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The Current Transcript for December 20, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

NELSON: As soon as I pull it out of the truck, they start getting nervous. It was designed to have all the features that geese dislike.

MATT GALLOWAY: Geese, symbol of Canada, sure, but also a nuisance in many communities. Have you seen what they leave behind? Enter the "Goosinator." In a moment, the cutting edge technology being deployed in this country to get the better of the Canada goose. Also this morning, with 11 days left in 2024, it's a good opportunity to look back on the year that was this morning, the soundtrack to the last 12 months. In an hour, Talia Schlanger and Lamine Abdel Mahmood spend the best music of the year. Might try and slide one of my favourites in there as well. Plus...

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 2: If you go back in history, we really treasured our clothes. We really looked after them because they were expensive, and we've just forgotten about that now because we have this sea of really cheap goods.

MATT GALLOWAY: The opposite of fast fashion. In the face of cheap clothes ending up in the dump, how to keep old garments out of the landfill from restoring and reusing what's broken to forcing retailers to be responsible for the entire lifecycle of the things they sell. That's in 30 minutes. But we begin with a big honking mess. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

The Goosinator chasing away bothersome birds

Guests: Allison Dempster, Chris Dela Torre, Paul Karchut

[Geese sounds]

MG: It's like the sound of Canada, or at the very least, the sound of the Canada goose. They are a national symbol, but for some, they are becoming a national nuisance. Crop damage, droppings, the hissing sound they make. What is good for the goose is not always good for us. And in Lethbridge, Alberta, they're actually trying something new to send a message to the growing goose population. That new thing is called the Goosinator. Allison Dempster went to check it out. Alison, good morning.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: This is a literal wild goose chase that we sent you on, to find out what about, what about the Goose? Am I saying that right, the Goosinator?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yes, that is what it's called. It sounds a bit menacing, doesn't it?

MG: What is, what is the Goosinator?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah, it's a, it's a remote-controlled device about a metre long, and it's bright orange. It's got a face on it with big yellow wolf-like eyes and jagged teeth. Exaggerated. Almost like a six-year-old painted it, which is no shade to the Colorado manufacturer. It's all by design. I'll let Nelson, who will explain. He's the pest management guy with the city of Lethbridge. He gets to operate the Goosinator.

SOUNDCLIP

NELSON: As soon as I pull it out of their truck, they start getting nervous. It was designed to have all the features that geese dislike. Geese have more of a spectrum of colour than humans do, so they don't like bright colours. Also, the sound coming off the prop is a sound that humans are really acute to, but geese are really aware of it.

MG: That, the sound is that weird thing that I hear in the background there?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah, that whirring. That's the prop. Yeah.

MG: What is what is said, "Goosinator" made out of?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Mostly styrofoam, but it sits on plastic skis so you can take it out onto the water.

MG: And did you, did you get a turn at the controls of the Goosinator?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: I wish. But there's some skill and strategy involved in running a Goosinator, Matt. [MG: Oh, OK.] And so, that ruled me out. And but I did watch Nelson manoeuvre the Goosinator around a local lake, which was partly frozen, and it really zips along. Nelson takes a tactical approach. He describes it as herding. He doesn't like the term hazing, so he circles them and they fly off pretty immediately. He doesn't get too close, but he wants them to get the hint to move it along.

MG: I mean, this does seem like cutting edge goose management technology. But beyond that, why is this city going to these lengths? What is, what is the Goose situation in Lethbridge?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Well, there are a lot of them, for one thing. But it's not just their numbers, Matt. There's also a group of them, 1200 at last count that won't leave.

MG: 1200 in 1 city, in Lethbridge.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah, yeah. And in that one spot. And so far, they're not migrating south for the winter. So, for the past couple of years, they've been congregating on a little patch of open water at Henderson Lake Park. And this park is a lovely spot in Lethbridge. Really nice lakeside paths, gardens, lots of grass. So, it's popular with humans and geese. Jackie Cardinal is the city's Parks Natural Resource Coordinator, and she says there's even a name for where the geese hang out in the winter.

SOUNDCLIP

JACKIE CARDINAL: We call it the hot tub because you'll drive by. It's -45 out and there's so many birds on this spot of open water that it looks like a hot tub. There's steam. There's so many birds, you can't even see the water. So when it starts, there's, you know, a handful that stay and people feel bad for them, so they feed them. And then, those ones come back because they're like, "Hey, there's free food here and there's open water, and we can hang out here." And then, it just, there's more and more and more and more to the point where it becomes a problem.

MG: The mind spins thinking of the geese in the hot tub. Even with said hot tub, though, I mean, you would imagine them sticking around for the winter in Lethbridge would be a bit of a gamble for the geese.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one reason why the city of Lethbridge is trying the Goosinator. They're concerned that with the warmer winters, the birds are getting lured into staying, but they then risk getting caught when there's a cold snap. And when I visited Henderson Lake, I saw a number of dead ducks on the ice. [MG: Oh.] So, they apparently stuck around too long. So, people obviously don't want to see the birds freezing to death. But there are other issues that have come up in Lethbridge with its growing goose population and in particular, Matt, what it leaves behind.

MG: This is a problem that many Canadians coast to coast would be familiar with.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yes, yeah. The droppings. Canada Goose, little known fact, Matt, deposits about 1.5 pounds of poop a day. Two thirds of a kilogram.

MG: This, I did not know.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: It's multiplied. [MG: That's a lot.] That's quite the visual. Yeah. And multiply that, you know, by a couple thousand, let's say, and you get a yuck factor that can get in the way of people enjoying a park. The faeces is also not good for the lake. There's the E.coli risk, and the lake already has a blue green algae problem. Also, along with the carpet of droppings, there's also the odd human goose or pet goose conflict. As we all know, the geese, a.k.a. Cobra chickens [MG: What?] can be quite prickly in the spring around their young.

MG: The cobra chicken phrase I've never heard, but as somebody who goes running, I have been out and have come across geese and hissed at. I mean, I'm a 54-year-old man, and the geese are snapping and hissing at me. And I've been kind of spooked by, by the geese.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: I mean, they're big birds, right? Like about, you know, 15-pound, 20-pound bird coming at you. That's, that's unnerving.

MG: A cobra chicken? That's what we call them?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah. Well, out here on the prairies, that's what we call them. I don't know. Maybe that's not a pan-Canadian term.

MG: I never heard that.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Okay. Well, it's apt.

MG: I keep learning more things. It does feel. I mean, do we know that you're talking about Lethbridge and the 1200 that won't leave that one area in the city? Do we know whether we are seeing more geese in Canada?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Their population has surged in recent decades. The current North American count for breeding geese in the spring is roughly 7 to 8 million. Compare that to back in 1950, when it was estimated there were 1 million. I talked to Frank Baldwin about these numbers. He's a waterfowl biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Winnipeg, and he says the population really took off in the '90s.

SOUNDCLIP

FRANK BALDWIN: In recent years, they've been growing at a tremendous reach, somewhere around 8 to 9 per cent a year. And if that's sustained, that means a doubling roughly every 8 or 9 years potentially. And that's definitely been on the radar of, of our branch and of also the provincial wildlife branches across Canada.

MG: A population doubling every 8 or 9 years. Why is the, why is the population exploding like this?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: There's an interesting story behind how we got here. The Canada goose wasn't always this ubiquitous. At one time, we were actually worried about their survival.

MG: There were too few geese in Canada.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah, Yeah. This goes back to the 1800s. Geese were a handy food source for settlers. They were also used for their feathers and quills, so they were hunted year round, and their numbers dwindled. Frank Baldwin says then in the last century, we decided to restore the population.

SOUNDCLIP

FRANK BALDWIN: If you go back into the 1950s and '60s, Canada geese were relatively uncommon, they were at one time thought to be even extirpated. And there was a really concerted effort across the prairies to, to foster their return. So, there was all sorts of programs that protected them, encourage them to nest in different areas, that was translocation projects and rearing projects. And essentially, with the variety of protections that they've been afforded to refuges and restrictions on hunting, they've really been allowed to expand quickly.

MG: That worked, didn't it?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: It sure did. But it's not the only reason for our robust goose population. Frank Baldwin says another big factor is the expansion of agriculture. So, the geese basically have got a banquet of crops to feed on now.

SOUNDCLIP

FRANK BALDWIN: They love emerging soybeans and canola and corn, and those are becoming quite dominant crops in Prairie Canada. So, when the birds hatch, their goslings are looking for a really nutritious high nitrogen food source. And those emerging crops really fit the bill.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: So, Matt, in Manitoba, they started seeing farmers claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in crop damage compensation. And that expense, along with vehicle collisions and damage to public parks and golf courses, led to a new designation for geese a few years ago in southern Manitoba. They are officially classified as overabundant, which allows for a hunt in the spring. Baldwin says it's too early to tell how it's working in terms of kerbing the population growth.

MG: So, you have the hunt in Manitoba. Lethbridge has the Goosinator, as our, our goose expert, what are other communities doing to deal with this exploding population?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Well, Matt, in Ottawa, they've been using something called the "Goose Buster."

MG: Do tell. I mean, I like the name. [ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah.] People, people are being interesting in in terms of, you know, the name they're cooking up for their goose eradication project. But what is the Goose Buster?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Well, this one is a drone, and it's similar to the Goosinator. The idea is to repel the geese. So, it's got lights. And a big part of the deterrent is the sound. I'm going to play some for you, Matt. Brace yourself.

[Sound of Goose Buster making a loud noise]

MG: I'd leave the area, let alone the geese.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: I know. It's terrifying, it's terrifying. Steve Wambolt is the creator of those horrifying sounds and the Goose Buster. He's who you're going to call.

MG: What is the Goose Buster's track record? Does, does the Goose Buster, is the Goose Buster successful? Is he getting rid of the geese?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah, well, he's been doing this for 10 years now, so he's got a decent track record. He says he has success in terms of keeping beaches clear of droppings.

SOUNDCLIP

FRANK BALDWIN: So, what happens is they do get the message and they do leave. You can tell by the amount of poop and feathers on the beach. The problem is we, you know, we got geese all up and down the Ottawa River. So, you got this continuous turnstile of them. We can easily get a goose to leave, and a lot of them do not come back. But because there's so many of them, this is where the population of them becomes a huge problem.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: So, Matt, beyond the drone, the city of Ottawa has other tactics. It's put up coyote decoys in parks. It also has what it calls an egg management program. So, geese eggs are sterilised in their nests. Each year, the city spends roughly $100,000 on bird management, and up to half that goes toward dealing with geese. And Ottawa's not alone. I mean, communities across the country are experimenting with these strategies.

MG: What about in the hot tub in Lethbridge where the geese are hanging out and not leaving? Does the city know whether the Goosinator is working to, to clear out the hot tub?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: It's still early days. The crews need some colder temperatures to set in so that when they drive the geese away, ice forms over the hot tub. They also need people not to feed the geese, as well-intentioned as they might be. I chatted with folks in the park about how they feel about the resident geese.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 3: Probably what they leave behind is what most people don't like.

VOICE 4: In the summer and the spring, the water is disgusting. Yeah, it has a strong odour.

VOICE 5: Lots of crap. And I slipped and slided, and I got to check my boots after my walk. If people would just quit feeding them, that'd be a big help. It's nice to see. wildlife in the middle of winter. I don't want to be all negative.

MG: I mean, I see his point. Sure, they hiss at you and they might leave a mess, but they're also part of the natural world. I live in a big city, and one of the things I love is that occasionally you will see geese just fly over the downtown core of the city that I'm in. And you think, this is a big, but you're also just part of that natural world, right?

ALLISON DEMPSTER: Yeah. Yeah. People told me they did like having the birds around you. Just as you say, seeing some wildlife in increasingly urban spaces is maybe reassuring a connection to the natural world. They're not so sure the Goosinator is going to work, but they would like to see their feathered friends head south for the winter for their own sakes.

MG: You have learned and taught us a lot about geese in the course of this conversation. Allison, thank you very much.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: My pleasure, Matt. Now, before I go, [MG: Oh?] I've got one more, if you can believe it, Canada goose story for you if you have time.

MG: Of course, yes.

ALLISON DEMPSTER: I figured. So, this is one of the CBC. This is one from the CBC Calgary Archives. It's a piece by my colleagues Chris Dela Torre and Paul Carter, and it's legendary here. We still get audience requests for it. It's about a close encounter Chris had with a pair of geese, a very close encounter.

MG: All right, Alison, thank you very much. Allison Dempster, our producer in Calgary. I mean, how could you not? This is that legendary story.

SOUNDCLIP

PAUL KARCHUT: Yeah, this was it, man. It was right over here.

CHRIS DELA TORRE: We're on the Bow River bike path. We're on the north side of the river, right around where Edmonton Trail meets Memorial Drive. So one morning last year, this, this used to be part of my daily commute into work. I'd cycle along the river into Kensington and then over to the CBC. I was just trekking along, had the, my music in my earphones. It was a good day. I thought it was going to be really good day. But there was two geese, full-grown geese. And then, like, their babies, the, what do you call the babies?

PAUL KARCHUT: Geese lings, or something?

[cross-talk]

CHRIS DELA TORRE: Sure, goose chicks. And I slowed down for them because they were directly crossing the path. And I'm just, you know, I'm literally thinking to myself, "This is one of the things that make cycling work so special." [Dramatic music fading in] And just as I'm having that thought, the two adults, they just they're staring at me like, like stink eye. Like, "What you doing here?" Kind of, kind of look, right? I've stopped completely, sitting on the bike, and the two geese attacked me. Like, one of them was like, I get to see their faces. You know, They were you that sound, you know, the [hissing sound] we have the sound. [Geese noises] So, the one attacks my face. And if you can just imagine, like the feathers, like, like going like this. [Imitating geese sounds with feathers] And I was just like, [imitating geese noises]. It was, it really was terrifying. I basically just fell off my bike and started swinging the bike around my head like in full, like big dramatic circles, right? I was basically fighting for my life at that point. So, they scattered off. I was trying to catch my breath, tried to, you know, gather myself and had to work. I still had a whole work day to face. So, I get back on my bike and I and I head off. But the bike, the brake, the front tire is stuck. It won't move at all. So, I guess what happened was in the, the melees, I had so much adrenaline going through me that I had broken my front brake so the front tire wouldn't roll anymore. So, I couldn't ride my bike to work. So, I locked my bike up against the nearest tree, that tree right over there. And I walked over to work, ended up being an hour and a half late, or so. That evening, I went back from my bike, and my bike was gone. Like, who would steal a broken bike that's locked up to a tree? Unless of course, you're two geese that planned the whole thing to begin with. And you know, the whole thing just went according to plan for them.

[Dramatic music concludes]

CHRIS DELA TORRE: Hey, geese are the gangster of nature. You know, I think that they just do what they want, you know? And I'm sick of it.

[Soft piano music playing]

CHRIS DELA TORRE: There was one weekend, just maybe a month or two after the attack where I just walked down to Eau Claire by the river there where they all hang out. And my son, who was four at the time was like, "What are we doing, Dad?" And I was like, "Son, I need to just make peace here. Just bear with me." So, we went and we sat down with the geese. They didn't bother me or anything. Like, they went, they didn't even really, they didn't even really acknowledge me or notice that I was there. But I really don't think I achieved the closure and peace that I still seek today.

PAUL KARCHUT: You still seem angry about it.

CHRIS DELA TORRE: Yeah. I mean, like, it's so weird. Like, who, who gets attacked by geese, Dad? I have to, I have the walk her out of his my whole life. Oh, there goes two, there goes two of them. Three of them. Four of them.

MG: A favourite from the CBC Calgary Archives, featuring Chris Dela Torre, and producer Paul Karchut. Have you had a close encounter with the Canada Goose? How did that work out for you? Are you still like, Chris is looking for closure after that encounter? The e-mail address: thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up Monday on this program, it has been an incredible year for women in sport.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER: McIntosh has got her nose out front. Summer McIntosh gets the Canadian hat trick of gold with an Olympic record time.

ANNOUNCER 2: Simone Biles, she was going for gold. Number seven of her career at the Olympic Games. She's got it.

ANNOUNCER 3: And here comes Clark. How will she go for history? [Cheers] The all-time leading scorer in women's college basketball.

MG: Summer McIntosh, Simone Biles, Caitlin Clark, some of the powerhouse female athletes who made history this year in swimming, gymnastics and basketball. Can't forget the inaugural season of the Professional Women's Hockey League, also known as the WHL. It drew in record-breaking crowds, and got so many young girls excited about hockey.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER 4: Rylind MacKinnon, of course, and now Sarah Nurse, a chance for a jailbreak, and she scores! That's how it's done! Sarah Nurse ties things up for Toronto, frees Izzy Daniel from the penalty box. And this crowd is in it.

MG: Next week, we'll look back at what's been a formative year for women in sport. From the first game of that PWHL to the Paris Olympics to the announcement that a new WNBA team will arrive in Toronto in the years ahead. You can hear all about that coming up Monday on The Current. Your CBC news is up next, and then...

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 6: 60 per cent of the clothes that we produce are made from synthetic materials, which means that they will take a [Music: Theme fading in] thousand years to break down in landfill.

MG: The closing, clothing industry produces something like 80 billion garments a year. Fashion is the third biggest polluting industry in the world, worse even than aviation, because a lot of those clothes end up in the dump. Coming up, we'll talk about how to practice sustainable fashion with a long-time fashion editor, why it might be time for a closet audit, and why increasingly the companies that sell you those cheap clothes are being made responsible for the entire lifecycle of the garments they sell. That's coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is the Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. Stick around.

[Music: Theme fading in]

Making fashion more sustainable

Guests: Tiffanie Darke, Russell McPherson, Jordan Girling

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I did a Christmas shein haul. There's way too much to show you in one video, so you're going to have to come back for part two, three and four.

VOICE 2: Guys, I have a massive garage haul. I low-key forgot what I even bought. Let's get it open here. I love getting packages in the mail. It's actually my favourite thing in the entire world.

MG: Clothing hauls have become extremely popular on TikTok, and it's not called a haul for nothing. Fast fashion makes acquiring hoards of new items not only affordable but very, very easy with just the click of a button. It also makes fashion the third biggest polluting industry in the world, with an estimated 92 million tons of textiles ending up in landfills every year. My next guest has another much smaller number to share with you. That number is five. That is how many new articles of clothing Tiffanie Darke believes we should buy in a year. Tiffanie is a top fashion editor in the UK and the author of, "What to Wear and Why: Your Guilt-Free Guide to Sustainable Fashion." She's in our London studio. Tiffanie, hi.

TIFFANIE DARKE: Hi, Matt.

MG: Tell me about, I mean, I say top fashion editor, tell me about the life you were leading as a fashion editor. You were working for, for Harrods at the time, right?

TIFFANIE DARKE: Yes. And previously to that, I was a fashion editor of a big national magazine as well. And I was very much part of the problem. So, a lot of this was through the noughties when the sort of rise of the democratic version of fashion, if you like, happened. In other words, all our High Street stores kind of exploded with items that looked like they were from the catwalk, but that you could get at really affordable prices. And so, fashion became this kind of all-you-can-eat buffet of kind of items that you could just pop in and get something new for Friday night, or if you needed an outfit for a party on Saturday, then you could get something new for that as well. You could follow all of the, all of the new trends and kind of snap up the new collections. And it was really exciting time because it just opened up fashion to everybody. Fashion, you know, previously was something that, in the words of the great Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, you could never be too rich and never be too thin, and suddenly, everyone could have it. And as a fashion editor, it was I was like, "Chucks away," right? "Let's do it." How much of this stuff can we get on our pages? And I ran all of those features which everyone will be very familiar with about, you know, the 27 shoes for spring and six skirts you need to buy now. But I didn't, in any of that, ask the question about where my clothes came from.

MG: So, when did you realise, as you say, that you were part of the problem? Was there a moment that, that kind of the light bulb went on?

TIFFANIE DARKE: Yeah, there was a very particular day in COVID lockdown, as they were very, for lots of people across the world. And at that point, I was Editor-In-Chief of Harrods, which is a big luxury store in London. It's a kind of temple to consumerism, if you like. And previous to lockdown, my job had been about, you know, doing all of the magazines and the in-store video and the live TV and all of that kind of thing. And then in lockdown, Harrods realised that its very top tier of customers were still shopping. They were basically lazing around on their private yachts in the Caribbean with nothing much to do but scroll and shop. So, if they could just get pictures, WhatsApp pictures of Louis Vuitton handbags and so forth to those customers, they could just click to buy. So, that very quickly became my job. And there was one day when I was cycling back through lockdown London, having let myself into the back of this sort of dark and airy store and snapped pictures of high value luxury goods, and sent them off to princesses. And I got home, and in the UK, it was a Clap For Carers night. So every Thursday, we would go out onto our doorsteps and bang our saucepans with wooden spoons with our kids. And that was a pretty weird day. And I suddenly realised that none of that made sense anymore.

MG: And so, out of that comes the rule of five. What is that?

TIFFANIE DARKE: Well, this was a climate report that came out of the Berlin Hot or Cool Institute, and they took a look at the fashion industry, which, as you mentioned, is the third most polluting on the planet. And lots of the brands in the fashion industry have said, "Don't worry, we're going to hit our 1.5 warming targets by 2030," which basically means that all of their supply chains will add up to only 1.5 degrees of temperature impact above pre-industrial levels by 2030. And this is what all the scientists say we have to stick to. If we go beyond that, then there's irrevocable change. But the institute looked at the promises that all of these brands were making, and crunched the numbers, and discovered that actually nothing that they were doing was going to get them anywhere near that because of our insane overproduction and overconsumption. So, you might produce something quite sustainably, but if you're producing 80 million items of batch, then obviously, it's not going to be very sustainable. So, they worked out that in the UK, the U.S., and probably Canada as well, we could only afford to buy five new items of clothing a year if we wanted to hit that 1.5 2030 warming target.

MG: How difficult, do you live by that, that philosophy now?

TIFFANIE DARKE: I have done, yes.

MG: [TIFFANIE DARKE: And]. And so as somebody who I mean, you just describe where you came from, how difficult is it to go from, you know, big to very, very small?

TIFFANIE DARKE: It's very difficult. [MG: Yeah.] I'm really not going to lie. It was really, really hard. But the most difficult part of it is, is tuning out the noise. Because what we don't realise is, is that we are marketed to all the time that consumption has become the de facto reflex option for everything that we feel.

MG: Can I ask you about that? I mean, we heard those TikTok clips. I had a conversation earlier this week with Jonathan Haidt, he wrote this book, "The Anxious Generation," [TIFFANIE DARKE: Yes] which is about how it's not just kids, but we're all on our phones, and we are steered by the algorithm in many ways. And if you hear those clips, I mean, people make a lot of money as an influencer saying, "I just got this haul, hoping that you will do the same kind of thing." What kind of influence does that have on us, do you think?

TIFFANIE DARKE: I think it's very sort of subliminally manipulating our, kind of, hormonal responses. So, there's an excitement to it. And then, there's a sort of element of, "Oh my God, can you believe that they just did that?" They opened the door, and it's piled high with boxes. And so, there's a sort of dopamine drip that's going on. And I think what Jonathan would say is that the way the algorithm is engineered is so that you constantly are seeking that dopamine hit. And marketing companies are doing exactly the same when it comes to consumption. It's the dopamine is the hit that we are all looking for in response to, whether we feel sad or whether we feel like celebrating, or whether we want to mark an occasion or, you know, whether we want to comfort ourself or treat ourselves. We know we can get that dopamine hit from clicking on something, and from buying something. And it has been ingrained into us over about 100 years of the consumption age to the point now that we are just buying way too much.

MG: So, there's also that idea of what is called retail therapy, where people I mean, it's gloomy now. The weather's been getting more intense for a lot of people. The news is not particularly pleasant as well. And a lot of people will go out and shop if they can because they feel that it helps them...

TIFFANIE DARKE: Cover the shopping.

MG: Yeah, it's a lot of fun as well. And if you just are only getting five things, some people might think that you take away some of that, some of that joy.

TIFFANIE DARKE: Well, let me, let me tell you how I find my alternative joy. [MG: Oh, okay.] So, there are different ways of approaching fashion. So, you can look at all the stuff that is already in your wardrobe and do something with it. And really, I'm sure men are much better at this than women, but women only wear about 30 per cent of their wardrobe, 20 to 30 per cent. Lots of it goes unworn. So, if you pull out of all that, all that stuff that's unworn and have a look at it, some of it won't fit you anymore. Some of it just isn't appropriate anymore. It doesn't feel right. But all you have to do is find an amazing seamstress, and work on re-engineering it, and kind of adapting it and making it into something new. And that is actually a hugely rewarding and creative process. There's also lots of stuff in our wardrobe that we don't wear because I don't know, like the trouser hems are too long. You don't wear those trousers. If you just took them up, you'd have a whole new pair of trousers without, you know, even buying anything. And then, there's lots of great fun stuff you could do with swapping parties, borrowing off your friends. Renting is a really good option as well. There's lots of different ways that you can get hold of new clothes without actually buying anything new.

MG: I mean, this is a practical thing, but a lot of it is also philosophical, right? In terms of changing. It's not just changing the algorithm, it's changing how, how the brain is wired.

TIFFANIE DARKE: That's absolutely right. And I think actually that that is what brings you a great moment of clarity and joy when you swap that philosophical approach. So, actually, you know, buying those five items of clothing is now a really fun thing for me because I research them massively beforehand. I spend a long time choosing. I'm very careful that where I buy those clothes from, you know, it's good sourcing and a good supply chain. And so, the joy that I get when I get those, that item is beyond anything that I had before. And my value relationship with that item of clothing is much, much stronger. But also, I've now recognised when I am being manipulated and so, when I am resorting to shopping for a reason, that isn't really because I need it or I want it. And I think living with less actually makes you a little bit freer and a little bit lighter in the world. And it also, let me tell you, it makes you a little bit richer as well.

MG: What would the Tiffanie Darke of the fashion magazines and of Harrod's, think of the Tiffanie Darke now?

TIFFANIE DARKE: Well, I think that I mean, I am, I am still buying really beautiful clothes, [MG: Yeah] and I'm actually spending more money on fewer things. So actually, I kind of afford better things now.

MG: But there's more meaning to them?

TIFFANIE DARKE: That's way more meaning to them. Yeah, I think, I think she would respect her, I would hope.

MG: But it's hard in the world that we live in, right? I mean, this is how we're steered in some ways. If, even if you're struggling, you're still being told that you need to have more.

TIFFANIE DARKE: Yes. And the thing is, if you haven't got much money, then actually, the only thing you can do is look at all of those cheap clothes. And the way those cheap brands market themselves at you is deliberately to make you want more and more and more. And of course, if it's cheap, it's probably not going to be very well-made. So, it's actually not going to last you a very long time. So, it's going to wear out and then, you're going to have to buy something else to replace it. So, you know, you're in this terrible loop that you really need to break out of. And there are sort of, there are things you can do, like you can turn off the ads on your social media streams. There are ways to get around it, but they don't make it easy for you.

MG: Tiffany, really glad to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

TIFFANIE DARKE: Thank you.

MG: Tiffanie Darke is an author and fashion editor. Her latest book is called, "What to Wear and Why: Your Guilt-Free Guide to Sustainable Fashion.".

MG: If you do end up doing that closet audit that Tiffanie was talking about, peering in the closet and figuring out what's there and what you need and what you don't need. In this country, probably going to find a parka, maybe another one, maybe some ski pants hanging in the wardrobe. Maybe they have a bit of a broken zipper or a tear. Velcro doesn't stick anymore. That's not ideal when it gets really cold out. But that is where my next guest comes in. Russell McPherson is founder of "Gear re-Store" in Calgary. The company also has two U.S. locations, specialises in repairing and reviving outdoor gear with the goal of making it last longer, and keeping it out of the landfill. Russell, hello.

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: Good morning.

MG: Tell us what you do at the "Gear Re-Store." What is it that, that you're involved in?

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: The primary line of business is repairing technical outerwear. So, think about Gore-Tex clothing, tents, backpacks, sleeping bags, that kind of thing. Most of the work that we do is under warranty for the brands. So Arc'teryx, Canada Goose, Patagonia.

MG: And how old? I mean, in terms of the stuff that's coming in, how old are the items that you're repairing?

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: It varies. So, every brand has their own warranty policy. Some brands might be 1, 2, 3 years. Other brands such as Patagonia are lifetime. So, we can, we recently did a piece for Canadian Tire that came in and it was about 40 years old.

MG: 40 years old. [RUSSELL MCPHERSON: Yes.] And so, that's really interesting in part because the sense perhaps from some people is that if something breaks, it can't be repaired. But you're sugg--, I mean, if something's that old, clearly you were able to stitch it back together. Tell me a little bit about how you think about what, what the lifecycle and the lifespan of these items is.

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: Well, to me, quality is quality. And make no mistake about it, when you are paying good money for an outdoor garment, part of what you're paying for is the warranty repair. The brand will have calculated that a certain number are going to come back for repair under warranty. If you buy quality, there's an expectation that the brand is probably going to take care of you. But also when you buy quality, you're not just buying an extended warranty, you're buying, you're buying gear that is going to last longer. You know the old saying, "You get what you pay for" is very true.

MG: And part of this, as I said, is keeping this gear out of the landfill. If the people have something that they don't need anymore, but they understand there's still life in it, can you make use of it?

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: We can to a limited extent right now. We have a program that we call EO1L, so most of the industry refers to Gear as "End of Life." We refer to it as, "End of First Life." So, once an original owner no longer wants their gear, there's a variety of options to them. I would recommend that they contact their brand. So, for example, if you have a Patagonia jacket, contact Patagonia. They might actually buy your jacket back with an in-store credit. They'll take it in, they'll refresh it with a wash and a repair and whatever it needs, and then, they'll put it back on the market for re-sale. That's what we call recommerce. There's a first life, a second life, a third life and a fourth life. If we can give it a second life through recommerce, having a second owner for that garment, that's, that's the first choice. Second choice would be to say, make a backpack or a wallet or a fanny pack or something like that out of gear that is no longer functional and can't be made functional. Sometimes, you can take two old jackets and make it into one old jacket. The challenge with that is North American labour rates. You know, if it takes us two hours to put together a backpack at our shop rate and we have to sell that off to somebody who then wants to put it on a retail store shelf, the economics are challenging for sure. That kind of thing is what we would refer to as upcycling. Down cycling is what we're having a more serious look at right now.

MG: And what's that specifically?

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: That would be something along the lines of shredding up the old garment and repurposing it. There's a company out of New Jersey that we've been in conversation with, and they're taking old neoprene wetsuits and things like that and turning them into flip flops and yoga mats, and things like that. And we'd send it off to this company, they'd make it into something else, and then, we would send it all over to the brand, and they could either try and resell it or they can use it for giveaways at management conferences or that kind of thing.

MG: And again, the whole goal is to keep this stuff out of the dump?

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: 100 per cent. And that is not just something that we think is something we should be doing. It's something that government is telling us that we must do. There is legislation in Europe right now that is preventing incineration and landfilling, and that legislation is coming to North America, no question about it.

MG: Just personally for you, I mean, as you said, it's something that you have to do. But why do you want to do this? How did you end up doing this sort of work?

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: It's a, it's a long story. I'll try and keep it short, but I'm more of a business person. And so, I guess you could say I'm an accidental environmentalist. But the more I've been doing in this space, the more I am becoming a purposeful environmentalist. And I guess what it really boils down to is I just don't like waste. I don't like tossing stuff out that's not done its time. My grandfather did have a profound influence upon me. He graduated from university right before the Great Depression. And so, he spent 10 pretty tough years trying to do what he could to keep the family afloat. And so, he became a classic saver. You know, pieces of twine, 40 white light bulbs, all these kinds of things. And, and I observed a lot of that when I was growing up and when we went over to visit with him. So, I think that did have a deep influence on me.

MG: He'd be proud of what you're doing now.

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: I think he would be.

MG: Russell, thank you very much for this.

RUSSELL MCPHERSON: My pleasure. Take care.

MG: Russell McPherson is the founder of the "Gear Re-Store," has locations in Calgary, Denver, and Philadelphia.

MG: Some companies have made inroads on extending the life of what we wear, what to do with the clothing when it reaches the end of its lifespan, though, is still a pretty thorny issue, especially with the proliferation of what's known as fast fashion. The European Union recently introduced regulations designed to make clothing and textile companies responsible for their entire lifecycle of their products. It's called Extended Producer Responsibility or EPR. Jordan Girling is head of EPR with the Waste and Resources Action Program. It's a global non-governmental organisation based in the UK. He is near Bath in the United Kingdom. Jordan, hello to you.

JORDAN GIRLING: Hello, good morning. Thank you for having me.

MG: This is about addressing a problem. How big of a problem is textile waste?

JORDAN GIRLING: Textile waste is a pretty huge problem. Textiles have the biggest impact on the environment and climate in Europe alone. So, it's a pretty huge problem.

MG: And so this is about, as I said, making sure that the people who create those products are responsible for it. What does that mean? That you're responsible for the entire lifecycle of an article of clothing?

JORDAN GIRLING: So, in a traditional sales transaction, i.e., where a business sells a product to a citizen like me or you, usually the legal responsibility of the seller of that product, it immediately stops once the citizen owns the product. With EPR, the seller of the products have the extended responsibility to not only ensure that the product is designed, manufactured, and sold in a safe and sustainable way, but they also have the responsibility to contribute and finance the environmental, sustainable collection and management of that product once it reaches its end of life.

MG: How does that work in practice? I mean, if I go into a store and buy something, what? What happens then?

JORDAN GIRLING: What happens is the company that's selling it to you has, has paid a no--, nominal fee of around $0.10 per garment or something like that. That fee is paid to a central body, usually called a producer responsibility organisation, and then that central organisation amalgamates all the fees, and they disseminate to collection and recycling and treatment networks throughout the country to help fund collection and recycling once your product eventually reaches its end of life.

MG: And so, there would be some sort of depot where when I'm done with the shirt that I bought, I take it to that location and drop it off?

JORDAN GIRLING: Yes. A big part of extended producer responsibility systems is making sure that there's adequate collection networks for consumers. So, you might have collection banks and supermarket. You might have in-store take back obligations. So, you could even take the garment back to the shop where you bought it. Some countries, municipalities even have kerbside collection in the same way that you would deposit your trash and a van would come along and collect it. Some places have that for textiles, and you can deposit textiles outside your door to make it really convenient for you.

MG: What happens once it's picked up, or once it's dropped off?

JORDAN GIRLING: It would go to a sorting facility to assess its quality. In an ideal world, the products would be suitable for re-use so it could be reused and resold. If it transpires that the product is quite a low quality, it's not actually suitable for re-use. Then, it would be channelled through some sort of recycling facility.

MG: This has been in place for a while in France. How has it worked there? Has it been successful?

JORDAN GIRLING: France has had extended producer responsibility for textiles since 2008, has been successful in some regards. The volumes and quantities of used textiles being collected has increased quite dramatically. So, that's great to see. There are some reports that actually a lot of the textiles that are being collected by that system are actually being exported to countries in the global South that don't necessarily have the waste management infrastructure to handle all of those products. So, there's some good bits and some bad bits.

MG: What about the industry itself? I mean, does, you can imagine the industry is not particularly keen on being responsible for the item of clothing after point of sale. How much pushback is there from that clothing industry?

JORDAN GIRLING: I wouldn't say that the clothing industry is against helping to finance the end of life management of the products that they're selling. Certainly, there are some companies in the industry that don't really want to pay an extra fee, but there are a lot of companies out there which are very sustainably minded and really want and advocate for a policy like this.

MG: But there are companies who don't, and those companies are enormously successful, perhaps selling clothing made in China, shipping it all over the world for, for almost next to nothing. And the sense is that, that those companies I mean, that, that's not even fast fashion. It's lightning fast fashion, right? How do you go about incentivising those companies?

JORDAN GIRLING: So, Extender Producer Responsibility policies can be designed in a way which discourages those sorts of business practices. So, these companies pay for, for each product that they sell. They can be heightened or penalty fees added on top of that, if the products are low in durability or quality to discourage that type of product.

MG: You were just in Banff, Alberta at a recycling industry conference. What is your sense as to whether policies like this could come to this country any time soon?

JORDAN GIRLING: I think policies like this could come to Canada very soon. We've seen the policy for EPR already emerge in North America In terms of California, EPR on a provincial level in Canada is for other types of waste streams like packaging, for example. And I see no reason why EPR systems for textiles could be equally as successful in Canada.

MG: Just finally, part of this is I mean, we were saying, it's also about us as the consumer, right? Do we need a mindset change in terms of how we think about the lifespan of the items that we buy?

JORDAN GIRLING: Consumers play a really important role, and part of EPR Systems is to deliver consumer awareness campaigns so that consumers really understand what the negative impacts are of textiles disposed of incorrectly. If consumers don't know about that, then they're less likely to engage in these collection systems. It's a big part of what WRAP is involved in. Yes, we're advocating for this type of policy, but we're also advocating for circular living. Consumers and citizens play a really important role, and it's important that we don't underestimate that.

MG: Jordan, thanks for this.

JORDAN GIRLING: Thank you.

MG: Jordan Girling is the head of the Extended Producer Responsibility Program for Waste and Resources Action Program, which is a global non-governmental organisation that is based in the United Kingdom. Well, coming up after your regional update, 'tis the season [Music: Theme fading in] when all the "Best Of" lists come out. The thing with those lists is that rarely do people actually agree about what the best film or show or song actually is. Hopefully, you will like our list. In 90 seconds, two friends of the program will be here and they will bring their picks for 2024's Best In Music, the music that they loved this year. That's coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

And the best albums of 2024

Guests: Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Talia Schlanger

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Down Bad by Taylor Swift]

[Music: Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter]

[Music: TEXAS HOLD 'EM by Beyonce]

[Music: 360 by Charli XCX]

MG: All the big tunes. Taylor Swift and her Tortured Poets era. Sabrina Carpenter, keeping it short and sweet. Beyonce, too, stepping with Cowboy Carter. Charli XCX defining not just a colour, but an entire season. No surprise that these albums are topping the Best Of lists for this year, but they are just a drop in the bucket of some of the great music that came out in 2024. With me are two people who have listened to every single record released this year. They are friends of The Current. Elamin Abdelmahmoud, of course, is host of CBC's Commotion. And you've heard our pal, Talia Schlanger in the chair for everything from Q to As It Happens, and more. She also released her own tremendous album this year, "Grace For The Going." Good morning to you both.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Good morning.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Matthew Douglas, as I live and breathe. [Inaudible]

[cross-talk]

MG: As I live and breathe. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: What a delight to see it.] What does an album need to have it on your Best Of list? What are the parameters here that we're talking about?

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: I think something that just gets stuck between your ribs, you know, like you hear an album and you say, "Yes, this is beautiful" and "I'm enjoying this music," but something that you take away from the album that you sort of like, I'm walking around and this part is still just kind of like stuck a little bit with me. That's the thing that, you know, then, you can be sort of on my list is like, "I still keep thinking about this album, keep returning to it,".

MG: Talia?

TALIA SCHLANGER: For me, what makes an album of the year is something that either really drops me into the centre of the moment, like really, really feels like now or really, truly takes me out of it. I was really reflecting on that one, putting together some [MG: Oh, that's interesting] of my favourite lists. Yeah, like mu--, music that reflects the urgency of our times, and music that allows me to forget everything completely. And an album that does that really well will always be on my list. And I also really appreciate hearing old sounds in new ways, and that makes the Best Of for me.

MG: So, we have a lot of music to get to.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: We sure do.

MG: Our producer, Austin, is at the turntables. He's going to try and dice it all up here for us. This is your first pick.

[Music: RED FUTURE by Snotty Nose Rez Kids]

MG: Elamin, what's that? And why does it stick to your ribs, as we say?

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: That is the Snotty Nose Rez Kids out of Kitamaat Village, British Columbia. I love this record. The song is called RED FUTURE. It is a title, title song of this album. Look, the Rez Kids are on their sixth record. They are trying to have a wider conversation than the conversation they've been having before. And this is an album that touches on this larger theme of Indigenous futurisms, the idea of Indigenous artists, creating music or novels or movies. They're about imagining a thriving future for Indigenous people. And you hear that on this record and you hear that in this song. And the fact that they worked with Electric Fields, which is an indigenous duo from, from Australia, is like, they're also trying to expand the meaning of what Indigenous music can even be. Like, this album actually kind of acts as like a Best Of. Like, Aysanabee's on this record, [inaudible]'s on this record, there's just something expansive about what the Rez Kids are doing this record.

MG: What a great way to start.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Yeah, man.

MG: Talia, you're up.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Okay, pressure's on. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Let's go.] We're going on a psychedelic adventure. Here we go.

[Music: Red Flags by Brittany Howard]

TALIA SCHLANGER: Okay, that's not Prince, but it was recorded on one of the consoles that he used for his debut album. .

MG: A little bit of a Prince feel there.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Totally. Along with everything else is Brittany Howard. The song is Red Flags, and it's from her second solo album called, "What Now?" Which is, just, as I said, like a psychedelic adventure in experimentation. You have freaky funk on there. You've got R&B, you can hear jazz, you can hear gospel. And most of all, you can hear a flow state. Like, when I talked about an album that takes you out of the moment and lets you escape somewhere else. She has captured pure flow and she's also been so inventive in the instrumentation. The record has PVC pipes played and trash bags, and there's also this motif of crystal healing bowls that come up now and again. So there is inherently, you know, vibration and healing sort of baked into the way that they've recorded this.

MG: This is like a record of heartbreak, too, right?

TALIA SCHLANGER: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

MG: Which, if you're thinking about it, you're looking for something to take you out of the moment. I mean, that's probably what she was looking for.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Absolutely. It's also very self-reflective heartbreak. You know, it's not putting the blame on you kind of heartbreak. It's the more real thing than that, where you're reflecting on your, yourself and the whole situation at large.

MG: I want to play something that, I love this record, but I love the story that this guy kind of captures. Have a listen to this.

[Music: Name of God by Mustafa the Poet]

MG: You both know this record really well.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: I love this record, man. [cross-talk]

MG: This is Mustafa. Yeah. His song, Name of God from the album, Dunya. I mean, I like this in part for a bunch of reasons. It's a beautiful record. It is unclassifiable in many ways. I met him when he was, I think, 13 or 14 or 15 years old. He was a p--...

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: [Inaudible] as a poet.

MG: Yeah, he was a poet in Regent Park. And we had him on a program that I used to host at Metro Morning in Toronto. And from there, he has gone on to all of these different things, and his career keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's a record about heartbreak, and his love/hate, hate/love relationship with this city, and the world and the place of him in this world. But as I say, it's kind of unclassifiable and undefinable in some ways.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: And he gets like smaller and smaller. I feel like that the more microscopic focus he has on this album, the more universal it feels like, the more specific the heartbreak is, the heartbreak of like not being able to return to your city in the same way as I used to be able to, or the loss of people that you used to know that used to just walk down the street, be able to see and having them not be around anymore. The more this record connects, and also as a Sudanese Canadian dude, Mustafa is, like he's borrowing a lot of Sudanese instrumentation. And then, you talk about old songs returning in new ways, like it bats all over that Mustafa record.

MG: It is, it's a gem. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Yeah.] And his career is just going to explode. [ABDEL ABDELMAHOUD: Yeah.] Imagine. All right, you're next.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: I'm next. Okay, I'm picking, I would like you guys to hear a little bit of Donovan Woods. Let's play the song.

[Music: Back For The Funeral by Donovan Woods]

MG: Not by design, but I weirdly listen to a lot of Donovan Woods. Yes. I don't know, I don't know [cross-talk]. Yeah, I don't know how that ended up happening, but I just found that that was a record that was on a lot.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: I mean, I think okay, so the record is it's called Things Were Never Good If They're Not Good Now. That song is called Back for the Funeral. And like, the way that Donovan's writing has evolved, Donovan has been around for a while, right? [MG: Yeah.] But the way that his writing has evolved, it feels like he's gotten to the point in his craft where every line is a scene and every scene makes you weep and you're like, "I can't actually get to the next scene because we're, I'm still stuck on that phrase or that specific truth of the last one." And that is like, the ideally, you could put together one song like that. Like, not a lot of artists get one song like that, let alone 12, let alone 14. And so, like he's I think at a point in his craft where he's kind of like, step back and go like, "Donovan Woods is at the height of his sort of songwriting abilities," and it's all over this record in literally every one of those songs. I had a hard time picking one, but like Back for the Funeral. Extraordinary.

TALIA SCHLANGER: That one, and there's also a song when our friends come over. At that small moment where you just, you get a little extra ready and your partner sees you in a new way. Even if you've been together for a long time, when, when your friends come over, like he just finds those small universal moments of life and turns them into such beauty.

MG: You sound like you're talking like a fan, but also as a songwriter.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Oh, thanks.

MG: I'm serious, because that's what you do.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: That's exactly right.

MG: You grab little things and you turn it into something.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Exactly. You say, How can I find meaning in this? And also, I think when you give a moment in life that is mundane a little bit of extra care and you treat it with beauty and with art, you're shining a light on it and saying like even, even the, even the hard things deserve our care. And I think about that a lot, writing songs.

MG: Talia Schlanger is here. Elamin Abdelmahmoud, we are talking about the best music of 2024. And you are next.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Okay. If you're driving, don't do this. But if you can afford to close your eyes, close your eyes.

[Music: Raat Ki Rani by Arooj Aftab]

TALIA SCHLANGER: Okay.

MG: What is that?

TALIA SCHLANGER: I know, right?

MG: What is that?

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Where did you take us, [inaudible]?

TALIA SCHLANGER: That's Arooj Aftab from her record, Night Reign. Like, I can't even speak over it. It's so beautiful. But she's Pakistani-American and she's singing in Urdu. And it did not occur to me until bringing that song here to play it that I should try to find out what it actually means. Like, I've spent so much time with it this year and not to like, you know, fetishise a language that you don't speak, but the thing that I find happens when you, when you listen to music in a different language than, than you're able to understand, you could hear the voice just as an instrument rather than [MG: Of course you can], right? It's emotion, not communication. So anyway, I wrote to a friend of mine who speaks Urdu. I was like, "Can you just tell me what this is?" It's "Queen of the Night" is, what the song title means. Anyway, you can just, you can, you can just hear the perfect sort of aural lens with which she perceives the world. Like, you can hear jazz, you can hear folk, you can hear South Asian classical music. This record helped me sort of understand why I love some of the music of people who borrow from South Asian classical music, like Jeff Buckley. [MG: Yeah.] I was like, why? I hear Jeff Buckley, but I don't hear Jeff Buckley. I hear Jeff Buckley's inspiration. Like, I hear the source. Anyway, just an absolutely stunning listen. And she just put out a bunch of tour dates so folks can catch her live. It's really special.

MG: We'll put out a list of all of the things that we're talking about because you will be frantically trying to write them down, and you're going to be cursing us if we don't have that list out. So, we will put the list out at the end of this program. You're up next, sir.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: I'm up next. Okay. I want to introduce you to Joy Oladokun. I love Joy's work. She has an incredible voice, but she also has a really fascinating vantage point. I'll talk about the vantage point, but maybe let's play the song first.

[Music: I'D MISS THE BIRDS by Joy Oladokun]

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Okay, Let me talk about Joy. [MG: Yes, please?] Joy, born in Arizona to Nigerian-American parents. And she creates this beautiful sort of collage of folk and country music and, but also, she's been very open about her place as a black woman trying to create country music or trying to create Americana music. And feeling unsettled in that place, and feeling unsettled in sort of the weight of the racism that she encountered in the industry. And also trying to say, like, "Do I have to be the one to witness, you know, all of the changes we keep talking about, they're coming? Do I have to bear that in my body or can I actually take a break? And I, like step away from this world, even though it's a world that enriches me so much." And so, she makes this record observations from a crowded room, which is just like very much reflects her general vantage point of just like being the quiet person in the room. And then she writes, You know, towards the end of this record, she writes a song, "I'd Miss The Birds," which is just about the idea of leaving Nashville and what, everything that Nashville represents, the idea of like, you got to be in this environment in order to make it, but also at what point is pursuing the thing that you love, taking away more from you than it is giving you? You know, is it nourishing still, or is it actually like kind of subtracting from who you are? And she's wrestling a lot with all of those concepts in this record. And it is, like, the most sort of quiet kind of inward record of saying, "I have everything I've been pursuing. I'm not sure it's worth it." And that's a big thing for someone to say, you know? And so actually, she, she, she really hit it.

MG: Has that change, you've written about this, you've talked about this a lot. Has that changed at all the rejection or at the very least, suspicion that the industry has for black folk, for example, who might be making this kind of music, who love this? I mean, you listen to that and Dusty Silverado, I mean, those are the, she's right there. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Yeah.] And yet the industry perhaps doesn't wrap its arms around her. Has that changed, do you think?

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: And she's as right there as you could possibly be. And she's trying to say, like, even what being right there means might actually be taking too much energy away from you [MG: Yeah] as an artist. And I think, like, there's a meaningful question of like, But do the numbers tell us things have changed? Yes, they do. Do they tell us that the cost of being there has changed? They don't reflect that. Right? Like, the idea that you have Shaboozey being one of the biggest artists of the year, 2024. A black man who gets, like, has a country song that goes so big, [MG: Everywhere], everywhere, truly everywhere for months and months and months. And then, there is like this cost of saying, "Nobody's talked to Shaboozey about what it means to have to continually answer for his presence in the genre." And I think, like, Joy's trying to ask the next question. It's not: Did you make it? Yes, you did. What did it cost?

MG: Yeah. What did It cost?

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: And that's a different question. And I think it's a really brave question to ask exactly at the moment when you've made it. Actually, that's like that's the most difficult moment to pose that question to yourself and go like, "Oh, I think it might've cost too much." I think, I think I'm a little bit away from, from the thing that makes me who I am.

MG: It's also just a really beautiful piece of music. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Yeah]. It's lovely. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Yeah.] Talia Schlanger.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Yes?

MG: What do you have?

TALIA SCHLANGER: We're going to go deeper into the woods of country. Here we go.

[Music: Fox Hunt by Sierra Ferrell]

TALIA SCHLANGER: Okay. I saw Sierra Ferrell. This is Sierra Ferrell with a song from her record, "Trail of Flowers." I saw her at Massey Hall. I think it's the last time you can see her in a venue that small. I think she's going to just continue to blow right up. She, as you can hear, she's got that vintage kind of country twang in her voice and such an old school sensibility. But she makes it so new. The presentation is so fresh and so weird. And what I love about her, that that that line, "I'm just a hunter just trying to survive." To me, that's the essence of what country music can do. It can take a concept that is so simple, so, so relatable, so human, so drawn from life, and turn it into this universal metaphor. And, you know, I'm just trying to survive when we think about this last year, I think a lot of people are just trying to survive. [MG: Yeah.]

TALIA SCHLANGER: Yeah.

MG: Match that.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: I mean, first of all, I just got to say, the idea of, this was the year that everybody went country. [TALIA SCHLANGER: Yeah.] I think it's because there's something about country music and its ability to have hard conversations in ways that, like pop music kind of can't. You know, like when you come, when you want to turn inwards, you know, like you go to country music. And also, you mentioned the idea of that's the last time you'll see her a venue that size, like the next time Sierra Ferrell's coming to this town, she's opening for Post Malone [TAHLIA SCHLANGER: Right] in a gigantic stadium, which I'm trying to imagine, "Oh, that sound." But in a gigantic stadium, there's something really special about that. And also, just in terms of country music being the genre of saying hard things. Let's play the next song.

[Music: I Hate Love Songs by Miranda Lambert]

MG: I Hate Love Songs.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Miranda Lambert. The, the album, perfect album called, "Postcards from Texas." [MG: A Perfect album] [TAHLIA SCHLANGER: Oh, wow.] I'll say it, I'll say it again. Postcards from Texas. The song is called, "I Hate Love Songs." Miranda Lambert is someone who's had her life fall apart and put back together in public so many different times. And she went back to some of those moments. And I don't think she had to. I don't think she owed people, sort of publicly commenting on some of those moments. And, and she dug deep and she was like, these are all the scars that I'm carrying. And I like, I'm someone who's followed Miranda Lambert's career for a long time because she is the kind of artist who combines this like, very strange voice. You don't have a lot of voices like Miranda Lambert with, like, very hyper-specific songwriting. And then, that shows up all over "Postcards from Texas" all over a moment like, "I Hate Love Songs," where she's like, you know, "I, I've made mistakes. It ruined my life. And now, I have to sort of just kind of live with, live with myself." And there is a cost to that. And also, you continue to endure. Like, that is what life is kind of about, and making a record about some of the hardest moments of your life is not, not an easy thing to do, especially when you don't have to. And so, turning into it makes me love her more.

MG: You want to talk about somebody whose life fell apart, and then, he made art out of it. Have a listen to this.

[Music: Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds]

MG: Is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds title song from his album Wild God, which I love. This is the record I listen to the most this year, I think. And part of it is, I mean, he had this incredibly difficult, his son died. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Devastating]. He fell into this pit of grief, became kind of this public vessel for grief, where people could talk to him about grief, and he would talk about what it means to mourn and love and kind of work through this really publicly. But he also, and this is about that, you said that people are just trying to survive in this year, has decided intentionally to find joy. There's a song on the album called "Joy," and it's about kind of the ghost of his son coming back to visit him. And the ghost says, "We have all had too much sorrow. Now is the time for joy." And this choir comes in, and it's like somebody described it as The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy walks through the door and it's black-and-white, and suddenly the world goes into colour, like the hair on your arm stands up. And that's, I love it because it's about joy, and you have to find joy.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: You said that line and Tahlia, like, clutched her heart entirely. I mean, look, there is, there is something about someone like Nick Cave was able to just go [MG: Yeah] directly, like as close to the bone as possible when it comes to saying this. You've got to live with these emotions. You got to confront them and look at them in the eye, you know?

TALIA SCHLANGER: I was just sitting, picturing him sitting in his Nick Cave cave and going there, like going there enough to, to make music out of it. Like, it's one thing to go there, but then, to go there and turn it into something, I don't know.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Like, the record that you made is a record that like to me, like, you continually go there [TAHLIA SCHLANGER: That's fair] and you're doing sort of, like, [MG: That is true] push to those places. I'm like, "That's not an easy muscle that most people work on a good day, let alone having to continuously revisit it so much that you get as close to the emotion." I cry every time I hear your song, "So Small," every single time. That's a true story, Talia Schlanger.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Thank you. That's very kind of you. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Anytime]. Thank you. [ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: Yeah.]

MG: You get the last word. And we're going to play this song because you're esteemed guest here. You are too, my friend.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Oh, yes.

MG: We're going to play this.

[Music: Broken Man by St. Vincent]

TALIA SCHLANGER: St. Vincent. Anytime she puts out a record, it's going to be on my Best Of The Year. Without a doubt, that's "Broken Man." It's from, "All Born Screaming." You can hear her love of horror, jump scares in this music, but it's also so unfair to just play one song from this record because the range of humanity that she shows, like she's able to give hard edge treatments to really delicate, sensitive topics. There is a lot of beauty and comfort on the record, even though you don't necessarily hear it in that song. And she's just a monster of using the studio as an instrument itself.

MG: This was fun. Thank you both for coming in with a stack of great music.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Thank you so much.

ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD: A delight. Any time, Matt.

MG: Elamin Abdelmahmoud is the host of, "Commotion." Talia Schlanger, you hear her regularly on CBC Radio. Of course, she has that album that makes Elamin cry, "Grace for the Good." What are, what's the best music that you heard this year? If there's something that has really moved you, something that perhaps got you through something or took you somewhere, let us know. You can e-mail us: thecurrent@cbc.ca. That's it for The Current for this Friday, the 20th of December. Q's up next. I'm off for the next little bit. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah, Happy holidays. Hopefully, you will get some time to be with people who make you feel good over the next couple of weeks. Elamin mentioned this song, you talk about music that makes you feel good. This is a song that has been everywhere. We were driving on P.E.I. this summer. We were next to a car full of women who were singing this at the top of their lungs. It's Shaboozey , and "Tipsy." I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you soon.

[Music: A Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey]

Friday, December 20, 2024 Full Transcript

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