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The Current Transcript for April 6, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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There's a general concern in the tech community, somehow the military industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly, if you will. I don't know how to say it any other way

GILLIAN FINDLAY: That is Eric Schmidt the former executive chairman of Google speaking last year. And the concern he's talking about that Silicon Valley's great technological breakthroughs from algorithms to AI could be harnessed for warfare is very real. This week thousands of Google employees wrote to their bosses demanding a new partnership between the tech giant and Uncle Sam be scrapped. They don't want their work used in military drones. We'll get into the controversy behind what's known as Project Maven. In our first half hour today. Also today, a trip to a kingdom teeming with fascinating life forms which may hold some invaluable insights for our future life. I'm talking about the Kingdom of Fungi.

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They are landing on me. They are on your food. They are n your lungs. They are on your skin. They are on each thing you touch. Some of those will save us, some of those threaten us. We're just beginning to understand which are which.

GF: And after that we'll take a listen to Red Velvet an all-girls group that are superstars in South Korea.

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The audience gave us a great response. They clapped a lot and sang along the end of the concert. So I was really touched.

GF: The concert they're talking about took place in the North Korean capital in front of an audience including a certain Kim Jong Un. As musical diplomacy it was pitch perfect. But can it really help get the North and the south singing from the same songbook. We'll ask that question in an hour. I'm Gillian Findlay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

Are killer robots inevitable? Tech world uneasy about use of AI in warfare

Guests: Ian Kerr, Gregory Allen

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In the 21st century a weapon will be invented like no other. This weapon be powerful, versatile means and indestructible. It will feel no pity, no remorse, no pain. This weapon will be called The Terminator.

GF: The cyborg assassin known as The Terminator was the stuff of dark science fiction back in 1984. But in 2018 the age of real autonomous weapons of war may be dawning and it's giving some at one of the world's biggest tech companies nightmares. This week 3000 plus employees at Google signed an open letter saying: "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war." The letter was in reaction to news that Google has partnered with the U.S. Pentagon to work on something called Project Maven. Not a lot is known about the project but Google has confirmed the goal is to use artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery which has some predicting it will ultimately be used to improve the accuracy of military drone strikes. From employees of a company with a motto 'don't be evil', that's not sitting well. My next guest says this story demonstrates an urgent need to curtail so-called killer robot technology. Ian Kerr holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics Law and Technology at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. And we reached him this morning in Ottawa. Hi there.

IAN KERR: Good Morning Gillian. How are you?

GF: I'm fine. Ian, what do you make of the letter that the Google employees wrote to their bosses?

IAN KERR: Well I think the letter is quite simple and it actually corresponds with a similar letter written by the Canadian AI community to Prime Minister Trudeau which I was a main signatory of. In both cases both of those letters are basically saying that the people who make develop and dream of all of these amazing technologies that we want in our society simply do not want to weaponize artificial intelligence. They want artificial intelligence to be used to good ends not to destructive ends.

GF: Well could you help break it down for us. Project Maven what you understand about it? What specifically are they, and I guess you, worried about?

IAN KERR: Well the idea behind Project Maven is to take personal information of people from all around the world for example through the use of facial technology - facial recognition technology as an example - as a means of helping to target and potentially use lethal force against individuals. And so the idea behind this is that the data can be used to train AI to be able to discern targets in particular ways. But what's impressive and important to recognise about a project like this, if you think about it, the world is still trying to come to terms with companies like Google and Facebook repurchasing our personal information without our knowledge and consent for targeted ads that are used to manipulate which products we buy or who we vote for. Now what we're seeing and what we're being told is that Google would be using our personal information without our knowledge and consent to help the Pentagon make targeting decisions, potentially about who to kill, maybe with maybe without human involvement.

GF: We'll get to Google's answer to that in just a moment. But I want to go back, you mentioned this letter that you wrote to Prime Minister Trudeau; I think it was last year. You talked about a clear moral line and your fear that that that line was about to be crossed. What is it that got you thinking that?

IAN KERR: Well the idea behind this so-called killer robot - which technically in terms that the United Nations we referred to as the autonomous weapons systems - is that you would delegate to the machine's system the ability to target and kill with no human intervention or oversight. That's what the technology would seek to do. And there's just too many people in the technology space and said moral citizens of the world who want to be clear about that and say we shouldn't permit AI to target or kill without any form of meaningful human control. And the idea of delegating life or death decisions to a machine crosses a fundamental moral line right. No matter who is using them. If you're basically playing Russian roulette with the lives of others because no human being by definition is involved in the decision making where a robot kills autonomously.

GF: Is this a matter of debate within the artificial intelligence community? Did you get support for your position?

IAN KERR: Well the letter currently has more than 500 signatories, mostly from people who work in the space in Canada but also from other people from around the world. When we sent the letter to Prime Minister Trudeau it had about 200 signatures of very very top people in the Canadian AI space. And since then the numbers on that letter have almost tripled. We haven't yet received a response of any sort from Prime Minister Trudeau but I would say that that is not a fringe movement. If you think of how new AI is and that it's just a developing field, that is a significant in percentage of people in the field. And the ban, the call for a ban is an important signifier.

GF: All right. And I want to have you stand by for a second and I'm going to bring in someone else who's been listening to our conversation. Gregory Allen is an adjunct fellow at the Centre for a New American Security. Last year he was the lead author of an extensive study called 'Artificial Intelligence and National Security' which was published through the Harvard Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs. And we have each Gregory Allen in Washington D.C. Good morning.

GREGORY ALLEN: Hello. Thanks for having me.

GF: Gregory Allen we're talking about this in the context of this letter that Google employees sent to their bosses saying they don't want to be involved - their company to be involved in warfare. What did you make of that letter when you read it?

GREGORY ALLEN: Well understandably large technology companies are wary about working with military and intelligence organisations. The ethical stakes are quite high and they need special assurances to feel confident that any such work is consistent with their values. Google itself has been quite cautious about working with the U.S. military in any capacity. For example Google acquired Boston Dynamics in 2013 which was a major military robotics developer. After the acquisition Google closed out all of Boston Dynamics as contracts with [unintelligible] and the military. I have been among those encouraging the United States military to pursue use of AI technology in a cautious and ethically conscious approach. The mission's scope and ethical safeguards surrounding Project Maven are exactly what I was hoping for and here I have to correct the record that the description that Ian Kerr gave Project Maven is not at all, not at all, what that program is about and what it is doing.

GF: Well what's your understanding of what the program's about?

GREGORY ALLEN: And I say this because I have closely advised the folks who are working on Project maven today and what I can tell you is that it is not about taking personal information from Google's data sets and using that in a military context at all, at all.

GF: Well what is it?

GREGORY ALLEN: Instead Project Maven is about using AI for computer vision purposes, meaning analyzing video and images taken from drones and then applying a minimal amount of analysis. It's important to talk about where the technology is and what it can actually do. This technology is counting things that are observed by drones. So it's saying 'in this picture there are five buildings. In this picture, there are three cars and there are two people'. It is not even at the level of characterising activity as in 'this person is walking'. It is not even at that level of sophistication, much less saying 'this person is consistent with the Google user ID X'. That is just completely divorced from what this technology is being used.

GF: Well I suspect, Ian, and you can jump in here, that the concern is while that may be what's happening now that this may be the beginning of a slippery slope that leads somewhere completely different. Ian, do you want to jump in?

IAN KERR: Yes sure. I appreciate the precision of the comment by Gregory but yes my point was more in the spirit of where these technologies can go. And I think it is indisputable that the vision behind machine learning in some of these contexts is precisely to make a veil of the massive data sets that are available to train AI to do things. And so if the project is in a nation state where as described I'm more concerned about the spirit, which is the fact that these companies have access to such amazing data sets and that the access to those data sets can be used for many amazing things. My concern is about when they are turned towards the ends that we've been talking about.

GF: And I want to jump in here and say that we did contact Google and to get a statement about the open letter and they in fact make it very clear in the statement that - I should probably read the whole thing. "Maven is a well-publicised DOD project and Google is working on only one part of it" and they say "specifically scope to be for non-offensive passes that technology - as Gregory said - was used to flag images for human review and is intended to save lives and to save people from having to do highly tedious work". And that's the end of the quote. So Gregory are Ian's concerns valid? You've talked about the need for caution here.

GREGORY ALLEN: Yes. And I would say that there is absolutely a legitimate concern about the ethical implications of the application of artificial intelligence to warfare but there is no way for researchers in this field to abstain from affecting global security by doing their research. Right now most artificial intelligence is published open source and openly on the Internet, meaning that these breakthroughs are available to absolutely everyone. And I know for a fact for instance that Russian weapon manufacturers such as Kalashnikov have announced that they are developing a fully automated neural network based combat modules today, and they are using research that was pioneered in universities in the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom. So publishing all of this research openly absolutely has an effect on global security and national security. There is no way for researchers to get around this. But I really am frustrated by the criticisms of the United States military in this regard because whereas Russia has said explicitly that they are opposed to a any kind of restrictions in international law on the use of lethal autonomous weapons systems, the United States military issued directive 3000 0 09 in 2012 which prohibits exactly the sorts of things that Ian has been expressing concern over, which is to say autonomous weapons unsupervised by humans. It is currently U.S. policy to prohibit all of those activities. And yet instead of praising the U.S. military for adopting these policies Ian and others are attacking Project Maven which is supervised by extraordinary set of ethical safe guards and is merely dipping a toe into the water of artificial intelligence. This is exactly the type of program I have been calling for as an ethically conscious very simple test type program. Other countries are being far more aggressive and it's important to point that out.

GF: But Gregory if other countries are being far more aggressive, you mentioned Russia I think China is also in this game, is there inevitability here, an argument that the United States will have no choice but to go down the same road despite the concerns that they may have?

GREGORY ALLEN: I think it's too soon to say that it's inevitable. I see the scenario that you are describing and I understand that in the year 1895 the great powers of the world got together in an international treaty and banned the military use of aircraft. Obviously that ban did not survive contact with World War One. And so the safeguards that the international system is thinking about and considering right now with regard to the prohibition of the use of AI and warfare are coming up against the fact that AI is an incredibly useful technology. Most of the leading researchers in this field compare AI's impact to the impact of electricity. While it would be laughable to try and say that we should ban the use of electricity in warfare. The only reasonable solution is to talk about the uses of AI that are and are not consistent with our ethical values.

IAN KERR: Can I jump in here?

GREGORY ALLEN: Just let me finish this thought. I believe that the United States and Project Maven in particular have been absolutely exemplary in identifying the uses of AI that are consistent with US values and these are the ones that we're pursuing.

GF: Ian.

IAN KERR: A couple of points. First of all the idea of the goal of being consistent with U.S. values. When we started off by talking about Google, one of the things that I wanted to say about that is I'm a citizen of the world. I'm not a citizen of the United States I'm a citizen of Canada. So my concerns are about Google as an international corporation partnering with the U.S. as a means of furthering US ends. And I'll just say this, I do agree to some extent Gregory with your claim that the U.S. has put forth policies to try to at this point maintain some human connection into the system. But I think you overstate the matter in terms of U.S. policy where the U.S. has been very clear that it is so far against the calls at the United Nations for a pre-emptive ban of technologies which would require meaningful human control. And the terminology in the U.S. is different than that and it allows for different things to take place. And it's problematic.

GF: Can I just jump in here for a second? You know we have allowed forms of computer intelligence into virtually every other aspect of human life. What's the argument? Why should weapons be off limits for AI, Ian?

IAN KERR: Well the idea isn't that weapons should be off limit. The idea is that we do not delegate control of kill decisions to weapons and that's the important point here, that we have to maintain meaningful human control when it comes to killing.

GREGORY ALLEN: Yes. And we already have seen the extensive use of automation in a military context. For example heat seeking missiles, missiles which lock onto targets automatically based on their being very hot. That technology has existed since the 1950s. But the United States has put forth policies regarding what types of aspects of military systems are acceptable to automate and which ones are unacceptable to automate. And as we incorporate new forms of automation, specifically including machine learning and modern AI, it is critical that we continuously revise and update those standards to reflect the state of the art technology. And that is exactly what we are doing and that is exactly what Project Maven is doing.

GF: Is there an ethical distinction between a machine that is given instructions to kill and a soldier that's given instructions to kill?

IAN KERR: I think so.

GREGORY ALLEN: The United States. Has the United States has been very clear on this that the responsibility, the moral responsibility of the use of lethal force does and shall always reside with humans. And that is explicitly the scenario that we are trying to avoid in which someone could say it's the system's fault. We want to make clear here that the buck stops with the human in the loop and that there will always be a human in or overseeing the loop.

GF: Ian, do you accept that?

IAN KERR: Yes. So I agree with Gregory on that on that point. That's crucial. And it's actually interesting if you look at the root word of Maven at the etymology of the word Maven. Maven is a Yiddish word and it's the word for an expert. And if you look back only to Yiddish legend and talk about Golem's the vision that we would hand over to an artificial machine various tasks and responsibility. The main lesson of the Golem was that the Golem should only serve a limited purpose and I think we have to draw the line at not letting artificial entities make choices of life or death.

GF: But do you accept what Gregory is saying that that line can and will be drawn?

IAN KERR: I'm sorry. I understood Gregory to be saying that he agreed that there always must be a human in the loop. There must always be meaningful human controlling kill decisions.

GF: But do you have confidence that that will always remain to be the case. I mean, especially if ours are potential enemies perhaps have a different standard or a different set of guidelines.

IAN KERR: Well let me put it this way. That is precisely the argument in favour of international treaty which is legally binding which would make it illegal in the military sense to use autonomous weapons where kill decisions are made without meaningful human control. We need precisely that kind of a treaty in order to ensure that that doesn't happen. And that would be great if the U.S. would come on board with that.

GF: All right I'm going to have to leave it there. Thank you both for your for your insights today. Ian Kerr holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics Law and Technology at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and he was in Ottawa. Gregory Allen is an adjunct fellow at the Centre for a New American Security. He was in Washington D.C. So stay with us now. The CBC News is next. And then a trip to the fantastic kingdom of Fungi don't turn up your nose from eating garbage to fighting bacteria. Fungi could be just the thing to save our species. I'm Gillian Findlay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Fungi offers promise of medical cures, cleaner garbage and better beer

Guests: Anne Madden, Gerry Wright

GF: Hello I'm Gillian Findlay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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GF: Still to come a troupe of South Korean performers made their way to Pyongyang this month for a rare performance, in the audience, North Korean leader Kim Jong un. It is just the latest example of international outreach through music. Half an hour we'll ask whether musical diplomacy ever really moves the needle and helps bring countries closer together. But first more than just mushrooms.

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Microscopic Mysteries inside a microscopic mystery. WE don't have to go to far off lands or distant places because there's new species underneath our feet. With each new species is the promise of a new compound that could be the next greatest antibiotic or a chemical that could cure cancer or something that we don't even know what it could do yet.

GF: So what is the microscopic mystery that has microbiologist Anne Madden so excited? Well it is fungi. Fungi, when we think about them at all conjures up images of mushrooms or for some scary diseases. They've been around for a billion years and yet we know so little. Five million species of fungi and we've only identified less than 1 percent of them. Today scientists around the world are racing to change that, excited by how much we still have to learn about fungi; the vital role they've played in the evolution of our planet, the role they might play in the future, everything from fighting disease to ridding us of garbage to well making better beer. This Sunday CBC Television's The Nature of Things airs a documentary called The Kingdom: How Fungi Made our World. One of the key scientists appearing in the program is Anne Madden. She's a post-doctoral research fellow at the North Carolina State University. And she joins us today from Cambridge Massachusetts. Hello.

ANNE MADDEN: Hi there.

GF: So we heard you in the documentary talking about the mystery of Fungi. What's so mysterious?

ANNE MADDEN: Where to begin. So fungi are these incredibly diverse species that exist all around us. Right now they're riding along on your shoes. They're in the air we're breathing and yet we don't know most of the species and we don't really know what they can do. And as a scientist this is so exciting because you don't have to go to far off places to find new species. They are right here.

GF: Well take me back to the beginning. Fungi, fungi - it's sometimes hard to know what to call them. People have different terms but what are they and what do they do?

ANNE MADDEN: Fungi are microscopic creatures that bizarrely enough are more closely related to animals than they are plants or other microorganisms. This is really strange because most of them exist as the single celled creatures. So we've all run into them if we've let fruit rot. You'll see them as these fluffy things growing on your strawberries and right next to them you might see something slimy that's growing that'll be bacteria. And yet those fluffy ones the fungi more closely related to us and these ancient species are creatures that are really good at creating different chemicals and enzymes and it allows them to digest their world as animals we tend to digest things on the inside we take in food we get nutrients from them fungi so often are kind of oozing out their enzymes and digestive juices into their surrounding space.

GF: Well I think mushrooms are probably the one most people would identify most readily as fungi. What are mushrooms?

ANNE MADDEN: Mushrooms are these glorious fruiting bodies of fungi. So many many individual cells coming together and they're helping the fungi disperse or move around their environment. Lot of fungi produce spores and you can think of them like dandelion seeds. So they'll get carried off in the wind to new spaces where whole networks of fungi can start growing.

GF: In the documentary. You talk about them as a third mode of life. What role have they played and how we have evolved? How life has evolved?

ANNE MADDEN: Fungi are really critical to our own story as animals. So fungi evolved at least a billion years ago and there are microscopic creatures that are particularly good at shaping their environment, again using all of these chemicals that they produce to break down their environment and making it more accessible for other forms of life. They have formed partnerships over the years with plants allowing plants to take in different nutrients and that shifting of our world, as plants began to grow, really shifted to how animals could take over the land as well.

GF: So would the world have evolved in the same way without fungi?

ANNE MADDEN: I think it's nearly impossible to imagine what our world would be like without fungi. They're a part of our story as much as plants are a part of our story. They allowed animals to colonise the world they allow plants to grow as they do. They are critical for who we are today.

GF: And so how to plant and fungi worked together today? What's the importance of that relationship?

ANNE MADDEN: We're talking about a large number of species. So there are a lot of different relationships and there. But one of the most elegant ones I think is the fungi that actually grow among plant cells and in the roots of plants and create an exchange, whereby the fungi are giving up some nutrients and the plants are giving some nutrients to the fungi. And they have this mutualism that allows the fungi to prosper and allows the plants to grow.

GF: And they actually communicate, don't they.

ANNE MADDEN: They do they're sensing one another and exchanging information.

GF: And how does that work?

ANNE MADDEN: It's through a number of chemicals and much the way that we can sense different things in our environment in terms of taste and smell. Those are all often mediated through chemicals the same way that fungi and plants are communicating with each other through a kind of chemical language.

GF: And what is the importance of that.

ANNE MADDEN: Without fungi a lot of plants couldn't access the nutrients that are needed for them to grow. Some fungi help these plants stay protected from certain diseases. In that role, the fungi are almost like an immune system of the plants or at least working with the plant's immune system.

GF: I'm fascinated by the fact that, as you say, have been around for a billion years and yet it sounds like we are just now beginning to understand how they work and why they're important. Why has it taken so long to understand them?

ANNE MADDEN: Isn't it crazy that there's something right in our own homes that we know almost nothing about? I think that part of the reason that we know so little about fungi in comparison to plants or animals is that they're small. And they're so small and oftentimes nearly invisible that it took science a long time to develop the right tools to be able to understand just what species are around us. And so in recent years there's been a lot of DNA sequencing technology that has allowed us to start to answer that question of what fungi are around us. With that we've found incredible diversity and it's allowed us to explore species that are doing things that we could have only imagined in the past.

GF: Let's talk about a bit of exploration and some of the research are doing. Here's some tape from the documentary that's going to be on The Nature of Things. Have a listen, it's you and some of your colleagues hard at work.

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VOICE 1: So here we have four different yeasts hat came from the different arthropods we were looking at. And you can see that the yeast look quite different. It got different pigments produced and they all have a different smell. We get kind of a fruity note in that one. Yeah that's likely going to come through in the beer, so you want to keep that in mind when you look through them.

VOICE 2: That's right. The yeast that was originating from the last body is now making a real force and you're about to print them.

VOICE 3: I don't know how I feel about that. Shall I feel good?

VOICE 2: Try it.

VOICE 3: Alright, here we go. Well that's quite good.

VOICE 2: Liked that?

VOICE 3: Yes. Waspy and delicious, little bit fungal too. I like it.

GF: Well that's some fun research, fungi and beer. What's that all about, Anne?

ANNE MADDEN: Yes. So there we're talking about some of our research looking at the relationship of insects and yeasts. And so insects and yeasts are both sugar feeders. They both have sweet tooth so to speak. And what we did is we used this knowledge at North Carolina State University to find yeasts inside insects, particularly wasps and bumblebees.

GF: And yeast too is a fungus. Is that right?

ANNE MADDEN: Yes yes. So one group of fungi - think of them as kind of like a group of family members - they're yeasts, and they're not very good at moving themselves around. They're not good at floating along like dandelion seeds. Instead they often rely on insects to move them around like airplanes. And so we use this knowledge to look and see what yeasts were in these insects and if any of those yeasts could be used in brewing beer. Now all the beer you've ever had are made with yeasts but typically a few species that have been known for many hundreds of years. And we found a species of yeast that is really distantly related to any of those species. It diverged maybe more than 150 million years ago and it wasn't used to produce any commercial beer, but we found that it could make a valuable sour beer in record time and it could make these flavors that are kind of like honey notes and fruit and flower or aromas. And this beer is actually harder to produce for craft breweries and this yeast actually saves them time and money. And so this was really exciting as scientists that we could show the value of microbial diversity and fungal diversity and show that it has a utility for humans.

GF: And I gather you're doing similar things with bread. What do you see is the potential for fungi in helping us in the future with things like food supplies?

ANNE MADDEN: So fungi are incredible. They are the source of innovation right now the yeasts that make our bread and beer are capable of doing so much more than producing alcohol. They're producing flavors, they're producing nutrients, they're transforming something that's really inedible into something that is healthy and nutritious. And these different species can do this in different ways. So as we find out how different fungal species can help us we can actually build better foods in the future.

GF: And there's also medical applications so, Anne, I'd like you to stand by for just a moment. We're going to bring in another scientist now to talk about his research and then and then we'll come back to you. Gerry Wright is the director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research and he's a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University. He's looking at how fungi might help us fight the pernicious problem of antibiotic resistance. And he's joining us today from Hamilton Ontario. Hi There.

GERRY WRIGHT: Hi how are you?

GF: Good. Well what first got you thinking that fungi you might have a role to play in this growing resistance to antibiotics.

GERRY WRIGHT: So I think many people know the story of the first antibiotic penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming. It was discovered from a Penicillium mold, a kind of fungus and a fair number of the antibiotics that we've since put into clinical practice over the years come from fungi or bacteria that live in the soil as well. As I'm sure most of the people listening are well familiar with the antibiotic resistance crisis that we're in that is the bacteria keep evolving new ways to get around these antibiotics that we discovered. So we thought well maybe because bacteria and fungi have been intimate for so long and if the fungi are producing antibiotics in a sort of game of tit for tat warfare maybe they've also produced compounds that block resist.

GF: Well you say they're intimate but in fact they have been enemies or are enemies. What how does that relationship work between the fungi and the bacteria?

GERRY WRIGHT: Yes I think it's hard to say what's happening deep down in the soil where all of this is really happening. I think certainly what they are, definitely they live very close together and they have for billions of years. And some of these things we call antibiotics or chemical signals that clearly have the ability to kill bacteria but bacteria have developed all sorts of interesting ways to overcome this. So it is kind of, you know people call it warfare, but I think it's like detente instead.

GF: Well what were you trying to do and how did you set out to do it?

GERRY WRIGHT: So we reasoned that if fungi are producing antibiotics then maybe they're producing molecules that block antibiotic resistance which is the challenge that we're having in the clinics today. And so we just set about collecting bacteria and fungi from environments around Canada in particular but also around the world, and just started looking to see whether or not they make stuff that overcome antibiotic resistance. And in the case that we talk about in the documentary we actually found the fungus from National Park in Nova Scotia that produces a molecule that blocks antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria.

GF: And that that's a huge development isn't it, potentially?

GERRY WRIGHT: Yes we were pretty excited about it. It made sense to us because you know these kind of fungi that it's called an Aspergillus. Aspergillus makes penicillin like antibiotics and so we thought well they make them than they might have a ways, they might also make molecules that block penicillin resistance or compounds like that and that turned out to be true. And there is definitely in them the potential to turn this into a drug and in fact that's what we're doing right now.

GF: What stage is that at this point?

GERRY WRIGHT: So we're still in what's called a clinical stage that it hasn't been in humans yet but it's been in several animal models of infection and it's proven to be pretty effective. And so we're hopeful, the compound has been licensed to a pharmaceutical company and they're doing all the really hard and expensive work right now to show whether or not we could actually turn that into a drug.

GF: Is this actually going to solve antibiotic resistance?

GERRY WRIGHT: If we're successful it will solve a small portion of antibiotic resistance for a period of time until the microbes evolve out of it. So the thing about antibiotic resistance is that it's because we're dealing with microbes that can evolve so quickly, they're always going to be ones that get away that fall through the cracks and become challenging in the future. So it's a constant effort that we have to be and to be able to solve this problem.

GF: How many fungi did you have to test to find the one molecule that actually worked?

GERRY WRIGHT: Well I'm embarrassed to tell you not very many. We only needed to screen about 500 strains of bacteria and fungi that we had just collected from the environment. The way that this work is that I sent my graduate students out with a mandate that when they go to someplace cool they should just pick up a little bit of soil if they can, as long as it's not illegal, and bring it back to the lab and we would isolate bacteria and fungi that live inside these soil samples. So one of my students went camping out on the East Coast and she came back with this sample and we just randomly collected microbes that live in it. And so in this pilot we only screened 500 and we found this molecule. So usually you hear stories of screens of millions of species. But this was serendipitous but also I think indicative of the richness of the chemistry that is being made by fungi in the environment all the time.

GF: What was that moment like when you realised that you had a positive result?

GERRY WRIGHT: Well at first I honestly didn't believe because we had only screened five hundred. So we went back and made sure and we regrew the organisms. And sure enough we were credibly excited. The really exciting time I must confess is when we were able to in a mouse we reinfected it with one of these superbugs that is resistant to our last line of antibiotics were able to rescue that antibiotic by injecting this compound that we had isolated from this fungus that was growing in the soil here in Canada.

GF: Right. Gerry Wright. Thanks so much for joining us.

GERRY WRIGHT: My pleasure.

GF: That was Gerry Wright who is the director of the Michael J. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University. He joined us from Hamilton Ontario. Anne Madden I want to come back to you now. That's an example of how fungi are being harnessed, the power of funds is being harnessed for the good. Are there others like that?

ANNE MADDEN: There are. So Gerry talked about how antibiotics and antibiotic rescuing molecules can come from fungi. But we also have a wonderful history of fungi helping us with other therapeutics. So a lot of people are familiar with statins or this class of chemicals that allow our blood pressure to get lower and these compounds were discovered in fungi in another Aspergillus species that you can often find in your home or on your shoe. Aspergillus made Lovastatin for Merck. So this is a chemical compound that is a blood pressure medication and it netted Merck think over a billion dollars. And that came from a fungus that's just circulating in our world.

GF: But there's a darker side too isn't there and part of the documentary that will air on Sunday goes into that, and I want to play you another clip now and this is from Karen Bartlett. She's a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia and in the early 2000s she was involved in researching an outbreak of the infection C Gattii Vancouver Island. And the C Gattii as I understand it is a fungus found in soil that can be lethal to both animals and humans. But when it first appeared in B.C. it wasn't clear where it was coming from. Let's take a listen.

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[Music]

Standing in the middle of these trees in the middle of literally a forest and not knowing whether it's going to be an epidemic or... It was pretty sobering. The second thing that crossed my mind at that point was that because I was the one there taking the samples is if I had a risk of coming down a [unintelligible] disease or not.

[Music]

GF: That's a bit scary, Anne, not all fungi are our friends. How do we figure out which ones harm us and which ones help us?

ANNE MADDEN: I think it's important to remember that out of all of the fungal species in the world so few of them can cause disease in humans. That doesn't take away the terror of those few species though. C Gattii think it's terrifying not just that it can kill humans but that it can infect trees and dolphins and dogs. It is really that thing out of science fiction horror movie. But I think it's important to remember that if aliens were to come down to the planet tomorrow and they were to meet one planet and not one plant was poison ivy, they might say 'Uh! Plants are horrible. They make lots of pain. They're awful. They cause itchiness. We should eradicate all plants.' And we know that that's not true because that doesn't give plants the credit of producing fruit and timber and all the lovely flowers that we know. And I think it's important to think about fungi in that same way.

GF: But there is a cautionary tale in here I think and the documentary gets into this, that C Gattii I was actually dormant until the world started to warm. Should we be worried about other potentially dangerous fungi that could be unleashed as the world continues to warm?

ANNE MADDEN: What keeps us safe from most fungal infections is our warm body temperature. Fungi typically don't like living at that temperature that our bodies exist at, and that's great because that keeps a bit of separation from us. We know a few species that can overcome that hurdle and those are the ones that we typically see as pathogens. Those are the ones that cause yeast infections or infections like C Gattii. And as our world warms there is a danger that fungi will increasingly become adapted to that warmer temperature and that brings them ever closer to being able to inhabit our own bodies as disease agents

GF: So where does the research go from here then?

ANNE MADDEN: Right now our lab is working on the microbial jungles of sourdough and other foods in fermented beverages and this is a space where fungi have been working with us to create more nutritive and better tasting foods and we've got to explore some of this by having citizen scientists from all over the globe send us samples of their sourdough. And we've used DNA sequencing methods to uncover what fungi, yeast, bacteria are in there. And from there we're starting to uncover some of the mysteries of these foods. So we're really excited about some of the results coming out of this and it's only the beginning, because as we look to fungi we see ever more diversity and ever more ways that these fungi can help us in terms of new therapeutics in terms of coming up with ways to break down pollution and doing things that we can only imagine.

GF: I think this documentary is going to open a lot of eyes to this whole field. I don't know that most people spent a lot of time thinking about fungi. Why is it important that that happen? Why is it essential for us to learn more at this point?

ANNE MADDEN: I think as humans that it's natural that we fear microorganisms because we often associate them with disease, and it's helped keep us safe in the past to avoid microorganisms and even avoid thinking about them. But we know that fear can also limit us. It can keep us safe in some respects but it can keep us from innovation and adventure and new discoveries. And that's where we are with fungi that we need to start exploring to be able to understand how they can help us build a better future.

GF: All right. We will leave it there. Anne Madden thanks so much for joining us today.

ANNE MADDEN: Thank you so much for having me.

GF: Anne Madden is a microbiologist and a post-doctoral research fellow at North Carolina State University. She was in Cambridge Massachusetts. The Kingdom: How Fungi Made our World airs this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. 8:30 P.M. in Newfoundland and Labrador on CBC Television's The Nature of Things. So coming up we're moving from a hidden kingdom to a hermit kingdom. A recent concert in North Korea was the latest attempt at musical diplomacy. But should we be singing its praises? That discussion in our next half hour. I'm Gillian Findlay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

How a k-pop concert in North Korea is the latest in a trend of musical diplomacy

Guests: Paul Rockower, Rebekah Ahrendt, Adam Cathcart

GF: I'm Gillian Findlay. Welcome back to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

GF: Well that is the music of Red Velvet, a South Korean pop group or K Pop band. one of the most successful groups working in that massively popular genre. While they may be wildly loved in South Korea, listening to red velvet north of the demilitarised zone would normally be a crime. But this week Red Velvet was part of the soundtrack to what some are hoping could be a diplomatic thaw. The band took part in a concert in the North Korean capital and among those in attendance was none other than the North Korean leader himself Kim Jong Un. It was the first time in more than a decade that South Korean musicians had performed in the north, then by all accounts Kim Jong un appeared to enjoy the show. But can a concert bring greater political harmony? In this half hour we're going to hear a few different perspectives on the power of musical diplomacy beginning with Adam Cathcart. He's a University of Leeds historian who has researched the role of classical music in North Korean politics. He's also a classically trained cellist and we have reached him this morning in Leeds England. Professor Cathcart, hello.

ADAM CATHCART: Good morning.

GF: Well I'm guessing by now you've seen and heard some of the video from that concert in Pyongyang. What did you think as you watched it?

ADAM CATHCART: Well I think the optics of it are certainly extremely striking. It's been a very long time since the South Korean popular music group has played in Pyongyang it has happened before. But Kim Jong Un attending the concert putting his own sort of stamp of approval on it and his very friendly behaviour with the musicians after the concert was certainly very striking and it's a good sign that the enter-Korean diplomacy seems to be working. And that's at least at the very top because of course North Korea is an extremely top down system, there is some kind of direction for perhaps greater openness and perhaps more of this kind of interaction. But that remains to be seen of how wide this is willing to go.

GF: Tell me about the kinds of restrictions that existed in the past. What if this music and been played by an average North Korean? Have they been able to get their hands on to it? What kind of penalties might have resulted?

ADAM CATHCART: Well I think those penalties are still in place. So this is the oddity of it that it's being lauded as a great moment in inter-Korean diplomacy but in fact North Koreans still have an extremely difficult time accessing outside information of any kind, but especially the taboo remains on South Korean popular culture artifacts. Most North Koreans who have access to South Korean media do it illegally from broadcasts from China most often, sometimes from things coming in on DVDs that are sold in markets or in USBs. And there are very strong penalties against consumption of that media or possession of it which is why people keep it inside their families or within their close circle of friends.

GF: What can happen?

ADAM CATHCART: Well people have been sent to sort of short term work camps. There's kind of six months in a rehabilitation center as they call it. But basically it's a very hard indoctrination on the other side and some people have been sent to longer term detention for example. So it's the thin end of a very very big wedge of North Korean state surveillance, and the state spends massive amounts of money to try to penetrate the networks that both technical and human that that allow that information to come into the country. People cannot consume it on North Korean made iPad's or tablet computers or phones. And so there's a very very lucrative trade. It's expensive and difficult to get that information and those kinds of performances in North Korea as it's highly disincentivesed by the state for legal reasons.

GF: So that's tightly controlled, the music coming in from the outside. But the regime has never hesitated to use music as a tool a propaganda tool I guess inside their own country. Have they?

ADAM CATHCART: No absolutely not. That's been there from the beginning a very Soviet style of music education from the bottom up, nationalistic content which is not so different in some sense from a lot of other countries. But what is unusual is the focus put on the leadership so much of that cultural production is about the leaders is geared toward the Kim family, now Kim Jong Un. And the music itself is connected at the highest levels, the most well-funded levels to the missile program and the nuclear program which sounds a bit strange. But in fact if you're watching the North Korean missile program or its nuclear program some of these people are specialists in this. They spend their lives trying to figure out what type of warhead North Koreans developed, is it really a hydrogen bomb that they've developed, have they miniaturised the warheads, these very existential questions, they get some of that information from the musical performances when the North Koreans broadcast images.

GF: We have a little bit of an example of that. Let's play that.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

GF: Well that's quite a contrast. That song was called 'Without a Break'. What's it about?

ADAM CATHCART: Well it has to do with advancing fast [unintelligible] at a break, without a break rather in a breath, so speeding forward. And it's about generally the movement of the country rapidly forward toward a technical deterrent of the outside imperialists, foremost the Americans. But also the ability of the economy to move forward at a quick clip as well in the kind of the militants speed at which this all happens. So this has to do with Kim Jong Un sort of sticking to your policy which he calls the Byungjin policy or parallelism which means 'we'll develop our nuclear deterrent and our missile programs and at the same time we'll develop the economy'. Which is exactly what the international community is trying to say cannot work. It's because of the nuclear program and the missile programs that we are sanctioning you so heavily and your people cannot have the goods and services that they deserve. So it's an interesting way for North Korea to kind of bundle it all together, have a girl band play it with electronic instruments purchased from abroad, to have kind of a disco beat that says 'we've got a new leadership, we've got a new strategic line and we're going to push this forward no matter what'. So in a sense it's a very old wine in a new bottle.

GF: So just quickly then the real question everyone's asking is this concert that took place with the K-Pop band, is this going to have an effect. Well I think it certainly will have an effect to young North Koreans who if only for just one day can see that there are performers down there on the southern part of the peninsula who are willing to come north, that there may be some possible future opening an exchange. The problem is that you have these very very strong youth groups, the Communist Youth League or the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League in North Korea, the Democratic Women's Union. There's these mass societies that the regime is really pushing and has pushed from the very beginning as levers of control. So they are being inculcated with very different data and very different ideas. And this K-Pop I think is just seen as basically by the regime. It is supposed to be seen as a moment of diplomacy rather than cultural opening. Adam Cathcart thanks so much for joining us. Adam Cathcart is a historian from the University of Leeds and he researches the role of classical music in North Korean politics. We reached him in Leeds England. Well North Korea is famously one of the most isolated countries in the world but there are a few Westerners who perform there over the years.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

GF: That's the New York Philharmonic performing in Pyongyang in 2008. The music is a Korean folk song popular on both sides of the DMZ. And in 2015 this group became the first Western rock act to perform in the hermit kingdom.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

GF: Wow. That's the Slovenian Avant-Garde industrial group Laibach with their cover of the 80s classic Life is Life. It's one of the songs they played during their visit to the North Korean capital. Evan Novak is one of the group's members.

SOUNDCLIP

We give them something that they've never seen or heard before. You know they were curious what are we doing and what are we doing it and why does it sound as it does. You know the same thing we got from them, in fact. They took us to the music school. They took us to some cultural places. They showed us the whole country. They took us around. They took us down to the demilitarised zone. And we had the chance to communicate with people.

GF: Helping to facilitate that kind of communication is both a profession and a passion for my next guest. He used to work with the next level the U.S. State Department's hip hop diplomacy program. Who knew? And he managed the State Department's American Music Abroad program, that's the successor to the famous Jazz Ambassadors that took artists like Louis Armstrong all over the world. Today Paul Rockower runs his own company Levantine Public Diplomacy. It works for NGOs and for foreign ministries wanting to tap into the diplomatic power of music. And we have reached him in Denver Colorado. Good morning Paul.

PAUL ROCKOWER: Good Morning Gillian. Thank you for having me on. Don Quixote at your service.

GF: [Chuckles] Well tell me about that power. Why do you think music is a good tool of diplomacy?

PAUL ROCKOWER: So I've been working for the last number of years trying to connect people through all the different kinds of intangibles, music, art, dance, culture, food. And these these basic intangibles work to connect people because they can connect through verbal and nonverbal communication and it really speaks to the history and culture but also it can help give a voice. So I got started running in music diplomacy programs with a NGO called American Voices which runs performing arts academies in countries in conflict. So Iran a performing Arts Academy in Iraq teaching jazz and breakdancing and theater in Iraq. And American voices had the grant for American Music Abroad. So I took different types of American music bluegrass, blues, Hawaiian music on different tours. I took a five female bluegrass band in Della Mae, it was Pakistan and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, took a Hawaiian slack-key guitar group to Brazil. Yes, all sorts of quixotic adventures. And through that I set up my own organisation Levantine Public Diplomacy which worked with alumni of the American Music Abroad Program to help them connect with U.S. embassies to run different types of programs. So Hawaiian music and Zimbabwe, Aloha Zimbabwe, or I took Della Mae the five year old bluegrass band to Brazil with the U.S. embassy for the World Cup.

GF: I get the picture but let's take a listen to what it kind of sounds like on the ground. You mentioned Zimbabwe and Aloha music. We got a taste of that. Take a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

I want to share this with you. Aloha means [unintelligible]. It's the same concept. We share that. We're all the same people and we have the same love

[Music

GF: It sounds like a lot of fun. What what was the reaction in Zimbabwe?

PAUL ROCKOWER: Oh the Zimbabweans loved the Hawaiian music because it was such a different sound and Hawaiian slack-key guitar is such a fluid form of music that you can incorporate different styles to it. So there was a real cultural connection between the Hawaiian slack-key guitar music and the Zimbabwean music, between the hula dance and different types of Zimbabwean dance. And I think that's the beauty of using music as a form of cultural connection is that it's so fluid that you can play with it. I mean artists and musicians make the best ambassadors because they listen differently and they incorporate different styles into their work that shows that they're listening and paying and touching other people's culture.

GF: Those cultural connections. Do they have a greater impact? Do they resonate beyond that? Can they actually influence political connections?

PAUL ROCKOWER: I think absolutely. For starters the cultural exchange programs are long term projects it's planting seeds and helping create you know various cultural infrastructures but also really making you know up and coming artists think differently about their music. So with the hip hop program that's how young artists how to use hip hop as a tool for social empowerment, entrepreneurship, conflict resolution. And so you see musicians getting to think about how to use their music differently in their communities how to be better artists how to be more involved through their arts, and this in the long term creates change. But you can look at any number of examples throughout the Cold War; the Jazz Ambassadors program influencing youth in Beyond the Iron Curtain. I mean kids used to listen to the transistor radios you know under their covers at night listening to Willis Conover's Jazz Hour and mimicking his gravelly voice. It helps socialise different values and I think in the long term it can create real positive change and impact.

GF: Well you say socialise different values. I mean what you call cultural diplomacy some would call cultural imperialism, right?

PAUL ROCKOWER: That's a fair question. I would say that the work I do is giving a voice to the impure lies. I mean Hawaii had been its own separate country and so getting to share Hawaiian music and culture is showing different sides of America. Hip hop is definitely not the establishment, getting you know hip hop artists who come from communities that deal with similar issues and problems as the countries we're working in, that creates a better connection. I mean hip hop artists are not traditional diplomats. They are diplomats using their music and they're ambassadors of their music and craft. So it's a different way of connecting. I would say that we stay away from the politics and most of that. I mean most of the problems I had on these programs were not politically related.

GF: [Laughs] Well but at the end of the day I mean a lot of these programs - and you worked for that for the State Department - I mean there are inevitably political, aren't they?

PAUL ROCKOWER: So I would say that all the partners get into it for different reasons and I would give the State Department credit. They back off and let their grand partners run the programs. So they're not telling the artists what to do, what to say, and really working on these programs we give the artists you know full rein and freedom to talk about and be critical of the U.S. if they so choose. So I would say that all of the artists and partners into this for different reasons. The State Department has its reason. I would say the universe North Carolina's music department which ran the hip hop diplomacy program, they do it for their own reason of trying to expand the boundaries of international hip hop. I do it for the reason of, I believe that you know connect building a space in which cultures can connect, can help further dialogue. I do it because I enjoy connecting people through music and through an art and dance culture.

GF: So as you watch that concert in Pyongyang what did you think? What impact will that have?

PAUL ROCKOWER: I think it's I think it's great. I mean I think any little bit to bring North Korea in from the cold is positive. I think again this is a long term project. You're not going to see the border between North and South Korea break down over a K-Pop band. But what it is is a long term awakening that hopefully you can get North Korea. And I think your last guest spoke well to the difficulties that it faces. But I think any little bit of light you can shine into the hermit kingdom is ultimately beneficial. And the more young people who are listening to K-Pop in North Korea is going to help North Korean society slowly transition, slowly, slowly transition.

GF: [Laughs] That's a lot of pressure on K-Pop. All right Paul Rockower thanks so much for your time today.

PAUL ROCKOWER: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

GF: Paul Rockower is a former cultural diplomat for the U.S. State Department and he now runs his own company Levantine Public Diplomacy. We reached him in Denver Colorado. Well it has been said that music has such charms to soothe the savage breast and perhaps that's why it's long been an important feature in peace negotiations and international summits. My next guest has been studying why and how nations have used music to further their interests. Rebekah Ahrendt is an associate professor of musicology at Utrecht University and the editor of music and diplomacy from the early modern era to the present. We have reached her today in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Hello.

REBEKAH AHRENDT: Hello.

GF: So how far back can we trace the use of musical diplomacy?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: That depends on how you define diplomacy. So if we think about the modern system of resident diplomacy that will take us all the way back into the 15th century, 16th century. And there is evidence of music being used in quite similar ways across the centuries since then.

GF: And why?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: Part of it is that music has a certain representational power. So if we think about the earliest instances in the 16th century it is very much to facilitate the representation of the state on an international stage. It also created opportunities for diplomats themselves to interact socially. Many diplomats were also performers right up until the early 20th century and even today we have diplomats who are performers themselves.

GF: You heard about the Congress of Vienna for instance. Give me an example of what kind of a role music played there?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: So the Congress of Vienna was unusual in that despite it being a major negotiation point for the end of the Napoleonic wars there were no plenary sessions. Instead all important negotiations took place in an informal face to face situations and often these occurred on the ballroom floor at dinners where there was music in the background. The diplomats in fact were often up until four or five in the morning at the various parties and bowls that they were invited to. Such was the emphasis placed on musical sociability that the press did then made the famous comment that 'le congres ne marche pas, il dance'.

GF: [Laughs] It doesn't go forward but it dances.

REBEKAH AHRENDT: Yes

GF: [Laughs] I mean it's amazing. Can you imagine the G 20 for instance? No plenary sessions but everybody just having a good dance at night.

REBEKAH AHRENDT: That would be interesting and actually there's an interesting video on YouTube at the moment of the European foreign ministers at a meeting in Turkey singing We are the World. So it still happens. [Laughs] But I must say too, one of the interesting features of the Congress of Vienna was that besides the major events and the balls there was also an orchestra that was organised by the diplomats themselves were they actually performed symphonic music together.

GF: My last guest Paul Rockower, who you were just listening to, he was involved with the successor program to the Jazz Ambassadors Program in the United States. This was quite important I believe. Who were the Jazz Ambassadors and what did they do? Why were they important?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: So the jazz ambassadors, after the end of World War II there was a need arose to start cultural programs abroad and a special fund created for the president to create such programs. And there was also a music advisory committee that was installed that was made up of music critics and composers and these colleges who were set up to advise on what kinds of performances or ensembles might be best to send abroad. The music advisory board was very concerned that it be high art music. The State Department felt differently and thought that it ought to be jazz. So Virgil Thomson who is a composer and one of the advisers said the State Department boys only want jazz.

GF: Why? Why did they just want Jazz?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: What they felt was that jazz was the music of the people. It was also a very American music. And so therefore could serve a double purpose of not only representing America on the world stage but also of reaching the hearts and minds of the people with a genre that was popular. So beginning in the late 1950s with artists like Benny Goodman or Louis Armstrong or later on Dizzy Gillespie, there were numerous Jazz acts that were sent abroad.

GF: Let's take a listen. We've got a little bit of Louis Armstrong here from a newsreel in 1960.

SOUNDCLIP

One of the most popular emissaries gets a warm reception as he arrives in Congo on a State Department's sponsored goodwill mission. Louis Satchmo Armstrong whose golden trumpet has preached the gospel of New Orleans jazz of every continent arrives in truly royal style.

[Applause and music]

Louis solid swinging outraged Radio Moscow which blasted Armstrong's visit as diversionary tactic - a lefthanded tribute to a mellow cat the Congolese find right on the beat.

GF: Of course it made Moscow mad and maybe that was the point. Do you think it really did have an effect that you can point to as you look back now historically?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: It depends on who you ask. So there were people who were involved in those programs in planning that tours who felt very strongly that it was jazz music and other cultural efforts that brought down the Berlin Wall in the end. What I would like to emphasise is that music maybe we shouldn't think of it as having but rather creating dispositions and opportunities. So what those involved do with those dispositions and opportunities is very much an open question.

GF: But you say the Berlin Wall. I mean would that be your analysis that it really did have an impact?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: Again it's very difficult to say if there is any direct impact. I mean Paul Rockower referred to long term effects. Some people have tried to analyse the role is diplomacy in terms of these long term effects but it's one of the things that is rather immeasurable. What it does create though, it's something Adam Cathcart referred to as well, is that these sorts of events, these moments of coming together and listening to music together, of experiencing music together do provide a good sign for observers of potential for improved relations. Whether or not those improved relations come about is very much open to debate and has to be seen as time goes on.

GF: So as you watch the concert in Pyongyang recently what were your thoughts?

REBEKAH AHRENDT: It was very much in line with efforts across the last few centuries. What is always of concern in planning such events is what kind of music is involved and how that matches the expectations of the audience and the goals of the performers and producers, who ought to choose what music is played. It's also very important and I must say that that South Korean pop industry is very involved with the South Korean government on a number of levels. So you can't see a level of control that points to careful coordination of goals of the South Korean state with the K-Pop performances. And also to keep in mind very much for what purposes are these performances taking place at the very least as I said, they can model relations for the public if not for policy makers themselves.

GF: All right we'll leave it there Rebekah Ahrendt. Thanks so much for joining us today Rebecca Ahrendt is a professor of musicology at Utrecht University. And we reached her today in Maastricht in the Netherlands. So that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for Q. You may know John Krasinski for playing the character of Jim Halpert on the American version of the sitcom The Office. He joins Tom Power to talk about that role and his new film A Quiet Place.

[Music: Theme]

GF: I'm Gillian Findlay. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Friday April 6, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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