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Mark Jordan Legan reviews three films out this week: the long-awaited Sex and the City movie, staring Sarah Jessica Parker; the horror movie The Strangers and a documentary about steroid use among youth, Bigger, Stronger, Faster.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: This is Day to Day from NPR News. I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: I'm Alex Chadwick. There's a lot to see at the Multiplex this weekend. There's a documentary on steroid use in America and a new horror film and the long-awaited big screen version of a classic HBO series. So, to see what the critics think of these latest film releases, here's Mark Jordan Legan with Slate's Summary Judgment.</s>MARK JORDAN LEGAN: With all the recent steroid scandals in sports from high school to the pros, it was just a matter of time before someone made a documentary about it. Filmmaker Christopher Bell tackles this subject in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, showing how deeply ingrained steroid abuse is throughout America. And it is. I mean, even here at NPR, we're always tested for anabolic steroids. I didn't want to go into the whole human growth hormone, All Things Considered scandal.</s>Unidentified Man: Now that I'm into it, I realized it's not really all that bad. I love steroids. I mean, I think I'll probably be on and off of them probably forever.</s>MARK JORDAN LEGAN: The nation's critics are pumped up. The Village Voice roars, scrappy, remarkably expansive and crazily watchable. Entertainment Weekly finds "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" fascinating and the Los Angeles Times cheers, raucously funny and surprisingly insightful. Innocent people way out in the middle of nowhere have always been a horror film staple and that's exactly what "The Strangers" is about. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play a young couple relaxing in their remote getaway when mass strangers break in and terrorize them.</s>Ms. LIV TYLER: (As Kristen McKay) Why are you doing this to us?</s>Unidentified Woman: Because you are home.</s>MARK JORDAN LEGAN: Well, it certainly makes a case for not staying in. Overall, the critics want to get to know "The Strangers," even though the Seattle Post Intelligencer sniffs, "a screaming cliche." The Chicago Tribune calls it an enormously unsettling taut spare thriller, and the Onion offers, as an exercise in controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier.</s>MARK JORDAN LEGAN: Hey guys and gals, Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha are ready for their big screen debut. Yes, the highly anticipated "Sex and the City" movie is finally opening in wide release. If you need any kind of plot description, well, honey, you're as unwanted as white shoes after Labor Day.</s>Ms. CYNTHIA NIXON: (as Miranda) So, he bought it and you'll live there with him.</s>Ms. SARAH JESSICA PARKER: (as Carrie Bradshaw) Yes, together, that's right.</s>Ms. CYNTHIA NIXON: But he'll own it, so you're keeping your own place, right?</s>Ms. SARAH JESSICA PARKER: Oh, Miranda, I haven't figured out the details yet, but I'm a smart girl, and I'm sure I'll figure out something that I'm very comfortable with.</s>Ms. CYNTHIA NIXON: I just wanted to be sure that you're being smart here.</s>Ms. SARAH JESSICA PARKER: And I love you for that, but for now, can't you stop worrying for me and just go ahead and feel what I want you to feel? Jealous. Oh, jealous.</s>MARK JORDAN LEGAN: I'd love to tell you all the critics find it fabulous but then, I'd be fibbing. The majority do enjoy it, but the detractors agree with the New York Times which snarls, vulgar, shrill, and deeply shallow. But the Philadelphia Inquirer shouts, the four women couldn't be better or better matched. And the San Francisco Chronicle raves, the best American movie about women so far this year. So in honor of "Sex and the City," I'm sure you're all just dying to know who I'm wearing, well I have on my Chanel top with some Versace slacks and it goes without saying I have my Dolce and Gabbana underwear on, oh wait, I got to run, I could see my editor eyeing my Hermes Birkin Bag...</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Mark Jordan Legan is a writer and fashion icon living in Los Angeles.

Silverjet, the business-class airline, suspended operations on Friday. United Airlines and U.S. Airways have suspended merger talks due to labor concerns. British Airways raised its fuel surcharge for the second time in a month. Marketplace's Amy Scott talks with host Alex Chadwick about turmoil in the airline industry and what it means for consumers.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: From NPR News, it's Day to Day. Well, it would have been the world's largest airline, but United Airlines and US Airways have thought better of joining forces. After two months of merger talks, they are going their separate ways. Marketplace's Amy Scott is here. Amy, how come this merger fell apart?</s>AMY SCOTT: Well, United Airlines has been looking for a merger partner for a long time. The idea being that joining forces with another big carrier could help the airline cut some costs and better compete with low-cost carriers and recently, you'll recall, Delta and Northwest agreed to merge adding a pressure on United. But merging costs a lot of money upfront that the airlines don't have right now and both United and US Airways have a lot of labor strife. One analyst I spoke to says put together two big airlines with problems and you'll get one huge airline with problems. He also said that there was some disagreement about who would run the new airline. So for now, a merger is off the table.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Well, what is this going to mean for passengers?</s>AMY SCOTT: Well, some analysts have said that a merger would have led to higher airfares, but everybody I talked to today says airfares are going to rise regardless, and the main reason is the cost of fuel. British Airways just announced is second fuel surcharge increase this month. One analyst I spoke to, Robert Mann, says consolidation could be good for consumers in that it could help keep these airlines flying.</s>Mr. ROBERT MANN (Airline Industry Analyst): The bad news is that fares have to rise anyway. The good news is that if consolidation occurs and the surviving companies become more stable, there will be a system around for customers to use at those higher prices.</s>AMY SCOTT: Now, United is expected to keep looking for some kind of partner. It's reportedly trying to persuade Continental Airlines to at least form an alliance where they would share some operations but remain separate companies.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: OK, there's the United news. But there is another airline story today. This is an all business class airline that's shutting down.</s>AMY SCOTT: That's right, what may be the last Silverjet flight left Dubai for London this morning. The all business model just doesn't seem to be working out. We saw MAXjet shut down last Christmas Eve, another one called Eos stopped flying last month. Silverjet was up against those high fuel costs and also, the credit crunch has made it difficult to get financing. The airline is still trying to work something out with investors but right now, it's not looking very good. I do have one bit of good news for air travelers, though, today. They'll no longer have to pay two dollars a bag for curb service on American Airlines. American dropped the fee to appease skycaps who said that their tips had dropped sharply when the fee was imposed. The airline also says it will lift a ban on tipping skycabs at Logan Airport in Boston.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: But they're keeping that 25 dollars-a-bag charge for anything that you...</s>AMY SCOTT: That's right.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Thank you, Amy. Amy Scott of Public Radio Daily Business Show at Marketplace.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Child Protective Services overstepped their bounds when it seized children from a ranch in Texas. The ranch is home to the polygamist sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Patrick Crimmins of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services speaks with Host Madeleine Brand about the ruling.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is Day to Day. I'm Alex Chadwick.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: I'm Madeleine Brand. In a few minutes, we talk about the fashions in the "Sex and the City" movie and what's hot this summer.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: First, Texas officials have collected DNA from Warren Jeffs, he's the polygamous sect leader. He's awaiting trial in an abuse case for his spiritual marriages to teenage girls. Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in a different case involving the FLDS sect. More than 400 children were taken from the sect's ranch by child protective services. They were placed in foster care, but now the court says they should be returned to their parents.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Patrick Crimmins is spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Mr. Crimmins, what is your reaction to this ruling and what will you do today?</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): Well, the first thing that has to happen is Judge Walter has to act. The ruling did not order Child Protective Services directly to return the children, so what happens next is up to Judge Walter.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: So this court, the Texas Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals both said that what your agency did was really overstep your bounds, that the removal of all these children was not warranted, what do you say to that?</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): Well, you know, from the very beginning, we only had one goal, and it's a goal that Child Protective Services always has and that's to protect children. And again, we were disappointed with the ruling as we were disappointed with the earlier court ruling, but we acted appropriately. We believe, given the information that we had at the time and given what our investigation found when we went to the YFC ranch.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Which was that five teenagers were pregnant, is that right?</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): Well, there's quite a bit more to it than that, I mean, I don't want to go into it again, right now.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: But that is a key point in this whole dispute is that the Court of Appeals found that there was evidence that you presented, only five teenage girls were pregnant and did not warrant the removal of all the children on basically a suspicion that they might be abused sometime in the future.</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): You're picking out one or two sentences from what the Court of Appeals said.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, do you think that that's an erroneous interpretation?</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. It's just that I don't want to talk about the court rulings. The court rulings are something that have happened, has already happened, and we just need to move forward.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, is there any other recourse, then, besides reuniting the children?</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): Well, it depends on what Judge Walter does and as far as how that affects the investigation that's currently going on, you know there is an active abuse neglect investigation going on now. I mean, it had not concluded. You know, it's interesting to know the Supreme Court did not direct the agency to end the investigation, but you know, it's difficult to know exactly what's going to happen.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Are you worried at all that this might compromise future child abuse investigations?</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): That's something that is being discussed a great deal in all kinds of circles--legal and social services and government and otherwise--as to what effect this whole, you know, two-month long experience will have on how Child Protective Services in Texas and perhaps elsewhere, conduct investigations, how they respond to complaints.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: What are some of the possible outcomes do you think?</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): It's impossible to say. I mean, again, Child Protective Services in Texas, like any CPS in any state, has to operate a great deal on judgments and a great deal on, you know, risk assessment rules and risk assessment models and in any case in which you respond to a report of possible child abuse or child neglect in a household, if you find abuse or neglect in that household a CPS investigator is trained that if one child in a household has been abused then the other children in that household may be at risk of abuse. So it may be in the best interest of everyone in the household to remove all the children. That's the model that we operated under in the YFC case. And the court says that that model, that risk assessment decision-making, was flawed, and you can't remove all the children in a given household just because you believe one or more of them have been abused or neglected, and so that's something that is causing a great deal of interest in social service circles.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, Patrick Crimmins, thank you very much for speaking with us today.</s>Mr. PATRICK CRIMMINS (DFPS, Spokesman): You're welcome.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Patrick Crimmins, he's spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Former first lady Michelle Obama was on the Grammy Awards over the weekend. Marian Robinson texted her daughter: "I saw it, because (someone else) called me."

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. This happens to many people who get a chance to be on TV. Michelle Obama turned up on the Grammys telecast. And afterwards, she says she received a text message from her mom, who said the former first lady had failed to tell her she'd be on TV. Mrs. Obama said she thought she had, but her mom was having none of that. In a deft bit of motherly guilting, Marian Robinson wrote her daughter, I saw it because someone else called me.

Congratulations to the Maine Moose Festival. They announced that they had set a world record when more than 1,000 people made moose calls.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with congratulations to the Maine Moose Festival. They set a world record as more than 1,000 people made moose calls. Let's listen.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: One.</s>UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Imitating moose).</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Didn't know moose had an air horn - but here's the peak.</s>UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Imitating moose).</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: One grammatical note - the plural of moose is moose. So we're hearing more than 1,000 person all making moose call.

Judge rules the ex-Trump campaign chairman lied in Russia probe. It's been a year since the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. Ex-Air Force intelligence officer charged with giving secrets to Iran.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Why, when he knew the consequences, did Paul Manafort lie?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Well, that question remains after a judge ruled that Manafort did intentionally lie. He had a plea deal with the special counsel investigating Russia's involvement in U.S. politics. He was supposed to give truthful information. Robert Mueller says he did not. And the judge's agreement means his plea deal is done. Democrats have a theory as to why. Adam Schiff is chair of the House Intelligence Committee.</s>ADAM SCHIFF: It's not just that if he told the truth, it would be damaging to Manafort. But it would reflect so adversely on the president that he would lose his chance of a pardon.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That is one theory. What can we learn from the nature of the lies? NPR Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson is on the line once again. Carrie, good morning.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: What exactly did Manafort lie about?</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that Paul Manafort lied about a payment to a law firm that apparently did some work for him, about some other unrelated criminal investigation, and then here's the most important thing. Judge Jackson found Manafort lied about the nature of his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI has linked to Russian intelligence. They had meetings and conversations throughout the campaign, and even after the campaign, after the inauguration and into 2018 that prosecutors say were at the heart of this investigation into Russian election interference and whether any Americans helped.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. Wow. So this is Paul Manafort's conversations with a guy linked to Russian intelligence. I'm just making sure I understand this. And you're saying that Paul Manafort lied about talking with this person throughout the presidential campaign, where Manafort was campaign chairman for President Trump for a while, and even continued after the election for a good while. So are we able to learn anything from - anything true from knowing which lies he told?</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Well, you know, a lot of the proceedings in this matter have been sealed. We're eventually getting transcripts, which have a lot of blacked-out versions or redactions. We do know that prosecutors think that Manafort passed some kind of polling data to this person the FBI has linked to Russian intelligence, that they had a meeting in August 2016 at the heart of the campaign.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: And we also know this, Steve - that Rick Gates, who was Paul Manafort's right-hand man and deputy, has been cooperating for a lot longer than Paul Manafort. Prosecutors are taking this information from Richard Gates, who also was around the campaign, the inauguration and the Trump White House, and contrasting it with what Manafort has told them to help determine that Manafort has lied about matters central to this investigation into what happened with the Russians and Americans in 2016.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: In order to know that Manafort lied, you need to know at least some of the truth. I don't want to connect these dots too firmly yet, Carrie, but I want to note what some of the dots are. You're saying that Manafort is suspected of passing polling information to Russians. That's one dot. We know that Russians were using internet troll farms and other methods to pass propaganda messages to the United States during the election. What would it mean if those dots were more firmly connected?</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: I think we're going to need to wait and see what Robert Mueller and the FBI investigators have found rather than speculate about what might be out there.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Good point.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: There's been a lot of bad reporting in this case. We got to be careful.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: But what we do know is those dots are there and that the Mueller investigation continues.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: That's - yes, that's right.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Carrie, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: My pleasure.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: It's been one year since the Parkland mass shooting in Florida, where David has been reporting this week.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah, that's right. This morning, I'm in Broward County, Fla., Steve, just a few miles or so from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where that mass shooting claimed 17 lives a year ago. And since then, as we know, young Parkland survivors have really emerged as a driving force calling for stricter gun laws across the United States.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Some of them have become quite prominent across the country. So how is the community marking this moment, David?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I mean, I think when you - one thing you could say is this is not going to be a normal day here. They've made attendance not mandatory at the high school. And you hear from many parents who are saying they're not going to have their kids go to school. They're going to have them close with them at home to spend the day.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: At 10:17 a.m., there's going to be a moment of silence planned to honor the 17 people killed a year ago. And many schools across the state of Florida are expected to join in that. And there's a commemoration tonight in a park that's just a few blocks from the school. And that's the same spot where a vigil took place a year ago, and 17 crosses were put up.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: We've been following your reporting and the reporting of an NPR team on social media, David, and seeing these really quite memorable photographs of young people in the sunshine in Florida reflecting on this event. What are you hearing?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. I mean, you know, for one thing, if you remember the youth movement that was really born from the tragedy to combat gun violence - and we spoke to one of the leaders of that movement, David Hogg. He's now graduated from the school. He's moving on to Harvard. He says he's excited about college. But you know, he's sounding as determined as ever to keep the fight on even as he is spending more time in New England than down here. And you know, we talked to a theater director, Steve, who's trying to create a space for students to come in and create theater and art and have a place to kind of let steam off.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And I also spoke to a young man, Patrick Petty. He lost his sister, Alaina, in the shooting. And he was remembering how he and his sister used to go to the shooting range together.</s>PATRICK PETTY: That's something that my sister and I bonded over and something that we both enjoyed doing. And I can remember seeing the smile on her face the first time she went shooting and the first time she was learning. She really enjoyed it.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And so you know, I asked Patrick if his views have changed about guns since his sister was killed in a shooting, and he said no. He believes in the Second Amendment as strongly as ever, including the right to own assault weapons like the one that was used in the shooting where his sister was killed. But he said he has become a little more open to listening to people on the other side of the gun debate, is more open to conversation, which was interesting.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Yeah. David, there's a bit of news I want to ask about. The governor of Florida, if I have this correctly, has asked for a grand jury investigation in response to demands for accountability, specifically holding accountable the county superintendent of schools in Broward County. Haven't you spoken with him?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I have, yeah. Robert Runcie, the superintendent here, has been under a lot of criticism. And the new governor, Ron DeSantis, called for this grand jury to investigate school security across the state, but especially here in Broward County. There's been so much anger, Steve, among the families of Parkland victims who don't think that the superintendent reached out to them enough over the past year. They don't think he's moved quickly enough to put new security measures in place.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: When I sat down with Runcie, I mean, he told me that you can't rush security measures just because it's in response to a tragedy, that they have to be carefully thought out. And he also took a moment to apologize to families who don't think that he has been there for them.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Well, David, thanks for being there for us. We are listening to your coverage on NPR News from Parkland this week.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Some other news now. How much damage did a former U.S. Air Force officer do to national security?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. Monica Witt - she defected to Iran back in 2013 and now the former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence officer - is being accused of providing secrets to the Tehran government. There's a federal indictment that says she disclosed the code name and the secret mission of a Pentagon program for hackers linked to the Iranian government, who've now also been charged. And they allegedly tried to install spy software on computers that belonged to Witt's colleagues.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: All of this allegedly happened years ago, but we're just learning about it now. And NPR's Peter Kenyon is covering the story. Peter tracks Iran for us. Hi, Peter.</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: What exactly was Witt working on when she was with the Air Force?</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Well, she started in '97. She worked there until 2008. The indictment does not give the exact nature of what she was working on, but she did learn Farsi early on. She joined then the Office for Special Investigation - that's counterintelligence. The indictment says that Witt came to the FBI's attention after she traveled to Iran and appeared in a video criticizing the U.S. She told the agents, I'm not going to divulge any sensitive information. Don't worry. And she passed a series of U.S. security and background checks.</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: But the indictment says she began working with a so-called talent spotter for Iranian intelligence. Then, in 2013, she told her story at the Iranian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. And then, in late August of that year, she flew to Tehran.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: You used the word counterintelligence, which, generally speaking, means Americans who are trying to fight back at Iranian efforts to penetrate the United States.</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Yeah.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And instead, she became a penetration in a way. What kind of information did she provide Iran?</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Yeah, that's a good point. The indictment doesn't give out a lot of specifics. But it mentions a Pentagon special access program - that means classified information that she had access to, along with the code names for that program. Monica Witt also knew the identities of several U.S. intelligence agents, and she knew the real names of some intelligence sources.</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: The indictment lists eight agents or analysts known to have worked or interacted with Witt. And it says Witt created target packages for Iran to use against U.S. agents. The counts against her include passing national defense information to a foreign government, cyber offenses, identity theft. And as you mentioned, there's four Iranian cyber attackers also named.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Is there any response from this person who defected to Iran years ago or from Iran itself?</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Not so far. In going through Iranian media, though, I did find a story from about a couple weeks ago by the Fars News Agency. It's seen as close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. And that story's headlined "The Story Of An American Soldier Whose Dreams Came True In Iran" (ph). And it quotes Witt making disparaging remarks about the U.S. military and also saying that her 2012 conversion to Islam was a dream come true.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Wow. Very briefly, Peter, are Iranians feeling very much pressure from the increasing U.S. effort to isolate them after dropping out of a nuclear deal?</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: If so, they're not saying so. There is a meeting going on in Warsaw billed as an anti-Iran meeting. It's been - had the title changed. Secretary Pompeo says the most important thing for stability in the Mideast is to confront Iran.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. Peter, thanks very much for the update. Really appreciate it.</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Thanks, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's Peter Kenyon.

David Greene talks to Caitie Switalski of member station WLRN and Patrick Petty, whose younger sister was killed in the school shooting. Petty's belief in the 2nd Amendment is stronger than ever.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: We are marking one year since the mass shooting, just a few miles from here, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Caitie Switalski reports from member station WLRN in South Florida, and she's with me. Hi, Caitie.</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: Hi. Good morning, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So you started covering the tragedy in Parkland, I mean, on our air, actually, literally as it was unfolding a year ago. Right?</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: Yeah, and it was - it was one of the most shocking and horrific days I think anyone here has seen. But it was impossibly hard. And I think that's the only way you can describe it. And that's why I think a year later, today, is so impossibly hard for people that live here and have lived through this, not just through that day but for an entire year of aftermath after this.</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: And that's why I think a lot of - a lot of families don't want to send their children to school today. A lot of people I've talked to are spending this day really hunkering down, you know, almost treating it like it's a hurricane day, which sounds strange - but just being together in your home with your family, no agenda.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Reflecting and just being there, close.</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: Yeah. The idea about today, at least locally, is forget politics. Just remember who these 17 people were.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: You know, thinking about what's changed and what hasn't over the past year, there's this new NPR poll we have out this morning suggesting that around the country, the outcry over gun violence has lessened. And I wonder - I mean, here, is the youth movement that was begun by students here - is it still going strong?</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: Yes and no. The March for Our Lives movement, I mean, obviously took the entire country by storm this time last year after the shooting. And immediately, you had marches across the country. And here, a year later, I mean, it's just quieter activism. So it's not going to be going at the same rate it was when we had the big march in D.C.</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: But, I mean, for an example, just this week, David Hogg, who's a key figure in the March for Our Lives movement, he went to the Broward County Elections Office and helped file 200 signed petitions in an effort to get started, over the next year, trying to get a constitutional amendment on Florida's ballot in 2020 to ban the sale of assault-style weapons.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So still - still active. But...</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: Still active.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: ...We should say, one thing you've reported on is that there are different views of guns in this part of Florida.</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: Absolutely. I think a lot of people might expect, because Parkland is the center of this March for Our Lives pro-gun-control movement, that it's in some way not a gun-owning community. And that's not true. It's really split, 50-50. And that split shows, not just through families but through all of this advocacy here. There's a big portion of people that own guns.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Well, and in a second, we're going to hear another perspective on guns. You actually put us in touch with the young man, so I want to thank you for that and for your reporting. Caitie Switalski from member station WLRN.</s>CAITIE SWITALSKI, BYLINE: Thank you, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: The young man that she introduced me to is Patrick Petty. He's a student at Stoneman Douglas, and his younger sister, Alaina, was killed there. And I asked him to tell me about her.</s>PATRICK PETTY: We fought, screamed, yelled at each other plenty of times over stupid things. But overall, we - we really started building a bond the past couple of years and got to be better friends and got to learn about each other. And we actually had pretty similar interests.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Patrick is 18 years old. He wants to go to West Point and be a military officer. And he's always supported the Second Amendment. I asked him if that's changed at all since his sister was killed.</s>PATRICK PETTY: After the shooting last year, my dad and I, we both looked at our views and thought about the Second Amendment a lot and thought about what it means to us and whether or not we still supported it and whether or not some of the things that we had supported for our entire lives, whether or not we supported those things still, or whether or not we had a - we had a change of heart. And we came out of it, I'd say, pretty much the same, if not stronger in our support for the Second Amendment.</s>PATRICK PETTY: And my belief is not about hunting. It's not about just having them for sport or for fun. It's the Second Amendment was written for us, the citizens, to protect ourselves against a tyrannical government. That may not happen for 50, hundred, even a thousand years. But the moment you take that right away, you open the door for it to happen. You make it easier for it to happen.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Now, to fight a tyrannical government, Patrick said citizens should have the right to powerful weapons, even assault weapons like the one that killed his sister. Although recently, he and his dad went to Florida's state capital to show their support for a new law that included something he didn't like. It bars anyone under 21 from owning an assault weapon. The law had been 18. I asked him if he would have compromised on that before the mass shooting.</s>PATRICK PETTY: No, I wouldn't have. I've always been into politics, and that's always been something that I've loved. I've always loved learning about the issues and learning information on them. And before the shooting, I really loved learning as much information about a topic so that I could be the one that was right. Since the - last February, my - my views haven't really changed. But my perspective has changed a little bit.</s>PATRICK PETTY: And now I'm focused on understanding people, why they think the way that they do, why a certain issue - whatever that might be, whether it's guns or school safety - why they take that position, why they care about that so much, and then finding the common ground and building - really building a relationship on what we both agree on first so that when it comes to a political hot topic - whether it's gun control, abortion, any of these big hot topics - we have that sort of bond between us already that makes us respect each other for just being humans and being people together.</s>PATRICK PETTY: And we already know that we're not terrible people. We can sit down and say, you know what? I love that person. I know - I know they're a good person at heart. We may not agree on everything, but that's OK.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Were guns something that you and your sister bonded over?</s>PATRICK PETTY: Yes. So my sister started shooting when she was about 8, so that was a couple years after me. And my dad took us and got safety courses. We started out small, with a .22 handgun. And he was right there with us every step of the way. Instructors were right there with us.</s>PATRICK PETTY: And yes, that's something that my sister and I bonded over and something that we both enjoyed doing. And I can remember seeing the smile on her face the first time she went shooting and the first time she was learning. She really enjoyed it.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Is there a moment that stands out to you, over the past year, where you really felt like the high school community was just there for you?</s>PATRICK PETTY: I definitely do. At my sister's funeral, just a few weeks after the shooting, when I got up to say a few words, I got up and I looked back. And there were about 3,000 people crammed into the chapel. And they opened up the gym as well and put a bunch of chairs in there.</s>PATRICK PETTY: And there were about 3,000-plus people crammed into that building to show support for my family and show support for my sister and come pay their respects. So that was probably the best physical representation of how much love this community has.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Listen, we're all sorry for what your family's been through, and thank you for talking to us.</s>PATRICK PETTY: Thank you for having me.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: That was Patrick Petty. He's a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where his sister, Alaina, was killed a year ago.

Journalist Maria Ressa has been released on bail after she was arrested on Wednesday on charges of "cyber libel." Her arrest came amid fears of a broader crackdown on the press in the Philippines.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The worldwide fight over press freedom focuses for now on the Philippines. Authorities have arrested Maria Ressa. She's co-founder of an independent news site called Rappler. It's a startup. It has reported critically on the family activities of President Rodrigo Duterte. And that includes his anti-drug operations that have killed thousands of people, including drug users and drug dealers and others. NPR's Julie McCarthy joins us from Manila.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Hi, Julie.</s>JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: What was the charge for putting this publisher under arrest?</s>JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Well, it was a case of cyber libel - online libeling. A local businessman here complained that he had been defamed by Rappler, which is the name of Maria Ressa's news outlet...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Right.</s>JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: ...Because they linked him to illegal activities in an article that was published seven years ago and republished five years ago. And the businessman said he was very grateful to the justice department for bringing the case. But according to Rappler, the contents of that report were published earlier in another newspaper. But he only went after Ressa's website Rappler.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. So five years ago, seven years ago, Duterte wasn't even president. And yet now the case is brought by Duterte's government. Are there people who are responding by saying that this is not really what the government's concern is about?</s>JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Well, that's exactly right. In fact, they're saying what it's really about and what it smacks of is silencing the critics of President Duterte. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty International all moved in to say just that. The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines calls it persecution - this is a quote - "persecution by a bully government." So you get a sense where the lines are drawn here. Now Maria Ressa is a - is globally recognized. She's among the journalists who Time magazine named person of the year. And while this was the first time she was arrested, it was the sixth time Ressa has had to post bail. There are several government agencies, including the tax department, that have gone after her. Now, Ressa told me that the case has wide implications and that the message the government is trying to send couldn't be clearer. Here she is.</s>MARIA RESSA: Be quiet or you're next. You cannot be silent. Do not be silent because the rule of law is the only thing that keeps a democracy together. Press freedom is not just about journalists. Press freedom is the foundation of all the rights of all Filipinos to the truth. We're in a battle for the truth. And the first casualty is a number of people killed in the drug war. This is death by a thousand cuts of Philippine democracy.</s>JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Now, she's referring there to - Steve, to the president's anti-drug operations, which some - many human rights groups have called extrajudicial killings. And the death toll ranges from 5,000 - according to the government - upwards of 20,000. And Rappler's investigation of the drug war has put it at odds with President Duterte to say the least.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Very briefly, is there a wider pattern of going after the press?</s>JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: There is - he's threatened others. He's threatened to pull the license of other mainstream media. But, you know, it's important to remember to see what's happening in the Philippines as part of a larger trend. The press freedoms are under assault across Southeast Asia, from Myanmar to Cambodia to the Philippines. Reporters are being jailed and harassed and killed.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Wow.</s>JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: And all of this is coming with a sense of impunity. And therefore, journalists are very worried about the heightened dangers in the Philippines.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. Julie, thanks so much. That's NPR's Julie McCarthy.

NASA's six-wheeled rover landed on the red planet in January 2004 for what billed as a 90-day mission. The robot was still going until a dust storm on Mars last summer killed it.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: And now on this Valentine's Day, a story of heartbreak from deep space. NASA's love affair with the Mars rover Opportunity is now kaput.</s>STEVE SQUYRES: There wasn't a moment when you go, oh, my God. It's over. Rather, it was this growing realization that this thing that had been such a big part of our lives for so many years was finally coming to a conclusion.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: That's Cornell professor Steve Squyres. He was head of the team that ran the scientific exploration of Mars.</s>STEVE SQUYRES: I expected to be sad, and I'm not. I feel really, really good.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Opportunity was supposed to have a mission lasting 90 days. Instead, it lived about as long as a typical pet - 15 years until June, when it went quiet.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: The team back on Earth tried everything to re-establish contact over the next several months. On Tuesday, though, they gave up. They sent it one last signal - a goodbye of sorts. It was a recording of "I'll Be Seeing You" by jazz legend Billie Holiday.</s>BILLIE HOLIDAY: (Singing) I'll be seeing you in all the old, familiar places.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Sad to say that Opportunity did not take the opportunity to respond. Thomas Zurbuchen is associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.</s>THOMAS ZURBUCHEN: I'm standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission as complete and with it, the Mars exploration rover mission as complete.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Now, Opportunity was, actually, the second rover that NASA managed to land on Mars back in 2004.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The rovers performed tests to determine whether there were once life-sustaining conditions on the planet. And they discovered evidence of ancient waterways. For scientist Steve Squyres, Opportunity exceeded every expectation.</s>STEVE SQUYRES: The first 90 days, that we expected to get. We would've been disappointed if we hadn't gotten it. After that, every day was a gift. And you just try to appreciate every single one of them.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: They took every possible opportunity.</s>BILLIE HOLIDAY: (Singing) ...In every lovely summer's day...

Residents of Manhattan share their thoughts about the movie Sex and the City, shoes and new styles for summer. Day to Day's New York fashion contributor Najwa Moses shares her thoughts and theirs with host Madeleine Brand.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: When I think of the TV show Sex and the City three M words come to mind, Manhattan, Magnolia Bakery, and Manolo's.</s>Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) The next day, over dessert, I was still not over the fact that my shoes had deserted me. These were new Manolos. I hadn't even done a full lap around the party and you know, I don't play favorites with my shoes but these were very special.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Carrie Bradshaw played by Sarah Jessica Parker obsessed with the shoe designer Manolo Blahnik. Women going to see the movie "Sex and the City" this weekend are as curious about Carrie's shoes as they are about her wedding to Mr. Big. Najwa Moses, Day to Day's fashion contributor, is in New York and she's been doing some hard-hitting research there on the streets of New York City. Hi, Najwa.</s>NAJWA MOSES: Hi, Madeleine. I think you forgot one M. Men.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And Moses.</s>NAJWA MOSES: And Moses.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: So you spoke with the shoe expert who went to the "Sex and the City" red carpet premiere event, and I guess the shoe expert was looking down at that red carpet to see what the ladies were wearing.</s>NAJWA MOSES: Oh, yes. Well, actually, I spoke with Miss Meghan, aka, Meghan Cleary. She's America's shoe expert and actually, the carpet was pink. When I speak to her a little about you know, what the girls were wearing on their feet, Kim Cattrall, kept it real with Jimmy Choos, and she had on a basket weave, metallic basket weave stilettos. Basket weave is going to be a huge, huge trend for the summer as well as for the fall. So, get on top of that. Have a lot of fun with that.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: I will.</s>NAJWA MOSES: And as for S.J.P. a.k.a. Carrie Bradshaw, Ms. Meghan lets us know exactly what she had on.</s>Ms. MEGHAN CLEARY (Shoe Expert): I had a little friend inside the Sarah Jessica camp who let me know that her shoes were Givenchy golden, peep-toe, ankle-boot stilettos.</s>Ms. MEGHAN CLEARY (Shoe Expert): BRAND Oh, my gosh! I don't even know what to do with that, Najwa.</s>NAJWA MOSES: Let's just talk about this for a minute. She wore ankle boots on the pink carpet. It's a revolution. It's all about the ankle boots. It's all about the ankle boots, friends.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And I'm just wondering, has "Sex and the City" jumped the shark there in Manhattan? Are people sick of S.J.P. and all her friends?</s>NAJWA MOSES: Absolutely not.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: OK.</s>NAJWA MOSES: From the premiere where 1,500 people actually got locked out, to last night. Actually I was passing, just walking in the streets about 12 o'clock midnight, and people were lined up at the theaters. Gaggles and groups of girls had just come from having cosmos. People are ultra-excited. You've got people taking days off. You've got bloggers calling it "Sex and the City" Day.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Today, being "Sex and the City" Day?</s>NAJWA MOSES: Today is "Sex and the City" Day. I call it "Sex and the City" Day. And I think people around the blogosphere are also calling it "Sex and the City" Day.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: For us mere mortals, you talked earlier about what the style should be for the summer, what we should be wearing on our feet this summer. You talked about ankle boots. What else?</s>NAJWA MOSES: Shoes are really fun this summer, Madeleine, and I'm excited about it. One other thing that you're going to see is neon colors. I'm talking about strong, strong neon colors, orange, limes, yellows. You are going to see them done in platforms, in pumps, in flats. And they're going to be done a lot in a patent-leather tone. So, they're going to be popping. And actually, I went down to Soho to check out a boutique that I absolutely love called Irregular Choice. It's all about fantastic, funky shoes mostly imported from Europe, down at Soho. And I spoke with Zoe Papos(ph) who's actually the manager, and said, hey, Zoe, what's going on for this summer? Tell me what people are buying, and what people are wearing.</s>Ms. ZOE PAPOS (Store Manager, Irregular Choice): Sandals that are inspired from the Greek mythology like the ones with the wings, that they're in silver, in gold and black color. We have some styles that they cover the ankle but they're still sandals. And they're very successful as well.</s>NAJWA MOSES: Oh, they have a cuff. Oh, those are great!</s>NAJWA MOSES: Do that one more time for me.</s>NAJWA MOSES: That's the cuff.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Zoe was great. So, these are flats.</s>NAJWA MOSES: Yes. Flats have gotten very sexy. You see them with the wide cuff, you see them with straps, still in the thongs style. So, if you want to wear flat this summer, by all means, have fun with flats.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Fashion expert, Najwa Moses from styleaholics.com. Thanks, Najwa.</s>NAJWA MOSES: Thank you, Madeleine. Always fun.

President Trump says he will sign a border funding compromise to avert a shutdown, but will also declare a national emergency in order to build a border wall. Also, Amazon cancels plans for New York.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: President Trump is set to sign a bill this morning that would fund the federal government and prevent a second shutdown but...</s>MITCH MCCONNELL: He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time. And I've indicated to him that I'm going to support the national emergency declaration.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Republican Mitch McConnell made that announcement on the Senate floor. It is worth noting when McConnell said this, what he said and who was saying it. The Senate was about to vote on a border security defeat for the president. Lawmakers approved the bill without billions for a border wall. McConnell said the president will claim emergency powers to spend the money that Congress denied him. It's striking that McConnell was the one to support this end run around Congress since he is a leader in Congress and was widely reported to have - was widely reported to have advised the president not to do this.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: NPR's congressional correspondent Susan Davis is in the studio with us this morning, along with national security correspondent David Welna, who's on the line. Good morning to you both.</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: David, let's start with you. By declaring a national emergency, what specific authorities does that give the president?</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: It gives him potentially many authorities. There are hundreds of statutes that Congress has been approving since the time of George Washington that lie dormant most of the time. They are only activated when the president declares a national emergency. By law, he has to cite which specific statutes he's going to be using. But when he does use these statutes, there's really no definition that Congress has ever given for what constitutes a national emergency. So it'd be hard to challenge him on the grounds that, no, this doesn't fall within what we consider a national emergency. Congress does have ways to block a national emergency. Both chambers would have to vote to do that and then send that to the president for him to sign. And if he doesn't, they'd have to override a veto from him. So really this sort of opens the way for him to tap those powers and try to get the money that Congress refused to give him in this bill that he is expected to sign today.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So, Sue, how is Congress reacting to this?</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Well, as Steve noted, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supports it, which came as some surprise because we do know from our own reporting that he had expressed private concerns to the White House about this course of action. Not all Republicans are onboard. Republicans, like Susan Collins of Maine, have said publicly they do not support the president going in this path. Marco Rubio of Florida said that he believed that this could open - set a precedent for future presidents to use. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to that dynamic.</s>NANCY PELOSI: I'm not advocating for any president doing an end run around Congress. I'm just saying that the Republicans should have some dismay about the door that they are opening, the threshold they are crossing.</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Democrats overwhelmingly oppose it. And Pelosi is saying to Republicans, like Marco Rubio, you are right to be concerned.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Because they could use a national emergency - if Democrats could take the White House back, they could declare a national emergency on climate change or gun control or any number of issues.</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: And she specifically mentioned gun legislation in her remarks.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So what does Congress do in this moment?</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: So they have options. The first option is the law that gives the power the president to do this gives Congress the power to take it away. They have the authority to pass resolutions of disapproval that would essentially block the president. The political reality is you would need a veto-proof majority in both chambers to do that, and they probably don't have that because Republicans control the Senate.</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: They also can challenge it in the courts. And Democrats are saying they are prepared to do that. How they challenge it goes to what exactly the president does. But remember, there's a constitutional challenge in question here. The Constitution is very clear in Article I that Congress gets to decide how money is appropriated, and the president is challenging what that means.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But, David, where is the money going to come from? I mean, the White House has suggested that there will be all kinds of pots of money that the national emergency will give the president access to.</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Right.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What pots of money?</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Well, it's most certainly not pots of money coming from Mexico to pay for a wall, despite all the president's earlier promises. These pots of money are all funding that Congress has already approved for other purposes. And mostly they seem to be associated with the Department of Defense, which gets about two-thirds of the money that Congress approves each year. We don't have the specifics yet from the White House, but it appears that Trump is going to try to raid other accounts to add more than $6 billion to the $1.375 billion that Congress has approved for a border barrier for a total of $8 billion. That's a lot more than the $5.7 billion he'd been seeking. And most of that money - $3 1/2 billion - is expected to come from the Pentagon's military construction budget.</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: And that's likely to anger a lot of defense hawks on both sides of the aisle because that money was all meant to be spent improving military bases. There's also about $2 1/2 billion in the Defense Department's drug interdiction program that Trump is expected to tap, as well as another $600 million from Treasury's drug forfeiture fund.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Wait a minute. So the president has been expressing concern about drug trafficking across the border, and he's going to take away drug trafficking interdiction money in order to build the wall. Is that correct?</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: That's right. And I guess he would argue that while this is all about stopping drugs, and that's what the military money was meant for, that's what I'm going to do with it too.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Which is just fascinating - because if if that money were available, they would have appropriated it that way in the first place because, at its core, this is all a spending debate. This is all about creating the budget, as is Congress's writ to do. And if that money had been available, they would have done it the first time.</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Right. And they shortchanged the president on what he wanted. But it was saying basically Congress judges that this is as much money as you should get for this.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So there are national emergencies - I mean, it's nothing new, right? And there are dozens that are currently active - is that right, David? What are these?</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: There are dozens that are active. But they're mainly actions that are freezing the assets of foreigners in U.S. banks - that kind of thing. President Trump has actually done a couple of those things. This is very unusual that a president would declare a national emergency to get money that Congress would not give him, effectively making it an end run around Congress. In fact, it's hard to find any other president who's ever done this. So we're in uncharted waters right now.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Sue, any inclination as to what happens, like, over the next hours and days?</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Well, as David said, we really are looking for where exactly the president's going to draw all this money from. Remember. We knew the White House was thinking about this. So Democrats have also been prepared for this. In the response to the State of the Union, one of their responses - California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a former member of Congress, cited this national emergency threat and said if the president were to go forward on this, Democrats were prepared, and he would file action in court the day the president signs the declaration. So we're looking for the specifics on it and then who in the Democratic Party are going to bring these suits.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Interesting. I remember interviewing independent Angus King of Maine when the shutdown had just begun. And he predicted, as others did, that the only way that people could save face and keep the government open was this idea of a national emergency. And now they're going to have to deal with it. NPR's Susan Davis and David Welna. Thanks so much, you guys.</s>SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: All right. When Amazon announced they were looking for cities to house their new headquarters, it was almost like a popularity contest.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: A very expensive popularity contest.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Indeed.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Cities submitted proposals about all the amazing things they could offer Amazon. And in turn, the corporation promised a lot of jobs and an economic boost. After a long highly publicized search, New York was selected as one of two locations, along with Alexandria outside of Washington, D.C. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was delighted.</s>BILL DE BLASIO: This was unprecedented. And Amazon had a national competition because they had something worth competing for.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: But just three months later, that relationship has come to an end because Amazon announced yesterday that it is canceling the plans for its New York City campus.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: NPR's business correspondent Alina Selyukh joins us in studio to explain why. We should also note Amazon is an NPR underwriter. Alina, good morning.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So Amazon made a huge deal about the search for these locations and the announcement. You'd think they would have thought through all the potential pitfalls, right? What happened in New York?</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: I think this really was quite the jarring development for everybody involved. I mean, we were hearing from some local groups who were meeting with Amazon officials as early as Thursday morning. And nobody in those meetings seemed to know that this was coming. The hugest sticking point in all of this for the critics was the fact that the city and the state were offering a really large subsidy package to Amazon - tax breaks of almost $3 billion.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Add to that the upset city council. This was really big. Amazon had picked an approval process that involved the mayor and the governor but gave city council no real power over the deal - upset city council.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: And also in a way, this was a reflection of the rise of the progressive left. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had been an outspoken critic, and her district is near the area where Amazon wanted to build the new HQ. And there's something to be said about New York groups really knowing how to mobilize.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: In this case, housing groups, union groups, all kinds of groups came together at those city council hearings where Amazon was just pummeled. And the supporters had their arguments too. A potential of 25,000 well-paying jobs is nothing to sneeze at - plus in the area of Queens that doesn't really have a tech presence. But supporters weren't as visible as the activists. And really in New York, this played out more like a political fight than a business negotiation.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So can I ask about the argument of AOC? It was just - we don't think Amazon is going to give enough back to our local community. It's not worth it - the tax breaks basically.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Yes.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So what are we hearing from inside Amazon at this point about what it means for their headquarters expansions worldwide?</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Right. So they're saying they can't really do a project in a place where local elected officials don't want to work with them. And they will not be looking for a replacement location, although certainly other cities are probably calling them now. We saw Chicago officials publicly saying they'd welcome a reconsideration from Amazon. And even back in New York, while Amazon critics celebrated last night, many people were torn about how this played out. Maybe they didn't love the financials of the deal, but they didn't want Amazon to just walk away.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: We spoke to Chris Hanway, executive director of a Queens-based nonprofit Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement. And he said he'd kept his mind open about the HQ deal and was sad about the lost job opportunities for Queens residents. But he also said Amazon hasn't been fully forthcoming with answers to some of the questions the local groups had.</s>CHRISTOPHER HANWAY: I think this is a real lesson for everybody who - whether you're on the organizing side or you're on the corporate side - about the importance of communication.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Communication - so, Alina, just briefly, this is a model for economic development. A lot of cities luring businesses with tax breaks. Is this going to change anything to that model?</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: It's hard to say. The system that was run on tax incentives has existed for a long time. But because this will go down in history as such a high-profile failure to strike an agreement, I'm sure that the activists who opposed taxpayer-funded incentives will forever use this as fodder for the broad campaign against these kind of megadeals.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: All right. NPR's Alina Selyukh for us this morning - Alina, thank you.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Thank you.</s>ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: (SOUNDBITE OF DAMU THE FUDGEMONK AND RAW POETIC'S "RAW POETIC'S MOTIF (INSTRUMENTAL)"

A new documentary about the conflict in Sudan follows six people working to bring humanitarian relief to the region. Adam Sterling is one of those featured in Darfur Now. Sterling's passion for the cause led him to form The Sudan Divestment Task Force.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: There's a new documentary about the conflict in the Sudan.</s>Unidentified Man: The Janjaweeds are basically an Arab militia. Some people say that they are the proxy force. That is much of Janjaweed's deed, enormous amount of tribal violence, which is getting the situation increasingly worse. I think it is the responsibility of the government of having opened this Pandora box that I don't think now they have the capacity to close, in order to bring peace to this area.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: "Darfur Now" follows six people working to bring humanitarian relief and peace to the region.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Twenty-four-year-old Adam Sterling was a college Student in southern California, when he first learned about the situation in Darfur. He says he had to do something to help.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): I was e-mailed a story by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. He's been one of the most prolific writers on Sudan and Darfur in the last four or five years. And I just had happened to open this one e-mail, and I've read the story, and Nicholas Kristof was visiting one of the refugee camps.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): And looking at the use of rape as a systematic tool in the genocide, and he was speaking to a young mother and he said to this mother, every time you send your daughter out to collect firewood, she's raped. Why don't you send your son? And the response from this mother was, if I send my son, he'll be killed. If I send my daughter, she'll only be raped. And it just blew me away that that type of decision is made in Darfur on a daily basis. And, you know, I thought back the decisions I had made and remembering college, I spent a week deciding whether to get an Xbox or a PlayStation. And it really kind of - I think that was my wake-up call.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You also talk about being someone who wasn't particularly into activism in college. What made the difference for you this time?</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): I think I found a cause that I just I couldn't find an excuse not to get involved in. I mean, Darfur marks the first time in history that a genocide has been labeled the genocide while it's actually still happening. And, you know, I grew up learning about the holocaust and, you know, here we are repeating history again. And I just - I couldn't accept that. And, you know, it started small. A group of us from my class got together and, you know, we didn't wake up and say, we're going to start a global divestment campaign.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): But, I remember our first meeting, there was four of us. And it was the four of us that started the group and our next goal was just to get more people to come to the meeting and kind of just - we would be successful on that and then it was what can we do next, and it's always been what can we do next for the last three years.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Explain what you mean by divestment and who you're trying to get to divest.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): Sure. So we, you know, looking at ways that we could kind of impact the situation in Sudan. We looked closely at kind of the Sudanese government and saw that they were really the kind of the ones arming the militias that were conducting the attacks in Darfur and ultimately the ones that were preventing peace and security in Darfur. So we thought, you know, what's the best way to leverage the Sudanese government. And looking at the situation in Sudan, we found that generally, it's a very poor country.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): The average yearly income is around $600 a year. Yet, we found that the Sudanese government was bringing in billions of dollars a year in oil revenue and that money, unfortunately, wasn't going to debt relief. It wasn't going to development. It was going almost all to military spending. And we found that the Sudanese government itself didn't have the capacity or the capital to really take the country's vast oil reserves and turn them into revenues.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): So they brought in all of these foreign oil companies, which then did that work for them. So we found the Sudanese government was incredibly relying on these companies and then we looked at our university investments, our state investments and found that we had millions of dollars invested in these companies.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): So using our ownership in these companies, we basically said to the companies, hey, you've got influence over the Sudanese government, if you don't use that and change your behavior in Sudan, we're going to sell our shares in your company. And that's really kind of what the divestment campaign has been over the last three years.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: How successful would you say that you've been in those three years? What have you accomplished?</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): It's been really amazing. You know, our first campaign was at the University of California. We were successful there and then we're asked by a state legislator, who said, hey, this is a great idea, help me write a law. And in the last, now, two and half years, 21 states have passed Sudan Divestment Laws, so we're really excited about that.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, this is one of a series - "Darfur Now" is one the series of films and documentaries that has come out, putting Darfur front and center. Do you think that media, whether it's fiction, non-fiction, can really transform people who may not be that interested in this cause?</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): Absolutely. I think one of the issues is if you're interested about Darfur, up until this point you've really had to seek it out. I remember, you know, I had to really go look for more information about Darfur. And hopefully, with films like "Darfur Now," kind of the information will be given to people and they'll then be faced with the decision to act. And with "Darfur Now," it really - it chose - it's inspirational in that it doesn't just show the genocide; it shows people responding to that.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Give me just a quick example of one of the most powerful moments where you thought, okay, I'm really making a difference and one of the moments where you just felt despair.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): You know, I think despair, early on in our campaign, as I said, our first campaign was at the University of California, where you've got UCLA, UC Berkley. There's ten schools and they've got a huge pension fund. When we really first got involved in the divestment campaign, one of our faculty advisers - and this was actually a supporter of us - of ours, took us a aside, a small group of us and said, hey, I think this is great, what you're doing. But, you know, I really - I want to warn you guys, I've been teaching here for many decades, and that the board of trustees they're very conservative and this is just not something they're going to go for.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): Fortunately, we had thought we had spent too much time writing up a proposal so we kept going and we were successful. But that was a difficult moment, to keep going after that. And I think a high, more recently, we've been able to help draft a piece of federal legislation. It's the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act, which pass the House of Representatives in July and is now making its way to the Senate floor.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Do you ever worry that your connection to Darfur is not close enough in terms of experience or engagement to really motivate other people? How does that relate to the work that you do?</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): Well, I think, you know, if you kind of took that argument, then one could say, you know, unless you go to Darfur, you can't take action. And, you know, I would like to go someday, but I think there's people that do go and can make a bigger impact there than I can. And I think my impact has really been on the political situation here in the U.S. and showing people that, you know, you can take action. You don't have to, you know, go to Darfur. You don't have to necessarily be an expert.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): I mean I wasn't until, you know, I really got involved. But I think, you know, anyone can take action. It really - there's a famous quote after Rwanda in 1994, the genocide there, a U.S. senator said, if we had received just 100 letters from our constituents telling us that this was important to them, the situation would have been different. There would have been a different result. So ultimately, I think, you know, we've been given the evidence about Darfur and everyone can act.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Give me an example of someone who you consider a hero in the fight to save Darfur?</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): I think, you know, the first time I got to see "Darfur Now" at the premiere in Toronto, I was really blown away by Hejewa Adam who is one of the characters in the film. She's the young lady who lived in Darfur and her child was killed in one of the attacks. And she made the decision that, you know, her contribution to the crisis would be to kind of pick up arms and join one of the rebel movements and protect her people from these types of attacks.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): And that really put into perspective all the sacrifices I've, you know, putting off grad school and moving to D.C., that I've made and really kind of had motivated me to keep pushing. So I didn't think I'd get a lot about the film, I've been exposed to this for so long now that it's - I'm almost desensitized. But really, I, you know, really enjoyed the film and it inspired me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Adam, thanks so much.</s>Mr. ADAM STERLING (Resident, California): Great. Thanks for covering this.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Adam Sterling is director and co-founder of the Sudan Divestment Task Force. He's also one of six people featured in the documentary, "Darfur Now." The film is currently in theaters nationwide. You can learn more at our Web site, nprnewsandnotes.org.

Former Bush administration Press Secretary Scott McClellan's memoir is highly critical of the administration, specifically its handling of the Iraq war. NPR News Analyst Juan Williams discusses this and Sen. John McCain's upcoming trip to Baghdad with host Madeleine Brand.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: Two years ago, Scott McClellan resigned as White House Press Secretary. He received a warm goodbye from President Bush.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: President GEORGE W. BUSH: One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days of his time as the press secretary, and I can assure you, I will feel the same way then that I feel now that I can say to Scott, job well done.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, it's safe to say President Bush and Scott McClellan will not be rocking in chairs together anytime soon. This week, McClellan released his highly critical memoir of the Bush White House, and the White House fired back saying McClellan is a disgruntled former employee. I'm joined now by NPR News analyst Juan Williams. And Juan, what is the White House doing here? Are they mounting a very aggressive PR campaign against the former press secretary?</s>JUAN WILLIAMS: Well, they don't have to because everybody who considers himself a Bush loyalist, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, I could go on, Dan Bartlett. All people who are now, you know, out of the White House have done just that and they are on every news station, every TV news channel just constantly and saying, this is not the character they know. Scott McClellan has changed, something is wrong. And inside the White House, this is very interesting, Madeleine.</s>JUAN WILLIAMS: There are two competing theories. One is that Scott McClellan is mad because President Bush didn't properly support his mother when his mother was running against Rick Perry for the governor job down in Texas. And the second one is that, you know, he was the young guy. He's just 40 years old, he's weak, he was over his head in the job in the first place, and he had to be asked to leave and he, you know, held some bitterness in his heart about this. And so, he felt used - especially used on the Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame case. He feels as if he became a fall guy and that he's now paying back President Bush and the White House for all that happened with a book that is just, you know, a sensation at the moment.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, OK. Let's go to another political fight, I guess if you will - the back and forth between John McCain and Barack Obama over Iraq. And visiting Iraq this week, I think on Memorial Day, Senator McCain said, well, Senator Obama, why don't you come with me?</s>JUAN WILLIAMS: What an invitation. Come, let the master show the rookie around. You can imagine why Senator Obama said no thanks. But clearly, John McCain sees an advantage in doing this because if you look at the polls, Madeleine, the one clear plus that he has - and it's a huge advantage - is in terms of protecting the United States and fighting the war on terror and fighting in Iraq. From Senator Obama's prospective, it's not a bad deal for him to go by himself and look around because he has made it clear that Iraq is a mess and is really - if the country was to elect John McCain, they'd be getting a third term of George W. Bush and more of the mess in Iraq. And he wants to illustrate that and play that up as a central theme of his fall campaign. So both sides see that there's something in it for them in terms of the political calculus.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: OK, Juan. Your best political conversation this week.</s>JUAN WILLIAMS: Well, everybody in Washington, Madeleine, is intent about this upcoming meeting of the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee this Saturday. But really, the interesting conversation is what happens afterwards? Is it possible that after Puerto Rico this weekend, Montana and South Dakota vote on Tuesday, that Hillary Clinton will say, yeah, you know what, I lost? Or is it the case that she is willing to continue the fight on to the convention. And it's so interesting because there's a fight inside her campaign about this, featuring in part Bill Clinton, who more and more seems to be an advocate of the idea of the dream ticket of Hillary Clinton as vice president. Meanwhile, there are people who are saying, Hillary Clinton is being disrespected and forced from the race and don't you dare ask her to get out people in her own campaign. So there's a lot of internal back and forth over the future of Hillary Clinton as this very moment.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: NPR News Analyst Juan Williams. Thank you, Juan.</s>JUAN WILLIAMS: Have a good weekend, Madeleine.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Thanks. You, too.

The Democratic presidential field has two more candidates. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar officially announced they're running. Other candidates fanned out across the country to campaign.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The sheer number of Democratic presidential candidates has shifted the national conversation. For years now, President Trump has had an enormous political advantage. He's been able to make virtually every news story all about him. Any president has the power to seize attention, and he has constantly used it. But the Democratic challengers have filled the Internet and TV screens with different faces and different messages. NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid is following the latest presidential announcements. Hi there, Asma.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota announced over the weekend, and I guess you can say she began with a quite memorable image.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: (Laughter) She did. She was outside on this snowy cold Sunday. And, Steve, part of why, I think, she did this was it was really a symbolic backdrop. You know, she talked about geography. She talked about where she's from in her announcement speech. And so she wanted to be beside the Mississippi River. She pointed out that it runs really smack dab through the middle of the country, through the heartland. And she talked a lot about, you know, where she comes from, what her roots are, that she has these working-class roots. She talked about her grandpa who worked as an iron ore miner. And what I thought was really interesting in her announcement speech is that she talked about where she's from and what sort of credibility that Midwestern credibility gives her, but she also casted herself as this really pragmatic problem solver - someone who's focused on results. We have a clip of her here.</s>AMY KLOBUCHAR: We are tired of the shutdowns and the showdowns, of the gridlock and the grandstanding.</s>AMY KLOBUCHAR: Today, on this snowy day on this island, we say enough is enough.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And she's there with the snow in her hair...</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Yeah (laughter).</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: ...The snow on her coat. OK. So she says she's pragmatic, but hasn't she faced criticism about how it is that she gets things done?</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Yeah. So, Steve, she has been - in recent days, there have been a couple of different stories that have talked about how she's treated her staff with a couple of examples highlighting, you know, throwing out a binder out the window, say, of a staff member and whatnot. And we should say a lot of these stories don't have individual quotes from named sources. Nonetheless, she was asked about this. And according to reports, she did not deny any of the specific allegations. In fact, she admitted that, you know, she can be tough. And she said, I have high expectations for myself; I have high expectations for the people that work for me, and I have high expectations for this country.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Certainly a sign - maybe another sign of a different political world, isn't it, Asma? If you read history, you find all kinds of politicians who were unbelievably abusive to their staffs. But now this is something that people are going to talk about apparently.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Yeah. I mean, Steve, I think what's so interesting right now about the political climate in general is that we are dealing culturally with a lot of things that candidates may not have dealt with before, whether that deals with, you know, how they treat their staff, whether that is, you know, allegations of sexual assault - obviously a much more sort of severe situation nonetheless - but how they deal with race. These are all cultural things that, I think, candidates a decade - let's say two, three decades ago wouldn't necessarily have dealt with.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: But Klobuchar is in, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also says she's in the race. Let's listen to some of her announcement.</s>ELIZABETH WARREN: We can't afford just to tinker around the edges - a tax credit here; a regulation there. Our fight is for big structural change.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And she is making this argument that the economy has been tilted in favor of certain players, and she wants to tilt it back. And challenging President Trump - how's the president, though, trying to regain that narrative that he's somewhat lost control of here?</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Yeah. So, Steve, I think part of what we're seeing with President Trump is that he - specifically, I would say, with Warren, but he loves to taunt some of these Democrats on social media. So he sent out a tweet mocking her, and it was seen by some to refer to the Trail of Tears. As you know, that was the forced relocation of native Americans in the mid-19th century, a policy that led many people to die. She called it racist, and she suggested that Trump might not be around in 2020. He might be in prison, but he's not the only problem that Democrats will have.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Wow. OK, NPR's Asma Khalid. Thanks.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: You're welcome.

NPR's David Greene talks to food writer and human rights campaigner Yasmin Khan about her latest cookbook, and the travels that inspired a collection of Palestinian recipes.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The author Yasmin Khan explored a troubled part of the world through its food. Her newest book is part cookbook, part travelogue. It's called "Zaitoun," which is the Arabic word for olive. And both the language and the ingredient are clues to where she takes us. She focuses on the Palestinian kitchen.</s>YASMIN KHAN: Not in any way to kind of silence the Israeli experience, but just to - well, just to enable a space for Palestinian voices to be heard.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Yasmin Khan spoke with David Greene.</s>YASMIN KHAN: Usually when we might mention Palestine or Palestinian culture, it's in the context of a very specific and quite fraught political context. So it was so incredible for me to be able to access this other side of Palestinian life - one that encompasses beauty and flavor and texture and joy.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What you - as you started to meet people and research this book - at one point you talked about a meal with a Palestinian nurse in East Jerusalem, who said you can't discuss Palestinian food without talking about the occupation. Talk about that conversation and what you took from it.</s>YASMIN KHAN: Absolutely. And I think - you know, I know from my years of working in the region that in Palestine you can't separate food from politics. You know, a Palestinian's ability to access food is so dependent on their ability to get through checkpoints or their ability to pass through roadblocks. And I think that fragility of everyday life - the uncertainty and the pressures that that brings on ordinary Palestinians is also something I felt was important to convey in the book. You know, I think so many writers go on travel escapades, you know, and travel is seen as such a joyful thing. Here I am in front of a market in a wonderful place - well, that's true. But what I'm interested in is showing you the beauty that exists in the marketplace but also the reality that people face behind that.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What's an example of a dish that is purely Palestinian - that is really distinctive?</s>YASMIN KHAN: Oh, there are so many, but I think my favorite is this dish called musakhan, which is roasted pieces of chicken that are marinated in this - in allspice and cinnamon and cumin and then roasted in the oven and laid over bread topped with, like, gorgeous fried red onions and then sprinkled with loads of sumac to give it a really sharp tang. It's a wonderful sharing food. It's just one that you'll find in Palestinian communities wherever you go.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Well, how does Palestinian food fit into what we've talked about for so long as Middle Eastern cuisine?</s>YASMIN KHAN: One of the things I find very exciting in the food scene at the moment is how we are beginning to break down what Middle Eastern food is. You know, we would never say, oh, well this is European food because we know that European food is filled with all these nuances - German food and Spanish food and Italian food. And we have the same in the Middle East. You know, I'd love us to get to a stage where Middle Eastern food is not just bunched together as one big homogenous bloc but that we get to really get into the nuance of all the different parts of it.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: If people are reading your book in the United States and want to make some of these dishes, can people access the ingredients, so they can make these recipes, you know, as authentically as possible?</s>YASMIN KHAN: Absolutely. All the ingredients can be found in U.S. stores. And, you know, Palestinian food certainly isn't you know unattainable. The ingredients we're talking about things you probably already have, but it's just about cooking with them in a different way. So just last night, I was making this Gazan avocado dip, which is, like, smashed avocados with kind of a thick, strained Greek yogurt, some green chili and garlic and dill. And, you know, these are things that we're all kind of used to seeing in our pantry, but putting them together in this way just, you know, helps you elevate a dish in the most fun way.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Am I right? You talked about pickling avocados in the book, right? What does that taste like? And is that a Palestinian tradition?</s>YASMIN KHAN: Yeah. I'm all - you know, pickling and fermenting is such a big part of Palestinian food culture. And, you know, we've all had that moment when you kind of have an avocado at home, and it's a bit firm, but you want to eat it. And you're just like, oh, what do I do - that frustrating moment of impatience. So this is a great recipe where it's a quick pickle - where just in a few hours, you can get a hard avocado into a lovely, creamy, sharp pickle. And, you know, one of the things that I try and do in my book is - yeah, I cover the classic recipes, but I also cover, you know, dishes that represent how modern Palestinian food exists today. So I really try to provide a snapshot of contemporary life for Palestinian communities through their food.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: You know, you always think about food and the table, you know, as a place that can bring people together. Is that overly optimistic to think about cuisine in this part of the world as something that might bring people together in a place where there's been so much tension?</s>YASMIN KHAN: I think it's a very good question. Look. I'm not going to sit and pretend that, you know, my books and this work is going to somehow heal all the divisions within the Middle East. But it is undoubtably a universal truth that breaking bread with other people, that sharing food, that sitting round a dining table with people does break down barriers. And now it enables you, from a very human level, just to acknowledge another culture. It enables you to learn about another culture. And it enables you to bring - to humanize another culture.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Let me just ask you if there's one memory or one moment or one day or one cafe or one person's home or kitchen that really just stays seared in your memory as you were doing this research.</s>YASMIN KHAN: There really is. It comes to me so instantly. I remember one evening I was in Ramallah, and I'd just been to visit this Palestinian yoga school and had gone back with the teachers to one of their homes. And we were all sat outside under a full moon. Our host had brought out this beautiful dish called moussaka. And it's roast eggplant cooked in a garlic and allspice and cumin tomato sauce with chickpeas in it. And we kind of tore off pieces of taboon flatbread and scooped up these morsels of eggplant and tomato, sat outside on this beautiful evening, and it's just a memory I'll cherish forever and a real - you know, something that will always remind me of how Palestinians can find joy and celebrate life no matter what circumstances they're in.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Well, the book sounds lovely. And thanks so much for talking to us about it.</s>YASMIN KHAN: Thank you so much for having me on.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And that book is called "Zaitoun" by Yasmin Khan.

David Greene talks to Jessica Bakeman of member station WLRN and Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie about the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. Seventeen people were killed.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: We are just a few miles away from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where one year ago today, Valentine's Day, a mass shooting took the lives of 17 people. Jessica Bakeman is one of the journalists who has covered the tragedy and its aftermath. She covers education for member station WLRN in South Florida, and she is with me now. Hi there, Jessica.</s>JESSICA BAKEMAN, BYLINE: Hi, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Talk me through how this community is marking one year today.</s>JESSICA BAKEMAN, BYLINE: So today, the high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas is having what they're calling a day of service and love. So that's an opportunity for students to come in for a half day of community service activities. At 10:17 a.m., they're going to do a moment of silence to honor the victims. Obviously, 17 is the number of people who died.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Significant number, yeah.</s>JESSICA BAKEMAN, BYLINE: And then there are also going to be some community groups having activities throughout the day. For example, there's a nonprofit called ShineMSD that was founded by some of the students who wrote a song called "Shine." They sang it at the CNN town hall one week after the shooting, on national TV. And so they're going to have art therapists at the park that's near the school, so students can go and do some drumming and do some painting. I know some students are doing a poetry reading - so lots of activities for people, if they want to, to come together and try to heal together.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: But a lot of students are being kept home to just spend time with their families, it sounds like.</s>JESSICA BAKEMAN, BYLINE: Yeah, so students are allowed to just not go to school today and tomorrow. They're encouraged, if you don't want to participate in some kind of community service activity, then stay home with your family.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Can I just ask you - it seems like, even a year on, there is still so much anger here, a lot of it being directed at the school superintendent in Broward County, Robert Runcie. I mean, Florida's new governor came out yesterday, said he wants a grand jury to investigate how, you know, school safety is handled throughout the state, but especially here in Broward County. What - why all this anger?</s>JESSICA BAKEMAN, BYLINE: Yeah. So the parents of the victims especially, and also parents of students who still go to Marjory Stoneman Douglas, are really angry that some of the school safety measures they see as critical are not in place yet or weren't in place before the shooting that could have potentially prevented some of the death that happened. So specifically, there's a commission called the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission. It was created by the legislature to investigate the shooting. And some of their recommendations are specifically looking at what would have prevented what happened last year.</s>JESSICA BAKEMAN, BYLINE: So, for example, they want the police officers in Broward to have access to cameras because there was an issue with delayed surveillance footage. They want a code red policy, so that it's clear what happens if there is an active shooter situation. And they also want what we - what are called hard corners. So those are spaces in classrooms where students can hide away from a threat where they wouldn't be able to be seen or shot through a classroom window or door, which is something that happened on February 14 last year.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right. WLRN's Jessica Bakeman. Thanks so much.</s>JESSICA BAKEMAN, BYLINE: Thanks, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And, you know, I had a chance to sit down with the superintendent, Robert Runcie, in Broward County in his office yesterday. And as Jessica just was telling us about those hard corners in classrooms to protect people, I asked the superintendent if they have now, a year on, been marked off in every classroom in the county.</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: Not in every school in the county. Our goal was to try to get this done by the end of February. It may go a little longer than that because we're trying to work with law enforcement agencies, and there's some apprehension on some of them to be engaged in a process of designating that because of maybe liability concerns. So it's not...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Let me just give you the chance to explain why is that not going - like, it seems, I think, to some people, like you're just putting tape down in - so why is that...</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: Oh, no. So here's what the concern is - the corners are not so straightforward. So, for example, if I have a classroom that has two doors, where is the corner? Is it over here, if you come through that door? Or is it over there, if the threat comes through the other door?</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: So this is not something that you want to simplify. It's an important and thoughtful thing that needs to be done in each and every classroom because not every single classroom in this county or in any district anywhere is exactly the same.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Well, can I ask you about something that's been very personal? There have been some of the families of victims who have felt like you didn't reach out to them in ways they had hoped for. We were actually sitting down this week with the brother of Alaina Petty, who was killed. He said that families have been disappointed that you haven't visited with them, families of victims.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I mean, he said to us, he hasn't come - speaking about you - come to visit with his family. That - are we missing something? I mean, or is that a decision that you made?</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: No, that - so I have visited with families. I have not been able to visit with all the families. There were some that, at that time, were not at a place that you could - they wanted to talk to anyone. And then, you know, that grew into anger and so on. I've continued to try to reach out.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Then is this a miscommunication, when you have, you know, a family saying that the superintendent hasn't reached out to us?</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: No. I have reached out and tried to connect with families that, in some cases, they don't want to talk to us. But I can't make somebody meet with me.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: How hard has it been on you personally to have days like this, I mean, where there has been so much loss in this community? And then I just think about you having just watched the governor basically undermine you and say that this district needs to be investigated with potential subpoenas for how it has handled a tragedy.</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: Well, I didn't hear him say exactly that. But - and so...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: But also said he's been asked to suspend you, and that he's not...</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: No, he's - and he's said that before. I - and I understand that, right? But I can't focus on that, and I honestly don't. I need to have a laser-focus every single day on how we're going to get better and better at improving safety and security in Broward County Public Schools. And we're moving as fast as we can, but - and we need to deal with things the right way, not just quickly.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Let me just finish with a personal question. I've read about you and your own experience with gun violence, and your mother, having to live through her being shot when you were a kid. Can you tell me about that and how you've reflected on that?</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: Yeah. So I was 8 years old, and I was standing next to my mother on a Saturday, on our porch. And a gentleman started shooting at us and shot my mother in the face. And, you know, it was a horrific hate crime. You know, she survived it.</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: But one of the things I reflected on almost immediately upon the tragedy at Parkland is that I never had any counseling services. We were just left on our own - as a family, just - you guys go figure out how to deal with it. And I wanted to ensure that these families in this community would never have to go through anything like that. You know, we - and we continue to provide as much support as we can because I - you know, I have some sense of how difficult this is for them.</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: And, you know, I've tried to bring that experience to help our community. I know there are families that are angry, and I've tried to balance with giving them space and offering support as much as I possibly can. And until all the families that don't feel that I've reached them or done enough, I offer my sincere apologies, and I will continue to do everything I can to support them.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Superintendent Runcie, thank you for your time.</s>ROBERT RUNCIE: Yeah. All right.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And on this anniversary of the Parkland shooting, David is reporting from South Florida throughout today's program.

The Turkish government has issued a stern statement denouncing China for violating the fundamental human rights of Uyghur Turks and other Muslim communities in China.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Let's go overseas now where China faces new criticism for the treatment of its people. The country already faced worldwide questions for the arrest, torture and political brainwashing of members of its Uighur minority. Most Uighurs are traditionally Muslim, and a majority Muslim nation has risen to their defense. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Turkey.</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Turkey's Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning what it called the violation of the Uighur's fundamental human rights. The statement says, quote, "the reintroduction of internment camps in the 21st century and the policy of systematic assimilation is a great shame for humanity."</s>ABDUREHIM HEYIT: (Singing in foreign language).</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Turkey singled out a Uighur poet and musician Abdurehim Heyit who had reportedly passed away in prison. That assertion drew a quick response from China. Beijing released a video showing a man who identified himself as Heyit.</s>ABDUREHIM HEYIT: (Foreign language spoken).</s>PETER KENYON, BYLINE: In the video, Heyit gives the date, February 10, and declares that while he's under investigation by Chinese authorities, he hasn't been abused. A social media campaign using the hashtag #MeTooUyghur! sprang up after the release of that video with Uighur activists demanding videos of their own missing relatives. The Uighurs are one of the oldest Turkic-speaking ethnic groups from Central Asia. Many are now living in Xinjiang, called the Uighur autonomous region of China. The Uighurs complain that an influx of Han Chinese to the area is an effort to make Uighurs a minority there. For its part, China accuses Uighur activists of pursuing a violent campaign for autonomy. Turkey's Foreign Ministry is calling on Beijing to close the internment camps and respect the fundamental human rights of the Uighurs. The head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, praised Turkey for its criticism of Beijing and called on other countries to do likewise. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul.

Some say Germany will force the EU to give Britain a good Brexit deal because it's a good market for German goods. But regrets about Britain leaving the EU appear to be more emotional than economic.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Some of Britain's friends are feeling badly about the country's imminent divorce from the EU. A group of prominent Germans recently wrote to The Times of London expressing that very sentiment. They want Britain to stay close to its European allies, even after Brexit. As Anna Noryskiewicz reports from Berlin, it seems that regret though is more about culture than economics.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: Stop almost any German on the street and play them this clip, and they will immediately identify it.</s>MAY WARDEN: (As Miss Sophie) Same procedure as every year, James.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: That's "Dinner For One," a beloved 1960s British comedy sketch that has shown every New Year's Eve on German TV. But back in the U.K., almost no one has heard of it. It's a disconnect that gives an insight into Germany's relationship with Britain - a fondness for its culture coupled with a flawed understanding of the modern state of the country.</s>PETER LITTGER: We want our cliche of Britain to stay in the EU, and this is certainly not what this whole discussion should be about.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: That's Peter Littger, an author and journalist who writes about the influence that the British and especially the English language have had on Germany. I met him at the Union Jack, a British pub in the heart of West Berlin. He says when he heard the result of the Brexit referendum 2 1/2 years ago, he was stunned.</s>PETER LITTGER: I rushed to Britain to see my friends, to try and feel if something has changed. And it felt different. The ability to discuss controversial viewpoints in a very civilized but creative way was suddenly destroyed.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: But Littger says he's not sure his fellow countrymen really care about Britain leaving the EU.</s>PETER LITTGER: Britain is important to them on a cultural level. But in political reality, I guess that Germany was looking at Britain much more 100, 120 years ago than it is now.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: It's a similar story in the business worlds - general sense of regrets but not much concern about the economic impact, even though Germany sells about $90 billion worth of goods to the U.K. every year. At Berlin's city port, where containers arrive from all over the world, I meet one of the managers, Lasse Sibbert.</s>LASSE SIBBERT: We are connected with the ports of Bremen and Hamburg. For them, it's a big topic. They also have to think about, will there be new customs regulations? What kind of new customs regulations are there going to be? When will they turn into effect? The insecurity on how everything will turn out to be is causing quite some headaches.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: Even so, Sibbert says, when you break it down, the direct effect of Brexit on Germany's vast economy will be minimal. And he gives his own operation as an example.</s>LASSE SIBBERT: Our turnover of 150,000 overseas containers. Because of Brexit, perhaps we will miss a couple of hundred containers.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: There may be some Brexit headaches for Germany's businesses, but there is a heartache among the political class. Burkard Dregger, the leader of the center-right party, the CDU, in Berlin's Parliament. He's also one of the prominent politicians who signed the letter to The Times.</s>BURKARD DREGGER: I love the British humor. I love the tradition, of course. I love the queen. I love the House of Commons. They are really a substantial part of Europe, and they should realize this.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: Many Germans are disappointed that Britain's involvement in the European project always seemed halfhearted, even though both countries share a commitment to free markets, democratic ideals and fiscal responsibility.</s>BURKARD DREGGER: I really am convinced that Britain and Germany are not strong enough to compete economically with China. If we have economical interests to join our forces, we cannot say Germany first or Britain first. We have to have a European conviction of joint interests.</s>ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: Dregger says Britain leaving the EU is an emotional and political disaster. With Britain gone, Germany might even be able to strengthen its influence in the European Union, but there is no glee in the departure of a close friend and ally. For NPR News, I'm Anna Noryskiewicz in Berlin.

Denver teachers will be back on the picket line for the third day on Wednesday after the two sides failed to reach a deal Tuesday night. It's the first such strike in Denver in 25 years.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Now, let's hear some of the teachers on strike in Denver, Colo. They begin their third day out of school today, and some spoke with Jenny Brundin of Colorado Public Radio.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: It's the first teachers strike in Denver in 25 years. Teachers say the district just began bargaining in the last few weeks, despite negotiations that started 15 months ago. That's one reason teachers are frustrated.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Shut it down. If they don't pay up, shut it down.</s>JOHN HAYCRAFT: My name is John Haycraft, and I am pissed.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: Teacher John Haycraft joins several hundred teachers at a downtown rally, just across the street from bargaining. Teachers say the current dispute stems from years of not listening to teachers' complaints about Denver's low pay and bonus system. Haycraft says only five of the 53 teachers he began with at the school eight years ago are still there. He wonders how long he'll stay.</s>JOHN HAYCRAFT: People call it burnout, but that's not the right word. I haven't burned out. I've been demoralized.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: Tuesday, the district and union moved closer together on some issues. But still on the table is how much money teachers should make and incentive pay. The district sees bonuses as key to keeping teachers in highly challenged schools. The union wants that money instead put into salaries. And after nearly 13 hours of bargaining, superintendent Susana Cordova sounded a more positive tone at the end of an exhausting night.</s>SUSANA CORDOVA: It's been a very productive day. I think we made a lot of progress. And I'm looking forward to getting back together at the table tomorrow.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: All schools except preschools are open. But many fear how long the strike will go on. Erika Righter is a single mom of two. Righter's mother watches her 4-year-old - for now.</s>ERIKA RIGHTER: I am incredibly nervous about how long this goes. Honestly, I don't have a plan.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: More than half of teachers didn't report to work Tuesday. A third day of bargaining continues today. For NPR News, I'm Jenny Brundin in Denver.

President Trump heads to El Paso, Texas, to promote his border wall. Virginia's governor and lieutenant governor refuse to resign. Venezuela isn't letting U.S. humanitarian aid enter the country.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: How can President Trump get himself out of a corner?</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: In Washington, talks at securing a deal on border security, including the president's wall, fell apart. The acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney spoke to "Fox News Sunday," and here's what he said about the possibility of another shutdown.</s>MICK MULVANEY: They cannot sign everything they put in front of him. There'd be some things that simply we couldn't agree to. So the government shutdown is technically still on the table. We do not want it to come to that, but that option is still open to the president and will remain so.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So where does that leave negotiations right now?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith is here. Hi there, Tamara.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: I just want to note, Mick Mulvaney did raise the prospect of a shutdown there. But he said it's technically still on the table, which I read to mean virtually not on the table. What, if anything, are lawmakers coming up with?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, what we hear is that the negotiations at the moment are stalled. This comes after last week. They were saying they were making good progress, and everybody was optimistic. Now those negotiations have hit a bump. The problem seems to be not just funding for the wall. Democrats are now saying they would fund some portion of the wall, but they want something in exchange for that. And they want to limit funding for ICE detention beds. They object to the way that the Trump administration is doing deportation policy, and they want to sort of control the way that is done by limiting the number of detention beds.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: In past negotiations, back when the government was still shut down, the White House had asked - had actually been asking for more money, about $800 million more for detention beds. So this is a real standoff, and it's a different one. It's about policy more than it is about money or about symbolism.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Yeah.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: But it's also still very emotional and talked about in moral terms.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Well, let's remember. ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement - there is a movement among some Democrats to abolish ICE. It doesn't sound like that's where Democrats are, but they want to restrict its activities to some degree so you have a broader border security debate. Now, how is the president trying to influence this debate by showing up near the Texas border today?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, the president is likely to do what the president has done in other addresses, including the State of the Union and two other addresses to the American people as this debate has gone on, which is to talk about crime and paint all immigrants as criminals - all immigrants coming through the southern border. And so he is likely to do the thing that he has been doing. It's not clear whether it will be persuasive. But San Antonio - not San Antonio...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: El Paso.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: El Paso. El Paso is an area where he says the wall has worked.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Well, El Paso is also the home city of Beto O'Rourke, the former congressman who is thinking about a run for president. And by no means is he the only Democrat who's moving in that direction.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Yeah. And Beto is on something of a vision quest, but other people have really been running for president already. Cory Booker was in South Carolina this weekend. Kirsten Gillibrand was also there. Amy Klobuchar made an announcement on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River in Minnesota in the middle of a snow storm. Elizabeth Warren made it official with a big speech in Massachusetts. It is still frozen and snowy, and the 2020 campaign is up and running. There are five women members of Congress already running for president, and it's not even March.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So much for a political correspondent to do - Tamara, glad you're there.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Thank you.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's Tamara Keith.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Just over a week ago, it was perfectly fair to ask - how could the governor of Virginia possibly keep his job?</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Ralph Northam is now trying to answer that very question. He refused to resign over an old racist photo and is now giving interviews in an effort to rebuild public support for him. He gave one interview to Gayle King on CBS.</s>RALPH NORTHAM: Virginia needs someone that can heal. There's no better person to do that than a doctor. Virginia also needs someone who is strong, who has empathy, who has courage and who has a moral compass. And that's why I'm not going anywhere.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Northam has denied that he was in the old yearbook photo. He admits he did wear blackface while impersonating Michael Jackson - once. He's defending himself at the same time that the lieutenant governor, rather, faces two accusations of sexual misconduct.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And let's focus on the lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax. Whittney Evans of our member station WCVE in Richmond has been covering that part of the story. Good morning.</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So how has Fairfax's case advanced over the weekend?</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: Well, first to be clear, Fairfax has strongly denied both of these allegations.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Right.</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: He says the encounters in question were consensual. So what's happened since the first allegation is that people are now calling on Fairfax to step down. They weren't after the first allegation. Lots of prominent people in Virginia and across the country are now saying they want to see him resign immediately, and that includes most of Virginia's congressional delegation and even people like Senator Kamala Harris, who's running for president.</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: But there are also some people who are saying, slow this down. Let's not rush to judgment. There are some religious groups that have a rally scheduled at the Capitol today to support keeping Fairfax in office. So other than denying the allegations, Fairfax says he's called for an FBI investigation to clear his name. But it's unclear if the FBI would take that up. It's usually local jurisdictions that handle these kinds of cases.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: I did see the video over the weekend of one Virginia lawmaker stepping before reporters and saying, if the lieutenant governor doesn't resign by Monday, I'm going to start impeachment proceedings. Can he do that?</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: Well, there is a difference of opinion about whether impeachment for this situation is even possible in Virginia. A state representative who's a Democrat - his name's Patrick Hope - said he's going to start the impeachment process today. And he plans to introduce a resolution in the House. And then if a majority of the House vote in favor of the resolution, the process begins. But it's ultimately up to the Senate, which will conduct a trial and make the final call.</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: But I spent some time this weekend with this man named Dick Howard. He's a constitutional scholar in Virginia, and he was actually part of the group that rewrote the Virginia constitution in 1971. He's the only one left of that group. He was 35 years old when he helped write it, and he's in his early 80s now, and he had this to say.</s>A E DICK HOWARD: The constitution actually says that you have impeachment if there has been malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty or other high crime or misdemeanor.</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: So Delegate Hope, the representative who plans to introduce the articles of impeachment, he says sexual assault obviously is clearly, you know, a high crime. But Howard's interpretation of the constitution is that the high crime or misdemeanor piece has to have taken place while the official was in office, right? To qualify for impeachment, the crime has to be somehow tied to the elected official's position of power.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And of course, these accusations are more than a decade old, well before he became lieutenant governor. So can he continue doing the job - which is a real job, lieutenant governor? I mean, he has to be in public today. Can he continue doing that?</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: Yeah. And there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't. Sources close to him say that he does plan to gavel in today, and it will be business as usual.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Gavel in because he runs the Senate, when you're the lieutenant governor of Virginia.</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: That's right. He runs the Senate, and he is next in line should the office of the governor go vacant.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Whittney, thanks so much.</s>WHITTNEY EVANS, BYLINE: Thank you.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's Whittney Evans of WCVE.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: All right. The confrontation in Venezuela now moves to that country's border.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Yeah, the border between Venezuela and Colombia.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).</s>UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Speaking Spanish).</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).</s>UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Speaking Spanish).</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What you're hearing now is the sound of Venezuelan doctors. Yesterday, they were near this bridge that connects Colombia and Venezuela. And they are demanding that the Venezuelan military stop the blockade that is now keeping U.S. humanitarian aid from getting into the country. And of course, the backdrop to all this is the political crisis in Venezuela between the president, Nicolas Maduro, and the U.S.-backed opposition leader, Juan Guaido.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Which the U.S. has now - who the U.S. has now recognized as the president. John Otis is covering this story from the Colombia-Venezuela border. Hi there, John.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: What is the purpose of the United States in sending this aid?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Well, you know, on paper, the reason is because there is a big humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. They're sending up, you know, rice and beans and cooking oil and all kinds of, you know, emergency medical kits and baby formula. You know, they want to try to get that aid into Venezuela to start to try to help alleviate all the suffering. But there's also a lot of politics involved.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: One of the reasons for amassing all this aid, you know, right on the border is to try to tempt the Venezuelan military forces or shame the Venezuelan military forces who are propping up Maduro. They want the top officers to turn against his government, to allow this aid to start flowing into the country to alleviate the suffering. And you know, that would be one way to bring about regime change, which is what the Trump administration and the opposition is really pushing.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh - because the United States has effectively said, this is humanitarian aid for the Venezuelan people in the name of the government we recognize, the government of Juan Guaido.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Yes, that's exactly right. They're trying to give a boost to Guaido. Guaido really doesn't control anything in Venezuela. But they want this humanitarian aid to be kind of a symbol of the good things that Guaido would bring to Venezuela if he is actually allowed to rule and if Maduro goes into exile.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: We'll note, John, that you're in a border city there. I imagine you've been down to see the border crossing. What, as far as you can tell from the Colombian side, is the attitude of the Venezuelan military up to now?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: You know, up to now, Steve, I mean, there've been, you know, just a few defections. And also, the top military attache in Washington has turned against Maduro. But overall, the Venezuelan military is standing firm. They're supporting Maduro. And so the problem here is that - because of that, you know, Maduro's still in power, he still controls the country. And there's really kind of no plan B for getting this aid across the border into Venezuela.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. Thanks for the update, John. Really appreciate it.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: No problem.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That is reporter John Otis speaking to us from the Colombia-Venezuela border.

Rachel Martin talks to Anne Marie Miller, who was sexually abused by a pastor at her Southern Baptist church. Recent reports show decades of sexual abuse by church leaders.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The Southern Baptist Convention is facing calls for criminal investigations into sexual abuse within the denomination. This, after two Texas newspapers published reports showing that over the last two decades Baptist leaders, employees, volunteers, sexually abused more than 700 people, many of them children. Anne Marie Miller is one of the survivors. She was 16 years old when her family left a small town in Texas and moved to Dallas. She was searching for connections, and she met a local youth pastor who was in his mid-20s.</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: It started as just a casual friendship, but it did get more physical and sexual as we continued to meet.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: After it ended, Miller thought of it as a relationship gone wrong, until years later, when a friend told Miller about her own experience of sexual assault by a Baptist youth pastor.</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: She said it so perfectly. She said, I wasn't - it wasn't consensual. I was compliant. So at the age of 16, even legally, I was not able to give consent.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: In 2007, Miller reported her assault to Baptist Church officials. They determined that it did happen, but they never fired her abuser, who then found another position within the church. Last year, Miller, who is now 38 years old, reported him to the police. In December, he was indicted for sexual assault of a child. I asked Anne Marie Miller what went through her mind when she read the investigations in the newspaper.</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: I think it's wonderful. And I know a lot of people are shocked with the amount of victims and amount of predators there were. But I know - I know for a fact that there are so many more. The SBC has failed in a huge way to be proactive in stopping abuse that they know about. Because they have this - I call it the idol of autonomy. Each church is local, and each church is, you know, responsible for its own actions.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right. It's not like the Catholic Church, where there's a big hierarchy and each church is beholden to a larger church structure and, ultimately, the pope. This is a decentralized kind of system.</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: It's decentralized, but that's just an excuse. Because if you know that people are getting abused, and you know that you have pastors and leaders doing it and yet you don't do anything about it, you are not fulfilling the mission of protecting the most vulnerable, which is what Jesus was all about.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention - the president, J.D. Greear, also Dr. Russell Moore - say, clearly, this is evil, it is something that needs to be wiped out. They also say - Dr. Russell Moore did on our program - that some tangible changes need to occur. I want to play a clip of him from our interview.</s>J D GREEAR: There are a number of steps. One of those has to do with training churches to know how to respond when there is a case or a suspicion of a case. And then there has to be a way to connect churches to one another to know when there has been an incident or an allegation of abuse happening at another church, to prevent someone from simply moving from one church to the other under cover of darkness.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What do you make of that?</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: I hope that it happens. I think those are very realistic first steps. I know Dr. Moore personally, and he and Mr. Greear have been supportive of me personally during this time, and I have good faith in them. I don't know if it's going to happen because people have been suggesting those very things to them over the last decade or more, and they haven't been implemented. They're missing a very key component, I think. It's great and it's essential to protect future people from being harmed and protect predators from moving from church to church. But what are you going to do about the survivors now?</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: I can tell you that, myself included, it is going to be a cold day in hell when I step back into a Baptist church. Like, you're not helping heal the damaged. And so there definitely needs to be something for victims. We need counseling. We need resources. Our families have been traumatized by this. And just by keeping that within the church, you're going to miss a majority of the people that have been hurt by the church because most of us that have been hurt by the church are no longer in the church.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: You say you are no longer a member of a Southern Baptist congregation. But have you been able to more broadly rebuild your faith, your Christian faith?</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: That's a touchy subject for me. I haven't. I've gone through phases where I think I have. But then this always comes back around, and I'm just not sure. Sorry. I don't mean to get emotional. But I know there's a God, and I know that there's Jesus. I believe in Jesus. But it breaks my heart to know that there are men and women who have destroyed other men and women and children under the name of Jesus, and in God's name and in God's house. And so I don't know if I can see that church is a safe place again, I really don't.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Anne Marie Miller, thank you so much for talking with us and sharing your story.</s>ANNE MARIE MILLER: Thank you so much for listening.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Anne Marie Miller was sexually abused by a Baptist youth pastor in the 1990s. She is now a writer in Texas.

Vietnam's economy grew faster than any mature country last year, partly because of the trade war. Manufacturers are leaving empty factories in China and are fleeing to cities like Hai Phong.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Some economists say there is no winner in a trade war. They've said that especially during President Trump's trade war with China. Turns out, there is at least one winner, though. Vietnam is gaining business. It's receiving what you might call trade war refugees who are taking their business out of the war zone. NPR's Rob Schmitz went there.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: On the new expressway connecting Hanoi to the ocean, trucks loaded with toys, televisions and telephones have brought traffic to a standstill, their drivers wearily gazing out under rows of cranes building more factories. The only one smiling is Dan Krassenstein, a supply chain manager who's followed one economic boom after another, from Taiwan to China, and now to Vietnam.</s>DAN KRASSENSTEIN: Everything I'm seeing now in South Asia and Southeast Asia, it's like "Groundhog Day." It's like 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago. It just keeps repeating itself.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: But this time, a trade war is accelerating the global supply chain shift. President Trump's tariffs on China were part of an effort to bring jobs back to America, but those jobs are heading to countries like Vietnam, instead.</s>DAN KRASSENSTEIN: So today, are you selling any bags to the United States?</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Krassenstein's company, Procon Pacific, sells heavy-duty plastic bags for transporting goods like sugar, flour and fertilizer on container ships. Today Dan's visiting a company named Anphat. He's going to check out their factory to see if he wants to source his bags here. Sales director Jessica Hien says they're eager to work with him.</s>JESSICA HIEN: And we do welcome any comments about the factory or anything at the production...</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Did you hear that - we welcome comments? Dan heard that.</s>DAN KRASSENSTEIN: I always walk along the walls because that's where dirt gathers, rodents, insects, et cetera.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: On his factory tour, he's checking for cleanliness. These are food-grade bags, and the factory floor needs to be spotless to prevent contamination.</s>DAN KRASSENSTEIN: Clearly, you can see there's some spider web. So that's an area where something from the outside is coming in.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: It's been tough moving out of China. Suppliers there keep a tidy ship, and a typical worker makes 50 bags a day. Vietnamese workers are half as productive, but they make less than half the wage of a Chinese worker. Krassenstein estimates a savings between 10 percent and 20 percent by making his bags here. A drawback, though, is cleanliness.</s>DAN KRASSENSTEIN: And see right here? This trash can, I found some evidence of candy wrappers. This is also a food-grade violation, with candy wrapper.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: There's a sign at the entrance saying no food or beverages. But then Dan finds a vending machine on the factory floor. There's clearly room for improvement.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: And Vietnam is on a path to do just that. This is the soundtrack to the port city of Haiphong, population 2 million. In the past few years, Haiphong has built an expressway to the capital, Hanoi, one to China, an airport and a deep-water port. Cranes building five-star hotels fill the sky. Last year, its economy grew by 17 percent, more than any other city in Vietnam. If there's a clear winner of the U.S.-China trade war, its Haiphong. Hans Kerstens works for Deep C, a Belgian company developing the city's port. He says, the companies that are leaving China, this is where the rebuilding.</s>HANS KERSTENS: Most of the time, we see a decision time between one and two years. Last year, a lot of the companies that we signed, the decision time was much shorter. We had one company coming in in the evening, signing-in in the morning. It was a Chinese company. We had never seen that before.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: And it's not only the trade war drying supply chains from China. The electricity price in Vietnam is half that of China's, and if companies relocate to Haiphong, they pay a fraction of the taxes. Government incentives mean the average tax over a company's first two decades is around 4 percent. The port city's location is also important, says Deeps C's general director Bruno Jaspaert.</s>BRUNO JASPAERT: I think Haiphong is strategically and geopolitically very well-located. The South China Sea is heavily contested, and the border line where you don't have issues is about here.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: That wasn't always the case. Haiphong's port, which empties into the Gulf of Tonkin, was heavily bombed in the Vietnam War. Jaspaert says when they were building the deep-water port, they had to blow up portions of the seabed to detonate unexploded bombs buried in the sand.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: The flood of expats into Haiphong can be best seen and heard at the city's only international school. Principal John Mudd, a native of Montana, went from managing 50 students to 140 in a single year. And now the new school he opened in the fall to accommodate all these new students will have to expand.</s>JOHN MUDD: We just moved in here five months ago, and we are already doubling the size. So if you walk around our facilities, we built the playground, we built the soccer fits. We moved it within six months so we can build the new next building.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: And for any place growing this quickly, there are growing pains.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Outside Haiphong, back in Anphat's plastic bag factory, Dan Krassenstein is wrapping up his inspection when he realizes he needs to go back to the factory floor to check something. It's break time. Lights are off and a manager turns them back on so that Dan can see. As he scans the lit factory floor, the finished bags start moving. Workers are inside them sleeping. This is a big no-no.</s>DAN KRASSENSTEIN: Look around here. People are sleeping inside finished bag. This is a problem. You need to have area where they can rest, but the human body should never touch the finished bag. I see people over there with hair exposed, sleeping inside the bag. It's contamination. So this is a lot of training.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: And Anphat's sales director Jessica Hien says they're ready to learn.</s>JESSICA HIEN: It is also very helpful that he saw the problem. Even we know that, like, for the worker attitude and everything. But somebody from outside come in and show here, this one is not OK, this one is OK.</s>ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: They'll have to learn fast. By the end of 2019, Anphat will have a new factory, and it plans to more than triple its workforce from 300 to 1,400 people. That's a lot of training. But in a place that's growing as fast as Vietnam, Hien says it will be done. Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Haiphong, Vietnam.

Attorneys for Autumn Lampkins says the Delaware mom wanted time to pump breast milk, but a KFC restaurant limited her breaks and eventually demoted her. She's been awarded $1.5 million.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Autumn Lampkins was like many new moms. Months after giving birth in 2014, she had to work. She got a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Delaware that required a 10-hour shift. Lampkins needed to pump breast milk, but her employer limited her breaks and eventually demoted her. Now she has a potential college fund for the kid because she sued and won $1.5 million. That could buy a quarter-million two-piece chicken meals. It's MORNING EDITION.

President Trump is not happy with a budget deal but thinks a government shutdown is unlikely. A drug lord is convicted on all charges. Migrant children are sent to a Florida shelter — we get a tour.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has never been one to hold back when he doesn't like something.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Am I happy at first glance? I've just got to see it. The answer is, no, I'm not. I'm not happy.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: That was the president speaking there to reporters just as details were getting out about a bipartisan border security deal. This legislation includes some spending for border fencing, but it falls billions of dollars short of the money that President Trump had demanded for a border wall. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging the president to support this bill.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: When last we spoke of the border deal, the public had not yet seen the bill. So what does this agreement really do for border security? Let's ask NPR's Scott Horsley, who's on the line. Scott, good morning.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Let's begin with one thing we do know for sure. Nita Lowey, one of the negotiators, affirmed it last night on All Things Considered.</s>NITA LOWEY: Frankly, it denies the president billions of dollars in funding for the concrete wall that he demanded.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. The billions are missing. So if the bill doesn't have that, Scott Horsley, is there anything for the president to hold onto and claim that his side won?</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Well, there are a few bones for the president, to be sure. We still haven't seen the actual bill, so we will get more information as this day goes on. But we do know, as you mentioned, it includes only about a quarter of the wall funding that the president had demanded, only enough to build about 55 miles of advanced fencing. It also does not include the increased funding for detention bed that the president had sought to house people who are awaiting deportation. In fact, the authorized number of beds in this agreement is down from the number that Homeland Security is housing right now.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: However, we don't believe it includes the sharp reduction in beds for people who are arrested in the interior of the United States that some on the Democratic side had been seeking. So I guess you could call that a win for the president. And also, there is some additional money for enhanced border security that doesn't involve a wall.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Well, let's get to the practical effect here on the border, setting aside the politics for the moment. Is it becoming clear how this measure, this package of measures, would make the border more secure?</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Well, certainly a lot of this discussion has been largely symbolic. Whether we're talking about 55 miles of wall or 200-plus miles that the president had been seeking, it's all a fraction of the 2,000-mile border. This does include additional money to beef up the official ports of entry. And it's important remember, Steve, that there is a huge amount of legitimate cross-border traffic that sometimes gets lost as we talk about illicit traffic. That's enormously important in places like El Paso, like McAllen, like San Diego. There is also, however, non-human traffic. And a lot of the fencing that is in this bill is in the Rio Grande Valley, an environmentally sensitive area, and that could be affected adversely by the wall that is included.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. All right, Scott, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: You're very welcome.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's Scott Horsley.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Many of the stories in the news today touch on U.S. relations with Latin America. That is certainly true of the American jury that convicted the Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Yeah. That verdict was handed down in a federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Tuesday. U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue spoke outside the courthouse after the verdict was read.</s>RICHARD DONOGHUE: This conviction, we expect, will bring a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. It is a sentence from which there is no escape and no return.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The jury's decision came after weeks of gripping, at times even disturbing, testimony. A number of former cartel members actually took the stand and then detailed the brutality and bloodshed that was at the core of El Chapo's cartel, a cartel which was responsible for a lot of the flow of narcotics into the U.S. for decades. So the question now, how is this conviction being viewed back in Mexico?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Well, NPR's Carrie Kahn is going to tell us because she is in Mexico City. Hi, Carrie.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Hi, good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Is this a big subject of conversation where you are?</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Well, it's been covered in the press here - definitely isn't dominating the news, but you know, some of the trial's more salacious revelations got some good media play. Remember the day in the trial when this convicted Colombian trafficker testified for the prosecution that Guzman had paid the former president a $100-million bribe? Yeah, that barely got coverage here. I think part of it was that Mexicans were in the midst of a crippling gas crisis. But also I think there's a lot of corruption fatigue since, you know, these past years have been plagued by revelation after revelation of high-level corruption and conflict-of-interest scandals by the previous administration.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: But yesterday, we went out after the verdict, and we did get reaction from Mexicans here in the capital. And by far, most were pleased with Guzman's conviction. One high school student said, you know, maybe in some parts of the country, Guzman is still seen as - romanticized for his outlaw persona, but for him, he was a brutal criminal who caused this country so much pain. And this one 30-year-old computer salesman really summed up what a lot of different people said, is that how Mexico could and should have been the one to try Guzman. And they just felt bad that it's unfortunate that a foreign government had to bring this man to justice once and for all.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Carrie, I'm curious. When you talk about the relatively muted coverage in the media, I have heard over the years, perhaps you have as well, of Mexican journalists who are threatened, who are killed, editors who are told not to put certain things in the paper. Is this something that, if you're in the Mexican media, you have to be a little bit careful about what you say, even though obviously Guzman is in federal custody now?</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Definitely. Definitely. There is a lot of self-censorship here by the press and - but there are also a lot of courageous and brave journalists that try and cover this drug war and the cartels as best as they can. But it is - you know, Mexico has one of the highest rates of journalists being murdered in the world.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Do you have a sense as to whether Guzman's conviction will significantly affect the actual flow of drugs into, through, out of Mexico into the United States?</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Well, just looking at Guzman's cartel specifically, the Sinaloa cartel, it hasn't lost much strength since his arrest in 2016 or his extradition in 2017. It's still one of the largest in the world, and that's according to the U.S. and the DEA's - the Drug Enforcement Administration's - last year, their drug threat assessment. They said in it that the cartel maintains the most expansive international footprint of any Mexican drug organization still.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Wow. OK, Carrie, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's Carrie Kahn in Mexico City.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. Thousands of migrant children continue to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border every month without their parents.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right. And then many of these kids are then transferred to an emergency intake shelter in South Florida. It's called Homestead, and it's been the focus of a lot of controversy. It is the largest shelter for migrant children in the U.S., and it's the only one run by a for-profit corporation, and there's no oversight from state regulators.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR's John Burnett toured the shelter. He's with us this morning. Hi, John.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So what did you see when you got in there?</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Well, really it's - you know, the tour guide tried to make it seem like it was a summer camp to us. This was actually my third tour of a large government child shelter, and there was certain similarities among all of them. They show you the soccer fields and the basketball courts and classrooms and the Xbox games and the cafeteria where they get three hot meals and two snacks a day. And they tell us about the holiday parties and the talent shows. And then you see the kids, these lines of 12 Central American teenagers at a time, they're all walking very orderly, single file, escorted by a youth worker. They smile and say hola. But the thing is, you never really get to talk to the children or record anything.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So that leaves you going for other sources of information, as well you should. Are there people who have spoken with the children that can give you information?</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Right. And this was really interesting. I had the good fortune to get a fuller picture of the lives of these migrant kids in the Homestead shelter. I sat down with a group of attorneys who'd been granted access to the children by a federal judge. They oversee the welfare of migrant kids in U.S. custody. And I asked them, OK, so this is what reporters see on our sort of stage-managed tours. What do you, the lawyers, see? This is Leecia Welch. She's director of legal advocacy at the National Center for Youth Law.</s>LEECIA WELCH: We see a very different picture. We see extremely traumatized children, some of whom sit across from us and can't stop crying over what they're experiencing.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: So Welch described what she said was well-meaning policies gone horribly awry. She told me about adolescents who've been traumatized in their home country and then by the grueling journey north, and now they're forbidden to touch each other - even if they're siblings, even if they've made close friends to the shelter and one gets transferred, and they can't hug that person goodbye. The shelter says the no-touch rules are there to protect the children.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Why is it significant to note that this is a for-profit detention facility, or it's being run in any case by a for-profit company?</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: So, you know, I've reported about private companies that run immigrant detention facilities for ICE a lot over the years, but I had no idea that private industry was moving into child shelters. There's a Florida company called Comprehensive Health Services that runs Homestead, which now has 1,600 kids. The government pays CHS about $1.2 million a day to care for these kids. The company says that the children, that their safety and welfare is their top priority, and they follow all federal regulations to the letter. But there's definitely good money to be made here. I also found out that, just in the last two weeks, this company had taken in over three - rather, this company has taken over three additional shelters in south Texas, for a total of 500 additional migrant youngsters.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So when you call up this company, and you say, you know, I can see you're making a profit here, and I've also spoken with lawyers for children you're holding, and they say they're traumatized, what's the company say to that?</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Well, they'll say, and the government will tell you, that their mission is to get the custody of these kids out of the Border Patrol, in these cage-like holding cells that have been so harshly criticized, and actually get them into places like Homestead, which are - you know, they're not summer camps, but they're a major improvement over the austere border cells. And of course, it's not the environment of a loving family, but they have case managers at all the shelters who work to find sponsors that the kids can go live with. And immigrant advocates say that the kids still are staying too long at these shelters - 67 days.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Sixty-seven days on average.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: On average, right.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: John, thanks for your reporting, really appreciate it.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: You bet, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's John Burnett.

Rachel Martin talks to Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention about how church leaders are responding to a report that exposed widespread sexual abuse of church members and children.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: There is a reckoning afoot in the Southern Baptist Convention. It's the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., and it's now in the middle of a sex abuse crisis. This week, the Houston Chronicle published a comprehensive investigation that counts more than 700 victims of abuse by church leaders over the last two decades.</s>ROBERT DOWNEN: There was a huge diversity, both in the abuse type, the age of victims. But virtually all of the victims were children.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: That's Robert Downen, one of the reporters on that investigation. While there have been high-profile and individual sex abuse allegations against Southern Baptist leaders in the past, the Houston Chronicle report lays out just how widespread the abuse has been.</s>ROBERT DOWNEN: What knowledge exactly leaders had, I don't know. But I think that it's pretty fair to say that this stuff was out there. And there was a group of vocal people who were basically yelling as loud as they could that this was a crisis.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: To find out how church leaders are responding to the results of this investigation, I spoke with Russell Moore. He heads the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.</s>RUSSELL MOORE: It's shocking and scandalous, and it's a real crisis.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So how could this kind of abuse go on for so many years in so many different congregations?</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Well, there are a number of reasons and none of them good - and none of them excusable. One of the things that's happened is that a church, which is supposed to be and should be the safest place in the world for vulnerable people, has often been a place where predators believe that they can hide. And unfortunately, too many churches have either had the understanding that these sorts of things couldn't happen to them because they're churches and haven't been vigilant. And churches that have taken a wrongheaded and unbiblical view of grace to believe that somehow that means an excusing of predatory behavior or of not seeing the role of the civil authorities in reporting right away. There are so many horrific reasons behind this happening.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So you're suggesting that internally, each church - which has a lot of autonomy - even if they were aware of the allegations, they may have put religious doctrine and religious notions of forgiveness over accountability.</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Well, I think in many cases, there was an understanding of forgiveness and grace and reconciliation that doesn't match up with what the Bible teaches. Jesus never, in any place, excuses the harming of vulnerable people and children and others. And so this is a human crisis, and it's also a theological crisis.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The Houston Chronicle, as part of the report, says church officials did know, were encouraged to make reforms and were not interested in doing so. Do you know why?</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Often, church autonomy has been used as an excuse for a lack of accountability. Our polity does make this harder because each church is independent, and a church doesn't answer to a bishop or anyone above us. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things that can and should and must be done. And so that means that the hard work has to be done to see how that can happen, not to use church autonomy as an excuse.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So what are some practical steps that churches and the broader Southern Baptist Convention can take in this moment? It's one thing to say, this is a sin; this is an outrage. How do you make sure it doesn't happen again?</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Well, there are a number of steps. One of those has to do with training churches to know how to respond when there is a case or a suspicion of a case. That has to do with also training ministers at the very front end of their ministries, and we're working with seminaries and universities to do that. And then there has to be a way to connect churches to one another to know when there has been an incident or an allegation of abuse happening at another church to prevent someone from simply moving from one church to the other under cover of darkness.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The Houston Chronicle says in its report that at least one accused sex abuse offender remains to this day in his church position. Do you think that should be the case?</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Absolutely not. I think that in every case, someone who is a sex offender should not only be removed from any ministry leadership and disciplined by a local congregation but should also be handed over to the civil authorities.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Does that mean you will follow up on the Houston Chronicle's reporting and try to pass that message down to the local church?</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Yes. If I have any inkling as to who this is, I'll call the congregation directly.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Do you see parallels to what's happening within the Southern Baptist Convention and the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church?</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Yes, I do because both are a crisis of credibility. Someone should know that when they step into a church, that they're in a place that is going to be safe and a place that is going to be advocating the most strongly for those who are the most vulnerable. And so there very much is a parallel there. What I hope is that what happens out of that is genuine reform that will ensure that the next generation of people don't have to face these questions at all.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Dr. Moore, thank you for your time.</s>RUSSELL MOORE: Thanks for having me.

Happy Galentines Day! It's the holiday invented by Amy Poehler's character on TV's Parks and Recreation. Many people celebrate Galentines in real life. On Feb. 13, celebrate with your girlfriends.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Good morning, I'm Rachel Martin. Happy Galentine's Day - nope, not Valentine's, Galentine's. It's the holiday invented by Amy Poehler's character on the show "Parks And Rec." And now many people celebrate Galentine's in real life. On February 13, you're supposed to grab brunch with your girlfriends. Here's how Leslie Knope put it.</s>AMY POEHLER: (As Leslie Knope) Ladies celebrating ladies - it's like Lilith Fair, minus the angst, plus frittatas.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So raise a glass to the gals in your life who keep you laughing and loving.

You might know actor Ken Jeong from the movie The Hangover. NPR's David Greene talks to him about his new Netflix special, and how he went from being a medical doctor to a comedian and actor.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK. Remember that one scene in "The Hangover?" A man jumps out of the trunk of a car completely naked, and he attacks Bradley Cooper with a crowbar.</s>ZACH GALIFIANAKIS: (As Alan) Oh. Stop.</s>BRADLEY COOPER: (As Phil) Who was that guy? He was so mean.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: That guy is Ken Jeong, real-life medical doctor turned actor. He had his own show, "Dr. Ken." He was in "Crazy Rich Asians." Now he's gone back to his comic roots doing standup. And that "Hangover" movie offers some priceless material.</s>KEN JEONG: By the way, it was my idea to get naked in "The Hangover." Did you guys know that? Yep, that's right. My wife said it'll be the feel-good movie of the summer because every guy will go home feeling good about themselves.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Ken Jeong's new Netflix comedy special comes out tomorrow. It was filmed at the Ice House in Pasadena, Calif., where he got his start. And it's fitting that it's being released on Valentine's Day because his routine is dedicated to his wife, Tran Ho, who is there laughing in the audience. Actually, the name of Ken's comedy special was her idea.</s>KEN JEONG: That's my wife's idea, to name it "You Complete Me, Ho." That was not me (laughter).</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: We should say that's her last name...</s>KEN JEONG: Her last name.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: ...Just so people realize.</s>KEN JEONG: Yeah.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. The two actually met at a happy hour for doctors.</s>KEN JEONG: It was almost like the lonely hearts club, you know...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter) What's a...</s>KEN JEONG: ...At a Dave & Buster's (laughter).</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What is it like at a happy hour for doctors? (Laughter) What's the conversation?</s>KEN JEONG: Doctor stuff and just kind of like how it's just so hard being single and in LA but also being a doctor. It's a - we're all just kind of lamenting. And then we're like, oh, wow. We have our misery in common.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter).</s>KEN JEONG: (Laughter) So want to go out?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Within months, they were engaged. And just as Ken was leaving medicine for Hollywood, well, life happened.</s>KEN JEONG: It all happened all at once, good and bad. I had quit my day job. I did feel free, like, OK, I can really kind of pursue acting full time and with the support of my wife. And then my wife gets pregnant with twins, and we have, you know, two beautiful girls, Alexa and Zooey. And then my wife, she - yeah - found a lump while she was breastfeeding. It came back stage-three triple-negative breast cancer. And...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Which is very serious.</s>KEN JEONG: Very serious, a very aggressive variant of breast cancer. And, you know, everything in our tracks stopped. And, you know, I credit my wife with being so strong. And I remember right before she started her chemo. And she just said, I would not - you know, we have two beautiful girls. I wouldn't trade it for the world. The way - I still remember how she just had a calmness about her that was a calm strength that I don't see in a lot of people.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: She's undergoing chemo when you get offered maybe the biggest role of your careers, Leslie Chow in "The Hangover." Is that...</s>KEN JEONG: Yep. Yep.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What are you both talking about when...?</s>KEN JEONG: It was my wife and even my mother-in-law telling me to take the role, like, because you're suffering from caregiver burnout. You're - because our twins are 1 year old at the time, and I'm taking - lighting the candle on both ends. And I was doing everything I could, you know? Or - with the kids or driving Tran to chemo or making sure she was OK after she would get weak from the chemo. So...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: They wanted you to have an outlet.</s>KEN JEONG: They wanted me to have an outlet. Tran did say, it was like this will - this is a good outlet.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: We should say it's so great that she is a survivor and is...</s>KEN JEONG: Yes, and - yes, and...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: ...Doing so well and was at your show. And, I mean...</s>KEN JEONG: Of note, she's cancer free...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah.</s>KEN JEONG: ...For, you know, over 10 years now. And to be cancer free is - of this kind of cancer, it is a medical miracle. It is a - it's a miracle.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So why'd you decide to go back to standup?</s>KEN JEONG: I ask myself a lot, you know, why did I do it because I hadn't done standup in 10 years. I was nervous as hell. It was literally a year ago that I went back, first time ever, at the Laugh Factory.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What made you nervous? Like, is it the audience aspect of it, which is different from being on the set of a movie? Or what - what's nerve-racking?</s>KEN JEONG: I wasn't worried so much about the audience. I just wondered if I had anything to say. And it takes - really, if you get really perfectionistic about, which I am, it can take 10 years to really write 10 good minutes. Like, the jokes you see on my Netflix special, like, I went to every casino and theater. And I went up on open mikes, literal...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Testing them out, and...?</s>KEN JEONG: Yeah. I mean, I was known. When I would headline at - let's say at the Ice House, they have a secondary stage where they just have open mikes at the same time for just comics starting out. So while my opening acts were going up, I would actually be trying out brand-new jokes at the...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: You'd slip into the other room with the...</s>KEN JEONG: Yeah. Yeah, I did.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: ...Up-and-coming comics to...</s>KEN JEONG: Yeah. You have to just keep whittling down these jokes.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Wow.</s>KEN JEONG: And the thing that makes standup brutally hard is not just about the writing. It's not just about the performing. It's a combination of everything.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: You're, like, an incredibly polite guy.</s>KEN JEONG: (Laughter).</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I mean, your standup routine, that - it's raunchy.</s>KEN JEONG: Yeah.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I mean, there's profanity.</s>KEN JEONG: Thank you. Thank you.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: You're using nasty words for your wife, for your daughters.</s>KEN JEONG: Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: No, I'm just curious. Like, what - is that part of the act? Or is that required, or you feel like it's necessary to get a vibe for the room? Or what role does that play?</s>KEN JEONG: Yeah. I think in standup comedy, it - there's a bit of kind of - there's a bit of pro wrestling to it where...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter).</s>KEN JEONG: ...Like, if you're the Nature Boy, Ric Flair, you're kind of being - you know, wheeling, dealing, styling, profiling guy.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter).</s>KEN JEONG: But then, when the camera's on, he just turns that up to 10. So I've never consciously thought about this. But it's more of like, OK, when I'm on stage, I just kind of know the voice, my standup voice. And I think that it's important to know what your voice is on stage.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Did your wife think you went over the top or crossed the line at any point?</s>KEN JEONG: No. (Laughter) she's really good about - that's why I married her.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter).</s>KEN JEONG: I think that's (laughter) what it's - you know, Tran, the reason why we're married is because Tran and I have an exact same sensibility of what we love in comedy.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: That's actor and comedian Ken Jeong. You can see his new standup special tomorrow on Netflix. Oh, and I do have to share this. Before Ken left our studio, he told me about the first time he performed in front of a crowd. It was at a high school talent show.</s>KEN JEONG: I sang this Lionel Richie song, "Three Times A Lady."</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I mean, if you felt like closing out our conversation with that, I would not complain at all.</s>KEN JEONG: Yeah. (Singing) Yes, you're once, twice, three times a David. I love you.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: My life will never be the same.</s>KEN JEONG: Shut up.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: My life will never be the same.</s>KEN JEONG: Shut up. I'm not done.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Oh, sorry. Please.</s>KEN JEONG: (Singing) You. Now you may speak.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter) Thank you. That means everything.</s>KEN JEONG: (Laughter).</s>LIONEL RICHIE: (Singing) You're once, twice, three times...

Democrats are showing their colors in their first full week controlling the House. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker goes before the House Judiciary Committee today.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker goes before the House Judiciary Committee today. Whether he will answer their more sensitive questions about the special counsel's Russia investigation is another matter. House Democrats have threatened to subpoena him if he didn't show up. NPR's Kelsey Snell is here in the studio this morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Hi, Kelsey.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hi there.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So what do we know about the line of questioning that the judiciary committee is going to pose to Whitaker?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Well, we know that they have a lot of questions. And the primary thing that we'll probably hear them ask about is the Russia investigation. But I understand Democrats also want to ask things about immigration policy and the way the administration plans to handle these cases, not defending the Affordable Care Act in federal court.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: But, again, this is going to be a lot about Russia. They want to ask him specifically about the circumstances around President Trump's firing of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and whether that replacement was intended to interfere into the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller. And I would imagine that you will hear that over and over and over again.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: This hearing with Whitaker comes at the end of a week where Democrats started to follow through on campaign promises that they had made to investigate Trump and the Trump administration. One of those promises was to look into the president's tax returns. Is that going to be part of this oversight push?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Yeah, it is. And they started to, actually, begin the process of looking into the taxes in a hearing yesterday. But it's starting out really slow. And we kind of expect that it'll continue at that pace, in part, because there are concerns that going too far too fast could be politically perilous, essentially. Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged a careful approach in a press conference yesterday. And the hearing that they did yesterday was kind of - I don't know - academic.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: They had a lot of think tank people talking about the law around the president's tax returns because it is a pretty serious thing to go after somebody's private tax information and put it out there publicly. The committee overseeing this, the Ways and Means Committee, has that legal authority. But they want to use that judiciously.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: I think, though, that this whole question is part of a broader theme in the House right now, where Democrats are starting to flex their muscles and show what it will really be like to have Democrats in charge of the House and in opposition, in many ways, to this president.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: They also have to manage this balancing act, right? Like, on the one hand, they want to move forward with aggressive investigations into the administration. But they also have other policy priorities, I imagine, they want to push through.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Yeah. They talk about lowering prescription drug prices. And they talk about doing something on infrastructure and doing something on climate change. But, really, it's hard to do that for Democrats because they really only control the House of Representatives. They can't get things passed in the Senate. And they don't control the White House.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: So when it comes down to it, investigations are a way for them to put their stamp on a lot of issues that they care about. They held hearings on guns. We expect them to do more on the environment. They are going to talk about child separation policy at the border. It is their way to interact with the White House and kind of hold the president accountable for policies of the last two years.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So meanwhile - and that's a big meanwhile...</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: (Laughter).</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: There's a group of bipartisan lawmakers who have been tasked with trying to find a solution to the whole border wall debate in order to prevent yet another government shutdown. Can you get us up to speed on where those negotiations are right now?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Yeah, they - that group of - they call themselves conferees. They have been talking for over a week now. And they say that things are going well. One of the top negotiators, Richard Shelby of Alabama, met with President Trump yesterday, came back and said he thought things were going well and that he was feeling positive. But they only have a week. Their deadline is a week from today - February 15. And that doesn't give them a lot of time.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: So I've heard from many people that they think it may - they might need a short extension if they're going to hash out a deal in time to keep the government open. I am told, however, nobody wants a shutdown. And so (laughter) they're doing everything they can to avoid another situation like we saw.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Did anyone really want one the first time, though?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: (Laughter).</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I guess we'll wait and see. NPR's Kelsey Snell, thanks so much.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Thank you.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is accusing the National Enquirer's parent company of extortion. Also, Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog discusses the Court's decision on Louisiana's abortion law.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is at war with the National Enquirer and its parent company, AMI.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. Bezos laid out this explosive allegation in a post on the blog site Medium last night. In it, Bezos says the tabloid's owner, David Pecker, was trying to blackmail him. In the post, he writes, quote, "rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten."</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Now, Bezos says the company was threatening to release intimate photos of him in an effort to stop him from finding out how the National Enquirer had obtained his private photos and text messages documenting an extramarital affair. Bezos also implies here that the reason for the blackmail is that he is the owner of the Washington Post, which has been dogged in its reporting about President Trump.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So much to talk about here. NPR's Uri Berliner is here to help us understand this story. Hi, Uri.</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: Hey, Rachel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So David mentioned there some intimate photos revealing an extramarital affair. Can you tell us more about what exactly the National Enquirer had on Bezos?</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: Yeah. They said they had a series of photographs of Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, the woman that he had been having an affair with, very sexually suggestive, lewd photographs that they were threatening to publish unless Bezos backed off from his investigation into how AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, obtained those photographs. And that's - he really wanted to find out how those personal texts and photos leaked.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right. So in this long Medium post, Bezos just publishes some of the emails that he says are from AMI. What do they say?</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: Yeah. So Bezos, you know, basically says, OK, you've got these photos on me. I've got these emails from you, from officials from AMI. And basically, they're saying that they want Bezos to stop investigating. One of them from an AMI official proposes some terms to end the dispute with Bezos. It says it will agree not to publish any of the texts or photos. But in exchange, Bezos must say that AMI's coverage of his affair was not politically motivated. The other email described some of those suggestive photos that we've been talking about.</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: I reached out to AMI for comment. I've not heard back from them. But Bezos in his post says there is a political motivation here.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I mean, let's just spend a second talking about that. There are all kinds of political threads to this, right? As we noted, like, David Pecker is a good friend of Donald Trump's. And Jeff Bezos is the owner of the Washington Post, a paper that has been pretty critical and aggressive in the reporting over Donald Trump, right?</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: Absolutely. The Post has been very aggressive in its reporting of Trump. Trump has also feuded with Amazon, the company that Jeff Bezos founded. He claims they get all kinds of breaks. They're not paying their fair share of taxes. So this has been an ongoing feud between between President Trump and Bezos, who owns the Post and founded Amazon.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: And remind us about the National Enquirer's connection to the investigations into Donald Trump because David Pecker was granted immunity in the investigation into Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen because Pecker was involved into those illicit payments to Karen McDougal, right?</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: Right. The National Enquirer acknowledged paying hush money to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump. She was paid 150,000 during the 2016 campaign. And so that's really what happened there.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: He also refers to his ownership of the Post as being a complexifier for him, which is an odd word. But, I mean, what more does he say about his role as the owner of the Post?</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: He says, (laughter) yeah, it's a complexifier, difficult, but he has no regrets about owning the Post. And it's - he says it's - when he looks back on his life, owning the Post and supporting its mission is something he'll remain proud of at age 90.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK. NPR's Uri Berliner for us. Thanks, Uri.</s>URI BERLINER, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the state of Louisiana from implementing a restrictive new abortion law before then ruling on its constitutionality.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yes. So this ruling right now puts a temporary stay on the law, which means clinics that perform abortions can keep operating for the time being until the court does rule on the constitutionality.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Supreme Court reporter Amy Howe is with us to talk through the ruling and the dissent because there was some. Amy, thanks for being here.</s>AMY HOWE: Hey, good morning. Thanks for having me.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: First, before we talk about the implications, what exactly would this law do in Louisiana?</s>AMY HOWE: A lot of it depends on exactly how it plays out. And that is part of Justice Brett Kavanaugh's dissent, which we can talk about. But the opponents of the law say that if the law's allowed to go into effect, there'd only be one doctor to provide abortions in the early stages of pregnancy and none at all for women seeking abortions after 17 weeks of pregnancy.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: You mentioned Justice Kavanaugh's dissent. What did he say?</s>AMY HOWE: So he was the only one who wrote to explain why he would have denied the stay that the opponents of the law were seeking. He would have allowed the law to go into effect. There were four justices altogether - Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch in addition to Kavanaugh all said they would deny the stay and allow the law to go into effect.</s>AMY HOWE: But what Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court's newest justice, wrote is that a central legal question in the case is whether this requirement that doctors who perform abortions in Louisiana have to have admitting privileges will impose an undue burden, which is the legal standard for whether a law violates the Constitution, on a woman's right to have an abortion depends on a factual question, whether the doctors in this case can actually get admitting privileges.</s>AMY HOWE: And that's disputed. The District Court in this case, the trial court, said that they wouldn't be able to, and the Court of Appeals said that they would be able to. And so what Justice Kavanaugh said is instead of putting the law on hold and speculating about this, let's figure it out during the 45-day transition period because if the doctors can get admitting privileges, there's no undue burden, and the law should be allowed to stand. If they can't, he said, they can come back to court.</s>AMY HOWE: And this would be faster than doing it the way the court's going to do it, which ultimately probably will wind up with a decision sometime in the summer of 2020.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Interesting.</s>AMY HOWE: Yeah.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Let me ask you about how it broke, though - 5 to 4. John Roberts, the chief justice, sided with the liberals. Was that surprising?</s>AMY HOWE: It was, yes. To be sure, the court was not writing on a blank slate because in 2016, the Supreme Court had struck down a similar law from Texas. But in that case, it was Justice Anthony Kennedy who joined the court's former liberal justices, and the chief justice, John Roberts, was actually in dissent. We don't know what his reasoning was to vote this - to vote with the four more liberal justices last night. But we do know that he's an institutionalist. So even if he might believe that the law is constitutional in a vacuum, perhaps this Texas case from three years ago says otherwise.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Amy Howe reports on the Supreme Court for the SCOTUSblog. Amy, thanks for being here this morning. We appreciate it.</s>AMY HOWE: Thanks for inviting me.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The will-he-or-won't-he debate is over. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker goes before the House Judiciary Committee today.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. House Democrats have been eager to press Whitaker on his interactions with President Trump and his oversight of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, even threatening to subpoena him if he didn't show up. Whether he'll answer their more sensitive questions about the investigation is, of course, another matter, but we'll find out. House Democrats are feeling emboldened with their new majority. This is House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings on Wednesday at a hearing on strengthening ethics rules for the executive branch.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: The American people gave this Congress and this committee a mandate to restore our democracy and clean up our government.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: All right. For more on House - on how House Democrats are using their newfound power, we've got NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell in the studio. Good morning, Kelsey.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So first off, let's talk about Matt Whitaker. The acting AG is going to go before the Judiciary Committee today. What are they going to ask him?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Well, first of all, this happened after a week of kind of back-and-forth. Whitaker originally threatened not to show up because Democrats on the committee were essentially threatening to subpoena him. But he agreed to appear last night. And Democrats say they want to ask him specifically about the Russia investigation.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: They are going to ask lots of questions. They're probably going to touch on things like the child separation policy or potentially about immigration and health care. But this will be largely about the Russia investigation, how much people know about it and how much the - inside of the attorney general's office, how much they're talking to the president about that. And it'll be public, so we'll watch that happen.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: This hearing with Whitaker comes at the end of a week where Democrats started to follow through on campaign promises to investigate the president, to investigate his administration. One of those promises - Democrats have pledged to look into Trump's tax returns. Is that going to be part of this oversight push?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: It absolutely is. We just don't know how fast it's going to move. Just the other day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she was - wanting people to be cautious. She wants people to be careful about this because sensitive tax returns are a really serious thing, and releasing them quickly has a lot of potential implications and potential legal implications if the president decides not to comply.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: But, you know, it's important to think about this in the context of broader oversight that Democrats want to do. They are moving forward from the shutdown. And they want to spend their time making sure that they make good on promises to investigate this president, and this week was all about that.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Is - does that jeopardize their other agenda items? Because they're not just about investigating the president, right?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: They say that it doesn't. They want to do other things. They want to make health care more affordable. They want to have conversations about climate change. But really, when you are - Democrats are the - only controlling the House. They don't have power over the Senate or the White House. So it's hard to legislate. Doing these investigations allows them to put their stamp on everything - on guns, on child separation, like we talked about, and even on the environment.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Meanwhile, I can't let you go without asking about the border security talks because there is this panel of lawmakers who are trying to come up with a border security agreement to avert yet another government shutdown. Are they making progress?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: We are told that things are looking good and that they are negotiating in good faith, but a deal is not in hand yet. And I've been told by some people privately that they think that they might need a little bit more time than just next week. So this could get extended if they can't get a deal in the next couple of days.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The deadline's the 15, right?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: The 15.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK. We'll be following it. NPR's Kelsey Snell for us this morning. Thanks, Kelsey.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Thank you.

Blackface has been a constant in American culture going all the way back to the country's founding. It's one of those inconvenient facts of U.S. history: a white supremacist cultural building block.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Virginia's legislative black caucus wants answers about the numerous scandals embroiling that state's leaders. They want an investigation of the sex assault allegation against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax. The caucus also called for more action from Attorney General Mark Herring following his apology for wearing blackface when he was 19. And they reiterated a call for Governor Ralph Northam to resign over his blackface controversy. Herring and Northam have said they were unaware of the harm they were doing at the time. I asked Gene Demby of NPR's Code Switch team about the history of blackface in America and why it has endured.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: It is a very long, complicated history. Blackface predates the Civil War, but it really gained traction as part of the minstrel shows that became wildly popular in the latter part of the 19th century. At one point, it was the most popular form of entertainment in the United States. Usually white performers, but not always, would apply some cork or some dye to their skins to blacken their skin. Maybe they'd apply some bright-red lipstick or wear white gloves to perform as these grotesques of what they imagined these newly emancipated black people to be. And it was meant to dehumanize. Blackface corresponds with the rise of Jim Crow segregation and with spectacle lynchings. And the popularity of blackface, like, continued well into the 20th century. By the 1920s, the vaudeville legend Al Jolson was the country's most popular entertainer.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Most of his act was in blackface. He was the star of the first talky, which he performed in blackface. And the conventions of vaudeville are so steeped in blackface imagery that you get Mickey Mouse in white gloves. Like, Mickey Mouse is...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Mickey Mouse.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Mickey Mouse (laughter).</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Mickey Mouse is an outgrowth of blackface?</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Mickey Mouse - according to some researchers of that period, Mickey Mouse is a minstrel figure. And so that's why you see this sort of convention around cartoon characters in white gloves because that's part of vaudeville. And so much of the DNA of vaudeville is blackface.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK, so this is offensive. I mean, when African-Americans - when anyone who understands the history sees this, you understand that this is offensive. And yet, it happens. And yet, white people are still putting blackface on, I mean, in these recent examples. This was happening as recently as the '80s.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Right. I mean, one of the things we talk about a lot on the Code Switch podcast is the way that the civil rights movement created these taboos around open racism. So in the post-civil rights world, blackface moves away from public spaces and sort of retreats to all-white spaces - spaces where there's not going to be a lot of social sanction for it. So...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Where no one raises an eyebrow. They're just...</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Where there's just not going to be any black people around, right?</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: And just to back up a bit, that's a lot of spaces that white people inhabit. So a study by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2012 found that white people were significantly less likely to have friends of another race than were black or Latino people. In fact, three quarters of white people, the study found, had entirely white social networks. So the median white person's contact with black people is almost one of abstraction. And so these are spaces that are not really hard to cultivate - these super white spaces. And so when we're looking at these stories in the news, we're seeing fraternities at some college parties. These are spaces that are not necessarily codified as white spaces or resistant to people of color, but they're spaces that are functionally so.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right. So that means in these all-white spaces, people - they're basically not held accountable. There's no one there to raise their hand and say, hi, that is super offensive to me.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Right. That's what seems to be happening. And of course there is this continuum, right? Some people are just oblivious. And some people are much more malicious, right? Obviously, we live in a time when someone posts something to social media, there's the slippage between these all-white contexts. And this larger social media space, on Twitter in particular, is much browner and younger than the country at large. And so these very different histories with these imageries are sort of butting up against each other.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So social media makes it easier to hold people accountable for racist behavior.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Yes. It also makes it easier for these images to spread in the world, right? I mean, the picture that seems to have ensnared Ralph Northam was buried in a medical school yearbook. Of course, now someone posts a racist picture to Snapchat or Twitter or Instagram, that can slip out of the sort of safe space into a much more contentious space very quickly. One of the things that is also happening here is that blackface has always had - especially in the post-civil rights world in which it was dangerous, right? That danger is part of the reason why people did it, right? It's part of the reason that people did it in these safe spaces.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Oh, so they knew there was something wrong about it.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Right. It's part of the sort of like - the thrill, I imagine.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The taboo.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: The taboo of it, right? And so this is something that's true about the history of blackface minstrelsy - is that it was this element of mischief. This element of, like, we're doing something naughty is obviously much more insidious than that, but we're doing something naughty that always animated it, right? And so it's probably important for us to think about the ways in which racism can be animated by things that are fun, by things that...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right, Mickey Mouse.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Mickey Mouse, right (laughter)?</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Like, he's playful, and it's entertainment. And people are singing and dancing.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Absolutely. It becomes habituated in that way because it doesn't seem like malice. It doesn't seem like cruelty, right? And so you have something like, you know, the mascot of a sports team. Like, people do the tomahawk chop, and people do these other things that a lot of people from native communities will say are really offensive. And the defense for that is often that, like, this is fun for us; this is a thing that brings people together. But minstrel...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right, we don't mean anything by it; it's not - yeah.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: That's right. It's just in good fun. But that's always been important to the way that people have justified these very mocking racist images.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Gene Demby from NPR's Code Switch team. Thanks so much, Gene.</s>GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Thank you, Rachel.

The Venezuela military is blocking humanitarian aid from getting into the country, where political and economic crisis rage on. The U.S.-backed interim president has vowed to open those aid routes.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The political crisis in Venezuela is also a humanitarian one.</s>UNIDENTIFIED DOCTORS: (Chanting in Spanish).</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: That's the sound of Venezuelan doctors. Yesterday, they were on this bridge connecting Colombia to Venezuela. They are demanding that the Venezuelan military stop the blockade that is preventing U.S. humanitarian aid from getting into the country. The protests come as the power struggle in Venezuela continues between the U.S.-backed opposition leader, Juan Guaido, and President Nicolas Maduro. John Otis joins us on Skype from the border between Colombia and Venezuela. John, thanks for being here.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What can you tell us about the aid, the U.S. aid, that's - that they're trying to get into Venezuela?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Well, you know, the U.S. has sent up a lot of non-perishable food items, rice and lentils and cooking oil. There's baby formula and diapers, emergency medical kits. And it's all being stored right near this big border bridge going across between the two sides.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: But as you mentioned, Maduro's blocking the aid from coming across. He doesn't want to admit that he's overseen the worst humanitarian crisis in the country's history. And, you know, he's also saying that, oh, sending in this aid would sort of be a Trojan horse, a kind of pretext for a U.S. invasion of his country.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But the aid really illustrates the fact that the Venezuelan people themselves are quite desperate in this moment, right?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Oh, yeah, they're very desperate. You know, those doctors we just heard who were protesting on Sunday told me that a lot of the children that they see now suffer from malnutrition. Studies show that most Venezuelans have lost, you know, a sizable chunk of weight due to the food shortages. There's, you know, major medical shortages. One doctor even told me that patients have to bring in their own paper so she can write up medical orders.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: So that means doctor - you know, a lot of surgeries can't be carried out, or people have to leave the country to get medical treatment. And so we've seen three million Venezuelans leave the country, and the U.N.'s expecting 2 million more to flee this year alone.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So the military is blocking this aid from getting in. They're doing so presumably at the behest of Nicolas Maduro. So he's still got the backing of the military, then.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Yeah, that's correct. And, you know, one of the reasons that the U.S. is sending up this aid and just putting it right there on the border is to try to tempt or persuade military officers to turn against Maduro and to support Juan Guaido, who the U.S. claims is the legitimate president. They're hoping that they allow this aid to come in. And, you know, if that happens, that'll be a big boost for Juan Guaido's provisional government. And it could help bring about regime change in Venezuela, which is what the U.S. and the opposition is really pushing for here.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Is there any sign that that is happening, that there are military officers on the border who are having a change of heart?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Well, that's the thing. So far, there is really no sign of that. I mean, it could happen going forward. But right now, that's not happening. And so this aid is just piling up out there on the border. Guaido has called for another round of protests for Tuesday. But so far, the aid's just piling up and not getting in.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Reporter John Otis speaking to us from the border between Colombia and Venezuela. This is where U.S. convoys of humanitarian aid are trying to get into Venezuela, and the military, the Venezuelan military, is blocking access to that aid. John, thanks so much. We appreciate you sharing your reporting with us this morning.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Thanks so much.

For insight on how a black woman can catch a good black man, Farai Chideya talks to comedian and Essence magazine relationship columnist Finesse Mitchell. He answers some of your questions about trying to find a mate. Mitchell's book is titled Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya and this is NEWS & NOTES.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: For the ladies who think it's hard to find a black man who loves black women, Finesse Mitchell says he's just what you're looking for. In fact, the comedian and Essence magazine columnist cares so much, he's written a new book to help a sister out. Yes, he is taken. But his book is called "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much." In it, Finesse advises black women on figuring out their male counterparts. He also gives his tips on mastering the dating game.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Like he says, if you want to know whether or not to buy that pair of skinny jeans, go ahead and ask your girlfriend. But when it comes to men, ask Finesse. So we took him up on his offer and invited Finesse to come by. He's right here. Hey, how are you doing?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): Hey, Farai, how are you?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I am doing great. So, you know, you have all sorts of jokes as a comedian about women and men. But this book has a little tinge of seriousness to it, doesn't it?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): Right. Just some real-life, in-the-trenches type of information that unless you've done it or, you know, had a best friend really go through it and you were a witness to it, then you would just say, oh, that's not true. But everybody who's been - had their heart broken and everybody who's had some great successes, they read the book and if they're smiling, they're laughing. If they're not laughing, they're just chuckling out loud.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What made you want to even break down the situation between men and women?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): I really enjoy it. I'm writing because I've always wanted to write more seriously than just write jokes. With "SNL," you're writing - always writing one particular type of humor. And so when Essence came to me with the opportunity to give women relationship advice, instead of just month after month questions after questions that I thought was so commonsense sometimes, it was so plain, but sometimes, people get a little clouded when it comes to love, I decided to, yeah, let me put everything in a one-stop shop for women.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, you know what, you have this whole thing of the list. What do you mean by the list?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): Everybody knows that in order to have some success in giving anything close to what you want, you got to have an idea what you want. So if you're not actually writing it down, because I know a lot of women who used to write stuff down on paper and then scratch it out three months later when they found out that they don't really want that, to women who just keep an idea of what they want in their heads. I think that it's important to know your type. And if you know your type, you know a good friend from a good love interest.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Yeah, the hilarious sequence in the book where you talk about if men have little flashcards on their forehead, things you can't see but maybe you should.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): You like that?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I love that.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): They are figuring guys out.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Mm-hmm.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): And if everything was on their forehead, the whole game of just, you know, is this guy serious. Is this guy telling me truth? Is this guy genuine? Or am I genuine, do I like, you know what I mean?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Does this guy have 12 kids by 12 women?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): There you go. And I broke them all down, right?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You did. You did. Now, we - let's go back to this question of the list. Tarsha(ph) in St. Louis asks when is a list too long and how detailed should it be. Right now, her list is 47 items long and includes things like he needs to sleep on the left side of the bed and he must love sushi. Has Tarsha taken it too far?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): A little bit. Just a little bit. That whole sushi thing is unacceptable. No…</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): But, yeah, 47 things, that's interesting. At most…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: For the woman who wants it all.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): For the woman who wants it all. But then I also touched on that 80-20 rule where I have a paragraph in there that just says, you know, you cannot expect somebody to be everything you want because nobody's made that way. And you have to be able to compromise and realize some things you can live without. And you shouldn't throw away a good person simply because they don't sleep on the left of the bed. And the most important thing after you put that list of 47 things together, you got to be honest with yourself. That man too good for you.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): You can't keep that man. That man - I know many people - I know dudes that have crossed over to meet that man if he got the hell all of 47 things. So, you know, I tell women to keep it simple. You know, because once you say this is what he has to have, that's it. Every guy that comes close you're still, you know, folding your arms and sucking your teeth like, you know, wasting my time.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We actually had a conversation on our Bloggers Roundtable where someone said that his friends thought it was traitorous for black women to date white men.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): Love has no color, man. Life is short. And if you really just want to fall in love with a good person, a decent person, you know, because there's no sense in finding - waiting all this time and finding a black man and then he beats you every night. You know, when you had this nice white guy, this nice Hispanic guy, who would treat like a queen. I mean, you have to go with somebody ultimately, who wants to be there with you for the long term. You can't necessarily go by color because those options aren't even always available to you.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): I mean, think of this, Farai. The higher you go in the business world, the less blacks you see. But since your routine becomes so constant day in and day out, you start to fall in love with the people you see. And so if all of them - if you're a black woman and all the men are white, eventually, you start dating white men, and vice versa.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That's true for at least some people - not everybody, but…</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): Not everybody. You got to - you know exactly what you want. But if you don't have time to like - because someone may feel like you're on a timetable. Oh, I got to get this done. And so they want to get along with whoever wants to get along with them and go through life with him. But then at the same time, there are women that's just like I know exactly what I want. I want a nice, strong black man who's just going to treat me right. And those guys are out there, too. But then you can't get better in the search because it's taking so long.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Here's another question for you. Courtney(ph) in Los Angeles has been engaged for over two years. She and her fiance have not set a date yet. He says he wants to be financially secure so he can take care of her and her son properly. And he wants to move straight into a house once they're married. She thinks that his ideas are great, but she also feels like he's really putting off the wedding. What do you think?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): Whoa. Who knows?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That's an honest answer.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): You know, I mean, who knows? I mean, there are a lot of men who want all their ducks lined up in a row, and they feel like the commitment is I put a ring on your finger. I'm letting you know, hey, it's you, boo - you're the one I want. I mean, who knows? Because that's a tough one. Because it gets to the point where you start to get nervous and you start thinking, well, maybe, you know, we should have pushed this thing back because we were better of as just dating. We didn't have any problems whatsoever. And then a minute you start planning a wedding, all of a sudden, problems start coming. Oh, man. I'm messing up what I had, you know? But you got to know the situation personally. And I think two years is a long time to be engaged.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So, Finesse, do you have a book for the brothers too or you just going to leave that all in your secret card room talk?</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): No. The next book is called stop lying brother, you know you're not an astronaut.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. You got me, Finesse. Thanks a lot.</s>Mr. FINESSE MITCHELL (Columnist, Essence Magazine; Author, "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much"): Farai, thank you for having me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Finesse Mitchell is a comedian, columnist and author of "Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much." You can find out more about his online work and his offline work at our Web site, nprnewsandnotes.org. He joined us in our NPR West studios.

Kacey Musgraves won the night's top honor, album of the year, for Golden Hour — which also won country album of the year. Childish Gambino won record and song of the year for "This Is America."

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The Grammy Awards ceremony featured two kinds of suspense. One, of course, was suspense to see who would win. And now we know the country singer Kacey Musgraves won album of the year. Childish Gambino became the first hip-hop artist to win record and song of the year. The other kind of suspense was to see who would show up. NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: "This Is America" earned Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, three Grammys in addition to song of the year.</s>JOHN MAYER: Childish Gambino could not be here tonight, but we accept this award in his honor.</s>ALICIA KEYS: Childish.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Singers John Mayer and Alicia Keys accepted the award, but Glover actually declined to attend the ceremony. And one of the artists featured on "This Is America," 21 Savage, couldn't be there because the British-born rapper is fighting deportation from the U.S. Winners Kendrick Lamar and Ariana Grande also declined to attend, and Drake was reported to be a no-show as well. So it was a real surprise when he walked on stage to accept his award for best rap song, "God's Plan."</s>DRAKE: I definitely did not think I was winning anything. My brother's here. I want to take this opportunity while I'm up here to just talk to all the kids that are watching this that are aspiring to do music.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Drake began by talking about being a mixed-race kid from Canada misunderstood by the music business. And as he held up his trophy, he said this.</s>DRAKE: Look, if there's people who have regular jobs who are coming out in the rain, in the snow, spending their hard-earned money to buy tickets to come to your shows, you don't need this right here. I promise you. You already won.</s>DRAKE: But...</s>UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Next, a special Grammy performance by...</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Drake was cut off before he finished. Later, a spokesperson from the show told reporters backstage that producers thought Drake was finished talking and offered him a chance to finish, but he declined. Another winner, Dua Lipa, was similarly cut off. She won for best new artist and started her speech this way.</s>DUA LIPA: I guess where I want to begin is by saying how honored I am to be nominated alongside so many incredible female artists this year because I guess this year we've really stepped up.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Her jab referred to a comment Recording Academy president Neil Portnow made after last year's Grammy Awards. He said women should, quote, "step up," unquote, if they wanted to be more visible in the music industry. As Portnow announced, this is his final year at the academy. He addressed that controversial remark by saying the Grammys and the industry must include more female voices.</s>NEIL PORTNOW: This past year I've been reminded that if coming face to face with an issue opens your eyes wide enough, it makes you more committed than ever to help address those issues.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: So host Alicia Keys started out the evening by inviting on stage four other powerful women to talk about what music means to them.</s>ALICIA KEYS: Please, can I bring some of my sisters out here tonight?</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: They were singers Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, actress Jada Pinkett Smith and former first lady Michelle Obama.</s>MICHELLE OBAMA: From the Motown Records I wore out on the South Side to the "Who Run The World" songs that fueled me through this last decade, music has always helped me tell my story.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Alicia Keys reiterated the reference to superstar Beyonce's female empowerment cry.</s>ALICIA KEYS: Who runs the world?</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: The telecast was dominated by women performers, from Dolly Parton to Lady Gaga - who won a Grammy for the song she co-wrote for the movie "A Star Is Born" - Diana Ross, Cardi B and Janelle Monae.</s>JANELLE MONAE: (Singing) ...Baby. Let the vagina have a monologue.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Brandi Carlile brought the audience to its feet when she sang "The Joke," which won two Grammys. Carlile won a third for the album it's on. And backstage, she told reporters how significant it was to have so many women at the Grammys this year.</s>BRANDI CARLILE: It's huge to me. I mean, I'm a kid from the '90s from Lilith Fair, you know. And those women were just dominating those platforms. They were getting record deals. They were becoming record executives themselves. And to watch that backslide for the last 20 years has been heartbreaking.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: But Carlile added this.</s>BRANDI CARLILE: Tonight gives me hope as a mother of two young daughters.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.

Frank Robinson, celebrated Hall of Fame baseball player and the first African-American MLB manager, died Thursday at the age of 83.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: And some sad news this morning. Frank Robinson, the Hall of Fame baseball player and manager, died yesterday at the age of 83. What an extraordinary career. It began in 1956 when Robinson won Rookie of the Year. He was recognized twice as baseball's Most Valuable Player, the only man ever to win that title in both the National and American leagues. He was also named MVP of the All-Star Game and the World Series.</s>UNIDENTIFIED BROADCASTER: He's holding.</s>UNIDENTIFIED BROADCASTER: Long drive. That's deep to left field. That one is going...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: That was Robinson hitting a homerun in the 1970 World Series. At that time, he was playing for the Baltimore Orioles where he spent much of his career. Robinson made history off the field, too. In 1975, he became manager of the Cleveland Indians, the first African-American to manage a major league team. But in interviews, Robinson said he didn't want his race to be the headline.</s>FRANK ROBINSON: Everywhere I went, it was, how does it feel to be the first black manager? I just wanted to be looked up on and thought of as a major league manager. My head almost blew off and just exploded because you're hearing the same questions.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: He made his mark on so many baseball towns. He went on to manage the San Francisco Giants, the Baltimore Orioles and the Montreal Expos, who later became the Washington Nationals. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982, his first year of eligibility. Now, while he loved baseball, Robinson was not blind to its faults. And he said the sport introduced him to the sting of racism, but he refused to dwell on the adversity. In a 2006 interview, he offered this advice to the young people who saw him as a hero.</s>FRANK ROBINSON: Just dream the dream and don't give up on it. And, you know, if things get a little tough, that's life.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What an extraordinary life this was. Baseball Hall of Famer Frank Robinson died at his home here in Los Angeles at the age of 83 years old.

Samuel Beckett's masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, is being performed on the streets of New Orleans. Actor Wendell Pierce is starring in the production, and he tells NPR's Tony Cox why the play speaks to the struggles of a post-Katrina New Orleans.

TONY COX, host: Absurd hope is a major theme in Samuel Beckett's famous play "Waiting for Godot." Last weekend, Godot got the Big Easy treatment when it was performed outdoor in New Orleans' lower Ninth Ward.</s>TONY COX, host: The performance was free to the public. And in classic New Orleans' fashion, theatergoers were treated to bowls of gumbo before the curtain rose. Then a marching band led the crowd two blocks away to a vacant lot where the play was staged.</s>TONY COX, host: Unidentified Man #1: Help.</s>TONY COX, host: Unidentified Man #2: Oh, my God. Help me. We were beginning to weaken. In an hour, sure to see the evening out.</s>TONY COX, host: Unidentified Man #1: Help. Do you hear him?</s>TONY COX, host: Unidentified Man #2: Oh, believe me. We have struggled unassisted. Oh, we are no longer alone waiting for the night, waiting for Godot, waiting for waiting.</s>TONY COX, host: Unidentified Man #1: All evening, we struggled unassisted, and now it's all ready…</s>TONY COX, host: "Waiting for Godot" in no less stars J. Kyle Manzay of "American Gangster" and Wendell Pierce of HBO's "The Wire." Wendell Pierce joins us right now.</s>TONY COX, host: Wendell, thanks for coming on.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): Thank you, Tony.</s>TONY COX, host: Hey, listen since the 1950's "Waiting for Godot" has been performed all over the world including in prisons and in war zones - all kinds of places. Why does this particular work speak so well to the issues that New Orleans is dealing with right now?</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): Well, This play deals with the abandonment of humanity and struggling with despair, a tug of war between despair and hope. And the whole idea of waiting for an entity to come in and either save you or assist you or do you decide to do something for yourself and understand that there is this abstract idea of hope that you must hang to and try to achieve some semblance of existence and validity to your journey on the - in life.</s>TONY COX, host: Well, what about…</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): And so right…</s>TONY COX, host: Go ahead. I'm sorry.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): So right now in New Orleans, I mean, you know, this for two years been this great sense of abandonment and struggle and a sense of survival and hanging on to hope. And I just think that with all those themes in a play, it just speaks to what people are going through right here and the whole idea of waiting is paramount here in New Orleans.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): We have been waiting for recovery and waiting for the government to actually live up to his promises and also waiting for a something to inspire and then also dig in deep down with ourselves. The play also says let us do something while we have the chance.</s>TONY COX, host: Let's talk for moment about the staging and the time that we have time left. And we don't have as much time as I wished we did because it's a very interesting story, and I'm a big fan of yours on top of all that.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): Oh, thank you.</s>TONY COX, host: But the staging challenges, Wendell - the weather, onlookers, airplanes, traffic - talk about how those things impacted your ability to put this on, literally, in the streets.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): Well, you see that's the thing. I think one of the stars of the play was actually the setting. I mean in the lower Ninth Ward, it's not just one vacant lot, we're talking about an entire neighborhood gone - vanished. And a part of it was this cathartic feeling that the audience had while watching us in this void of the play realizing that they were in a void that was created by one of the greatest disasters of our time.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): And the fact is we were on hallowed ground where you could hear the voices and the cries of all those who lost their lives right there in that very spot. So it was profoundly moving experience not only if you're the actors and the audience also - but just very spiritual also.</s>TONY COX, host: Here's my final question. You're moving - you're doing the play again this weekend but you're moving locations. Where are you moving to and why are you moving given what you just described?</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): Well, we wanted to make sure that all the city was involved and not just one neighborhood. A lot of people don't understand that 80 percent of the city was destroyed. It wasn't just one neighborhood. One of the actors in play said he thought he was - he knew everything about the disaster, and when he came down, he didn't realize how vast it was.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): So we didn't want to just to keep it in one place. We wanted to take it out to all the neighborhoods. Take it out to places where people have also suffered. And we're in Gentilly ward now, which is a, sort of, like a different vast void because you have - it's like Chernobyl, out of every 10 houses maybe one person is back in. And there's these shells of homes which kind of reflect this metaphor - the shell that New Orleans' right now. You know trying to regain that life in heart of the city.</s>TONY COX, host: You've never done anything like this before, have you?</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): No, this is the reason someone becomes an artist. You know what thoughts are to individual. Art is a form where community comes together and reflects on his past, his hopes for his futures.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): And the greatest thing about this performance is the fact that with all of the fighting and struggle that we're going through as a city, it was a time - it was the best of time for New Orleans to come together. It was a unique time where people of different walks of life, desperate parts of the city, had came together as one to, kind of, feel this cathartic experience of what we've gone through and the hope of where we should be.</s>TONY COX, host: Wendell thank you so much. And as they say in the theater, break a leg.</s>Mr. WENDELL PIERCE (Actor, "Waiting for Godot;" "The Wire", HBO Channel): Thank you very much. If you get a chance, come down this weekend.</s>TONY COX, host: Will do. That's Wendell Pierce of HBO's "The Wire." This weekend he'll be performing Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot."

Linda Hawes spends her time training prospective foster and adoptive parents on how to create a healthy family unit. She shares some of her secrets with NPR's Tony Cox.

TONY COX, host: We're joined now by Linda Hawes. Linda trains prospective foster and adoptive parents on how best to blend newcomers into an existing family structure.</s>TONY COX, host: Linda, welcome.</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): Good morning.</s>TONY COX, host: What would you say is the number one challenge for parents who find themselves presiding over a blended family?</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): The number one challenge for most of them is not realizing that the children are coming, you know, with - we called it baggage, you, know, what the child is bringing, and what that child is bringing is the experiences and peoples and connections and cultures.</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): And so they think, I just want a child so bad and I want to love this child. They forget about what all that child is bringing with them when they come in in the door. And so, therefore, they hit them in a face later in some behaviors.</s>TONY COX, host: Well, let's talk a little bit more about that, as a matter of fact, because when a parent already has biological kids and then they bring in a child from the foster care system, or maybe it's another relative's child, or a spouse's child from a previous marriage or relationship, what kinds of tensions should the parents expect?</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): First of all, the parents need to make sure they know their existing family, their family system as it exists prior to that child arriving. It's best that everyone be on the same page as possible before that new child is added into the family.</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): And you'll be surprised. You think you know your children and you've birth - you've given birth to them, you've raised them, but, you know, you'll find some interesting things out when you talk about bringing in others. That's the first thing. So once everybody's on board for this blend, then you need to have family rules and dialogue on what everybody's role is going to be once that child is there.</s>TONY COX, host: How important is timing in terms of bringing new faces into the household?</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): Timing is very important. I understand there's an emergency situation sometimes, we can't always plan at every aspect of it. But if we know that this is going to happen, timing is very important. We need to transition everyone, the existing family as well as the new child, into that home. And it could start out with being something differently - actually, a lot, such as visits and overnights.</s>TONY COX, host: Are there some family situations, Linda, in terms of kids that should just be avoided, plain and simple?</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): Well, everyone isn't that cut out to parent; we need to face that. And that's why we ask people to please be in touch with their motivation. Put the child first, you know, past your own personal desires and so forth. Put the child first that's going to come into that home.</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): I teach prospective foster and adoptive parents and I tell them, know your family, know yourself. And we work really hard on getting them to look inside of themselves about maybe loss in support that they've had in their life, then, maybe they haven't dealt with it yet. And that needs to happen prior to a child coming in.</s>TONY COX, host: As we bring our conversation to a close, tell us a little bit more about the training. What specifically is the regiment like? I understand it's 33 hours…</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): Thirty-three hours, yes. It's broken up in 10 modules. And the Los Angeles County insists on anyone interested in their children, whether foster or adopt, they must go through this training with certified trainers. And that goes to every aspect before the child arrives - what to do once the child's in your home, and so forth. And it helps them to have - that way they blend this child into their family without as much difficulty. We want it to be a happy experience for them as well as the child, you know - not to come into chaos.</s>TONY COX, host: Can you tell right away when a parent comes into one of your classes that, oh, they'll be fit or they won't be fit?</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): Almost. Almost we can. And fortunately, for us, they usually weed themselves out because it is a very strict regiment and they cannot be absent for any reason. They must maintain working with us for six weeks. So with that said - and then way we put them through a very intense training, we make them really get in touch with their own feelings which they don't expect. They expect to come in there and get maybe a few parenting courses, and they don't think they're going to have to deal with themselves first.</s>TONY COX, host: Really? Our time is really up, but I have this one quick question. I don't know if you can answer it quickly, but I hope you can. Are children involved in the training because you're talking about parenting? It seems that you would need to have children.</s>Ms. LINDA HAWES (Foster and Adoptive Parents Trainer): They are not. But what we do is we do case studies of real cases. And we introduced eight children to them that are not actually there. And we even take them into some role-playing. What would they do when this situation if that happened in their home?</s>TONY COX, host: Mm-hmm. Fascinating stuff. Linda Hawes, thank you so much. She is a foster and adoptive parent with two biological children. She also works for the Los Angeles County as a trainer for a prospective foster and adoptive parents.

What does DJ Marshmello's Fortnite concert mean for the future of music performance? The 10-minute virtual concert was one of the largest digital gatherings ever.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So what's a club DJ to do when a lot of kids would rather sit at home and play video games instead of go out and dance? DJ Marshmello recently tried to solve that problem by making himself part of one of the most popular video games out there. He created an avatar of himself and staged a performance inside Fortnite.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: For those blissfully unaware, Fortnite is a virtual battlefield game played by millions around the world, often at the same time - not exactly the place you'd expect a dance party to break out. It was the first ever Fortnite concert. And as NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports, it was such a hit, we're probably going to see more.</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: A video of Marshmello's Fortnite concert has been viewed more than 20 million times on YouTube. Neon colors pulse as avatars dance, wave glow sticks and leap through the air while DJ Marshmello revs up the virtual crowd.</s>MARSHMELLO: Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: According to the ratings company Nielsen, some 10 million people - or their avatars - attended this virtual concert. When Marshmello's concert was over, players commented, best event ever, and, better than the Super Bowl. Marshmello tweeted a video of kids dancing.</s>UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Oh, my God.</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: This isn't the first time musicians and video games have converged. Michael Jackson...</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: ...And David Bowie both appeared in games in the 1990s.</s>DAVID BOWIE: The survival of your soul is at stake.</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: But back then, they played together in the living room, not in a massive virtual arena. Today, musicians are gamers, and famous gamers are into music. Marcie Allen is president of the music and sports agency MAC Presents.</s>MARCIE ALLEN: It's about being in the center of culture. And with music and gaming, that's where these kids are sitting, you know, the generation Z and then on the cusp of millennials.</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Joost van Dreunen is managing director of SuperData Research, a part of Nielsen. He says there's an interesting juxtaposition between the Fortnite concert and the failed Fyre Festival, an expensive music festival in the Bahamas promoted by celebrities on platforms like Instagram that never delivered on its promises.</s>JOOST VAN DREUNEN: And then you compare that to, like, these silly kids on the fringes of the entertainment business, you know, these 14-year-olds. And they're just having a good time, and they're just sharing with their friends. And I think that that's a really interesting indicator of what's to come down the line, right?</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: For anyone worried that video games will spell the end of physical clubs and concert halls, composer and DJ Sam Spiegel says it won't happen.</s>SAM SPIEGEL: There's something very visceral about being at a show, feeling the sub-bass hit your body and being next to people that are sweating and screaming. And, you know, at least so far, we've never been able to create anything that lets you experience music that way in the digital world.</s>ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: And hey, maybe there's a future for radio too. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.

Host Farai Chideya continues the conversation with Joe Reed, a longtime friend of John Tanner and chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference. He says Tanner has a strong record of fighting for civil rights and is committed to preserving voting rights.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Meanwhile, John Tanner declined our invitation to come on our program, but Tanner's office gave us a statement. Here's part of it.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: (Reading) The reports of my comments do not, in any way, accurately reflect my career of devotion to enforcing federal laws designed to assure fair and equal access to the ballot. I am honored to have the opportunity to do this work and I am honored to serve with the dedicated employees of the voting section who, day-in and day-out, work hard to protect the rights of all Americans under the Voting Rights Act.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We now have a guest who supports Tanner's role at the Justice Department. Joe L. Reed is chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference. He's also associate executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association, and a longtime friend of John Tanner's. Thanks for coming on.</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): Thanks for having me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So you were listening to Congressman Davis' remarks. Do those reflect the man that you know?</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): No, they do not. And let me say we have a very fine congressman from Alabama. Congressman Davis is an able congressman. He's doing well and he's going to go places.</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): Having said that, I've known John Tanner really longer than I've known nearly Congressman Davis. John Tanner has a good record on civil rights. He's been an aggressive monitor of civil rights in the state of Alabama. He has made Alabama - made the racist element in Alabama behave. He has been on the cutting edge, he's been there for us when we needed him even if he made the - these comments he made. You know, I don't find them so offensive that, I think, that they - that he needs to be fired.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Let's take a look at another situation that he was talking about. He came under some scrutiny in a 2005 memo to the Franklin County Civil Division in Columbus, Ohio. And Ohio was a real make-or-break state in the last presidential election.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So he addressed the possibility of voter disenfranchisement during the 2004 presidential election. And he wrote: The reality is the allocation of voting machines actually favored black voters because more whites were voting on each voting machine than black voters.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: He basically was saying that white people were at a disadvantage. Do you find as an African-American man that that cut on the situation when many people argued quite the opposite that people in urban areas, many African-Americans were in long lines - how do you make sense of that?</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): Well, first of all, I think, we ought to increase the voting machines wherever they are needed whether they are in Alabama or in Ohio.</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): I go back then. You have judge a man, the whole man, not just one statement -and one isolated statement in the one case. He worked with us in Alabama to get more black polling officials. Alabama has more black polling officials per capita than any other state of the nation. Alabama has more black elected officials than any state in the nation per capita. The Alabama legislature is the only legislature in our - in this country. That pretty much reflects the racial population of the state by none.</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): John Tanner was in the middle of that. I drew real reapportion plans for myself. John Tanner - he would done it the days of Brad Ramos(ph). And he was very instrumental in getting Brad Ramos to sustain his decision and to sustain our position. So we've increased our numbers in Alabama legislature. And our goal has been and we are pretty much arrived at them in Alabama.</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): We don't have any chambers of the government, in this state or blacks of over 10 to 15 percent without having us black representation at the local, the district and state levels.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Mr. Reed, let me just - one last thing.</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): Yeah.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When you think about the way that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has been in the news, all of the controversies over whether it is pursuing a voting rights and civil rights agenda, how does John Tanner fit into that? Do you believe that he has a commitment to upholding and even forwarding voting rights?</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): Yes. Based on the evidence, based on his record, based on his comments and based on the things he has done in Alabama over the years, John Tanner deserves to just stay on with the Justice Department where he is. And I would hope that we keep one thing in mind, if you get rid of John Tanner, who are you going to replace him with? Because I can tell you, I don't believe that you're going to find any person around there who's going to be any more committed to protecting the rights of individuals than John Tanner, blacks included. And I know because I've been there; I'm there every day. I've been on the frontline of some 40 nearly 50 years and long before John Tanner came on. So John Tanner has a record. If he needs to be reprimanded, I assume somebody will reprimand him. I think the hearing is going to help him ultimately.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Mr. Reed, thank you so much…</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): Yes.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: …for coming on.</s>Dr. JOE REED (Chairman, Alabama Democratic Conference; Associate Executive Secretary, Alabama Education Association): Well, thank you very much. And John Tanner needs to stay on.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Joe Reed is chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference. He's also associate executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association and a longtime friend of John Tanner.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show segments, including responses to a conversation about the growing number of multigenerational households and the experiences of homeless runaways and young squatters.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Tuesday, the day we read from your emails and Web comments. We talked a week ago about the experiences of transients and young squatters. Jobie(ph) emailed from Buffalo, New York, to tell us: A lot of us ex-squatters and scavengers have not abandoned any of our ideals and are using all of our learned skills to do things like rehab houses and live self-sufficiently with little or no money. Several of my friends and myself now own houses outright, paying from 10,000 to as little as a dollar from our learned skills and are rehabbing on the cheap. Compared to a country in foreclosure crises, it's not looking so bad for us old street punks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Another listener took issue with some of the callers: I can't help but feel a bit offended. I grew up poor in Los Angeles and have seen middle to upper-class people fascinated with how my family grew up. People who actually end up living this way out of choice have the luxury of doing these things for some type of experience. The people who I knew who were homeless regretted their circumstance. Choosing this way of life simply demonstrates the extremes people will go to when hardship has not been a real part of their life. That by email from Oscar(ph) in Kansas.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The troubled economy also pushed more people to live with relatives, increasing a trend that started decades ago. It's an arrangement that works for many, including Leslie(ph) in San Antonio. My father moved in with us after he was diagnosed with cancer for both financial and logistical reasons. The year he spent with us was nothing but a blessing. He was able to spend time with his granddaughters and vice versa. The relaxed day-to-day interactions and nightly goodnight kisses cannot be compared to the occasional weekend visits or stressed time during holidays. I look back fondly and with no regrets for that blessed year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But living with extended family all under one roof does not work for everybody. Amy(ph) in California wrote: I really admired callers who have described healthy communication and setting of realistic goals. Unfortunately, I don't feel the same kind of satisfaction with my current situation. I long for a home of my own, I long for privacy, and I long for a living situation where I feel like I'm unequivocally the woman of the house.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And finally, Gib Shell(ph) emailed hoping to put to rest the debate over just how to pronounce the name of Osawatomie, Kansas, or is it Osawatomie? Like Ron Elving, he wrote, I grew up in Osawatomie. I lived and worked there. Native speakers are actually also divided on the pronunciation. Should it begin with a long O as in the word close, or should it have a short O as in the word loss? Since both pronunciations exist in the region, there is no absolutely correct pronunciation. We have to go with the origin of the name to find the more correct one of the two. It's derived from two Native American tribe names, Osage and Potawatomi, combining the two, who both lived in the area before whites settled in in the 1850s and 1860s. So the more correct pronunciation would be with the long O.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So there you have it, though I'm sure we'll get more emails from Osawatomie. If you have a correction, comment or a question for us, the best way to reach us is by email. The address, talk@npr.org. Please, let us know where you're writing from and give us some help on how to pronounce your name. If you're on Twitter, you could follow us there, @TOTN.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tomorrow, political junkie Ken Rudin's back with all the latest from Florida, and Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire will join us, as well. We'll see you then. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.

Actor Anthony Mackie is best known for playing uptight Army Sgt. JT Sanborn in the Academy Award-winning movie The Hurt Locker. Mackie is also no stranger to off-Broadway plays and independent films. The Julliard graduate stars in Man on a Ledge, and has several other productions scheduled for release in 2012.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: You may remember Anthony Mackie as the uptight sergeant who defused bombs in Baghdad with Jeremy Renner in the Oscar-winner "The Hurt Locker."</s>JEREMY RENNER: (as Sergeant First Class William James) That wasn't so bad. First time working together. What do you think?</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: (as Sergeant J.T. Sanborn) I think us working together means I talk to you and you talk to me.</s>JEREMY RENNER: (as Sergeant First Class William James) We going on a date, Sanborn?</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: (as Sergeant J.T. Sanborn) No. We're going on a mission, and my job is to keep you safe so we can keep going on missions.</s>JEREMY RENNER: (as Sergeant First Class William James) It's combat, buddy. Hey, it's just 39 days.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: (as Sergeant J.T. Sanborn) Thirty-eight if we survive today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Then in "The Adjustment Bureau," Mackie played a mysterious agent who challenged Matt Damon's perceptions of fate and free will.</s>MATT DAMON: (as David Norris) You freeze people. You froze my friend.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: (as Harry Mitchell) We need special authorization to do.</s>MATT DAMON: (as David Norris) You poke around in people's brain to make them think whatever you want.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: (as Harry Mitchell) Be quite, David.</s>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Can I get you something?</s>MATT DAMON: (as David Norris) Just some water, please.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: (as Harry Mitchell) We can't talk here. Meet me on the 4 p.m. boat and I'll answer what I can.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you can catch Anthony Mackie right now at your local Megaplex as a cop caught up in the midst of a diamond heist in "Man on a Ledge." And Anthony Mackie joins us now from a studio in New Orleans. Nice to have you with us today.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I think in something of a coincidence, didn't you star in a film about Langston Hughes?</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: I did. I starred in a film called "Brother to Brother," which was about a young poet trying to find his way and his voice through literature, and Langston Hughes was one of the variety of actors we used to help him understand what it meant to be a Harlem Renaissance poet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And following up on our question, so you're familiar with the poet. What do you think - what did you take away from that experience?</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: From the film?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Well, doing "Brother to Brother" was kind of magical because living in Harlem at the time, I learned so much about culture and history that I didn't learn in school. I think being an actor, I'm blessed with the opportunity to look at different facets of life in a completely different way. I'm able to be voyeuristic in a very supported, nurtured environment when it comes to different aspects of culture. So I learned so much about myself and really about where I come from. And I think it garnered a certain amount of pride when it comes to, you know, my history and my culture, specifically being from New Orleans and all the great artists that have come before me and put me in the plate, given me the ability to be where I am.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll talk more about that in just a minute. I wanted to talk a little bit, though, about your film, "Man on a Ledge." You get to play one of the bad guys.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Yeah.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Not necessary. Everybody is a little bit of a bad guy. I get to play Mike Ackerman, and basically, I think he's a good guy. His best friend on the police force, Nick Cassidy, who is played by Sam Worthington, was pinched for a off-duty detail and given 25 years in prison. So, Nick goes up on a ledge to proclaim his innocence, and my job as his friend, his old friend and old partner, is to help him out find clues and, you know, basically drive the plot along to help the audience figure out why the hell would somebody get on a ledge.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Two years ago, you were waiting for "Hurt Locker," which at that point had been nominated for best picture. Last year, you were in "The Adjustment Bureau," which got some very good reviews, too. You go opened the paper to read reviews of "Man on a Ledge," not so good.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: You know what, this is a hit-or-miss business. I think every project you do, it's, you know, six one way, half a dozen the next. I actually enjoyed the movie. I feel like we've gotten away from what good movies used to be. I think it's a action/suspense/thriller. And the last time I saw a, quote, unquote, "suspenseful movie," I was so confused by the end of it, I had to idea what was going on.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: And I feel like this is a movie that actually gives you what you go to the movies for. You know, you get a Slurpee. You get some popcorn. You sit down, and you can actually enjoy a movie and follow it to the end. And I think for every one bad review, you have three very good, very positive reviews. And I counted it, so I can definitely say that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We can go to Rotten Tomatoes and check you out.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wanted to ask you, there was a quote you once said that - I think it was after "Night Catches Us," where you impressed so many people. You said you get offered so many scripts to do exactly what you had done before, and you constantly look for new things to do. You have been the star in some smaller films. You are a supporting player in some of these bigger productions in Hollywood. You're sort of on that cusp. How much choice do you have?</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: I have all the choice. I'm at a - I think as actors we're all at a great place to where we have the ability to say no. I say no, you know, 10 times more than I say yes. And I think I'm fortunate in a way where, you know, I choose projects for a specific reason. This project I chose because I wanted to be a plot device. I wanted to work on that type of character that drives the plot all the way to the end of the film. I've never really played that before, and I wanted to see if I could hold that on my shoulders - allow the audience to be interested in me as a character throughout the course of a film. And I feel like I did that in this film. I'm very proud of it. I'm very proud of the work that I was able to do with Sam. You know, he's a "Avatar." So...</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: So I really enjoyed it. And I think the movie is really good and it's fun. And by the time you get to the end of it, you definitely are fulfilled. It's a ride.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Anthony Mackie is with us. "Man on a Ledge" is the movie. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And I have to also ask you about some controversy that you stirred up, talking about how the African-Americans in the movie business, you feel, have not done enough to tell their stories.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Mm-hmm. Well, I think that statement was blown completely out of proportion because of one phrase I used in particular. And that was a bad choice of words by me. But I do think that if you look at some of the pioneers in this business, you know, you know, God rest his soul, Don Cornelius started "Soul Train," you know, with what, $200? If you look at Robert Townsend, he started his career by producing and directing a film on a credit card. If you look at what Bill Cosby was able to do with his career.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: If you look at all of these people from the analogs of African-American history in entertainment, they gave us a blueprint on how to make money, and how to make it work. And I feel like, you know, you get out in the L.A. life. You're laying in the sun. You're being invited to parties. You're having a good time. You have girlfriends, boyfriends. You have expensive cars. You forget the idea of hustle. And I think right now, our hustle game is way behind.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: I think if you look at what Judd Apatow has done, what Seth Rogen has done, if you look at, you know, what Latino film stars have done with, you know, their five major Latino networks right now. I think we have to work harder towards our own demographic and telling our own stories. I think it's preposterous that we have to look back to George Lucas to tell the story of some of the greatest American - figures in history with the film "Red Tails." You know, I think if we want that story to be told, that's something that we can tell and something that we can do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I know you've read your critics and your critics say, where is the Anthony Mackie movie? Where is the film he's going to make?</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Yeah. I read that all the time, and I'm asked that question all the time. And, you know, I have projects that I'm working on and things I want to get done. You know, but at the end of the day, this is a business, and I don't want to put myself out there until I'm ready to be put out there. You know, now it's a slow burn. You know, Morgan Freeman didn't pop in this business until he was well over 40. You know, if you look at Sam Jackson, Sam Jackson didn't pop in this business until he was, you know, damn near 40.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: So I'm in a position now where I'm allowing myself to grow. I don't want to jump out and then do something that people don't appreciate or don't like, and that I'm a one-hit wonder that you'll never hear from again. You have to allow yourself that aspect of nurturing and growing until you're ready to pop out there on the scene. And that's why I try to diversify my portfolio of roles. So when it's time for me to do that, I can bring a modicum of ideas and cultural references to a role to have people interested and have people want to see more of me. I think that's why Denzel is where he is. I think that's why Will Smith is where he is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I've read you wanted to make a film about Jesse Owens...</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: 100 percent.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There's a limited window.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Well, I'm lucky. Black don't crack. So I got about...</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: I got about six more years as long as I drink a lot of water and use facial moisturizer. But, you know, I mean, I feel like if you look at it, you know, Jesse Owens is, I feel, the greatest American figure ever. Because you have to look at what was going on in 1936. Schmeling had just knocked out Joe Louis, you know, and that was the Brown Bomber. You know, and Hitler is going around talking about I've developed the ultimate race. And for somebody to come into New York and knock out Joe Louis, everybody kind of thought he had something. Everybody was afraid. So Jesse Owens winning those four gold medals kind of kept him at bay and gave the world the courage to take him on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We can't wait to see the movie. Anthony Mackie, "Man on a Ledge," thanks very much.</s>ANTHONY MACKIE: Thank you, sir.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Anthony Mackie joined us from a studio in New Orleans.

Mitt Romney bounced back from his second place South Carolina finish and won the Florida GOP primary Tuesday. NPR's Ken Rudin discusses those results. Maine Public Broadcasting's Jay Field and the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Steve Sebelius preview the caucuses that begin Saturday in those states.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Romney recovers to romp back to the front of the pack while Newt succumbs to a barrage of negative ads. It's Wednesday and time for a...</s>NEWT GINGRICH: Carpet bomb...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Edition of the Political Junkie.</s>PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.</s>VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?</s>SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.</s>SENATOR LLOYD BENTSON: Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.</s>PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore.</s>SARAH PALIN: Lipstick.</s>GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: Oops</s>GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: But I'm the decider.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Every Wednesday, political junkie Ken Rudin joins us to recap the week in politics. The Florida fallout leads, for sure, but Democrats celebrate a special election. Indiana Republican Dan Burton will retire from the House. Democratic Governor Bev Perdue will not run again in North Carolina. We'll look ahead to this weekend's caucuses in Maine and Nevada.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joe Biden admits he advised against the bin Laden raid. Later in the program, Governor Christine Gregoire on the debate over gay marriage in Washington state, plus a special guest star. But first political junkie Ken Rudin joins us back in Studio 3A this week, after our visit to Orlando. And we begin, as always, with a trivia question. Hey, Ken.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Hi, Neal, and again thank you WMFP for hosting us in Orlando. That was lovely. We had a great time there. OK, trivia question, another convoluted trivia question.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh no.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah, I'm sorry. OK, the thought of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich being together on the presidential ticket does seem far-fetched, although we have seen people who battled each other for the nomination before, and they've run together in the general election. So that's not new.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But if it turned out to be Romney and Gingrich, it would pit someone who served as governor with someone who served as a member of the House. OK, ready for the convoluted part?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes, I (unintelligible).</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: OK, are you sitting? You are, you're right in front of me. When was the last time such a ticket, compromised of someone who served as governor and someone who served as a House member, lost? And we're talking about a major-party ticket.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK, so we know that, for example, Clinton and Gore won.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So that's the opposite. So the last time someone who was a governor and someone who was a member of Congress...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Of the House.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The House - ran on the same ticket and lost. So give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And of course the winner gets a fabulous Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And for the record, this is somebody who either the current governor or former governor, current House member, former House member, just to make it even less clear.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Even less clear than it was before. And speaking of clear, Ken, hard to believe a week ago, we thought the Florida primary was going to be a toss-up.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, not only that, I thought - and I think we talked about it last week in Orlando - I thought that Newt Gingrich having a big victory in South Carolina had the momentum, had the great debate performances to go into Florida and perhaps win it. And yet we saw the Romney - new focus of Romney, better debate performances, a weak, I thought, performance, by Gingrich in the debates.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: As Newt Gingrich said in the beginning of this show, carpet bombing, and Mitt Romney won, you know - all that momentum of South Carolina eroded, and Romney won a very comfortable 14-point victory, yesterday, in Florida.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You mentioned one of the factors in the debate, and one of the factors in Gingrich's big win the week before in South Carolina, was the revelations about the - about the - excuse me, the revelations about the income tax and Bain and losing jobs and that sort of thing. You mentioned Mitt Romney doing a much better job in the Florida debate.</s>MITT ROMNEY: But have you checked your own investments? You also have investments through mutual funds that also invest in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Newt Gingrich, not as sprightly, not as adept, not as agile as he was in the South Carolina debate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Absolutely not, and the look on - I mean, the thing we just heard about Mitt Romney, it came following Newt Gingrich attacking him on investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you know, that's the illegitimate child. And yet Romney with opposition research just came back at Gingrich, and Gingrich was just confounded, had no response, looked like he just lost his mojo, and really, for the rest of the debate, he just seemed more on the defensive.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And the talk about moon colonies and things like that, he seemed to lose his way in Florida.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And 99.99 percent of the ads that were run by the Romney campaign and by the super PAC supporting him were negative. There was one ad, I think, in Spanish on the radio, that was positive for Romney. But other than that, it was a barrage of negative ads. And as you say, Newt Gingrich, well, sounded very defensive.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: Lincoln once said if a man won't agree that two plus two equals four, you'll never win the argument because facts don't matter. Romney's the first candidate I've seen who fits the Lincoln description.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And whining about your opponent outspending you five to one, well, that was the fact, but you're not going to win a lot of elections that way.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: True, but money doesn't always win elections, as President Phil Gramm would say or, you know, the people who have poured in tons and tons of money. So just to blame it on money is not a sufficient answer for why Gingrich lost so badly.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And, you know, Gingrich, to say that Romney's a liar, and, you know, facts are facts, and he's distorting the facts, but look, Newt Gingrich did have investments in Freddie and Fannie, he did resign from the speakership in somewhat of a disgrace. So all the things that Romney said - many of the things Romney said about Gingrich were absolutely true.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And they will go on to Nevada and Maine and then on elsewhere. We'll be focusing on that later. Meantime, there still are two other Republicans in the race, and essentially Rick Santorum and Ron Paul decided hey, let's skip it.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, why not because Florida - violating party rules, Florida was a winner-take-all primary. So in other words, unlike most of the other early states, like we saw in New Hampshire, like we saw in South Carolina, you win a percentage of the vote, you get a percentage of the delegates. In Florida, it was winner-take-all. All 50 delegates go the winner.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: So if you're Rick Santorum or Ron Paul, don't have a lot of money, don't have the greatest organization, you're not going to finish first, let alone second, why compete in such an expensive state?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll see how they do in caucus states, which divide their delegates proportionally, when we get to this weekend and talk more about that. In the meantime, Mitt Romney has sometimes been, well, criticized for being out of touch, the $10,000 bet, that sort of thing. This morning on CNN, he did not do himself any favors in an interview with Soledad O'Brien.</s>MITT ROMNEY: I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And of course he meant to say he's fighting for the middle class, but - I'm not concerned about the very poor?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, he did say after that, my real focus is the middle class. But again to say that I'm not focused on the very poor is again one of those class/wealth problems that Mitt Romney seems to always stick his foot in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, we have some people on the line who think they know the answer to this week's trivia question.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: We also have a result in Oregon. We want to quick talk about that later?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll get to that, just a minute.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: OK, I'm just nervous, I'm nervous.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We know you're nervous. All right, we have some people on the line who think they know the answer to this week's trivia question, and that is the last presidential - major-party presidential ticket - with a former governor and former member of the House...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Or present.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...who lost the grand election in November. 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. And we'll start with Scout(ph), and Scout's on the line from Rochester, Minnesota.</s>SCOUT: Yes, I think it was Nelson Rockefeller.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And?</s>SCOUT: And Gerald Ford.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, Nelson - well, we're talking about the...</s>SCOUT: Or Gerald Ford and Rockefeller.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, they didn't run together. I mean, we're talking about an election. They ran, and of course Gerald Ford dumped Nelson Rockefeller as his running mate and picked Bob Dole in '76. Rockefeller never ran for vice president.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And did not win, anyway, so...</s>SCOUT: I understood the question to be who served. Tom Dewey, then.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: No, we don't...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One answer to a customer.</s>SCOUT: Oh, well...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: This is new rule that we started in 2006.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next - this is Nancy(ph), Nancy with us from Hartford.</s>NANCY: Hi, is it Michael Dukakis and Paul Tsongas from Massachusetts?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, no, I'm looking for the ticket, the presidential ticket that ran in November. There was not a Dukakis-Tsongas ticket.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks, Nancy.</s>NANCY: OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see, go next to - this is Ruth(ph), Ruth with us from Marietta, Ohio.</s>RUTH: Carter and Mondale.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, Carter was governor, but Mondale was never a member of the House.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Of Georgia. He was a member of the Senate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Now of course they won and lost, so you could say they won or lost, but Mondale was never a member of the House.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nice guess, though. Let's see if we can go next to - this is Sherry(ph), Sherry with us from Carolina Beach in North Carolina.</s>SHERRY: Hey, I'm so glad y'all are going to talk about Bev Perdue because I'm curious to hear what y'all say.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We will.</s>SHERRY: And (unintelligible) hour-long political junkie. My guess is Dukakis-Bentsen.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, that is the correct answer.</s>SHERRY: (Unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Sherry, you're no Jack Kennedy.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But what's interesting about that, people forget that, of course, Dukakis governor of Massachusetts, some people would like to forget that, but Lloyd Bentsen was a member of the House in the early 1950s, when he advocated bombing North Korea, nuclear weapons in North Korea, but that was Lloyd Bentsen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So stay on the line, Sherry, we will collect your particulars.</s>SHERRY: Thank you, thank you, I'm so excited.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And congratulations, in exchange for your promise of a digital picture of yourself wearing the Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt. We will mail one out to you. So stay on the line...</s>SHERRY: (Unintelligible) my dog wearing it, because I hike with her every day when I listen to this.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Then we can get rid of the one of the smalls, maybe.</s>SHERRY: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hang on.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's funny, a lot of people have told me to hike during the show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Take a hike during the show. Anyway, somebody mentioned there's a political result, I think, in the state of Oregon.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: There is. I'm glad we talked about that. This is the first congressional district. This is the one that David Wu resigned last August because of a sexual assault charge. The - this has been a Democratic district. The last Republican to win it was 1972. So they should have won it, and they did win it big. But they were nervous about the Anthony Weiner result in New York, where similar circumstances – well, not similar circumstances but the fact that the Democrats lost a safe Democratic district.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: They won - Suzanne Bonamici won the seat pretty handily. Democrats put a lot of money tying the Republican nominee, pretty fairly, to the Tea Party. And so the Democratic seat stays Democratic.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, we also mentioned Bev Perdue, elected governor of North Carolina, decided not to run again.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Her numbers were abysmal. She had 32 percent approval ratings. The Republicans were really on the ascendancy in North Carolina. They won control of the House and Senate in North Carolina for the first time - in 2010 - for the first time since 1870.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: The Republican's nominee is going to be Pat McCrory, the former mayor of Charlotte, who narrowly lost to Bev Perdue four years ago. Democrats insist that the party is better off without Perdue. Obama's chances of carrying the state are better with Perdue gone, and lot of the Democrats are looking at Erskine Bowles, among others, as a possible Democratic nominee.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Former bigwig in the Clinton...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Who ran for the Senate twice and lost.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in the meantime, we have Dan Burton, the longtime congressman from the state of Indiana, to retire. But we can't leave the segment without remembering the former mayor of Boston, Kevin White.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Kevin White was 82 years old. He died last Friday. He was the mayor of Boston for four terms. He also ran for governor, and his running mate was a guy named Michael Dukakis, by the way. Anyway, he was the mayor of Boston during the 1970s racial upheaval with bussing, a really tough time for the city of Boston and for Kevin White in the 1970s.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So Kevin White, one of those who has passed away this past week. Stay with us, we're going to be focusing next on the competitions coming up this weekend in Maine and Nevada.</s>If you live in the Silver State, tell us: How have politics there changed since 2008? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Zap us an email, talk@npr.org. More in a minute. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. With 50 delegates and vaunted swing state status, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney campaigned tirelessly throughout the Sunshine State. But two candidates, as we mentioned, gave Florida a pass.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rick Santorum tended to a sick child. Ron Paul focused on the next two states, Maine and Nevada. They are smaller and carry fewer electoral votes. The caucus system, though, could play well for the Paul campaign.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political Junkie Ken Rudin is our guest, as he is every Wednesday, and you can find his latest ScuttleButton puzzle at npr.org. Ken, did we have a winner last week?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, we did, Neal. I'm glad you asked that question. The buttons were, there was a letter E, there was a (unintelligible) for clerk, and there was an Ing button from Senator Greening of Alaska. And when you add that up together, you get Eli Manning.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Eli Manning.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: By the way, there's something going on Sunday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In Indianapolis.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I'm so nervous. Anyway, the winner...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Going to be a right to pass state.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I like that. Gary McAtee(ph) of Chickasha, Oklahoma, was the winner. So he gets a T-shirt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK, by the way, we've had a couple of emails saying: Why was not Palin-McCain the right answer to this week's trivia question?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Because we talked about - well, well, OK...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We talked about a former governor. She was serving governor.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: No, no, no, no. I think I said – was the governor was at the head of the ticket, the House member was the vice president, and I don't know if I specified that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, we might have to give away another T-shirt to an email.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: No...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, never mind. Political junkie Ken Rudin is our guest. He's hemming and hawing over there. And you can find that new ScuttleButton puzzle at npr.org. In a couple of minutes, Steve Sebelius from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about votes there this week and how the Latino vote will play out, not just in the primary but in - in the caucuses, rather, but in the general election come November.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So Silver Staters, we want to hear from you. How has Nevada changed politically since the last presidential contest? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: First, though, to Jay Field, a reporter with Maine Public Broadcasting Network, who's been covering the Paul campaign up there. He joins us from the Maine Statehouse Bureau in Augusta. Nice to have you on the program with us.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: Hey guys.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And if there's a state Ron Paul can win, is it Maine?</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: A lot of people seem to think it is Maine. You know, four years ago, Mitt Romney won 52 percent of the vote here, he won the caucus. John McCain came in second. But Ron Paul only finished, you know, a little over 150 votes behind John McCain.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: And ever since then he's really tried to make some inroads in the state, and he was up here over the weekend, at five events Friday, Saturday, and I covered the first of those events at a church in Bangor, Maine. And it was just packed with people, I mean barely a place to stand.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: And that was the story pretty much through his entire time in the state - large overflow rallies of these kinds of voters, these independent-minded Republicans up here who really like what he has to say on a whole variety of issues.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Jay, well, Maine has elected two independent governors the last couple of years. So maybe that appeals to the kind of electorate there. But I have a question about the Maine caucuses. Most of these events are one-day affairs. Maine's caucuses last a full week. Explain that to me.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: Yeah, they go on February 4th through the 11th, and in fact some towns even got going before the fourth. So - and it's, yeah, it's a rolling caucus. And, you know, four years ago, actually, that window there was even larger, and I believe the caucus ended up, finished up in March.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: But, you know, it's a quirky process in the sense that there's sort of a beauty contest, sort of a straw poll vote at each caucus site that gives sort of a snapshot - and that's what we'll I think learn on Saturday, who is the likely winner of the Maine caucus.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: But the delegates, the delegates do not get awarded until the state convention in May.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So a little like Iowa, where we don't find out the real result for another month.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: Yeah, something like that, right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, has anybody else been campaigning in Maine?</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: No, no. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have taken a pass on the state. Mitt Romney has an office here. He has a presence here. You know, he has signs here and there, and he's certainly, I think, the favorite in the primary due to his tremendous, you know, resources, his organization.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: But a lot of political observers around the state who follow elections closely here really do think that this time around Ron Paul has a real good chance to win.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's interesting, Ken, the signs at Gingrich headquarters yesterday said 46 states left to go. We've had, in other words, just four contests, three different winners and could end up a fourth one in Maine.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right, and 46 to go, but since Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot in Missouri or...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Virginia.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: ...Virginia, that's really 44 states to go. But right, if Ron Paul wins Maine, he'll have his victory, and as Maine goes, well...</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: Be careful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jay Field, thanks very much for your time today, have a good time.</s>JAY FIELD, BYLINE: My pleasure, thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jay Field, a reporter with Maine Public Broadcasting, with us today from their statehouse bureau in Augusta. Now we turn to Steve Sebelius, who writes the Splash Politics blog for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and nice to have you with us today.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Well, it's great to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And he's with us by phone from Las Vegas. Like Maine and like Iowa, Nevada is a caucus state. That's really all they have in common, though, isn't it?</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Yes, unfortunately we have no coastline, no lobsters, no - no L.L. Bean.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So as we look ahead, a lot of people say the - Mitt Romney should have a big advantage in Nevada because there is a significant Mormon community there.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Well, as it turns out, the Mormon population is very small by percentage, it's only about seven percent of the population, but the turnout among the Mormon community is very, very high. It's estimated that fully a quarter of the 44,000 caucus-goers in 2008 were Mormons, and so with that type of political involvement and turnout, they're definitely going to be a factor.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as we look at the remainder of the field, again, Ron Paul has been very active there.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Yes, very active. In fact, I just concluded an interview with him here in East Las Vegas. He's been campaigning to really raucous crowds. He's somebody who goes around talking about monetary policy, who's older than the average voter; he turns out young people who it's like they're at a concert or something - really excites people.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: He did very well here. He came in second to Mitt Romney in 2008 and is looking to try to up those numbers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email we have from Tyler(ph) in Nevada: I live in the state, and it seems like the economy is getting better here. I've only seen one ad for Mitt Romney and nothing else. I think Gingrich or Paul could do well here because while the state went blue in 2008, the red part is very red, also very rural outside the metro areas of Reno and Las Vegas. Would you agree with that, Steve?</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Yeah, actually there's - people have talked about the two Nevadas. There's really kind of three. There's Las Vegas, where the majority of people live, that's the southern part of the state down here in Clark County. There's Washoe County, which has rural and urban in the same county, and then there's the rest, which is the vast rural parts of the state, which are very red.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Ron Paul is going to campaign up there, as some of the other candidates. So there's really kind of three Nevadas. But I think the emailer is right. The economy is starting to show signs of recovery. It's just very slow and very painful, and compared to the boom years prior to the recession, I don't think Nevada will ever see that kind of just absolutely mindboggling economic boom ever again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Steve, we're talking a lot about horserace, and who's up and who's down. But Nevada is one of the states most seriously suffering from home foreclosures. Are the candidates even addressing this issue?</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Yeah, they are. It's interesting because Nevada, as you mentioned, is the number one place in the nation for foreclosures. It's also number one in unemployment. But the Republican solution to that, on the front page of our newspaper we had a comparative analysis of the four candidates on Sunday.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Each of them said some version of the same thing, which is that tax cuts, lessening government regulation, is the way to go. I just asked Ron Paul specifically about our foreclosure crisis, and he said, look, we can't prop this up, we can't - you know, these programs are well-intentioned, but they don't achieve the results that they want to achieve. What we have to do is let the free market work.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: That's essentially what Mitt Romney said. No one criticized him for that. It's one of the few things his competitors have not criticized him for, because I think essentially they all agree with that.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Meanwhile, President Obama in his State of the Union address talked about a program that would help refinance at lower interest rates. He's been out here talking about other programs to kind of keep people in their homes. Republicans are definitely divided and take the opposite view.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we get a caller in. This is Lee, and Lee's on the line with us from Reno.</s>LEE: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>LEE: You know, I'm actually just leaving Reno via a vehicle, but I'm not the driver. I have been living in Lion County, which is part of that great rural, I believe the red section of Nevada, but I don't know that it's really so red as it is more libertarian. And I think Ron Paul's going to do pretty well in the rural areas because Nevada's a state where people don't want to be told what to think, don't want to be told what to do, and some of the Republican interference in personal lives doesn't wash too well here. Overall, I think a lot of the people who pushed Nevada into the blue in the election four years ago, many of them have left. And I was working in a library in Lyon County, and my husband and I, we lost our home to foreclosure. Our business closed. And I had to leave my job at the library.</s>LEE: And the time I was working there I just saw people - I mean, the burden on social services in the rural parts of Nevada has just gone up, up, up, and the funding has gotten cut, cut, cut. And people are pretty angry. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see Ron Paul do pretty well here. (Unintelligible)...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Steve Sebelius...</s>LEE: ...I'm voting for Obama.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Lee, thanks very much. She's raised a couple of interesting points, Steve Sebelius, one about the - Ron Paul's prospects in the caucuses but then in - what's changed with the electorate as we look ahead to November?</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Yeah. Absolutely. The rural parts of Nevada are very libertarian. Nevada is a very libertarian state. That's why a candidate such as Ron Paul is going to do fairly well. A candidate such as Rick Santorum whose appeal is with social conservatives or religious conservatives probably not going to find as much purchase in Nevada as someone such as Ron Paul will. But it is a very different state than it was four years ago. I mean, four years ago, Democrats had 100,000 voters advantage over Republicans.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: That has dropped to 50,000, roughly half, of what it was. President Obama now has this economy and four years or three years of this economy to deal with. Recovery is slow. People are not finding jobs as much as they want. And so it's going to be a much more competitive state than it was four years ago where Obama won by 12 percent. I still give him a slight advantage, but certainly it's going to be a much closer race than it was four years ago because of those factors.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: You know, I agree, and I'm just wondering also the - we also have a Latino governor in Nevada. What's the Latino vote looking like, and are they involved in Republican politics there?</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Yes, they are. As a matter of fact, they have made a lot of efforts to reach out to Republicans. The only trouble is the issue of immigration. I attended a breakfast in which our senator, Dean Heller, who's a Republican running for election this year, was present. He outlined his economic ideas. He said there's so much we have in common - Republicans and Hispanics - with regard to faith, family, entrepreneurship, small business. But when it came to the issue of the DREAM Act specifically, he said, look, I'm against it.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: And every Republican candidate is against it to - with varying degrees of intensity. And when it comes to that issue, that's a real problem in the Hispanic community. There was a Republican person there who stood up and said, look, I agree with you on every other issue you talked about. When it gets to this, I just can't agree with you. And what's the future of the Republican Party with our race, our people if we stumble on this one issue? So I think that's going to be a real stumbling block for Republicans trying to reach Hispanic voters here in this state.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve Sebelius, thanks very much for your time.</s>STEVE SEBELIUS: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve Sebelius writes the SlashPolitics column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and joined us today by phone from Las Vegas. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And amid these primaries, we focused a lot on the Republican presidential field for obvious reasons. Last month, President Obama laid out some of the themes of his reelection campaign in the State of the Union, which he bookended with references to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Last week, Vice President Joe Biden gave us the most detailed account yet of the decision to send SEAL Team 6 into Pakistan and put it in a very political context. This is an excerpt from the vice president's remarks to a Democratic congressional retreat last Friday in Maryland.</s>VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I just want to tell you, this guy's got a backbone like a ramrod. For about four weeks, only six of us knew the possibility of where bin Laden was. And we had to make a decision. The president, he went around the table with all the senior people, including the joint - the chiefs of staff, and he said I have to make a decision. What is your opinion? He started with the national security adviser, the secretary of state and he ended with me. Every single person in that room hedged their bet except Leon Panetta.</s>VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Leon said go. Everyone else said, 49, 51, this - until he got to me. He said, Joe, what do you think? And I said, you know, I didn't know we had so many economists around the table. I said we owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is don't go. We have to do two more things to see if he's there. He walked out and said I'll give you my decision.</s>VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The next morning, he came down to the diplomatic entrance, getting in a helicopter, I believe, to go to Michigan. I'm not positive about that. He turned to Tom Donilon and said go. And he knew what was at stake, not just the lives of those brave warriors, but literally the presidency. And he pulled the trigger. And that's clear to the American people.</s>VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: It says less about bin Laden than it does about character, about this guy leading from behind. This guy doesn't lead from behind. He just leads.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Ken, we heard a lot of comments from Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney in the campaign in Florida about how weak a leader Barack Obama has been about his apologies for America. This is going to be a critical issue in the campaign, and that story is going to be a critical element of it.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah. I think it's true. I think it's not so much surprising that the vice president will commend his commander in chief...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or this vice president would say, you know, hey, I'm the guy who voted against.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, but the - well, that's true, too. But the thing is also that - first of all, the Republicans have not acknowledged. They will not give Obama the credit that I think that anybody else would give him for not only toppling - getting bin Laden but Gadhafi and things like that. And so foreign policy, which is not going to be the main theme in the fall election, of course, it will be the economy. But when the Republicans talk about leadership and foreign policy, they're going to be up against some strong record - a strong record of the president.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And quickly, Ken, an email from Anthony here in Washington: A lot of the press says Romney won all 50 delegates yesterday, saying Florida is winner take all. But Michael Steele, former head of the RNC, said delegates are distributed proportional to the vote totals. Who's right?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: No. It's all - winner take all in Florida. That's why instead of getting 99 delegates, which was what Florida has, they would - they were penalized. They were cut in half, and they were only allowing 50 delegates because they violated the rules.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because if you vote before a certain date, then you have to be proportional - it all gets complicated. Somehow, the convention is going to be in Tampa. I'm willing to bet all 99 delegates get seated in Tampa.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, we don't know because - we'll see.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political junkie Ken Rudin is here with us. When we come back, outgoing Washington Governor Christine Gregoire will join us to talk about the gay marriage issue underway in her state legislature. We want to know what you think. Should gay marriage be decided in the legislature, in the voting booth or in the courts? Give us a call, 800-989-8255, e-mail talk@npr.org. Stay with us, special guest coming up. TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

Our series on the black family continues with a look at African Americans who adopt children from foreign countries. NPR's Tony Cox talks with Thomas Atwood, president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, and Sherry Redwood, who is in the final stages of adopting a child from Ethiopia.

TONY COX, host: This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Tony Cox.</s>TONY COX, host: All month long, we'll be exploring the dynamics of the family. Black families, like many American families, are changing in part because they're choosing more and more to adopt children from other countries.</s>TONY COX, host: The Department of Homeland Security reports that Americans adopted more than 20,000 children from overseas last year. White celebrities have gotten lots of attention for looking outside the U.S. to expand their families.</s>TONY COX, host: But what do black families look for when they choose to adopt abroad? And what's in store for a foreign child when he or she comes into a black American home?</s>TONY COX, host: Sherry Redwood is a Baltimore area entrepreneur and a black mother in the process of adopting a 15-month-old boy from Ethiopia. She joins us. And also joining us today is Thomas Atwood. He is president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption. Welcome, both of you.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): Thank you.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): Thank you.</s>TONY COX, host: Tom, let me begin with you. The State Department reports that intercountry adoptions are on the rise in the United States. Why do you think so many people are looking outside of this country to adopt especially, especially when there are still a lot of American children who need homes and families, and especially among that group, black children?</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): Well, Tony, there are both some myths and some realities that cause people to turn towards - internationally for adoption. If you think about adopting an infant domestically, well, there are many more couples seeking to adopt babies and there are babies to be adopted. That's a reality.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): But the - but when you look at adopting out of foster care, there's a myth there, and that is that the child is going to cause problems for the family. And that's not really, generally, the case. I mean, all of the children can be challenging to parents. But the - when you adopt a child out of foster care, you're going to know what you're getting into usually. So it's - that kind of reason for going abroad is based on a myth.</s>TONY COX, host: So there people that think, basically, that it will be easier to deal with the system as well as the child if you get one from another country.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): There is a reality, too, Tony, to adopting out of foster care and that is that you foster parent a child for a few years and still not be able to adopt him or her. In the meantime, you've fallen in love with the child, and the - but the child may be returned. When you're adopting internationally, it has its own challenges, but it - in some ways, it's a little bit more predictable than adopting domestically.</s>TONY COX, host: In what way would it be more predictable?</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): Well, an agency can tell you when in any given a country how much time we're talking about, what the process is with some predictability. Now, there are some surprises in the international adoption, too, though. There can be some reactions, some nationalistic reaction within countries opposed to international adoption that can cause a country to shut down or slow down.</s>TONY COX, host: Let's talk to Sherry for a moment about her particular experiences. Sherry, you and your husband have a kid in college and two teenagers, is that right?</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): Yes.</s>TONY COX, host: Now, you're adding to your family by adopting a child from Ethiopia. So question number one is this: Why did you look outside to U.S. to adopt to begin with? And secondly, why Ethiopia in particular?</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): We looked outside the U.S. We really enjoy raising children and we feel like we have a lot to offer as a family. But we wanted to try to make the best impact that we could in terms of humanitarian gesture and humanitarian effort.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): When you look at the situation in the pre-emerging and developing countries and you find that there - for instance, there's one doctor for every 35,000 people, and you find that only 11 percent of a population has access to safe water. And you see that there are children there who need a good home and who could benefit from the potential here in America. That made it an easy choice.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): Ethiopia, specifically, we chose - we were definitely looking for an African country because we are African-American and we want the child to be comfortable in America, you know, racially and also socially. Ethiopia, in particular, because it's one of the countries that has a cooperative stance, and the agency that we're working with is already there with non-governmental programs to assist the country as well as to do the adoption.</s>TONY COX, host: Now, have you had any personal experience with the domestic adoption agencies here? And secondly, has the process with Ethiopia gone as you would have expected, because Tom just said that on occasion, international adoption can go - he didn't say more smoothly, but that was sort of the implication.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): I - we have not had a relationship with a - with domestic adoption, although, we would not rule out foster care and I can comment on that later. When we decided to go with an international adoption, my husband and I - and we explained to our family it's a tenuous process, although, you know, you do what you can. It is arduous and it is tenuous and you always have to remember that, although, we have been - we have had a child referred to us, something could happen politically or just within the government agency that administers the adoption process and they could call us tomorrow and say it's all off.</s>TONY COX, host: Mm-hmm.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): And you - I think you have to go into it with that expectation.</s>TONY COX, host: Tom, I want to talk a little bit about what Sherry made reference to with regard to Ethiopia and a sort of political/social consciousness that she and her husband had with regard to where they wanted to adopt and why.</s>TONY COX, host: Ethiopia was ranked number five on the list of countries where Americans adopt children. Haiti ranked number 11. Why are those countries particularly attractive do you think?</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): The biggest factor in a country being open to international adoption is simply the policy of the government. If the government is open to this child welfare program, then adoptions will proceed. If they're not, they won't. Because adoption agencies are eager to serve the children. This is what brings adoption agencies into this line of work. It's desiring to help children, and they will go where they have a cooperative government.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): We are delighted to see the growth in the number of African adoptions. There are - there are still many - it's still, you know, very small amount compared to the orphan challenge in Africa. And for that matter, that's true of any country of origin for international adoption. But Ethiopia has been a country that has grown in its commitment to this child welfare program.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): But as she said, this can be - this can change in a moment. Fortunately, every country of origin is - has a double-mindedness towards international adoption because the natural instinct of a country to want to be able to take care of their children themselves. And to a certain extent, we would - you can respect that. However, we really have to look at it from the perspective of the child.</s>TONY COX, host: Mm-hmm.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): The child has a greater interest in having a family than growing up in a country in which he or she happens to have been born, while domestic adoption is certainly the preferable option and a great option for a child. If it's not happening, then we shouldn't let national boundaries and national pride prevent children from having families.</s>TONY COX, host: I want to talk to Sherry some more, specifically about her adoption, but I have one more question for you, Tom, and it's this. We mentioned that Ethiopia was number five on the list, Haiti at number 11. What country, just curiously, is number one on the list of countries that Americans most adopt from internationally?</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): China, then Guatemala, Russia, Korea and those countries have been the highest ranking for quite sometime.</s>TONY COX, host: For a long time. Mm-hmm.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): Sherry is right, by the way, I want to just make sure we're clear on this, that adoptions - all type of adoptions are challenging and have their process idiosyncrasies that are going to be challenging and emotional for parents to deal with, but international adoption is a good option. And basically, people have to explore them all. Adoption is a calling.</s>TONY COX, host: Well, let me just stop you there, only because I want to…</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): Yeah.</s>TONY COX, host: …first of all, let people know what we're talking about and who we are.</s>TONY COX, host: You're listening to NPR's NEWS & NOTES. And I'm Tony Cox.</s>TONY COX, host: If you're just tuning it, we are talking about blacks adopting children overseas with Thomas Atwood whom you just heard, who is president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, as well as Sherry Redwood, who is a mother and entrepreneur in the Baltimore area, and she is in the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia.</s>TONY COX, host: And I want to go to you, Sherry, now to talk about your adoption of this young Ethiopian boy. In this country, the United States, there's a premium for adopting black boys. They are harder to place. Adoption agencies will tell you both privately as well as out of foster care, as well as out of county adoption agencies around the country. Number one, why did you select a boy?</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): We have two boys and we have a girl - one girl and two boys. And we have thoroughly enjoyed all three. However, we live in Baltimore, Maryland, and the climate on the East Coast, especially in Baltimore, Maryland, as across the country, for black males is not great. But we feel like we kind of figured it out a little bit on how to raise black males successfully. Baltimore has a female mayor who's African-American and the head of the city council is African-American.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): You look at statistics across the country about African-American females - and they have had very good results and then very successful. So since we had a choice, we felt like, you know, what can we do - what can we do to make an impact and, you know, we chose the gender that we felt is having trouble, but we feel like we would be able to support this child and bring out his potential so that he would be successful.</s>TONY COX, host: One of the challenges facing adoptive parents is to blend the adopted child into the family where there are already birth children. You not only have that challenge faced - that you are facing with your new adopted child, but you also have the additional burden of bringing in a person from another culture and another country and also blending that experience into being here culturally. How are you going to do that and explain who he is to him?</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): Well, we had - most people who are adopting internationally have to take classes in adopting and the challenges and the emotions and how to bring a child into the family. And so you learn certain things. And one of the things they stress is that from early on - as early as you can, you incorporate the idea that this child is from a different culture and we will have pictures - we're very fortunate that we do have pictures of him when he was young and through stories and just keeping that in front of him, and also, of course, education in Baltimore is very close to Washington, D.C., which I think is probably the largest concentration of Ethiopians outside of Ethiopia.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): So we have tremendous access to the Ethiopian culture, which we, as a family - I'm from the American South and I have always incorporated my experiences there with my children. And my husband's from Jamaica and we have certainly incorporated that. And so that's a very, very big part of bringing him into the family as educating the children, our biological children, as well as family members and everybody.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): Ethiopia, in particular, is a very ancient society and culture. It's the cradle of civilization. It's where it's all started. So it's very important. And we really honor and are glad to have the opportunity to sustain that culture in our child.</s>TONY COX, host: One more thing more for you. Do you all look alike in - or is that going to be an issue in terms of your adopted child from Ethiopia standing out from the rest of the family?</s>TONY COX, host: MS. REDWOOD: Well, that's - and you know what, that will be very important for him. And, you know, we would never go to Asia or somewhere like that. And I think that is important because he does, he will blend in. I - my children kind of run the gamut, but people have said that I resemble the people of Ethiopia, and he looks like one of my children when they were young.</s>TONY COX, host: Okay. And he is one of your children.</s>TONY COX, host: MS. REDWOOD: He is one of my children.</s>TONY COX, host: Yes, he is.</s>TONY COX, host: MS. REDWOOD: He looks like, yeah, he's related to us.</s>TONY COX, host: Tom, here's a question as we're coming down toward the end of the interview. We've seen some controversy over adoption in Africa particularly several French aide workers who were arrested in Chad for allegedly trying to take more than a hundred orphans to Europe for adoption. Chadian officials are saying that it was an attempted kidnapping.</s>TONY COX, host: What are - for people that might be considering this who are listening, what are the red flags to be careful of when dealing with international adoption agencies?</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): Well, you want to work with an accredited adoption agency. You want to work with some agency that has a clear track record. This group in Chad was - by all reports, was violating the law. And you do not want - you need to - you don't want to violate the law here. It's not necessary. You can succeed in adoption, and it's very important that people comply. And when they don't, as far as we're concerned, the agency should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law because it harms other adoptions. It harms the reputation of adoptions when something like that - what has happened in Chad occurs.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): So people just basically need to look at the adoption agency they're working with, compare, shop like you would with any other choice you're making and be sure of that agency. And you can check references and you can check the National Council for Adoption Web site.</s>TONY COX, host: What are the things, Sherry, this is the last question. It'll be for you. We've got a little over a minute or so to talk about it.</s>TONY COX, host: One of the things that happens with adoptive parents, at least those that I've had contact with here in California, is that they have a certain level of fear and anxiety before the adoption takes place. And once the adoption has happened, then they begin to find a way to make it work.</s>TONY COX, host: What advice would you give to someone listening to you now who is considering adopting, whether it'd be domestically or even internationally as you have done, about what they should be concerned about and what they can look forward to?</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): I think as Mr. Atwood said, you know, first, find a reputable, experienced agency. Also, if you're - I would say, adopt within a family, single adoptions, of course, for single people, have certainly happened, but you need a lot of support, so have a support system.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): And I think lastly, have an open mind. Try to be open because you're going to be - whether it's domestic or internationally, you're going to be finding out a lot about yourself, and also, you're going to have some procedures that are sometimes uncomfortable, and you just have to kind of keep an open mind and keep going.</s>TONY COX, host: One really quick thing. Is language an issue for you?</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): His - the Amharic language?</s>TONY COX, host: Yes.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): It's - it is - we are practicing. It's a difficult language. He's only 15 months old, so we're hoping that it'll be okay. But we're willing to try to communicate with him with what we know.</s>TONY COX, host: Well, good luck with that. Tom, Sherry, thank you both coming on.</s>Ms. SHERRY REDWOOD (Entrepreneur, Baltimore): You're welcome.</s>Mr. THOMAS ATWOOD (President and CEO, National Council for Adoption): Thank you for having us.</s>TONY COX, host: Sherry Redwood is a mother and entrepreneur in the Baltimore area and Thomas Atwood is the president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption.

More and more factory work in the United States is being done by machines, and the industry increasingly relies on highly skilled workers. NPR's Adam Davidson explores the shifts in the manufacturing industry, and Tim Aeppel of the Wall Street Journal discusses the implications for the U.S. economy. Read coverage of the changing manufacturing sector by Adam Davidson and Tim Aeppel.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. The good news, even in the recession, came from American manufacturing. Output is up one-third over the past decade. But over just about that same period of time, six million manufacturing jobs disappeared. About as many people work in manufacturing now as did at the end of the Depression, though our population has more than doubled.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In a piece for The Atlantic and reports here on NPR, Adam Davidson of Planet Money focused on the education and skills American workers need to out-perform their competitors in China and just how difficult it's going to be for people disadvantaged in some way to get any kind of manufacturing job at all.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you work in manufacturing, or used to, what's changed? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Later in the program, the stories to follow as you watch the Super Bowl. Mike Pesca will join us from Indianapolis.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But first, NPR's Adam Davidson, who wrote "Making it In America," the cover story for the current issue of The Atlantic and joins us now from our bureau in New York. Adam, nice to have you back.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Hey Neal, great to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you tell the story of Matty Parlear(ph), who got the kind of unskilled factory job once common in Greenville, South Carolina, but unlike old-time factory jobs there, there is little chance for promotion and every chance that she's going to be replaced by a robot.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Yeah, I think one of the key things that I learned during this story, I chose Greenville, South Carolina, because up until - right through the '90s, there was this huge textile economy. I mean, for basically 100 years, any - well, any white person to be fair, there was a lot of segregation - but any white person who showed up at a textile mill was all but guaranteed a job.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: It didn't matter if they had gone to school or if they had a third-grade education. They were going to get a job. There was that much demand. And some of those people were able on the job to acquire more and more skill. So they might start off, you know, in the '10s and '20s they might have started off at seven years old. Later they might have started off at 16 or 18 years old. But some of them would acquire skills.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And many textile workers were able to own their homes, own a car or a truck, maybe a boat, take their family on vacation, you know, have something approaching a middle-class life. And that is gone, and it's been replaced in Greenville by much more of what America has become: advanced manufacturing.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: So there's the new BMW plant, Michelin plant, all sorts of high-tech plants where they do still employ some lower-skill workers, but clearly you want to be a highly skilled worker. Those are the only people who are likely to have work for many years to come.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You asked an interesting question in the story, and that is: Why would anybody make anything in America?</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Exactly. I mean, that - you know, we hear so much oh, manufacturing is dead in America, and that is not true. As you said, the statistics are pretty clear that manufacturing, as a financial concern, is doing quite well. But manufacturing, as a source of jobs, is doing very, very badly.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And basically in part because of global trade and China and in part just because of technological advances, U.S. manufacturers do best when they can reduce what they call the labor component of a price of a good. So in any old manufacturing economy in the U.S. in the '50s and '60s, in China today, labor can be a significant part of the price of a good.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: But now a U.S. manufacturer is going to try to have the labor component down to four, five, six, seven percent of the price of the good, and what - the way they do that is far more advanced machinery is doing a lot of the work of making the product, and the worker is just there to either program the machines, fix them when they break, you know, make - troubleshoot them, but the bending of metal and the extruding of plastic and the shaping of products, that's - you know, that's being done more and more by advanced machines.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You contrast Matty with another co-worker by the name of Luke Hutchins(ph), who's had college, he's had years of technical training. He had years in another job. And, well, he's got something of a, you know, innate genius for being able to visualize what the inside of these very precise machines are doing.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: I mean, this, for me, you know, I have a college degree, I consider myself educated, and I realize I don't have the skills, and I probably can't acquire the skills to be an advanced manufacturing worker because of that sort of combination of both book smarts - you know, a guy like Luke Hutchins, 27-year-old, really bright guy, he understands advanced calculus, he understands the metallurgy of complex metals.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: He has, at least a decent grounding in pneumatics and electronics, and computer programming. But then he has this magic skill, which I certainly don't have. You know, inside an advanced machine - the machine he works on operates on between seven and nine axes. I mean, you almost feel like you're talking about string theory.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Like, you're in a nine-dimensional universe where you have to picture one part rotating one way, where a cutting tool is coming in at some oblique angle and spinning in a different way, and you have to sort of have a sense of how these two, how the cutting tool and the particular alloy of metal are going to interact.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: It's - it takes - it's a real intellectual pursuit. And this guy Luke and one of his colleagues Ralph(ph), young, they - much like you and I, I have to say, in the jobs we've chosen - they are on a lifelong intellectual journey. They're learning more and more about metallurgy, the cutting properties of different instruments, physics, and that's how they see their jobs, as a constant learning and investigation of how to make physical things more cheaply, more efficiently, more accurately.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And that's what it takes. You need to have that kind of intellectual agility, that excitement about acquiring new knowledge, I think, to be a truly successful factory worker today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We should note Groundhog Day, 2012, Adam Davidson describes a career as a midday radio yodeler as a lifelong intellectual challenge.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, we want to hear from those of you who work, or used to, in manufacturing and how that has changed. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. We'll start with Aaron(ph), Aaron's with us from Detroit.</s>AARON: Good afternoon, and thank you so much for having me on the phone.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure, go ahead, please.</s>AARON: Yeah, I just wanted to call up and make the comment, I've been working - I'm from Detroit, I've been working in advanced manufacturing for about 11 years now. It's a small company, modular aluminum technology. We make conveyors and guarding and end-of-arm tools for robots and everything else.</s>AARON: And I just wanted to point out that, through my eyes, I've seen two things happen over the past decade. The first would be that we don't necessarily make things in America, anymore, especially in Michigan - such as toasters or cars or refrigerators - but we make the things that make those things, and we make them better than anybody else in North America.</s>AARON: And I would also add that there's been a giant shift in the last 10 years with the downfall of the domestic auto industry. Whereas, you know, the tool that we used to build to put in a windshield, you know, is now picking up solar panels or pieces of drywall or forest products. And really, today's advanced manufacturing, with robotics and all these other machines, really transcend any one product.</s>AARON: And now it's almost like if you're going to make an assembly line, you kind of play the cup game with some established machinery, and they you just connect them all with some robots or ancillary equipment. And yeah, you can make anything, it's incredible. That's it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thanks very much for the call, Aaron. Let's bring another voice into the conversation, Tim Aeppel, Wall Street Journal bureau chief for economics, who writes on a range of economic issues, including manufacturing. He's also with us from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you with us.</s>TIM AEPPEL: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I wonder what you make of Aaron's analogy, that we no longer make so many things but rather things that make things.</s>TIM AEPPEL: Well, there's an element of truth to that, but I think there's also a wide range of things that are produced that simply don't make sense to produce anywhere else, and they maybe aren't as visible. I mean, the auto industry, we talk about the demise of the U.S. auto industry, but frankly the auto industry has just changed and become - there are quite a few foreign manufacturers that have set up shop here.</s>TIM AEPPEL: And we produce cars on a scale, and after the problems in Detroit, that has been quite a snap-back in that industry, and that's been one of the strengths of manufacturing in the Midwest: auto parts, transporting auto parts, goods that are used to transport, things related to transportation.</s>TIM AEPPEL: So I think that there is a bigger picture, definitely true that we - we're excellent at manufacturing machinery, and that's one of our global strengths, one of our largest manufacturing exports is machinery.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as you've read, I'm sure, Adam's piece in Atlantic, and Aaron, thanks very much for the phone call, but Tim Aeppel, as you read that piece, I mean, he was describing the precision of the fuel injector that was being assembled and constructed at that plant in South Carolina. I think that's one of the things you're talking about.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But those kinds of precise jobs, the value added by not just the machinery but the education of the workers involved in manufacturing that, that's what makes those jobs still viable in America and the reason they're not in Mexico or Malaysia or China.</s>TIM AEPPEL: Yes, and I think what that piece captured very well is the barbell that's emerged in manufacturing jobs. You have really these high-end jobs that are - that require a lot of skill and training, and the other jobs increasingly are ones that it doesn't make sense or doesn't make economic sense, certainly, to automate. These are people moving goods at the end of the line.</s>TIM AEPPEL: One of the things that's been very slow to automate, for instance, is quality control. I was in a glass factory once, and people looking at very specialized glass products are much better at perceiving faults in glass, at least at that time, and I actually asked the factory floor managers about that.</s>TIM AEPPEL: And they said they had tested all kinds of, you know, quality control systems to check glass, and it simply wasn't possible to get the kind of quality you can get from somebody who just knows how to look for flaws.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: On the other hand, you wrote recently about, I think, a Sunny Delight factory where the people who drive the forklifts that move the stuff around the warehouse are quickly going to be replaced by automated machines, and as the manager of that plant said, and those forklift drivers are going to have to get jobs elsewhere in the plant, of course many of them will not.</s>TIM AEPPEL: Exactly. I mean, I think the goal of a lot of manufacturers today, as I understand it, is to develop the kind of production system that keeps them competitive for the day when demand does grow. And one of the problems right now in the larger economy is slow growth. And I think manufacturers feel that very acutely.</s>TIM AEPPEL: When they automate and become more productive, they produce more with less. If the demand isn't there, they're producing the same with less, and that just results, in some cases, in job losses. But the goal for those companies is obviously to eventually be able to produce more and hire more.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Eventually, we've been waiting for eventually a long time. We'll find out maybe when it'll come along. We're talking about modern manufacturing in the U.S. with NPR's Adam Davidson, and you just heard Tim Aeppel from the Wall Street Journal. If you work in a factory or used to, what's changed? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Companies starting a new product line must consider what NPR's Adam Davidson calls the continual off-shoring calculus. To do that, they must decide what should be made in the U.S. and what might be better made overseas, somewhere where labor's cheaper, like Mexico or China.</s>It might seem like the answer is obvious: Do it overseas, save money. But money is not always the only factor. Sometimes doing things here in the U.S. makes the most sense, in terms of quality control and delivery speed. Davidson's report on manufacturing, "Making it In America," appears in the current issue of The Atlantic. You can find a link to that and to related stories he did for NPR at our website, npr.org. Just click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>It might seem like the answer is obvious: He's with us from our bureau in New York, as is Tim Aeppel, the Wall Street Journal's bureau chief for economics. We want to hear from you. If you work in a factory or used to, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. What has changed on the floor and upstairs? You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>It might seem like the answer is obvious: And let's go next to Carl(ph), and Carl joins us from Wichita.</s>CARL: Hi, Neal, thanks for taking my call. I work for an aircraft manufacturer here in Wichita, Kansas, and what we've seen, oh, over the past at least 10 years if not longer, is continual relentless drive towards leaner manufacturing, as well as more cost-effective manufacturing.</s>CARL: Aircraft manufacture, by its nature, does not lend itself well to automation. So there's a definite need for the human component. And what we're seeing more and more is the actual assembly of the air frames, larger and larger pieces are going offshore to China, to Mexico, places like that because the labor is cheaper.</s>CARL: And as a result, there have been quality control issues. So I definitely agree with that. I've been very fortunate. I didn't come up through the manufacturing ranks but more on the service end of things, and I've been able to work my way up from turning a wrench to actually now being a technical support representative.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wonder: Do you still see that avenue that was open to you, is it open to somebody who's starting out today?</s>CARL: To a much lesser degree, Neal. What we're really seeing, it used to be here in Wichita, a person could get out of high school, with a high school diploma, and get into an assembly job at my company with a very, very good wage. And those jobs are disappearing rapidly. There's still a significant workforce at my company that does the final assembly here. But to a greater degree, and we've seen our company almost halved in the last five years, as more and more of this stuff goes offshore and of course with the economy and aircraft sales, things like that.</s>CARL: But yeah, more and more of it's just going offshore.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there's competition from within the country, as well. Wichita got some bad news recently.</s>CARL: Yeah, yeah, we've been taking some hits here in this town.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thanks very much for the call, Carl, appreciate it.</s>CARL: Thanks for having me, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Adam Davidson, again starting out with the wrench, it reminds the story of Matty Parlear. And I think one of the things that really points - that really took from your piece was that somebody who starts out with a disadvantage, like she did as a young, single mother, somebody who's got other disadvantages, who didn't get the chance to go to school for whatever reason or another, those people are going to be on the outside, I think forever, you say.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Well, so I think this is the thing to worry about. I mean, there's - I mean, sometimes I think manufacturing is talked about almost in mystical terms, as if it's the only thing that truly adds value to an economy, and everything else is just nonsense and middlemen, and I don't think that's true.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: I think that, you know, manufacturing is a crude term. It just means a business whose primary job is to physically make something and/or transform one material into another material, whereas services is not just, you know, Wal-Mart jobs. I mean, we're doing a service right now, doctors provide services.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: The service sector is much more than just, you know, really lousy fast-food jobs or something like that, and there's no inherent reason why an economy couldn't be almost entirely services and much less manufacturing.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: So I think we can over-romanticize manufacturing jobs, but I think the key issue right now, at this moment, is that for all of American history, you know, we started as an agrarian nation, and then we industrialized, and then we, you know, radically urbanized and then suburbanized. And with every one of these major transformations, there were - there was a lot of creative destruction, there was a lot of old ways of making a living disappearing - we don't have blacksmiths and buggy repairmen anymore.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: But there was something that came along that provided even more opportunity to the - to everybody, including the low-skilled. And that part is not happening now. So, you know, we'd hear so much about the 99 percent versus the one percent, but this is much more of a 50-50, 60-40, 40-60 cut type of situation. That we have - the service sector is very good for people like you and me, the ever intellectually curious...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Midday yodelers, yes.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: The midday yodelers, who are able to - you know, we generally make more money when, you know, when you have a college degree, leaving manufacturing, you have a good shot at making more money. But for the Matty Parlears, for people who just have a high school degree, you generally make less money and have less opportunity when you leave manufacturing.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And it's not - you know, people say oh, well, that's fine because we used to have blacksmiths, and now we don't, and we have better jobs. But it's just at this moment, it is - nobody knows, I've yet to find anybody who can tell me what is coming next for the low-skilled manufacturing worker that really can provide upward mobility, a long-term, you know, career-long economic opportunity?</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And it's not to say it's impossible that that way one day come, that we'll figure that one out, but it's pretty hard to see where that would come from. So I don't fear for the overall health of the U.S. economy as much as other people do. I think GDP will go back to healthy growth at some point. I think there will be wealth creation - substantial wealth creation. But I don't know that it'll be as broadly shared, and that is new, and that's I think very alarming.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Tim Aeppel, we got some I think decent economic news today on employment and other things and probably expect some decent unemployment numbers for the month of January, when they come out I think on Friday. But this is still I think fair to characterize as a jobless recovery.</s>TIM AEPPEL: I mean, job growth has been the real disappointment in this recovery, and I mean, manufacturing has stood out, but it's good to keep it in perspective. As Adam says, the - I mean, since the early 2010, we've added about 300,000 manufacturing jobs, and that's excellent relative to manufacturing. But relative to the number of jobs that were wiped out in the recession and that have yet to come back, it's still very small.</s>TIM AEPPEL: And I think manufacturing, some of the sort of mystical nature of manufacturing that we have to also keep in mind here is that the sort of divergence between the kinds of skills on the factory floor also have kind of changed the value of those jobs. So there's a lot of manufacturing jobs, kind of the like the woman that Adam wrote about, that the upward limits of pay are pretty - are pretty limited.</s>TIM AEPPEL: And in the past, you had people who would go into a manufacturing plant out of high school, start driving a forklift, start doing basic things and pick up more and more and basically move up...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, like our caller from Wichita started as a wrench-turner and now seems to be making a pretty good living, yeah.</s>TIM AEPPEL: Exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And that is - I mean, you can still meet people in their 40s who have that story to tell. I meet very few people in their 30s and almost no people in their 20s who can say yeah, I started here as a low-skilled worker, and on the job I acquired those skills. That's very rare.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Can I mention one other thing is the caller talked about lean manufacturing. That's not just a generic term. That's, you know, sort of a precise term referring generally to the application of what the Toyota production system. And this is really the revolution of the last 20 years or so, or 15 years or whatever it is, in American manufacturing.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Some people say it was - anyway, the dating is controversial, but you really do see factories making higher quality products with half the workforce. That's a typical narrative is lean allows them to, without - even without investing in huge new machines, just by really studying the systems you have in place, figuring out how stuff moves from one person to another, how much inventory you keep on hand, you can find, using this Japanese approach, you can find massive savings on labor.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And that has, I think, the statistics are fairly clear, that has cost a lot more jobs that outsourcing manufacturing to China. That is really hallowing out this work.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Email exactly to this point from Paul(ph) in Peoria: I've worked at a large Midwest manufacturer of yellow bulldozers for 35 years. In that 35 years, our factory workforce has shrunk by about two-thirds. We now produce three to four times as much product, so productivity has gone through the roof.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also, when I started in the factory - I've long since moved to management - I worked with people who were functionally illiterate. Today we start with something like nine to 10 high school grads to fill one factory job. Many of the people in the factory have at least some college. And I think we can all guess what that yellow tractor company is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In any case, let's get Alan(ph) on the line. Alan's with us from Pittsburgh.</s>ALAN: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, you're on the air, go ahead, please.</s>ALAN: Hi there, yeah. Actually, I'm trying to - I have a product, a new product. I'm an entrepreneur, product developer, and I desperately want to be able to make my product here in the USA. I've gotten figures from China, and I'm - I've also gotten figures from the USA. And a few things that I'm noticing are I'm 50 to 60 thousand apart. In the U.S. it's more expensive for the tooling. I also know that for my product in particular, which is relatively small, handheld, it's going to cost me about a dollar per unit just to get it here from China to - and that's just to the East Coast or the West Coast.</s>ALAN: Then I've got to do some shipping to get it to, you know, a fulfillment house. Also, it's going to cost me more money for insurance if I make it in China rather than the USA. And the time, it takes about six weeks minimum to get something shipped from China to the U.S. So for many reasons, I desperately want to make this in the USA, and I'm trying to figure out how to do that. You know, I've got good numbers. You know, I'm getting closer, but I'm still maybe $70,000 difference by making it in the USA. So questions are: Are the American people willing and other people willing to pay more for something that's made in the USA?</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: That's an easy one.</s>ALAN: If it costs me $4 - if it costs me $1 per unit just to ship it here, that translates to $4 per unit retail.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Adam, a simple one, I think the answer is no.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Yeah. The answer is absolutely not. I mean, this is something that economists...</s>ALAN: Absolutely not what?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Will Americans...</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Yeah. People will not pay more for made in America. They say they will. Surveys, you know, you can do surveys where people will say I'd pay twice as much for made in America. I always buy made in America. But all you have to do is compare any product that's made in America and costs more to a product that costs less. People, you know, the market, you know, the market, which economists talk about, you know, that's the real poll. That's what - where the rubber hits the road.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: You can't charge a penny more. I mean, it's just not - it's not a true value that the American consumer has in any vast way. I'm sure there are, you know, small discreet little areas where, you know, and some people might choose to buy a lot. This thing I buy because it's made in America. But probably they're buying most of their clothes that wasn't made in America, et cetera, which, by the way, is not a problem. In fact, increased productivity should not be seen as a horrible disaster.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: I mean, we - if you phrase it as factories employ far fewer people, you know, it sounds like, oh my God, those terrible factories. Why would they do such an evil thing? But productivity growth is the only way for a society to get richer, because of productivity growth we're not all hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers. And this world, you know, this world is filled with subsistence farmers still in very poor countries. We need much more productivity growth all over the world.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: That's not the issue. The issue is, what comes next? I mean, I don't think the solution to America is to somehow make manufacturing less productive or force manufacturers to hire more people than they need. It's not even to force manufacturers to make stuff in the U.S. even if they can make it cheaper overseas. It's figuring out: How do you get the low-skilled worker to have in-demand skills that the market really demands?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So education. So some of the – solving a lot of the social problems that leave them disadvantaged in the first place and make it difficult for a (unintelligible) to get the education she needs, to get that to second-tier job?</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: You know, in the post-war period, we had such broad-based growth that it masked some of those issues because you could have a dysfunctional home, a really lousy education, and you could still go to Detroit or go to Chicago or, you know, go to Greenville, South Carolina, and get a job. That's much less the case now.</s>ALAN: So does this mean that that someone who would like to produce something in America should not?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, it was fascinating...</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Product by product.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Product by product. Alan, Alan, Alan, Alan, listen, Adam, I thought one of the most interesting parts of your piece was you went to this company that manufactures these car parts, and their decision-making as to whether to manufacture something in this country or in Mexico or in China was fascinating.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: Yeah. Exactly. And I mean there's this view that, oh, every company is just getting to China as fast as they possibly can. But what I discovered, standard motor products makes something like - or sells something like 25,000 different auto parts. And they are constantly reviewing which products should we make here in the U.S., which products should we buy from China, which products shall we make at our Mexico plant, which shall we make at our Polish plant.</s>ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: And the calculus constantly changes. There's - it happens that some new innovation or some new market dynamic makes it make a lot of sense to move something from China back to the U.S. Of course on balance more things are moving to China than moving back from China.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or to Poland. In any case...</s>TIM AEPPEL: And one of the things that...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I have to interrupt. Please excuse me. We're talking with Adam Davidson and Tim Aeppel. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And I'm sorry, Tim. Go ahead.</s>TIM AEPPEL: Oh, I would - one of the things that the caller should keep in mind is that these things are shifting constantly, as Adam said. And the calculus also includes a lot of things that aren't obvious. And I think more companies, you know, maybe not smaller companies that are trying to source the production of a single product but large companies look at all of the things that go into the actual cost of delivering the good. I mean just something as simple as having your product produced somewhere where you can bring a customer and show them being - show them it being made - that actually has a value in certain industries where you win a contract because you can take the customer to your factory, and they can see how it's being made.</s>TIM AEPPEL: And those things are increasingly being brought into the calculation and it's one of the things that's keeping certain things here, and it goes into that sort of more complex calculation of, you know, transportation costs, insurance, what will happen in the future with currencies, all of these factors.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we get one more caller in. Fred, we've got just a minute left, but you've got it.</s>FRED: All right. All right. Great. Thanks. Well, I've been involved in this kind of makings of things, and I'm more like the old buggy repairman and the blacksmith. And if anyone says that those are unskilled jobs, it's not true. I've seen just - people don't know how to make things in this country anymore. I go to auctions, and people are just throwing the machines away - antique machines. You all think that everything has to be made by a computer. I'll never forget - well, I've got this issue of American machinist, the picture of Jay Leno holding this little brass governor body.</s>FRED: And without our GibbsCAM and our five-axis CNC machine, we couldn't have made this reproduction part from an 1840 engine. Well, how did they make the original one in 1840? Nobody knows how to use basic machines. It's unbelievable. There's so much work. I have tons of work, personally. I'm self-employed. I've got my own shop that I've - I've got machines that were destined for the scrap yard, let me tell you. If I didn't rescue them, they would have all been junk.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Fred, thanks very much for the call. Congratulations. And we'll heartily endorse your viewpoint. Adam Davidson, Tim Aeppel, thanks. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

The works of Langston Hughes reflect the lives and struggles of African Americans, and celebrate the richness of the culture. February 1, 2012 marked the 110th anniversary of the late poet, musician and playwright's birth. Nikky Finney, National Book Award-winning poet Arnold Rampersad, author, The Life of Langston Hughes Emery Wimbish, former dean, Langston Hughes Memorial Library at Lincoln University

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. From the Harlem Renaissance to black power, Langston Hughes spoke to the life of African-Americans. The neglected son of a famous abolitionist family, he immersed himself in books. Eighteen years old and just out of high school, he saw sunset on the muddy Mississippi from a train and wrote the poem that introduced the world to Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."</s>LANGSTON HUGHES: I've known rivers. I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.</s>LANGSTON HUGHES: I've known rivers. Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Langston Hughes would have been 110 yesterday; he died in 1967. What should we teach young people today about Langston Hughes? Our phone number, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Later in the program, actor Anthony Mackie from "The Hurt Locker" to "Man on a Ledge," but first Langston Hughes. Nikky Finney, the winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, joins us. She's a professor of English at the University of Kentucky, with us from member station WUKY in Lexington. Nice to have you back with us.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Thank you, Neal, thank you so much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And when your students first come into class, what do they know about Langston Hughes?</s>NIKKY FINNEY: They usually know the first poems that they might have been taught by a teacher, that kind of thing. They know something about the Harlem Renaissance. They know a little bit, perhaps, about the blues motif that ran throughout so much of his work.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But there is so much more.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Oh, there's so much more. You asked in your opening comments what should we teach, what should we be talking about in terms of Langston Hughes today, and I would just answer: everything. I would talk about his essays, which for me as a freshman at a small college in Alabama, I had never read "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" until my great and best teacher, Dr. Gloria Wade Gales(ph), put it in front of me.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: And it was not - it was in that moment that my life changed, that I understood the kind of artist and poet that I could become, that I could mix politics and poetry, the beautiful and the ugly all in the same pot, and I could make something that somebody might lean into and think about what it meant - what it might mean to be human in America in whatever year the poem was heard.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As your students learn more about Langston Hughes, what do you point them to?</s>NIKKY FINNEY: I point them to - you know, in America, I think we look at the short, rather whimsical poems that had a lot packed in them, but you know, just like many other things in America, you know, Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech, we play it over and over, and when we pull back the covers a little bit, we find so much more that's there.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: And so I love talking about some of the other poems that are longer. I love looking at his fiction, as well as his short poems, to fling my arms wide in some place of the sun, to whirl and to dance 'til the white day is done. That's a traditional classical American poem. And hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Those poems are like just so important, but there's so many other poems that we don't study by Langston Hughes that I try to make sure they put in front of themselves, and they get a pencil, and they circle all the poetic devices and things going on in those more complicated Langston Hughes poems.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes, and you're a teacher of writing, and they have to study those devices.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: They have to study those devices.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But there is a moment, I'm sure, where you want to just let them sit back and listen to the rush of the words.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Oh, like the piece you opened the program with, Langston Hughes's voice, thank goodness we have it. Thank goodness we have it to go alongside what he was saying, because the poem that you just played is so beautifully read by him. And it's just - it's important to, I think, hear the poet's voice alongside that mellifluous quality of the poem itself.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from our listeners as well. What should we be teaching a new generation about Langston Hughes? 800-989-8255. Email is talk@npr.org. Let's start with Indira(ph), who's calling us from Norman, Oklahoma.</s>INDIRA: Hi, yeah, I think it's really important to first of all teach all children that Langston Hughes even existed and the relevance of his political statements on how people of color are being excluded or how their lives might be different than people who never think about these things.</s>INDIRA: I myself did a poetry project in seventh grade, about 1973, using Langston Hughes. It was an all-white school, I'm half-Asian and half-white, my children are also African-American, Asian and white. And anyway, I was given an F for the - I was a straight-A student, and I was given an F - and I was told Langston Hughes is not a real poet.</s>INDIRA: And my English teacher gave me an F, and the ironic thing is the way I got exposed to Langston Hughes was reading Jonathan Kozol's book "Death at An Early Age," where he was fired from the Boston public schools, it's about the destruction of the hearts and minds of African-American children in the public schools, where they're not taught about their history or their value or African-American literature.</s>INDIRA: And he taught them about Langston Hughes and was fired for it, and I thought it was really ironic that I got an F on my poetry project. And I think today, when they are trying to destroy ethnic studies programs, making them illegal, defunding them in Texas and Arizona, which operates to further alienate people of color - and I'm talking about everyone, I'm talking about Muslims, I'm talking from whatever country, I'm talking about Latinos - I think that it's a very pernicious path that they're going on.</s>INDIRA: And I think more than ever, Langston Hughes' poetry, like "America Never Was America To Me," which juxtaposes the beauty that the American dream holds for everyone of every color, and the fact that it's not realized and the pain that causes even to this day, I think that's so important for people to be exposed to.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Indira, I think if you've still got a copy of that report, if you send it to Professor Finney, she might recalculate your grade.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Absolutely.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, we appreciate it.</s>INDIRA: Thank you, bye-bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Arnold Rampersad wrote "The Life of Langston Hughes," published in two volumes. He's professor emeritus at Stanford University's English Department and joins us now by phone from Negril in Jamaica. And it's good of you to join us.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Well, thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what do you think? Obviously you've spent a great deal of time studying the life and work of Langston Hughes. What do you think, if we could capsulize it, we should be teaching a new generation?</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Well, I think we should be teaching a new generation some of the points raised already on the program, but for me, what Langston Hughes epitomizes above all is a love on the part of the poet for poetry but a love also for African-American culture in all its forms, and a love of the blues and jazz, a refusal to be ashamed of the realities of one's cultural experience.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: But the dedication to poetry is something that we shouldn't avoid at all, talking about Langston Hughes set out from very early in his life, as you pointed out, Neal, to be a poet, and very early on he wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," and that became his signature poem for the rest of his life.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: So he was determined from the very beginning to make a living for himself only through writing, only through literature, and especially through poetry, and that dedication to literature, to cultural expression, seeing the importance of it is something I think we should never lose sight of in talking about Langston Hughes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I was reminded of a phrase just today, looking back at some material - in fact some of the material you were writing, and that was the phrase literary sharecropper that he used to describe himself.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Yes, he talked about himself as being a literary sharecropper. This was in the '50s, in particular, and '60s. Of course he died in '68. In other words, keeping at it religiously, relentlessly, keeping at the business of writing, of trying to reach people, to communicate with them, reading his poems and reading his essays wherever he could to whomever wished to listen to him, that total sense of dedication to art and also to reaching particular bodies of people and especially young children, very important audience to him.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: That was something that was a signal(ph) side of Langston Hughes, and helping also younger writers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we associate him, I think, a lot with the Harlem Renaissance, but this is a man with a very long career, a very complicated man.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Yes, he was a star of the Harlem Renaissance, no doubt about that, along with Countee Cullen, probably the two outstanding younger poets of the Harlem Renaissance. And there's that essay, "The Negro Speaks of - the Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," that was a kind of manifesto of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: But he lived on into the 1930s to write a great body of radical poetry but also to produce some plays that were nonpolitical in a sense, and then he continued out into the '40s with literature devoted to the civil rights movement and the - all the way down to the black power and black arts movement.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: I mean, he was on the scene tending to his craft and trying to reach as many people as possible.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're speaking with Arnold Rampersad, who's the biographer of Langston Hughes. Also with us, Nikky Finney. Her collection of poems, "Head Off and Split," won the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry. She teaches English at the University of Kentucky.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What should we teach a new generation about Langston Hughes? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. In 1955, Langston Hughes recorded selections from his volume "The Dreamkeeper" for Folkways Records. He wrote that book especially for young readers at the suggestion of Cleveland librarian Effie Lee Powers(ph). Here's Hughes reading one of those poems, "Homesick Blues."</s>LANGSTON HUGHES: The railroad bridge is a sad song in the air. The railroad bridge is a sad song in the air. Every time the trains pass, I wants to go somewhere. I went down to the station, my heart was in my mouth, went down to the station, heart was in my mouth, looking for a boxcar to roll me to the South.</s>LANGSTON HUGHES: Homesick blues is a terrible thing to have. The homesick blues is a terrible thing to have. To keep from crying, I opens my mouth and laughs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking today about Langston Hughes, who would have turned 110 yesterday. What do you think young people should be taught about the poet? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our guests, poet Nikky Finney, and Arnold Rampersad, author of "The Life of Langston Hughes." Let's see if we go next to another caller. Lynn's(ph) on the line, Lynn with us from Rohnert Park in California.</s>LYNN: Good morning. I think it's really important for young people and all people to know about Langston Hughes, to know that he wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" as an 18-year-old traveling on a bus down to Mexico to visit his father, who had left the United States because he didn't feel enough freedom as an African-American man, and that Langston Hughes really lived his life as a public intellectual.</s>LYNN: And that's a thing that I always want to point students to because we live in this popular culture where the intellect is denigrated and, you know, that Hughes is a cool guy. He didn't use dialect, necessarily, but he had all these blues and jazz themes and connected his poetry with music, which is why Dave Brubeck set a lot of Langston Hughes' poetry to choral music.</s>LYNN: I'm a choral conductor, and so I have conducted and recorded some of Brubeck's music that's set to Langston Hughes poetry like "The Dreamkeeper." And this word dream comes up in Langston Hughes' poetry all the time. He says bring me all your dreams, you dreamers. Bring me all of your heart's melodies that I may wrap them in a blue cloud cloth away from the too-rough fingers of the world.</s>LYNN: And he just tells us exactly how he feels a bit about the hurt artist, intellect, but that's striving for a dream of freedom.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nikky Finney, that's certainly among the themes in his work.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Absolutely. I was thinking, as you were asking the question and as the caller was talking, you know, one of the things that we could do with Hughes's work, I think across the board in terms of American culture, is look at how Hughes stressed his love of himself in all - in so many different ways.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: You know, in the courage, resiliency, the strength of black culture, the humor, and if we could get young writers proud of themselves, proud of - no matter what community they come from, writing with that kind of verve and that kind of spirit, that could be something that the legacy of Langston Hughes could be used for and with.</s>LYNN: Yeah, he was one of the very first Afro-centric writers in the country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Arnold Rampersad, remind us, he did make an early visit to Africa.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Yes, he made a very early visit to Africa - excuse me. He was barely 21 when he decided he wanted to go to Africa, and he would get there by any means. And he joined a ship as working in the kitchen and sailed up and down the west coast of Africa, and it made a huge impression on him, and he wrote some wonderful poems that - out of that experience.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lynn, thanks very much for the phone call, appreciate it.</s>LYNN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we go next to - this is Austin(ph), and Austin's on the line from St. Louis.</s>AUSTIN: Yeah, I wanted to mention the fact that I believe Langston Hughes was also a great humorist. I mean, I was - I'm a huge fan of his Jesse B. Semple series, and there's a lot of - it's a very, it's plainspoken, the way it's written, but there's a lot of - there's a lot in there. It's easily absorbed.</s>AUSTIN: And he's not - Langston Hughes isn't all serious, as far as topics go, but - I mean, there are a lot of deep topics that were covered, but it's just the way it's written, it's very easy to absorb. It gives you an idea of how things were in New York at that time and just the issues that people face.</s>AUSTIN: But it was something that was easily absorbed by people reading it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nikky Finney, Semple is a character who is in a bar in New York and explaining things in his own voice, sort of in the Mark Twain tradition in an odd way.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: I think that I could agree with that, Neal. But the other thing that - coming so specifically out of the African-American culture, and the caller is absolutely right - you're there reading these American, these amazing scenes that Hughes has written. And if you're not careful - and I put my quote, the quotation marks up - you'll find yourself learning a world of things about human nature.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: You're laughing. You're at the bar. He's looking at the woman down from him, and you're also learning about something outside the door, around the corner, in Harlem, in New York, in America. And you put the book down, and you can't believe how much you've learned about who we are as human beings.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, Austin.</s>AUSTIN: No problem, sir.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Emery Wimbish, Jr., is former dean of the Langston Hughes Memorial Library at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, Langston Hughes' alma mater. As a young student at Atlanta University, he met Langston Hughes, and he joins us now from his home at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. Nice to have you with us today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: EMERY WIMBISH, JR.: Yes, I'm very pleased to be with you. I'm excited to be with you. I met Mr. Hughes when he came to Atlanta to teach at the university as a professor of creative writing. He was the first professor to have that title. I later had the privilege of hearing him talk to students. He was a guest lecturer in my English class at Clark College. Dr. Brooks invited him, and he virtually had a symposium.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He came, and he read many of his poems, many of the poems that we have heard today. It was a great pleasure to have that experience. Later I was able to get funds to invite Mr. Hughes to speak at his alma mater, Lincoln University. He did that long before his fraternity invited him, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He came, and he gave a public lecture. That lecture was in Mary Dodd Brown Memorial Chapel. And finally, I had the great honor of being a - the temporary guardian of his gift to Lincoln University. He gave a collection of books, manuscripts and other memorabilia, which is housed in Langston Hughes Memorial Library today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It must have been - I've read that in fact he liked to go to the dorms and hang out with the students and tell stories. It must have been extraordinary to have that opportunity.</s>LANGSTON HUGHES: He certainly liked that. He liked the informal meeting with students. And you're quite right: He liked the formal lecture, but he also really liked to just sit around in the lounges in the dormitories and talk with students.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Do you remember anything he may have told you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: JR.: Well, there were things that he told me that I certainly can't recall at this moment.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Your memory, sir, is better than mine. Thank you so much for your time today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: JR.: Thank you very much for the opportunity.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Emery Wimbish, Jr., former dean of the Langston Hughes Memorial Library at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, with us from that school in Pennsylvania. Email from James: His travel writings were simply fabulous, some of the most insightful and fun to read among travel books. Especially good is his humorous stories of the very religious sisters he lived with in Mexico City, their views on his chosen friends and his amorous experiences in Russia.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Arnold Rampersad, yes, the amorous experiences in Russia, but those visits to Russia would come back to haunt him. They would be amongst the controversial passages of his life.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Yes. Around 1932, '33, he began writing some of the most radical poems ever penned by an American writer. He stopped writing about blues and jazz, and, recognizing the particular pressures, economic and political pressures of the age, he made himself into a radical poet. And he wrote one poem in particular, "Goodbye Christ," which goes on to say, you know, hello to the worker peasant, me. That came back to haunt him.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: When people on the far right began to go after him very seriously in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and he ended up before Senator McCarthy's famous or infamous subcommittee, he was forced to retreat, in fact, and to declare that poem in particular an aberration of his youth. How much he regretted having written it, I don't know, but he certainly was forced to take it back.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we hear the reverence in Emery Wimbish's voice of the - some members of the African-American community. In the 1960s, that was not always the case.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: I beg your pardon?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There was - there were some elements of the Black Power movement that, well, had some skepticism about Langston Hughes.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Yes, that's quite true. I mean, other poets got it worse than Langston Hughes, but it's a measure of the slight insanity of the times that Langston Hughes' credentials should have been called into question since he virtually invented the concept of black arts in the 1920s. But, yes, he felt a little bit of the hot breath of that particular brand of radicalism. But, well, he died in 1968, before, I guess, it could become worse than it already had been for him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet, today - due in no small part to your work, but today regarded as one of the major artists of the 20th century.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Yes, that is quite true. And he lived to see his beliefs vindicated, his faith in black people, his extraordinary love of black people and his extraordinary love of America, he lived to see those ideas vindicated by time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hmm. Interesting. Arnold Rampersad, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it.</s>ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Arnold Rampersad, professor emeritus at Stanford University's English Department, author of "The Life of Langston Hughes," which was published in two volumes, and joined us today on the phone from Negril in Jamaica. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Nikky Finney is still with us from WUKY in Kentucky. And, Nikky, I know we've asked you to read one of Langston Hughes' poems.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Would you go ahead?</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Absolutely. "Let America be America Again," by Langston Hughes.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain, seeking a home where he himself is free. America never was America to me. Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed. Let it be that great, strong land of love where never kings connive, nor tyrants scheme, that any man be crushed by one above. It never was America to me.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) Oh, let my land be a land where liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, but opportunity is real and life is free, equality is in the air we breathe. There's never been equality for me, nor freedom in this homeland of the free.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart. I am the negro bearing slavery scars. I am the red man driven from the land. I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek, and finding only the same old, stupid plan of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) I am the young man, full of strength and hope, tangled in that ancient, endless chain of profit, power, gain, of grab the land, of grab the gold, of grab the ways of satisfying need, of work the men, of take the pay, of owning everything for one's own greed.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean - hungry, yet today despite the dream, beaten yet today - oh, pioneers. I am the man who never got ahead, the poorest worker bartered through the years.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream in the Old World, while still a serf of kings, who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, that even yet its mighty daring sings in every brick and stone, in every furrow turned that's made America the land it has become. Oh, I'm the man who sailed those early seas in search of what it meant to be my home, for I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, and Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, and torn from black Africa's strand I came to build a homeland of the free.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) The free? Who said the free? Not me. Surely not me. The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed and all the songs we've sung and all the hopes we've held and all the flags we've hung, the millions who have nothing for our pay, except the dream that's almost dead today.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) Oh, let America be America again, the land that never has been yet, and yet must be - the land where every man is free. The land that's mine - the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, me, who made America, whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose. The steel of freedom does not stain from those who live like leeches on the people's lives. We must take back our land again. America. Oh, yes, I say it plain.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: (Reading) America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath: America will be. Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, the rape and rot of graft and stealth and lies, we the people must redeem the land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, the mountains and the endless plane.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Poet Nikky Finney, reading an excerpt from the poetry of Langston Hughes. More after a short break. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In just a couple of minutes, we're going to be speaking with actor Anthony Mackie. But right now, we'll continue our conversation about the life and work of the great poet Langston Hughes. Our guest, Nikky Finney, who won the National Book Award last year for her book of verse "Head Off & Split," an English professor also at the University of Kentucky. And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. Let's go next to Rachel, and Rachel's with us from Portland, Oregon.</s>RACHEL: Hi. This is just a phenomenal and timely program. So thank you for bringing his voice back on the air. I just wanted to share, there's plenty of questions of what we should be teaching our young people about Langston Hughes. I think that Langston Hughes embodies what we should be teaching our children, period, from all perspectives.</s>RACHEL: And the word that immediately came to mind is bravery. As the mother of a seven-year-old poet, I recite - I've been, you know, reading and making up poems and - for my son since he was born and sharing how people like Langston Hughes, in his accessible words and voice, can help facilitate children to being brave in sharing their own words and voice. It's the biggest gift that we can give many of our children right now. And he absolutely embodies that, among many things. So bravery is the one word that really came to mind. And I just want to thank you for bringing this back and having this discussion. Hopefully, a lot of people are hearing you talking about life and Langston Hughes, all of you, and your strong words.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for the kind words, and we appreciate the phone call. Nikky Finney, bravery. A bookish young man who said he fled into literature out of loneliness because he was, well, to some degree - he came from an activist family, a famous family, but they did not pay much attention to young Langston.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Correct. And one of the things that I've read about him, and I believe very powerfully sometimes, that when you're born into a family, and that family has certain wishes for you, certain things that they think you should be and do, and you have your own understanding of those things, that one of the ways you can save yourself, one of the ways you can keep your hands around your spirit and what you want to do is through the power and magic and wings of books. And I believe he was able to hold onto his courage. I believe he was able to hold onto his sense of himself through the pages of books.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: And, Neal, if I could just respond to Rachel's statement about bravery, the poem I just read, "Let America Be America Again," is full of so many different kinds of emotions: anger and love and courage and the sort of irony of this poem, if you read the entire thing - and you could hear how long it is. But you cannot do what some politicians have done in the last few years. They love this title, "Let America Be America Again." And they go, oh, yes. This is - we're going to put this on our website. We're going to use this as our campaign slogan. And then they don't read it.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: And you can't - with all of Hughes' beautiful language and beautiful words, you can't do that. You have to come into the entire notion of what he's talking about as a poet, because the bravery that he's asking us to wear, the courage he's asking us to hold onto is in every line, every stanza. And so to just take a snippet of the title or the one line, you miss so much of the full dimension of Hughes' courage and his bravery. And so I just wanted to tell Rachel thank you for reading to your son Langston Hughes. I think that's how we will be - finally become America again, through those kinds of one-on-one acts with our children.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This email from Jane in Denver: I taught my students about Langston Hughes in Denver in the 1980s. In April, after my fifth-graders had taken the state tests, my student, Heather, raised her hand and said, Ms. Anne, there wasn't one question on the test about Langston Hughes. And I suspect - I asked you at the beginning what your students coming into class knew about Langston Hughes. And I was surprised that they knew so much. I would've been more expectant to hear, yes, they knew the name, yes, they heard about this black poet of the Harlem Renaissance, but I suspected they had not read very much of Langston Hughes.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Well, I think it depends on the class too, Neal. Some years - you get some great information and you know that some students have had some amazing teachers. Other years, not so good. And so I think, though, Langston Hughes is the one poet that - African-American poet, poet from Harlem Renaissance - that is accessible, that people do, teachers do - not always, and I'm not saying that, not always and not enough, certainly not enough - but I do have students who are familiar with Langston Hughes on some small level.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nikky Finney, as always, thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate it.</s>NIKKY FINNEY: Thanks for calling, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nikky Finney is the author of "Head Off & Split," which won the National Book Award for Poetry last year. She also teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky and joined us from WUKY, our member station there. We'll be talking with Anthony Mackie in just a moment. Stay with us.

News & Notes Web producer Geoffrey Bennett talks with Farai Chideya about the stories making the rounds on the show's blog, "News & Views," including reaction to the recent ouster of two black CEOs, the TV writers strike, and the launch of the new Web site, NPR Music.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Here at NEWS & NOTES, we have our own 40 acres of the blogosphere, News & Views. With more on our conversation, that means us here and you joining us online, we've got NEWS & NOTES Web producer Geoffrey Bennett.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Hey, Geoff.</s>GEOFFREY BENNET: Hello, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So I understand that the future of black CEOs has become a hot topic. Last week, Stan O'Neal stepped down from Merrill Lynch, and this week, Time Warner announces CEO Dick Parsons will be replaced. What are people saying online?</s>BENNETT: Well, on our blog, the conversation focused on whether the departure of those black CEOs was a matter of race or if it was just an issue performance in business politics. One reader, Tambae Obenson(ph), he cut it down the middle.</s>He wrote: I wonder what the presence of Parsons and O'Neal really meant to their individual companies. If they were no different than their predecessors, then it's all rather moot. The question here is whether we expect them as black CEOs to be more attentive to the voices of black America.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So we've also been covering the writers' strike. The late-night talk shows are in reruns, the primetime shows could go into reruns in a few weeks. I've heard that "Desperate Housewives" is about to run out of episodes.</s>BENNETT: Right.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We've talked a bit about it. What's been the response?</s>BENNETT: Well, folks are really mourning the loss of their favorite TV shows. People like Lolita who wrote, now, I have to watch the real Bill O'Reilly rather than the Stephen Colbert spoof. Terrifying, she writes.</s>BENNETT: And others are dreading that some of the realty TV that's about to pop up because, you know, reality TV hasn't always portrayed black folks in the best light, shows like "Flavor Of Love" come to mind.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Yeah. We also had been talking about "Dog the Bounty Hunter."</s>BENNETT: Yeah, sure.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And people weighed in on that.</s>BENNETT: Exactly.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So I understand there are some new features on our Web site.</s>BENNETT: Right. Well, folks who listen to our show online probably already know this. But there's a new flash-based media player on our site. It's faster and more streamline. People can stack up the segments they want to hear for extended listening. And NPR has also launched a new Web site called NPR Music. They can check out a variety of live concerts, artist interviews, album reviews. And they can find it by going to npr.org/flashmusic.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: and as usual, you can speak your mind. Tell folks how they can go to that section of our site.</s>BENNETT: Yes. Any issue that people want to sound off on they can go to our site. Click speakyourmind at the top of our blog, nprnewsandviews.org, and that's how they can get in touch with us.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. Well, Geoff, thanks a lot.</s>BENNETT: Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Geoffrey Bennett is the Web producer for NEWS & NOTES.

Best-selling novelist Bebe Moore Campbell died a year ago this month, and former Washington Post reporter Patrice Gaines has penned an open letter dedicated to her dear late friend.

TONY COX, host: And finally, this week's Snapshot. It comes from former Washington Post reporter Patrice Gaines. This snapshot is dedicated to the award-winning writer Bebe Moore Campbell who died from brain cancer one year ago this month. To Gaines, Bebe was not just a best-selling novelist, she was also a good friend. As a tribute, Patrice has penned this open letter.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Dearest Bebe, we can't believe a year has past. Your girlfriends and family are trying to carry on in a manner in which you would approve - working hard with bit sprinkles of fun. We will gather in D.C. for a brunch soon. We planned to toast you. Meanwhile, hear our shout-outs from part of the crew and your family.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Yolanda(ph) wanted you to know that she had a fabulous 60th birthday party with the theme: Say it loud, we're 60 and proud. She says all the divas were present, and you were probably on the dance floor too.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Remember all those assignments you left for Linda(ph)? You would amazed at how much she has gotten done.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Francine(ph) went to see "Dreamgirls" with here mom and daughter, and cried all the way through the movie. She thought about how you always went to see black movies the first week they were out. How you'd call her and say, girl, you have to see.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Judy(ph) keeps a recording of the last phone call you made to her. You were sick, but you called to ask about her mom. She wants you to know that her mom died in July. Judy says you were right. Going through this has been one of the toughest things I've ever done. She is comforted by your words. Everything is going to be all right. I love you.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Lafleur(ph) cracks up when she sees a cornfield. She remembers the two of you walking through cornstalks, 30 summers ago, dressed in white sundresses and silver earrings. We had just painted our nails fire-engine red during a long talk about beating writers block says Lafleur.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): At some point, the two of you stopped, stretched out your arms and raised your faces to the sun. Lafleur writes in her note: You, Bebe, looked at the two of us and said, we are the finest scarecrows this burrow will ever see. Lafleur is still laughing.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Your mother, Gigi(ph), wanted to send a message about your grandbaby Alicia's birthday. She says, November 4th didn't have your touch, but it was a great day. Alicia and her mom, Maia(ph), and daddy, Olius(ph), went to Disneyland and went on every single ride except one. The only reason they didn't go on that one was because Alicia says the line was too long.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Your beloved Ellis(ph) sends his message. The California African-American Museums' third annual gala function was dedicated to your memory. You would have a ball, and we would have danced all night. I danced for you. And when we went up to the Monterey Jazz Festival, we toasted to you on a deck of the house overlooking the ocean.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): That's it Be. I'm on the radio now. I think of how I used to sit in the car or at my desk and hear your voice on the airwaves and feel so close you, though you were in California and I was in D.C.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): We are trying to live by your credo. Ellis sent it to me on an e-mail. It's from the Maya Angelou poem and it ends with the line: Life loves to be grabbed by the lapel and told, I'm with you, kid. Let's go.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): You may have arrived at the gate before us, dear Bebe, but it gives those of us who loved you great pleasure to imagine that you arrived breathless.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, Washington Post): Love, Patrice.</s>TONY COX, host: That was reporter turned writing coach, Patrice Gaines with this week's snapshot. She told her story from member station WFAE in Charlotte, North Carolina.</s>TONY COX, host: That's NEWS & NOTES.</s>TONY COX, host: And to listen to the show or subscribed to our podcast, visit our Web site, nprnews¬es.org - no spaces just, nprnews¬es.org.</s>TONY COX, host: NEWS & NOTES was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium. Next week, controversial study about AIDS.</s>TONY COX, host: I'm Tony Cox. This is NEWS & NOTES.

Don Cornelius, the host and creator of Soul Train, died Wednesday at the age of 75 of an apparent suicide. Adolfo Quinones, also known as Shabba Doo, was one of the program's original dancers. He remembers Cornelius as the emancipator of street dance.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: We were going to talk with Christopher Weingarten from Spin magazine today about tweeting record reviews. We still hope to do that at another time. But this morning, police in Los Angeles found the body of Don Cornelius. First reports point to suicide. Cornelius changed television and America in 1970 as the creator, host and producer of "Soul Train." He left that program in 1993 with his signature sign off.</s>DON CORNELIUS, HOST: And you can bet your last money, it's all gonna be a stone gas, honey. I'm Don Cornelius, and as always in parting, we wish you love, peace and soul.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What did you learn from Don Cornelius and "Soul Train?" Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quinones was one of the original "Soul Train" dancers. We spoke with him a couple of years ago about the show's influence on music, dance and culture. And, Adolfo Quinones, welcome back to the program. I'm sorry it has to be under such sad circumstances.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Yes. I'm happy to be back. However, I come back with mixed emotions. Obviously, the passing of Don Cornelius has a personal effect on me and I'm sure millions and millions of other people. He was a great influencer, and I've been calling him the street dancer's emancipator and the soul provider...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hmm. Street dancer's...</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: ...that allows for all of us to be something.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Street dancer's emancipator. What do you mean by that?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: He gave us the right to be free. He put us on the world stage and said, hey, show the people who you are. Be free. Let it go. Let loose. And in that way, our dancing that was at one time just being, you know, performed in social environments, in people's living rooms across the United State during holidays mostly, and some, you know, small dance clubs, we actually had a television forum. So in that way he emancipated us. He gave us the freedom to be free dancers and to express ourselves in ways that we hadn't enjoyed before.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The moves that you did on the show as Shabba Doo, were those the same moves you did in your bedroom, in your house and on the street?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Essentially, yes. There was a number of signature moves that went on to become professional gold standards for the street dance and hip-hop culture like locking, for instance. That was basically birthed on "Soul Train" but was impregnated, if you will, in the street clubs in and around Los Angeles area. But yes, for the most part, the dances that we were doing, we were doing in each other's, you know, homes and house parties.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What was Don Cornelius' influence on you?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: His influence on me was looking at him, being the spiffy dresser that he was, I mean, the guy was the epitome of cool, you know? I used to look at him and think, God, you know, I want to be like him. I want to be like that. I want to wear clothes like that. He was just so cool, and he had swagger then before people knew it was swagger, you know, and so it had an influence on me as an artist, later on as a professional dancer.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: If you've ever taken note of my career, you would see that I wore a lot of suits and things, and I tend to dress up. So there was a handful of people that I aspire to be when I grew up and that was - one was Cab Calloway. James Brown, we always want to be James Brown. And then Don Cornelius. You know, being a young black kid, you know, you want to be like that. You want to be like the man.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You described him as a quiet man when you were on the show a couple of years ago.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Did he take an active part in saying, do this, don't do that?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Don Cornelius is - was very hands-on with respect to the show. But, you know, he was smart enough to allow us to be who were, you know, and he just created an environment. But every now and again, he'd say, hey, you, you know, kid. Come over here. Do that thing you were doing, that crazy thing. Or he was standing back of the "Soul Train" backdrop there that looked like the back of the train, and he'd say, you know, during the breaks or whatever, he'd say, (unintelligible). You still acting crazy? Or...</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: ...he would shout to different people. So he knew us, and he would talk to us. And every now and again, the early - especially in the early days, he would come down the "Soul Train" line. So that was a big treat, you know?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email we have from Matt in Portland, Oregon: As a kid growing up in suburban Washington, D.C. in the 1970s, I remember sitting in front of the TV with my bowl of SpaghettiOs hose to watch "Soul Train." I recall being mesmerized by the show and all of the cool dancers. The opening animation and the theme song hooked me instantly. The deep voice of Mr. Cornelius just dripped in hot buttered soul. I don't think I would have been introduced to funk, soul, R&B, gospel or early hip-hop without it. I'm now passing on my love of that music to my five-year-old. We have are own "Soul Train" dance parties in the living room. The kid has got some funky moves. RIP, Don Cornelius. That's it from...</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Wow.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get a caller in on the conversation. Let's go to Shawn, Shawn with us from Oakland. Shawn, are you there?</s>SHAWN: Oh, yes, I am. Hi. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good. You're on the air.</s>SHAWN: Hi. Thank you. What I love from Don Cornelius was that there was an entirely new type of way to be black. There was a black world that was both part-African, part-American, but wholly unique in that it was a different world than the blight and the crime shown about black folks in the 1970s. And so growing up and seeing that, it empowered me in such a way that no book could, no music could. But just watching us be that way, positive and respectful and talented, was such a huge boost for a kid growing up in the 1970s.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Shabba Doo, that had to be your story, too. You grew up in Cabrini-Green, one of the most notorious projects in Chicago.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Oh, yes. You know, I wanted to say, you know, one doesn't grow up Cabrini-Green. One survives Cabrini-Green. But growing up - I grew up after I left.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Shawn, thanks very much for the phone call. Appreciate it.</s>SHAWN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Shabba Doo, you - talk to us about what he was like as a - you got the chance, as you grew up on the program, to see what he was like as a producer, not just the creator and host of the show, which, I guess, we all got to see on TV. But as producer, can you talk to us about that a little bit?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Don Cornelius, you know, later on in my career after leaving the show, being part of The Lockers and having my run with that crew, I then went solo. I had an opportunity to come back to the show now as a full-grown man and kind of collaborate with Don on my appearance on the show as a guest star. And my impression was he was the consummate professional. And, you know, people really didn't know that he was really funny, as well. He had a kind of a dry humor, but he was a funny guy. He liked to tell jokes, you know?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Can you give us an example?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Well, you know, like, you know, just - if you watched the interview he gave The Lockers, post our performance on the show, it kind of gives you an example. He would come to each one of us, and he knew us, and he would make little jokes, like he would say, you know, hey, Shabba Doo. How are you doing? How are you and your crazy sister are doing? Stuff like that. But he was kind of inside joke, you know. Or he'd say, hey, watch out. They always do that move. Watch that kick, you know, or I think he's going to take you down or something - all these kinds of references to the wild sort of dancing we were doing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: People forget your sister was also a performer on the show, one of the Butterfly Girls.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Yes, yes, yes. Fawn, Fawn Quinones was one of - and she went on after the show to marry one of the original Lockers, Fluky Luke, and they have a son together.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Kevin in Jacksonville: To this day, I cannot look at those little plastic magnetic letters that you place on your refrigerator without thinking about the "Soul Train" Scramble Board. Besides Don Cornelius' classic love, peace and soul at the end of the show, the scramble board was my favorite part. It always made you wonder why they did it, because the puzzle was always so easy, but it's a classic. RIP, Don. Love, peace and soul. The scramble board, was that something that you paid any attention to?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Oh, yes, of course. That was the highlight of the show. There was a couple of highlights, but a main highlight was the "Soul Train" Scramble Board. Me and my sister actually did that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You did that?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Won that one.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, tell us what - for those who don't remember, tell us what it was.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: You know, I can't remember what the name of the artist was. I think it was Tina Turner, I think, but I do remember what we won. I - my sister won a red eight-track player, and I won a yellow one.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Wow, an eight-track tape player.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: We got a little - yeah. And then I got a little Afro blowout kit that came with it. That was the Afro Sheen, you know, Ultra Sheen cosmetic kit.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What did you have to do to win? Just guess the - guess what those scrambled letters spelled?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, they would scramble these magnetic colorful letters, like, on this circular board. And then you would have to, you know, give you a minute or so, and you'd have to figure out what the name of the artist was.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And...</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: You know, what's kind of funny is that - well, some of the dancers in the show, you know, they would be standing off-camera. And they would try to throw in, hey, no, she was (unintelligible), you know, things like that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So you didn't know the answers ahead of time? Because we always thought you did.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: No.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with...</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: I didn't know the answers ahead of time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Shabba Doo, also known as Adolfo Quinones, the head of On Q Media. Now, about the late Don Cornelius, if you haven't heard, he - found dead in his home in Los Angeles today, this morning, apparently as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Ray, and Ray's with us from Eagle River in Wisconsin.</s>RAY: Yes. I would like to say that Don and "Soul Train" - I was brought up on the north side of Milwaukee. I'm a white person, and I'll tell you, it helped bridge the gap between the black and white community immensely. It was a good time, and Milwaukee was one of the best cities to live in, in between Motown coming through and Don Cornelius and everything. And the inner city had employment. We all got along. We used to talk about "Soul Train" all the time. I'm telling you, it was a magnificent part for the black culture, breakthrough in the media that show people another side of positiveness of them and how we can get all get along through dance and being creative. It was wonderful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Shabba Doo, that's an important point to make. Back when that program went national, 1971, there was a lot of racial tension in this country, and this program had its part in breaking that down a little bit.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Yes, it did. Yes, it did. "Soul Train" did what most - what the United Nations, in some respect, failed to do: bring people together and communities in different countries together in a way that no other institution or government has ever been able to successfully do over a long period of time. We've been able to do it in short spurs, but not a long - over a long period of time. "Soul Train" was a catalyst for respect and love for each other through music and dance. It was that type of big, kind of, thinking show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ray, thanks very much for the call. Here's an email from Eric in Birmingham, Alabama: I learned as a kid in the 1970s that not every program that starts with a cartoon is a cartoon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And interesting, this one from Trey in St. Louis: I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons. When "Soul Train" came on TV, I knew TV time was over. My mom would dash to the TV and run us out of the house to play. Twenty-five years later, I now go online to see all the culture I missed out on. And, Shabba Doo, as a grownup, you mentioned returning to the show as a guest star. But did you keep in touch with Don Cornelius?</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: You know, I mentioned that in my Universal Truth: Honoring and Preserving Street-Dance Culture page on Facebook. No, I didn't as much as I should have, and I regret that. The last time I saw Don was some years back after a Whispers concert. It was - we were just hanging out backstage and talking and stuff. But, you know, I just - you know, you get caught up in making a living. You get caught up in doing your work and - that you forget what's most important in this world are people...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we go...</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: ...and what they mean to you, you know? You get caught up.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Corey's(ph) on the on the line joining us from St. Louis.</s>COREY: Hey, guys. How are you doing? Love the show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>COREY: A few things I've always loved about "Soul Train" as a kid, as a '70s baby, as I call myself, we had "American Bandstand," "Dance Fever," the lip-sync(ph) show. But as a black kid, this was a show that really, you know, showed our music, our artists, people we hear and identify with on a daily basis on the mainstream, on the main TV, you know, stage. And it's amazing that 22 years that this show remained on the air in the midst of cable, MTV, VH1 and everything else, I love the fact that Mr. Cornelius, rest in peace, that he kept the same concept throughout the entire 22 years that that show was on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Corey, I don't mean to cut you off. The phone line is betraying us. We really have a hard time hearing what you had to say, but I think we get the spirit of it. Thanks very much for the phone call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd like to end with this email from Alicia: I remember growing up as a little girl listening to the sounds of my parents' records. Along came "Soul Train," and the first time I saw Aretha Franklin, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, I was hooked. So progressive, so magical to see all the different kinds of people gathered to dance. My wish was to one day be on the show, to have fun and dance with all the interesting people from various backgrounds and ethic groups. Mr. Cornelius invited me to his house to see so many incredible acts. He invited everybody, no matter how old, what color and how much money you had, he always had the best parties. And, Shabba Doo, I think we can all agree with that.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Yes, wholeheartedly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Shabba Doo, thanks very much for your time today. We're sorry for your loss.</s>ADOLFO QUINONES: Yeah. Thank you. And everybody, get on the "Soul Train." Keep dancing. Keep doing what you love to do. And remember to always reach out to the people that mean most, because they're not going to always be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quinones joined us from his office in Los Angeles. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

The Manhattan Institute reports that U.S. metropolitan areas are now more integrated than any time since 1910. The migration of African Americans to the South, gentrification and immigration have all contributed to the shift. Yet some argue the decline of segregation does not mean racial inequality is obsolete. Jacob Vigdor, adjunct fellow, Manhattan Institute Sheryll Cashin, professor of law, Georgetown University

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. The civil rights movement established segregation as a social sin, but progress has been slow in the decades since. Now a report released this week by the Manhattan Institute finds a widespread decline. Metropolitan areas are more integrated now than they have been since 1910. All-white neighborhoods are nearly extinct. Gentrification and immigration have helped shrivel inner-city ghettos, and many African-Americans have moved to the Sun Belt, the most-integrated communities in the country. Critics note the numbers, but argue there's still a long way to go.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tell us the story of how your neighborhood has changed. Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>Later in the program: What did you learn from Don Cornelius and "Soul Train"? You can send us an email now. The address, again, is talk@npr.org. But first, Jacob Vigdor joins us from the studios on the campus at Duke University, where he's an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He coauthored the report "The End of the Segregated Century: Racial Separation in America's Neighborhood, 1890-2010."</s>Later in the program: And nice to have you with us today.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Well, thanks, Neal. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the end of the segregated century?</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Well, the segregated century is a term of art that I kind of made up to refer to the period between 1910 and 2010, because I think that when historians write the history of this period long in the future, they'll see 1910 and 2010 as sort of bookends of a period where segregation rose dramatically, and then segregation reversed. And integration happened to the extent that all those increases disappeared.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, what has happened - you're obviously working off the census figures from 2010. Correct?</s>JACOB VIGDOR: That's correct. That's correct. So this is an extension of a project that Professor Glaeser at Harvard - my coauthor, Edward Glaeser - and I have been working on since the mid-'90s to track segregation metro area by metro area in the United States since 1890. The 2010 census figures enable us to continue this time series forward.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you say - one of the conclusions is, for example, the all-white neighborhood is virtually extinct.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: That's right. If you go back to 1960, it's about 20 percent of all neighborhoods that the census counted had exactly zero African-American residents. And today, that is down to one in 200. Or that's one half of 1 percent. So there are still a few out there, but you have to search pretty hard to find them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And also that inner-city ghettos are shriveling, yet clearly, they still exist.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: That's one of the interesting things about this report. There are still segregated neighborhoods out there. If you talk about the South Side of Chicago, if you talk about Detroit, the key to remember is that these cities have been declining in population. So there are segregated places, but fewer and fewer segregated people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the - one of the big changes has clearly been suburbanization.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: That's correct. And that's a big part of the story. And the two facts that you brought up - the near-disappearance of all-white neighborhoods and the movement out of segregated inner-city neighborhoods - suburbanization by African-Americans is what explains both the phenomena.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Where 60, 70 years ago, a - one black family moving into a white neighborhood had the effect of triggering the phenomenon we called white flight. Has that phenomenon disappeared?</s>JACOB VIGDOR: The phenomenon of white flight, you have to understand, is a phenomenon that's really rooted in an era where black migration from the rural South to cities was rampant. That era came to an end around 1965. Since that era, this phenomenon of tipping and blockbusting that you hear talked about in discussions of the pre-civil rights era, it's much less common. The - I'm sorry. The integration that we're seeing in suburban neighborhoods looks much more stable than patterns that we would have seen a half-century ago.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we're talking about African-Americans and white Americans. But clearly, Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans are part of this conversation, too.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: That's something that's changed dramatically over the period that we've been looking at, 1890 to the present. The United States is not a biracial country anymore. And what's interesting is that the new ethnic groups - Latinos, Asians - you find them in - moving into neighborhoods that had been white. You find them moving into neighborhoods that had been black. And so that's really diversifying all parts of the country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we want to get callers in on the conversation. We also have another guest, Sheryll Cashin, a professor of law at Georgetown University. We want to get her into the conversation, too. But I have to ask you: What happened - your study from 1890 to 2010. What happened between 1890 and 1910? What was the advent of this segregation that you're talking about?</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Well, if you think back a century ago, the African-American population was still concentrated in the rural South. So there were just not very many back residents of many of these cities. And those blacks that lived in the cities were actually kind of integrated. Sometimes they were living with Italian immigrants or other ethnic groups like that. It's really the - what historians would call the Great Migration, that started around 1920, that brought African-Americans out of the rural South and into cities that created the birth of what we would call the ghetto.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what happened, do you think, in the last 30, 40, 50 years, to see this precipitous decline?</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Well, if you look at where the turning point was, the turning point was right around 1970. We had the Fair Housing Act in 1968. We had other legislative and policy changes that really made housing market discrimination illegal and stopped discriminatory practices. And so I think we are seeing the legacy of those changes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As we mentioned, Sheryll Cashin is with us, a professor of law at Georgetown University, author of "The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream." She's been kind enough to join us here in Studio 3A. Thanks very much for coming in.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I assume you've seen the same figures that Jacob Vigdor has.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: Yes. I read the study very carefully.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what's your conclusion?</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: I don't disagree with the data. I disagree with the interpretation of the data. The language of the end of segregation or the end the segregated century, I think, is highly misleading. What the data shows is we've gone from being an extremely segregated country, where mid-century, eight out of 10 blacks would have to move to be integrated, to now only five out of 10 blacks would have to be moved. I think the numbers show that we are - have gone from being very segregated to segregated, or moderately segregated. You know, half of black people, mid-century, lived in ghettos. Now one in five do.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: But there's still a lot of segregation in American society. I would still say it's a segregated society, and segregation continues to structure opportunity in this country, and it continues affect race relations. One of the things that I think the study does not account for is the lives of children. Children live more segregated - live more segregated than adults do, and particularly children in public schools. While we've had this - you know, laudatory, modest decline every decade in segregation in neighborhoods since 1970, since 1980, our schools have been increasing in segregation. And now children in public schools are more segregated than they have been in a very long time.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: I looked at a study today from three researchers at Northeastern University. They looked at school districts in the top 100 metropolitan areas. And the picture they paint is one of separate, but equal - unequal. A black and Latino child in public school today, their average existence is one where a majority of peers are minority and many of their peers are poor. Forty-three percent of black and Latino children go to schools where 80 percent of their peers are poor, compared to only 4 percent of whites. So we still have a lot of segregation in society.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jacob Vigdor, is this a question of glass half full or glass half empty?</s>JACOB VIGDOR: As a matter of fact, I didn't hear any statements there that I really disagree with. There's something important that you have to think about in regards to schools. I think segregation in schools is an important issue. At the same time neighborhoods are integrating, school districts have reduced their effort in terms of busing for integration, and they've been spurred on in large part by the courts.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: You may recall from a few years ago, the Supreme Court issued rulings with regard to the school districts in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington, basically forbidding them for busing to achieve racial balance. And so you see this increase in neighborhood segregation that's not matched - I'm sorry, an increase in neighborhood integration that's not accompanied by an increase in school integration, and it's because of these countervailing movements that are driven by court decisions.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: And, you know, there are a lot of problems with high-poverty schools. And, you know, I've done some work on this myself with Jens Ludwig at the University of Chicago and where - you know, I think that those are the - these are all important things to keep in mind.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But we should not - I'm sorry, go ahead, Sheryll Cashin.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: Well, I'd also say there's still a lot of problems with high poverty in highly segregated neighborhoods. You admit in your study that the number of census tracks that you would characterize as a ghetto hasn't changed that much. It's just that they've been depopulated, but still one in five black people live in what you would describe as ghetto neighborhoods.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: And I'd venture to say that to live in a ghetto today, in 2012, is very different than what it was like in 1970. These are alternative universes where the prison system plays a more dominate life - role in the life of young black men. Some neighborhoods, four out of five young black boys can expect to be caught up in the prison system.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: These are places where anybody who can leave have left, and frankly, the persistence of the ghetto, I think this is one of the last vestiges of Jim Crow, the persistence of the ghetto and the system of mass black incarceration that's grown up - I mean, since 1970 we have created this system of mass incarceration. That's a form of segregation in itself.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: It heavily colors race relations. I mean, if we're honest about it, we all carry stereotypes in our heads, and there are psychology studies that show it, where, you know, we heavily associate black with crime, particularly black boys and men, and this is part of the reason why it becomes very difficult to get political will to support the kind of policies that will create more inclusion in neighborhoods and schools.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jacob Vigdor, those prison numbers are beginning to come down for any number of reasons, but they are accurate, too.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: That's true. You know, I got into this business of studying segregation in part because I was motivated by this concern that being segregated into neighborhoods affects your life chances in some way that goes beyond schools.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: But what really opened my eyes quite a bit was some research that's come out of a number of universities since the mid-1990s concerning an experiment that the Department of Housing and Urban Development did in the 1990s called the Moving to Opportunity experiment where they gave a randomly selected group of residents of high-poverty housing projects vouchers to move into low-poverty neighborhoods.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: What the evaluations of these programs have shown over and over again is that when you move these residents out of the ghetto, their outcomes don't necessarily change. And so that changed my mind about this issue.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jacob Vigdor of the Manhattan Institute, Sheryll Cashin, author of "The Failures of Integration," are our guests. We're talking about a new report issued by the Manhattan Institute, "The End of the Segregated Century." We want to hear from you. Tell us the story about how your neighborhood had changed. 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Social scientist Robert Putnam, well-known for his research on civic engagement and communities, the "Bowling Alone" author, found Americans tend to bond with people very much like themselves in terms of age, race, religion and more, which can be bad news in diverse neighborhoods.</s>ROBERT PUTNAM: What we discovered in this research, somewhat to our surprise, was that in the short run, the more ethnically diverse the neighborhood you live in, the more you, all of us, tend to hunker down, to pull in. The more diverse - and when I saw all of us, I mean all of us, I mean blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos, all of us, - the more diverse the group around us, ethnically, our neighborhood, the less we trust anybody, including people who look like us.</s>ROBERT PUTNAM: Whites trust whites less. Blacks trust blacks less in more diverse settings.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And now a new report from the Manhattan Institute, working on analysis of 2010 census data, says diverse neighborhoods are more and more the norm in the U.S. So we want to hear from you. Tell us the story of how your neighborhood has changed, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jacob Vigdor, one of the authors of the report from the Manhattan Institute, is with us from Duke University. Also with us here in Studio 3A, Georgetown law professor Sheryll Cashin. And let's see if we can get a caller on the line, and we'll start with Jay, and Jay's on the line with us from Jacksonville.</s>JAY: Good afternoon. I've seen my neighborhood change. It was predominately African-American when I moved in and more whites and other races have moved in over the last about decade or so. And some things have improved, and some things have remained the same.</s>JAY: I would say overall that you can't just look at where people live as an indication of the effects of integration, that most of the statistics about African-Americans lagging behind in education, wealth and social mobility have remained unchanged and are in fact even becoming worse at this point.</s>JAY: So the goal of integration wasn't to make a society where you can live anywhere, predominately. The real goal was to create a society in which all people can achieve their goals, and we haven't gotten there yet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, I'd say that was one of the goals, but equal opportunity, of course, the overarching goal, as well. But I wanted to ask you about that, Jacob Vigdor. We keep seeing statistics on the - amidst this housing crisis, the gap between black homeownership and white homeownership growing ever, ever larger.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Well, I think that it's important to think a lot about racial inequality. I wrote a book chapter a few years ago called "The Perplexing Persistence of Race." And the point of it was to illustrate how we made what we thought were a lot of advances in the civil rights era, the Fair Housing Act, equal employment legislation, and yet somehow in the wake of all those good movements in the 1960s, black-white disparities - now, it's not just homeownership, but it's unemployment rates, it's income, it's wealth - they have persisted.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: And I think that one of the things that comes out very clearly is that - the caller is absolutely right that it's not about segregation. So we can make segregation go away to some extent, but you can't expect that to just sort of magically make all forms of racial inequality go away. The inequality is still there. It is a more complicated problem than we might have thought it was back when we were passing this legislation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jay, would you say your neighborhood had changed as a result of the process we sometimes call gentrification? I think Jay has left us, and we thank him for his phone call. And that has been, Sheryll Cashin, one of the engines that is driving change in many African-American communities where they're becoming integrated because, well, to some degree blacks would say they are being driven out.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: Well, I'm not sure about that. I'd actually like to take up Jay's point about whether policies to support desegregation matter or not or whether segregation matters. I think one of the hopeful things that comes out of this study is that policy choices do matter. The study acknowledges that decades of intentional segregative policies created segregation, and reforms to undo that helped to bring segregation down.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: And I would beg to differ. I think the phalanx of policies we got from the civil rights movement, including the Fair Housing Act, created a lot of freedom and mobility, mobility that my parents didn't have, and it helped to create the black middle class.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: In 1950, 72 percent of African-Americans lived below the poverty line. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act helped create a black middle class. Yes, there's persistence in inequality, but I can point to a number of policies that continue to have discriminatory effects, including racially targeting of predatory lending that helped create or exacerbate the wealth gap between blacks and Latinos.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to Michael, Michael calling from San Antonio.</s>MICHAEL: Yes, when I was young, we were the first African-American family on our street, and I guess we experienced white flight. Whites moved out, and more African-Americans moved into the neighborhood until it was very diverse. And then some of the whites that were in the neighborhood never moved out and are still, in fact, in the neighborhood, some very elderly people.</s>MICHAEL: But I think that one of the thing that is being missed in this argument concerning the benefits of desegregation is the fact that the cultural atmosphere has changed so broadly in the United States and has been a helpful impetus to what was going on in civil rights in the courts.</s>MICHAEL: Give you an example, well, first of all, I think it was Thurgood Marshall who originally said, well, we lost as much with integration as we gained. But later on, what happened was as we moved further and further away from white male-dominated society, and I'm not trying to disrespect anybody when I say that, but the fact is that young white males said, hey, we're not following this government just because you say we need to go to Vietnam.</s>MICHAEL: White females say you know what? I'm going to burn my bra because I'm not going to be anybody's subject. African-Americans, of course we know what was going on there. So we had this cultural upheaval against all of those things that really helped to enforce segregation in the society, and as those things have slowly begun to slip away, we've seen a more integrated society.</s>MICHAEL: Now of course there's still more work to be done, and in this regard, you know, I still haven't heard a politician say that what we need to do is lower all the tax rates in all the ghettos so that we can encourage more businesses to start moving in there and employing people, so - which would probably be a great impetus to help the wage, you know, the...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I actually remember Jack Kemp talking about that, enterprise zones. That was quite some time ago. But it's interesting, Jacob Vigdor, you find that communities like San Antonio, a city that is exploding in population, that those Sunbelt cities are in fact the most integrated communities in our society.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: San Antonio is one of the 10 largest cities in the United States. I've just recently looked up that information, and I was kind of surprised, but it's really true. And this phenomenon that Michael in San Antonio describes, of black families moving in but then the neighborhood not quite tipping all the way, I think that's something that we really saw in large measure starting with data in the 1970s and going forward.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: And what Michael was talking about in terms of this cultural shift, that's a big part of it, that racial animosity, it's not gone. It's certainly not gone. But it's not the same as it was 50 years ago, and that's a big part of it. You know, the general social survey has been collecting information from adults for a very long time, asking them questions such as would you have a person of a different race over to dinner.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: And you can see the change in attitudes that way and the trends in that over time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sheryll Cashin?</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: I would agree with that. I mean, one of the most hopeful things I take from this study and what's new and really interesting is the decline of all-white spaces. The Latino population grew at 40 times the rate of growth of the white population in the last decade. It is increasingly difficult for anybody to avoid having encounters with people who are different racially or ethnically.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: And what's happening, I think, in a lot of metropolitan areas and what I hope will continue to happen is a rise in what I call cultural dexterity, the comfort of people being around people who are different. And my hope is that as this rise in cultural dexterity continues, we will be able to create a multiracial coalition to support saner public policies that give everybody, particularly struggling middle-class people, more choices in housing and schooling.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: And I think integration will help with that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Ellen, Ellen on the line with us from Milwaukee.</s>ELLEN: Well, I'm sorry to tell you that it's really bad here. I've been living here for 70 years, and, well, the only reason I didn't live in Milwaukee for a while was because I lived in a little place called Town of Lake, which was annexed and became the city of Milwaukee. So I've been in this neighborhood all of my life, and we do have a terrible inner-city problem. And I think the last recording was that 50 percent of black men in the city of Milwaukee are unemployed.</s>ELLEN: Manufacturing has left the inner city. There's - these young black men are being targeted, I'm positive, by our police force. I'm sure that they're doing as much - white kids in the suburbs are doing as many drugs as the black kids in Milwaukee, but the black kids in Milwaukee are the ones that are going to jail. And we have - even have a governor now that is trying to put into place the fact that people with a - black men with a felony - or any man with a felony, I guess, but they are mostly black - can't even be hired into the government.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Into a government job is, I think, what you're talking about.</s>ELLEN: Exactly. Exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And - but following up on her point, Jacob...</s>ELLEN: Maybe even being a janitor in a school.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jacob Vigdor, the places that have changed least, you found, were in the North, places, well, I guess, like Milwaukee.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Yeah. It's very interesting. We've had three callers so far, two from the Sun Belt - Jacksonville, San Antonio - and Milwaukee. I'll tell you, Milwaukee is a place I spent a lot of time. My mom lives there. I have a 91-year-old grandmother who lives in West Allis. And that's a place where I was a kid growing up where I sort of learned about segregation because it is one of the most segregated cities in the United States.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: And the fact that segregation hasn't changed much there, one thing that we've learned is that the places where segregation is happening are places that have undergone a lot of population growth. Milwaukee has not really experienced that. It is in the new neighborhoods, the neighborhoods that are rising out of the fields, on the outskirts of Sun Belt cities - where you see integration happening the most. The neighborhoods that don't have a history behind them, that's where you see an integrated group of residents coming in and creating a new history.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, Ellen.</s>ELLEN: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Jacob Vigdor of the Manhattan Institute, co-author of a new report titled "The End of the Segregated Century: Racial Separation in America's Neighborhood, 1890-2010." Also with us, Sheryll Cashin, professor of law at Georgetown University, author of "The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Tom in Charlotte: At my church, which is an intentionally integrated church led by a black and white pastor, we've been wrestling with this. But the church, in trying to take the long view, recently the pastor said, maybe we're building the church our sons will someday lead.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Sheryll Cashin, it's been described as the most segregated hour in America, that Sunday morning.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: Yeah, well, I go to a black Baptist church in Washington, D.C. But where people choose to worship God, I think, is less important than whether or not we are going to pursue public policies that encourage rather than discourage race and class inclusion. And this becomes extremely important as we rapidly diversify.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: To go back to one of the things that the previous caller from Milwaukee said, the reality she describes about what it's like to be a black male in a high-poverty inner-city neighborhood is not related solely to Milwaukee. Wherever ghetto census tracts exist and they continue to persist, you have this alternative reality I talked about.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: And the thing she describes are described very well in this book, "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander. While it is wonderful that in American society there's a lot more freedom and markets to live where you want to if you can afford it, we still have created this alternative universe of mass incarceration. And the people who are left behind in a relatively small percentage of ghetto census tracts do face incredible difficulty in terms of participating in the American mainstream.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: And if your callers hear nothing else I say. I want to underscore that segregation in American society harms everybody, not just ghetto residents. It harms everybody. The vast majority of struggling middle-class white people are trying to figure out where to live. It's only the 7 percent of Americans who can buy their way into what I call gold standard, high-opportunity neighborhoods that happen to be overwhelmingly white.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: They're the only ones who are truly living the American dream, where they get high-quality public schools, very little poverty, low taxes, low crime. Everybody else gets a different deal. And if we pursued policies like inclusionary zoning and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I just wanted to give...</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...Jacob Vigdor a chance to respond.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As you look ahead to the future, do you see this kind of rapid progress that would shrivel those pockets of ghetto neighborhoods and inner cities down to, well, much smaller than they are now?</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Yeah. You know, one of the things that you learn when you look over this much history of segregation in the United States is that history matters. And we've seen it all over the country where we've analyzed the data.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: When neighborhoods are established as black neighborhoods - and we're talking about neighborhoods now that were largely established between, say, 1920 and 1965 - you don't see much movement into those neighborhoods on the part of people of other races. Maybe you see a little bit of immigration here, a little bit of gentrification there, but, for the most part, these neighborhoods are not changing very much. And that's something that's come up already today. They are sort of depopulating.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: And so that's - it's hard to forecast a lot of change happening there in the future because we haven't seen much change there over the past 40 years. This kind of change that's easier to point to and anticipate will be the change that we've already seen in terms of the movements towards more newly-constructed integrated neighborhoods.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jacob Vigdor, thanks very much for your time today. Appreciate it.</s>JACOB VIGDOR: Oh, you're welcome. It's a pleasure to be here, Neal. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jacob Vigdor, professor of public policy and economics at Duke and co-author of "The End of the Segregated Century." Our thanks as well to Sheryll Cashin, who joined us here in Studio 3A, professor of law at Georgetown, author of "The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream." Thanks very much for your time.</s>SHERYLL CASHIN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Coming up, we're going to be talking about the late Don Cornelius. We got this email from Greg in Charlottesville, Virginia: Growing up watching "Soul Train," and Don Cornelius taught me two things. One, there is no such things as a bellbottom that's too wide or a platform shoe that's too high. Two, the "Soul Train" dance line features the coolest cats on the planet, hands down. We would like to hear what you learned from Don Cornelius. 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. Stay with us. Shabba Doo will join us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

A 33,000-year-old skull of a "wolf on the way to becoming a dog" was found in a Siberian cave. Evolutionary Biologist Susan Crockford, co-author of a study about the skull in PLoS ONE, discusses why the discovery challenges common beliefs about dog domestication.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Ever wonder where your pet poodle or your Labrador came from, who her ancestors were and when she evolved from wolf to dog? A 33,000-year-old fossil, discovered in a Siberian cave, may help shed some light on those questions. Researchers report that features of the ancient skull, including its overall size and teeth, indicate it might have belonged to a wolf on the way to becoming a dog. They say the skull tells a story that may make us question everything we thought we knew about dog ancestry and domestication.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Susan Crockford is an evolutionary biologist and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria. She co-authored the study on the skull published in the Public Library of Science. She joins us from British Columbia in Canada. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: DR. SUSAN CROCKFORD: Hello.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That's a pretty big claim to question everything we know about dog ancestry and domestication.</s>CROCKFORD: I'm not sure that that's exactly what we said...</s>CROCKFORD: ...but it certainly does shed some new light on some of what we've been thinking about what's been going on.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tell us about - give us a little nutshell description of what you found.</s>CROCKFORD: Well, it's a complete skull with both of the lower jaws. Most of the teeth are there. The skull was found in a cave in Siberia, in the Altai Mountains, in about 1975. The Altai Mountains are in, sort of, southern Siberia. If you look on a map, it's where the confluence of Mongolia, Siberia and Afghanistan, just to sort of place it.</s>CROCKFORD: And the original archaeologist who found the specimen thought that it really didn't look like a typical wolf, and so he pulled it out for some re-analysis. And that's what we've been doing now, is going back and doing - did some radiocarbon dating to put it in proper chronological context, and also looked at measuring it and that sort of thing to see how it compared to both more recent dogs and also to wolves of that time period.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, what would be the key differences and the key similarities to make it look like it was transitioning from a wolf to a dog?</s>CROCKFORD: Well, the really key outstanding feature is its size.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>CROCKFORD: It's about the size of a large Samoyed dog, so really quite small for a wolf. However, the teeth are still wolf size. So it's this combination of dog and wolf features that makes it different.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you've pushed this fossil back over 30,000 years. Where would the - what was the last fossil estimate of that timeline?</s>CROCKFORD: Well, in around 12 to 14,000.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow, that's a big difference.</s>CROCKFORD: Yeah, it is a big difference. And one of the things that really is critical, we think, is that one of the things that happened in between that, of course, was the ice age.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Oh.</s>CROCKFORD: And so a lot of places where some of the other fossils have been found in Europe actually were covered in glaciers during that ice age period.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm.</s>CROCKFORD: So it's a really important blockage...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>CROCKFORD: ...of things going on in Europe. And one of the things that we noticed was that while this specimen was found before the ice age, there are no specimens similar to it that continue on through the ice age period or after in that same area of Siberia. That area of Siberia actually wasn't covered by glaciers, and so people still live there. And even still, there are no similar specimens that carry on through time.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And so is there still this big gap between 12,000 and 33,000 years of knowledge of what happened there?</s>CROCKFORD: Yes. There are several more specimens similar to this one that we found that were found in Belgium, the Czech Republic and around the Caucasus in Southern Europe and - that are similar to this and about the same - from the same time period. But still this big gap.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. You know, we all - we've been told over the years that the common belief about how dogs were domesticated is that ancient people tamed wolf pups. They tamed them and created them, brought them in, and they morphed into dogs, so to speak. Does this back that up, or is there a better theory?</s>CROCKFORD: Well, I would say not. One of the things that has come to light is that - that idea that taming actually leads to the changes we see between wolves and dogs really has no evidence to back it up. It doesn't mean that it couldn't have happened. It just means that, really, there are - is no evidence to suppose that that's true. So what anthropologists and biologists have been looking at is what kind of process might be a better explanation for how that transition would have occurred.</s>CROCKFORD: And what we're coming up with is the idea that actually the wolves domesticated themselves, that when people settled down into permanent villages that some wolves chose to come and live with those people, and as a result of that colonization of the new habitat, that they naturally became this new species that we call a dog.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now why would it have to become a new species? Why can't a wolf just, you know, learn to live with people if that's what it did?</s>CROCKFORD: Well, partly because of its own natural inclination to stay away from dangerous predators. And, of course, you have to remember that that's what people were at that point in time. They were hunters, and they were hunting big game animals like mammoths and horses and bison. And they were actually in direct competition with the wolves of that time period. And wolves, almost certainly, would have challenged people, try to come and claim a carcass of a mammoth for themselves, and people would have - had to drive them off. And they would have killed them, I'm sure, if they could have.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So to live peacefully with people, the wolf would have to become more peaceful is what you're saying.</s>CROCKFORD: Well, I mean, peaceful is one way to put it. And the other - some of the other aspects that need to change in terms of behavior are the fearfulness, the - and the stress response. They need to not run from people when they get close because it's actually - getting close to people means that they can go in an scavenge some of the waste that is laying around.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And as far as the skull getting smaller...</s>CROCKFORD: Well, what we know from experimental evidence is that some of these kinds of changes are the result of growth rates shifting between the wolf and the dog, and that almost certainly happens while the puppies are still embryos. So while they're still inside the mother, they're being exposed or they're growing at a slightly different rate than the wolf ancestor is.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. So we find evidence that they have evolved before the last ice age. We have this big ice age, this giant gap in history. And now, do they have to then be domesticated all over again?</s>CROCKFORD: Well - and that's what it looks like, is that this - whatever the process that's going on, is it - was happening from Western Europe, all the way across to Siberia before the ice age. The ice age put an end to that because people had to move away and start doing different things. After the ice age ended people settled down again, and the process started up. So it means that whatever this specimen was, it was maybe in the first few generations on the way to becoming a dog, it didn't make it all the way, and it certainly is not an ancestor of modern dogs.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's not.</s>CROCKFORD: No.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Can we get any DNA samples out of these things?</s>CROCKFORD: Possibly.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>CROCKFORD: That's one of the areas of further research that we're going to try and get into.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And where would you look for more fossils that would be the, you know, those missing ears here?</s>CROCKFORD: Well, we would need to look in an area of Eurasia that wasn't covered in glaciers during the ice age.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And are there people...</s>CROCKFORD: And so that pretty much puts us into, say, southern - or most of Siberia, actually, and China. China's a very fertile area actually, possibly specimens showing up there. There hasn't been a lot of work done, and there's a very good chance that there could be some quite old early dogs showing up in China.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. If wolves were evolving to become more domestic, were there other animal relationships evolving with humans at the same time?</s>CROCKFORD: At the same time as dogs?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yes.</s>CROCKFORD: No, not really. It really seems to have been pretty much sequential. It - especially in those early days. And so, the next one after the dog, a little bit of contention there, but it looks like perhaps the pig.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Uh-huh.</s>CROCKFORD: And then goats and sheep.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: When did the housecat come into?</s>CROCKFORD: Oh, it's quite late. It's - it doesn't come in until around the Egyptian period, maybe, you know, four to five thousand years ago. So - and it - again, if you think about even the way cats were used or the way that they were living even 50 years ago in rural areas that they were being attracted by the rodents that were living off the stored grain. And so that brought cats in from the wild.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Were they - did they look different than they would have today?</s>CROCKFORD: Not very much. Cats actually haven't changed as much from their wild ancestors have - as dogs have, and that has to do with this business of how the growth rate changes and how it changes the length of the snout. A wolf has a much larger snout than a cat does, so there's more room for change.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Very interesting. Let's go to the phones. Elle(ph) in Los Gatos, California. Hi, Elle.</s>ELLE: Hi, yes. I feel that wolves - it's all through food and need in the dead of winter when food is scarce. The wolves need food, and the people thousands of years ago were more in tune with nature and would put food out for them. And little by little, they became more gentle and docile because they trusted. There was a mutual trust. And I've seen this in today with friends who have put cat food out for wild skunks and wild raccoons. And over the years, with many generations, these animals have become quite domesticated and quite happy in their homes. So it's always a need. It's a mutual need that I feel really is how it comes about.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right, Elle, and thank you for calling. 1-800-989-8255 is our number. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, talking with Dr. Susan Crockford. What do you think of that? Do you think that might be a mechanism for...</s>CROCKFORD: Well, she raises an interesting point, and that is that there really have to be some kind of need on the part of the wolf. And one of the things that, I think, comes into play here is that there may have been instances, especially after the ice age, where wolves may have been stressed. There might have had some food shortages going on, in which case it would've made all the waste products that people just left lying around - I mean, they didn't have to put it out for them especially. It was just there, and that would've been especially attractive. So it really raises a point that it, you know, it was beneficial for both. The wolves got to eat, and the people got to have their campsites and their villages cleaned up.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's go to Dustin in San Antonio, Texas. Hi, Dustin.</s>DUSTIN: Hi. How are you today?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi, there.</s>DUSTIN: Thank you. As I understand it, wolves and dogs can successfully interbreed and produce multigenerational successful offspring. Are they still considered a different species? And if so, it's not a bit arbitrary considering the differences seem to be mostly phenotypic. Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Uh-huh. Good question. Dr. Crockford?</s>CROCKFORD: Well, that's an issue that has been contentious for a little while, and part of that comes from the idea that animals cannot interbreed if they are indeed true species. They can't interbreed and produce fertile offspring that go on to breed for another generation. And one of the things that genetics has shown us is that very many more real species can hybridize than we have ever been aware of. And what's important to keep in mind is that while interbreeding is possible, it doesn't happen on a regular basis. And so at that level, it really doesn't challenge or put in jeopardy the species as a whole.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Uh-huh. So we're changing out views then about how this might have...</s>CROCKFORD: Well, I think so. And it - one of the things that's happening is that - one of the arguments is that wolves and dogs are very close genetically and that for - so perhaps we should actually consider them just the same species but a different form, a different subspecies perhaps. But, in fact, what we're learning is that there are very many species who are just as close genetically, and we would not consider them to be members of the same species. So it really is putting more emphasis, I think, back on the differences in form, the body form and the behavior and the physiology, and those differences between them that keep them separated. And that is raising an importance; the genetics, not so much.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Crockford, thank you for taking time to be with us today.</s>CROCKFORD: It's been a pleasure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Have a good weekend. Dr. Susan...</s>CROCKFORD: You, too.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Susan Crockford is an evolutionary biologist and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, and she co-authored the study on the skull published in the Public Library of Science.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flatow in New York.

Online media advocate Clay Shirky has long been a skeptic of newspaper paywalls. He now thinks 2012 could be the year that a critical mass of readers will be willing to pay for news online. Shirky discusses his conversion and Denise Warren, general manager for NYTimes.com, explains the New York Times paywall strategy. Read Clay Shirky's column "Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Paywall skeptic Clay Shirky long maintained that barriers to newspaper websites were counterproductive and self-defeating, that online readers accustomed to getting the news for free would find another way or another source of news.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: After a largely unsuccessful attempt at a paywall a few years ago, the New York Times introduced a revamped pay model in 2011. Signs are it might be working. Clay Shirky argues that's in part because some highly motivated subscribers are willing to pay and in part because advertisers seem to want access to those well-read minds.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's not just national newspapers like the Times and the Wall Street Journal. Local papers recognize that dwindling circulation means they're going to need online revenue if they want to keep covering city council, the zoning board and high school football.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So what about where you live? How do paywalls change things? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Later in the program, an Israeli attack on Iran on The Opinion Page this week.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But first, newspaper paywalls. Clay Shirky, an associate professor at NYU, joins us from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you back on the program.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Thanks so much, Neal. Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you wrote a piece on - called "The Year of the Paywall," which said 2012 might just be the year in which newspapers abandon the idea that all readers are customers.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Right. I think the thing to understand about the model that's being tried now by the New York Times, by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, by the Chicago Sun Times, finally gives up on the idea that every reader online can be treated as if they were someone who is purchasing the paper, the kind of online equivalent of someone who's purchasing the paper when it was just a physical product.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: In fact, what all three of the papers are doing, and I think an increasing number of papers are copying them, is saying we will never get a majority or even a sizable minority of our readers to pay us directly, but we can design a system in which some of our most passionate, engaged readers pay us directly, and the rest of the readers, the casual readers, we can keep around for the advertising revenue.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And squaring that circle has been the hard conversation for the last really 15 years of paywalls. It looks like now maybe that we've got a solution that deals with both halves of that equation, both the user fees and the advertising.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you suspect that will change things in a number of interesting ways. We'll get to that in just a moment. But first, you - your conclusion is that most people who use the newspaper aren't necessarily reading the coverage of the Florida primary; they're checking the sports and the horoscopes.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Right, I mean, you know, newspapers have always been a bundle, right? They have sections for a reason, and it's not to maximize the chance that a Mets fan is going to see news from the Honduras, right? There are people who go to the sports section first. There are people who go to the business section first. There are people who read only those things.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: As long as the newspaper was a bundle, no one ever had to care that people were buying it for radically different reasons. But once you go online, and people can unbundle things, where you can traffic directly to a story without going through the home page or any of the rest of it, suddenly what it - the individual choices made by individual readers come to matter a lot.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And so online it became impossible, really impossible, to get the casual readers to behave like committed readers who would read every section or every story or what have you. In fact, if you graph what people are reading on any given newspaper, the absolute commonest pattern is the user who reads one article in a month.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And that's the bulk of the head count. If you raise even a small threshold, all of those people go away, you get a core of more loyal readers, but you lose a lot of people to advertise to.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So if you raise the bar, say you can have 20 articles a month for free, you're going to get most of your readers still and the advertising that is directed to them. That'll still sell, but that's not going to pay a lot of your costs. You can, though, charge those motivated subscribers a fee, and it looks like they're going to be willing to pay for it.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: That's right, and it certainly - I mean, what we're seeing now - again with the Times, the Star-Tribune, the Sun Times - is that a small core of readers will come forward and support the paper. And this is I think a really interesting change because it isn't just, hey, we got a new source of money, which is always welcome in the newspaper world, but also because psychologically it moves the Times, the New York Times business model closer to NPR's, where a majority of listeners don't donate in any given year, but those of us who do sign up, become, you know, members, in my case WNYC, become members of their local station give money, are supporting the enterprise for the rest of the population.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: So now the Times has this similar group of very committed users who are disproportionately supporting the paper for the rest of us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's interesting. You wrote about that in this article: Lest NPR seem like small ball, it's worth noting, you write, that the Times has convinced something like one out of every 100 of its online readers to pay, while NPR affiliates' success rate is something like one in 12.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We've been at it a little longer than they have, but...</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Practice, practice makes perfect, yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So nevertheless, that changes if you're appealing to core listeners and core readers. That changes your business.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: That does change your business because suddenly you care about the difference between the user who just happens to glance at an article and the user who's actually committed to the longevity of your institution.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Now, when you go to advertisers, typically in the open market, when it was just, you know, here's our Web traffic, an eyeball was an eyeball is an eyeball, as the phrase is in the online marketing world. But when you are actually deriving some of your revenues from users signing up to give you, in the Times' case five bucks a week, what that - what makes that user base loyal and what makes that user base recruit more users to become loyal suddenly becomes a business imperative.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: That means you've got this small subset, as NPR has a core of users that support it, you've got now in these newspapers a small subset of their users who aren't just customers but are approaching a condition like members.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, joining us now from a studio at the New York Times, where she's chief advertising officer, is Denise Warren; she's also general manager at NYTimes.com. Nice to have you with us today.</s>DENISE WARREN: Thanks for having me on the program, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I'm not sure you accept Clay Shirky's analogy, but if you get into the tote bag business, we're going to have a problem.</s>DENISE WARREN: We sure will.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is this a reasonable analogy, that in fact you're getting a core audience who's willing to - I think Clay Shirky referred to it as the God forbid audience, the people who say God forbid the New York Times should go away.</s>DENISE WARREN: I think Clay has outlined it exactly right. I mean, this model was not designed to get everybody who comes to our website to pay. Clay is absolutely right in terms of the distribution of the audience, and I think this is true for most publishers. The vast majority of people come and turn one article or two articles.</s>DENISE WARREN: But there is a very loyal minority of folks who told us through rounds and rounds of research that they value the New York Times content, they'd be willing to pay to support the New York Times content. And so the key for us in this model was threading that needle - remaining open to the Web, enabling those who are coming to us for that one article or two article, et cetera, to still enjoy the content but at the same time enable those who are very loyal to have some kind of a different experience with us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And threading the needle in terms of how many stories you can access for free per month and the price point.</s>DENISE WARREN: Yes, that's right. We did a tremendous amount of research in the lead-up to the launch of the pay model. And I want to just actually throw something out here, as well. We keep talking about the quote-unquote paywall, but I think it's important for your audience to understand that this was a holistic strategy, and it's across all of our digital platforms.</s>DENISE WARREN: So it includes not only our website, but it includes our mobile devices, as well, and that is - you know, I think everybody knows is becoming increasingly an important way for folks to access content. And we're seeing some very interesting user behaviors as it relates to that. So it's important just to understand those distinctions.</s>DENISE WARREN: But price became very important, understanding how our users were using the website, how many articles they were accessing; really setting the meter on the website at the exact right place really was the trick to the success that we've seen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email we have from Victoria: I love the New York Times and often thought I would pay for the information they were giving away for free. One day, while I was reading it online for free, I opened up an offer in the mail to pay for the delivered subscription and wondered why I would do that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But now that they want me to pay for the online version, I'm hesitant. I've used up my 20 free articles this month. I'm waiting for February. I think they're charging too much(ph) , maybe $4.99 per month. After all, they don't incur any of the costs of printing and delivery.</s>DENISE WARREN: I think the New York Times journalism is extremely expensive, and it's very, very, very valuable. And again, our research suggests that users are willing to pay for that. We're giving users a number of different options in terms of how they'd like to pay for it. There's several different approaches.</s>DENISE WARREN: One is the home delivery bundle, so to speak, which includes access to all of our content across all digital platforms. There is also, going to the other end of the spectrum, the opportunity to access our content just on the website and your smartphone device. That is a much lower cost than the home delivery. And then there's a variety of options in between.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And then there's geezers like me who still get a newspaper on my driveway every morning. Clay Shirky, though, I wonder, she's talking about all the mobile apps. I wonder how much the smartphone and the tablet have changed this equation because they are so much more like the newspaper experience.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Well, they've changed the equation less, I think, than you'd imagine. And in fact, I think one of the Times - one of the things the Times said in launching this, in launching their system - I don't like to call it a paywall because something that lets out most of the content, the wall isn't the right metaphor for it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Maybe a membrane then.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Exactly, fair enough, right, semi-permeable membrane - that consumers are increasingly converging on their expected behaviors. And in fact the difference between the phone and the tablet and the computer are shrinking as the tablets and the phones get more capable.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: So there was this thought originally that the tablet would be this kind of ideal walled garden, but unfortunately Apple also shipped it with a browser, and so the Web is still present and in fact more present in the mobile phone ecosystem than it has ever been before.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And so I think increasingly publishers are saying if we're printing something and then putting it on a truck and putting it in your driveway, as you said, Neal, then that is essentially one form of delivery, and digital is a different form of delivery.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Most of the kind of pure iPad plays have worked out only if they're newsletters, which is to say for a small, relatively tightly organized group of readers. But once it's really a newspaper, once it means to be a general, you know, an omnibus publication for a large group of readers, digital content goes to the various devices users want it to, and if you add too many distinctions in there, the user frustration goes through the roof, and it stops being worth the segmentation in the first place.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Clay Shirky, an associate professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, author most recently of an article called "The Year of the Newspaper Paywall." Denise Warren is also with us, senior vice president and chief advertising officer at the New York Times Media Group, general manager for NYTimes.com. We'd like to hear from you. Where you live, how are paywalls at newspapers changing things? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Paywalls for news content still a matter for significant debate in the online world and indeed in newsrooms too. Meghan Peters from the social media and digital culture news blog Mashable recently called 2011 the year the paywall worked. Others push back, arguing paywalls only work in very specific situations for certain kinds of readers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That may not be a bad thing on the national level at organizations like the New York Times and for local publications like the Honolulu Civil Beat. We want to know what it's like where you live. How have paywalls changed things? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our guest is Clay Shirky, he's an associate professor at NYU; and Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com. Let's go to Robert, and Robert's on the line with us from Fairfax, California.</s>ROBERT: Yes, hello. I've been a lifelong newspaper reader, and I used to - of course, I live in the Bay Area, so I used to get the Chronicle. And I love reading the New York Times online, and I did so for several years for free. And then when the New York Times started charging for it, I think I held out for a month or two, but I can go through 20 articles very quickly.</s>ROBERT: So I finally decided to pay, and I get the Sunday Times, the printed newspaper, and I pay for the digital content, and I'm happy to do so because when you think about it, I mean, most people, at least if you're over a certain age, you used to pay for newspapers all the time. You just took it for granted.</s>ROBERT: And certainly for the quality of the New York Times, I think it's well worth it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I wonder, do you think, though, as a digital subscriber, you should be forced to see all the ads that everybody else sees?</s>ROBERT: Well, I'd like to see fewer ads. I do notice, because I was going to mention, too, that obviously people can get Yahoo! News and Google News, which are good news sources, but the ads on those sites just seem more obnoxious. So I don't know if the Times is trying to have a certain aesthetic standard for their ads, but yeah, fewer ads for people who are subscribing would make sense to me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Denise Warren?</s>DENISE WARREN: Actually, Robert, first let me thank you for being a loyal, long-term paying customer of the New York Times. We do appreciate your support. Yes, in fact, the New York Times does take its ad quality very, very seriously. We actually have an ad acceptability department that monitors the quality of advertising across all of our platforms.</s>DENISE WARREN: We do take great measure to make sure that there's a balance between the advertising and its quote-unquote intrusiveness, or I think obnoxiousness might have been the word that you used, Robert, and we really are very careful about that because it is the entire user experience that really does matter to our customers. So that is very important to us, and I'm glad you've noticed it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But if there are digital subscribers like Robert, who is paying the five bucks a week or whatever it is, shouldn't he be maybe screened off from more ads?</s>DENISE WARREN: I think the real answer to your question, Neal, is the economics, as I said earlier, of producing the quality content that the New York Times produces. It's such that it demands both an advertising and a subscription revenue stream.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, Robert, thanks very much for the phone call, appreciate it.</s>ROBERT: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Clay Shirky, you speculate, though, in your article that motivated readers like Robert are going to come eventually to want maybe different things than the 90 percent who will never subscribe.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Right, there's actually been a very interesting conversation kicked off after I'd put out that piece, in which the New York Times public editor, Arthur Brisbane, who I should say does not speak for the New York Times directly, he's in an ombudsman role, but he asked about fact-checking. He asked should the Times become truth vigilantes, as he memorably put it.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And the pushback that he got on that idea of essentially how hard should we push politicians not to either bend the truth or sort of use weasel words to get around these issues, he had a kind of a sophisticated conversation about how, you know, how much leeway should we give them.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And the universal that came back from politically committed readers was none; we rely on you to go after the politicians and not allow them to essentially get away with distorted political speech. And when you see that kind of uprising - and it happened several times in a row because Brisbane went on to explain his point of view several times in a row, when you see that kind of uprising, you think there is unmet demand here in what those users want from the paper relative to what at least Brisbane's conception of the job is.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And when you get a paper that has an increasing integration of its social functions - the Times recently moved the comments directly onto the page with the articles, they've made the comments section more conversational, so user-to-user conversation is simply going to be more important and more engaged on that platform in 2012 than it was in 2011.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: At the same time there is this small group of users for whom their commitment to the paper is significant enough that they're going to be handing over five bucks a week. And I'm speculating that when those two forces come together, you're going to see that group of people start to ask for things that are different from what the people just showing up to read the occasional business article or the occasional celebrity article are going to ask for.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Denise Warren, is that part of the conversation at the Times? Yeah, go ahead, please.</s>DENISE WARREN: Yeah. As a matter of fact, we're not waiting for them to ask. We're starting to give products and services to our paying subscribers. So for example, last year we launched two apps. One was a politics app on the iPhone, and another was called the collection app, it's a fashion app on the iPad.</s>DENISE WARREN: These apps will be no charge to our paying customers on those platforms. And you cannot access that content unless you are a paying subscriber. So you're starting to see us experiment with this as well. There's also subscriber newsletters that we are giving to our paying customers that help them understand the back-story behind some of the more significant news pieces that we are reporting on.</s>DENISE WARREN: Again, this is only something that is going to our paying customers. So we're starting to do this already and experiment with that approach.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We should also point out, I think your publisher said that in the event of a horrible event like 9/11, maybe that instead of 20 articles a month, that could be moved considerably upwards as people wanted to access stories on a situation like that. So this is flexible.</s>But I wanted to read this email from Russ in Berkeley: Unlike the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times is available on Google. Just go to the New York Times site, see a story you want to read, paste the headline into Google, and there's the full story for free. You can do this as many times as you'd like.</s>But I wanted to read this email from Russ in Berkeley: It's more hassle than subscribing, but not a lot. A friend of mine who works at the Times told me the paper is fine with people who do this because it ups the page views and hence increases the amount they can charge for ads. Denise Warren, is that true?</s>DENISE WARREN: Yeah, so when we originally were constructing the model, it was very, very important to us to do a number of things. One was certainly - obviously the business objective was to create a new revenue stream while maintaining a very robust and growing advertising revenue stream.</s>DENISE WARREN: But equally as important was our mission, and it was incredibly important to us that we remained open to the Web. We had, as you noted earlier, an experience with Times Select, where this was many years ago, it generated over $10 million in revenue, so it was a successful model, but what we learned form that experiment was that a certain number of our very important voices, mostly our opinion journalists, were quote-unquote walled off from the rest of the Web.</s>DENISE WARREN: And we did not think that moving in that direction really made a lot of sense for the New York Times. So one of the core principles for executing this model was to remain open to the Web. So we were very generous with the number of articles that users can access, as well as remaining open to search and social and all the referral points back to the New York Times.</s>DENISE WARREN: When we first launched, there was a lot of discussion and debate about this approach, and we took a lot of criticism for it, and there was a lot of quote-unquote gaming of the system. But nine months later, I can tell you that we really haven't seen a lot of people manipulating URLs or cutting and pasting. We haven't seen a very big difference, you know, in terms of that now versus prior to launching.</s>DENISE WARREN: I think, you know, the basic headline here is that most of our users are honest, most of them are going to sort of abide by the rules that we've laid out, and they don't really want to work that hard, if they really want to read an article, to go back to Google and, you know, continue to operate that way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Denise Warren, thank you very much for your time today, we appreciate it.</s>DENISE WARREN: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer at the New York Times Media Group and general manager for NYTimes.com. And as we mentioned, Clay Shirky, it's not just the Times, it's not just the Wall Street Journal. The Journal and the Financial Times always seen in a special category, business news, time urgent, they had proprietary information people were always willing to pay for. But it is more now - fairly large regional papers.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Right, well, so - and this is I think the thing that finally - the newspaper industry moves in a pack because in a way they've all had the same business model for so long. They've all looked for some kind of synchronized solution to the current economic problem.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And so when an individual paper would have an individual experiment, it would be regarded as interesting but not evidence of anything. Now that you've got the Sun Times in Chicago and the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis and so forth experimenting with this model, you - I think we're starting to see real movement away from the classic paywall of you pay me or you don't read it to this kind of metered threshold where if you're a casual reader, we're going to treat you as useful for the advertising base.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: But if you're a passionate reader, past a certain point we're going to ask you to support the mission of the paper as a whole, and this is exactly the same surprise as when Radiohead puts up an album for free and asks people to pay, or Louis C.K., the comic, puts up a show for free and asks people to pay, is that people actually do it. They actually pay for it because they think it's the right thing to do - not in a completely bloodless I'm-calculating-an-economic-transaction way, but because they care about the person or the institution on the other side of the browser page.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: And that, I think, is - that - this is going to be, now, a big sorting out for American papers, between those papers for whom readers have, as you said in the article, what I call the God forbid reaction, right? God forbid, the Chicago Sun Times go out of existence. The people who feel that way are going to be disproportionately likely to support the Chicago Sun Times, not just because they think I'm buying content and that's what I used to do when it was on paper, but because they think of themselves as supporters, as people who care about the institution as a whole.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And now you're - we're getting into sort of McLuhan territory here, but...</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Oh, yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, yeah. Radio, a hot medium. People subscribe to National Public Radio because they think Scott Simon is terrific, or Robert Siegel is terrific, or Renee Montagne is terrific, all those people. There's this emotional bond with this medium. Newspapers, a cool medium.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Well, so this then gets into the big open question, which is the hollowing out of the American metropolitan newspaper between 1980 and now, where a majority of the content for the kind of mid-sized metro daily papers for towns of 100, 200,000 people. They're not so small that they're just doing community news, but they're not so large that they can cover everything the way The New York Times famously can. And those papers are often a - made up of a majority of wire service content and, you know, Sudoku and astrology. Sudoku and astrology are not categories that anybody has a local monopoly on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: No. And they're - they are available for free.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Right. And so we're going to start to see newspapers sorted on this kind of hot-to-cold spectrum that McLuhan first introduced. People who have a passionate relationship with a particular paper or - are going to be the people disproportionately likely to support it. But if you turn that around, papers that are good at not just delivering a product that users were willing to pay for when it was printed, but papers that are good at actually getting people in their town or city to say, I like this institution, I'm committed to it in a hot way. Those papers are going to be disproportionately better positioned to survive this transition than the people who've just been bundling the AP newswire and a bunch of comics from, you know, a syndicated service and wrapping it inside a thin veneer of local news. Those papers are going to suffer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking, of course, about Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist of the 20th century who - I guess his best-known book was "The Medium is the Massage." You can hear the pun in there. Clay Shirky is our guest on TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's go to Rod. Rod is on the line with us from Denver.</s>ROD: Hi. Love your show, Neal. It's fantastic.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>ROD: Unfortunately, a lot of the pay scale started to happen during the worst economic downturn. I feel that I have become less informed because of my inability to pay for The New York Times. And I love The Times. I love it. But my statement is this, that because I've become less informed by The Times and not being able to read as much, the Denver Post here in my area has picked up the slack a little bit in the fact that it's put more Facebook posts out there, and I'm able to access it better that way, and I feel more informed that way. That utilizing social media and maybe apps, you know, is one of the things that The New York Times needs to, you know, maybe look into more. And I'll take my comment or my answer off the air.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK, Rod. Thanks.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Great. Thank you, Rod. Yes. This gets to what Denise was talking about, I think, which is papers really have two missions. There is no such thing as the news business. There's only the advertising business, which used to cross-subsidize news, right? So the old hook model was you write about the football team so you could take money from the car dealer and give it to the guy on the city desk. And it was crazy system, but it also worked for a really long time.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Now that the economic model that supported that is under, you know, debilitating pressure from the Web, papers have to rebalance how much of what they're doing is about pursuing the revenue that supports the mission, and how much of it is about broadcasting the results. And I think everybody looked at what happened to The Times and Sunday Times, which are very significant papers in the political conversation in the United Kingdom. And after they went by the paywall - even more dramatically than what Rod is talking about with The New York Times - just large parts of what The Times and Sunday Times published never resonated with the general public.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: So there is now this tension, and Rod's got it exactly right. If you put out everything to everybody, you cannot generate a real stream of revenue from your most passionate users. On the other hand, any threshold is going to cut off some number of people who would be interested in reading more, but are not, for one reason or another, going to come up with $5 a week, or whatever it is that The Times is asking for. And that re-alignment is actually, I think, going to be a really big shift in the newspaper environment. Because, as he said, the Denver Post, may, in fact, be able to goose its advertising revenues better by staying more free longer and picking up some of the territory The Times cedes.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: So the - instead of saying, the whole newspaper industry is now going to adopt this one new business model - we're just going to move from point A to point B - I think you're going to see this big scattering of some papers using social media better, as Rod was saying, others pulling back from it. Some papers charging more, other papers charging less. And it means that the whole, essentially, the assumed business model that lay under every newspaper in the United States is breaking up, to be replaced not by a different business model, but by a whole range of business models around how open or closed they want to be.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, one final note, this email, I guess, from Martin: I'm a college student in Minnesota, studying computer sciences. I've been highly involved in the Occupy movement and pay a vast amount of attention to anonymous actions. I get the majority of my news on Twitter before it gets released by most major news networks. Why should I pay for news I've already received for free? Just food for thought.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: I mean, the reason you pay for news is to get the news that you haven't received for free. So Twitter's the source of news in two different ways. Some of it is truly, genuinely, breaking news, right, if you subscribe to any of the Occupy feeds because many New York City police forces have actually made a practice of arresting journalists, which is, you know, I think an affront to the First Amendment but certainly part of the recent tactics, then finding out what the occupiers themselves are saying as they're being cleared out is the way to get direct news. But sometimes you need an institution to commit to doing the investigation in a way that isn't going to show up on Twitter. And that's the kind of thing we rely on The New York Times to do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And one final fact check here, and this is from Ross on an email: Louis C.K. did not offer a show for free. He offered it for $5 though he did not put a digital lock on the copies for real. So thank you for that correction. Clay Shirky, thank you very much for your time.</s>CLAY SHIRKY: Thank you. Thank you, Neal, for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And when we get back, the opinion page. Stay with us. It's NPR News.

This week solar flares sent a huge blast of X-rays and charged particles screaming towards the Earth. Solar astronomer David Hathaway and physicist Doug Biesecker discuss the sun's explosive behavior, and how that 'space weather' affects satellites, airplanes and the electric grid.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: You've probably heard the news earlier this week. There was an explosion on the surface of the sun, a solar flare, and because we at SCIENCE FRIDAY want to know how everything works and why, we're calling in a couple of experts to explain the ABCs of a solar storm and actually how the sun works.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How good are we at predicting these solar explosions? What effects can they have on the Earth? Are there still some unsolved mysteries about the sun and how it works? Let me introduce my guests. David Hathaway is a solar astronomer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Hathaway.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: DAVID H. HATHAWAY: Thank you, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome. Doug Biesecker is a physicist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder. He joins us from radio station KGNU in Boulder. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Biesecker.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Thanks for having me on the show, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome. David, can you give us a play-by-play of what happened there on the sun this week?</s>HATHAWAY: Yeah, it starts with a flash, a solar flare that we see particularly in X-rays from the sun. The sun gets 100 to 1,000 times brighter than normal in X-rays from the sunspot region. With that - we saw that, of course, in the time it takes light to get from the sun, so eight and a half minutes or so.</s>HATHAWAY: Within an hour we saw radiation from it. This is energetic, subatomic particles, electrons and protons and so forth, and that built up pretty steadily and stayed high for days. That whole explosion, it's a magnetic explosion on the sun, launched what we called a coronal mass ejection.</s>HATHAWAY: This is literally a billion tons of matter moving at a million miles an hour, streaming through the solar system, and it was aimed pretty much right at us. That hit us a couple days later and produced some spectacular auroral arrays.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And is it going on still? Is there still activity going on?</s>HATHAWAY: Well, it's interesting you should ask. That one has since calmed down, but we are at this moment in the midst of an even bigger flare as far as X-rays, but it's off the edge of the sun, so we're not going to get the dramatic fireworks here on Earth from it. But we are at this moment in the midst of an X-ray flare that's even more powerful than the one from a few days ago.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Ira, in addition to that, I just want to point out that the radiation storm is - from that is also in progress.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So we called you at the right time.</s>HATHAWAY: Indeed.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right, we're going to - we have a whole bunch of time to talk about it. So 1-800-989-8255 is our number. We're going to talk about this new solar flare that's happening as we speak and bigger than the one that happened earlier this week. You can tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I, and you can also go to our Facebook page and our website.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So we'll be back talking more about solar flares with David Hathaway and Doug Biesecker. Our number again, 1-800-989-8255. We're in the middle of a big one, and we'll talk about it some more. Stay with us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking about solar astronomy this hour with David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Doug Biesecker at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. Our number, 1-800-989-8255, and we called them up originally to talk about this week's earlier solar flare.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But we find out right now, as we speak, there's an even bigger one happening, although not the one that's pointed at us. It's not going to be hitting the Earth. Is that correct, Doug?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Right, so the active region, these regions of intense magnetic field that produce flares and give us the coronal mass ejections, the same region that gave us the activity earlier in the week has rotated in the five-day sense to where it's now seen at the edge of the sun.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: And so the coronal mass ejection associated with this big flare is headed off away from Earth. But even in spite of that, we see the direct X-rays and ultraviolet from the flare, and any radiation being accelerated by the coronal mass ejection can still make its way to Earth, and we're seeing both of those effects in progress.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And what effect would it have on Earth here?</s>HATHAWAY: Well, the flare, the main effect is an atmospheric one. And the way you might be concerned about that – well, really, you probably wouldn't be - but if you're somebody who uses high-frequency radio to communicate – say, a ham operator, or you're in a ship at sea, or you're even in a plane flying, you know, across the Pacific Ocean right now, you'd find your high-frequency radio probably isn't working because of this solar flare.</s>HATHAWAY: The way that works is the signal has to bounce off a layer in the atmosphere known as the ionosphere, and right now the ionosphere is very different from its normal state. And that bounce of the radio signal doesn't happen; it in fact gets absorbed by the atmosphere.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: So HF users - high-frequency users in the Pacific right now are feeling the effects of this solar flare.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Were they warned about this one?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Well, predicting a solar flare would have happened today at 1:37 Eastern Time. We're not there yet. What we do is we look at these regions of intense magnetic field, the sun spots, how many of them are there, how complex is the magnetic field contained within, how big is it.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: And from that we can compute our probability. So much like you might hear 40 percent chance of rain tomorrow, we can also say, you know, 60 percent chance of solar flares tomorrow.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So people in that area that you're saying, pilots, whatever, who are flying, they may be having trouble and not knowing why but probably predicting, uh-oh, another solar flare.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: That's exactly right. But they have a workaround. As long as they can see those communication satellites that sit over the equator in geostationary orbit, 22,000 miles above the surface of the Earth, they can switch to that sat-com and still get the signal through.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: David Hathaway, what is it on the sun that causes this thing to happen? What's going on in the internal workings of the sun?</s>HATHAWAY: It's magnetism, pure and simple, that - it's magnetic fields involved in all of this. It's magnetic fields that make the sunspots themselves, that within the sun the flow of these ionized, electrically charged gases produces intense magnetic fields, and in some spots it gets to be, you know, thousands of times stronger than the Earth's own magnetic field, strong enough that in fact it chokes off the flow of heat from inside the sun, which is why sunspots appear dark.</s>HATHAWAY: But those magnetic fields can get twisted out of shape and basically short-circuit by reconnecting, and all that magnetic energy gets released explosively. And so that's where it ultimately comes from, is magnetism ultimately produced inside the sun that we see manifest at the surface in sunspots and above the surface in coronal features, these loops where the gases in the sun's hot corona are confined, move along these magnetic loops above the surface.</s>HATHAWAY: And so we can see the presence of the magnetic fields there. But it's - again, magnetism's the key to it all.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Speaking of magnetism, does our Earth's magnetic field that surrounds it, does it protect us from any of these things?</s>HATHAWAY: Very much so, yeah, that the Earth's own magnetic field would normally look like a bar magnet's magnetic field, what we call a dipole field, going into the North, coming out of the South. But because it's also subjected to the solar wind that blows off of the sun at a million miles an hour, that solar wind drapes the Earth's magnetic field into a comet-like structure, a tail.</s>HATHAWAY: So it pushes the magnetic field on the day side closer to the Earth, and it stretches it out on the night side into a long tail in back of the Earth. So that magnetic field does protect us from charged particles, but it's - it can also get disrupted by the magnetic fields in these coronal mass ejections that when this magnetic explosion goes off, the coronal mass ejection that's produced has magnetic field, is a key part of it, and that magnetic field, once it hits the Earth, if it's directed in the opposite way, if it's directed from north to south instead of south to north, it can produce reconnections in the Earth's magnetic field that ultimately lead to energetic particles, electrons and protons, streaming back along the Earth's magnetic field line into the atmosphere and producing the aurora.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow, that's terrific. Doug, did you want to jump in there?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Well, I was going to say in addition to the aurora, when the coronal mass ejection slams into the Earth's magnetic field, that magnetic field that does protect us from the radiation storm, that changing magnetic field causes problems for customers.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: That's why the Space Weather Prediction Center is monitoring the sun 24 hours a day to provide forecasts and get out those official watches, warnings and alerts to customers, because when that coronal mass ejection hits the Earth, currents are being induced into the power grid.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: So the power system operators, with as little as 15 minutes of warning, can protect their systems by making sure they have sufficient capacity to handle the extra currents, to have people in place to turn off a transformer if it starts to overhead. So it's something industry can respond to. They just need to have the watches, warnings and alerts to make sure they're able to.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now, this one, if I heard you correctly, started less than an hour ago, and...</s>DOUG BIESECKER: That's right, and...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so you weren't really able to get out - your prediction is at what stage, compared to, let's say, weather forecasting? What stage are you at at predicting?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Well, I think the canonical thing people use is we're about 30 to 50 years behind weather forecasting. There are certain things where we're much better than that. With a coronal mass ejection we can observe them back at the sun, and then we can predict with in fact a numerical model that we introduced on the Weather Service supercomputer just a couple of months ago, we can use that to predict when this coronal mass ejection would arrive at Earth.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: And the storm that erupted on Sunday, January 22, erupting at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time, slammed into the Earth at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, within an hour of when it was predicted.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And the one that's predicted less than - it started an hour ago, when is that going to slam into the Earth?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Well, that's - the early indications are that, in fact, it won't. Because the active region has rotated away from an unfavorable position, that coronal mass ejection is going to fly harmlessly off into space, maybe hitting a science satellite or two on the way.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I think a lot of people don't realize that the sun actually rotates.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Yeah, the sun...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It spins on its own axis, yeah.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Every 27 days on average, and because of that rotation - and I'm going to give Dave the opportunity to jump in here and talk about why that's significant - lots of very - that's one of the reasons why the sun is so interesting, and we have a solar cycle.</s>HATHAWAY: Yeah, part of it is that it - because it's a ball of gas, it doesn't have to rotate like a solid ball. In fact, it doesn't. At the equator, it rotates once in about 24 days. If you get near the poles, it takes about 35 days. And so that produces a sheering motion that things get stretched out and wrapped around the sun because of it, things like magnetic fields in particular, and that's in fact a key part of how the magnetic fields are generated and maintained within the sun, is - this is what we call differential rotation, the fact that the equator is rotating faster than the poles.</s>HATHAWAY: There's a sheer layer near the surface that as you start at the surface and move inward, it - the rotation speeds up, then stays constant through, you know, 100,000 miles or so and then changes again at a layer about a quarter of the way into the sun.</s>HATHAWAY: So that rotation, in fact, is key to producing the magnetic fields.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to Virginia in Flint, Michigan. Hi, Virginia.</s>VIRGINIA: Hi.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there.</s>VIRGINIA: Fascinating stuff. We've had really warm weather here in Michigan. Is this going to impact weather patterns, like, are we going to have a really hot summer now? Or another question is, is this going to melt the solar - excuse me - melt the icepacks and ozone and all that kind of stuff? I don't know if I've missed some of the answers already. But I'd be interested in how much it's going to melt, you know, the ice that's already melting so fast.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: OK, Virginia, thanks for calling. We'll see what we can do.</s>VIRGINIA: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Uh-huh.</s>HATHAWAY: Yeah. Those are great questions. The sun does influence climate to some respect, but probably not weather as far as the day-to-day, that even though the sun got 100 times brighter in X-rays, it hardly got brighter at all when you add up all the energy that the sun puts out and the Earth receives. That's a tiny amount, even over the course of a complete sunspot cycle, when you go from no sunspots to, you know, 100 sunspots on the sun and all of that activity; the sun's only about a 10th of percent, one part in 1,000 brighter. And so it's a small change. It has - again, in the long run has a bit of an effect on climate but day-to-day weather probably not.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Here's some questions, a few questions, different questions basically the same theme coming from the Internet, and people want to know how this would affect - a flare like this might affect people in space, either the space station or people - astronauts on their way to Mars or maybe on the moon, things like that.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Sure. Well, there certainly can be impacts. The astronauts on the International Space Station right now have to be concerned, but in general do they need to be concerned from the activity that's happening right now? Not really. Their action - they would react at very, very large levels of radiation. There's a certain risk that they're willing to accept, a few extra - or a slightly higher risk of cancer as they age. But the systems that they're using can be impacted by a radiation storm.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: So you know, with the shuttle, for example, the robot arm couldn't be used when a radiation storm exceeded a certain level. So there are certain impacts they do have to be aware of.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tell us about this huge solar storm of - the storm of 1859, Doug.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Well, 1859 was - it's kind of our perfect storm in solar physics. So the day was Thursday, September 1, and Sir Richard Carrington was in his house, at his observatory, watching the sun like he did every day, and he projected this image of the sun with his telescope till it was about 11 inches across. And each day he would draw the sunspots. And this particular day he'd finished drawing the sunspots and he was just about to start measuring the locations on the sun when all of a sudden two bright lights appeared in the middle of one of these magnetic regions he'd measured.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: And he'd never seen this before. And he thought, oh, there's something wrong with my equipment, and he checked it out and quickly realized, no, it's not my equipment. And the careful observer that he is, he wrote down the time, 11:20 a.m. He was so shocked by this, he ran off to find somebody to help verify what he was seeing. He couldn't find anybody, came back, and it was already fading. It lasted all of five minutes. By 11:25 a.m., it was done.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me just interrupt to say this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. Talking with Doug Biesecker, spinning a yarn about the solar flare of 1859. Keep going.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: So now he knew something special had happened. And what makes this really remarkable is at a magnetic observatory, again, when you shake the Earth's magnetic field, you know, if you and I had a compass, you know, it would point to solar north. But if you made a compass that was sensitive enough, you would be able to see that that magnetic field was shaking during one of these geomagnetic storms. And in fact, at 4:00 a.m. on September 2nd at the magnetic observatory at Kew Garden, there was a great magnetic storm.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: And Carrington said, you know, a swallow doesn't make a summer, but there seems to be a connection here. So in just 17 hours after he saw a flare on the sun, we had a huge, in fact the largest ever recorded, magnetic storm on the surface of the Earth. It was so strong, every magnetic observatory in the world saturated, except for one that we know in India, and all measurements of that storm are now based on that one. Impacts...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And what did - yeah. What did it...</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Telegraphs and things like that?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Right. So the technology of the day was telegraphs. So that's really where most of the impacts were. You know, in Pittsburgh the telegraph machines got so hot, the operators couldn't touch them. In Philadelphia, a telegraph operator received a shock from his equipment. In Boston, there was a flame of fire. You know, in telegraph stations up and down the East Coast the wood got scorched, paper burned. What did the average person see? Well, aurora. In Indianapolis the aurora was so bright and so strong, you didn't have to look north to see the aurora.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: You could look at your southern horizon and still see the aurora. In Jamaica, it was described as like the light of a fire. It's believed that - well, in fact, it's been recorded that sailors saw it just 12 degrees north of the equator and that if weather conditions had been favorable it would have been seen even at the equator. So the entire globe was able to see the aurora on September 2, 1859.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. Do we know why that happened in such a spectacular fashion? What...</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Well, this particular event was really just the extreme of exactly what happened just this past Sunday. Associated with that solar flare was one of these coronal mass ejections. The speed of the coronal mass ejection doesn't tell you exactly how strong the storm will be. That - for that you need to know the magnetic field in the CME, but it's a pretty good indicator. And that transit of 17 hours is the fastest ever recorded. And the impulse, you know, the amount of energy that got dumped into the Earth's magnetic field was just incredible.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Do we have a number you can put on even a solar flare that just happened this week, how big explosion goes on?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Off the - no. I don't have a number.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dave, you got it?</s>HATHAWAY: Yeah.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Yeah.</s>HATHAWAY: The typical flare, if you look at the radiant energy from it, is the equivalent of a million megatons of TNT. So that's the energy equivalent of 10 million Hiroshima bombs.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. All right. We're going to let that sink in for a little bit, take a break. We'll come back more and talk with Doug Biesecker and David Hathaway about the sun and solar events. Our number, 1-800-989-8255. You can tweet us, @scifri. Stay with us. We'll be right back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking about solar flares and the sun with David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, and Doug Biesecker of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder. And we're going to talk a little - a few more minutes, because I want to recap. If you've just tuned in, there is a big solar flare happening right now in the sun, and maybe we can recap it. David, you want to take a shot at it? Or Doug? Who would like to tell us what's going on there now?</s>HATHAWAY: Doug is probably better at that. He's on top of it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: OK. Doug, what...</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Sure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Bring us up to date.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Right. Well, I was on top of it until I walked into the studio, but what we had on a scale of one to five, we measure space weather, and the solar flare we had last Sunday we measured at two on our solar flare scale, or an R2. The flare we just had is even larger, at the R3 level. Within 20 minutes of that solar flare erupting, we started to see radiation particles at very high energies that are starting to hit the Earth. They - the Space Weather Prediction Center, in our role, of course, put out a warning as soon as the flare began and in fact put out warnings for the radiation storm before the particles even began to arrive.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And that happened today?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: So that's happening right now. So the flare itself is probably practically over.</s>HATHAWAY: Yeah.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: The radiation storm will continue. It's hard for me to estimate without having seen the data recently how long that will continue. But what that would cause, you know, potential impacts to that - when the radiation levels reach sufficient levels, those same particles that David talked about coming down and hitting the polar regions, causing the aurora, that also causes the high frequency communications outages in the polar regions. And so any airplane flying over there loses their high-frequency radio.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: The problem there is they can't see those satellite - communication satellites sitting over the equator, so in fact they have absolutely no way to communicate if they're in the polar regions during one of these storms, which is why it's important that they get the information as quickly as possible, because if they have to divert one of those routes, it's not very cost effective.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: David, you want to add anything?</s>HATHAWAY: No. It's just - I wanted to mention, I am in my office so I can see the data, and the X-rays are well on their way going down, but the energetic particles, protons in particular, are rising rapidly.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Reaching us on Earth?</s>HATHAWAY: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. These are being measured as we speak at...</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Right.</s>HATHAWAY: ...satellites and geosynchronous orbit.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how many - how many watchdog satellites do we have out there?</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Well, for - well, NOAA, those same weather satellites that are taking pictures of the hurricanes...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: ...we have space weather sensors on those. And in fact the flare and the radiation storm are being measured with instruments on those same weather satellites. But we do leverage assets from NASA, for example; the coronal mass ejection that's associated with this flare, we know it's headed nowhere towards Earth because we've got images of the solar atmosphere from that - from a NASA satellite that show us that that's what's happening. And we also use those data to help forecast when those coronal mass ejections will hit the Earth.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We'll be watching over the next hours, and people will, I guess, listen to SCIENCE FRIDAY will know about it, because this word is coming out, happened within, oh, just a little bit over an hour ago. And thank you, gentlemen, for taking time to alert us.</s>HATHAWAY: Thank you, Ira, for having us on.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome. David Hathaway is solar astronomer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. And Doug, thank you. Doug Biesecker is physicist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.</s>DOUG BIESECKER: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome.

As baby boomers age and young people struggle to find work, more families than ever before are choosing to pool resources by moving in together. The economic downturn accelerated this already growing national trend toward multiple generations living under the same roof. Christopher Collings, lives in a multigenerational household Katherine Newman, author of The Accordion Family Greg McGuff, division president, Lennar Homes

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Jennifer Ludden in Washington. Neal Conan is away. The Great Recession forced many families to tighten their belts: cutting off the cable, cutting back on groceries, eating out less. But more and more Americans are making even bigger changes, pooling resources by moving in with relatives.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And while the downturn has accelerated this growth in multigenerational households, the trend actually started long before the economy turned south. Joining me now is a member of one such family. Christopher Collings lives in Hacienda Heights, California, and he's with us now by phone from Brea, California. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: Hello Jennifer, glad you could have me on, thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So tell us, who lives in your house?</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: It's myself, my wife, we have three daughters, we have a fourth child on the way, and we have mother- and father-in-law, my wife's parents there, as well as occasionally, about two or three weekends a month, my brother- and sister-in-law come down from Bakersfield, California, with their two kids, and my other brother-in-law, who is living in New York, where he models, he usually stays with us maybe a grand total about a month out of each year, usually a few days here and a few days there.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: That's a bustling house.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: It is, yes indeed.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And why did you and your wife decide to move in with her parents?</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: Well, it was a couple different things. We had already had a home of our own about 20 miles away, and my mother- and father-in-law had recently purchased a newer home here in Hacienda Heights and were selling theirs. It's quite a large home and we thought, you know, my wife at the time was driving 20 or 30 miles. It was a longer commute, and it just made sense to us for several different reasons, both economics of being able to just share the costs of a single household plus probably more importantly for me was that I come from a small military family, and we traveled the world, but there was never a lot of family around when I was growing up.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: And once I met and married my wife, I sort of latched on to her extended family, which I always thought was a boon to be able to have a lot of relatives and family get-togethers that I missed growing up. So the idea of being able to have grandparents, my kids' grandparents, living with us was perfectly acceptable for me, and I thought it was just a wonderful idea.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And that was OK with the grandparents, too?</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: They've certainly enjoyed it. You know, having children around, especially three and a fourth on the way, all the time makes the household a lot louder and a lot messier, but, you know, children also bring a lot of life to a household.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: You know, if my mother- and father-in-law, who are in their late 50s now, were living in a home on their own, probably it would be a lot quieter and a lot more empty, though. And they certainly - in fact they just returned from a trip to Taiwan, their native land of birth, and the first thing they said when I picked them up at the airport is how much they missed the grandkids, and they can't wait to see the grandkids, and it's all about the grandkids.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Aw. Now it's obviously working well for you, but were there some adjustments? Were there some challenges there at the beginning?</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: Oh, certainly, and maybe also I should let you know that I'm a normal, white Caucasian American. My wife is Taiwanese descent, and her family are also Taiwanese. So I am the only Caucasian amongst a sea of Asian faces.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So some cultural differences to figure out there.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: There were indeed, yes. So it's not just generational but cultural.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Like what?</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: But, you know, the thing is I think the main point was that we were - our objective was that we love each other, it's a family, and we just make an effort to work through any difficulties. There would be difficulties both because you have - you know, I liken it to the fact that whether you're living with anyone, whether it's a college roommate or like when I was in the military, people I would dorm with or even when you first marry someone and you spend time, there's always a serious amount of adjustment and compromise when you live with somebody who has their own way of doing things and seeing things.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: And we certainly had our fair share of that, but in the end, it was a matter of working through those things and just realizing that, you know, two good words are I'm sorry and trying to find the compromises. So I think in the end, we've been doing it now for nine years, and we just have a lot stronger relationship for it, and pretty much after the first two or three years, it became a lot easier - smoother sailing I should say.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So you think - you say you and your wife have a stronger relationship for living with her parents?</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: Well, my relationship with my mother- and father-in-law, I just call them mom and dad, is certainly stronger. They treat me like their son. And my wife and I, our relationship obviously is great. There were some difficulties, you know, that even stressed our relationship a little bit, but, you know, we just have a lot of love for each other and grace, and I think it just, you know, worked itself out.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: I - honestly, there wasn't - there's no one great point of drama that I could point out. There was no fighting and yelling and screaming. It's more little things like, you know, the porch light left on because my father-in-law gets up early, and we don't. And so he comes in, and, you know, he wants to turn off the porch light because it's on at 8 o'clock in the morning when it's bright sunlight.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: I know it seems little, but, you know, it's little things like that that we just have to be able to just work things out and accept that we see things a little bit differently, and we work to compromise to make everything run smoothly, and the same for them, too.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And any tips? I mean, is there like a monthly meeting or a list of ground rules? Any tips for how to make it work?</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: Yeah, I mean, I'm not a particular list person, and I think that if you try to set objectives like monthly meetings, it would probably go out the door by the second or third month just because it's life. And I think the main thing is to communicate. My in-laws would have a - whenever they had a point of conflict, they would often keep it within themselves and expect me to just know what that might be, and that certainly wasn't the case.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: And once we were able to just communicate those things, and they could see that we were making efforts to accommodate them and vice versa, I think that was the real way. So if I had to make any recommendations, it would just be to communicate and to realize you're really on the same team.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: I mean, living together provides - not only is there economic benefits there, but there's security and there's fellowship, companionship. You know, the house is never really empty. There's - you know, if anybody's injured, or even just as a simple as, you know, oh, the car's having problems, you don't have to worry about the logistics of going to someone's house and picking them up.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: It's all those little things, and I think we sort of miss that in today's life with - you know, we don't know even who our neighbors are most of the time. So I've really enjoyed the opportunities of being able to have a nice big household filled with people, and I have no problem when the four people, my brother- and sister-in-law come down from Bakersfield, and they spend the weekend.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: And the kids get along great, and certainly the children love having their grandparents handy, and the grandparents love having the children. I should also mention my mother-in-law still works. So she's not the typical, around all the time with the grandkids. She actually runs her own business and, you know, would like to eventually be able to spend more time with the grandkids.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, well Christopher Collings, thank you so much for sharing, and thanks for your time.</s>CHRISTOPHER COLLINGS: Certainly, Jennifer. You have a good day.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: You, too. And if this is your story, if you live with a multigenerational household, give us a call. Our number is 800-989-8255. Our email address is talk@npr.org. Or you can join the conversation at our website. Go to npr.org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Later in the program, we'll talk to crime writer Walter Mosley about his latest Leonid McGill mystery. But first, Katherine Newman joins us. She's the author of "The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents and the Private Toll of Competition." She joins us from our New York bureau. Welcome.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So, many people think of this multigenerational household as a new phenomenon with this recession, but it's not really. Is that right?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: We had lots of multigenerational households, especially before the second World War and the huge influx of women into the labor market. It was absolutely commonplace for older people to move in with their children before we had nursing homes and when we took responsibility for caring across that generational boundary.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: What I think is new, relatively new, is young people moving in with their parents in order to shelter from the economic stresses that did predate the recession, that actually do go back all the way to the restructurings of the 1980s, and to the elongating period of time when young people need to get more education in order to qualify for professional careers.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: So what's new is the phenomenon of people in their 20s and early 30s either boomeranging back into their parents' households, or in many countries other than the United States never leaving in the first place.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And you mentioned the restructuring of the 1980s that kind of started driving this. What do you mean?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: I mean the period in which we first start to see pink slips raining down on people in the professions, educated, white-collar workers who were being outsourced and downsized. We had a period of sort of neoliberal reforms in the labor markets around the world where people who were used to having long-term jobs suddenly found themselves with short-term contracts and part-time work.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: That's a kind of new phenomenon of what we sometimes call contingent work, which really made a powerful appearance in labor markets all over Western Europe and Japan and the United States in the early 1980s and has stuck with us ever since.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So this multigenerational household, it's not just an American thing that's happening now?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: Oh, not at all. In fact, it's even more pronounced in countries like Italy, Spain, Japan. We're really in the middle. We're not on the extreme end. And we're in the middle in how we feel about it, too, because this phenomenon provokes some very extreme and negative reactions in some countries, and in others, it's, well, what's the problem, why me worry, why did they ever want to leave me anyway, which seems to be the typical reaction in the Italian families that we interviewed for my book.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So what, though, what does it mean? So we have 20-somethings moving back in in large numbers with mom and dad. You know, are they doing this - you mentioned economic reasons but also people are getting married later and later. Are they moving back home because they're not planning on getting married or does moving back home make it more likely that they're not going to get married until much later?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: Well, there are a whole bunch of chickens and eggs in your statement, and they're all right, of course. There are economic drivers to the phenomenon I call accordion families. It has become much more difficult for young people to find their footing in the economy. That did precede the recession, but it certainly got worse during this recession.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: It takes much longer to complete an education at a level that will qualify you for a professional career, so that's expensive, and you can shelter some of those costs by moving in to the inn of mom and dad.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: So there are a lot of economic reasons that have particularly been at work in the lives of younger people entering the labor market. But there are cultural expectations, too. You know, when I was a kid, in my teens, there was a lot of cultural support for living pretty cheap and wearing blue jeans with holes in them, and you didn't care very much whether you lived in a pleasant place.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: I think that that was an aberration, that sort of countercultural era. Now I think there's more of a desire for creature comforts but not the capacity to pay for them. So if young people move back in with mom and dad, they might be able to afford a nicer car, they might live in greater comfort than they could afford to pay for on their own.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: They may need to save money for the master's degree they'd like to acquire or their experience as an intern where no one's paying them at all in order to get to where they want to go ultimately as professionals.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: So all of those things, which are a combination of economic factors and cultural tastes, or generational tastes, play a role in pushing the creation of accordion families.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, and we're going to hear some stories from our listeners after the break. We're talking about households with multiple generations under the same roof. Call us if this is your story, 800-989-8255. Our email address is talk@npr.org. I'm Jennifer Ludden. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Jennifer Ludden. Moving in with your kids or your parents appears to be a financial lifeline for many people, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Adjusted incomes for those families are lower overall, but the poverty rate among people in multigenerational households is significantly lower than in others.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: The economy is just one part of this trend of more extended families living under the same roof. If this is your story, as a member of a multigenerational household, give us a call. Our number is 800-989-8255. Our email address is npr.org, and you can join the conversation at our website. Go to npr.org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Our guest is Katherine Newman. She wrote the book "The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents and the Private Toll of Global Competition." And we also have some folks on the line. Amy's(ph) in Sacramento, welcome.</s>AMY: Hi, thank you for taking my call.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Go right ahead.</s>AMY: Oh, OK, well, we - I'm 37, I live with my parents still. No, I know it sounds funny but, you know, it was a decision we made together in '04. My husband and I had lived on our own right outside of Sacramento in Folsom. And my parents, who lived in my grandparents' house, built in the '80s, had - wanted to move, wanted to downsize because it's a house with a mother-in-law quarters in the back, where my grandparents were living.</s>AMY: And, you know, we didn't - the kids, us, we didn't want them to sell the house, and we couldn't afford to purchase it for what they needed to move on, and my parents asked us up one weekend, and we had a discussion about selling our own in Folsom, refinancing to add on. And we agreed.</s>AMY: And my husband's a carpenter. My dad's very handy, and we came up, and we made it one dwelling, and it's two homes basically attached as one dwelling. And so I live there with my grandfather, my parents and now my two kids.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Oh, you have, what's that, four generations?</s>AMY: Yes.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Your grandparents are still alive.</s>AMY: Yes.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Wow.</s>AMY: My grandmother had passed away a few years back, but...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: I see. And what challenges have come up?</s>AMY: Well, you know, moving in as - you know, I moved in with my parents. So my husband got to move in with his in-laws. And I was working out of the home as a real estate appraiser. My mother was working and she retired, and she ended up working in the home. And the transition from being the child to having my own kids and then living with my mother, who used to, you know, raise me as a child, having to find it's not quite that boundary, but, you know, creating my own boundaries as a mother and becoming my mother's friend and being somebody to work together in a relationship different than the daughter.</s>AMY: You know, and so setting those parameters, and luckily my mother, you know, she's a very easy person to communicate with. There was a few fights because we were - she did end up working with me, and she wanted to change my daughter's bedroom, and she had - she is very strong, A-personality like myself, and we had to have those sit-down conversations of, OK, this is where I'm at, this is what you expect.</s>AMY: But, you know, I'm also a mother, and I want to rear my children. And having - you know, I heard somebody, a previous caller talking about how it actually strengthened their relationship, and we're finding that, too, but it takes willing parties, I'm noticing. It takes...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And a lot of communication.</s>AMY: Yeah, and, you know, there was a few times where my mom threw her hands up and said you know what? I can't do this. I think we need to split up. There was only - it was two times in two years in a row, and the first year, I said, you know, mom, I think this is a relationship just like my husband and I. We have to work on it also. We have to work towards solutions.</s>AMY: And then the next year, we were going through it, and I threw my hands up and said you know, this is just too much. It's too much information. We have to work with, you know, five people instead of just me and my husband. And she said, you know, honey, this is a relationship. She said that back to me.</s>AMY: And I put my hands down and said you're correct. You know, I have enjoyed my parents more now. And - but it takes people that are willing to work hard, that are willing to look towards the common goal. You know, when we refinanced the house, you know, it's to benefit all of us. As someone else said, you know, when a car does break down, we don't - we don't abuse each other, as well.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Well, Amy, thank you so much, appreciate your call. Katherine Newman, a lot of issues at play there, financial among others.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: Well, I think the thing we need to understand is that when young people, or even not so young people, move back in with their families, they're not the same person who was there when they were a teenager. And the role relationships aren't the same, either.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: What I found on the whole was that it did make things more positive. This is particularly true when we look at people who are in their mid-20s who aren't married yet and don't have their own children moving in with their parents. They come back as young adults, and the parents no longer have the kind of surveillance obligations, you know, is Sally home by midnight, what's she doing with her boyfriend?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: They sort of lose those anxieties around their homework or where are they going to go to college. All the many things that makes parenting stressful tend to sort of recede into the background, and what comes into the fore is something closer to an egalitarian friendship.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: That can be difficult to negotiate, but it also has many positives associated with it. The other thing that happens is that those parents become, or remain, sociologically younger. They're not any biologically younger, but their roles remain as active parents. And if you define your identity by that activity, then you're not really moving on into that sunset year of the empty nest and the grandparent life. You're really the same person you were when you had your kids in the first place. You're an active parent.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So it's keeping you young.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: It's keeping you sociologically young. So there are many silver linings to all of this. The problems crop up when there are either conflicts over who's doing what and who has what sort of authority. And for the younger person who doesn't appear to be making moves toward that adult metamorphosis. That does generate trouble.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: If Johnny's in the basement playing video games, it's very different than Johnny's earning a master's degree...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Or saving for a mortgage or something like that.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: Exactly.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Let's take another phone call. Jennifer in Oahu, hi there.</s>JENNIFER: Hi, I was just calling because we also live in a multigenerational home. My - I have a son who has special needs, and I guess our biggest problem is trying to define each person's role, like grandparent and parent. You know, grandma just wants to be grandma and doesn't really want to discipline, but when they live next door, like how we are, we live on the same property, you know, it's hard that he goes whenever he feels like he can escape from mom's discipline and run over to grandma's to a rescue.</s>JENNIFER: But we just - we have a lot to deal with, like, you know, drawing the line of, you know, what she can allow him to do and not allow him to do. She wants to give him the world, but, you know, you can't spoil him that way because he sees them so much, it's kind of a different relationship.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: That's right. She can't do the spoiling all the time if she's there all the time. Interesting.</s>JENNIFER: Exactly. So we've actually gone through therapy.</s>JENNIFER: I know that sounds so - I mean, no, it's good.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: A new field for psychotherapists.</s>JENNIFER: We, we - yeah, somebody actually had to come in and kind of like talk to all of us, and just, you know, we cherish them enough that we wanted it to work. You know, we've got a really good setup where, you know, my son has every playground equipment and therapist you can think of, and they help us with a lot of that stuff. But it's just hard when, you know, he wants to do something like put his feet on people's ears, and she thinks it's the cutest thing in the world, and I'm trying my hardest to stop that.</s>JENNIFER: My son has autism, so he does lots of quirky things that grandma thinks are cute and mommy's trying to stop, you know.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Right.</s>JENNIFER: We've had to kind of set like a rule as far as like after 8 o'clock, you can go over there until bedtime, and I won't be monitoring what you're doing. But if you're outside, and you get to play with grandma, then she needs to follow by mommy's rules.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, well, Jennifer, thank you so much for calling and good luck with making it all work.</s>JENNIFER: Thanks, bye-bye.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Katherine Newman, we're going to let you go, but before we do, can you give us any kind of strategies to help make this work? You've interviewed so many families for your book. Were there tips that stood out?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: I think the kind of honesty of communication that your callers have expressed is really quite crucial. Trying to explain what your expectations are, how long is this relationship going to last this way, that is how long are we all going to be living together? Is this a permanent arrangement? Is this temporary?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: Are we there to help one another achieve some goal? And what are the benchmarks in moving toward those goals? Like any other relationship, a certain degree of honesty and disclosure certainly helps, but I think that many of the reasons why these relationships work among your callers is that they've got older in the family that are still active, they're still healthy.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: This is not a question of having to take care of them, but it might become that someday. How are those obligations going to be sorted out? What are the financial obligations of the people in the household? Do you expect your children to pay rent or to contribute to the mortgage?</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: In the Italian families I interviewed, those kids were helping to pay off that family mortgage. So who does that house belong to? Will that help them someday with some sort of asserts? Straightforward disclosure certainly helps.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, I actually maybe said goodbye a bit too early there. I think you can - if you can stay with us, that would be great.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: I'm happy to.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: But we're going to be joined, as well, by Greg McGuff. He's a division president for Southern California - in Southern California for Lennar Homes. The company saw this trend toward more family members living under the same roof as a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy housing market. Greg McGuff is with us now by phone from his office in Corona, California. Welcome to you.</s>GREG MCGUFF: Hi, Jennifer. Thank you very much for having us. And I love the intro - an otherwise gloomy market.</s>GREG MCGUFF: It is exciting to be doing something exciting in today's housing market.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So what do you see out there? What's this market?</s>GREG MCGUFF: Well, you know, what we see on the multigenerational front is really a market where, you know, you see one in five households currently living multigenerationally, yet you didn't really see a new home building or new housing providing homes for those buyers.</s>GREG MCGUFF: So what we're starting to see, as we brought on what we call our next gen product, the Home Within a Home, is we're starting to see a change in our buyer profile coming to our communities. And we're starting to see the demographics that are so strong, relative to the baby boomers, relative to the boomerang children, and just relative to people who are looking for a different, more flexible way to live...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And does that include a lot of immigrant families? Hispanics and Asians much more likely to live like this. Is that right?</s>GREG MCGUFF: Absolutely. I mean, that's what the demographics tell you, although right now, honestly, we've had, you know, a cross coverage of all the ethnicities - Caucasian, Hispanic, Filipino, Asian - and all for a different reason.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So tell me about your next gen home. What's it like?</s>GREG MCGUFF: Well, the next gen home, it looks like a typical single-family home, you know, that could be 50-foot wide. It's a 3,000 square foot home. But approximately 500 square feet are dedicated to what we call the Home Within a Home. So it has its separate entranceway, which really gives a lot of independence to the person living in the next gen suite. They have their own living room with a kitchenette, so they'll have a refrigerator, a convection microwave oven, a sink. They'll also have their own laundry area, their own bathroom, one or two bedrooms.</s>GREG MCGUFF: And what's also important is to kind of give a dedicated outdoor space so that they can have also an outdoor and indoor living, and it connects to the main home. So what it offers somebody is the flexibility of living independently, but also to be able to interface because these are families that are living together. And it avoids some of the conflicts we heard with, you know, some of your previous callers relative to porch lights being left on and how you operate within the space.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And who's buying these homes?</s>GREG MCGUFF: You know, people are buying it for a lot of different reasons. You certainly have a lot of people who are buying them now and seeing the flexibility in it, that maybe their sister lost their home, and they're going to live with them for two years. And their parents, you know, they're looking ahead and saying, my parents two years from now aren't going to be in a position where they can live on their own. And you see people who are now in a position where their mother is living alone, and they want to live with their mother. And you see their college children coming back into the home.</s>GREG MCGUFF: And you also see people buying it because in California you have a lot of people visiting the state from other parts of the country, or you have people coming over from Asia and have extended stays, and they look at it and say, this is fantastic. My mother-in-law comes for, her parents come for, you know, a month or two months, and they now have their own private space that they can live in and interface with us in a familial way.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Let me just say here, you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Let's take another caller. Mark is in Detroit, Michigan. Welcome, Mark.</s>MARK: How are you doing?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Good.</s>MARK: OK. We were looking for, basically, what the - your new guest is describing. We were looking for a house with the - with an in-law suite because we were trying to maintain - my wife and I were trying to maintain a house, plus help out her dad, who lives close by. And he is, you know, he is about 80 now, and we wanted, you know, something suitable for all of us. And the - we couldn't afford it ourselves, but by selling our house and selling his house, we were able to buy it. We actually - or it's like a partnership.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And you suggested that or he did?</s>MARK: Well, initially, it was my suggestion, but, you know, we all got together on it and bought the house together. And it's - now we don't - we didn't find one with an in-law suite, unfortunately. And so the real issue, for us, has been, you know, space, you know? But it's hard to not be in each other's face all the time. The in-law suite, I think, is just a must. But, you know, you can't always, you know, you can't always that pull it off, so...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, so...</s>MARK: ...at least in our area because those houses are few and far between.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So there's more market out there that needs to be served. How do you manage the tight space with everyone?</s>MARK: Well, it's precarious. You know, there are times when - just for me because he's not my father. You know, there's pros and cons having him there, but that's what I have to do for myself. I have to think, OK, what are the pros again? I think I remind myself often what the pros are.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Well, Mark, thanks for calling.</s>MARK: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So, Katherine Newman, privacy is a big issue in these arrangements.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: Yes, it is especially interesting when you talk to people who are, again, in their mid-20s, who would like to be able to have romantic relationships. How do they do that in the context of their parents' home? You know, all the people who've been calling you have fully-formed partnerships. They're married. They have kids. So they're past through all of those awkward stages of trying to find their life partners.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: But when we look at younger people who are boomeranging back into their parents' house, it's a little bit more complicated 'cause in order to navigate that emotional terrain out there, it's difficult to do that if you're inside your parents' home. Even so, I find that baby boom parents are fairly comfortable with a slightly more liberated sense of privacy or sexual behavior for their kids. They're not so uptight about whether or not they bring a boyfriend or a girlfriend home. After all, they were the generation themselves that broke most of those barriers to begin with.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: That's right.</s>KATHERINE NEWMAN: So it would be odd for them to stand on a high horse with this. But it is still difficult for that young person to find their way when the economy is not really making it possible for them to do that autonomously.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Right. We have just a moment left, but, Greg McGuff, are you concerned that once the economy rebounds maybe demand for this kind of home might fall off?</s>GREG MCGUFF: No. We firmly believe that this has staying power. You know, when you look at the flexibility, and because it allows for some of that privacy and independency that the Katherine is referring to, we really believe it will continue. Also, if you just look at the change in ethnicities and the greater increase of, you know, Asian, Hispanic homeowners within our country, and it's also a way, you know, to curb urban sprawl.</s>GREG MCGUFF: So if you're caring for your mother, you don't have to drive five minutes to take her to get her haircut or to take her to (unintelligible) housing. And I also think, with the economy, it isn't going to change the fact that 350,000 Americans are turning age 65 each month in this country.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Greg McGuff, division president for Lennar Homes in Southern California, thank you so much.</s>GREG MCGUFF: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And Katherine Newman, author of "The Accordion Family," thank you. Coming up, "All I Did Was Shoot My Man." We'll hear from Walter Mosley and his private eye Leonid McGill. Stay with us. I'm Jennifer Ludden. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

Violence persists around Damascus as protesters continue to urge President Bashar al-Assad's to step down. The Arab League has suspended its monitoring mission and the United Nations Security Council is considering a resolution condemning al-Assad's regime. Kelly McEvers, foreign correspondent, NPR Wissam Tarif, human rights activist, Avaaz Anne-Marie Slaughter, politics and international affairs professor, Princeton University

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Over the weekend, it became clear that the crisis in Syria has entered a dangerous new phase. The presence of monitors from the Arab League failed to restore calm. As violence continues, monitors withdrew on Saturday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Armed opposition to the government of Bashar al-Assad continues to mount, and in just the past few days, clashes were reported in Damascus and in Aleppo, the two largest cities in the country, which had been mostly quiet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The Syrian government rejects an Arab League proposal for the president to step down to make way for negotiations on elections, and Russia appears ready to oppose further measures at the United Nations Security Council. So what's next? What do you think the United States should do? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Later in the program, Freddie Mac's conflict of interest on refinancing mortgages. But first Syria. NPR foreign correspondent Kelly McEvers, joins us from Beirut, and Kelly, as always, thanks very much for being with us.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what is the latest, especially from Damascus?</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: What we're hearing from activists and witnesses inside Syria is that government troops are launching a major offensive in a series of suburbs outside the capital. Government troops are going in with heavy arms and shelling residential areas largely to sort of take back some of the towns that rebels had claimed to control over the weekend.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Now, when they say they controlled these places, they basically had set up checkpoints to protect unarmed protestors in these towns, protestors who are against the government. But now the government troops are coming back in and saying no, you actually don't hold these towns, we do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we apologize for the slight delay. that's caused by the satellite telephone. But it brings Kelly McEvers to us in high quality. In the meantime, as this conflict continues to spread, is there any doubt any longer that this is on the verge of civil war if not open civil war?</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: It's looking more and more like the latter, Neal. You know, it's - for months and months, this was an uprising. This was largely by, you know, unarmed protestors in cities and towns across the country calling for the downfall of this regime.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Over the summer, what we saw were, you know, small numbers of soldiers defecting from the army, taking their guns off of the base and saying they wanted to protect protestors, again like they've been saying in these suburbs.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: But what we're seeing now are just open clashes between these anti-government rebels and pro-government forces. And what we're hearing in the last 24 hours is that the defections are increasing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It had been, also, until very recently, a provincial conflict: mostly in the countryside, mostly in smaller cities. What does it mean now that there has been fighting in and around Damascus and Aleppo?</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: What it means is that the regime's narrative - that they have everything under control and that, you know, yes this is largely a concern of folks in the rural areas, this doesn't really concern you people here in Damascus and in Syria's second city, Aleppo - that that narrative is really kind of unraveling.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: That the rebels were even able to get that close and, you know, even if they were just manning some checkpoints for a short period of time, that they were able to do that sends a really strong message to the people inside Syria, to the so-called, you know, silent majority that's been kind of sitting on the fence waiting to see where this is going to go.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: I think now there's a sense that there is a tip - now, does that mean that the regime is on the verge of falling? No. Why? Because the army is still more powerful than this very ragtag rebel group.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And where does this leave diplomacy with the withdrawal of Arab League monitors? The Arab League says it will take its proposal to the United Nations Security Council. But as we noticed, Russia and perhaps China, as well, seem to be ready to oppose it.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: That Arab League initiative does call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to, you know, eventually abdicate power. It's not an open call for, you know, regime change. It's slightly more diplomatic, let's say, than that. And so by - but by doing that, you know, Russia has said that that's just too much. Even though this new resolution does not call for new sanctions, does not call for any kind of international intervention into Syria, they still say that this notion that somebody else, that outsiders would, you know, would decide when a president should step down, that that's too much for them.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: That's what they're saying publicly. They have indicated that they are willing to negotiate, and we'll see tomorrow, when the U.N. Security Council meets. Russia kind of came up with its own proposal today, saying that - you know, inviting elements from the Syrian regime and the opposition to Moscow for talks.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: The regime, of course, immediately agreed. The opposition, of course, immediately refused, saying there's no way they will hold talks with a regime that is responsible for so much killing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in the meantime, there are those who say it is time to at least start talking about what kind of international intervention might be useful, might be possible, and that, I assume, you hear different things from different people in Syria. We hear more and more of the people in Syria at these demonstrations saying please protect us.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Sure, you know, every - you know, all the way back to the summer, we had, you know, Friday protests. Every time they protest on Friday, they have a title, and one of them was even called No Fly Zone Friday. So it - that's - you've seen that going all the way back several months. But this is still a very fiercely debated topic inside Syria and inside the Syrian opposition.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: I mean, it's the one thing that divides the opposition probably more than anything else. So while we have seen calls from the inside for some kind of help, some kind of intervention, it's not unanimous by any means. I think they're - the Syrian people by and large are very wary of such a move.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from our listeners today. What should the United States do? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. We'll start with Matt(ph), and Matt's on the line with us from San Jose.</s>MATT: Hi, I'm calling about the Christian minority in Syria that's protected by the Assad government. We've seen in Egypt and in Iraq that once the government falls, the government is no more, the Islamists start attacking the Christians. In fact, it's even starting in Syria.</s>MATT: Just on Friday, a priest named Bassilius was shot in the chest while he was taking care of wounded people at one of the demonstrations, shot by the demonstrating side or the rebel side. I'm not saying that Assad's good, he's a horrible tyrant, but at least he's maintaining order or has been maintaining order, I mean, has been keeping people from killing the Christians.</s>MATT: So that's all I wanted to say is that I think we ought to stay out of it and let Assad reassert himself and re-establish order.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Kelly McEvers, the United States has said that President Assad should step aside. It has not taken steps to do that other than sanctions thus far. But what about Matt's point that Christians seem to be being protected by the regime and might be at risk if that regime should fall?</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: It's a hugely important point. While I cannot confirm this particular incident that he's talking about, access to journalists is very restricted these days, it is an extremely important point for all minorities, not just Christians. Actually, the Assad regime is in the minority itself. The Assad regime comes from the Alawite sect, which is very much in the minority in Syria. So all other Alawites in Syria are very worried about what would happen should this regime fall.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: We saw what happened in Iraq when the strong man goes. We've now seen what happened in other places when the strong man goes. Who's there to sort of hold the place together? And it's not just about Islamists, it's about minority groups finally having a chance to have their say and all of a sudden thinking that maybe one way to have their say is through violence when there is no order at the top.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: The Christian minority in Syria, therefore, has been very silent throughout all of this and very much on the side of Assad through all of this. But again, as the country begins to unravel, and as the instability spreads, I mean, as people don't have power anymore, as the currency starts to plummet, as it has, they start to wonder is this is the guy who can hold the place together.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: And I think that's the issue. You know, while America can call for Assad to step down, I think this is exactly what's making the U.S. and the rest of its allies very wary of any kind of intervention, it's this very scenario.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Matt, thanks very much for the call. Joining us now is Wissam Tarif, Arab world campaigner with Avaaz, and he's with us from his home in Lebanon. Nice to have you with us today.</s>WISSAM TARIF: Thank you, thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what do Syrians tell you that they want?</s>WISSAM TARIF: Syrians want to live in dignity. They want basic human rights, and they want freedom. They want very much what people in democratic countries, in the U.S., people take for granted. We're talking about a regime that for 40 years has oppressed its people.</s>WISSAM TARIF: There's no - there was no freedom of expression. People were put in jail very easily. There have been systematic torture. There have been killings, shooting on peaceful protestors. What's happening in Syria at this stage, we have to take it to its root, to its origin.</s>WISSAM TARIF: This is an uprising of the people in Syria against a dictator, against a totalitarian regime.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And to - to remove that dictator, as you describe him, do Syrians want the outside world to help? And if so, how?</s>WISSAM TARIF: Well, Syria is in a very strategic location. We have to keep in mind that the Syrian regime and the U.S. had a deep problem during the Bush era while the Syrian regime was accused, repeatedly, even by Obama administration, in the early stage, of sending insurgents to Iraq.</s>WISSAM TARIF: The Syrian regime has been accused by (unintelligible) the Prime Minister Hariri of Lebanon, by supporting terrorist group, et cetera. The Syrian regime has chosen in the past, when it was convenient, for the regime to play the role of the stabilizer.</s>WISSAM TARIF: That's why the international community have constantly embraced this man and this regime. Now the game has changed. This man is not an element of stabilization in the region. This man is a dictator who has been killing his own people. Therefore, yes, we have heard lots of voices coming from inside Syria.</s>WISSAM TARIF: The National Council has called for military intervention very similar to the Libyan scenario. Of course, this is a very difficult topic, and there have been different views coming from inside Syria. But as the oppression and the military campaign and the crackdown expands, also the demand for a buffer zone or for a no-fly zone is getting bigger and louder during the protests from the people in the streets.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A couple of differences with the situation in Libya. For one, many more people have died in Lebanon, thus far, 5,400 according to the United Nations. Thus far there are no areas held by rebel forces inside Syria, as there were in Libya, for an organization to form a provisional government. So that's a big difference, as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about the ongoing crisis in Syria. What should the U.S. do next? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Activists report heavy shelling rained over homes today, though Syria's official news agency has been silent on those reports. It said that a gas pipeline in that area was blown up by an unidentified terrorist group.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Syrian forces attempted to push back dissidents from suburbs outside Damascus in an effort to regain control of the eastern side of the city. It's unclear that they've been successful. The intensified assault from President Bashar al-Assad's regime comes just a day before the U.N. Security Council takes up a resolution that would demand that President Assad adhere to an Arab League peace plan to make a transition to power to a vice president and permit the creation of a unity government.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: NPR foreign correspondent Kelly McEvers is with us from Beirut. Human rights activist, Wissam Tarif, Arab world campaigner with Avaaz, is also with us from Lebanon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Callers, we want to hear from you. What should the United States do next? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Let's go next to Drew(ph), Drew's on the line in Cincinnati.</s>DREW: Hey there. Well, I would just like to say that while I agree it's great to push economic sanctions, I think that the world community should really limit it to that, because if we look at Afghanistan, you know, we removed, you know, dictators, but you have the Taliban. And, you know, we went so far as to even put boots on the ground.</s>DREW: Now if we were to do that in Syria, you know, well, Afghanistan is still quite unstable, and they're still fighting. So I guess it really shows that it's ultimately up to the people to take care of their - you know, take care of their country and their government and really make their steps to decide what they want as a people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Drew, I guess the question would have to be: Given the fact that the army remains loyal to the regime, we could see thousands of people, thousands more people, killed.</s>DREW: Yes sir, yes sir. I mean, it's quite unfortunate, but at the same time, do we want those people to be killed, both Syrian civilians and international troops? Or do we just, you know, try and hold out with economic sanctions and eventually try and find a, you know, a diplomatic end to it?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A couple of question there. Kelly McEvers, is there any indication that economic sanctions can be persuasive? We know they're having an effect.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Yes, definitely. Like I mentioned before, I mean, the currency is not doing well. The prices of basic goods and services are going up, you know, heating oil, things that people need this winter. It's getting cold. So I think that, you know, this silent majority that we're talking about is feeling the squeeze of the sanctions.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: And this is exactly what the aim of the sanctions are, right, is to sort of convince the people that the government doesn't, you know, have the strength to hold the place together, and then maybe they'll turn against the government themselves.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: However, I think it's - you know, it's a little bit dangerous. I think, earlier on, you saw a lot of American diplomats who just sort of assumed that this would just take care of itself, you know, that eventually this regime would fall. And I think we're seeing that this regime is very resilient and is not willing to just sort of capitulate.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: So, you know, I think diplomacy is an important tool in the toolbox, as well, and I think we're going to see that, at least that debate begin at the U.N. Security Council tomorrow. I'm not necessarily certain that there will be some unanimous vote, where you've got, you know, a chorus of unanimous voices in the international community in agreement, but it...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we seem to have just lost the satellite telephone linkage to Kelly McEvers in Beirut. We're going to try to get that back. In the meantime, we'll got to Wissam Tarif, and you spoke just a few moments ago about the creation of buffer zones. They would have to be protected presumably by outside troops. Would they be a positive force, or could they make the situation worse, as our caller suggested?</s>WISSAM TARIF: Well, we have to keep in mind that the Russians have been blocking any resolution coming from the Security Council. The Russians still hold three nos, no for sanctions, no for arm embargo and no for ICC referral. I think it would be only fair to refer this regime, al-Assad, and the regime components to the international criminal courts.</s>WISSAM TARIF: Nevertheless, the Russians are not going to allow that tomorrow. What is possible and what is doable, the Arab League have made an initiative or a peace initiative in which they have suggested that al-Assad pass power to his vice president, to Farouk al-Sharaa.</s>WISSAM TARIF: I think that if the United States and the main allies - which is Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the United States - put enough pressure on Russia, then Russia, because the Russians have been talking continuously about a political solution, well, this is a political solution. If al-Assad surrenders power to the vice president and leaves the country, then that might be the beginning of a political solution, like...</s>But the big question is: Would Russia allow that? And if the Russians get engaged in this process, the big question, would al-Assad accept this and simply surrender power and leave the country? Well, I'm of the view that he will not do so.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So you're of the view that this is going to be a protracted internal conflict, perhaps outside forces being drawn ever more inexorably in, providing weapons. As you mentioned, the Russians are providing weapons to the government, but other people are providing weapons to the opponents, too.</s>WISSAM TARIF: Well, we have seen this uprising for the first six months, when it was very peaceful, people were taking to the streets with bare chests and asking for their freedom, facing tanks and live ammunition from the regime side.</s>WISSAM TARIF: Of course there is a militarized wing of the revolution that has started in the last three months, and it's gaining legitimacy and popularity from the people on the streets because the Free Syrian Army at this stage is protecting people, is protecting the protestors and protecting property.</s>WISSAM TARIF: But we have to be realistic here. The Free Syrian Army, when it comes to the kinds of weapons they are using or the amount of ammunition they have, it's nothing compared to what al-Assad has. Al-Assad have tanks, has helicopters, has missiles, rockets, everything. Al-Assad can take the cities and the suburbs of Damascus by force. Of course he can.</s>But the big question is: Can he afford the political price for that? Because this will come on a huge human cost. We're talking about thousands and thousands of civilians that he has to kill in the process.</s>But the big question is: So imposing order, in effect, means a huge number of casualties from civilians. So of course this is not an acceptable solution for the people in Syria or the international community.</s>But the big question is: One more point here, which I think is of extreme importance. The international community has to assume responsibility. Those dictators did not survive by themselves. Those dictators have had the leverage and the privilege of support of the West, of the United States and of Europe, and of other nations.</s>But the big question is: Now that people here are uprising, they are saying enough is enough, yes the West has interests in this part of the world, but these interests can be achieved and can be obtained by talking and befriending with the people in the Middle East, not with dictators.</s>But the big question is: The era for dictators is over. People want freedom and want dignity. This is the bottom line. And as the West supported dictators, now they have to support the people who are asking for their freedom.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Wissam Tarif, thank you very much for your time today. We appreciate it.</s>WISSAM TARIF: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Wissam Tarif, Arab world campaigner with Avaaz, he joined us from his home in Lebanon. With us now is Anne-Marie Slaughter, former policy planning director under Secretary Clinton. She is currently a politics and international affairs professor at Princeton. She wrote about how the world could and should intervene in Syria for The Atlantic and joins us now from a studio at Princeton University. Nice to have you with us today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: DR. ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: It's my pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And one of the problems you pointed out with intervention: Well, it's very messy. You also pointed out the problems of a lack of intervention could be even more messy. A full-fledged civil war in Syria, you wrote, could quickly become a proxy war between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and at least some NATO countries on one side against Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and possibly Iraq and Hamas on the other.</s>SLAUGHTER: Yeah, the prospect of a Syrian civil war turning into a larger proxy war is very real. Already, Russia is clearly arming Syria. Iran backs Syria strongly. Hezbollah has been a Syrian ally and protégé on the one side. And of course, Iraq has taken the view, thus far, it's stood with the Syrian government.</s>SLAUGHTER: So if it comes down to a rebel army, the protestors - enough defections so really there is a full-fledged army fighting on the opposition side against the Syrian army, you're going to have those countries arming the government, and at some point then the - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the states that have been supporting the opposition or at least looking for a solution - will have to be on the other side.</s>SLAUGHTER: And we cannot afford a - that kind of a conflict in the heart of the Middle East.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So how do you avoid it? Is there a role for diplomacy still?</s>SLAUGHTER: I do think there's still a role for diplomacy. Indeed, I think when Steven Cook was raising the idea of intervention and I said at least that's to be thinkable, part of that is to try to make clear that we want a diplomatic solution, and we need to create the incentives to get one. It does depend tremendously in the first instance on the region. The Arab League has been more active than anybody could have imagined in terms of taking a stance, sending in monitors, calling now for Assad to step down.</s>SLAUGHTER: If they can put a lot of pressure on Russia at the Security Council more than I think the standard Western-versus-Russia pressure, that is probably our best hope of a diplomatic solution.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the - of course, the threat to intervene has to be backed up by the willingness to intervene, no?</s>SLAUGHTER: It does. This is important. It's important, too, though, for the credibility of the West as a whole. When the West - when the U.N. authorized intervention in Libya, it authorized intervention under the doctrine of responsibility to protect, which says if a government is failing to protect its people by committing genocide or crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing, really grave and systematic crimes, then the international community can intervene to protect.</s>SLAUGHTER: We did that in Libya. At this point, as you pointed out, there are many thousands of people who've died in Syria. That's - if that continues, at some point, the credibility of the international community is on the line. I think, though, we can't intervene unless there is a pretty unified request to begin with from the Syrian people. They're the people we would be trying to protect. They have to resolve that debate on their own. And then, it has to go through the region and finally through the regional organization and then finally to the U.N.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And if the Russians, as we have every reason to expect, unless they change their minds, veto, what then?</s>SLAUGHTER: That's the hardest question. In my view, if the - if you had a request from the Arab League backed by the protesters themselves and you had a - perhaps a super majority on the Security Council, meaning nine, 10, 11 out of the 15 vote to support, then I would be willing to countenance action even in the face of a veto as we did in Kosovo. When it comes down to this kind of humanitarian intervention, I think the rules surrounding the veto are more complicated, and there are precedents as in Kosovo for acting even in the face of a veto.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Anne-Marie Slaughter is with us from Princeton University, former director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department. We're back with Kelly McEvers from Beirut. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And, Kelly McEvers, it's fair to say that every next step that we've heard - buffer zones, no-fly zones - is seen by the government as the next step toward removing it from power. It's regime change.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Yes. You know, I think the regime feels like it's got its back against the wall in that regard, but it's up to now as - is confident in the fact that Russia will stand behind it. And so I think that's where it's able to sort of exercise, you know, the - sort of the crackdowns that it has and the power that it has in, you know, attacking civilians, attacking civilian neighborhoods and escalating the violence in the way that it has over the weekend. You know, this - the Syrian regime is very, very aware of its position in the international community and its position in the world.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: This is not Libya. You know, Syria is in the heart of the Arab world. It is bordered by Iraq, you know, Turkey, Lebanon, places that have had their own problems in the past. And the Syrian regime is very acutely aware of the fact that the international community does not want a major quagmire. And so - and that the international community knows that intervention could bring such a quagmire or no intervention could bring such a quagmire. So they're using this stalemate. They're using this sort of indecision as a way to go in and take as much control as possible.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's go next to Hannah(ph). Hannah with us from Raleigh, North Carolina.</s>HANNAH: Hi. I just wanted to see the idea of removing Bashar Assad and having Farouk Sharaa take over. I don't think that's going to serve the Syrian people any good because - I mean, as a Syrian myself, I think Bashar Assad is the weakest link in the whole regime. To leave anybody from that regime is a mistake. I think the Syrian people has suffered enough - long enough under all of those people, and this kind of solution, I believe, is only to give Bashar Assad a way out without being harmed and keep the same things, you know, not changed in Syria.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So what is the alternative?</s>HANNAH: I think thousands of us do actually arm the Syrian people and let them get rid of the regime themselves.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Anne-Marie Slaughter, arm the Syrian people, that would presumably be done by various degrees of covert or overt by Turkey.</s>SLAUGHTER: Well, by Turkey and possibly other countries in the region. I do want the Syrian people to be able to determine their own fate. But again, if we can get a political solution, it would be far, far better. Violence begets violence. The more killing there is, the more other groups who are affected want to take revenge. And as we've been talking about the number of people in Syria, the number of minorities who are already worried, who are also Syrian people - the Druze, the Kurds, the Alawites, the Christians.</s>SLAUGHTER: If you arm the Syrian people, you really could get not only civil war but a kind of anarchy. So at this point, I think we want to do everything we can to use the kind of pressure, including a legitimate or a credible threat of intervention to bring the parties to the negotiating table.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hannah, thanks very much for the phone call. Appreciate it.</s>HANNAH: All right. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we'd like to thank Anne-Marie Slaughter for her time today.</s>SLAUGHTER: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Anne-Marie Slaughter, politics and international affairs professor at Princeton University, as we mentioned, former director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department. She wrote "How the World Could and Should Intervene in Syria" for The Atlantic. Kelly McEvers, thank you for your time.</s>KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: NPR foreign policy - foreign correspondent Kelly McEvers with us from Beirut.

As tensions mount between Iran and the U.S. and Israel, the international community struggles to determine the best way to slow Iran's nuclear weapons capability. Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman predicts that Israeli political leadership will launch an attack on Israel in 2012. Read Ronen Bergman's New York Times piece "Will Israel Attack Iran?"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And now the opinion page, but something of a departure from our usual 800-word argument. In the cover story of this weekend's New York Times magazine, Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman says Israel has long posed a three-part test to decide whether it's time to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities. Would such attacks make a severe dent in Iran's program? Can Israel count on international support, particularly from the United States? Have all measures short of war been exhausted? Bergman concludes that Israel's political leadership is convinced that for the first time, the answers to all those questions is yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you have questions about the logic and consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, give us a call. 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Ronen Bergman is an analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and author of the "Secret War with Iran." He joins us now, via Skype, from Jerusalem. Nice to have you back on the program. Ronen Bergman, are you there? And we're having difficulties reaching Ronen Bergman, who's the analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth in Jerusalem. He's also the author of the New York Times cover story on its most recent Sunday Times magazine. He's back with us by phone now. Are you with us there?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: DR. RONEN BERGMAN: Yeah, I'm here. I'm sorry. Something has gone wrong with the Skype connection. Can you hear me?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes, fine. And things happen from time to time. You sound fine on the phone. We'll stick to that. You've come to the conclusion at the end of your story that Israel will attack Iran in this calendar year. Why now?</s>BERGMAN: Because of a few reasons, and the most important of them is that, according to the latest intelligence estimates from Israel, Iran is just about to enter, what is termed by Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and by Israeli intelligence, as the immunity zone. And that immunity zone is a point in time, on the timeline of the advancement of the Iranian nuclear project, after which the Iranian nuclear facilities are going to be immune, or almost immune, to an Israeli strike. And according to the latest intelligence available to Israel, Iran is about to enter the immunity zone within nine to 12 months.</s>BERGMAN: And the Israeli's are trying to warn that if a decision is not taken during this time, from now until the mid or end of 2012, then it would be too late to take a decision. Or as the Defense Minister Barak has said, he said that after 2012, the issue of a nuclear Iran would be also important. Serious, interesting, but then he says the issue is going to be taken from our hand - the decision making process, the makers of policy, politicians - to your hands, journalists and historians.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's...</s>BERGMAN: Therefore, 2012 is the critical year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's important to say it's not the conclusion that Iran would have a deliverable nuclear weapon at the end of this calendar year, just that the window for a successful attack would close.</s>BERGMAN: The latest intelligence suggests - and I think this is agreed by most intelligence agencies working on the Iranian issue – is that once an order is given - and this is according to a promise that the scientist of Iran gave it to the supreme leader. Once the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, gives the order, they are able to produce the first nuclear device within a nine-month period, and then to take another half a year to a year to miniaturize that device to fit the shoulders of a Shahab-3 missile that can hit Israel. And therefore, from the point of view of Israel, Israel seeing an Iranian nuclear bomb as a sort of an existential threat, the threat is imminent or almost imminent.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I'm sure that there will be objections on any number of levels. But one of them is that Israel, the United States and most other intelligence services around the world believed in 2003 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and they were wrong.</s>BERGMAN: Yeah. The Iraqi lesson is important and should be taught and learned throughout the intelligence services throughout the world, but this is very, very different. In Iraq, there were speculations. There was some dangerous information. In the Iranian case, we are talking about the IAEA, who has just released a very, very clear report accusing Iran of violation of the NPT. And this report is based upon the inspectors of the agency taking whatever inspection they should have taken in - on Iranian (unintelligible) inside the Iranian facility. And the Iranians themselves, you know, they have claimed that they have - they are enriching uranium to the point of 19.7 percent, and they are far beyond closing the nuclear fuel cycle.</s>BERGMAN: The argument is what are the targets of the Iranian leadership in this nuclear project? The Iranians claim that they have only peaceful targets, and the intelligence services worldwide do not believe them. And I can tell you, Neal, that even in all (unintelligible) conversation, even Russian intelligence, the Chinese intelligence official, all of them agree that Iran is aiming at assembling a bomb. And if they were not aiming, then the whole mouse-and-cat game that they are playing with the international community and the IAEA wouldn't have happen because they wouldn't have anything to hide.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just a clarification of the couple of the acronyms Ronen Bergman used, the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, which was highly skeptical of the claims of a nuclear weapon in Iraq before the war in 2003. Also the NPT, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory and to which binds it to not produce nuclear weapons. And let me just follow up. There are - as you point out in your article, this is hardly a debate that is one-sided. In Israel, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan says an attack would be a serious mistake. It would set Iran back only temporarily, and that Israel then would risk a ferocious counterattack.</s>BERGMAN: The debate is - was heated in Israel following up Meir Dagan's meeting with some journalists. I was among them on his last day in office. And basically he said that the idea to attack here militarily is stupid. That Mossad was able - hinting to covert actions that were attributed to Mossad sabotaging the Iranian nuclear facilities and killing some scientists. These attempts were able to delay the project significantly. He was talking about 215(ph) as the year in which Iran will be able to assemble the first nuclear device. And thus, the sword, he said, is not on our neck, and we should not take a military action that would have an inevitable day-after effect that are going to be horrific to the Israeli population. That is his point of view and his point of view should be heard and taken seriously.</s>BERGMAN: But I would say that after weeks of researching for this New York Times piece that you mentioned, I would sum up and say that most of the leadership of Israel, including Mossad's current assessment, military intelligence and others, all of them agreed that the timeline is very different, that Iran would be able to produce the first device within a year, and that sanctions, the - or the combination between sanctions and covert actions are not significantly effective, and are not holding the Iranian nuclear project. Therefore, unless something happens and the Iranians agree suddenly to all conditions posed by the international community - but unless something unexpected is happening, my assessment is that the leadership of Israel would take the decision knowing that it would lead to a possible problematic outcome.</s>BERGMAN: And we can discuss this maybe later. What are going to be these outcomes? But knowing that it might lead to these outcomes - but when comparing the possible outcomes, including rockets fired at Israel (unintelligible) cities, including terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets overseas, but banishing these as problematic and as tragic as they can be with the possibility of Iran being armed with nuclear arsenal, they would make a choice, they will make a decision to send the bombers.</s>BERGMAN: Israel being a country I would say suffering past traumas, with the mindset to do everything to prevent a second holocaust, and with this comparison being drawn - I think, it's the wrong comparison, but yet it's still there - a comparison between Adolf Hitler and President Ahmadinejad, a comparison that is prompt by Prime Minister Netanyahu - when you put all of this together, you end up with one administration only, and this is to do whatever Israel can to prevent Iran from obtaining this capability.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ronen Bergman is our guest, a senior analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli newspaper, the author of a article on the cover of this week's New York Times' Sunday Magazine, "Will Israel Attack Iran?" You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And Chris(ph) is on the line. Chris is with us from Central California.</s>CHRIS: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I understand clearly that the United States is a big part of the equation at - in striking Iran from the Israeli standpoint. But we're in an election year, and the timetable of having to strike between nine to 12 months would indicate that the strike would have to come before the election. And if this strike went poorly and had a very negative effect, say, on the election, is that part of the calculation?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ronen Bergman, what the kinds of advance notice would Israel give to the United States? What terms of the election timing does Israel take into account?</s>BERGMAN: Yeah, these are two different questions. The first about the alert. The United States has urged Israel not to strike and also request Israel to give the U.S. administration a heads up on a possible strike. The Israelis - the high rank Israelis negotiating with the administration have not given both. They did not promise not to attack, and they did not promise not to - or to give an early warning. On the other hand, the Americans use the same vague language when it came to the Israeli questions on what the United States exactly is willing to do in order to fulfill the presidential promise to do - to be determined to prevent Iran from being nuclear. So both sides are using - on the crucial questions are using a very vague language.</s>BERGMAN: I would assume that Israel would give a few hours alert and hours - two hours, five hours alert to the United States just to hear the State's side and say, we have given you some sort of a pre-warning. The elections in the United States are considerations as the overall structure and the quality of the relations between the United States and Israel, which are perceived with all good reason as the most important strategic asset that Israel has. But at the end of the day when the main consideration is to prevent Iran from being a nuclear country when this threat is perceived as a national or as a major threat to national security of Israel is not an existential threat, then, I'm sorry to say, but I think that all other considerations are becoming minor. And...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chris, thanks very much for the call. Israel itself possesses, what, 300 nuclear weapons we believe, maybe more? Why does not deterrence work? Israel, of course, would retaliate if Iran were to use a nuclear weapon.</s>BERGMAN: I would assume that - oh, I know that most of Israel's leaders do not believe that Iran is going to use nuclear weapon against Israel. The problem is not the nuclear threat. The Iranians are not stupid. They want to live. They might be in support of suicide moment, but they are not suicidal themselves. And I think that most leaders, and me personally as well, see that there are only few people who believe that Iran would be hesitant enough to - sorry, brutal enough and stupid enough to use nuclear weapon against Israel.</s>BERGMAN: The problem is that once Iran acquires this ability, it would change the balance of power in the Middle East. And a country that possesses nuclear weapon is a different country when it comes to support proxy jihadist movement. And these Israeli leaders afraid would significantly narrow down the variety of options from the point of view of Israel just to quote one example coming from Minister of Defense Barak when he said, just imagine - he told me in a meeting we had on the 13th of January in his house - said just imagine, Ronen, that tomorrow we go into another war with Hezbollah in Lebanon like we did in 206(ph), and this time we are determined to take them out. But Iran comes forward and say, to attack Hezbollah is like attacking Iran, and we threaten you with nuclear weaponry.</s>BERGMAN: Now, Minister of Defense Barak says it's not necessarily that we would be threatened not to attack, and we would decide to cancel the war, but it would certainly make us think twice. And also - and this is something that you need to live in Israel (unintelligible) put some time to understand. If Iran declares a successful nuclear test, people in Israel are going to be, I would say - I think I'm not exaggerating if I say in a hysteria. This would change the - some of the society of Israel, and it would damage the economy of the country. And Israel for years have adopted the policy that it should maintain a monopoly of a nuclear - or nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, and I think it would do everything to maintain this monopoly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ronen Bergman is the author of "The Secret War with Iran," most recently the author of The New York Times Magazine cover story this week, "Will Israel Attack Iran?" He joined us on the phone from his office in Jerusalem where he's an analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth. Thanks very much for your time today.</s>BERGMAN: Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You could find a link to that New York Times Magazine article at our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Tomorrow, we'll talk about the fine art of the pitch. If you got a great idea, you're probably going to need financial backers who will need some convincing. Join us for that. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

Seven people die every day in Florida from prescription drug overdoses, by one estimate. Many of those deaths have been linked to pill mills — medical facilities that illegally prescribe or dispense strong narcotics. Local authorities are taking steps to combat the crisis. Amy Pavuk, reporter, Orlando Sentinel Tom Parkinson, Morning Edition host, WMFE

NEAL CONAN, HOST: Prescription drugs from pain centers here in Florida cause seven deaths a day from overdoses in the state, and nobody knows how many more across the country. Interstate traffickers, local dealers and addicts take advantage of loose regulations that allow doctors to establish so-called pill mills. Of course, there are many legitimate doctors and legitimate patients as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If prescription drug abuse has hit your family, give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. Amy Pavuk is a crime and courts reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, and she joins us here at member station WMFE in Orlando. Pleasure to have you with us.</s>AMY PAVUK: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also with us is Tom Parkinson, MORNING EDITION host here at WMFE and a reporter at member station covering this issue. Nice to have you with us, Tom.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: Nice to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Amy, I have to ask, one of the questions that thought my regulate this was a registry that recorded every prescription and every sale. Thirty-five other states have it. Florida's supposed to take effect last October.</s>AMY PAVUK: Florida now has a prescription drug monitoring program. That was something that drew sharp criticism from leaders across the country, including from the White House because it is touted as a tool that is one of the most effective in combating the state and the nation's prescription drug epidemic.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how effective has it been in the months since it's taken effect?</s>AMY PAVUK: It is a little bit too soon to tell. It hasn't been in effect that long, but law enforcement who I've spoken to have started using it. They use it to track what doctors are prescribing and what citizens are receiving in prescription.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Meanwhile, there are hundreds of these so-called pill mills that says, you know, pain center, pain medication. The purposes are quite legitimate.</s>AMY PAVUK: There are. This is one of the things that law enforcement and legislators made clear, which - our state has plenty of legit pain clinics. It is just this small number of so-called pill mills that are causing the problem.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And these are individual places run by individual doctors who issue a lot of scripts.</s>AMY PAVUK: They do. They are accused of just prescribing a plethora of pills without any true legitimate need.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so these end up in the hands of, well, either local dealers or, in fact, sometimes interstate dealers.</s>AMY PAVUK: They do. There's a term that law enforcement has coined here called the pillbilly. That is referred to as citizens in - from Kentucky, Ohio, you name it, who travel here specifically to get pills. They can get them, and then they return to their home state and fill them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the markup, as I gather, if you buy an OxyContin pill, for example, from a prescription, it's about $1, maybe $10 then on the street here in Florida, maybe $40 a pill if you're selling that in, just to pick a place, Kentucky.</s>AMY PAVUK: That's true. And we're hearing that the amount is actually going up now that the supply is dwindling.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Tom Parkinson, what kind of an effect is all this having on this community?</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: It's just been devastating, Neal. It's - as one of Amy's sources actually said recently, if there were seven people a day dying from any other disease, authorities would be all over it. This was allowed to continue for far too long. And that's one of the reasons why it became so severe here in Florida because for at least a decade, there was lax to no regulation on these clinics. No pill mill - or pill monitoring database, so doctor shopping was relatively easy to do. And I wanted to go back to your point about the pill mills.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: I recently interviewed Sheriff Jerry Demings, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings about this and asked the sheriff, you know, how can you tell? What's - how can you tell the difference between a legitimate pain management clinic and a so-called pill mill? These places, you have to understand, Neal, they were - look like just storefronts. They would be wedged between a laundromat and a pawnshop or something. A patient would basically show up with any kind of vague complaint of back or neck pain or whatever, receive a perfunctory, if any, physical examination and then be written a scrip for hundreds of doses of these highly addictive pills on a cash-only basis. They're open 24 hours a day, till 3:00 a.m. or something, armed guards, sign saying you're not allowed to sell your drugs to other patients.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: This doesn't describe the picture of when I go to my physician. It's not like that. There are no armed guards there. So clearly, if you have a line of people outside a building at 3:00 a.m. paying cash, something is not right there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Amy Pavuk, is that accurate? These are places that dispense as well as prescribe?</s>AMY PAVUK: Well, technically they can't dispense themselves anymore. That was part of the legislation that was recently enacted. But yes, I've been to these pill mills myself. It is not uncommon to see lines of people standing outside. As Tom mentions, armed security. It's just - it's not routine. It's not standard, what people would consider general care.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet when law enforcement tries to intervene, the person says here's my prescription and here are my pills. It's perfectly legal.</s>AMY PAVUK: Right. And that's one of the defenses that the patients and the doctors have, particularly the doctors who say, you know, I prescribed this to this patient. I told them to take one pill a day. I did not tell them to take 30 pills at one time, and I certainly didn't tell them to sell them either.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the - and they have a legitimate complaint. This my business and why are you messing with me?</s>AMY PAVUK: Right. And that's what makes these criminal investigations so difficult, is because law enforcement essentially has to hire or get doctors involved to assess these and look at these and say, OK, if this person came in with a back pain, what would you ordinarily do? Would you do this? Would you do that? Would you send them to a specialty doctor? And they really have to assess this on a case-by-case basis, which makes building these cases so tedious and time consuming.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom Parkinson, you think a pattern would indicate - well, a pattern - if you're dispensing large numbers of pills to large numbers of people, maybe people should get suspicious.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: Yes. And to their credit, law enforcement is cracking down, and it apparently is having a tremendous impact. They're just getting started on it, but the latest figures I've had is more than 400 clinics have been closed down in the last year. Prosecutors have indicted dozens of pill mill operators. Eighty doctors have lost their licenses. A number of doctors have gone to prison, and we're talking, you know, five, 10, 15-year sentences. So they really are cracking down. It seems to be having an effect. One telling number, I think, is the doctor purchases of oxycodone dropped from 35 million doses in period of 2010 to less than a million, 925,000.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Wow.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: So it obviously is having an effect. But there are a number of unintended consequences, Neal, because these are highly addictive medications, and you don't just wake up - if you're addicted to one of these pills, you don't just wake up one morning and say, oh, it's illegal now or my pill mill is closed, I'm going to quit. These people are going elsewhere, and those are some of the unintended consequences that I talked to Jerry Demings, the sheriff, about. They're seeing a huge spike in illegal street drug sales and also a huge spike in armed robberies of pharmacies, drug cargo heists, all kinds of...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ancillary...</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: Ancillary, yeah, unintended consequences.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll get to the calls in just a minute. But, Amy Pavuk, where do these places get their pills from?</s>AMY PAVUK: Well, it used to be the doctors in Florida could buy their pills directly from the manufacturers, hence why we saw the numbers that we were seeing for years, such as in 2010, 90 of the top 100 oxycodone-dispensing doctors in the nation were from Florida. It's a huge number. It's obviously decreasing now. And so now drug addicts and abusers, when they can get their pills from doctors, or if they don't buy them on the street, they are going to have to turn to pharmacies. But with that said, at least one pharmacy chain is implementing some changes. CVS recently sent a letter to what it deemed high-dispensing doctors, telling them that it was no longer going to fill their prescriptions for pain killers and other scheduled substances.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I assume doctors are saying, wait a minute, how do you get to decide which doctor's prescriptions to fill and which you don't?</s>AMY PAVUK: Exactly. They're calling it discriminatory. One, you know, several people are referring to it as a black list and saying that, you know, look, you're pegging us as criminals when we haven't been arrested. We're not under investigation. But a story that I investigated that ran recently showed that quite a few people on that list actually either have been arrested or under investigation, so there is some correlation between CVS's list and what law enforcement and health department officials are doing.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: That should be pointed out, Neal. These people - we're not talking Dr. Kildare here. People - you uncovered some of the people in your - on that list in your piece, excellent piece that ran on Saturday in the Sentinel. Could you tell us a little, Amy, about who some of these doctors were? I mean, pretty shady characters.</s>AMY PAVUK: Sure. Sure. I looked at the doctors from Central Florida. There is one doctor who was arrested for not just allegedly - again, he hasn't gone to trial, hasn't been convicted - not just for allegedly running a pill mill, but also hosting wild sex and drug parties at his home. He invited...</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: With his patients.</s>AMY PAVUK: With his patients. You have people who range from him to simply doctors who have a lot of fatal overdoses associated with their patients, and law enforcement looks in and says, why is this person having four and five overdoses of their patient base in a year or two?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get a caller in on the conversation. 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. Sam's with us from Merritt Island here in Florida.</s>SAM: Yeah, how are you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>SAM: Yeah, I don't know how relevant it is, but I have a sister-in-law who was recently arrested for selling OxyContin, and she would use several people to purchase pills for her, from Miami to Orlando. They would pick doctors from Miami or Orlando that they could get their pills from. And she was arrested, and none of the doctors were prosecuted, as far as I know. But she is back out, and she is doing the same thing again and using the same people. And I was just wondering, you know, if they couldn't possibly put certain people on a list that, I mean these people don't need and shouldn't be prescribed these drugs, you know? I mean, they're using the same mules each time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Amy Pavuk, any prospect of such a list?</s>AMY PAVUK: Well, two things come to mind: One, what you're referring to about your sister, those are actually what law enforcement in Florida refers to as sponsors. There's a lead person who quote-unquote "sponsors" other people to get drugs for them. That's one thing. The other aspect is this database that Florida now has will track that.</s>AMY PAVUK: So if your sister has four people going and getting drugs for her, law enforcement and pharmacists can now track who those people are and what they're buying. They don't have free access to that database. Law enforcement has to prove that they're already investigating the person, but that is what Florida's new database, which really has only been unveiled actually just a matter of weeks, if not just a few months - that's what it's intended to do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sam, we hope your sister gets out of the trap.</s>SAM: Sorry?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the - we hope your sister gets out of the trap she's in.</s>SAM: Yeah, my sister-in-law, and I sure hope so too. And I was just upset that they had all the prescriptions with the names on them and none of the other people were sought either.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Thanks very much. We're talking about prescription drugs and so-called pill mills here in Florida. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This email from Ashley: I'm pharmacist, newly graduated in May. I currently work for Walgreens, and I have found that I am more of babysitter against pain and stimulant drug abusers than a health care professional. People abuse these drugs at a ridiculous rate and get angry when I tell them the risks they're putting themselves to by taking too many. In regards to prescribers, I see legitimate and potentially illegitimate prescribing practices. However, I can't prove any illegitimacy, so I'm stuck with dispensing hundreds of pain and stimulant meds to one person at a time. It's extremely frustrating. She's writing from Davenport, Iowa. And I assume, Tom, that's the situation a lot of pharmacists here find themselves in.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: Yeah, it seems to be that way. And as Amy and I have both said, law - there are new laws in place, state laws and county and municipal laws, and they seem to be working. They seem to be taking effect, but it's probably going to take a long time to know if that's really going to work. And Neil,, I think it needs to be said, as this caller pointed out, that many of these people, you know, they didn't set out to become junkies. They were injured in a car accident or some other way and some legitimate physician prescribed these drugs to them, and then they became addicted.</s>TOM PARKINSON, BYLINE: And there's many others, it should be said, that have a legitimate need for these medications and use them responsibly, as prescribed and do not abuse them, just as there are many doctors who legitimately prescribe the drugs. But these new laws, including the prescription drug database, are just riddled with loopholes, all kinds of loopholes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to - this is Fred. Fred with us from Ocala, Florida.</s>FRED: Yeah, I had to laugh when you said about legitimate doctors. My son was in an auto accident and he went and saw a, quote, "legitimate doctor," who due to the pain of the injury gave him prescription for 180 OcyContins. Well, that was about $40,000 out of my bank book ago, and it - we've been fighting(ph) it for three years. He gives him a script for the OcyContins without even a return visit. So - and this was a respected doctor in the community, supposedly.</s>FRED: But my son, I constantly try to get him off. I get him clean. I even put him in jail for nine months. I get him clean. He goes fine for months, falls back off the wagon. It's a horrible, horrible disease, if you want to call it a disease or an addiction. But his sources - when he goes straight and we talk a lot, trying to get him straight - his main sources - and he tells me they're going for 20 to 40 dollars a pill on the street - are the - he tells me a lot of senior citizens are getting prescriptions.</s>FRED: They're supporting themselves off it because people you would never expect to be drug dealers are, you know, 60, 50, 60 years old getting prescriptions because they don't have a good pension, and they're supporting themselves by reselling their pills. Also, a great deal of the pills he was purchasing were coming from guys who were getting them from the VA. You know...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fred.</s>FRED: ...it's a horrible, horrible thing. Like I say, I fight every day, you know, trying to get my son so he's going to stay alive.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fred, you must be...</s>FRED: And the doctors are just - oh, the doctors, I - they are the ones who should be thrown in jail. And...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Fred...</s>FRED: ... pass out scrips without any follow up or without any recourse to them, you know?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fred, I know you must be worried sick, and we hope your son deals - well, finds a way out of the addiction. But he raises a good point, and I wanted to read it - raise it again in the context of this email from Christopher in Orlando. My mother was a regular visitor of a local Central Florida pill mill. She overdosed Christmas Eve, 2011. These doctors should be made responsible for their dangerous actions. Well, they're talking about actually charging some doctors, aren't they, Amy?</s>AMY PAVUK: They are, and law enforcement and prosecutors are doing what they can. Locally, the numbers are skyrocketing of prosecutions, of drug trafficking charges, and they are going after these doctors. It's just a very difficult and slow process.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Amy Pavuk of the Orlando Sentinel, thanks very much. Our thanks also to Tom Parkinson of the WMFE here in Orlando. We have to thank Mark Simpson, Mac Dula, Melissa David, Vierka Kleinova and everybody here at WMFE for their hospitality as they hosted us here today. Tomorrow, Jennifer Ludden will host with a conversation about the growing number of multi-generation household. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan.

When creative thinkers develop a concept, they must convince others their idea is worth backing. Pitching skills are needed in the newsroom, and in the worlds of entertainment, fundraising and invention. But what makes a pitch successful? Lori Greiner, inventor and judge on ABC's Shark Tank Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, senior vice president, National Geographic Channel

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. The fine art of the pitch can be difficult to master, but all of us take a shot at least from time to time. We try to convince the boss on a great idea, persuade investors to back our invention, sell an editor on a story, a producer on a film or a TV show, an employer on yours truly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Everybody knows you're supposed to keep it short and strong, but like a sharp curveball, a well-intentioned pitch can sometimes wind up in the dirt. So we want to hear from those of you who get pitched all the time. Bosses, editors, producers, investors, tell us: What have you heard that turned your head or turned your stomach? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org and click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Later in the program, Fred Korematsu's portrait goes up in the Smithsonian later this week. His daughter tells us how she found out her dad was a civil rights hero. But first, Lori Greiner has been called the queen of QVC, where she hosts the show "Clever and Unique Creations." She's also one of the sharks, the judges on ABC's "Shark Tank," and she joins us by phone from Westchester in Pennsylvania. Nice to have you with us today.</s>LORI GREINER: Hi, Neal, nice to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also with us, Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, a senior vice president at National Geographic Channel, with us here in Studio 3A. Nice to have you with us, too.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Thanks so much for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Lori, let me ask you first. I know you have about 110 patents. So what's the most important lesson you learned about making a pitch over the years?</s>LORI GREINER: Well, I think the most important thing is to have something that will grab the attention of who you're pitching to in one sentence. You've got to get them fast and immediate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So the high concept, as it is.</s>LORI GREINER: Yes, the high content, I think, and doing it with confidence and passion.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So the person pitching is as important. Great ideas don't sell themselves.</s>LORI GREINER: No, great ideas don't sell themselves. I think it's equally as important who's doing the pitch and that they are passionate about what they're pitching and very confident. I think people don't like when you're not confident about what you're pitching, and they don't want to invest in you or get behind you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, as one of the sharks, you are the recipient of pitches, and what do you see people - can you give us an example of something somebody did wrong?</s>LORI GREINER: Well, I think a couple things that I noticed people did wrong, one was having a lack of enthusiasm or confidence in what they were pitching. If they don't believe in it, you're not going to. And I think when doing the pitch, missing opportunities.</s>LORI GREINER: So when you see that people are reacting and they're ready to give you an offer, or, you know, they say when you've already gotten, that they're sealing the deal, walk away, say yes and take it, I think many people miss opportunities by continuing to haggle or dicker about little points.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, because you're in the studio here, I could see you nodding when you say missed opportunities.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Yeah, I think that there is an art to listening in the pitch that sometimes people forget. Oftentimes you've got great sales people going in to give the pitch, and they forget I can listen and ask questions and really jump on those opportunities that do come up, get to know the buyer and what it is that they're looking for and learn how to position yourself as the problem-solver, their problem-solver, because really at the end of the day a lot of the people with deep pockets and money to spend, they want to invest in their own idea.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: So if you listen, you can figure out, all right, how do I make this seem like it was their idea. And that's the master, the people that can really get a lot of things through, that's the way they do it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So how many pitches do you get per week?</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Oh, goodness. Well, right now we're at a conference, and I've probably received about 50 this morning. That's unusual. Typically it would be more about 10 to 20 a day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how - given that many, what makes one stick out?</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: You know, technology is becoming more of a - playing a larger role.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Not a PowerPoint, please.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: No, no, definitely, not for us. For National Geographic Channel, you know, we need amazing visuals, and we want to be in business with the most creative people that can also execute. So before, when I started at Geographic about eight years ago, it was all verbal pitch, and it was a four-page treatment, and that was it.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: So you had to have a good title, you had to have a good tagline, but beyond that, you know, you had to just go on faith. Now there's really sophisticated demo reels that are put together, and people that do those and do them well probably end up getting more business.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It takes money to make money. You have to make the demo reel.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: It's true. Investing in your own pitch is important.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lori Greiner, is that something that you've learned over the years too, the technology has shifted?</s>LORI GREINER: Well, I think not as much for what I do. You know, products can actually still just be sketched out on a piece of paper, or ideas, and then sent over to your factories, and they can make you up a sample or a prototype.</s>LORI GREINER: So I think it's a little bit different just because of the different industries that we're in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from those of you who get pitched all the time. If you're an editor, a producer, well, a boss, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And I wonder, Lori Greiner, as you've developed this talent over the years, do you find that it serves you well in other walks of life?</s>LORI GREINER: Oh, absolutely. I think running a business, doing what I've done for the last - since 1996, has taught me so many things because I started from just an idea and then had to figure out how to make it, market it, every single thing from soup to nuts on how to get a product done and out there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: 'Cause we think of that product, well, of course the person knew every aspect of the production process. No, as it turns out, you just had an idea and had to learn everything else.</s>LORI GREINER: Right, exactly. I had to figure it out for myself. I think today there's a lot more available to people, a show like "Shark Tank" and different websites where people can give their idea and have people that can help them get it to market, whereas back when I started, there really wasn't much like that out there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're - Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, you mentioned you're at this conference, the Real Screen Summit, where reality television producers from all over the - and we don't think of National Geographic as reality TV, but it is, and even a project like "Restrepo," the great documentary that was - well, let me put it bluntly, should have won the Academy Award...</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...that was pitched to you too, and that kind of programming. So it runs the gamut. And those kinds of programs, but for people pitching ideas, something like the Real Screen Summit, I mean that's got to be, you know, Nirvana.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Uh-huh. And one of the mistakes that oftentimes people make is that they think that they know National Geographic because it's an amazing brand, it's been around for 100-plus years. But oftentimes they filter their ideas then. So they - I can't tell you how many ideas on Everest I get.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: At every meeting, somebody comes in the first time, they have a great Everest idea. But we have evolved, and we're always evolving, and it's important to get to know the buyer. I think the first time - you have to be persistent as well. You have to get in the door, and that's difficult...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Getting the meeting is hard, yes.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Getting the meeting is hard, and so if you have more than one idea beyond Everest, make sure that you're not filtering those through. Let the buyer kind of go through the ideas with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, so if you have three or four ideas, you've got the meeting on the Everest proposal, but wait a minute, there's this K2 proposal, it's even better.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Oftentimes I say, all right, you pitched me those ideas. What else is in that bag? What are you pitching to other people that you think that I wouldn't do? Because we are - we're evolving, and you can't think of where we want to be nine months from now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wonder, Lori Greiner, is that aspect true in your business too?</s>LORI GREINER: Absolutely. You never know what's going to be the next great thing, whether it's a product or a business. And I think that people just sharing every idea - and I agree completely with Bridget - sometimes something that somebody thinks maybe is their worst thing that they were going to pitch, it's their number 10, and they give you one, two, three and four, number 10 could be great.</s>LORI GREINER: And so I think being open and hearing everything and looking at everything, you can tell, I think instantly, whether - as I said on "Shark Tank" - if it's a hero or a zero. But if you don't hear those things, you won't be able to know.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is pitching an investor different than pitching, well - I don't know, Lori Greiner, if you have a lot of experience pitching editors, but I assume you have a lot of experience pitching investors.</s>LORI GREINER: Yes, I've had a lot - I have pitched, and I have had a lot of people pitch me. And I think I agree with Bridget. An interesting other facet it is knowing who you're pitching to, the same as knowing how to pitch. Listening, as she said, is important because I've seen times where there might be several decision-makers in a room, and if one person gets slighted, it could change the mix of the whole reaction to everybody sitting there.</s>LORI GREINER: Whereas, you know, if you're sure that you're making your pitch to everybody and engaging everybody, I think that's very helpful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bridget?</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: You know, that also brings up or makes me think of picking your pitching partner is also important. Oftentimes I see people come in with someone who's very similar. I mean we all like working with people that have a similar background and you can relate to.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: But there is an advantage to having a pitching partner who might be a different age or who might be a different gender because you can appeal to a wider base. You don't know who's going to be in the audience all the time.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: So for - in the entertainment world, when I was on the producing side, I could go into MTV and I'd be on, but my maybe more seasoned boss, when we'd go to PBS, he'd be on. And you can play off each other that way and make sure that you're reaching a larger audience.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get John(ph) on the line, John calling us from Detroit.</s>JOHN: Hey, how you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>JOHN: As a - I'm an event promoter, and one of the biggest things that annoys me, and I get several pitches daily, is the lack of originality. I get so many people that want to take an existing product. I promote events. I get so tired of people wanting to bring the same kind of events in or the same products, just changed over their way.</s>JOHN: You know, I'm looking for fresh new things, not the same old stuff just reproduced.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So somebody might say it's just like this except with a twist.</s>JOHN: Well, what they'll do is they'll come in and they'll say, well, I have this line of apparel that I'd like to sell at your events. And it's just like the other three brands that I have already for sale at the events. And there's no originality to it. They're just putting the same kind of graphics on there and just a different color.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So maybe they did the research and say, oh, he must like this kind of brand and nothing else, but they haven't done enough research.</s>JOHN: Right, just a pure lack of originality.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it.</s>JOHN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that's probably going to ditch my pitch for Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt for mid-afternoon talk show with a picture of Everest behind the host.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: She's a senior vice president of global development and production for the National Geographic Channel. Also with us is Lori Greiner, known as the queen of QVC, one of the judges on ABC-TV's "Shark Tank." If you get pitched all the time, give us a call. How do good pitches go bad? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. If you're incredibly lucky, you'll come up with an idea that sells itself, for an app that offers a tidy solution to a universal problem, for a restaurant that launches the next big fad, for a product that's perfectly timed to hit the shelves now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you're not - and let's face it, most of us aren't - crafting the perfect pitch to drive investors to their checkbooks is your best hope, and that's where today's guests come in. Lori Greiner is known as the queen of QVC. She's one of the sharks on ABC's "Shark Tank"; and Bridget Hunnicutt of National Geographic Channel is the brains behind the reality show "Witness" and the documentary "Restrepo," which was nominated for an Academy Award.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: They know what it takes to make a good pitch. So if you are pitched regularly, as a boss, an editor, an investor, what's the pitch you heard that absolutely flopped? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We have an email from Juliette(ph) in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin: You invited comments from bosses and businesspeople, but parents hear more pitches than any typical person in a day. So I suspect she's right about that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller on the line, though. This is Victor, Victor with us from Charleston in South Carolina.</s>VICTOR: Hello, Neal, how are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm well, thank you.</s>VICTOR: Good. I was a circuit court judge for 12 years. I have had people pitch stuff to me on a daily basis that those folks that you're talking to have never heard of.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: These are people pitching, to some degree, for their lives.</s>VICTOR: Yes, or certainly their freedom, or their fine.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what works - well, I'm sure that, you know, the proper amount of deference, the proper amount of taking responsibility for what they did, I'm sure that's something that worked in your, or may have worked in your case that might not be applicable in other cases.</s>VICTOR: Well, it's always interesting because, you know, realistically speaking, when you're dealing with that particular environment, whether it's white collar or DUI or anything else, you're talking about education, mental health. You're talking about employability, all of those kinds of things come into play.</s>VICTOR: And I find that the people, the lawyers especially, that pitch to me were the ones that stuck to the facts and put together something that was extremely verifiable. And that tended to be a lot more effective than someone utilizing social or poor me or I didn't do it or the victim was as bad as I was type thing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, stick to the facts, verifiable, that's got to be important in your business.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Absolutely. We want that kind of credibility. We demand it. And I think that also just honesty. When you're working, or when you're receiving a pitch, you get a sense of how close is that person to the actual content. How knowledgeable are they? And you get that sincerity, and that's also important, and it'll come through in the final product. So that's also important for us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Lori Greiner, integrity, well, the people who come up with products are - some are charlatans. That kind of integrity, verifiability, that's got to be critical in your business.</s>LORI GREINER: Absolutely. I would never invest in or want a business partner who I didn't feel would have integrity and that I could totally trust and was a good partner for me. So I think it's absolutely critical.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Victor, can you remember one occasion that was either spectacularly good or spectacularly bad?</s>VICTOR: Me?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah.</s>VICTOR: Oh yeah. Quite frankly it was very interesting to hear someone plead for life in a death penalty case, and the lawyers did a very, very good job. The unfortunate thing was his record certainly did not verify any sort of mercy with regard to that particular case. And it (unintelligible) to me.</s>VICTOR: The more difficult ones are things like accidental deaths and driving accidents in South Carolina, when you can wind up with a homicide scenario, where in reality it was truly an accident. Anything involving alcohol winds up being a homicide.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Victor, thanks very much, and it's nice to have you remind us of the importance of this craft from time to time. Appreciate it.</s>VICTOR: Verifiability is the one thing that I think is most important. Anybody that's either applying for a job or a guilty plea or anything else needs to certainly have verifiable documentation when they make their pitch.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you. Let's see if we can go next to - this is Steve, Steve with us from Jenks in Oklahoma.</s>STEVE: Hi, Neal, how are you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>STEVE: Well, I just want to say that I am constantly amazed at the pitches I get as a small community newspaper in a suburb in Tulsa that don't even have anything to do with even Oklahoma a lot of times. I get stuff from FEMA. I get stuff from - on just disasters that happen halfway across the country or even local events, you know, 50 miles away. They just seem to send news releases, and they don't take into account the audiences that they're sending those to.</s>STEVE: And I guess they think that if they throw enough, you know, at the wall, something's going to stick somewhere, but you know, a lot of times I can call and find out, OK, yeah, there is a local angle, there is a resident of Jenks or Bixby or Glenpool, Oklahoma, the three towns that I write for, but I don't have time to call them all the time.</s>STEVE: So I think a lot of times if the PR people, you know, would maybe take a little bit more time to, you know, figure out a local angle to pitch these stories, especially to, you know, community newspapers, I think that would help them get their message out a lot more.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve, that's very interesting, thanks very much.</s>STEVE: OK, thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You were talking earlier, Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, of - you want people who are convincing you that in fact the idea was yours to begin with and in fact that maybe they can solve your problem. I wonder if you could overdo that, if somebody can come in who says, you know, you've got a real problem at 8:00 at night and I can help you with that. You know, that could be a little too much.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Absolutely. You need to walk that line very gracefully. But I think at the end of the day, if you can figure out what the buyer's problem is, and you can position yourself as the problem solver, you'll have a lead for the next pitch. Even if you don't have the perfect fit in that meeting, the next time around you'll be the one that they call, and you can come in prepared and more in line with what he's looking for in Tulsa.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: For us, you know, we're looking to get a wide appeal, and so, you know, you can't go too niche, and you just have to walk those balance - walk that balance very carefully.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it sounds like there's another part of this, and I wanted to ask you, Lori Greiner, about this too. You can't take it too personally. No is a perfectly acceptable answer. Next time it might be yes, so don't get too upset.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Right. I think you also have to worry about - you know, sometimes some buyers aren't comfortable saying no. Like on "Shark Tank," that's fabulous because they just let them have it. But in reality, a lot of buyers will kind of go, huh, that's interesting. So as a pitcher, you have to learn how to read between the lines, and you need to be able to say, oh, that one's not going anywhere, this one is the one they like.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lori Greiner?</s>LORI GREINER: I think that when - sometimes you're helping a person by saying no. If they don't have a good idea or something that you don't think is going to make it, if you tell them no, you might be saving them a lot of time and money. Sometimes putting out a lot of money and effort, people have lost their homes, they've destroyed themselves financially. So sometimes you're actually doing them a favor and being nice by saying no if you really think it won't work.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Have you ever had a situation where you get pitched something, and it's terrible pitch, but you say wait a minute, there's an idea there that maybe we can work with?</s>LORI GREINER: I think yes, that has happened, and I think sometimes the person is so appealing that maybe what they're pitching isn't great, but you believe in them, and they're so creative and charismatic and hard-working and passionate that I want to be involved with them, and so I might try to bring them in and then see what can we do with them and where can we go that might be different than what they first came in with.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Marianna(ph), Marianna with us from Houston.</s>MARIANNA: Hi there. You know, it's fascinating listening to this. (Unintelligible) and I work as the marketing and community relations director for a local firm. And my pet peeve when being pitched is when someone assumes that I'm not the one to make the decisions because I am a young woman.</s>MARIANNA: I love when they tell me, well, can you go check with your boss, or can you go check with the person who needs to make this decision. And I sit there going, well, you're talking to her.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or it ain't getting there, even if there is somebody else higher, because, yeah...</s>MARIANNA: Right, absolutely. Well, you know, the buck stops with me, and my company's bucks stop with me, and you know, it's a real shame when someone assumes that I'm there to show them to a conference room or serve them some water as opposed to I am the person they need to meet with and who will be making that decision.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, I'm sure you've never had that problem.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Well, you know, I think it's actually - she's probably in a rare situation. Most of us do have to go back and report in to other bosses. Even when you get in sometimes with the GM, they have to report to the CEO what they're doing. So actually, I - you don't want to let the person you're meeting with realize what you're doing, but you do want to plant soundbites for whoever you're meeting to be able to take to their higher-ups.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: And you also want to be able to follow up and make it very clear and concise so that they can communicate and advocate for your project on your behalf with the higher-ups. But you never want to let the person you're meeting with feel that that's what you're doing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In other words, it's important to point out somebody may pitch you for, I'm guessing, 10 or 15 minutes. You then have to pitch your boss for five minutes or three minutes. So you need to have that kernel of the idea that you can communicate very quickly.</s>LORI GREINER: Exactly, and...</s>LORI GREINER: other words, it's important to point out somebody may pitch you for, I'm guessing, 10 or 15 minutes. You then have to pitch your boss for five minutes or three minutes. So you need to have that kernel of the idea that you can communicate very quickly.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Exactly. And then my boss needs to go to our ad sales department, and then they need to go pitch sponsors. So, I mean, it gets shorter and shorter and more concise.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah. It's always bad when the advertising or marketing people come back and say, what's this about?</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: It happens.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting. Thanks very much for the call, Mary Anna.</s>MARY ANNA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Paula in Sebastopol, California: I've come up with some very original product ideas that I'm sure would be successful. In fact, many have actually been produced years later by someone else with great results for them. My quandary is how does one present these ideas to a company or an investor and protect it from being stolen?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Lori Greiner, that's your bailiwick.</s>LORI GREINER: Well, that is a difficult thing. I always recommend, if you can, to patent or protect whatever your idea is. If you can't, you have to make your best judgment. Sometimes people don't get anywhere because they sit on something, so afraid to reveal it. And yet, in the reverse, sometimes if you expose something too widely, you can risk losing it. So I think just be careful and be discriminating in who you reveal it to in the beginning.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there are products and ideas that can be protected by patent.</s>LORI GREINER: Yes, yes. Absolutely. There - it's something that a good intellectual property attorney could tell you whether or not they feel your product is protectable, and they can do searches in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to see if it is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to - I'm sorry. You were going to say?</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Well, I think for entertainment, oftentimes people can become too precious with their ideas, and you've got to throw them out there because it's so fast-paced, and you can miss an entire trend because you're being too precious with the idea. No network executive is going to make their career or do a channel any favor if they're taking ideas from people. That's not the business that we're in. We're looking for talented people, and we're going to treat them well and as partners.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think I saw a TV series based on that very idea of people stealing ideas. Of course it didn't turn out too well for the executive involved. Anyway, Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt is senior vice president of global development and production for the National Geographic Channel, a panel member at the Realscreen Summit's "So You Think You Can Pitch." Also with us, Lori Greiner, known as the Queen of QVC, a judge on ABC TV's "Shark Tank." She holds about 110 U.S. and international patents and is also the host of "Clever & Unique Creations" on QVC TV. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Mike, and Mike is with us from Cottonwood in Utah.</s>MIKE: Hello?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Mike. You're on the air.</s>MIKE: Hi. Thanks for having my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>MIKE: Yeah. I just want to make a comment about the whole thievery of ideas. I'm a rock climber and an explorer, and I've pitched to people such as National Geographic and had some success with different companies in the outdoor world, but I've also seen my ideas come up a year or two later with other people. And I think it's pretty interesting because my ideas are places to go on the planet where no one's been to, to climb and to explore. Yet a year or two later after the idea is pitched, they're going to that exact spot. I just wonder if there's any comments on that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt?</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: You know, it's difficult. I think a lot of people don't realize the volume of material coming in to us and the number of people pitching. And oftentimes when you're pitching, you think this idea is so original. It's so unique. I will tell you that I got a pitch on lightning, and we did do a show five years later on lightning. But when - the original producer did call me and said, you know, I pitched you a lightning show five years ago, and I saw what was on air. And I was like, I've been pitched lightning shows a hundred times. And I think what's really important also in getting pitches is why this? Why now? What about this idea is relevant? And timing is a lot to it, but oftentimes it's the town. It's the person who you're talking to. But nobody is in the business of taking other people's ideas and just - it wouldn't do anybody any favors.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mike, I'm not sure that's - that may be cold comfort.</s>MIKE: Yes. I think it's the unique situation I have. It's more about the location of planet and being an explorer. And it's just curious to know when you research the places for years and years, and then somebody else is going there after you've pitched it, when it's almost impossible to find the same contact and the same location on the planet. But anyways, thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Well, good luck, Mike. Hang in there. All right. Let's see if we go next to - this is Sonny(ph), Sonny with us from Grand Rapids.</s>SONNY: Hi. Two quick points. First is, I'm the parent of two daughters, and one daughter gets her way far more often than the other without us really realizing it because she's a far better pitcher.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ha.</s>SONNY: For instance, the other day we were trying to decide where to go to dinner, and my one daughter, who gets her way more often, said, Dad, you know, don't you love the steak at Texas Roadhouse? Well, my other daughter was just back there, pounding the feet, saying, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's.</s>SONNY: So we went to Texas. And the second point I'd like to make is one of the importance of creating an opportunity, and I'd like to actually demonstrate that by proposing that I send a sizzle reel about the Arizona cowboy, the modern Arizona cowboy, over to your National Geographic guest.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm sure she would find room for it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sizzle reel is about TV production proposals. It has nothing to do with steak.</s>SONNY: That's right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Sonny, thanks very much. Good luck with that.</s>SONNY: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Bye-bye. When, Lori Greiner, did you realize you were good at this?</s>LORI GREINER: Oh, I think probably within the first year. I was fortunate enough to - with good pitches, which I think was very important - get into JCPenney nationwide and to get on the shopping TV network. But it was a very key thing that I did when I would call people because it's very difficult to get buyers at any store or shopping network to pick up the phone.</s>LORI GREINER: And when I finally did, I had one second literally in which to grab their attention. And I would tell them that I had the greatest earring organizer ever. Nothing else was out there like it. Could I have five minutes of their time? I'd be in their town on thus and such a date. And by giving them a way in which to see me quickly and trying to intrigue them, almost every single one of them allowed me to see them for five minutes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hmm. Bridget Hunnicutt, I'm sure there was a time when you sat quaking in somebody's office and were ushered in and then realized, hey, I can sell this.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Oh. The first meeting was a disaster. I remember being very intimidated by the building I was going into, and I had a whole binder full of ideas that I was ready to pitch. And I went through - he was very generous with his time. He spent, like, an hour and a half, but I went through each pitch. And he said, no, because, no, because, no, because. So it's very disheartening. But I think that with persistence, that made a huge difference, and so it got better.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bridget Whalen Hunnicutt, now senior vice president of global development and production for the National Geographic Channel. Thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate it.</s>BRIDGET WHALEN HUNNICUTT: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also, Lori Greiner, good luck with the sharks.</s>LORI GREINER: Oh, thank you. My first episode's February 10. I hope you can tune in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lori Greiner, queen of QVC and now on ABC TV's "Shark Tank." She joined us from her home in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Coming up, Karen Korematsu joins us to remember her father, civil rights champion Fred Korematsu. Stay with us. TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

Several American cities celebrated Fred Korematsu Day Monday. Korematsu fought the executive order that incarcerated thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. His case went to the Supreme Court, and in 1988, thousands of surviving internees and heirs began receiving reparations. Karen Korematsu, daughter of civil rights leader Fred Korematsu

NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just a couple of months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered that anyone of Japanese descent be removed from the West Coast. In one of the most shameful episodes in American history, more than 110,000 people were forced into concentration camps. A few, though, refused, including a then young man named Fred Korematsu.</s>FRED KOREMATSU: I didn't think that the government would go as far as to include American citizens to be interned without a hearing. And then later on, they changed my draft card to 4-C, which is enemy alien. In those days, if you're an Asian, people automatically think you don't belong in this country. You're not an American, and I thought that was wrong.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fred Korematsu became the subject of a test case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, but it ruled against him in 1944. Forty years later, a federal court overturned his conviction. In 1988, Congress voted to pay reparations for the surviving Japanese from the camps, and the government apologized. We want to hear from Japanese-Americans today. How did you hear about your family story during the war? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fred Korematsu died in 2005. His daughter Karen Korematsu tells his story. She joins us today from member station KQED in San Francisco. Nice to have you with us today.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And yesterday was the second Fred Korematsu Day in California, and I'm sure that was quite emotional.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Yes, it was. It's wonderful to see how much my father's legacy has grown. And we've had several events around California and even as far as Florida in honor of my father's special day of recognition, Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Your father now recognized as a hero, a champion of civil rights, but I understand you didn't find out. He never talked about it when you were a kid.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: That's correct. I didn't find out about my father's Supreme Court case until I was a junior in high school. And it was in a social studies class when my friend Maya(ph) got up in front of all of us to give a book report, an oral book report, about the Japanese-American internment. Her book was called "Concentration Camps USA." And when she was talking about the Japanese-American internment, it was a subject I had not heard of before. No one spoke about it in my family. And then she went on to say that someone had resisted the exclusion order and resulted in a famous Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. the United States. Well, I sat there and said that's my name. And the only thing I knew is that Korematsu is a very unusual Japanese name.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so you went home and asked your mom.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: I did and confronted her and said, you know, is this about my father because my friend Maya did not refer to my father's first name. So certainly, I thought it was some other black sheep of the family, not my father.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: And she says, no, it is. And I said, well, why didn't anyone tell me before? And she said, well, you'll have to wait until your father gets home.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what happened when you spoke with him?</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: He said that it happened a long time ago, and that what he did he felt was right, and the government was wrong, and it clearly was that simple to him. And I could see, however, the pain in his eyes, and I couldn't just go any further with any other questions. The irony to this story is that my brother, Ken, who is four years younger than I am, found out the same way in high school.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So he still didn't tell your little brother.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: No. My father said, you know, we're always very busy with our lives being Americans. I mean, that's what my father believed, was he wanted to get on and be an American and do all the activities that are privileged to us. And, you know, four years is a big gap difference in ages, and my brother was not even in high school yet. And I said, well, when are you going to tell me? He says, well, when you got older, and I said, well, I am older.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: But it clearly was not a subject that he felt comfortable talking about.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What was your reaction? I mean, at the same time, you're finding your father was a man who stood up for his principles, yet you were also finding out there's an important part of his story that he hadn't told you.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Yes, I didn't realize what it - at the time - what it meant to have a federal record. Certainly I asked my father if he could vote, and he could vote. But one - several years later he wanted to get his California real estate license, and he went through all the course and passed the test with flying colors, and then you fill out a form. And it - on that form there's a line item that says have you ever been convicted of a felony. And he was, and so therefore he couldn't get his California state - real estate license. And it was so, so sad because he felt like he - he'd been let down by his country again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let - we forget, yes, he resisted, but that meant that he was charged with a crime, convicted of a crime, and I guess served some of that - his time at the concentration camp.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Yes, yes, he did along, with the rest of his family. But he also felt responsible for the loss of his Supreme Court case in 1944 in regard to the rest of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans that had been incarcerated, and he carried around the weight of that shame for almost 40 years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's implied in a documentary about your father that the people, the other Japanese-Americans in the camp, held him in disregard.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Yes. He was vilified from the moment that he resisted. And so when he went in to the - first it was at the Tanforan Racetrack, the assembly detention center in San Bruno, California, where everyone was to report. And no one wanted anything to do with him. They felt that if they associated with my father, that some harm might come to them or their families, and certainly he had disgraced my grandparents and our - and his family.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Karen Korematsu, daughter of Fred Korematsu, the civil rights activist whose legacy is being honored in California with Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and Constitution, and a special event later this week here in Washington, D.C.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Yes, we're very excited that we're going to have a special dedication and presentation of two of my father's photographs that were taken circa 1940. One is a headshot and the other one is him with his family and my uncles in the flower nursery in Oakland, California. And it's in a permanent exhibit called Struggle for Justice. And again, my father will be the first Asian-American to be in this permanent exhibition.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We would like to hear from Japanese-Americans today. How did you find out about your family's experience during the Second Word War? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. And Michelle is on the line calling from Tulsa.</s>MICHELLE: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi. Go ahead, please.</s>MICHELLE: Sure. My grandfather, his name is Makoto Miyamoto. And he said that when he was young, they had a choice. They could go to Japanese interment or join the Army to show that they were Americans, and they felt like they wanted to be Americans, so he joined the Army and he was part of the 442nd.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Famous battalion that fought in Italy.</s>MICHELLE: Yes. Yes. He was very decorated. I have a wall, you know, covered with medals that he earned, and just recently in October he got the Congressional Medal of Honor.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That is an incredible honor and it is something - I believe that unit was more decorated than any comparable unit in the U.S. Army.</s>MICHELLE: Yes, they were given the most dangerous missions, you know, and he has some amazing stories.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wonder - I've spoken with many people who served in the Second World War, and they did not tell, a lot of them, their stories. For many years they just kept quiet. Was your grandfather that way?</s>MICHELLE: He didn't tell many people, but he told his family all the stories. I've always known those stories, you know? So it was really neat. We're very proud of him, and he wasn't necessarily, you know, proud. He felt like it was their duty as Americans to do that, so - but we're very proud of him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Of course, as you should be, as you should be. I've had the great opportunity to meet several people who've received the Medal of Honor, and to a man they all said the people who deserve those awards, in fact, never came back, and they're just lucky to be representative of their units and the people who truly deserve to be honored. I'm sure your grandfather did wonderful things.</s>MICHELLE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you very much for the call, Michelle.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But it's interesting, Karen Korematsu, yes, went on to great achievement, but did not have much of a choice.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Well, yes. You know, also I'd like to point out that your caller said that, you know, her family knew about her grandfather. But there was really a code of silence among the Japanese-American community not to talk about their experience. They wanted just to get on with their lives and to prove that they were good Americans. In fact, I've had people ask me, you know, why did people willingly go into these camps? They felt that they - if they demonstrated their cooperation, that would prove their loyalty - pardon me - as Americans, and that's what was important to them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I believe it was just last year that an exhibit opened up at the site of the camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Your father's family relocated to Topaz in Utah, but many others were in camps all throughout the West, one of them at Heart Mountain, and an exhibit has opened up there. I wondered if you've had the chance to see it.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: No, I haven't.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Excuse me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. We're going to give you a chance to catch your breath for just a moment.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Karen Korematsu, the daughter of Fred Korematsu, the civil rights champion whose legacy is being honored this week in California, as we mentioned, later this week in Washington, D.C. And you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's see if we go next to Dave. Dave with us from San Francisco.</s>DAVE: Yes. Thank you. I'm chronologically challenged. I can't remember the exact year, but I was - it's just a great honor to some time back be granted the Fred Korematsu Award for Human Rights.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Really?</s>DAVE: And it's just something that has stayed with me my entire life. Reading his story, listening to him whenever I could, it just - it's been a wonderful life-changing experience.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Can you give us a capsule explanation of the reason you were awarded this honor?</s>DAVE: I was doing human rights work in Latin America, in particular late-'80s in Guatemala, and the surrounding environs, when there was, you know - I think future history books will (unintelligible) genocide back then, but certainly a lot of people were killed. A lot of people were both internally and externally displaced. Lives destructed forever. And during the time I had to spend weeks, sometimes months on end in the jungle, you know, tracking down refugees, things like that, and making sure that whatever help could be given was, whatever protection could be given was. And it was, you know, that work was all inspired by Mr. Korematsu, and his (unintelligible) achievements, which survive today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Karen Korematsu, that's another way your father's legacy is honored.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Yes, it's amazing. When my father was still living, we would be going to different events. And there are always young people that would come up to him and say, oh, Mr. Korematsu, you're the reason that I went to law school, or Mr. Korematsu, you're the reason that I'm involved in social justice. And clearly that's what my father had hoped for, that his story would be an inspiration and a lesson to - for others.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, Dave.</s>DAVE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see, we go next to Marissa. Marissa with us from San Jose.</s>MARISSA: Hi. My grandfather, his name is actually Ralph Horio, and he was in the Camp Tule Lake. But in San Jose he was a farmer, and he had orchards on the Chaboya farm. And he also was - him and the rest of family was actually part of the baseball teams that was going on in the internment camps. My grandfather actually helped write a book called "Asahi to Zebra" with a man named Ralph Pearce.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I think I read part of that book. It was about a young Japanese baseball star growing up in one of those camps, and the difficulties trying to get him placed in professional leagues.</s>MARISSA: Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah. I think I did read that book. That's interesting. And your grandfather worked on that, and what did he do after that in the rest of his life?</s>MARISSA: Well, for the rest - he actually tried to go to medical school but wasn't actually - I don't - he didn't tell me the full story. But the story come and goes that he wasn't able to finish school because after the camps he had to help take care of the family farm and the family business. And so he pursued professional photography after that. He took all sorts of pictures of weddings, models, and he went to all sorts of, you know, rock concerts with my mom and my uncles, like he saw Led Zeppelin and Kiss and the Ramones and did a bunch of photography.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Back in those ancient days, yes. Marissa, thanks very much for the call.</s>MARISSA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Karen Korematsu, we just have a minute or so left with you. And we've been hearing a little bit about your dad's record as a civil rights champion. Tell us a little bit about him as a dad.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Well, he was a wonderful father. I was very close to him, and he was a very kind and generous and loving person. He loved animals, and he felt like everyone was as honest as he was. He never was angry or bitter about his experience. He only just believed deep down inside that someday perhaps he would be able to find justice, you know, not for only himself, but for all Japanese-Americans that had been incarcerated. You know, his story is an American story, and I think that's why it resonates so much today. And the significance is also the story of 120,000 Japanese-Americans that were interned into these camps. But they - but you could tell that they're all truly American stories.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Karen Korematsu, thanks very much. And good luck later this week at the ceremony at the Smithsonian.</s>KAREN KOREMATSU-HAIGH: Thank you so much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Karen Korematsu joined us from KQED, our member station in San Francisco. Her father's portrait will be the first Asian-American to join the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's permanent exhibition Struggle for Justice. Tomorrow, a new report on segregation in America and what it calls the end of the segregated century. Join us for that. I'm Neal Conan. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

The Turkish economy is booming and changes to the constitution have expanded rights for women and minorities. Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl argues that while the Turkish government has its shortcomings, it could become a model for Islamic governments throughout the Middle East. Read Jackson Diehl's Washington Post piece "Turkey's Government is the New Normal in the Middle East"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: In a recent presidential Republican debate, Turkey - under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - was described as a place where the murder rate against women has increased 1,400 percent, where press freedom has declined to the level of Russia, and where Turkey's prime minister has embraced Hamas and threatened military force against both Israel and Cyprus.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mostly true, notes Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl. But he also goes to point out that Turkey's government just installed an advanced radar to track missiles from Iran, joined the NATO intervention in Libya, hosts the Syrian opposition, and amended its constitution to expand rights for women, ethnic minorities and unions - all at a complicated and sometimes infuriating place, Diehl writes. But if we are lucky, Turkey may become a model for the Islamic governments in Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you have questions about Turkey's role in the region and its value as a model, give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor at The Post and writes a biweekly foreign affairs column and joins us from a studio at the newspaper. Nice to have you back.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Oh, it's my pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you acknowledge that Turkey as hardly the perfect ally.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: No, it's not. It's been a very mixed bag. There have been ups and downs. And the Obama administration has really struggled with the Erdogan government. But on the whole, they feel like they're reaching a positive place, and some of the evidence shows that they are.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And some of the evidence, yet that recitation at the beginning, that's also true.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: That's true. I wouldn't vouch for the murder rate about women, but it is true that they have launched a lot of crackdowns domestically against journalists, against opponents in the military, against other secular forces. And they've had a very rocky relationship with Israel. I don't think the threat to use force against Israel should be taken seriously, but a relationship that once was very close has deteriorated very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A relationship once very close with Syria has also deteriorated.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: And I think that speaks well of Erdogan. He cultivated Bashar al-Assad, sent delegations there, declared that Syria was going to be a close ally of Turkey. When the revolution in Syria started, he first supported Assad. He sent people there to talk to Assad about reforming. When Assad refused reform, he switched sides. He's completely switched sides now. In fact, he's not only hosting the Syrian opposition, but he's hosting some of what's called the Free Syrian Army, the opposition army that's starting to coalesce.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: And I've heard that Turkey is supplying that army with weapons. So Erdogan has completely come around to the other side on that issue, and it shows that in the Arab Spring as a whole, he is backing the forces of liberal change.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, interesting. If a NATO ally is backing a irredentist force of a neighboring country, well, that raises all kinds of questions, doesn't it?</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Yeah. That's not irredentist so much as it's an opposition force. It's a rebel force. It's an insurgent force fighting against a dictatorship. And it's really not different from backing the Libyan rebels, which NATO supported, again, with Turkey's participation. I think the difference here is that Turkey's the neighbor, and they have the capacity to do something that the rest of the NATO allies, probably in a perfect world, would like to do, but don't feel that they can.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And did in Libya with the authorization of a Security Council resolution, which does not exist at the moment. But anyway, moving on from other aspects of that, if we're lucky, you say, places like Egypt and Iraq will use Turkey as a model.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Yeah. You hope that that's what will happen. I mean, there's, you know, there's a different sort of Islamic movement coming out in the Middle East. We're used to seeing Islamic movements in power in places like Iran that are fundamentalists, very hostile to the West, or else movements that are associated somehow with terrorism, like Hezbollah and Hamas. Now we're seeing a kind of Islamic movement that has sworn off violence, that has a much more - is much willing to cooperate with the West and is operating in this kind of uncertain middle ground and are sort of up for play.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: They could cooperate with us. They could be hostile to us. And it's going to be a matter of trying to work with them and see what we can get out of them, instead of knowing from the start that they're going to be hostile.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One of the great things that we worry about in both Iraq and in Egypt is a new government emergence there with a parliamentary majority clearly dominated by Islamists is minority rights. And Turkey's record on that is not outstanding.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: No, although again it's been mixed. And the Erdogan government has been, certainly, initially, more supportive of Kurdish rights and Turkey than was the previous military governments. But recently, they've been tougher on - certainly on the armed wing of the Kurds and has carried out attacks on Iraq against that wings, and they've put some Kurdish legislators in jail. So they - again, it's a very mixed bag on the whole, probably somewhat better than the previous military governments.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's interesting, most of the places we are talking about in terms of the Arab Spring were once dominated by Turkey during the Ottoman Empire.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: And I think people in the region are very aware of that, and Turkey itself is very aware of that. They have to be careful about that. They're a little bit like we are in Latin America. People are very wary of them. They don't want to be a Turkish colony. They don't want to be dominated by Istanbul. And so there's a - Turkey has to be somewhat subtle and careful about not appearing to dictate to these countries.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Not appearing to dictate. At the same time, it should be persuasive that Turkey is more and more prosperous - not prosperous on the European level, not yet, but its middle class is advancing.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: That's exactly right, and I think actually that's one of the most important things that Turkey has to offer, because in a lot of these countries, they are struggling with what their economic policy is going to be after this revolution. That's particularly true of Egypt, which doesn't know whether it wants to be a state-dominated economy, whether it wants to be - go back, return to a kind of populism where - what direction they want to go. And here they have the model of Turkey, which was a basket case 10 years ago in 2001, which had to turn to the IMF in desperation, and now is one of the fastest growing countries in the world.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Their GNP has tripled in the last 10 years. So they have a very important model to offer Egypt, in particular, but also other countries in the region that are going to have to find a way to grow economically in order for these revolutions to succeed in the long run.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's - we're talking with Jackson Diehl, our deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post. He contributes to the PostPartisan blog, as well. And let's get a caller on the line. Kirsten is with us, Kirsten from Bonita Springs in Florida.</s>KIRSTEN: Hi. I lived over in Turkey for a few months of the year for a few years ago, and I married into a well-to-do Turkish family. And I wanted to have your speaker address the women's rights issues. Having spent so much time over there, I never felt that I was - that I had to be afraid of acting or dressing any way different than I did in the United States. And I know a lot of people don't understand Turkish culture, but I didn't feel like would - was being held down or threatened in any way by being Western.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Well, yeah. Turkey's very different from other countries in the region in that respect. Now, some people in Turkey do worry about what the Erdogan government's intentions are about women. One of the most - the signal initiatives of this government was to try and permit women to wear headscarves in universities, which may sound like a trivial issue, but in Turkey, it was a matter of enormous symbolism because they had been banned for many years. And when they launched this initiative, it almost prompted the military to try and carry out a coup, and eventually Erdogan backed off.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: And, in fact, he's struck a very balanced approach so far. They changed the Turkish constitution actually to expand some rights for women, making it easier to get a divorce, for example. So they've - they're taking very much a middle road.</s>KIRSTEN: And I think the whole aspect of wearing the hijab was more - in trying to ban that, I think they were just trying to empower the women who maybe lived in the lower classes or the more eastern parts of the country who were more tied to those types of habits.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well. Yeah, we do we have to understand the history of this particular version of Turkey arising from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire under the great general and then leader of the country Ataturk, who was militantly anti-Islam.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: That's right, exactly. He made secularism sort of the religion of Turkey, and he installed the military as its ultimate defender. So it's been long road for this Justice and Development party of Turkey just to introduce Islamic ideas back into the public discourse again. Erdogan was once in prison simply for reading a poem that had an Islamic tenor to it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Kirsten, thanks very much for the call.</s>KIRSTEN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as we look at this history, that is something that is not the case elsewhere in the Middle East. I mean, you could make the argument that that was the case to some degree in a place like Syria or Iraq, but no longer.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Yes, that's right, and then this history of secularism. And, of course, the military governments in those places did consider themselves secular, but they had the effect of strengthening Islamic movements by trying to repress them. So one reason that the Muslim Brotherhood is as strong as it is in Egypt and as strong as it is in Syria is that the governments there tried so hard to repress them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is also the question of, as you mentioned, the change in policy towards Israel. And yes, there was the incident with the convoy that was trying to break the blockade of Gaza and the Israeli commandos who attacked and killed some people on a Turkish vessel. This convoy was all Turkey's idea, I think it's fair to say. Nevertheless, Turkey now insists that unless Israel apologizes and lifts the blockade, there can be no improvement in relations.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Yes, that's true. They - and they went through extensive negotiations last year, trying to reach some kind of accord. And I think the one thing you can say is the Turkish government was proved fairly flexible in those negotiations, and they reached a point where they had a deal that the majority of the Israeli Cabinet, I think, was in favor of accepting. At the last minute, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided not to accept it. But they did get pretty close to striking a deal. And I think it's also worth noting, there's been no other convoy sent from Turkey to Gaza since then. So I think in the long run, the Turks realized they do not really want to rupture with Israel, or probably I think there is some chance they will get - they will improve that relationship in the next couple of years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet there are elements at least that believe Turkey cannot improve its role in the rest of the Middle East and improve relations with Israel at the same time.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Yeah, it's a balancing act. They have to strike. And, of course, you know, that's why some part of it depends on what happens in the peace process. If there's movement in the peace process, then it's easier for someone like Erdogan to be friendly towards Israel.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is also a question that you raised in the article, in the op-ed piece in The Washington Post, and that is the degree to which the - Erdogan, the prime minister, has been a confidant of President Obama.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Yeah, it's one of the most remarkable things. You know, I wrote a piece a couple of years ago pointing out that Obama had relatively few foreign friends, that he didn't tend to develop strong personal relationships with other leaders. And since then, one of the changes in that has been his relationship with this man, Erdogan.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: And it's interesting, because Erdogan sort of thwarted him in a very important moment in June of 2010 when the United States was pushing very hard for sanctions against Iran. Erdogan first tried to stop the whole process from going forward by striking a separate deal with Iran. Then he had Turkey vote against it in the U.N. Security Council. Obama was terribly offended. They met soon afterwards at a Group of 20 meeting, and Obama took Erdogan aside and said, look, you know, I'm really unhappy with you. That was an important initiative that you tried to stop. And they ended having a very long conversation, went on for several hours, and somehow emerged with an understanding.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: And since then, I'm told that Obama has called Erdogan on the phone last year more times than any other foreign leader except David Cameron, and they seem to have reached the kind of meeting of the minds. And they - and you can see it happening in areas like Syria and Libya, for example, where Turkey has been pretty much on the same page as the United States.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jackson Diehl, thanks very much for your time today.</s>JACKSON DIEHL: Oh, it's my pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jackson Diehl joined us from a studio at The Washington Post. You can find a link to his piece "Turkey's Government is the New Normal in the Middle East" at our website. Go to npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. And this is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

An investigation by ProPublica and NPR finds that Freddie Mac has invested billions of dollars in bets against struggling homeowners. Public records show that Freddie Mac, in a potential conflict of interest, sought to make gains when homeowners failed to qualify for refinancing. Chris Arnold, correspondent, NPR Marilyn Geewax, senior business editor, NPR

NEAL CONAN, HOST: A report by NPR and ProPublica finds that Freddie Mac bet billions of dollars against homeowners' ability to refinance their mortgages. Public documents show Freddie Mac sought to make gains through complex securities which would make money for Freddie Mac, but homeowners with high-interest rate loans would not be able to qualify for refinancing. This is not illegal, but it does raise questions about a conflict of interest within a federally-owned company that is supposed to make getting a mortgage easier.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chris Arnold is a correspondent here at NPR. He worked with ProPublica on the investigation of Freddie Mac, which came out this morning. He's with us here in Studio 3A. Nice to have you in Washington.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also here in the studio is NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax. And, Marilyn, good to have you back on the program.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Hi, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Chris, let's start with you. So how does a large taxpayer-owned company get involved in betting against refinanced mortgages, which everybody says would be great not only for the mortgage holders but for the economy?</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Right. Well, I can see how you would think that. Part of what you need to understand to understand the story is that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are kind of two companies inside of themselves. So take Freddie Mac, it does a guarantee business, which most people know them for, you know, you get a home loan, they guarantee the loan, they allow the mortgage market to work well that way. That was sort of what their mission was built around, you know, going back decades, that they help foster homeownership.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: But at the same time, they also have what could be described as a hedge fund inside of the same company, and they make all kinds of investments. So it's within that sort of hedge fund side of the business that we found this was going on. And I was working on this with ProPublica and a reporter there, Jesse Eisinger, who we should mention, too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Of course. So the way this works is that hedge fund part was betting against homeowners refinancing. In other words, if you're paying 7 or 8 percent on your mortgage, they are betting that you will not be able to refinance, therefore you will be paying a lot more on your mortgage payments every month. While it might be in everybody else's interest that the mortgage rate come down to what it is, three and a half, 4 percent.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Right. And one way to think about this is let's say you're going to buy a house, Neal, and you want to borrow $100,000. So Marilyn and I...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Cheap house.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Well, yeah, in D.C., imagine...</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: ...this is in another part of the country. So, you know, it's public radio. We have to do what we can do.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: But - so Marilyn and I loaned you the $100,000, and you're paying 7 percent interest. And then, you decide, well, jeez, look, I can get three and a half percent or three and seven-eighths. I'm going to refinance. And that's a little sad for Marilyn and I because we don't get the 7 percent interest payment anymore, but we do get our $100,000 back, right? When you refinance, you pay off...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I refinance with the ABC Mortgage Company, and they pay you the $100,000?</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Exactly. Right. So that is very different than what Freddie Mac has done with these investments. Because what Freddie Mac did is they owned these mortgages, but they sold off their right to collect that principal. And all they have the right to do now in these trades is to collect that 7 percent interest. Does that make sense?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, I guess, it makes sense for Freddie Mac, and that 7 percent that they're collecting, that's why they want to make this short-term bet that a lot of people will not be able to refinance - President Obama spoke about last week.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Right, right. And the thing is since they have given up the right to collect the principal, that's all they have, right? So if you stop paying the 7 percent and I'm Freddie Mac, I lose everything. I mean, I don't get any money from you. I don't get the $100,000 back. And so it's a more concentrated way to invest in the mortgage market and it - bond traders say the only reason you would do that is if you were betting against homeowners being able to refinance.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: And, Neal, could I just make a point here?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Marilyn Geewax, go ahead.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Yes. The thing that is unusual about this is Wall Street is full of hedge funds and big investors, and some of them go broke, and some of them make tons of money. But wait a minute, Freddie Mac is owned by the taxpayers these days. So it is...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Didn't those taxpayers just bail it out a couple of years ago?</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Yeah. So in 2008, when there was the financial crisis, it's a long story, but fundamentally, the taxpayers now own Freddie Mac. So one might wonder why taxpayers are involved in acting like a hedge fund. Now, it may be in Freddie Mac's best financial interest to make all sorts of investments that could be very profitable for them, but there may be some questions here about: Should Freddie Mac be involved in these kinds of things when they have to take very risky positions like that? Is that a role for a taxpayer-owned entity that has the mission of helping homeowners?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Marilyn Geewax, who's an editor here at NPR, and Chris Arnold, NPR correspondent. If you've tried to refinance lately and you've had troubles, give us a call. 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. And, Marilyn, that raises another question. Freddie Mac's role is to facilitate good mortgages. If it's betting on the short term that people would not be able to refinance, is it blocking people's ability to refinance?</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Well, and this is something, you know, we want to be careful got to overstate here. And what Freddie Mac says is there is a firewall between the investment part of its business and the part of its business that sets policy for homeowners and for refinancing, some things like that. So they say whatever might be going on on those two businesses, it's a coincidence of - you know, whatever, that it's not a concerted, calculated effort to profit by, you know, doing wrong by homeowners. But even at best, what our reporting has shown is that they're making a calculated bet against homeowners being able to refinance, and that - you know, is that an appropriate bet for a company that can control homeowners' ability to refinance to be making?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is it, Marilyn, a legal bet? There seems to be a conflict of interest.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: And there are people in Congress now who are starting to wonder about whether or not this should be changed, at the moment, as the laws are structured, and as Freddie Mac's mission is, which is to not go broke. You know, it's supposed to be a solvent organization doing its business, but it's also supposed to be helping homeowners. This structure could be called into question.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: And one senator, for example today, Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, sent a letter to the president urging him - I'm quoting from the letter - he says, "to put an end to these practices immediately, to ensure that the investment decisions being made by Freddie Mac are in line with the intent of Congress and the greater needs of our economy." So we also spoke today with Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican from Georgia, who's also interested in reforming Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. So I think there are people on Capitol Hill who are starting to really ponder: What is the structure of these organizations and what role do they play? What's appropriate for them to do? And this is just sort of an interesting look at conflicts of interest. We are not, in any way - our story has not said that it is illegal, just that it raises questions about how it functions.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, you did quote Alan Boyce in your story, a former bond trader who's been involved in efforts to push for more refinancing of home loans. Freddie Mac, he said, prevented households from being able to take advantage of today's mortgage rates and then bet on it. You say, well, Freddie Mac has two arms, one, the left hand, did not necessarily know what the right hand is doing. However, they seemed to be miraculously working in concert.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Well, and the timing of some of these, too, you know, lending would be - or credit would be tightened. One example was Thanksgiving evening or somewhere around there, and then very soon after that, some trades were made that were betting against homeowners. So, you know, but again, we can't prove that the left and the right arms were working together. What is being referenced in that quote, as well, is that Freddie Mac has been making it harder for homeowners to refinance. They've been putting additional fees in place, additional restrictions. Some of that is justified.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: The whole lending community has been making things tighter since the housing market collapsed, but more and more economists, you know, are saying, look, the pendulum's probably swung too far. We should - especially when it comes to refinancing. We've got hundreds of - we got tens of millions of homeowners who are stuck in higher-interest-rate loans. Wouldn't it be good for them, wouldn't it be good for the economy if they had some more money in their pocket to spend? You know, let's let some more of those people refinance.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Neal, if I could just make one point. The important thing here, in all of this discussion of these big terms - hedge funds and Freddie Mac and some of these unfamiliar things - the issue here is the housing crisis. That's something we all know a lot about. It's affected everyone in this country, and particularly in states like Florida, California, Arizona, Nevada. These states have been hit hard because of this housing crisis. Many people have homes that are underwater. They want to refinance. The economy has really been slowed by the housing crisis. So all of this is not just a strange academic discussion about what is the role of a government-sponsored blah, blah, blah, you know.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Quasi-governmental corporation, yeah.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: It's about: Can we end this housing crisis? How do we get to the end of what has been a nightmare for the country? And would - is Freddie Mac part of the solution, or is it sort of part of the problem right now because of its structure? And I think we've seen in the Florida primary the topic of Freddie Mac last week, listening to the debates, how many times that name came up. It's been a big issue, because when you're talking Florida, you're talking housing. People care about this topic, and it's not some esoteric, weird discussion among academics and investment bankers. It's something that touches millions of people's lives.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get a caller in on the conversation. Let's start with Jeff, Jeff with us from Pleasant Hill in California.</s>JEFF: Good afternoon. First time caller, many years listener. And this is a subject that I am - I'm almost speechless that I'm able to talk to you about this today because I've been following this for many, many months. My spouse and I purchased a home here in the Bay Area in 2008. It dropped 40 percent in value in the last three-and-a-half years. We both are employed. We have excellent credit. We've been trying to refinance, but basically, they're asking us - and our current mortgage holder - is to re-buy our house a second time, to come up with up to 75 and up to $80,000 to make up for the lost equity. I've been following this program last summer. I've been contacting my mortgage company weekly. Finally, two weeks ago, my mortgage company said that the rules are finally in place, and we might be able, might be able to refinance at the current rate starting after February 6th.</s>JEFF: The issue is Freddie Mac keeps changing the rules. There isn't any teeth into the programs. There's no penalty involved for people like us who cannot refinance because, if we have to get an appraisal, our house is worth less than what we paid for it three years ago.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Underwater - that's the underwater mortgage. And, Chris Arnold...</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Yeah. This gets to the heart of one of the big issues that this story raises. And, you know, there have been some baby step - I guess you might call it - efforts to allow underwater borrowers and other borrowers to get these lower rates - if, as the caller says, you know, they have good credit, they've got jobs, they can pay. It's just here they are stuck, you know, in a higher interest rate.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: President Obama has talked about this. Lots of economists have talked about this. There's a program called HARP. I believe it's the Home Affordable Refinancing Program.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Refinancing program, yes.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: So, you know, the idea is here we could help millions of people. So far, I think just about a million people have been helped through that program, but there are 10 or 20 million other people out there who haven't been able to access it. And so the question implicitly of the story is, well, you know, it certainly can't help that there are conflicts of interests within these companies that are at the heart of allowing these people - you know, if Freddie Mac is making bets against homeowners like this, you know, is that helping things?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jeff, how much difference would it make to you if you were able to refinance at, say, three and three quarters? I think Jeff has left us, so we thank him for his call.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Well, this is really the heart of the issue, too, Neal, that what we're talking about when we say there's refinancing. If you think, hey, I'm renter. I don't care. What's it to me? It matters to the economy for this reason: right now, we have a lack of demand. Consumers haven't been spending enough money, and that hurts people at restaurants. It hurts retailers. It hurts car dealers. People need more money in their pockets, and this is one way that you could actually boost people's incomes. Now, perhaps they'll use that money.</s>MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Let's say you save $500 a month. Maybe all you're going to do is pay down your dentist bill and your credit card. Maybe that doesn't stimulate the economy tomorrow morning, but it does help that dentist's office get the bill paid. And it does start to free up room on your credit card so that by summer, maybe you can take a vacation. Really, to heal the economy, it has to start with this housing problem.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax, also with us NPR correspondent Chris Arnold. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And a similar email from Allen, who emails: My wife and I have credit scores that our mortgage broker has termed beyond excellent. Still having trouble getting a mortgage because of retail lenders' concern over their ability to resell our mortgage to Fannie or Freddie. So even if you're talking to the bank down the street, Chris Arnold, you're also talking to Fannie and Freddie.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: You know, Fannie and Freddie, they're kind of the great eyes behind the curtain. You know, I mean, you don't see them. You might interface with somebody else. But, yes, they control, essentially, the entire mortgage market right now. You know, in the wake of the housing debacle, everything is going to Fannie and Freddie (unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I got a lot of emails and calls along these lines. From Ricky: What's the role of Dodd-Frank? And this - that, of course, the financial reform package that was passed in the previous Congress. Does this not stop it?</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Well, there's a lot we could talk about there and probably don't want to get into. But one thing is, lenders will say that Dodd-Frank makes it harder for them to refinance people. So they say this new regulation is making things tougher, you know, but we could have a whole show on the merits of that claim, probably.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller in. Let's go to Richard, and Richard with us from Wichita.</s>RICHARD: Yes. Real quick question. It was commented that Freddie Mac sold off the rights to collect the principal in the home loans, and I would like to know who bought those rights and what percentage of the principal they paid for the right to collect on those - on the principal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Any idea, Chris?</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Those are all good questions. The takeaway in all of that is that the - those rights were sold off into the market, so investors all over the world potentially could have bought them. Critics of these deals also say that, look, if Freddie Mac had just gone out and sold these mortgages in a simple fashion, it would have gotten more money for them than it got by cutting them up into 20 pieces and selling them the way that it did.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But this quick question is: investors?</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Investors.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Investors bought these. Richard, sorry if we can't be more precise than that...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...but that's kind of the way these commodities work. We thank you for the call. And more on this story later today on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Chris Arnold, thanks very much for your time.</s>CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Thanks, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: NPR's Chris Arnold worked with ProPublica on the investigation of Freddie Mac's bet against homeowners. Also with us, NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax, both here in Studio3A. Tomorrow, a provocative proposal: Instead just reading and listening to people who agree with you, why not seek out the other side in political commentary? Join us for that. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.

Increased violence by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram threatens to ignite a wider Muslim-Christian conflict in Nigeria. Africa's most populous country also continues to face persistent problems with the economy and corruption. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, foreign correspondent, NPR John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria Shehu Sani, president, Civil Rights Congress

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Jennifer Ludden in Washington, sitting in for Neal Conan. In Nigeria, long-held tensions between Christians and Muslims are flaring again. An Islamist sect called Boko Haram, suspected of having links to al-Qaeda, killed at least 185 people in the past week with coordinated bombings in the northern city of Kano.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan is promising to crack down. He's fired his police chief and six deputies. Nearly 200 people have been arrested. But the president faces criticism for his handling of the conflict. NPR correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton joins us in a moment.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: If you have questions about what's happening in Nigeria, give us a call. Our number is 800-989-8255. Our email address, talk@npr.org, and you can join the conversation at our website. Go to npr.org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Later in the program, a practical wedding. But first, Nigeria. NPR foreign correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is based in West Africa, and she's been reporting from Kano this week and joins us from there. Ofeibea, hello.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Greetings from Kano, Kano which is a historic, ancient city. And I must say right from the start, Jennifer, that Muslims and Christians here in Kano have lived together side by side for generations with very little trouble. So the communities here are very troubled by what has happened over the past week.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And can you give us a sense, Ofeibea - is it mostly Muslim there? What's the share of the population?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: In Kano, in Nigeria (technical difficulties) Africa's most populous nation, and we're talking of a nation of 140 million-plus. You have Muslims living in all parts, Christians living in all parts. You have Christians who come from the south, (unintelligible) Christians. You have Muslims. You have Christians who come from the north. So this is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Here in Kano, all the communities have lived, as I've said, side by side for generations. So this city is reeling in shock because of what has happened. The bombings claimed by Boko Haram, whose name in Hausa, which is the lingua Franca, Hausa - the lingua franca here in northern Nigeria, means Western education, is haram, which means forbidden, sinful, according to Islam. So that already tells you that this is an anti-Western group that has especially been an anti-government group since its inception.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: It's very much in recent times that it seems to be targeting more and more churches, for example, places where Christians gather. But Muslims also have targeted, as have the security forces and state institutions, especially the federal government of Nigeria.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Now, President Goodluck Jonathan has traveled up to Kano and said that these kind of bombings that Boko Haram has carried out are a new thing for them, and there have been accusations, as we've said, of ties to al-Qaeda and so forth.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Today in an interview with Reuters, the president called on Boko Haram to come forward and explain themselves. What's he hoping here?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Well, he says that they should identify themselves and say why they're resisting, why they're confronting the government, why they're destroying property and especially innocent people. And he said only then will there be a basis for dialogue, and that's in quotations, we will dialogue. Let us know your problems, he's saying to Boko Haram, and we will solve your problem. But if they don't identify themselves, who will we dialogue with?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: And you have many in Nigeria who are saying that dialogue is the only way forward. The fact that there is now this menace, this threat that is so violent and is so deadly - just in the first month this year we're talking more than 250 people - that talking is the only way forward, that a security crackdown, and that from the government has been the way up till now, to clamp down on people that they suspect of being militants, that is not going to work.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: You need to deal with the root problems here in Nigeria, and that's not between Christians and Muslims. It's about poverty. It's about people who feel marginalized, isolated, not protected in any way by the government, not able to get jobs, not having opportunity, especially unemployed young men who are able to be manipulated by either unscrupulous politicians or unscrupulous religious leaders, be they Muslim or Christian.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: That, many Nigerians will tell you, is the real problem here, that Boko Haram, whether they're assisted by al-Qaeda or other, in inverted commas, terrorist groups in the region, that's why they have taken up arms against the state, that they feel that they've got nothing to lose.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And didn't President Jonathan also allude to that today in his interview with Reuters and suggesting some kind of program to help unemployed youth?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Indeed, but people are saying, you know, before we get to that, deal with the issues. Meet these people first. President Jonathan has talked about the current crisis in Nigeria. He's likened it to the Biafran civil war here in Nigeria when a million - or is it three million, I'm not quite sure - people lost their lives at the end of the '60s and the early '70s.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: It was a brutal, brutal period in Nigeria's history. More recently also, Nigeria has suffered from the conflict in the oil-producing area. This is a country that produces crude oil, that supplies the U.S. with about an eighth of its crude oil imports.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: We had militants there, heavily armed, as are the Islamist militants here in Nigeria, who literally waged a war, a campaign of sabotage against the government, against the oil industry. It was only when they came to the negotiating table, and an amnesty was offered to the militant leaders, that that particular problem stopped, or at least it was drastically reduced.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: That's why people are saying whoever these people are in Boko Haram (technical difficulties) you must sit down and talk to them. It's the only way this problem can be resolved in Nigeria.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton joining us from a touchy line there, from Kano, Nigeria. We're getting the best line we can. We're also joined by former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell here in Studio 3A. Welcome to you.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: Thank you very much, it's good to be here.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: You're also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and you've been writing about this situation this week, kind of with a pretty depressing take on affairs. How do you see this latest flare-up of this longtime strife here?</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: Part of the difficulty is that Boko Haram is not an organization in the traditional sense of the word. It does not have a charismatic leader. It doesn't have a politburo. It doesn't have an agreed-upon manifesto. It appears to be highly diffuse. It has many different strands.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: In some respects it resembles a movement more than almost anything else.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Does it have popular support in Nigeria? I mean, we've just seen a U.N. report recently, says there's evidence that it has employed mercenaries from Chad. I mean, is this an outside group, an inside group?</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: I'd be very careful. Boundaries in northern Nigeria are extremely fluid. Does it have support? Movements like this normally have relatively few activists, a larger number of sympathizers, and a larger number still of those who acquiesce to what is being done.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: And in fact, when the focus is on attacks on the police, who are nearly universally hated in Nigeria, the military, and the federal government, none of these institutions enjoy any great popularity. Your correspondent made, I think, an extremely important point when she was talking about the general sense of alienation, the general sense of problems, huge problems that are not being addressed.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: This, as it were, is the kind of oxygen that fuels something like Boko Haram. The government's approach has been to treat Boko Haram as a security issue. More police, more soldiers. The police in many cases are poorly trained. Police in Nigeria are a national institution, which means that the actual policeman on the ground is almost certainly not from that particular area.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Which you've written is done on purpose so they are seen as impartial, but there's a double-edged sword there.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: There's a double-edged sword there, that they don't really understand sometimes the nature of the people that they're policing. And according to human rights organizations, the police and the military have in fact been responsible for a significant number of killings in the north.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: What of course this does is it even further alienates a population that is already feeling marginalized.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Let me ask Ofeibea, before we go to the break here, Ofeibea, the - I understand the new police chief has now taken position. Is that right? And how is he being received?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: It was with immediate effect, and we'll see (technical difficulties) come in for huge criticism, masses of criticism that it is not protecting the people. The ambassador has spoken about how the government has been throwing security at this problem rather than dialogue at the problem, and many Nigerians, and we were at a truck park, at a bus park yesterday when literally dozens of frightened people were fleeing Kano.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: One woman we spoke to has lived here all her life. She was born here, married here, has children here. She said I'm going. I don't feel safe. You know, the ground was shaking when we heard those bombs. We don't feel safe here anymore, we don't feel that the government can protect us. Our only way is to leave, to go somewhere else in this country. Kano is no longer safe.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: We are talking about the tensions and violence in Nigeria. We'll have more with NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton from Nigeria, and also former Ambassador John Campbell coming up. We'll also talk with an activist from Nigeria. If you have questions, call us at 800-989-8255. Or email us talk@npr.org. I'm Jennifer Ludden. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Jennifer Ludden. Nigeria has long faced challenges from corruption, an economy that relies on oil exports and simmering ethnic and religious tensions, tensions made evident in the recent series of bombings by Boko Haram, the militant Islamist sect whose name translates roughly to Western education is sinful.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: It's the latest crisis for President Goodluck Jonathan. We're talking today with Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR's foreign correspondent, now in Kano, Nigeria; and John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador and political counselor to Nigeria. He's now a senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: If you have questions about what's happening in Nigeria, give us a call. Our number is 800-989-8255. Our email address is talk@npr.org. And you can join the conversation at our website. Go to npr.org and click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And let's take a phone call from Alasakomi(ph) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Hi there.</s>ALASAKOMI: Hi, how are you Jennifer?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Good. Go right ahead.</s>ALASAKOMI: Ofeibea, I was going to ask you, the way you're looking at the situation right now in Nigeria, would you characterize Boko Haram as being a local terrorist or a local gang who has an international agenda on their mind? That's my first question.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Ofeibea?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: I missed your name, I'm sorry, but I would say that it's very hard to characterize Boko Haram. They started in 2002(ph) as a homegrown outfit that targeted especially Nigeria's security forces. It was the army and the police. It was the places where the security forces take their leisure, beer taverns, parlors where alcohol is served.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: And it was almost exclusively in Madugli, which is a remote northeastern town, and that is where we believe Boko Haram was born. Now, when its leader, Yusuf Mohammed, was killed in police custody in 2009, that is when Boko Haram - and I say that in inverted commas because that is what we're calling them. They have a much longer name, and sometimes people speak for them, but often not.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: That is when they stepped up their campaign and included all sorts of targets, still the security, still the government, but especially since the inauguration of President Goodluck Jonathan last year, after the election, the campaign has intensified. And in the past few months and weeks, we have seen even churches targeted.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: But in August, the U.N. headquarters in the capital, Abuja, were bombed, deadly killings, and that was a suicide bomber. We've also seen police headquarters, the federal police headquarters in the capital, Abuja, attacked also, this time by a suicide bomber in a car.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: So definitely Boko Haram's tactics have become more sophisticated as the campaign has intensified, and there are those who say is it because a Christian southerner, President Goodluck Jonathan, is now in charge, that perhaps disgruntled politicians in the North who feel that their candidate, who died, should have been replaced by another candidate from the North, are they the ones behind Boko Haram?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: President Jonathan himself has said that he feels that members of his administration across government and in the security forces are backers and sympathizers of Boko Haram. So there are many, many unanswered questions.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, thank you for that call. Ambassador Campbell, you've suggested that a political settlement is needed here but that anyone would require a restructuring that may not be possible.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: Well, all things are possible. It simply may be extremely difficult and extremely difficult for the people who traditionally have run Nigeria. There are some things that could be done in the short term. One is to reduce the - either reduce the security presence in the north or greatly improve its quality.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: Secondly, there could be a campaign of reaching out to the North, more frequent speeches by the president, an indication that the deep-seated grievances the North has are being heard and that they will be addressed. And then I think it would be extremely useful at this point if some kind of dramatic development initiative were to be announced, focused on a place with a large population like Kano.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: It's easy for us sitting here in Washington to forget just how immense northern Nigeria is. Kano has at least seven million people. We're talking enormous numbers of people in a part of the world which suffers from desertification as the Sahara moves down, under-investment in agriculture, the collapse of the railway network, traditional agriculture exports - cotton and ground nuts largely gone, the manufacturing sector based on textiles also largely gone.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: As rural impoverishment increases, more and more people flee into the towns, essentially looking for work. Very often, these are in fact children. These are people who can be eight, nine, 10 years old, and you see them - you see them on the streets of Kano begging.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: So when we're talking about deep-seated grievances, we are talking about something that has multiple causes. Yes, the political dimension is very important, and the sense particularly amongst northern political figures that somehow or another the presidency ought to be theirs and it is not, that is certainly a very important factor.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: But there is also a much deeper factor that looks at the increasing marginalization of northern Nigeria, as well as its impoverishment. The differences in level of development between the North and the South now are really quite dramatic.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And Ofeibea, this sense of economic deprivation really came to fore in recent weeks. The president tried to eliminate a longtime subsidy for fuel in this country that produces oil but has to import its own. Tell us what happened then.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Bedlam. It was absolute mayhem. Nigerians almost unanimously said absolutely not, hell no - excuse my language, Jennifer - and they were down on those streets in the tens of thousands: Muslims, Christians, Northerners, Southerners, Easterners, Westerners, those from the center of the country, except of course the immediate supporters of President Goodluck Jonathan, saying, hey, look at you fat cats in Abuja, in the government, in the national assembly, in all the official positions, getting huge salaries from the oil wealth of Nigeria whilst this country's 140 million, most of the people are impoverished.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: And now you get rid of the fuel subsidy, which means that not only gasoline goes up, but food, transportation, everything. How can you do this to us and overnight, on New Year's Day? The government's argument is that Nigeria can't afford $9 billion on food(ph) subsidies. Nigerians are saying we can't afford corruption, institutional corruption in government. Deal with that first before you punish us. Punish yourselves first. Bring your salaries down.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Make sure that the ordinary Nigerian is able to send his and her child to school and put food on the table. Don't just decide overnight that you are going to make our lives even more impossible. So there was - it was Nigeria in unity saying no to its leaders.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: And I think that was a big shock for President Goodluck Jonathan and his government, although of course they have a point. Subsidies cost money. They say they were going to use the money for development. Nigerians say no, prove to us that you would do that. That's not what we've seen is the reality in the past.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Let's hear from another caller here. Brian is on the line in Salt Lake City. Hi there, Brian.</s>BRIAN: Hi, my roommate actually just returned from Nigeria. He's a Nigerian refugee. And he was in the Southern region of Ogoni, and he was attacked, and someone that was with him was kidnapped, one of his relatives. And I was just wondering how the instability in general in Nigeria has led to greater unrest and the rise of (unintelligible) criminals taking the opportunity of the instability (unintelligible).</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, let's see. Ambassador Campbell, do you want to address that? Thank you, John - thank you, Brian.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: It is true that there's a good deal of that. And it is to be found in all parts of the country. I would like to return to a very important point that your Kano correspondent made. She made the point early in the conversation to the effect that Christians and Muslims have lived next to each other in Kano for 1,000 years, and this is perfectly correct. It is also perfectly correct that in some parts of the country, religious tension between Christians and Muslims has been high.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: What was really significant about the fuel subsidy strike and also about the demonstrations that went on parallel to those strikes, what was really striking was the way Nigerians united across religious and ethnic lines, so that in the city of Kano, for example, the informal Muslim police were protecting Christian churches during the strike. Christians in Kaduna were protecting Muslims during prayer time. Nigerians can pull together across religious and ethnic lines.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: John Campbell is a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria. He's now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he's joined us here in Studio 3A. Thank you so much.</s>JOHN CAMPBELL: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And we're joined now by Shehu Sani, a writer and activist in Nigeria. He's also the president of Civil Rights Congress, a coalition of 34 human rights groups based in Kaduna, Nigeria, and he joins us from the studios of the BBC in London. Welcome.</s>SHEHU SANI: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Two months ago, you tried to broker a cease-fire between Boko Haram and the government. It did not happen. Tell us what happened instead.</s>SHEHU SANI: Why I tried to broker a cease-fire simply has to do with the very fact that since 2009, when the police crackdown on the Boko Haram as a group, it has been a cycle of violence and killings and murders and arson, and it has become very clear that the government of Nigeria is incapable of crushing the Boko Haram armed insurgency. Rather, it has led to the loss of innocent lives of Nigerians, particularly in the northeastern part of Nigeria. As a human rights activist, I thought a good or right (unintelligible) an idea of serving as a bridge.</s>SHEHU SANI: And I reached out to the group, and I presented myself as an activist and someone who spoke against the massacre against the group in 2009, when the late President Umaru Yar'Adua ordered that group, the group shall be crushed. And then I asked them if they will attune to the idea of meeting the former President Olusegun Obasanjo. And my choice of Obasanjo was simply because he is the chairman of the board of trustees of the ruling party in Nigeria, and he's someone whom I knew when I was a political prisoner, and he was also together with me in the cell.</s>SHEHU SANI: And then I reached out to him and gave him this idea, and he also agreed. And then that was set. The group gave out their conditions that they can sit down and talk with Obasanjo without the presence of security men, and then, there shall be free conversation, and the meeting should take place in their den, in Maiduguri. And then, I - Obasanjo agreed, and then a date was set. We went there and sat down. Now there was someone called Babakura Fugu who happened to be the guardian of most of the families of Boko Haram members who have either been killed or they are now on their own. So he offered to serve as an intercessor.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: You know what, I think we may have to jump ahead here, because we only have a few minutes left. I understand that actually one of the hosts for Boko Haram was killed, and those talks never happened. Is that right? But I'm curious, whether - are you still trying - and actually, before your answer, let me just say that you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>SHEHU SANI: Yes.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Shehu Sani, you're still trying to get these talks together?</s>SHEHU SANI: Yes. The - Fugu, the one I was telling you, he was the one that was killed. And when he had the meeting with the Boko Haram, they gave us some possible way out of this violence, one of which is that there must be the release of all their - of their members who are currently spread in prisons and police cells across the country. And there's a need for the government to rebuild their houses, their mosques, their schools that was demolished in 2009. And then there must be a comprehensive program of rehabilitating the families of their members that were killed, over 1,000 of them in 2009.</s>SHEHU SANI: And the suggestions was - the advice was given to President Obasanjo, and then he gave it to President Goodluck. And since then, nothing has been heard about, because the government believe that it can crush the group with the use of force, and then we just step aside and watch the government use the force. And it has not been able to work.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: But you - do you think there is a common ground here that Muslims and Christians can agree on some common things? Very quickly, please.</s>SHEHU SANI: Yeah. I think there's a need to suppress the problem of Muslims and Christians, and then that of the Boko Haram. The violence and all the hostility between Muslims and Christians has been there, even before the formation of Boko Haram. And Boko Haram's getting into it by attacking churches simply escalated the problem. And I think there is a possibility of a solution if we have the involvement of a third country, like Turkey, Qatar or Saudi Arabia, that can serve as a mediator between the group and the government. But for now, I don't think the group can talk one-to-one with the government.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Shehu Sani is a writer and president of the Nigerian human rights coalition Civil Rights Congress. He joined us from the studios of the BBC in London. Thank you so much.</s>SHEHU SANI: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, a final quick question to you. You're staying there in Kano for a few more days. What are you looking out for?</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Also, it's what Shehu Sani has spoken about, whether there's any room for negotiation, and then just talking to the residents of the city who are still in shock, finding out what they feel the solutions are, speaking to those who are leaving the city because they feel unsafe, and especially speaking to religious leaders and others who want to see unity. We heard that Muslims and Christians protected each other as they were worshiping in the mosques, in the churches. Most Nigerians will say to you that's how we are. This is a fantastic country. This is a dynamic country. This is a country where we can get along. Just because there are a few bad apples doesn't mean that everybody has to suffer.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: NPR foreign correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton in Nigeria. Thank you so much.</s>OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Always a pleasure.

In his book, Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, Physicist Michael Nielsen discusses why scientists jealously guard their data and are slow to adopt online tools for collaboration. Nielsen talks about why attempts to create science wikipedias have failed.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Chances are you've come across the website Wikipedia in your daily online searches. It's a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and it certainly has a wealth of information on everything from the Australian cattle dog to Lady Gaga.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now imagine a Wikipedia for science, a place where scientists and others can go to research topics outside their area of expertise, find links to cutting edge studies, edit, update content. Surprisingly, it's not a new idea, but efforts to create a Wikipedia devoted to science has failed in the past.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: In fact, scientists as a group, they don't seem to have embraced online tools to collaborate and do science out in the open. Why, you ask? Well, that is the subject of my next guest's book, Dr. Michael Nielsen. He is a physicist and author of the book "Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science." And he joins us from Toronto, Canada. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Thank you very much, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Why are scientists the last ones to get in on this?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Well, it's kind of funny. I mean, they certainly helped bring us the Web back in the early '90s. Unfortunately, they're pretty bought into doing things in the standard way, the way they've done them for centuries, which is you do your work in the lab, you get all your results, you write them up in a paper and possibly several years later, it all appears for your colleagues to digest at that point.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: And, you know, that's a great system if you're back in the 1600 or 1700s, but today we've got better tools, but people still haven't adopted them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: These are collaborative tools, right?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Yeah, I mean, you can talk about sort of people collaborating together, sharing knowledge, maybe attacking problems out in the open, where you can bring in lots of different expertise from all over the world to maybe get a better handle on some of these problems.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Give us a flavor of how that might work. You have a couple examples. You have many examples in your book, but...</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Sure, so an example I really like a lot that kind of illustrates how different this is is over the past couple of years, a group of mathematicians, starting with a Cambridge mathematician, a fellow named Tim Gowers have started what they call the Polymath Project. And what they've been doing is using blogs and a wiki to attack difficult open research problems completely in the open, allowing anybody to contribute basically by posting their ideas in the comments section of these blogs and the wiki.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: And they've actually been really tremendously successful at attacking some of these problems.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So they're sort of crowdsourcing the idea and waiting for people to help them find a solution?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: That's pretty much exactly what it is, yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how far can you apply this to other, let's say, disciplines outside of mathematics?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Well, you know, to some extent it's an open question because not everybody's doing it, and so it's going to be really interesting to see. There have been, you know, all kinds of efforts in different fields - astronomy, genetics and many others - which have been at least sometimes very successful. But it's still very early days, and I think it remains to be seen just how far we'll get.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, we have a lot of people interested in science who listen to us. Maybe they'll call in or send us some ideas. Our number is 1-800-989-8255. You can tweet us @scifri. We're talking with Michael Nielsen, author of "Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science."</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Maybe you would like to use networked science, you have an idea, maybe you have used it and make some suggestions, how it might work for you. Is there a wiki, I mean, is the wiki for science the central place for people to go, or can they go to other kinds of groups that they might find more attractive?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Well, it's funny actually. That's kind of a - in some ways, it's a bit of a sad story. A lot of scientists have tried starting wikis for science. One I happen to be very familiar with is a quantum computing wiki, that's my area of research.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: And while a lot of people, researchers in the field were very excited by the idea of having the quantum computing wiki - certainly many I spoke to - that didn't necessarily mean they wanted to take the time themselves to go and contribute.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: And so you had this funny situation where a lot of people think a resource would be really useful, but they're too busy doing other things - working on their papers and their grants - to want to contribute. So...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You called it a quiki(ph), right? That's a different...</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Yeah, that was actually - their name was quiki, for a quantum wiki.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That's good. So - but it didn't get traction, is what you're saying.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: No, it didn't get traction, and to be honest, you know, I thought it was actually really well-executed. So it's not like it failed because it wasn't well-done. I think it failed because people lacked the motivation to contribute.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, one of the major obstacles to open science, you say, is scientists being rewarded for publishing scientific papers. How do you change that culture?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Yeah, so, I mean, I should say first of all that it's a terrific thing that they get rewarded. If you go back to the 17th century, scientists generally weren't rewarded much at all for sharing discoveries, and as a result, they conducted a lot of their research very, very secretively indeed.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: So, you know, it's a good thing that we have this modern system, but we would like to change - I would certainly like to see a change to a new system where scientists are rewarded for sharing their ideas more broadly, for sharing data more broadly and for sharing their computer code more broadly.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Now, and getting how to do that, there's a lot of details. It's a complex question.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, let's go to Joe in Whitehall, Virginia. Hi, Joe.</s>JOE: Hi, how are you doing?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Fine, how are you?</s>JOE: Doing great. Listen, tell me, you're making it sound like a new concept, but isn't this the whole reason the Internet came to be, that it evolved from Arpanet back in the late '60s and early '70s? You're making it sound like a new thing.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Sure, you're absolutely right, that if you go back to 1970 or so, at that stage, it was really almost a scientific research project, and it gradually grew through the '70s and '80s, mostly in academic institutions.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: But I think what we've seen through the 1990s and the 2000s is that in fact the rest of our culture has caught up to the scientists and actually gone really a long way past them, things like the success of Wikipedia or the success of open-source software like Linux really have eclipsed in how they're using these tools the way scientists are using them. And so there's some catch-up for the scientific community to do at this point.</s>JOE: Ah, so there is. Well, well put.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right, thanks for calling, Joe.</s>JOE: Yes, sir.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. Let's see if we can get another phone call from Mitch in Park Rapids, Minnesota. Hi, Mitch.</s>MITCH: Hi, how's everybody doing?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there.</s>MITCH: This fits well, because my point was about - my understanding of scientific discovery, of research and development, is that it's funded by private businesses mostly, and so it's for-profit. And so if I am a business owner and I am going to be put $10 million into a new way to put stem cells in somebody's eye or, you know, whatever, I'm not going to want to share that with somebody because I'm doing that for my own profit.</s>MITCH: And so, you need to have that network of millions of people, as Linux does, who are willing to put in their own time for the common good, and the culture of computer and technology is not the same as the culture of scientists. And so it's going to take time until that culture of research shifts to the openness of the technology industry.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, people willing to work for nothing.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: So let me come back on - you said that - you started by saying that most research is funded by companies. But actually, about $100 billion a year is spent of just public money on basic research. That's a lot of money, obviously. I mean, it's an absolutely astounding number of dollars to be spending on basic research.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: And that money, presumably, is being spent in the public interest, and so I think you can make a pretty good case that publicly funded science should be open science.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Now, you can shift from that kind of basic public research to focus on more applied commercial research, as you suggest, as well. And so you might say, well, what happens there? And actually, what happens there is kind of interesting. To some extent I agree with you, there will continue to be a secretive culture within many companies, but there are some big companies - Eli Lilly is one, for example, who are interested in what they call open innovation models, wherein they actually give up some knowledge about their internal processes and their internal problems, and they try and recruit people from outside the company to help attack those problems.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: So even some what you might think traditionally very secretive organizations are actually finding some benefits.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: When you have an open society, you allow anybody to come in and take a look and I guess in a way become a peer reviewer, right? I mean, won't peer review change if billions of people are all out to look at the work and comment on it?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: It's a really interesting thought. You know, again, I think it's early days, but there are some interesting examples. I guess last year, there was a lot of talk about this so-called arsenic life publications. So some people found that maybe arsenic was being, you know, actually put into the DNA in living organisms, and there was a paper published in Science that got a huge amount of publicity. And actually, some online bloggers started to look in detail at this, particularly a person named Rosie Redfield, and they started to pull apart the paper with a lot of help from the community and comments from many, many different people. And I think it's fair to say that maybe that work has resulted in a lot of skepticism now about arsenic life.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. 1-800-989-8255. Some examples that I can think of where, I think, gets across the idea of scientists, of citizen scientists. We've had examples - we've had people on the program who talked about, you know, crowdsourcing gene folding, right? People can see patterns better than computers. They can figure out maybe how gene molecules, I'm sorry, not genes, protein molecules fold a little bit better. There's something you talk about in your book called the Galaxy Zoo. I remember we talked about that also.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Ah, right. So this is the - where they crowdsourcing galaxy classifications...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yes.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: ...that project you're talking about. Yeah. So what do you want to know, Ira?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: No, I'm just saying that is this the kind of public science that you're talking about, getting people involved who may not be scientists, maybe citizen scientists, to help out scientists in their own project?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, their - in Galaxy Zoo's case, they recruited a quarter of a million people who actually did, get this, 150 million galaxy classifications, which enables the astronomers who started the project to solve all kinds of interesting astronomical problems that they just couldn't do otherwise. You can't, as a scientist, sit down and do 150 million classifications at your desk. They'll just take too long.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. Is it - do you find that there is resistance to the way - to changing the way, the old way, of things being done? Are older scientists resistant to change and becoming part of this process?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: I'm not so sure I'd say resistance so much as it's just difficult to see how to cause a large-scale change. How do you get everybody simultaneously to adopt the new way of doing things? And so some people will kind of throw up their hands and say, well, it just can't be done. Probably the people actually get that the most from, scientists who are sort of in their mid-career. They're doing post docs or they're at the end of their graduate studies. And while they're subject to the system, they don't really feel like there's very much they can do to change it. When I talk to younger scientists, they're often very enthusiastic. And sometimes, when I talk to much more senior scientists, because they feel like they have some power to actually change the system, they can actually be quite enthusiastic.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Talking with Michael Nielsen, author of "Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Network Science" on SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. Let's go to the phone lines. To David in Rochester, New York. Hi, David.</s>DAVID: Hi. I think I am a good example of this with amateur archaeologists in North America. And years ago, I was interested in the archaeology of western New York here and started noticing these stone structures in the woods. And there were some local information that it was Native American. And with the birth of the Internet, all these people started to blog about how they were finding these things in the woods and how there's a connection with all these amateur archaeologists and the professional archaeologists are beginning to look into this. It's interesting how we all share this information and it's grown.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hmm. Interesting. Michael?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Yeah, it's a terrific example. It's not one I'd thought of actually before. I guess in my book I talk a little bit about some amateur birders who are doing some very similar kinds of things, and they use the Internet to keep in touch with one another and to keep track of what rare bird species they've seen nearby. So it's kind of a parallel example, I guess. There's a lot of similarities in how they're doing that.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Is there any fear here with being overwhelmed with participants, in people who may not be as knowledgeable, and having to weed through all that stuff that comes in?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Sure. So there are certainly some difficulties and challenges that arise. You know, if you create - anytime you open up your system of producing information some more, you create, I guess, more potential for noise as well as signal. And so that's a serious point. And we're still discovering what that's going to mean. There have been some interesting examples of scientists making public announcements of, you know, potential discoveries on their blog. One blogger, for example, announced rumors that the Higgs boson had been found.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I remember that one.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: And then - yeah. It was a guy names Tomas Terico(ph), and, you know, he kind had to walk it back a few days later. But it wasn't until after the new scientists had published kind of his rumors, basically. And that's an unfortunate situation, and it's a bit of a problem.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. Last question in the last minute I have. If the open science model was adopted, you say it will be the second time the process of scientific discovery changed in history. What would be the first one?</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Yeah. So I guess - I talk about the first and second open science revolutions.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: And so the first, who's going back to the 17th century, in the very early days of science, you had people like Galileo, often very reluctant to share their discoveries with the world. And it really was the adoption of the journal system, in fact, at the end of the 17th century that started to see scientists be a bit more forthcoming. And that is a wonderful thing, and it's, you know, just magnificent for our society if that happened. But today, we can do better. We have better tools for working together, better tools for constructing knowledge together. And so we need a second open science revolution that will see scientists and the public more broadly adopt these tools and use them really to their full potential.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you think this is going to be a hugely powerful event.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: I do. I think - you know, when you look at the history of science, it's tempting to focus on thing - you know, big kind of scientific discoveries, the invention of the laser or, you know, the structure of DNA or things like that. But when you're actually talking about the tools which people use to construct knowledge itself, when you change those, that's incredibly powerful. It's a bit like, you know, what happened when the internal combustion engine was invented to transport. All of a sudden, you just completely changed the game across the board. And I think we're in that same kind of a transition, but not for transport, but rather for how we construct knowledge.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: If you want to know more about it, you could read Michael Nielsen's new book, "Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science." Thank you for taking time to be with us today, Michael.</s>MICHAEL NIELSEN: Thank you so much, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Good luck to you. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the earliest known evidence of dog domestication. Stay with us. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

Florida's GOP primary has become a battleground for the four remaining Republican hopefuls in the 2012 presidential race. The state's size and population are much larger than other primary states', and TV advertising is expected to play its largest role yet in the campaign. Ken Rudin, Political Junkie columnist, NPR Lucy Morgan, senior correspondent, Tampa Bay Times Aubrey Jewett, political scientist, University of Central Florida Leonard Curry, chairman, Republican Party of Florida

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Orlando. Gabby Giffords bows out of Congress, Michele Bachmann vows to return, Newt reborn in South Carolina, while Santorum struggles to stay afloat. It's Wednesday and time for a...</s>RICK SANTORUM: These are not cogent thoughts...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...edition of the Political Junkie.</s>PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.</s>VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?</s>SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.</s>SENATOR LLOYD BENTSON: Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.</s>PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore.</s>SARAH PALIN: Lipstick.</s>GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: Oops.</s>PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: But I'm the decider.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Every Wednesday, Political Junkie Ken Rudin joins us to recap the week in politics. This week we're at member station WMFE in Orlando, less than a week before the suddenly all-important Florida primary, where there are now four GOP presidential hopefuls still standing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rick Perry quit even before the South Carolina vote. That vaulted Newt to the top of the national polls again as the air of inevitability leaks out of the Romney balloon. In Jersey, veteran Democratic Senator Bob Menendez gets a formidable opponent, and the Supreme Court orders new congressional lines in Texas.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In a few minutes, we'll focus on the Florida primary, and later in this jumbo edition of the Political Junkie, the Florida GOP state chairman joins us. But first, Political Junkie here with us - Ken Rudin's in the studio at WMFE. We begin, as we always do, with a trivia question. Hey, Ken.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Hi, Neal. Well, OK, we know that four years ago in the Florida primary, Hillary Clinton won the primary but did not get the nomination. Before Hillary Clinton, who was the last person to win the primary in Florida but failed to win the nomination?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you think you know the answer to this week's trivia question, the last person before Hillary Clinton to win the Florida primary but lose his or her's party nomination, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Of course the winner gets the fabulous no-prize T-shirt in exchange for a promise of a digital image of themselves for our wall of shame.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Ken, we begin when we can with actual votes. South Carolina, wow.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, you know, that seems like months ago, and it was only last Saturday, but it was a thumping, as Newt Gingrich beat Mitt Romney 40 to 28 percent, a 12-point victory, far better than any of the polls indicated. As you say, it did burst a balloon in the Mitt Romney inevitability argument and once again resuscitates Newt Gingrich, whose campaign was all but dead in June, came back to be a frontrunner for a while in December and then also deflated as he got hit by ads in Iowa.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But now he has the momentum in this race.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And he is, at least according to one Mitt Romney endorser, a viable candidate. This is Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, the Republican who's a supporter of Mitt Romney. It didn't sound that way when he talked on CBS's "Face the Nation."</s>SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Electability was the issue before South Carolina primary, during the primary, and on voting day, and Newt won. He's the guy that we saw, 40 percent of us, the best to go into the arena and beat Barack Obama.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So that's one of Mitt Romney's supporters.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I actually didn't know he was a Mitt Romney supporter. I didn't know that. But anyway, but I thought still the fact is that a lot of people who - the argument for Mitt Romney all along had been he is the guy who is best able to defeat President Obama. And if you looked at the exit polls coming out of South Carolina, Gingrich won on everything, including electability, including - and also from women.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Remember the bombshell from Marianne Gingrich about the open marriage, something that Neal Conan and I have, I think we can admit that now...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We do? You never told me.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Anyway, but so - and he even did well with women. He did well with almost every demographic. Ron Paul did well with younger voters.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As he always does.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: As he always does. And Romney did best with older voters, but it seemed like Gingrich, you know, he also carried 43 of the state's 46 counties, truly a landslide.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's somebody who does sound like a Mitt Romney surrogate, it's the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.</s>GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: I think Newt Gingrich has embarrassed the party over time. Whether he'll do it again in the future, I don't know, but Governor Romney never has.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And of course that is more of an attack on - and Romney has now been forced to go on the attack here in Florida.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, perhaps one of the reasons that Mitt Romney didn't do as well in South Carolina was the fact that some people said that he was not as aggressive. He didn't have the fire in the belly, at least in the debates, and Gingrich, if nothing else, is a very effective debater.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But at the same time, he does have the flaws. He was reprimanded by Congress. He did resign as speaker after 1998, and Mitt Romney was not shy about bringing that up during the debate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nor, of course, the payments he received from Freddie Mac.</s>MITT ROMNEY: If your entities are getting paid by health companies that could benefit from a piece of legislation, and you then meet with Republican congressman and encourage them to support that legislation, you can call it whatever you'd like; I call it influence-peddling.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Influence-peddling is the allegation. If it smells like a lobbyist, if it walks like a lobbyist, if it talks like a lobbyist, it's a lobbyist.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And not a historian, and you know, for all the focus on Mitt Romney's tax returns, and of course Mitt Romney was very clever to release them on the Monday during the State of the Union address and before a debate, you know...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Between the two debates.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Between the two debates. So he tried to get that issue gone from the campaign dialogue. He didn't completely do it, but now the onus seems to be on Newt Gingrich and his Freddie Mac contract.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, Newt Gingrich is running a more presidential - i.e., against Barack Obama, campaign as Mitt Romney used to try to do, and here's been one of his major themes here in the state of Florida, where he's talking about regime change 90 miles south of Miami.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: I guess the only thing I would suggest is I don't think that Fidel's going to meet his maker. I think he's going to go to the other place.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: Second, I would suggest to you - I would suggest that the policy of the United States should be aggressively to overthrow the regime.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that's something that he hopes will play well in South Florida.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Newt Gingrich obviously wants a regime change not only in Havana but in Washington, D.C.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In the meantime, we have some people on the line who think they have the answer to this week's trivia question, and that is: Before Hillary Clinton, the last person to win the Florida primary but lose the nomination of their party. 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. And we'll start with Laura(ph), and Laura's with us from Green Bay in Wisconsin.</s>LAURA: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi.</s>LAURA: My guess is Howard Dean.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's a scream.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: The Dean people are going to be so upset with you, Neal, as I am, even though we have an open marriage. No, Howard Dean did not win the 2004 primary in Florida. It was won by John Kerry, who won the nomination.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call. Let's see if we go next to - this is Troy. We're trying to get - maybe that Line 7 is not working. Instead we'll go to Line 1, and Sherry's(ph) on the line, Sherry with us from Southport in North Carolina.</s>SHERRY: Rudy Giuliani.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, that's an interesting point because Rudy Giuliani...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Really hoped he would.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Matter of fact, he based his whole 2008 campaign on the Florida primary and bypassed Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, but by doing that, he was ignored by the voters here, and he went on to finishing a poor third in the primary, which was won by John McCain.</s>SHERRY: OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, Sherry, and let's go next to - this is Matt, and Matt with us from Portsmouth, Arkansas.</s>MATT: Yes, is it Bob Dole?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, Bob Dole did win the primary in 1996, and of course he was the nominee. He didn't win the primary in 1988, but he wasn't the nominee in 1988. So in other words...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you mix and match, you get it right.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But it was not Bob Dole.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nice try, thanks very much.</s>MATT: Thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's go to - this is Gabriel(ph), Gabriel with us from Boston.</s>GABRIEL: Hi there, how are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>GABRIEL: I believe the answer is Gary Hart.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Gary Hart is the correct answer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ding, ding, ding.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: In 1984, remember he came - he was second place in Iowa, which propelled him to a victory in New Hampshire, and while he was losing elsewhere in the South to Walter Mondale, he really beat Mondale pretty handily in Florida. But ironically, because he was not prepared, he did not win most of the delegates, but he did win the primary. Gary Hart in 1984 is the correct answer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Stay on the line, Gabriel, and we'll collect your particulars and send you off a fabulous Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt in exchange for your promise of a digital picture of yourself to post it on our wall of shame.</s>GABRIEL: With pleasure, and of course no monkey business.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Glad you said that and not me. Hold on. Thanks and congratulations.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Actually, this is perfect weather to be wearing a Political Junkie T-shirt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It is perfect weather for a Political Junkie T-shirt. In the meantime, the president was dressed rather more elegantly last night at the State of the Union message, where typically - well, if Osawatomie, Kansas was the start of his campaign, he followed up last night in the State of the Union message, where of course he's staring right at the Republicans he's pretty much running against.</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that is the theme that he hit in Kansas. He hit it again last night. We can expect to hear that for the next several months.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And of course it came at a time when Mitt Romney is telling the world that he is paying 14 percent of his income in taxes and while most of the country is paying much more. President Obama said that the minimum tax rate should be 30 percent. It's about income distribution and inequality, and having Romney's taxes come out the same week as the State of the Union was a good - a bonus for the president.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, not a presidential candidate this year, as many hoped he would be, came out, and he did the Republican rebuttal.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Here were are four years later. They can't find a job. Why should they support him? We're living at a time with 13 million people out of work, four million people out of work for more than a year. Forty-nine million Americans living below the poverty line. Undue influence by Obama campaign supporters. Things are not going in the right direction, they're going in the wrong direction.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Mitch Daniels really able to impersonate all those voices. That's actually not true. That's a Republican National Committee ad. We played the wrong cut of tape there, and I apologize for that. That was my mistake. But that is an ad the Republican National Committee has started to run against Barack Obama in places like Virginia and North Carolina, important states for Barack Obama.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Look, we heard the president last night. I mean, obviously what it is is basically sort of like - not so much laying out his campaign for re-election, but it's pointing out that the Republicans - here's how he differs from the Republican Party. While they are beating each other up, here's what he's doing for the middle class. Here's what he's doing for the unemployed.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And, you know, while (technical difficulties) numbers are falling down, Mitt Romney's approval numbers are decreasing rapidly as he's getting into that gutter, you know, battle with Newt Gingrich, the president's numbers are inching up.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the president is beginning to run his first real political ad, and let's take a listen to that.</s>UNDENTIFIED MAN: For the first time in 13 years, our dependence on foreign oil is below 50 percent. President Obama kept his promise to toughen ethics rules and strengthen America's energy economy.</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this message.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it certainly didn't hurt the president of the United States to, the day after his State of the Union speech, be able to announce that an American hostage and a Danish hostage had been rescued by U.S. Special Forces in Somalia.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Which comes on the heels of the Osama bin Laden and the Gaddafi death in Libya, which the president mentioned in the State of the Union.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Political Junkie day in Orlando, Florida this week, ahead of next week's primary. Up next, we want to hear from Florida primary voters. Have you made up your mind yet? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Stay with us, TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan at the studios of member station WMFE in Orlando, less than a week before what's become the all-important Florida primary. Ken Rudin, our Political Junkie, is here with us. And Ken, do we have a ScuttleButton winner this week?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: We did, actually. We failed to mention it last week, so we're going back two weeks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Two weeks...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Matter of fact, this is how old the puzzle is. The solution was New Hampshire primary, and that was like several years ago. But the winner was Annette Hernandez(ph) of San Francisco.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And she will, of course, get a Political Junkie T-shirt for her winning entry, and so that's just two weeks ago, there wasn't one last week?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: There was, but we don't announce two winners in a row.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, well, I didn't know that.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And besides, San Francisco hasn't been winning much lately, so it would be nice if somebody...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ooh, ooh, twisting the knife. In the meantime, a correction. I misidentified Lindsey Graham as a Romney supporter, and that - as an endorser. He may be a supporter, but that remains to be seen. I apologize for the mistake. You can find Ken's latest ScuttleButton puzzle and Ken's Political Junkie column at npr.org/junkie.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We are not the only ones touring the Sunshine State this week. Three of the four GOP candidates are here trying to drum up support before Tuesday's vote. Florida, unlike any other primary or caucus state thus far, the GOP primary is only open to registered Republicans. The state's population is significantly larger than New Hampshire, South Carolina or Iowa, and it's got several expensive media markets.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Advertising will likely play a major role here over the next six days. We want to hear from Florida primary voters. Have you made up your mind yet? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. You can also drop us an email, talk@npr.org.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joining us here in the studio in Orlando, Lucy Morgan, a senior correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times. Nice to meet you in person.</s>LUCY MORGAN: Good to meet you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And thanks for taking the drive all the way from Tallahassee for us. And Florida moved up its primary before the last presidential election to gain national prominence. Well, that certainly seems to have worked out.</s>LUCY MORGAN: I guess so. They - for the moment, they've lost half their delegates, but they have hopes of getting them back from the nominee.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, they did last time around when they did this, as the Republican Party decided oh well, let bygones be bygones.</s>LUCY MORGAN: Well, you know, they do want votes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's interesting, we're saying - have Florida voters made up their minds? A lot of Florida voters have already made up their minds. If fact, they already voted.</s>LUCY MORGAN: A couple hundred thousand have already voted, and there are like 300,000 absentee requests or so. So we're well on the way to the election.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And also with us here in the studio is Aubrey Jewett. He's a political scientist at the University of Central Florida, just down the road from us here, and nice of you to come in as well.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Great to be here today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we often hear Florida is such a diverse and huge place. I've heard it described, I think by you, as not a state so much as a country.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Well, yeah, it has 10 media markets. You referenced that earlier, how many different media markets there are. And we are just very diverse. The diversity in Florida is really mirroring what you're seeing across the country. We have a large Hispanic population, large black population, a very large elderly population, and of course lots of baby boomers, families with kids. So it's quite diverse.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The ethnic mix also very different from, well, South Carolina for sure.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Absolutely. You know, another reason why Florida is taking its proper place as early in the primary is we do represent the diversity of the country a lot better, I think, than any of the previous states.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Lucy Morgan, all those media markets, if you're going to run in Florida, you need an organization, you need money, you need to have things established.</s>LUCY MORGAN: Lots of money. You really need lots of money, and he who has bought the airwaves may dominate, which I suspect may be Romney.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, Lucy, I have a question about that because we're talking about money, and Romney does have that, and we're talking about organization in a state that needs organization, and Romney has that too. But Newt Gingrich has momentum, and we saw that coming out of South Carolina. You know, Romney won New Hampshire handily. Newt Gingrich won South Carolina handily. What do you make of the money versus the organize - I'm sorry, the money-versus-the-momentum argument?</s>LUCY MORGAN: I think that the establishment Republicans, and the money is behind Romney at the moment. Those make up the early voters a lot. I think this is going to be a close race in Florida, that Romney - it was Romney's to lose, and the weapon that Mitt(ph) was handed in South Carolina by John King and ABC helped him surge ahead.</s>LUCY MORGAN: However, we've seen him surge before, only to sort of fall back, and I think that may well happen to him here.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Does the Freddie Mac argument that Romney's making against Newt Gingrich resonate in Florida?</s>LUCY MORGAN: I think it does in some areas of Florida. The whole housing industry problem is bigger here certainly than it was in South Carolina, and in New Hampshire and Iowa as well. So the housing thing does resonate here.</s>LUCY MORGAN: The question I have is how much Romney's own finances are going to play into this. I suspect there won't be as much animosity toward his wealth here as there would have been in South Carolina, particularly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Aubrey Jewett, I have to follow that up. In South Carolina, we had the Tea Party governor endorse Mitt Romney, the establishment candidate. That didn't work out so well. Here in Florida, you have a former governor, Jeb Bush, who sits over all of this like the...</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Godfather of Republican politics.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You said it, I didn't.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But he hasn't endorsed anybody.</s>LUCY MORGAN: No, and he's not.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Yeah, I think he's staying out of it, and I think our governor, I think I read the governor has also refused to endorse anybody. You know, interestingly, four years ago Charlie Crist waited until about three days before the election and jumped in on the McCain bandwagon and then took credit when McCain won. But this time around, I don't think we're going to see any endorsements from the highest profile leaders in Republican politics.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Aubrey, we compare the electorate in Florida, the Republican electorate in Florida, with South Carolina. South Carolina is much more conservative, more Tea Party-oriented. But in the 2010 primary for governor here, Rick Scott, a Tea Party guy, beat the establishment guy, Bill McCollum.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: He did, and Lucy and I were talking about this just a little bit earlier off the air. In Florida, Bill McCollum, who was a 20-year very conservative Republican congressman and then a very conservative attorney general, he was beaten by Rick Scott, who was able to convince Republicans in Florida that Bill McCollum was not conservative enough.</s>LUCY MORGAN: But he had a $75 million advantage. He spent $75 million of his own money to flood the market with ads.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: He did, and - but it does raise the question - it's the question, of course, that Republicans have been asking about Mitt Romney for the last several months, and is he conservative enough, can they embrace him and - or are they still just looking? And right now it's just so tight in Florida.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Up till about a week ago, I was among the many who thought, OK, in the end, Romney's going to pull it out, but I'll tell you: He is in a world of trouble right now in Florida. He may hang on, but Gingrich is really surging in the polls.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lucy Morgan, what do you think?</s>LUCY MORGAN: I think Romney will pull it out. The newest poll, the better of the polls, Quinnipiac, came out this morning giving Romney a one-point advantage, within the margin of error. But I think the advantage he has is the early vote and the establishment Republicans who are behind him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get some callers on the line, 800-989-8255. Florida primary voters, have you made up your minds yet? We'll start with Marie(ph), and Marie's on with us from Fort Lauderdale.</s>MARIE: Yes, good afternoon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Afternoon, go ahead, please.</s>MARIE: Yes, well, I have decided to shift gears. Instead of voting Democrat, I am voting for Mitt Romney because I am a very dissatisfied Democratic voter. As a Haitian-American, I have seen no change in the status of a lot of my friends as far as finances are concerned. A lot of them have lost their houses, and all the promises that were made during the campaign, none of them have been accomplished. So I am switching my gears to see if I can vote for capitalism.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so vote for Mitt Romney. Why Mitt Romney, if you're going to switch to vote Republican, among the other Republicans?</s>MARIE: Well, the other candidates, they just, they do not appeal to me. Gingrich has a lot of baggage. Mitt Romney is a capitalist. He has made a lot of money, and I - he stands for what I believe the American dream is all about - fighting...</s>LUCY MORGAN: Did you change your registration to Republican?</s>MARIE: Yes, I have.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much, Marie, appreciate it.</s>MARIE: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's see if we can get another caller on, and let's go to Amber(ph), Amber's with us from Tallahassee.</s>AMBER: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Amber, you're on the air, go ahead, please.</s>AMBER: I have decided to vote for Ron Paul.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And why?</s>AMBER: I guess what it boils down to for me is a smaller and limited, more federal government and the restoration of state rights. And I believe that he'll represent me in that way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Amber, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Ron Paul...</s>LUCY MORGAN: I wonder if Ron Paul might pick up some votes out of this. We have a growing independent registration of voters in Florida, and if you assume that there will be people who resent Mitt Romney's money and the way - and the taxes he paid and others who will resent Gingrich's personal life, I wonder if Ron Paul might not be the beneficiary of some of that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken, though, we keep hearing Ron Paul, he's here for the debates, but because it's a winner-take-all primary, he's ducking out.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's exactly right. He's not campaigning in the state, and obviously he's looking toward the caucus states, where the delegates are chosen proportionally.</s>LUCY MORGAN: Except in North Florida, the people standing on street corners with signs are holding Ron Paul signs.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And we haven't mentioned Rick Santorum either. Is he a factor here at all?</s>LUCY MORGAN: Less so, I think. But certainly, he'll get some votes. There are evangelicals that will go to Santorum that will run away from the others.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But I would assume, Aubrey, that evangelicals less a factor than they were in Iowa and South Carolina.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Yeah. I think in the - within the Republican base of Florida, you'll see a lot - more moderates and just a lot more economic voters and less of the Christian conservatives, social conservatives. There's certainly numerically a lot of them, but as a percentage of the Republican Party in Florida not nearly as much as South Carolina, nor in the Iowa caucus for sure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see - we go next to Oviedo. Oviedo with us - excuse me. David is with us from Oviedo, in Florida.</s>DAVID: Good afternoon. Yeah...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>DAVID: ...I am an independent who often leans toward the Republican Party, but I'm looking at the selection of candidates this time, and I'm trying to maintain a little bit of distance and not get drawn in by all the pre-election hoopla. And I have to ask myself, are these the best that our political system can come up with? We've got a - one candidate, a leading candidate in the Republican Party who's been publically discredited by - in his last office. Another one who claims to be an outsider business person, but yet, you know, he's clearly an insider and part of a privileged class. The only - to me - the only one with any creditability in the Republican Party is Ron Paul, who's got some consistency in what he's saying.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do you plan to make your vote for Ron Paul then?</s>DAVID: Well, yeah, I guess that's who I am leading - leaning towards, but, you know, at this point, again, I find myself at 54 years old - once again, I'm not voting for somebody. I'm voting against the other candidates. And it just seems like in the last three, two to three presidential elections, the candidate that have been put forward, I just cannot believe that they're the best minds, the best thinkers, the most effective politician that this system can put forward. (Unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wonder, Lucy Morgan, we, you know, that's an interesting point of view, and I think that there are a fair number of Republicans who feel that way.</s>LUCY MORGAN: Oh, I talk to them every day. There are a lot of Republicans who really regret the final lineup they have to choose from; many of whom would like to say Jeb Bush or somebody like him jump into this race. I am convinced that Jeb has no intent of jumping in this race, that if he ever runs for president, it would be at least four years from now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Aubrey Jewett, would you agree?</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Absolutely. And I was thinking back. I think Tim Pawlenty actually made a big mistake when he dropped out after that Iowa straw poll. We saw every other viable Republican race to the top as, again, as Republicans were searching for the not-Romney candidate. And I'm sure if he had stayed in long enough, he would have found himself on top eventually. And I think he would have been a very credible candidate, as a former governor and sort of solid on policy and probably good with Tea Party and conservatives, et cetera. But fact is, you know, he - I think he just got a little scared that Michele Bachmann was doing too well, and he dropped out.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking on The Political Junkie this week with Lucy Morgan, who's a senior correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times, and Aubrey Jewett, political scientist at the University of Central Florida. Of course, Ken Rudin is with us. We're in Orlando, Florida today, less than a week ahead of the primary. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And one P.S. to the - to David's point, the caller: dissatisfaction with candidates is not new. In 1960, Democrats were saying, is Jack Kennedy the best we could do? He's a, you know, a young guy. He's inexperienced. He's too green. I mean, can't we do better than John F. Kennedy? So that dissatisfaction, we've been around for a long time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller on the line. Let's go to Mike, and Mike is on the line with us from Tampa.</s>MIKE: Hello, folks. How are you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good. Thanks.</s>MIKE: You kind of covered some of my stuff, but I'm just concerned about who to vote for. I'm an evangelical Christian and, you know, a little concerned about Romney's waffling on abortion. And I don't really want to say much about Gingrich. I'm not sure about what to do with Santorum. I really don't know.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So you're in a bit of a quandary. Santorum, we're told, at least by the evangelical powers that be that met in Texas the other weekend, that your votes should go to him.</s>MIKE: Well, I've heard that, and I don't know - I - it's the lobbying stuff that he was involved in and some of that, that kind of makes me a little nervous. So I'm just not excited, and that doesn't feel good. I want to be able to be excited about somebody to vote for and get behind him. And I just don't feel that way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's interesting. Lucy Morgan, have you seen excitement on the Republican side this year?</s>LUCY MORGAN: Yeah, a lot of people are excited but not for the reasons you would expect in an election. I wonder if Aubrey might know the breakdown between men and women registered as Republicans in Florida because I do think that the women's vote is unlikely to go to Gingrich in a mass number. If the people I have heard from are any example because a lot of the women who know what Gingrich's background is are furious with him.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But women voted for Gingrich in South Carolina.</s>LUCY MORGAN: I understand that. And Nikki Haley didn't. But...</s>AUBREY JEWETT: And then, that Quinnipiac poll that you mentioned earlier, Lucy, I looked at some of the breakdowns, and there is the gender gap that you mentioned in Florida right now in the polls, that men were more supportive of Gingrich - Republican men, I should say. And Republican women were more supportive of Romney.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What characteristic - as we look at the jigsaw puzzle that is the state of Florida and all the different places it is, from the panhandle all the way down to South Beach and Key West, very different places - what issue, if there is an issue, is going to distinguish these candidates, Aubrey, do you think?</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Well...</s>LUCY MORGAN: The...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, Lucy.</s>LUCY MORGAN: ...economy perhaps. We are a state that's had very high unemployment, and a lot of people losing their houses. I think - I have to believe that plays into Romney's hand, a successful businessman. If you look at who - if you're thinking of how the average voter would look, but I don't know that it does.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Aubrey?</s>AUBREY JEWETT: Yeah. And I was going to agree that the economy and jobs and the housing issues, theoretically, those are - well, not theoretically. Those are the most important issues to Florida voters, including most Republican voters. But as far as what distinguishes the candidates in the minds of the voters right now, I'm really not sure it's going to come down to issue base, I think, and this is bad news for Romney. I think it's going to be a more visceral, you know, Republicans are looking for someone that's more of the attack-style politics and somebody that they, at least in their view, is a more trusted conservative.</s>AUBREY JEWETT: For Gingrich, that's good news. He built a long reputation as a conservative, you know, helping the Republicans take control of Congress in '94. Of course, since he got out of office, he's actually in a number of occasions not been so conservative.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida, thanks very much for your time today. Lucy Morgan, thank you, too.</s>LUCY MORGAN: Thank you. Thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lucy Morgan, a senior correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times. Political junkie Ken Rudin is going to stay with us. In a moment, we'll stay and talk with the state chairman of the Republican Florida Party. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political junkie Ken Rudin is with us here in the studio at WMFE in Orlando, less than a week ahead of the critical primary here in the state of Florida. And joining us now is - it's going to be a winner-take-all front primary with 50 delegates at stake, more than any other primary to this point. It's a state Barack Obama carried in 2008, one the Democrats hope to hold onto. But, well, let's get through the primary first. If you plan - voters, if you plan to vote in the Republican primary, have you made up your mind? 800-989-8255. Email, talk@npr.org.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joining us now on the phone from Jacksonville is Leonard Curry, chairman of the Florida Republican Party. And, Chairman Curry, nice to have you today on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>LEONARD CURRY: It's good to be with you. Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And a lot of people thought after three contests, this presidential - this primary season would effectively be over by now.</s>LEONARD CURRY: That - a couple of weeks ago, that was definitely what the pundits were saying. We've been saying for a year, though, that it would be all eyes on Florida and all about Florida when we set our primary date, and here we are, and it is certainly all about Florida.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You took a risk changing your primary date. You are technically in violation of party rules. And could lose what, half your delegates?</s>LEONARD CURRY: Yeah. Right now, we are - we would have had 99 delegates, and we have 50 which will be winner-take-all. But let me just clarify. The primary date is governed on - is under Florida statute, that the statutory authority runs with the - sits with the Florida legislature, not with the party. So they set the date at January 31st. As a sovereign state, they did what they thought, and we're acting in the best interest of over four million registered Republicans in the state of Florida.</s>LEONARD CURRY: I'm not happy that we lost our delegates, but I do think that - I've always said I think it's important that we go early, and I understand why the legislature did what it did.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, Mr. Chairman, that's a good question because what happened four years ago, the same thing, the Democrats lost all their delegates. And as a matter of fact, the DNC, Howard Dean - Chairman Howard Dean told the candidates not to even campaign in Florida. And Hillary Clinton basically won a meaningless victory. And the Republicans lost half their delegation. And yet - I mean, couldn't Florida still be early but just not in January? Couldn't it be the first week of February?</s>LEONARD CURRY: Well - and again, the committee that met that made this decision, based on what they were hearing around the country, and there was a lot of talk about a lot of other states moving their dates up, they believed that if they didn't put a stake in the ground early and lock up January 31st, that there was a good chance that we would not be right behind South Carolina. So based on an analysis, they made a decision. Agree or disagree with it, it's where we are now. And it's turned out to be - work out for us. All eyes on Florida, winner take all, 50 delegates, it's a big deal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I have to tell you after we've been to campaign stops in Iowa and New Hampshire, it's kind of nice to be in Florida.</s>LEONARD CURRY: We've had an unusually warm winter this year, so I'm not complaining. It's been very pleasant.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Actually, it was warm in Iowa, too, but comparatively warm.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But it was very hot during the debates.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It was very hot during the debates.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I have to ask you, you have not endorsed anybody. So I wonder, how do you handicap the race right now?</s>LEONARD CURRY: I think it's wide open. The - with Newt winning South Carolina, each candidate having won three states. It's wide open. And it's - I expect it to be pretty volatile up through - right up to the primary date. Our last debate is in Jacksonville, Florida, on Thursday night this week. And if you look at how important these debates have been, how big of a role they played in voters making decisions, I'm arguing that this is - we've been in the playoffs all along, and this is the Super Bowl of debates. And this is where - this is the big game for each of these candidates to win Florida.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And given your knowledge of the state, if somebody tries to drop the gloves and mix it up - there'd been some pretty stinging attacks starting in South Carolina and moving on down here to Florida - does that work with Florida voters?</s>LEONARD CURRY: You know, if all - if everybody stays negative, it will work. I believe that if a candidate is - can come out in a debate with a clear, compelling message and argument - moral argument for the free market and job creation and how that will affect people's lives and contrast that with how big government programs have failed and really have not lifted anyone out of poverty, if someone can come with that message, I believe that the voters will respond to that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Mr. Chairman, also let me ask you a question that I asked the two previous guests. We always talked about Florida being a very important state with organization and money. It's a big state with expensive markets and ostensibly that should help Mitt Romney, but then you do have the momentum of Newt Gingrich coming from South Carolina. What prevails in a state like this?</s>LEONARD CURRY: Yeah. Money being able to play in the 10 media markets and having significant money and resources and organization is very important. But the debates have changed the game this year. It seems, four years ago – it was so long ago - but it seems to me the debates have played a much bigger role, that the (unintelligible) media that's coming out of this debate - these debates gives someone a chance in Florida that maybe doesn't have the historical fund that you'd have to have to be competitive here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller in on the conversation. Let's go to Tom, and Tom is on the line from Pensacola.</s>TOM: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Tom.</s>TOM: I'd like to voice my support for Newt Gingrich and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And why are you voting for the former speaker?</s>TOM: I'm voting for the former speaker because in the '90s he got so much of the conservative agenda passed with the Contract of America. And...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Contract of - with America, Ken, we remember that as a remarkably effective campaign tool. Did it turn into actual legislation once the Republicans took office in 1994?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, some, yes, like welfare reform, working with President Clinton, but like terms limits, things like that, it did not. The thing about Newt Gingrich, he was always seen as more of a visionary that somebody in power able to implement his proposals.</s>TOM: Tom?</s>TOM: Yes, I'm still here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. So - but you believe he's the candidate who can make a real change in Washington?</s>TOM: Yes. And can I do a little bit of handicapping?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>TOM: Well, up here in the panhandle, I believe that Newt Gingrich has a lot of support, and I believe that he has the best chance of carrying at least the northwestern counties of the state.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Leonard Curry, what do you think of Tom's handicapping?</s>LEONARD CURRY: I think it's wide open. Again, I really think that the voters - the polls are showing pretty much a dead heat right now between Romney and Gingrich. And I think that whichever of these two guys comes with a positive, compelling argument that how job creation and the free market will affect individual lives and allow us to fund education and reform other programs, that's going to be the candidate that will emerge victorious. If they stay negative, if it's all negativity, it's really a toss-up.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom, thanks very much for the call.</s>TOM: All right. You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email: Since so many snowbirds have second homes in Florida, is there evidence that some might vote twice in their home states too? Is there any mechanism to ensure that doesn't happen, Chairman Curry?</s>LEONARD CURRY: I'm sure - yes. Our supervisor of elections in various counties, they have safeguards in place, and I'm sure that they're doing everything they can to ensure that we don't have either blatant voter fraud or someone who just makes an honest mistake.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's go next to John, and John's on from Cape Coral in Florida. John?</s>JOHN: Yes. Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, John. You're on the air. Go ahead, please.</s>JOHN: Yeah. I'm casting my vote as a Republican. I've always voted as a Republican. I'm going to stick with Rick Santorum because I believe he is the one who's got the cleanest slate. He doesn't have all the baggage that Romney has with his IRS issues and that Gingrich has with his wife issues. So I think it's safe to say Santorum would have the least ammunition to go against with Obama. Obama would probably have not much to fire at him. So I'm going to go safe and go Santorum.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, John. Thanks very much for the call. Ken, that's interesting. We forgot to mention that I think the same day that the - just before the election here - in South Carolina, rather - it was just about the same day, it turned out, Rick Santorum won Iowa.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah. He won by a whopping 34 votes as opposed to Mitt Romney winning it by six votes. But nobody seems to get advantage out of Iowa, and it doesn't seemed like Rick Santorum has either, even with, as you said, these - the group of evangelical leaders who, in Texas, said that Santorum is the right kind of candidate. But now it seems like - well, look. With Ron Paul disappeared from the state, Santorum seemed to be a bystander in the battle between Romney and Gingrich. It does seem like to be a two-person race right now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Leonard Curry, you said pretty a dead heat between Gingrich and Romney. Is this down to a two-man race?</s>LEONARD CURRY: I mean right now, that's what the polls would indicate, but we've seen that we've been surprised so many times this election cycle, this primary season so far that - I mean, who knows. You know, there could be a surprise here between here and next week and could knock somebody off and someone else could emerge. But right now, based on polling, it's Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Mr. Curry, obviously President Obama won this state narrowly four years ago. Is the battle among the Republicans hurting their chances of taking the state back in November?</s>LEONARD CURRY: I don't think so. Whatever our candidates - while I don't like the fact that we're in a circle of firing squad right now, we're beating each other up - President Obama is going to say the same thing, so what's out there now will just, he'll regurgitate and would come up anyway. So I don't think it's going to hurt us in the long run.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Henry.</s>LEONARD CURRY: I don't particularly care for it I want to see a vision, and I want to hear a vision, and I want to know the vision and the view for Florida and America, but I don't think it hurts us in the general.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Henry is on the line with us from Miami.</s>HENRY: Hi. I love the program.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>HENRY: Yeah. I'm just calling to comment. I'm in Miami. And amongst my peers and the people I speak with, one of the big issues is everyone's opinion of electability, who can be the strongest opponent in November. And that comes up as more of a topic than any specific issue or stance in that regard. And I just want to get your guys' opinion on that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Do you see any great distinction, Chairman Curry, on the issues between, say, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum? And obviously you would have to say yes there is with Ron Paul, but those other three?</s>LEONARD CURRY: No. I'd say that generally all of the candidates believe in the big picture that the party believes in, and which is more freedom and economic freedom and job creation, and that's how you affect people's lives, and that's how you fund a safety net to take care of people that are in trouble. But I just - I'd like to see somebody emerge with a compelling argument on that. So no, I don't see huge differences.</s>LEONARD CURRY: And even though Ron Paul has some ideas that are different than the other candidates, look, he's brought to the conversation some important things that I think are a healthy discussion.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Henry, thanks very much. You've not made up your mind, Henry?</s>HENRY: Yeah. I'm supporting Romney because we all believe he's the only one with a decent chance of winning.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.</s>HENRY: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Leonard Curry, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Of course Political Junkie Ken Rudin is with us. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Regarding Henry's call that we've just heard - the electability argument has been Romney's strength all along. But as Newt Gingrich said during the debate, and he's correct, the Democrats were salivating at the thought of running against Ronald Reagan in 1980, thinking he was the easiest to beat, and of course Reagan won a landslide over President Carter that year. So what we see as electable in January or February may be much different come November.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Chairman Scott - I have to ask you. There is an element of the Republican establishment we keep hearing about. Well, former Governor Jeb Bush has not endorsed anybody. Governor Scott has not endorsed anybody, at least so far as we know. Senator Rubio has not endorsed anybody. Where is this establishment?</s>LEONARD CURRY: I agree with you. I mean, you know, every - I hear every election cycle that the establishment hands the electorate a candidate, and that perplexes me because it actually takes registered voters to go to the polls on primary day and pick the candidate. So I don't get it, but people like to say it, and it is what it is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chairman Curry, thanks very much for your time today, and we hope you have a successful primary. And who knows? Maybe you'll get those delegates back.</s>LEONARD CURRY: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed the conversation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Leonard Curry is the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, on the line with us from Jacksonville, Florida. And Ken, a couple of things that we've not had the chance to get to. One is in the state of New Jersey, where Senator Bob Menendez certainly has, well, pretty formidable opposition.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, on two reasons. First of all, it's a state senator by the name of Joe Kyrillos. And what makes this a very interesting race is Kyrillos has a very strong ally of Chris Christie. Chris Christie, when he was a U.S. attorney, launched an investigation against Bob Menendez around some kind of financial stuff. So there's tremendous animosity between Chris Christie and Bob Menendez. And Kyrillos running as the Republican nominee, if he should get the nomination, will probably be seen as a referendum on Governor Christie.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email we should really get to from Kelly in Orlando: I'd like to comment on the former caller's comment regarding Mitt Romney's IRS issues. What issues did Mitt have with the IRS? As I see it, he earned income and paid the tax rate as outlined in the Internal Revenue Code. Why should he be faulted for paying a lower tax rate than others if - as if he wrote the code? So that's an accurate statement, and so thanks very much for that correction.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Another senator, Mark Kirk from Illinois, just elected last time around, a young man in the hospital after a stroke.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah. He's 52 years old. Over the weekend he had an emergency surgery. The doctors say it went better than expected, but he's not - it's unlikely that he'll have a complete physical recovery. He has some mental capacities and that's fine, but he will have major years of work to get his physical stamina back, and it may not be 100 percent. And that's what we saw with Tim Johnson, the senator from South Dakota, who suffered a stroke in 2006, still in a wheelchair, still has impaired speaking, but his mental facilities are back - faculties are back. But it's a sad thing. You know, Mark Kirk only 52 years old. And of course it comes on the same day - we're talking about Gabby Giffords, who's resigning from Congress a year after that horrific assassination attempt. And she announced today that, you know, she made it official today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it is so dramatic how that gunfire, that incident in Tucson a little over a year ago, changed things. We might be talking about Gabby Giffords running for United States Senate from Arizona right now.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well - but we also talked about, at that time, that this was going to - we would lower our voices. We will cool our tempers. We would all sit together, you know, Democrats and Republicans were sitting together, and that lasted all of 15 minutes. And, of course, it's a great sentiment, but it's not reality.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political Junkie Ken Rudin with us here in Orlando this week. We'll be back in Washington next week with our regular broadcast. Ken, as always, thanks very much.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Thanks, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

Reporting inThe Lancet, researchers write that a preliminary study shows embryonic stem cell therapy in two patients with macular degeneration was safe. Results suggest the patients' vision improved slightly. Dr. Robert Lanza, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology and co-author of the study, discusses the trial.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Stem cell therapy, it seems, is always promising, promising to cure diseases or illnesses. And this week, a study using embryonic stem cells has increased the hope of fulfilling some of those promises.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Researchers say results of an early clinical trial indicate it may be possible to restore vision using embryonic stem cells as treatment. It was published in The Lancet. Human embryonic stem cells were used to treat macular degeneration in two legally blind patients. Four months after the transplants, researchers say the therapy appears to be safe and has even improved the patients' vision.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: The study was the first published report of the use of embryonic stem cells in humans. That comes over a decade after these cells were first isolated in the lab. Dr. Robert Lanza is the chief scientific officer of the biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology, which funded the research. Dr. Lanza was also co-author of The Lancet study. He joins us from Marlborough, Massachusetts. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>ROBERT LANZA: Thank you, a great pleasure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What was the purpose of this trial using embryonic stem cells?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Well, we were studying the safety and tolerability of the cells. One of the trials was designed to treat patients with - who have Stargardt's disease, which is the most common pediatric macular degeneration. And the second trial was to treat patients who have dry AMD, which is the leading cause of blindness in the developed world.</s>ROBERT LANZA: And in both studies, we turn the embryonic stem cells into cells known as retinal pigment epithelium, or RPE cells, and those were injected under the retina into the sub-retinal space of the patients. And these RPE cells are responsible for maintaining the health of the photoreceptors, which we see with.</s>ROBERT LANZA: So in both of these degenerative eye diseases, which are currently untreatable, there's a loss of these RPE cells, which leads to a loss of the photoreceptors and then blindness. So we were hoping that by adding new, healthy RPE cells, we might be able to prevent this process from occurring.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Was this sort of a proof of concept stage?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Well actually, this is a Phase 1/2 study. So it was essentially just to test the safety of the cells. We were actually going in in these first two patients with the lowest possible dose. These again, are patients with very advanced stage disease. So we weren't expecting to see any real efficacy at this early point.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you did find, at least in one of the patients provability that something was happening?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Absolutely. You know, it's first important to point out that when you measure visual improvements in patients with low vision, this is very difficult. There's no consensus in part because of current - there's currently no treatments. But that being said, the vision in both patients appears to have improved after transplantation of the cells, again even at the lowest dose.</s>ROBERT LANZA: So before treatment, the Stargardt's patient could only detect hand motions. But within a week after treatment, she was able to actually start counting fingers. Indeed before the treatment, she couldn't read any letters on the standard visual acuity chart, but by two weeks, she started reading letters, and by one month, she could actually read five letters.</s>ROBERT LANZA: But I think it's important to point out that that doesn't really capture the difference that this makes in their life. So for instance the Stargardt's patient reports she can now see more color, and she's a graphic artist, so of course that's very important to her. She had better contrast and dark adaptation out of the operated eye.</s>ROBERT LANZA: For instance, the dry AMD patient can now use her computer again. She can even read her watch. So little things like that, which we all take for granted, obviously can make a huge difference in the quality of a person's life.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You've got to agree that two patients is hardly enough for a larger conclusion.</s>ROBERT LANZA: Absolutely. It's very important to point out that there could also be a placebo component to this improvement. But I think there's enough objective data to suggest that there's a very real biological signal, and these are obviously very preliminary data, so we need to interpret the results very cautiously until we have more data and in more patients.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Are there more patients in trials?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Yeah, so we have two clinical trials. The first, for Stargardt's, involves 12 patients. And the second study, the dry AMD, is another 12 patients. And just recently, last Friday, we started a new study in Europe, the first in Europe, where we started treating another group of 12 patients who have Stargardt's disease.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now, is this true that this is the first use of human embryonic stem cells in patients?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Well, no, there have been three trials that have been approved by the FDA. One was Geron for spinal cord injuries. They have halted that study. And then these two studies. So these are actually the first published results that are indicating what we might expect to see.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you bring up a good point. If Geron is now out of the human embryonic stem cells business, right?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Right, from what we can understand from public statements, they didn't see any biological effect, which of course makes it difficult to have a therapy. So again, they were early-stage trials, as well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So that, like, puts it on your back, does it not, to continue?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, for 13 years, everyone's been talking about embryonic stem cells, and so they're saying, well, does it work, does it work? So I think this is the very first time that we have some signals that something very real seems to be happening.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you actually see regrowing of the damaged area?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Yes, this is a very interesting thing. When you treat the eye, you can actually look into the eye and see what's going on in real time. So we can actually see with very high-resolution instruments right down to the cellular level. And we could actually see, beginning at the first week, an increase in the pigmentation that continued throughout the study period.</s>ROBERT LANZA: And we also had these OCT, these high-resolution instruments, that showed engraphtment of the cells in spots where there weren't any cells prior to the treatment.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now, I understand that actually, if the cells were just sitting in a Petri dish in the lab, you can watch them grow right there.</s>ROBERT LANZA: Yeah, it's very interesting, yes. In a Petri dish, it turns out that these embryonic stem cells like to do all the tricks - they make all the cell types that are in the eye. So in addition to seeing, for instance, these retinal pigment epithelium, we also can see photoreceptors and the various neuronal cells, the bipolar cells. So they almost want to assemble into an eye in the Petri dish.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so how do you keep them from assembling into other things besides the eye once you put them into someone's eye?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Exactly. So that's why this has taken so long to get into the clinic, at least in part. So when they're left on their own, these embryonic stem cells will turn into a hodgepodge of cell types. So in part of the dish, you might see cartilage or nerve cell and then in another section some beating heart cells.</s>ROBERT LANZA: So the main issue is how to turn those reliably into the desired replacement cell type. And in fact, we're still just learning how to do that with some cell types. But fortuitously, it turns out that these cells like to become retinal pigment epithelium. So you - in almost all these cultures, they will eventually have little freckles of pigmentation, which are RPE cells, and those cells expand very, very nicely. So we can take very small patches and turn them into literally millions of these cells.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you took these from embryonic stem cells.</s>ROBERT LANZA: Yes, so we actually started out with a single cell from a leftover IVF embryo, and we turned that cell into a embryonic stem cell line, which of course are the body's master cells. So they can become virtually every cell type in the body.</s>ROBERT LANZA: And since these cells are immortal, they can provide an unlimited supply of starting material. So for these studies, we turned those stem cells into these RPE cells, which were then frozen down, then shipped off to the clinical site. And then after they're reformulated, they can then be injected to a fine kenular(ph) into the subretinal space of the patient. And actually it's an outpatient procedure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Is it true that you have pioneered a way of getting the embryonic stem cells out of the embryo without destroying the embryo?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Yes, I mean, obviously there are some people, such as former President Bush, who think it's wrong to, quote-unquote, "destroy one life to save another." So we developed another method that's routinely used in IVF clinics around the world known as PGD.</s>ROBERT LANZA: And this method allows you to remove one cell from an embryo without destroying it. And then we take that cell, instead of using it for genetic testing, we turn it into stem cells, and we now have several of these lines that we can use in the future where no embryos were destroyed.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How many cells do you have to inject into the eye to get it...</s>ROBERT LANZA: So in these clinical trials, they're dose escalation studies. So in the first three patients of each trial, we will start with only 50,000 cells. And then after we treat those three patients, we will double the dosage to 100,000 cells, and then eventually 150,000 and then finally 200,000 cells. So that's not very many cells.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And why has it taken over a decade for a published report on such a use of...</s>ROBERT LANZA: Right, well, embryonic stem cells are amongst the most complex biological entities that have ever been proposed for clinical use. So the dynamic complexity of their biology poses regulatory concerns, and in particular, for instance, keratoma formation, which by definition these undifferentiated cells have to do if they're injected into a living animal.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Advanced Cell Technology and you personally have been criticized in the past for overstating results because, you know, you've been having trouble raising money to stay in business. How do you answer those critics?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Well, there are a lot of forces working against us that will turn things any way they can. We try to be as clear as we can. We try to publish in peer-review journals and try to present the data as clearly as we can. We are a public company, so obviously that impacts stock, but it just doesn't make sense not to just present the data as straightforwardly as possible.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And why is the eye a good spot to try to do this now?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Well, actually there are three reasons. The first reason, of course, is that there are diseases that affect millions of people. So dry AMD, for instance, affects 30 million people worldwide. It's currently untreatable. There are no therapies. It's a horrific disease. So if we can do something about it, that's important.</s>ROBERT LANZA: Two, is the eye is what's known as immune privileged, which is one of the very few sites in the body where you can actually transplant cells without a risk of rejection, or at least the rejection process is reduced.</s>ROBERT LANZA: And then thirdly, it turns out that these embryonic stem cells, as I mentioned earlier, like to turn into what's known as neural ectoderm, into neurons and these retinal cells so that we can actually get these cells in very large numbers, and in effect, we can get near 100 percent pure retinal cells, which is very important, of course, going into a patient.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right, so what do we tell all the people who are listening now who want to get in on a study because they know somebody or are themselves suffering from some eye illness?</s>ROBERT LANZA: Be patient. You know, we're working on this as aggressively as we can. It's very important first to show that these are safe, do no harm first. So, so far - knock on wood - things are looking very good. And if that pans out for the rest of these studies, we will then be able to increase into Phase 3 and 4, where we'll be able to treat hundreds and then eventually thousands of patients and then get more reliable data. Then it can become more wide-scale, assuming everything goes as all hope.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I want to thank you very much for taking time to be with us today, and good luck to you.</s>ROBERT LANZA: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Robert Lanza is the chief scientific officer of the biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology, which funded the research reported in the journal Lancet. He's also a co-author of The Lancet study there, and he was joining us from Marlborough, Massachusetts.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're going to take a short break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about crowdsourcing science, the new era of network research. Author of the new book called "Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Network Science" Michael Nielson will join us. Stay with us. We'll be right back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

NASA ended the U.S. shuttle program in 2011, leaving roughly 9,000 workers at the Kennedy Space Center without jobs. Many in Cape Canaveral hope the private space industry will blossom, and lead the way back into space, and back to work. Nicole Creston, reporter, WMFE Jeff Greason, president and CEO, XCOR Aerospace

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan broadcasting today from member station WMFE in Orlando. For many Americans, the exploration of space represents a bold venture on behalf of both the nation and our species. But here in Central Florida, it's also an important industry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: For decades, NASA provided high-tech jobs in Houston of course, in Huntsville, Alabama, and many other places and many thousands of jobs at Cape Canaveral, just down the road. The cancelation of the shuttle program meant pink slips for some 9,000 people who used to work at the Kennedy Space Center.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But while some leave to look for work elsewhere, others hope that private industry can restore the future of Florida's Space Coast. So space workers, wherever you are around the country, where do you see your future? Our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Later in the program, the prescription drug epidemic in Florida fueled by pill mills. But first, the future of space. Nicole Creston is a reporter and afternoon host here at member station WMFE and joins us here in their studios - actually I'm in her studio. Nice to have you with us today.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Pleasure to be here, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Can the private space industry ever replace all those jobs along the Space Coast?</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Well, I'm hearing from some experts that the answer is: eventually, but it will look very different than it has for the last 50 years and some change. There's been one big program, obviously, the space shuttle program. There's been one sort of entity that all of the workers, some 15,000 workers, have worked on.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: But now you're looking at kind of a new paradigm. Just last week, NASA went to the administration and told them that they had sort of a new way of looking at their culture, much more diversified is what we're looking at.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Kennedy Space Center would be, instead of working on one project, an eclectic mix. NASA will be over here in one area, maybe the Department of Energy is over here in another area working on alternative energy technology, and over here there's the commercial space industry park, and so on.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: So could we have all of those jobs back? Yes, but it's going to take some five to 10 years, probably at the minimum. In the meantime, there's some work but nowhere near as much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The astronauts, American astronauts that go into space, currently ride on Russian rockets, and it looks like it's going to be that way at least until some commercial company develops the ability to launch astronauts up to the International Space Station.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: That is absolutely true, and there's a lot of competition for it. Right now, it looks like SpaceX may be the leader of the pack on that specific issue. About a year - well, their full name is Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. They have a test version that they launched of the Dragon Capsule, and that made them officially the first private business to send a spacecraft into orbit and return it safely, which is of course a very big deal.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: It was supposed to make its first unmanned cargo run to the International Space Station on February 7th, so - but they've just announced they're pushing that back until mid-March at the earliest because more testing is needed. So we'll see how that shakes out.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: But in the meantime, yes, it's - Russian Soyuz capsule that is providing all of the back and forth.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So, the next American astronaut to ride on an American rocket, the patch on their shoulder might say Boeing or, you know, something like that, as opposed to saying NASA.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: It may, Boeing, SpaceX. There are many private companies out there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as we look at the culture of this place, it has been one of those permanent industries. Ever since John Kennedy - well, before that, the space program was already booming, but the challenge to get to the moon within the decade and the Apollo program, it really seemed like this was a permanent part of the infrastructure here in Florida.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Absolutely. I mean, everything down to the area code, which is 321. You don't get that for nothing. Apparently, a politician went and fought for that. Street names, school names, restaurants called Shuttles, everything about that area has space ingrained into the culture. It's really been quite a blow and a huge surprise, and it's going to look very different when this sort of diversified KSC comes to fruition.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Huge surprise? Everybody knew the space shuttle program was coming to an end.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Well, that's true. Since 2004, in fact. But everyone sort of expected that there would be another large program waiting in the wings, the large Constellation Program that would keep not all of the workers but a large piece of the workers from the shuttle program. And of course that changed.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: And now we've got the gap that is going to be going on for two, five, 10 years. We're not exactly sure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We think of this as a federal program. There's also the state of Florida that's involved, and there's plenty of money, well, at least there used to be plenty of money, in the state budget to try to ensure that there were projects to employ all those people here on the Space Coast.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Yes, Space Florida. In fact, they are involved in getting the money looking for the new diversification programs. There are the Economic Development Commissions from our county, where Kennedy Space Center is. And they had retraining programs. They offered resume rewriting for people who were being laid off because they'd simply been with the shuttle program for so long they didn't have to think about those things 20, 25 years.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: They offered everything that they could, but it's been quite a difficult transition. Space Florida has been working with the laid-off workers, but it's still hard for them to find work.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what about the next generation? Not only engineers moved here, their children grew up here and went to school and went to various universities to come back and work in the space industry, too. This was family project.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: That's absolutely true, and it's not as bad as you might think, looking at the future of the aerospace industry. It is going to be slow for the next few years, as we've been discussing, but this focus on diversification is going to create some more jobs. That's kind of where it's at, so to speak.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Kennedy Space Center, which mostly obviously focused on launch operations; it'll have more technology, development, medical advances, propulsion systems, alternative energy as I mentioned, innovations from creative minds as it partners with private industry. And the future of aerospace jobs, I've actually spoke to a couple of experts who are pretty optimistic about it, that we're really just beginning to discover the economic and commercial potential that space offers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from those experts out there in the audience. If you work in the space industry, or maybe if you used to work in the space industry, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. We'd like to know where you see your future and, well, not only in industrial terms but in physical terms. If there's going to be an American space program, is much of it going to be here on the Space Coast in Florida or elsewhere around the country?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Again, the phone number is 800-989-8255. Email is talk@npr.org. And when you're talking about this very slow growth here in Florida, well, there was this enormous infrastructure. All of these people - and I'm talking about the talent, the workers - all of these people who were here, who had the ability to make these things work, is it all going to be dispersed? Is it all going to be - take a lot of time and money to re-create.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: That's absolutely true. And Space Florida and those other entities that we talked about were trying to keep that talent here because it's an immense pool of incredibly intelligent and very talented people. But there's been a lot of dispersal already. As I said, people are moving to areas where there are other aerospace hubs. And I just recently spoke to one former space worker. He worked in ground operations there for more than 20 years, now he's working at one of the local theme parks on the graveyard shift.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: It just - some of the lucky ones stay and are working on the - from the ground-up sort of ops for the new heavy-lift program that NASA's going to be doing, but a lot of them have left the area.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: New heavy-lift program, we mentioned that they're going to rely on essentially taxis provided by commercial companies to get up to the International Space Station. The heavy lift, that's for exploration to the asteroids and to the planets and beyond.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Yes, the planets and beyond: Mars, moons of Mars, way out there. It's - they're calling it the SLS, the Space Launch System. It's basically designed to be a very big booster to put a big piece of cargo really far out there, as we said; to Mars, the moons of mars, to go as far - to do something new, to go as far as we can. And that's sort of the vision for NASA itself, is to go places that we've never gone.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is also a question of focus and a question of marketing. In the 1960s, it seemed obvious why we needed a manned space program. Well, for one thing, the options were limited. Men needed to do a lot of the work in space. But nevertheless, there was also the competition with the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, yes, there - they Chinese were involved, yes the Europeans are involved, yes, the Russians of course are still involved. But is Florida, are the people here engaged in trying to make sure the rest of the country understands why we need to do something and what that something is and why we should focus on that and spend all this money?</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Oh yes, they are very engaged. Our lawmakers are. Our individuals are. I spoke to - back in July, the people who were going to be laid off in the final wave, so to speak, of that 9,000 people, and you should feel the pride of those - the pride of the project and what they worked on, what they've accomplished, how far they've gone and what we can learn.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: I mean, medical advances have been made in space. There's research that's done in space that can't be done anywhere else. It's surprising. There is often the question: why do we have the space program. And the answer is there are endless possibilities for technology developments, for research and development that can't be done anywhere else.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Nicole Creston, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED host and reporter here at member station WMFE in Orlando, where she does a lot of stories, as you might expect, on space. Space workers, where do you see your future? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. We'll be coming back to talk with Jeff Greason, who is the president and CEO of XCOR Aerospace, which is a privately held rocket company working with NASA.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But we also want to hear from you. Space workers, where do you see your future? Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan at member station WMFE in Orlando, about an hour from the Kennedy Space Center, talking about the future of U.S. space program. Clearly, budget cuts and other changes have had a lasting effect along the Space Coast here in Florida. Thousands of workers lost their jobs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But the end of the shuttle program, at least according to NASA, by no means the end of U.S. ambitions in space. Just a few weeks ago, twin NASA satellites entered into orbit around the moon. Later this year, SpaceX hopes to become the first private company to rendezvous a capsule with the International Space Station. NASA continues to work on rockets and crew capsules, among other technologies.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll talk with the head of one spacecraft company in a moment. But it's worth pointing out this note that came today from Space.com. During his State of the Union address, President Obama did not mention NASA or his vision for deep-space exploration of the asteroids and Mars. He did emphasize the need for innovation to remain competitive in the fields of sciences and technology.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Obama's speech comes a day after Republican presidential candidate debates took place in Florida, where candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich made statements. They called for a leaner NASA and more support for private space industry initiatives. So that gives you some indication of the national debate on this issue.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Space workers, where do you see your future? Our phone number is 800-989-8255, email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. And you just click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our guest is Nicole Creston, a host and reporter for member station WMFE. Joining us now from Mojave, California is Jeff Greason, president and CEO of XCOR Aerospace, a privately held rocket company working with NASA. He served on the Augustine Committee that reviewed NASA's Human Flight Program for the Obama administration. Good of you to be with us today.</s>JEFF GREASON: Nice to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let me ask you two questions: How important is the space industry going to be in the future? And how much of it is going to be on Florida's Space Coast?</s>JEFF GREASON: I think the space industry will continue to be a growing part of both the U.S. and the world economy in the future. I think how much of it is on Florida's coast is going to be tied to the policy choices that we make as a nation in what we do with the federal government's space program, with the NASA space program.</s>JEFF GREASON: A lot of people talk about that as if that was something that was going to happen to us, but the future of what NASA is a choice that we make, it's not a destiny, and there are multiple things we can do with the nation's space program, and some of them might have a very bright future for Florida.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But it is not necessarily so, in other words. If there's going to be lots of launches, they could come from a lot of different places.</s>JEFF GREASON: Well, I think the - that's certainly true that, you know, it could be good, it could be bad. It depends on the choices that we make. The Cape has a natural advantage as a launch site for expendable large boosters, and really the choice that hasn't been clearly brought into focus in national policy is if we wanted to select a policy that was good for Florida, we would select a policy that had a lot of launches.</s>JEFF GREASON: And, you know, the more launches there are, the more activity that there will tend to be at the Cape. That's not the only thing that can be done in Florida, but that's an area where Florida has a real advantage over other sites. And it's a challenge, if I may say, in the current posture of our program is that we are, as was discussed earlier, putting our energies towards the development of a larger booster that would fly less often. And that's not necessarily such a great thing for Florida.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is that one of the projects you're working on?</s>JEFF GREASON: No, we have - NASA is a very small part of our customer base. We're primarily focused on the private sector markets.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And those are smaller rockets designed to lift satellites into orbit?</s>JEFF GREASON: Designed to lift satellites or, in the case of our own company, we're focused on sub-orbital missions carrying people or payloads up to space and directly back down.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so those are projects that are, well, not as employee-rich as some of the NASA projects we've seen in the past.</s>JEFF GREASON: Well, that's quite true. You know, one of the - you know, the market is demanding more cost-effective, more reliable space transportation. One of the consequences of most cost-effective space transportation is it doesn't use as many people per launch. And that means if you want to employ a lot of people in the space sector, which I'm all in favor of, we need to do more launches.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get some callers in on the conversation, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And we'll start with Chuck, and Chuck's on the line with us from Lansing in Michigan.</s>CHUCK: Hi, I'm a longtime friend of Jeff's. We've known each other for maybe 15 years now. How are you doing, Jeff?</s>JEFF GREASON: I'm doing well, thank you.</s>CHUCK: The - I just want to follow up on Jeff's comment about commercial because the - one of the drivers that would really bring a lot of the all-the-way-to-orbit launch activity to the Space Coast would be providing a robust commercial environment to allow companies like Bigelow Aerospace to essentially implement their business plan.</s>CHUCK: They're talking about doing larger, purely commercial space facilities that could take the technologies and products and some of the spinouts from the International Space Station and make, you know, real commercial, you know, no-kidding, economy-on-the-ground type stuff that would require dozens of launches a year.</s>CHUCK: Last year at the FAA conference, Bigelow, Mr. Bigelow published his manifest, which talked about 20 or 25 launches per year. The entire manifest for the space station is, you know, four or six. So that would be the big driver for really bringing lots of activity back to the Space Coast to support commercial activity and not have to rely on NASA budgets to do it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nicole Creston, Bigelow is one of the companies you're familiar with?</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Yes, it's run by a billionaire from Las Vegas. He is a hotel chain owner. In orbit in fact now he has two test models, 12-feet-by-8-feet inflatable space stations, which is very interesting to think about.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: NASA sold him the licensing rights of that, and he does want to provide access to those space stations to universities, to smaller countries that can't get their own access into space or to space tourism.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: But it's interesting question, space tourism, because I hear some experts that say that that's a place to focus, and then some others say, well, you may run out of people that are wealthy enough that want to see the black of space.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jeff Greason, I have to say the first thing I hear when I hear inflatable space station is meteorite.</s>JEFF GREASON: You'll have to discuss the details with Bigelow, the company, but I hope they discuss that publicly because the inflatable station is made of many, many layers. It actually is substantially more resistant to meteoroids than a thin aluminum skin, as on the International Space Station today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh good.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But what about the prospect - and just this is as an industry observer, rather than for your company in particular, about the prospects for space tourism?</s>JEFF GREASON: Space tourism is, I think, going to be an important market. I think people like to talk about it as if it were the only market, and that's certainly not true. There's plenty of things to do in space that are on a purely commercial basis. But there's also nothing wrong with people paying their own way.</s>JEFF GREASON: You know, high net worth people being early adopters of products and services is how we have gotten mass-market acceptance of almost all the technologies that we take for granted today. I know a lot of these people who want to pay their own way. They're dreamers who have dreamed of going to space and space happening their whole lives, and they want to use some of the wealth that they've put together in their life to try to bring that day closer for everybody, and I think that's great.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chuck, thanks very much for the call.</s>CHUCK: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Maggie(ph): I got my bachelor's in astronautical engineering at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and I'm currently working on my master's at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. I'm 24. Being in the Air Force will allow me to be active in the DOD's space program, which is flourishing. GPS, weather, communications satellites will be constants in the field and will always provide jobs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I did minor in Russian because I dream of being an astronaut, so I really hope manned space flight becomes a reality again. Space needs to be a commercialized space that makes money or the industry will suffer. That's our job as engineers, to find space's economic worth.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Nicole, that's one of the things we did not mention, of course, the Defense Department - very active in space.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Oh absolutely. In fact, I went to an engineering job, aerospace job website, and saw a lot of listings for the Department of Defense. And I do want to point out that there are still a number of launches that are happening out at Kennedy Space Center. They are mostly at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, and they are communications satellites, Delta rockets, Atlas rockets with these types of things attached. So yes, very active.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Martin in Denver: I work for a large aerospace defense company here in Denver. We're undergoing a major shift in the space industry, which is analogous to where the aviation industry was in the 1920s and '30s. This period saw the rise of non-government, i.e., civilian aviation in the form of civil air transportation, private aircraft operators, which led to today's airline, commercial and general aviation industries. Leaving space transportation entirely to the government is like the Federal Aviation Administration operating the sole U.S. airline. I, for one, am excited about the future of American space operations.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Jeff Greason, is that a viable analogy, do you think?</s>JEFF GREASON: I absolutely think so. And, you know - but it's important not to overstate the case. Government continued to play a role in making that transition in aviation in the '20s and '30s. But the role that they played was not to set up a national airline. The role that they played was to set up elements such as airmail, where the government could use their limited resources to help stimulate markets that also had private customers. And that, I think, is the most productive area for our nation's civil space program to focus on. Where can NASA purchase services and products that will help NASA do its missions, but will also enlarge the pool of customers for critical capabilities that are also available to private markets?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Somebody to send mail to, perhaps. Let's see if we'd get another caller in. This is James, and James is with us from Denver.</s>JAMES: Yes. Hi. I just called in to make a comment. You know, I feel like a big problem that the U.S. space program has is that the public never really seems to have a firm grasp on what exactly we're doing. You know, we always flew up these missions with the shuttle and ran experiments that I feel like a lot of the public didn't really understand what they were about. And going forward, you know, we're talking about asteroids and other things. And I think what the program, the space program really needs is a clear-cut and bold mission that the public can get excited about, like they did with Apollo, you know, something like colonizing the moon or colonizing Mars, something that people can really understand and get enthusiastic about.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet, Jeff Greason, people have outlined projects like that. It was President Bush who said we need to go back to the moon. It was President Obama who said, I think, we need to go to Mars, and people don't seem to get excited.</s>JEFF GREASON: This is a subject I care a lot about. I think Apollo has really cast a long shadow on how we think about space. And even the caller, that I agree with, cast it in terms of a mission that we should care about. We don't need a mission that we should care about. We need a purpose that we should care about, and the missions are just tools in the job of serving that purpose.</s>JEFF GREASON: I think that space, and including manned spaceflight, can be opening a frontier that brings real economic and social benefits to us here on planet Earth. But to do that, we have to be much bolder than we have been in decades in what we do in space. We don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money, but we have to spend that money as if we cared what we were going to get for it, not to spend it for the act of spending it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nicole?</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Well, I've heard references of a gold rush in space, if you will. I've heard some experts say the first person to get rich in space will cause the excitement, and he may not be wrong. I've also heard it mentioned that if we learn how to mine the platinum - apparently, there's a lot of platinum on the moon, apparently there is something called helium-3, which, if we learn how to process it correctly, we could have a new energy source from it.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Those would be important and economic engines and important things that would - that could change the world. These may be the things that we need to focus on in our - at least in the marketing. Let the public know those are the things that we're working on. That's the kind of research and development that is being worked on by the space program.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: James, thanks very much for the call. We're talking with Nicole Creston, who you just heard here at WMFE. Jeff Greason is also with us, the president and CEO of XCOR Aerospace. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Ron: There's another great program waiting in the wings. The loss of 9,000 jobs to the closing of the space shuttle program would be a greater loss if all those great technological minds went to waste. Many of these people are engineers whose whole lives have been spent geared toward making things that are more fuel-efficient, more compact and lighter weight. Why not restructure that program for the development of new technology that would be great for the nation, one in which there's still time for the USA to become the last great leader in? The space shuttle program should be re-geared toward the development of electric vehicles to take the place of gasoline-powered transportation at the end of the carbon age.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jeff Greason, I'm not sure that's the bold goal that you are aiming for.</s>JEFF GREASON: Well, I believe that there are economic goods that we can achieve by doing the right things in space. If we can, I think we should. If we can't, we don't need the government to re-allocate the resources of all those bright minds into other projects where they will be more economically valued. That's the kind of thing that markets are good at. You know, whenever - you know, we do not anymore retain - as I sometimes say, we don't have the infrastructure to make 1960 Corvettes anymore, but we don't regard that as a national tragedy. Those engineers went on to make other things.</s>JEFF GREASON: The issue is not this job versus that job. The issue is if we want to continue to be a vibrant nation in our government space program, we have to figure out what we want to get out of it, and then we can ask the question of how should we structure it to get those things?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I have to ask you. Yes, there was one huge project, NASA, which produced huge budgets, huge numbers of jobs and, of course, huge rockets, as well. As we look toward the future - and, Jeff Greason, your company is just one of many - there's going to be a lot of different ideas out there, a lot of competing proposals. Who's going to decide which go forward? Is it going to be the government? Is it going to be the market?</s>JEFF GREASON: That's a great question. And I think the answer ought to be the market. But the government is and will be a participant in that market. And the greatest step forward we could take is for the government to select the services it wants to buy on the basis of cost and quality rather than on the basis of which contractor and which state is going to get the job.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate it. Jeff Greason is president and CEO of XCOR Aerospace, a privately held rocket company that works with NASA, among other clients. He joined us today from his office via Skype in Mojave, California. Appreciate your time.</s>JEFF GREASON: My pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also, our thanks to Nicole Creston, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED host and a reporter who covers space here at member station WMFE in Orlando. Thanks very much.</s>NICOLE CRESTON: Thank you, Neal.

California became the only state to implement greenhouse gas emission controls in January 2012, but the debate there over climate change continues. University of California history and science professor Naomi Oreskes says the time for bickering over whether or not climate change is real is over. Read Naomi Oreskes' Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, "The Verdict Is In On Climate Change"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: Disputes on climate change are often presented in the familiar paradigm of a court case with scientists as prosecutors, skeptics as the defense, and the rest of us the jury awaiting the ruling of a judge.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In an op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times, historian Naomi Oreskes objects. She argues that most of the skeptics are shills, scientists are, in fact, the jury, and that their verdict has long since been handed down. Naomi Oreskes is the co-author of "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth About Climate Change," and joins us now from a winter vacation in Snowmass, Colorado. And thanks very much for taking a break today to speak with us.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: Thank you, Neal. Can you hear me?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We can.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: Good.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I have to say that while the vast majority of scientists agree the Earth is warming as a result of human activity, a vast majority does not mean unanimity. It's not unanimous.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: No, of course not. And, you know, I'm a historian of science. Most of my work is focused on the question of how scientists do evaluate evidence and judge the data that they collect from the natural world. And, so of course, in any scientific community, there will always be people who have dissenting opinions, and that's fine. Nobody really has a problem with that. The problem is when it's misrepresented. The problem is when a normal give and take of scientific debate is misrepresented to make it seem different than it really is.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: So in the scientific community today - and not just today, but actually for the last 10 years at least if not longer - there has been a general consensus that climate change was underway. And we're talking about climate change caused by things that people do. Not the normal ups and downs of weather and natural variability, but a different new phenomenon caused by greenhouse gases and deforestation. There has been general agreement in the scientific community about this issue for quite some time now. The vast, vast majority of scientists who work on this issue would agree with that statement.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you draw, again, an analogy to a court case, you were serving as a juror recently and say that, you know, in a sense, we should not be open-minded. What did you mean by that?</s>NAOMI ORESKES: Well, right. And I was, of course, being a little deliberately provocative, but the point I was trying to make was drawing on an analogy with the jury. This was a great experience because we had a wonderful judge, and one of the things she said to us at the very beginning - and I wrote about this in the op-ed piece - she asked us at the very beginning during jury selection: If I sent you out right now and then asked you to come back - and this is before we turn any evidence and before the jury had even been impaneled - if I asked you, do you think these people, the defendants, are guilty, not guilty or you don't know enough to know. And the vast majority of people in the room raised their hands for we don't know enough to know. And the judge said: That's the wrong answer, that in this case, open-mindedness is not the correct answer because the law establishes a presumption of innocence.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: The law tells us that those defendants are innocent, presumed innocent until the prosecution has proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt. And it was a kind of eureka moment for me because I thought, oh, of course, the judge is completely correct here. We think of open-mindedness as a virtue. And in many walks of life it is a virtue, but there are some situations when the situation calls for something else. In the courtroom, it calls for us to assume that the defendants are innocent until the state makes its case against them.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: So then I thought about, well, what about in the case of science? Well, science is a little different. It's not exactly the same as a courtroom. Innocence and guilt don't really make much sense when we're talking about science in the natural world. So then the question becomes, well, who is making this judgment? And so the argument I was trying to point out is that, as ordinary citizens, many of us feel, well, we don't know what to think. You know, we've heard a lot of conflicting things about climate change so - and I've heard many people say to me, I'm open-minded about it.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: And so the argument I was trying to make was to say, well, in this case, being open-minded - although it might sound good at first and may sound good in principle - it actually doesn't make sense when you have now more than half a century of accumulated scientific data put together by thousands of different scientists all around the world, men and women, black and white, Republicans, Democrats, you know, all, you know, very diverse scientific community, over half a century of work. At this point, to say that you're still open-minded is to really be ignoring this huge body of scientific evidence that really points to a very, very strong conclusion.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Naomi Oreskes, professor of history and science, professor at the University of California, San Diego. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. If the evidence is so overwhelming, why is it that this argument seems to be losing traction?</s>NAOMI ORESKES: Right. Well, this is the subject of a book which I published last year with my co-author Erik Conway called "Merchants of Doubt." And in the book, we asked exactly that question. We said, well, if there's so much scientific evidence, why do so many of us have the impression of a raging scientific debate? And so we've spent five years researching this question. And, you know, it's funny for me because it's funny for me to even be having to have this conversation, because I first published on the scientific consensus on climate change back in 2003. So I've now been working on the consensus piece for almost a decade.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: But for the last five years, Erik Conway and I have been working on this question why so many of us think there's a raging debate. And what we showed in the book is that there have been systematic efforts organized by people outside the scientific community to undermine the scientific data and to convince all of us that the jury - scientific jury was still out in order to delay government, business and community action on taking steps to prevent further manmade climate change.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A conspiracy theory.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: No, it's not a conspiracy theory. It's a history. We're describing events that had happened. We're describing the things that people have done. There are organizations. There are networks. It's not a conspiracy in the sense that it's not taking place in smoke-filled rooms. In fact, one of the sort of remarkable things about our book was that we were able to show how much of this activity took place in open air, in plain sight. A lot of the research we did wasn't actually that difficult to do. Many of the documents we found were in the public record.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: So it's not a conspiracy in the sense of, you know, creepy, evil people in backrooms doing terrible things. No. It's actually out in the open, which in some ways makes it more shocking and in a way more alarming that the media haven't done more to talk about the events that have actually taken place in the last five years to convince the American people that there was a debate, you know, an argument that really flew in their face of a huge amount of evidence.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is a - your case is not bolstered when stories come out. This publication of emails by scientists in England who seem to be, though not fabricating data, suppressing publication of data that seem to fly in the face of their conclusions.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: Well, exactly. And, of course, this is where the media has played a huge role because that is exactly how the story was told in the media, you know, a year or so ago. But what we know now from many different investigations that have taken place, including the House of Lords in Britain, is that those emails were completely taken out of context, very much misrepresented. And what was the real give and take of scientific debate and also the real frustration that scientists feel at the misrepresentation of their work was taken massively out of context.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: And, you know, you mentioned that this took place in England. Earlier in your show, you mentioned that Meryl Streep has - had her 17th Oscar nomination for portraying Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. And I thought, you know, that's a great thing to remind people about because Margaret Thatcher was one of the first political leaders to understand the threat of the human-caused climate change.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: And she created the climate research university at East Anglia, where these emails were stolen from. Created that institute more than 30 years ago to ask and answer this exact question: How do we tell the difference between natural climate variability that takes place all the time - normal, natural climate change - versus what we could call abnormal or even synthetic climate change that has been caused by greenhouse gases and deforestation? That was the question that Mrs. Thatcher posed to the British scientific community more than 30 years ago. And that question has really been answered beyond a reasonable doubt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You also, speaking of smoke-filled rooms, draw an analogy to the so-called debate over tobacco's health.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: Well, exactly. And this was a major topic in our book. And that's where the true conspiracy, of course, comes in because the tobacco industry, the American tobacco industry was in fact found guilty by the U.S. Department of Justice, charged under the RICO statute with criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people. And one of the things we were able to show in the book is that some of the exact same people, not just the same tactics, but actually the same individuals who had worked in the tobacco industry and developed the strategy, for which they were convicted of criminal conspiracy by the U.S. Department of Justice, those same people have been involved in some of the attempts to undermine and challenge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Naomi Oreskes, thanks very much. We'll let you get back to your vacation.</s>NAOMI ORESKES: Thank you so much. And thanks to the Snowmass Ski Company for letting me use their phones to take this call and do this interview.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Naomi Oreskes, professor of history and science studies at the University of California in San Diego. Tomorrow, we're taking political junkie Ken Rudin on the road with us to Orlando where we'll talk about the Republican race in the Sunshine State, the president's State of the Union message and much more. Join us for that. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

Discover the secret life of ice—what makes it cloudy or clear, why cracks form on ponds. Science Friday visited Queens ice sculptor Shintaro Okamoto in his studio and spoke with ice researcher Erland Schulson, of Dartmouth University, to find out why ice is an interesting subject for artists and scientists.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: Time now for our Video Pick of the Week. Flora Lichtman, our multimedia editor is here. Hi, Flora.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Good video as always.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yeah. This one is about something that I encounter every day, and I think of it as little more than a beverage cooler or maybe a nuisance on my commute to work. I'm talking about ice. But it turns out that ice was way more interesting than I knew before (unintelligible)...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You got...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: It's much more than...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You got up close and personal with a bunch of ice...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yeah, I did. So we went to Shintaro Okamoto's ice sculpting studio in Queens, and he is an ice expert for sure. And we also spoke with an ice researcher, the head of Dartmouth's ice research lab. I didn't even know there was such a thing as an ice research lab. But this guy, Erland Schulson, actually founded it and learned about ice's slippery properties. I mean that figuratively too.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow talking with Flora Lichtman, who's discovering that ice an amazing...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: It's amazing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...an amazing, amazing substance.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: I heard from both of these ice experts who are experts in these sort of different ways, right? One is an artist...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: ...and the other is a scientist. But they both said the thing, that ice is full of these mysterious contradictions. For instance, ice can be cloudy, or it can be crystal clear. Ice can be as soft as a snowflake or as hard as concrete.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. And you went to his - their studio where they have these chainsaws buzzing...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Well...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: ...and cutting up the ice and making ice sculptures, right?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: When you're dealing with something as hard as concrete, you have to bring out some serious power tools. And so they said that, actually, 60 to 70 percent of the sculpting work is done with chainsaws, sort of brute work, says Shintaro Okamoto.</s>SHINTARO OKAMOTO: The process is quite, kind of, root, you know, with these power tools. And the finished product is so much about this kind of fragility and, you know, elegance, and it's kind of funny to see some of these ice sculptors who present themselves as just like these macho guys and they create hearts and swans, you know?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And what did they create for you over there?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: We saw a couple of things in action, some lions that were headed to the Ritz-Carlton, and then a dragon for Chinese New Year that was going to the Waldorf-Astoria. And it took a couple hours to do the sculpting. And once you start, obviously, you're not - you can't stop, because it's melting as they're sculpting.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you saw - we see the video there, and then we see the - some commentary about the physics of ice and how it forms.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yeah. One of the most interesting things I learned - did you know this, why ice is cloudy and some ice is clear?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hey, you noticed that.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: You see it all the time, but what - I found out the answer. It turns out that it's tiny air bubbles trapped in the ice that makes the difference between cloudy and clear ice. So cloudy ice has these little bubbles trapped and that scatters the light. So for Okamoto, there's ways to make ice - specialty ice with no bubbles. But you know, you learn about as they go.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. He's making 300-pound slabs (unintelligible).</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: It's not your average IQ.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But one thing on video - I saw a video (unintelligible) covering up the ice, is that he has to let the ice sort of sit for a while, right, the giant block of ice.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You just can't hack at it. It has to, like, cure or something.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Acclimate.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Acclimate.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yeah. I like the curing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It has to acclimate.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yeah. It can't be - because it's all - this is another sort of interesting material science thing. It comes out of the freezer and it's all one temperature, right?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: And it's really cold. And even on a day like we were there - it was in the 40s maybe in the studio, which is another thing - but you have to let the ice warm up. And if you cut into it too quickly, it will crack and burst, and that's because as it's warming up, the outer layer is actually warming up faster than the inside. And as it warms up, it expands, and so it creates this strain between the outer skin of the ice and the inner part. And this is apparently what causes cracks on ponds too. That's what Erland Schulson said.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. So you're learning - when you watch this video, it's up on our website at sciencefriday.com, and as you watch the ice sculpture going on, Flora has magically integrated some wonderful commentary about what the physics of ice and how it all works.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: I snuck in a tiny bit of science.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: There's a lot of it, yeah. Well, it's very - it's beautiful. The stuff that make is absolutely gorgeous. They do it quickly, right?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: It's really fun to watch them work. It's really fast. Yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And, you know, they're - and they had no goggles on first. The ice is flying all over the place.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: And chainsaws everywhere. I mean, you said dueling chainsaws in the promotion, and it's totally right. It was scary, like, all the time sort of wielding these power tools.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And so you got a lesson and watched the ice sculpture. At the same time you learned a little bit about how ice is formed, and how you make clear ice and all kinds of good stuff. Thank you, Flora.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Thanks, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's up there at our website sciencefriday.com. And you can download it on iTunes also, our videos there, and take it along with you on your iPod or iPad, and take along also all kinds of stuff on our website. That's about all the time we have for today.

BP released millions of gallons of dispersants to break up oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But what if dispersants could be sucked up again after doing their job? Chemist Julian Eastoe talks about an iron-containing soap he's created that can be recaptured using a magnet.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, BP poured nearly two million gallons of dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico. The goal, of course, is breaking up oil slicks, making them dissolve into ocean waters, sort of like how you squirt dish soap on a greasy frying pan to get the oil to wash away with the water.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: The problem is, after you dump all that soap into the Gulf, the soap stays there. My next guest has developed something that could be the solution: the soap that has iron in it so that you can suck up the soap with a magnet.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How do they do it? Could we really use something like this next time there's a big oil spill? Julian Eastoe is a professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol in the U.K. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Hello, Ira, from the United Kingdom.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thanks for joining - how did you get this idea? It sounds so simple yet so easy.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Well, to explain that, I'd like to propose an interactive experiment for you and your listeners. Would that be OK?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Absolutely.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Well, the experiment works best if you're in the kitchen. So go over to the fridge and take one of those picture fridge magnets, you know, with Niagara Falls, Las Vegas or Disneyland on it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: And now go over to the kitchen sink with the magnet. Next put the magnet against the bottle of dish soap. Right. What happens?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Nothing.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Absolutely nothing.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: That's because normal soap is not magnetic. Just as you said, you can't control where it goes. Gravity does that, just sucks it down the drain. Now, Ira, we've been making soaps and surfactants with unusual properties for some years. Have you ever thought of a soap you could turn on with the flick of a switch, a light-sensitive surfactant? We made one of those about five years ago.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: And next we thought why not try magnets. Would it be possible to make surfactants or soaps that respond to magnets? Well, if that's true, then you stand a chance to control where the soap does and where it doesn't go. Our motivation for this was just good old-fashioned scientific inquisitiveness.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you created this soap that is magnetic so that the soap dissolves the grease, keeps the grease with it, and then you can just magnetize it away with a magnet?</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Yeah, it sounds incredible, but it's true. I mean, I was witnessing the experiments in my laboratory at the University of Bristol this afternoon with graduate students. We were making emulsions with lube oil, our magnetic soap, and we were moving them around using magnets. The emulsions can be collected up. It's amazing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now, I've - I've got an experiment for you now. Tell me if this is possible. Let's say that you can put your - you can disperse your magnetic soap into a harbor. Can you magnetize the hulls of ships so that they sort of scoot around the harbor soaking up all the grease collecting on their hulls, and then you just clean them off when they get back to the harbor?</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Well, Ira, I hadn't thought about that. It sounds feasible to me, but I think we would have to do some tests in the laboratory. I'm not sure about if you can maintain magnetism in the hull of a ship.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: A-ha, but you think you can do this with an oil spill by collecting up all the grease later on?</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Well, in principle that's right. That's what we demonstrated in the laboratory. The - we started with chemicals that are relatives of common or garden(ph) soaps. We kept the organic part of the molecule, the one which dissolves oily substances, but we chemically modified the ionic part, which makes the compound water soluble.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: And it's quite simple, really. We replace the normal ions with magnetic ions. Those ions contain the element iron.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And voila, because the soap molecule, as you say, is fascinating to begin with. One end likes to stick in the grease, one end likes to stick in the water, and that's why it works so well. And you basically took the water end and put a piece of iron in there.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Yeah, we've done this with iron. That's in the paper, which has been published recently, but we've even used other magnetic units. I can't disclose them right now because they're under a secrecy agreement, but we are now starting to optimize the chemistry, and that is now really exciting.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: I think what this research shows is the first stage in any scientific breakthrough, the essential proof of principle, and once the proof of principle has been established and has been communicated to the scientific community, that's when it gets really interesting.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: That's when the collective consciousness, those thousands and thousands of scientific minds get to work coming up with ideas that you would never have thought of.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, it's - so once you show that this can happen, people will say, you know, this is what I could do with it. Sort of like...</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Now, it was suggested to me, Ira, by somebody from the British equivalent of the Audubon Society - that's the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the United Kingdom - that this could potentially help in the cleanup of those poor seabirds when they get contaminated by oil slicks.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: They get washed down with this magnetic soap.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Yeah, he suggested that maybe with the extra pull from the magnet you would be able to clean off the poor birds more effectively than just using the traditional, you know, dispersants. So I sent a grad student down to the store to get some lube oil and a pillow. We've taken it apart and we're testing that idea right now with down from the pillows that we bought in the store.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm sure the grad students are doing it, right?</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Sure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You know, once these things happen, you know, like you never know where they're going to end up. I mean, the laser beam was invented to cut steel and razor blades back in the early '60s, but look what it's used for now. You never know where your idea might wind up, where it will end.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: No, that's the really exciting thing about being a scientist, is that you uncover facts and figures that you just do not know where that will lead for the human race. Think about the liquid crystals, which were developed in the U.K. in the 1970s.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: When they developed liquid crystals, they had no idea that it would be an integral part of mobile phones and smartphones, for example, but they certainly don't work without liquid crystals to allow you to interface with the electronics through the screen. And this is the same it could be here with this application, the applications that could come from this magnetic soap.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now, let me ask you the $64 question, as we say here in the States.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And it is a $64 question, I guess. Is it cheap enough? You know, can you make...</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Well, in fact, it's interesting that what we started with, a chemical, sort of just the brothers and sisters of those that you would find in household products, we tried to keep it simple here. And the cost of our magnetic soap is already reasonable. It's reasonable enough that it could actually be scaled up.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: Think that the elements that are contained in this soap are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, chlorine and iron, all very, very common elements. And therefore the soap that we've made is cheap, commercially viable.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, I wish you the best of luck, and we'll watch to see where your soap shows up, so to speak.</s>JULIAN EASTOE: OK, thank you very much.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thanks for taking time to be with us today. Julian...</s>JULIAN EASTOE: OK, it's been a great pleasure, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're quite welcome. Julian Eastoe is a professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol in the U.K.

President Trump walked away from his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without a nuclear deal. What does this mean for future negotiations?

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: President Trump is coming home empty-handed from his nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The two leaders failed to reach an agreement to reign in Pyongyang's nuclear program. The president says Kim was demanding too much relief from economic sanctions while offering too little in the way of disarmament. The summit's abrupt end puts a spotlight on the president's negotiating tactics, as NPR's Scott Horsley reports.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: President Trump has always tried to present himself as a master negotiator. But he was unable to close a deal with Kim Jong Un today. As their meeting ended in Vietnam, Trump told reporters sometimes to get a good bargain, you have to be willing to walk away.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: There was a potential we could have signed something. I could have a hundred percent signed something today. We actually had papers ready to be signed. But it just wasn't appropriate. I want to do it right. I'd much rather do it right than do it fast.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Trump and his advisers painted this not as a breakdown in negotiations but rather a pause to regroup. Foreign policy analyst Dan Drezner of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy says that's preferable to the kind of superficial nuclear deal some people worried Trump might strike, one with big concessions by the U.S. and limited movement by North Korea.</s>DAN DREZNER: This is a good outcome in the sense that Donald Trump did not get completely swindled. He went to the poker table, and he left the poker table with some of his chips.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Robert Gallucci, who was chief negotiator with North Korea in the 1990s, was also relieved that Trump didn't give away the store. He notes the advance team that tried to lay the groundwork for the Trump-Kim meeting was given very little time to iron out differences before the leaders arrived, a high-pressure challenge Gallucci likens to the two-minute drill in football.</s>ROBERT GALLUCCI: We need something that unfortunately looks like processes we've had in the past. That doesn't mean it has to take four years. But it, you know, may well take more than four weeks.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Ordinarily presidents hold off calling for a summit until much of this diplomatic spadework is already done. But Trump, who boasts of enormous confidence in his own ability to forge agreements, has twice now announced meetings with Kim Jong Un with little or no preparation. Michael Fuchs, who helped oversee Asia policy in the Obama State Department, calls that a mistake.</s>MICHAEL FUCHS: The cart before the horse strategy has not worked here.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Fuchs, who's now at the Center for American Progress, says Trump too often prizes summit pageantry over substance, what he calls a reality TV approach to diplomacy collided with actual reality in Vietnam.</s>MICHAEL FUCHS: The president too often acts like he just wants a win, so I hope the president will learn this lesson not just on North Korea but when it comes to China as well.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Trump is already looking towards another summit this coming month with Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk about trade issues. The aborted North Korea summit could make Trump more cautious about those negotiations, but analysts worry it could also leave the president all the more desperate to make a deal. Trump often complains many of these international challenges festered for years before he came into office.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I get a kick out of so many people from past administrations telling me how to negotiate when they were there in some cases for eight years. They did nothing.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: But the president may finally be discovering that international diplomacy, like health care, is more complicated than he imagined. Drezner says perhaps Trump's so far unsuccessful effort to strike a deal with North Korea will inspire some humility.</s>DAN DREZNER: Sometimes policy failures happen not because your predecessors were incompetent or failed to think outside the box. Sometimes it's that the box is a really difficult one to get out of.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Especially when that box is armed with nuclear weapons. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Francisco Santos, Colombia's ambassador to the United States, about the political crisis in Venezuela.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Colombia and Venezuela share more than a thousand miles of border, and more than a million Venezuelans have recently poured across that border. So Venezuela's economic and political chaos are sending shockwaves across Colombia. Francisco Santos is Colombia's ambassador to the United States, and he joins us now in the studio to discuss the next steps in Venezuela. Welcome.</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: Ari, it's a pleasure being here.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Just to remind listeners, two men claim to lead Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro is holding onto power. He has the support of Russia and China, among other countries. And many Western countries, including the U.S. and Colombia, support opposition leader Juan Guaido. They've been calling for Maduro to step down, and he refuses.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: So how do you see the stalemate ending?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: Let me add something. It's not only Colombia. You have 600,000 Venezuelans in Peru. You have 250,000 Venezuelans in Ecuador. You had 180,000 in Chile, and you have around 100,000 in Argentina.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: And so the population is pouring out of the country.</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: It's a continental crisis. It's something that the Western Hemisphere has not had in its history. So it's a very, very big challenge that can destabilize the whole continent.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: And how do you reverse this?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: I think, obviously, Maduro must step down. Obviously, what we need is free and fair democratic votes in Venezuela, which is something that was taken away from the Venezuelans many, many years ago. So we're working, all of the countries, to get important members of the military to back Guaido, and I think that's the tipping point.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was in your country, Colombia, this week, where he insisted that all options remain on the table. That includes military options. As ambassador, what have you told the U.S. about that possibility?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: We have never discussed anything related to military action.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: At all? You haven't even warned them against it?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: No, no. We haven't discussed that. We've worked very clearly in terms of diplomatic pressure, economic pressure. The economic sanctions are only starting to hurt. Probably, there's two or three more weeks of cash that they have, and then they're literally going to run out of cash. So that's another step.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Are you saying you expect this to end in two or three weeks?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: No, no, no - that the crisis will deepen and that even the most staunch supporters of Maduro will start looking the other way. And we hope that this will end well, but it can go bad very quickly. For the first time, I heard in the border people saying, we want weapons. And they can get weapons.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Who at the border is asking for weapons? What do you mean there?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: The young kids who are throwing rocks at the other side, trying to get the...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Do you mean kids on the Colombia side throwing rocks at the Venezuelan military?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: Yeah. The Venezuelan kids.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Venezuelan...</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: And saying, listen, we're not going to let them kill us without being able to protect ourselves. That's the first time I've heard that. And I was worried sick because it's very easy to get weapons. We don't want to follow that path. That path is a civil war. And a civil war would be a disaster for the U.S., for Canada, for all the country.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Maduro claims that this is a U.S.-backed coup effort, that Juan Guaido is a puppet of the Americans. Does the Trump administration risk playing into that narrative with its actions?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: Well, I think he, Maduro, wants that to be the discourse. But if you look, almost all of the countries in Latin America are for a Maduro exit. This, the Grupo de Lima, did not have the U.S.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The Grupo de Lima is an association of Latin American countries that came out with a statement saying it's time for Maduro to leave.</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: Exactly. And the U.S. wasn't there. It's not present. This is something that Colombia has led. You have Argentina. You have Brazil. You have Chile. You have Panama, Costa Rica. So this is something that the continent has led and has led diplomatically. And, look, for the first time in Latin American history, Latin American countries are sanctioning another country from Latin America without the U.S. being involved. That shows a maturity from the Latin American diplomacy that we didn't have five, 10, 15, 20 years ago.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The humanitarian crisis is one of the worst in Latin American history, and more Venezuelans have gone to Colombia than any other country. Does Colombia have what it needs to deal with the need there?</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: No. We are doing our best effort. But I'll give you - more than 180,000 attendances in ICU are Venezuelans in the last year. Hundred and eighty-thousand.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: People, Venezuelans in the ICU in Colombia, in Colombia...</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: Because of malnutrition. Kids come. Women, pregnant, ready to lose the baby because of malnourishment. We have seen chicken pox, we have seen polio - sicknesses that, in Colombia, were eradicated decades ago are back. So our health system is very stressed. Our classrooms are up to the limit. If we get one more million - that can happen very quickly - they will start affecting employment in Colombia for Colombians. And then you can have xenophobia, and you have something like that. And that's a flame that, you light it, and you don't know how to put it down.</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: So, yes, we're worried. The U.S. is helping, definitely. Very much so. We need more help to treat this huge migration crisis.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Ambassador Santos, thank you so much.</s>FRANCISCO SANTOS: Thank you.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Francisco Santos is Colombia's ambassador to the United States. And elsewhere on the show, we hear from Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela.

Tyler Perry is retiring his Madea wig — the last of this major money-making movie franchise is hitting theaters this weekend with A Madea Family Funeral.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: In 2005, Tyler Perry debuted a character whose movies have gone on to make more than $500 million.</s>MABLEAN EPHRIAM: (As Judge Ephriam) Madea.</s>TYLER PERRY: (As Madea) How you doing, Judge Mablean? It's good to see - oh, your is pretty, girl. Look at you. You're looking good. How you been?</s>MABLEAN EPHRIAM: (As Judge Ephriam) You're still at it.</s>TYLER PERRY: (As Madea) This ain't even my fault. What had happened was...</s>MABLEAN EPHRIAM: (As Judge Ephriam) Save it.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: That's a clip from "Diary Of A Mad Black Woman," the first of 11 Madea movies. The eleventh drops this weekend, and Tyler Perry, who plays Madea in drag, says this will be the last one in the franchise. It's called "A Madea Family Funeral." Well, to say goodbye and talk about why this character has become such a phenomenon, Lisa France joins us now. She's a senior entertainment writer for CNN Digital. Hi there.</s>LISA FRANCE: Hey, Ari. How's it going?</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Good. So I was just browsing Rotten Tomatoes, and "Diary Of A Mad Black Woman" has a 16 percent rating. The most recent Madea film, "Boo 2! A Madea Halloween," has a 5 percent rating, but the franchise has been a huge financial success. How do you explain all of that?</s>LISA FRANCE: Because people love to hate Madea movies.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: (Laughter) OK.</s>LISA FRANCE: It's kind of like a black family reunion. Like, you know someone's going to embarrass you, but you also know you're going to have a great time. So I think it's one of those things where people just don't want to admit how much they enjoy Madea films. And even if they really don't like them, they still like to hate-watch them. They make a lot of money. You don't want to be left out of the conversation when somebody is talking about the latest Madea film.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: What is it about the character that inspires both the love and the hate?</s>LISA FRANCE: Well, you know, Spike Lee has gone on record as saying that the films are kind of like coonery and buffoonery, as he said, that he feels like it's very stereotypical to have this angry black woman. But for many people, it also reminds you of your grandma or your auntie, you know, those people who say whatever. They use their age to their advantage to be able to, you know, curse you out or let you have it. And it's just a very divisive character because on some levels, it's very historical, but on others, it feels very stereotypical.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: These films all have certain themes in common. There's often kind of a family narrative, sometimes a moralistic or Christian streak. Sometimes Madea does kind of - almost, like, public service announcements. This clip is from "Madea's Family Reunion."</s>TYLER PERRY: (As Madea) When you get tired of a man hitting on you, honey, ain't nothing you can do but cook breakfast for him. Bring him into the kitchen, and get you big old pot of hot grits. And when it starts to boil like lava after he had got good and comfortable, you say good morning. Throw it right on him.</s>LISA FRANCE: I mean, right there you have the dichotomy that is Madea - on one hand, incredibly loving, looking out for someone who's being abused but, on the other hand, also violent (laughter). So...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Abuse is a frequent topic in a lot of these movies, which seems like a heavy subject to tackle in slapstick humor. What do you think is the value of returning to it again and again in film after film?</s>LISA FRANCE: I think because it's one way for us to have the discussion and, in a way, try to keep it light. You know, people want to see the reality of life and African-American life and what happens in families, but they also want some levity to it. So I think by using humor, Tyler Perry has been able to open people's eyes and allow people to have the conversation which would otherwise be extremely uncomfortable to have.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: All right, well, we're talking about this because Tyler Perry says this weekend's movie, "A Madea Family Funeral," will be the last one in the franchise. Do you believe him?</s>LISA FRANCE: I don't.</s>LISA FRANCE: The reason is while he says that he's tired of portraying Madea and he has a new deal with a new studio; he's using that as an opportunity to kind of leave Madea behind, these movies make so much money. And I just feel like it's going to be a Michael Jordan situation. Michael Jordan said that he was going to retire, and that was it. And then Michael Jordan turned right around and came back. So I think there's going to be a sense that at some point, Madea is going to have to come back.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: OK, so I just want to be clear here. It seems like you're saying Tyler Perry as Madea is the Michael Jordan of film. Do I understand you correctly here?</s>LISA FRANCE: (Laughter) Are you going to quote me on that, Ari, really?</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: I think you're on the record with that. I think we've got that on tape. America is going to hear you saying that.</s>LISA FRANCE: I think I'm going to go ahead and stand by that because when he comes back to play again, you'll say Lisa France said it.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Lisa France, senior entertainment writer with CNN Digital, thanks a lot.</s>LISA FRANCE: Thank you so much, Ari.

Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died Sunday at the age of 85. The legendary coach's reputation was deeply tarnished after sex abuse charges were filed against a former assistant coach. Writers and fans continue to debate how Paterno should be remembered. Buzz Bissinger: "Joe Paterno's Death Shouldn't Turn Him into Sandusky Case's Martyr" Howard Bryant: "Joe Paterno: Hard lessons, Bitter Truths" LZ Granderson: "Mourning Joe Paterno, A Flawed Hero" Jim Litke: "'After 61 Years, He Deserved Better'" Stewart Mandel: "Once a Living Legend, Joe Paterno Dies Amid Modern-Day Tragedy"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died from lung cancer yesterday, at the age of 85. The Hall of Famer won more games than anyone in major college football history, and became an icon in State College, Pennsylvania, for his emphasis on academics and integrity as much as on winning; and for the donation of a library and funds for the study of the classics. That legacy, though, was deeply tarnished after allegations of sex abuse against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, and after Paterno's abrupt dismissal after 61 years. Paterno himself said: I should have done more.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How should we remember Joe Paterno? Give us a call: 800-989-8255; email us: talk@npr.org. We'll also read excerpts from several op-eds. We'll begin with this, from Buzz Bissinger on the Daily Beast, where he said: He should not be remembered for - he should be remembered for what he did do: his success as a football coach on the field in which he won 409 games, the most in history; his far more impressive record off the field, in which, according to a recent study, 80 percent of his players graduated within six years; his multimillion-dollar donation to the Penn State library system; his undying love for the school.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But he must be remembered for what he did not do - which wasn't losing to Ohio State or Michigan or Wisconsin, but the willful inaction that by all accounts, helped to aid and abet an alleged sexual predator named Jerry Sandusky. It is how I will remember him most. Maybe it is because the scandal unfolded so soon before his death, or maybe because it was such a failure of responsibility.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go to a caller. And Glen(ph) is on the line, with us from Panama City in Florida.</s>GLEN: Yes. Thank you. You know, I feel sorry for the people in Pennsylvania because, you know, most of these people, obviously, they don't deserve that tarnish. But sports is all about sportsmanship. You've got to do the right thing, and he did not do the right thing. If he saw a young man being raped back in 2002 and did no more than he did about it - he didn't call the police - they should take that statue and melt it into ingots, and sell it to benefit people that are suffering from those types of abuses. They should take his name off the library too. Get rid of all of it; give it back to his family.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I understand your anger. He, though, did not witness the alleged rape. He was told about it by someone else - who soft-pedaled it, as I understand it. Nevertheless, Paterno himself admitted, I should have done more.</s>GLEN: Yeah. And he didn't, so he doesn't deserve a statue. And I would - if I were a Penn State alumni or student, I would be furious that his statue is on that university; doesn't deserve to be there. Think about the victims, folks. Thank you. Bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks for the call, Glen. Here's an email from Lorna(ph) in Palisade, Colorado: As undergraduates, we used to pass Joe Paterno on the sidewalk outside East Halls, the largest housing development in the free world, as he walked to the stadium for practice. We were always aware that he put education of his players above football. For that reason, he was and will remain our hero.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's go next to - this is Rick(ph), and Rick's with us from Ann Arbor.</s>RICK: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead.</s>RICK: I think Coach Paterno is unduly being criticized because - as you said early - he didn't perform the rape; he didn't witness the rape. He reported to people who had the authority to investigate, and he returned to his 16-hour-a-day job. And so he's been - I think he's being vilified. And as I made a point to a friend earlier - is that when I was 13 years old, I was the manager of our high school track team. And during a hazing incident, it got a little creepy.</s>RICK: I've never blamed the coach. I blame the guy who performed the - who decided he wanted to get grabby on me. And that was more - I don't see why Paterno being a third or fourth party should be vilified for this in the way that the previous caller spoke against him so - he didn't do it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He did not do it. That's - and was not being investigated for any criminal wrongdoing - at least, that's our understanding.</s>RICK: Right. His crime was that he didn't follow up as actively as he should have, and that's his crime. But his crime pales - far pales in comparison to what anybody else ever did so...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, a moral failure, then.</s>RICK: I'm sorry?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A moral failure?</s>RICK: I don't know. I think moral - somebody made the point to me one time was if that was the mother of a child, you know that she would have followed up. And somebody pointed out that you have all these big football coaches with all their bravery on the football field, but they couldn't stand up to a guy who is abusing kids. Now, is that Paterno, or is the assistant coach who reported it, or is anybody else who did the investigating? Is Paterno the one? He is the most visible person. He is the deepest pockets, maybe, for people to go after.</s>RICK: But if it was me, I'd ask the victims.Was Paterno at fault, or was anybody else at fault? Do you - do they hold Paterno at fault? And for everybody else to weigh in on their opinion, I think it's just an opinion that has a little value compared to what the victims would actually - who they would actually blame.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rick, thanks very much for the call.</s>RICK: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This, from a piece by Jim Litke in the Associated Press. Joe Paterno had barely hung up on the phone when his wife of 50 years picked it up and redialed the number scrawled on the slip of paper. After 61 years, Sue Paterno said to the man who just fired her husband, he deserved better.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll skip down a few paragraphs - yes, he did, Jim Litke continues. And there may be no more fitting postscript for the life and career of a football coach, husband and father who became not just the face but the unyielding, cantankerous soul of a school that over the course of his tenure, was transformed from a cow college into a top-shelf, public research university.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, all those people who rushed to judgment about Paterno's role in the Sandusky case will have to find their way out from under the sordid scandal without the longtime coach. Paterno, 85, died yesterday of lung cancer. Those who knew him well believe it was something more akin to a broken heart. His legacy will be forever clouded, in large part because the chance to prove his remorse in the final chapter of his public life was taken by the trustees, and is now gone forever.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: For the lion's share of his 85 years, though, Paterno piled one good deed on top of another that had nothing to do with football; things that time can't erase - like the library that sits several blocks from the football stadium and was built, in large part, with his donations back to the school. On balance, all that good should have been enough to earn him one, final opportunity to erase the stain that he called one of the great tragedies of his life. He deserved better.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Michael, and Mike's on the line from Portland.</s>MICHAEL: Hi, there. Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to utilize him as an example of somebody who may have done a lot of good in his life, someone who may have accomplished a lot, can still make an extreme error in judgment that could have potentially caused a tremendous amount of harm.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So a teachable moment.</s>MICHAEL: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Michael, thanks very much.</s>MICHAEL: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is from a piece on si.com by Stewart Mandel, remembering Joe Paterno: Though he wouldn't say so openly, Paterno had long feared suffering the same fate as Bear Bryant, the revered Alabama coach who died of a heart attack four weeks after coaching his last game. Eerily, Thursday's the 30th anniversary of Bryant's death. Paterno couldn't imagine life without football. When he was finally confronted with that dreaded reality, it was not of his own volition.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So an 85-year-old man found himself grappling with his unexpected professional demise while also fighting something as unmerciful as lung cancer. Whether you rooted for him or hated him, admired him or detested him, you can surely see the sadness and the self-wrought tragedy of Paterno's final days. One of the perks of becoming an idol is achieving historic immortality, but Paterno was never more human than during the final 11 weeks of his life.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's go next to Paul, Paul with us from Black Mountain in North Carolina.</s>PAUL: Hi, Neal. So you did a good segue because what I - my comment is, basically, this is a tragedy. And the thing about a tragedy, and a tragic figure, is that they're caught up in forces that are far bigger and far beyond their control. And the question about this tragedy is: What is the tragedy of it? And I would like to say that in my opinion, this is an incident that shows that there's something amiss in how we finance, and how we support, higher education in this country - when football and the reputation of a football team, etc., becomes something that could cause all of these lapses of judgment.</s>PAUL: And so it's not really about Joe Paterno. It's about our values being kind of misplaced. And I'm not saying - I mean, I basically think that this could be mitigated a lot if we had a better way of financing public higher education. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks for the call, Paul. This along the same lines from a piece on espn.com by Howard Bryant, who, of course, also appears Saturday morning sometimes with Scott Simon. (Reading) Despite the urge, Paterno's death should not be used as an opportunity to massage and soften the events that led to his downfall, for it's possible to mourn his passing without rewriting the truths that are known. The truth that his passing should also mark the end of college sports coaching dynasty.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: For all the victories and championships, the recruiting coups and runaway revenues, it cannot be understated that his death stands enshrouded in bittersweet contradictions because of the dynasty he was allowed to build. Paterno had too much power, with not nearly enough oversight. He was bigger than the school, and the school towered to - cowered to him. Paterno gave millions back to Penn State, and as his power grew and grew unchecked over four decades, the university lost the ability to control whether he was benevolent or a tyrant.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It was not a power particularly special to Paterno, but to his industry. The entire culture of the coach deserves deconstruction and revision, for the same can be said, in varying degrees, of Bryant and Knight, Bowden and Calhoun, Krzyzewski and Boeheim. Let's go next to - this is John, and John's with us from Aurora in New York.</s>JOHN: How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good. Thanks.</s>JOHN: Great. You know, I listened and - or rather, I read the report about what Paterno said to the reporter, and he said something very interesting. And he said he didn't want to bias the investigation. Now, if you think about how much power that Paterno had and how much there is in our society the abuse of power, at that point in time, if he had followed up, it might have been considered a witch hunt. Or if he, you know, came down - his superiors or the people under him, you know, if he leaned one way or another, he could have been seeing trying to bias the outcome.</s>JOHN: He did, I think, exactly what a position - a man in his position had to do. He reported it to the people who had jurisdiction over the situation, and then he let it go and let the chips where they - you know, they had to fall where they had to fall without him coming on either side of it, because he realized all the things that the reporter just wrote, that he was, in many ways, you know, Penn State.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet some might say...</s>JOHN: Go ahead.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...well, some have said, in fact, that by simply reporting it up to chain of command, he was sending a signal, too, to let's not pay too much attention to this because Joe Paterno, the most powerful man in Happy Valley, did not want to pursue this.</s>JOHN: But he didn't know at the time whether it was accurate or not. If he had - believe me, based on everything, you know, the best way that you can indicate anything about a person is their past behavior. If Joe Paterno had, you know, I believe, felt that there was this horrible person on his campus, why wouldn't he have just fired him?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, he was no longer on the staff at the time. So...</s>JOHN: No, but I mean, yeah, you know, you're banned from campus. If he had that much power, believe me, Joe Paterno could have snapped his fingers and said, out of here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes, he could have. I'm sure he could have.</s>JOHN: No - there's no doubt about that. Now, why would a guy with his background, with his faith, with all these, you know, things dismiss this? There's no past history of that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet he seemed to be remorseful that he did not do enough, that this was not investigated, that the victims were...</s>JOHN: But that's 20-20.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I agree, 20-20.</s>JOHN: That's 20-20. I mean, obviously, the guy came into his office. He said some things. He didn't go in slamming his fist on the desk and say, coach, this is what I'd saw. What are we going to do? He came in and he said, look, I saw this guy in the shower with somebody else. It appeared that he didn't know - he didn't make a definitive statement.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But neither you and or I were at that meeting. But he could have said: What exactly did you see? This is a very serious allegation, a former coach in the shower.</s>JOHN: Now, that's going to be an interesting part of the court case. But you have to, you know, 60 years of being an outstanding guy doesn't fade at a kitchen table at 10 o'clock at, you know, at night.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. John, thanks very much for the call. We're talking about the legacy of Joe Paterno. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. This email from John in Eugene, Oregon: Joe Paterno cared more about winning than anything, including the lives of vulnerable children who looked up to him. He knew Mr. Sandusky should not be allowed to be involved with children or young people, but he allowed the contact and ignored the consequences to pump up the wins column and his ego. He should forever be referred to as child molestation-enabling Coach Joe Paterno. They should help prompt people who were unsure of a coach's or other trusted adults' intentions to look at the situation with open eyes. Paterno's actions sully the great Vince Lombardi line: Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing. Let's see if we can go next to - this is Brian, Brian with us from Ocala, in Florida.</s>BRIAN: Hello, yeah. I believe that - I love your show. I enjoy listening to you. I listen to you every day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>BRIAN: I love the fact that - well, you know, the man did what he was supposed to do. He reported the incident. Once you put it in someone else's hand, it's not for him to keep the hovering over - the guy who worked up under him that did this. But at the same given time, I believe he looked at the situation and said, you know what? Even when it came out, I've done what I'm supposed to do. Why make a big fuss? He had a good career, you know, he lived a long time. He enjoyed his life, you know, and can't nobody break his record. No one has broken his record yet as a football coach.</s>BRIAN: So, yeah, when you're at there, it is about winning. But at the end of the day, I still believe he did what he was supposed to do. You can't force someone to do what they're supposed to do. It just looked bad on him because he was the head coach. But I believe the man walked away in dignity with it, and didn't walk away with his head hung down. And he said: You know what? I enjoyed a life. I know the students love me, he said, from his doorstep. I love the students, too. Why make a big issue of it? No doubt, he probably knew that his days was getting short. So why waste the rest of your time arguing over issues that you really have no control about it, that's going to even make it worse for you in the time that you got left?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Brian, thank you very much.</s>BRIAN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll finish with this comment on CNN from LZ Granderson, a senior writer and columnist for ESPN the Magazine and espn.com, this an excerpt from this piece. (Reading) If you've ever held a crying child in your arms, it's hard to see Paterno as a victim of the media. But if you've ever made a mistake, if you've ever mishandled a difficult situation, if you've ever done something you've regretted, then it should be hard characterize JoePa - a man that has done so much good outside of football - as a pariah.</s>And therein lies the rub: What do you when a wonderful man who's made a terrible mistake dies? How do you properly honor an admirable life without whitewashing the egregious shortcomings that ruined the lives of others? I see the Penn State students paying tribute to Paterno in front of his statue on campus and wonder how many would still do so if they had young children of their own to protect. How many would do so if they were one of Sandusky's alleged victims? I'm not directly tied to the scandal at Happy Valley, so I wasn't among those who was wronged, and thus it's not really my place to judge or forgive. But who among us can forget?</s>And therein lies the rub: Joe Paterno is scheduled to be buried in a funeral in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.

Two projects aim to harness renewable energy using cutting-edge technology and engineering. AltaRock's Susan Petty discusses plans to turn hot rocks at a dormant volcano into a source of power. University of Maine's Habib Dagher talks about the potential of deepwater floating wind turbines.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're listening to Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We here at Science Friday are constantly on the lookout for cool, innovative, renewable energy ideas. And when we came across these next two, we knew - I just knew I had to share them with you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Our first one, we go to a dormant volcano in Oregon. It's the site of a renewable energy project that involves hot rocks, millions of gallons of cold water and cutting edge geothermal technology. Susan Petty is the president and chief technology officer for AltaRock Energy, one of the collaborators on this project. She joins us from Seattle.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Welcome to Science Friday.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Hi, Ira. Good to get to talk to you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hope you're weathering the storm out there.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Well, I had to stay home today, because we have 10 inches of snow out here and the road hasn't been plowed yet. But...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, what better way than to share your phone call with us then today?</s>SUSAN PETTY: Absolutely. And we can talk about heat, which is a good thing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, let's talk - so how do - how are you going to use this volcano? Tell us about this. Dormant volcano in Oregon. You're going to use it to generate power.</s>SUSAN PETTY: OK. Well, we were very fortunate. AltaRock Energy is a company that's been focused on advance technology for using geothermal energy since 2007. And we found that the - some folks, Davenport Energy, our partners, had drilled two wells at Newberry Volcano, looking for conventional geothermal resources. And they didn't find it.</s>SUSAN PETTY: What they found, though, was a lot of heat really close to the surface. And so we came to them and said, Look, we've developed this advanced technology that should let us get this heat out, even though you don't have the normal cracks and hot water that would be in place for a conventional geothermal resource.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So instead of - so you made lemonade out of lemons when you got there and decided to try something new.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Something new. And it really is new. I mean, there have been other projects where people have drilled down, gotten into hot rock and made fractures and then circulated cold water down one well and produced it hot out of another well. There're two projects like that - one in Germany and one in France. And they're generating electricity now.</s>SUSAN PETTY: The problem is that it's only economic to do this in some very special places or if you have the kinds of price incentives that they have in Europe to get people to do that.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So what you're aiming to do is to do what? You have the rocks – have the hot rocks there. You will send cold water down, heat it up, bring it back up to the surface?</s>SUSAN PETTY: That's right. And what we are going to do at this particular experiment is we already have a well. That's great. And it's very hot. So what we'll do is we'll put this cold water down. And the combination of the cold and a little bit of extra pressure allows the rock to start to fracture. And then we can extend those fractures out from that first place.</s>SUSAN PETTY: And as they extend out, they will bifurcate and new little fractures will open up. That makes little snapping and popping sounds, which we can use to map where the fractures are going. And we do that from the surface using sensitive seismic instruments.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Then when we finish making one set of fractures, the new thing is that we then pump a suspension of little plastic bits into the crack we've made. That stops that crack going, allows us to let the pressure come up a little bit more in the well. And then the cold water can move out and down, and extend out another set of fractures in the well.</s>SUSAN PETTY: And we can then put the plastic bits in that set of fractures. We can do that again and again until we're happy with what we got. And then when we stop pumping in cold water - this plastic is a biodegradable type of plastic that will then as it heats up break apart into little tiny components of the polymer. That will be completely soluble in water. And we can then produce them out.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you're making sort of a pool or a reservoir of hot water underground?</s>SUSAN PETTY: That's right. A reservoir in little cracks. I don't want you to think of it as an underground lake. It's a reservoir in that it's a bunch of tiny little cracks. And the more tiny cracks we can make, the better we can get at that heat that's in that volcano.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is not like fracking for natural gas is it?</s>SUSAN PETTY: No. Because in fracking for natural they want a great, big, huge crack, which they then hold open with proppant, with sand. And we don't want that, because that wouldn't get us access to that rock that we want to contact with our cold water to get it to heat up.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How hot does the water get?</s>SUSAN PETTY: Well, we're very lucky. Because this is a volcano, it gets quite hot. So the temperatures in this well are higher than 600 degrees F. They're above 320 C.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. So does the water - that's superheated water then?</s>SUSAN PETTY: Well, yeah. So the water will get that hot, and it will then come out of the production wells at that temperature. And we'll be able to - we have two options then as it comes out of the well. We can either take the steam part - it'll boil - and we then can separate the steam and the water and put the steam through a steam turbine, which is probably what we'll do.</s>SUSAN PETTY: But we have another option. And that is that we can take the full stream of hot water and put it into heat exchangers and boil another fluid. And that will vaporize and that can go through a turbine.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Either way, it's a closed loop. We take all of this water that comes out, pick the heat out of it to make the electricity, and then we put it right back in the ground.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So it's sort of like a boiling water nuclear reactor, but without the nuclear reactor.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Well, you know what? At this place, it's without the nuclear reactor. But everywhere you go on Earth, the deeper you go, the hotter it gets. And that actually is kind of a nuclear reactor, because that heat comes largely from radioactive decay or radioactive isotopes that are in the crust of the Earth. So it's kind of a very diffused and controlled nuclear reactor there under us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. So when does this all happen?</s>SUSAN PETTY: Well, OK. So the schedule is that we're just now - we've just completed our environmental permitting work. The Bureau of Land Management has released our environmental study for public comment. We have got that public comment period almost done. The BLM will then say go ahead.</s>SUSAN PETTY: And we also have a grant from the Department of Energy to help us do this experiment. So they'll say go ahead. And we have to put in some more sensitive seismic instruments. And that will be happening in the spring. We will then rig up and start the stimulation experiment probably at the end of July, beginning of August.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Is this - so you're saying it's technologically feasible, but you have to discover whether it makes economic sense, right?</s>SUSAN PETTY: This is the big part of this, Ira. Right now, we could do this pretty much anywhere. We have the technical capability to generate power from this type of method, anyplace that you would want to try and do it. The problem is it's just not economic. The wells are deep and expensive. And we don't get that much power out of each one, so it wouldn't be justified.</s>SUSAN PETTY: We're hoping that this new method, where we can get a lot more of the hot rock contacted and therefore produce more hot water out of each production well, will make this much more economic. And so then we can move off the flanks of dormant volcanoes, where it's really hot close to the surface and go to places where we would find more normal levels of heat at depth and use this technology to make power a lot of places. That's the goal.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, we wish luck. And we'll be watching to see how this turns out.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Well, that's great. And we'll let you know what happens.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. We'll be watching. Thank you for taking time to be with us today.</s>SUSAN PETTY: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Susan Petty is president and chief technology officer for AltaRock Energy, one of the collaborators on this project.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're going to move on now to offshore. The other project I talked about that was really different that we'd kind of like to look into. This is going offshore to deep waters in the Gulf of Maine. And that's where a group called Deep Sea Wind Consortium hopes to one day see 100 floating wind turbines, each as tall as the Washington Monument, harvesting wind energy.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And while we know all about wind turbines, but the difference here - these turbines are going to be in deep water, way out to sea. You won't even be able to see them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Habib Dagher is director of the Advanced Structures and Composite Center at the University of Maine, which leads the consortium. He joins us from Orono.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Welcome to Science Friday.</s>HABIB DAGHER: Thank you. Pleasure to be with you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Did I describe that correctly?</s>HABIB DAGHER: That's very well done.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're going to have - well, you're not going to start out with 100 of them are you? You're going to just try one or two?</s>HABIB DAGHER: Yes. We we're going to walk before we run on this. And we started, actually, with scale models. These turbines, when they're completed, they'll be about 300 feet to the hub, but five to ten megawatt turbines. The blades would be close to 180 feet long per blade.</s>HABIB DAGHER: So what we've done is we started with smaller specimens, a 150 scale unit, that we put in a wave wind basin. And these were about six feet to the hub, the blades were four feet long. And we put them through, essentially, a variety of designed storms to understand how they perform in hundred year storms. If you've seen the movie, "The Perfect Storm," we actually created many perfect storms in a wave wind facility. And that's where we start and that's where we started them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you found that they can resist some of these great storms and not be in danger of capsizing or getting wrecked?</s>HABIB DAGHER: That's correct. That's the purpose of the experiments. One reason we ran the experiments is to see how these actually perform, but also to try to understand how to predict how they will perform in a variety of environment.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now, what makes Maine or the offshore part of Maine a good place to do this?</s>HABIB DAGHER: Within 50 miles of the Gulf of Maine, of the state of Maine, there's about 150 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity. That's about 150 nuclear power plants worth of wind. And the state of Maine only uses 2.4 gigawatts of electricity at the peak summer period. So we've got quite a bit of resource out there. And the state of Maine also has a maritime history with Bath Iron Works and others who've built ships and so forth, so it made sense for us to harness this resource and then build on an existing industry base.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And this is the first time this idea will be tried in the U.S.?</s>HABIB DAGHER: That's correct. That's the first time it will be tried in the U.S.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Has it been tried elsewhere?</s>HABIB DAGHER: Yes. There's been - there's currently an international race to go after what we call deepwater offshore wind. And the reason is there's so much resources out there and it's close to major cities across the globe. To put things in perspective, there's enough offshore wind capacity around the U.S. coasts, within 50 miles of the U.S. coast, to power the U.S. four times over. And about 75 percent of that is in 100 feet of water or more. So it's a huge resource in the U.S. It's also a huge resource globally. The first operating floating wind turbine in the world was put out in Norway by a company called Statoil about a couple of years ago.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. Now Cape Wind in - off, I'm sure as you know, off of Nantucket has been having trouble with the local people, saying this is an eyesore. You won't have that trouble because they're so far offshore?</s>HABIB DAGHER: That's correct. Our turbines - our plan in Maine is to place these turbines between 20 and 50 miles offshore, so you won't see them because of the curvature of the Earth. And we've run some - the University of Maine, through a National Science Foundation-funded program, ran surveys across the Gulf of Maine, across the state of Maine, with two - over 6,000 people, and the support was over 98 percent for the concept.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you would run a cable back to the shoreline?</s>HABIB DAGHER: That's correct. And that technology is thoroughly well known right now. In Europe, they've been building offshore wind farms since 1991, and even in the U.S., we've built another of these undersea cables, if you wish. Yeah, there would be one cable that will come from a farm to a location on that.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR, talking with Dr. Habib Dagher, a director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine. And you eventually - you there, you eventually - you could be an exporter of electricity, could you not?</s>HABIB DAGHER: Yes, absolutely. The state of Maine has a put a plan together that - to produce close to 5 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. That's the equivalent of five nuclear power plants worth of wind, when the wind is blowing, of course, and with an average output of 40 percent of that over the year. That's about two gigawatts. We can't use all two gigawatts in Maine, at least just for electricity. We plan to use it to heat homes, and we plan to use it to also fill up cars, essentially the electrical cars and the hybrid vehicles in the future. And then the rest of it, of course, we could sell on the New England grid.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tell us your time schedule on it.</s>HABIB DAGHER: We are - we have just finished doing this last year the 150 scale models that we just discussed. At this stage of the game, we're designing a one to six scale unit that's going to be deployed in the spring of 2013, spring of next year, in the water off the Gulf of Maine. Following that, our goal is to put a small farm off the Gulf of Maine and just start constructing that in 2016 and have it operational in 2017. The state of Maine has put out a bid for the farm right now, for this demonstration farm, and the Maine PUC is in the process of selecting a winning bidder for that project. And then following that, between 2017 and 2020, the goal is to expand that to a larger farm in the order of a 500 megawatt farm. So that farm would have, say, 105 megawatt turbines.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And there's no reason why other places up and down the East Coast could not do the same thing.</s>HABIB DAGHER: Absolutely. So there's a lot of opportunities all across the United States and beyond to do this kind of thing. And actually, Japan, as we speak, the Japanese Parliament just two months ago has allocated $250 million to build six floating turbines off Fukushima because of the nuclear disaster in the area. They're looking for alternatives to nuclear energy and they have deep waters off their coast, so they're looking at floating wind turbines as well. The U.K. right now is also looking at doing that. So there's an international race to go to deep water offshore wind technology.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And, you know, what do you say to people who say, well, you know, the wind doesn't blow all the time?</s>HABIB DAGHER: That's correct. We all know that very well. And typically in most places in the U.S., you could integrate wind and you could deal with that. When you - about less than 10 percent penetration of wind on the grid. If you go over 10 percent, you start to have to do some things to back up the wind, so forth. So you can accommodate up to 10 percent penetration in most locations without a lot of trouble. Because what's happening is we already deal with an uncertain grid because the load changes throughout the day and throughout the week and so forth. So we know how to deal with an uncertain load, if you wish. So up to 10 percent in most places, we're OK. And 10 percent of, let's say, in the New England area, the grid is about a 30 gigawatt grid. So getting up to 3 gigawatts in the New England grid would be very doable without a lot of effort.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. But you're taking - you're saying there is potential to go a lot further?</s>HABIB DAGHER: There is. There is potential to go significantly higher than that, of course, with backing up the wind properly. And also, how do you use the wind? If you use the wind, say, to fill up cars, one of the best ways to store renewables is in the electric vehicles. As - if we look down the road 10 or 20 years in the U.S., if we start, say, having a 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 percent penetration of these vehicles, they're like a bunch of batteries. They're not all in one place, but they're a large distributed battery.</s>HABIB DAGHER: And most of us use our cars less than an hour a day. So the other 23 hours they're sitting there, they can be taking that energy and storing it. And, essentially, what we'll be doing is we'll be displacing using fossil fues for the gasoline and using - and replacing that with renewable power. So that could be stored, if you wish, in these vehicles.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right.</s>HABIB DAGHER: You can also use it to heat homes with it, and you can store that energy as well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Sort of distributed storage, instead of (unintelligible). Yeah.</s>HABIB DAGHER: Yeah, yeah. And certainly that's one of the many ways you could use to address some of the - if you wish, the intermittency of the wind.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, Dr. Dagher, I wish you good luck. We'll...</s>HABIB DAGHER: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...we'll be following you. We love to look at really creative alternative energies, renewable sources. And we'll be following Dr. Habib Dagher, who is director of Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine, where we see a whole bunch - a fleet of floating turbines off the coast. We'll watch it and wait and see.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk about that cruise ship and why its navigational equipment didn't work, or did it? Stay with us. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

A consent decree to overhaul the Chicago Police Department begins Friday. The implications for the police department loom large, but results of oversight in other cities have been mixed.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Today Chicago officially began its journey of overhauling its police department under the watch of a federal judge and an independent monitor. The massive plan comes after years of complaints about police brutality from residents of mostly black and Latino neighborhoods. For many, the video of a police officer fatally shooting a black teenager in 2014 was the last straw. Now Chicago joins more than a dozen other cities where consent decrees are forcing police departments to change. NPR's Cheryl Corley reports.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: It was just two years ago that the Department of Justice issued a blistering report calling the Chicago Police Department's use of force excessive and racially discriminatory. Soon afterwards, Chicago police issued a new use of force policy, emphasizing the sanctity of life and started holding training sessions.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Drop that knife.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hey, drop it right now, or you're going to get shot.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: At the police training academy, officers looked at videos of real use of force encounters and talked about what could have gone better. Now under a consent decree, there are many more changes in store. For example, the department must create a monthly report about use of force incidents. It bans police from using Tasers on people who are simply running away. The agreement also expands mental health services for police, including an initiative for suicide prevention, a big concern recently. Eddie Johnson is Chicago's police superintendent.</s>EDDIE JOHNSON: We've known about this consent decree for the last two years, so we're prepared mentally to have to deal with it. As a matter of fact, the consent decree will make us better. We say bring it on, and let's get down to business.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: There are 14 other law enforcement agencies in the country getting down to business. The police department in Ferguson, Mo., is one of them. A fatal police shooting there sparked nationwide protest and helped spur the Black Lives Matter movement. Activist Felicia Pulliam says progress under the consent decree is mixed.</s>FELICIA PULLIAM: You know, I'm going to have to say that I've seen some incidents of improvement. There was a lot of resistance to a new practice of policing, a new way of policing the community, from some police officers.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan says it's a different story there. After 6 1/2 years of operating under a consent decree, a federal judge said in January Seattle's police department was in compliance.</s>JENNY DURKAN: We still have a disproportionate amount of force being used against people of color that we think we need to look at more carefully, but there has been a sea in cultural change.</s>JENNY DURKAN: RICHARD O'NEILL: Well, it was very frustrating from the beginning.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: And Richard O'Neill with Seattle's police union is still critical.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: O'NEILL: The incentives to get out and be a proactive officer I think has been damaged. And something the city cannot deny anymore is that we have had a real hit in recruiting - retaining officers.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: That's a problem nationwide even in departments without decrees. Chicago officials and community activists say they've studied the consent decrees in other cities. Sheila Bedi is an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center. She represented activist and community groups in a successful fight to allow them to have a direct say in overseeing the court-ordered reforms. She says that's uniquely different from other consent decrees.</s>SHEILA BEDI: There are very specific ways that police in Chicago abuse their power, and it was critical that this consent decree could not just be imported from Seattle, for example, that they really address the particular harm that Chicago communities face.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: The federal judge overseeing Chicago's police reform plan says it's an important step in the city's ongoing effort to repair the damaged relationship between police and residents. He says it's no magic wand, but it is a beginning. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.

President Obama rejected Wednesday a proposal to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast — generating intense debate in both countries. Murray Mandryk, political columnist for the Leader-Post of Sasketchewan, offers a Canadian perspective on the controversy. Read Murray Mandryk's Regina Leader-Post column, "Let's Pipe Down XL Debate"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: Last week, President Obama rejected the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from the tar sands of Canada to refineries in Texas. Opponents argued that burning off the vast deposits would doom any chance to stop global warming and that the route across Nebraska's Ogallala Aquifer was too risky. Supporters said the pipeline would create thousands of jobs and reduce reliance on Middle East oil. As you can imagine, there's controversy in Canada too.</s>Op-ed columnist Murray Mandryk wrote: It's time for Canadians to move pass talking points and have thoughtful dialogue on better addressing oil policy issues. Well, nobody believes the debate over the XL pipeline is over, so how should we see last week's decision? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. You can also find a link to Murray Mandryk's column there.</s>Op-ed columnist Murray Mandryk wrote: Murray Mandryk is political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post. His op-ed ran in that newspaper on Saturday. And he joins us now from studios at the CBC. Nice to have you on the TALK OF THE NATION today.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, thank you, sir. Nice meeting you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project last week, or at least seemed to. You say this is far from being over.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, I think there's people in your country that will have a far better grasp of the political nuance than maybe I would. But I think there's a lot of people in Canada that anticipate that it will come back in 2013 once things cool down. It's largely seen here from those that can take a breath and get past their own politics to be a strategic political move in relation to your vote coming this fall. Everyone fully anticipates that the pipeline will go ahead because it makes sense on a lot of levels from a Canadian perspective and probably from an American one as well.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: However, there are any number of controversies related to this and inconsistencies in policy in both countries, not the least of which Canadians, for all our reputation of being nice and reasonable, we sometimes like to have our cake and eat it too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, fill us in, a little background on the Canadian political argument. Of course this is a policy that's been very popular with the conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: It is very popular. And much like your country, you really can't talk about a Canadian perspective and have anything that's terribly uniform, sir. In our country, the problem being is that, you know, we are as divided, as I'm sure Americans are, on a lot of issues, up to including this one. And we're also regionally divided because eastern Canada isn't as dependent on oil production as a revenue source. In Canada it's a little bit different perhaps than in the United States because the provinces, equivalent to the state government, obviously has control over the resources - its natural resources.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: So for provinces like Saskatchewan, where I live, or next door in Alberta, it's a really big deal to produce oil and a really big deal to export it, particularly to the United States, which would be our preferential export. The difficulty being is that, particularly in Alberta, they're running headlong into the environmentalist lobby. It's not just an American environmentalist lobby, but I think our federal Canadian government and perhaps a couple of our provincial Canadian governments want to categorize it that way, as too much influenced by the American left.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: In reality, though, what is of concern, though, is just being able to get our oil to market. As I say, the preferential market would obviously be the United States, but there's a second pipeline through northern B.C. called the Northern Gateway pipeline that Canadians are proposing - Canadian oil industry is proposing as perhaps an alternative to feed Asian markets - China and such - if this pipeline doesn't go through in terms of the Keystone development.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: So there is a lot of layers and nuance to this argument that makes it not easy to digest in one whole sitting. You almost have to - you have to take this one in in bite-size pieces.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That pipeline - proposed pipeline to the Pacific Coast, if my grasp of geography is correct, would have to go across the Rocky Mountains, through a lot of wilderness area, and I would assume some areas run by native - operated by Native American tribes.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: You're absolutely right. And the first station plan right is an incredibly important issue in Canada, and right now they're in the process of hearings. And it is those hearings that incited the Canadian natural resources minister to start talking about foreign-backed environmental radicals who basically are trying to kibosh is - our Canadian government sees it - this northern pipeline.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: The fact of the matter is, there's probably many of us who really wonder the very question that you're asking, why on God's green Earth and, you know, quite literally on God's green Earth, do you want to put a pipeline through the Rocky Mountains in general because it's difficult, but pristine wilderness like this through First Nations? The company involved, Enbridge, hasn't exactly had a perfect record on environmental spills, as the people of Wisconsin might attest in 2007. In fact, I think in the last decade, it's had something like 804 spills of 200,000 barrels of oil through its pipelines, et cetera, and its other enterprises.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: That said, I'm not anti-pipeline. I'm probably like a lot of Americans and certainly a lot of Canadians that obviously see that this is the best way to generally move oil. It certainly beats - it's certainly better than tanking it through - with cars and tanker trucks that are going to possibly have more of an environmental disaster and are more likely to because of the nature. In relative terms, it's probably a reasonably safe way to go about it. But in doing so, we do have to sort out all this environmental differences; our own in this country and certainly with Keystone XL, related to the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, the sand hills there, and different landownership issues, et cetera. And it's difficult, of course, force it through, because of this situation in America where it has become a bit of a political football. It's now becoming a bit of a political football up here.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: And as I think you pointed out, the conservative government is pushing it through because they particularly like the idea of this fight for whatever reason in terms of supporting this base, and there's certainly concern about the economic argument. But I don't think enough people are sitting back and taking a look at the Obama administration and understanding that this is a pretty pragmatic government as well. Probably, it's going to come to the conclusion that once the smoke clears, it's in America's best interests, obviously, to have a pipeline through here too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And one of the reasons people got themselves arrested in front of the White House last fall was the argument that if we start to tap this vast resource of the Alberta oil sands or tar sands - and I guess those have controversial terms, too, whichever one you use - but if we start to tap these vast reserves, if we burn those - that petroleum, the odds of fighting back global warming are over. It's dead.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, here we run into a bit of difficulty, one of which is the fact that the feeding government isn't - is wholeheartedly - the current Canadian government isn't wholeheartedly supportive of a notion that global warming is man-made, let alone it'll be caused by the tar sands. They embarked kind of very aggressive program called Ethical Oil, and one of the more controversial right-wing authors in this country has even penned a book under that name. And the premise of it basically being is two things, one of which is that the argument that tar sands oil, oil - sands oil isn't as dirty as some claim.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: And early in my career, I actually work up in the area, in Fort McMurray, and I can attest that, no, it's really not in terms of its environmental impact. Yes, it's problematic, but it is a mining venture. And from that perspective, it's not as damaging as some might think. There's certainly huge issues related to underground water supplies, et cetera, other issues, but there's a really good argument that the whole notion of its environmental damage has been vastly overblown, particularly its impact on global warming. When you can consider all the other things that we do in both our nations and China, like burning coal and such. There's more of a direct impact.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: And obviously, the secondary issue related to this is sort of the political end in terms of, well, you know, where is this going to take us politically. And I think that's probably fitting into the Stephen Harper Canadian government - the conservative government in Canada - is to what points they want to make in terms of bringing their own agenda forward. So it's, I guess, they say in the movies in terms of some of the protesters, it gets complicated.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, let's see. We go to a caller. Edward is on the line, calling us from Maui in Hawaii.</s>EDWARD: Hey. Aloha and happy New Year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy New Year.</s>EDWARD: Say, look, you know, in the last - I don't know how many years it's been since I've been aware of Canadian tar sands, and then in the last year or so since this pipeline has come up. I believe that a lot of what I originally heard of the - in the last year or two was that, as your guest have had said, Canada's interest is marketing their oil. He also speaks of America's best interest. I'm trying to figure out what those are. I know that Canada is improving their pipeline to their coast so they can ship to China. And I know they want to run a long pipeline across our country, and I think the ecological issues can be addressed. But I'm trying to figure out what's in it for us? They want to get access to Gulf Coast ports to ship that oil to other parts of the world.</s>EDWARD: That oil isn't going to end up into our own pipeline. I mean, heck, we're shipping excess fuel off of the continent right now 'cause we have oversupply. What's it - what are America's interests besides what's realistically estimated at around 6,000 jobs for a short period, and then there's the maintenance jobs. I'm assuming there's going to be a tariff per barrel that goes through there. But what exactly, in your guest's opinion, are America's best interest? The threat of not having tankers going along our coast and leaking oil or trainloads through them? Because it really sounds like it's in the best interest of Canada. But what's our interest?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Murray Mandryk, from the Canadian point of view, what's the argument they make when they go to Washington?</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: Oh, certainly. It was the second point that I got a little lost in thought and didn't get to, but it's related to that Ethical Oil question from the Canadian perspective. And simply put this way: Do you want to buy your oil from sometimes unstable Middle Eastern dictatorships? We all know what's happening in the world of the Arab Spring. We all know what's happening in other countries. We know the history with your country related to 9/11 and the difficulties with the Middle East. We know what's going on in Iran and what's going on with Iran right now and what's going on in Iraq. We know the problems related to dealing with Middle Eastern nations. Do you want to deal with Middle Eastern nations or who we like to consider America's best neighbor, which is Canada?</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: Now this is sort of the argument from the Canadian government perspective, not necessarily mine. But I'm actually very sympathetic to that argument because we have the longest unguarded border in the world. We have the best trade relationship in the world. There's no particular reason why us selling oil to Americans can't be beneficial to both of us. However, within that, I think there's a couple of things as Canadians and Americans, but certainly as Canadians, which I'll speak for, that we have to be respectful of - one of which, obviously, is your environmental process. And we can't just be mad and basically say, well, because this isn't in our economic best interest, we have to say we're being picked on or that the American Obama government is somehow doing us an unjust turn.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: There may be political reasons behind the decisions related to the Obama not - government not approving the permit. But there are certainly political decisions behind the U.S. Congress, dominated by Republicans - at least from our standpoint, there seems to be - of imposing the arbitrary February deadline when they've going through this process for a number of years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking...</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: It's not like TransCanada pipeline hasn't exactly been in the middle of these hearings forever.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Murray Mandryk, political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post on the Opinion Page this week. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. There was another point mentioned there, and that is this oil would be refined on the Texas Gulf Coast and, a lot of people say, then shipped to export to other countries. It would not go ultimately to the American market.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, that's quite possible. That - your - I'm venturing out of my area of expertise in relation to this. Generally speaking, in Canada we see the oil being exported for - to U.S. for domestic use and domestic consumption. And certainly, you have a market for it. The tar sands as it's called or the oil sands is - I think they prefer to call it for politically correct reasons of being the product more saleable - is a vast resource that actually has great potential in terms of our fossil fuel needs going forward in the future. And I guess there's an interesting question from the Canadian perspective, is that why would be shipping it from that distance when we could probably refine all of it here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, that's what Gavin(ph) asks in an email from Norman, Oklahoma: It makes sense, on a lot of levels, your guest says. Why does the oil need to be processed 1,700 miles from where it's extracted?</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, you have to understand Canadians sometimes. I think some days I think we just would rather ship raw products and raw resources than refine them ourselves. And it's a century's old frustration for western Canadians who have long been viewed as the hewers of wood and drawers of water, compared with our eastern counterparts. And it's certainly a longstanding frustration, but the fact of the matter is one of the reasons why we do it this way, it's just more economically efficient.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: If you have the refineries near New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Texas, and they're existing and they met the environmental approval in those particular jurisdictions, it's more cost efficient than building them up here. Sometimes, we face with the reality of something like Hurricane Katrina that comes along that not only shuts down, basically, your oil production but ours as well. So there are deep considerations here to be made, but this is somewhat the longstanding nature of Canada that's basically been - always deemed itself a bit more of a supplier of raw material than manufacturing. A lot of it has to do with our population base and our inability to do things like this cheaply to go in our climate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Murray Mandryk, thanks very much for your time today.</s>MURRAY MANDRYK: You're very welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Murray Mandryk, political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post, with us from CBC studios in Regina. You could find a link to his column at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Tomorrow, 10 years after the sex abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church, what's changed? Join us for that. This is the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

More than anything, Democratic primary voters say they want a candidate who can beat President Trump. But there's not a clear sense of what that will take.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: When it comes to their 2020 presidential nominee, there is one thing Democratic voters seem to agree on more than anything. They tell pollsters, campaigns and reporters they want a candidate who can beat President Trump. NPR's Asma Khalid has been asking Democratic voters to explain what they mean by that.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Whether it's Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, Democrats are all seeing some iteration of this.</s>DOUGLAS LEY: I want a win (laughter) pure and simple.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: That's Douglas Ley. He's the majority leader in the New Hampshire State House. Ley says it's still really early, and he wants to hear from all of the candidates first.</s>DOUGLAS LEY: And, you know, quite frankly, if it boils down to, let's say, two or three candidates that I'm happy with but one is perceived by me to be more electable than the others, I'll go with electability.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: That word electability is also something I hear thrown around a lot, so I ask him what exactly it means.</s>DOUGLAS LEY: For me, it means speaking to working people, speaking to good, you know, middle-class people who are getting shafted.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Ley thinks his party needs to do a better job of appealing to the working class. He's not sure if that means a progressive or a centrist. Frankly, he says, voters just want solutions. And he's not alone here at the big, annual New Hampshire Democratic Party dinner. Chris Muns is chair of the Democratic Party in Hampton, a small town on the New Hampshire seacoast.</s>CHRIS MUNS: I grew up in Michigan. I mean, I think one of the things that Democrats have to do is reconnect with that - you know, that industrial heartland.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: His wife, Melanie, says a candidate's geography might help.</s>CHRIS MUNS: I mean, that's where I think Amy Klobuchar might have a chance because she's from the Midwest. She can appeal to the middle of the country, where other people can't.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Melanie Muns says she's already seen three or four candidates in person, and a lot of them have similar policies.</s>CHRIS MUNS: Because there are so many similarities, at that point, it'll just sort of be a gut feeling.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: A gut feeling to find someone electable. That word is something Jaime Harrison says he also hears a lot in South Carolina.</s>JAIME HARRISON: People are saying the same thing, but I think it means different things to different people.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Harrison is an official with the DNC in South Carolina. He says Democrats he talks to are searching for a candidate who will pay attention to the base of the party.</s>JAIME HARRISON: Someone who will go into African-American communities and spend resources to talk to them and mobilize them and get them involved and get them engaged and who will not take the black folks for granted.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Whether that's a progressive or a moderate is up for debate.</s>KEITH WARING: I'm really looking for a candidate that can bring a centrist message.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: That's Keith Waring, a city councilor in Charleston. He says if he could choose the ticket, he'd go with former Vice President Joe Biden as president and California senator Kamala Harris as vice president. Waring says Biden has experience, and Harris could re-energize parts of the Obama coalition.</s>KEITH WARING: I think Kamala Harris has the ability to bring a lot of Southern states with her like the North Carolinas, the Virginias and possibly even Georgia and probably even appeal in Florida.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Waring says the biggest change this time around regardless of which candidate he chooses is that he's excited with his options, way more excited than 2016.</s>KEITH WARING: I felt, when I voted the last time, I was settling. Although I voted for Clinton, I just think the country was tired of that drama.</s>ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Even if Waring is not a hundred percent sure who he'll vote for, he's excited about a number of potential Democratic contenders this time. And in the end, that kind of voter enthusiasm can boost turnout, and high turnout is precisely what a Democrat needs to defeat Donald Trump. Asma Khalid, NPR News.

The International Maritime Organization has decreed that by 2015, all large deep sea ships will be required to carry the latest in electronic navigation equipment. But does state-of-the-art navigation technology prevent shipwrecks like last week's off the Italian coast? University of Southern Mississippi hydrographer Max van Norden talks about the technology.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Last week, a cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 people ran aground off the coast of Italy, resulting in the loss of numerous lives, not to mention damage to the ship. It struck a rocky outcropping clearly visible on the chart, tearing a gash in its hull, which leaves us wondering: How in this age of GPS, sonar, other high-tech navigational devices could such a tragedy occur? Did it veer dangerously off-course? What kind of technology does the crew of large cargo and cruise ships depend on?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Joining us to talk about this and answer some of those questions is Max van Norden. He's coordinator of the hydrographic science program in the Department of Marine Sciences at University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Thank you very much, Ira. I'm glad to be on your show.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome. Is this a common occurrence?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Not really, not really. I mean, this is - well, this is really a case of gross stupidity.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Why do you say that?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Well, because a modern navigational system, which would have been present on a ship like the Costa Concordia, would have definitely warned the crew, the bridge crew and the captain that they were - you know, had to make corrective actions. A modern navigational system, which is called an ECDIS, an electronic chart display and information system, really gives great improvement in navigational safety because, first of all, it gives great improvement in the situational awareness. It automatically plots the position of the ship, as you mentioned, with GPS.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: It also automatically plots the positions of other ships within its radar range to - and, from that, project, from the course and the speeds, whether there's a problem with, you know, possible collisions with other ships. It also plots what we call AIS targets, automatic information - automatic identification system targets, which every major ship today has to carry an AIS transponder after 9/11 because. And these transponders give a ship's position, its course, its speed, what cargo it carries, where it's coming from, where it's going, what flag it flies, so forth.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: But from the - from, say, the Concordia's AIS receiver, it could also have plotted all the AIS targets as well. So a active system gives greatly improved situational awareness of the water space the ship is going in and there to prevent collisions with other ships.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: And then, in addition to that, the systems allow for voyage planning, where the navigator sets out the exact track that they want to follow at each course change based upon the electronic navigational chart. And if the navigator should set out a course or a planned course in this voyage planning that takes it over a hazardous area, the active system will tell him, you can't - this is a bad track. You know, change your voyage plan to a more safer track. So it's also a great improvement in voyage planning.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: And then the third thing is the route monitoring part. It actually gives you warnings when you exceed the allowances for danger. In the voyage planning, you'll put in things like the ship's characteristics, its turning rate and things like that, its allowable draft. And if it gets too close - and the standoff allowances to navigational hazards, and if it exceeds those allowances, the system will give out warnings, you know?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Think of the Exxon Valdez, for instance, in 1989. That accident could have been prevented with a - with an ECDIS system. But they didn't have ECDIS at that time. But if you recall, there was a third mate, an inexperienced third mate on the bridge who failed to make a critical course change. And an ECDIS system would have warned him, say, you've got to make this turn at this time. And - or as the ship was going off towards a navigational hazard, the ECDIS system would have given him a warning, saying, you're getting too close to this navigational hazard. Or a depth sounder, which is interfaced with an ECDIS system, would have told him, you're - the bottom is getting too shallow. You need to make - take corrective actions. So all these are great improvements in navigational safety that these modern electronic chart display information systems provide to the mariner.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And the location of the underwater hazards are also well known, like the rock that it hit.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Well, in this case, yes. But you bring up something - there are some pitfalls to these navigational systems, particularly, I think, in my opinion, in fact, the cruise line industry because these displays, these are all very colorful, you know, computer monitors and displays</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: ...navigational systems, particularly, I think, in my opinion, in fact, the cruise line industry, because the - these displays, these are all very colorful, you know, computer monitors and displays that sort in complacency(ph) the fact the - OK, the database for these active systems is the electronic navigational chart, and it looks very colorful as well. But in many cases that information on that chart is based on very old data. NOAA, for instance, is responsible for charting U.S. waters.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: I've seen the presentation where they say that 50 percent of the data on their charts were collected by hydrographic surveys before 1940, old technology. And so in areas that are well travelled by, say, container ships or tankers, whatever, these well-travelled routes are well charted. But these cruise liners, they like to go off the beaten path and show, you know, pristine areas, picturesque areas to the passengers. So they're going off the beaten path into areas that are not well surveyed.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Or maybe they've been surveyed many, many years ago with old technology, even by - perhaps by Captain Cook even. But in any case, these areas in fact may not have ever been surveyed, in some cases of Alaska, where the glaciers have receded and these cruise liners going to these areas and watching these beautiful glacier areas may have never - the waters, however, may have never been surveyed.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: So for these cruise ships, they're going off the beaten path and putting these half-a-billion-dollar ships at some risk with the passengers, of course, by going into these areas that are not well surveyed. Even though the chart might look very fancy and colorful and - a very colorful display in this modern, integrated bridge, but that underlying data would have been collected, in many cases, with very old technology.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. But the case of last week, this was not that case, was it?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: No, it was not. This is just really a case where - well, from my readings, the Costa Concordia had a modern navigation system, modern (unintelligible) system. It was given a number of warnings that he's getting too close, I'm sure, but I guess in his case, the captain's case, he just turned off the warnings and ignored them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Would there not be other members of the crew on the bridge there?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: There would. And I was wondering why the chief mate would not have jumped in and say, Captain, you're doing, you know, you're taking the ship into dangerous waters here. But, you know, that's - I'm just speculating.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right. So there's enough electronics on the ship to let you know, at least in that case, to let you know where you are exactly...</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Exactly.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...and to let you know exactly what is around you. And it's up to you to decide whether to listen to it or not.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Yes. And in the case of the Costa Concordia, of course I mentioned every large ship has to have an AIS receiver these days. Nowadays, I mean, it was constantly transmitting those AIS transmissions, and there are stations ashore that pick that up and can simulate exactly where that ship was through that whole ordeal. And in fact, there's a very good website that show – it gives some explanations of where the ship went.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What website is that?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: One that I saw that was really good is gcaptain.com, where they show, using the AIS data, exactly where the ship travelled. And the narrator gives very good explanation what he thought happened.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Gcaptain.com?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me go to the phones to Matt in Alexandria, Virginia. Hi, Matt. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>MATT: Oh, hello.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there. Go ahead.</s>MATT: Yeah. I was curious. I used to be a second mate. And I was wondering if the voyage data recorder info had been recovered. And if so, would it ever be made public?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: I saw a picture of them recovering the voyage data recorder.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Is that like the recorder on an airplane when it goes down?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Yes.</s>MATT: Yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So it's been recovered. And that would have the record of where - exactly where it went.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Matt, does this surprise you as a second mate?</s>MATT: Yeah. Yes. I mean, the ships I've been on have all had one. We never had to do anything with it, I mean it was sort of a passive thing. But we were under the instructions or understanding that if something happened, it would be one of the first things recovered, and the data it records would be used to recreate what happened prior to the incident.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. Thanks for calling. 1-800-989-8255. Talking with Max van Norden. So you're saying that there's a lesson here about the future of cruise shipping and knowing where you are and the ancient charts that - and you were not joking that some of these go back to Captain Cook.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: No, I wasn't. Another example, the QE2 grounded off of Martha's Vineyards a couple of years ago. I think 1992. They went off the beaten path and grounded off on - in an area they hadn't been surveyed since 1939. So, I mean, these things happen.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you say they go off the beaten path because the captain may want to get the passengers a special look at something or get close to a glacier in Alaska?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Right. That's part of the deal for these cruise lines, to take you into picturesque, you know, pristine areas of Alaska and other areas and have the, you know, the passengers see some very beautiful scenery. But in a number of cases, these are unsurveyed or very bad or very old surveyed areas.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And the alarms could be going off in the ship, literally off the chart when they do these things.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Well, you see, in that case the alarms wouldn't necessarily go off because the ship relies or the active system relies on the known data of the electronic navigational chart. And so if there's nothing to tell or nothing in the data to say that there's, you know, there's a danger, if the rocks haven't been discovered that will ground the ship, if those shoals have not been discovered, there's no - the alarms wouldn't necessarily go off.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But in the normal course of a cruise, we would expect that this is - if you stay on course, this cruise has taken - the captain and his crew have taken this trip a hundred times at least and know exactly where everything is, and they're quite safe.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Right. If they follow, you know, the normal shipping lanes or have taken these cruises along that line before, then it should be safe, yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. Talking with Max van Norden, who is coordinator of the Hydrographic Science Program at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. So what is your recommendation here, Dr. Van Norden?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Well, of course one recommendation would be to, you know, follow the advice of your ecto(ph)-system and not overrule it. But the other thing is that we need, you know, more hydrographic surveys in those areas where these cruise liners are going.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. And...</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Modern surveys.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And we need to have captains take less risk.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Absolutely.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What is the normal sequence of an investigation that would go on now?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Well, I - that's really out of my area. I, you know, I'm sure the Italian version of their coast guard would be following that investigation, and they would have to present the evidence to a maritime court of some type. And generally these things follow some sort of maritime law.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And as far as knowing where you are in the water and what's around you, would not sonar on your own ship tell you that there were these rocks right next door to you, where you're going?</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Well, most ships do carry a depth sounder. But in a case of a ship like the Concordia, which has a great mast behind it, it would be - they don't have the type of sonar, probably the forward-looking type of sonar that, say, a warship would have. They would have a more, you know, commercial, down-looking sonar. And there was probably no way they would detect something in time like that. They can only see a prevailing trend, say, in the bottom, but on all of a sudden type hazard that's in the way, no. They would have to depend upon the charts to tell them there's a hazard. And they need - and, of course, in this case, you need to follow the charts instead of just thinking that you could get away with what he did.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: If you have the chart, you got to use it.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: That's correct.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And the charts that he used, there's no reason to believe these were ancient charts. And as we talked about before, he had been over - I mean this is just a normal course that this cruise liner took all the time.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Well, no, not in this particular case, though. I mean in this sail-by that he did, he had done it, I believe, one time before but with slightly different headings. And so what he did was actually, you know, unauthorized and unusual. Now, what I meant was normally ships would stay, you know, farther away from an island like that on - in the normal shipping lanes. And that would've been the safe course of action.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Van Norden, thank you very much for taking time to be with us.</s>MAX VAN NORDEN: Oh, my pleasure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Max van Norden of Southern - University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show segments, including responses to a conversation about the challenges autistic people face in navigating romantic relationships, and about when and how to ask for a second medical opinion.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. During last week's show on love and autism, many listeners called and emailed, including Eric from Red Bluff, California. We read his email on the air. I will be a 40-year-old virgin in September. I dated once, when I was 32. Other than that, I've had no love interest where the love was reciprocated. I did not expect to ever find love. I do not believe I could be loved. That is all.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A listener named Thia(ph) reached out to respond. I was listening to TALK OF THE NATION today, and there was email read from a man named Eric from California. I have no idea who he is, but it hurt to think that he thinks no one would ever love him. I wish I could have told him that I love him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And after last week's conversation about seeking second opinions, many of you wrote in about what happened when you went to a second doctor, including this piece of advice from Hilary Anthony(ph) in Eugene, Oregon: As a registered nurse, I will only say I have many times discharged a patient who was still reeling from the idea of a sudden upcoming surgery, and the surgeon is someone I wouldn't necessarily trust. But, of course, you can't say that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If the patient asked me what I think, I say, well, you can always get a second opinion. You have that right. Every patient to whom I've said that has immediately understood what I wasn't saying and thanked me. Some have come back and thanked me. Every nurse I know who works in surgical settings has done the same. Ask your nurse and read between the lines, because we're not supposed to have opinions.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this from Dr. Lynn Klimo, a psychiatrist in Ohio: I encourage my patients to get a second opinion. I believe that if any physician is telling you they have the absolute answer, you need to run the other way. Doctors are fallible. We are limited by our knowledge, and the information that's available today is immense. The best physicians are those that say I don't know, work as a team, utilize colleagues, are open-minded and encourage patients to take power over their own health. We need to collaborate with our patients. They are the healers. We are the guides. Medicine as the paternalistic model from the past does not work anymore. Educate our patients, and they can educate us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you have a correction, comment or a question for us, the best way to reach us is by email. The address is talk@npr.org. Please let us know where you're writing from and give us some help on how to pronounce your name. If you're on Twitter, you can follow us there @totn.

A high-speed video camera is a must for biologist Sheila Patek, of University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Patek studies the lesser-known speed demons of the animal kingdom. A trap-jaw ant can move at over 100mph and a mantis shrimp can accelerate with a g-force of 100,000 (the space shuttle accelerates at 3Gs).

IRA FLATOW, HOST: With us here now is Flora Lichtman and our Video Pick of the Week. Hi, Flora.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What you got for us this week?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: This week, we are taking a look at the secret speed demons of the animal kingdom. Forget, you know, forget the cheetahs.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That was immediately the one comes to mind, right?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Me, too.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Cheetahs.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: I think speedy ones, I think cheetah, I think gazelle...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Sure.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: ...something. No.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: No.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Microfauna, my favorite.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: These are - we're talking shrimp, ants...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wait a minute. Shrimp? A - shrimp is fast...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: A 50...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: ...speed demon?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Speed demon. OK. So let me give you these - so let me just blow your mind with some statistics...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: OK. OK. Please.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: ...just because it's almost too good to be true. Sheila Patek is the biologist at UMass Amherst, by the way, who loaned us this amazing video footage that you can see on the website and told me this. So mantis shrimp are these kind of little, weird lobster-y looking things. They can move their punching claw - they don't have - they have a little puncher - 50 miles per hour in water.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Fifty miles per hour. And the force that they produce with that claw...</s>SHEILA PATEK: They can strike with peak forces of over 1,500 Newtons. So this is like a stick of margarine-sized animal hitting with over 300 pounds of peak force.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Ouch.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. Wow.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: If you are a snail, that's no good. That was Sheila Patek, by the way. So it's kind of amazing to watch them in action. And, of course, you need a high-speed video. It really doesn't look like much.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: We have some real-time video, and you don't really see anything. With the high-speed video - and they can record at 100,000 frames per second - you see not only the punch happening, but this - this was just amazing - a cavitation bubble is formed when the mantis shrimp punches in water. It's sort of like boiling. So this bubble forms, and the collapse of that bubble also helps to strike the prey.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: It's really neat.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so it's on a video, and it's up there on our Video Pick of the Week @sciencefriday.com. And that's how it attacks? It beats up, like a boxer, and knocks them out with this...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: We have an amazing footage of a mantis shrimp just knocking a crab to bits. That's a little sad, but you can...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Where else are you going to see that?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: That's exactly right.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: But it gets even better. So I was - you know, mantis shrimp blew me away. And then Sheila Patek was, like, but meet...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But wait. There's more.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: There's more. Meet the trap-jaw ant, which makes the mantis shrimp looks slow. These ants can close their mandibles at 100 miles per hour, she says.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: No kidding.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: That's just amazing. So they're spring-loaded. The - you know, one of the main question is: How do you produce a force this fast?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: And it's these sort of springs that you load up with these slow muscles, and then a latch, basically, unhooks them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Twang. Just like that and it's - that's what...</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yeah. And that's the sound you would imagine when you see them on the website, because they just fly in all directions. And this, you know, they actually can use their mandibles to locomote. So if you're a researcher, you can imagine this might get you into trouble.</s>SHEILA PATEK: If you happen to be in the field studying these ants and you walk into an ant nest, all of a sudden, they'll be like popcorn, firing their jaws against the ground, flying themselves into the air and landing on you. And you'll soon discover and be reminded that ants are related to bumble bees and things like that that have great, big stingers. And they all start stinging you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Flying ants.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Popcorn ants stinging you.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: This is, like, the best video. This is just - I love the video footage that Dr. Patek provided. It's really fun.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's a great footage. And you said that these things are popping in her aquaria that she keeps in her lab, the shrimp?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yes. The mantis shrimp, too, apparently can be a little bit intimidating. If - this is what Dr. Patek said. If they're in a bad mood, they'll knock on the glass. And actually, other researchers have told me and shown me pictures of mantis shrimp breaking the aquarium wall. That's how powerful they are.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you carry them around from place to place.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Oh, yeah. And you can carry them in, like, water bottles, but they'll break those, too. It's - the things is the forces - the strike is so fast that it's like a welt. But if they spear you - some have spears - you're in trouble.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I hate it when that happens. That's Flora's Video Pick of the Week. You can see it up there on our website, @sciencefriday.com. It's unbelievable stuff, as always. Thank you, Flora.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thanks, Ira.

The National Center for Science Education has long defended educators' right to teach evolution in public schools. Now climate science too is under attack. NCSE executive director Eugenie Scott talks about how teachers and parents can fight the push to get climate change denial into the classroom.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. 2011 was the ninth warmest year on records, according to a new NASA report, and those records stretch back into the 1880s. And nine of the ten warmest years have happened since the year 2000. In other words, it's hotter than ever in modern history, but no data is enough to convince some climate change deniers about global warming. Lawmakers in several states have already introduced laws to make sure the views of climate skeptics are represented in the classroom.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Louisiana has already passed one. And as the case with teaching evolution, rather than deal with complaints of parents, some teachers are just avoiding teaching climate change altogether saying it's more trouble than it's worth. That's where my next guest comes in. Her group, the National Center for Science Education, has defended evolution teaching for decades and now it's taking on this new challenge to keep good climate science in the classroom and bad science out.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me introduce her. Eugenie Scott is the executive director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: Thank you very much, Ira. It's great to be back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How widespread is this phenomena?</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: We have noticed, of course, every year as you and I have discussed, there have been a batch of anti-evolution bills submitted to state legislatures, but over the years, we've noticed that many times these anti-evolution bills also bundle global warming along with evolution as allegedly controversial issues that teachers are supposed to give balance to. And we know what that means, you're supposed to teach standard science and then teach anti-science or anti that particular view.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: In fact, one was just introduced. We don't even have it up on our website yet. One was just introduced yesterday in Oklahoma that would do this. But we're also hearing reports of school boards and, you know, local school districts discussing regulations or imposing some sort of restrictions on teachers to teach climate change and climate change denial, basically. And that's obviously something that has a chilling effect.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: But I think the thing that really motivated us to get into this is the stories that we're hearing from individual teachers more and more frequently that they are receiving push back from either students or from parents and of course, the board of directors that pays their salary in the local school district. And we thought that maybe our experience in dealing with these - really they're political issues and not really scientific issues so much - on the local level might help teachers cope with these pressures just as we've attempted to help them over the years cope with pressures against teaching evolution.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: So, yeah, it's out there, Ira, and it's a problem that we'd like to get ahead of. You know, sometimes I think that the climate change issue, climate change education issue, is sort of where evolution was 25 years ago or 25, 30 years ago. And it took us awhile to gear up to us being, you know, NCSE, but the science community as well. Maybe we can get ahead of this one and it won't be quite as big a problem.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But evolution was based, originally, as a religious point of view. You're saying that this is more a political point of view.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: That's correct. The commonality is that with the anti-evolution problem that we have been dealing with, yes, you're right, the ideology that motivates it is religious ideology. There's some religious ideology that motivates the anti-global warming group, but it's not really predominant. I mean, there's, you know, God's providence would never let anything bad happen to the Earth is out there, but that's not really what's motivating and paying for the surge of anti-global warming and climate change that we've seen recently.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: It's more a political ideology and/or an economic ideology. it's the idea that if the planet's getting warming - if the plant is truly getting warmer, then we're going to have to do something about this and this is going to require us to make compromises, perhaps in our standard of living. I might lose my job if I'm in a business that's - or an occupation that has to do with energy production based on carbon, you know, coal, oil, gas, et cetera.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: And people really have sincere fears about what's going to happen and clearly, the easiest thing to do is just attack the science. Well, the science is invalid. It's not really getting warmer. This is just an effort by liberals to increase big government. You hear that kind of argument out there as well. And so, you know, yes, the science is necessary. Yes, we will have to deal with the claim it's just sun spots or it's just the sun or it's just normal cyclical kinds of things. It's the volcanoes, not human putting CO2 in the air. We're going to deal with that.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: But fundamentally, we're going to have to deal with these underlying issues, just like with evolution you have to deal with the underlying religious issue and try to assuage some of those concerns. Because, you know, you can't solve this problem by just piling more science on it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And science teachers are avoiding the whole thing altogether.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: We have reason to believe, but it's only anecdotal. There hasn't been a really good survey, a good reliable, you know, standard survey of research...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: ...type of survey of teachers as to what they know about climate change, climate science, and what they're actually teaching about it. But we have reason to believe anecdotally that many teachers are saying, whoa, this is another controversial issue. It's too much work to - you know, I don't want to put up with the crap. I'm just not going to teach it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We have a lot of people who email us or blog us and say, if I want to answer climate change skeptics, where do I get information? What kind of hard data can I tell them why I'm convinced of it?</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: I think a website that I've found very useful and I recommend to people and will certainly link to it from the resources on NCSE's website is climatescience dot - excuse me, skepticalscience.com. It's a very useful site. It's written by scientists and knowledgeable people, engineers and the rest and they have very clear explanations with links, you know, documented scientific research supporting their views for the top 100 or so climate change denialist arguments.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: So if you want to know whether sun spots are the cause of the global warming, well, they'll explain that very clearly to you and they actually have, for most of their refutations, they have more than one level. So, you know, here's the basic level and here's the more advanced level and you click on the advanced level and you get the 8X10 glossies and a lot more detail than probably most people actually need. But it's a very useful site.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: And there are other sites also, De-Smog blog is another one that refutes many of the arguments. So the refutations are out there. It's not going to - NCSE is not going to have a lot of that information on our site. We'll have some of it, just, you know, basic stuff. But we will link - we will provide links to good scientific responses to the claims of the global warming deniers.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, Dr. Scott, thank you, Eugenie, for coming on and talking with us.</s>EUGENIE SCOTT: More than happy to. Thanks so much for helping us get out the word that we're here to help on this topic as well as evolution.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Eugenie Scott is executive director of the National Center for Science Education, that's based in Oakland, California.

Surgeons in Sweden replaced an American patient's cancerous windpipe with a scaffold built from nanofibers and seeded with the patient's stem cells. Lead surgeon Dr. Paolo Macchiarini discusses the procedure and the benefits of tissue-engineered synthetic organs.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: An American cancer patient became the second person in the world to receive a synthetic windpipe transplant. Surgeons in Sweden replaced a patient's cancerous windpipe with one that was grown in the laboratory. It was made from plastic nanofibers and seeded with the patient's stem cells.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But just how is this artificial organ turned into a functioning airway? And how can this experimental procedure be used on other organs, perhaps lungs, even the heart in the future?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: My next guest, Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, was the lead surgeon for both synthetic windpipe transplants. Dr. Macchiarini is the director of the Advanced Center for Translational Regenerative Medicine at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Welcome to Science Friday.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: DR. PAOLO MACCHIARINI: Thank you so much.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thank you for joining us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's start at the beginning. How was the scaffold for the synthetic trachea built?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, basically, by the same fibers that everybody of us has, nanofibers; very, very small fibers that are composed and native to the human trachea. So when we wanted to transplant this organ, we thought what is best. And the best would be to just replicate what human nature has done. And this is the reason why we use these very thin fibers.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And then you seeded the fibers, the mold, so to speak, the plastic, with the patient's own stem cells.</s>MACCHIARINI: Exactly. Because these first steps, the generation of the scaffold, was entirely made in the laboratory. But without the cells, the scaffold could not be implanted, because the trachea is the only organ which is in contact with the external environment. So if you put a prosthesis(ph) or synthetic material (unintelligible) become infected. And you can have different lethal problems. By reseeded the scaffold with a patient's own stem cells, we were making living plastic tissue.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Did the stem cells then start to grow as trachea cells?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, the first step is to produce a nano(ph) composite. Then the second step is to take the stem cells of the patient. The third step is to put the two together using a so-called bioreactor, which is a shoebox where you put this (unintelligible) cells and the scaffold. And the cells are attracted by this scaffold, because it is biomaterial and permits attachment of the cells. And the cells are not only attaching, but then starts to proliferate, are living. So that they feel like they would be in a physiological (technical difficulties).</s>MACCHIARINI: Once you have done this, you implant it, implant this in the human body and you give bioactive (unintelligible) that differentiate the stem cells into the (unintelligible) of the trachea. And this happens usually within 14 days after the transplantation.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so that the stem cells basically grow and become part of the trachea?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, rather than growing, they differentiate into the given specific cells. And to avoid infection (unintelligible) the graft. Yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so by the time you transplant it back into the patient, you have the plastic structure and you have tracheal cells that you're putting back into the patient?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, we have the nano composite. We have cells. But these are not tracheal cells, because in such a short time you cannot differentiate a cell. You just can have cells that are living. And once they are implanted in the human body, we use the human body as a so-called own bioreactor and we boost the regeneration.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so how long would it take for those cells to regenerate once they're back in the human?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, after one week of the transplantation, we did an endoscopy. That means an evaluation of the graft. And by taking the cells out, we were finding evidence that the cells of the (technical difficulties) inside it were already there. So in short of seven days you can have differentiated cells starting from not differentiated cells.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how long would it take to cover and make a complete trachea?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, we did - before the last patient came home, we did again an endoscopy. And it was lined with the cells. And today we just proved, with the pathologist, that cells were all there. So probably this depends (technical difficulties) three dimensional measures of the trachea. Because if it a - it's a very long - it is a trachea with bifurcation so that many factors play a role. But usually within two to three weeks, if you tell the body to boost, to accelerate regeneration, you can get the complete differentiated trachea.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Two to three weeks you can make the whole trachea.</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, using the human body as a bioreactor, yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So I imagine you could try to do this with other organs in the body, other things.</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, we are starting to learn what happens with this still experimental therapy. So I'm not so pessimistic to try to do the same with other tissues or organs. And since I'm a thoracic surgeon, I deal with organs of the chest. So I would think of the esophagus at the chest wall, at the liver – at the lung, and eventually at the heart. Yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how are the patients doing?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, probably there was a huge media coverage when he came back in the United States. And he's doing very well. He was seen yesterday by his referring physician in Baltimore. And as far as I know he's doing fine.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Can you reconstruct blood vessels this way?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, actually, the Yale University has started to - a clinical trial approved by the FDA using tissue (unintelligible) in children. So the answer would be yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And just to understand more completely, this is a - the trachea is - it has a microfiber backbone to it, on top of which you have permeated with stem cells. And the stem cells have been coaxed into becoming tracheal cells?</s>MACCHIARINI: Exactly.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Exactly. And then they have now totally covered and taken over on top of this structure of plastic? They have now become sort of a living organism?</s>MACCHIARINI: Yes, sir.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. And you did this all - it all happened within just a matter of a few weeks?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, usually - again, depending on the degree of difficulty of the three dimensional aspect of the tissue, you can produce a trachea, for instance, just the tube, in two days. And a bifurcated trachea in 10 days. So now - then you need two days for getting the cells, reseeding the grafts, or in two weeks you have an entire trachea.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And perhaps you might extend your work further, because you deal in this and possibly into the lungs.</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, ideally, yes. But to me my dream would be another one. It would be rather than replacing the lung or replacing the heart, you use cell therapy to treat these organs before they ultimately do not work anymore. so rather than doing a transplantation, just when we have the first signs of insufficiency, whether to treat these organs with the patient's stem cells, probably targeting the defect that they have, so prolonging and extending their life.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So if you have untreatable tumors, for example, within the patient, you might be able to instead of putting a new part in put the stem cells in and they would grow to replace that?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, I don't think that this is so easy. We first need to be very cautious to identify so-called cancer stem cells, because within the cancer you have cells that do proliferate forever and have many of the aspects of undifferentiated and ever proliferating stem cells.</s>MACCHIARINI: So whether we could target these cells to block the growth and eventually treat cancer, this is very, very early.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So what makes your technique so revolutionary?</s>MACCHIARINI: Well, the fact that, first of all, in six months we've had three - we were able to treat 31 and 30 years respectively, young gentlemen that had a tumor of the trachea and they're still alive. So the revolution is there, because there wouldn't be any other treatment options.</s>MACCHIARINI: And the second revolution is that (unintelligible) is too much, but a new thing is that we were able to – we saw in the blood of the patient's stem cells that as soon as the (unintelligible) transplant, were already expressing the profile of respiratory cells. So they were recruited from the preferred(ph) and went home to the site of the transplant to make the cells of the trachea.</s>MACCHIARINI: So that means that indeed, we could do and replicate this for other types of - like the liver, kidney, heart. We just need time and more economic support to prove this concept.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yes, time and money. That's all we need.</s>MACCHIARINI: Exactly, as usual.</s>MACCHIARINI: Exactly.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, thank you very much, Dr. Macchiarini, for...</s>MACCHIARINI: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...taking time to talk with us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is the director of the Advanced Center for a Translational Regenerative Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're going to take a break. After the break, we're going to look at two renewable energy projects using pioneering technology. One that taps the heat that causes - under volcanoes. And another project: to float wind turbines off the coast of Maine in really deep water. Not close to shore but far away so you can't even see them from the shore. In deep water creating, you know, electrical energy that way.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We'll talk about it when we get back. Our number: 1-800-989-8255. Tweet us at SciFri@SCIFRI. We'll be right back after this break.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is Science Friday from NPR.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Victor Cha, an expert on North Korea and former top adviser to the George W. Bush administration, about the U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: We turn now to Victor Cha. He was the National Security Council director for Asia during the George W. Bush administration. He's now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University. Victor Cha, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.</s>VICTOR CHA: Thank you for having me.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So President Trump, one of the more memorable lines from his press conference afterward - he said, sometimes you have to walk. And I wonder, when you heard that, what went through your mind.</s>VICTOR CHA: Well, the first thing was that that was not the outcome that he was building all the expectations up to be for this summit. Everybody knew that this particular meeting had to have real tangible steps towards denuclearization since the Singapore summit last July was focused largely on statements and no actions that followed it over the next seven to eight months. So the absence of an outcome and Trump's characterization of walking out was clearly not the outcome that was expected. And the question is - you know, why did this happen when the president was so eager to have a meeting with the North Korean leader to actually speed up the process?</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Well, let's dig into the why did this happen - because there are conflicting accounts starting to emerge from Hanoi. The U.S. came out and said these negotiations broke down because North Korea demanded that all sanctions be lifted in return for only some denuclearization. North Korea has now come out and briefed and said no, we only asked for a partial lifting of sanctions. I mean, my question is - how did we not know what the North Korean position was walking into these talks? This was supposed to be the summit where more groundwork had been done in advance.</s>VICTOR CHA: That's a great question. And clearly, not enough groundwork was done in advance. I think the fact that President Trump is so open to almost any policy position if it moves the whole process forward causes the North Koreans to try to move all the negotiations directly up to the level of the president because, at the working level, they feel like they have a more tougher U.S. position. And the stakes are very high because when leaders can't agree, you don't have much diplomatic rope left after that.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So let's just lay out the balance sheet - wins, losses for each side. The U.S. walks away from the summit with what? Did the U.S. get anything out of this?</s>VICTOR CHA: No, not really. You know, he walked away from it completely empty-handed with a process that the summit was supposed to save and now has put it at least two steps backwards.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: He says he did secure a commitment to continue the no new testing, no nuclear testing, no missile tests.</s>VICTOR CHA: Yes. I know he's really trumpeted that as being a big victory. But our own research on this shows that whenever the United States is talking to the North Koreans, they generally do not do missile or nuclear tests. And that's been the record for the past 25 to 30 years. So he can claim it as a success of his policy, but it's actually just an empirical fact.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: What about on the North Korean side - what do they walk away from this summit with?</s>VICTOR CHA: So I think they're also in a bit of a bind. I mean, I think the North Korean leader also went out on a limb to do another meeting with the president in Hanoi, in Vietnam - on a train for 56 hours or whatever the number was. And it's not clear that they know where they're going to go after this either. If they resume testing, we're going to go back to a very difficult confrontation between the two sides.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So where do you think things go from here - we're two summits in between these two leaders - third summit? Or is the best possible outcome at this point that U.S.-North Korean diplomacy drops off the front pages for a while and lower-level negotiations try to inch things forward?</s>VICTOR CHA: Well, I think we'll certainly see lower-level negotiations. I don't think we'll see a third summit for quite some time. I think the president probably feels like he was burned by it, and he was always the one who was most enthusiastic about doing this. He was always pushing that process forward. So in terms of where we go from here, there are a few things we have to watch.</s>VICTOR CHA: The first is whether the United States is going to resume military exercising with the ally South Korea, something that President Trump had suspended after the Singapore summit. Is North Korea going to continue to produce a mass weapons material, which they had been doing since the Singapore summit through Hanoi? And then the question is, you know, whether the United States is going to do anything on sanctions-lifting after this summit, or are they going to increase the sanctioning? There will be voices for increasing sanctions against North Korea.</s>VICTOR CHA: So you know, we have to watch these things because they will take what is a precarious situation and either put it into a tailspin or leave it sort of at this unsteady status quo for the time being, until the working level can put it on more stable ground.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Victor Cha - he was National Security Council director for Asia during the George W. Bush administration. Thanks very much.</s>VICTOR CHA: Thank you very much.

Scientists have confirmed that rocks collected recently in the Moroccan desert came from the Red Planet. University of Alberta meteorite expert Chris Herd, who has acquired one of the chunks, talks about how scientists analyze space rocks, and whether organic compounds might be found inside.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Russia's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft splashed, crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday. It was a failed mission. It was meant to travel to the Martian moon Phobos and bring back a soil sample, but it got stuck in Earth orbit instead. And they were - never made it out of there. But in lieu of shooting off another expensive sample return mission to Mars, there is a cheaper way, just wait for those Mars rocks to come to us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It happens once about every 50 years, and we got lucky last July when a meteor shower spits some Martian samples, right here down to Earth. They fell way out on the Moroccan desert, but the samples have come back. Since then, scientists, including my next guest, have been snatching up those meteorites from meteorite dealers. Yeah, they exist. What do you do once you get your hands on them? Can you even touch one without contaminating it? Is there any hope those chunks might contain some trace of organic compounds or even traces of past or present life?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Joining me now to talk about it is Chris Herd. He's associate professor and meteorite expert at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He joins us by phone. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Herd.</s>CHRIS HERD: Thanks very much.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You are actually in actual possession of one of these chunks?</s>CHRIS HERD: Yes, yes. I arranged to purchase a specimen of this amazing meteorite for the University of Alberta Meteorite Collection.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How do you buy one of these?</s>CHRIS HERD: Well, you talk to a meteorite dealer, and you work out a good value, a good rate. And then, yeah, you come up with the money.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm picturing the scene from "Casablanca" and that marketplace where people were selling all kinds of stuff. Is there an underground meteorite market with folks who come in and out of the desert picking the stuff up?</s>CHRIS HERD: Well, in actual fact, in morocco there's a whole economy set up with people picking up meteorites from the desert. They know what they look like, and they bring them into the markets and sell them there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What do they look like? What does the one that you have looked like?</s>CHRIS HERD: Well, it's kind of unusual as meteorites go, because it is a rarer type being from Mars. But it has a black what's called a fusion crust, the outer crust that formed as it came screaming through the atmosphere that sort of burnt look to it. And in - on one side, it's broken, and you can see a bit of the interior. The interior is sort of a greenish-gray color.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So sort of glass-encrusted in its own little delivery vehicle?</s>CHRIS HERD: Yeah. That's right. The outside heats up enough to actually melt the rock, and then, that forms a glass as it cools off after it comes into the atmosphere.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how do you analyze it without contaminating it? You know, because I'm figuring you're handling it, but you're saying since it's sort of covered in glass, it's - the inside is, sort of, kept pristine from the way it was.</s>CHRIS HERD: Yeah. Well, that's something that we want to - we definitely want to test. How do you keep it from getting contaminated? That's probably one of the best questions, because this is really an incredible opportunity - being such a recent delivery, such a recent fall - that we want to try to do everything that we can to keep it from getting contaminated, including with organic molecules. And we have those on our fingers, all, you know, and it's just the way we are. We have things like cholesterol and squalene, weird compound - sounding compounds like that that actually are in our finger crease.</s>CHRIS HERD: And so one of the things that I did after we've received this - the sample was to actually just give a little bit of a rinse on the outside with a solvent that we're going to - and we're going to analyze that, hopefully, later this week or next week and see what we find. It's actually kind of a way of detecting whether anybody has touched it before it got sent to me.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And then, how do you crack it open and look inside?</s>CHRIS HERD: Well, then, we'll - we're going do everything we can before. There's a lot of sort of nondestructive, as we call it, tests that we can do first. But then once we - once we're ready, we'll cut it open. We'll use a very thin blade saw, and we'll cut it open. And we'll look inside, and we'll make polished mounts that we can do various types of analysis on with microscopes and just try to get as much as we can - much information as we can out of it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How old is it, and is it - does it come from a period on Mars where life might have existed?</s>CHRIS HERD: That we don't know at this point. All we can say is that, based on the original work that was done by my colleagues, Tony Irving and Scott Kuehner at University of Washington in Seattle, we know that they - it has a texture that is the minerals that are - the way they're inter-grown is very similar to other types of Martian meteorites that we've looked at before. But we don't know anything about the age yet. Having said that, those other meteorites that this is similar to, are in the sort of 200- to 500-million-year-old range. That's geologically fairly young, and that's not from a time period that that where we think there was a lot of water around on Mars, but you never know.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. You know, there was that famous meteorite from Mars that's supposedly had signs of ancient life on it that created a lot of excitement, and then went away very quickly.</s>CHRIS HERD: That's right. And that one was - that one is of around four billion years old. So that dates, really, from way back in Mars' history. As I say, we don't really know, because we only just started working on this, how old this particular meteorite is. But the potential is there because it's a fresh meteorite fall, you know, because it's been kept pretty clean, as far as we know, that once we get into the inside of it, we may be able to find - you know, what we find inside is more likely to be from Mars than from the Earth.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's go to the phones. Dale in Denver. Hi, Dale.</s>DALE: Yes. I'd just like to make a comment that - I mean, ever since I first heard of these meteorites that supposedly come from Mars they found on Earth, I've been incredibly skeptical. You know, beyond an asteroid, you know, a large meteorite slamming into Mars and knocking debris up, and then having that stuff make it all the way to Earth are incredibly astronomical. Until we can actually get something from Mars and compare it to these meteorites, you know, I think it's a little farfetched making the claim that we're actually examining bits of Mars.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. Thank...</s>DALE: We have no proof of that.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, let me get a reaction, Dale. Thanks for that comment.</s>CHRIS HERD: Sure. I can definitely address that. And there was a really seminal series of studies that were done in the early 1980s on a particular Martian meteorite - a particular meteorite that belonged to this group that was found in the Antarctic. Prior to that - prior to the mid-1970s, early '80s, these meteorites were kind of lumped into a group on their own. We didn't really know where they came from. We just knew that they looked different front other meteorites.</s>CHRIS HERD: In the - in 1976, we had the Viking landers, and the Viking landers had instruments onboard that could measure the composition of the Martian atmosphere, and they did that quite well. And in the early 1980s, this one meteorite was investigated and found to contain trapped gas inside of it. When that gas was analyzed, it was shown to be a match to what the Viking landers found in the Martian atmosphere. And further to that, it's been shown that the Martian atmosphere composition is unique in the solar system. There's no other planet or object or moon that has quite the same composition of atmosphere. So finding this trapped gas in the meteorite is a fingerprint that tells us that it comes from Mars.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What can you learn from this meteorite or other meteorites that land in Morocco or other places apart from what you can learn from the Antarctic ones that have already been discovered for many years?</s>CHRIS HERD: Well, each one, they're all quite similar in some ways. They're all igneous rocks - that is rocks that started their lives as a magma somewhere in the interior of Mars and came up and erupted near the surface. But they all have slight differences to them, and there's - some of them are quite subtle. Some of them are even, you know, more subtle than what you see just by slicing it open and looking at the texture. And so these are the types of advance studies that we do to try to figure out what this new meteorite can tell us that we haven't found in other ones. Every single one tells us another piece of the puzzle of Mars geology as a whole.</s>CHRIS HERD: One of the things that we can do is to actually peer back through the thing - the magma crystallizing into this rock. We can peer back and say something about the magma itself and the interior of Mars, that part of Mars that it came from. So in some ways, we can almost probe right into the inside of Mars through these kinds of studies.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now, Dale is very - from Colorado is very skeptical about - I mean, how could a meteorite, a piece of Mars, get here?</s>CHRIS HERD: Well, he was right that, you know, that the ideas that some large objects, some other meteorite slammed into Mars and launched rocks off the surface. Mars is a smaller planet than the Earth. It has lower gravity, about one-third the gravity of the Earth. And it has been shown through a modeling now that you can actually launch rocks off the surface of Mars. You don't even need a very large object hitting Mars in order to do it. The object - the minimum that you need is something like - something that would hit Mars and make a crater about three kilometers across, which, you know, sounds kind of large, but there's lots of craters that size or larger on Mars. You can get a rock sitting near the surface, accelerate it, you know, fast enough to leave Mars' gravity.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And maybe it could be floating around in the solar system for thousands of years until...</s>CHRIS HERD: Thousands, or millions, at least.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Or millions. So something happens to nudge it in this direction, or it gets here?</s>CHRIS HERD: Or just - yeah. It just happens across our orbit. And, in fact, you know, the - I mean, the point about it - this is that because we keep getting these - this is now the fifth fall of a Martian meteorite, plus we found a whole bunch of other ones, some other - 50-some other meteorites all over the world that have fallen in, you know, prehistoric times. We know that there's debris out there, Martian debris sort of floating around in the solar system, and it keeps landing on us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So there could be a lot more stuff out there in the desert that...</s>CHRIS HERD: Oh, almost certainly. Yes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And are you going to be looking for more, or are people - is there a competition to own this?</s>CHRIS HERD: Oh, there's a - I'm sure there is.</s>CHRIS HERD: There's always a competition. I'm sure there are groups out there looking right now. You know, the economy that exists around these things really drives people to, of course, go and look for more all the time.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What did you pay for this, if I might ask?</s>CHRIS HERD: We paid $300 per gram.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how many grams do you have?</s>CHRIS HERD: 58.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm doing a quick - six...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...sixty times - it's $18,000, something like that?</s>CHRIS HERD: Something like that, yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Something like that. Sounds pretty cheap to me, for something that comes from Mars.</s>CHRIS HERD: It actually is on the low-end. I have to say it's on the low-end of what Martian and lunar meteorites tend to go for. They tend to be several hundred dollars per gram, on up.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so, when do you - when can we see this? Will it be out exhibited, or can we...</s>CHRIS HERD: Well, there are a number of - well, if any of your listeners get up to Edmonton in the next few years, we hope to have, you know, part of our piece that we purchased on display. But there are other groups making efforts to - other collections, meteorite collections purchasing other pieces. And the ones that are - I know for sure Arizona State and New Mexico. So hopefully they have plans to show us some specimens, as well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And we have some photos on our website of this meteorite and other - for other raiders of the lost meteorites.</s>CHRIS HERD: Yeah. That's right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Do you feel like Indiana Jones sometimes?</s>CHRIS HERD: Sometimes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, thank you very much. And we'll wait to see the publication of what you found there, the...</s>CHRIS HERD: Oh, yes. It's just the beginning right now.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. Chris Herd is an associate professor and meteorite expert at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Thank you for joining us today.</s>CHRIS HERD: You're very welcome. My pleasure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR.

In his book Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Oxford University clinical psychologist Mark Williams talks about the brain and body benefits of mindfulness meditation, a cognitive behavioral therapy that can be as effective as drugs at staving off recurring bouts of depression.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: Up next, mindfulness. Ever find yourself going through day stuck in autopilot mode, waking up at 7:15, wolfing down your usual hot cereal, really, without really tasting it, while you read the paper, your emails, your Facebook feed.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Then it's off to work, sitting in traffic on the bus or train, consumed by thoughts of that electric bill - oh, I forgot to pay that; the birthday call you have to make; that confrontation you want to avoid at work today; or what you're cooking for dinner tonight. Any of this sound familiar? Would you like, instead, to turn off those stressful thoughts of the day and just concentrate on what's going on around you right now? Relax, enjoy the moment and worry about that stuff later.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That's what my next guest advises, what he calls mindfulness based cognitive therapy, or mindfulness meditation, a practice, he says, can sometimes be as effective as drugs and staving off recurring bouts of depression. What's the science behind meditation therapy and what are the connections between body and brain? Mark Williams is here to explain and he's actually going to guide us through a mini meditation session. We wouldn't want you to do this while you're driving so a little bit later we're going to do a little meditation and maybe you'll pull off the road or listen to it later on the podcast.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mark Williams is the author of "Mindfulness: An Eight-week Plan For Finding Peace in a Frantic World." He's also professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford in England. He joins us from BBC Radio (unintelligible) in South Hampton, England. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Hi. Thank you very much indeed.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you explain – is there a nutshell you can explain what mindfulness is?</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Well, mindfulness is a form of awareness, really, so we're all aware sometimes that just as you're wonderful description of getting up in the morning and as you were driving to work with all these things going through your head, we also know that sometimes we can naturally switch that off sometimes if we take the time to take a walk with a youngster, you know, three or four-year-old, and they're going very slowly along the road and they're looking at things.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And sometimes you just have this capacity to slow down at their pace to see what they're seeing as if through their eyes and to see little tiny details of life as if for the first time. So we know rushing around, but we also know how to slow down sometimes. It's just that slowing down is actually very difficult to do.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, especially in this age. Our number is 1-800-989-8255. You can call us to talk about mindfulness. Maybe you practice it yourself. You can go to our Twitter, tweet us at scifri. Is this an especially challenging time with all the distractions from our cell phones and tablets and things like that?</s>MARK WILLIAMS: There's no doubt that we have always lots of new challenges. Now, whether cell phones and emails and stuff, which, of course, most of us find get us down from time to time, whether that's something which is a passing phase in terms of perhaps the new generation coming up will learn how to cope with that better than we who've been around a while without it and then find it very overwhelming.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: But certainly the 24 hour, seven days a week connectivity, as my colleague John (unintelligible) UMass Medical Center has pointed out, that sense of connectivity means that we have to take special measures to know how to slow down and how to take a brain break, if you like.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. We're going to talk about those special methods for slowing down and taking a brain break. We're going to try and take one right here on SCIENCE FRIDAY, after the break when we come back and have Mark Williams give us a little demonstration of how to practice mindfulness. Our number is 1-800 - this is something, Michael - 1-800-989-8255. 1-800-989-8255 is our number.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Also, you can tweet us at scifri, @S-C-I-F-R-I, and we'll try a little mindfulness during the break. Stay with us. We'll be right back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking with Mark Williams, author of "Mindfulness: An Eight-week Plan For Finding Peace in a Frantic World." Our number is 1-800-989-8255. You can tweet us or on Facebook, go to our Facebook site at scifri and tell us, do you meditate, why you do it, what do you get out of it. You can tweet us or leave us a little note there in our SCIENCE FRIDAY Facebook page.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mark, who is this book for? Is it for people who suffer bouts of depression? Is it for people who - is it for everyone? Is it to teach you how to focus on what you want to focus on instead of all those other things?</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Absolutely. If you start with that last question, most of us find that our attention is often hijacked by our current concerns so our attention just wanders all over the place and it's very difficult to focus. So one of the first things you learn in mindfulness meditation is how to just settle the mind, how to focus, not to clear the mind. So it's not the idea that you try to switch off all these thoughts going through, but that you see them passing through the mind like clouds in the sky.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And that already gives you a greater sense of balance and control in your life. And the reason why it's relevant for everybody and not just people who get depressed is because both getting caught up in the constant spin of rushing around in a frantic world needs some addressing for many, many of us, most of us indeed. But also, we find that exactly the same strategies, the same skills we find in our research actually reduces the risk of depression.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: So those how would get depressed in life many times, especially those with three or more previous depressions, it halves the risk of depression coming back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So this is actually measurable, the effects.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Indeed, indeed. So there would be now six trials around the world starting off with the trial at (unintelligible) in Toronto and (unintelligible) in Cambridge and I did now 10 years ago. And that was the first trial to establish that eight weeks of this training could reduce depression. And we measured it both with questionnaires, but also with very careful interviews based on the American Psychiatric Association's interview to diagnose depression. And the interviewers were blind.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: They didn't know whether people had had the meditation or not, so they couldn't, as it were, make up the results to try to make the results better. And they found this really striking reduction in the risk of future depression.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mark, can you give us a little taste of the sort of meditation you teach in the book, a little session here?</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Yeah. So here's a two or three minute meditation that people can try out. As you quite rightly said, it's not wise to do it if you're in your car and you're doing lots of things that need your full attention. But if you can, you can become aware of your posture and just if you're in a sitting position, you might want to just sit up straight so you've got a straight spine. But not stiff, not sort of like a sergeant major.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Just with the back straight, the head balanced, the shoulders can be quite relaxed and dropped. And even this sense of changing your posture already signals your intentions to step out of autopilot. And then, there are three steps now that people can try for themselves. The first is just to notice what's going on in mind and body right now. So in the silence that comes up, just notice any thoughts that are around, any feelings or emotions there may be, any body sensations that are around.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Notice any tendency we have to want to change what we discover and seeing if it's possible to simply allow it to be just as it is, just as it already is. And then, moving to step two of this short meditation, to gather your attention, to let all that fade into the background, gather the attention and place it lightly on the breath. So just noticing the sensations of the breath moving in and out of the body, and it may be convenient just to focus on the sensations down in the abdomen.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: You can put your hand on the abdomen, if you like, and just notice the rising of the in breath and the falling away of the out breath. And just paying attention as best you can to that sensation of breathing in and breathing out. Not trying to control the breath in any way, simply allowing the breath to breathe you. And if the mind wanders at all, just notice where it went, and very gently escort it back to the breath, the sensations of in or out breath.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And now, taking step three of this short meditation and expanding attention to the body as a whole, sitting here. So simply noticing the whole body, all the sensations in the body from the surface of the skin and right deep inside as if the whole body was breathing now and allowing the sensations in the body to be just as you find them. A sense of coming home to the body. And then, when you're ready, beginning to move fingers and toes, opening your eyes, if they've been closed, and taking in wherever you are, all of your surroundings, and allowing thee meditation to pass and coming back to this moment.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: So that's it, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That's nice. Is this something that you have distilled from other meditation techniques or something you've...</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Yeah. I mean, right in the beginning of our research in the beginning of the 1990s, we were very, very helped by a tremendous breakthrough that had been made by John Cabbot Zen(ph) and his colleagues at the UMass medical center in Wooster. And he developed mindfulness based stress reduction for chronic pain and people whose illness was caused by stress or who were stressed by their illness. And he developed an eight-week program in which he'd taken some of the essence of these centuries old - I like to call them spiritual exercises.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: They exist in all religions and they exist in secular context as well. And he'd put them in the heart of a general hospital for chronic pain and he generously allowed us to use that as a format for applying mindfulness to our problem that we had as psychologists, which was the gradual realization that had come to the fore at the last part of the 20th century that depression was getting more and more common and recurrence was very, very in the minds of clinicians, because people were getting depressed earlier in life so they're having a whole lifetime where they were at risk of a new episode of depression.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: So the emphasis changed from treating depression to preventing depression. And so we distilled from John Cabbot(ph) in using many of the meditations he used. And the three minute breathing space, which is what we've just been through, was a distillation even further down so that people could have a mediation which was very portable, that they could take around and do it any time of day whenever they felt they needed to gather themselves.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And you notice the very first step of the breathing space is not actually going to the breath at all, but just checking in with what's the weather pattern like in your mind and body, a sense of - what is this? What's arising from me right now? And that itself is a huge gesture of openness to yourself, of friendliness towards yourself, and for people who are depressed or frantic all the time, we're not very much friends with ourselves. You know, we tend to beat ourselves up all the time.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to the phones and see some questions we've gotten. Robin in Brumfield, Colorado. Hi, Robin.</s>ROBIN: Hi.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi, there.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Hi, Robin.</s>ROBIN: Am I on the air?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You certainly are. I know you probably put yourself very much at ease at that mindful session we just had.</s>ROBIN: Well, I can tell you firsthand that mindfulness works and it absolutely changed my life. I am so excited that you're running this program. Thank you for running this program to make people more aware of mindfulness. I am in the process through my nonprofit organization to launch a program for children, teaching children mindfulness in the schools. And it's such an amazing thing for kids. And I'm doing all this research to that, how it's helping children with impulse control and more focused and assured in their ability to just help them to redirect their thoughts and be more clear.</s>ROBIN: And when you clear away the stuff, it's a lot easier for them to do that and take in and retain information.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Absolutely.</s>ROBIN: So it's really exciting.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Yeah. Thanks, Robin. Absolutely. We've got some schools program over in the United Kingdom as well and it's extraordinary how children get it so quickly. Do you find that?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Oh, we lost her. I think she...</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Okay.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...she...</s>MARK WILLIAMS: She's gone.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But you have experience with kids and...</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Yeah. We mostly, in our Oxford mindfulness center deal with adults, 18 to - towards older age adults, but we support various other groups that are looking at children, and we also do, even earlier than that, for mindfulness-based childbirth and parenting to prepare for a new baby based on the Californian work going on by Nancy Bardacke, a nurse midwife in California who's developed childbirth and parenting programs with Mindfulness.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: But the school's work that Robin has alluded to: Goldie Hawn's doing a lot of work with her Mind Up program in the States. That's also come into the U.K. And I mean, the whole idea of brain breaks, for example, is from the Goldie Hawn Mind Up program, where she just - is very much a fact about the way in which kids are able to take these short breaks, and it really helps them focus their attention.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Talking with Mark Williams, author of "Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan For Finding Peace In A Frantic World." Can people get frustrated trying to do this correctly during your instructions?</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Oh, absolutely. And in fact, the frustration is a real good opportunity during meditation to notice all the adverse sort of little reactions that happened, like I noticed you say to doing it correctly. And there's a great emphasis in our world - isn't there - on making sure you do things well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Exactly.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And, you know, we don't ever heed that wise advice that says if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. And I think in one sense, with meditation, the sense of having the intention to be - to give yourself a little break, to be with yourself as you are, that's already enormous. It's an enormous act of generosity towards yourself. And then, you can watch all these thoughts coming up like, am I doing it correctly, or maybe I've done it wrong. I'm not trying hard enough.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Oh, I went to sleep. Oh, my mind wandered. And that's exactly the stuff of meditation. Meditation is not sitting blissfully at the top of the mountain with a mind clear. It's actually noticing all the stuff that we don't normally notice going through our mind, and then learning to relate differently to all of the stuff. We notice that sense of failure. We notice the sense of frustration, and we notice the sense of I must always get things right or it means I'm a bad person.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: We notice that and then gradually, sort of, step back a little, not in an avoidant way, but see it like standing behind the waterfall, seeing its force but not getting dragged down by it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: In your book, "Mindfulness," one of the things you recommend is being more spontaneous. Tell us about that.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Well, one of the things we ask people to do, week by week, is not just to meditate, but do things in their daily life which just, sort of, shake up the habits a bit. So, for example, we suggest just sitting in a different sort of different chair at meetings, occasionally and - or at home, just to get that different perspective. Or maybe doing, sort of, going to a movie theater without planning - with a friend - perhaps without planning beforehand what you're going to see. So you just turn up at seven in the evening or eight in the evening, and you just watch what's there, just choose when you get there.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Now, most movie theaters often have a big choice, so it's not a disaster to do that. But there is a, sort of, sense of spontaneity, a sense of reclaiming the life that you've probably, you know, lost when you moved out - teenager or early 20s. Many of us are very cautious. We want to plan our times to the last second, and that means not going to see anything that we didn't plan beforehand and know what it was. So that sense of just shaking up and being a little more spontaneous can help reclaim your life a bit more.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But if I - the idea of living for the moment, I mean being - actually being in the moment that you're living in, a very interesting and worthwhile pursuit. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. Talking with Mark Williams, author of "Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan For Finding Peace In A Frantic World." To follow up on that thought, just to be able to sit there and say this is the moment, and I'm going to enjoy this moment because I can't control what's going to happen in the future...</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Exactly.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...but I can control what's happening right now.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: That's right. That the only time that that we really make our choices is in the present moment. And it doesn't mean that you have to suspend all your planning, sometimes you have to plan for the future. But most of us are pre-living the future. We're not really planning the future now. We're just pre-living it and all the worries and things that might go wrong. And we're reliving the past. So, you know, sometimes, we have to remember what happened in the past.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And - but can we remember knowing that we're remembering? Can we plan knowing that we're planning? And that brings the remembering and the planning into the present moment. And the science, the neuroscience is really interesting. The brain changes when you do that in really interesting ways.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: In what way - can you describe that for us?</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Well, there are a number of things. One of the things that my colleague David Creswell, in UCLA, found. When he put people in a brain scanner, and he took people who are either high or low on a mindfulness scale. So if you're low on that scale, it means that you're rushing around all the time. You don't taste your food. You know, you're always listening only with one ear to what people are saying because your other ear is off doing something else - that sort of sense of rushing all the time.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: So he had people that varied on that dimension, that mindfulness dimension, and he put them in a scanner and looked to see what their brains were doing. And what he found was a pretty characteristic feature of people who are always rushing around, is the part of the brain that is usually in fight-and-flight mode - is called the amygdala - was actually in a sort of chronic state of over activity. So when we rush around, we may believe that we're rushing around to get things done or that we're being very creative. But that is - it's an illusion of productivity. And as far as the brain is concerned, it's like as if we're running away from a tiger.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. So...</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And that's really interesting. Now, when he puts them people through an eight-week course, you'll find that the amygdala actually settles down. It normalizes. It switches off. It - instead of running around as it were away from a tiger all the time, it addresses the reality of the situation rather than the constants or looking for threats. So that's one very important part of neuroscience. Another is the work by Sara Lazar at Mass. General. She's found that people that meditate for over a long period, actually have structural changes in their brain.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: In very interesting parts of the brain, that are about attention, attention control and also part of the brain called the insula, which others have found even short-term changes. And we know the insula is active in empathy. And it also switches on for a lot of other things as well. But one of the critical factors here is it seems to be active in when we have an emphatic response, like feeling the feelings of other people, the insula switches on. That is changed by mindfulness meditation.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: And what also other people have found - is this Toronto group, Norman Farb and his colleagues in Toronto, found that this is sort of a moving - an uncoupling of our ability to appreciate the body with thoughts about things...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right...</s>MARK WILLIAMS: ...and we switch off the stories.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: If you want to read the rest of what's going on, read Mark Williams' book "Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan For Finding Peace In A Frantic World." Thank you for joining us.</s>MARK WILLIAMS: Thank you, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're going to have this up on our Facebook page as a SciFri snack, the whole meditation that we went through will be up there at the end of the show. So if you missed it, you can check it out then. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

At a summit in Vietnam, President Trump said he believed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's claim that he had nothing to do with the 2017 death of American college student Otto Warmbier.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: And one more note about the summit. At his press conference in Hanoi, President Trump was asked about the death of an American college student named Otto Warmbier.</s>DAVID NAKAMURA: Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. You have a personal relationship, and I believe Vice President Pence does, with the family of Otto Warmbier.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I do.</s>DAVID NAKAMURA: I'm wondering...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Otto Warmbier was the American college student detained by North Korea in 2016 and convicted of trying to steal a propaganda poster. Sometime while in detention, he fell into a coma. He never regained consciousness.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: It's not known for certain what happened to Warmbier while he was imprisoned. The North Koreans say that Warmbier contracted botulism. The Warmbier family says he was tortured. He was released to the U.S. in June of 2017, and he died a week later.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Which brings us back to the press conference today - Washington Post reporter David Nakamura asked Trump if he had spoken to Kim Jong Un about what happened.</s>DAVID NAKAMURA: Have you, in Singapore or here, confronted Kim Jong Un about Otto Warmbier's death...</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have.</s>DAVID NAKAMURA: ...Asked him to take responsibility? And what did he say to you? And why do you call him your friend?</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have. And I have talked about it, and I really don't think it was in his interest at all. I know the Warmbier family very well. I think they're an incredible family. What happened is...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: President Trump said whatever happened to Warmbier was, quote, "horrible," but concluded Kim Jong Un was not responsible.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I really don't believe that he was - he - I don't believe he knew about it.</s>DAVID NAKAMURA: Did he say - did he tell you that he did not - did Kim Jong Un tell you...</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He felt badly about it.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: And Trump added, he believed it when Kim said he didn't know anything about it.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You know, you got a lot of people - big country, lot of people. And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto - some really, really bad things.</s>DAVID NAKAMURA: Why are you...</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But he tells me that he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word. Yes, ma'am. Go ahead, please.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The president's comments today drew comparisons to his accepting the denials of Vladimir Putin on Russian interference in the 2016 election and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia on the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Both Democrats and Republicans criticized Trump today, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, speaking here from the capital.</s>KEVIN MCCARTHY: I do not see the leader of North Korea as somebody who's a friend. We know what happened to Otto. We know what this country has done. I support the president in his effort to denuclearize them, but I do not have a misbelief of who this leader is.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The family of Otto Warmbier has not responded.

In Wednesday's testimony, President Trump's personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said Trump had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release emails that would damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: And that is where we will pick up with NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas, who has been following every twist and turn of this testimony today. Hey, Ryan.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So Michael Cohen, as we just heard, came into this hearing a convicted and confessed liar. How did he play that today, and how did the lawmakers questioning him play that?</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Well, this really was the big ole elephant in the room. Cohen has pleaded guilty to several federal crimes, including tax evasion, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. He is going to federal prison, as you said. That is not the ideal resume for a congressional witness.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Democrats tried to get out in front of this issue. Chairman Elijah Cummings addressed it in his opening statement. He acknowledged that Cohen lied in the past, but he said that it was critical to hear from him today so that lawmakers and the American public can make their own assessment of what he has to say.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Republicans came at this from the other side. The top Republican on the committee, Jim Jordan, ripped into Cohen. This is a tactic that was repeated by almost every Republican lawmaker. Jordan ticked off Cohen's federal crimes. He quoted federal prosecutors, what they had written in court papers about Cohen - that he was motivated by greed, that he used his power to deceptive ends, that he was a fraudster, a cheat, a convict. Cohen himself - he acknowledged his credibility issues. He said that's why he brought documents to back up some of his allegations against Trump.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Right. He brought letters and introduced financial statements and a check, which leads me to ask you this. For all of the hoopla surrounding the testimony today, what struck you as the most significant things we actually learned?</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Well, Cohen spent around a decade working for Trump, so he has a lot of material to pull from. We can't get at all of it. He accused the president of being a racist. He accused him of shady business practices. But one big headline that Cohen made involves WikiLeaks. He says he was in Trump's office in July of 2016 during the campaign when Roger Stone called and Trump put him on speakerphone, Trump being - Stone being a longtime informal adviser to Trump.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Cohen says that Stone told them he had just spoken with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and he said there would be a big email dump in the coming days that would damage Hillary Clinton. So he's saying that Trump knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks emails were coming.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: There's one other thing that stood out. Cohen says that Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow and the lawyer for Jared Kushner reviewed his first statement to Congress. Cohen says Trump's lawyers edited that statement so that he lied about how late into the campaign negotiations over this Trump Tower project in Moscow went. The goal on that was to protect Trump. Cohen has admitted that that statement - that original statement to Congress was a lie, and he's going to serve prison time over it.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: OK, so the new thing here - Cohen had admitted he lied about that. What he added today was that it was Trump's lawyers who edited his statement...</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Right.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: ...He says. OK, the other thing that struck me was the discussion about hush money payments made to two women who have alleged that they had affairs with Trump. And we got some new details on that.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Right. Cohen brought documents to back up these allegations. We now have a photo of a personal check from Donald Trump with Donald's squiggly signature on it. It's a check for $35,000 to reimburse Cohen for the hush money payment that he made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. The big twist here, though, is that the check is from August of 2017, so that's a check from once Donald Trump was president of the United States.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Signed while he was living in the White House.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Right. Trump has long insisted that he never had an affair with Daniels. He's denied that the payment had anything to do with the campaign. Cohen and federal prosecutors in New York as well say this payment was explicitly to influence the campaign and keep Daniels silent.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: OK, so where does this leave us? Cohen, as we've said, is headed to prison, but we expect that Congress will keep pulling at the threads that he introduced today.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Right. Cohen has one more day of testimony on the Hill, actually. That's behind closed doors with the House Intelligence Committee. He's promised to cooperate with federal prosecutors if he's asked. There are several ongoing investigations into Trump-related matters, including the Presidential Inaugural Committee. Cohen reports to federal prison in May to serve his three-year sentence.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: But as you said, this does not end with Michael Cohen. Again and again today, Democrats asked him to provide the names of people who were witnesses or could corroborate his testimony. He did that. So we may very well see those people called up to Capitol Hill to testify about what they know.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas - thank you, Ryan.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Thank you.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Siegfried Hecker, author of a Stanford University report on North Korea's nuclear program, about U.S.-North Korea relations.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: We're going to turn now to Siegfried Hecker. He is a nuclear scientist who has been tracking the nuclear program in North Korea for decades. He's seen the country's nuclear facilities firsthand. He's now an emeritus professor at Stanford University, and he sees some promising signs in relations between the U.S. and North Korea. Welcome.</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: It's my pleasure, Ari.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: You and some of your colleagues at Stanford have made this elaborate chart showing where in the U.S.-North Korea relationship there is red - danger, chance of war - to green, where things look a little more promising. You've been tracking lots of different aspects of this nuclear relationship. Explain, just in the last couple years, what has changed?</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: By the end of the Obama administration in 2016, almost all of our indicators had turned red. And in 2017, the first year of the Trump administration, they turned deep red. And...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: That was when President Trump was saying little rocket man and things like that.</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: Precisely. Not only was the political situation such that it was red and great tension, but also, North Korea made significant progress in its nuclear and its missile program. And now we just released the 2018 chart. Believe it or not, what happened is quite a few of the indicators turned less red, and some of them turned green.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: There are about a dozen indicators here, ranging from diplomacy to plutonium enrichment to missiles, sanctions. Tell us where you see things improving.</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: Yeah. So since I'm a nuclear guy, we don't just talk about nuclearizing or denuclearizing. I like to stress the three components of a nuclear arsenal - the bomb fuel, the - what we call weaponization - that's design, build and test - and then the delivery - the missiles. So as we track those - for example, on the bomb fuel, North Korea has continued to make highly enriched uranium and plutonium. So that's still deep red.</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: However, on the weaponization, it's cranked back one. And the reason is that in 2017, they were making enormous progress, including what was likely a test of a hydrogen bomb. And then they ended testing. And if you end testing, as far as I'm concerned, you don't have a militarily useful hydrogen bomb.</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: And then in the missiles, likewise, they were making significant progress on ICBMs. Actually, they tested some submarine-launched missiles. They ended missile testing. And therefore, that's also rolled back. In the diplomacy world, there were many things that had turned quite dark green because the Singapore summit, North-South relations.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: In your opinion, how much of this positive movement has to do with President Trump himself?</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: Well, that's very difficult to tell. The one thing that I would say - the single most important thing to change the whole tenor of the relationship and the threat was the Singapore summit. The Singapore summit was exactly the right thing to do to actually lower the tensions between North Korea and the United States. Then, that led to a lot of moves from North Korea, such as the end of missile testing and of nuclear testing. And so, you know, whether we like it or not, we have to admit that those were steps in the right direction.</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: The question was, you know, can one actually follow up? That was difficult in 2018. You know, I have reason to believe that we can be more optimistic in 2019.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: What about the argument that the U.S. is giving North Korea a real public relations win - a prominent meeting with the president of the United States before the entire world - without getting a concrete concession from North Korea in return for that?</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: They already have a concession. That concession is an end of testing. And that is significant. In terms of giving Kim Jong Un, you know, that spotlight in the world, if it makes him a more responsible leader, if it makes North Korea to allow in some sunshine and some cooperation, my view is that's actually a step in the right direction.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Siegfried Hecker is a senior fellow emeritus at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, speaking with us today on Skype. Thanks so much for your time.</s>SIEGFRIED HECKER: You are very much welcome, Ari.

In Wednesday's testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen said he committed crimes to protect Trump.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: For years, Donald Trump's onetime personal fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen says he threatened, intimidated and lied to shield his boss, including in sworn testimony to Congress.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Do you swear or affirm that the testimony that you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Congressman Elijah Cummings as he swore Cohen in today in front of TV cameras and throngs of reporters. Cohen told the sprawling House oversight committee his lying days are over.</s>MICHAEL COHEN: The last time I appeared before Congress, I came to protect Mr. Trump. Today, I am here to tell the truth about Mr. Trump.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: During hours of testimony, Michael Cohen repeatedly apologized for his crimes and moral transgressions.</s>MICHAEL COHEN: I am not a perfect man. I have done things I am not proud of. And I will live with the consequences of my actions for the rest of my life.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: He said those crimes were committed to enable and promote Donald Trump - actions that will soon land Cohen in prison.</s>MICHAEL COHEN: Last fall, I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of and in coordination with Individual No. 1. For the record, Individual No. 1 is President Donald J. Trump.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Included in that slate of felony convictions - a payment to silence an adult film actress who says she had an affair with Trump, a payment Cohen says that was directed by the president.</s>MICHAEL COHEN: The president of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The Trump campaign's contacts with Russia also took center stage today. Cohen told the panel that Trump did not expressly instruct him to lie about negotiations with Russians over the Trump Tower in Moscow, but Cohen says Trump's directive to do so was still very clear.</s>MICHAEL COHEN: In conversations we had during the campaign - at the same time, I was actively negotiating in Russia for him. He would look me in the eye and tell me there's no Russian business and then go on to lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Another question hanging over this hearing and the Mueller investigation at large - did the Trump campaign coordinate with Russia during the 2016 election?</s>MICHAEL COHEN: Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. And I want to be clear. But I have my suspicions.

President Trump is holding his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. There are big questions on the table — like whether or not the two can agree on what it means to denuclearize.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump is underway. The two met Wednesday in Vietnam. While Trump and Kim were publicly positive about potential outcomes for the talks, it is still not clear whether their countries can close the gap on their differences. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe is traveling with the president and has more.</s>AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: If President Trump has any doubts about his negotiations with Kim Jong Un, he didn't let it show when the two met in Vietnam.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think that your country has tremendous economic potential - unbelievable, unlimited. And I think that you will have a tremendous future with your country - a great leader.</s>AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: And Kim also had compliments, praising Trump for bringing them together. Through his interpreter, he said...</s>SUPREME LEADER KIM JONG UN: (Through interpreter) And I truly believe that this successful and great meeting that we are having today is thanks to the courageous decision - political decision...</s>AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: After that comment, Trump and Kim spoke one-on-one privately for about 30 minutes. The two were later joined by members of their delegations for what the White House called a social dinner. While Wednesday's meetings were filled with happy talk, on Thursday, the leaders will have to get down to business.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're going to have a very busy day tomorrow. And we'll probably have a pretty quick dinner. And a lot of things are going to be solved, I hope.</s>AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Trump and Kim are expected to sign some sort of joint agreement. The question is, what can the U.S. offer North Korea to convince them to give up their weapons without first easing sanctions? Fred Fleitz, a former chief of staff to national security adviser John Bolton, said providing sanctions relief without full denuclearization has been a red line for the White House. Fleitz says it's possible the U.S. might be willing to open a liaison office in North Korea that could eventually lead to a formal diplomatic relationship.</s>FRED FLEITZ: It's such a minor concession. But for the North Koreans, it might be important, and it might be a face-saving way to get them to allow inspectors to go into their nuclear test site.</s>AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: There's also talk of a possible peace declaration between the U.S. and North Korea since the Korean War isn't officially over. In exchange, North Korea may agree to give up its main nuclear weapons center, Yongbyon. Whatever deal is reached, experts say follow-through will be critical, especially after the first summit failed to offer much in the way of concrete results. Trump has resisted that criticism, however.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I felt it was very successful. And some people would like to see it go quicker. I'm satisfied. You're satisfied. We want to be happy with what we're doing.</s>AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: But as Trump tries to nail down a deal with North Korea, back home, the congressional testimony of his former lawyer Michael Cohen threatens to overshadow the summit. With Trump scheduled to hold a press conference tomorrow, it's almost certain that North Korea will not be the only topic of discussion. Ayesha Rascoe, NPR News, Hanoi.

Michael Cohen will testify Wednesday in his first public House Oversight Committee hearing. He'll face tough questions from President Trump's allies and some Democrats who have called for impeachment.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: All right. Well, as we just heard Tim mention, Michael Cohen's testimony tomorrow before the House Oversight and Reform Committee will be public and will likely be dramatic. Cohen will face questions from some of the president's most ardent defenders and also critics who've already called for his impeachment. The big headlines will come out of whatever Cohen reveals about Trump. And as NPR's Kelsey Snell reports, the focus also will be on Cohen's own credibility.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Even on the highest drama days, congressional hearings all pretty much start in the same way. The chairman - in this case, Democrat Elijah Cummings - picks up the gavel.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: The committee will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized...</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Cummings will repeat that ritual call to order tomorrow, moments before he ask President Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen if he swears to tell the truth and nothing but the truth this time in a marathon of questioning that could last all day. Cummings says this is a high-stakes hearing that people will remember for 200 years, and he has a responsibility to the public.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: We've been flooded with so much information that is inaccurate that the main thing that I'm trying to do is get to the truth and expose it to the American people.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: It won't be easy to keep that serious tone intact. There are some rules for what members can ask, but Cohen is expected to face salacious questions about things like hush money payments made on Trump's behalf to women, including a Playboy model and a porn star. And there will be questions about whether Trump himself ordered Cohen to lie the last time he spoke to Congress. Cummings says Cohen is a man who now has a chance to tell the truth. But Republicans like Jim Jordan of Ohio are questioning his motives.</s>JIM JORDAN: A guy who is going to prison in two months for lying to Congress - you got to be kidding me. So this is a complete circus. Everyone sees it for what it is. Michael Cohen can't be trusted.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: It's something Republicans will repeat over and over. Jordan and Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows, another Trump ally, say Cohen is simply a liar. Democrats have not found a clear way to combat that. They realize it's a problem. And Congressman Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, says the goal now is to make sure Cohen corroborates other evidence of wrongdoing in Trump's inner circle.</s>JAMIE RASKIN: So it's not really a question of making him a believable witness. It's a question of getting from him all the information we can in order to supplement the other information we have about what's been going on in the administration.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Cummings says he does have a plan to make that happen. But a hearing of this magnitude can get out of hand quickly, and not every Democrat is expected to focus the same way. Some of the committee's newest progressive members, like Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will also weigh in. All three have largely focused on other policy areas so far. This will be their first hearing on the Trump investigation, and it's unclear what they'll ask. Ocasio-Cortez made clear in her early days on the committee that she's not interested in holding back. At the time, she said it isn't the committee's job to, quote, "paper over" any presidential misdeeds. Instead, she says it's her job to get to the truth.</s>ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: We are not supposed to be here to protect the president, and we're not supposed to be here to kind of have an agenda against him.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: The marathon hearing will put every strategy on display, leaving it up to viewers to decide who they believe. Kelsey Snell, NPR News, the Capitol.

In rural northern Nevada, a local Sheriff is accused of sexual harassment and assault. But he keeps getting elected. It's prompting his accusers and critics to ask what it will take to unseat him.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Storey County in northern Nevada has made a name for itself as home to a major industrial park. It's drawn the likes of Tesla and Google. Recently, though, the county, home to about 4,000, has gained notoriety for a different reason. Its top law enforcement official, the sheriff, faces a growing list of serious allegations against him, including rape. His accusers are asking what it will take to unseat him.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: From Nevada, NPR's Leila Fadel has our story. And a caution to listeners - her reporting includes details of sexual assault.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: On most days, Melanie Keener is hidden away in a cubicle in the backroom museum of the Virginia City courthouse. It's a far cry from the job she held as the sheriff's chief deputy. That's what happens, she says, when you cross her former boss, Sheriff Gerald Antinoro. She's suing him for sexual harassment.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: According to her lawsuit, on the last night of a law enforcement convention in Ely, Nev., in 2015, she and her boss went to their rooms. Later...</s>MELANIE KEENER: He sent me some very inappropriate text messages.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: She says the texts appeared to be referring to oral sex. Then, on the about five-hour ride home with her boss...</s>MELANIE KEENER: There was just a - this long narrative of his sexual life and to the point where I didn't know what to say. This is my boss, and I was terrified that I would lose my job.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Over the next eight months, she says, the sheriff grew more hostile toward her. While he was away at a convention she said she couldn't go to, she found the courage to report him to the county. It opened an investigation, but she says it felt like she was being punished.</s>MELANIE KEENER: You know I didn't come forward because I was afraid of losing my job. And then I finally came forward, and it was just - it was like the county had no idea what to do.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: While the sheriff kept his position, HR took her badge, her keys, her gun and reassigned her. She went from being the second-most-powerful person in the sheriff's office to inspecting fire extinguishers and making security maps in a hidden corner of the courthouse - this, even after an internal investigation found that the sheriff violated the sexual harassment policy.</s>MELANIE KEENER: You know they call him Teflon because it doesn't matter what he does wrong, he gets away with it.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Police reports, court proceedings, ethics commission hearings, interviews with lawyers and Antinoro's accusers show a whole range of allegations against him from rape, misusing government resources, to using racial slurs.</s>LAURIE: Sheriff's office. This is Laurie (ph).</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Antinoro was first elected to the sheriff's office in Virginia City, a former gold-mining town, in 2010. He denies the allegations.</s>GERALD ANTINORO: The people of county haven't bought into their nonsense, and they keep returning me to office because obviously somebody thinks I'm doing a good job and that I'm a decent guy.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: That's Antinoro. He says every accusation is political because, he says, some people don't like him enforcing the law. Before his arrival in Storey County as a deputy in 2006, he bounced between different law enforcement jobs in Utah and Nevada.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: 2006 was the same year he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman with another sheriff's office employee, according to a police report filed by the alleged victim.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I was home sleeping, and I was awakened by the sound of a police radio.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: The woman met with me at a cafe near Storey County. She asked that we not use her name because she's afraid and ashamed of what happened. She says another sheriff's office employee she knew brought Antinoro to her home. She later told police Antinoro raped her at the direction of the other man.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: To cope, she started drinking. Because of the drinking, she says she lost her job and custody of her daughter.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Just trying to get all the memories to go away - you know, beating myself up because I shouldn't have let it happen.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: She's sober now, but it took years for her to get her life together. And in 2014, she says she gathered the courage to report the alleged assault to the police in Sparks, Nev. Even then, she did it under a pseudonym. But the statute of limitations had run out. Every day, she drives through Storey County to get to work.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And every time I see a Storey County car, I freeze. I feel my blood pressure rising, my pulse racing. I feel sweaty because I think, what if it's one of them?</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Through the Melanie Keener lawsuit, another assault allegation surfaced against Sheriff Antinoro. A woman testified a romantic getaway with the sheriff turned into a gang rape in Lodi, Calif., in 2015. In her deposition, the alleged victim says that Antinoro invited three strangers to the hotel to rape her. She says she never reported the assault because she's, quote, "scared to death."</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: The Nevada attorney general's office spokesperson says her statements were referred to police in Lodi, Calif. A Lodi police spokesperson says they opened an investigation in 2018. They since closed it but won't discuss why to protect the privacy of any potential victim.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: I asked Sheriff Antinoro about the accusations, and he dismisses each one. He points out he's never been prosecuted. The rape in Sparks, Nev...</s>GERALD ANTINORO: It was false then. It's false now. No truth to it whatsoever.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: The orchestrated gang rape...</s>GERALD ANTINORO: That is a complete and utter fabrication.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: The conversation about a sex life with his former chief deputy, Melanie Keener, in the car. He says if it bothered her, she should have said something. As far as the text messages...</s>GERALD ANTINORO: There was no sexual innuendo - never had any interest in her in that manner. It makes me not want to talk to anybody because you can take anything and turn it into sexual connotation.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Everything is either a fabrication or, in the case of things like harassment and racism, people being overly politically correct. He acknowledges he's called white people the N-word but he doesn't see that as racist. So why would so many people make up stories?</s>GERALD ANTINORO: It's a concerted effort by a small group of people to try and remove me from office, plain and simple.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: And what would be the reason behind removing you from office?</s>GERALD ANTINORO: I enforce the rules. I follow the law. I don't give people breaks.</s>LANCE GILMAN: Great story to tell - not true.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: That's Lance Gilman, a real estate developer and one of the people responsible for bringing Tesla and other tech giants to Storey County. He's also the local brothel owner of the Mustang Ranch and a county commissioner. Everyone in town knows about the feud between the local sheriff and the local brothel owner.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: The sheriff says Gilman is conspiring against him because he doesn't rubberstamp permits at the brothel. Gilman says that's a lie. He's suing for defamation. Gilman helped lead a failed recall effort in 2017.</s>LANCE GILMAN: We've used every avenue we know of to say look at this.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Melanie Keener's lawyer wrote to the Nevada attorney general's office demanding an investigation into all the allegations against the sheriff. A statement from the attorney general's office said after hundreds of hours of investigating, the office found, quote, "no criminal conduct within its office's jurisdiction." That lawyer also represents Gilman.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: So Gilman says now he's pinning his hopes on the state's ethics commission. It looks at things like the misuse of government resources and must seek Antinoro's removal from office through the courts if he's found to have willfully violated the ethics of his office three times.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Meanwhile, the woman suing Antinoro for sexual harassment, Melanie Keener, says this isn't about politics. It's about keeping the highest law enforcement authority in Storey County accountable.</s>MELANIE KEENER: To see it, you know, as politics, I just think that that takes away from those that have been victimized by him.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Sheriff Antinoro was elected for the third time last year.</s>LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Leila Fadel, NPR News, Virginia City.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with longtime Chicago political columnist Laura Washington about what makes the city — and its elections — so unique.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The phrase Chicago politics has its own unique connotations. And today is Chicago's mayoral election. A record 14 candidates are competing to run the city. So to talk about what makes this city's brand of politics so distinctive, we're joined now by Laura Washington. She's a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and a resident fellow at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Welcome.</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: Thank you.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: You're a Chicago native. You've covered politics in the city for decades as a journalist. And you worked for the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington - no relation - in the 1980s. So when I use that phrase Chicago politics, what comes to mind for you?</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: Well, when it comes to this mayor's race, it's about rough and tumble politics. Most of our mayors, at least in my lifetime, have been tough, hardball-playing, top-down mayors who consolidate power and money and run the city primarily through the Democratic Party machine. That machine is not what it used to be. But it's still a major player. Harold Washington used to say, Chicago politics ain't beanbag. You've got to come with your game on.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Rough and tumble, come with your game on, consolidate power and money - some people associate Chicago politics with corruption. Do you think that's accurate?</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: What a surprise.</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: Indeed, there's a reason for that. There's been a university study here that says that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the nation when it comes to the number of elected officials who've been convicted and sent to jail. There's a very thin line in Chicago politics between what's legal and what's illegal. And mayors and aldermen and other elected officials often use their power in exchange for campaign contributions, in exchange for political favors. It's sort of a commonly known thing and highly tolerated.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: You also mentioned the Democratic machine. And even in other big cities that are highly democratic, I don't think people talk about the machine in the same way they do in Chicago. So what do you mean by that? And how influential is it today?</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: Well, the machine was always dominated, first by Richard J. Daley and then later by his son, Richard M. Daley - two of the most powerful mayors in this century and the last. It's basically a network of political operatives, precinct captains, city workers who are beholden to the top people in city hall and who do their bidding in exchange for jobs, in exchange for political favors. And so on a typical election day, the machine candidates usually win because they are the ones that have the street power, the street muscle to get folks out and get them to the polls.</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: And back in the good, old days - I don't think this happens so much anymore. You'd see politicians trade gifts, things like chickens and, sometimes, even cash, to get people out to vote. Now things are a little bit more subtle and above board.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: So you've given a really vivid description of what makes Chicago politics Chicago politics. But the next question I have is, why? I mean, why is Chicago so different in these ways?</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: Well, you know, Chicago's a very tribal city. It's very segregated, very diverse but very segregated. And most people in the city live in neighborhoods with people that look just like them. So people tend to vote along ethnic lines. And so for many years, the ethnic groups that always won were white politicians and white voters because they were in domination. Now the city's much more diverse. And, in fact, it's a majority minority city. But people still feel most comfortable voting for and with people of their own.</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: So in a race like this, where you've got 14 candidates and a significant number of them are people of color, you may see a little bit of a different outcome because racial voting is also going to be split up in many different ways.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: That's Laura Washington, Chicago Sun-Times columnist and resident fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Thanks so much.</s>LAURA WASHINGTON: Thank you. I enjoyed it.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and member of the House oversight committee about Michael Cohen's public testimony Wednesday.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Michael Cohen spent a decade at Donald Trump's side as his personal lawyer and fixer. Today, he testified before Congress that his former boss was a racist, a con man and a cheat. This testimony comes just a couple of months before Cohen goes to prison for crimes that include lying to Congress and covering up what Cohen called Trump's dirty deeds. One of those deeds was paying off women who say they slept with Trump. The president denies those affairs.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Today, Cohen produced a check signed by Donald Trump in 2017 after he was in the White House. Cohen said that check was reimbursement for one of those hush money payments.</s>MICHAEL COHEN: The president of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: In another part of the program, we're hearing from a Democrat who questioned Cohen today. And we are joined now by one of the Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.</s>RALPH NORMAN: Well, thank you, Ari.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Everyone went into this hearing with expectations for what would happen and what they would hear.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: What did you hear or see today from Michael Cohen that surprised you?</s>RALPH NORMAN: Well, I guess the main thing, Ari, he really wasn't - he apologized, and he, you know, said he was a changed man. And my questioning, along with others, said, well, you know, is he really repentant or is he - did he just get caught? And...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: I think a lot of Republicans were very concerned that he was lying again under oath, given that he has lied under oath to Congress before. But one question I have for you is, even if you set aside every unverified claim that Cohen made and assume that he is a liar, he's introduced a pile of documents as evidence. There was that hush money reimbursement check we mentioned. There are copies of financial statements, letters, articles with the president's handwriting. Even if he is a serial liar, does it concern you that these documents appear to connect President Trump to crimes?</s>RALPH NORMAN: Well, here's the question. One - with the payment for the women, that's old news. But that's fine. Let him produce the documents. Let him - he says he's been looking, you know, for, I think, weeks and months for boxes of documents. Let's get them out. We're not trying to hide anything. And I guess, you know, where were the documents? Where are they now?</s>RALPH NORMAN: And we came in, and the fact that he - you know, I'm not interested in Michael Cohen's opinion. The fact that he will be in an orange jumpsuit in less than 90 days, it's obvious for the record what he's admitted to - tax fraud, bank - signing fraudulent bank statements. He's guilty of that. And yeah, it makes us suspect on anything he says.</s>RALPH NORMAN: But - and he came out with - and this really got me - when he came out, the man that he says he would take a bullet for, that he respected, he worked for a decade, and then he said, you know, he's a cheat. And my question to him was, Mr. Cohen, you were his personal lawyer for 10 years, who you respected. You illegally recorded him, wiretapped him. And...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Congressman, I would like to drill down on something that you said, though, that - where you referred to the hush money payments as old news because the fact that President Trump wrote a personal check to Michael Cohen to reimburse him for those hush money payments - which have been documented to have been a campaign finance violation - that's not old news. That's something we learned today, that he made that payment from his personal account while he was in the White House. Does that concern you?</s>RALPH NORMAN: Well, it is what it is. And let's let the documents show, and let's let the public - and let's let it be of record, as anything else he has. So you know, that'll be played out as it is. You can't change that. Where were they...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: I mean, I guess the question put bluntly is do you believe the president was complicit in these crimes that Michael Cohen is going to prison for?</s>RALPH NORMAN: Well, after they examine the records, let's see what happens. Let's see how they judge it. But my issue is why did he wait this long? And if that's all he has - you know, he was on the record today of no collusion. I thought that with the Mueller investigation...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: With Russia, you mean?</s>RALPH NORMAN: With Russia. I thought with the Mueller investigation, you know, this was going to prove Donald Trump - they're laying the groundwork to impeach the president. That's what this is about. And anything...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Well, you're saying you're undecided as to whether the president was complicit in crimes or not. If the president was complicit in crimes, then whether or not the president should be impeached seems to be an open question.</s>RALPH NORMAN: Well, let's open it up, and let's see the documents. But we got his opening statement 10 minutes before I walked in. He gave things - he gave documents and news to CNN that he didn't - he gave the Democrats. He didn't give us. If this is really aboveboard and open, show it to everybody, and then let's let - let's see what happens.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Congressman Norman, just in our final 30 seconds or so, I want to ask what you think it says about President Trump's judgment that he kept this man by his side for a decade as recently as last year?</s>RALPH NORMAN: My question is what - how about Michael Cohen's judgment? My question's about Michael Cohen's loyalty. Anybody that would tape somebody unknowingly, he has no credibility. And the lies that he's - I mean, he's going to jail for things unrelated to Donald Trump. He's going to jail for things to benefit him. And he has no credibility. It's a circus. And the date that he's doing it with the president overseas making probably the biggest decisions about nuclear weapons...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: All right.</s>RALPH NORMAN: ...Is huge.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Congressman Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, thank you for joining us today.</s>RALPH NORMAN: Thank you.

As President Trump prepares to meet with Kim Jong Un this week, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Jeong-Ho Roh of Columbia University about what peace means on the Korean peninsula.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Here is something to keep in mind as President Trump meets with Kim Jong Un this week. The Korean War is not over - not officially. An armistice was signed in 1953. But it was a military cease fire, not a political or diplomatic treaty ending the conflict. So what exactly does peace on the Korean Peninsula mean? And what steps need to be taken by all parties to finally achieve it? Jeong-Ho Roh has contemplated these questions for years. He's the director of the Center for Korean Legal Studies at Columbia University and formerly worked as an adviser to South Korea's ministry of national unification.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.</s>JEONG-HO ROH: Glad to be here.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Why was the Korean War never officially ended? Why has it been all these decades?</s>JEONG-HO ROH: Essentially, the problem with the Korean War is just that, as you mentioned, it ended with the armistice, which is really a military agreement. And the condition behind a military agreement is that a formal political agreement must follow to replace it. And what happened was, after the end of the war, they attempted to do this in Geneva several times. But because of the longstanding differences between North Korea, United States and, in this case, South Korea, that political agreement never came to fruition. And essentially, that process that started in 1954 - one year after - continued for 65 years.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: We are seeing indications that President Trump and Kim Jong Un may be preparing to make some kind of peace declaration in Hanoi, which prompts a number of questions. To start with, can Trump and Kim Jong Un just declare the Korean War is over? I assume South Korea and China and other parties would have a say here, too.</s>JEONG-HO ROH: It's a tricky question because, essentially, a peace declaration is obviously very different than a peace treaty - for three reasons. A peace declaration is really a statement that, you know, we are going to end hostile relations that have existed between belligerent parties - as opposed to a peace treaty, which would actually legally and formally end the Korean War. And second thing is a peace declaration in itself is not binding; it's a political declaration. And finally - this is, I think, an important point that you alluded to - a peace declaration would really be purely a bilateral statement between North Korea and United States, whereas in the case of a peace treaty, because of the different parties involved, this would necessitate a multilateral treaty - basically meaning China, South Korea, North Korea and the United States. So it's two very, very different things with different intended purposes.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The basic arguments for and against some sort of peace agreement emerging from this summit - how would you lay those out?</s>JEONG-HO ROH: Well, the argument for a peace declaration is that it furthers the goal of creating goodwill between North Korea and the United States - that, in fact, what you're doing is, by declaring that there is a peace, in fact, there is a peace. And hopefully, North Korea and the United States will work within that definition.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Right. There's a commonsense element here.</s>JEONG-HO ROH: Right. As opposed to - the other element - so once you have declared peace, then it raises into question - you know, what are the options that are available for the United States if North Korea does not comply?</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: You mean in terms of leverage?</s>JEONG-HO ROH: In terms of leverage. It kind of also weakens the justification that the United States will have for keeping its armed forces - soldiers - in South Korea.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: You're referring to something like 28,000 U.S. troops that remain in South Korea.</s>JEONG-HO ROH: Exactly. If there is a peace declaration and you kind of declare the end of a war, I wonder whether the North Koreans would not demand that, well, since we're in a state of peace, the Americans should withdraw from South Korea. Now, having said that, I'm not sure that declaring peace or having a peace declaration really changes the matrix to a significant degree that it's worthwhile.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: When you say it doesn't really change the matrix, what do you mean - that it's, in a way, almost a sideshow to the nuclear issue, which is the main ring?</s>JEONG-HO ROH: Yes. I mean, it gives what the North Koreans want. But then if North Korea really does not comply at the end of the day, we have not really changed anything in terms of denuclearizing North Korea. So therefore, other than the symbolic statement that you're making, I'm not sure that it really makes a difference.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Jeong-Ho Roh, he is director of the Center for Korean Legal Studies at Columbia Law School in New York. Thank you.</s>JEONG-HO ROH: All right. Thank you.

President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen is testifying before Congress this week. In many ways, this tour is a high-stakes do-over.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen is testifying before Congress this week. Today was the first of three days of hearings. And in many ways, this tour is a high-stakes do-over. Cohen will be going to prison this spring for multiple charges, including campaign finance violations and lying to members of Congress, including the very ones he met with today. Those lawmakers sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee. They have been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and their meeting with Cohen happened behind closed doors.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: NPR's political reporter Tim Mak has spent much of today on the other side of those doors. He joins us now from the Capitol. Hi, Tim.</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: Hey there.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: So did you get a sense when this hearing wrapped of what happened inside?</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: So this interview started early this morning, and they grilled him for nearly nine hours. But it was behind closed doors, which is where the Intelligence Committee does much of its work, including discussing sensitive national security issues. As you mentioned, Cohen has previously pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, specifically before the House and Senate intelligence committees. And he's expected to be starting that three-year sentence in May.</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: Senators are obviously hoping that he was truthful in his comments to them today as opposed to in the past. Now, lawmakers were generally tight-lipped about the content of the interview they had today, but we heard briefly from Cohen on his way out.</s>MICHAEL COHEN: I look forward to tomorrow to being able to, in my voice - to tell the American people my story. And I'm going to let the American people decide exactly who's telling the truth.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Did you get any sense from lawmakers of the kinds of questions they asked today?</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: The Senate Intelligence Committee has been investigating the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 elections for more than two years. So we expect they focused on the intelligence questions, which is why they met behind closed doors. The questions would have been things about Russian contacts, about any foreign business dealings, any possible leverage that foreign entities might have over the president.</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: But when Cohen testifies tomorrow before the House Oversight Committee in public, it's expected he'll be asked a totally different set of questions about the Trump business, for example, or about the Trump Foundation and about the 2016 Trump campaign.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: And tell us more about what Cohen plans to say in response to those questions.</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: So the House Oversight Committee hearing is expected to be dramatic. According to a person familiar with his plan, Cohen is expected to provide a behind-the-scenes look at his work over the years for Trump, including what he alleges are the president's, quote, "lies, racism and cheating," end quote.</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: More specifically, Cohen is expected to tell the public about hush money payments he made to two women, Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, who allege they had affairs with Trump more than a decade ago. Cohen also intends to provide evidence, including documents - and that's really important here - of what he alleges is criminal conduct by Trump since he took office.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: What are Republicans who often try to play defense for the president in these kinds of situations saying about Cohen's testimony this week?</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: Well, it really depends which Republican you talk to. The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference has been collegial and bipartisan for more than two years. But the House of Representatives is a different matter. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are expected to challenge Cohen's credibility, especially given that he has lied to Congress in the past. And this echoes what the White House has said about Cohen. Trump Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called Cohen a, quote, "disgraced felon," end quote, and said that it was, quote, "pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies," end quote.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: That's NPR's Tim Mak speaking with us from the Capitol. Thanks, Tim.</s>TIM MAK, BYLINE: Thank you.

A dog named Duke has been the honorary mayor of a small Minnesota village since 2014. He passed away on Feb. 21 at the age of 13.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: We're going to take a moment to remember a civic leader, a distinguished Minnesotan and, a rarity in these polarized times, a politician who was universally loved.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: His name was Duke. He was a dog. He was also the honorary mayor of Cormorant, a tiny village in rural Minnesota.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Duke was a Great Pyrenees, big and fluffy and white. And for the first half of his life, he was just a humble farm dog.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Then one day back in 2014, the village decided to hold an election of sorts. It was mostly a fundraiser for the community.</s>TRICIA MALONEY: Let's do a dollar a vote and put a big sign up that says, OK, vote for your favorite person that you would like to have mayor of Cormorant Village.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: That's Tricia Maloney, who owns The Cormorant Pub. She is one of the people who first came up with the idea. She says Duke, while, OK, yes, not technically a person, was already a local celebrity.</s>TRICIA MALONEY: So many people went, oh, you can vote for mayor. Let's vote for Mayor Duke.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: And Duke won by a landslide, so they swore him in.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: If you accept this challenge and these responsibilities, please raise your right paw and bark.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Well, Duke panted, looked out at his constituents and stayed silent.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Yay.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Close enough.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: That was just the beginning. Karen Nelson helped raise Duke and describes herself as his adopted mom.</s>KAREN NELSON: When they first said Duke, everybody just kind of thought, oh, yeah, it was just going to be a big joke. But the newspaper got a hold of it and the TV station, and then it just went viral.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: He made national and international headlines and became an icon for Cormorant. His portrait is at the top of the township's website, wearing his signature top hat. Here's Nelson.</s>KAREN NELSON: He always loved the kids hanging on him and petting him. And when we did the parades, he'd sit on the back of this red convertible, and he just held his head so high and proud.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Duke served four one-year terms as honorary mayor, so 28 dog years. When he retired last year...</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: ...The village wrote him a song.</s>UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing) You might think that it's quite strange this dog became the mayor, but Cormorant Village thought it through. It was fair and square.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Pub owner Tricia Maloney says she thinks they'll leave his post vacant for now. Duke was special.</s>TRICIA MALONEY: Duke probably brought more to this community than any of us ever have. He never barked. He never growled. He never nothing. He will forever be our mayor.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Mayor Duke the dog died last week. He was 13 years old.</s>UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing) He's Duke. He's Duke. He's the mayor of this town. He's Duke. He's Duke.

A possible outcome of this week's U.S.-North Korea summit would be an exchange of liaison offices. These diplomatic posts are more limited than embassies. It would mark a step toward more normal ties.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: This week's summit could lead toward more normal relations between the U.S. and North Korea. There's been talk of opening liaison offices. Those are diplomatic posts that are more limited than full embassies, and they've been tried before, as we hear now from NPR's Michele Kelemen.</s>MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: The Clinton administration came close to opening up a liaison office in Pyongyang. Robert Gallucci says it was one of the plans that came out of nuclear negotiations he led in the 1990s.</s>ROBERT GALLUCCI: And we moved pretty far down the road to doing that, as in looking for real estate, and we found our place. They didn't, by my recollection, find their place here. We, it's called, fenced off our foreign service officers who would serve in a liaison office. It just didn't happen.</s>MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: There were many reasons it didn't happen. The U.S. didn't want to upset its ally South Korea by moving too quickly, and it wanted to be able to get to an office in North Korea from Seoul.</s>ROBERT GALLUCCI: We, of course, would like to have had a good linkage between Seoul and Pyongyang, and I remember that was an issue, too.</s>MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: If President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decide to open up liaison offices, it could happen quickly, says James Dobbins, a former assistant secretary of state and special envoy who helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul after the Taliban was toppled. In that case, the Afghans wanted the Americans there, and the U.S. had the infrastructure.</s>JAMES DOBBINS: We had an embassy building there, which had been vacant when I entered it. It still had pictures of Henry Kissinger on the wall, half-smoked cigars in the ashtrays and half a bottle of scotch on the bar in the basement.</s>MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: In Pyongyang, Dobbins says, the two sides would have to start from scratch.</s>JAMES DOBBINS: So you need a site. You need an agreement which provides diplomatic immunity to your personnel and to the site. You need some agreement on the scale of the offices.</s>MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Currently, Sweden is the protecting power of the U.S. in Pyongyang, meaning that Swedish diplomats are the ones who help when Americans get into trouble in North Korea. A liaison office would be a step above that and the State Department says a precursor to the establishment of embassies and full diplomatic relations. Dobbins, who is with the RAND Corporation, expects it would be a sought-after assignment for foreign service officers - at least at first.</s>JAMES DOBBINS: How exciting it remained would depend on, you know, whether the two sides make use of these missions. If they do, then obviously it continues to be exciting. If they don't, if the relationship goes back into the refrigerator, then it could be pretty boring and sterile.</s>MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Diplomats of other Western countries have described how limited their access is in North Korea. They live on compounds with other foreign diplomats and can't travel without permission. Still, retired ambassador Lino Gutierrez says it's always good to have diplomats on the ground, as the U.S. did in Cuba for many years before the embassies were reopened in 2015.</s>LINO GUTIERREZ: There's no substitute for having the person on the field who can tell us exactly what's going on, even if they don't have access to the top levels of government.</s>MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: North Korea does have one diplomatic post in the U.S. at the United Nations headquarters in New York. But those diplomats also can't travel, even to Washington, without U.S. permission. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it will roll back Obama-era restrictions on payday loans, which can trap consumers in a debt cycle.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Earlier this month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it will roll back Obama-era restrictions on payday loans. Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia from Planet Money's The Indicator tell us what the regulations would have done for consumers and what it's like to be in a debt cycle with payday lenders.</s>CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: Amy Marineau took out her first payday loan nearly 20 years ago. Amy was living in Detroit with her husband and three little kids. She says the bills had started to feel crushing.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Amy went into the payday lending store to just see if she could get a loan, just a little one.</s>AMY MARINEAU: I felt like, yes, I can pay this bill.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Amy says it felt like she could breathe again, at least for a couple of weeks. That is when she needed to pay the payday lender back with interest, of course.</s>AMY MARINEAU: You have to pay 676.45. That's a lot of money.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: You still remember the amount.</s>AMY MARINEAU: That 676.45 - it just now popped in my head.</s>CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: That extra 76.45 was just the interest on the loan for two weeks. Play that out over a year, and that's an annual interest rate of more than 300 percent.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: But when she went back into the payday loan store a couple weeks later, it felt like she couldn't pay it back quite yet, so she took out another payday loan to pay off the 676.45.</s>AMY MARINEAU: Because something else went wrong. It was always something - something coming up, which is life.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Amy and her husband started using payday loans to pay off credit cards and credit cards to pay off payday loans. And the amount they owed kept climbing and climbing.</s>AMY MARINEAU: You feel defeated. You're like, when is this ever going to end? Am I ever going to be financially stable? Am I ever going to get there?</s>CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: And this is, of course, why the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had planned to put payday loan regulations in place later this year. Those new rules were announced under the Obama administration and would've restricted who payday lenders could lend to. Namely, they would only be able to lend to people who could prove a high likelihood that they could immediately pay the loan back.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: How much of a difference would those regulations have made in the industry?</s>RONALD MANN: I think it would've made a lot of difference.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Ronald Mann is an economist and a professor at Columbia Law School. He's spent more than a decade studying payday loans. And Ronald says the regulations would've basically ended the payday loan industry because it would've eliminated around 75 to 80 percent of payday loans' customer base.</s>RONALD MANN: I mean, these are products that are - there's a fair chance people aren't going to be able to pay them back.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Ronald says that is exactly why about 20 states have either banned payday loans entirely or really restricted them.</s>CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: On the other hand, more than 30 states don't really have restrictions at all on payday lending. And in those states, payday lending has gotten huge, or, you might say, supersized.</s>RONALD MANN: The number of payday loan stores is about the same as the number of McDonald's.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Actually, there are more payday loan stores than McDonald's or Starbucks. There are nearly 18,000 payday loan stores in this country right now.</s>RONALD MANN: So I think what you really have to see is to step back and say or ask, why are there so many people in our economy that are struggling so hard?</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: People like Amy Marineau.</s>AMY MARINEAU: The turning point for me was having to, at 43, live with my mother again and not being able to take care of our family the way that we wanted to.</s>CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: Amy says that at that moment, she decided no more payday loans ever. She went through bankruptcy. And since then, she says, she has been incredibly disciplined about her budget. She and her family have their own place again, and she's currently working two jobs. She says they all live on a really strict budget - just the necessities.</s>STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Stacey Vanek Smith.</s>CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: Cardiff Garcia, NPR News.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of a Chilean predator priest, helped organize a meeting between abuse survivors and Vatican officials last week. He tells NPR's Ari Shapiro his thoughts on Pope Francis' vow to erase abuse in the church "from the face of the Earth."

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Pope Francis yesterday declared an all-out battle on abuse in the Catholic Church, saying it must be erased from the face of the Earth. Today the bishops and abuse survivors who went to Rome for the historic summit have returned to their homes around the world, and the question remains. How will the church make good on the pope's promise? We're going to put that question now to somebody who is at that summit. Juan Carlos Cruz is a survivor of abuse in the Catholic Church. Thank you so much for joining us.</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: Thank you, Ari, for having me.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Let me first ask what your big takeaway from this summit was. How are you feeling now that it's over?</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: You know, I never expected that after three days, it was going to be earth-shattering change immediate, you know, like many people unfortunately expected. I was lucky to be asked by the pope to organize a meeting before the summit on Wednesday with survivors from all over the world. And then my testimony opened the whole summit. And, you know, it was good because they never edited anything. There was nothing I could not say. So, you know, there's people that are happier, people that are not so happy. But I'm optimistic, and I want to keep hope that there will be things happening.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: You say you're optimistic and hopeful. Did you hear anything from Church leaders that struck you as new, as definitive, as a sign that things will move in a different direction?</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: So I've had the opportunity to speak with Pope Francis several times, and I'm very respectful. But I tell him I feel like it is. And Pope Francis of 2017 is not Pope Francis of 2019. He's a man that has been able to listen and change and understand better. What I worry about are the bishops that go back home and, you know, remain the same. And that's my biggest worry.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The pope urged bishops and abusive clerics to hold themselves accountable. Do you think that sort of self-accountability will do what needs to be done here?</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: No, I don't think it works. You know, unfortunately we've had too many examples, mine included in Chile, of bishops that can see the worst crimes, yet they cover it up and don't do the right thing and disappear documents. And so I know that there's been a lot more awareness and accountability, but it hasn't shown that this self-policing works.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: So if the pope is urging people to self-police and you don't believe that works, why are you hopeful and optimistic?</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: I believe that there's bishops that take this very seriously, and I believe that more we're going to see in the following days things that will, yes, allow self-policing, but at the same time, they'll be ways of holding bishops around the world accountable for their actions. And so if someone doesn't do what's the right thing, I'm hopeful that they put a process in place that will show up and say, this particular bishop is not doing, and they'll be very strict with him, I'm hoping.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Is that based on something that you've heard in your conversations with the pope and other church leaders, or is that just sort of a wish that you have?</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: No, it's based on conversations that I've had with other church leaders. And I can't tell you exactly what things are coming up. I'm hopeful that they make bishops work with local law enforcement to hold them accountable also in civil society and civil law, not just canon law, and a bunch of other things. It's a combination of things that we've spoke about and others that I know they're working on.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: We've heard from a lot of survivors who've told us that they have lost faith in the church as a result of this crisis. Have you?</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: You know, no, I have not. I'm Catholic, and I remain Catholic. And I am not going to let them win. Now, I have my days, Ari, and I'm better one day and not-so-fine the other, but it's so worth it, though. When you feel you are able to help one person to deal with this horror, it makes it so much better for me as well.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Juan Carlos Cruz, thank you so much for speaking with us.</s>JUAN CARLOS CRUZ: Thank you, Ari.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: He's a survivor who was in Rome for the summit on abuse in the Catholic Church, and he joined us from Philadelphia.

The U.S.'s main allies in Asia — South Korea and Japan — are carefully watching the second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi. Both hope for a good deal that leads to denuclearization but are concerned that a bad one might emerge.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Two of North Korea's neighbors will be watching this week's summit very closely - South Korea and Japan. They are key U.S. allies in Asia, also potential targets of North Korea's weapons. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Seoul about their fears and hopes for the meeting.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: According to a recent survey, about 54 percent of South Koreans are optimistic that the Trump-Kim summit will produce a deal leading to the eventual denuclearization of North Korea. Around the time of the first Trump-Kim summit, that figure was 75 percent.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: A Seoul-based think tank, the Asan Institute for Policy Research (ph), conducted that survey. And Shin Beomchul, a North Korea expert there, says of course South Koreans remember that North Korea has reneged on previous pledges to give up its nuclear weapons.</s>SHIN BEOMCHUL: However, still, majority of the Korean people have a - just kind of appreciating the current negotiation process because we really suffer the threat in 2017.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: According to the survey, most respondents now think the threat of war on the Korean peninsula is low in the immediate future. Shin, though, is concerned that North Korea will offer minor concessions at the talks in an attempt to draw out the negotiating process.</s>SHIN: If North Korea decides that this kind of a denuclearization step - maybe more than five or six - a deal with them takes one or two years. So then it would be very hard for us to denuclearize North Korea.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: By that time, he worries North Korea will have cemented its status as a nuclear state, and President Trump's successors in the White House may not be so willing to negotiate with Pyongyang.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: His other big concern is that President Trump will strike a deal in which North Korea gives up its long-range missiles, which can target the U.S. mainland, but leaves Pyongyang its medium- and short-range missiles, which can hit South Korea and Japan.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: In contrast to the U.S.' focus on keeping sanctions in place, South Korea's policy is to incentivize North Korea to give up its nukes in exchange for economic cooperation. But Cho Han-bum, a North Korea expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government think tank in Seoul, says inter-Korean economic cooperation can't move ahead without a successful summit.</s>CHO HAN-BUM: (Through interpreter) Seoul wants to pursue denuclearization, inter-Korean relations and a peace regime simultaneously, rather than putting inter-Korean relations first.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Japan, meanwhile, is working to make sure that its interests are still represented even though it's not at the talks. Mintaro Oba, a speechwriter and former U.S. diplomat, notes that Japan is focused on some narrow interests which are not shared by the U.S.</s>MINTARO OBA: One is the issue of Japanese citizens who have been abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s - a very emotional issue for the Japanese people.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Tokyo has taken a harder line on North Korea than Seoul and enthusiastically backed U.S. sanctions against Pyongyang. Oba says this fits in with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's aim of revising Japan's U.S.-drafted postwar constitution, especially its limitations on Japan's military.</s>MINTARO OBA: It was in Prime Minister Abe's domestic interest to play up the North Korea threat and demonstrate the necessity of strengthening Japan's own security posture, which could include the constitutional reform that Prime Minister Abe has always wanted.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Japan says Oba has the potential to play a key role in any deal on North Korea. It has the economic clout to help North Korea develop if it chooses to denuclearize. And if it doesn't and things take a drastic turn for the worse, then U.S. military bases in Japan will become extremely important. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Maryland Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in advance of Michael Cohen's scheduled testimony.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Michael Cohen, the president's longtime lawyer and fixer, is headed to prison. He's been sentenced to three years, having pleaded guilty to campaign finance and other crimes. But first, Cohen says he wants to give, quote, "a full and credible account of the events which have transpired."</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The venue for that - three congressional hearings this week. Two will be behind closed doors, but Cohen's testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will unfold in full public view.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The man who'll gavel that hearing to order 10:00 o'clock Wednesday morning is Elijah Cummings. He's a Democrat from Maryland. He chairs the House Oversight Committee. And he joins me now from his home in Baltimore. Congressman, welcome.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: It's good to be with you.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So Michael Cohen, as you know, has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. What makes you think he will be a credible witness now?</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Well, we don't know. I have practiced law for more than 20 years. And you have a situation where a man apparently wants to bare his soul and talk about his relationship with this president. Keep in mind that Michael Cohen is the one person who has accused the president of committing a crime. So it's hard to say what's going to happen.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: But the good thing about it is that members of Congress will have an opportunity to observe him. The public will have an opportunity to observe him. And I think that's a good thing.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: But did it give you pause to give him such a prominent platform, given his history of lying to Congress?</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Of course. But at the same time, we have a situation where it's quite possible we may never see the light of day what Mr. Mueller does because there's a lot of discretion that the attorney general has with regard to releasing anything that comes out of the Mueller investigation. And so the - it's quite possible that the public never would have an opportunity to hear directly or see him.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: On the other hand, we have the president. The president, you know, almost on a daily basis has talked about how he has not committed any crimes and has basically called Michael Cohen a liar. So I think it's only fair to Michael Cohen and to the president that representatives of the people - that is Republicans and Democrats in the Congress - have an opportunity to ask questions.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: What's your top question for Michael Cohen? What are you going to ask?</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: We'll be looking at subjects such as the president's debt and payments relating to efforts to influence the 2016 election, the president's compliance with financial disclosure laws, the president's potential and actual conflicts of interests, the president's business practices and the Trump International Hotel in Washington. And it's - and accuracy with regard to reporting data to the Congress.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: You've got a couple of firsts going on here. This is Cohen's first major public appearance since he turned on the president. This is also the first big marquee hearing for the Democratic-controlled House. And I wonder why Michael Cohen, who, A, we've talked about, has a history of lying to Congress - B, the questions you're describing don't seem to have anything to do with Trump's conduct as president or his administration's policies.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: No, that's not accurate. First of all, you got to understand, our jurisdiction...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: You're talking about stuff from 2016, from the campaign, which is important, but...</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Yeah, I got that. But our jurisdiction - and the main thing that my committee is for is making sure that government functions properly.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: But is there a risk of it looking like Democrats are determined to just keep digging through the tawdry chapters of the president's life - testimony about a porn star and a Playboy model - instead of exercising serious oversight over his administration?</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Well, that's interesting that you said that because you're inaccurate. The first thing we did was a drug hearing. We had a hearing on drugs - prescription drug. That was our first major marquee hearing. Our second major marquee hearing was one where we talked about HR1, which deals with voting rights and corruption in government.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Safe to say HR1 didn't quite have the TV networks buzzing in the way that Michael Cohen is going to be, but go on.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Yeah. But my point is, what are we supposed to do, sit back on our hands when we see that there may be problems in the executive branch, when the Constitution clearly states that it is our job? We have sworn to be a check and balance on the executive branch, and that's exactly what we're doing, period.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Quickly, and before I let you go, the House, as you know, is set to vote tomorrow to block President Trump from using a national emergency to build a border wall, which is - this is expected to pass in the House. Not so clear what's going to happen in the Republican-controlled Senate. Do you believe Congress will be able to block the president?</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: That's not the question. The question is whether, when the president vetoes it, we will have enough votes in the Senate to override it. And I must say that I doubt it. Basically...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So you're saying you think in the Senate they will vote to block him from using emergency powers. That would go to the president. He will try to veto it. And then it's a question of what happens when it comes back to Congress.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: That is accurate.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So, I mean, again, we're gaming out predictions here. And who knows how this may unfold in the coming days. But what is the point of this exercise if, ultimately, the president may be able to veto?</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Well, then it ends up in the courts. You can't just sit around and not do anything. We're talking about accountability. That's why we have courts. And you have a number of senators who'll be running in 2020, and they're going to have to be answerable to the people when the people ask, why did you allow the president to take away your power? When we give the president the opportunity to go around the Congress, that is basically taking away the power of the Congress, and it also is taking away the power of the people.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: That is Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings. He chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and he'll be leading the questions for Michael Cohen come Wednesday morning. Thanks so much for your time, Congressman.</s>ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Thank you.