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The Current Transcript for January 10, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We have intelligence from multiple sources, including our allies and our own intelligence. The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface to air missile on a day when speculation grew from a whisper to a roar.

MATT GALLOWAY: The prime minister all but confirmed what many suspected when it came to the crash of a Ukrainian airliner carrying 176 people, including 63 Canadians. First up, how a community already in mourning is reacting to this latest awful news. And a conversation with the last man to represent Canada in Iran on what happens next. And then the fires in Australia continue to burn with more than a billion animals now possibly lost.

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Not pleasant. And we've got a large pit filling up and a lot of them dying, you know, they might get [unintelligible] there on their last breath as they show up.

MG: A look at the efforts to preserve that wildlife, including the story of Bear, the koala saving rescue dog. That's coming up in 30 minutes. Also on the way, the journalist Peggy Orenstein on her new book, Boys and Sex. It's just as it sounds. Parents, you may want to take a seat. The lesson begins in an hour. We begin with the latest on a deepening Canadian tragedy. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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'It means a lot' to see Canadians come together to mourn Iran plane crash, says vigil organizer

Guests: Zarrin Mohyeddin, Dennis Horak, Payam AKhavan

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VOICE 1: I know five, six people, all friends, yes, their family. And [crying] she was pregnant. She had a three year old son. She was also seven months pregnant. They were just getting settled in Canada. A man who believes that. It's so tragic.

VOICE 2: My name's Tina. I'm 17. And I go to Sean Green Secondary School. One of the victims went to our school. He was in our grade. A lot of us I grew up with him since he moved here. It's really hard to grieve the death of someone who is, or mourn the loss of like someone who was so close in age with us, like we should not be having to come out to a memorial for someone who is our age. Like, it just, it's not right that he was one of the victims who died at such a young age.

VOICE 3: It's really hard. You know, there are many, many young people I know. You see so many young people and you missed [unintelligible].

MG: The voices from a vigil in north Toronto last night in the dark, biting cold. People lit candles and shed tears. Zarrin Mohyeddin helped organize that vigil. She came to Canada more than 40 years ago in the wake of the Iranian revolution. And she's with me in studio now. Good morning.

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: Good morning.

MG: What's it like to listen to those voices from last night?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: It's very disturbing. It's very sad and angry that why this happened.

MG: What have the last 48 hours or so been like for you? You helped organize this vigil. But even before then, as people were, we're coming to terms with the scale and the scope of this tragedy. What's that been like for you?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: It's very hard. It's very, very hard, I believe for all the Iranian Canadian community. And we wanted to do something for them and to honour them. And also, we organized this vigil, because we wanted the community come together to show their unity and to honour the people they lost their life.

MG: Tell me a little bit about what happened last night. I saw some of the photos that have been posted up. Your daughter Samira works here. And so I've seen some of the pictures and there was a large crowd there. Tell me a little bit about what you saw and what you heard last night.

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: It was a very good turnout. It was over a thousand people gathered in the square and unified together to honour those people that we lost. And everybody was upset. Some people was very angry. As I said before, it's sad because it's a question why this happened.

MG: There were politicians there as well. The mayor of Toronto.

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: Lots of them, mayor up Toronto was there, a member of parliament there, a minister of immigration and citizenship was there.

MG: Why was it important for you to have to have those leaders there as well?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: Because we wanted to know to show to the people, especially to people in Iran as well, too that they are mourning right now for their loved one. And here in Canada that we are all unified in Canada. And I really appreciate all the effort that the government of Canada and especially the media of Canada that cover this tragic accident.

MG: One of the things that I've heard from friends in the community is that they are heartened that this is being treated as a Canadian tragedy, not as a tragedy to a specific community. But it's our story. It's all our story.

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: Yes.

MG: What does that mean to you?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: It means a lot. That we're really in [a] safe haven that we thought about it, that we come here to get a safe haven and we are here. And we are so lucky that we live together with the Canadian, I mean, abroad Canadian. And that it's very heartwarming feeling with this situation that we have right now in grief.

MG: Did you see that at the vigil last night that that you saw the swath of the country there, not just people from the Iranian Canadian community? People beyond that community?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: Exactly. Yes. Yes. It was fantastic.

MG: Fantastic.

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: Yes.

MG: You mentioned the various emotions that were there. And people are obviously still in shock. And there's a lot of grief and a lot of sorrow. But you mentioned anger as well. Tell me about anger. Are you angry at what happened?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: I am very angry, too. You know, it is a different emotion and it's bothering because on one hand, you are very emotional and also very sad. But on the other hand you are very angry that you don't have any answers. You can't get any answer because you are dealing with a government that always deny what they have done to survive.

MG: The prime minister yesterday said that he had seen evidence that all but suggested that an Iranian missile strike was responsible for this crash. How did you process that information? Because people, as I said, had been speculating about what happened to this plane. But when the prime minister said that the evidence showed that that's what happened. How did you react to that?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: You know, first I've heard that this plane came down, I became suspicious. Because how could a plane fly in a zone that hours before the missile was fired? And how come, I mean, I remember that as soon as we heard in the news that this happened lots of airline stop flying into that area. And how come the country that caused that, they didn't close their airport and they let the commercial aeroplane to fly. For me, I was suspicious from the beginning, but yesterday it was confirmed.

MG: What do you want to see now from the Iranian government? I mean, the Canadian government is pushing access and we're going to talk more about that in just a moment in terms of what the government of this country can do. But what do you want to see from the Iranian government?

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: Iranian government, unfortunately, as I said, there is a history of Iranian government. They always deny what they did. They always lie. There are a hypocrite government. And, for example, 1500 people, they were killed, protest, they've already killed two months ago. And they deny it. Three days they cut the cell phone. They cut the Internet and they killed people. But they don't accept it.

MG: What about the community here? What happens now with this community? I mean, people were gathered yesterday.

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: They want answer and they are asking the government of Canada to investigate, demanding the Iranian government to let them know what's happen, and that that's all we want from the government of Canada.

MG: Zarrin Mohyeddin, appreciate you being here this morning. Thank you.

ZARRIN MOHYEDDIN: My pleasure.

MG: Zarrin Mohyeddin helped organize a vigil in Toronto last night for the Iranian Canadian community. She was with me in our Toronto studio yesterday. The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, echoed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's assertion that the plane was brought down by an Iranian missile. U.S. intelligence officials have said the same. Getting definitive answers, though, as to what actually happened will not be an easy task. Payam Akhavan is a professor of law at McGill University, former United Nations war crime prosecutor. We've reached him in Montreal. Good morning.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Good morning.

MG: What was your reaction after hearing what Justin Trudeau said yesterday? Very strong statement early on in this investigation, believing that the evidence he's seen shows a missile strike.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, there is a credible intelligence indicating that that was the case. And it's not surprising given the circumstances. Four hours earlier, Iran had launched about 12 ballistic missiles against U.S. air bases in Iraq in response to the U.S. drone attack that assassinated Qassem Soleimani, one of the most significant military figures in Iran. So in that context, the prospect of a civilian airliner being potentially mistaken for this kind of misapprehension of attack is a real possibility. And we have to remember the history of Iran Air flight 655, and then was shot down over the Persian Gulf in 1988 by an American warship, the USS Vincennes. So I think the Iranian people are very well aware of the tragic consequences of civilian airliners becoming entangled in these sorts of situations.

MG: The head of Iran's National Aviation Department this morning said - this is a quotation: "What is obvious for us and what we can say with certainty is that no missile hit that plane". What do we make of that denial?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, I think we have to appreciate that Islamic Republic of Iran is an authoritarian state, that the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards, have disproportionate influence. So it's going to be difficult to get an impartial investigation, especially one that may implicate the Revolutionary Guards who were in possession of the surface to air missiles. It is highly embarrassing, highly embarrassing that they would have shot down a civilian airliner just outside of Tehran airport. So I think it's going to be difficult to get the Iranian authorities to admit what happened, let alone to provide appropriate compensation for the families of the victims.

MG: Well, what about those families? I can't imagine what they're going through before they hear these comments from Justin Trudeau. What are you hearing from families in the community after this latest development?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, I've been approached by several of the families of the victims. They're already searching for answers. They want justice. I think for now, the time is for the families to mourn their loss. It's a time of bereavement. But I think that after the initial shock of this loss settles, the families of the victims, together with the government of Canada, have to indicate to Iran their absolute determination, first of all, to ensure full and impartial investigation. The families of the victims have a right to truth and then justice. Iran had brought a case against the United States before the International Court of Justice in 1989, after the downing of Iran Air 655. Iran owes compensation to the families of the victims. And there are procedures in international law that the government of Canada can and should pursue to ensure that Iran compensates the families of the victims.

MG: I want to bring Dennis Horak back into this conversation. He's the former head of Canada's mission in Iran before Ottawa shut it down in 2012. He's in Toronto. Dennis, good morning to you.

DENNIS HORAK: Good morning.

MG: What did you make of the prime minister's statements yesterday? Unusual, a lot of people say, for the prime minister to this early on in an investigation, be as clear and direct as he was saying. Were you surprised?

DENNIS HORAK: No, I frankly wasn't. I think, as some of your previous guests have mentioned, that I think a lot of us, a lot of people when they heard about the crash and it was in the context of the missile strikes by the Iranians, a lot of us, I think, assume that there was there was some sort of connection. And so, you know, if the intelligence shows it and it clearly does, I don't think there's anything wrong or terribly surprising that they would come out and be as vocal about it, particularly the Americans, and they get to come out publicly. Certainly a lot of sense to do that.

MG: And yet, as I mentioned, the head of the National Aviation Department in Iran says not a chance that this didn't happen. He's very clear about it, saying, no, there is no missile that hit that plane. Where does that leave an investigation?

DENNIS HORAK: Well, I think that it sort of speaks for itself. I mean, the investigation is supposedly in its early days and already we're drawing conclusions. And so I think that sort of tells you perhaps where this is headed. We would like to see obviously everyone would like to see a transparent, open investigation. And I'm mildly encouraged that the Iranians seem to be open to letting the Transportation Safety Board and I read I heard recently as well just recently that perhaps even Boeing will be able to send people there. That's all encouraging. But I really wonder what sort of follow through they'll be, what sort of access really get to the raw data, whether this is a PR exercise. You know, how much of the evidence is still around? I've saw bulldozers on photographs on the site yesterday. So I'm very sceptical about what this sort of access and transparency will actually look like.

MG: Well, and that's the question to me. We're learning that Canadian officials, if there is any officials who are allowed to go to the scene, will have access to information that Iran releases publicly, will get a copy of the final report. But those officials won't be able to, at this point, examine the records or even visit the scene of the accident. So what is the point of the clearance that's that Iran seems to be offering? Is it just a PR exercise?

DENNIS HORAK: I think that's exactly what it is. It's to avoid the criticism that they're somehow closing off the entire investigation. They can say, look, we let these people come in. We've opened this up and, you know, what are you talking about? And then the Iranians will come to their own conclusions and perhaps use the presence of foreign third party bodies to say, look, see, this is an open investigation. It's still worth doing. It's still worth going again. I'll be more convinced when they actually arrive. And likewise with our consular teams that are supposed to go there. When I was in Iran, we heard lots of promises about access and visas and things like that that never really materialized. So it's a sort of wait and see.

MG: Just last point on this, Dennis, the families that are grieving right now, they're in the midst of mourning, 63 Canadian citizens on board that flight and many others coming to Canada. They're going to want to retrieve the remains of their loved ones. What does that process look like, given the fact that we don't have consular officials right now on the ground in Iran?

DENNIS HORAK: It certainly makes things more complicated. If we had an embassy there, if we had officials that could be there immediately liaising with Iranian authorities and knowing who they are, knowing where they are, it would make things easier. It's a very complicated process to start with. In the absence of Canadians on the ground, we have allies and that will certainly help out. The Ukrainians have already offered assistance, which is terrific, will probably make likely liaise with our usual allies, the U.K., the Australians and New Zealanders and I'm sure will be very helpful. But it makes things much more complicated for the families. It creates delays. It's another level of bureaucracy to deal with. So there's no substitute for actually having Canadians on the ground. And hopefully the Iranians will realize and recognize that this is a humanitarian tragedy. It's a human catastrophe, unimaginable grief for the families and take the politics out of it. Let Canadian teams go in there. I'm just not confident they'll do that.

MG: Payam Akhavan, you talked about legal recourse. The families we heard are angry. And if Iran is proven to be responsible for this crash, what will they be able to do to try and find some sort of accountability?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Unfortunately, it's not possible to bring claims before the Canadian courts against the foreign sovereign. We have the State Immunity Act. But it is possible for Canada on behalf of citizens to make claims, espouse the claims of its citizens. And we have to remember also that one of the UN specialized agencies is the International Civil Aviation Organization, which happens to be based right here in Montreal. And it is open to Canada to raise this matter before the International Civil Aviation Organization in particular if Iran does not allow for a full, proper and impartial investigation. And there can be consequences attached to Iran's failure to properly investigate a matter which clearly implicates the safety of civil aviation, and that could include the suspension of Iran's rights under the relevant civil aviation treaties which regulate air traffic. So I think that there needs to be a very determined and vigorous response. Now, maybe the time to mourn this tragic loss. And then to think very carefully about next steps following.

MG: Dennis Horak, in the remaining seconds that we have, what do you want to hear next from the Prime Minister, he spoke yesterday, but what could he do in terms of that vigorous response that Payam is talking about?

DENNIS HORAK: Well, I think at this point we need to focus on getting our people in there. And if that means sort of taking this as a quiet diplomacy, sort of an approach that I think that's maybe prudent in the short run. In the longer run, certainly we need to push and we need to push publicly for a thorough investigation. We need to have the answers. Even if you know, even if the Iranians, you know, the Iranians are claiming this is a mechanical failure of some kind. Well, the world needs to know what that is, what it was all about. Because if there's a problem with the Boeing aircraft, other airlines are flying it. The world needs to know. And if not, if it was a missile attack and was likely unintentional, then we need to know, are there protocols that we can put in place in war zones, for example, where this doesn't happen again? It's happened before. And I heard in 1988 and other times,it should never happen again. And perhaps there are protocols that can be put in place for civilian airliners in war zones. So there are a lot of answers that be need to be discovered and the government needs to push that. But at the moment, I think the focus needs to be on getting our Congress stuff in there and our technical stuff in there.

MG: We'll leave it there, Dennis, thank you. Dennis Horak, former head of the Canadian Mission in Iran. He's in Toronto. Payam Akhavan, thank you very much, professor of law at McGill University, former United Nations war crime prosecutor. He's in Montreal. CBC News is next. And then we had to Australia to talk about the work that volunteers are doing to save the wildlife there in the midst of the fires. This is The Current. I'm Matt Galloway.

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Meet Bear, the sniffer dog trained to find koalas threatened by Australia's bushfires

Guests: Sam Mitchell, Romane Cristescu, John Grant

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, Peggy Orenstein has spent a lot of time researching and writing about girls and sex. Well, now it's the boys turn. And she has found out some surprising things about how boys feel about everything from hook-ups to what it means to be a man. More on that in half an hour. But first, the wildlife decimation from the bushfires in Australia.

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MG: The Australian bushfires continue to rage. Higher temperatures are expected today and nearly a quarter million people were told to evacuate their homes in the states of Victoria and New South Wales. The statistics are alarming. At least 27 people have died. Almost 2000 homes destroyed. 10.7 Million hectares have burned. That's an area almost the size of the island of Newfoundland. And experts are saying that as many as a billion animals could be dead. Yes, that is billion with a B. This is something that Adam Mudge, a volunteer firefighter, has seen up close.

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ADAM MUDGE: You can't grab every bit of wildlife and chuck it in the truck as much as you'd love to. You've still got lives, properties. It's one of those things that's really tough, as you can imagine, you see animals. I've only got one way to go. I just try and get away. You see animals the whole time. Kangaroos. It's just the sad part of it all. I mean, yes, people have their homes, walls and stuff like that. When you think of the countless animals in New South Wales, it's just devastating. Kangaroo Island on South Australia. Yes. You know, you think about the snakes. You think about the bugs. You think about the birds. You think about everything. Possums. It's just all gone.

MG: One of the hardest hit areas is Kangaroo Island off South Australia's coast. Sam Mitchell is the co-owner of Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park and Rescue Centre. Sam, hello.

SAM MITCHELL: Yes. Can you hear me?

MG: I can. Hey, it's Mike Galloway in Toronto. How are you?

SAM MITCHELL: Yes. Sorry. We've got fires all around us at the moment, so I might not be the clearest.

MG: What do you what are you in the midst of right now? You said fires are all around you.

SAM MITCHELL: There's five of us on site at the moment. We didn't have the army in today helping build our animal enclosures for all the rescues, but the fires pick back up again. And a lot of people have evacuated. And we do have fires blowing in our direction. So we're just sitting here with our fire units that belong to the park and taking it on, so we can get anything under control if it-- if it does hit us.

MG: How close are they to you?

SAM MITCHELL: Well, we can see flames, big flames. I honestly don't know. Within... Yes. Likewise. And the winds are strong. So it's been a pretty wild day. Been flat out, obviously bringing Titan on all the koalas. And it was flat out here until about 10:30 AM until the army got the call to evacuate. So we sent all of our volunteers out. My wife and son [unintelligible] to see those cars to the north and then the north east of us all morning. And now blowing towards us, we had a wind change and now the fires to the south and southwest and south east. It looked like they were riding pretty hard at the moment. So that's why we're still standing in the morning.

MG: How are you holding up here?

SAM MITCHELL: Not too bad. Until one sees. If it blows over, then sit down and think of that or be a little bit different, but, you know, we were, we had five close blocks today. We had bombers and water bombers and helicopters flying around and we still had animals showing up. We had one trail with 20 koalas in it. I would try and treat them with minimum people on the grand due to evacuations and obviously the threat of burning down completely.

MG: Tell me about the state of the animals when they're brought in. You mentioned the trailer of koalas. What are they arriving in? What kind of state?

SAM MITCHELL: Some of them are just extremely hungry. They suffer no wounds, but they're just very hungry. The homes being burnt and somehow they have survived. Some of them don't stand a chance. We're seeing some come in and, you know, the hands and feet are burned to the bone. Smoke inhalation is too bad and just there's no way of us saving them. Once you got third degree burns. Get more travel. We're seeing a lot coming come in that just got burns to their hands and feet and often on their nose. And we can treat those guys the best we can. What goes through to our vets bandaging up those wounds, pain relief, antibiotics. Get some food and water into them and rehydrate them. Changes koalas is different. We're seeing a lot of joeys come in these days.

MG: The koalas that are on Kangaroo Island, these are different than the ones that are on the mainland, right?

SAM MITCHELL: Yes, well, they are a southern koala. So, South Australia and Victoria, we have the southern koala. Up in New South Wales and Queensland, we have the northern koala. But even at Kangaroo Island, once considered to be disease free. So, you know, they do suffer from chlamydia, either on the mainland and at one point at about 50 to 60 thousand koalas here. Up until this morning, we were talking like half, over half, the population is going with the farther, being pretty extreme tonight, I don't know how bad they are. You know, we're just being in the park, keeping an eye out. But, yes, a lot more vegetation is burning pretty hard at the moment. So the losses could be out there.

MG: What is that like having to-- I mean, you mentioned that there are ones that are so badly injured that they can't be saved. What is that like to have to process that in terms of how you deal with us?

SAM MITCHELL: Well, we've got to do at the moment everything so far. Everything is rough, a little bit rough. At the moment, we were prepared to have anywhere from five to 10 rescue koalas at any one time. But then, you know, we've seen maybe 150 now, all up. And, you know, we can't keep up with-- well, we're trying to keep up with the building, will go along nicely until all the buildings had to be evacuated today. So it having them the best we can until we can get some better facilities and infrastructure up and running. We have the army at area, 30 army personnel. [unintelligible] not preparing areas. But then obviously right now things have changed. So hopefully, hopefully we're still standing in the morning and can continue to save as many animals as we can.

MG: And the ones that you can't, you have to put down.

SAM MITCHELL: Yes, unfortunately. And we've got vets on site and as much as we can, but there are a lot of road closures. It's pretty hard to get over here to the island. And yeah, I'm doing a lot of that myself. The euthanizing, it's not pleasant. You know, we. We've got a large pit filling up and a lot of them don't even make it. You know the trauma is too much for them and the time people find them and can manage to get them to us. Sometimes they just don't make it, or they're on their last breaths as they show up. But, you know, there are a lot of successful stories. You know, we have saved a lot. So like I said, we had we've seen probably 150 and I reckon we've got about 100 of those guys still going strong. It'll pull through quite well. And those numbers will double in the coming weeks even more. There is so many koalas here. So a lot of them have perished in the fires but there is a lot out there that just no longer have a feed source. So they will start seeing some died of starvation. So I wouldn't get to those guys as quick as we can. Then we can get them here, get them fed and worry about where we're going to-- you know, their habitat later on down the track.

MG: I was going to say how worried are you about, as you say, later on down the track, the long term outlook for the animals?

SAM MITCHELL: We have enough time to think about that. We've got a lot of support. The funding page has really taken off. So I will put all that money into rehabilitating those koalas and building, planting out new habitat for them. But honestly, we've got to get through today. And then worry about what's going on at the moment and save the animals. And that's next week's problem.

MG: Do you think that being busy and having everything kind of happening all at the same time in some ways is a bit of a relief so that you don't have to sit down and think of the scale of this?

SAM MITCHELL: A little bit, but, you know, when you get your one and a half year old here, and you've packed them into the car and send them into town, they don't have to worry about their safety. Hold up a sec. What's going on, bill? [Talking to someone] I'll wrap this up. I got to go.

MG: Sam, I'll let you go. You got to fires all around you. I appreciate it.

SAM MITCHELL: Cheers, Matt.

MG: Be well. Sam Mitchell's the co-owner of Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park and Rescue Centre. He's in Parndana, Australia. Finding the koalas in need of rescuing can be difficult. And that is where Bear comes in. Bear is not a bear. He is a koala detection dog. Romane Cristescu is a koala ecologist and one of Bear's keepers. She's on the Sunshine Coast in southern Queensland, Australia. Romane, hello.

ROMANE CRISTESCU: Hello, Matt.

MG: How does Bear find injured koalas?

ROMANE CRISTESCU: So we train him to detect koala scent. So he's got a tough job because koala, if you can imagine, live in tree so the scent is a bit harder to pinpoint. But he's helping us point quite out for research so that we can take them and then follow their movements across the landscape. And so for him, it is just the same game. It's a game to find a scent and then get to play with the ball. So doesn't really realize that there's animal actually injured and in need of care. He just wants to get to play with his toy thing.

MG: So when he smells a koala, what does he do?

ROMANE CRISTESCU: So he's trained to drop. We didn't want to train him to bark because we do work, you know, in wildlife and area in national parks and other beautiful places. And the last thing you want is to actually introduce a predator that's going to stress out animal. So he just it's a very quiet, just drops and then he waits for us to catch up and to play with his ball.

MG: So in the scale of this devastation, how much of a help has Bear been in helping to rescue injured koalas?

ROMANE CRISTESCU: At the end of the day, as you say, the scale is just so mind blowing is hard to really imagine it, but I'm not going to lie to you. It's a drop in the ocean and we might have lost thousands we still don't know. And the fire is still growing. So we all need to just take a breath when this is all over and calculate and see how bad it is. But it's going to be bad that we know. But at the moment, we just, you know, all of us trying our best to do something, even if it's a small thing. Any koala at this point of time is important because, you know, as you lost a big proportion of the population, you're going through what's called a genetic bottleneck. And that's bad news for animals, because the more diversity they have, the better they are at being resilient to any future change. And that's exactly what we're throwing at them. So we are at this point of time, even though it's not enough, it's better than nothing.

MG: Tell me about Bear. What kind of dog is he?

ROMANE CRISTESCU: He's a crazy dog. And yes, it's funny. Look, it's you know, it's the kind of dog we look for. So a rescue dog and the way we choose them, it's the dog that wants to play all day long and often those dog are much as a pet because they're really obsessed and single minded. So we actually found them in pounds very often and we have five of them at the moment that we've trained on different odour, but mainly for quite our research. And Bear, you can feel, courageous. He is a very funny character. He's always, always a bit over the top. So I think, all the other dog are little bit, you know - not jealous because that's not what they do - but they're a bit over the same and in the media he's got because he's just- he's not that much more polite dogs with the other crew. So it's like come on, Bear.

MG: But that single mindedness is important as you say, because you want him to be obsessed with finding that set.

ROMANE CRISTESCU: Yes, exactly. So even though sometimes it's a bit much Bear and haha, but yes. For, you know, especially for the other dog because five of them are really ball obsessed but Bear is the less. He's a bit socially awkward if you want. The one that kind of pushes all the rest of them around. But you know this is how we select them for that. That obsession. And then and when the boys out you just forgets where he is. He step on the other dogs. He pushed them around and the world disappears. And the only thing that matters is that tennis ball. And so that's how we can go anywhere and work in any places, even, you know, post fire, because Bear doesn't see that. Bear sees you've got the tennis ball and we're going to get to play. And that's all that matters.

MG: He's become a bit of a star on the Internet. Tom Hanks, Leo DiCaprio and other people giving him shout outs on social media. What is that done in terms of raising awareness for the work that you're doing?

ROMANE CRISTESCU: We hope it's done a lot for the cause of koala for the all the animals that are suffering post fire. And to be entirely honest with you, we think it's a bit too much to focus only on Bear. But we understand he is a great story. He's a rescue dog that no one wanted and you know, that end up doing some good for conservation and being even, you know, praised by Tom Hanks. So it's kind of, it gives hope to people in a personal note that you can be unwanted at some time in your life, but still end up doing something really good. And also, I think it gives hope that they are a lot of us on the ground, not just Bear, trying to do whatever we can. But really what all hope is, is that, you know, through Bear and through the plight of koalas, people are awakening to the fact that we need more action for climate change, because this is terrible this year. But imagine next year and the year after. We can't continuously lose that much habitat to those extreme catastrophic events. So let's all hope that people are attracted to that lovely story, but then they see the bigger picture in the end and demand, you know, a better future for koala I know the animals.

MG: We could use some of the hope that you're offering and that Bear offering in the midst of this bleak story. Romane. It's great to talk to you. Thank you so much. And good luck.

ROMANE CRISTESCU: No worries. Thanks again.

MG: Romane Cristescu is a koala ecologist and one of Bear's keepers. She's a research fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast and co-founder of Detection Dogs for Conservation. Well, the devastation from these wildfires is overwhelming, but in the midst of that, Australians have been doing all they can to help keep wildlife alive.

SOUNDCLIP

The area was very hard to get into. So the fire had wrapped around on the other hill sought and it was coming down the hill towards this house. The koalas were just sort of coming out of the scrub, basically. We just turn in the data and the landowner said, look, plucked them up and put them in her laundry. And when we open the laundry, those already five koalas sitting in there. So they just kept coming out, these koalas. And then later on, I found out that day the lady had herself saved eleven in total. So we were just very, very lucky that we had people that were very wildlife savvy. They knew what to do.

ADAM MUDGE: As a volunteer firefighter Adam Mudge once again. John Grant speaks for wildlife information, rescue and education services or wires. This is the largest wildlife rescue organisation in Australia. John, hi.

JOHN GRANT: Hi, Matt.

MG: Ecologists are estimating that more than a billion animals have been killed or affected by wildfires. That number is it is almost hard to comprehend. What are you hearing?

JOHN GRANT: Well, we're hearing the same thing. I mean, it's a staggering figure, but it's actually been it's been worked out scientifically by Professor Christopher Dickman, who we actually liaise with. He's with Sydney University and we're based in Sydney as well. So Sydney University has actually done a release on these figures explaining how they've been reached. And when he says fire affected, yes, it's a hell of a lot of deaths and all of that, but there's also what continues after the fire is that animals lose their habitat with five million hectares burnt out. There's a lot of animals that have lost their habitat, and their habitat is not going to come back for quite a long time. So they are all affected. There are animals that are being hit on the roads as they look for new habitat and being killed. So they're being affected. We're already in a terrible drought situation here in Australia. So the animals that have managed to escape these bushfires are going onto land that was already drought affected, food shortages. So starvation issues are kicking in. It's it's it's it's been terrible. It's devastating.

MG: How concerned are you about the possibility of extinction for some of these species, given everything that you've just said and the long tail of this story?

JOHN GRANT: Well, it's a very it's a very real possibility. We've got just one group that I know of. There are, everybody probably knows emus in Australia. But there's a particular group of emus in northern New South Wales which called Coastal emus is different from the other emus. They must have branched off at some point. Now, we're very worried about what's happened to that colony since the fires. The impact of these fires, I think because of the scale of it, which is hard for people to imagine unless they hear the impact of them, is not going to be felt for some time. So we don't even know yet what may have survived, what might have may have escaped. Well, we know that most of the animals that escaped were the ones who could outrun the fires or they could fly out of the fires. So that leaves a lot of our animals that wouldn't have been able to go anywhere. You know, that the smaller kangaroos, the smaller gliders, flying foxes, bandicoots, all those sorts of animals. And there are rare examples of those in colonies throughout all the areas that have been burnt out. And we can only assume that they will have vanished. It's going to take a while for anybody to get in there. But the complication is that even if they've managed to go into burrows or the holes, they're going to come out and there's going to be no food there for them. So we're going out at the moment putting food stations where we can so that animals that have survived have got something. And then as soon as we can get into the fire zones, then people will search for more.

MG: It's heartbreaking to hear.

JOHN GRANT: Yes, it is heartbreaking. But we have to remember, why is the organisation that you're speaking to now, we've got over 2600 volunteers across New South Wales. And each of those volunteers is trained and each of those volunteers is taking in fire affected animals as we speak. And most of them are young. Most of them joeys that have been rejected by their- well, not rejected, that's a harsh word to use. A survival instinct with these animals and they have to escape fire or anything that's threatening is that they will throw the joey as they go because it's survival instinct for them to say to themselves first. So we are finding a lot of the joeys that have been thrown out as the parents have tried to escape the flames. Some of them got burnt paws. You know, they're not nice injuries, but they're injuries that they'll recover from. So, you know, all of the care, the positive thing to this is that, you know, we're there to save whatever we can to help rebuild the population that's been devastated through these bushfires and the drought.

MG: Tell me more about the people who when we heard of that off the top of; the woman with the laundry hamper and the koalas that kept coming out one after one. As she was rescuing them. There was a woman, I'd heard the story who was living in a car after her house burned down and she was taking in wallabies.

JOHN GRANT: That was last week. Yes. Well, she actually had the four wallabies in care already. This is happening to us because a number about volunteers are in rural areas and they're on the fringes of the cities where a lot of these fires have gone through. So we've had a number of people have to pack up, up to I think one person had to pack up 30 animals and bring them with them. You know, they did it in a number of cars, obviously. But this lady- sometimes here when these fires happen, that the evacuation can come like an hour before something happens. They move so quickly. So the lady you're talking about, the volunteer you're talking about, she got the call from the police that she had to leave immediately and she just put the four joeys in their pouches into her car and she went down towards the beach. And she, like a lot of other people do that. I'm sure you've seen the footage of people sleeping on the beach. They're their dogs and their cats and they're their pets and their children. And she was down there with her four wallabies in the car and she's lost everything, unfortunately. But she will- she's given those wallabies to another carer to look after the moment while she rebuilds her own life. But yes, we've had other people who've been evacuated who've had to bring their joeys into the city. So they've been in place into the centre of Sydney and their parents back gardens hopping around there happily on a bit of a holiday before they got back. So, you know, we're in all the doom and gloom there's some happy stories going on of volunteers rescuing all manner of-- You know, I think people don't realize that like a ringtail possums, those little we call them pinkies, those little joeys when they come out because they don't have any hair on them at that point. So they're pink. They weigh about 300 grams when they come in. So they're tiny, tiny little things. And yet with the right care, they managed to survive. You know, we've got little, little wombat joeys that are coming in, a lot of these ones because the mother has been hit by a car or she hasn't survived for some reason. But the joeys in the pouch, the joeys can survive in the pouch for up to 48 hours after the parent has died. So, you know, our volunteers go out along the roads, out where the fires are, even if they find it. And it's like, because often, Matt, they can just die from dehydration and exhaustion afterwards. But that doesn't mean the joeys aren't still living in the pouch. So they always do a pouch check. And if the if the vet assesses that there's a chance that - all animals go to a vet first for assessment - and if the vet says that there's a chance of them being rehabilitated. And that's exactly what the volunteers do. They're amazing.

MG: It sounds amazing. And again, in a bleak situation, it's good to hear some positivity and people pulling together as they try and make the best of what's going on. John, I appreciate you talking to us in the best of luck.

JOHN GRANT: Thank you very much. We appreciate it. We appreciate all the concern is coming from all around the world. Thank you.

MG: John Grant is a spokesperson for Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Services. He was in Sydney, Australia. Well, in our next half hour, you have kids in the house. You might want to turn the radio down. Actually, turn it up. We're talking about boys and sex. An important conversation with the author and journalist, Peggy Orenstein. Stick around. My name's Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Boys and sex

Guest: Peggy Orenstein

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: See hooking up to me is, like to girls I know, like girls like taking more personally than guys like for me, for example, a few months ago, I hooked up with some lady at the party. I didn't really have a good time. She didn't really have a good time. Honestly, it was as boring as [beep]. I mean excuse my language. But, honestly, I feel like us, guys, it's like, oh, cool. As girls it's on a girls standpoint. It's like damn. Like you start catching feelings, I guess, because it seems like more something more personal than anything else.

VOICE 2: I also feel like a lot of the hooking up is a happens at parties and stuff when people are like under, intoxicated and under the influence.

VOICE 1: Because when you're intoxicated you have a way more confidence than when you're not. Like honestly. Like. Yes. You wake up the next morning like, what the [bee] did I do. I mean excuse me. And you're like what do I do? Then they're like, you know, you do this and then you're like, man! And then you start your day off by going to McDonald's, getting Egg McMuffin, you know.

MG: Drinking, then hooking up, then grabbing a breakfast sandwich. Perhaps no big deal for 16 year old boys in Vancouver. That's a pretty typical 12 hour cycle for teens, according to Peggy Orenstein, the author and journalist who spent much of her career looking at sex and relationships from a female point of view. She was on this very program a few years ago talking about her book, Girls and Sex Navigating the New Complicated Landscape. Well, now it's the Boys Turn. Her new book is called Boys and Sex: Young Men on Hook-ups Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the New Masculinity. A note for listeners, perhaps not surprisingly, this conversation will include some frank discussions about sex. Peggy Orenstein is in our New York City studio. Peggy, good morning.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Good morning. That was a great clip.

MG: I was going ask what goes through your mind when you hear those two teenage boys talking about hook-up.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: They could have been any boys that I talked to. You know, one of the things that I've always focussed on language and I have long had an obsession with that phrase, catching feelings, like it's a disease, like, you know, you don't want to catch an STD. You don't want to catch chlamydia. You don't want to catch gonorrhea. You don't want to catch feelings. It's a very telling thing.

MG: At the risk of sounding like the middle old May, a little middle-aged man that I am or even older than the middle aged man that I am. What exactly is hook-up culture?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: So there is a difference between a hook-up and hook-up culture. The word hook-up is an intentionally ambiguous word, and it can you know, it could mean anything. It could mean making out. It could mean oral sex. It could mean intercourse. And the fact that it's ambiguous allows kids to over estimate what their peers are doing and perhaps kind of obfuscate what they're doing. And it can put pressure on young people to feel like they should be doing things that maybe they don't want to do, having unwanted sex, maybe be a little push a little harder if they're guys than they might otherwise. But the idea of casual sex obviously is not new. It's been around forever. But what hook-up culture is the idea that casual sex or sex precedes intimacy. So the physical precedes the emotional rather than being a product of it. And a hook-up has become the kind of path to a relationship to young people, even though the great majority of hook-ups don't lead to a relationship.

MG: You could imagine some parents even hearing that clip off the top. Hearing those two teenage boys talking, you could imagine the parents freaking out because it sounds as though those kids are talking another language. You talked about, you know, catching feelings that the parents may not understand the hook-up culture. It might reject this idea that young people are having sex all the time. Are those parents wrong?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yes and no. As I said, a hook-up can mean anything. And the fact is, among college students, which is where most of the research is, is done. About 30 to 40 percent of hook-ups involve intercourse and 25 to 30 percent go no further than kissing and groping. And with high school students, the majority are, you know, the intercourse [unintelligible]. So, you know, kids are not having more sex than they used to if you define it by intercourse, but they are engaging in other acts more than they used to. And when we don't label those acts as sex, then we actually open the door to disrespect and potential misconduct.

MG: You speak with more than 100 boys and young men for this book.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: I did.

MG: How did you manage to get them to talk as openly as they do to you about something as traditionally awkward as talking about sex?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: I think it's just that I gave them permission, and I have to say that when I started, I was kind of reluctant to write about boys. I've been writing about girls for 25 years and I didn't think they would talk. And I you know, I actually thought I would have entire transcripts consisting of ah-ha ha. Something like that. But so I was surprised. It was one of the biggest surprises to me, how eager they were to talk and how eager they were to explore, not just to describe what was going on with them, but they actually had a lot of insight and one expressed a lot of anxiety and conflict and feeling that, you know, they maybe they resist that idea of catching feelings on a surface level but beneath that, they're having a lot of feelings. And having the opportunity to discuss that I think was so rare for them that they went for it. And I also found that those experiences, they would say to me all the time, you know, this was an amazing conversation. This was like therapy. And they felt sort of even that short conversation that we would have on, you know, in the shorter interviews, that it was transformative. And I thought, wow, if they can have that talking to a stranger. Imagine if we could create an environment where they could actually have those authentic conversations with the adults in their lives or with one another.

MG: There's this moment in the book where you're talking to one of the boys that you profile, Wyatt, and you develop this kind of ongoing relationship with him talking about hook-up culture. You're in the midst of this conversation and then you get a text from another boy that you've been talking to called Nate. What happens in that moment?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: That is one of my favourite moments in the book, because you can never predict something like that. You know, you can't make that happen. So Wyatt, I had been talking to him for about a year and he had gone through sort of the whole hook-up scene where he was very active. And then at first I liked it and then started to feel that it was really hollow and not representative of who he was and not what he wanted. And we were talking about that. And Nate texts and he's off looking at colleges where he'd been admitted and is seeing this hook-up scene at one of the schools that he's at. And that's something that he wasn't wanting for himself. He'd had a bad experience. It wasn't what he'd want. He wanted something more connected. And he just said, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to go to Bone Town? - That was his phrase - and worry about connecting with somebody later, or am I just supposed to forget about that part? And so I asked Wyatt, who was on Skype. This is what Nate is saying. How would you respond to him? And they ended up having this conversation through me about basically being your authentic self and being able to not necessarily have to follow that script that you're being given. And it was so meaningful to Nate. And he you know, he said, thank you. That was just what I needed to hear. And then he sent me a little heart emoji. And I really sat with that for a while because this was amazing that he got to have this experience and he got to have who he was validated and have that support. And it really just happened because of this weird happenstance of both of them being part of a book.

MG: What did that exchange tell you about how boys experience hook-up culture?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Well, despite what the guys said at the top of your show, most of the boys that I met and most of the boys, when you look at research, are at best ambivalent themselves about hook-up culture. You know, as one guy said to me who had hooked up with 10 girls his first semester of freshman year of college and had intercourse with five. So he was fairly active. He said, you know, it can feel like you're having two distinct experiences and there's not a lot of eye contact. There's not a lot of even conversation necessarily. And it's like you're acting vulnerable but not being vulnerable, which is weird. And he said, you know, it's not necessarily a problem for me, but it's not especially fun.

MG: Did that surprise you?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: I've talked to enough students to know that whenever we have conversations about hook-up culture, they tend to devolve into what they don't like about hook-up culture. And when I'll ultimately say, well, so why do you keep engaging in it? They sort of say, well, you know, it's still sex. Like it's still your social life. It's better than not. It's kind of because it's what what's on offer, I guess.

MG: How does alcohol complicate hook-up culture? You write that it doesn't just complicated that in many ways hook-up culture is dependent on binge drinking.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yes. Yes. Lisa Wade talks a lot about that American hook-up, which is a great book on hook-up culture. Alcohol creates what Lisa Wade calls a compulsory carelessness because you have to drink in order to get past the awkward of think of hooking up with another person. And it also is what establishes meaninglessness in a hook-up. If you hooked up with somebody sober, you know that that would actually mean something. Boys are also acutely aware now that having sexual interaction with somebody who is intoxicated is assault. And so the trick becomes finding somebody who is drunk enough and being drunk enough yourself to say yes, but not so drunk that they can't give consent. And that becomes really complicated. That's the kind of thing that terrifies parents. That is the kind of thing that terrifies parents are that they really need to talk to their kids about. And the thing is, I think we've talked a lot about and to girls about the perils of alcohol for them. But we haven't talked enough about the impact of alcohol on boys, because boys have a tendency to over perceive 'yes' particularly when they're drunk and to not hear 'no', especially when they're drunk. And also and I think the boy at the top in your clip was saying it, you know, it gives you the courage to do what you might not otherwise do, including push harder than you might otherwise push. Drunk boys are also less likely to step in if they see something happening as bystanders than they would if they were sober. So alcohol doesn't just put girls at risk. It puts boys at risk of harming somebody else. And it's really important to talk to boys about that and about the gender and power dynamics that can happen within hook-up culture.

MG: A lot of this helps create what the modern definition of masculinity is, or at the very least, how these young boys and young men interpret the idea of masculinity. When you were speaking with with these boys and men, what did they tell you about what makes that, quote unquote, ideal guy?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: It was really interesting because on one hand, of course, a lot has changed and boys see girls as deserving of their place in the classroom. They see them as deserving of, you know, their place in the playing field in leadership. They have female friends. So in the public realm, there's been a great deal of progress, but privately, not so much. And whereas girls have a much broader idea of what it means to be female, boys, when you say, hey, what's the ideal guy? Their description really sounds like they're channelling 1955. And it's all about sexual conquest, athleticism, dominance. There is a kind of new thing of being simultaneously aggressive and chill, which I can't quite understand. And then, you know, the real biggie, emotional suppression, stoicism.

MG: Not crying.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Not crying so that whole piece of resisting vulnerability. When I used to talk to girls, a big theme of that work was about how girls are disconnected from their bodies. And boys were disconnected from their hearts. That whole thing that you mentioned of not crying, you know, boys would talk about putting up a wall and, you know, they were allowed happiness and anger and anything else. A number of them use that phrase, you know, would go behind the wall or a number of them would use the phrase I trained myself not to feel or, you know, the taboo against crying.

MG: What was it? There's a story in the book about the boy whose parents gets divorced.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yes. That was just going to say that. One of the boys talks about wanting to cry when his parents were divorced, got divorced and he couldn't. So he streamed three movies about the Holocaust back to back and said, well, that did the trick. But, you know, he had to do that in order to connect with his feelings.

MG: This idea of the ideal man it's, as you said, really complex. There's a lot that's going on. Our producer in Vancouver went out and spoke with a 22-year-old man about what he thinks around this image of the ideal man. Have a listen to what he said to her.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm Japanese and Japanese is generally smaller than Canadians and Americans. Right? So the more taller and muscular man, they're more like manly. I think masculine man is more like manly.

MG: I think he's saying that there's a real bias when it comes to what's considered manly. And you explore this in the book as well.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yeah, there sure is. I love that you have these clips, they're so fantastic. I talk a lot about boys of colour and particularly about African-American boys and Asian-American boys who are kind of flip sides of the same coin. And in terms of how we think about masculinity, so African-American boys are kind of hyper sexualized. But then the other side of that is that they are - that can flip over and they are quickly seen as more predatory and Asian-American guys are seen as less masculine and asexual. And one of the guys who is Asian-American that I was talking to was telling me about his experience on swipe apps and swipe apps, you know, are kind of rife with sexual racism. And he matched with a girl who they talked for a little while and she said, well, you know, we could be friends, but no offence. I don't date Asian guys. And he was like, how is that no offence? Of course that's offence.

MG: Of course it is. And then now on the other side of it, you tell the story of - was it Xavier?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yes.

MG: Who is a young black guy who's trying to figure out - again back to the hook-up culture - how he figures into that partying, drinking scenario as a young black man.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Right. And that, you know, with the African-American guys that I spoke with were in largely white schools. So they were operating in that realm and they felt a pretty intense sense of anxiety all the time around that. And so one of Xavier's friends, Emmett, said to me, I don't like to go party. I'm not I want to be in a room with a bunch of drunk white kids because anything could go wrong. And if I'm the only black guy at the party, you know, I'm the only black guy at the party. So there was this sense that he was going to be targeted and potentially, as they would say, you know, lose my whole life for, you know, not only walking, talking, you know, pulling out your I.D. when black, but also potentially for being in a room and being the only black guy. And if anything, you know, he was like, if something gets broken, if a girl complains anything, it's gonna go straight to me.

MG: What about the issue of such sexual orientation? What's it like? What did you learn about what it's like to be a young gay man right now?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Well, there were a couple of things that were really interesting about that. The first was how it related to straight people. And one of the things that came out really clearly was that gay boys presented a kind of model of how to navigate consent and negotiate sexual relationships, in part because they had to. You know, what was going to happen in an encounter was not assumed or obvious. One gay boy said to me, I don't really get these straight guys who are so resistant to talking about consent because if you're talking about it, that means you're going to be having sex. And that's great. So what's the problem? Dan Savage who writes a syndicated column on sex has said that gay men tend to use what he calls the four magic words, which are what are you into? And I loved that because it's exactly the sort of open-ended question that we ought to be encouraging people to engage in when they have a sexual encounter. What are you into is a conversation and puts everything out on the table as opposed to the way that we tend to think of it, which is that it's a yes or no response to a set of predetermined ideas. And usually that one person is suggesting.

MG: More broadly, how do you see young men talking or are they talking about the issue of consent? It seems as though society has had an evolution, certainly growth when it comes to matters of consent. But when you're talking to those young men, are they part of that conversation?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: They were struggling. They were certainly thinking a lot more about consent. But how they related to it, you know, kind of was along a continuum. And one of the issues is that we tend to think that only monsters assault people and that if you assault people, you immediately become a monster. But that tends to ignore the sort of coercive behaviour, lower lover misconduct that a lot of good guys engage in. And the fact is, you know, a good guy can do a bad thing.

MG: Can we talk briefly about porn and what porn has done to how boys and young men see, not just issues of consent, but sex and sexuality?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yes. I mean, you have to know that if you have a teenage boy, he's certainly seen porn. And that it has become an absence of parental conversation and conversation in school, one of the main sex educators. And, you know, curiosity about sex is natural and masturbation is important. But what's changed is that with the rise of the Internet and smartphones and particularly sites like Pornhub that drop the paywall, young people can see anything that you can imagine and a whole lot of things nobody wants to imagine right at their fingertips. And the picture of sex that they're getting-- you know, there's all kinds of porn. There's queer porn, there's feminist porn, there's ethical porn. But that is not really what they're looking at. They're looking at what you can get for free. That's the most accessible. And that typically shows sex as something men do to women. Female pleasure as a performance for male satisfaction. Distorted bodies. A lot of acts that, you know, wouldn't really feel good to most people. And when we're not talking to our kids, when we're not telling them what is real about that, what's not real about that, what's missing from that, inevitably they're taking that into the bedroom with them.

MG: You end the book by talking about talking to our kids about this. And there are a series of lessons for parents. We started in talking about parents being freaked out by maybe what they heard around hook-up culture. What's the lesson to parents in terms of how to talk to boys and young men about sex?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: So, look, I know you would rather poke yourself in the eye with a fork than talk directly to your son about sex. Right? Maybe you can't even talk to your partner. You know, It is not something that we as a culture have learned how to do, but we don't have the luxury anymore of silence. We have to do it because if we don't, the media will educate our kids for us.

MG: And you have to do it. I mean, as you say, you wouldn't talk about table manners in one conversation and expect your son to be polite, that this needs to be a series of conversations.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yes. Yes. I mean, you would not sit down and say, okay, you know, you need to have good manners when you leave the house. Make sure to put your napkin on and say, please pass the food and excuse yourself before-- it's like you give a whole list and then walk away and think, okay, I've told my child. I've done my job. No, you would not do that. So in the last chapter of the book, I devote that to talking about not giving you a script, but the kinds of conversations that you need to have with your boy. And most of them would work with girls, too, about sex, but not just sex. You know about consent, but not just consent. Sexual pleasure, about media, about porn, about making gender dynamics visible, about a whole series, about masculinity, about a whole series of ideas that they're going to and messages that they're going to confront that we need to disrupt and help them critique and understand better. Like I was thinking about how I have a daughter and when she was little, I was constantly bringing up distortion, body distortion in animated films. So I would say, you know, we'd watch some Disney film and I'd say, hey, look, her eyes are bigger than her wrist. Are your eyes bigger than your wrist? Is your head bigger than your waist? You know, and just having these like sort of constant little conversations and I thought, I wonder if I would have done that if I had a son. I don't know. And he is growing up in these same, you know, culture where that is saturated. I mean, that's for little kids. But as they get older, you know, it's saturated with sexualised imagery that. And this is mainstream media, video games, TV movies that the same sexualized imagery that that girls see, the same ideas of female sexual availability and sexual submission, the same ideas of male sexual entitlement. And we've gotten so much better about talking about that with our daughters over the years, because we see the harm that that can do to them. But we have been really silent with our sons. And I think that's one place that is not that threatening for parents to change. And I would also, since I'm on this subject, just put out there that rather than thinking of this as excruciating and awkward, you can think about these conversations as a way to be scaffolding towards a deeper relationship with your son and an adult relationship and showing them that you can show up and have difficult conversations, because if you can't have difficult conversations with them, how are they going to learn to have them with other people?

MG: That's great advice. Peggy, thank you. It's a real pleasure to talk to you.

MG: It's been great. Thanks so much.

MG: Bye. Peggy Orenstein is the author of Boys and Sex.

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Rick Mercer on the time a gun-waving John Crosbie threw him off his lawn

MG:Well, before we go, we want to acknowledge the death of John Crosbie. For more than 50 years in public life. He was a force, unlike many others, as a federal cabinet minister and to progressive conservative governments from his budget that brought down the Joe Clark administration in 1979 to his shutdown of the cod fishery that devastated communities, to his tenure as lieutenant governor of his beloved Newfoundland and Labrador. John Crosbie was 88 years old. We thought it's only fitting to give the last word today to another luminary of that province, Rick Mercer. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and have a great weekend.

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RICK MERCERY: Well, you could put forward an argument that he was perhaps the most influential politician in history. He was a man who was at the centre of every significant part of Newfoundland history since confederation and whether people agreed or disagreed with him. Nobody ever questioned his love of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was infused in everything he did. Not only was he a giant figure in Newfoundland, he was a giant figure nationally and in many ways he was our most famous Newfoundland are for many, many decades. And we were okay with that because he embodied all the qualities that we're proud of. He was hard working. He was passionate. He was capable and had a hell of a sense of humour. And we were proud of him. He was known as a good guy. And I don't think there's anyone in Canada who knew John or knew of John who wouldn't want to sit next to him on a plane or have a beer with the guy. And I was fortunate enough to do both of those things. Probably the first time I spent any time with him was when his book was released. No Holds Barred. Which is a great political memoir. And I was on this hours, 22 minutes. And I went down and I did a shoot with him at his summer place. Anyway, we came up with this gag where he was going to throw me off his land at the end and he said, Oh, I've got something for you. And he went in the shed and then he came out and then he had a gun with him. And he threw me off the lawn and he said '[unintelligible]. You can kiss my--' and bam, he fired the gun over my head. And it was a great moment. It scared the hell out of me. But just as soon as he fired the gun, the door opened and Jane, his wife, ran out and she said, 'John, you told me you got rid of that'. And he looked at me. He said, 'it's time for you to go'. He had a great sense of humour and he always had time for me as a young fella. Anytime I happen to be around him and I would badger him with questions and that kind of thing, you know, he was a gentleman.

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Friday January 10, 2020 Full Transcript

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