Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2024

The Current Transcript for November, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Maybe some people will feel like, 'Oh, that's cheaper, that's gross to get something second-hand, but I think the more you do it, you'll see the value.

MATT GALLOWAY: The holidays are a week away and at the same time, people are struggling with a cost of living crisis. One solution: How about something pre-loved for a loved one? In 30 minutes, how savvy thrifters are saving money, and cutting down on waste by shopping second-hand for gifts. Also this morning: High stakes political drama. No, not that one.

SOUNDCLIP

BRITISH REPORTER: Keir Starmer's defended sandwiches as a great British institution after Kemi Badenoch told Spectator magazine she doesn't think they're a real food. The Conservative leader also said lunch is for wimps.

MATT GALLOWAY: The new leader of UK's Conservative Party finds herself in the soup for dismissing the sandwich in a country where sandwiches bring in something like $14 billion to the economy. Battle lines were drawn. In an hour, an expert defends the hand-held meal. And yes, a hot dog is a sandwich. But we begin with the embrace of cryptocurrency by a generation burned by the economy. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Young people turn to crypto

Guests: Claire Brownell, Omid Malekan

SOUNDCLIP

CRYPTO VOICE 1: How desperate do you have to be? Imagine if your success story was "I made it off a Fartcoin." That's going to be in your biography. That's crazy. That's, that's crazy work.

MG: Well, not that crazy to everyone.

SOUNDCLIP

CRYPTO VOICE 2: 10 years ago, I would have never expected to say those words, but Fartcoin looks like an interesting trade.

MG: To be honest, I never thought I'd be saying these words on air either. Fartcoin is something known as a meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency that has blown up in the past few months. Its value now sits at over $1.2 billion CAD. Cryptocurrency has been on an upward trend since the U.S. election. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is promising to make the United States the crypto capital of the world and to, in his words, "do something great with crypto." Bitcoin hit another all-time record high yesterday after passing the $100,000 U.S. milestone two weeks ago. To explain all of this, meme coins and the crypto wave, I'm joined by Claire Brownell. She is the future finance reporter at The Logic, covering digital Currencies. Claire, good morning.

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Good morning.

MG: Let's walk through the basics here. What are meme coins?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Sure. Well, first of all, you know, what is a cryptocurrency? It's something that lets you, for the first time, transfer a fully digital object from person to person. Prove that you own it. You know, prove that when you're sending it, you're not sending the same thing twice to two different people. And that's all without the involvement of the financial system or the government in any way. So this, in my opinion, is actually a genuinely incredible innovation. What makes a meme coin a meme coin is that it takes that incredible innovation and just distils it to pure silliness. So, these digital objects that don't have any value except the meme and the marketing attached to it. [MG: The...] So, you know, saying things like this is, this is Fartcoin. We think it's valuable because farts are funny. And then, you know, we're going to make a market for it and see how many people can trade up the value. And the game is to sort of take your money out before the whole thing inevitably collapses. That's what makes a meme coin a meme coin.

MG: It has no value.

CLAIRE BROWNELL: There's I mean, you know, some of the people in these projects will argue, you know, they'll say things like, you know, Iggy Azalea recently launched a meme coin called Mother, and she said, "Eventually I'm going to launch an online casino. And these are going to be sort of like the casino [inaudible] that you had to use for the casino. Like, sometimes, they try and make an argument that eventually it'll have a value. But what distinguishes a meme coin from other crypto tokens is that we all pretty much agree that it's mostly just a big joke.

MG: Who's buying them?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: People who like to gamble, people who maybe have made a lot of money in other cryptocurrencies and feel like they have money to burn and want to see how much they can make it go up even more by taking speculation to the highest possible level. People who want a lottery ticket, people who feel like the traditional value investing has failed them and they're not going to make it to retirement the normal way. So, you might as well try to buy a lottery ticket. That's who's buying them.

MG: I guess, I'm still trying to understand how a meme coin like Fartcoin would reach a value of over $1 billion.

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Yeah, well, I mean, if you're familiar with how a Ponzi scheme works, that is essentially how is that everybody keeps convincing more people to put in money. You know, everybody says, you know, look how much this investment is going up. Like, put in more money and you can get it out, too. And, you know, it works for a while, right? People are putting in their money. You know, demand causes the price to go up. It's just that eventually, you know, you're going to run out of people to keep putting their money in. People are going to want to take their money out and the whole thing collapses.

MG: And you need to be one of the people that gets your money out before the thing drops to its value, drops to nothing.

CLAIRE BROWNELL: That is the game essentially trying to, you know, time the market or time, you know, time the whole thing before it collapses.

MG: This is I mean, the rise of this and the popularity of this is coming at the same time or as similar time as the value of Bitcoin is skyrocketing. How significant to you is it that Bitcoin is over that $100,000 U.S. market?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Yeah, I mean, it's very significant. You know, it's a huge, I started covering digital assets for The Logic in 2021 and yeah, back then the idea of it being $100,000 of the U.S. talking about making it a reserve currency, like those are things that, you know, even, you know, the wildest, most optimistic laser-eyed Bitcoiners, you know, would have sounded pretty wildly optimistic. So, it's a pretty big deal.

MG: How much of that has to do with Donald Trump and what Donald Trump has said in terms of, as I said earlier, making the U.S. the crypto capital of the world, but also talking about creating that Bitcoin strategic reserve like, like the oil reserves?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Yeah, I mean, I think it's significant. You could see in the markets, as soon as the election results were announced, it was just, you know, that's when it started going, you know, in sort of like hockey stick straight up territory because yeah, cryptocurrencies are, you know, in the U.S., especially under sort of a cloud of whether they're allowed or not. The, you know, the previous SEC chair, Gary Gensler, was on, you know, a big crackdown mission against crypto. So if they have somebody who's not only friendly to it, but you're talking about, you know, adding it to the reserve, that's a huge boost.

MG: I said in the introduction that you cover the future of finance. Is this the future of finance?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Well, it's funny. Like, this is, it's such an interesting topic because, you know, people will say, is this the future of finance or a big scam, and my answer to those questions is yes.

MG: Sorry, it's, it's both, it's both things at the same time.

CLAIRE BROWNELL: I think, you know, it really is. It's a genuine technological innovation. It's a genuine you know, it is fascinating. There are things that, you know, like we can now, it's not just this transfer of value. People have now taken that steps further and created banks that execute fully automatically on blockchains without, you know, middlemen or the financial system involved. You know, lending protocols, exchanges. Like, it really is truly amazing. But along with that comes this sort of like silly speculation game that ends up being very harmful to a lot of people. And yeah, there's really that duality to this whole topic that I find fascinating but also frustrating.

MG: What do you think it appeals to? I mean, what's going on right now? Who, who is not buying into this, but who, who is the receptive audience for this, do you think?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: I think the receptive audience is people who feel burned and cheated by the status quo. And I think that's, you know, that's why there's a crossover, I think, between Trump voters and crypto fans. And a lot of sense is that, you know, someone's coming in and saying, you know, "I see that the system has cheated you and I have a new way to do it that doesn't involve, you know, any of the old guard at all." You know, "Here's that, here's a totally different way that we can, you know, get away from the whole, you know, swamp of Wall Street and Ottawa, Ottawa in Canada and Washington, US." That's appealing to a lot of people who feel like they can't get ahead.

MG: I mean, it's not just Donald Trump. The city of Vancouver passed this motion last week to explore making the city Bitcoin-friendly. And there would be a Bitcoin reserve there. It could be accepted as payment as well. How significant is that?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, obviously not quite as big as the U.S. talking about making it part of their reserve currency, but it's still, it's still huge. When I saw in February 2021, I started being The Logic's crypto reporter full-time and even, you know, Tesla putting Bitcoin in its balance sheet was a huge controversy. Big news. You know, it was, you know, the idea that we would then have countries who are making it legal tender and talking about putting in reserves, like, that's a big, big shift.

MG: And Pierre Poilievre has talked about this as well. There's a video that circulated a while back of him talking, he bought a shawarma with Bitcoin.

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Yes.

MG: And I mean, he faced criticism when the value of Bitcoin dropped. But what does that tell you?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Yeah. Oh, yeah. He faced the Liberals slammed him that for, about that for ages because he said Canadians could opt out of inflation by buying Bitcoin and then, the value of Bitcoin immediately cratered and inflation kept going up. But yeah, I think it has, you know, it's becoming more and more mainstream every cycle. It becomes because we have these boom and bust cycles at it, and every cycle, it becomes a little more embraced by, you know, politicians, by the financial system, a little more entrenched in sort of the real world.

MG: And so, this is just finally, this is a moment, do you think, when we start to see a more mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency?

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Yeah, certainly acceptance by mainstream. I think another huge thing that happened this year is the U.S. launched Bitcoin ETFs exchange funds, which basically lets you, you don't have to open a crypto wallet, you don't have to open an account on crypto exchange. You can just use your traditional brokerage account to buy a claim on Bitcoin. You can put it in your retirement account. And that has proven wildly, wildly popular. And that means that, you know, Wall Street institutions like BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton now own, they actually collectively own more Bitcoin than Satoshi, the creator of Bitcoin at this point.

MG: Claire, thank you very much for this.

CLAIRE BROWNELL: Thanks for having me.

MG: Claire Brownell is a reporter at The Logic. She covers digital currencies, and the future of finance.

MG: Omid Malekan is an adjunct professor of blockchain and crypto at Columbia Business School. He's worked in the crypto industry, and is the author of several books on this subject. Omid, good morning to you.

OMID MALEKAN: Good morning.

MG: How do you understand what's going on with, I mean, couldn't, we could start with Fartcoin and the fact that this thing is valued over $1.2 billion. What is going on here?

OMID MALEKAN: I think Claire actually did a great job of describing, describing the phenomenon. But I want to add one thing, which is that while the, the Ponzi scheme analogy is, is apt and mechanically correct in that the whole thing is sort of a house of cards, and eventually when the music stops, most people will lose money. The difference between a meme coin and a Ponzi scheme is there is no deception here. You know, with a Ponzi scheme, there's somebody pretending to do something useful and serious and productive, like investing the money. And then later, it's revealed that they're actually lying and taking money from new investors and giving it to old investors. Meme coins don't have that. Everybody is aware of...

MG: Everyone's in on the joke.

OMID MALEKAN: Everyone's in on the joke. So, despite being gambling, risky and something I strongly discourage everyone to stay away from, I think we should acknowledge that they're are at least intellectually honest. So then, the question is what are they a joke on? And I think, in some ways, they're a joke on the entire financial system because as you and your listeners know, finance on Wall Street is full of people who take themselves very seriously and they pretend to be doing very, very important work, which as a business school professor, I must acknowledge they do. It's very important to have lending and trading and capital raising. But finance is also a profession that periodically blows itself up, needs massive bailouts. You know, the retail people end up holding the bag while the, the affluent and the executives of these institutions somehow always make it out fine. So to me, meme coins are almost a political form of protest against us taking the rest of the financial system too seriously.

MG: I mean, you could see that as well and how you've described the crypto boom. You've said that if you want to understand the crypto boom, think of it as a form of intergenerational revenge in some ways. What does that mean?

OMID MALEKAN: That means that what's happened in many developing countries in the last, say, 15, 20 years, going back to the 2008 financial crisis, is that the basic dream of the average young American or Canadian, which is to get a good education, get a job, be good at it, work your way up into the, you know, comfortable middle class, upper-middle class life of own, your own home, have a retirement portfolio, don't have too much debt. That dream has increasingly become out of reach. And a lot of it actually has to do with various government policies. But nevertheless, the average age of a homeowner in many countries is a lot older than it used to be. Young people just can't afford to buy a home anymore because house prices have gone up a lot faster than incomes have gone up. Here in the U.S., we have this, the student debt crisis that a lot of students who graduate have so much debt because college has become so expensive that it's unlikely that they're going to make enough money from their job to pay it down any time soon.

MG: So, what is, what does crypto offer those people?

OMID MALEKAN: Well, the other element of this is that, you know, why is it that houses are so much more expensive? Even stocks, like if you're a young person and you want to invest in a up-and-coming AI or graphics card company, the price has gone up so much in the last 10 years, and you didn't own any. Your parents and your grandparents, they owned it and they've benefited. So, crypto represents a way for young people to also participate in upside and appreciation, but notably in something that's new, something that the previous generation hasn't sort of rigged in its favour via various laws and policies, something that's very jargony and complicated. So, you know, Grandpa's likely not going to be investing in Bitcoin. Now, whether that works out or not obviously depends on when you measure it. So, right now, cryptocurrency prices like Bitcoin have been doing very well. People who invested in them are ahead of the game. A couple of years ago, the opposite was true. But I think you can apply this to even what we saw with the meme stock craze a couple of years ago during the pandemic, which is that young people increasingly feel like they need to find their own way of creating generational wealth.

MG: And the fact that it scares the old guardians of the economy in some ways, that's the point.

OMID MALEKAN: That's the point. Yeah. You know, sort of like the, even with meme coins, the fact that and as somebody who is a member of the older generation, I hate, I hate having to even say this, but the fact that Fartcoin has been the thing that has been doing well, and whoever invested in it a couple of weeks ago has for now made a lot of money, is part of the appeal.

MG: Let me ask you, we're almost out of time, but I want to ask you two things. One is just about I mean, Trump is coming in and has said that he wants to make Bitcoin a larger part of the U.S. economy in some ways. Where does that leave regulation of this? If there's so much money that's sloshing around, where does that leave regulation?

OMID MALEKAN: We are going to need new regulation, which should ideally come from new legislation and a substantial portion of the crypto industry, at least the more professional, responsible participants have been calling for this the whole time. The problem is, under the Biden administration, the position from Washington was either we're going to regulate crypto with laws that were written 100 years ago, or it just shouldn't exist.

MG: And so, the answer now will be to do what?

OMID MALEKAN: The answer now is to actually create new rules that respect what is good and benefiting about this technology. And there's a lot to like and celebrate about it, but also clamp down on some of the more embarrassing shenanigans that go down. And that's not necessarily a meme coin. You know, people, people want to gamble with their money. And actually, gambling is increasingly legal in the U.S., but it should be around the more serious things like these dollar stablecoins, how we regulate cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and so on.

MG: It says something just finally, it says something culturally about where we're at right now that people would turn to this, right?

OMID MALEKAN: Absolutely. And I think the younger people, while I might disagree with some of their reckless behaviour, I certainly have a legitimate gripe with the economy that the rest of us have created for them.

MG: Which is why they're turning to that risky behaviour.

OMID MALEKAN: Exactly. [MG: Yeah.]

MG: Omid, thank you very much for this.

OMID MALEKAN: Thanks for having me.

MG: Omid Malekan is an adjunct professor of blockchain and crypto at Columbia Business School, and the author of most recently, "Re-Architecting Trust: The Curse of History and the Crypto Cure for Money, Markets, and Platforms." Here's R.E.M., and Strange Currencies.

[Music: Strange Currencies by R.E.M.]

MG: Talking about 30 years ago. Most recently heard in The Bear, it's R.E.M. and Strange Occurrences. Your CBC News is next. And then, for those who haven't finished or even started their holiday shopping, it's crunch time. If you're looking to avoid big box stores and save some money, how about "Thriftmas?" We'll talk about how to embrace the art of thrifting and second-hand gifting. Coming up in six minutes, I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Strange Currencies by R.E.M. continues]

Thrifting holiday gifts

Guests: Tara Wickwire, Kevin Jacquemain, Karin Marley

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

SOUNDCLIP

CAITLIN FEAR: For my daughter's friend's birthday parties, I find a series of books and then, like a top and then, maybe a stuffy. You can find everything.

MG: That's Caitlin Fear. She runs For Me and More. It's a pre-loved clothing and accessory company geared toward kids and their parents. It is no secret that life is more expensive these days, and with the holiday season here, the bills can stack up quickly. And so with that in mind, it turns out more and more people are hitting the thrift store, or scrolling online marketplaces on the hunt for gifts. And as Caitlin points out, there are sweet deals to be had.

SOUNDCLIP

CAITLIN FEAR: For me, it's also that I really like high-end stuff, and I can't afford it at the prices that it perhaps is at first-hand. And I don't, I wouldn't want to pay that. I don't want new, a new H&M dress when I could have a second-hand Stella McCartney dress.

MG: Our producer, Amanda Grant, loves a good thrift score and so, she was off to Value Village to give this idea of "thriftmas" a try.

SOUNDCLIP

AMANDA GRANT: I have a few people I'm looking for. I need to look for, my mother-in-law loves vintage candlesticks and fiesta wear, and always looking for books for my six-year-old. He's into graphic novels and kind of mystery chapter books right now. And I'm also looking for my husband. He needs more buttoned-down shirts, and some slacks. And if I'm really lucky, a leather blazer. Okay. Let's see what we can find. And maybe a little holiday decor for the house as well.

MG: It's a big long list, but it was not too long before something caught Amanda's eye.

SOUNDCLIP

AMANDA GRANT: Okay, so my sister-in-law really likes to do puzzles. And there's one here. It looks like it's still in the wrapping, in the plastic. It's a little dicey to get a second-hand puzzle because you want to make sure that there's all the pieces.

MG: That would be important in the second-hand puzzle. After scouring the racks and shelves, she did indeed find that leather blazer for her husband. Now, if you want a more curated thrift experience, Stephanie Pellett has you covered. She runs Objects and Outfits. And Amanda caught up with her at a second-hand pop-up market in Toronto.

SOUNDCLIP

STEPHANIE PELLETT: My goal is to kind of elevate the second-hand buy-in experience. Like, what I want to do is attract customers who hadn't even thought of it, and don't realise how much good stuff there is out there, and that sometimes, it can feel easier just to go online and like buy a bunch of stuff from, you know, one of the big retailers. And then if you don't like it, you might send some back and return it. But what they don't understand is that that stuff, it ends up in the landfill. Even when you return things, it doesn't end up back on the shelf.

MG: Stephanie's been a lover of "Thriftmas" for years, and so she's now trying to pass on that second-hand holiday cheer.

SOUNDCLIP

STEPHANIE PELLETT: At every year. I might start giving people a second-hand gift and ease them into it. So, this year, I hope my parents aren't listening, but I got them some sterling silver salt and pepper shakers for the Christmas table. Now, like, they're beautiful. They come in still the original box. And when people are buying for my daughter or my family, I say, please don't get us any gifts, but if you want to, please buy it second-hand. And so then, people are also like kind of seeing the value in that.

MG: With me now are two people who know that value and the joy of shopping second-hand. Tara Wickwire is an avid thrifter in Halifax. Kevin Jacquemain runs Rivendell Books. It's a used bookshop in Barrie, Ontario. Good morning to you both.

TARA WICKWIRE: Good morning.

KEVIN JACQUEMAIN: Good morning.

MG: Tara, how did you get into Thrifting?

TARA WICKWIRE: Well, I as I was explaining to your producer, I grew up in the Annapolis Valley and there's a retail phenomenon, Frenchys. It's a, it's a second-hand clothing chain based in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and established in 1972. And the supply pipeline comes from sort of the Eastern seaboard. So, it's a lot of, you know, cast-off American clothes. And, you know, starting from when I was a kid, we would go there regularly. And it was, it was a treasure trove of great brand names and great quality clothes. And it was kind of back before thrifting really became a thing. But it's always been sort of the steadfast presence and probably the reason I fell in love with it originally.

MG: It's a phenomenon, you say, [TALIA WICKWIRE: Yeah], not just not just a store. So, when you, when you take in the phenomenon, I mean, what are you looking for when you go to Frenchys?

TARA WICKWIRE: Well, you know, I have, there's a combination of, of my approach, so I may have a short list of things that I'm sort of manifesting in the thrift hunt. But also, it's just sort of you have to be open to discovery. So, I will often start, you know, in the men's department, go through sweaters. I'm looking for natural textiles. So, wool, cotton, 100 per cent cotton, cashmere, you know, great leather pieces. And sort of, I go through and I really stick to basic classic colours. And that's sort of how I approach it. And then I, you know, move to denim and so on, but just with an open mind and then, with maybe a few things that I may have in mind that I'm looking to source.

MG: So, that might be for yourself. I mean, as I mentioned, one of the things that's happening right now, given the cost of living crisis and the fact that life is just generally expensive for people and the holidays are right around the corner, is that people are looking to try and save some money and maybe buying second-hand would be an option for them. What would make a good second-hand gift?

TARA WICKWIRE: Well, there's sort of two elements to a great second-hand gift. I mean, there's, starting with if you've selected something purposely for someone and that's a very special sentiment that you're putting forward. And, but the two things I give as advice in this gifting is the restoration. So, you find a sweater, and it might maybe have an odd smell. So, you know, once you wash it, and dry it and kind of put some care into it. The second part is the presentation. So, you know, for the sweater, you might line it with tissue and wrap it in a beautiful box with a big bow. And that sort of gift exchange experience becomes, you know, elevated. But here it is. You know, it's maybe a $7 sweater, but it's something that I picked just for you. No one else has one exactly like it. And so in this, in the presentation, it's, I just think it's a great experience. And there seems to be a shift in the mindset out there. I think people are far more open to upcycling clothing second-hand. It's the stigma is, you know, slowly but surely going away. So, which is a really good thing because we need to keep things out of the landfill. And so that's, that's why I'm so passionate about thrifting, and I think that's why others should sort of embrace it as well.

MG: Do you think that that mindset is really changing? I mean, there's a psychological hurdle for some people here. When you're giving a gift or when you're on the receiving end of a gift, the expectation is it's going to be something new. It's not going to be something where he could say "pre-loved" or just used, right?

TARA WICKWIRE: Right. So, sometimes, you might want to caveat that. It does depend on who the receiver is of this gift. But some people are more open than others. But I think, you know, millennials are driving this, this movement around second-hand and upcycling and how they're, you know, kind of candidly sharing their finds and making it more of a, you know, so, so much more commonplace. But, you know, for example, my brother-in-law, one year, I found a Barney's grey cashmere coat. I had it dry cleaned. I put it in a great garment bag, and I gave that to him for Christmas. And so, rather than just a standard, you know, boring, you know, button-down shirt, I gave him this very special coat and he's worn it ever since and eternally grateful. So, that's, that's an example of, you know, what you can kind of do to give it a little more kind of a special touch. And, but it does depend on, on the kind of end recipient for sure.

MG: Kevin, you've been listening in. I love used bookstores, and used bookstores, I mean, they're not as common perhaps as they used to be, but they still have a huge place in the, the book shopping landscape, if I can put it that way. Why do you think used books make a good gift?

KEVIN JACQUEMAIN: Well, I think, you know, when it comes to books, books are one of those things that I find people don't mind as much of it if it's been pre-used. It's that idea that somebody else has read that story, has kind of taken part in that adventure, if you will. So, when, when somebody walks into a used bookstore, they're, you know, they're looking for that, that special find, that nicer addition or something that, you know, somebody else has had their hands on. And so, I feel like that idea of giving a used book is not, doesn't hold that same stigma as, as maybe other things. People enjoy that, used, the used books and, and like the fact that that has been in somebody else's hands before it gives it that, that history and a little bit more of a, I don't know, a little cachet to that present from what I found.

MG: If you are, I mean, and this is one of the things that comes out if you shop, you know, with face-to-face with somebody rather than just ordering something online, is you actually get to talk to the person about what you're buying. And hopefully that person has some information that can help steer you into what you might want to purchase. What do you, if you're pulling together a selection of, of used books for somebody, what do you look for, and what are you thinking about?

KEVIN JACQUEMAIN: So, I always start with: What are their interests? What kind of books have they read in the past? What are the things that have really gotten them excited about reading in the past? Take a look at your bookshelf, especially if you're buying for somebody else. Take a look at their bookshelf. What are the books that they're interested in? When, I find when giving gifts of books, the very best gifts I've given in terms of books are the books that I have loved in the past, because then you're not just giving them something to read. You're giving them something that you know you've experienced, something that you can debrief about after they're done, something that you can share. And so, you know, when giving suggestions for people as to buying gifts, it's I like to talk to them about, you know, what have they read in the past, What are they interested in and what do they you know, what do they want to share with somebody that that they're giving to?

MG: And have you found that? I mean, maybe it's now because life is expensive, as we were saying, or this idea that people and maybe it's a generational thing, people are interested in not just purchasing something new but perhaps upscaling something and using something that's already been loved. Are you finding that, that people are giving used books increasingly as gifts?

KEVIN JACQUEMAIN: Absolutely. I mean, we have countless customers coming in, especially at this time of year, that are looking for those specifics or just looking for suggestions for books to give to people for the holiday season. Absolutely.

MG: Tara, that's a lot more work. I mean, giving a second-hand gift. You're not just sitting in front of your computer, clicking in the middle of the night, ordering something online and having it delivered the next day. What would you say to people who don't feel like they have the time or maybe even the patience to...? I mean, the chase is part of the goal here in some ways. You have to spend some time doing this, but people may feel that they don't have the time or the patience to do that.

TARA WICKWIRE: Well, that is one thing. It does require patience. But in the earlier clip, the, Stephanie who has the business of reselling and kind of making that access point easier for people. So, I think you'll see, you know, on our downtown main streets second-hand, more and more second-hand clothing and decor stores popping up. And so, that makes that easier for the average consumer to go in, take the advice from the salesperson, which is a little bit different than going to a Frenchys or a Value Village where you're really independently on your own search. So, I think that's, that's a component that's happening. And, you know, consignment stores are terrific. And I think, you know, to buy something that's higher quality than something from a mass retailer, and it's something that's more unique, that's so special. So, I think, I encourage people to experiment and just, you know, dip a toe in with consignment and then, you can go with your, if you build that interest.

MG: I don't want to ruin the surprise for anybody. Is there a gift that you're planning to give this holiday that you're, that you're looking forward to?

TARA WICKWIRE: Several. [MG: Oh.] Several. [MG: Okay.]

MG: Tell us about one.

TARA WICKWIRE: So, one is I'm restoring this vintage coach bag. And so I, you know, I did find it at a Frenchys and I, you know, brought it home, cleaned it, and now it's like, I have been using this kind of leather conditioner on it, and I've stuffed it with tissue. And then, what I'll do for this friend, I'll put in, you know, a tube of my favourite hand cream. And then, I think that's kind of a lovely gift. And that all together is, you know, not expensive, but it's great meaning. And it's also, you know, it's something I could have kept for myself. But I looked at it and I thought, this is like suitable for my friend.

MG: The meaning really counts, right? That's the big thing here.

TARA WICKWIRE: [MG: Yeah, yeah.] It does. It does.

MG: Kevin, what about for you? Is there a gift that you've been given, a second-hand gift that you've been given that means a lot to you?

KEVIN JACQUEMAIN: Absolutely. My oldest brother is a writer and is, is the most difficult person to buy for. And part of that is that he is such a good gift giver. He has over the years, through Christmases and birthdays, he has given me, always used a book of his choice. And every year, it's one of, if not the best book I've read. He's, you know, an excellent, excellent judge of books. But, you know, part of that is just knowing that he's read it and having that time to kind of discuss it with him afterwards. And that's a part of the gift in itself.

MG: What a really interesting idea. I think a lot of people I mean, in this time and the clock is ticking in terms of people having to do their shopping as well, will be interested to hear about this, and perhaps will move their way toward if they can get their head around it, that idea of a second-hand gift. Tara, thank you very much.

TARA WICKWIRE: Well, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

MG: Kevin, Thank you.

KEVIN JACQUEMAIN: Hey, thanks for having me on, Matt.

MG: Tara Wickwire is an avid thrifter in our Halifax studio. And as you heard, prioritising second-hand gifts this Christmas. Kevin Jacquemain runs Rivendell Books. It's a used bookstore in Barrie, Ontario.

[Music: Right Back to It by Kathryn Crutchfield a.k.a. Waxahatchee]

MG: What a song. Kathryn Crutchfield, a.k.a. Waxahatchee. And Right Back to It, that is from her brilliant album, Tiger's Blood. Friday on The Current, we are going to be talking about some of the best music of this year. There was a lot of great music that came out, including that album and that song in particular. And we will have a rundown of some of the things that we loved and some of the things that you might have loved over the course of this year. That's coming up Friday on The Current. Also, Friday on this program.

[Sounds of Canadian geese]

MG: It's kind of like the sound of Canada, isn't it? The Canada goose, or Geese, there's never really just one of them. There are so many geese. So many, in fact, in that in many parts of this country, people believe there are too many geese. And so, this quintessentially Canadian bird can also be a quintessential nuisance.

[Geese sounds continue]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: 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. And then, it just was more and more and more and more to the point where it becomes a problem.

VOICE 2: You can tell by the amount of poop and feathers on the beach. We, you know, we got geese. So, you've got this continuous turnstile of, and 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 and this is where the population of them becomes a huge problem.

VOICE 3: In the summer and the spring, the water is disgusting. Yeah, it has a strong odour...

VOICE 4: Lots of crap. And I slip and slide and I got to check my boots after my walk.

VOICE 5: They just, they're staring at me like. Like, stink eye. Like, "what you doin' here?" kind of, kind of look, right? I've stopped completely, sitting on the bike, and the two geese attack me. Like, one of them was, like, I could just see their faces, you know? They were you that sound, you know? The [Geese sound] We have a sound.

[Geese sounds continue].

MG: Trust me when I tell you that you do not want to miss our goose expedition on Friday, I can almost guarantee that you will learn a thing or two about the Canada geese, including how much, yes, how much they poop, why we have so many of them. We will take you to Lethbridge, Alberta to discover what they are doing with all of those geese. There's something called the "Goosinator" that is in play in Lethbridge. We'll also go to Ottawa to find out about the "Goose Buster," cutting edge technology dealing with the goose, coming up Friday here on The Current. Last week on this program, we spoke with Daniel Leader. He is known as the bread guy, one of the people who started the artisanal bread movement to focus on how different baked goods can taste if you use really great flour and simple techniques. We heard from a lot of you about your love of sour dough and beyond. And so, The Current senior producer, Karin Marley, is here with some of your mail. Karen, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning. So let's start with Michael McGraw. He takes his baking very seriously. He wrote to us from New Brunswick, "There's always something to learn about baking bread. In 2015, I noticed the price of bread had gone up more than it should. I spent four months researching green grinders. I decided on one that was expensive, but it is a beautiful work of art. I am off grid and cook and bake in an airtight wood stove. I bought two cast iron bread pans, expensive and heavy, but they work very well. If you buy more than 300 pounds, 300 pounds of wheat berries from Speerville, here in New Brunswick. They deliver it free. So, I buy several hundred pounds at a time, enough to last years as long as you keep it dry. I have 6 or 7 types of wheat berries, and each makes a different loaf of bread. Sometimes, I mix and match. I baked bread for the first time more than 50 years ago. It was a brick. The yeast I bought had expired before I bought it. I'm a bit better at it now."

MG: There were a lot of lovely stories, and the sad one as well, from Van Buchanan of Victoria, British Columbia, "Many years ago, when the Earth was flat, I came across a sour dough recipe in a very old bread book. The rest is history. My starter came everywhere. My family and I went. We were camping in Farragut State Park in Idaho, not far from our home in Lethbridge, and we came across a little pub. The five of us went in, we told. We were told the owner's wife had just had a baby, no health care. And my girls went for a dip in the lake. We borrowed towels from the pub. The young couple who owned the pub had a sour dough starter that was 80 years old, handed down from family. The next day, we drove back there with our towels that we had borrowed. And much to our dismay, the pub and the living quarters had burned to the ground in the night. All was lost, including that vintage sour dough. It was devastating. We made a little gift and we cried."

KARIN MARLEY: Tommy Aird owns Tommy's Whole Grain bakery in Vancouver. He wrote to say that he liked the interview, but he had one objection. "Limiting the flavour description of whole wheat flour to earthy is an injustice. Whole grain flours will always have a complex and nuanced flavour profile, may it be floral, lactic, weedy, spicy, etc. Earthy and pungent doesn't come close to describing it. It would be the same if that was how a Sommelier summed up Burgundy wines." Fair enough. And then finally, Ellen Agger of Victoria wrote about a specific baking book that Daniel Leader had mentioned. She wrote, "I bought my Tassajara bread book in 1970, its year of publication when I was 16. I lived in a co-op house in Toronto. In the early 70s, we put $5 a week into our food budget. Out of that came a 100-pound bag of whole wheat flour every few weeks. We took turns baking our own bread using this wonderful book," she sent pictures. "It's now 54 years old, held together by packing tape for many years with pages covered, as in all good cookbooks with cooking stains. I still use the pancake and granola recipes."

MG: That's lovely. Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: Thank you.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer on The Current. Thanks for all your letters. If you hear anything on the program you want to comment on, get in touch. You can email us: thecurrent@cbc.ca. Still with bread, sort of. It is the subject of a political scandal in the United Kingdom. [Music: Theme fading in] We are going to talk about sandwiches, and how the new leader of the Conservative Party found herself in hot water in dissing lunch and sandwiches. That's coming up in 90 seconds here on The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

The great British sandwich fight

Guest: Max Halley

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current. You have probably heard an awful lot by now about the political uproar in Ottawa. But have you heard about this recent brouhaha in Britain? Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch did an interview with The Spectator magazine, and started a bit of a bunfight. Here are people on the streets of London reading her comments aloud for a reporter.

SOUNDCLIP

BRITISH VOICE 1: Lunch is for wimps. I have food brought in, and I work and eat at the same time.

BRITISH VOICE 2: Sometimes I'll get a steak. I'm not a sandwich person.

BRITISH VOICE 3: I don't think sandwiches are real food. It's what you have for breakfast.

MG: And now take a listen to their reactions to her attack on the sandwich.

SOUNDCLIP

BRITISH VOICE 4: It's a weird hill to die on, to be honest.

BRITISH VOICE 5: Look, if we could all have steak brought in, I think everyone would.

BRITISH VOICE 6: Isn't that what the women on Devil Wears Prada did?

BRITISH VOICE 7: They were invented here. What else is not food?

BRITISH VOICE 8: You've just had your lunch yourself.

BRITISH VOICE 7: I had a sandwich.

BRITISH VOICE 8: How was it?

BRITISH VOICE 7: It was tasty.

MG: Tasty. Queue the reaction from her political opponents on the Labour benches.

SOUNDCLIP

BRITISH REPORTER: Keir Starmer's defended sandwiches as a great British institution after Kemi Badenoch told Spectator magazine she doesn't think they're a real food. Ed Miliband, who was famously photographed eating a bacon sandwich, said she needs to discover the delights of a bacon sarnie.

MG: With me now, somebody who understands the delights of all kinds of sandwiches. His name is Max Halley. He is a chef, cookbook author, and owner of Max's Sandwich Shop in London. Max, hello.

MAX HALLEY: Hello, Matt. Hello.

MG: What do you make of this attack on the sandwich by the new leader of the Conservative Party?

MAX HALLEY: I just, you know, what has the sandwich ever done to them? I, it, to be honest, I'm quite baffled by it, but I am also thoroughly entertained by it. How nice that finally our politicians are debating something of real importance.

MG: She also said that you wouldn't eat bread if it was moist. Which [MAX HALLEY: What a weird thing to say] maybe that's a hill to die on.

MAX HALLEY: It's such a weird thing to say, isn't it? I like. So what does that mean, that, like, so a piece of, a piece of bread is okay, but a piece of bread with mayonnaise or butter or something on it is not okay? It says, the whole thing is genuinely odd.

MG: Now, Keir Starmer, of course, the Prime Minister, he, he has to respond because this is his opposition. But also, he felt like he needed to defend, you know, the good name of the sandwich. What, has he done enough to do that?

MAX HALLEY: I don't know. He, what did he say? He said that he, he liked and or his spokesperson said that he liked a tuna sandwich and occasionally a cheese toastie, which, you know, is no bad thing, I guess. But it sounds like even Keir could make a little more effort with the stuff he puts between two bits of bread.

MG: I mean, people here in this country eat a lot of sandwiches, I'm sure, but this is nothing quite like what happens in Britain. You eat something like £8 billion worth of sandwiches each year. That's like $14, $15 million CAD of sandwiches a year. Why are, why are people there so crazy about a sandwich?

MAX HALLEY: I think, I think British people feel, rightly or wrongly, that the sandwich is a kind of core part of British cuisine or British food. It's like literally the go-to lunch of the country, which is what makes you know Kemi Badenoch, Badenochs's statement so odd. Why, I'm, you know why would she kind of stick herself, you know, up in a tower? It's odd.

MG: Also, because this has been the subject, as we said earlier, of, you know, political missteps in past. Ed Miliband was caught eating bacon sandwich [MAX HALLEY: Bacon sand--] in this really awkward photo. David Cameron [MAX HALLEY: Yeah] was eating a hot dog with a knife and fork.

MAX HALLEY: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does, this actually just tell us that the, the people we elect to office are just mad when it comes to their lunch.

MG: And yet, I mean, there are many sandwiches that are mass-produced. [MAX HALLEY: Yeah.] Does she have a bit of a point I mean, that, that sandwiches, you can talk and talk about it, but it's a bit overrated, isn't it?

MAX HALLEY: I mean, how dare you, Matt. [Inaudible]. I want you to take that back immediately. I, this is also a hill that I will die on.

MG: What is the, what is the worst? I mean, and I ask this based on those, those kind of mass-produced sandwiches. [MAX HALLEY: Yeah.] What is the worst that you've seen that is consumed on a regular basis?

MAX HALLEY: Oh gosh. I don't know. I'm sure there are all kinds of abominations when it comes to sandwiches. For me, just on a completely personal basis. I think a cold slab of cheese is a horrible thing to have in a sandwich. Cheese for me should be melted when it's in a sandwich. So, I guess I would, I would dislike a piece of cheese between two bits of bread fills me with dread. But otherwise, I believe that all my children are beautiful. And the sandwich, the sandwich can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

MG: I mean, you, you have a direct connection to this because you worked in some pretty fancy restaurants and then, ended up opening up a sandwich shop. Why did you do that?

MAX HALLEY: I did. So I yeah, I worked in sort of jazzy Michelin star restaurants and all that kind of business. And when I, when I left there to open a restaurant of my own, I, I knew a guy who had done, had changed the burger in Britain from a kind of sort of thing that you would get at maybe a football ground or a fish and chip shop, a kind of junk food thing, and turned it into something a bit more gastronomic. And when I, when it came to me opening my own restaurant, which was now over 10 years ago, I looked around and I thought, what is there that has mass appeal but has been neglected, and become a bit rubbish? And I realised that the sandwich was, was there for the taking. So, I took it.

MG: What are the elements, based on that and the taking to, to, to elevate the sandwich? What are the elements that make a great sandwich in your mind?

MAX HALLEY: Well, I mean for me, in terms of the sandwiches that I serve at my sandwich shop, I have a sandwich mantra, which is hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.

MG: Okay. Explain, explain the mantra to us.

MAX HALLEY: Yeah. So, it is, I believe in those three core contrasts that our brains find deliciousness. And what I am most concerned with is deliciousness. And the sandwich, certainly when I started ten years ago, well, the sandwich in England was something that had become completely about convenience and not about deliciousness.

[cross-talk]

MG: Did you go to press and get the cheese and onion rather than something. And it's, it's just something to fill you up.

MAX HALLEY: Exactly. Yeah. It's something that you can slam down at your desk without thinking about too much, and you can eat it with one hand. And so, I made sandwiches that are so large and full of goodies that you'd struggle to eat with one hand. You need, this is a two hand job. And yes, so hot, cold, hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy, soft. That I think, what is lacking in nearly all sandwiches is crunch. And we, we live in a world where people think lettuce is crunchy, which is an abomination. Lettuce is not crunchy, lettuce is fresh. And its purpose in sandwiches, as far as I'm concerned, is to provide freshness. Now, crunch comes from deep-fried things. Crisps are crunchy or chips, as maybe you call them, are, are where crunch, real crunch is to be found. And so, every sandwich I have ever served at my sandwich shop has had a deep-fried element to it. Yeah.

MG: Put it all, put it all together. I mean, what would if you roll together hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy and soft [MAX HALLEY: Yeah] what would, what would an example of that if I walked in to your shop be?

MAX HALLEY: Literally, every sandwich we've ever served has adhered to, adhered to those rules. So for example, the kind of signature sandwich of my sandwich shop is the hammock and chips sandwich. So, hammock and chips as in fries is the kind of classic British pub lunch. And when I opened my sandwich shop, I wanted to try and turn the sandwich into something that could be seen as a meal. And so, I started with, with something that was already clearly a famous plate of food. So, hammock and chips. So, in, in my sandwich version of that, there is hot, braised ham hock meat. There is piccalilli. I don't know. Do you know Piccalilli? [MG: No, what is that?] So, Piccalillis are kind of halfway between a sort of chutney and a condiment. It's a kind of pickley vegetable chutney with kind of curry spices in it.[MG: Love it.] And some turmeric and coriander and Cuban and mustard vinegar. Lots of onion and carrot and, yeah, kind of crunchy, acidic chutney, I guess, is what it is. So, you have the hot, braised ham hock meat, You have this, this piccalilli, sweet and sour. You have a fried egg, you have shoestring fries or what the French call [inaudible]. There's crisps that have, crisps that have the same dimension as match sticks. And then, you have malt vinegar mayonnaise. And so, there are all of those. There is hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy and soft. All six of those elements are present in that sandwich.

MG: It sounds incredible.

MAX HALLEY: I mean, they are, you know, I'm not going to, I don't want to beat around the bush or blow my own trumpet too much, but these are some of the best sandwiches in the world. Like, my sandwich shop has been recognised as one of the best sarnie shops in the world, and people travel to come and eat our sarnies. And so yeah, I'm super proud of them, of the sandwiches and the sandwich shop.

MG: I have to ask you before I let you go, people define sandwiches in different ways. So, how, how do you define, is it just anything between two pieces of bread?

MAX HALLEY: I don't know. Look, there is, there are many argument, is a hot dog a sandwich?

MG: Is a hot dog a sandwich?

MAX HALLEY: The look, I for me, yes. Arguably, I understand that a hot dog arguably has toppings, not fillings, which might prevent it from being a sandwich. But the truth is, I think the definition of a sandwich is pretty loose. Like Taiwan's Bao, the kebab. You know, these are fundamentally all really sandwiches of sorts. And I think the definition of a sandwich is that some kind of bready, filling-y arrangement, but not always.

MG: But not always. What would you, just finally, what would you serve to the leader of the Conservative Party to change her mind?

MAX HALLEY: I mean, quite frankly, any of the sandwiches in my sandwich shop, she's clearly got a terrible attitude towards mayonnaise, and that needs to be rectified.

MG: Max, it's great to talk to you. I'm hungry now. Thank you very much.

MAX HALLEY: Thank you.

MG: Max Halley is the owner of Max's Sandwich Shop in London and the author, author of "Max's World of Sandwiches: A Guide to Making Amazing Sandwiches." It's kind of like a thing that people would argue over in a pub: Is a hot dog a sandwich. What's the go-to sandwich? What's the best sandwich? Is mayonnaise an abomination? Do you not eat moist bread as the leader of the Conservative Party said? Email us: thecurrent@cbc.ca.

[Uplifting rock music]

And the enduring appeal of stuffed toys

Guest: Max Genecov

MG: This is The Current. My name is Matt Galloway.

[Sounds of child naming her toy]

MG: Well, ice cream. Cup cake. Wobbly one. A young girl is sharing her favourite jelly cat-stuffed toys on TikTok. The wobbly one is a leak, by the way. That's right. A stuffed plush leek. What, you might ask, is a jelly cat? It is a wildly popular brand of stuffed toys appearing on plenty of Christmas lists this year. Think soft, velvety plushies in the shape of everything from animals to food to planets and sad rats.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I don't want to see any new jelly cat plushies unless it's my guy, Lachlan Sad Rat. Like, truly, he's the only one I care about. He's the only one I will ever care about.

MG: Alas, Lachlan, the sad rat, has sold out everywhere. You might have noticed that was a grown up desperately seeking a stuffed, sad rat. Jelly cats, it turns out, are not just popular with kids. Social media is filled with adults showing off their jelly cat collections.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 2: I am one of those grown women who collects jelly cats, and every single one of them has a name. So, let me show you the family. This is Wilbur. He was the first jelly cat ever got, and I got it as a gift for my boyfriend. Here's Kung Fu Panda, Spotty, Baby, Airhead, Nelson.

MG: Jelly cats are even the target of crime. Earlier this year, a man was arrested in Richmond, British Columbia, after a cache of stolen toys worth $150,000 was found. Many of them jelly cats and police thanked, in their words, the jelly cat community for helping find the toys. Jelly cats join a long line of stuffed animals that have captured imaginations from squishmallows to beanies all the way back to the original teddy bear. Max Genecov is a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, a proud stuffed animal collector. He wrote an essay in the New York Times magazine, recommending stuffed animals for adults. He is in Philadelphia. Max, good morning.

MAX GENECOV: Good morning.

MG: Tell me about Sloth and Patricia the couch potato.

MAX GENECOV: Okay. So, Sloth is a very handsome sloth. He comes from the Pusheen universe of stuffed toys and characters. He's a, like a, he's a little stuffed animal friend of mine, Patricia the couch potato is a stuffed animal I knit. A little less cuddly, made of some very nice wool, but little less cuddly of it. But very cute and propped up there. Yeah, they're very adorable.

MG: And they're part of your stuffed animal collection.

MAX GENECOV: Yes, they are.

MG: How many stuffed animals do you have?

MAX GENECOV: I don't want to count. I have tapered off buying them recently just because I don't have much space or money. And I have a baby, so he's enjoying them mostly now.

MG: But are we talking like tens? Dozens? Hundreds?

MAX GENECOV: Not hundreds. Probably a few dozen, like, yeah. Probably that, there are a few baskets in various rooms.

MG: And they all have names and personalities.

MAX GENECOV: Yeah, pretty much all of them do. They all have something, something that goes on with them, even if they are just kind of a cute little budgie. I guess that's a cute, and the most recent one is I bought, I got a little budgie, actually. My sister-in-law got it for my baby. It's small, squishy, and his name is Jeremy, we decided.

MG: You have to fight with the baby for them? I mean, do you, do you sleep with them?

MAX GENECOV: I mean, I've got a like, the sloth actually, is probably, is, I don't know. He's a good size for just kind of like holding in as an accessory pillow in bed. And I know he's very, like, comforting to look at and hold, but most of them don't get into bed. That would be a very busy, full bed.

MG: You write about, I mean, playing with him. What does that look like? I mean, describe the play.

MAX GENECOV: I mean, like, often it's yeah, it's like I mean, with, with my son, of course. But my, even with my wife, it's just like or even by myself, it's just kind of like looking at them, imagining what's going on in their heads, like putting on a voice and like putting it up to my wife's, like, face and doing some sort of character to it. That's, that's often what it is. But when it is just by yourself, like, it's just kind of like you're, you're in a reflective mood, and you're, like, looking at them and it's kind of like you're having a little bit of a conversation with them in your head or just like bouncing ideas off or even just like looking at their eyes, and seeing that they're looking at you, seeing yourself [inaudible] at them a little bit.

MG: You have a baby. You're married. [MAX GENECOV: Yes.] You write in The New York Times, I mean, you're an adult. You write in The New York Times magazine about, about recommending playing with stuffed animals as adults. What do you get out of that?

MAX GENECOV: Yeah. So, I think that it's, it cultivates a sense of, like, gentle, playful reflectivity in you. Like, I described it as doodling with your emotions.

MG: What does that mean?

MAX GENECOV: I mean, it's just like trying to, like, trying things on, like, gently holding kind of like an emotion or something. Like, whether it's positive or negative and being kind to yourself with it. Like, wondering where, like, things are kind of going in your life or something that just happened maybe with the stuffed animal, it can, it has an opinion on it. Or you imagine the stuffed animal in the same places you like in the same event. What would happen with them? Where would they take it? Those are the kinds of things that I kind of mean. It's like it's a kind of assisted daydreaming that's like it keeps it keeps it light, It keeps it gentle. And even when you are kind of I don't know if you're feeling worse, even like it can help to like, just bring a little bit of lightness, some other kind of, maybe even and just a bit of a distraction, reminding yourself about, like, the other things in life and the things that are perhaps bothering you.

MG: I mean, that's some sort of comfort in some ways.

MAX GENECOV: Yeah, certainly. Certainly.

MG: Do you see a line between this where how you describe the comfort that they give you? And I mean, what, what you're studying in clinical psychology?

MAX GENECOV: Yeah. So, I think that the kind of bulk of my research isn't entirely related. My research is like, about the connections between clinical and positive psychology and my clinical work, I see some relationship. I see patients under, under supervision, but the patients have, a lot of them have stuffed animals. Like, sometimes, we have group sessions. These are patients with severe emotion dysregulation issues, chronic invalidation through their lives, other issues, substance issues, depression, all these sorts of things. And we have group skills sessions, and sometimes, stuffed animals come on, on stream because like, people are just kind of like holding them. We do group therapy virtually often, so they, they're in their homes. They have their, they have their little guys around them. I think it's useful there. There's some research on that, and like the clinical realm. But most recently, I'm working. I have a collaborator, Ryan Nemec, who's worked on a lot of stuff on character strength, and he's been recently very interested in gentleness, and how, like, gentleness relates to other kind of character strengths, virtues, aspects of well-being, prosociality, these sorts of things. So like I'm, I'm getting more into that. I got into talking to him about his research through talking about stuffed animals.

MG: Do you think that having those stuffed animals, and having a relationship is the right word, but certainly some interaction with them, that that can cultivate gentleness?

MAX GENECOV: Yeah, I think so. It's definitely a practice in gentleness. Like, you, like, they make you feel like I mean, I think soft things make you feel gentle often. Like, obviously with kids, they love throwing soft things because they won't destroy anything. So, like a Nerf ball or something. But when you're holding that feeling, that kind of like level of like tactile detail, even like, if like soft texture can make you key into like, those details with it. And then also, the emotional aspect, like appreciating those softer parts of yourself. Even in it's, I think, good practice, like, you see it with kids, certainly.

MG: What do you make of how big of a business this is? I mean, it's not just the jelly cats and the stuffed animal industry. Sales of these went up from $1.35 billion USD in the first half of 2021 to over $2 billion in the same period this year. What's going on, do you think?

MAX GENECOV: Geez, I mean, I think that, I think that we're in a bit of a collection boom. I like ever since probably the pandemic, people have been collecting all sorts of things a lot more versus, because they had extra money to spend on things that they weren't going out for. And I think people maybe are going out less period since the pandemic, and they're putting their money elsewhere. And I think Squishmallows, which I think started before the pandemic, but like those are highly collectable, jelly cats are highly collectable, as you're just saying.

MG: But there's also, it sounds like people are looking for something. I mean, one of the things that you wrote in the piece is that, that it's shameful in some ways to admit that you haven't outgrown the needs that a stuffed animal would satisfy.

MAX GENECOV: Yeah, I think that, I think that that might maybe, maybe has changed is changing. I mean, I think there's like, people being open about it on social media is a big thing. I think people getting into them through their kids, and being maybe more honest about that is a big thing, too. But for people who don't have kids, even, I think that there's like less shame about it, more vulnerability. I think it's just maybe for some people with it being, being at home for a while more, you know, like that's their space. They maybe got the stuffed animals they do have, or that they acquired. They have a closer relationship now, like I have so many trinkets on my home office desk that are staring at me all day. Not stuffed animals necessarily, but some of them like really small guys, but maybe just people feel closer to them. And because of that closeness, that's, I don't know, feels more normal.

MG: What would you say to somebody who's an adult who is listening to this and said they have a difficulty wrapping their heads around this, and say "Are you kidding me?" Like, I can't play with stuffed animals because I'm a grown up. This is kid stuff. And it's not for an adult.

MAX GENECOV: I guess I would say, like, where's it, where's it kind of coming from? What do you have to lose if you do play with a stuffed animal? And it's the sense of like, what I think about that is like, it's a sense of, it's just like not the right time or something? There's a real pressure to be serious, to be productive. All these things, and stuffed animals feel like very archetypically frivolous in a way, and people don't want to fritter away their time. Even when they're playing video games often, you see adults and they're just like locked in and they're not even playing it as a game, you know?

MG: That's, that thing that you talk about, about how play is undervalued for adults.

MAX GENECOV: 100 per cent. Yeah.

MG: Why do you think we do that? Why do we undervalue it?

MAX GENECOV: Because it's not, you can't get money or prestige out of it. I think that's a big thing. And that's what we're driven by, and what we're told to value. It's like, I have to make some money so like, this can all end up okay. And then, when that's all done, I just want to shut off. I don't want to kind of even cultivate something in myself, which I think that stuffed animals can do. But yeah, it's just, it's not, it's not valued in society, if I can say something so broad.

MG: Do you have a favourite in your collection?

MAX GENECOV: Favourite stuffed animal? I don't know if I have a favourite stuffed animal.

MG: Like if the house, you mean, we hope this never happens, but if the house was on fire and you had to grab one as you run out...?

MAX GENECOV: Oh my goodness. It would probably be. I mean, I'm just looking at it right now because it's on my desk with this. My, my, I knit them. But my wife also makes them, she needle felts and she needle-felted me a raccoon, and he's on my desk right now, so I might grab him.

MG: Is that because you like the raccoon? Because your wife made it for you?

MAX GENECOV: Well, I mean, because, because both he has this kind of look in his eyes like he needs some help. And normally. So like, there's, like, a bit of, like, pathos there. He looks like he's asking for a treat maybe. But yeah, sense of closeness, A sense of meaning. Like, he's not so cuddly, but he's certainly one of a kind. Yeah. Another option is that my raccoon I grew up with, I still have, I have the baby sleep with that one mostly.

MG: You still have it, though?

MAX GENECOV: Yes, they still have it. He's up. He's like probably up in the crib right now. His bow fell off, and I had to re-glue one of his, re-glue his nose last month or so. But he's good.

MG: Max, thanks for talking to us about this.

MAX GENECOV: And, of course, thank you so much.

MG: Max Genecov is a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. That's The Current for this Wednesday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. Before we go, just one final word on the sandwich debate that we were talking about earlier. The question as to whether or not they are a real food, Kemi Badenoch, the Leader of the Opposition started this whole thing, said that sandwiches aren't real food, lunch is for wimps. But if she did have lunch, she'd rather have a steak brought in for lunch. Most Brits seem to be satisfied with the common sandwich. Here's Pulp, and Common People. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: Common People by Pulp]

Wednesday, December 18, 2024 Full Transcript

Social Sharing