Hello everyone. My name is Florence and welcome to my talk Why the World Needs a Vagina Museum. I just want to start really quickly by saying some content warnings I will be talking about vaginas. I'll also be talking about some difficult and sensitive topics including sexual violence and FGM and transgender issues as well so if you would rather not listen to that that's totally fine and this is your opportunity to leave and there's absolutely no judgement whatsoever. It's family friendly depending on what your family is like and you should know that there is a picture of a vulva at one point because obviously. I launched the project to build the world's first bricks and mortar vagina museum because I found out that there was a penis museum in Iceland but there is no vagina museum equivalent anywhere in the world and I thought that was a bit unfair as a bit sort of inequality on the nose so there's only one way to change that. That's to do it yourself. I was at a networking event once and I had one of those badges and it said Florence Schachter, vagina museum and this woman came over said hello and she looked at my boobs which I'm normally totally fine with and she was like oh what's the vagina museum and her friend had to be like darling it's what you thought it was because people are just so like they don't expect to see the word vagina in a public space and I've had some really weird reactions to the vagina museum and I'm going to show you a few of them just so you kind of know what we're dealing with. So obviously a lot of them are quite nice, you know I'm not going to say, I'll show you many of those because it might be a bit braggy so I'll show you the ones that maybe are not necessarily nice but more jokes. There's this one, there's a building in London dedicated to crusty old cunts but enough about Parliament, there's a vagina museum too. I get this all the time, so many variations the Republican Party, the House of Lords and it's funny the first time you hear it until you really think about what the crux of the joke is the crux of the joke is that cunts, vaginas, vulvas are bad things that's the joke and they're comparing the people they hate to other things they hate vaginas but I mean not all of them are quite so sinister this one's quite nice a vagina museum's coming in London officials caution that while crews work to respect warning signs and tour guide instructions caution slippery when wet which is much better than the endless jokes of will it be closed once a month for refurbishment? No, no it won't it's still going to be open and it's going to be even better we've even caught international attention I'm very short on time for this topic, for this talk so I'm not going to show you all the videos like Conan O'Brien mentioned us in his monologue which is really exciting and he made a joke obviously but he did make this joke and I'm very proud of that which is I bet I can't find it a vagina museum better can't find it which is interesting considering there is a flower literally designating its location but of course they don't actually mean the vulva what they mean is the cleteris a vagina museum better have a knocker on the door because no man will be able to find the buzzer apparently there's a cleteris museum very near the vagina museum but I could never find it I hate this joke so much because it is so easy to find it's right okay that's the only photo in there don't worry it's gone now and we get all sorts of jokes I promise you there's not a joke you could tell me that I haven't already heard also there's a lot of journalists for some reason who really hate the existence of the vagina museum people's like why so many genital related PR requests I don't know why they're so upset that sounds great and then people use it as a way of making personal commentary for example here Florent Jecter a particularly loopy British feminist is fundraising for a vagina museum I like the fact that they called me loopy if you look in the preview of the article they also call me a YouTube star I'm a feminist YouTube star they're actually complimenting me it's a little backfire the personal commentary never ends did you know if you say a weird idea out loud around Florent Jecter there's a 50% chance you'll do it referencing the vagina museum I don't know this person this was a complete Twitter egg but damn did they peg me about a year ago I broke my foot and I was in Brighton and I was walking around with one trainer and one slipper and some friends of mine that evening were like we should go clubbing and I was like I've literally got a broken foot and I'm walking around in a slipper yes of course I'll go and that is a picture of me in a club in a slipper it's just something off my bucket list and then sometimes it isn't necessarily personal commentary for me but for other people I won't read the first one because whenever I read it I always feel gross and then somebody says this sounds like a project that the Trump administration might want to grab I've heard so many Trump jokes I can't handle it anymore yet that person agrees a little baby just can't deal with Trump anymore but then it's not always fun and games I get quite a lot of people who don't like the fact that we're gender inclusive so this is an example of somebody who applied to us sharing a poster of an art exhibition we did in Edinburgh where it was something like art exploring people's relationship with their vaginas and somebody said why have you used the word people instead of the word women and I thought that was really interesting but I was like don't you consider women people? but yeah it's just a fact there are people with vaginas who don't call themselves women and there are people who are women who don't have vaginas that's just literally a fact there are people out there who do that and I think it's very arrogant and hubristic to tell somebody else actually I'm going to define you actually I get to decide who you are this happens quite rarely it's actually rarer than you'd expect but there is always the mansplaining this is indeed a real email that I received I blacked out the name because I don't want him to be embarrassed if he ever comes to my talk but also he is absolutely going to be embarrassed where he says I heard about your idea and here is the suggestions of things that you might want to include and then he gives me a number of suggestions the vagina monologs like I hadn't heard of the vagina monologs like I'm opening a vagina I was absolutely astounded I'd literally heard of like all of these things except for maybe one which was just a recommendation of a very specific researcher and um so I was far too nice to be honest and I was like oh thanks I knew about these but I'll keep them in mind and then he sends a follow up email where he says there are some more suggestions and this is the real list he suggested I include photos and illustrations information history he suggested I include history in a museum like I didn't know what a museum was it was really astounding I mean but hashtag not all men because obviously you're wondering what did my father think that's what I'm always wondering but after the that was way too dark I'm sorry I'm sorry I've never made that joke before but I'm definitely writing it in anyway after the first after the sorry I just realised I didn't put my timer on after the first article was published he sent me an email and this is the email he sent to me oh I click one thing and it all stops working he says hi Florence I read your article in the independent you've hit the G spot with this interview oh my father is one of a kind he really is but of all those reactions there are some reactions that really proved to me why we need a vagina museum so much and it's things like this people saying let's open a close your vagina museum instead the world needs lots of things but a vagina museum isn't one of them I obviously disagree with this and so I thought maybe I would make the case to you why does the world need a vagina museum now I'm about to talk about some very difficult topics and then I'm going to tie them all at the end so please bear with me this bit is about to get a bit depressing I normally start this section of the talk by showing you a video it's called My Cliteris it's a song by a charity called Integrate UK which works with victims of FGM in the UK it's a really great song and I'm going to play it at the end for us to all like you know exit to it's a really great song so why do we need a vagina museum what is the history that we need to learn about our vaginas and everything that goes with that what is happening right now in the world that we need to be learning here for example retake the night type protest about 1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence or sexual assault at some point in their lives in some countries that is as high as 70% child marriage is still occurring in the world all over the world there are more than 700 million women who are alive today who were married before their 18th birthday and this woman is one of them her name is Angel McGeehee this is a photo of her on her wedding day when she was 13 years old in Idaho in the US the legal age of marriage is mostly 18 except for two exceptions where it's 19 and 21 if you have parental and judicial permission in 25 of those states you can get married as young as 13 no, as married as young as 11 in the other 25 states if you have parental and judicial permission there is no minimum age for marriage there are over 200 million people alive today who have undergone female genital mutilation it is a problem that happens mostly in Africa but it used to be a problem in the US mostly in Africa but it used to happen in the UK until very recently maybe a hundred years clitoridectomies the surgical removal of the clitoris was quite a standard treatment for anything from masturbation to epilepsy to almost any mental health issue in a woman today women and girls together account for 71% of all human trafficking victims and only 3 out of 4 women are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation does anyone know who these people are? Heads of State yes, it is every head of state or head of government in the world as of when I last updated my talk so you can see for example there's Theresa May who I can't even think about now because every time she pops up in my head she's dancing and her brain wants to just die there is Angela Merkel and Sansou Chi the New Zealand President which is the bottom second from the left she is amazing by the way if you haven't heard of the New Zealand Prime Minister President, I'm not sure she recently came back from maternity leave she went on maternity leave while she was the head of state when she was having her election campaign people asked her what happens if you go on maternity leave what happens if you get pregnant, you're a young woman and she was like yeah, I'll just go on maternity leave New Zealand won't crumble you realise the government isn't entirely run by one person it'll be fine and talking of governments there are still over 70 countries in the world where it is illegal to be gay or to be LGBT 12 of those still carry the death sentence I was in the United Arab Emirates I was working at the Science Festival and I was in the hotel and United Arab Emirates is one of those places you can get flocked for just for being suspected of being gay and we were sitting at a hotel and a local man he was sitting on another table and he just interrupts our conversation he goes, can I ask you something why do you have beards and there were two men there who had beards two of my friends and they were like, I don't know it's just a fashion at the moment that's just what we're wearing and he was like, I think you're wearing beards I think you have beards because you want to show how masculine you are you want to show women that you're a good strong man you're definitely not one of those gays and to his credit one of my friends just stopped him and said well I know that can't be true because I have a beard and I was so impressed with him in that moment because this local the way that country works that local literally could have got him flogged and deported for that single comment he's okay, don't worry on an average day talking of of legal repercussions on an average day I do at least six things that would be illegal for me to do in another country just because I'm a woman things like cycling to work and leaving the house very recently driving someone just motioned to me the driving very recently in Saudi Arabia they allowed they let women to start to drive some people are saying it's a cover up for some other things that was like a distraction thing but like at least it happened I guess but until very recently in Saudi Arabia women could fly planes but they couldn't drive cars so women they would be driving this humongous plane they'd land the plane and they'd have to get a chauffeur and a taxi to their hotel because they weren't allowed to drive the car it's I beg as a belief if you want to find out how many laws you break every day just for being a woman and you can do it even if you're not a woman it just says if you were a woman that is the URL if you just google like match international but what will the vagina museum do to tackle these issues the world is shit yes the world is totally shit but I really do believe that a vagina museum can be one of those things that can help turn the tide of the world we'll have permanent galleries exhibitions where we can learn about the issues that I've just discussed because most of the time these issues are swept under the carpet they're taboo when they're brought up people don't even want to talk about them and by having an exhibition you can go there and you know that it's a trusted source there are people to talk to and people to ask questions and that I think that's why exhibitions are so important why permanent collections and museums are so important because they're a way of society telling itself what they deem important we'll run events which is basically another method of learning in a different format because not everyone will enjoy exhibitions but also we'll have events like comedy nights because we have to laugh sometimes we'll be doing outreach work this is really important the outreach work that we do is to encourage charities to do things like distributing menstrual products to the homeless, to refugees and asylum seekers to people in period poverty outreach work like working with cancer sufferers tomorrow is Guiney Cancer Awareness Month by the way because I just feel like you can't come to the vagina museum learn about how shit the world is and then just have no follow through you have to be able to channel that anger frustration into doing something good and policy work and advocacy is a big part of that as well so making policy recommendations to make sure that our government is protecting and furthering our rights and doing awareness campaigns and things like that and then of course there will also be a gift shop because it's a museum and a cafe with a vulva cupcakes because I mean come on don't those look delicious oh yes I went to an event at the feminist library where we made vulva cupcakes I made my first ever vulva cupcake and it was just the best I highly recommend, they're so easy so I decided to make a vagina museum that's what I did and this is the actual tweet where I decided to do that and you can see it dated 20th March 2017 it really wasn't that long ago where as a joke I said people there's a penis museum in Iceland but no vagina museum anywhere who wants to start one with me so I retweeted myself because I'm that kind of person and I said oh I tweeted this on a whim but it's actually a life goal now so what would the vagina museum look like that's the bit I kind of fly away dreaming about what will be in it so there's going to be four permanent galleries this is the current plan, it may change it takes a really long time to build a museum this is what I've discovered so the current plan is society culture science culture society and history because that's the order that I'm doing them in the slides so science I thought it would be a fun one to start with so there's so much misinformation about the gynaecological anatomy out there so I thought it would be a good place to start it's a good sort of starting point and to show you how much misinformation there is out there I thought I might show you something that went viral a few months ago this is a post from Kyle do women actually orgasm there is no conclusive physiological evidence of it men are very clear obvious but women not so much I have to disagree one thing is clear women are taught that they are supposed to orgasm are we where? I need to go to this place perhaps it is an unreasonable myth that would help explain why so many women are sexually unsatisfied I think we all know why women are sexually so unsatisfied in your life Kyle because they are expecting some defining moment like men have maybe a woman's sexual experience is just totally different from a man's I will study the issue further a true scientist I really don't think he is going to study the issue further to be honest there is so when I read this I was absolutely astounded that any person could think this I didn't even know where to start and not knowing where to start is something that's quite common in this country half of 26 to 35 year old women in the UK cannot label on this diagram which one is the vagina anyone want to give it a go it's okay I'm just going to show you really quickly camera I'm going to go out of shot for a second it's that one that's the vagina cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes ovarian tubes actually ovaries I don't like calling it the fallopian tubes because Gabriel Fallopio who is named after was an absolute dick if you want to find out why I have the most hilarious story about at home when we do the Q&A afterwards so the misinformation is having real impacts as well on people's lives so in child anyone know this show call the midwife it's an amazing show makes me cry every single episode it's really cathartic but the reason I brought it up is because tears during childbirth are on the rise in the UK and the Royal College of Midwives is trying to figure out why this is and they came to the conclusion that it is TV I know another reason why TV is the worst but because imagine this you're giving birth it is an extremely stressful situation you're not really listening to people you're just kind of and when you're in that kind of situation you just refer to what knowledge you already have what is almost the only experience we have as modern people of childbirth it's from TV and what do people do on TV but when you are crowning which is when the baby's head is coming out of the vagina you don't want to push that hard you actually want to push really slowly because that's the bit when you're most likely to tear you've got to take it really easy and the only show I've ever seen who has shown childbirth accurately is called The Midwife so you know we should commission the next season if anybody works with BBC here but all of this information is even not enough because not everyone fits in to the current information that is available so I don't know if anybody recognises who this is this is Lady Collin Campbell she is particularly famous for being on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here she wrote books about Diana or something because she's a posh English white lady and that's what posh English white ladies do but the reason I bring her up is because she wasn't actually born a lady she was born as a so she was born when she was born she was born in Jamaica in the 1960s referring to my notes to make sure I get all the facts right and she had indeterminate genitalia as it's called she had a fused labia and a deformed clitoris I'm only using those words because that's what was in the medical notes and has been reported to me and that's as much as I know and her parents were given the choice by the doctor you can either raise them as a girl and I'll do the surgery or you can raise them as a boy and I'll do the surgery she was being posh white English people they were like, yeah boy but when she started going through puberty she was going through a sort of very female puberty she her hips were expanding she was developing breasts and they realised that they had made the wrong choice and she agreed with them she never felt like a boy and it suddenly all made sense so what they did is they put on hormone blockers so she would stop becoming a girl and when she was 18 and she now lives as a woman she's only called Lady Colin Campbell not because Colin is our old name but because posh English people they take their husband's name in full Princess Michael of Kent this kind of surgery is called normalisation surgery normally it is currently banned or restricted in three countries and one US state very recently does anyone know which countries they are Malta yes that's like the first person in the audience who's ever got their right well done Malta is super great it was the first one really random is anyone of the other two it's chilly where it's banned and it's restricted in Columbia and in this state of California they've condemned it but I'm not really sure what that means yet we'll see and then once you start having your you start learning about your anatomy learning about menstruation of course and this is a real thing that went viral a person tweeted saying tam chwm should not be free why does everyone keep saying they should be if you can't control your bladder then that's not the tax payers problem I know that's how much misinformation there is out there about our bodies there are real people out there who do not understand how periods work you'll be very pleased to know that after this tweet was sent now and with menstruation comes of course the terrors of puberty unless you're never long bottom I only put that photo in there for my own gratification and then with puberty comes of course the possibility of pregnancy which is another really important thing to learn because it's such an important thing in our society that there are so many myths about it if the baby sits high it'll be a girl if the baby sits low it'll be a boy there's so much misinformation so much misinformation for example this was a real ad where a person these two people were checking a pregnancy test like they did the tagline is when you want to be sure like you don't need but of course not everyone wants to get pregnant and not everyone wants to get pregnant and people go to great lengths to not be pregnant one of the ways, just an example is called God's loophole so the image that I've shown you is a comedy song by Garfunkel and Oats that is all about this loophole where basically in America there is a lot of abstinence only education they're not learning about contraception and this leads to a huge misunderstanding on how these sorts of things work so God's loophole is the idea that losing your virginity is penis goes into a vagina so how do you keep your virginity don't put it in the vagina put it next door and that is God's loophole problem is is there are all the associated risks of unprotected sex all their learning is you shouldn't have sex and for them sex is penis and vagina and STIs are on the rise basically and even when we're getting sex education it's often very poor sex education we're not learning about things like consent so this is still from the Thames Valley police video about tea if you haven't watched it I highly recommend it it's now compulsory in all schools and of course we've gotten over the sort of baby making years there comes menstruation menopause why did both those words begin with men I really don't like that basically menopause is kind of the reason why humans are so great and if you want to find out why we can do that afterwards because I don't have enough time but of course that is a very heteronormative point of view wait before the sex I was going to say I think about sex basically women have less orgasms or fewer orgasms than men do heterosexual women 61% of the time they will have an orgasm during sex for lesbian women it's much higher of course but for bisexual women it's even lower than heterosexual women I don't know why that is further studies are required but that is again sorry so everything previous has been quite a heteronormative point of view and learning about LGBT issues are really important especially the just actual information behind it because there are real people like this who try to prove that same sex attraction and being LGBT is unnatural and do you know how he proved this he did it with magnets he got two magnets and it was like look north and north they don't like to go together but north and south they attract therefore being gay is wrong I know beggars belief and of course that's to do with attraction which is very different to gender identity which people have been gender non conforming literally for millennia we have such early records of people not conforming to the gender binary including for example much more modern version does anyone know who this person is gay who I just wanted to share this image of them because they are modelling this new lingerie range and they look way better than I would in this underwear and I think that's something to be celebrated and of course because I am a scientist the research of the gynae anatomy will be something that's included because that is a very chequered history including its study of animals and the mascot of the museum will probably be the hyena again if you want to know why come ask me afterwards the hyena is amazing so that's the science one so I thought I'd labour over that a little bit because I think it's a really good starting point and now I'm going to just quickly raise through the other three galleries so there's the culture gallery where we will show examples of art paintings, sculptures music, genelmenes pink will just be on loop constantly books, plays things like Georgia O'Keeffe, the flower series I don't know if any of you have seen the flower series it's a whole range of paintings of flowers and they look like vulvas so much every single one of them looks like a vulva but to this day her and her estate because she's not with us anymore always said it's not a vulva get your mind out the gase it's not a vulva at all and I find it really interesting why they said that did they say that genuinely because she was painting vulvas or was she like it's 1926 in America where homosexuality is illegal of course it's not a vulva who knows we'll have exhibitions on books like The Hamay's Tale which I think is one of the greatest books about the gynaecological anatomy and of course more modern art as well like The Great Wall of Vagina the artist has already agreed to sell it to me once we have enough money and space and I only keep saying that so that he keeps to his promise it should be called The Great Wall of Vulva I totally admit this but then it wouldn't be a pun and I think the pun is way more important guys the society gallery so the society gallery will explore cultures all cultures around the world and how they have explored the gynaecological anatomy for example religious rights this is an image from the annual festival in Assam in India which celebrates the goddess shakti's annual menstruation very jealous only once a year the myths and legends that our society has about vaginas for example vagina dentata what a wonderful phrase wonderful phrase I'm gonna write that song you bring up Disney do you know the movie Moana I'm gonna assume you do you know the rocks character Maui so in the original Maui mythology do you know how he dies it's the best story he's a bit of a trickster and he wants to get the secret to immortal for immortality so what he does this is his plan he goes to find the goddess of death and his plan is to climb up her vagina exit through her mouth not sure how the biology works on that and by reversing the process of birth he will then be able to prevent death and so he waits until she's asleep and then she's a massive giant and he starts crawling up her vagina and on looking is a bird and this bird finds this scene so hilarious and they start laughing laughing hysterically so loudly that the goddess wakes up and she's like Maui what the fuck are you doing there and so sure what she does is she activates her obsidian vagina teeth and crushes him to death yeah so I really think it's the me too story of the ancient world myths and legends indeed will have exhibitions on the language that we use this is just an image from a book called colourful cocks and quims which if you buy it all the money goes to FPA so you know always a good shout out for them exhibitions on sexuality and sexual oppression I think maybe chastity belts might be one not necessarily in origin because vagina dentata happened before definitely before chastity belts maybe further the myth of vagina dentata and also legislation and courts and how it has been dealt with in the political world for example with Kesha this is an image of Kesha who tried to get out of her contract with her producer because she claimed that he was sexually assaulting her and the judge basically said actually I value his financial interests more than your well-being and so I'm not going to break the contract and so she appealed and the new judge said you should have known before you signed the contract that is the state of our courts and is a story that happens again and again in almost every country so that's the society gallery and of course the history gallery it is what it says on the tin the history of gynaecological medicine for a very long time doctors would not even look at it so we wonder why it's so behind every other field of medicine the history of the science behind the gynaecological anatomy so does anyone know what that is that's a vagina according to Vesalius people genuinely used to think vaginas were just inside out penises this is a cut out I'll zoom out because this is an image from a 1559 anatomy textbook and I don't know if you can see but on the image of the there's like a headless woman who has her insides on display and somebody cut out the vulva and the book was found like this so nobody knows who cut it out or why they did it but because these are woodcuts by Vesalius we have many other examples so this is what it normally looks like because they get reprinted all the time that is what the vulva looked like and I just think it's really interesting because her labia are poking out her inner labia are poking out from outer labia I don't know but I love it the history of menstruation I don't know if anyone remembers using these my mum definitely used these where before you had adhesive pads you had to clip them on the history of contraception this is a real comic sort of little thing where there's a stalk carrying a baby and it says and still the villain pursues her for as long as we've been having babies we've been trying not to have babies the history of vulval beauty standards very hot topic now but was a hot topic always as you can see this is Rubin's Three Graces so as we know by the name they are supposed to be the most beautiful women who could imagine number one they have rolls of fat and cellulite which is great but they also don't have any pubic hair and I think this is really interesting because people keep saying oh the removal of pubic hair is something that's only been happening very recently it's actually been happening for a very long time for hundreds of years for loads of different reasons so that's kind of an overview of what I want the museum to be how will we get there so we currently have a pop-up museum which is travelling around the country where you can learn about all sorts of different things we're then going to open an interim space so if anybody in London, Bristol or Brighton has an empty building they would like a vagina museum and know that I'm on the lookout and then once we've done that for a few years then we're going to start building the permit museum just to manage everybody's expectations here is where we're going to be having some future places we're going to be having the pop-up exhibition if you would like to come visit us and here are some events that we're doing we mostly do them in London but the on the female body one is in Manchester so that is kind of the cliff notes of the past year and a half of my life and I hope after sitting all of that thank you so much for being with me through this journey and I hope one day you can come visit and agree that the world does need a vagina museum thank you very much thank you Florence Shekter you'll be taking questions in the bar shortly after this let's go to the bar thank you and apparently we still need a lot of volunteers especially for the car park so if you haven't yet you can volunteer on the AMF website there's a link at the top or visit the volunteers tent thank you


vlog, except I'm starting it late on the weekend and it might go into early next week. So like I'm starting this at 2.30 on Saturday and my birthday is on Monday, but I have an exam on Tuesday. So I'm kind of thinking of going through to Monday slash Tuesday-ish for this week's vlog video. And normally when I do vlogs it's however length of time for whatever book I am reading, but I've decided I'm just gonna do a chunk of time and whatever books I read, which is generally what other people do. But the reason I'm doing it is because I am participating in the Desertathon this month in the month of May and so I'm kind of just, I'm finally getting back into my reading as I'm almost done with exams. So I want to be reading as fast as possible, but then that's not always very interesting vlog content. So the first book if you watched my Desert TBR, Desertathon TBR, which will be linked down below in case you didn't watch it. The first book that I am reading for it is The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna and I actually have done quite a bit of reading of this this morning. I started it last Saturday when it was very beginning of May because there was a reading sprint happening so I started it then, but because it's been exam week I haven't picked it up at all since. So today I did some more reading sprints and I'm actually on page 130, which is about one-third of the way through the book. And theoretically there shouldn't be, didn't really a reason why I shouldn't finish it today other than the fact of like, I don't know if I can slash will finish it today. There are only a couple things that I need slash want to do today and they're not very time consuming. So like I don't have a good reason not to finish it today, but I'm only a third of the way through and it's like 400 pages, which back when I was younger and like was reading all the time I didn't have near as much homework or life responsibilities, not a problem, but like nowadays we'll see. So I'm going to start off reading this and I'm going to keep going through my TBR for the Desertathon. I am also listening to an audiobook, something else to note. I am listening to the Labyrinth Lost, which made an appearance in my Cinco de Mayo recommendation video that came out like two weeks ago now. So that will also be linked up here and probably down below for you to check out. And I am under halfway, but like more than a third of the way through that audiobook. And I am enjoying it a lot as well. I'm enjoying both books so far. I will be able to vlog me doing things while listening to it because I do film on my phone, but that's also how I listen to audiobooks. But I will most likely be doing a lot of listening in the car because this coming um Sunday, tomorrow, tomorrow, we are going to go to Chicago to celebrate my birthday. Don't worry, we're all fully vaccinated and we are still going to be responsible wearing masks and social distancing and whatnot. But so I hopefully, it's a six hour drive, so I will hopefully be listening to my audiobook during that time. So I'll keep you updated on that as well, but for now I'm gonna go do a couple things and then I will sit down and get some reading done finally. I'm so excited. I'm still behind on my Goodreads goal. Like I am incredibly behind on my Goodreads goal because I've just been so swamped with school. So I think it'll be really exciting for me to hopefully do some catching up this summer, if not getting ahead this summer to account for what will most likely be a busy fall. Here we go. Awesome triggers for like they kind of die over and over again. It's very interesting reading about the religion that they follow. There are so many lines and quotes from the infinite wisdom, that's what they refer to it as, that I sit there and I'm like this sounds a lot like stereotypes that some people have against some religions. Like I can see roots of extremism in their religion that are stereotypical extremisms of other religions that we actually have in our real world. So I thought it's been very interesting reading it in this fantastical context and coming from like someone who does believe in it and fully trusts and goes along with the religion, especially when it's super oppressive towards women and she is a woman. So it's very interesting to read her and how devout she is to the infinite wisdom when coming from our world we see that A it's terrible towards women and B it just sounds like it has connections to extremisms or stereotypes of other religions. So I think that's very interesting and I'm really, I mean obviously there's going to be character growth where she like no longer believes in it and defies it and is like no women should be allowed to run and be independent of a man and bloodity, but that's probably going to happen. I mean that's just kind of how YA goes but I'm also really liking the found family in this. It feels, I don't, it doesn't like necessarily feel forced. It just feels like you know these women are being ripped from their homes and the first people they see are the ones that they are clinging to and I, it's very, I don't quite know if I like just how easily they came together rather than being cautious or scared but at the same time I understand that you want to be connected with other people who are in the same situation as you but yeah no I'm enjoying the found family. I'm going to keep reading some more probably after I do a couple things but I've been doing the readings for us for the Desert of Thon and that's what they're currently doing so I am enjoying it thus far. Wait hold up, so we're doing a Veggie Tale silly song ranking and we're listening to a little bit of each song as we are driving to Chicago. So uh the next one is the Madame Blueberry. Madame Blueberry. Madame Blueberry. All right. I think let's do Manatee, Barber Manatee. Now let's do Barber Manatee. And we'll judge it not by if it's a bop but like what it's supposed to be you know a sappy kind of. So we're judging them based off of if they're a bop, if they're silly kind of fun and then what was the other one? That was it. Yeah, that was it. How's that? And there's going to be a lot of nostalgia too. Yeah, first off, do not remember the orchestra. We joined that because it follows the tragic saga of Barber Manatee. It's a daytime drama. I love House. Be glad it wasn't a deal breaker for me sweetie because that was IT's ITT drive. Barber also the soap opera joke like that. It's a soap opera. It's just completely. It just seems like it was just a silly song about the manatee. It's divine. So that's probably going to be a two one. Okay, I think I just I think the instrumental and the dramatics. Manatee, it's but it's not dramatic than still. It's a dramatic. It's a tier one. If we if by some miracle of like some serious like office energy. Yeah, you dragon. I need that coffee right about now. They're not in the books. They're reading the books. Now your husband's stripping. I'm not monetized in the first place. That's for your patreon. What? In front of obviously I did film with them a little bit like you see them in the clips but like me talking into a camera and so so I didn't I didn't do a lot of filming. I really didn't do a lot of reading either because well I had a lot of fun on my birthday weekend. I was not expecting to read a lot physically anyway but I didn't get to listen to my audiobook at all because I couldn't find my headphone converter for my phone and I couldn't find my Bluetooth headphones right before we left. So I I the only way I was going to listen to my audiobook was out loud and no one wants to sit in a car for 10 hours while I am halfway through an audiobook like yeah that's something that I did with my parents all the time. My parents would be reading a book they'd be halfway through and we'd listen to it on a drive but that's not something that I can do with my husband and friends who are not big readers. So I did not get any reading done this weekend and this vlog is probably going to go up late because this is Thursday morning. So we are back home from Chicago. I had a blast as you could probably see and tell. I guess that was just a weekend vlog or weekend vlog that didn't really have much to do with reading. I hope you guys still somewhat enjoyed it but I promise we'll get back to some reading because now that I am done with school officially I will be able to read in the mornings before I go to work. So yeah so if you like if you actually did like this video click the thumbs up or if you want more reading vlogs in general you know ones that have to do with actual reading also give the video a thumbs up or comment down below like what kind of videos you want to see um or comment down below just what you're reading or a book that took you a long time to get through. I'm not it's not that the gilded ones is taking me a long time because I'm not enjoying it it's I've actually just been so busy so hopefully I can do a lot more reading of that today um but yeah subscribe if you have not subscribed to the channel I post videos every Thursday um and hit the bell and the notification icon so you know exactly when I post on Thursdays but until I see you all in the next video I wish you a happy reading.


Going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards rip in one box of 2023 Where you go 2023 Pneodomers elite football hobby for Kyle's eat the cop Drake London and base Spellbound is J. Jettus Drake London Mike Evans and base orange Devonte Smith to 399 high life Tyree kill filler Fillers are a little egregious in this Marvion over shown to at 149 Dakota and base and Rogers say Kwan face Anton Harrison to 999 that is gonna be a Zach Evans turn of the century auto 299 for the Rams this one there Angeles Michael Meyer 299 Jalen Hyatt high life Mike Williams and base that is to 399 Brian branch for the Lions on the orange rookie Joe burrow 299 an inch Coran Bennett that is to 375 Terry McLaurin on the craftsman Jersey card For the commanders and a Marian over shown again to 149. It's weird The same guy same parallel Bryce young rookie elitist and always gonna be based on the back Between three and four Jonathan mingo to 999 and will Anderson on the pen pals auto Rats on that one there Kyle very nice very good defender in Houston now third overall pick Jameer Gibbs ice Lamar to 149 on the aspirations for the Vens Don't Ravens tomorrow. It's awesome, dude Not the stress for the Bucks play Marvin Mims to 99 See I don't You don't win that it's not good To 75 Travis Kelsey on the spellbound and base that'll do it for your break there Kyle. Thanks again for the sport buddy Get him right out to my man


From The Conversation, this is Don't Call Me Resilient. I'm Vanita Srivastava. Worker rights under the pandemic have been deeply compromised, and we're talking about a group of workers in which their set of rights were already very precarious. The pandemic has increased the control of worker rights and worker freedoms. When COVID-19 first hit, I found myself thinking about the essential workers, like many of us. Doctors, hospital staff, those working in grocery stores. That's where my mind went. What I didn't immediately think about were the tens of thousands of migrant workers who arrive in Canada every year. These are the folks that make up about one-sixth of the workforce, of those who grow, produce, and pack the food that we eat and serve to our families. Today, we're going to talk about migrant workers, one of the community's hardest hit by COVID-19. You may have heard in the news about the outbreaks on farms and in meat processing plants. But for the most part, migrant workers have been largely invisible in our society. My guest today, Minsuk Lee, calls them the Unseen. Minsuk is an associate professor at OCAD University in Toronto, where she examines the intersections of art and social change. But she is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has chronicled the migrant worker experience in Canada for over a decade. Her feature, Migrant Dreams, explores the story of those who come here under the country's temporary foreign workers program. It's a system, she says, that treats them like modern-day indentured workers. And she's got so much more to say on the subject. Which is why Minsuk was one of the very first people I thought of when we decided we wanted to talk about migrant workers and their place in Canada today. Minsuk, I have so much I want to ask you. And so I'm going to just jump right in. What were some of your first thoughts when COVID-19 first hit? When the lockdown was declared and we witnessed all around us the alarm of the global pandemic, and the very first thing I heard was social distancing. That what would protect you from COVID-19 was social distancing. And immediately I knew migrant workers would be in trouble. Because migrant workers do not have control of their own space. Social distancing is a luxury. It means you can control the space that you live and work in. And migrant workers are regularly housed in very crowded living conditions. Oftentimes I have seen workers living 2030 in a garage that has no windows and is used to store farm equipment when workers are not living in the garage with one or two bathrooms that are accessible. I have also seen that migrant workers work very close, cheek to cheek, elbow to elbow in the greenhouse spaces, in factory lines when they're processing foods, fruits or cutting fish. So I knew that the pandemic, which was sending alarm bells across the world, what was required to protect yourself from the pandemic, social distancing, would be unavailable and inaccessible to migrant workers because they are required to work very closely to each other, number one, but even more concerningly, they often are housed in living conditions that are very crowded and they can't control the spaces that they live and work in because of the laws of Canada's migrant worker program. Are you in touch with some of the folks that you have interviewed over the years? Do you continue to hear from them? Yes, and I'm not going to name names because workers often need to have their identities protected. There were two workers out in the West Coast. They were sent back by their employer because they were in communication with community organizers in the West Coast working on a farm and they agreed to receive some food and support because community organizers saw that migrant workers were... ordinarily migrant workers are very isolated. They're kept away from the non-migrant worker population. And oftentimes employers ensure that migrant workers do not have very much contact with Canadians. So it's a kind of isolation that I think most Canadians could not imagine where what I have seen is that a migrant worker will arrive in the airport, let's say at a 4 a.m. flight from Mexico or from the Caribbean. They'll be picked up by a broker or someone who works in the farm, maybe the employer or supervisor, driven to their living quarters and the next morning they're expected to show up at work and then it's seven days a week of work and oftentimes where they're working are farms which are really isolated in rural communities and getting access to go grocery shopping to do some banking or to do any kind of activity outside of work is monitored and requires transportation from the employer and it requires that kind of organization. So the isolation of migrant workers is extreme and in the West Coast when COVID hit, there were workers who were concerned about the quarantine measures that were being applied to them, required of them and their employer immediately put down measures such as no guest visitors, no leaving premises after a certain set number of hours and then the workers were also not able to go shopping during the quarantine time or if they were ill and the food that they were being provided was not adequate and so there were community organizers that delivered food to the workers and once the employer found out, the employer sent those two workers back to Mexico because the employer decided that they had contravened the rules of the farm so workers being punished for speaking out is a frequent occurrence so I'll be careful about naming workers but yes I have spoken to workers that I have filmed with one of them was working in a farm in a mushroom farm in Ontario and this worker contracted COVID, tested positive and what the boss did was put them in a house with other workers who were some were positive and some were negative so the worker I know who was sick was put in a house with workers who were and were not sick and they were sharing bathrooms and this worker was given no information and then they were quarantined for two weeks and for the first week they actually didn't even know whether they would be receiving any money, any food what would happen and it was mutual aid from their fellow migrant workers that supported them over the very first week which was really terrifying because they had heard a lot of scary stories about COVID and then after week one the employer gave them some information that they would be able to apply for some emergency funds which they did but during that entire time the employer was responsible for providing them food because they were under quarantine and also housing I mean there must be fear all around in this case fear for those who have it and fear for those who don't and that must cost divisions as well yeah there's a lot of fear and tension on farms pre-COVID fear about job loss because there's so much at stake tied to holding onto this job in Canada but since COVID workers have arrived very afraid of their own health they know that workers have died in Ontario they are aware that there are workers who are working alongside each other some who are sick, some who are asymptomatic some they don't know and they're aware that their boss isn't providing appropriate housing and then when workers are sick the kind of food that they're being offered is barely enough the one worker I know who was sick he was terrified the entire time and he's very depressed because he is aware that workers alongside him are sick workers in the plant were working while they were ill he knew this and had nowhere to report it to and didn't believe anyone would believe him anyways and then as you're saying there's the fear of being sent home or you know sent away the fear of being sent home is a constant running fear for many workers because that's the reality of Canada's market worker program it's designed to keep workers in line with a strict control that is exercised by employers and the control that's exercised by employers is through the power employers have to send workers back to repatriate workers workers come into Canada under tied work permits which means that their status in Canada their job in Canada is only secure as long as their relationship with their boss is good I think for any of us to imagine that our boss would have that kind of power over us you know our livelihood, our living conditions who we speak to many of us to imagine our boss having that kind of control of us it's really, it's unimaginable and that's why the term we talk about when we describe the program is modern day indentureship where workers arrive and they are tied to this one employer they have no labour mobility they don't have the proper protections I've seen workers in greenhouses handling pesticides and chemicals and not having appropriate masks or gloves or you know the kind of protective clothing you're supposed to have and they're given garbage bags literally garbage bags and told make a hole in the top and on the sides and put it over your body and shoot your head over the garbage bag and that's going to be your protective layer as you spray these really dangerous chemicals I know workers who've lost eyesight who've gone blind from pesticide exposure workers who've lost fingers and limbs and so now during the time of the pandemic the work site has become just doubly lethal for workers it's tragic that the spotlight is on now because so many workers are getting sick and dying in the pandemic what has happened to workers is that they have been blamed for outbreaks on farms and that's exactly the opposite of what should be happening employers were able to secure millions of dollars from the federal government for pandemic preparedness and workers were also working alongside sick workers so all the kinds of provisions and protections that we were told employers were taking during the pandemic those failed workers miserably on top of that workers were blamed for the outbreak and the social stigma of COVID was applied to the worker when in fact industry and employers should have been held responsible we had dug for the premier of Ontario shaming workers and blaming workers and saying workers were not cooperating with testing when that was not true workers were very afraid for their lives working in Canada and they were aware they were not being provided the adequate safety protections that were required under the pandemic and increasingly what has happened under the pandemic is an increase in intensity of surveillance and intensity of control of workers' mobilities so employers have now put on curfews on farms so workers can't leave at certain times there's been talk in Leamington for example of establishing the zones where workers will be barricaded in and to just stay within the approved zones so the regulation and the restriction of worker movement has been discussed in really problematic ways that conjure up ideas of some kind of labour camp so this is why worker rights under the pandemic have been deeply compromised and we're talking about a group of workers in which their set of rights were already very precarious the pandemic has increased the control of worker rights and worker freedoms social distancing for a while when we were in lockdown I mean you know stay home what I'm hearing you say is that home is not home it's a very dangerous place it's overcrowded and there's no distance we couldn't feed Canadians without the labour of migrant workers many people think we're talking about family farms with you know a few chickens and pigs and cows and three generations of farmers working hard out in the sun that's not the picture of industrial agriculture or factory farming that's underway in Canada that produces most of the food that we eat you know we're looking at greenhouses that are 10 football fields in length these are massive industrial operations and there are hundreds of workers working in these greenhouse operations and so when we're talking about the fact that we have an industry that requires a flexible workforce that is controllable and that is you know factored in to the exponential profit that they realize year after year because they know that the money the expense spent on labour is manufactured as low there have been billions of profits made through this industry on the backs of migrant workers who are unfree they can't change their employer they can't change their you know job site and most workers are in Canada without a pathway to citizenship without a pathway to permanent residency without a pathway to status so most workers are here in Canada working and paying taxes paying into CP Canada pension plan CPP paying into EI the employment insurance plan they're paying basic consumer taxes with everything they purchase so they're paying into Canada's tax system and yet they have no pathway virtually no pathway to citizenship why do you think that pathway is blocked what do you think that is about you know the restricted pathways to citizenship are designed they're designed to keep Canada looking the way it does and primarily keeping the majority of workers who come into Canada under the migrant worker program come from the global south most of the workers are racialized workers most workers come to do the jobs Canadians don't want to do the 3D jobs dirty, difficult and dangerous you could say that the picture of Canada has this you know rosy postcard of you know Canada is a country that invites diversity from people all over the world and the doorways are open and just you know the opportunity is here knock and will invite you in well the reality we know is that the front doors to Canada are blocked there are long waiting lists and increasingly there are more and more onerous restrictions on immigration pathways to Canada the back door is wide open for temporary market workers to do the essential work that industries need but that back door ensures that you will remain permanently non-status so you're not here under a temporary foreign worker program as a temporary worker because your labor is only needed on a temporary basis but that temporary basis could last for years and years right it's not like that person could actually be working here for decades right so the label of temporary is constructed migrant workers are not here on a temporary basis the labor of migrant workers is required constantly there is a chronic labor shortage in very specific industries and instead of addressing the immigration backlog in the front doors our federal government would prefer to use the migrant worker program as a convenient backdoor entry that addresses industry needs ensures industry profits but doesn't address the critical labor shortage when you talk about this being like a very challenging issue and how much of these attitudes and policies have to do with race the fact that these are black and brown bodies doing the work and the labor oh yes this is a racist program undoubtedly without a doubt how is this program designed I think we have to recognize the history of a program like this began with the settlement of Canada the colonial history of Canada is very much aligned to and part of the creation of the temporary foreign worker program so you know back from the 1800s when Canada had to build railroads to connect towns dotted across the landscape the people that they needed to build the railroads the labor that was required Canada set up a migrant worker program to bring in Chinese workers to do the work on the railways Chinese workers who would do the work or less pay than white workers and do the most dangerous tracks of work you know using dynamite in the Rockies for example so the programs that were set up in the 1800s to bring Chinese workers in were designed to extract labor but also to deter settlement they were allowed on a certain period of time and then they were expected to go never expected to settle you've been doing this for a while you've been documenting migrant workers I mean long before COVID have you seen any dramatic changes in their conditions or any improvement or dramatic changes for the worse? No I think that things have gotten actually even more strikingly concerning you know one of the things that you talked about in the beginning in your intro you said that I called migrant workers unseen and the idea that workers are unseen that is deliberate there's a constructed way workers are unseen I'd like to offer that as a thought around the history of migrant worker programs and how racist they are and how there's a design to the migrant worker programs that are steeped in racism. On this podcast we've been talking a lot about the idea of resilience in the face of things like this how much resilience do you see in these men and women that you meet? Well quite a bit most of the workers are men I'd say over 90% of migrant workers are men in Canada who work on farms then in the 1990s things shifted dramatically and Canada's tamper foreign worker program expanded so now we have over 80 source countries that are participating in the TFWP but the majority of countries that are sending workers to do the low paid menial work with very little access to citizenship those are countries from the global south and in the TFWP you have private brokers emerging as key players private brokers that are charging workers 5, 10 $14,000 $14,000 this fee is technically illegal but no one monitors recruiters the activities of recruiters and so they operate fundamentally as the middle person between the employer and the worker they secure the worker their position in the farm and they also they manage the workforce so they pick the worker up at the airport they ensure the workers got some kind of housing and they are the ones communicating directly with workers if you owe somebody $7,000 to $14,000 that's indentured labor I mean I'm sure they want to keep close track of you oh yes most workers can't pay that so they pay maybe a few thousand up front and then agree to pay the rest off of their weekly check there's a 10-15% cut that goes to the recruiter for years years sometimes 3-5 years so workers arrive already indebted to a private recruiter that's very common so they're bonded labor yeah I would say they've gotten worse I would say that the symbolic gestures of the federal government have gotten more you know pronounced and it's been much more clear that we have an industry that requires a labor of these essential workers and at the same time the workers do not have access to the same set of rights that Canadians expect workers in Canada to have but no one's taken action to change the living conditions and the working conditions and the very program that designs the vulnerability of the workers workers are not innately vulnerable or there's nothing inevitable about workers being exploited we've designed this program and people benefit and profit from it now you were asking about resilience of workers and I think migrant workers who come to Canada are incredibly resilient and very creative and very much workers who understand the oppression that's built into the labor program and I don't think workers come in without recognizing how deeply exploitative the program is many times workers don't have a choice so coming to work as a migrant worker leaving your family and working abroad is not a choice if it's about survival I would say that over the years I've seen workers with great courage insist on their humanity and fight back often times workers who fight back are the ones who are targeted by the boss and sent back home and new workers are brought in so I've seen that constantly play out there have been many workers who have resisted and fought back and they don't stay in Canada long but there are also many who have fought back and they've made a difference I'm also wondering about your own personal journey like what sparked your interest in migrant workers that made you want to devote such a large part of your life to this issue how I got involved was through worker resistance so back in 1999 I met a friend of mine who's a labor activist, Chris Ramsaroup and Chris was organizing an information fact-finding tour of migrant worker farms in Leamington, Ontario and I ran into Chris in Toronto and he told me that migrant workers were organizing and that some had gone on a wild cat strike in Leamington, Ontario and I remember thinking one, I didn't know we had migrant workers in Canada I wasn't familiar with that I thought it was a US problem and number two, I remember thinking if migrant workers are going on a wild cat strike then things must be really bad and it's only four hours from Toronto to Leamington, Ontario we went on a bus and I was so struck by the fact that there was this large population of migrant workers who lived in a parallel universe almost I could say, like a parallel universe of Canadians and there was this active unseeing that was practiced migrant workers walking on the sidewalk alongside Canadians and Canadians would just unsee them and there were hundreds and you'll see or any area where there are migrant workers but particularly Leamington because that's sort of ground zero for migrant worker populations in Ontario what I saw was there were certain pockets of the parts of the streets where there were little tiendas or the church where migrant workers go on the Sundays there were areas where migrant workers would congregate and hang around but much of the townscape actively there was no connection between the Canadian township and the migrant worker community Minsuk, I'm looking at the time so I'm going to ask you one last question what do you hope for the way forward but also how can the average person help? I think that we need to finally ask ourselves who's profiting from the migrant worker program as it currently exists in Canada it's benefitting somebody who? and then we can ask ourselves then if you're not comfortable if you don't feel it's okay if it doesn't support your own personal community values that we have a program in Canada that's designed to exploit, control, dominate and oppress a set of workers and to refuse them a set of labour and human rights that Canadians expect anybody in this country to have access to if that's not okay with you then what do we do with this program well I think the obvious thing is status on arrival workers should have access to PR so they arrive at the airport they arrive in Canada and they immediately get some kind of residency status absolutely and there are carrots that have been suggested many employers in the industry do actually support and argue for PR but they want it controlled by employers they want to have it as a pathway that's long and drawn out for three to five years and that employers control what happens then is that workers are even more controlled by employers because the employer will say if you put up shut up then you'll get the carrot at the end of five years and that kind of disproportionate control over someone's destiny should never be given to one individual oh that's scary yet that's a lot of scary control what you are going to create are citizen tyrants so I think people need to ask themselves the very serious question of this country that we live in how do you ensure that the values and the beliefs that we say we support are put into practice I'm wondering if there's anything you know somebody listening to us talking about this and feeling like they need to do something what can they do it's the political will I think the political will to change Canada's migrant worker program must come from people who are activating their voice within systems that we currently have getting in touch with our MPs and their MPPs and being able to say very unequivocally the program it's from the 1800s why do we still have this program it's time to redesign a new program that answers our economic and industry needs and that is aligned with the social justice human rights values that Canadians support it's also talking about the program as you said in the beginning workers are often times unseen they're not unseen because we can't physically see them they're constructed as inconvenient so they're constructed as unseen so we need to be talking about the migrant worker program with our neighbors, with our family members right? speaking up about it and ensuring that communities in which workers live and work in that those workers are not isolated or alone there are many organizations in Canada that have spent decades and decades working on migrant worker rights so getting in touch with either the volunteer driven grassroots organizations that are fighting for migrant worker justice unions or there are interfaith groups that are also working with migrant workers and many food organizations food-based food sustainability organizations so there's a broad range of groups that have been fighting for migrant worker rights and getting in touch with those there are many across the country from every city in the country now I know there are active organizations that have been very vocal on migrant worker rights and so connecting with one of those certainly Minsuk, do you have any last thoughts before we close up today? one of the very basic things we need is access to food and for Canadians to get through the pandemic by essentially treating migrant workers as doubly one essential issue and also as disposable in our own food system and our own economic and political systems and we can't accept that so I think the one thing we can take away from this current moment that we're in is that our existing systems structures that support how we produce food how we build our food systems and our labor systems and we continue to do that we did that before the pandemic but during the pandemic the inhumane treatment of migrant workers has intensified we have to get through the pandemic by not sacrificing a category of people we have to get through the pandemic by realizing that the systems of inequities are not acceptable and that we can change them we just feel overwhelming sometimes I really appreciate your vision that we can change it yes we can change it and not only can we but we have to we don't have a choice thank you so much for all your time today I really appreciate it thank you for having me, Venita that's it for this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient I'd love to know what you're thinking after that conversation with Min Suk Lee I'm on Twitter at v-i-n-i-t-a also tag at conversationca and use the hashtag Don't Call Me Resilient if you want to learn more about the migrant worker experience or check out some of Min Suk's work go to theconversation.com it's also where you'll find our show notes with links to stories and research connected to our conversation today Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada this podcast was produced with a grant for journalism innovation from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada the series is produced and hosted by me Venita Srivastava our producers are Nahid Bui Nihal Elhadi and Vicky Mochima with additional editorial help from our intern Ibrahim Dyer Reza Daya is our technical producer and sound guru Anua Quarku is in charge of marketing and production design Lisa Varano is our audience development editor and Scott White is the CEO of The Conversation Canada special thanks also to Jennifer Morose for her indispensable help on this project and if you're wondering who wrote and performed the music we use on the pod that's the amazing Zaki Ibrahim the track is called Something in the Water thanks for listening everyone and hope you join us again until next time I am Venita and please Don't Call Me Resilient