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The Current Transcript for November 23, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE 1: Don't trip. I'm going to take it off the hands for you.

VOICE 2: These [unintelligible] aren't for sale.

VOICE 1: How do you think your ancestor got these? Do you think they paid a fair price? What they have taken [unintelligible] they took everything else.

LAURA LYNCH: That scene maybe from the fictional superhero film Black Panther, but the issue of cultural plundering is all too real for many African countries. Their leaders say artifacts were stolen by their former colonial masters and they want them back. In an hour, I'll speak with an African art historian who's leading the charge. And a former US museum director I'm not sure everything should be returned. Also:

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The one that sends astronauts to Mars, it's very hard, very dangerous and expensive to send astronauts to build there. It would be ideal if we could send a team of robots on ahead to build them a habitat that would be willing for them when they show up.

LL: Justin Medfield believes one of the secrets to helping us conquer the stars above may be found in the ground beneath. His team at Harvard is developing robots that mimic termites. The pesky insects aren't just house wreckers. They are some world builders capable of jaw dropping engineering feats. We’re going all in on termites in about half an hour from now. But first:

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Folks in Alberta, folks here in Calgary are living through extremely difficult times. Yes. This is very much a crisis when you have a price differential that up around 40 to 50 dollars even, that a massive challenge.

Alberta used to save its greatest disdain for Pierre Elliot Trudeau but the province is struggling economy has turned its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into this generation's target of Albertan's anger. I’m Laura Lynch. This is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Slumping Alberta oil prices could have 'dire' impact on rest of Canada, warns economist

Guests: Don Scott, Peter Tertzakian

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[Protestors chanting] What do we want? Build that pipe>

LL: Some 2,000 protesters in Calgary descended on the hotel where Prime Minister Trudeau was staying yesterday, to tell him what they think will fix the country's spiraling oil economy.

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[Chanting] Build that pipe.

LL: Pipelines like Trans Mountain and Keystone Excel have been held up and the oil trains are full. That means too much oil is getting stored and not sold and that is driving Canadian oil prices down. They're now lagging far behind U.S. benchmarks. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says it's reaching a breaking point.

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Over the last few weeks the world's price differential has reached historic highs. This differential presents a real danger to the Canadian economy. Every day costs the economy about 80 million dollars.

LL: Communities in Alberta are first to feel the hit. Communities like Fort McMurray which is the epicenter of Alberta's oil sands business. Don Scott is mayor of the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, and we reached him in Edmonton. Hello.

DON SCOTT: Hi, it's great to speak with you.

LL: Can you tell me how are the people of Fort Murray dealing with these lower oil prices?

DON SCOTT: Yes we've been through a lot of challenges. We went through a flood and as everybody knows, we were through a fire. We went through the economic downturn. And now we're facing plenty of challenges with the downturn of the price of oil. So there's a lot of worry, a lot of concern. We're very frustrated that we're not seeing the progress that we'd like to see.

LL: When you say there is worry and concern, is it manifesting itself in any way? Are businesses closing, that sort of thing?

DON SCOTT: I would say people coming up to me and talking to me about it, which is the first time that's happened in the last couple of years. I mean we've been through a lot. But what I've observed recently is people coming to me saying they're worried for their jobs and their future. People now are starting to worry that things are going to affect them personally.

LL: When they say those things to you, what do you say back?

LL: I talk to them about the steps that we've taken. We've been meeting with the Premier; we meet with the various ministers. I had a sit down meeting with the Prime Minister few months ago and he was telling me the right things. He said he was going to work hard to make sure that this happens.

LL: To make sure what happens?

DON SCOTT: That we were going to get access to tidewater. The other pipeline was going to be a priority for his government. So you know we're hearing those things but what we really want to see is action. So based on what I'm hearing I'm optimistic, but based on what I'm seeing I'm a little bit concerned.

LL: Even if even if you get the things that the prime minister is saying he's trying to do for you, those solutions are far far away. So what's facing your community in the short term?

DON SCOTT: Yes I mean there's challenges. We are still seeing some signs of optimism, believe it or not, even in this environment. We have different oil companies going through regulatory hearings and talking about extensions and things that are going to happen in the future. But what I'm more concerned about is we are not seeing the investment that I think we otherwise would. If we had a date when we knew the pipeline was going to be completed. If we had more certainty in that area we would be attracting a lot more investment in our region. So it's a big concern. We want to make sure that our region is getting as much investment as possible.

LL: Demand at the local food bank apparently is up quite significantly. We spoke to Dan Edwards who's the executive director of the Wood Buffalo Food Bank Association. Let's hear what he had to say.

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We had a 73 percent increase over our pre-fire numbers. Regardless of fire recovery, we're now back into normalizing mode and we're still seeing an increase in people needing assistance from a food bank. I was surprised by it myself being you know entrenched in this. This is a day to day, serving people, my job is to get food out the door. Some days I go 'wow that was a really busy day'. But until you really kind of sit down actually, look at the numbers to realise how many people we are really serving. 70 percent. That's 7971 hampers last year that's serving 16,457 individual people.Break that down even furhter, 6,171 of them were children under the age of 18. It's an alarming amount.They're saying I never thought I'd have to use this service but thank you so much for being here.

LL: Those are people who are living in your community. What do you think of those numbers?

DON SCOTT: I've been hearing those numbers myself. Our social sector services it's strange. Since the fire especially there has been a lot of need in our community. And anyone who thinks that we are fully recovered from the fire, isn't realizing what's actually going on in our region. There is a lot of demand. So we do have a very generous [unintelligible]. The average giving ot the United Way is one of the highest in Canada, taken the per capita giving. But we are currently being strained.

LL: Who is affected by this crunch? Who are the people who are turning to the food band?

DON SCOTT: I would tell you it's people on the ground. A lot of people assume that everyone that's in Fort McMurray region works for the oil patch and is making a large cheque. But that's not the case. You know we are just like every other community. We have teachers. We have people who work in restaurants and stores. And when the economy turns everyone is affected by it in some way. I think it's fair to say that the people in my region are facing a lot of stress. I see it in my kids, I see it in the other children of the community. Some children who talked to me they're still having nightmares about the fires. They're worried about things. So there's a lot of mental health challenges going on in our region. Something we've certainly talked to the government about, the provincial government. And we're always looking for resources in our own region.

LL: So I guess the uncertainty of the current such situation there adds to uncertainty that already existed because of the fire.

DON SCOTT: It's really a challenging situation. Notwithstanding everything I still do have a long term sense of optimism. There are good signs that are happening. We're opening a new movie theatre up there. So the kids are really excited about that. So we are seeing occasional really good signs.

LL: Fort McMurray has seen its ups and downs in oil prices, before. It's obviously such a resilient community, but I'm wondering how that compares to now in terms of the prices.

DON SCOTT: It's hard to a lot of people who've been here, I've been here about 20 years. Others that I've talked to been there 30 or 40 years, say that this change is different than previous ones. It seems like a lot more entrenched, the downturn and the economic challenges. And there's no immediate sense that it's going to improve the drastic way.

LL: There are some oil analysts predicting this is going to be reduced spending in Fort McMurray this winter because of the low prices, there could be lay-offs and it could be a harsh winter.

DON SCOTT: Yes and that concern is exactly tied to the investment. Unless we get pipeline to tidewater, I sense that we're going to be losing investment.

LL: We talked earlier about where you talked to the Prime Minister about, and others about in terms of solutions for the community. What do you want the provincial government to do right now to improve the situation?

DON SCOTT: One thing we always raise the importance of them logging and doing everything they can to make sure the federal government makes the pipeline happen. I mean we always advocate for many other needs in our region, but the pipeline and that issue is probably at the very top of the list.

LL: Again that pipeline is far away. Even if it does go forward, but there's also talk of limiting production voluntarily or mandated by government. I'm wondering how that would go over. Because it isn't exactly helpful for your community.

DON SCOTT: Yes I would see that as a failure. If we start to limit production because the governments haven't got their act together to make this happen, I think it would be seen as a failure on all levels of government if we're starting to take those kinds of measures.

LL: Mayor Scott, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

DON SCOTT: Okay. Take care. All the best.

LL: Don Scott is the Mayor of the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo which includes Fort McMurray. Well for weeks now Western Canada Select has been selling for roughly 40 USD below the American benchmark price which is West Texas Intermediate. As I mentioned some in the oil industry are calling for cutbacks to oil sands production to stem the oversupply and drive Canadian oil prices back up. The Alberta government has enlisted a team to consult with industry executives to come up with solutions. To discuss all of this, I'm joined by Peter Tertzakian. He is an economist and executive director of ARC Energy Research Institute. He is in Calgary. Hello.

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Hi how are you.

LL: I am fine. I wonder if you could be helping explain to listeners and to me why there's such a price differential between oil that is produced in the oil sands and the industry standard, West Texas Intermediate?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Yes that's a great question. So I think we all know by now of the pipeline constraints. So the ability of getting the product to market. It has been severely constrained and delayed. So that's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is on the supply side: the ability to bring large quantities of the oil, including from the oil sands, has increased and also there has been some legacy projects that have been under construction for a long time that were expecting pipeline to occur by now, that have just come on stream. So the Western Canadian Select marker, which is the place for the heavier and oil sands type grades of oil, is forty dollars below the prevailing price. I think your listeners should realize that 40 dollars below the say 55-ish that were at. It means that the price is only about 15 dollars which has the lowest prices that we have seen in decades.

LL: And is that sustainable?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: No no. At those prices the producers are losing money. In other words they are cash flow negative.

LL: Then that leads me to ask why do they keep pumping it out if they're not making enough money to sustain the operation?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Well because many of the operations in the oil sands cannot stop. They are based on steaming of the reservoirs which they have been doing for years, and if you stop heating them up they will cool down and there will be permanent damage to the reservoir. So it's a very serious decision to shut them. But I should also mention that, while all the focus is on Western Canadian Select, the real issue that has emerged is this pushing and shoving amongst the oil sands companies to get into the pipeline. So it has now spread over into the lighter barrels of oil of which is very significant in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and that is much more serious.

LL: Can you explain what that pushing and shoving is?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Well the pushing and shoving is because again there's too much supply and we are in a free market economy. And that those that have low costs, established supply chains and so on are able to put more oil through the system. Some in the industry are suggesting that this is a price war, which I believe it to be.

LL: So let me understand this they're all jockeying for it to get that limited space in the pipeline to put their products through there, and that results in some getting shut out.

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Exactly.

LL: Okay. And then that pushes the price down even more. I’m trying to visualize what it looks like when you keep pumping out the oil and you can't ship it anywhere. Are storage places where they put it all?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Yes that's correct. For example you see the iconic Big White storage tanks in places that produce or by refineries that consume, and those storage tanks fill up and when they get to the top then you really have problems in terms of the price blowing out how much as it is. Now some producers have already shut in some of their production to the tune of about 130,000 barrels per day. Just for context I mean the overall production of Alberta , we are the fifth largest producer in the world, in Canada and 130,000 barrels per day is on four and a half million of total production.

LL: I want to talk a little bit more about other options. What about rail?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Well rail is definitely an option. As I like to say it's a pipeline on wheels. 110cars pulled behind a locomotive, it's just like a pipeline on wheels. The challenge is that you cannot mobilize rail very quickly, that locomotives have to be dispatched. In this case even potential manufactured purchased and shipped over here, along with other specialized railcars cars that meet safety specifications. And then you have to start loading them and sending them to various markets. So this is happening in real time right now. And even reported that there was a record amount of real shipment that is now leaving Western Canada to markets across North America.

LL: It's still not enough even with that?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Yes. The urgency of the situation has accelerated the dispatching of more rail. It's really six months out, nine months old before sufficient quantities are really there to clear the inventory, the glut. The real issue is not measured in months. The real issue is measured in weeks. The contagion has spread to the lighter oil markets. And the lighter oil market is a completely different mode of oil production than the oil sands. It's the iconic wells that you see with pump jacks and so on that occupy much of the rest of Alberta, certainly Saskatchewan, and even parts of British Columbia. And the prices there have now collapsed as well. And that means that we have the potential to lose what's called the winter drilling season, because of the drilling is done in the winter. And if this price for the Edmonton light - as it's called, the lighter benchmark - continues to stay around to the 25 dollar mark, which is also a money losing proposition, then we are going to lose all the typical growing and capital expenditures that we see in the winter.

LL: And then we lose revenue, we lose jobs. Tell me what the effects are of all of that?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: The effects are quite dire because, where the oil sands are relatively concentrated in a small part of North East Alberta, the employment that is around this other part of the oil industry which spends twice as much as the oil sands spreads all the way from northeastern British Columbia, through Alberta all the way into Saskatchewan and even parts of Manitoba. And so the unemployment, field unemployment prospects, are very vulnerable right now and the decision to do this winter drilling are made in the next few weeks. That's why there is such an urgency and that's why there is such pent up - or actually it's not pent up anymore - the frustration that we see here like 'do something', because it's going to affect multiple provinces and a significant portion of spending.

LL: Then in terms of 'do something', some of the oil patch are requesting that the Notley government take action to mandate a reduction in output. What could that look like?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Well the mandating of reduction can be done with legislation that is available. However there are arguments for and against for arguments are like that and everybody thought we needed intervening extraordinarily just to get the price up sufficiently before the locomotives arrive and were able to clear that up, a few months from now. The against arguments are put forth by larger companies who have said, well, we have our own transportation means, we have our own supply chain refineries and so on. So it doesn`t affect just as much, don`t medal in the market. This is a free market.

LL: In this vein I want to play a clip for you, of Alex Pourbaix. He's the CEO of Cenovus that's one of the big companies who is actually pushing for the province to limit production. Listen to this.

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This is an untenable situation. What we`re saying is the government has the tools to deal with this. We see this as a very temporary but a very acute situation. Nobody is making money at this price and this is rapidly becoming an emergency situation in the economy.

LL: As you said before there are players big players like Suncor Husky who aren't in agreement on this. Given all of this what do you think Notley's going to do?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Well, very difficult situation. She's dispatched the envoys to go and spread out because I said that it's a battle of titans, but it's also pulling in unfortunately hundreds of other companies across Alberta, a lot of labor and so on and so forth. So if your free market capitalist, you would just observe the situation and say okay, it's like the airlines, if they cut their ticket prices and losing money may the best airline win, right, as an observer. But there's a third dimension to this which I think the Notley government is likely to play into and that is that the people on the resource and they effectively get in top a royalty agreement and a partnership with these companies to develop and sell the resource. And so the argument for intervention really is more clear. If you put forth the idea that 'wait a minute' like we, the people of Alberta, and indeed all Canadians, because Canadians are forfeiting revenue of significant quantity, are losing too in effectively what is a near [unintelligible] price war.

LL: And the federal side, we have the government announcing in its financial update earlier this week that it was going to allow for capital cost allowances on some infrastructure and that includes obviously the oil companies. But it doesn't sound like it's willing to do much more than that. Should the federal government be doing more?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Well, the federal government can do more in the near term to long-term. Its levers are much more limited in the very immediate term. Over the course of the next few weeks, it's really critical that these near term glut issues that Alex Pourbaix talked about are resolved. Because if they're not resolved in the next few weeks then you're going to start to see layoffs. You're going to start to see the whole winter drilling season forfeited. That's why there is such a fire alarm being pulled.

LL: Is this a crisis?

PETER TERTZAKIAN: It is. I think, domestically, it's on the verge of being one. This is the largest industry in the land. The revenues, without these differentials of the industry as a whole across all the provinces that produce oil, is in the order of 110-120 billion dollars. And so when you are seeing such traumatic discounts, it significantly affects top line revenue then it affects income and the taxes you get from that, the royalties. And then spreads out to all the peripheral services including all the way from a helicopter pilot to steal manufacturing in the Eastern province that support this industry.

LL: It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks. Thank you.

PETER TERTZAKIAN: Yes. Thank you for having me.

LL: Peter Tertzakian is an economist and executive director of the ARC Energy Research Institute. He is in Calgary. Well the CBC News is coming up next. Then we're going to head to Brazil where researchers have discovered a huge network of millions of interconnected termite’s mounds. Those tiny house wreckers may hold the secrets to our next engineering marvels. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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'Just unbelievable': Termite mound network the size of Great Britain discovered in Brazil

Guests: Stephen Martin, Lisa Margonelli

LL: I’m Laura Lynch and you’re listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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LL: Still to come African countries say it time that cultural artifacts plundered by explorers and colonial powers are finally returned. But some musicologist say repatriation could do more harm than good. The quest for stolen treasure, in less than 30 minutes. But first, all hail the... termites.

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[sound: Tapping]

LL: Those are the sounds of termites. Specifically, this is what they sound like when they are communicating, tapping their heads on the timber that they're eating. Okay. Termites may be destructive pests when they're chopping in your house but they are also impressive builders. Researchers in Brazil recently discovered a network of symmetrical 4,000 year old termite mounds, connected by intricate underground tunnels. And it is huge, as in its visible from space, as in the excavated soil equals the volume of 4,000 Great Pyramids, as in it is the size of Great Britain. This termite network in Brazil is the largest non-human engineering feat ever built by a single species. Stephen Martin is one of the researchers with the team that made the discovery. He is a social entomologist and a professor at Salford University. He is in Sheffield England. Hello.

STEPHEN MARTIN: Hello, Laura.

LL: Now you've been to this area to study this termite colony and these mounds a few times and I'd like you to sort of walk me through it. Can you describe what it looks like?

STEPHEN MARTIN: It looks actually quite normal. As you're driving along these mounds just start to appear. They're about 10 feet high, 20 feet at the base and they are every 30 or 40 feet. They just keep coming. They’re in a very regular shape. It is in a forest, so you can see very far in, but they're just everywhere and you keep driving and driving. They're just along road side. If you turn off, they are there. And it really becomes impressive when you start to look on Google Earth or on Google Maps and you can really see the expanse of them.

LL: Right, but I wonder what it was like for you, the first time when you were out there on the ground seeing all of this.

STEPHEN MARTIN: Well the first time I was there, it's just unbelievable. You just cannot believe what you're looking at. You take some photographs. We just recognized there was no evidence of termites' actually activity. And I thought it just might be a geological feature, sediment in a lake bottom, it's too regular. So I came back to England, talked to some friends and they said 'no, no. This is just geological. It's nothing. Animals couldn't build something on that scale'. So I went back on another trip and then I met Roy Hughes who lives there and he's actually also studying the termites. We teamed up and then we took this task to actually to try and prove how they're built, what built them and that led us eventually to this study.

LL: So tell me about the mounds. What is so special about them?

STEPHEN MARTIN: Well actually there's nothing special about them in many ways, because they're just mounds of soil. So they're excavated as a result of these huge excavations on the ground to make these huge tunnels. But what's strange is they're really regular space as if there was a gram plan, as somebody would actually put these things. Every 20 meters they built another mount. They're all roughly the same height but they're over you know a huge area, hundreds and hundreds of miles. I've just got these regular space maps and that's unusual. So that's when we started to try and answer the question how could this arise. And you know we just kept in discovering more and more things, that they're very old and they're actually the oldest living structures that have been made by, or persisted, because they're made by insects and actually still occupied today around about 4000 years.

LL: It's just amazing. Do you say that the models themselves are little more than dirt. So what is inside or how did you find out what was going on with them?

STEPHEN MARTIN: So there's nothing inside. That's just the central tube, a vertical tube that goes down into the ground. And when we followed that down with optic fibre cameras we found that that intersects with the sort of underground motorway and underground highway. And these are very large. About 10 centimeters which is- you know the termites are only about a centimeter - so much larger than the termites. And they are just moving up and down the large passageways. And then we went, we dug down, which is very difficult because the Earth is baked hard there, and we just hit another junction and another junction, and then we realised we were into a massive network. And occasionally we find galleries which you've got dried leaves in, which is their food, or sometimes with brood. That's young termites, the baby ones that's been reared. But we never found one of the nests where the king and the queen lives or where all the eggs are produced.

LL: This sounds like a society by anonymy.

STEPHEN MARTIN: It is exactly a society. It's one that obviously predates what we do, to be here a long time. But yes they have a single, well, we believe, normally, a social insect of a single queen, then one or few males to do the mating. And then a huge numbers of female workers and they do all the work. Some of them develop into soldiers and they're incredibly successful. This group of social insects of which the termites are part dominate the earth. Their biomass is five or six times more than all the vertebrates at all; people, the elephants and dogs and cats and animals on the planet. But we don't see them, they live in the soil under the ground and they tend to be small. So this is a rare example where actually there workings over a huge length of time have been preserved, because it's a very stable climate. So things haven't changed and nobody really lives in this area. It's a very poor area of Brazil and you can't grow crops on this particular land it is too barren. So it's been left alone. So the termites have been allowed to persist.

LL: But why are they building this network of tunnels, and as you say these sites galleries? What purpose does it serve?

STEPHEN MARTIN: To get their food. So basically the reason that we believe that they've had to excavate such a massive range of tunnels, is their food only appears about once a year for about a month. Because most of the time it's 40 degrees searing hot and everything's pretty much dead on the surface, like desert and it rains and then everything comes. The leaves come up out of the trees, flower and then they fall to the ground and then the termites must get as much food as they can before it disappears. So just like if you can imagine in Canada, if all shops, food shops, are only open for one week a year. So those with the fastest cars and the best access to big highways are going to be able to get more food, for that short period of time. And that's why they're built these, to be able to get fast access to a limited food supply.

LL: Survival of the fittest.

STEPHEN MARTIN: Exactly.

LL: But they also play a role in the ecosystems. What role do they play?

STEPHEN MARTIN: Well they're really really important. They turn over dead matter, so dead leaves, dead wood, dead grass. So they're basically keeping the nutrients turning over. If we didn't have them, things would build up. And this is a problem. Termites we know them often as pests but when we build a house out of wood then obviously the termites see is, you know, big chocolate cake. So once you get into it they're just going to eat it because it's that's - let's say - natural wood. Wood is very difficult to digest. Very few animals can do it. Termites are one of the highly specialised ones that can. Otherwise, they're sort of replaced by fungi in the northern climates. In the tropical climates termite, they decomposed would basically by eating it.

LL: Why this discovery such an important scientific breakthrough?

STEPHEN MARTIN: I don’t think it represents a really massive breakthrough. It's just a surprise. I mean it's undiscovered wonder of the world that we've never really found. And in this day and age, with a small planet, we think we know everything. Really, from the scientific point of view what's really interesting is the regular patterns. How does that evolve? Because you've got an insect which is blind. It is no central communication. So these are individuals acting on their own. They're able to build these really complex and beautiful structures without sort of any grand design. And these are known as self-emergent properties which appear and we have a lot of ideas and this is one of the- There is mounds like this but they're all fossilized in South Africa and North America. And so there's a lot of debate of how they came. A lot people think it was geological. And the problem is whatever built is gone. And this is a case where actually we know what built them. They're still there and we've tried to come with some ideas to explain this incredibly beautifully regular pattern. Because it's just very-- it's optimal, it's the best way, the most efficient way of getting rid of soil is to have a very evenly spaced system of amounts. And it take a long time, it takes hundreds of thousands years for these things to evolve which circumstances in that area of Brazil have allowed so we can see it.

LL: Now that when it comes to the design of the mounds, really, what you're saying, what I read is that it's really just the termites getting rid of soil. And they climb up to the top of the mound and they dump it.

STEPHEN MARTIN: That's exactly right. So that's all they do. But they've evolved this system so they travel a shorter distance. The most efficient spacing of the mounds. If you look up say honeybee colony you've got a column and they're all hexagons. And again that is the perfect space in a perfect packing solution to put a lot of space into one area, not circles but the hexagons. And this effectively also sort of base on a large hexagon system. But is its natural selection optimization over long periods of time. There just been very efficient which is survival of the fittest.

LL: So interesting. Professor Martin thank you for your time.

STEPHEN MARTIN: No problem.

LL: Stephen Martin is a professor at Salford University and a social entomologist. He is part of a new study on termite mounds in Brazil. And we reached him in Sheffield, England. Well, for most Canadians termites can't possibly be seen as architects. Instead there are architects of destruction. Richard Murphy has spent several decades helping homeowners fight termite infestations as the operations manager for Aetna Pest Control in Toronto. He recounts some of his worst encounters with termites, including in its own house.

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[Music]

When I bought the house I didn't know- Well, the real estate agent and I didn't really know why the first floor wasn't in the basement. So that was pretty bad damage but I had wafted to places where it's like tear down. You know, I saw one in East York, it was toast. Like the termites had been there probably for 20 plus years. And unfortunately the guy who owned the house was in the early 90s and he wasn't seeing well. He wasn't hearing well. He didn't realize how bad it was because he just didn't know. So the big beams the wooden beams holding up the first floor. The actual floor joists. You know when you get a nasty structural stuff it gets really expensive to fix. So here's a photo of someone's roof in the West End of Toronto. And what they've done is they put spray foam insulation right underneath the roof boards. Unfortunately the termites got right into this foam insulation as we ripped the roof of, then we started ripping into the form, there's like 9 inches of foam - that was very costly to install - but the termites completely infested it. All the stuff inside this foam, all those brown galleries, that's termites. I got a great deal of respect for these insects. I think they're the hardest working [unintelligible] pretty much on the planet. When they're working individually, through science, we know that individual termites are actually penalty's. But when you get half a million to a million go into town or something yeah you get a lot of respect for them.

LL: That's Toronto exterminator Richard Murphy who has learnt to respect termites over the years, as has my next guest. Lisa Margonelli is a science journalist who has spent the past decade investigating the complex worlds these insects occupy and what humans can learn from them. It turns out termites might help us unlock the secrets to building sustainable structures, to creating cooperative robots and perhaps even producing better bio fuels. Lisa Margonelli's new book is called Under Bug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology. And we reached her Arrowsic, Maine. Hello.

LISA MARGONELLI: Hello.

LL: Now we've just heard about the kinds of termites that eat away at our houses. But in the termite Kingdom, how common are those species?

LISA MARGONELLI: Well there are about 3000 kinds of termites that have been named and there might be another 2000 that are kind of just out. They don't have names. But only 27 of them actually run around eating houses and being pests. And what's funny about that 27 is they happened to be the ones that are close to him and they like Disturbed landscapes. They are doing very well with climate change. They've also travelled around a lot of times on our boats and railroad ties and pallets and you know with international shipping and things like that. So in a sense they are our friends who we keep very close and then they eat our houses.

LL: I don't know of all people would call them friends, but I’m wondering what it was like when you first saw termites in the wild in one of those colonies?

LISA MARGONELLI: Well the first time I saw them it was just out in Arizona. I just sort of flipped over a rock and a I had a little thing called aspirator and I was able to suck them up into a little mouth powered vacuum and look at them. And they were just all clinging to each other. They're very tiny. They're translucent. They have no wings, no eyes. They were just ridiculous. Individual from nothing without their colony. That's one other aspect of being a social insect, is that an individual termite can't reproduce. It can't really feed itself. It can't defend itself. They need to have the queens and the kings to reproduce. They need to have the soldiers for protection and then the workers can kind of do their job.

LL: In case you talked about those complex social structures, what do we know about how they actually communicate or interact with each other?

LISA MARGONELLI: Termites are kind of amazing. They communicate by smell through pheromones. The queen can kind of keep the keeps her brood, basically as children. And that's one of the things about termites is they don’t- the workers and the soldiers don't mature. They stay in the army. But they also communicate by clicking to each other. They spend a lot of time grooming each other and touching each other constantly. If you leave termites in a little area where they have no sensation at all, they will just sort of stand on in a huddle stroking each other with their antennae.

LL: But is there a leader? Is the queen coordinating the digging and the construction?

LISA MARGONELLI: So there is no leader. Just as Dr. Martin I think said, they're building all of these now without any sort of a co-ordinator. It's not a master mind. It's these tiny mini minds. It's just the individual work based on little local signals underground, with no eyes and they build these magnificent structures that have sort of evolved a combination of behaviour and genetics and signals from the landscape. That's how they build these structures.

LL: So let's talk about larger applications then. Why is it scientists are looking at termites as the key to producing biofuels?

LISA MARGONELLI: Well termites can eat wood which is actually pretty rare in nature. So they have about 200 to 300 symbiotic bacteria and other microbes in their guts. And those, it's basically like a molecular wrecking yard. A piece of cellulose come in and they just start yanking the parts off the edges of it and destroying it kind of molecule by molecule, and changing it into hydrogen and methane. They make nitrogen bioavailable. So they can do it. And the question is how can we do it. So 10 years ago I started--

LL: Do you mean how can we do it, how can we eat wood? Is that what you're saying?

LISA MARGONELLI: Yes. We do we eat wood?

LL: [Laughs]

LISA MARGONELLI: If we could it eat wood, we would be able to make a cellulose and wood into fuel. And so we could use that to run our cars. So the idea is to sort of imitate them in some way. And in the beginning they were really trying to - scientists - were really literally trying to imitate them. Now I think it turns out that what termites are doing in their guts is very very complicated. And so now they're more of a model system and an ideal of what we could do if we could understand how to do it correctly.

LL: Now what about robotics experts? What are they trying to learn from termites?

LISA MARGONELLI: They're trying to learn that question of how is it that the individual termite does receive signals from the other time and from themselves, and it puts a ball of dirt down, and then 100 million other balls of dirt are down you suddenly have a mount. How is it that that leaderless collaboration and construction happen? So the robotisists want to make robot that can build. So that we could have buildings that are built by robot. They also want to have built robots that can build without a leader, so that the robots are communicating amongst themselves and can kind of make, at a certain scale, leveled decisions on the ground. The other thing that they want is to be able to make software that, for example, in a network if something breaks into the network and you have a virus coming in your computer network, the computer itself - the network - can go and heal that. So it is both sort of a changeable robot that can do things as well as sort of the idea of how this works that can be applied to software.

LL: We spoke with another scientist who's been exploring what we can learn from termites. Andrea Surovek is a professor and a research scientist at South Dakota Institute of Mines and Technology. She is working on a project to try to understand how termite mounds might hold the key to sustainable buildings of the future.

SOUNDCLIP

In the current study we're looking out at the typology of termites mounds. So what we're hoping to do, is find shape of structural elements that can also assist the heating and cooling in the ventilation systems was studying, to help save energy in building construction. To give you an example, there was a building called the East Gate Center in Zimbabwe that was designed by an architect named Nick Pearce, who looked at termites’ mounds and how they ventilated. And he created a building modelled on that behavior that uses about 10 percent of the energy of a state building of its size, in that area. So the impact on energy usage could be extraordinary.

LL: Lisa Margonelli, what exactly is it about the structure of termite mounds that's worth copying to humans?

LISA MARGONELLI: Well, there are a lot of different kinds of termite mounts. Some of them move air using the heat in the cooling outside in the landscape. Some of them actually keep the termites cool during the day and a little bit warmer at night, some of them keep them dry during the wet season and wetter during the dry season. So all of these shapes have kind of physical properties that sort of make use of the Sun's temperature and the sort of the things around in the environment. And I think that's kind of what the dream is in building more termite inspired building. We you know we have huge [unintelligible] systems in our buildings, and we have windows and everything's closed up. How could we kind of use these [unintelligible] ventilation system that termites have evolved to to be more comfortable.

LL: Okay we have about a minute left and I'm wondering we tend to see them as pests, but how much love did termites get from a scientific community?

LISA MARGONELLI: Well unfortunately most of the people who are paying for studies, up until the last 10 years or so, have been you know extermination company with good reason. But there's a lot to love about the termites I think. When you kind of step back you understand that they're making the world around us - even though we're totally unaware of it.

LL: Okay then, what would you say people really need to understand about termites in order to love them more?

LISA MARGONELLI: Well I think you need to look at them all frolicking amongst themselves. They're actually really cute. They have big heads like [unintelligible]. And they're always touching each other and kind of goofing around. And when you really examine them they're building, you see that only some of them are working hard. Some of them are kind of we leaders who encourage the others to work. And others are just screwing around.

LL: We're going to we're going to have to leave it there. They’ll outlast us all. Thank you very much.

LISA MARGONELLI: Thank you. Bye.

LL: Lisa Margonelli is a science journalist and the Author of Under Bug: An Obsessive Tales of Termites and Technology and she was in our Arrowsic, Maine. Coming up in our next half hour, Benin's bronze artifacts. Egypt's Nefertari bust and Rosetta Stone, all African cultural cornerstones. None of them currently on the continent. We'll hear about the fight for their return in 90 seconds. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Should western museums return artifacts looted from former African colonies?

Guest: Marie-Cecile Zinsou, Anuraag Saxtena, Gary Vikan

LL: I’m Laura Lynch and you’re listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[French speech]

It is unacceptable that a large part of African heritage be in France. African heritage can not just be European private collections and museums.

[Applause]

LL: That was French President Emmanuel Macron speaking in Burkina Faso last November. The West African country is just one of many countries on the continent that are asking friendship museums to return artifacts taken by French colonial forces. President Macron commissioned a study, that's out today, examining the repatriation of cultural artifacts to its former African colonies. And it could have far reaching implications for French institutions as well as international museums that are facing their own repatriation calls from Africa and beyond. According to the report, about 90 percent of Africa's cultural heritage is currently outside the continent. The first African country to officially ask France for the return of its artefacts is Benin. Marie-Cecile Zinsou is a French-Beninese art historian. She is the president of the Foundation Zinsou in Benin which promotes contemporary art in Africa and we have reached her in Paris, France. Hello.

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Hello.

LL: What do you make of this report that is calling for the return of these artifacts and objects?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Well it is very important moment for us in Benin. Last November was a big shot when Emmanuel Macron decided to speak about the African heritage which has been in France for a hundred years, since the colonial period. Today the report is released and it is very ambitious, because it is said that France should look at its colonization time and think about giving back the African artworks. It's the first time in history, and we hope that the President of the Republic it's going to follow the recommendation and let Africa has its heritage back.

LL: Why were you so shocked when President Macron decided to look into this?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Because the French law doesn't permit, usually, that the French collections change. I mean the African artworks have been in France in the national collections, in the Benin case, since 1892, but there is a law in France saying that the national heritage, French heritage, doesn't move from the collection. You can't take anything back from the collection. So normally we couldn't ask for the African artwork to come back to Africa. This report suggests that we change the law, and the president today has the power to change the law because a national assembly is into La Republique en Marche, which is his political party. So today it can actually have a law changing the heritage French law and we could get our object back.

LL: Can you give me an idea of what kinds of things we're talking about? Describe them a bit for me.

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Well it depends really on the country. I will speak only for Benin. In the Benin case it's mostly royal art, art form the Dahomey Kingdom, from the Abomey city which is the capital city of the King. So we are speaking about thrones, the King's thrones and we're speaking about the door of the palace and we are speaking about most objects that were once the King's property in Dahomey.

LL: Is there one particular object in the collection that you are looking forward to having back in the country, again?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Well there are quite a few. I think the door of the palace would be one of the most important object to come back, and also one of the statues of one of the gods. It's so important that it is [indistinct French speech] today. I think this god, the Gu god should come back quite soon.

LL: What is Benin then doing to prepare to receive these objects and take care of them?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Well for the moment Republic of Benin is the only country in Western Africa to have asked officially for the return of abject for their institutions. But for the moment one of the things that worries me is that the government is talking a lot and they are speaking about creating museum, it has been speaking about it for three years but for the moment nothing is really done.

LL: Well then if Benin gets these objects back, is it actually going to be able to take care of them properly?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Well yes because it's just a question of will. If they decide you want to take care of your heritage, you can do it. I hope this will emerge some restitution for [unintelligible].

LL: What got you interested in history in the first place?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: I [unintelligible] my exam when I was 21. I've been working there since 2005, with my museum, with my contemporary art foundation. I created it because there was no way to have access to contemporary creation and culture freely in Benin. So I wanted children to be able to go for free in a museum and connect with their history and with the creation of our time. So that's how I got into this battle of restitution in the battle of culture, every day for everyone.

LL: I'm wondering what the response was from the community when you opened up your museum.

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Everyone told me it was no use because Africa didn't need museum, because if Africa had needed museum there would be some. And after a year, we had received 200,000 people and so people stopped making stupid comments on the African people going to museums.

LL: And yet you can't seem to get them moving toward creating a new museum to host this art that is being repatriating.

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Well you know we have the experience of showing the French African collections in 2006 because we did first and one of the only exhibition of the museum of the [unintelligible] in Africa in Benin. We stayed open for three months with this exhibition and we had 275,000 people coming. So I think if the governments are not acting quickly the population where its interest is and understands the importance of this heritage. So people come and very keen on discovering their history.

LL: Now the French government first made the announcement about returning these items last year, and since then some gallery owners and curators actually had reservations about sending them back. Just listen to this tape.

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[French speech]

I think at the moment Africa lacks the structure. These objects must not be exposed to parasites. You have to have staff who can handle, clean and repair items if need be. And also staff who can display them and put them in a place and at this time this just does not exist in Africa.

LL: That is gallery owner Bernard Dulong speaking to the French television channel France 24 in January of this year. Marie-Cecile, what do you think when people say that you're just not ready to conserve these objects?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: It is very strange because the person who is speaking it the person who created a private museum in Benin with his friends, all the French gallerists of ancient art, African art. And created a museum in Cotonou and is showing one of the most impressive collection of ancient art of [unintelligible]. So it's very weird to hear from him. I understand that people from the art market are absolutely furious about this idea of restitution. But the way it is told is first a lie because most people can say we haven't had any condition in Africa. It’s absurd. Senegal is opening in two weeks a fine museum which has every international conditions to receive object. Mali has had a museum in Bamaco for 20 years which is absolutely great. And some other countries don't have them or have museum but in a poor start, but obviously if those countries engage in the restitution path, obviously they will renew their museum. So I think it's very condescending and it's a very French way of looking at Africa, to say Africa doesn't know how to do this and now we'll show you, or we'll do that for you. It is the problem of the French vision of Africa. It hasn't changed a lot since colonisation.

LL: I'm wondering then what will the return of all of this art mean for Benin?

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Well imagine that today, you would have grown up without any museum, without any artifacts of your history. This is what it means, when objects come back. It is being your history come back. You see, because today our museums are empty and nobody knows about history. So today all this new generation will be able to see with eyes, and not5000 kilometres away, the symbol for a proud history.

LL: There's also an opportunity for you to be able to show the world that, yes, you can take care of your own things.

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Yes it's very important for the image of Africa and for the way Europe looks at Africa, this will probably change the vision of Africa in Europe.

LL: Alright. We will leave it there. Thank you very much for your time.

MARIE-CECILE ZINSOU: Thank you.

LL: Marie-Cecile Zinsou is a French-Beninese art historian and president of the Foundation Zinsou. She is in Paris, France. Well, African countries aren't alone in working to have stolen artifacts returned. Back in 2014, Australia's then Prime Minister Tony Abbott personally delivered two stolen artifacts to the Indian government. My next guest to helped locate and recover them. Anuraag Saxena is a co-founder of the India Pride project, a volunteer organization that is working to return Indian art and antiquities back to India. He is in Singapore. Hello.

ANURAAG SAXENA: Hi Laura. Thank you so much for having me.

LL: What is the India Pride project? What are you trying to accomplish?

ANURAAG SAXENA: The India Pride project is based on a very simple idea that heritage belongs to its own people and that history belongs to its geography. And any kind of symbols of our civilization - or any other civilization for that matter - that were taken away forcefully and without consent, deserve to go back to the community they were taking from. So the India Pride project is really an effort to build advocacy and awareness and the idea that restitution needs to happen, as the world [unintelligible] universe.

LL: How many people were involved in this project?

ANURAAG SAXENA: Well we have a core team of 11 and an extended volunteer of 700 people across the world, who are in whenever needed. But I think the most fascinating part of running IPP is that we have no funding at all. We have no employees at all and we have no authority at all. And I say this kind of tongue in cheek because these are three excuses people with passions use to not do what they really believe in. So I think we're emerging as a very interesting model as the world's first outsourced heritage restitution project.

LL: Did you have any sense of how many pieces of art and artifacts are missing from India?

ANURAAG SAXENA: Well you know there's a whole bunch of organisations with very different estimates. The UNESCO for example said 50,000 artifacts were stolen from India. You know the estimates are anywhere from 30,000 to 70,000. But you know the way I look at, even one is far too many. So you know these are crimes that extend beyond statistics. It would be unacceptable even if one happens.

LL: What sort of items are we talking about though?

ANURAAG SAXENA: It's interesting you know linking back to what Marie just said about Benin. We all have items from the collections. We have maps and paintings and manuscripts and what have you. But the interesting part about India is a whole bunch of faith objects, or religious objects, are stolen from India. A disproportionately high number of objects that are smuggled out, are of religious significance. So crucifixes from churches and [unintelligible] are idols from temples, Islamic objects and Buddhist objects that are disproportionately high amount.

LL: So take me through what you do exactly, what are the steps you take?

ANURAAG SAXENA: Well IPP really has three core areas of focus. The first is where we do a lot of analysis which is the research about tracing what was stolen, from where, where is it now et \c etc. The second part is advocacy which is a much bigger challenge than I thought it would be because it means nudging to governments to do what is right. And the third is building awareness because, to be honest, the world at large doesn't see heritage theft, or heritage smuggling, as a large enough problem today. And through the efforts of Marie and mine and a whole bunch of others, we're trying to make people realise that it's not legit. To you see something from Benin of India China or any other Indigenous community in a Western Museum where it doesn't belong.

LL: How do you get the attention of countries, and not just countries, but curators?

ANURAAG SAXENA: I believe people are fundamentally very decent, Laura. YI think curators are often the victims themselves. They've been fooled into buying or acquiring stuff, not knowing that it was wrong. So it's all very often it is just about informing them about the morality of a particular heritage object. Now for those that aren't as decent on morally stable, there needs to be a bit of naming and shaming and you know pointing out to the world that it is not acceptable what they do. So we do whatever it takes to get the attention to essentially convince them to do do what's right.

LL: How successful have you been, then? How many jobs have been returned with your campaigns?

ANURAAG SAXENA: Oh it's a fascinating question. You know from India gained independence, which is 1947 to 2014, that's about 65 years, we had roughly 13 objects come back to India. So that's roughly one every five years. In the last four years we've had over 200 objects offered back to India. So you know there's a spike in what's coming back now.

LL: I just want to play some tape for you. The movement for the return of items from France to Africa was spurred by a speech to French President Emmanuel Macron gave in Burkina Faso last year. Here is a clip from that speech.

SOUNDCLIP

In many African countries, often it is these African curators who organized the smuggling. And it is sometimes the European curators that save the African works for Africans benefit, by getting out of the hands of the traffickers and smugglers.

LL: Now I wonder what do you make of this idea that Europeans are actually saving the arts from being smuggled.

ANURAAG SAXENA: Well I got two quick responses to that, Laura. A- It is factually incorrect that Europe the literally saver. You know if you were to check the Interpol art crimes database, it is full of European objects that have been stolen from Europe. So - A - it's a false narrative that has been spread by Europe for whatever interest they see in it. B - I think it is also very elitist and condescending to indigenous people to say, 'hey listen, you're not as good as we are'.

LL: But aren't some of the Indians artifacts stolen by Indians themselves and sold around the world?

ANURAAG SAXENA: A lot of local stealing happens everywhere in the world. There is Canadian aret that is stolen in Canada, there is American art which is stolen in America, there is Indian art that has been stolen in India. But, if you just look at the numbers, it ignores the demand side of the problem, which largely exists in the North American continent and in West, in Europe. And I think that needs dealing with. Unless your part of the world does something about illegal demand, our part of the world can do nothing about illegal supply.

LL: We will leave it there. Thank you very much for your time.

ANURAAG SAXENA: Thank you.

LL: Anuraag Saxena is a co-founder of the India Pride Project, a volunteer organization working to return Indian art and antiquities back to India. He is in Singapore. Now not everyone agrees that all objects in Western collection should be returned to their countries of origin. Gary Vikan is president of the Committee for Cultural Policy. It's a think tank that advocates for a balanced approach to returning objects and trading in antiquities. He's also the former director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. And after the memoir Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director. We have reached him in Baltimore. Hello.

GARY VIKAN: Hello Laura, great show. Thank you.

LL: Can I get your initial reaction to the point that Anuraag Saxena was just making?

GARY VIKAN: Well certainly things that are clearly stolen need to go back. Nobody gains from any trade that is tainted. And what we advocate for, with Committee for Cultural Policy, is a world where in objects are legally bought and sold across borders. I long have believed that the movement of objects is like the movement of ideas in people. I lived in Romania under Ceaucescu for a year, and nobody could come, and nobody could go and objects quit and come and go and books would come and go. And we don’t want a world like that. We want a world where there is free movement across borders, but they must be controlled, legal and bilaterally agreed to. So that is what he advocate for. And yes I do believe it's great Indian art in Baltimore and we have a fantastic collection of the arts of India. But I also think American art should be in India. And so finding a balance which is what Macron is starting about is, I think, what we all want to see.

LL: I think language is important here. You said stolen works should be returned. How do you define stolen?

GARY VIKAN: Well in the case of the Shiva that was returned by Australia that was by the good work actually of the group that we just heard about, was actually in a place and photographed in that place and then it was taken out of that place. So it's clearly a stolen item. The Walters's filled with antiquities that came totally legally into the United States with the full knowledge of the countries of origin.

LL: Your memoir is called Sacred and Stolen and I'm wondering if you were ever involved in acquiring or holding objects that were of questionable provenance.

GARY VIKAN: Well when I began my museum career in the 70s and 80s, the terms under which the accepted practice of the comings and goings of art was very different from what it is now. Cyprus had just been invaded, the northern half of Cyprus, had just been invaded by Turkey. And there were vast numbers of icons and even frescoes in mosaics on the market that had been looted out of Northern Cyprus. I mean objects that were 800,000 years old. And that was more or less acceptable at the time. It was amazing really how people would turn a blind eye to what in retrospect is obvious. So times have changed and I'm proud to say that I was involved in a couple of major repatriations to Cyprus of objects had been looted by Turkey.

LL: Now the report on artifacts in the French collections is out today, and also this week a delegation from Easter Island came to the British Museum in London England to request the return of a two and a half metre tile based sculptor. And I'm just going to have some tape for you to listen to.

SOUNDCLIP

My grandma who passed away, almost 90years, she never got the chance to see here ancestors.I am almost half a century and this is my first time to come here. I am here as a representative of the government and I am also [unintelligible]. And we came all here, but we are just a body.You're, the England people, have our soul. And it's time to, maybe send us back for a while, so our sons can see it as I can see it. You have keeping him for 150 years. Just give us some months and we can have [starts crying].

LL: Now that is the governor of Easter Island speaking in London on Tuesday. Gary Vikan, how should museum professionals respond to that kind of an emotional appeal?

GARY VIKAN: Well I think the key word is collaboration, cooperation. And also to bear in mind that the effort ownership of something, actually possessing it, ina legal sense and having it accessible are two different things. And I think if we're more comfortable with things moving across borders for a while, and giving access to our audiences in faraway places that way. So if we arrive at a point of full transparency and collaboration with supply countries, it seems to me we're going to be in a better place. And yes, those kind of emotional pleas are very powerful.

LL: Museums do seem to be more open to returning objects, but there are still high profile cases like the Elgin Marbles in London again where there is resistance to returning them to Greece. Why do you think that is?

GARY VIKAN: Well when you have something you want to keep. It's human nature. When you stand on the Acropolis, actually go to the Acropolis Museum and you look off the window there's the Acropolis and then you see all the reliefs in the museum that there are the originals, and you see plaster casts of the pieces in London, all you can think I think it - as a normal visitor to that museum - is wouldn't it be great if that extraordinary monument were whole again? Or at least as whole as it possibly can be. Because at the end of the day, it's our cultural heritage. It's not Greece, it's not England, it's the World Heritage.

LL: I don’t think Greece would necessarily agree with you.

GARY VIKAN: A bit of a borderless view of the past. I think we're going to get to a better place.

LL: I'm not sure that Greece would necessarily agree with you on that. I mean what legitimate reasons are there for museums to continue to hold objects if the home country wants them back?

GARY VIKAN: Well they are gotten legally. After all we're talking, in the case of sub-Saharan African, of 90,000 works in France. A vast number of objects and nobody wants all of that stuff. You know, it's just more than anybody can ever handle. Most museums show just a small fraction of the art that they have in their collection. So I think there's a lot of latitude leading toward the state, or a state of circumstances, when there are great collections of African Art in Africa and great [unintelligible] of African Art in Paris and in Rome and in London and New York and Baltimore. There is plenty of art to go around. And if the trade is open, transparent and done without coercion, it seems to me we're going in the right hour.

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

GARY VIKAN: Thank you.

LL: Gary Vican is the former director of the Walters Art Museum. His memoir is called Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director. He's also president of the Committee for Cultural Policy which advocates for a legal market in antiquities. And we reached him in Batlimore. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q where Rufus Wainwright joins host Tom Power to talk about Hadrian and his long and varied music career. I am Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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