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The Current Transcript for February 16, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

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Prologue

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LUKE STARK: You can make a lot of money if you're Facebook by targeting advertising to somebody if you know that they are, for instance, feeling more depressed.

MATT GALLOWAY: Hey, Siri, how am I feeling today? As artificial intelligence becomes more common, from the virtual assistant in your phone to Facebook monitoring which posts you like, your emotional well-being is also becoming top of mind. And the machines are getting better at reading your emotions. In 30 minutes, the very real privacy concerns of this deep AI and where it might end up from picking your music and helping prevent aggressive driving to assisting patients with dementia. Also, this morning,

MELLISSA FUNG: The word kidnap is a trigger for me. It still is. My blood runs cold. It's like having a flashback. And so I was horrified that these bills had just disappeared.

MATT GALLOWAY: Former CBC journalist Mellissa Fung was reporting in Afghanistan in 2008 when she was abducted by armed men and held for weeks before being freed. She returns to that experience in a new documentary to tell the story of schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria. In an hour, Mellissa Fung is here to talk about their shared experience and why she believes she will always be a captive. We begin, though, with the story of a former doctor returning to medicine to help on the front lines of COVID-19, his most recent job, working on board the International Space Station. Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. And this is "The Current".

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Quebec astronaut David Saint-Jacques on trading his space suit for scrubs

Guest: David Saint-Jacques

MATT GALLOWAY: In his distinguished career, David Saint-Jacques has worked in Canada's north, several countries around the world and of course, up there, way up there.

HOUSTON: Station, this is Houston. Are you ready for the event?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Houston, this is Station. I'm ready.

WOMAN: Station, this is the Canadian Space Agency. How do you hear me?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: I have you loud and clear!

WOMAN#2: Bonjour, David!

MAN: Hello, David.

MATT GALLOWAY: That is Dr. David Saint-Jacques, on board the International Space Station in the spring of 2019. He spent seven months in space during that mission. And now, after more than ten years away from medicine, he's traded in his spacesuit for scrubs. And he's part of the team working in one of the COVID hot units, as they're known, at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal. David Saint-Jacques joins me now. Doctor, good morning.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Bonjour, good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: You're on shift right now.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: That's right. Yes. I'm taking a little break between patients on the COVID ward.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's... what's life like for you right now? I mean, and what's the shift been like so far?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Well, so this is my third week as a... as a trainee. This is a university hospital, so anybody who's ever been in one of those big university hospitals knows, you know, there's a bunch of trainees everywhere all the time. So I'm just a bit older than most trainees here. So I'm on the COVID ward. So like most hospitals, here they try to concentrate all the COVID patients together to protect the rest of the hospital. And same with the staff, physicians and nurses just kind of concentrate on the COVID side or non-COVID. So I'm one of those COVID units. It's a very good learning atmosphere, very collegial atmosphere, because people pitch-in, volunteer from all different branches of medicine, we have, you know, nurse practitioners from paediatrics [chuckling]. We have cardiologists who come and help. Everybody's bringing their own little, you know, speciality. But nobody really is a specialist of COVID. So I really love the collegiality and the kind of dedication that people show. It kind of relieves the otherwise pretty gloomy mood because the truth is we don't have a cure for COVID. We just support patients and help their own immune system fight it off. And so often we feel a bit powerless.

MATT GALLOWAY: A year into this, I mean, and you talk about the gloominess in the powerlessness, how are people doing? We're about a year into this pandemic now.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: The medical staff, I mean, they're tired, of course, like everybody else, we've all had enough of this. [chuckling] We're all ready for this to stop, but it's not any time soon. So this is not the time to let our guard down. There's also, you know, a sadness at seeing the increasing length of wait lists for everything else that we are not doing while we're taking care of COVID. We all know someone who was waiting for a non-urgent procedure, for example, but this waiting list just keeps creeping up on us. So that's... that's really there's a sadness there. And there's also, you know, every patient you admit reminds me of your mother, of your brother, of a friend, sometimes of yourself. And so, you know, we think of COVID now. It's easy to get kind of jaded by just these numbers every day that are huge. But each one of these numbers is a person with a family. And it's a disaster for each and every one of them. So there is a... we're at war, basically. That's the feeling, you know?

MATT GALLOWAY: What have you learnt about coping in the time that you've been there? I mean, as you say, you see your mother or people who look like they might be your mother, your brother, your father, but yourself as well. I mean, as... as somebody who perhaps is out of that cohort that we might normally associate with COVID. What have you learned about this disease?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: That is true. Yes, it was a bit of... bit of a, you know, a reality check the first time I admitted a man in his early 50s otherwise in good health, someone that looks just like me. And there he was. And for him, COVID was a disaster. You know, we tend to think of it as either this diagnostic that comes out of the blue, and you have no symptoms, which is most cases or something that will mean that you will be intubated in intensive care and die. But in between these two extremes of lethal and completely asymptomatic, there's these thousands of people that are hospitalized, and they can look like anybody. It is so varied with so little that we know about about this this disease. It's really, it just it takes so many forms. And now we are bracing ourselves for variants of the COVID. And we're hoping this is not going to, you know, to to to make things too much worse. But this is definitely not the time to let our guard down. You know, and I keep thinking of all the health care workers who are putting so much effort into this. But, you know, the reality is the people who are saving most lives are people in the public who are following the rules. Whenever you wear a mask, whenever you wash your hands, whenever you, you know, refrain from direct contact with... with anybody at all, you can minimize. Whenever you do that, your saving lives. And you'll never know it, maybe, but this is really where the battle is.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me about why you're there? People know you as an astronaut, but they may not know that you were practising family medicine. What was it that led you back here?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Yeah, before joining the space program 11 years ago now, I was a family physician. I worked in a little Arctic village up in northern Quebec, an Inuit community. And so I was one of those old fashioned rural doctors that do a bit of everything. And I maintained medical skills, you know, for emergencies, because I was also a physician on board the space station, but, of course, [chuckling] I only had like three or four very healthy patients. So I never thought going back to medicine was even really a realistic option for me. But now with the pandemic, and I could hear from friends, physician, telling me about the shortages. And I felt like I wanted to help and do something practical. So I just you know, I called the Canadian Medicines Quebec, who are the regulating body here, and the McGill University, where I did my residency. And I checked out, and, yeah, there was a way. So... so I'm like back into kind of a training phase now joining these... these big, big teams on the ward. And I mean, I do it to help with the pandemic. I also do it because, as we say, you know, helping makes you feel better. I do feel it's just a matter of personality. You know, I like to feel like I'm part of the... part of the solution, that I'm actually in the action. So there's, I think, it's a win-win. And it is really, really endearing to see the dedication, really, of the... of the health care workers. It's just... it's just incredible the work that they do day in, day out for now, almost a year.

MATT GALLOWAY: You had to decide to do this. And I mean, I don't know whether there's a tipping point or whether there's something that happens. What was... what do you remember about when you picked up the phone and said, OK, I'm going to make the call to try to figure out what I can do to help?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: I was anxious. I mean, that it is a steep hill to climb going back to clinical practice. But it... it seems vertiginously steep [chuckling] at the beginning. And I remember, yeah, after picking up the phone to make the initial arrangements and get the ball rolling, feeling like, oh, what... what machine have I just set up there? [both chuckling] But now that it, it's going, you know, that train is leaving station. And the first day here, first day back on the ward, I felt like, oow, is this a good idea? But, you know, every day, the fog is lifting in my mind, and things are coming back. It's not quite like riding a bike, but the things do come back.

MATT GALLOWAY: You say you're nervous. I mean, somebody who has, you know, blasted off in a rocket into outer space, that is the thing that I think would make most people nervous, not heading back into a ward like this. But what was the most daunting thing? What was... What was the thing that you found most challenging stepping back into this world?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: You know, it's an interesting question. So, when you're an astronaut, it's a bit like being a pilot, I guess, or racecar driver, you know, you... you're risking your own life. You make a mistake, your life is at risk. It's different from being a physician or a nurse, where it's other people's lives that are at risk. I don't know if your see the neurons, but it's like caring for other people. When you have a responsibility for others, I feel it's heavier than responsibly just for yourself, in a way. And also, I didn't want to be wasting people's time, you know? [chuckling] I don't want to be the guy who's trying to help but is actually in the way. [chuckle] So there was maybe it's performance anxiety, just, you know, a worry that I would be a weight for these teams. But no, people have been very, very, very patient, very restraining. And, you know, I find there's always so much that... that needs to be done. So just I try to be kind to myself and give me the time to come back. You know, it takes a while.

MATT GALLOWAY: There's something humbling about that, right? To go back into a situation like that.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Very much so. And... and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. I think it's... it's healthy to get out of your comfort zone. It's healthy to get out of your comfort zone. That's what keeps you alert and moving forward.

MATT GALLOWAY: What have your days been like? I mean, walk me through one of your days.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: So these big hospitals are, you know, they're staffed 24/7. So I'm on the bigger kind of day team now for several weeks. So we come in the morning, and we get a handover from the person who was there at night, you know, that kind of take care of emergencies. Or if there was a new patient, then we see the sicker people. Then we deal, maybe handle admissions or discharges, people who have to leave. And then, you know, we do the investigations. So it takes a whole day. Then we discuss as a group. There's a bunch of people involved in the care of patients here, you know, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians, social workers and the various nurses, various consultants. You know, we're kind of the... we're kind of the hub for for all these people when you're a responsible physician. And so and then, you know, come the end of the day, we hand over it to the person who's going to be there in the evening. And then that wheel goes on like that, day in, day out.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's been the hardest part of the work that you're doing?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: It's just it's frustrating not to know your stuff. [chuckling] It's frustrating to... to be hesitating at every step of the way, right? It is frustrating. So that's I have to just... just give myself the time. But, you know, you don't want to... you can't go cowboy and just say I think I know what to do. But no, you've got to be sure. No, that's been difficult. And then it's just sad every time a patient passes away, every time you lose a patient to COVID, you know, it's just... it's just very sad to kind of share that grief with the family or friends or whoever was... was near to the patient and involved. And, you know, you want to... you want to hug the rest of the team, but you can't even hug these days. So that's also been hard, of course, the loss of a lot of patients.

MATT GALLOWAY: You said earlier that in some ways, it's like a war. Tell me more about that. Why would you use that language?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Because it's kind of drawn-out, waves after waves of patients coming in. And because of the focus we put on this, because of all the energy we put to it, it's like a national priority. So in that sense, it is similar, I think, to a war effort. And also because we're... it's kind of new. We're, you know, public health authorities are they're kind of figuring out the path in the dark every day, a bit more step-by-step based on new research. And so everything we know about all these research labs that are working for trials of this and that. So there's a lot of kind of figure it out as you go type of attitude. So... and it's unknown. Every day is an unknown.

MATT GALLOWAY: In many ways, what we're seeing now in terms of the arrival of vaccines, and perhaps are coming slower than some people would want. But in many ways, they're coming faster than we thought would be possible as well. It's a triumph of science.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: That's true.

MATT GALLOWAY: And I mean, sending people into outer space is a triumph of science as well. What do you make of that, and of what science has been able to achieve this year?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: There's this expression it's not rocket science. [Matt chuckles] You know, it's true that sending people to space is a big feat of the human mind. But I think medicine, the whole of medicine, the whole of health care is an incredibly ambitious thing that humans do to understand our own body and help nature, basically. It's really impressive that we managed to come up with a vaccine this fast. And I've been vaccinated myself. I really encourage anybody who has the chance and gets asked to say, yes, that is, you know, that's our best hope right now to... to kind of flatten that curve as the expression now is used commonly. [sigh] We have to get out of this mess. And this is the best path we have.

MATT GALLOWAY: We're also in the face of that, faced with a lot of people who don't believe in the science. And you'll see it whether it's, you know, they refuse to get the vaccine, or they're out protesting saying they don't want to wear a mask, and they find, you know, wearing a mask to be some sort of imposition on their rights. What do you say has somebody who's there on the front lines, and as you described, you see the heartache of this. What do you say to those people?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: And I can understand, because if you haven't seen a hospital, if you don't know anybody who's sick, if you've ever been sick yourself, it is an abstraction. That's just something you're told. But it's like people that think the earth is flat. It's just not true. [chuckling] It's not flat. And I can understand why you might believe that when you look at the horizon, and it looks flat. But I think it's a... it's a matter of education. Yeah, unfortunately, often there's kind of suspicion with science these days. That's too bad because it really is reason, and science remain our best enemies against the otherwise sort of perilous nature of things. So I think it's a matter of reassurance that this is the right thing to do. And I mean, COVID exists. COVID is dangerous. It is flooding our hospital. It is clogging our health care system. It is putting in peril some people. It has killed so many people. It is... it's... it's not a joke.

MATT GALLOWAY: Our lives have been a lot smaller this year. I mean, and we've been unable to, I mean, travel to see friends and family, move around, go to the places that... that we would otherwise. I'm wondering whether the, you know, the time that you spent in space, in a confined space at all prepared you for the confinement... it's a different kind, but the confinement and the small nature of our lives these days.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Yeah, there was an eerie feeling of deja vu in March last year when we did the first confinement. I was still in Houston with my family. And it felt like I was somehow prepared for it. You know, having spent all these years and training around the world, not seeing my family and then seven months in space in a little, you know, aluminium can with three people. And I had developed tricks to, you know, to make it through. Basically, kind of be gentle to yourself, keep the big picture in mind, why are we doing this? Just basically keep the morale by remembering what the mission is, focus on the little things, focus on the happy things, the little happy things in your life that we take for granted. You know, I find great solace to playing with my kids every day. And then there's a sense of you need to get organized. You know, as adults, we're used to life organizing us. That's not true when you're not working, for example, or unemployed because of COVID. You have to structure your life. We know that's good for kids, but it's good for adults, too. Otherwise, you can never accomplish anything. It's depressing. And then there's the interpersonal aspect. You know, at the outset, it's nice to think that you're going to be with your loved ones all the time. But 24/7, you know, [chuckling] things can get sometimes, you know, kind of abrasive. And it was the same in space, you can imagine. You have to be particularly careful with other people's emotions, and kind of be proactive in, you know, tackling any brewing conflict before it gets out of control. And also, I find important to leave people a space. Everybody needs to be alone from time to time. And when you're stuck at home together, that can be that's something you actively have to allow. So all these little tricks that I develop that we need to survive in space station that I find, woop, this is kind of similar in so many ways.

MATT GALLOWAY: How long do you think you'll work in the hospital for?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Oh, so I'm in training for about a month, and then we'll see if that is enough. I mean, my ambition is to keep working here sort of part-time like most people do here. They take a week, kind of a week every month or something like that, taking shifts like that. So, do that as long as is needed.

MATT GALLOWAY: And what have you learned about yourself in doing this?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Confirmed that it's good to get out of your comfort zone. And confirm that, for me, you know, being part of can I say having an active role is I find solace in kind of reality, operational reality, day-to-day sort of accomplishment of little things. So it's just reinforced things that I knew about myself. And it's good to be can we say in French, you know, [Speaking French] [Translation: helping is good for you].

MATT GALLOWAY: I can imagine when you're up in space, there's a lot of things that you miss, obviously, about being there, and things that you can't have that are down on earth. What about the reverse? Are there things that you miss from up there?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Space?

MATT GALLOWAY: Yeah.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Ah, the just mind-blowing view of the Earth. It's life-changing. Yeah, and the... the incredible feeling of being part of this huge international collaboration. It's like a jewel. It's like a shining example of the fact that feuding countries who are otherwise not doing very well diplomatically are actually working every day in space. And that gives me a lot of... lot of hope as a citizen and a father.

MATT GALLOWAY: Do you want to go back?

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: I would love to. I would love to. But I'm back.... I'm at the back of the queue now.

MATT GALLOWAY: [cuckling] You've been once.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Yes.

MATT GALLOWAY: I really appreciate the work that you're doing. It's important. And again, to give back, it's not something that people need to do, but something people choose to do. And that you're doing it is really powerful. And I appreciate you taking some time to talk to us.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Thank you very much.

MATT GALLOWAY: Good luck.

DAVID SAINT-JACQUES: Stay safe. Stay safe, everybody.

MATT GALLOWAY: Astronaut and doctor David Saint-Jacques. He was in Montreal, working at the McGill University Health Centre. Your CBC News is up next. And then,.

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Are you social, or antisocial?

JOAQUIN PHOENIX: I guess I haven't been social in a while, mostly because --

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: In your voice, I sense hesitance. Would you agree with that?

JOAQUIN PHOENIX: Was I sounding hesitant?

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Yes.

MATT GALLOWAY: Can computers really read your emotions? And if they can, what are the risks of that? Emotional artificial intelligence in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". Stay with us.

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We look at the implications of AI that can detect your emotions

Guests: Yang Hao, Luke Stark

MATT GALLOWAY: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current".

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MATT GALLOWAY: Still to come, it was a horrific day in 2014 when nearly 300 girls were kidnapped in Nigeria by Boko Haram. They were only a fraction of the thousands of girls abducted by the terror group. Journalist Mellissa Fung spoke with some of these young women for her new documentary, "Captive", and she'll be here to talk about that and her own experience of being abducted in Afghanistan. But first, can a computer really tell how you're feeling?

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MATT GALLOWAY: Chances are, you know how you're feeling right now, maybe well-rested after a long weekend, perhaps worn out from the stress of this pandemic, maybe refreshed from your morning coffee. Could a computer tell you all that, though? Scientists say yes. Researchers in the U.K. are developing a new deeper form of artificial intelligence. It takes wireless signals and uses them to figure out people's emotional state. Professor Yang Hao is the project lead. He's also dean for research at the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Queen Mary University in London. Professor, good morning.

YANG HAO: Good morning, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: Why did you want to use wireless signals to figure out how people are feeling?

YANG HAO: Well, my research group has been working on wireless technology for almost 15, 20 years. And we pioneered the research so called bodycentric wireless communications. So we use wireless sensor to understand, you know, the human physiology data. And we hope that this can be used for, you know, improving human health care, health well-being and so on, purely just based on, you know, those physiology data, such as the heart beat and also the breatheway. Can we actually find out what is the emotional state of the human subject?

MATT GALLOWAY: Before we get too deep into this, explain how you do this? What are you doing to test this technology with these wireless signals?

YANG HAO: Well, what we do is we effectively, you know, launch the radio signals into human subjects, and we receive the echo and, you know, reflected the signal. And after that, we use machine learning and to pick up some tiny features of those kind of variation data.

MATT GALLOWAY: So as I understand it, you're... you have the subjects who are sitting there, and they watch a video, and then that video is meant to evoke a specific emotion. Is that correct?

YANG HAO: Well, that's... that's a unit experiment, yes.

MATT GALLOWAY: Yeah.

YANG HAO: We call it testing in a controlled environment, yes.

MATT GALLOWAY: And so then what happens? You send the wireless signals towards them, they bounce back, and what what do you get back as the subjects watch these videos?

YANG HAO: We detect those signals, we we apply the signal processing and the AI machine learning. We just try to understand what are the tiny variations from the reflected signals?

MATT GALLOWAY: And the variations would be in someone's heart rate or their breath rate?

YANG HAO: Well, the both of them.

MATT GALLOWAY: Right. When you do this, and you apply the artificial intelligence, what do you learn?

YANG HAO: What do we learn? We take those, you know, time variation of those signals. We apply that in our signal processing techniques, including transformation. You actually can't find out much more interesting, tiny variation of the features. So those related to the tiny movement of the body. And also, breath rate and also the heartbeat. And from that, we relate that to the video that had been shown and that we find the colouration, so we can classify that at the high resolution of seventy-one-point-six-seven per cent accuracy. So that's about eight per cent increase than previous technologies other people have been using.

MATT GALLOWAY: How do you think this technology could be used? Give me an example of this?

YANG HAO: There are many things that you can... you can use this technology. To give you an example, when you're walking into the home after a stressful day and you want to switch a light, which is perhaps depending on your mood or whether it's dimed or, you know, it's bright, or you switch on your Hi-Fi system, you know, playing music, you know, whether it's you can play a soothing music, or you gonna play a rock'n'roll, those kind of things. I know some companies is actively looking into those technologies. In addition to that, you know, we all using smart devices at home, and we use Siri, right? We use Alexa. When you're talking to them, you know, there is no emotion involved. And I think in the future, I think once you have a conversation with a machine and if the emotion elements can be detected and blended into the application, that will be very interesting.

MATT GALLOWAY: So what what would it mean then if there's an emotion that's been added, and I'm talking to Alexa through the smart speaker, what's that going to do? Is Alexa going to respond in a different way?

YANG HAO: Well, it's... I hope it would respond in a positive way to help you, to understand you more, right? Including coming back with much more responsive actions, whether this is when you're doing shopping, or when you're selecting the songs, when you selecting a movie, or you have even a simple conversation. So just like you and me where we have a conversation, it will be useful. And when we switch on the camera, when we when we do a TV interview, that would be potentially different, than when we just have an interview through the air and over the voice.

MATT GALLOWAY: So Alexa would be able to pick up something in my voice and respond in a certain way, and perhaps select a piece... if I'm feeling down, Alexa perhaps picks a piece of music that would... that would lift me up or, you know, a film or something like that that might give me a bit of a boost because the system would be able to pick up something in my voice that would lead it to better understand the emotion.

YANG HAO: Yeah, yeah, I would believe so. You know, even select relevant news piece, you know, avoid those, you know, emotional sad piece. So there's so many things you could do.

MATT GALLOWAY: What sort of ethical concerns are there in doing this, and using this sort of technology to figure out how people are feeling?

YANG HAO: Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question. You know, we've been asked many times, you know, when we're looking at the wider sensor technologies. When you use technologies related to the personal data, and when you use smartphones, Internet and those sorts of things involve ethics, right? It's not just about emotion study. So we need to have, you know, policies and regulations in place, and make sure those data is only for your personal use. And you need a consensus before you sign away those data for other purposes.

MATT GALLOWAY: Yeah, because you could imagine it would be incredibly valuable to marketers if they knew how I was feeling just based on things that were being picked up by technology. They could sell me things. They could... they could offer me things that I might not even know I needed or wanted.

YANG HAO: Well, sure. That's... that's one way you see it. But the on the other way, people even talk about in the entertainment business to engage audience, you know, lively into the performance and so on, right?

MATT GALLOWAY: Just before I let you go, this research, while it sounds fascinating, has also faced criticism. People have called it pseudoscience, saying that... that this is not possible. You can't actually measure emotions in this way through this sort of technology. What do you say to that criticism?

YANG HAO: I have not seen people saying this is pseudoscience. Actually, this is a science. And the people these days realize more and more now when the scientists is advancing. And particularly, you know, people understand more about how brain works. And let's be honest, emotional well-being is one of the important issue the society need to tackle. And many organizations have identified mental health is one of the, you know, big societal challenges in the future. Emotional study is a scientific study. It will be treated rigorously with ethical concerns.

MATT GALLOWAY: Professor, it's good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

YANG HAO: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Professor Yang Hao is dean for research at the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Queen Mary University of London. That's one type of emotional recognition technology, but there are others. What about having music chosen for you based on how you're feeling that day, from gloomy.

[Music: "I Know It's Over" by The Smiths/punk]

MATT GALLOWAY: To overjoyed.

[Music: "Walking On Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves]

MATT GALLOWAY: The music streaming service Spotify just secured a patent for technology to do just that, and there are many more applications of this technology being explored. It's a field my next guest says deserves a lot more scrutiny. Luke Stark is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University. Luke, good morning.

LUKE STARK: Matt, thanks so much for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Thanks for being here. Spotify trying to figure out how I'm feeling, to choose whether I want to listen to Katrina and the Waves or the Smiths does not sound like a particularly bad idea. Is there something wrong with that?

LUKE STARK: That could be worse, but I think that one of the big challenges with all of these technologies is that they don't always have a solid definition drawn from multiple different fields as to what emotion actually is? Your previous guest, Professor Hao's, work is ingenious. You know, it's a brilliant way of using radar to probe the inside of the body from a distance. But I'm not convinced it's actually measuring emotions. It's measuring heart rate. It's measuring breathing rate. And it's doing so in a kind of correlation with, you know, a video. But I think that there's more to emotions than just heart rate and breath rate. And I think that's actually where a lot of the digital technologies that claim that they're doing emotion recognition are lacking.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me more about that. What are the other ways that those technologies would go about capturing our emotions?

LUKE STARK: Sure. So to start off, emotions are a pretty complicated topic. I mean, I think we can we can all appreciate that from our personal lives. And they're made up of a lot of different facets, right? So they do involve a kind of physiological response, things like heart rate. But they also, of course, involve how we're thinking, how we're reacting, the cultural context in which we brought up, our behaviour and our own subjective sense of the world, right? So... so emotion scientists know this, and it's called the problem of parts, right? There are a lot different parts to emotion. If you're an observer trying to figure out somebody's emotions, all you've got to go on is the kind of external expression, the external signals of emotion.

MATT GALLOWAY: Yeah.

LUKE STARK: So that might be the movement of the face, the movement of the body. It might be heart rate. So if you... if you're able to peer through the skin with radio waves. It might be vocal tone of voice, that's a big one. It might be things like words or even graphic images. So, for instance, Facebook, about four or five years ago, rolled out these reaction icons that let you put a little emotional tag on every post. And that's also a way of of kind of trying to track and correlate emotion.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, there's a huge commercial interest. Is that what's at the heart of all of this, or is there's something else going on?

LUKE STARK: I think that's a big part of it. I think that as smartphones have become ubiquitous, as digital sensors have been implanted all over the place, there's both been a desire on the part of computer scientists to to kind of get a better handle on the social right, on the social world that we all live in. And also, I think, a sense that, you know, there is this... this kind of model of emotion that's available from physiology. And, you know, it works with computers, it works with big data, with digital analysis. And so that's what they'll go with. It's tractable kind of computationally. And so I think the combination of those two factors has really led to the growth of this field and the sense that you can make a lot of money if you're Facebook by targeting advertising to somebody, if you know that they're, for instance, feeling more depressed. And this was actually something that happened a few years ago in Australia. There was a leaked document that showed that Facebook told the advertisers that they could tell when teenagers on the platform were more depressed or more vulnerable and take that moment to, you know, to sell them something that might make them feel better.

MATT GALLOWAY: Yikes! We'll talk more about Facebook in a moment. But there are all sorts of applications, and we've hinted at this, for technology like this and where this information could be used. Tell me about education. How do you think that this could improve or at the very least impact education?

LUKE STARK: Yeah, education is a... is an increasingly fraught space for this kind of work. It kind of coincides with more broadly the way that facial recognition technologies are, you know, being... being sold to school boards and installed in classrooms, especially in countries like China, although there are plenty of places in the United States that are also exploring these technologies. And, you know, the expert on this is a guy named Bill Williamson out in the U.K., and he's written a lot about how the kind of embrace of the paradigm of social emotional learning, which is, you know, this kind of idea of focussing on the emotion and social life of students. While potentially really positive, also, you know, seems to be drawing a lot of emotion recognition folks into the space. And what that means is in the most extreme examples, installing systems like were installed in the high school in Hangzhou, China in 2018 that would, you know, monitor things like attentiveness. They would monitor eye movement and enthusiasm, and they would do that both to potentially grade students and also assess evaluate teachers. Now, this sounds a little extreme, and there have been reports that this technology, you know, didn't pan out so well in this in this Hangzhou high school. But it certainly is a kind of an example of... of some of the ways in which these systems might get deployed or might want to be deployed in the future.

MATT GALLOWAY: What else could it be used?

LUKE STARK: Your previous guest mentioned health and wellness, right? And that's a huge space for multiple different ways around, you know, emotional recognition. One that's already on the market is the Amazon Halo, which is, you know, a fitness wearable device. And one of the ways that it promotes itself is that it says it's going to listen to your voice throughout the day; it has a microphone, and it's going to report back to you based on your tone of voice, your emotional state throughout the day. Car analysis through both face and voice is a big one.

MATT GALLOWAY: How is it going to be used in the car? I mean, just to determine whether you're a happy driver, [laughing] an aggressive driver, somebody suffering from road rage or what?

LUKE STARK: Yeah, pretty much. I think the idea is generally that if the system, you know, detects abnormal physiological readings, maybe it detects your eyes are off the road, maybe it detects you're speaking in a loud voice, right? It'll assume you're upset and it'll potentially take some sort of automated action to make you drive more safely, whether that's slowing you down or temporarily, you know, asking you to pull off the road.

MATT GALLOWAY: What about now and this pandemic time that we're in where we're all using technology differently? Are there applications that could come out of the, you know, the situation we find ourselves in?

LUKE STARK: That's a good question. I think one of the places where these technologies have been used quite a lot is in things like virtual hiring. And, you know, anywhere where you have a video that's where you're collecting audio and data about the face, you have the potential to run one of these emotional recognition systems on it. Some companies like HireVue and other companies that that do these automated hiring systems have in the past talked about how they use emotional recognition of both face and voice to, you know, to classify and to... to score applicants.

MATT GALLOWAY: You can imagine... you could imagine that would be fraught.

LUKE STARK: Yeah, absolutely. It is... it is totally fraught. So... so there are a few things to say to that. There have been studies that show that emotion detection systems are not as accurate on certain faces than on others. Right. So, Lauren Rhue at University of Maryland has done a great study that shows how emotion recognition systems misclassify smiling Black faces as more angry more often. But these systems are not really measuring emotion, right? I think I want to go back to that central point. They're measuring some external signals of emotion that may or may not tell you that much about, you know, how somebody actually feeling. And may or may not tell you that much about whether this person would be a good employee or not.

MATT GALLOWAY: There's technology that's being developed to help children on the autism spectrum, who perhaps may have difficulty in understanding or reading human emotion. And that this technology would help that. Is that a positive potential coming out of a technology like this?

LUKE STARK: I think it can be. You know, it's important to work with... with that community and make sure that these technologies fit with what they need and what they want. But that's often the kind of the positive... the positive use case that people talk about. In certain limited situations, potentially in the medical or therapeutic uses, there might be uses for this kind of recognition technology.

MATT GALLOWAY: What about what the professor was talking about when it comes to patients perhaps with dementia?

LUKE STARK: I think that could be helpful. I think I maybe rather see, you know, the resources that... that would go into a system like that, go into systems to provide better home care and maybe, you know, better... better conditions for folks with dementia to engage with their families, right? I think that's one of... one of my big concerns about a lot of this work is... is that it tends to crowd out other less digitally-high-tech solutions right? We know a lot about about people with dementia, and we know that they benefit from human contact and they benefit from, you know, often benefit a lot from intensive therapies of various kinds.

MATT GALLOWAY: I asked the professor about the ethical concerns around this. And consent is a big thing, but often we'll sign up to something, and consent is just a button that we click. We don't read anything that's in front of the button before we say we consent. For many people, Facebook is is kind of right at the edge of this. We know that it's a business that... that, you know, in many ways, monetizes how you respond to posts that are there. Can you really consent to having your emotions or your reactions being measured and then monetized?

LUKE STARK: Unfortunately, under the current legal consent regimes, you know, you can because... because you click that button. But I think a lot of the folks that I know who work in the space of online privacy really, really consider that kind of consent regime to have basically failed. You know, it really... it really doesn't reflect often the kind of complicated, nuanced ways that people want to act online. And Facebook has been very, very good at finding new ways to kind of mine the data that it collects for various behavioural insights --

MATT GALLOWAY: But also... but also manipulate people's reactions. I mean, there was that controversial effort that they had based on... on the news stories that people were seeing, right?

LUKE STARK: To back up a little bit, yeah. So in 2014, Facebook got a lot of bad press because they published a paper that showed that they were basically showing more positive words or more negative words in the news feed of about a half-a-million Facebook users. And this got a lot of people upset. And Facebook's reaction was a little bit confused because, of course, they do this kind of experimentation all the time. And so I think that is one big concern about digital emotion tracking is... is the sense that emotions as kind of a focus for experimentation are something that people are really uncomfortable with.

MATT GALLOWAY: You mentioned what was happening in China. I want to play something from Shahzada Ahmad with the U.K.-Based human rights organization Article 19. That group recently put out a report warning about the use of this kind of technology in China.

SHAHZADA AHMAD: One thing we noticed was, with face recognition, foreign media caught on to how widespread this was in China, quite late after it was already, you know, blanketing major cities and not really something you could kind of turn the clock back on. And with emotion recognition, we thought, OK, you know what? There's actually enough here that we can draw attention to this now. And also draw attention to the fact that there is public critique of it in China in some of the places where it's implemented, and kind of start the discussion early so we don't end up in the same place we have with face recognition. We know, right, especially in use cases involving public security and education. It's just so clear that these aren't just privacy violations. We have no idea, one, what the long-term effect of these technologies are on people, and how it changes kind of your social psychology and behaviour. This could be really damaging to the way people choose to behave if they think they're being monitored for their emotional expressions.

MATT GALLOWAY: If we know we're being watched, will we change the way we express ourselves?

LUKE STARK: I think so. I think we need, of course, maybe more research on exactly how these particular technologies will change behaviour? But I think the kind of long-running work in privacy studies and surveillance studies does suggest things like chilling effects and various other behavioural changes will take place. In the report, Ms. Ahmad co-authored, going Back to that high school in Hangzhou China, some of the students reported feeling intense pressure to have a kind of attentive face, to kind of really purrfect their expression and their bodily, you know, their bodily position. Others just kind of said, oh, this isn't going to work. This is stupid. You know, I'm going to ignore it, right? So... so there is a range of responses, but I think the more these systems get built into some of... some of the situations that are already kind of, you know, involve high pressure, things like school and work, the kinds of changes in behaviour that Ms. Ahmad was talking about are going to continue to be a problem.

MATT GALLOWAY: So if this is about control, whether it's governments or whether it's hiring, and it's about money in terms of monetizing this, just finally, what needs to be done, I guess, by governments and by policymakers to ensure that this sort of technology isn't abused?

LUKE STARK: Several things. I think one thing is to, you know, to listen to the scientific voices that are really calling into question some of these technologies and their broad applicability, right? So... so there was a piece by a really eminent psychologist from Northeastern University, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and some co-authors last year in 2019, where they did a meta review of research on the inference of emotion from facial movements. They looked at all these papers, and they... and they found that these systems aren't particularly reliable. And, of course, there's.... there's hugely limited generalizability in terms of different contexts and cultures around the world and how that shapes emotional expression. I think that we have to understand these technologies as potential threats to human rights. What governments and politicians need to do is really press for a wide range of... of actions against not just these technologies, but more broadly, other biometric technologies like facial recognition. So we're looking at, you know, potentially sectoral bans, you know, moratoria, slowing down the development of these systems. And again, you know, focussing research and resources not totally away from high-tech, but towards, you know, some proven strategies that can be augmented by high-tech systems and not totally reliant on them.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is the horse already out of the barn?

LUKE STARK: On emotion recognition technology, I don't think it's quite there yet. It's playing at the gate. So this is... this is... this is the time to really rein it in.

MATT GALLOWAY: Luke, this is fascinating. It's great to talk to you about it. Thank you very much.

MATT GALLOWAY: Thank you. Luke Stark is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University. Coming up after your regional update, former CBC journalist Mellissa Fung will be here to talk about her new documentary, "Captive". It delves into the kidnapping of girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram and her telling of their stories. And how that has helped Mellissa come to terms with her own abduction. I'm Matt Galloway. We're back in 90 seconds. Stay with us.

Journalist Mellissa Fung’s new documentary

Guest: Mellissa Fung

MATT GALLOWAY: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current".

WOMAN: It was three Mondays ago, when some 300 girls were abducted wholesale from their boarding school, 16 and 17 year olds callously loaded onto trucks and then simply vanished.

[A man speaking in a foreign language]

WOMAN: A video surfaced that appears to be Boko Haram claim of responsibility, from a man believed to be its leader. I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, says Abubakar Shekau.

MATT GALLOWAY: On a spring night in 2014, almost 300 girls were abducted from their village in Chibok village in northeastern Nigeria. The crime horrified people around the world, including the Canadian journalist Mellissa Fung.

MELLISSA FUNG: The notion of captivity is... it's easy to define it because obviously, if you're held hostage, if you're kidnapped, you're a captive. But how that stays with you, I think, is another form of captivity.

[Music: Tense].

MELLISSA FUNG: You're always a captive. I am a captive.

MATT GALLOWAY: In 2008, Mellissa Fung was reporting for CBC in Afghanistan when she was abducted and held underground for 28 days before being released. That experience shapes her new documentary, "Captive". It tells the stories of girls victimized and kidnapped by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, and the road to healing for both her and those schoolgirls. Mellissa, good morning.

MELLISSA FUNG: Hi, Matt. Thanks for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Thanks for being here. And congratulations on this film. What went through your mind when you first heard about that mass abduction of girls in Nigeria in 2014?

MELLISSA FUNG: The word kidnap is a trigger for me. It still is, you know, whether it's 276 schoolgirls from Chibok or an aid worker or other journalists. I just my blood run cold. It's like having a flashback. And so I was horrified, like most everybody around the world, waking up to these headlines that these girls had just disappeared overnight and taken hostage into the forest. And the more I read about Boko Haram, the more horrified I was because these 276 girls that I just heard about are only a fraction of the girls that they have kidnapped over the years and held hostage. You know, the more I read, the more I realized that some girls had escaped. And I thought, oh, my gosh, what kind of trauma are they dealing with? Who's helping them? Are they getting counselling? Are they back in school? All the things that go towards rebuilding, reclaiming your life after a trauma, which I went through myself. And I thought, how could girls who have so little, to begin with, how do they begin to rebuild? That's what got me started on this journey.

MATT GALLOWAY: You say in the film that your time in captivity in some ways brought you there and brought you to their story.

MELLISSA FUNG: It did. It made me... it made the girls trust me because, you know, it's very hard to ask about a trauma without re-traumatizing. And often journalists go into places and just talk to victims, ask victims about what they went through. And... and having been, you know, on the other side of that myself, I just knew I couldn't do the same thing. And so when I went in, I told the girls I understood in a way that most people probably don't. And they were free to ask me about my experience. They wanted to know about the Taliban. They wanted to know where I was held. And I was very, very open with them. I mean, I told them things I haven't even told close friends. So I think that helped build trust, and it helped them tell their story.

MATT GALLOWAY: I want to ask you more about that trust in a moment. But I mentioned at the beginning, I mean, the 2014 abduction of the girls in Chibok... and we know that story. We know the #BringBackOurGirls campaign and, you know, Michelle Obama and other people involved in this very public movement. This is different in some ways. Tell me, as you understand it, more about Boko Haram and how they operate in that area of Nigeria?

MELLISSA FUNG: Boko Haram has really started their violent activities around 2009. 2011 they bombed the U.N. building in Abuja national police headquarters and really sort of made their mark. And violence became sort of their M.O., so to speak. And so the world hadn't really paid attention until the idea that, you know, they could just go into a village and kidnap almost 300 girls. And that's really what put them on the stage. And in fact, Boko Haram roughly translates as Western education is forbidden. You know, they are Salafist Islams, and they believe that Western society is immoral and corrupt. And anybody who doesn't obey the letter of the Koran, the way they see it deserves to be punished. And that includes other Muslims. And so they're different in that way. They're a group that has no problem targeting and killing other Muslims.

MATT GALLOWAY: And that kidnapping, I mean, again, it's not just those 300 girls. This is something that Boko Haram has done on not a regular basis but a frequent basis.

MELLISSA FUNG: I mean, they did it just the other day. They overran villages. They often kill the men, take the women or they recruit the men to become Boko Haram fighters. And they burn down the village, take all the food. They've really been operating like this, you know, for the better part of a decade. And the government is still having trouble kind of keeping them under control. And, you know, the president has said they have been defeated, but... but they really haven't. And just when you think that there are two-point-five-million people they've displaced throughout northern Nigeria and sort of that Lake Chad area and, you know, the idea that they... this one group has displaced almost three million people in that area. And really, we we don't pay enough attention to what's going on there.

MATT GALLOWAY: There are three girls that you introduce us to in this film that were captured by Boko Haram, Zahra, Gambo and Asma. tell us about them. Who are they?

MELLISSA FUNG: They are three of the many girls I met who managed to escape their captivity. Now, they are not part of the Chibok group at all. They were taken separately when their villages were raided. And they managed to escape because sometimes the military will launch an incursion into the forest, and it creates a chaotic environment where people can escape. And so these three managed to escape. And Asma was the youngest at 12 years old when she was taken into the forest. She's the most soft-spoken one, I think. Zahra was, you know, she likes to say the best student in her school before she was kidnapped. She was taken at the age of 13. And wanted to be a doctor. You know, they all want to be doctors or journalists or lawyers, she said. And she was the most determined to go back to school. But she got pregnant by the Boko Haram fighter she was forced to marry. And so she has struggled since her escape. Gambo is beautiful. She looks like she should be on the cover of Vogue. And she's the angriest. She's... she's the one who's I think had the hardest time coming to terms with what's happened to her and how her life changed by her kidnapping. And so each of them gives us a different window into the experience of... of trauma and what it... what it feels like to try to reconstruct your life after.

MATT GALLOWAY: One of the things that you ask early on in the film is... and it's not so much a question, but you're thinking about what their first night in the forest would have been like for them after they were abducted. Tell me more about that and why that was running through your mind?

MELLISSA FUNG: I remember what it was like for me my first night in a hole in Afghanistan, and just what runs through your mind, you know? You know, have my parents been told? Where are my parents? Are they going to kill me? And it is just that the first moments of realization that you're a captive and sort of having to come to terms with that, it's surreal. And so... you know, these girls were so much younger than me that I couldn't... I just couldn't imagine what might have been going through their their minds. You know, a lot of them... Asma was taken with her whole family, her mother, sister, father, brothers, and then separated from them. So can you imagine, you know, what that first few moments would have been like for her, you know, not knowing if they had what... what happened to her family, knowing that they had also been captured? That's a personal... it's a personal thing. You know, just that fear that first night when you're coming to terms with your captivity.

MATT GALLOWAY: Asma, as you mentioned, was just 12 years old when she was abducted and then married. And we'll talk more about that in a moment. Let's take a listen to a little bit of Asma.

ASMA [Speaking in a foreign language]

TRANSLATOR: They took us deep into Zambezia forest. They said they would marry us, but I said no. Then they threatened to kill me. They told my mother that I was no longer her child, that I belong to their leader, Shekau.

MATT GALLOWAY: What did she tell you about what life was like in the forest?

MELLISSA FUNG: She chose her words sparingly. You know, I didn't want to re-traumatize her by making her relive the whole experience, but she did say she was married off to a fighter named Mohammed, who would go off and fight during the day. She would be expected to cook, have a meal ready for him when he came back. That he said she was a terrible wife because she couldn't cook. And would beat her because of, you know, her inability to be a proper wife. You know, she's 12 years old, Matt. I can't even... I get so upset thinking about, you know, what she went through.

MATT GALLOWAY: Yeah.

MELLISSA FUNG: At that age.

MATT GALLOWAY: How did they manage to escape?

MELLISSA FUNG: It was through a government or military attack on Boko Haram, on their encampments, which the military often does. And in that chaos they run. And I think, you know, in the film you hear Zahra talking about running, running, running, running, running and not knowing where she was going, you know, just running. Actually, Zahra escaped not in the chaos of a military operation, but she just, you know, did it on her own, as Zahra does. But there are openings. And, you know, you hear of people escaping all the time, going back to, you know, Asma and Hawa running during a military operation, and then running into each other, you know, mother and daughter who had been separated when they were captured, finding each other when they were escaping. You know, Hawa, Asma's mother said it was a miracle that I found her, but not a miracle because Asma's older sister, Beina, is still in the forest.

MATT GALLOWAY: Let's take a listen to Zahra talking a little bit more about her experience in the forest.

ZAHRA: [Speaking in a foreign language]

TRANSLATOR: Some people, if I tell them about what happened to me, they'll start labelling my child. They'll call her Boko Haram child and other names. So that's why I don't want to tell anyone.

MATT GALLOWAY: In the documentary, she says, and you've hinted at this, how could a young girl like me be pregnant? What was the situation that girls like Zahra found themselves in when they finally got free?

MELLISSA FUNG: This is I think the saddest part about this for me is that they finally get free, and they are shunned by their communities and their families.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do you mean shunned? I mean, you would assume that they get free, and they would be welcomed back, they're not in captivity.

MELLISSA FUNG: So Zahra... Zahra's escape, she she was running out of the forest, she came upon a village. And the villagers ran away from her because they said, you know, with Boko Haram, you're a wife of Boko Haram. And so they didn't trust her. And they have good reason not to trust because Boko Haram has been using their kidnapped girls, many of them who are the ones who refused to get married to a fighter, as suicide bombers, sending them back into villages and blowing themselves up. And so the villagers, when they saw Zahra running towards them, thought she's either going to bomb us or she's one of them. And so it took her a while to kind of gain their trust. You know, she had to say, please help me. No, I ... you know, I'm not with them. I escaped. And finally, they... they helped her.

MATT GALLOWAY: Gambo is also one of the girls that... that goes through that that shunning that you describe. Let's take a listen to a little bit of... of what she had to say about that experience.

GAMBO: [Speaking in a foreign language]

TRANSLATOR: Yes, I'm angry. They really hurt me, but they didn't kill me, so I still have hope.

MELLISSA FUNG: What do you want to do now that you're free of Boko Haram?

GAMBO: [Speaking in a foreign language].

TRANSLATOR: After what they did to me, if I can take revenge on them, I will.

MATT GALLOWAY: What was life like for her when she got free?

MELLISSA FUNG: It was really hard. She was also taken with her mother, who was not in the film, Hajira. And many of these women make a living selling things. You know, they sell maize cakes that they make. They sell, you know, things they sew. And Gamba, when she went back to her village, she said nobody wanted to buy anything from us. Nobody trusted us. Nobody wanted to be around us. Nobody wanted anything that we were selling. And so she really felt not wanted in her own community. And I think that was very hard for her. And that, you know, fed into her anger at her circumstance.

MATT GALLOWAY: Did you hear that idea of revenge from other girls?

MELLISSA FUNG: I did with Asma, Asma said, I want to take revenge, but there's no use. I'll never find them. Gambo, she was the angriest out of the three girls, you know? And she said, it doesn't matter if I find the husband who I was married to, you know, I would just kill any one of them. Doesn't matter if it's him. And so she was really looking for a place to channel that anger. And I asked her, you know, what are you doing about this anger? She said, I'm praying about it. I'm becoming more religious. I'm asking Allah to take it away from me. And so I think she's still got quite a bit to work through.

MATT GALLOWAY: In many ways, this goes back to what we heard at the very beginning of the conversation, in the clip of you talking about captivity, and saying that you're always a captive. And then you say, in your words, Is am a captive. What does that mean to you?

MELLISSA FUNG: My captivity is always going to be a part of who I am. And it's taken me a long time to accept that. You know, I spent the first few years after my experience running away from it, compartmentalizing it. And it wasn't healthy for me, Matt. You know, it's been now 12 years since my experience that, you know, it led me to this film, my experience. I wouldn't be here talking to you about these girls if what happened to me hadn't happened. And so it becomes part of who you are. It doesn't define you, but it helps you, gives you a different perspective. It gives you a unique perspective, I think.

MATT GALLOWAY: You talked earlier about how you go about speaking with these girls. And part of that was... was shaped in many ways by questions that you faced. I mean, how did how you were interviewed after your release, and you wrote a memoir about this, how did that shape how you approach these conversations with these girls? Because you're able to get them to speak about something that I think none of us would want to talk about or would feel comfortable speaking about, in some ways?

MELLISSA FUNG: I think that the girls realise that we are all part of this club of women who have suffered violence in conflict. And there's a language, you know? And you ask how did questions to me inform my questions to them? I just remember, you know, people asking questions I didn't want to answer. I never talked about being sexually assaulted when I was in captivity. I never talked about my, you know, and in the book, I alluded to it, that it happened. I still wasn't really ready to talk about it. And a reporter asked me when the book came out, and I was doing interviews on the book, asked, OK, so we didn't know you were raped. What was that like? Why did you decide to talk about it now? And I said, whoa, that's not a good way to get me to talk about that at all. And it took me a while to kind of collect myself. What I really want to say was a four letter word, and I'm ending this interview, but I couldn't believe that somebody would be so just blatant about it. Blasé almost. And so I knew that I, you know, I knew how I didn't want to ask questions. And I knew what is uncomfortable to talk about. And, you know, we don't talk about rape enough. And that's... It's still uncomfortable to talk about. But... but it's part of what happens, and it's not something that everybody's comfortable sharing. So the girls, I kind of gave them as much space as possible to talk about what they wanted to talk about. When we get to the counselling session in the film, you know, by then, they really open up.

MATT GALLOWAY: That counsellor, Dr. Fatima Akilau, is a psychologist with the Neem Foundation that helps girls abducted by Boko Haram. And the girls meet with the psychologist in part to try to process what they've been through, but also figure out what's ahead. Here's part of your conversation with the psychologist.

MELLISSA FUNG: And I'm still... I don't... you know, I still am dealing with it.

FATIMA AKILAU: Right. A decade on. So it just highlights what these girls have in front of them.

MELLISSA FUNG: It is a long road. And I'm just, you know, how long does it take? You know, shouldn't I be better by now? Shouldn't I.... shouldn't I be back to normal or is there no real normal? You can't really ever go back to right before trauma, can you?

FATIMA AKILAU: You can't erase what's happened to you, and I think it's always going to be part of your identity now, but it also doesn't have to define you, which is what we tell these girls. It's... it's something that happened at one particular point in their life. It's a major thing. It's changed their life, but it doesn't define the rest of their life.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's available to these girls, given what they have been through?

MELLISSA FUNG: Not much, matt. My three girls, I took them to meet Fatima Akilu because that was the only way they were able to talk to somebody, Neem runs a school for former girl abductees. It's not quite a school. It's more like a rehabilitation centre. But they do have classes. There's art therapy, music therapy, but they can only take 100 girls at a time because it's so intense. And it's only... there's only one of these schools in Maiduguri. And there's so much need. You know, a hundred girls get access to this on a one-to-one sort of very intimate, involved basis. And that's what they really need to... to really recover. And there's just not enough... not enough resources.

MATT GALLOWAY: One of the things that you say in the film is that... I mean, and you've hinted at this, it's OK for... for trauma to take its time, but also that it's not weak to, in your words, go back into the hole, to go back to that place that... that... that you were in or that they were in. Did you believe that it was weak to do that? And, I mean, what was the work that you did to realiZe that it wasn't, that that's just part of that process, if I can put it that way.

MELLISSA FUNG: I mean, I... I've been in and out of therapy for the last 12 years, which is a good thing because as my first trauma therapist said to me, it's no good to be here in perpetuity. You can't have a standing date with me every week for the rest of your life. That is not healthy. And so when I left her, she said, you're, you know, I'm happy to leave you for now, but if you ever need to come back, let me know. And years later, I went back to Afghanistan on another assignment. And coming back from there, I felt like I needed to see somebody, just dealing with all the flashbacks, the trauma that you still process. And I think everybody processes trauma differently. And some people, you know, are more resilient than others. We all like to think we're resilient, but to admit that you're not as strong as you think you are is actually OK.

MATT GALLOWAY: That's important in part because you develop this real connection with these girls, and you really want to help them. And part of that is just being with them and being real with them and open with them. And there's a... you see that in the film. I mean, there's this real connection that develops. Is part of that about letting them know that it's OK to not be OK?

MELLISSA FUNG: Absolutely. Absolutely. And they know that. When I first met them, you know, they kept saying, they're OK, I'm OK, I'm OK. I'm just angry that this happened, you know? And gradually, they were able to say, well, no, I still do have nightmares. I can admit that to you, right? And I said, that's OK. I do, too. That's part of what this experience is. What... what... what it means to heal. It's OK to still have nightmares. You know, I'm... I'm still... I'm in touch with them all the time through Kabeer, the local journalist that I've been working with all these years. So it's... I miss them. I was supposed to be back a couple of times last year, but the pandemic sort of put the kibosh on those trips.

MATT GALLOWAY: What happens next for them? I mean, their lives are so violently interrupted. As schoolgirls, is school and continuing school possible for them?

MELLISSA FUNG: It's a struggle. So the film leaves off and after, you know, I leave them in the film, Kabeer and I find them a boarding school that will accept them. And that was great. But then their grades weren't good enough. So the boarding school asked them to leave. And Kabeer found them a day school. So we got them a tutor. Their grades improved. Then the pandemic hit. The schools were shut down. So when Kabeer told me the schools are shut down, they've got to go back to the village, my heart just sank because, you know, we talk about schools closing here in the U.K. and in Canada. But when schools closed there and girls have to go back to their villages, how many of them are not going to be able to go back to school after the pandemic? And that was my real fear. And so what we've been working really hard now that schools are reopening in... in Nigeria to find them a new boarding school.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just finally, how... how does making a film like this, and I can imagine, I mean, even talking about it, but being involved in it for as long as you were can't be easy. How does a film... making a film like this help you?

MELLISSA FUNG: I think I learned so much from the girls. You know, they have so little materially when you look at where they live, how they live, but they have so much inner strength, they have so much faith in God. And that's what I find amazing. Their resilience is inspiring. For me, it was rewarding because I drew strength from them as well. I will admit there were really dark days, dark nights, you know, because I really had to revisit my own captivity, in a way, in making this film. But I hope that going to those dark places will shine a light on the beauty and the strength that these girls show us.

MATT GALLOWAY: Isn't it amazing that they draw strength from you, and then you are able to draw that back from them as well?

MELLISSA FUNG: Yeah, it's.... it's been really rewarding that way.

MATT GALLOWAY: Mellissa, thank you very much.

MELLISSA FUNG: Thanks so much, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: Mellissa Fung is a journalist and the director of "Captive". It airs tonight on TVO at 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time. That's it for "The Current" for today. Coming up next on CBC Radio one, it's "q". Canada Reads is on the horizon, and the program is featuring each of the five panellists, one-by-one, talking about the books that they have chosen to defend this week. Roger Mooking, celebrity chef, who's defending debut novel called "Butter, Honey, Pig, Bread". Sounds delicious. Stay tuned for that. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to "The Current". Take care. And I'll talk to you tomorrow.

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February 16, 2021 Episode Transcript

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