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Rachel Martin talks to political scientist Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan about the long odds against independent political candidates.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, said on our program yesterday that he is considering running for president as a centrist independent.</s>HOWARD SCHULTZ: I know for a fact that there are very good people on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, who unfortunately cannot vote with their heart and their conscience and do the right thing.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: There are real structural challenges to any independent bid for the White House. And our next guest argues there just aren't enough voters out there who would align with what an independent like Schultz might offer. Brendan Nyhan is a political scientist at the University of Michigan, and he joins me now.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Good morning.</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So every presidential cycle, the media gives a lot of attention to people pining for a third way, some kind of break from the duopoly that is the two-party system. Is there a real constituency out there for that?</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: It's much smaller than people think. Almost all Americans lean towards one of the two major parties and vote for them pretty consistently. They're, in other words, closet partisans. What that means is that the constituency for a centrist independent campaign is much more limited than you might think, especially the particular mix of issue positions that someone like Schultz is offering. The independent candidacies that have done the best often have had a kind of populist orientation or capitalize on a particular issue where the parties are out of step with the public.</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: It's not clear that either of those applies to Schultz. He's no populist. And the issue he's emphasized most in his initial conversations about running is the national debt, which very few Americans are interested in. And in particular, there's very few who are socially liberal like Schultz but economically more right of center.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Although we hear a lot of those people talk on TV, come on the radio - the punditry is often made up of people who are so-called fiscal conservatives but may be more socially liberal.</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: That point of view is highly overrepresented in the media and among Beltway elites. Those folks are often very excited about the prospect of a socially moderate, economically conservative candidate. But the public at large doesn't share their enthusiasm. And that's why, for instance, candidates like Michael Bloomberg, when they've taken a look at the polling over the years, have repeatedly declined to run. They've seen that the constituency for that kind of a candidacy is quite limited and there's not a clear path to victory.</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: The Electoral College is a winner-take-all system. You only get the votes if you win that state. And even if you succeed in creating an Electoral College deadlock, the House of Representatives is going to decide who the president is. And the House of Representatives is not going to pick a candidate who's not from either of the major parties.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Looking ahead to 2020, is it explicitly clear yet which party has more to lose from an independent bid from Schultz or someone else?</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: It's possible that he could run a campaign that would draw votes from Donald Trump. It's possible that he could run a campaign that would, on net, draw votes from a Democratic candidate. There are certainly reasons for concern. For instance, in 1992, there's research indicating that Ross Perot's candidacy, on net, drew votes away from Bill Clinton, who was the challenger to an unpopular incumbent. It introduces a lot of risk and uncertainty. The odds of being a spoiler for a candidate like Schultz are much higher than the odds of actually winning, given the vast advantages the major parties have.</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: The prospective winners here are Schultz's book publicist and his consultants, both of whom would be thrilled with the prospect of him running. Unfortunately, you know, billionaire neophyte political candidates often have people whispering in their ear about how they can win. And that may lead them down a road that ultimately isn't as promising as they were led to believe.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan - political science professor there - thank you so much for your time.</s>BRENDAN NYHAN: Thank you.

Antonia Bundy, a 911 dispatcher, took a call earlier this month from a boy who sounded sad. Bundy wasn't busy so she helped the young caller work through what to him was a math emergency.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. A 911 dispatcher named Antonia Bundy took a call earlier this month from a boy who sounded frustrated and sad.</s>UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I had a really bad day, and I don't know.</s>ANTONIA BUNDY: What happened at school that made you have a bad day?</s>UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I just have tons of homework.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Which is not a reason to call 911. But Bundy wasn't busy, so she helped the young man work through what clearly felt to him like a math emergency. It's MORNING EDITION.

Rachel Martin talks to Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan's new ambassador to the U.S. and the first woman to serve in that role, about ongoing negotiations with the Taliban. NPR's Tom Bowman weighs in.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: After 17 years of war in Afghanistan, the United States wants out. And there now appears to be a framework for making that happen. But the Afghan central government hasn't been directly involved in these discussions. So far, the negotiations have been between the U.S. and the Taliban, which has left many Afghans worried about their future. Roya Rahmani is not one of them, though. She was recently appointed Afghanistan's first female ambassador to the U.S. And she is optimistic the U.S. will do right by her country. What is less clear to her is whether the Taliban is negotiating in good faith.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Do you trust the Taliban negotiators?</s>ROYA RAHMANI: I haven't been at the table to be able to directly respond to this. However, what I could say is that our people has demonstrated the generosity to let go of the past and to let go of the grievances as a price for peace. And they are willing to come in terms. There is one other thing also - that Afghanistan is a changed place. The resolve to democracy is one of our highest values. I will quickly share with you something that really moved me when I visited Afghanistan after parliamentary election, and that was that a taxi driver sacrificed seven hours of his income earning hours while he is responsible for feeding four of his children at home in order to cast his vote. That shows there is resolve to democracy - our resolve to the values that we have earned. And Afghanistan's nation, a changed nation now, has different standing and aspiration today. So whatever the outcome, it has to cater to that.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What happens to Afghanistan's young democracy if the Taliban is either incorporated into a power-sharing agreement or, at the very least, legitimized through this peace plan?</s>ROYA RAHMANI: The Taliban, if part of the Afghan society, they can certainly participate in the democratic processes. We have laid out a very clear roadmap towards peace on how we could go about this. And we are hoping to be able to unroll that. That will specify the rules, and they are most welcome to join and be part of the power sharing, stand for election, have people vote for them. This is their right like every other Afghan citizens' right.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: You are the first woman to serve as ambassador from Afghanistan to the United States. Are you concerned that if the Taliban is incorporated into government, if the Taliban is legitimized, that all those advances for minorities in Afghanistan - for women in particular - are you concerned that they will be reversed?</s>ROYA RAHMANI: Rachel, I don't believe that Afghanistan could fall back. We are a changed nation. There is a shift in the mindset. Let me give you an example. I have met a soldier who has joined our forces simply because he has two daughters. And he will not agree that his daughters will not go to school. That's the reason he told me he joined our forces. Afghanistan is a changed place, and this is why that there is more to a peaceful Afghanistan to offer to all its partners as a partner - not as a dependent - in the foreseeable future.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: At some point if the peace talks continue, you as an ambassador, I would imagine, would have occasion to be in a meeting with a Taliban leader. Would they even tolerate your presence there considering their subjugation of women? I mean, it's one thing for you to say you believe that Afghanistan is moving forward, but the Taliban have not conceded that at all. They still maintain the same views about women's place in society.</s>ROYA RAHMANI: Well, that question is for them to answer. But at the same time, let's not forget if I am at the table like many other women, I will be representing half of my population. If - no deal would be acceptable if it ignores half of our population.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Ambassador Roya Rahmani, thank you so much for talking with us.</s>ROYA RAHMANI: Thank you very much.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: She is Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., the first woman to serve in that role. NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman was listening in to that conversation and joins me now. Good morning, Tom.</s>TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning, Rachel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is the special envoy leading the U.S. in these peace talks. He insists - Khalilzad does - that nothing is for sure until the Afghan central government signs off on it. But how likely is that?</s>TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Well, right, that's what he said. It's important to note, Rachel, we're in the very early stages of this process. The Taliban have yet to agree even to sit down with the Afghan government. That's what really has to happen. And that's what the Afghan government is demanding, and so is the U.S. government. Now, the Taliban say before they sit down with the Afghan government, they want a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says the rights of the Afghan people will not be compromised in the name of peace. So that clearly means making sure the rights of women are assured, that women can work outside the home, girls can go to school and so forth. But again, we're sort of at a stalemate a little bit here, you know, because the Taliban want that timetable withdrawal of U.S. troops before they sit down with the Afghan government.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right, and...</s>TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Again, there's a lot that has to be done here.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I mean, we heard a lot of optimism in the ambassador's voice there. But what is to prevent the Taliban from overthrowing the Afghan government once the U.S. is gone?</s>TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Well, that's of great concern of people within the Afghan government who just don't trust the Taliban and are wary of any deal and, of course, are concerned that the U.S. will leave abruptly. President Trump has said he'll pull about 7,000 troops out. That's half the number there now.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right.</s>TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: So again, there's a great concern within the Afghan government about whether you can even trust the Taliban.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Thanks, Tom.</s>TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: You're welcome.

Cross Scott didn't know CPR, but he did know Season 5 of The Office. In one episode, employees are told to press a victim's chest in time to the beat of 'Stayin' Alive." The woman resumed breathing.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Cross Scott did the right thing. He saw a driver in distress, pulled over to help and found the woman had no pulse. But he did not know CPR. Luckily, he did know Season Five of the TV show "The Office." In one episode, employees are told to press a victim's chest in time to the beat of "Stayin' Alive." The Washington Post reports Mr. Scott did this until the woman woke up. The Bee Gees and "The Office" saved a life. It's MORNING EDITION.

Donald Trump is unpopular with black voters, but Omarosa Manigault is trying to change that. NPR's Elise Hu speaks with Manigault, Trump's director of African-American outreach.

ELISE HU, HOST: Donald Trump's presidential campaign is attempting to appeal to communities of color. But it's going to be a tough road. A recent Washington Post poll shows 94 percent of black voters disapprove of Trump. That's something Omarosa Manigault is trying to change. She worked in the Bill Clinton White House but made her name on Donald Trump's reality show "The Apprentice." Now she's director of African-American outreach for Donald Trump. We reached her via Skype, and I started by asking her about the Trump campaign strategy for reaching black voters.</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: Well, it is a 76-page strategy, so I - in my three minutes that I have with you, I'll just say that it is important for Mr. Trump to make sure that all folks are included in his vision for this country and included, I mean, improving the conditions in the inner cities, particularly where I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, where the average income is about $13,000, where unemployment is at an all-time high, particularly for young men under 30 - black men under 30 - creating jobs and creating the opportunities for people to get training for those jobs and then making sure that those jobs are not shipped overseas. And so Donald is very concerned about the economic conditions, particularly of African-Americans in this country.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: On this topic of inclusiveness, on a lot of fronts, Donald Trump has staked out what sounds to many as a xenophobic or anti-immigrant position. He's even won over the support of some white nationalists. So how will you convince people of color to swing his way?</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: Let's be clear - Donald Trump says things that, you know, challenge people's thoughts on race and race relations in this country. And they are, at times, racial. But the charges that he - or any of those things are not substantiated. The truth of the matter is that Donald Trump has been in the public eye for years and years and years. And we didn't hear these accusations until he decided to run to become president of the United States, and then you hear his opponents saying these things.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: What kind of advice are you giving Donald Trump about inclusiveness?</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: Well, a lot of what I do with Mr. Trump is really guide him in terms of what's happening in the communities. He had no idea, until he started running, how many young black men and women were dying in the streets of Chicago. And so those are issues that I not only advise him on - that these are things that have to stop, that we have to find ways to make sure that the value of black lives in inner cities around this country is elevated. And so yeah, those are things that I talk with him about and that are important to his campaign.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: What Trump policies would solve those problems?</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: Job creation is going to be key. If you start to create opportunities for people, you'll see the number of people who are on welfare, the number of people who just feel like they have no hope - that number goes down. And his policies that really focus on businesses will help create jobs that will give us the opportunity to be self-reliant and to make a difference.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Omarosa, let me ask a little bit about you. You were a Democrat until joining the Trump campaign, I understand, and have supported Barack Obama in the past. So what explains your shift, personally?</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: Well, I think it's a great question. And, in fact, a big portion of what I'm doing as African-American outreach director is appealing to Democrats. I was - I worked for the Clintons. Unfortunately, it was during the impeachment time. And then I made the very tough decision, when both Senator Clinton and Senator Barack Obama were running, to support Barack Obama. And many in the Clinton camp weren't very pleased with me, even back then. But when Donald Trump entered this race, I knew that a lot of his policies aligned with what would improve my community.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: What will you be doing between now and Election Day?</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: As a Baptist minister, I still believe in the power of the pulpit and going into black churches, going into barbershops and beauty shops, going into homes and having very intimate town halls. So I'm very excited, but I only have 100 days to get this done.</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: And I'm up for the challenge (laughter).</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Omarosa Manigault is directing African-American outreach for the Donald Trump campaign. Omarosa, thanks.</s>OMAROSA MANIGAULT: Thank you.

Donté Colley, one of 2019's fastest-rising social media stars, talks about his chosen way to spread happiness: via energetic and emoji-laden dance videos.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: We can all use a little encouragement, motivation and joy in our lives, right?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Rachel, how did you know? Anyway, that's where Donte Colley comes in.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Colley makes Instagram videos. It's just him, dancing in front of the camera by himself.</s>DONTE COLLEY: I start by throwing on a song and hitting record on my iPhone and kind of just improvising a little bit of a dance.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: With his perfectly timed twirls and twists, he edits in emojis that pop up on screen - stars and fireworks and hearts, confetti explosions.</s>DONTE COLLEY: I really have no idea what is going to happen. So it's, like, kind of like a fun journey for everything.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: And there is giant text over all the images, feel-good phrases like, keep going. You matter. You complete this planet.</s>DONTE COLLEY: I just wanted to encourage my friends to really just push through through any kind of struggle that they are going through. And social media is a great platform to do that.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Using social media to spread a positive message. And many people have responded.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: This week, Colley took his show on the road, showing off his moves on "Good Morning America."</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Do it, Donte.</s>WHITNEY HOUSTON: (Singing) Oh, I wanna dance with somebody.</s>DONTE COLLEY: I've been getting quite a bit of messages like, this made my day or, this kind of saved my day, which - I actually didn't expect that at all. But I'm super grateful for it.</s>WHITNEY HOUSTON: (Singing) With somebody who loves me.</s>DONTE COLLEY: It definitely made me feel good that it was making other people feel good, which, at the end of the day, is just the objective, is - we all just need each other.

Candidates Trump and Clinton will soon receive intelligence briefings, which makes some people nervous. NPR's Elise Hu speaks with former acting CIA director John McLaughlin about the practice.

ELISE HU, HOST: Now that they're officially their parties' nominees, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will soon begin to get national intelligence briefings. Critics of both candidates are uneasy with the idea. Some worry Trump is too close to Vladimir Putin. Others bring up Clinton's carelessness with a private email server. John McLaughlin served as deputy CIA director under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He joins us now.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Good morning.</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: Hello. Good morning, Elise.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: First, why do presidential candidates, some who aren't elected officials, get intelligence briefings? And what kind of briefings do they get?</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: Well, this tradition goes back to President Harry Truman, who decided, when Dwight Eisenhower was running for president and Adlai Stevenson back in 1952, that they needed to have some sense for what was going on in the world of foreign policy, given the tumult of that time. So it's been a tradition since then.</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: And the theory is that one of these two people will become president of the United States. And so fairly early on in their candidacy after nomination, they should get some kind of a briefing on what the government, particularly from the intelligence point of view, thinks is going on in the world.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: The Washington Post quoted a senior intelligence official who said he would not participate in any session with Donald Trump. What are you hearing from your friends in the intelligence community on this topic?</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: I guess I would say this - my understanding and my experience is that intelligence professionals will step up to this and do it. The director of central intelligence, James Clapper, spoke on this matter - senior intelligence official in the United States - and he basically said we have teams ready to go and do this. I know there's a lot of controversy about both candidates. But, you know, the intelligence ethic here is you stay out of politics.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Do you personally feel comfortable with Donald Trump getting briefed?</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: I do in the sense. You know, I'd be among those who would say I think some of the things he said have been close to disqualifying. I mean, some of the things he said about our fidelity to our alliances to countries in NATO are, to me, shocking things coming from a presidential candidate. But on the other hand, if I were directing this, I would not have reservations about having him briefed. In fact, I would think it is all the more important that he be briefed.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: We also can't forget that Hillary Clinton was just recently reprimanded by the FBI for her quote, "careless handling of sensitive material." Do you share concerns about her?</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: No. My take on Hillary Clinton would be what she did with the email server was a mistake, and she's acknowledged that. On the other hand, this is a person who is so accustomed to intelligence briefings. I mean, she had a daily briefer every day who briefed her as secretary of state on essentially what the president was getting at the same time, that I would think her posture in these briefings would be more in the mode of now where were we? - I wouldn't have any reservations.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: And finally, are there dangers to not briefing candidates?</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: I think there are. The danger of not briefing them is that on the day they walk into office, it is, all of a sudden, upon them that there are these complexities they didn't understand. Things don't get to the president's desk unless they're hard. Someone else deals with all the easy stuff. By the time it gets to the president, it's complicated, and the choices are almost always all bad. So the sooner they start to understand and get a sense of flavor for that, the better.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: John McLaughlin is former acting director of the CIA. Thanks for speaking with us.</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: You bet. Thank you, Elise.

A hot air balloon carrying at least 16 passengers crashed early Saturday morning near Lockhart, Texas. There were no survivors. It's the worst such accident in U.S. history.

ELISE HU, HOST: In the nation's worst ballooning accident, 16 people died when the hot air balloon they were riding in struck power lines in Central Texas Saturday morning. The balloon burst into flames and fell into a pasture. Everyone aboard was killed. NPR's John Burnett says federal aviation investigators are treating it as a major accident.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: The huge sightseeing balloon was floating over cornfields and cattle and farm-to-market roads in open country, south of big city Austin. It was red, white and blue with a big smiley face and Ray-Bans. The oblong gondola was carrying passengers who paid, according to the company's website, around $200 apiece to check a balloon flight off their bucket list. Then shortly after 8 a.m., something went terribly wrong. It struck high-voltage transmission lines that tower 15 stories over the farm fields. Eyewitness Margaret Wylie stepped out of her mobile home down the road to take the dogs out when she heard a strange noise.</s>MARGARET WYLIE: I think the pops that I heard was the balloon connecting with the lines. And by the time I looked that way, it was already on the ground. And then the fireball went up.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Wylie said she saw cattle in a nearby field run in terror when the orange ball rose into the air. First responders described the wicker basket on fire when they arrived on the scene.</s>MARGARET WYLIE: I knew there were people dead, or at least somebody dead, when the coroner's vehicle came through.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: An investigator confirmed the balloon is operated by Heart of Texas Balloon Rides of New Braunfels. The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation, which starts today according to on-scene spokesman Erik Grosof.</s>ERIK GROSOF: And to the families that may be watching us right now, we offer our thoughts and prayers to all of them for the loss. And this will be a difficult site for us to work through.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Difficult because there are no survivors, balloons don't have flight data recorders and it's not certain there are eyewitnesses to the actual collision, says a veteran balloon pilot who's monitoring the situation in Texas. Gondolas have gotten bigger as balloon rides have grown in popularity and operators learn they can make more revenue. In 2014, the NTSB recommended the industry should come under greater regulatory oversight. This was based on three balloon flights that made hard landings in gusty winds that seriously injured passengers.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Noting that balloons can now carry more than 20 riders, the agency said quote, "the potential for a high number of fatalities in a single air tour balloon accident is of particular concern." The Federal Aviation Administration declined to act, noting the recommended changes would not result in higher operational safety. Dean Carlton is president of the Balloon Federation of America. He said in an interview he expects the federal investigation will take more than a year. John Burnett, NPR News, Austin.

Steve Inskeep talks to Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, about where U.S. troops are deployed — including at the southern border.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: This week, newly empowered Democrats are asking why President Trump sent U.S. troops to the border with Mexico. The question comes from the House Armed Services Committee. New Chairman Adam Smith says he will use his power to question the president's use of the military.</s>ADAM SMITH: If you ask the military anything, do you know what the answer is? Yes. Can you take that hill? Can you win this war? They always say yes. That's why we have civilian control of the military. They need to have that attitude. We need to make the smart decisions to say, I appreciate the positive approach; I don't think you can, and I don't think it's in the best interests of the United States to spend your blood trying.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Adam Smith has represented Washington state for more than 20 years. We met in his Capitol office, where he's preparing for a hearing on Tuesday. He has questions about the president's chaotic decision-making. He says that even though he broadly agrees with some of the president's goals. For example, he favors the president's move to reduce the U.S. presence in Syria, just not doing it so suddenly in a tweet.</s>ADAM SMITH: And that is the troubling thing, of course. The president - we won; it's over; ISIS is done; we can leave now. You know, I mean, where do you get that from?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Well, has the president been right to push for a smaller U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan?</s>ADAM SMITH: I believe so. Yes. And Afghanistan's a real big problem. I really wish that the United States did not have national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our interest in the region is the threat of transnational terrorist groups, obviously. That's where bin Laden was hanging out when he hit us on 9/11. We want to make sure they don't rise again. But the perpetual notion that if we just put in another 5,000 troops, if we just stay another five years, then we'll have a stable enough government in Kabul that we'll have an ally - yeah. We are losing lives and spending money in Afghanistan, and I'm not sure we're making progress.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Just go. You're open to that, you said.</s>ADAM SMITH: Well, not just go - there's no way to just go.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: But...</s>ADAM SMITH: OK.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: ...Get going in whatever fashion...</s>ADAM SMITH: Yes. Do it...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: ...You can.</s>ADAM SMITH: Yeah. It takes time - probably years, not months - in order to pull people out in a responsible way. But a strategy that says our continued military presence in Afghanistan is unlikely to improve the situation, is unlikely to be worth the cost, is an argument that is becoming more and more persuasive to me.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Do you intend to use the power that you have as the head of this committee to push for that outcome?</s>ADAM SMITH: I intend to use the power that I have on this committee to spur that debate. And the only way out of this is through a negotiated settlement. And there will not be peace in Afghanistan, probably in my lifetime. There are so many factions and so many warlords. What you want is you want to try to reduce them. And the way to do that - make peace with the Taliban. You know, build some sort of coalition government. Believe me; there are costs to that. I understand that. You know, and then, hopefully, yes; use that group to fight off, you know, ISIS and others. But the Taliban blows hot and cold on that, you know, depending on the day, and I don't know.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: When President Trump ordered troops to the border to help secure the border against a caravan that - been in the news shortly before the midterm election, was that a legitimate use of U.S. military power?</s>ADAM SMITH: Absolutely not. And the active-duty troops, I think they, like, put up some barbed wire and maybe built a temporary structure or two, and you can't tell me that was a good use of their time. Border security has gotten a ton better in the last 14 years, in part because we've made a lot of policy decisions to do it. But the president is manufacturing a crisis to pander to his base and try to keep a - well, and obviously, he's not trying to keep his campaign promise because his campaign promise was that Mexico was going to pay for it. But he made that promise because it played well with the crowd. Something that plays well to the crowd doesn't translate into policy. Now, to the extent we have a - these caravans that are coming - they're turning themselves in. OK? You don't need a wall. You know, you don't need anything (ph) to stop them. We need stuff to process them. The only thing that has really changed is we could use some more money for judges to process asylum-seekers. You know, processing asylum-seekers is the crisis, and the president is demagoguing this issue instead of addressing the problems that he raises.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: If the deployment to the border right before the election was not a legitimate use of military power, what was it? Was that a political use of the military?</s>ADAM SMITH: Absolutely. I mean, the president was trying - this crisis - they're coming for us. You heard his language. You know, we have an invasion, you know, coming at us, which was utter and complete nonsense. But when you engage the active-duty military, that drives up the debate because that's what we use - and the military is stopping an invasion. Well, the military didn't stop anything. Most of those people who went down to the border were sitting around playing cards because they didn't have anything to do because there was no invasion.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: What, if anything, are you prepared to do now that you are in the majority, should you see another deployment of the military that you view as political?</s>ADAM SMITH: Well, the deployment's still going on, so this is not a past-tense problem. This is a present-tense problem, and our first hearing is going to be on this subject. We want an explanation of the policy. We want to shine a light on it and make it clear, in my view, that there is no legitimate purpose here. And if there's no legitimate purpose, then why are you wasting the amount of money that you're wasting to put them down there?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Are you concerned about further political deployments?</s>ADAM SMITH: Absolutely. This president does not operate like any president I've ever dealt with or ever read about. He is unabashed in pursuing his agenda in any way he sees fit.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That leads to another question. We've been following the news from Venezuela, where there are two competing presidents. And one key factor, as we have reported, is - who is in charge of the military? - whose orders the military will follow. The United States is nowhere near that level of chaos, but it's a tense political moment. Have you asked questions of military leaders to be sure they know what rules to follow in the event of a crisis?</s>ADAM SMITH: I think this is part of the debate and part of what went into the border deployment - was the concern that the president - there was mixed messages coming out of the White House that wanted to use them for law enforcement in the U.S., which is a clear violation of our Constitution and a precedent that we do not want to set. So yes; part of this discussion about the border deployment is going to be to emphasize the clear constitutional law that U.S. military does not do domestic criminal situations. They are not allowed to act as a law enforcement agency.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Have you already raised that question with military officials that you must talk with from time to time?</s>ADAM SMITH: Yeah. I - well, I raised it with Secretary Mattis, but he's not there anymore, so - and we talked about this a couple times, as we were concerned about it. And I will say that the Pentagon secretary, Mattis, and everybody I spoke to was - you know, they were very adamant about not stepping across that line. The mixed messages were coming out of civilians in the White House, not out of the Pentagon. They were very clear that they were not going to engage in law enforcement activity.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Mr. Chairman, thanks very much.</s>ADAM SMITH: Thanks for the chance.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Adam Smith is the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which plans a hearing on the border deployment tomorrow.

Steve Inskeep talks to Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King about this week's Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to temporarily enforce its plan to ban transgender military personnel.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The Supreme Court ruled this week that the Trump administration can, for now, enforce a ban on many transgender military personnel. The president announced that ban on Twitter in 2017. The Pentagon effort to refine his tweet into policy is being challenged in court. And the justices say the policy may go into effect while the court challenges proceed.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King is among those affected. She has served in the military for almost two decades, received much attention in recent years as a transgender woman in the years when President Obama's administration was allowing transgender personnel to serve. Before her transition, she was deployed to Afghanistan three times.</s>PATRICIA KING: My second trip to Afghanistan was in 2003. And it was one of the most life-altering experiences for me. And the reason I say that is we had the opportunity, when we were there, to see the difference that had been made in the short time from our occupation to 2003. I saw women driving cars. I saw children going to school, and I saw the difference that we had the opportunity to make. And that sat with me.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: How did you identify at that time?</s>PATRICIA KING: At the time, I had not come out, even to myself. So I still identified as a male. And I was wrestling with the feelings that I was having. I felt like I was stuck in the wrong body. But this was at the birth of Google. There was no Internet search history to find an understanding. There were very few books. So I didn't have an understanding of the feelings I was having.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: When did your thoughts clarify?</s>PATRICIA KING: Towards the end of that decade, towards around 2010, I started to understand what it was. I understood that this is not something that's just going to go away. But I was married, happily so. And at that point in time, what I had decided was that I was going to repress these feelings. I had made the assumption that my family would not be accepting, that I couldn't just end one life and start another as a different person.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And you decided on a different course when?</s>PATRICIA KING: Towards the end of my most recent deployment in 2014, my wife and I decided the best course for us was to dissolve our marriage. And in that moment, I had the opportunity to make a decision about what I wanted the rest of my life to look like. Through a lot of thought and a lot of prayer, I made the decision that I was going to come out and start a transition. And then it was time to come out at work.</s>PATRICIA KING: Now, the Army was not yet at a point where we had changed our policy. So coming out at work was a risky thing. But I knew that being authentic to myself was important. So I came out to my leaders and my peers in the Army.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And then President Obama did change the policy for a while. Is that correct?</s>PATRICIA KING: Yes, shortly after that there was an announcement that there would be a freeze on transgender discharges while they did a one-year study. In the end, the DOD rolled out a policy allowing us to serve openly and genuinely.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Now the rules have changed again. What do those rules mean for your day-to-day life as a soldier?</s>PATRICIA KING: The policy that is going into place creates a grandfather clause for transgender service members, which essentially makes those of us who are serving openly right now kind of like the last white rhinos. This particular policy affects all of us. This decision and this policy give a false sense of credibility to the inaccurate notion that transgender people are somehow less or less capable than our peers.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: How have you answered the objection, which I'm sure you've heard from someone in the military, that they want you to be ready to serve and not going through surgeries?</s>PATRICIA KING: Every service member will likely go through a period where they are not deployable for some small period of time, whether it be an injury, the birth of a child. We all go through that. Service members are not robots. We are people with lives. And human lives sometimes have factors that slow us down.</s>PATRICIA KING: Transition can be that. But in my experience and in my case, the portion of time where I was not deployable and not ready to go to war was incredibly small. And every transgender service member knows that our first responsibility is to our job.</s>PATRICIA KING: We employ the best and brightest in the military. And we appreciate what they bring to the table. Providing world-class care to the best and brightest is the cost of doing business to have the finest military and all-volunteer force in the world.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Staff Sergeant King, thanks so much for taking the time.</s>PATRICIA KING: Thank you.

The shutdown fight boils down to one issue: border wall funding. The Housing and Urban Development secretary urges elected officials to re-open government. Venezuela's military backs President Maduro.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Members of the Senate sometimes like to refer to themselves as the world's greatest deliberative body.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: In modern times, the speeches in the Senate debate draw limited attention. But Senator Michael Bennet was an exception yesterday. The Colorado Democrat is usually a pretty reserved guy. But yesterday, the Senate failed to advance two plans to end a partial government shutdown, and Bennet wasn't having it.</s>MICHAEL BENNET: How ludicrous it is that this government is shut down over a promise the president of the United States couldn't keep and that America is not interested in having him keep.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Republicans for their port - for their part reportedly lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the impasse at a private lunch.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So what now? NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith is here. Tamara, good morning.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Have Senators come up with anything that maybe could pass?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, not necessarily...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: (Laughter) OK.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: But they're talking. And that's the thing. There were these two test votes yesterday, and they failed. But taking a test that fails has a purpose. And it really kickstarted conversations. I think part of why it kickstarted conversations is that six Senate Republicans crossed party lines and voted in favor of the Democratic bill to reopen the government and fund the government without funding a wall...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Which is the big - the big dividing line here, the president's demand for funding for a wall on the Mexican border. OK.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Right. And so that prompted the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, to go huddle and talk about what was possible. And then they didn't really come up with anything fully, but they're talking, which is a new development.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. And I guess they've talked about possibly a temporary reopening of the government while they negotiate. Of course, Democrats have demanded, open the government first; we'll talk about the wall later. Republicans have largely - with the exceptions you mentioned - obeyed the president in the Senate and voted the way that he wants, only to - only to have reopening the government with wall funding. Would the president approve of some kind of temporary - temporary movement?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: It's not 100 percent clear. He was asked about it yesterday. He said, you know, McConnell and Schumer, they're working on something. Let's see what they come up with. But, you know, maybe - maybe he said, he might support it.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Let's listen.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the ideas suggested is they open it - they pay a - sort of a pro-rated downpayment for the wall, which I think people will agree that you need.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: So Senator Schumer's spokesman put out a statement after that saying, Democrats are a hard no on the wall, pro-rated or otherwise. President Trump was asked, well, what if they come up with something that doesn't have wall funding in it? And the president was a little squishy on it and then said, you know, I've got other options too.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh, which would be a reference, I suppose, to the possibility of declaring a state of emergency, which is something the White House has discussed but dismissed up to now.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Exactly.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The idea of a down payment on the wall would go against the Democratic position here. They've said they don't want to continuously have the president threatening to shut the government down to get things that he wants. Giving him a little bit of what he wants for a temporary reopening of the government would go against that position, wouldn't it?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Indeed, it would, which is why Democrats are not open to that idea.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Do you have any insight as to what the president is thinking now beyond what he has said in public?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, he has - he had this meeting with conservatives earlier this week. They came away thinking that he was going to hold firm and that he wasn't going to fold. They said they're used to Republicans folding in shutdowns. But they feel like the president is pretty strong on wanting wall funding.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK, Tam, thanks for the update.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR's Tamara Keith.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Now, today federal workers miss their second paycheck.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right, and crucial programs to help Americans pay rent or buy food are actually running out of money at this point. On TV yesterday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he was baffled by this. He said it should be simple for federal workers to take out loans. Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told NPR's Brockton Booker - Brakkton Booker, rather, that's not so simple.</s>BEN CARSON: I mean, yes, I know we're going to give them back pay. But that doesn't take care of the interest if they borrow money. It doesn't make them whole again.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And NPR's Brakkton Booker is in our studios. Brakkton, good morning.</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Where did you run into Ben Carson?</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: So we were at an event in D.C. It was a late-night event. We were actually - he was out there talking with members of the homeless population. He was getting basic information about their health and about their general circumstances, about how they became homeless. And we were chatting in between these interviews that he was conducting. And Carson is typically low-key, doesn't get riled up about things. But you could tell he was getting very frustrated about how long the shutdown had lasted. And here's what he had to say.</s>BEN CARSON: We can continue to hope that our leaders will recognize that this is an easy problem to solve. Just take your ego out of it.</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: So there, you hear him say, our leaders and, take your ego out of it. So, you know, at first glance I was like, well, does he mean Nancy Pelosi? Does he mean Senator Mitch McConnell? And does - does he mean President Trump? And I - I checked with the staff, and they insist that he was only talking about congressional leaders.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh, OK, although when you think about ego, there is a person who comes to mind. What are the secretary's concerns as this shutdown goes on? What makes it so bothersome to him?</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Well, he's certainly got the federal workforce on his mind, including many of his staff at HUD, who are, again, missing their second paychecks today. There is another concern, though, that obviously HUD provides rental assistance to many millions of low-income Americans. So his real concern, too, are evictions. Now, Carson pointed out that, you know, no tenant has ever been evicted as a result of a shutdown. But then again, no shutdown has ever lasted this long.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK, are there safety - safety net programs here that are going to run out if this goes, like, another month or so?</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Well, it looks like a lot of programs, including housing choice voucher programs and project-based programs that HUD organizes, there are - there's food stamps, SNAP benefits that is run out of USDA. Most of these programs are going - it appears to be they're going to be running out of money by mid-February, certainly by early March. And that is giving a lot of concern to a lot of Americans.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: You know, I'm thinking if you're a tenant, it's going to be stressful not to be able to pay your rent and embarrassing not to be able to pay your rent. But you probably won't be evicted right away. The person who really ends up short there is the landlord.</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Right. And the landlord - I talked to one landlord who does have Section 8 housing. Her name is Jennifer McQueary (ph). Here's what she had to say.</s>JENNIFER MCQUEARY: No, I'm not a tenant in jeopardy of losing my home. However, I am a landlord in jeopardy of losing everything.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Everything?</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Everything. I mean, she owns 10 properties, all of them with Section 8 housing vouchers. And she says if she misses one payment, she is very close to losing it all. And she's hoping to not have to evict anybody. But, you know, times are tough right now.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh, because she borrowed money to own the buildings.</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Right.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And some people have really strict terms on those loans.</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: And she's also - yes. She has mortgages to pay. And she's expecting money from HUD to supplement the mortgage there.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Brakkton, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.</s>BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Absolutely.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's Brakkton Booker.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Some other news now. How is a crisis in Venezuela evolving?</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Some but not all Americans are moving out of harm's way. The State Department ordered non-emergency U.S. government employees to leave Venezuela. But key personnel remain in defiance of an order from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. says it's not going to follow the president's demand to evacuate because the U.S. recognizes not President Maduro, but instead, the opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as his replacement.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Reporter John Otis has been following the situation closely. He joins us now. Hi there, John.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: How is each rival president moving to consolidate power?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Well, it's a pretty bizarre situation. Maduro claims, you know, that he is the legitimate president because he took power through an election that was held last year. But that election, most international observers say it was a sham, that he basically stole the election. Nonetheless, he was sworn in for another six-year term just this month. And that's kind of what set off all these protests.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Juan Guaido is Venezuela's - the head of the congress. And under the constitution, if there's a vancancy in the presidency, you know, the head of congress takes over. And that's his claim to legitimacy. He wants to lead a transitional government and hold new elections. And he's been recognized by the U.S. and most Latin American countries.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: But for now, Maduro would seem to have the upper hand because he pounced on the backing of Venezuela's powerful military. So, you know, it's kind of a situation where Maduro has lots of power but not much legitimacy. And Guaido has a lot of legitimacy but no real power.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: You said Maduro counts on the backing of the military. Is it clear that he has it and will continue to have it?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Well, Steve, the military is sort of a black box. You never really know what's going on. But on the surface, his support would - would appear to be holding. Yesterday, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino came out and said the armed forces continues to recognize Maduro as Venezuela's only legitimate president.</s>VLADIMIR PADRINO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Now, Steve, one reason for this support is that Maduro's given officers a lot of perks. He's put them in charge of government ministries and even the vital oil industry. Also, some top officers have been accused of drug trafficking and human rights abuses. And so they fear that if the opposition and if Guaido actually take power, that they could go to jail or be extradited.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh, so they've got money on the line and their own futures on the line. And yet, they must understand the instability of the situation. And this is a military that once produced Hugo Chavez, the guy who established the socialist government, didn't it?</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: That's correct, Steve. And, you know, the military, you know, they've been involved in a lot of rebellions over the years. And there are a lot of disgruntled officers. And there have been a lot of coup plots. But at the same time, Cuban intelligence agents are working very closely with the top brass in Venezuela to snuff out any conspiracies. So that's why all the rebellions that we have seen have all been quite small. You may remember that attack on Maduro last year. It wasn't carried out by army battalions. It was carried out by a couple of drones.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. John Otis, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Thanks, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's reporter John Otis, who is based in South America, has been following this situation in Venezuela.

Starting tomorrow, concealed weapons will be allowed on Texas campuses. NPR's Elise Hu talks with University of Texas vice chancellor David Daniel, 50 years to the day since the UT tower shooting.

ELISE HU, HOST: Tomorrow marks 50 years since a national tragedy played out on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.</s>UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: This is a KLRN News bulletin. A sniper with a high-powered rifle has taken up a position on the observation deck of the tower on the campus of the University of Texas. He is firing at positions within his range.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: The sniper was a former Marine and expert marksman named Charles Whitman. By the time police shot and killed him, 14 people were dead and more than 30 others wounded. As the UT-Austin campus marks that grim anniversary tomorrow, a new gun law will take effect in Texas. For the first time, licensed gun owners will be allowed to carry loaded, concealed handguns on all Texas public university campuses. Dr. David Daniel is one of the officials charged with implementing the new law. He is deputy chancellor of the University of Texas System, and he joins me now.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Dr. Daniel, welcome.</s>DAVID DANIEL: Thank you. It's good to be with you.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Well, let me just ask, how do you feel about this law going into effect on this anniversary?</s>DAVID DANIEL: Well, it's unfortunate that the anniversary of that tragic shooting happens to coincide with the implementation of the concealed carry law. As chance would have it, the 50-year anniversary is the date August 1, 2016, and that happens to be the date that the concealed carry law goes into effect for public university campuses in Texas.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: What exactly are the provisions of the new law? Kind of spell that out for us.</s>DAVID DANIEL: The law extends the right for concealed handgun license-holders, who already have the ability to carry their handgun generally in Texas, to carry those concealed handguns onto college campuses. The unique aspect of the Texas law is that the law empowers university presidents to establish reasonable rules for the carrying of concealed handguns, taking into account the unique characteristics of each campus. But presidents may not establish rules that prohibit, or generally appear to prohibit, the carrying of concealed handguns.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: So what would be an example of maybe a restriction on the UT campus that's different on the Texas A&M campus at College Station?</s>DAVID DANIEL: So in some of our campuses, concealed carry is not allowed in dormitories, whereas in other campuses, it is allowed. Probably the most significant difference is a provision established at the University of Texas - Austin that allows occupants of individual offices to not allow concealed carry within their office. I expect some other campuses in the University of Texas System to adapt that rule as well, but I expect that others will not. So we do see differences at different campuses.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Are you preparing any additional levels of security or any trainings, drills as a result of preparing for this law?</s>DAVID DANIEL: We've put some additional training in place for our police officers to deal with weapons. We have talked about putting additional security cameras in place at key locations. So the implementation of the law has raised anxiety. It has raised concerns, and we're trying to use it as an opportunity to increase safety and security on campus in general.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: On the topic of all this debate and dialogue, some professors are attempting to reverse this law with a lawsuit. And in it, they're noting the timing of it going into effect on a mass shooting anniversary. So Dr. Daniel, I have to ask - will this law make campuses safer?</s>DAVID DANIEL: (Laughter) Well, we don't have an opinion one way or the other about whether the law will make a campus safer or not. Chancellor McRaven was very clear - and I agree with him - in that our preference would not be to allow concealed carry on campus. However, we're very respectful of our legislative process. Our elected leaders made their decision. The governor signed it into law. We at the university are committed to following the law, making our campuses just as safe as they possibly can be and do so in a way that does not alter the learning environment at our campuses.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Dr. David Daniel is deputy chancellor of the University of Texas System. Dr. Daniel, thanks so much.</s>DAVID DANIEL: My pleasure.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now; Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post; Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review; and Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, tell us who they read even if they don't always agree.

ELISE HU, HOST: Since algorithms make it harder to find political views we disagree with, where should we go to find them? To find out, we called up several conservative and liberal opinion writers and thinkers and asked them who they read and watch. Amy Goodman, the host of "Democracy Now!," is a voice on the left. She says getting out there and talking to different people is the way she breaks through the silos.</s>AMY GOODMAN: I read widely so that we are not segregated, you know, on the networks watching many different programs from Fox to Al Jazeera, from MSNBC to CNN, to all of these places.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Here is Jennifer Rubin.</s>JENNIFER RUBIN: I'm the author of the "Right Turn" blog at The Washington Post. And although many conservatives think I'm not conservative enough, I do report and editorialize from the conservative side of the spectrum.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: She regularly reads columnists considered very liberal, including her colleagues at The Post, E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson.</s>JENNIFER RUBIN: When every kid can have a blog and anyone can get on Twitter, you miss those people who have covered presidents and elections and world events for a long time. And so they have a richness of understanding a perspective about how this compares to other events in previous years. And that, I think, is vitally important.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Here's another conservative perspective - Ramesh Ponnuru, editor at National Review. He says even though he disagrees with many progressive opinion writers, he always learns from them.</s>RAMESH PONNURU: And very often they are trying to respond to the best conservative arguments rather than simply pointing to the worst ones and making fun of them.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Ponnuru follows several liberal writers at The Huffington Post and The Washington Post.</s>RAMESH PONNURU: I think that Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine is someone who consistently gives me things to think about and sometimes to agree with but also often to disagree with.</s>JONATHAN CHAIT: My name is Jonathan Chait, and I write columns about politics from a center left perspective for New York Magazine.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Chait disagrees with most of the conservatives he reads, but he finds Ramesh Ponnuru one of the most interesting. And, no, neither of them knew we were talking to the other. He says he follows commentators and writers across the political spectrum.</s>JONATHAN CHAIT: I disagree with almost everyone, politically, about something. So there's hardly anyone who I read who I always agree with.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Chait says that making sure he reads and hears other sides of an argument is just common sense.</s>JONATHAN CHAIT: It's like asking a mathematician, why are you always looking at numbers?</s>ELISE HU, HOST: That was Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!," Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review and Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine.

Free-thinking bloggers in some Muslim countries face criminal prosecution and even death for expressing their ideas. There are Islamic scholars who say this is a distortion of what Islam teaches.

LYNN NEARY, HOST: Some of the most deadly terrorist attacks have been Muslims killing Muslims. Earlier this month, a truck bomb targeted Shia Muslims in Baghdad, killing some 300 people. ISIS considers them apostates. In Bangladesh, radicals have gone after Muslims they suspect of blasphemy. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports on how a liberal Muslim in Saudi Arabia found himself facing such charges.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Eleven years ago in Saudi Arabia, a restless young man named Raif Badawi set up an internet forum. It was a place where he and other Saudis could share thoughts about the social order in their country. In English, the site was called Free Saudi Liberals. Inevitably, it got Badawi in trouble with the religious authorities. Four years ago, he was arrested. He remains in a Saudi prison today.</s>ENSAF HAIDAR: (Foreign language spoken).</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Ensaf Haidar is Badawi's wife. She speaks here through an interpreter.</s>ENSAF HAIDAR: (Through interpreter) As it is written in the judgment, he has been accused of creating an internet website, adopting liberal thinking and ridiculing some religious figures as well. And he also liked a Christian page.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: That was on Facebook. Haidar fled Saudi with their three children and now lives in Canada. In her book, "Raif Badawi: The Voice Of Freedom," Haidar says that her husband is a good Muslim but that he promoted a live-and-let-live philosophy. That's a perspective conservative Saudi clerics consider un-Islamic.</s>ENSAF HAIDAR: (Through interpreter) There was a fatwa issued against him from 150 religious figures in Saudi Arabia. So this was the main thing that created the problem for him.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: A serious problem. In a Saudi court, Badawi was charged with blasphemy and apostasy. For conservative Muslims, blasphemy is when someone insults Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. Apostasy is when a Muslim rejects Islam altogether. Badawi was accused of abandoning his faith for liberalism. Assim Al-Hakeem is a hard-line Saudi sheikh famous for lecturing in English.</s>ASSIM AL-HAKEEM: The consensus of all scholars that if a person changes his religion from Islam to any other religion, the punishment should be execution, death.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Badawi was indeed condemned. Under international pressure, Saudi authorities later reduced his death sentence to 10 years in prison and a thousand lashes. But his case raises vital questions. Who gets to judge what constitutes blasphemy or apostasy? And is this what Islam really teaches? Sheikh Assim, while defending the death sentence for apostates, says in one of his online lectures that it can be imposed only by the government of an Islamic state on the advice of scholars.</s>ASSIM AL-HAKEEM: It is not for Tom, Dick or Harry to carry out this punishment. This cannot be done without following the procedure, meaning if someone says that he doesn't believe in the Prophet (speaking Arabic), can we go and chop his head off? The answer is no.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Sheikh Assim says ISIS leaders do not follow the required procedure, so their killings are not justified. He defends the Saudi approach. But in her book, Ensaf Haidar says that system often amounts to vigilante justice.</s>ENSAF HAIDAR: (Through interpreter) In terms of who can accuse a person of apostasy, unfortunately, it's anybody who has a long beard.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: The men with long beards are the ones with influence. The version of Islam prevailing in Saudi Arabia is Wahhabism, an uncompromising fundamentalist ideology dating from the 18th century. Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, says Raif Badawi's live-and-let-live philosophy doesn't fit with Wahhabism.</s>AKBAR AHMED: The Wahhabi faith would take a very conservative, very hard line of drawing boundaries around the faith and saying, in fact, you cannot have a live-and-let-live philosophy. It must be only this way of life. Anything else is not the correct interpretation of how we approach God.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: But many Muslim scholars question whether Wahhabism is a true reflection of Islam. Akbar Ahmed says some of what's associated with it and other fundamentalist interpretations of Islam does not actually come from the Quran or from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, but rather reflects beliefs and practices passed down from Arab tribes before Islam even emerged as a religion.</s>AKBAR AHMED: Very often, pre-Islamic customs come into Islam, for example, honor killings. These are tribal customs which have come into Islam. So tribes which are Muslim will practice these in their societies. And they will say these are Muslim because we are Muslim. In fact, these are not Islamic, and they come from outside Islam.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Another consideration, seventh-century Arabia was a purely Islamic state. To be a Muslim was to be a citizen. To reject Islam was to reject state authority. Apostasy was tantamount to treason. But that was a political, not a theological, fact. And Akbar Ahmed of American University says such anti-democratic thinking has no place in the modern world.</s>AKBAR AHMED: When someone tells me there's no democracy in Islam, I ask them, which Islam are you talking about? Because it's certainly not my understanding of Islam. To me, the value of Islam is precisely that it is a religion which is compassionate, which is inclusive and can be interpreted in a way that people who are not Muslim are able to relate to it and be comfortable with it.</s>TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: This is, however, what Ahmed calls a modernist view of Islam. And he acknowledges that it's the ultra-conservative fundamentalists who have been gaining strength recently in the Muslim world, from Saudi Arabia to Syria to South Asia. That does not bode well for liberals like Raif Badawi, who still faces years in a Saudi prison. Tom Gjelten, NPR News.

The justices announced the ruling Thursday. More challenges loom, however.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is Day to Day, I am Alex Chadwick.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: I am Madeleine Brand.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Coming up, the cost of food is going up, so restaurant chefs get creative in the kitchen.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: First, gay marriage in California. Eight years ago, voters in the state past a referendum that says marriage is for a man and a woman only. Gay and lesbian couples are trying to get that reversed, the California Supreme Court is supposed to rule on it today. Right now, Massachusetts is the only state where gay marriage is completely legal. Sarah Varney is a reporter for KQED. Sarah, what are the cases before the court today? What are they arguing?</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): There is about two dozen gay and lesbian couples who have joined with the city of San Francisco, and they've argued that the state ban on same-sex marriage discriminates based on gender or sexual orientation, and that it violates their fundamental right to marry.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: So there is just a basic constitutional question before the court. You mentioned that San Francisco is a party to this, and remind us, a few years ago there was kind of a brief spade of same-sex marriages in the city. What happened?</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): Back in 2004, San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, said that the state ban against same-sex marriage, in his mind, violated the state constitution. And so on Valentine's Day, four years ago, he opened up City Hall and allowed gay couples to get married. So I was there that whole weekend, it went on for quite a few days, and there were couples lined up around the block. In the end, about four thousand couples got married. The Supreme Court came in quickly after that, and put a stop to it, and then, during the court proceedings, they overturned all of those marriages, essentially saying that the Mayor didn't have the authority to make that decision.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: So the case that's before the Supreme Court, now, began sort of back then. And what are experts predicting that the court is going to say today, if indeed there can be any predictions?</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): It is very difficult to say, I was at oral arguments several months ago, and the court seems very split, I think, whichever way the court goes it will be a very close decision. It did seem that the Chief Justice, Ron George, who is a Republican, this is a Republican majority court, did seem inclined to agree with the same-sex couples, that the state of California has long recognized the rights of same-sex couples, to raise children, to be foster parents, to own property. And perhaps it no longer makes sense to bar them from marriage. So there is a lot of discussion in this, during oral arguments on why should the state of California continue to maintain essentially separate institutions for gay men and lesbians, and for heterosexuals. The court was really curious about, what is this about marriage that really matters. And there is a lot of discussion back and forth, that marriage communicates a deep meaning, that the name marriage matters. Some of the justices said, doesn't having separate institutions remind us of bans on interracial marriage? They talked a lot about a case in 1948, California was the first state in the country to overturn a ban on interracial marriage. There is lot of conversation about whether or not those same principles apply to this case.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Is this situation any different because the court is dealing here with a referendum that was passed by the state's voters, or does that just simply not matter because is a basic constitutional question?</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): Essentially, it doesn't matter. It is a basic constitutional question, the court seems inclined to - they weren't going to say let's kick this back to the voters, for instance, and let them have another try at it. I would add, though, there is the 2000 Prop 22, which is what you were referring to, but there is also a state statute that goes back to, I believe, it is the late 70s. It is in the State Family Code that also defines marriage as that between a man and a woman. So it is actually two different things that they are looking at here.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Now the state legislature has, in the ensuing years, twice passed laws legalizing same-sex marriages.</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): That's right.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: And Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed both of those.</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): That's correct. Governor Schwarzenegger said the voters have spoken on this in 2000, when they passed Proposition 22, so I'm going to leave it up to the voters, or whatever the court decides, I will follow what the court decides.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: So that decision is coming down later today. I read a coMm: ent from a gay activist who said, whatever way California goes, this is going to be a very important decision for the entire country.</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): I think so. I mean, everybody has been watching, obviously California is the most populous state in the country, has a very large gay and lesbian population. If the court does rule to overturn the ban, that would take effect in about 30 days, unless the court says otherwise. And so within 30 days, if in fact this ban on same-sex marriages is overturned, you'd start to see gay couples getting married in California.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Sarah Varney of KQED, in San Francisco. Sarah, thank you.</s>Ms. SARAH VARNEY (Reporter for KQED): Thank you.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Marketplace in a moment on Day To Day.

Turkey is rounding up suspected coup plotters, with more than 6,000 detained. NPR's Lynn Neary speaks to Bulent Aliriza of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

LYNN NEARY, HOST: Turkey's minister of justice says the government has detained some 6,000 people it says were involved in Friday's attempted coup. Dozens of arrest warrants have been issued for judges and prosecutors as President Recep Erdogan purges anyone seen to oppose the government. Joining us is Bulent Aliriza. He is director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was in Turkey when the coup started. Thanks so much for joining us.</s>BULENT ALIRIZA: You're welcome.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Now, much of the violence was in Ankara, where you are. What is the situation in the capital now?</s>BULENT ALIRIZA: Stable, but understandably tense. The night of the 15th and the morning of the 16th there was heavy fighting going on downtown. The coup perpetrators had taken over the headquarters of the military, and they had also engaged the police in other parts of the capital. It continued throughout the night and then it died down the next morning. But obviously, the events of a few days ago have left their imprint on the people.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Have things returned to normal, would you say, or they're just - you used the word stable. Is there a sense of normalcy at all yet?</s>BULENT ALIRIZA: Well, you know, it depends what we mean by normal. Obviously, we're not back to the situation that existed before the coup. It was thought by many people that a coup would no longer be possible. This is a country that had suffered from coups in the past. And when we talk about normality in Ankara, it's a normality which nonetheless is affected by what had happened a few days ago.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: How firm is President Erdogan's hold on power?</s>BULENT ALIRIZA: Firm. It was firm before the events. It's firm again now. But it must have come as a shock to him that there was a coup attempt against him. After all, he and the party that heads - the AKP, the Justice and Development Party - had won a number of elections and was, as election results confirm, widely perceived to be popular with almost 50 percent of the vote. And yet here it was being challenged by the military. And on top of that, there was an attempt on his life. The hotel where he was staying was attacked by special forces. He wasn't there at the time. He'd just left. You know, that must've been a shock to him. He's back in control but very much aware of the extra-parliamentary challenge by the military (unintelligible).</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: President Erdogan has placed the blame for this coup on Fethullah Gulen. He's a Muslim cleric living in exile here in the United States. He has categorically denied that he was behind this. These two men were allies at one point, but now obviously enemies, bad blood between them. What's the story there?</s>BULENT ALIRIZA: It's a very long story. And the bad blood stretches back to the end of 2014, when prosecutors believed to be followers of Gulen began a series of investigations against a number of ministers in the Erdogan government and then subsequently, a week later, against members of Erdogan's family and others associated with them. Everyone immediately branded that a coup and from then on has been making a point of naming the Gulen movement for still engaging in plotting against his government, and culminating with the blame that he has laid at the door of Gulen and his followers for the coup attempt.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Turkey has asked the U.S. to extradite Gulen. Any chance you think that that would happen?</s>BULENT ALIRIZA: Well, it depends on the way that the U.S. government judge the seriousness of the allegations. And Gulen happens to be a permanent resident, so it has to be judged sufficient. But it has to be stressed that President Erdogan says the coup - has made a point of underlining his desire for the extradition of Gulen and appealed personally to President Obama, and said that he'd raised this personally with President Obama in the past.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Bulent Aliriza. He is the director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thanks so much for being with us.</s>BULENT ALIRIZA: Thank you.

Donald Trump and his running mate pick, Gov. Mike Pence, are heading to Cleveland for the Republican Party convention. NPR's Lynn Neary speaks with NPR's Mara Liasson about Trump's choice.

LYNN NEARY, HOST: Trump named Indiana Governor Michael Pence as his running mate, delaying the official announcement until yesterday because of the attack earlier in France, which left more than 80 people dead. In introducing Pence, Trump blamed the Democratic leadership for instability both overseas and at home.</s>DONALD TRUMP: We need new leadership. We need new thinking. We need strength. We need, in our country, law and order.</s>DONALD TRUMP: And if I'm elected president, that will happened.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: NPR political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now from Cleveland. Good morning, Mara.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Lynn.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: So how is this tough talking going over with voters? How do you think it'll go over?</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Well, in the past, it's worked very well for Republicans on crime, national security, terrorism. They were always the tough party, best to keep people safe. And Trump has been very quick to jump on all of these terrorist attacks. He blamed Hillary Clinton for the the growth of ISIS over - yesterday. He also said that he is the only one who can keep voters safe. So this is a top concern for Americans, especially after San Bernardino and Orlando.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: But the Clinton campaign is banking on something different. It believes that voters want sure, steady leadership. It's actually got a new ad out that says Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, provides steady leadership in uncertain times. That, maybe, is not as powerful a message as Donald Trump's America first and we're going to bomb the expletive deleted out of ISIS. But that's what she's putting up as a contrast.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Well, has Donald Trump offered any specifics on how he is going to defeat these threats?</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: He said he'd ask Congress to declare war on ISIS and on Islamic terrorism. That sounds very bold, but most experts say that would be merely symbolic. He has called for extreme vetting of immigrants. He's also called for a ban on people from, quote, "terrorist nations." He said he'd use waterboarding. He'd kill terrorists' families. He has said both that NATO is obsolete and we - the U.S. maybe should pull back a bit from NATO. But then on Friday, he agreed with FOX News host Bill O'Reilly, saying that NATO should commit ground troops and air forces to wipe ISIS off the face of the earth.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Let's talk about Trump's running mate, Mike Pence. He's very far right conservative. He's also a religious conservative. Is that going to help with the evangelical vote?</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: It might. Mike Pence describes himself as a Christian, a conservative and a Republican in that order. So having him on the ticket should help Trump unify the party, bring some conservative Christian voters off the sidelines. This clearly was a pick to shore up Trump's base, to double down on the strategy of appealing to white, working-class voters in the Midwest, in the Rust Belt. This was not a pick to make the Trump ticket more appealing to minorities or suburban women.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: It's interesting that Trump does not appear to expect Pence to play the traditional role of the attack dog. Pence actually swore off negative campaigning years ago in an article called "Confessions Of A Negative Campaigner." And in a "60 Minutes" interview where both Trump and Pence appear together, Trump said that Pence doesn't have to attack Hillary Clinton. He'll take care of that all by himself.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Right. And very quickly, Mara, it seemed to take a long time to come to this decision, which the Clinton campaign is seizing on. Does that matter now?</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: I think that it doesn't matter to most voters. They don't really care how long it took Trump to come to the decision or whether he vacillated about it. But it did cost him. It was a missed opportunity. He missed having the media focus on Pence.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: All right. NPR political correspondent Mara Liasson in Cleveland, thanks so much.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Thank you.

Authorities are piecing together details on the suspect who killed more than 84 people with a 20-ton truck. At the same time, questions persist about security.

LYNN NEARY, HOST: In Nice, France this morning, police took two more people into custody for possible connections to Thursday's attack. So far, evidence indicates the man who drove a truck along a pedestrian boulevard, killing 84 people, acted alone. But authorities are questioning several people. As NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, news that the attack was inspired by ISIS has added to fears.</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: In Nice, the beach has reopened and residents can stroll once again along the Promenade des Anglais, the picturesque, palm-lined boulevard that runs along the Mediterranean coast. Today, the usually festive promenade is littered with flowers and candles. Faces are somber. Nice native Anne Noyer is lighting a candle.</s>ANNE NOYER: We are very afraid. Very, very...</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Afraid, Noyer says, that the attack was inspired by ISIS. She says, "if the driver was just mentally ill, well, it's horrible, but a freak thing." "If he was with ISIS," she says, "it means the enemy is all around us." Noyer says Nice has an uneasy relationship with its Muslim population. Many Muslims have been here for generations and are integrated, she says, but others not so. Among them are foreigners like the Tunisian killer Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. A hundred people from Nice have joined the ranks of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria, one of the highest numbers of any French city.</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: At a mosque in Nice, prayers are breaking off. News that the attack may have been carried out in the name of ISIS worries the Muslim community in this city. French-Tunisian Farid Benhada tells me none of this has anything to do with Islam.</s>FARID BENHADA: (Speaking French).</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: "The driver was no Muslim," he says, "but many of the victims were. God never told anyone to go kill children." Benhada says Muslims are afraid of a backlash. Bouhlel lived in this hilly neighborhood of high rises in the north of Nice. He came to France from Tunisia 10 years ago. People here say he beat his wife until she left him. They also say Bouhlel was not religious, but angry and mentally unstable. French authorities are examining Bouhlel's cell phone, found in the van. They say he may have radicalized rapidly in the last weeks.</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Church services are being held across the city today. There is sadness and growing anger. Many say there was not enough security Thursday. Bouhlel was able to drive his truck up onto the sidewalk to get onto the crowded boulevard.</s>PHILIPPE VARDON: Nothing has been really done to protect our people.</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: That's Philippe Vardon, a local official with the far-right National Front party. He blames the French government for the sparse security Thursday and for allowing mass immigration over the years. He says that's created Muslim ghettos where radicalism takes hold.</s>PHILIPPE VARDON: You've got some places that are really not French at this moment because it's only Muslim area. And so in these places, it's the Muslim law.</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: The anti-immigrant National Front party wants to close French borders and leave the European Union. Vardon believes the recent attack will make people realize his party is right. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Nice.

Now that the Republican convention is over, it's the Democrats' turn. Correspondent Mara Liasson tells NPR's Elise Hu what to expect from the Democratic Party Convention that starts Monday.

ELISE HU, HOST: Yesterday, Hillary Clinton announced her vice presidential running mate. She chose a loyal centrist who's very much on her same page.</s>HILLARY CLINTON: So while Tim was taking on housing discrimination and homelessness, Donald Trump was denying apartments to people who were African-American.</s>HILLARY CLINTON: He is still fighting those battles today.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Despite Kaine's solid civil rights background, he may not be progressive enough to placate Bernie Sanders' supporters, and that could be trouble. Joining us now is NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Mara, good morning.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Elise.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Well, the Clinton-Kaine rally yesterday had all the bells and whistles of a vice presidential announcement, but it belied a huge crack in the party. On Friday, WikiLeaks released nearly 20,000 emails that were apparently written by Democratic National Committee staff. Mara, bring us up to speed.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: The 20,000 emails had been hacked from the DNC, and they were released right on the eve of the convention designed to make Sanders' supporters even more angry than they might've been. They're very disappointed about the Tim Kaine pick. But some of the emails showed that DNC staffers were not being neutral between Clinton and Sanders. This is the charge that the Sanders supporters have made all along. And Sanders has had a famously terrible relationship with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who's the chairman of the DNC. He's actually endorsed her primary opponent.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: And there's been some fallout from the WikiLeaks release. Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not speak at the convention. She will gavel it open and closed. And she will leave her post as DNC chair after the convention instead of in January, when she was scheduled to leave. In a separate development, the Democratic Party Rules Committee has agreed to limit the role of superdelegates. Two-thirds of them will now be bound to the results of their state primaries and caucuses. This was a compromise.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: The Sanders group - delegates obviously wanted the superdelegates to be gone altogether, but Sanders' campaign praised this as a tremendous victory. If this rule, by the way, had been in place in 2016 it wouldn't have changed the results at all. So the goal of this is to get unity. There - the disunity inside the DNC might not be as bad as the Republican Party, but there's still plenty of it. And the Democrats want to make sure there is no chaos on the floor of the convention. They want a contrast to the Republican Committee.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: So on this Tim Kaine choice, when Hillary Clinton announced him yesterday she called him, quote, "my kind of guy." Mara, just what kind of guy is that?</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Well, he is a lot like Hillary Clinton. He wasn't put on the ticket for balance. He's a lot like Bill Clinton's pick of Al Gore - you know, another centrist border state baby boomer. In this case, he does double down on a lot of Hillary Clinton's attributes. He's a pragmatic policy wonk like her. He's willing to compromise for incremental progress. He's not a purist who holds out for 100 percent and gets zero, just like her. He's described himself as boring. Some people would say she's not super charismatic. He's also very well qualified like her. He's been a mayor and a governor and now a senator. He's been the chairman of the Democratic Party. And he also speaks fluent Spanish. She doesn't do that, but that's definitely an asset.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: What about the Republican side, Donald Trump and Mike Pence? Did their convention, which had some controversy and division - did that help or hurt them?</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: We're waiting for polls. We've had very few polls that have been taken since the Republican convention. Some of the ones that are out show he - Trump has made some progress. Maybe he is getting a little bit of a bump. But the gap had already been closing even before the Republican convention started mostly because Hillary Clinton had been hurt by the FBI director's statement that she had been extremely careless with classified information in her emails.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: Real quick, Mara, looking ahead to the week, what should we be paying attention to both inside and outside that convention hall in Philly?</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Well, the big question is Democrats want to show that they are inclusive, not divisive, that they're unified, that they're optimistic, not pessimistic. But we want to see how much unity is there. Monday night is when Bernie Sanders speaks. I think he'll set the tone for his supporters. Then outside, we have to look at the protests. Cleveland was relatively calm, calmer than expected. Will there be raucous, maybe violent protests in Philadelphia? Of course, it's going to be 100 degrees almost every day. That might have an effect.</s>ELISE HU, HOST: That's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Mara, thanks.</s>MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Thank you.

A parade of speakers begins tomorrow when the GOP convention starts in Cleveland. NPR's Lynn Neary talks with Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who will be one of those addressing the crowd.

LYNN NEARY, HOST: A lot of Republicans are sitting out the convention in Cleveland. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is not one of them. She'll be a featured speaker, and she joins us now on the line. Welcome to the program.</s>MARSHA BLACKBURN: Thank you. Delighted to be with you.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Tell us, what does Governor Pence bring to the ticket that Donald Trump has been struggling to show to voters up until now?</s>MARSHA BLACKBURN: Governor Pence brings several positives to the ticket. He is the perfect balance for Donald Trump. He is very reserved. He is a solid conservative, articulate, understands so many issues that deal with foreign policy because he served on the Foreign Affairs Committee during his time in Congress. And I think as the nation looks at the issues of national security, jobs and economic security, Mike Pence is the perfect balance to this ticket.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Is there any way in which Mike Pence might, though, mute the appeal of Donald Trump, who has - is very popular because of his huge, big personality?</s>MARSHA BLACKBURN: Well, Donald Trump is very popular. And there are some of his supporters that were hopeful they were going to get a libertarian-type candidate on the ticket with Donald Trump. I think what Mike Pence will do is balance that to the conservative side. I also think that when you look at the African-American community and the Hispanic community and how pro-life those communities are - the Catholic church and how pro-life they are, Mike Pence is going to help in that regard.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Mike Pence has disagreed with Donald Trump about a lot of things. He supported - Pence supported the Iraq War. As a congressman, he voted for free trade agreements. I think he has spoke out critically about Donald Trump's call for not allowing Muslims into the country. Will Pence have an influence on Trump over issues like these?</s>MARSHA BLACKBURN: Knowing Mike Pence and having worked with him in the House, what Mike Pence is going to bring is a different approach and a thought. And he will be the one to sit at the table with Mr. Trump and say, well, let's think about this another way. Or let's think about other implications. That is healthy in the process of the debate. And I look forward to seeing Mr. Pence bring some of those new ideas forward.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: As we've been talking about, a lot of Republicans aren't going to the convention. And many say they will never support Donald Trump. Are you doing anything to try and convince those people that they're wrong, that they should support Donald Trump?</s>MARSHA BLACKBURN: I'm reminding many of those individuals every chance that I get that when we focus on personalities, we lose. When we focus on principles and policies and people, we win. So I have said, come on, get over yourself. And there are plenty of times I have supported our ticket because I agreed with them more than I disagreed with them. And my hope is that we're going to see that same approach come to bear - that people will kind of move past it and realize, yes, they do need to support the ticket.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn represents the 7th District of Tennessee. Thanks so much for joining us.</s>MARSHA BLACKBURN: Thank you.

Is ISIS expanding its territory into Bangladesh? NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Georgetown University's Bruce Hoffman, about terrorism's global footprint and the increasingly lethal attacks.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Iraq is reeling from one of the deadliest recent bombings to hit that country. At least 109 people died when a truck packed with explosives was detonated in a busy shopping area as people were out celebrating Ramadan. ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, that country begins a two-day period of mourning after 22 people were killed in a terrorist attack on a popular dining spot in that nation's capital. An Islamic State propaganda wing claimed the attackers were affiliated with ISIS. That has yet to be confirmed.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: We reached out to Bruce Hoffman. He's a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. And I asked him if it was new to see an attack like the one that happened in Bangladesh carried out in the name of ISIS in that part of the world.</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: I think it is new, and I don't think it's surprising. In recent years - over the past two years - both al-Qaida and ISIS have made significant inroads in Bangladesh. They've seen it as fertile grounds for expansion. There's been over 40 persons killed in terrorist acts, mostly al-Qaida-related, over the past two years. But, of course, ISIS and al-Qaida are competing on a worldwide canvas. So wherever al-Qaida goes, ISIS tends to follow.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Is ISIS looking globally for parts of the world, countries that have a history of civil war, of instability, of Islamist movements that they can then exploit? Is that what's happening?</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: Absolutely, although I would put it that they're actively looking for opportunities for expansion. And I think that's why often they follow on al-Qaida's heels or sometimes are ahead of al-Qaida.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Remind us of the current relationship between al-Qaida and ISIS.</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: At the moment, intense rivalry and competition. But, of course, ISIS is an offshoot of al-Qaida, and their ideology isn't completely separate.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Of course, the tool the Obama administration has used the most to combat the threat from terrorism, whether ISIS or al-Qaida, is the drone program. We saw on Friday the White House released a long anticipated report about civilian casualties. It seems like a good moment to ask a big question. Has the Obama drone program made us safer? Has it done what it was set out to do?</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: I think it has been successful tactically in that I believe it has likely disrupted terrorist attacks, kept terrorists off-balance, compelled them to spend more time looking over their shoulder and being concerned about their own security than in planning and plotting attacks. But I think one also has to say that strategically, it hasn't been successful.</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: Al-Qaida's present in twice as many places today than it was in 2008. ISIS has eight provinces throughout the world and some 50 different affiliates in 21 countries. So it's been successful, perhaps, in minimizing the immediate threats, but I don't think we should confuse activity with strategic progress in actually eliminating the threats that these groups pose.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Have you been surprised at how this threat has metastasized over the past decade?</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: Yes, absolutely. I've been surprised how it's metastasized over the past five years. It was just in 2011 that virtually everyone at the top of the U.S. government, including the president, was heralding that al-Qaida was on the verge of strategic collapse and implying that we had turned a decisive corner in the war on terrorism. And the situation today, I think, is fundamentally alarming in the sense that since November, we've had really an unprecedented concatenation of terrorist attacks throughout the world that have been enormously lethal.</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: Now, you know, many people say, well, in the 1980s there were far more terrorist attacks than there were today. But that's true. But they were killing in the ones and twos. For instance, in 1985, the Abu Nidal Organization staged a simultaneous attack on the Rome and Vienna airports. It was enormously tragic. Nineteen persons were killed. More than double were killed the other day in Istanbul. And I think that's an important exemplar that terrorism is becoming much more lethal than it's been in the past. It is targeting these soft targets.</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: The other difference between, let's say, a lot of the terrorist attacks in the 1980s and today, those groups were giving warnings. That's what we don't see from these groups. There's no warning involved. They're just out for bloodshed and mayhem.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Bruce Hoffman is the director of Security Studies at Georgetown University. Thanks so much for talking with us.</s>BRUCE HOFFMAN: You're very welcome.

Scientists think they've finally caught on film a shark getting some rest. NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Greg Skomal, a marine fisheries biologist, who was part of the team that collected the footage.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: It's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, which means a whole lot of shark attacks.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Ow.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Sharks attacking people.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: The white tip suddenly reappeared out of nowhere, went straight at one of the divers and bit him.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Sharks attacking people in shark cages.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: He's going to go after Gary (ph). He's coming right at me.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Previews of sharks attacking Blake Lively in "The Shallows."</s>BLAKE LIVELY: (As Nancy) Get out - shark.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: And now, in a video posted by Discovery earlier this week, this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: The SharkCam team is witnessing a dramatic shift in white shark behavior.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But it might not be quite what you'd expect.</s>UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: At 8:30, they see something no one's ever seen before.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Scientists believe they have recorded a great white shark napping.</s>GREG SKOMAL: Maybe it was a power nap and it was just recharging its batteries before menacing a bunch of seal pups.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: That's Greg Skomal. He's a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. Skomal was part of a team that collected the footage off the coast of Guadeloupe last December. They tagged a shark and were following it with an underwater camera.</s>GREG SKOMAL: The goal of our research was to use SharkCam to see what these sharks do when they disappear into deep water and also what they do at night, you know, which is a really tough time to study the behavior of animals, particularly if they're in the ocean.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: And the SharkCam did its job.</s>GREG SKOMAL: We saw that the sharks were almost in a catatonic state.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: You've probably seen something similar sleeping next to you at night, mouth gaping open, moving slowly - except sharks don't snore.</s>GREG SKOMAL: No, sharks don't make any noises - ever.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But even when resting, sharks have to keep swimming.</s>GREG SKOMAL: It has to force water into its mouth and over its gills. Otherwise, quite frankly, it would drown.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Skomal says it was exhilarating to watch. No one had ever witnessed that type of behavior from a shark before, even though the constant movement makes it hard to definitively prove that the shark was sleeping.</s>GREG SKOMAL: It's almost impossible for us to actually determine whether it was napping, whether it was sleeping or just going into kind of a resting state where it's slowed down perhaps its metabolic rate, it's slowed down its swimming movement. It went to a bare minimum in terms of keeping itself alive.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: One thing's for sure - this napping shark, whose name is Emma, looked almost peaceful.</s>GREG SKOMAL: All too often, we think of the white shark and - unfortunately, it's portrayed this way, you know, on television - as being a highly aggressive monster that is out to consume everything in its path, including humans.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But really, they're just animals like us.</s>GREG SKOMAL: And it has to do what most animals do. You know, it has to eat, but it also has to rest.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Nighty-night, Emma the shark. Nighty-night.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: That was marine biologist Greg Skomal with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

If Trump hopes to win Michigan, then he's got to win over working-class white men in suburban Detroit. But it will be tough. The state hasn't backed a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Donald Trump is pinning his election hopes on a group of voters with long ties to the Democratic Party, but who've been known to abandon that loyalty and vote from - and vote Republican. We're talking working-class white men, especially union members, the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s. This week, NPR and several member stations are taking a look at battleground communities as part of our project A Nation Engaged. Today, NPR's Don Gonyea has this report from the Detroit suburbs in a state the Democrats expect to win. But with these voters, it's clear Hillary Clinton still has work to do.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: If you stop by Larry McCool's house in Garden City, you'll be greeted by a trio of giant Rottweiler dogs. Don't worry, they're friendly, he tells me.</s>LARRY MCCOOL: Come here. Come on, Coco.</s>LARRY MCCOOL: Maxie's about 12. Azul, he's about 2. And they're both rescues.</s>LARRY MCCOOL: Come here, Az (ph). Az, come here. Good boy. Smile.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Coco, who looks like a small bear, seems to be angling to play fetch with my microphone in the backyard. McCool is 54, a union carpenter.</s>LARRY MCCOOL: My neighbor on one side, he's a UAW worker. The neighbor over here's a Teamster. You know, so it's basically auto industry and basically good union people.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: When the financial crisis hit here, these small single-family homes took a big hit, he says, losing more than half their value just like that.</s>LARRY MCCOOL: Everybody was upside down. I mean, it was terrible 'cause to go to work and see somebody's stuff sitting on their front lawn - and I remember one of the first ones I've seen. And I stopped on the side of the road. And the wind was blowing stuff around, and I asked the woman if she needed help. You know, she was being evicted, and you could tell all hope was lost.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: He says the area's coming back, but slowly. McCool is voting for Hillary Clinton after being a Bernie Sanders supporter in the primaries. He says Trump is all ego.</s>LARRY MCCOOL: You know, you're Caesar - you know, here comes Caesar and boom, boom, boom (ph). You know, he's got his whole family with him and we're going to do this. And, I mean, we're not the Roman Empire where we're going to walk in and take things.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: McCool's support of Clinton puts him in line with his union and with the national AFL-CIO. But it's not hard to find dissenting opinions among the rank and file here.</s>JIM BELL: I'm - I - none of them. That's who I like. I don't like any of them. They're a joke.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Forty-four-year-old Jim Bell works in nearby Dearborn. He's a Ford employee represented by the United Auto Workers Union. Politically, he says he's an independent.</s>JIM BELL: I'm undecided. However, I lean more towards Trump just because I think the change that Obama wanted to bring - I think Trump will.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Bell does like what the billionaire candidate says about trade, including that American factories will come roaring back, that auto jobs will return from Mexico. But Trump has also said UAW members make too much money. Bell doesn't like that, nor does he like that so many Trump-branded products, like Trump ties and shirts, are manufactured overseas.</s>JIM BELL: Make America great again, but he's contradicting exactly his theme song for this campaign by buying everything over in China. You know, and it's - however, that is still better than shady Hillary.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Bell's coworker, Kevin Eisbrenner, has been a Trump backer from the beginning. Both he and Bell say they do wish Trump would tone down the insults, but they like that he's not politically correct. Eisbrenner also said this about Trump.</s>KEVIN EISBRENNER: I'm voting for the man, but do I think he's qualified as a politician? No. But what he's qualified at - he's a leader. And every good leader knows how to surround themselves with qualified people.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Now to a coffee shop in Novi in northwest suburban Detroit. Fifty-five-year-old Scott Klein is a long-haul truck driver and former Sanders supporter. He is also undecided now, but he does not like Trump, which sets him apart from most of the other drivers he talks to.</s>SCOTT KLEIN: They say there's two kinds of truck drivers. There are the ones that sit at the counter and there's the ones that sit at the table. I'm a counter guy.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: So he sits there. And the guys on the stools next to him -</s>SCOTT KLEIN: Trump. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: All of them?</s>SCOTT KLEIN: All of them. (Laughter) I don't understand it. But I do, in a way. What's happening out in Washington now isn't working today. The vehicle for blowing the system up is Mr. Trump.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Klein says he's interested in Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. He says it's all frustrating, though, because it shouldn't be that hard to get some basic things done in Washington. I asked what would make a difference in his life.</s>SCOTT KLEIN: I would like a life where every week - that we make enough that the bills are paid and I can put some money away for retirement.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Are you doing that now?</s>SCOTT KLEIN: No. No.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: In Monroe County, south of Detroit, the Ford plant closed almost 10 years ago. Thirty-nine-year-old Chuck Brooks worked there. He was able to transfer to another Detroit-area factory, but says there are still worries about more jobs going to Mexico. He says he tells fellow workers that Trump with his tough talk on trade is not the answer.</s>CHUCK BROOKS: You've got to be careful what you wish for because it could backfire.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Bernie Sanders won the Michigan Democratic primary with Brooks' support. Now he's for Clinton. He says Trump has no credibility on jobs and trade. But he points to another potent topic Trump uses to lure union votes - guns.</s>CHUCK BROOKS: They're taking your guns. You know, I won't take your guns. We all need guns. Go out and buy a gun. You know, go protect yourself. No one's coming to your house and taking your guns.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Michigan as a state has gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections. Historically, union members tend to vote in line with the recommendation of their union leadership. Donald Trump is hoping that changes this year. He at least has the ear of these voters in suburban Detroit. Don Gonyea, NPR News.

In 2015, the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended many reforms. Laurie Robinson, who co-chaired that task force tells Rachel Martin that reform requires long-term commitment.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Near the end of 2014, after months of escalating tensions over police killings of young black men, President Obama formed the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Laurie Robinson co-chaired that task force.</s>LAURIE ROBINSON: I absorbed all three events as tremendous tragedies that shattered the families, shattered the communities and actually America as a community. But I think what we have learned since Ferguson, as America has struggled with these problems, is that they are problems of American communities.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: In 2015, the task force issued a final report listing its recommendations - build community trust, encourage police transparency and accountability. There are about 18,000 American police departments. Robinson says that makes widespread reform difficult. But...</s>LAURIE ROBINSON: Some 50,000 officers have been given training on key task force themes, like this fair and impartial policing and on procedural justice. And nearly 5,000 law enforcement personnel, according to the Justice Department, have been trained on the task force report.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Robinson says this past week's shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota show there's still a long ways to go. And yesterday, President Obama said if anything good can come out of these tragedies, he hopes that, quote, "communities around the country take a look and say - how can we implement these recommendations?"

The world mourns the loss of writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with Sara Bloomfield of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. He was a Nobel laureate, an acclaimed author, human rights activist. He was also a survivor of the Holocaust and spent his life teaching people how to understand the darker parts of our humanity, but to look always to the light. Elie Wiesel has died at the age of 87.</s>SARA BLOOMFIELD: The world is different today. It's a diminished place.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: This is the voice of Sara Bloomfield. She's the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which Elie Wiesel helped create. We asked her to help us remember Wiesel and the powerful legacy he leaves behind.</s>SARA BLOOMFIELD: You know, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, when the world was not really looking back and remembering, he could not forget. And he had a drive and a compulsion to remember, but to give a voice to those who had been silenced. And he gave that voice through "Night" and through his other writings in a way that I think makes the Holocaust continue to resonate through the generations.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: How did he bear that responsibility?</s>SARA BLOOMFIELD: I would say with a lot of humility and anguish. I mean, I think it was a burden for him. And by the way, I want to be clear - I don't think Elie would ever say that he speaks for the dead or he speaks for survivors. I think he - in fact, he would say no one can, that that is sacred space. But he felt he had to give a voice to his own experience and hope that in doing that he would illuminate not only the suffering, but the lessons and the challenge to the future.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: And he was very clear. He said numerous times he was spared and he was not to squander that opportunity.</s>SARA BLOOMFIELD: Yes. It was a big responsibility and a big burden. And I think he felt that as much as he could do, it would never be enough. The ultimate goal would be not only memory, but the action that would come from memory, that memory would inspire a different future for mankind.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Can you trace his evolution from survivor to writer to human rights activist?</s>SARA BLOOMFIELD: Well, you know, he published "Night" very early. It was published in 1955. I think sometimes people forget it was at a moment when not many people were talking about their experiences. So he came right out of the Holocaust and published that. And I think that really was the beginning of a movement. And then as that grew to prominence - and then, of course, he was recognized with the Nobel Prize and so many other well-deserved recognitions - I think he realized that his responsibility, in fact, had grown greater and that there was more that he had to do. And he took on this role as human rights advocate and, I think, moral leader and a person who would speak truth to power.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: You did know him. Can you talk about who he was on a personal level?</s>SARA BLOOMFIELD: Many ways you could describe Elie Wiesel - thinker, human rights advocate, writer. He would, I think, most want to be known as being a teacher. He really cared about teaching. And I think he thought everything he did was in the service of education, including the museum, and that reaching young people and reaching new generations was the highest calling that you could have. I would also say that, you know, he was a man of great humility and dignity. I was - he would always say to me as we grew close over the years, Sarah, tell me how I can be helpful to you. Tell me what I can do for you. And knowing that I had his friendship and his moral support always meant so much.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Sara Bloomfield is the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Thank you so much for talking with us and helping us remember Elie Wiesel and your friend.</s>SARA BLOOMFIELD: Thank you.

U.S. soldiers are staying on in Afghanistan. Sarah Chayes, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tells NPR's Rachel Martin that more troops won't solve the real problem.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But now we're going to turn to the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the U.S. has had thousands of troops there. Despite a plan to withdraw most of them by this coming January, President Obama says he will keep more soldiers in Afghanistan longer than he planned. He made this announcement this past week.</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Instead of going down to 5,500 troops by the end of this year, the United States will maintain approximately 8,400 troops in Afghanistan into next year, through the end of my administration.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The president did point to some successes in Afghanistan, but he acknowledged the Taliban had retaken some parts of the country. There is still the threat from ISIS and al-Qaida. We are joined by someone with long experience in Afghanistan. Sarah Chayes covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR. Afterwards, she remained in the country to start a manufacturing co-op. And later, she went on to work as special assistant to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. Chayes is now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and she joins me now. Thanks for being with us, Sarah.</s>SARAH CHAYES: Thanks for having me.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The U.S. has spent $65 billion building up Afghan security forces over so many years now. And we hear all the time about how U.S. forces are increasingly standing down so Afghan troops can stand up. But they seem to be faltering. After so much time, so much investment, why?</s>SARAH CHAYES: I think the problem is that this isn't fundamentally a tactical problem. Troops are only an instrument in the hands of a government. And so if the government is so either dysfunctional or actively hostile to its own population, it's really hard to imagine how an army can become a stronger and more professional organization belonging to that government.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What do you think about the idea of keeping this number of U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan? Do you think it's a footprint that's too big? Is it too small?</s>SARAH CHAYES: I don't think it makes any difference. I think zero has a certain psychological impact on Afghans. But the difference between 2,000 or 5,000 or 8,000 is absolutely immaterial. I think this decision is entirely aimed at the United States. If the president were to continue drawing down and if something blew up, it could be blamed on his decision to draw down.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: You lived in Afghanistan. I imagine you still keep in touch with some friends who are there. What do they tell you about what kind of presence they want to see from the U.S. in the short and long term?</s>SARAH CHAYES: Most of my friends would prefer more rather than less U.S. presence, but they all agree that this isn't the heart of the problem. And they literally said the problem here is administrative corruption. If you people don't fix the administration of this country, you can send 100,000 - you can send a million soldiers here - it's - you're never going to get security.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK. So allegations of widespread corruption. What does that look like in Afghanistan today, in 2016? What kind of examples can you give?</s>SARAH CHAYES: It means every time you interact with a government official, you get shaken down for money. As part of the counterinsurgency process, we put, you know, more soldiers out into villages. The soldiers would steal the wood. They steal your produce. Police shake you down - you know, several checkpoints - three to five checkpoints on an hour and a half drive. You have to pay bribes to pay your electricity bill.</s>SARAH CHAYES: And the other thing that's really important to bear in mind is, you know, when a cop shakes you down for money, he doesn't do it politely. I mean, think about that young man in Tunisia who had been slapped in the face by a police officer who was shaking him down. And he lit himself on fire, and we got the Arab Spring. I mean, this is what is generating a lot of the support for the Taliban.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Ashraf Ghani is the new president. He's got strong ties to the U.S., but does he want the U.S. telling him what to do?</s>SARAH CHAYES: Of course not. But I do think it is possible to relook all of the ways that we continue to interact with Afghanistan and figure out how, at least, to shape those interactions so that at least they don't reinforce corrupt practices and where Ashraf Ghani seems to be making a good faith effort to address the problem, to support him, but don't give him a blank check. Don't take anybody at face value.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Sarah Chayes is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her most recent book is titled "Thieves Of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security." Sarah, thanks so much.</s>SARAH CHAYES: Pleasure.

Chefs are combating higher food costs with smaller plates, cheaper ingredients and smaller portions. But they're not dropping menu prices.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is Day to Day from NPR News, I am Alex Chadwick.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: I am Madeleine Brand.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Food prices are likely to remain high for the next two to three years, that announcement came today, from the UN.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: For restaurant owners, this is a real business problem. And as Day To Day's Alex Cohen reports, many chefs are trying to cook-up creative solutions.</s>ALEX COHEN: At Lucille's Smokehouse Barbecue, in Torrance, California, that bell means it is time to open the smoker.</s>Mr. CRAIG HOFFMAN (Owner, Lucille's Smokehouse Barbecue): True barbecue is low and slow smoking and cooking of the barbecued meats.</s>ALEX COHEN: Craig Hoffman, the restaurant's owner, proudly shows off his smoker, which can hold up to a thousand pounds of meat. Inside are rotating racks of tri-tip, chicken legs, baby back ribs, pulled pork, and brisket.</s>Mr. CRAIG HOFFMAN (Owner, Lucille's Smokehouse Barbecue): All those items are based upon feed cost, and with sixty percent of the corn crop either going to ethanol or being exported, our product costs have gone up.</s>ALEX COHEN: Hoffman's customers are also being hit by the high cost of food and gas, so they aren't eating out as much.</s>Mr. CRAIG HOFFMAN (Owner, Lucille's Smokehouse Barbecue): We are seeing less and less of our customers coming in as regularly as they used to.</s>ALEX COHEN: Hoffman didn't want to raise prices, so he's made changes in what you get for the existing prices. For example, he used to offer two side dishes with every lunch order.</s>Mr. CRAIG HOFFMAN (Owner, Lucille's Smokehouse Barbecue): So you can get French fries and corn, or potato salad and beans, then we've now gone down to one side.</s>ALEX COHEN: Across the country, from the local diner to fine dining establishments, restaurant owners are changing the way they do business.</s>Mr. HOWARD GORDON (The Cheesecake Factory): We revamped our lunch menu.</s>ALEX COHEN: The Cheesecake Factory's Howard Gordon says even though the nationwide chain is known for its enormous servings, they've decided to reduce portion sizes on some items.</s>Mr. HOWARD GORDON (The Cheesecake Factory): We were hearing from our guests that for a lunch they didn't want to take leftovers back to work to put into a refrigerator, while at dinner they were more than happy to take home everything that was left over.</s>ALEX COHEN: Other chains are switching ingredients. Chuck E. Cheese, that prince of pizza, is now using a cheaper cheese, a reformulated mozzarella product. At Legal Sea Foods, a popular East Coast chain, beverage VP, Sandy Block, says while the dollar is weak in Europe, and domestic wine prices are up, they are buying more bottles from South America.</s>Mr. SANDY BLOCK (Beverage VP, Legal Sea Foods): Something would have been unthinkable maybe even three to five years ago, but we are planning a new list with substantially more Argentinean Malbac than California Merlot.</s>ALEX COHEN: But changing wine lists, menus, and ingredients can easily turn off customers, which is why many restaurateurs turn to guys like Ron Paul.</s>Mr. RON PAUL (Owner, Technomic): Just like the guy running for president, but is not me.</s>ALEX COHEN: This Ron Paul runs a company called Technomic. Technomic researches customers' habits, and they consult with restaurants like the Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Chili's. Recently, Paul's noticed it is harder for restaurants to profit, because customers are spending more cautiously.</s>Mr. RON PAUL (Owner, Technomic): What happens oftentimes in the restaurant situation is consumers are skipping the beverage factor. They are not spending the money for the beverage.</s>ALEX COHEN: And so Paul tells restaurants to bundle. That is, offer a special that includes a drink and a desert, so customers will wind up buying more. He also advices, if you have to cut back from a 14 ounce stake to a ten ounce one, make a reduced portion look bigger by serving it on a smaller dish.</s>Mr. RON PAUL (Owner, Technomic): It might be better to have a ten-inch plate kind of heaping full with salad, than have a 12-inch flank that doesn't look as full, because it doesn't really cover the surface.</s>ALEX COHEN: And here is where there might be a silver lining to the dark clouds of the economy. Restaurant portions should be smaller, says David Heber, Director of UCLA Center for Human Nutrition.</s>Doctor DAVID HEBER (Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition): A lot of studies do show that if you have a bigger portion in front of you, you are more likely to eat the whole thing. A recent study with a refilling bowl of soup showed that people eat 31 percent more when the bowl kept refilling itself.</s>ALEX COHEN: But Heber cautions a lot depends on where you make cuts. Protein tends to be expensive. Sugars, fat, and salt are much cheaper. That might be why The Cheesecake Factory says it has no plans to trim the size of its signature desert, they are still making and selling 40 thousand cheesecakes a day. Alex Cohen, NPR News.

The port city is hosting the International AIDS conference for a second time. NPR's Jason Beaubien tells NPR's Lynn Neary that much progress has been made in combating AIDS, but more needs to be done.

LYNN NEARY, HOST: The International AIDS Conference opens tomorrow in South Africa. The conference, which takes place every two years, is the biggest global gathering of HIV/AIDS researchers. It's returning this year to the South African port city of Durban where it was hosted 16 years ago. A lot has changed around HIV and AIDS since then. NPR's Jason Beaubien spent the last two weeks in southern Africa looking at issues around HIV in the region, and he joins us now. Good morning, Jason.</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: So this conference is back in Durban, first time since 2000. How have things changed since then?</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: Things have changed dramatically around HIV over the last 16 years. I mean, if you think back to the year 2000, HIV and AIDS was viewed as a death sentence back then. And now this is a manageable health condition. And also back in 2000, during that conference, South Africa was gripped with a terrible HIV epidemic. And at the same time, the president, Thabo Mbeki, was questioning whether or not HIV actually causes AIDS.</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: His health minister was talking about these herbal cocktails that were supposedly going to cure people of AIDS. All of that has changed. And now South Africa's actually a leader in terms of getting people onto treatment, tackling this epidemic. Yeah, it's amazing the difference that 16 years has made.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: And people themselves are approaching it - thinking differently about HIV. Is that right?</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: People are, and also they aren't. There is still a lot of stigma, a lot of denial around it. I was working on a story out of Mozambique about sex workers. And I was talking with these women who work in the sex trade in Mozambique. And they're saying that, still, most of their clients don't want to use condoms. They believe that they're never going to get this. They believe that herbal remedies or traditional medicine are going to be able to cure them.</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: There was this one woman that I was speaking to - she is HIV-positive, and she's gotten onto treatment. But I was asking her about, you know, her clients. And, you know, who are they? Are they mostly people from the region - from central Africa - where are they from? And she's like, no. Most of these people are from Great Britain and China and India and America. And she said - and even they don't necessarily want to use condoms. So there are still a lot of issues that are keeping this epidemic from completely getting under control.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: Jason, as you've already said, advances in treatment mean that AIDS and HIV - no longer necessarily a death sentence. How does that change the conversation at these international conferences?</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: You know, in a way, it's been good. In a way, it's been bad. By having this no longer be a disease that is causing people to waste away and have these horrible deaths, it has taken some of the urgency out of this epidemic. And so researchers now are trying to compete with malaria and tuberculosis and these other diseases because AIDS is no longer as scary as it once was. So that is a bit of an issue.</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: But the same time, you know, there's still a lot of work that's going on around trying to come up with a vaccine against HIV. There's work to try to come up with a cure. Both of those, however, are still a really long way off. And at the same time, you've still got 35 million people around the globe, you know, infected with this virus.</s>LYNN NEARY, HOST: NPR's Jason Beaubien. Jason, thanks so much for joining us.</s>JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: You're welcome.

The city of Dallas is still reeling from the murders of five police officers. Residents are rallying around law enforcement but some warn they can't abandon peaceful protests.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The protest in Dallas on Thursday night had been peaceful. Some demonstrators had brought their kids. Police snapped selfies with protesters. Then shots rang out, screams. The crowd dispersed. And when the sniper shooting stopped, five police officers were dead, at least seven others wounded. The protests had come in response to the deaths of two black men who died after encounters with police, Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. And so there are prayer services this weekend to mourn the dead. There have also been more protests in cities across the country, from New York to Baton Rouge.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Alton Sterling, Alton Sterling, Alton Sterling, Alton Sterling.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: President Obama held a press conference from the NATO summit in Poland. He cautioned not to let the actions of a few define all Americans.</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The demented individual who carried out those attacks in Dallas, he's no more representative of African-Americans than the shooter in Charleston was representative of white Americans.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Meanwhile, the city of Dallas remains on edge. Last night, an anonymous threat against police prompted them to cordon off an area around the headquarters and deploy SWAT teams. But that turned out to be a false alarm. As NPR's John Burnett reports from Dallas this morning, a grieving city has responded by embracing its cops.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: So far, donations have poured in. And three of the downed officers' families have each received checks for $100,000. Dallas police deeply appreciate the expression of public support, but well wishes only go so far.</s>RON PINKSTON: To have some coward sit and wait and assassinate officers, it's - it hurts. It hurts bad.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Detective Ron Pinkston, 30 years on the force, is president of the Dallas Police Association.</s>RON PINKSTON: As we talk right now, there's officers out on the street who are hurting from this tragic loss. And they might be answering a call of a man with a gun. And they're going to continue out there to serve the citizens.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Outside police headquarters are parked two squad cars covered with flowers, flags and balloons from sympathizers. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings came to the spontaneous memorial on Saturday looking weary.</s>MIKE RAWLINGS: This morning when I woke up and saw the pictures on our front page of the officers that died, you realize more existentially the pain that these families are going through.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: The five deceased policeman are Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa. They ranged in ages from 32 to 55. They were remembered by friends who spoke to The Dallas Morning News as a gentle giant, a former Marine, a cop's cop, a baseball fan and a jokester. Since the shootings, Dallas police have been patrolling in pairs for added security. They have no plans to upgrade their body armor.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Fred Frazier, another official with the police association, says he's concerned because their Kevlar vests are engineered to deflect handgun rounds. The shooter had an assault-style rifle that fires a high-velocity bullet.</s>FRED FRAZIER: It goes right through it. It goes right through it every time like butter. Our armor's not built for that. It's not built for rifles.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: For those who marched with Black Lives Matter through downtown Dallas on Thursday night, this is an experience they'll remember for the rest of their lives. Lourenco Alexander is a 40-year-old dump truck driver who was protesting with his wife and their two boys when the shooting started. He says he grabbed his 7-year-old's wrist, and the family ran as fast as they could to avoid getting trampled by the panicked throng. Later that night, Alexander had the singular responsibility, as a father, to explain what had happened to his frightened, bewildered boy. He spoke outside of his church on Friday night.</s>LOURENCO ALEXANDER: I told my son, I said that this is a distraction from what we are trying to accomplish. This is just a disruption in the movement that we're trying to stand for. But we can't let this stop us. We can't let this detour us. And I had to go ahead and revert back to our past in the civil rights movement. There was a lot of blood that was shed in the civil rights movement, but it never stopped them from progressing.</s>JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Lourenco Alexander says he also told his son that violence begets violence and peaceful protest is the only way to affect change. John Burnett, NPR News, Dallas.

Upper Midwestern states are in danger of losing a precious economic commodity: young people. Many are leaving for other parts of the country after finishing school. Without young, educated workers, there's little incentive for businesses to locate in economically hard-hit states.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: This is Day to Day. I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: And I'm Alex Chadwick.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Now for another report in our series we're calling the Bottom Line. We're looking at how the current economic downturn is affecting people and their communities. Today a valuable commodity in the Upper Midwest is draining away. Wisconsin, Nebraska, the Dakotas, they're all losing young workers. As the 20- somethings pack up and leave, so do hopes for an economic recovery. Celeste Headlee reports.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: This is the sound of college kids, doing what college kids do, on a spring day on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit. They may not even be aware of it, but what they do after they finish school will have a major impact on the economic fortunes of the entire Midwest. You see, businesses tend to locate in places where there's an educated, energetic workforce, and many of these students aren't sticking around after graduation.</s>Professor DAVID SWENSON (Economics, Iowa State University): People go to where they think they're going to get work. Jobs go to where they think they're going to find the right kind of people.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: That's economist Dave Swenson of Iowa State University.</s>Professor DAVID SWENSON (Economics, Iowa State University): Where those two things intersect currently just isn't in the Midwest and the Plains.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: So, people are heading west, east, and south in search of a better lifestyle, and Carolyn Sallee with the Anderson Economic Group in Michigan says it's no surprise.</s>Ms. CAROLYN SALLEE (Consultant, Anderson Economic Group): Manufacturing jobs falling by 30 percent, and so those are the good paying blue-collar jobs that you needed a high school education, and you could go and you could make a 60,000 dollar salary.</s>Mr. JOHN TILLMAN (Chairman, CEO, Illinois Policy Institute): Moving statistics from moving companies really tells the tale of whether states are having in-migration or out-migration, and the Midwest and Illinois, for example, is suffering from out-migration at a very large rate.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: That's John Tillman with the Illinois Policy Institute. He says his home state has lost over 700,000 people in the last decade.</s>Mr. JOHN TILLMAN (Chairman, CEO, Illinois Policy Institute): You can certainly see it in places in Cook County outside of Chicago. Some of the neighborhoods that have struggled. You can see it in certain parts of this city where they'll be blocks and blocks of boarded up places where people have left.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: And Dave Swenson from Iowa State says it goes beyond urban areas and manufacturing jobs.</s>Professor DAVID SWENSON (Economics, Iowa State University): The Dakotas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, all are losing population in their non-metropolitan areas.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: In fact, Swenson says 75 percent of counties in those states have seen declines, and it's not that state governments aren't aware of the problem.</s>Professor DAVID SWENSON (Economics, Iowa State University): Every state in the Midwest has been doing everything they can think of to stimulate growth, to try to entice, bribe, or otherwise subsidize economic development. Whatever it takes to remain competitive, they've tried it.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: Carolyn Sallee says Midwestern states know they have to let go of the old industrial economy, and start adapting to modern realities.</s>Ms. CAROLYN SALLEE (Consultant, Anderson Economic Group): So, in the auto industry maybe not making cars, but doing other research and development for it. Or it's taking the agricultural products and then, you know, thinking about how they can be used, and turned into fuel.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: And it's slow, probably too slow to stem the current exodus of 20- somethings, but Susan Ramsey of the Greater Des Moines Partnership says her city has focused on those recent graduates and two-income couples. Yes, the city is diversifying, but it's also about doing the little things.</s>Ms. SUSAN RAMSEY (Senior Vice President, Greater Des Moines Partnership): We've learned from a lot of our employers that they were having trouble landing interns because what they were going to pay interns for the summer, wouldn't necessarily support them in renting an apartment for the summer.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: And for those couples where both are pursuing careers...</s>Ms. SUSAN RAMSEY (Senior Vice President, Greater Des Moines Partnership): When a company recruits one, they're not, you know, they're able to connect and make a hire because we can help find that trailing spouse a location here as well.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: But no matter what solutions they choose, it seems clear that Midwestern states need to act immediately to avoid future misfortune. Kurt Metzger is the director of research at the United Way for Southeastern Michigan.</s>Mr. KURT METZGER (Director of Research, United Way for Southeastern Michigan): The forecast are showing that Michigan's going to be 25 percent over the age of 65 in no time.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: Metzger says states can't sit back and wait for things to improve. It's time for a complete change of mindset.</s>Mr. KURT METZGER (Director of Research, United Way for Southeastern Michigan): Those Midwest values that we all feel very strongly about, the whole idea was yeah, the kids are going to go away because kids always do, but they're going to come back when it's time to raise a family. Well, it doesn't happen anymore.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: Metzger says it's not just about reforming the tax structures, or developing new industries. It's also about updating those Midwestern values, and that could mean changing everything we think we know about the Midwest.</s>CELESTE HEADLEE: For NPR News I'm Celeste Headlee in Detroit.

Rescue workers are struggling to dig people out of the rubble following a massive earthquake in southwest China. Robert Siegel, co-host of All Things Considered, discusses the situation from the hard-hit city Chengdu.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: From the studios of NPR West, this is Day to Day. I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: I'm Alex Chadwick. Coming up, an American woman's account of surviving China's big earthquake.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: But first, rescue workers labored to find survivors under the rubble in southwest China, after a massive earthquake toppled schools and hospitals. Heavy rain has slowed the progress of the rescue teams. Thousands of people are dead now. All Things Considered's Robert Siegel is there in Chengdu. And Robert, you were out reporting today. What did you see?</s>ROBERT SIEGEL: Well, I went out to the area that was hardest hit by the earthquake. These are small mountain villages to the north, in this case, the northeast of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan. And I got as far as a village where 90 percent of the houses were crushed and destroyed by the earthquake, where somewhere between 200 and 300 people were killed, just typical of what's going on in some of those small villages.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Now, as you say, these are small villages in a mountainous region. Is it difficult, then, for rescuers to reach these villages and to help people?</s>ROBERT SIEGEL: It has been difficult, and what you have on the road that leads out through this area and other roads, I believe, is you have rock slides. And the roads are cut into the mountains, and the earthquake shook loose rocks, in some case, huge boulders the size of SUVs, in some cases, and in other cases, entire mountainsides seemed to collapse on villages.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL: When that happens, it blocks the roads, and right after the earthquake, it posed problems for the army as it was trying to get troops out to do relief work. They just couldn't pass through the roads. Now, much of the way you see a lot of buses and dump trucks. You'll see a dump truck go by with a tarp over the back of it, and you see peeking out from under the tarp, it was raining today, so that the tarp is over, are people. They're coming out in buses and trucks and cars and ambulances and vehicles of all sorts.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: What about - what are you seeing in terms of official response? I know that the Chinese premier was there yesterday, and that seems to be in stark difference to what happened in the last major earthquake a generation ago.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL: Yes. Premier Wen made an appearance at the town of Dujiangyan. The people we spoke to who had heard him were very grateful that he had shown up. More to the point, in the hours right after the earthquake, the authorities declared this a top priority, number one to evacuate the injured, and the expressway north out of Chengdu, north out of this very big city where we are, the provincial capital, was limited to emergency vehicles.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL: And there was a steady stream, just one ambulance after another, going north. Medics in the towns got the wounded into the ambulances, and the ambulances turned around and went back south, either to Chengdu or other cities where there were hospitals that could treat them. So, the response in terms of eventually getting soldiers to these places, to supply order and to do some digging, and also, medical assistance was very, very prompt. As for food and water, everybody seems to be saying they need more and more medical supplies, so I suppose much is yet to be done.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, thank you, Robert.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL: Sure, Madeleine. Good to talk.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: That's All Things Considered's Robert Siegel, and I'm sure you'll be hearing more of him later today on All Things Considered.

The U.S. House takes up the farm bill Wednesday. Two-thirds of the massive bill would pay for the nation's nutrition programs, including food stamps. Most of the rest of the legislation would provide subsidies for farmers and conservation programs that protect the land.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: From NPR News it's Day to Day.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: The House of Representatives, today, is scheduled to vote on a farm bill that would cost nearly 300 billion dollars over the next five years. Two thirds of that money would go for nutrition programs, including food stamps, and most of the rest would go towards subsidies for farmers and conservation programs. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer joins us now. Nancy, there's a lot of money in the farm bill for non-farm programs.</s>NANCY MARSHALL-GENZER: Yes there is, Alex. In a word, that's because of politics. Lawmakers from rural states know they can't get the farm bill through Congress without support from law makers representing urban areas. So they sweeten the pot a bit, and they add money for food stamps, and other nutrition programs to the farm bill. Urban law makers are actually demanding more money this year, and I spoke with Gawain Kripke about this today. He's with Oxfam America and he says this farm bill actually contains 10 billion dollars more for non-farm programs than the last farm bill did, in 2002.</s>Mr. GAWAIN KRIPKE (Oxfam America): It is increasingly not a farm bill, it's more about food stamps, and anti-poverty programs. But they still call it a farm bill, and it still runs through the Agriculture Committee so, those interests dominate the debate.</s>NANCY MARSHALL-GENZER: Now, those agriculture interests have made sure the subsidies for farmers in this bill are quite generous. Farmers who are making more than 750,000 dollars in farm related income are no longer eligible, but President Bush had wanted to lower that income cap to 200,000 dollars, but members of Congress rejected that. They say that farmers can make up to 750,000 dollars a year and still get federal money.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: So, President Bush is threatening a veto of this bill. How real is that?</s>NANCY MARSHALL-GENZER: It's a real potent threat. In some ways it could be a potent threat in the House, but not in Senate. The Senate is actually expected to have enough votes to override a veto, and that's because Senators have to represent their entire states. Now, Sally James follows the farm bill for the Cato Institute, and she says even if there aren't a lot of farmers in the state, they are very vocal, and they are very good at getting their senators' attention.</s>Ms. SALLY JAMES (Cato Institute): If you're a farmer and you are depending on maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidies, you are going to make sure you hire a lobbyist, and you are going to make sure you call your senator.</s>NANCY MARSHALL-GENZER: Now, it's different in the House, representatives only have to worry about the people in their districts, and they're not likely to support farm subsidies if they don't represent any farmers. That's why the support of urban lawmakers is so important.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Other incentives in the bill for support from lawmakers who don't really represent rural areas?</s>NANCY MARSHALL-GENZER: Alex, it's a nice little grab bag of goodies for - there's pretty much something for everybody. There are tax breaks for race horse owners in Kentucky. The farm bill also gives money to quote "geographically disadvantaged farmers in Hawaii and Alaska."</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Thank you Nancy. Nancy Marshall-Genzer of Public Radio's daily business show, Marketplace.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Stay with us on Day to Day from NPR News.

Palestinians are upset that President Bush is only visiting Israel this week, says Diana Buttu, who advised the PLO during peace negotiations with Israel. Alex Chadwick talks to Buttu about Palestinian reaction to Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: Diana Buttu is a Canadian-born Palestinian. She's a former senior legal advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She's teaching now at Birzeit University near Ramallah in the occupied territories. Diana, how would you answer this question we just put to Jeffrey Goldberg? Is a two-state solution really the only alternative for Israelis and Palestinians now?</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): At this point in time, the answer is no. And the reason is that if you look at the course of history. Over the course of history, this land has never been divided in a successful manner. And it's becoming clearer amongst many Palestinians that there's not going to be a two state solution. This is largely because there are many settlements that are now in the West Bank and that seem to be growing in the West Bank. Many Palestinians are now beginning to say well, look, it's not working, it hasn't worked in the past, so maybe what we should be looking for instead is a one state solution in which everybody is given equal citizenship, equal rights irrespective of religion.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Is there something that Palestinians can do to move things forward to that end or some other, or is progress something that is entirely in the hands of the Israelis because they have the power.</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): It's in the hands of both people I believe. On the side of the Israelis, if the interest is a two state solution then they have to make that interest very clear. The settlements have to be stopped and reversed. There are almost five hundred thousand Israelis now living amongst Palestinians in the West Bank. It would have to stop that practice now and reverse it. But it doesn't seem as though that is something that it wants to do. As it comes to Palestinians, a similar decision has to be taken. And right now the decision making process has completely been focused on just having a two state solution, having an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. But increasingly, many Palestinians are now beginning to talk about a one state solution. If that's the path the Palestinians are going to go along, I personally believe it has to be a decision that's taken in a positive sense, rather than a negative sense, not just because the two state solution is no longer working, but because this is something that Palestinians inherently want.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: When you talk about a one state solution, Israelis hear that, and they say well this one state could not be Israel if it had a majority Palestinian Arab population. If everyone had equal rights there wouldn't be a Jewish state anymore, would there?</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): The problem is that there's never really been a definition of a Jewish state other than to say a Jewish majority. The only way that they could create a Jewish majority in a place where it's largely not-Jewish is through the process of expulsion, which is what happened 60 years ago on this very day. I think that if Israel looks at itself a little bit more clearly, and asks itself what it means to be a Jewish state. Then I think that the idea of perhaps a Jewish safe haven which is what many, many Israelis are talking about, is something that can be brought into the frame, can be something that this country can turn into.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: But can you imagine a situation developing now where Jews felt, all right, we'll have a safe haven. And our partners in this safe haven will be the Palestinians and the Arabs, the people with whom we have been locked in a mortal struggle for the last 60 years.</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): I do think that it can happen. It was the case 60 years ago which is why there is such an influx of Jewish immigrants into the territory itself. So the possibility is there. The conflict has existed over the course of the past 60 years owing to the fact that there's been an attempt to put one group above another, and hence you have a conflict, which you would have a conflict in any other place around the world. I think if you get to the situation of equal rights, you'll see a very, very different Middle East.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: You were a formal advisor, legal advisor to Mahmoud Abbas. Why did you quit that job?</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): I left for a number of reasons, but largely because I was tired. It was an exhausting job, and I didn't see that peace was going to come within my period of working with him. I was beginning to feel that the U.S. Administration was starting to play games with Mahmoud Abbas. And as much as they had said that they wanted to see a different leadership, they wanted to see a new Palestinian leadership emerge, there really wasn't a sense on the part of President Bush or on the part of the International community that they truly wanted to see an end to the conflict. I felt it was more a question of conflict management rather than conflict resolution.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: And now you teach at what I believe is the preeminent university in the West Bank, Birzeit University?</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): Yes it is.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: You see a lot of young people there.</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): I do.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: And what do you see?</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): A lot of young students who have never lived the life I've lived, and that makes me sad. I see students who, although they're Palestinian, have less of a right to see their birth country than I do. I, as a Canadian, have the ability to travel all throughout Israel and throughout the West Bank, and my students barely have permits to come to class. I see young students who have never met Israelis. The only Israelis that they have ever met are soldiers and settlers. I feel a great deal of sadness. At the same time, I see amongst them a great deal of optimism and hope. My students show up to class every single day knowing that at the end of their four years they just might not have a job, and indeed most of them do not, but yet there's a desire to learn and a desire to change their lives. So I see some sadness and some happiness.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Diana Buttu teaches Law at Birzeit University near Ramallah in the West Bank. Diana, thank you.</s>Ms. DIANA BUTTU (Former Legal Advisor, PLO): Thank you.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: And stay with us on Day To Day from NPR News.

Chinese Americans make up almost 20 percent of San Francisco's population and the local reaction to the Sichuan province quake was immediate and passionate. A newspaper's request for aid drew a line around the block.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is Day to Day. I'm Alex Chadwick.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: In a few minutes, more than 50 African-Americans convert to Judaism in a small, southern Illinois town.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: First, aid to China to help recover from the devastating earthquake. A Russian plane arrived today with 30 tons of food and blankets for Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu. This is the first international aid to reach the region.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Japan has pledged nearly five million dollars in cash and supplies, and France says it is sending a cargo plane loaded with tents, sleeping bags, tarps, and cooking kits.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: The earthquake is spurring private relief efforts here, in the U.S. as well. Nearly one fifth of San Francisco is Chinese-American, and for many, the distant disaster feels very close. From member station KQED, David Gorn, reports.</s>DAVID GORN: On the top floor of China Town's Baptist Church about 30 recent immigrants are taking a literacy class. ..TEXT: (Soundbite of people speaking Chinese)</s>DAVID GORN: Teacher Mimi Wong(ph) is talking about the subject on everyone's mind, the 7.9 earthquake that shook central China Monday. She has an envelope at the front of the class for people to make donations for earthquake relief. Even though these immigrants don't have much money, they slip a check into the envelope on their way into, or out of class. Wong tears up as she asks her students when they first heard about the earthquake?</s>Ms. MIMI WONG (English Teacher): (Through Translator) We are just kind of sad. That's way I'm a little emotional. He just said that is so sad inside, that we are just numb with grief.</s>DAVID GORN: None of the students in this adult literacy class is from the quake region. Like most of the Chinese-American population in this area, they come from southern China. They may not have friends, or family members affected by the quake, but says Wong, they all still the full weight of the disaster.</s>Ms. MIMI WONG (English Teacher): (Through translator) Because we are Chinese, we are bonded together.</s>DAVID GORN: Later Wong says she'll walk that envelope, stuffed with donations, down to the local Chinese newspaper, Sing Tao. The advertising office there is collecting money to give to the Red Cross. The paper ran a full page ad asking for donations. Editor Tim Lau says the response, so far, has been overwhelming.</s>Mr. TIM LAU (Editor, Sing Tao): When the readers read about the ad, they go straight to our local office in San Francisco's China Town and there's a line out there. People are lining up to donate money to the earthquake victims.</s>DAVID GORN: At the head of that line to donate is Marina Lu(ph). She says that everyone in her family, her father, her brother, her sister, they all plan to give. In fact, when the newspaper tries to take her picture because she's the first one to donate, she says no, she doesn't want any kind of special recognition.</s>Ms. MARINA LU: Everybody is very shocked, you know, even though we are not living over there right, but we are Chinese. We feel the shock, like everybody around the world. You know, everybody should be doing something.</s>DAVID GORN: Across the Bay Bridge to Oakland. This working class city has a partnership with earthquake ravaged Mianyang, China. They are friendship cities, similar to sister cities. Oakland City Councilman, Henry Chang was born in China, and says he's visited Mianyang about a dozen times in the last decade. So far, he hasn't been able to reach anyone he knows there.</s>Councilman HENRY CHANG (Oakland City Councilman): There is over 7,000 people that die from that, and also at least, another 18,000 is right now still bury.</s>DAVID GORN: Chang is offered to send a search and rescue team from Oakland to Mianyang. It's the same crew, he says, that went to New York City after 9/11. And he says it's one of the few teams in the country that specialize in finding, and pulling people, from collapsed buildings. Chang worries when they arrive in China, it may be even more chaotic than September 11th.</s>Councilman HENRY CHANG (Oakland City Councilman): When I heard 7.9, knowing the type of structure over there, in China mostly like bricks and other reinforced type of structure, so I know that it is going to be really tough.</s>DAVID GORN: Chang learned from his many trips to Mianyang that it's a poor city, and will take years to rebuild. The Chinese American community here in the Bay area, has been willing to step up in the past, after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the Sin Tao newspaper group raised more than a million dollars. This time they expect donations will far exceed that total.</s>DAVID GORN: For NPR News, I'm David Gorn in San Francisco.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: You know, listeners can't really see you, Alex, as being radio, but a few hours ago, you were pretty sweaty.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: I prefer to think of it as a healthy glow. One of the side benefits of my commute to work today by bicycle. This is Ride Your Bike to Work week and we'll have more on that coming up.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: There's more in a moment on Day to Day.

NPR Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving discusses former GOP Rep. Bob Barr's decision to run as a Libertarian candidate for president. He also explains why Sen. Hillary Clinton's expected win in West Virginia on Tuesday isn't making big waves.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is Day to Day. I'm Alex Chadwick.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: In a few minutes, a profile of a young writer who expected to be applying to graduate film school right about now, instead he is serving his country in Sadr City, Iraq.</s>Captain NATE RAWLING (U.S. Army Captain, Iraq): There was a great quote from John Irving, "A novel is a place for everything you can't use in your own life if you are a writer."</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: First though, to politics in this country and developments. NPR's Senior Washington Editor, Ron Elving, a regular Day to Day guest on Mondays, is back with us. Ron, we are going to talk about who is getting out of the race and when. But first, I want to begin with someone who is getting in, and that is Congressman Bob Barr, has made an announcement this morning. I think this could be significant. Tell us about it.</s>RON ELVING: It is not an unanticipated announcement, Alex, Bob Barr has made clear he is going to run as a candidate in the Libertarian Party. If he is, in fact, the nominee of the Libertarian party, in a very real sense to put it all in a nutshell, he becomes John McCain's Ralph Nader.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Now, of course we mean the Ralph Nader who cost the Democrats, in the view of many, the election in the year 2000. But how big a factor could Mr. Barr be for Senator McCain?</s>RON ELVING: So far we have not seen Libertarian candidates cause much of a problem for Republican presidential candidates, at least not in our lifetimes. But there is always the possibility that if John McCain does not entirely nail down the support of all conservatives, some conservatives in some states may gravitate towards Bob Barr as a purer expression of their particular political philosophy.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Meanwhile, Ron, there is the Democratic race that's still churning ahead and tomorrow the West Virginia primary takes place. And Hillary Clinton, at least according to one pole there, is expected to just trounce Senator Barack Obama by something like 36 points. And I'm just wondering why no one seems to care about that anymore?</s>RON ELVING: It's primarily because West Virginia is not very big. There are only 28 delegates at stake. There are only three Congressional Districts in West Virginia. It's close to being a minimal electoral college state, and it's also been a state where Hillary Clinton has had an insurmountable lead from the very beginning. It is the second oldest population in the country behind Florida. It is within the top three or four whitest states in the country. It also has the lowest number of college educated people as a percentage of the total state population. So, if you look at all of the characteristics of the Clinton coalition, with the exception of course, of the gender issue, West Virginia is way out at one end of the scale. So she's always been the presumptive choice.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: But she is still fighting, and she is still staying in the race until June. Is there any talk of her angling, at all, for the vice presidential spot?</s>RON ELVING: Yes, there is a great deal of talk about that and one of the reasons that she might be staying in, would be to have that leverage for the number two spot on the ticket. And I think she is quite actively interested in at least having it offered to her. She would almost surely take it. Now, she has said she will stay in until there is a nominee. We would anticipate the first date in which that claim could be made, would be a week from tomorrow, on May 20th, when the Kentucky and Oregon primaries would put Barack Obama over the top in terms of having a majority of pledged delegates. He doesn't even have to win both states, probably win Oregon, probably lose Kentucky. And he is now, in the last several days, moved ahead of Hillary Clinton in terms of unpledged delegates, sometimes called superdelegates, and so really, he's going to be the winner in both categories of delegates.</s>RON ELVING: And at that point Hillary could easily say, he's the nominee, I'm getting out. We do have the Michigan and Florida delegations out there, but there are deals being negotiated right now that are probably going to give her a rather small net of delegates from each state, but get those delegations seated as everyone thought they should be, in one way or another. So, that will resolve that final question, and before we even get to the end of the month, these things could be worked out.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: But Ron, why isn't there a stampede of superdelegates, of the remaining superdelegates? Don't you need to see that? And you don't see that yet? Are you saying that you will see it a week from tomorrow?</s>RON ELVING: I don't know that we will see it at any one given moment. The Obama campaign has, among other things, preferred to bring these groups of people out in small groups. Whenever Clinton announces one or two superdelegates coming her way, the Obama campaign likes to bring out four or five of their own, so it's conceivable they have a reservoir of these superdelegates that they are drawing down slowly. Also, you still have 200 and some superdelegates who have not seen it in their interest yet to commit, about 50 of those had yet been determined by their state conventions, so of course they can't commit. But among those who are still holding out, many of them have their own political reasons for doing so, including that they don't want to go against the wishes of their district, or their state, which has already voted for the person they don't plan to commit to.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Ron Elving, along with political editor Ken Rudin, he produces the weekly podcast, It's All Politics at npr.org. Ron, thank you again.</s>RON ELVING: Nice to be with you.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: There is more coming up on Day to Day from NPR News.

High oil and natural gas prices are keeping Texas business humming along, despite economic problems elsewhere. Companies are hiring, real estate is selling and the state budget is on track for a huge surplus.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is Day to Day from NPR News. I'm Alex Chadwick.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: I'm Madeleine Brand. While much of the nation is suffering through the beginnings of a recession, Texas is doing just fine, thank you. Business is booming, real estate is holding its own, and the state is forecasting a budget surplus of more than 10 billion dollars. NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports from Dallas.</s>WADE GOODWYN: Remember back when you were in elementary school and learning your U.S. states in geography class? Each state would have a little drawing inside of it of the commodities that state produced. Inside the outline of Texas, there was always an oil derrick with oil spouting out the top and a long-horn steer with a bovine look on its face. It seems quaint now. America used up most of Texas' oil in the last century. The long horns, well, they're a college football team, right? But surprisingly, in the world economy of 2008, those little drawings have made a comeback.</s>Mr. ALLEN SPELCE (Director, Communications, Office of Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts): You have a 10.7 billion surplus because Texas has actually been doing better than the rest of the nation economically. And one of the biggest economic drivers is oil and gas.</s>WADE GOODWYN: Allen Spelce is with the Texas comptroller's office. And the fact is, all the reasons that are causing much of the nation to suffer economically, energy costs headed to Mars, a housing market that popped like a soap bubble in the west Texas wind, and food prices that make dieting look attractive, these are the same reasons the Texas economy is doing so well.</s>WADE GOODWYN: For the first time in decades, farmers and ranchers are making real money. They, in turn, are buying new tractors and combines and hay bailers, spreading the wealth further. But the main force driving the Texas economy is the same one that's making Saudi princes rich, oil and gas. Just take a look in the help-wanted section of Texas newspapers. Allen Spelce says they're filled with ads for roughnecks and engineers.</s>Mr. ALLEN SPELCE (Director, Communications, Office of Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts): We've got areas, for example, out in West Texas, that are booming, you know, the Midland-Odessa, the Fort Stockton. In fact, we even heard that there's a new Wal-Mart going up in Ft. Stockton.</s>WADE GOODWYN: It turns out that not all the oil was pumped out of the Texas earth, just the easiest to get at. At 30 dollars a barrel, it just wasn't worth the effort to get what was left. But at 130 dollars a barrel, that's a different story. And it's not just oil. The largest natural-gas field in North America, the Barnett Shale, is located under Fort Worth and covers hundreds of square miles.</s>Mr. TERRY FULKERSON (Drilling Crew Leader, Barnett Shale): And these are all different well sites. There's one right there. There's another one right there. There's - connect these wells with pipelines to transport the natural gas.</s>WADE GOODWYN: Terry Fulkerson (ph) oversees a crew laying hundreds of miles of pipeline in the Barnett Shale. The United States Geological Survey estimates this field contains 27 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and the estimates just keep going up. As Fulkerson and his crew bore into the Earth, passenger jets roar overhead.</s>WADE GOODWYN: Who knew Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was sitting on top of a giant natural-gas field? But it is. There will eventually be 300 rigs in or around the airport alone. They just announced a plan to drill directly under downtown Fort Worth. They'll go in sideways. Drilling has come a long way in the last 25 years.</s>Mr. TERRY FULKERSON (Drilling Crew Leader, Barnett Shale): There's a huge demand for equipment. There's a huge demand for natural gas now that the price has gone up, you know, from four dollars up to 14. It's gone up 50 percent in the past four weeks.</s>Mr. MARSHALL MOUNDS (Drilling Crew Member, Barnett Shale): I bought a brand-new RV since I been here. I'm buying a new truck in September. It's a great time for us.</s>WADE GOODWYN: Marshall Mounds (ph), a roughneck from Oklahoma, is buying his truck and his RV and maybe a fishing boat in Dallas, helping the state surplus by contributing to Texas sales taxes. He lives in the Sandy Lake RV Park, north of town.</s>WADE GOODWYN: His wife stays in Oklahoma and visits from time to time. Not all the good-paying, working-class jobs are gone from America. If you're willing to dig in the dirt 12 hours a day for natural gas, even when it's 100 degrees out, you can afford that fishing boat and the new pickup to haul it down to the lake with.</s>Mr. MARSHALL MOUNDS (Drilling Crew Member, Barnett Shale): Supply and demand. The northeast needs it more than we do. That's where most of it's going.</s>WADE GOODWYN: With a nation hungry for energy, Marshall Mounds knows he'll be in the Barnett Shale until he retires. Business is booming. He and Texas are doing fine. Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, Dallas.

High gas prices, over-scheduled airlines, and a dollar dropping in value overseas are causing a lot of folks to worry about where they'll vacation this year. But all that seems benign to our contributor Peter Mehlman. The former Seinfeld writer has larger fears.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: It may be comforting to know that the government is planning so diligently to respond to all manner of terrorist attacks. That is unless you are Peter Mehlman. Peter used to write for Seinfeld, and so when it comes to neurosis, he's in a class of his own.</s>Mr. PETER MEHLMAN (Contributor, Writer): International travel is on my agenda for this summer, so you should know right now if you take me hostage, you'd be making a big mistake. I don't know who you are or what you stand for, but I'm giving you fair warning. The last time I used my passport was 2002 so I'm still in a post 9/11 state of mind when it comes to leaving American soil. Frankly, I'm not that comfortable leaving Santa Monica soil, but there's plenty of justification for my paranoia. In the last two months I've heard or read several accounts of journalists, volunteer aids or tourists being abducted by people just like you. They're held for days or weeks or months. Interrogated over and over. Harrowing stories are these. And yet you should know that I find hostage situations fascinating, as long as they're not happening to me. Let me go point by point on why they cannot happen to me.</s>Mr. PETER MEHLMAN (Contributor, Writer): Point A. Besides my dependency on Chap Stick, I'm on both thyroid and cholesterol medications. I don't know if you can fill prescriptions in the vicinity of the room where you would tie me down to a 36 inch Zenith, but I have my doubts. The hostage stories I hear about all take place in the middle of nowhere. It may not be in the middle of nowhere to you, but to me there are maybe five places in the whole world that aren't in the middle of nowhere.</s>Mr. PETER MEHLMAN (Contributor, Writer): Point B. I'm a TV comedy writer without a development deal at the current time, so if you think anyone is going to pay a ransom for me, think again. Ten years ago it would have been a different story but now, well, you watch Al Jazeera I don't have to tell you about the state of comedy development.</s>Mr. PETER MEHLMAN (Contributor, Writer): Point C. When it comes time to forcibly make me record propaganda statement on your behalf, you won't be happy with the results. Sure, I'll cooperate, I'm one of the few people who has Stockholm syndrome before being held captive. But the thing is, I tend to ad lib. In fact, I ad libbed the last line. And we all know how much you people hate it when your captives go off message. Hopefully you are convinced that there are tons of Americans more qualified to fill your hostage taking needs than me. Of course you've seen plenty of Americans, you realize that tons of Americans ads up to about three people. Anyway, if you let me travel in peace, I'll promise to pump some free falling dollars into your free falling economy, and just go home and be out of your way. Do we have a deal?</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Comedy writer and professional paranoid, Peter Mehlman.

The artist, famous for using found objects in his work, was 82. His most famous work, "Bed," was painted on a quilt using paint, toothpaste and fingernail polish.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: One of the pioneers of the post-World War II American art movement is dead. Robert Rauschenberg was 82. His gallery says he died yesterday. His early works mixed ordinary objects with paint. He called them combines. One of the most famous is "Bed." The artist was too broke to buy a canvas. He took the quilt off his bed and he painted it.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Robert Rauschenberg was a native of Port Arthur, Texas. He went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He studied painting under the famous Bauhaus master Josef Albers. Rauschenberg said that his teacher's controlled and disciplined approach to art inspired the young artist to do the exact opposite.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Here he is, recalling his early approach to art. This is at a symposium in Los Angeles seven years ago.</s>Mr. ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (American Artist): I couldn't paint with a brush. I just loved painting so much that I painted with my hands only. And the paintings both looked like it and all of my clothes did.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Robert Rauschenberg said he wanted to work in the gap between art and life. As his career developed, he worked in that gap in most every way imaginable, collaborating with dancer Twyla Tharp and the musician David Burne.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: He built a studio at his home on Captiva Island, Florida and he continued working until the end. Here he is again at that Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Symposium.</s>Mr. ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (American Artist): The only unhappy days that I seriously have, other than, you know, monumental tragedies, is, like, when I can't work, damn it.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Artist Robert Rauschenberg. He died yesterday at the age of 82.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Stay with us. NPR's Day to Day continues.

A new Goldman Sachs report says oil prices will soon spike to $150 a barrel. The company has successfully predicted past price increases. Wall Street Journal's Neil King discusses why this report is likely accurate.

ALEX COHEN, host: This is Day to Day from NPR News. I'm Alex Cohen.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And I'm Madeleine Brand. If you're upset about gas prices now, wait a year. Oil experts predict prices will continue to rise. The investment bank Goldman Sachs - it predicted the current price spike - says crude oil prices may jump from the current 120 dollars a barrel, all the way up to 200 dollars a barrel by next year. Neil King writes about this in the Wall Street Journal, and Neil, why does Goldman and Sachs - let's start with them - why do they think there will be this big price increase?</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Mr. NEIL KING JR. (Staff Writer, Wall Street Journal): Well, they are looking at some of the fundamentals that are out there, particularly, the lack of what we call "spare capacity," that is amount that someone could bring online if there was a real jolt to the system, and that has typically been Saudi Arabia that actually has the ability to do that. At that moment, their ability is down to about two percent of what the world consumes every day. We consume about 86 million barrels a day.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: The Saudis might, in a pinch, be able to bring on about two million barrels, and there's also just a general downward trend in a lot of the countries that the world has relied on for a long time. Mexico, production is going down there rather dramatically. It may stop being an oil exporter altogether within four or five years, as it's going now. And where the biggest pools of oil are in places like Iraq or Iran where there are difficulties, obvious ones, in getting investors to get what there is. So, it's like a compounded problem.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And meanwhile demand is increasing?</s>Mr. KING: It is. It's actually decreasing at the moment in the United States, and largely because we are a lot more price-sensitive than many other parts of the world. But the big pinch, which isn't noticed all that much, is actually in the oil-producing countries itself is one of the biggest demand increases, particularly in Saudi Arabia and in Gulf countries.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Now, in your article, you quote an analyst as saying that at 150 dollars a barrel, which is not too far away from 120, that would put prices at, quote, "an unprecedented level, even going back to just after the Civil War." What will that mean for prices at the pump?</s>Mr. KING: He was figuring, this being someone that works for the Federal Reserve in Dallas, that 150 would push gas prices to at least $4.50.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, and then next year, 200 dollars, according to Goldman Sachs, what would that translate into?</s>Mr. KING: Whoa, that would - I mean, that's the kind of price level that you would see a serious impact on the U.S. economy. I mean, that would at least be six, perhaps even upwards towards seven dollars a gallon. And what was amazing, Goldman was saying that this was sort of an outlier possibility, but they were saying that there was a decent chance of oil averaging 200 dollars a barrel next year and that would - I mean, that would have really huge impact.</s>Mr. KING: The thing is, is that at the moment, we have no real ability to bring on big amount of supply to ease all this. But any real downward turn in demand would change the equation a lot. So, that's the thing that a lot of people are looking at now.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: So, they're just hoping that people will, long before it gets to seven dollars a gallon, will say, oh, my gosh, I've got to use less and that will lower the price.</s>Mr. KING: That that will happen, that even that kind of stress will push not only people to change their behavior, but also push other things, technology and other forms of fuel, et cetera, that much faster, that will then make up the difference, but - and that will be equal to change in demand, at least for petroleum products.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: That's Neil King. He writes for the Wall Street Journal. Neil, thank you.</s>Mr. KING: I appreciate it. Thanks.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Wow, gas at seven dollars a gallon? I think that price spike will hit a lot of drivers like a Mack truck. Here's a sample from the littlest engines to the big dogs on the road, of what it would cost to fill up at seven dollars a gallon.</s>Unidentified Man: Say, bro, is that a Yaris?</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Don't call it hatchback or a gas guzzler. Toyota's Yaris lift-back packs a very practical 11.1 gallon tank. Still, at seven dollars a gallon, it'll take almost 78 bucks to fill the tank of this little sporty ride.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Buy American if you want to, but stars-and-stripes luxury could cost you about 126 dollars to fill a Buick Lucerne with seven-dollar gas. Today's Chevy Impala is a new twist on an old-school favorite. What will get old quick is the 119 dollars that you'll pump into that tank.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Unidentified Announcer #1: Stop in and see your Chevrolet dealer for the greatest show on work.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Then there's the palace on wheels. Ford's Lincoln Navigator is the SUV version of top sirloin. Good thing it's so big and cozy, because if gas reaches seven dollars a gallon, you might need to put up the house and move on in. A hundred ninety-six dollars per tank.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Unidentified Announcer #2: Lincoln, reach higher.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And finally, over in this corner, the super heavyweight of highway hulks, Hummer's H2. It's a decadent mammoth. It gets about 10 miles per gallon. So this mighty H2, subject of a lot of awe and a lot of scorn, would need 224 dollars' worth of gas to fill a tank. Not so tough now, huh?

New York Times sports writer, Bill Rhoden talks with NPR's Tony Cox about the world of sports, including Major League Baseball's play-offs and Kobe Bryant's current drama with the Los Angeles Lakers.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It's time to look into the world of sports, and for that, we turn to our own Tony Cox.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Earlier today, Tony sat down with our sports guru, New York Times writer Bill Rhoden.</s>TONY COX: Hey, Bill.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): The great Tony Cox again.</s>TONY COX: Yeah. What's up? Listen, we have Kobe who may be on the trading block, Major League Baseball may be instituting instant replay, and Randy Moss and T.O. may have finally found the right uniforms.</s>TONY COX: So let's start with baseball, Bill, because the Red Sox and Cleveland, as we all know, played today. And Colorado's waiting in the wings after having already plowed through the National League. But as we approach the World Series - before you talk about whether you think Colorado can do what, you know, Florida and the Angels and Arizona have also done in this millennium - instant replay is on the table again in Major League Baseball. Commissioner Bud Selig says, he hates it, but he's willing to talk about it.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Well I think we're going to see it. You know, in 2005, Bud said, I hate it. In 2006, he said, well, no. In 2007, he's just less talk. So I think that - I think, Tony, that we're one big gaff away in the World Series, one major blunder ofhaving instant replay and I think what's going to happen is that we're first going to have it in the spring training on a limited basis.</s>TONY COX: On a tryout basis?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Yeah, tryout bases, but I predict in about two to three seasons, we're going to have instant replay. In about 17 years, our grandchildren will be saying, what? You guys never had instant replay? Wow, what kind…</s>TONY COX: They needed to. Hey, let's talk about Colorado for a moment. I mean, the Cinderella team of the year, they went what, 21 out of 22 at the end of their last run and are heading into the World Series.</s>TONY COX: Are they going to be able to do what the Angels did, what Florida Marlins did, what the Arizona Diamondbacks did, coming in and surprising people and winning the whole thing?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): I don't think there's any reason that they can't, Tony. I mean, beyond Cinderella, they've got a tremendous left hook, you know. They are a great hitting team. They've always been a great hitting team historically. This year, they are an outstanding pitching team. They've got great beliefs in themselves. If you just looked at them, they're in a streak - it's a winning streak. They picked each other up.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Their confidence, Tony, is just so high, always very cautious against this. You know, baseball is not like football, basketball where a momentum is something made. You don't really have that kind of momentum in baseball. So I think this dead period now while they are waiting might be the only thing to kind of throw some cold water on their hot streak.</s>TONY COX: Talking about…</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): But I like them - I like them a lot.</s>TONY COX: All right, talking about hot streaks, nobody in the major sports world right now, at least in American sport, is on a hotter streak than the New England Patriots who are undefeated and, you know, talk is starting to begin, Bill Rhoden, that this may be a comparison to the 1972 Miami Dolphins who went undefeated. Is it fair comparison?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): It's beyond fair, Tony. I mean, this team is great. And if no one gets hurt, if none of their key guys gets hurt, man, I think they're going to run the team. If Brady doesn't get hurt, if Stallworth - Donte Stallworth doesn't get hurt, if that passing game stays intact, they've got a great running game, the defense is just beginning to pick up. Seymour just came back, Rodney Harrison came back, I mean, I think that's kind of like in bad West, you know, and you can run that Boston.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): I think Ross is all you'd be with players out there.</s>TONY COX: So you like them?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): I like New England. I like - put it like this, I like New England's chances of running the table.</s>TONY COX: Running the table. Let's talk about somebody who's a part of making that happen and somebody who isn't. And these are the two number 81s, Randy Moss and Terrell Owens. It seemed as if, at least in Randy Moss' case, putting on a New England Patriot uniform all of a sudden made him a nice guy again.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Well, let's not go that far. I mean, I don't think - I mean, I don't think he's ever not a nice guy. I just think that he - there are some character issues that were brought up by losing. And we don't see those characters issues yet because everything is wonderful. He's never had - he's never been in a system like that - like New England - since, I'd argue, since Minnesota with Daunte Culpepper.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): But this is just a perfect situation. I mean, he - Tom Brady, that system is just wonderful. They've never had a wide receiver like that. I mean, it's - you look at them play (unintelligible), it's like a - like two kids playing catch.</s>TONY COX: Mm-hmm. MVP candidate? MVP candidate?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Yeah, I mean…</s>TONY COX: No question, huh?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): If the season started right now, I will see who else. And, you know, everybody talked about Dallas and New England, but when you saw that game…</s>TONY COX: No contest, yeah.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): It was like - it was just another - completely another level of football.</s>TONY COX: Let's talk about another level of football right now as a matter of fact. Let's talk about college football.</s>TONY COX: The BCS rankings came out this week as you know. Ohio State hard to believe, number one right now, but I can't - and South Florida number 2. I can't see them staying in those positions the rest of the way, can you?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Yeah, well, you kind of - I mean, this is, you know, unlike previous years, which are less - I think three or four years where one loss would base - you almost had to be perfect to play for the national championship.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): This year, I think you can lose a game, two games, and to be honest with you, Tony, South Florida really should be number one. They really should be number one. I just think the voters just couldn't bring themselves to vote for South Florida. But South Florida has kind of got a going on.</s>TONY COX: Well if they beat Rutgers in their game scheduled for today, maybe they will move up into the number one spot for next week.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Well, they should. I like that.</s>TONY COX: One more thing before we get away. There's a guy out here in California who needs a team to play for. He's tall, scores pretty well, good defender, but the owner of the team doesn't like him anymore. His name is Jerry Buss. Kobe Bryant, is there a team that could take him, would be interested in taking Kobe? And who might that be?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): New York, New York, the Big Apple. Please, Kobe, please come to New York. He would be tremendously appreciated here. This should - this is the…</s>TONY COX: But they said they didn't - Isaiah says they don't want him.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Well…</s>TONY COX: He just said no, no. You just said that.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Isaiah is - you know, maybe his judgment was not that great.</s>TONY COX: Well, you know, our time is running out. But I have heard that Mark Cuban is the guy that really wants to bring Kobe to the Dallas Mavericks. Will you give up Dirk Nowitzki for Kobe Bryant?</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): In a minute. In a New York minute.</s>TONY COX: In a heartbeat.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): No question.</s>TONY COX: Bill Rhoden, thanks a lot. We'll talk again real soon.</s>Mr. WILLIAM RHODEN (Writer, New York Times; Author, "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback"): Hey, Tony, it's always a pleasure.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NPR's Tony Cox talking with William Rhoden. Rhoden is a sports columnist for the New York Times and author of "Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumphs of the Black Quarterback."

What do you do when you see members of the military? The Gratitude Campaign urges people to show their appreciation with a sign similar to the American Sign Language gesture for "Thank You." Alex Cohen talks with Scott Truitt who started the campaign.

ALEX COHEN, host: Over the next few weeks, 3,500 hundred soldiers now stationed in Iraq will begin to return home to the U.S. You might wind up seeing some of them in uniform on the street, at the airport. So, what do you do? Perhaps you want to thank them for their service, but you aren't quite sure what to say. That's how Scott Truitt felt, and so he did something about it. Scott Truitt joins us now from Seattle. Welcome to the program.</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): Thanks.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: So, you have started something you're calling the Gratitude Campaign. What is it?</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): Well, just as your intro said, I found myself in airports quite a bit over the last 10 years or so, and I would walk up and verbally thank soldiers for serving for us, and shake their hand, and sometimes I noticed that this was a really easy thing to do, and it felt very natural. And then other times it kind of felt awkward, and there are lots of different reasons why that happens, as I've learned over the years.</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): I'm familiar with the military salute, and I started thinking, you know, boy it'd be nice if civilians had something similar to a salute that we could use to say thank you quickly and easily without having to approach somebody if we are not comfortable with that, or without having to stop them if they're in a hurry.</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): And so basically what the Gratitude Campaign is, is it's a gesture that starts with your hand on your heart as though you're about to do the pledge of allegiance, and then you just bring your hand out and down in front of you, and the literal translation for this sign is "thank you from the bottom of my heart."</s>ALEX COHEN, host: Soldiers aren't necessarily going to know what this sign means. Isn't there a possibility that you could run the risk of them taking it the wrong way? I mean, if you see the sign it's not too far from a sign that could actually be interpreted as a very rude gesture.</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): There is another gesture that starts with the hand just under the chin and it's an offensive gesture, and that's why we went with the one that starts at the heart so that if you didn't know what it means, you would at least know that it comes from the heart, and it must be a good thing.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: We spoke earlier today with an Army spokesperson, and she told us that she hadn't heard of this campaign. She said she wouldn't be too surprised if it caught on, but how do you do that? How do you get the word out so soldiers actually know what this means?</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): One of the ways that we started getting the word out was by airing this video that we've made at sports presentations. We had the Seattle Seahawks, NFL football team, air it at their games, all their home games this past season, and several other professional sports teams have done the same this year, and we've been really grateful about that. We also posted it to the Internet, and it kind of took off from there.</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): We've had over eight million visitors since December. We also have - there's a woman in Germany who is responsible for reintegrating soldiers into civilian life after they've served overseas. They stop through Germany first on their way home, and she is using our videos to open up her program that she does with them. So, a lot of soldiers are seeing it that way.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: It's almost become like a secret handshake it sounds like.</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): It is, yeah.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: Scott Truitt is founder of the Gratitude Campaign. He spoke to us from Seattle. Thank you.</s>Mr. SCOTT TRUITT (Founder, The Gratitude Campaign): Thank you.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: With gratitude, we ask you to keep listening, as NPR's Day to Day continues.

Writer Hanna Ingber Win has struggled to get through to her family living in Myanmar. The fact that the country is poor doesn't make it less tragic, she insists.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: Trying to reach people in Myanmar isn't easy under normal circumstances. This week calling people there has been almost impossible. Los Angeles writer Hannah Ingber Win says she finally got through to relatives.</s>Ms. HANNAH INGBER WIN: My husband is Burmese, and his parents live in a simple one-room structure in outer Rangoon. They don't have a phone, let alone access to the Internet. Saturday's cyclone wiped out entire villages in the Ayeyarwady Delta, and left much of Rangoon without electricity. For my husband and Burmese friends living in the United States, this means days spent trying to get in touch with friends and family back home. They call for hours. They send frantic emails. Most of them have had no luck. They have no idea if their family is safe or has enough food and water. We managed to get through to my husband's uncle four days after the storm. His first words to me, we survived. He wasn't joking.</s>Ms. HANNAH INGBER WIN: The city has never experienced such disaster. The streets are covered in fallen trees, billboards, and broken glass. If you drive, he told me, it's like you're driving in the forest. When I lived in Rangoon four years ago, my apartment was on Sule Pagoda Road, a couple blocks from the Bandoola Garden and its water fountain. I now look at photos on the Internet of people wading through that fountain using the dirty water to wash themselves, or bringing buckets of it home. Five days after the storm hit, we finally got words from my husband's cousin, who lives in Rangoon. She is safe, but worried about water. A 20-liter bottle has tripled in price. People in Rangoon aren't just thirsty, she said, they're angry. She said the soldiers don't help clean up the damage or provide needed food and water. I can't name my husband's cousin or uncle because even natural disasters are politically sensitive in Burma. They're like state secrets.</s>Ms. HANNAH INGBER WIN: When I lived in Rangoon, I didn't know a storm hit western Burma until my aunt in Westchester, New York, emailed me. Now I have more information in Los Angeles than my family does in Rangoon. I remember American journalists calling the Hurricane Katrina disaster a scene out of a third-world country. That made me angry. My family and friends live in a so-called third-world nation, and when such disasters happen there, when their government refuses to sound a timely alarm, when it doesn't provide food, electricity, shelter, or medical care, when it prevents aid from getting in, when it leaves people to live with almost nothing, or die, it is also a tragedy. Just because they live in a poor country doesn't make it less tragic. I asked my husband's uncle if he was angry at the government's response to the disaster. He laughed and said no, because we're used to it, and then the line went dead.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Hannah Ingber Win is a writer living in Los Angeles.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Stay with us on Day to Day from NPR News.

Screen Actors Guild negotiations have stalled, which could mean another Hollywood strike. Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Verrier tells Madeleine Brand what it might take to get the parties back to the bargaining table.

ALEX COHEN, host: Another labor strike is looming in Hollywood. A few days ago, the major movie studios called off contract talks with the Screen Actors Guild, after three weeks of negotiations. The studios said the demands of SAG were unreasonable. The Guild recently released a statement saying it was willing to negotiate around the clock until a deal was done. For more on this we go now to Los Angeles Times entertainment business reporter Richard Verrier. Welcome to the program.</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Hi. How are you?</s>ALEX COHEN, host: I'm doing all right, but how are these two parties doing? Bring us up to date on what's been going on.</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Well, they're not doing too well. It's not quite doom and gloom just yet. They still have a month and a half to go before the actors' contract expires, at which a point at which the actors could decide to go on strike. But after three weeks of negotiations, they've made some headway, but are far apart on a host of issues across both new media and old media.</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): The main sticking point at this point has to do with the fact that the actors are seeking better terms than what writers and directors negotiated in their recent agreements. Specifically, the actors want a bigger cut of revenues from DVD sales. Their DVD residuals formula hasn't been changed in over two decades.</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Among other things and they are also sharply at odd with the studios over how much money they should get when shows are streamed online, and what kind of shows that are created for the web should be covered under the union's contract. So those are just some of the issues.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: Today, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers started negotiations with the union known as AFTRA, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. And we should mention that many NPR employees are members of that union. Can these negotiations put pressure on any future negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild?</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): There's no question. AFTRA is expected to negotiate a deal in fairly short order, but they have much less contentious relations with the studios, and they've already negotiated a contract that - a separate contract that incorporated many of the same elements as the deal that the writers struck. So they're expected to basically accept a similar framework as what the writers negotiated. And that will certainly put pressure on SAG because at that point it would be the three other unions would have been basically accept the terms that they've said fall short.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: If it does, in fact, go to a strike, can Hollywood weather another potential shutdown?</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Well, certainly an actors' strike would be more devastating than a writers' strike. The writers' strike lasted a hundred days and shut down scripted-TV production and had a large effect across Hollywood, not just among writers but on below-the-line - thousands of below-the-line workers, many of whom are still struggling to get back on their feet.</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): And a SAG would strike would also have a big effect on feature-film production. Now some feature films, independent features, have received waivers to keep shooting, so the impact would be negated somewhat. But there isn't much appetite for another strike, following the writers' walkout.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Verrier, thank you.</s>Mr. RICHARD VERRIER (Entertainment Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Thank you very much.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: Brian May of Queen. That's coming up next on NPR's Day to Day.

The TV personality's documentary, The Business of Being Born, criticizes the U.S. birth industry, advocating alternative birth methods over hospital births. It comes out on DVD for Mother's Day. Ricki Lake spent three years following Manhattan midwives, filming home births and interviewing experts to make a documentary on natural birth.

MADELEINE BRAND, host: This is Day to Day. From NPR News, I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: I'm Alex Chadwick. Sunday is Mother's Day. The question of becoming a mother, or at least giving birth, is at the heart of a documentary that comes out today on DVD. The Business of Being Born is a critique of hospital birth in the U.S. The film offers home birth and midwives as remedies. Eve Troeh reports.</s>EVE TROEH: Ricki Lake. Yes, the Ricki Lake, actor and talk show host, had her first baby in a hospital in New York. She didn't want drugs. She didn't want induced labor. She got both. Her son was born healthy, but she felt out of control.</s>Ms. RICKI LAKE (Actor, Talk Show Host): It made me think twice the second time around, wanting to be in that setting at all.</s>EVE TROEH: Lake started going to midwife conferences, training to be a birth coach, and learning everything she could about natural birth.</s>Ms. RICKI LAKE (Actor, Talk Show Host): It's another world. What they believe, the research that they do. I mean it's just - this information wasn't really accessible to the regular folk like me.</s>EVE TROEH: Lake and her friend, filmmaker Abby Epstein, set out to change that. They spent three years following Manhattan midwives, filming home births, and interviewing experts to make the business of being born. It's gained a following among moms-to-be. I sat down to watch the movie with two pregnant women in Los Angeles, both first-time moms. Maryann Oberley(ph), about seven months along, was a bit reluctant.</s>Ms. MARYANN OBERLEY (Pregnant, First-time Mom): I didn't know if I wanted to watch it or not, because I want to have my baby in the hospital, I'll probably use drugs if I feel like I need them. So I was worried that it was going to try to scare me out of that, or preach to me too much.</s>EVE TROEH: The other woman, Julie Mullin(ph), has a bigger baby bump at 34 weeks. She's seen more friends and relatives seek out natural birth.</s>Ms. JULIE MULLIN (Pregnant, First-time Mom): It seems like there's been a lot of prejudice against pain medication and child birth. People were like, oh, women are supposed to suffer in childbirth, so I'm curious that the pendulum's sort of swinging back the other way.</s>EVE TROEH: Both women cooed over the home birth scenes, including footage of Ricki Lake herself. She had her second son at home, in her bath tub, and you see it all.</s>EVE TROEH: The water can be so cool. Again, mom-to-be Julie Mullin.</s>Ms. JULIE MULLIN (Pregnant, First-time Mom): I mean, definitely, it's something to consider. That just looks so much more comfortable in a lot of ways than lying on a bed.</s>Ms. MARYANN OBERLEY (Pregnant, First-time Mom): And it's wonderful to see births like - it's just - it was just so beautiful.</s>EVE TROEH: That's Maryann Oberley.</s>Ms. MARYANN OBERLEY (Pregnant, First-time Mom): As long as you go into it knowing like, whatever I've decided for myself, I've decided and it's okay to stick to it even, if these people have a very different opinion.</s>EVE TROEH: Producer Ricki Lake says, the business of being born is not about judging women's decisions. It just presents options.</s>Ms. RICKI LAKE (Actor, Talk Show Host): It is not about have a home birth like me, at all. I mean, I think it's about educating yourself, and empowering yourself to make the choice that's best for you, because I think so many times, you know we spend more time researching what camera we're going to buy, or what TV set we need in our home, instead of, you know, what is the best care provider for me, during this most precious time in my life. Women or the consumer needs to know, they have choices.</s>Ms. HARRIET HALL (Retired Family Doctor): If the consumers wanted something that we tested scientifically, and found out that it wasn't in their best interest, I don't think we would want to do it.</s>EVE TROEH: Harriet Hall is a retired family doctor. She reviewed the business of being born for the website Science-Based Medicine. Hall says the film is moving, but short on scientific fact. Statistics in it suggests, the infant mortality rate and the number of C-sections would go down, if there were more midwives and home births.</s>Ms. HARRIET HALL (Retired Family Doctor): Midwives have come up with a lot of good suggestions. We need to test the things that they do, that are different from hospital births, find out if they really give better outcome or not.</s>EVE TROEH: Hall says the film presents a dichotomy, rather than a broad range of options, like bringing midwives into hospitals, where obstetricians can back them up. The film shows doctors with a few exceptions, as controlling birth. In one montage, nurses talk about Pitocin or Pit, a drug that induces labor.</s>EVE TROEH: Unidentified Nurse #1: Hit her, means you are basically instructing the nurse to start Pitocin.</s>EVE TROEH: Unidentified Nurse #2: I asked to keep upping the Pit.</s>EVE TROEH: Unidentified Nurse #1: Probably about 90% of our patients at some point, are on some type of augmentation.</s>EVE TROEH: Unidentified Nurse #22: Which is not anywhere near adequacy so (inaudible).</s>EVE TROEH: Unidentified Nurse #1: If you're not making that change in that segment of time that they were looking for, then we're going to try to facilitate things.</s>EVE TROEH: Unidentified Nurse #2: Or maybe start Pit.</s>EVE TROEH: The moms-to-be, who watched with me, Julie and Maryann, felt the hospital births didn't get fair shake.</s>Ms. JULIE MULLIN (Pregnant, First-time Mom): Actually, it probably would have been cool, if we'd seen some positive hospital births, too.</s>Ms. MARYANN OBERLEY (Pregnant, First-time Mom): Because it was ironic. I thought that they had mentioned in the movie like, women are thought to be terrified of birth, and then all they showed were scary things.</s>Ms. JULIE MULLIN (Pregnant, First-time Mom): Of hospital births, yeah.</s>EVE TROEH: Practically and financially, Julie Mullin(ph) doesn't see how home birth would work for her, even though she's now open to it.</s>Ms. JULIE MULLIN (Pregnant, First-time Mom): I kind of got it all of a sudden, like yeah, you know maybe this really would be a good option. I have no idea how I'd even work that now,you know, with an HMO.</s>EVE TROEH: Neither woman wants to put expectations on herself for her first birth. Both know several women who tried to do natural birth and weren't able. One birth in the film speaks to that. The movie's director, Abby Epstein, learned she's pregnant while shooting the film. After all her research on the topic, she decides to go with home birth.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: It doesn't go as planned.</s>Ms. RICKI LAKE (Actor, Talk Show Host): Should I get this cab?</s>Unidentified Man: Yeah, yeah.</s>Ms. EPSTEIN: Please go. It's really hurting. Oh, my God. This (bleep) (bleep). I want to get there. I cannot have another contraction in this taxi cab.</s>Ms. RICKI LAKE (Actor, Talk Show Host): You know, it was so interesting. It's like life and art kind of coming together.</s>EVE TROEH: Producer Ricki Lake says the emergency became integral to the film.</s>Ms. RICKI LAKE (Actor, Talk Show Host): You know, having never made a documentary before, I really think it balances the film in a way that we couldn't have anticipated.</s>EVE TROEH: No film can set the standard for the right thing to do during birth. Natural may be normal for a lot of women, but "The Business of Being Born" shows that motherhood doesn't always follow the script. For NPR News, I'm Eve Troeh.

The president's daugher is getting married this weekend at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. The ceremony will begin with a traditional BBQ.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: OK, back to the family-friendly part of the show including the First Family. Presidential daughter Jenna Bush is getting married tomorrow at the Bush ranch in Crawford,</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And the First Family has invited about 200 guests in a private, outdoor ceremony. No press allowed, although the White House will probably release a few photos after the event.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: First lady Laura Bush and the president's mother, former first lady Barbara Bush have been handling most of the details. Mr. Bush did find a little time to joke about his role in the wedding.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: President GEORGE W. BUSH: I had to face some very difficult spending decisions, and I've had to conduct sensitive diplomacy. That's called planning for a wedding.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Jenna Bush is 26 years old. She's marrying her long-time boyfriend, Henry Hager, and today is his 30th birthday.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Tonight, friends and family are invited for a rehearsal dinner and tomorrow, the Bushes will host a traditional Texas barbecue lunch before the ceremony.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Jenna Bush will wear a gown designed by Oscar de la Renta, her mother's favorite designer, and the newlyweds plan to live in Baltimore where Jenna will work as a schoolteacher.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: NPR's Day to Day continues.

The cyclone in Myanmar devastated the country's rice crop. What does the loss mean to high food prices elsewhere in the world?

ALEX CHADWICK, host: From NPR News, it's Day to Day. There are several developments in the story of Myanmar, and the cyclone that has devastated that country. American officials say that a U.S. military plane has been cleared to land with relief supplies on Monday. And UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that he has not yet been able to actually speak with, and reach the leaders of Myanmar, people he's been trying to reach for days to facilitate relief efforts. Also, the U.S. Agriculture Department now predicts that the country's rice harvest is going to drop by 7% this year because of damage from the storms.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: And joining us for that is Marketplace's John Dimsdale. John, what are the longer-term economic consequences of the storm for Myanmar?</s>JOHN DIMSDALE: Well, fortunately for the latest rice crop, the cyclone hit after most of it had already been harvested. So there's less of an immediate impact on rice supplies. However, the storm swamped the rice fields with a huge wave of salt water, and that's preventing the planting of seeds for the next crop.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: So what is this going to mean for world supplies of rice?</s>JOHN DIMSDALE: Well, the growing global demand for rice has been putting a lot of pressure on supply and therefore, the cost already - prices have gone up as much as three times normal in recent days. There have been rice riots in some places of the world, so this has already been a volatile market, even before the cyclone. In terms of global markets, Myanmar is no longer a major supplier of rice. It used to be. In fact, before the military junta took over more than 40 years ago, Burma was the world's largest rice exporter. But these days, Lex Rieffel with the Brookings Institution says Myanmar's rice growers can barely feed their own country.</s>Mr. LEX RIEFFEL (Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution): There's no incentive to produce a surplus, because any surplus, for example, tends to be expropriated by the government to feed the very large military establishment that it has. They don't have access to fertilizers and other, you know, high-yielding varieties, etc., etc.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: So John, the storms' effects really are going to be most acute inside the country.</s>JOHN DIMSDALE: Yes. There are 50 million people there, who because of the internal policies of the military junta, have very little purchasing power, and they depend heavily on local agriculture. Lex Rieffel, who studies this region of the world, says the looming food crisis in the country is going to be horrible.</s>Mr. LEX RIEFFEL (Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution): They don't have access to imported rice or other foodstuffs that might substitute, and even the emergencies supplies are not flowing into the country as they would in a normal situation.</s>JOHN DIMSDALE: That's why the current holdup in getting relief supplies into the area is especially tragic. The people in the rice-growing Irrawaddy Delta will have to fend for themselves, and it looks like for several months at least, the salt water that has flooded the rice paddies will prevent the growing of desperately needed rice.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Thank you, John. John Dimsdale of public radio's daily business show Marketplace.

The death toll in Sadr City has reached more than 1,000. As families flee the city, the government plans to put them up in a sports stadium. Tom Bowman updates us on what the Iraqi parliament and U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are doing to stop the violence.

ALEX COHEN, host: This is Day to Day. I'm Alex Cohen.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: I'm Madeleine Brand. In Iraq, fighting continues today in Sadr City. That's the Shiite slum in Baghdad. More than two million people live there.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: For more than a month, both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi forces have been trying to quell the violence there. Forces loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been battling Iraqi government soldiers.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Since the fighting began about six weeks ago, 1,000 Iraqis have been killed in Sadr City. NPR's Tom Bowman is in Baghdad. Tom, in the last few days the parliament in Iraq has been talking about how to end this fighting, and grappling with this issue. What are they talking about?</s>TOM BOWMAN: Well, Jalal Talabani, he's the president of Iraq. He sent a letter to parliament basically saying let's try to come up with a truce here, and one of his suggestions is for the fighters to turn in their medium and heavy weapons. Also he's proposing an amnesty for those who have not killed either Iraqi or American forces.</s>TOM BOWMAN: Now, the Sadrists in parliament, they're really concerned about the loss of civilian life, they say, there. They're saying they also don't have any heavy weapons, and if the Iraqi forces want to come in without the Americans, they'd be happy to have them come in. But they're still debating it, and one of the Sadr members of parliament, Nasser al-Rubaie, during the debate in parliament he basically said the invasion forces, meaning the United States, they're carrying out what he calls aggressive attacks in Sadr City, including air strikes against Sadr City.</s>TOM BOWMAN: And then he asks, could someone tell me how to counter air strikes? Is there any other force to stop the airplanes? Other members of parliament are really worried. They say that Americans are using too much heavy firepower. They're using rocket attacks, unmanned drones firing missiles, tank rounds. Now, the American military will say listen, we're going to do what we have to, to protect our soldiers.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, until relatively recently, there seemed to be a truce. The fighting was reignited in Basra back in March, and is it just getting heavier and heavier, and spiraling out of control?</s>TOM BOWMAN: That's a good question. It seems to be in Sadr City. The death toll is increasing, more fighters are taking to the street. I sat down with a Mahdi army commander last week and he told me that he is maintaining the cease-fire, but about 600 of the 2,000 soldiers under his command are joining the fight in Sadr City.</s>TOM BOWMAN: He said they are defending their neighborhoods, defending their families. So, while the truce appears to still be holding, that eight month truce that was set up by Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Mahdi army, a lot of his fighters aren't abiding by it, and are joining the fight in Sadr City.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Now, how in control is Muqtada al-Sadr? Is he directing this, or are these in fact a separate group?</s>TOM BOWMAN: Well, the Americans say they are special groups, Iranian trained remnants of the Mahdi army that are fighting here. That's the official line. Some American officers I talk with say it's really amorphous. They kind of go back and forth between these special groups and the Mahdi army. We don't know who really is fighting.</s>TOM BOWMAN: There is a question about control and how much control Sadr has over his Mahdi army. It seems to be splintering, but the other thing we're seeing too is there seems to be even more support now for Sadr, particularly in Sadr City, because of the heavy-handed tactics the civilians say are being used against the fighters in Sadr City. There's growing hatred for Maliki in Sadr City, and growing hatred for the Americans here as well.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Is it possible that we're seeing the beginnings of a civil war between various Shiite factions in Iraq?</s>TOM BOWMAN: We could be seeing that. We're also seeing in other areas of Baghdad elements of the Mahdi army seem to be popping up fighting Iraqi and American forces, so we don't know how far this will go. Will the entire city erupt? What we're seeing now is a lot of families are heading out of Sadr City.</s>TOM BOWMAN: Beforehand, in the last few weeks during the fighting you would see families and people move from one part of Sadr City to another. Now we're seeing hundreds of families actually leaving Sadr City, and the government plans to put them up at a sports stadium just outside of Sadr City. There's a real worry, you know, obviously among the civilians about where this thing is heading, and will it spiral out of control.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: NPR's Tom Bowman speaking from Baghdad. Thanks, Tom.</s>TOM BOWMAN: You're welcome.

It's the day after the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries. John Dickerson, Chief Political Correspondent for Slate.com joins Alex Cohen to talk about the results and where the candidates are headed next.

ALEX COHEN, host: Joining us now is John Dickerson, Slate.com's chief political correspondent. Hi, John.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): Hi there.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: So, you just heard this conversation with Senator McGovern. What do you make of it?</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): It's a big deal because McGovern is not some crazy person running around having random opinions. He's not a pundit, and he was a former Clinton supporter, or sort of still is. But he has evaluated the outcome and said, you know, essentially, she should hang it up.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): Now, this is the kind of conventional wisdom, not that she should leave the race, but that she had a bad night and that the math is so stacked against her that it's impossible, and he has now ratified that view, and as a kind of party elder, that adds some weight to this pressure that's on Senator Clinton.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: So, in light of this news, and last night we have Barack Obama winning the primary in North Carolina, Clinton taking Indiana but just barely. Is there any realistic chance that she can turn this around?</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): Well, it's a very, very, very slim chance. It got slimmer after the primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. I was just on a conference call with her campaign staff, and here is their case. It's the best possible case they can try to make. First is that they are going to try to turn this whole election into West Virginia, which is the next contest. Hey, fortunately for Clinton it's a contest in which she's likely to do very well.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): They're also trying to argue to seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan, those sort of "limbo" delegates who have been written out of the process by the Democratic National Committee. And then the third argument they make is that if you look at the right polls in the right way, Hillary Clinton sets up better against John McCain than Barack Obama does. Those are all debatable points. They are points.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): The problem with them though is that none of them are terribly new, and none of them are strong enough to convince these superdelegates, and it's really all about the superdelegates now, that they should reverse the trend that has gone so far, which is the trend among the pledged delegates, and among the superdelegates. Barack Obama has won them basically about five to one since Super Tuesday.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: This morning, the Hillary Clinton campaign revealed that over the past month that the senator has loaned her own campaign 6.4 million dollars, and this is the second time that she's made such a personal loan. How long can the Clinton campaign run itself this way?</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): The question is this, how does this affect her ability to raise money outside of her own fortune? Which is one of the facts she'll use to argue to superdelegates. She will basically say, look at all these people, if they exist, and the campaign has been silent about the money they raised on the Internet so far since Indiana. This suggests she may not be doing very well in the fundraising front.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): And she needs to be able to show that she can fundraise to make an argument to superdelegates, hey, don't go to Barack Obama as you have been, but stick with me because people are still writing me checks, which means the regular people and humans in the country still have faith in my candidacy, and therefore you, Mr. and Mrs. Superdelegate, should have the same kind of faith.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: John, the first line in your piece this morning refers to the Democratic election, which, you write, seems at times designed by Willy Wonka. I assume by that you don't mean covered in chocolate.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): No, that would - if it were covered in chocolate, it might be a pleasant affair. So far it's been, you know, had these twists and turns in which, for those of us covering it, has been fantastic, and the polls actually show the Democrats are - about 60 percent of them are still happy for this drama to continue. But last night's victory, we thought we had a split - victory by Hillary Clinton. We thought she had won Indiana and Barack Obama had won North Carolina.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): Obama had given to her - conceded to her, essentially, on Indiana, and then we had this pause of a couple of hours, two or three hours, where it looked for a moment or two like Barack Obama, because his one county that he did very well in was coming on strong in the end there, because it took a long time to count the votes, that it looked like perhaps he might win both states of the evening. What it ended up doing though is shrinking Hillary Clinton's margin down quite a lot, which diminished her victory in Indiana a bit.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: So, when is it going to be over? When are we going to have one candidate?</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): Well, we don't know. There are three, I guess, possibilities that come to the top of my mind immediately. One is that the superdelegates look at the results from Tuesday and just decide to rush to Barack Obama. Some will certainly go to him, but that kind of a rush is unlikely. Superdelegates are kind of cautious people by nature.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): The other option available for superdelegates is that, in June, when all of the primaries and caucuses are over, that they then would make a decision. And then the third is that the superdelegates may make their decision, and the margin would not be enough to put pressure on Senator Clinton to withdraw from the race, and that she then continues to fight, and then takes it all the way to the convention and tries to get herself the nomination there.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: Either way, doesn't look like you're going to be bored any time soon. Slate.com's political correspondent, John Dickerson, thanks.</s>Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Chief Political Correspondent, Slate.com): Thank you.

Farai Chideya talks with Machivenyika Mapuranga, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United States, about the economic turmoil in his country and what's being done to fix the problem.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now we move from West Africa to the south. Zimbabwe is in dire straits. Inflation is at more than 6,000 percent. There are shortages of gas, cooking, oil, bread, sugar and salt.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Machivenyika Mapuranga is Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United States. We talked about one of the most well-known incidents in Zimbabwe's recent history when President Robert Mugabe began seizing the land of white farmers of British descent.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Many international observers say this was the tipping point in Zimbabwe's decline. But Ambassador Mapuranga says the story goes back further to a point where the United Kingdom promised to compensate white farmers for leaving Zimbabwe and then broke that promise.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): When the British reneged on that promise to fund the land reform program, the government went to parliament to pass legislation and even to amend the constitution to enable government to acquire land forcibly because before then, land could not be acquired forcibly. You know, it was not to say the white farmers must leave, even as we speak today.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): People don't know that Zimbabwe today, as we speak, has the third largest number of white farmers after South Africa and Namibia. We used to be number two after South Africa with something like - 4,500.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Ambassador, I'm not going to argue that point with you. But what - a couple points. One is that, undeniably, the amount of agricultural output has gone down. And whether or not you think that that's a function of land redistribution, there is an economic crisis. Why do you think then that that happened? And what are you going to do about it?</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): Yes. So in terms of agricultural production - yes, definitely. You cannot gainsay the fact that the acquisition of these vast tracts of land by people who had been denied the opportunity to become commercial farmers has contributed to the food shortages.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): You know, I've always been asked this question, you shouldn't have done that, why did you do that? Because you were not - you, Africans, are not good farmers. And I've always said that how can you become a good farmer if you don't have the land?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Ambassador, how much time do you think you have? There's very little cooking oil, there's very little sugar, there's not even mealy(ph) meal in some places. And I'll just put the currency issue in a frame.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When I went to Zimbabwe in 1997, there were 10 Zim dollars to one U.S. dollar. By the time I came back in 2001, on the parallel market or the illegal currency market, it was 300 Zim dollars to one U.S. dollar.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, you can get well over 250,000 Zim dollars to one U.S. dollar. That is crushing to everyday people. While you were waiting to figure out how to turn around the nation, do you expect people to stay in the country or do you expect this mass exodus to continue?</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): Well, let me - I wouldn't call it a mass exodus. You know, if you look at the phenomenon of the brain drain or people leaving the country, going to South Africa and wherever the pastures are greener, this is an eternal - this is a universal phenomenon.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): Even here, when you have the richest economy, the United States here and you have poor Mexico, you know, to the South, Americans are having to - maybe to construct a wall or a virtual wall, and the question of immigration is top of the agenda of Congress here. Whenever you have a dire economic situation, people leave for greener pastures. So this is not something that is peculiar to Zimbabwe.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): Independence is not about having a flag in the national anthem. You have to control your natural resources and own your economy. And this is what we are heading towards, and we are going to suffer for that. But we are experimenting and actually exploring a new paradigm of development in Africa. And I think that the rest of Africa will follow us in the near future.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Ambassador, before we let you go, I want to move to the topic of elections. In July, we spoke with Arthur Mutambara. He is part of one of the factions of the Zimbabwean Movement for Democratic Change, one of the opposition parties.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Here's a little bit of what he said.</s>Mr. ARTHUR MUTAMBARA (President, Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe): The three elements to Zimbabwean national crisis - on the first one, on political illegitimacy, what we're saying is those who are running the country called Zimbabwe are doing so without the consent of the governed. They empower through a fraudulent election. So the starting point in Zimbabwe is to make sure there are free and fair elections, the two wings of the MDC. We are working together in this mediation.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Ambassador, first of all, were the past elections fair and free? And secondly, what are you going to do in the future?</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): Well, the question of free and fair elections never became a question or an issue until the land reform program was launched in 2000 - in the year 2000.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): The first democratic elections in Zimbabwe were organized and conducted by the last British governor, Lord Soames, and he said, Robert Mugabe, your party has won. You form a government. And every five years, we have had elections observed and validated by Africa's continental organization, the OAU, and - and our - the regional organization that we belong to, SADEC.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): You know, I even asked the United States assistant secretary of state, Jendayi Frazer, when we visited the State Department. I said, how is it that elections take place in this one? And the European Union observes them and validates them as free and fair. And you never get the African Union or any African country -Nigeria or Zimbabwe or whatever - saying no, we have followed elections in Portugal. Even though the European Union says that they were free and fair, we don't believe they were free and fair, and we are going to impose sanctions who are in Portugal. But this is exactly what happens in our situation.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Ambassador Mapuranga, we're just out of time. Thank you so much for joining us.</s>Dr. MACHIVENYIKA MAPURANGA (Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States): Thank you very much, again. You're welcome.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Machivenyika Mapuranga is Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United States. He spoke with us from our NPR studios in Washington.

Rep. Michele Bachmann suspended her campaign. Texas Gov. Rick Perry headed home to reassess his bid after Iowa. And while Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul carry the momentum into New Hampshire and South Carolina, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman promise to continue their campaigns. Ken Rudin, Political Junkie columnist, NPR Matt Bai, chief political correspondent, New York Times Magazine

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Concord, New Hampshire. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul will debate who won last night, but as usual, the Iowa caucuses provided much more clarity on who lost.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This morning, Michele Bachmann ended her campaign. After returning to Texas to reassess, Rick Perry decided to skip New Hampshire and go directly to South Carolina. Newt Gingrich is already here in New Hampshire with plans to get even for the negative ads that pummeled him into fourth place in Iowa.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: We are not going to go out and run nasty ads. We're not going to go out and run 30-second gotcha ads. We're not...</s>NEWT GINGRICH: But I do reserve the right to tell the truth.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political junkie Ken Rudin joins us here in New Hampshire to help us figure out what happened to the three one-time frontrunners and what that tells us about the Republican Party and the race for the presidential nomination. Matt Bai of the New York Times also joins us. Plus later in the program, one of the Iraqi interpreters who faces death threats because he worked for U.S. troops.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But first, the other candidates in Iowa. If your candidate finished out of the top tier in the caucuses, where does your support go now? 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: Political junkie Ken Rudin joins us here in the studios at New Hampshire Public Radio in Concord. Hey, Ken.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Hi Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Matt Bai of the New York Times with us from Studio 3A back in Washington, D.C. Hey, Matt.</s>MATT BAI: Hi, Neal, how are you doing? Nice to talk to you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good to have you back on. Each of the Iowa also-rans led the GOP field in opinion polls at one point or another. Ken, obviously Michele Bachmann is out. Do any of the others have the resources to get back into serious contention?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, Rick Perry's shown that he does have the resources. As a matter of fact, he blanketed Iowa with a multi-million-dollar ad campaign, but it didn't do him very good, obviously - a poor fifth place.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I think a lot of the voters got their initial impression of the candidates through the debates, and Rick Perry stumbled - once he began stumbling and stumbling, he never recovered. Whereas Rick Santorum was completely ignored during the debates. He was, you know, the outlier. Most questions did not go to him.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And while everybody was focusing on the so-called frontrunners, the Michele Bachmanns, the others, Santorum was out in the field raising funds and getting votes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Matt Bai, you did a really interesting piece on Newt Gingrich in the New York Times Magazine, and I wanted to ask you, he was feeling the hand of destiny a little bit, of greatness, as you put it. But he's been seemingly angered by what happened to him in Iowa and, as we just heard, seemingly vowing to run a scorched-earth campaign here in New Hampshire.</s>MATT BAI: Yeah, he is, Neal. I don't really know what's going on. He - you know, he was saying - he was telling everybody, and he was telling me in Iowa that not only, you know, did he want to run this positive campaign, but the one time he'd gone negative, when he stood up at a debate and said about Mitt Romney, you know, the only reason you're not a career politician is because you lost to Ted Kennedy, his numbers dropped.</s>MATT BAI: And he seemed convinced that actually being the positive candidate was the thing that was fueling him. It may be that he's decided that was not the right way to go and that in fact you can't answer negative attacks by just being positive. It may just be that he was just emotionally really angry last night.</s>MATT BAI: You know, I think, you know, my own sense of it is there's probably a value in fighting back. You can't say negative campaigning doesn't ever work. But I'm not sure there's a value in telling people you're going to be negatively campaigning.</s>MATT BAI: And even though he said he wasn't going to run negative ads, I think he certainly left the impression, as you say, that he's going to come out full-bore in New Hampshire. And I think to the extent that that underscores the old image of Newt Gingrich as kind of a guy who will get down and personal, it probably doesn't benefit him with a lot of the people who might otherwise support him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as you point out, as we look forward to those two campaign debates before - between now and primary day here in New Hampshire, there are few better at withering scorn than Newt Gingrich.</s>MATT BAI: Yeah, I mean, that's his milieu, and don't forget not only the two in New Hampshire and then a very big one in South Carolina, which will be closely watched, too, and I think he intends to stay at least through there. So that is a great, you know, forum for Gingrich. The question is: Does he come out and be that confident, positive guy who can dominate a debate, simply because he's incredibly articulate and can sort of heap scorn on the president or on the moderators, in a way that Republican voters find compelling?</s>MATT BAI: Or does he - you know, does he use that quick mind-to-mouth ability that he has to start attacking the people around him? And I think it's possible - I've always felt that New Hampshire was the danger zone for Gingrich, because it's - as you know, Neal, and you're there now, both of you are, it's a cauldron, it's a week-long cauldron.</s>MATT BAI: Everything's very close together. There's a huge media crush everywhere. It's all very compact, and if you're going to break down or give in to exhaustion or make a mental mistake, it's probably going to be there. That's where things happen.</s>MATT BAI: You know, and I think it's a danger zone for Gingrich because he is given to speaking rashly, off-the-cuff. He is given to impulse, and I think that's where that discipline issue that people often raise with him, you know, poses him more danger, perhaps, than it did in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah, Matt, I agree with you completely. I mean, I think one of the most amazing stories of this campaign year was the rise of Newt Gingrich, the fact that we all had such negative opinions of him. By the time he left Congress in early 1999, he probably was the most unpopular politician in America.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And yet during the debates, we saw him insist that he would not attack his fellow Republicans, and he got - he moved up and up and up in the polls because of it. And so for him to go - now his ads won't go negative, but for him to go negative in...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He doesn't have any money for ads.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, there's that, too, but I mean, but he has the opportunity to go negative in Saturday and Sunday's debates, and if that's the case, perhaps the specter of the old Gingrich comes back to haunt him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this, the Gingrich who you compared in the piece, he compared himself to figures like Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and Ronald Reagan re-emerging from the wilderness to feel the hand of destiny guiding him toward greatness and pulling his country out of the abyss.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And remember when he couldn't get on the Virginia ballot, his campaign likened it to Pearl Harbor.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well... But he - go ahead, Matt.</s>MATT BAI: No, I was going to say, I think that - you know, I think in a sense that is what drives Newt Gingrich and what makes him formidable. It's - you know, he could have gone away. A lot of candidates would have gone away. It was a dark period. Tim Pawlenty got out, you know, and probably regretted it, with less to be humiliated about than Newt Gingrich, who went through a complete drubbing and writing-off by all of us, and a lot of Republicans.</s>MATT BAI: The thing that keeps him going is this inner sense of his own value on the historical stage. People make fun of it and lampoon it, but he believes it. It keeps him going. It makes him - it's always made him resilient. And I don't write him off. I mean, he had a bad showing, certainly, in Iowa, given where he was a few weeks ago, but not given where he was a few months ago.</s>MATT BAI: New Hampshire is a different state. He's a good political tactician, if not a great retail candidate, and I still feel that the field is very unsettled and fluid.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you supported someone who did not end up in the top tier in Iowa, of course that's Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, where does your support go now? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And we'll start with Barrett(ph), Barrett's on the line with us from Casco in Washington.</s>BARRETT: Hi, yes, I - thanks for having me. So really I'm a young conservative and just right of center, though. I feel like this race is, if anything, making me more of a moderate. Because the choices in front of us, if you're a GOP voter, basically we have a bunch of guys leapfrogging out of a clown car. I mean, they're terrible.</s>BARRETT: Keep in mind that the end game is that we've got to elect someone who can beat President Obama in a general election in this country, and we don't have that person. I was most inclined to support Jon Huntsman. That's a guy I know, I feel strongly, that he could pull in moderates.</s>BARRETT: And, you know, he is not looking like a viable option. Look what happened in Iowa. We have Mitt Romney by eight votes - over Rick Santorum? You know, so this thing is changing week to week. It's fluid absolutely, but the endgame is we're probably going to end up with Romney, and he's terrible. I can't get excited about any of these other candidates.</s>BARRETT: The most sensible, the most credible, the most genuine, I think, has been Jon Huntsman. You know, Romney is a moderate squish from Massachusetts. He's basically like the lost son of the Kennedy clan.</s>BARRETT: You know, this is a guy who's a flip-flopper, and to me, he appears like a Manchurian candidate. He's not very genuine. He doesn't connect well with people. And I...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It was interesting, there was an ad that Newt Gingrich ran in the Manchester Union Leader this morning, Matt Bai, who called Mitt Romney a timid moderate Massachusetts - a timid Massachusetts moderate. But the word moderate these days in the Republican Party is a little bit like calling him a terrorist.</s>MATT BAI: It is. I mean, there's nothing - being timid and moderate are about the worst things you could be in this Republican field. Somebody ought to give Barrett a radio show because I think he's - I liked his summation. I mean, look, that is - that is the story of this season.</s>MATT BAI: No matter which way you cut it, no matter who emerges or rises, it is dissatisfaction among Republican voters with their choices. There are a lot of Republicans who woke up this morning and thought that Iowa should just lose its license to caucus for having, you know, basically elevated Ron Paul and Rick Santorum alongside Mitt Romney, who very few, you know, conservative activists feel they can support.</s>MATT BAI: So, you know, I think it was a good night for Romney, and I think he's the guy, you know, I think he would have taken that scenario in a heartbeat. But - and I think a lot of Republicans will ultimately rally around him if he, you know, tears through New Hampshire as we think he will.</s>MATT BAI: But I think there are a lot of conservative voters today feeling like Barrett does.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But before we completely forget about her campaign, Michele Bachmann was on the cover of Time Magazine this past summer, winner of the Ames straw poll and has, today, bowed out of the race. What mark does she leave on this campaign, Matt Bai?</s>MATT BAI: Well, I'm grateful that the Iowa straw poll has lost its credibility in this process, because it's one of the more shameful processes in American politics, I think - in terms of just plain buying votes and not being representative of a whole lot.</s>MATT BAI: I mean, you know, I was down in South Carolina last week, where Bachmann had a pretty strong organization. It's there she would have gone, not to New Hampshire. She wasn't really - she had, you know, an organization there, but she wasn't really polling well or catching on.</s>MATT BAI: I think, you know, like all of these candidates have been - have shown some real flaws from the beginning of the process. And I think if you talk to people about Michele Bachmann, the fact that she said a bunch of things half-cocked that turned out not to be true, the lack of experience, I think for Republican voters that was a real problem in her credibility and a real problem for envisioning her as someone who could run against Barack Obama. And I don't think there was a path forward for her.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about the other candidates in Iowa. If your candidate finished out of the top tier in the caucuses, where does your support go now? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. Matt Bai of the New York Times is with us, also political junkie Ken Rudin. 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, broadcasting today from the studios at New Hampshire Public Radio in Concord. Jon Huntsman this morning called the results in Iowa kind of a jumbled-up outcome. The former Utah governor and current candidate for the Republican nomination says the race is still wide open. He's not giving up.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Newt Gingrich, for his part, promised a more aggressive campaign and vowed to go after frontrunner Mitt Romney every day. Texas Governor Rick Perry will skip New Hampshire and focus now on South Carolina. We're talking about the other candidates, other than those who finished in the top tier in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you backed one of those who didn't finish in the top tier in Iowa, where does your support go now? 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: Our guests are Political Junkie Ken Rudin, with us here in the Granite State, and Matt Bai, chief political correspondent for the New York Times magazine. And let's get another caller on the line. We'll go to Steve, and Steve's on the line from Flint, Michigan.</s>STEVE: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi. Go ahead, please.</s>STEVE: Yeah, basically, I really love the character of Michele Bachmann. I think that she demonstrated a principle of service, adopting so many children and taking care of them. You don't find that in a politician. The closest thing I think you've come today in the mix is Mitt Romney, and Mitt Romney, I believe, has similar acts of great character, whether it is his service or devotion.</s>STEVE: You know, he stepped out of business to run the Olympics, not to make money, but to help that organization recover from its chaos and corruption. He's demonstrated over his lifetime, whether it's his service as a young man going away and serving his church for two years, it's consistent with the traits of Bachmann, where she - you know, she does - I don't know. She lives a life that she says that she's going to do. It's just not hype. It's not - it's just not an image. It's the real person behind the act.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Steve, I understand you would have preferred Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney. Your support goes to him now. But she spent a lot of time saying, you know, he wasn't a true conservative.</s>STEVE: I think that's fair. And if you want to pick the true conservative, I think you have to go to Rick Santorum, and he's also, I think, a fine man. But I think at the end of the day, you know, this country needs a leader who has character more than it does somebody who's at a polar end of any spectrum. And I think that's what we have today, a person at a polar end of a spectrum.</s>STEVE: And you look at Romney, who's a very wealthy man, and in this environment that kind of plays against him, but he's given millions to charities. On the other hand, you have Obama who, basically, while serving people all his life in the acts of service, has managed somehow to become a millionaire. And I don't know how people who are genuinely serving are able to do that.</s>STEVE: I understand how a businessman can be successful and make millions and then turn around and give it away, but - and that's what Mitt has been doing, and Bachmann not so much giving money away but giving her time and devotion to others.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think the president wrote a couple of bestselling books, and that'll do it for you. But Ken Rudin, I think what Steve is talking about is electability, and I think that's going to becoming more and more of a focus.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, polls show, coming out of the Iowa caucuses, those who feel that beating President Obama is - those Republicans who feel that beating President Obama is the number one priority, Mitt Romney did by far the best. But those who adhere to true conservative principles, Mitt Romney's numbers on those were very far, you know, short of that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Matt Bai, there's the - we're talking about the cap back in Iowa. Mitt Romney got the same 25 percent in Iowa he got four years ago, when he could not convince people he could break through that limit. Obviously, he'll do better than that here in New Hampshire. Are you going to be looking ahead to South Carolina?</s>MATT BAI: I am looking ahead to South Carolina. In fact, I really enjoyed listening to you down there. There's a lot of driving around the state. It was good to have that to entertain me.</s>MATT BAI: You know, I don't think it's a problem - I don't think the percentage is a problem if you're Romney. I understand why people will jump on him for it, and I understand why the president's people want to call him, you know, the 25-percent man and all this.</s>MATT BAI: The fact is Mitt Romney's basically run a general election campaign to this point. He's made a calculation - and I think a smart one to this point - that there's nobody in that field who can actually beat him. And, in a sense, the best thing that can happen to Mitt Romney is to survive the primaries rather than make a convincing statement in all these states, get by with a percentage of the vote that's not very impressive to political insiders, but come out without having taken positions or gone on the offensive in a way to earn the respect of the right wing of his party.</s>MATT BAI: That leaves him well-positioned to take on the president. Very few candidates can get away with that, and Romney doesn't get away with it because he's so obviously the guy or because he's this great politician. He's getting away with it because he has a very weak field of rivals.</s>MATT BAI: And to this point, he was nearly beaten and closely followed last night by two guys who can't beat him in the nominating process, I don't think. And so if you're Mitt Romney, and somebody says to you, you can keep getting beat up by the media for getting low percentages and not being able to pull in the far right of the party, but you can have the nomination and face the electorate and the broad center of the American public having not marred yourself as a candidate, I think he would take that deal in a heartbeat, and I think he'd be right to.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Matt, before we coronate Mitt Romney here, I want to talk a little bit about Jon Huntsman's strategy. John McCain, we saw twice, he boycotted or bypassed Iowa, went to New Hampshire directly and won it both times. Other candidates like Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman have tried that and failed. What do you make of the Huntsman strategy, and does he have to do - what does he have to do here to continue?</s>MATT BAI: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I heard you say earlier, Jon Huntsman says he's not giving up. I don't know why he should. He hasn't run yet, right. I don't write Huntsman off. I mean, look, I don't think Romney can't be beaten in this process. I just think if you're looking at the people who've so far challenged him, right, if you're looking at the two people who came out of Iowa up there with him, I don't think those are the guys who are going to beat him.</s>MATT BAI: He's got a bigger problem if he were right now facing - let's say if Rick Perry had gotten traction, which he just didn't. If Huntsman surges in New Hampshire, if Gingrich surges in New Hampshire, these are bigger problems, I think, for Mitt Romney. But that hasn't happened.</s>MATT BAI: And I don't write Huntsman off. I was with him, you know, when he first came to New Hampshire on his first trip. He has, you know, obviously made his entire strategy to stay there. His numbers have gone up. I mean, if you're going to make that your whole bet, I think certainly you would want to see your polling doing better than he's done.</s>MATT BAI: And I think Huntsman's problem has been an inability to articulate a very clear message about why he's running and what kind of alternative he offers. But the window was there and probably is still there, and if he had a good showing in New Hampshire, my sense is in South Carolina and some other states, he could get a lot of people interested very quickly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Rob, and Rob's on the line from Grand Rapids.</s>ROB: Hey, guys. You know, I'm a Gingrich supporter, and I have been for a little bit now. But if Gingrich implodes, I really think I'm going to go towards Santorum for two reasons, one just because I believe that Gingrich's speech last night, he was almost saying in code, you know, I'm going to get negative, and there may be a chance I implode.</s>ROB: So Santorum's a great guy. I think he gave him a little bit of a nod there. Two, I think it's because Santorum's speech last night at midnight, it was an amazing speech, and it really blew me away. He seemed extremely sincere.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Rick Santorum has that effect on a lot of people who get to meet him. But Matt Bai, not everybody has a chance to meet the candidates outside of Iowa and maybe New Hampshire. Once you get to South Carolina and certainly to Florida, organization, money, advertising, that becomes the premium.</s>MATT BAI: It does. I mean, I think this is - I'm not saying anything terribly original here, but this is the million-dollar question - or maybe, you know, the $20 million question around Rick Santorum, which is: You know, can he consolidate? No one's been able to consolidate the anti-Romney vote.</s>MATT BAI: Is he a guy - coming out of Iowa, very unknown to a lot of people, polling very poorly in South Carolina and New Hampshire - is he a guy who can quickly, you know, consolidate that support? And I don't know. I think it's a really tall order.</s>MATT BAI: I think the danger for Santorum, if you've watched the debates - because as you said, not everybody's going to get to meet him in his pickup truck. He can come off as very angry and very petulant. He did a lot of complaining in the debates about being ignored. I'm the - he kept saying I'm the only guy on the stage who's done this, and I'm the only guy on the stage who's done that.</s>MATT BAI: I think, you know, there's this sincere, very likable side of Rick Santorum, which I think did come off in that speech last night, and I agree it was a good one. But then there's the kind of debating Rick Santorum, who seems a little whiny and immature. And I think that - you know, like Gingrich has now a danger zone in New Hampshire, where I think he has to control certain impulses and be a disciplined campaigner.</s>MATT BAI: I think Rick Santorum has probably - again, I'm not a political strategist, but I think if I were talking to Rick Santorum today, I would say it's time to step back for a minute, if you can catch your breath, and think about what it is you want to project to people, because you are, as you say, getting into those mass-media states, and you have to think about how that comes across to people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rob, are you going to be watching these debates here in New Hampshire?</s>ROB: I have been the whole time. I will be again, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good luck. Thanks very much for the call. Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Matt, with Newt Gingrich finishing fourth and Rick Perry finishing fifth, is - two candidates we thought would be the strongest challengers to Romney - was Rick Santorum finishing second good news for Mitt Romney?</s>MATT BAI: Shows you what we know, huh, Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah.</s>MATT BAI: Oh, I really do think it's good news for Mitt Romney. I mean, look, I've learned not to prejudge. We never know what's going to - if you'd asked me three weeks ago, can Rick Santorum win Iowa, I'd have told you I might have a better chance of winning Iowa. You know, it's - and here he is, and he did - he ran a fantastic campaign there. So we really - I mean, you need a crystal ball.</s>MATT BAI: But I think if you're Mitt Romney - and you have to game it out because that's your job - you know, I think if someone had said to you six months ago, hey, you can actually basically draw in Iowa, you'll pretty much be almost an exact tie, and the guy who's going to tie is going to be Rick Santorum, behind that is going to be Ron Paul, what are your odds of getting the nomination? I think he'd be jumping up and down and saying 99 percent.</s>MATT BAI: I mean, for Romney, the question has never been is he going to get challenged? He's going to get challenged. There's no such thing as a Republican or Democratic front-runner who doesn't face, you know, a serious challenge. The question was going to be, by whom, and is it someone who can beat him? And I'm sure the Romney people, in fact, I know, are betting that neither Rick Santorum nor Ron Paul can realistically beat him.</s>MATT BAI: And as you say, the people who, I think, they would have been more concerned about, you know, lacked the resources or lacked the message or haven't been able to get it going. And we haven't even talked about Rick Perry, who's apparently changed his mind and is going back to South Carolina.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Rachel, and Rachel is in Detroit.</s>RACHEL: Hi there. When I first decided or, you know, got engaged in this election, I had an open mind to the entire field of candidates. And, you know, they were asking me, did the Iowa straw poll change your mind about who you think the - who you're going to be voting for? And I thought about that, and it did.</s>RACHEL: For me, being avid in politics, watching the polls, Santorum has been, you know, consistently below fifth place, and here he comes up with this mysterious surge, you know, his philosophy of which really hasn't been elaborated on in the debates. So I see him as a flimsy candidate at best.</s>RACHEL: And the fact of the matter is Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in the last election. I'm not sure he has what it takes. And so, for me, the only consistent and clear front-runner I see is Ron Paul because he's the only one substantive enough, I think, to challenge an intellect like Barack Obama in the debates.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Of course Mitt Romney lost to John McCain for the Republican nomination last time around. He didn't face Barack Obama. But Ron Paul - where do you go - how do you respond to those, Rachel, who say Ron Paul is - can't get the nomination? He's unelectable.</s>RACHEL: Well, I think that that is for the American people to decide. And many can do speculation, but speculation is not what is written in the sands of time and does not control the fate of the American people.</s>RACHEL: And, also, I would like to comment to the guest that you have on, that anyone who sees delight in the discreditation(ph) of the electoral process, you know, the Iowa caucus, I think that you should question that philosophy because that is the American people speaking with their vote.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He wasn't talking about the Iowa caucuses, but about the Iowa straw poll, which was held last August and is a very different process. But, Rachel, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.</s>RACHEL: Oh, OK. OK. Well, I'm glad then you could provide that clarification. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Appreciate it. We're talking about the other candidates other than the top tier in Iowa. Matt Bai of the New York Times Magazine is with us, Political Junkie Ken Rudin as well. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Matt Bai, as you mentioned, we have not mentioned Rick Perry. Last night, after he decided to reassess and go back to Austin, people thought, well, that's just about it. He still does have resources. He's got a lot of money but does he have anything else?</s>MATT BAI: He does have money. I mean, I can tell you, I haven't been down in South Carolina, which is where he's headed next. You know, he - and spending a lot of time with Tea Party activists down there. He has virtually no Tea Party support that I could discern down there. I mean, he has a lot of work to do, although, you know, I still think he has life. And he's a fellow Southerner, and, you know, if he can - if he runs a strong campaign down there, I'm not going to write him off.</s>MATT BAI: I think it's very strange. I'm not sure. Ken may remember better. I don't remember a candidate going back to reassess their campaign in their home state, cancelling a campaign trip on this kind of abbreviated schedule and then changing his mind and going anyway. I think that's actually going to make it harder for him because I think once he said he wasn't going to South Carolina this morning, a lot of people down there probably tuned him out. And so, you know, I think that's only going to add to the troubles he has.</s>MATT BAI: You know, I want to say one thing real quick, Neal, about Ron Paul from Rachel, your last caller. You know, the Paul people are always saying, you media, you don't write about him. Why don't you include Ron Paul? You're biased. You know, I think they're right. It occurred to me somewhere as we were getting on the Iowa that we don't say enough about Ron Paul because we do think, oh, he's just at the same old thing. But his campaign matters, and he hit on something and is hitting on something that we missed, I think, and that is this real frustration in the Republican base with the militarism of their party.</s>MATT BAI: And the traction he got, really talking about no more wars and no more getting involved and minding our own business, that isolationist streak, which really manifests itself now as a frustration with the cost we've paid for these wars over the last 10 years or so, I think that's a real issue. I think it's sneaking up on the Republican Party, and I think Ron Paul has illuminated a trend that they're going to have to deal with, and that could propel his candidacy further than we think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet, Ken, most Republicans - certainly Newt Gingrich and a lot of the other candidates - would say Ron Paul is so far out of the mainstream of the Republican Party on precisely those kinds of issues, foreign policy and the military.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, he's certainly outside the mainstream of the Republican members of Congress because he often has a vote and he'll be the one naysayer. But Matt Bai is making a good point. There's a lot of dissatisfaction and anger out there. And I think - I don't know if Ron Paul has moved closer to the mainstream. I think the Republican Party and many of its adherents have moved more to the Ron Paul point of view, that the war - think of Iraq, Afghanistan. Were the loss of lives worth the cost, you know, that we paid for it? So I don't know if that's a majority Republican view, and I think, as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum say, it is outside the mainstream. But there are a lot of voters, Democrats and Republicans, who are coming around to that point of view. And that's why we talk about this a lot, but the thought of Ron Paul running as a third party Libertarian candidate if he doesn't get the nomination is a possibility, and I think he could make a big difference in November if he does choose that course.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Matt Bai, just a few seconds left, but hard enough to reconcile the Mitt Romney practical moderate wing of the party, if you will, with the social conservatives. What do they do with the Ron Paul supporters?</s>MATT BAI: Well, it does depend, obviously, if he thinks about going outside as he did. People forget he ran as third party candidate, as a Libertarian candidate, a couple of times before he was in Congress, so you can't say, you know, he'd never do it. You know, I think when it comes to all - you know, the conservative activists, the Tea Partiers, the Libertarians, Campaign for Liberty, this is a party that wants to beat Barack Obama. And I think for electoral purposes, if Mitt Romney is the nominee, he can use that to his advantage. Governing a coalition, governing with people who are that suspicious of you, that might be an - that might be a hard order, actually.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine. Thanks very much. Political junkie Ken Rudin, thanks to you too. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

The Republican National Committee declared Mitt Romney the winner in Iowa, but all three top candidates claim victory. The verdict came late, and Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum had the closest finish ever in a presidential caucus. Rep. Ron Paul placed a close third. Ken Rudin, Political Junkie columnist, NPR Josh Rogers, reporter, NHPR Linda Fowler, professor, Dartmouth College Rep. Charlie Bass, Republican from New Hampshire Sen. Andy Sanborn, Republican state senator, New Hampshire

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Concord, New Hampshire. But in Iowa, Romney ekes out an eyelash gold. Ron Paul settles for bronze, and a sweet silver for Santorum. It's Wednesday and time for a...</s>RICK SANTORUM: Game on.</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 BENTSEN: 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. After a long night and early morning in Des Moines, we're in the studios at New Hampshire Public Radio in Concord. Eight, count them, eight votes separate the top two in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ron Paul remains in the top tier, Newt and Perry will soldier on, but Bachmann gets winnowed aside. We'll spend most of this hour looking ahead to next Tuesday and the primary here in New Hampshire, but first political junkie Ken Rudin joins us here in frigid Concord, and we begin as always with a trivia question. Hey Ken.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Hi, Neal, welcome to New Hampshire, and thank you, New Hampshire Public Radio. Trivia question is: Who was the last sitting president to be defeated in the New Hampshire primary?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you think you know the answer to this week's trivia question, the last sitting president to be...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: He could have been reclining.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: To be defeated in the New Hampshire primary, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And Ken, of course the winner gets a fabulous Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt, but...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: It would be good if it was long-sleeved.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here it would. But pop quiz, Ken: closest finish in an Iowa caucus?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: This is it. This is exactly it, eight votes. Not only is this the closest finish in Iowa history, it's also the lowest vote anybody's gotten to win the caucuses. Bob Dole got 26 percent in 1996 when he won the caucuses and then lost a week later in New Hampshire.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Mitt Romney, 25 percent, Rick Santorum 25 percent, not only the closest but the lowest percentage for a winner in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so Romney ekes out a win. He had been downplaying Iowa all along until, well, I guess about the last three, four weeks, when he invested heavily. He saw a chance to win, maybe a decisive win.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right, I mean, the funny thing about Rick Santorum, and I guess there are two winners here. Obviously, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Rick Santorum was the only candidate of all of them who never was the frontrunner. You know, Michele Bachmann when she won...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And isn't now.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: No, exactly, but she won the Ames Straw Poll. She was a frontrunner. When Rick Perry came in and elbowed her out of the way, he was the frontrunner. Herman Cain with his 9-9-9, he was the frontrunner, Newt Gingrich the frontrunner.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And Rick Santorum was, you know, at the end, if you looked at the debate, he was on the far left or the far right, not ideologically but just on - when you looked at the candidates, and he was out visiting all 99 counties, doing the grunt work that we always said wins, but we never thought it would matter because everything was on the debates, how Gingrich looked, how Rick Perry looked, how Mitt Romney looked.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And so tremendous comeback win, although the polls show it at the end, tremendous comeback win for Rick Santorum. But at the same time, Mitt Romney, as you say, spent a lot of time away from Iowa, focusing a lot on New Hampshire, at the last second thought he had a shot of winning it, and I guess if he had eight more votes than Rick Santorum, he did win it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, he won it, but last time he was disappointed after investing heavily in New Hampshire - excuse me, in Iowa, and coming up second to Mike Huckabee. This time, he comes in at the end, invests heavily in Iowa and ekes out a small margin of victory but just about the same percentage as he had four years ago.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Exactly, and matter of fact, fewer votes. So, I mean, for all - for four years later, as the ostensible frontrunner for the nomination, and if you ask me, I will tell you I think Mitt Romney will be the nominee, and yet you didn't see it yesterday in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because in part, those still surviving against him don't have the same kind of organization or the same kind of funding.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right, and of course Iowa is also a different kind of bird because the electorate there, the Republican electorate there, is far more conservatives. Caucuses by definition get more conservative people out than primaries do. And so we saw, like, for example Mike Huckabee four years ago, when he won in Iowa, came to New Hampshire a week later and finished a weak third with 11 percent of the vote.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: The constituency, the Republican constituency in Iowa, is far different than it is in New Hampshire.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: With one exception, one person who brought in new voters to the Iowa caucuses, younger, more moderate voters was Ron Paul.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's correct. I don't know about - certainly moderate on issues of the war, for example, but Ron Paul very, very strong third-place finish. There's a lot of speculation about what he will do should he not win the Republican nomination, whether he'll run for Libertarian - run as a Libertarian as he did once before. But he says no, I'm in this to win.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And his strategy is very similar to what Barack Obama did in 2008: He will go after the caucuses, which he did very cleverly against Hillary Clinton. He kind of blindsided her by focusing on caucuses. There are a lot of delegates to be picked up there, and the name of the game is delegates in 2012.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And quickly, we want to go through some of the also-rans. We have Michele Bachmann, once as we suggested the - the winner in the Ames Straw Poll last August and on the cover of Time magazine. The day she won that straw poll, Rick Perry came into the race and sort of eclipsed her. She never regained her footing, and today she bowed out.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right, a weak sixth-place finish with five percent of the vote, and that was the end of Michele Bachmann. Now the question is whether she runs for a fourth term in Congress.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We have some people on the line who think they know the answer to this week's trivia question, and again it is the last sitting, reclining, recumbent, however you'd like, president to lose the New Hampshire primary. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. And we'll start with Pete, and Pete's on the line from Inverness.</s>PETE: George H.W. Bush?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: George H.W. Bush.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, George H.W. Bush did - well, let's see. I mean, he was elected president in 1988. So when he ran for president, when he was...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A sitting president.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: A sitting president in 1992, he beat Pat Buchanan in the primary in 1992.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Despite all those peasants with pitchforks.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Exactly, but anyway, but President Bush was - won the New Hampshire primary in '92.</s>PETE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Very good guess. Let's go next to Pete in Hollywood, Florida.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Another Pete.</s>PHIL: Actually, it's Phil. And I'm going to go with Jimmy Carter in 1980 at the hands of Ted Kennedy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The challenge from Ted Kennedy within his own party.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, actually, what's interesting to note - Jimmy Carter is the wrong answer because he beat Ted Kennedy pretty handily, but I think Ted Kennedy is the only guy from Massachusetts, when you think of John Kerry and Paul Tsongas, the only guy from Massachusetts, Henry Cabot Lodge, to lose a New Hampshire primary. Carter beat Kennedy pretty handily in 1980.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It was New York and Connecticut where he was upset.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's exactly right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go to Don now - thanks very much for the call, Phil. And Don is on the line from St. Louis.</s>DON: I'm going to guess Estes Kefauver in 1952 against Harry Truman.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, so who was the incumbent president who lost?</s>DON: The incumbent president was Harry Truman.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's correct.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ding, ding, ding.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I expected a lot of Lyndon Johnson answers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I thought President Kefauver had a hard time.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: He did, but Harry Truman was not - did not announce his candidacy, lost to Estes Kefauver in '52. A few days later, he stunned the nation and said I am not going to run for president in '52, which is exactly what Lyndon Johnson did when he beat Gene McCarthy in '68.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So in any case, that opened the door to President Adlai Stevenson. In any case, Don stay on the line, and we'll collect your particulars and send you a Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt in exchange for your promise of a digital picture of yourself wearing it that we can post on our Wall of Shame. Congratulations. I guess he's...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: He's so excited.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He's already on hold. In the meantime, some of the other campaigns in Iowa, we talked about Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry announced last night he was going back to Austin to reassess, very unusual for people to reassess and then decide to stay in.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right, I mean, we saw Herman Cain suspend his campaign. Of course, we haven't heard from Herman Cain as a candidate since then. Rick Perry, when he announced yesterday he was reassessing, we all thought that was the end of the Rick Perry presidential campaign. But he did announce this morning that he will attend the two debates coming up in New Hampshire on Saturday and Sunday, and basically his focus will be the January 21st caucus - primary in South Carolina.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's his firewall, not his firewall so much but his last chance to salvage his bid for the nomination.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One of the best funded, other than Mitt Romney, still in the Republican field.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And what does the money mean? I mean, all the money he had he - he spent more money personally in Iowa than any other candidate, finished a weak fifth.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But one person who did not have the organization, did not have the funding but came in fourth - a month ago, Newt Gingrich said I'm going to win this thing. I am the presumed candidate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: He was, and a lot of people probably thought so, and I think perhaps Mitt Romney thought so too, and that's why PACs aligned with - unofficially aligned with Mitt Romney, spent millions and millions of dollars hammering Gingrich for all his foibles and his problems and his baggage and which are - there's quite a few, but anyway, Gingrich got really his head handed to him, negative ads, negative ads.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And Gingrich, very interesting speech last night, he basically was not conciliatory at all. He says I'm going after Ron Paul. I'm going after Mitt Romney. You know, he's a liar, and I'm going to savage him in New Hampshire.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Look, New Hampshire all along was supposed to be Mitt Romney's firewall...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: To lose.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: To lose, right, and the polls still show him with a huge lead, even Rick Santorum is way, way back in the pack, but let's see how much Mitt Romney gets beaten up in these primary debates coming up this weekend.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we're playing the battle of expectations again. Mitt Romney was expected to win at the end of the day in Iowa. Now how much of the margin - how much is the margin? If he gets under 50 percent, is that not so good as we expected? What's going to be the expectation come New Hampshire?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah, I don't know if he was the expected winner in Iowa. He certainly is the winner in New Hampshire, and we've seen in New Hampshire in the past, when Bill Clinton finished second to Paul Tsongas in 1992, and yet he was the comeback kid. When Gene McCarthy finished second, George McGovern finished second in New Hampshire in '68 and '72 respectively, and yet they were seen as the winner because they exceeded expectations.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So what is the expectation for Mitt Romney here in New Hampshire? Yes, he's going to win, but by how much?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right, he's got to win, and he's got to win big. Right now, the polls show him anywhere between 43 and 47 percent of the vote, which is far more than he got last year, when he collapsed at the last second and lost to John McCain, who endorsed him today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, a bit of other political news. We've, as redistricting goes on, seen any number of seats, of people in the same party forced to run against each other. One of those situations today, one of the members of Congress, sitting member of Congress, decided to retire.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, not announced today, but yes, in the recent days, Steve Austria, who is a pretty new congressman from Ohio, the Republicans control the whole redistricting process there, but they had to merge one district, two Republicans running against each other, Steve Austria and Mike Turner.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Austria's district was really basically, you know, carved up. He announced he was not going to run against Turner, his friend, in the primary and will retire.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In Utah Orrin Hatch, the long-serving Republican senator is getting a primary challenge from a young Tea Party candidate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Exactly, I mean, of course those who were opposed to Orrin Hatch wanted Jason Chaffetz, the congressman, to run. The Tea Party is still not happy with Orrin Hatch, but he has a lot of money and still is expected to get re-nominated.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as if things could get worse between the president and the Republicans in Congress, President Obama today announced a recess appointment. This always infuriates whoever is out of power. Richard Cordray, in this case, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, nothing about him in particular, it's the recess appointment. Anyway, stay with us, we'll have more. 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. We're broadcasting today from the studios of New Hampshire Public Radio. Even with a final trip to Iowa last week, political junkie Ken Rudin came out of last night's caucuses with absolutely no votes at all. He's here licking his wounds in New Hampshire.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In just under a week, the Granite State hosts the first-in-the-nation primary vote. Was there a ScuttleButton puzzle last week?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: There was. There's a new one up this week. But the last one - I had a Tiny-Tim-for-president button. Actually, it said Tiny Tim for president and first lady. There was a Tea Party button, and there was also a stop BO, the Baltimore Orioles. So when you combine those, you have Tim Tea-BO, yes. And Michael Strawminger(ph) of Fargo, North Dakota, was the winner.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, well, he gets a Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: What luck.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there's a new column up.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: New column, basically the history of Iowa and what it means for the candidates.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In just under a week, the Granite State here hosts the first-in-the-nation primary. Before we get to that, Mitt Romney's long been the prohibitive favorite. He was governor right next door. He owns a home here. Last night's close call re-energized the supporters of Rick Santorum. And Jon Huntsman, who skipped Iowa, is hoping for a strong performance here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Will the Iowa caucuses affect your vote? What's changed as a result of Iowa? We'd especially like to hear from voters in New Hampshire. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email is talk@npr.org. Joining us here in the studio at New Hampshire Public Radio, where he's a reporter, is Josh Rogers, and nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JOSH ROGERS: Nice to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also with us from Dartmouth College is government professor Linda Fowler, welcome to you.</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Josh Rogers, I guess we have to start with Rick Santorum, a shoe-leather campaign, retail politics, well, proved to work again in Iowa. But what kind of an organization does he have here in New Hampshire?</s>JOSH ROGERS: Well, it's unclear what kind of organization. He does have a campaign manager, his national campaign manager Mike Biundo is from New Hampshire. He successfully steered Frank Guinta to Congress running a grassroots campaign. And prior to camping out in Iowa for some time, Santorum has done a lot of events here and in the traditional manner, not like some of the candidates, who do two events a day.</s>JOSH ROGERS: He does six events and works it. Presumably he'll get a boost. His folks seem to think that he can, you know, galvanize the remainders.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He's been down in single digits.</s>JOSH ROGERS: He's been down in single digits, there's no doubt about that. I mean, no one would have imagined that he would be competitive here, and I guess we'll find out.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ron Paul is the other winner, he would say in a three-way tie, he would say, in Iowa, but he comes in with much sunnier prospects here in New Hampshire.</s>JOSH ROGERS: Well, his message resonates naturally with a good deal of the Republican electorate. Certainly there's a libertarian streak in New Hampshire, fiscal conservativism, small government is big. The wars weren't hugely popular here, and he's had a campaign that's been working it on the ground for months, phone-banking daily.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Who's on the air?</s>JOSH ROGERS: Not - you know, remarkably not as many ads as one might have anticipated and certainly not the onslaught we've seen in Iowa. Ron Paul's been up. Romney's got some ads up, and sort of like in Iowa, although we would anticipate there will be some ads whacking Romney, you know, he's been able to skate through without the sort of sustained barrage that, you know, his Super PAC, run by folks that are officially not with him but, you know, unofficially strong supporters have been, you know, beating down people in Iowa with.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A stealth candidate came out of nowhere to do very well in Iowa, Mr. Santorum. Would that be Jon Huntsman here in New Hampshire?</s>JOSH ROGERS: Hard to say. I mean, Huntsman has certainly, you know, staked it all on New Hampshire. He had his 150th event last night in Peterborough, where Romney will be tonight. You could argue that the results out of Iowa, the muddle may auger to his benefit, but, you know, he's going to have to pull votes directly from Romney is at least the conventional thinking on that.</s>JOSH ROGERS: I mean, he's reaching out to independents, but core Republicans have thus far been, you know, not too enthusiastic about him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Linda Fowler, Josh just used an important word: independents. This is an open primary here in New Hampshire next week, which means independents can vote for a Republican if they'd like to.</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, that's right. What you do is go into the voting place and say for the purposes of today I want to be a Republican or a Democrat. And then once you've voted, you change your registration back to independent. So, there's also same-day registration. The interesting thing is you're registered as a Democrat, you can't go in and say I want to be a Republican today.</s>LINDA FOWLER: So it's not a completely open primary, but it's close. And of course the verdict in New Hampshire is critical to validate Romney's claim that he's the person who can get elected in the general election because he can appeal to independent voters.</s>LINDA FOWLER: So if he doesn't do well in the state, that's problematic for sort of the basic premise of his campaign.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, I was just going to ask, you know, Mitt Romney seems to have all the endorsements. I don't know what endorsements mean, but he got John McCain today, he has Charlie Bass, Kelly Ayotte, the senator, former governor and senator Judd Gregg. But Newt Gingrich has the Manchester - the New Hampshire Union Leader, and they've been attacking Romney, I was going to say left and right, right and right, constantly.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: What does that do to the field? What does that do to the primary electorate?</s>JOSH ROGERS: Well, one thing that was interesting is that Speaker Gingrich - former Speaker Gingrich essentially didn't, you know, return for several weeks in the wake of that endorsement, which certainly boosted his campaign and, you know, certainly made the Romney folks a little nervous.</s>JOSH ROGERS: They were - you know, they had got a barrage from the Union Leader last time around, and so they weren't expecting to be endorsed. But you could argue that Newt Gingrich didn't do - make the most of that.</s>JOSH ROGERS: And with the wind, you know, putatively sort of coming out of him a little bit in Iowa, you know, perhaps it won't be as big a factor, but it's a big cudgel, and they like to wield it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Linda Fowler, you were trying to get in there.</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, I was going to say in the old days, not getting the Union Leader endorsement would have been the kiss of death for a Republican. Today a lot of voters in the state get their news from the Boston stations, and so the influence of the Union Leader is not quite as substantial as it used to be, but it still matters.</s>LINDA FOWLER: And it's a paper that takes the gloves off towards the people that it doesn't like. So Romney in the past has been able to skate sort of above the fray. Nobody's really challenged the claims that he makes that he's electable, that he can turn the country around and so forth. And the Union Leader is one of the places where that message is coming. And then we'll see whether the other candidates have ads to sort of reinforce it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If Newt Gingrich does, as we suspect, run a scorched-earth campaign against Newt Romney, the man he's been calling...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Newt Romney?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Newt Romney, Mitt Romney, yeah, a liar these last couple of days. We'll have to see if the Union Leader takes up those cudgels, as well. But interesting, you said the Boston media, a lot of voters in the Republican Party get their cues from conservative media, including Fox News and various talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We were told that in some respects, the Iowa caucuses were going to be a measure of their influence, not pro-Romney. Mitt Romney did pretty well. How much of a factor, Linda Fowler, will conservative media play in New Hampshire?</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, I don't think we have good numbers on that, but what the conservative media do is play into kind of an ornery feature of New Hampshire voters. They like to take down frontrunners. They've done it a number of times. And there's also, if you remember, Pat Buchanan won here in '96, John McCain won twice, and so I think that the national news media may fuel some of that sentiment of we're going to send a message, we're not going to have a coronation here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: You know, what fascinates me, too, is that while the Republican field still seems very muddled, maybe not in New Hampshire but nationally, yet it seems like the DNC, the White House, they were all convinced it's Mitt Romney. The Democrats have opened up a little shop in Iowa to talk - make their talking points.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And they're all - the word today is that Mitt Romney is the 25-percent man, the fact that he only can get 25 percent in Iowa, 25 percent nationally in the polls, and it just seems like while the Republicans don't know who the nominee will be, the Democrats and the White House are convinced it's Mitt Romney.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Josh Rogers, we think Mitt Romney will do better than 25 percent here in New Hampshire. But at this point, he's got to be trying to manage expectations.</s>JOSH ROGERS: Well, I think that's right, and, you know, a win would be a win, but, you know, talking to a lot of Republican strategists, they think if he wins by anything less than 10 points then, you know, could easily be spun as lackluster, although, you know, he will walk away with the win.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Linda Fowler, one thing we also have to understand, we were talking about the importance of the evangelical vote, social causes in the state of Iowa, it's a little different here in New Hampshire.</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, it is. The evangelical vote is no more than 15 to 20 percent of the primary electorate. Assuming that Rick Santorum picks up most of that, now that Bachmann isn't in the race, and Perry's not campaigning here, some will go to Ron Paul. He picked up some in Iowa.</s>LINDA FOWLER: So my - the person I'm watching is not Santorum but is Paul. And I've said since October that I think he will do better here than people expect, and I still think that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from those of you, especially in New Hampshire, how does Iowa change things? As we just heard from Linda Fowler, professor of government at Dartmouth College, Michele Bachmann out of the race. It looks like Rick Perry is effectively skipping the race here in New Hampshire, going on to the primary in South Carolina. How does this dynamic shift, as you have Ron Paul a strong third, Rick Santorum the new man in the race against Mitt Romney? And, Ken Rudin, it's interesting that you have a meeting scheduled for this coming weekend in Texas of movement conservatives - those would be toward the right wing - people meeting to see: Can we settle on one person to run against Mitt Romney?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, it's clear from the beginning that the conservative wing in the Republican Party - which is not a small wing. I mean, basically that is the Republican Party - not happy with the prospect of Mitt Romney as the nominee, who has had, shall we say, somewhat-liberal positions in the past when he was running for office in Massachusetts. They would love for the conservative vote not to be split. They would love to unite around one candidate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And while Iowa voters did help narrow the field a little bit with Michele Bachmann's leaving, you still have Ron Paul. You still have Newt Gingrich. You still have Rick Santorum, and you still have Newt Gingrich. So you will still have four conservatives still splitting the vote, and that's the thing they don't want to see, because that can only help Mitt Romney.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: They've tried to do this before.</s>LINDA FOWLER: And...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm sorry, Linda Fowler. Go ahead.</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, of course, the story that came out of Iowa looks very different today because the vote was split. If there'd been one person, it would have been a Mike Huckabee kind of person. The storyline would have been completely different.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get a caller in on the conversation. Troy is with us from Iowa City.</s>TROY: I think the big story is that the support for - Obama supporters in Iowa have dropped significantly. But I think if Iowa caucuses were at the original date, I think Santorum would have beat Romney.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because they were moved up earlier, because Florida moved up - it's a long, complicated story.</s>TROY: Exactly. But I think the big story is Obama support has dropped significantly in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Barack Obama carried Iowa handily in the 2008...</s>TROY: But his turnout votes dropped significantly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I understand. I was just - let me say something, Troy. Barack Obama carried the state handily back in 2008. But, Linda Fowler, how much do we read into, as Troy suggests, yes, there were a turnout for Barack Obama yesterday in Iowa, sort of a pro forma thing to boost his support...</s>LINDA FOWLER: Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...but clearly not the energy that comes out in a caucus.</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, you'd - I don't take that very seriously. And one might also point that the turnout in the Republican caucuses was less than it was in 2008. But the other point that was made by one of your callers about...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just a small correction, it was just a little bit more, but just about the same number as 2008.</s>LINDA FOWLER: Oh, in the end, that - oh, OK. Thanks for letting me know. When I went to bed last night, it looked less.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, we - some of us got some sleep, unlike Ken. We're talking about what's changed since Iowa. Ken Rudin, the Political Junkie, is with us, also Linda Fowler, professor of government at Dartmouth College, and Josh Rogers, a reporter here in New Hampshire Public Radio. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Can I say one more thing about the turnout? Four years ago, the Republican Party was really in a funk. They were - you had an unpopular president, President George W. Bush, an unpopular war in Iraq. You had a faltering economy. And so you had 120,000 Republicans turning out in Iowa not very excited. A similar number, maybe a little bit more, but a similar number turned out in 2012, when you would think the enthusiasm would be up, the anger against Obama would be up. And I'm surprised there wasn't a bigger Republican turnout than there was.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what is...</s>LINDA FOWLER: Amen to that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...enthusiasm like here, Josh, in New Hampshire? Do we expect to get a big turnout come Tuesday?</s>JOSH ROGERS: I think we're expecting a reasonably large turnout. Participation is always pretty high. And if you go to the events, you know, the blood of activists is definitely up. You know, it's, you know, and the independents, they represent 40 percent of the electorate. How many of them choose to vote in the Republican primary is a tough thing to answer at this point. And so that will be a big part of the turnout. But certainly, the enthusiasm of activists, well, for me - I just came from the event where Mitt Romney was endorsed by John McCain.</s>JOSH ROGERS: And I guess I was a little surprised that there weren't more people there. There were, you know, a couple of hundred people, you know, half again as many media types. But it was not enough to fill a full high-school gymnasium. They had curtained off half of it. So, you know, I don't know precisely what to make of that. But we should know - I mean, Gingrich drew a pretty big crowd into a pretty small room this morning. Santorum is arriving tonight, and it'll be interesting to see what sort of crowd he can pull.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is also a Democratic primary next Tuesday. Will that be significant? I know there's at least one candidate running against Barack Obama.</s>JOSH ROGERS: I forget precisely how many candidates. I mean, there are many fringe candidates running. And some people, you know, one person who's running is Randall Terry, the sort of, you know, anti-abortion activist. He's on the Democratic ticket. He's actually the first guy on the Democratic ballot this year. We'll see. The Democrats are doing kind of a dry run, let's be organized and see if we can run our get-out-the-vote operation. But I - the turnout's not going to be high.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Linda Fowler, let me turn to you. In 2006, 2008, the Republican Party was virtually obliterated - not just in this state, but across New England, this entire corner of the country. How has that shifted in the last couple of years? Is that going to continue?</s>LINDA FOWLER: Well, in 2010, the state legislature, both chambers, were elected with veto-proof majorities of Republicans. But their agenda of expanding where people can take guns, trying to introduce bills about evolution and so forth - I think people who just voiced their disgust at the Democrats may be taking a harder look at Republicans this time around. And I'm not sure that having this highly visible, very extreme legislature is helpful to the party in the general election.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there are a number of interesting congressional races in New Hampshire, as well, Josh Rogers.</s>JOSH ROGERS: There are. Carol Shea-Porter, a Democrat from our 1st District, is trying to reclaim her seat against Frank Guinta, who won - former mayor of Manchester, won with a lot of support from the Tea Party and from, you know, conservative voters. Should - there's a primary there, but she's expected to win. And on the Democratic side, it looks, at this point, like it'll be a rematch between Charlie Bass of the 2nd District versus Ann McLane Kuster, who ran a pretty strong campaign.</s>JOSH ROGERS: Bass ended up nosing her out to reclaim the seat he'd previously lost to Democrat Paul Hodes, who ran for Senate last time, and he lost to newly elected Kelly Ayotte.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: What was the question again?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken, you're the one (unintelligible)...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: So I was actually following it, I really was.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So - but as we look ahead, Ken, how much - we saw what Iowa has done. Will New Hampshire winnow, as well?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, I think if - one person to watch certainly is Jon Huntsman. He ignored Iowa. He's basing everything on New Hampshire. If he doesn't have a significant number here, he's finished.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Linda Fowler, thanks very much for your time today.</s>LINDA FOWLER: My pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Linda Fowler, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. Well, a mega-sized edition of The Political Junkie this week because of Iowa. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Today, we're in the Granite State, looking ahead to next week's first-in-the-nation primary with Political Junkie Ken Rudin at the studios of New Hampshire Public Radio. Iowa proved the campaign for the Republican nomination is nowhere near finished. Next Tuesday, voters in New Hampshire weigh in. Expectations are high for Mitt Romney, in particular. And we're going to be talking with two experts here in New Hampshire on various aspects of New Hampshire politics.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joining us on the phone is Representative Charlie Bass, a Republican who represents the 2nd District of New Hampshire in Congress and has endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Nice to have you with us today.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: Good to be with you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION. And also with us here in the studios at NHPR is State Senator Andy Sanborn, co-chair of Ron Paul's campaign in New Hampshire. Nice of you to be with us.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: Neal, thanks so much. I appreciate it. And Congressman Bass, who's my congressman, good afternoon.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: Good afternoon, Senator Sanborn. How are you?</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: Fine. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's start with Congressman Bass, because you're endorsing the person, well, widely regarded as the frontrunner here in New Hampshire. What does an eyelash victory in Iowa do for Mitt Romney?</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: I think that Governor Romney had set his sights at second or possibly even third place. I think it was perceived around here, at least, that Iowa was not necessarily going to be his strongest state. Until recently, as we - as you heard - we've all heard, Governor Romney hadn't put much of an effort into Iowa, but did near the end. And I think his showing is really quite extraordinary, given the level of effort. Now, it shifts to New Hampshire. And I've been in the business of being involved in this process since 1979, when I endorsed Howard Baker for president. And things can change very quickly.</s>So my advice to Governor Romney has been: run like you're three votes behind, and don't expect anything to be the same next Tuesday as it is today. I think Rick Santorum's good showing in Iowa and the fact that he has worked hard in this state now for almost two years now - as has Jon Huntsman - means that, you know, Mitt Romney, who's also worked hard here, will have to match him, you know, step for step during the next five days, because a lot of people will make up their minds between now and next Tuesday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Senator Sanborn, the person - Ron Paul came in, well, maybe a slight disappointment there in Iowa, but expected to do very well here in New Hampshire, as well.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: Yeah, Neal. I mean, clearly, the fact that the Iowa results said, you know, one very obvious point, and that's, you know, there's three - we're essentially down to three different candidates in this race. As you note, Ron Paul has been truly the consistent, stable voice, something people can truly believe that, you know, he's - when he says what he says, he means what he says, he has a phenomenal group of people working here in the state of New Hampshire. He's been here for some time, as you know. He has, you know, very dedicated, loyal support.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: You know, one of the things I find that's so exciting about Dr. Paul is, obviously, when we talk - start talking about how some candidates have come up and come down, and there's been this real gyration within the Republican Party, that Dr. Paul's numbers have continued just to migrate north, that he hasn't had to back up at any level whatsoever. And, you know, people are really ready to pick a president or a presidential candidate that actually, you know, says they're going to cut the size of government, going to push back on the scope and the regulation.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: And this is the type of state for that. As Congressman Bass knows, we're a people that really believe in personal freedoms, who really embrace personal responsibility. And that's what Congressman Paul brings to this, and so we're very, very excited for Tuesday. We're working really hard, and we expect to see some great things coming out of it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As he left Iowa last night, Congressman Paul talked to his supporters as results came in. And this was a little bit of his message.</s>REPRESENTATIVE RON PAUL: We will go on. We will raise the money. I have no doubt about the volunteers. They're going to be there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Senator Sanborn, yes, volunteers were a huge part of the effort for Ron Paul in Iowa. What does the organization look like here in New Hampshire?</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: I actually think it's bigger and stronger in New Hampshire than it even was in Iowa. You know, we're very happy that our brothers and sisters out there did such a great job of bringing out the message and bringing people into the caucus and bringing a great result - again, you know, solidifying the fact that we're truly down to three great candidates. In New Hampshire, I believe that our organization's bigger. I believe that our ground force is stronger, our message is - our messaging is fantastic. And we're really showing it with real numbers, as you know.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's not forget Rick Santorum, who had that late surge in Iowa and came in eight votes behind. Boy, a great showing for him, but a little bit frustrating too. But anyway, as he talked to his supporters early this morning in Des Moines, former Senator Santorum said he's moving on, as well.</s>RICK SANTORUM: Because the message I shared with you tonight is not an Iowa message, or an Iowa and South Carolina message. It is a message that will resonate across this land. It's a resonate - it will resonate, I know, in New Hampshire.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Congressman Bass, difficult to ask you to handicap the opposition, but Rick Santorum, what kind of a challenge does he present to the front-runner, your man Mitt Romney?</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: Well, as I said a minute ago, Rick Santorum is articulate. He's attractive. He's young. He's energetic. He's hardworking. He's been here in New Hampshire for almost two years. I knew him when he was in the state Senate. He was elected to the state Senate the same year I was elected to Congress. We've worked well together. But I think that the scope of - the portfolio, if you will, that Rick Santorum brings to the table is attractive to a relatively narrow group of voters that have been looking for somebody other than Mitt Romney now for about a year. And the question is: Does that group of voters translate into a majority in November? And I think that Rick Santorum, who has significant experience in Washington - he obviously, you know, understands politics.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: But my candidate, Mitt Romney, has been in the business community now for 25 years. As we all know, he turned the Olympics around, and he's a remarkably diverse individual in terms of his background experience. And, obviously, he has the shoulders, as he puts it, to bear what is going to be a very, very nasty campaign for president. If he has to run against an incumbent that has a billion dollars in the bank, I think Republicans can legitimately say to themselves: Who do we want to have represent us after the convention? And who is most likely to win this election in November? Because after all, that's what these primaries are ultimately all about.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think, Congressman Bass, you misspoke slightly when you said Rick Santorum elected to the state Senate. You meant the United States Senate. He went to Washington the same year you did.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: I meant he - I've got Andy Sanborn on the mind.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, I see. Well, who wouldn't?</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: Thank you, Congressman.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken Rudin.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Quickly, Congressman Bass, first of all, condolences of the passing of your father. We talked about him the last time you were on the show. He was quite a guy, and I'm sorry about your loss.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: Thank you.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: What we saw with Mitt Romney is obviously his - he needs to reconnect with conservatives. And he's still stuck at 25 percent nationally in the polls, 25 percent in Iowa. Does the John McCain endorsement - while McCain is very popular here in New Hampshire, what does McCain say to the conservatives out there who want to get some kind of a message, a signal from Mitt Romney?</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: Well, I think McCain is a little different now than he was a decade ago. He's been through a really tough campaign. He took on J.D. Hayworth in the primary last - or, a year and a half ago now. And, obviously, you know, he is a winner, because he won the nomination. He was the - you know, the delegates of the convention nominated him, despite the fact that he has somewhat different credentials from a person like Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, possibly.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: I think John McCain is the kind of person that will play in New Hampshire, and where he's needed in other states. Most know, you know, I'm not a political junkie myself, but in states where he did well and where he has a good base, I think he'll be a huge asset. And you combine him with Governor Christie of New Jersey - who's immensely popular, not only here, but probably all across the nation, along with others - I think Governor Romney has a nice sort of portfolio of individuals with different backgrounds, different philosophies, all of them supporting him because they believe that he has the temperament, you know, somewhat akin to, you know, how do you review somebody that you're thinking about proving for the U.S. Supreme Court? It's not about every specific issue. It's about how successful you are in resolving problems.</s>One other item: Mitt Romney knows how to work with the Democrats. Good Lord. The minorities that he had - or majorities, Democrat majorities that he had to work with in Massachusetts certainly showed that he can - that he might be able to end the gridlock, if you will, or he certainly knows how to get things done in an environment where you have mixed-party representation. So we'll just see how John McCain works. I mean, he'll be helpful to Mitt in some places, and I'm sure the governor will use him to the greatest extent possible.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Andy Sanborn?</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: Congressman, thanks. You know, part of the support of John McCain in - you know, he has a great, established history. He's done wonderful things in defending our country and being a senator. But, again, it clearly shows that the Romney campaign - and one of the things I truly love about Congressman Bass and most of us here in New Hampshire is we always prefer to talk about what's great about our candidate versus getting in the weeds and making it dirty. And I truly appreciate that.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: And for Congressman Paul, compared to Governor Romney, you know, all these endorsements that the governor picks up continue to be very similar to where he is. And I personally think it's a challenge for him to have McCain come in, just like with Christie. And I appreciate them both. But it perpetrates the conversation that he can only seem to find moderate Republicans who have been, you know, not quite as strict on cutting, not quite as strict on pushing back on regulation or taxation. So he hasn't had that ability to truly cross all the borders between conservative, moderate and maybe liberal Republicans.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Although he did get Nikki Haley in South Carolina.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: He did - absolutely. I stand corrected on that. It's - again, we go back to Congressman Paul, where his support, I mean, truly exceeds all levels of the political spectrum. And he's so strong with independents. He's actually good with some Democrats. So I actually see his support being broader, although still keeping that, you know, no holds barred, I make no exception, I'm a conservative. And that's what he says every day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Senator - State Senator Andy Sanborn, co-chair of Ron Paul's New Hampshire presidential campaign, and with Congressman Charlie Bass, who's endorsed Mitt Romney. Of course, Political Junkie Ken Rudin is with us. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Senator Sanborn, you talked about an upbeat campaign. In the air war in Iowa, both Ron Paul's campaign and the Mitt Romney campaign, through its super PAC, you could say there's plausibility - plausible deniability there. You could say there's not. That's an argument. But any case, both leveled very harsh advertising at Newt Gingrich, who came in fourth and complained bitterly about the negative ads that were run against him. Do those guns get turned around and aimed at Mitt Romney now in Massachusetts?</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: You know, that's a great question, whether or not they get aimed at Mitt Romney, whether or not they get aimed at Rick Santorum. And like Congressman Bass, I know Rick Santorum, great guy, truly understands what he believes in. And he had a great showing out in Iowa. You know, when it comes to the negative ad thing, in New Hampshire, I don't believe it plays as well as, maybe, other states. We have a much lower tolerance to negative ads, and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's what they said in Iowa, too. It seemed to work, though.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: It did seem to work against Newt. And, you know, it shows that they work. As much as you don't want to hear them, it does show that there's some plausibility to that. But, you know, for us on the Paul campaign, there's a positive message about those traditional New Hampshire Yankee values and American values of cutting, of pushing back and finding someone who really is consistent and believable.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As opposed to those serial hypocrites on the other side.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But, Charlie Bass, same question to you. That super PAC, Mitt Romney says, hey, I don't have any control of this. If I told them what to do, I'd go to prison. He can say cut it out, though.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: Sad to say, without getting into the constitutional issues, the Supreme Court has greatly broadened the definition of the First Amendment so that these super PACs can sort of operate outside of the political structure. And it's bizarre that we have a campaign, campaign committees, party committees, every penny has to be accounted for and reported every 10 days and so forth, and yet there's this whole other political advocacy world that's completely unregulated. And I don't support that, but it's there.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: And I'm sure that there will be plenty of advocacy, if you will, on the other side against Mitt Romney. I guess the saving grace, if you will, for Governor Romney is is that he's been under that gun now for years and years, when he was governor of Massachusetts, when he ran for the U.S. Senate, when he ran - the negative ads have been running here in New Hampshire for months against Mitt Romney.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: And they - basically, there's nothing new. Now, with Rick Santorum - and as we obviously know with Newt Gingrich - they were relatively unknown by the average voter. And so when these ads came out, it was - frankly, whether it was truthful or not is one thing, but it was new information. I don't know what they can do to Mitt Romney that they haven't already done. There's nothing that I can see that Barack Obama can say about Mitt Romney that somebody else hasn't already said. And he's been able to shake it off and keep his eyes on the horizon and keep moving forward. And I think that really defines - at least partially defines electability in November.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Rick Santorum ran hardly any ads in Iowa, and Newt Gingrich's ads - his broadcast ads, were all very upbeat and focused on himself. So, Mitt Romney, a lot of people say, has gotten pretty much of a pass on some of the ads thus far, except for those run by Ron Paul. But, Ken Rudin.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Senator Sanborn, I want to ask you this question. You're talking about true conservatives, and who the conservatives back for president. Rick Santorum - I think it was Rick Santorum, the other day, who said that Congressman Paul's foreign policy is to the left of Dennis Kucinich. Now, he may - he said this. And so, obviously, Ron Paul does appeal to many conservatives, but he also is a strong anti-war - has a strong anti-war record. What do you make of that left-of-Dennis-Kucinich comment?</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: Well, the left of Dennis Kucinich is - I mean, you always love great copy, right? Because it makes even me laugh when I say it here. But you know I laugh at a lot. Neal, the - I believe the American people believe in what Congressman Paul says every day. You know, clean up your sandbox before you go out and play, and that's a big, global concept.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: We have issues at home. So if we're going to be focusing on defense - and you know he's a - Dr. Paul's incredibly strong on defense. But it's defense, not offense. If we're going to be building schools, or if we're going to be building bridges and roads, you know, there's plenty of roads, schools and bridges we can build right here in America. If we're looking to get people employed and have them spend their money in our economy to help our economy work, let's pull some out of Germany or out of Japan or Korea, bring those people home, secure our borders and let them spend their money in America. You know, it's that American-first and restore-the-American-values things that I really think is making his message so incredibly broad.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Do you worry that voters here in New Hampshire might be concerned about those pamphlets that Ron Paul published 15 and 20 years ago, when he was out of office, that had some very unfortunate things in them?</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: You know, I think that people from New Hampshire and the people in America understand the dark side of politics. And he has disavowed those letters since the first time. You remember, they came up last time he ran for office, and was very clear and consistent: disavowed them, doesn't agree with them, and, you know, again, maintaining the same type of stance on that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Senator Sanborn, thanks very much for your time.</s>STATE SENATOR ANDY SANBORN: Thanks so much for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Congressman Bass, thanks for talking with us.</s>REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE BASS: Anytime. (unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political Junkie Ken Rudin will be back with us next week, when we have results from New Hampshire. Stay - and Jennifer Ludden hosts tomorrow. So I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from New Hampshire Public Radio and NPR News.

On Tuesday, the House voted almost unanimously to extend a ban on taxing access to the Internet for another four years. News & Notes Web producer Geoffrey Bennett talks about that and the stories building buzz online.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: The next time you surf the Web, you may want to thank your congressman. Yesterday, the House voted to keep the Internet tax-free.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NEWS & NOTES Web producer Geoff Bennett has more on that and what's making the rounds on our blog.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Hey, Geoff.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Hey, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what's this good news for Web users?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Well, this is good news. Yesterday, the House voted almost unanimously to extend the ban on taxing access to the Internet for another four years. Now, the ban was set to expire at the end of the month. And a lot of those who voted for it support making it permanent - permanent they say because big telecom companies need tax-free Web access to invest more in high-speed Internet lines, and eventually, work toward closing the digital divide.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So Jena Six, it had moved a little bit out of the news spotlight, and now, it's back with these congressional hearings that you blogged about.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Right.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Also, BET Awards. What's that about?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Yeah. Well, Bryant Purvis and Carwyn Jones - two of the Jena Six - turned up at the BET Hip-Hop Awards over the weekend. They were there to present an award but they were on the red carpet hobnobbing with celebrities. There's a photo of them joking around where they're holding up the number six to represent the Jena Six.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: So we've asked the question was it appropriate. And here's what folks said. One reader called it a slap in the face. He says it shows disrespect for them to attend and for BET to even fad on the notion that this was a good idea. It's mindboggling.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Russell Randall(ph), another commenter on our blog, says he doesn't think they should use the Jena situation as a way to obtain Hollywood status. But they should still be allowed to have fun.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: And another reader, Moji Derende(ph), says timing is everything. No one is telling these teenagers not to have fun, just don't be teetering for the cameras a few days before the congressional hearing on the Jena Six case.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what else is getting a little play on our blog?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Well, people are talking about Tyler Perry's success with his film "Why Did I Get Married?" contrasting that with the level of respect he is not getting in Hollywood. We have a part of an e-mail from him where he talks about some of the obstacles he faced when promoting the film.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: And there are some reactions to the rash of noose hangings around the country from Jena to Columbia University to the Coast Guard. These incidents have gotten a lot of attention online. And there's a debate on our blog about the appropriate response to it.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We also have Speak Your Mind and what do we have got up there right now? How can folks join in?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Yeah, well, there's a piece from blogger Jasmyne Cannick this week about complexion issues in the black community. So folks can check that out. And we continue to offer the invitation for others who want to speak their mind in our blog to try us a piece and send it in.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Sounds great. Geoff, thanks again.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Geoff Bennett is the Web producer for NEWS & NOTES.

Novelist Walter Mosley introduced readers to Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins almost two decades ago. Now he has published Blonde Faith, the tenth book in the Easy Rawlins series. He joins Farai Chideya to explain why he's ending the famous detective series.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When does a detective call it quits? Sometimes when the writer who made him up says it's time to take the bullets out of the revolver and move on.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Novelist Walter Mosley introduced readers to Ezekiel Easy Rawlins almost two decades ago. Now he's published "Blonde Faith." It's the tenth book in the Easy Rawlins series. When Mosley told me this would be his last Rawlins novel, I wondered if it he was like a politician saying he'll never run again or a boxer saying, this is my last fight.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): They mean it when they say it. I mean it right now. You know, the thing is, is that I thought the other day about how many books I have in my head. And I realized I don't have a long enough life to write all the books that are in my head. I've done Easy Rawlins. I really - I've covered it. I could stop writing Easy and write all these other books I have to write.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): Like for instance, I want to a write a series of novellas - science fiction novellas called "The Cross Town Omnibus to Oblivion." And there are five novels I haven't - the only thing that they have in common is a theme. And the theme is, is that in each one of these novellas, a black man destroys the world. You know, there are so many, so many things to write.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You have - among the genres, you have essays/polemics, you have speculative fiction, erotic fiction, you had your book on writing, which gathered a lot of fans. What do each of those genres do for you that's different in terms of how you feel as a writer and how you present yourself to the world?</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): You know, it's so interesting being a black man in America writing anything. Because for so long, we've been kept out of so much that almost anything I enter - it's not the first time, it's one of the first times. Anybody, you know, black has ever written this kind of work. And so that's kind of very interesting to me.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): You know, in a country that's so unbelievably dominated by the concept of capitalism where people, you know, just - they really like - I specialize. I put the left front tire on the Pinto. Okay fine. If you're building cars, maybe you need somebody that does that. But in my life, you know, as a writer, I can go anywhere. I can do anything. And if I want to say something that's different, I may have to find a different genre to say it.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): And if I'm going to, you know, criticize America's so-called war on terrorism, I'm going to have to do something, you know, political. It's going to have to be a polemic, as you say.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When you think about - and I'm just going to be really honest here - where your money comes from, I'm assuming most of it comes from your fiction and most of that comes from the Easy series. Do you feel, in a way, that you have this freedom that comes from a certain commercial success where you can do all these other things?</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): It's pretty much an interesting issue though. I mean, because you know - nobody's ever happy enough. You know, like, you know - somebody said, well, you know, you're doing really good. Well, I could say, well, look at James Patterson, look at Mary Higgins Clark, they're doing 30 times better than I am economically.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): But, you know, the issue is, is that, you know, I'm making enough to live. I'm writing books that I think, you know, that are important to me. I'm writing about black male heroes, which hardly anybody has ever done ever in America and even today. I'm having a good time. I'm writing books that I think, you know, that are important. And also I have a career as a literary writer, no matter where I'm writing. And I - that's so important to me. You know, that - where I can be taken seriously as, you know, as a man of letters, you know, actually in this world.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Let's go back to Easy. You paint a picture of his family, which has this network of family by love or family that has been taken in and you've got in this book an Asian-American girl, a Latino guy. You paint this picture, on the one hand, of this very multi-ethnic Los Angeles that can stick together in a very familial sense, and then also, this hard and fast colored line beginning to break down.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: How did those two ideas of the kind of multi-racial L.A. and the black-versus-white L.A. oppose each other in this book? Why did you choose to kind of put them together and play at this point in time in this series?</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): It's an interesting - I mean, it's an interesting question. You know, a lot of people, for instance, if they're not a Chicano or Korean or Japanese or whatever, forget those people.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): So you have a lot of black people writing about black Los Angeles. And there is a black Los Angeles, but the black Los Angeles is seasoned and tempered by Chicanos and Koreans and Japanese and other Asian, you know, populations, and some by white people and certainly, by the Jewish population.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): And so to write a book about Los Angeles that pretends that Los Angeles is black or white is almost as bad as the old guys writing books about Los Angeles in which Los Angeles is only white. It doesn't make sense. Now, of course, before the riots, there were two colors - white and not white.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): And all of us who were, you know, Japanese, Korean, black, Chicano, we all got along. We understood each other. We worked together. We lived together. The riots changed that. But Easy comes from a moment of consciousness before the riots. And so he's still able to see a greater variety. And, you know, there are still a lot of people that work together. A lot of people only want to concentrate on conflict, but there are a lot of people who get along and understand each other.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You have this cast of characters that, again, spans this different racial classifications and cultural classifications. At the same time, you have Easy's mentor who you mentioned from time to time being Jewish. But you don't have a lot of Jewish characters in the book, although that's personally part of your heritage. Is there a reason why you chose to go down the path of really focusing on African-American life and then not, kind of fleshing out Jewish-American life?</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, a lot of people write books about Jewish-American life. And there's some very good books, you know, all through kind of our history. And as I say many times, there are hardly any writers about black American - black male heroes in America, ever - now or ever in our history. And so it's, you know, it's a task I've kind of - I've taken on with not necessarily a conscious decision, but certainly a decision.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): And, you know, the Jewish characters in my books are wonderful and I love them. And they've been in all the books, but they're not, you know, it really is a - they really are novels that are, you know, peopled by African-Americans.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Walter, thanks so much.</s>Mr. WALTER MOSLEY (Author, Easy Rawlins Series): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Writer Walter Mosley created the black literary icon Easy Rawlins. Mosley's 10th and last novel featuring my super detective is out now. It's called "Blonde Faith."

For analysis of news from Africa, Farai Chideya talks with Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. The two discuss the new U.S. Africa Military Command, or AFRICOM; a report from Human Rights Watch on violence and corruption in Nigeria; and offer a preview of the IMF and World Bank meetings.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya and this is NEWS & NOTES.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It's time now for our Africa Update. The new U.S. Africa command is open for business, but is Africa ready? And a Human Rights Watch report on violence and corruption in Nigeria.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: For more, we've got Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Hi, Emira.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Hi, Farai. It's good to be with you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Yes, absolutely. Now let's go to AFRICOM. It's this new U.S. Defense Department African Command. Africa had been split between European command, central command, Pacific command, now it's under a single command unit. Some African nations and some Western watchdog groups are saying this is not a good idea. But the person who was appointed, General William Ward, of course, says this is going to improve security in Africa.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What's your perspective?</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Well, it's quite easy. AFRICOM is a disastrous issue for Africa. It represents the Bush administration's expansion of its Department of Defense, its military footprint on the African continent. It is absolutely the wrong way to go just as we saw the disasters of military expansion and military responses in Iraq. We also recognize that those military and militarized responses in the African continent is absolutely the wrong way to go.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But if you have a situation where the U.S. is already evaluating Africa from a distance, wouldn't it make more sense to have the United States evaluating it up close with - is that an argument that has any, you know - does it wash with you?</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Farai, what we recognize is that this Bush administration is really focused on its quest for oil at all cost. And we recognize the high strategic value of Africa's resources, particularly oil, but also, as you were talking about in the previous segment, uranium. There are tremendous strategic reserves in the African continent. And as the Bush administration looks to Africa for more of its addiction to oil and these other vital resources, it is looking also to expand its military presence. It is not in the interest of Africa. It is actually not even in the interest of the U.S. to further - to put additional military personnel in harm's way for the quest of oil.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, the Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has invited AFRICOM to set up headquarters in her country, which also happens to be your country of origin. But many others question AFRICOM's intent. The senior Pentagon official, Ryan Henry, says the new command is not about increasing military presence in Africa but rather restructuring what already exists.</s>Mr. RYAN HENRY (Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, U.S. Department of Defense): We did have consultations with South Africa. And at that point, we made it clear that AFRICOM is not about new bases and it's not about new forces. So we really don't see that as an issue. There's never been any plans to put any forces in South Africa, in the SADEC countries or anywhere new on the continent.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: The SADEC countries being the Southern African region. But going back to Liberia, why do you think the president of Liberia has cast opened the doors and will that invitation be heated?</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Farai, when you see Liberia after 26 years of war, you see no functioning schools or health care, no functioning roads. I think Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is thinking that she will get some material benefits. Maybe there will be roads built by the military. I think those who follow the issue of the levees and the - you know, Corps of Engineers in - right here, in the Gulfs here in Louisiana, understand that there could be issues at play even with that prospect.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): But clearly, what is at stake here is the further expansion regardless of what Henry or others are saying, you know, that this will not be permanent basis. They're calling it lily pads. They're calling it all kinds of wonderful names. But in essence, it is increasing the role, increasing the resources for the Department of Defense in engagement with Africa in U.S.-Africa policy.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): There are clear efforts to increase diplomacy, increase development. These are what's needed in terms of U.S. foreign policy. But in every instant, it is the Bush administration hitting first with defense, expanding its defense, you know, mechanisms, its militarized engagements as opposed to development and diplomacy.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Let's move on to the money. You have the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund having their annual meetings. So what is on the table for Africa nations particularly around debt and forgiveness?</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Well, let's be clear. These organizations - the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund - they were created 60 years ago, Farai, to tackle poverty. And as you look around the African continent, all of the countries that have engaged with those institutions are actually much worse off economically.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): So it - you know, you look at certain countries, you know, Mozambique, where the life expectancy has dropped to 37. You go around the continent, and it is country after country that has engaged with these institutions, actually, has seen their core resources sold off to the highest bidder. It could be the resources whether its oil or it could be the privatization of water. It's selling off key essential services, whether it's health or education, to the highest bidder often to private corporations.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): And so the programs of these organizations, these institutions - the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund - have led to disastrous responses for the African continent. And I think, you know, in addition to the policies, the actual strings attached to those loans have been disastrous. It has created a cycle of debt for African countries that has been inescapable for the last 30 years in many instances.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Emira, what can be done then?</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): So what can be done is end the debt trap, cancel the debt. I think this is on the table squarely this week. There are organizations - Jubilee is an organization of churches and student of groups and grassroots folks from around the world that are calling for the cancelation of debt. There has been so much talk of debt cancelation but really very limited action.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): You know, if you go back to the case of Liberia back in February, there were all these promises of debt cancelation. Even the head of the World Bank at that time, Wolfowitz, in the midst of all his controversies, was talking about debt cancelations for Liberia.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): To date, nothing has happened. Lots of rhetoric, but no movement forward. Why? Because there is an interest in maintaining this handle on the African continent, this grip on the economies of Africa, so that the resources can continue to flow in the interest of those seeking profits as opposed to seeking really the needs of the common people, the ordinary people in the streets throughout the continent.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Emira, you talked about resources. I want to move on to Nigeria. It is the seventh largest oil exporter in the world, highest population in sub-Saharan Africa, new reports saying that there's violence and corruption. Is this new news? You were just in Nigeria. What did you see?</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Well, what you see is actually sad, Farai, because many of the communities, particularly in the Niger Delta, are actually facing circumstances that they haven't faced since their grandfather and grandmothers' days. They are living in economic situations that are far worse off than their grandparents. What you see is people living still in thatch roofs no matter what the wealth is that is flowing from their communities.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Oil is $83 a barrel, Farai, but yet, these communities have seen no benefit from oil flowing since 1956. They have no schools. They have no running water. They have little health care. And yet companies - I could name some of them, you know. Chevron and others that are very active in the Niger Delta are continuing to use practices to extract the oil - gas flaring is what they call it - that are destroying the environment and also harming the health of those communities.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): So they are bearing the brunt in so many ways, those communities there. And you can understand their frustration after all of these decades of seeing profits being made by these corporations. Exxon Mobil topped historically high profits. And yet the communities from which the oil is flowing are getting absolutely nothing.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So very quickly. New president, newly elected president, will he be able to change things?</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): Well, you know, the whole election process was really flawed. And I think, you know, there was much hope after the elections in 1999 that Nigeria was on a different path. And there was a lot of disappointment in the elections and the process that led to this president.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): So the first step for anyone in position of power in Nigeria is to start listening to those communities, to start hearing their concerns. What we had back in the '80s under Ken Saro-Wiwa and other human rights activists was a clamping down of activism. The killing actually of Saro-Wiwa and the other activists, that frustration of even giving blood of their heroes, having brought no change, has led the young people today to take on other means and hope…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Emira, unfortunately, we have to end it there. Thank you so much.</s>Ms. EMIRA WOODS (Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies): It's a pleasure, Farai. Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Emira Woods is co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. And she was at our headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Sarah Jones gained wide acclaim after creating and portraying 14 characters in her off-Broadway hit, Bridge and Tunnel. The Tony Award-winning playwright, actor and poet talks about her new project at New York's Lincoln Center and her new role with the United Nations.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When you sit down to talk with Tony Award winner Sarah Jones, you never know quite what to expect.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): (As Rasheed) I know some of y'all ain't really into hip-hop, you know what I saying? But the first way you have know I'm an MC is because I hold the microphone in the official MC posture. Y'all can see that right there.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): (As Rasheed) All right, yeah. And then the second way - the second way is cause, you know what I'm saying y'all. I'm going to say, you know what I'm saying, you know what I'm saying a few more times before I finish this sentence right here.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That was just one of the 14 characters that Sarah created and portrayed in her off-Broadway hit "Bridge and Tunnel." She's had plenty going on of late. The Lincoln Center Theater commissioned Sarah to write a new piece for the stage and she's also working with the United Nations. And she's with us now.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Hey, Sarah.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): Hello there, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It's good to talk to you. So tell me about this new piece you're working on.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): Well, I'm really excited about the new piece and one of the most exciting things is kind of feeling it come together in my mind. It's sort of jelling and every time I get to listen to one of the voices from, you know, the show, whether I'm in rehearsal or having some time to spend here with you and the listeners listening to Rasheed, it reminds me that it's all about the character. So it's very character-driven.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): And I just met recently with Andre Bishop, the wonderful artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater. And I - all I can tell you is, you know, whether is this for his hair? Or you know, I'm thinking about, oh, this is for people who sort of populates my mind depending on the day. All of them are vying for attention. So I look for some combination of that when I finally hit the stage.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I know your husband probably is scared in the middle of the night when you wake up talking in character or something like that.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): That's definitely true.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): Just like me, he was a performer and writer in his own - right, Steve Coleman and…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And a Tony winner.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): And a Tony winner himself. But I sometimes feel like I hold the trump card because if we have a really bad argument later if he wants to be romantic, I can always turn around and say, hey, how would you like to be romantic with me?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Can you give us any kind of a hint about what the frame is for your new work that you're developing?</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): Well yes. It's definitely going to be a lot more personal and for throughout my experience as a performer and writer, I've definitely been most interested in the vantage points of different, you know, people from different ethnic backgrounds, different economic backgrounds. This is going to be the first time I delved a little bit into some personal space, and it's very, very daunting, but also, as you can imagine, it's in some ways it's a new territory for me. So I'm looking forward to it even though it's quite an undertaking.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You come from a very multi-ethnic family yourself and so perhaps that gives you some insight. I just want to play a little bit more from one of your other characters in "Bridge and Tunnel."</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): (As "Bridge & Tunnel" character) There are basically fewer career possibilities for people of Jamaican ancestry in this country. One is to become secretary of state.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): (As "Bridge & Tunnel" character) Another is to take care of children.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): (As "Bridge & Tunnel" character) But you see, either way is the same thing because you have to run behind the over-privileged baby who can barely form sentences.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what about your growing up or your family made you want to create and inhabit these lives that you put on stage?</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): Well, it's interesting, you know. Among the projects I'm working on are some topics and some of the areas where I'm sort of doing more exploration than ever include health in, you know, in sort of a public health sense and in a more direct sense.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): You know, we've hopefully all seen the Michael Moore film "Sicko," which really I think, you know, shone such an important light on, you know, where we are as a country. But even looking more broadly globally, we have such incredible technology, and, you know, the ability to, you know, extend people's lives in ways never before seen yet.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): You know, we have so many people with terrible health problems across all backgrounds, but in particular, we have ethnic and racial disparities that you know, African-Americans and Latino Americans and other people are facing. And I actually think that in some interesting ways, my parents, both being doctors when I was growing up must have influenced me because the Kellogg Foundation supported a piece that I'm touring with - yeah, in certain places. It's called "A Right to Care" and it basically you know look fat, where we are in health from a multi-ethnic perspective.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): And as I was writing, I felt, oh, my goodness. This, you know, this was really my parents' dream of my becoming a doctor like they were. You know, I sort of came about it through a side door, but it's definitely, you know, it makes me think back to my childhood and all of the different voices around my family's table and also that my parents came every night, you know, with my father saying, you know, so and so had a heart attack today and I had to keep him from dying right on my table, and you know, and pass the peas.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So finally, you're doing work with UNICEF and Africa. You've got the U.N., Congress, all these different venues. When can we expect to see this Lincoln Center work up here?</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): Well one of the wonderful things about all of these works, whether it's working with UNICEF on violence against children and the piece that I'm performing in that capacity or the Kellogg piece I just mentioned, or, you know, any of the other work, they all sort of feed the kind of germinating seeds in my process.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): And I feel like the work that I bring to Lincoln Center is going to borrow elements from all of it - all of my travels. I'm looking forward to going to Kenya soon, Afghanistan, various other places that I'll be so fortunate to get to travel and hear the perspectives of people who we may not see on our evening news or, you know, who we may never encounter here. I'll actually get to travel.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): So to be kind of a new twist on the work I was able to do on Broadway with "Bridge & Tunnel," for example, those were my neighbors from Queens and Brooklyn and, you know, all around.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Sarah, sadly we must stop. Sarah, thank you so much.</s>Ms. SARAH JONES (Tony Award-Winner Actress): Oh, thank you, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Sarah Jones, Tony Award winner, spoke with us from NPR studios in New York.

Boston Globe reporter Keith Reed talks with Farai Chideya about America's widening income gap, how China's robust economy will impact the price of their goods in America, and how a weaker dollar impacts the trade deficit.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: The gap between rich and poor is getting bigger and America's middle class is shrinking. According to the most recent tax figures available, those are ones from 2005, 1 percent of the population earned more than 20 percent of America's income.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: For more, we've got Keith Reed, he covers economics for the Boston Globe. Keith, hey.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Hey, Farai. How's it going?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, it's going well. But this income gap, it hasn't been this big since the 1920s. What's exactly going on?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Well, what you've had is a situation in which there have been a confluent of factors that have helped those who were already relatively wealthy or actually already very wealthy do better while wages and other measures of wealth for those who are poor, either in the middle-class or who are low-income, just haven't gone anywhere.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): I mean if you look at what's happened in the economy over the last several years, go back about three or four a years ago, and when we were coming out of a very brief recession early in 2002, and we started to hear the term jobless recovery. That happened around the same time or at the same time that we also started to see that - some of the tax cuts come into play that the Bush administration put in place. There were always critics of the tax cuts who said that those were going to assist the wealthiest Americans and not help the middle-class that much. I'm sure those same critics of the Bush administration would point to this data now and say that we really see - what we're seeing is the impact of a jobless recovery several years ago, stagnant wages since the, quote, unquote, "jobless recovery," at the same time as wealthier Americans were able to hold on to more of what they earned as a percentage of their take-home income compared with the rest of American's state bring home.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Keith, when you talk about being in the 1 percent, how much do you have to earn to be in that club?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): You're sensitively talking about people who earn upwards of $250,000 a year and above. There are relatively few people - I mean, it doesn't - 250 grand, it doesn't necessarily sound like a lot of money when you talk about how many millionaires and even billionaires are on the country today. But there are relatively few people who are making that much money these days, and very, very - many more people who make less than $100,000. I mean, you know, the median-incomes in many states. For example, here in Massachusetts, median-income is only in the 40s. Massachusetts is considered one of the wealthiest states, one of the highest earning states in the country because there is a high percentage of people who are in that - want that top 1 percent of wage earners. But there are many, many more people, for example, in a state like Massachusetts that earn $48,000, $44,000, $50,000 a year compared with the relatively few people who make a million dollars, $250,000, $300,000 a year.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: In some countries like South Africa and Brazil, a gap between rich and poor is considered a destabilizing factor because a lot of times that people are extremely poor and they see people who are extremely rich, they say, let me get some of that by any means necessary. Could that become a problem for the U.S. in the long run?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): I think we are long away from that situation. I think there are also many greater political and social factors at play here.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): When you talk about the wealth gap in the United States, you are also - you also have to remember - or the income gap, not the wealth gap - those are two different things that I want to maybe come back to. But when you talk about the income gap here in the United States, which you're also talking about - you have to remember the context in which this is happening. In the U.S., we have, overwhelmingly, the wealthiest population, the highest income earning population here than you do anywhere else in the world.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): And so if you're talking about going to another country and comparing their income gap, the gap between rich and poor, generally, there is the gap between someone who's very, very wealthy and some - and the average person who makes little to nothing. Here, we still have a large robust middle-class. That middle-class is increasingly squeezed by any number of factors, stagnation of wages, job growth, the shift in the economy to service jobs as opposed to skilled, manufacturing or production-type labor.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): But we still have a relatively large middle-class. And this is still quite possible here in the United States for a person making well less than that 1 percent - that top 1 percent income earner to have a decent living. I think somebody here making $40,000 or $50,000 in the United States would probably be considered a wealthy person by the standards of many of those other countries that you mentioned.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Let's talk about the impact of the U.S. dollar on people's ability -who are not in this 1 percent - to just get by on the day to day. So many folks are buying goods from China, the kind of housewares that you could find at Wal-Mart or almost any store these days. But the price of Chinese imports might actually be going up because China's currency is rising against the dollar. Explain that a little bit.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Well, what you've got, essentially - many currencies around the world are rising versus the dollar. The United States has a huge trade deficit with China, and it also has a huge budget deficit. We are right now a country that has mired in debt. And actually about a month ago, a few weeks ago, the Congress extended its ability to borrow. They would - the Congress actually has its own sort of - you know, you've got a credit card in your pocket and you can't charge more than that credit card than the limit on that card allows you to. Well, Congress sort of has the same thing. They - there are laws that limit the U.S. government from what it can borrow. The government was very close to reaching that limit, and so it had to extend its own ability to borrow.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): When that happens, that puts a downward pressure on the value of the U.S. dollar versus many other currencies in the world. And that means that goods from those countries are going to rise in cost compared with what you would pay for good produce in the United States.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): The problem is - if you go back just a few minutes ago when we talked about what's happening in the United States in terms of the economy where the jobs are, that makes a big difference because we are now very much a service and information economy. Many, many more people today work in jobs that serve, where you're serving someone else. You work in the hospitality industry, for example, compared with the job maybe 30 or 35 years ago when many more people worked to produce goods.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): So because so many goods are coming into United States, the United States workers here are producing far fewer goods that are usable by consumers here, by households here in the United States. We're pretty much in a position where we'd be holding to countries that now hold much of our debt. And because they hold much of our debt, they're able to produce or to purchase goods in the United - from the United States at a much cheaper level than we could here in the United States purchase their goods from overseas.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, Keith, break it down in terms of just - for most people, you're not going to keep track of the Chinese currency. But…</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): No.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: …how much does this really, all of this wrangling on international trade level affects what you can and can't buy for the dollar?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): It will - well, it has a great impact on when it - what you can or can't buy for a dollar. Think of it in this in these terms, you go to your favorite store, say, you go to Target. You want to purchase a new television set from Target and that television set is made by a Chinese manufacturer. Target has to then go to that Chinese manufacturer and buy in bulk the TV sets that it is purchasing for, you know, for its shelves.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): The Chinese currency rising in value versus the U.S. dollar means that Target has much less buying power over in China. In order to make a profit then, Target has to buy as many TV's as it can for the lowest prize possible. That lowest prize obviously rises because it doesn't have the purchasing power that it normally would have. When that television goes on Target's shelves for example, and you go in and want to purchase it, Target then, has to make up the difference with what it charges you in terms of a retail prize.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Now, of course, you're not being charged in the Chinese currency or whatever currency the currency of the country that Target purchased that television for. You're being charged in U.S. currency. And so, dollar for dollar, you are spending more for the same good than you would have, say, six, 12,18 months ago.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): I mean, that's really what's about. It's the ability of an American company to go out and purchase either goods or raw materials from another place - from another part of the world where the value of their currency has so grown in relationship to the value of our own currency that U.S. companies no longer have the buying power that they would have had. And thus, U.S. consumers are going to have the buying power that they would have had.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But there's a flip side, which is that U.S. exports have been on the rise for the sixth straight month. And that also has to do with the weaker dollar, right?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Yes because the flip side to that is that it makes it much easier for a consumer, for example, in Europe to go out and buy goods from the United States because the European, whatever the equivalent of Target would be in Europe would have much more buying power because of the European - the Euro's relationship, the value of the Euro in relationship to the U.S. dollars so they could buy many more goods at a better price coming from the United States.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): But those goods on their shelves still will be able to make a healthy profit while, if not lowering price is at least holding prices steady. So that definitely helps the U.S. countries that are still involved in manufacturing that are producing goods and that are exporting them to other countries.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Finally, does that mean at some point, there could be more jobs here in the U.S. in manufacturing?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): That's possible. But it would, that would need to be a very long-term thing. I mean, the best case scenario is that you start to bring the trade and balance back in line. And so this, you try to reach some level of parity. And in case in which that happened, then, of course, you'd be looking at a situation where the value of other currencies around the world wouldn't necessarily be worth as much or more than the U.S. dollars as it is currently, and that might not bode so well long-term for U.S. exporters.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): In the short-term, it could very well mean more U.S. jobs. You also have to understand that we are about three - down about three million manufacturing jobs in this country as of today.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Keith…</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): So any addition - mm-hmm,</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We're going to have to wrap it up there. Thanks so much.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): I'm sorry. Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Keith Reed covers economics for the Boston Globe and he joined me from member station WBUR in Boston, Massachusetts. Just ahead, the U.S. courts used to expand civil rights protections. Is the reverse true today? And, "Everybody Hates Chris." We take you behind the scenes of the hit show.

Farai Chideya continues her weekly reporters roundtable with Mara Schiavocampo, digital correspondent for NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams; Corey Dade, Atlanta correspondent for The Wall Street Journal; and Stephen Henderson, deputy editorial page editor for The Detroit Free Press.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And we're back with more of our Reporters' Roundtable. I'm joined by Mara Schiavocampo, digital correspondent for "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams," also Corey Dade, Atlanta correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and Stephen Henderson, deputy editorial page editor for the Detroit Free Press.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So let's pick up with the Nobel Prize. Former Vice President Al Gore had just been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm going to back into this one a little bit. Mara, do you think that this will revive at least a movement to draft him to run for president?</s>Ms. MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO (Digital Correspondent, "Nightly News with Brian Williams"): Absolutely. I think even the speculation that he was going to win had revived that movement. There is the draft - I believe it's called the Draft Gore Group who claims to have 165,000 signatures in an online petition. They are the same group that had the full-page ad taken out in the New York Times. So even the prospect of him winning had gotten a lot of people excited about it. So now that he's actually won, people are really going to start, you know, helping on this Gore '08 bandwagon, but who knows if it'll actually encourage him to make that leap.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Corey, there's - the Associated Press is running a story that says all his advisers are saying no, no, no, he won't run. But there's also a Hillary-Gore ticket, you know, movement. It all sounds kind of like fantasy football in a way, people throwing all their wishes out there. What does that say about the electorate? Are people just still searching around for their perfect combination like a sort of a grand buffet in Las Vegas or something?</s>Mr. DADE: Well, I don't...</s>Mr. DADE: I don't think it says anything directly about the electorate because I think this is a machine or an affectation of Gore supporters trying to meet the needs of the electorate. And I think that at the end of the day, there is still a very strong sentiment out there among Democratic voters that Al Gore won the election outright and he should have been our president for at least certainly the first four years from 2000 to 2004.</s>Mr. DADE: But I think what this may be is a sort of - you know, the prospect of him running again, maybe an unfortunate byproduct of modern politics, in that presidential campaigns are so exhausted that the news media examines every aspect of a candidate's background and their personality. So the point that if that candidate loses and try to run again in the future, the public doesn't believe they can possibly learn anything more about the new - about that candidate.</s>Mr. DADE: So the public may view a second candidacy by Al Gore as something similar to like a bad television rerun. Then they're seeing that change in channel.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Stephen, I want to get to the meat of the matter. It's climate change. Now, does this choice for the Nobel Peace Prize end the debate over whether there is global warming or, you know, and basically just move it to a point of okay, what do we do now? Or do you think there's still going to be some debate over whether or not this is an issue?</s>Mr. STEPHEN HENDERSON (Deputy Editorial Page Editor, The Detroit Free Press): Well, already this morning on some of the blogs that I read every day, that's been the argument. Is - again it revives the argument over whether climate change is real or manmade or not. So I don't think it ends it. I think one of the - can I say that I'm a little bit mystified by the award, though. I mean, I'm not sure that there's a - I'm not sure of the direct connection that I can draw between climate change, which, no doubt, Gore has done an awful lot of very good work drawing attention to and the Peace Prize, which historically has gone to people who, you know, seek to end conflict. I guess I'm just left a little bit scratching my head this morning.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Mara, some people have argued that as water decreases, for example, in certain regions, it could cause wars. Do you buy that? Do you buy that that's part of the rationale perhaps that the Nobel jury used?</s>Ms. MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO (Digital Correspondent, "Nightly News with Brian Williams"): I don't know if that's part of the rationale that they used, but that is absolutely a valid consideration. You already see the seeds of planet wars cropping up around the world in places where resources are drying up and people are fighting over them.</s>Ms. MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO (Digital Correspondent, "Nightly News with Brian Williams"): I mean, the root of so many conflicts historically has been resources. Human beings fight for resources. And so when those resources are dwindling, people are going to fight over them. You can't live without water. That is something that people will fight and kill for. So I think that's a very real consideration.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right, Mara, Corey and Stephen, thanks for joining us.</s>Ms. MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO (Digital Correspondent, "Nightly News with Brian Williams"): Thank you.</s>Mr. DADE: Thanks for having me.</s>Mr. STEPHEN HENDERSON (Deputy Editorial Page Editor, The Detroit Free Press): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I've been speaking with Mara Schiavocampo. She joined us from NPR's studios in New York. And she's digital correspondent for "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams." Also from Atlanta, Corey Dade, Atlanta correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and Stephen Henderson, deputy editorial page editor for the Detroit Free Press. And he joined us from WDET Detroit.

Cornell University professor Jason Sokol explores the lives of Southern whites during the Civil Rights era. "Some white Southerners recount literally trembling when they first shook hands with an African-American man," he says.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya and this is NEWS & NOTES.</s>Unidentified Man: We just got to report on you on this end that the students are in.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: This is footage from Little Rock, Arkansas, circa 1957. It's the sound of an angry white mob standing against the integration of the city's public schools. It's a kind of image that comes to mind for many African-Americans when they think of white Southerners of the civil rights era.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Jason Sokol has written a book examining the lives of white Southerners in that troubled time. It's called, "There Goes My Everything." Jason says most southern whites were neither actively in protest of equality for black Americans, nor supportive of the cause. Jason, welcome.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Hi, Farai. Thanks for having me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So you talk about the need to capture the complexity of white southern life. Give us kind of a range of responses people had to the civil rights movement, the nascent civil rights movement.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Well, most of us know about clansmen, citizens, counsels, political pedagogues, like Orville Faubus, as you mentioned, in Little Rock and George Wallace. We know about these whites who resisted the civil rights movement strongly and often with violence. And I think we've all heard of a few stories of heroic whites who maybe joined SNCC or joined in the civil rights movement. But the vast majority of white southerners, 90 percent of them at least, were somewhere in the middle.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Most of them did not like the idea of black civil rights. They were opposed to the civil rights movement and to racial equality. But they weren't opposed enough to join the clan or to be violent about it. They were more grudging and reluctant and halting. And when they were finally forced to take a stand one way or another, or finally forced - confronted with the fact that their lives might change, then a lot of them reacted in ways that really span the whole gamut. Where some ended up supporting civil rights for a bunch of complicated reasons, not necessarily that they sympathized with the demands. But that they often didn't what their everyday lives to be overturned. In the end, would choose different degrees of support or resistance that were closely to the middle of the spectrum.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You talk about very small personal ways in which people thought that the color line was just normal. Having a handyman sit outdoors always using the same plate and Mason jar when he ate lunch. What were some of the other ways that people had to then go back and take a look at these small everyday things?</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): The small everyday things were the land in which whites would refer to African-Americans by their first names. Or they would call them Auntie or Uncle. They would never call blacks mister or missus. And when the civil rights movement came along, they had to start bestowing such courtesy titles upon black people. Sometimes, those tiny little changes were just as shattering to white people as the larger changes of blacks voting or blacks demonstrating in the streets. Along the same lines that white would never shake hand with a black or a person with a black man before the years of civil rights movement.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Some white southerners recount literally trembling in the first moments when they first shook hands with a black African-American man. And these are the smaller things or ways that the effects of the civil rights movement really sipped in and penetrated the very depths of everyday life.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You start out your book with the World War II era. And that, again, points out the complexity of responses to the African-American soldiers coming back. Some tragic violent incidents and some acts of transformation. Maybe you can read us a little bit about one of the people's reactions to that era.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Sure. One soldier I talk about is a guy named Seph Laurie(ph() who was stationed outside of Selma, Alabama. Only a very few number of soldiers fought in integrated regiments. But for those few, for that minority, a lot of them reported great - a great deal of change in their racial attitude and behavior. And here's what Seph Laurie says.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): (Reading) That was my first really contact with negroes. I learned that a negro was a human being with blood in this brain and perspiration on his brow. With aches the same, ambitions the same, thought of home the same. I leaned later that he died the same as a white man dies, for the same cause, also, in combat. I learned that he has the same courage and daring as a white man. To the best of my knowledge, there is no resentment on the part of any white officer.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Where did things go from there in terms of the relations? What do you see as, perhaps, one of the subsequent pivots?</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): In World War II, this is where most blacks began to express real demands and desires for civil rights. And some of the leaders of the civil rights movement during the '60s, people like Medgar Evers and others, were veterans who had fought in the World War II. And that - those experiences in their '40s were really the origins and the beginnings of the civil rights movement.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You also have a section on the Ninth Ward, which we all have come to know from the Katrina disaster, and the relationship between whites and blacks that soured, in a way, against the backdrop of economics and school desegregation. Tell us about that time.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): I didn't know before I started this project that the Ninth Ward was the first neighborhood in the Deep South to integrate the schools. And that occurred in November of 1960. But in those years, it was not just a black neighborhood; it was poor neighborhood with all sorts of ethnicities. When the schools finally integrated, the day they integrated, thousands of whites boycott it. Whites formed mobs in the streets. But I also tell the story of those few white parents and white families who kept their children in school.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Actually, I know radicals. Not that they want it necessarily civil rights to come, but there were some parents who wanted to keep their children in school and continued sending them, and in turn, they attracted the wrath of the mob, the ire of the mob. And I found those to be some of the more fascinating and sort of stunning ways in which you could see the civil rights movement dividing the white community against itself and dividing somewhat people within - inside within themselves, sort of psychological wars going on.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When you think about this book that you wrote, what do you make of the attitudes of the white south today compared to the era that you write about?</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Well, it seems that everything has changed and nothing has changed. Some people's attitudes really deeply changed through the civil rights movement, and I tried to show that, but some didn't. And I also show the younger generation grappling with its heritage, with its segregationist upbringing and heritage. And wrestling with the fact that this is their history on the one hand, and yet on the other, growing up in a new world, growing up in a world where they aren't forced to discriminate against blacks, where there is equality under the law. And so, I tried to show this real tangle that exists in this ambiguous way that we've experienced both stunning change over the years, along with sobering continuity. And it all depends upon where you look and what layer of society you look at.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Jason, thank you.</s>Professor JASON SOKOL (Professor, Cornell University; Author, "There Goes My Everything"): Thank you, Farai. I appreciate it.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Jason Sokol joined from the campus of Cornell University, where he teaches history. His book is called "There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975."

Mychal Bell has been sentenced to 18 months in juvenile detention for convictions that pre-dated the alleged attack last year of a white fellow student. Farai Chideya gets an update on Bell's story with James Rucker, founder of San Francisco-based "Color of Change."

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: The black student at the center of the so-called Jena Six case is back behind bars. Mychal Bell was ordered yesterday to spend a year and a half at a juvenile facility. The sentence was for juvenile convictions Bell received before his alleged attack last year of a white fellow student.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: For the latest, we've got James Rucker. He's the founder of the San Francisco-based Color of Change, that's an activist Web site that gathered protesters to march in Jena.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So James, Bell was just released two weeks ago regarding the Jena Six case.</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): Right.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, he's got these 18 months in a juvenile facility. Explain to us what's going on here.</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): Yeah. Well, Mychal had prior arrests and convictions related to - I believe there was a simple battery and I'm forgetting the other charge. And so he was out essentially on probation when the December 4th incident went down.</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): So effectively, what's happened - the judge could have done this, I believe, at any point in time, which is - what's kind of raising, you know, questions for a lot of us as to the timing of this. But essentially, when you've got - you're out on probation and you get picked up for really almost anything, you can be forced back into jail to serve the time.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Is this going to raise a similar flag among activists or is this something that is going to make people think, well, you know what, he's just a bad kid and I wish they just let this go?</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): That's I think the unfortunate part of this. I mean - from my perspective, what we have is, you know, a judge acting in - and again it's the timing, in a way, that paints Mychal Bell and I think, by implication, the others as criminals. And it a kind of, you know, as many says to that town and it kind of helped them, you know, kind of justify the approach they've taken to prosecute these young men.</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): Again, our issue here, you know, it's not that Mychal is a saint and if kids have done, you know, beat someone up, there is penalties they should face. It's about the unequal application of justice. And in this case, it appears that judges, you know, if it's not one thing it's another in terms of getting Mychal back into jail. He's been on house arrest. He's not a flight risk. There's no reason to have to have to take this move. They could proceed with the trial in juvenile court as they had planned.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, what about the other black teens that have been implicated or named in the Jena 6 case or do you think that they will be tainted by association?</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): I think in the court of public opinion - and that's what I think this is largely about - it can. You know, thankfully, these young men have great representation in terms of the legal counsel they have. And just from what I have been able to piece together, you know, about the facts of the case, what was presented in the previous court proceedings, I think they're - you know, I'm hopeful and I think they're on good ground. But yeah, I think it's -from a public opinion perspective, it makes it hard, you know? Mychal's being painted as this out-of-control young man who, you know, again, no saint, but I think these images is not exactly, you know, fair.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So, what are you going to do next, in terms of yours organization steps?</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): Yeah. We've been focused on a few things. One is Reed Walters, the prosecutor in this case has overreached from the beginning, you know? From calling the tennis shoes that the young men were wearing, you know, lethal weapons, threatening the kids at the school and so on. So we believe that Reed Walters is not an appropriate representative of the state of Louisiana. And about 4,000 of our members have written to the disciplinary board in Louisiana that oversees, you know, kind of disciplining attorneys. We're also raising money. I mean, this fight, as you could see, is perhaps going to go on for a while. I mean, we've raised a little over $240,000 for the legal defense of the young men. And, you know, we'll do whatever we can to support the families and the young men.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. James, thank you so much.</s>Mr. JAMES RUCKER (Founder, Color of Change): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That was James Rucker, founder of the online activist group Color of Change, based in San Francisco.

As a part of our monthlong series on civil rights, our roundtable guests discuss how the U.S. court system brought about social change. Guests include Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; University of Maryland law professor Sherrilyn Ifill; and Ted Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Historically, civil rights were fought for on the streets and won in the courts. Lawyer Thurgood Marshall led the hard legal battle for equal education. Four years after his victory in the landmark Brown V Board case, Marshall addressed the U.S. Supreme Court.</s>Mr. THURGOOD MARSHALL (Civil Rights Lawyer): Education is not the teaching of three R's. Education is teaching of the overall citizenship, to learn to live together with fellow citizens and above all, to learn to obey the law. And therefore, I'm not worried about the Negro children at these states. I worry about the white children in Little Rock who are told as young people that the way to get your rights is to violate the law and defy the lawful authorities. I'm worried about their future. I don't worry about those Negro kids' future. They've been struggling with democracy long enough. They know about it.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Marshall and others used a lot of spark, major social breakthroughs for black Americans. But is today's legal system restricting ways of promoting racial equality? Today, as part of our month-long series, we discuss how the U.S. courts affect civil rights. Joining me now, Wade Henderson, he's the President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. We're also speaking with the University of Maryland law professor Sherrilyn Ifill and Ted Shaw. He's the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Thanks all of you for coming on.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): thank you.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): Thanks for having me.</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So Ted, how would you say - what created the relationship between the civil rights movement and the courts?</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): Well, I think that the courts in the era of Thurgood Marshall and Brown versus Board of Education opened up a new paradigm and there was a symbiotic relationship between activism and lawyering. And it wasn't always a relationship without tension. But when Brown was won, Brown really split American history into a kind of a B.C. and an A.D. for African-Americans and indeed, for the country. And so it set up this paradigm for social change through the courts at the same time that activists where marching in the streets and you had the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Martin Luther King and others.</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): So those two things worked hand in hand even if at some time there where tension with one another. Martin Luther King was saying I'm going to break this injunction. Thurgood Marshall was saying, no, you can't do that. He said your job is to get me out of jail and not to tell me what to do. And that's the relationship that worked. So a lot of people, a whole generation of lawyers went into the profession because they saw law as a way of achieving social change.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Sherrilyn, would you say that the courts in the '50s and '6os were friendly to civil rights or acquiescent, or how would you describe that relationship?</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): Well, I think the courts are part of the larger society. They were moving along the rest of society. And I think that's important for people to remember that the gains that were made in the courts, you know, happen in a period of time in which other things are happening in the country as well. And as Ted Shaw has just said, there was activism happening on the streets. And so there are social and political forces that are happening at the same time. And courts can work in tandem with that.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): And so it's not necessarily that courts are doing it alone or out there by themselves, but they reflect what's happening in the larger society. And judges are aware of what's happening. They're drawn from that larger society and movements can put pressure on court.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): And so, you know, to say the courts were friendly, there were many courts that were not friendly particularly state courts in the South. The federal courts increasingly became more and more friendly and increasingly became educated. I mean, that clip you just aired of Thurgood Marshall, you know, there was a tremendous role that civil rights lawyers played in educating judges who came, really, from very rarified very segregated circumstances as many of our judges still do today. And so, lawyers were educating them about what was happening in the country and about what needed to happen in order to fulfill the promise of the constitution.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Wade, not everybody of course, was happy with decisions like Brown v Board. Some folks call it activist court, sewing sympathies to the plaintiffs. Now, first all, is that a fair criticism? And secondly, how does that reflect on the debates about what the Supreme Court in particular should be doing today?</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): Well, I think, Farai, it's an exaggerated criticism. If one puts in context the strategy adopted by civil rights advocates and scholars supporting our view many years before Brown was decided, the NAACP founded in 1909 had, as its two principal efforts, achieving voting rights for African-Americans because the organization knew that the power to vote was the power to make decisions that affect your lives. And using public education as the foundation predicates for advancing the constitutional right of citizenship to a quality public education recognizing the importance of education plate as a transformative lever in American society.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): I think the strategy that was pursued by Thurgood Marshall, by Charles Hamilton Houston and by other legal scholars in the early part of the 20th century, ultimately lead to courts inevitably, to the decision that was handed down in Brown. And certainly, without that long record of accomplishment, Brown would not had been possible. So I do think it's important to note that this was not something that happened in a vacuum. That it reflected a conscious effort on the part of the civil rights legal theorists for the kinds of advancement, systematic advancement, that would be necessarily to bring about that change.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): When you compare the courts if that time, however, to the courts of today, the federal courts of today, there is a big difference. President Eisenhower, 50 years ago, signed the First Modern Civil Rights Act, the 1957 Civil Rights Act. He is remembered in many ways as being relatively modest with respect to civil rights games. But in reality, he did something very important. He appointed judges to the federal bench who had integrity, who had a generous view of the constitution and who apply those principle in specific instances that helped to advance the interest that we now today believe to be black rights.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): And I think, when you look at the comparison between the appointments of the Eisenhower period and the appointments of President Bush's justices to the court or his federal appointments to the federal bench, you see a real marked contrast between a president like Eisenhower who wanted to elevate the integrity of the courts and a president like George Bush who seeks to debase and manipulate the integrity of the courts by appointing people who he believes will move the court dramatically to the right.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: In case you're just tuning in, I want to reintroduce the folks and the topics. This is NPR's NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We are talking about the courts and civil rights. Just heard from Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. We've also got Sherrilyn Ifill at the University of Maryland law professor, Ted Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, Sherrilyn, would you agree with Wade that the Bush administration has debased - very strong word - the courts as it applies to civil rights?</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): Well, I wouldn't - I'm not sure I would use the word debase the courts. I would certainly say that the actions of President Bush have, I think, debased the appearance of the court in the minds of the public. And that is that, you know, for a nation that's run on the rule of law, it's so important that the public have a sense of integrity that the court stand apart from political manipulation. And so, regardless of the conduct of judges on the bench, I think that the concerted effort of the executive to appoint justices of a particular viewpoint sets in the mind of the public the idea that the court does not stand the part.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): And I think that is debasing over all to the sense of democracy, which really relies on the idea of this independent court. So I don't think it's the quality of the court has been debased or diminished, but I do think that, you know, a concerted long-term effort to politically influence the court in the way that I think many of these appointments, you know, or efforts to appoint judges to the court have reflected, I think, and some of the rhetoric about judges and activist judges and so forth, is quite damaging to our sense of democracy and quite damaging to the important role that the court plays, I think, in standing apart from merely reflecting the political wins but being able to be a place where you can come and have the justices be educated and the justices can reflect on the promises of the constitution, of laws and statutes that are passed by Congress, and can issue decisions without the public feeling that merely by knowing who appointed the judge or the justice, or merely by knowing the political party of the judge or the justice, or merely by knowing what society or organization approved of the appointment of the judge or justice will know the outcome of the case. That seems to me is very, very damaging to our system of democracy and to the perception of the court.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Ted, are you effective? And what I mean by that is that you're the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Presumably, you want certain outcomes, as the organization always had in cases of civil rights, cases about school desegregation, what laws and methods can be used. Can you do your job in this environment or do you have to find new ways to do your job? Are you successful at this point with your mission?</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): Well, we must do our job in this environment. This is the environment in which we find ourselves. It may not be the environment I would have chosen, but this is my watch. This is our watch. Now having said that, what has happened is that the ultra conservatives, the far right, they've stolen our playbook. They've stolen the rhetoric. They've stood fact in history on their heads.</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): They've taken the mantle of color-blindness and turned it into a weapon against all efforts to do anything about racial inequality on a voluntary basis. And the courts have been carefully stacked with people who have a certain point of view over many years. The issue for us these days is not whether we're going to be in court because we have to be, if only because our adversaries are in court trying to dismantle so much of what we accomplished over so many years. And we have to play defense.</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): You know, I say all the time that the question is not whether we want to play offense. We want to play it at every chance we get. But it's like football. You can't play offense unless you have the ball. And yet when you're on defense, you still have to be out there on the field. We have to be fighting the Michigan case, which is a defensive battle, to preserve diversity opportunities. We had to fight in the Seattle and Louisville school cases, even though we didn't get the result that we wanted in its entirety. But we were fighting to preserve voluntary integration methods.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But, Ted, let me jump in, those cases didn't quite turn out, I'm presuming, the way you wanted to. Are you coming up…</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): Well, Michigan did. Michigan did. We won in Michigan.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It was sort of qualified, you know, this can continue in these certain circumstances, which is better than what happens from civil rights point of view in terms of the desegregation methods. But is there anything - do you have a brass ring right now that you're going for that would be a new legal standard, a new legal strategy, anything like that?</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): Well, very quickly, we did win Michigan. And what we won in Michigan was exactly what we have for the 25 years before Michigan. But that's a longer conversation. Louisville and Seattle, that was a lost, but we didn't lose everything there. Brass rings. You know, I believe that this country has always wanted to turn away from the issue of race. And we haven't been able to yet. We haven't found our way to do that. Clearly, we have to move toward other methods of addressing these problems.</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): So you asked earlier whether the courts are effective or whether we can be effective. Well, we have to continue to work in to courts. We also have to work in the political arenas. But, you know, I also think we have to look at the issue of economic inequality, even though, that's not a complete substitute for racial inequality. And at the same time, we have to continue to push back against these folks who would try to make all voluntary efforts to anything but racial inequality illegal.</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): Is there any magic bullet? I don't know that there is one. This is a long hard trouble. It always has been. And I think it always will be. But it's not one that's going to go away.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): But, Farai, I think that…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Go ahead, Wade.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): This is Wade again. I think that Ted's point, which is that the work that the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other legal defense funds like that do is critically important. And they're doing what they are supposed to do. And they're doing a tremendously effective job in the federal courts.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): But the difficulty that we face now is that we no longer have a federal court system that is quite as open to examining the impact of race in the 21st century as their predecessors were in the last half, perhaps, of the 20th century. At the same time, however, the political strength of the African-American community and the progressive community generally, has grown substantially.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): And what we lack in our ability, perhaps, to win some cases in the federal courts today is to some degree, not all set entirely, but certainly, the impact is minimized by virtue of the political strength that has emerged within our own communities. We have to tap and organized that strength more effectively than we've done and we have to harness the power that is already in place in our community. If we do that effectively and if we coordinate our strategy, I think we can still make substantial gains in the 21st century equal to what was done in the last year…</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): Well…</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): And if I might add, we are only - we're still a five-four court even after all of these appointments, it's a five-four court on all these issues of race and the political winds will shift. All we want is justices who will be open-minded.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Let me get Sherrilyn in here. What about the whole brass ring thing, whatever else you're going to say as well?</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): Well, I was going to say that if Ted Shaw (unintelligible) was the brass ring is on the radio, I will kill him. I'm sure he would not reveal that even if I would, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So it's just a strategy not to say what's next?</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): No, I guess what I wanted to say, Farai, was that, you know, people forget that, you know, Brown didn't - as Wade Henderson said, Brown didn't just appear one day. And, you know, rest assured and be aware that there are many people I know in the academy that work with civil rights organizations and civil rights lawyers - there are independent lawyers. There are activists. There are those working in the political arena - in concert, to really talk about what those next steps are and to develop strategies.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): And we are developing it, implementing strategies. And, you know, the court is that, suddenly, you know, it's appeared in Brown suddenly to be sympathetic. It had been a long road for Charles Hamilton Houston and for Thurgood Marshall and for civil rights litigation. You know, there was a case in 1911 called (unintelligible) versus Harrison, which the Supreme Court acknowledged that there was ranked voting discrimination happening in the state of Alabama and just said, you know, we can't do anything about it.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): You know, so the lawyers didn't sit down and they continued to litigate cases -some they won, some they lost. They were pushing a rock up a hill until the conditions were right in which they could effect change. And I think that's the period we're in now. The courts are not sympathetic in the way that they were in the late '50s and early '60s. And so now, we're pulling together all the different strength that makes civil right strategies work until the conditions are right to make the kinds of advances that we need to make.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): But this period is just as important as the period when we're having tremendous success. And I think people need to understand that because we're not winning all the time in the courts, it doesn't mean that tremendous progress is not being made. This is the groundwork that's being laid right now and that's what had to happen before 1954.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Sherrilyn, Wade and Ted, we have to end it there. Thank you so much.</s>Mr. WADE HENDERSON (President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): Thank you.</s>Mr. TED SHAW (President, NCAAP Legal Defense and Education Fund): Thank you.</s>Professor SHERRILYN IFILL (University of Maryland): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We've been speaking with Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, who joined us at our NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. Also spoke with University of Maryland law professor Sherrilyn Ifill. And Ted Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. He spoke with us from our NPR studios in New York.

News & Notes producer Roy Hurst relives his childhood with the Nancy Wilson song, "How Glad I Am," the first record he ever remembers hearing.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And it's time now for our Staff Song Pick of the Week. This week, our producer Roy Hurst has control of the CD players.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So Roy, what do you got for us?</s>ROY HURST: Farai, this must be the first record I was ever conscious of. It's called "How Glad I Am" by Nancy Wilson, recorded in 1965.</s>Ms. NANCY WILSON (Singer): (Singing) My love has no beginning, my love has no end. No front or back and my love won't bend. I'm in the middle, lost in a spin loving you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So how do you remember that song?</s>ROY HURST: Well, I must've been - I don't know, 2 or 3 years old when I heard it. I remember lying on my back under the windowsill and there's this radio on the windowsill and this song is playing. And now I grew up knowing about Nancy Wilson because I grew up around musicians and besides that, I always said that I would marry a combination of Diahann Carroll, Lola Falana and Nancy Wilson. I think that translates to Beyonce.</s>Ms. NANCY WILSON (Singer): (Singing) My love won't rise and my love won't drop.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So how come you realized that this song is from your childhood?</s>ROY HURST: Well, about five years ago, I'm riding in my car, and this song comes on and I immediately flashback to that moment when I was a baby and I first heard it. And I'm thinking of myself, this song makes me happy.</s>Ms. NANCY WILSON (Singer): (Singing) And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know how glad I am. I wish I were a poet so I could express.</s>ROY HURST: The story doesn't stop there because later I'm spending the summer with friends in Chicago, and I'm sharing the space with a popular alternative band, the band of Neko Case. And this band was going to be performing at a music festival there.</s>ROY HURST: So now I'm sifting through the record collection in this house. And one of the singers - Kelly(ph) is her name. She and I were going on and on about our love for Nancy Wilson, and in particular, this song. And at that festival, she actually stopped the set and sang this song to me. She dedicated this song to me. It was the first and last time I ever had a song dedicated to me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well there's still time in your life yet, Roy. But I also know that Nancy Wilson has come to NPR West a few times. Did you ever get to meet here?</s>ROY HURST: Yes. And not when the, you know, be all over celebrities, but I was very excited to meet her and I'm chatting her up in the lobby and just when I'm about to tell her about the impact she's had on me, somebody comes and whisks her away. And I'm still wondering if she would've sung a few bars to me of this song, "How Glad I Am."</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Roy, that's beautiful. Thank you.</s>ROY HURST: Thank you.</s>Ms. NANCY WILSON (Singer): (Singing) And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know how glad I am, how glad I am.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NEWS & NOTES producer Roy Hurst with our Staff Song Pick of the Week, Nancy Wilson's "How Glad I Am."</s>Ms. NANCY WILSON (Singer): (Singing) My love has no beginning. My love has no end. No front or back…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That's our show for today. Thank you for sharing your time with us. To listen to the show or subscribe to our podcast, visit our Web site, nprnewsandnotes.org. No spaces, just nprnewsandnotes.org. To join the conversation or sign up for our newsletter, visit our blog at nprnewsandviews.org.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NEWS & NOTES was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium.</s>Tomorrow: battle scars and success stories and stalwarts of the Civil Rights Movement.</s>Ms. NANCY WILSON (Singer): (Singing) My love won't rise and my love won't drop. I'm in the middle.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya, this is NEWS & NOTES.

More than 90 percent of patients in one survey said they'd want to know what doctors write in their charts. The majority of doctors, though, are reluctant to share their notes. Time's Alice Park explains why patients want to see their charts — and why many physicians are wary of the idea.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: When you visit a doctor and he starts - he or she - starts jotting down notes in your records, do you want to know what they're writing? Over 90 percent of patients do, according to one recent study. But doctors are not as keen on the idea. Many physicians note insights and comments they may not have shared with patients. They report concern that revealing this information could leave a patient confused or frightened.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Patients, if you have access to your doctor's notes and medical records, what difference has it made? And, doctors, is this a good idea? Call us at 800-989-8255, or send us an email, 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: Alice Park is a staff writer at Time magazine, where she covers health and medicine, and she joins us now from a studio in New York. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.</s>ALICE PARK: Thanks for having me.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So patients have long been able to see their medical records, but it's not always easy to get access, especially to these doctors' notes. Why is that?</s>ALICE PARK: Well, a patient's record belongs to the patient, really. But I think it's really our health care system which has evolved into this, you know, paternalistic doctor-knows-best kind of structure where the doctor has been sort of the gatekeeper of all the medical information. And, you know, the reasons aren't all nefarious.</s>ALICE PARK: There's a reason why doctors sort of feel like they need to interpret the medical information that's in a patient's chart, and it's because it's incomprehensible to most people: test results, you know, whether results fall into normal or abnormal ranges. You know, you don't want to be looking at those on your own and trying to figure that out.</s>ALICE PARK: So I think what started out with good intentions - you know, doctors trying to help patients better understand their health - has really turned into this system where doctors have kind of kept control of the information, and patients have felt that they don't have a right to see it.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So, I mean, there are logistical obstacles in the way? What happens if someone says, I want my records?</s>ALICE PARK: Well, I think before records became electronic and digitized, there were some very physical obstacles because, you know, it became an issue of having the patient look at their chart and the information in the chart in the presence of the doctor just to ensure that, you know, it wasn't falling into wrong hands.</s>ALICE PARK: You know, a doctor wouldn't want to sort of put a chart in the mail to someone because you just don't know where it will go and who will see it. But I think once charts became digitized, this idea of giving patients access to what's in there and having them look at test results and look at, now, doctors' notes has become much more realistic.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So you reported on a study that asked patients and doctors about this idea of access to these notes and records. Why did patients report that they wanted to see their records?</s>ALICE PARK: I think the reasons are many, not the least of which is it's their information. So, just on principle, it makes sense that they would want to see it. Secondly - and these are sort of some of the interesting reasons that emerged from this survey - patients also said that if they saw kind of what their doctors were writing about their visits that it might even motivate them, in some ways.</s>ALICE PARK: Anecdotally, some of the researchers that I talked to said, for example, patients who are overweight or obese and who have been told to, you know, try to lose weight, they said that none of that kind of really sunk in until they saw in their chart and saw their doctor's notes that, at each visit, how concerned the doctor was about the weight and about what sort of, you know, subsequent problems might arise from being overweight. And it motivated them to actually do something about it.</s>ALICE PARK: So it can have some very positive effects, too, and patients really reflected that in their answers to why they wanted to see their chart, was because they really wanted to know what their doctor was thinking, and they thought that that would help them better understand also what was going on with their own health.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And why did some doctors say that - many doctors said they were OK with this, but more, as I take it, said they had some concerns. What were they?</s>ALICE PARK: These concerns ranged from some very practical ones, which were that, you know, the more, obviously, patients are getting information, the more questions they're going to have. And, you know, many doctors already feel pressured enough by the limited time that they have to spend with patients, and they feel that they might be burdened even more with additional questions from things in their chart that they may not have to worry about.</s>ALICE PARK: But a more serious concern has to do with how patients interpret the information in the chart, and doctors legitimately were worried that they might have to censor, kind of, some of their medical best-guesses about what might be wrong with a patient or what kinds of tests they need to do in order to rule out certain conditions, that they don't want to alarm the patient, so that they might censor some of those notes that they put in there if they knew the patient were looking at it.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Hmm. Let's get a listener in, here. Anthony is in Sterling, Illinois. Welcome.</s>ANTHONY: Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my call, and I really am enjoying this program. I actually saw a doctor. I'd been having some ear troubles for quite a while, and we couldn't figure it out. I've been to several different ENTs and - up to Mayo Clinic in Rochester. I saw a very - a real specialist in the field at Northwestern in Chicago. He's an otoneurologist. And actually, his policy to mail patients, he said - during my first visit, he said it is our office policy to mail all patients their records. About a week after your visit, you'll be receiving, in the mail, all the records from the visit today and all - the results of all the tests.</s>ANTHONY: And, you know, these are highly specialized tests that we did. It was a lot of testing. And I really felt it just helped so much. I really felt that - I could be more my own advocate, and I just so appreciated that. He was a wonderful doctor, anyway. But the fact that he did that, it just spoke so - to me, it really spoke highly of his practice...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And, Anthony, did you get any clearer sense or different sense of what was going on with you than you'd had just meeting him in person?</s>ANTHONY: Absolutely, because, I mean, I was - first of all, I know a lot of doctors don't like us to do it, but I was able to Google some things, find out more about the tests that he did. They were reliable sites. You know, I made sure the sites that I checked were reliable. And I was able to learn more about the tests, and then yes, I was able to follow up. Yes, it is time consuming for him, but I did, you know, very briefly email him a couple of questions that I had. And he very, you know, briefly emailed me back a couple of days later.</s>ANTHONY: It was great. It was like there was more of an ongoing communication that we had, and he was very happy to answer my questions. And absolutely - and, in fact, I was referred then to another specialist, and my troubles have cleared up. My pain is gone. I was having a lot of pain, and it's gone now. And I just think that was a big part of it. I really just cannot speak highly enough of that policy. It was the first doctor I'd ever had that did that. I've never heard of it before. And I don't know whether it's a trend that's increasing, but I just - I can't speak - it was great. It was wonderful.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Anthony, thanks so much.</s>ANTHONY: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Alice Park, there's a happy story of access to medical records.</s>ALICE PARK: Well, that's the idea. That's what doctors hope will happen. And indeed, a lot of hospitals - and even private practices - are starting adopt this policy where they will, you know, send test results and allow patients access to their records. What the issue was here with this study in particular were the doctor's notes, and these are notations that physicians make to themselves mostly so that they can make sure they go through almost a checklist of things that they need to consider when they're looking at a particular patient's symptoms. So...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And what kind of things do they note? What's in those notes?</s>ALICE PARK: Well, it can range - and my father's a physician, so I can - I sort of have second-hand knowledge of this. But, you know, they range from really just running down, for example, this patient - the caller who was just on, you know, if it wasn't clear what was causing his ear problems and his pain, they would just run down, you know, could it be, let's say for example, a tumor, cancer? Could it be, you know, an infection? Could it be inflammation? They would just run those things down and - just to make sure themselves that they are testing for all of those things.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: You know, we have an email from a Dr. Matthew in Cincinnati. He writes: I would not want all of my patients to see their notes simply because most will really interpret them in negative ways. It would cause many to become very dramatic and misunderstand the true meaning of his notes. Honestly, he writes, even when I'm - I talk with someone one on one, there's a lot of explaining done. Seeing just a few things in notes is only going to cause extreme confusion. Is that a typical sentiment there from this survey?</s>ALICE PARK: Yes, and it's a very legitimate one. Obviously, medical information is - it, you know, requires a lot of interpretation. Clearly, something like this, a change like this is not going to happen overnight, and it's not going to be smooth. You know, there will be a transition period where I think both doctors and patients will sort of have to feel out what works best for them. And doctors, I think, acknowledge that they'll also have to perhaps adjust the way that they make notations in patients' charts, knowing now that patients will be increasingly accessing them and reading them. I think one actually amusing example that a physician told me was that in medical parlance, the acronym SOB actually means shortness of breath.</s>ALICE PARK: But it could be misinterpreted by a lot of patients as meaning something quite different. Yes. He would be changing doctors there.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: You've written that more patients are asking for transparency. Is this because of the digital age, things are, you know, electronic now? Or is there something else going on?</s>ALICE PARK: Well, I think there are a lot of factors behind that. One is technological, that it's just possible now. It's more possible. It's easier. Second is, you know, our culture is changing, as well, where we are becoming more transparent, I think, in many different aspects of our lives. One thing that surprised the researchers of this study, as well as many of the physicians involved, was that up to 20 percent of patients said that if they were able - you know, if they had access to the doctor's notes and their charts, they would actually share them and, you know, show them to friends and relatives on their own.</s>ALICE PARK: This surprised doctors a lot who thought that the patients would want to keep these types of things private. But I think there's a lot of different factors leading into kind of this general sense that things should be more open and transparent.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Let's take a call. Dahomey(ph) is in Columbus, Ohio. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.</s>DAHOMEY: Hello. Thank you for having me on the show. I was calling - I actually have two perspectives. One, I am a psychologist, but also I was telling your screener about an incident with my cousin. But as a psychologist, the way I look in my clients' records and the way I treat them is I actually assume that my clients are actually going to ask for them and be able to see the records. And I think that transparency is really important, because patients want to know what's being said and what's in their records, because that's going to go to insurance, if it goes to insurance companies, if it goes to any other people.</s>DAHOMEY: In general, though, when I do give reports, though, I do get a release of information. If my clients are looking for their private records to be released, I sit down with them or I'll have a conservation with them and tell them very directly what the information that I'm going to be releasing is and also let them know the implications of that. So if I'm releasing to their new employer that they have depression or if I'm releasing to a new employer a certain type of record, what type of implications that may come along with it.</s>DAHOMEY: And even on most cases, I actually encourage my clients to think about, instead of releasing their full client record with each single note that we have, a summary about the information that they - a summary of our work together, because that actually can be much more nuanced and kind of probably fits their needs better.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Hmm. Dahomey, thanks so much for the call.</s>DAHOMEY: No problem.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Alice Park, Dahomey says, as a psychologist, she assumes her patients will see these records. But you wrote that when it comes to psychiatry, I think, that there are some reservations.</s>ALICE PARK: There are some concerns. I mean, obviously, this is not going to be easily implemented across all, you know, different disciplines. And psychiatry, in particular, is an area where doctors may - and patients may need to sort of have some time to work out how the information is made available. Psychiatrists, in particular, are also noted that if they were - you know, there's a lot of mental illness conditions where denial is an issue. And for a patient to see a potential diagnosis or a physician's impressions of the patient's mental state may not be helpful, and it may actually be harmful. So clearly, that's one area where things need to be worked out better.</s>ALICE PARK: Another one that was brought up was cancer diagnoses. So there are some cancer hospitals that noted that, for example, the patients are not allowed to access their records until after seven days of a biopsy. And that gives the doctor time to meet face to face with the patient to discuss the results rather than having the patient see it in black and white for the first time.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. We have a couple emails here. AmigaDragon sent a tweet with a suggestion that you should view records with a doctor or nurse to interpret them with you. Allow the access, but do it together.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Jennifer in Cypress, Texas, writes: My husband's current doctor dictates his notes into a little tape recorder while we're in the exam room. At first we found it odd, but now it makes us feel like we're more empowered in working with him. And she writes that they've actually corrected his dictation occasionally as he said something different than what we just heard or understood. And we've been able to clarify everyone's understanding. So is there sort of a fact-checking benefit here?</s>ALICE PARK: There is, and I'm glad the - that email came in, because some of the physicians did mention that they're starting to now actually dictate or show the patient the notes as they're going into the chart. And as this caller notes, in some cases, they're actually correcting what's going in there because, you know, doctors are rushed and they are only humans, so they may make errors in family history or, you know, noting some physical results. So it can be helpful in some ways.</s>DAHOMEY: And this is just an example of how it's a give and take. And, you know, the system may not be perfect the first time around, but as doctors and patients work together, they might find a way that this kind of openness and transparency can help both.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So you've written that some of the main concerns are that the access to notes will take up more of a doctor's time, the patients will have follow-up questions and there will be a lot of back and forth, or some concerns about malpractice suits. You write that some places have actually mandated open access, and what's happened there?</s>ALICE PARK: Well, they've actually seen that this has not been the case, so that their premiums have actually gone down. They have not seen a surge in malpractice cases. And the doctors are actually reporting that in most instances, they're actually not spending extra time - the extra time that they anticipated they would, because I think one of your callers mentioned that he was doing some Googling on his own and research on his own, and they were sort of using the information in their charts as a springboard for learning more. And all of that learning did not necessarily involve taking more time from the doctor.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: OK. Alice Park, do you - has this made you change your attitude? Do you read your notes more now, your doctor's notes?</s>ALICE PARK: I actually haven't, but I think this is - I think I will. This is a good idea, and I think transparency is a good trend in this area, in this field, in medicine, because our sense that the doctor is sort of the gatekeeper of all this information is probably an old-fashioned one. And while it's not going to be easy, I think it's a good trend.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Alice Park at Time magazine, thank you so much. This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Jennifer Ludden, in Washington.

Golden State Mutual, a black-owned insurance company, auctioned off their entire collection earlier this month. Some pieces sold for three times their appraised value. Why is some African-American fine art increasing in worth? Nigel Freeman of Swann Galleries and Bill Hodges of Bill Hodges Galleries explain.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya. And this is NEWS & NOTES.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: A stash of African-American fine art tucked away in a black-owned insurance company in south L.A. It used to be a bit of a secret. Now, no more.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Golden State Mutual auctioned off their entire collection earlier this month. The work sold for a total of more than $1.5 million, and some pieces sold for three times their appraised value. Is this an example of black fine art finding its audience? And who's the doing the buying?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Nigel Freeman runs the African-American fine art department at Swann Galleries. Freeman managed Golden State Mutual's auction. Also with us, we've got Bill Hodges of Bill Hodges Gallery. It's the only black-owned gallery on Manhattan's West 57 Street, that's an art hub known worldwide.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Gentlemen, thanks for coming on</s>Mr. BILL HODGES (Owner, Bill Hodges Gallery): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So…</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Hello.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Nigel, can you take us through some of the art that was sold, any famous names?</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Oh, of course. This was a wonderful collection and had many works by important African-American artists from Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett, Henry Ossawa Tanner, the beginning of the century, to someone like David Hammons, who's a contemporary artist today.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Oh, what sold for the most for single item?</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Our top block was the coverlet on our catalogue, a very important drawing by Charles White, it's called the General or Harriet Tubman in print, this is a large ink drawing by Charles White, and it's sold for $300,000. (Unintelligible) with our buyers (unintelligible) $360,000 total.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, Bill, what do you see as trends in terms of how African-American fine art is selling, and who's buying it?</s>Mr. BILL HODGES (Owner, Bill Hodges Gallery): I think the trend is something that, probably, happened a few years ago, and it's spiraling upward. And predominantly, the people who are acquiring African-American artists' work today are the people within the Wall Street positions, the sports players. A lot of African-Americans are getting involved now because this is, I like to tell my other clients or I tell my clients, that this was the first generation of African-Americans that has been able to actually collect artwork.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So when you think about this sale, there's also recently been the acquisition of a Jacob Lawrence painting for the White House, not part of the same lot, $2.5 million. And that is a hallmark in a couple of ways. One, who the buyer was, and two, the amount. Nigel, do you agree with Bill that there's a new energy around collecting African-American fine art?</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Oh, yes, I would. I would characterize it slightly differently. I would agree, absolutely, with Bill that there's a whole new generation with affluence and means who have a great desire to acquire the essential works by the important African-American artists. And I think this is really a generational shift.</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): There was a generation before that could acquire works by African-American artists, but they bought them quietly. They went to artist's studios and amass collections without necessarily buying them directly from a gallery or at auction. And we're seeing today that that earlier generation are now thinking about selling their works, and so we see wonderful collections like Golden State coming to sale.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, I know that you can't talk specifics. But I'm assuming that most of these works went into private collections. How does that affect - you know, whether or not that's the case, in this specific instance? But should these works be essentially sought after by museums and educational institutions that couldn't show them publicly to…</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Oh - excuse me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Go ahead.</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Now, I'd like to speak about that because it - we did not just sell to individual collectors. Early on when we acquired this collection after Golden State contacted us, I made a very early and broad attempt to notify museums and institutions so they could participate in our auction. You have to give museums advanced notice because it's not like someone who can just write a check, they have to go through acquisition committees, and it takes time for them to get their act together, to be ready to bid in auction. And we had a whole host of institutions and museums participating in this sale. Some were successful. Some were outbid by individuals, private collectors. But we certainly had a very broad and involved institution and museum-client base for the sale. And that…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Bill, what…</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): And that's…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Sorry. Go ahead.</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Excuse me. No and that's something that we're making every effort to do - to reach out not just to individuals, but to museums and institutions.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Bill, this may not be something that you deal with directly in terms of how you sell your art, but even people who are private collectors can then choose to show in museums. How important is having access to artworks in public spaces so people who don't have $360,000 can go and access those works?</s>Mr. BILL HODGES (Owner, Bill Hodges Gallery): I think it's extraordinarily important. For so many years, people would go into the museums and not see major works by African-Americans. Years ago, when the museums - the Philadelphia Museum acquired a Tanner, that was a major acquisition.</s>Mr. BILL HODGES (Owner, Bill Hodges Gallery): But for so many years, people would go into museums and not see works by African-Americans. I guess, Bearden and - Bearden especially was one of the people in the late '70s, in fact that they're from about 1963 on, you could see works by Bearden in the museums and it was heavily collected by museums.</s>Mr. BILL HODGES (Owner, Bill Hodges Gallery): But it's extraordinarily important to see pieces like Charles White, works like David Hammonds, works like - so many of the works that were in this particular field at one gallery. So it's a wonderful thing that institutions are, you know - because the question remains and you were saying, you know, seeing our people or African-Americans as a whole on the walls of museum because, you know, historically, they were not there because of the color of their skin. And it's been very well known - it's a well-known fact.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Bill and Nigel, thanks so much for this.</s>Mr. NIGEL FREEMAN (Head, African-American Fine Art Department, Swann Galleries): Thank you.</s>Mr. BILL HODGES (Owner, Bill Hodges Gallery): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Bill Hodges runs and owns Bill Hodges Gallery in Manhattan and Nigel Freeman heads the African-American Fine Arts Department of Swann Galleries. He joined us from NPR studios in New York.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And you can see some of the works sold in the Golden State Mutual auction, just go to npr.org.

Crime rates dropped sharply in the past twenty years, according to FBI data, a trend that continues despite the recession and a recent decrease in prison populations. Criminologists see a clear trend, but can't fully explain what's driving the decline in violent and property crime rates. Charles Lane, columnist, Washington Post William Bratton, former chief of police, New York and Los Angeles

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. If violent crime statistics were spiraling up to historic levels, you might expect plenty of blame to go around: angry politicians pointing fingers and blue-ribbon panels pondering what's torn the fabric of society.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The fact is we're on the opposite end of that spiral. FBI statistics show crime down significantly over the past 20 years, homicides by 51 percent, property thefts 64 percent. Better policing gets some of the credit, but criminologists cheerfully admit they can't explain it all.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So what's gone right, and how does that change things? How has the drop in violent crime changed your life? 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: Later in the program, 125 writers on the moment that changed their lives. We'd like to hear the story of your moment. You can email us now, talk@npr.org. But first the decrease in crime, and we begin with Washington Post columnist Charles Lane, who joins us from a studio at the newspaper. Nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today.</s>CHARLES LANE: Thank you, Neal, happy New Year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy New Year to you. You're on because you wrote a piece where, among other things, you added up some of the hidden benefits of all this less crime.</s>CHARLES LANE: Yeah, I think it's one of those things where the old saying is you don't know what you've got until it's gone, and here it's you don't know what you're getting until it's gone, in a way. We are - crime is down so dramatically that you can see the benefits not only in improved sort of sense of security and psychological well-being that goes along with that, that's shown up in Gallup polls that show people feeling more comfortable now walking at night outside.</s>CHARLES LANE: It shows up in the improved nightlife of downtowns, which means more money for tourism here and there. There was a story, coincidentally, in the New York Times last week about the nighttime culture of Central Park. Remember that, it was supposed to be such a dangerous place? Now it's full of joggers and bikers and people walking their dogs.</s>CHARLES LANE: And simply last but very much not least is the lives that are not being lost to crime that used to be. I cited some information in my piece from criminologist Franklin Zimring, who points out that because of the drop in homicide in New York, the death rate for young men in that city is half what it would have been if the homicide rate had remained what it used to be.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I took a look at Mr. Zimring's book, "The City that Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control," and one of his conclusions is really interesting: Most of the crime associated with New York in the '70s and '80s, that's when it was spiraling up so badly, was not an organic outgrowth of the people who lived in the city or the way they lived.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Single-parent families, chronic illegal drug commerce and use, economic inequality, problematic urban educational systems and cultural values that emphasized male aggression and machismo can produce a city with homicide rates of 5.6 per 100,000, as well as producing a city with a homicide rate of 30.7.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: His conclusion is there has been fundamental change in the crime rate without fundamental change in the city.</s>CHARLES LANE: Yeah, that's his very controversial claim, and I think he is - one of the reasons I like his book is that he's very candid about what we do and do not know. I suspect the police department of New York would argue that they did make fundamental changes in the way they approached crime as an institution there, and New York, as you probably know, Neal, was a center of innovation under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg.</s>CHARLES LANE: And they take a lot of credit, but I think it's also probably the case that the credit that's given to those new policing tactics can be overstated. So we do have a little bit of a case study and sort of a crime mystery here. Fortunately, though, the question is trying to figure out a good development that's a bit mysterious.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's get another voice into the conversation. Among those who get some of the credit for those changes, William Bratton, currently chairman of Kroll, a corporate investigations and risk consultant firm but formerly chief of police in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles. And he joins us from our bureau in New York. And William Bratton, nice to have you with us today.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: It's very good to be with you, thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I - how much does improved policing and larger numbers of police, how much credit should that be given?</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: In New York and Los Angeles the majority of the credit, being quite frank with you, that in both those cities - and I was police commissioner in '94 to '96 in New York and for 2002 to 2009 in Los Angeles, the country's two largest cities and presided over the beginnings of phenomenal decreases in crime.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: And I give a lot of the credit to the police, who were focused on the changing of behavior because we have finally come to appreciate that crime is not caused by, but influenced by, the economy sometimes, by the weather sometimes, by demographics sometimes, by poverty, by racism. Those are influences which for 30 years criminologists, academics and politicians told us that they were the causes of crime.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: The cause of crime is quite simple: It's human beings who decide intentionally to commit a crime, criminals, or many others who get caught up in the moment of passion under the inducement of alcohol or drugs and commit crimes. That's what police exist for, to control behavior.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: And in New York City, and I can speak very specifically to it, and in Los Angeles, I can specifically towards there also, that was the focus of the Los Angeles and New York City police departments: to control behavior, to change it. And that's effectively what the single most significant cause was, if you will, in both those cities.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: And also the embrace of a philosophy of policing, community policing, that after the failed philosophy of reactive policing, community policing focused on the prevention of crime, returning us to our roots.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: So if you want to blame somebody for the crime decline in New York and L.A., two cities I'm intimately familiar with, blame the police.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Blame the police, OK. Well, it's interesting, there are - during those 20 years, when crime has been declining, for most of that time, except for the last couple of years, the numbers of people incarcerated also spiraled up very heavily. Did that play a factor?</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: In New York, we intentionally understood that there was going to be a bell curve, that to change behavior, which had not been controlled for 30 years in this city, in which all types of aberrant street behavior was allowed - drug dealing on street corners, 8,000 open-air drug dealing locations in 1993 documented, quarter-million fare evaders every day in the subway system, street prostitution, the so-called broken windows that Kelling and Wilson wrote so eloquently about - that police were not focused on preventing crime or dealing with quality-of-life crime.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: They were focused on responding to crime. That's what they were expected to do because they had been told that the root causes of crime were beyond anything that they could deal with.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: If you believe that the root cause of crime is individual behavior, well, that's what police in a democracy exist to deal with, and that's what we dealt with, first in the subways in New York City beginning in 1990. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the effect of that in his book "Tipping Point," where fare evasion, which was epidemic, like an epidemic growing in leaps and bounds, once we began to focus on going after the individual fare evader so that people could see we were focused on that behavior, it changed and changed almost overnight.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Just the other day here in New York, a fare evader was arrested by a police officer, 20 years after we developed the tactic, and lo and behold, what did that fare evader have in his possession? He had a 9 millimeter handgun in his waistband, and in his gym bag, he had a machine gun.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: And so the idea was that if he'd been smart enough to pay the fare, the police might not have ever focused on him, but because he broke the rules, in New York we pay attention to those rules, as well as more serious crime.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Charles Lane, the explosion of prison population a byproduct of the policing that has happened, as well, is it an inevitable byproduct?</s>CHARLES LANE: I don't think so. If you look at the numbers, they tell the story that during the period of 1990 to '99, when the country was just beginning to sort of get a hold of the crime rate that had exploded theretofore, you saw the prison population growing really fast, 6.5 percent per year, which was five times the rate of overall population growth.</s>CHARLES LANE: But in the last decade, that decelerated to 1.8 percent growth per year through 2009, only twice the rate or a little bit close to twice the rate of overall population growth. And now in the last two years, the prison growth rate has begun to actually decrease, marginally, and I think that is natural because now that we've gotten crime down, right, in the last decade or two, there will be, you know, fewer inmates coming on-stream.</s>CHARLES LANE: We do face as a society a couple of real dilemmas associated with this. One is the just troubling consequences of that many people, a million and a half people, roughly, in state custody. And number two, what to do with all those folks who were incarcerated for long periods in many cases back in the 1990s when they start coming out over the next decade.</s>CHARLES LANE: But I think there's a lot of disagreement about exactly how much of the credit for reduction in crime, increased incarceration for longer sentences, deserves. But I think most experts agree it at least deserves part of it because during the '60s and '70s, the period where crime really took off in this country, it coincided with, in a way, a relaxation of incarceration, and so I think the reversal of that played some role in improving the crime situation.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: This is Bill Bratton again. If I may go back to that point, in New York City, we consciously understood that when we began to change behavior that we were going to increase the number of arrests particularly for quality-of-life behavior, and many of those then led to arrests for more significant behavior such as carrying firearms while you're evading the fare on the subway.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: So the prison population in the city jails, Rikers Island went up from about 17,000 to a maximum of about 22,000 in the '90s, today that prison population in the city jail is around 11,000 to 12,000 on average each day. Why? The city has had 700,000 crimes in the early 1990s each year. This year, they'll report about 105,000.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: New York City is the principal feeder of the New York state prison system. New York state is, in fact, closing prisons because the prison population has declined. Effectively, it goes back to my point again about the emphasis on police changing behavior, controlling behavior to such an extent you change it.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: We are going to be tested in the next several years as a large part of that prison population is being accelerated out of prison because of budget issues, et cetera, and coming back into an environment where, in many cases, they're not going to be under supervision of parole agents or probation agents.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: So we have a new potential area of concern and area of study to learn from. Can we in fact control their behavior once they come out of prison?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about the drop in crime rates over the past 20 years, a major drop in crime rates. How has that changed your life? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. We'll continue with Washington Post columnist Charles Lane and William Bratton, the former chief of police in Los Angeles and New York City. 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. The economy remains sluggish. Even after the recession ended, a number of states released prisoners to cut costs or comply with court orders. Still, crime rates continue to drop. Criminologists can't fully explain why.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking today about what's gone right in the fight against crime and how that changes things. How has the drop in violent crime changed your life? 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: Our guests are Washington Post columnist Charles Lane, William Bratton, former chief of police in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, now chairman of Kroll, a corporate investigations and risk consultant group. And let's see if we can get a caller in on the conversation. We'll start with Linda(ph), Linda with us from St. Louis.</s>LINDA: Well hi, happy New Year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy New Year to you.</s>LINDA: I have a kind of unusual aspect - perspective on it. I'm thinking that violent video games have helped. I think when people get frustrated, and they go home, and they can shoot a few people on video, they don't have to do it in real life.</s>LINDA: And, you know, I walk around my neighborhood, and, you know, I feel safer. People are in their house, and, you know, every window has a blue TV screen shining out of it. And, you know, that's - I think that's an outlet for people, and I think that they're using it a lot more. It's cheap, it's readily available, and you do it in the comfort of your home. You don't have to get on a subway, you know.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting theory, Linda. Charles Lane, I suspect if - again going back to that opening, if crime were going up, people would say it's those violent video games.</s>CHARLES LANE: That's right, and they do say that when certain crimes happen. But I would offer kind of a modified hypothesis of what your caller just said. As Mr. Bratton well remembers, there used to be a place in Boston called the Combat Zone. It was an area where XXX films were shown, and it became sort of zoned there, and it was an area where criminals became active. And lots of cities had sort of red-light districts like that.</s>CHARLES LANE: But now that pornography can be viewed on the Internet and before that on home video, a lot of that went indoors, and a lot of the sort of prostitution and outdoor kind of criminal activity that went along with it disappeared, as well.</s>CHARLES LANE: I think there's a really potentially fruitful area for inquiry related to the whole change in urban downtown activity that may have been brought about by moving a lot of this kind of entertainment, adult entertainment, indoors to private homes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting, Linda, but you do say you do feel more comfortable walking around downtown at night?</s>LINDA: Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, I don't think that there is as much of a problem. People aren't coming up behind you. You know, it's calmer. I think that's the sense I get overall is the whole area, it's calmer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, Linda.</s>LINDA: All right, bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Robert(ph) in Little Rock: It's good to know crime is down in some places. However, that's not the case everywhere. In Little Rock, the murder rate doubled in 2011 from 2010. The problem with consolidated crime statistics is they downplay the very real problems in some communities where crime rates may deviate from the arithmetic mean. Perhaps L.A. or New York City can spare a few police to help us here in Little Rock.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: William Bratton, it's important to point out, yes, some places do have problems, and some places, like New York, have had even more success than that mean.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Well, I think the point of the email is a very good one in that crime is not down everywhere in the significant way it is in New York and Los Angeles. But the good news is one of the things that has happened is the collaboration that goes on between government, between police, between communities in terms of what is working that we have more of an ability to share now than we did back in the '70s and '80s.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: There's more willingness to share and to work with each other. The recent spate of arson fires in Hollywood, for example, the officials out there are crediting the collaboration between agencies that as recently as 10 years ago might not have even spoken to each other for a common problem that they quickly came together and called us and set up a task force and gave out a lot of information, and the social media was engaged in it.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Times have changed, and one of the great things that has changed is the ability to communicate and to share ideas. And I began in the 1970s, when ideas weren't even being researched to be shared, and the ability to share them was de minimus.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: The world is a very different place today. So Little Rock, for example, can in fact learn from other communities as to what do they do to deal with the same issues they're dealing with. And like medicine, medicine works on different patients, it's a matter of being aware of it and having the appropriate medicine.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We should note, William Bratton earlier said a lot of the credit should go to the police for the drop in violent crime statistics. In 2011, U.S. police fatalities rose 13 percent. So we need to note that and note that those changes in statistics come at a price for those who are on the front lines, and that happens all the time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller in on the conversation. Joe's(ph) on the line with us from Tampa.</s>JOE: Hey, Neal, great show as always. I've got to say New York is now once again my favorite city. I grew up there in the '70s, and you would never ride the subway. Now in the '80s, you would see there was a lot more police riding the subway, and we were just up there last year. I let the kids go and see some stuff in downtown Times Square on their own and, you know, came back, we stayed right there, had a wonderful vacation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Charles Lane, you noted the Combat Zone in Boston, Times Square in New York City, well, a lot tamer than it used to be.</s>CHARLES LANE: You know, I showed my journalism students in a recent class a film about New York that was set in the mid-'80s, and it depicted that kind of wild scene in Times Square, and it was like showing them a film from another country. They didn't know what I was talking about.</s>CHARLES LANE: But there are incredible statistics. Central Park in 1981 reported 731 robberies in Central Park alone. In this year, the recently passed 2011, 17 robberies in Central Park. That - you know, the positive spiral that this sets off is just extraordinary, and it goes right back to what Mr. Bratton was saying.</s>CHARLES LANE: When police departments are not swamped by the crime in their own jurisdictions, they have more time and more people available to do the kind of communication he's talking about, and that in turn helps them lower crime further. That frees up additional resources.</s>CHARLES LANE: In fact, New York has sustained these reductions in crime with a smaller police force. It has shrunk by about 6,000 men over the last - men and women I should say - over the last decade. And so I can't emphasize strongly enough that once you achieve that tipping point, the positive spiral that it sets in motion is really dramatic in some cases.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joe, thanks very much for the call.</s>JOE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Daniel(ph), Daniel with us from Oxford in Ohio.</s>DANIEL: Good afternoon, how are you today?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>DANIEL: Excellent. I wanted to make a comment that I think will inform a little bit of your discussion. I'm a law enforcement officer working in a rural environment. In the areas of a rural state like Ohio, we've noticed that total arrests per officer are down. I would like to consider, like, at least your panelists to consider, the fact that officer-initiated violator contacts are down because of fewer number of law enforcement officers. And that would directly relate the total number of arrests and reports of crime.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So you're suggesting there's crime, even violent crime, that goes unreported?</s>DANIEL: Indeed, and what I would - I would present that the officer-initiated crime is down significantly, at least in my area of the world, largely because there are fewer officers that are actively on patrol specifically in our rural areas. The urban areas that you've discussed earlier, clearly there is less public crime in the downtown areas because of the good work of law enforcement, you know, professionals like Chief Bratton and many of the others that have followed in his example.</s>DANIEL: Wherever you have areas that have lots of legitimate visitation and good populations of law-abiding citizens, the violating population feels less comfortable and less inclined to do violence. I think that was a large part of Chief Bratton's book that he published in the mid-'90s, his book entitled "Turnaround," that I'm confident is the fact in the areas where you have large populations and proactive professional law enforcement, it's created environments that...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, it's interesting you say that, but Chief Bratton, I'm taking Daniel's comments, they're important, but nevertheless I don't think there's, for example, less drug traffic in places like New York and Los Angeles than there used to, there's just less violent crime associated with drugs.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Not necessarily that in New York, I mentioned that in 1993, '94, that there were 15,000 documented drug-selling locations, 8,000 on the streets, street corners, and 7,000 indoor locations. Certainly those 8,000 external, very visible locations that were destroying neighborhoods are largely gone, not to say there's still certain areas in New York that you can see open-air drug dealing, but not anywhere near the scale of which it occurred in 1993, '94.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: And the issue, I think, is the idea that where police focus their attention, that the number of police are important, you get what you pay for, that you can expect what you expect. And in New York in the '90s, we had a lot of cops: 38,000. It went up to as high as 41,000 after I had left. But in Los Angeles, I had a police force of about 9,000. And while we were able to grew it by almost a thousand over the seven years I was there, I still proportionally had a police force that I would have had to have had 18,000 officers in L.A. to have had equivalent numbers to what I had in New York.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: But it was how we use them. We use them very proactively, hot-spot policing. We use them very assertively. And we use them to control behavior. The challenge was to do it constitutionally, compassionately, consistently. But L.A. now is into - going into its 10th straight year of crime decline with a police force that's actually shrinking in size, similar to New York's situation. And what has, in fact, happened was that with a population that has grown in both cities, the criminal population has not grown, that the behavior is being controlled.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: And so to your caller's point, it's a combination of factors: enough police, but, as importantly, what those police are doing. Are they, in fact, assertive? Are they policing? Are they addressing what's creating fear? In New York for 30 years, they were not addressing what was creating fear among the eight million, and that was bringing about the 700,000 victims that they had in the early 1990s. Starting in the '90s, we began to address what was creating the fear, as well as the root causes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Daniel, thanks very much for the call.</s>DANIEL: And thank you very much for your time and, Chief Bratton, for your valuable service.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Charles Lane, I wanted to go back to that point, though. It is - Mr. Zimring's contention in his book, "The City That Became Safe," indeed that by most demographic projections, the way the population of the city - in New York City he's writing about - you would expect, by previous expectations, that crime would have gone up. In fact, it has gone down.</s>CHARLES LANE: Yeah. I think one of the reasons I wrote in my column was that I think journalists generally don't spend enough time trying to understand good news. And I think this is a challenge to all of us who try to analyze what's going on in the society, is to understand why this positive trend took hold at a time precisely when everyone - all the experts were predicting that in the early 1990s that we were about to experience an even worse crime wave in this country. And it did - not only didn't happen, it went dramatically in the other direction.</s>CHARLES LANE: One of the things that was supposed to be about to happen was the rise of the sort of youth super-predator category - didn't happen. Another thing that was supposed to happen was that, you know, crime in small cities was going to start to approach the same level as New York City - didn't happen. And so forth, and so on. And I think, again, it's a problem that really needs study. If I wanted to call for anything in this, it would be detailed, careful study of this positive trend, so that we can make sure to continue to do the things that will prevent this from ever reversing and ever having the country go back to the past levels of violence.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Charles Lane is a columnist for The Washington Post. He wrote about crime statistics for the newspaper. William Bratton, the former police chief for Los Angeles, New York City and Boston, now current chairman of Kroll. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. And let's go to Tara, Tara with us from California.</s>TARA: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call. I love your show. You have a great show. My husband and I listen to it all the time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>TARA: Yeah. I just wanted to say real quickly that we've been experiencing the opposite. We're in Northern California, and quite a few areas have been experiencing an explosion of crime - not violent crimes. It's more home invasions, home break-ins, that sort. But I don't agree with that last caller. I think reduced police force, maybe a reduce in recordkeeping and statistics - so, you know, for L.A. to have less crime, I'm really surprised. I'm from L.A. And with the problems on the border, you know, drugs and so forth, I'm really surprised that they show less violent crime.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, Tara. Thanks very much. And again, it's important to remember categories of crimes and location, location, location. Here's an email from Jonathan in Massachusetts: Why is it now that murder rates are falling? You hear little or no talk about changing criminal law to provide more liberty and less security. Why don't we also pass laws to be a little softer on criminals or make prisons more humane? We are quick to move to a more police state when things get bad, but refuse to move back when the facts change. I wonder, Charles Lane, if you have a comment.</s>CHARLES LANE: Well, I guess I don't agree with the caller's premise. I think that actually a number of states now are exploring alternatives to incarceration. I think the - kind of the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction. We've recently had the Supreme Court order a large-scale release of prisoners from California state prisons because they were deemed to be unconstitutionally - the conditions were unconstitutionally bad. And I think that, in fact, the nature of the fall in crime itself is about to start solving some of the concerns that the caller or the emailer raises because, I repeat, as you have less crime, you will have less incarceration. I think this problem, though, a real one is - I hope, and I think the numbers suggest - may be already on the way to ameliorating itself to some degree.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Chief Bratton, you've talked about some of the things that you thought went right, including, of course, important changes in how the police operate. What is the most important thing to remember as we move forward? What lesson should we learn?</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Well, I think, of the 1990s, we had a perfect storm, in a good way. We had, truly, for the first time, a collaboration, a partnership between the national government, the omnibus crime bill, President Clinton, the creation of the community policing office and the embrace of that philosophy. So we had partnership - federal, state, local government. We had a philosophy that repudiated the professional philosophy of focusing police on only responding to crime.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: It was now going to be turned into a focus on prevention. We had an investment, a huge investment made in seven - excuse me, 100,000 additional police officers in the United States who are better-equipped, better-trained, better-led. We had lessening of some of the racial tensions that have been so much part of our problems in the '60s, '70s and '80s. We had a very good time in the 1990s in that we invested significantly in trying to correct the problem that had been going for 30 years.</s>WILLIAM BRATTON: Now, as we go into the 21st century, we are disinvesting, and we're going to - we have to take a close look at what does that disinvesting - what is it going to result in? Will it see a return to some of the bad old days? We just don't know right now, because we're at the beginning of the turn of that pendulum.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: William Bratton, thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate it. Charles Lane, also thank you for your time. Charles Lane, a columnist for the Washington Post, joined us from a studio at the newspaper there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Up next: the kiss, verdict, the second chance - tell us about the moment that changed your life. 800-989-8255. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

The Department of Labor has proposed regulations that would limit the kinds of work children can do on farms. Opponents feel the rules would hurt family farms and fundamentally alter farming life, while proponents say the changes would help keep kids safe. Pat Blank, senior news producer, Iowa Public Radio's KUNI Bill Northey, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Nancy Leppink, deputy administrator, U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Des Moines. The Department of Labor describes proposed regulations on kids and agriculture in terms of safety. A lot of farmers describe them as an attack on the rural way of life. The restrictions would prevent children 16 and under from the riskiest work, like driving tractors or working atop tall ladders, unless they're working for their parents on a family farm.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Opponents argue that exception doesn't go far enough, that regulations could discourage youngsters and increase reliance on migrant labor. The period for public comment on these regulations expired at the beginning of this month, but farmers, here's another chance to weigh in. 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: Later in the program, more on an Iowa law some say criminalizes HIV, but first child labor on family farms. We begin with Pat Blank, a senior producer for Iowa Public Radio. She joins us today from the studios at Iowa Public Radio in Cedar Falls. Pat, nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Nice to be here, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I understand you grew up on a farm, not all that uncommon in this state. How would these new regulations require change? Would it be serious change?</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: I think in some cases perhaps it would be more because it is called a family farm for a reason, and not everybody lives on a particular farm. There are also siblings, cousins, grandpa, grandma, and some of these rules and regulations would prohibit the cousins from coming to the farm maybe on the weekend or during the week and helping with some of the chores if they were under a certain age.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If they're under a certain age and depending on the task that they're assigned to do. Also as I understand it, a lot of family farmers rent land that's adjacent or nearby, and again it's unclear whether these regulations would apply to children working on that land.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Exactly, and also perhaps if, at the spur of the moment, they need to bale hay, for example, and not everybody is there on the farm, they would need to call someone in from the city to help, and that would prohibit that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The idea is that this is primarily directed - and we're going to hear later from somebody at the Labor Department - this is primarily directed not against family farms, this is primarily directed against children who are hired migrant laborers.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: I would say some, yes, migrant laborers, but it's such a broad law that it doesn't really say migrant laborers per se on the rules and regulations. So the way that it is being interpreted, I think some of the fear comes from that it's not just migrant laborers or somebody coming in who's hired on the farm, but again those people who are not specifically related and live on the farm.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, how is safety regulated now?</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Pretty much by the farmers themselves. I think the farmers are likely to assign things that are age-appropriate and skill-appropriate in most cases to their own children and all those who help, as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet we also see statistics that agriculture is the most dangerous occupation.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Exactly, and I don't think anyone argues that the revisions are needed. This would be the first rewrite of these proposals in more than 30 years. I think some of the sticking points come with who's going to enforce it, and we know best, speaking as farmers, farmers who live on the farms know best as to what's appropriate and what's not appropriate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are - yes, we're talking about family farms, but we're talking in Iowa and most of the rest of the country, too, about corporate farms, and most of these regulations, it would seem, would apply to people working not only on those farms but in places like grain silos and meat-packing areas.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, and so in those kind - in other words, the reaction you're hearing, are people saying we don't need these regulations, or these regulations need to be tweaked so that they exempt the family farms even more than these ones do already?</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: I think that's mostly the case, and in the reporting that I did, for example, the 70-year-old grandmother who I talked to said we taught these children to be safe. We taught them what was safe and how we did things on the farm, and we also instilled the passion for the farm. So the family farms are not dying, that we would continue to pass these on.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: So I think that's the sticking point here in Iowa for much of it, and no one, again, argues that they're against safety. They want to make sure that some places are prohibited: grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots. Those are all dangerous places for people any age, 16 or under or older.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, so are tractors.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: True. Some of the - some of them would be prohibited from under age 16 operating almost all power-driven equipment. That would be four-wheelers, tractors and that kind of thing. So what has been proposed or what has been talked about is to bring this back to the classroom and have vocational agriculture teaching some of those things, teaching driver safety skills.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: The problem with that is a lot of the budget cuts have cut those programs out of the schools and out of the budget.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's bring Bill Northey into the conversation, secretary of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. He also comes from a long line of farmers, four generations, and he joins us now from his office here in Des Moines. Nice to have you with us today on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>BILL NORTHEY: Good to be with you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I know you've been a vocal opponent of these proposed laws. What's your issue?</s>BILL NORTHEY: Yeah, the same as Pat has laid out here. I think they just go too far. You know, I think probably as you mentioned, the intention is correct, to be able to address some of the concerns where there are kids that are unrelated, they're migrant families, they're in situations with large numbers of employees.</s>BILL NORTHEY: But I think, whether accidentally or on purpose, these end up catching family farms, and they can catch family farms where the parent is just wanting to be able to be out there with children and having plenty of time to be able to teach them how to handle themselves around livestock or around equipment.</s>BILL NORTHEY: In some cases, you're going to have kids out there that will have a school permit that can drive to school but can't drive the tractor on their farm three miles an hour across a farmyard. And certainly even some challenges in taking care of livestock in 4H and FFA projects if it's read in its most aggressive form.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet I'm sure the first thing we'll hear from the Department of Labor is wait a minute, there's an exception for family farms. The regulations presume that parents will take greater care for the safety of their own children, and therefore, these don't apply in those situations.</s>BILL NORTHEY: And that does help certainly in some situations. If - my understanding as I read it, I made my way through the regulations, the exception is for someone who owns their own family farm, and it's their own kids - it's not their grandkids so that you'd have a challenge if you had a grandparent out there, and the son wasn't farming, or the daughter wasn't farming, and the grandkids wanted to come out.</s>BILL NORTHEY: You also have a challenge if it's a family farm corporation. Now, if it's owned solely by that family, these are family farms, as well. If they're owned solely by that family, there is an exception, but if it's owned by that family member and another brother - in fact, many of these farms out here are owned by several different family members. They are absolutely family farms in all ways except evidently according to these regulations.</s>BILL NORTHEY: And those exceptions don't capture those kinds of family farms in the way the regulations read right now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And also as we mentioned, rented land might not be covered, either.</s>BILL NORTHEY: Yeah, I think there is a question mark about that. I would think you might be able to cover that under the family farm operation definition, but I think there certainly are folks that raise a question about that, as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And some opponents say this is a case of far-off Washington making regulations about things people really don't have a clue about.</s>BILL NORTHEY: Well, I guess we don't necessarily know intentions or the folks that put it together. I do think this is the value of having a comment period, in having a chance for people to be able to weigh in with their concerns.</s>BILL NORTHEY: Now, I assume the Department of Labor, then, will look at those concerns and realize that there are some - I would still hope these are unintended consequences to capture some of the family farm operations. Maybe they do intend to. I guess we'll see what the final rules look like. But I would hope that folks have laid out a lot of the situations that could be a problem and that those are understood and taken into account when they write a final rule.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bill Northey, secretary of the Iowa Department of Agriculture, with us today from his office in Des Moines, thanks very much for your time.</s>BILL NORTHEY: Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Ellen(ph) in Ann Arbor: How are they going to uphold these regulations for farms? Is the county sheriff going to be arresting owners of factory farms that have child migrant workers? Pat Blank, do the regulations speak to that?</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Not that I could see about how they're going to provide for that, and that was one of the things that came up with some of the reporting that I did. Some of the people said: OK, great, you put these in effect. Is it going to pit neighbor against neighbor, somebody sees one of the children driving the tractor who shouldn't be, are they going to call somebody and turn them in? I guess that's part of what needs to be decided by the Department of Labor.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get a caller in on the conversation, 800-989-8255. Charles(ph) is with us from Kingston, Arizona.</s>CHARLES: Kingston, Arkansas.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Arkansas, excuse me, AR, and I made the mistake, my apologies.</s>CHARLES: Yeah, I just wanted to say that farming and ranching is a culture. The only way that you can learn to do certain things is by doing them. And when you're a kid, if you're not out there participating, you're not going to learn. And it is dangerous, most of the things or many of the things you do on a farm are dangerous, but if you've ever tried to hire someone that wasn't raised on a farm to help you work on a farm, you just see that the danger is transferred to an older age.</s>CHARLES: You can't hire city people to work on farms. They can't do it. They don't know how to fix things. They don't know how to handle livestock. So a regulation like this that is basically unenforceable I think does more harm than good.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Even though there is the exception for family farms?</s>CHARLES: Well, I wish I'd read the regulation. But I mean, one of my greatest experiences growing up was working for my neighbors. Would that have been illegal?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I guess it would depend on the age and what you were asked to do, but you were asked to do some evidently dangerous things.</s>CHARLES: Yeah, a lot of the things we did were dangerous. As a ranch kid, probably the most dangerous thing you do is ride a horse. Are you going to say that you can't help your neighbors when you're 15 years old, help them round up their cattle? I think this is just another case of the government, maybe they've got other things they could be doing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Charles, thanks very much for the call, we appreciate it. We're talking about the regulations, proposed regulations, that would cover kids and agricultural work. Farmers, what do you think? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. You can also send us an email, talk@npr.org. More in just 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. I'm Neal Conan broadcasting today from the studios of Iowa Public Radio in Des Moines. We're talking about proposed regulations from the Labor Department that affect kids and agriculture, regulations directed at safety, safety primarily of the tens of thousands of kids who work as migrant workers on farms and grain silos and feed lots around the country, but regulations that many farmers say has maybe unintended consequences, attack a way of life that would affect family farms.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Even though there is an exemption for family farms, many farmers say the exemptions don't go far enough. Our guest is Pat Blank, a senior news producer for Iowa Public Radio, grew up on a farm and reported on these proposed regulations. 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And let's go next to Richard, and Richard's with us from Red Love in California.</s>RICHARD: Hi, I do safety training for farm workers, plus I worked on farms since I was probably 12 or 13 years old, for the neighbors. And as people when they're younger can learn to do things that are harder (unintelligible) caller mentioned when they're older - and I have been 20 years of safety training, and it's - you know, it takes work. You need to work with them. It can't just be turn them loose.</s>RICHARD: But I learned to drive tractors and spray and pick on ladders very young, and it taught me a lot of responsibility, and you know, I realize the risk, and it helped me in training other people. And usually, you know, the families will work with them. They don't want their kids to get hurt, whether they're migrant or owners. And it's just takes - like learning to drive a car, if they start young and work with them and teach them the safety rules and the consequences, I think it's a lot better than it is to wait until somebody's older, and it's harder for them to learn, and they haven't worked.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Richard, if you train safety, you are well aware then of the statistics. A lot of people get hurt on the farm, even if they're trained.</s>RICHARD: Yes, and I always bring up in my training that there's very few accidents. It's mostly careless acts. And they just need to be trained on what can happen and how to prevent it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So as you look at all those tractors that overturn, I think 1,400 people get injured every year in overturned tractors, this is something - are people when you train them trained to wear protective clothing, seat belts, that sort of thing?</s>RICHARD: Yes, a lot of the training I do is in orchards. So it's - sometimes they can't use the roll bars, but - so you know, train to have to be that much more careful. And if they, you know, if they have the roll bars, they absolutely have to wear seat belts. And, you know, of course I expose a lot of information on what has happened, and you know, review the consequences just like nothing - I just read a thing the other day, they were saying the most dangerous thing for a farm worker to do is to drive to work and go home.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, that's probably true as well, but that's a problem that afflicts all of us, but...</s>RICHARD: Right, but you know, we can't rid of all the hazards, but by teaching people young, and especially people that are going to be involved in it the rest of their lives, they have a lot more opportunity to learn how to do it correctly from the beginning.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Richard, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it.</s>RICHARD: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Pat Blank, I wanted to ask you the question - essentially I think what we're hearing from Bill Northey and from our callers is this is to some degree an apprenticeship and that unless you learn young, well, unless you spend years learning how to do this work, you're not going to learn how to do it.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: I think that's correct, and I think also that you won't have a fire in your belly for staying on the farm and continuing to be on the farm unless you started out doing it as a child.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And give us an example from - if you would, if I'm not prying too much - from your own background. What did you learn to do young, and how did it change your life?</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: I learned a lot of responsibility because - especially around the animals. I was responsible for - we had a lot of chickens. Actually, we had every animal. We had chickens, hogs and cattle. And it was my responsibility to make sure that the chickens got fed.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: If I went to school and didn't feed the chickens, then they were hungry, and then they didn't produce eggs, and that was part of our livelihood. So I learned responsibility. And I also learned to be careful and to be - to look around me, just to look at my surroundings, to be careful by looking around and seeing what was ahead of me, not just looking what's on the ground and right in front of my nose.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller in. This is Nancy, Nancy with us from Ann Arbor.</s>NANCY: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, you're on the air, go ahead, please.</s>NANCY: I just wanted to say I'm not sure what the answer is to all this, but I baled hay in eighth grade, ninth grade and 10th grade, and it was extraordinarily dangerous. I got heat stroke twice. I had a whole stack of hay fall on me. At the same time, it was a really valuable experience to me, and even now, and I can tell you absolutely that at the time, even though after the stack of hay fell on me, I would not have ever said no.</s>NANCY: I would not have ever walked away from it, and I think that somebody needs to watch out for the kids because this is not something that I would want my kids to do. You're actually incentivized, if you had a whole team to bale hay, you got five cents a bale, but on the days that I did it all alone because I was the only one who showed up, I got 25 cents a bale.</s>NANCY: So I think that somebody needs to watch out for the kids because they just don't have the wherewithal at that age to look out for their own safety and say no to things that are very dangerous.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And was this on your family farm or working for somebody else?</s>NANCY: No, this was working for somebody else.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, Nancy, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it. I'm glad you got out from under that hay.</s>NANCY: Me too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nancy Leppink is deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the Department of Labor. That's the division responsible for enforcing federal law on child labor. She joins us now by phone from Minnesota. And Nancy Leppink, thanks very much for your time today.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: My pleasure, thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I know you've been listening to the broadcast so far, and I wonder, the exemptions for family farms, these are not set in concrete as I understand it. You've been listening to the comments that have been gathered over the past several months, and will those be taken into account?</s>NANCY LEPPINK: Well, first of all, just to correct something that you said when you introduced the program, and you said that 16 years and younger, and actually the regulations only apply to children who are 15 years and younger. So any child who's 16 years of age can perform any work no matter how hazardous on any farm in which they're employed.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: The other thing that you should - people should understand is that the coverage of these - the coverage of these regulations is set by statute. And so consequently the provisions that relate to family farms and the provisions that relate to who is obligated to comply with the regulation is set by statute.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: The only thing that these regulations that are being proposed do is that they look at the types of hazards that are present in agriculture and make a determination as to whether or not they're too hazardous for children to perform who are younger than the age of 16.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: So issues related to, you know, the family farm exemption is really - is set by statute, and nothing in the regs that are being proposed makes any change regarding the coverage of the law that's been in effect for over 40 years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So just to clarify, if a family rents some acreage next door, would kids under the age of 16 be allowed to work on that?</s>NANCY LEPPINK: It depends on what they would be having them do. If they employ them and they - having them engage in activities that either the current regulations would prohibit or the proposed regulations would prohibit, then yes, that would be a child labor issue.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: However, there's many things that children, you know, of all ages can do and can continue to do on farms and would be able to continue to do under the proposed regulations.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Some - we saw some comments of people complaining if you kept your 4H animals on your grandmother's farm, that might not be permissible under these regulations.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: No, that's not - that's not correct, actually. There's - first of all, the child labor regulations only apply for when there's an employment relationship. So children who are participating in 4H, children who are participating in Future Farmers of America, none of those activities are going to be affected by this proposed regulation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the other objection we heard from Bill Northey, that some farms are partnerships now, they're not strictly owned by individual families but by groups of families, would the regulations apply in those circumstances?</s>NANCY LEPPINK: Well, again, it's not so much the regulations but it's whether the statute applies, and under those circumstances, because as I said, nothing in the regulations that are being proposed changes the coverage of the statute; all it does it deal with the types of - it adds to the hazards that children or the types of jobs that children cannot be employed in on farms.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: So for the question regarded - regarding, like, limited liability corporations, that if the child - if the child is the child of a parent who's operating that farm or has an owner, who's an owner in that LLC of the farm, then that child can still fall within the exemption.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The family farm exemption. And is it correct to...</s>NANCY LEPPINK: It's not really a family farm exemption. It's more an exemption for the children of parents who own or operate a farm.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And is it correct to say that the intention here is to make it safer for persons under the age of 16? We're talking more about migrants than about the children of farmers.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: We're talking about children who are employed to work on farms, who are not the children of the owner or operator of the farm.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, again, the question that we had on enforcement, some people say it's unenforceable. In fact, that would be your responsibility, no?</s>NANCY LEPPINK: It - so it certainly is enforceable. The Wage and Hour Division is responsible for enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes the child labor laws. And we spend a significant percentage of our enforcement resources on engaging in enforcement activities in agriculture and, in fact, have had several initiatives in agriculture in the last couple of years, particularly in the blueberry industry, but also targeted investigations on the West Coast, in the strawberry industry. And so consequently, these laws are very much a priority for the Department of Labor, and we put significant resources into their enforcement.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We know the comment period has expired. What's the next step? Where do we go from here?</s>NANCY LEPPINK: Well, the department received over 10,000 comments on this proposed regulation. We extended the comment period by 30 days to ensure that all persons who had concerns regarding the regulations, both in favor or against, have the opportunity to comment. So the next steps are to review all of the comments that we've received, to take them into consideration for purposes of making changes to the regs based on those comments. And then once the comments - all the comments have been considered and appropriate changes have been made, then the rule will be published in its final form.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: When would you expect that? Just a broad time frame.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: Well, it's difficult to know, simply because 10,000 comments are a lot, and so it takes some time to give them the kind of review that they deserve. But I would say it's, you know, it's a several-month process.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nancy Leppink, thanks very much for your time.</s>NANCY LEPPINK: It's my pleasure. Thank you very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nancy Leppink, deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor. We're talking about agriculture and kids on the farm. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's get Brian on the line, Brian with us from Eagle in Michigan.</s>BRIAN: How are you doing? I have a small family farm. We have horses, pigs, sheep, chickens. I also have three of my neighbor's kids. Two of them are age 11. One of them's age nine. They come out just about every day and do something on the farm. And the question I have is if these regulations passed, since they're not my kids - we aren't employing them to do anything, but do I have to keep them off the farm?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I - as I was just hearing Nancy Leppink, I believe it has to do only with situations of employment where you're paying them. But, Pat Blank, you may understand these regulations a lot better than I do.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: That's the way I read it, as long as you don't employ them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so these kids aren't getting paid, Brian?</s>BRIAN: Nope. They come out because they like to work with the animals and they want to learn something about farming.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It sounds like, at least as far as we understand it - we're not going to provide you defense attorneys if we're wrong. But as far as we understand it, I think you're going to be OK.</s>BRIAN: All right. Well, that makes sense to me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Brian, let me just ask you: What do you think they learn in the process of working with the animals?</s>BRIAN: Well, the most important thing is when they come out, especially when you're working with a large animal like a horse, they have to learn respect. And that's - if you watch the animal, the animal will normally tell you what it's going to do. There is some danger. You know, there's danger getting in the car and getting on the expressway that's probably far greater than what they ever see on the farm.</s>BRIAN: But, you know, you learn to read the animals. You learn to respect the animals. And once you can figure out what the animal is going to do, you can't ever eliminate all the danger, but it's certainly - people have been doing it for thousands of years, and children have been doing it for thousands of years, and that's how they learn.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how old are these kids?</s>BRIAN: They're - one's nine, and two are 11.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I assume you watch them pretty carefully to make sure they're doing age-appropriate tasks. I think we lost the caller, and I apologize for that. So, Pat Blank, given the time frame, it sounds like we're going to be talking about, well, several months before these regulations are published.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Exactly. And we should probably also mention, Neal, that 70 members of the U.S. House and 28 senators have signed a letter and sent it to the labor secretary, calling for a withdrawal of the proposal altogether.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Withdrawal of the proposal altogether - even though, I think, everybody we've spoken with said, wait a minute. Yes, of course, safety is important in places, as you mentioned, like silos and feedlots.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Exactly. What they have said is that it's puzzling why the department would suddenly propose some changes to the existing regulations, particularly because we've had advances in farm equipment and the adoption of technologies that improved operator safety over the last 35 years. So they question the timing of this.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thirty-five years. That's the last time these regulations were revised, and other people might say we've learned a lot about safety since then, too.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Right. And a lot of the equipment is also safer, and some of the training is more intense. You know, some of the things that we did - I'm talking back in the '60s, you know, nobody wore a mask when they did spraying out in the farm field and, you know, we rode on the tractor with bare feet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How would this - I've read some comments that this might increase reliance on migrant labor.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Perhaps. I'm not sure that would be the case in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In Iowa. It would depend on the crop and the way the farming is set up.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: Right. We - I - we don't depend a lot on migrant workers for corn and soybeans.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Pat Blank, thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate it.</s>PAT BLANK, BYLINE: My pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Pat Blank, senior news producer for Iowa Public Radio, with us from their studios in Cedar Falls. When we come back after a short break, we're going to be talking about laws that require failure to disclose positive HIV status to sexual partners as a crime. That's the case in more than 30 states, including this one in Iowa. It's a Class B felony that could put you in jail for 25 years. More on than that we return. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

For four years, an Iraqi named Tariq worked for the U.S. military as a translator. He's faced death threats from other Iraqis and asked to be identified by only his first name for his protection. Once the troops pulled out of the country, he lost his job and the on-base security that came with it.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: Over nine years, the United States hired thousands of Iraqis as interpreters, people denounced as traitors or American agents by some of their fellow countrymen. As the U.S. military withdrew, many interpreters lost their jobs and U.S. military protection. Amid death threats, a lot of them want to relocate to the United States but can face long waits for a visa. If you worked with interpreters in Iraq, call and tell us your story: 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: A former interpreter for the U.S. military we're calling Tariq joins us now from his home in Baghdad. He's requested we not use his full name. And, Tariq, nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>TARIQ: Hi. Thank you. Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I know you've gotten death threats. How do they arrive?</s>TARIQ: Well, when I worked with the U.S. military, because everybody who works as an interpreter the U.S. military in Iraq is considered a traitor to the country because he is working with the - what they call the occupation forces. So we are, you know, a lot of people try to watch our steps and see when are we going off base and - because sometimes we take, like, about four to five days off each month when we go and visit our families. So that was when I went out one day from the base and my brother was picking me up, and we had a car following us.</s>TARIQ: And I found out that these guys were, you know, tracing us all the way, and they were having - they were armed. So thanks, we were lucky that we had a nearby U.S. patrol where we stayed there and - while they - those guys left. But - and some - yes, there's a lot of other incidents, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The unit that you were working with pulled out of Iraq, I believe, in October. And what have you done since then?</s>TARIQ: Well, since October, I'm staying home. I went once to meet an L.A. Times reporter downtown Baghdad. That was last month. And the other things, I'm just staying home. I have some new seeds. I bought some seeds and trying to have a little garden to just kill some time, you know?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you're waiting for a visa.</s>TARIQ: Exactly, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is there anything you can do to speed up the process?</s>TARIQ: Well, many senior officers in my command have tried to - there are letters to the U.S. Embassy, and they have contacted some embassy, the consular officers. But unfortunately, it didn't work. And they said that even - we contacted some senators, and the senators are saying that this process cannot be expedited nor waived.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is an American law that was passed by Congress which calls for expedited visas to be provided to, I think, to as many as 20,000 Iraqis who worked for the U.S.</s>TARIQ: Yes. It is called the Special Immigrant Visa Program. And in the Congress, they call it the Kennedy Act, which allows 5,000 Iraqis to travel to the United States on special immigrant visas from 2008 to 2012. And this number should not exceed 5,000 a year for five years, so it should be 25,000. But until now, only about 20,500, kind of like that - something like that, were granted those visas. And we're waiting, like - me, personally, I'm waiting for - since June for my visa to come.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Your cause was not helped when two Iraqis in this country were charged with plotting terrorism.</s>TARIQ: Well, yes. Those two guys that were caught and, you know, aiding al-Qaida and trying to fund it in Iraq, they did not work for Americans nor they did have (unintelligible) like what we do nor - they don't have any letters of recommendation. They went through a very different program. But unfortunately, everybody is in the same basket now, and we're held like anybody else.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: From the - you mentioned letters of recommendation. This is from the Los Angeles Times article, this is the reporter citing these letters that you received, an American colonel wrote: In the performance of his duties, Tariq has received many death threats and murder attempts. Tariq never faltered. And that he mentioned you had passed stringent U.S. military security clearances. An American lieutenant colonel wrote: I would employ and/or work with Tariq anytime, anywhere in the world.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And an email to the Los Angeles Times, the officer, who asked for anonymity, wrote: He's a very smart young man and is more well-read than most people I know. So you do have glowing recommendations. Again, that doesn't seem to be much help at the moment.</s>TARIQ: Well, yes. Unfortunately, no. That's when we contact anybody in the State Department or in the - especially those two - colonel and the lieutenant colonel. They tried their best to, you know, try to expedite the visa by contacting senior officials or writing to the U.S. Embassy. But they said that it's not the U.S. Embassy call. It's the security checks that is conducted by different department, so they have no say in it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get some callers in on the conversation. Our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. We'd like to hear from those of you who worked with interpreters in Iraq. And we'll go first to - and this is Marie. Marie with us from North Smithfield in Rhode Island.</s>MARIE: Good afternoon. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes.</s>MARIE: I'm calling because I was in Baghdad with the Civil Affairs unit from '03 to '04. And consequently, we worked with a lot of interpreters because that's what Civil Affairs soldiers do. We, you know, we work with civilians all day long. So over the entire year, we worked with about 12 interpreters, most of whom, actually, my battle buddy found and hired. And, you know, they receive threats all the time when we're in country. And about nine months after we left, two of our interpreters were shot, execution style, as soon as their car left the compound where they were working.</s>MARIE: And another one of my interpreters was struggling to get out until late 2006, and there is just nothing we could do. You know, he would call and he would email and he was just desperate. And, you know, your guest, Tariq, has referred to, you know, the red tape, the bureaucracy. You know, the paperwork with the visas, it's so complicated and it's so heartbreaking hearing them - sorry, it's very upsetting.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Are you OK, Marie?</s>MARIE: I am. I am. But, you know, good people were lost and I think a lot of Americans don't think about that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Did you ever ask your interpreters, when you were there, why, given the risk, they decided to do it?</s>MARIE: Yes. And, actually, one of our best interpreters who ended up being shot to death by a U.S. soldier on his second day in country, told that me that it's because he loved his country, and he really believed that the Americans being there was going to make it a better place, that he wanted to help. And that's how so many of my interpreters felt. There weren't just doing it for the money, although they needed the money because everything was a mess since he have gone in and ruined it. But so many of them genuinely wanted to make their country better. That was just the most heartbreaking part.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Marie, thanks very much for the call. And we're sorry that your friends got killed.</s>MARIE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tariq, I know you must know people who shared the same fate. And let me ask you the same question, given the risks, why did you decide to do it?</s>TARIQ: Well, it was the same reason, because when the Americans came in, after having - especially people on my age, we didn't even, like, see a good day in Iraq since our childhood because we were born in a war. And then in 1991, we had another war, then the embargo. Then in 2003, when the U.S. forces came and they toppled Saddam, everybody was very, you know, happy that, OK, we have the United States in Iraq now. We're going be the 51st state. We're going to have schools like they do.</s>TARIQ: We're going to have all those theme parks. We're going to have everything like the U.S. And we even - we didn't - and in Iraq there is not much a presence of a foreign population, so you always see locals. So when they the U.S. forces came in with their wonderful gear and soldiers and people that we have only seen in movies, we were very eager to work and help because we felt that working with them will be a good thing. But then, I don't know, a lot of people started to get fooled by insurgent's propaganda and - which is fueled by, you know, the neighboring countries and a lot of different organizations, terrorist organizations. So when we worked, we were - we felt that we're going to make this country a better place, but unfortunately we didn't.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: No, I understand that. Was there a time when you became disillusioned?</s>TARIQ: Well, it, kind of, in 2009 and 2010, me personally, when I started to work in a direct contact with the Iraqi government and being a liaison between the U.S. military, between my unit, which was a contracting unit, and the U.S., and the Iraqi government, and I started to see how the Iraqi officials in the government deal with the issue. That they are not even taking Iraq as a priority, nor they are trying to get use of the American presence and American, you know, ways of managing the - anything and, you know, in their work or - like Americans were fighting corruption more than Iraqis. So I was like - yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Go finish your thought.</s>TARIQ: Yeah. So I was, like, then I realized that the people who are in charge are corrupted and are not willing to do something, so I won't be able to make something.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This, an email we have from Jacob: I was a rifle platoon leader with a Stryker infantry battalion serving in Baghdad 2006, 2007. I'm eternally grateful for the service that our Iraqi interpreters gave to us. Not only did they enable us to accomplish our missions on a daily basis, but they also gave me a personal insight into Iraqi culture. I spent countless evenings drinking chai and drinking - eating Iraqi food with our platoon interpreters. I gladly wrote letters of recommendation for four of our interpreters, and thankfully, all four are in the U.S. I wish the same could be said for those who did not make it. I think it's a travesty that after the sacrifice made by these brave Iraqis, so many are essentially being held out to dry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Tariq, who served as an interpreter with U.S. forces in Iraq. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And as I understand it from that Los Angeles Times article, your fiance is among those Iraqis who did managed to make it out.</s>TARIQ: Yes. Her mom used to work for the U.S. - for a company, a U.S. company. She was a civilian, and she applied one year before me. So luckily, she made it out before the - that, you know, Kentucky incident.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: With the Iraqi refugees - when review processes were stalled, as new securities procedures were put into effect. Is there any timetable that you have from the embassy or from the State Department?</s>TARIQ: Well, when I was interviewed in June 2011 and the consular officers said that it should take about eight months after this interview. She said, I can't guarantee that you will get it within eight months. You might get it earlier. You might get it later. I have so many friends that are waiting in their 14th or 15th month, and they didn't get their visas yet. I didn't finish up that period, but unfortunately because of the situation in Iraq and because things are going bad very quickly, you know, the same day when the U.S. forces pulled out, the prime minister has issued these arrest warrants and asked for a no-confidence vote for his deputy, which has sparked some sectarian tensions.</s>TARIQ: And then two days later, we have - about 16 explosions struck Baghdad, killing about 200 civilians. And lately, he declared that the militia that was publicly attacking the U.S. who are in Iraq because of request from Iraq - the Iraqi government, he declared that this militia will join the political process. And they held a huge ceremony close to where I live in Baghdad. And they were, you know, publicly celebrating the withdrawal of the U.S. forces and saying that we have conducted about 5,200 operations against the U.S. military and killing hundreds of U.S. soldiers.</s>TARIQ: In addition, they said, we kicked the Americans out. So these people are the same people who killed interpreters, doctors, professors and American soldiers and contractors. These are now being part of this government, so you can expect which kind of government is ruling Iraq now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you did get the visa, if it did come through, where would you go? What would you do?</s>TARIQ: Well, I'm going to California. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to look for a job and try to start a new life, get married, get a life like anybody else. But unfortunately I have to leave Iraq now within - until the - because I have requested the U.S. Embassy to send my passport back because when we interview at the U.S. Embassy, they keep our passports. But now, I - because the situation has gone very bad so I've requested my passport back, and I'm going to some - to a neighbor country, probably Jordan, and wait there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is your family at risk as well?</s>TARIQ: Well, not as much as I am because I am - I'm not a kind of person who talk a lot about where do I work. And so nobody - not a lot of people knows my family and knows that I was the one who worked for the U.S. But they are in danger like anybody else. You know, everybody in Iraq is at danger. But they are not at danger because they worked for the Americans. But us, interpreters, we're, you know, we're treated in a different kind.</s>TARIQ: In a late interview that was broadcasted on your news, they met a cleric who works for the anti-American Muqtada al-Sadr. They asked him if the order to kill the interpreters that was issued before is still valid and he said, it is fully valid and it's forbidden to collaborate with the invaders and occupiers in Iraq. And if you collaborated, you have to face the Islamic justice.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It must be maddening to spend all your time indoors, tending that little garden, as you say, raising tomatoes from seeds, yet given that atmosphere, you know it must be even more crazy to think about going outdoors.</s>TARIQ: Well, I'm not exaggerating if I said I haven't seen daylight since like three or four weeks because even I'm trying to sleep, you know, the difference in timing between Iraq and the United States. So - and my fiance is in California, so she's about 10 hours far from me. So I almost sleep the day here and wake up at night, which is night - it's just midnight now in Baghdad and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Tariq, good luck to you. We wish you the best. Tariq, a former interpreter for the U.S. military. We've agreed to identify him by only his first name for his protection, with us from his home in Baghdad. Tomorrow, Jennifer Ludden will be here. Before we go today, special thanks to our hosts at New Hampshire Public Radio, especially Andrew Parrella, Nathan Chervek, R.J. Perkins and Michael Saffell. Thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back in Washington on Monday. I'm Neal Conan, TALK OF THE NATION, NPR News.

Every year thousands of scientists visit Antarctica. Some study the gas plume from the active volcano, Mount Erebus. Others map the ever-changing ice caves. But they all face the same challenges of working on extreme terrain. Two researchers and a photojournalist discuss how research is done on the frozen continent. Tehnuka Ilanko, graduate student, Volcanology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K. Kayla Iacovino, graduate student, Volcanology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K. Chris Linder, author, "Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions," Seattle, Wash.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. It may be winter up north, but down in Antarctica, the summer fun has just begun, fun of course if you're a scientist or an explorer. What could be more exciting than studying endless, beautiful blue ice, unique plant and animal life, the ebb and flow of towering glaciers?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so, each year, thousands of researchers converge on the frozen continent with summer research season that kicks off in November. A summer, of course, in Antarctica is not like one in most places. It's got a few challenges. You have to not mind sleeping in tents with 75 mile-per-hour winds or snowmobiling across ice with dangerous crevasses there or looking into the mouth of a steaming volcano.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, Antarctic and South Pole exploration is - also celebrating its 100-year anniversary because 100 years ago this minute, two exploration parties were racing to the South Pole. I'm talking about the Amundson and Scott expeditions.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Joining us to talk about science in the southernmost point of the Earth are a couple of researchers and a photojournalist who has spent some time in Antarctica. And let me introduce Kayla Iacovino, she's also a Ph.D. student at Cambridge. She's studying volcanology and petrology, has been sharing her experiences at Mount Erebus right there in Antarctica on her blog. You might remember a year ago she was on our show at sciencefriday.com. Welcome back.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Hi, Ira, good to be back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Good to have you back. Chris Linder is the author of "Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions." Chris Linder has teamed up with four science writers to create a really richly illustrated book. It's loaded with gorgeous photographs, which looks at how science gets done at the poles. And Chris joins us from Seattle. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Thanks a lot, Ira, it's great to be here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're trying to get in touch with Tehnuka Ilanko, and she's a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. She is in Antarctica and near Mount Erebus in a phone booth. We're trying to get through to her, but you know how technology works, sending a long-distance call. Well, we'll keep putting quarters into the phone and see if we can get through.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But let begin with you, Kayla. Tell us about what's going on in Antarctica compared to what you were doing last year?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Well, some of the same studies are continuing this year. A lot of the volcanic monitoring that I was - a part of my group is still happening. So, on Mount Erebus there, just so your listeners have a bit of background, Mount Erebus is a very active volcano located right near McMurdo Station, which is the largest Antarctic base.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: It's an American base, and they give us basically support and then send everything and all the supplies and helicopter us up to the volcano, where we live for about a month and monitor all kinds of things, like look at the volcanic gases that are coming out of the volcano, looking at the thermal properties of the lava lake, which is in the volcano.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: There's also people studying the ice caves, which are on Mount Erebus, and they're formed when the hot, volcanic gases from Erebus move through the ice on top of the volcano and carve out these beautiful caverns with some gorgeous crystals, ice crystals in them.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: And there's also people looking at infrasound and seismic to study the inner workings of the volcano, as well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And Chris Linder, of course, you were there yourself, taking pictures at McMurdo there.</s>CHRIS LINDER: That's right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And the gorgeous ice caves. There's a great picture in your book of - is it you? I can't remember, someone with a laptop inside an ice cave.</s>CHRIS LINDER: That was my writer, Hugh Powell, and that was actually taken during what's called happy camper training, which everyone who goes into the field in Antarctica has to go through, and it's basically an introduction in how not to die in Antarctica.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And so, we were reporting for the entire time we were in Antarctica doing daily dispatches posted to a website, and we said, well, we would love to continue doing the reporting during happy camper training, and so we brought our gear along. And for that night that we spent in what's called a quinsy, a little ice cave, we typed out and sent a dispatch.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow, and I know things are a lot different these days, Kayla. There's actually a land line that we're trying to get through to. When I was there many years ago, there was only a short-wave radio, and you were lucky to get through on that.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Yeah, we're actually surprisingly well-connected at McMurdo and even at Erebus, which is considered a remote camp. I mean, we had Wi-Fi up there. I could get the - I could actually - the Wi-Fi was coming from our hut, and we sleep in tents outside of the hut. I could actually be on the Internet on my iPhone in my tent when I was there.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: So, I mean, we do have a lot of really good connectivity up there. It's not as remote as you would think.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Last time when you were talking to us from Mount Erebus and looking down into the mouth of the volcano, a year later, have you noticed, are there any changes from what you saw a year ago?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Oh definitely. I've been - as you know, I'm in the States right now, I'm not down in the field, but I've been correlating all the reports coming in from there and posting them on the blog. And it looks like the lava lake has dropped a couple of meters in height, and it's also become a bit smaller. So it might have crusted over a bit.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: And the weather has been completely different there this year. It's a lot wetter, and so the plume, the gas that's coming out of the volcano, becomes thicker and obscure the lava lakes. So they haven't actually had that many good views into the lake.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: We had a really good year last year and got some really amazing shots.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: National Science Foundation funds a lot of research that goes on in Antarctica, and they send them all down on these big airplanes. Chris, what was your experience like on one of those planes?</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah, it's a pretty incredible opportunity to be able to travel on this huge Air Force plane. What's funny is when you load up in Christchurch, New Zealand, that's where you leave, it's summer. So it's 85 degrees, there's cicadas humming, and you've got the smell of flowers.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And early in the morning, it's not even light yet, you get into this belly of this aircraft wearing a humongous red parka, these ridiculous-looking white boots, wind pants, and so you're just sweating freely as you get into this aircraft.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And you never know what's going to be inside when you get in. There could be an eight-foot-wide drill running down the middle of the aircraft or four vehicles or a whole row of seats.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And you get in there, and you're kind of whisked up into the air, and it's usually a five-hour trip, and it's kind of disorienting because there's only about, you know, one or two little portholes that you can peek through to see this beautiful environment unfolding underneath you.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And when you land, you land on the sea ice outside of McMurdo Station and step out, and all of sudden you've gone from summer in New Zealand to summer in Antarctica, which is a very different thing. There's no smells at all. You get hit with this dry kind of chilly wind when you're out on the runway, maybe 15 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe colder out there. And you realize that the thing you need most is sunscreen and sunglasses because it's usually this bright sun that's just beaming at you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's also - you describe McMurdo as big, sprawling, what looks like a mining colony.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah, it's - when you get there you realize just how much research is going on down there during the summer months. The thing that I will never forget is this beeping sound of these loaders, whenever they're backing up, of course, they're making a beeping sound just like any truck in the United States.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And these vehicles are constantly on the move, carrying equipment, food to the helicopter pad, back up to these - one of the 47 buildings that are - that comprise McMurdo Station. And so it's designed to kind of get researchers their safety courses and to get them their gear and get them out in the field, so they can get to do science as soon as possible. But it's a lot of work.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. We're now going to see if we can bring in somebody live from Antarctica. She's a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. Tehnuka Ilanko, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tell us what you're studying there. What's your day like in Antarctica?</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: Well, I'm studying gases coming off of the plume in the lava lake off Mount Erebus. So basically I've got an instrument up at the crater rim, and it measures the infrared radiation that's basically heat that's coming off the lake. But since the heat is passing through the gases, some of it gets absorbed, and by looking at the spectrum of energy that's remaining and modeling what's been absorbed, we can figure out what gases are found and in what quantities.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And why is it so important for you to study Mount Erebus? It is one of the few active volcanoes on the Earth, is it not?</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: Yeah, it's one of only three with long-lived active lava lake, which basically represents a window into (unintelligible) system. That's quite an unusual opportunity, and surprisingly enough, Antarctica is one of the best places to study this because the other two are in Ethiopia and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mount Erebus is the most accessible.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And not only that, you have a lot more sunlight during the day to do your work.</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: We do, we've got 24 hours of daylight.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, and does that represent a challenge to sleeping or running the rest of your life, all that daylight?</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: It does. Some people find it really difficult to sleep. Some people find it very difficult to stop working. So by the end of the season, we're all on quite unusual schedules.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how will you measure your success over there?</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: Well, it's good to have everything up and running. There are a bunch of different projects going on. So as long as we're getting in good data that we can process, then that's an achievement for us. At the moment, we're working on trying to get some instruments running over the winter, which would be a really big achievement. We'd get - instead of just one month of data, we've been getting 12 months.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you think it could stay by itself and run in the dark, the six months of darkness there and that cold?</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: So the idea was, you know, everything would be automated. We would have a wireless link that sends everything back to McMurdo, and we'll be able to operate the instruments remotely. (unintelligible) have to be up here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, I know it's difficult for you talk to talk to us, but I want to wish you good luck and - with your research, and thank you for taking the time to be with us, and happy new year to you.</s>TEHNUKA ILANKO: Thank you. Same to you. Have a good afternoon.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Good afternoon to you. Tehnuka Ilanko is a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. She's studying volcanology and gas - geochemistry. And currently, she's right there at the base of Mount Erebus. Kayla Iacovino, could you tell us where she was speaking from? Was it a phone booth? Where do you have a phone booth at the bottom of a mountain in Antarctica?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Well, it's - we do have a landline up there. I believe there's one that's connected through that adjacent New Zealand base there. And there might be also a landline that goes back to McMurdo. So - or it's possible, of course, that she was doing what I was doing last year, which was using the satellite phone, although that's not as reliable of a connection.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. We're very lucky to get it. Chris Linder is author of "Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions." You only talked about one expedition to Antarctica, but you had other polar expeditions. And I was very intrigued by your Greenland experience, and you're talking about these huge ice-melt lakes that exist in Greenland.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah. That is probably my second-favorite place on Earth, after the Cape Crozier penguin colony down in Antarctica, because it's just such a unique environment. You've got meltwater that's forming on the Greenland ice sheet and collecting into these depressions on the ice to form these turquoise-blue jewels, basically, is what they look like from the air, from the helicopter.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And the researchers there are interested in what happens to that water in these lakes when it suddenly disappears. What they're noticing from the satellite record is that one day there will be a lake there four kilometers long, you know, containing millions of gallons of water, and the next day, it would be totally gone.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And so they were putting instruments around the lakes to try to determine when that water disappears, you know, through cracks in the bottom, just like pulling the plug in a bathtub. What does it do to the ice?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. So all that is going down below the ice and lubricating the ice, possibly, and letting it - the glaciers slide?</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah, that's what they found out. By using these precision - very precise GPS recorders placed around the lake, they could tell exactly how that ice sheet was responding. And just like grease on a railroad track, it makes that ice sheet slip a little bit faster when that lake actually drains and goes through a thousand meters of ice all the way to the bottom.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. Talking about Antarctic research this hour on SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, talking with Chris Linder and Kayla Iacovino. Our number: 1-800-989-8255.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Kayla, what do you miss about not being down there this season?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Oh, God, there's so much. There's so much in this.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: I'm really hoping I can go back next season. But just - I think Antarctica is the most beautiful place in the world. It had some of the most incredible land forms and ice forms that I've ever seen.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: And really - I mean, even working - you know, I miss the people, as well. Working there in a group, we were 12 of us for a month in a remote hut, where you didn't really see anyone else except for maybe the occasional helicopter pilot if they came in for a coffee or something.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: And so you kind of get to be a pretty tight-knit group, and that's a really unique environment to work in. And, I mean, it's just - there's so many amazing things about it: exploring the ice caves, going up to the crater rim and watching explosions. It's just amazing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. Let's get a phone call or two if we can. Let's go to Leslie in - is it Rawlins, Wyoming?</s>LESLIE: Yes, it is.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi, there. Welcome.</s>LESLIE: I just wanted to say how wonderful it is to hear some scientist live from Antarctica. Last winter, I had the most amazing experience. I accompanied a team of researchers from the University of Washington down to Antarctica with a program called PolarTREC.</s>LESLIE: And the point of this organization, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, is to embed teachers with research teams to help bring science back to students around the world and get them intrigued in the science that's going on and hopefully entice them to go into different science fields when they get out of school.</s>LESLIE: And I was located in three different remote camps along the Beardmore Glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains. This was exciting for me, not only with the type of science we were doing and seeing how science is conducted out in the field, but the Beardmore Glacier was also very historically important because this was the route that Scott took in his quest to be the first to reach the South Pole, actually, 100 years ago.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>LESLIE: So this was a really exciting experience for me, and I just wanted to share that.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thank you very much, Leslie. Yeah. It's a life-changing experience, is it not?</s>LESLIE: Definitely so. I'm still trying to figure out a way that I can get back down there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. Well, you're not going to get to the same spot, but, you know, there are cruise ships and everything that go to the peninsula from South America. So maybe you can get closer.</s>LESLIE: Well...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Oop, I just lost her. Yeah. It does change your life, Kayla, does it not?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Oh, definitely. Definitely. It's interesting you're talking about the cruise ships. There was one or two that came through McMurdo while we were there, and when we first arrived there, giving us a tour of some of the laboratory spaces and telling us about when these cruise ships would come through. And they kind of take them on tours through McMurdo, and almost are - and here are some scientists in their natural environment. It almost felt like being, you know, in a zoo or something. It was really funny.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Next stop, penguins.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. We're going to take a - I can't believe a cruise ship actually has gotten as far as McMurdo. Things have changed a bit since I was there.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Yeah, yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. 1-800-989-8255. We're going to take a break and talk more with Chris Linder, author of "Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions" and Kayla Iacovino, she's a PHD student a Cambridge. Our number: 1-800-989-8255. You can also tweet us @scifri, @S-C-I-F-R-I. We'll be right back after this break.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking about the challenges scientists face while studying everything, from volcanoes to ice caves in Antarctica with my guests Kayla Iacovino, a PHD student at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., Chris Linder, author of "Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions." Our number: 1-800-989-8255. This is - we were talking about a polar explorer, and this being the 100th anniversary of the - Scott and Amundsen racing into the South Pole.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Chris, it's hard, when you're down there, to avoid the fact that you're in a very old place. It's almost like a living museum with the shacks there sort of frozen in time, and yet - and all this new research going on.</s>CHRIS LINDER: It is. And in some cases, those buildings are side by side. At McMurdo station, Scott's Discovery Hut is within the site of McMurdo station, the modern U.S. station there. And if you go out to Cape Royds, which is out on the sea ice, you know, just a short snowmobile ride away from McMurdo, there's Shackleton's hut, built in 1908, sitting, you know, probably a quarter mile away from the penguin researcher's hut which is there now. And so the - you know, history is all around you when you're down there, and those monuments are lovingly restored by the New Zealanders who take care of them.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And walking in there, you see pictures on the walls that Shackleton and his party brought down there, boots stuffed with straw. Everything looks like they just got up from a meal and walked out and never came back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And it's interesting, because I was reading in your book about finding a penguin that had been on a table, open for dissection, and I swear that must be the same penguin I saw 30 years ago still on that table.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah. You'll see, you know, seals stacked outside that they had used for food for their dogs. All these things are monuments. And because of the Antarctic Treaty, nothing is to be touched or removed. And so, you know, as you're walking around a penguin colony like Cape Royds, you'll actually see little pieces of wood that were - have been broken off by the wind from the dog kennels or other things that Shackleton built, and those are historic debris. And they're not to be touched or picked up or altered in any way.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You know, we talk about the research that's going on there. But there's a lot of astronomy research going on there, too, in Antarctica, isn't there? And stuff we don't hear very much about, the sun, because there are six months of sunlight, you can, you know, look at the sun. I think even in that neutrino experiment that we're talking about, weren't they - wasn't it going through the Earth and coming out in Antarctica someplace?</s>CHRIS LINDER: Right. I think that was being built at South Pole Station, so, you know, another flight away to the south from McMurdo.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And that is one - yeah. And that is one of the most coveted trips, is it not, to the South Pole? Because very few scientists, even though they may spend decades there, ever get to the South Pole.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah. And I haven't been there myself, but I'd love to go.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. Kayla, do they talk about that a lot?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Oh, definitely. That's one - a couple of the hotspots if you're in McMurdo, it's going to Erebus, and everywhere else, it's going to the South Pole.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's like - actually, count myself among the very lucky to have been there all those years ago. And I remember scientists being very jealous of me because...</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Did you make it to the pole?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I got to the pole. I have pictures from...</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Wow.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It was, of course - there was a different pole station there. When I was there in 1979, they had just built a new pole station. That is already gone. There's a brand-spanking new one near. But it is a place. And it's really interesting that you talk - both of you, and I'm sure you can both testify to this. Chris, you talk about how unforgiving the weather is down there. You make a mistake, you've had it.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah. It can change rapidly. And even a year ago, I was coming off of the Nathaniel B. Palmer, an icebreaker, in about mid-February. And we were among the last in McMurdo that were getting ready to leave. And after we left, I'd seen this news reports that a Norwegian party had come down, kind of unannounced, and they were going to take some four-wheelers down to the South Pole without permission from anybody.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Their ship - a storm brewed up, came out of the south with a terrific windstorm, sank their ship, I think killed two of them onboard, and a couple of more had to be rescued and brought back to New Zealand by the U.S. staff that was remaining down there. So even though, you know, our ability to handle the environment has gotten a lot better, it still is not a place to be toyed with.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And that's why you have so much respect for those polar explorers of 100 years ago. They had hardly any of the modern clothing and technology that we have. And they - some of them spent years down there at a time.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. And did even more epic things than we're doing now, like the trek that one of the parties made in the middle of winter to go get an emperor penguin egg at Cape Crozier, you know, braving, you know, 70 mile - 70 degree below zero temperatures trekking along in boots filled with straw and, you know, sleeping bags that would freeze overnight from their sweat and they'd have to, you know, press their feet into them to warm them up.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Kayla, are you going back anytime soon?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: I hope so. I have my fingers crossed to get down there next season.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And still studying Mount Erebus?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Yup, yup. Going to be taking more samples and taking more measurements.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And what exactly, you know, fascinates you about this?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Oh, there's so many aspects to it. I mean, just my volcanological, you know, interest in it - purely that, but also just the fact that it's - this volcano in Antarctica, it's this whole fire and ice thing going on and - it's just - like I said, it's just a beautiful place. And Erebus is a really unique volcano. It's got some really interesting magmas that come out of it. I'm interested in the chemistry of the magma, so that's a big thing for me. And also the active lava lake, I mean, going into an active volcano is an amazing thing as it is, but to go to one that you can actually see the inside of it at the surface is pretty incredible.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's see if we can get a phone call or two in here. Matt in Cincinnati. Hi, Matt.</s>MATT: Hello, and thanks for taking my call. Great show.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thank you. Go ahead.</s>MATT: Hey, I had question. It seems to me last year about this time, there was - you had a story about, I believe, it was some Russians drilling through about two miles of ice on top of a lake down there. I was wondering what ever became of it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Chris, any idea what happened?</s>CHRIS LINDER: I think - from what I heard, they got close and then had to pull - had to abort at the last minute because they had run out of time. But that was a big deal because no one had ever broken through into that lake before.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Chris, there's a lot of ice to drill through, isn't it?</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah, I can't remember how thick it was, but it took all season to get as far as they did.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And a lot of - drill goes very slowly. The ice is very tough, and you run out of time, right? Because you're not staying out there in the middle of the darkness.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah, at the end of the end of the season, you got to go.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Weren't there some contamination issues as well?</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah, that was - I think was a huge concern because there's all these chemical lubricants that are used to keep the drill from freezing, and once you tap into a previously untapped environment, it's going to be forever changed. It'll never be the exact same as when - before you drilled into it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: With all that sunlight down there, remember it's - I'm asking this over 30 years ago to people - why don't you have, you know, solar energy, that kind of stuff to tap into generation there? Is there any more thought to that going on? Or even at field stations.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: They're doing more of that now.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah.</s>CHRIS LINDER: Yeah, we use them.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: You know, at Mount Erebus, we have wind and solar power, but we have a backup generator as well, just in case.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to Norman in Monroe, North Carolina. Hi, Norman.</s>NORMAN: Good afternoon, folks. I'm listening on to a station WFAE in Charlotte. I have two questions, and it's kind of strange one. First, how to keep your potable water from freezing? And second, when you have a call for nature, how do handle it in sub-arctic temperatures?</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: That is so funny. That is - I have to say, that is probably the number one question I get asked is, how do you pee?</s>NORMAN: Yeah.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: And especially if we're living in a tent, and you need to go the bathroom in the middle of the night, obviously, you don't want to have to get up and put on all your gear, you know, long underwear, wind pants, parka, gloves, hat, everything because that would just take too long. You'd, you know, pee your pants before you got outside. So what we do is the United States Antarctic Program issues they very own pee bottles, which is basically a wide-mouth Nalgene bottle, and you learned very quickly how to hover above your sleeping bag - men and women - how to hover above your sleeping bag and pee into a bottle in your tent at night.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, I hate to end the program on that note.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But it is part of the experience, right? I remember being there and it's all part of that experience. And I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today. And have a happy New Year.</s>KAYLA IACOVINO: Oh, thank you so much. And you too.</s>CHRIS LINDER: And thanks a lot, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome. Kayla Iacovino is a Ph.D. student in University of Cambridge in the U.K. Chris Linder is author of "Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions." If you like to see some stunning pictures of Antarctica, surf over to our website at sciencefriday.com. We have a few up there, but the book itself is worth buying.

Year's end always means a slew of top ten lists, the ubiquitous arbiter of the year's best films, books, albums and political stories. But Dallas Morning News film critic Chris Vognar has a confession: Those lists are not just subjective — they're often completely arbitrary. Read Chris Vognar's Dallas Morning News post, "Some Thoughts On Top Ten Lists."

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Now that we're nearing the end of the year, top 10 lists are everywhere. You know what we mean: the top 10 books or films or albums or whatevers of the year. And they're not just written by professionals anymore. Thanks to blogs and sites like Amazon and IMDb, you can now find these lists everywhere. But not only are they subjective, they can be downright arbitrary says film critic Chris Vognar. Chris is the film critic for the Dallas Morning News. And earlier this week, in a blog post or the newspaper, he said that writing top 10 list is, quote, "a fool's errand."</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Chris Vognar joins us in a moment, but we'd also like to hear from you. When you write your top 10 list, what - tell us what factors do you consider. Call us at 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. Chris Vognar joins us now from member station KERA in Dallas, Texas. Welcome.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Hi, Jennifer. How are you?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Good. So tell me about writing your top 10 list this year.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Well, the fool's errand part may be a little bit harsh. It's kind of funny. We see so many movies over the course of the year. We see broad comedies. We see little intimate dramas, documentaries, everything. And then come end of the year, you're told, all right, now rank them from one to 10. And it's just funny because they're so different and posing one against another just becomes, as I said, kind of a fool's errand, it becomes very subjective.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Well, and are you ranking what you liked or are you trying to rank what your audience liked or do you go by box office numbers? What do you - do you have a system?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: That's a great question. I'm ranking them how I like. That's the only way how I can rank them. It shouldn't really be seen as a these-are-the-best-10-movies of-the-year list. It should be seen as these are my favorite movies. And that is, as you were saying earlier, why anybody can do one of these lists. There's no objective standard as to what the 10 best are. It all comes down to what your tastes are and what you enjoyed.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: But as a film critic, a professional film critic, I mean, do you feel a need to throw in a documentary or two?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: I do, personally. I'm a big fan of documentary, and I think that's where a lot of the most interesting work is being done. So there's always going to be one or two documentaries on my list this year. They were two. I always want to put at least one international film on my list because I know I don't see nearly everything that comes out around the world as far as movies go. So yeah, I sort of - I have a way of saving spots for certain kinds of movies that I want to represent?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: What do you mean? Oh, oh, oh. So an international documentary.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Yeah. For instance, if I see a documentary that I like, I'd say, yeah, I'm definitely going to put that on there because that's going to be one of my documentaries on my list. I guess you could call it a quota system on those for documentaries.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So how else do you narrow things down?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: It's extremely arbitrary. I look back. I generally don't look at the reviews I wrote. I think there are movies that I gave a B plus two that made my list and movies that I gave an A or A minus 2 that didn't. I just look back and think about what I wrote about that year, make sort of a rough list. And then I start (unintelligible) them down. If you see something closer to the end of the year, it's often more prominent in your memory, and that makes it easier.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Doesn't it seem fair?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: (Unintelligible) It's a very, very subjective and, as I said, arbitrary kind of process.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So what are some examples from this year's list?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Well, let's see, I saw "Hugo" two weeks before I did my list, and it ended up being my number one movie. I saw it on a night off. I wasn't reviewing it. I just went on as a civilian, and it charmed me to death. And I kind of knew that was going to be my number one movie. I saw a documentary called "Marwencol," which is about a man who is beaten nearly to death and recovers through his art. Well worth seeing. I saw it almost two years ago now.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: And even then, I would say this is a pretty special movie, and I want people to see it. That's another thing. Sometimes you can draw attention to the certain film that you think otherwise might slide under the radar. You can draw attention to it by putting it on your top 10 list.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. We've got a caller on the line, Dave in Nashville. Hi, there.</s>DAVE: How are you doing?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Good. What's your top-10 list question or comment?</s>DAVE: Well, I write for a new online magazine called weepingelvis.com, and we are specifically a modern music content site, and we are getting ready to publish - actually, it's a top 30 for us, but certainly the top 10 is the time we - the thing we spend the most time on trying to figure out. And this year, we had six editors of the site, plus 14 other music industry professionals and just savvy listeners that we polled come with our top 30 albums for 2011.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So you're not going to be the arbiter? You're going to let your audience pick them.</s>DAVE: Well, it's us, the six of us around, and then other people that we think their opinion is something that - whether we disagree with it or not, we think it to be educated and savvy. And some of them are just music listeners, just appreciators. But we feel that their, you know, tastes are good, and so we pick the list of those, and had those involved with us, as well. And it came to a list of 20 others that were voting for the top 30 albums.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Any hot debates, or did it all work out OK?</s>DAVE: It actually amazingly worked out OK. We thought we were going to have some ties and there were going to be some arguments, but there weren't. I was a little - wanted us to be a little more broad. We ended up leaning a little bit more towards the alternative and indie scene. I would have liked for us to spread out a little bit more into country and hip-hop and hard rock, but we ended up with a great list of 30 great quality records that I think that people would enjoy. And so, no arguments and we didn't have to have any tiebreakers, and people saying while they thought one was better than another. And for the most part, our taste was reasonably down the line.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, Dave. Thanks for the call. Chris Vognar, do you - Dave brings up a point there. Do you consult peers? Or do you have an editor who kind of has to approve your list? What's the process there?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Not really. I mean, I have an editor who edits my copy, but it's my list, at the end of the day. Look, I really - I enjoy top 10 lists as a reader to a great extent. In fact, I enjoy them more as a reader than I do as a compiler of the lists.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Really? Why is that?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: So - because I think these lists really are for readers. And when you're looking at somebody's list, you don't feel that sort of sense when you're compiling the list of why am I picking this movie instead of that movie and what's - what will people, perhaps, think about the fact that I'm - you know, maybe people don't like documentaries that much, but at the end of the day, it has to be your list. I have one sort of funny story. I have a very smart friend who saw my list, and I have "Bridesmaids" - the comedy that came out last year - on my top 10. And she was like, well, I really liked "Bridesmaids," but is it really better than "Tree of Life"? And, of course, "Tree of Life" is this very esoteric, sort of experimental film that I really liked. I just enjoyed "Brides...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Hard to compare.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Yeah, exactly. So what other context or conversation would one be comparing "The Tree of Life" to "Bridesmaids"? It's just a funny thing.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So you said that you sometimes do want to push maybe a lesser-known film. You think people should see it, and this is an opportunity.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Yeah. I think part of the critics' role is to be a curator of, you know, films or works of art that they find especially important that might otherwise go unnoticed, and to be an advocate, even, for certain films that, you know, really somehow touch you in a certain way, that you think people might otherwise miss out during the course of a year.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Let's take another call. Madeleine is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Hi, there.</s>MADELEINE: Hello.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Hello.</s>MADELEINE: Thank you for taking my call.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Go right ahead.</s>MADELEINE: Yes. I'm calling to share as to why I select particular movies, especially those like "Midnight in Paris." It's due to the message in the storyline, a moving plot, captivating characters and the scenery, which tends to be many times awe-inspiring, and I just loved that particular film. But "Hugo" is also good.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So make your own list, Madeleine?</s>MADELEINE: Well, I don't always make a list, but those are the many kinds - those are the elements that I select as to why I'm attracted to a film, and will then go out and buy the DVD and watch it many times at home.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Well, thanks so much for sharing.</s>MADELEINE: You're welcome.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, Chris, so excellent storyline and scenery and plot.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Sure. I mean, those - all of those things are great reasons to like a movie, but we all have different criteria at the end of the day. I mean, that's a very sort of democratic thing. Anybody can make a top 10 list. It's one of the great things about them.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Well, and it seems like more and more are - you did say that you kind of enjoy them more as a reader. But I was wondering, since so many people are getting in on the act in writing their own lists, is there some personal satisfaction or some benefit other than for the benefit of others? Is there some self-benefit in writing these?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Yeah, it's kind of fun. It gives you - I mean, it's funny. These lists often come with essays that kind of look back at trends or, you know, plotlines, if you will, for a certain year of movies. I find that part more satisfying than the actual list, because it gives you an excuse to sort of account for a year. We like breaking up life and works of art into different years and saying that was a great, that wasn't such a great year. That part of it, to me, is satisfying, just sort of that taking account of what you've seen over the last 12 months.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Tell us about your top 10 list and how you put it together. Call us at 800-989-8225, or email us at talk @npr.org. Chris Vognar, what do people think when you put out your lists? What kind of reaction do you get?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Sort of that - you know, I mentioned the reaction that my friend had about "Tree of Life." It's often what about this movie or what about that movie, and more often than not, my response is that's a great movie, or that's a very good movie, easily could have been on my list, just didn't make it this time. Or perhaps I didn't really like that movie that much, but, you know, viva la difference. I mean, that's kind of what it comes down to.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And you say you enjoy them as a reader. What do you think when you read other people's lists?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: I like comparing people whose taste I respect. I like comparing the way they think to perhaps the way I think. I like circling films that maybe I missed. Even as a movie critic, I don't get to see quite everything. So there are times when I say that's one I need to check out. At the end of the day, I am, you know, a consumer of movies and a watcher of movies, as much as I am someone who gets paid to write about movies. So I enjoy reading critics and people who have interesting things to say in provocative lists as much as the next person does.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So after you put your own list out, did you find someone else's and, go, uh-oh. Forgot that one.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, every time. No doubt about it.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Like what? Tell us, what should we go back and watch now?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: That wasn't on my list?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Yeah.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: What did I absolutely leave out? I did an honorable mention list this year, as well, which is alphabetical: Errol Morris' documentary, "Tabloid," which I love. I think his one of the best moviemakers around, not just in the documentary field, but anywhere. He did not even make my honorable mention list. It slipped my mind somehow that just - these kinds of things happen. Luckily, I gave it a great review when I wrote about it.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Phew, let's get another call - another call in here, Jed from Roosevelt, Utah. Hi, there.</s>JED: Hello, there.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: What...</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Hello.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: How are you? Go right ahead.</s>JED: All right. Thank you. I actually was listening to this, thinking about all the experiences I've had talking to different genders, male and female, that make different top 10 lists. And I found, in my experience, that I'll share a top 10 list with a female and she'll say, oh, well, I don't have any top 10 lists. I don't put any movies or music in any ordinate list. And that really struck me. I was wondering if you had any experience with those kinds of things.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Ah. Is there a gender-divide on list-making?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: That's a great question. I mean, there are - some of my favorite critics are female, and they've, you know, some of my favorite lists have come from female critics. It's a funny - it makes me think of the Nick Hornby novel, "High Fidelity," which is sort of about the male obsession with categorizing things and putting them in top five lists.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: In that case, he's doing it with his own life. It was also made into a movie, appropriately enough, with John Cusack. So is there a gender divide with the impulse to make the top 10 lists? I don't know. That's a really good question. I can say that, you know, critics like Manohla Dargis or Lisa Schwarzbaum, who I really respect, make great lists that I devoured this year.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Thanks for the call there, Jed. Any other lists that you look for when you are - or do you cheat and look at other people lists when - before you need to file your own?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: I try not to. I'll probably take a peak every now and then. In a way, it's useful just to have your memory jarred.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And do you feel like your list has to be different, or do you like, oh, I can't, you know, missed out and not put down what everyone else is putting on?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: That's actually a really good question, because these lists do often recycle at least some of the same, say, five or six movies, just in different positions. So there's a little bit of self-consciousness about, do I really want to say this is the best movie, when everybody else is saying this is the best movie? And I think that gets back again to how arbitrary it can be, because my number five movie could have been my number one movie. My number three movie could have been my number 10 movie. So I think - in a way, I think the way it goes is to do it alphabetically, and just to say these are the - it's funny, because as a reader, I think that's a copout. And as the list-maker, I think it's a very attractive copout.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Back to the theme of it's all arbitrary.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Yeah.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Josh is in San Antonio, Texas. Hi, Josh.</s>JOSH: Hey, hey. How's it going?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Good.</s>JOSH: Hey. I just wanted to make a quick comment. I'm a community writer for a videogame website Bitmob. And a lot of the times in the videogame community, we also find ourselves making top 10 lists. One of the interesting things about top 10 lists, though, is that it is arbitrary, and no two lists are really going to be the same. That said, it's kind of a tool that, a lot of the times in my particular medium, we use to generate controversy and discussions and essentially drive traffic to our posts and just, in general, generate some sort of discussion.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Mm-hmm. OK. Chris Vognar, do you - are you driving people to the Web with your list, here?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: I hope so. I try to. Yeah. I mean, you want to generate interest. And you generate a little more interest when you're not just throwing out the exact same movies that it seems like so many other people are throwing out. So, yeah, I enjoy - if I have a movie or two that very few others have on there, I kind of like picturing somebody scratching their head and saying: What in the world is that? And maybe going out and seeing it. So, yeah. I think these things can be very useful for generating discussion. I think that's what it's all about, in the end, is generating discussion.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Josh, thanks for the call.</s>JOSH: My pleasure.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Chris Vognar, before we let you go, I guess we should ask, even though you've now told us it's really meaningless. What is the number one movie on your top 10 list...</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: It's not meaningless.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: ...movie list for 2011?</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Arbitrary, not meaningless. My number one movie was "Hugo..."</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: That's right. I saw this.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: ...Martin Scorsese's - yeah. It's Martin Scorsese movie about a kid living in a clock tower in Paris. It's really about movie love, though. And this is actually a pretty good example, because I probably love movies and obsess over movies more than many average moviegoers. And so it makes some degree of sense that I really liked this movie, which is about the love of movies.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Chris Vognar, the film critic for Dallas Morning News. He joined us from member station KERA in Dallas. Thank you so much.</s>CHRIS VOGNAR: Thank you, Jennifer.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Tomorrow, TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY looks at how scientists do research in Antarctica. And Neal Conan will be back here with you in the New Year on Monday. This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Jennifer Ludden, in Washington.

Candidates made their last-ditch campaign efforts in Iowa Monday ahead of Tuesday's caucuses. The Des Moines Register's Iowa poll predicted a close three-way race between Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Pollster Ann Selzer shares the poll results. Read more about the Des Moines Register's Iowa Poll.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: Last Wednesday, Ann Selzer could not be cajoled into even a hint of the final Iowa poll as she joined the Political Junkie. Selzer and the company - and her company polls for the Des Moines Register and for Bloomberg. It's considered the gold standard in Iowa. And the Register published the results on Saturday night. It showed Mitt Romney in front, followed closely by Ron Paul and Rick Santorum surging into third. Ann Selzer joins us again from Iowa Public Radio. Nice to have you back on the program.</s>ANN SELZER: Great to be here, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And often, it's not just the raw numbers but movement that's interesting. You poll over four days. What did you find?</s>ANN SELZER: Well, you know, if I had divulged what we were seeing when I was with you last, it would have looked completely different by the time our poll was actually published. On the first day of that poll, we had Ron Paul with a huge lead, and we had Rick Santorum sort of finally breaking into double digits. And by the end of the poll, Ron Paul had fallen 13 points. Rick Santorum had doubled his support. So by the end of our polling period, we ended up with Romney holding steady and holding onto a lead. Ron Paul, Rick Santorum kind of jockeying for that second-place position.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But one of them seemingly falling, the other surging.</s>ANN SELZER: Yes. Just - I have never seen such a dramatic change over four days of interviewing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there was another candidate who was in charge, at least in the lead, a month earlier when you last took the poll. Newt Gingrich not doing so well now.</s>ANN SELZER: Newt Gingrich not doing so well now. He is in the low teens along with Rick Perry. Michele Bachmann has not made it into double digits in quite some time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as you look at this volatility, have you ever seen anything like this?</s>ANN SELZER: I have never seen, in our final poll, this much change this fast. Now I carry around a graph from 2004 to remind me that things do change in the final days. We started with Howard Dean competing for the lead and then ending up, on our final day of polling, in fourth place. So that reminded me that things do shift. But this is far more swift, far more volatility, far more dramatic.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so, if things are happening that quickly, this snapshot even a couple of days ago may not tell the story of what's happening today.</s>ANN SELZER: Well, you know, clearly, people will react to this poll and have a different feel for what's playing out in this Republican caucus. You know, our sense was that where did the Santorum surge come from? And one theory is it came from a recent CNN poll that showed him doing well. That poll was just of Republicans, so it would have underplayed Ron Paul, so we kind of, you know, set it aside. But once we saw the Santorum surge, you know, some of these things become self-fulfilling prophecies.</s>ANN SELZER: But certainly, all the campaigns are working to try to change these numbers. So the Ron Paul campaign is going to be trying to reinstate the lead that it had. The Romney campaign is going to look to keep what it has and hopefully build a bit more. And Santorum is looking to keep that trajectory going up. They're all working hard. They're all spending money to make exactly those three things happen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you're talking about - volatility and movement. It seems that the one - one of the steady people has been Mitt Romney, who's been, well, just, I think, a little bit better every time in your poll.</s>ANN SELZER: He had a bad poll last time in November. He had dropped down to 16, but he's sort of back to that roughly 25 percent, 24 percent where he's been on all our other polls and many other polls in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there are some people who say, wait a minute, that seems to be his cap. Does your polling suggest that that is about the size he can get?</s>ANN SELZER: Well, you know, people are going to still change. I don't know that I have any data that says it's a cap. You know, one interesting thing about this race, Neal, is that, to me, it's a choice that Republicans seem to be making or the tension is, you know, is this a time to send a message about what candidate we send? Or this is a time to get somebody elected? And Mitt Romney ends up with almost half of the people in our polls saying he's the most electable.</s>ANN SELZER: Well, now, if he only gets 24 percent as their first choice, clearly, there are a lot more people who think he's electable. To me that says, if that becomes the driving issue, if Republicans get together on caucus night and talk about whom they should nominate, that's potential room for Mitt Romney.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Company, the public opinion research firm that polls for The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg. She's with us from Iowa Public Radio in Des Moines. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And what about those further down the ticket? It seems that Rick Perry seems to have rebounded a bit.</s>ANN SELZER: Well, Rick Perry is sort of playing with a couple of point margin. He is, you know, steady around 10 percent, a little bit higher, a little bit lower. His numbers have not really move in our polls really all year. We were not in the field with the poll when he was at his height of popularity, so our polls basically have him unchanged.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Michele Bachmann, again, her popularity would have preceded your poll as well.</s>ANN SELZER: Well, we caught her in June and she was tying with Romney as the front-runner then and never since.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And never since. So we've seen - Herman Cain, we've neglected to mention briefly at the top of the polls, too, and now out of the race. It is this extraordinary procession, and some people have likened it to Republicans with that steady performance of Mitt Romney at or near the top of the polls throughout, looking for an alternative and trying one person out after another. Does that seem to make sense to you?</s>ANN SELZER: Well, you know, that certainly is plausible. We looked in our data every single way we could think of to identify the anybody-but-Romney vote, and we found no bigger cadre for Romney than we found for Gingrich or for Ron Paul. You know, I think it certainly sort of makes sense about why his numbers never grow. But in Iowa, he didn't come to the state. He didn't want to appear to care too much about Iowa. So, to me, that's a stronger reason why his numbers haven't really grown.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And he seems to have change his mind over the past couple of weeks, not just campaigning in Iowa personally, although he's made a couple of trips to New Hampshire as well, but never - but pouring a lot of money into the race, both for himself and through the Super PAC.</s>ANN SELZER: Well, and there seems to be some pent-up demand to see him now that he's actually here, so his crowds are quite are big. And that - those may be people who have a different first choice candidate but they want to be sure that they give him at least one look.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And then, we're going to New Hampshire in next week. And, of course, our Political Junkie will be in New Hampshire on Wednesday as we look at race there. Of course, we'll be looking at the results from Iowa, as well, but that's a very different electorate.</s>ANN SELZER: It's a very different electorate and it's a very different race. One of the polls we did Iowa was - we had a companion poll in New Hampshire, this was for Bloomberg News. And we looked at the results, and Iowa was fascinating. Everything seemed to be moving and changing. And New Hampshire just seems so static and just nothing really moving up there. So I know that some of the candidates are leaving Iowa and skipping New Hampshire to go directly to South Carolina. It is a different kind of electorate. It's a primary, so things lock in a little bit earlier. You know, it is a more moderate state. It's less influence of social conservatives.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And open primary, so independents can vote in the Republican primary as well.</s>ANN SELZER: But keep in mind, Neal, if you're an independent - if you're a registered Democrat, you can show up on caucus night and caucus for the Republicans. You just have to change your registration.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you say some people are skipping New Hampshire. Mitt Romney, of course, governor in the neighboring state of Massachusetts, has a home in New Hampshire, is the, you know, you hate to use this word, but prohibitive favorite at the moment in New Hampshire as a substantial lead in any case. And some of the more socially conservative candidates may be skipping New Hampshire to go on to South Carolina, which maybe more fertile ground.</s>ANN SELZER: Exactly. I think that there are candidates who took a look at Iowa and thought - I'm a good fit to win Iowa. And those are not the same candidates who look at New Hampshire and say I'm a good fit for New Hampshire. I think most obviously it would be Mitt Romney, but also Jon Huntsman takes a look at New Hampshire and thinks that that might be a place for him, and that's where he's put all of his eggs in that basket.</s>ANN SELZER: A candidate like Newt Gingrich might think that while he might do well in Iowa, that he could also do well in New Hampshire but it seems like the field sort of divides between the Iowa type of candidate and the New Hampshire type of candidate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And just as you keep those charts from 2004 around, some others might look to 2008 and remind everybody that Barack Obama, heavily favored to win in New Hampshire, until the actual day of the voting. So things can change quickly there as well.</s>ANN SELZER: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So as we look at this final poll, you know, how much do you think it can change over the two days between the end of your polling and the actual caucuses?</s>ANN SELZER: Well, you know, there's a little bit of the secret world of the pollster. As we're looking at those numbers night by night and we're getting ready to take them down to the newspaper, so they can start writing the stories. And I will admit to you that I took out a pen and sort of made a dotted line of the trajectories as they were happening, kind of, saying, OK, well, how many - with two more days, how could this end up? We have no way of judging because the campaigns really are tying to influence those numbers. You know, if everything were just equal and in a vacuum, there's a chance that Rick Santorum could end up being the winner.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Company. Thanks very much for your time. We'll have to see how things come out Tuesday night.</s>ANN SELZER: Always my pleasure to be with you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ann Selzer, polls for the Des Moines register and Bloomberg. She joins us from the studios at Iowa Public Radio in Des Moines.

The Iowa caucuses will be critical for Rep. Michelle Bachmann and former Sen. Rick Santorum, or a chance for Rep. Ron Paul to steal the national spotlight from Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Ken Rudin, NPR Political Junkie Joyce Russell, reporter, Iowa Public Radio J. Ann Selzer, president, Selzer and Company Steve Scheffler, president, Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Des Moines. Boehner blinks, Nelson bows out in Nebraska, and Newt to Paul: No more Mr. Nice Guy. It's Wednesday and time for a...</s>NEWT GINGRICH: Systemic avoidance of reality...</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 BENTSEN: Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.</s>PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore.</s>GOVERNOR 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 both in the studios of Iowa Public Radio in amazingly snowless Des Moines with the caucuses now less than one week away.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As polls show Ron Paul up and Newt Gingrich down, the former speaker repeals his no-negativity pledge. Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, even Mitt Romney all jump on the Iowa bus. House Republicans give in on the payroll tax extension. DOJ says no way to the South Carolina's voter ID law. And redistricting makes Republicans angry in Maryland, happy in Jersey. Nobody's happy in Arizona.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll focus on the caucuses here in Iowa for much of this hour, but first we begin, as we always do, with a trivia question. Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Hi Neal, and that Howard Dean scream happened in Iowa in 2004.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It did, yeah.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: OK, the trivia question is: Who was the last person to win the Iowa caucuses and lose the New Hampshire primary in the same year twice?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you think you know the answer to this week's trivia question, the last person to win the New Hampshire - win the Iowa caucuses and lose the New Hampshire primary in the same year twice, give us a call, 800-989-8255. No email this week because of the difficulties here in the foreign studio here in Iowa. But they can do it; we just can't.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you think you know the answer, 800-989-8255. In the meantime, we're going to be focusing on Iowa, but we have to go right next door to begin with: Ben Nelson of Cornhusker kickback fame calls it quits.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, he - the Democrat will not seek a third term. Now, there are some Democrats who say that he's a nominal Democrat, that he often did not vote with his party, and that's true. But the removal of Nelson from a third-term bid certainly opens up the Senate race - the Senate seat - for the Republican Party.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: There seems to be no Democrat out there who looks likely to fill the shoes. They're talking about Bob Kerrey. The last I saw, Bob Kerrey was, you know, at the New School University in New York City. I don't think that's a good resume to run for the Senate in Nebraska.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: So anyway, the Republicans are battling each other in a tough primary, but obviously right now that seat looks like it's leaning Republican. At the minimum, Dave Heineman, who is the governor there, Republicans would love for him to run and clear out the rest of the Republican field.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And makes it even harder for Democrats to hold on to their majority in the Senate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: It was tough anyway. I mean, of the 33 Senate seats up next year, 23 are Democratic-held. So, you know, they had the numbers against them anyway, but this would have been a tough seat to hold for the Democrats either way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A week ago, we were on the countdown clock, yet again, this time on the payroll tax cut extension as the Senate had approved a two-month extension and gone home. The House of Representatives refused to do it, and Speaker of the House, John Boehner, was getting withering criticism on this from, among others, the president of the United States.</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is an issue where an overwhelming number of people in both parties agree. How can we not get that done? I mean, has this place become so dysfunctional that even when people agree to things, we can't do it?</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It doesn't make any sense.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Neal, you got a nice applause there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It was, from the president, no less. But in any case, the withering criticism that counter for John Boehner was not so much the president, he can get by with that...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's exactly the point. It's the Wall Street Journal. It's conservative and Republicans around the country. And also it showed clearly that Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republican Conference had no faith in the House Republicans. Why give President Obama and the Democrats a huge victory? And they did, by standing against the extension for two months, they kept saying it was a Band-Aid - to oppose the extension for two months of the payroll tax and then knuckle down and basically succumb to President Obama's argument, it was a big victory for the Democratic Party and a loss for the Republicans.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this is the way John Boehner finally admitted that it was all over.</s>REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: It may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world, but I'm going to tell you what: I think our members waged a good fight.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Waged the good fight. Well, I guess we can put our countdown clocks away for, what, oh seven weeks now.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Exactly. But here's the thing. The Republicans, all along, were seeing that President Obama would capitulate, would back down, would acquiesce for most of the year, and I suspect that they thought the same would happen this time. This time, Obama said he would not back down and refused to back down, and it was the Republicans who basically had to change its mind.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just before we get on to the news here in Iowa, and there's plenty of that, redistricting - three states now, I guess Arizona map is nearly finished. Two Tea Party freshmen are going to face a more difficult road. Also, maps look like they're being finalized in the states of Maryland, where a Republican is being squeezed, and in New Jersey, where two Democrats are going to be forced to run against each other.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah, let's start in the reverse order. In New Jersey, which is going to lose one seat, basically Steve Rothman, who is from Bergen County, decided he's going to move and challenge another Democrat, a fellow Democrat Bill Pascrell. So the Democrats will lose - New Jersey will lose one seat, and it looks like they will lose one Democratic member because two Democrats will run against each other in the primary.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: In Maryland, it's the opposite. The Democrats control the whole process there, and Roscoe Bartlett, the long-time, long-serving - I think he's 80 years old - Republican, the new lines have put in a lot of more liberal, minorities - Democrats into his mostly rural district, and Roscoe Bartlett could be in trouble, as well.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And in Arizona, two Republicans find themselves with less hospitable districts, including Ben Quayle, the son of Dan Quayle, and so that - those seats have been made much more competitive with this new redistricting scheme.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get some people on the line who think they know the answer to this week's trivia question, and that is the last person to win the Iowa caucuses and lose the New Hampshire primary in the same year twice, 800-989-8255. No email this week. We're going to start with - this is Bob(ph), Bob with us from Rochester, Minnesota.</s>BOB: Yes, hi, this is Bob Shixta(ph) from Rochester, Minnesota, and I believe that the answer is Dick Gephardt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, Bob, I know you're a first-time caller. But Dick Gephardt - actually Dick Gephardt won the Iowa caucuses once in 1988, but he did not win it the second time he ran for president.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nice call, Bob.</s>BOB: OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to - let's see if we can go to - we're trying to go to - let's see if we can go to Deborah(ph), Deborah with us from Chanhassen, Minnesota.</s>DEBORAH: Hi, I am not like Bob. I call all the time.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I think Bob's a first-time caller.</s>DEBORAH: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Bob's voice. He makes me goofy. Hey guys, welcome to dreary Iowa or Ioway(ph).</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Did she say dreary?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Pardon?</s>DEBORAH: George W. Bush.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: George W. Bush, two-time president of the United States.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, actually, George W. Bush did lose the New Hampshire primary to Ronald Reagan in 1980, but he won it in 1988. So he did not lose New Hampshire twice.</s>DEBORAH: Thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nice try, though, Deborah, appreciate that.</s>DEBORAH: Thanks, bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to - this is David(ph), David with us from Charlotte.</s>DAVID: Hi, good afternoon, guys, and happy holidays. I'm going to guess Bob Dole.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Bob Dole is the correct answer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ding, ding, ding.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: He won the Iowa caucuses in 1988 but then lost, shortly after, to George H.W. Bush in New Hampshire. He also won the Iowa caucuses in 1996, lost New Hampshire to Pan Buchanan.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So hang on the line, David, we're going to take down your particulars, and we will mail you off a fabulous Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt in exchange for your promise of a digital picture of yourself that you can email us, and we'll put that on our wall of shame, congratulations.</s>DAVID: Great, I certainly appreciate it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, David - I hit the right button on this laptop computer. In the meantime, we have some developments here in Iowa, and that is Newt Gingrich, just a couple of weeks ago seemed to be surging, seemed to be rushing to the lead. The latest polls show him withering under a blizzard of anti - of negative advertising from, among others, Ron Paul. Yesterday on CNN, Newt Gingrich was asked about the criticism he's getting from Ron Paul, who described him as a serial hypocrite.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this in particular, hearkening back to some pamphlets that Ron Paul distributed 20 years ago or so, when he was out of office, which contain some very insensitive language. Ron Paul says, well, he hadn't been paying a lot of attention to them.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, I kind of think what Newt Gingrich was talking about was Ron Paul's views on foreign policy and national security.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Specifically, he mentioned those pamphlets.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: OK, well, there's also that issue, as well, when Ron Paul was out of Congress. I mean, he left Congress in 1984, ran for president as a Libertarian in '88, came back in I think '96. In between that, he ran the - he under his name, the Ron Paul Political Newsletter and a lot of anti-gay, anti-African-American, anti-Semitic statements were in his newsletter.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Now, Ron Paul says I never read it, I didn't write this, it's abhorrent to me, I repudiate it. But it went out under his name. This issue did come out in 2008, when Ron Paul ran for president last time, but obviously now as a potential frontrunner - and he may very well be the frontrunner, I'm speaking to a lot of people who think that Ron Paul with his dedicated, you know, cadre of supporters, could win this thing.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: The more somebody gets into the limelight, as we saw with Newt Gingrich, as we saw with Rick Perry and Herman Cain, Ron Paul, you know, his past is coming back to haunt him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The other person who seems to be steady in the polls, as he has pretty much throughout this entire process, is Mitt Romney, who first was under the radar here in Iowa, now running a lot of advertising. If he loses, he's not going to be able to say I didn't pay a lot of attention. He's spent over a million dollars, him and his PAC, to run ads, including this one, which is now up on the air.</s>MITT ROMNEY: I'm going to get rid of Obamacare. It is a moral imperative for America to stop spending more money than we take in. It's killing jobs, and it's keeping our kids from having the bright prospects they deserve. The experience of balancing budgets is desperately needed in Washington, and I will take it there. I'm Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the old tactic of, in your own voice, attack the president, be presidential in your approach, but your PAC, the people who are supporting you also, they're the ones who run the negative ads attacking people like Newt Gingrich.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Right, everybody's doing that. Rick Perry is doing that, as well. When it's a Rick Perry ad, a Mitt Romney ad, a Ron Paul ad, it's very positive, very - talking about the candidate in positive terms. When your PAC puts - your SuperPAC, they call it - when the super political action committee puts up these ads, it's viciously withering, negative ads.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We should also mention Gary Johnson, former Republican candidate, now leaving the party. He's officially declared he's going to be running for the Libertarian nomination for president of the United States.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And there may be a challenge to him, too. Don't count out Ron Paul, if he doesn't win the Republican nomination, as a potential Libertarian candidate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or a third-party candidate. We'll have more about that and more on the situation here in Iowa, less than a week to go before the caucuses, it is still anybody's ballgame. We'll be back in just a minute. Political Junkie Ken Rudin is 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. Political Junkie Ken Rudin and I are in Des Moines today, at the studios of Iowa Public Radio. The first votes of the 2012 nominating contest will be cast Tuesday night at 7 P.M. all across Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Candidates like Representative Michele Bachmann and former Senator Rick Santorum need to place well to keep their campaigns afloat. Others, like Texas Congressman Ron Paul, see the first voting contest in the nation as a catapult into the national spotlight a week before the first primary in the country, that of course in New Hampshire. We're going to be there next week.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are differences between caucuses and primaries. Within caucuses, there are differences in how Republicans pick their winners and how Democrats choose theirs. Of course, only the Republicans are caucusing this go-round. Barack Obama is going to face no opposition.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So Iowa Republicans, who's your first choice? Who's your second? Our phone number, 800-989-8255. Email us, 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: And joining us here in the studio at Iowa Public Radio, where she's a reporter, is Joyce Russell, nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Hello, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what happens on Tuesday night?</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Well, neighborhood meetings happen. They're held in the evening in all 1,700-plus precincts. They're essentially organizational meetings for the party, but in presidential election years like this one, they include a vote for the presidential candidates.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Now, in the case of the Republicans, it's essentially a straw poll or a preference poll. Attendees express their preference for the Republican presidential candidates. Those results are reported to the media, but the results are not binding when it comes to selecting delegates to the county and then the state and then the national conventions.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: So that's why you don't normally hear how many delegates to the national convention each candidate in Iowa won. There are 25 in all, by the way. Sometimes you'll see that in charts, where people will break it down, well, they got this many delegates. But that's kind of...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Speculative.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Speculative. And the state party strongly urges that the delegates reflect the preference poll, but there's no obligation that they do so.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Joyce, we always talk about the Democrats, how they'll spend five hours debating ethanol and then whether Neal Conan should still be host of TALK OF THE NATION, things like that. But the Republicans basically have their straw poll, and they leave pretty soon. Is that correct?</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Well, a lot of them do. But, you know, the real diehards will stay and debate the party platform, and then they do elect delegates to the next - to the district convention.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And I was listening, four years ago, there were 120,000 Republicans who showed up at the caucuses, but they were on the defensive over George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Now, they seem to be on the ascendancy, or at least more energetic than they certainly were four years ago.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Well, yeah, and it will be interesting to see how that affects turnout at the caucuses. And the Democratic caucuses, there were huge lines. There was huge interest in Barack Obama. And because people can change their party affiliation at the caucus site, people planned - they had the list of how many registered Democrats or Republicans are eligible to vote at that caucus, but if huge numbers of independents or the opposite party come and change their party affiliation in order to participate, then you have huge crowds.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: You actually had traffic jams at the Democratic sites last time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But is it one of the - you just cast a ballot, a paper ballot?</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Well, it's not even a ballot.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: They don't give you a piece of paper with a slate of candidates. They give you a blank piece of paper, and you write the name of the candidate that you want. Now ahead of that, people are able to stand up and make their case. So a well-organized candidate is going to have people at as many precinct caucuses as they can who will stand up and say this is why you should vote for Mitt Romney, or this is why you should vote for so and so.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: But then they're handed a blank piece of paper, they write the name of the person on, and then they count those, and those are reported.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so - but do they gather in groups around each candidate?</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: That's how the Democrats do it, and it's a much more complicated process, and that's - the way the Democrats do it, a second choice is much more relevant. So people gather in groups for their person that they want, and then they have to have a certain number or percentage in order to be viable.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: So if someone is then named not viable, then other people go after those people and try to get them to come to their group. Cokie Roberts once famously described the Iowa caucuses as like a Tupperware party, but she was talking about the Democrats and not the Republicans.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is different. Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Joyce, the caucuses start 7 P.M. Central time, 8 o'clock Eastern. When do you think we'll see results or get a sense of what's happening?</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Well, because this is a Republican affair, it happens pretty quickly, actually. I was at Republican caucus last time, and before that, they were even done there, they were declaring Mike Huckabee the winner of the Republican - so within the hour, it seems like it usually happens.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this is announced per district around the state?</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Well, it's reported into a central location, and then those are all counted, and totals are what we end up with.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So almost as much as the Democratic caucuses, this would seem to reward people with good ground game, good organizations.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Absolutely. There's some exception. There have been exceptions to that over the years, but in general, the more people that you have going to those caucus sites, standing up - because people do turn out at the caucuses who are undecided. If you've got somebody there speaking for your man or your woman, you have an advantage.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Now, last year was a very good example of where that didn't really hold true. Mitt Romney was very well-organized, and then Mike Huckabee, you know, his thing really took fire with the evangelicals behind him, and he was able to win.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: On the flip side of that, John McCain actually tied for third place in the Iowa caucuses last time, even though he had really no organization at all. The caucus that I went to, nobody even stood up and spoke for him, although I did see a man with a T-shirt that said sportsmen for McCain. So there were supporters out there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So this is going to be fairly straightforward compared with the Democrats.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: It is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And should be over pretty quickly.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: Yes, I would say within the hour.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what does this insanely good weather - turnout should be pretty good.</s>JOYCE RUSSELL: I don't know that weather really affects - you know, we're hardy here, and, you know, people talk about the weather effect, but unless it's really just sleeting and driving sleet and snow, I don't think the weather really affects it that much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joyce Russell, thanks very much for your time. Joyce Russell, a reporter for Iowa Public Radio. She's with us here in the studios of Iowa Public - we're actually in her studio, we'll put it that way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also here with us is J. Ann Selzer. She's the president of Selzer and Company, a public opinion and research firm based here in Des Moines. And nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION. Nice to meet you in person.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, it's always great to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Six days to go. Who's up?</s>J. ANN SELZER: I'm not going to even raise so much as an eyebrow to give you any indication that I know anything other than our most recent poll that we took in November.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In November? So we've seen other polls since then.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And they're not your poll, which of course is the gold standard. But lately, we're seeing that Mitt Romney seems to be holding steady, but Ron Paul seems to have taken the lead.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, we had in our - the three polls that we conducted show only Ron Paul getting consecutively better and better showing in every poll that we did, and he's the only one that didn't have a big surge. He's the only one that didn't get a lot of media scrutiny until about now. And we do know that his organization is strong in the state.</s>J. ANN SELZER: So I think Ron Paul, it doesn't surprise me that some of those polls are showing him doing well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are other people who have spent a lot of time in this state, and you think for example of Rick Santorum.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Michele Bachmann, of course, is from next door.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Yes, and Rick Santorum may be the lesson learned about organizing in Iowa, that putting in face time and going to 99 counties and holding a lot of events may not be sufficient if you're not the right candidate with the right message.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet, we're seeing that Rick Santorum seems to be picking up some endorsements, some pretty significant endorsements over the past couple of weeks.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Yes, and I think that's kind of the X-factor, that do you kind of get this informal coalescing of people who are interested in those social issues coming together behind one candidate. I will say, though, that the mood in Iowa is very different than it was four years ago when Mike Huckabee won, and people have a tendency to refight the previous war.</s>J. ANN SELZER: And there was a thought that as a social conservative, that's all you really needed in order to win Iowa. The mood is far more geared to thinking about the economy, jobs, tax reform. That's what's on the minds of likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Ann, two things. First of all, if you last polled in November, by doing it once a month, you're going to do - I guess the next poll, the final poll will be next Sunday, correct, before the caucuses?</s>J. ANN SELZER: That's correct. You'll get a preview Saturday night.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: You don't get a chance to see momentum then. I mean, if you're doing it in November and then at the end of December, it just seems like you miss out what's changing in Iowa.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, I think we see what's changing in Iowa during the final time that we're in the poll field, in the field with the poll. We saw in 2004, Howard Dean go from a contender for the top spot down to fourth place just during the four days we were in the field with our final pre-caucus poll.</s>J. ANN SELZER: So we see - we will see the momentum. We will see the final momentum that matters in our poll.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: It seems like more evangelical Christian candidates seem to do better in the poll. In other words, they're underrepresented in the polls than so-called moderates; that so, in other words if Mitt Romney is supposed to be among the leaders with Ron Paul or whoever else, it seems like a more evangelical conservative candidate can do better than the polls indicate.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, if the evangelicals who are coming to caucus unite around one candidate. Right now, they're pretty fragmented in terms of their support, and that's what Mike Huckabee did not have. He did not have a contender for that portion of the Republican Party, and that's why he did well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In fact, we're seeing some calls today by some evangelical Christian leaders in Iowa for a Santorum-Bachmann shotgun marriage, as some have described it, to unite their campaigns. Where one is strong, the other should give way; where the other is strong, the other should give way in order to have one more coherent candidacy.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, Michele Bachmann made a direct pitch saying, look, we have a weak president in terms of his overall standing with job approval. There's been no better time to get exactly what you want in a president, meaning strong on the social issues that have been - you've been disappointed in previous Republican candidates. So now is the time to stand for purity. So she's been trying to be the one that they will come behind and think that they could win forward.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: OK. So we have - the poll is coming out. The actual caucus is coming out on Tuesday. What do you see different than you have four years ago? It seemed like four years ago - and I was just mentioning this to Joyce Russell before - that it seemed like the Republicans were on the defensive. They were more, you know, fretting about Bush and the war and the economy, things like that. They seemed to be more energized this time.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, I think they're energized because they think they have a - they believe they have a good shot to take the White House. They think they are - they can hold onto the House of Representatives, and they think they can take the Senate. And that would be, you know, a very strong and powerful position for them to be in, but they need to win the White House in order for that to happen. So I think there's an energy, thinking there's an opportunity here. It's relatively rare that you can unseat a sitting incumbent. They think this is their year.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: How important are endorsements? Everybody talks about if only so-and-so would endorse so-and-so that would change so-and-so's prospects. Are endorsements as big as, you know, political junkies like to think they are?</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, I don't think endorsements close the deal, but I do think they can open a door. That is, if someone that you respect, somebody that you admire can give you an idea of why they support this person the way they do or if a newspaper that's not known for a particular brand of politics endorses somebody unusual, it can open the door to questioning - taking a second look at a candidate that maybe you hadn't considered.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from callers. Republicans in the state of Iowa, who are you going to support come Tuesday? 800-989-8255. Email, talk@npr.org. Don is on the line, calling us from Pittsburgh.</s>DON: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>DON: What I think is this: There's a fair chance that what's going to happen nationally is that none of these candidates are going to take enough votes in the primaries to win on the first vote at the convention. And if that happens, I believe there's a fair chance that Jeb Bush will get drafted.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ooh, you...</s>DON: The Iowa caucuses are an ideal place for him to try - sort of put a feeler in the water because it's a write-in vote as the person was just explaining so...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As Joyce Russell was telling us. Goose bumps all over political junkies everywhere, brokered convention. Ken Rudin, is this a possibility?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Let me think for a second. No.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And the reason is not - first of all, the last time the Republican convention went past the first ballot was 1948. Last time a Democratic one was 1952 for the presidential thing. The thing is, for the most part, you have a lot of winner-take-all states and especially after the April primaries, when the April - the primaries start in April, they're almost all winner take all. So, you know, unlike the Obama vs. Clinton battle that lasted throughout June, I suspect that we can have a nominee sooner than you think. And, of course, if Mitt Romney wins in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire - and, of course, that's a big if - it could end even sooner than we think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Don, thanks very much for the call. Of course, Pittsburgh, eastern part of Iowa. You're listening to the Political Junkie here on TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Ken Rudin, of course, is with us, along with Ann Selzer, president of Selzer and Company, a public opinion and research firm, polls for The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg. She joined us here in the studio at Iowa Public Radio. Have you ever seen before the caucuses so many people undecided?</s>J. ANN SELZER: You know, there's a little bit of a myth of the Iowa undecided vote, and we're a little bit responsible for it, I think. When you ask who is your first choice, there will be about one in 10 who say I don't have a first-choice candidate at this point. So that's relatively low. There are 60 percent of likely caucus-goers who have a first choice but then say they could be persuaded to change their mind. Now, in our last poll, we probed that group and said, well, what's the reason that you have a - you think you could be persuaded to vote for somebody else?</s>J. ANN SELZER: Is it because there's something that you fear will be revealed about your first-choice candidate that will be a problem? And 25 percent said that's - that bothers them. Sixteen percent said, oh, I already know something about my candidate that I think that could become a bigger problem, so I'm kind of withholding judgment there. Ninety-two percent said I always wait until much later in the process. So they have a first-choice candidate for the most part.</s>J. ANN SELZER: They're just open. You know, it's Iowa. There's no advantage to locking in all that early. The campaigns haven't organized all that well this time around, so they're not asking people to commit. And if you're not asked, why would you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ann, the other part that we hear about a lot is Iowans do not like negative advertising, and, boy, we're seeing and this last week in particular a whole lot of negative advertising.</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, there is such a thing as Iowa nice, and that, again, is sort of the myth that Iowans won't respond to negative advertising. They might not like it, but clearly, there are campaigns that live and die by them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: We did see four - we did see eight years ago when Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were battling for the lead in Iowa and they went after each other so - with such nasty commercials that it was John Kerry and John Edwards who pushed them to three and four because of the negativity. So in that sense, it backfired.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller in. This is - excuse me. I'm having trouble with line seven. I apologize, Andy from Slater, Iowa. If you could - if we could move him to another line, somehow we'd like to get him in.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I never like line seven.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or - well, Slater, Iowa, of course, is one of the great garden spots of the world. In any case, Ann, you were going to say?</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, I was going to say I carry around what I call the Register graph of doom for Howard Dean, and you see him going, as I mentioned, from being a top contender falling into fourth place. And that was at the height of those negative ads that were - just the onslaught right then.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as we come down to the wire, the bus tours, the - are people going to be resentful of those who did not spend as much time in Iowa - Mitt Romney - as others did, say, Ron Paul or Rick Santorum?</s>J. ANN SELZER: Well, I think the Romney campaign maybe. We may find out that this has been a very shrewd sort of maintaining plausible deniability. If they don't come in well in Iowa, they never intended to come in well in Iowa. But if they win Iowa - terrific. But I believe that they've had kind of a stealth organization all the time. I understand that his event in Davenport last night, they were packed in, and people had to be shuttled into a, you know, into adjacent areas.</s>J. ANN SELZER: So that now that he's here that there's - that organization may be ginning up the support and bringing crowds to show enthusiasm that may have been there all along.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And when you and your super PACs spend over a million dollars in the state, it gets hard to explain that you didn't really care how it came out. Ann Selzer, thank you very much for your time today. We look forward to your poll on Saturday night with a glimpse...</s>J. ANN SELZER: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...of your poll. She's president of Selzer and Company. We're going to continue talking Iowa with Political Junkie Ken Rudin. Stay with us. When we come back, we want to hear from Iowa Republicans. 800-989-8255. Email, talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan, TALK OF THE NATION, NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This hour, we're concentrating on the Iowa caucuses, which are just six days away. Many outside of Iowa lament the power given to this state. Critics say the strong evangelical bloc here does not reflect the rest of the country, nor does the state's emphasis on agriculture. If you're going to the caucuses here on Tuesday, who's your top choice and your second? 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: Political Junkie Ken Rudin is with us here at Iowa Public Radio. Also joining us here in the studio is Steve Scheffler. He's the president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, the Republican national committeeman for Iowa. Thanks very much for coming in today.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Thank you. It's good to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you've not endorsed anyone?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: No. And I don't intend to, either.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how come?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Well, first of all, as a veteran of three caucus campaigns - and I think they were pretty good salesmen. At the end of the day, most individuals, regardless of political philosophy will make their own choices, and so I think that many times an endorsement can actually be a divisive thing, especially when many of the candidates are saying the same thing. And so we just think it's best to keep their feet to the fire but, you know, trust Iowans to make the right decision on January 3rd.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Keep their feet to the fire on which issues in particular?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Well, any - those issues that's going to be facing a president, whether it's cultural issues or economic issues, and I know the organization I work for actually had a series of house parties all across the state featuring one candidate at a time. And we've encouraged people to come to those events where the candidate will speak, but they'll also ask him for some very specific public policy questions. So making sure, you know, there's only a few states - we're one of three or four states that gets that opportunity.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: After that, leaves Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, basically; it's all about media bias, and so we have a tremendous responsibility and a tremendous opportunity here to put their feet to the fire.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All about media bias in Florida, a much bigger state...</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Correct.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...a much more diverse state. But we're certainly seeing a lot of media bias in this state...</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Correct.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...$10 million, we're told over the past month.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Right, right, right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how much - this used to be retail politics. Obviously, that matters. So does ads during the football games on Sunday.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Well, I think ads probably may play a more important part than they used to, but I still think at the end of the day, people want to have an engaging conversation with a candidate, not one or two times but three or four times, so they can evaluate these candidates one by one and side by side and then make their decisions. So I still think that's a very important part, and we better not lose that opportunity. Otherwise, it all becomes big, huge media bias all across the country. So it's an opportunity that Iowans need to prize and take advantage of.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Steve, Iowans say that you cannot turn on the TV for than five minutes without seeing a negative ad attacking one candidate or the other. Is this more unusual than ever, and what's the reason for that?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Well, I think it is more unusual than in the past, and I guess it's because it's high stakes. You know, it's a wide open presidential race, and people seem to think that negative ads work, and kind of makes sure that another candidate's vote totals on January 3rd are suppressed. And I understand that candidates should and have the right to show differences of opinion in terms of political philosophy, but I guess, like a lot of Iowans, I'm a little putout with all the negative ads. It maybe takes somebody's past positions into account and basically distort other facts. So I think, you know, Iowans are kind of sick of that. I think at the end of the day, they're not going to pay attention to those negative ads.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get some Iowa Republicans on the line. 800-989-8255. You can also email us, talk@npr.org. We're going to make another attempt to get Andy on the line from Slater, Iowa. And, Andy, you're on the air.</s>ANDY: Yup. All right, very good. Nice to talk to you today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And glad we can get you on the air. Go ahead, please.</s>ANDY: All right. I am planning on voting or caucusing probably for Romney. I'd like to do Huntsman, but he just doesn't seem viable, that that vote would then matter. So I just basically feel like the Republicans in Iowa are pulling us further and further right as a party, and particularly as an evangelical Christian we're just painted as a bit too hypocritical and a bit too hateful. So I like the Huntsman-Romney wing of the party better than I do some of the more socially conservative.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Andy, thanks very much. And is there one position in particular that would lean you towards former Governor Romney?</s>ANDY: Not in particular. I would - not in particular. I'd like it, you know, if like Huntsman he believe a little bit more in science and they were less able to attack the - our Supreme Court here in Iowa and get rid of those judges. But I don't know, I may vote Huntsman in any case.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Andy, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it. And he is referring, of course, to the - when he's talking about the judges, this was the decision by the Iowa Supreme Court to say that gay marriage was legal under the Constitution. Those judges - some of those judges ran for extension of their terms and they were defeated. And it's interesting, how much do social issues play in this caucus, do you think, and how much do the economy - there's so many people out of work.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: What I find kind of amazing is the press always talks about social issues being enunciated here at the expense of economic issues, and I just don't really see that at all. I see a lot of these candidates, whether it's Michele Bachmann or Perry or Santorum or Newt talking about economic and social issues - and I'm, frankly, of the yoke that those issues are interlinked. And if you don't have a candidate that believes that moral and cultural values are important, then quite frankly I don't think we'll ever get it right economically. So I think those issues are interlinked, and I don't believe for one minute that they've been overplayed. And if you look at the results of caucuses in the past, to say that, you know, the caucuses has been hijacked by the evangelical wing of the party, I think that's an overstatement.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: I mean, George W. Bush won the caucuses here back in 2008, and you look at Bob Dole won the caucuses here in 1988. He won them in 1996. And so I think a lot of that is just media hype that has no credibility to it. And quite frankly, anybody with a value system that wants to be involved, I certainly encourage that. And so, again, I believe that that's just something that's been overplayed. But secondly, like I said before, I think those issues are interlinked and they're all important issues.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Steve, I first met you in 1988, when you were working for Pat Robertson. And back then, Robertson brought in a lot of evangelical Christian conservatives who never participated in the process before, or rarely did. And now, we kind of expect that we see a Mike Huckabee win in 2008. We saw a Pat Buchanan, less evangelical but certainly conservative, in 1996. How has the Iowa Republican Party changed since 1988 and Pat Robertson?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Well, actually, I think the influx of those people that came in with Pat Robertson way back in 1988 have added a lot to the Republican Party. We elected people like Terry Branstad. We elected people like Chuck - or reelected Chuck Grassley in this recent election because of the conservative element in the Republican Party. We took control of the Iowa House. We almost took control of the Iowa Senate. And quite frankly, they've added a lot of vigor. And quite frankly, if you look at who the volunteer base of the Republican Party is today, it's those same people that, you know, some people, you know, some people cast dispersion on. It's a lot of those people that are in the evangelical, pro-life movement that are basically the backbone of the party in terms of the volunteer work today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller in. Jim's on the line from Des Moines.</s>JIM: Yes, I am in Des Moines, and I'm going to support either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum because the constant reports that Iran is threatening to cut off the Gulf of Hormuz, where I believe we get a sixth of our oil. And those two gentlemen both support ethanol, which is giving us now a significant amount of our oil and could be a whole lot more if we want them to do it. It's very much in the news. And you can't cut off our cornfields with any foreign people, so that's why I'm going to support those gentlemen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Jim, thanks very much for the call. He's referring to reports today, I believe, in the news that Iran threatened to - in the event of additional sanctions because of it's nuclear ambitions - close the Strait of Hormuz. I think the Fifth Fleet said they might have a vote in that too. But in any case, the ethanol issue has been a critical one here for many candidates for many years. Is it this time around?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: I think it is. But I think there was a recent poll out, maybe four or five, six months ago, that said that ethanol subsidies was a deal breaker with only about 20, 22 percent of Iowans. And I think as Senator Grassley and others pointed out, if we have an equal playing field in terms of the energy question that, you know, eventually maybe we wanted to have to have subsidies anywhere across the board. So, you know, for Iowa's economy, it certainly is important. But again, I don't think ethanol subsidies per se is a deal breaker with most caucus goers this year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: We were - just a second ago, we were talking about evangelical conservatives and the influence they have. And yet, many polls seem to indicate or word on the mouth - or word on the street seemed to indicate that Ron Paul is also doing very well, who's not really an evangelical conservative? What is that all about? Where does the Ron Paul support come from?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Well, I think a lot of Ron Paul support goes back to the fact that he is the one that's been consistent on the longest-term basis in terms of calling our nation to account for its humungous debt and overspending. And a lot of people are attracted by that, and I think rightfully so, knowing that he's the one candidate I think that's talking about getting rid of five federal departments. So there's a certain appeal to that.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: And so there's an attraction there and, you know, he's going to bring out some new caucus-goers, which I think bringing new people into the party system is always a good thing. So he does every support there, but he's also - got his detractors because of some other issues, so.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I think Rick Perry only had three that he wanted to cut. I can't think of the third one.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What the third one was, no? We also heard - seen different polls on the issue of Mormon religion, and this, of course, refers to Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, both of whom are Mormons, and different polls showing that Republicans in this state might not vote for somebody because of their religion. How do you think that's going to break out?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Are you talking about in terms of the caucuses or the general election?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Caucuses.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: No, I don't think at the end of the day that people are concerned about that particular issue. What they are concerned about, I think, like myself, is why Mitt Romney, like Jon Huntsman, has not been to this state more often. And quite frankly, I think the candidates that have been here on an even long-term basis asking for the votes of Iowans is important. And so I think his lack of absence - or his absence here has been one thing. And I think also, some people are concerned about where is he at on certain issues.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: You know, prior to 2007, he talked, you know, in the affirmative for homosexual marriage, gay rights, was pro-choice, probably could be considered to the left of even Ted Kennedy, who he ran against in the Senate back in whatever year that was. And then when he came to Iowa, he talked on the right side, but now he doesn't talk about it at all. So I think there's a concern about where does he really stand on these issues, you know, period.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Steve Scheffler, the president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. And the political junkie is with us, as he is every Wednesday. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller in. This is John(ph). John is calling us from North Central Iowa.</s>JOHN: Yeah, thanks. I've heard people talking about undecided Iowans, and it is true that we kind of hold out to the last minute. I've done before. But, you know, this time, I am genuinely confused. I have been something of an ideologue, was a Huckabee supporter. This crop, I really like them all. I mean, I don't hate anybody. I don't even hate Romney. Santorum and Michele - she's awesome - are my ideologues but (technical difficulties)...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I think we're losing John so far.</s>JOHN: ...kind of - I think he might get her done, he might for the economy. I think we could stand him for four years. Although he's not my perfect ideologue, we could stand him for four years. He could prescribe Ex-Lax, get our economy going and give birth to, you know, a liberated financial system that's not all bogged down.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, John, excuse me. Sorry to interrupt. We - your cell phone dropped out there for a second. Which candidate are you talking about you think might get her done?</s>JOHN: Well, I don't know. I'm not really sure. I think if we put up with Paul for four years - although not my ideologue - he could prescribe some Ex-Lax and give birth to a liberated economy back to the what the Constitution said.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I see.</s>JOHN: So - but I still don't know. I really - I'm not just pulling your leg. Normally, I do know. Like I said, I pulled hard for Huckabee. I met him. I spent a lot of time with him, just meeting him on the road. But this time, I really don't know. I think we have a good crop of possible choices.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let me ask you, Steve Scheffler. Yesterday we heard Newt Romney - Newt Gingrich – excuse me, falling into somebody's trap there - Newt Gingrich say, first of all, that Ron Paul cannot get the nomination and that he could not support him against - maybe even not against Barack Obama. There are people who say Ron Paul's positions on national defense and foreign policy are outside the mainstream. Is that going to make a problem for him here in Iowa?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: I think at the end of the day most people are going to be willing to enthusiastically support whoever nominee is, any of the six or seven people that are running for president. The bottom line is, I think that most of us wouldn't have ever dreamed that we could have a president as far left as Barack Obama, who, indeed, is following a socialist agenda. So I think at the end of the day, any of these candidates would be 150 percent better than what sits in the White House today. So I think at the end of the day that they'll support the nominee.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Steve, just a few minutes ago, you were talking these - the flip-flops or the switch in positions for Mitt Romney. But as we've seen the last couple of days, Newt Gingrich has a history also of renouncing previous positions. Do you think that's going to hurt Newt Gingrich as it seems to be hurting...</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: I don't think nearly so much as Mitt Romney because at least he has tried to talk about, you know, where he's at today and tried to convince voters that this is where he's at, whereas Mitt Romney basically, as I mentioned before, is not even talking about these issues, where he went from left to right and now he's basically silent on those issues. So, you know, Newt, to his credit, is talking about why he's made those - these changes here and there. And I think when people hear it enough times that they believe that person is going to be consistent, do what they said they're going to do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get one more caller in. Let's go to Seth, and Seth's with us from Northwest Iowa.</s>SETH: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call, Neal. It is an honor to share the air space with you at the moment.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, that's kind of you to say.</s>SETH: Oh, thank you. I would just like to say that I believe that when the caucus is all said and done, Ron Paul is going to pull through because he speaks to the pragmatic side of most Iowans. And whether you say they're Christian conservative or liberal, I think at the end of the day, that doesn't matter - no offense to your panel - because we're fair people.</s>SETH: I mean, the Supreme Court passed gay marriage for a reason. And I think that if you look at the facts back, the reason that those judges got knocked off the docket is because there was far too much money poured into it. And, yes, the small chunk of the true Christian conservatives went to the polls. But I think if you went across the board with every Republican in Iowa, they would say that they want a fair life for everybody, and Ron Paul stands for that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Seth, thanks very much for the call. Given the split among the numbers of candidates, do you expect anybody to get over 25 percent come next Tuesday?</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: I think at this point it's probably highly unlikely, and again, I think a lot of it is based on two reasons. One is the candidates have not been here near as often, except for maybe like Rick Santorum, have not been here near as often as they have in past caucus cycles when people want to evaluate their candidate after five or six encounters of those candidates. And secondly, it's because a lot of those candidates are very similar on a whole wide range of issues.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, we'll see what the results are next Tuesday. Thanks so much for your time, Steve Scheffler.</s>STEVE SCHEFFLER: Thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. He joined us here at the studios of Iowa Public Radio. Next Tuesday, Ken Rudin, our political junkie, will - going to be back on the road again in New Hampshire. Tomorrow, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will join Jennifer Ludden, who'll be filing in, to talk about the proposal to extend federal wage protections to home health care workers. Join her for that. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from Des Moines.

It's 2012 — time to throw out the 2011 calendar. But professors Richard Conn Henry and Steven Hanke say it's time to trash the Gregorian calendar altogether. The Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar would make holidays fall on the same day of the week each year. Wired's Brandon Keim explains why he thinks the plan is not a good idea. Read Brandon Keim's Wired post, "Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: And now, the Opinion Page. It's the start of a new year. Already, millions of us have posted new calendars on the wall or installed new ones on our computers. But Steven Hanke and Richard Henry, two Johns Hopkins University professors, propose a more radical step: the Hanke-Henry permanent calendar, which they say will solve the yearly hassle of reworking our schedules and even help businesses put fiscal calendars in sync. But that raises a question: Is the current calendar a problem for you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If it is, call and tell us why or why not. 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Brandon Keim is an associate editor for Wired Science and wrote a piece for Wired.com, "Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational." And he joins us from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION. Happy New Year.</s>BRANDON KEIM: You, too, Neal. Thank you for inviting me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: New Years is an appropriate - this is the official holiday, of course, not the actual holiday, which I guess is their point. Why is it a different day every year?</s>BRANDON KEIM: Well, the Earth takes 365 days to orbit the sun, and under our Gregorian calendar, there's seven days in a week. And you divide 365 by seven, and you have 52 weeks, 364 days and one left over.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that's where we get into problems. It's not quite 365. It's 365 plus some change, and the division just doesn't work.</s>BRANDON KEIM: It does not. And for people of a certain persuasion, that does cause a pea-under-the-mattress irritation. And also in the world of finance, there are apparently instruments by which interest is calculated that the calendar, as we have it now, causes a certain amount of inefficiency or even enables people to take advantage of it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, presumably, we have computers now to handle those abstruse calculations. But in the meantime, what they've proposed is a calendar that is far more rational. It chops it to 364 days a year, and then deals with those extra day per year and some change by saying every five or six years, we're going to have an extra week.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Yup. A whole brand-new week, which does seem a little - well, I don't want to say irrational, but it does add a certain irregularity to things. But it would be every five or six years, and specifically on those years which begin or end in a Gregorian calendar Thursday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I bet it's not going to be easy to remember - as easy to remember as 30 days hath September.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Yup. The rhymes go out the window, as do the knuckle counting, which I wasn't even aware of. Somebody on the train yesterday explained it to me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Wait. Knuckle counting? I was unaware of this, too, until this very minute.</s>BRANDON KEIM: It's a mystery. I still don't understand how it works. But I'm sure if you Google knuckle counting the months, you will find out that the peaks and valleys on your knuckles correspond to short and long months.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How does - never mind. Anyway, that's kind of the problem. All of us figure out this stuff as we grow up, and we learn to deal with it.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Yes, we do. And I think part of what is so appealing about the Richard Henry and Steve Hanke's project - and really the many calendars that have come before. There's a rich history of people who have proposed new and better designed calendars during the 20th century. And, you know, there's really something kind of noble and enduring and can-do about it. There is the Raventos Symmetrical Calendar, which had 13 months and 28 days, and something called the Symmetry454 Calendar, where there were no Friday the 13ths.</s>BRANDON KEIM: And actually, in the 1950s, the United Nations formally rejected the idea of a world calendar, which would have had an extra day at the end of each year that would have been known as World's Day, and depicted on the calendar with a W on it. It would have been a holiday for everyone, which - I must admit, I do like that idea.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's got a certain charm to it. Of course, there were universal calendars - at least we're talking about the Western world, for the most part - the Julian calendar dictated by Julius Caesar back in Roman times. But because of the inaccuracies over time, well, we started observing winter was not in the winter months anymore. So Pope Gregory corrected that. We have the Gregorian calendar.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Indeed. And - but whereas Pope Gregory needed a papal decree to make this happen, back in 2004, Richard Henry thought to himself, well, you know, we have the Internet now. And if I make a Web page, people will come to me, and this idea will filter out and perhaps, it will - the calendar will change from the ground up.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He should for pope. And that way, he could issue - well, anyway. You know, nobody has the power of Julius Caesar or Pope Gregory anymore.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Nobody does. But perhaps all of us combined would have the power to change the calendar.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Brandon Keim of Wired Science, who wrote the piece "Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational." And you're - we want to hear your thoughts. What's wrong with the current calendar we've got? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. And Bob joins us on the line from St. Paul.</s>BOB: Hey, thanks. Wouldn't just be easier to go day one through 365, and then start over? Why do we even need to rationalize it with names and days and splitting things up into, you know, smaller, you know, time segments? Why not just do - it's day one of, you know, 2012, whatever?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He's got an argument. There are celestial mechanics that tell us the number of days and the number of days it takes for a complete year. Why are we missing with it's Tuesday the 13th?</s>BRANDON KEIM: Well, I do think - that question actually does get it, the fact that keeping time is, to an extent, very arbitrary. The Earth goes around the sun once every 365 days. There are points at which it is closer or farther in, so it is warmer or hotter. And we have seasons that correspond to that. But what we choose to name the days and how we choose to keep track of them is really a human project. And it would be possible to have day 76 or day 274, but I think most of us would find it inconvenient. We are established in our seven-day weeks, of which the six and seventh day are used to rest, and it's just simpler. I think it adds - it makes life more tractable and progresses in a more fulfilling way to have Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Bob, I can say - I think that, you know, it's pretty easy to say that, well, the Iowa caucus is day three and the New Hampshire primary is day, I guess, seven days after that would be 10. But it's a little hard to say, you know, would you like to go out to the movies with me on day - 275. I think Bob has left us, probably to get to his abacus and figure all of this out.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As we look at the calendars, though, it is time that we're talking about. And, indeed, these two proponents have an even more radical solution, and that is we do away with time zones.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Yes, it would be - Greenwich Mean Time, universal time around the world all the time. And so I believe right now that would make it 7:47 p.m., and that would be the time for all of us. And once again, there is a certain truth to that. The time is the same, wherever you are. And from Richard Henry's perspective, it makes no sense to say it's one time in Australia and another time here - although I do think that most of us find that keeping time is supposed to be relative to our own experience. And so from our own experience, it does make sense to say to someone in Australia, I had to get up at 5 a.m. And they can relate to that, because 5 a.m. equals early.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's going to be awkward, too, if you're in some place like Fiji, to have Monday become Tuesday in the middle of the day.</s>BRANDON KEIM: There would be that, although on the flipside, there would no - be no more International Date Line. So...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's true, which is confusing enough if you've ever gone across it on the way to a place like Japan or China. You pick up a day on the way there, or lose a day on the way back, or vice versa. I forget.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Exactly. It's tricky.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see. This is an email from Eric in Greensboro. So when is Shabbat? And my birthday is October 31st. When do I get to celebrate it? Of course, Shabbat, one of the holidays on the Jewish calendar.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Indeed. And I'm glad, actually, he brought up the Hebrew calendar, because there are many people out there who use more than one calendar. Jewish people have the Hebrew calendar, which proceeds in time right alongside the Gregorian, and live according to both. And I think an idea like this, in practical terms, is not going to be adopted. I don't think people are ready to get rid of the rhythm of their lives just so easily. But if enough people really did want to do that, you could start keeping time by it right now. And communities, cultures could spring up around it. And you really could have the Hanke-Henry Permanent system existing alongside the Gregorian, and, who knows, maybe supplanting it some day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Though they're very close, and so that might be a problem, the Jewish calendars. You also get the - many places in the world, for example, we think of Christmas as a - early winter, so solstice - right around the solstice, is a holiday. Easter is a spring time holiday, that sort of thing. In much of the world, Tet, which is the important holiday, that moves. It's on the lunar calendar. It could be any time of the year.</s>BRANDON KEIM: In here, actually, I must confess, you're running up against the limits of my own provincial ignorance. And I go, Tet, when is that?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It changes, is the answer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's another email, this from Barb in Virginia Beach: Our presidential election falls during leap year, giving us one extra day of campaign commercials and/or debates. Shortening the calendar would give us some relief.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Wow. Going to a Canadian system, with six weeks of campaigning, would really give us relief.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But that's talking about changing culture. That would be something else entirely. Another email, this one from Paul: I would not support a permanent calendar. I like the chance to have my birthday on the weekend, and would hate to have it stuck on a Monday.</s>BRANDON KEIM: I agree. Many people feel that way. And I know that Dr. Henry's response would be: well celebrate your day on whatever you want, whenever it is. But I must confess, I am sympathetic to that view as well. I like having the holidays change from year to year. And actually, I feel that, you know, a calendar that proceeds uniformly and regularly for economic purposes, really, there's too much in our lives already that is abrogated or warps to fit economic demands. And I think we need less of that, not more. I think if the economy slows down for two weeks when Christmas and New Year's fall on weekdays, so be it. That's a good thing. Let us be human for two weeks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I have to day say, I do get annoyed at the holidays, but mostly at the ones that are celebrated by moving them. Martin Luther King's birthday is Martin Luther King's birthday. It is not the nearest Monday. I like July 4th because it's July 4th. Christmas is December 25th.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Hmm. I agree. How do you feel about Thanksgiving?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think it's the third Thursday in November, whatever that is.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Hmm. Yeah. I - the floating holidays, I agree with you. They are a little annoying.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Brandon Keim of Wired Science and Wired.com. He wrote a piece called "Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's the knuckle explanation in an email from Larry in Pineville, North Carolina: I learned this in first grade, in 1941. With your right hand, point to the first top knuckle on your left. It's on top, so it's a longer month. Between the high spots are low spots or shorter months. Here's the trick. On the last knuckle, which hits on July, a long month, hit it twice, as August is also a long month. Kids stuff. Best mnemonic I ever heard. I still like 30 days hath September, April, June...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In this email from Ryan in Gainesville: It auspiciously being 2012, didn't the Mayans have this whole calendar thing figured out?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's another, of course, talking to the point that I think the Mayan calendar ends right around the solstice, the winter solstice come December.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Yes, it does end then. And let's hope we're all there to see it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Linda in Richmond - Richmond, California, I should say. How weird is it that our calendar in the United States still begins the week on Sunday? What is the history of this strange practice? I wonder if your calendar research unveiled an answer to that.</s>BRANDON KEIM: That is a superb question. It never even occurred to me - which just shows how ubiquitous it is - that I took it for granted. I will look that up. And if she can provide her email, I'll send her an answer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. If not, we'll get answer from you and put it on our Letter segment tomorrow if we can get the answer that quickly. I think Google might provide it for us. But - or maybe the Wikipedia. Now, let's go to Luke, and Luke's on the line with us from Fort Collins in Colorado.</s>LUKE: Good day. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fine. Thank you. Happy New Year.</s>LUKE: To you, as well. So, a number of years ago, I was sitting around pondering the irregularity of our calendar and decided to sit down with an Excel spreadsheet and divide the number 365 by every number up to 365 to find out: Is the year divisible by an even pattern? And what I found is that it's only divisible by two numbers: five and 73. Obviously, it ends in five. So I pondered then, what could you do with five periods of 73 days? And so I came up with a scheme to break down the 73 days into 10 seven-day weeks, so that we would maintain the seven-day weeks. And at the end of each of those five periods throughout the year, you'd have an additional three-day weekend. And so it would maintain the seven-day week, but it would also break down the year into perfectly regularly systems.</s>LUKE: And so once you calculate the weekends for each of the 10 seven-day weeks and then the additional three-day weekend, you come up with approximately the same number of days that our current system allows for holidays and federal holidays and whatnot. You still have approximately the same number of working days per year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the - and change - 365 days and change. So a leap day every four years?</s>LUKE: Yes.</s>BRANDON KEIM: I think that's fantastic. Did you come up with names for the periods?</s>LUKE: You know, I fiddled around with it for quite awhile and tried to see if I could make it collate with the zodiacal pattern of the constellations. What I found was that the constellations aren't quite perfectly regular, either, so they didn't fit perfectly. I fiddled around with it some, but no. I didn't come up with, like, seasonal-type names. No, I didn't really go that far with it. The only other time that I've seen that exact same idea proposed was with a pseudo-religion called the Discordians. You can find a Wikipedia article on them. But they also suggest the same sort of pattern.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Didn't Napoleon also rename the months and the days of the week?</s>LUKE: I don't know if it was Napoleon, but during the French Revolution, the Thermidorian revolution, I think, also came up with the system of replacing all religious connotations, so street names, like (unintelligible) Saint-Michel, the saint was removed from...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Right.</s>LUKE: Yeah. You're totally right on that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thermidori - well, perhaps, they called for lobster every Sunday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Speaking of celestial mechanics, Christine Kearns(ph) from Morris, Minnesota, among many who wrote to correct our guest on email: Don't let that statement Earth closer or further from the sun causes warmer or cooler. It's the tilt of the ecliptic...</s>BRANDON KEIM: Oh.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...that causes the seasons, not the ecliptic - not the elliptic of the orbit. OK. So...</s>BRANDON KEIM: Oh, I'm going to go eat some humble pie after I take off the headphones here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much. And, Luke, thanks very much for the phone call.</s>LUKE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Claire in Bend, Oregon: As a teacher trying to explain the calendar to elementary school students is yet another difficult undertaking in explaining the logic - or perhaps lack of it - in a system, much like English spelling rules or our system of measurement. So perhaps it's one of those lessons that we ought to learn that, essentially, life is unfair, and you can spell through about six different ways.</s>BRANDON KEIM: There is that. And actually, on the subject of measurements, I would refer people to a lovely little essay by George Orwell, whom would expect to be so very rational and yet, he liked the - just the sound of the words, inches and pounds. And there you have a man who just holds with tradition sometimes, even when it doesn't make sense.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hard to say: and kilometers to go before we sleep. It just doesn't work. Anyway, Brandon, thanks very much for your time today.</s>BRANDON KEIM: Happy New Year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Brandon Keim, associate editor for Wired Science, joined us from our bureau in New York. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.

For this week's snapshot, its back to Lake Wylie, S.C., with former Washington Post reporter Patrice Gaines, who shares the thing she finds sweetest about summertime just before the season ends.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya and this is NEWS & NOTES.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: On this week's Snapshot, it's back to lovely Lake Wylie, South Carolina, with former Washington Post reporter Patrice Gaines. Like many of us, Patrice is getting ready to welcome in the fall season, but she's still not quite ready for that autumn chill.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Here, Patrice shares one of the things she finds sweetest about the summertime.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): I first went to the Peach Tree market shortly after moving to Lake Wylie. My next-door neighbors, Martha(ph) and George(ph), had the place high on their must-see list. Martha mentioned it in the same breath that she told me about the trash dump and Sweet Repee(ph), the fur(ph) store run by the Lioness Club.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): Now, two years later, visiting the market has become our regular ritual. We tell the seasons by when the Peach Tree market is open or when it's ice cream parlor closes. We enjoy the 10-mile drive along the two-lane road to reach it. We passed gills with horses, cows and goats. We ride unto an archway made by bowing trees with branches that meet up over our heads. We cruised down Main Street in the small town of Clover. We drive by consignment shops, the Pickly Wickly(ph) and George's tax office. We passed through Filbert, South Carolina, which we wouldn't know existed if it weren't for the sign, and we arrived in York, where the Peach Tree market stands alone at a rural intersection.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): We find something new every time we go to the market. On a recent Saturday, George, Martha, my sister Carol(ph) and I admired jars of peach syrup and green tomato pickles. Earlier in the summer, we had sampled bounty and Monroe peaches and cut slithers of the watermelon we left out for visitors to taste. On this day, I taste Key lime Jelly and pumpkin butter. I buy three packs of garlic cheese grits, one to send to my daughter in Atlanta, and my mouth waters if I think about the shrimp and grits I know I will cook for breakfast the next day.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): Eventually, we end up in the ice cream parlor, which is attached to the market. The ice cream is made nearby. The price is right, $1.70 for a scoop, 2.25 for a double. For the rest of October, we will visit the parlor as often as we can, and I will eat as much ice cream as my conscience would allow.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): George, Martha and my sister will also indulge. We know the parlor closes at the end of October and won't open again until next summer. George is notorious in the ice cream parlor. I've never seen anyone eat as much ice cream as he does, says Merwyn Smith(ph), who owns Peach Tree market along with her husband Ben. She calls George one of her favorite ice cream eaters.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): People gawk at George, who is 5'3" and 140 pounds. He eats a double cone with three scoops of ice cream: black cherry, chocolate and butter pecan. Then he eats a double cone with a scoop of black cherry and a scoop of butter pecan. Martha says he loves ice cream but loves the attention more. I must bore the crowd. I get a single waffle cone with a scoop of butter pecan and a scoop of sugar-free vanilla to lessen my guilt.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): What I always enjoy most about the ice cream parlor is watching the children step on to the low wooden bench that runs along the front of the freezer. Little children who otherwise would be too short to see the vats of ice cream, stand on a low bench and peer at the bright green lime sherbet and blue and pink birthday cake-flavored ice cream. I sit eating my cone, and I am mesmerized by the difference made by that simple length of wood.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Journalist; Former Reporter, Washington Post): Ben Smith(ph) is a grandfather of three and father of two. He told me he have the step put in after watching mamas lift their children and hold them so they could see the flavors of ice cream. I look at the wood and I am reminded that every solution doesn't require a blue ribbon study or millions of dollars to implement. Here, a simple piece of wood raises children a foot higher and changes what they can see.</s>I lick my ice cream and watch a boy peer into the freezer, then proudly point his finger to exactly what he wants: chocolate chip.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That was journalist and writing coach Patrice Gaines with this week's Snapshot. She told her story from member station WFAE in Charlotte, North Carolina.

From stump speeches to political ads, religion is a hot-button topic in the presidential campaign. Many of the GOP candidates have emphasized their faith while campaigning, and others have come under fire from opponents and religious leaders for their beliefs. Barbara Bradley Hagerty, religion correspondent, NPR John Green, senior research advisor, Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. In Iowa, all the GOP presidential candidates continue to profess their faith in speeches and in broadcast ads, perhaps none more than Texas Governor Rick Perry.</s>GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As president, I'll end Obama's war on religion, and I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Religion and politics have long intertwined in this country, and this year's contest for the Republican nomination raises more religious issues and controversies than most: Mormonism, dominionism and Catholicism, redemption, steadfastness and conversion all figure in a race where faith is cast as an expression of character values and of political priorities.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How does a candidate's religion affect your vote? 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. Later in the program, we'll reconsider the calendar on the Opinion Page this week.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But first, politics and religion. NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty joins us here in Studio 3A. Happy New Year. Welcome back.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Thank you. You, too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Evangelicals in Iowa are seen as a key element of the GOP electorate. The caucuses, obviously, are scheduled for tomorrow. Are there differences in the ways the candidates are appealing to that? Why don't we go through one at a time?</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Sure, sure, I mean, this is - there's - everyone wants the evangelical vote, and I think that's because of Mike Huckabee, actually. In 2008, when Huckabee walked away with the evangelical vote and got a lot of momentum for his ensuing candidacy, and so everyone wants that vote.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And so you are seeing different people - it's playing out in different ways. For example, OK, Mitt Romney...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Frontrunner, according to most of the polls.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Absolutely. Now, he is basically trying to play down his faith. And why is that? It's because he's a Mormon. And evangelicals have a lot of skepticism, a lot of wariness about Mormons. Polls show that something like 53 percent of evangelicals say that Mormons are not Christians. Forty-seven percent say they'd be uncomfortable with a Mormon president.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And so what you're seeing is a lot of skepticism, and he is trying to kind of play down his faith. The only thing he's really said is I've been a member of my church my entire life, and I've been married for 42 years, kind of bringing up the family values issue.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also a contrast with one of his opponents, Newt Gingrich, who hasn't been married to the same woman for 42 years.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: That's right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But as we see that's more of a factor in the Republican primary than it would be - according to the polls - in a general election.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Absolutely. That's absolutely right. I mean, it's interesting to watch what happens to evangelical voters if he becomes - if Romney becomes the nominee. Basically, 91 percent of evangelical voters say they would vote for Mitt Romney if he were opposing Barack Obama.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And basically, they just - they so dislike Barack Obama that they will vote for anyone who can oust him. So you will see people - he will get the evangelical vote - maybe not as fulsomely, maybe people will stay home. But he will get the vote.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that raises a question: This is not a wedge issue. There was, at some point, Rick Perry in particular when he was first in the race, some of his supporters said, wait a minute. We can't support a Mormon candidate. Mormonism is a cult.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: That's right. That's right. A Dallas pastor called Mormonism a cult, and he was - I mean, he was actually talking about the technical definition of a cult. But at any rate, it created quite an outcry, because people felt that was hitting a little bit below the belt. And so even Rick Perry came - kind of came to Mitt Romney's defense and said, well, we don't really want to talk about that. We don't want to bring religion into this in this way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: At least differences in religion - he's not been shy about bringing religion in. But we're going candidate by candidate, and number two in most of the polls is Ron Paul, the former Libertarian Party candidate.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Right, absolutely. Now, he was raised Lutheran. He now attends a Baptist church. He says that he sees his faith as a deeply private issue, and he doesn't want to talk about it because he doesn't want to kind of use it for political gain. But he says he has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: So he has the kind of evangelical, or at least - he has the evangelical talk. We'll put it that way. He mainly talks about - when you think about his scripture, though, the Constitution comes to mind more than the Bible, in some ways. I mean, he talks a lot about how God created man to be free, with God-given rights and that the government is taking away our freedoms. So it's a sort of Libertarian, Tea Party faith.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And he really doesn't talk very much about faith at all. The one area, though, that evangelicals really like about Ron Paul is his stand on abortion. When he was a country doctor, he delivered 4,000 babies, he said, and he never saw a case where abortion was necessary. So he's really, really pro-life.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And, in fact, he won the Values Voters Summit last fall. So, obviously, evangelicals like him to a certain extent.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Then let's go to number three, at least in the most recent polls, the candidate who is said to be surging, that is Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from the state of Pennsylvania.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: That's right. He's Catholic. He's billed himself very much as the family values candidate. His wife Karen has homeschooled all seven of their children. He's surging in the polls because he's been very, very conservative on these issues. By the way, I should say that - Catholics and Protestants - evangelicals no longer have a problem with Catholics. That went away back in the 1990s or so, and something like 82 percent of evangelicals have favorable views of Catholics. So that's not a stumbling block for him.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And he is very - he - you check the mark on the boxes on all of their big issues. He's very pro-life. He supports a federal marriage amendment. He says he'd work to limit birth control, to ban stem cell research, to reinstate the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wants to pass a workplace religious freedom act, allow prayer at school events, including graduation, football games, that kind of thing.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: So he is really playing to evangelicals, here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Newt Gingrich is fourth in most of the polls. Previous, a month ago, we would have put him somewhere different, but at this moment fourth, and in some ways the most interesting. He has converted to Catholicism.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: That's right. His is a very interesting spiritual journey. He was born Lutheran. He converted to Southern Baptist in graduate school. And then in 2009, he converted to Catholicism. Now, the person who was central to that was his third wife, Callista. She's a very devout Catholic. She sings, actually, in the professional choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine here in Washington, D.C.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And what would happen - they got married in 2000, and he began going to Mass with her every week to watch her perform. And he says it just kind of seeped in, this Catholicism seeped into his psyche, so to speak.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Now one - many people would see a little bit of irony to the fact that Callista was the one who really led him to Catholicism, because he was having an affair with Callista for six years before he divorced his second wife. And so there is a little bit of irony in that, and I think a lot of people feel there is baggage there.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: You know, and I should say that a lot of people do think that he's changed, that he's a kinder, gentler, more mellow Newt. They don't know if it's because of his Catholicism, or because he's now a 68-year-old grandfather, but people do believe he has baggage and he would be vulnerable, I think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's take two candidates together, that would be Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. And both seem to be cut - at least superficially - from the same stripe.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Yeah, that's right. They're kind of straight evangelicals. They're pro-life, anti-gay marriage. They just - they're very mainstream evangelicals. They also - and they've both very much been, you know, playing to the evangelical voter in Iowa and South Carolina. I mean, this has been their strong point.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: They both have a little bit of an interesting footnote. If either of them becomes the nominee, it will be very interesting to cover this other religion story that we haven't been able to cover, which is this issue of dominionism.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, what is dominionism?</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Well, dominionism - and by the way, the folks who subscribe to what's called the New Apostolic Movement, that's - other people call them dominionists. They don't like the term, but these folks who subscribe to this movement are charismatic Christians.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: They've been very supportive of Rick Perry. If you'll remember the big prayer meeting he had in Reliance Stadium, they were some of the major supporters. And what they believe is that we are in a kind of spiritual battle for America's soul.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And dominionists, or these New Apostolic Movement folks, they believe that Christians should take back the seven mountains of influence. That's what they call it. And those seven mountains are government, business, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and religion.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: They say that America is losing these, that Christians need to really take these back, and that unless we do, this country - well, we're in the middle of a spiritual battle, they believe, and that this country's soul will be lost unless they can do this.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Which raises a question - we want to get to calls in just a minute - but why is it that religious conservatives feel so strongly about Barack Obama, about the opponent, that they would vote for anyone in the Republican Party, as opposed to - other than on political issues?</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Well, I think a lot of it does have to do with this policy when it comes to, you know, abortion, when it comes to gay rights, things like that. I think they don't like the health care policy. But I just have to say - and I'd be interested to know what others believe about this - I think there's just this visceral dislike for Barack Obama that I haven't seen in many, many years - maybe Bill Clinton. But there is a visceral dislike.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And I think - I mean, they talk about him wanting to make America godless. So I think there's this kind of visceral dislike that is at their core that has more to do with - more than - it's not just about policy. It's this kind of sentiment they have toward him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear how a candidate's religion affects your vote. Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. We'll start with Patrick, Patrick calling us from Jacksonville.</s>PATRICK: Hey, how are you? I'm a teacher, high school and college history teacher. And when I get to politics and religion, I mention to my students that John F. Kennedy in 1960 had to speak in front of a group of Protestants and pretty much guarantee them that he was not going to allow his Catholicism to interfere with his ability to be president.</s>PATRICK: So that was like, you know, almost 50 years ago that we have somebody having to tone down his religion. And now if you don't pump your religion up, you can't get, you know, beyond vote number one. And I think there's just an irony of that.</s>PATRICK: And I find it that, you know, the more a candidate talks about their religion, the less likely I am to vote for them because I think it's just kind of a little overboard.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But - thank you, Patrick, for that. But he's absolutely right. John Kennedy said, wait a minute. Yes, I'm a Catholic, but the pope does not dictate my policies. Today, we have candidates saying my religion does dictate my policies.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Yes, that's right, but it's not...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Even some that say God told me to run.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: That's right. And I guess a certain type of religion is acceptable. For example, Mitt Romney ran into this issue. He gave, essentially, what he tried to make a Kennedy-esque speech back in 2008, where he said the same thing, that my faith, I'll be - my faith will not dictate my policies.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: So if you have the right type of religion, I guess you're allowed to talk about it. But if you're, say, a Mormon, you're not.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Barbara Bradley Hagerty about how candidates express their faith in their campaigns. Tell us: How does a candidate's religion affect your vote? 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. This election year, it feels as if we know at least as much about a candidate's religion as we do about his or her position on national security, education or health care - not always the case.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In years past, it may have been enough for a politician running for high office to simply state I'm a Catholic or an Episcopalian. Now candidates make statements about their faith to distinguish themselves from the field. How does a candidate's religion affect your vote? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also weigh in on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd especially be interested to hear from those of you with whom it is an important factor. Again, 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. Our guest is Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR's religion correspondent. And let's go next to - this is Joel, Joel with us from Johnson City in Tennessee.</s>JOEL: Well, Happy New Year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy New Year.</s>JOEL: And your discussion couldn't be more apropos for me. I was doing research on an article on religion and elections. And what I was doing, it was on the sixth - Article Six of the body of the Constitution. And that says that no religious test shall be required to hold or obtain office - or something similar to that - in the United States.</s>JOEL: And there were lots of discussion of this in the Federal Convention in 1787, and they put the issue to rest. And they discussed the intransigence of religion, and the fact that religion would have a disunifying or an un-unifying effect, rather than creating a national unity. And these were religious people, but they also expressed the fact that religion, in the past, historically, had caused dissention among people in the country.</s>JOEL: And just when they thought it was resolved, both very strongly in Massachusetts, ratifying convention in Virginia, it was raised again. And some of the members of the convention just stated, and they said I thought this issue was resolved, and now you bring it up again.</s>JOEL: It was mainly the preachers, interestingly enough, because they feared that even if they wanted a religious person, they didn't want a particular sect to take hold. And that eventually became the First Amendment, where they didn't want a national religion. It was the religion of the - you know, the flavor of the month.</s>JOEL: And they thought their religion may be strong now, it may not be strong in the future.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, we, of course, remember that the - early United States, a much more homogenous place, but a place with very vigorous and very, well, fractious divisions among the different sects of Protestantism, largely - of course there were Catholics and others in the country, but their numbers were relatively small. But the differences among those other groups were, as you suggest, profound, Joel. And this is something that has animated the discussion of the constitutional issues going back to freedom of religion, as you mentioned in the First Amendment, right from the very beginning.</s>JOEL: Well, it precedes the First Amendment, because the First Amendment was raised, the issue was raised. I think Pinckney, he made several propositions. But basically, many of his propositions became the First, Second, Third and Fourth Amendments. But his motion to add to affirm, you know, either affirm or - either swear or affirm the - to the following the Constitution, his addition of no religious test was accepted immediately.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mm-hmm. All right.</s>JOEL: Yeah, so basically, I couldn't vote for somebody - I have friends who are - I'm not a God-believer, but I have friends who are Catholic, friends who are Protestant, people who are evangelical. They've run for office locally. I have no problem in voting for them. But the more somebody professes his religion, as they said back in the conventions, possibly he's just a charlatan and he's pandering for votes, and he'll say anything that would get him elected. I trust him less.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joel, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.</s>JOEL: Have a great day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's bring John Green into the conversation, he's at member station WKSU in Kent, Ohio, where he's director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and distinguished professor of political science at the University of Akron. And nice to have you with us today.</s>JOHN GREEN: Oh, it's great to be with you, too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Happy New Year.</s>JOHN GREEN: Yes, sir.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we - despite those fractious sects that we talk about, everybody elected president of the United States was a Protestant of one form or another until John Kennedy.</s>JOHN GREEN: Yeah, that's right. It was interesting. We had different kinds of Protestantism, but the Catholic population, which was growing steadily over time, really didn't have an opportunity to win a presidential election until 1960. And interestingly enough, John F. Kennedy's been the only Catholic ever elected to the presidency.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There was one Catholic nominee beforehand, Al Smith, back in the 1920s, but anti-Catholicism a much more virulent issue in those days.</s>JOHN GREEN: Yes, it was. In fact, through a lot of the late 19th century and up through the middle of the 20th century, it was a very serious division. Part of that reflected religious differences that had come from Europe. But part of it reflected ethnic differences, the United States being, you know, the veritable salad bowl of different ethnicities, some of them Protestant, some of them Catholic.</s>JOHN GREEN: And that all sort of came together in 1960, and the whole issue of religion was very, very prominent in that campaign. And then Kennedy was elected, and as your previous caller remarked, partly because he made an effort to distance himself from the Vatican directly.</s>JOHN GREEN: You know, he still professed to be a serious person of faith, but he argued that he would be a Catholic who happened to be the president of the United States, rather than a Catholic president of the United States. And that sort of put an end to the Catholic-Protestant arguments, at least at that intense level. And then, in the succeeding decades, that's largely diminished.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Have you in your recollection observed a race where profession of religious belief, that so many candidates have said my faith will dictate my policies, that that's been such a big issue?</s>JOHN GREEN: You know, I think this year's Republican nomination contest, particularly in the Iowa caucuses, has been especially intense in that regard. I can't think of another race where we had quite as much attention to the candidates' faith, both by the candidates themselves and by other people who are participating in the contests.</s>JOHN GREEN: But there have been some other examples. If you go back to the election in 2000, when George W. Bush became the nominee of the Republican Party, we did have a bit of an argument about faith in the Republican caucuses, and we've also seen some similar discussions on the Democratic side, for instance, if we go back to 1976 and Jimmy Carter, who, of course, was elected president that year.</s>JOHN GREEN: So what we see this year is not entirely new, but the level of intensity seems to be particularly high.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller in on the conversation. Let's go to Ed, and Ed's with us from Tuckerman in Arkansas.</s>ED: How you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Very well, thank you.</s>ED: This is a very interesting conversation. I listen to it in my field, where I work, constantly, day by day, all levels of political beliefs. And like I was telling the gentleman a minute ago, I think what people are striving to ascertain here is whether or not we have a morality level.</s>ED: Different religions from all over the world are competing here in the United States, different morality levels of politicians, ethics, morals, the beliefs that make up our country. And that's what people are fighting over right now. They're trying to decide at what morality level this country needs to exist.</s>ED: And they say that they don't want to include this in the conversation, but basically, in this country, that seems to be the conversation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So would you see an important distinction between the morals of just a generic Episcopalian or a generic Catholic or a generic Calvinist?</s>ED: Well, those are doctrine differences, and doctrine and morals are totally separate, although a lot of doctrine is based on the differentiation of moral behavior and the belief in different moral behavior. So from a layman's point of view, people that don't want to participate in morality seem to be what everybody is considering to be liberals, and people that want to participate in morality seem to be the people that want to be considered as conservative, and that seems to be where the split is in the United States right now...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's interesting.</s>ED: ...from my perspective.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, no, I hear you, Ed. Barbara Bradley Hagerty?</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: It just seems to me that one of the things that's going on is people are making religion a - almost a proxy for morality. I mean, what you look at it, it's pretty consistent over the years. You look at polls, and you see that more than half of Americans - and polls range from 56 percent to 72 percent - say that it is important for presidential candidates to have strong religious beliefs.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And so - and the - it seems like the only type of person who can't be elected president is an atheist. I mean, that's what polls show. And so - at least at this point. And so there does seem to be this kind of conflation of morality and religion. And...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wonder, did the test include Muslims in that category?</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Yes, Muslims are on the next-lowest rank. So they're right above atheists. But everyone else, you know, the - I mean, you know, that's - I think that Christians, it's Christians and then Jews - John Green could help me with this. And then I think - I don't know where Mormons are, but basically, Muslims and atheists have the hardest time with possibly getting elected.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John Green?</s>JOHN GREEN: Barbara's got the ranking just about right. Catholics and Protestants- evangelical Protestants tend to have a favorable view in the public, and people say, at least in the abstract, that they'd be willing to vote for someone of that faith for president. Mormons, a little bit lower, still on the positive side. But non-Christian faiths other than Judaism tend to be lower. Jews rank somewhere ahead of Mormons and a little bit below evangelicals. So Americans are not as conscious of religious affiliation as they were back in the days of John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. But some religious affiliations - or the lack thereof - still matter to a lot of voters.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And is Ed, our caller, correct to say that most people associate liberals, Democrats - we're drawing a broad brush, there - but with lack of morality and conservatives with morality, and the stronger religious beliefs with morality?</s>JOHN GREEN: Well, an awful lot of people do see religion of one kind or another as being the basis of morality. Now, we can argue with that, but that's a view that a lot of people have. And so for a lot of voters, a shorthand of whether their candidate has good morality, good values, commitment to transcendent beliefs is a level of religiosity. And to a lot of voters, the level of faith, the level of religiosity is actually more important these days than the particular religious community they might be part of.</s>JOHN GREEN: Of course, there's also a big argument about what we mean by morality. To many traditionally religious people, morality means sexual morality, traditional family values, those sorts of things. Of course, to a lot of other religious people, it means social justice or protecting the environment or not discriminating against members of minority groups. So it's not just an argument about the extent of morality. It's also an argument about what do we mean by morality.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ed, thanks very much for the call.</s>ED: Which is all theology, when you get right down to it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It certainly is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Appreciate it.</s>ED: Have a good day. Happy New Year, everybody.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Happy New Year to you, too. We're talking about politics and religion, how that's playing out in the 2012 elections. We're talking with Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR's religion correspondent. Also with us, John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron and distinguished professor of political science at the University of Akron, as well. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, which is coming to you from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Allen: I wonder how many voters react negatively to public professions of religion and appeal to Christian extremists. Clearly, the calculus is that God talk does a candidate more good than harm, but by how much? And, Barbara, we were talking earlier about some of Rick Perry's supporters describing Mormonism as a cult, and he decided to back off that.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We've had concern lately about some who profess support for Ron Paul and their extremist views on various issues. And does this play into it? You can't always control what your supporters are...</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...in favor of.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Right. You can't. I think people do - I think we're going to learn a little bit more about this as the primary season goes on. I think in the early - what we're hearing in the early primaries is we've got in Iowa and South Carolina, and then Super Tuesday, we've got a lot of Southern states. And so we hear a lot of God talk. What I'll be interested to see is whether there's a certain backlash as we get to those states that maybe are not so religiously oriented, or the Republican Party's not so dominated by evangelicals, for example.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: And I'd like to see if there's a little bit of pushback by people. Now, maybe that those people are just - the ones who don't like the God talk are Democrats, and they're going to vote for Mr. Obama anyway. I don't know. So I think this is a question that - and maybe John has some polling numbers about it, but I think this is something that has yet to play out.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, it's thought, John, to be less of a factor in places like New Hampshire, which is, of course, coming up next week.</s>JOHN GREEN: Yes. That's true. The religious composition of the states vary enormously. Out in Iowa, there are a lot of religious conservatives of one kind or another, and, of course, it's a caucus state. So the intensity has a lot to do with turnout and participation. And in other Midwestern states and in the South, there are large traditionally religious populations. New Hampshire not as much, more Catholics and mainline Protestants there. The religious conservatives have never had quite the factor - been quite the factor in New Hampshire.</s>JOHN GREEN: And when you get to larger states, like, say, the state of Florida, there will be a lot more diversity. There are certainly some religious conservatives there, but there's a large Jewish population. There's a large Hispanic population, a large Catholic population. And in more diverse states, candidates have to be more careful about how they use religious language.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, of course, between now and then, we will see voting in the state of South Carolina, where, again, religious conservatives are thought to be, well, a major element of the Republican electorate. But here's an email we have from Susan: Why do apostolics and evangelicals detest Obama so much? Going back to a question we were talking about with Barbara Bradley Hagerty a few minutes ago. The answer is obvious, she writes. It is racism. Do black evangelicals hate Obama? And, Barbara, I wonder - I suspect not.</s>BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: I suspect not, too, but I bet John has the stats on that. I have - I believe that black Protestants and black evangelicals are much more favorably inclined towards President Obama. John?</s>JOHN GREEN: Well, that's absolutely true. Some of President Obama's strongest supporters in 2008 and down to today are black Protestants, black evangelicals, other minority groups, including Hispanic Catholics. A lot of it, of course, has to do with race in a positive sense, but also with many of the policies that President Obama has pursued.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that said, is it fair to label his critics who are conservative, white evangelicals as racists?</s>JOHN GREEN: I think I'd be very cautious about that. There probably is some racial antagonism. After all, race has been a major issue in the United States for a long time and particularly among some of the older generations. Some of those tensions still linger. And so I'm sure it's part of the process, but I think there are some other factors there, as well. One is the fact that President Obama has very liberal policies - from the point of view of conservative Christians - on social issues, like abortion and gay rights. Also, he's presided over an enlargement in the size of government - from their point of view - with his health care law and so forth.</s>JOHN GREEN: And many conservative Christians are skeptical on both counts. And then, of course, there's been a lot of discussion about President Obama's own faith. A large number of Americans don't actually know what his religion is, and a small minority think that he may be a Muslim. Others who do know about his faith wonder about his association with controversial preachers and some of the black ministers in the past. So there's a lot of factors that play into the dislike of conservative Christians for President Obama.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And getting back to the Republican field, it's interesting that the Mormon who has campaigned broadly on faith, but not his particular faith, and the libertarian who's been perhaps the vaguest of them all are one, two in the polls in Iowa at the moment. And it goes to show that neither the most religious nor the most conservative emerges from the Republican field. We'll have to see what happens. Barbara Bradley Hagerty, John Green, thank you.

When Facebook engineer Arturo Bejar observed users were reporting pictures of themselves, not those with illegal content, he recognized the need for a better way for users to resolve internal conflicts. Bejar talks about how Facebook is trying to encourage compassion in online social interaction.

Facebook allows users to report photos that violate its policy: illegal drug use, for example, or graphic violence. Last year, engineers at the company noticed that the majority of those reported photos contained nothing obviously offensive. In fact, many looked like ordinary pictures of ordinary people. It turns out that some of those people simply didn't like the way they looked in those pictures, and young people in particular felt some images were being used to bully them.</s>Facebook allows users to report photos that violate its policy: If you've ever reported a picture on Facebook, call and tell us your story. 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. Arturo Bejar is a director of engineering at Facebook, and he joins us from a studio at Stanford University. Nice to have to you on the program today.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Nice to be here today, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And when did you realize that the user's definition of a reportable photo was different from your definition?</s>ARTURO BEJAR: So we usually sit down with the people who process the reports as they come in, and we like to see what they're doing and what the content that is being reported. And we went to the photos. And we're going for photo after photo after photo, and it was reported for like violence or drug use or pornography. And we're looking at the photos and we're like there's absolutely nothing wrong with that photo. That photo is fine.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Somebody — might not be the most flattering photo. And then we noticed that the person who was reporting the photo happens to be in the photo. And so we began digging into the issue from there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so as you started to realize that these are people who were tagged, as the expression goes, in that photograph, clearly, some of them did not enjoy their image.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Absolutely. And when you look at the two options that we give you when you see a photo and you don't like how you look in the photo, you can either talk about it in the comment thread for it, in which you're pointing attention to it, you're calling attention to it in front of all of your friends. Or you can hit report. So people were hitting report and were using the available categories to let us know that they didn't like the photo and that they would want to have the photo taken down. But we wouldn't take it down because there's nothing wrong with the photo.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So how did you decide to adapt your policy then?</s>ARTURO BEJAR: So we made it such that when you hit report, we ask you if you're in the photo. And then we ask you if the photo is unflattering or if you don't like how you show up in it or whether you find it harassing or bullying you. And most people say, you know, I don't like how I look in this photo. And in the first version we did of this, we put up a blank message box where you can send a message to the person who posted the photo, usually a friend of yours.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: And most people faced with that blank box wouldn't put anything in there in which they would, sort of, step out of the fore because they didn't know how to handle that conversation with their friends.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: They didn't want to confront anybody and were uncomfortable and didn't know how many people were going to see that message too.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so what we did is we were, at that time, talking to somebody at the Compassion Center in Stanford, the Compassion Research Center and - called CCARE. And in talking to them, they were telling us that what triggers your compassion reflex is when you recognize that the other person is experiencing an emotion. So if you notice that they're sad, if you notice that they're happy, if you notice that there's something going on with them, how you engage with them changes.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: And we tried different pieces of text in that open dialogue box. We put in I don't like how I look in this photo. We tried different messages. And then we allow you to edit before you send it so that's in your voice, but we wanted to facilitate the conversation by putting some default words in. And in doing...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Some prompts, some suggestions.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Absolutely. To prompt some suggestions for people to send a message. And we found that the message that said, hey, I really don't like how I look in this photo, most people would feel comfortable sending that message. And most interesting, most people who receive that message would just go ahead and remove the photo.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Did they reply back at all?</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn't.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And sometimes, did they apologize?</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Sometimes they did, yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's interesting because you can sometimes get a flaming email from somebody, and they don't really expect you to write back. But if you do, they will say, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you'd take it that way.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Absolutely. And as we look at the content and as we've been looking at the space very closely for sometime now, we find that most status updates are photos that people find stressful were not intended to be that way at all, that the person posted the photo because they liked it. They thought it was funny. They didn't notice how the person looked in the photo or they were saying a comment which they thought was clever. And you're and the computer and you post that, and you don't have the - that you cannot see the person's face when you're saying this to realize that what you're saying might be impacting them in some way. And so we could do some work to help facilitate that conversation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is another category you mentioned earlier, and those are people who thought that the pictures were intended for bullying or harassment, and that's different.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah, that is different. And what we wanted to do there is that - we found as we're looking in the space that most people seem to think that online communities are different from real-life communities, that the rules are different, that the way you engage with things is different. And that we don't believe to be true. We believe that we could facilitate real-life connections, that we want to have the same mechanisms that you use in real-life communities to solve online issues. And so when we're looking at bullying, if you're getting bullied in school, you don't write a letter to a superintendent. You tend to go to a principal, to a teacher that you trust, to a friend to give you support.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: And so when we looked at how the bullying reporting work, we made it very easy for you to take the photograph or the piece of content and share it with someone in your life, and give both people and the party tools to say how you deal with the issue once you're presented with it. Because we think that if you can send it to a parent or a teacher or a friend, they can come talk to you and help coach you through the issue and help you see for what it is and help deal with an issue as a community. And that's what we wanted to facilitate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So that a third party needed to be brought into the conversation at some point, but not necessarily a third party from Facebook. You're not the police, here.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah, we're not the police, and the only thing Facebook can really do is take the content down. And sometimes, the bullying content - message, when you look at it, it's like, oh, you look great today. And we don't recognize that as bullying. We don't have the social context of what's going on. Now, if we do take things - we get the reports, we will take the content down, absolutely. But as we were studying the space and we've - with our safety advisory board and talking to teachers and other people, we found that the best thing to deal with this is to help the target of the bullying deal with the situation, because you might not be able to change the behavior of the bully. And so to have somebody in your life come and talk to you and give you support is, I think, an important way to do that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from those of you who've reported a picture, then asked that it be taken down on Facebook. 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. We'll start with Janice, Janice on the line with us from Minneapolis.</s>JANICE: Hi. Thanks for taking the call. You know, I had photo - or I asked for a photo to be removed. I was at a political event. And where I work at, we were, you know, we're asked not to participate or engage in this kind of stuff. And someone took a picture without my permission. But before I know it, I'm tagged on Facebook at this event. And so I contacted the person or - and they didn't take it down. So I went to Facebook, but I felt like I had to report it as an indecent picture, or rude, in order to get a response.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So, as far as you knew, the intention was not malicious. It was just somebody who took a picture, you happened to be in it. You were may be somewhere - you certainly didn't want to be seen in that picture. And I wonder, Arturo Bejar, how does that situation play out?</s>ARTURO BEJAR: So we try to give you tools. For example, if you're tagged, you can make it so that you can approve whether a photo shows up in your profile or not. And so you can have queue where if a friend tags you in a photo, the photo will not show up in your profile unless you've approved the post in your profile. So we try to give you tools to control what gets presented that's associated with you. Now, if the photo gets reported to us and we look at it and it doesn't break our terms of service, we don't feel it's our place to take it down. And so I think in this case, we hope that the conversation with the person who posted the photo works out. But at the same time, you know, somebody who receives the message has the right to keep the photo, because it's a photo that they took.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Janice, is this photo still up?</s>JANICE: Yes, it is. And I didn't even know the person who took it or give permission to take it. And it just feels - even though it's not on my profile, everybody else can see. I'm identifiable. And so I guess that was my question, too: Are there any other tools that I can use?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Anything - oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: I'm sorry. So I think in this case, really talking to the person who posted the photo, asking them to take it down, letting them know how you feel about the photo is the best thing that you can do.</s>JANICE: OK. Bye, thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good luck, Janice. Thank you very much for the call. Let's see, if we can go next to - this is Nicole(ph) , Nicole with us from St. Clair in Michigan.</s>NICOLE: Yeah, St. Clair Shores, correct. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead.</s>NICOLE: Well, I was just calling because the main times I've reported any photos have primarily been photos by dog fighters, of dog fighting, and then there are also some artists, particularly in other countries, who post on Facebook pictures of what they consider art, which is they maim and do terrible things to animals until they're dead and then take pictures with them. And I've reported some of those. But I find it interesting, because at the same time, we post pictures of shelter animals who have been victims of dog fighting. And so it's not so much - it's the intent behind the picture that seems to matter.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hard to figure out, sometimes.</s>NICOLE: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that's interesting. But the pictures of dogs being mauled, Arturo Bejar, would seem to come out to the graphic violence part.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Yes. We have a team that's very dedicated to reviewing those images. And if they do - we have a set of guidelines. And if they do violate the guidelines, we will take the photo down. And if we have repeat issues, we try to notify the person who posted the photos so that they can learn not to be posting that kind of content on Facebook.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nicole, thanks very much for the call.</s>NICOLE: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to - this is Susie, Susie with us from Salt Lake City.</s>SUSIE: Hi. I just actually had a recent situation where we had to go almost to the route of reporting photos. My son is two years old, and my brother-in-law was posting all these pictures of him on Facebook. And though they're not inappropriate in any way, I don't feel comfortable. I don't know who's on his friends lists. I didn't want pictures of my son on Facebook without me knowing. We went about trying to ask him to take them down. He wasn't willing to do that. So we were going to try to report them. I guess my question is: How do we - does Facebook have a policy, are they going to get a policy to keep my child's face - I don't want random people being able to post his pictures on Facebook without my knowledge.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because once they're out there, they're out there.</s>SUSIE: Yeah. And it just makes me uncomfortable, because I don't - he has a thousand friends. I don't know these people. I don't know - you know, I don't know who's looking at my son's photos.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, clearly, you know him and you've talked to him. But, Arturo Bejar, is there any kind of a policy that you can - people are concerned about the safety of their children.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Yes. And I think that, first, you have start with the conversation and how that goes with the person who posted the photo, because there will always be the possibility for somebody, in some event, going and taking their photo. And they need to do understand that you care about your children, and whether you want your kid's pictures to show up online or not. And this is a conversation that you need to be having with your friends, because it's pretty easy in a family reunion for somebody to take a picture and have the image be shown up there.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Now, we do make it such that when you post content and other things, it should only be visible within the circle of their friends, and without a tag or some other kind of direct link, it's not that - they would know that their - your kids - when somebody's looking at the photo. But I think from our prospective, for photos that, again, when you look at the photo, there's nothing in there that breaks Facebook terms of service, that the real important thing, that when you post - try to facilitate online and really encourage to happen in person is to have that kind of a dialogue. Because sometimes you will be tagged in a photo, and you really are not comfortable getting tagged in photos.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Or sometimes somebody will put - post a picture of you at a bar, and you're not comfortable having that picture posted. The only people who can tag you are your friends, and you have to have these conversations with - to give the feedback to your friends about, like, you know, I am not comfortable how I look in this photo. Can you please be more mindful about it? Because again, in what we found is most people don't intend that to be the case.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So have a conversation with - is he your brother-in-law, Susie?</s>SUSIE: Yeah, he's my brother-in-law, and I think the hard part is he wouldn't take them down. And then it's just hard, because where do I go from there? I've had the conversation. There's no way for me to say, Facebook, hey, I'm uncomfortable. I just - I guess that's where the struggle is, when you try to have the conversation and it's still up there. I can't get the pictures removed.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, I'm sorry, Susie. Good luck. If you have another conversation, good luck.</s>SUSIE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Appreciate it. And Arturo Bejar, we thank you for your time today, for sharing information about how this policy is being adapted. We appreciate it.</s>ARTURO BEJAR: Oh, thank you very much for having me today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Arturo Bejar is a director of engineering at Facebook. He joined us from a studio at Stanford University. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

Nearly two million home health care aides help seniors and people with disabilities to live independently. These caregivers often work long hours doing difficult work without overtime pay. The Labor Department has proposed rules to bring home care aides under federal minimum wage and overtime protections. Steven Greenhouse, labor and workplace correspondent, The New York Times William Dombi, vice president for law, National Association for Home Care and Hospice Hilda Solis, U.S. Secretary of Labor

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Jennifer Ludden in for Neal Conan. The home care industry is one of the nation's fastest growing. Home care workers help those who are old, ill or disabled, bathing them, turning them over at night, helping them eat and do simple, daily tasks that have become impossible.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: The work can be physically and emotionally grueling and the hours incredibly long, and yet for decades, home care workers have been exempt from minimum wage and overtime protections. But the Department of Labor has proposed a rule to end that.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Today we're exploring what that will mean. If you're a home health care worker or an employer of one, either a family or a third-party contractor, how will this proposed rule affect you? Our number is 800-989-8255. You can email us at 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, Sri Lankan cookbook author Skiz Fernando, Jr., joins us. But first, Steven Greenhouse is the labor and workplace reporter for the New York Times. He joins us from our New York bureau. Welcome, Steve.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Nice to be here, Jennifer.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Let's get some background first. Why is it that home care aides were first exempted from wage and overtime protections?</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: In 1974, the federal government exempted - issued rules exempting these workers from the minimum wage and overtime laws. And at the time, you know, this was not a very large industry, and there were, you know, some workers who were basically seen as companions, who maybe played chess or checkers with an elderly person or disabled person, or took them for a walk.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: In many ways, they were likened to babysitters, and they weren't really seen like professional - seen as professional workers. And this whole industry now with two million workers, and as you said, Jennifer, one of the fastest growing in the nation as the elderly population soars, now there are two million of these workers, and they're often well-trained.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: They take courses to become certified home care aides. And the Obama administration basically scratched its head and said this doesn't make sense that these, you know, people are treated essentially like babysitters. They do real work, and like real workers, they should be covered by the minimum wage and overtime laws.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So do we know what do they earn on average today?</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: On average they earn about $8.50 to $12 an hour. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Now, when you multiply that out by, you know, a full-time work of, you know, 40 hours a week - and many of them don't work 40 hours a week, Jennifer - they make $17,000, $20,000, $22,000 a year, certainly not a king's ransom.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: And federal statistics show that 40 percent of the nation's home care workers get some type of government aid, either, you know, Medicaid, food stamps or sometimes even welfare.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So they're not incredibly well-off, they're - even though many, it sounds like, do already make minimum wage.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: I'd say the great majority make minimum wage. There is - you know, they are - many of them are fairly skilled, and a lot of them are not willing to work for less than minimum wage - although there are some catches, Jennifer. You know, there are some situations that, you know, that I know of and many of your listeners know of, of, you know, people who need round-the-clock care, and on weekends they might have someone, you know, with them for 48 full hours on a Saturday and Sunday, and you multiply that out, it might not come to $7.25 an hour.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: When my father was ill a year or two ago, we had an aide coming to our house, and she'd start at maybe nine in the morning in a town 20 miles away, and she'd work for two hours for another client then would take transportation, working for the same agency, and it would take her and hour and a half to get from the first client to our house.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: And during that hour and a half of travel, she wasn't paid at all. So if you multiply out how many hours she was either working or traveling, you know, she ended up not getting paid the minimum wage because she wasn't really being paid for the many hours she traveled.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Right, and what about, then, this issue of overtime? I mean, do we know in general do many workers get overtime even though it's not required?</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: When I wrote my story the day this was announced, Jennifer, I was told, you know, maybe 10 percent of the two million workers get overtime. And, you know, when this case went before the Supreme Court, a woman from Queens, New York, Evelynj Coke, said I often work 70 and 80 hours a week, you know, taking care of elderly patients, and I should be paid for overtime for everything I work over 40 hours.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: And she said it was, you know, outrageous that she's working all these hours and not getting time and a half. And the Supreme Court ruled that, you know, under current regulations, you know, before the Obama administration made these changes, she's not - she doesn't qualify for overtime. It was up to either Congress or the Labor Department to issue new rules.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: And the Labor Department did that, and I think this will help, you know, the 100,000 or so workers who do work overtime, although people in the industry say, essentially, we don't want to spend - you know, we don't want to pay people time and a half. This means that instead of having some workers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week, we will spread the work around more, maybe hire more people.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Right, and we are going to hear later in the hour from someone in the industry and also from the Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, to look at this more. Can you give us a sense, Steven of - you mentioned a bit the typical daily life of a typical home worker, home care worker.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Well, there are generally two varieties. Now, 90 percent of the home care workers work for agencies, Jennifer. And generally, they might have two or three clients a day, you know, helping someone with physical therapy, maybe checking their blood pressure, feeding them at lunchtime, waiting for - you know, waiting until son or daughter gets home from work to help out.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Or they are often - you know, the people who work, say, around the clock on Saturdays and Sundays. And, you know, the federal government says 92 percent of these workers are women, 32 percent of them are African-American, 12 percent are Hispanic. A lot of them are minority. A lot of them are immigrants.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: And I think the Obama administration, in doing this, you know, it's - it helps - you know, the Obama administration says, you know, this is part of our effort to help the middle class, you know, to help lift people up who need lifting up. And it also, I think, helps the Obama administration with its political base showing, you know, we care, we're fighting for the middle class.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: And, you know, some African-American and Hispanic groups have been saying President Obama hasn't done enough for them, that he's, you know, been happy to help the banks and hasn't done enough for his base. And certainly this will help ring some bells with his base.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And this - we should note this has been kicking around for a while. I believe I read the Clinton administration, basically its last day in office suggested doing these rules, and then they were sidelined by the Bush administration, and now they come back.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Yes, I mean, President Clinton, we all know President Clinton was known for procrastination, right. So here are these rules. He also issued some important job - you know, occupational safety rules in his last days in office, saying this is going to be great for workers.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Then President Bush came in, and since President Clinton issued these rules so late, they had, you know, they had to wait 60 days to really take effect, and President Bush was able to roll them back and essentially cancel them. And had President Clinton, you know, issued these rules a year or two earlier, then these rules would have remained in effect.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Now, what - we again will hear from Hilda Solis at the Labor Department, but can you give a sense: What exactly has the Labor Department said? They are going to change, they are looking to change, they are figuring out how this is going to work? What do we know so far? Because there right now is this comment period where, you know, they could tweak things.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Just to be clear, Jennifer, these are proposed rules. They're not final rules. And under the federal rule-making process, agencies have to propose rules and then accept public comments for 60 days. And sometimes there will be tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of comments, and the agency, if it's doing its job, really pays attention and reads to and listens to these regulations, to these responses, to these comments, and if - you know, if the public comment says, you know, this is really wrong, this one way, you should tweak it, you should tinker with it in this way, many times federal agencies, you know, do make changes in response to public comments, as they should.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Now, we've also had some members of Congress talk about holding hearings and maybe passing something to preserve this exemption. Do you know what might happen there?</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: You know, as you've discussed and Neal has discussed many times on TALK OF THE NATION, you know, the Republicans in Congress are not in love with what the Obama administration has been doing on the labor front, whether it's the NLRB, whether it's job safety, mine regulation and with these rules.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: And Republicans say, with some justice, that this will cost the government more and that it might also cost the families, you know, who shell out money out of their own pockets to pay for home care workers, it will cost them more. And the - you know, the Republicans might hold hearings just to examine how much more will this cost, what influence will this have on agencies.</s>STEVEN GREENHOUSE: When - I was in a telephone news conference with Labor Secretary Solis, and I asked her, you know, will this cost, you know, nearly as much as the Republicans say, will this be dangerous, and she responded that it really wouldn't be expensive at all. She said that it would cost Medicaid and Medicare, and those two programs account for 75 percent of the nation's $70 million - sorry, $70 billion, in home care costs, she said that these changes for minimum wage and overtime will cost the federal government $31 million to $170 million a year, which is far less than one percent of the total cost of those two programs.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: OK, let's bring in a caller here. We have Camilla(ph) on the line from Salt Lake City. Hi, Camilla.</s>CAMILLA: Hi there.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Go right ahead.</s>CAMILLA: Thank you for taking my call. I'm a home health aide here in Utah, and I'm actually a certified nurse assistant. So I've received training. And currently, I'm going to school. So I'm working part-time now, about 25 hours a week. But just a few months ago, I was working about 60 to 75 hours a week. This included my driving time.</s>CAMILLA: So technically I was only working in the patient's home for about 35 to 40 hours. So it was really frustrating because I was not getting paid overtime at all. And so I'm really happy about this because I feel like I am the advocate for the patient, and I'm doing a lot for the patient, and I feel like I do a lot for my agency, and I deserve to get paid more.</s>CAMILLA: And I know a lot of home health aides. I've been lucky to be able to support myself with the wage that I'm receiving, but I know other aides aren't getting paid, you know, barely minimum wage, and they have children. And luckily, I don't have a family to support, so...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right, Camilla, so thank you for your call. That's one happy home care worker out there. Thanks for calling. We are speaking with Steve Greenhouse of the New York Times, and soon we'll hear from Bill Dombi at the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, as well as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to talk about this proposed rule change for home health care aides. I'm Jennifer Ludden. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Jennifer Ludden. Today we're talking about home health care aides. Since the 1970s, so-called companionship workers have been exempt from federal labor protections, but now the Labor Department wants to change that, extending the minimum wage and overtime coverage to them.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: If you're a home health care worker, or if you employ them, how will this proposed rule affect you? Our phone number is 800-989-8255. Our email is talk@npr.org. And you can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Steven Greenhouse is labor and workplace correspondent for the New York Times. He's with us from New York. And also Bill Dombi of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice is here. It's a trade organization for the home health care industry, and Mr. Dombi is the group's vice president for law. He joins us by phone in Dunkirk, Maryland. Welcome.</s>BILL DOMBI: Oh, thank you, Jennifer.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Now, I understand your organization's actually conducting a survey about this new rule. Can you tell us: What are you finding out?</s>BILL DOMBI: Well, we're surveying two different categories of businesses that provide home care services. One are the businesses that provide the personal care services that would otherwise be considered companionship services in states where there is an obligation to provide both minimum wage and overtime.</s>BILL DOMBI: We're also surveying those states where a new obligation may come if the proposed rule is finalized to try to get an understanding of what kind of impact it may have. And what we're finding so far, and our survey is not yet finalized, but what we're finding so far is that the change that would require minimum wage would have virtually no impact at all on the way businesses operate, but beyond that, the overtime compensation would require changes within the business.</s>BILL DOMBI: But the changes primarily would be ones that affect the workers, and the number one finding of the survey is that the companies would have to address the overtime obligation primarily by reducing the number of hours worked by employees in order to avoid paying overtime, and the main reason they're explaining that is because they do not set their prices; their prices are set by Medicaid and Medicare and other government payment sources.</s>BILL DOMBI: And those payment sources are not going to be responding, it's anticipated, with any increased reimbursement to cover the additional cost.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: OK, so how would that play out if someone then reduced their - the hours for workers. What would happen?</s>BILL DOMBI: Well, from what we found in those states that have already had the overtime obligation, we expect to see the same mirrored in the new states that may be affected and that being that the businesses, you know, provide the employment, restrict the hours to 40 hours, hire additional workers to fill the needs that they have of their clientele and that the workers interested in working more than 40 hours go and find a second or third job with another employer.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So - and you're saying that happens already in states that already have overtime requirements?</s>BILL DOMBI: There are about 20 states that already have one form or another of overtime obligation. Michigan, for example, it's straight after 40 hours. In New York state, it would be overtime after 40 but time and a half for minimum wage rather than the actual hourly wage.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So on one hand, it sounds like you're saying there could be more jobs created through this, although individual workers may take a hit.</s>BILL DOMBI: Well, there's no shortage of home care aide jobs, as the Department of Labor itself has recognized. This is one of the fastest growing areas of employment. I think there are more jobs to be filled already. So creating new jobs is not necessarily going to help, in fact probably cause some greater difficulties in meeting the needs of elderly and disabled because this is very tough work.</s>BILL DOMBI: The people who provide home care, personal care services, home care aide services - it goes by many labels - are incredible people, providing services that many of us just couldn't handle.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Which advocates, then, say they should get a little more, they would - you know, would you argue that they don't - shouldn't get overtime?</s>BILL DOMBI: No, we wouldn't argue that they shouldn't get overtime. The concern that we have is that looking at this worker and overtime compensation in isolation from all other needs will likely lead to the kind of responses that we're getting into real action, meaning the worker is not going to gain anything out of it.</s>BILL DOMBI: When we look at this worker, the home care businesses already face high turnover. Recruitment is difficult. Retention comes with that, it's difficult, as well. And when you're seeing the reasons for difficulty in recruitment and retention, beyond the hard work, are issues of compensation and benefits and the like.</s>BILL DOMBI: And so do the individuals, you know, want to stay on the job because they're getting a higher base wage or because they're getting overtime compensation? It is better to have health insurance than it is to have overtime compensation? Is there a more likely chance of recruiting and retaining workers if they have career opportunities?</s>BILL DOMBI: And so our position has been that you've got to examine all of these elements of the workforce, determine what is going to make the greatest difference for both the worker and the services provided because, you know, we all can keep in mind that elderly and disabled individuals are the beneficiaries of the services provided by these workers.</s>BILL DOMBI: So we've been advocating for a four-corner-type plan to try to address all of the needs, with recognition that this is not a management-versus-labor issue so much as it is management and labor versus the payer source.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: What do you mean, four-corner-type plan?</s>BILL DOMBI: Well, four corner meaning looking at the issue of health insurance, looking at the issue of career opportunities, the issue of base wages because if overtime is the only thing that really is affected in the compensation and work relationship of personal care workers, home care aid workers, the businesses have already demonstrated that they have a way of dealing with that that ends up creating nothing but additional cost for everybody and less work opportunity for the workers, which doesn't sound like the kind of win that both the businesses and the workers would like to see.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Let's bring a caller in. We have Jack(ph) in Warsaw, Wisconsin, who is an employer of health care aide or many aides. Hi there, Jack.</s>JACK: Hello. I just wanted to call in and applaud this law. We have always paid more than minimum wage. We have always paid overtime, although we try to minimize overtime, as he mentions. We have this innate turnover in caregivers, and we try to not work them too much so that we experience less care - or less turnover.</s>JACK: And I know that we get industry emails each week, fight this, fight this, fight this. I applaud this law because I think it will force our competitors to pay, I feel, equal to us, and it will give us a level playing field.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And so you're feeling the industry as a whole doesn't want these laws, but you feel that you do. You try to minimize overtime, Jack. How do you do that?</s>JACK: Well, if we have a new demand for hours, we will do overtime and pay time and a half for caregivers, but we know that's not a sustainable solution. No one can work that many hours in such a stressful, demanding position. So we will allow them to work overtime, to get us through a period of high demand, but then we will add to staff so that no one burns out prematurely.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And do you not have workers who really want more time? I mean, are there some - we've heard of some who maybe have a second job. You know, if they're getting, you know, over minimum wage but a fairly low wage, you can imagine some might really want extra hours.</s>JACK: We do have many that want it, but from experience, we just know that it's not sustainable. They can't do this type of work for 50 and 60 hours a week and still do it well. There are safety concerns. There's client and caregiver burnout, could just - it's not sustainable in an overtime situation. So we use it very sparingly, and we're not afraid to pay for it when we use it, but we try to minimize it because it works out best for the client and for the caregiver.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Well, Jack, thanks for the call.</s>JACK: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: William Dombi, what do you make of Jack's point there?</s>BILL DOMBI: Well, I think Jack is a reflection of the industry at large. There is a misimpression that the industry is up against the companionship services exemptions revision. I think, you know, the better characterization is what I offered before, is that we've got to look at the whole worker and the whole compensation package and the whole employment status of those workers because in the absence of those workers, there are no home care businesses.</s>BILL DOMBI: And so the workers and the businesses have to work this out together there. The Department of Labor itself, you know, when it evaluated the impact of this proposed rule, assumes to a great degree that the workers will not work past 40 hours because of the pressure of overtime compensation and the inability to sustain a business with such compensation.</s>BILL DOMBI: So we're looking at that and saying, you know, why are moving forward at this juncture with just an isolated approach to that worker when in the end the only gain that happens is that the worker is restricted from 40 hours. And I'm not sure every worker is happy with being restricted.</s>BILL DOMBI: The individual who just referenced it, you know, they, as a matter of protocol, try to keep the workers not working overtime. You know, it is something that's very important to do, but it's not always in sync with what the worker wants. Some workers want more hours than 40.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. William Dombi, vice president for law at the National Association of Home Care and Hospice, thanks for joining us by phone from Dunkirk, Maryland.</s>BILL DOMBI: You're very welcome.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: The Department of Labor is pushing for this change in how we care for the caregivers, and Secretary Hilda Solis is its biggest proponent. She joins us now by phone from Los Angeles, California. Welcome.</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: Hello. How are you?</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Good. I understand this is a personal issue for you. Your mother, at one point, was a care worker, is that right?</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: Years ago, yes, it's one of her first jobs coming to this country and immigrating here. But it is even more of a priority because, personally speaking, I have a very ill father who has a caregiver, and we have services that are being provided for him. And here in the state of California, we have such great rules in coverage to provide for adequate minimum wage overtime. And we're gladly doing that, because, you know, it's a personal issue for many families.</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: You definitely want to have someone who is very much in tune with this kind of service and with the patient. And I think, for many years, people in this industry, especially in home health care workers over the years that I've lived in California and advocated for better salaries for them overall, they are the hardest working people, and they deserve to be respected. And it is a growing industry. By and large, we're seeing potentially two million people, mostly women, mostly women of color, many women or immigrants that take these jobs on, and have no idea that there are protections for them in many states.</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: And we want to standardize that. And I think, in all fairness, the president, President Obama, when he announced the proposal, said that these folks deserve to be treated fairly. They deserve to be paid fairly for service that many older Americans couldn't live without, and nothing could be further from the truth. I think our focus has been very fair. We want to hear comments from everyone. I certainly want to see this profession become more professionalized, so that there are different career avenues, and that we can bring about the appropriate career training and whatever additional certificates that might be needed or required, or could be given so that people could look at this as a long-term profession.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: I think that...</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: I definitely see many women who have not been paid adequately who had to subsidize their income through public welfare programs, food stamp programs and through other means. And we should be taking a close look at this over the next few years. Not just this year, as we propose the rules but as we move towards the baby-boomer population living longer and choosing to live at home.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Let's hear from a caregiver. I believe we have one on the line. Jim in Orlando. Hi there.</s>JIM: Hi. This is Jim. Thank you, Jennifer. I own a homemaker companion company, mostly private duty, in that the clients pay directly. Medicare and Medicaid is not paying for it. We specialize in live-in care where somebody is there for a 24-hour period, and they're not earning overtime, but they are sleeping at night. Our concern is that the caregivers will actually, like, make less money and the clients will receive less care, based on this proposed rule. Just a quick math, right now, if you take in eight hours - as of January 1st, Florida's minimum wage will be $7.67 - they'll make $61.36 for the day, and they'd make more than double that as a live-in caregiver and will go to eight-hour shifts, three eight-hour shifts rather than pay overtime, if this law went into effect.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So you're saying it's the caregivers who will feel the brunt of this?</s>JIM: They will. They'll make half as much. But additionally, the clients, because it will cost more, will have to make a decision whether or not they can bear that cost because they're paying out of pocket. But also, if they can't get more care, or they can't afford more care, they'll get less care. And about two-thirds of our clients are memory impaired...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right...</s>JIM: ...whether it's dementia or something else, and they can't go without somebody being with them, not caring for them 24 hours, but with them 24 hours.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right. Jim, thanks so much for the call.</s>JIM: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Let me just note, you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Secretary Solis, what about Jim's concerns there, that caregivers will get less money, less hours?</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: Well, you know, we heard the concern earlier about the potential to pay overtime, but in many instances, that is, I think, one of the most important aspects of being an in-home health care provider, someone that's providing this care, because they grow - there's that attachment, also, that comes along with working and caring for an individual. And certainly, in many cases, and I've seen it happen right now in our own household with my father, who has become attached to his caregivers.</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: He has two, and they work different shifts. And I know that what we're looking at here in terms of individuals that would be receiving, say, Medicare and federal assistance, that the amount of money is actually a lot lower than what most people would think. So I know that that wouldn't be a hindrance. In fact...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: You've calculated, right, the cost to Medicare and Medicaid, potentially?</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: Yes. What we're seeing here is that Medicare and Medicaid, which covers about 75 percent of home care costs, would likely pay an additional 31.1 to 169.5 million each year toward home care aid. That would represent approximately .06 to point - 0.29 percent of federal and state outlays for home care, a very modest increase to ensure that two million working professionals are provided with good coverage - with good salary and coverage. That, again...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: So can I just clarify, does this mean...</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: ...helps out these families that rely so much on these individuals for that immediate and very personal care.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: But if someone, say, have an overnight shift and they're spending the night and maybe sleeping seven or eight hours of that night, they will get paid even into overtime for that, or would it be calculated some different way?</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: Well, we would be looking at it - we would be looking, you know, generally, for overnight shifts, the companion would have to pay when they're - they do have to pay - the companion would have to pay when they do sleep over. But, generally, an employee who is required to be on duty for less than 24 hours is working even though the employee is permitted to sleep and all the time is counted as hours worked. So if an employee is required to be on duty for 24 hours or more, the employer and employee may agree to exclude bona fide regularly scheduled sleeping periods of not more than eight hours...</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: All right...</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: ...of hours worked.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: ...and we are running out of time. But, Hilda Solis, labor secretary, thank you so much for your time.</s>SECRETARY HILDA SOLIS: Thank you.</s>JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: And she joined us by phone from Los Angeles.

Twin GRAIL spacecraft on a mission to study lunar gravity are nearing the end of their almost four month journey. The probes are expected to reach the moon on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. GRAIL's principal investigator, Maria Zuber of MIT talks about the data they hope to collect.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. The New Year's countdown has begun, not at the clock in Times Square but this one for two NASA probes set to orbit the moon this weekend. The twin spacecraft, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B are expected to enter lunar orbit 24 hours apart, one on New Year's Eve, the other on New Year's Day.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: This marks the end of a three-and-a-half-month journey for the washing-machine-size crafts launched from Florida in September. Just what does NASA scientists, what do they hope to do and accomplish? What are the pair of probes, what are they going to reveal about the Earth's closest neighbor, four decades after man first landed on the moon?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how can twin spacecrafts chasing one another in circles help reveal the inner secrets of the moon? Why do we need two of them to do it? Yeah, all interesting questions, all here. We're going to try to get them answered by Dr. Maria Zuber, she's principal investigator for NASA's GRAIL mission. Dr. Zuber is also a professor of geophysics, head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. She's at WBUR in Boston. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Zuber.</s>MARIA ZUBER: Thank you, Ira. It's great to be back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's always good to have you. Tell us about the purpose? Why now after all these years do we send two of these probes to the moon?</s>MARIA ZUBER: Well, the country, the various countries of the world have sent over 100 spacecraft of the moon, and there's still a lot of fundamental things that we don't understand about the moon. Most of these missions have studied the surface of the moon in various capacities, whether it be imaging, craters and mountains or learning about composition, studying lunar samples.</s>MARIA ZUBER: But fundamental things, such as why the near side of the moon is different from the far side of the moon still aren't very well-understood. And so it occurred to us that the answer might not be found on the surface, the answer might be inside of the moon, and that's what this mission proposes to study.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And what part of the inside of the moon are you trying to study?</s>MARIA ZUBER: From crust to core, we'll be producing a very precise map of the gravitational field of the moon. In fact, when we're finished with this mission, the gravity field of the moon will be known better than the gravitational field of the Earth. So it will be quite accurate.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And why do we need to do that? I mean why specifically the gravitational field?</s>MARIA ZUBER: Gravity is one of the fundamental things that we try to study of the inside of a planet. Gravity studies the distribution of mass in the interior. So if we know something about what the composition is on the surface, if we know the size of the body, and if we know the mass, then we can understand what the - what I'll call radial distribution of mass is in the interior.</s>MARIA ZUBER: So we can learn about the crust, the mantle, and if the moon has a core, we will study that, as well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You do say that the moon is a mysterious place, the side facing us is different than the side further - on the other side. It's also mysterious because we're not quite sure how the moon was created, are we?</s>MARIA ZUBER: Well, the - I will say the only theory for the formation of the moon that doesn't have a fatal flaw is one where the moon was formed due to the impact of a Mars-sized body into the Earth. This impactor hit the Earth at a relatively high angle, and the core of this impactor is thought to have wrapped itself around the core of the Earth, and parts of the crust and mantle of the impactor and the Earth were thrown off into orbit and were thought to have formed the moon or perhaps even more than one moon, as a recent theory has suggested.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And will these studies with these twin satellites, satellites of the moon, will they tell us any more about that process?</s>MARIA ZUBER: Well, it's certainly hoped that that would be the case. The recent study suggesting that the Earth may have in fact had more than one moon back in time after this gigantic collision took place came out relatively recently. It came out this spring in a paper in nature, and it wasn't something that we had conceived of when we had written the proposal to do the GRAIL mission.</s>MARIA ZUBER: But the idea shows some plausibility, did some calculations to demonstrate plausibility, and it laid out specific ideas that can be tested by understanding things about the inside of the moon. So the idea behind this second moon theory is that a moon about a third of the size of our current moon was in the same orbit around Earth as our moon was.</s>MARIA ZUBER: And because it was in the same orbital plane, it wasn't moving very fast in comparison to our moon. And so it was stable for some period of time, but eventually it became unstable and drifted towards our moon and impacted it.</s>MARIA ZUBER: But because it was moving at about the same - very close to the same velocity of our moon, it behaved very differently than normal collisions that we have on planets. Normally when we have a collision on a planet, what happens is a great deal of kinetic energy gets thrown into the planet, and a big hole gets excavated, which forms an impact crater or an impact basin.</s>MARIA ZUBER: And if you look at the surface of the moon, Mercury, any of the solid planets, you will see a heavily cratered surface. Well, because of the fact that this collision of the Earth's - or the moon's purported companion was at a very low velocity, it actually adds more material to the moon than it excavates. So instead of forming a hole on the moon, it formed a mountain.</s>MARIA ZUBER: And one of the puzzling things about the back side of the moon is that there is a huge highland area in the equatorial region of the moon, which is - which does not occur on the moon's front side. There have been a lot of ideas about what this mountain might have been due to, what would produce a mountain on one side of a planet and not another, and one of the ideas is that it could be the remnants of this collision of an early moon.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Fascinating. Would some pieces have drifted away, or would they all still be on the moon, the remnants of that second moon there?</s>MARIA ZUBER: Certainly I think some parts of the moon would have in the collision, are lost from the moon, but the bulk of it, the preponderance of the material actually sticks with the moon and adds to its mass. So it's a very remarkably creative idea, and actually the simulations that were shown demonstrated that it's plausible.</s>MARIA ZUBER: I mean, it doesn't prove that it was the case, but it lays out some things that one can look for in the inside of the moon to test whether or not this was the case.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So your twin GRAILs, A and B, can help solve that problem?</s>MARIA ZUBER: They certainly can. They will provide information that will allow us to evaluate that hypothesis. So we can either at that point reject it, or it may need to be modified on the basis of what we find or demonstrate that it was correct.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, is it sort of serendipitous that you designed this way before this whole hypothesis came up?</s>MARIA ZUBER: That's correct. We had plenty of other interesting things that we wanted to look at, but it's remarkable that, you know, having studied the moon for so long, that there are still great new ideas about the moon and the Earth-moon system.</s>MARIA ZUBER: I mean, the Earth is - you know, the Earth is involved in this whole process of what was going on back then.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow, and I understand that even though you've dubbed these satellites GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, their names are going to change.</s>MARIA ZUBER: The names are going to change soon. So...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Do we know what they are yet?</s>MARIA ZUBER: We - I know what they are.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tell me, OK?</s>MARIA ZUBER: You and all the many, many listeners of SCIENCE FRIDAY, you will all learn soon enough. After the successful launch of the two spacecraft in September, we announced that there would be a naming contest, and we permitted schools and other student organizations to propose names for the spacecraft.</s>MARIA ZUBER: And they needed, when they proposed these, they had to write an essay with the idea that the name should in some way reflect something about the mission, something about the moon, something about the fact that the students realized that there are two spacecraft operating in a certain way.</s>MARIA ZUBER: And so a group of us evaluated those names, and after the two spacecraft are successfully in orbit, we'll announce the winners.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We have a winner. There's also a moon-cam, right? Kids can look at the moon from the spacecraft?</s>MARIA ZUBER: Yes, this - so this - in terms of the scientific payload, it's two spacecraft with the same instrument on each spacecraft because the spacecraft make their measurement by ranging to each other. But what we decided to do is put cameras on the spacecraft but not to give them a scientific purpose.</s>MARIA ZUBER: The experiment is called MoonKam, and it's being run by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, and each spacecraft has four cameras on it, which are pointed at different - two are looking at nadir, which is directly below. One looks a little bit in front of, and one looks a little bit below.</s>MARIA ZUBER: And these cameras have no scientific purpose. The purpose of them is totally education and outreach, and students and schools can sign up to be a part of the MoonKam project, it's targeted for middle-schoolers, and students will meet - in collaboration with their teachers, learn how to use the software.</s>MARIA ZUBER: I imagine it'll be the students teaching the teachers how to use this software in a lot of cases. That's the way it often works, where they can - students will - schools will be assigned a period of time, and they will study the trajectory of the spacecraft and what parts of the moon they'll be passing over and propose to take images.</s>MARIA ZUBER: And that'll be run - operated out of the University of California San Diego by Sally Ride Science.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And we'll - it sounds very excited. There's a lot of stuff going on up there. Dr. Zuber, I want to thank you for taking time to be with us and making this educational opportunity available.</s>MARIA ZUBER: Yeah, thank you very much, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome. Dr. Maria Zuber is principal investigator for NASA's GRAIL mission. And she is also a professor of geophysics and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to - we're going to make a phone call, get a phone call, take a phone call from Antarctica, yeah, live from Antarctica. We'll talk about research. You know, it's summertime down there, just beginning to heat up with the research. So we'll talk about what's going on down there. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

Many have fallen off the New Year's resolution bandwagon soon after adopting a new diet or quitting smoking. So how can you achieve year-end goals and start the year on a positive note? Roy Baumeister, co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength , has some tips.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: Next up, say, it's time for New Year's resolutions. You want to lose your weight or you want to quit smoking? You don't know how to make your New Year's resolution last more than, well, let's say a week? Some researchers say the answer may lie in strengthening your willpower, and my next guest is of them. Dr. Roy Baumeister is co-author of the book, "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength." He's professor of psychology at Florida State University and he joins us from Tallahassee. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Thank you, Ira. I'm glad to be here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What do we have to do to get willpower?</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: What do we have to do? Well, everybody has some, and so you just kind of manage what you have, you have to understand how it works, that you have a limited amount of it, that it waxes and wanes as you use it. And in ideal circumstances, you can build it up like a muscle by exercising it steadily over time.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You mean you purposely put yourself in a situation where you need some willpower to overcome it, so you practice it?</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Yes, you can do things - you start by making small changes in your life. In one of the studies we did, we just had people work on their posture for a couple weeks, and that then produced changes on all sorts of things that had nothing to do with posture because you just get used to correcting your own behavior and bringing it up to your goals and standards.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: So some other workers found that people who do these little exercises, you know, you can switch - use your left hand for things you normally use your right hand for, and so on. If you do these over time, they can make you better able to succeed at quitting smoking and controlling alcohol and other things like that. That willpower, there's one resource that you have, and you use it for anything. So if you build it up in exercising one thing, it helps with the next thing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Does changing your diet help you at all?</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Well, willpower is energy. It's real energy. It's tied into the body's food supply. So what you eat is the source of your food, which is why dieting is one of the most difficult things to exert self-control in, because you need to eat in order to have the willpower to resist eating.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: But in terms of changing your diet, well, there's a nutritionist literature - in the laboratory, when we want to give people a boost of willpower, ironically we give them sugar, but that's just because in the laboratory we only have people for a short time and we need something that works fast. We recommend eating protein and other sort of healthy foods that your body can burn over a longer period of time to get energy from. That's probably the best advice in terms of diet.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, talking with Roy Baumeister, co-author of the book, "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength." Should we be taking on New Year's resolutions that, you know, we have the willpower to do them? I mean, that sometimes we might bite off more than we can chew - going overboard.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Well - that's an important point, Ira. Remember, you only have one stock of willpower, and every time you try to change yourself, you're using some of that. So when you make a bunch of resolutions all at once, each one you try to do is to detracting from your ability to do all the others. So, you know, it's a good idea. I totally believe in making oneself a better person and so on. But do the things one at a time rather than all at once. Some people make...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you're saying we basically have a storage house of willpower that we can deplete?</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Yes, absolutely. We use the term depletion very much in our research. It's become more and more used among the research community - ego depletion tied into the self, but, you know, we can think of it in ordinary terms as depletion of willpower. And yes, that happens to people every day in ways that can be, you know, measured in objective differences and how likely you are to give in to temptation later in the day after you've used up your willpower as opposed to earlier in the day when your stock is more there.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: So yes, very much. It's one - it's important to understand how willpower works, which is why we wrote the book you so kindly mentioned. And, you know, use it once, I mean, that's why that the different New Year's resolutions will work against each other, but if you do them...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Too many.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: ...in a series, completing the first one will actually strengthen your ability to move on to the second one.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So if you want to lose weight - if that's your New Year's resolution, you should - you can gain more willpower by challenging yourself with the food you want to avoid. Would that be correct? In other words, if you want to strengthen your willpower, add to your reserve, and you see a brownie sitting there, you put the brownie down and say, I'm not going to eat that.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Well, as long as you succeed at not eating it. But there's - there seems to be some risk involved in that strategy; if you give in, then that sets you back. But you - I would say if losing weight is difficult, and, you know, that's the most challenging thing, don't make that the first thing you do. Set a more realistic goal to, you know, make your bed every day or stop swearing in front of the children or I don't know what. You know, and then when you've made those changes and those are successful, then you can move on perhaps to a more challenging one.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Also, you know, we, like most of the research assessment, dieting itself, you know, going on a severe crash diet is not a good strategy. People lose weight and then gain it right back. What you really want to do is gradually make permanent changes in how you eat so that you can live in a long-term way with this food and still get the nutrition you need and still get the enjoyment out of eating. That's just one of the...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So take little - get little willpower victories, and they'll add up so you can tackle the big one, is what you're saying.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Absolutely. I think that's a great way to put it, Ira. That's what people should do and much better than making, you know, five resolutions, trying to do them all at once and then getting nowhere with any of them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, thank you for those tips.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: All right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Roy Baumeister is the co-author of the book "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength." He's also a professor of psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Thank you for joining us and have a happy New Year.</s>ROY BAUMEISTER: Thank you, Ira. Happy New Year to you too. Bye.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You, too, and that's about all the time we have for today.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from Talk of the Nation listener comments on previous show topics, including our annual show remembering remarkable lives lost, and a recent proposal to change the laws governing what work children may do on farms.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. Our annual program to remember those who died in the year past brought many more calls and emails than we could get to. This story from Linda Cloney(ph) in Corning, California, caught our eye. I wanted to remember William Yabsley(ph), she wrote, my husband and life partner. He was known in the San Francisco Bay Area as Mr. Bill, the clock man. He managed the timepiece clock store for many years, and had the most amazing ability to analyze and repair any clock in existence. He would always say, there never was a clock that couldn't be fixed with a little time and knowhow.</s>And many of you echoed these sentiments from C-noise(ph), who wrote: Please don't forget Anne McCaffrey, the author who created the world of Pern with its dragons and dragon riders. She also wrote about ships that sang and cats who can run the galaxy. She died just before Christmas, and her unique voice will be missed.</s>And many of you echoed these sentiments from C-noise(ph), who wrote: Our conversation about new regulations proposed by the Department of Labor to limit the kinds of work children may do on farms prompted Constance Holland(ph) to write us from Longmont, Colorado: One summer, on a break from college, my father sent me out to drive a grain truck, which I quickly found out did not take corners nearly as well at 20 miles an hour as my Honda Civic. I dumped 60 bushels of grain.</s>And many of you echoed these sentiments from C-noise(ph), who wrote: This law should focus more on training required rather than on penalizing farmers for using the most readily willing and available labor most family farms have. I did work on my father's harvester from about the time I was eight years old without ever having an injury, but staying focused on all the moving parts was very important, and better training would highlight this. We should note, however, the proposed regulations include exemptions for kids who work for their parents.</s>And many of you echoed these sentiments from C-noise(ph), who wrote: Finally, several people complained after a guest's description of President Obama's policies in last week's Political Junkie segment, this from Mike on Facebook: I've heard Neal correct a lot of people on the show over the years, yet he just let the guest say Obama is putting forth a socialist agenda. I don't even like Obama, but I have to say it's usually Neal's style to butt in and least add a caveat about an untrue statement.</s>And many of you echoed these sentiments from C-noise(ph), who wrote: If you have a correction, comment or questions 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, or follow me @nealconan, all one word.

President Bush has plenty of supporters who agree he should have blocked the children's health care expansion. Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute's Director of Health Policy Studies, explains why.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Despite pressure from Edelman and others, Congress may not have the votes to overturn the S-CHIP veto. And the president has plenty of supporters who agree he should have blocked the health care expansion. One of them is Michael Cannon. He's the Cato Institute's Director of Health Policy Studies.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Michael, welcome.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): Thank you for having me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So let's go back to Marian Wright Edelman. She just argued the case for insuring working families that don't qualify for Medicaid. So let me present you with a scenario: You have a two-parent family with three children. They work hard, but they can't afford health insurance premiums because their employers aren't helping them out much. So wouldn't that family benefit from the S-CHIP expansion?</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): Well, a lot of families would benefit from the S-CHIP expansion. The problem with this expansion is that it's not - well, there are a number of problems with it. Unfortunately, not many of them are being discussed in the current debate. And one of those problems is that the expansion is not targeted very well. In fact, the S-CHIP program itself is not targeted very well at those people who need help. If you look at S-CHIP as it exists right now, 60 percent of the children who are eligible actually already have private health insurance.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): And if you look the expansion that Congress would like to pass, the children that they're trying to expand S-CHIP to encompass, 77 percent of those children already have private health insurance. So if this is, you know, an expansion that's - or a program that exists to help those who are in need, it doesn't do a very good job of targeting its assistance to those who are in need, which I think lends credence to the charge that the proponents of this program are not interested in targeting this - targeting it to only the people who need help. They are really more interested in pulling more people on to the roles of government programs and crowding out private insurance.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): Now, you had mentioned that I'm a supporter of the president's veto. It's not - that's not quite accurately as I'm not a supporter of the president's position because I have taken the position that rather than - or not only should the president veto the expansion of S-CHIP, but the president and Congress should let this program expire. And…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So you want to see it all disappear and…</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): Well, and you - when you say that, you have to take a moment to convince people that you're not a moral degenerate. The reason that I want this program to expire is because I think it is - it does a poor job of helping families who are in need.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): And there are a number of reasons for that. For one, it's not very well targeted at them. It discourages low-income families from climbing the economic ladder, which could have health consequences for the children. It increases the cost of private insurance for those who remain outside the program. And there's no evidence that this is a cost-effective way of improving children's health. In other words, there could be other interventions that would get more health for the money.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Sorry to interrupt, but what other interventions are you thinking of and are those going to come from private sector, government? What, specifically, are you talking about that could deal with the millions of kids who are uninsured and the other ones who - Marian Wright Edelman, among others - argue are underinsured?</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): Well, if you're talking about government interventions, there are other approaches, some within the area of health and some outside of the area of health that could have as positive an effect on health outcomes as expanding health insurance. Those could include discrete programs such as vaccinations, and - Ms. Edelman mentioned one of them - prenatal care and other screening programs, or interventions targeted at increasing incomes or improving education because those have also been correlated with health outcomes.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): But we're not even having a debate over whether those approaches should be utilized or not. And I think that, you know, that's one area where the debate over S-CHIP has been lacking.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): And I think that part of the reason is, is another reason to be skeptical of this bill, which is something else Ms. Edelman brought up, that the insurance industry favors this bill. The physician lobbyist says it favors this bill, the lobbyists for the hospitals and the pharmaceutical companies because they all stand to gain tremendously from having, you know, greater subsidies, greater government subsidies for health care.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): But I'm not sure that we should be expanding government health insurance enriching those special interest groups when they can't point to evidence that they, you know, would give - deliver the most health for the taxpayers' money.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Michael, just quickly, what do you think is in the tealeaves for overriding the veto?</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): I'm not very good at making those sorts of political predictions. I never would have guessed that the president would have taken so strong a stance against this bill.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): What I would like to see though is, you know, a better effort to provide health insurance to these targeted families. And I think that the simplest way for Congress to do that would be just to let individual consumers and employers purchase health insurance from outside of the state in which they reside. Creating that sort of a national marketplace for health insurance could reduce the regulatory costs that states add on to insurance policies, which the CBO has estimated increased premiums by up to 15 percent. And the people who are going to be helped by that the most are going to be the people whom S-CHIP is trying to target except we would be able to help them without raising their taxes, without pulling them into dependence on government and discouraging them from climbing the economic ladder or having - creating any of the other ill effects that this S-CHIP program creates.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Michael, thank you.</s>Mr. MICHAEL CANNON (Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We've been speaking with Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. And he spoke with us from our headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Author Kim Reid grew up in Atlanta in the early 80s — a time when serial murders of black children rocked the city. She writes about being a teen during that tumultuous time in her memoir No Place Safe: A Family Memoir.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: In the summer of 1979, Atlanta kids were doing what kids do - playing outside, fighting, flirting, trying to round up a little money with odd jobs, but then two boys were found dead along a wooded road. That was just the start of a killing spree. Over the course of two years, 29 black children, mostly boys, were murdered.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Writer Kim Reid was a teenager when the terror began and her mother was a detective who got assigned to the case. In her book, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir," Kim writes about the effects of the murders on her city, her family and herself.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Kim, thanks for joining us.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): Hello. Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So your book really reads like a novel. It's an incredible story. What made you decide to write it and why now?</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): Well, I grew up wanting to be a writer. I wanted to tell a story because I thought it was important to my family as well as Atlanta's history. But I didn't really act on it until a few years ago. I was reading an excerpt from a book review and it portrayed the cops on a case as insensitive, and while it was beautifully written and captured the emotions of fear at the time, I thought it painted too broad strokes about the cops not really caring about solving this case, because I knew a very different story. My mother not only wanted to solve it, but she was obsessed with the case, so I wanted to tell that story.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, your mother was the first black female crime investigator for the Fulton County DA's Office. You write a lot about just how much this took out of her. Tell me a little bit about her, how she worked on the case, and what kind of emotional cost she had to pay.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): Well, I write a little bit about how - I saw her as two people - my mother and also this cop and it helped me to deal with the fact that she was out there in the streets, not just on this case, but other cases. But she's a tough woman - still is a tough woman, no longer a cop, but I think, you know, being a single mother, she had to go through a lot of things with keeping us fed and keeping the rent paid.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): But she was also kind and she saw in these kids, in having to go to talk to mothers that their children have been found. I think she - it brought her home to us, her own kids. And so she was really consumed with finding out who the killer was in this case.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What did it do to you? I mean, first of all, on a practical level, you had to spend a lot of time taking care of your sister, but also, were you afraid? Were you afraid for your mother, for yourself, for your neighborhood?</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): All of that. I think the biggest thing it had for me and probably other children in Atlanta at the time was you lost a little bit of your childhood. I lost some of that being the oldest with a single parent. But the other was the fear of you couldn't go down the street and play basketball after dark, the panic your parents would feel if you got home just a few minutes late because they didn't know if you'd been snatched. And, you know, children's conversations, I think, changed because we talk about who went missing last and had there been another body found.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: At the same time, you were breaking ground going to a mostly white school where things weren't always pleasant. And you had a conversation with your grandmother about going to a white neighborhood, whether or not you felt safer there. Tell me about that conversation and did it hurt you at the time.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): It did hurt. Well, the school I went to - I left - it was my first time dealing with this investigation. Also, it coincided with my first time leaving my black neighborhood and going to a mostly white and a mostly white school. I think black folks made up about 1 percent of the school there.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): And it was a difficult time because I think in the first year of the investigation or the murders, people really didn't see it. Outside of the inner city, people didn't see it as their problem. And so that was one thing, dealing with some of the insensitivity. Also just dealing with in your face racism, that was the first time I had to deal with that.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): And the conversation with my grandmother was about my fear that in trying to fit in, I was assimilating and losing who I was.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What about race in the city? There were black families, who said, oh it couldn't have been a black man. There were cries of racism against the police force. How tense were things?</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): Oh I think, especially in the first year, it was pretty tense and it was pretty polarizing. I thought, you know, I think in the black community, we automatically thought it had had been racial because all the victims were black children. And I think - I don't believe the whole community joined in - black and white - until the bodies were found in white neighborhoods. That's my opinion of it.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): But initially, the children were coming from mostly black neighborhoods and they were being found in black neighborhoods. But then the killer began leaving bodies outside in the suburbs. And I think that's when the community became less polarized.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Wayne Williams, arrested, convicted - there are still some people including some officials who think that he is not the killer. What do you think?</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): Well, I would agree, but you know, my information is secondhand. But you know, I think one thing people don't realize is there were 29 official victims on the list - on the official list.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): Wayne Williams was only tried for two of those and convicted for two of those. And those two were actually adults. They weren't children. So a lot of people think, first of all, those adults shouldn't have been put on the list with the children.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): And I know my mother believes he did the two because she was part of the prosecution team that convicted him. But she never believed that he did all of the murders. And her partner at the time, he has been vocal in saying he didn't believe he - that Williams did any of the murders.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Quickly, what are you working on next?</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): A novel and I'm enjoying the freedom of not staying true to the facts. It's nice to know how a story begins and how it ends, but I'm really enjoying writing fiction. But I still - it's still family drama and, you know, my husband worked for a police department, my mother was a cop, my stepfather was a - is a criminal lawyer and so I'm still really interested in crime and the emotions it drives people to do crimes, so.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Kim, thanks so much.</s>Ms. KIM REID (Author, "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir"): Thank you for having me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Kim Reid's book is called "No Place Safe: A Family Memoir," and she joined us from member station KUVO in Denver, Colorado.

Eight years before the National Museum of African American History and Culture even opens its doors, patrons can pay a virtual visit. The museum's director, Lonnie Bunch, talks about the launch of the long-awaited cultural museum on the Web.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I am Farai Chideya. And this NEWS & NOTES.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now is your chance to check out a new Smithsonian museum way before it opens its doors. The National Museum of African-American History and Culture has just launched a major online version of itself. The bricks-and-mortar museum won't open for eight more years.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Joining me now to talk about the museum - a virtual and physical - is director Lonnie Bunch.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Hi, Lonnie.</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): How are you?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I am doing great. So I actually have your Web site right here in front of me - clickable. And you have this map, this kind of interlinking of different places to go - culture, photograph, differences. You have people like Judith Jamison in "Cry." I mean, what's your intention with this Web site?</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): Well, in some ways, I realize that because the museum is still many years off, the history of African-Americans is too important to wait. So what I wanted to do was to make it accessible now by creating a virtual museum. Because what a virtual museum allows us to do is, not only to sort of make sure the history is accessible, but it also allows the public to shape who we are and who we will become once the building is open.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I see that you have things like Share Your Memory. So you're asking people, not only to see what you have, but also to contribute.</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): I think that as a historian, one of the things I know is that there's so much data, so many stories, so much history in people's minds in their stories. So what we wanted to do is to encourage people to share their histories because, first of all, that would create new information for historians like myself.</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): But also, it would begin to get people to realize that their history, their story is important. And if I can get people to realize their own family histories are important, then I could help people realize how important it is to preserve history, generally.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, let me go back to the bricks-and-mortar museum. A lot of people say that this kind of museums should have been opened a long time ago. There's a Native American Smithsonian museum. There's Air and Space. There's all these things. Why did it take so long to commission an African-American-focused museum?</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): Well, I think that the struggle has been over a hundred years trying to get a museum on The Mall, but I think the timing is right. I think that there is bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats to make this real. I think there's also a sort of a middle class of African-Americans who want to support this. But even more importantly, there are large numbers of non-African-Americans who realized that unless they understand the African-American story, they really don't understand the American story.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So you've got all of this work that's got to go into collecting physical objects for the museum. And then you have all this work for the Web. What do you think that - what's lacking from the Web site that you can't get unless you have physical objects for display?</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): Well, I think that what the Web site can give you are stories. You can see the images. But somehow, part of what happens in a museum is the social interaction among people, among families. So that when you come and see the real object - the Greensboro Lunch Counter or a car that the Pullman porters worked in - not only does this engage you because it's the real thing, but it encourages you to talk to children and to parents and to cousins and to the people just walking by you. So it really enlarges our understanding of the history by the social interaction that goes on within a museum.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I also see on your Web site that you have an exhibition, "Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African-American Portraits," that's actually going to be at the National Portrait Gallery - sort of one of your sister museums. Is that something you're going to do more?</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): Ah, yes. I mean, part of the notion is that I want to suggest that this isn't a museum project. That, in essence, this museum exists now. And so the Web site is one way to demonstrate that, but so is the exhibition "Let Your Motto Be Resistance."</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): In some ways, they are two wonderful poles for us. On the one hand, "Let Your Motto Be Resistance" is the kind of wonderful exhibition that you should expect from the Smithsonian, which is kind of traditional. But on the other hand, you have the Web site, which is very non-traditional for the Smithsonian. So I want to show that this new museum is going to be both a place of tradition and a place of innovation.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: One of the great things about being able to go to the Smithsonian Museums is that they're free unlike many museums in other cities. What are you going to do in terms of outreach? You know, both with this Web site and then with the bricks-and-mortar museum to try to get non-traditional museum audiences in there?</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): Well, I think that, first of all, we recognize that we are a place of education and we are a place to tell stories. So part of what we want to do is really reach out to the Washington, D.C. area because I want to make sure people realize that the Smithsonian is in Washington, D.C. But then I also want to make sure that through the kinds of programs we do that we can encourage teacher training, that we can be a resource for information for students, that we are a place that people can come to when they want to learn about their family history.</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): In essence, our hope is simple. This is a museum that will help us all understand who we are as Americans and in some ways, will inspire us by these sort of wondrous African-American stories that we will tell.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: One last thing, there are many different African-American-focused museums that have opened fairly recently, everything from the Civil Rights Museum to the Maryland African-American History Museum. Will you have any efforts to try to network with these other museums?</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): In fact, I have argued that our job is to realize that there are hundreds of institutions and thousands of people in this country who care about this subject. So our job is in essence, to be a collaborator, to be a beacon in essence that draws people to watch them because many people will come to the Smithsonian who won't go to other places. And our goal would be to get you to come either via the Web or actually to see the exhibitions we do. And then we'll push you back to the local community.</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): So if we're doing an exhibition on the migration of blacks from the south to the north, we'd also say, after you see our exhibition, go see how the DuSable Museum in Chicago explains that, or how the California African-American Museum in Los Angeles explains that. Our goal is to be a partner in making African-American history accessible and meaningful to us all.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Lonnie, thanks so much.</s>Dr. LONNIE BUNCH (Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture): Oh it's my pleasure as always to be with you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So we've been talking to Lonnie Bunch. He's the director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. You can find a link to the virtual museum on our Web site, nprnewsandnotes.org.

Marian McPartland has shared duets and conversations with piano jazz luminaries for decades as host of NPR's Piano Jazz program. In January, the show gets a new host — and a new focus. Pianist Jon Weber will feature new young talents on the program, Piano Jazz Rising Stars. Hear preview segments from Piano Jazz Rising Stars

NEAL CONAN, HOST: For decades, the great Marian McPartland illuminated public-radio airwaves with her duets and conversations as the host of PIANO JAZZ. Since 1979, she spoke and played with established artists like Herbie Hancock, Alice Coltrane, Carla Bley and - of course - Dr. Billy Taylor. Next week, a new kind of PIANO JAZZ launches on NPR. The show will feature young talents who shine through their energy, innovation and artistry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you're a jazz musician, how and where did you learn how to play? 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: Jon Weber is the host of NPR's PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS, and he knows a thing or two what it's like to be a musical protege. At age 19, he'd already opened for Pat Metheny and Stanley Turrentine. Jon Weber joins us now from our bureau in New York. And Jon, nice to have you with us here on TALK OF THE NATION today.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Neal, it's a pleasure to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how did your experience as a youngster influence the vision for this new version of PIANO JAZZ?</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Well, I recognized by the time I was 16 years old that jazz was the music for me. I was playing heavy metal guitar at the time. And I think a lot of teenagers go through this, where they hear something that's - they want something more. They want something more than the simple chords. And they hear jazz and they say wow, listen to this. So I heard some fusion artists at the time. And the - I guess it wasn't that - it was the gateway drug into playing jazz...</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: ...which - and eventually, big-band jazz and eventually all forms of jazz.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so where do you go now? Do you go to disgruntled heavy metal players to look for new performers?</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Oh - well, you never know where the next source material is going to be for jazz. It comes from everywhere. That's one of the wonderful things about jazz, is that we welcome everything into the melting pot.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet I looked at the list of performers that you have in this upcoming, new season of PIANO JAZZ, and several of them - it surprised me - started out as classical performers.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Yes, I know. That's the thing. I mean, it's - nothing wrong with having wonderful piano technique. For example, Aaron Diehl is one of my guests. He's a wonderful pianist who was born in 1985, but is still steeped in the tradition and all the discipline from the Harlem Renaissance, which happened at least six decades before he was born. For some reason, he understands that - or studies that.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: So yeah, classical technique always helps. But sometimes, you just want a little something where you want to be able to change things - because, I mean, how many people - how many times have you listened on your iPod to a song and you thought, oh, change a note here or a word here, and I'd like that better? So I mean, that's - then you're doing jazz, really.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But it raises the question of where young people these days learn, and should we consider jazz now a concert - conservatory music?</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Yes. And the thing that is unique about jazz as a concert music is that you can change things. In other words, if you're going to perform Mozart's "Piano Concerto in B Flat" or Beethoven's "Sonata in C Minor," you know what you're going to get. But if you do a jazz show, you don't know what you're going to get. But it's going to be cool; it's going to be improvised; it's going to be imaginative. We've had 11 decades of jazz, if you believe that Jelly Roll Morton invented it in 1902 - which he claims...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One afternoon when he had nothing better to do.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Nothing better to do. But that's - they discovered that just taking a series of chords and improvising and - improvised music is - it's really found its home in jazz, and I think it's here to stay because there's endless variations. You can go all over the world for new sources to absorb into jazz. So why not?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's hear some - we'll hear a couple of tracks from some of these rising stars you're going to be featuring. We'll start with Grace Kelly - of course, not the actress and princess of Monaco but a 19-year-old - 19-year-old - alto saxophonist and vocalist.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that is young Grace Kelly in a duet with Jon Weber, pianist and host of NPR's PIANO JAZZ RISING STAR. So obviously, one of the traditions of piano jazz, that collaboration - that sustains.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: I love that Marian had such a original idea in 1979, when she started the show - because there was no such thing as a jazz show, where you brought on an artist to talk about jazz and to improvise with the host. But Marian was perfect for that because she - her general knowledge is so tremendous; her musicianship is so wonderful; she's so personable. And she is the artistic director of PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS, the show that I'm beginning next week.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: And she loves Grace Kelly, by the way, who just is - at age 19, listen to her swing. That song, I believe, is called "Philosophical Flying Fish." And she swings like she's been doing it all her life, and I guess she has. At age 19, she also sings really well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're going to hear some more of that later. But tell us a little bit more about, how does somebody - now a senior at, I think the Berklee College of Music, up in Boston - how does a person like that become quite as accomplished as she is? She's got - what? well, a lot of albums out.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Seven. She started young, and she was exposed to it. And as Stefon Harris has said, there are just - there are no wrong answers on the bandstand. You just take risks, and you let the chips fall. As I said with Taylor Eigsti, who was also on the show - a great pianist - you just let the chips fall. You just let it happen. And if there's a mistake, or something that's perceived as mistake, you follow that. And Frank Zappa used to do this on the bandstand. He'd - wrote very difficult arrangements. And sometimes somebody would make a mistake, and everybody would follow the mistake. And that became the cool thing to do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Jon Weber, pianist and host of NPR's PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS. We'd like to hear from the jazz musicians in our audience. Where and how did you learn how to play - 800-989-8255; email: talk@npr.org. Josh is on the line, calling us from Minneapolis.</s>JOSH: Hi. I just want to say that it was my band teacher at Tech High School in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Mr. Gary Zwack, took - as a freshman, took me under his wing and really taught me everything there was to do - everything that there was to jazz, and music in general. And I really need to call out all the teachers and music teachers out there, who really do a fantastic job.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what did you do after high school?</s>JOSH: I actually went into the military. I actually broke my tooth, and I cannot do justice to my trumpet anymore, unfortunately.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, I'm sorry to hear it.</s>JOSH: So all - I still love listening to it. But thank you for doing this, and a huge call-out to all the music teachers, who are doing a fantastic job. Thank you very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks for the call, Josh. And Jon Weber, I'm sure you would - we'd hear a hearty amen.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Hear, hear, Josh. Gary Zwack, God bless you. I love everything you're doing. I had a gentleman like that named Mark Kleckey(ph), turned my life around. I would probably be a heavy metal guitarist in some garage band, or 6 feet underground, if not for him. He turned me onto jazz and yes, a big shout-out to all the jazz teachers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jazz - all right, this may be controversial. Jazz used to be popular music. I don't think it's fair to call it that anymore.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: No. One time, jazz was popular music; the big bands of the day, the - it was theater music. Something happened in the mid-'50s, where it just suddenly, kind of branched off. But in a way, I guess us jazz musicians are kind of proud of the fact that we're not popular music. We kind of enjoy being iconoclasts, or being just a little bit off the beaten track, or being special in that way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Tim. Tim's on the line with us from Detroit.</s>TIM: Yes, hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Tim. You're on the air. Go ahead, please.</s>TIM: Yeah, a longtime listener. I like it. Yeah, when I was playing drums - never had a lesson - very young - in my late teens, early 20s - but playing rock and roll with the regular guys was, you know, I'm just keeping beat. But I met some older gentlemen, and I was - they played horns and such, took me around to jazz bars. And like your gentleman said, you could just learn so much more and do so much more. And somebody said - I said, I should get some lessons. I didn't think I was any good. And he said nope, nope. Just - you got your own style. Do your own thing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do you still play?</s>TIM: No, no, nope. I sold my third set of drums many years ago, when I started working a regular job, unfortunately.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do you still hang out in piano bars?</s>TIM: They're hard to find. There used to be - all around, where anybody could go in and maybe sit in. We had a bar there, where we played at in Dearborn, and they had clubs around. People would come over after like, a wedding hall would close, and there'd more musicians just sitting in, having a good time, you know...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Jon Weber...</s>TIM: ...and just doing whatever.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...I think Tim's right about that. There are fewer and fewer of those kinds of clubs.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Fewer, yes. It seems - every generation, we bemoan, oh, no, it's going away. There's no more - the clubs are gone. And then, for example, in Minneapolis, where I play maybe five or six times a year, there's a bunch of musicians who just hang out in a basement and play. And it's - it looks like a club. So just - there's always hope, and there's always musicians who just have outgrown the ordinary and they just - they can't stand the fact that there's no place to play. They need an outlet to play. And they - we've - they find one, by hook or crook, and it develops into something bigger, without fail. So I have great optimism that clubs will be around. I mean, people have said this for years - they all, they're going away - but they always come back.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, Tim. Hang in there.</s>TIM: Yeah. I was just going to say, about the piano bars, yeah. You can sit in a lot of bars and play guitars and such. But as far as playing jazz goes, you know, that's sort of gone, I think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Tim, thanks very much.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: I don't know, you know? It's something - on the show, on PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS, I am astonished at the number of young people - 20-somethings, 30-somethings - who know so much about the music that preceded them, and they're into jazz. They're - they respect rock, and a lot of times - I mean, I had Taylor Eigsti on the show, and we had a nice discussion about Coldplay, the British band. Most of those guys were born when I was in high school. And we started talking about the song "Daylight," and he said, I think I'm going to play that. And he did.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, as it happens, we have that cut queued up. Let's hear...</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Are you serious? This is great.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...Taylor Eigsti, playing a little Coldplay.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Taylor Eigsti, from PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS. And Jon Weber, a little bit older than our previous artist that we heard from, Grace Kelly. He's - well, mid- to late-20s now.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Twenty-seven. I know. Well, the thing is, Taylor pointed out something on the show that - a very astute observation - that jazz musicians have always borrowed from the pop music of the day. If you look at Bill Evans' recordings from the '60s and '70s, he's always playing something from the latest Broadway show. Listen to Miles Davis. He's playing Cyndi Lauper in the '80s. And you notice it all the way along, so why not now?</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: I mean, I heard Kris Bowers, the winner of the Thelonious Monk Piano Competition - he's going to be a guest on the show; at age 22 - he'd play some things holding onto the strings inside the piano as he plays, using the entire instrument as a percussion instrument, which it was intended to be. And it sounds like a hip-hop groove under what he's doing. And it's cool, and it sounds like jazz.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Jon Weber, pianist and host of NPR's PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Erish(ph) : I studied jazz guitar in high school because I wanted to learn all aspects of guitar. In retrospect, I think learning music is like learning a language. Learning jazz is like learning conversational music. Every kid should be exposed to it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: By the way, he notes that he's a big fan of piano jazz - even though I now play rock.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: That's great. It is very conversational. It's very much like baroque music, in a way - inasmuch as you have an idea, then something else answers that idea, and then you work and you weave sort of a fugal message and a statement that's from the joined instruments together, if there happens to be more than one.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Email from Patrick in Cincinnati: I mourn the retirement of Marian McPartland, to whom I've listen to - to whom I've listened for decades. In her later years, she was often reminiscent and backward-looking - not a bad thing. But I'm delighted by the forward-looking approach Jon is now taking. It's crucial to show jazz can be a young person's genre. I'm 46, and often find myself on the young end of jazz fans.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's a demographic that's not going to work in the music's favor.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: You'd be surprised how many young people are playing and listening to jazz. I cannot believe the bumper crop we've got right now, coming out of the music schools, which is one of the reasons for the show. It just - there were so many young, innovative people who are willing to take a lot of risks and are also really familiar with the pop music. I mean, many people stop listening to new music when they hit 25 or so. But we're catching people right at that point where they have all this energy and creativity, and they're willing to take music in from all parts of the world.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: And, you know, I adore - Marian is just my idol. I used to transcribe pieces that she would have on her show, when she'd have a guest and they'd do some improv. I would transcribe it, and I'd write it out for wind ensemble or string quartet. It's very, very musical. And she was forward-looking as well. She had, sometimes, very, very young artists on there as well, and she was never afraid to learn things from a young person.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Conner, Conner with us from Eugene, Oregon.</s>CONNER: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi. You're on the air. Go ahead, please.</s>CONNER: Oh, yeah. I just wanted to give a shout-out to Dr. Ed Christianson, rest in peace. I love that man dearly. And I am just one of the many, many people whose life was touched by him. He was a young man growing up in Harvey, North Dakota. And when the jazz band came through town, he jumped on the train with them and took off, and toured across the nation and made his living as a jazz player; and eventually came back to North Dakota and taught at Fargo North High School, and was just an inspiration. He was an amazing man and a brilliant teacher. And I just think of him all the time. He recently passed away, and I know there's, literally, thousands of us out there that are affected by him, and just his passion for big bands and his extreme displeasure with the karaoke movement and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, he's got a lot of company there.</s>CONNER: Indeed. As a music teacher - not in the schools, but as a private music teacher and jazz musician, I think back daily on the lessons I learned from Dr. Christianson and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we've gotten a lot of emails about - well, yours is the first call to mention Dr. Christianson - but about other teachers in elementary and high schools, all of whom touched people's lives tremendously as they taught them jazz. Conner, thanks very much for the phone call. Jon Weber, good luck with PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS.</s>JON WEBER, BYLINE: Thank you very much, Neal. It's a pleasure to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: PIANO JAZZ RISING STARS premieres next week, and Jon Weber joined us from our bureau in New York. Tomorrow, Political Junkie Ken Rudin and I go on the road to Des Moines, to take stock of the race for the Republican nomination for president. Join us for that. We'll leave you with some singing by the alto player Grace Kelly we heard from earlier. This is "Bye Bye Blackbird."</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.</s>GRACE KELLY: (Singing) Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me. Pack my bags and light the light. I'll arrive late tonight. Blackbird, oh, blackbird, blackbird, bye-bye.

Failing to disclose positive HIV status to sexual partners is a crime in more than 30 states. In Iowa, it can carry a 25-year jail term. Advocates say the rules are discriminatory, and are urging state governments to reword laws that solely target HIV, but not other transmittable diseases. See guest Lindsey Moon's coverage for the Iowa Center For Public Affairs Journalism, "Living Positive In Iowa"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: In more than 30 U.S. states, it's illegal not to inform sexual partners if you're HIV-positive. Here in Iowa, it's a Class B felony that carries up to 25 years in prison, even if there's no transmission of the virus. Proponents say to knowingly expose someone to a potentially lethal virus is equivalent to attempted murder. Critics argue that these laws single out people with HIV to the exclusion of other dangerous STDs, and they hope to see legislation to change the law so it doesn't target those with HIV, many of whom are gay men.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you live with HIV or AIDS, when do you tell somebody? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Lindsey Moon joins us here in the studios of Iowa Public Radio. She's covering the story with IowaWatch, an investigative journalism website. She's also a research assistant here at Iowa Public Radio. Nice of you to have come in today.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: It's great to be here. Thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how prevalent is this statute? How often is it applied?</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Well, since it was put into law in 1988, it's been used 37 - there have been 37 charges filed.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here in Iowa.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah. Yup - which, according to the best available data, is the second-most number for these laws in the country, second only to Tennessee, which doesn't sound like a big deal, until you step back and consider that Iowa is a low-prevalent state for HIV infection. And so even in states like New York, where there's a lot of people who are infected with HIV, they've only prosecuted four cases for HIV transmission.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, how did these laws come to be on the books in the first place? They were - you'd think that if somebody is a predator, knowingly does not disclose this and is intent to infecting people, there are laws on the books that cover that already.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah. Well, they were originally passed in some states because when the Ryan White CARE Act came out to send federal funding the states...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is back in Reagan administration.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah, right. There - it was included that there had to be a way to - or to prosecute the transmission of HIV. But Iowa's law wasn't passed during that - during those - when those laws were. So Iowa's law was passed in the late '90s, after a case in New York. There was a man named NuShawn Williams who went around and had sex with 75 women and didn't tell him that he was HIV-positive. And so there was a big national media, you know - there's lots of coverage in that case. And so Iowa passed one with a lot of states, because they were worried about something like that happening.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So, in fact, has anything like that happened? Has anybody knowingly transmitted the virus?</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: No, not from my knowledge or from the reporting that I've done.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are some of these laws also that, as you say, they go back to the Reagan administration. The science is a little bit out of date. There was great concern. This was during the HIV - I'm pretty sure it's fair to call it a panic at those times - that the virus could transmitted by spit or by any number of other transmission methods, which have turned out not to be true.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Right. I mean, in Iowa's law, one of the problems that advocates say is troublesome with the wording of the law is that it doesn't say whether or not the type of sex act matters, and it also includes any exposure to bodily fluids. So there haven't been many cases prosecuted because of biting or spitting, at least in Iowa, but there have been nationally. And so they just want to have it changed so that it is up to date with public health knowledge.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Change - that's an important word. They want a revision of the law, not to take it off the books.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Right. At least people who are working on it in Iowa are - they just want to change it so that it doesn't just point out people with HIV. And they would like it to...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'll just also say that if it - up to 25 years seems a pretty a stringent penalty if there's no transmission of the virus. And even if, as I understand it, you use protection, you could still be prosecuted under this law.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah. That is actually one of the big cases that has catapulted it to have a lot of people concerned about how it's being used. There was a case in Waterloo a couple of years ago, and a man - he claims that he did use protection, his partner says that he didn't. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which was eventually amended, but at the same time, he was placed on the national sex offender registry. And so it's hard for him to find a job, and he's relocated out of the state because he can't find work here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that's another aspect of the statute. If you are convicted on this, you were on that sex offender registry, I guess, for the rest of your life.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah. Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it seems to me you would get - you said somebody said he used protection and the other person said he didn't - you're going to get a lot of he said, he said charges here.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah. And that's another one of the concerns because there are public health officials who argue that having the he said, he said aspect of it is not OK, especially when there are people pushing to have everyone take their - like personal responsibility for their own sexual health. And one of the men that has a case in litigation, right now, didn't tell his partner. He said that he wanted to use a condom but his partner said no, and he didn't tell him, but if you would have that knowledge, it would have made it different.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: But at the same time, if you know that you're in high-risk group, it just - it's one of those things that they would urge you to do anyway. And so, failing to tell someone else of your status, if you're not willing to protect yourself, is one of the problems with the law.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And doing some research for this segment, the Centers for Disease Control said that, in fact, knowing transmission of the virus seems to be very rare. Most of the people who are infected are infected, but they didn't know.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah. That's also true. And it's - there has been one case that's been prosecuted in Iowa where actual transmission did occur. And so when people know that there is a transmission law, they don't get tested, or some people say that they don't get tested for fear that they're going to be prosecuted or that someone could use that against them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because ignorance of your HIV status is - it gets you out from under the law. If you don't knowingly have HIV, you can't be prosecuted?</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Right. And the only defense that you can use is to say, I had informed consent and here's proof it, so...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It gets very complicated. Well, we'd like to hear from those of you in the audience who live with HIV. 800-989-8225. Email us: talk@npr.org. When do you tell somebody? Let's see if we can start first with - this is Tony. And Tony is calling us from Rochester in New York.</s>TONY: Yes, Neal. Thank you. I've been living with HIV for 18 years, and the person who gave it to me did not tell me, and we ended up being in relationship. He didn't tell me for over a year. And so I tell everyone - immediately. It's - if there's any chance of sexual encounter, I reveal my HIV status. And as I was telling your screener, you know, years ago, it was a deal breaker. You know, people would either say, OK, we have to be safe or we're not going to have sex. A lot of times it was, we're not going to have sex.</s>TONY: But these days with the new developments in medications and so on and so forth and viral load going, you know, way, way down and T cells remaining high and the rate of transmission, even with positive people, I find that it's not a deal breaker anymore.</s>TONY: People will shrug their shoulders and say, OK, no big deal. You know, and if they want to have safe sex, that's fine with me. If it's their choice that we don't, that's fine also. But it's - the culture, at least within the gay community, has certainly changed over the course of, as I said, 18 years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Was there a time when you thought that maybe the person who gave it to you - did it ever cross your mind that, wait a minute, you didn't tell me, that he should be prosecuted?</s>TONY: Oh, are you kidding? Yes. Yes, it turned into a very dysfunctional relationship because of that. And the relationship ended shortly after he did - well, he didn't reveal. His best friend told me. And then he denied it. And -but, you know, as it came out, it was - yes, I was very angry and very hurt and felt betrayed. And I think that plays a role in why I do tell people. I mean, beside the fact that it's ethically and morally the right thing to do, you know, I had that bad experience of, you know, living intimately with someone who was keeping a huge secret from me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Not only a huge secret, but 18 years ago, this was a lot more serious, as you suggest. It's still pretty serious, but there are a lot advances.</s>TONY: Exactly. Now it's like considered a manageable condition, sort of like diabetes. But back then, yeah, it was, you know, all of my - I was going to a funeral a week because my friends were dying so quickly of the disease. So, you're absolutely right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.</s>TONY: OK. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see, we go next to - this is Robert. And Robert's on the line with us from Galveston.</s>ROBERT: Thank you taking the call. I have been HIV positive for many years, and I consider this sort of legislation extremely invasive to people's personal privacy. I agree with the previous caller that it's morally imperative that you share your status with a potential partner. However, these laws are used by people to blackmail HIV-positive people for potential monetary gain. Because, basically, not only are you dealing with sickness issues, but you also have to deal with - you have to be out to your community, to your employer, to your church, to your family, to your friends - so that you're maintaining this outward status so that if anyone comes and tries to compromise your personal privacy, you can maintain that everyone knows that this is basically a known entity. And I really hate this egregious 25-year potential, you know, penalty plus, you know, being on a sex offender registration is just an extreme overreaction from a very limited community that's imposing its will upon people who are already enduring a great burden.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Robert, I assume you're talking about the law in Texas. Is up to 25 years here in Iowa, the same in Texas?</s>ROBERT: No, I actually moved to Texas, away from Louisiana, that has a similar law.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there's not a similar law in Texas?</s>ROBERT: No.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting. Thanks very much for the call.</s>ROBERT: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I wanted to get back to that point, Lindsey Moon. There are some people who say, you know, again, ignorance of your HIV status gets you out from under this law, even if you do transmit the disease - even if you suspect you have it. If you don't know you have it, and some people say, wait a minute. That prevents some people from being tested.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yeah. And I know - I'm not sure if there are many cases where that has been used as an excuse in Iowa, but there is one woman, specifically, that I have spoken with, and she contracted HIV from her husband who didn't know that he was positive. And so, even if she would've wanted to say anything about it and the way that it was transmitted, she couldn't have.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, let's see if we can get another caller in on the conversation. We're talking with - I'm actually having a little difficulty with the phone system here. We're talking to Lindsey Moon, a research assistant at Iowa Public Radio, about a law here in Iowa and 33 other states, that makes it a criminal offense to knowingly transmit HIV. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And let's go to Jonathan, Jonathan with us from Myrtle Beach.</s>JONATHAN: Yeah. How are you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good. Thanks.</s>JONATHAN: I was calling - I'm actually not positive. My husband is, and he disclosed that information to me on our second date. And I think one of the things that is not being addressed in this whole conversation, and I think it's become - because of laws like this, it has become prevalent really to disclose it early on, just because if you're seeking a relationship with somebody, that's something that's going to come out eventually, and you might as well get it out early, rather than late. And rather than investing time in something that's not going to go anywhere, because I think for some people, it really is a deal breaker.</s>JONATHAN: But as your guest alluded to, because of treatments the way they are, especially in the gay community, it's not something that carries the weight that it once carried. It's not something that's as frightening, and it's not a death sentence anymore. I mean, it's something that you'll live with for 20, 30, 50 years. I mean, it's something that is not life-ending.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes, of course, for most people in most situations, Jonathan. But you never know when somebody's immune system might have been compromised by something else. For somebody else, it might've been...</s>JONATHAN: Absolutely. And it's something that you just have to be cautious about. I mean, and I think, again, in situations where you are speaking of relationship and you're actually dating somebody, then that's something that you do dispose because you want to make sure that you take those precautionary steps to prevent transmission. I think the real issue here is, in situations, for lack of a better term, where people are hooking up, it's not being disclosed. And though that is not as common as it once was in the gay community, it still does happen. And in those situations, I think a lot of times it's not disclosed because you're not going to achieve the ultimate goal of the hook up, you know?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mm-hmm. I understand. I understand. Thanks very much for the call.</s>JONATHAN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email. This is from Steven in San Antonio. I'm a gay man living in San Antonio. I've been on medication for five years and have been undetectable since starting. The risk of transmission, even without protection, is very low. However, even today, there is still the stigma that HIV equals a death sentence. When I'm meeting people for dates or whatever, I tell them upfront so - so if they are unable to deal with my status, we don't have to waste any more time. However, there are other STDs that can be just as dangerous and just as deadly as HIV. Those should be included in the laws as well. And, Lindsey Moon, that's one of the situations the proponents of this revision of the law hope to address.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Yes. With - if the law is revised, they hope to include things like hepatitis. And the draft of this legislation that they have right now mentions things also like maybe typhoid or tuberculosis or - if you're going to prosecute the transmission of a disease, why just limit it to STDs and not, you know, just transmittable diseases, contagious diseases?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next, to Vincent. Vincent's with us from New Lynchburg in Virginia.</s>VINCENT: Hi. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm well. Thank you.</s>VINCENT: Yeah. What I do is - I've only had to do it once, but since I was diagnosed, I do a full disclosure on the first date. Before we decide to have a relationship and become intimate, I have a letter notarized stating that we have not done anything that would transmit or cause the virus to be transmitted. And we both sign, by the notary, before we even engage in safer sex.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Boy, that's romantic, isn't it?</s>VINCENT: I have to do it to protect my interests.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: No, I understand, but it could put a damper on things.</s>VINCENT: Oh, no. Actually, it's kind of exciting because most of the time we go into a local bank, and the bank's - the reaction on the person's face is hilarious.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That is - OK. Who drew up the letter, by the way?</s>VINCENT: I drew it up.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's only - you've only used it once?</s>VINCENT: Yeah. I only have to use it once.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thanks very much, Vincent. Appreciate the phone call. Lindsey Moon, thanks very much for your time today.</s>LINDSEY MOON, BYLINE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lindsey Moon, a research assistant at Iowa Public Radio. Tomorrow, Jennifer Ludden hosts the show. She'll have Erik Larson on to talk about "In the Garden of Beasts," one of the books we missed when it came out earlier this year.

Nuclear power generates 20 percent of electricity in the U.S., but the nation's reactors are aging — and new plants are expensive and take years to build. Gas, coal, wind and solar are potential alternatives, but all have environmental or logistical drawbacks. Christopher Joyce, science correspondent, NPR Michael Shellenberger, president, The Breakthrough Institute

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. No nuclear power plants have been built in this country since the accident at Three Mile Island more than 30 years ago. The old reactors continue to provide 20 percent of our electrical power, but many of them will start to come offline in the next 10 years or so.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Given the time it takes to construct any kind of power plant, decisions have to be made soon about how we replace one-fifth of our electrical power and add the additional capacity we're going to need. There are no easy answers or single solutions, and the issues are enormous: politics, economics, climate change, national security, the balance of trade, jobs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So how do we replace all that electricity? Our phone number is 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, a credibility test for Syria - excuse me, Jon Weber the new host of NPR's "Piano Jazz: Rising Stars" will join us. But first, NPR's Christopher Joyce joins us here in Studio 3A. Just - Chris, nice of you to be with us.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Thanks for inviting me, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And just last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensed a new reactor design. So will new nuclear plants replace the old ones?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Well, it's great to be invited to a talk that has no easy answers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And no simple solutions.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Thank you very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're welcome.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Thank you very much. The AP1000 plant that was approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it's built by Westinghouse, it's something of a white knight, if you will, because as you said, the nuclear industry has been feeble, if you will, for a long time and for very many reasons: financial reasons, for safety reasons, for public skepticism.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: And the AP1000 has had a long history. It was initially approved, it's a smaller plant, and as they were building it, they just - they discovered during those years that oops, it's going to cost more per kilowatt hour than we thought. This isn't going to work.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: They went back to the drawing boards. They made it bigger to get economies of scale, and they tried to make it safer and simpler, to make it cheaper. And so they came up with the AP1000. It's a big plant. It's over 1,000 megawatts, and the NRC now says we like the way it looks, we think it's safe.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: There's still some hoops to jump through. They still need to get certification for construction, and then again NRC has to approve an operating license. Those probably shouldn't be difficult. So we might see new reactors by 2016, 2017.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So this is a long process indeed. And how many?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: There will be two in Georgia and two in South Carolina, at least that's what - they're undergoing - they're the farthest along in terms of licensing, and they have money. And money is a big question. It's one thing to have a design that people like, and there are good things about the design.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: I mean the design is the so-called passive design. It's much safer in the sense that it doesn't have - it doesn't need all the electrical equipment to make it - to bring in coolant if there's a loss-of-coolant accident. A lot of so-called passive design, you use gravity, you use convection to bring cooling water in.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: It's a standardized design, and so in the sense you don't have to build a different plant every time. All the nuclear plants I think this now were one-off, you know, and that just doesn't make financial sense. They've trying for years in the industry to do a standardized design and say look, get one that's good, it works well, standardize it, we can all build the same one, and it's cheaper that way.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: So that's to its advantage. But there's still the financial world, which is very reluctant to invest in nuclear power, and that's been a big stumbling block.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because per kilowatt hour, it's still pretty expensive.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yes, and, you know, it takes a long time. It takes a long time to build a coal plant, too, but a nuclear plant is - there's so much more to it, and it takes - the permit process is so long. You know, you go to a bank, and you say I need to borrow billions and billions of dollars, oh and by the way, I won't have any money to pay back the interest for another five or six years.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: You know, you're just going to have to pay the interest for five or six years with no money coming in. Investors don't like that. It's risky. Then you have things like Fukushima. You know, you have an accident that comes along, changes the rules. And right now we're seeing, for example, the price of natural gas coming down.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: And, you know, no nuclear - a nuclear power plant doesn't operate in a vacuum. It has to compete with other sources of energy like coal and natural gas.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But then you talk about natural gas. Natural gas presents problems of its own. Yes, it turns out there's a lot of natural gas that we can now access through the fracking drilling techniques that have become so popular. They've also become pretty controversial.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: They have, and these are new days for fracking. Fracking is not, you know, it's a new technology, much newer than nuclear, for example, and it's being used in places, well recently like in Pennsylvania, in new geological formations where they're having some trouble, you know, controlling the pollution of groundwater, and then there are numerous other problems. There's state regulations that just aren't ready to deal with this new technology.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: However, when you look at the kind of things that need to be done in order to make fracking safe compared to what needs to be done to make coal less polluting and safe, what needs to be done to get rid of nuclear waste and to make nuclear power plants safe, I think a lot of people will tell you that the obstacles are much lower for fracking, that these are solvable problems for less money than solving the big problems of coal and nuclear.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet nuclear, one of its advantages is it does not add carbon emissions to the environment. It is green in that respect. Yes, you've got to figure out a way to dispose of that nuclear spent fuel, but it does not add to climate change.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: And that was the, sort of, the calling card that nuclear pulled out of its pocket during the 1990s, and hey look, folks, now that people started to get serious about climate change, they could say hey, we're clean. I mean, we don't emit carbon. That's great.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: But that hasn't been enough to push it over, and furthermore, we've seen that the public opinion on climate change took a nosedive in the sense that people got a little less worried about it, and there was no carbon price. So if - without a price on carbon coal remains cheap, and so it's still an argument that they don't win financially.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, if - we're at the same stage that Germany was. They weren't building any new power plants. They were talking about extending the life of their old power plants, and they've decided not to do that. They say they're going to do this with renewable energy. How are they able to do it, and we're not?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Good question. I would like to go over and find out. In fact, that's something that I hope to be doing. So this is something that the Germans claim that they can do. They're going to have to use probably more natural gas, which does create carbon.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: They are probably going to be using nuclear power wheeled in from France. So if they can manage to do it, though, if the Germans can manage to get baseload, regular, 24/7 power out of renewables, then, you know, they could take away the last argument that nuclear has.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Baseload, what does that mean?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Well, in the sense that it works 24 hours a day, you know, seven days a week. It's consistent, you know, unlike solar power and wind power. You don't have to worry about when the wind doesn't blow, you don't to worry about when the sun's not shining.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: And you can produce a great deal of power, and you're not down a lot of the time, whether for repair or for lack of a source of energy, and that coal and nuclear are the very best at that because their fuel is cheap, they run consistently, efficiently, and it's just the way our big cities need electricity.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, we'll get more and more into the - let's get some callers in on the conversation, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. How are we going to replace the 20 percent of our power currently provided by aging nuclear power plants? Roy(ph) is on the line calling us from Binghamton, New York.</s>ROY: Yes, hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi.</s>ROY: I'd like first off commend Germany for the incredible step that they've taken telling the nuclear industry that they are obsolete, as well as did when Tesla and Edison came about telling the whalers that we didn't need the blubber anymore to make electricity.</s>ROY: And I'd also like to commend France in their wisdom in saying that fracking isn't the answer, either. But instead what I would recommend for our baseload, a very challenging project, which would involve a superconductivity loop from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians in which ambient lightning could be harnessed because that's been the whole problem harnessing lightning is that there's such an incredible amount of energy that goes energy that goes in as to how to dissipate it.</s>ROY: And a combination of tidal, the Bay of Fundy runs twice a day, a 40-foot tide. These are incredible opportunities that need to be looked into, and the sea kite concept that the Norwegians are developing shows incredible promise from the oceans, as well. And I'll take my comment off the air.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Chris Joyce, a lot of futuristic proposals there. I'd not heard about the ambient loop from the Appalachians to the Rockies.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: No. I haven't either.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But tidal power, a lot of people talk about the promise of that.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Well, I would make the same argument about solar and wind power, which are even closer at hand than that. But the problem so far has been these are much cleaner and limitless sources of power. But how do you get there from here because we need electricity now, and if - and I know this is a tired argument, but I think it's a strong one, which is in order to get the grid to be able to handle renewables and even natural gas, the pipelines necessary for natural gas, it's going to take time and a lot of investment.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: In the meantime, over the next 15, 20, 25, 30 years, there's got to be some sort of bridge. There's got to be something that we can continue to keep our economy thriving. And, you know, that's what we have to deal with right now. Those other technologies are fabulous, and, you know, any number of them could help us out, but it's a matter of what do we do until we perfect it and make it price competitive.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And make it price - yet how do we calculate price? People look at the air pollution right now and say there are thousands of people dying every year as the result of air pollution. Statistically, they look at that and say that's accurate. That's part of the price, too, no?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yeah, the so-called externality of coal, for example. And the EPA has just passed a new rule on mercury, which is going to be making coal a lot more expensive because - and put some coal-fired power plants, you know, away forever, and - the older ones. And that's the sort of thing that we're now cycling into the cost of our energy.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Nuclear is going to have to do this with its waste because we're going to have to find a place to put that waste permanently. There's a process going on now to try to find a replacement for Yucca Mountain, which was dropped, and, you know, that all - getting rid of that, it's just going to add to the cost of nuclear.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: So yeah, you have to plan ahead, and in the meantime, things change. That's one of the difficulties of planning for energy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And things change in any number of different ways. We have seen enormous growth in the number of wind turbines, for example, yet wind continues to provide a very tiny fraction of our needs.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yeah, the interesting statistic on wind is it's one of the fastest growing sources of energy in the world and in this country, but it's still tiny because it's starting out from such a low point. And again, there's a situation with where do you find the best wind.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: You know, you can build a wind turbine somewhere, but if you don't have a lot of wind, then it's not going to be price competitive. So you build it where there's the best wind, well, in the Great Plains. And, well, that's great for people in the Great Plains, but how do you get the electricity to the East, where a lot of the demand is?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you can't store it. So...</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yeah, that's another technology we could talk about.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: NPR's Christopher Joyce is with us here in Studio 3A. When we come back, we'll talk more about the future of nuclear power in the U.S. Is there a better way to generate the 20 percent of our electrical power that comes from old nuclear plants right now? 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. Nuclear power is a divisive issue, particularly among environmentalists. Some, like the Sierra Club, say there's no such thing as safe nuclear energy and no long-term plan to securely dispose of nuclear waste.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Others, like the Breakthrough Institute, say nuclear power is worth it because it does not make climate change worse, like fossil fuels do. Is there a better way to generate the 20 percent of our electrical power that comes from nuclear plants right now, nuclear plants that start coming offline in the next 10 years or so?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our phone number, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And you can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. And let's go next to Dave(ph), Dave's on the line with us from Baltimore.</s>DAVE: Hi, good afternoon, Neal, huge fan of the show, very glad to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>DAVE: And very glad that you got this as your topic today. A couple of brief comments, I agree very much with what your guest just mentioned in terms of the fact that a lot of these ideas that we have, you know, going really big on solar, really big on tidal, really big on wind, are decades out in terms of getting the technology to where we would need it to be actually a legitimate power source, whereas as he just mentioned, we've got two nuclear plants almost ready to go in Georgia and South Carolina, North Anna 4 in Central Virginia, Calvert Cliffs 3, which is several years out because of roadblocks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And not far down the road from you there in Baltimore.</s>DAVE: I'm sorry, one more time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And not far down the road from you there in Baltimore.</s>DAVE: No, not far, about an hour and a half south. The biggest issue, as somebody I heard over the summer say, was not just NIMBY, not in my backyard, but also a lot of people have this thing that called BANANA, build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. And when we look at nuclear, the big issue in my opinion as a teacher is education.</s>DAVE: There's so little understood by the general public about nuclear and about the actual legitimate dangers and about the actual legitimate promises of it. I mean, for example the energy density of it, the entire amount of energy that you will consume, the amount of fuel that you will consume in your entire lifetime, Neal, would fit in a soda can in terms of the uranium fuel pellets.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think I'll stick to Dr. Pepper.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Dave, thanks very much for the call, we appreciate it.</s>DAVE: Absolutely, thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joining us now is Michael Shellenberger. He's the president of The Breakthrough Institute, and he's with us today from member station KUNC in Greeley, Colorado. Nice to have you with us today.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we've - obviously could have taken advocates from any number of points of view. We've decided to talk with you to day as a supporter of nuclear energy even after Fukushima Dai-ichi, which of course the costs of that in terms of billions and decades have yet to be measured.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, and I should just context this by saying that we're actually advocates of all low-carbon sources of energy. I mean, we've been big advocates for increasing the amount of money we spend on renewable energy R&D from about the $2 billion that we spend annually today to about $15 billion, and another $15 billion on top of that just to, you know, to buy down and to be buying the advanced technologies: solar, wind, advanced nuclear, the rest.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And really we've been advocates of renewables for 10 years. It's only been in the last few years that we've increasingly lost confidence that we can scale up renewables in the time period that we need to scale them up in order to radically reduce emissions. And that's made us - that's forced us to take a harder look at nuclear energy.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And that's kind of been a - it's been a gradual process of coming back around to supporting nuclear energy as folks concerned about the environment. I mean, I think people forget that the environmental movement was largely pro-nuclear up until the late '60s because it was a way to generate pollution-free electricity and also not have to build hydroelectric dams, which destroy natural landscapes.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So it's been - so I think we're advocates of all these advanced energy technologies, and I think it would just be incredibly foolish to take nuclear off the table.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Not merely in your view take it off the table, you believe we need rapid expansion.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, we do. I mean, I think to provide some context to it, you have a source of energy here which generates 20 percent of our electricity, as you mentioned, 70 percent in France. If you actually look at deaths per energy source, nuclear comes out as one of the best. I think only wind out-performs nuclear, and that even counts the expected deaths from Fukushima because of course there haven't been any deaths yet from it.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The estimates are of some - I think between one and 3,000 eventual cancer deaths from Fukushima, which is obviously serious and of concern, but, you know, in the context of catastrophic climate change risk, you know, in the context of the, you know, thousands of coal miners who die every year, you know, the Deepwater Horizon, fossil energy, all energy production is quite dangerous, including solar panel production.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, people think solar panels are clean. When they install them on their house, they're clean, but when you manufacture them in a place like China, you get all sorts of industrial waste. There was even a riot in one of the towns near a solar panel production, solar factory in China earlier this year because the company had dumped so much waste in the river.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So energy production is a dirty business, and I think it's - you're really having to make some hard choices. I think it's been - within the environmental community, I think an idea took hold in the late '60s that no, no, there was this really easy way to do it, it would just be solar panels and wind turbines and water wheels and, you know, insulation in our homes, and we would never need to have fossil energy or nuclear energy.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And I think that for those of us that kind of, you know, grew up in the post-'60s era, even with growing up with "The Simpsons" as an anti-nuclear TV show, I think when we take a hard look at a world that is going to consume three times more energy over the next century and the need to zero out all emissions from energy production, I mean go to zero by the end of the century, it's just hard to see how you do that without a lot of nuclear energy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how do you do that without, as our previous caller said, running into the BANANA problem, build absolutely nothing anywhere?</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right, that is the big issue. I mean, I think what we have - I mean, I think long term, we're optimistic that various publics around the world are going to come back to nuclear. I think where you see the greatest opposition to nuclear energy is in very wealthy countries, where really we live long lives, we have very safe lives.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Countries that are, I think, far less - that have a better perspective, I think, of the overall risk are developing countries, and they haven't slowed down their nuclear renaissance at all since Fukushima. But I think even in the United States, I mean, you have to remember half the country is pro-nuclear. Most of those folks are Republicans and conservatives. Very few of them are like us, more on the liberal side of the political spectrum.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I think when the case gets made properly over the next several years by environmentalists, by progressives, about why we need to take a second look at nuclear, I think we're going to - I think people are going to start to change their mind.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Christopher Joyce?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yeah, Michael, thanks for those comments, and it's interesting to hear from you on this. I wonder, though, you know, you talk about the need to more toward the non-emitting, non-fossil fuels. I mean, the marketplace has shown us so far that it chooses fossil fuels, so they're the cheapest, but, I mean, that's the way it is.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: And given the emergency with the climate change, and given the nature of competition in the rest of the world, you know, is it time that this country needs to say look, the marketplace is not going to do this for us, that we need massive subsidies to get to where we need to go?</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, I mean, the interesting thing is the more you learn about the history of electricity production in particular but really all modern energy is that governments have always been heavily involved. I mean, start with hydroelectric dams that were financed by the U.S. government.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Nuclear energy is obviously a product of the defense establishment, solar panels from NASA, wind turbines...</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Fracking?</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: We just did a big study on fracking, which you might have seen.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: I did.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: All of the major technologies that led to the shale gas boom, which incidentally have basically doubled United States reserves of natural gas over a period of a decade, all came from federal government investment. There's even a very good book I'm reading right now I highly recommend called "Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?," and it's a serious question because so many of our what he calls general-purpose technologies, from satellites to...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Why don't we get to that argument in another day? All right?</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: OK, sorry about that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's stick to nuclear power.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, yeah. So I guess the question is yes. I mean, I think the reality is after Three Mile Island, the United States, the government basically said we're going to move more towards - we're going to move back towards coal and back towards fossil.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: You know, governments make these choices. Publics make these choices. Energy is the backbone of a nation's economy, and so ultimately at the end of the day, these are decisions that are made by the public. And that's what's happened in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I think Japan is up in the air whether it will go back to nuclear, whether it'll go heavily into renewables or whether it's just going to burn a lot of fossil. So ultimately, it's a question I think that the American people are going to decide.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for your - well, let's see if we can get a caller on with you. Let's go to Mike(ph), and Mike's with us from Denver. Mike, are you there? Mike?</s>MIKE: (Unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mike?</s>MIKE: Yes, I'm here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're on the air, go ahead, please.</s>MIKE: OK, sorry, sir. Yes, on this nuclear question, that no matter how safe the technology may be purported to be, you're always going to have that chance of radiation breaking loose from a nuclear plant, like what happened with Fukishima. You're always going to have that chance. You're never going to be able to get away from that. So in that one sense, the argument would be how much - how many times does one have to get a proverbial bloody nose before you get away from the guy that's socking you? So that's one side of the argument.</s>MIKE: As far as alternatives go, one of the things is that we can look at using a bunch of mirrors to direct sunlight through a central point and create heat that way and thereby turn water into steam the way we do at nuclear plants now. There's also - individually we can look at how we consume energy individually. For example, there's a hardware store in the mountains here in Colorado, I believe, that generates its own energy using solar, and they actually sell power back into the grid.</s>MIKE: And then, of course, when it comes to consumer devices, the vast majority of consumer devices and computers and whatnot, anything basically that has a transformer, taking A.C. power to a transformer, we can conceivably come up with a low-voltage power system to power those, and then save the big voltage, the 120 volt or whatever, for the major things that actually require it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Toasters.</s>MIKE: But I think there's a whole bunch of different solutions that we can look at.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Thanks very much for the call. The alternatives, I'm sure Michael Shellenberger would advocate any of those that prove to be practical. The statistics, he points out, on nuclear, you say yes, statistically the safest - or one of the safest. One accident changes those.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, that's absolutely right. I mean, again, this is about public perception, which I think we should take very seriously. I mean, it may very well be that the public decides that it doesn't want nuclear anymore. And I think that what people need to realize is that they are in essence deciding to stick with fossil energy and all the risks that that brings. And if I could just end with one thing, we have a new e-book out called "Love Your Monsters," and the title essay comes from - I mean the title comes from an essay by a very good French anthropologist who describes the Frankenstein myth and says, you know, really, this is a parable for our attitude towards technology.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Dr. Frankenstein, his mistake was not in trying to, you know, use technology to create something. It was that he abandoned his creation when it didn't turn out right. And we think it's a powerful parable for things like nuclear where, you know, the truth is we should, you know, he argues we should treat our technologies as we would our children. You don't abandon your children when they misbehave or when they don't turn out exactly like you would wanted. You love them. You care for them, and you improve them.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And I think that we should have that attitude towards all of our technologies. I don't think that – I don't think that - I think that nuclear, obviously, has some risks. Solar and wind have big problems as well. And I think we have to consider all of that in making these choices.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Michael Shellenberger, thanks very much for your time today. Appreciate it.</s>MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Michael Shellenberger joined us from KUNC in Greely, Colorado. He's president of the think tank The Breakthrough Institute. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And here's some emails. Tim sends an email, says in order to replace 20 percent of the electricity produced by nuclear power plants, I'd like to see two things: a conscious effort to actually save energy by homeowners by changing their habits, conservation if you will.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Secondly, I've seen firsthand homes that are weatherized. Average savings? About 25 percent. We shouldn't be concerned with producing more but in saving more. Chris?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Well, I think that's a good argument. I mean - and good luck to you. I agree completely. But getting Americans to save is a slow process. I mean, you know, we've seen, I guess, no more Hummers. That's a good sign, maybe, for conservation, but it takes a long time to do that, and it takes effort.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This from James in Sagle, Idaho. I'd like to point out it's false that wind and solar cannot provide base-load power. There was a study just last year of wind power along the East Coast of the U.S. by tying together seven sites, not including Cape Wind, showing that the wind is always blowing in enough of those places to guarantee power, not to mention the Saudi Arabia wind, the U.S. high plains. Don't believe the fossil fuel industry propaganda. So there's an argument for that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this from Shawn in Jackson, Michigan. Would it be possible to touch on the possibilities of space-based solar power? It's been mentioned as an engineering problem, not a science problem.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yeah. And I've - there have been fascinating and intriguing propositions for building sources like that, as well as tying together, you know, offshore wind turbines and that sort of thing. And these are great. It just always comes down to who's going to pay for them - and right now, is the customer, the rate payer, willing to pay more money to get what they're used to getting cheap? I mean our energy in this country is very, very cheap, and we're not just used to paying what the real cost of it is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The real cost? I mean, how do you calculate the real cost?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: The real cost is, you know, in nuclear, it's the additional cost of getting rid of nuclear waste, which we haven't really paid for yet. It's the cost in coal - burning coal, of the mercury and the soot and the particulates and the health care - the extra health care that we have to pay for due to that; that's been going on for decades. And these so-called externalities just have not been part of what we pay for. And you know, if Americans are willing to pay for higher costs for their energy, we could get energy that's not as polluting.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lauren from Sonoma emails: You need to hear from sustainability people on the energy footprint of nuclear plants. All that steel and concrete, the mining of uranium use more BTUs of carbon than they produce in carbon-free energy, plus the fact that the government is responsible for ensuring nuclear plants show that the bean counters on Wall Street consider it too big a risk. And that's part of the...</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: They do, yes. I mean, that's been the Achilles' heel of nuclear for a while now, is that even as the NRC and others say, and even environmental groups say, look, they're safer than they used to be, there's been a lot of progress, it comes down dollars and cents. It's just very expensive, and investors are saying, you know, I think we've got better alternatives, at least for my money.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And for their money, right now, what do people in the power industry say is going to be the future as these plants start to come offline in the next 10 years and so?</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Well, some of them I've talked to say we don't know, and we're worried about that. I know that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which is the people who run the national electric grid, they've come out with a report just in the past week saying natural gas is where it looks to be. We don't have a lot of large - most of our natural gas, electric producers, are peak - they produce peak power. That's the, you know, not the base-load power. That's when there's a surge of demand, and then you have to cycle up a plant really fast...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A hot day in the summertime.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yeah. So they come on fast, and then they can turn off, and it's no big deal. You know, there are big base-load gas plants. Japan has a bunch of them, and you can build them. It takes a while, and of course, in the past people have been burned by going to natural gas as a big source because the price is fairly volatile. And the price of coal and the price of nuclear - of uranium has not been so volatile. So it could be gas, but you know, we'll see.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the environmental impact of gas with the methane produced in the production, and of course it does release carbon emissions...</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: It does.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...part of the burning, so...</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: It certainly does.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...these problems are not going away. Chris, glad you can answer all of our questions.</s>CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yes. Hard questions. Thank you for inviting me for the hard-question session.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: NPR science correspondent Christopher Joyce with us here in Studio 3A.

How can different ethnic groups work together to make social change? Farai Chideya asks Robert Lovato, former director of the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles; Raphe Sonenshein, a professor at California State University Fullerton; and Van Jones, president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, Calif.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: This is News & Notes. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Last week, we looked at where the civil rights movement is headed. Today is part of our month-long series on civil rights. We discussed coalition building across ethnic groups. Joining me now to discuss the topic, we've got Van Jones, president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. Also, Roberto Lovato, former director of Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles -it's the country's largest immigrant rights group - and Raphe Sonenshein, a professor at California State University, Fullerton and an expert on political coalition building. Welcome to all of you.</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): Thank you.</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): Thank you.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So historically, black Americans and Latinos have been relatively good at forming activist coalitions, but not so much now, including the immigration issue. Roberto, what's the state of play between African-Americans and Latinos?</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): I think it depends on where you're talking about. I think it depends on which Latinos and which African-Americans you're talking about. It's - we've entered a time where it's increasingly difficult to talk about what it means to be black, for example. Is Obama black? Is Clarence Thomas black? And so those are indicators, along with immigration. We're in an extremely complex time - racially, economically, politically. I've been traveling the country for the past four years, looking at these kinds of issues. And I find a mix of some really great and inspired things, and I find some very troubling and difficult things, and I find things that are just kind of tepid.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Give me an example of one success story and one story of tension.</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): Well, let's locate them both in Louisiana, New Orleans after Katrina. After Katrina, what we all heard about was Mayor Ray Nagin's comments about Mexicans coming in, which a lot of us found discriminatory - even racist. And what we didn't hear about were - was a lot of the coalition building that started at around that time between the religious groups, labor groups, and it's still going on to this day. That doesn't make news. Peace generally doesn't make news and doesn't sell CNN ads - war does, including, you know, what you hear in (unintelligible) about race war. That sells. That's sexy. It sells in media, it sells in politics, it sells in academia, it sells throughout.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, Raphe, there was - many people would argue a schism of a coalition that existed during the civil rights movement in the '50s and '60s of Jewish Americans and black Americans. And later on, during the black power era, there were fishers that developed. Is this something where there was a coalition between - and I'm not just talking here about blacks and Latinos, but between African-Americans and other groups of color that split, or was there never as strong a base to begin with?</s>Dr. RAPHE: It's closer to the second. And in fact, it's not so much that an existing black Latino alliance is fracturing. It's that it's really a new relationship that, in coalition terms, it was really the relationship between African-Americans and white liberals, principally Jews, that was the principal coalition across racial lines.</s>Dr. RAPHE: Everything from the civil rights movement to the election of black mayors in the '60s and '70s - and the top example of that was in Los Angeles. The coalition behind Tom Bradley for 20 years was almost overwhelmingly a black Jewish coalition. And what happened was, Latinos often felt like the odd person out in that coalition. They're sort of members sometimes, sometimes not members. What has really changed in the world in all cities and in American politics is the emergence of Latinos as a group that can't be ignored, and at the same time, a greater distance between blacks and white liberals, blacks and Jews. And so everyone's looking for new partners.</s>Dr. RAPHE: So what you really have now is two groups who everybody thought a long time ago would have been natural coalition partners, now sort of circling each other like in the ring - sometimes friendly, sometimes in conflict. But it's much more of a new relationship than people realize.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, Van, you're working on green jobs. You're based in the Bay - the Bay Area, Northern California - obviously very diverse. Do you find - there's been a lot of recent activity around civil rights, around the issues of justice in the criminal justice system. You've worked on that as well. Are issues like jobs going to bring as much of a coalition together? What are you finding?</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): Well, I mean, I think, you know, the Bay Area is really kind of - looks like the country is going to look where Oakland is the most diverse city in the country. So, you know, here, you know, you can't talk about the Asian community, you mean, the Mong(ph), do you mean the Filipinos, you mean the Koreans, even the Chinese, you know, talking about, you know, Latinos, you know, there's, you know, literally every nationality is here from all over the world.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): So for us, I do think it's important to recognize that once you get to a certain place where no one group or no two groups are the dominant group, things change pretty dramatically. We found that, you know, all of our kids -black and Latino kids and some of the poor Asian kids - are going to schools that don't work, looking for jobs that don't exist, trying to find scholarships that don't exist, and getting herded off to prisons in disproportionate numbers. Those are common ground issues, kitchen table bread and butter issues that we've been able to build pretty interesting coalitions around here in Northern California.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): Similarly, the question around jobs, we found, yeah, well, the national conversation is a sort of a baked discussion about, you know, immigrants displacing African-Americans and all this sort of stuff, most people are pretty clear that, you know, immigrants working in the fields do not close all these factories and shut down all these Army bases here in Northern California. And so…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But, Van, I have to jump in. There are maybe logical arguments about that, but there's real anger. There's people, you know, when I go out in the field and do reporting, there's a lot of anger among certain working class African-Americans. And maybe it's displaced anger but it's anger.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): Oh, I get that.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So how do you deal with that?</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): Well, I mean, I think that the reason that you have the anger is because there's a lack of political leadership in the African-American community that's actually pointing to real problems and - point the real solutions to real problems. Whenever you start out in an organizing campaign, there's all kind of bigotry and bias and stuff there. But what I think is most important in this conversation is that where the campaign starts and where it ends are very different.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): The civil rights movement created a context in which blacks and Jewish people came together. They came together, they were closer at the end of that movement. They weren't at the beginning. I think we've got to get back to a politics of possibility and opportunity that says all of us kind of struggling at the bottom in any scaling systems have a lot more in common and get a lot more done if you want together to fix these systems.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Raphe, there's a saying, likes don't like likes, meaning, people who are in economic distress or who have problems, you know, getting into the, you know kind of the promised land of American society don't always cohere. How do you change that dynamic if you're someone who's trying to change that dynamic?</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): Well, that's a great point. You know, for years, people hoped that African-Americans and white working-class people would come together. And it never happened. And one reason was racial attitudes were so strong especially on the side of white working-class voters. I think there's a greater opportunity for working-class Latino and working-class African-Americans to come together but it's still - there's a lot of problems.</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): For one thing, take the New Orleans case. There were plenty of people in leadership positions especially at the national level, who actually put Latinos against blacks by making it difficult for blacks to return and then just as a minor point trying to suspend the Davis-Bacon Act to provide union wages to people who would work on construction jobs. That's what the Labor Department did until Congress intervened. As soon as Congress intervened and said everybody has to get a fair wage, a lot of that rush to bring new Latino workers in evaporated because everybody was going to be able to compete for the same jobs at the same level.</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): So some of it has to do with the fact that the system is now throwing two working groups together at each other. I also think that the media loves a conflict story. Now there are plenty of conflict stories in the high schools, in the jails, in prisons, and these are very, very exciting stories. But if you walk down in neighborhoods, say, in South LA that are mixed, you'll very often see people living very harmoniously on the same block doing the normal things people do in every neighborhood. It makes a lousy story, however.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: In case you're just tuning in, this is NPR's News & Notes. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We are talking about coalition building for civil rights across ethnicities. Talking with Roberto Lovato, writer with New America Media and The Nation, Raphe Sonenshein, professor at California State University Fullerton, and Van Jones, president of the Ella Baker Center for human rights in Oakland.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Roberto, let's back up a little bit, we are talking about coalitions between racial or ethnic groups. But there are racial and ethnic groups, for example, within the Latino community. You know, there's Afro-Cubans, there's Latin Americans, there's people who have a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of, you know, urban and rural and all these immigrants and American-born. How do you even start to build a collation when within the Latino community, the Asian-American community and increasingly, even the African-American community, you have to do coalition building?</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): I think we have to do a couple of things. The usual thing you do in coalition building is identify a vision - the unique vision and you organize around and you build leadership around. And you also have to identify the leadership and have information about who they are and who you are. And so we need to kind of give some nuance to understanding what it means to be Latino, for example. There are Afro-Cubanos, Afro-Cubans, Afro-Panamenios, Afro-Panamanians.</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): We have to really build our understanding of Latinoness, of Blackness. I've tried in my writing and in my work to understand - better understand and immerse myself in black politics in the United States. That's why I started off saying that there's no one way to be black. I mean I'm fascinated the way that Clarence Thomas is using the discourse of the civil rights movement.</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): There's not even a one thing - one way to view the civil rights movement. I've heard about Andy Young whose approach to civil rights means, you know, supporting Wal-Mart and into expansion into neighborhoods that are eventually going to be gentrified. So we really have to, you know, we have a lot of work to do and we're lazy, we shouldn't be in the world.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, gentlemen, in the time we have left, I want to move to the question of how you do build these bridges. We talked a little bit about it and first of all, I want to ask you, Raphe, what's the mountaintop? Where are people heading in terms of civil rights? I know that's a big question. And then, how do you get them there?</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): Well, right now, I think a lot of people are lost, not knowing where to hit. But there is a goal. The goal is equality and fairness and justice. In other words, you don't form coalitions just because of the good feeling of being with other people who are different from yourself. Although, that's a great thing all by itself. It has a purpose.</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): Because in this country that's so fractured by race and with working people so fractured by race and ethnicity, the only way to have equality is for those groups to find a way to work together. But what we know about coalitions is it's always done by a small group of people in each community who become very familiar with the other community and in effect, show the way for people who would naturally rather just hang out with people just like themselves and say, I'm visiting with this person over here, why don't you come along with me tonight.?</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): Some of the best coalitions in the country are probably built by 20 or 30 people who act as sort of translators from community to community. Conversely, it takes fewer than 20 people to fracture relations between communities because it's much easier to do that. So all you need is one person with a megaphone to get up there and in effect, say, did you hear what they said about you? I think Roberto's right. This is the hard work. But it doesn't take everybody to do it. It takes a small number of committed people.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What about white folks?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: To be perfectly honest, is it too late to bring working class white people into any kind of movement for economic justice?</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): Well, I've been studying this for, I don't know, how many years. White voters who are working class will vote at progressive agenda, but they will not necessarily join an interracial coalition. That's just the reality. When you look in the room and see who's on the white side in the discussion, it's almost always going to be a liberal white person, often Jewish, not always Jewish, maybe well educated, maybe middle class.</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): And that's annoying to a lot of people because they believe that it should all be a big working class coalition. The reality is that working class whites are the repository of some attitudes about race that make it awfully hard. For example, if you do some polling on immigration, blacks may have concern about immigration, conservative whites, including working class whites can be kind of red hot up on that issue.</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): But it doesn't mean that people can't come together on issues like health insurance and stuff like that, it's just I wouldn't expect a big tent of everybody sitting around talking about, you know, how we feel about each other. That's going to be (unintelligible) working class.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Roberto?</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): I think that mountaintop is one, which we're getting along and conscious of the fact that we're getting along, more conscious than we are now or less mediated as in media experienced and one of which we have clouds cleared up - clear our view with a direct, you know, view of capitalism and our relationship to capitalism.</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): I heard Raphe mentioned the word system. People don't even talk about this system anymore. I'm so grateful for - to hear Raphe use the word, system because we need to look at the system. We don't just need to look at electoral politics and candidates. You know, are we for Obama or Clinton? No, because they both get funding from the same system. And…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But, Roberto, a lot of people would argue the whole reason that America has diversity is because of capitalism. People coming here to try to make their way. What do you say to that?</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): Well, yeah, people were brought here on slave ships because of capitalism. People's land was stolen in the Southwest, Mexicans, because of capitalism. Asians were excluded from the American enterprise by capitalism. And so…</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But in recent years, there's been - I mean, a huge migration, whether you see it out of necessity or out of hope, so much to the reason that immigration has been. People trying to start businesses, make their way.</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): People desperate enough to cross deserts where they and their children die is also a part of this equation of what capitalism does to us. So it's a mix bag and that's why - but we don't even talk about it. We need to get a point - to a point where we're at that mountaintop. We're breathing clean air. It's clear. We have a clear view of what the real issues are.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): Well, I definitely think that the question of economics, which is, you know, what's on the table now. And global economics, historical economics, the precedent economic system is something that's important. And what I take away from the conversation, though, is that a kind of economic populism that really points out, you know, the health care question, the public school question, you know, job opportunity. I do think that we've got to get more and more, back-to-back kind of kitchen table bread and butter. Maybe, we don't all get along. Maybe, we don't all like each other. Maybe, we don't all go to, you know, join the same coalitions. But fundamentally, there's got to be an agenda that is a majority agenda in the country for the people who, you know, are working hard every day for modest incomes. And that to me is where I see the most potential.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): I do believe that, you know, Latinos, blacks, Asians and whites, but white folks as well, when there's an agenda there that speaks to them and that speaks to the opportunity for their kids, can rise above of much this bigotry. As long as we're just left, though, to be on their own, as best we can, we are going to be resentful of that next person who looks like they're different than we are.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Van and Roberto, Raphe, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much.</s>Dr. RAPHE SONENSHEIN (Political Science, California State University Fullerton): Thank you.</s>Mr. VAN JONES (President, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland): Thank you</s>Mr. ROBERTO LOVATO (Former Director, Central American Resource Center): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: We've been talking with Van Jones, president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland; Roberto Lovato, writer with New America Media and The Nation and Raphe Sonenshein, professor at California State University, Fullerton.

On today's weekly economics segment, Farai Chideya talks "Home Ownership: 101" with author, economist, and Bennett College president Julianne Malveaux.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Congratulations, apartment dwellers, you will be renting for the rest of your life. Okay, we can't promise that, but the recent buzz about the mortgage crisis has left some renters feeling they will never get a shot at homeownership.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But wait, there's hope. We've got author and economist Julianne Malveaux here to give us some tools to fight the fear of potential first-time home buying. Who knows, there may be escrow in your future after all.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Julianne, welcome.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Thank you, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So how bad is the housing market right now?</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): You know, the market is always - I would not encourage any potential first-time homebuyer to get out of the market because some of these subprime and other instruments are leaving the market. I would encourage people to learn as much as they can about buying a home.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): If you're just renting and you haven't even thought about it, don't close the door on it because, still, homeownership represents one of the few ways that working class and middle-income Americans can accumulate money. When the home - when the prices of homes go up, you don't sell your home every time the asset fluctuate, so you end up sitting on top of lots of capital. That equity that you have in your home can often be used to finance others of your dreams - to start your business, to send your children to college - things like that. So I would encourage everyone to consider homeownership.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Look at it this way, Farai, nearly 75 percent of all whites own their homes. For African-Americans and Latinos, the number is 50 percent. That's a huge gap. Some of those folks are going to lose their homes because of this whole subprime crisis. But if you walk into the ownership market armed, as you say, escrow may well be in your future.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So where do you begin?</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): There is a wonderful Web site that I want to put out there. HUD is actually a great resource. If you go on HUD's website, www.hud - H-U-D -dot-gov, it's a great place to learn about home buying. They've got one piece that I found really interesting and very, very easily written, plainly written, called "Common Questions from First-Time Homebuyers."</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So when you think about - if there's a checklist in your mind that has to do with your emotional readiness, your finances, give us a sense of the couple of things like that.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): First question, why do you want to own? How long have you been in your rental property? Are you pretty stable? If you're still a student, you're still moving every other year, you still want to, you know, leave the country and go see the world, this is not the time for you to try to buy unless you've really got some failsafe. But if you're married with two kids and you think your jobs is going to be there for a while, if you've been in the same neighborhood a long time, or even if you've been renting the same apartment for five years, goodness, think about all the money you've been giving someone else.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): So just, first of all, don't - a lot of people say, I want to buy, they don't. They waste a lot of time and sometimes some money. Make sure you're ready, A, emotionally, as you say. Second, make sure you're ready financially. What does your credit score look like? That's what we all call the adult report card. It really it will tell you what kind of loan you'll be able to quality for, what kind of interest rate, what kind of - how much money you're going to be able to get that - which will help you look for a home.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): So if you're - you have any credit-readiness, check it out. There are some small things you can do. We've talked about them on this program before, to clean up your credit, get your credit report, make sure all the errors are gone. If you've got lates, fix your lates. In other words - you know, you want to go six months without any lates. So you want to go in and say, okay, gee, I've been paying my American Express bill late because I'm out of the country, I'm doing this - it still counts. Good excuses don't matter with the credit score. So clean up your credit score to the extent that you can.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Third, try to pre-qualify. Pre-qualifying means, as you go to the bank with your credit score, your income, all the information you have about your financial status, and you say, gee, how - what kind of a loan can I get? How much money can I get? And there's a difference between getting the loan, so that you're ready to jump and just getting an idea, and your banker can walk you through that. In some cases, if you have medium or poor credit, there are federal mortgage programs that you can probably qualify for. So take some time to find out what you can afford. It doesn't make sense to go find the best house in the world and it costs, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars more than you can afford. The best way to deal with this is know what you've got available.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Also, when you're doing that, feel the kind of money you have available. Have you got any savings or anything like that? The first house - if you see a house that you fall in love with and you think you're going to be able to qualify for it, the seller will probably ask you for some good faith money. That might range from as little as a thousand or $2,000 to as much as 1 percent of the price - 1 or 2 percent of the price.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): So what do you have available? Because if you're going to ask someone to take their home off the market - in other words, removing it from other offers, you got to give them an incentive to do that.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well…</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Otherwise, you fall in love with this home. You run to the bank and say, I've found the - my dream house, you know, and it costs, you know, $350,000. When you get the 350 and go back, the house may be gone.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I want to back up a little bit to the credit issues you were talking about. Say that you are someone who has sparkling credit, clear as crystal water, but your partner or spouse has that kind of mucky, gooey, uh-oh, lots of lates, possible defaults credit. What happens then if you're trying to buy a home?</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): If you're trying to buy a home together, their credit will affect yours. So there are things you can do about that, including looking for the loan in your own name. Now the challenge with that is that if you need that person's income to qualify you, to make you look like a better prospect - in other words, you don't need their credit score, but you need their income. They'll say, you make 50 grand and your partner makes 50 grand, and partner has all kind snarly credit. But you can't qualify for the loan you want without the hundred thousand income - annual income - you may be in a little trouble.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): So you've got to figure out - and again, a good financial adviser sitting down with one of the housing counseling agencies, including some of those that are funded by HUD can help walk you through that. Most cities have programs - many cities - not most, but many cities - Washington, D.C. among them, San Francisco among them, and many of the other major cities have city-sponsored programs for first-time homer buyers that often include a counseling component and, in some cases, for people of a certain demographic - depending on their income or something else - may actually provide some assistance. They may say that you can come in with a zero down payment or something like that. So look for all the programs that are possibly available to help you, and that's a situation where you're prime for help.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what about the reality of this market in terms of what houses are available? There is a lot of folks right now who may be trying to get out of the market because they're just paying too much per month as their interest rates go up. Is this a good time to try to snatch up a deal?</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): It's a good time to snatch up a deal if you can afford it. I mean, I wouldn't let the issue of deal drive of your housing decision, although, clearly, once you settle on a neighborhood or a series of neighborhoods, you know, and a number of other things, if you can get a steal, get one.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): And there are all kinds of steals you can get. You can buy if someone who's desperate because they're moving, and they've got to move by X day. They've got a job starting in Washington, D.C. right away - that someone who might actually finance the mortgage for you. So you've got snarly credit, one of the things you might think about is, is someone willing to finance that mortgage for you? That means the owner of the home would actually be the one who held your note. So the bank says, no, Farai, we can't give you loan. But the owner, who's desperate and has known you since you're 11, says, Farai is not going to default, so I'll carry her loan, which means you'll pay that person a certain amount of money every month as opposed to paying the bank.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): There are all kinds of - there are lots of deals. I mean, if you really think it's time to buy, you have some desperate people, but you also have to hunt foreclosures and other kinds of foreclosures. You have some bank foreclosures that are out there, someone who's highly motivated - just got to get the shoe leather out, get their fingers to do the walking on the Internet and find out what's out there.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Are foreclosures necessarily better deals than other houses?</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Not necessarily. I mean, just because it says foreclosure doesn't mean it's a great deal. It's just like, you know, going to get something on sale at the mall. Just because it's a sale doesn't mean it's good. But foreclosures are a possibility because, especially if it's a bank foreclosure. Banks don't want to be in the real estate business. They're in the banking business. So if they're stuck with the house because the person before you defaulted, they're going to try to get rid of it.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Sometimes they'll price it at fire-sale prices. Same thing with HUD, I mean, there are not always deals when you get auctions. Don't go to an auction and get slaphappy. And that means you go to an auction, you get up in the auction, you bid that price back up to market price. But look around, if you're interested in things, look at the neighborhood, make sure you have a real sense, especially with foreclosures, of what neighboring properties are valued at. Often, Farai, you have foreclosures in markets where the house was the most expensive house on the block.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): You might have a house that, you know, they're selling, you know, 500,000; but if everything else around it is valued at three; and you think, well, gee, this is a million-dollar house, all the square footage, it's got a pool. But if the pool is in the hood, there's a problem.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now what about rent-to-own? Some people who don't have a lot of cash on hand will sign rent-to-own agreements. How do those work? And is that a good prospect?</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): It's a great prospect especially if you have a great relationship with the landlord or the person that you're working with. Generally, what happens is that you agree - you and the landlord agree that a certain percentage - and it can range from 25 percent to 50 or 60 percent - but a certain percentage of your monthly rent will be set aside, you know, as a mortgage payment. At a point in time when the person decides that your finances are more stable or that they can work with you, they basically will turn the property over for you, help you either carry them where it's for you or work with you to get a bank loan.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): So basically, you're - you have the opportunity to stabilize your credit by showing that you've paid this rent bill, which is a rent-to-own bill, every month for X number of months. Usually it's two years before - a year to two years before these things mature. And you've got to make sure that the contract is a good contract. Also, make sure that there are, you know, it' a contract, there are some standard contracts, you might have a lawyer draw it up, or there are some you can get on Nolo. But make sure that if you change your mind, you're protected and, or the landlord's protected. And protection may mean nothing. I mean, they may say, okay, you're going to have forfeit that mortgage portion or they may be willing to give you back a small percentage of it.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Julianne, thanks so much.</s>Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College for Women; Economist; Author, "Home Ownership: 101"): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Author and economist Julianne Malveaux is president of Bennett College.

She captured attention as the lead voice in the powerhouse gospel group Sounds of Blackness. Now, gospel and R&B singer Ann Nesby talks with NPR's Tony Cox about her music-making career and her latest CD, titled This is Love.

TONY COX, host: This is News and Notes. I'm Tony Cox. Here's another listener favorite. Ann Nesby's musical roots reached way back to her hometown in Joliet, Illinois. That's where she came up singing in her church.</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): For me, as an artist, my family's roots of being a Christian go a way way back. God was the center of our entire life. So, we knew that we were going to go to church and it was not a question. They didn't give us a choice or any option whether we were going to go to church and we were going to be in the choir. If you had any inkling of a voice, if they needed you in the choir, you are going to be there.</s>TONY COX, host: In the early 90s, Nesby joined the gospel choir Sounds of Blackness. She became the group's lead vocalist and she won her first Grammy for the album "Evolution of Gospel." She later left Sounds of Blackness to pursue a solo career. I spoke with her about her CD, "This is Love" and her new sound.</s>TONY COX, host: You know, I was talking about you to someone the other day. And I said to there, man, can she sing, which you really can. And their response was, you should see her make a wrong move by the sheer power of her voice. How do you do that?</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): I'm sure that it has to be the anointing of God because there's no power of my own. I can maybe attribute to the many, many hours of choir rehearsal in church - church all day, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon and Sunday night, church hopping in between being in the foundation. But other than that, I don't have a clue.</s>TONY COX, host: You know, Ann Nesby, you are called an inspirational R&B artist.</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Yes.</s>TONY COX, host: And traditionally, I know that you know this. These two music forms have often clashed, but they've also been successful for a lot of artists. Do you ever feel conflicted at all about singing R&B under the halo, so to speak?</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Absolutely not. I have the firm belief that all music is God's until we defile it with lyric. When God gives me a story to tell, I'll tell it whether it's labeled, R&B, or whether it's labeled gospel. If God gives me that music and that song in the context of a personal relationship or a spiritual relationship - we have to learn how to treat each other outside of church because we do come home and have a relationship without husbands, our significant others, our children. And we have to learn how to be right within our households first because charity begins at home. So, if there is a lesson to be taught, it can be taught very freely with music.</s>TONY COX, host: You know, let's follow-up that point talking about with the new CD "This is Love." This project feels like it straddles two musical worlds to me, R&B and spiritual. Is that what we can always expect when Ann Nesby is singing?</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): I think that you can expect whatever God gives me, and I'm definitely going to talk about issues that have concerned me or have concerned those I loved because I know that people overcome by the testimony of others and seeing that others can make it. And sometimes, when you're going through something, you feel like you're all by yourself. But if you have that song that talks about that very issue, sometimes fans come up and they say, you know, I just felt like you were singing directly to me because I'm going through that exact thing. And when people come up and say that, I feel like the mission that I've taken on is being completed - in fact, the song, the single that I have now "I Apologize" is a song that we all can relate to. If you're in a relationship, there is times when can't just come right out and stand in front of your mate and say, you know, I'm really sorry.</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): (Singing) I wanna make it up to you baby Want you to know that I love you</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Just a little time Just a little time Just a little time</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): I'm going to do whatever I have to do To make it up to you Sorry, sorry baby</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Just a little time Just a little time Just a little time</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): I apologize, yeah…</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): This is just a relationship issue that I put to music.</s>TONY COX, host: You know, it's interesting you should mention that song because that was one of the ones I was going to ask you about, because it's really one of those slow, you know, light slow kind of songs, begging for forgiveness, stayed out all night, didn't call, you know? You know what I'm saying.</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Yes, yes absolutely.</s>TONY COX, host: This is a kind of song that you normally hear the fellows, you know, who gone and done wrong and come home and are begging for their mates to forgive them. You don't usually hear women talking about being out all night long. I got to ask you, how much of this is you, from real life?</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Well, this one isn't me, but it is a situation that I know women come up against because sometimes, sisters do go out and they stay out all night with their girls. You know what I'm saying? And sometimes, sisters, we have a little bit of a problem saying I'm sorry sometimes when we're wrong.</s>TONY COX, host: You think?</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): And that's what this song says, pretending like I'm never wrong and blaming everything on you. Well, that's what this song is all about. And some, you know, we have to say I'm sorry too.</s>TONY COX, host: Now, let me ask you about one other song. Our time is running a little short. I want to get two more things in here. One song in contrast to the song about "I Apologize" is track number 6, "Thank God."</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): (Singing) I do great Where my eyes do (unintelligible) Oh no, baby My greatest fear would be known To be in love alone Thank God I wasn't in love Thank God…</s>TONY COX, host: Parts of this song are almost Aretha-like. In fact, your mom played Aretha in your house, didn't she, when you were young.</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Oh, yes she did.</s>TONY COX, host: Did some of the queen of soul sink in?</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Oh, absolutely. I was listening - my father was actually the first person to introduce me to Aretha, and that didn't happen to be an R&B track. It happened to be the first gospel song that I have heard Aretha sing, and that was "Precious Lord" and she was singing on a recording with her father. And my father said, listen to this, babe. After that when my mother would sit down and listen to Aretha Franklin, I heard her doing a whole different thing. So, some of those licks that you hear me do is an incorporation of listening to Aretha, Gladys, Patty, Stevie, Donny Hathaway. So, I mean, I'm not afraid, I'm not ashamed to say that I owe a lot of the learning that I did from pioneer artists that were great and successful, and I enjoyed everything they did. And I incorporated some of that into the Ann Nesby style.</s>TONY COX, host: Gospel audiences are different than non-secular audiences, are they?</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): Sometimes gospel audiences, I think, are somewhat jaded in that they have great gospel singers that are always in their church all along as they're growing up. You know, when I was growing up, I went to a church that on any given Sunday anyone of the soloists in the choir could slay you and knock you under the bench. So, gospel audiences are already accustomed to great, great singers. So, you really, really, have to be a singer to really, you know, kind of set a church on fire. That's my opinion.</s>TONY COX, host: Well, Ann Nesby from what I've heard, you can definitely set a church on fire.</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): (Laughing) Thank you.</s>TONY COX, host: Thank you so much for coming in. The new album is "This is Love."</s>Ms. ANN NESBY (Singer): (Singing) And every time I see your lovely smiling face I feel the magic shine…</s>TONY COX, host: That was R&B and gospel singer Ann Nesby from a conversation I had with her in October, 2007.

News & Notes producer Jenee Darden is up for this week's staff song pick. Her choice is Bon Jovi's "It's My Life," and she explains how the song encouraged her to pursue her college dream.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It's time now for our Staff Song Pick of the Week.</s>Mr. JON BON JOVI (Lead Singer, Bon Jovi): (Singing) This ain't a song for the broken hearted.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: The song is Bon Jovi's 2000 smash hit, "It's My Life." It's off their double-platinum album, "Crush." This single revitalized the New Jersey band's career after a five-year hiatus. The success came a new crop of young Bon Jovi fans including NEWS & NOTES producer Jenee Darden.</s>JENEE DARDEN: Has someone ever told you that you can't achieve your dream? But deep inside you hear a soft, gentle voice that says, don't give up, you can do anything. Well, sometimes, that voice inside of me isn't very soft. It actually sounds more like this.</s>Mr. JON BON JOVI (Lead Singer, Bon Jovi): (Singing) It's my life. It's now or never. I ain't going to live forever. I just want to live while I'm alive.</s>JENEE DARDEN: I got hooked on Bon Jovi when I was a junior in college. Their song, "It's My Life" influenced a big decision I made back then.</s>JENEE DARDEN: Like so many young black girls, my dream was to move to Atlanta and attend the historically black college Spelman. I always pictured myself on that small Southern campus, analyzing society with intelligent, ambitious black women. I was accepted to Spelman but I didn't get enough financial aid to go.</s>JENEE DARDEN: I remember sitting on my bed in Oakland, staring at my acceptance letter. My dream was shot and I was devastated. I decided to save money and go to the University of California San Diego instead. It was just my luck that UCSD offered an exchange program to Spelman.</s>JENEE DARDEN: Four years later, I'm sitting in my San Diego bedroom, staring at another Spelman acceptance letter. Only this time, I was accepted into the exchange program. This is my last chance to get a taste of that black college experience I always wondered about.</s>JENEE DARDEN: Some people in my family didn't think it was such a good idea. They would say, you have one more year to finish school. Just stay in San Diego. What about your apartment? And, of course, how are you going to pay for this? I thought it over and prayed. Then one day, I was watching T.V. and turned to VH1. There was my answer. Four guys with long hair from New Jersey blaring to me.</s>Mr. JON BON JOVI (Lead Singer, Bon Jovi): (Singing) It's my life. MY heart is like an open highway. Like Frankie said I did it my way. I just want to live while I'm alive. It's my life.</s>JENEE DARDEN: Then it hit me. I can't live for everybody else. This is my life. I dipped into my savings account, packed my bags and flew to Atlanta that fall. I had the time of my life. All the football games, marching bands, step shows, parties, fried catfish in the school cafeteria - what an experience. And to be surrounded by black female professors empowered me.</s>JENEE DARDEN: Who would have thought a Bon Jovi song led me to a black college? To this day, "It's My Life" is stored on my mental play list. Now, when others try to block me, I tune up the negative, crank up Bon Jovi, and keep living my life.</s>Mr. JON BON JOVI (Lead Singer, Bon Jovi): (Singing) It's my life. It's now or never.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That was producer, Jenee Darden with her Staff Song Pick of the Week, "It's My Life" from Bon Jovi.</s>Mr. JON BON JOVI (Lead Singer, Bon Jovi): (Singing) I just want to live while I'm alive. It's my life. My heart is like an open highway. Like Frankie said I did it my way.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That's our show for today, thank you for sharing your time with us. To listen to this show or subscribe to our podcast, visit our Web site, nprnewsandnotes.org. No spaces, just nprnewsandnotes.org. To join the conversation or sign up for our newsletter, visit our blog at nprnewsandviews.org.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NEWS & NOTES was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Tomorrow, the new memorial at New York's African Burial Ground.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya. This is NEWS & NOTES.

Black women die of breast cancer at higher rates than white women. Part of the reason is lacking preventive care, but there are other factors — and some of those may be beyond the patient's control. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates explains.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya. And this is NEWS & NOTES.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Black women die of breast cancer at higher rates than white women. Part of the issue is who gets mammograms and check-ups. But there are factors as outlined by the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center. And some maybe beyond the patient's control.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates has this report.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: A lot of women are frightened they might develop breast cancer, but despite that, they avoid going for screenings or exams that might help in early detection.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: Former CBS anchor Rene Syler is herself a breast cancer survivor. In an online interview with Black America Web, she says she understands that fear, but doesn't want it to get in the way of saving lives.</s>Ms. RENE SYLER (CBS Anchor, "The Early Show"): I've heard people say, I don't want to know. If I have cancer, I don't want to know. Why?</s>Ms. RENE SYLER (CBS Anchor, "The Early Show"): Unidentified Female #1: Right.</s>Ms. RENE SYLER (CBS Anchor, "The Early Show"): Why would you not want to know that? Wouldn't you want to a fighting chance at success in beating the disease?</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: Knowledge can be power, but sometimes it complicates the choices you have to make.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: A recent preliminary study by the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center says black women's breast cancers often occur at a younger age and are more aggressive than they are for their white peers.</s>Dr. CATHERINE LEE (Oncologist, University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center): We also found that African-American women were diagnosed at a higher stage.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: That's lead researcher for the Michigan Study oncologist Catherine Lee.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: Cancer stages go from one to four. A higher number indicates the disease has progressed further. Dr. Lee says annual imaging and exams are important parts of breast health. But as the Michigan Study and others have pointed out there are other pieces to this puzzle.</s>Dr. CATHERINE LEE (Oncologist, University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center): These findings demonstrate that there is something else is going on - something biologic that is contributing to the outcomes of African-American women compared to white American women.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: That something else is the realization that African-American women have a greater proclivity for estrogen-receptive negative or ER-negative tumors. These tumors don't absorb the hormone-based therapies that successfully treat some tumors.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: Marcy Deveaux, an associate journalism professor at Cal State University-Northridge, describes herself as one of the lucky ones. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003, but she caught it very early. Her tumor was so little, she say, it was classified T1, the smallest classification.</s>Professor MARCY DEVEAUX (Journalism, California State University Northridge): Finding breast cancer so early now that they had to put a stage in between zero and one.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: That was good news for Deveaux. Discovering she was in that group of women who are ER-negative, wasn't. After frank discussions with her doctor, she knew what that meant.</s>Professor MARCY DEVEAUX (Journalism, California State University Northridge): It means our tumors won't accept Tamoxifen. Some of those other drugs that are now sort of the wonder drugs that are being used.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: But if traditional therapies won't work for these kinds of breast tumors, what does? Deveaux's Beverly Hills oncologist, Dr. Philomena McAndrew, agrees options are limited.</s>Dr. PHILOMENA McANDREW (Oncologist): Part of the reason is that we don't have specific targeted therapy that we can use in addition to the chemotherapy, the general chemotherapy that will act to further reduce the risk of spread overtime as well as reduce the risk of a new breast cancer in the other breast.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: Dr. McAndrew insists an ER-negative diagnosis is not a death sentence.</s>Dr. PHILOMENA McANDREW (Oncologist): Having a tumor that has aggressive features is not synonymous with the fact that their tumor is going to recur. Many - and most of those women are cured or are ultimately alive many years later without evidence of spread of the disease.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: Marcy Deveaux has learned through Dr. McAndrew and her own research that there are things she can control such as exercising daily, reducing her fat intake and drinking alcohol occasionally, if at all. She feels comfortable that these will lower her risk of recurrence and that time might be the biggest help of all.</s>Dr. PHILOMENA McANDREW (Oncologist): There are breakthroughs almost every month. I truly believe we will find, if not a cure, we will find a better way to manage this chronic disease hopefully in the next five years.</s>KAREN GRIGSY BATES: Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.

Last week, President Bush vetoed a proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, calling it part of an effort to "federalize health care." Farai Chideya examines the debate with Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Last week, President Bush vetoed a proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program or S-SCHIP. That move has sent health care professionals and activists right to the front doors of Congress. In a moment, we'll speak with the policy analyst who supports the president's veto.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But first, Marian Wright Edelman. She's founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund. Welcome.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So give us a sense of how many children could have been added to the rolls and from what economic backgrounds they had come.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Well, nine million plus children are uninsured, and one of the things I think is important for people to realize is that this is a very modest bill that the Congress has sent to the president who vetoed it. It would reach only three to four million of the nine million uninsured children. And 90 percent of those children play by the rules, live in households that play by the rules, who work every day, and don't get private employee insurance. And so this is a modest bill that the president has vetoed, but it still leaves six million children behind.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: How specifically could this affect African-American families?</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Well, there are millions, one in - millions of uninsured African-American children. One in seven babies who are black, one is born uninsured. We have low birthrate rates that disproportionally affect black children because mothers don't get pre-natal care. And one of the things we had wanted very much in a bill that we have been supporting - and in the CHIP bill - was to see that all pregnant women and children get covered so that children don't start off with two or three strikes against some. But black babies are disproportionally affected by the lack of insurance, and that's a disgrace.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You've been working for years on issues affecting children. Is there also a problem of children being underinsured? How does that fit in to this larger discussion that we're having now?</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): There are millions more children who are underinsured. One of the things that bothers me very much that is not, again, fixed in this CHIP Reauthorization Bill that the president vetoed is that there are two classes of children. Medicare - Medicaid children get comprehensive benefits, including dental and mental health benefits. In CHIP, those children are not guaranteed those same benefits.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): You can have two children in the same family - one eligible for SCHIP, one eligible for Medicaid - and one child can get guaranteed benefits and the other cannot. And we wanted very much to see that every child gets guaranteed dental care and mental health care.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Those Katrina children are still out there waiting. They will not all be helped by this bill. Those children who are underinsured in places like Prince George's County can't find a dentist.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): We've had children die from tooth abscesses. I know of three this past year -two of whom were black - dying unnecessarily because they could not get dental care, could not find a dentist.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): And so millions more are underinsured, and that is just not right in this country. God did not make two classes of children. This CHIP bill takes very modest steps, and the president is even vetoing that. That's not correct.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Is there any element of parents not knowing what exactly their children are eligible for? How much of this - obviously, there's the political side, which we'll return to - but are there parents who don't even know what benefits their kids could get?</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Absolutely, there are many parents who don't know what benefits their children can get. And dealing with two separate bureaucracies, we would like to make it one. And our All Healthy Children Act would make it simple. We've had children die because they fall through the bureaucratic cracks. And these are parents who did know what was right, did try every way we know how -say, in a place like Texas - to get their children back on care.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): One young man, 12 years old, died because his mother who had multiple sclerosis - intelligent, tried very hard, started three months before the re-eligibility enrollment procedures. We were going to throw them off the rows, applied a dozen times, and still could not get through the computer system and the bureaucratic barriers and so Devonte died.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): So many parents don't know because of poor outreach, because this is not designed to make it easier rather than hard in many of our states. But many parents who do know are spending all their time trying to get their children health care, and we make it so hard, and we need to simplify those bureaucracies.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Turning back to the politics, who are the coalitions that will try to either get the veto overturned or find a new way to reauthorize and expand this program?</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Well, I think that one should be clear that this is a broad bipartisan coalition that is supporting a very modest CHIP bill, which the president is vetoing. Republicans in the Senate put together us a bill that has $35 billion as a minimum down from the 50 billion that the House put in. But Senator Grassley from Iowa - hardly a flaming liberal - really has worked with Senator Baucus. And on the outside, we have had - even the health insurance industry and the American Medical Association and the pediatricians and the labor unions. And so this is a very broad coalition, all of whom recognize that investing in children will save lives, will save taxpayers' money. The president has been putting out facts that are simply not true - either he hasn't read it or he has not understood what is involved. This is not an attempt to socialize medicine or to have government control to many of the people medicine.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Many of the children who are in the CHIP program and in the Medicaid program are served by private providers it is absolutely wrong to say that this bill is trying to cover a lot of middle class people up to 83,000. That's not in this bill. He should read the bill. This is a very modest next step to build on the progress that states have been making. And so I just hope that the president's wrong-headedness here will be corrected, and that we will find the votes in the House to override it. We have the votes in the Senate on both sides of the aisle to override it. But this is not a partisan issue. This is an issue that will save lives, save taxpayers' money, and that the overwhelming majority of the American people support.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Ms. Edelman, thank you for your time.</s>Ms. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN (Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C.

News of Marion Jones' mea culpa is racing around the Web. Last week, the Olympic track star publicly admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during a tear-filled press conference. News & Notes Web producer Geoffrey Bennett talks to Farai Chideya about that and the other stories getting attention online.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You're hitting up our blog, News & Views, with plenty of discussions of track star Marion Jones. Last week, she admitted to use of performance-enhancing drugs, and she's facing possible jail time, plus relinquishing her Olympic medals.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NEWS & NOTES Web producer Geoff Bennett knows what's on your mind online. Hey, Geoffrey.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Hey, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what are folks saying about Marion Jones?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Yeah. We started following that story literally moments after the news broke, and we were flooded with comments from our supporters and detractors. We had comments from folks like L.J.(ph), one of our readers who said, Jones made a very courageous statement by admitting her guilt and by using her pain and shame to teach younger generations to not follow in her footsteps. Then there were folks like Doris(ph) who said Jones is not the only one and probably won't be the last to admit to using steroids. And in the - we have a comment from Moji(ph) one of our frequent commenters who called it the least surprising news of the week. Least surprising, Moji says, because Marion Jones and people around her, like track star Tim Montgomery, who had already admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs, so that current admission shouldn't be seen as earth-chattering.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, last week, we also had a provocative conversation…</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Yep.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: …about the generational issues in the civil rights movement. What are people saying about that?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Right. That conversation was NAACP chairman Julianne Bond and writer Kevin Powell. Well, surprisingly, a lot of the response seemed to be focused more on the delivery of those guests than the content, particularly that of Kevin Powell.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: One reader going by the alias T.R. said, Mr. Powell came off very passionately. While passion is good, it can also be poisonous if you're passionately wrong. And Bond didn't escape criticism either. One reader - Mel G. said it was a non-debate because it seemed like Mr. Bond didn't want to really address the issue. So suffice it to say, that debate that started on the air hasn't been resolved online at all.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what else is going on? What's popping off on the blog?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Well, a story we covered back in June is getting new life on our blog these days. It was about a bill introduced in Congress that would have severed old federal ties to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. It was a response to that group denying black Cherokees and tribal citizenship.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Well, the congressional black caucus hosted a panel on that issue a few weeks ago. And people took to our blog to debate the merits of that proposed legislation. So that's an ongoing conversation. And we started hosting open forums on our blog a little while ago, and people can write about whatever they want. And we have a couple of different conversations about the cultural - about different aspects of cultural empowerment.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You also put out a special ask to our listeners and readers.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Yeah, we're doing some market research News & Views these days. They want to know more about the people coming to our blog everyday. So we asked them questions about their news consumption habits, and, you know, their favorite blogs, favorite news sites, favorite newspapers. And so they can go to our blog and give us the goods.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. Geoff, thanks.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Geoffrey Bennett is the Web producer for NEWS & NOTES.

This week's installment comes from Ricardo Pitts-Wiley. Wiley was a teenager in 1968 when he started a new school in Michigan. He told his son how this seemingly small shift changed his entire life.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Time now for StoryCorps Griot, the project that's recording black Americans across the country.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Ricardo Pitts-Wiley was a teenager in Michigan when he started attending a new school in 1968. Ricardo recently told his son how that experience shaped the rest of his life.</s>Mr. RICARDO PITTS-WILEY (Resident, Michigan): I got bussed to a high school in my sophomore year from a school that there was a large African-American black population to a school that we were 2 percent of the population. And it was awful - just awful getting bussed. Even though I always thought I had intelligence, I never felt like I wanted to even try to use it there. So I did just enough to get by.</s>Mr. RICARDO PITTS-WILEY (Resident, Michigan): In my junior year, our teacher there, Bob Price(ph), put me in the play, "Romeo and Juliet." And I was the only black kid in the play and I caught hell -I caught hell from the white kids at the school and I caught hell from the black kids. And in some ways, it forced me - caused me to distance myself from both of them.</s>Mr. RICARDO PITTS-WILEY (Resident, Michigan): Neither one of them were willing to support what I wanted. So I became, kind of, single-minded in that respect. In opening night, I came on the stage with this kind of fake beard and this big, floppy mushroom hat made out of upholstery fabric that the director's wife had made and everybody burst in laughter.</s>Mr. RICARDO PITTS-WILEY (Resident, Michigan): And what could have been a crushing moment in my life, really, was just something different. I - you know, I said, no, I'm not going to give in. And I did this little squeaky voice and I just kind of dug in and I just begged for this voice, the spirit of Brock Peters who was, you know, who was very much alive at that time, but I've always his voice - Brock Peters. All those muscles and everything, you know. He's like a black man with big voice and muscles and bad, you know, "Porgy and Bess," all that stuff.</s>Mr. RICARDO PITTS-WILEY (Resident, Michigan): And I said, I need that voice, Brock, and he sent it to me, and a voice came out. And I was the prince, not a big part, but I was the prince. And that's the opening scene when I walked off the stage and I said that's it. This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Ricardo Pitts-Willey who's worked on and around the stage for more than three decades. He came with his son Jonathan to StoryCorps in Providence, Rhode Island.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: StoryCorps Griot was currently in Holly Springs, Mississippi. All the Griot-initiative recordings are archived at the Library of Congress. A copy of each interview will also go to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: To find out how to record your interview and to hear more from StoryCorps Griot, go to nprnewsandnotes.org.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That's our show for today. Thank you for sharing your time with us. To listen to the show or subscribe to our podcast, visit our Web site, nprnewsandnotes.org. No spaces, just nprnewsandnotes.org. To join the conversation or sign up for our newsletter, visit our blog at nprnewsandviews.org.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: NEWS & NOTES was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Tomorrow, our Bloggers' Roundtable.

Many job seekers assume they won't make much progress in their search over the holidays. Not so, says Lauren Weber of The Wall Street Journal. Weber explains why job hunters may want to consider keeping their search alive through the holiday season. Read Lauren Weber's Wall Street Journal piece, "Looking For Work? Keep It Up Through The Holidays"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: A lot of people take a break over the holidays. Schools are out, people go on vacation or head home to be with their families. And many of the unemployed and underemployed take a much needed breather from the grind of the job hunt. In this week's Wall Street Journal, reporter Lauren Weber wrote that there might be more opportunities than you might think right now. Hiring officials, are you pretty well shutdown for the year? And if you're looking for a job, what is your holiday strategy?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: 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. Lauren Weber joins us now from our bureau in New York. She covers careers for The Wall Street Journal. Nice to have you with us.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Thanks, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you got some interesting answers when you spoke with companies and jobseekers at a job fair last week in Manhattan.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Yes. The companies that I spoke to who were looking to hire people were saying that the attendance at the job fair was actually very, very disappointing. One man I spoke to said he had about a third as many people stopping by as he normally does when it's not holiday season. And, you know, as he said, everybody who - all of the companies that were there that day were looking for people. So jobseekers who chose to stay home or, you know, as you said, take a break from looking for work during the holidays might be missing out on those opportunities.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you also ran into at least one jobseeker who said wait a minute. I go out there every day, rain or shine.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Yes. This was a woman who had been unemployed for about 11 months. She had been a government engineer, lost her job in January, and she said she looks for a job every day. And she said, you know, plenty of companies are very well organized. There are projects that get announced at all months of the year. In fact, she had - she mentioned that Mayor Bloomberg had recently announced a big development project here in New York, might be looking for engineers. You know, so she said there's no point in taking a break from looking for a job. There's always somebody who needs somebody with her qualifications.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In general, what kind of jobs were the companies offering, though? Were they, you know, 40 hours a week, full-time, benefits, that sort of thing?</s>LAUREN WEBER: No, unfortunately. At the job fair that I went to and then others that I've been to, a lot of the jobs that are open are actually commission based. You know, they are insurance, sales or financial products, financial planners. One company was a debt-collection company, which, unfortunately, says something about our economy right now. And a lot of these jobs are, like I said, commission based. They don't pay a salary. They don't pay benefits. So they're not exactly the highest quality jobs.</s>LAUREN WEBER: On the other hand, you know, I've spent a lot of time looking at the job board websites, things like Monster or CareerBuilder. And if you look on those sites, there are jobs being posted every single day. You know, dozens often, you know, if you type in any city, and those are for other kinds of jobs. You might find nursing positions, project management, accountant, things like that. So it's not just the low-quality jobs that are available.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I was also interested - you pointed out in your piece - there's a lot of companies that have, you know, departments have budgets, and it's use-it-or-lose-it money. If they don't spend it by the end of the year, they're not going to get it back in their budget the next year.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Exactly. This is more of an issue for bigger companies than small ones, where, you know, there's a single budget. But for big companies that might have departments or divisions, each one has their own budget to get through, you know, for the whole year. And most companies operate on a fiscal year that matches the calendar year. So they really do have to use that money by the end of December. If they can't prove to their managers that they've spent their budget, it looks like they don't need the money, and they won't get it again next year.</s>LAUREN WEBER: So, you know, that money might be used to fill open positions or, who knows, even to create a position, just, you know, for a project that might be anticipated for the following year, or it can be used for extras, like a relocation expenses or a signing bonus.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Lauren Weber of the Wall Street Journal. She covers careers there and saying that there are some maybe unexpected or counterintuitive opportunities for jobs available during the holiday season. 800-989-8255. Email, talk@npr.org. We'd like to hear from those of you who are hiring. Are you still open for business for the remainder of the year? And those of you looking, what do you do to set your holiday-period strategy? We'll start with Alice, and Alice is on the line with us from Tulare, in California.</s>ALICE: Hi. I was calling in because I'm actually sitting on a panel for interviewing right now, to fill a position for a community liaison position, and I was just astounded. I was asked to be part of it. But what astounds me is the number of qualified individuals. You know, normally in, you know, in the hiring process, you'd have a few individuals, and we're in a rural, agricultural area. But to have, you know, upwards of more than a dozen applicants that are qualified just really hints at the fact that, you know, we're going to have the best individual for that position once all is said and done.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah. That sounds like also you're going to have to make a difficult decision when it comes down to it. Somebody gets a job...</s>ALICE: Exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sorry?</s>ALICE: Exactly. I mean, it's just going to be really, really tough once everything is said and done because every one is very, very qualified.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, at least somebody in California is hiring, though.</s>ALICE: Yes, definitely.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nice of you to call, Alice. And thanks very much for the call.</s>ALICE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Mark: I've been looking for work for two years now. My strategy for the holidays: keep searching full time, full speed ahead.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Lauren Weber, you pointed out that, well, yeah, part of the strategy for job seekers, yeah, go on Monster, apply for those jobs, but network, network, network.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Yeah. I mean, that is kind of the golden rule for all job seekers. You know, that's - often many companies report that's the best way to find a job. And if anything, they prefer employee referrals to, you know, a resume that just comes over the transom along with hundreds of others. So, you know, holidays are a great time to do this. You can - there are many parties being given, whether it's with family or friends or neighbors. You know, there's always people to meet and kind of ask them what they're doing and about what's going at their companies.</s>LAUREN WEBER: So, actually, I didn't even - this didn't even occur to me until after I had written the story, but this is exactly what I had done in my previous job. I was at a New Year's Day party, and I happened to meet somebody and asked her about her company. I had just written a book. I'd been out of the job market for about two years, and I was quite in need of a steady paycheck and some health insurance. And I met this woman. We talked about her company a little bit. She said that they were just starting to hire. I sent her my resume the next day. And two months later, I was working at the company. So it really...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Wow.</s>LAUREN WEBER: ...can work. You just never know who you're going to run into. And, you know, always keep an open mind. You know, not that you want to bring copies of your resume to a party and force it on anybody, but it's a really good way to meet people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah. I was going to put resumes in my Christmas cards, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah. No. I would stay away from that.</s>LAUREN WEBER: And hopefully, you like your job and you're not going to leave anytime soon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, that's true enough. And let's go to Steven(ph), Steven with us from Perry, Oklahoma.</s>STEVEN: Hello. Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good.</s>STEVEN: I am actually looking for a job. I'm not unemployed right now, but I'm underemployed. I'm a pilot. And I've got an interview two days after Christmas, on the 27th with a commercial airline. So things are looking up for me hopefully.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, seeing the new rules out today, make sure you get some sleep.</s>STEVEN: I will do, sir. Yeah, that's important so.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So what would the difference be?</s>STEVEN: I'm sorry. What was that?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What is the difference between what you're doing now, and if you got this job, what would you be doing then?</s>STEVEN: Currently, I'm working as a flight instructor, which is pretty standard for pilots that don't have a commercial job, to work as a flight instructor. But it's very - it's hourly pay. And so you get a week of bad weather, you don't really do much flying, and so you don't get paid a whole lot and you don't get guarantee. And so it's much better to be there because you get some kind of a minimum guarantee for your salary if you're working for a commercial airline.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That voice, I can hear it coming over the intercom now.</s>STEVEN: Yeah.</s>STEVEN: Well, hopefully, next time you're on a flight I'll be sitting up front.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, Steven. Good luck.</s>STEVEN: Thanks. Bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's see if we can go to - this is Annie, Annie with us from Saxtons River, Vermont.</s>ANNIE: Hi. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good. Thanks.</s>ANNIE: Well, my story is that I have a business as a freelance copywriter. And I've been hit by the economy, so I've been putting my feelers out looking for the right organization to work for. And I had a great interview on Monday with a company, a Web development company. And just a few minutes ago, in fact, I heard back from them. I had sent them a little thank you note, thanking them for the interview and asked them what their timeline was. And they said they will actually not be deciding until the first week of January because they're all in and out during the holidays.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And...</s>ANNIE: It didn't surprise me, but...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So everything is kind of on hold for a little while.</s>ANNIE: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Lauren Weber, do you think that's true for a lot of companies?</s>LAUREN WEBER: It might be. You know, as the pilot was saying, some people are interviewing and hiring even in that week between Christmas and New Year's, when we probably assume everything is shut down. But I think this woman's experience is probably not atypical, but it's good that she interviewed before the holidays. I think a lot of companies, you know, they look at January or the new year like we do as individuals. You want to hit the ground running. You want to be energized for your goals for the year. And so I think, you know, a lot of companies do want to hire around this time probably because they have new projects that are getting underway, and they just want to be staffed up and ready for that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Annie, good luck.</s>ANNIE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Appreciate the call. Lauren Weber, as you continue to talk to people about careers, few years ago, people going out of work would have said, wait a minute. I'm going to hold out for a job where I'm making close to if not as much money I was before. I want a job with benefits. I really don't want to take a job on commission. That's all changed hasn't it?</s>LAUREN WEBER: Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of people just don't have that luxury. I mean, there aren't enough job openings to ensure that people are going to find their perfect job. The most recent statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that in October there were 3.3 million job openings on the last business day, and this is better than it was in the trough of the recession. But in the month that the recession began, or the month right before the recession began, there were 4.4 job openings. So, you know, we're not nearly up to the levels we were at before this - before the recession began. So, you know, people just can't be quite as choosy and selective as they would hope to be.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Now, when you drill down into the numbers a little bit, there are certain fields and industries where the unemployment rate is much lower. So if you're an engineer or have - or an accountant, these are industries that seem to be doing really well, or fields that seem to be doing really well. I think for accountants the unemployment rate is somewhere - or for engineers, it's about half what it is for the national rate. So, you know, there, you can afford to be a little bit choosier. In fact, I've heard that in some cases salaries are actually going up, which is a sign of greater competition among employers for those people.</s>LAUREN WEBER: But, you know, if you don't have some of those specialized skills that are really in demand, you know, you are looking for a job along with many, many others, and the competition is stiff. And for many people, that means choosing something that, in better times, they would have probably passed over.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lauren Weber covers careers at The Wall Street Journal. You are listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the numbers - you mentioned specific numbers, but the job numbers are taking up a bit. The unemployment figure is down to 8.6 percent, I think. But some of that is due to people who've just stopped looking.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Yes. There are a lot of discouraged workers out there. Hopefully, they will - they are starting to see that things are actually picking up. Like, for instance, another data point that came up from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was that 1.9 million people quit their jobs in October, and that's about 500,000 or 400,000 up from the trough in that data point which was in January of 2010. So more people are feeling that - are either finding other positions or are feeling that they have a little bit of luxury of leaving where they are and hopefully finding something better. And most of those jobs, you know, will have to be replaced. Those employers will look for replacement workers for who was there. So, you know, some of the data really does indicate that things are looking better than they were at the worst point, and we are in recovery. Technically, we have been for awhile. It's been a very weak recovery. But even so, it's clear that there are more jobs out there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you talked about differences in terms of the kinds of jobs, engineers, for example, that people are looking for. What about regionally? Is – are some places in the country doing better than other? We just heard, for example, pretty good employment numbers for a place like Maryland.</s>LAUREN WEBER: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I've seen a few studies recently that show the Midwest is actually really ticking up in terms of hiring. And that was somewhat surprising to me because we think of the coasts as being more dynamic economically and that, you know, more innovation would come from the coastal areas. But I think probably because manufacturing is doing OK, certain kinds of manufacturing, you know, Detroit is coming back, the car industry. So, you know, the Midwest seems to be popping more than other regions right now.</s>LAUREN WEBER: You know, different - depending on different studies. You see different kinds of data. But in the ones about the records of people quitting, the most quits were actually in the South. And unfortunately, it's something you can't really drill down further into the numbers, so I can't say which industries people seem to be leaving their jobs or moving into other jobs in. But I was kind of interested to see that. It was a little bit surprising.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Terry(ph) in Franklin, Tennessee. Well, I've seen lately many firms posting jobs but in no hurry to hire. I've seen the same jobs posted and reposted for, in some cases over six months. I've also noted the same jobs seem to rotate around through various recruiters. So that's interesting.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, let's see if we can go next to Leah(ph), Leah with us from Oakland.</s>LEAH: Yes. Hello. This actually links in a bit to the oil discussion. I work for an oil reclamation and recycling company in - we're based out of Emeryville, California, but we're hiring in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas for a procurement specialist. We have a high volume of products down there, and unfortunately we're just not seeing the volume of applicants that we expected in a downturn economy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Not seeing the - when you would think that everybody would be applying for a job.</s>LEAH: Right. One would think. We get a lot of replies by email that are sort of joke replies, not including the resume, not including a cover letter, just people that seem to be ill-prepared to present themselves professionally in the market place. But we are not seeing the kind of quality applicants that we had expected in a downturn economy. With the kind of competition that's out there, we had thought that would really drive more qualified applicants to our door, and unfortunately that just doesn't happened.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, maybe they'll show up now, Leah. Thank you very much for the call.</s>LEAH: I hope so. OK. Take care.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is from Wiki(ph), who wrote us: One issue facing job seekers is employers looking for the purple squirrel. Purple squirrel is a term used by employment recruiters to describe an unlikely job applicant with the exactly right education, experience and qualifications that perfectly fit a job's multifaceted requirements. One, in theory, this prized purple squirrel can handle all of the extensive variety of responsibilities of a job description would allow businesses to function with fewer workers. So are - Lauren Weber, are employers being a little picky?</s>LAUREN WEBER: Yeah, there are. It's funny, I've never heard that term purple squirrel, but I'll have to add it to my lexicon. You know, this relates to a couple of the recent calls. You know, I do think sometimes employers figure, well, there are so many people out there looking. Eventually, the perfect person is going to walk through the door. So maybe they are, you know, hiring very slowly or just waiting on jobs, waiting on filling jobs. And in terms of what Leah said, there are a lot of - employers also complain about what's called the skills gap. There are lots of unemployed people, but not the people with the right specialized skills, and this may be an issue for companies. They may have to invest more on training in order to create the employees that they're looking for.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is from Patricia in Laramie: An employer scheduled an interview for December 30th. Some higher-end employers are pushing things out to January. After searching for a year, I just got a job offer today for a new position with a conservation organization. Congratulations.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lauren Weber, thanks for your time. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

No one is sure whether the Imperial woodpecker is extinct—the two-foot-tall relative of the Ivory-billed woodpecker lives in a remote mountain range in Mexico, and was last credibly spotted in the 1990s. Tim Gallagher, editor of Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine, describes a hair-raising expedition to try to save the woodpecker and make it home unscathed.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Birding. Birding doesn't seem like a risky pastime, does it? What's the worst that could happen? Sunburn, a little rain, a little cold, lost binoculars. Well, not always. In 2010, Tim Gallagher, editor of Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine, went in search of a rare woodpecker and was lucky to make it back alive.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Our multimedia editor Flora Lichtman talked to Gallagher about it and has this story.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: The imperial woodpecker is two feet tall. That's huge.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: As far as we've been able to determine from the fossil record, there's never been a bigger woodpecker.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Its closet relation is the ivory-billed woodpecker, and like its cousin, the imperial is critically endangered if not extinct. The last credible sightings were in the '90s. But Tim Gallagher thought there's a chance a few still may exist, which is what drew him to the remote mountain range in Mexico where the woodpecker lives.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: The Sierra Madre's always been a rugged, ungovernable place.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: And that's where the story turns.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: An ordinary birding expedition this was not.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: It's heavy drug-growing country, holding AK-47s. The guy was trembling and all white as a sheet. It just got crazier and crazier. It's like unbelievable.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: That's basically how the story ends, but it really begins 50 years ago with the late William Rhein.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: William Rhein was a dentist who lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and he was also an amateur ornithologist. He was basically a bird fanatic. And he was really obsessed with the imperial woodpecker.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Tim Gallagher, by the way, is also really obsessed with the imperial woodpecker.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: They're just so huge and powerful, swift-flying, and their crests. I just get real pleasure from seeing them.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Rhein must have felt similarly. Back in the '50s, he made several self-funded trips to the mountains of Mexico to look for this bird, and he's the only one known to have captured the bird on film. But for many years he kept the footage kind of under wraps.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: The only opportunity he had to film this bird, he was o the back of a mule. So it was kind of jerky. So I think he was embarrassed by it, and he never really told many people about it.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Until an ornithologist by the name of Martjan Lammertink found a reference to the footage in some old letters and tracked Rhein down.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: So he went there not knowing if this would be any good. He thought at best maybe there'll be an identifiable image of this bird, which will be nice.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: When he got to the house, Rhein loads the reel on his 16-millimeter projector.</s>WALTER RHEIN: We're all set to go. Cross your fingers. I haven't looked at this for years and years and years.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: That was recorded - that's when Martjan first saw that film. He turned this tape recorder on when the guy was playing it, and...</s>WALTER RHEIN: And right here is where the - this is the (unintelligible) right here.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: They started rolling this film, I mean it was incredible. I mean, this bird pitching up the tree.</s>WALTER RHEIN: Now this is back in the woods.</s>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: There it is, there it is. You see it?</s>WALTER RHEIN: There it is, yeah.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: Chipping off chunks of bark, throwing pieces of bark away (unintelligible); it even takes off and flies three different times. And so in an 85-second film, it's just an incredible amount of stuff going on.</s>WALTER RHEIN: Well, I thought that was lousy, but I'd forgotten about those shots.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: It was just such a tangible thing, something you could almost reach out and touch, you know. It was just like seeing a ghost.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: Watching that movie in many ways inspired me. I just want to go there and save that bird.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: And that's what they tried to do. Gallagher and the ornithologist Lammertink got together an expedition to go to the Sierra Madre Occidental, to the exact same spot where that footage was shot 50 years ago.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: Martjan knew a forester in the city of Durango in Mexico, which is about a five-hour drive from where we were going to go in the mountains, and he was real familiar with that area. It's heavy drug-growing country, opium and marijuana, which we didn't fully realize when we first went up there.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: Before we'd gone, a couple of months earlier, communicating with the forester, he'd said it's still pretty safe in this part of Mexico, so you should be OK. But when we finally got down there, he said, you know, there's really like a wave of violence starting to sweep through here.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: And then - and actually, we had some pretty scary things happen right from the start.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Like for instance, the night before they were supposed to leave Durango.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: We got a call from the forester, and he said he'd received an anonymous call from someone who knew exactly what we were doing and when we were going and was really furious about it. In fact, one of the Mexican scientists who was going to go with us, he dropped out of the expedition at that point.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: And so suddenly it was, like, should we not go? Or what's happening?</s>TIM GALLAGHER: You know, we were so close. It was like our excitement level was so high, I just, I knew if we left no one would go to check that area in our lifetimes. And I just thought we've got to go. And we decided we were going to go.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: But we had our first bad encounter the next day as we were driving up there. This dark truck came up behind us and then came racing by, and all the guys in it were holding AK-47s, and they matched the description of some people who had murdered someone in another village about a week ago.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: By the time we left, it felt more like the mountains of Afghanistan than Mexico, and you know, three houses were burned, and a man was abducted by - you know, from a little village, and all of the villagers had to put their money together to buy this guy back. And it's just insane.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: You know, I mean, what are they going to do the next time someone gets grabbed?</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: How did you guys stay safe? What was your strategy?</s>TIM GALLAGHER: We didn't really have a strategy. We just tried not to bother anyone and went with our business.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Which remember, started out, at least, as a mission to find a woodpecker. So that's what they tried to do. And one of their tricks was this.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: And we'd play these recordings of an ivory bill woodpecker because their voice is supposed to be just like an ivory bill. It sounds like a loud toot of a child's toy horn.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: And they were hoping for a toot in return.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: Rumors still do come out of there of, you know, lone imperial woodpeckers. But in all the places we went, we didn't get any response.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: They never did spot the bird on that trip. Gallagher says logging has destroyed much of the imperial's habitat, and he heard from people who live there that 50 years ago there were extermination campaigns by loggers who thought the birds threatened the timber. Since then, new threats have emerged.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: I'll tell you one of the worst moments for me. You know, we were warned against crossing this - the Rio Tuxacoringa(ph), and on the other side, the Setas control that, which is one of the worst drug cartels. And one day we're on the top of this cliff looking across the canyon, and there were people out there burning these old-growth trees, and they were going to destroy that forest so they could, you know, plant more opium poppies, and there was nothing we could do about it.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: It wouldn't have mattered if there were imperial woodpeckers over there. I'm almost glad I didn't see one because it would have just made me sick. You wouldn't know what to do. The government, the Mexican government can't go up there. It's too dangerous, you know.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: And I'm a real optimistic person about just about everything I do, and it just became so depressing. You know, at the end, we really did not know if we were going to get out of there. I even took the memory cards out of my cameras and my voice recorders and things, and I put them in my - the little hip pocket on my jeans just in case, you know, we got robbed or murdered. At least what I'd gotten would exist, you know.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: What started out as a quest to save a bird became a trip about Gallagher's own survival.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: Luckily, luckily we made it out of there, but then the next day we arranged to meet the forester in the city of Durango out in the park, and we were going to have breakfast together, and he walks up to us, and he's just - he's shaking like - and he just hugs us both tightly.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: And he said, you know, if anything would have happened to you, I never would have forgiven myself. And he said that night before we drove out, he and his wife got down on their knees and, you know, prayed to God for our safety and everything.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: By that time, we were all just standing in that park crying, you know, but it was awful.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: Gallagher isn't planning to go back anytime soon, he says, but he didn't know that right away. After all, he'd spent years researching this bird. He'd made half-a-dozen trips to Mexico in the last two years.</s>TIM GALLAGHER: It was hard to back away from it. I was really, really interested in the work, and I loved interviewing the people, and I think about the bird. It - it's just, it's too dangerous. You know, I've got kids at home that I need to raise.</s>FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Which for Gallagher may mean being haunted indefinitely by a ghost bird 3,000 miles away. For SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Flora Lichtman.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: If you want to see the only documented footage of the Imperial Woodpecker, check out our video pick from a few weeks ago. It's on our website at sciencefriday.com.

The death of Florida A&M drum major Robert Champion, Jr. continues to reverberate at schools nationwide. His death exposed a hazing culture unfamiliar to many, but band directors and school administrators have been dealing with the problem for many years. Marcus Chanay, vice president of student life, Jackson State University Donna Freitag, marching band liaison, University of Wisconsin-Madison

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. The death of 26-year-old drum major Robert Champion, Jr. continues to reverberate not just at Florida A&M and other historically black colleges but at schools nationwide. His death exposed a culture that many of us know nothing about, but it's a problem that band directors and school administrators have had to deal with for many years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In 2009, the marching band at Jackson State University made headlines after 45 members were suspended after an alleged hazing incident. Similar questions arose a few years ago at the University of Wisconsin. More on both in a moment, but tell us, if you're in a school band, how does this play out at your school? 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, many consider the holidays a barren period for the job search. In fact, we're going to talking instead to the chief advisor to the prime minister of Turkey, which is playing a key role in Syria and Iraq and the future of the Middle East, so stay tuned for that. But first, band hazing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's begin with a caller, and we'll begin with Adrian, who's calling us from Portland, Oregon.</s>ADRIAN: Hi, thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you're in a school band?</s>ADRIAN: I was in a school band a long time ago, 1974, and we traditionally had a sort of official hazing that would happen that was fairly harmless. And my freshman year, it was canceled because one of the other students called home, and their parents complained.</s>ADRIAN: So unfortunately there was an unofficial hazing that wound up with a kid getting a concussion, by being thrown against a concrete block.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Unofficial hazing; is this sort of, you know, an induction into the band?</s>ADRIAN: Yeah, it's all the freshmen at band camp would go through this.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Why?</s>ADRIAN: Why - that's a great question. It was supposed to instill a bit of a camaraderie that we would all go through that, and we knew that the previous years had all gone through it. And like I said, the one that was sort of official, which would have included some adults being there, was a bunch of silly pranks. And - but once that was actually canceled, then, you know, some seniors took it under their - took the initiative and physically, you know, made everybody line up.</s>ADRIAN: And one guy said he wouldn't do it, and it turned into a fight, and it was pretty horrendous.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So if the goal was camaraderie, it should - it doesn't seem like it worked.</s>ADRIAN: No, it didn't work at all. And the kid who called home wasn't the one that was injured, and he actually quit the band before the season even began.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Was anything done to the schedule?</s>ADRIAN: No, the schedule was - I mean, there was just one student that quit the band.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I see. And so were there any recriminations after one person suffered a concussion?</s>ADRIAN: Yeah, you know, back then not so much. They said, you know, kids are kids, and unfortunately a guy got hurt, and there was a lot of talk about not having any future hazings like that. But, you know, like I said, it seems like it would have been much better if it had been a supervised hazing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Adrian, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it.</s>ADRIAN: All right, thank you, bye-bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joining us now is Marcus Chanay, vice president of student life at Jackson State University. He's with us from a studio at Mississippi Public Broadcasting in Jackson. Nice to have you with us today.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: Thank you, nice to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you work directly with the band there at Jackson State University. I wonder, it must have seemed a little bit like deja vu after you heard about the incident at Florida A&M.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: It was. As most folks know, we had an incident back in 2009, not to the severity of anyone being killed. There was a freshman young man that was taken to the hospital, was released to his parents, but we had 23 young men that were suspended from the university and who also lost all of their scholarships, and no one could be in the band from that incident in 2009.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Can you give us some idea - I had not been aware the - of the way this worked not just within the band as a group but within subgroups of the band. Was that the same kind of situation you had there at Jackson...</s>MARCUS CHANAY: That was the same type of situation. The band itself, they're just like sections. You have a trombone section, a baritone section. The incident in 2009 was involving the percussion section. And so there were freshman that were, as the caller said before, trying to come through I guess if you call it a process of being, the camaraderie, the being able to be a part of that section.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: They did things that could have caused extreme harm and danger to them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And these involved typically - well, some of the hazing things involves going through a gauntlet.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: I'm sorry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Going through a gauntlet?</s>MARCUS CHANAY: No, no, no. One of the incidents - the incidents that occurred in 2009, these young men were paddled, and the one young man that it finally came to our attention was hit with a chair across his shoulder, which caused a severe injury to his collarbone. So this is how we found out about the incident, when the young man was taken to the hospital.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: Again, an investigation was done, and we ended up losing 23 of the upperclassmen percussion section that year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's bring another caller into the conversation. Kara(ph) is on the line calling us from Paducah in Kentucky.</s>KARA: Oh, I just wanted to comment about high school hazing in marching bands. I was in marching band for four years. I was in the color guard. But I know that it was a really big issue that - within our brass section that they would dog pile you. And it finally got cut out one year because a kid got hurt. It wasn't like a major injury or anything, but - and then we - there were separate hazing incidents, kind of, between, like, other sections of the group and everything, like throughout the marching band.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So each group would have its own rituals, its own traditions?</s>KARA: Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's interesting. Was everybody OK, Kara?</s>KARA: Yeah, everybody was fine. I mean, I look back on it today, and I think that I - that was probably the most fun I ever had in high school, being with the marching band. But, I mean, we did - there weren't problems with people getting hurt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call. I'm glad nobody got hurt. Marcus Chanay, that illustrates both sides of it. Yes, this band is a source of - well, the kids love it. It's a source of intense pride for the university, and yet somebody can get hurt.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: That is very true, and I think the caller from Kentucky was definitely correct. A lot of the band members that come in as freshmen went through the same ritual as freshmen in high school. So for them, it's nothing that is unusual or different. They just feel that it's this part of the culture. And so to go through it, a lot of them feel that it's just something that you need to do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: After the incident at Florida A&M, many singled out historically black college bands. Hazing does not just happen at HBCUs. In 2008, after the University of Wisconsin's band faced hazing allegations, Donna Freitag was called in to work with the band. She's now marching band liaison at the University of Wisconsin, joins us from Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison. Nice to have you with us today.</s>DONNA FREITAG: Great, thank you, it's great to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do these problems some familiar from when you were called in to help the band there in Wisconsin?</s>DONNA FREITAG: Yeah, you know, quite a few of them do sound familiar. Certainly the - you know, asking students to do things as new members certainly sounds familiar. I think the severity varies from, you know, school to school and different activities. There was never a death, something, you know, that severe here at Wisconsin. But there certainly was enough that there was some concern.</s>DONNA FREITAG: And, you know, allegations of hazing was reported to the university in 2008 by a few parents of the band students, and the university certainly didn't want that to get out of hand and to grow, so hence the hiring of myself as a liaison to kind of step in and really focus on that culture and find out what was going on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, how do you change band culture? As we were hearing, this starts in high school.</s>DONNA FREITAG: Yeah, and that's one of the things that I realized as well in taking over this position, that this wasn't the first time that students were being hazed, that it was happening at a lower level certainly in the high school ranks. But how do you change a culture?</s>DONNA FREITAG: It's something that we believe that it's an ongoing process. It's something that will always be a part - any time you have an organization that brings in new members, that organization is at risk for hazing. So it's not something that you can sit down and have a meeting and say we're going to cut it out, and that's it. It's an ongoing process and something that takes a lot of work.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Marcus Chanay, in your experience, yes, suspensions, maybe even some expulsions, but that's not going to solve it, is it?</s>MARCUS CHANAY: No, and what we did, we created a task force immediately after that with the - it was an actual interim band director that actually went through that in 2009. And we created a task force that included students, faculty, staff members and alumni band members to really try to figure out why, why did you have to go through this, especially from the standpoint of paddlings or any other type of physical abuse.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: And what was the reason for it? So we were trying to get down to the bottom of it, but as she just said, it's just a situation where even though you might be able to tame one group, but then you have the new group coming in, and one of the issues that we have is just trying to keep, as the young folks said, the kids say, the old heads away because they're people who are not even part of the band any longer that are still trying to bring in these 17-, 18-year-olds through a process.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's not just those but the uncles, the brothers, the parents - hey, that's the way it was when I was in the band. That's the way it should be, these are great traditions.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: Correct.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah. Email from Karen(ph) in Grand Rapids, Michigan: As a veteran of two HW, historically white, Big 10 marching bands, I was appalled to learn hazing continues to exist. It was name-calling, sexual harassment, verbal abuse and shunning. Despite all that, I'm still actively playing in three local community bands, a honk-style street band and tuba Christmas. So again, there is two sides of this, at least.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd like to hear from those of you who played in school bands. How did cliques and initiations play out where you went to school? Give us a call, 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 watch college football teams from the comfort of your coach instead of from the bleachers, you miss what many consider the best part of the game: the halftime shows put on by the universities' marching bands.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Strutting drum majors, twirling flags, pounding drums capture the audience's attention with tightly executed formations and a wall of sound. But at some schools hours of practice is not the only thing it takes to make it in the band. Sometimes hazing plays a big part too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tell us, if you're in a school band, how does it play out at you school? 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. Marcus Chanay is vice president of student life at Jackson State University; and Donna Freitag is the marching band liaison at the University of Wisconsin. And let's go next to Sonia(ph), Sonia with us from San Antonio.</s>SONIA: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Sonia, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.</s>SONIA: Yes, I am. I want to share an incident that took place when I was in high school band. I had just become a part of the leadership for the low brass, and what they did was they surprised us by coming to our house really early in the morning, and they dressed us all up in crazy clothes and took us out to eat in a public place.</s>SONIA: But this experience was really positive from my point of view because it really made me feel like I was now a part of the leadership because it was something that we all had to go through in order to be a part of this. And our parents knew about it, and our band director was there.</s>SONIA: So I'm not saying this excuses any of the violent hazing incidents, but hazing does take place that's not that – that is kind of positive.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Donna Freitag, that sounds pretty harmless.</s>SONIA: Yeah, it was.</s>DONNA FREITAG: You know, thinking about, as Sonia said, you know, dressing up in funny clothes and going to a restaurant doesn't seem like very much. There's other things. You know, freshmen are asked to carry equipment or do some menial jobs, which, you know, just those different types of activities really don't seem like a lot.</s>DONNA FREITAG: But what happens over time is they become more dangerous. The little things - we talk about hazing - the little hazing turns into big hazing if it's not stopped early, and really, though you may not think it's that big of a deal, it really can turn out to be bad in the future.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And does the presence (unintelligible) the band director that was there, parents were there - if adults are on hand, does that tell you, well, maybe this is OK?</s>DONNA FREITAG: Well, and I think that's really giving the wrong message, that that type of behavior is OK. I think that that is a concern, when adults and parents are a part of that because I think it sends a mixed message of what is OK and what isn't OK.</s>DONNA FREITAG: And as I said earlier, it's just the fact that those types of activities don't seem like much, but in a subtle way, year by year, we always try to want to up the ante just a little bit. Oh, that was OK, let's do something a little more fun, maybe, that becomes a little bit more dangerous.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sonia, thanks very much for the call, glad you enjoyed yourself.</s>SONIA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There's an email just to that point from John(ph) in Aurora, Colorado. And Marcus Chanay, we'll put this to you: Do hazing incidents increase in intensity year over year? I'm thinking maybe the kids are trying to outdo those who went before them.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: I think, you know, sometimes that is the case. But, you know, the problem is that when you're dealing with 19, 20 and 21-year-olds, who - they are really equal in peers - it just happens to be that I came to school a year or two prior to, and it's about tradition. It's about trying to hold a tradition that's supposedly been in place for years.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: But as we were putting together our task force at Jackson State, a number of the older members, alumni members of the band, stated that they never got involved in any type of physical hazing. Yes, they might have had freshmen that carried their instruments or things like that, but they never got involved with physical hazing.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: But I think it was very clearly stated what has happened, I think where you have students that are trying to do more than what was done in prior years or trying to do things that they seem to think that's going to make them a better band member. And it definitely tells that it doesn't make you a better band member just because you went through one thing. It has nothing to do with the way you play your instrument.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: And that's one of the things that we found out through that task force. The young men that were being hazed, it was not about that they were playing wrong or doing things. They would get, you know, direction from the band directors, but it was just because they wanted them to go through a process. So it had nothing to do with their music ability at all.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller in. This is Nick(ph), Nick with us from St. Louis.</s>NICK: Sure, thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>NICK: How are you doing? Yeah, I just wanted to comment. I was - I was in the band last year and they surprised me with the gauntlet they made me run through. But I don't see it as a problem. It was a very interesting - you know, they slapped me with female sexual objects as I ran through. But I would continue it. I liked it. It wasn't a bad experience.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It was not a bad - so you didn't feel threatened in any way?</s>NICK: No, I didn't feel threatened. They were kind of jelly, rubbery soft, and you know, they just slapped me in the face with them as I ran through the gauntlet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So some humiliation, but all in good fun?</s>NICK: All in good fun. We put them in our mouths, and you know, it was - some were big, some were small.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call. Donna Freitag, it would not take much to take what he just said and say that's sexual abuse.</s>DONNA FREITAG: Yeah, exactly, and I just - you know, one of the points that I wanted to make, that we call it hidden harms of hazing in that you don't know what someone's background is as far as the students coming in. We've had students that maybe were sexually abused prior to coming to college, or maybe their father or mother committed suicide, or there's, you know, there could be drug issues.</s>DONNA FREITAG: And when you're asking students to do things that are a little out of the ordinary as that, you're putting them in harm's way without really knowing what their background is all about and the harm it could actually do to them psychologically without really meaning to, but you just don't know someone's background. So asking them to do that, I think, is very, very harmful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Email from Ron: My daughter was in a high school marching band and later college. She joined an elite private marching band one summer in the off-season. She came home with a broken pelvis. Until the recent Florida incident, it never occurred to me that her injury might have been a hazing incident. My daughter isn't talking.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Marcus Chanay, is that part of the problem too? Is there a, you know, don't squeal culture too?</s>MARCUS CHANAY: That is definitely part of the problem. You know, the incident back in 2009, at Jackson State, if it had not been for a young man who was underage, he was 17, and the hospital had to call his mother and father, that's how the university got involved. And because there were other incidents that we found out prior to that evening incident, we know that we would have never known what was happening.</s>MARCUS CHANAY: So it is a culture that says, you know, we don't tell. And a lot of times, even for those people who do not participate, they don't tell. That's including upperclassmen or even freshmen that are there and decide that they don't want to be part of that particular part of the band. But they don't tell what they see. They don't tell what they hear. So that is definitely something that's within the culture itself.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: An important email from somebody who describes himself as Former Band Geek: At our Tennessee school, band was about the only group one could go through where there was not accepted hazing. It seems like we were all misfits in some form or fashion. I can't imagine what high school would have been like without band. My daughters can't imagine not being in the band right now. So let's not paint - tar every band with the same brush.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But Donna Freitag, I wanted to get back to that point. A lot of people say, after an incident like what happened at Florida A&M, how could the school administration not know? And I know you can't speak to their case, and there's liability questions involved here, but you look at the school administration and say, wait a minute, we have to be held responsible, no?</s>DONNA FREITAG: Well, you know, one of the things in looking at the size of a band, you know, three to four hundred students, and you know, that's one of the reasons why I was hired, because my focus is on the culture of hazing within the band, where you've got that many students, and with the director and administration there's other priorities that they're looking at.</s>DONNA FREITAG: You know, the band director is looking at music and performance, and that has to be their number one focus and priority, where me being hired for this position, I can really dig in and look at this and so, yes, uncover things that are happening.</s>DONNA FREITAG: One of the things that I had done early on when being hired is I met with all the freshmen individually because I had time to do that, met with all of them individually for about a half-hour, 45 minutes apiece, to find out exactly what their experience was like and to build relationships in regards to letting them know that there's somewhere they can go if they feel uncomfortable or they feel like that they've been hazed.</s>DONNA FREITAG: That first semester, I met with several rank leaders as well, meaning those are the students that are in charge of the different sections on the field. And I met with them, and there's probably about 25 or so, in a total of 190 students I met in that probably first, oh, month and a half, and really tried to uncover what was happening, and yet who else is going to have that kind of time to really figure that out?</s>DONNA FREITAG: Again, you know, I relate it to being a parent. You know, you try to teach your kids the right way and give them guidance, but you're not with them 24/7, and there's things that happen that you just don't know about.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Andrew(ph). Andrew with us from Dallas.</s>ANDREW: Yes, hello?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're on the air, Andrew. Go ahead, please.</s>ANDREW: Oh, hi. I'm calling about the corps at Texas A&M...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yup.</s>ANDREW: ...and the band there. As you know this a pseudo-military fraternity that graduates lieutenants to the Armed Forces. And there's quite a bit of, I guess, what you would call hazing going on there. But when I was a member of the corps, I went through as a freshman and was hazed. And in a fair number of classes, I did haze younger cadets. But I don't see (unintelligible) hazing gets there. In a military institution, it serves to test one's commitment to the group, which is an important aspect of military.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I can understand that, but it is also an institution where the - those of you who graduate will go on to be controlling officers in the Army or the Marine Corps with control over lethal force. People have been abused. People have been physically harmed. Does not – is not this the wrong culture?</s>ANDREW: Was this - the culture of the military is trained to kill. It's not an attractive part of the culture, but it's an important part of our society. We have to have men who are willing to and able to execute lethal force (unintelligible)...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I understand that. But should not those men use that lethal force with great care?</s>ANDREW: Well, absolutely. But there's no polite way to kill a man. You know, and no matter what wars of violent acts, I mean, you have to have men trained in violence to execute force. It's not pleasant, but it's necessary.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: No, I understand all of that. But when you are hazed, you develop psychological problems that could manifest themselves on the battlefield and contribute to a very serious mistake.</s>ANDREW: That is true, but - that is true, and that's something that you dealt with. Wartime psychology is an important thing and not fully understood, but only recently becoming understood. But the hazing that goes into that, there's no way you can remove hazing from that kind of training. You're asking men to walk into danger, perform a task they otherwise would find meaningless. You have to get them in the right mind to do that, and hazing is an effective way to perform that. They're shaving bald, that kind of thing, sleep deprivation, the physical discomfort - all those things are necessary to forge a man into a tool capable of executing that kind of violence.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Donna Freitag, he's talking about unit bonding, which a lot of institutions believe is critical to performance on - in any number of places, including the battlefield.</s>DONNA FREITAG: Yeah. Boy, that's scary. I just don't see the correlation between hazing and preparing men and women for war or battle. You know, I'm looking at it from a band perspective, and, you know, it's - to me it has leadership written all over it, in regards to the drum major, in regards to rank leaders, section leaders. And, you know, a part of our responsibility as educators at a university is to help students become better educator, better leaders when they leave. And I think we really play a large part in that. And to agree with hazing and to allow that kind of behavior, are we really getting them ready for life after college?</s>DONNA FREITAG: You know, talk to students about, you know, whether they're in business or engineering or whatever their major might be, is at some point in time, they're going to be in charge of a group of people. And how will they lead them, is it through hazing rituals? Well, they'll probably have everyone quit and you're going to get fired. But how are you going to lead that group, moving forward. And so as far as leadership goes, I don't think hazing has any part to do with producing great leaders in our society.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Donna Freitag, marching band liaison at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Also with us, Marcus Chanay, vice president of student life at Jackson State University. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And let's get Cliff(ph) on the line. Cliff is with us from Southfield in Michigan.</s>CLIFF: Hi, how's it going?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>CLIFF: Good. Good. Yeah. I came up in '97 in the Florida A&M University marching band, and there was hazing all over the place. And one thing I can tell you is that hazing is an individual choice. It's up to the individual, whether you want to go through any type of process or ritual or not, you know? If you're one that is prone to fall influence by your peers, hazing is definitely there for you. But if you're one that can stray away from peer hierarchies and want to stand your ground of being an individual, hazing is never a problem at all.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Don't you fear getting kicked out or ostracized?</s>CLIFF: Well, if you're there for marching band, I let my music playing ability and my marching do the talking. If you're an excellent and precise marcher, if you know fundamentally all your music techniques and you're able to teach others and duplicate yourself, I found that that is what gets you your respect.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is also - by simply not participating, you're also tacitly condoning a system which, well, the investigation remains to be seen, but there's a girl in the hospital with a broken leg and there's a man in the morgue.</s>CLIFF: Right. Right. Right. Well, not condoning because, you know, physical hazing or mentally hazing, I really don't condone. But I can say that this - both parties are at fault, the parties that are hazing and the party that chose to participate in the event. It's unfortunate Robert Champion and also the young lady who had got her leg broken, but they put themselves in that predicament, unfortunately. And the world is tough. You know, you learn after high school, after you go away from mom and dad, yeah, you know, one bad decision could put you in a predicament that can ultimately change your future.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It could also get you suspended, kicked out, charged...</s>CLIFF: It's true...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...with a crime, yeah.</s>CLIFF: This is true. I can know - in my experience, their band director, Dr. Julian E. White who has been suspended currently, you know, he gave us the pep talk as freshman, let us know that if we had any problems at all, if there was any individual that we had a situation with, just put the name on a piece of paper, slide it under the door, and that he would go and take it from there administratively. And he did. Many band members were kicked out just on that process alone. So...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, as we've heard from Marcus Chanay and Donna Freitag, just - I'm sure other procedures were put into place. They may have been inadequate. It's more than just that that's involved.</s>CLIFF: Well, actually...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I don't mean to cut you off, Cliff, but we just have a few seconds left. Marcus Chanay, I wanted to ask you. When it gets so serious, these bands are really important. Would you consider saying, that's enough, we got to stop this?</s>MARCUS CHANAY: Yeah. The bands are very important, but I think it comes to a point in time, and that's why we have even - we no longer - from a hazing standpoint at Jackson State or even suspending, we are now expelling. But I have a - I can tell you this much. From a band director standpoint, it is a tough job, and Donna made it very clear and evident that trying to look over two, three, 400 individuals is very key. But when it comes to a point in time when bands can no longer follow the rules and regulations, you're going to find that those bands will be leaving the fields.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about band hazing. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced new rules Wednesday designed to reduce potentially dangerous pilot fatigue. Bart Jansen of USA Today discusses the changes and why the FAA felt compelled to adopt them, and sleep medicine expert Charles Czeisler explains how the body responds to fatigue. Read Bart Jansen's USA Today coverage of the FAA rules. Read Charles Czeisler's CNN op-ed about fatigue among air traffic controllers.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Three years after a commuter airline crash near Buffalo that killed 50, the Federal Aviation Administration announced new rules to reduce one of the key factors that contribute to accidents: pilot fatigue.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The FAA cited cases where lack of sleep led to procedural errors, unstable approaches, lining up with the wrong runway and landing without clearance. The new rules call for shorter shifts and longer rest periods between flights. They do not apply to cargo pilots, and commercial airlines have two years to implement them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So for now, pilots, when do you sleep? 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. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Later in the program, Georgetown professor Philip Carver on the homework assignment of a lifetime. But first, Bart Jansen joins us here in Studio 3A. He covers FAA and Transportation Security Administration for USA Today. Nice to have you with us.</s>BART JANSEN: Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And these new rules, as we mentioned in response to that crash in Buffalo, the Colgan crash, was fatigue specifically cited there?</s>BART JANSEN: The NTSB did not blame fatigue specifically in that crash, but they did note the pilots didn't necessarily sleep in a bed the night before the crash. They were heard yawning on the cockpit recorder. And so the relatives of the victims have used that flight to really push for these changes, and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood credited those families with keeping the pressure on and keeping an eye on fatigue.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also in relation to that flight, we learned that particular commuter pilots can commute a long time to their flight, and these new rules take that into effect.</s>BART JANSEN: That's right. For the first time, the - it's called flight duty period, which is the whole day not when you're actually at the controls flying the plane, will start counting the time that they perhaps commute by flying on another plane, just essentially as a passenger but flying on another plane to get to the flight that they're actually piloting.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So awake.</s>BART JANSEN: Correct, right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how much does it reduce the amount of time they'll be able to fly?</s>BART JANSEN: Well, the flight duty periods were 16 hours. They are now being reduced to nine to 14, depending on how many flight segments you're flying in a day and what time of day you start and stop. If you're starting overnight, you get to fly less, and then there are longer rest periods, as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the accommodations have to be taken into account, too.</s>BART JANSEN: Yes, the rest periods in the past had been eight hours, but that could include the time that you took driving to the hotel, you know, not necessarily asleep. What they're asking for now is 10 hours of rest with at least eight of it as uninterrupted sleep time. And if the schedule or the pilot feels that something was a distraction, they couldn't meet that standard, they are supposed to, you know, put up their hand and report it and say that they can't be included in the next day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that should be without penalty.</s>BART JANSEN: That's the idea.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll find out more when we talk to pilots. This comes in the opposition from - despite opposition from airlines and they said the cost of this could be substantial.</s>BART JANSEN: Yeah, the FAA estimated that this should cost airlines something like $300 million over 10 years. The costs could be through additional hiring of pilots because you'd need more to cover the flights that you've got. The airlines contend that under a previous proposal for this rule that it could be as much as $2 billion a year, although that included some things that are no longer included in this rule.</s>BART JANSEN: So they say it's going to be way more expensive than FAA calculated.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And one area where expenses definitely came into the calculation involves cargo pilots. They mostly fly at night, and the cargo companies said wait a minute, these rules would be prohibitively expensive for us.</s>BART JANSEN: That's right. They - the pilot unions all advocated to have better rules. The rules were first defined 50 years ago. Planes have gotten much more complicated. The assignment has gotten much more difficult. And so they thought everybody ought to be included in a revision of these rules.</s>BART JANSEN: Cargo was carved out because Secretary LaHood and FAA administrator Michael Huerta found that the cost benefit of including cargo pilots was just too prohibitive on that industry. So they're going to try to encourage them to participate voluntarily, but they are not required to follow these rules.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And none of these rules take effect for two years.</s>BART JANSEN: Correct. They're giving the commercial airline companies two years to implement them because it's going to take a little bit of work to get the schedules revised so that they follow these new standards.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get some pilots in on the conversation. We're asking, since these rules don't take effect for a couple of years, if you fly cargo, they may never take effect, when do you sleep? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. We'll start with Jim(ph), and Jim's on the line with us from - where is this, Fernlove in Nevada?</s>JIM: Close, it's Fernley, Nevada.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fernley, Nevada. OK, go ahead.</s>JIM: Yeah, I really enjoy your show, just have to say that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>JIM: Well, you know, the problem with these rules are is, you know, pilots, unlike others, we move around, across time zones and other things. So you know, whether you get six hours or eight hours of sleep isn't really the important part. I get up at 5 a.m. every day, and I go out on duty for 16 hours and fly eight hours, and I go, and I get my rest, and that's my cycle every day. There's no problem there.</s>JIM: The problem comes in, I'll just give you my personal example, I fly a 747, and it's international. So I commute to Hawaii, but I do it a day ahead of time, and so there's no issue there. But I leave Hawaii around noon, and I get into my destination, Japan - Japan time, around 6 in the evening. Now of course that's much later for me, for my body. So I want to go to sleep when I hit the ground.</s>JIM: But I don't. I force myself to stay up until 9 or 10. If I'm lucky, I'll get up at 5 in the morning. If I'm not lucky, I'll get up at 2 in the morning. And then my next flight is that night. Well, I can't just turn off. Now granted, it sounds great, I've had 24 hours off, but I can't just turn off during the day.</s>JIM: So I'm up all day, and then my next flight's that night, and I'm up all night, get to my next destination, let's say Australia, during the day, and so I'll take a nap, a little nap during the day because I'm tired, I've been up for, you know, 30-plus hours, and then the next flight will be the next day. So that one's OK because I've switched back into a day, and my body will want to sleep at night, even though I'm kind of twisted around on time zones.</s>JIM: And I have to say as a pilot I have been at the controls looking at the runway, hands on the controls, with - I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but it's like somebody has a little switch, and they're turning you on and off, your eyes are blinking. And, you know, you're nodding in and out, in and out, in and out.</s>JIM: You hit the ground, and of course then all the adrenaline is there, and now you're up for a couple hours because you can't go to sleep, even though you were about to fall asleep on the approach.</s>JIM: So they don't take into consideration where are you and when are you versus where you were, and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well there is - and Jim, thanks very much for the call and for elucidating a problem, and suddenly my job seems a lot easier. But thanks very much for that, and thanks for your kind words, too. But Bart Jansen, there is some consideration of time zones.</s>BART JANSEN: There is. There is going - they will require greater acclimation in new time zones for pilots as part of that rest period. I can't cite the specifics right now, but they will - on long flights like that, they are going to be requiring more time off between those long segments and, you know, even without that greater perhaps rest period than what he's citing.</s>BART JANSEN: I mean, if you stopped at midnight, you could not get behind the wheel again before 10 a.m. under these new rules.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller in on the conversation. Let's go to Joe(ph), and Joe's with us from Boise.</s>JOE: Hi, thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>JOE: Yeah, I echo the sentiments of the previous caller. I also fly cargo internationally, and, you know, my schedule sounds similar to what you just heard. And my problem is the 24-hour layover, which sounds like an adequate amount of rest; however, if you're arriving at a destination at midnight and going to bed at 2 a.m. by the time you get to your hotel, and then all of a sudden you have a 3 a.m. departure 24 hours later, it's very difficult to get your body on any kind of sleep cycle and a schedule that you're used to if you have a normal 9-to-5 type of job.</s>JOE: And that I find the most difficult. Now suddenly you have to find yourself sleeping twice within 24 hours, and that's a very difficult thing to do. And the accommodations they have for us are very nice. They're comfortable. They give us plenty of opportunity to rest, but it's just difficult to tell the human body just OK, sleep now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, and especially when it's repeated and repeated and repeated.</s>JOE: Yes, yes, multiple 24- to 25-hour layovers are probably the worst. It's - having a, you know, a layover with 18 hours or 36 hours is much better, where you can sleep once, get up, go to work, get to your destination and sleep again. However, these cargo schedules aren't quite like that. They're all over.</s>JOE: You could very well, on a week-long trip you could probably fly all 24 hours of the clock.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Would you also agree with our previous caller there have been moments where you're coming down toward the runway and find yourself nodding off?</s>JOE: Well personally not with me, but I have seen it with other colleagues. Yes, that's very possible. I mean, fatigue is a very insidious thing, I think. It's not just, you know, the switch is on, and all of a sudden you flip the switch off, and OK, I'm fatigued. You know, you're like OK, I'm kind of tired, I think I can get through this next flight, but, you know, it's a difficult thing to measure.</s>JOE: And yeah, I have seen that happen with colleagues before, and usually I can get enough adrenaline going just to last for the, you know, approach and the landing and get through that part.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thanks very much for the call, Joe, and safe flying.</s>JOE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Appreciate it. As you look ahead to these regulations, Bart Jansen, the pilots are I'm sure going to say good step but not far enough, certainly on the cargo regulations. And the airlines are going to say this is going to cost us a fortune. We're going to have to hire a lot of new people and jigger around all these schedules.</s>BART JANSEN: Yes, the airlines have already said that, and unfortunately for the last caller, you know, cargo not yet included, and, you know, he may face the same concerns. But the thing that the FAA made a big point about yesterday in announcing these rules is that they did try to take scientific research into account in developing the rules, take into account that really you don't want to be up in the middle of the night.</s>BART JANSEN: And that's why they jiggered the rules so that if you're starting in the middle of the night, you fly less, and you, you know, divide up the day better. But the problem, part of the reason why cargo became prohibitively expensive to incorporate in this rule is because cargo pilots fly often overnight, in the middle of the night. So they're sort of in the worst situation in this.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bart Jansen of USA Today just mentioned scientific research. In a moment, Dr. Charles Czeisler joins us to talk about the way sleep deprivation messes with our brains. And we want to hear from more pilots, as well. When do you guys sleep? Give us a call, 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. Sleep deprivation is a problem in many lines of work. Harvard researchers have found police officers don't get enough shuteye, which can lead to unchecked anger on the job. Medical residents work 28-hour shifts and went longer before a new set of rules implemented in July limited their hours.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yesterday, pilots learned they will get new rules aimed at managing fatigue, as well. So pilots, give us a call. When do you sleep? 800-989-8255. Email us, 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: Joining us now is Dr. Charles Czeisler, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. He joins us from a studio there in Boston. Nice to have you with us today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: DR. CHARLES CZEISLER: Thank you, Neal. It's nice to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the FAA says it used the latest fatigue science to guide these requirements. As you look at them, I'm sure, like many pilots, you'll say maybe a step forward. Do they go far enough?</s>CZEISLER: Well, of course not including cargo pilots is very unfortunate because those cargo pilots are often flying during the nighttime hours and trying to sleep during the daytime hours. And so they really are right at the sharp edge of difficulty adjusting, and they're the ones who really need at least 10 hours off in order to maintain eight hours time for sleep because it's even harder to sleep during the daytime than it is, of course, at night.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in terms of how pilots respond to fatigue, I gather one of the few studies that tracked pilots' brainwaves during flights was done by NASA. This was on trans-oceanic flights. It caught 44 percent of the pilots sleeping on the job.</s>BART JANSEN: Yes, and they were sleeping, typically, on average, about 45 minutes as they transited the Atlantic. And so it's very pervasive problem. You know, everybody thinks that the passengers are all draped over the seats on these redeye flights as they go across from the East Coast to Europe but that the pilots are perky and awake up front, but that study showed that that's not true.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, those are the long-haul pilots. What about those pilots who fly commuter flights, hops, many hops in a row?</s>CZEISLER: Well, they can often go, as Jim said when he called in earlier, from early morning hours all the way straight through the day, as currently they are often scheduled for many, many hours and very long days. And these rules should help to trim that and provide them at least a 10-hour opportunity for rest at night.</s>CZEISLER: I am a little bit concerned looking at the rules because there appears to be a loophole in them, where if an airline implements a fatigue - what's called a fatigue risk management system, they may be able to circumvent the rules, and I'm concerned that even if they provide education for pilots and try to monitor their fatigue that there should still be absolute limits as to how many hours that they can fly and absolute limits on the minimum number of hours for rest.</s>CZEISLER: And I'd like to understand more about that. That's not explained in the rules as they were issued.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bart Jansen, do you know more about that?</s>BART JANSEN: Yeah, the FAA did give the opportunity for airlines to come up with their own plans if they could come up with a scientifically justified alternative to the kind of guidelines that these rules provide. But the FAA will have to sign off on those rules. So I think they would say they're trying to allow flexibility but that they will still keep an eye on the standards.</s>BART JANSEN: But as you say, it's - you know, you maybe want to keep that 10 hours of rest. It might - I'm not sure where the flexibility would come and perhaps how you order the segments during the day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And when he talks about monitoring, is there any provision for monitoring in these rules, to measure the pilots' brainwaves or even have a camera on them?</s>BART JANSEN: I haven't heard of anything like that as part of these rules.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Dr. Czeisler, might that be a step forward?</s>CZEISLER: It could be a step forward, but my understand is that this would be internal monitoring, and I haven't heard anything such as a camera or other systems that really could measure whether or not there are lapses of attention happening in the pilots when they're flying.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And pilots have a lot of reasons why they would object to cameras in the cockpit. So that's something that would have to be worked out with the unions, and they may not be happy with that. Let's see if we can get another caller in. This is Kevin(ph), Kevin with us from Philadelphia.</s>KEVIN: Hi, Neal, thanks for taking my call. I would like to, if I could, emphasize one thing that was already mentioned very early in the show about rest.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead.</s>KEVIN: The - like he mentioned, it can be as low as eight hours of rest. You know, rest begins, at my company anyway, I work for a major airline, 15 minutes after we shut the engines down. And so in the eyes of the FAA, we're resting while the passengers are still deplaning, and we're still on the airplane.</s>KEVIN: And we often go through that hotel door an hour into our rest period, and of course as you probably would know that when you go through a hotel door, you can't just assume a sleep position. You know, it takes a while to wind down. And then of course we have to wake up an hour before our rest ends to get ready for the next days' flying.</s>KEVIN: So as you can imagine with what I just said, the real rest, not the FAA's version of rest but the real rest, is really only about five, five-and-a-half hours of sleep. And where do we get our sleep? I fly an airplane that flies sometimes three or four flights a day, and I'll often come into the cockpit, you see the captain and my flight attendants all sleeping in first class chairs waiting, you know, to board the next flight in an hour or 45 minutes.</s>KEVIN: So sometimes we get our sleep during the day onboard the airplane.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: While it's on the ground we hope. But Kevin, thanks very much, and we appreciate your calling in. Dr. Czeisler, what kinds - when he's talking about those kinds of sleep patterns, what kinds of problems can that lead to, does research show us?</s>CZEISLER: Well, research shows us that when you're not getting an adequate amount of sleep at night, the fatigue accumulates, and you build up a sleep deficiency. And within about a week, your sleep - the impact of that sleep deficiency is just as bad as if you were awake 24 hours. And we know that that induces a level of impairment that's equivalent with being legally drunk in terms of the impairment of our reaction time and other measures of performance.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's interesting, the president of the Independent Pilots' Association, Robert Travis, is opposed to the exemption for cargo carriers. He said giving air cargo carriers the choice to opt in to new pilot rest rules makes as much sense as allowing truckers to opt out of drunk driving laws.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: From what you just said, that's not an exaggeration.</s>CZEISLER: No, it's not. And another area that seems to be missing from the regulations, although this 300-page document has only just been released yesterday and I haven't read every word, but it doesn't seem to deal with the commuting that happens before the flight.</s>CZEISLER: And many pilots are actually living in a different place, possibly across the country, from where they are domiciled to have their first - where the airline company has them assigned to be living.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bart Jansen, I think you told us it does take that into account.</s>BART JANSEN: Yes, this new flight duty rules, allowing for a nine- to 14-hour day, that will begin to recognize that commuting time, to count, basically - it's not counted as the flight time of the eight or nine hours per shift but that it will count as the flight duty time of up to 14 hours. So they will begin counting that, and that's what regional airlines in particular are worried about because of people getting around to their different jobs.</s>BART JANSEN: One other mention on something you just said about the cumulative sleep deprivation, part of the new rule expands the amount of rest that you have to have consecutively each week so that they have to have 30 consecutive hours of rest each week, which is up from 24.</s>BART JANSEN: So you're going to get a weekend, or a better weekend, anyway, from now on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller in. This is Jim(ph), Jim with us from Andover in Minnesota.</s>JIM: Yes, hi. I fly for a major airline. I also commute to work. But I just wanted to mention, you know, they talk about the rest problems and the eight hours. Many of the major carriers, and I'm not counting (unintelligible), in our current contracts with ALPA have a nine-hour minimum at the hotel. So we are able, usually, to get the eight hours of minimum rest.</s>JIM: So we land, we're delayed, and we break into our normal time, and we call the crew desk and say hey, we can depart nine hours later, and they'll adjust the flights as necessary or re-crew that flight and put us on a later one. So the problem isn't pervasive in the industry, as far as the minimum times.</s>JIM: Now, there are other issues, obviously flying international time zones, I also do that, and you get a three-day trip to London, we get one night in a hotel. Where is the other night? So - but I do think that, you know, we do need some fatigue assistance so we don't have to negotiate for it in every contract. And I appreciate the FAA for stepping in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, thanks very much for the call. Here's an email, this is from Brian(ph) in Michigan: As an on-demand cargo pilot, I may be awake and on call all day long and not called into work until midnight with little notice, not returning until 9 a.m. We find that taking turns napping is a safe and effective method for keeping up our alertness.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's unfortunate that airlines or the FAA would not allow short naps for pilots that are short on sleep. Sleeping on the job is looked down on in most work environments but would be a great option for airlines if we could get over that stigma. And Dr. Czeisler, is he right, sleeping a 45-minute nap during a flight, might that be, if it's allowed, a good thing?</s>CZEISLER: Absolutely. Dr. Mark Rosekind, who's now a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, when he worked at NASA-Ames, did a landmark study in which he actually tested the efficacy of a 45-minute rest break that allowed an opportunity for a nap. Typically the naps were about 20 minutes.</s>CZEISLER: And they dramatically reduced the episodes of inattention and lapses of attention and falling asleep from top of descent to landing. So what that earlier caller Joe had - caller - or actually - sorry, the earlier caller Jim had mentioned nodding in and out and falling asleep on the approach. That's what's dramatically improved if they're given a chance to nap during the flight.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Do the new regulations, Bart Jansen, allow for napping during flights and just parenthetically, the last time we were talking about sleeping on the job in air transport, it was about the air traffic controllers. Have they got new regulations?</s>BART JANSEN: I don't believe the air traffic controllers have new regulations. I'm sure as these rules get digested, other unions of, as we said, cargo pilots, other aspects of the industry are going to want to get similar consideration because they also have stressful jobs where you don't want people falling asleep. In terms of the napping, I suspect - I think what this rule is trying to say is they want a certain amount of sleep, you know, the 10-hour rest between shifts but that there might be the greater flexibility for napping over that 14-hour flight-duty period.</s>BART JANSEN: So that - I suspect that might be part of the place where FAA is thinking maybe that's where an airline can come up with a good idea about that. I do think, though, that a lot of the - in the development of the regulations, the concern was that they get rest in a bed - or in a quiet area because people were trying to catch naps in, like, lunchrooms and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or as we heard, in first class, waiting for the next...</s>BART JANSEN: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...group of passengers.</s>BART JANSEN: And that maybe isn't the best rest.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm an airline - writes Stacey(ph) in Washington, D.C., I'm an airline captain for a regional airline flying in one time zone, Eastern. My largest complaint is starting at 4 a.m. one day and flying a trip on mornings. Then a few days later, I'm assigned to fly until midnight. There's no consistency on early flying versus late flying. Dr. Czeisler, can that present a problem?</s>CZEISLER: Yes. Trying to shift the timing of when you're sleeping and waking greatly degrades the ability to maintain consolidated sleep. And Stacey is right that some consistency in the schedule would greatly improve the ability to adapt to that schedule and to get the rest that you need.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Dr. Charles Czeisler, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. Also with us, Bart Jansen, USA Today reporter who covers the Transportation Safety Administration and the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. Yesterday, they issued new rules on pilot fatigue mandating longer rests, except for cargo pilots. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Dr. Czeisler, from what I can read of your and other research, we would all be better off if people in dangerous jobs, stressful jobs - like air traffic controllers and pilots - only worked during daylight hours. That's not going to happen.</s>CZEISLER: That's right. And so that's why we need to develop strategies to mitigate the fatigue associated with working at night. And one of those strategies is to make sure that people don't have sleep disorders that can interfere with their ability to stay awake even during the daytime and not just during at night. And that's why I'm a little disappointed in this rule that it doesn't mandate screening for obstructive sleep apnea, which is the most common sleep disorder in pilots whose body mass index exceeds a certain level, so it puts them in the overweight or obese category.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So those people even though they may be in bed and snoring for the requisite number of hours, they're not getting the rest.</s>CZEISLER: Exactly. And that increases, for example, motor vehicle crashes by a couple of hundred percent in terms of the risks, and we would expect that that would greatly interfere with their ability to sustain alertness while flying a plane as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just a quick question, Bart Jansen, how big a deal was this for the Department of Transportation to get these new regulations through? Obviously, it's been three years since that Buffalo crash.</s>BART JANSEN: Yes. And Secretary LaHood acknowledged that it took too long, that he wished it would been faster, and that there still remains work to be done, as he plans to meet with the cargo executives in January to try to encourage them to participate voluntarily. But he also noted that, you know, the last changes in these rules were 1985, that he said people have been talking about doing this for 25 years, and they hadn't done a dang thing. But that they finally got it done, and that it was that crash, which he called his worst day on the job, to get it across the finish line.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see we get one more caller in. This is Steve. Steve with us from St. Petersburg.</s>STEVE: Hi. Yeah. I wanted to relate an incident that happened to me. I'm not a pilot, but I was a detective in the New York City Police Department. I had an hour commute to work, and we had a case where I was on duty for about 32 hours. And at 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm heading home. I have no remembrance of crossing the Nassau County line into Suffolk County. But one of the patrol officers in Suffolk County recognized my car, and as I went by about 75 miles an hour on the Long Island Expressway, he realized I was sound asleep with my eyes open.</s>STEVE: And it's a straight run out there, thank God. And I was going down the highway for about eight miles, he flashed - he didn't use his siren, but he flashed his lights into my mirror and awakened me. It took about eight miles, he said, to do that. But I - excuse me. He knew I was fast asleep with my eyes open.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve, you are one lucky duck.</s>STEVE: I certainly am. And I made sure that that never happened again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Dr. Czeisler, he reminds us it's not just air traffic controllers. It's not just pilots. This is for a lot of people.</s>CZEISLER: That's true, and he's described a phenomenon called sleep driving. And if you - there was an incident where it was filmed for 30 minutes on I-25 in Denver a couple of years ago a woman sleep driving. It's part of the brain. The prefrontal cortex can be asleep, and that's the judgment area of the brain, while the other part of the brain that carries out routine highly over-learned tasks like driving can keep going and negotiate turns and so on, but you may be running people off of the road as this is happening or even driving toward emergency vehicles because people in that state tend to drive toward flashing lights and so on. So he is quite lucky indeed.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve, we're glad you're OK.</s>STEVE: OK. Thank you very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you very much. And thanks to our guests, Bart Jansen of USA Today who covers the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration, he was here with us in Studio 3A. Dr. Czeisler, appreciate your time today.</s>CZEISLER: Thank you so much, Neal.</s>BART JANSEN: Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Charles Czeisler is a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School and joined us from a studio on the campus there in Cambridge.

House members on Tuesday rejected a Senate plan for extending the payroll tax cut. To attract House conservatives, the Senate had included a controversial provision forcing President Barack Obama to decide on the fate of a planned oil pipeline within 60 days. Ron Elving, senior Washington editor, NPR Coral Davenport, energy and environmental reporter, National Journal

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. House Republicans balk, Senate Republicans fume and Newt's Iowa lead evaporates under the heat from negative ads, anti-endorsements and Mitt's charge that he's unstable. It's a Wednesday and time for a...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: UNDENTIFIED MAN #1: Zany.</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>RICK PERRY: Oops</s>PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH: But I'm the decider.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political junkie Ken Rudin is off this week, so NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving joins us to recap the week in politics. The Senate passes a rare bipartisan bill nine to one, so the House kills it. But there's one point of agreement; both chambers say it's time for a holiday recess.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rick Santorum wins a big endorsement in Iowa. South Carolina's governor picks Mitt, and the National Review votes for anybody but Newt. Stealth Republican candidate Gary Johnson will now run as a Libertarian, and Sarah Palin says there's still time for folks to join the race. Are Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton listening?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In a few minutes, the politics of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Later in the program, why the holidays could be the best time to find long-term work. But first, guest political junkie Ron Elving joins us here in Studio 3A. As always, Ron, thanks very much for pinch-hitting.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Neal. You always make the week sound much more exciting than it actually might have been.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, that's our job here at Political Junkie. Last Friday, Senate Republicans walked away convinced they'd scored a victory on the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. What happened?</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Well, apparently that victory was snatched from the jaws and turned into what now appears to be sort of a freefall for the House Republicans. We don't want to prejudge the total reaction to what's happened in the last few days. Sometimes these things take a little while to sort out. And they certainly are getting a lot of air time and a lot of opportunity to explain themselves.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: But what appears to have happened was that the Senate Republicans and Democrats, believing that they had, essentially, the go-ahead from John Boehner, negotiated the...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Speaker of the House, yes.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Speaker of the House - the Republican leader of the House - believed that they had an opportunity to go ahead there and work out a bipartisan deal, worked one out, could not get all the things resolved, wanted to come back and do some more negotiating after the holiday break.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: And so they put a 60-day extension, essentially freezing everything in place. By the way, this includes payments to doctors who have Medicare patients - and I'm going to come back to that in a moment because it's very important - and put all this in place for 60 days with the full expectation that they would return, negotiate a full-year extension of all of these various provisions, including childless benefits, including the payroll tax cut. And then they went home.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: And they believed that they had done what everyone wanted them to do. And again, as you said, it passed 89 to 10. Now, it's extraordinarily unusual for the Senate to do anything that contains any controversy whatsoever with those sorts of numbers, just a handful of Republicans opposing it and a few Democrats, as well, some of the more liberal Democrats, in fact. And so they all went home happy, except they had not yet gotten the official OK from the House.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: And it turns out John Boehner was speaking mostly for himself, or he says he was misunderstood, and, well, the House came back on Monday and voted the whole thing down. So there's nothing. There's no extension of any of those popular programs, including the payroll tax cut, including the jobless benefits, including the ability of doctors to continue to take Medicare patients at full pay.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: They're going to be hit with a 27 percent pay cut if they take Medicare patients in January. That may be the element in all of this that really sets the match to the conflagration.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Unemployment extension, as well, but as we go through this, some people are questioning: Is this the speaker of the House watching his knees cut off by the Tea Party coalition?</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: That is one interpretation. From the standpoint of what we saw him up against in March and April on the government shutdown, on funding, and what we saw him up against in August when he negotiated a big deficit reduction deal with President Obama and then had to walk away with it when - walk away from it, I should say, when his own people back in the House Republican Caucus said no deal.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: So this is the third time that it appears that John Boehner, functioning as the speaker of the House, doing what the speaker of the House is expected to do, has negotiated with the forces of everyone else in Washington, gotten a deal and then been told by his own troops sorry, we're not going there.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: He may be at the crisis point of his speakership.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There was one other element of that deal: It would have forced President Obama to make a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline, putting him on the horns of the dilemma. More on that in a few minutes. A lot more on that in a few minutes, it's going to come back even if this deal does not go through.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, let us go to Iowa, where it turns out last week it seemed that Newt Gingrich was the clear leader. This week, anybody's ballgame.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Yes anyone's ballgame. It appears there are six candidates bunched between 10 percent and 25 percent, and with the fluidity of people moving up and down within that range, it's possible to imagine Ron Paul winning the whole Iowa caucus shooting match, if you will, with 22, 23 percent of the total participant vote.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: It's also possible to imagine somebody else winning it with 23, 24 percent, perhaps even - it could possibly even be Mitt Romney, who is spending most of this week touring New Hampshire, not even in Iowa. It could be Newt Gingrich, who has been a skyrocket in December but also a skyrocket that seems to be in the process of crash-landing, dropping very rapidly even as he rose.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: And we have several other candidates contesting, as well, some of whom have reason to think and hope that they could be the Iowa hero this year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, part of that problem for Newt Gingrich is he is being dramatically outspent, and there is a whole bunch of negative ads, including one broadcast by a super-PAC aligned with Mitt Romney.</s>UNDENTIFIED WOMAN: You know what makes Barack Obama happy? Newt Gingrich's baggage. Newt has more baggage than the airlines.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that again from a super-PAC allied with Mitt Romney, who say I can't possibly tell them what to do. If I get in contact with them, I will go to the big house. He didn't mean 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: That's a big white one, no.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Whether there's plausible deniability or not, this has prompted some stinging language from Newt Gingrich, the master of no-holds-barred politics.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Newt Gingrich, who has lately been playing the positive card and trying to be above the fray, possibly, some would say, because his super-PAC doesn't have as much money as Mitt's, has said look, those are friends of Mitt's who started this thing. They're former staffers of his. It's former donors of his who are putting money into it. We don't really know all that much about who's putting money into it.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: But Newt is saying they're just trying to drive me out of the race with money.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's not going negative, but it's disgusting.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: Ask them if they run into one of these candidates to tell them they ought to be ashamed of themselves. They ought to take this junk off the air.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so he finds himself melting under this barrage of negative advertising, being outspent considerably not just by Mitt Romney's super-PAC and by Mitt Romney, but Michele Bachmann is also running negative ads against him, and there has been one persistent set of negative advertising from that other factor in the race that you mentioned, Ron Paul.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: UNDENTIFIED MAN #2: Everything that Gingrich railed against when he was in the House, he went the other way when he got paid to go the other way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: UNDENTIFIED MAN #3: He is demonstrating himself to be the very essence of a Washington insider.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: #2: It's about serial hypocrisy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that has been telling.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: That's what they call a killer ad. It started out on the Internet as a two-and-a-half-minute ad, which a lot of people downloaded and saw. But then there is a shorter television version, which I believe is what we just heard, and that is killer because so many more people will see it.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: In fact, it's being shown so often in Iowa it's difficult to imagine anyone interested at all in either politics or even watching television has managed to avoid seeing that ad in recent days, and many people in all camps are attributing the sudden drop-off in Gingrich's numbers in Iowa largely to that ad.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, you're seeing some - a lot of attacks against Newt Gingrich, some attacks against Mitt Romney, largely from Rick Perry, and then you're seeing Ron Paul attacking Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. But the one person who seems to be escaping all of the attacks is Ron Paul.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Ron Paul has been a fringe figure in the minds of most people, in the mainstream media and among the other candidates. In fact, when you ask the other candidates who do you really like on this stage or who might you want to take ideas from, they love to say, oh, Ron Paul, you know, he really stands for what he believes in - mostly because they think that overall, his views are not acceptable to the mainstream of the Republican Party.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: And while his fierce partisans, his loyalists, will always be with him, that he's not salable to the broader Republican Party, particularly on his foreign policy. And that once you get out there to independents, people are going to say whoa, cut 80 percent of the federal government, 80 percent of the federal government? Defense, Social Security, Medicare?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All aid to Israel.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: All aid to Israel. That gets a little spiky. So they don't fear Ron Paul, and that's why they haven't been doing anti-Ron Paul ads. If they could have known a few weeks ago or months ago where Ron Paul would be sitting in Iowa right now, they might have done so.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As we mentioned, Gary Johnson will no longer be running as a Republican. You might have missed that he was running at all.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: One debate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He will in fact now be running as a Libertarian. Ron Paul, interestingly, declines to rule out the possibility of a third-party candidacy.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Go back to 1988, Ron Paul was the Libertarian Party candidate for president. Then he came back to the House as a Republican later on. Look, Ron Paul is a guy who knows that he is at his maximum leverage right now. He knows that people are listening to him in a way they have not listened to him at any other point in his career, even when he did run as a third-party candidate for president.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: And he has the nation's attention. Why in the world would he want to rule out running as a third-party candidate right now? It wouldn't do him any good.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting development in the Texas senatorial contest, pretty late in the day, we thought we knew the field when, well, out of the backfield comes rumbling a surprise candidate. A mustang has entered the race.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: All right, Southern Methodist University Mustang, Craig James, who was in that famous Pony Express backfield with Eric Dickerson back in the late '70s, early '80s, had a pretty good pro career of his own, was offensive player of the year on year, I believe he was in the Pro Bowl, had quite a career. And more recently, of course, and more broadly known to people today as an ESPN college football analyst.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Craig James is a guy who is probably about as universally known in Texas as you can be without being currently playing football.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or Roger Staubach.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Or Roger Staubach, who will always be playing football in Texas, or for that matter perhaps a officeholder in Texas. He has never run for office before. So this would be his inaugural run in politics, and he's already gotten a lot of attention. Presumably he'll be able to raise a fair amount of money. This may be more of a wide-open race than we knew, or maybe he's just getting in too late.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it was interesting, Sarah Palin said this week it is not too late for folks to get into the race, unclear whether she was speaking for herself, but all of a sudden we see an editorial in the Wall Street Journal from the former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, the brother and son of a president of the United States, and all of - robocalls for Hillary Clinton.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: I'm not sure when Sarah Palin said it wasn't too late for folks to get in she was referring to Hillary, but she certainly was thinking about somebody other than herself, one assumes. If she wanted to get in, all she has to say is I don't see anybody emerging from this field who expresses everything I want in a candidate, and she has refused to endorse any of them, saying she's still thinking about which one is most reflective of her views.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: So if she wants to get in, she has a perfect entre to do so. She doesn't have to say folks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: When we come back, we'll dig into the Keystone XL Pipeline battle. What do you think? Is it about national security, jobs, the environment or just politics as usual? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. We'll be back in just 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. The Senate tossed loads of sweeteners into the payroll tax cut extension it passed last week, chief among them forcing President Barack Obama to decide on the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline within 60 days.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The president announced this fall he'd wait until after next year's elections before deciding whether to approve a pipeline that would pump oil from Canada's oil shales to the United States. It was a relatively low-key plan until environmentalists, people who the president hopes to call his own, brought it front and center to the White House.</s>UNDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) Hey, hey, ho, ho, dirty oil has got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Before those rallies were over, 1,000 people had been arrested. The issue was front and center. On the other hand, the pipeline could create thousands of jobs. It's oil from a safe ally and could potentially destabilize the environment of the states it passes through. On what basis do you judge the Keystone XL Pipeline? Is it on national security, the economy, the environment, or is this just politics?</s>Our phone number: 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. Joining us here in Studio 3A is Coral Davenport, energy and environmental reporter for the National Journal. Nice to have you with us.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Nice to be here, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, of course, guest Political Junkie Ron Elving is still with us. But Coral Davenport, what in the world does an oil pipeline have to do with the payroll tax cut extension?</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Absolutely nothing. This was thrown in as pure politics, at the end of the day. And what I think is so interesting about this issue is the Keystone Pipeline has been on the table since 2008. It was first proposed in 2008, during the Bush administration, and has been kind of a back-burner environmental issue for three years.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Environmentalists have always opposed it. The oil industry has always supported it, and most Americans didn't really know all that much about it. This year, as we started to approach an election year, environmentalists became really worked up about it. They saw that the State Department - it looked like the State Department was going to make a decision, a final decision.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The State Department's involved because the pipeline crosses a national boundary.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Right. And the State Department gets the final signoff on this. It decides whether the pipeline is in the national interests or not. And environmentalists are very, very opposed to this pipeline because it doesn't just bring conventional oil into the United States. It will open up a market for pretty much the dirtiest kind of fossil fuel that there is in the world.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: It's - the Canadian tar sands oil - you know, regular oil that we produce now contributes to global warming, but the oil that's in the Canadian tar sands is kind of special. It's in this dense, gooey mix with sand, and the only way to get it out is by using so much energy, that you create about 30 to 70 percent more global warming emissions to get it out.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: So building this pipeline, some environmentalists say, could really be a tipping point for climate change. And so environmentalists kind of geared up and got these protests going, elevated the issue and got the president's base so activated on this that they threatened to leave him. This is sort of the environmental base that, you know, knocked on doors, got people excited, you know, really brought out the vote for President Obama in 2008.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: And they said, this is it. This is the environmental issue. If you say yes to this, we will leave you. You know, we might not vote for the other guy, but all that support that we brought to you, forget it. It's gone. This is our one issue.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: And it worked. You know, it's sort of one of the few times that we really see environmentalists came together, got a single message, and it had appeared before that the State Department was going to approve the deal, and they delayed it. The environmentalists had a real success.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: So congressional Republicans saw a great opportunity to really stick it to the president by saying as soon as he delayed it by saying nope, you know, we're going to put you right back there. We're going to stick you between, you know, your base and a hard place.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And a hard place, Ron Elving, is with, well, jobs and labor unions, all of whom are, you know, the economy, the president looked...</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Exactly, exactly. It's the economy. It's the jobs. It's getting everybody back to work. That's the key to Barack Obama's success or failure in 2012.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: His polls are up a little bit because the economy is up a little bit.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Just the tiniest little move in the economy, just the tiniest little move down in the unemployment rate helps him enormously. So we have to assume that the one issue that is completely paramount in this election is that economy, and here is a symbolic moment, a totally symbolic moment because we're only talking about maybe a few hundred or a few thousand jobs at most in this connection. But it looks like the symbolic yes or no.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: And that's what's really elevated this issue from the backburner to the front lines of the political debate. Republicans hadn't paid a lot of attention to this, and then it just - the nature of the issue itself just fit so perfectly what the political narrative is going to be for 2012.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: It's about oil security. It's about the economy. And yes, it's about jobs. There's dispute over how many jobs it would create, but it's clear that the pipeline will create jobs. So Republicans love the idea of jumping on this and saying the administration - you know, this administration is saying no to a job creator and no to something that could help the economy. It's - it puts the White House in a terrible situation, politically.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, the president doesn't face this, because the House punted on that two-month extension, which would have forced it onto his plate. It's going to come back. The Republicans see this as too good an issue, Ron.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Yes, Coral's exactly right. I mean, they have not had a gift like this in some while. So they're certainly going to seize upon it. And whatever happens with the payroll tax cut extension, whatever happens with this particular episode in the struggle between the White House and the Republicans in Congress, this issue will be back, attached to something else that is similarly spiky difficult and impossible for the president to just push away.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, there is one other obstacle in the way of the pipeline, and that is Nebraska, a Republican state with a Republican governor who said wait a minute. We opposed this pipeline crossing land that - underneath which lies the Ogallala Aquifer. Say that three times fast.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Well, Ogallala is one of those words we Midwesterners love to be able to show off we can say. We don't handle some of the other Indian names quite so well. But this particular part of the world is enormously environmentally sensitive because the Ogallala is an enormous aquifer, affecting many, many, many states and many, many people's livelihoods.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: So this is not Republican-Democrat in Nebraska. This makes a certain amount of sense to them as an environmental question. But there's always the prospect of re-routing the pipeline, getting it away from Nebraska, getting the Nebraskans set to one side so that we can go back to the symbolic issue.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Coral Davenport, some say even if it's blocked in the United States, these oil sands are going to be tapped, and that oil is going to be sent - perhaps by pipeline - to the West Coast, where it can be shipped to China.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Absolutely. That part of the debate is - you know, the demand for oil globally is so great right now, that with or without this pipeline, you know, someone's going to get to that oil. One reason this source of oil that is so polluting and so expensive...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so big.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: ...and so big - has not yet been a major source of oil is because it's extremely expensive to extract. But now that we are - we've really entered the era of, you know, $100-a-barrel oil kind of as the norm, people are looking - you know, companies are looking for oil in unconventional places all over the world.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: And it's certainly - it's an appropriate argument to say with or without that pipeline, someone's going to figure out a way to get that oil.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, we want to get some listeners in on the conversation. Ron Elving, we know you have to leave us, and we thank you very much for filling in for Ken Rudin, who will be back next week as the Political Junkie goes on the road to - what's that town? Des Moines...</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Des Moines, Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...Iowa, just one week ahead of the Iowa caucuses. So, Ron, again, thanks very much, and Ken Rudin will be back next week.</s>RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Coral Davenport's going to stay with us. In the meantime: 800-989-8255. How should we see the XL Pipeline issue? We'll start with Josh, Josh with us from Yukon in Oklahoma.</s>JOSH: Yes, sir, how are you doing? Nice to meet you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for calling.</s>JOSH: Thank you. As far as the conversation goes, the pipeline, I can tell you personally I work in an oil field here in Oklahoma, and it has provided numerous jobs, not just for people I work with, but friends. And I think it's a great deal. The only problem I have with it is that I think the politics are getting too much involved with it, and - but they're also not listening to the people in Nebraska and understanding that, you know, if they didn't provide this many jobs, what about helping out some of the Nebraska people and understanding where they're coming from?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, Josh. Thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: You know, and Josh touched on something that's going to be a really big part of the 2012 campaign, generally. It's not just jobs, but this idea of energy jobs. In 2008, Obama introduced the idea of green jobs. That idea has been, you know, pretty battered, especially in the wake of the Solyndra controversy.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: But Republican candidates are really seizing on this idea of energy exploration as a jobs creator, and we're definitely going to see a lot of discussion about energy exploration and the pipeline drilling as a jobs creator.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that's also put as a political question to environmentalists who say President Obama, if you go for this, we are - you are dead to us. A, he doesn't quite believe them, but he thinks they will vote for him, if not work for him, if not fund him. But in any case, do they actually prefer a Republican president and a Republican Congress who would be on the policy of drill, baby, drill, not just the pipeline but fracking and offshore oil?</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: This is where it's interesting to see that Republicans have really gone up to the brink on this. There's this classic tension between Democratic lawmakers, Democratic presidents and environmentalists, because a Democratic president, you know, kind of knows that there, you know, he or she has to make pragmatic political decisions, and they know that there are times where they can do things that will disappoint the environmentalists. And the environmentalists aren't going to go and vote for the other guy.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: So they're always, you know, we see this administration always trying to maintain that balance. You know, we've seen this administration disappoint environmentalists on some other issues, and they know that the environmentalists will still stay with them. This is the case where all the environmentalists organized and got together and said we will abandon you. We will - you will not have our support. This is the one singular issue. And you don't usually see that. You don't usually see...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because they see if that reservoir of oil sands is burned, they say it is curtains...</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: A tipping point.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...for global warming.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Except - environmentalists do have something else to worry about, which is essentially what the administration - what President Obama has done now is he has delayed this decision. He has not denied the oil pipeline. He's delayed the decision until after the election. So if a Republican becomes president and the Republican has that decision, it's almost certain that they would go ahead and approve it. So it's all a really delicate careful game.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Matt. Matt with us from Elkhart, Indiana.</s>MATT: Hey. Thanks for having me on the air.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>MATT: I had a question mainly about if there's any public funds that would be directly or indirectly used to support the pipeline. I guess I'm mainly - my thought is that it seems sort of crazy that we can invest this kind of money, even if it's just money spent on supporting the, you know, remaking the roads that support the trucks that bring the equipment to build the pipeline when we could be investing in things like high-speed rail and all those sorts of things.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is the government supporting this? I thought it was privately funded.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: It is all privately funded. It's being built by a company called TransCanada. It is subcontract - it's contracting out to, you know, looking at subcontracting - contracting out to other companies. But there's no direct government contracting plan right now that I know of.</s>MATT: OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks, Matt.</s>MATT: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Email question from Red in Oakland. The Wall Street Journal says 20,000 jobs number comes from the pipeline company. What do they count? Is there an independent analysis of how many real long-term jobs would be created?</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Yes. That 20,000 number, which comes from the pipeline company, has been heavily disputed. There is an independent analysis by Cornell that says the number would probably be closer to 2,000 or 3,000 jobs, and that they would not be long term. They would probably be construction jobs building the pipeline itself, which would take a couple of years, and that would be the end.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Coral Davenport, energy and environment correspondent for National Journal with us here in Studio 3A. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Email question from Richard in Pennsylvania. Why don't they just build a refinery in Canada?</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Well, again, a kind of, you know, the question is, you know, bringing the oil into the U.S. and a global market. And what's interesting is - the point of the pipeline would be to bring the oil to U.S. refineries and then actually to be able to ship it out. It would be brought to Louisiana and Texas where there are refineries and there are shipping facilities. And so there's some question as to how much of that oil would actually go directly into the U.S. market, anyway, if it's kind of going directly to a transport point.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And another email, this from Nick in Vermillion, South Dakota. I live in South Dakota, and, well, not an environmental activist, I oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. All we have out here for both our agriculture and our tourism industries is our environment. When, not if, a spill happens, our environment will be contaminated. To my knowledge, there's no guarantee whatsoever the pipeline's owner would be made to ensure they can provide complete and prompt cleanup of any accidents, leaving the surrounding environment and its people in a very, very hard place indeed. People like him would point to the pipeline break in the Yellow Stone River last summer and say this kind of thing is inevitable.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Absolutely. And that's one reason why it has taken so long for the administration to get to a decision because it's been subject to many rigorous environmental reviews, economic reviews, state and local reviews. And again, there's this kind of balance that the State Department would have to make. You know, the possible threat of some local contamination or some small or medium local spill versus what would be the broader benefit for national interest or the economy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Steve. Many thousands of more jobs in solar or wind where they are needed at the point of energy use. In other words, why are we developing oil when we could be developing alternative technologies?</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: You know, something I recently learned that's very interesting is there are actually more than twice as many jobs in the renewable energy industry in the United States than there are in the fossil fuel industry. There's - according to a study by the Brookings Institution done over the summer, there are 2.7 million jobs in the United States in the renewable energy industry and only about 800,000 in coal, oil and other fossil fuel extraction; which is interesting, you know, it's surprising to, you know, understand that discrepancy in numbers. And this project is expected to bring, you know, two to 5,000 additional jobs, which is, you know, not insignificant but it's a small - it's a much smaller number than the number of jobs in the renewable energy industry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this from Stan in Geneva, New York. It's my understanding the oil from the Excel pipeline goes to Texas in order to be exported. How does exporting this oil make us less energy dependent?</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Exactly. That's one of the issues. I mean, it's not - there's no guarantee in building this pipeline that the supply actually come - will come directly to the United States. There will be new supply entering the global market, and that will be produced - you know, the demand for that supply will come from North America, potentially reduce demand from the Middle East. But, you know, the oil market is really global, and so, you know, it's not a guarantee that this will be injected directly into the U.S. market.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: And there's no guarantee whatsoever that will make any difference in oil prices or gasoline prices in the United States. All of those are influenced by global developments around the world. So all of this comes into play when you think about whether or not it's a good decision to do it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So in some ways, it's symbolic, but symbols are important.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Yes. And the fact that it's so symbolic is so clear if you look at the history, if you look at how this, you know, sat as a backburner issue until we were approaching a heavily contested presidential election. All of a sudden, you know, it became something being touted by the campaigns.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And until 1,000 protests said...</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...I'm willing to go to jail to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline. Coral Davenport, thanks very much for being with us today.</s>CORAL DAVENPORT: It's a pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Coral Davenport, energy and environment correspondent for National Journal. As we mentioned, Ken Rudin, political junkie, are on the road to Des Moines next week, so join us for that.

By tracking the blinking light of distant stars, NASA's Kepler space telescope has identified the first Earth-sized exoplanets, and another which orbits its star in the "Goldilocks zone," where liquid water—and possibly life—could exist. Principal investigator William Borucki talks about the newly discovered worlds.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you're scanning the Milky Way for life, where do you look? Well, probably someplace not too different from planet Earth, right? So you want to find a planet about the same size as Earth to increase the chance it has a rocky surface, with oceans of course rather than being a giant ball of gas like Jupiter, and it should be just the right distance from its star, in what they call the Goldilocks Zone: hot enough to have liquid water but not so hot that the surface has completely scorched.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, this month, scientists using the Kepler Space Telescope announced the discovery of exoplanets that fit into each of these categories. How long before they find Earth's twin, a planet that fits both categories? And once they do, what's the next step to investigate whether or not it might harbor life?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Here to talk about it is William Borucki. He is principal investigator for the Kepler Mission and a space scientist at the NASA-Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Hello, Ira, it's nice to be here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's talk about these three new planets, Kepler-22B, -20E and -F. What's so special about them?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Well, clearly the goal of the mission is to determine the frequency of Earth-size planets in and near the habitable zone of stars like the sun. And these are a major step toward that goal. First of all, Kepler-22B is a planet that is in the habitable zone of its star. It's the right temperature, but it's probably a little bit big. It's about 2.4 times the size of the Earth, and when we look at that, our suspicion is it probably is mostly a water planet, or maybe it has a lot of gas.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: But we don't think it's a solid, rocky planet. It's in the habitable zone. Any moons that have - which might also - would also be in the habitable zone. But the other aspect of what Kepler has found this week are two planets that are Earth-sized.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: So they are the right size, and we believe they are probably rocky, but they're too close to their star. They're too hot. So they're not in a habitable zone. So we're sort of finding planets all around the air that we want, and little by little, year after year, as Kepler gets better at this and finds more planets, we're getting closer to the major goal, Earth-sized planets in a habitable zone and in particular enough of them so that we can get an idea how frequent they are.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Are they common in the galaxy, or are they very rare? Because that's the real question, not just finding one or two but finding out are they common. If they're common, probably lots of life in our galaxy. If they're very infrequent, you know, we may be alone. So the frequency is important, and to get at the frequency, we've got to find planets in a habitable zone that are probably the size of the Earth or maybe up to twice the size of the Earth.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And we're up to, what, 2,300 exoplanets that have been found so far?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: We found some 2,326 candidates. These are stars that show us signals that look like planets. But we have to do ground-based observations to check them out, to make sure that it's not a small star crossing a big star or two stars in a background eclipsing one another.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And so of those 2,300 candidates, we've only been able to confirm 33 so far.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And I've heard that the Kepler satellite has been quoted - has been dubbed your baby. Would that be accurate?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Well, I certainly advocated it starting in 1984 and built some photometers and worked with headquarters to find a mission that we could launch. And so over the years, I and Dave Koch and several others have worked to build this mission, and we were so delighted to find in 2001 that it was accepted as a mission.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: It got launched in 2009, after a lot of work building this and testing it, and it's worked beautifully ever since.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So between 1986 and 2001, many years, you're telling me you got turned down all those times?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Well, in 1984, I wrote the first paper on what we should be able to do, and I started building some photometers to prove it could be done. The missions that would allow this Kepler to fly didn't get started until 1992. And so we proposed in '92, in '94, '96, '98, and each time they turned us down because they thought it would be too expensive, or the detectors couldn't possibly work, or no one had done photometry of tens of thousands of stars simultaneously.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And Kepler does 150,000 stars simultaneously. So we had to go through many different steps to prove that this would work before we got permission to launch.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And look what they would have missed if they hadn't launched it.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Yes, we wouldn't know anything about all these small planets. We're finding planets as small as Mars, a few that might be even smaller than Mars. We're finding, you know, thousands around all kinds of stars. So it's just been an enormous bounty of planets.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And people in the United States and people in Europe are all getting together, looking at these objects, trying to confirm them and writing lots and lots of papers. And we'll be rewriting the books on astronomy because what we've found is not what we expected.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What do you mean it's not what you expected?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Well, everyone expected that we would find small planets close to their stars and big planets further away, just like in our solar system. That's not what we find. We find lots of big planets that are close to their stars, and we find planets, you know, whole groups of planets, six planets well inside the orbit of Mercury, very, very close to their stars, very, very hot, planets that are hotter than - as hot as molten iron, for example.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: So just a huge range of planets bigger than Jupiter, planets smaller than Mars.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you find some that - some of these last two that they orbit the - they orbit their sun in, what, six days?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: That's right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And one that we found a little bit earlier called Kepler-10B orbits in less than a day, which means that if you got up in the morning, you know, it would be spring, and the trees would be blooming, and by noon it would be summer, and, you know, the leaves would be - you'd go out and pick tomatoes in the evening. Fall would occur, all the leaves would fall off, and that night it would be winter.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: So that, you know, years are one day, six days, a month. We find a huge range like that. Now, planets that close to a star of course are so hot that they couldn't possibly have life, but what I'm saying is that you have to imagine things so different on the planets that we're finding.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you imagine that from what you're finding, there's got to be some planet like ours in that Goldilocks Zone, right?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: That's right, but, you know, to be in the Goldilocks Zone, for stars like the sun, the Earth is in a habitable zone, by definition, and it takes this Earth one year to go around the sun. So that gives you a first transit, first one and second one, and every year you get another transit. We need a minimum of three times to cross the star so the star dims. And that dimming tells you how big the planet is, and the repetition tells you how far away the planet is from the star.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And that tells you whether or not it's in the habitable zone because if it's close to the star, it's too hot. So for a planet like the Earth, around a star like the sun, it takes three years for us to make the measurements we need before we say oh, this is an interesting candidate, let's see if we can prove it's a real planet.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: The spacecraft has not been operating three years yet. So those small planets at the habitable zone of the stars like the sun, you know, we will not have found yet. We're finding planets in the habitable zone, and we've found 48 candidates in the habitable zone so far, but they're stars smaller than the sun, cooler than the sun.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And so we're finding those, but they're not exactly sun-like. They're a little bit cooler and smaller. And our hope, then, is since we're finding those, and the stars aren't very much different, in the coming year or so, we'll be finding more planets like the Earth in a habitable zone of stars much more like that of the sun.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: If you're finding only planets that pass in front of their stars, so you can see the shadow from them, or - how many stars are you missing?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: That's a very good question because for us to see the transit, the planets moving between the star and ourselves, you can calculate that the chance of doing that is equal to the diameter of the star over the diameter of the orbit.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Now for the planets with periods of the order of a few days or a few weeks, that's about 10 percent. So we would miss 90 percent of such planets. But if planets are out with orbital periods closer to a year, closer to the distance from the Earth to the sun, then we miss about 99 and a half percent. So every one that we find, there must be at least 99 more out there.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And so we use that geometrical correction to say we have found a certain number, and we can predict how many are out there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how close is the closest one that might, you know, be close to an Earth-kind of planet?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Now, are you speaking of close in terms of size, temperature...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: To the Earth. I mean, how close to the Earth, the distance to the Earth?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: The distance? OK, fine. I think we have found some that are within 50 light-years.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Fifty light-years?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Yes. Now, these are planets. These are not Earth. They're just planets. But if you're saying I want to find an Earth, and I want to find it in a habitable zone, we haven't found any Earth yet in a habitable zone. We have found objects bigger than the Earth in a habitable zone, we found Earth-size too close to their stars to be in the habitable zone.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: But the stars we look at are generally - for example, Kepler-22B, the one that's in the habitable zone that we announced, that's 600 light-years away. Now, the two Earth-sized planets that we found that we announced, that's 1,000 light-years away.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: So those are - basically Kepler is a probe. It looks out into the galaxy and says what do we - what's out there? Future missions will look at just the closest stars because they'll have to look at the whole sky then. We look at just one portion, a big portion, but it's not the whole sky.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Will there be future missions?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: Oh, I'm sure there will be because...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What makes you - with the way the Congress has got budgets going these days, what makes you so sure?</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: I believe that in Europe and the United States, we'll look seriously at our problems, and we will solve them and that we will get back to a much more productive, happy time in the future.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, you know, that's optimistic, and we can certainly hope for that, but there are no plans for another Kepler on our drawing board now is what you're saying.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: We have quite a few missions that people have ideas for and have been proposing. The problem with two that come to mind immediately is something called TESS, which is a terrestrial planet-finder, which is for the nearest stars. It actually finds bigger planets than Earth, but it looks at the whole sky to see which ones have planets.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And then the Europeans have one called PLATO, which does the same thing. So each continent, basically, has ideas. But the ones that both Europeans and the people of the United States are really looking forward to are ones that look at the atmospheres of these planets because if you find that these planets have atmospheres - and we don't know that ahead of time - that's important for life.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: If the atmospheres have CO2 and water, that's important for plants. The CO2 is what they breathe, water is what they respire. So if you have plants, you could have life, and maybe the plants are building oxygen, in which case you might have even higher forms of life.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: And so these future missions are designed to find the composition of the atmospheres.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, we'll have to look forward to them, and we want to wish you good luck and thank you for coming on to talk with us today.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI: You're most welcome, my pleasure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Have a happy holiday. William Borucki is principal investigator for Kepler Mission, space scientist at NASA-Ames Research Center in Moffett Field. We're going to take a break. When we come back, the war on cancer turns 40 today. Make you feel old? Harold Varmus is here to talk about how far we've come, where we're headed. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

Cooking crystal meth is just "basic chemistry" for Walter White, the fictional chemistry teacher and anti-hero of the TV drama "Breaking Bad." Organic chemist Donna Nelson serves as science adviser to the show; she explains how the series' writers work to get the science right.

IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you haven't seen the TV show "Breaking Bad," get it on your Netflix queue because at the center of the action is Walter White. He's the show's chemistry teacher turned meth maker turned anti-hero. This month the Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, even NPR's FRESH AIR named the show as one of the top 10 TV shows of 2011.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: The show's fourth season just ended, and if you haven't seen it, you'll have a couple of months to catch up before the last season, Season 5, gets started. And if you have seen the show, you know a bit about science. You've probably been pleasantly surprised about how accurate the science is.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, that is no accident. Joining me now to talk more about it is the show's science advisor. Donna Nelson in her day job is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. She joins us from there. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Oh, thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How'd you get such a good job like that?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Oh, it's been - it's just been amazingly fun. I'm a member of the American Chemical Society, and in its magazine, the Chemical and Engineering News, there was an interview of Vince Gilligan when he had first started the television show "Breaking Bad." And in that interview, he was stating how important it was to him that he get the science right for the show.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: But he talked about how he didn't have that much of a science background, and none of his writers had an extensive science background, and so they were having to go to the Web and Wikipedia in order to get science content.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And he made a statement in that article that he would welcome constructive criticism from knowledgeable sources. And in looking at that, I realized it was organic chemistry, and I've been here, this is all I've ever done is teach organic chemistry, and I thought: I can do that. So I volunteered.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That's great. Let's play a clip from the show so people get a little bit of flavor, if they haven't seen "Breaking Bad," about what's happening there. So let me cue that up now.</s>BRYAN CRANSTON, ACTOR: (As Walter White) I know alkynes, diolefins, trienes, polyenes. The nomenclature alone is enough to make your head spin. But when you start to feel overwhelmed, and you will, just keep in mind that one element, carbon. Carbon is at the center of it all. There is no life without carbon.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Now that is the teacher, the character Walter White, played by...</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yes, by Bryan Cranston.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Bryan Cranston, and that is sort of a tame part of the program, where he's actually teaching chemistry to the class there, right?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yes, that was one of the scenes in which he was actually teaching organic chemistry to the high-schoolers, and that scene is very interesting, at least to me, because they appealed to me and said, you know, we want to teach - we want to present him teaching about alkynes to these high school students, what would be appropriate for him to say?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And they had written a few things, and there were, you know, some errors, and I mean that's really basic organic chemistry. And so I just wrote them back a little bit about the nomenclature of alkynes and, you know, tried to fill them in a little bit.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And a lot of what I said was used in that very introduction. It was really amusing to see them, you know, use the material. And at the end of that, they had said, well, is there anything that he would have written on the blackboard? And so I drew out some structures and sent them to them by email.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And I was just amazed. They drew up on the blackboard exactly what I had sent them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Of course this is a chemistry teacher who finds out that he can make a lot more money making methamphetamines using his chemistry knowledge than he can teaching school.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yes, and he's a very good organic chemist. He's an excellent organic chemist. And so he makes excellent meth. And I'm always very fast to say that that is not what we do in our labs at the University of Oklahoma or in any of our classrooms.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Are you ever fearful that he'll give away the recipe, the real way - does he ever give away the real way to chemically make meth in a lab on the show?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Oh, do they do that? Are you asking that? No, they don't. That was actually one of the concerns of a lot of people, but Vince Gilligan has been very clever. You know, there are multiple ways to make meth. And so although his scenes are very accurate, he will sort of (unintelligible) together parts of different syntheses, so that if you just simply followed the one synthesis as it's presented, you wouldn't come out with methamphetamine.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I've got another cut I want to play here that sort of gives a little bit more of the flavor of the show, when - on the darker side.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: OK.</s>BRYAN CRANSTON, ACTOR: (As Walter) They use reductive amination to yield methamphetamine, four pounds.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN, ACTOR: (As character) No pseudo?</s>BRYAN CRANSTON, ACTOR: (As Walter) No psuedo.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN, ACTOR: (As character) So you do have a plan? Yeah, Mr. White! Yes, science!</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That's one of his drug dealers telling him that he's very happy to know science because it's making him a lot of money.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yeah, yeah, and so, you know, it's a very unusual show. And when this first came about and I had to decide whether I wanted to, you know, try to assist them, originally I was thinking, well, you know, would I want to get involved in something like this?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And then after watching a few episodes of the show I realized this is not glorifying drug-making at all because he has a very hard life. You know, I mean, starting out he was in his underwear in the desert, and you know, the sand and getting scraped up, and then later he gets, you know, beat up and shot at and all sorts of fights.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And I can't imagine somebody looking at that and saying, yes, that's exactly the type of life I want to lead. So I thought, well, you know, they're going to either have a hit show with good science portrayed or with bad science portrayed. And of course for scientists, when we see science portrayed badly, you know, inaccurately on television or in the movies, it's like fingernails on the blackboard.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: So I thought, well, you know, I'll help them. And of course I can't help them on the illicit meth scenes, the illicit meth lab scenes, but they get assistance from the DEA. I'm not their only science advisor. They have many advisors, and I think I might have been the only one on the high school chemistry scenes, but they have many DEA agents helping them.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's go to a call from Mitchell(ph) in Chicago. Hi, Mitch, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>MITCHELL, CALLER: Hi, Ira. I love SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thank you. Got a question for us?</s>MITCHELL, CALLER: Yeah, actually I wanted to say I've always been interested in chemistry, ever since I was little, but when I started watching this show, I decided to go back to college to study chemistry.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow, so that was an impetus, a catalyst, as they would say in chemistry?</s>MITCHELL, CALLER: Yeah, a catalyst.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: That's actually wonderful. That's absolutely wonderful. I think that Vince Gilligan would be thrilled to know that his show is having that sort of an influence.</s>MITCHELL, CALLER: I can't wait for the next season. It's not coming soon enough.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's the last one.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thanks, Mitch.</s>MITCHELL, CALLER: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thanks for calling. Is he really concerned, the producer, is he really concerned about, you know, encouraging people to learn about chemistry on each episode? Does he have a little bit of real chemistry on it, or has that sort of gone...</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yeah, I think so, yes. He really does. And he was very concerned about getting the science right. He was. I was really delighted to see this in him because, you know, for so long there's been this sort of a myth that you can't portray good science or accurate science and actually have an interesting show.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And I think that this show proves that that is a myth. It is entirely possible to present science accurately and have a hit show. And I really hope that what he's done - and of course this has been done by other television shows, you know, "CSI," et cetera...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: "Big Bang Theory."</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: But it - I hope that it will inspire others to follow his example.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you must be sad to see it going into its last season then?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yes, you know, it's been a wonderful show, but I really do believe that others will pick up where he's left off in this one aspect.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Do you believe that science is having sort of a rebirth on - in the entertainment industry, on television, perhaps in the movies with science movies and TV shows coming out?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yeah, I think it perhaps is. I know that many of the scientists are trying to become more available now as science advisors, and the National Science Foundation is really trying hard to further this. And you know, there have been even discussions in Congress about what we need is a hit television show that portrays good science. And that's been said for a long time.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: And of course like I mentioned, there are many shows that already fill that, such as "CSI," but this is the first time that we've had one, I believe, on organic chemistry per se.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I would have never thunk it myself, being - having done so terribly in chemistry in my own lifetime, that a hit show would be based around organic chemistry.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yeah, well, I say that, you know, it's a lifetime goal trying to teach organic chemistry, to make it easy, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm ever going to achieve it in my lifetime. But we do try.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Do you use the same teaching methods that he does in front of that classroom?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: No, not really. Of course I'm teaching at the graduate level, and the chemistry that I'm teaching is more difficult. I'm teaching undergraduate and graduate both, but it's just - it's a little more advanced than what he gets into. His is really sort of a lower level. And when you get more to the higher levels, you have to teach more pattern recognition. It can't possibly be just straight memorization.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: I think the key to making it easier is the pattern recognition and, you know, relating just simple rules to be able to absorb the mass amount of material and draw patterns across the material. That's what will make it easier.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And what makes this show interesting to viewers, I guess, is that it deals with the drug world, which a lot of people know a lot about, but it uses that as, so to speak, the catalyst to talk about the science itself...</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yeah, I think that much of the science is so spectacular that to me it seemed to almost become a separate character in the show. And when I mentioned that to Vince, he said yes, that he thought that was the case. And so I don't know if he actually intended that from the beginning, but that's the way it's worked out, and I think it's wonderful.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So people would expect, like a character, it to show up every week, right? You'd tune in see what he might be talking about, what the science might be in that episode.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Yeah, a different type of science or a different little take on science or, you know, something interesting about science. I think it's been wonderful. It was just so much fun participating in this. I had a terrific time, and I would strongly recommend other scientists who are considering doing this to go ahead; it's a lot of fun.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, we'll see what happens, and do you know what happens in the fifth season yet?</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: No, I don't, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Just between us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thank you, and good luck to you. We'll - maybe we'll see you on another TV series. You never know.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Well, thanks. I mean, I would love it. It's been a terrific amount of fun. I've really enjoyed it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thank you very much, Dr. Nelson.</s>DONNA NELSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Donna Nelson in her day job is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and she joined us from Norman.

Remember those 2011 new year's resolutions? If you haven't contributed to your child's college savings plan or spent your use-it-or-lose-it flexible savings account funds, there are still a few days left to get it done. Chicago Tribune columnist John McCarron shares tips on taking care of business. Read John McCarron's Chicago Tribune column, "Take Care Of Business"

NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are just six days left before New Year's. With time running out on 2011, there are some important things to do beyond buying a new calendar or deciding on your New Year's resolution. From contributing to your 401(k) to spending use-it-or-lose-it flexible savings account money, what do you do with this last waning week? What do you accomplish before New Year's? 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: Chicago Tribune contributing columnist John McCarron joins us from his home in Evanston, Illinois, to discuss what you need to do before the beginning of 2012. Nice to have you with us today.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Well, it's good to be here. Happy Boxing Day, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Happy Boxing Day to you. What's at the top of your to-do list before the end of 2011?</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Yeah. I was looking for a column idea for today, and I'm thinking what do people want to read about the day after Christmas, and I thought, well, maybe, you know, actually it's an important week. A lot of things need to get done by the end of the week. So I threw one together with a few bullet points. I think my top one was here in Illinois, we have one of those college savings plans, those 529 program.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are in many states, yeah.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: There are, indeed, and it's - unlike some other things, they give you until the tax deadline in April. You have to make your contribution by the end of the year. So it's time to write that big check if that's how you're going to finance your child's college education.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are also some other kinds of deadlines. If you want to make a tax-deductable charitable contribution, again, you've got just six days.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: That's exactly right. And in fact the Tribune where my column appears has their own charity, so this also gives me a chance to plug that. And I had some fun with some other local grief that occurs out here in the Chicago area - maybe all your northern listeners would appreciate - that's changing the vehicle sticker on your windshield. And the city of Chicago goes June to June, so they thought they were OK. Most of the suburbs, it's January 1, like the one I live in. So there we are out there, you know, in, well, it's not too bad, but near-freezing temperatures with our Windex or nail polish remover, we're trying to (unintelligible) razorblades, so it can get bloody trying to get the old sticker off and get the new one on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are also - a suggestion you have to go on a crash diet to at least get within shouting distance of the last New Year's pledge.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Well, yeah, and it just seems so cruel that the big eating binge of the year just comes in the last 30 days, you know, somewhere between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve. It seems - that's always the hardest time for me, but I thought maybe if I'd add that old chestnut, maybe some people would take my advice.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Also a lot of people pledge come January 1 to hit the gym. By this time, 51 weeks later, some of - a few may have dropped out.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Yeah. It's kind of hard to catch up in one week, especially, as I said, if you're going to all these Christmas parties. Although I managed to throw in the column that, well, you know, everything you read about this health business isn't - we had some sort of counterintuitive studies this year that said - one of them said that salt wasn't really all that bad for you. Another one said that saturated fats really showed no higher incidence of cardiac distress. I don't know. I - my wife's a nurse, and she said no, don't listen to that. The same old rules apply.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes, indeed. You can ignore half the studies that come out touting changes to the appreciations of fat, chocolate and caffeine; these are perennial studies and just wait for the next one.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: That's right. It reminds me of that Woody Allen movie about the future where he says it turns out all the things they said were bad for you turned out to be good and vice versa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd like to hear what you think we need to get done by the end of the year, rushing toward us now. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. I'd always heard about changing the batteries in your smoke alarm on the days we change the clocks.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Well, that's a good idea too. But, you know, for one thing, you've got to change the time on the clocks, so you're busy as heck just doing that. And, you know, this week, between Christmas and New Year's, it seems to me it's just the ideal time to get all sorts of things done, like the deadlines going forward, where people who, you know, aren't on payroll deduction who basically have to withhold their own taxes and send it in, now is the time, I think, to write those four dates down on your calendar for 2012.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You don't happen to know what they are, do you?</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Oh, I do. As a matter of fact, I prepped here; they are January 15th, so that's pretty quick, April 15, June 15 and September 15.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So they hit you twice on 4/15.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: That's not fair, but it's true. Although I notice this year they give you - I think the 1040 deadline this year isn't until April 18. It seems like - Washington seems like they're doing us a favor by giving us a couple extra days.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about the tasks we need to accomplish before the end of the year. Give us a call. 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. Let's go to Teresa. Teresa, on the line with us from Boston.</s>TERESA: Hi. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm well. Thank you.</s>TERESA: That's good. I spent today - I went out to lunch with a friend who needed to use a Groupon before the end of the year, and then I went and used a LivinSocial coupon that also expires at the end of the year. So trying to get those coupons done with. You feel like you really need them when you buy them and then you don't use it for the last minute.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So would you have done this had you not had the coupon?</s>TERESA: No, no. It was sort of like, like $20 of cupcakes. I mean, I really like cupcakes, but I probably wouldn't have driven into Boston. It was just outside of the city. I probably wouldn't have driven in the day after Christmas if it wasn't for the coupons, but I wanted to use it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I can understand wanting to use it. And then you can refer back to that pledge to join the gym.</s>TERESA: Yeah, exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Teresa, thanks very much. Do you have, John McCarron, any coupons you get to use?</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Oh, yeah. You know, my wife and I are in the market for a box spring and a mattress. And we're looking at a big sale, and I think Macy's says, you know, got to be here by year's end. But I'm suspicious about those because it seems like soon as that sales expires, another one comes along. Although if you're buying for a business and it's a business expense, it's the real deal. You can't deduct it against your 2011 business income unless you get the deal done, you know, by quittin' time Friday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There's also a lot of businesses. If you don't spend whatever is in your account at the end of the fiscal year, you're not gonna get that in your budget next year.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Well, that's right. And then, you know, a lot of people too who aren't even in business have these flexible health savings accounts. And another Tribune writer, Mary Schmich, wrote a column last week about the crazy things - not so crazy, really - that people spend on towards the end of the year, you know, dental checkups and go buy an extra set of eyeglasses, new prescription or whatever. There's really quite a frenzy that goes on at the end of the year on health care.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Rob, and Rob's on the line with us from Kansas City.</s>ROB: Yes, sir. Hey, guys. Happy Boxing Day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy Boxing Day.</s>ROB: I just wanted to mention, I'm a residential energy professional working out of the KC(ph) Metroplex. And you only got six days left to purchase certain items like insulation and energy-efficient doors and things like that before you lose the chance to get the tax credit available from (unintelligible) the Department of Energy and the Energy Star programs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And these are pretty substantial energy credits, aren't they?</s>ROB: Yeah. You know, some of them are, you know, actually not nearly as good as they were last year, from the stimulus. But, you know, they're still available, where you can get up to three to 500 dollars, you know, for some insulation or some – maybe a new door or a couple new windows. You know, there are some other ones that lasts until 2016, but there are a few that are ending this year. So you know, it's just a quick Google search on the Net for tax credits for energy-efficient stuff, and it'll take you direct to the site.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John McCarron, I don't know about there in Chicago. Here in Washington, all we here on the radio is ads for insulated windows.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Well, yeah, and while you have the gentleman on, I wonder if you write up the job now and commit to it, what if you don't get the work done until February, or maybe it's some outdoor work that can't happen until Spring. Can you take the credits still?</s>ROB: Well, actually, a lot of it allows you to actually purchase the material. So even if you couldn't get the work done, you could go, you know, to Home Depot or Lowes or someplace like that and pick up some installation and then, you know, either do it yourself or have - hire a contractor after the first year and still get that tax credit, you know, to put on your 2011 return.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I think maybe if you sign a contract with the company before the start of the New Year, that should be enough too?</s>ROB: Yeah. And you know what, I'm not positive on that, but you know, there's always, you know, there's ways to do things.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Rob, thanks very much for the call. Good advice.</s>ROB: Thanks, guys.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we go next to - this is Toby. Toby with us from Chapel Hill.</s>TOBY, HOST: Hi. This year I really need to get my Christmas tree down because I never managed to get it down last year. And as I got deeper and deeper into the year, it got more and more embarrassing to family and friends, complaining that I still had my Christmas tree up. But on the upside, it was up long before theirs were this year. So that's my comment.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do you have a real tree or a plastic tree?</s>TOBY, HOST: Oh, no. It's one of those fake trees. If it was a real tree, it would have been a fire hazard. And - but I just have no storage space, so my thinking was ultimately I came down with my storage area, and I could put it in intact with the bolts and everything still on it, and then I could just take it out next year, and then save myself some time, but I just never got around the taking it down.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So pre-decorated is the idea?</s>TOBY, HOST: Exactly. And plus, you know, it kind of makes you smile when you're sitting there, it's summertime and you've got a Christmas tree standing around in the corner.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John McCarron, when do you plan to take your tree down?</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Oh, Martin Luther King Day is my drop date on that. I feel guilty if I don't get it down by King Day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Toby, thanks very much for the call.</s>TOBY, HOST: Thank you very much. Happy New Year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy New Year to you too. Let's see if we go next to - this is Francis. And Francis with us from Mount Shasta in California.</s>FRANCIS: Good morning, gentlemen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>FRANCIS: My thing for between now and New Year's is I take all the charitable deductions - I shouldn't call them deductions because I don't do deductions. But all the charities that have asked me for money through the year, I spread them out all over my kitchen table and prioritize them and decide which groups are going to get my charitable deductions. So I write Christmas checks all afternoon to the world.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're like John Beresford Tipton writing $1 million check to each?</s>FRANCIS: Well, I don't have that much money.</s>FRANCIS: Here in Northern California, retired on a pension, you haven't got that much money. But I do prioritize which organizations I think will do the most good for the most number of people, usually environmental organizations. And I just write them out a check or a membership or something like that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Greg Jeff - John McCarron, other than the - your own newspaper's charity, do you do the same thing?</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Well, I do. I usually pay by mail. I'm back in, you know, the licking stamp generation. And I put the worthy solicitations in our bill organizer. And of course at the end of the year they work their way to the fore and I sit down much as your caller. That's an excellent idea, by the way. And the one I always give a really strong look at is United Way, especially with all the cutbacks coming down at the state and national level for basic services. I think sometimes they're so familiar that we tend to look for the more exotic charities, but United Way, it seems to me, is the one that stands out as really helping people right on the street level in our communities.</s>FRANCIS: This way you can keep track of them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Francis, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it. Good luck.</s>FRANCIS: Good way to keep track of them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks.</s>FRANCIS: Bye-bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with John McCarron of the Chicago Tribune about what needs to get done before the year expires. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Amanda in Miami: Finish your Ph.D. research. What a way to end the year and get ready to write the dissertation in 2012. And this email from Jennifer in Mountain View: Trying to have a baby to qualify for the 2011 tax deduction. I hope she's pretty far along in that process. Let's go next to Sue. Sue is with us from Woodland in California.</s>SUE: Hey. How you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Very well, thanks.</s>SUE: Great. Hey, I'm going to lose a pound this week as I clean one room a day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One room a day?</s>SUE: That's right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How many rooms in your house?</s>SUE: See, today I've cleaned the pantry and my (unintelligible) filters, and I've had a carrot and three glasses of water.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A carrot and - I think you're on track.</s>SUE: I hope so.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. And just make sure you don't dip that carrot into any of the - that guacamole that you have saved leftover from the holiday party.</s>SUE: Oh, no. Good lord, no.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK, Sue.</s>SUE: Like second Christmas day, finding stuff - all the stuff I forgot I had.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: By the way, as you're changing - as you're cleaning these rooms, there's a lot of filters in various part of our houses. Is this the time of year you want to change those too?</s>SUE: Yep, changing filters and smoke alarm batteries that I was too lazy to change back in October when the clocks changed, and yeah, all that stuff.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John McCarron of the - your furnace have some filters that might need changing?</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Well, no, because we have hot water. But I have an air-conditioning filter that - I'll be probably put that off until we crank it up in June when the heat comes. But I really like the idea of that two-fer, of losing weight while you're doing home chores. I know I always - I kind of look forward to shoveling snow in the winter. I call it the Irish health club because there's no dues and no monthly minimums.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sue, by the time you're done, I suspect your vacuum cleaner may need to be cleaned too.</s>SUE: Oh, I've got too many cats and dogs. I already change it just about weekly, so too late for that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call.</s>SUE: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bye-bye. Let's see if we go next to - this is Michael. Michael with us from Honolulu.</s>MICHAEL: Yes, good morning. A couple of quick things before we get cut off. First is on that energy component. It doesn't have to be paid for. It has to be installed. If it's not installed, you don't get the credit. And second of all, on the payments of the January, April, September stuff, January is the 2011 payment. And you need to make that state payment prior to the end of the year in December in order to deduct it, even if it may not be due until January next year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It sounds like you're somewhere in the accountancy business.</s>MICHAEL: I certainly am, for almost 70 years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thanks very much for clarifying that. We appreciate the correction.</s>MICHAEL: And I'm also from Chicago originally. Thank you, John.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I bet you're having a much better time in Honolulu than...</s>MICHAEL: Hey, I'd rather live in Honolulu than Chicago, let me tell you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John, would you rather live in Honolulu than the suburbs of Chicago?</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Oh, absolutely not. I'd probably be bored in Honolulu. You know, too much good food and sunshine, I think, might be bad for you.</s>MICHAEL: Happy Christmas, gentlemen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy Christmas, Michael. Thanks very much for the phone call. And, John McCarron, thank you so much for your time today.</s>JOHN MCCARRON: Oh, thank you, Neal. It was fun being on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John McCarron, a contributing columnist at the Chicago Tribune, with us today from his home in Evanston, Illinois. Tomorrow we'll talk about nuclear power. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says U.S. plants are safe, but with public opinion mixed, their future is uncertain. Join us for that. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.