The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Margaret Atwood: Democracy Under Her Eye

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

What do artists see that others miss? Canadian writer Margaret Atwood's decades of literary exploration have shown her to be an incisive observer of people and politics. She sits down with Steve Paikin in a live event on the campus of the University of Toronto to talk democracy, authoritarianism and how fact can indeed be stranger than fiction. As a strong voice on several of the pillars of democratic life, the conversation touches on core values such as freedom of speech, citizenship, where democracy can backslide, and how to work for a better democratic future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Matt Nethersole. And I'm Tiff Lam. From TVO Podcasts, this is Queries. This season, we're asking, when it comes to defending your beliefs, how far is too far? We follow one story from the boardroom to the courtroom. And seek to understand what happens when beliefs collide. Where does freedom of religion end and freedom from discrimination begin? That's this season on Queries in Good Faith,

a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. this information one story at a time. Subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Instagram. I want to start with a story and the story goes like this. It's almost a decade ago. And I'm in Sudbury, Ontario with Margaret Atwood at Laurentian University. And we are doing a Q&A about a wide range of subject matter. And it's going pretty well, if I say so myself. I think it's a really nice conversation.

And at the end of it, I say something like, you know, this went so well, we should do this again sometime. And she said to me, well, why don't you make me a proposal? And I said to myself, you know, as a married man, when I hear the word, make me a proposal, I immediately got up out of my chair, I got down on one knee, I grabbed her hand, I looked lovingly into her eyes and I said, Ms. Atwood, let's go, let's figure something out. I accept your proposal and that's why we're here tonight. So I'm glad it's all come together. She accepted the proposal. The reason you are all here tonight for free to see Margaret Atwood is because Red Wilson gives us a very

generous donation to help us do this series about democracy. And we are truly grateful to him. I've known him for about 40 years. He used to be a deputy minister at Queens Park. He's done very well. But more than having done well, he does good. And he's not hoarding his money. He's giving it away as fast as he can to things that make a difference in this world. So we're truly grateful to Red Wilson for his participation tonight. Right on. And without further ado, let's bring out one of the world's greatest authors. Here's Margaret Atwood.

Hello Steve. Hello Ms. Atwood. That's nice, eh? It's very nice. Yeah. I have been thinking about what you and I have in common, and I came up with a few things. Can I go through this just as we start, before we get to the heavy duty democracy stuff? What will you do if I say no? I will go ahead anyway.

I beg your indulgence. When you went to the University of Toronto, what college did you go to? This one! So did I. When you did your master's degree, what city did you do that in? Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was on the other side of the Charles. I was in Boston, but we were in the same Commonwealth, so pretty close. How many daughters do you have? Same one, yes. We both have one.

How many copies of your biggest bestselling book did you sell? I've got no idea. See, now that was going to be my big punch line here. And you kind of ruined my punch line. Well, it depends what you're counting. Are you going to count all the translations? Are you going to count? OK, let's count the translations.

What would that take the number up to? I'm not sure. Moving on. Let's just say a lot. A lot. OK. I think you did better than me on that one. So maybe we don't have that one in common. You know how trolls counted in Flatland?

One too many lots. Lots. Did you incidentally, did you see what they were doing at Bloor just before coming into this building tonight? No. What were they doing? They were shooting a television show with a bunch of people who were dressed up in very odd red costumes

wandering around saying, blessed be the fruit. I don't know, you know anything about that? I didn't know they were doing it here. They tell me nothing. A few hundred yards from here. Well, that's interesting. I should go down and say hi. You should. You should.

Yeah. Under his eye, of course. Yeah. OK, let's start with this. When we set up this event, and I accept, you accepted my proposal. I did, yes. Yes.

We did not know what the outcome of the US election would be. We now know what the outcome is. Has that altered how you think about democracy? Well, let's take the positive view. Which is what? Blood did not run in the streets. There wasn't a civil war. The election was orderly.

And people voted. But all of those things happened because the Republican won, not because the Democrat won. No, not all of those things happened for that reason. People would still have voted. I think during the election itself, blood would not have run in the streets. What were the other things I said?

There might have been some uproar if Republican had not won, but that would happen after the election. So you still found something to be content about. I wouldn't say content. I could say it could have been worse. Could have been worse. I'm inferring from your point of view

that a country that elects Donald Trump once is one thing but a country that is prepared to reelect him a second time admittedly not consecutively but still is a horse of a different color what do you make of that okay so people vote according to we don't vote anymore for what we think is the best. We vote for what we think is the least worst. And I think they were scared of what the other side might have represented, partly because it was unknown. And also, I have to say this, I don't wish to alarm you,

a lot of men didn't want to be bossed around by their mother or the nice girlfriend that had thrown them over in high school. And they were not going to vote for a woman. Some of them for religious reasons, but some of them from more conservative parts of society, and they just weren't going to do it. Because who knows what she might do to you, Steve. So you don't find it a coincidence

that Donald Trump managed to defeat two candidates, both of whom were women. It's not a coincidence. I don't think the United States, with its background in the 17th century Puritan theology, which was pretty hard on women, I don't think that they are ready for a woman leader, evidently. Well, here's where I get to have some fun and sort of push back a little bit. You think this is fun?

Well, let me try this. Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump. That suggests to me that they're in the wrong places, admittedly. Not in the electoral college, but in the popular vote, she did. Kamala Harris actually got tens of millions of votes from people who apparently were not

mortified at the thought of having a female president. Yeah, but not enough. Not enough. Fair enough. But a lot. Yeah. Any encouragement there? Be my guest.

Not yet. Yeah, at least nobody got shot. Well, Donald got shot. I'm not sure about that. Oh. about that. Oh. OK. Am I going to have to get Molly Thomas out here to say,

you're not convinced? OK. Let me explain showbiz to you. Yeah. That's very easy to fake. But the part that isn't easy to fake is that this guy got shot. But shall I cast your mind back to before you were born,

with the assassination of President Kennedy? I was alive for that, thank you. Not much. Must have been quite little. How little were you? I was three. Yeah. You don't remember. That's a lie, if that counts. Yeah, I don't think you probably remember much about it. No. No, no, no. Okay, so first this guy Oswald, we think, shoots Kennedy. And then this guy called Ruby shoots him. And then Ruby has an unaccountable heart attack.

In jail. Yeah, as one does. So put all that together in your head. Anyway, it's not that I'm into the conspiracy theories, but. But you're not convinced that the conventional wisdom around the Trump assassination is on the level. Is that what I'm hearing?

That is what you're hearing. And what do you attribute that to? Showbiz. Well, it did, I mean, I don't take any joy in saying this, but it did work for him, right? It created an unforgettable. Oh, yeah, for sure. Sure, of course it did. That's what

showbiz is hmm hmm there's a there's another way to interpret the election results as opposed to misogyny having a role in them and we can do you can have both okay so here's the other one and something else. Sure. So how about slightly more numbers of American voters wanted to shake things up as opposed to continue with the status quo? Is that an acceptable interpretation? Yes, it is. I think that's very acceptable.

I consider the MAGA movement as a revolutionary movement. And that's why I'm so interested in the French Revolution right now. And one of the results of this, and that's why I'm so interested in the French Revolution right now And one of the results of this and it's already happening is that people are starting to talk about class again Whoo, so they stopped doing that in the 50s Because of McCarthyism they're talking about it a lot in the 40s. A lot of writing came out of it that was about class problems.

The 30s vary strongly that way. And then the 50s, it stops. So we're not going to talk about that anymore because communism. And also the Cold War was really settling in, so communism bad, socialism bad, class. But it's back on the table now because this election was determined partly by class differences. So is this a good thing that it's back on the agenda? Well they're talking about something that's really there.

So I would say it is a good thing that's back on the agenda. One of the things that happened under Reagan was that he started taking apart the New Deal, which had made things more equitable. And the wealth gap just widened like that and now it's very very big indeed and that of course is always one of the prerequisites for a revolutionary movement. You are one of the most ideal people to ask this next question to given what we were talking about earlier. How's this for a setup? And that is evangelical Christians are a huge part of President Donald incoming President Trump's base.

How concerned are you that Gilead may come to life? It's coming to life to a certain extent. But I have to say that for women in Texas and Florida, Gilead would be preferable. Meaning what? Meaning you get three square meals a day in excellent medical care. and Florida, Gilead would be preferable. Meaning what? Meaning you get three square meals a day in excellent medical care. So what's happening in those states is that people are being forced to have children that they cannot afford.

They're not getting prenatal care. They're not getting postnatal care and all kinds are leaving those states in droves because of the laws that they've put in and women are being forced to carry around dead babies inside them so gilead would never do that

they value babies and they value women who can have babies. What's happening in those states is that they're killing women who can have babies. We have heard some horror stories on the news there's no question about that. Yeah so so not Gilead all you wish but at least you've got three squares some clothing a roof over your head and excellent medical care. Can you tell us why, let me set it up this way, in the lead up to the presidential election, on numerous occasions, the abortion issue was huge when it came to referendums, when it came to other races. So referendums made it more impossible for Trump to get elected, do you know that?

Explain. Why would I have to explain everything to you? See, you already know it. Okay. So if you separate that question off from who you vote for for president, you've got to have it both ways. You've got to vote against restrictive abortion laws, but also vote for Trump. Okay. You get to vote against restrictive abortion laws, but also vote for Trump. OK, but as you look at the arc of political history,

the abortion issue was helping Democrats a lot, right? The end of Roe versus Reign. It was, but because you had a choice, you could vote on that side in the abortion referenda, and you can vote on the Trump side, on the presidential side. And he said about a million times, I'm leaving it to the states. So I doubt very much whether you'll see him try to push through a national abortion prevention thing.

Number one, he actually doesn't care. It's not one of his big things. prevention thing. Number one, he actually doesn't care. It's not one of his big things that was hurting him, but he doesn't care. And number two, it is in the States. It's a states' rights thing now. That's what the Supreme Court has said. It's also an untenable position according

to the American Constitution. You're not going to ask me about that. Well, did you want to follow up on it? Absolutely. I can take a hint, fire away. It gets a little bit complex, do you mind? We're on a university campus, where better for complex discussions? That is to mean something. It doesn't still, OK? The right-wing evangelical religious position

is that as soon as there's a fertilized egg, it's a life. No, no. There's something called a soul that goes into it. OK. A soul is a theological belief. And according to the Constitution, you're not supposed to force people into a religion

that they don't believe in. So suppose you don't believe in the soul. You're still being forced into some laws that presume that there is a soul. So the other part of it that's untenable even from a theological point of view is once you're dead the soul is supposed to be somewhere else. Correct? I'm following. Not in your dead body, we hope. So somebody has a pregnancy that they have wanted and they hope they're going to have a baby, etc. The baby dies.

There's no longer a soul in that baby. Why cannot the dead, decaying thing that's inside that person be removed? There's no theological grounds for not removing it. You're arguing logic there. I'm arguing theology. OK. But the theologians in the States don't seem to agree with that interpretation.

Or maybe only when it's- I'm not sure there are any theologians. OK. You know, I have to say in this respect, there's an awful lot of Christians in the States who are not evangelical right-wing Christians. So there.

There were several comparisons made by critics of the incoming president, suggesting that he was the next incarnation of Adolf Hitler. And I wonder whether- I don't think he's that smart. Did Democrats exaggerate the nature of the threat to their own electoral peril? I think they had the wrong dictator. I think he was much more like an incarnation of Mussolini. Mmm. Yeah. In temperament, in manner?

In blowhardness. So Hitler made impassioned political speech, but Mussolini bloviated. And I have to say that neither of these people would have done so well without the invention and deployment of radio. So right down the street from here, Marshall McLuhan was in full spate in 1960 when I was a student. And would that he were with us today, because he would have a lot to say about the role of social media and the internet in changing the direction of society and electoral events.

New communications technologies are always very disruptive. So the Gutenberg printing press enabling cheap books not only increased literacy, but it was followed by 300 years of religious warts. Because of course, people got hold of the Bible. They could read it. Just a minute now. This isn't in there. We're going to start a different branch of this, which

is going to be more faithful to the Bible, and it could do away with limbo and indulgences and this and that. So very disruptive. And the advent of the internet and social media has also been very disruptive. This was probably, well, I should ask you if you agree with the conventional wisdom, which seems to have emerged since the election,

that social media in general general and podcasting in particular was hugely influential in an unprecedented fashion in this presidential election campaign. You agree? Well, unprecedented, I'm not sure about that because I think Obama won because the Democrats at that point had figured out social media and the Republicans hadn't. and had figured out social media, and the Republicans hadn't. But yes, this is a new, it was a new incarnation of it. And let us factor in also the role of drugs like fentanyl, which make people, and opioids, which make people quite angry.

But if we imagine a future now where the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and CNN and MSNBC are going to be much less influential and Joe Rogan is going to be much more influential, what does that portend for a democracy in your view? Yeah, I'm not sure that's a given. Okay. So it's very easy to be angry when you're not on the winning side. But once you've won, you actually have to do this thing called governing. Yeah. So what's Joe Rogan going to be angry about now? Now that his guy is there. So whose fault is it going to be when things

screw up as they will? Because they always do. They always do, and I think there's the potential for interesting things happening down there. It's quite high. But one of Trump's superpowers appears to be that everything can fall down around him, and somehow his base doesn't hold it against him. In fact, they blame everybody else and say he's a victim of it all.

Just you wait, Henry Higgins. Yes, my fair lady, what are you saying? Once you're the guy, like what, and by the way, this is his last spin on the wheel. You think so? Yes. You sure? I'm not sure.

I'm never sure about anything, Steve. I'm not a prophet. Hate to disappoint you. It's not impossible or improbable that he won't go for a third term. He can't. Well? Unless he tears apart the Constitution.

And not only that, he's already in the third term, according to him. Because according to him. Because he won the second time. Yeah, he won the second time. He's in the third term. He shouldn't be there at all. Thank you.

I have heard since election day numerous Kamala Harris supporters say, I can't stand the fact that Trump won. But on the other hand, if the lesson to the Democrats is they'll worry a lot less about pronouns and a lot more about making sure that people are taken care of, well then maybe this will be a decent outcome after all. Class, as I said. Yeah. Yeah.

So these other concerns, the pronouns and these kinds of things are pretty elite concerns. It's what people, Joe the plumber is not talking about this stuff except to be annoyed by it. So I think all of that and the things annoyed a lot of people. So arguments made by Democrats. No, arguments made by Democrats. No, arguments made by academics. Academics, that we're losing our democracy

if you put Trump back in. Those would fall on deaf ears. No, no. Well, they cared more about what they could afford to buy to put on the dinner table. Now, she was offering a better deal, but she was not talking about it as much. I have heard people say again since election day, I'm not, if I have an opportunity to

go to the United States for a vacation I'm not going now. The only way I can express my outrage at the result of this election is not to give them my money. Do you hear that? Well no because I don't see as many people as you do. I doubt that. Well, let me ask the question directly then. If you had plans at some point in the next year

to go to the United States, are you still going to go? For a vacation? But not for business? What are these vacations of which you speak? Writers don't take vacations. I thought they did, and they just took their laptops with them. No, no. Instead of vacations, they have periods

of looking out the window, which is called working. This year and next are apparently the two years in world history when more people than ever are going to vote in liberal democracy all around the world absolutely liberal democracies illiberal democracies all kinds of countries and In some countries they are choosing more illiberal Democratic options than perhaps what we have on offer in some of the Western democracies How much trouble do you think democracy is in right now? OK, well, let's go back and look at what we mean by the word.

That joke they make about communism and Christianity, both great idea, never been tried. You can also say that about democracy. Because I don't think there's ever been a straight up total number of votes for everything kind of democracy. So you hear a lot about the Greeks and cradle of democracy, et cetera.

That was very restricted. It was restricted to men and men who are not slaves and men who had to be citizens of particular piece of ground. So yes, it was the beginning of that idea, but it wasn't what we would call democracy much at all. What is the closest you might've come to it? Well, probably the more egalitarian societies were in places like Iceland. Yeah. Why? Because the women were quite big. And they were very fit. You know, them and the Norwegians, they're just in Norway and the place is just wall to wall spandex

as they speed by you and their power runs. They're very fit. The men got Iceland into all kinds of financial trouble and it was the women who got them out of trouble. Oh, that's recent. I'm thinking we're back in history. But Iceland is the only place where they put some of those bankers in jail

Why is that? Because everyone in Iceland is related to everybody else in Iceland and you don't do that to your relatives Right. This is like 300,000 people in the whole country, right? Yeah, and they and they know exactly who everybody is Because they have to Apparently there's an app that says whether or not you're related to the person you want to date and how closely. Very handy to have. Very handy. Yeah, I wouldn't mind it myself. I want to ask you about how we seem to be treating each other these days. It is a bit of a problem in Canada. It is a massive problem south of the border.

And that is we seem to be living in very tribal times. It's not only the case that I believe what I believe and you're wrong. It's I believe what I believe and you're evil. So this is not a good thing. How do we, can we get to a point where we are able to listen and respect each other's points of view, even if we don't agree?

Well, no. You're asking me that. You think I have an answer. I was hoping. Well, I think it takes a certain kind of one thing I just said on my sub stack was don't blow your family off because they didn't vote the same way you did, because regimes come and go. But later on, you might need those family members to bring you the casserole and stick

you in the old age home. I know people, I presume you do as well, who are no longer talking to members of their family because they voted Democrat, they voted Republican, whatever. I think they're silly. But it's happening. Yeah, well, a lot of silly things

are happening that I can do nothing about. Do you see a way for us to get to a point where we're actually able to be more civil with one another? Well, I think, and I hate to say this because I was an early adapter, and adopter, and adopter, and social media. But in person is always preferable to online if you want to really have a nuanced and respectful conversation because the algorithms and some of these platforms drive towards anger. And sitting down around a dinner table, that's a different thing.

So you're not going to actually throw your food, at least most people are not going to throw their food at other people sitting around the dinner table. The most heated it can get unless somebody stomps out is change the subject. And that's okay to do? Absolutely. It was my grandmother's favorite ploy. So her next door neighbor came, she's rural Nova Scotia, her next door neighbor came over to ball her out with the fact that her granddaughter, namely me, had written a novel with sex in it. That would be the edible woman.

But you know, kin is strong in Nova Scotia. So my grandmother goes, I know all this because my aunt was hiding behind a door laughing her head off. My grandmother goes, the woman goes, rah rah rah. And my grandmother goes, lovely weather we're having. It might possibly rain tomorrow. And that worked? Well yes, because the person cannot continue on if you're not replying to their stuff. So we should try that today. Be my guest.

Lovely weather we're having, but it might rain tomorrow. When do you think it will snow? The thing that you used to say when you walked into a store, nice weather we're having, and the accepted reply was, in Canada, we'll pay for it later. That was the exchange that you had. That's right.

Everybody's, not everybody. A lot of people are digging in on the culture wars right now. Oh, are there still culture wars? Actually, we just experienced it in the province of Ontario in the past month with the provincial government deciding that it knew better than the city of Toronto

where to put bike lanes. Is that a culture war, or is it just a greedy land grab? If you're asking me, I'd say it's a culture war. OK, you mean bikes versus cars. Yeah, it's a very significant political difference in terms of coalitions that help you win elections. And we know where the province stands. We know where the city stands.

I guess I want to know. Everybody's digging in and not going to give an inch. How democratic is all that? Who's the majority? Well, no government in Ontario, I shouldn't say in history, but no government in 75 years has ever got elected with a majority of the votes, right? But they've gotten elected with a majority of the members. Yes.

Yes. So this is another point about democracy. What kind of democracy are you going to have? Are you going to have that kind, which is in Canada, heavily slanted towards rural areas because that's when that system was set up so now a lot of people have moved to cities my vote is worth much less than that of a farmer living in Saskatchewan yes there's not much I can do because it would require tearing apart the Constitution and we know what a can of worms that would be.

We have seen that movie before. Yes. But as long as we're on the subject of different kinds of democratic systems and what works better, you will remember that the current prime minister of the country made a promise that the last election we had in 2000, I guess the first election that he won in 2015, would be the last first past the last election we had in 2000, I guess the first election that he won in 2015,

would be the last first past the post-election this country would see, because he was going to bring in different kind of electoral systems. And that really happened, didn't it? The promise happened. Yes, but. Do you wish he'd kept that promise? Well, I'm not sure that it was a promise

he was ever able to keep, because you have to get buy-in from a whole bunch of other people. And anybody who was one of first past the post-election with a very small margin is not going to buy into that. Well, he had the majority of the seats. He could have snapped his fingers and got it done. He could not have. Because a lot of his own members would have disagreed with him.

Okay. I want to bring another problem to your attention and see what you have to say about that. There's this famous expression, of course, that the center cannot hold. And yet, I mean, surveys I see, people I talk to, most people are kind of moderate in and around the center of the- Absolutely. You agree. OK.

And yet, most of what we see on cable television, certainly in the states, represents the extremes and not the middle. So how do we get the center to hold? How do we get the dynamic middle to hold? OK, so that's a quotation from a poem by Yeats. OK, so it's not a political dictum. It's just something that people are fond of quoting.

And it happens not always to be true. So my little democracy diagram that I did for the Financial Times, in which they very cleverly animated, goes like this. It's a circle. And up at the top is tyranny and down at the bottom is chaos. And through the middle is this middle that we've been talking about. And that's where you want to live.

Cause things are a lot more stable. You're less likely to get shot, imprisoned, lynched, and all of those things in the mushy middle. There's an arrow going up on the left and on the right towards tyranny. You can get there either way. There's an arrow going down,

both on the left and on the right, towards chaos. And you can get there either way. Once you get enough chaos, people will vote for a strong man, because he will say, only I can fix it, or I will make the trains run on time. And they've had too much chaos, it's really a terrible place to be, chaos. So they say, give it a go, and then there's an arrow that goes either on the right or on the left, all the way up to tyranny like that,

which is why extremes on the right and left are always trying to create more chaos. Because the worse things are, the more likely they're shot is at getting control of the whole shebang. As you look south on a scale of 1 to 10, how chaotic do you think things are down there? Not as much as you might think.

The trains are still running on time. People still have jobs. They're still number one country in the world. There's a lot of poor people and as I've said conditions for women of reproductive age are pretty horrible in some states and the end result of that is going to be those people will move out if they can and people with young daughters will move out if they can. And people who want to have babies and get pregnant will move out if they can because they won't have any health care for them worth talking about at all.

So that part is going to get worse before it gets better. When the people who put those laws in realize that it's not having the effect of a net increase in their young populations. It's having the opposite effect. That's already happening. When you look at Canada, and I ask the same question about chaos from 1 to 10, where do you think we are?

Bad news on the housing crisis. Really bad. And why do you think Trudeau's advocate we need to cut off immigration? Because people coming in didn't have anywhere to live. And you can't keep bringing people in if there's no place for them to live. You saw these stories, right?

An hour from here, an hour and a half from here, international students sleeping 10, 20 to a house? It's ridiculous. Yeah, not sustainable. No. So what are governments, local and provincial and national, going to do about that? Because that's the big problem right now.

And the other problem with that is, who's going to have five kids if they can't afford it and have no place to live? Let me do, let me try this here. I'll put the argument forward, you tell me whether it's all wet or whether there's something to it. Democracy can be a really lousy system when it comes to making the hard choices to fight climate change, dealing with housing problems, housing crises like we haven't seen before, a fickle electorate that may be prepared to take a gamble on a quasi-authoritarian figure because they don't like the alternative.

Should that make us question whether this is the system we want to live under? OK, who was it? I think it was Winston Churchill who said. I know where you're going. It's the worst system of government in the world, except for all the others. And by the way, dictatorships aren't doing very well in a lot of those areas either.

Okay. They just kill people for pointing it out. Yeah. Let me, am I going to do this on camera one, Sheldon? Where are we going to go? Right there. Thank you. I want to remind everybody we're here at the Isabel Bader Theatre on the campus of Victoria University at the University of Toronto.

This is part of our series on democracy. It's made possible by the support from Red Wilson and his wonderful foundation. And we are in conversation with the incomparable Margaret Atwood. I want to also take this opportunity to show you that she has a new very thick book out. There's lots of good stuff. I, you know, I've gone through this. This is, um, this is a fantastic book of poetry. Margaret Atwood, New and Selected Poems, 1961 to 2023. It's called Paper Boat. I'm happy to show it to the camera right there. Six decades of put seven decades of poetry? 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, aughts, teens, 20s. Seven decades. We haven't finished with the 20s yet. That's true.

Haven't finished. That's pretty amazing and even though you have a lot in there, can I ask you how you make a decision? It's funny because John Ferry, our vice president, and I were looking through this earlier today, and he mentioned one of your poems, and I actually looked in the index to see if it was there, and it was not there. So you had to make some choices about what to put in and what to leave out. Yeah, we made a lot of choices. Yeah, how did you decide something like that?

Well, I was working with this guy called Dan Halperin, who was the person who put me up to it. So he and I would send lists back and forth and I would say I want this and he would say I want that and we just had to saw off. But you know that's what you do. It was even worse with That's what you do. It was even worse with Burning Questions, which is the book of essays. I think we had five times as much material as we ended up putting in. And that's apparently thick book too. And they'll just tell you one story about thick books. So I'm sitting on a train in Ireland.

And you know the Irish love literature and reading, and it used to be that on Aralingus the upholstery was embroidered with the names of Irish writers, so you could be sitting on James Joyce. So these four ladies sitting across the aisle were discussing books. And as I age dropped on them, I realized they were discussing my books. And one of them said to the other, well, you know, I read the latest one, and I thought it was a little long. Well, sometimes things just get a little long, Steve. I've got some very short books, too.

Yes, but we should say, I mean, it's amazing how prolific you have been that you could put 600 pages of poetry together and not include every single poem you ever wrote. It's true, but I just want to point out that you take my total age and divide it by the number of books. And it's not that prolific.

So Joyce Carolos is way ahead of me in the prolific department. She writes in automobiles. She had a little shelf that she's writing away on. Writes in cars. You're serious? Oh, absolutely serious. Okay. I wasn't going to raise this, but you just did.

So, oh, and I should also say, I think we got microphones somewhere around the hall because I'm going to do a couple of more minutes here and then it's an opportunity for you folks to ask questions of Margaret Atwood if you want to. So I think, yeah, back in that corner there, there's microphones over there. And I know this is a Canadian audience and nobody wants to go first, but somebody be brave. Be ready, be ready. I've been asked everything, so don't be shocked.

Here we go. If I don't like your question, I'll just rearrange it. Okay, you just opened the door to this, so here we go. You just turned 85 years old a couple of weeks ago. There are, I'm not trying to flatter you here, these are empirically provable facts I'm going to introduce here. There are not many people in this world who are at the top of their game, the top of their relevance, still selling stuff, still actively engaged, still writing, still matter.

Still alive. Still alive at 85. Yeah. How do you feel about all that? Well, I'm glad I can still walk around and don't have arthritis, but let me tell you what the hearing doctor said to me. The hearing doctor said to me after doing his test, wellness, Atwood, for a person in your demographic, you certainly have very good hearing.

And I said, that's because most of the people in my demographic are dead. They're not hearing much. We don't think they are. Yeah. But it's pretty cool. You've got to admit, it's pretty cool. It's cool. You gotta admit. It's pretty cool. It's cool. A lot of this is genetic and Some of it is lifestyle, but but not all how old was your mother when she died?

97 And your dad? 86 So you got long life there, maybe yeah, it doesn't always work out that way So far so good. Yeah. well, you know that joke? No. You don't. It's in bad taste.

Oh, yeah, the one about somebody jumping out the doli? No. Oh. OK. Edit. No. Go ahead. What more do you think?

Then it goes to the doctor. And the doctor says, I've got two pieces of terrible news for you. And the man says, oh, dear. what is the first piece of terrible news? And the doctor says, well, the first piece of terrible news is that you're riddled with cancer. It's just everywhere. And the man says, oh, that's awful.

And what is the second piece of terrible news? And the doctor says, the second piece of terrible news is that you're in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease. The man says, well, at least I don't have cancer. And the doctor says, well, at least I don't have cancer. And the man says, well, at least I don't have cancer. And the doctor says, well, at least I don't have cancer. And the man says, well, at least I don't have cancer.

And the doctor says, well, at least I don't have cancer. And the man says, well, at least I don't have cancer. And the man says, well, at least I don't have cancer. That is hysterical, and I can't believe you just told that joke here. Well, I'm allowed to because I'm old. You can do whatever you want. That's true. You get away with all sorts of stuff now.

I got one more serious question, but before I ask the serious question that we get the audience in, you will remember some years ago, I think he was on city council at the time, when the current Premier of Ontario said, I'd walk down the street, I could bump into Margaret Atwood and wouldn't have a clue who she was. No, it was worse than that. Oh Kate, what is... Margaret Atwood, who's she? I wouldn't recognize her if I bumped into her on the street. If she wants to have an opinion she needs to get elected and come down to City Hall.

So in order to have an opinion apparently you were supposed to get elected. Well my question is have you met him yet? Oh I met him right after that. How'd that go? Well, not so well for him. So after that remark of his, I went up north as one does, and then came back to find out that a lot of people had printed off my face and stuck it on their own faces, going down to City Hall so that he would know what I looked like. And they're also calling out to me on the street, Margaret, I recognize you.

I know what you look like. So I was out of art's thunder of some kind and he leapt out from behind a potted palm. Photo op. That really happened? Yes. You and he. Well I didn't do it. Okay.

Okay so the question is do I go with the last serious question here or do we just go to the audience? Go to the audience. Go to the last question. Go to the last question? Okay we'll try this last question. You're an artist. Artists push boundaries.

I wonder if that feels different today, because the boundaries have shifted so much that artists are now being accused of defending the status quo as opposed to pushing the boundaries. What do you think? Okay, the idea of artists pushing the boundaries is a romantic idea that comes out of the age of the French Revolution. There have been other periods of history in which that's not what artists did. Artists, particularly painters, reflected the status quo,

because that's what people paid them for. So this idea of the romantic artist, cutting off his ear and things like that, that's pretty modern. So artists pushing boundaries, they're not gonna be pushing boundaries a lot if they're employed by creative writing departments at universities.

So they can push boundaries somewhere over there, but just not within the system that happens to be paying them. Think about that. So the only reason I can do, I can be such a rascal. You were gonna say something else. Yes. Yeah. The only reason I can do that is that I do not have a job.

My employers are the readers, not even the publishing company. That would be quite false. You're an independent contractor with the publishing company. But the people who actually allow me to tell jokes like the one I just told you are the readers. But that's not true of people who have other jobs and they're not making their money from what we call the market. So far they seem to be voting for you. And I'm grateful.

Thank you, readers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank this brave soul at the microphone there for starting things off. If you like, give us your first name, where you're from, and fire away. Hi there. My name is Craig. I'm from Toronto and this is a question for Miss Atwood. Reflecting on the current state of democracy, a lot of times I hear people try to look to the past to draw parallels from that. Do you feel there's anything useful from comparing the current state of democracy in the 2020s to the 1920s in that trajectory? 1920s. She's not that old. You behave yourself. Sorry. I would go

much further back than that. I would say we're in a very unsettled time. And I'm very interested right now in the French Revolution because it started out with great idealism and very democratic ideas, except for women. And then it quite quickly, and it's amazing how fast that was, it quite quickly became a tyranny. So I think what you always have to watch out for in a democracy is how quickly that can happen. And yes, let's say the 1920s, you're thinking of the Weimar Republic and how quickly Hitler took over.

So if you really want to go back and look at stuff, I recommend I, Claudius, the Robert Graves TV series, which looks at what was happening between the Republic and the Roman Empire at the time when it was switching over from something like a wasn't a democracy but it was a Republican form of government to an Emperor and if you know we can go on so yes I think it's always interesting to look back and try to look for patterns, but with the caveat that it's not going to be an exact replication of anything because we're different and particularly we're technologically different.

Thank you. Yes, next please. Hi, my name is Julia Panella. I'm from King City, just north of the city. And I want to thank you, Ms. Atwood, for being a Canadian icon and for I think reminding everybody in the room how powerful your voice can be, especially as women. And we touched on some of the themes here, but I feel like every day I'm waking up and it's a twilight zone. What does feminism mean to you? And what do you think the future of feminism looks like when we have social media and I think this constant beret of you know I hate

to say it but you know feminism isn't a good thing we're having women saying that I'm not a feminist but doing things that women have fought for to do so just kind of curious about your definition of what feminism is. We've been through this wash and spin cycle a lot in history. And I'm always quite cagey when people say, are you a feminist? Because I want them to define what they mean. And usually they can't. There are, in fact, at least 75 different forms of feminism. It's true.

You can find it on the internet, all different sorts of, you know, sects, subsects, cults, and I can tell you what the mistakes of second wave feminism were, which is the wave that I was around for. Would you like to know what they were? Yes. OK. They blew off mothers. OK. They also said really silly things, like you can't be an artist unless you're a lesbian. That is false.

And they therefore alienated a lot of women. It would have been quite happy to have the kinds of changes that were made, such as your own credit card, things like that, more practical things. But once you get into theory, you get what is called theory creep. So my theory is radical, well mine is more radical than yours. Well I'm gonna say that sleeping with men is sleeping with the enemy. So they also alienated a lot of people

who actually thought sleeping with men was quite a lot of fun. So they were not inclusive enough as to who they would acknowledge as women, you know. And you just saw that with the Women's March a couple of years ago. They would not allow women who were in favor of civil rights for women and all those kinds of things, but who had a theological position that was against abortion, they wouldn't allow those women in. That's very short-sighted. I'd also like to point out to you the following.

Women of reproductive age are always in the minority. Always. It's math. So the other people in the population are going to be women who aren't of reproductive age and men. So unless you have allies amongst those two other groups of people, you will always be outvoted. And wake up, do the math, and stop saying that all men are evil. Because it's stupid and untrue? And also...

APPLAUSE ...tactically unwise. Hi, my name is Karithi Gathavasilin. I actually am from Toronto. I work for the City of Toronto in development planning, so everything that I'm learning here is very apt, and I've been learning a lot. So thank you so much for this opportunity.

I do have a question that I wrote down. Do you think fiction has a power to change society, or do you see literature more as a mirror of the times? Why not both? Why not both? Why not both? Why not both? So I was once a Victorianist and I'm still very interested in that period of time, including the under-clothing, which was quite amazing. If you want to look at this, it's on a YouTube series called Prior Attire, in which the,

she's a historical costume re-creator and she shows how you get dressed in the morning in a given year and what these substructures were holding up these garments that looked so peculiar. Now what was the question? Mirror of the times or power to change society? Well mirrors of the times have the power to change society. And that's what Dickens was doing in his socially conscious novels such as Nicholas Nickleby and even Christmas Carol.

He was very conscious of what was going on in the underclass. And simply by showing that, he was making people aware of it and fostering social change. And another one to closer to home, Gabriel was the tin flute, did exactly that. He was exploring the slum life in Montreal, which a lot of people just didn't know existed.

So I would say both, but I would also say writers don't have any actual power. They have influence, but they have no army, and they don't have a voting bloc, and they're not making legislation. So yes, they can influence, but they have no actual power. Yes, please. Hi, Ms. Atwood. My name is Lauren. I'm also from Toronto.

And this is my question. You called the assassination attempt on Donald Trump's showbiz. And I believe it's important to question things. And I also wonder, how does one balance accepting certain things as truth versus challenging what is presented as reality? If we can't even determine what is and isn't real, how do we have productive conversations with each other?

How do we navigate the world if we all have different facts? Yeah, that's a very good question. Let us say that there's a difference between fact and belief. They're two different things. And I will also say that that science is not a thing. It's a method. And science never has a settled answer, which is why it gets in so much trouble. Because people want settled answers a lot of the time. They want this is the truth and that other thing

is not the truth. And the real world is often rather fluid in that respect, and certainly people's beliefs. So I don't have a quick answer to that question, but there are some fact-checking sites. I admire them greatly. They're fact-checking sites, but infinite recession. How do you know that the fact-checking site is telling you the truth?

Back to the French Revolution. The 40 years before the French Revolution. The 40 years before the French Revolution were another communications technology revolution. It was the age of pamphleteering and proto-newspapers and some very obscene printmaking. And it was also a time when people didn't know what was true or what to believe. And they would discuss these questions in cafes, there would be conflicting pamphleteering, there would be different people writing on different sides of the question, and it was very similar to what we see. And it was a lot faster than you think.

You think, think oh slow news It was very quick, especially in Paris Words would get around very swiftly Something had changed and this was the new thing anyway, very fascinating to watch good luck with it and Try to find a fact-checking site that you trust. And watch big if true. Last question of the night, please.

Thank you. Good evening, Ms. Hadwood, and thanks for being with us tonight. My name is Fabrizio Commetto. I'm a European who has been living south of the border for 11 years now and was happening to spend more and more time in Canada because my wife is Canadian. Having lived in the US for quite some time, I often hear my friends or people around me boasting that America has the biggest democracy and the best democracy in history. But to me it seems that America today has more a plutocracy than a democracy.

So my question is, in a system which is like it seems to be now a plutocracy, how do we make common folks, people understand that calling such system a democracy might be a fallacy? And in an area where social classes are apparently resurgent, what we can do as citizens to make people understand that voting for people like Trump, who are rich, might not be in their best self-interest? Thank you. Okay, so I don't think it's a question of making them understand. There's an expression which uses the F word. We're all adults here. I'm going to use Okay, F asterisk ask us to more

Yes around and find out So people often just don't believe things unless they're impacted personally and directly by them So there is no climate change until the hurricane wipes out your town. And there is, you know, Donald Trump is amazing until everybody in your town loses their job because he's decided to wipe out all of Biden's job things that he created.

So I would say F asterisk K and find find out and the job of the media is just to track what is happening in this respect. This happened here, this happened there. This town is gone because all the jobs are gone. But I would also say it would be a fallacy to believe that everything Donald Trump does is bad. We don't know yet what he's going to do. He probably doesn't know either. And we don't know how it's going to work out. So I would just say keep your eye on the world of reality where people have jobs and eat food or else don't have jobs and are eating potato chips. Do I hear you say we've got to give Donald Trump a chance?

No, that's not what I'm saying. No, he's got a chance. We don't have to give him one. It's a question of what he does with that chance and whether the things that he does with that chance are positive, net positive or net negative. Okay, I want to thank you for... Were you shocked that I said that? Well, you didn't actually say it. You said two asterisks.

So... No, no, not that part. No, you weren't shocked by that. The part where I said, we don't know yet whether what he's going to do is going to have a net positive or net negative. That's true. I have no problem when people say things that are true.

Oh, good. No, that's fine. Did I say anything that wasn't true? Well, we're going to go to some websites and check out what you had to say. Is that where you get your news? I gotta do a bunch of business here. The first piece of business is I'm so glad you accepted my proposal in Sudbury because I thought that was tons of fun tonight. It was tons of fun. Good, I'm glad you thought so too. I want to thank, I've got to do a bunch of thank yous, folks, so hang in there for just another minute, and then we're going to wrap this up tonight.

Mark Ford is the head of our technical team, and Sheldon Osmond, who I talk about from time to time on the agenda, is our director, and I want to thank both of them for making this happen tonight. The folks here at the Isabel Bader Theater at Victoria University at U of T have been fantastic. Jason McGregor, top shelf.

The Wilson Foundation. If not for Red Wilson and his generosity, everybody's paying to be here tonight. Instead, they're all here for free. It's a beautiful thing. Hillary Clark, you are, what would the Premier say? You're a champion, you're a champion. Producer of TVO Today Live, great job, Hillary.

We would remind everybody that you can see past conversations of this series on our website, tvot.org slash tvotodaylive, or hey, we got our own YouTube channel, how about that? TVO Today, it's all on there as well. And finally, I know this audience wants to join me in thanking one of the world's greatest living writers, Margaret Atwood, for being with us here tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. TVO Today Live is made possible by the generous support of the Wilson Foundation.