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The Current Transcript for January 20, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

MATT GALLOWAY: Living with long COVID is no fun, but fun. Precisely what's at the root of an innovative programme in the UK to help those suffering with symptoms that just won't go away. An initiative by the English National Opera, a place singing techniques usually employed by professional singers to help long COVID patients breathe easier. In 30 minutes, the healing power of music and singing together. Also this morning, when New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her sudden resignation this week, there was much speculation as to why she was quitting. The former prime minister Helen Clark offered one suggestion, saying that Ardern faced unprecedented hatred and vitriol. And Ardern isn't alone in that.

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If we want to live in a democracy still we need the voice of women and we need to protect women.

MG: A new film from Quebec explores the online hate that women and girls face now and how police forces, experts say, are unequipped to deal with it. In an hour, the personal toll of online attacks and a film that gives voice to those the attackers are trying to silence. We start, though, with a debate over further arming Ukraine and questions about how much more Canada can give. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Defence ministers meet to discuss further arming Ukraine

Guests: Richard Shimooka, Constanze Stelzenmueller

MG: Dozens of defence ministers are meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany today, and all eyes are on Berlin to see what weapons Germany is willing to supply to Ukraine. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky, urged world leaders earlier today to send tanks.

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Hundreds of tank who are not hundreds of tanks. All of us can use thousands of laws in discussions, but I cannot put words instead of cars that are needed against Russian artillery or instead of anti aircraft missile that are needed to protect people from Russian airstrikes.

MG: Several NATO countries, including Canada, have pledged to provide Ukraine with more military support. But Western tanks are seen as a pivotal weapon weapon in this next phase of the war. And Germany has been holding out.

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It is also clear that we will avoid that this is becoming a war between Russia and NATO's. I think this is something which is also the view of the Ukrainians, as far as I understand, with all my talks. And we will continue to be active in this way to do this.

MG: That's German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Constanze Stelzenmueller is director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. She's in Washington, D.C. Good morning.

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: Good morning.

MG: You wrote in September that Germany needs to shake off its habit of excuses for inaction, that that is unworthy of a country aspiring to leadership in Europe. What do you make of the reluctance in Germany to send tanks to Europe?

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: Two things here, if I may. That was the head of the Financial Times chose over comments that I wrote for my monthly column. And I think it would be unfair to say that Germany has been inactive. In fact, it sent some pretty important weapons, like the Gephardt's the Howitzers and the Hamas, Ira's t-systems that the Ukrainian have credit those affected. Yes, there was a huge dispute about tanks. And I wrote in my last column that I disagree with the German refusal to send tanks. And at this point, it's we're now meeting in Ramstein and it's clear that the Germans have some boxed themselves into a corner. I personally don't the argument of the Chancellor that this is would be an escalatory decision, but it's important also to say he is refusing point blank. He's saying if the Americans sent tanks, then we will allow other European nations who want to send their tanks. And I personally believe that Germany would in that case, also send some of its own.

MG: Part of this, as you mentioned, is waiting to see what the Americans do. But what is at the heart of that reluctance, as you understand it?

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: Well, I mean, that it would really have to ask the chancellor. I think the critique of Schultz that is truly fair is that he has been prudent to the point of excessive cautiousness, acting after a very long deliberation, always in strict lockstep with Washington, D.C., and reluctantly. But then actually, as as I said in several stages, the Germans ended up giving the Ukrainians really important amounts of kit, not to mention ammunition straight from the beginning, something that is less headline worthy. But I think another point that I do want to make, because I think it's important, is that the instinct to caution is one that is actually shared by the Biden watch. Right. There has always been a prudence about the American decision. The expression here is boiling the frog. In other words, the White House ambiguity, despite in absolute terms spending enormous quantities of kit, have always been very careful about what kind of kit they were sending. And even in this latest enormous package that they announced yesterday, they still not willing to send attack and long range missiles, they are still not willing to send aircraft and they are so far holding out on M1 ABRAMS Although I also agree that the M1 ABRAMS is heavier, is less manoeuvrable legitimately, and it would make sense here to not move in lockstep and send the German made clear which that NATO member states.

MG: That is worth mentioning, that the German government this morning denied that it is waiting to see what tanks the United States sends before it makes its move.

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: There's a new Defence Minister inside that and I think that may have been a glitch. He's just out of work yesterday.

MG: Can you talk just further? I mean, that's important context because the previous Defence Minister, Christine Lambrecht, resigned this week at a pretty sensitive moment after a series of blunders. What do you what do you make of her resignation at this moment?

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: Well, media have since reported that she decided to resign on January 3rd and that she and the chancellor agreed to wait until the 16th on Monday to make that public so as to give him time and time to look. I find those reports credible. It's, I think, not unfair to say that she had a really fraught tenure of a little over a year. I saw her at the last Munich Security Conference, a major worldwide meeting of defence and security experts and policymakers, politicians, and she seemed uncomfortable in her role. It was widely known that she wanted to become interior minister minister in what was then a very new German government that had just started in December 21. And I think she never really grew into that role and she never really learned how to handle what is a very complicated German defence bureaucracy that was designed after 1945. For all the obvious reasons. I know they seem to be a civilian safety net of the armed forces and prevent disruptive change of any kind at a time when it's the Russians who are providing the disruptive change. That is of course a little difficult. But redesigning bureaucracies is a fiendishly difficult.

MG: The decisions that Germany makes don't just impact Germany and Ukraine. Poland is also asking to send its leopard tanks to Ukraine, but needs the German go ahead to do that. Why is that necessary?

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: Well, that's a characteristic of all major weapons systems. There are export control regimes in place. These are decades old regulations, multilateral regimes of arms control, which are supposed to prevent the fires of weapons systems just passing them on and or acting as passwords, as it were, for recipients whom the producers. States would never have sold them itself. And so the problem with that proposition by the poem, although I have considerable emotional sympathy for it, is that that would truly undermine an important multilateral regime at a time when multilateralism is is itself under siege. And I think that is really not not just not in Poland's interests, it's not in German interests, is not in America's of Canada's interest, for that matter. I'm still hoping that this gets itself resolved another way.

MG: What's at stake for Germany if it doesn't get itself resolved?

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: You know, ultimately this, I think, is about Germany's position as as one of the three great powers and one of the two great line powers in Europe really were the three, if you will, France, Germany and Poland. But by dint of its its geopolitical position, its wealth, its population size. Germany has a responsibility to lead. I think a lot of German citizens, if you look at German opinion polls, would acknowledge that. And in fact, this government would acknowledge that. But, you know, there's there's a new opinion survey from yesterday about whether to send men back to Poland or not. And 46%, a plurality of those asked said that Germany should send them, 43% said it shouldn't, that for the first time a plurality in favour. But you know what? That's a 3% difference. You could see that the population is split on this. Of course, the answer I would have to that is well, that is an occasion for leadership, but it's when a politician sort of makes his mark by by taking a principled stand.

MG: You're hearing rhetoric from Russia saying that if Russia were to lose this war, this could trigger a nuclear war. How concerned should people be about that and about the larger piece of action here that the more weapons and the higher grade weapons that are sent to Ukraine, the greater the chances that this war will escalate further.

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: I want to emphasise again that this is a really important criterion and one that has been important not just in German debates but also here in Washington, D.C. And I think that for an elected Democratic politician, to be prudent is not just a virtue, it's a responsibility. I think the question to ask is, is this prudent and is it working? And there is a sense, you know, I suppose the great debate in the West right now is our choice is between between prudent trade, between being prudent and avoiding escalation and being helping the Ukrainians make a push to push Russian forces out of their territory. And the argument there is, is we're avoiding exhaustion not just of the Ukrainian forces, but exhaustion of Western publics whom are being at the same time targeted just as much as the Ukrainians are by the Russian indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and civilian dwellings. And I take seriously any politician who who takes escalation seriously. But I think it's also important to say that that argument has been made at every step of the way of weapons deliveries since Russia's invasion on February 24th. First anniversary's coming up. And every time there were statements from the Kremlin saying that this was the red line, that must not be crossed and it didn't happen. So, unfortunately, this what we're looking at here is a decision between not a risky option and a no risk option, but between two risky options, not a classically tragic decision. That is is what happens in great politics. But but my my, I personally think that the argument that heavy weapons deliveries will prove this country has been tested several times and has not proven it to happen.

MG: Constanze Stelzenmueller, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

CONSTANZE STELZENMUELLER: It's been my pleasure.

MG: Constanza Schlozman is director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. She was in Washington, D.C.. Canada has pledged to send 200 armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine. And there are questions now about whether Canada should also send the heavy tanks that Ukraine really wants. Richard Shimooka is senior fellow at the MacDonald Laurier Institute and expert on defence procurement. He's in Surrey, B.C.. Richard, thank you for joining us.

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: Thanks for having me.

MG: In a way that the average person could understand. Can you just briefly, I guess, first off, explain the difference between the armoured personnel carriers that Canada has promised Ukraine and the leopard tanks that Ukraine is asking for?

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: So there are two types of armoured personnel carriers that we've, we've committed in three. In the fall we committed around 39. They're called armoured combat support vehicles axes. These are also known as lab stickers that we utilise in Canadian service. These are sort of the heavier vehicles that allows or allows troops to be moved around the battlefield. They're fairly heavily armed. You saw them quite a bit in Afghanistan or earlier versions of those. The 200 light armoured personnel carriers, the Rochelle senators, they're more like heavy, heavy trucks that have armour on them. They look a lot like Humvees or yeah, Humvees are probably the best example you could think of out there in the in the public sphere. Right. Those vehicles are basically, again, for light moving troops around, utility around around the battlefield. They're not really intended for heavy combat. More sort of light duties. That's very different from tanks. Basically, tanks are a crew that four, four crew members, They are built around heavy armour, a large gun that's really designed to basically attack, to direct fire other tanks or armoured or heavily armoured positions or whatnot. So they're very kind of different roles.

MG: Canada has about 100 of these tanks that were purchased during the war in Afghanistan. What do you think is behind the hesitation or the reluctance to offer them to Ukraine?

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: It's really that Canada's force design was for when we acquire those tanks is really there's really not much sort of extra surplus of tanks that can can kind of give out without actually detrimentally harming its combat capability in the future. So that's we do understand is that we have around 80 to the sort of just the tank, the pure tank variant. There's there's also armour cover vehicles and engineering vehicles. But really it's the 82 that sets the core capability. And 82 doesn't actually mean they have 82. That's always ready to go. You're actually working backwards from a from around 20 that candidate can sustain in the field and deploy and deploy, let's say in Latvia or or as we did in Afghanistan. And from that to work back from there, you have about half of those are another 20. That are kind of spares that are being upgraded or refurbished. And then you have another 40 beyond that which are utilised for training in Canada. And those ones are not really appropriate to be sent to send abroad. They're they're not a great material shape because the Canadian forces tend to use them sort of in a rough fashion in order to train their troops. And they're not intended to really be sent to combat. That makes sense.

MG: You could imagine the Ukrainians making the argument and perhaps others as well, that war is happening right now in Ukraine. We have these tanks and if we're just going to keep them in reserve, why not send them to Ukraine where they could be used in this fight? What's the response to that argument?

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: It's can it can send tanks. It's not to say that we cannot. But you're really looking at you're really going to harm Canada's capability in the future years because we just don't have a surplus. There's a difference in on how can it designed its force in, you know, in the late 20 tens versus how there's European states who have a legacy force of those tanks. May was have a 100 or so in storage that are not being used at all. So if we were to utilise our tanks and and sort of, you know, donate like, say ten or 20, that would really harm us in the future years in order to actually provide even training for our own troops or even placing Ukrainian troops. Right. Whereas there's other areas where can I can contribute that would probably be more effective to some degree or or be a better use of our resources and also help the Ukrainians more than if we were to give sort of the small number of tanks that we have just because of the way that we built our force really doesn't make it easy often for Canada versus other countries.

MG: How much more can Canada do, do you think? We hear a lot of stories about how stretched our military is? We saw stories about how Canada is buying weapons to send to Ukraine because you don't actually have the weapons that that Ukraine is looking for. How much more can can a power, a country like Canada realistically do here?

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: Quite a bit and I think-.

MG: Quite a bit.

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: Yeah, quite a bit. I agree. And I and as your previous guest suggested, I think it is important in my personal opinion that we should provide Ukraine is what they need to continue their effort against the Russians. I think one of the areas that we can provide is continuing on with with deliveries of the armoured combat support vehicle. It's a good vehicle for what the Ukrainians need. It's it's not a sort of flashy capability, like a heavy like a main battle tank, but it certainly provides a better capability than what the Ukrainians are because they're currently using a Soviet era armoured personnel carrier called the BTR. And that kind of capability. Our what we're providing them, the SCV is certainly much more capable of that and allows them to operate much more effectively and move their troops around much more effectively than they currently can. So if can, it can kind of continue that process of delivering and sustaining those troops and sustaining those those vehicles and also also maybe train them, bringing them maybe perhaps to Canada and sort of really simplifying the logistical situation for the Ukrainian troops and the sustainment of those vehicles. That's a pretty big plus for the Ukrainian forces. Again, it's not nearly as as as sort of a attention grabbing offer, as, you know, sending our celebrities. But it really would help the Ukrainian Ukrainian government and provide other capabilities as well.

MG: We're just about out of time, but you were very quick to say that there's more that Canada could do for people in this country who might be uncomfortable with what Canada is doing already and might be uncomfortable with more going to Ukraine. Just very briefly, why would you say that we in some ways have a responsibility to do more now?

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: We've been we've been part of Ukraine's kind of history for quite some time, like since the since the end of the Cold War. Canada's provided quite a bit of material support, support on democratic and political form within the country. And there's there's a very large Ukrainian population in this country that really all want to see Ukraine prosper and sort of bill itself as a as a strong nation. And I think what has happened specifically since 2014 and, you know, since since February last year. All right. Really, we need, I think, to to show that there is a common Western community to sort of descend or to that that we share these values and we're willing to defend them. And this is one of the easiest and probably the most important places where we can do so.

MG: This meeting is happening in Germany right now. And the word just now from the German defence minister is we cannot yet say at what point there will be a decision on leopard tanks. So we may well indeed come back to the story. In the meantime, Richard, appreciate you being part of the conversation this morning. Thank you very much.

RICHARD SHIMOOKA: Thanks for having me.

MG: Richard Shimooka is a senior fellow at the MacDonald Laurier Institute and an expert on defence procurement. You're CBC News with the latest on the war in Ukraine is up next.

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And then this isn't a program for people who like singing in particular. And lots of the people who continue to come are the ones who, when I initially meet them, are great pains to explain to me that, you know, they won't be taking part in that because they really hate singing.

MG: A new program from the English National Opera is giving hope to people with long COVID. Even if you hate opera and you couldn't hold a tune to save your life. This fascinating story coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

How the English National Opera is helping long COVID patients breathe a little easier

Guests: Suzi Zumpe, Dr. Joanne Herman

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to the Current. Still to come, shining the spotlight on online misogyny, but first, singing songs of long COVID.

[Music: Theme].

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VOICE 1: So let's start with doing our [unintelligible] soujnd. So do that for me.

GROUP: Mmmmm mmmm.

MG: Show me where it's going with your head so I won't...

GROUP: Hmmmm. Ammmm.

VOICE 1: So good. I love it.

MG: That might sound like a singing class for beginners. And it is. But it also has a larger purpose. The participants were all living with long COVID, and the instructor is from the English National Opera. The program was designed with experts from Imperial College London to help long COVID patients with recovery. A recent study published in The Lancet showed promising results with participants reporting a better quality of life and reduced breathlessness. Joining me now is Suzi Zampe, who is the program's creative director, and Dr. Joanna Herman, an infectious disease physician who participated in the programme. Good morning to you both.

SUZI ZUMPE: Morning.

JOANNA HERMAN: Good morning.

MG: Suzi, can you describe what we what we just heard there?

SUZI ZUMPE: It's very weird hearing it. Yeah, I guess that was a class. So in a breeze takes place over six weeks and we have six hour long classes. And that was a little snippet of a little bit of a vocal warm up for participants.

MG: ENO Breathe as the English National Opera Breathe. That's the name of the programme.

SUZI ZUMPE: That's correct. Yeah, that's right.

MG: And what are you actually doing there?

SUZI ZUMPE: So in that exercise, we are warming up voices, but also looking at the coordination of breath and voice. Because often if people have experienced breathlessness and if breathing doesn't feel easy, then there's lots of knock on effects around, tension around voicing. And so looking at the coordination of breath and voice and finding, I don't know, I guess, like little bits outside of where you would speak in your naturally spoken range. All of those things help us to find greater ease in producing sound.

MG: Dr. Herman, you were part of that exercise. What was it like doing that?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Firstly, it was great fun, and I have to say that when I first started, it was just an immense sense of relief to belong to a group of individuals sharing this whole pretty ghastly experience of long COVID. But the sessions were I mean, I didn't know what I was going to what I was signing up for. So I thought it would be some some breathing and some singing. But it was so much more than that. I mean, an hour of sort of pure joy and fun and extraordinary exercises that really was so beneficial in so many ways.

MG: I want to talk about the broad impact of this. But you said a couple of times how much fun it was. It sounds obvious in some ways, but why is that important?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: I think with long COVID has been a roller coaster, really of both physical, sort of an emotional roller coaster. And I'm coming up to three years in March this year, and it's been very isolating. Our lives have been completely suspended. I myself haven't even been able to return to life as an infectious disease physician in the NHS. So having that bit of joy and fun burst on to your screens for an hour a week is has been really important and really uplifting and energising.

MG: Suzi, where did this idea come from that the English National Opera would help people with long COVID?

SUZI ZUMPE: It's an interesting question. I mean, I think we're all sort of such a long way through and into and almost beyond, but not quite pandemic that it's quite hard to think back to those very early days. But initially, certainly in the UK, any sort of art music completely collapsed and singing was really rebranded as one of the most dangerous things you can do, which for my industry was pre-COVID Japan and and English National Opera, I think was so inspired in terms of a creative approach because the first thing that happened was that the costume department started making scrubs for, you know, PPE for NHS workers, which was kind of amazing. And out of that relationship with Imperial College Healthcare Trust was born. And that's where the initial idea for this came. And I guess it was looking at thinking about the idea that, you know, singing is all preoccupied with breath, but we perhaps approach things as musicians in a different way than a medic or a physician would. So what's been exciting has been working together with a multidisciplinary team of people with lots of different expertise and exploring what we might offer together.

MG: Tell me more about that and what you offer that's different when it comes to breathing in particular. Tell me more about that and what specifically you're doing.

SUZI ZUMPE: Yeah, sure. Well, you know, when you breathe to sing, you breathe in a way that is emotionally connected with the music that you're about to engage with. And when that happens, you're not focussed on the minutia of different bits of physiology. Whereas for people with Long-covid who've perhaps suffered for a long time and done lots of so. Research into what they might be doing. They might have got very lost in the tiny little bits of which muscles should be moving where or what should be coming out, or whether you should be pushing or pulling or this, that and the other. And I think by exploring together through using lullabies as our emotional core for the program, there's a slightly different route which people can find quite helpful.

MG: So in that now lost Joanna this as well but in that warm up that we heard where yeah yeah I mean what's going on there when it comes to people's freedom.

SUZI ZUMPE: So, that one, well, it's interesting. I mean, that one is tricky to show things with purely with breath on the radio, isn't it? Of course. But what's interesting there is that what people are doing is making NGs, an 'nnnn' sound and using that sound just to kind of explore a little bit the vocal range and the bit of voice that we speak and get lots of use. But as we get older, you know, we're less likely to use the extremes on either end. And by coordinating breath and voice, so on an energy sound, you kind of can't do yourself much damage. It's a really gentle, less impactful way to use your vocal folds than speaking or singing. So by using moving that around, you just sort of begin to coordinate breath and voice a bit differently. And because what they're really doing is writing their names as signatures. So in that exercise, the energy sound is kind of vocal ink, and the finger of their writing hand is the pen, and they're writing their signature. So if I was to write my name, which is Suzi, it sounds like this: 'Mm hmm'. So because they get out of their heads and into their bodies, that's one of the things that is, I guess, an advantage.

MG: Dr. Herman, when you were doing that, I mean, you've talked about that being part of something larger, which I think is important, and I'll ask you more about that in a moment. But as you were doing that physically, what was going on in your body?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: I think as soon as Suzi said, you know, the experience, taking your mind away, distracting your mind with sort of breath and so I think is really important. So it just takes you out of your physical symptoms and focuses on something else, much like any breathing practice does, whether it's yoga, sort of pranayama practices as engaging part of your parasympathetic nervous system, which I think many people with long COVID have a sort of dysfunction in that part of the system, which leads you to be in this sort of want but tired state for a lot of the time. And I think by engaging with breathing practices which we know engage that part of the nervous system that needs to get back into balance. So I think it's all sort of linked in a really important way.

MG: You mentioned the idea of taking your mind out and away from where you're at right now. And you wrote a piece at the end of last year about what this is all been like for you and in some ways said you're living in the Twilight Zone. What is that like right now?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: It's been it's been a really, really tough time for myself and I know for many other people with long COVID. So you certainly feel that life has been suspended between the life. You knew what I call b c before COVID, where you actively were working, you were engaged socially, you did your sports, whatever, and now you're kind of forced by this disease to live within different confines, different parameters. So, you know, I can't do the things I used to do very actively. I have to be very limited about social engagements. I might manage a couple of hours with dinner, with friends, but then I might need to go and have some time on the sofa, you know, going to the to the piano to sing on the stage at the Colosseum was like a massive feat just to even get there. And I'm not a hugely forward sort of one train ride about 40 minutes away. I mean, I still really feel life is very much suspended. But at the same time, when I look back and think what I could manage, say, a year ago, a few months ago, month on month, I'm making steady progress, but it's painstakingly slow.

MG: Because I say, how are you doing today?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Today I'm not too bad, but I knew I had this today, so I was being quite careful this morning.

MG: I'm really I feel fortunate that you took some time to speak with us. I want to play a little bit more of this programme in action. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

Everyone: One two three four.

[Vocal sounds]

VOICE 1: Pick up the cake. It smells amazing.

GROUP: Mm mm.

MG: You have to explain what's going on.

SUZI ZUMPE: I know it sounds like we've all joined the word count.

MG: I wasn't going to say, but continue.

SUZI ZUMPE: So, I mean, what I love about this particular exercise, this exercise is called spell casting, and that's what people are doing, that casting a little spell. And I do explain as part of the program that the things I'm asking them to do are not purely because I think they're amusing, but give a lot of context and explanation around what each of the elements of an exercise are. However, people can engage with the explanation as much or as little as they like, but if they remember the narrative, the story of conjuring a cake that's too hot, that burns your tongue, that you swallow. And then that comes back to haunt you. That's all you need to remember, really. And, you know, at the end of that, you have warmed up your reflexive breathing, so warmed up your intercostal muscles, the muscles that if you were going to chow down on some spare ribs, those are the ones you'd be eating. And then what else do we do? We've raised the soft palate. We warm up our vocal range. We give our tongue a stretch. All of these things that are just really good for coordinating breath and voice. And so if you've got a whole load of meetings or lots of commitments online and you're breathless, you might feel very anxious about any presenting or conversing that you have to do as part of that. So this kind of thing can help line people up for success and give them a bit more confidence, really.

MG: Dr. Herman Is it fun too, to have a lot of fun and be a little silly in the. Midst of everything that you're going through?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: And if any of the family tends to walk in when I'm doing this, they just think it's hilarious. Like, what on earth are you doing? It can't be anything to do with long COVID, but it is. And what was the other thing I was going to say is that people have used these techniques and fed back to me as well, that they've used it before meetings. And it's really helped them with speaking, calming down, finding their voice. It really is extraordinary how well it works.

MG: Suzi, what were you going to say?

SUZI ZUMPE: I was just going to say one of my favourite things about this exercise in particular is I don't know what we're saying to dogs and cats in the world, but bearing in mind that everyone is on Zoom and we're sort of having these tiny little windows into people's lives, this is the moment when cats and dogs come to molest them and, you know, feel terribly anxious about their owners. And there's something so beautifully human about, you know, all these pets crashing into check. Everyone's okay. I love it.

MG: Joanna, I've spoken to a lot of people who are going through Long-covid and the thing that they have talked about in addition to their symptoms is just how isolated they feel. What is it like just to be with other people doing something like this?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Oh, I think it's wonderful. I mean, it's been a lifeline for many. And I think it's also you know, it's been part of a group who have really a silent understanding of each other's illness. We don't need to explain ourselves. We don't need to excuse ourselves. We don't need to say, oh, yes, I still can't work because people are often incredulous that, you know, two years plus and you still can't get back to work. But you look. You can look okay. It can be an invisible illness. So I think being part of that, not having to justify yourself or anything is really essential. And out of my group that started together, we've we've become a kind of die hard group of about eight who are still in touch regularly on WhatsApp. We laugh, we cry together, we share coping strategies. We pick apart employment law when people have been dismissed from employers, etc., etc.. So it's been for me, and I think for most of us on the program, we all say the same. It's just been an essential lifeline when so many of us are still not getting the help we actually need from the NHS.

MG: Suzi mentioned lullabies earlier. Where's the place of lullabies y lullabies in all of this?

SUZI ZUMPE: They're just they're so universal. I mean, like, wherever you drop down in the world, people would know what a lullaby is and what it's for. And in fact, if you were to travel back in time, the same is true. Like they are just in the very fabric of our humanity, but also they are perfect for non-specialist singers. So that's that's who passes them between each other down the years. And so they're a little bit sort of outside of spoken range, but by and large, not massively. So they feel achievable, but the phrases are more exaggerated than what you do with your breath in speech. So from a kind of purely physiological point of view, they're really useful, but also emotionally, they are perfect for us because everything that we want to do around this programme is connected to calming and soothing in terms of what's happening with people's breath. And you know, that's what's happening here, really.

MG: Dr. Herman I don't know whether you had some sort of secret desire to be on stage in performing or when. Maybe you do. Maybe you have a, you know, a side life of being on stage or not. But is there if not, is there any part of you that was at all shy, reluctant about singing with other people?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: No. I mean, I've always enjoyed the music's always been a part of my life anyway. And actually, my favourite lullaby of all time has been something called Abbey Yo-Yo. And probably a year or so ago I said to my WhatsApp group of our dreams would be to try and sing Abba Yo-Yo on the stage at the Coliseum. And that happened last year, the end of December, actually barely a month ago, which Suzy told me subsequently it was her idea or, you know, she'd already had that in mind. So I would say from the beginning.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Yeah.

MG: Suzi, for people who I don't know, maybe people don't know this lullaby. Can you give Yeah. Can you give us a little bit of it?

SUZI ZUMPE: I can, yes. [unintelligible] was made famous in the West by Pete Seeger. But it's a South African lullaby, and the story of it broadly is that Abiola is a monster who comes and terrifies children. I think he might even threaten to eat the children. But his weakness is that when his name is sung to him, he falls asleep. So. So that's the story, the lullaby. But I'll send you a little bit of it. You have to forgive me because I've got a broken arm at the moment, so my-.

MG: Oh, my goodness.

SUZI ZUMPE: Ukulele playing is a bit shonky, but it's just about possible. [Plays music] So it sounds like this.

SUZI ZUMPE: [Sings]

MG: That's lovely.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: It is sweet.

MG: What was that like? I mean, that's your favourite lullaby you said Dr. Herman.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Yes, I think I have a strong connection to South Africa, having lived there and worked there for a bit. And it was the first thing we sang and just the whole thing just felt very connected to me. So yeah, I just love it. It's simple and it's just it's very evocative.

MG: And so singing it on Zoom with people that you've never met is one thing. But you've mentioned a couple of times being at the Colosseum. This is the London Coliseum.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Yeah, it was the London Coliseum.

MG: He got on stage together and performed. What was that like?

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Well, let's say there was no audience except for a few of the No Breathe team. And if you are.

MG: Still a performance, if you're on a stage in front of anybody.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Oh, it was it was magical. It was exhilarating. Magical, very moving. I mean, we had people some came in wheelchairs. Some were struggling to walk, some were struggling to breathe. But it was it was that sense of community. It was just the realisation of something that was really, really, really wonderful.

SUZI ZUMPE: There were a lot of tears. I think the thing that was so special about it is that as a group, you know, people who continue to engage with this program beyond those six weeks, some of them like did the pilot, which is like two and a half years ago. Now it's ages ago, and they still come to these weekly drop in sessions. But none of us have heard each other because, of course, Internet latency means that everybody is muted. So although you can see that people are singing and people can hear the leader singing. So me, if I'm leading a session, actually you don't hear other voices. So that first moment of hearing each other on stage was, you know, profoundly moving and profoundly moving and quite hard to lead because I could see all these teary faces. I'm like, Oh my goodness, you have to stop crying or I won't be able to manage to listen. But it was really, really gorgeous.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: I've seen even just hearing Suzi mention it again, it gives me goosebumps because I completely was filled with goosebumps and it was just very emotional. It was it was really fantastic.

MG: Well, and it really speaks to this is something that you said at the beginning, Suzi, but how in the early days of the pandemic, when everything shut down and people thought that music was this thing, that was the last thing that you could possibly do, and kids and schools and choruses and church choirs and operas were all put on the shelf because this was not something safe. Well, it speaks in many ways to the power of music and what that power can do. What have you learned about that through this program?

SUZI ZUMPE: I set an interesting question. I mean, there's this beautiful Oliver Sacks quote, which I'm now going to butcher because I don't have it in front of me, but which is around how music both helps us to feel our feelings more deeply, but at the same time provides solace. And I think there is something so true about that. And, you know, you previously mentioned that sense of isolation that we all felt during lockdown and certainly here when everything was totally locked down. But, you know, that was so much more extreme for anybody with long COVID and in fact, for people who continue to be unwell. That feeling hasn't gone away. So whereas for some of us, life has got, quote unquote, back to normal to a degree. If that's not you, that's really that's really arresting and hard thing to live with, I think. And so moments of connection and music become more powerful as a result. I would say.

MG: What about for you, Dr. Herman, again, and I ask you this as somebody you said in March, it'll be three years that you have been going through this.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Yeah. Which is, I still find that hard to believe. You know, when I. When I got ill, I was over the acute infection. Within two weeks, I was, you know, a mild case by definition. So no risk factors? No, not admitted to hospital. And I remember ringing work beginning of April saying, now I feel much better now I should be back. But then I just went downhill again. So I think that sense of isolation has really been terrible, particularly on, you know, and it's like it is a rollercoaster. So on your bad days, you feel particularly isolated and lonely and you can't do things. So having like a regular thing to connect to is so important. And you know, music is a universal language, so it speaks to people in so many different ways. But it really for most people, it really sort of gets right to to them in a very positive way.

SUZI ZUMPE: The other thing that I think we should just say around singing and music is that, you know, Joe is somebody who enjoys, enjoys singing. And that's, you know, that's lovely. But this isn't a programme for people who like singing in particular. And lots of the people who continue to come back, ones who when I initially meet them, are great pains to explain to me that, you know, they won't be taking part in that because they really hate singing. And it's interesting because whereas singers think about breathing to sing, well, this sort of inverts that in that we are singing to breathe well. And whether or not you are already invested in singing and music and feel like it's something for you, there's something in this programme that will be for you anyway.

MG: A lot of conversations about COVID over these last three years. I don't know that I've ever had a conversation quite like this. This is fascinating work and it is remarkable and I'm really glad to talk to you both. Suzi, thank you very much.

SUZI ZUMPE: It's a pleasure. A pleasure.

MG: And talk to Herman. I wish you the best of health and thanks for for taking time to speak with us.

DR. JOANNA HERMAN: Thank you.

MG: Suzi Zumpe is creative director of the English National Opera's Breathe Programme. Dr. Joanna Herman, one of the participants. And she's also a physician specialising in infectious diseases. Well, coming up after your regional update, online misogyny has unfortunately become commonplace. I will speak with the director of a new documentary that goes offline to examine the real world impacts of these attacks on women and why she believes ending misogyny is key to protecting democracy. That's in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

Misogyny in the digital age

Guests: Guylaine Maroist, Laurence Gratton

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. A new Canadian documentary introduces us to women and girls who have been targets of online attacks, and it shows the deep impacts of this abuse on their lives. The documentary is called Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age. When it premiered in Quebec, it broke box office records for documentary film. We're going to speak about why this film resonates so much. Just a heads up that we are talking about some disturbing and graphic content. Guylaine Maroist is the co-director of the documentary and she is in Montreal. Guylaine, good morning.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Why did you want to make this film and why did you want to make this film now?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Well, in the beginning, Léa Clermont-Dion, the co-director also of this film, she came to see me. Léa is a very prominent young feminist in Quebec, and she had received threats, and it was 2015. This phenomenon was just starting. We were starting to hear about women being targeted, you know. And when Léa told me about that, I said, yes, sure. You know, it's a big involvement when you decide to make a documentary film. In this case, it was seven Years of Our Lives. So we took the time to really make an investigation before, and we realized that it was very pertinent. And I also realized that I had been targeted when I released a film in 2014 about a nuclear power plant in Quebec, and the nuclear power plant closed. So you can imagine some people were unhappy. So I had kind of tossed this away and I stopped talking, discussing the issue, which is exactly the point. You know, the people want to silence women who speak about certain issues, particularly feminists and politicians. So it's a very important issue, and that's why we decided to make this film.

MG: How do you think that harassment has changed, as you say, and as the title says, in the digital age, what's different now?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Oh, in the digital age, the first problem is that there is no law to protect women. Nothing is protecting women right now. Because it happens on these big social media platforms, there is no regulation and it spreads like crazy. And also the aggressors are not punished. So it's the far web and it's very insidious. You know, you've heard about that. It's becoming endemic. You know, women politicians are targeted

MG: Journalists.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Journalists, women who speak and even young girls. You know, it comes from everywhere. Like the case of Radia Parsons in our film, a young teenager who's been harassed. The thing is it's endemic and the women now fear speaking in public. I was teaching at UQAM here in Montreal last year, and young women were telling me, Oh, yes, we know about cyber violence and, you know, I want to become a politician, and I decided not to become a politician because I don't want to experience this in my life. So if we want to live in a democracy still, we need the voice of women and we need to protect women.

MG: That speaks to the title of the film itself, Backlash, Because you talk in the film about when this sort of abuse happens, when these attacks happen, and in part it mean it can happen to any woman. But you are often talking about when women's voices are heard, when they reach a level of prominence or a level where they have a public voice.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Yes. In this film, we follow four very strong women from very different backgrounds. One of them is Laura Boldrini. She is the most harassed woman in Italy. She's been harassed, you know, since 2014, 15, since she became a politician in Italy. And she was re-elected just now in the autumn, in a post fascist government that is there. So it has risen and risen tremendously. And what Laura tells us in the beginning of the film is yeah, you know, men were with us to a certain extent in all these rights we've gained and this power we've gained in the past hundred years. But now that we are close, you know, we're closer to getting there, there's some people who don't like that. And we are experiencing this huge backlash.

MG: I want to play a little bit from the film. This is Laura Boldrini talking about some of the attacks, as you mentioned, that she faced. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

LAURA BOLDRINI: Thousands of violent comments, death threats, grave threats. And then, a Mayor tweets, let's send a rapist to Boldrini’s house so she will smile again. A Mayor doing this has this strange idea, very dangerous idea about rape. This strategy is aimed at telling women and girls, you know, keep far. This is a business for men. Go back to the kitchen. Go back to the kitchen.

MG: That's the Italian politician, Laura Boldrini, talking about the abuse that she faced online. Again, these weren't, in many cases, anonymous voices. She talked about a mayor. It was a mayor of an Italian town. The tweet was about sending rapists to her house.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Yes. This is disturbing. And, you know, it happens everywhere. It's kind of a mild form we are experiencing here in Canada. But even in the U.S., the same kind of, you know, heinous content which are encouraged in the USA, it's becoming common. And we have another woman we're following in the movie, Kiah Morris, who was targeted by racist Alt-Right men. Max Mitch, actually we can say his name because he proudly, you know, insults people because, you know, in the U.S., it's the so-called freedom of speech that allows people to say these things, you know. What we are seeing and what is disturbing with this is that it's an ideology being propagated, and that anti-feminist, very sexist ideology that is making its way in people's minds, unfortunately. You know, in Italy, a right wing movement was elected, and it goes hand in hand with a sexist ideology very often, unfortunately.

MG: At the beginning of the film, you say explicitly that we decided not to interview the abusers. Why did you not interview them? But also, why did you find it was important to say that and to say who you spoke to instead?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: You know, before choosing to follow these women? We did an extensive research. We interviewed about 100 experts, including experts on legal issues in the technology as well. And we wanted to interview the abusers, but we realized that people don't understand what these women go through. You know, it's something to read this story in a newspaper, and it's something else to follow them in their daily lives. These women live in horror, and we need to understand how silencing these crimes are. And so we said, okay, our challenge, Léa and I, our challenge was to give the people, people who watch the film, to let them understand, to make them understand what these women go through. So we said, okay, the goal is to silence women, so we're going to follow them and listen to them.

MG: It's really the voice of these women that we hear from.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Yes. And their lives because we're following them. It's not just them talking. We follow them in their intimate, everyday lives to understand the horror they go through.

MG: Let's hear from one of those women. Laurence Gratton is a grade school teacher in Quebec. She is in your documentary. Laurence, good morning to you.

LAURENCE GRATTON: Hi, good morning.

MG: This is difficult to talk about, but you do speak about it. And we see, to Guylaine’s point, you living your daily life in this film. I want to ask you about these online attacks that you experienced. They started when you were in university. Tell me what happened.

LAURENCE GRATTON: Yes. So they started when I was a university student to become an elementary school teacher. And I was harassed online about, I would say, more than five years by a man that I met when I was studying in university. He was studying to be a teacher just like me. And I'm not the only one in this situation because he sent hateful messages and death and rape threats to a lot of my university colleagues too. So you see me in the movie and you also see two of my colleagues. And he wrote to us with fake Facebook accounts, which means that it was really hard to prove that it was him. And the investigation process with the police was long and complicated.

MG: Let's talk about that, those fake Facebook accounts. He was impersonating a woman who was in your class, right? You were led to believe it was another woman in a class that you hadn't met before?

LAURENCE GRATTON: Yes. In the beginning, it started like that. It wasn't like death threats. It was really hateful messages. And I was wondering who wrote those kinds of messages to me and to my colleagues. And it was long before we saw that she didn't exist. But he really created a few Facebook accounts with some young girl faces that looked like students from our program.

MG: How did that escalate?

LAURENCE GRATTON: In the beginning, it was really only hateful messages. Even if it wasn't funny to read those kinds of messages, it was only that. After like a year and a half, he got kicked out of the university program. And then the violence escalated to a point that it was death and rape threats that he sent to us, messages with our family members’ names in it. And we felt more and more anxious and we felt scared. So the violence really escalated.

MG: He cut and paste a photo of your head and attached it to a body on a pornography site. Is that correct?

LAURENCE GRATTON: Yes. Not only me, but a few of my colleagues too. So we're a group of maybe like 10, 12 women that got some messages after he was out of the program. So yes, he created some fake accounts with our Facebook photos on a website.

MG: What was the impact? In the film, you say that you could no longer live a normal life. What was that like to go through?

LAURENCE GRATTON: I mean, you tried to live your life just normally without worrying about anything. But I felt scared and anxious because you never know when the online threats are going to become a reality. And even if you want to think that he is never going to do anything and that it's just online, you never know. And you don't want to take chances with those kinds of messages. It's always like in the back of your mind. So it made me anxious.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: May I?

MG: Go ahead.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: In Laurence’s case, you know, one of these men from these sites came up to one of the girls because the addresses of the girls were published. So to me, that was completely disturbing. And I mean, you have to understand that it's a very understandable fear.

MG: Yeah. And so because of that fear, you went to the police, right?

LAURENCE GRATTON: Yes. I went to police with, again, a few of my colleagues. And we had to explain the story. But in the beginning, it wasn't so easy for them to understand that it was quite serious. They were telling us like, Oh, it's only online. He's never going to do anything. So you can see they didn't think it was a serious issue.

MG: What was your reaction when the police said that they could not do anything, that they didn't think it was a serious issue?

LAURENCE GRATTON: I was feeling sad and more anxious because the only place where you can get help with those kinds of violent situations is with the police. So I felt like I couldn't do anything. And they opened an investigation case, but it took quite a few months. So it made me more and more anxious with time.

MG: Guylaine, you filmed that scene with Laurence going to the police. What did you expect was going to happen when she went to the police and said, These are the threats that I'm facing, This is the fear that I'm living with right now. What did you expect was going to happen?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Well, actually, we were curious. We wanted to understand because we were hearing all these women saying, well, I went to the police and they told me to get off Facebook, you know. And we wanted to have the real answer, you know, the common answer. So Léa and I wanted to interview police officers and it was not possible. I guess it's a protocol they have. They cannot speak to people. So that's the idea we got, you know, we're going to put a mic on Laurence and just know what was the reality of it. And that's exactly what happened. You know, the person has good intentions. We think all these police officers have very good intentions. But first of all, they ban the lies. You know, they don't understand the extent of what this woman is going through and the possibility of a real threat. We're seeing it more and more. Unfortunately, these threats become real. And you see it in the U.S., just the Nancy Pelosi, you know. So there's a transgression and people can find the addresses of these women online. It's really easy. And that's why Léah and I said, okay, we need to find solutions to this issue as well. And we think that the police officers have to be trained, you know, to receive a formal training. It doesn't have to be long, but we have to stop analyzing this violence, this cyber violence.

MG: There is an extraordinary scene in this film, Laurence. You were in university to become a teacher. You graduate and you are now a teacher in a grade school. And you bring up this topic of online harassment in your classroom. And I want to play what happens when you bring this up and a couple of girls in the class talk about what they have gone through. And we should just say, this is in translation, and there are some swearing in this recording. But have a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

A guy on Instagram messaged me, Hi bitch. Then he sent me a picture of his abs. I felt really uncomfortable. It was really weird. He said, Hang on, I'm masturbating. It was so weird. I didn't know him. He called me a fucking whore. I don't know who he is.

MG: As a teacher, you work to make the students feel comfortable in talking about what they've gone through, and say that it's okay for them to talk about this stuff. How old were these girls, Laurence?

LAURENCE GRATTON: They were in sixth grade. So here in Quebec, in sixth grade, you're like 11, 12 years old.

MG: And when they told you what they had experienced online, given what you had gone through, what was your reaction?

LAURENCE GRATTON: I was amazed by their capacity to share their stories. And I felt like they were listening and understanding my story. But it was really incredible for me that they got to share their own stories and experiences with social media, because, you know, this generation, they're a lot more used to social media than us, and they really understood the importance to counter cyber violence.

MG: Guylaine, when you saw that play out, I mean, what was going through your mind?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: What was amazing with that scene is that, you know, the children were not even prepared. You know, we had told them, yes, we're going to speak about this issue, blah, blah, blah, we're going to film. And candidly, you know, out of, I don't know, 20, I don't know, they were 25 maybe, you know, a lot of them had stories. And we have been showing the film in schools, you know, in high schools and all kinds of venues, actually. And very often, there’s a professor or a primary school teacher who shows up and says, You see that scene, I experience that all the time. People don't understand what the children go through in the social media, and the children don't speak about it to their professors or their parents. We live in another world, and there seems to be a disconnection with what we understand of this world.

MG: This film has been a huge hit in Quebec.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Yes. You know, we're very happy with this. You know, it was number one in theatres, actually.

MG: Yeah.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Which is quite amazing for a documentary film.

MG: What does that tell you about this conversation? I mean, are you finding because of the success of this film, but to the moment that we're living in, that people are now having this conversation that perhaps they weren't having in past?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: I think people needed this conversation. I think that that's why it had an impact. And to our amazement, we want to have an impact when we make a film. But we did not expect this much because different kinds of media were talking about it not just one time, but several times. I think people need to have this discussion. People are afraid of what might happen. People are concerned for their children, for the women around them. And that's comforting to see the level of humanity people are showing. And I believe that we can change things. And we live in a quite progressive place. You know, it's not perfect, but I think we have the people that can change things, and we see the will to change things and try to regulate the social media and the Internet actually, to make it a better place for women and children.

MG: You've created tools in some ways for teachers so that they can talk about this as well?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Yes. There's a platform. It's not translated in English now, but it will be done in the next couple of months. It's called stopcyberviolence.ca. You can find resources for victims. You know what to do, how to protect yourself, but also tools for teachers, for high schools to demystify what is cyber violence, to tell people how to protect themselves. And also, we are doing a campaign. There's a petition online. It's stopcyberviolence.ca, in which we're asking training for police officers. But also it would be important for Canada to make a law. There is such a law that has been made in Germany. So a law that requires the social media platforms to remove heinous content in 24 hours, for instance. And if they don't do this, they pay a huge fine. In Europe, it's €50,000. But, you know, these social media platforms, they have all the tools to remove content. They don't because it pays. In their business model, it is a good thing because, as you know, heinous content and particularly misogyny attracts attention, and it's shared and it's liked. So, you know, they won't remove it if they're not obligated to do it. And the problem is that all these social media platforms, they are above our law. You know, we don't require them to obey our law system, which is not okay. If we still believe in democracy, we have to demand that they remove these content.

MG: Part of this was about, as you said, giving voice to these women who these attacks are meant to silence them. Are you confident having led this conversation, but seen a real response in Quebec, but now broadly to the film, that this will change, that now is the opportunity to change this?

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Yes. I'm very optimistic because I see the response. I see it in people's eyes that people want to do something about it. We're seeing, you know, people want to use the film as a tool, and we're very happy about it, to campaign and to change things. And yes, we can. You know, we live in societies, civilized societies. We made law systems. And I think we have to organize the Internet in such a way that it's a place where there is fairness, justice and no crimes.

MG: Laurence, just finally to you, how are you doing now? One of the things that you say in the film is that in some ways you still live in fear of another attack.

LAURENCE GRATTON: Yes. But I have to say I'm doing great. The greatest part of doing the film was to see people's reaction, and to have so many discussions with parents, students that saw the movie that were really interested in to counter cyber violence. So I'm doing great. It was a great experience in the end to do this film. And just like Guylaine said, I just hope that police officers will have the chance to get trained on how to interact with victims of cyber violence. That would be their next step for me.

MG: It's a very powerful film, and I'm grateful to speak with you both. Thank you very much.

GUYLAINE MAROIST: Thank you.

LAURENCE GRATTON: Thank you. Thank you so much.

MG: Guylaine Maroist is the co-director of the documentary Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age. Laurence Gratton is a schoolteacher featured in the film. They were both in Montreal. This documentary will be shown in weeks to come in theatres in Winnipeg, Kingston, Edmonton and Vancouver. And starting on the 6th of March, you'll be able to stream it for free on CBC Gem. That is The Current for this Friday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. We will leave you this morning with the music of David Crosby. David Crosby died this week at the age of 81. Founding member of the Byrds, the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. He shaped an entire Sound of Music during the 60s and 70s. As one of the godfathers of California's Laurel Canyon scene, David Crosby rubbed shoulders with and influenced the likes of Joni Mitchell, The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and more. Outside of music, he was both a dogged advocate for social and political causes, cannabis in particular. He was also a notorious curmudgeon and a delinquent, spending time behind bars for drugs and weapons charges. He was not the core songwriter of the groups that he played in, but his playing and harmonies were unmatched. and they often hated each other. But when they worked together, their harmonies in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were just astonishingly beautiful. This is from the 1970 album Déjà vu, CSNY, Teach Your Children. I’m Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Have a great weekend.

[Song: “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young]

Friday January 20, 2022 Full Transcript

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