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The Current Transcript for September 28, 2018

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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PC: Well it made for one heck of a fiftieth birthday dare. Actor Will Smith bungee jumped off a helicopter hovering near the Grand Canyon. He says the Canyon has terrified him since he was a child and the idea was to base that fear. In an hour I'll speak with the Yes Theory co-founder who helped dream up Mr. Smith's dare and also a researcher who argues that sometimes basing your beers is just as traumatizing and dangerous. Also today:.

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So much of the story of South Africa has been told through men, big men, men with guns, men who are heroes. I kind of wanted to tell a different series of stories which are about these little girls.

PC: Sisonka Msimang's father was a titan, a gorilla for the African National Congress. His fight to end apartheid meant everyone made sacrifices. Sisonke grew up in exile in Zambia, in Kenya and here in Canada, until finally returning to South Africa. Sisonke Msimang's new memoir is her personal reckoning with the ANC and her homeland. And you can hear our conversation in half an hour. But we begin with another women's words, those of Christine Blasey Ford. Yesterday she told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about her alleged sexual assault at the hands of a teenage Brett Kavanaugh the U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

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Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes, I had a hard time because he was very inebriated. I believed he was going to rape me. Brett and Mark were drunkenly laughing during the attack.

PC: Judge Kavanaugh then told the committee that if an assault on Blasey Ford did happen, he most certainly was not the assailant. The one similarity in both their recollections of those high school years: booze. In a moment we'll look at the relationship between alcohol and assaults. Hello i'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Research suggests double standard of onus when alcohol involved in sexual assault

Guests: Bailey Reid, Kelly Davis

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The laughter, the laugh the uproarious laughter between the two. And they're having fun at my expense.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: That is Christine Blasey Ford saying what she remembers most about the night that she says she was forced into a bedroom at a house party when she was 15 years old and sexually assaulted. She told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that Brett Kavanaugh pinned her down while his friend Marc Judge watched and laughed along with him. Judge Brett Kavanaugh also testified saying that he didn't dispute Ms. Ford may have been assaulted but he says it certainly was not by him. He called the accusations a smear job by the Democrats and he denied that his drinking habits could have been a contributing factor.

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I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers, sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer but I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out. And I never sexually assaulted anyone. There is a bright line between drinking beer, which I gladly do, and which I fully embrace, and sexually assaulting someone which is a violent crime.

PC: Four women have now made allegations against Judge Kavanagh. Each of them say alcohol was a factor. Judge Kavanagh denies all of the allegations. But all of this has raised questions about the connection between alcohol and sexual assault. Our first guest is Kelly Q. Davis Who has researched this connection as well as how alcohol influences behavior and memories. Kelly Q. Davis is a psychologist and associate professor at the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University. And we reached her today in Bethesda Maryland hello.

KELLY DAVIS: Hello.

PC: I want to talk about the science. What does it say? If someone is drunk, are they more likely to commit sexual assault?

KELLY DAVIS: Well the science suggests that alcohol can be one factor that interacts with a host of other factors to predict sexual assault. So it's certainly not in and of itself the cause of sexual assault but it can exacerbate other conditions that do make sexual assault more likely.

PC: So one of those conditions may be the idea of someone getting aggressive, and there was some discussion during Judge Kavanaugh's testimony yesterday about whether he became more aggressive when drunk. What about that idea that alcohol can/does make people more aggressive?

KELLY DAVIS: We did find in studies, where we bring people into our laboratory and use experimental paradigms to understand alcohol's effects on aggression, that when we randomly assign people to either consume alcohol or control beverage in the lab, that on average individuals who have been drinking alcohol do report that they would respond more aggressively than individuals who are sober. So we do find that there can be a relationship between alcohol causing aggressive actions. But that we also do find that that tends to be exacerbated in people who have those underlying tendencies to begin with such that individuals who are more aggressive perhaps have more misogynistic attitudes towards women. Those that tend to be the individuals who are the most likely to become aggressive when drinking.

PC: Meaning that alcohol does not change you but it can exacerbate, bring out some qualities that already exist in you?

KELLY DAVIS: That is a way to look at it. Yes.

PC: And in the lab basically, just put it in lay people's terms, you basically gave alcohol to some people and then not to others. And then what? You ask them questions about would you act more aggressively or how did you determine?

KELLY DAVIS: The way that we do that with sexual assaults paradigms is that we present people with a hypothetical sexual scenario that could involve a sexual assault, and we ask people to project themselves into that situation as if that were happening to them at their current level of intoxication. So we have them really put themselves into that situation and we asked them what are you thinking? How are you feeling? How would you behave in this particular situation? And one of the things that we asked about is how likely would you be to pursue sexual activity that is not consensual, that the the other person in the scenario says that she does not want?

PC: There is this argument - and you know we're talking about this because of what was talked about yesterday at in the United States the Judiciary Committee - but we hear it often in courts of laws and in everyday life about the argument that someone was so drunk that they weren't really responsible for their own actions. What do you say to that?

KELLY DAVIS: Well I would say you know that is something that it's difficult to understand really and I think that one of the things that we find when we're looking at sexual assault is that there tends to be a double standard about how we consider the role of alcohol and responsibility. In fact when a victim has been drinking we tend to blame her more for the assault. But when an assailant has been drinking we tend to say oh that's a reason why he did it and we have to excuse him. And so I think that when we're thinking about issues around blame and responsibility we need to be thinking about applying those equitably.

PC: And in your research I guess the better question is what about not whether they're responsible, but how responsible they feel for what they what happened. In other words what responsibility do they take for their actions? How do they feel about that?

KELLY DAVIS: Well we tend to find with research and it's pretty clear that victims who have been drinking actually feel more responsible for what happened. They blame themselves. They feel like I shouldn't have been drinking. If I hadn't been drinking this wouldn't have happened. And so they actually take on more self-blame than victims who have not been drinking. And we tend to find the opposite with perpetrators, that perpetrators who were drinking at the time of the assault feel less responsible for what happened.

PC: I want to be clear this is not about blaming the victim but I want to ask you this question; we often hear advice for women 'don't get yourself into a situation where you're drunk. You need your wits about you. Life is hard. So stay sober so you can have all your wits about. Your date maybe drunk. You don't want to lose control of things'. What do you make of that?

KELLY DAVIS: Well the way we talk about that in our field is the difference between what we call risk reduction and rape prevention. And so what you're talking about when we think about women's drinking and how and what women can do to protect themselves we refer to that as risk reduction. An individual woman by watching her alcohol consumption or making sure that she's in a safe environment can reduce her own risk of being raped. But that doesn't necessarily mean that a rape won't happen that night. In fact what we find is that with some perpetrators they will try to find the drunkest woman in the room or the drunkest woman at the party and then target her. So a woman who is not drinking she herself may have reduced her own risk but she didn't really prevent a rape from happening. What we need to do to prevent rape is we need to focus on the perpetrators and if we want to actually stop alcohol facilitated rape we need to be talking about perpetrators and how we work with them to reduce their likelihood of committing sexual assault.

PC: I want to play a clip from yesterday's hearings about Brett Kavanaugh's drinking habits and how his memory may have been affected. So this is Senator Amy Klobuchar questioning him.

SOUNDCLIP

AMY KLOBUCHAR: In your written testimony you said sometimes you had too many drinks. Was there ever a time when you drank so much that you couldn't remember what happened or part of what happened the night before?

BRETT KAVANAUGH: No. I remember what happened and I think you've probably had beer, Senator, and...

AMY KLOBUCHAR: So you're saying there's never been a case where you drank so much that you didn't remember what happened the night before or part of what happened?

BRETT KAVANAUGH: You're asking about black out. I don't know. Have you?

AMY KLOBUCHAR: Could you answer the question, Judge? So that's not happened. Is that your answer?

BRETT KAVANAUGH: Yes, and I'm curious if you had.

PC: Kelly Q. Davis What does the science say about how alcohol could affect someone's memory of what happened? And I want to start asking that question from the perspective of a perpetrator. What does the science say about how alcohol can affect a perpetrator's memory of what happened?

KELLY DAVIS: We do know that alcohol impairs our memory and one of the things that was mentioned in the clip that you just presented was blackouts. There are two types of blackouts. There are what are called fragmentary blackouts where pieces of an event cannot be recalled. And then there are what are called on block blackouts where an entire event cannot be recalled. Those tend to happen at pretty high levels of intoxication. Some evidence shows that they can start as low as point 0.15, but others suggest that it tends to be higher blood alcohol levels around 0.2 Or so. And so one has to be pretty intoxicated for blackouts to happen. But there are a lot of individual differences in whether or not one experiences a blackout. To be clear a blackout means that someone is still conscious. It's just that they aren't encoding those memories into their long term memory. So they won't be able to recall what's happening later but they are still conscious.

PC: Is there a relationship a correlation to a victim of sexual assault whose memory isn't as clear as some people would like. They don't remember every last detail but because we know that trauma sometimes makes your memory cloudy that you shut down, your brain shuts down. Is there a relationship where alcohol contributes to that as well?

KELLY DAVIS: There's some evidence that trauma can affect your memory in both helping you remember some aspects very clearly and then other aspects not as well. There has been a study that was actually looking at the role of alcohol and memory in sexual assault. And they used an experimental paradigm where they brought women into the lab, had them consume either alcohol or controlled beverage. So some of them were intoxicated and some of them were sober. And then they were presented with a sexual assault scenario and they read through it and they answered questions about it et cetera. And then they were brought back and actually they did it online, but they were asked questions 24 hours later and four months later about what they remembered from that event. And what this study found was that intoxicated women did not remember as many details as the women who were sober but that the details that they did remember were as accurate as the women who were sober, suggesting that perhaps intoxication - when we're talking about sexual assault related events - perhaps some of the details are more fuzzy but that key pieces of those events that the woman does recall are likely to be as accurate as someone who would have been sober at the time of the assault.

PC: As someone who researches these issues what has struck you most about how the allegations as Judge Kavanaugh have played out in the public eye?

KELLY DAVIS: Well there are a number of things. And the role of alcohol in that I think is a critical one and how we understand how alcohol plays a role in our culture and in certain peer groups. And I think for me the particular issue that I mentioned earlier was how we consider it differently for the victims versus perpetrators, and this kind of a double standard that continues where we blame victims when they've been drinking and we want to exonerate perpetrators when they've been drinking. And I think that we can't have it both ways.

PC: Kelly Q. Davis thank you for your time I appreciate it.

KELLY DAVIS: Hank you. Thank you for having me.

PC: Kelly KJU Davis is a psychologist and an associate professor at the College of Nursing and Health Information at Arizona State University. We reached her today in Bethesda Maryland. Well the potential impact of alcohol on sexual assault is a particular concern on university and college campuses in the United States and also here in Canada. Bailey Reid is the sexual assault services coordinator at Carleton University in Ottawa. Ms. Reid joins us from our auto's studio. Hello.

BAILEY REID: Good morning.

PC: How often is alcohol linked with sexual assault on university campuses?

BAILEY REID: We see that about 50 percent of sexual assaults that happened on university campuses involve alcohol.

PC: 50 percent of them. And I think you know yesterday for those of us who listen to Judge Kavanaugh and talking about the culture of drinking and his high school and college days, may not be unfamiliar to many people who went to college and or university and also drank whether it was back in the 1980s or whether it is today. But give us a sense how common binge drinking is on campus these days.

BAILEY REID: Well I think it's pretty common. It's certainly considered to be- We've got programs at Carlton that are looking at that. But there are certainly aspects of university that aren't drinking and it isn't something everybody is doing.

PC: You know you mentioned that that the studies have shown that alcohol is involved with 50 percent of sexual assaults in North America. Is there any data whether in terms of numbers, in terms of whether those sexual assaults were done by people known to the victim or not. Are those numbers pretty steady whether it was someone they didn't know or someone they didn't know?

BAILEY REID: Well yes. So the sort of stranger danger is actually a myth. The Canadian Federation of Students did a study and they found that in 80 percent of sexual assaults on campus, that was somebody that the or the survivor knew.

PC: 80 percent of times someone you know.

BAILEY REID: Yes.

PC: The other thing that we heard a little bit about yesterday and this morning in our conversation was this idea that perpetrators get their potential victim drunk. How common is it for perpetrators to intentionally get a woman drunk with the intent of sexually assaulting her?

BAILEY REID: I don't know the exact statistics on that. There was a study done by the sexual assault center in Hamilton that found that 48 percent of young men don't necessarily consider it quote unquote "rape" if the person that there is holding is so intoxicated that they can't consent. So I think there is an issue around belief and the understanding a definition of sexual assault and drinking and consent.

PC: I'm glad you brought up the word consent for obvious reasons, but I want to put it in this context; how do you help women distinguish the line between consensual drunk sex. Meaning, I consented while being drunk and assault.

BAILEY REID: Well that's not for me to decide for anyone but myself. So I think we need to believe women and believe survivors when they're telling us these stories because women know the difference between drunk, consensual sex, even drunk consensual regrettable sex, and sexual assault. So that's that's not for me to decide for anyone else. That's for survivors to define and for us to believe.

PC: Talk to me more about the cultural messages there are for women around drinking alcohol. As I said earlier, this isn't about victim blaming but women are sent the message like 'Ooh don't drink. You might get in trouble'. So talk about the culture that surrounds this on university and college campuses.

BAILEY REID: Yeah I think that's something certainly in my role at Carleton University. I really try to avoid it. I never tell women not to get too intoxicated in order to prevent sexual assault. Your previous guests had talked about risk reduction versus rape prevention and I understand the nuance of that. But even the message around risk reduction; women aren't safe when they're sober. They're not safe when they're intoxicated. They're not safe at home. They're not safe on streets. They're not safe in bars. You know it's really sexual violence is pervasive across society and nobody is immune to it because they choose to do something or not do something. The focus really does have to be on those who are causing harm and ensuring that they're not continuing that behavior.

PC: What do you tell women to protect themselves from a potential sexual assault, especially when they're you know college kids - There aren't kids - call them people who go to college go out and drink a lot of them. It is part of our culture. So what do you say to them to help them protect themselves when they are out drinking and I'm not saying getting drunk but they are still drinking?

BAILEY REID: Well I mean I never say that. I always say anyone who is intoxicated has as much a right to be safe as anybody else. I do talk about making sure that if you're intoxicated you're getting consent. Our sexual violence policy is very clear that if you are incapacitated by drugs or alcohol you cannot consent to sexual activity. But if you are incapacitated by drugs or alcohol you will be held responsible for your behavior if you cause harm. So you know when I talk about prevention of sexual violence I'm focusing on those who are causing harm and making sure that doesn't continue to happen.

PC: So the old message doesn't matter if you're drunk, you don't do this. You should not do this. This is illegal.

BAILEY REID: Exactly. Well to me it's a pretty clear example of rape culture. A few years ago, I live in Ottawa, Canada Day big parties and somebody was intoxicate, peed on the war memorial and people were incensed with anger and I get it. Don't pee on war memorials. It's not appropriate. But we're talking about an inanimate object that we've assigned value to. But people wanted community fines. They want in community work. You know people were very angry but then when they caused harm to a real human being, most often young women, we are like 'Well you know how everyone makes bad choices'. This is very clearly rape culture.

PC: Bailey Reid thank you for your time as well. I appreciate it.

BAILEY REID: Thank you.

PC: Bailey Reid is a sexual assault services coordinator at Carleton University. She is in Ottawa. All right the CBC News is next and then I'll be joined by Sisonke Msimang who spent her childhood away from South Africa because of her father's fight to end apartheid. When she finally went back as an adult it was a disappointment and a homeland she felt wasn't living up to its struggle for freedom. I'll talk to her about that realization in just a bit. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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How the daughter of an African revolutionary learned about racism in a Canadian playground

Guest: Sisonke Msimang

PC: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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PC: Still to come, actor Will Smith faced his fears this week bungee jumping from a helicopter over the Grand Canyon. Videos of people pushing past their boundaries are popping up all over the Internet. But some researchers are warning not to go too far. That fear is there for a reason. The debate over confronting the things that scare us the most. We'll talk about that in half an hour. But first the legacy of South Africa's fight for freedom.

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VOICE: Six years ago, these men with a school kids of Soweto. Today they are guerrillas of the African National Congress the ANC. This is the first time they have been filmed, here in the bush, somewhere on the borders of South Africa.

[Singing]

VOICE: They sing of their leader, Nelson Mandela. 'Show us the way to victory', say the words, 'Freedom is in your hands'.

SISONKE MSIMANG: So my father was one of those ANC guerrillas who actually left quite early. So he left just before Nelson Mandela was sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island. So in the early 1960s and he went off to Russia and got military training there and then came back to Tanzania, set up a military camp there and did a lot of revolutionary things and then found his way to Zambia to Lusaka which was the headquarters of the African National Congress in exile.

[Singing]

PC: The African National Congress or ANC is one of the most storied political parties in the world. And for Sisonke Msimang it was in her blood, deeply woven into the fabric of her life from Zambia to Kenya to here in Canada Ms. Msimang spent a childhood in exile until she finally returned to a free South Africa and an unexpected reckoning with the ANC and her country's history. Sisonke Msimang is the author of always another country a memoir of exile and home.

SISONKE MSIMANG: The ANC back then was this collection of deeply ambitious, idealistic driven people. So it was a self-selecting group of excellence, of intellectual excellence of kind of bravery. These people that I referred to in the book as the first people who saw themselves as like you know the first black nuclear physicist and the first black family to ever live in Norway. And you know so this real collection of people who are intellectuals and who were champing at the bit for freedom. So it was a remarkably eclectic and cosmopolitan community you grew up in.

[Singing]

SISONKE MSIMANG: When I was growing up Nelson Mandela meant pretty much everything to us. He was very much the device in our lives that explained why we were moving from place to place. So you know asparents who had to explain to us as kids you know 'we've been here for a little while and now we're going to move again. The reason we had to keep on moving was because there was this guy on this place called Robben Island. And one day he would be free. And until he was we couldn't go home'. So everything in our life was explained by this guy on this island. And when he was free we would be free. And that's exactly, like remarkably what happened [laughs].

[Singing]

SISONKE MSIMANG: The parties and the music were absolutely sort of integral to growing up in Lusaka especially so there was always a cause for some sort of celebration or another. We were often hosting people who had come, who had just arrived in the country and it was very important that we feel like we were a part of a community. And music is very much part of South Africans blood. Our political music is well known. We know how to get down and so the parties were always full of you know Mary Mugaba but also very much like lots of African-American music from the time; the Gap Band; Boney M you know that was very much the sort of 1970s 1980s when we were growing up we.

[Singing]

PC: What comes back to you when you hear that?

SISONKE MSIMANG: Just noise lots of noise comes back too and I hear that song thinking about all the women who would crowd into our apartment, and the sort of all over the place the kind of uncles smoking and often drinking way too much. Any number of the houses that we spent a lot of time in, especially in the Lusaka days in the 1970s, were just always full of people.

PC: Sisonke Msimang, where were you as a child when your father was one of the gorillas?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So by that time I was born he wasn't actively doing that anymore so very much part of underground ANC structures but no longer seeing any kind of action. So when my sisters and I were born my mom was an accountant. She was an accounting student and met my father in Lusaka and he was a part time revolutionizing part time studying, because there was this real in activities for many years. The regime cracked down on the ANC. there was a quiet period in the 1970s before the children of 76. And so we were really lucky that we got to spend quite a bit of time with my dad in that era.

PC: And given that your dad, as you said, was part time guerilla, part time student growing up in Zambia, what did you know about what your dad was fighting for?

SISONKE MSIMANG: Everything because we spent a lot of time here overhearing and then participating in - I guess I mean that sounds really strange to say - but like revolutionary activities. So we were part of the Young Pioneers and the young pioneers would meet every Sunday and we would practice gumboot dancing and we would learn you know revolutionary songs. If there were opportunities to travel for the young people in the community it would be to places like Cuba or to the Black Sea in Russia, because what was then the USSR was backing the ANC in those days. So it was very much a part of our lives, the idea of that we were fighting for nonracist, non-sexist- like I probably could have rattled off by the age of six or seven. We are fighting for a nonracist non-sexist democratic South Africa.

PC: So what were you told about South Africa?

SISONKE MSIMANG: That it was a racist. That it was a country where black people were not free where our parents had to leave in order to fight for freedom. It was a place where our heros Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others had been sentenced to life in prison simply for daring to have, to try to have dignity. I mean that was very much part of the narrative of us growing up.

PC: It was clear, what the fight was about.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Oh definitely it wasn't something that we grew up to find out about later. We were grazed understanding and knowing that this was the kind of fight for our lives that our parents were involved in.

PC: Your mum worked outside of the home. What did her brand of 1970s African feminism look like?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So my mom wouldn't have called herself feminist and actually everybody in the ANC community in which I grew up, all of the women were involved in some kind of labor outside the home. Many of the women who we hung out with were either senior figures in the ANC, who went on to become ambassadors and all sorts of things, representatives of the ANC in different parts of the world, some of them were involved in the military side of things. So I grew up with a very clear sense that women belong everywhere. And I remember that the 1980s was a time in Africa where it was called the decade for African women. And you know there were slogans all over the place 'a woman's place is in the revolution'. You know that kind of message was very clear to me. So my mom wouldn't have called herself feminist probably because she would have bucked against the label, the word but if you had unpacked the meanings she would have of course claimed it.

PC: And she had hopes for you that fit your class at least because you were the first post-colonial middle class.

SISONKE MSIMANG: We were, definitely. I mean I think what's interesting is that that generation of revolutionaries were all middle class. The African National Congress itself if you trace it back to its history is founded by Africans who are lawyers. This is the learned class. These are people who have adopted Christianity. And part of the affront to that dignity about the apartheid system is that they're saying 'Look at us. We know how to read and write. We've known how to do these things for many many generations. How dare you think that you can tell us what to do?' So they're offended obviously along racial lines but there is a strong class basis to there being affronted by this whole situation. So I think lots of those leaders carry that with them. Nelson Mandela is a product of that right. He's very much. He's a lawyer. So I think that the hopes of that generation were very much tied to building a society where all of us could benefit, where all of us could be whoever it was that we wanted to be. That's what my parents wanted for us.

PC: And pushing back against the narrative, the stereotype of uncivilised, uneducated black South Africans.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Which is part of the struggle that people don't often talk about. Part of what the apartheid regime was trying to do was to try and to tribal Africans. So this idea of creating Bantustan homelands and issuing passports for your tribe was both this crude attempt to kind of fracture the nation. But much more importantly it was to essentialise. To say that a metropolis like Johannesburg, where people spoke multiple languages and had developed this really cosmopolitan sense of themselves as Africans with multiple language groups, that could not exist because that's a threat. That kind of an African with a modern forward thinking, able to move easily between their ethnic roots and this new sense of themselves that was very threatening. And that's part of what I think the struggle about apartheid was about.

PC: A threat of freedom in many senses that word.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Definite thing.

PC: So you grew up in Zambia and you write about this in the book, you were sexually assaulted. Comfortable as you are, what happened?

SISONKE MSIMANG: I was seven and there was a guy who worked in the home who was very well trusted. He was a sort of gardener kind of guy who was often did errands nd I was left alone with him and he sexually assaulted me. It was a very obviously difficult and painful experience. But it was also an experience that I've reflected on a lot over the course of my life because I was silent about it. And I was silent about it because it was sexual, the violation was sexual, and even as a 7 year old I understood very well that if I said anything about it, no matter how much everyone loved me and how much you know the whole community was about us as kids, if you are a girl and you say anything about sexual assault, you are marked. You are that kind of girl and you are no longer innocent. And something about you is spoiled. I understood that very very clearly. And no one had to tell me that. I just knew it very well. So it was a difficult experience in and of itself. But it was more difficult I think in that because I knew that I couldn't say anything.

PC: You say as hard and as difficult of an experience that was, it didn't break you.

SISONKE MSIMANG: No.

PC: Why do you think you're so resilient?

SISONKE MSIMANG: I think resilience is a function of a whole range of things that are- It's like an inoculation and it's an inoculation of love, of people believing in you, of confidence, assertiveness, like all of these things that are really hard to quantify. But often I think what happens with sexual violence is that usually it's - mine was quite unusual in that it was a once off, often sexual violence is repeated. So the message keeps being reinforced that you are worthless, that this is how I will treat you etc. So I think that's one part of why I was able to be more resilient. I think the second part of it is that often sexual violence is reinforced by other messages which say that you're worthless. So. Somehow as a kid I figured out, one, that I have to keep this a secret because I didn't want to be marked. But I also figured out that this was one thing that had happened to me and it wasn't me. And I think that's a function of being given many messages all the time every day that said that that's not you. It was an act but it wasn't a defining act.

PC: And I would imagine that also being surrounded by a bunch of revolutionaries who had to be resilient against so much that that kind of ethos of resilience taught to an embedded in you, maybe without using those words, but that that was a function of who you were surrounded by and the life you live.

SISONKE MSIMANG: So it's a double edged sword. So yes on the one hand. On the other hand that's part of why I was silent. There were always many more important things for us to be focusing on than what you were going through as a little person. So when there's a revolution that's bigger than the little kids who happened to be caught up in the maelstrom then those kids learn very quickly to keep quiet about what may be bothering them, because that's not a big deal compared to the fact that there's this man on Robben Island who's really got no freedom.

PC: So then you and your family come to Canada.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes. The land in my hometown of Saskatoon.

PC: How did you end up in Canada?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So because my mother was a Swazi citizen which meant that it was a very patriarchal society. She could not pass on citizenship to her children as a woman. She married this guerrilla fighter who has given up his own citizenship effectively by leaving South Africa. So he's persona non grata. He is existing on a series of cobbled together papers, you know always some different new passport, often fake. So there is no security of state for us. And my mother in her infinite wisdom by the time I was about 10 says her husband like, Dude we need to secure something for these kids. You know they need t'o belong somewhere'. And so applied and Canada accepts us with it's really interesting generosity. I think Canada's generosity is a very complex thing. And so my parents always tell this great story about going to the High Commission and asking you know where. So this is the days before Google.

PC: This is like 1984.

SISONKE MSIMANG: It's 1984 and so they say 'So where should we go?' Like you know we get the official things saying yes you can come. Where should we go. And so the official at the at the embassy you know looks at my parents and he says 'Well you've got three girls and they're all under the age of 10. So you need to go to some more quiet and family oriented. Go to Saskatoon.' He says to these revolutionaries who have like lived all over the world and are part of this like have the sense of themselves as being like too big for themselves. And so off we go to Saskatoon, which lasts about six weeks. And off we go to Ottawa.

PC: Off you go to the big city.

SISONKE MSIMANG: We settled in Ottawa. Yes.

PC: What was it like as you say we were black South Africans landing in Canada in 1984. What were you seen as? Did you face racism? What was it like?

SISONKE MSIMANG: We did face racism but that again wasn't the defining feature which is like kind of hard for me to say given that the story that I tell. The story is about racism but Canadians are so nice and so on the one hand we really were welcomed. And I think there's no contradiction between understanding how racism functions and how welcomes function, that people can be hospitable and ignorant. Some people can be racist and people cannot. So it's complicated.

PC: I do want to ask you about the racist incident that you referred to in the book, one of them, because for any person of color you remember the littlest transgressions to the biggest ones.

SISONKE MSIMANG: They stay with you.

PC: They stay with you.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes.

PC: I want you to tell the story about you were called a monkey. It's important to tell the story and as you explain it we'll know why.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes. So we've just moved to Ottawa and I think it was actually the first week of school. And we were playing on the playground and this boy - we were on the on the on the monkey bars, and he so you know, smart boy, he says 'Look at that African monkey'. And he starts making noises that a monkey makes. Everyone else on the playground joins in and starts laughing and sort of making the noises. And it was very humiliating. I was 10. I burst into tears and off I go and get home and tell my mom and I'm crying. She comforts me and my father gets home from work and we tell him the story. And my dad's response, classic, is 'but what did you do on it?' Said I cried. And he said 'Why did you cry. What kind of a coward child am I raising?' This is the revolutionary. [Laughs] And so my mom intervenes. She like 'She's a child. You know this was hard. She is not the problem here.' So we have this whole discussion and in the morning he takes me to school. So this is mortifying to me as a 10 year old. I want nothing more than to be swallowed up by the earth. And we go and we have a chat with the principal. So we sit in the principal's office and my father tells him what happened the day before and the principal is very kind and nice and says 'I'm sorry that happened'. And so my father is like 'So we need an apology'. And the veneer of niceness stops when you demand accountability. And so the principle was kind of surprised like 'Oh well I mean. You know this is Canada and there's very few of you guys. And so this is kind of going to happen', you know. And my father is like 'Absolutely not. This is not going to happen. I did not come to this country. I did not leave South Africa to fight for freedom for this to happen to my child. So that's not Okay, under your watch or anybody's, it's not okay to be in a public school system where this happens'.

PC: So what's your take away from that?

SISONKE MSIMANG: I mean what was important about the story is that we went to the classroom and the kids collectively apologized because my father insisted on it. And so everyone sort of in the class in the sing songy voice sort of said 'Sorry Sisonke'. What was important for me was that I saw in action, being role modeled by my own father, that when you are the subject of racism you have agency, number one. Secondly, that racism is the problem of the racist not the person who suffers the racism. So it was a very clear lesson in accountability. It was a very clear lesson that I should not own the problem. And one of the connections that I hadn't made, that readers have made since I published this book, was that when I was sexually assaulted I owned the problem because women continue to own the shame of sexual violation. And when I was racially abused I knew because of my upbringing that it wasn't my problem. So I was initially humiliated but I knew enough that I could tell my parents and that they would help me. So there's still this gap between racial abuse and sexual abuse that we need to think about like why was it that this this kid knew without anyone telling her that on this one she has to be silent and that when she can seek help.

PC: It's interesting talking to because your Blackness in different context means different things for you and you're discovering along the way different things about yourself, different things about the various societies that you lived in. You go to college in the United States. So what was your experience of being black in America like?

SISONKE MSIMANG: America teaches you so many things. Because it's history of anti black racism is so intense, if you are black in America you are anonymous. So often people would like stand in front of me in a queue as if I didn't exist. You're tracked immediately as soon as you walk into a shop. So you become this criminalized person and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Like it's so not personal. And this is the thing about racism. It's not personal. The person enacting the racism doesn't care whatsoever about your individuality. So that [unintelligible] of yourself is so confronting, so difficult to grapple with. Which is why my approach to racism has been to take solace in the fact that has nothing to do with me. Because if I allow it to erase my humanity then the racist wins. And I'm saying that their racism is correct. If I simply recognize that the act of racism is an act of erasing my individuality then that's the racist problem. I refuse to own the racist problem. So America teaches me many of those kinds of lessons because you have to to navigate it.

PC: So as you're going about the world so to speak Zambia, Kenya, Canada, the United States were South Africa in all of this?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So South Africa is always there. It's always there in my mind. It's always there in our hearts. We are constantly thinking about what will happen when we come home. And of course there's a point when my sisters and I are like 15, 16, 17 and my parents are like 'When we go home...' and we're like 'Come on guys. Like this thing is never going to happen'. And then remarkably it does happen. So South Africa is this very clear place where we belong. Everything in our lives is in limbo towards this time when we will go home.

PC: You came home. Mandela is president.

SISONKE MSIMANG: We get to live in the country and he is the president of the country. He doesn't die for a really long time. He gets to see the fruits of freedom.

PC: And so when you get there in the early part of your time there, what are your hopes for the future and your future at this point.

SISONKE MSIMANG: There's no difference between the hopes I have for myself and the hopes they have for my country. I went to all the truth and reconciliation commission hearings. I covered them for work. I knew every single cabinet minister. I had picture of them on my wall in my office. You know I sound like such a nerd. But this was special and important time.

PC: But the exchange rate you get disillusions. Fair word?

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes. I think disillusionment is a fair wordage because the people who build this new society were responsible for tearing down the old society, there were people whom I loved, whom I respected, whom if I didn't know them personally I knew of their presence. So they were heroes and I think it's really important for society to come to terms with the fact that politicians are not heroes. I think over time my view on the politics of South Africa has really matured. I am no longer disillusioned. I am skeptical of claims of Saviour's and I think that we are in a really healthy moment of reflection and challenging. And I think a whole new generation of politicians are being born who we have very low expectations of which is great.

PC: It's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Thank you very much.

PC: Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home and she was with me in our Toronto studio. All right coming up the terror of facing your greatest fear will either cure you of that fear or feel like, well, living death. The promise of the former versus the trauma of the latter. That's coming up in about 90 seconds. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. We're back in just a bit.

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How Will Smith conquered his fear - by leaping into the Grand Canyon

Guests: Matt Dajer, Steven Maren, Emelia Sam

PC: Hello again I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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[Sound: Helicopter noise, Cheering]

PC: That is actor Will Smith hurling himself out of a helicopter on a bungee cord for his 50th birthday earlier this week. Well the jump was near the Grand Canyon and he did it, Will Smith, to face a fear he has held since a family trip back in 1979.

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My parents drove us cross-country to. We were going to California for a family reunion. So we drove to the Grand Canyon and we got there and I remember having a deeply meaningful experience of how beautiful it was. But I was terrified to walk up to the edge and all my brothers and sisters and my whole family walked up to the edge, and I stayed back, you know just scared to to take in beauty. If you're scared you're not going to take the chances that you need to take to realize your dreams. And that was the thing for me. I don't mind being scared but I'm still going do it.

PC: Will Smith did it after he was challenged to the bungee stunt by a group called Yes Theory. It is made up of four men who met at Montreal's McGill University. They now have a YouTube channel where they challenge themselves, as well as strangers, to do the very things that make them uncomfortable. Matt Dajer is a member of Yap's theory. He is in Venice California. Hello Matt. Matt are you there?

MATT DAJER: Yes can you hear me?

PC: I Can now. How did you convince Will Smith to throw himself out of a helicopter?

MATT DAJER: Well it's kind of a crazy story. We were watching Will Smith; he had started his YouTube channel about six months ago. So he was very new to social media. We were just talking about how cool it was that he was doing this thing and how exciting we were about it. And then one of our friends, one of our cofounders, Amar, went to bed one night and he just had a dream. He dreamt that he helicoptered bungee jumped with Will Smith and the next morning he came into the room where Tom and [unintelligible], the other co-founders were there. And he told us and he was like Guys I think we should challenge Will Smith helicopter jump and we were like: 'What? What are you talking about?' And so within three days we had a challenge video up on our channel. It was a shot in the dark. We had not talked to his team. We hadn't talked to anybody and we had zero expectation that he would actually answer because the requests were so crazy. And then yeah within eight days he responded.

PC: So and then he did it. You guys started this thing called Yes Theory because?

MATT DAJER: Well we started about three years ago like you said in Montreal and we were feeling pretty stuck. We were in our early 20s and we didn't want to fall in any kind of routine. We felt like we were getting comfortable after having graduated we we were going from waking up straight to our jobs to come home watching TV and going to bed and doing it all over again. And we kind of wanted like a shakeup. We wanted to get out of our comfort zones. So we decided to do 30 things in 30 days that we've never done before. So every single day we would find that thing where we would challenge ourselves. That made us uncomfortable and we wanted to see what would happen. And after 30 days we had completely changed as people we become best friends. And we decided to kind of dedicate our lives to it.

PC: And so now you say to strangers: 'Hey! Confront your fears.' Are we talking just practical fears. I mean things like bungee jumping, skydiving. I don't know, zip lining, things like that every time. Those are the physical things that people fear or we are talking all kinds of fears?

MATT DAJER: All kinds of fears. So the way we approach peers on a very personal level. So everybody has different kinds of fears whether it's public speaking or heights or asking a girl out. Like it's very very specific to the person. So when we're going up to strangers or when we're challenging ourselves we really try and find that thing that's just been blocking them and we just try and really go after it. So yes it's [unintelligible] over.

PC: So what are some of those that stick out for you in terms of fears you've helped other people confront, other than the kind of obvious ones of doing something that you're scared of kind of in the sporting world.

MATT DAJER: For sure there's one actually in particular. There was a guy named Alex, about a year ago. He is 18 year old kid, he had just graduated high school and he was extremely shy. But his dream was to become a NASA astronaut. And we flew him out to L.A. and we set up this whole thing where we wanted him to give a speech in front of an audience. He'd never given a speech before he was too terrified to do it. And we felt that that was the first thing to really shake him up. And so we organized a bunch of friends to come out. We helped him craft his speech and he gave it in front of this crowd and he was petrified. But after he did it completely changed him. And within a year he was attending a new university. He was majoring in engineering and he was pursuing becoming a NASA astronaut. He would text us all the time and just be like: 'Guys I am not all the same person I was when you first met me.' So for us that's the most rewarding thing.

PC: For you. What's the scariest thing you've ever confronted in terms of your fears?

MATT DAJER: The scariest thing I've ever confronted, we did this episode called Sharing our Biggest Insecurities. And as three young dudes I think it was pretty difficult to get up like Santa Monica Pier and I had a son ask me about my biggest insecurity to a bunch. So strangers would come up and I would have to tell these people the biggest thing in my head that was blocking me. It was extremely extremely uncomfortable.

PC: Just briefly what was that thing?

MATT DAJER: [Laughs] Well.

PC: You've done it on a pier. You may as well do it on Canadian radio.

MATT DAJER: Exactly. And I'd say what I said back then my biggest insecurity was, I was always comparing myself. I just didn't feel good enough in terms of like with girls. Like I feel funny and I didn't feel good looking enough, or cool enough. And I would always compare myself to my closest friends. Whenever we had girls around I just didn't feel great about it. And then talking about it and telling these random strangers you realize how ridiculous it sounds. And doesn't even sound like a big deal. And that's kind of the whole idea of what we preach. It is like it's all in your head like you make up these stories in your head where you're not good and what's too scary. And the reality you're just overthinking it.

PC: Do you feel better saying it on national radio?

MATT DAJER: Yes. I feel great.

PC: Matt it's been good to talk to you. Thank you.

MATT DAJER: It was good talking to you.

PC: Bye bye. Matt Dajer is a member of Yes Theory. Well as you heard Matt and I talked about there are many kinds of fears. But if you're one of those people who are afraid of heights, and many of you are, going up Toronto CN tower can be nerve wrecking enough. Then think about walking around the outside of the tower, 356 metres up in the air. You are tethered. It is called The Edge walk. Beth and Kevin Adams tourist visiting from Birmingham England were brave enough to do just that yesterday.

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BETH: Bit nerve wracking wasn't it? So we got in there, paid for the tickets and everything, got suited up. They talked you through the safety of it and what you're going to be doing. Got into the elevator, got to the level we needed to

KEVIN: Everybody looked like ants. Little ants. It just looks like a big play mat when you're a kid playing with cars.

BETH: And they have these ropes they give you and then you just, the doors open up and you can just walk out onto the metal edge and see the whole of the city. They get you to do some activities. So the first is that you put your toes over the edge, let go of the rope put your arms out and you just look over.

KEVIN: The whole time I was leaning backwards I was just thinking 'this rope better support my weight' what was holding me on, which obviously it does. But that was what was going through my mind. And then when we did the front one I could feel my knees trembling a bit.

BETH: I think seeing the whole city makes it worth it, makes you more relaxed. I don't know, it's weird.

KEVIN: It feels surreal at the moment now. I'm looking up and thinking I didn't do it. But then, but right, we actually did it type of thing, which is the weird thing. But no it was good. Well worth it.

PC: There you go. Well our next guest studies the neurobiology of emotional learning and memory including what happens in our brains when we experience fear. Steven Maren is a distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A and M University. He is in College Station Texas hello to you.

STEVEN MAREN: Good morning, Piya.

PC: What happens physiologically when we feel fear?

STEVEN MAREN: Well we have a part of our brain called the amygdala which is built to detect threat. And when it gets mobilised, when it detects a threat it does all sorts of things to our body and physiology. It increases our blood pressure, we sweat, we freeze with fear and all those responses are intended to protect us from harm.

PC: You know we always hear, kind of culturally, you've got to overcome your fears, confront your fears. In other words I guess the cultural message there is that we should try and become beings without fear. Is it possible for we humans to exist without fear?

STEVEN MAREN: Well I mean it's an interesting question. Fear is a highly adaptive emotion and allows us to survive all sorts of threats and so being completely fearless would perhaps not be the best thing. It would have mean to avoid cars and traffic or dangerous cliffs and so forth. That said there are some interesting individuals who lack the amygdala and do not have a fear response. And they actually lead, not completely normal lives, but are they are still alive. So that says something about whether you need a fear system or not.

PC: So one of the things about confronting fears, whether in a clinical setting and in you know in the real world setting so to speak, is this idea of exposing yourself to the fear so exposure therapy. Or just like if you're scared of spiders, spend time with spiders or go to the pet store and see spiders. What happens when someone faces their fear and forces themselves to experience it over and over again, whether that is in a practical way or in a mental way?

STEVEN MAREN: So that's right. A clinical approach to addressing fears to expose one to the feared object or item or thought and that engage is a different part of the brain in the front of the brain called the prefrontal cortex which tends to dampen activity in the amygdala and silence it, thereby suppressing fear responses. Now it's important to point out that this works in the clinic because the studies in which the threats and feared objects are confronted is in a safe setting with the support of therapists and so forth. And I think that's key to the efficacy of these exposure approaches is that one experiences their fears in a controlled setting. I'm not sure that you know jumping out of a helicopter over the Grand Canyon is necessarily fairly controlled and you'd have to do that probably many many times to really overcome the fear.

PC: That kind of like an example, people think 'I am scared of jumping out of a plane, I will go jump out a plane,' and like that were done like that fear is gone. And you say it probably won't be gone. It will be gone for the moment that you do it maybe but it usually comes home again. Can facing your fears, whether again it's something kind of adventurous and practical or something I guess more rooted in everyday life, can facing your fears be harmful? Dangerous?

STEVEN MAREN: Well I mean I think it can in a sense. I think the control one has over that setting is paramount. If you're afraid of dark alleys in urban settings where you feel crime rates are high and there's the likelihood that you'll be mugged or worse than randomly walking down dark alleys in urban settings is not necessarily going to be the safest thing for you to do. You'll be confronting that fear. I mean there's all sorts of ways to do this either with mental imagery, virtual reality and so forth that might promote better and more adaptive fear reduction than going out and seeking all of the things that really you fear in the world.

PC: What distinguishes one person from another in this? And I'm asking scientifically and in the brain. Some people I guess kind of like the very things that many other people fear. I guess the obvious ones are like roller coasters, scary movies or whatever jumping out of helicopters while others of us just fear and don't want to deal, don't want to do that. What is it about fear that some people - I don't know if the word is enjoy - and other of us abhor.

STEVEN MAREN: It is a really good question. Scary experiences do release neurotransmitter called dopamine which many people associate with pleasure and reward. It's not all it does but that dopamine release might actually be rewarding and pleasurable to some individuals more so than others. And moreover after a trauma fearful experiences over, especially if it's in a somewhat controlled setting, you get an immense relief and elation and probably even higher levels of dopamine. I mean so I think some of us are built to really respond to those signals and there's possibly some correlation between that and people who pursue other very rewarding things, like drugs of abuse for example. So there's a lot of commonality I think in pleasure seeking in whatever domain it is whether it's relief from experience, you know, trauma or a drug use for example.

PC: Our brain differentiates between this kind of fear and the fear of something life threatening us. Our brain does that work for us.

STEVEN MAREN: Yes I mean it does. And we have you know the amygdala is built to really respond quickly. It's sort of the quick and dirty system for detecting threats and within milliseconds programmed behavioral responses even if it's not a genuine threat. You know when I was walking through a trail the other day there was a stick on the ground and my initial reaction, living in Texas, was that it was a venomous snake. And so I sort of stepped back quickly and sort of froze for a moment to evaluate but soon realized it was a twig on the ground and it wasn't a snake and everything was fine. So you have sort of a fast threat detection system and then a more slow thoughtful evaluative system which determines whether these things are really life threatening or not.

PC: Steven Maren thank you for talking to me today.

STEVEN MAREN: Thank you so much.

PC: Steven Maren is a distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A and M University. Well our next guest believes in embracing your fears. Emelia Sam is an associate professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery at Howard University. She also writes about personal development and spirituality and is the author of I Haven't Found Myself but I'm Still Looking. She's in Washington. Hello to you.

EMELIA SAM: Good morning, Piya.

PC: Why do you make the case of facing our fears?

EMELIA SAM: Well you know when I was younger I remember reading these magazines. I won't say which one, but they had this title of Fun Fearless Female and that was something at that time that I readily embraced, something that I thought I wanted to be. But over time I came to realize that my fear wasn't going anywhere. So to use the term fearless just felt very inauthentic. So I felt it was something that I have to start to embrace as opposed to eliminate. And I realized that what I wanted to be was courageous not fearless because those two things are mutually exclusive.

PC: Well it's interesting that the words you're choosing here because words have meaning, and culturally for a lot of people there is a stigma or a shame about talking about what scares them. In other words admitting that we all have fears and then talking about the specificity of them is something we don't normally feel very comfortable about. Why do you think that is?

EMELIA SAM: I think that the cultural narrative loves to equate fear with being weak and nobody wants to be that vulnerable, which is why I'm so glad that we have voices such as Briney Brown talking about the importance of being vulnerable. And you know I think it's just changing the narrative around here now.

PC: You know today we've been talking about different things on the program. But one of them is Will Smith who you heard us talking about there in our introduction, but we also talked about Christine Blasey for testifying yesterday Brett Kavanaugh's hearing and the first words or at least the first several words of Christine Blasey Ford's mouth is like 'I am terrified to be here'. In other words I'm scared. I'm fearful. It isn't bungee jumping out of the plane but in her contacts and I think many people can see why it was terrifying. She has been called a brave and courageous. So what do you think it took for her to confront in such a public high stakes case?

EMELIA SAM: Personally I'm amazed at her amount of personal resolve. I can't speak to her experiences; how she grew up; what it is that she truly believes but you know just looking at her case you see here on multiple levels. You know there's the fear of the initial trauma then having to relive that trauma, having to relive it in public and not just in public but on a world stage and to have to subject yourself to massive judgment. I just think to subject yourself to that amount of public scrutiny really is exemplary. I really do think that's a profile in courage.

PC: I think probably well I don't know that- I think maybe someone gave her advice like 'Don't be scared. Be fearless. Walk in there. Do your thing'. What do you think of that kind of cultural motto Be Fearless.

EMELIA SAM: No. It's just not something that I embrace at all. I know a lot of people have their little twist on what that means for them. I know somebody who used to talk about Tom fearless meaning to fear less you know not fear more things. But fearless in its real definition to be without fear, that's just not something that I personally strive for. I like to say that fear may be my companion but it will not be my guide.

PC: And yet you think fear is a good thing. Yes?

EMELIA SAM: I absolutely.

PC: Can you connect those for me?

EMELIA SAM: Yes. So I think that you know I say that fear is instructive. Fear does provide guidance. But when I say that fear will not be my guide it's in that fear is usually telling me to run away. And a lot of the times I need to be looking closer. So it is providing guidance. It just happens to be guiding us. It happens to be providing it in reverse. But I also think it's that courage requires fear. We like to say that people who are fearless are courageous and that's not true. Courage only exists in the presence of fear.

PC: And so given where you, earlier in your life believed in being fearless you used to believe that, that is changing. How do you deal with fear now?

EMELIA SAM: Yes and back then it made me feel inadequate. But now I just realized fears mean something that's very human. As Dr. Maren said, we are hardwired for it. And the thing is we have to be careful. You know the amygdala that he spoke of is an alarm that can go off in nonthreatening situations just as how he described. So it's important to develop a conscious process that allows you to explore the fear and not just react to it. So I think over time I've just become more mindful of the thoughts that arise when I find myself in a fearful situation and talk myself through it.

PC: Emelia Sam thank you for your time.

EMELIA SAM: Thank you, Piya.

PC: Emelia Sam is an associate professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery at Howard University. She is also the author of I Haven't Found Myself but I'm Still Looking: Spirituality Made Easy. We reached her in Washington. If you have anything to say do not be scared, that is so bad to. Do get in touch with us here at The Current. Or you can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. You can talk to us via Facebook, facebook.com/cbcthecurrent or e-mail us by going to cbc.ca/thecurrent And click on the Contact Us link. That is The Current for this Friday. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for Q. Tom Power talks to Josh Groban about the good cop and his new Netflix series and Josh Groban also be performing songs off his new album which is called Bridges as well a reminder to tune into my show on Sunday at noon. It's called Out in the Open and this week we'll be taking you to a unique place in Peterborough Ontario. It is called Haley House and it is one of the only halfway houses in our country to have people stay there who were older offenders. And we will be going deeper into Haley House that is this Sunday at noon on out in the open or you can download the podcast as early as you want. We are going to leave you today with some words by someone who we featured here on the show before. Will Pegg was one of the first Canadians to say he wanted an assisted death after it was legalized, back in 2016. He was diagnosed with metastatic bone cancer and Will did not think he would hear the finches this spring in his native Victoria. Well Will Pegg did hear the finches this spring but he died yesterday at 05:17p.m. Will was in his bed, in his wife Louise Takeda's living room, surrounded by members of his spiritual community. The currents Kristen Nelson met Will and Louise for a radio documentary we first brought you last December and we want to leave you with an excerpt for one more moment with the couple talking about the end and also their beginning. My name is Piya Chattopadhyay. Thank you very much for lending us your ear here on the Friday edition of The Current.

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WILL: I have never died before, at least not that I'm aware of. So it's a bit hard to envision but this whole process for me has been about trying to embrace wellness for the people around me. So whatever it looks like it would be with no drama hopefully, without a lot of footprints left on their hearts and there should be singing.

[Singing]

LOUISE: Look who is good at this as you are Will. It feels very awkward.

KRISTIN NELSON: You're great.

LOUISE: Hi my name is Louis Takeda. Very intimidating after watching him go, right.

KRISTIN NELSON: Louise and Will sit beside each other on a couch in a room filled with houseplants, afternoon sun streams in through a nearby window.

LOUISE: At one point I got an email from will saying that he had this terminal cancer diagnosis. And it was very shocking. It was very saddening and it kind of realized at that point 'Gee'. You always think you have more time that that's too bad that I didn't get to know him better you know he is such a great person and felt very sad about that. And then I thought there's still time like there is still time to get to know him. Louise began volunteering to stay with Will after his chemo treatments.

WILL: She really saw me at my completely lowest and most vulnerable. My body aged 10 years in a few months, my hair felt out, my skin fell apart. In the course of those visits I don't know about falling in love but in Buddhist terms we somehow entered into that place of love being in the place of love together. Completely surprising stunning both of us really.

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