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The Current Transcript for November 5, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: I actually despise what they're doing. I think they're a big distraction and they can tweet all they want, but I don't respect them and I won't respect them moving forward.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Remember the shooting in Parkland, Florida at the high school? The man you just heard lost his teenage sister in that tragedy and he's got no time for the teen activists from that same school fighting for tougher gun control. In fact last week he was at a Republican rally with his parents. They support a call for armed guards and armed teachers. As Americans spend a last day campaigning against a contentious midterm race, the Current's, Julie Crysler, brings us the sounds of polarized politics, not far from Parkland. Hear her in just a moment. And after that, how do we help people deal with the demons that follow them everywhere?

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VOICE: Every Yazidi the village has a mass grave. Were we not created like other human beings? Why are we all victims?

AMT: Many Yazidi young girls and women brutalized by ISIS are now in Canada. One man, a Kurdish German psychologist, is recognized as an authority in how governments need to and must help these victims. Canada has sought his advice. In an hour, we seek his insights. And blame Disney? A lot of creatures get the cuddly anthropomorphic treatment in film.

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VOICE 1: Hi, I'm Dory.

VOICE 2: Hi Dory.

VOICE 3: Hi Dory.

VOICE 1: And well I don't think I've ever eaten a fish.

VOICE 2: That's incredible!

VOICE 3: Good on ya mate!

AMT: Beyond Finding Nemo, do fish have feelings? We are checking the science and the debate in half an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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After Parkland shooting, students 'marched for their lives': Now they're urging youth to vote in U.S. midterms

Guests: Julie Crysler

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VOICE: They say a good a guy with a gun stops a bad guy with the gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. No. They say that no laws could have been able to prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.

JULIE CRYSLER: Do you remember that speech, Anna Maria?

AMT: I sure do. That is Emma Gonzalez, am I right? One of the survivors of the Parkland shooting.

JC: That's right. Back in February, she was in the auditorium at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. A gunman opened fire and 17 students and staff were killed. And in the aftermath, Emma and a group of friends started a movement calling for tighter gun control. And they organized that march on Washington that drew 200,000 people.

AMT: The Current's producer, Julie Crysler, is with me in our Toronto studio. Julie, we are talking gun control today. Yes tomorrow in the U.S. we have the midterm elections and Emma and March for Our Lives have been working toward them for months.

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VOICE: First time voters show up 18 percent of the time in midterm elections. Not anymore. Now who here is going to vote in the 2018 election?

JC: So that's David Hogg at that march on Washington.

AMT: David Hogg is the guy who the conspiracy theorists claim wasn't even a student. That he was merely paid as an actor.

JC: Yeah. Not true. He was a student. He's now an activist. And he and the rest of the group have been trying to change the conversation about guns to engage politicians and voters to convince them that tighter gun laws are needed and to stop tragedies like what happened at Stoneman Douglas. So I was curious to see whether their activism was actually translating into on the ground change and how Florida voters were responding to their message. So I traveled to the Parkland area.

AMT: And what did you find?

JC: Well we won't have a real answer until tomorrow of course, but I can tell you March for Our Lives has a big challenge in the midterms.

SOUNDCLIP

Girl chanting.

JC: So that is Emma Gonzalez. She's still wearing her head shaved and she was wearing a navy blue T-shirt that said "Persist" in pink letters. I met up with her and some of the other Parkland kids at Florida International University.

AMT: What were they trying to do?

JC: Well the plan was to get the students out of their dorm and drive them to an early voting site. They had a double decker bus.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Should we go up the stairs. Are we good?

VOICE 2: There might be like another room maybe.

VOICE 3: Yeah we only turned left.

JC: So David Hogg was also there. He's become one of the most recognizable members of the group, speaking at events across the U.S.

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VOICE 1: Should we knock on the door?

[Knocks]

VOICE 1: Okay these kids aren't even up yet.

VOICE 2: Yeah it's true, it's Saturday.

VOICE 3: It's Saturday?

[Knocks]

VOICE 3: Hello. Have you voted yet?

VOICE 2: Are you registered to vote?

VOICE 4: Yes I am.

VOICE 2: We're doing a bus to early voting for the next few hours. So it's right downstairs if you want to hop on.

VOICE 4: Early voting is today?

VOICE 2: Yeah you can early vote today.

VOICE 1: Yeah and there's like there's literally a bus that will take you there amd take you back. It's downstairs. It's says like Vote for Our Lives on it. So it's really cool.

JC: So it was a Saturday. A lot of students go home for the weekend, so there weren't that many around, but you can hear they did manage to talk to a few of them, but that double decker bus, it was more than they needed.

AMT: How else has the group been trying to engage young people in politics?

JC: Well to be fair, I mean this is just one of many events they've been holding. This summer they went on a bus tour all over the country. Leading up to the election, they've been holding town halls, visiting universities and throwing parties like one later that day where I caught up with Emma Gonzalez again.

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[Music]

VOICE: You guys go out and vote?

[Music]

VOICE: Yes. Free shirts, free stuff, anything. What size do you want? Any of these. What size?

JC: So they were playing music and handing out food and drinks in a courtyard on campus. Emma was heading out March for Our Lives t-shirts and bracelets, encouraging people to dance. I'd say a few dozen people showed up. I asked Emma why she thought more young people don't get involved in politics.

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VOICE: Usually young people don't get involved because they don't have time. It's so much to do and I drive home from college like every weekend. I'm here on like there's, we have like one party to all parties type of like it's like a really big hullabaloo. And it was this weekend and I was like sorry guys I gotta work. So like all my roommates were like you're missing out on the college experience and I was like, but I have to go work. So excuse me for like I got to go.

JC: But you're making a big, a different choice.

VOICE: Yeah.

JC: Not everyone can do that.

VOICE: I mean a lot of, a lot of people don't need to make that choice. A lot of like we have decided that we don't have the wiggle room. Like we could still just say you know what, screw it I'm just going to not do this anymore, but we don't because we have like higher moral ground than them.

JC: But I mean it would totally forgivable if you.

VOICE: Yeah it would be, but we wouldn't be able to forgive ourselves.

AMT: So Julie these events sound different from the rallies we saw right after the Parkland shooting. They're smaller, they sound smaller. What does it say about the strength of the movement right now?

JC: Well it does seem like some of the energy has waned. And the other thing that's striking is look these young people still have a big following on social media. But you can see it's that doesn't necessarily translate into real world action, but David Hogge told me he's not discouraged.

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VOICE: This is a generational long fight for justice. There's a famous quote by Martin Luther King where he talks about the arc of the moral universe and how it always bends towards justice. But what we have to remember is how long that arc is and it may not come this year or the year after or the decade after, but we have to start this fight now. It's going to happen before that though. All the walkouts were on high school campuses. Those kids are about to go into college and they've already learned how to organize through doing those lockouts and organizing their community. They're going to take that to college and start protesting against whatever they see as an injustice. And that really inspires me and gives me hope.

AMT: So in one way he's playing the long game, but what are they trying to accomplish in this specific midterm election?

JC: So their big focus is getting young people just out to the polls and they're also calling for stricter gun laws, continuing to do that. They want a ban on assault rifles and they want to see domestic abusers disarmed for example. Officially, this group is nonpartisan, not endorsing specific candidates and they say that preventing gun violence shouldn't be a partisan issue, but of course it is.

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VOICE: How about, do we have any Nancy Pelosi fans here?

[Crowd boos]

JC: So this was a Republican Rally and that's Andrew Pollack. His 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, was killed in the Parkland shooting. He was there to introduce the Republican candidate for governor of Florida.

AMT: And where was that Republican rally being held?

JC: So this is in the parking lot of the Wngs Plus in Coral Springs, it's a little over four kilometres from Stoneman Douglas High School.

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VOICE: So I'm going to tell you a word that haunts me. And it haunts me like I can't even tell you. It goes through my head every moment in the day. It's a word. That one too. It's called, it's accountability for my daughter. There's not a moment that goes by.

AMT: But he's not looking for accountability on gun control, is he?

JC: Right. He blames Democrats at the sheriff's office and on the school board for what happened in Parkland. And Andrew Pollack doesn't think more gun control is the answer. He wants to see tighter security at schools, armed guards, metal detectors and active shooter training for teachers.

AMT: And how big was the crowd he was talking to?

JC: So this is a heavily Democratic district, but they still got a couple of hundred people out.

SOUNDCLIP

Crowd chanting U-S-A.

JC: So there were lots of Make America Great Again hats, I even saw a baby wearing one. There were people carrying signs that said things like "say no to socialism" and "the devil is a Democrat."

AMT: And what did the people who were there have to say about the March for Our Lives people in that campaign.

JC: Well I actually heard some open animosity Anna Maria. This is Hunter Pollack. Meadow was his sister. He's 21, just a couple of years older than David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez.

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VOICE: I actually despise what they're doing. I think they're a big distraction and they can tweet all want, but we're the ones that actually made the change. So that's how I stand on that issue.

JC: And so like when you see them getting a lot of media attention, how do you feel about that?

VOICE: I think it's disgusting because they've been on two book tours in less than a year. I mean they're in it. The first two months I said maybe they're looking to do the right thing and then after the first two months I said, they're in this for followers or fame and possibly money in the future. So I don't respect them and I won't respect them moving forward.

AMT: Interesting. Really strong words from the brother of a young woman who was killed and real difference there.

JC: Yeah. Yeah. And it also gives you a sense don't you think of how emotional this debate is. You know people on both sides really angry. Now I did meet some young Republicans who didn't agree with the Parkland students on gun control, but they still respected their efforts to get young people voting and involved.

AMT: So how big is the gun issue in this election overall?

JC: Well look I think like everywhere, I think it's fair to say the midterms are a referendum on Donald Trump and his presidency. And in Florida, gun control is also competing with a lot of other local issues including dog racing. There's a measure to ban dog racing on the ballot. There's also a lot of concern about Red tide, the toxic algae bloom that's threatening the coast. But experts I talked to said that gun control is still in the top five issues on voters’ minds.

AMT: And how are gun owners feeling about them?

JC: Well I heard a lot of concerns about that, especially at Gun World of South Florida. That's a range and a gun shop, about a 20 minute drive from Stoneman Douglas High School. The young man who's awaiting trial for the mass shooting, bought several weapons there, but not the semi-automatic rifle that was actually used in the massacre.

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VOICE: It'd be 31.80, 15 each when you share a lane, but on a date night special, it's only 20 when you share the lane. So you save money!

AMT: Did he just say date night?

JC: Yes on Friday night they have a couples discount.

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[Gun shots]

JC: So the range is supervised by a guy named David Sweeney. He was wearing a red NRA golf shirt. And he was making sure that people don't get carried away while taking pictures.

AMT: Who was there?

JC: So it was a real mix. There was a young couple sharing a lane, taking turns firing a long gun. They were getting a little handsy between shots.

AMT: Date night.

JC: That's it, it was kind of romantic, I guess. There was a father with his teenage sons. You know a really mixed crowd. You can bring your own weapons. They also have them for rent or for sale.

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VOICE: This particular rifle is an Armalite. Which is actually what AR stands for. It's Armalite model number 15, not assault rifle.

JC: So that's Appollo Hacer, he works behind the sales counter at Gun World. He's a big guy, burly, bald head and a beard, an armful of tattoos. He's showing me the AR-15. This is the semi-automatic rifle that has become so controversial. It's the type of gun that was used in the Parkland shooting.

AMT: It was also used in the most recent shooting, the synagogue. Was it not?

JC: That's right and others like Las Vegas, the movie theater in Colorado. March for Our Lives has called for these kinds of weapons to be banned, but people like Appollo think there's a place for them.

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VOICE: It's very popular for sport because it's light. It's easy to use, the ammunition's readily available and not very expensive and like in 3 gun competitions, a lot of people use these rifles in those competitions because they can be very accurate and you can shoot them in those competitions with relative ease. And they're popular for even hunting like small vermin. So gophers you know coyotes and that such.

JC: You could shoot a gopher with that?

VOICE: You could. You could, it'd be a little overkill, but you could.

JC: A gopher is like am I thinking about the same animal as you.

VOICE: Yuu probably are, yeah.

AMT: So an AR-15 is good for vermin?

JC: I mean that's what he said. He you know as you hear, he does admit it's a little bit of overkill. And I you know just to give you a sense of the power of this weapon Anna Maria, I recently saw a ballistics demonstration and the bullet went straight through an SUV.

AMT: So how worried is Appollo about calls for banning weapons like the AR-15?

JC: So he was worried. The Democrats have been running on a platform that includes tougher gun control measures.

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VOICE: I could potentially be out of a job. You know, depending on what they pass, a lot of Floridians could lose their livelihood, but also my rights, my second amendment rights as an American could be infringed upon. We have a right to defend ourselves and that's what it is at its core is I'm in control of my personal protection, my defense. I'd hope to God I never have to defend myself, but I like having that option and the second amendment gives me that option.

JC: Do you worry for your personal safety?

VOICE: Mhmm.

JC: Why?

VOICE: Do you watch the news? I mean people get shot all the time down here and it's normally you know gang related. You may look at someone the wrong way and they freak out on you. I've seen it in traffic. I saw it several years ago, a guy got out of his car and started hitting another dude's car with a bat. For no reason. You know I don't know. It happens all the time.

AMT: He sounds scared and alarmist all combined.

JC: Yeah and you know look, I heard a lot of similar things from other people. I heard people saying they don't want to just rely on police to protect them and that they feel like it's a tough thing to talk about ever since the Parkland shooting.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Down here, it being so close to home, it's definitely a lot more emotional. It's much more of an emotional conversation. I mean even for myself, it was heartbreaking. I cried. No gun owner, who is an honest, law-abiding citizen, ever wants to see something like that happen. And the 99.9 per cent of us who use our guns in a legal manner, but when stuff like this happens, we get villainized. So it's been harder to have level headed conversations, but I don't think that should stop the conversation.

AMT: Julie how much did you hear that sentiment, the concerns about how polarized the debate has become?

JC: You know it's interesting, I heard that concern from a lot of people on different sides of the issue. Like Cameron Kasky for example, he's one of the students from Parkland who became active in March for Our Lives early on. You might remember him from when he challenged Marco Rubio on CNN.

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VOICE 1: So right now in the name of 17 people, you cannot ask the NRA to keep their money out of your campaign.

VOICE 2: I think in the name of 17 people, I can pledge to do that I will support any law that will prevent a killer like this.

VOICE 1: No, but I'm talking NRA money. A matter I bet we can get people in here to give you exactly as much money as the NRA would have.

VOICE 2: But it's not, I understand and you're right.

AMT: That appearance got a lot of attention for him and for the cause. How is he feeling about the movement now?

JC: Well Cameron left March for Our Lives in the summer. And he said he had some regrets about his role in shaping the conversation, including during that CNN town hall. Just play a little clip here. A warning he swears a bit when he talks about this.

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VOICE: Can you believe how pathetic that was? And you know what, so many adults were cheering me on and those are people who don't give a shit about solutions. They care about clubbing the Republican Party.

AMT: Why did he change his mind on that?

JC: He said he meant gun owners, like people I met at Gun World.

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VOICE: I realize that these are not people who shrug off school shootings. These are just people who don't agree with my ideas on how to stop them. And you know I started looking around and I started seeing what people were calling each other and I said this is ridiculous. I can't take part in this anymore. I can't in my good conscious, claim that somebody else doesn't care when little kids get murdered just because they disagree with me. That's pathetic. We all disagree on certain things. We all need to realize that everybody in this country wants pretty similar things, including safety and prosperity for everybody in it. So you can buy into any narrative you want that folks who don't believe in gun control are evil bloody hacks, but that's just garbage.

AMT: So Julie where is the common ground on all of this?

JC: Well you know considering how polarizing the gun debate can be, I was surprised how much common ground I did hear. The March for Our Lives people, they say they don't want to take guns away. They say they know that guns are embedded in American culture. They agree that people should be able to use them to do things like hunt. And gun owners I talked to agree that more needs to be done to make sure that people with violent tendencies, don't carry out these attacks. The problem is when you start getting into what specifically needs to get done, it gets hard.

AMT: It's interesting how the whole debate has developed over the months and now on the eve of the midterm election, I'm wondering how those activists students are feeling about their impact on this particular vote.

JC: Well look, I mean they told me they were optimistic, but they were also tempering expectations. So let me leave you with something that David Hogg said to me.

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VOICE: Any rise in voter turnout will be considered a win at the end of the day. Like if we don't, like we've already won too. Like we passed more gun laws in the past like eight months than have been passed in like I would say probably past eight years even. And like that momentum is going to continue. If we get a Congress, if we get a House for example that will work with us, that is just more legislators that will fund gun violence prevention, that would be a huge success.

JC: So he's hopeful that will happen and he'll be watching tomorrow night.

AMT: Well I guess we'll all be watching tomorrow night. Julie Crysler, thank you.

JC: Thanks Anna Maria.

AMT: Julie Crysler is a producer at The Current. Tomorrow we continue our coverage of the U.S. midterm elections with my documentary on Texas. Let us know what you think as you listen to what Julie had to say. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Identifying the polarization on all sides there, including people who really felt the impact of Parkland. Stay with us, the CBC News is next. And then, if you knew fish could feel pain, would you still eat them? Research suggests fish may just have more feeling than we thought. Scientists however are divided, including divided on the science that brought some to that conclusion. We will hear from both sides of the debate in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

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Do fish feel pain? Scientists are divided on the answer

Guests: Culum Brown, Steven Cooke, Hanne Digre

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, what Iraq's Yazidi women experienced under ISIS rule is unimaginably difficult, yet after being accepted in Canada as refugees, they say they are not receiving the mental health support they need. That's according to a new petition filed in the House of Commons last week. In half an hour, what we can learn from a psychologist who works with Yazidi women in Germany, as they work to distance themselves from the trauma of their recent past. But first, fish on.

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VOICE 1: Is it there?

VOICE 2: It is on.

VOICE 1: How does it feel Corey?

VOICE 2: Pretty good.

VOICE 1: I think it's a sockeye.

VOICE 2: Couple nice little tugs.

VOICE 1: You never know though.

VOICE 2: It's really flopping out the back too. Yeah we've had a real potpourri of fish here in the last 10 minutes.

VOICE 1: No kidding.

VOICE 2: Well let's have a look at this guy. Water ski him in here. Looks like a sock eye there.

VOICE 3: That's a beautiful fish though. That's a good size sockeye.

VOICE 1: There we go. Look at that. Beautiful.

AMT: Wow. The thrill of landing a sockeye salmon at the mouth of Fraser River. Whether they do it for food or for the sport of it, an estimated 3 million Canadians enjoy recreational fishing and out on the oceans, the fishing is happening on a truly massive scale.

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Sounds of a fishing trawler

AMT: On an industrial fishing trawler deckhands haul in a net overflowing with tuna. That's the sound you're hearing. Fish spill out onto the deck flopping wildly while workers kick them into a hole on the deck for processing. That's a scene repeated on fishing vessels around the world. From the hand caught salmon hooked in a stream to the suffocating tuna on the deck of a trawler, from the point of view of a fish either way seems like a stressful way to die. Which means there's a big question behind every salmon steak on your grill, every can of tuna in your cupboard. Do fish actually feel pain? For centuries the consensus has been, no. But a growing body of scientific research is suggesting that fish are more advanced than previously believed. If fish do feel pain there could be some far reaching implications for commercial and recreational fishing. For the latest thinking, I'm joined by two academics on either side of the scientific divide. In the fish do feel pain camp, I'm joined by Culum Brown. He's an associate professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, where he studies fish cognition and behaviour and how they apply to fisheries science. We've reached him in Sydney, Australia and from the fish do not feel pain side, we have Steven Cooke, a Canada research chair in fish ecology and conservation physiology at Carleton University and he's in our Ottawa studio. Hello gentlemen.

STEVEN COOKE: Good day.

CULUM BROWN: Good Morning.

AMT: Culum Brown, I'm going to start with you. Can you walk me through some of the key research that shows fish feel pain?

CB: Well I think the I guess the tide really turned in about 2002, when people first discovered that fish have effectively the neural senses in their skin and elsewhere that were capable of detecting painful stimuli. So it's the same kind of receptors that we see in humans and so that was quite some time ago and I guess since then there's a growing body of evidence that shows that they not only can feel the sets of painful stimuli, but they're processing it on an emotional and in a cognitive fashion and in a manner that is not identical to people, but very similar to the rest of the vertebrates. And indeed one of the reasons you and I feel pain in the way we do is because we inherited most of that hardware from our fishy ancestors.

AMT: And so can you tell me a little bit more about the studies, they were injected, were they not at one point, with acid?

CB: Yeah so there are lots and lots of different studies that have been done and most of them use a variety of different sorts of painful stimuli and one of the difficult things of working with pain and this is true in working with pain in humans is trying to standardise the painful stimuli that you're using in order to follow the behavioral responses. Now you have to remember when we're studying pain, we're talking about a subjective experience so you have a problem in that you can't ever really understand what's going inside the mind of another animal or indeed another human for that matter. But what we do is as with children, when you're studying pain in children, who can't tell you how they're feeling, you rely on behavioural and physiological evidence and basically by observing them, seeing does their heart rate change, do they hold their sore arm or leg or do they limp or do they cry. You use these sorts of behavioral observations to suggest that they're feeling pain in a way that is similar to what we might experience. And many of those include things like injecting initially bee venom, which we all have had some experience with, but then later it became a more refined and really the standard now is using a small injection under the skin of a mild solution of acids and it feels very much like a a bee sting to us. And when you do those sorts of experiments with fishes, you see all sorts of changes in behavior. And more importantly when you provide them with analogies and painkillers, then their behaviour returns to normal. So it's clearly that their responses are not reflexive. For a long time we used to think that fish were this sort of automated robots that swam around and just did their thing and no matter what you did to them they just reflexively respond to environmental cues and that's clearly not the case. We've known that for a really long time now, all over 15 years. So they're not reflective reflexive responses, they're long term changes in behavior that have got a lot to do with what's going on in their mind. They're clearly thinking about these sorts of experiences in a cognitive sense and probably in an emotional way, though I try not to talk about emotions in animals because it's a difficult topic.

AMT: Steven Cooke, is that a compelling argument for you?

SC: So if one really digs into the science, it becomes apparent that yes there are now several handfuls of papers that conclude or are supportive of the idea that fish feel pain, but we've been looking at those through a very critical lens. I'm part of a group of scientists, we consider ourselves to be fish pain skeptics, but fish welfare advocates and when we dig into the details of those papers, so if you don't run right to the conclusions and actually stop in the methods and really dig into the results, one quickly realizes that oftentimes the conclusions that arise from the papers don't necessarily jive with the actual findings. Some of the issues that we see repeatedly in this body of work is inconsistent use of definitions. So for example, it rather conveniently seems to always be the case that whatever definition is used, the findings tend to fit within that definition. So we believe there's a fair amount of harking going on. So harking is known as hypothesising after results are known. So in other words, instead of setting up an experimental approach where one identifies hypotheses a priori upfront and then goes about trying to test them, we think that a lot of this research involves doing the research and then playing with hypotheses and objectives afterwards to make sure that things fit.

AMT: So can you give me an example Steven of like we just heard about the bee sting, the bee venom and then the analgesic and the way fish react.

SC: Sure. So one of the things that we've seen is some of that early work suggests that the fish would exhibit rocking motions or would rub their snow snout and since then, others have attempted to repeat that work and found different findings. In particular, they found that the effects were very transient, short term in the order of several minutes. And there are other potential explanations that extend beyond the idea that it's fish pain. One of the things we also see is this idea that instead and I've sort of referred to this already, this idea of harking, we see that in some cases the authors will determine that it's an increase in say locomotor reactivity, how much the fish is swimming around in a tank that would indicate that the fish is being exposed to a painful stimuli, whereas in other cases it's a decrease. And so we see whatever the outcome, whether it's an increase or decrease, authors selectively basically attributing either outcome to pain.

AMT: Culum Brown, what do you say to that concern about harking?

CB: Yeah, look I think that harking is not a universal thing that's specific to this sort of scientific literature. It's true across the board and increasingly so, I think in the styles of that journals are expecting now, short, sharp and sweet messages. I think that's just typical of the way science is moving. I don't particularly agree with the way that that happens. Some journals in fact will ask you to do that, to actually write in that kind of style. Pretend that you actually knew what was going to happen right from the beginning. So I don't think that's a true of just the fish pain work. I also think that you got to remember that most of this work is peer reviewed, so it's not just one or two people who believe this, it's a body of work that's been peer reviewed by the scientific community at large. And if that's the case, then you probably have a problem with the way the scientific process works and the way publishing processes work in general and you could come up with all sorts of arguments along those lines that wouldn't just apply to the work that's been done on fish pain, but across the board on all sorts of topics.

AMT: Culum Brown, you say that they have neural receptors and that they have cognitive ability?

CB: Yes. I've personally worked on cognition in fishes. I have done for about 25 years and I think one of the things that we've realized and I hope that the message getting across to the general public is that fish are way smarter than most people believe them to be. I mean you still see on TV ads and things like that this idea that fish swimming around, particularly the gold fish is the stereotype, it swims around, does one lap of the bowl and it looks at something and then it does another lap and it looks surprised when it sees the same thing over and over again. We get these sorts of things popping up from time to time in Australian popular tv and I think that this is just a general view held by the public that fish are a little bit more stupid than other animals. And I think over the last 30 or so years, we've shown that that certainly is not the case. They have really fantastic learning abilities and I'm sure Steve would agree with all of this and their memory capacity is really good. They have amazing innovative capabilities, they have great behavioral flexibility, they show all sorts of different sorts of social learnings. They learn not only by themselves, but by observing and interacting with others. They've shown all sorts of fishy culture that happens both in the lab and in the wild. They cooperate with one another. There's good evidence things like social reconciliation, they build nests and use tools, so they're very sophisticated animals and in many of these areas of cognition that I'm talking about, they're no less sophisticated than any terrestrial vertebrate and in many cases, they put primates on the back foot.

AMT: And so does that then connect to the fact that they feel pain?

CB: Well, this is how my research came to the fore in terms of how they might feel pain and whether or not they might. And that's largely got to do with the fact that they, the argument has really shifted in the last 20 years. And this fish pain discussion has been going on for a really long time. It's really shifted since we discovered nociception, which is these pain receptors. It's no longer about whether they're capable of feeling pain in that way and in the physical sense can they detect that this potential damage is happening, but are they responding to it in an emotional and a cognitive fashion. And I think that's where the field is now, we've definitely moved away from whether or not they're capable of detecting this stimuli. In fact, these nociceptors they correlate back to the annelids, which are tinly little worm things. So that's a universal thing across virtually all animals and so the question now really is turning increasingly to one of philosophy, rather than science. Unfortunately, it's all about whether the fish are emotionally engaged in these sorts of experiences and to measure that, you really need to, if you're a scientist, rather than a philosopher, you need to change to measuring changes in physiology and behaviour, rather than speculating what may or may not be going on in another animal.

AMT: Steven Cooke, do fish have the physiology necessary to experience pain?

SC: So they certainly have the ability to sense and respond to various stimuli in their environment and we believe that nociception is part of that, however fish also lack certain brain regions that in other taxa humans, non-human mammals, that are necessary, we believe necessary to feel pain and to process it very much in the emotional context that Culum just described. So there's no doubt then when we injure a fish with a hook or when we fight it on the end of the line, that induces stress, that's undeniable. We know there's a stress response. We know that there's physical injury and we know that those two things can have behavioural consequences, however when we look at the trajectory of recovery from those things, we see that it tends to mirror the physiology. So it takes two or three hours before an animal is recovered from that kind of, from a typical fisheries interaction. We don't see that those effects being dragged out over days and weeks. So if an individual was in severe pain, as a result of say a hook in the mouth, we would not anticipate that they would continue with spawning, that they would continue on with a migration, that they would continue guarding their offspring. Yet the research that's been done suggests that only in extreme cases, where for example there's a severe injury that would lead to major blood loss, that fish actually stop engaging in those kinds of activities.

AMT: And regardless of your difference of views Steven, when we bring in the kind of understanding about fish cognition, what does that mean for how we think of fish welfare and treating fish humanely?

SC: And I fully agree with Culum that we're talking about impressively intelligent animals. It's one of the reasons that I love studying fish, thinking about how they navigate across vast water bodies that look all the same to us, yet they're able to figure out when they need to be where. Fish welfare is all about doing things that are good for the fish, thinking about their health, their physiological status and so on and so whether we're talking about Anglian fish culture, commercial fisheries, there's lots that can be done to improve welfare and that can be done completely independent of whether or not fish do or do not feel pain. And in fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that if we are erroneous in attributing the concept of pain to fish, that actually retards our ability to do the kind of research necessary to refine welfare and really I think derails the conversation. Welfare should be what we are all focusing on and that's something that we certainly preach when I'm talking to fishing clubs, when I'm interacting with commercial fishers. What can we do so that the fish that are going to be released, have the greatest likelihood of survival with the least impacts to their physiology, behavior and bodies and that's the kind of thing that will lead to outcomes that are good for populations if those animals though then go on and are able to reproduce and that's good for people.

AMT: Well let me just ask both Culum and Steve to standby because I want to go to Europe for a minute where some countries have legislation tightening rules around fish harvesting and Norway's one of them. Hanne Digre is a research director of Seafood Technology with SINTEF Ocean, which is a research institute in Norway that works with the fishing industry. She's on the line from Trondheim, Norway. Hello, Ms. Digre.

HANNE DIGRE: Hello.

AMT: So how does the legislation affect how fish are treated during capture?

HD: Well in Norway we have legislation from the slaughterhouses in the aquaculture industry and they also have this Norwegian council for animal ethics that gives some recommendations for also commercial fisheries. It's about we need to shorten the harvesting time and the time fish are experiencing high levels of stress, fear or pain before harvest and also included both also that they need to have gentle handling and minimal damage in the capture time and also stun the fish before harvesting.

AMT: OK well I have a clip here that I'd like to play for you. Blue North is a US company that says it prides itself on humane fish harvesting. This is a clip of the company's former CEO Kenny Down.

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VOICE: Blue North is the first commercial fishing company in the world to recognize fish as sentient beings deserving of ethical and humane treatment at harvest. A wide body of evidence has shown that this fish is better for you, it's more nutritious, it has higher vitamin content. The less hormones, these stress hormones of cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline get into the meat, the better texture, the longer shelf life, the buyers prefer it and it's just a win-win for everybody and you get this great source of nutritious food.

AMT: Hanne Digre is that consistent with what you have found, that less stressed fish are better to eat?

HD: Well we have found that less stressed fish has more firmer texture and also you have a prolong pre-rigor period. That means that you can also because in Norway we also filleted, the filleting the fish before it entered the rigor. That's also a product that because of the stress-free period before stunning and killing, you will have a prolonged period. So the texture is better and also yeah, so that's the main benefit actually.

AMT: And the B.C. Tuna Fishermen's Association got back to us this week and they say they sever the spinal cord immediately. That's what they do, that's apparently an old practice of recreational fishing as well. Does that, is that consistent with what's going on?

HD: Yeah I don't know the practice for the Tuna fisheries, but this is in Norway we have the cod, haddock and saithe fish species are really important for us. And there is several fishing vessels is introducing electrical stunning that to actually get a better quality of the fish that they caught.

AMT: So is Norway's fishing industry changing because it's better for business or because it's better for the fish?

HD: I think both. Yeah I think both, but I think you need to ask fishermen about that.

AMT: OK well we'll leave it there. Thank you. Hanne Digre, thank you. Hanne Digre, research director of Seafood Technology with SINTEF Ocean in Norway. The Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans was asked by us about regulations in Canada and I'll read a statement in part. This is a quote: "Fish should be handled in a stress-free manner as possible. Fish welfare is a relatively new field. Policy work to help ensure fish welfare is currently very limited." And then the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the CFIA, told us its role in animal welfare is limited to animal transport and for fish that means they should be protected in transport from "undue suffering, overcrowding and injury or sickness and the use of suitable containers." Steven Cooke in Ottawa, do you think Canada's fishing industry and government adequately take fish welfare into account?

SC: Well you've always got two approaches: one is the top down and one is the bottom up. I'm a firm believer as somebody that's active in the conservation science realm, that we tend to be able to do more good when we work from the bottom. That doesn't mean that there isn't a need for some regulatory and policy guidance at times, but working with commercial fishers the discussion that was just had around the idea that fish that are handled better in a commercial fishing context are of better flesh quality, that's something that makes inherent sense. And we know that commercial fishers are oftentimes at the forefront of developing approaches and strategies that maintain the welfare status of fish and the same goes for the recreational sector. As somebody that studies recreational fishing, I'm usually struggling to keep up with those innovations. We do science to test and ensure that the strategies that are being used are in fact good ones and sometimes we're able to help refine or refute things, but by and large, when we see innovations and how fish are handled in a catch-and-release context, it's anglers that have come up with those things, not the scientific community.

AMT: OK. Culum Brown, we just, we're almost out of time, but the question we began with, do fish feel pain still doesn't have a definitive answer, do you think it will?

CB: Well look I mean to be honest we still don't have any legal definition of pain in way of quantifying pain in humans. So it's an extremely difficult topic, there's no doubt about it, but I do agree generally with everything we've just talked about with respect to better handling of fish and improved welfare of fish and being win-win for both the fish and for the industry. And this is true also in Australia. One of our salmon farms have just gone down that road and have now got RSPCA approved salmon.

AMT: Well, we have to leave it there, but gentlemen thank you for your thoughts on this.

SC: Thank you.

CB: No problem at all.

AMT: Culum Brown, associate professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He studies fish cognition and behaviour. Steven Cooke, Canada research chair in fish ecology and conservation physiology at Carleton University in Ottawa. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. This is The Current.

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Trauma survivors 'can change society,' says psychologist helping Yazidi survivors of ISIS

Guests: Jan Kizilhan

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. It is almost impossible to imagine the ordeal that Yazidi women are emerging from, after being brutalized by ISIS in their homeland in Iraq. Last season, we brought you a documentary, it was called, "So They Can Rest A Little," and it featured two such women, Adiba and Basema, who are living in Canada now. This is a little bit of what they've lived through in their own words and a warning, what they describe is troubling.

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VOICE 1: They killed the men of Kojo. And put them into mass graves. Every Yazidi village has a mass grave. Were we not created like other human beings? Why are we all victims?

VOICE 2: We didn't know what was happening, but we knew they were killing the men and taking the women. Then they said, you have to be Muslim. They beat us women, raped us, tortured us. We said, no matter what you do to us, we won't change our religion.

AMT: Adiba and Basema speaking in translation in that clip. They now live in a suburb, north of Toronto, they're trying to make a life for themselves. Despite not knowing about a lot of family members who were left behind, some are missing, others are dead, they are two of the more than 1300 members of the religious minority in Iraq, who have been resettled in Canada. There are concerns that Yazidi refugee women in Canada are not getting the help they were promised. A petition tabled in the House of Commons last week calls on the government to provide psychological support to them. That's something my next guest knows a lot about. When this country first set out to resettle Yazidis in 2016, one of the first people from whom they sought input, was Dr. Jan Kizilhan. He is a Kurdish-German psychologist. He heads the Department of Mental Health and Addiction at Baden-Wurttemberg Cooperative State University. He's also the head of a German state-funded effort, known as the Special Quota Project, which has brought more than a thousand Yazidis to Germany, in order to try to heal. Dr. Kizilhan visited some 24 refugee camps in Iraq to hand-pick some of the most vulnerable people there for resettlement. We reached him at his office in Villengen-Schwinningen, after one of his latest trips back from Iraq. Hello.

JAN KIZILHAN: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: How familiar do those stories, that little bit of story you just heard from Adiba and Basema, sound to you?

JK: Actually since 2014 I'm listening these stories every day maybe through calls when I'm in Iraq and of course we have 1100 Yazidi women and girls who were in IS captivity and now in Germany for medical treatment. And when I'm last week was in Iraq and was at some of the camps, these stories are the same. It's horrible, unbelievable. Nobody can imagine this horrific situation that they were, as they goes through. It's the last example just to give you, when I was two weeks ago in a camp, eight-years-old girl who was five years when she was in IS captivity. She is now for six months in a refugee camp and she was observed how her totally family was executed by IS and even this five or six-year-old girls were sexually abused and raped by IS fighters. This is stories where we face every day in Iraq and Syria.

AMT: It sounds so horrific the stories they tell of what happened to them. With a population that is so very vulnerable, how do you decide who needs the most help?

JK: Actually still there is no rational decision. Of course we do a lot of assessment and we talk to each one for example when we decided to bring 1100 women to Germany for medical treatment. We went to Iraq and I myself examined and talked to each one of about 1400 women. I will never forget this number. But the political decision was to bring 1100. And now we have about three to seven thousand woman and girls in the camps. We need urgent help. So the decision was to bring women and girls who were in the hands of IS. This was the first criteria. After they are released, they should have any medical and psychological disease like post-traumatic stress disorder and the third criteria was in Germany must be able to treat them with, just give you example is doesn't make any sense bring 80-years-old woman with dementia, where we are not able to help her. And one of the most criteria was we are very focused on women who are raped because we are talking about a patriarchal society, who try to refuse these women. We know about 40 to 50 suicide, committed suicide, by the women because they are ashamed. They believe they are raped, they are not and will not be accepted by society. So our project in Germany was focus on women and girls who were in IS captivity and raped by the IS fighters. The 1100 women and girls who were brought to Germany, 99 percent of them were tortured, were raped and lost a lot of family members.

AMT: What are the challenges you have encountered in getting mental health support for the Yazidi women once they are in Germany?

JK: Actually all of what we observed and I was positively surprised that German government, as well the Germans welcomed Yazidis, despite the discussion about refugees and unwelcomed foreigners, but in the case of the Yazidis it was different. Still it is different. There are two reasons maybe, through the media they recognize the horrifying and terror of the IS and the second, the Yazidis, we have to say this unfortunately very openly, they are not Muslims. That's the reason they are welcomed maybe more. I'm not sure if they will be Muslims, if they are welcomed by the German community, but the German government indeed started already in 2014 for supporting the Yazidis and the same time we are talking about 200,000 Yazidis who are living in Germany. So they have a good and great big community with support, all the Yazidi women and girls.

AMT: When the Canadian government consulted you about our own resettlement program in this country for the Yazidis, what did you tell them?

JK: Actually I told them about the difficult of trauma and treatment of trauma. We're talking about transcultural aspects, if you try to deal with the Yazidis. When we are talking about the Yazidis that means in the last 800 years, the Yazidis faced 74 genocides. In the last 600 years, Yazidis are killed by the Muslims. We have a study which can prove that about 1,800,000 Yazidis were forced to Islam, by force. And about 1,200,000 Yazidis were killed in the last 800 years. That means we are talking about three type of traumatization. One is a trans-generation trauma, which is given from one generation to the next generation and we are talking about collective trauma, which means on 3rd August, 2014, the IS started systematically to destroy the society. Actually the same like the Nazis in Germany, they did in the 1930s, 40s against the Jewish community and the third is the individual trauma, all of them suffering from their own symptoms and own trauma events. In the Western community and Western psychotherapy we focus more on individual psychotherapy. We tried to cope the individual trauma to reduce symptoms. If you don't take the trans-generation trauma and the treatment models we will not be able to successful long term.

AMT: So as you help these women and girls, what are you doing to help them? What are their days like?

JK: You know if someone is facing this trauma event and it's not just one, they observed how the family killed and just give you an example, a girl of eight years called Runda, when they take in captivity, she was observed how her grandfather and father killed in front of her eyes. Later they divided her from her mother and they were raped for eight months by ten times by all Muslim IS fighters. Now when I talk her, do you want to came to Germany, they said yes, I want to come to Germany and I ask her why. She said, do you have school? I said yes we have school in Germany and she said because I want to be one day like you a doctor and to help my own people. We are talking about resilience and this is where the Western society don't understand. Trauma mean don't mean they are just sick and have to be in a bed or be treatment. Post-traumatic stress disorder traumatized society is also shown to learn and to wake up and change the society. And I hope so for this woman and the Yazidis they will understand and grow with this trauma and change the society.

AMT: So in other words, you help them cope with the immediate feelings of trauma, but you also give them a sense of a future, a sense that they can have agency and somewhere to look forward to.

JK: Absolutely. Absolutely. Without you have to work on the past, on the trauma to understand what's happened to them and without to cope this past, you will have no future. And this is how we are working. We are more focused on positive issues, but in the same time, to talk with him through narrative therapy. To accept it and they can learn and they understand because they know you know they told me always we heard many stories from our grandfathers and fathers about genocide. We never believed it. When it happened on the 3rd August when the IS came, so we remember the stories of our ancestors. We know what will happen now. In some way the Yazidis have a different kind of resiliency, were prepared more or less in quotation and can deal different to maybe another groups.

AMT: You have faced criticism, including from the United Nations, for uprooting as they say, the Yazidis from their homes in Iraq, to a completely foreign environment like Germany. What do you say to the argument that bringing Yazidis to Germany or Canada is not a long term solution?

JK: You know Yazidis are living now for more 4000 years in Iraq and the Sinjar areas. Since 2014, they are living in refugee camps. One refugee camp for example has more than 20,000 people. And I told to the United Nations. You mean these camps are roots? They don't they lost all of their roots. Their roots is on Sinjar, but Sinjar is destroyed and they don't want to go back. This is the first, the second as a United Nations, are you able to help them in the refugee camps through psychotherapy and medical treatment. They have no way of doing. So what is the problem to bring them to Germany and do medical treatment for them or psychotherapy? So this was still I argue, this is not a real critic. A critic means you are doing something wrong, but we have alternately we can do it better. If the UN can do it better, we will support them.

AMT: I know you're trying to improve the quality of psychiatric care and mental health support inside Iraq. What are you doing?

JK: We started in 2017 to set up an institute of psychotherapy and psycho traumatology, which is supported by the German government and it's a master studies where we train through three years, very professional, psychological with a bachelor degree to have a master degree, a double qualification. They will have a master after three years and they will a licensed psychotherapist under the same criteria like in Germany and they will able to treat their own people in Iraq and maybe hopefully for a long term there are no need to bring them to Germany. This is our aim.

AMT: And we've been talking about the impact of surviving ISIS or IS or Daish. What other sources of trauma though are there as well? Because it's different things piled on top, isn't it?

JK: Yes it is. You know we are talking about ethnic minorities. And if we are talking about trauma, it's not just a medical problem, it's a political issue at the same time. It's a social problem. We have to ask why the IS was able to came to Iraq and to kill thousands of people, destroy the society, destroy the culture and monuments. We as medical, we try to treat the person of course, but give me a question of the eight years you ask me why humans are so sinister? Why are they using violation? We can talk intellectually and talk about violence science and trauma science and about the society, but we have also to find a answer to Runda, to eight years at Runda, why people are so bad? If we're talking about trauma, it's not just a medical problem actually, it's a political and social and religion problem in the Middle East.

AMT: I'm wondering what impact this work with so many traumatized people has had on you?

JK: Personally of course it's impact me. Sometimes you can lost your belief. Belief in humanity, in humans. But my work and I'm writing a lot of books, helps me to get a distance and at the same time I'm involved in Germany and in different kinds of countries, try to help people to support the people to have a better future. And this is how I can try to cope and to understand this cruel situation that we are face in the last years.

AMT: And what do you do for your own mental health?

JK: I have a good family, a good background. Children who are supporting me. As I said I'm working now for 20 years with the traumatized people. So I have to learn to make a distance. I can close, when I close my office. So I'm a private person. I have a normal life. I enjoy a lot of issues, I'm writing novels. I'm traveling like you, like another person. So we have to learn to be professional, but in the same time to able to close the stories. These stories are not a part of my person, my individualism. I'm just listening and as a professional, I try to understand and to support, but never have to always say this is not my problem. The problem of Runda, can you imagine? I cannot. Can you imagine what Runda, the 8 years goes through when she was raped, how was the feeling. I don't know. But I can listen, understand and try to find together a way to cope this.

AMT: One of the lasting messages we heard from the Yazidi women in our documentary was that their healing cannot begin as long as they know that the atrocities of Daish or ISIS are continuing. That loved ones are still missing or in the hands of these perpetrators. What will it take to stop the root of all of this trauma and displacement?

JK: You know trauma, when you a face a trauma, traumatic event, like the Yazidi faced. This means this will be always a part of their life. You cannot erase it from your mind. But what we can do to show a way to control this. Just give you an example, sometimes when they are traumatized, they have nightmares, flashbacks, fear, anxiety, sleeping disorders. So the symptoms started to control their life. What we are trying is to say no you can control your symptoms, but this trauma will be a part of your life, to accept it as a part of your life, but you have a future. And you could go ahead with new experiences in your life, positive experiences of life and you are absolutely right. If they don't have a clear future in Iraq, if the family members are still missing or in the hands of the IS. Now this is always a problem also for psychotherapy. So we can stabilize them, we can support them, but resolution is absolutely when maybe they're released or even they know they are not alive anymore. So they can close this case and concentrate more in the future. And this is somehow a problem, a political problem, a problem of terror and of course the missing people. And we have also a problem of Yazidi women and girls who came now back from IS captivity with IS children. This is also a big problem, but this can't just solve by the Yazidi community and society in Iraq.

AMT: I'm wondering how you maintain hope for them, for those who you're trying to help. What do you tell them?

JK: OK. The first is to have a good relation and it's like in all psychotherapy. They have trust in you and they believe you. I wish to just give you an example, I was two weeks ago sitting with a woman who was crying, shouting, talking about her trauma event and I didn't say anything because I was just listening. And for me it was very active and tried to change some people, my part was just sitting and give her a feeling I am with her. And after this session, they came to me and said thank you very much, even you don't say anything, but I had the feeling you are with me. This is how psychotherapy is working to give them a feeling of trust, of orientation, of stability and with time if they have a trust, we can talk about different issues and show another perspective. This is psychotherapy for long term, which takes time and take patience and sometimes don't do anything is doing more than doing something wrong.

AMT: And what about you? You made the point that you've been helping people traumatized by conflict for two decades. When one war stops, another begins. I'm just wondering what you tell yourself.

JK: Actually I'm very interested in history and a history of violence. If you go through the mankind's history is full of violation. According to my estimation and researches, with the start of mankind's history, about 500 million people killed by human. Human killed human. This is the nature of humankind. And if you notice, so as through the history, just to give you an example, through the Second World War, 60 million people were killed by humans. We killed more than 15 million Indigenous people in North and South America. And this is our nature. We have to accept this and hopefully through culture, through peace processes, through ethnic philosophy, there is some development in humankind history and this gives me hope for the next 200, 300 years, we are able to change. And I never lost my hope that we will do it better than our ancestors.

AMT: Well, we will end on your note of hope. Thank you so much for talking to me and thank you for your work.

JK: Thank you.

AMT: Dr. Jan Kizilhan is the medical and psychological head of the Special Quota Project in Germany.

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AMT: Tomorrow on The Current, we're going to take an up close look at the people and politics of the Lone Star State. I have been in Texas and we have a new documentary, As Goes Texas. Texas plays an outsized role in Washington and some of the most closely fought mid-term battles are playing out there tomorrow. We were lucky enough to get a very personal take on the situation from Pulitzer Prize winning author, Lawrence Wright and that included a tour of some notable Austin monuments.

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VOICE: Well this is Angelina Eberly. She was an innkeeper in Austin, when it was the capital of the Republic of Texas in 1842.

AMT: These include some monuments that Lawrence Wright helped create.

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VOICE: And she set off the cannon, blew a hole in the Land Office, missed the Rangers, but aroused the citizens

AMT: They marked some of the most important figures in Texas history.

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VOICE: Our group, you know we put up statues and normally we wait until people are dead. But Willie, you know with all the stuff that he's gotten away with, we figured that he wouldn't disgrace himself any more than he has in the past. Everybody loves Willie. And it's such an interesting thing because he bridges these cultures. Ted Cruz loves Willie, even though you know Willie is a Bernie supporter.

AMT: Willie Nelson may have the power to transcend partisan politics, but our conversation on the floor of the Texas legislature began with some historical context for what is a bitterly polarized moment in American politics.

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VOICE: Well there have been periods in our history, that have been as mean spirited, but not so much in my lifetime. But it's, I don't know how we're going to crawl back from this period of time. You know the only thing that will make a difference is more balance in our electoral politics and with the gerrymandering and so on, which really began in this chamber that we're standing in. When Republicans gain control of this chamber of the House, they were allowed to draw new districts because of the census and the lines were drawn here so cleverly to withstand any kind of Supreme Court challenge that it gave Republicans an almost undeniable perpetual majority, even though the demography of the state is far less rabidly conservative than our elected representatives would lead you to believe.

AMT: With the electoral makeup of Texas the way it is, where else is Texas having an imprint beyond its own borders?

VOICE: Well you mentioned the word border and that of course is Texas has the longest border with Mexico. And you know, I think Texans have a bit of a different feel about it because a lot of Texans live on the border. And the truth is the Texas-Mexico border is a kind of living border, it's not, there's a lot of movement back and forth and always has been. So it's you know, if you live in on the border, it's almost as if you live in a different world. You're living in a world that is a part of two different countries and last year we had a historic drop in immigration. Now we're having this tremendous surge and it seems like that's what's throwing people off. Immigration is much more of a concern for Texans because of this tremendous surge of immigrants. You know, right now there's this huge convoy of people coming up from Honduras and it feels threatening to people and it reinforces, I mean nothing could provide a stronger argument for Trump's border wall than that kind of sight. And so I think it's hardened the views of a lot of Texans.

AMT: That's author Lawrence Wright. His latest book is, God Bless Texas. He was giving us a very personalized tour of the Texas State capital. Be sure to listen tomorrow for what we found. We're calling it, As Goes Texas.

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AMT: And that's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. The artist, actor and comedian, Abbi Jacobson, of the tv show, Broad City, is on Q today. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Nov. 5, 2018 episode transcript

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