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The Current Transcript for May 8, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Ahmaud was kind. Ahmaud he was well-mannered. Ahmaud didn't deserve to go the way that he went.

MATT GALLOWAY: Today is a Mod Arbery's birthday. He would have been 26 years old. In February while jogging in Georgia, the unarmed black man was chased down by two white men in a pickup truck, shot and killed. And last night, after intense pressure, the father and son were charged with murders. In 30 minutes, a look at what this story tells us about what it means to be black in the United States in 2020. Also this morning.

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Very surprised [unintelligible]. At this date, today, he was patient zero of France.

MG: Very surprised indeed. Where exactly did the coronavirus start the search for the so-called patient zero, later this morning. Are you spending more time in the kitchen these days? You and me both. Bill Buford is the author of a great new book called Dirt. He's here in an hour to talk about his hilarious, often fraught four years in France with his family learning how to make the perfect omelette and mastering the art of French cooking. And later, it was Adele's birthday earlier this week. It's not what people were talking about when it came to the powerhouse singer, though. Instead, many were discussing the photos she posted on Instagram and her dramatic weight loss. When, if ever, is it okay to talk about weight loss? We'll discuss. Plus, for those still keeping track of days. It's Friday. So let's play another instalment of Stuart Mclean's Vinyl Cafe. We start, though, in one of the less discussed frontlines of this pandemic. The mortuary. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is an extended edition of The Current.

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Mortuary work during the pandemic

Guests: David Penepent, Jean-Charles Cardinal

MG: It was a gruesome discovery. Police in Brooklyn got a call this week about the smell of a tractor trailer. They followed up, open the vehicle and what happened next made headlines around the world.

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NEWSCASTER: We do want to update you now on breaking news we've been following out of Brooklyn. Dozens of bodies were found in U-Haul trucks outside of a funeral home in the flatlands section. Police were called after neighbours say that they noticed a foul smell.

MG: A fleet of trucks used as a temporary morgue for many people. That story highlights a crisis in New York state. More than 20000 people have died of Kovac, 19. Their overwhelming capacity to deal with remains. And that's meant mass burials in Potter's fields and an overflow in funeral homes. And my next guest says that human crisis is getting lost in those sensational headlines. David Penepent is a professor of mortuary science at the State University of New York in Canton. He's trying to fix this issue. David, good morning.

DAVID PENEPENT: Good morning. I'm honoured to be here today.

MG: We're glad to have you here. It's an important story and you're doing important work. Those headlines are getting a lot of attention. How would you describe the situation for mortuary services in New York State right now?

DAVID PENEPENT: It's at a peak crisis currently. The problem just as revealing the broken mortuary system in New York state from governmental levels all the way down to the funeral home.

MG: How bad is it?

DAVID PENEPENT: It's terrible. What was happening at the Cleckley funeral home, the news story that you led the top of the hour with is probably the extreme, but there are many, many, many funeral homes in the New York City area that have human remains that they can't do anything with because the crematory system is overwhelmed in the New York metropolitan area.

MG: It's really difficult to talk about this. But when you say that they have human remains that they can't do anything with. What does that mean?

DAVID PENEPENT: Well, what that means is very simple. Throughout New York State, we have 48 crematories throughout the state and we are the most densely populated state and in the United States. And as a result, we have the fewest amount of crematories in the state. And when a pandemic occurs, the crematories that we have are just not enough. There are some states that have a third of the population and they have three times the amount of crematories. And so part of the broken system that I want to reveal to your listeners is the fact that because of the bureaucratic red tape and because of the moratoriums that the division of cemeteries has put on building future crematories prior to the pandemic, this crisis has been exacerbated by the very lack of resources that we have. So here's what happened. When the pandemic happened, we had five crematories in the metropolitan area, five. And those five crematories within a very short period of time became overwhelmed. And now there's anywhere from a six to eight week waiting period for funeral homes to get there low, to get those loved ones to their normal crematory that they've gone to on a regular basis.

MG: Goodness.

DAVID PENEPENT: So the only answer is to ship. I should say distribute those human remains to other crematories in neighbouring states and in upstate New York.

MG: Is that why that backlog, I mean, again, the story of the tractor trailer and the trucks used as a temporary morgue. Is that why people are having to take those dramatic steps? Because there's simply no where to move those remains.

DAVID PENEPENT: There's nowhere to bring these human remains. It's not a question of you taking human remains on. It's a question of once you've taken them on. You have no place to go with them. And they're trying to make, they're trying to make a spectacle of it Cleckley. You know, and I'm not saying what quickly did is right. Don't get me wrong.

MG: That's the funeral home.

DAVID PENEPENT: That's right. What he did with the funeral home did, it was wrong. But that's another part of the broken system, you see. And he has a funeral home about the size of my kitchen and living room put together. And he had six funeral homes practicing out of his one location. And the problem with that is it's not only his human remains, but it's also the human remains of those six funeral homes that are also in that location. So their are human remains are there with his human remains. So it's a problem on top of a problem, on top of a problem and a broken system.

MG: You've been involved in this for the last few weeks. As I mentioned, you're a professor of mortuary science, but you're now in this work. What are you doing?

DAVID PENEPENT: Well, basically, what I do is, until I had my trucking line shut down because the places where I was renting the trucks from to move some of these human remains out of the metropolitan area into neighbouring states and in upstate New York, I got blacklisted. You know, I kind of find it funny. I was hoping to get blacklisted by a country club. And here I got blacklisted by a trucking company.

MG: Because they don't want to buy because they don't want you using their trucks to transport human remains.

DAVID PENEPENT: That is correct. You know. So that's kind of the humorous part of this whole thing is I've never been blacklisted in my life until I got blacklisted by a trucking company. But here here's what here's what I've been doing. I've been going around to various funeral homes that have large quantities of human brains, 20, 30, 40 sets of human remains. And I've been transporting them to various crematories that have agreed to take on such a large number and cremate them in a timely manner within a week period of time. And in doing so, over the last four weeks, I put a little dent into the problem down there. And 740 human remains have been taken to their place arrest and their families have gotten their loved ones back. Well, it's only a small part of a big problem. I estimate there is about approximately between ten and twelve thousand human remains that need to be cremated from this pandemic.

MG: How does this exacerbate the pain that people are already suffering? I mean, we're in the midst of this global events and people are losing loved ones. And then you're what you're describing to sounds even worse.

DAVID PENEPENT: Oh, my heavens. You hit the nail right on the head. Not only does these families who have experienced the loss of a loved one are grieving the very fact that they could not say goodbye to their loved one in the hospital and their loved one died alone. Now, because of the COVID epidemic or pandemic. Now, they can't bring any closure to the fact that their loved ones dead and there's no place to go. Quick little story. I had a family from Cortland, New York call me. And they were in tears because their loved one died in their loved one was in a nursing home for 15 days in a morgue trailer. Okay. And now, mind you, it was refrigerated, but the very thought that their loved one was among hundreds of other remains sitting in a morgue trailer waiting for final disposition. And the problem is, is that no funeral home is taking anymore human remains because they're overwhelmed and they don't want to end up like Cleckley. So what ended up happening is that their body was just sitting there. And so they called me and they said, please help me. Please help me. And I said, don't worry. I said, I have a funeral director who will take care of the situation. And I called my friend down there and I had him go to the nursing home, pick up their loved one. And then by Sunday night of last week, their loved one was on a truck ready to go to a crematory for final disposition. And I sent this family an email. And I said, your loved one is on her way to her resting place. And at the end of the night, when we got all done, her body was the last one to be placed on that truck. And I gathered the funeral directors together and I and we said a prayer. And this is a prayer. I said, :eternal rest grant on to them my Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all the souls who died during this pandemic rest in peace". And off she went to the crematory. And today, the family has their loved one in their hands so they can begin the grieving process. You see funeral directors do one thing and one thing only. We take the death event and help people connect to their own grieving experience. And then this pandemic. The funeral directors are paralyzed because they can't do what they've been trained to do; help people and heal people and give people that compassion that they need, that empathy that they need, because the resources aren't there to carry out what they've been trained to do as professional.

MG: People might think, because we don't often talk about death, that someone like yourself who is in this work might become numb to this idea. But the scale of what you're talking about is extraordinary. What is this? Just before I let you go, what is this this experience been like for you emotionally?

DAVID PENEPENT: It's a spiritual experience. It's. It's got me to reach within myself. It understand what empathy is because empathy is the key to funeral directing. Because when you're empathetic, you don't say, I'm sorry. You say I'm here for you. And that's what the funeral directors are supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, with this pandemic, they're becoming occupationally, they're experiencing what is known as occupational paralysis, where they don't know what to do. They have never been trained to deal with this type of situation. And they've been thrown into it and they're freezing. They don't have a relief valve in order to handle this type of crisis. So ultimately, for me, it was a spiritual experience because every single family that I helped, they entrusted in me into my hands, they're their loved one's heart. And I helped take their loved one to their place, a rest. And that within itself is a spiritual experience that cannot be described in words other than the feeling that what I do as a professional is nothing more than a corporal work of mercy.

MG: It's important work in an awful time. David, I appreciate the work that you're doing and I appreciate you telling us about it. Thank you.

DAVID PENEPENT: Thank you very much and blessings to your audience.

MATT GALLOWAY: David Penitent is a professor of mortuary science at the State University of New York in Canton. In Canada, the situation in our funeral homes is not quite as dire as what David was talking about. Yes, the industry has had to adapt from the wait hold services to the way they move bodies. Jean-Charles Cardinal is secretary treasurer of the JJ Cardinal Funeral Home in Quebec. Jean-Charles, good morning to you.

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: Yes, hi, Matt.

MG: You've been listening to my conversation with David Penepent. What do you make of what he's been saying?

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: My God, it's an awful time in the United States here. It's not quite like that, although we have, you know, quite a lot of people passing on but it's not to that magnitude. You know, we can still manage.

MG: What has the work been like for you in these past few months in the midst of this pandemic?

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: Past few months has been a total revolution of the way we serve families. You know, the funeral business. Is it? It's more than a business. It's a it's a mission, actually. You know, we're there to help people. And we do- you know, it's also a business. But the first focus is to make sure that their families are catered to, making sure that everything goes smooth, making sure that it's flawless. All of that. So we used to do, you know, to go to houses where people passed away dressed in suits and ties and shirts and polished shoes and all that. But the last two months has been totally- we had to change it. Everything with that, like our people now are going in hazmat suits with a full face, with masks. And it's very impersonal. It's very medical. It's very dry and cold. People understand the reason, but it's very intimidating and it puts us off. You know what? We have to step in another arena all together and do things totally differently to basically preserve lives.

MG: What does that mean for the compassion, the empathy that that connection that David was talking about when, as you say, your teams arrive in hazmat suits and there's that cold clinical approach to something that is so precious.

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: We have to keep our compassion there, and actually we do, because we need to be there for our people. We explained the suits we are wearing. We explain that they have been totally washed. And through that, our focus is always to take some time off in order to honour the person who passed away. Fortunately, we do not have the numbers there in the United States. So we are available to do ceremonies although there are a lot more complicated.

MG: Can you tell me? Can you tell me about those complicated ceremonies? Again, we've been speaking about how so much of life has changed dramatically in these far and these past few months? What does it mean for those ceremonies at the end of life?

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: Ceremony of end of life, as you know, a funeral is a place for people to gather, to be solely diatom with one another and to exchange hugs and then shake hands. And there's a lot of human touch going on. The fact that we can not have groups, you know, because of the laws of Quebec in order to again preserve life and making sure the pandemic is as controlled as can be. Well, then we have to resort to other measures. Like, we have been doing gravesites. We have been doing prayer groups through the cellular, with Zoom applications. So then basically people log in. We have someone who celebrates the life close to the caskets and cemetery. Then people in their car like we used to go have drive ins, ins before and then we would listen to movies and cars. Well, it's sort of the same thing that that we've created within the cemetery.

MG: So people are there at the graveside. People are there in their cars while somebody would be at the gravesite with the casket. And that's that connection.

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: Yes. Yes. And they can exchange through Zoom because they can see someone can share, actually. And so the ceremonies are still going on. But we have to resort to technology, which is a great help, because otherwise there would be absolutely no way that people could understand or hear the message. So it is a great assets. But it's silly. It's still difficult because people participate. But the touching part is not there. And for other situation where people do cremations, well, of course, a funeral. Most of the time will happen when all of this is over. But when is it going to be over? So people are sort of on a standstill, waiting for a time to celebrate their loved one. But it can be a few months down the road.

MG: We just have about a minute or so left. What do you think that means for the grieving process when that gathering is delayed indefinitely?

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: Well, in in the meantime, we have to use a lot more psychology with people like me, a lot more patient to use a lot more of our abilities and then acquire new abilities, get counselling on how to serve people and making sure dates the they get to compassion or were good listening. And then they're really organised and do a lot of follow up to make sure that nothing gets lost and then that we're on track and to make sure that people can hope some closure soon.

MG: It's a new world, isn't it?

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: It's a totally new world. It's crazy. And us, too. You know, we used to shake hands all the time. And so it's you know, we had to learn the new ways of communicating in new ways to greet people.

MG: I appreciate you speaking about this. Again, we don't often talk about death. But this is important and it's all around us. And the way that those rituals are changing is impacting people on a daily basis. Jean- Charles, thank you very much.

JEAN-CHARLES CARDINAL: Thank you, Matt, for having me.

MG: John-Charles Cardinal is the secretary treasurer of the Jay-Jay Cardinal. Funeral home in Quebec. The CBC News is coming up next. And then to Georgia. He was an unarmed black man shot and killed while he was out for a jog. The story of Ahmaud Arbery coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery shows 'culture of complicity' akin to lynchings, says activist

Guests: James Majjor Woodall, Carol Anderson

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

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MG: Still to come, misadventures in French cooking. The bestselling author Bill Buford is here in half an hour. But first, black male running; the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.

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[Phone tone]

9 1 1, was it just emergency?

There is a black male running down the street.

It's late February. An unidentified caller is telling the dispatcher that a black man is running down the street. That call is placed just before just after 1:00 p.m. in Glynn County, Georgia. And it echoes another nine one call minutes earlier.

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CALLER: And he's running right now.

DISPATCHER: Okay, what is he doing?

CALLER: He's running down the street.

MG: A video has emerged and a warning. It's disturbing to hear. In it, you can see Ahmaud Arbery, a 25 year old man in a white T-shirt jogging on a tree-lined Road. He comes up behind a white pickup truck that stopped in the middle of that road. There are two white men, one in the truck bed armed with a gun. The other on the pavement in Ahmaud's path. And that is when we hear the first shot.

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[Three gunshot].

MG: Three shots and Ahmaud Arbery falls to the road. Wanda Cooper- Jones is Ahmaud's mum.

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He was out for his daily jog and he was hunting down like an animal and killed.

MG: According to a police report from that day two men, Gregory McMichael and his son Travis, had armed themselves and followed a mod. Neither man had been charged. But now, yesterday evening, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested the men for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Today would have been Ahmaud Arbery's 26 birthday and supporters are holding a virtual protest and memorial, putting on sneakers and filming themselves, jogging, using the hashtag I Run with Ahmaud. James Major Woodall is the state president for Georgia with the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. He is driving to Brunswick, Georgia, where Ahmaud Arbery was killed. James Major Woodall, good morning.

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: Good morning. Good morning, thank you for having me.

MG: Why are you heading down to Brunswick, Georgia now?

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: We're headed to Brunswick to celebrate the life and legacy of Ahmaud Arbery. We will be having a rally at the Glynn County Courthouse this morning at 10:00 a.m. to also demand that both the district attorney in Brunswick resign immediately, as well as the district attorney of the Waycross circuit who was the second district attorney to review the case who put forth an opinion that the two murderers were justified in their actions. And so therefore, we're asking that both of those district attorneys resign and they become disbarred. They are no longer allowed to practise law in the state of Georgia ever again.

MG: That D.A. George Barnhill wrote that it appeared Travis McMichael and Greg McMichael were following, in his words, in hot pursuit, a burglary suspect with a solid first hand probable cause. What do you make of that argument that that Ahmaud Arbery had been killed while resisting a citizen's arrest?

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: I think I think Barnhill this is opinion is total garbage. I believe it is also unprofessional. It is not legal in any way, shape or form. And as the chief elected official of law enforcement in the judicial circuit, that he would be okay with making such a statement shows that his incompetence is not only not presentable, but nor is the professional, but it's also quite telling that is, he is criminally complicit in the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

MG: Charges were laid last night. These two men have yet to go to trial, but the charges were laid last night after much protest and a long delay. Were you surprised that these two men were arrested last night?

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: I was not surprised because I knew from this set the first day I saw this case that Ahmaud was murdered like a dog, like his mother, Cher, that he was hunted like a wild animal. And they should have been arrested immediately. And that's why, again, you know, we are demanding that the 1st district attorney resign because she had the case for three days and she hadn't even looked at the video. And so, you know, the police chief is currently on leave of absence. And so we're expecting his removal very quickly. But the district attorney needs to be removed. And we have a lot of work to do to ensure that the community's trust in this law enforcement in elected officials is restored.

MG: Why do you think that it took until now, though, for these charges, murder and aggravated assault to be laid? Again, this killing took place in February.

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: That's right. Between the district attorney there who is in Brunswick. [Unintelligible], the three days he looked at the case, the six weeks that George Barnhill looked at the case and sat on it because he believed that the murderers were okay and justified in their actions. That's why it took so long, because we had district attorneys in this state who are woefully incompetent and are judicially, you know, practicing in such a way that allows them to do malpractice. And that's just not something that we should be doing nor supporting in our state.

m: Without the video, where do you think this case would be?

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: Well, I don't know. You know, that's a hypothetical. You know, the interesting thing is that the Department, the Police Department there in Brunswick had the video from the first day of the incident. Immediately. The fact that the first district attorney didn't watch it, the second district attorney, obviously watched thought that everything was okay. So that there is a culture of corruption. There's a culture of complicity in what we call white supremacy. Right? And so if you are okay with this kind of behaviour happening, I wonder how many other people have died and nothing has happened as a result of their incompetence and judicial malpractice.

MG: What do we know about Ahmaud Arbery? Tell me a little bit about this young man.

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: Ahmaud, he would have been 26 years old. He was a young man. He was very humble. His parents share that. He was always running. You know, he was very athletic. And his friends, you know, were very fond of him. They appreciated his humour and a sense of loyalty to them. So he was a, you know, not a troubled child whatsoever. It was a normal kid like anybody else. And if this could happen to him, I'm afraid it could happen to anybody. I see myself in Ahmaud Arbery, I'm 26 years old. And this could've happen to me, it could happen to any one of our sisters, or brothers here would just simply walk in the street. We got people who you know, and this is not necessarily about Ahmaud himself. Well, we've got, you know, children who are in the parks who could be shot dead because somebody is quote, afraid for their life. We got people who just simply walk in to Walmart, you know, looking at an item on the shelf that could be considered a threat to someone. And so they need self defence because simply to the colour of their skin. So we have a culture of complicity in black violence that continues to allow, as the song of the 1939 song says, that we've got strange fruit still hanging from poplar trees. And in 2020, we got black blood still draining in our street.

MG: Biden compared this to a lynching. Do you think that that's appropriate?

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: Is very appropriate. It's very appropriate. It's appropriate because this the video that was that was published all over the world. People didn't realise initially what the video was, the very same thing that happened in the lynching days when white people who are lynching black people, they would literally take pictures of the dead corpse, smile next to it and publish it for the world to see. And that's exactly what happened with this video. And so we've asked people to not share the video so that we are not too supportive of this kind of culture. We're trying to eradicate white supremacy in all shapes, forms and fashion. And that is one way we can start.

MG: What are you going to do as the NAACP? What will you do to try and get justice? And what does justice look like in this case? Because it's about this case. But to your point, there is a continuum. There's a larger story here about what it means to be black, particularly in the South, in 2020. So what does justice look like here?

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: Justice looks like charges being filed. You know, they have been arrested. So that was the first demand that we had. The second part looks like we get rid of those district attorneys so that they're not practicing law ever again in the state because we cannot afford to have law enforcement who are not willing to serve the people, not their political interests, not their political party, but serve the people. There was only one victim that night. One victim. And that victim was vilified by the district attorney. We can't allow that to happen. The third thing is, though, people in that community register to vote because when they vote, they're able to elect a better district attorney that does represent the people. So that's what justice looks like. And we won't stop till we get.

MG: Are you encouraged by what people around the world are going to do today on what would have been his birthday, which is go out for a run and tag themselves on social media saying 'I Run with Ahmaud'?

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: Most definitely. We love it. We encourage everybody to post those videos and pictures and, you know, create art and those kind of things that really celebrate the life and legacy of Ahmaud. But we're also going to ask people to take it a step further and make sure that they participate in the process, because this is not just happening here. It's happening way too often in way too many communities. So we're asking everybody to not only celebrate Ahmaud, but also commit to eradicating white supremacy in every shape, form or fashion.

MG: James Major Woodall, good to speak with you. Thank you.

JAMES MAJOR WOODALL: Thank you so much. And God bless you and you all, take care.

MG: James Major Woodall is the state president for Georgia with the NAACP. On his way down to the community where Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in February. That killing, as you heard, has led people like Joe Biden to make comparisons to the sorts of lynching seen during the Jim Crow years when black people were hunted down with impunity. Georgia was one of the epicentres for that kind of violence. Carol Anderson is a professor of African-American studies at Emory University and the author of a number of books, including White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Carol Anderson is in Atlanta, Georgia. Carol, good morning to you.

CAROL ANDERSON: Good morning.

MG: Were you surprised yesterday at the arrest of Gregory and Travis McMichael for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery many months after that killing happened?

CAROL ANDERSON: I wasn't surprised, but I'm not doing a celebratory dance yet because it reminds me in so many ways of the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman.

MG: For people who may not remember that, just very briefly, what happened in that incident and what are the connections?

CAROL ANDERSON: And so you had a black child at this time. He was 17, walking through his neighbourhood to do something really innocuous, going to a convenience store. George Zimmerman, who called himself basically community patrol, he calls 9-1-1, says he sees somebody black and it looks like he's doing something wrong. It looks like he's up to something and he gets out of his car and stalks Trayvon with a loaded weapon. There is a confrontation as Zimmerman rolls up, walks up to Trayvon. There a scuffle and then Trayvon is shot dead. When the police arrive, Zimmerman says, hey, I was standing my ground. I was just defending myself. There is a child on the ground who is dead. There is Zimmerman who is standing there. He's got a small cut on his head and the police don't investigate. They say, yes, okay, for all intents and purposes. And it took incredible activism, months of activism to get Zimmerman arrested and to get him on trial.

MG: And then he was also acquitted.

CAROL ANDERSON: And then he was acquitted. So that's why I'm not doing the celebratory dance yet, because this justice system is a long and winding road that has many, many pitfalls.

MG: When you hear those 9-1-1 calls and essentially the the statements made by the people who are calling when they say what's going on is there's a black man running down the road. What does that say to you?

CAROL ANDERSON: It speaks to the criminalization of blackness. The 9-1-1 operator is saying, well, what is he doing? Well, he's running. So a black man running becomes a criminal act. Well, what is he doing well. He just came out of a house under construction. How many times has somebody gone into a house under construction to look at the floor plan, to look at how well is being built, to see whether that's a place where they might consider or that they're looking at something in that house that has nothing to do with theft. But the fact that he was black and in that neighbourhood automatically made him criminal. So that's what that is saying.

MG: This happened in your state. How would you describe race relations in Georgia in 2020?

CAROL ANDERSON: You know, we came off of a brutal, brutal gubernatorial election between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams, who would have been the first black woman elected as governor. It's tough. It is absolutely tough. In the end, one of the things that we haven't fully made the connection yet, but some are, is that George Barnhill, who was the prosecuting attorney, the second one who wrote that opinion that Arbery was clearly that this was a justifiable homicide. He was the same prosecuting attorney who went after a black woman, Olivia Pierson, for voter fraud. And he was a community leader and all she did was like, how do you use this machine? She said, do you put your card in here. That was a way to intimidate black people from voting. So you asked about the state of race relations in Georgia. And it is a- it is tough. Running while black will get you killed.

MG: This conversation is happening in the midst of a pandemic as well while this the governor, that same governor has ordered the state to open up in the midst of a situation where the majority of people who have died of the coronavirus in your state are black.

CAROL ANDERSON: Right. So, you know, the CDC noted that 80 percent of those hospitalized in Georgia for the coronavirus are African-American, 80 percent. And Kemp has ordered a partial reopening. And what he has ordered reopened gives you some sense of this. So that he hasn't ordered Rolls Royce dealerships open. He hasn't ordered tanning salons opened. What he has ordered were that beauty shops and tattoo parlours, gyms, massage parlours that they be open.

MG: What does that say to you?

CAROL ANDERSON: And so that says to me that he's looking at the ratio and class dynamics of the that of those enterprises, of those businesses, and that it becomes where you're putting that those people, particularly African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and poor people. Working class people in basically what I call a coronavirus firing squad. Putting them right before a firing squad because the state has put them out there to work without providing the level and depth of protection. That that population needs that we all need in a pandemic.

MG: In the meantime, if you go back if you go back to the Ahmaud Arbery story, this is the question that I asked James would all, which is what is justice look like in part of this disease? Ask you as a historian, you look at the long sweep of this. But in this in this incident, in the midst of that long sweep, what is justice look like?

CAROL ANDERSON: Justice looks like there is a fair trial, that the evidence is put out there clearly, definitively, that there is a verdict. And looking at the evidence, looking at the discrepancies between the video and what the McMichael statement was about what happened. And that there is a guilty verdict. And that they are sentenced. And that there is a clean sweep of the law enforcement from the police who looked at that and didn't do a full interview to the prosecutors who just swept that aside and said, now this is fine, but there is a clean sweep and a summary view of previous cases.

MG: In the last minute that we have in the meantime, what is it you talked about the idea of running while black. That if you go out for a jog, you could be a suspect. What does it say to black people in Georgia right now about the precautions they need to take, that, you know, the survival skills that they have to employ in their lives?

CAROL ANDERSON: We have been talking for a long time because it's not just Georgia. The John Crawford case was in Ohio, where you had a black man who was in Wal-Mart looking at a B.B. gun sold in Wal-Mart and he was gunned down. It is our lives are always so precarious because the normal, routine, mundane things that everybody does, we become suspect. We become criminalized for the routine, the mundane. And so the stress of that, the reality of that. Mothers and fathers tell their children, be careful, be careful, be careful.

MG: Carol, Anderson, good to speak with you. Thank you.

CAROL ANDERSON: Thank you so much.

MG: Carol Anderson is the author of a number of books including White Rage The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. She was in Atlanta, Georgia. This is the current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. We've been asking for songs that soothe you during these tough times. We're in the midst of something extraordinary. And music is often something people will turn to help ease some of that anxiety and some of that tension. Bruce Amos from Ottawa wrote in with his suggestion. Bruce says, You can't do better than Domenico Scarlatti Sonata K466 played on the piano. It is heavenly. Bruce will take your word for it. This is Scarlatti Sonata in F Minor K466. Domenico Scarlatti Sonata in F Minor K466 suggested by Bruce Amoss. If there is music that you're listening to that helps soothe your soul in these tricky times, let us know. You can reach us at The Current. cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link or email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up next, he's gone from frustrated home cook to obsessive chef in training. The selling author Bill Buford is here in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. .

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How writer Bill Buford earned his 'chops' and became a French cook; Burton Cummings

Guests: Bill Buford, Burton Cummings

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to T he Current. They're two of the things that many of us are really missing right now, travelling, as in getting on a plane, going somewhere far away and great restaurants where you actually sit down at a table, savour food and company. Both are at the heart of my next guests new book. But Dirt is no cookie-cutter memoir of culinary travel. No, it's the latest from Bill Buford, who back in 2006 in his fantastic book, Heat, brought us along in his immersive adventures into the soul of Italian cooking and into the punishing reality of kitchen life. In Dirt he uproots his and his family's lives on a quest to do the same with the cuisine of France. A quest that was meant to last a few months ended up lasting almost five years. Bill Buford is on the line now from his home in New York. Bill, good morning.

BILL BUFORD: Good morning.

MG: I'm not going to France anytime soon, and neither is anyone else.

BILL BUFORD: Neither am I.

MG: So this will my this will be the best case thing I think is a fantastic book. And it really does take us to where you went. Why did you want to go to France? Heat was about Italy and immersing yourself in Italian food and culture. How did you end up with France?

BILL BUFORD: Two reasons. One is that although I did become, I think, a reasonably accomplished Italian cook from my time in Italy, there's always a belief that the real cooks, the trained cooks — the cooks that everyone respects — is a French cook. And I wanted that knowledge. And the other was a covert, almost anarchic suspicion that the Italian belief that they actually invented French cooking might be historically true. It was something I wanted to do for a very long time, and I kept putting it off because I knew it would be complete hell. And for a while it was.

MG: And indeed, it was right from the very beginning. This is fraught. You have a very patient wife, I should say,.

BILL BUFORD: More than patient, angelic and actually without whom, et cetera, et cetera.

MG: There are a series of, as you say, important conversations that happen. How did you convince her that this was a good idea for the whole family to go? As I say what was something that was initially going to be a few months and then turns into this epic adventure?

BILL BUFORD: At the time, I was doing a preparation apprenticeship with Michelle Rishard in Washington, D.C. You see a renowned French chef and I was there much longer than my wife liked my being away. And when I proposed that maybe I needed to go to France by myself, she immediately and resolutely said, "No, we're going as a family. We're moving to Lyon as a family," and not only that — and this is probably the most terrifying thing — we're gonna do it legitimately going through the French consulate with real visas. And it was transformative. I remember that conversation as being one of the most majestic conversations of our married life.

MG: How old were your twins at the time?

BILL BUFORD: At the time of that conversation, they were not quite three years old — they were not quite potty trained. But by the time they got there, they were.

MG: Why did you pick Lyon? People would obviously assume that you might go to Paris or some other destination in France. Why Lyon?

BILL BUFORD: I didn't think I was going to pick Lyon, but the more time I spent with French cooks, the more I learned of their respect for the city of Lyon and that Lyon represented the closest to pure French cooking. As one chef said, Paris could be New York. There's all these international cuisines. There's everybody from everywhere else, and nobody grows up to be a Parisian chef or a Parisian cook. But in Lyon, there's centuries, really, of traditions and a relationship to the countryside and to wine. I mean, really it's kind of like the epicentre of the wines that the French really, really love. And that's where I would find something different. Also in Lyon, people didn't speak English. I learned later, actually, that they did speak English, that just would never use it, but you never, never heard it at that time. And it's changing now. But at the time, you heard like a Canadian or an American or an English accent, it would be radical. It was not a place that tourists went to. And the city itself, although it pretends to like tourists, really doesn't like visitors.

MG: You learn about the culture and you write about this. You say there is a quality about French rudeness, a self-righteousness probably that provoked your wife, Jessica, to the point of rage. She would be at a dinner and she would smile too much or laugh too loudly or pour the wine. What did you learn about the culture of Lyon?

BILL BUFORD: Lyon is a very closed city. The sort of standard expression would be "You like Lyon, don't you? You love it. I mean, what is there not to love? This is where you want to be, isn't it?" They were very much to themselves, and it took a long, long time to open them up. But there is also a self-righteousness, you know, I say in a pure generosity of heart, a self-righteousness about French manners and behaviour. And there is a kind of there is a rudeness to them that would just provoke my wife. She just went livid. And her French was so good she could go toe to toe with any of them. And it would be maybe on a bus or at a restaurant or when the minds, or where that man at a restaurant, a Bouchon that we went to, leaned over to her, when she poured the wine. She is master wine candidate and said, you know, in this country the men usually do the pouring. And she turned on him and said, "Oh, how funny because this is a restaurant owned by women, run by women. The wine is bought by women. And not only that, but I'm a consultant of their wine list. And he just dwindled in her presence.

MG: You go there to learn the technique, to learn about how to get to the soul, in some ways, of French cooking. And to do this, you have to be working in a restaurant which is not an easy thing to do, particularly for an American who doesn't perhaps speak a lot of French. How did you earn your way in to this bootcamp?

BILL BUFORD: With a lot of difficulty. I went over there confident that as I had done in Italy, I'd get into a kitchen and I'd have a hard time. I'd learn the language, I'd learn the cooking language, I'd learn the skills, and I'd eventually ... equip myself. Here they didn't want anything to do with me. I had cooking experience. I had restaurant experience. I had French restaurant experience. I'd written a book. I was a New Yorker journalist, and they just didn't want to have anything to do with me. And in the end, I did then become a baker, and it was a monumentally moving and important experience. But I had to go to cooking school. I went to the Institut Paul Bocuse, which is probably the best cooking school for French cuisine in the world, and I got some chops. And then once I had that, I was allowed to do a stage for 19 days — but only 19 days. And then by the 19th, I had completely forgotten the arrangement and then I was told that I could stay absolutely as long as I wanted. And then I became a member of the team. And it was just life changing. There's a lot of people that can go to a country and learn a bit or do it like three weeks at school or a week at a cooking school. But I really wanted to go and get the real skills. And once I got into that kitchen — it was a two star Michelin restaurant, one with a legendary history — La Mere Brazier. I was in the place that I wanted to be. It took a long time to get there, but I was where I wanted to be.

MG: Were you surprised at how - and it sounds like an abvious question - how different Italian and French cuisine was, just in terms of technique — in terms of the precision, in terms of you don't pick up that piece of prosciutto with your fingers and, you know, put it into your mouth — that they think of food completely differently?

BILL BUFORD: And I have to admit, I've come around to really respecting the French approach. The Italian approach is It's soulful, and you want to get your hands dirty. And you use your hands to mix your sausage filling or whatever it is that you're making and that's kind part of the experience. But then as one French chef went out to me, and then what do you do with your hands? You've got to wash them. And the French approach is just, it's much more ordered. Do your your cutting board is like a sacred space. And you're aware that from your cutting board, the food passes to the mouth of the diners. So it's got to be preserved. Only certain things can go there. You're sure you know exactly where your apron is? You know exactly how to use your knife. You know exactly how to stamp and you don't use your hand. And don't use your hand. You use two spoons or a fork and spoon. You don't even know, use tongs. And there's a tranquillity, an order about it that I really came to love.

MG: You write that nobody smiles in the French kitchen. And I mean, whether it's in culinary school or whether it's at the restaurant, things seem very severe. How would you compare that to being in an Italian kitchen?

BILL BUFORD: Italians are all— they're all out there. They're big hearted and they're welcoming, and if you speak a little bit of Italian, they're so surprised that you've taken the time to learn their language and they're very physical. It's one of the hardships for times right now as they can't touch each other? They love to touch each other in your face and they're hugging you and they're kissing you. It's it's a different culture of France. It is alarming how seldom people smile. And one of the people I met in the kitchen early on, my friend Sylvan in the Mere Brazier kitchen, what made him stand out was the fact that he smiled. And it was like sunshine after a long winter. But to the other side of that day. Once you get close to them, I remember actually was Salvan. Once he he would kiss me or once my baker would kiss me. And I would kiss him. Once you pass that little- once you become real friends, or once you have them over for dinner, once you cook for them, once you make food for them. Then there's an intimacy that is profound and it really seems like it will last for life. And that's very different from American friendliness or Italian jolly warmth. There's a kind of profundity once you get past the unsmiling-ness.

MG: What did your boys make of being there? People who may have seen the video that's on the New York Web sites of you all making omelettes. They are thrust into this new culture. What did they make of the experience?

BILL BUFORD: Well, we may have brought them over at the perfect age. I mean, to be fair, I wasn't trying to do anything, you know, parentally smart.

MG: Perhaps the opposite of that.

BILL BUFORD: I was going there and we have them. You know, I really, my first proposal [unintelliglbe] leave them behind. And that wasn't going to happen. And I was just, as we're making preparations, people kept saying, oh, three years old. That's the perfect age. That's the perfect age. Well, you know, whatever we're going. They're three, we could be going over when they were 17. But actually, three probably was the perfect days because they're learning the English language, then. They were pretty good at it. And then they're learning the French language and they became pretty good at that. The transition wasn't as quickly affected as people thought it would be. It wasn't in a month or two month. It actually was about, it was almost, it was more than a year. But there was a moment when we had an American speaking babiy sitter, wonderful lad. One morning he came in and he said, [In a French accent] hello, George, [unintelliglbe] Hello Stephan. And from that moment on, they were in French and that was their first language. And the trick then was keeping up their English. They just they just flowed right. And they became very popular members of the school. They became a member of the community. It became their home.

MG: You did the similar experiences I mentioned in Heat, which is a book that I read, go back to constantly, in part because of the great recipe for spaghetti or pasta with clams with a little secret extra butter in it. It's very important, but also because it's just a story about immersion, it's a story about excess. How do you look back on that book 14 years later?

BILL BUFORD: Oh, with a lot of affection, especially for our time in Italy. I now regard this- I'm very happy to learn the skills I did. I'm I'm comfortable making pasta, understand the philosophy of pasta. Understand the philosophy of making a pasta dough. I've learned skills as a butcher and I'm comfortable breaking down a pig, less comfortable breaking down a whole cow. But I definitely learned skills that have helped me in life. But it, too, is culturally very different. It did help me when I was going when I was in France, because Italy and France are more related than either Italy or France realised. And there's a definitely a kind of cultural flow between them and a culinary flow between them. And it gave me a perspective that very few people in France have. There's no French person would ever bother to learn Italian, that would just be a waste of time.

MG: One of the central characters in that book is Mario Batali, the chef who was one of many chefs who's been accused of sexual harassment, charged with assault. You have said that everything that people are saying about him now in some ways was in that book. Why do you think what he did 14 years ago in some ways was celebrated compared to how it's obviously looked at now?

BILL BUFORD: Well, I think, you know, we found 14 years ago, it seemed rude and politically incorrect, but savvy and ironic and complex and fun. It was threatening type speech that didn't have any threat. And what clearly happened is it kind of moved past that. I mean, I think everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people have enjoyed Mario the reverend. But it didn't seem to have bite, which, alas, it turned out to have.

MG: Do you think the culture of food has changed in terms of what we celebrate? And who we celebrate.

BILL BUFORD: Oh, I think yes. I think it's changing, actually. Well, except for the fact that the biggest change right now is that all our restaurants are closed. I think it's going in some quite wonderful direction. I think the number of women chefs in the kitchen has changed. I thought, you know, maybe the brutality and the the sexism and the aggression that you see in a kitchen is really, really unnecessary. And I think it harks back to when kitchens were really run by whoever you could get in there to work. It's like prison conditions. And meanwhile, food and restaurant food in particular have kind of moved into a sphere of high culture. And it was the dissonance between the kind of a low culture of the kitchen and the high culture of the product, which has been very, very disturbing. I think that is dissolving. France even more more behind things than the United States and certainly behind than Canada. But it's it's it's it's changing there as well. And that's that is only for the good.

MG: Do you worry about restaurants in this moment and what we're gonna be left with?

BILL BUFORD: I think it's an interesting moment. I mean, it's tragic. And especially in the United States, where you have this whole sector of immigrant workers who have fake Social Security numbers and they are, you know, pretending to be legitimate citizens that they're not. And so they can't get unemployment and they are really in a tough spot. And all the concern, a tough spot. I mean, there's nothing positive about this in the least, except I think we took restaurant cooking for granted. And there's a French attitude, which I really applaud, because in France, actually, most people cook at home just like we are all doing now. And they don't eat lavishly at home. They eat well, they eat French. But it's kind of French mom cooking, or dad cooking. But it's get food on the table. Feed everybody. Do it in a reasonable time and do it nutritiously. And then when they go out to a restaurant. It is a special occasion. You go out to a restaurant. Someone does the shopping. Some cooks the food. Some is serving you. The food. Sometimes doing the washing up afterwards. And you celebrate it. Any French person because the restaurant eat every single course. When an American goes around. Oh no. I don't need dessert. Even though they had, you know, five different courses before that. They eat everything and they they make a point of eating everything 'cause they're celebrating the fact that they go to a restaurant, they have a sense of celebration of the restaurant. This is really one of the great treats of the civilized world that I think we have lost here where we are. And maybe never entirely had. And I think if we ever get to that point again, we're going to love the restaurant. We're going to love the fact that we did way, way, way too much cooking at home and we had to do lock conditions afterwards. And I am looking forward to that moment. I think restaurant are going to die. People are going lose their jobs. But there's a there's a good thing ahead, I think.

MG: I love this book. And it's a great pleasure to talk to you. Bill, thank you.

BILL BUFORD: Thank you very much.

MG: Bill Bufard. His new book is called Dirt. It's out now. He was at home in New York City. It's The Current on CBC Radio 1. Matt Galloway Tom Power has been doing a little bit of home cooking. He's here now with a little bit of rock and roll history. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: I'll tell you what I'm cooking up for you, buddy. If you ever see that show Mythbusters.

MG: Yes.

TP: You know, they used like blow up a battery, something like that. Everyone thinks you can't blow up a battery, but turns out you can. They call me the Mythbuster around here for today and today only. You know why?

MG: Why?

TP: Because I talk to Burton Cummings, the legend about 50 years since American Woman by the guess who went to number one, all kinds of myths, all kinds of stories about that song, about some controversy around that song, about the success of that song. And Burton Cummings, I guess he's at that stage in his career, Matt, where he's ready to bust'em. So we bust some myths. And American woman together. We're Mythbuster together here in the CBC. Here's my conversation with Burton Cummings.

SOUNDCLIP

BURTON CUMMINGS: It was basically jammed on stage. We were doing two shows at a curling rink called The Broom and Stone, and it was in Mississauga. I guess not too far outside of Toronto. And between shows we had the band had finished the first show already. And between shows, I was outside the rink and I was trying to cut a deal, hammer out a deal with this guy bartering for something. I don't even remember what. And I heard the other three guys start up and I said to this guy, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm proud to be onstage. I got a run. I've got to be up there with the band. So they the guys couldn't find me at that point. And it was time to start the second show. So Backman started this guitar riff. Just a repetitive riff just to more or less to signal me to get the hell in and get on stage. And it was da da da tum tum... da da da tum tum. And I heard this and I ran in and jumped up on stage, just started making stuff up out of my head. One of those Bob Dylan stream of consciousness moments where you just go with what's coming out of your imagination. And I was more or less looking for things that rhyme. You know, coloured lights can hypnotise. Sparkle someone else's eyes. A lot of people thought it was political, you know, it was never political. But for some reason, these guys have started to say, well, it was, you know, the American woman was the Statue of Liberty. Now it's just not true. That's not true. I wasn't thinking about the Vietnam War. Basically, I was just singing Canadian Woman, I prefer you. And what came out was this, what could have been construed as an anti-American. You know, American woman stay away from me. One way or the other, it caught the attention of the public and it became much bigger than- we didn't see it coming. Believe me, we didn't see that coming.

TP: Yes, I heard that when you guys got ask to play the White House, you were asked. Not to play American woman. Is that true?

BURTON CUMMINGS: See, there's another myth.

TP: Oh, really?

BURTON CUMMINGS: Our manager at the time came up with the idea that if we told the press that the White House had asked us not to play it, it might be a good publicity stunt. Well, it backfired. It backfired on us. And we were crucified in Rolling Stone anyway, even for playing at the White House, for the Nixon administration. But that's nonsense.

TP: It's funny. It feels like the song kind of got away from you. Like the meaning of the song. I can't imagine what that's like to create a song onstage and for people to, you know, infer all this meaning from it that you really have no control over and really is not anywhere close to what you actually meant.

BURTON CUMMINGS: No. And and here's the thing. It was a different era in history. You know, as I say, the Vietnam War was raging. There were protests all over on campuses and that that terrible shooting in Ohio had occurred. You know, where the troops shot some students down and everything was really ready and things were off the rails. You know, it was a very tumultuous time. And I guess, you know, timing being what it was, that song suited a lot of people's emotions. And we were the benefactor of that. But it was never, ever meant to be political. It never was.

TP: You were the first Canadian band to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 with American Woman. You were at a Holiday - Unless this is another myth. But I heard you were in Milwaukee when you found out you went to number one. Is that right?

BURTON CUMMINGS: That's very true. This is true to fact is. Back to those days. Wednesday was the day you got the magic phone call to find out what chart position your song had the next week. And Randy got the magic news that we had gotten, number one. He called the three of us to one of the hotel rooms. The four of us got on a bed, put our arms around each other's shoulders in a circle, jumped up and down until the bed broke. We were just like little kids. And, you know, people have asked me if you could go back and relive, you know, a few minutes, five or 10 minutes of your life what would you choose? You know that. Well, that might be pretty high on my list. So it was a, you know, a once in a lifetime experience for us. And it was a magic moment for us.

TP: It was it was the Jackson 5. It was ABC that you that you knocked out.

BURTON CUMMINGS: Well, there you go. And I and I remember, too, that the Beatles let it be I think was was also in the top 10 at the same time. So we certainly were up there with some pretty big artists.

TP: Burton, what does it mean just to close things off? I mean, that it turned 50 years old this past March and in a couple of days. Well, tomorrow in this year, it'll be the 50th anniversary of it going to number one. What does it mean to you knowing that this song's popularity has sustained for so long?

BURTON CUMMINGS: What it means to me is that good records live forever. You know what I mean? When that three minutes of magic is captured on a record. It's there forever. It freezes time.

TP: Records freeze time. I love that so much. Burton, thank you so much for your time.

BURTON CUMMINGS: Oh, thank you very much. And stay safe and everybody be well.

MG: Tom Power in conversation with Burton Cummings. This is the Guess Who you are free to air guitar.

[Music]

MG: Classic selection. Guess Who American woman. The CBC News is next. And then in 90 seconds, another classic, Dave and Morley are back. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe: The Hairdresser; Mailpack

Guests: Karin Marley

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still, the common tracing pathogens to patients will look at the value of uncovering the origins of the coronavirus. But first, another tale from the Vinyl Cafe. You know, here at The Current, I like to think we keep our promises. I told you that we'd be back after the news and here we are. Also last week I promised that we'd play some more Vinyl Cafe for you. And Friday seems like the perfect time to do that. This story is about a relationship that I think many of us are missing these days. Here once again, the late great Stuart McLean in the Vinyl Cafe and the hairdresser.

SOUNDCLIP

STUART MCLEAN: For the past 20 years, Morley, faithful beyond fault, has gone to the same hairdresser whenever she needs her haircut morally goes to Lawrence. She found out when she and Dave moved into the neighbourhood where they still live. A woman who has her priorities straight Morley found Lawrence before she found a doctor or a dentist. And over the past 20 odd years, Morley has followed Lawrence from one salon to the next. Right from the start, Lawrence made Morley feel special. Instead of delegating the job to an assistant, Lawrence washed Morley's hair himself. He kept a special bottle of shampoo for her. He used it instead of the salon's usual rehydrating mineralizing, oxygenating, detangling, protein boosting, volumizing apricot shampoo with a jojoba infusion. If there is one thing in the world that morally hates, it's a jojoba infusion, Lawrence remembers stuff like that. In fact, Lawrence's mummeries the most appealing thing about Lawrence. Lawrence remembers things like how his clients take their coffee and things about their families. How was Sam's birthday? He would ask when Morley showed up for her next appointment. Morley felt that she and Lawrence had a special rapport, a relationship built on the important things in life like history, trust and jojoba. Over the past few years, however, things have been changing slowly, slightly, but significantly, nevertheless. Over the past few years, Lawrence has let things slide. One afternoon, as she settled into his chair, Lawrence brought Morley a cup of tea instead of coffee. Another time he used the foul smelling apricot shampoo and he would've finished off with hairspray if Morley hadn't stopped him. It had been years since Lawrence had asked Morley what she wanted done to her hair or suggested a cut he thought would make her look good, not the end of the world, to be sure. More a disappointment than a disaster and Morely, faithful beyond a fault, resigned herself to the changing and slightly diminished Lawrence to the way things were, rather than the way things used to be. She hadn't given it a lot of thought. Not until the Saturday morning she went to get her haircut and she came face to face with the salon's new stylist, a young hairdresser from Quebec with a liquid accent and spiky black hair. His name was Matthieu, and he had been assigned to the chair right beside Lawrence. And Morley walked in. He was everywhere except the chair, jumping around the room, waving a scissors in the air, trying to persuade the woman he was working on to let him loose on her head. What's the worst that can happen? He called over his shoulder as he blew past Morley with his hands full of magazines. If you don't like what I do, we'll change it. And then he dropped to his knees in front of his chair. Please, I'm begging, he said, you were born to be a blonde. That was the day that Lawrence told her that he had been thinking of opening a salon for dogs, waving his hands around, staring at Morley in the mirror, not looking at her hair at all as he cut it. Do you know how much you can charge for styling a shitzu? He asked earnestly. Morley was telling Betty Shellenberger all about this when Betty called on Sunday night, Dave and Morely had just finished dinner, and Dave was lying on the couch reading the December issue of Canadian living, absorbed by an article called Leaving the Bird Behind: Christmas Without a Turkey. Morley was moving around the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher, wiping counters and talking to Betty on the portable phone, she was telling Betty all about Matthieu and what a riot he was. Which, of course, led her to Lawrence and how Lawrence seemed to be slipping. 21 years, Morley was saying, we'd been together for almost twenty one years. 21 years, thought Dave, we'd been married 23 years. Dave, out of sight but not out of earshot, overheard Morley talking on the phone in the kitchen. And Dave assumed that she was talking about him. How was Dave to know Morley was talking about her hairdresser? He irritates me, said Morley.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: He doesn't listen to me anymore. Dave, out of sight, but not out of earshot, propped himself up on the couch. Okay. Dave shouldn't have been listening in. But he was listening in and he was thunderstruck by what Morley was saying on the phone. He used to know what I like, she said. But I've changed, I'm ready to experiment.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: I've seen things in magazines I'd like him to try on me.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: It used to take an hour. Now he speeds through it in 15 minutes.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: It feels like he's just going through the motions. He won't look me in the eye. He just looks in the mirror. Morley, his sweet wife, his partner of 23 years, his soul mate, the mother of his children, his rock. What did he done wrong? When had this started? What mirror?

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: And now what was she saying? She was saying, oh, my God, there's another guy, I'd love to try him out. Just, you know, once maybe. David leapt off the couch and he stood in the middle of the living room, his heart pounding. Morley, meanwhile, who had said goodbye to Betty was heading upstairs. Dave watched her go and then he bounded up the stairs behind her. And when he got there, Morley was standing in the bathroom, gazing in the mirror. And she was thinking, My hair always will look the same. I will always look the same. I'll never be a blonde. She was so preoccupied with the state of her hair that she didn't notice Dave standing behind her when she picked up her toothbrush. Dave was standing there looking over her shoulder at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She brushed her teeth. Oh, hi. She said when she noticed him. And then she turned and she said, Do you think loyalty's and important quality?

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: What, said Dave, trying to ignore the ringing in his ears. If you're in a bad relationship, said Morley, should you stay if you're just staying out of loyalty? And she dropped her toothbrush in the glass on the counter and she flounced off to bad. She fell asleep immediately, storing softly and twitching, and she dreamed that she was having her haircut. And in the dream, Lawrence was using dog clippers. And when he finished, he charged her twice as much and gave her a milk bone. She tried to object, but all she could do was bark. Dave tossed and turned all night by morning, Dave had worked himself into a complete panic. He went to Kenny Wong's cafe for lunch. He sat at the counter. I'm not really hungry. He said, finally settling on soup, barely touching it, finally fessing up. I think Morley is seeing someone else sees that. Don't be crazy, said Kenny, morally wouldn't do that. Dave looked at Kenny Forlornly. Eat your soup, said Kenny. Come back and talk to me if she starts behaving suspiciously. Suspiciously, said Dave. Like what? Well, you know, said Kenny, if she changes her hairstyle, that sort of thing.

[Laughter].

STUART MCLEAN: As April folded into May, Morley couldn't stop thinking about Matthieu. And the more she thought about him, the more she yearned for a different haircut. Every day without Matthieu became a bad hair day. By the end of May, morally could barely stand to brush her hair. She called the salon on a Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday was Lawrence's day off. She asked if they could fit her in for a style, not a cut. She said, I'm not ready for a cut. Matthieu had a cancellation at four, so the girl on the phone. What's your name? Helen, said Morley. She wore a baseball cap and sunglasses to the salon and she slinked past the receptionist and shampoo girl. She went there with her layered Bob intending to let Matthieu wash in style at nothing more. But he stood behind her and he held up her hair from the back and he let it fall through his fingers like sand over and over. He picked up her hair and let it drop back to her shoulders. Piece by piece. And he said, I have to cut this. She knew it was coming. It was inevitable. If she didn't want him to cut it, why had she come? Okay, she said, quietly. And when he had finished, she looked at herself in the mirror and she couldn't believe the change. She looked totally different, smarter, sophisticated. I love it, she said. She couldn't wait for Dave to come home.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: So she headed off to the store instead. Dave was sitting behind the counter flipping through a magazine when Morley walked through the door. I decided it was time for a change. She said, What do you think? Ten minutes later, Dave burst into Kenny Wong's cafe. Don't panic, said Kenny. Your job, said Kenny, is to make a fuss. Your job is to win her back. And so Dave set off to woo his wife. He bought Moley a green Jane Jetson Pez dispenser, morally always love the Jetsons. And then he added a pack of refills at the counter. What the heck he thought. She seemed to like the Pez. But Dave didn't think the presents had had enough of an effect. What about flowers? Ask Kenny Wong. So the next day Dave went to the florist. He couldn't believe his luck. They had Venus fly traps. Each day he brought home something different. Ever since Matthieu's cut my hair, he's been bringing me little treats, Morley told Betty. It's so cute. A Venus fly trap, said Betty. Yes, said Morley, and a pair of wool socks and a bouquet of Tootsie Pops. Red ones. Morley loved the sudden attention almost as much as she loved her new hairdo. But she was plagued with guilt. She had to change the way she walked to work so she didn't go past the salon and accidentally bump into Lawrence. And one evening, when she saw Lawrence in the grocery store, she had to abandon her basket and bolt. I got to stop this. She told Betty. I can't keep seeing him. Not like this. But she went again on a Wednesday, a Wednesday afternoon in September. I'll need three hours, said Matthieu. I want to add some colour. Morally, who had never even had highlights was reluctant. I don't know, she said. Trust me, said Matthieu. You'll love it. So while morally was sitting in the salon chair, guilty, nervous and excited, Dave was slumped behind the counter in his record store, staring at the piece of paper that he had found on the kitchen table that morning. There were three words written on it. They were written in Morley's handwriting: Matthieu two o'clock. Dave was staring at the paper and reaching for the phone, about to call Betty Shellenberger. It had taken him all day to screw up the courage to make the call if anyone knew what was going on, Betty Shallenberger would. Betty, said Dave, getting right to the point. Betty, said, Dave, do you know about Matthieu? Of course, said Betty, it's not exactly a secret.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: She hasn't told me, said Dave. Well, Dave, said Betty, it's not something you'd necessarily share with your husband, is it?

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: I have a date with him, too. I haven't told Arny.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: You're seeing him, too, said Dave. Yes, said Betty, Gerda's coming with me. Two at once, said Dave. Of course not, said Betty, one after the other. He does my whole bridge club, Dave.

[Laughter].

STUART MCLEAN: Everybody loves Matthieu. Oh, my God, [unintelliglbe] Dave. Honestly, Dave, on a Saturday morning, people line up to see Matthieu.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: My last appointment was so good, said Betty, that I gave him a $30 tip. Why is this happening? Said Dave. Things get stale, Dave, said Betty Matthieu has amazing technique. He's French, you know.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: Where did they meet, said Dave. His place, of course, said Betty. Give me the address, said Dave, filled with a sudden resolve. Matthieu had already began Morley's transformation as Dave flew down the street. Dave was checking numbers as he ran. He was running without thinking what he was going to do when he got to where he was going. He was just consumed by the need to act. And when he found the right number, he burst through the salon door without registering where he was or what was going on around him. He spotted Morley before he spotted anything else. His wife, morally a black nylon cape, cinched tightly around her neck, half her head covered in clumps of hair. The other half festooned with dozens of little pieces of tin foil, something red dribbling down her face. His wife, Morley, had never looked worse. He had never loved her more. Morley, he blurted out, I love you. Don't go through with this. It's not too late.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: Everything in the salon screeched to a halt. And as it did, Dave slowly took in his surroundings. The women sitting in the chairs, the stylists with their hair dryers poised in midair. The spiky haired young man with his mouth gaping, open, hovering over Morley with a paintbrush in his hand. All things considered, the salon staff were very nice today. They guided him to a quiet corner and a soft chair and they bought him a coffee. And he sat and he waited. And after the colouring was finished, he and morally walked home together. I told them I wanted something natural, said morally as they walked along. It is natural, said Dave, pointing at the bright red leaves on the maple tree in the park.

[Laughter]

STUART MCLEAN: They sat on a park bench under that tree, and Dave, overcome with love and relief, finally asked the question that he had been afraid to ask before he knew the answer. Are you still happy with me, he asked, is everything okay? Morley looked at him with her licorice red streaks and said, of course it's okay. I would've told you if it wasn't. And so it was six weeks later that Morley called the salon and booked an appointment with Lawrence. Before she went, she phoned Lawrence himself. I feel a little embarrassed about this, she said. And she told him everything about the day he had brought her tea instead of coffee, about the time he had used the apricot shampoo and about Matthieu. Lawrence was a little chilly the first time she saw him, but she didn't let him get away with it. We have to try something different, she said, and it has to be your idea. I was thinking, said Lawrence, we could start with apricot shampoo. That's when she knew they were going to be okay. And she isn't wrong. They will be okay. Though, it's going to take a little longer than she thinks. Lawrence will suggest things and they will try them, but not many other things will work. Morley was never meant to be a blonde or have dreadlocks. But it will be what they're doing that counts, just that they are doing something new and they're doing it together. As for Dave, Dave, I'll keep bringing your stuff all winter long. Root beer, favoured jelly beans, sponge toffee and honour birthday instead of going out to one of the neighbourhood restaurants they favour this year, he'll cook for her just the way he did when they were dating, heating cheddar cheese, hot dogs in the toaster oven and roasting marshmallows over the gas flame of the stove. Thank you very much.

[Applause]

MG: It's the late great Stuart McLean with the hairdresser from the Vinyl Cafe. Because you've asked for it and you deserve it. We'll bring you another episode of the Vinyl Cafe next Friday. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. We spoke yesterday about reimagining public spaces in our cities, talking with some urban planners about how cities are changing, how they're forcing us to think differently about how we allocate space on the streets, perhaps creating more space for pedestrians and cyclists because there are fewer cars on the roads. Is this something that is a good idea? Could it be replicated across the country? Could it stick around? Certainly got your attention. Many of you shared your thoughts with us after the senior producer of The Current, Karin Marley, is here to help us go through some of your mail. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So we can start with Paul Martin of New Westminster, B.C., who wrote: Here We Go Again, another expert moralizing on the rest of us, unwashed. Remember, pedestrian friendly businesses likely rely on customers who use vehicles as well.

MG: That from Paul Martin. This from Pamela Pastachak of Ridgway, Ontario: I do agree that COVID-19, will change things because it has proven that the large corporate centres of commerce may quickly become obsolete. COVID19 may well have put the first nail in the coffin of Metropolis living. Population density can only contribute to the spread of the disease, as is evidenced by the geographic hotspots of COVID-19. Living in smaller centres appears to have fewer downsides. Commuting to work, whether walking, biking, transit or car in smaller centres is easier. In fact, small city transit is usually enjoyable to take as it doesn't involve travelling underground or overcapacity in cars or buses, unlike the Metropolis Transit's. In large cities, many people drive because transit systems are unpleasant and dehumanizing during rush hours. A future where employees work from home or commute small distances is likely to be envied, and that is an environment not likely to occur in a big city.

KARIN MARLEY: We also had a story earlier in the week about the boom in People Riding Bicycle's, which prompted some of you to write as well. Tyler Rettinger of Saskatoon wrote: Thanks for mentioning the Soup Can Bike Lane in Saskatoon. I modelled it after the Red Cup project, which remembers Dave Salivates, a cycling advocate from Washington, D.C., who was killed by the driver of a stolen car. I called my tactical urban project the Red Cat Can Project. I collected about $400 and 100 cans of soup and made a four block lane to push for open streets and a logical extension of one of our few protected bike lanes. The lane was dismantled by city staff. Unfortunately, the bigger picture is that our city is reluctant to make the bold decisions to help those walking and biking both now and as we move forward post pandemic. Backlash from drivers is strong here.

MG: Finally, a letter from Thomas Brawne of Ottawa who writes, What's wrong with this COVID-19 picture? I am just back from a 15 kilometres on the bike. Along the way, I saw two people cycling with masks, one with a face shield, but neither wore a helmet. Living the nightmare in Ottawa. Thanks for all your letters. We love to get the mail. Will read everything that you send us. You can reach us through the Web site at cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link or send us an email directly, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Karin. Thank you.

KARIN MARLEY: Thank you.

MG: Coming up in about 90 seconds, the problem with patient zero. Why singling out the first in an outbreak can often do more harm than good. That's on its way. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Origins of COVID-19; Dancehall

Guests: Ann Jolly, Tanisha Scott

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The story of the coronavirus changes by the hour. So how exactly did we get here?

VOICE 2: Now the hunt is on to find who carried the disease.

VOICE 3: Now we may have found Patient Zero.

VOICE 4: Another extremely worrying thing for authorities here is that they still haven't identified, John, who Patient Sero is. Which means that they don't know how he got here. They don't know how it's spreading, nor how quickly it's likely to spread.

VOICE 5: Where are we right now in tracking down Patient Zero and the true origins of the virus.

MG: Those questions have a theme to them. Can the virus be traced back to an exact time, a place and a person. While understanding the origins of an opiate can be valuable to scientists, there is a fear that in zeal for answers and the rush to try and find the answers to those questions, we could be pinning blame on patients. Ann Jolly teaches as an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Ottawa. Ann good morning.

ANN JOLLY: Good morning. How are you?

MG: I'm well, thanks. As you heard, there's great interest in finding the origins of that virus. How important is it?

ANN JOLLY: So it is actually pretty important to find the first infection. And I do think, you know, you're absolutely right in we are trying to identify the first infection and the poor person who, you know, who the virus chose to set up shop is exactly that a person that we need to take care of and be respectful of the person. So, yes, it's actually Patient O, so that was the original patient from HIV or AIDS, rather. And it was from O, means out of country. I think if it got confused with patient zero.

MG: So it's not Patient Zero. It's Patient O. Oh.

ANN JOLLY: Yes. It was the CDC's terminology for somebody from our country. And so, yes, it's very important that we find the first infection because we can then see how the virus has adapted to war to the human host. So that's the first thing. But the other thing, later on, of course, these viruses, they they replicate rapidly and inaccurately. So any little advantage that they have. So, you know, you have several different subtypes of virus and little difference which will help the virus to survive is important. So looking at the virus as it was when it first got into people and they now will help tell us where it's going, like what kind of changes is the virus making in its genome to be able to adapt to us now?

MG: When we're talking about COVID-19 and the spread of the virus outside of China, there was some information that came out this week from France. What was that information?

ANN JOLLY: Yes. So France had stored theologies from people. And three samples, not[unintelliglbe] And there's a bunch of samples from patients who had been sick towards the end of the year and early this year. And that would have been as a result, obviously, of the influenza season. So people do get, as we know, every year from that. And what they did is filtered down the ones that they could not identify influenza in. And, of course, they found the SARS COVID-2. And so that's a very helpful start in all of this, because it does tell us that there was probably a spread going on before it was formally recognised in the west outside of China, and that there may have been enough asymptomatic spread going on, that it was not clear, you know, exactly how far it had gone before we started to see more serious cases that were hospitalized.

MG: Can you explain how they do this? I mean, that, again, this was frozen blood samples. How how do you go about figuring that out?

ANN JOLLY: Oh, okay. I'm sorry, I. I think it was actually so frozen [unintelligble] samples. You can do the same thing with frozen blood samples, too. So the frozen [unintelliglbe] pharyngeal samples, they just are what they did is amplified up the virus. From what we know now as far as what you know with using primers that is the sort of the food or the building blocks of the protein. Then they amplified up those specimens and detected them in serology. What you can do is search for the- you can actually make fairly quickly make a research test, not for diagnostic purposes, just for research that will bond to you, use the antibodies in the blood to bond to the real virus. And then what you can do is identify those antibodies within stored blood. So most laboratories, you know, save some leftover blood from people that maybe they haven't diagnosed correctly or there's a possibility of a mistake. And they store that for a little bit of time. And we could definitely be looking at that. It used to actually be pretty standard. So when I worked in Manitoba, when we had a hantavirus, we did this on, you know, quite a few stored samples and found, in fact, there was exposure to hantavirus in the fields in Manitoba. So, yes, I'm not sure why it's not happening. And I've been trying to find out, but I haven't had any luck.

MG: One of the things that happens is and, again, whether it's patient zero or patient 0, people want to try and find out origins and trace it back to somebody. And we heard that in that little clip there. Who was the first person who was infected with this virus? I can hear you sighing as I go through this, what's the danger and the concern in doing something? Y

ANN JOLLY: So I actually, um, I've just come back from a visiting professorship at Penn State with the critical medical humanities. And it's really important that we try to we need to keep that. We need to keep tabs on everything, that's for sure. But labelling people as 'patient zero', 'patient o', 'super spreaders', this is a really harsh way to speak about a person that's been infected with a virus completely, you know, involuntarily. 'Super spreader' assumes that, for example, they're doing it on purpose, that they spread it knowingly. And in fact, the person is actually sick and just needs our help. They certainly do not need to be identified without their permission, because, you know, what can happen then is people become fearful. And I've lived through, you know, the first days of HIV.

MG: Well, juust remind us what happened with HIV, because, again, they, people went on a hunt for patient zero and ended up being naming somebody.

ANN JOLLY: Yeah. And I'm not sure exactly whether he had volunteered his name or whether they, you know, how that exactly happened. But it's really important for public health professionals and and to maintain respect for our people and and maintain their humanity. It is not okay to name somebody. It's one thing if they step forward and say something. It's a completely other thing if if we name somebody. Because what happens then is you drive the virus underground. People will become fearful of spreading it. And we've all been named as a as a super spreader or spreader. So we've seen, you know, incidents of people spitting in the streets in the US at Chinese people. And then in China itself, you know, the same kind of thing happening with African people in the southern province of Cuonzo. So it is really important to maintain our humanity, dignity while we're doing this. There's an interesting thing I tell my students. So, you know, when you're when you're tracking a virus and surveilling it, you want to keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. So the virus is your enemy. So between you and the patient's infected, you want to be fighting the virus rather than fighting each other. And so, you know, if people feel fearful, they won't tell you everything or they may be too scared or they may not even be tested, that way, the virus can totally elude you. And so it's really important. I think it's against the virus, not against each other.

MG: Just in the last couple of minutes that we have, how do you ensure that you get the answers that you want without the potential consequences of doing that, without the potential consequences of people or communities being vilified? And as you say, the virus going that underground?

ANN JOLLY: Well, I think one of the ways is to be careful and like I said, respectful of how we address them. So the term super spread, I actually wrote a piece about if we could change that name that we use to highly interconnected person. So people who do tend to, obviously, are exposed to the virus are usually once that have many, many- they know many people, have many friends or many contacts. For example, lawyers and physicians would see many, many people today. So it's more likely that they would be affected than other people who see, you know, who are sort of in high tech and see only the people around who they work with. So that is one of the ways in which the virus spreads. And I think the way that we can refer to them is, for example, highly interconnected person. That way they're hip instead of super spreader SS.

MG: That's a really interesting way. I mean a part of its language, but as you say, the language has meaning and it has an effect as well. Ann thank you for this. This is this is ongoing work and important. Appreciate you talking to us. Thank you.

ANN JOLLY: Thank you very much, Matt.

MG: Ann Jolly is an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Ottawa.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway Tom Power, host of Q is back on. Hello, Tom.

TP: Matt, how are you?

MG: Well, I'm fine. Are you much of a dancer?

TP: I am not. You know, I can waltz a little bit, but that's kind of- I think you and I have talked about this in the past, not to be telling tales at a school. You're a bit of a dancer.

MG: I do love dancing. I'm not very good at it. But to me, one of the things I'm looking forward to most is putting a lot of people into some sort of space and turning music up loud and we'll all dance.

TP: You know, maybe I'll be there playing the music. Maybe that's what I can do. I can just play Irish music and you can dance to it. How about that?

MG: I'm not much of- you will see.

TP: Maybe a Riverdance thing, you don't think so?

MG: I don't know.

TP: All right. Well, listen, I got to talk to you about a different kind of dance here, too. Tanisha Scott is an amazing Canadian choreographer. She's worked with - check this out -Beyonce, Drake Cardi B, Rihanna. The list goes on and on. Pretty good, right?

MG: All much better dancers than I am.

TP: Okay, good. Remains to be seen. There are a lot of people who credit Tanisha with bringing Jamaican dancehall to the mainstream, especially in music videos. Tanisha herself is pretty humble about it. She sees herself as someone who tells stories through movement. I talked to her about choreographing this new series called Utopia Falls. And I started by asking her how does dance and theatre work in quarantine? Check this out.

SOUNDCLIP

TANISHA SCOTT: That's still the question. It's going to definitely take time before we do any other type of like performances. We're obviously in a state where we can't be more than six feet close to one another. And if you just think about the idea of theatre, music videos, any type of dance performance art piece where dances a lot about communicating and touch and just feeling. And it's only so many things that you can do with, say, just one person. But dance is always so much more powerful when you have a group of people for a specific medium to evoke and convey different feelings. And just to tell a story, you know, you of course, you have your solos. But I come from more of a world where it's predominantly a group setting when it comes to the artist.

TP: You know, I what I love about your story is, I want to say we'll talk about Utopia Falls in just a few minutes. But I do want people to get to know you a little bit. But I love when people defy common knowledge that unless you've been doing something since you were three years old, there's no way you can become successful at it. Like I know your dad was a DJ. You come from a very musical home, but you know, you're one of the most, if not the most in-demand choreographer in like Western culture. You didn't start to choreograph till after university, right?

TANISHA SCOTT: Yes, you're absolutely right. And it's not even something that I personally wanted to do. I just wanted to dance. That was my thing. And I not only just pursued it, but I was just given the right opportunities. And I pushed through. I made it mean something. The smallest parts that I'd have in a music video, I'd make the most of it just in any place or whatnot, I let somebody know that I dance and it's something I'm interested in or just find the right places to dance so that I can be seen. And through that it just evolved. And I went with it. I took these chances. And this literally just took a leap of faith in everything that was presented to me that I felt has something to do with dance. And it pretty much worked because I find that anytime you're in something and you love something so much, you want to know so much more about it. So dance doesn't just begin and end with your own personal movement. Becomes choreography. And then from choreography, you go to start trying to teach or do choreography, too. Then it's like, wow, you know, how does somebody tell a story without actually doing choreography? It's just movement walking, slumped over, evoke some type of story to like standing up straight shows confidence is another story. So like now creating a world around you so that you can build these stories to dance, which entails is what creative direction is and what not. So I just pretty much kept evolving within the nucleus of what dance was the meeting the root of my biggest loves period.

TP: I think it's safe to say that the music video that first put you on the map was for this song. Take a listen.

[Music]

TP: Give me the light from 2002. Like I can see that video in my head right now. And like, that was your first gig as a choreographer?

TANISHA SCOTT: Yes, it was.

TP: Wow.

TANISHA SCOTT: It was. I had I had no idea what I was doing. I was I don't even know how to choreograph, but I was put onto the job as a choreographer, not as a dancer. My God. And I had to figure it out. And through just the blessings of like having like the dopiest friends and the community of dancers. I was like, let's just figure this out. And I pretty much had one rehearsal and the next day we're shooting. It was scary, but it was also super fun and comfortable at the same time, because everybody in that video were, if they weren't friends of mine, they were just people that I'm familiar with. And we're all within the same community dance community. So it was a good time. Nobody expected that video to do what it did.

TP: And another way, I mean, I talked about how you're like, you know, a central figure. You pay such a big role in bringing Jamaican dancehall dance into mainstream pop culture. Your background is Jamaican. You grew up visiting Jamaica. It's one thing to be exposed to dance hall. It's another ballgame to become sort of an expert in teaching it. What was that process like?

TANISHA SCOTT: I guess because it was so innately within me was a little easier to teach. It wasn't like I had to study or go to school for it. And I wanted to make sure that, you know, I took on the way that my teacher taught me how to do a specific style. It was just organic. It was a lot easier because I felt like I was having fun. It wasn't about the technical part of it. It was just more about the feeling of it.

TP: Sean Paul's not the only kind of gigantic artist you worked with. As I mentioned in the weighing in. You've also worked with Cardi B and Beyonce and Rihanna and a great up-and-coming Toronto rapper named Drake. And you choreographed the music video to one of his biggest hits. Take a listen.

[Music]

TP: I know obviously being ironic there, that is Hotline Bling, that music video has been viewed 1.6 billion times. You choreographed it. You're in it. Did you have any idea what a big deal it would be?

TANISHA SCOTT: Not at all. No. It almost was like when we worked on X and I. Give Me the Light. Like nobody knew where that would go and how far it would reach. But I tell you, it's the Canadian touch. It's just something that we effortlessly do when we are doing anything when it comes to just art. I find like we just automatically are able to just think out the box and just give something. I don't know if it's because we're just blended with so many different cultures and, you know, we're like seeing lots of life and things happen in these other countries. You know, socially it comes to the US. They tend to be like what people may think like the four [unintelligible] when it comes to entertainment and music. But when you have an eye on what's happening on the outside and you have so much culture already within where you live, like it's it's easy to not just interpret, but give our own feedback with a different spin and a different eye on things. So I think that's what it is. Being Canadian.

TP: As a choreographer, though, I am curious, you know, after Hotline Bling came out, there were all these sort of gifts and all these memes of Drake's dancing. As a choreographer, does that bother you at all or is it a compliment?

TANISHA SCOTT: You know, it's a compliment because either way, Tom, like if people talk bad about something or if they talk good about something, the fact is that they're talking about it. So it's left an impact on them. That means they've seen it and they have an opinion. Some people don't have opinion on anything. I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want the work that I do to not be thought about. I want you to remember it, good or bad, and let's have a discussion. So, yeah, it's a super huge win. Huge.

TP: That's great. So now things have taken a bit of a turn here. So Utopia falls, as I mentioned earlier, a policy group of teenagers like 300 years in the future, all participating in a huge performance competition. They discover this ancient art form called hip hop. They end up dancing in a bunch of different genres, all choreographed by you. We've talked about hip hop and we've talked about dancehall and we've talked about pop. I just I feel like you don't typically work in dystopian science fiction. You know.

TANISHA SCOTT: Yes. Not at all. No. But what made this really cool and super progressive it's it just shows that the meat, the core of any dance that you learn. When you take a class, you have to learn the basics steps. You've got to go back to the beginning. If you want to learn how to do ballet, you're not going to go to advanced ballet. You got to start at the very basic level of it. And with this show, when it came to the dance portion, it was like a circus for me. Like the best thing ever, because I got to study, relearn, familiarise myself and even start a whole new chapter of learning different styles of dance that I've never learned before. So I was learning as I was teaching and creating on the show from flamenco. You have the [unintelliglbe] of course it is house. It is the hip hop. You're voguing. You were whacking. Modern. Contemporary. Then there's freestyle. We dabbled on break dancing. It was just like a jungle gym. It was challenging in the sense that I wanted to make sure that we were completely authentic with the movement giving, as well as the progression of how each character's own journey that they went through their personal style in the movement outside of what they learnt started to change, too. So it was a big task, a very big task.

VOICE 1: You know, a lot of people are home these days looking for something to watch them and their kids are trying to find something to keep the hours occupied. I'll close off this way. Why utopia falls. What's the pitch to folks who might be home right now looking for something to watch?

TANISHA SCOTT: Outside of just it being entertaining and thought provoking. It's also a history lesson. It makes you go back and discuss. For different reasons why certain things happened, of course, in the archives brings up a lot of stuff from war, too. Of course, all the different dance styles, music and it's a discussion for the household and it's definitely for all ages. And they also hit on a lot of things that have to deal with today. Love. It has to do with sexuality. It has to do with growing up. Has to do with just like science fiction in itself. So science, the future, everything. So that's why I say Utopia Falls is definitely a binge watch for this pandemic that we're in.

TP: Tanisha, thanks so much for your time. I can't wait until things get back to normal. We can have you in the studio.

TANISHA SCOTT: I would love to.

TP: We can go deeper through your career and maybe I can learn a few moves too. That'd be great.

TANISHA SCOTT: You got it.

TP: Tanisha, thank you so much for your time and take care and stay safe.

TANISHA SCOTT: Thank you, my love. Take care and be safe, too.

That's Tom Power in conversation with the choreographer Tanisha Scott. Seems like a good chance to play a little bit of dance hall. This is Buju Banton and the legend Beres Hammond to called A Little More Time.

[Music]

MG: Beres Hammond andBuju Banton. Coming up, he won the Pulitzer Prise for editorial cartoons. I'll speak with a Canadian illustrator, Barry Blitt, about spoofing the Trump White House with what the committee called deceptively gentle watercolours. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt; Adele and the conversation around weight loss

Guests: Barry Blitt, Scaachi Koul, Marielle Terhart

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, complementing weight loss. When, if ever, should you do it? A photo of the singer Adele has raised that debate. And we'll talk it out in about 10 minutes time. But first, sketches from the Trump White House.

[Music: Theme].

MG: You know, sometimes the absurdity in politics can leave you speechless, that, it turns out, is where Barry Blitt comes in. Barry Blitt doesn't just talk politics. He draws it. And earlier this week, the Canadian American illustrator won a Pulitzer prise in the editorial cartooning category for a collection of satirical covers and cartoons that appeared in and on the cover of The New Yorker magazine. Barry Blitt joins me from Connecticut. Barry, good morning.

BARRY BLITT: Good morning, Matt. How you doing?

MG: I'm well. Congratulations.

BARRY BLITT: Oh, thank you so much.

MG: How does this work? Somebody calls you, send you an e-mail. You get a telegram. Tell you you've won the Pulitzer prise. This is a huge deal. How does it unfold?

BARRY BLITT: Yes, it's a huge deal indeed. And I'm still you know, it's still very surreal. But yeah, I received a phone call over the weekend from my editor who told me not to read a word of it to a soul until it was announced on Monday. And I've spoken to other Pulitzer winners who said that's how it generally happens. You know, you get word of it before it's announced.

MG: You say it's surreal.

BARRY BLITT: Yes. It's not anything I've ever, certainly ever expected, and it seems like an award that's, you know, reserved for the real talent and the serious art artists.

MG: You're being very humble. It's a very Canadian thing to do to deflect and say that it goes to the real talents and the serious artists. When you are, of course, a real talent and a very serious artist.

BARRY BLITT: Yes, I guess. I mean, I I live in the house that Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in, you know, many years ago.

MG: Wow.

BARRY BLITT: So, there was a real Pulitzer that was here once. This is a cartoon Pulitzer, I think. So, you know, I take it like that.

MG: The judges said that you deserve to be recognised for - and these are their words - work that skewers the personalities and policies emanating from the Trump White House with deceptively sweet watercolour style and seemingly gentle caricatures. Does that sound like what you do for a living?

BARRY BLITT: It is exactly what I do. Yes. And believe me, you know, there's there are many caricaturists and cartoonists who will say, you know, really skew a face. They're able to stretch and and distort and get amazing likenesses and put a lot of vitriol in their drawings. And as much as I would love to draw like that, I don't. And I think my work is basically passive aggressive. You know, it's it's, maybe it's making a point, but it's doing so, you know, in a quiet Canadian voice, if you will.

MG: Let's talk about a couple of the illustrations that were recognised. One is of Donald Trump, U.S. president sitting on something, sofa or a chair, and he's watching television. What's going on here?

BARRY BLITT: Yes, that was when his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was testifying against him. And I think the general consensus, everyone's wondering how Trump was taking it because it was reflecting very badly on him. So I've got the president. You know, he's got a remote TV remote in one hand and hamburger in the other, as one might expect, except he's I think he's eating the remote and he's aiming the hamburger at the television, trying to change the channel. I mean, so it's slapstick, basically. I'm not sure it's making it much more of a point than that.

MG: This other one could have been I guess it wasn't a cover, but I guess it could have been a cover for The New Yorker magazine. There are words on a manuscript that are all blacked out and there are a couple of words that stand out. Tell me about that.

BARRY BLITT: Yes. I submitted that as a cover. I can't remember if it came too late in the week or they had another cover they wanted to use. But it was, they ran it as a cartoon on the Web site and it's basically called a redacted cover. And it makes fun of the or at least references the old Saul Steinberg covers of the magazine. And he would do these assemblages of his drawing table, basically with a piece of paper and his tools or, you know, his drawing pens and around them. So this is, it's a manuscript in the middle. And then there's pens and Exacto knife. There's white out. And there's all the words on the manuscript have been redacted except for a very few.

MG: One of the Ukrainian folk dancing.

BARRY BLITT: And it gets a bit absurd. But I mean, yeah, there was obviously a Ukrainian angles of this and don't ask me what those mean.

MG: Just one more I'll mention and this is of the president having his shoes shined. What's going on here?

BARRY BLITT: Right. I mean, this was just basically a way of highlighting the enablers that he seems to surround himself with. And here we've got Senators Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell and also Attorney General Bill Barr there Trump is sitting high in the pictures here. So the top of his head is cut off. But you can see his shoes and his shoes are being shown by these three and they're all on their knees in matching uniforms and matching brushes.

MG: I've spoken with comedians who say that the time that they live in in the United States is really difficult to find comedy in. That it's difficult to find jokes in the president's behaviour. Is it difficult to spoof him through drawing?

BARRY BLITT: You've spoken to comedians who say it's hard to find jokes?

MG: Because of the seriousness of things and that it almost seems to that more absurd than any joke in that they could come up with.

BARRY BLITT: Well, he is more- I mean, I've I've I'm sure I have submitted ideas that he ends up doing. A lot of actually cartoonists talk about that. It's hard to out absurd him. He is a caricature to start with in the way he looks, the way he acts. It is, it's almost impossible to-- You know, I find when I'm drawing him now that I'm normalising him and making him look, you know, like a regular person, if you will. He seems to have done all the work for you. And it would probably be better using humour and absurdity elsewhere, really.

MG: So much is written about him and what happens out of his administration. What do you think that illustrations can do to add to that discourse, to add to the insight into what's going on?

BARRY BLITT: Insight? I'm really not sure. I mean, I'm just looking for laughs, honestly. You know, I'm not sure about. About insight into it. It's- I mean, it seems like a carnival, really. And I'm not sure how much you can say about a carnival.

MG: What are you drawing now? We're in this weird time where everything is upside down and inside out. When you sit down. I don't wear it at the drawing table. What comes to mind?

BARRY BLITT: Geez, I should look through a sketchbook. I mean, last thing I was drawing, I was attempting an autobiographical cartoon about my bald spot. I'm not sure what that should tell you. I've got I've got pages of puns and I have done some drawings of, you know, of the condition of being in quarantine and, you know, people isolated, lots of those kind of drawings.

MG: Does the quarantine lend itself to what you do this this particular situation?

BARRY BLITT: I mean, it really doesn't. It's pretty dire. And I know that there is humour in it. And it will be easier to use humour when things, you know, let up a little bit. But I think we're a little bit a little ways from that, it seems like. So in perhaps Trump is the best place to be, you know, putting my energies right now.

MG: Well said. Congratulations again. It's a great pleasure to talk to you. And we'll see what you what you draw next, whether it's your bald spot or something else involving the U.S. president. Barry. Thank you.

BARRY BLITT: Okay. Thank you so much, Matt. Appreciate it.

MG: Barry Blitt, American Canadian cartoonist and illustrator, who earlier this week when a Pulitzer prise in the editorial cartooning category. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. The singer Adele took a photo this week to celebrate her birthday. And what began as a post on Instagram ended up getting the world talking.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's the photo that has sent shock waves through the shape, as well as when pop star Adele marks her 32nd birthday with an Instagram page showing off her stunning new figure.

VOICE 2: Well, they say it is thought to have lost around seven stone. And lots of rumours are circulating about how she shifted the pounds, including following the cert food diet.

MG: Seven stone is about 100 pounds. The weight loss is noticeable and it's attracting much praise. It's also raising some debate about whether it's appropriate to comment at all. Scaachi Koul is a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed News. She's in New York City. Marielle Terhart is a writer and body inclusivity advocate. She's in Edmonton. Good morning to you both.

SCAACHI KOUL: Hi.

MARIELLE TERHART: Good morning.

MG: Merielle, the British press is using the word shockwaves to describe the reaction to this photo. When you heard, perhaps, maybe you saw the photo first or maybe you heard about the photo, what went through your mind?

MARIELLE TERHART: I think for me, my biggest question was why people were so interested in a complete strangers body when it's clear that she isn't saying anything about her bodyc hange your weight change and instead saying, hey, thanks for wishing me happy birthday. That's their response to that is your body is different. And so now we need a global debate on whether it's better or worse or what our personal opinions are on how a complete stranger looks.

MG: Scaachi.

SCAACHI KOUL: I mean, I think it was pretty striking that she didn't say anything. We were, as a public more than happy to fill in the blanks for her and often ascribing a lot of moral values to the weight loss and arguments about her health, even though we have no idea, and motives. And so it was really strange.

MG: Does she need to say anything, Marielle? I mean, she's Adele. She's a superstar. She also posted on an Instagram or she has something like 35, 36 million followers. Does she need to say anything?

MARIELLE TERHART: No, I don't think she does. And I think the concern is that we feel the need to say something. I think that's where the issue lies isn't that her body has changed that as a culture we think that that's one our business to something to make commentary on. And to really strengthening that we are monitoring how other people look and what their body size is at all time.

MG: You wrote a piece, Scaachi. It's called The Adel's Weight Loss is a double bind. What do you mean a double bind?

SCAACHI KOUL: Well, I mean, it's an unwinnable position for her. I mean, if she loses weight for whatever her personal reasons are, there's always going to be people who are unhappy about it and simultaneously incredibly happy about it. And neither of those, I think, are really that fair. We've no idea why she lost the weight. It also doesn't really matter. It's her body. She can do whatever the hell she wants with it. If she didn't lose the weight, there would always have been people who would have had something negative to say about that. So there it really there's no winnable position for her. And by virtue of merely posting a photo of herself, it's sort of inflamed this argument we're having about her body. And she didn't even say anything.

MG: She's a, you know, established, super successful artist who knows, I'm confident, about the power of social media and the power of an image. Does the fact that she put it out there herself make it fair game to discuss, Scaachi?

SCAACHI KOUL: Well, I mean, I don't think she has that option. I don't think it's really about is it fair game? I mean, it's her body and its relations allowed to do whatever she wants. I think it would be silly to argue that she has to hide herself because we're so primitive in our discussion of body image and weight that we can't help ourselves but sort of root around in why she did it and how she did it and what it means. I mean, that's not really her fault. I think it'd be unfair to ask a young woman who's public don't post anything online, because if your bodies changed at all in the last five years, we're all gonna have a meltdown about it.

MG: And specifically, I mean that the fact that she is a young woman has a huge part to play in this. Right, Marielle?

MARIELLE TERHART: Absolutely. I think it's so important to keep in mind that so many Canadians struggle with eating disorders. It's thought to be upwards of a million Canadians and predominantly women struggle with eating disorders. And so seeing this kind of rhetoric and celebration around drastic weight loss can be incredibly damaging and harmful for those people. And it's also reaffirming all of these same quarantine beliefs and means that we've been seeing since basically the first week that if you lose weight or if your body changes or if you gain weight during quarantine, people will notice and people will judge you for that because it is a moral failure.

MG: Tell me more about that. Because when people start joking around about the COVID-15 or something like that. And initially that was a joke. And then look was looked at, well, I can't go to the gym and I'm stuck at home. And maybe we've talked about this in the program. I'm suffering from anxiety, depression.

MARIELLE TERHART: I mean, I think that my biggest question is why in the middle of a global pandemic are we still so obsessed with being as small as we physically can as a culture? Why is thinness still so prevalent as what we should be trying to shape our bodies into, opposed to treating our bodies as, you know, the global grief we are going through and letting them just be? I think it speaks so loudly to how desperately our culture relies on diet culture. And this is just one more example of that.

MG: There is a lot of cheering,Scaachi, that's going on. And it's not just from people who are commenting across the world about this post, but you see celebrities reacting to the picture saying: congratulations. Well done. She looks fantastic. What does that do in terms of that's larger conversation that Marielle was talking about?

SCAACHI KOUL: Oh, God. I mean, it's incredibly toxic. And I mean, like, what are we really celebrating? We have no idea what the loss was or how it happened or what the reasons were for it. And, you know, it's one thing to sort of say, oh, she looks great. And having felt that before at her earlier weight, how she looked before. That's fine. But I think there's a lot of dialogue online in particular about like, oh, Adele is my inspiration for now losing my weight. I have no excuse. I need to figure this out. And it's like that is not what this is. And I think often for women in particular, when you see other famous women sort of have these body transformations and they lose a lot of weight, the feeling is, okay, well, I should be doing that, too. And that's something we've all been conditioned to learn from, even though it's not accurate. So, yes, I mean, it's an incredibly toxic misery creating discussion.

MG: She was also celebrated for her look, if I could put it that way in past and who she was in person and the comments that she made about her body saying that it's my body and whatever I do with it is my decision. And she's been very private in her personal life, but has let a couple of those comments out. What is now the same is happening in sort of in reverse. What does that say to you, Marielle?

MARIELLE TERHART: Well, I think that is a great example of what Scaachi's article was saying that it's a double bind. You know what I mean? There's there was no way for her body to be acceptable. And I think that's such an interesting thing to be looking at culturally is that we resented her when she was larger or we celebrated her when she was larger. We resent her and shoot when she's thinner. We celebrate her, Windish, when she's thinner. And I think it reiterates that if you have a body in some way, it is failing someone and you will be held accountable for that in such a public way, especially if you take up public space. I think that she was very clear in set such clear boundaries through her entire career of being a private person. At no point did she say like, I am going to be your icon for body positivity. I am going to be a fat icon. We put her in that role. And then when she chose to no longer be in that role by her body weight changing for again, I can't stress this enough reasons we don't know. It is so unfair for us to be angry that her body is different over the course of our lives. Every single person's body is going to change. And so when we expect people to maintain the same shape or size through the course of their life, they will fail and we will be disappointed.

MG: Is there ever a weakness, this we're saying earlier in the program, is there ever the opportunity or is it ever right to compliment somebody on weight loss, Scaachi?

SCAACHI KOUL: That's a really loaded question. I mean, I don't know, I think that's a really tough one. I think there's a big difference if you're talking about somebody who has to lose weight for health reasons that he's talking to about that and is a close friend. And that's a conversation that they're having. But generally speaking, no, there's no reason. There's a million other things you can say to somebody after, you know, when we all come out of this misery and isolation. There's a thousand other things you can say to people other than, oh, wow, you like, you really lost weight while we were all in quarantine. There's a million other compliments you can give. I think we just need to be slightly more inventive. Weight is not the best or worst thing about anybody.

MG: Marielle.

MARIELLE TERHART: Yes, I would say, again, we usually don't know why people's bodies are changing unless they're a deep, close friend and are confiding in us in some way or another. I think that there are so many other ways to say you're happy to see someone care for their body regardless of what size they are without it being you look thinner and that is better because if their weight changes again, then you've also said you are no longer thinner and now you look worse. I think that there are just so many other ways to talk to people.

SCAACHI KOUL: In your piece, Scaachi, you said that how we're reacting to this in many ways says more about us than it does about her. And so what would you want to see in terms of a different way to react to photos like this? Because the photo is going to get reaction. And I'm sure that she knew that the photo was going to get reaction as well, but it has generated a reaction.

SCAACHI KOUL: Yes. I mean, ideally, I would hope that eventually we get to a point where we don't even register it. Like, who cares? Like literally, who cares? It would be nice if we got to a point where I was like, okay, your birthday. In an ideal world, we would feel completely agnostic about something like this because we happen again as we've all seen things throughout this segment. We have no idea why she did it. We don't know how she did it. We don't know why. So there's nothing really to say beyond that. But yes, I mean, our response to it speaks volumes about what we think about weight and will we think about the value of a thin person versus the value of a larger person and what we think about our own weight and whether we think that it's important to lose that weight. So it's not really about her, ultimately.

MG: Marielle, you've talked about how we frame that value. How better perhaps could people react to photos like this? Should people react at all?

MARIELLE TERHART: I mean, she's wearing a really cute dress with a puffy sleeve, leaving some very elaborate hoople flowers. I feel like there's so- if as a society we need to compliment someone on her birthday for posting a photo, there are so many other parts of that photo that we can focus on. It's her first photo that she posted in 2020. We could just say, hey, we're glad to see you. We hope you're doing well. I don't think that there was any need to comment on her weight. And I think that the fact her weight is different might be one of the reasons she hasn't posted a photo in five months.

MG: It's great to talk to you both. Thank you.

MARIELLE TERHART: Thanks so much for having me.

SCAACHI KOUL: Thank you.

MG: Scaachi Koul is a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed News. She was in New York. Marielle Terrhart is a body inclusivity advocate. She was in Edmonton. We can't talk about Adele without hearing Adele. This is Rolling in the Deep.

[Music]

MG: Adele Rolling in the Deep. Time to say goodbye to our listeners in Newfoundland and Labrador crosstalk is up next for you, for everyone else. We're back in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Kraftwerk

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway Tom Power, host of Q is back. Hello, Tom.

TP: Matt, I got one for you. Ready?

MG: Oh, yes. One being a joke, I hope.

TP: I hope so.

MG: Okay. Ready.

TP: A polar bear walks into the bar and he says, I'll have a rum. And a Coke. The bartender says, yes, no problem. But you know, what's with the big pause? He says, I've had it my whole life. I'm pretty good, eh?

MG: I shall miss these interactions that we have. We have to engineer some way for you to be able to come on and tell jokes in the after time.

TP: I love it. I love that idea. I'll come whenever you want.

MG: You know, one of the things that has happened over the course of this pandemic is we talk a lot, you and I, both music and you, and I've spoken about some of the in the course of this. Some of the big names in music that have died while we have been thinking about music in a different way. And there was Tony Allen, who was John Prine. And then this week we learned about the death of one of the giants of modern music, member of Kraftwerk, Florian Schneider.

TP: Yes. Florence Schneider, one of the founders of the legendary German electronic group, died this week at the age of 73. Outpouring recognition for the work the way they changed music. Matt, your a Kraftwerk fan, right?

MG: I am indeed. And I think one of the things that I was lucky enough to see them in New York, which was a while, I really wondered whether they were just checking email on the stage because they were just behind podiums that had laptops on them. They weren't. But you think of the music that they have shaped and it is it's like 50 years of music in many ways, everything from hip hop to the music of David Bowie to Depeche Mode, to anybody who's making music with computers in many ways is making music with computers because across Kraftwerk,.

TP: I mean, you think about it an entire industry and I know folks in the music industry who tell me that there's, you know, pretty much the biggest driver in the music industry right now is electronic music. And you go to Las Vegas every single night. You know, tens of thousands of people are pouring into clubs to hear what? Electronic music, dance music when and what's often called techno music. I mean, you wouldn't necessarily have any of that kind of industry at all if it wasn't for the pioneering work of Kraftwerk. You know, it's no wonder they're called the Electronic Beatles because, you know, without them, the music industry wouldn't look anything like it does right now.

MG: Nobody knew where the studio was. Nobody knew how to reach them because they didn't have a phone. They didn't accept e-mail. They didn't do interviews. And if they did do interviews, it was only about riding bikes, not about their own music.

TP: Yes. I mean, there's something to be said about that. They were sort of mysterious. They were sort of robotic in their own way. And, you know, it was they kind of blurred the lines between being humans and machines. Don't you think?

MG: Indeed. And we should play a little bit of machine music to celebrate the life of Florian Schneider.

TP: I am excited to hear this man. I'm so jealous. You got to see them.

MG: Yes, it was- there are bands that you kind of can't believe you're seeing when you see them. And they toured and it's like we have to go. And so we went.

TP: We're people dancing?

MG: No. People were standing and just staring because it was just like a monumental. There they are. And it's weird. It was incredible.

TP: Well, let's set it up, let's go for it.

MG: Tom, thank you.

TP: Matt, take care.

MG: Tom Power, host of Q Florian Schneider, one of the founders of Kraftwerk. We learned he had died. He was 73 years old, died of cancer. This is a song that will take us at Florian Schneider and his bandmate Ralph Hutter were big cyclists, as I mentioned. They when they did interviews, often the interviews would only be about cycling, not about music. They used to ride as much as 200 kilometres a day together in the 1970s and 80s. And Florian Schneider once told an interviewer that he loves cycling because it was this perfect marriage of man and machine that you didn't ride with headphones on. You listen to your body, you listen to your heart, you listen to the wind around you. You'll hear that in this piece of music. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Have yourself a great weekend. We'll talk on Monday. This is Kraftwerk and Tour de France.

[Music]

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