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The Current Transcript for September 26, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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There has been a lot of shame put on music that Millennials care about because there is this idea that it will never be as good, as authentic, as real as music that was created by baby boomers which I think is completely false.

LAURA LYNCH: The 50th anniversary of the Beatles album Abbey Road, Bruce Springsteen's seventieth birthday cause for celebration though perhaps not as wild a party as in younger years for the boomers, but younger generations are apparently fed up with the long shadow cast by those who claim the times and the music have never been matched. More in an hour. Before that our national affairs panel take stock of the federal election campaign so far. But first a Canadian exclusive. As talk of impeachment and whistleblowers swirl around Washington we head to Moscow to speak with Edward Snowden. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

A 'simple, clear' case: Why Edward Snowden thinks U.S. Congress will support the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower

Guests: Edward Snowden

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If in fact he believes that what he did was right then like every American citizen he can come here appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case.

LL: That's former U.S. President Barack Obama. In August of 2013 talking about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden had just revealed how U.S. intelligence was doing surveillance on a massive scale around the world.

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I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information. That provided whistleblower protection to the intelligence community for the first time. So there were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions.

LL: Today a number of critics aren't so sure the protections described by President Obama actually exist. A case in point, they say, is the whistleblower who raised red flags about President Trump's communication with the president of Ukraine. The redacted version of the complaint has now been released. The whistleblower in question did go through the proper channels but the findings had been stifled by administration officials. Edward Snowden has written about his own experience as a whistleblower in his new book Permanent Record. And we reached him in Moscow for a Canadian exclusive interview. Just a note though this interview was recorded yesterday.

LL: What do you think of the whistleblower story that is now gripping Washington?

EDWARD SNOWDEN: What we saw in this process is this person has done - as far as we are publicly aware of the facts being reported so far - has done everything the right way. They've gone to the inspector generals. Inspector generals have confirmed the allegations seem to be credible and I believe they've said that there's some sense of urgency there. And this has gone up to the higher level whole intelligence community inspector general. This is the office of the Director of National Intelligence. And here, something strange happened. Here, the inspector general for the office of the Director of National Intelligence put a hold on the report and intercepting it before it could go to Congress. Told us whistleblowers as far as we understand now - and again facts are scarce because this case is progressing quite rapidly - that he couldn't go and talk to Congress about this and his complaint could not be provided to Congress based on advice by the White House and the Department of Justice, implying something that that's quite unusual in this case. Typically they say state secrets right. This information is classified. We have to make sure we redact this. It can't be handed over. I mean they always do this. This is sort of argument one. But we saw an argument to here which is a little bit different something called executive privilege. And what they're actually worried about is saying that the Congress shouldn't be allowed to hear that sort of process based deliberative information from from inside the White House. Congress, to their credit - this is extremely rare and U.S. whistleblower history - basically leapt out of their chair and said, you know, how dare you. What is this all about? Because this whistleblower's doing something a little bit unusual but strategically is quite wise and is the reason I think, for the first time in really decades of history on this matter, we might have someone who is actually protected by the failing whistleblower protection process in the United States. And I would argue from the public's perspective, we don't care who this person is. We don't care whether they're partisan or not, despite what President Donald Trump is saying they're very aggressively raising questions about is this person. Do they know the facts? Are they partisan? Or are they throwing in you know with his political opponents? The public should not and honestly must not, care about the provenance of whistleblowers allegations because it's not where they come from that matters. It's what is the proof for the allegations? Are they true?

LL: I'm wondering though as you watch this from your perch in Moscow, does what's going on now make you feel more validated in your decision to go to the press, rather than then trying to make it work through channels?

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Actually no because I wasn't waiting for additional evidence. The fact that whistleblowers are a persecuted class under the laws of the United States is not a fact it's in contention by any serious person. Right. Of course there are politicians, there're national security officials. There are presidents that are being currently accused of wrongdoing themselves who will disagree and say this proper channels there's methods there's ways to go about this. But look we've got 50 years of history that says if you reveal the government is doing something wrong the government is not going to thank you for it. They're going to retaliate for it. And this is why we have this conversation about whistleblower protections where we're trying to increase them. Rather than feeling a sense of vindication, what I feel here is a sense of optimism that this may be, because it's such a simple clear bright line case of an individual alleging wrongdoing by another individual. We actually have some records, some transcripts of the calls and things in place it's very easy to fact check. And because it does not indict the system of power itself more broadly. Right. This doesn't also put Congress itself in-- [cross talking].

LL: So you're saying it in a sense there's less at stake because it's a narrower case.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Right. There's very much at stake for the president. Right. But there's far less at stake for this system. And so I think we actually will see this whistleblower protected and that's a precedent we very much need in the United States.

LL: All right you have good experience of this. And you join the NSA the National Security Administration, had a very high level security clearance. You started to realize that the NSA was involved in some highly questionable surveillance programs. But 2011 was a key year, what happened that year that set you on the course to become a whistleblower?

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Well what I had seen over the course of my work at the CIA, at the NSA was just bits and pieces of how the whole system worked because that's how the intelligence world functions. It's this principle, I'm sure you've all heard of from movies, called need to know. And the idea is if you don't need to know something no one tells you and you're not supposed to go looking. So you work in offices and you eat lunch every day with everybody in office b but you have no idea what office B really does. I mean this is to say throughout my career I had been working routing and connecting the flows of intelligence. Then eventually I end up in Tokyo Japan. And here I am now proposing new systems for backing up all of this information that we're collecting moving around the world, because of experiences I've had on the field seeing embassies get burned out during protests and things like that. And I want to make sure everything that we worked so hard to collect doesn't get lost. And then later I'm working as a senior technologist for Dell. And this was when I start seeing - particularly when I come across the inspector general's report about something called the Stellar Wind program shortly thereafter this - that my entire career had actually been the service of building a system that I did not realize at the time I was building; the first system of mass surveillance. This is a system that does not watch criminals. It does not watch terrorists. It watches everyone simply because it's cheap and easy to do any communication we see. We intercept. We store. We sort through. We search programmatically, algorithmically and we try to save these things for as close to forever as is technically possible. And now I'm working for the NSA Hawaii. Through an accident of history at a little place called the office of information sharing. This is a system which basically shares information to different employees depending on their accesses, depending on their projects. The thing they're supposed to work on but in order to do this I have to have access to everything. I have to become the centre of this new network. Everything flows through me. And it's here where I see the full picture of everything. It's here where I see a classified inspector generals report on a program called Stellar Wind. That's the code name. The actual classified inspector general's report that I read, you can read yourself, it was published in The Washington Post. If you look for it online. Here I saw something extraordinary and unusual I'd never seen it before. The classified and unclassified documents were entirely different reports. The classified story of what actually happened, how the United States government had, at the direction of the president, set out to violate the Constitution, our basic laws, and continued to do so for years with the explicit knowledge of a very few members of Congress but some members of Congress.

LL: And that was the moment when you say I think I need to get this out. And what follows and I would encourage listeners to read this - it's quite extraordinary - about how you went about collecting all of the top secret information, getting it out from where you were actually working. Can you tell us briefly about about the way you actually managed to get the information out? Because I think maybe a lot of people have seen the film, the movie. But tell us how you did that.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Imagine you are one of the only guys who now knows everything that you do on the Internet is being watched. Every phone call you make is having records made of it. Just right now when you're when you're listening to us on the radio. If you have a phone in your pocket, if it's the seat beside you in the car, if it's writing your per screens off but the phone is still on. It is constantly screaming into the air all the time saying 'Here I am. Here I am. Connect me'. Now you have to talk to journalists. You have to get in touch with people who work on national security reporting issues. Wow you're working at NSA. Going into the office every day, without tripping the system, without implicating yourself and without getting caught and basically thrown in prison for the rest of your life before the public ever learns about why. That's what I called a single point of failure. If there's any point in the process where I could be caught, journalists could be caught, the information could be caught before it was basically being handled in a manner that could not be stopped. That was the end of the story. No one would ever know what had happened and I would go to jail for the rest of my life. So I set up a system in my car using a method called war driving. This is where you put a little G.P.S. sensor that's magnetic on the roof of your car. You just stick your hand out the window like you were putting flashing lights on the top of it or something and then you run the USB cable from it down through the window toward a laptop. And laptop is running a special software called Kismet which is ironic because it's a nod toward destiny. And it's a very powerful Wi-Fi adapter, just like a normal Wi-Fi adapter but extremely strong with a very large antenna. And then I began driving and what all of this complexity does is it listens just like your cell phone is streaming into the air it's listening for every wireless access point; the one in your house, the one at Starbucks, the one at the ball, every access point, everywhere is shouting. And now I was listening and when I was listening for was to create a map of all the access points on the island that I could reach that didn't have cameras around them that I could get to plausibly and sit for a while I write to journalists. It were unlocked. They were open that didn't require a password or they had such a weak password that I could let myself in. And now I could use anonymous routing networks. I could send encrypted emails. I could reach out to these journalists and persuade them. Please please find a secure way of talking to me so I can tell you something that's very important. One of the funny things about this story is that the first journalist that I reached out to him, Glenn Greenwald, reaching out anonymously. He doesn't know my name. He doesn't know I work at the NSA or anything like that, just some person on the Internet contacts him says 'hey I've got a huge story you need to know this but I can't tell you until you start using encryption software'.

LL: And he doesn't know how to do it.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Right and he doesn't know how to do it and he doesn't he's a busy guy. He doesn't have time to learn. So he's like Yeah yeah yeah I'll do it I'll do it I'll do it. And weeks tick by and he never response. And so I go to someone. Else I go to Laura Poitras who works with him on the freedom the press Foundation's board and has actually done a documentary just recently in The New York Times on a previous NSA whistleblower and had herself fallen under suspicion and been targeted by the U.S. surveillance state. And so this is one of these things the story almost didn't happen because the first journalist couldn't figure out how to speak securely on the Internet. Fortunately they did and now we all know just how much we are being watched.

LL: This is this idea that you're driving around the island and you're holding on to all of this information by yourself. You're not even telling your, then girlfriend now wife, Lindsey about what you're doing. And eventually you leave and all you leave is a note for her. What was that like for you?

EDWARD SNOWDEN: It was it was horrible. I mean this is the most isolating part of the entire process. Anyone that I told this secret who did not immediately call the FBI and say Help help. Someone's going to talk to a journalist would themselves be accused of sharing my crime. If I had told my partner Lindsey of many years the FBI would have said she was an accessory to the crime. She was a part of a conspiracy. And so I felt perhaps more alone than I ever have at any point in my life here. And poor Lindsey came home to a note that said I have to leave for work. I'll be gone for a while. Basically, I love you. And she'd seen this before because of course I worked undercover and she understood what my work generally leaves like. So she thought I was just going on what we call a TDY, temporary duty to some foreign location.

LL: And then she didn't hear anything from you until she saw headlines.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Yes. She was actually sitting with one of her friends I believe when I came on TV. She learned about me at the same time as everyone else and that's you know one of the most terrible things you can do to a person. And the thing that I say about her she's got the greatest character that I've ever known. Because, look, at that made me the worst boyfriend in the history of the United States.

LL: Maybe the world.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Precisely right. Yes it was competitive ranking. Well I think there's a lot of ladies who wouldn't forgive me and they'd be right. But she turned to her friend and she actually said that's the reason that I fell in love with him.

LL: And so let's bring this up to present day. There are still those who are saying your actions hurt U.S. intelligence gathering that they put the national security of the United States in danger. How do you respond to that?

EDWARD SNOWDEN: I think it's great. I love when people say things like that because the easiest response is to say. Show me. And this is the thing that remember now we're not in 2013 and 2013 it was understandable, even for the president to go look this is risky behaviour, you know, this could create risks. You know maybe the journalists are going to handle this right. Maybe Snowden's got it wrong. Nobody knows anything about it because it's happening every day and it's just so fast that it scares people. But I had been under investigation by my government, and by your government, by every other government since 2013. And despite there being a ton of reports published no one has to this day ever shown a single bit of evidence that there has been any harm either to national security broadly or to especially any individual particularly. And you know you see these guys go out on shows and they repeat the talks and they say these kind of things. But if you can't show any evidence of harm after more than six years it's because that harm does not exist.

LL: Six years later, as you said, six years of living in a country that you never intended to end up in, living in a country with a political system that you do not particularly approve of. Do you ever think you will go back to the United States?

EDWARD SNOWDEN: I do. I've made it quite clear and for those who are curious there's a long portion of the book about how I ended up in Russia despite my very best and in fact continuing efforts. But I've had a single demand in negotiations with my government since the very first year under Barack Obama for returning. And I'm not asking for a pass or a parade or a pardon. All I've asked is that they guarantee the right to a fair trial, in a fair trial, and I think anybody would agree to this, there are two questions that a jury has to consider. One, was the law broken? And this is the standard point of entry for any trial. Two, if the law was in fact broken, was that breach of law. Justified? And this is where the government says, oh no, that should be part of trial, all that should be forbidden. In fact the laws that the Obama White House charge me under, specifically and intentionally, forbid the jury from considering that question. The espionage act is what's called a strict liability crime which means the jury doesn't care whether what you did was good or bad. They're prohibited from doing this. And I want to just point out how toxic that is to the idea of a fair trial and how extraordinary that is. If you murdered someone you could go before the jury and they would let a murderer argue. Well it was in self-defence. The jury doesn't have to go along with it. The jury can say no we are not persuaded by that. But that is a question for the jury to decide not the government. And under the Espionage Act, under the laws of the United States today, fair trials are absolutely prohibited because juries are prohibited from considering the question of whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.

LL: So I guess the answer to the question is you're not coming back anytime soon.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Well I mean that depends. Is it unbelievable. Is it unimaginable to you that we can offer fair trials in the United States to whistleblowers? Right now sadly we know the answer is yes. But things can change.

LL: Edward Snowden we will leave it there. Thank you very much for your time.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Thank you so much. Stay Free.

LL: Edward Snowden's new book is called Permanent Record. He was in Moscow. The CBC News is next. Then, lots of promises this week in the federal election campaign from carbon emissions to pharmacare to money for retrofits. We'll find out how it's playing with voters when we reconvene our national affairs panel. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

National affairs panel on election battlegrounds

Guests: Marie Vastel, Eric Gernier, Steven Zhou

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come: Signs. Signs. Everywhere a sign. But which one will stick out as memorable at tomorrow's climate strikes. Is it the art or the message that makes a perfect sign. We'll find out in half an hour. But first back on the election trail.

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LL: We're into the third week of the federal election campaign and there's no shortage of Campaign News to discuss our rotating national affairs panellists here and ready to help make sense of it all. Eric Grenier is a senior writer and polls analyst and the CBC is parliamentary bureau. Marie Vastel is a parliamentary correspondent for Le Devoir. They're both in our Ottawa studio. And Steven Zhou is a staff reporter for Vice who's covering the election. He's here in our Toronto studio. Hi everybody.

ERIC GRENIER: Hi.

STEVEN ZHOU: Hello.

MARIE VASTEL: Oui.

LL: Eric Grenier. We'll start with you. It's been a week since those photos of Justin Trudeau and brown black face made headlines and there's already been some polling to gauge how Canadians are reacting. What do you see?

ERIC GRENIER: What we are seeing a pretty mixed reaction I'd say. In terms of how people are going to be voting. Maybe a little bit of a drop in support for the Liberals not anywhere close to the kind of maybe catastrophic drop that might have been thought was on on track for the Liberals earlier on when the photos first came out. A lot of the polls are suggesting that for a lot of Canadians either they weren't bothered by the photos to begin with, or if they were, they accepted his apology. But the issue for the Liberals is that it is a very close election and there are some voters who have told pollsters that they were considering voting Liberal and now they're reconsidering that. And when you're in a really neck and neck fight with the conservatives, if you lose just a few voters that could be pretty important.

LL: I know where this is a snapshot. Polls always are but can you look at those numbers now and tell us whether that means we're heading for a more minority government more likely than a majority?

ERIC GRENIER: I'd say right now it's more likely a minority because both the Conservatives and Liberal summer on 34 percent the Liberals probably could win more seats out of that just because of the fact that they are leading in places like Quebec and in most polls in Ontario. But it is really a tossup. You could see either party coming out with most seats and depending on how the splits go depending on where things move between now and Election Day. You can't rule out a majority either at this stage.

LL: Marie. I hear you itching to get in here.

MARIE VASTEL: Well the other the other thing I find that makes it hard to predict is that it's still a very volatile vote. It seems to me we had a poll in Le Devoir yesterday and today with [unintelligible] who showed that 53 percent of voters in Quebec were sure of their votes. That's not you know that much it's half and 63 percent in Canada. Which means essentially that there's a third of voters in Canada who could still swing one way or the other. And I think that's the risk for the Liberals at this point is that we haven't seen a big drop in support as Eric said. But this could still you know percolate in people's minds and lead them to question either if Mr. Trudeau is really who he says he is, which is what the NDP is trying to frame into voters mind or if he lacks judgment as the Conservatives are trying to frame in the voter's mind. And to me that if I were the Liberal campaign, that is what would worry me. There is still you know two three weeks at this point left to the campaign. This could still change a little bit. And where do these people who are still unsure of their vote go. The same poll the same [unintelligible] poll showed that the second choice for voters is still most probably for liberal voters the NDP or the Greens and that split of the vote, like Eric said, could be really damaging that. Or liberal voters just staying home because they don't feel like being bothered by going to vote.

LL: Okay. Steven What impact do you think the Brown Black face controversy is having on Justin Trudeau's image his brand?

STEVEN ZHOU: Well I think unlike the other major party leaders the prime minister has a record. He has an international reputation. He has built that for himself in 2015 and onwards. And he has that for voters to compare it with when it comes to his rhetoric this time around. And I think there are a number of ways that Canadians can kind of see that you know maybe on the environment. Okay. So he says one thing he you know he wants to bring Canada in accord with the Paris Accords. But you spent 4.5 billion dollars buying a pipeline. And he has a lot of progressive rhetoric on race. But then there's what we saw in the past few days. So I think it's very difficult. And. But I also think, again. Like the co-panellists were saying it's very volatile. It's we're still you know still a long way to go. And I also think that there is also going to be some degree of fatigue with regards to always discussing someone else's scandals. Whereas the other candidates have to at some point start sort of distinguishing themselves in other ways based on their own personality not policies.

LL: Actually Eric I wanted to ask you to play historian just a little bit here. How often do scandals that emerged during the campaign end up making a difference on Election Day?

ERIC GRENIER: Well I was trying to think back to where you could find something similar in Canadian political history. It's very hard to find anything like that so you have to go really south of the border because obviously they have much more of a rich culture of political scandals. And you know you can have lots of campaigns where it seems like they're about to get derailed. If we think about the last presidential campaign Donald Trump and the Access Hollywood video of the video that was done where he was boasting about groping women. When that came out it seemed like a bombshell seem like it was going to end any hopes of Donald Trump winning which at that point they didn't seem like he had many hopes to begin with. But after a few weeks there were a few debates. There was those e-mails that came out regarding Hillary Clinton and of course he won that election. So just because something seems like it's going to derail a campaign it's going to change everything. Often voters they tend to, you know, they tend to go back to where they were before and often they see things through that partisan prism, that if they were planning on voting liberal probably a lot more likely to cut the Liberal leader a lot of slack. Whereas if you were going to vote conservative, they're really upset about that. Polls are showing that the people who are most upset about the blackface photos are conservatives who based on you know their demographic profile you would not expect to be the people who would be the most upset by this.

LL: Okay. I want to touch on a story that that emerged yesterday that forced Trudeau to defend himself. The Globe and Mail reported that Eva Nassif - who was elected as a Liberal MP in the Quebec Writing Vimy in 2015 - says she was denied the party's nomination because she didn't praise Trudeau's feminist credentials. And Justin Trudeau was asked about this by reporters. Let's listen.

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JOURNALIST: Was she let go because she did not endorse your feminist credentials after SNC Lavalin?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I'm not going to comment on the specific decisions of the green light committee, but those determinations are made on a fair basis, according to the rules of the party. But in this case that was not the issue that ended up leading to Madame Nassif being red lit.

LL: Now Steven again how does that square with the brand? What Justin Trudeau's trying to sell?

STEVEN ZHOU: Well again I think you know that regardless of exactly what transpired there. I think once you head into October 21st voters have in their minds a personality. And I think you know the perception is already out there that he has a tough time living up to his reputation. And I think you know it's hard to say whether or not you know that that'll contribute to him losing X number of seats or anything like that. But it's hard to get out of the political climate once it's there. And it'll certainly be there on October 21st I think.

LL: Marie Vastel do you agree?

MARIE VASTEL: Yes I do agree that the problem here is that like the blackface photos it could lead people to question whether Mr. Trudeau really is who he said he was or as Stephen said living up to his own standards or the brand that he created for himself. This whole story is a bit odd to me because there were a whole lot of allegations also in that Globe story that weren't addressed by the Prime Minister and that aren't being addressed by the party. And what's odd is that it's not that unusual to see an MP or a candidate kind of being pushed out, but usually it's to make way for a star candidate, someone that's very very well known in that it would be a really big get for the party, which we didn't see in this riding, which is in the area of Laval north of Montreal. So I think there are a lot more question marks around what actually happened in there.

LL: All right. Maybe more digging for you to do. Let's stay with you for a second because I want to talk more about Quebec polls. Le Devoir, the poll yesterday looked at voting intentions in the province. What did it find?

MARIE VASTEL: Well it found that the Liberals are still ahead. But amongst francophone voters - which are oftentimes the ones that you look at for Quebec because they're the bigger part of the population and they decide a lot of ridings - the Bloc Quebecois is actually itching to now be first. I don't necessarily find that that surprising. What actually surprised me, before the campaign was starting we were talking to different parties what do you expect and it actually seemed to me like all of them were underestimating how the Bloc might actually do this time around. They've had a rough time in 2011, a rough time in 2015 but they have a new leader. He's actually quite an efficient communicator. He used to be a political analyst on different media platforms and you know he is quite helped with the fact that there's a nationalist government in Quebec. And so the Bloc Quebecois has gone back to this sort of traditional role that they had of defending Quebec's interests and Quebec's positions in Ottawa. And it is kind of being made easy for them this time because this national government that coalition. Quebec government in Quebec has positions that really none of the federal parties are agreeing to defend. So Francois Legault, the Quebec Premier is against the pipeline through his province which the other parties have either said yes or somewhat yes to a pipeline. He has this secularism bill that we have talked a lot about, Bill 21. Mr. Yves-Francois Blanchet, the Bloc leader is the only one staunchly defending Quebec's right to have this bill. And so he has this ability to kind of be the only one with his message. And he also has been pretty much under the radar because no one expected the Bloc to do so well. And so he hasn't really been challenged by the other parties. He hasn't had to face negative ads or people criticizing his policies or his promises. That will probably change I expect now that people see that he's going up in the polls. But it definitely could be interesting on October 22nd if the Bloc ends up maybe you know having 15-20 seats could even be third party in the House of Commons and have the balance of power. That would definitely be an interesting dynamic.

LL: Certainly ups the stakes for the French language debates. Eric I mean which party stands to lose the most if the Bloc does hold firm and make that kind of comeback?

ERIC GRENIER: Well there's two different ways you can look at that. Obviously the bloc is picking up a lot of the NDP support that they've lost. And they do share a lot of voters at least from [unintelligible] poll with the conservatives which is a bit of a change for the Bloc Quebecois. But I think the real loser out of it, if the bloc does start to make a little bit more noise, is the Liberals. Not so much that they would lose a lot of voters to the bloc but they're vying for a lot of the same seats, because the Liberals were looking to pick up a lot of those seats in the Francophone regions of Quebec, particularly the ones that the NDP won in the last election. And if the Liberals were planning on winning some of those seats with 30 to 35 percent of the vote, if the Bloc is managing to get 33-36 percent then they're not going to be winning those seats. So I think that would be where the Liberals are concerned because they do need to win a lot of seats in Quebec to get a majority government. And if they start to not be in a position to pick up those seats then that majority calculation starts to get really complicated.

MARIE VASTEL: And it could also be damaging for the conserves. I mean I agree with Eric that liberals need more seats in Quebec if they want to get a majority but the conservatives also need more seats anywhere if they want to win government. And they also had their eye on some of these NDP seat kind of rural, urban-rural ridings between Montreal and Quebec City. And if they lose those to the Bloc that's also less seats that they have in their total to try and get to power.

LL: Steven you at the start of this campaign there was a lot of talk about the NDP sliding fortunes. How do you think the party's doing now in particular in Quebec?

STEVEN ZHOU: Well I mean polls aren't everything but when you're fourth, or I believe fifth, in the polls I mean it's clearly an uphill battle. I don't think Quebeckers are still very familiar with with Mr. Singh even after he went on Quebec television on their flagship television show. And you know and you know it's a start. But you know when he was out there at a by election [unintelligible] not that many people showed up. And I don't think that'll translate very well on election day.

LL: Now Eric one telltale way to see where the campaigns think that they are perhaps winning or losing is where they're going on the campaign trail. And you've looked at where the party leaders have been spending the most time during the campaign. Tell us about what you found.

ERIC GRENIER: Yes our colleague Phil Ling here put together a tracking of this and it really does reveal what the strategies are for the different parties. The Liberals obviously as the majority government they have to defend a lot of the seats and they're doing that. Trudeau has spent some time in seats the Liberals won in the last election. But the ones where they're going on the offence they seem to be going after NDP seats. So they see that the NDP is weak and that they can maybe pick up some of those seats to make up for losses they might have to the conservatives, who are entirely on offence. Andrew Scheer is not visiting any of the ridings where he has an MP or he had an MP a dissolution. They're just going after Liberal seats. They know that if they're going to win they have a long way to go. They've got to pick up 70 seats. So he can't really spend time in rural Alberta to try to shore up support there. They know they're going to win those. And what's really kind of fascinating those the New Democrats who as we've been talking are struggling. They are more or less in a an election where they're just trying to save what they can. But Jagmeet Singh has actually spent a lot of his time in liberal ridings, going after seats that the NDP lost in the last election, maybe trying to set up some momentum for later on in the campaign. The real question is in the last couple of weeks of the campaign will we see Doug meet saying in NDP seats, just trying to save them make sure that he has a caucus? Or is he still going to be playing offence? And it's a bit of the wildcard how well the NDP is going to be doing. The Conservatives would certainly like to see the NDP doing a lot better.

LL: All right let's do something completely different. Let's talk about policy. Steven the Liberals unveiled an ambitious climate plan this week. Will that be enough to satisfy voters who actually identify climate change as their top issue?

STEVEN ZHOU: Well again I think in this case the proposals are going to be compared to his record. And I think you know that's a thing an incumbent Prime Minister deals with is you know he has a record for people to think about and I think people will think more about that than what he then whatever rhetoric he has this time around. And you know again I think people are going to be, if anything, thinking about the pipelines. They're going to be thinking about his his support for the B.C. project on the liquefied natural gas, and I think it's hard to say. I think they'll be doing that comparison calculation in their mind.

LL: Well again for those people who identified climate change as an issue what about the Green Party platform? How do you think that will play?

STEVEN ZHOU: Well I was looking at their platform the other day and it's absolutely huge. And I just don't think that people will go to the polls with my new policy issues in mind. I think they have, with regards to a party like the Green Party, it's mostly a personality and and rhetoric. But you know I think that it's hard to say.

LL: Marie, the Conservatives and the Liberals both came out with proposals for homeowners who want to retrofit their houses and make them more environmentally friendly. What stands out for you about these competing plans?

MARIE VASTEL: Well it's interesting to see Mr. Trudeau kind of try to one up his rival on the right, but also on the left so. So yesterday as you said Mr. Trudeau competing with Mr. Scheer on home retrofitting renovations but he also did the same on this mat leave measures where the Conservatives are offering a tax credit. And the Liberals are offering tax free benefits from the get go. Same thing on tax cuts. Both parties have offered a tax cut for lower income. But Mr. Trudeau, you also see Mr. Trudeau doing the same on the left, with his climate plan kind of trying to imitate or give people the sense that he's trying to imitate the Green Party platform with a net zero emissions by 2050, trying to have an ambitious climate plan. It does seem that we're kind of - the Liberals are kind of - trying to fend off the right as well as fend off the left to try and do what they can to remain the most popular party. But what I find with all these kind of competing policies from from from everyone is that in the end I wonder if the voter will actually be able to distinguish who is offering what. Because a lot of these policies are you know pretty similar. We have dental insurance. We have pharmacare. We have tax cuts left and right. We have a climate plan that is not necessarily that drip drip drastically different. And you end up with kind of this rainbow of policies that are pretty similar which could be challenging for the voter on October 21st or before if they want to vote before, but doesn't decide who to vote for.

LL: But then doesn't that go back to Steven's point that what they're taking into the ballot booth with them is an impression of the leader more than anything else?

MARIE VASTEL: Well it usually ends up being that. And the other thing that I would watch for in the next few weeks is that the environment was the number one issue in a lot of polls this summer we seem to be going into the election with that as being number one preoccupation on people's minds. But already two weeks in we see that it's actually affordability the economy and jobs. And so the Conservatives have been hammering that message a lot. And I think we might see the Liberals do the same. If they come to the realization that maybe the ballot box question isn't necessarily on climate change. Even though it's a big preoccupation on people's minds, maybe at the end of the day it always does come back down to people's wallet.

LL: Eric how are the parties talk about affordability and taxes then resonating with Canadians?

ERIC GRENIER: Well I think Marie's right. There's a lot of competing promises and it's hard to distinguish whether this one is going to save you 50 dollars and this one's going to save you 75 dollars and whether you care that much about that. I mean you're seeing that a lot of these promises are very expensive. A lot of parties are spent talking about how they're going to spend money, not really talking about how they're going to pay for any of this stuff. And you can see that the real goal seems to be to just give people something that they will vote for, whether or not it's actually going to be a good policy, a lot of these tax credits home renovations they cost a lot of money for the government don't actually achieve much. You know people tend to, if you need a credit for rent renovating your home you have to have enough money to renovate your home to begin with. So you were probably going to do it anyway. So it's really a chase for voters and you at some point people are going to have to be wondering how pragmatic, how responsible a lot of the platform promises are. And that's a delicate line to to try to follow if you're promising a lot, and eventually people can clue into the idea that you know this these don't doesn't quite add up. It has to be something practical here.

LL: Okay before we go I want to get all your thoughts on what the common threads you're seeing emerge in that campaign. Steven let's start with you.

STEVEN ZHOU: Well I think you know before it started off being a war or a battle between the Liberals and Conservatives between Scheer and Trudeau with regards to who was going to stand up for the middle class. And that narrative I think overall got derailed with the black and brown face scandal. But also I think that's brought in different issues with regards to race and identity that's come to kind of dominate this this election. And it's interesting to me that it took this much for Canadians to really think about issues of race and identity as a quote unquote election matter because it's not about dollars and cents and you know numbers. And I think the common thread I see is that all parties have a kind of underside when it comes to dealing with these issues. So even progressive parties like the NDP or the Greens have had problems with race and we've heard openly NDP supporters saying they don't want to go forward meet Singh because he looks different. He wears a turban. And that many Green Party candidates have had to resign or have had to answer for themselves.

LL: Okay. Marie we have about a minute left. Does this campaign have a central theme in your view?

MARIE VASTEL: Well it seems to me I guess to go back to what Stephen was saying earlier that they're really, both main parties, are really trying to make this about personality in values, that liberals started off by kind of painting Mr. Scheer as someone who would go back on progressive values, who had different values than then Mr. Trudeau. And the Liberals and the conservatives trying to paint Mr. digit Trudeau as someone who lacks judgment and isn't necessarily responsible enough for the job of prime minister. And I think that's what we're seeing shaping up. One of the main parties the Conservatives really hammering that they want to save you money, and the Liberals hammering that they want to stay on a progressive path with progressive policies. Whether that message or ballot box issue will change it remains to be seen, but for now it really seems to be sort of that framing.

LL: Eric if you've got a 10 second answer. What the polls could tell us about common threads?

ERIC GRENIER: I'll just say trust. The NDP and the Greens are saying you can't trust Justin Trudeau. Andrew Scheer has called Justin Trudeau a liar and liberals are making the pitch that you can only trust us to protect the environment.

LL: Thank you very much to all three of you.

GUESTS: Thank you. Thank you.

LL: Eric Grenier is a senior writer and polls analyst in the CBC Parliamentary Bureau. Marie Vastel is a parliamentary correspondent for Le Devoir. They're both in our Ottawa studio and Steven Zhou is a staff reporter for Vice who's covering the election. He was in our Toronto studio. Coming up. The Beatles were great but Bruce Springsteen but they're all white men and you kind of think it's time for them to move over right. It's time for other people to get some time in the spotlight and have their moment in the sun.

[Music]

LL: Baby boomer culture is ubiquitous especially this week with the Boss and the Beatles marking milestones. We'll debate whether it's simply time to move on. Hear that, Beatles? Some are saying it's time to move on. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

The best protest signs

Guest: Bonnie Siegler

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

A sign is the way where you can represent your own views on the matter and why it's meaningful to you. So I think that's the power of it. You have this whole ocean of people all articulating their individual moral values in an ocean of science.

LL: An ocean of signs that will no doubt be the scene across the country tomorrow as protesters take to the streets in planned climate strikes. Students from Simon Fraser University will do their part at the Vancouver rally. And yesterday they prepared with a sign making party message.

SOUNDCLIP

My sign is 'Which green do you see'. It's a picture of the two trees compared to money which ones government going to pursue in the future if they're going to value our money or our actual world and the state it's in at the moment.

My science is 'Respect your mother' and like the mother has an 'O' which is in the shape of the earth. I think that there's a lot of value behind signs and that's what people see first when we're in protest. So I think that like making death is like showcasing our care and how much we value this issue.

What my sign says is 'Make a change before you get screwed'. Basically what it implies is not aware of what other changes happening around us, then sooner or later you will be done for.

LL: But what makes the perfect protest sign. Bonnie Siegler is a graphic designer and owner of the design studio Eight and a Half. She's also the author of Signs of Resistance: A Visual History of Protest in America. She's in Westport, Connecticut. Hello.

BONNIE SIEGLER: Hi. How are you?

LL: Good. What advice would you have for those students on how to make the best possible protest sign?

BONNIE SIEGLER: Well the most important thing is that they choose their particular passion the thing that they care the most about. That really comes across especially when you're in that sea of marchers and everybody has a slightly different take on it. You see the depth of these issues and how important they are to people. But I have to say on some level it doesn't matter what the sign looks like because it's just it empowers us to make signs and go out there and say what we feel. So that passion comes across. I know I'm a graphic designer but despite the design that passion really comes across.

LL: Not just the act of making a sign.

BONNIE SIEGLER: And going out there and marching it and using your voice and investing yourself in the cause. And once you get involved like that your person and your physical being out there marching holding a sign. You'll stay involved. You're more likely to vote. You're more likely to use your voice. You've invested yourself in the cause.

LL: Let's talk about the history of this. When did protest signs first appear?

BONNIE SIEGLER: Well the very first image that was sort of used like a protest sign that I have in my book is Benjamin Franklin in 1754 which is an image that people still know today. And actually I've seen in different marches. It's just as join or die and it's the 13 colonies represented by a snake cut into many pieces. So that was a really long time ago. And yet the image endures. And a bunch of the images that endure throughout history follow that same formula of a sort of powerful simple image with as few words as possible like the Uncle Sam poster or Rosie the Riveter which just says 'We can do it', or I am a man during the civil rights marches, or even the Obama Hope poster. Instantly recognizable. Very simple. Very few words.

LL: But there's also other kinds of signs that stand out because they're funny. How important is humour when you're making a protest sign?

BONNIE SIEGLER: I think humour really what it does is it invites the viewer in to share with you rather than yelling at somebody. So it just it works so well when you can be clever/ like I saw somewhere- we marched in New York a week ago and there were things like 'If the environment where a bank it would have been saved already' and 'Make climate deniers extinct', and 'Don't frack it up'. That was when I saw a bunch of times. So just by having a wink in there you invite the person seeing it to be in on it with you.

LL: But there was another sign that I think you saw last Friday that stood out for a different reason than it was a two year old. Tell us about that.

BONNIE SIEGLER: Oh gosh. It was just a kid. I mean this is a testament to the kid's parents. He was sitting on someone's shoulders and he had a cardboard sign with just literally scribbles on it. And he's holding it up really proudly. And it's just I mean both it's heartbreaking that this is the state we're in, that we're bringing our children out to march and protest because it's their lives and their future on the line. But it was also so beautiful to see this kid getting involved and being so proud to be just like the grownups holding signs. Protest signs have actually moved online. What connections do you see between the old school protest signs and mean culture?

BONNIE SIEGLER: Well really means are the new posters because when we used to make posters, if you were at the March you would see them, or if you were in the city you would see them. But now they can travel around the world in seconds. So and they're super smart and funny and of course Photoshop has allowed a lot of things like they're so serious. That's one of my favourite called Tiny Trump where people scale the president down to a tiny size and put him in different situations.

LL: Such as?

BONNIE SIEGLER: Which is like the very first meeting with Obama during the transition. Trump is taking me in the chair and Obama is a normal size. And you know it's just instantly funny and it's a great commentary on their relative prominence. And then other people followed and every time they did tiny Trump they were at a different scale. So it became kind of a group activity online.

LL: But does that move opinion do you think?

BONNIE SIEGLER: You know it's we're so power we feel so hopeless right now and frustrated about the cowardice and the greed going on in so many different areas and these kinds of messaging invites us in. And we get to share in that. It's I think it's really important. Margaret Atwood said the very act of recording how you feel is an act of hope. And we need hope more than anything else right now.

LL: And so that's talking about the online the means. So tomorrow is climate strike day. How big a part do you think protest signs can actually have in the street in creating real social change?

BONNIE SIEGLER: Look seeing that the sea of people is really moving. Changing minds, we just need to create. I don't know about changing minds but I do know about bringing more of us in. And I do know that we're the majority. So getting everybody who does feel the same way about climate change out on the street. I mean denial is not a policy and we have to show that. We have to show that we know that denial is not a policy and we're against and we're going to fight till the end for it.

LL: So what's your latest sign? What's the last one you've done? You're an expert.

BONNIE SIEGLER: Ooh. For the ice. There was a march against ice and I did a parody of the war is not healthy for children and other living things from the Vietnam War and I did 'Ice is not healthy for children and other living things'.

LL: All right. Thank you for telling us about everything.

BONNIE SIEGLER: Thank you.

Bonnie Ziegler is a graphic designer and author of Signs of Resistance: A Visual History of Protests in America. She's in Westport, Connecticut. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch.

The dominance of Baby Boomer culture

Guests: Dorothy Woodend, Brittany Spanos, Susan G. Cole

[Music]

LL: 50 ago this week the Beatles released their album Abbey Road. Piers Hemmingsen is one of the baby boomers who grew up on music like this.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

PIER HEMMINGSEN: The message is that the Beatles were giving out love peace. I think that's the message that they've left. We had come out of a very bad dark era with World War Two. And I think there was just a real feeling in society that there was some freedom at last.

[Music]

PIER HEMMINGSEN: The thing about The Beatles is that you did wait and you waited and you waited. And they didn't disappoint. So I think there's a real progression in their music. So we were all very disappointed of course when they split up. But I think they had a natural start and a really nice finish. And Abbey Road The album was the perfect way to finish their story.

[Music]

LL: Piers Hemmingsen is the author of The Beatles in Canada: The Origins of Beatlemania. Not only is it the fiftieth anniversary of Abbey Road, Bruce Springsteen turns 70 this week. Those are some major baby boomer cultural milestones and it's kind of amazing that all these years later figures like the Beatles and The Boss still loom large. I can hardly say it out loud but some are actually wondering if it's time to move on. I have three guests here to talk about that. Susan G. Cole is a freelance cultural commentator and a contributing books editor for Now Magazine. She joins us in our Toronto studio. Dorothy Woodend is the culture editor for the online news magazine The Tyee She's in our Vancouver studio. And Brittany Spanos is a staff writer for Rolling Stone. She is in New York City. Hello to you all.

BRITTANY SPANOS: Morning.

SUSAN G. COLE: Hello.

LL: Susan let's start with you. From the baby boom generation why do you think the Beatles have such a powerful and lasting hold on pop culture even 50 years after they split?

SUSAN G. COLE: Well first of all they were very good. They were like nobody else in their time. Everything they did had a huge impact. You know globally; the way they cut their hair, what they wore, when they put their lyrics on albums everybody else did. They invented the concept album. And remember too that they rose just at a time when mass media were taking a foothold all over the world and it meant that everybody around the world was into them. And can I emphasize again? They were very good remember that pre 50s, early 60s pop music was all 'I love you baby baby baby' and they did have a great lyric and yeah yeah yeah. But John Lennon was an exquisite lyrical writer and there really hasn't been any body of work from any other artists except maybe possibly Bob Dylan, who is also a baby boomer, by the way than anybody else.

LL: So you say that that is lasting then, that their dominance is lasting right up to present day.

SUSAN G. COLE: Well the Beatles dominance is lasting but I would make the argument that the boomer generation's influence over culture has waned substantially.

LL: Why?

SUSAN G. COLE: Well I think a number of factors have come into play. For one thing the way in which culture is pervaded now has changed dramatically except in books by the way which I would argue that baby boomers still dominate. But in terms of things like movies, in my view, major movies are made by studios who are interested only in fan boys. It's very difficult to find a movie released that's even made for adults at this time. I think too that movies and music now are directed towards niche markets. They're not that interested in one big generation the way we were in the 60s where we were waiting for one record to come out every week, and maybe two or three releases came out, hundreds of releases all the time coming out on different kinds of platforms. It's just simply not the same. I would say one more thing before I go. I think television still has an interest in the boomer generation. But Netflix itself is the king of niche marketing. So I just don't think the dominance is there. And note too that all three of our major party leaders running for office now are nowhere near the boomer generation.

LL: Okay we may get into politics a little later, but Dorothy Woodend is a Gen-Xer. What do you make of the dominance of musicians like the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen? I'm wondering if it does it make you roll your eyes?

DOROTHY WOODEND: Yes. In all frankness Yes it does. I mean that's very much my parents music and I remember you know inheriting this album as a little kid and they were the only records you had growing up so you would listen to them. But it was also not your music, right. So when the 80s finally hit and you know things like Prince and Cyndi Lauper and Billy Idol came along there was that sense of like, oh finally, you know here's something that I can actively embrace as a teenager. And it's interesting because my son is 18 now and he has a sort of full range of my parents music, the music that I grew up on. He's obsessed with Prince for some reason. But also you know the meat goes and this whole like hip hop explosion. So I think that kind of diversity that the upcoming generation and subsequent generations have access to it's actually really cool and really exciting, because there isn't that kind of monolithic culture which you know is predominantly male, predominantly white. The Beatles were great but- Bruce Springsteen, but they're all white men. And you kind of think it's time for them to move over. Right. It's time for other people to get their moment in the sun as it were. And I'm really ready for that and I probably think other generations are as well.

LL: All right let let's go to the relative youngster in our group. Brittany Spanos you were born more than 20 years after the Beatles broke up. How long a shadow has their music and the music from that generation cast on people your age?

BRITTANY SPANOS: I mean I think that it's been pretty long. I think that - especially for the millennial generation and the music that's come out of the early obsolete 90s - there's this idea that these musicians cannot be added to the canon in the same way that artists like The Beatles or Bruce Springsteen or The Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan can be added. There was this idea that music was at its peak during that time and nothing can reach that level of greatness. And so I think that there has been a lot of shame put on music created by millennials, music that Millennials care about, because it will never be as good as authentic as real as music that was created by baby boomers which I think is completely false. So I do think that the Beatles have cast a long shadow, and obviously there is a major influence from them on music that is created today. I think a lot of artists and in every genre compare themselves- I mean we had, Migos were mentioned like Migos calling themselves The Beatles and Rae Sremmurd with Black Beatles like we have a lot of artists that reference them. I mean Drake just got a Beatles tattoo that's like him walking Abbey Road with all four. It's there and their influence is always going to be there but I think guys we're seeing with you know Gen Z I think that influence is going to wane/ and I think you know younger generations are caring less about considering the boomer musicians as epoch of music which I think is for the best.

LL: What do you listen to?

BRITTANY SPANOS: I listen to a wide variety. I'm a huge pop band and that's what I cover mostly. I definitely grew up on a lot of boomer music because of my grandparents, my parents. My parents are Gen X so they listen to a lot of kind of 90s rock and metal. But yeah I grew up listening to a lot of pop music and I was the first thing I loved. I loved boy bands, [unintelligible], Britney Spears but there was a lot of fame that I felt as a pop fan because there was this idea that artists like Taylor Swift can't be considered as great a writer as John Lennon or Bob Dylan. Like we cannot even consider them the same field because they didn't exist at the same time.

LL: Susan you want to jump in.

SUSAN G. COLE: Well I think there is- first of all I think it's every generation's job to want to have our impact on the culture. You know when I'm listening to these very smart women talk I mean I'm thinking about how we felt in the 60s in wanting to push Frank Sinatra out of the way. But I just really question this idea that we're so dominant. When I look at the impact that rap and hip hop have had on the culture, when I look at Beyonce, when you and you mentioned Taylor Swift who are all dominant record and music purveyors, it feels to me like we in fact have very very very much moved on. And I think the Beatles are different. So just because a record or a group creates a record that's a cultural touchstone doesn't mean the entire generation is dominant. And yet Britney, you work for a magazine called Rolling Stone.

BONNIE SIEGLER: And I do want to say I disagree with that to a point because there is this curve that a lot of artists work on that is set by the Beatles and they're still part of the conversation and we're still trying to break a lot of that dominance set by a lot of artists from that era. Yes. In Rolling Stone as I do work at a magazine that is kind of the boomer hub. So maybe I'm attuned to it a little bit more but I think that the Drake tattoo is the perfect example. He got this because he had finally broken a record set by the peak Boomer band.

LL: I just want to play everyone a clip here from Ken Womack. He's a Beatles historian. He makes the case for the timelessness of the band's music and in particular Abbey Road.

SOUNDCLIP

For many baby boomers there is a sense of nostalgia about the record about what they were doing in the 1960s about all the significant cultural and social shifts of the time. But having said that this is a really great record and it still looms very large today and a lot can be said about successive generations who have come to love the Beatles. Right now children are falling in love with the Beatles because of those timeless compositions played extremely well, sung beautifully by truly great rock and roll singers.

LL: Dorothy wooden. Is it possible the Beatles are just so good that they transcend that category of boomer culture?

DOROTHY WOODEND: Sure.

[Laughter]

LL: Careful now, very big hesitation there.

DOROTHY WOODEND: I mean I grew up on their music but I think every generation like you say has to refute the generation before them and make their own culture, make their own way, whether they're sort of taking it apart and piecing it back together and sampling you know bits of the Beatles and their own work, and to circle back to film and that sort of divide between the big tent pole Avengers type offerings and you know smaller niche films. It is really interesting to see the sort of fracturing culture and there's a sort of very large, very monolithic, very powerful cultural sort of touchstones. And then this sea of other offerings. And I think it's interesting to see who's still in power and who still makes the decisions, who still has the resources and the money to produce those films and to produce those records. And I don't think that has really shifted hugely. And there's where the boomers are still really holding on pretty tight to the reins of power.

LL: When I'm looking around at the new capitalists they are not boomers. And in fact it's quite shocking to me. Your point that they're probably to a certain extent still dominating Hollywood may stand and we can look for example at these new movies. One new movie about Springsteen. Yesterday a movie about The Beatles never having existed. A movie about Elton John Elton. And you can see how the are these new movies that are trying to appeal. And as I mentioned television because you know Boomers don't go out the way we used to you know. So we still have that kind of influence.

DOROTHY WOODEND: You're too old to go out.

[Laughter]

LL: Let's not get carried away. Dorothy I just want to ask you I mean I think we're admitting to the fact that the boomers still have a huge amount of influence whether it be in culture or in politics and they've been seen for a long time as this wave that just rolls over everything. Do you think your generation ever really had control of the cultural agenda?

DOROTHY WOODEND: The Gen X generation.

LL: Yes.

DOROTHY WOODEND: No. We got squeezed, I think, a little bit between the boomers and the Millennials. So you know the Gen X generation that I think is a pretty disgruntled bunch in many ways and--

LL: You did have John Hughes.

DOROTHY WOODEND: Yes, I'll take John Hughes I guess. Because you know when that film came out the Breakfast Club, I was the same age as Molly Ringwald. So I identified very strongly with that genre of film. It's hard to give up your nostalgia for that period in your life because it was so seminal and so influential in many of the things that came afterwards.

LL: I think if you hang on long enough it will come back around there's almost no doubt to this.

DOROTHY WOODEND: Inevitably.

LL: And there will be a generation that resents you for it.

DOROTHY WOODEND: Well they're coming up fast.

LL: Brittany Spanos, what do you think we're missing if boomer culture and the boomer generation continues to occupy so much space.

BRITTANY SPANOS: I think now we've come into canonizing a lot more of the Gen X artists. And so I think that we should be allowing that space for newer artists and what the idea of musical authenticity and cultural authenticity can be, and really accept a lot of the changes that are happening. And I think that's sort of what's been the biggest struggle. I mean you didn't even see it in the music industry, the owners, the record labels who could not deal with this shifting status of the business where we kind of move to streaming. And even with you know iTunes and downloading earlier in the century, I mean there was this pushback from the industry when it could have been really fruitful and could have worked a lot more quickly and to their advantage if it had been accepted a lot earlier.

LL: Brittany I'm just wondering what artists do you see out there today. You've touched on this a little bit that you think may deserve as much attention as the Springsteen's and The Rolling Stones of this world.

BRITTANY SPANOS: A lot of Artists that have been mentioned, not only by me but by everyone. We have Beyonces and the Drakes and Taylor Swifts look at them beyond selling a lot. Looking at them as artists who have changed the cultural conversation and even myself we get stuck in the numbers and we forget to appreciate what they have done to empower the listeners that they are reaching globally to change the way that we consume music. And I think that's as important as any sort of authenticity of writing that we can consider for a lot of the boomer artists that we are discussing as well.

LL: Dorothy, I think you want to jump in.

DOROTHY WOODEND: Yeah. So I think he was that very famous quote about the Velvet Underground selling you know 30000 copies of their record. But of course everyone who bought a copy of their record went out and started their own band. So there is like all kinds of different types of influence.

SUSAN G. COLE: Including those people who are trying to fight Ticketmaster and who are trying to make sure that their fans can get to concert tonight I honour them as well. I think that's a very important point that you've made about how you can have an impact on other areas other than just ticket sales.

LL: And Susan I just want to ask you when is the day going to come if it's coming when the boomer generation is entirely out of the way?

SUSAN G. COLE: Today is the last night, guys. Well here's what I want to say to my generation actually, Laura, and that is that the only way that culture can bloom and grow is if those who were dominant at one time keep their eyes open and keep their hearts open. Because when you look what's happening with the green movement, that is all another generation. When you look what's happening with guns in the states, that's a whole other generation. And we're only going to survive culturally and politically if we remember that everybody has something to say and we should keep listening.

LL: Dorothy, as you mentioned you have a son who's younger than 20 what gives you hope that people like him are getting out from under the thumb of baby boomer culture?

DOROTHY WOODEND: I think freedom to explore and he's not hemmed in by any particular set of ideas about what's so important or what's valuable or what's good. To me that kind of liberty and that kind of freedom. That's where culture is alive right. That's with a cutting edge where things are genuinely happening. And it's still really exciting kind of looking on from the distance of another generation.

LL: All right. Well I thank all three of you for coming in for a great discussion about a generation that I thought I was part of but Susan tells me I'm too young for it.

SUSAN G. COLE: Too late. That's OK. I'll accept that.

LL: Thank you to all three of you.

Guests: Thank you.

LL: Susan G. Cole is a freelance cultural commentator and a contributing books editor for Now Magazine. Dorothy Woodend as a culture editor for The Tyee and online newsmagazine and Brittany Spanos is staff writer for Rolling Stone magazine. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q Jonathan Van Ness from Queer Eye talks about how he built his confidence after a rocky childhood in a small Midwestern town.

And it is only appropriate to close the show with a song from Abbey Road. This is the Beatles with the end. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: The End by The Beatles]

Thursday September 26, 2019 Full Episode Transcript

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