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The Current Transcript for October 31, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We use those guns to defend our families and loved ones. It's just, we just need separation. We want to be separated from the French. They are really treating us bad.

LAURA LYNCH: A divide over language and a minority that wants a separate nation, might sound familiar to Canadians, but this is Cameroon. And there it is the inverse and it's deadly. The English claim the French majority is ignoring their rights as the country draws ever closer to civil war. But before that on this All Hallows Eve, we're doing something a little different.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It never gets old seeing people get completely frightened.

[Screams]

LL: Yes, it is Fright Night, something many of us love and many others love to hate. For those who enjoy a good scare though, the old fashioned haunted house may just not be enough anymore. Get ready for the immersive hunt, first up. After that.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: A normal day you have your own boundaries on your own life. You aren't exposed to extreme elements. You aren't exposed to being kidnapped, you aren't exposed to living out a horror movie.

LL: This man loves the thrill of fear so much he can't get enough. Not once or twice, he's been scared out of his wits, nearly four dozen times and he has paid for the experience. What others dread, some adore and some even claim it's good for them. That's in half an hour. I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and this is a Halloween edition of The Current.

[Music]

Back To Top »

Meet the Queen of Haunts — she makes it her business to frighten you out of your wits

Guests: Justin Brink, Amber Arnett-Bequeaith

Guests: Jordan Helfman, Bernie Farber, April Glaser

LL: Tonight is Fright Night Halloween. A night for kids to put on their scariest costumes and a night for kids of all ages to have a good scream at a haunted house, like this hospital of horror in Edmonton.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Where am I supposed to look?

[Screams]

VOICE 1: Oh Jesus. See you didn't take long to get me scared.

VOICE 2: You find yourself trapped in the halls of abandoned hospital and you know if you make your way up through this elevator that you can get working somehow. If you can just make it to the exit on the top floor, you'll be safe, but as you discovered, it's not quite that simple is it.

[Screams of terror]

VOICE 2: Hi, I'm Alex Russell.

VOICE 3: And I'm Nathaniel Russell.

VOICE 4: And so you guys are two brothers who created a terrifying thing. Are you trying to hurt people?

VOICE 3: Well, trying to scare people and I guess it's working.

[Woman shrieks]

LL: OK. That doesn't sound like your grandma's haunted house. It is part of a new generation of spooky attractions where the frights are actually virtually real.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 2: Even though you know like oh that's not a real fall or I'm not really this high up, like your brain just almost tricks you into thinking like, yeah, but what if I am and you just can't bring yourself to do it. And some of those sensations like the fear in the pit of your stomach. it still it triggers it when it's right there in your face, like something jumping out at you. You can't help it, it's just a visceral gut reaction.

[Screams]

LL: Thanks to CBC Edmonton producers Clare Bonnyman and Kim Nakriekko for going inside the virtual haunted hospital there. Now my first guest today is the creator of his own scary attraction, just don't call it a haunted house. The new term of art is "underground immersive extreme haunt experiences." And Justin Brink's extreme haunt is known as "Miasma." We have reached Justin Brink in Chicago, Illinois. Hello.

JUSTIN BRINK: Hello. Good morning.

LL: How is what you do different from the old fashioned haunted house?

JB: We're different because our show is narrative-based. We use non-traditional environments and what most people will find extremely different is that we are physically aggressive.

LL: Physically aggressive? Okay walk me through one of your productions. You say there's a narrative. What is someone going through at experience?

JB: So our latest, our last show that we performed in September, we brought a guest in and they had very little knowledge to what exactly they're walking into. We give them you know we sign all the paperwork and I handed them a gun and a ski mask and gave them a partner, pushed them through a room and told them they needed to rob some innocent people and take over the room.

LL: Not a real gun?

JB: Well you know if I said that, would I still be immersing people?

LL: But I'm sure that the police would be interested if you were doing something like that.

JB: Right.

LL: OK. So they have to rob someone and you do describe it as an extreme experience. So tell me what more you can about how you make it extreme.

JB: Sure. So largely what we do is we try to create a visceral experience, something that the suspension of disbelief is pushed a little bit further down. Fully immerse our guests into a horrifying experience. So each guest goes through it completely alone. Their show is for them. The experience can't move forward without the guest. So unlike the traditional haunted house in which you'd walk through and you walk through with 20-40 people and the bouncers pop out. Our story literally can't move forward without the guest making choices that are sometimes horrible and sometimes emotionally charged, without that guest making that choices.

LL: And you said, but you have someone going with them from your group.

JB: They are monitored from time to time. In this particular instance, they could have another actor with them, but that actor left them very soon. So there are moments where they appear and feel completely alone.

LL: Now you talk about aggressiveness, physical discomfort. Can you explain that?

JB: Yeah I can. So we are a full contact haunt, which means that we will touch you. We will move you around. We will put you, be physical uncomfortableness. For example, we might put you in a very tiny space that for some people would be extremely claustrophobic. We use restraint, such as handcuffs or mouth gags or blinding people. This might be putting an individual on the ground and restraining them with their arms behind their back and we have used electricity in the past.

LL: What? Electricity? How?

JB: Yes. Well we'll just say the electricity may or may not touch their skin from time to time.

LL: What like a cattle prod?

JB: I can't tell you the object, but it's certainly not comfortable.

LL: People want to do this. Do they?

JB: Yes we have so many people signing up for our e-mail list that we can barely keep up. In fact, we've had over 700 people sign up in the last two weeks.

LL: But not everyone who signs up can come into one of your shows, right?

JB: That's correct.

LL: So how do you choose people?

JB: We have a process. Our story begins before they even walk through the door. When we have their e-mail and we're ready to announce an experience, we generally send out a portion of the story, which requires an action from the guest that says, sending us a bit of information about themselves. If it's telling us a little bit about who they are in relation to the narrative. We get a little bit of information of who these people are and from there they're whittled down to essentially a lottery. The reason some individuals don't get in is that the best way I can describe it is that red flags may come up and we might see that this experience isn't quite right for the individual that has applied for it.

LL: Tell me, give me an example of what a red flag might be.

JB: If we see someone that has trouble separating fiction from reality. That is a red flag to us.

LL: And you can get that by just having them talk about what they want out of the experience?

JB: We have had success in doing that in past, yes.

LL: How much does it cost?

JB: Our last experience was $100.

LL: OK. I want to play some tape for you now. This is Taylor Winters. He's an engineer in California who's gone through 43 of these so-called haunt experiences and here he is describing the first time he went to one of them.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I was absolutely frightened. I've been doing haunted houses and theme park attractions for so long, but those are all jump scares. And then going to an immersive horror experience where they were allowed to touch you was such a frightening concept. You had to sign a waiver like going through. It was such an empowering experience because it really pushed me more to limits that I didn't really know were there, not that there was real power in that and also real beauty in that. And all those stresses are just gone and you know it's like why would I stress about that report that's due tomorrow when I just survived being suffocated or I just got waterboarded for five minutes. Like if I can survive that, then I can ask a girl on a date. That's not scary anymore.

LL: OK. Waterboarded. Why would anybody want to be waterboarded?

JB: Well I think Taylor's right on is that it's not about the wants for these simulated tortures, it's about the overcoming of that experience, of coming out and feeling like you survived and you can conquer the world. I largely think that's why individuals come through and quite honestly, we live in a world filled with screens. Everything we do is with screens now and the ultimate escapism is sometimes to enter an environment, sometimes horrible for some people, and to get out and not have that screen and be fully immersed in an experience. If that has horrible things like waterboarding and that might be there.

LL: I can just hear some listeners reeling in shock at hearing this kind of thing. How do you make sure this kind of physical comfort though, discomfort doesn't go too far?

JB: We do have lines. We test, I personally test the show at "Nauseum," over and over and over again to make sure that this is the appropriate amount of physical contact and aggression and make sure that we're doing it safe. We've been doing it for several years. So we do know how to safely keep our guests going through. On our staff, we do have medically trained individuals. So we are prepared if anything were to happen, which we actually have never had an accident or anything even close.

LL: Have you had people say wait, stop. I want to get out.

JB: Sure. I'm sorry?

LL: Have you ever had someone starting through and then saying, no no this is too much. I can't do it anymore.

JB: Yes. We have a safe word that they can call at any point in the experience to remove themselves. And we generally have a few people call. Every experience we have a few people say that safe word and we take them away from whatever experience they've decided to leave and walk them out and make sure they're OK. And generally they are, they just were about to do something they that just their they had that reaction, that gut reaction that said no I need to stop. And generally they're fine, just a little shaken up. But yeah we remove them immediately, make sure they're OK and walk them out the door.

LL: Justin, what are you hoping people take away from one of these haunt experiences?

JB: Well I'm a storyteller and this is the medium I want to tell stories in. I want them to take away, A, they've seen an original story, an original work of art and B, I want them to have a visceral experience. I want them to have something that they'll never forget that. They walk away all night saying wow I can't believe I did that. And I want them saying, I want to do something like that again.

LL: Yeah, I don't think you'll ever see me at the door, but thank you for talking to me.

JB: Of course.

LL: Justin Brink is the creator of Miasma, an extreme, immersive haunt experience. He was in Chicago, Illinois.

SOUNDCLIP

Door opening.

[Screaming].

LL: Now few people in North America know more about haunted houses and the haunted house industry than Amber Arnett-Bequeaith. She literally grew up in the business, as the daughter of haunted house entrepreneurs. Today, she is the spokesman for America's National Association of Haunted Attractions, called America Haunts, and we have reached her in Dallas, Texas. Hello.

AMBER ARNETT-BEQUEAITH: Good morning. Happy Halloween.

LL: Thank you. So you have a special name. You're the queen of something. What is it?

AAB: I am. I am the Queen of Haunt during this beautiful time of year.

LL: Now why are you called that?

AAB: Well when this industry began, which was back in 1975, the Edge of Hell, which is the very first and the oldest, considered the granddaddy of them all. It began the industry and it is the oldest commercial haunted attraction in the United States. And so it kind of just fell into that. I think what's interesting as well is that this was also created by my mother and my grandmother, my uncle who I now run the business with and we did a lot of outdoor theater before we ever did haunted attractions. So we are much more of a theatrical element. We don't believe in gore or shock. We believe in the haunting and creating memories.

LL: OK. So tell me about those first haunted houses in America.

AAB: Well it's definitely, my great grandfather was a pastor and the Edge to Hell was all based on the essence of heaven and hell and that if you walk on the edge, you will encounter these sorts of demons. So yes, I'm an expert in fears and phobias and that's what you're trying to provoke. And that really has to do with the theme. How you are able to move the mind into a certain area just for a split second, believe that something is real, like in the use of live animals or yeah it was very claustrophobic in the Edge of Hell and it continues to be one of its elements. But it's about that these sorts of demons are classics like vampires and rats and snakes. So more of the general phobias that can provoke the adrenaline rush that people are looking for.

LL: But gentler than what we're hearing about today then?

AAB: Absolutely. America Haunts, the haunts that I represent and am the spokesperson for, we are adamantly against those types of experiences. In fact, we don't even consider them haunts.

LL: And you're talking about the kind of haunts we just heard from Justin Brink. You're against that?

AAB: Yeah. It was interesting because in the beginning it says don't call me a haunt and then he uses that term throughout his interview. So no, like when you read story books and you see these beautiful buildings, two story buildings, they're never a one story haunted house, but the visual from a child, these are the types of attractions. We're hi-tech, we're animatronics, we're Disneyesque in how we present ourselves.

LL: Why are you against what Justin Brink does?

AAB: Well I've been doing this for 44 years and his terminology that we've not had anyone who's experienced major medical issues yet, just tells me that the time will come and they, we spend all of our haunts in America Haunts, we'll spend close to a half a million dollars on the safety of the customer. It's our number one concern. Before we ever build anything that someone wants to pay to come see or enjoy for Halloween, these types of attractions don't go through the rigorous coding that we do. Theirs is very small and it's just not something that we agree with on any level.

LL: So tell me then, why do people want to go into a creepy house to be scared?

AAB: Well for us, it's creating that safe environment. And it's also definitely whenever, one of the things that we talk about for the Edge of Hell and what is so amazing for me is that now, they started that when I was 5 years old, we now have grandparents bringing back their grandchildren. It is an experience that you don't forget. It is fun to watch people get scared in a safe environment and you learn a lot about people. How someone reacts and everyone reacts differently. Some crawl, some cry, some run. Some give up their date to the monster and leave them. Some pee their pants. Everyone's reaction to being startled or scared is different and that can be very humorous. It's also an amazing holiday to get to step outside of who you are, but I think that it's also just about those human experiences. And being in that environment together creates bonds. And we get, we have tons of wedding now at our haunted attractions.

LL: Weddings, really?

AAB: Yeah, a lot of people, maybe it's their second, a lot of second weddings and there's children and they want to make it fun for them. They're combining families. So yeah, we marry people every year. The Edge of Hell was I think listed by the Nod, as one of the top five most unique places to get married in the United States.

LL: I would think so. Now you come at this, I think from a life long, as you were talking about your family before experience of this. There's a rumor you used to sleep in a coffin. Is that true?

AAB: It is. It is. So for us, we did theater and so you, everyone works the show. Everyone had a part. And I worked in the room with my mother and then whenever I would grow tired, my uncle would scoop me up and that was just kind of the safest place for me to sleep for the night. It was up above the big entry arch door and back then, from 1975 to 2018 one of the things that I mentioned is the amazing increase of technology. It's also, if you look at why these extreme haunted places or what they term "immerse" are coming forward, is the continued human nature of wanting kind of like an adrenaline junkie. And that's kind of where those place, just a general experience for an amazing fall fun atmosphere is what we create. And back in 1975, you could go to graveyards and gather all the flowers. That's what we used for snow, with the dying, the smell of dying flowers throughout the house. Now in 2018, you actually have infusers. You can make any room smell exactly like you want, which that's touching all of your senses and that's what we do inside America Haunts is we're working with what you touch on the wall, what you're walking on. We could go to the stockyards and you know buy a few animal heads.

LL: I want to ask you though before we run out of time, as the Queen of Haunts, as your title, the Queen of Haunts, what are your plans for Halloween night?

AAB: Oh my gosh. I am going to be trick-or-treating with my twins. So back when I was growing up, my mom always had to work and I've always made it something that I do is I make sure and have some time to trick-or-treat with my children. And so I'm all about the essence of what Halloween is.

LL: Sounds kind of tame.

AAB: Bottoms for apples and hay rides and going to a haunted house.

LL: This is very tame, Amber.

AAB: Actually no. We have at the beach, you can just go down a four story slide or you can jump two stories out a window. So we're not exactly just tame, we're just not what we were talking about earlier.

LL: OK. Amber, thank you very much and Happy Halloween.

AAB: Happy Halloween. Screams and laughter from Dallas.

LL: Amber Arnett-Bequeaith is the Queen of Haunts. She's the spokesperson for America Haunts. We reached her in Dallas, Texas. Well the CBC News is next then the haunts continue on this Halloween Day. We're going to go inside the heads of people who go out of their way to get scared and not just at this time of year. The therapeutic value and risk of fear in our next half hour. I'm Laura Lynch, in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you are listening to The Current.

[Music]

Back To Top »

How feeling frightened can be therapeutic for some

Guests: David Zald, Margee Kerr

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come. Cameroon in West Africa, is a country on the brink of civil war. The country's English speaking minority says it's being oppressed by the French speaking majority. It's trying to breakaway and armed conflict has ensued. That story in half an hour. But first, the therapy of fear.

[Music]

LL: Well in our last half hour, we heard about a new generation of haunted house or immersive extreme haunt experience. People go to them for fun, but some people go to them for more than that. Take the Los Angeles-based horror experience, Heretic, for example. It offers its patrons a truly terrifying experience. They're made to feel like you're starring in a real life horror movie and some participants say it's almost a form of therapy.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The thing I really appreciate about Heretic is that it pushes me to the limits that I didn't know I had. So you know in normal day, you have your own boundaries on your own life. And you know you aren't exposed to extreme elements, you aren't exposed to being kidnapped, you aren't exposed to living out a horror movie and then Heretic gives you that opportunity to take away the control from your life and be put in situations to explore different aspects of yourself that you didn't know were there and really get a feel of who you are, when you're put in these extreme situations.

LL: Plenty of people are drawn to experiencing fear. In fact, they think it's a thrill more than anything else. My next guest has studied what draws people to fear and what they get out of it. David Zald is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and that's where we have reached him. Hello.

DAVID ZALD: Good morning.

LL: Now listening to that man's experience, why would someone choose to put themselves in an extremely frightening situation?

DZ: Well one of the things that he brings up, which I think is really important is that there is a mastery experience that can happen, if someone does it and goes through it and does it successfully. They prove to themselves that they can and that's a really important feature.

LL: But what motivates them to seek it out in the first place?

DZ: I think that varies between people. One of the things that makes them seek it out is that it's something that's beyond the normal. You know if we go through our daily life, sometimes it can be, let's just say boring and sometimes where we don't have all that much that's going on and this hones the senses. This gives you an experience that you're fully invested in, that you're fully experiencing and that itself is really quite appealing to many people.

LL: Yeah, we heard our guest in the last half hour talk about the fact that so many of us are surrounded by screens all the time, that actually getting inside something physically is actually one of the reasons why people seek it out?

DZ: Yeah, I mean you can only do so much by watching TV or even playing video games. This is a totally immersive experience that people are having.

LL: What's happening in a person's brain during that kind of experience?

DZ: Well there are several areas of the brain that are really there to detect salience or how to really sort of attend to things that are important, including things that are threatening. So there's areas such as a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is in our temporal lobes, which sends projections all over the brain, including to like direct projections to visual cortex that may allow things to get prioritized. So that we can act, so that we can perceive what's important, so that we can run if we need to, we can fight if we need to and this is really an organizing sort of motivation because it's stamping that this is urgent. This needs to be dealt with now.

LL: How do people then tend to feel after that is over?

DZ: Well there is a natural sense of relief that happens. There's this letdown that happens of this relaxation and that itself may be considered really rewarding. Greg Siegle, who's a psychologist at University of Pittsburgh, says that people are almost like they're in a meditative state at times once they leave that experience because it's like everything has been released. And so they're still in the here and now, but there's this major relaxation that can happen. There's also still a sort of tingling of the reward itself from the experience, just like if you just got off a rollercoaster, where it's a full complete in the moment sort of experience.

LL: Can't people access those same kind of emotions though from other less extreme things? I mean you do mention rollercoaster, lots of us have been on that. Is it exactly the same kind of response?

DZ: It's a very similar response. I think the thing that's important to note is that there's almost like these experiences have to be on adrenaline, in the sense that people have experienced one thing and every time you experience it, it sort of gets devalued a little bit more, such that it's not as intense the next time. And so what's happened with some of these extreme haunted houses is they've upped the ante for the people who have already done the traditional haunted house. That's been a great experience, but it's no longer as dramatic for them and so this raises it up a notch.

LL: So is there a downside to that then?

DZ: I mean I think the downside is that for some people it could be more than they bargained for. If they haven't sort of worked their way up to that, it's like starting on the extreme level and that could be really challenging for some people.

LL: Well I would also think about people who've experienced trauma in their past.

DZ: And that's one of the concerns that had been raised, that someone who has had trauma, this could even be like a flashback experience for them and can raise up issues. We often think of that some exposure is actually really helpful therapeutically, and you could see an advantage there, but that's typically done in a therapist office, that's done in a very controlled way where you're stepping it up over time. This just throws the people right in there.

LL: And you're talking about when it's used as therapy, these are specifically for people who are trying to overcome traumatic experiences.

DZ: That's correct.

LL: So all we're hearing about these activities becoming more intense. Do you think there is a limit to how far people can or should go with all of this?

DZ: There may be. I think there's going to be big individual differences though. For some people that limit may be really up there and it may not be clear where that point is that reaches a limit. I think there are other people where that limit is reached much earlier. And for those people I wouldn't particularly recommend that they do these extreme haunted houses, unless they've already proven to themselves that they can do easier ones.

LL: What about for you, what's your limit?

DZ: For me, I put myself someplace in the middle. There's some of these houses that I've read about that currently would be more than I would choose to do myself.

LL: David Zald, thank you very much for your time.

DZ: You're welcome.

LL: David Zald is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Of course, what does make one person shiver and quiver, can make another person laugh or just clam up. My next guest looks at all the different ways people react to fear and why. Margee Kerr is an adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and she is the author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. We have reached her in Philadelphia. Hello.

MARGEE KERR: Hello.

LL: You are an avowed lover of haunted houses and so much so, in fact you set up one in your laboratory. Tell me what you were researching.

MK: So my colleague, Greg Siegle, who Dr. Zald mentioned earlier, we wanted to really understand from a comprehensive perspective what was happening in these spaces and why people were going to them and what they were feeling and how that changed from before to after. So we did set up a temporary lab in the basement of an extreme haunted attraction and we recruited guests who had already purchased tickets. We asked them a series of questions before and after it and we also measured their brainwave activity with mobile EEG headsets before and after, as they completed a series of different types of tasks to see how their thinking changed. And yeah we found that people's mood does improve. So it is providing a in the moments mood boost and those positive changes were related to reports of feeling like they challenged their fears, that they learned something about themselves and the scarier the better.

LL: Did that surprise you?

MK: It didn't surprise me a ton, you know obviously if people are dedicating time and resources to something then they are looking for some positive gain. I think that the degree of increase was surprising, you know people's mood really did improve and then what was surprising too is how their brain wave activity did change. As Dr. Zald was mentioning, we did see that there was this global decrease of reactivity after people went through, suggesting people really weren't getting caught up in their thinking. Things just you know they were kind of checked out in a good way.

LL: Now we know when we're afraid, but it is not easy to define. Can you give it a try. What is fear?

MK: Well it is very much an individual level process that people are bringing meaning to what their body is doing, to what they are doing. So we can have many different definitions of fear even within the same person. You know we know the fun fear versus the true just terror, so you know at a physiological level, it's really the variation is the norm, but there's going to be a lot of differences. It's really about the meaning that we give to these experiences within specific context.

LL: What factors though contribute to people reacting differently?

MK: So that's a big mix of genes, personal experience and environment in which we're raised. So you know for cultures that have a large Halloween industry, there's this big space for this idea of fun scary. So it really is going to vary by culture and by personal experience and genes.

LL: Right because haunted houses, they're not really a thing in other countries. It's a very sort of almost North American thing.

MK: Yeah and it's interesting in my travels to Japan and South America. You know the Halloween version of the haunted house has been exported, but even in you know in different countries, they still have their own versions of fun scary activities. So in Japan you see a lot of haunted attractions are active in the spring you know when it gets hot and you would go to a haunted house to get a chill and cool down.

LL: And then the other thing you were talking about is upbringing, people who were raised in you know who had a terrible upbringing, would react differently to fear I would think.

MK: Yeah. So it's really interesting because you know in my studies, there are people who want to go to a haunted house because their lives are you know boring or mundane, but there are also people who have had you know traumatic experiences that want to go to feel a sense of mastery, who want to feel you know the fear within their own control. And then you know there are also the studies that are done with people who have experienced extreme neglect, their threat response is going to look very different. They might not get the same type of reward because of how their you know threat response was impacted.

LL: What it means to them is a different thing entirely because of the way they were desensitized to it, would that be the right word?

MK: Yeah and that's what you see when they're looking at studies with you know kids who are raised in abusive orphanages or you know with extreme neglect. It's their response is not going to look the same or probably bring the same type of experience.

LL: Now I want to get to this for our listeners because you like to seek a thrill and feel fear yourself and not far from our studio here is the CN Tower. You took a walk out on the ledge of that building, as an experiment. I would never do this. What was that like?

MK: It was amazing and it really is my favorite experience and the one that I think impacted me the most because I was so surprised. I'm not afraid of heights. When I went skydiving, I just experienced pure bliss. And I did not think that I would be afraid, but as soon as I walked out on that platform, it was like I had met a whole new Margee. I just I was completely shocked at how my body responded. I was terrified. And it was such a wonderful reminder that there are still experiences where we can learn new things about ourselves. I think as we age we tend to think that there's nothing new to learn or discover, but there is and the fear I felt on the CN Tower was unlike anything I'd ever experienced, but I made it through and I did it. You know you're out there for like half an hour and I still use that experience today when I'm trying to do something that is difficult or that I'm afraid, I remember like I hung off the side of the CN Tower. I can do this and it really is a source of strength for me.

LL: Now we should say that this is an attraction that you and others who do this are tethered to the tower. Would you ever do it again?

MK: Absolutely and that's what is so amazing too is I knew that the safety precautions were extreme. I mean they make sure you are totally safe, but none of that matters as soon as you walk out there. It's you just, you stop thinking. And it was like all I thought was I can't fly, I shouldn't be up here. And I would do it again, you know I wish I could do it at the start of every morning just as a confidence boost.

LL: Now our fears are instinctual and I'm wondering if there are risks in not listening to your gut and listening to that instinct.

MK: Yeah I think that people need to learn their own fear response because it is there to inform us about our environment. And it can you know alert us to something that could be threatening that we may not be paying attention to, so ignoring what our body is telling us can be you know, can be dangerous. We need to listen to it and develop a self-knowledge around it, to be able to say, OK well I may be having a gut feeling that something's not right, but what is that trying to tell me. And is it accurate. Is this you know whatever is signaling this, is it a real threat or or something else. So it's really about learning your own body, learning your reactions and and gaining that sense of self awareness.

LL: But you agree that it can be therapeutic for some people or anxious people to experience fear and to confront it?

MK: I do. We saw that people reported lower rates of anxiety, less stress, less frustration. You know it was serving to help people you know feel good, even if just for a moment. My colleague Greg and I are working on furthering this research and developing a grant to do trials to see really how far these benefits can go and how they can help people. Certainly though, it's all within a context of choice and that people are maintaining that sense of agency and control.

LL: Now beyond haunted houses and thrill inducing recreation, how else do you see fear being used today?

MK: Fear is a wonderful way to motivate action. And so it can be used by power holders, politicians, the media to control attention and to motivate you know action towards a specific agenda. So I do a lot of lectures and speaking on how to recognize when fear, when you're being intentionally scared in a manipulative way, really to either buy something or follow a specific agenda because you know it is an effective strategy to scare someone and then offer a solution and reduce that feeling of anxiety.

LL: Are you seeing that in the political world around you, as you approach the midterms there in the United States?

MK: Oh absolutely. I think that at this point, it's gone beyond subtlety to just blatant. This is the approach and we're going to use it and it's very disheartening because it is a time when we need to be thinking thoughtfully and carefully and not just responding on fear.

LL: But it must work.

MK: It does work and that's what I really try to get that message out there so much that the people need to understand what they truly are at risk of and what is really going on because we have this amazing body, this amazing threat response, but it can be used at times against us. To make us afraid of things that we don't really need to be afraid of.

LL: Really interesting discussion, Margee Kerr. Thank you.

MK: Thank you.

LL: Margee Kerr is an adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. She is in Philadelphia.

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How a Nova Scotia pumpkin regatta honours the giant gourd

Guests: Danny Dill

LL: We have one last Halloween treat for you, a short story now about something you've likely never thought about.

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VOICE: Well I call them PVCs, personal vegetable craft.

LL: That's Danny Dill in Windsor, Nova Scotia and his PVCs or personal vegetable crafts, are giant pumpkin boats. This week, a man in North Yorkshire, England made the world chuckle when he paddled down the River Ouse in a giant pumpkin. According to news reports, the British man is applying to have his PVC recognized as the world's largest pumpkin boat. It weighed 619 kilograms, but for Danny Dill, son of the legendary giant pumpkin grower, Howard Dill, the Yorkshire pumpkin is not all that impressive. For about two decades, Danny Dill has been hosting a pumpkin regatta in his hometown of Windsor and some of the entries this year alone have been about the same size and he knows of some that are much bigger. Here is Danny Dill.

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VOICE 1: These are a lot of the competitors this year that were at our regatta. So we keep our track record of the size of the pumpkin that they're growing. So you can tell a lot of these are single paddlers, 544 pound pumpkin. Shoot down the list, you know this one 1073 pounds, you get down here, there's somebody a 1361 pound pumpkin. It's one thing a lot of people just even to see a giant pumpkin, you know even a 500 pound pumpkin is amazing, but then you get in a pocket and paddle it is another thing. I really don't know what's wrong with them. As I always say, I grow them, I don't row them. There's more entries here. 1269 pounds, 1155, 1361. Twenty years ago we just started off as kind of a bit of a joke. Five local people getting in a giant pumpkin, just to see if they would float and paddle across the water, which they did. I mean there was, it was a success. Now there's pumpkin regattas all across the world basically.

VOICE 2: And it all started here.

VOICE 1: Yeah we were the first actual pumpkin race, pumpkin regatta in the water. There was a grower a couple of years before that ordered seeds from us and he grew a giant pumpkin at that time, about 700 pounds and he decided to get in the pumpkin as a solo effort. Had a little trolley motor on it and just kind of you know mosey along in the water a bit. I never really thought, you know I thought oh you're crazy fool sort of thing. Never gave it much thought till it was about two years after that, that a couple of local ladies in our community approached me and thought what else can we do with pumpkins besides having our contests. And I thought well you know something, we could maybe try to have a race and they looked at me with like four eyes like what are you talking about. I said oh just put them in the water and race and here we are today. I don't even know what the big deal is about it or big Dill I should say. I mean, actually I just found out a grower that we've known for a long time from Oregon, paddled a pumpkin this year that weighed 2003 pounds. He grew for pumpkins this year over 2000 pounds and I thought OK I'm going to check this out because I knew there were much bigger pumpkins being paddled, not only here in Canada, but also in the United States. And he put one in the water this year that weighed 2003 pounds, one time. So that's big.

VOICE 2: What do you think as the guy who came up with the idea of having a race on the water in a pumpkin, that this whole idea has taken off around the world?

VOICE 1: Oh I'm actually I'm overwhelmed by it all. I think it's, this year we attracted probably 20,000 people here in Windsor alone. I mean with no advertising. It's incredible the draw at this giant pumpkins in the water in regatta. And like I said all these other locations I mean are staging these events now in their own states or provinces or countries because they know the magnetism of the giant gourdes and what it attracts. I mean I guess you just need a few key ingredients, you need some giant pumpkins. You need some crazy people and you need some body of water and you're good to go. So I think it's going to be a wonderful thing. Who knows, it could be in the Olympics someday.

LL: OK, yeah the Olympics of giant pumpkins. Think about that when you put out your tiny little pumpkin outside your door tonight. That was Windsor, Nova Scotia's Danny Dill, an expert on big pumpkins and pumpkin regattas. Well coming up in our next half hour, we'll be talking about something completely different. I'll speak with Felix Agbor Nkongho. He's a human rights lawyer whose advocacy around issues in the war torn region of Cameroon landed him in prison. I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

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Could a conflict along language lines push Cameroon to civil war?

Guests: Felix Agbor Nkongho, Paul-Joel Kamtchang, Chris Roberts

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current. The videos from Cameroon are disturbing.

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[Man speaking in French followed by a gun shot]

LL: In this one, two women and two young children are being led down a road by a group of African soldiers. The women and children are blindfolded, then ordered to the ground and abruptly shot at close range. The video first surfaced on social media in July and a debate immediately broke out over who was responsible. With many pointing the finger at Cameroonian soldiers. Government officials initially dismissed the allegations as fake news, but an exhaustive forensic investigation by the BBC, determined when and where the executions happened and that the soldiers in fact were Cameroonian. Within a month the West African country's government confirmed seven members of its military had been arrested. It's damning proof that this is a military capable of turning against its own citizens. In the country's north, where the video was taken, the military is fighting Boko Haram, the Islamic insurgent group that once aligned itself with ISIS. But in the country's southwest, a lesser known conflict is driving Cameroon to what some are calling the brink of civil war. The predominantly francophone country's military is battling against rebels from the country's anglophone minority. The English speakers are incensed over what they describe as widespread repression and the rebels have even declared an independent republic they're calling Amazonia, which already has its own national anthem.

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National anthem of Amazonia.

LL: Some of the self-described Amazonian resistance fighters you hear chanting the anthem there in an online video, they look like teenagers and at least one, a young boy is jubilantly brandishing a gun. The United Nations estimates that the fighting has displaced 160,000 people inside Cameroon, with another 40,000 fleeing to neighboring Nigeria. Both government forces and rebels have been accused of atrocities. Villages and schools have been burned and protesters and activists have been jailed and kidnapped. Felix Agbor Nkongho was one of them. He is a human rights lawyer and an anglophone activist in Cameroon. He is also the president, founder and chairman of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa. He is currently though visiting Canada where he's been meeting with a number of government officials and politicians. And he is in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

FELIX AGBOR NKONGHO: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for having me in the studio.

LL: What was your reaction when you first heard of that video of the two women and children being executed?

FAN: Well I I watched the video. It's not very surprising. It's a pattern, which is widespread and systematic. What is happening in the northern part of Cameroon, the fight against terrorism and Boko Haram, the excesses of the military officers, the special wings and the police is a pattern that has always happened in Cameroon when there's protests. You know civilians have always been arrested, have been detained, some have been killed and this is what we're facing also in the English-speaking part of the country. So these are widespread and systematic gross human rights violations, which the government is known to be perpetrating.

LL: Right and they were caught up in Cameroon's war with Boko Haram and that as you say is not the only conflict the military is fighting. How do you explain what has been happening for the past two years in the country's two majority English speaking regions?

FAN: Well what has been happening in the country is clearly the basic fight for rights, a fight against marginalization and oppression, a fight for the restoration of the state of the southern Cameroons, for the restoration of federalis depending on who is talking in the struggle for in southern Cameroon. But it started as a peaceful protest by lawyers and teachers in October 2016 with the creation of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium. But the brutality, the reaction of government, you know had in positions, people were beaten, lawyers were arrested, their wages and guns were seized. Students were robbed and mugged just like what happened in the north also you know and some of their houses were broken, their properties were carted away, lots of them were detained. You know this is a pattern that happens and as a result of that, some of the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium of which I was the president, we were arrested and taken to a military detaining Yaoundé and tried on counts of terrorism, succession inside civil war, group rebellion, amongst others you know and these charges were just kind of bogus charges. But what happened is that the positions of people hiding. Most people looked at a treatment that was made it up on the leaders on those who were arrested just for arguing about a return to the federal structure that we have. And some believe that it was high time that the restoration of the independence of southern Cameroon, the war, the struggle should move to another level and that is where we are today.

LL: As you mentioned, you were charged with terrorism and jailed. What was prison like for you?

FAN: Well I mean prison was psychologically and physically very difficult. When we were arrested on the 17th of January, that's the same day the internet was cut off in the south, was on the north-west regions, that made of the Southern Cameroons for three months. And that was kind of collective punishment against the people of the southern Cameroon. We were cuffed from Boya. We were blindfolded and taken to Yaoundé, you know taken into the headquarters of the special investigative unit then transferred to the Gendarmerie headquarters and imprisoned. It was a psychological warfare. You know some of the guards would be very insultive. Some were very cooperative, but I remember a time when I was kept in solitary confinement for 45 days because they had found the telephone in my cell and which we're not supposed to have a telephone in the cell. That was I think one of the was periods on being in jail. But I think the height of the torture, psychological, was when my father was buried. My father died in my house on the 10th of December 2016 and my lawyers made an application, a request to the state authorities that I should attend his funeral, but they rejected it. So my father was been buried while I was in jail for really committing no crime. So it was really difficult you know, but I think our people also showed us a lot of love and that is something that I would always be indebted to the southern Cameroonians. They were very supportive. They paid us visit, they supported us emotionally you know by always writing letters, coming with food and bringing us water. So whilst we were in jail, I mean we really felt the love of the people and the struggle was definitely continuing. So it made us feel proud that we fought a good fight and the people had not abandoned us.

LL: Were there francophones among those who supported you and came to visit?

FAN: Yes, no, we, I personally had lots of francophone friends. You know if you look at my legal team, the team that defended us, there were lots of francophones also. We had Francophones like the current presidential candidate. So we had a battery of francophone lawyers also who were very supportive. We had francophone friends also in the press. I remember that a lot of them also would come and visit and some francophones who were interested in what we were doing. So they also supported us in the struggle.

LL: Now you were jailed. What other steps did the government take against those it considered its enemies among English-speaking citizens?

FAN: Well I mean most of them we were fortunate to be jailed honestly because why I say fortunate, some were not given the opportunity to be jailed. We have at least 6000 anglophones or southern Cameroons who have been killed in this struggle. We have those who are in jail. We have teachers like Valérie who has been in jail for now going to his second year. We have journalists, we have just people who were picked up in the street just because they were strolling, doing something.

LL: Can you tell me what happened in the village of Menka?

FAN: The story of Menka, it's a very tricky story because I have interviewed one of the lone survivors of the Menka incident and he gave me a completely different picture. It's just that for security reasons I decided not to publish the interview. I've met him and he said they were not boys, they were not terrorists. You know they had been brought in by a friend that government wanted to recruit them to do some work. So they were ambushed you know by government officers. You know they were not terrorists and the people who were living there, they did not force them to be there. So the narrative from the government flies completely against what this survivor told me you know. But because these things you know it goes unreported, after a while everybody forgets about it, the gruesome killing in Menka is similar to the one that happened in the 30th of July, where five young men were killed. I mean there were five, four were forward. The same situation happened a few weeks ago in Buea town, where close to thirteen people were killed.

LL: I have to ask you though, anglophone rebels have also been accused of atrocities targeting people they believe are working with the government and burning schools. How much responsibility do rebels bear for the bloodshed?

FAN: As the president of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, we have constantly and continuously condemn violence from both parties. We don't condone the violence committed by the armed separatists. Yes they have been bombing schools, yes they have been kidnapping. They've been demanding for ransom. You know they've been also terrorizing the civilian position. That is why we believe that if we can have a very holistic dialogue and decision that can bring an end to this current crisis because there are atrocities committed by both parties. Yes the government commits most of the atrocities, but also we should acknowledge the fact I mean the armed separatists are also committing crimes and we've strongly condemned these atrocities committed by the arm separatists. But there is a need for both parties to sit and talk, I mean those who are taking up arms. And if there's a possibility they can give the people the right to go for a referendum and decide what they really want.

LL: Now as I said you've been meeting with officials and parliamentarians in Ottawa. What role would you like Canada to play?

FAN: Well I would like Canada, it's in the Commonwealth like Cameroon, it's francophone like Cameroon. I would like Canada to raise the issue about the crisis, the humanitarian catastrophe going on in the English speaking part of the country at the level of the Commonwealth. Raise it at a level of the francophonie also and that Canada should try as much as possible to raise at the security council. Nothing stops Canada from joining with other friends of Cameroon to try to include something like travel bans. To freeze the assets of those who are perpetuating these violence. Canada can have meetings with other partners, like the US, like the EU to address the issue that is affecting the peoples of Southern Cameroon. But Canada also has the possibility, the potential to also support civil society organizations that are documenting and monitoring and reporting on the violations and also assist in providing legal aid to those who are in detention because some of them don't have access to lawyers under legalities. Canada also can issue a strong public statement condemning what is going on in Cameroon because we have a shared humanity. We have a responsibility to protect. Canada has a moral authority to ensure that the crisis in Cameroon comes to an end.

LL: We will have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

FAN: You're welcome.

LL: Felix Agbor Nkongho is a human rights lawyer and anglophone advocate from Cameroon. He is the president, founder and chairman of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa. He was in our Ottawa studio. And as you just said, it's not just anglophones that are upset with how Cameroon's government is treating the country's English speaking minority. Paul-Joel Kamtchang is a freedom of expression and digital rights activist who works with an organization called Data Cameroon. We reached him in Johannesburg, South Africa. And our thanks to CBC producer Marc Apollonio for his interpretation services. Hello.

PAUL-JOEL KAMTCHANG: Hello.

LL: We spoke to Felix Balla, what do you think of the kinds of criticisms he's made against President Biya and the Cameroonian government?

PJK: I agree with his take on things. He does an excellent job of documenting violations of rights on the ground. And what he brings to the table in terms of his analysis is just the first steps on what needs to be done to take care of the anglophone problem and his views are shared by a large part of the population of Cameroon.

LL: Now he was jailed for eight months for speaking out. Do you think that that was warranted?

PJK: No, I don't think that was fair. The government invited Mr. Balla to the table and for a dialogue and then decided they didn't like what he was saying and threw him in jail. They've done that with other authors and it wasn't, these weren't the people who were agitating and causing people to agitate in the streets. And so they were just targets of the government to impose its will.

LL: So then what would the current climate be for freedom of expression in Cameroon?

PJK: I'd say right now it's a pretty bad situation as far as rights go, not just the freedom of expression, but also the right to protest. And all this began in the lead up to the election that happened October 7th when the government started to prohibit people from being able to march, accusing people of wanting to cause violence or trouble in the streets. Yet at the same time, allowing pro-government demonstrators to march, even with the support of the police.

LL: Now what is the situation then for Francophone activists like yourself? Can you speak freely in support of Anglophone rights, if you choose to?

PJK: We have a situation now in Cameroon where anyone speaking in support of the anglophone cause is being branded as an apologist for terrorism, an apologist for separatism, when that's not the case at all. Francophones who are agitating on behalf of anglophones who are being pulled into court where what they're doing is really just a case of standing up for the rights of their fellow citizens. They're not making any sort of stance for special interest rights, they're just standing up for other Cameroonians who in this case happen to be anglophone.

LL: And what about you personally? Have you faced consequences? Have you been harassed for speaking out?

PJK: Yeah. Shortly before I left Cameroon, I received a message and this is in the context of the fact that I'm helping people, documents on the grounds, criticisms that are being leveled by the government of people of participating in dangerous speech and other criticisms that are aimed at fracturing our society. So I received a message about that work that was telling me to let the government do its job. And I realized after the fact that it was actually quite a thinly veiled threat. I don't take it very seriously, I don't think it was a very dangerous threat at this stage. It came from someone in the government. I do realize that it's coming in a climate where anonymous messages are being sent around and so it's a time that we have to be aware and careful.

LL: What is it exactly that you're asking for?

PJK: What we're asking for is just a fair and neutral dialogue process that brings representatives of the anglophone community and the government to the table with a neutral and independent mediator. Various efforts have been made in the past to create this dialogue, but they haven't been forthright. They haven't been fair and they haven't allowed the anglophone side to really represent its views.

LL: Now President Biya won re-election after 36 years in power. I'm wondering if you think the country can find a solution to all of these problems under his leadership.

PJK: I highly doubt it. He is at the head of an arrogant government that makes decisions and imposes them on the people. So unless he is prepared to wipe the slate clean and begin with a totally new approach, it's highly unlikely I think that he will resolve this anglophone problem.

LL: Is your country close to falling into civil war?

PJK: No I think it's highly unlikely they'll be a civil war. The government's approach is to leave problems unresolved and that way be able to take control afterwards, which means that there will probably be a continuation of flare-ups of discontent, but I don't think it's going to go as far as a civil war.

LL: What role do you want to see the Canadian government play in trying to move this forward in trying to resolve this?

PJK: I think that the international community in Canada need to take a fairly strong approach with the government of Cameroon now. You know that includes things like economic sanctions, taking this case to be before the UN because up till now the international community has dealt with Cameroon in a diplomatic way. It doesn't seem to have resolved anything, so now I think it's time to put in place some stronger measures.

LL: Mr. Kamtchang, thank you very much for your time.

PJK: OK. Thank you very much.

LL: Paul Kamtchang is a freedom of expression and digital rights activist who works with an organization called Data Cameroon. We reached him in Johannesburg, South Africa. And again thanks to the CBC's Marc Apollonio for his help with translation in that interview. Well my next guest says Canada is well positioned to help leaders in Cameroon defuse the escalating French-English tensions in the country. Chris Roberts is a professor at the University of Calgary where he teaches African politics and international relations. He is in our Calgary studio. Hello.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Good morning, Laura.

LL: We just heard Paul-Joel Kamtchang call on Canada and the international community to take essentially a harder stance on Cameroon. What do you think of that?

CR: It really is about time. The issue though is Canada has some direct ability for leverage, but really works best building a multilateral coalition that is willing to take those kinds of measures that both of your previous guests have suggested, which is a range of maybe targeted economic sanctions. But actually on one hand you offer you know you have the sticks, but on the other hand you want carrots, so you want to be able to actually enable that dialogue, which both of your guests have also mentioned, which is helping both people within the francophone part of the country and the anglophone part of the country, find a way to actually have a neutral open dialogue that is mediated by civil society organizations or at least supported by, you know not led by, but supported by international assistance to actually start to address some of these issues. Federalism is not a word that you can actually mention in this dialogue process, which is as Felix pointed out, federalism if you can't talk about federalism in Cameroon, then what is the next step? You have to go towards secession because federalism or autonomy is no longer on the table.

LL: It is so unusual to listen to this and know that Canada has mirrored the situation and dealt with it in a different way. Is that what makes Canada well suited to help try to deescalate tensions in the country?

CR: Well pretty much exactly. If we go back to Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1960s, before he was prime minister, he did a tour as a minister, as a justice minister, he did a tour of Francophone Africa in the late, middle late 1960s, basically describing how Canada's constitutional system works in terms of dealing with this binational, bicultural relationship between anglophones and francophones. Fast forward 40 or 50 years, Cameroon which was initially at independence in 1961, when southern Cameroon joined up with previously French Cameroon, it was a federation, but that federation quickly was turned into a formally by 1972, a unitary state. So this notion that you know Canada is basically the reverse of Cameroon. We have, Cameroon's about 20 percent anglophone, about 80 percent francophone. It's really not a language issue, as people in Cameroon will point out, it's not as this strict language divide, but it is an issue of a centralizing unitary government that has been dominated by a certain political party since independence, but also a president, who has been in power, you know put it in these terms, this president has been in power since the first term of Ronald Reagan and controls this country as a more as a fiefdom than as a country that's designed to actually empower everybody in the country.

LL: Now President Biya is who you're talking about and I understand that you view him as a rather cagey individual. How does he insulate himself from international criticism?

CR: Well this is the issue. I mean he does not produce a lot for the average Cameroonian, whether you're in anglophone Cameroon or if you're in francophone Cameroon. What he does, what he has done very well is make sure that he has international legitimacy. And how does he do that? For a long time he made sure that Cameroon was like the island of stability in a region which ranges from you know Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Central African Republic. It was this island of stability for investment, but also for international peace and security. So what does he do? He has allies in the global war on terror. He has United States troops and French troops on the ground, helping him with the Boko Haram crisis in the north. But of course, what it's done is it's led to his military being stronger so that they can actually clamp down in the West, which is an internal political problem, resulting from this lack of autonomy and lack of power and lack of economic opportunity in the West. But he also has the economic ties of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, which flows from Chad through Cameroon to the coast, which is ships oil for both Exxon and the China National Petroleum Company. He has a large United Kingdom company that's developing a vast gas deposit off the coast. So he has economic, big economic companies and countries that are on his side. He's part of the global war on terror and he also, Cameroon supports both with military forces and through logistics, the very large UN peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic.

LL: So what's the incentive then for him to come to the table then?

CR: Well that's the thing. There is no incentive. If he's allowed to continue, both in terms of this international legitimacy, there's no incentive unless all those partners, including the United States, including France, including the United Kingdom and Canada as well, start to realize that Cameroon now that it's in the news, is no longer this island of stability. And part of that the major problem the major cause of that lack of stability is this government which has been in power for so long.

LL: So how is Canada responding then in your view?

CR: Well it's been slow. It's been quite slow. But Canada, differently than almost every other country, responded to the last election with a very clever diplomatic trick, which was Canada took note of the recent election results. It means that they didn't recognize it. They didn't say these are legitimate. It takes note that President Biya won the last election. That's the same language Canada used to recognize China in 1970. Take note of their China policy.

LL: Is that enough?

CR: No but it's a start and between, some of the initiatives that are coming up, for instance perhaps a dialogue process, which is being led by the churches and civil society within Cameroon. It has been delayed time and time again, that is planned to take place in western Cameroon. Everybody who's interested in this dialogue process, basically agrees that process should probably be taken outside the country and moderated by international observers so that it can get both the government who does not want to talk about federalism and of course many of the Amber groups in the interim government, which is pretty fed up with this government and doesn't think federalism is on the table.

LL: Chris, I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there.

CR: You bet.

LL: Thank You. Chris Roberts teaches African politics and international relations at the University of Calgary. He joined us from our studio in Calgary. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Oscar-winning actor Michael Caine is on the show with his new memoir, Blowing the Doors Off. I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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Oct. 31, 2018 episode transcript

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