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The Current Transcript for November 15, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: If you have somebody coming in who doesn't understand economics. And let's be clear, Donald Trump does not understand economics, you add an element of chaos.

MATT GALLOWAY: Joseph Stiglitz does understand economics. He won the Nobel Prize. He advised President Bill Clinton, held a top position at the World Bank. And despite predicting economic chaos under Trump, he also understands why many people feel that the economic system isn't working for them and gets why they would vote for change. In 30 minutes, Joseph Stiglitz on inequality, Elon Musk, a more progressive form of capitalism and the big opportunity he thinks that is being presented to Canada in the face of a second Trump presidency. Also this morning, millions of people paid the company 23AndMe to dig into the family secrets held by their DNA. Now, that company is in financial trouble and is shedding 40% of its workforce. Coming up, what that means for your genetic information that the company holds. Plus...

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I used to bring them to school with me, and they were my friends. It was very magical for a child.

MG: In its heyday, My Little Pony outsold Barbie as one of the world's most popular toys. Now, the iconic plaything has been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame. Yes, such a thing exists, along with Transformers. In an hour, some strong opinions about what makes a great toy. But with hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Canada's biggest city to see her, we begin with the Taylor Swift effect. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Why Taylor Swift is such a ‘catalyst for joy’

Guests: Shawdra Whaley, Dawn Johnston

[Crowd of people singing You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift at concert]

MG: Those are hundreds of Taylor Swift fans, some with tickets to the big show, some without singing at the top of their lungs. It was the scene in Toronto at the Taylgate, which is the official pre-party for the Eras tour. Yvan Ponio and Randayn Cortez were there. They flew in from Edmonton to be at one of Taylor Swift's six sold-out concerts in Toronto.

SOUNDCLIP

YVAN PONIO: So my outfit is like inspired by the Bejewelled. I kind of like recreate like the jacket, like the denim jacket. So like the denim pants and some put, like, some jewels and like, stones. And my outfit for this one.

RANDAYN CORTEZ: My favourite album from Taylor's Reputation. So, of course, I'm going to dress up as Reputation. I think Taylor's just nostalgia. Like I've been listening to her for, like, forever. Like, if I think, I have a bucket list that I made when I was 10 and literally said, 'Go to a Taylor concert' and it's happening. So, I'm trying not to freak out. I will probably freak out and cry later. Especially as like a woman, like, I think she's made such an impact for our community. And honestly, I feel so safe being here than anywhere else.

MG: Father and daughter duo Adele and Steve Frink drove in from Kingston.

SOUNDCLIP

ADELE FRINK: It's kind of our thing that we've bonded over, we're both huge Swifties. He's been a Swifty way longer than me.

STEVE FRINK: I was a country Swifty. Her debut album and Fearless, and Adele's picked that up and made me go to the Eras tour movie. She's just graduated from university, and has a good job and so now has a bit of money. So, she went ahead and bought the tickets without telling me. So then we've just sort of got caught up in it and we actually haven't got dressed up yet.

ADELE FRINK: I have like a Midnights-inspired outfit, like an anti-hero costume.

STEVE FRINK: I actually have a Kelce, an official Kelce sweater. Plus, Adele's made us sunglasses with our favourite songs in beads on, on the top.

MG: Steve was very excited to share this experience with his daughter.

SOUNDCLIP

STEVE FRINK: Well, we've probably been best friends for 20 years and I kind of raised up a lot of my own. And so through all that and 15 years of hockey and just going through all stages of life, we've actually just become best friends. Som we just do a lot of stuff together.

ADELE FRINK: Yeah, exactly. It's a huge cultural movement in my generation and I'm happy he's jumped on the bandwagon, like also loves Taylor Swift.

MG: When Taylor Swift announced her plan to finish her Eras tour in Canada, 31 million people registered on Ticketmaster to try to get tickets for the shows in Toronto and Vancouver. In Toronto, the city is predicting 500,000 visitors in the economic boost of nearly $300 million. And last night, Shawdra Whaley was one of the lucky ones. She went to the opening night of the Eras tour in Toronto, is with me in studio now. Good morning.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Good morning.

MG: How are you feeling this morning?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: I'm feeling good.

MG: Did you get any sleep? I mean, it ended when? In the middle of the night. And now you're here.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: It ended at around 11:00, and I slept a few hours. Got a good couple, three hours of sleep after I got home at 1:00.

MG: This is the first time that you seen her?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Yes, very first time I've ever seen her.

MG: So tell me about the show.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: It was unreal. I really was not prepared when I thought I was. I wasn't expecting to cry as much as I did, the atmosphere at all. I felt safe in the city.

MG: Why did you cry?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: It was all these songs are so emotional and hearing even Enchanted, Speak Now is my favourite album. So getting to hear that live really like touched my heart.

MG: You said it was unreal. What was unreal about the experience?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Just everyone. How everyone was all there just to celebrate Taylor Swift and just being a part of the fandom. And everyone was so nice tr--, trading friendship bracelets. Like, you didn't feel, you felt like you could walk downtown Toronto.

MG: Who did you go with?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: I went with three of my friends.

MG: How did you get tickets?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: I was one of the few that survived that Ticketmaster great war. Yeah. Got in 15 minutes and out.

MG: You feel lucky? You feel like one of the lucky ones?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Oh, yeah, yeah. Definitely.

MG: Can you. What is it about her music that, that that does something to you?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: It's the fact how she can get in touch with different types of emotions and different ways of expressing those emotions in songs, and it can relate to, I feel like different ages in your life, in different stages. So, for a Fearless album, whenever I was younger, those songs hit differently then. But now that I'm older, I can even look back on those and think, 'Oh, now I understand these songs even more.' So, it's just, she can hit every demographic, every age group, and she can really get you to feel something with just one song.

MG: Can you think of a time in your life when one of her songs really resonated with you? When it I mean, it meant something really special to you?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: It would have to be. Whenever I first heard Back to December on the original Speak Now when it was released, that was my first introduction fully to her and the first time I heard it, I was sitting in my room watching the YouTube video in just an awe at everything I was seeing, and I was like, 'I need to know more about her.' And ever since then, I've just been obsessed with that song, and it will always stay my number one.

MG: The thing with the concert is that it's a collective experience, right? [SHAWDRA WHALEY: Right.] And so, I mean, the scenes around we're just across the street from the Rogers Centre. The scenes around here yesterday were amazing to see thousands and thousands of people around. But you're in, in a stadium with 50,000 other people who are all singing the same song at the same time. [SHAWDRA WHALEY: Yeah.] That's different than you being in your room by yourself, hearing that.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Oh, it's so different.

MG: So, what is that like?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: It was so much fun. It was just one big party. You felt like everyone was singing the same song. All the words, everyone's dancing, you're not sitting down. It just felt like such a big party that you were a part of.

MG: For people who don't get this, who think this is a concert. I mean, there are concerts all the time and she's a pop star and there are other pop s--. What would you say to them?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: I would say you have to give it a shot. It, it isn't just a concert. It's one big experience that you don't realise it until you're in that moment. And you really do need to give her music a shot. Other than just the radio signals.

MG: So what happens now? You've seen the concert, but there's five more in Toronto.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: I'm going to be going to the Taylgate later today.

MG: Which is the big pre-party.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Yeah. Yeah. But I don't have any more tickets. I only got the one for opening night.

MG: Not attempted to get more? And we were looking at, you know, at the resale market, the tickets are really expensive. It's like $15,000 for some tickets on the floor.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Yeah. No, I unfortunately, I cannot spend that amount of money, so I'm good with my night one.

MG: And you will remember this night that you had for the rest of your life, you think?

SHAWDRA WHALEY: 100% I will. There's no way I will forget it.

MG: Shawndra, thank you very much.

SHAWDRA WHALEY: Thank you.

MG: Shawndra Whaley is a Taylor Swift fan from Cornwall, Ontario, who saw the opening night of the Eras tour Canadian date's last night in Toronto.

MG: Dawn Johnston is a professor of media and communications at the University of Calgary who has lectured on the cultural importance of Taylor Swift. Bit of a Swifty herself. Dawn, good morning to you.

DAWN JOHNSTON: Good morning.

MG: You have a niece who went to the show last night. Did you get updates, minute-by-minute updates about the show?

DAWN JOHNSTON: I was pretty impressed. My brother was on the ball with sending, sending short enough video clips to make me feel like I was there and snatch away the joy for me when the video clip ended.

MG: So you suffered with a bit of FOMO yourself wishing that you had those tickets instead?

DAWN JOHNSTON: Yeah, like legitimately the most jealous I've been of my brother my entire life.

MG: Can you explain for people who are watching this and seeing the images and the news and hearing us talk about this. I mean, the downtown core of the largest city in this country is taken with the excitement of this tour. Why are people connecting with this tour in particular? I mean, there are concerts all the time. Bruce Springsteen was here for two dates just a couple of weeks ago, and you didn't see this kind of thing for Bruce Springsteen. What is it about Taylor Swift that's going on here?

DAWN JOHNSTON: Yeah, I mean, if you, if you think back to the, you know, the interview you just did and the way the passion that, that fan spoke about with which she attended her first Taylor Swift concert. People get super excited about their sense of connection to this artist. And I think a lot of it is, I think a lot of it is related to the fact that we've seen Taylor Swift kind of grow up in the public, public eye, kind of come into her own as an artist, as a woman, as a feminist and, and as a, you know, kind of pop culture figure of real significance. And it's, there have been points of connection for people with various parts of her life and various parts of her work that I think have really allowed her to kind of cut through a lot of the noise around popular culture and make what feels like a genuine connection with a lot of her audience.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean, there were people who were in Toronto last night from as far away as Colorado, folks from your town in Calgary. There were people that we heard on the radio who had flown in from Newfoundland. They had no tickets, but they came anyway hoping that maybe something would happen. You lecture, as I said, on the cultural importance of Taylor Swift. What is that cultural importance?

DAWN JOHNSTON: Yeah, I mean, I think that for sure that Taylor Swift is, I mean, she's, I think she's an exceptionally talented artist. You know, my, my niece and my brother both talked about the kind of recognising intellectually that the, that she was going to perform for three, three and a half straight hours. But the reality of seeing that sort of stamina and energy was, was kind of mindblowing. We know that she's talented as an artist, but I think she's also an enormously talented businesswoman, style icon, role model, influencer. She's someone who has, has really figured out how to, how to craft a story well and tell it in a way that connects with an audience. And I think that, that's true of her music. But I also think it's true of her sort of celebrity status and her role as a public figure and, and her sort of experiences growing up, growing up in the public eye.

MG: I mean, that business acumen you can see in this tour, it's called the Eras tour because it goes through the different eras of her musical life. You have people who connect to 1 or 2 or many of those eras. They come dressed up, as you heard in costumes that speak to this, or that's smart business, that's smart marketing to be able to, to play to a wide range of, of an audience.

DAWN JOHNSTON: It is. I mean it's, like, it's enormously bright to be able to figure out how to, not just build new audiences, but maintain the audiences that you've got. And, and I think that, I think the way that Taylor Swift has embraced every era of her, her development, rather than sort of letting go of earlier music or letting go of earlier parts of her identity in favour of more mature or newer or recent work. I think that that's a lot of the appeal. She's not sort of saying, you know who I was in my in my late teens or early 20s is kind of cringe now. I think she's kind of owning the, the various parts of, of her development and that allows her fans to do the same thing. And yeah, I think there's something really smart about that.

MG: It's smart in part because the tour has made $1 billion so far.

DAWN JOHNSTON: Yeah. That's not nothing, hey?

MG: It's not. When you are that influential, I mean, it's interesting not to talk about politics, but people wanted to get her to talk about things like politics. Right? What does that do to that business acumen? Michael Jordan used to say that that, you know, he didn't make political statements because, in his words, Republicans bought shoes as well. Is there, is there a danger in being asked to make statements or take positions on things when you are trying to speak to that enormous audience?

DAWN JOHNSTON: Yeah, I mean, for sure there's the danger from a business perspective. There are a lot of points in Taylor Swift's career where she has made decisions that could have proven to be really unpopular when, you know, when she decided to take on Scooter Braun. And [MG: This is her former manager.]

MG: [DAWN JOHNSTON: Sorry?] Her former manager.

DAWN JOHNSTON: Yes, exactly. Yes. And decided to rerecord her entire back catalogue. I think that was a moment where she could have alienated a lot of folks in the, in the music business. I think when she spoke out about, about sexual violence in the industry and was named one of TIME's Silence Breakers and back in 2017, these are all moments where, where she ran the risk of sort of speaking out and, and risking some of her, some of her success or popularity. But one of the things that I've liked best about her is that she has used, you know, for lack of a better term, she's used her power for good instead of evil. And she's recognised that she has an enormous opportunity to influence a huge audience, and particularly an audience of young women who have maybe not voted before or have not considered themselves to be politically active, to see that they can make a difference and that their values are something that can drive their, their interaction with the world and their opportunity to impact the world.

MG: What do you say to people who don't get it? Who say that, as I was saying earlier to, to of our previous guest, that there are people who might say that she's just another pop star, that, that what we're talking about. These are successful concerts and successful tours but that's it, that it's not more than that.

DAWN JOHNSTON: Yeah. I mean, I think you'd have to be living under a rock to suggest that it's nothing more than that at this stage. I mean, you cannot be a fan of the music. Like, music is, is a lot about personal taste. And her music speaks to me. I recognise it's not going to speak to everybody, but, but to suggest that that her, you know, her role as a savvy businesswoman, as an incredible philanthropist, as an influencer, as a, a voice in the political landscape, to say that none of that matters is, I think, being really dismissive of the, the power that she has as a woman in business, the power that she has, as a, as a social and political icon. And, and I think you ignore that to your own peril, frankly.

MG: She's also a catalyst for joy, right? I mean, if you saw the scenes in the downtown core of Toronto yesterday, it was amazing and the news is terrible and winter's coming and it was light rain in the city. And yet, people, people were having the time of their lives. What, what does joy mean and the joy that she can create in this moment, do you think?

DAWN JOHNSTON: I think that it's irreplaceable at this moment. I think that for a lot of folks, you know, myself included, there's been a lot of turning away from news in the last little while because it's, it just feels like a lot. And, and I, I think for a lot of people, the ability to connect emotionally in an embodied way, in a way with a community of people who are as excited as you are about something, it feels, like it feels joyful. And it's, it's almost like an invitation or permission to kind of fully embody that joy for a short period of time with a group of people who are feeling it, too. And I don't know. I think there's a total beauty in that.

MG: That's the magic of live music, being in that collective space [DAWN JOHNSTON: I thi--] with somebody and singing along with a bunch of other people that you don't know, but you're singing the same thing.

DAWN JOHNSTON: Absolutely.

MG: So, you're going to try and wangle some tickets for that? I mean, there are shows in Vancouver.

DAWN JOHNSTON: I know there are shows in Vancouver. I was in that same lottery as everybody else trying to get those tickets. And, you know, let me tell you, if I, I. I'm too generally nervous about like resale tickets to, to think that if I paid, you know, cagillions of dollars, that it would still turn out to be a fake ticket. And I couldn't handle that level of anxiety. So, I think I'm going to be like the armchair fan through this tour and living vicariously through everyone else. My knees included.

MG: Dawn, thank you very much.

DAWN JOHNSTON: My pleasure.

MG: Dawn Johnston is a professor of media and communications at the University of Calgary.

[Music: Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince by Taylor Swift]

MG: That's Taylor Swift. The first song that she plays on this tour, Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince. For people who manage to get tickets or for those who did not, this is The Current on CBC Radio. My name's Matt Galloway. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

[Music: Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince by Taylor Swift continues]

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

Guest: Joseph Stiglitz

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. As pundits and analysts contemplate the results of the U.S. presidential election. The economy was a big part of the puzzle when it comes to the outcome. In an ABC exit poll, 45% of voters said they were worse off financially under the Biden administration. That's the highest result ever for that kind of question in a U.S. exit poll. Joseph Stiglitz does not believe that the economy is going to get any better under President Donald Trump. He's one of 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists who published an open letter in October arguing that Trump's policies were, to quote him, "Counterproductive and would result in higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality." Joseph Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University. He served as an economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, and was the Chief Economist of the World Bank in the late 1990's. He's in Toronto for an event launching his new book, "The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society." Joseph Stiglitz, good morning.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Good morning.

MG: How do you make sense, as an economist of the moment that your country is in right now?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think it's the culmination, the output of a three-decade increase in inequality. I wrote a book about a decade ago called "The Price of Inequality," and I said this growing inequality would, I couldn't tell when read to a demagogue. And I couldn't predict how bad that demagogue would be. But my interpretation, when, as you said, so many people say that they're worse off is that they're, they're expressing not a view about how they are today relative to a few years ago, but really relative to the trends of the last 30, 40 years. What they're really saying is "I see so many people doing well off, and I'm not doing very well." As you mentioned, by ordinary indicators, the unemployment rate is very low. Exam a miracle, the extent to which inflation has been brought down. Of course, there are specific problems like high housing prices. But any critical analysis would say that Trump's policies will make many of those things much worse.

MG: And yet people didn't feel that. I mean, when you spoke with people, we heard this. When I was travelling through the United States, and we've heard it certainly in the wake of the election. People felt that those who were saying the economy's doing great and you should feel good about it, they're saying that they felt like they're being gaslit in some ways, that they would go to the to, you know, the gas station to put gas in their tank and they would see how much the gas cost in front of them. They would go to the grocery store and they would see how much the food was. They would try to pay their rent and they would understand that they were behind at the end of the month rather than feeling ahead. Why do you think people didn't buy the argument that the Biden-Harris team and I say that, too, because it was Joe Biden saying that he had done really well on the economy that that team was selling. Why didn't people buy that?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, you have to understand, when, when economists look at this, they look at the numbers. The numbers said that wages are going up even more than prices had. I think there's some psychological problems here. People tend to think that the wage increases they get are earned and they may not notice that the wage increases, but they really notice prices. And what they really notice are the extreme prices, that is to say, eggs or, as you say, gasoline. But even in the case of gasoline, it went way up, but then it came down. And what they say six in their mind is the fact that it had gone up. And this is an important insight into economics that the profession hasn't fully taken on board. We call it behavioural economics. There are a lot of irrationalities. What is salient, what is really perceived by people can be quite different from the ordinary numbers as economists calculate them.

MG: Do you understand the anger that people would feel that they would? I mean, despite what you're saying and despite the evidence that's being presented that people would feel in the book, you talk about how in some ways the American Dream is becoming a myth, that they don't feel that their children are going to do better than they are, and that they would be willing in that anger to make a change no matter what that change, the experts might say, will do, but that they would be willing to make a change because of the anger that they feel.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I do understand that. And, and that's precisely the more general point, it's not happened in the last three, four years. It's what's happened over the last 30 years and over the last 30 years, the American Dream has eviscerated. The fact is that the percentage of people who will be better off than their parents has really dropped. They're more insecure. And that is, was one of the main themes in my book, that the economic changes that we've had over the last 30 years under the name of neoliberalism weakened our systems of social protection and made people more insecure. Large swaths of the country have faced deindustrialisation. They've seen actually wages go down. So, what we're talking about is not what's happened over the last 3 or 4 years, but happening over a quarter century.

MG: Why did you predict all those years ago that inequality would lead to a demagogue?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: People feel the system is rigged. And that's an expression that President Trump used. They somehow feel that they've been conned. They talked about the American Dream. It was there, but now they know it's not there. And so in that context, a politician who a strong man who promises, I will take care of your problems. They become susceptible to the promises of that kind of politician. We've seen it all over the world, this kind of populism, authoritarian populism. Unfortunately, no matter how strong you are, you can't change arithmetic. 2 plus 2 is still going to be 4, not 5. And if you have bad policies, you're going to have bad consequences. So if you impose tariffs on Chinese goods and Americans depend, for our perils and plyings, for steel, for construction on Chinese imports, it's going to take a while for us to find alternative sources and they won't be as good. That means the arithmetic there means prices are going to go up.

MG: You've said that if Donald Trump lives up to his promises, there will be problems. What what's the problem that you're most concerned about?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the most, the problem I'm most concerned with is the undermining of our democracy, of our institutions. There is a broad consensus now in economics reflected in this year's Nobel Prize that these kinds of institutions are really important for the economy. If you don't have a kind of institutional stability, it's hard to have the sense of stability that investors want. You know, one of the areas of debate right now is what he would do to the Federal Reserve.

MG: Once they're hired, their fire, the head of the Federal Reserve.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, he can't fire him. That's the point.

MG: He said he won't leave, either.

[cross-talk]

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: He's, he has two more years of his term and that will be one of the critical tasks. Will he try to break the law?

MG: That we've had in this country, and I'm not sure how much you know, but the leader of the opposition who polls suggest could very well be the Prime Minister of Canada when our election is held, has said that he would fire the head of our central bank as well. What does that tell you about I mean, beyond the specifics, it goes back to the health and the need for those institutions. What are you most concerned about when those institutions that people feel perhaps aren't serving them, but those who are in power would like to go at? What worries you about that?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, you, you need the rule of law. As I said, you need a kind of overall stability for economies to flourish. Countries that have provided that have done better. And that's clear. Yes. Over time, we need changes and we have procedures for making changes, that's Parliament, Congress. I may have disagreements with the Federal Reserve, judgements about what the effects of interest rates. I worry that a high interest rates make it more difficult to get housing and could actually therefore exacerbate one key aspect of inflation. So, you know, I'm sympathetic that we need democratic debates and at times we will, if I can persuade other people, change. But if you have somebody coming in who doesn't understand economics and let's be clear, Donald Trump does not understand economics. You add an element of, of chaos and that is bad for the economy. It's bad for society, it's bad for politics.

MG: How do you think, you're here in Canada this week. How do you think this country should be prepared to navigate how you use your word that chaos that might be coming and whatever Canada's economic relationship with the United States is under another presidency of Donald Trump? We are, we're in many ways tied at the hip.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: First of all, you have a competitive advantage if you maintain your institutional stability, because there will be some Americans who will want to leave, but there will be many people from all over the world who. Talented people, who otherwise, would have come to the United States will say "Canada's the place to go."

MG: Do you think that that's realistic?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah. If you maintain your institutional stability, I know that's true. The other piece of advice that I would say is Donald Trump is very transactional. Yeah, he doesn't have an overall ideology except, as you might say, the strongman being powerful and an ideology of rent seeking, you know, doing the deal transactional. And that means, you have to. If the U.S. imposes tariffs, you have to retaliate and impose tariffs and then, you negotiate. We worked for 70 years now since World War Two to create a rule of international law that enables us to work out these differences. He's torn that apart. And so you, you can't rely on the WTO. You just have to do, realise this is the new transactional world and you can't be a wimp. You have to stand up and say, we have a trade relations. And you start putting tariffs, and Canada Steel will retaliate.

MG: It's a much more optimistic view than I think a lot of people in this country have right now. A lot of industries are spooked because they worry. I mean, whether it's the auto industry, whether it's other industries that trade substantially with the United States, when you have a protectionist administration come in that's talking about tariffs, people worry that they'll have the legs cut out from underneath them.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: This goes back to the point I made before: A high level of uncertainty, which is really bad for business. What we saw in the first Trump administration was that he would announce very high tariffs. And then, there were these kinds of negotiations that went on. Still, at the end, there were tariffs. There was, there were distortions. Would I expect, you know, the magnitude of the tariffs against Canada will be small? Compared to what he will do against China. And American firms are even more spooked because they buy a lot of goods from China. It will manifest itself then into higher inflation. All those tariffs will lead to, to higher prices. Restrictions on immigration are going to lead to shortages of labour, and higher wages will feed into higher prices. And then finally, more inequality, which is the original problem that we began talking about because he has proposed tax cuts for the billionaires, for the corporations.

MG: What do you make of the fact? You mentioned billionaires. What do you make of the fact that the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, tech gazillionaire, is one of the closest advisers to Donald Trump? Apparently, they can't get him out of Donald Trump's resort. He's there every day. What do you make of that?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think this is very dangerous in the following sense. He has literally billions of dollars of defence contracts.

MG: Through SpaceX, and [JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Through Space--], StarLink.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: And, you know, he, he claims to be a libertarian, does believes in small government, and yet he's getting these billions of dollars a government contract. And Tesla was saved by the government, by a half a billion dollars of government loans at a critical time in Tesla's life. So, you understand somebody who is totally, you might say, corrupt in that he takes government money and then says he doesn't believe in government. I understand how he and Trump could be bedfellows because they're equally chaotic. And he says he's going to find billions and billions of government waste. What I worry about is what he defines as waste are programs that are basic to ordinary individual well-being. I mean, for instance, one of the things that, that Trump has promised to get rid of is Obamacare.

MG: It speaks to I mean, part of the title of the book is "Around Freedom: The Road to Freedom." And people will define freedom as either freedom from, or freedom to. I had this conversation with the historian Timothy Snyder about this, who's trying to been thinking of it recently, about this idea of what freedom is. How do you define freedom when it comes to economic freedom? What is that?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That is the central, a central message of my book. And I'm glad you raised it, because what I emphasise is that part of freedom is freedom to live up to your potential, as you say freedom to do. And that means if you're going to live up to your potential, you have to get the education. You have to have the health care so you're not burdened by disease. But there's another fundamental idea in my book that relates to a broader notion of freedom. Many in the right talk about their freedom to carry guns, their freedom not to wear masks. And here I say in a complex integrating society, one person's freedom may impinge on that of another, or one person's freedom may be the unfreedom of another.

MG: That the idea that the freedom to guns can also lead to school shootings.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly. So, Isaiah Berlin put it, "Freedom for the wolves as often meant death for the sheep." And that central idea that we have to balance those freedoms the right doesn't seem to understand. And in many of the cases that I've described, it's very clear how we would if we had a rational discussion, balance those freedoms.

MG: What is the good society then that, you talk a lot of in the book about progressive capitalism. And people feel that, some people feel that the capitalist system has let them down, that that's in part why they are angry. That's why they lash out and vote against the indicators that might present information to the to the contrary to that. What is that, that good society, that progressive capitalism could lead the United States towards?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: So, I try to contrast neoliberal capitalism, the kind of capitalism that we've had for the last quarter century that's led to all this inequality that led to the financial crisis that has led to all of this grievance. Freedom to choose meant freedom to exploit. And we see the exploitation of market power and that kind of anger that we were talking about, and I understand. Progressive capitalism says we have to balance these freedoms and we have to take into account areas where we can work together. By, by working together, we can all do better. So, for instance, stop lights. A simple regulation and the deck says you can't move until your light turns green. But in the absence of those stoplights in a city like New York, you have gridlock. No one can move. So, regulation gives everybody more freedom, and the freedom to pollute is taking away many people's freedom to live and the freedom of our planet to survive. So, what I've been advocating is, is this kind of progressive capitalism that really understands the how we as a society are integrated and then tries to analyse how do we balance these when we have tradeoffs? What are the areas where when we work together, we can get more and how do we, how do we do that working together? I sort of advocate for a rich taxonomy, a rich ecology of institutional arrangements that for instance, we're moving to a service care economy. I feel better having an NGO, somebody that focuses on care than a Wall Street hedge fund, taking care of somebody who has Alzheimer's disease. You know, hedge funds are more likely to be specialised in how can I take most advantage of them? And we've seen the failures of hedge funds owning prisons and, and old age homes and schools.

MG: Newspapers.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Newspapers and all that. So it realises different kinds of needs can be served by different kinds of institutions, sometimes government, sometimes the private sector, but sometimes civil society, NGO, sometimes cooperatives. So, that's the kind of society that I try to describe and say that kind of arrangement will do better at creating a good society. Creating people who themselves are more honest, more caring, more concerned with others, kind of children that we would like to have.

MG: You say in the book, just finally that there are good reasons to worry whether America's form of, or its capitalism and flawed democracy is sustainable. In the face of that and in the face of what you've been talking about, where, where do you find signs of hope right now? It's a difficult time for a lot of people.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: It's a difficult time for a lot of people. And, and if you would ask me that question 4 or 5 years ago, I would have said I find hope in our young people. You know, I still teach at Columbia and, and our students are committed. Many of them are committed to change, committed to the values that I try to articulate in, in my book. They know that the current arrangements are not sustainable. Our plan won't be sustainable if we don't do something about climate change. So they, they recognise that. And that was where I put my hope. My caution in, is so many of the young people also supported Trump and I think they, too, have a grievance. There's an intergenerational equity when I talk about inequality. It has many dimensions racial, gender. But one dimension that's become very clear is across generations. They feel like they can't get on the track of owning a home. In the United States, they owe huge student loan debts. So, they're not even sure what their future looks like. And so, they feel the system is rigged. There's grievance, and I am hopeful that if we get a good government, it's going to take us four years to have another shot at it. But there are policies that will address these intergenerational inequalities, and I think the grievance is not that deep, that if we began to address their concerns, they would join with, you know, it was a close, it was a close race. If we just persuade a few more percentage. And I think the young are persuadable that we can start with the progressive agenda that I lay out. And if that happens, more and more people will come to understand we don't have to have that system that failed, was [inaudible], 40 years of a failed system. So, it's deep, it's not going to be correct overnight. But we will begin to correct it. And then, maybe that level of anger will come down and we will be able to work together for better solutions to our problems.

MG: Joseph Stiglitz, it's a great pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Real pleasure.

MG: Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize winning economist and the author, most recently of "The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society." Well, coming up after your regional update.

[My Little Pony commercial playing]

MG: Welcome to the Time Machine. My Little Pony [Music: Theme fading in] is cantering over to the National Toy Hall of Fame, along with Transformers and the card game, Phase 10. Every year, the Strong National Museum of Play inducts three new honourees to that Hall of Fame. The balloon apparently didn't get into the Hall of Fame, which is a little bit of controversy. We will talk with the Chief Curator about what makes a good toy, more than just nostalgia. That's coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

And whether your DNA is safe with 23andMe

Guest: Chris Bensch, Timothy Caulfield

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

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STEPHANIE NASELLO: I was a city kid who wanted to have their own pony, and my Little Pony was sort of the answer to that.

MG: Stephanie Nasello grew up in Toronto. She's now in her 40s. But her love for the My Little Pony toys has survived the decades. She has a large collection, but it is her first ponies that got her through the tough times growing up.

SOUNDCLIP

STEPHANIE NASELLO: As a child, I was horrendously bullied and the ponies provided me a form of escapism. And when I discovered collecting, I discovered a whole community of like-minded people who understood how happy these little small pieces of plastic made me because we all shared that same passion. And through that community, I ended up making lifelong friends.

MG: Stephanie started collecting the colourful figures as a teenager after she saved her childhood ponies from being sold by her mom at a garage sale.

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STEPHANIE NASELLO: I was about 15 and Google had just become invented and I ended up finding a collectors' website and I started thrifting and going to garage sales and started buying from eBay. I was a teenager, and I was spending my money instead of going to parties and I was spending them on ponies from Germany or from Italy and Greece I purchased from all over the world.

MG: Stephanie has thousands of ponies in her collection, which is now worth tens of thousands of dollars. Toys like My Little Pony have left a lasting impression on kids from the '80s, so much so that this year, the horse figures have been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame. Chris Bensch is Chief Curator at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. And that museum hosts the Toy Hall of Fame. Chris, good morning.

CHRIS BENSCH: Good morning to you.

MG: For people who may not remember the My Little Pony toys, we played a little bit of the of the commercial earlier, and it was a bit of a trip down memory lane. Just describe what these toys are.

CHRIS BENSCH: My Little Pony toys are pastel-coloured horses. There are about 6 to 8 inches tall based on their different model, but their big characteristic is that they have hugely long manes and tails that allow kids to have a lot of hair play, combing, styling. They make them in a thousand different varieties. So, Stephanie could literally collect so many different variations. They've got a whole universe to explore.

MG: If you are a child of the '80s, you know of the My Little Pony. I mean, these were incredibly popular toys. I'd read that they at their peak, were outselling Barbie?

CHRIS BENSCH: They are essentially four-legged dolls, if you want to think of them that way. They've got accessories, they've got friends, they've got hair that you can play with. Yes, they are very much akin to Barbie and they were everywhere. They were on Saturday morning cartoons. They were on movies. It goes on.

MG: Why do you think they made such a lasting impression on people like Stephanie?

CHRIS BENSCH: I think the toys that we value in our childhood resonate with us throughout our lives. They are things that really shape who we turn out to be. And if we've kept them, or if we've lost them along the way, they are still very powerful, sending us back to a more innocent time.

MG: How much of that has to do just with nostalgia? I mean, the My Little Pony came back in the 2000s, right?

CHRIS BENSCH: Some of it is nostalgia and some of it is a cycle that the toy industry has gotten into where they reintroduce toys every 20 to 30 years. As the kids who grew up with them have kids of their own. And then, they have a new generation of fans.

MG: But as you mentioned, I mean, there are toys that we all had when we were young that we think, well, that was the best toy. Whatever toy exists now, that's fine. But I had the best kind of toy.

CHRIS BENSCH: That's right. One of my favourite phrases I hear from our hundreds of thousands of visitors at the Strong Museum is I had one of those with this tone that I haven't thought of that in years, but wow, it's sending me back in time.

MG: So, My Little Pony was not the only toy that made it into the Toy Hall of Fame this year. Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, also made it in. Just remind us what the Transformers were if people, if that, just me saying that doesn't send them into a spiral?

CHRIS BENSCH: Well, Transformers were robots that masqueraded as autos, trucks. They were amazing in their capacity to click into shapes that you wouldn't have guessed when you just looked at that simple sedan or that semi-tractor trailer.

MG: How do you think toys like that, and the My Little Pony, I suppose, developed the creativity and imagination that kids had?

CHRIS BENSCH: They really gave kids room to go playing. That's one of the things that we love to encourage, that everything doesn't have to be rule-based or sports leagues. It can be open-ended play that you are in control as a kid. You're making up stories. You've got these raw materials and both the world of My Little Pony and Transformers gave kids that sort of possibility.

MG: Forgive my innocence, but I did not know that there was a Toy Hall of Fame. I mean, it sounds obvious that that should be one, but I didn't know that it existed. Tell me about this and how many toys are in the Hall of Fame.

CHRIS BENSCH: The National Toy Hall of Fame was founded in 1998, so we're in our 26th year of inductions. There are currently 87 inductees to the Hall of Fame. Things that, of course, you would think of: The hula hoop, the Frisbee, the Dollhouse, the Bicycle, Barbie and G.I. Joe are both in the Hall of Fame. It's sort of a who's who of evergreen toys, the ones that endure generation after generation.

MG: I was going to say, how do the toys get into the Hall of Fame?

CHRIS BENSCH: Three big criteria. One is longevity. They need to be on the market at least 20 continuous years. So, kids and their parents could both have grown up with them. Second, these are toys everyone can recognise. Even if you didn't have a teddy bear or a Frisbee, you would recognise them right away. And third, these are toys with great play value: Learning, creativity, discovery, socialisation. They're not the ones you roll your eyes at when you got them from your grandparents on your birthday, and shoved them under the bed.

MG: In speaking about that, it's interesting to note that the trampoline was one of the finalists this year, but it did not make it into the Toy Hall of Fame. A lot of people like their trampolines. People have, over generations, have used the trampoline. How, how would a toy like the trampoline not make it into the Hall?

CHRIS BENSCH: There are so many deserving toys this year. We had nominations from the public for more than 386 different toys. So, there's a lot of deserving toys out there and they just all can't get through the revolving door in any one year. I'm confident trampoline will bounce back.

MG: Very nicely done. I was waiting for you to say something like that. The balloon also not in the Hall of Fame?

CHRIS BENSCH: It was the first time for both trampoline and balloon to be in our list of 12 finalists, our short list for consideration. So, they've got opportunities to appear again. I have people who say balloon, they're just party decorations. I try to persuade them that if you're hit with a water balloon, you'll know that it's a thing for play and not just a party decoration.

MG: There are some, some things in the Toy Hall of Fame that perhaps people might be surprised by. The cardboard box is in the Toy Hall of Fame.

CHRIS BENSCH: That's right. In 2005, we inducted the cardboard box, especially thinking of those big appliance boxes that I know when I was growing up, if the neighbours got a dishwasher or a side-by-side refrigerator, that was the backyard with the kids I wanted to be in and turning it into a spaceship, a cottage, a castle, you name it. Cardboard boxes are powerful playthings.

MG: Sand is also in the Toy Hall. In some ways, that makes sense. But I don't think of sand as a toy in some ways.

CHRIS BENSCH: Neither did a couple sports deejays I talked to in 2021 [inaudible] that day, and I told them that if they got a sandbox without any sand, they would be sadly disappointed. [MG: Fair enough.] I think I turned them around.

MG: How do you think? I mean, in doing this work, how have you seen how play has changed over time?

CHRIS BENSCH: We all know through the last decades of our lives, both our work lives and our play lives have become more and more electronic. So, there's a big trend to screen time. But part of what having a healthy diet of play includes outdoor play, social play, imaginative play, as well as screen play. So, having a balance is key, and that's great to remind people of some analogue toys in the National Toy Hall of Fame.

MG: Do we dismiss the value of play and in particular, that unstructured play? You said earlier that it doesn't need to be just screens, but also just organise things like a sports league or what have you, that just letting kids be kids and letting them play wildly can also be a lot of fun. Have we, have we devalued that in some ways?

CHRIS BENSCH: I think parents have often devalued that. Their lives are so regimented and scheduled, they do the same with their kids. I think having just opportunity to be a little bored and let your imagination run free at that point. I know we also as grown ups, I love working in the yard and gardening. I just did that. What I'm really doing, I'm not working outside. I am playing with dirt and plants and things like that. We don't talk and play terms because we think play is frivolous, but it's anything but that.

MG: I was thinking of the toy that I grew up with. I used to have this like Bionic Man, Steve Austin-kind of figurine where you could he had like a bionic eye and you could look through the back of his head and it was like a zoom in. I'm assuming that's not in the Toy Hall of Fame, but is there, is there a toy that you grew up with that like maybe Transformers or My Little Pony or Sand in the Sandbox, it's something that even if it's not in the Hall of Fame, still has great resonance and value for you?

CHRIS BENSCH: Well, we have more than 500,000 items in the Strong Museum's collection. So, let me reassure you that the Bionic Man is the entire collection. For me, the toys that I remember most, I was a toy car kind of kid. So, when I see Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks and Hot Wheels entering our museum collection, those are ones that really have an extra emotional zing for me.

MG: Chris, it's great to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

CHRIS BENSCH: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Chris Bensch is the Chief Curator at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. And that museum hosts the Toy Hall of Fame.

[Indie rock music playing]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. My name's Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

RACHEL SOUTHARD: 23andMe changed my entire life, and I had no idea that a saliva sample would have such a big impact on my life.

MG: Before Rachel Southard took a 23andMe DNA test, she had asked her parents if it might reveal any secrets. They said no. The results proved otherwise.

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RACHEL SOUTHARD: Lo and behold, I had a bunch of half siblings populate. 23andMe was saying that these people shared X amount of genetics with me and they are likely to be my half sibling.

MG: Turns out Rachel's parents used a sperm donor for her and her siblings. She posted on YouTube how, if not for 23andMe, she feels she would have never known her whole self.

SOUNDCLIP

RACHEL SOUTHARD: This has made my life make so much more sense, and I feel like it was the missing puzzle piece to explain my life, my interests, how I am.

MG: 23andMe has sold more than 12 million of those DNA kits. But the company has fallen on hard times, announcing this week they will lay off 40% of their employees. This also comes after a massive security breach last year that exposed the data of nearly 7 million users. Timothy Caulfield is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. His research is in health law and policy. Tim, good morning.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What was the promise, as you understand it, of 23andMe when it first hit the market?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Well, this, this is a topic that I've been following right from the start. You know, right out of grad school, I was doing research on the policy issues around genetics. It was the Human Genome Project era. There was just a tremendous amount of excitement about the role of genes in our life. You know, it was, became part of pop culture. It was, there are headlines everywhere. They seem to be finding a new gene for this or that constantly. So, 23andMe really, I think emerged during that time. I know they emerged during that time. And there was this promise that if you get your genes tested, it's going to change your life. And it was part of a broader kind of a suggestion that the genetic revolution was going to revolutionise health care. And so, I can remember this so well, Matt. There was a lot of, of excitement. And I think everyone really believed it was going to happen. I call it Geno hype, right? There was so much hype. So that, I think, was the foundational promise of 23andMe. And then, of course, what you start to hear is, as your first guest highlighted, it became about ancestry discovery, about family discovery. And that became a big marketing promise, too. But even there underlying there, there was these promises that you're going to find out more about yourself as your guest highlighted, right? And that somehow your genes, a promise that I actually don't believe, their genes are really fundamental to who you are as a human being, both for your characteristics, but also for your sort of heritage. Where you're from, if you have, you know, German genes, you should be cheering for the German soccer team, that kind of thing, which is, you know, fundamentally problematic on many levels. But those were the promises. And that ancestry one in particular, helped to drive the industry. So, you had 23andMe and ancestry.com. They kind of took off and their ads were absolutely everywhere. Everywhere. But as you, as you've highlighted, it's starting to wane significantly.

MG: I mean, the interesting thing is that it was an at home kind of thing. You can spit in the tube and send it away and off you go. You did this yourself, right?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: I did. I did it for a book project I was working on. And I've met with the 23andMe team, you know, with the executives, you know, several times. And, and I think they believed this. You know, they believe that this really was revolutionary and they were doing good, good work here. And when I did it, you know, I got back my test. So, these are early days, right? And it was tremendously expensive. And I think it was like $1,000. That's my memory anyway. And now it's like $80 bucks or something. $1,000. And they, they tell you that, they told me that I was increased risk for cardiovascular disease. They told me I had increased risk for certain cancers. You know, no one wants to hear that. But then, they give me my personalised, my precision recommendations about what I should do: Eat healthy, exercise, don't smoke.

[cross-talk]

MG: Sounds very precise.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yeah, really real precision stuff, you know, and, and it's, that's the recommendations that they still provide, right? The promise just was never fulfilled. And I think that that's one of the reasons that we're seeing this decline.

MG: I mean, how much of this also is the fact that I mean, you spend whatever it is, $1000 or $80 once and you don't have repeat customers. How much of that do you think, there's a ceiling for this type of business in some ways?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think particularly with the, with the ancestry part of the equation, because you did see this spike in, in popularity, you know, a few years back when ancestry, you know, before the pandemic when ancestry stuff really took off. But it seems, the market seems to be saturated, right? And obviously and you're right, you could test once and you don't need to. They do come out with different products and, and sort of like. If you give them a little bit more money, you have this sort of other kind of service you can get. But I can still go on the 23andMe website and get all the bad news about all my terrible predispositions, and how I'm not going to be an elite sprinter. I can go do that. But that you're right. That was the da--. The money that I gave them, you know, over a decade ago.

MG: How sound was the science behind what the companies were claiming? Being, in terms of being able to run through your DNA and yes, say, sure, you may not be an elite sprinter, but you also might be predisposed to certain forms of disease and what have you. How sound was that science?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: So, I'll say variable. I'll say variable. I think that's, the general promise I don't think was rooted in good science from the, from the get go, because as I highlighted earlier, in order for this to be effective, to be revolutionary, right? Both for individuals and for, you know, health care systems more broadly, you had to be able to change people's behaviour. That's you know, that's the only way it's going to make a difference, right? You have this risk, go do this behaviour. And we all know what those behaviours are. So, the question becomes does genetic risk result in increased behaviour change? And the evidence we had before 23andMe emerged said no. And the evidence we've had after says in general no. Yes, there's these niche examples where it might make a change, but sort of globally and in the aggregate, the answer is no. So, that science in itself. It was nev--, the promise was never going to be realised because of that. In addition to that, the connection between genes and disease and other complex characteristics has turned out to be fantastically complicated, right? Early days in the Human Genome Project. I can remember this very, you know, I was doing a fellowship on the ApoE4 gene in the United States, and there was this belief in, remember BRCA1 and BRCA2? Those are the genes connected to breast cancer. We thought we'd find just many, many genes like this. These are genes that are highly predictive, not the ApoE4 as much as BRCA1 and 2, but we thought we'd find all these highly predictive genes and it didn't really pan out like that. Genes are just one piece of a very complicated puzzle. For most conditions, yes, there's diseases where genes are very, very important. But when you think about those big chronic diseases, etc., one piece, an important piece of a very complicated puzzle.

MG: It's interesting because they also, in the process of laying off 40% of their workforce, have shut down the therapeutics division of the company, which was meant not just to be able to tell people that these thing, these are things they may be predisposed to, but also develop new medicines that potentially could tackle those things. What did you make of that?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yeah, I thought that was interesting. And here I am kind of jumping on 23andMe a little bit, but they really were that I think, the most sophisticated of these direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. And there have been many, by the way, and we've studied their advertising and what the promises that they've made, and 23andMe really was, I think, the most nuanced and, and, you know, the most careful in how they presented their work. And they also did research. You know, they partnered with researchers. They put out a report. They had a report not that long ago about diabetes and genetics. So, they were trying to do that work. And having met the executive, you could sense that they wanted to do that. So, but I think this really speaks to the reality of, of how this hype, this Geno hype that from the early days of the Human Genome Project, really hasn't played out as people thought it would. Hey, look, there's a lot of fantastically exciting research going on. We're still involved with really exciting, interesting genomic research, but it really hasn't played out as we probably should have predicted. You know, science is hard. It's innovative. You know, there's fits and starts, right? It really hasn't played out like those early headlines promised.

MG: In the meantime, as the company goes through financial headwinds, it has a lot of data on people, genetic data, the information that you submitted as part of that research. Should people be concerned about what 23andMe has?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yeah, I mean, this, this is interesting. So, if you go to their website, they have a obviously a privacy promise on the on the website and they, you know, they claim that they're going to do everything they can to protect people's privacy. And if they, if they sell the company and they've recently said they're not going to, but if they sell the company, all those rules will transfer. If it goes bankrupt, all those rules will, will transfer. I don't know. I think there's a lot of uncertainty about that. And by the way, there's already been a major data hack [MG: Yeah] for 23andMe. It happened last year, millions of samples. In fact, they settled a lawsuit, I think it was $30 million class action lawsuit for that, because of this breach. And so my data was, you know, potentially available for people to the hackers to, to look at. So, there have been breaches. There've been breaches with other databases. Unclear how this will play out if, if it goes bankrupt. So, there are, I think, reasons to be concerned. And it is interesting because privacy concerns loom large in people's minds when it comes to genetic data. And I think there's an interesting paradox here. Matt, because one of the reasons that people are very concerned about their own genetic data is because the research community and companies like 23andMe have told them that their genetic information is super special and unique and revolutionary. And, you know, we should, you should be concerned about your genetic data. So, you know, it's kind of ironic that their marketing about the value of genetic information has maybe heightened the private privacy concerns around genetic information that may have led people to be more hesitant to get involved with these companies.

MG: How could just finally, how could it be used? I mean, what is, if people are worried, what should they be worried about? [TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: How can it be, sorry?] How could it how could how could that data be used?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Oh, how could it be used? [MG: Yeah.] You know, so they could look at it to get a sense of, you know, where you're from. And so that other breach talked about that if, you know, for use for discriminatory purposes, they could find out, you know, what you're predisposed to. I think we have to be careful not to overhype the genetic discrimination risks associated with this. But they're real. They're there. So could, if you were an executive or something like that and someone found out you were predisposed to all these, you know, genetic conditions, could that information be used for nefarious purposes? Possibly. But I think we need to be careful not to overhype the concerns. The privacy risks are real and people feel people feel very attached to their genetic. Studies have consistently shown this, attach their genetic information, even if they don't know what to do with it, Matt. Like, even if they, they can't read it themselves or if it's not necessarily relevant to their health or their future decisions, they still feel very attached to their genetics. And I think that in part is because of the pop culture messaging they've heard for decades.

MG: Any regrets about spitting in that tube and sending it off in the mail?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: No regrets. I thought it was a fas--, fascinating journey. And it was funny because I you know, my whole life, Matt, I've been a sprinter. I met my wife on a track team. And the first thing I saw when I opened 23andMe, I have four beautiful kids because of track and field. First thing I saw when I opened 23andMe: Unlikely sprinter. Thank God I didn't get that test before I met my unbelievable wife.

MG: Tim, it's great to talk to you as always. Thank you very much.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Thank you.

MG: Timothy Caulfield is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. That is The Current for this Friday, the 15th of November. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. We were talking about the inductees to the National Toy Hall of Fame. My Little Pony on that list. Here's a fun fact that you may not know: The actor who voices two of the main characters in the television show, My Little Pony, is also one of the singers in the Canadian band, Hey Ocean! Her name is Ashleigh Ball. And so Ashley and Hey Ocean take us out this morning. This is Big Blue Wave. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Have a great weekend and we'll see you on Monday.

[Music: Big Blue Wave by Hey Ocean!]

Friday, November 15, 2024 Full Transcript

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