout just in what's happening right now. This week U.S. diplomacy has been front and center with two precarious situations; the Iran deal, the peace talks between North and South Korea. The Iran deal was a huge struggle for the Obama administration to get accepted. What did that deal say about the way diplomacy should work?

RONAN FARROW: You know the lessons of the Obama administration are interesting and complicated. There are senior Obama administration officials like Ben Rhodes, who as you know one of the most influential foreign policy voices in that administration, saying kind of a mia culpa. You know that there was an early period where there was a policy process overtaken by what Rhodes called celebrity generals. You know that during the United States review of its posture in Afghanistan, which is a place I served for the State Department, we didn't really let diplomats voices into the room. And one of the stories I tell in War on Peace is how that resulted in occasions where we really actively sabotaged opportunities for diplomacy. That said, to go back to Ben Rhodes , he talked about a course correction. And I think it's a pretty fair appraisal of what happened to say that they of course corrected . At the end of that administration you wound up with, after several years of really doubling down on diplomacy, the Iran deal, the thaw in relations with Cuba, the Paris climate change accord obviously you know all accomplishments that are under threat now. The Iran deal is of particular interest because I think it represents both a lot of the importance of diplomacy and also a lot of the misunderstandings that diplomacy carries with it. There's this fantasy that there was some alternative perfect deal and in fact you know the architects of the Iran deal are the first to admit that it is highly imperfect, that it addresses only a narrow slice of Iran's bad behavior. It doesn't address their human rights abuses or their non nuclear missile tests or any number of problems that we have with them. But it's unclear how those other issues would have benefited from us also confronting a rising nuclear power in Iran. And what seemingly every world power ally of the United States involved in that deal agrees on is that Iran has, within the narrow confines of that flawed agreement, abided by its terms. So you have a situation with the Iran deal where if the United States pulls out it will look like exactly what it is, which is American leadership, meaning we sabotage our own deals and do so unilaterally. And that will send an extraordinarily alarming signal to our allies and drive a wedge between the United States and many allies around the world. But it will also, maybe more importantly, send a message to North Korea . What is the next rogue regime that we hope to make a deal with to contain their nuclear power supposed to think when they see us walk away from the last time we tried this?

AMT: And when you look at Korea Mr. Trump is taking credit for bringing the north and south together. He's already being touted as deserving the Nobel Peace Prize. Could it be that his unorthodox methods to that point on North Korea have worked?

RONAN FARROW: Time will tell. It's completely possible that for instance the American president meeting with Kim Jong Un will prove to be part of an effective diplomatic approach. There's no reason why that can't be part of diplomacy with North Korea. However there are also a lot of reasons why we have turned down that opportunity in the past. And there are a lot of occasions on which North Korea has said the things that they're saying now that seem optimistic and it turns out they were lying. And there's a real risk all of the experts involved in North Korea diplomacy say that we end up getting played if we go into this meeting. You know that absent a core of experts of the kind we used to have to steer policy in that region to really identify the pressure points, and steer us away from pitfalls and make sure we don't make commitments we shouldn't be making. You know without that kind of attentiveness from career diplomats who know the region we may well end up getting played this time. So it's really a wait and watch situation. I think obviously everyone hopes for the best. But the point is if we had a functional diplomatic apparatus there'd be less risk associated with this gambit.

AMT: Okay so even like the angry tweets and the public threats, even if they could push something you need the diplomacy happening behind the scenes you need a whole other layer going on, and you're telling me that those people actually don't exist anymore, do they?

RONAN FARROW: I think that's right. You know there was a core of North Korea experts at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration when we last tackled this problem. That was an attempt that was not a complete failure. You know it fell through in the end. But we made a lot of inroads particularly in our dialogue with China around this issue. Those are threads that we will likely have to pick up if we want to resume regional diplomacy there because the Chinese have more leverage over North Korea than anyone. And right now we don't have that kind of a core of experts and we don't seem to have any interaction between the people who really know those lessons of the past and the current approach.

AMT: President Trump ran on a platform of America first did people in the State Department see that as a warning, that the State Department was going to be gutted?

RONAN FARROW: I think when this administration came in people didn't know what to expect because Donald Trump didn't really campaign on specific policy promises. You know there were a lot of atmospherics certainly, he talked about you know bad deals and reducing spending abroad and not kowtowing to foreign powers as much. You know the great irony is that in slashing our diplomatic capacity we've actually ceded more and more authority to for instance China which is in the process of going in the other direction and spending more and more on its diplomats around the world.

AMT: It's almost unwitting, isn't it, that the United States is pulling back China's just moving in?

RONAN FARROW: That's exactly right. In place after place around the world we see a situation where China is building more bridges and more dams and has surprisingly given China's reputation as just sort of a commercially minded rapacious interloper. You know shuttle diplomacy underway. They've got an envoy tackling regional peace issues in Sudan for instance. This is a new side of China. And while it's going to take a long time for China to eclipse American leadership. The trend line is pretty striking. And this is all exacerbated by the fact that in many of the places I'm talking about we no longer have American ambassadors.

AMT: And what does that mean for the United States? Like connect those dots into the future for me.

RONAN FARROW: I am careful to not paint an overly rosy picture of American leadership either. You know I fully embrace the fact that the United States is an imperfect global leader, that you know the impact of our leadership can often be deleterious to global security, that our human rights track record

is not spotless either. But I still do believe that a nation like China which has a serious authoritarian streak and serious human rights issues that it has not confronted, and despite this new mounting diplomatic face that they are putting forward to the world is still very much about its own narrow commercial interests. I think that we should all question whether we want that brand of leadership to overtake the United States influence.

AMT: Is what President Trump has been doing to the State Department really unprecedented?

RONAN FARROW: Unprecedented is a word that gets thrown around a lot when outlets describe what is invariably called an assault on the State Department, or a war on the State Department. And it is certainly a new extreme you know we've never seen an administration come in and just you know sack career expert after career expert all at once. We've never seen this degree of an empty state department or empty embassies that have acting low level officials instead of ambassadors. This is new. But I hesitate to use the term unprecedented because actually there's plenty of precedent in American history. And those are the occasions when we have done similar slashing and burning of America's diplomatic capacity, not to the same extent, but in a similar direction. And we can derive clear lessons from that if we choose to. You know you look at the Clinton administration where, after the Cold War, James Carville who was Clinton's campaign manager said it's the economy stupid. That was the mantra. And they came in on a promise of domestic reinvestment and one of the consequences of that is they sent out Warren Christopher there, for secretary of state under that administration, to make a call for slashing the State Department that sounded very similar to Rex Tillerson rhetoric over the past year. And in the end we slashed diplomatic and development spending by 30 percent over the course of the 90s, closed a ton of embassies, shuttered and folded into the State Department proper two very important government agencies devoted to information and arms control and lost a lot of influence. And when 9/11 rolled around we did not have the kind of robust diplomatic capacity that I think we needed. And all of this contributes to a soup of complicated reasons some of them unavoidable but some of them avoidable that led us to this hyper militarized presence in the years since 9/11.

AMT: Well I want to ask you about the militarization of foreign policy in the U.S. How has relying on the Pentagon and the intelligence services changed the way that the United States carries out foreign policy?

RONAN FARROW: Well I'm very careful to point out you know no one, no sane person, is proposing that we as a nation surrender military might. Indeed the best examples of diplomatic leadership came about because there was a kind of synergistic combination of military might and the threat of military might and diplomatic endeavor. You know if you look at Bosnia and the Dayton peace accord brokered there by Richard Holbrooke. That is an agreement that came about partly because he was able to array the threat of NATO strikes around his diplomatic theater. He was a colorful larger than life guy and you know made all these kinds of grand gestures during the negotiations, had luggage moved out in front of the American negotiators rooms so that the other side would freak out and think that the negotiations were over and come back to the table. You know this was all supported by American military might. That said you know I think what most of the voices in this book agree on is that there is a problem of balance. You know Madeleine Albright, Clinton's second secretary of state, talks about the inevitability of a larger

Pentagon than State Department but she also talks about it being way out of whack, way way more imbalanced than it needs to be and how that is deleterious to our interests around the world.

AMT: I'm struck too when you talk about the cutbacks and the reductions. You've got a little story about where was it that they needed a satellite dish for the roof, and they had to jerry rig it with a barbecue.

RONAN FARROW: [Laughs] I believe that was in the embassy in Beijing during the 90s when Clinton was really hacking away at the State Department. Yeah lots of colorful anecdotes, sewers leaking, and as you say in one embassy you know these poor career foreign service officers like getting on the roof and jerry rigging up like a barbecue grill to try to get TV signals, because they were so desperate for coverage and they didn't have money to actually have satellite dishes. And you know this is not a productive way to empower our diplomats. It wasn't then and you know a similar and much worse story is playing out now.

AMT: Last month the State Department confirmed it's investigating how allegations of sexual harassment and assault were handled inside the department. And many people are saying it is the MeToo movement that motivated that investigation. What are your thoughts now that the MeToo movement has come to your old workplace?

RONAN FARROW: Look I think we should all welcome accountability in every career, in every walk of life. It was always very clear to me, reporting on these stories about sexual violence, that this was not about Harvey Weinstein or about Hollywood. This was about the abuse of power and the systems that silence survivors of sexual violence regardless of what career they're in. And you know many of your listeners will, I'm sure, be all too familiar with the dynamics of powerful men in whatever community, whatever business you know using their power to either abuse people or just as importantly silence people that they have abused. So I think it is a welcome sign of not just what our supporters did but the bravery of men and women coming forward and talking about their stories of abuse that you see these kinds of follow on investigations in every walk of life including diplomacy.

AMT: And this is where I see some overlap in your work as we're talking today. Your job in the State Department brought you to Afghanistan and as a journalist you interviewed suspected war criminal General Dostum. You have taken risks. You've faced powerful people. How did those experiences prepare you to investigate the mighty Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein?

RONAN FARROW: You know I was very fortunate to grow up in a family where a lot of my siblings were adopted from around the world, with very serious disabilities and special needs. And the people I loved most were a pretty direct reflection of many of the world's problems. You know people who had come from terrible poverty and abuse and it was there for hard to ignore those problems. And I also had the benefit of a wonderfully public service minded and very brave single mom who raised me, and I owe a lot of my sense of principle to her. I don't always live up to it but I try in earnest. And you know I have tried, maybe because of the combination of that and kind of growing up in a family of storytellers as well, to put a spotlight on stories that I don't think are being heard and to elevate voices that I think we should hear more of. And that spanned work I did in Sudan where I was writing about survivors of sexual violence as a tool of war in that region to exposing these alleged mass killings in Afghanistan. You know going out there as I reported on this book War on Peace to kind of dig up, almost literally, evidence

about a mysterious mass grave in the desert and multiple administrations in the United States covering up evidence that it had been the work of an ally of ours, an ally that we laid down with in the context of a very militarized moment in foreign policy where we kind of sidelined any concerns, except giving guns to the guys who could help us go up against our enemy in the short term.

AMT: Abuse of power takes many forms doesn't it?

RONAN FARROW: It does indeed.

AMT: Your fact checker at The New Yorker Natalie Meade tweeted that working on your Weinstein reporting was the most high stakes work she had ever done that it gave gray hairs.

RONAN FARROW: [Laugh] I apologize for the gray hairs Natalie. Natalie's hair looks fantastic. And Natalie is a fantastic journalist and fact checker and it was really a remarkable team effort at the New Yorker, after a long saga of fighting to get that story out to be embraced by and supported and defended by David Remnick who is the editor of The New Yorker and one of the great living journalists. And Natalie and a guy named Fergus McIntosh and a woman named Tammy Kim and the list goes on and on a cadre of incredible fact checkers and lawyers and copy editors. You know it really is a team effort to do reporting of this kind. I'm so grateful to everyone who poured a whole lot of sweat and blood sleepless nights into breaking these stories.

AMT: Did you have an idea of that exposing Harvey Weinstein would resonate that powerfully and that widely?

RONAN FARROW: I'm just so grateful that it did. You know I was very much locked into the concerns about honoring the bravery of the women who spoke to me and making sure that their sacrifice and courage hadn't been for nothing. And I don't know that I spent a ton of time thinking very far beyond that except that I knew in a general sense that this was the tip of the iceberg for a deep vein of untold stories. And that I had some sense that the bravery of these women might inspire other people. And clearly it has. And I'm just profoundly grateful to them and everyone who has heard and followed on their message.

AMT: Sexual harassment and worse by powerful men has existed for a very long time. What was it about this moment in history that made the MeToo movement possible do you think?

RONAN FARROW: I think the world changed. I think Anna Maria, that where once was the case that survivors of sexual violence, particularly those whose abusers were powerful, looked at the media landscape and saw no example of stories like theirs being told and increasingly brave survivors have chipped away at that status quo. We now see examples stretching back a few years that I think predated and helped inform the moment we're in currently. You know you can look at what Bill Cosby's accusers went through, being smeared terribly and dealing with very divisive reactions but telling their stories bravely. And you know I struggled to cover that issue as much as I could. It was apparent to me that we weren't doing enough to tell those stories. And when it came to speaking to these survivors of sexual violence in the Weinstein story, you know we had long and painstaking conversations about all the

ramifications of their speaking. And understandably they were trepidation and they feared retaliation. And you know I think they were profoundly motivated by the desire to help other people and the knowledge that they could maybe warn the next person to come along. But I think they were also empowered by those little shreds of precedent that I could present to them. You know that I could say yes they got a brutal reaction but they did tell their stories in the case of Cosby. You know that Gretchen Carlson at Fox News had told her story and had been respected afterwards more recently. You know that there was a growing push towards accountability where maybe, just maybe, they could envision a universe for the first time in which they might be heard.

AMT: This week Ashley Judd said she is suing Harvey Weinstein for harming her career point. And for him pointedly telling a director that she was a nightmare after she refused his sexual advances. How did you react to that news?

RONAN FARROW: I think Ashley Judd is a very committed activist and a very principled person. And I think she's being smart and calculated about how she makes her moves on this for maximum impact. You know I know that that suit is not about her bottom line. This is about sending a message about the kind of retaliation that we tolerate in all of our industries. And you know I think on multiple occasions she's done a great service to this issue and to other survivors of sexual violence. You know it's not just her. A lot of the women in the Weinstein story recounted similar instances of retaliation. Mira Sorvino, who spoke for the first time in some of my stories, also was enmeshed in some of the same examples where Peter Jackson has admitted that Weinstein put the kibosh on her hiring for Lord Of The Rings, and you know she and I have talked about that personally and you know I think it's devastating. You can imagine for anyone in any career that, at the prime of your moment of opportunity, for actors that's a moment that you can't easily get back. You know she is in a different place in life now and that that same moment won't come again I hope. Other wonderful moments do. But I think it is a source of tremendous sadness to her that she was blacklisted in that way and that there is such an immediate example of someone who wanted to hire her and didn't because, in part, a powerful guy came crashing down and said don't do it.

AMT: You know President Trump has called the women who have accused him of assault and harassment 'liars'. He's threatened to sue them. Why is it that he has survived those allegations while the MeToo movement has exposed and brought down other powerful men in politics, in business and in Hollywood?

RONAN FARROW: Well you know I'm careful not to conflate multiple different things that are going on here. I think that the suppression initially of that tape of Donald Trump bragging about forms of harassment and assault, and then the fact that he prevailed in that election even when that tape emerged, did galvanize a lot of women who were really frustrated and survivors of both genders, I imagine, of harassment who were frustrated and probably in that sense you know this was one of the many catalysts that contributed to that moment in terms of why there hasn't been more accountability on those allegations. You know I think that's a really fair question task and you know in some ways Donald Trump is a sui generous figure. He has leaned into the things that his critics find objectionable and there are so many claims of harassment around him that he has been able to very effectively kind of leverage the fatigue of the American public, and the tendency to view a large number of claims as white noise.

AMT: I'm just wondering what you think with your own journalism look at the coverage of the Russia scandal, look at so much investigative reporting right now. Do you see this as a golden age sort of or revamping or a renewal of investigative reporting right now?

RONAN FARROW: I hope so. You know I can only speak for my little narrow experience of it but I know that, when I was in American network television as an investigative reporter on one of our large morning TV shows, it was viewed as sort of quaint. You know there were wonderful investigative journalists at networks across the United States and in local news across the United States but it wasn't viewed as you know an upwardly ascendant corner of the business. It was sort of oh how novel you're doing investigative work. And this was at a time when many of those units that I just described were shrinking and were sort of beset by cuts and an unwillingness of corporate overlords to run that kind of reporting. And I'm talking systemically not in my case specifically. So I'm relieved to see a moment where there is so much public dialogue about the renewal of good investigative reporting and I'm just so grateful to all the reporters out there striving to do that and really succeeding in doing that. And at a time when there is this you know classic authoritarian move of undercutting the press and you know this charge of fake news. It's really been extraordinary to see how many wonderful men and women in the press have risen to the occasion and to put a spotlight on important truths.

AMT: Ronan Farrow good to talk to you. Thank you so much.

RONAN FARROW: Thank you Anna Maria. I really appreciate it.

MW: Ronan Farrow spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti last May. His book is titled War On Peace. And as for Harvey Weinstein he was indicted by a grand jury in New York in May on charges of rape and criminal sexual acts relating to three women. His legal team denies that he assaulted any of his dozens of female accusers. He has pleaded not guilty and is currently out on one million dollar bail. He and his company are also facing 18 lawsuits and other claims filed in the past year. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Today jazz saxophone great Sonny Rollins is on the program. I'm Megan Williams. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Wednesday August 1, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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