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The Current Transcript for September 25, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

DANIEL LEVITIN: Why does music have the ability to somehow remind you that you have a soul? How is it that just a collection of frequencies can make you feel so many things and remember so many things?

MATT GALLOWAY: These are questions Daniel Levitin has been exploring for years. In his latest book, The Canadian neuroscientist looks at the healing power of our favourite songs and the scientific evidence behind why music has the ability to address everything from Parkinson's disease to brain injuries. In 30 minutes, why doctors may soon be prescribing music as medicine and how music helped Levinson's friend Joni Mitchell. Also this morning, polyhero dice, gelatinous cubes, moral panic. Dungeons and Dragons turns 50 this year. We will take the legendary game for a spin, with me as a half elf. In an hour, as well:

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YVES-FRANÇOIS BLANCHETTE: My job is not to take sides between Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Polievre. Because in Quebec, there's a third way. It's the Bloc Quebecois. And actually, people seem to like it quite much.

MG: The future of the Liberal government rests in the hands of Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchette. Coming up, what does he want and why is the message of Pierre Polierve seemingly not resonating in Quebec? But we begin with the self-described human guinea pigs testing the drugs of the future for rent money. Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

The human ‘guinea pigs’ testing drugs for a living

Guests: Habiba Nosheen, Trudo Lemmens

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FRANCO: I'm a guinea pig. I let companies test the medications on me in exchange for money.

MG: That's Franco. It's not his real name, but CBC has agreed to keep his identity confidential because he could lose his livelihood. And as you heard, he makes his living mostly by getting paid to be in clinical drug trials. Franco lives in Canada and is one of thousands of people here and in the United States who make money this way.

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FRANCO: The very first time I remember being very afraid, I thought it was some kind of illegal activity. I thought that my life may be at risk. I thought it was going to be some kind of a clinic in the back of an alley, and they may take my liver away. And I was very afraid. If I had any doubts, I was thinking, I need to pay my rent.

MG: The journalist, Habiba Nosheen, has made a new documentary called Bodies for Rent, and it raises some big ethical questions about drug trials and the work that people like Franco do. Habiba joins me now. Habiba, good morning.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Hi, Matt.

MG: He refers to himself as a guinea pig.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah.

MG: What does he do for money?

HABIBA NOSHEEN: So basically, before a drug can go on the market, before even it's tested on people who actually have a disease to see if the medication works or not? We actually test it on people who are healthy to see if it's safe. And Franco is one of the thousands of people who take part in those drug trials to see if a drug that's going to be introduced to the market or potentially introduced is safe or not. And he basically, you know, lets pharmaceutical companies put experimental medication in his body in exchange for money.

MG: And he says he can make more money doing this than working in a factory.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah.

MG: How much money can somebody make doing this?

HABIBA NOSHEEN: A lot, actually.

MG: A lot?

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah. So, we spent two years talking to people and following them with our colleagues at the Investigative Journalism Bureau. And our goal was to try to understand this hidden world, because not much is known about how they do this, why these people sign up for this. And what we learned was really astonishing, which was the pharmaceutical company would like you to believe that people are doing this because they care about science. They're donating their time or volunteering is how they like to put it.

MG: You can help somebody else by helping yourself.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Exactly. But when you talk to these people, what becomes really obvious is nobody that we spoke to told us that they're doing this because they want to advance science. They're doing this because they're often people who are living on the margins of society, and this is a way that they can make money. Even getting a minimum wage job for someone like Franco that he can sustain full time, he's having a hard time with that. He said he can't. He can't get enough hours. It's not enough to pay rent. And what people have learned along the way is their body is something that they can leverage to make money and make ends meet.

MG: And again, studies like this, you might see the advertisements if you're in Toronto. Sometimes they're advertised on the subway, for example. 'You can make upwards of $20,000.'

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah. The highest we found with Franco was, it was more than $20,000 that he could make. In the U.S., we found one of the subjects we were following, he did one that was for $30,000 over a course of two months. Most of the ones that Franco was doing was you know, he did one for 2700 for something like seven days.

MG: So, what are the lengths that he goes to to be accepted into these sorts of trials? Because it's competitive in some ways to get into a trial like this.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah. So, before you can get into a trial, you do something called a screening. And these participants want to make sure that their body is seen as as healthiest as it can be. And one of the ways that that's judged is by your weight. And Franco, for example, tells us that he really struggles with his weight, as many people do. And some of the things he says he does is, there's a Chinese tea that he takes and you can drink that tea for a couple of days, get extreme diarrhoea. That's how he brings his weight down to qualify. And some of the extreme things he does, he says he's taken meth. You do two, three days of meth, and he says that's the drug of choice for a lot of people trying to drop weight for drug trials because it only stays in your system for less than four days.

MG: Once he meets that threshold, what happens when you're in the trial is something else entirely. Here's Franco describing what a typical kind of trial would feel like.

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FRANCO: There's cameras inside everywhere except inside of the bathrooms. And some of the sleeping area. You're always under surveillance. You have to finish all the food that they're serving to you. Then you take the pill. Then they ask you for a mouth search. So, you open your mouth. They say, lift your tongue. And somebody can put a flashlight and they check to make sure that you're not hiding the pill. Then people start taking blood from me. I have studies that they take blood from me like 15 times throughout the day.

MG: How long do these drug trials take?

HABIBA NOSHEEN: The duration can range. You can be in one, for example, one of the ones we were following Franco doing, it was over the course of six months. And so, you're not in house the entire duration. You would go in maybe for two weeks at a time. You'd be in house at this facility. You go back, live your normal life, come back a month later, you're checked in again for ten days. So, it could be spread out. Other ones we've seen are, you know, one of the subjects we were following, he was in one for 60 days straight. That means you walk in on day one and you can't leave the facility until the end of 60 days.

MG: And there are real restrictions on this. [HABIBA: Absolutely.]. He talks about how you have to ask for permission to go to the bathroom. And you can't leave if something on the outside world happens that would compel you to want to walk out of that building.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: If you leave, you forfeit the money. That's what they all understand. And there are, depending on the type of study you're doing, there are definitely food restrictions. What you can bring inside, when you can use the bathroom, if you can drink water. So, they're pretty extreme. And, you know, one of the subjects in the film called it drug jail. That's what he says it feels like.

MG: Which is interesting because they used to test drugs on prisoners.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah.

MG: Behind bars.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Until the 1970s, both in Canada and the United States, we tested phase one drug trials on inmates. So, we have a history of doing this on really vulnerable people. But when it moved out of prisons after the 1970s, we just basically moved to doing this on poor people and other people who are living on the margins of society and really need this money.

MG: One of the things that happens in the outside world, he tells the story, his girlfriend dies. [HABIBA: Yeah.] And he can't leave.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: I mean.

MG: He could.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah.

MG: But then he would forfeit, like, he would have abandoned the money that he was trying to make.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah. The desperation of how much they need the money really comes through for me. And the humanity of these people just-- they're not doing this because they have all sorts of other options in life and they've just signed up for this because they think it'd be fun. This is a real way for a lot of people who are struggling in society to make ends meet and to have to make the call If you want to leave a facility, if someone you love died. I mean, that's heartbreaking.

MG: People here in Canada, but also people in the United States. One of the other subjects in this film is an American, Raighne, who talks about specifically choosing trials that pay the most.

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RAIGHNE: When I first started doing clinical trials and I remember like thinking this seems kind of crazy, like the waiver that you signed, like it said something like, you could die and like, you know, the company wouldn't be liable. And I was like, that seems nuts. But it seems like easy money and it should be fine. Like, you're being observed the whole time.

MG: How risky can these trials be?

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah, you know, it does range, obviously from medication to medication, and what drugs you're testing for. And obviously people react differently to different drugs. But in Raighne's worst scenario that he describes, the medication made him so sick that he couldn't stand and he needed help even go to the bathroom and peeing. So, it really can be a scary moment. And the way that the consent forms that these subjects sign put it, like, it really limits their options for suing people if something does go wrong. If somebody is injured in a drug trial in Canada, the pharmaceutical companies just send them off to the hospital, to the E.R. to get taken care. We basically have these for-profit companies testing on people, and when something goes wrong, it's really the public system that picks up the funding and provides health care for them. So, that's a bit strange.

MG: I want to hear more about what it's like to be in that system. Here's Raighne again.

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RAIGHNE: I do get scared doing some of these drug trials and sometimes I say a little prayers to myself, like where I'm just like, Please, God, let me be okay. Let me not die.

MG: I mean, he's laughing, but it's a very awkward laugh. It doesn't seem particularly funny.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah, with Raighne, we followed him for a year and it was, you know, what we wanted to capture was all sides of what it's like for these people. And I think their honesty really comes through. And one thing that we notice in talking to these people is the shame that comes with it. I think the reason many people don't know about this hidden world and how people make this money is because most of them don't really want to talk about it. They're actually kind of ashamed of it. And, you know, in one moment that we're filming with him, he was down to like the last $80 in his bank account, and he doesn't have enough money to pay rent. And that's a lot of pressure. But that also speaks to the desperation of why these people are doing this.

MG: What happens when the participants in these trials have serious side effects from the medications that they're being paid to take?

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Basically, what these people tell us is if you reveal that you have side effects, most of the time you're going to get kicked out. And from the companies were doing the testing, from their perspective, they would say, well, yeah, of course we're not going to continue doing testing on people who are showing that they're getting sick from it. But from the perspective of these guys that we followed, if you get kicked out of the study, the problem is for them that you don't get the money. And to avoid that situation, they hardly ever disclose any side effects that they're having or severely downplay that they're having side effects.

MG: Franco, who we heard from earlier, speaks directly to that in the film. Have a listen.

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FRANCO: About ten years ago, I was doing a study and one of the side effects was a migraine. Now, I never experienced migrants in my life. By the second day, I woke up with a pounding headache. So I complained. I said, Listen, I have a really bad headache. I have a really bad migraine. And they asked me, Can you stay? Can you continue? And I think they were paying like $2,700. So, back then it seemed like a lot of money. And I said, Yes, I would like to continue the study. So by the fourth day, I said, You know what, This is unbearable. I almost feel like crying. So, I went home and instead of making 2,700, I think they gave me like a $500 cheque. A month or month and a half later, they have another study. So, I called the clinic back and they said, No. You said that you suffered from a migraine for more than three days, so therefore you're not allowed to do studies anymore. And I was in shock. I was offended. I was, I mean, I felt used like, wait a second, you guys give me the pill and you're being penalized for being honest. So after that, I kind of learned my lesson and I decided to tone down my, the side effects.

MG: So, when he says he's learned his lesson, he tones down the side effects.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Yeah.

MG: He's not telling the truth about the side effects that he experiences in the drug trials so that he can make the money.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Exactly. And he's not alone. Most people we spoke to said that that's how you stay in. It's kind of like this survival game. You know, the goal is to make it to the end of the trial for them. And if they begin to have any side effects, they will do anything to make sure that it's not noticed.

MG: Because if they pull out, they only get a fraction of the money.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Exactly. And that money means a lot to them. So, we've created a system where we're incentivising people essentially to lie.

MG: When these people have to leave a trial early, given everything that's at stake, what they are willing to put themselves through, but also the money that they're trying to get at the end of this, how difficult is it for them?

HABIBA NOSHEEN: My God. Over the course of making this film, I got the most heartbreaking messages when a subject would get kicked out of a trial for, most often or not, it was because they got sick somehow. And they really see that as a personal failure. Like you saw them get mad at themselves at first say like, Oh my God, I can't believe it. My stupid body. I got sick. They were relying on this money. They needed this money. And they feel like they failed somehow.

SOUNDCLIP

FRANCO: I feel like a failure. I was supposed to use that money to live happily ever after, but I got sick. When something happens to the guinea pig, you get rid of it.

MG: This is really revealing into a part of the system, and behind those ads that people might have seen that people may not know the details of. Habiba, thank you very much.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Thank you.

MG: Habiba Nosheen is the director of the documentary Bodies for Rent. This documentary airs tomorrow night on the Passionate Eye on CBC. Nine p.m. in most of Canada, 9:30 p.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador, and for free on CBC Gem. Trudo Lemmens is a professor of health law and policy at the University of Toronto. He's been listening in to our conversation and is also in studio with me. Trudo, good morning to you.

TRUDO LEMMENS: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What stands out to you about the people who are taking part in these trials and how they're treated? They refer to themselves as professional guinea pigs.

TRUDO LEMMENS: One thing that I found striking with this powerful documentary is the fact that not much has changed. People have been talking about this ten years ago or 15 years ago, and we're no longer talking about prisoners, but we're talking about people who are marginalized, who are subject to structural, economic, social pressures. And we have an organization of a practice around clinical trials data that incentivises people to participate even when they're harmed. So, I found that completely devastating.

MG: I mean, you can imagine there are people who are saying that these individuals willingly signed up for this. It's not as though, you know, we're in the 1970s where people are inmates in prison and they're forced to do this. They willingly sign up. They are paid to do this. And this is a process by which we in the broader society benefit, because these drugs that we will use are ultimately tested. And that's part of the testing.

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes.

MG: Process. What would you say to them?

TRUDO LEMMENS: Well, I would say the situation is not entirely different in the sense that the research involving prisoners generally involved actually prisoners volunteering to participate in research. When Justice [unclear] did an investigation for this for the Ontario government or medical associations, he actually received a letter of American prisoners who basically made the argument, We would like to give back to society as a form of redemption. We like to participate in clinical trials. They would get benefits within the prison context, and it was deemed to be exploitative to basically put people who are imprisoned, who may get some benefits from participating in medical research, to use that as a tool to get them to participate in clinical trials. So, now we don't use better circumstances in a prison context, but we do have people who are marginaliazed, if you look at the research ethics guidelines that have have been established around the world and that we also have in Canada, we basically do insist on the need to avoid exploitation of human subjects in biomedical research.

MG: What does it tell you that a couple of people in this documentary admit that they're motivated in some ways to lie about the side effects because there's a financial imperative that if they step out of the trial too early because they fall ill, they're not going to get the money that they need to pay rent and what have you.

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yeah. So, that's a particularly worrisome component of the documentary because it means that we have created a system where we have incentives that result in people potentially harming themselves by hiding side effects of medication. We have a risk to the public because this is public safety data that will be used to establish whether a drug has an overall beneficial risk benefit profile.

MG: And that data would be collected in part by understanding the side effects of a drug.

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes.

MG: And if somebody is minimising the side effects, you don't know what you don't know.

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes. And so, if this is data that the public health agencies need to establish the safety of a drug, there should be publicly accountable control on how these data are being gathered and on the reliability of these data sets.

MG: Do you worry about the impact of the safety of new medications as they get to market based on the fact that, as I said, some of the participants in those trials are willing to lie?

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes, I must put it in context. Phase one trials on healthy volunteers are just the first phase. But still, if we do them, it means that we do them for a reason, namely to establish at least some baseline safety and efficacy. So, it at least suggests that some of the data that we gather in phase one trials is not necessarily reliable. And that I would say, requires urgent attention of health authorities. We've known that for ten years, 20 years, actually, that there are concerns about how these trials are being conducted. And so, I would argue that as other countries have actually done more regulation and more governance of how these data are being collected as needed.

MG: What could we learn from other countries? I mean, Health Canada says it is looking to publish new regulations in the spring of 2025 that, in its words, 'Will align with international best practices regarding trial oversight.' What do we need to strengthen this country when it comes to how these trials are regulated?

TRUDO LEMMENS: Well, I would say we have to realize that special safeguards and controls are needed. That we need, for example, registries for clinical trials to avoid, for example, that people participate in several clinical trials at the same time, maybe in different provinces in the country, and that may be harmful to them. We need, I would say, more governmental control on financial compensation because we need to treat that for the important labour that it is. So...

MG: People would-- is your suggestion that people would be paid the full amount, even if they have to withdraw from the trial because of side effects?

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes. And I understand obviously, that companies are probably concerned that people will say, Oh I have side effects simply to not continue to participate in clinical trials. There has to be some level of control over it.

MG: Are you confident that those changes will fall in line with what other countries have done?

TRUDO LEMMENS: I mean, even internationally, there are some challenges around that. And so, this is big business. There are lots of pressures to keep the system as a kind of a soft governance system where it's an industry that basically sets the standards and controls the standard. Industry has done some things. It has introduced accreditation programs. But Health Canada has known about these challenges for quite some years. So, Health Canada could have introduced a regulatory system around research ethics committees. It could have introduced regulations around payment of subjects. It hasn't done so because I think we've worked largely with the presumption that this is best left up to industry to govern the practices.

MG: Trudeau Lemmens, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

TRUDO LEMMENS: My pleasure.

MG: Trudeau Lemmens is a professor of health law and policy at the University of Toronto. The CBC News is coming up next. And then: music as medicine.

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DANIEL LEVITIN: It was extraordinary because she had been not very communicative when she got back. She'd been in a coma and the music reached deep down inside of her and reminded her of who she was and what she liked.

[Music: Theme]

MG: The neuroscientist Daniel Levitin says music was instrumental in helping his friend Joni Mitchell recover from a brain aneurysm. Coming up, the science behind how music can help us heal and why we get that tingly feeling when listening to a song we really love. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current, and we're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

[Music: Fades up]

Could doctors soon prescribe music as medicine?

Guests: Daniel Levitin

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

[Music: 'Hallelujah' by k.d. lang]

MG: Kind of makes the hair on the back of your next end up, doesn't it? That's the great k.d. lang, of course, and her version of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. Those opening lyrics inspired the title of a new book: I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine. We know that music has the power to soothe the soul, but we are also learning that music can help heal the body and the brain. The author of that book is Daniel Levitin, neuroscientist and musician himself, and he is with me in studio. Daniel, good morning.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Lovely to see you, Matt.

MG: Lovely to see you and lovely to start a conversation with a little bit of k.d. lang. What is going on in the brain when k.d. lang sings Hallelujah and you kind of get that tingly feeling?

DANIEL LEVITIN: I got the chills too, just... I mean, yeah. The music hits every part of the brain that we've so far mapped. And it activates different areas of the brain in different ways. One of the discoveries we've made having to do with the chills, the auditory system, the eardrum basically has direct connections to the parts of your brain that would get you to move out of the way if you heard a sudden loud noise, the so-called startle response. And that hair on the back of the neck, the shivers down the spine are connected to all of that.

MG: How much do we know scientifically about how music affects us? Because this has been studied and people have been talking about this for a long time.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Well, it goes back to Aristotelis, the ancient Greeks and Pythagoras. I mean, Aristotle. I mean, why does music have the ability to somehow remind you that you have a soul or make you think that even if you're a skeptic, that there might be something more to this world than just us toiling away at our jobs? That there might be something that connects us all as human beings and common inhabitants of the planet. It's something that's been studied for a long time, but when we got brain imaging, it made it tangible. You could see biologically what was going on and I would say experimental science, in the last 20 years has become more focused on having suitable controls.

MG: This is work that you do at your lab at McGill University, and you've been studying how music can-- I mean, one of the things you look at is how it can help us tolerate pain. Tell me a little bit about this. How did you test that?

DANIEL LEVITIN: Well, so the first study we did was actually showing that we can't tolerate pain using music. It was an interesting upside-down experiment. My colleague, Jeff Mogil, who's from Toronto and played in a boy band and it was signed to A&M Records when he was a kid, he runs a pain lab at McGill. And what we found together was that if you play music with somebody that you haven't met, even for 20 minutes, it causes you to feel such empathy for them that if they're in pain, you feel pain. And we demonstrated this in an experiment, that music making creates a bond between people that launched a separate thought, which is that, well, maybe listening to music can relieve pain. And my lab at McGill was the first to show that when you listen to music you like, your brain releases opioids, natural pain relievers. Not at the pharmaceutical levels that you might get from a Vicodin, but enough that it reduces your experience of pain.

MG: What do we know about that? Part of this is about why we like the music we do. I mean, what kinds of music work best? Or how do you figure out what kinds of music work best that would reduce pain?

DANIEL LEVITIN: Yeah. So, I mean, I guess you're going to say if we're talking about music as medicine, what's the prescription? What song, what genre do you prescribe and what's the dose? And the funny thing is that music is so subjective and so personal. It's not like there is a single healing song or a list of healing songs. We now know that music can boost your immune system through modulating levels of serotonin, which in turn increase the production of T cells and natural killer cells that travel to the site of an infection. So, from a wellness standpoint, music that you like, it's not about genre. It's not like heavy metal is bad or classical is good. What we find in brain scans, Matt, is that the differences between genre pale in comparison when you look at brain activity to the similarity of the way it makes you feel. So, very divergent songs can produce almost identical brain activity in the amygdala, the limbic system, the parts of the brain that make you feel pleasure.

MG: What's happening in the brains of people who have Parkinson's or Multiple Sclerosis or Tourette's that would allow music to help with movement?

DANIEL LEVITIN: So, let's unpack those one at a time. Parkinson's is a neurodegenerative disease, and it damages circuits in part of a structure called the basal ganglia that help us to coordinate smooth, continuous movement when we're walking. Those circuits are degraded. And Parkinson's patients either freeze or they start walking and then speed up and almost fall over because they're running rather than walking, or they can't even get started. Music, because it has a tempo, a steady beat, causes certain neurones in the brain to fire in synchrony with that beat. And so, you've got supplementary circuits in the brain that were not damaged by the Parkinson's that are now keeping time. And so, in that way, the music acts as an external timekeeper, allowing Parkinson's patients to walk smoothly and with rhythmic auditory stimulation. Parkinson's patients can not only learn to walk while the music's playing, but can retrain the brain so they can walk even without music. And the effects of the training can last for months.

MG: That's amazing. MS, what's happening there?

DANIEL LEVITIN: Similar things with motor control movements and MS. MS has a different cause. There is an insulating sheath around neurones called myelin. Neurones are sending electrical signals. You need to have an insulator just like the wires in your house or you short circuit. And myelin is a fatty white substance, which is why we refer to it as white matter. That gets degraded. And yet there are circuits that are not de-myelinated and music is able to activate them. You mentioned Tourette's and stuttering. Tourette's disease is often accompanied by tics, uncontrollable body movements. Similar to Parkinson's, you've got a problem with a timekeeper. You've got a problem with a brain circuit that's not keeping time and doing things in the right order. And music can overcome that by activating circuits that are undamaged. And eventually, as Torontonian and Norman Doidge has shown, the brain can retrain itself.

MG: Want to play an example of somebody who grew up with a stutter. And if you listen to their music now, perhaps you would have no idea of that. This is Kendrick Lamar.

[Music: 'good kid' by Kendrick Lamar]

MG: That's Kendrick Lamar from his album: good kid, m.A.A.d city. He is not the only musician who was credited with helping-- using music to overcome a stutter, but it just, it's remarkable to listen to that and think that that's what he was able to do.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Just extraordinary. And, you know, Elvis Presley stuttered when he spoke. James Earl Jones, the great actor who just passed away, he stuttered when he spoke. You would hear it in interviews.

MG: And there's something about music that would allow those individuals to not, override that, but compensate for that.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Well, so, you know, stuttering is an inability of the brain to put things in the right order and at the right time. Music has, of course, its own internal momentum. It has a schedule. And we have fortunately evolved populations of neurones that fire in synchrony with the music, keep a kind of an internal clock going. And so, it's like having this richly elaborated metronome in your head that's telling you when things need to happen. We take for granted that we have an internal clock. For somebody like Kendrick to be able to sing like that, a lot of the work is being done for him by the timekeeping of the drumbeat. Now, James Earl Jones had a little harder time because he didn't have music, but I read that the way he approached memorizing his lines was he would memorize them with a rhythm, almost like a Shakespearean rhythm.

MG: And that would give him that internal. [DANIEL: Yeah.] Metronome.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Yeah.

MG: There are amazing stories in this book of of people who have used music to overcome extraordinary things, including brain injuries. I want to play something from someone you know and have played music with.

[Music: 'Motherless Children' by Rosanne Cash].

MG: Daniel Levitin, who were we listening to right there?

DANIEL LEVITIN: That's Rosanne Cash, who suffered, well, she had a chiari malformation. Part of her brain needed to be operated on to remove it. She lost her ability to play music after her brain surgery. And it's something that, of course, was very hauntingly distressing for her. But the miracle of it all, or the science of it, depending on how you look at it, is that she was able to retrain herself in just a fraction of the time it took to learn the stuff in the first place. And we see this over and over again. What might take you 30 years to learn the first time you can relearn in a month. And in her case, she sat down with her elementary piano books and she had to retrain her fingers to move because the part of her brain that was operated on, the cerebellum, governs movement.

MG: What is Rosanne Cash's story? Tell us about the ability of the brain to heal and the role of music in that. Because you will often hear stories from people who have a family member who had a stroke or some element of neurological damage. They seem different. You play music and suddenly it's like they came back to who they were. What's going on there?

DANIEL LEVITIN: Well, so for one thing, it's a myth that we don't grow new neurones and we don't make new connections. We're growing new neurones all the time when we're making new neural connections all our lives. Every time you learn something, taste something new, do something new, that is, that learning creates new pathways in the brain. That's what learning is to neuroscientists. It's the creation of new pathways. When you hear about people who recover with music, it's because music is such a rich stimulus. It has rhythm and pitches and loudness profiles and different timbres of different sounds. It's got a beat, it's got metre.

MG: And historical context and memory tied to it, as well. Right? It just takes you back to that moment when you heard that song the first time.

DANIEL LEVITIN: It really does. And so, music is able to activate a lot of different pathways in the brain all at once. Auditory pathways, memory pathways, emotional pathways. As we were talking about earlier, direct access to your movement centres. Music is the only art form that makes you want to move whether you want to move or not. And so, in terms of recovery, what we're talking about with neuroplasticity is rewiring the brain to do what it did before, but with new pathways.

MG: In 2015, your friend, the great Joni Mitchell, suffered a brain aneurysm and you were involved in helping to choose the music that might help her recover. And some of the choices that you made, I think, might be surprising to some people. Have a listen.

[Music: 'Johnny Be Good' by Chuck Berry]

MG: Why did you think that Chuck Berry, Johnny Be Good would be instrumental in helping Joni Mitchell recover?

DANIEL LEVITIN: Instrumental. Matt, you're giving me a little too much credit because I didn't actually choose the music. In the early 2000s, Starbucks created their own record label, and they put out CD's called Artists Choice, and they asked musicians for their desert island discs. And Joni was one of the first artists who was asked to create, you know, a CD of what would you want on a desert island? And she very generously involved me in the conversation. She had me over to her house for several late nights across a period of weeks listening to records. We just spun records and CD's and she was sort of talking out loud, Should I include this? Should I include that? What about this? What do you think about that? And it's not that she really wanted my advice, I think. She just liked, you know, the company. The-- playing music together is so much more rewarding than playing it by yourself. But Chuck Berry was on her desert island disc, and after she got back home from the hospital and being in a coma, I spoke with her nurses and I said, Play her the music on that desert island discs. That is the stuff she, by her own description, loves the most.

MG: That's in her DNA, in some ways.

DANIEL LEVITIN: It's in her musical DNA. Yeah, it's what she perks up to. And it was extraordinary because she had been not very communicative when she got back. She'd been in a coma and the music reached deep down inside of her and reminded her of who she was and what she liked.

MG: People will see that video of her when she performed at Newport and played Both Sides Now and will burst into tears because of what that song means, but also because of what she has gone through. How much of that, the recovery, how much of that has to do with music? It sounds obvious to ask somebody about that, given what she means to music, but it feels like the recovery was driven by music.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Well, you really nailed it with why we're moved to tears. I mean, the song Both Sides Now is talking about looking at life from two different sides. When she recorded it with the London Symphony Orchestra and the arrangement by Vince Mendoza later in her life, and she had that husky, deep Eartha Kitt voice instead of the angelic aunjanue voice, you were hearing the Both Sides Now, "I've looked at love from both sides now," not from a 22-year-old, but from a 62-year-old. Right? And now we are hearing it from somebody in her 70s who's just recovered from a serious brain injury. Very, very moving. I have to say, although music was a catalyst, Joni has such a powerful will and indomitable spirit that I don't know that simply music would have recovered most people to the extent that she recovered. It really was a force of her own determination that got her to where she's going to be playing the Hollywood Bowl this fall.

MG: I mean, there's a-- obviously, and this is the work that you're doing, scientific kind of evidence that is being accumulated around this. But given what we've been talking about, is there kind of a, I mean, and this is the 'secret chord' thing, like kind of a spiritual element to this, that you still don't understand? Something that exists outside of our grasp, but we know it. The hair on your arm stands up when you hear that.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Matt, it's all outside our grasp. There's nothing in the grasp. I mean, we're kind of hand waving and saying, well, this is what's going on in the brain. But the ability to say this is what's going on in the brain is something that's important for doctors and health insurers to be able to say, yeah, this is real. But I think so much of it is, for want of a better word, ineffable, mystical even. How-- I mean, the ancient question-- how is it that music, just a collection of frequencies can make you feel so many things and remember so many things?

MG: How would you want this to be used in future? In the best-case scenario and incorporating it in a more intentional way, how do you think music could be used as medicine in the future?

DANIEL LEVITIN: I think in the not-too-distant future we're going to see, right now all the streaming companies have recommended lists and they're pretty dumb. They don't really work for me. But I think this is a golden age for music. There are 100,000 new songs being uploaded every day.

MG: You have access to everything.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Two hundred million songs as of last count across the major streaming services. And so, finding the right thing for you is the trick. And so, I think I will help there, not writing music, but in helping to select music based on the features of the music that you've liked before and help you discover new music. And on a more practical level, what I see is health insurance companies and governments and doctors and clinicians realising that instead of prescribing drugs, which can be harsh on the body and have side effects, we can be doing what people have been doing for 20,000 years, but with a more targeted scientific basis. And that is to use music for helping with injury, recovery, treating depression, all the other things we've been talking about.

MG: One of the things you say in the book is that it's never too late for you to learn how to actually play something, to pick up an instrument and learn how to play it.

DANIEL LEVITIN: I'm so glad you brought that up, because I do think all of us are musicians. Whether we play an instrument or not. We are a musical species. We're wired for music. Infants start musical babbling around the time they start linguistic babbling, and many infants sing before they can speak. So, we are musical, but we're told that in our current society, well, if you don't play well, you shouldn't play at all. And that's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Playing an instrument has been shown to be neuroprotective and it is never too late to start. My grandmother, when she was 80, she was an immigrant to the United States. Around her 80th birthday, she shared with my mother and I that every morning since 1939, she sang God Bless America. She was so grateful for a country to take her in-- a song written by another immigrant, by the way, Irving Berlin. And so, my mother and I bought her a little keyboard and we put masking tape on the keys so that she could play, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And she just loved playing it. And she learned at some point to take the tape off the keys because she'd memorized it and, in a year, or so, she'd worked out a rudimentary harmony with her left hand. She learned to play the piano at age 80. It gave her a sense of purpose, a sense of agency and accomplishment, even at 80. And she played that keyboard every morning until she died at 97.

MG: We'll leave that there. Daniel Levitin, thank you very much.

DANIEL LEVITIN: Thank you.

MG: Daniel Levitin is a professor emeritus of psychology, neuroscience and music at McGill University. His book is called I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine. We mentioned that performance by Joni Mitchell of Both Sides Now at the Newport Folk Festival. Here it is live, recorded in 2022.

[Music: 'Both Sides Now' by Joni Mitchell]

MG: Something else. Joni Mitchell recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022. Brandi Carlile there, joining her on backing vocals and Both Sides Now. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

MIKE: A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness. It is almost here.

WILL: What is it?

DUSTIN: What if it's the demogorgon? Oh, Jesus. We're so screwed if it's the Demogorgon.

LUCAS: It's not the Demogorgon.

MIKE: An army of troglodytes charged to the chamber.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Characters in the TV show Stranger Things Playing Dungeons and Dragons. The fantasy role playing game celebrates its 50th anniversary. We will roll the polyhedral dice with a Dungeon Master coming up. I'm going to transform myself into a half elf. What will that look like? Well, you'll find out. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds. How could you leave?

[Music: Fades up]

What the Bloc Québécois wants for keeping Liberals in power.

Guests: Michel C. Auge, Daniel Thibeault

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

SOUNDCLIP

Francois Legault speaking in French.

MG: And with that, Premier Francois Legault turned up the heat on Quebec politics. He challenged the Parti Quebecois leader to pressure the Bloc Quebecois to vote in favour of the Conservatives non-confidence motion, which is expected today. Now that the NDP no longer has a deal to support the Liberals, the votes of the Bloc could make the difference between the government carrying on and a snap federal election. Last week, Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said his members would not vote to bring down the government, at least not this time. To explain what exactly is going on in Quebec politics and how this could influence politics across this country. I'm joined by two journalists. Michel C. Auge is a political columnist with La Presse, commentator on Radio Canada. And Daniel Thibeault is the host of Radio Canada's political television show Les Coulisses de Pouvoir. Good morning to you both.

BOTH: Good morning.

MG: Michel, let's start with the Quebec premier urging a vote against Justin Trudeau to defend the best interests of Quebec. What is he getting at there?

MICHEL C AUGE: Nobody's quite sure why it came to him to do that, because obviously, if you vote, the no confidence motion we'll get the election and will most probably get the Poilievre government which Quebeckers do not want. So it seems Mr. Legault tried to embarrass the PQ, the Parti Quebecois, who is the sister party with the Bloc and to go tell them to bring down the government. Nobody quite understood what he meant or what was the end game of this. But the only thing we can say is that it very much turned against Mr. Legault then to have any kind of positive result for him.

MG: Daniel, can you make any sense of this?

DANIEL THIBEAULT: This, I agree with Michel on trying to embarrass the Parti Quebecois to a certain degree, I think it was short sighted from Mr., from Mr. Legault. I don't think he realised the impact his comments would have or the scale of his impact on the federal, on the federal level. And there's no justification. There's no reason for the Bloc to go this way. Right. The supply and confidence agreement between the NDP and the Liberals is down. The Bloc has found some new power back. They want to negotiate something. They want to get stuff for Quebec. And in that dynamic, there's no reason for them to vote against a government with whom they're about to negotiate. Plus, and Michel point it out, we, the Conservatives, are not overly popular in Quebec. Let's put it that way. And there's no guarantee that the Conservatives will give anything better to Quebec. And so in that particular context, the Bloc, the Bloc needs to play it's hands at this point.

MG: Want to talk about the federal Conservatives in a moment, Michel, what do you make of the role that the Bloc is trying to play right now? Referred to themselves in some ways as the adult in the room? And we saw the shouting match on the floor, the House of Commons last week. There were concerns that it might come to blows, people yelling at each other pretty closely to each other. What does that mean, the adult in the room?

MICHEL C. AUGE: Well, it's pretty much a situation they are in. Partisanship has grown in this House. The minority government, the supply agreements and all that made every party very edgy. And the more we're going towards the end of that mandate, the more they're getting edgy. The Bloc is much more, I would say, calmer with all of this, they have an ultimate objective, which is sovereignty, which is not in the cards in Quebec politics right now. So they are trying to get the best deal they can out of a minority government, which means not rocking the boat too much and listening to what their constituents are telling them. And their constituents are telling them, we don't want a federal election right now.

MG: There are a lot of people, I think, who might be surprised to hear that there are adults in the room in the House of Commons, given the shouting and the polarisation that people see. Daniel, do you see that as a role that the Bloc can play?

DANIEL THIBEAULT: I think the Bloc was forced into that position in the past couple of years, mainly because of the polarisation between between the Conservatives, the NDP and the Liberals and, and given the lack of negotiation power, that negotiating power that the Bloc had because of the supply and confidence agreement, they started to focus on the debate in a very mature way, in a very serious way, and they kept the tone down. Mr. Blanchet was always seen as someone who would try to bring some sort of a solution to the table or bring some calmer tone to the discussion. Probably not because he wanted to, because Mr. Blanchet can be feisty at times. It's just because he was probably just forced in that position, he made it play for himself.

MG: There are people across the country who are wondering what he wants and what this party wants and what it will try and extract from the Liberals to keep the Liberals in power. Let's hear Yves-François Blanchet speaking on 'Power and Politics' on CBC last week. He was asked how long he will support the Liberal government.

SOUNDCLIP

YVES FRANCOIS BLANCHET: At some point, the NDP will have to vote against the Liberals on something that we do not want either. And then the grenade will blow. When you play with those things, eventually it does happen. And I believe that in the coming weeks it might happen. It's, you know, an accident is so rapidly happening.

MG: Michel, the grenade might blow [all chuckling], take back the adults in the room thing, maybe. What exactly does he want, do you think, from the Liberals?

MICHEL C AUGE: He wants very small things that he can bring back to his voters saying, we got that for you. Right now, they're fighting very hard. So, there is a discrepancy between people between 65 and 74. As far as old age pensions are concerned and the people over 75, he wants people to be between 65 and 74 to get the same advantages. You will say that is not much playing with a grenade, but this is something he can come back to his voters in [inaudible] and to his voters all over Quebec saying, We got that for you. And if he doesn't do that, in fact and he plays with grenades, with real grenades, people probably won't forgive him. So and that's been the Bloc since the 1990's when you think about it. They say we will try to bring concrete progress for files that touch Quebec nationalism, Quebec, the special status of Quebec, but also for every Canadian, for what is seen as something that's unfair like old age pension right now.

MG: Do you think that the Liberals and I want to pick up on that for every Canadian piece, but do you think, Michel, that the Liberals will want to play ball here? That they will give him what he's looking for in the very least, the short term to keep the government in power.

MICHEL C AUGE: They may very well be and it's happened before, but I don't know what the state of public finances are on that particular issue. But the fact of the matter is they don't, the Bloc will have to see two things at the same time. One is that their voters do not want an election. That's obvious. There's nobody in Quebec clamouring for a federal election, and especially since a federal election would probably give a Poilievre government, which is, Mr. Poilievre is not very popular in Quebec. That's an euphemism. The other thing is that the Liberals may very well give that if that means staying in power, they've done worse.

MG: How should other Canadians, people outside of Quebec, look at that deal making, do you think, Daniel.

DANIEL THIBEAULT: As far as the Bloc goes?

MG: Yeah.

DANIEL THIBEAULT: It's, I don't think the Bloc cares about the way other Canadians look at it.

MG: And yet they have the balance of power.

DANIEL THIBEAULT: They do have the balance of power and they're playing their hand. They're playing for what their hand will be at the next election in Quebec. They're campaigning only in one province. We need to remember that. And in the case of the old age pension that Michel was pointing out, the interesting thing is that every now and then, when Mr. Blanchet speaks to reporters in English, he points out that it's not only a gain for Quebec, it's a gain for the whole country. And so, this is something that he can play on both sides. There's been other demands. There's other things, he wants a better protection for supply and demand. He wants more power for immigration in Quebec. I don't think he's going much further. In fact, the interviews in English like you just heard, he doesn't do that many of them. He does the scrums, but rarely sits down for a full-blown interview. He talks to his voters. His voters are in Quebec. And right now, he knows that he can come back to Quebec and say, You don't like Mr. Trudeau or you don't like Mr. Poilievre, there's me in the middle. And he's basically putting together the case that he's going to be putting forward to voters next election.

MG: Michel, you've hinted at this a couple of times, Pierre Poilievre not particularly popular in Quebec. You wrote a piece that said, these are your words "It's not hard to guess the reason Quebeckers are allergic to Poilievre's style, that of intimidation, insults and a feeling that he has never encountered a quarrel in which he did not want to get involved". Tell me more about this and why the style of Pierre Poilievre, which seems to be appealing to some Canadians across this country, is not resonating in Quebec.

MICHEL C AUGE: Well, first of all, Quebeckers are pretty much averse to any kind of confrontation. They don't like that a lot in politics. And even though we play very often with very divisive issues like sovereignty, people don't like too much confrontation and too much argument. That's one thing. The other thing is, Mr. Poilievre not only arrives by insulting people and, you know, he's quick to insult, let's put it this way. But he also says things that are in provincial or even municipal jurisdiction and say this will be my way or the highway. There will be not a dime for a public transit in Quebec City if you don't build the very controversial third bridge or tunnel or whatever between east and north and south shore. That's not his business. And when you come and say that when you come and say the Mayor of Montreal, she's incompetent. The mayor of Quebec City is an incompetent guy. People voted for these people who is Mr. Poilievre to say get rid of Valérie Plante in Montreal. She's not good. So there are two things here. There's his style, but there's also the permanent confrontation with Ottawa, which basically was not the Conservatives Party's hallmark. This was the way the Liberals used to play. And people don't quite like that.

MG: Daniel, what do you make of that?

DANIEL THIBEAULT: The thing that I find interesting with Mr. Poilievre is that contrary to the previous Conservatives leader, he's not trying to propose anything specific to Quebeckers. Mr. Harper, Mr. O'Toole had a Quebec platform and a Quebec offer. And it was, it was, I was told by, by some of his advisers early on after he won the leadership, you know, we tried that in the past and it didn't work. So why would we try it again?

MG: If the polls are to be believed he may not need...

DANIEL THIBEAULT: And that's what, Stephen Harper proved that you can form a majority government with a very small base in Quebec. And so in that particular, with that particular view he walks into Quebec without, I think, caring too much about what people think or what people will say about him. They'll probably make some gains or they're hoping to make some gains, but modest gains. And but they're not going to make those gains with a specific offer or specific little things that they'll offer to Quebec. They'll offer to Quebec what they're offering to the rest of the country. And if they want to buy it then buy it, if not, well, they'll get their voter base somewhere else.

MG: Just out of time. But I have to ask, given talk of the grenade going off and accidents happening, how long do you think this relationship, such as it is. Lives between the Bloc and the Liberals, Daniel?

DANIEL THIBEAULT: It's ah, it depends how the negotiation or the discussions unfold. There's a private bill at the Senate right now that would give Mr. Blanchet the increase in pension that he's looking for. How far are the Liberals willing to go on that one we'll see. And then the other, you know, little parts that they want to talk about, can they make some headway on that? Likely. I think the Liberals would like to keep that going until the spring. As for the confidence, the first confidence vote that they should survive this week, but there'll be a series of others. And Mr. Blanchet has already hinted that if it doesn't go his way, he's willing to pull the plug himself when it comes his opposition day. So we'll see.

MG: Michel, the leaves are just changing now. Will this government still be in power when the leaves return to the branches in the spring? Do you think, will they last that long?

MICHEL C. AUGE: They may be the government may be still in power when the leaves come back, but might as well have a very early fall season next year, early next year, because I don't think they will go much further than the spring. But I will defer to Daniel about head counting and House of Commons. I'm in Montreal. He's in Ottawa. [laughter]

MG: It's good to have you both here. And we will talk again, I'm sure, in part because of that balance of power. And everybody's wondering how long this arrangement, such as it is, will last. Thank you both.

BOTH: Bye. Take care.

MG: Daniel Thibeault is the host of Les Coulisses de Pouvoir, on Radio Canada. Michel C. Auge is a political columnist with La Presse and also a commentator on Radio Canada.

[Music: Fades up]

Battling goblins, live on the radio

Guests: John Dempsey

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio one. My name is Elrick Nightbreeze. Actually, it's Matt Galloway. But for the purposes of this next story, yes, you can call me Elrick.

SOUNDCLIP

HOMER SIMPSON: We played Dungeons and Dragons for three hours and I was slain by an owl.

BART SIMPSON: Listen to yourself, man. You're hanging with nerds.

HOMER SIMPSON: You take that back!

MARGE SIMPSON: Homer please. These boys sound very nice, but they're clearly nerds.

HOMER SIMPSON: Really? But nerds are my mortal enemy.

MG: Poor Homer Simpson. If he only knew it was cool to play Dungeons and Dragons now. The role-playing game turns 50 this year, and it is played by millions of people around the world. Recently seen a resurgence of popularity driven in part by COVID, as well as programs like Stranger Things.

SOUNDCLIP

Kids shouting Dungeons and Dragons terms at each other in a clip from Stanger Things.

MG: John Dempsey has been a Dungeon Master for eight years now. He's been hired by people across the world to moderate their Dungeons and Dragons sessions. And he is here in our Toronto studio this morning to give us a little live radio DnD demo and introduce me to my character. Yes, Elrick Nightbreeze. John, good morning.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: I'll get to the demo and my alter ego in just a moment. I'm curious about this, Elrick. What got you into the DnD?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Well, I originally got into it as a teenager at about grade nine, I guess it was. I moved to a small town and didn't really know anybody at the school yet, and one of the teachers there I guess, recognized that I was a bit of a loner at the time and thought that I might be interested in the game, and she gave me a boxed set to borrow. And when I took the game home, I was just amazed and loved it right away.

MG: What did you love about it?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Just the fantasy aspect of it. It was very interesting. It's something I hadn't experienced before, and the idea of playing the game was very exciting when I didn't know anybody that played at the time until later when I moved to another town and met some friends, and we began playing for like the next 20 years [laughter].

MG: We're going to play in just a moment. But for people who have never played, can you just briefly just explain how it's played?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Yeah. Each player in the game is playing a character, which is an adventurer in the game. And the goal of the game is different for every game. One game they might be trying to say rescue a princess or kill a dragon or find the treasure or what have you. And the group of players are playing a team that's working towards this goal in the game.

MG: You are the Dungeon Master.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Yes.

MG: We should say. I mean, it's radio so people can't see. But can you describe what you're wearing?

JOHN DEMPSEY: I'm wearing a hooded black robe, very similar to something you would see maybe the Grim Reaper wearing.

MG: I won't take that personally. You do, I mean, you have you have the look of a Dungeon Master. [JD: Oh, thank you] And what does the Dungeon Master do?

JOHN DEMPSEY: So the Dungeon Master in the game is the, both the narrator and the moderator of the game, they describe what the players see and hear and guide the players along the adventure and also ensure that they're following the rules and so on.

MG: What do you make of the cultural significance and the cultural moment it seems like DnD is having. I mean, sure. Homer Simpson saying that it's just nerds that play it. That's not, it's a big deal.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Well, when I first started this business, most of my customers were busy professionals. So, yeah, it's not just nerds playing the game anymore. A lot of people from all sorts of different aspects of life have been drawn to the game. The show 'Stranger Things' has introduced a lot of young people to the game who had never heard of it in this generation and yeah, it's become very popular again.

MG: So let's play. I have a sheet. That has my character description on it. This was filled in, our producers here kind of filled it on my behalf. So, they took who they thought I am and kind of inserted information to create this character. So, there's all sorts of information on this. Can you just describe what I'm looking at here?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Yeah, this is the character sheet, which describes all the aspects of your character.

MG: Elrick Nightbreeze.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Elrick Nightbreeze. Elrick Nightbreeze is a half-elf. He's a sorcerer. And he is a chaotic, good person. Which would be similar to, like, a Robin Hood mentality.

MG: Oh okay. The chaotic bit kind of threw me for a little bit, but I like that. He has special skills, Elrick does?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Yes. He's a sorcerer. So, he casts magic spells in the game. And every character in the game will have a different profession, whether it's a warrior or wizard or a cleric or a rogue or what have you. So, Elric is a sorcerer, and his magic comes from within.

MG: Apparently, I believe that people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. I protect those who cannot protect themselves. But I also have trouble in trusting my allies. Might be a bit of a loner. When it comes to my half-elf character here. Walk me through a scenario how do we play this game?

JOHN DEMPSEY: So the scenario we've, we're going to play today is Elrick, as you'll see in his background on page two there. He has come from a small town where he grew up as a woodcarver, helping with the family business.

MG: Do you want me to read some of this?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Yeah, yeah. If you just read to the listeners maybe his background story.

MG: Sure. So, when he was 12, Elrick noticed that he was developing strange powers which allowed him to perform feats of magic, but he was unable to control these abilities and his parents told him to keep the powers to himself so as not to cause the family any trouble. Most of his days were spent making wooden tokens and arrows that were used by the town guards. But in his spare time, Elric would practice magic hidden away in a neighbour's barn trying to gain control of his abilities. This had a tragic result one day as his magical practice resulted in a fire which burned the neighbour's burned to the ground. The neighbours were furious. The townsfolk grew fearful of him. It was decided by his family that it would be best for all if Elrick left the community, at least until he learned to control his magic. Saddened to leave Elrick packed up his things and took to the road and ever since has been searching for a way to control his magic, hoping that someday he can return to his family. His travels and inquiries over the years have now led him to investigate some ancient ruins located in the Sword Coast that have been rumoured to be the home of a hermit sorcerer of great power. And it is here that he hopes to find some guidance. It's quite a back story. So, what happens now?

JOHN DEMPSEY: All right. So, in this scenario, Elrick has come to the ancient ruins in search of this hermit. So, I have some dice here I brought.

MG: And you have the ruins set up. I mean, there's a little model of the ruins here on the table in front of us.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Yeah. We have a scene set up here already and we're going to be using, for the most part, the 20-sided die here. And in the game Elrick has just come into the ancient ruins and is investigating the area when all of a sudden from behind one of the walls come two goblins. Upon seeing Elrick, they draw their scimitars and rush forward to attack.

MG: This does not sound good. What happens now?

JOHN DEMPSEY: So when we begin a combat sequence in the game, the player and the Dungeon Master will each roll a 20 sided die.

MG: Okay, so I'll roll the dice. [rolling dice sounds] 11.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Right. Okay. I got a five. So you would go first.

MG: Okay, so what do I get to do?

JOHN DEMPSEY: So Elrick has several choices. He has his spells which are on your third sheet there. And also he has his weapons a quarter staff or a dagger.

MG: Let's use a spell.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Okay. Which one would you like?

MG: Magic missile? How about that?

JOHN DEMPSEY: So, which one would you like to cast it at? Which goblin?

MG: Oh. We'll do the goblin that is on the right. [JD: Okay]. Gets the magic missile.

JOHN DEMPSEY: All right. So as Elrick casts the spell, three volts of force come out of his hands and fly into the goblin.

MG: I'm going to roll this dice here?

JOHN DEMPSEY: You're going to roll that three times and then add three.

MG: Three, four and one.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Okay. Goblin goes down as the magic missiles slam into his body, leaving one goblin remaining.

MG: Okay, so we have to do something with the goblin now.

JOHN DEMPSEY: So the goblin. Screams in anger rushes forward to attack with his scimitar and misses.

MG: That's good news for me.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Very good news.

MG: What happens now?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Now we come back to your turn. If we had, we're playing with other players, and it would cycle through the other players turns until we come back to the enemy again. But such since it's just yourself will be just going back and forth. So, it will be Elrick's turn again.

MG: Okay, so I get to use another one of these spells. How about sleep? I get to put the creature to sleep.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Okay. All right. So for this one, you're going to roll that five times and total it up.

MG: Okay. Three. Five. Seven, one. And seven.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Okay. The goblin falls asleep as sparkly dust floats over its body. It falls to the ground snoring.

MG: Victory is mine.

JOHN DEMPSEY: Victory is yours. But wait. [MG: Oh no]. Another goblin comes in from the side, this one wielding a short bow. And as he aims his arrow at you and fires, it just barely misses Elrick's head. Back to Elrick's turn.

MG: How long? We don't have a ton of time. So, we could play this for hours. How long do games like this go on for?

JOHN DEMPSEY: While generally a session is four hours.

MG: Four hours?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Some groups choose to go longer. Some I have like, some youth groups that I do that I'll just do like a two-hour game with them.

MG: Yeah, why do you think it's so popular, this is the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons. [JD: Yes]. And we just got a little snippet of it there. Why do you think this is still so popular in a time when people I mean, you have all these things on your phone that just suck up attention and it's easy to be just, this requires, you know, us looking at each other, talking to each other. Why is it still so popular, do you think?

JOHN DEMPSEY: Well, I think for a couple of reasons. One, there's the fantasy aspect of it. You know, it allows the player to be something that they've maybe always wanted to be or experience, you know, maybe to be a wizard or a mighty warrior or something. The other aspect, I think is it's an escape from the modern world, you know, from the stresses of life. You know, for a few hours, you get to go to another world and be someone else and not have to deal with your own realistic problems and instead focus on the character you're playing.

MG: We will leave it as a cliff-hanger. What happened to Elrick Nightbreeze? We will stay tuned to find out or play your own game to see what happened. John, thank you very much. That was super fun. I've never played a board game live on the radio before. John Dempsey is a for hire Dungeon Master for the board game Dungeons and Dragons. DnD turns 50 this year. Elrick Nightbreeze the half-elf lives on. That is The Current for this Tuesday, the 24th of September. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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Tuesday September 24, 2024 Full Transcript

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