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The Current Transcript for July 6, 2018

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: So follow the path that will ultimately give you greater happiness and fulfillment in life. Go explore the outside world. After all, when you die, all you'll have is your memories. So you better make some good ones.

MIKE FINNERTY: The accident this week at BC's Shannon Falls cost three young lives and it's casting a spotlight on a whole modern cadre of lovers of nature, wilderness and extreme experiences, people for whom Instagram and video posts are as much the point. Coming up, we'll meet a cliff jumper who says he feels the pressure constantly to up the anti for his jumps and their settings and we debate whether the phenomenon is spreading the love of nature or spoiling it. Also today, the wine revolution that's taking wine making back to its authentic roots.

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VOICE: You can go to another wine maker that makes natural wine, it will never taste this way. That's why it's fantastic with natural wine. Every wine is the personality of the wine maker.

MF: Natural wines begin to take off in Canada. That's in half an hour. And Mic Drop is back on this summer Friday. It's the new CBC podcast where teens pick the topics and take the mic.

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VOICE: High school next year. I'm nervous for like picking on people and stuff like that. Like picking on me for my acne. I don't really know cause I've never been to high school, but it's just nerve wracking.

MF: I'm Mike Finnerty. This is the summer edition of The Current.

Why these thrill-seekers are reluctant to geotag the stunning sites they find

Guests: Robert Wall, Molly McHugh, Bryan Smith

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VOICE: We made it to a private secluded beach that you can only get to by hiking through this little area. So we're here at the devil's den and this basically a sink hole. It is a subterranean body of water and it's super cool.

MF: Cliff diving, exploring caves, white water kayaking, Ryker Gamble's Instagram feed documented his seemingly endless stream of breathtaking exploits around the world, something he did as part of the High On Life blogging group. But on Tuesday he and two friends, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper, died in an accident at Shannon Falls, near Squamish in British Columbia. And after a life lived to the fullest, Ryker Gamble and his friends leave behind a trove of memories on Instagram and YouTube. But their online lives also raise questions about the way social media is changing the way we experience the natural world. Robert Wall is a freestyle cliffjumper who documents his activities on social media and we've reached him in Lake Tahoe in California. Robert, hello.

ROBERT WALL: Hi.

MF: What went through your mind when you learned about what happened to Ryker Gamble and his friends?

RW: You know, obviously it's tragic. It's something that sucks to hear. You never want to see that in any kind of community and especially the outdoor community because you know people that go on trips like that, we all are kind of like like-minded and my heart really goes out to them for the situation that they were in. As I understand, he was working with High On Life, so he obviously had a big influence himself on like the outdoor community. It's tragic. You never know what can happen and it just really sucks when it goes totally wrong like this.

MF: Have you had a close call?

RW: Yes I have, actually. My closest call last year we were setting up a giant rope swing, it's I think technically the world's biggest rope swing to water. Was the first one to step up that day, for some reason I was just feeling it. So I got up in the tree stand, dropped off and I didn't have a good enough grip on the line and I swung about directly to the bottom of the pendulum, slipped off the rope, came right by a tree and like five feet away from rocks, which probably, I don't know if I would have died, but I could very well been like paralyzed at least. And then there's another 50 foot drop to the water. So it would have been a very messed up situation, but luckily I just grazed the rock pass and hit the water and got out unscathed. But that was yeah, that was probably my scariest.

MF: Can you explain what freestyle cliff jumping is?

RW: Yeah. I think the easiest way to put it is we don't worry about form necessarily or anything like that, but freestyle cliff jumping is more just you know the body's natural ability to flip to the air and having your own tweak and spin on things. Because a lot of my friends are skiers so it's not all proper or anything, but the rotations and the flips that we can do are still at a professional diving level. We're still throwing triples and some people quad flips and all these twists and stuff. So it's a very kind of like freestyle, laid back aspect of diving.

MF: How high do you go?

RW: Recently, we've been pushing it pretty hard. I actually did my highest jump about a month ago in Tennessee. It was a hundred and fifteen feet.

MF: And what's that feel like?

RW: Amazing. It's addicting. It's the craziest freefall sensation cause like your mind really just shuts off. Those seconds when you're in the air, all I hear is the waterfall and things around me. Like you're so conscious of what's going on there, you don't almost really have time to think about being scared or those other things. Cause you know all your thought and concentration has to go into absolutely nailing the jump. But then when it's over, it's the craziest adrenaline rush, right when you come up in the water, it's just like there's no other feeling like it.

MF: How do you make sure that the entry point into the water is going to be safe?

RW: There's a lot that goes behind the scenes to these spots. You know because obviously in the videos you just see the main highlight, you see the jump. I mean we thoroughly depth check every spot we go to, especially like new ones, it's always a must. You can't, you can never jump into unknown water, even if you're jumping off a five foot rock cause you can still get hurt. So we always thoroughly depth check, lots of times we've had to set up ropes before, safety ropes downstream in case the currents are too gnarly. And as far as you know landing correctly, we do train for this. We go to trampoline Gyms a lot.

MF: How important is the social media aspect of it?

RW: Well it's important to us because we're trying to grow this as like a movement and it's more of a lifestyle to us now, you know cause we go out and we camp and we go to all these cool spots and we're meeting new people. And the social media part that we get to share just helps get the word out there and shows people like, I think it's a really healthy active thing to promote you know. We're showing kids, especially in today's world, like you can still go outside, you can still camp, you can hang out with your friends and it's all kind of centred around cliff jumping. We're just trying to really push that and promote it out to the world.

MF: I mean a lot of good things that you're talking about, like really positive things about being outdoors, being active and establishing a community, but there's also the risk-taking aspect. I mean are you not also bringing people in to a community of people who really put their lives on the line and put their lives at risk.

RW: Oh yeah, but not everything's for everyone. You know there's pro skiers out there that I think are really rad, but I would never go drop off a cliff they do. So, yeah I don't think people need to necessarily look at it and go, I need a copy exactly what they're doing cause that can be very dangerous. And I'd almost like to use the term that we're professionals at this because we have done paid shoots and it's starting to get a lot more job oriented too so.

MF: So you making a living out of this? Are you making money?

RW: Not necessarily like a full living, but we definitely do shoots. I've edited some videos for companies too as well, so like also on the filming end of things. That's a big aspect of it.

MF: Is there a potential to make lots of money?

RW: Oh definitely. I think so.

MF: Robert there are some people who are worried about how unspoiled parts of the world are suddenly getting invaded by, I guess people like yourselves and the fact that you or others like you would geotag them, that they'll be discovered. What's your view on geotagging?

RW: I do not geotag any spots and I look at people who do honestly as a bad move because when we go to spots, you know some people kind of know where they are. There's well known spots and then there's the secret ones. None of our group will ever like post exactly where it is and we get a lot of comments and people kind of getting angry at that. Saying like oh you're keeping these spots for yourself. It's too dangerous. For reasons like people getting hurt on cliffs, you know cause we don't know who these people online are. We can't just give out a spot and kind of feel liable for their safety. But also like you said, you know these amazing places out in nature, you don't want them to necessarily get blown up with people that won't respect it. I totally understand that geotagging is not cool honestly and so whenever we get asked where these spots are like I'll start to tell people like sorry I can't give this info out. You know, because unfortunately there's people out there that will go and they'll trash these spots and then five years later you see the spots shut down and closed off and then no one can use it.

MF: Robert, it's nice to talk to you. Stay safe.

RW: Yeah definitely. Thank you.

MF: Robert Wall, he's a freestyle cliff jumper and he is in Lake Tahoe, California. Now we're going to continue exploring that territory where our online lives meet the natural world now with Bryan Smith who's an adventure filmmaker. He's worked for National Geographic and Discovery and he's also been on numerous expeditions to remote areas of the world. We've reached him at his home in Squamish, B.C. And Molly McHugh is a staff writer at The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website and podcast, who spends much of her free time trail running, hiking and camping. And she's in Portland, Oregon. Hello to you both.

MOLLY MCHUGH: Hi.

BRYAN SMITH: Hi. Good morning.

MF: Brian you're really pretty close to Shannon Falls, aren't you? And I wonder if you could begin by telling us what you thought when you heard of the accident that took the lives of Ryker Gamble and his two friends.

BS: I guess it's you know, of course tragic any time we hear these things in our community, but it does happen here. I wouldn't say a lot, relative to the numbers of people that visit Shannon Falls or even the Chief, but you know, this is the adventure capital Canada and occasionally people get caught out. It happens in our community, so it's not uncommon here to have an incident happen. I guess the first thing I thought of, you just you kind of wonder about the details like what happened. Were these people prepared unprepared.

MF: Has Shannon Falls changed and has it been changing?

BS: I mean both Shannon Falls and the Chief are some of the most heavily visited areas in the Lower Mainland. You know it's a very popular destination for folks in Vancouver and for people from out of town to come up to see the sky and they're really accessible spots. So I mean I've watched it change dramatically in terms of just the sheer numbers of people there. Is that a bad thing or a good thing? It can be debated both ways. I mean it's been a great thing for Squamish to see tourism you know sort of take off. We're not just the gas stop on the way to Whistler, you know we've got these destinations that have become quite popular.

MF: Molly, what strikes you about Ryker Gamble's story, the story of his two friends who lost their lives and I guess what we heard from Robert Wall.

MM: Well just to echo what he said, it's incredibly tragic, but it is something that you hear about happening more and more. There are these amazing places and there's certainly something of anteing up every time you have a video or you post something and there's you want the next big thing to show up and people start to do more dangerous things. So it is becoming more of a common story.

MF: And what's the impact of the anteing up as you called it, as Robert Wall called it as well, more broadly. I mean, if the videographers, if the Instagrammers are doing it, does that immediately have an effect more broadly?

MM: Sure. It's definitely had an effect. There is certainly a positive side and I see what he's saying a lot in that, I think that the internet and social media has democratized the outdoors a little bit. It used to kind of seem like this unattainable thing or that it was something that only people who are really experienced and knowledgeable about the outdoors could access it. And it's really if you're seeing people you know or that you relate to posting on Instagram or seeing these YouTube videos, it becomes a much more something that you can do. You see people you know doing it and you're more interested in it and it's really had this big allure for the outdoors that is amazing and I am so excited about that. But at the same time, you don't see that the cliff these people climbed up to is a five thousand foot elevation gain and you wore flip flops and you know, you're not prepared to do that stuff. So there is the problem of safety, there is the problem of trail overcrowding, there are problems that people don't know about, leave no trace practices or practice them. And so then we have issues with our environment being degraded because of just how over run it's become. No go ahead.

MF: I was going to say, you know Bryan, our last guest talked about how he thought himself anyway, that it was not cool in his words to geotag. What's your view on geotagging?

MM: I agree with him. In the story I wrote it was geotagging had was being used by people to find the next place they wanted to go. And if you're going on vacation, you looked up geotags and saw, okay there's this amazing beach and everyone goes to this beach. I'm going to get a picture on that beach too. So there is a sense that if it's a place like the Grand Canyon, you know, go ahead and geotag that, everyone knows where that is. That's okay, but secret spots are precious and geotagging is overrunning them. There's quite a few here in Oregon where I live that they're completely changed and have a lot of environmental issues just because they've become really popular Instagram spots.

MF: Molly didn't I read a piece by you about how you sometimes will geotag and send those secret spots to just a select few people that you really I guess value.

MM: So I won't geotag them, but if people ask me and usually it's people I know personally, I'll tell them. I used to tell them in the comments, so it was public, but I've started just sending direct messages because I don't want, it's not like I have a million followers. Not yet, but even I won't tell them publicly just in case it will contribute to that problem. So I totally see why it's important to curb that sort of activity.

MF: Bryan let's hear you on geotagging. What's your I guess what are your values around geotagging?

BS: I mean I think I take a similar kind of stance, personally anyway. It turns into, like there's no geotagging police out there, you know, that you know you get in trouble for doing it or not. So it kind of turns into a personal thing, it's like where your values stand in terms of you know sharing with the world's secrets space or your personal you know favourite spot. Obviously some people want to blast to the world you know whatever great thing they've just found. My personal take is you know, I stay away from that usually. I rarely post stuff you know right off the bad anyways. So is good or is it bad, it's a technology that sits at our fingertips and it's up to the people that are using individually their devices, whether they want to do it or not. And I don’t think you're going to stop the people from sharing secret places. You know it's an impossible thing to police. So it's just kind of, for me it's one of those things where I mean I wouldn't share spots, but can you stop people from doing that? Probably not.

MF: And why has all the social media become such an important part for a whole group of people, maybe a whole generation of people and how they experience nature. Do you think we miss out on something because we are so attached to our phones?

BS: I mean, for sure. I mean I'm a filmmaker and so I find it really interesting that you know the phone is taking off commercially now as far as, you know you can have individuals that are out in the parks that are just out for a vacation. They're you know taking happy snaps and sharing with their family. Now there's this whole onslaught of people who are doing it commercially, making money off of it. And it's quite an interesting intersection because you know if we as a film crew want to go shoot something, a magazine piece, a television piece and we want to go into a national park or park and do that, like we have to go through a permitting process. You know the safety part of it and what we're going to show and how we're going to do that, it's all regulated. And even locally here in Squamish, we'll have parks that'll say well no you guys can't do that this time of year, it's just too busy here. So now there's this whole new generation of filmmakers that are out there with a phone. So how do you regulate that? I mean by my sort of checking down system, if they're operating commercially, they should be going through the same process as a bigger film crew. You know it's just a new medium of media that they're using to distribute a story. So it is an interesting kind of intersection right now, how the park systems or places actually manage this.

MF: Molly what's your view on that?

MM: Well it is really problematic for a lot of the parks trying to just keep up with this trend. We already have problems with their budget as it is and now just the influx of people and people who don't know how to take care of these spaces has been a huge challenge for a lot of state and federal parks. So it has the potential to be good because if people are enjoying these places and they want to take pictures of these places and they're excited about them, you have to hope that the effect is they'll want to be invested in them. They'll want them to stay around. They'll want to continue coming back and so they'll keep them clean, they'll respect them, they'll learn about how to take care of them. They'll volunteer maybe and so that's I guess my very optimistic view of this, that I hope that's the effect it will have on people, but it also we're just a society built on consuming and we consume a lot of digital content and now we're consuming a lot. The outdoors has been seen as a place to create content to consume and so I just think that the attitude around it is still a little skewed and it's going to be a challenge for a while. It's been seen as this thing that people can take quick pictures of and just you know make money off of, instead of something to kind of appreciate and take in.

MF: Is it crazy to suggest that parks maybe should limit wireless service?

MM: I don't think so. I would. I think it's a little crazy how reachable we are when we're in the middle of nowhere now it seems. I know there's been more of a push to have cellular service available everywhere and I totally understand for safety reasons that that can be a benefit, but I would advocate for trying to do it less and for having less connectivity in these places. It's just so crazy to go like at Yosemite there's a Starbucks now and there's wifi at some places and it's just a very strange experience.

MF: Bryan what do you think of that?

BS: Yeah. I mean it is interesting like if you go to you know a play or a movie theater, you're asked to turn off your phone and engage in what's going on. There's a lot of places that you know it's sort of culturally unacceptable to have a phone on. So then you can kind of cross apply that to the outdoors and say well if you're going to go experience this beautiful waterfall in a national park, like maybe you should just put your phone down and experience it. I think the kind of flipside of that is that whether you have a phone or if you flash back a couple decades ago like parks and these natural places have always been a place of photography. That's a large reason why the national parks system in the United States you know kind of got off the ground in the first place, is the imagery that we come from these places were inspiring and you know fostered people to protect them. So it's not sort of culturally unacceptable to have in this case a phone, but it really is a camera in these places. It's not been a place where we've been asked to shut off our phones or not take pictures. And you know the good that comes out of it is clearly, hopefully inspiring other people to protect these places. So yeah I think you can look at it both ways, but the connectivity in these places I mean no one's really talked about it yet too that everyone's like oh you know people see like a risky video and they want to go out and do it. I think that's way less of a risk factor in these places than you know people just taking selfies on the edge of a cliff and then in the concentration of trying to take a selfie fall or do something completely idiotic just because they're distracted.

MF: Listen both of you, we have to wrap it up there. I want to thank you both very much.

BS: You're welcome.

MM: Thanks for having me, yeah.

MF: Thanks Guys. Bryan Smith, the adventure filmmaker, he was in Squamish, British Columbia. And Molly McHugh, staff writer at the Ringer. She's in Portland, Oregon. And over to you, what do you think about documenting our trips to nature on social media? That's a good summer topic. Are we over posting or do posts inspire people to get outside and enjoy Canada and enjoy the world. Head to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. I'm Mike Finnerty. We're going to talk about natural wines in the next half hour on the summer edition of The Current on CBC.

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'God doesn't make wine. God makes vinegar': Backlash against natural wine is a corker

Guests: Robert Joseph, Matthew Sherlock

MF: Hello. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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MF: Still to come, from acne to alcohol, Mic Drop, the new CBC podcast by teens for teens. It gets right to the heart of what's really on their minds and that includes peer pressure.

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VOICE: They're like you're such a loser. What's the big deal. What's going to happen. What's the worst that could happen. I'm like the worst that can happen is that I don't want to do it. Going against my beliefs, my principles, I have them.

MF: We'll bring you another instalment of the Mic Drop podcast in half an hour. First.

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Sound of bottle popping.

Uncorking a wine world debate.

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Conversation at a wine tasting.

MF: That's wine writer Panos Kakaviatos with a few friends tasting natural wines for the first time at a wine bar in Strasbourg in France. The wine is cloudy in this case, with an orange tint, normally bad signs for a vintage. But natural wines do not play by the same rules as your typical Merlot and they're definitely, some would say defiantly, not made the same way either. Natural wines are turning up everywhere these days from Copenhagen's Noma restaurant, named the world's best four times, to the casual dining chain Earls. The growing popularity has ignited a debate in the industry about what place these rebel vintners should occupy. In a moment, we'll meet the sommelier and winemaker credited with bringing natural wines to Vancouver. First, to help us understand natural wine, we're joined by Robert Joseph, who's a former wine critic and the editor-at-large of Meiningers Wine Business International. And we've reached him in Champagne in France. Robert, hello.

ROBERT JOSEPH: Hi. Good morning.

MF: So just to be clear on this, what is natural wine?

RJ: I think natural wine is rather like nouvelle cuisine with a reaction to traditional French cooking. Natural wine is a reaction to modern wine making, which involves quite a lot of technology and some would say a certain amount of chemicals, one kind or another. And so the idea is that the natural wine people make their wine as hands off as possible. So they're like organic wine producers in the vineyards. They don't use products of pesticides or fungicides or fertilizers. And then in the winery, they avoid using, they don't like to fine the wine, which is what you do with beer and wine. They don't like to filter it. They don't use sulfur dioxide, which is used to prevent wine going bad and they don't use coutured yeast. They let the yeast on the grapes do the job. All of which makes it sound very nice. The only problem as you just heard from your tape earlier, a lot of the wine doesn't taste the way people would expect wine to taste and it doesn't look the way you'd expect wine to taste.

MF: Because you have just defined it as what it is not. It isn't industrial wine or the wines we've become used to, but is there an actual definition of what a natural is?

RJ: No there's no legal definition and what they like to say is there's no manipulation. It's natural. The implication is that it's the way God would make wine and what I would say is God doesn't make wine. God makes vinegar and God makes raisins. There is no evidence that God ever made wine. And if you leave vines to their own resources, they don't make wine. So wine is, like bread, like beer, like anything else, wine is something that man has created and it's one of the great creations that man has has come up with. And sulphur dioxide for example, has been a very, very useful tool to prevent people having to drink vinegar and having to drink wine with all sorts off flavours.

MF: Crucially, natural wines I think this is important to understand, natural wine does not mean organic wine, right?

RJ: It's organic plus. In other words, everything you know about organic wine, which means not using chemical treatments in the Vineyard, you do that plus you do a hands off approach in the winery.

MF: Right. And biodynamic wines, is that again another category?

RJ: Biodynamic is a whole other story. That's a man called Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian came up with this really strange set of ideas back around the 30s, to say that you could actually make better wine not just wine agriculture, by following a set of rules, which do include burying a cow horn full of cow poo and working by the rhythm of the planets and the various other things and stirring water to give it.

MF: And the moon, the rhythm of the moon.

RJ: All of those things. And the point is, most of this sounds crazy to most people, but actually a lot of the best wines in the world seem to be made this way. Whether it's because they're made that way is not so certain, but there's a very big difference between biodynamic and natural in the sense that biodynamic wine makers can use some of the tools that the natural wine makers choose not to use, which includes sulphur dioxide, filtering and fining. In other words, to get a product of wine that is not cloudy, that doesn't have any obvious faults and so on.

MF: What do you think has led to the surge in popularity that we're seeing with natural wines?

RJ: I think there are two things. I think one is we've seen more and more big branded wines that are filling the supermarkets and the stores where wine has become what you call an SMCG, a fast moving consumer good. And so the idea of getting back to artisanship, just like we see in craft beer, you could argue that natural wine is a bit like craft wine in some senses. So I don't think it's as good as most craft beer. And secondly I think very importantly, sommeliers and I'd be interested to hear what Matt has to say about this, it has given sommeliers a wonderful tool when talking to their customers and indeed wine shop people, where they've got the keys to a mystery that other people don't have. So we've gone from here is a ninety-five point Parker wine to here is a wine that Parker wouldn't know about and wouldn't like, but it's made by a self-taught wine maker who does everything by his own instincts. And yes it looks a bit cloudy and tastes a bit like cider, but that's, it's natural wine.

MF: OK. So there is quite a bit of pushback in some quarters. And Paul Pender is the director of viticulture at Tawse Winery in Ontario and he says the idea of natural wine may come from a good place, but something is lost along the way.

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VOICE: A lot of the wines that I've tried that I don't like have a very similar profile in terms of being over-oxidised. They taste like they're 25 to 30 years old, when they're just really a lot faults like volatile acidity and other things of that nature, which we don't really want in wine. I think some of the good things that we've learned in modern winemaking is to make a wine without fault. So I think that the natural wine movement now seems that there are more funky and weird wine is, the more people are talking about. Even though you've actually lost that connection to the land because the main flavour you get is the fault in the wine.

MF: Robert, what's your view on that, on faultless wines?

RJ: Well I think that basically most of us, when we go into our favourite restaurant, want the meal we had last time. We don't want the sauce to be lumpy, we don't want the meat to be not fresh. We actually want it to taste good and what the natural wine lobby wants us to accept is well, okay it doesn't taste that good this time or whatever, but that's because that's natural.

MF: But don't we also want to be surprised and delighted at a restaurant?

RJ: Surprise and delight is by good, not by bad. And you know it's basically.

MF: But some natural wines are good, come on.

RJ: No, no, but my point is, I'm a great supporter of some good natural wines, but like the guy you just had on, I've had too many bad ones and I've had too many sommeliers, actually telling me that the bad wine was good. So if a waiter in a restaurant tells me that the meat I’m eating isn't tough and I think it's tough, or the potatoes aren't cooked properly and I think you know, or they are cooked probably and he thinks they're not. Whatever. You know that stuff, I'm the customer. I want to drink something, I want to eat something that actually tastes good to me. At the moment we have is a lot of people are buying natural wines for semi political reasons, if you like, for spiritual reasons, rather than the taste. There are some very good ones and some of the really good wine makers are making wine this way and some very good traditional wine makers are learning from the natural wine movement and they're changing some of what they do. So in many ways, it will have been a good thing, but along the way there will be some pretty disgusting wines, will have been poured and paid for by unfortunate consumers.

MF: OK. Well let's bring Matthew Sherlock into the conversation, who's Wine Director at Burdock & Co., which is a farm-to-table restaurant in Vancouver and it features natural wines almost exclusively. And he's at his home in the vines in Naramat, British Columbia, where he's the co-owner of Lock & Worth Winery. Matthew. Hello.

MATTHEW SHERLOCK: Hello Mike, thanks for having me.

MF: Nice to have you. Thanks for agreeing to speak to us. Quite a lot of scepticism there from Robert on natural wines. How do you view them?

MS: I think pretty much everything Robert said is 100% accurate. As with any movement, I think completely there is wonderful things that happen within the movement, but when you have a definition and sometimes dogma, there's some really bad stuff that goes on as well. I would like to say that if we're talking about wine and if we start from a basic tenet that wine is actually an alcoholic beverage that we're drinking that's derived from grapes, that the wine side is that we want it to represent time and place. So vineyard and vintage and I think Rob is absolutely right and as with conventional wine as well. When we have things that are either volatile acidity, oxidation, flaws in the wine, they're just as bad as heavily manipulated science in conventional wine because they obfuscate vintage and vineyard. So on both sides in natural winemaking and "conventional winemaking," if we're drinking wine that doesn't say anything about where it came from and when it was grown, I think we're actually not even talking about wine anymore, we're just talking about alcoholic beverages.

MF: So why do you serve so many of them?

MS: Definitely at Burdock's, when the restaurant was open, chef is very interested in where the food comes from, people that grow it and most importantly how delicious it is. And when we looked at making the wine list, it made a lot of sense for us to start to look into the natural wine movement because we were talking, basically about farmers who were trying to best represent their produce which is grapes in a bottle, which is wine, which happens to go very well with food. It just philosophically made a lot of sense and then on the flip side, the way chef's food is, which is more transparent, a little bit more umami as well, has quite a bit of acidity and savoryness, we found that a lot of the natural wines work extremely well across the board with the food.

MF: Tell us about a really good natural wine and how it sets itself apart from the standard wines that you get pretty much everywhere.

MS: Sure, and again, the best natural wines and again if we're talking about wine period, these are wines that actually say something about where they're grown, when they were grown and what the varietal is and less about you know a counter-culture movement or making something that's funky just for the sake of being anti-conventional. So the best natural wine for me, making worldclass wines which you know Robert mentioned, Robert Parker point wines. He receives points from international wine critics, they're undoubtedly considered very good wines to excellent wines, but they say something so direct and so pure about where they're and when they were grown that it's interesting. They're just so transparent and it's kind of like chef's to a certain point, where you can see everything. There's no smoke and mirrors and ultimately just really, really delicious.

MF: Well that's what I was going to say, can't they also just taste really great apart from all the you know the sourcing and reminding you or bringing a certain part of the world to your glass. Arent' they as well just you know great in the mouth and great to taste.

MS: Absolutely. The best, I mean the best ones and honestly the only ones that I think are worth drinking are absolutely delicious. I actually import a lot into western Canada, natural wines and the reason I did was cause I just in my travels found that they're the wines I wanted to drink. I don't want to wine that's oxidized, cidery, has lots of volatile acidity. Just in the same way I don't want to drink wine that has mega purple added to it or has been through a spinning clone. I mean all it does is tell me about how smart the lab tech was. I don't need to taste a wine that tastes like cider that tells me how lazy the winemaker was. I want to taste delicious wine and it just turns out that a lot of the natural wines that I think are doing a good job are ultimately extremely delicious.

MF: It's a little bit tricky. I want to bring Robert back into the conversation. It's a little bit tricky Robert to find the really great ones though isn't it and because the whole kind of system around classification of natural wines is different in really radical ways from the standard wines that people know. Can you explain it?

MS: Apparently doesn't exist, but I mean what's slightly disappointing to you in terms of a debate is Matt and I obviously agreeing far too much for this. And my answer because I do drink natural wine, my answer is that you need to have a wine merchant the wine supplier or a restaurant, who you can trust. So it sounds to me everything that Matt has just said makes me feel that I would very happily accept a bottle without blinking.

MF: You guys could enjoy a glass together.

MS: My problem is with some of the French sommeliers I've met certainly in Europe, who actually have famously been giving people wine that actually has been spoilt by cork taint or whatever and the customers said no I don't really like this wine and the sommelier said you don't understand. You don't appreciate it. To me wine like food, you know some people like eating burgers, other people like eating quinoa salads. We're all different and it's our money that we've worked hard to earn, that we're spending on our food and drink. I think that if somebody can make me a better burger, if he can make me a burger made from a happy cow, that's a much better thing. And if somebody can make me a wine that is actually being made without the use of all sorts of unnecessary additives, including mega purple, which is the colouring additives that Matt mentioned earlier, of course that's what we want. But you know I think it's a very, it's a minefield. Some natural wine bars that I've been to, as I say, do serve the cidery oxidized wines and they're places I don't go back to, but when I'm next in Canada, it's been a little while since I was in Vancouver, next time I'm there I'm going to head straight to Matt's to trust him to give me some of the wines he's pouring.

MF: But Matt, for the consumers, for instance if you're a consumer who loves a dry French wine, you know you're going to go to your wine shop, you'll pick a Sancerre and chances are, you're going to be happy. Is there anything like that that you can find in some sort of standardisation with natural wines, where you can kind of find your way and know what it is you're going to like?

MS: No. It's complicated. I also think it's part of the whole reason that its, "natural wine movement" is starting to have a reaction against because we really have dumbed down wine more and more, which is completely fine. I think accessibility is really, really important. And natural wine is a bit of a minefield. It's very difficult. I was kind of saying to your producer when we spoke last week that it's kind of like that quote from Tommy Boy, where you know they want to, he wants to seal the deal at the end of the movie. And he's like look, you should just do the deal, by the part cause you know you buy a good steak from your butcher, you don't want to stick your head up the cow's ass to know how good it is. Unfortunately, in the natural wine world, you really, really have to do the research, which I think is really good cause we're asking really, really good hard questions of producers, both conventional and natural, which weren't necessarily being asked before. But if you don't do it all yourself, I think Rob's completely right, try to find someone that you actually trust and just ask them hard questions. I think the movement is really important because we're actually talking about what the major industrial complex of normal wine actually is and if we have to drink some bad wines along the way, I think that might be okay. We're getting some pretty bad wines anyways. So.

MF: Robert, is the natural wine movement a threat to that?

RJ: No it's not, it's far from a threat. And one thing I'd say, which is interesting, is I recently read that Two Buck Chuck, the wine that's very popular in the States, has now gone a huge seller, it's now going to being organically grown, which has to be a good thing. No I think anything that shakes things up, I do it a lot in what I do in my work is good and providing, you're not doing it for destructive reasons. At the moment, it's a fad, at the moment some of the wilder, more self taught, more less reliable producers will probably give up or they won't make any money or they'll get bored or something will happen, but we will end up with a whole set. I understand that Matt is making natural wines, we're going to end up with more good natural wine producers and we'll wake up in five years time and we'll all wonder what the fuss is about. Just as we did with nouvelle cuisine 30 years ago. But I think at the moment, the only difference I'll make is that actually some of these bad bottles are pretty expensive. So the advice I'd give to anyone who wants stray into the natural wine world is go to an actual wine bar. Try it by the glass, if you can, before you try by the bottle because that way you might avoid making some expensive mistakes. At least your mistakes will be in good company in a bar and at a slightly lower cost.

MF: And Matt is that is true, that you are trying to make a natural wine or making one?

MS: We're trying to make natural wine, we're not there yet. It's very, very difficult to work this way. The thing is making good natural wine and again, if we're just using the definition of wine, where it's actually it has to be good by definition cause it says something about where it's grown, requires a massive amount of knowledge and patience, extremely high quality fruit. You can't make natural wine with bad grapes. You can't, not any one that's drinkable anyway. So that side of it I think's really positive cause it's pushing people who've been making more conventional where you go you know what I have this problem, I'll just fix it with my toolkit in the lab. Instead maybe you go you know I have this problem, I'm going to fix it in a vineyard. So I'm actually grow better fruit because I want to make wine that I don't mess around with in the winery and it's forcing the hand of people who want to work that way to work better in a vineyard, which is a really positive development.

MF: So how close are you to having one that you'd be ready to.

MS: Wine by wine, vineyard by vineyard. It's not like, oh I just graduated you know natural wine wizard level winemaking, you know. Everything is very specific and very difficult and you know it's very easy to mess up. Also, you can go broke and I think Robert is completely correct and I hope that starts to happen more and more with some of the really poor producers of this natural wine cause they're not doing anyone a favour. So it's tough. It's really hard, but it's really, really, really rewarding.

MF: Robert, do you make wine?

RJ: I do in Southern France and we're even trying to make some zero seltzer wine, which fits in to some of the natural wine.

MF: And how is that going?

RJ: Well basically it's a wine called La Grande Noir and we're doing pretty well, we're in Canada and we're in the U.S. But it isn't, as Matt just said, it's not easy. And when I meet people who say I decided one day I'd make wine and the next day I taught myself to do it. You know, it's teaching yourself to play tennis or play the piano or any of these things, it is not that simple. Nothing is that simple. So I think as Matt said it is a skill, I love the fact that he's taking time to do it. The thing I would say to the listeners also who are straying in to this. Please, please, don't get bullied into anything. When you're in a bar and somebody gives you a cloudy nasty or something that tastes nasty to you and you say I don't like this. If the sommelier or the bar person says oh no that's the way it's supposed to be, you don't get it, you gotta learn. It's your money. You're paying for the drink, get something you do like. You do that with a cocktail, you do it with a coffee. You can do with the wine, but there will be some natural wines you will fall in love with. I'm sure there are. And when you find one, when you find some, then go ahead and drink them and support those good producers.

MF: Listen, both of you thank you very much.

RJ: Thank you.

MS: Thank you very much.

MF: Have you chosen your wine Robert, it's a little bit later for you there, have you chosen your wine for tonight?

RJ: Not yet. It's early afternoon here, I'm at a conference on fine wine here in Champagne. The weather is gorgeous and wishing you a really good day in Canada.

MF: Okay thanks. I appreciate that. Robert Joseph, who spoke to us from Champagne. And Matt, thank you as well. Matthew Sherlock, Wine Director at the Vancouver restaurant, Burdock & Co. and co-owner of Lock & Worth winery and he was in Naramat, B.C., on side of the world and we'd love to hear your thoughts on natural wines. What have your experiences been, good and bad. I remember very distinctly one of the first natural wines I had smelled a lot like my grandma's farm in Saskatchewan. And then I've had some really fantastic bottles that made me want to drink almost nothing but. So a bit of hit and miss. So head over to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. Coming up once again, we're heading our last half hour of air time over to teens. Real unfiltered, uncensored teens talking to teens, from the new CBC podcast Mic Drop. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Mic Drop: Here's why The Current is giving a voice to Canadian youth

MF: Hello. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. And if you were listening last Friday, you know that we're doing something a little different to end our weeks this summer. We're going to give this part of the show over to teenagers. Shari Okeke and Carrie Haber, our colleagues in Montreal, created and produced a new podcast for CBC called Mic Drop. It's about teens and their real life struggles. And Mic Drop doesn't hold back. The podcast gives teens a little privacy using only their first names or in some cases pseudonyms. And that way they can really open up about their lives. So here's the CBC original podcast, Mic Drop.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Basically there's white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white white, white, brown and darker brown. That's bullshit.

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VOICE 1: This is Mic Drop.

VOICE 2: Mic Drop.

VOICE 3: It's about us.

VOICE 4: Teens and our stories and what we've been through.

VOICE 5: What we are still going through.

VOICE 6: Without any adult interruption.

VOICE 7: Testing.

VOICE 8: Testing.

VOICE 9: Mic will drop in five, four, three, two.

VOICE 10: Drop the mic.

VOICE 11: In this episode of Mic Drop we are talking about things that just aren't there.

AVA: Hi my name is Ava. I'm 11-years-old. I'm in my bathroom right now, I'm getting ready to wash my face because I have acne right now. We're trying to get rid of it as hard as we can, but right now we're just trying a whole bunch of different things, mixing things together and right now it seems like it's going away, but we're just going to cross our fingers. Okay so right now, I'm going to grab my face cleanser. Pump one on my hand. Rub it in. Run the water. It was like the beginning of grade 5, when it first started showing up so like I woke up with like a little pimple on my chin or something. And it just like every day it would get like more and more and more and by like the end of grade 5, I was just like 15 pimples on my face, like one day. I'd like try and get rid of them. I would have like a good skin day for like three days in a row and then it would just 15 more would appear and then I would have like 16 and then I'll get 17 or something. I just wanted to stay at home all day. Didn't want anybody to see when I had really bad days. OK. Now that that's done I'm going to move on and get my lotion slash moisturizer. Girls in my class have like said to me like three or four times like about my acne, have you been drinking water? Have you been trying this, trying that. Like my sister uses this for her acne, my sister uses that. My brother uses that, blah blah blah blah blah. And I've been like I've tried everything, what you just said. I do a four step routine every single day that I got from a dermatologist and they still say things like that and they just find that's not there. Me and my friends were sitting like just eating lunch and then one of my friends said, Ava you're having a bad breakout day. Did you drink pop last night or Sprite or something, like a fizzy drink. And I said no why and she's like because you so much like acne right now. I'm like oh that's not your opinion, just say that OK. And it was just like they would look at my face, but they wouldn't be looking at my eyes, they would be looking like around my face. A few weeks ago like a little boy, I don't know who he was, but he was just like eww that's gross or something. And it's just like kind of annoying. I know they're just like little kids, but like it's still a message and like little kids, they just speak the truth. I want people to understand that I do have acne. I know I have acne, they don't need to mention it out to me that I have. It's just I don't like it when they do it and I just want people to get the message. After a while it just like starts hurting my feelings. So just use two steps. And now we're going to be using TactuPump and it's like a moisturizer. I rub it on the places where I have zits or pimples or acne. Some people are lucky and they don't get scars or anything, unlike me, I have lots of scars on my face right now. So they do look like acne, the scars, but there's not there's like no bumps. It's just like red dots or purple or blue dots or something. Since I'm going to high school next year, I'm nervous for like picking on people and stuff like that. Like picking on me for my acne. I don't really know cause I've never been to high school, but it's just nerve wracking. I have one last step to do and this is just an oil. So I rub it on my whole face and this just helps the dryness, but it doesn't make it feel like you can't move your face.

WHITNEY: We're in a makeup store now. So I'm standing in front of a bunch of foundation bottles and I'm looking for my shade. My name is Whitney. I'm 18-years-old and I love doing makeup. I used to have a light-skinned best friend and like everybody would like always be like going crazy over her. And like I wouldn't get jealous of her, but it was like when I got told one time to my face that she's more beautiful than me, the guy was like look at her and they're like what happened to you. And I was like what do you mean what happened to me like and then like I'd pretend I was fine. Obviously I went home and I cried, but like yeah it was really hard. I would say like this wouldn't even work for me. And I'm not like, it's not dark enough. It's like they just grab a bunch of brown shades, throw in a little bit of orange and put it on the shelf. I would see like jokes on Twitter and Instagram about dark-skinned women being compared to like roaches and like toads and like I would do all these things like bleach my hair. I would wear lighter colors on my skin tone. I would like do a lot of foolishness, so I'd try to be lighter. I literally got called the "n-word" by a black man that was lighter than me. He came off the train. I was sitting down on the platform waiting for my friend and he took a picture of me. So I'm like excuse me sir, could you please delete that picture. Did you just take a picture of me. He was like, he instantly got aggressive. He started screaming at me. You should be grateful that I want to take your picture. You should be thankful. This is the problem with you dark-skinned women. You never appreciate when someone finds you beautiful. He called me the "n-word." Called me it more than once. He called me more than two times. Called me more than three times. And it was really frustrating for me. I've been called this word over the internet and stuff like that, but I've never been called this in real life. And for the first time in my life, when I got called the "n-word" it was by another black man and I was like are you serious. And I started crying like crazy. I couldn't get to my destination. I was going with my friend. We were about to go and have a good time and it just ruined it cause I started crying and I had to go back home and I just felt like complete trash after. When I had just started high school, I was doing makeup because I felt like I was really insecure and ugly like without it. Maybe in grade 11ish I started realizing that like my skin tone is beautiful. And I realized that in the way that I do my makeup it made me feel more confident. And I use makeup as like a way of displaying how I'm feeling in the moment. How I'm feeling through a day. So if I'm in a down mood I'm going to go to my vanity and I'm going to put on my makeup. I can make my lips purple or blue or like gray whenever I feel like it. And like do I want to be Rihanna today, do I want to be Beyonce? It depends how much foundation I'm going to wear, which is like really bad because I should really just try to be myself. But it's just like lots of fun for me to like sing and stuff. OK. Let me count this out. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12 shades. Of those twelve shades, I don't even know how I can make this work. The undertone is just like no. When you're going in to find makeup and you can't and you can't find something for your complexion, you think back to all those negative things that were said about you and you're like shit. Maybe that was true. You know. Maybe I'm not beautiful enough or maybe I'm not worth enough for them to make complexion products that suit my skin tone. It's okay Whitney, don't cry about it. It's fine. Just go to this brand, they cater to you. You want to be giving your money to them you know. So it's something that I love doing and I'm okay with giving my money to the right people in order for me to do it. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful range. I love this so much. It's gorgeous. Even the concealers are just versatile as F. Look at this. Basically like a skin tone color wheel. It goes from the darkest of the dark, I could countour with this, this, this, this, this. This is my actual shade right here, it's what I'm wearing right now cause I love it. Yeah this is just really rare. I've never seen like anybody drop this many shades for darker skin tones. It's an even amount of skin tones for everybody. Don't let people push you around. Don't let people tear you down because they feel like you're too dark to do this, too dark to say that, too dark to want this for yourself. You have to realize that you are valid and you're worth a lot and you get to decide how you want to live your life and what you want to do for yourself.

LAYLA: I mean there's always the constant pressure of them putting it on me. Here do this, here do this, or do this. And me being dragged down by them because when they were drunk and high, everyone was asking me Layla are you doing it too. Layla are you doin doing it too. C'mon one puff, one puff. I don't want to do it. They're talking about how on Monday he's bringing them brownies. Hi my name is Layla. I'm 15 soon to be 16. My mom and I are very close because we not a huge difference in age. You know 21 years apart. So my mom is like definitely like my best friend. I tell her everything. So there's this guy at school who I used to be friends with. He enjoys weed and my friends have randomly decided that they also want to get into it and he's hooking them up as they said. There was this one time I thought that there was going to be a normal lunch and we start walking into Tim Hortons and they're like let's make a quick pit stop. So we go behind the store and one of them pulls out a thing of Pringles. I'm like what is going on, what is she doing? And she just pulls out two joints. I'm like oh my God. They're like c'mon, one puff one, one puff. Just do it. Stop being a baby. Just do it. I don't want to do it. I'm not going to do it. So I started backing up because I didn't want to smell like it because I didn't want to be guilty by association. So then when they were done, we continued walking to Tim Hortons and I go and buy my food. And one of my friends pulls out a water bottle. I'm like what are you drinking. They're like oh why don't you find out by taking a sip. And it smells disgusting. Like is this vodka and they're like yeah. Please do it. Please do it. Just a little bit. Just one sip. Just one sip. No I'm not into the alcohol or the drugs. It doesn't have an appeal to me. I don't see the reason as to why people do it. It's not something, I don't think I'll ever get interested into. And also religion too because it is against my religion to do those things, but especially drinking. It's said like in the Qu'ran, that it's bad. Don't do it. Because you're not you when you're drinking. You're not, you're not thinking straight. You can hurt other people without knowing. It's kind of like a defense mechanism, I guess maybe. My friends started walking back to school and you know it takes a little bit of time for everything to kick in. So they were normal at first, but as soon we started getting closer and closer to the school they started acting weird and screaming and yelling some inappropriate stuff in the street. I would tell you what they said, but I don't feel comfortable telling you that because it was so weird. That's the only word I can think to describe their behaviour that day. We got to school and I ditched them, I dart away from them and I was just thinking, hey it's their life. They can ruin it. Let them do what they want. They can rot their brain like that, but it's not something I want to do. I'm not going to be dragged down into this. They're like, you're such a loser. What's the big deal, like what's going to happen? What's the worst that could happen? I'm like the worst that could happen is that I don't want to do it. I'm going against my beliefs, my principles, I have them. A lot of it comes from my parents and the way they raised me and just the way I think. I'm a very strong person. I stand up for what I believe in. I don't like to be swayed. I'm very stubborn. I try to be as open-minded as possible when I'm convinced of something or when I truly believe in something, I don't want to hear it. I'm right. You're wrong. I'm right. You're wrong. My friends at school, I cannot tell them anything. They are not trustworthy at all. So my mom is the person I tell everything to. Everything. If I drank and I didn't tell her, it'd be killing me. It'd be eating me up alive, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. It makes me feel like I have someone there who supports me and is like yes keep on doing that. Keep on doing that because if I didn't, if I didn't have my parents, I don't know if I would have reacted the same way.

OLIVIA: I'm Olivia. I'm in grade 10 and I'm 16-years-old. It started getting bad when I was around 13-14 years old. Me and my mom had been arguing for a while and it was just about silly little things at first, like put your dishes in the sink or go take a shower. No, I don't want take a shower. Like it was just little things like that and we both went crazy and it just got bigger and bigger and we both didn't realize the extent that we were going to. It was getting violent and many times the police had gotten called on us from neighbors. There was one time that the police showed up at our house. There was glass thrown all over the floor, we just didn't know what to do and I just didn't know what was going on with me and my mom. I didn't know what our relationship had turned into. So at that point I just started rebelling a bit like I was like why am I even here, like why am I fighting with my mom when I can just be off doing something else. I started coming, not coming home on time. I started going to other people's house, I knew I shouldn't be there. I'd just go and smoke or I'd go and pop a molly or take a xanax because that was my way of thinking. I wasn't myself. I was doing drugs and I was crazy because I was just not happy with who I was. And it wasn't my mom's fault and I know that now. It was me, I chose that path. It was my birthday and my mom told me not to invite my friend over, but I invited her over anyways and my friend was also being a bit rude to my mom, which wasn't respectful. But I didn't say anything because I didn't care. And she had kicked my friend out and I was like OK, you know what, you want to kick my friend out, I'll leave too. So that was the first night that I had ran away. There was cops out looking for us and everything and my friends dad found us and he saw me there crying and he said listen, I'm going to bring you to the police station. I understand what things have been going on. So then I had gone to the police station and I had told them about all the violence and all the yelling and everything that's been going on. And they had decided to put me in a foster home because it wasn't a safe environment for me to be at home at that point. When I walked into that foster home, I felt so alone. I felt like I didn't really have anyone anymore and it was a difficult feeling to feel. It felt like being in grade 8, not having anyone was hard. At that time I didn't really have love in my heart. I didn't really have anything. I just felt so empty and I felt like I just had nothing else to lose. The worst day was I was with my friend at this person's house and I had a meeting with my social worker and my foster mother. So we all had a meeting and I just really didn't want to go and I just turned my phone off and just said you know what, fuck it. I'm not going. And we left. We left the house. We were high. We didn't know what we were thinking. We were like, we were two little girls on the street at 12am at night and we just started running. We were anxious. There was lights everywhere, we just didn't know where to go. So we ended up at a park. We both woke up like maybe it was like 3-4 in the afternoon and the police had caught us at that point. We were both put into police cars and I was driven to my foster home and she was driven to her house. The day after I was it took me so long to go back outside because I was so traumatized from being outside the whole night and from having to run. I think that was hurting me the most is that there was no one really there for me to be like, like bro, wake up, what are you doing with your life? Like what are you doing? Yeah there's people saying like don't do drugs, it's bad for you, like common things like. But I wanted someone to really like you know what slap me in the face and be like wWhat are you doing? What's wrong with you? I needed someone to help me find me again. And then that's where Amcal came in. It's a group home. My first two weeks were horrific. One of the staff members here knew my biggest fear was spiders and he had saw me crying and crying. I wanted to leave this place. I hated this place. So he gave me a broom and he said go outside and clean all the spiders off the door. So my first night, I had to take a broom and clean all the spiderwebs off the back yard door. And I guarantee you, there was about 50 spiders on that door. Oh my gosh. I was like I am in hell. Like I'm not getting out of here like I'm in hell. But I had people for the first time telling me like you created this life for yourself. You have to accept your choices and you have to acknowledge your choices. We had a lying circle and we usually do those circles when the staff members know you're lying about something, but no one admits it. So basically what happens if you're in a lying circle ad no one admits it, there's a group consequence for everyone. And a group consequence can be like scrubbing the floors with SOS pads or having cheese sandwiches for dinner. So basically, I lied and I didn't tell anyone and everyone had to scrub the floors and it was just horrible and it was all because of me and I knew that. It took me a couple weeks to really figure out like listen, I need to do my shit right to be able to get out of here. How Amcal works is that we had family meetings and to see that my mom gave so much effort into trying to fix our relationship, really built such a good image of who she is now and how much like I really love her and how much she really did care back then and how much I didn't see it. Our communication level suddenly started to go way up. We started talking about our problems and how we wanted to communicate with each other. And if one of us had a problem with something the other one was doing, we communicate instead of using violence. And Amcal showed us that us talking and being a family again could really be the best thing for us and it was the best thing for us. To be honest with you, I cried when I left. I created such a big bond with the staff here, walking into this place like I still remember the first day like huge bags under my eyes, my hair all messy, my clothes ripped like F you, get me out of this place and then walking out crying of joy, how much it helped me. Now I mean, my mother and I are the best we can be. We just sit and laugh together for hours and she says like, oh come watch this movie with me and I'm like sure we just sit together, we cuddle, we go out to restaurants. It's good having my mother back you know, it's good knowing that my mother is there for me and I know that she always will be. And it's a good feeling to have someone there. So now I'm in school full time and also have a job and this year is the first year in high school, I ever passed math. Like wow I got like a 82 in math this year, like I was so proud of myself. Like I used to wake up in the morning and be like oh not another day of this stupid craziness. Like now I wake up and I'm like oh my gosh, like I get to go see my friends at school. I get to go eat some lunch. Like I just think about things that teenagers should be thinking about, like oh I get to go to a concert in two weeks. Like things like that, like simple things.

VOICE 1: Olivia has really turned her life around. But if you're in the middle of your own struggle, Kids Help Phone is available 24/7. It's free and confidential. You don't even have to tell them your name. You can call 1-800-668-6868. They have a free app you can download called Always There or you can live chat with a counselor on the Kids Help Phone website.

VOICE 2: Mic Drop is produced in Montreal by Shari Okeke and Carrie Haber. Jeff Shane is our associate producer and the show is mixed and edited by Crystal Duhane. Subscribe to Mic Drop in your podcast app. You'll automatically get the new episodes, when they come out. And we'd love to hear from you. If you even use email, there's an actual email address: micdrop@cbc.ca. Follow us on Instagram @CBCMicDrop. You can also find us at cbc.ca/micdrop. If you like what you're hearing. We'd really, really appreciate it if you leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

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MF: You've been listening to the CBC podcast, Mic Drop and you can subscribe to it wherever you get your podcasts. We will provide a link at our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And we'll also bring you more Mic Drop next Friday. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Kevin Macdonald is the Oscar-winning director behind the new documentary, Whitney. The film traces Whitney Houston's rise and fall including allegations of abuse and Kevin Macdonald joins Tom Power to talk about some of the surprising insights he gained into Whitney Houston's life and career. Remember you can take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. I'm Mike Finnerty. This is it for me on the summer edition of The Current. Duncan McCue is here on Monday. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current and have an awesome summer yourselves. Talk to you soon.

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July 6, 2018 episode transcript

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