sentence1
stringlengths 15
1.2k
| sentence2
stringlengths 46
501k
|
---|---|
Arab League observers arrived in Syria Monday, prompting a tentative calm between anti-government protestors and security forces. But many Syrians are skeptical that the monitors can permanently quell the unrest. Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy at the American University in Beirut | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This week, Arab League observers entered Syria to monitor the government's pledge to end the crackdown on protesters and withdraw armed forces from besieged cities. Many in the opposition say the monitors will operate under the government's thumb and that the entire exercise is just a show designed to prop up a regime that's already lost its legitimacy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd like to hear from you if this is a credibility test. What will it take for the Arab monitors and indeed the Syrian government to pass? 800-989-8225. 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: Rami Khouri joins us now to talk about the Arab League observers. He's director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and joins us from his home in Beirut. Rami, always good to have you on the program.</s>RAMI KHOURI: Thank you. Glad to be with you again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thousands of protesters gathered earlier today as Arab League observers entered the crucial city of Homs, where so much fighting has under - has gone under way. And there are reports that the Syrian government pulled its armored columns out of that city just in advance of that, yet tear gas filled the city today.</s>RAMI KHOURI: Yes, the reports that are coming out of Syria today from various sources are a little bit conflicting, but what seems to be happening is that this is just the first day, so things may change. But it seems that where the observers or the monitors are going - they went to five cities today, five teams of 10 people each. And in Homs and in other places, what seems to be happening is as they go to a neighborhood, the government forces that may be there pull out. And then - or there's a very few of them left, and they observe the monitors go in and they take a look, and then the monitors leave and things can change.</s>RAMI KHOURI: So the monitors are going to certain spots in certain cities observing. They're monitors. That's all they are. They're not a fact-finding mission. They're not an investigating mission. They just go and look, and they're supposed to verify if the Syrian government is complying with terms of the agreement that the Arab League and the Syrian government signed, which calls on the government to pull its troops out of the center of the cities and release prisoners and stop using military force against peaceful demonstrators. So it's really going to be hard to see if the monitors can really be everywhere at once. There's demonstrations all over the country, and the first day really was rather mixed in the verdict that we saw.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The monitors are according to that agreement are supposed to be - go wherever they want, whenever they want, yet, of course, they are also reliant on the Syrian government for their own security and for transportation.</s>RAMI KHOURI: Right. And this is again part of the reason why many people are skeptical about this whole operation. They can go wherever they want. In some cases, they get somewhere and it might be a dangerous place. There might be some shooting. The government is giving them transport. You might tell them this isn't a good place to go now, so we have to just give this is a little bit more time. It's only been going on for one day to be fair to everybody. But the whole operation is one that the Arab League feels has some diplomatic importance, but many of the people on the opposition in Syria and elsewhere are quite skeptical about it.</s>RAMI KHOURI: And the people on the ground, obviously, want the monitors to come in and do their job because the people demonstrating on the ground peacefully, those who are peaceful, which is the overwhelming majority it seems, want the monitors there because the monitors provide a little bit of protection they feel and will be able to report back and say, well, here's what we saw. But there's a tug of war going on between the government of Syria and the demonstrators, each of which wants these monitors to play a slightly different role.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is there any indication the monitors might go to a place like Homs and stay there for a little while?</s>RAMI KHOURI: Oh, yes, and for sure they will. In fact, today, I think the group that went to Homs, the leader of the group went back to Damascus, but members - other members of the group stayed in Homs. And the - I think the plan is that there will eventually be 500 monitors. There's only 50 now in the country, and over the next week or 10 days, they'll build up to about 500. And that should give them a lot more coverage in the country.</s>RAMI KHOURI: The real question that most people are asking is, will this lead - it'll probably lead to a slight toning down of the violence, but will it lead to a serious political process that might bring an end to both the massive demonstrations and the government using violence against the demonstrators? And there are people who are fighting against the government, and shooting and killing government forces, small numbers here and there. But there are certainly are some of those. It's clear.</s>RAMI KHOURI: Will this whole process come to an end and shift into a diplomatic or political negotiation to end this crisis and perhaps turn the page in Syria and move to a different political system. Most people are pretty skeptical about that, but we just have to wait and see. Nobody can tell how these things will go. It really depends on how the Syrian government and Bashar al-Assad and the group of people around him who run the country, how they analyze their situation.</s>RAMI KHOURI: If they feel they can ride this out and put down the protests, they'll just keep doing what they're doing. If they feel that they're really cornered and their days are up, then they might possibly shift into a diplomatic strategy, if there's still a chance to do that. Nobody knows.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The opposition has a vote in this too. Is there any indication that as the monitors arrive and spread out through the country, they will step up their peaceful protests as a way of forcing the government's hand?</s>RAMI KHOURI: Oh, I think there's no doubt that that will continue. And there's been, you know, new developments in the last two months or so, which is you've got some numbers of soldiers - it's hard to tell how many. Some people say 20,000. Some people say five to 10,000. But a good number of people have defected from the Syrian military, and some of them have now joined the Free Syrian Army that is fighting against the Syrian government and military. And it's possible that you might get an end to that kind of military resistance, but peaceful demonstrations, I think, will certainly continue. And as long as they're peaceful, I think that they will keep growing.</s>RAMI KHOURI: And there's no doubt that huge numbers of people in Syria that are critical of the government and want it to leave. And it's important to note the escalating nature of this process over the last seven to eight months or so, that initial demonstrators back in March and April were saying we want reform. And then they started saying, we want the government to fall. And then they were saying recently, we want the president to be put on trial. Or we want the president to be shot or killed or put to death.</s>RAMI KHOURI: And escalating demands over time in line with the escalating violence has been used against the demonstrators and the deterioration of the whole situation because in some places in Syria, you're starting to get very dangerous signs of people killing each other based on their ethnic or sectarian identification. And the fear is that you'll end up with a big civil war. I don't think that's going to happen myself, but this is a fear that many people talk about. So this is an escalating process.</s>RAMI KHOURI: It's been escalating for months and months. And there's no way that it's just going to quiet down. People don't expect this to be resolved quickly through political means. But the monitors represent an important step here with the Arab League stepping in diplomatically and taking this first step. The more important thing about the monitors is that they are part of a diplomatic process that the Arab League initiated about two months ago, which also said if this agreement is not implemented to stop the violence and shift to the political course, then the Arab League will ask for other things to happen, like perhaps calling an international assistance or going to the International Criminal Court or going to the U.N. or something like that. So this is part of a longer term process.</s>RAMI KHOURI: And you have - also, today and the last few days, you have people in Homs, in Idlib and other cities in Syria, demonstrators asking for international protection, more than just the monitors. They want international protection. So there is a continued escalation of the conflict and the various political and diplomatic dimensions of it as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, also editor-at-large for the Beirut-based Daily Star. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR news.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let me ask you about another development. Twin car bombs exploded last week in Damascus outside the intelligence building: 40 people killed, over 100 injured. The Syrian government says terrorists associated with the opposition did it. Others say the government did it itself. Any resolution to that? That seems to be a very serious escalation no matter who did it.</s>RAMI KHOURI: Well, definitely, it's a serious escalation. And the real sad part of it, besides the people being killed and injured, is that there are three or four plausible candidates that you could say did this. And this is one of the great tragedies of the modernized world, that a great city and a great culture like Syria or Damascus has been relegated to this situation where massive bombings and large numbers of people killed and injured happen and nobody knows who did it, and different people are plausible candidates.</s>RAMI KHOURI: I, personally - I have a hard time thinking the government did it because if it was the government, they certainly wouldn't bomb their own security services. They might bomb something else. But it's hard to see the government. The government says al-Qaida-type people did it, and they accuse terrorist of being among the demonstrators. The - many in the opposition say the government did it.</s>RAMI KHOURI: It could be perhaps government security people who were leaving, who were defecting and turning against the government. There's all kinds of possibilities, and we just have to, again, wait and see if history gives us some answers to these things. And, unfortunately, situations like this in the Arab world often go unanswered, unexplained.</s>RAMI KHOURI: They certainly wouldn't bomb their own security services. They might bomb something else. But it's hard to see the government - this government says (unintelligible) people but it - and they accused terrorist of being among the demonstrators. The - many in the oppositions say the government did it. It could be perhaps government security people who were leaving, who were defecting and turning against the government. There's all kinds of possibilities and we just have to, again, wait and see if history gives us some answers to these things. And, unfortunately, situations like this in the Arab World often go unanswered, unexplained.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is there something - any one thing you're looking at to see whether the mission of these Arab monitors - Arab League monitors is going to be credible?</s>RAMI KHOURI: Yes. I will - personally, I would be looking at - if there are Syrian troops that withdraw from the center of the cities, which is part of the agreement with the Arab League, if they actually stay out of the center of the cities, or if they just withdraw when the monitors are there, and then when the monitors leave they go back, then we're talking about a very unserious process. There's another thing to look for, which is if the government troops pull out and the demonstrators continue to demonstrate peacefully, will there be other people who then go and shoot the demonstrators, plain-clothed people or thugs that are working against the demonstrators for the government, which is the accusation that the demonstrators make?</s>RAMI KHOURI: We have to see these things as they occur. In other words, is there a real winding down of the military part of this conflict and a shift into a political phase? Or are we just seeing a transition from one kind of fighting to another kind of fighting? But I think the presence of the tanks and the troops in the middle of the cities is probably the easiest first sign to look out for.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rami Khouri, thanks as always for your time.</s>RAMI KHOURI: Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Rami Khouri, again, director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Tomorrow, we'll be in Des Moines. Join us for a conversation about kids and agricultural work. The Labor Department wants to ban kids from doing some of the more dangerous jobs which some farmers fear will threaten their way of life. Join us for that. This is the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. |
Using Google Earth, military blog posts and open-source documents, Georgetown University professor Phillip Karber and a team of students have uncovered new information about the tunnel complex China uses to hide and transport its nuclear missiles. The team's conclusions have stirred heated debate within the intelligence and arms control communities. Read a Washington Post story about the Georgetown University team's findings. | Imagine getting this class assignment in college: Use Google Earth, a few thousand military documents and a couple of TV shows to find out what you can about a major power's nuclear weapons arsenal - oh, and you have to translate all that stuff from Chinese. Three years after Georgetown University professor Phillip Karber assigned that homework, his research team of students pieced together a report that shines new light into the massive tunnel complex that China uses to hide and transport its nuclear missiles and provoked a sometimes outraged-debate about the possible size of China's arsenal. Former Pentagon official and now Georgetown professor Phillip Karber joins us here in Studio 3A. Nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>Imagine getting this class assignment in college: DR. PHILLIP KARBER: Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I gather this all began in an odd sort of way with the earthquake in China in 2008.</s>KARBER: It did. I was on a defense panel, and the chairman of that panel had seen some reports that suggested a nuclear weapon might have gone off or certainly there were a lot of cave-ins that would have affected China's nuclear arsenal related to Szechuan. The area where the earthquake occurred was - the epicenter of it was - would be like happening in Los Alamos for the United States because it was the center of their nuclear research. And tragic, I mean, a number of the people lost their kids in those schools...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure. Yeah.</s>KARBER: So they knew that I had an arms control class focused on Asia, and we've been looking at a number of issues related to Asian military issues and how to get it constrained. And so I said, hey, how about having your students take a look at it, so we started looking at it. And we didn't - what we found on the Szechuan was - what we concluded conclusively: A nuclear weapon had not gone off. There was clearly a lot of security and concern about radiation and stuff, so there was probably some kind of problem. But we were really not able to have anything conclusive. But in the course of that, we started tripping over a lot of Chinese documentaries and video showing the work they were doing on their missile forces and building a huge complex of tunnels.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, we are familiar with nuclear missiles being stored underground - silos in North Dakota, silos in Novosibirsk, among other places. This is something on a different order.</s>KARBER: Yeah, what the Chinese did and have been doing for, actually, several decades is instead of going vertically down, and so you can actually see the hole from Earth and having one location, they went horizontal. And you would - and they would build literally a complex, a honeycomb of tunnels underground - they have described this - a typical complex as having 10 kilometers of tunnels and about 10 - and about one opening for every kilometer.</s>KARBER: So you're in this honeycomb network of tunnels, and the missile hides in there. And it can go out. It can fire. And they can drive back in - rearm, refuel, reconstitute the force and go out another tunnel or go from one tunnel complex to another.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So this is not just a few of these. This is 3,000 miles...</s>KARBER: Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...of tunnels.</s>KARBER: We've been doing the work for about 15 months. We're just wrapping up. And we thought we had an interesting story but with a lot of - a lot more questions than answers. And on the 11th of December 2009, the Chinese publicly announced that they had been spending the last 25 years, since 1985, and had built 5,000 kilometers or 3,000 miles of tunnels. And we - you could have picked me up off of a floor.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Your jaw at least.</s>KARBER: Yeah. Absolutely.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, first of all, that can, you know, that suggests a lot of things. For example, there is one particular unit in China that is in charge of all of their nuclear missiles, particularly the long-range ones.</s>KARBER: They have an organization called the Second Artillery, which is kind of a weird name because you've got a second, why would you call it second?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And why would you call it artillery? Well, missiles - kind of artillery.</s>KARBER: What was interesting, Zhou En Lai personally named it, so that an outsider, you know, and for 15 years - for its very first 15 years of its existence, it was top secret. The name itself was chosen so that people couldn't figure out that this was really the missile force. But this is their - China's strategic rocket force, like our SAC or the Russian strategic rocket force. And they're also in charge of not only the missiles, but they're in charge of the country's nuclear weapons. So it's a relatively large organization.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So they'd be in charge of even the ones on their submarines, for example.</s>KARBER: It's not clear whether they're in charge of the naval ones. That is frankly ambiguous, but they are in charge of the air force ones. But they don't - they're not the only ones doing tunnels. They're the only ones who do tunnels for the missiles and the nuclear weapons. There's more tunneling going on in China, both civil and military, than every place else in the world combined today. It's - there's a lot of highway construction, railroad construction, the air force, the people's armed police, everybody is building tunnels.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, one reason is they looked at the results of the war that NATO waged in Kosovo, also in Serbia, and said, that's interesting. First, the United States and its allies have tremendous air power and very accurate too. But when the Serbs hid stuff underground, it didn't get hit.</s>KARBER: Yeah, exactly. The spent a lot of time studying that. And by the way, our report was intended to not raise the question - not to demonize the Chinese for building tunnels. Our interest was from arms control perspective. If you're building these tunnels, then that raises - it challenges certain things that we've had in terms of how you get negotiated constraint the future. And so that was really our focus. It's become somewhat controversial, but I tried to insist that, really, our focus is not to demonize anybody, but rather say, OK, how do we get in a negotiation and then sort of think about having a mutually negotiated constraint?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because, for example, Russia's missiles, going back to the days of the Soviet Union, and American missiles are - everybody knows where they are. There's a degree of transparency. All of this had been negotiated in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. So those silos have caps on them. People understand what's beneath that cap, that sort of thing.</s>KARBER: Here's – give you how serious this is, we and the Russians are in the INF Treaty in which we abolished an entire class of tactical and intermediate-range missiles. The Chinese now have 1,500 of those missiles. We and the Russians have zero. The Chinese are adding about 100 missiles per year. These are tactical theater missiles, both conventional and nuclear. In the end, we and the Russians cannot stay in that zero treaty. Either we're going to get the Chinese in, or we're going to get out. One way or the other. So...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, some people might say, what difference does it make if the United States has 5,000 warheads and the Russians have 8,000 warheads and the Chinese have 400?</s>KARBER: It isn't the warheads, in terms of the INF Treaty.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah.</s>KARBER: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, none of these countries have any missile protection or their own missiles, nor do we have missiles that would respond. So what happens if somebody has...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure we do. They're in Minot, South Dakota.</s>KARBER: No. These are - those are ICBMs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes. But if the Chinese dropped a nuclear weapon on Tokyo, we would respond, no?</s>KARBER: No. Because what's interesting is - what makes it challenging is that these are dual-capable missiles. So these 1,500 missiles can attack, conventionally, airfields. They can be - now, a new class can attack aircraft carriers or large ships. So the danger to people living on the periphery of China is that this huge imbalance then can be used offensively. So they then look to us and ask for protection. We say, oh yeah. We'll - in the old days, we'll just reinforce with our air force or we'd send an aircraft carrier. Well, so now, wait a minute. These things can take out an airbase. They can take out Guam. They can sink an aircraft carrier or may in these couple of years. So all of the sudden this becomes a very unstable issue, very much like the INF debate in Europe in the mid-'80s.</s>KARBER: So our argument is that - and these missiles are hidden in tunnels, and we see them move out. They will deploy from one tunnel complex, practice firing, and then they move to another tunnel complex, reload and shoot again. So our - from an arms control perspective, you'd like to say, OK. Let's kind of get this under control. It's better off to get you guys in the treaty than us and the Russians to break out of it and try to respond.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, it's interesting you say it from arms - some of your bitterest critics are in the arms control community.</s>KARBER: Sure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is based on a calculation that you made in the study that there could be - could be - as many as 3,000 Chinese warheads (unintelligible) the - that's roughly 10 times more than what the generally accepted number is.</s>KARBER: And let me emphasize. I said it and every reporter has asked: I don't know how many nuclear weapons China has and I don't claim I do. OK? If you look at the tunnel complex, I would argue that no one else, unless they have some top, top secret paper or talked to a Chinese general on the outside knows either. There's a huge complex. So the question is, what's in it? Now, it's interesting. The Chinese - if you look at the Chinese writings, they talk about having a safe distance between missiles of approximately a mile when they're in the tunnel complex. So if you said, oh, there was one mile between missiles, and I got 3,000 miles of missiles - 3,000 miles of tunnels, then that does raise the question of whether there would be a larger number than we have seen or believe.</s>KARBER: My own personal belief is they have a lot of reloads. That is that you have a missile launcher and that same missile launcher - just like us and the Russians in the old Cold War - one launcher could fire several conventional missiles. It could also fire several nuclear missiles. And that's - and it's that uncertainty, that question that then - and it's not going to go away. I mean, people can yell at me and they have, but it's only going to get worse as China builds up its force and more attention is given to the tunnels. So we're going to have to get into a negotiation with them and say, OK, guys, you know, do you really want to pursue this? What can we do to constrain it? What can we do have better confidence? And I'm sure they're going to ask stuff of us, so we ought to be willing to offer stuff to them as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Phillip Karber, government professor at Georgetown University, who led a team that researched underground tunnels where China hides its nuclear weapons. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, coming to you from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But you've been around this business for a long time. A report like this will have consequences. There will be people who say, wait a minute. We are basing our estimates on China's nuclear arsenal on old theories. They could have, according to this report, as many as 3,000. Therefore, we should not cut the number of American missiles. And they're going to wave this report in their hands.</s>KARBER: That's true. There's that effect, and there's also the effect of people who have built a host of assumptions about what the Chinese have. One of the arguments that they have such as small stockpile is the argument that they haven't produced enough fissile material.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Plutonium or highly-enriched uranium.</s>KARBER: If you look at that - those assumptions, those assumptions assume that they stopped producing in 1991, and in the last 20 years have not produced any enriched-uranium. Those assumptions assume that the Chinese have produced a small amount of plutonium for their military but have not converted any civilian plutonium of which they have - should have a lot, given all the civilian reactors. Not one ounce of that has been converted to the military, and yet you can't account for where it is. So - and I'm not saying they have. I'm not saying they have anymore warheads than the minimum. But the evidence is a lot more ambiguous than it is commonly portrayed. So - and my argument is, we ought to be engaging them and trying to get them to be a little more explicit.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As you know, your critics say, some of those estimates you used were based on long debunked Web postings, some, in fact, based on an estimate by an American Naval aide back, I think, about 30 years ago.</s>KARBER: There's a whole bunch of estimates. So these are sort of - I think, frankly, that specific argument is very much of a cheap shot and sort of (unintelligible), but so let me sort of address it. If you go back to early 1990s, the National Resources Defense Council produced a great book. I actually wrote a very positive review of it on Chinese, British and French nuclear forces. And in that book, they said, oh, they could have around 700 in their inventory. The leading Chinese - the leading scholar on China's nuclear development, John Lewis, said about the same time they had as many nuclear weapons - that he had been told by the Chinese - has many nuclear weapons as both the French and the British combined.</s>KARBER: The Russian general staff in 1995 published a report that said they had 2,000 nuclear weapons. And the Russians know them better than just about anybody because they gave them much of the technology for their reactors, and they've been targeting them. So there's - so 15 to 20 years ago, people were talking about a force that was anywhere from twice to five times larger than the number we currently have, we currently estimate. So it's not unnatural to ask, what happened to those warheads? Were those estimates...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If they ever existed.</s>KARBER: If they ever existed, were the estimates off? Or where they old warheads maybe for aircraft, and they've re-mined them, which is very possible. But we're not accounting for it. And that's a legitimate question that needs to be addressed and not just treated as a demagogic issue. Again, I'm not making a claim, and certainly our research didn't say, oh, you know, yes, there's these all these weapons. But it is not illegitimate to go through and address various estimates.</s>KARBER: And by the way, the number that's sort of contentious, this 2,350, is the number that's used on Chinese - China's mainline encyclopedia or the online encyclopedia, which would be like their Wikipedia. It's called Baidu. And there's a big article on the underground works, on the underground tunnels that they have now put out. And guess what? In the middle of that article, it says, oh, we have 2,350 warheads. Again, I'm not saying that that's right. But it's not illegitimate to at least raise the question, hey, there's a whole bunch of estimates. We're probably not going to get the answer.</s>KARBER: One of the things we found, Neal, that's really interesting is the Chinese had built a nuclear reactor, 21 kilometers of tunnels under a mountain. We knew nothing about it. It sat there for 25 years unused. It was called the Strategic Reserve Reactor. This is (unintelligible). This reactor was to be used only if - after a nuclear war started so that the - so if the other reactors had been taken out, they could produce new nuclear weapons. So you have this entire reactor complex designed specifically to build warheads underground for 25 years that we didn't know anything about until they went public about it.</s>KARBER: So it is not unreasonable to say, hey, there's a lot of stuff buried. There's a lot of questions. We're not going to be the last people to raise these. And we raised them in an arms control perspective. Others are going to raise it in terms of, oh, we're doing a build up or so forth. So I think the student research is responsible in the sense of raising this issue, and then people can sit down and discuss it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One of the sources they used - your students - was a couple of Chinese TV shows. The equivalent of...</s>KARBER: Yes, yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...researched via looking at "24."</s>KARBER: These were awesome. These were - I call it the equivalent of "The Good Wife." The Strategic Rocket Forces, China's Strategic Rocket Forces, they have their own television studio. They had a Chinese general who's a major general, who is a television director, award-winning director. He produced - he wears a uniform. He produced in the Second Artillery two major TV docudramas. They went for about 24 weeks. One was in 2004 and one was in 2008. We found the 2008 one right after the Szechuan. They play once a week. Everybody gets their popcorn and sits down and they - and both of these are extremely accurate in terms of the uniforms, the details. And guess what? There were tunnels all over them.</s>KARBER: It actually helped us understand things that we would see in the writing in the military literature that we weren't quite sure how they were handling it, so they were insightful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Phillip Karber, a professor at Georgetown University. Thanks very much for coming in today. Appreciate it.</s>KARBER: Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tomorrow, it's TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. The war on cancer turns 40 this month. Join Ira Flatow for a conversation about how far we've come. We'll see you again on Monday. Merry Christmas, everybody. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. |
The New Year inspires many people to start fresh. Some vow to exercise more or quit smoking, others clean house or meditate. And we do it again and again, year after year. Astrophysicist Adam Frank explains the role that cycles — natural and arbitrary — play in our lives, and how technology has altered those cycles over time. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Today, we mark the winter solstice, in three days, one of the major holidays of the religious calendar, followed by an entirely arbitrary start of the New Year. All of us observe cycles, patterns that regulate our lives from season to season, or Olympiad to Olympiad, or the return of the 17-year cicadas. Some, like the solstice, are dictated by celestial mechanics. Others - well, we've simply invented: spring cleaning, for example, or spring training. What's the cycle you live your life by?</s>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. Adam Frank joins us from member station WXXI in Rochester, New York. He's co-founder of and contributor to NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, and a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. Nice to have you with us again, and happy solstice.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And who decided every year ends on December 31st?</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Yeah. Well, that actually is associated, obviously, with the - first, the Julian calendar, which was set up by Julius Caesar. And then we kept that with a - there was a major revision of the calendar in the 1500s by the Gregorian calendar, Pope Gregory XIII. But it is sort of very arbitrary. And I've always thought that New Year's is kind of a stupid holiday in some sense, because it's not tied to really anything other than the arbitrary whims of calendar-making. And, in fact, I actually locked myself in a bathroom one time at a New Year's Eve party to protest the arbitrariness of it, as an astronomer. And, of course, my girlfriend was very, very angry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I can understand. There are other rituals that are supposed to accompany the moment. But in any case, calendars - not just the Julian and Gregorian calendars, as you point out - a lot of cultures have calendars, and they mark time in different ways.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Well, the interesting thing about calendars - if you look, you know, if you really wind the clock back to prehistory, is that before there were even calendars, certainly, humanity has always been very closely tied - our cultural rituals were very closely tied to the cycles that nature imposes upon us. There's the, obviously, the day, the month, you know, the round of the lunar cycle, also tied to women's - the menses - and then, of course, the year.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: And it wasn't really until we became a more complex culture, really, you know, around 4,000 years ago, the beginning of urban, you know, building urban empires, that calendars came into play - before that, people, in particular the solstice or the equinox, very important to early cultures. But the calendar was something that was really a political and religious creation. It was needed by people because you wanted to mark off the ruler's birthday or the day that he ascended to the throne. So - but before that, we were really always tied - and still are, even if we don't really recall it - really very much tied to the astronomical cycles.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so, yes, it was springtime to plant, maybe. But whether that was a Friday or a Monday, who cared?</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Right. Exactly. I mean, what, really, people needed to watch for were the natural signals of watching where the sun rose every day on the horizon. And, of course, the solstice, the winter solstice is when the sun reaches its southernmost point and begins now marching northward, which also means it's going to be higher in the sky each day and the season - the days are going to be longer and warmer. And so it's no surprise, in some sense, that so many things cluster - like Christmas or New Years - cluster around the winter solstice because that really was, you know, going far enough back, that was the cycle.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: That was the main cycle we needed to mark both, you know, in our spiritual and mythic connection to the world, and also, you know, needing to plant crops at the right time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It might be apocryphal, but I had read that Christmas - four days, usually, after the solstice - was the first time, using old instruments, you could tell the days were actually getting longer.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Yeah, something along those lines. I mean, many people think that Christmas was really originally tied to the Roman celebration for the solstice, the, you know, the sun unbowed - that's one translation of it - which was, you know, the Roman representation of the fact that the sun was returning in its might, and that the early Christians sort of tied Christ's birthday to that, because it was already a celebration.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, then we get to the Middle Ages, and still no accurate way to tell time, among other things.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Well, the interesting thing is, you know, we sort of think - you know, we count years now, right - our cycle, our New Years counts off - you know, the calendar turns, and it's another year. You have 2011, 2012. But really, that didn't - you know, even in the Middle Ages, people weren't counting from Christ's birthday. In general, people were always counting from some important person's political date, the date - as what we've talked about, the date when, you know, the ruler ascended to the throne.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: And even though the idea of counting from Christ's birthday started sometime right in the fifth or sixth century with one particular monk who was tasked with it, for a long period of time, it was forgotten. It really wasn't until the 1700s again that people began sort of counting years off from, you know, from Christ's birthday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, wait a minute. Wasn't there a big kerfuffle around the first millennium, the millennium that was supposed to be the end of the world?</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Right. But that was actually - and that's an interesting point. So it's really, you know, it was a smaller group. I mean, people, you know, people knew about this day, because it went back to - Dennis the Little was his name, in around 523, was, you know, the first guy who sort of said, look, you can count from Christ's birthday, rather than the local emperor. So people knew that it was there, but most of the society really wasn't paying attention to it. So that millennium thing is very interesting, right, because you actually see - one strange thing about our lives is that our lives are linear. We're born, and then we die. It's a journey from birth to death, and yet we have these cycles imposed on us, right, by the world.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: And in our calendars, even though calendars are arbitrary, whenever we reach special numbers - like a century or a millennium - we suddenly get this idea that, oh, the world's going to end, right? And that is, in some sense, almost echoes what's happening in our lives, because our lives do end. So we see - even though we're embedded in these cycles, we still want to impose some kind of ending at special times.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we get some callers in on the conversation. Arbitrary or natural, what is the cycle that determines your life? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. Joe(ph) is on the line with us from Parker, in Colorado.</s>JOE: Hi. I live my life by the Wisconsin Badger Football season, which begins in the fall and, you know, then I get lost after the Rose Bowl. And then I live that, in that sort of state of being lost a little bit until it's sunscreen season, in the summer. In Colorado, you just have to slather all the sunscreen on. Those are the seasons in - that I experience in my life.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I gather it is not sunscreen season today in Colorado.</s>JOE: You know, hardcore sunscreen people say you it's always sunscreen.</s>JOE: We have, like, 18 inches of snow. The sun is not out today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, hunker down and listen to the radio, OK?</s>JOE: There you go.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: You know, what's interesting is that the Romans for a while didn't count on January and February. They had 10 months in their year. And they knew full well there were more days, but there was no reason to count, essentially, because nothing was going on, and you weren't planting anything. So in some sense, you're living - you're recouping that idea that basically, in between, you know, your favorite sports team season or the summer, there's nothing to do, so why even bother counting?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Christina's on the line with us from Stockton, California.</s>CHRISTINA: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi. You're on the air. Go ahead, please.</s>CHRISTINA: I live in San Joaquin County, which is the largest producing vegetable county in California, and we follow the farmer's market pattern. We try to buy our produce and vegetables as close to home as we possibly can, which means that most of our vegetables and fruit come from at least 10 miles or less. But...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Christina, what are you eating right now? What's at the farmer's market?</s>CHRISTINA: There's a lot of squash at the farmer's market, which...</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Fruit, vegetables and things.</s>CHRISTINA: ...I personally don't care for.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, me neither.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Me neither.</s>CHRISTINA: So it's harder to get a lot of the different fruits that, like, my kids would eat. But I've got a daughter who's a citrus fan, so oranges are in season right now. So we're eating a lot of citrus dishes, a lot of fruit salads with different kinds of, you know, oranges and the tangerines and that type of thing. A lot of lemons are in season.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: The clementines, right?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Absolutely. Clementines, that's the Christmas present. Christina...</s>CHRISTINA: Right.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...this is one of the...</s>CHRISTINA: She's actually - she's getting one of those in her stocking.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, we're not going to give it away. Christina, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it. But, Adam Frank, this is, perhaps, the oldest of cycles.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: I think - and that's a fascinating point for the - for all of us to consider, because one of the most interesting things that happened to us over the last 200 years is that with the birth of the industrial economy and, you know, having all these cheap energy to, you know, keep our cities lit 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is that we really were removed from those - that most fundamental cycle of where does your food come, and when do you get it, right?</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: You know, when you can go get your, you know, your eggs any time of day, then you've sort of been lifted out of this very essential connection between you and the world, where it used to be that market day - the market was only open at certain times, and often the market was only open certain days.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's go a little bit further back, Adam. Hunter-gatherers, we have to follow the herds.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Right, exactly. That fundamental connection that human beings - which is built into our genes, into the connection with the world cycles. We have been lifted out of those in the last 100 years in the petro-economy. And, you know, it's - in many ways, I think, it's been to our detriment. I mean, the convenience is wonderful. But really, how many people, if you go on to your supermarket, who do you know there? Do you know the green grocer? Do you know the guy who gives you the meat? Whereas if you go to a farmer's market, as part of this ritual of attending the market, you know, you end up kind of knowing the guy that you're getting the meat from.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As a Jewish educator - writes Dan in Napa, California - much of my life was lived according to two harvest-based calendars: the Hebrew calendar and the school year, often leading to a lot happening all at once in the fall. And we forget. Yes, of course, the school year is an agricultural calendar.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Right. And that's a very - you know, and it's an agricultural calendar imposed on top of an industrial model, right, because we needed the kids to be schooled in a very particular way. You think about cycles for, you know, an industrial model, and yet, still, you know, some fraction of them needed to be - needed to leave for the harvest. And, of course, now, what's happened is that very few people are involved in agriculture anymore. And so there's lots of people asking: Do we still need that cycle?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, here's an email from Jim: the start of the NBA season. So it was seriously messed with this year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He's a San Antonio Spurs fan. Good luck to him in the last year, therefore, the big possibility. We're talking with Adam Frank, co-founder and contributor of NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, about the cycles of our lives. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. And this is Ted. Ted's on the line with us from Cincinnati.</s>TED: Hi, there. This may sound a bit strange, but the cycle I have in mind is the sunspot cycle.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Good astronomical cycle.</s>TED: Yeah. I hung around radio and shortwave-listening such for a good big part of my younger life. I didn't get my ham radio licensed until I was about 22. But I have found that - well, I should explain for those who might not know that when there are more sunspots, it's more easy for you to communicate across shortwave with multiple bounces to far away places. And where there are fewer sunspots, it's harder to talk to people in far away places.</s>TED: And I found that, unfortunately, in my life, typically, when the sunspot cycle has been at its highest, I've been wrapped up in family affairs or business affairs or whatever. One time I was studying for my PhD and, of course, couldn't play radio. So I've missed a number of the last sunspot cycles, and the one that we are in now is supposed to be a late one and a down one. And I'm feeling very frustrated about not being able to participate in something that some of my mates have been able to enjoy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, don't worry about it, Ted. The DX will rise again in the next cycle. So...</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: You know what - that's actually a really fascinating example, because we talk about some cycles that we've lost because of living in a high-technology culture. But actually, the sun cycle is one that we've gained in the sense that what happens with sunspots, when you're at solar maximum, there tends to be a lot more solar storms. And those solar storms can be - as we're learning, as we become a space-faring race that uses the orbital domain around the Earth for communication satellites, weather satellites, you can really have major disruptions by, quote-unquote, "space weather" from storms that happen. And so we are going to have to become more and more cognizant of that cycle, of the weather in space from the solar - the cycle of sunspots.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, of course, you mentioned sidereal patterns. This is, again, very ancient, but as soon as Thomas Edison really got involved, that began to change. We could rise or go to sleep whenever we chose - maybe not healthily, but we could.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Yeah. That's actually a remarkable thing, that what changed with the introduction of artificial lighting is that people's sleep patterns changed, because it used to be that there were two sleep - there were patterns of two deep-sleep patterns each night, where people would call it first sleep and second sleep. You'd go to bed when the sun went down, or somewhere around there. And then you'd sleep for a while and you'd wake up around 1 o'clock, you know, sort of slightly restless, and then sleep again maybe an hour later. And you can find in diaries from the 1600s, people talking about I've had my first sleep. And that language is completely gone now, that that - those cycles have been completely erased because of the technologies.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Greg, Greg with us from Kensington, Kentucky.</s>GREG: Hi. What's up? Thanks for having me on the show. Love it. I'm back stateside for a little bit. I'm really glad I got to catch you guys jamming on air. I just wanted to speak about a little cycle that I'm following around the world, you know, speaking about the suns and sunspots. Don't ever want to get skin cancer or anything, but I, you know, I'm surfing out there on the waves. Somewhere, it's summer in the world at all times, and, you know, I'm going to be there, right there with the summer, always catching some major Z's after I've been surfing all day, if you know what I mean.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So you're going to be heading down to Australia after this?</s>GREG: Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir. I just had to see my folks for Christmastime, sir.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Greg, thanks very much. And is there any other pattern that you can follow in an El Nino year, for example? Is it better one place or another?</s>GREG: Oh, sure. I mean, you're talking smaller islands that have sort of a - anywhere Southern Hemisphere, talking, and weather patterns. I've only been doing this for three or four years, but the real grizzly guys, they know the hot islands. You know, we just go jumping from one to the other. You know, you can't surf from one to the other, but, you know, the boats, that's what they're for.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Right, Greg.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Greg, thanks very much and have a great time.</s>GREG: Thank you.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: You know the - with the whole idea of tides, right, there's another cycle that we, you know, that - depending on where you live. If, you know, certainly if you're a fisherman or you're involved in the sea, that's one that you need to be accounting of. And as we, you know, move forward, especially as we kind of look at the end of the oil era and we start thinking about all other technologies that might be able to replace oil, many of them actually will connect us to cycles again. If you talk about tide power, you are certainly going to be thinking about, you know, how to engineer things so that you can capture the max amount of energy from the tides.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This from Noreen in Tucson: I'm a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. I rescue and care for hummingbirds. My life cycle coordinates with their cycle of life. No kidding. In this rich hummingbird area, I have taken in 63 hummingbirds in various stages of their development this year. There's a cycle I have not considered. Of course, my life revolves around the spring training, the regular season, the play-offs and, well, we're now in the Hot Stove League. But, Adam Frank, thanks very much for bringing up this subject for us.</s>ADAM FRANK, BYLINE: Oh, a real pleasure. Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Adam Frank, co-founder, contributor to NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester in New York. His new book is "About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang," and he joined us from member station WXXI. Tomorrow, TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY with the annual bird count. We'll be back here on Monday. Merry Christmas, everybody. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. |
Violence in Syria between the government and the opposition continues to mount and expectations for a peaceful resolution are low. Turkey was once closely allied with the Syrian president, but now calls for him to step down. Ibrahim Kalin, chief adviser to Turkey's prime minister, explains his country's position on Syria and its role in the Middle East. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Activists branded yesterday as the bloodiest day of the uprising in Syria. Arab League observers are scheduled to arrive in that country tomorrow, but there's little hope at this point of a peaceful resolution between the government and the opposition.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Turkey continues to be a key player. Once closely allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey now calls for him to step aside. Ankara has cut diplomatic ties with Damascus. Syrian military and political opposition groups are now based in Turkey.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ibrahim Kalin serves as chief adviser to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and he joins us now on the phone from Ankara. Good evening, Mr. Kalin, and nice to have you with us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: DR. IBRAHIM KALIN: Good evening. Thanks for having me on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how does this end in Syria?</s>KALIN: Well, the situation in Syria, obviously, is very complicated. You know, we are implementing a number of measures against the Syrian regime at this point. We are putting a lot of political pressure. We are implementing economic sanctions. And in the meantime, we are empowering the opposition.</s>KALIN: We had hoped for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Syria. At the beginning of the events, our prime minister made a number of calls to President Assad to carry out reforms, listen to the opposition, start a national dialogue process. Unfortunately, none of these things happened.</s>KALIN: And as a result now, President Assad is completely isolated, not only in Syria but also in the region, as it is shown by the decisions of the Arab League and the Islamic Organization Conference, a number of other regional and international organizations.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This started months ago as protesters, much like protesters in Egypt and Libya and Tunisia. It is turning into civil war, no?</s>KALIN: Yeah. Well, that's what we are afraid of, obviously. As the regime continues to crack down on peaceful protesters there, you know, people, ordinary people, are losing. A lot of people on the ground said they're finding ways to defend themselves against this brutal response from the regime.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As it turns towards civil war, do you fear Turkey becoming embroiled?</s>KALIN: Well, we hope not. We are against any military intervention in Syria at this point. That's why we are putting political pressure, economic sanctions and other measures at our disposal, but civil war obviously will affect everyone, all the countries in the region, not just us, but, you know, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and other surrounding countries. That's why we are putting a lot of effort diplomatically to prevent any all-out civil war in Syria.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You say you are also empowering the Syrian opposition. Not just political opposition, there are military groups, former members of the Syrian military who are now on the Turkish side of the border.</s>KALIN: Yes, there are some, but they have come as part of those who have fled the crackdown. And when we opened the borders, our prime minister had said at the moment that we will welcome anyone coming from Syria. So it included people like ordinary people, families, women, children, but also other people who turned out to be soldiers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And some of those soldiers have organized themselves into the so-called Syrian Free Army.</s>KALIN: That is true, but actually the main body of that military unit or military structure is actually inside Syria, not in Turkey.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: At some point, it will - might it become so serious that the Turkish government would think about saying the Syrian people have a right to defend themselves against this oppression?</s>KALIN: Well, I mean, they are doing everything in their capacity at this point to defend themselves, but they are still actually using peaceful means. But, unfortunately, the regime is not responding in kind. And they've accepted the Arab League proposal to let the observers from the Arab League to go into the country.</s>KALIN: In our view, this will not really result in anything concrete at this point because they're just killing people on a daily basis. And the opposition is not in a position, really, to speak to them because so much blood has been shed. If this was like three, four months ago, five months ago, maybe there will have been a possibility of some talk, but it looks very, very difficult at this point.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: When it looked like the Libyan government forces were about to crush the opposition in Benghazi, it was NATO who was authorized by the United Nations Security Council resolution to intervene to protect civilian lives. Is there any possibility down the road of a similar circumstance in Syria?</s>KALIN: Well, when you're confronted with a situation like what we have in Syria right now, of course, you have to prepare yourself for, you know, any possible scenarios. But, of course, that doesn't mean that we are preparing for a military intervention through NATO or some other regional force, even though some people, including some from among the opposition, have called for some sort of intervention from outside. But we are against any kind of military intervention at this point, because it will just make things much more difficult.</s>KALIN: And we are still hoping that our position will empower itself, will organize itself, will present itself as a genuine and true alternative to the Baath regime in Syria. And in the meantime, the Syrian regime will reassess the situation and hopefully either step down or, you know, start some sort of - even the word dialogue really doesn't have any power at this point, but something that will enable a transition in Syria.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Would that mean - could that even start with Mr. Assad still in Damascus?</s>KALIN: I think that's very difficult at this point. As I said, you know, a couple of months ago, this was maybe - still a possibility. But at this point, the vast majority of Syrian people have also turned against him. He's lost his legitimacy with his own people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet he has not lost his legitimacy with his army.</s>KALIN: Not with the army, but, you know, how long will they be able to sustain the situation? That's the big question for everyone.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But how many people may die before they change their minds?</s>KALIN: Of course. I mean, that's exactly the crux of the matter there. I mean, that's our primary concern. People are dying. The most recent United Nations number was about over 4,000. I mean, God knows how many people have died. Maybe it's much more. Thousands have been imprisoned. Thousands have been tortured, et cetera. So, I mean, people will have to defend themselves at this point, but hopefully this will not turn into an all-out civil war.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are also, as you noted, economic sanctions on Syria in an effort to encourage the regime to change its policies. Those economic sanctions inevitably rebound on the population, as well.</s>KALIN: Unfortunately, I mean, that's the dilemma of the sanctions. But the current sanctions in place against the Assad regime are beginning to have some impact on the regime itself. Eventually, it will change the regime behavior in this process because, economically, they cannot sustain this exceptional situation, you know, for too long, because they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars at this point on these military operations. They're losing money from tourism, investment, bilateral trade relations, et cetera.</s>KALIN: Yes, unfortunately, the Syrian people - at least some parts of the Syrian people - will be affected negatively, but the ultimate goal here is to force the regime to change its policy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Syria's most important economic partner had been Turkey. Its most important strategic partner is Iran. How much is Iran playing a factor in this?</s>KALIN: Well, Iran is looking at the situation, obviously, from its own point of view there. They have somewhat a different view of what's happening inside the country. Maybe they have different sources of information, I don't know. But eventually, of course, any instability or major, you know, chaos in Syria will affect, of course, Iran, us and other countries in the region, also. But we are working also with Iran to find some sort of a solution to the situation in Syria.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Syria is a very important ally to Iran, in no small part because it is the conduit through which it supplies Hezbollah in Lebanon.</s>KALIN: Mm-hmm. Well, Iran, of course, has been part of what some people have called a resistance front against Israel and Israeli occupation policies in the region. So they have teamed up with Syria, but also with Hezbollah and Hamas for many years. And the main reason behind this and the main justification for this, of course, has been Israeli aggression and Israeli occupation. And if Israel had a reassessment of its own strategic priorities at this point and change its policy, you know, that whole alignment of these countries and other groups will have turned out to be very different.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Ibrahim Kalin, chief adviser to the prime minister of Turkey. You raised the question of Israel relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv, considerably strained over the incident involving the flotilla which was assaulted by Israeli forces. Subsequently, the United Nations investigation found that Israel was within its rights to blockade Gaza, but had used excessive force. Turkey asked Israel for an apology. That has not been forthcoming. Have relations moved past that impasse?</s>KALIN: No. We are still at the same point where we said that the Turkish-Israeli relations will not normalize until and unless Turkey's three conditions are met, and those three conditions are a formal apology from the state of Israel, paying compensation to the families of those who were killed, and lifting the blockade of Gaza.</s>KALIN: And we are still at that point, because we believe, you know, killing nine people, nine unarmed, innocent people in international waters was against international law, was against any sense of friendship or ally between any two countries. And what we have gone through after the flotilla incident during the negotiations bilaterally under the U.N., et cetera, have all shown to us that the Israeli government is not interested in repairing relations with Turkey.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That last point, though, lifting the blockade of Gaza, the U.N. said that's within Israel's right.</s>KALIN: Well, it depends on how you define occupation. If - even if you define, for example, the situation in Gaza at this point as occupation or non-occupation, it is the responsibility of the Israeli government to provide for civilians and others who are living in Gaza with basic needs, such as medicine and food, supplies and construction materials to build hospitals, et cetera, and none of that has been forthcoming. And this has been, you know, registered in many of the U.N. resolutions, in many of the statements of the U.N. secretary-general, and also as well as other international bodies. And people are living like an open prison in Gaza. I mean, we're talking about more than 1.5 million people with practically no access to basic needs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: They could get those needs across the Egyptian border, of course, too.</s>KALIN: Well, the Rafah gate is tightly controlled still by Egypt, in cooperation with Israel. That's why people in Gaza have been forced to use the tunnels. Some people talk about the tunnels as if it was a luxury in Gaza. People have been forced to use those tunnels to get, you know, day-to-day basic needs and supplies from the Egyptian side.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Ibrahim Kalin, the chief adviser to the prime minister of Turkey. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. As, of course, you know, U.S. forces withdrew finally from Iraq the other day. I wonder how Turkey sees the situation unfolding in Baghdad.</s>KALIN: Well, we believe the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is a good step for the normalization of the political establishment in Iraq. It was a promise that President Obama made when he came to power, and he kept his promise and ended a major misadventure in Iraq. Of course, now it's up to the Iraqis to maintain order and balance of power and peace within the country. Of course, the most recent developments in Iraq - I'm referring to the arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi - is worrying, and this is maybe the first sign of the deeper political rivalry that is going on in the country.</s>KALIN: But at the end of the day, the Iraqi security forces have been training for the last couple of years. Now they have taken the command in many parts of the country, and we are hoping that for a united Iraq with political stability and with a social cohesion, where all groups - Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, Turkmen, Arab, Christian - all, you know, live together as part of the Iraq, of the united Iraq will be possible. But this puts a lot of obvious responsibility on the shoulders of the political leaders in Iraq.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As you know, many in the United States worry about Iranian influence in Iraq. Is that something that concerns Turkey?</s>KALIN: Iraq is like a little miniature of the Middle East. You have Sunnis, Shiites, Muslims, Christians, Kurds and many others, and it's natural, you know, for some of those, you know, groups to feel some sort of social, sectarian or otherwise affinity with other countries. We are in favor of, you know, overcoming those sectarian ethnic identities for a united Iraq, and we work with Iran and other countries in the region to make sure that Iraq remains united. As I said, you know, some countries may have different views on what kind of regional order should be established, especially in the wake of the - or in the middle of the Arab Spring that is still unfolding.</s>KALIN: But at the end of the day, the goal is to overcome this identity politics that divides countries. Unfortunately, we have seen some very negative consequences of those types of identity politics in Iraq, in Lebanon and other places. And we are working with all the countries in the region to make sure that people live according to the law and participate in the democratic processes on the basis of issues, not just on identity.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Iraq emerging from 20 years of war and chaos - as you mentioned, the Arab Spring in various stages of progress in places like Syria, on your border, Lebanon, too, in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia. In many of those places, a hundred years ago, Turkey - a very different Turkey - was an imperial power. What does Turkey see its role as now?</s>KALIN: We are trying to help this difficult process in the region. But in many ways, it's actually a good thing for the region, because it's now generated and energized by a type of local ownership that we haven't seen in a long time, meaning that people are coming out and they're demanding justice, dignity, transparency. And we have supported these legitimate democratic demands all along, and a lot of people see Turkey as a source of inspiration. I don't want to say model, because we don't want to impose anything on other people, and we don't see ourselves as a model for others.</s>KALIN: But we believe that we have an experience that we can share, because Turkey has gone through stages of democratization, redefining civilian-military relations, rebuilding its economy after the economic crisis of 1999 and 2001, and also now pursuing a very active foreign policy. In some of those areas, we believe we have something that we can share, you know, with people over the processes, say, in Tunisia, in Libya, in Egypt, because now they will go through a similar processes of writing a new constitution, changing political party's laws, establishing institutional democracy, empowering the civil society sector, rebuilding the economy, et cetera, and we have a lot in common with those countries.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ibrahim Kalin, I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there, but we thank you very much for your time. We hope you join us again.</s>KALIN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tomorrow, our favorite film buff Murray Horwitz joins us to celebrate "A Christmas Story." Join us for that. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. |
U.S. forces have left Iraq and a drawdown in Afghanistan is underway, but both wars have left an indelible impact on the U.S. military. The armed forces have altered strategy and tactics, and countless lives have been changed — including those of the families of service members serving multiple deployments. John Nagl, president, Center for a New American Security Greg Jaffe, military reporter, Washington Post | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. At long last, all U.S. forces are out of Iraq. What could be a long drawdown in Afghanistan is underway, and the U.S. military that emerges has changed over the past decade. Technology evolved, ours and the enemy's; a force trained, equipped and structured for high-intensity combat learned to adapt to counterinsurgency and counterterrorism; an all-volunteer force found itself isolated from much of the rest of America.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We see women, gays and lesbian in different roles, and the apparent endlessness of the commitment tested institutions and strained families in ways few anticipated.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you've been in uniform these past 10 years, how did our wars change our military? 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, what we need to get done before the year is out on The Opinion Page this week. But we begin here in Studio 3A with John Nagl. He helped institute some of those changes as one of the authors of the new counterinsurgency manual. He's now president of the Center for a New American Security, and nice to have you back on the program. Merry Christmas, and appreciate you being with us here in Studio 3A.</s>JOHN NAGL: Great to be back, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you had to point to one change over this past decade, what would it be?</s>JOHN NAGL: It would be the one that you highlighted. It was a military that was prepared for, focused on conventional high-intensity conflict against a peer or a near-peer, another state; a military prepared to fight fighter planes in the skies, ships on the seas, other tank armies on the ground.</s>JOHN NAGL: And over the last decade, it has become a military that can confront non-state actors, terrorists and insurgents, on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and inside a half-a-dozen or a dozen other countries around the globe, where terrorists are plotting, continuing to work their nefarious deeds.</s>JOHN NAGL: And the military and the other agencies of the U.S. government, the relationship between Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, has come together much more closely. So it's a very, very different military than it was a decade ago.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How deep does this change go?</s>JOHN NAGL: We're waiting to find out, I think, as the war in Iraq comes to an end, at least for the United States, at least for now; as we continue to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, but one that we're increasingly handing over to the Afghans to fight for us, with us in a supporting role that I think is going to be the big change over the next several years in Afghanistan.</s>JOHN NAGL: We are returning our military to preparing for the next war, and for, for instance, the Marines are doing a huge amphibious exercise off the East Coast of the United States in the month of January, the biggest they've done in at least a decade, maybe longer. So we are starting to move back toward becoming a full-spectrum force that continues to conduct low-intensity conflict and counterterrorism operations but simultaneously is re-honing its edge for conventional warfare.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's bring Greg Jaffe into the conversation, military reporter for the Washington Post. He's the author, with David Cloud, "The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army." He joins us by phone from Avon, Colorado. Nice to have you with us today.</s>GREG JAFFE: Hey, thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And just as John Nagl was describing, an army that began this conflict 10 years ago, just about, contemptuous of the idea of nation-building as it was described then, has emerged very different.</s>GREG JAFFE: Yeah, I think that's right. I was - I agreed with just about everything John said there. The one thing I would add is it's just become a much more, sort of, intellectually nimble force. You know, there's a lot more vibrant debate among officers about the right way forward, about sort of different options, you know, counterinsurgency versus things like counterterrorism, which is more focused on hunting bad guys.</s>GREG JAFFE: And it's a military that's much likely to reach out to, sort of, other parts of government, whether it be USAID, and folks kind of like anthropologists, and even reporters, to kind of try and understand their environment. It's much more conscious of their environment beyond just the maneuvering in battle.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Even reporters, John Nagl was shaking his head.</s>JOHN NAGL: That's a little extreme, Greg. But Greg's point is well-taken, and I'm reminded of the counterinsurgency conference that David Petraeus hosted out at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in early 2006 - now more than five years ago - where he invited anthropologists and aid workers and human rights activists and even reporters like Greg Jaffe, as well as some good ones...</s>JOHN NAGL: To come together and pull everybody's thinking and understand that the military didn't have all the answers, and to succeed in the kinds of wars we were fighting then, are fighting now, are likely to continue to fight, the military mindset and the military tools and technology are part of the answer, but they're only part of the answer.</s>JOHN NAGL: And so I think Greg is right to highlight the contributions that many people not wearing uniforms have made to the fights we've had, the successes we've had, and the future direction of the force.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want your contributions, as well. If you've served in uniform these past 10 years, how has the military changed as the result of our wars? This email, 800-989-8255 is the phone number, the email address that Dean(ph) used in Salem, Oregon is talk@npr.org.</s>He writes: I served six years in the U.S. Army Reserves in PSYOPS, psychological operations, as an intelligence analyst and interrogator, working with the Seventh Infantry Division and in prisoner-of-war support. During the period '76 to '82, my fellow reservists and I helped improve the ways our military interacted with both military and civilian populations in war zones. It was a huge alteration in our military culture.</s>He writes: For me, as a former anti-war activist of the Vietnam era, it was very satisfying to play a role in improving the ways we did things and avoid the excesses of Vietnam. Then during the Bush administration, much of these gains were challenged, although they did and do violate our doctrine in the field manuals and in the schools in Fort Huachuca and Fort Bragg.</s>He writes: We made our military more human, more American and provided myself and others with genuine feelings of positive accomplishment. I wonder, John Nagl, if you would agree.</s>JOHN NAGL: Well, Dean's comments, I think, are well-taken. In the aftermath of Vietnam, broadly speaking, we moved away from many of the lessons that we learned in Vietnam - from focusing on the human terrain, on the integration of all elements of national power - and we decided that we weren't ever going to fight a Vietnam kind of fight again.</s>JOHN NAGL: And we forgot, as we were making that decision, that the enemy gets a vote in deciding how he or she is going to fight us. And we had to relearn a number of those lessons that Dean learned and helped us as a military learn – now, I guess, 30 years ago.</s>JOHN NAGL: I'd also like to highlight, though, Dean said he served as a reservist, how important the role of the reserve forces have been. We literally could not have succeeded to the extent that we have in Iraq without the reserve forces. At one point, I think they were 40 percent of the forces on the ground in Iraq and at one time.</s>JOHN NAGL: And we've developed a much more capable, much more integrated guard and reserve force into the general military. To the extent that General Pete Corelli, the vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army whose service through this decade has been exceptional, has said publicly we simply cannot fight our next war without the Guard and Reserve. So I'd like to thank Dean for that service, as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Greg Jaffe, I wanted to raise that point with you. After the war in Vietnam in 1975, a greatly demoralized, all-draftee or draft force was transitioned to an all-volunteer force. It was also determined the United States would never be able to fight a war again without the Reserves and the National Guard, as it did without the National Guard in Vietnam.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But the stress that was put on National Guard these past 10 years, nobody ever anticipated anything like this.</s>GREG JAFFE: Yeah, I don't think they expected it at all, in terms of the repeat deployments that you'd see from guardsmen who were going on a rate of about once every five years - which is really disruptive both to your career and, you know, to your family life.</s>GREG JAFFE: And I think what they found that's even more disturbing, you know, suicide has been a problem for the Army. And the Army's been able to do a pretty good job in terms of managing or at least making a small dent in suicides among active-duty troops because you can really control them much more when they come back.</s>GREG JAFFE: You can make sure that they're kind of among peers who have been experiencing the same thing. You know, they're in a fairly controlled setting, which is a military base. With guardsmen, they often don't have that support. You know, they go home to communities that don't really understand where they were or what they've done, and I think the mental strain on them is much harder.</s>GREG JAFFE: And it's much harder to sort of track them and to know how they're doing because they're much more dispersed.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Communities that don't understand who they are, where they've been, what they've done, John Nagl, that could be broadly writ about the United States at large. We have a tiny fraction of our men and women in uniform, and with an all-volunteer force, that will remain the same. It is a very tiny subset of the American population, and most of us don't know anybody who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.</s>JOHN NAGL: It's a tiny percentage of the population. It's likely to get even smaller as the military is already starting to downsize after the strains of the last decade. And I think it's worth highlighting the long-term costs that are going to be borne by those who have served repeatedly, over and over again.</s>JOHN NAGL: Greg mentioned one year in five for the reserves. For a while during the surge, after the surge in Iraq, we had active-duty U.S. Army soldiers spending less than a year at home in between year-long combat tours on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the long-term costs, not just the thousands killed, the tens of thousands wounded, but the psychological costs and the cost on the families, the burden the families have borne for an all-volunteer that was never predicted, was never planned to take the kind of strain that the all-volunteer force has shown over the last decade.</s>JOHN NAGL: And I think it's an extraordinary testament to the leadership of the armed services that the force has held together under this extraordinary strain, but it is worth highlighting the long-term responsibility the American people have to join forces with those who have borne the battle for them and to take care of them for what is literally going to be generations to come.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Greg Jaffe, major rethinks after Vietnam. Do you find the appetite to reconsider, fundamentally, the structure of the armed forces after Iraq?</s>GREG JAFFE: No, I don't think so. I think we'll probably largely stick with what we've got. I mean, I do think that there's a rethinking of, you know, can we afford to, and should we continue to fight these kind of long wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where we're really looking to change society.</s>GREG JAFFE: I think to the extent that there's a rethink, there'll be a rethink about the mission, not about the structure of the force fundamentally, although I do think, you know, as we downsize, we're likely to see some changes, that John actually and his think-tank have written about very compellingly in the last couple of months.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: When we come back, more about how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have changed the U.S. military. If you served, what changes did you see? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email 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. Over the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tools the military uses to do its job have changed. Take the MRAP, for instance, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Troop Carrier. The first MRAPs arrived in Iraq in 2007 specially designed to protect troops from IED attacks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Drones, too, changed intelligence, reconnaissance and war fighting. If you've been in uniform these past 10 years, how have you seen the wars change our military? 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: Retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl is with us, also Greg Jaffe, military reporter for the Washington Post. Let's get a caller in on the conversation. We'll start with Rod(ph), and Rod's with us from Daytona Beach.</s>ROD: How is everybody today?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>ROD: One of the things that I saw - I was in Afghanistan theater for 2005, 2006, and 26-year retired Army veteran - one of the things that I saw that changed most importantly, I think, is training within the Army. We finally saw a combining of the training systems across active component, reserve component, National Guard component. Whereas before - the wars before Afghanistan and Iraq - there was a lot of difference in how those forces trained.</s>ROD: Now you see a lot of combined training, more of that total-Army concept, one-army concept, where you have your reserve forces, your National Guard forces training a lot more side-by-side with the active components. And I think that just brings along a much better, a lot tighter force, and I think that's one of the greatest changes that I've seen since I've been in the military.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John Nagl?</s>JOHN NAGL: I agree with that completely, Rod, thanks for your service. The integration of the Guard and Reserve into what's now called the Operational Reserve, what used to be a strategic reserve, we would only go to the Guard and the Reserve if things got really, really, really bad.</s>JOHN NAGL: And what we've done is, as Rod mentioned, is we've brought the Guard and the Reserve much more into the operations of the military in these wars, to the point that we literally can't do this without them.</s>JOHN NAGL: I think one of the big questions we're going to have to decide - as we downsize the force, as defense budgets start to come down, as they already have - is how much are we going to depend on the Guard and Reserve for backups for what's called the second major regional contingency. Are we going to keep all of the forces we need for two wars on active duty, paying them every day, or are we going to save some of those capabilities in Reserve, in the Guard?</s>JOHN NAGL: I think that's a decision that still has to be made, and a lot of people here in Washington are thinking hard about doing that in order to preserve our capabilities around the globe while saving some American tax dollars.</s>ROD: That's going to be a big decision to be made, as well, because from an instructor's standpoint, from a trainer's standpoint, that is definitely going to be - that's definitely going to be one of the big things taking us into the future. Thanks a lot, guys.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK, thanks very much for the phone call. Let's go next to - this is Alex(ph), Alex with us from New Haven.</s>DAVID: Actually, I am not Alex.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, I apologize.</s>DAVID: That's all right. That's not a problem. If you want to go to Alex, fine. Otherwise, my name is David(ph), and I'm here from St. Paul, Minnesota. Yeah, I just wanted to make the observation, I am active-duty Air Force, basically for five years during the late to the mid-'80s, and then I was a reservist both Army Reserve and the Army National Guard, got out in 2004.</s>DAVID: I want to go back to your comments about the all-volunteer force because I think that the all-volunteer force, the term is a misnomer. It's actually a political construction. There was never meant to be an all-volunteer force. The so-called all-volunteer force was supposed to be the active-duty cadre around which the reserve forces and the Selective Service system would be built up in the contingency of a war in Europe or - specifically Europe and Korea.</s>DAVID: There was never meant to be an all-volunteer force. That's why the selective service system still exists, and that's why, if you are an able-bodied, young, college male who decided that they want financial aid, you still have to register for Selective Service.</s>DAVID: So, I don't like hearing that term all-volunteer force because having been to Europe a few times and been to Reforger, I know what is supposed to happen, and the problem is that our political leadership is, frankly, exacted or exercised cowardice around the activation of the Selective Service system, especially with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's why we have people doing, you know, half-a-dozen and more tours to combat zones, which is something that was absolutely unheard of even at the height of the Vietnam War.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Greg Jaffe, our caller is factually correct, but he is also astutely correct in saying there is no way politicians are going to restore the draft at any conceivable point.</s>GREG JAFFE: Yeah, I think that's right, and nor does the military want it. And while it would have been nice to have lots of - potentially to have lots - to be able to draw on a lot of civilian expertise in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't think you would have been able to get away from the repeat tours.</s>GREG JAFFE: And as big a strain the repeat tours put on soldiers and officers, they also paid huge dividends. You know, it was that third and fourth tour in Iraq where people really started to figure out what the heck was going on there, how these tribes worked. And to the extent that you continue to cycle through new people every year, everybody's kind of one and done, you just never learn anything.</s>GREG JAFFE: And I think that's the problem we had to a certain degree in Vietnam, and it's something we've been able to correct for her. You know, the average soldier or officer or Marine in 2007 in Iraq, knew so much more than the average soldier or Marine in 2003. The average, you know, person in Afghanistan today, on his third or fourth tour, understands the environment in which he's operating so much better.</s>GREG JAFFE: And, you know, there's just no other way to get that experience other than to live it repeatedly. And so, you know, while a draft is nice and could bring some helpful skills to the table, I don't think it helps us in the long run.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Speaking of repeated tours, this from Jennifer(ph), a captain in the Kentucky Air National Guard: Most Air Guardsmen that I know - and being in the Guard myself - deploy every 18 months. Our deployment lengths are up to four months now. It's very difficult for members and families. We do not even get the same benefits as our active-duty counterparts.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John Nagl, that's undoubtedly correct and undoubtedly a strain and makes life really, really hard.</s>JOHN NAGL: It does, and it highlights one of the differences, I think, between the Air Force and the Army in particular. The Air Force has integrated its reserve forces into the operational force far more effectively than the Army has.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Air tankers, for example, vital to any operation, can't fly without the Reserves and the Guard.</s>JOHN NAGL: Absolutely right, and so folks like Karen(ph) who deploy over and over again, on shorter tours admittedly, and no one would say that - I mean, it's not easy being in the Air Force, it's not as tough as being on the ground, but the Air Force can't do what it is able to do, providing absolute air superiority for the United States over the entire globe, essentially, without the contributions of people like Karen.</s>JOHN NAGL: And this point really gets to the same point that David raised. I smiled when he mentioned Reforger, the reinforcement of Germany, the good old days, back when we used to send large forces to prepare for the war against the Soviet Union that thankfully never came.</s>JOHN NAGL: But we have asked an extraordinary amount of those who serve in uniform - active, Guard, Reserve - over the last decade. And although the demands are going to go down over time, inshallah, we hope, we have relied very, very heavily on a very small number of the American people to bear this strain.</s>JOHN NAGL: And it is incumbent, then, I think, upon us, to take care of them to help them get civilian careers when they get out, to find better ways to integrate their military service and their civilian jobs better than we've figured out so far.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ten years ago, I think, everybody in the military would have raised an eyebrow at the word, inshallah, now nobody does. But Greg Jaffe, another point about the Air Force, it is undergoing a major transformation at the moment as more and more unpiloted aircraft are integrated into the system, and that's not going to change.</s>GREG JAFFE: Yeah, no, I think you'll continue to see the numbers go up, and you'll see different kind of unmanned planes. You know, right now the workhorse is this thing called The Predator and its slightly larger cousin called The Reaper, but you're going to see more sophisticated things, stealthier drones, which we've already seen used.</s>GREG JAFFE: Recently one went down in Iran - that was a CIA drone. You're going to see potentially, you know, drone bombers and drone fighter jets that will go long distances and will be used more in conventional wars. So I think it will become - it will really start to take over the culture in interesting ways.</s>GREG JAFFE: It's tough for the Air Force because it really starts to redefine a lot of the - just everything about the service's sort of culture. I mean, can you be valorous - you know, valor is so important to our military in terms of how we reward and recognize people - can you be valorous when you're sitting in an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada flying a drone over Afghanistan?</s>GREG JAFFE: And, you know, how do you recognize those people? What kinds of awards do you give them? Because the traditional military reward built around bravery don't really seem to fit that context.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do those people, can those people suffer from PTSD?</s>GREG JAFFE: I've heard it, but I just don't buy it. Sorry to throw a blanket on - a wet blanket on that one. I just - I think they can probably suffer from things like guilt, you know, to the extent that you make a mistake, you kill friendly forces, or you kill civilians. I'm sure that has an emotional impact on them, and that that's something they need to deal with. In terms of struggling with PTSD, I'm not sure - I don't buy it. I don't think so.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John?</s>JOHN NAGL: I'm not as willing as Greg is to say absolutely not, but I do think that the psychological problems folks like that face who literally are fighting a war during their duty day, eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, and then they go home to the kids' soccer game, the transition that they make on a daily basis, I think, is very psychologically jarring. I agree with Greg that the nature of combat, at least a part of combat, is starting to change. And I think it's worth pointing out that the technology advancements that we've talked about so far today aren't only happening inside the United States.</s>JOHN NAGL: And so one of the big things we need to think about, the military needs to think about is how does it responds to the challenge of other countries developing drones. One of the drivers behind the increased prevalence of drones over the next 10 years, I think, is going to be the extraordinary what's called anti-access area denial capabilities that China is developing, which essentially push out the range at which we can launch airplanes from carrier decks and are going to necessitate that we move to unmanned systems that have greater ranges, and that can operate in contested airspace.</s>JOHN NAGL: So that we're seeing big, big changes, I think, in how we think about war, the advance of robots, not just in the air but on the sea, under the sea and on the ground, is going to be, I think, one of the big stories of the next decade.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We did manage to find Alex. I think we did, in New Haven. Are you there?</s>ALEX: Yes. Yes, I am.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I apologize. Go ahead, please.</s>ALEX: No problem. I've been a military reservist and active duty both for the last 12 years now. And when speaking to the changes that I've observed personally, I have to go straight to the educational backgrounds of most of our soldiers. When I first joined in '99, it was pretty rare for enlisted soldiers to have Bachelor's degrees at all, let alone advanced degrees. And serving Iraq in 2008 and to this day, I served with many privates and sergeants that have Bachelor's degrees, Master's degrees, both in area studies, math, physics.</s>ALEX: I think that that shows a lot of the evolution of our force, and it shows that it's coming in line too with the American populace as a whole. You can see it today, and the opening of Yale University at New Haven and Harvard recently signing ROTC contracts. The education of our soldiers are changing, and it's only going to make for a stronger force in the future.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And those standards for recruits, John Nagl, in part a result of the economy but in part a result of the greater percentage of America's youth who do go on to college.</s>ALEX: Right.</s>JOHN NAGL: Absolutely right. And I have to give a shout-out to my brother Mark who, like Alex, had a college degree and enlisted as a soldier, served in Iraq as an enlisted soldier and then came back and commissioned and is now a better officer for having served as an enlisted soldier. But the force we have composed entirely of people who want to serve, who - many of whom have these multiple combat tours, which is an extraordinary wealth of knowledge that literally can't be gained any other way.</s>JOHN NAGL: And one of the things that I worry about as we do start to downsize the force is how do we keep that talent somehow engaged, if not in full-time military reservists then part time in the Guard or reserves or somehow connected with the national security of the United States, because we're going to continue to need their help and the experience that they've purchased at such a high price for many, many years to come.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: John Nagl, retired lieutenant colonel, now president of the Center for a New American Security. Also with us, Greg Jaffe, military reporter for The Washington Post. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And let's go to Linda, and Linda is on the line from East Brunswick in New Jersey.</s>LINDA: I am. And thank you for taking my phone call. I'm going to be really short. We lost a son to suicide following his second tour of duty in Iraq. The first, he served with the 173rd Airborne. The second, he served with a unit of the Maryland National Guard. We learned following his death that there's a tremendous gap in mental health services available to members of the Guard and Reserve. And we were really heartened earlier this month when Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Representative Rush Holt announced a new peer hotline service available across all 50 states and American territories to all members of the Guard and Reserve and their families.</s>LINDA: That hotline is accessible at - oh, I'm so sorry. I don't have the number right off the top of my head. I'm sorry. I'm on my cellphone. But it is Vets4Warriors, and it is staffed by paid veterans, all trained through the University of Dentistry and Medicine from New Jersey. All of them are folks who have served, and the program is expected to be a huge help to folks who can't or won't use DOD or VA mental health services...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Linda...</s>LINDA: ...so if - I'm sorry?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Excuse me. I don't mean to cut you off and - so sorry for your loss. And I know you're making an important point. I just wanted to give John Nagl a chance to respond. The awareness of PTSD and mental problems caused by service and combat is enormously changed, very far yet to go, but big changes have taken place.</s>JOHN NAGL: Linda, like Neal, my condolences on your loss. My thanks for the service of your son. And many soldiers, Marines I've known have suffered greatly when they came back from their service. They were able while - to hold it together while they were fighting, but the fight got to them later when they got home. And it's a horrible story, and it happens much too often. And there are great steps being taken. You've talked about some of them to try to deal with this national crisis of those who have served, falling at their own hand when they return. But I also want to - hate to say this - but family members also are bearing this strain, the strain that you're bearing, but we've seen military spouses also fall.</s>LINDA: Well, you're exactly right. And I'm sorry to interrupt...</s>JOHN NAGL: No, ma'am.</s>LINDA: ...but I just want to give one more pitch for this great service that's now available to all Guardsmen and all members of the Reserve. The program is called Vets4Warriors. I wish I had the phone number. I don't. I'm so sorry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll find it and put it up on the website, Linda.</s>LINDA: Oh, that would be great.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK.</s>LINDA: But it's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Got you.</s>LINDA: ...all trained peer counselors, and it is also...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Linda, I'm afraid we are out of time, but we will get that number and put it up on the website. Thank you very much for your phone call. And our thanks to Greg Jaffe and John Nagl as well. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. |
At the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show all eyes are on the canine competitors, but there are kids competing, too. Behind every great show dog is a great handler — some as young as nine years old. | AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Westminster may be best known for crowning the top dog best in show, but it's also where junior dog handlers compete for top honors. Rather than focusing on the dogs' attributes, judges are looking for how well their handler can present their canine companions. Allyson McCabe reports from the show in New York.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: On Monday morning, New York's Pier 94 was packed with kids as young as 9 years old. Sydney Wills traveled more than 1,000 miles from her home in Spencer, Okla., to show her dachshund. You might think she'd be nervous, but at 13, she's already a pro at this.</s>SYDNEY WILLS: Since we're in New York and it's cold, I had to get up and walk my dog, make sure I get his sweater on because it is freezing cold. Then I had to walk all the way down here, get him groomed and get him ready and then go into the show ring.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: Thousands of junior handlers are registered with the American Kennel Club, but only those who can rack up seven or more wins over the year are qualified to compete at Westminster.</s>KATHY KIRK: The hours are long. It's a lot of work. People don't realize that it's not just a show and go.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: Kathy Kirk is a veteran handler and juniors coach. She says getting to the top requires incredible skill and dedication.</s>KATHY KIRK: They miss a lot out on school and other sports things and a social life.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: For 15-year-old Imre Mancini, competing at Westminster is a chance to carry on a family legacy. Her sister won last year's top junior handler prize. The trick is learning how to work with the dog, and she says that's harder than it looks.</s>IMRE MANCINI: In juniors, they look for that your foot is with the dog's foot. You're following the same pattern as the dog so that you guys match up.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: After two days of preliminary competition, neither Sydney nor Imre made the cut. But eight others advanced to compete at Madison Square Garden. The staging area behind the show floor was abuzz as VIPs mingled with the press and handlers put the final touches on their dogs - a spritz here, a clip there. The juniors were surprisingly as serene as the adults. And the dogs were virtually silent. At promptly 7 o'clock, the eight finalists took the floor clad in sequined dresses and dinner jackets strategically outfitted with hidden treat pockets.</s>UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Members of the Westminster Kennel Club welcome you tonight to the 143rd consecutive annual dog show.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: Johnathon Wehry looked every bit as dapper as his cocker spaniel. And first-time Westminster qualifier Melony Lopez's miniature poodle was similarly elegant with a light bounce in his step. The handlers communicated with the dogs using eye contact and subtle hand signals. The judge did the same with the handlers.</s>UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Madeline Beuhler of Manchester, Mo.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: In the end, the best junior handler title went to 17-year-old Madeline Beuhler, whose pug was one of the crowd favorites. Madeline and her mom, Stephanie, were both excited.</s>MADELINE BEUHLER: We're going to sleep in tomorrow and get home and get home to the family.</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: Although they had slightly different plans for celebrating the win.</s>MADELINE BEUHLER: We'll probably go have Mexican and margaritas (laughter).</s>ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: Backstage, the runners-up pose for selfies with their friends while one of the dogs nibbled on the remains of a well-earned hot dog. As one more Westminster draws to a close, the handlers are already preparing for regional competitions that could get them back to Westminster next year. But as they say their goodbyes, they just look like kids. For NPR News, I'm Allyson McCabe in New York. |
Discarded plastic shampoo and juice bottles are finding new life in unlikely places—as bridges, railroad ties and pilings. Jim Kerstein, CTO and founder of Axion International, talks about how his company transforms plastic waste into structures strong enough to support trucks, trains and tanks. | IRA FLATOW, HOST: You know, those used plastic bottles that you throw in the recycle bin, you know, shampoo, milk, juice, laundry detergent - where do you think they go? No, they're not like the socks, they don't get lost somewhere. One way they're being reborn is a sort of hard plastic lumber. Maybe you've seen them on park benches, right? Those park benches are not really made out of wood sometimes. They're used to build bridges now. They can make bridges out of plastic bottles that are strong enough to hold cars and trains and even tanks on military bases. You can squeeze or bend or crush a plastic bottle in your hands. So how do you get those throw-out bottles to support so much weight? And what else could we build with this recycled plastic?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You know, those used plastic bottles that you throw in the recycle bin, you know, shampoo, milk, juice, laundry detergent - where do you think they go? No, they're not like the socks, they don't get lost somewhere. One way they're being reborn is a sort of hard plastic lumber. Maybe you've seen them on park benches, right? Those park benches are not really made out of wood sometimes. They're used to build bridges now. They can make bridges out of plastic bottles that are strong enough to hold cars and trains and even tanks on military bases. You can squeeze or bend or crush a plastic bottle in your hands. So how do you get those throw-out bottles to support so much weight? And what else could we build with this recycled plastic?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well now, joining me now to talk about this is Jim Kerstein. He is chief technology officer and founder of Axion International in New Providence, New Jersey. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well now, joining me now to talk about this is Jim Kerstein. He is chief technology officer and founder of Axion International in New Providence, New Jersey. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Oh, thanks, Ira. How are you today?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Oh, thanks, Ira. How are you today?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How did you discover that these things will be good for making bridges and stuff out of it?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: How did you discover that these things will be good for making bridges and stuff out of it?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Well, you know, it really stems from the - all the bad publicity, and rightfully so, that plastics was getting in the recycling stream and more importantly in the waste stream. And we started taking recycled materials, working with Rutgers University here in New Jersey and looking for things where we could take a negative, which was waste into the environment, and turn it around into a positive, which was developing long-lasting products that reduce maintenance, reduce plant obsolescence and, you know, was really a useful thing. And so, again, in working with Rutgers and some other people, we started to advance this into railroad ties, bridges, military projects, marine projects, all that type of thing.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Well, you know, it really stems from the - all the bad publicity, and rightfully so, that plastics was getting in the recycling stream and more importantly in the waste stream. And we started taking recycled materials, working with Rutgers University here in New Jersey and looking for things where we could take a negative, which was waste into the environment, and turn it around into a positive, which was developing long-lasting products that reduce maintenance, reduce plant obsolescence and, you know, was really a useful thing. And so, again, in working with Rutgers and some other people, we started to advance this into railroad ties, bridges, military projects, marine projects, all that type of thing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So do you actually start with the bottles and melt them down, or how did it begin?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So do you actually start with the bottles and melt them down, or how did it begin?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Yeah. There's a, you know, I mean, there's now a whole collection process. Most people have some type of what we call curbside pickup, you know, where the bottles are put out and where the juice containers, detergent containers, all of that is put out curbside. It gets collected. We buy certain types of material and put it together. And, yeah, then you feed it through machinery and equipment, melt it down, and we can get it to take whatever shape we need it to, whether it's a round marine piling, an I-beam type of design, you know, interlocking tongue and groove boards, all different types of things.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Yeah. There's a, you know, I mean, there's now a whole collection process. Most people have some type of what we call curbside pickup, you know, where the bottles are put out and where the juice containers, detergent containers, all of that is put out curbside. It gets collected. We buy certain types of material and put it together. And, yeah, then you feed it through machinery and equipment, melt it down, and we can get it to take whatever shape we need it to, whether it's a round marine piling, an I-beam type of design, you know, interlocking tongue and groove boards, all different types of things.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So what do you mix it with? To make it stronger, there must be other additives, correct?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So what do you mix it with? To make it stronger, there must be other additives, correct?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's actually 100 percent recycled plastics. The key of the technology that Rutgers developed was to put together certain materials that are strong and rugged and tough but that might not be stiff enough on their own, and mix them with other materials that are - other plastics that are very stiff but might be too brittle on their own. And in the right proportions and through the right processing techniques, they yield all types of - all types of combinations. We have 13 patents or patents pending that we work with here. And as you mentioned at the beginning of this segment, we built bridges that hold 130-ton railroads and railroad cars, M1 Abrams tanks for the military, that type of thing. It's really pretty exciting stuff.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's actually 100 percent recycled plastics. The key of the technology that Rutgers developed was to put together certain materials that are strong and rugged and tough but that might not be stiff enough on their own, and mix them with other materials that are - other plastics that are very stiff but might be too brittle on their own. And in the right proportions and through the right processing techniques, they yield all types of - all types of combinations. We have 13 patents or patents pending that we work with here. And as you mentioned at the beginning of this segment, we built bridges that hold 130-ton railroads and railroad cars, M1 Abrams tanks for the military, that type of thing. It's really pretty exciting stuff.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hmm. So there is a bridge in Maine, which I think - given the weather, you know, and - because it's made out of plastic, I imagine it holds up to road salt and corrosion and things - and rust much better than a steel bridge.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hmm. So there is a bridge in Maine, which I think - given the weather, you know, and - because it's made out of plastic, I imagine it holds up to road salt and corrosion and things - and rust much better than a steel bridge.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Well, that is one of the beauties of this stuff. It's basically got an indefinite life span, which as I said before is a real negative if you're burying it or dumping it out to sea, as has been done way too often. But it's a real positive if you're using it to cut down on maintenance and increase the longevity of products and designs. It's pretty - again, that's what makes it exciting for us.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Well, that is one of the beauties of this stuff. It's basically got an indefinite life span, which as I said before is a real negative if you're burying it or dumping it out to sea, as has been done way too often. But it's a real positive if you're using it to cut down on maintenance and increase the longevity of products and designs. It's pretty - again, that's what makes it exciting for us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Is it the same stuff that we see on the picnic tables and the park benches?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Is it the same stuff that we see on the picnic tables and the park benches?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Not really. You know, just like there's different types of wood and Ipe from a rainforest is not the same as southern yellow pine, composite building materials are - have various formulations. Hours of formulations are designed specifically to impact infrastructure projects and allow us to do long spans and create the type of stiffness and strength that's needed to do bridges and marinas and that type of thing. It's not a negative reflection, I'm thinking like park benches and picnic tables. That's great recycling. But it does not have the same type of properties that our materials have.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Not really. You know, just like there's different types of wood and Ipe from a rainforest is not the same as southern yellow pine, composite building materials are - have various formulations. Hours of formulations are designed specifically to impact infrastructure projects and allow us to do long spans and create the type of stiffness and strength that's needed to do bridges and marinas and that type of thing. It's not a negative reflection, I'm thinking like park benches and picnic tables. That's great recycling. But it does not have the same type of properties that our materials have.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to Jim(ph) in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Hi, Jim.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to Jim(ph) in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Hi, Jim.</s>JIM: Hi, how are you doing?</s>JIM: Hi, how are you doing?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there.</s>JIM: My question was - I was wondering if there was any evidence for deleterious health effects that might be estrogenic or carcinogenic from many compounds that leak out of the plastic, especially, when - in long-term structures that are put in water, where those compounds might leak out into the water?</s>JIM: My question was - I was wondering if there was any evidence for deleterious health effects that might be estrogenic or carcinogenic from many compounds that leak out of the plastic, especially, when - in long-term structures that are put in water, where those compounds might leak out into the water?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's a great question, Jim. There are, you know, so many different types of plastics out there. The ones that we use are nontoxic. There has been testing done where our marine piles have been driven into waterways, where formerly creosoted treated wood and things were used, and it actually allows marine life to come back into the area because there's so little impact on the environment, so little negative impact. There's a lot of positive impact.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's a great question, Jim. There are, you know, so many different types of plastics out there. The ones that we use are nontoxic. There has been testing done where our marine piles have been driven into waterways, where formerly creosoted treated wood and things were used, and it actually allows marine life to come back into the area because there's so little impact on the environment, so little negative impact. There's a lot of positive impact.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you know we - we talk about carbon fiber a lot now and making cars and things out of carbon fiber. Could you do it with plastics? Recycled bottles instead?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you know we - we talk about carbon fiber a lot now and making cars and things out of carbon fiber. Could you do it with plastics? Recycled bottles instead?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Could you do a...</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Could you do a...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you make the bodies, you know, car bodies out of it - instead of carbon fibers, plastic?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you make the bodies, you know, car bodies out of it - instead of carbon fibers, plastic?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: You know, the potential is there, Ira, for all kinds of things. We don't put any limits on ourselves. But for right now, our focus is on, you know, true infrastructure projects that, again, are looking for real, long-term benefits of the type that we can offer.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: You know, the potential is there, Ira, for all kinds of things. We don't put any limits on ourselves. But for right now, our focus is on, you know, true infrastructure projects that, again, are looking for real, long-term benefits of the type that we can offer.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you actually run out of plastic bottles? If you got - if this really got going in a lot of bridges, and we know how much of the infrastructure is falling down all over America...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Could you actually run out of plastic bottles? If you got - if this really got going in a lot of bridges, and we know how much of the infrastructure is falling down all over America...</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Sure, absolutely.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Sure, absolutely.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...could you run out of their raw material?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...could you run out of their raw material?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: You know, I guess that's always a possibility, but we would be at a business level that would be so positively impacting the U.S. at that point and worldwide. I mean, right now, only about 17 percent of all plastics are actually recycled. So there's a long, long way to go before we get to that point. There's literally billions of pounds of material that are generated each year that are not recycled.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: You know, I guess that's always a possibility, but we would be at a business level that would be so positively impacting the U.S. at that point and worldwide. I mean, right now, only about 17 percent of all plastics are actually recycled. So there's a long, long way to go before we get to that point. There's literally billions of pounds of material that are generated each year that are not recycled.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's go to Richard in New York, New York. Hi, Richard.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's go to Richard in New York, New York. Hi, Richard.</s>RICHARD: Yeah. Hi, how are you doing?</s>RICHARD: Yeah. Hi, how are you doing?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there.</s>RICHARD: Yeah, I just wanted to comment. I have inspected a number of structures made out of your composite material, pilings and decking and what have you. In Staten Island there's a pier near where the Staten Island ferry comes in that was constructed. They did pile postings - I'm a diver. I do underwater construction, demolition, inspection. The product didn't stand up very low to the weather, you know, with the white (unintelligible) reinforcement roads with the black piling. Do you have any comment on that?</s>RICHARD: Yeah, I just wanted to comment. I have inspected a number of structures made out of your composite material, pilings and decking and what have you. In Staten Island there's a pier near where the Staten Island ferry comes in that was constructed. They did pile postings - I'm a diver. I do underwater construction, demolition, inspection. The product didn't stand up very low to the weather, you know, with the white (unintelligible) reinforcement roads with the black piling. Do you have any comment on that?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Oh, certainly. I mean, Richard, as I said before, you're right. I've seen those same failed projects. There are a variety of composites out there. The project that you're commenting on specifically was not one that we did. Our projects have been in service. We have bridges built for the military that go back about 14 years. We have railroad ties in service for oven a dozen years, I mean, and I'm talking here hundreds of thousands of them. So we know the longevity of our product and how it works. Again, it's like comparing different types of wood. Just because something is a composite doesn't mean it's the same as our composite. You know, we've recently won awards - R&D 100 for the top new projects of the year. And, again, we're getting reorders from customers that have utilized our product for years and years.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Oh, certainly. I mean, Richard, as I said before, you're right. I've seen those same failed projects. There are a variety of composites out there. The project that you're commenting on specifically was not one that we did. Our projects have been in service. We have bridges built for the military that go back about 14 years. We have railroad ties in service for oven a dozen years, I mean, and I'm talking here hundreds of thousands of them. So we know the longevity of our product and how it works. Again, it's like comparing different types of wood. Just because something is a composite doesn't mean it's the same as our composite. You know, we've recently won awards - R&D 100 for the top new projects of the year. And, again, we're getting reorders from customers that have utilized our product for years and years.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, what is it about your process or product that makes it so much better?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, what is it about your process or product that makes it so much better?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's just the type of - it's just the material formulation. And I'm not saying that to put down any competitors or anything like that, but our material formulation was derived specifically to yield longevity and performance in just this type of application.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's just the type of - it's just the material formulation. And I'm not saying that to put down any competitors or anything like that, but our material formulation was derived specifically to yield longevity and performance in just this type of application.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And if I'm a bridge engineer wanting to build a bridge out one of your - using your items, I don't need to know anything special or a special training or anything like that?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And if I'm a bridge engineer wanting to build a bridge out one of your - using your items, I don't need to know anything special or a special training or anything like that?</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's - not specifically any special training. Every material is different. Concrete bridges aren't built the same as steel. Steel is not built the same as wood. But - and so neither are composite bridges. But for instance, McLaren Engineering in this area, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Balfour Beatty, major engineering concerns have all designed with our materials.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: It's - not specifically any special training. Every material is different. Concrete bridges aren't built the same as steel. Steel is not built the same as wood. But - and so neither are composite bridges. But for instance, McLaren Engineering in this area, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Balfour Beatty, major engineering concerns have all designed with our materials.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. Jim, thanks for taking time to talk about it today.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. Jim, thanks for taking time to talk about it today.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Ira, I appreciate it. And next time, maybe I can get on not after a Nobel Prize winner, though.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Ira, I appreciate it. And next time, maybe I can get on not after a Nobel Prize winner, though.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We kept the audience for you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We kept the audience for you.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Thanks. Have a great weekend.</s>JIM KERSTEIN: Thanks. Have a great weekend.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Your welcome. Jim Kerstein is the chief technology officer and founder of Axion International in Providence, New Jersey.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Your welcome. Jim Kerstein is the chief technology officer and founder of Axion International in Providence, New Jersey. |
In the 1979 BBC series, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, director John Irvin created a dreary depiction of the British Secret Service. John Le Carre's Cold War espionage novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is enjoying a resurgence among today's audiences. Gary Oldman stars in a 2011 film adaptation of the book — often called Le Carre's finest — as master spy George Smiley, recalled from forced retirement to root out a traitor in the top ranks of the British intelligence service. While the 2011 film may be some viewers' first introduction to the story, many others will remember the iconic 1979 BBC mini-series starring Alec Guinness, recently released on DVD. The multi-part series slowly unravels a labyrinthine tale of intrigue, petty rivalries and bureaucracy against a dreary Cold War backdrop. John Irvin, director of the original series, joins NPR's Neal Conan to talk about how he crafted his adaptation and why the story still resonates today, more than two decades after the end of the Cold War. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the new movie "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," master spy George Smiley, played by Gary Oldman, recalls what he told his Soviet counterpart and nemesis Karla to try to get him to defect.</s>GARY OLDMAN: (as George Smiley) We're not so very different, you and I. We both spend our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. Don't you think it's time to recognize there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This new version of John le Carre's classic Cold War thriller inevitably faces comparison to the BBC TV series first broadcast in 1979 that starred Alec Guinness as Smiley.</s>ALEC GUINNESS: (as George Smiley) I'm not offering you wealth or smart women or your choice of fast cars. I know you have no use for those things. And I'm not going to make any claims about the moral superiority of the West. I'm sure you can see through our values, just as I can see through yours in the East. You and I have spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in each other's systems. I'm sure each of us has experienced innumerable technical satisfactions in our wretched Cold War.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In a moment, the man who directed that BBC miniseries joins us. If you have questions for John Irvin about either version, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email, talk@npr.org. And you can join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. John Irvin joins us now from the studios of the BBC in London. His version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is now available on DVD from Acorn Media. He's gone on to direct more than 40 films and television programs, including "Hamburger Hill" and "The Dogs of War." John Irvin, nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today.</s>JOHN IRVIN: It's a great pleasure to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I know you've seen the new film directed by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson. What do you think?</s>JOHN IRVIN: I think he's a very good director. Obviously, the film in the theater is very different from the version that we made, which went out on the BBC some 30 years ago. I don't think you could make comparisons, really. They're two different animals. I enjoyed it, and it was very thoughtful. It was very stylish, and it was engrossing. I know the story pretty well, so I wasn't lost.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It helps to have read the book, doesn't it?</s>JOHN IRVIN: It does. Yes, yes. It's a tricky one. But, no, I thought - I was - obviously, it was rather like looking in the mirror and seeing somebody completely different looking back at you. But I did enjoy it, and as I said, it was done with tremendous panache, and I enjoyed that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You faced - I'm sorry to interrupt. But you faced what you must have felt were hellish choices compressing the book to, what, five-and-a-half hours. They had two.</s>JOHN IRVIN: I know. I don't know how they did it. I mean, we thought we were compressing the story, and we thought we were, you know, we were hard pressed. But I - it is - the heart of it is really quite simple. It is, obviously, dressed up as an extraordinary, thrilling, suspenseful, you know, mystery. And I think the way I directed it and the way I saw it is very different from the way, you know, the present film is envisioned. But I think they're both - I mean, they're both valid. I saw my version as a, you know, as a labyrinth, with a very dark secret in the center of it. And I based my version on the corridors of the BBC.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, really?</s>JOHN IRVIN: This circus, it was a combination in my imagination really of all the intrigues, jealousies, rivalries within the departments of the BBC and combined with my schoolmasters, my boarding school, when I was - where I was very unhappy.</s>JOHN IRVIN: So I was able to get my revenge...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You couldn't actually take any of them out and shoot them, so.</s>JOHN IRVIN: ...both on the BBC and my school, yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So there is, speaking of shooting, one action sequence in both the movie and your version. It's right at the beginning. This is a little different from the spy thrillers that people had been accustomed, starring people like James Bond.</s>JOHN IRVIN: Indeed. This is - I mean, the ending sequence in our version was set in a forest. There's - it makes your pulse race. It's a man running for his life, chased by dogs. Here, it's an assassination - in Budapest. I think - you know, I think it's - it was never - it's never - it was never going to be compared with James Bond. But what's interesting is that Alec Guinness, the most thoughtful, the most - in some ways, the most cerebral of actors, when he walks into his house and realizes that somebody's inside, he holds a pistol in his hands, and he suddenly sort of completely changed. He obviously thought he was James Bond for a minute, and it's quite (unintelligible).</s>JOHN IRVIN: I just said, calm down, calm down. Stop that. Put it away. Not so keen, you know. But it's interesting that as soon as he had it in his fist, he was transformed by this weapon. I always remember thinking, gosh, you know, we're all boys at heart, aren't we really?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It is Alec- - and you mentioned his play with the gun. He did more cleaning his glasses than any actor I have ever seen in my life.</s>JOHN IRVIN: Yes, with the tip of his tie.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes.</s>JOHN IRVIN: Which is a - that's why it works so well, yes. That's - looking back through his - holding his spectacles up, almost like a magnifying glass with this great owl looking into them, you know, penetrating - this penetrating examination of his victims. Wonderful stuff - wonderful, wonderful. He was a master, master, master in terms of his technique. It was amazing. I mean, I've never worked with an actor who, apart from Melvin Douglas, who had the same command and control and concentration - absolutely brilliant.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We have - in fact, we've asked for calls. And a surprise to us, a wonderful former colleague of ours, Anne Garrels is calling. Annie, how are you?</s>ANNE GARRELS: I'm very well, and I have a great "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" story.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead.</s>ANNE GARRELS: Well, I was an ABC correspondent in the late '70s, '80s when the first BBC series came out. And I was the only one in town with a VCR. It was the old three-quarter inch. Nobody - it was way before VHS, and whatever. And I got the series, and I watched it in Moscow with the CIA station chief. I knew who he was. He knew I knew, but we never actually said that - and a bunch of Russians. And, of course, we were sitting there watching it. And, of course, we knew the KGB was listening in to the apartment.</s>ANNE GARRELS: And they knew we knew, they knew we knew, and it was a hilarious moment.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now - so that's how they first got the audio track of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."</s>ANNE GARRELS: Well, we had the video.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes. Now, you have the video. They got the audio by listening into you.</s>ANNE GARRELS: They got the audio for the first time - or maybe not.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Those were the days, Annie. We remember when the person the CIA believed to be the KGB chief in Washington used to be regularly issued the license plate 007.</s>ANNE GARRELS: Exactly. And, of course, subsequently, I was thrown out for being a spy - although, as the Soviets said, a very bad one...</s>ANNE GARRELS: ...I regret.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Annie, it is great to hear from you.</s>ANNE GARRELS: Well, I just - I heard this, and it was just, you know, one of those moments in the Cold War which are distant for so many, and present for so many of us. But, I mean, it was one of the best moments I had in Moscow.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Annie, thanks so much.</s>ANNE GARRELS: Thank you, sweetie. Bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our old colleague, Anne Garrels, calling in from, I suspect, Northeastern Connecticut, but she'll correct if I'm wrong. In any case, John Irvin, I know John Le Carre always liked your version of this novel as his favorite adaptation of any of his books into television or movies. Did you ever get a chance to talk to him about it?</s>JOHN IRVIN: About the - we worked very closely with David Cornwell...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes, his real name.</s>JOHN IRVIN: ...and - his real name, yeah. And although we'd - it's interesting. He may not thank me for saying this, but we didn't show him many rushes for about, I think, you know, until we'd been filming for three or four weeks. We then compiled some rushes with Alec, you know, playing Smiley. And he was halfway through "Smiley's People," writing it. And when he saw the rushes, the compilation, he went back and started again and rewrote "Smiley's People" so that Smiley was much closer to Guinness' persona. It was fascinating. So I know that - Alec and I became very close.</s>JOHN IRVIN: Alec was introduced to the head of MI6 by David. And I knew after that meeting that he was hooked, because he came back and he said to me, hmm, not quite a gentleman: suede shoes, blue suit, very trunky cufflinks. He didn't like the cufflinks. So I knew - once an actor starts talking about his costume or his - you know, I knew that he was hooked. It took - I had to work him for about a month, two months, almost, I think, actually, looking in retrospect, to persuade him to come aboard, because it was a year's work. It was a long, long journey.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Did you have to cancel shooting if the sun came out?</s>JOHN IRVIN: Steady. No, we - unfortunately, we had to stop shooting quite often because the crew was in a dispute with the BBC management, so it was (unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As happened often in those years, yes.</s>JOHN IRVIN: Yes. It was - we were embroiled in all sorts of industrial action, but I kept shooting, even if it was only for a day. But I thought that Alec would, you know, would be really, you know, disappointed and might walk. And I know that I told him (unintelligible), which we - you know, and we couldn't film. We weren't allowed to. The shop steward said no, no, no. So I said, you all go home. I was very depressed.</s>JOHN IRVIN: And I saw Alec get up to the telephone outside the dining room, and I thought, you know, he was, you know, talking to his agent, saying, well, you know, this is ridiculous. It's not working. And he came - and he talked to a waiter, and he sat down. And I was profoundly depressed. I thought, you know, we would have to abandon the whole project. And suddenly, the dining was flooded with waiters bearing trays of champagne. And I said, what on earth is - you know, what's going on? Hardly a time for celebration. And he said, no, no, John. You look so depressed. I thought you needed cheering up. So I bought you some champagne. And, of course, he stayed to the end. He was an extraordinary a generous man and, you know, obviously, a master. But he was very thoughtful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Fantastic performance you got from him. John Irvin, congratulations on the renewed interest in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."</s>JOHN IRVIN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I know you're also now working on a World War II story, "Monte Cassino," due out next year. So good luck with that.</s>JOHN IRVIN: Thank you so much. It's been a great pleasure.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," the Alec Guinness version is available on DVD from Acorn Media, the new - excuse me - the new movie version starring Gary Oldman is out on screens, I guess, just about everywhere. John Irvin joined us today from BBC in London. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. |
U.S. and Mexican authorities have subjected journalists reporting on migrant caravans to excessive questioning and barred a photographer from re-entering Mexico. U.S. media groups call this harassment. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Mexican and U.S. border authorities have put journalists covering the caravans of Central American migrants under unusual scrutiny. In one case, a photojournalist was denied re-entry into Mexico. Media rights groups say the trend is troubling and infringes on press freedom. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Freelance photographer Mark Abramson spent the last two weeks of December in Tijuana, Mexico, covering the recent arrival of Central American migrants to the northern border city. When he finished his assignment and attempted to cross back into the U.S. through the port of entry in San Diego, Calif., he says a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent referred him to a secondary inspection waiting room.</s>MARK ABRAMSON: They had me leave my stuff there. I couldn't take it with me. And a plainclothes agent took me into another interrogation room with no windows to question me for about 30 minutes.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Abramson says the agent, who was friendly, began asking him questions about his work, assignments and whether he could identify the leaders of the migrant caravan. Abramson says it's his job to inform the public, not the U.S. government. Alexandra Ellerbeck with the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says they have received complaints from as many as eight journalists who were referred to secondary inspections at U.S. border entries and asked similar questions. In one case, two U.S. photographers were shown pictures and asked them to identify so-called instigators of the caravan. Ellerbeck says she's concerned about U.S. agents' actions.</s>ALEXANDRA ELLERBECK: And try to get information from journalists about their sources or their reporting or information they're gathering - it has huge implications for press freedom.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Ellerbeck says her group has received complaints, too, about journalists and immigration lawyers being denied re-entry into Mexico after working with migrants from the caravan. U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not have a comment available for this report, nor did Mexico's national immigration agency. Carrie Kahn, NPR News. |
In 1971, computer dating involved people filling out forms and sending them by mail to a service where they ran profiles through a computer and mailed potential matches back. | AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Sweden's moves toward a cashless economy may offer lessons for what the U.S. will deal with in the future. But now let's take a trip into the past. With Valentine's Day around the corner, we dug into our archives to find the first time NPR ever reported on how people were trying to find a match with help from computers. It was September 1971.</s>MIKE WATERS, BYLINE: From National Public Radio in Washington, this is Mike Waters with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.</s>MIKE WATERS, BYLINE: This evening on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, the first part of the series on computer dating - we'll hear how this young industry that is the product of our technology has changed in just a few short years.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The series traced the origins of computer dating, and the story might seem familiar if you know how Facebook got started. That was in a Harvard dorm room when then-student Mark Zuckerberg developed a program to rank female classmates based on how attractive they were. Well, NPR reported it was on that same campus that students a few decades earlier - and following similar instincts - launched what became computer dating.</s>MIKE WATERS, BYLINE: It started back in the mid-1960s, when some students at Harvard University were offered free time on the university computers. They used their knowledge of computer programming to match up men from Harvard with women from Radcliffe. And the Harvard men decided to turn it into a small commercial business.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Before long, computer dating jumped from Harvard to the wider world. Reporter Carol Kadushin told our story.</s>CAROL KADUSHIN, BYLINE: When computer dating left the college campus, it developed into two branches, the inexpensive program where an interested applicant fills out a brief questionnaire - basic questions for matching are age, height and race - and sends in the processing fee of anywhere from $3 to $25. In return, he or she receives a list of presumably compatible people.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: There was no swiping left or right back then. Applicants dropped those paper questionnaires into the mail. The companies would transfer that data to punch cards or magnetic tape to be run through a mainframe computer, and the results would then be sent back in the mail.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: But here's one part that might still sound familiar. Back then, people worried that their potential matches might embellish their profiles. The more expensive computer dating programs included background checks for anywhere from $300 to $5,000 extra.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: But our report pointed out that some of those expensive computer dating services were no better than the cheap ones. Some background checks were not thorough. That was one hurdle. Another hurdle, the limits of the technology of the time - a man named Owen Rogers (ph) who ran Detroit's computer dating service put it this way.</s>OWEN ROGERS: When you're using a computer, No. 1, you have to use a program. I've yet to see one that has been a good matching process. If they could find a program that could do the job, possibly yes. But I don't think that they're going to find a program that can do the job at this day and age - maybe a little later on down the line.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Well, we are now down the line - way down the line from that reporting series in 1971. There are a number of dating apps now and a number of happy users who can say they have made matches built to last. |
Virginia's scandal-plagued governor and his lieutenant are holding onto office despite mounting pleas for them to step aside. | AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: It's now been a week and a half of cascading scandals in Virginia's state government, and the three Democratic politicians at the center of it are still in office despite calls to step down. The state's lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, faces two allegations of sexual assault. He denies the claims and wants an investigation. Virginia's governor and attorney general have both apologized for wearing blackface in the 1980s, and Governor Ralph Northam told CBS News this weekend that Virginia needs someone like him to get through this crisis.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: NPR's Cheryl Corley is in Richmond, the state capital, and joins us now with the latest. And, Cheryl, what was the scene like today in the Capitol building?</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Well, Audie, it was both ordinary and surreal (laughter) at the same time because despite all this controversy over the past week and a half, it seemed like business as usual. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax presided over the state Senate. Lawmakers were focused on regular business, tax policy and resolution - resolutions. And there are even schoolkids who had come in to sit in on the session to see lawmakers in action. But there was also this undertone of the scandals and reporters of course asking questions about those despite the governor and the lieutenant governor vowing to stay in office.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: At the same time, you have many people, especially Democrats, who had called on the governor and lieutenant governor to resign. Did we hear anything further from them?</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Nobody has really officially reversed their position. So you did have people saying things, but they were kind of stepping back from what we can tell. The Virginia Democratic Party, the Legislative Black Caucus, a host of Republicans of you know - as you know, have all called on the governor and lieutenant governor to resign. But when he was asked about Governor Northam today, Lamont Bagby, the head of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said reporters really should just ask again after the legislative session. And he said ultimately it's a decision that the governor has to make.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Cheryl, there was a Washington Post poll that came out over the weekend that found Virginians were split over whether Governor Northam should resign. What have you actually heard from people you've been speaking with?</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Well, the group of Northam supporters held a press conference today, and they included religious leaders and community activists and a former city council member, Chuck Richardson, who said that nobody was really overlooking this whole issue of blackface. But he said all these calls for resignation have been made in a really hyperpolitical environment. And he called them an overreaction. Here's what he had to say.</s>CHUCK RICHARDSON: Ralph Northam is a good man and a decent man. He has stood with us on issues both popular and controversial. Often when more calculating politicians would have stood on the sideline, he came forward.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: He talked about, you know, Confederate Row and how the governor has talked about getting rid of those statues. And those were the types of things that they admired him for.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Last Friday night, we also heard one delegate say that he would introduce articles of impeachment against Lieutenant Governor Fairfax today. Did that come about?</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: No. Patrick Hope is the delegate. He was the one who originally planned to start off the whole process today. He said he still thinks the lieutenant governor should resign immediately, but he said he wanted to hear from the two women who accused Fairfax of sexually assaulting them. And he said he decided to hold off on this whole effort for impeachment after talking to his colleagues.</s>PATRICK HOPE: And right now in talking to my colleagues, I don't believe that the impeachment process provides that. But I'm committed to finding that process, that investigation, so these women will have their say.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: And the lieutenant governor says he's - wants an investigation as well. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: That's NPR's Cheryl Corley. Cheryl, thank you for your reporting.</s>CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: You're welcome. |
Denver teachers began a strike Monday after more than a year of contract negotiations with the school district. This strike comes just weeks after a teacher strike in Los Angeles that lasted six days. | AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Teachers in Denver are striking over their pay. This after more than a year of contract negotiations with the school district. Jenny Brundin of Colorado Public Radio has been following this story. She's the education reporter there. And, Jenny, today was the first day of the strike. What was the school day like?</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: Well, all schools were open except for preschool. That's about 5,000 3- and 4-year-olds. The district said they didn't have the staff with that higher level of training that's needed for young kids. And for older kids, the district spent more than $130,000 on lesson plans for two days. Some high school students met in auditoriums. They were divided up into classrooms. At South High School, students walked out at 8 a.m., and they joined their teachers on the picket line.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: At another high school, things were a little more chaotic. One student posted a video of students leaving classes and flooding into the hallways where a spontaneous dance party broke out. Several students told me administrators tried to get students to go back to class, but when that failed, they said the kids could leave school, and several did. The district disputes that claim, though.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: When it comes to the negotiations, as we mentioned, salary's the sticking point, and, specifically, the district's current system of pay incentives. What more can you tell us about that?</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: Denver has an unusual pay system that doesn't really look like other districts. They get bonuses for working in hard-to-staff positions, like math, for example, or teaching in a high-poverty school. But teachers say those bonuses weren't reliable. And sometimes, the incentives would disappear or shrink in size suddenly. And that's led to high turnover in the district. High school teacher Rebecca Basgal told me that can take a toll on students.</s>REBECCA BASGAL: I was the first - I'm sorry. I'm going to cry. I was the first math teacher that stayed with them an entire year since their fifth-grade year. And kids don't deserve that.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: As you can see, this is a really emotional time for a lot of teachers. They've been at this negotiation for 15 months, and they're really kind of fed up at this point.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Now, going forward, the two sides are supposed to go back to the bargaining table, right? That's supposed to happen tomorrow. Where do things stand?</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: Teachers want the district to put less money into incentives and more money into raising teacher salaries. The district says their latest proposal gives teachers an 11 percent pay raise for next year, although the union contests that number. But the district isn't ready to do away with incentives. Here's Superintendent Susana Cordova.</s>SUSANA CORDOVA: We added more money, an increased emphasis on our students in the highest-priority schools based on our deep, deep belief around equity and to help incentivize teachers to work in the schools that need them the most.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: The two sides also disagree with how teachers can advance in their salaries. The union wants a reliable salary schedule where teachers can get pay bumps for professional development. And the district is worried costs would really skyrocket under that model.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: That's Colorado Public Radio's Jenny Brundin. Jenny, thank you for your reporting.</s>JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: Thank you. |
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with House Appropriations Chair Nita Lowey, a key negotiator on the bipartisan border security compromise reached Monday night. | AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: On Capitol Hill, a handful of lawmakers have struck a deal on border security. Now they have to sell it to their colleagues and the president by Friday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says President Trump got a, quote, "pretty good deal here," though it doesn't have all the border wall funding he wanted.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Let's bring in one of the key architects of this compromise. Congresswoman Nita Lowey is a Democrat from New York. She chairs the House Appropriations Committee, and she is one of the lawmakers who hammered out this deal.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Congresswoman, welcome back.</s>NITA LOWEY: Well, thank you very much. It's always a pleasure.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So to make sure that my understanding is right, four of you - you and another Democrat and two Republicans - brokered this draft. And now the full conference committee of 17 is working through it.</s>NITA LOWEY: That's correct. And I must say, for me, it was a real privilege to be part of this effort. This is really what government is all about. We had Democrats, Republicans sitting at a table brokering the final agreement, the final details. And I think it sends a strong message that this works.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Let me pause you there, though, if I may because you're calling this the final agreement, the final details. At least one of the other members of the committee - this is Republican Congressman Tom Graves - tweeted this morning he hasn't signed off on it and he has some concerns about it.</s>NITA LOWEY: Well, Tom Graves is a member of Congress. And again, that's the way democracy works. He's entitled...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: But he's also one of the 17 who's been hammering out this compromise.</s>NITA LOWEY: That's right. And I have no idea what he's complaining about. And all I can say is Senator Shelby, Senator Leahy, Congresswoman Granger and I got a great deal of input from our colleagues on the conference committee, and then we sat down and brokered the final deal - which I think does represent the way democracy works.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: In the end, was the amount of funding for a physical barrier - the actual dollar sign on that - was that a major sticking point?</s>NITA LOWEY: We were negotiating. We talked about many different things. Everyone was very honest, was very direct. And when that number was brought to the team by myself, there was some discussion, and then it was accepted.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: That number is reported to be 1.375 billion going toward...</s>NITA LOWEY: I haven't released it because that was my commitment. But you seem to have the number, and everyone else has the number.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Isn't that almost exactly what was on offer last December before the whole shutdown?</s>NITA LOWEY: Well, frankly, it denies the president billions of dollars in funding for the concrete wall that he demanded.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The president says he's going to build this wall. He - in fact, last night in El Paso, the banners and signs and chants were about finishing the wall. Is there any effort in this bill to stop the president from doing that, from doing just that - from building a wall on his own?</s>NITA LOWEY: I can't direct the president what to do as a member of Congress. I am just...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: You're saying you couldn't stop him if he decides to do something by executive order.</s>NITA LOWEY: I am just saying that this was a bipartisan process. Democrats and Republicans came together in good faith to work out a compromise bill. If the president decides to act in opposition in violation of this bill, then the conferees probably would have to get together and respond.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Here's my big-picture question. Are we going to keep having this fight? Because after all this - after the shutdown, after everything - the money runs out again at the end of September when we will, of course, be that much closer to the 2020 election.</s>NITA LOWEY: It's hard for me to believe that Republicans or Democrats would want to shut the government down and support that kind of action by the president. It's irresponsible. It's inappropriate. All those people who were out of work are just starting to get back to work. It's really time for the president to do his job. He needs to lead. He needs to govern, not play politics and tweet to his base.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Democrat Nita Lowey of New York. Congresswoman, thank you very much.</s>NITA LOWEY: It's a pleasure to be with you.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: And we will hear from Republican Congressman Tom Graves elsewhere on tonight's program. |
Lawmakers have reached a deal to avert another government shutdown, but the key question is whether President Trump will sign it. | AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: So President Trump is trying to decide whether to support that bipartisan deal, even as it doesn't give him everything he wants on border security. So for more, we turn to NPR's Tamara Keith at the White House. Hey, there, Tamara.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hello.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: So how is President Trump responding to the deal today?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, he held a Cabinet meeting earlier today, and he said that he hadn't seen all the details yet but that he's not happy.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't say I'm happy. I can't say I'm thrilled, but the wall's getting built regardless - doesn't matter because we're doing other things beyond what we're talking about here.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: This deal, as we just heard Congresswoman Lowey say, comes up well short of the $5.7 billion in wall funding that President Trump had demanded and shut the government down over about a month and a half ago.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: This works out to about 55 miles of barrier, when they had asked for more than 200 miles of barrier. And it will be Bollard fencing, which President Trump has called a steel-slat barrier, not a concrete wall, though the president has sort of moved on from the concrete thing a long time ago.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Sean Hannity, who is an ally of the president's, on his Fox show last night called it a garbage compromise.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: But in those comments, are people reading it as the president may be thinking of rejecting the deal? I mean, is there a chance we'll see another government shutdown at the end of the week?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, you never say never. But even though the president and his closest allies seem to hate the deal, he also clearly doesn't want to have another government shutdown.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don't think you're going to see a shutdown. I wouldn't want to go to it, no. If you did have it, it's the Democrats' fault. And I accepted the first one. And I'm proud of what we've accomplished.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: And what he accomplished was getting blamed for the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which put his approval rating through the wringer and really negatively affected hundreds of thousands of federal workers.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: But his positive take on it is that everyone is talking about border security now.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: At the same time, you mentioned Sean Hannity calling this a garbage compromise. So if the president signs this legislation, where does that leave his promise to his supporters to build a border wall?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, it leaves it in the rebranding department, partially. That's why we're hearing him now say finish the wall instead of build the wall. And in fact, there has been some small amount of border fence that has been constructed over the past two years and a little bit - like, 4 miles of it that are underway right now.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: But as he also alerted to - alluded to in that first clip that we played, the president is now going to try to go around Congress to get the wall built another way. One Trump ally told me that this agreement allows the president to do whatever he wants after he signs it with no downside.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Several Republicans in the Senate have said that they expect him to move money from elsewhere or possibly declare a national emergency to free up funds. And here's what the president himself said about it.</s>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The bottom line is, on the wall, we're building the wall, and we're using other methods other than this. And in addition to this, we have a lot of things going. We have a lot of money in this country, and we're using some of that money, a small percentage of that money, to build the wall, which we desperately need.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Now, I've asked numerous people inside the White House in the administration how exactly this work - what legal basis they plan to use, where the money would come from and other questions. And no one has yet given me a specific answer.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: But there do appear to be some options out there, including a statute that allows the defense department to construct roads and fences in drug-smuggling corridors. And the White House has been talking a lot about drugs as relates to the border recently. But all of this comes with risk, risk that Congress pushes back, risk that this ends up in court, in legal challenges.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: That's NPR's Tamara Keith at the White House. Tamara, thanks for explaining it.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: You're welcome. |
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, one of two African-American Democrats running for president, has been campaigning in South Carolina, the earliest primary state with a large share of black voters. | AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: South Carolina is a solidly red state. It's also critically important to Democrats running for president. Its large African-American voting bloc makes it a key state for those trying to capture the party nomination. So many candidates are already spending time in the state trying to endear themselves to those voters. NPR's Scott Detrow has been on the road there with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: It's Sunday in rural South Carolina, and Cory Booker sounds like he's preaching.</s>CORY BOOKER: You cannot love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women. You may not always agree with them...</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Booker's not making a campaign stop in a church. He's in a high school cafeteria telling a couple hundred voters why he's centering his presidential campaign around the idea that Americans need to come together and treat each other with more love and empathy.</s>CORY BOOKER: I'm - I have great ideas, some of which I've gotten into law, some of which I implemented in Newark. But when are we going to see that the cancer on the soul of our country is the divisions that exist between us in a nation that's united, that claims to be one nation under God? Well, we need to put the indivisible back into that one nation under God.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: That's despite the fact that so many Democratic voters are so angry at President Trump.</s>CORY BOOKER: You're one of those people who wants to fight fire with fire. Now, I ran a fire department. I was a mayor. I oversaw - I appointed the guy that really ran it. Let's not exaggerate. But that's not a good strategy to put out fires in a home, is to fight fire with fire. They brought water.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: South Carolina has been an important early primary state for decades. This time, though, most Democratic campaigns see it as even more important. That's for two key reasons.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: First, the party has become increasingly focused on and energized by diversity. And South Carolina is the first primary state with a significant African-American population. Second, the calendar - as longtime South Carolina political operative Jaime Harrison points out, South Carolina will vote just days before Super Tuesday, where several big Southern states with a lot of black voters will head to the polls all at once.</s>JAIME HARRISON: Really, you know, South Carolina becomes the gate to the rest of the South and other states with similar demographics.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Do well there, and suddenly you could be the leader. The 2020 Democratic field is the first ever to include two black candidates among the frontrunners. And both Booker and California Senator Kamala Harris haven't been shy about talking a lot about race. Here's Harris this week on the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club.</s>KAMALA HARRIS: Guess what the Russians have made very clear if - if we weren't before? That the issue of race is America's Achilles heel. And it has now become an issue that is not only about civil rights, but also an issue that is about national security.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Harris was referring to the fact that Russian operatives tried to exploit racial fault lines in their 2016 disinformation efforts. In South Carolina this weekend, all three crowds at Booker's events were predominantly African-American. But many voters were like Beverly Dianne Frierson, who said she's not going to be voting based on race alone.</s>BEVERLY DIANNE FRIERSON: I think it's great that we have Cory and Kamala. However, I also think that it's really great for the Democratic Party that we have a tremendous group of people who are very, very intelligent, highly skilled.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Besides, Frierson said...</s>BEVERLY DIANNE FRIERSON: I think it's much, much too early to say I'm for X, Y or Z. I want to attend as many rallies for the various candidates as possible, listen and learn.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: And it's clear Booker wants to take as much time to do that as possible. Several of his events stretched past the two-hour mark, and afterwards he waited as long as it took to make sure every single voter who wanted to could say hello, pose for a selfie or even get Booker to record videos on their phones to send to their families or friends.</s>SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Scott Detrow, NPR News, Sumter S.C. |
In the interest of cutting the Academy Awards telecast down to three hours, awards in four categories will be presented during commercial breaks, and edited for inclusion later in the broadcast. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Some Oscar winners this year will have to keep their thank-you's to the length of a commercial break. As NPR's Bob Mondello reports, this is the latest effort to shorten the marathon telecast.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: The length of the Oscars telecast has long been the subject of both concern and jokes. In 1979, Oscars host Johnny Carson began his monologue with this quip.</s>JOHNNY CARSON: This is the 51st Annual Academy Awards - two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a four-hour show.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Last year's Oscars ceremony came perilously close to that prescription, running three hours and 53 minutes while garnering the lowest U.S. viewership in Oscars history. The Motion Picture Academy committed to producing a three-hour show this year, and now they've revealed one way they hope to get to that running time. Four categories - best cinematography, film editing, live-action short and makeup and hairstyling - will be presented during commercial breaks. The presentations will be streamed live online while an edited version, including what members were told would be the spirit of the winning speeches, will be aired during the broadcast.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: What home viewers won't see is the walk up to the stage and the lists of thank-you's. After watching a video demonstration of the edited format, six branches of the Academy opted in. Four were chosen this year and will be guaranteed a live spot in next year's broadcast. Academy President John Bailey explained in a letter to Academy members that viewing patterns are changing quickly in a multimedia world, and our show must also evolve to successfully continue promoting motion pictures to a audience.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Others criticize that view. Steve Yedlin, the cinematographer of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," tweeted cryptically, TV show whose sole purpose is to package for public consumption the celebration of cinema craft announces that the celebration of cinema craft is too boring for public consumption.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: While shortening the Oscars telecast has been a goal in recent decades, it wasn't always. In 1959, the telecast was scheduled for two hours and came up 20 minutes short, forcing co-host Jerry Lewis to vamp.</s>JERRY LEWIS: We would like to now do 300 choruses of "There's No Business Like Show Business."</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: After a few moments of thanking anyone he could think of, he grabbed the orchestra leader's baton and led the band as the stage full of nominees danced away the remaining time. This year's ceremony will be Sunday, February 24. I'm Bob Mondello.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, may we take a moment to recap some of the outstanding awards given this evening at the 31st Annual Academy Awards. |
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Dallas Morning News reporter Alfredo Corchado about President Trump's visit to El Paso, and what it means for the city. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Here in Washington, congressional Republicans and Democrats are seeing if they can rescue talks on border security and maybe, just maybe, reach a bipartisan deal.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: President Trump is making his case for a border wall directly to voters tonight at a rally in El Paso, Texas, a city where Trump got just over a quarter of the votes cast in the 2016 election.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: To learn how people in El Paso are viewing the president's visit, let's bring in Dallas Morning News reporter Alfredo Corchado. He's in El Paso himself, and he joins us from there.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Hey there, Alfredo.</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: Hey, Mary Louise.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Great to have you with us. What's the vibe there in El Paso ahead of the rally tonight?</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: Well, people are usually excited about a presidential visit. I don't think excitement is the word that I would use for tonight's visit by President Trump. People are still angry, and they're downright insulted that the president would use this community to try to make his point, to try to make his case that a wall is needed to keep a city safe. He said at the State of the Union that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities, had been until they started building barriers. That hasn't been the case. That's never been the case. Historically, El Paso was and remains a safe city.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Right. You're talking about the State of the Union address last week. He did refer to extremely high rates of violent crime, he said, in El Paso before fencing went up a decade or so ago. And then he said after the fencing was put in place that crime came down. You said that's made people in El Paso mad. What are the facts in terms of the crime rate and any relationship that we can parse with a barrier being put in place?</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: Well, according to FBI tracking data, El Paso has ranked among the safest urban cities of its size even before or after 9/11. That's when President Bush began the secure fence project along the border. In fact, after the fence went up, beginning in 2006 until 2011, crime rates in the city actually increased by 17 percent. And that's according...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Increased by 17 percent?</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: Increased by 17 percent.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: And is that linked to the barrier or do we know?</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: It's not clear yet. During that - part of that period, we also saw one of the most - biggest violence on the Mexican side of the border in Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border communities. But it's not clear whether there was a tie, there was a correlation between the two. That's something that we continue to explore.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Bottom line - you're saying people in El Paso believe their city is safe and do not believe they need a big wall to make it safer. Is that correct?</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: That's correct. I mean, people in a El Paso see themselves as safe. And they hope to take back their narrative by demonstrating that their city is civil, is tolerant, is safe. And that's a message that they hope that gets across.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So what kind of crowd is expected for the rally tonight? Are there signs that there may be any protests or counter-protests coming together?</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: Well, the El Paso County Coliseum holds up to about 6,000 people. And what we've been told is that all the tickets have been issued. So they expect a good crowd, which is not really surprising. I mean, I think there's going to be a lot of supporters. There is a lot of curiosity from El Pasoans. I mean, it's not every day that a president comes to El Paso.</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: But there's going to be thousands of people expected for what they call a march of truth, a rally that's going to be led by El Paso native and former Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who will make, as we turn to the national spotlight, as a potential challenger to Trump in 2020.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: I assume his event - it's not a coincidence that this is timed for the very same evening as the president's visit.</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: I don't think it's a coincidence.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: A split-screen-kind of evening unfolding tonight in El Paso.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Alfredo Corchado, reporter for the Dallas Morning News, thanks so much for joining us.</s>ALFREDO CORCHADO: Thank you very much, Mary Louise. |
A Washington Post-Schar School poll finds Virginians split over whether Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam should step down because of the racist depictions in his medical school yearbook page from 1984. | MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We're going to start the program again in Virginia, where Governor Ralph Northam continues to reject calls to resign after racist photos were discovered on his medical school yearbook page. This morning, in an interview that aired on CBS's "Face The Nation," he said he isn't going anywhere.</s>RALPH NORTHAM: Right now, Virginia needs someone that can heal. There's no better person to do that than a doctor. Virginia also needs someone who is strong, who has empathy, who has courage and who has a moral compass. And that's why I'm not going anywhere. I have learned from this. I have a lot more to learn.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: As you probably know by now, the Democratic leadership of his state is in crisis over admissions that Governor Northam and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring had worn blackface in the past. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is also being pressured to resign over allegations by two different women that he sexually assaulted them. He denies that. Many state and national political leaders have been pressing Northam to step aside.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: But now, there's new information about what Virginia voters think from a new poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. It finds that Virginians are split, but in ways that might be surprising. I'm joined now by Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School. He's with us now.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Dean, thanks so much for joining us.</s>MARK ROZELL: Thank you.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Now, you found that voters are essentially deadlocked, with 47 percent wanting Governor Northam to step aside and 47 percent wanting him to stay. But the breakdowns are very interesting. So who wants him to stay and who wants him to go?</s>MARK ROZELL: The breakdowns indeed are very interesting because we are seeing that Republicans want the Democratic governor to step down not by a huge majority - 56 to 42 percent. But Democrats want him to stay. And independents are split, just like the general public overall. But I think a more important breakdown is on race. African-Americans by a fairly sizable majority say that the governor should not step down - 57 percent saying that.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Well, what do you make of that?</s>MARK ROZELL: It's complicated. But I think a lot of people may believe that this was, as the polls suggested, an isolated incident in Ralph Northam's past over 30 years ago. So one of the questions on the poll was whether people believe what he did was an isolated incident or an indication of a broader racial prejudice on his part. And a majority of people said it's an isolated incident.</s>MARK ROZELL: Another interesting finding that I think is very important is whether people are willing to accept the governor's apology. But again, what's really interesting is the racial divide. Blacks are much more willing than whites in Virginia to say that they accept the governor's apology.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Well, to your point, I mean, shortly after the photo became public, national figures quickly put out statements saying things like Governor Northam has lost all moral authority and should resign immediately. That was from the former vice president, Joe Biden. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who is running for president, of course, said the photo eroded all confidence in Governor Northam's ability to lead. But what you're telling us is that Virginia voters, particularly African-American voters and Democratic voters in Virginia, don't accept that.</s>MARK ROZELL: That's exactly right. And I think one of the most interesting if not the most interesting finding in this poll is that there is a huge chasm between the Democratic Party elites and their rank-and-file party identifiers in the public. And we cannot know for sure, of course, in every case whether this was a sincere conviction or if it was based on some judgment that it was politically necessary to jump on this bandwagon and demand that the governor step down. But whatever the case, that is not the sentiment among Democratic Party voters.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: I do want to ask you about Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax. As we know, he has been accused of sexual assault by two different women. Was there data on what people - what did people say about that - whether he should stay or he should go?</s>MARK ROZELL: So here, the difficulty is that the poll was being completed right before the second accusation came out. So we did have the polling data that reflected the first accusation against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax. And most people in the survey said at that point, they were willing to withhold judgment on the particular issue, on the accusation. So it was not a very strong endorsement for him. But again, that's sort of the midway point of these two accusations. The public largely was saying they wanted to take a wait and see attitude and - you know, before they made any particular judgment one way or the other.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So finally, though, digging back into kind of the history here, you also ask people if they had worn blackface or knew someone who had.</s>MARK ROZELL: Yeah.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Tell us what you found. And what do you make of the answer?</s>MARK ROZELL: Right. Eleven percent of Virginians said that either they themselves had done so or they knew someone who has done so in the past. Now, in my network, that's surprising. I don't know anybody who's done that. But I've heard other people say maybe 11 percent is even too less. You know, that - they think that many more people at least know somebody else. But this is always a problem with surveys, and we all know this, right? That when you have an uncomfortable question like that - have you ever worn blackface or know somebody who has done so? - I am sure that there are a good many people who are just not willing to admit to that to a pollster. And we can all understand why.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: That's Mark Rozell. He's dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Dean Rozell, thank you so much for talking to us.</s>MARK ROZELL: Thank you. |
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly discusses President Trump's tweets referencing Native Americans with David Chang, chair of the American Indian Studies department at The University of Minnesota. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: In this very early stage of the 2020 presidential campaign, a pattern of attack against one candidate has already emerged - President Trump going after Senator Elizabeth Warren with references to Native Americans. Warren has in the past identified herself as having Cherokee heritage. One case in point - over the weekend, Trump tweeted asking if she would run as, quote, "the first Native American presidential candidate" and said he would see her on the campaign trail - trail in all caps. David Chang says those comments are dehumanizing to Native people. He chairs the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Minnesota. Professor Chang, welcome.</s>DAVID CHANG: Thank you.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: When we see that trail in all capital letters, of course, the reference is to the Trail of Tears. But this is a pattern. In an earlier tweet, the president took aim again - this is at Elizabeth Warren - over a video that she posted on Instagram where she's drinking a beer in her kitchen. He calls her Pocahontas again. He says if she'd done this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash - a tweet that you have argued pokes fun at a devastating massacre and reinforced racist stereotypes.</s>DAVID CHANG: Right. Along with Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, an American Indian historian, we pointed out that he's really bringing together all these symbols - Pocahontas, bringing up the name of an actual American Indian woman but using it as a racial slur, referring to the battle at Little Bighorn, referring to the massacre at Wounded Knee, now the Trail of Tears. All these things come together with a whole kind of a field of symbols where he's relegating American Indian people to the past where they are the enemies of the United States. This is a real problem on a number of fronts.</s>DAVID CHANG: American Indian people, Indigenous people, are not mascots. They have not disappeared. They are not punchlines. Indigenous people are serious, contemporary people in the 21st century. And they have serious, contemporary issues to deal with. And so this kind of humor trivializes, demeans and also distracts from the reality of contemporary American Indian life.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Could they be - all of the things that you describe, could they at the same time be smart politics? The president is zeroing in on what he perceives as a weakness of one of his political opponents. Senator Warren has released a DNA test to support her claim of Native American heritage. She's not a member of any tribe. And she has been criticized herself for things that she said about her heritage.</s>DAVID CHANG: She's right to be criticized, and Professor Mt. Pleasant and myself have criticized for that, along with many other Indigenous people. It's not my job to judge the political strategy of the Trump administration. But it's more my job to speak from a perspective that is not often brought in here. And that is the perspective of Indigenous communities across the continent. So this might be a political strategy, but what matters here to me is how destructive, how brutal and how cruel it is to make a joke of genocide and ethnic cleansing.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Let me bring into the conversation actor Rob Lowe, who has also tweeted about Elizabeth Warren and said she would bring new meaning, quote, "to commander in chief." Lowe later apologized, but I wonder if you think, taken together, this gets at a larger cultural blind spot in terms of why this might be deeply offensive to Native Americans and their communities.</s>DAVID CHANG: I think that's right. There's a blind spot of, it would seem to me, of almost willful ignorance or of not looking rather than of just not seeing. To make references to Little Bighorn, Wounded Knee, chief, Pocahontas, Trail of Tears, in addition to the other violence that these things do, they do the violence of making people not part of the political conversation.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: David Chang - he is professor of history and chair of the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Minnesota. Thank you so much.</s>DAVID CHANG: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. |
President Trump holds a rally in El Paso, Texas, on Monday. In his State of the Union, he said the city has become safer since its border wall was built. Local residents and law enforcement disagree. | MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Congress has until Friday to reach a compromise on border security and avoid another government shutdown. Senator Richard Shelby, Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Fox News that negotiations are stalled.</s>RICHARD SHELBY: I'll say 50/50 we get a deal. I hope and pray we do.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: President Trump continues to insist on billions of dollars for a border wall. And tomorrow, he'll argue his case in El Paso, Texas. In his State of the Union speech, the president falsely described El Paso as one of the nation's most dangerous cities before a border wall was built there. As Monica Ortiz Uribe reports, that remark prompted a backlash from local officials from both parties.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: El Paso's Republican mayor tweeted that the city was never among America's most dangerous places. The local sheriff called Trump's attempt to justify a border wall sad. And El Paso's freshman congresswoman, Veronica Escobar, told C-SPAN that the president had lied.</s>VERONICA ESCOBAR: We were safe long before a wall was ever built.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: FBI statistics show El Paso's crime rate declined sharply in the early 1990s. The city didn't get a border wall - at least, not the high-grade steel variety - until 2008. Even then, Carlos Carrillo, a 20-year veteran of the El Paso Police, says the wall isn't solely responsible for the city's safety.</s>CARLOS CARILLO: I always compare it to the fire sprinklers, the smoke sensors that we have on our homes. That's just a tool. But is it going to stop the fire? No, it's not.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: The border wall did reduce cross-border thieves and drug mules, who took advantage of densely urban areas where the U.S. and Mexico are separated by less than a quarter mile. Now most illegal drugs come through ports of entry.</s>FERNANDO GARCIA: The wall that we need is a wall of law enforcement in the community working together to stand strong against crime.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: That's a goal Fernando Garcia, director of the Border Network for Human Rights, has been working toward for more than a decade. His organization hosts neighborhood forums with area cops and Border Patrol agents meant to spur dialogue and build trust. In 2000, his organization collected 150 reports of abuse by local law enforcement. By 2013, the number of abuse reports dropped to 20.</s>FERNANDO GARCIA: I believe that this is an important part of making El Paso safe - the fact that a family can report crime and abuse and doesn't feel fear, and they don't feel fear about doing that. For us, that is the metric of success.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: Garcia is afraid that Trump's aggressive enforcement policies could erode that progress.</s>FERNANDO GARCIA: Instead of seeing those immigrants and those families as members of our community, now agents or officers - you start seeing them as a threat.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: The president regularly highlights heinous crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. But study after study shows that on average, cities with large immigrant populations tend to be safer. Sociologist Cristina Morales says that in El Paso, a bilingual city with strong ties to Mexico, the immigrant experience endures across multiple generations.</s>CRISTINA MORALES: The immigrant memory is not a very far away memory for us. It's constantly being revived. And sort of - I think it keeps us grounded.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: A coalition of 40 local organizations opposed to Trump's border wall is hosting an event tomorrow night right across the street from the president's rally. It'll be led by El Paso native and possible 2020 presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke.</s>MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: For NPR News, I'm Monica Ortiz Uribe in El Paso. |
U.S. food and medical aid for Venezuelans is sitting at the border, unable to move into the country because embattled President Nicolás Maduro has blocked the roads. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The Venezuela-Colombia border - humanitarian aid from the U.S. sits on the Colombian side of that border, although it's intended for people inside Venezuela. If they were to receive it, that would boost opposition leader Juan Guaido. The U.S., among other countries, says he is Venezuela's legitimate head of state. But Venezuela's authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, still controls the country, and as John Otis reports, he's blocking the aid.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Tons of food and medicine from the U.S. government sit in a warehouse near a bridge connecting Colombia and Venezuela. The warehouse now holds nearly $100 million of rice, flour, baby formula, diapers and emergency medical kits. As he toured the site on Friday, Kevin Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, suggested that much more will be coming.</s>KEVIN WHITAKER: What you see here is the first shipments of what we hope will be a great flood of humanitarian relief for the people of Venezuela.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: But President Maduro is having none of it. Hyperinflation and chronic shortages of food and medicine have prompted more than 3 million Venezuelans to flee the country, yet Maduro denies there's a problem.</s>PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: At a news conference, he said the humanitarian crisis was invented by Washington to justify an invasion of Venezuela.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Unintelligible).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: To stop the aid from getting across the frontier, Venezuelan soldiers have blocked all six lanes of the border bridge with shipping containers and a tanker truck. Now the area around the bridge has become a rallying point for angry Venezuelans like these doctors.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Speaking Spanish).</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Speaking Spanish).</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Speaking Spanish).</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: They chant, what do we want? Humanitarian aid. Why? Because our patients are dying.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: One of the protesters, Dayana Delgado, is an immunologist from the Venezuelan city of San Cristobal.</s>DAYANA DELGADO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: She says, "if we have to, we will form a human chain and pass the aid box by box so it reaches the people who need it." But humanitarian aid is also being used for hardball politics. Juan Guaido and his U.S. backers are hoping to put the powerful Venezuelan armed forces on the spot. Blocking the aid is infuriating average Venezuelans, but Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador, is urging military officers to turn against Maduro and allow the aid to flow. And that could be a major step towards regime change.</s>KEVIN WHITAKER: This is an opportunity for the Venezuelan armed forces to take part in an admirable humanitarian campaign. The choice that they make now is going to be recorded by their families, by their country and by the entire world from here on out.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Meanwhile, Guaido is calling for more street protests on Tuesday. He's also signing up volunteers to help distribute the U.S. aid.</s>JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: On Sunday, Guaido told reporters, our responsibility is to create enough political social and international pressure so that the aid is allowed in. But so far, the Venezuelan military remains loyal to Maduro. The border bridge remains blocked, and the supplies remain untouched in the warehouse. For NPR News, I'm John Otis on the Venezuela-Colombia border. |
NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Mary Ziegler, law professor at Florida State University, and author of Beyond Abortion: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Privacy, about abortion laws that could reach the Supreme Court. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Today, a Louisiana abortion law is not taking effect. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to block it for now. The law requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Opponents say it would have left Louisiana with only one doctor able to perform abortions.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Now, Louisiana is not the only state looking to restrict access to abortion. So to get a sense of what else is out there, we called Mary Ziegler. She's a law professor at Florida State University and author of the book "Beyond Abortion: Roe v. Wade And The Fight For Privacy." I asked her whether we're seeing more states take up the issue now.</s>MARY ZIEGLER: We are, I think, in anticipation of Justice Kavanaugh voting differently than his predecessor Anthony Kennedy, who was, of course, the swing vote on many abortion cases. I think there's an expectation now that the court will go further in allowing states to restrict abortion or maybe down the road even to ban it.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: And so how does the law in Louisiana that came before the court this week compare to what you're seeing in other states?</s>MARY ZIEGLER: Well, the Louisiana law doesn't go as far. There are states that are considering much further-reaching abortion restrictions. For example, Mississippi bans abortion at the 15th week of pregnancy. Iowa and a handful of other states ban abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is around the sixth week of pregnancy. So the law that the Supreme Court enjoined is not as sweeping as some of the options that the court would have in terms of potential test cases.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Do you think there are other state laws that are likely to arrive at the high court within the next year or two?</s>MARY ZIEGLER: There are definitely some possibilities. The court has had one possible case in conference multiple times and hasn't decided yet whether to hear it. That case involves an Indiana law that was part of Mike Pence's governorship that has two pertinent parts - one regulating what the law describes as the dignified disposal of fetal remains, another banning what lawmakers describe as eugenic abortions, either abortions in cases, for example, of Down syndrome. So the court could hear that case quickly if it chose to. It's already on appeal from the 7th Circuit.</s>MARY ZIEGLER: There are other cases that would take longer to get to the court. They're now pending, for example, in states like Texas and Arkansas. Those include laws regulating dilation and evacuation procedures. Those are the most common second-trimester procedures. So there are a lot of possible candidates. It's probably a question of when, not if, an abortion challenge makes its way to the Supreme Court.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: When, not if, an abortion challenge makes its way to the Supreme Court. Now, you mentioned that one reason all this action is happening is that people expect Justice Kavanaugh to be more conservative on the issue of abortion than the justice he replaced, Anthony Kennedy. In yesterday's vote, we saw Chief Justice John Roberts side with the more liberal justices in putting a temporary hold on the Louisiana law. Does that mean that Chief Justice Roberts is the new Anthony Kennedy? Or is it impossible to read the tea leaves in that way from this one action?</s>MARY ZIEGLER: I think it's a little bit early to declare John Roberts the new Anthony Kennedy. But even before yesterday's decision, everybody widely expected him to be the new swing vote on abortion. One of the interesting things, I think, is that Chief Justice Roberts may have different concerns motivating him to sort of sit in the middle on abortion.</s>MARY ZIEGLER: In part, they're concerns about the Supreme Court's legitimacy and reputation. There's no reason to think that Chief Justice Roberts is particularly sympathetic to abortion rights claims on the merits. That said, he may have a concern about the way the court approaches abortion rights cases, especially if it looks as if the court has made a sharp swing to the right when it has a majority of nominees who are both Republican but also who seem committed or at least predicted to overturn Roe v. Wade.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: That's professor Mary Ziegler of Florida State University College of Law. Thank you for joining us.</s>MARY ZIEGLER: Thanks for having me. |
Trolls are already going after candidates for the 2020 presidential election. NPR's Michel Martin talks to Kelly Jones, who keeps an eye on suspicious social media activity for Storyful. | MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: As more and more people enter the 2020 presidential race, their announcements have been followed almost immediately by negative or disturbing memes and suspicious teardowns on Twitter. This activity has been noticed by those who keep an eye on the uglier side of social media, so we're taking it to our regular series Troll Watch.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: This is where we've been keeping track of cybersecurity attacks as well as the themes, memes and conspiracies being pushed by bots and trolls. That's what Kelly Jones does as a news intelligence journalist for Storyful. That's a company that monitors social media content, so we asked her to tell us what she's been seeing lately. Kelly, thanks so much for joining us.</s>KELLY JONES: Thanks for having me.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So you were telling us that the trolls work fast. What did you see around Senator Elizabeth Warren after she launched her exploratory committee?</s>KELLY JONES: We found roughly 65,000 mentions about Warren herself or some of her more dubious nicknames like Fauxcahontas (ph) or Pocahontas. One example of a claim that we found was that users could spot a blackface doll in the background of her Instagram AMA when, in fact, it was a vase on top of her kitchen cabinet.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Talk to me a little bit more about that, if you would, like, how it moves into the mainstream.</s>KELLY JONES: What happened was a poster shared it on 4chan, which is an anonymous chat board. So we were not able to identify who this person was or what their motivation was. It was amplified on a fringe news site, and how we define a fringe news site is not something that's mainstream or cable news or your typical site that you would search. It moved from there to being shared on mainstream networks, like Twitter, where conservative commentator Tomi Lahren even picked up the claim. And that was just within three days. The fact that one poster could make this claim and it was amplified so quickly really says something.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Yeah. It does say something, you know? Twitter recently suspended a couple of suspicious accounts that had been targeting Kamala Harris, the California senator, with false information that she is ineligible to run for president because her parents are foreign-born, which, even if it was true, wouldn't disqualify her from being president because she was born in the United States. So what would raise a red flag and make a Twitter account seem suspicious?</s>KELLY JONES: What we consider suspicious in nature are if they have unusual Twitter handles, if they retweet or post systematically or irregularly, say, in large numbers or if they tag several handles using the same text.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So, you know, the examples that we've talked about so far - the targets are women. And there's been a lot of discussion, recently, about women being targeted on social media. But there are men who have announced. And are they being targeted in the same way?</s>KELLY JONES: We have seen certain automation and memes, again, being used, for instance, related to Cory Booker. So we are definitely seeing both sides for male and female.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: But is there any special attention being given to women, or are there any special themes that are being directed at these women candidates?</s>KELLY JONES: I think what we're seeing a lot is the question of are these people fit to run. Are these women specifically fit to run? And that is something that we're going to be seeing throughout up until 2020, I feel.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK. And you started doing this work during the 2016 election. Are you seeing any changing tactics? I'm just wondering. How does what you're seeing now compare to what you saw during 2016?</s>KELLY JONES: I think that the idea of automation or suspicious accounts is going to be an ongoing theme through the election. Obviously, the idea of memeing is going to be a theme because these people who are posting this content are creating these images to cause political discourse. And, in fact, one poster we saw on a fringe network claimed that they memed Trump into presidency.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Kelly Jones is a news intelligence journalist for Storyful. Kelly, thanks so much for talking to us.</s>KELLY JONES: Thanks for having me. |
Pope Francis acknowledged this week that some priests and bishops have sexually abused nuns. NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Doris Wagner, who experienced such abuse in a Catholic order in Germany. | MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Pope Francis made history earlier this week as the first pontiff to visit the Arabian Peninsula. And, on the plane flying back to Rome, he made history again. He acknowledged for the first time that priests and bishops in the Catholic Church have not only abused children but also nuns. And he said it may still be happening. Doris Wagner joined a religious community in Germany at the age of 19, where she says she was sexually assaulted. She left that order in 2011 and has written a book about her own experience and another about spiritual abuse in the Catholic Church. And here's where I'd like to tell you that the details may be very disturbing to some listeners. With that being said, Doris Wagner is with us now from Herzberg, Germany. Doris, thanks so much for talking with us.</s>DORIS WAGNER: Well, thank you.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: How did the abuse, as you understand it, begin if you could tell us that? And I do want to recognize, again, that this is not an easy thing to talk about.</s>DORIS WAGNER: Actually, I experienced two kinds of abuse, and the first abuse I experienced is spiritual abuse. I wasn't allowed to think for myself and to have my own relationship to God. It was all dictated by my superiors, you know? This really actually prepared the sexual abuse because it put me in a position where I was not able to say I, I want or I don't want something because that was just not possible in that kind of spirituality that I was obliged to follow.</s>DORIS WAGNER: So the sexual abuse really happened when I - it was in Rome. I was given a new task. I was the librarian in the house. And the male superior of the house started to visit me in the library. He would come up, regularly. He would hug me, and I really got frightened. And I decided to talk to my female superior about it. And I was frightened because she had told me at the beginning when I joined the community that we had to be very careful that nothing sexual - feelings or sexual relationships or anything like that and that the sisters who have the greater responsibility.</s>DORIS WAGNER: Eventually, he came into my room in the evening and just started to undress me. And it was in this very moment when he started to undress me that I realized what was going to happen. And I just completely froze, and there was only one sentence I was able to say to him. It was, you're not allowed to do this. But it obviously didn't help. And then, he just went on.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: But you felt that you couldn't speak up. You felt - and based on your experience that you - if you did speak up, you would be blamed.</s>DORIS WAGNER: Yeah. And that's exactly what happened, you know? I thought I'm obliged to be silent because when I speak out, the community and the church will be damaged. And it was only in 2010 - that was two years after I had been raped - there were all those headlines about sexual abuse of children. And it was really then that I understood that survivors, victims have to speak out.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: And what happened when you did?</s>DORIS WAGNER: Well, the first time I spoke up was with my female superior. And she was really - she was crazy, you know? I've never ever again seen a person like that. She was completely out of her words. She was red in her face. She was jumping on her feet. She was shouting, screaming. What's really extraordinary to watch her reaction. And, at the end, she simply refused to understand that it was rape. At the end, she came up to me, took me into her arms - which was very unusual, never happened in the community that anybody would touch anybody else, usually. So she took me under her arms and said to me, I forgive you.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: You know, in recent days, we've heard some really horrendous stories, including from the pope himself. I mean, he says that there was even an order where women were being used as sex slaves. And I think that a lot of people would just have a hard time understanding. How is this possible? How is something so antithetical to what people understand to be the teachings of the church could be? How is that - how do you understand it? You've given a lot of thought to this.</s>DORIS WAGNER: Well, I think it's - actually, it's not surprising. When you look at the roles of men and women in the church, the men represent Christ. They are ministering the sacraments. They're in a position of power. All the positions of power in the church are kept by men, and the women, especially religious sisters - they are there to serve the men. And then, those men are not allowed to have any kind of sexual activity, actually, at all. But they have these women close to them who serve them, you know?</s>DORIS WAGNER: When you become a sister - and it shouldn't be that way, but in many, many communities - and definitely in the one I was in - sisters are trained to accept to see their own role as, you know, always being available. You don't - not to have any personal wishes or any personal ideas or versions of your life. Just be available for others and ready to suffer and ready to smile. Your own personal view or your own personal wishes don't matter. You're just available for others. So it's not surprising at all that, eventually, those men will abuse those women.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: What happened to the priest who you say raped you? I know that you did not initially name him, but it has been discovered, you know, who he is. What happened to him?</s>DORIS WAGNER: The priest who raped me is still a priest. He's still in the community. And there was another priest who sexually assaulted me during confession, and he became head of the unit of the doctrinale (ph) at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And he stepped down, recently.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: And I have to ask. The order that you were in put out a statement, saying that your allegations have been investigated by ecclesiastical and civil authorities and couldn't be substantiated. And how do you respond to that?</s>DORIS WAGNER: I find this very - I find this ridiculous, actually, because, first of all, it's, again, the same problem you see with other cases of sexual abuse. The ones who are investigated are investigating themselves. That's just ridiculous. And, two, I have to say I was never questioned on these matters, and I don't have any access to the files nor does my canon lawyer. So I don't know, actually, what they investigated and how they've found out because I was not questioned in the process.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: You've been researching this question, this whole - the experience that you had. And how prevalent do you think the abuse of nuns is?</s>DORIS WAGNER: There are, first of all, the reports of Maura O'Donoghue and others, who just, you know, documented the cases that they came across in their book as sisters and social workers in the 1980s. And they collected horrible cases, including women being raped by priests, women having children and being thrown out of convents, women infecting themselves with HIV, women who were forced to abortion. And the reports of Maura O'Donoghue had been sent to Rome in 1994 and were leaked in The New York Times in 2001. And I have been raped in 2008, which has shocked me how preventable that would have been if officials would have reacted, appropriately, to what they had been knowing much earlier.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: I was going to ask you, finally - and thank you again for visiting with us - about something that has been - it is so difficult to talk about. But do you think that the pope's acknowledgement will help?</s>DORIS WAGNER: Well, it's definitely helped already because everybody's speaking about it now. And I'm so glad that people are speaking about it now. And women - actually, nuns who have been abused are contacting me now. I'm really happy that they start to speak out. On the other hand, I think that the statement didn't help in a way because the pope did not present a plan. He did not say anything concrete, what he's going to do about it or what he has - would have done and has done in the past. There were no concrete action, nothing about persecution of perpetrators or compensation of victims. And that's, really, what I'm still waiting for and many others, too.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: That's Doris Wagner. She is a theologian and an author. She was kind enough to join us from Herzberg, Germany. Doris Wagner, thank you so much for talking with us.</s>DORIS WAGNER: Thanks for having me. |
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told lawmakers on Friday he has not taken steps to interfere with the Russia probe. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Democrats were exercising their newly minted oversight powers on Capitol Hill today. The subject of inquiry - acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and his oversight of the Russia probe.</s>MATTHEW WHITAKER: At no time has the White House asked for, nor have I provided, any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: This hearing could turn out to be Whitaker's one and only. The acting attorney general could be out of a job next week. That's when the Senate is expected to confirm a successor, William Barr. NPR's Carrie Johnson has been following this story, and she is here to talk more about it. Hi, Carrie.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hey, there.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: As we mentioned, this is really the first time the Democrats have wielded the gavel for oversight. This was the Judiciary Committee. What are the takeaways of the hearing?</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Well, most of this hearing focused on the ongoing probe into Russian election interference. Matt Whitaker says he's been fully briefed. He did not interfere with the investigation, and he says it will be done when the special counsel Bob Mueller says it's done. Whitaker also said he didn't talk to the White House about this Russia probe, but he wouldn't answer another question about whether he talked with the president about the campaign finance case in New York - the one involving President Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen. And Whitaker also refused to say whether he considers this Russia investigation a witch hunt, as the president does.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: There was a lot of tug of war over whether and how this hearing was going to happen. And once the hearing started, there was also a lot of tug of war. Tell us about some of the fireworks in the room.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Lots of raised voices, lots of interruptions. At one point, a Democratic congresswoman told Matt Whitaker, we're not joking here. Your humor is not acceptable. And things actually got off to a bad start, Ari. Take a listen to this early exchange between Jerry Nadler, the Democrat who is the new chairman of this committee, and Matt Whitaker.</s>JERRY NADLER: Now, in your capacity as acting attorney general, have you ever been asked to approve any request or action to be taken by the special counsel?</s>MATTHEW WHITAKER: Mr. Chairman, I see that your five minutes is up. And so...</s>MATTHEW WHITAKER: I - we - I am here voluntarily. I - we have agreed to five minute rounds. And...</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: So that happened (laughter).</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Yeah. Not typical for a witness to tell the chairman that his time is up, right?</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: No. Democrats looked back at the witness in shock. Jerry Nadler seemed to find the whole thing funny once he had a moment to process what was happening. The Judiciary Committee has a lot of power over the Justice Department, so this could be a real who's sorry now moment moving forward.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Yeah. So that was the reaction from Democrats. What did Republican lawmakers have to say today?</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Well, Doug Collins, the top Republican on the committee, says the Democrats were engaged in character assassination of Matt Whitaker. At the start of the day, Collins advised people to get out their popcorn and get ready for the political theater. There was some of that.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: He wasn't wrong.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: No. But on a more serious note, several Republicans pointed out how much the Justice Department does that involves people's lives - immigration, health care, opioid overdoses, civil rights. And those topics got short shrift today with so much focus on the Russia investigation. Of course, some Republicans also used their time to ask about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump's opponent in 2016, and about the president's claims of wrongdoing by the FBI in 2016.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: So as we said, by this time next week, there may be somebody new in charge at the Justice Department. Looking ahead, what do you see?</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Yeah. Bill Barr is likely to be confirmed by the Senate next week. He has a lot of experience in justice, served as AG in the 1990s. It's not clear what Matt Whitaker is going to do next - maybe a job at the Department of Homeland Security, I'm hearing. There are a lot of openings in the Trump administration right now, so he may have his pick.</s>ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: That's NPR national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Thank you, Carrie.</s>CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: My pleasure. |
Noah Callahan-Bever, editor-in-chief of Complex magazine talks about his new book, 50 x 50, which he co-wrote with rapper 50 Cent. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Rapper 50 Cent has penned his second autobiography. It's titles, "50 x 50" and it hits stores this week. In the book, 50 talks candidly about his tough childhood and his rise from the streets to the recording studio. The book also includes personal essays, handwritten song lyrics and baby pictures.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Noah Callahan-Bever co-authored the book. He's also the editor-in-chief of Complex magazine. Noah joins me now to talk about the upcoming issue and his new book.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Welcome back to the show.</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): Hello, thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So the October issue hits stores next week, and there's an article counterfeit sneakers called Faking the funk(ph). So, what exactly are we talking about here?</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): One of the things that has become more and more prevalent as sneaker culture has grown is basically bootleg sneakers have been popping up all across the country. You go on eBay and you'll see very, very cheap prices on things that, you know, you know at a sneaker boutique, either New York or L.A., you know, you pay hundreds of dollars for it. Yet somehow, someone in Taiwan is selling it for $40.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And it's tens of millions of dollars.</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): Oh, yes. Chinese bootleg sneakers account for 81 percent of all the counterfeit merchandise that enters into the United States, according to customs authorities, 81 percent out of 135 million.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, let's move on to the book that co-authored with 50 Cent. So how did you sit down with him and process what you were going to put into it?</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): I've known 50 for the better part of 10 years at this point. You know, we would sit down for two or three hours, and you know, we just look at the photos and, you know, I'd get him to sort of tell me stories about them, sort of the players and who the people are in them. And then also just sort of recounting these little sort of vignettes from his life. And then I just sort of, you know, helped to put them all together into one sort of somewhat more cohesive narrative.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When you think about the fact that just last year, he published a New York Times bestselling biography, "From Pieces to Weight," what's new about what you've just done?</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): All the visual stuff that he came to the table with me, there's pictures of him as a child, pictures of him in juvenile detention centers, all kinds of crazy stuff that no one's ever seen before. The beautiful part about doing "50 x 50" was that, because we had the photos to inform the narratives, it enabled us to sort of tell a lot of sort of interesting asides that weren't able to be covered in any of the sort of more straightforward, you know, tellings of his story.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: There's a great picture of him with his grandmother, his aunt at a picnic at a drug rehab program. What exactly is that about?</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): Well, he was, I think about 15 or 16, he got busted for having a crack in his shoe and basically they tested him for drugs. And although he wasn't a drug user, he - because he had been cooking up crack and using his hands to cut the coke, it absorbed through his pores and he was, you know, tested positive.</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): And so, basically his lawyer got the judge to agree to send him to a drug rehabilitation clinic rather than to send him to a juvenile detention center. And so he ended up going through that. And it's a very interesting sort of learning process, you know? He definitely attributed a lot of his ability to manipulate and his ability to discipline himself.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It talks about physical discipline. Do you ever think, okay, I'm working with this guy whose really talented, but he used to be a dealer, he talks all the time about getting shot. What kind of message am I sending to 12, 14-year-olds? Is this really what I should be doing?</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): Hmm. To be honest, I don't really ever feel particularly conflicted by that. I think that he is fascinating person and incredibly intelligent person. And I think that, you know, really the takeaway from his story should not be sort of the glorification of the negative side of his life. What's so interesting is how sort of fiercely analytical he is in his approach to life and how pragmatic he is in sort of overcoming the adversities and sort of the bad things that were thrown his way.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, what about this whole bet with Kanye? Is he going to retire?</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): Probably not. I think that if he does, it's going to have a lot more to do with his unhappiness with Interscope's ability to promote his album than it will, with anything having to do with Kanye West. I think he feels very much that he delivered on his end and that everyone around him sort of dropped the ball.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. Well that could be the next book. So Noah, thanks a lot.</s>Mr. NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER (Editor-in-Chief, Complex Magazine): Oh, thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Noah Callahan-Bever is editor-in-chief of Complex magazine and co-author of the book, "50 x 50."</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: The October issue of Complex hits newsstands on October 9th. |
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Dr. Willie Parker about the recent Supreme Court decision regarding abortion access in Louisiana. | MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-to-4 last week to temporarily block Louisiana from enforcing a law that would have required physicians providing abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of wherever the procedure was performed. Supporters of the law say it's intended to safeguard the health of women. Opponents say it's yet another attempt to make abortions difficult, if not impossible, for women to obtain.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We wanted to look both at the current science and state of medical practice when it comes to abortion, so we've called Dr. Willie Parker. He is a board-certified OB-GYN, the chair of the board of Physicians for Reproductive Health. And he also supervises abortion care for women in Alabama at a clinic that draws patients from some five states. Dr. Parker, thanks so much for talking with us.</s>WILLIE PARKER: Thanks for having me.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So, first, can I just get your thoughts about the Supreme Court decision?</s>WILLIE PARKER: Well, while I celebrate the fact that women in Louisiana will still have access to care because of the action of the Supreme Court, it was a temporary fix. What really needs to happen is the Supreme Court needs to hear the merits of that case and weigh, definitively, because these laws - when they create barriers to women, they deny them access to very necessary care.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Planned Parenthood has repeatedly called requirements like this a popular tactic to restrict or eliminate access using technicalities, but the technicalities are really where the battle is being fought right now.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So, first of all, I want to ask you a basic question which many people may not know, which - what are admitting privileges?</s>WILLIE PARKER: Well, admitting privileges are arrangements that hospitals have with individual physicians, saying that we will vet your credentials, and we will say that you can bring your patients here. So if I do outpatient care, like an abortion procedure, where complications are extremely rare, I would never admit enough patients to the hospital to keep those privileges. And so hospital admitting privileges are not an acknowledgement of the quality of a physician's services. It's merely a contractual arrangement with the hospital that certain physicians, who've been vetted by that hospital, can admit their patients there.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Let's also talk about the issue that is very much under discussion in the conservative media right now, which is matters that are being debated in New York and Virginia - or, at least, were being because they've been taken off the table in Virginia - that would have made it easier for women to obtain an abortion later in pregnancy. As you know, certainly, critics are calling this opening the door to infanticide. Is it?</s>WILLIE PARKER: The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but nobody's entitled to their own facts. And the facts are, Michel, where abortion remains legal in this country, those laws that were under consideration in Virginia and the ones that were passed in New York don't open the door to any services that women don't already have access to. For example, in New York, it made it clear that no one can have an abortion beyond 24 weeks unless the fetus is nonviable. And so all the laws did were just clarify what was already on the books.</s>WILLIE PARKER: In Virginia, they were taking away barriers that have delayed women from getting necessary care in later stages of pregnancy. So neither of these laws would ever create the misrepresentation that the president stated in the State of the Union, where a pregnancy can be terminated minutes or days before the due date.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Why does this issue remain such a difficult one for this society to come to an understanding about?</s>WILLIE PARKER: The fact that we've politicized this very important health care and we've made it, also, into a moral issue - it means that people are wrestling with subjective understandings, like morality and politics, and projecting them onto totally objective needed care, like abortion care.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: That is Dr. Willie Parker. He's a board-certified OB-GYN. Dr. Parker, thanks so much for talking to us.</s>WILLIE PARKER: Thanks for having me. |
Two movies about communities-in-conflict open in theaters this weekend, and though they come to basically the same conclusion, they could hardly be more different. | MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: In this week of rival State of the Union messages, two movies about communities in conflict have opened. Critic Bob Mondello says for films that come to, essentially, the same conclusion, they could hardly be more different.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: The documentary "The Gospel Of Eureka" takes us to Eureka Springs, Ark., a small town that's celebrated for two things, both of which involve costumes, lip-syncing and exaltation, a passion play performed in an outdoor amphitheater for crowds of the faithful...</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: You are about to see a dramatic reenactment the last days of life of Jesus Christ on Earth.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: ...And a nightclub, where the performances are, let's say, less reverent.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Singing) You're making her feel good, but you can make her feel better.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Male performers in sequined dresses wow the largely gay crowds at the Eureka Live nightclub. And you might expect that these folks and the audience at the amphitheater would be like oil and water, never really mixing. But this documentary concentrates on the spots where their worlds intersect - the trans woman and her husband who faithfully attend the passion play, the preacher who emphasizes inclusion for gay parishioners, the devout Christian owners of the drag club who worry about and contribute to the upkeep of the town's 65-foot Christ of the Ozarks statue.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: It's looking really good.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Last Wednesday morning, that whole wall of stucco...</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: The film is ever conscious of ironies, that this statue, for instance, was commissioned by an anti-Semitic clergyman or that the town's gay pride parade is halted by a sudden deluge from the heavens, ironies mentioned, not dwelt upon as the camera visits performers applying eyeliner to play Roman centurions on one stage, women on another. At one point, we watch from the amphitheater's control booth...</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Here we go.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: ...As the actor playing Jesus rises, majestically...</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: ...A majestic gospel voice soars at the nightclub.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Singing) Who will be thy Savior?</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: And you think, well, if the makers of "The Gospel Of Eureka" can find pride and piety on both sides of the cultural divide in this rhinestone-buckle-on-the-Bible belt, maybe there's hope for the rest of us.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: You could've knocked me over with a feather boa when it hit me that this precise message - folks who think they're enemies finding common ground - is what animates "Lego Movie 2."</s>TEGAN AND SARA: (Singing) Everything is awesome.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: You may recall that 8-year-old Finn, who'd been playing with his dad's Lego set, ended the first Lego Movie in a bit of a panic.</s>WILL FERRELL: (As The Man Upstairs) Now that I'm letting you come down here and play, guess who else gets to come down here and play?</s>JADON SAND: (As Finn) Who?</s>WILL FERRELL: (As The Man Upstairs) Your sister.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: And that's where this movie picks up several gazillion pieces later.</s>BROOKLYNN PRINCE: (As Bianca) We are from the Planet Duplo. We are here to destroy you.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Finn sends his good-guy avatar, Emmet, out as an ambassador.</s>CHRIS PRATT: (As Emmet) There's no need to fight anymore. See? Friends.</s>BROOKLYNN: (As Bianca) Oh.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Little sister Bianca smashes the whole Lego city of Bricksburg with her Duplo blocks, reducing it to Apocalypseburg. And, several years later, that's where we still are. Finn's a little older. And from the looks of Apocalypseburg...</s>ELIZABETH BANKS: (As Lucy) Run.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: ...He has seen some "Mad Max" movies.</s>CHRIS PRATT: (As Emmet) Hurry, the door is slowly closing.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: His sister sends in exploding pink hearts and big-eyed baby stars, who play Emmet for a sucker.</s>BROOKLYNN: (As Bianca) Oh, the pain. It's getting so cold.</s>ELIZABETH BANKS: (As Lucy) Emmet, what are you doing?</s>BROOKLYNN: (As Bianca) Hooray.</s>CHRIS PRATT: (As Emmet) See? That wasn't so bad. Nothing got in.</s>UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Something got in.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: In short, it's sibling rivalry writ with building blocks, a battle of preteen boy and pre-adolescent girl with boy nervous about growing up and utterly clueless about feminine wiles, especially when his sister kidnaps his Bricksburgians (ph) and starts treating them to spa days and glitter makeovers. Can this sibling gulf be bridged? Well, suffice it to say that while "Lego 2" has a new song called "Everything's Not Awesome," it will not dampen anyone's mood.</s>BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: I'm Bob Mondello.</s>UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Everything's not awesome. Things can be awesome all of the time. It's not realistic expectation, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. |
NPR's Michel Martin talks to Democratic speechwriter Paul Orzulak and former Republican speechwriter Mary Kate Cary about the political theater displayed at Friday's House Judiciary Committee hearing. | MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We're going to start the program today at the scene of yesterday's House Judiciary Committee hearing.</s>JAMIE RASKIN: You can ask the chairman for time, but I can't give you my time. Forgive me. We only have five minutes.</s>JOHN RATCLIFFE: I haven't seen you field a single question from the other side of the aisle about any of the enforcement priorities of the Department of Justice.</s>SHEILA JACKSON LEE: Mr. Attorney General, we're not joking here. And your humor is not acceptable.</s>HAKEEM JEFFRIES: We're all trying to figure out, who are you, where did you come from and how the heck did you become the head of the Department of Justice?</s>JOHN RATCLIFFE: Simple question, Mr. Whitaker - are there names - specific American names - mentioned in this redacted - 70 percent redacted...</s>STEVE COHEN: Would you say special - the special counsel's investigation is a witch hunt? Are you overseeing a witch hunt?</s>MATTHEW WHITAKER: Congressman, as I've mentioned previously, the special counsel's investigation is an ongoing investigation.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Those are just a few of the combative moments yesterday during the hours that acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker testified before the House Judiciary Committee. In his opening remarks, Georgia's Doug Collins, the committee's ranking Republican, attempted to adjourn the hearing after criticizing Democrats for political theatricals.</s>DOUG COLLINS: We're going to have plenty of theatrics. Bring your popcorn. I'm thinking about maybe we just set up a popcorn machine in the back because that's what this has become. It's becoming a show.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So we wanted to understand what both parties were trying to accomplish at that hearing, so we've invited Mary Kate Cary. She's a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. She's now a senior fellow for presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Mary Kate, welcome back.</s>MARY KATE CARY: Thanks for having me back.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We're also joined in studio by Paul Orzulak. He is a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, and he's a founding partner of West Wing Writers.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Paul, welcome back to you as well.</s>PAUL ORZULAK: Thanks, Michel.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK. So let's just try to understand what's been going on here. We just heard a clip from Congressman Doug Collins criticizing the hearings as a show. Mary Kate, what was the Republican strategy going into this hearing?</s>MARY KATE CARY: Well, this was an oversight hearing, Michel - not an investigation hearing, not a confirmation hearing. And usually, you get asked all kinds of questions about the different policies that the department was overseeing. And so instead, they sent questions in advance to the acting attorney general that were specific to the Mueller probe. And that's when the fireworks started.</s>MARY KATE CARY: And so I think the Republican strategy shifted from your usual oversight hearing to how to best handle questions about the Mueller probe. And as you probably know, Whitaker has only been acting attorney general for a few months and really has not had much involvement with the Mueller probe at all.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So William Barr is the president's pick for the next attorney general. He was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday. The Senate is expected to confirm him this upcoming week. So, Paul, with William Barr's expected confirmation, how much does this hearing actually matter? Why make him testify in the first place?</s>PAUL ORZULAK: I think the point of all this - there's one goal of this whole thing - to make sure Robert Mueller can do his job and finish his investigation without any undue influence or interference from the outside. The acting attorney general - while he's only been in the position for a few months, he's been briefed on the Mueller investigation. The point of the yesterday's hearing was to ask, did you pass along any information to the president or his team from that investigation at any point? Yes or no - get him on record saying yes or no. And he said no. And then, you know, the questioning was largely about, did others?</s>PAUL ORZULAK: But the point was to say - protect the integrity of the investigation and not have any outside influence from within the department. You know, the - he can fire Mueller if he wants. It's - it feels like we've crossed that bridge, and Bill Barr has already said he's going to let the investigation play out.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So was it about getting Whitaker on the record...</s>PAUL ORZULAK: Yes.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: ...On certain issues? Was it also about sending a message to the Trump administration that the Democrats have this kind of authority and are prepared to use it?</s>PAUL ORZULAK: Yeah. I think, from - there are different goals for both sides. I think Matthew Whitaker passed his audition yesterday for the president. I think he had an audience of one and showed that he could be as confrontational as the president when it comes to Democrats. I wouldn't be surprised to see him in the conversation about chief of staff after he's gone. But from the Democratic side, it's just to remind the president of what James Wilson in Pennsylvania said, one of our Founding Fathers - the Congress are the grand inquisitors of the realm. That's their role - checks and balances, balance of powers. The president hasn't had that for two years. He has it now.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: What do you think about that, Mary Kate? Do you think it was about getting specific information on the record? Do you also - you think it was about sending a message that the Democrats are prepared to use their oversight authority? What do you think?</s>MARY KATE CARY: Yeah. I think this was a curtain-opener for what we're going to see with Democratic control of the House. And the amount of needling and contentiousness I think is what makes good people not want to serve in public service. And it turns voters off to what's going on in D.C. And if you look - you know, I was taking notes as I was watching. And if you look at the list of things that he said, Whitaker said under oath, it was, you know, I have not talked to the president about the Mueller investigation. I have been briefed. I have not changed its course. I have not taken any action. I have not interfered in any way. I will continue to manage the investigation consistent with the governing regulations.</s>MARY KATE CARY: I mean, he couldn't have been more clear that he had nothing to give them. And yet, the tone just kept getting worse and worse. And, like I said, this is what makes good people not want to serve. And I think we're to see a lot more of this going forward.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So finally, for both of you, President Trump referred to these oversight hearings during State of the Union as, quote, "ridiculous partisan investigations" - unquote. And he tweeted, the Dems and their committees are going nuts. The Republicans never did this to President Obama. But, of course, there were many investigations when the Republicans were in charge of the Congress - I mean, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton's emails, the program known as Fast and Furious.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: So, to both of you, is there something different about this moment? I mean, assuming that you're not a hyper-partisan figure, is there something different about this moment? Let's say - like, who did I start with? I started with Mary Kate, so I'm going to give Paul the last word. So Mary Kate, I'll go to you first on this.</s>MARY KATE CARY: (Laughter) Thank you. I - what's different here, Michel, is you're right. There were investigations of Obama and previous presidents. But this was an oversight hearing that sounded like an investigation. And if you look at the list, there are upcoming hearings - oversight hearings for Steve Mnuchin at Treasury, for Wilbur Ross at Commerce, for Kirstjen Nielsen at DHS. And I think we should certainly expect to see more fireworks as these oversight hearings morph into sort of the tone of an investigation when they're not.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: And Paul?</s>PAUL ORZULAK: It goes with the territory. Every party in power has an oversight role and will make miserable the life of the administration. It goes with the territory. But let's remember, this is about answering the question whether president and states helped a foreign power interfere with the 2016 election. It's an investigation that's already led to indictments or guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies. We just need to let this play out. This is about protecting the integrity of that investigation and letting them figure out what happened here. All the rest is noise.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: That was Mary Kate Cary, Senior Fellow - I'm sorry, let me start with Paul. That was Paul Orzulak, co-founder of West Wing Writers, former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. And also with us, Mary Kate Cary, senior fellow for Presidential Studies at UVA and former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush.</s>MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We thank you both so much for talking to us.</s>PAUL ORZULAK: Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Michel.</s>MARY KATE CARY: Thanks for having us. |
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., and one of the 17 members of the bipartisan conference committee attempting to find a compromise deal on border security. | MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: We are now at one week and counting. Unless political leaders can reach a deal on border security by next Friday, we are looking at a second government shutdown this year. Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee, says the talks are going well. That, in his view, negotiators have, quote, "a much better chance of success today than they did at the start of this week."</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: So might some kind of a deal be starting to take shape? Well, let's bring in Congressman Tom Graves, Republican of Georgia. Along with Senator Shelby, he is one of 17 lawmakers on the committee formed to try to find a compromise. Congressman Graves, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.</s>TOM GRAVES: Well, thank you, Mary Louise. It's good to be with you today. And you're right, a lot has been going on in the last couple weeks, and...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Well, I want to ask. Yeah. I mean, Senator Shelby says this is going well, progress is being made. I saw Senator Leahy, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and also part of your group, says y'all are 95 percent to 98 percent done. What kind of number would you put on it?</s>TOM GRAVES: I would say that's pretty aggressive math there. But the Senate is generally a little bit more optimistic body.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Where would you put it?</s>TOM GRAVES: There's still some work to be done, clearly. But we're closer today, like Mr. Shelby said, than we were earlier in the week. And that's because we've been having conversations.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Have you all figured out how you define wall?</s>TOM GRAVES: (Laughter). You know, I've never really had a problem with that definition. I know there are others that do. But it's properly described as a steel, slatted barrier. There's really never been that much controversy over that term or application of a barrier. And...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Been a lot of controversy over how much money to throw at a wall. We were seeing some reports that Democrats might be moving toward offering money for some kind of barrier in exchange for a reduction in the number of detention beds at the border. One of your fellow conference committee members, Republican Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, confirmed to us this morning that that negotiation is actively in play. Is that a productive path for getting y'all to where you need to be?</s>TOM GRAVES: You know, I'm not one that believes you have to give up something in order to secure your country. And so I don't think that's the way we should be bartering. But I will point to a proposal that the Democrats put out last week, was their first offer, so to speak, which had $0 for a wall. Which, really, was unreasonable and not in good faith.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Can you tell me where they are right now?</s>TOM GRAVES: The easiest way to put it in context is the floor would be $1.6 billion - because that's what passed out of the Senate recently and within the last couple of months, and it was bipartisan - and the ceiling would be $5.7 billion. That would be the president's request.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: I interviewed your colleague David Price, a Democrat, who's also a member of the conference committee, interviewed him a couple of days ago. And I wanted you to hear one point he made. Here it is.</s>DAVID PRICE: I do think left to ourselves, as Republican and Democratic appropriators, assuming the president doesn't blow this up, I think there's a good chance we can come up with a workable plan. And I certainly hope we'll be allowed to do so.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Congressman Graves, respond to that - this idea that, left alone, you all will find your way to a deal. The question remains, as it has been all along, what the president might sign.</s>TOM GRAVES: Well, as Mr. Price said, I have not heard from the president himself. I do think the speaker of the House has been more vocal than anyone and has certainly interjected positions.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Nancy Pelosi.</s>TOM GRAVES: Yeah. Nancy Pelosi has done that. And...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: She's interjected into the negotiations y'all are having in this conference committee?</s>TOM GRAVES: And she's been very bold in saying there will be $0 for a border wall. That's her...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: I see what you're saying. Yeah.</s>TOM GRAVES: And she did that...</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Which was the starting position going in.</s>TOM GRAVES: That's right, which is an unreasonable beginning point, obviously.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Speaker Pelosi has said that she would sign off on whatever kind of deal you all come up with in the committee. Are you confident that the president would do the same, that he will sign off on whatever you produce?</s>TOM GRAVES: Well, that's easy for the speaker to say, Speaker Pelosi, because she has more votes in the committee.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: To be clear, she's not on the committee. But you're talking about Democrats who are in this conference.</s>TOM GRAVES: Right. She appointed more votes to the committee. Right. And ultimately, the Democrats control the product.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: To the question, though, of whether the president will sign what you produce.</s>TOM GRAVES: You know, I can't speak to what the president will or won't do, but I know that he is patiently waiting for this committee to put out a product that can get to his desk. And in the event that it doesn't, I know that he will have to look at his options at that point.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: What happens if you don't reach a deal?</s>TOM GRAVES: You know, I'm not ready to think that way yet. I'm not going to give up. I think these are good people on this conference committee who want to do the right thing and get to the right spot. And if that doesn't happen, we'll address that in the days ahead as that time comes near.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Georgia Republican Tom Graves. Congressman, thank you very much.</s>TOM GRAVES: Thank you for having me. |
Sheryl Lee Ralph performs during the 15th Annual "Divas Simply Singing" benefit concert in 2005. Actress and singer Sheryl Lee Ralph has been working in the fight against HIV/AIDS for almost two decades. She joins Farai Chideya to talk about the popular benefit she's organized called "Divas Simply Singing." Performers this year include Natalie Cole, Deniece Williams, Ledisi, Ann Nesby, Paris Bennett, and a reunion of the original Dreamgirls. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya, and this is NEWS & NOTES.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Divas Simply Singing. Women sharing their talents and fighting AIDS. Singer and actress Sheryl Lee Ralph created the annual fundraiser 17 years ago. And since the divas take the stage tomorrow in Los Angeles, we have got Sheryl Lee Ralph herself.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Thank you for coming on.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Thank you. It's good to be here.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what was the impetus for this entire project?</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): For me, it really started back in the '80s when I was on Broadway doing "Dreamgirls." In the midst of one of the greatest times in my life, being on Broadway in such a monumental musical, there came one of the worst times. And that was when friends, cast members, producers, everybody, just men just started dropping dead of a mysterious disease. And many of them died under stigma and shame and a deadly, deadly silence. And I just found it was unacceptable the way people treated them.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): And I said, this can't be right, human being to human being. So I was always trying to figure out a way to lift up the memory of my friends, to always celebrate their being no matter what anybody thought about them. I knew them to be good, wonderful human beings. And then when I came here to California, there was still more silence. You know, it didn't seem like people were really talking about AIDS really in that warm-embracing human way, not the way they do about things like breast cancer. You know, it wasn't warm and fuzzy. It was still oh, pariah, you know, those people over there. And I said, no, I'm going to figure out a way to bring my friends together so that we can commit in song, so that we can raise our voices and sing their praises. And now, you know, as years have gone on, God's - by the will of God, I hope that we're now a tool of prevention because this disease does not have to happen.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: On the level of performance, you have some amazing guests coming up.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Yes.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Give me - you mentioned "Dreamgirls." Give me a little taste of what you're going to have coming up.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Well, you know, for the first time in a long time, Loretta Devine, Jennifer Holliday and myself, the three of us are going to come together and be on the same stage together, something we haven't done in about 15 or 16 years. So it's going to be good to have the three of us, the three original Dreams altogether. Well, we're missing one and that's Debbie Burrell. So we'll all be together there on stage.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): We'll be joined by Natalie Cole, Deniece Williams, Paris Bennett, you know, from '06 "American Idol," her grandmother, Ann Bennett Nesby, gospel great Daddy Teeples(ph). I mean, we bring together a wide range of divas to come together in the best sense to fight the good fight against HIV and AIDS.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: When you think about how this has grown - you mentioned prevention…</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Yes.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Do you think people are hearing the message?</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): You know, I don't think that they're hearing it as much as they need to. You know, when I toured the country with my one-woman show, I've gotten to the point where I tell people now, if you won't do it for yourself - and you've proven that - then do it for your children. Because young people of every age, race, class and color are being impacted by this disease in ways that we cannot imagine. And, you know, I just tell people, you don't see it, I'm out there; I'm traveling; I'm in their face; I see it and you better wake up.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You mentioned your one-woman show, "Sometimes I Cry." Give us a sense, just a little taste of one of the characters that you portray.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Well, you know, "Sometimes I Cry" is based upon real women's real stories around HIV and AIDS. And for such a long time, women's stories, especially women of color stories, had not been told. Nobody even talked about the rising rate of infection in women of color. So I sat down and wrote down some of the stories of the women that I've met around the world, around the country.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): But one that I was intrigued by was one young African student I met in Arizona. And she said, my sister, I need to understand what is it with this ABC thing. They always talk about the ABC. A, you must abstain. But truly, I do not understand why would a woman want to abstain and not me, they have sex with her husband, you know, and maybe, enjoy herself. And then they said, B, you must be faithful. Well, I believe that we women, we are faithful. But is your husband, if he is not faithful, then it does not walk. You understand? And then in my concert, you'll talk about condoms, condoms, condoms. What, you think it's easy? You think as a woman, I just go up to the store and I say, excuse me, I would like to have some condoms please. And, by the way, they are very expensive.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): So, I do not understand this ABC. And I thought when she said that to me, my god, the message although well-crafted was delivered to the wrong audience. Because she keeps talking about a husband. She keeps talking about a mate. You know, a one-on-one relationship. And still, they're getting infected.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): So you have a message to a group and it does what? No good. So, you know, that character, I love that character, because she's lost her sister and she's now - she comes to America because her parents have to find a way to get her out of the community, because she's been marked for using her voice to speak up.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): So she's come to America to learn all she can about AIDS. But she said one more thing. She said, my sister, why is it you, my black American sister, are letting it happen you, what you see has happened to my people in my country. You who have everything, even those of you who have nothing, you have more than most people I know. You must do something.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And you are doing something. What does is it make feel?</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Oh, my god, it makes me feel - I have to hold on to hope. I have to keep my faith alive. It makes me feel like there's still a lot of work to be done.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, surely, Ralph. Thank you so much.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Thank you. "Sometimes I Cry," this Sunday, at the Hayworth Theater. 3 p.m.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, thank you. Actress and singer Sheryl Lee Ralph will be hosting the 17th Annual Divas Simply Singing. It's an AIDS benefit happening tomorrow night at the Wilshire EBell Theater in Los Angeles.</s>Ms. SHERYL LEE RALPH (Singer; Actress; Creator, Divas Simply Singing): Thank you. |
News & Notes intern Shazia Haq offers this week's staff song pick. Her choice: the song "Saeglopur" by Sigur Ros. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It's time now for our staff song pick of the week, the song "Saeglopur" by the band Sigur Ros. It comes from our intern Shazia Haq.</s>SHAZIA HAQ: "Saeglopur." The song title is Icelandic for lost at sea, but it could stand for meatball lasagna and I wouldn't know the difference, because it's not really about the words or lyrics at all, it's about shutting your eyes, closing the door, and opening your ears.</s>SHAZIA HAQ: I always thought if I ever made it as an Olympic ice skater, this song would win me the gold medal. Can't you see it? The toe loop there, the double axle there. Tara Lipinski standing in the corner. The camel spin. Scott Hamilton will be in tears. The crowd cheers. Me and my shocking pink sequin leotard with pounds of overdone eye makeup. I'd bow and thank my good Icelandic friends.</s>SHAZIA HAQ: People always ask, what does the music mean to you? Well, to me the question is, how do you get through the day when it sucks? What do you do when you just want to crawl into a ball under your desk on a rainy day with nothing but a bowl of cereal and some Koala Yummies? How can a single form and its song make you stronger?</s>SHAZIA HAQ: It's a shame to even begin describing it without sounding trite or stale, or drowning into metaphors of glaciers or icebergs or Nordic Fjords.</s>SHAZIA HAQ: I first heard the band during my junior in high school. I was young, dumb, but I knew good music when I heard it. At the time, my friends and I were working on a deadline for something very serious and very important - the high school yearbook.</s>SHAZIA HAQ: Oh, my God, end of the world. Papers were flying, fists were pounding, angry high school words were being exchanged and then, Sigur Ros came on shuffle on one of the computers, and everyone just shut up.</s>SHAZIA HAQ: Two years ago was my first Sigur Ros concert at the Hollywood Bowl in L.A. I was anticipating listening to this song live. And as the cluttering of the piano started, and the lead singer took his place, I closed my eyes.</s>SHAZIA HAQ: But then this really drunk girl started shouting how she loved insects or bugs or something like that. I couldn't believe it. I shelled out $50 to hear about some bugs?</s>SHAZIA HAQ: In the end, it's just about me and the feeling of the song. All I need is to lie on my bed with my headphones, listening to this to make things better, and maybe eat some meatball lasagna, too.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That was our intern Shazia Haq with our staff song pick of the week - Saeglopur by the band Sigur Ros. |
Today's economy is like a house of cards. If one thing goes wrong, then the whole system can fail. What's the ripple effect from record mortgage loan defaults and a lowered interest rate? Boston Globe reporter Keith Reed helps crunch the numbers. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: The economy is like a house of cards. If one part goes wobbly, then the whole system can fail.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What's the ripple effect from record mortgage loan defaults and a lowered interest rate? To crunch the numbers, we've got Keith Reed. He covers economics for the Boston Globe.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Hi. Welcome.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Hey, Farai. How are you?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I am doing great.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So we really need your help here. So the Fed, the nation's central bank, took action recently to save the economy from recession by lowering the interest rate. So what's the point of lowering that interest rate?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Well, the point is what they wanted to do was sort of stimulate the economy a little bit. What happened when you started to see all the wolves in the subprime market and you started to see so many people going into default is that the credit market has tightened up.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): What that meant is that people couldn't borrow any money. And when people can't borrow any money, people can't spend the money that they've been spending. In recent years purchasing houses and other big-ticket items based - doing so with debt really, really helped buoy the economy when many other things weren't growing. You didn't see a lot of job growth. You saw wages stagnant. But the economy was still doing very well because people were buying big-ticket items like homes on credit. When credit goes away or interest rates go up, then people can buy less, and that means you're at risk of the economy shrinking or going into a recession.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Let's take a walk through some of the different players here. So there are banks who give loans and there's also mortgage companies that give loans -is there a difference in what they're doing?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Yes, there is a difference. The banks are regulated by the federal government and also many state regulatory agencies, which means that in many cases, they will hold borrowers to a tougher or to higher standards than many of the mortgage companies, which aren't regulated by many states or the federal government at all.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): So most of the subprime borrowing that sort of ticked off this big decrease in the mortgage market, this decline in the housing market were given by mortgage companies that were not owned or controlled by banks and didn't have any regulation at all. Those subprime loans are much more risky than a traditional mortgage that you would have gotten from a traditional bank, and because so many of those mortgages were given to people who didn't have credit that was as good as it should have been, who didn't have the kind of assets that they needed, who didn't come to the table with down payments that they should have had, and many of those mortgages were also sold as securities back to Wall Street, that set up this big peril that you see the economy and the housing market in today.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It makes sense that the companies who gave out mortgages, at least in general, have been making money off of interests. But there are other people who essentially have invested, aren't there?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Absolutely. This is what I meant when I talked about mortgages being sold back to Wall Street. What happened was if a company - if a mortgage company gave you a mortgage, right, you've borrowed that money from that company. Now, a bank, traditionally, needs you to be able to pay the interest back on that mortgage in order for them to make money.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): But the reason why so many of these mortgage companies were making loans that banks couldn't make is because they had an ace in the hole, and their ace in the hole was Wall Street. Many of the mortgage companies would essentially take a mortgage, lending you money, and then sell that mortgage as a bond or basically as debt to Wall Street, and the Wall Street investor would then take the risk off the shoulders of the mortgage banker.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): It's essentially me lending you money without having to worry about whether or not you pay me back because I've sold the IOU to my brother or my sister. That person takes the risk off of my shoulders so I don't really have to care whether or not you're a good credit risk because they've taken the risk off my shoulders, and in turn, they will make the money off of you paying the interest on the mortgage.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So it's like a chain reaction, people are passing these things on. So who's left holding the buck?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): The person left holding the buck is going to be the investor at the other end of the table, the person who's - or the company, typically, a hedge fund or something like that who has bought that mortgage paper, that security or that bond from the company that lent you the money originally. And unfortunately, you, you're going to be left holding the bag because you've gotten the mortgage that you probably couldn't afford to begin with. And when that interest rate readjusts upward - we're talking specifically about somebody who was in the subprime mortgage that was also in adjustable rate mortgage, meaning that it was typically a very low rate for a year or so, maybe three years, and then it would readjust upward once rates changed in a couple of years. Those are the people who are left holding the bag.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So when you have the Federal Reserve lowering the interest rate, is this something that's going to really affect somebody who's just stretched and who's saving every dollar to try to make sure they pay their mortgage? Is that who's affected by this drop in rates?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Well, the unfortunate part about it is you could - there's a strong argument to be made is that it doesn't really help the person who's stretched by their mortgage payments. There are a ton of these mortgages that are still out there that haven't readjusted - with the interest rates, haven't changed yet. They're going to come do the - you know, the readjustment period is going to take place over the next one year, the next two, maybe even three years. So you're still going to see more and more people whose rates are going to adjust upward, I mean, even with the rates being bumped down slightly, they're still above where they were three years ago when many people bought the houses that they bought.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): So it's not necessarily going to help that person. What it is going to do is stimulate the economy, hopefully, in some other ways by making credit more available to people who haven't yet bought houses or to companies who haven't invested in equipment, to companies or investors who want to do some borrowing and put more money into their own enterprises. But it's not necessarily going to help the person who's in trouble with the mortgage right now.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: True or false: Someone who is not an economist said, oh, this is a great time to buy real estate if you have perfect credit because everyone is searching for people with perfect credit.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): That's somewhat true. It's not entirely true. I mean, I had a conversation with a couple of my friends this morning who are - one friend who lives in a D.C. suburbs, who owns a house already and he's trying to refinance, and another person who lives in Chicago and is just buying, and with - so they say impeccable credit scores. You know, it's not really - what's happening in the market is not really helping them.</s>I mean, credit got so tight: Mortgage companies and bankers got so restrictive with what they lend because of the problems that they had with all these subprime loans that, really, many of them should never have been made in the first place, I mean, that's where you need to start is that many of these loans should never have been made. But because they've had so much - so many problems and so many defaults and so many foreclosures go on, that even people with perfect credit today are having a tough time borrowing the money to buy a house that they can afford.</s>I mean, credit got so tight: So, theoretically, yes, it's a good time to buy a home right now. You're definitely in a buyer's market. You've got many more options if you're a buyer. You've got much more negotiating power than you had three years ago. The big question is whether or not you can find somebody to lend you money. And, in many cases, people who have impeccable credit can't find a lender to give them the money.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Is that going to actually cause housing prices potentially to go down even lower? Because if you have people who actually want to buy, and a lot of people don't want to buy right now, but they can't get the loans, I would assume that that means that the people who've got the for sale signs out are going to have even more trouble.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Absolutely. Every economist, every realtor that I've talked to has said that this trouble is not over. You've probably got at least another year, maybe, you know, another 18 months of downward pressures on housing prices especially in markets on the coast where you've got these housing prices that have gone up by incredible, unrealistic multiples for several years, double-digit percentage gains in the cost of - or the going rate for a home or for a condo over the last three, four, five years. Some of that - some of those prices just - really, honestly, they need to come down.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): And that's going to hurt some people who are trying to sell houses. But that's really the only way for the market to get back to some stability. I mean, if you, you know if you're charging, if the going rate for a condo is $400,000 in a marginal neighborhood in Boston or $600,000 in a really not so desirable neighborhood of New York, I mean, at some point, there just isn't going to be a buyer left out there for that condo or for that single family until the price comes down. It has to come down for there to be some rationality back in the housing market again.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, getting back to this whole question of the interest rate, is there any possible downside to individuals or to investors or to the health of the country in lowering the interest rate?</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Actually, there is. Remember when we started the conversation and I talked about this, or you actually brought up this house of cards effect. Well, so many things in the economy are tied to so many other things. And the point that I made was that, you know, the economy was really kept afloat for the last several years by consumer spending, and much of that consumer spending has been fueled by borrowing.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): The problem with that is that when you borrow, just like in your own household, you know, when you borrow too much on your credit card, eventually, the bill comes due. And if you can't pay the bill, then there's, you know, there's going to be some hell to pay. Right? Well, that happens in the economy as well. When the economy is buoyed by too much borrowing, when those bills come due to every American household and to every American company that has been making a profit on irrational spending based on irrational lending, which, you know, which happen all over the place over the last several years, it's going to hurt people.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): You know, the - at some point, you can't - you just can't borrow any more money as a household or as a company. And if the economy strength is really based on how much you've, how much companies and individuals have borrowed, then, you know, you're going to have some problems. And that's what we've seen over the last several weeks.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Actually, many people - many economists do think right now that the impact of lowering interest rates, really, is to help Wall Street and not necessarily going to help consumers that much at all, that this is really a bailout for wealthy investors who are having problems because they can't borrow the money that they used to be able to borrow to make some of the investments that they were making. And it's really not trickling down to the consumer level. And that's a great concern.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. Well, Keith, thanks so much.</s>Mr. KEITH REED (Reporter, Boston Globe): Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Keith Reed covers economics for the Boston Globe. He joined me from member station WBUR in Boston, Massachusetts. |
More than a dozen private hospitals are in big financial trouble. Southern Californians are finding fewer options when seeking emergency medical care. Host Farai Chideya talks with Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Costello about the situation. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Coming up, southern California's ailing emergency care services.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: But first, as you may have heard earlier, more than 2,200 South African minors are safe this morning after an all night rescue effort to remove them from a collapsed gold mine near Johannesburg. Another 800 miners are still stranded about a mile underground. Most of the miners are coming up unscathed. A few have been treated for minor injuries. We'll discuss this more on our Reporters Roundtable tomorrow.</s>And now some news closer to home: Say you've had a fall, stroke or heart attack, someone calls an ambulance, you rush to the hospital, and then the hospital turns you away. There's just no room. They're completely overbooked. That is not a hypothetical. For example, this summer, a Los Angeles area hospital had to turn away ambulances for 12 hours. Part of the reason, 14 other nearby hospitals in the last five years have closed their emergency rooms. The problem is critical in southern California but also nationwide.</s>And now some news closer to home: In a moment, we'll talk with a hospital official who's felt the pressure firsthand.</s>And now some news closer to home: But now, Dan Costello, he's a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and recently co-wrote an article about L.A. area hospitals in jeopardy. Dan, welcome.</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Good morning.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So there have already been emergency room closures. But are other hospitals facing the pressure today?</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Yes, particularly in southern California. You know, what we found is somewhere around two dozen local hospitals in southern California are in severe financial peril, with some of them at risk of going bankrupt and even closing in the relatively near future.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, L.A.'s King/Drew Medical Center closed its emergency room last month. Give us a sense of how many people might be affected, and what's the demographic of the area that it's in?</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Well, the numbers are slightly in dispute. But one of the numbers that people commonly refer to is that there were about 30,000 visits to King Harbor when it was fully up and running. Now that it has closed after the federal Medicaid agency pulled the hospital's funding, they have to find another place to go on an already taxed emergency room system locally. And so that, coupled with a number of other factors afflicting hospitals in general, but also afflicting hospitals in the region, it is taxing hospitals nearby.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, some hospitals, the Kaiser Permanente, Cedars-Sinai, which is local, seem to be doing much better. What's the difference between how they operate and how some of these other emergency rooms operated or operate?</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): You know, there's a - the reality of the hospital industry both in California and nationally, is that there is - and has been for a long time, have and have nots in the industry. But some - while some are getting poorer and poorer, others are getting richer and richer and expanding. Cedars-Sinai, as you just raised, is one of the premiere hospitals in the country. It's located in a relatively wealthy area of Los Angeles. And it is booming. It's doing better than it has in years.</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): At the same time, other hospitals, locally, are finding themselves confronting a number of growing problems: a rising number of uninsured, lower reimbursements for Medicaid patients, and other factors that are squeezing them ever more. And, you know, those on the edge appear to be closer to bankruptcy and closing.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, if you go to the King/Drew Web site, it basically says, okay, our emergency care has closed and, quote, "If you live within 12 miles of the hospital and need emergency care, please go to one of the hospital locations listed below or call 911." But some of those hospitals are on the possible chopping block. What's going on there?</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): I mean, what's happening is these - exactly what you're saying. You have these 30,000 emergency room visits a year, searching for somewhere to go. And many of the hospitals in that area already were facing their own problems and their own issues. And so they are increasingly turning away patients. From the numbers we found is that the amount of time it is taking to get a patient from their home to the emergency room has grown from roughly 13 minutes at the beginning of the year to around 18 minutes today. And so that's a significant issue, especially when you're talking about critical care patients.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Why don't we expand this out a little bit? I know you've also been looking at the situation nationally. Is there a similar problem in other parts of the country?</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): There are particularly in urban areas. In large cities, we're seeing this story happen over and over - from New York, Chicago, Miami. In some cases - in certain situations, it's worse - those communities that have higher levels of uninsured. California, for instance, has 20 percent uninsured rate. That's about 5 percent higher than the national average.</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): And so coupled with a number of other factors, Los Angeles and a few of the other cities that I mentioned are facing increasingly difficult situations where you come back to what we just spoke about.</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): You have a growing number of hospitals who are getting wealthier, typically in some of the wealthier areas of those communities. But in more disadvantaged areas where you have higher rates of uninsured or higher rates of those patients on - funded under government programs like Medicaid, they are struggling. And that's what's happening in L.A. and elsewhere.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Dan, thank you so much.</s>Mr. DAN COSTELLO (Reporter, Los Angeles Times): Well thank you, I appreciate it.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Dan Costello is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. And he spoke (audio gap) from the studios of (audio gap) in Los Angeles. |
News & Notes Web producer Geoffrey Bennett talks with host Farai Chideya about the stories that are making the rounds on the show's blog, "News & Views," including the Isiah Thomas sexual harassment case and reaction to the protests in Jena, La. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Isiah Thomas' bad behavior is burning up the blogosphere. Yesterday, a New York jury ruled the Knicks' head coach sexually harassed a woman who used to be a team exec. It ordered the team owners to pay her $11.6 million. And here to tell us what else is popping off on our blog is NEWS & NOTES Web producer Geoffrey Bennett. Hey.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Hey, Farai.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what are bloggers saying about the case?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Well, about Thomas, the general sentiment is this: How could a guy who's so successful be so arrogant and so openly reckless. Remember that during the trial, he tried to draw distinction between blacks and whites using the B-word to describe a black woman. Well, one blog summed it up as a spectacularly bad run of business acumen. The blog What About Our Daughters calls the 11.6 punitive damage a, quote, "stupid tax." Stupid, she says, because the team's owners would have been smarter to settle with the female executive who brought the case. And our blogger Mark Anthony Neal(ph) has written an essay where he says, Thomas was always a little man in a big man's game. And he points to this case as proof of it.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what else is popping off on our blog?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Well, Thomas is still a big issue. One of our readers Mojo Dorende(ph) says Thomas should be fired, she says, due to an executive running a storied basketball franchise to the ground with senseless operational moves. But she says the team's owners and its chairman deserve to get the brunt of the punishment for allowing a hostile work environment to exist. And one person summed it up this way. She says, Michael Vick, O.J., now Isiah Thomas - what's with this trifecta of rich black guys behaving badly?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: So that's the main issue these days.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So we've been going over the Jena Six case as a watershed movement for black blogs and for online activism, what's the follow-up?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Well, people are now looking back on those demonstrations and trying to figure out what the real impact was and whether it'll spark a long-term commitment to social justice.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: On our blog, reaction was mixed. We have a comment that says: Marches can help change laws but they very rarely change minds or attitudes. And on the other side, we have one from Leslie Hall(ph) who says: The Jena reality was not misguided. At least, people were reminded that racism exists and that in itself is a great thing when you consider the power of denial.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: So the jury on Jena's impact is still out for the most part.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So when you go to News & Views, anything else?</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Yeah, there's some great back-and-forth about Republican presidential candidates snubbing the black and brown vote. And there's the reaction to your post about integration and cultural coalition building. I'd say there's a few responses from experts at code-switching, people who are pretty good at going back-and-forth between different groups.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: So folks can now read those and join in.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. Well, Geoff, thanks again.</s>GEOFFREY BENNETT: Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Geoffrey Bennett is the Web producer for NEWS & NOTES. |
Dee Ford was getting angry tweets when the Kansas City Chiefs' player drew a late penalty against the Patriots and his team lost. A woman named Dee Ford is on Twitter, she gets tweets meant for him. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. Last weekend, NFL player Dee Ford of the Kansas City Chiefs was getting all kinds of angry tweets. He was hit with a late penalty, and his team lost to the Patriots. The thing is Dee Ford is not on Twitter, but a 47-year-old English woman also named Dee Ford is, so she's the one who got the Twitter rage. It's been happening for years, so the two Dee Fords have become friends. British Dee Ford said some of the tweets are quite nasty, and she is glad football Dee Ford doesn't have to see them. |
NPR's Tony Cox talks with Newsday sports columnist Shaun Powell about his latest book Souled Out? It explores the global perception of black athletes and how they are portrayed in the media. He also takes a look at how those athletes conform to or defy expectations. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: And now a new book about the modern black athlete. In "Souled Out," Newsday sports columnist Shaun Powell examines how the media represents black athletes. He also takes a look at how those athletes conform to or defy expectations.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Powell spoke earlier with NPR's Tony Cox.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): Every day in sports, something racial always seems to come up. And I thought some - most of the commentary on this was sort of, like, skewed. And I also think that when the topic is raised, people are hesitant to speak their mind for fear of being taken out of context.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): I think race in this country - people of all colors are still uncomfortable with it. So I felt that it was necessary to clear the air on several subjects with regards to race and with regards to athletes, and also, the perception of black athletes.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): In researching this book and doing this book and in talking with a lot of black athletes who play back in the, you know, '60s and '70s, I would probably say most of them are a little disappointed, basically, that their legacy and, you know, the way they went about their business and how they basically paved the way for black athletes today to enjoy incredible wealth and attention and fame, I don't think that the black athletes of yesterday feel that the legacy has been carried out as properly - by some, yes, but not by everybody.</s>TONY COX: You know, the media has a lot to do with the images of black athletes. And you devote a chapter of the book to that very subject. You called it media madness. And you have a subheading, which I thought was interesting, and it's titled, "The Price of Not Dancing to Their Tune."</s>TONY COX: So who is they that you're referring to and what is their tune?</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): Well, they, meaning, the power brokers. Yes, you do see more black faces in terms of writing and on TV, and that gives the appearance that blacks have sort of - are well represented in all facets of the media. But, Tony, that couldn't be further from the truth.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): First of all, I still think there are a disproportionately low number of blacks really doing what I do for a living or being authors or being on-air talent. But most importantly, what about the decision makers? There is not a black person in America - still to this day, not a black person in America - who has headed a major sports division in terms of being president of sort of, like, ABC Sports, NBC Sports, ESPN, Fox Sports. No. I mean, blacks are zero, basically, in those decision-making positions.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): And I thought that was an important point to raise because - just take for example, the Michael Vick controversy and also the Pacman Jones controversy.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): Yes, those were probably two regrettable incidents to those athletes and also to all athletes. But the manner in which it was non-stop covered and portrayed by the media, I was taken aback by that. I don't know, I think if there was probably more black people in decision-making positions, I think some of the emphasis, I would say, on certain aspects of wrongdoing, behavioral, things like that, I would like to think, at least, that those portrayals would be a little bit different.</s>TONY COX: Well, let me follow that point up with this because not too long ago, Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb, he went on the air and said he felt black quarterbacks and white quarterbacks are treated differently. Earlier this year, Gary Sheffield made similar comments about black athletes in baseball.</s>TONY COX: Now, as to those events on sports radio, the talk often centers around this, that black athletes always make the race card claim when they're playing poorly or when they are in trouble but that those complaints don't seem to ever arise when they're being touted as the greatest this or the greatest that.</s>TONY COX: Do you think that black athletes are looking for a double standard when it suits them and only complain about it when it doesn't?</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): I would probably say, in some cases, maybe yes. But, by and large, I would probably say no. I mean, you cited two examples, but I probably don't think any of us could cite, say, 50 examples.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): Donovan McNabb, for example, I would probably say that his timing was not the greatest because at that time he had been struggling in his NFL season. He started to feel a little bit of heat from Philadelphia. And as we both know, Philadelphia is a very rough place for anybody - white, black or whatever…</s>TONY COX: That's true.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): …in terms of fan abuse. And also, he plays quarterback. I mean, you're going to get heat. And also, one other thing I would disagree with Donovan McNabb about, the average black male walking down 125th Street feels more racial pressure or racism than a star quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Please, it's not even close.</s>TONY COX: Mm-hmm.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): We're not a color-blind society, but we are a star-struck society. And Donovan McNabb, he walks in a restaurant or whatever and people are going to move out of the way. I mean, he's going to get the red-carpet treatment, whereas an ordinary citizen wouldn't.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): But here's where I would agree with Donovan McNabb. As a black person, in any facets of society, you feel the pressure to be as good as or better than your white counterpart. And I think Donovan could have articulated a little bit better but I kind of had an idea what he was talking about.</s>TONY COX: You have covered a lot of sports, Shaun. Which sport, do you think, is best suited - if there is one - for black athletes, and which one is perhaps worst suited when it comes to the public's perception of them?</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): That's a good question. I would probably say the NBA. You know, the NBA, you're getting a lot of younger athletes who are coming in without spending much time on a college campus, without being, you know, making their mistakes away from, you know, the public eye. They come straight from high school and, you know, in a lot of ways, they're unprepared to be adults. And I chalk it up to their youth and I chalk it up also to the culture in which they were raised.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): On the other hand, if you look at some of the other sports where there aren't as many blacks like tennis, for example, they seem to be probably a little bit more prepared. And I say that at the risk of even the Williams sisters not really going to college. But to what advantage they've had is that their mother and father were outstanding parents. Same thing with Tiger Woods' parents. Outstanding. They did a good job in preparing their children for what lay ahead.</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): To be honest with you, the media really doesn't harp that much on the responsible athletes, black athletes of which there are many, by the way, and it seems to really play up or emphasize the - those small numbers who insist on being unprofessional and the like.</s>TONY COX: All right. Shaun, thank you very much and have a good one. Okay?</s>Mr. SEAN POWELL (Sports columnist, Newsday; Author, "Souled Out): Hey, thanks, Tony. I appreciate it.</s>TONY COX: All right.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Shaun Powell is a sports columnist for Newsday. His latest book is called "Souled Out" and he spoke with NPR's Tony Cox.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You can read an excerpt from the book at our Web site, nprnewsandnotes.org. |
Russian President Putin phoned Venezuelan President Maduro to commit his support in the face of a revolt against his government. The U.S. no longer recognizes Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. | STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The United States no longer recognizes Nicolas Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. The U.S. is promoting an opposition leader instead, but Maduro still has friends, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here's NPR's Lucian Kim.</s>LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: After the Trump administration announced that it no longer considers Nicolas Maduro to be Venezuela's legitimate president, the Kremlin has been denouncing the move as a typical example of American unilateralism and regime change. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin called the Venezuelan leader.</s>PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Speaking at a ceremony in Venezuela's supreme court, Maduro said he had spoken with Putin for 20 minutes.</s>PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Maduro said Putin told him he could count on unconditional support and even greater economic aid. Russia is deeply interested in the survival of the Maduro regime, having invested billions of dollars in Venezuela's economy. If Cuba used to be Moscow's closest ally in Latin America during the Cold War, now it's Venezuela, which is far more attractive because of its lucrative oil industry. The fact that Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, was defiantly anti-American made Venezuela an ideal partner.</s>PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Speaking Russian).</s>LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: In December, Putin hosted Maduro outside Moscow, voicing his full backing for his already embattled regime. Less than a week later, Putin sent two long-range bombers 6,000 miles to Venezuela as covered here by the Kremlin's English language news channel Russia Today.</s>UNIDENTIFIED BROADCASTER: Here it is. One of the two Russian Tupolev Tu-160 strategic, nuclear-capable bombers has just landed here in Venezuela. Wow, spectacular.</s>LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: At the time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said two corrupt governments were squandering public funds while their own people suffer. Putin's domestic critics are finding inspiration in President Trump's recognition of an opposition figure, Juan Guaido, as Venezuela's legitimate leader. Alexei Navalny, Russia's most outspoken opposition politician, called Trump's decision outstanding and drew parallels with Russia whose people are poor despite the country's enormous oil wealth.</s>ALEXEI NAVALNY: (Speaking Russian).</s>LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Speaking on his weekly webcast, Navalny said Chavez and Maduro have brought Venezuela to the brink of catastrophe and calculated that every Russian has involuntarily invested more than $100 in the Latin American country. Navalny, however, is still just a Russian opposition leader. And Putin, for his part, is ready to stake even more in Maduro's government. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow. |
Famed literary critic Anatole Broyard carried a big secret most of his life. He was a black man passing as white. His daughter, Bliss Broyard, writes about how she learned of her father's hidden life and explored her black ancestry in the memoir One Drop. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Anatole Broyard was one of the most respected literary critics. The late editor and columnist for the New York Times book review provided a lavish life for his family in New England, but he carried a secret so deep that he couldn't tell his own children.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, his daughter Bliss Broyard has written the memoir "One Drop" about his life and her search for her family.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Bliss, welcome to the show.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): Thanks, Farai, for having me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So when your father was dying, you find out the big family secret: That your father is part-black. Your brother says, that's all? What was your reaction?</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): Pretty much along the same lines. The afternoon that we found out, we had just witnessed my father suffering terrible pain. He was in the last stages of prostate cancer. So my mom took it upon herself to tell us because it seemed clear that my father wasn't going to live very much longer.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): So it seems, frankly, like not a big deal. And we had known about a secret for a couple of months, and I imagined that it was, you know, my dad had witnessed some horrible crime or incest or something. So the fact that it was just that he was part-black and we didn't even realize or understand exactly why had it been a secret at all.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, how did you feel about meeting these aunts of yours who had been living as black? Did you feel cheated in any way that they had not been a part of your life, and how do you think they felt about you?</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): Absolutely, I felt cheated. I mean, it started to dawn on me when I met them at the memorial service. I had met one of my aunts once when I was 7. And she, like my father, looks, you know, typically black. She could also -she passed when she was younger for work in the 1930s.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): But I did feel incredibly cheated, and as much as we've, you know, tried to have a relationship now, you just can't. It's hard to start when you're 24 years old. We're never going to have the kind of relationship that we'd had if we'd all grown up together.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): And I think from, you know, they've been warm - one of my father's sisters, unfortunately, passed away shortly after he did. But the rest of the family has been quite warm, but there's a legacy of pain and rejection there that's really difficult to get over.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: In your journey after your father's death, you went to Louisiana. You did an extensive amount of research tracing your family. Among other things, you found that some of your black relatives actually own slaves. How did that strike you? What did that make you think about all of the different things that had happened in and to your family?</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): Well, it really threw me for a loop. I mean, the woman that you're talking about was my father's grandmother. And I had become convinced in doing my genealogical research that she actually was the daughter of an emancipated slave. And finding a slave connection was important to me because I associated slavery with African-American identity so strongly.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): And I came to find out one afternoon that, no, she wasn't the daughter of an emancipated slave. She actually was the daughter of a black slave-owning family.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): Now, the Creoles of New Orleans, you know, have a quite a different story than the African-American history that I was familiar with. They were historically descended from free people. They had strong ties to their French and Spanish colonial - the colonists settled in Louisiana. And so they kind of followed sort of white social mores. And then, when they were prosperous enough, they also owned slaves, but it really challenged my notion of what kind of, you know, African-American identity I had.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, you point out that your grandfather joined the Carpenters Union in New York by passing as white. Now, that hints at passing as a form of economic survival. But what about your father? Why did he pass, if you consider it passing?</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): Yeah, well, I think, you know, the passing is such a complicated term. I mean, it suggests that there's these, you know, a very specific line between the categories of black and white. And if you, you know, just look through the legal history of the South, you'll see that the color line has changed, you know, many times and from state-to-state.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): So - I - but I think in my father's case, he - I mean, like it or not, there it's a legal and social custom. And when he was growing up in Louisiana and in New York, was that if you had even a small fraction of black ancestry, you were considered black. And that certainly is the way that both of his sisters lived, and many people, his childhood friends.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): I think for him, he - it was very confusing in growing up because his parents both passed for work. He certainly learned the lesson that it was easier to be white. There was a lot more opportunity.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): And so when he got to college, he went to Brooklyn College, which was predominantly Jewish in the 1930s. He found a kind of affinity among the other students there, and just sort of blended in with them, and stopped, you know, if he ever had been announcing his racial identity, no longer did that.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, during this book, you talk somewhat about your own feelings. And you don't always paint yourself in a flattering light. You say - and this is about you as you were younger - I'd never had a conversation about race. In the world I was raised - and it was considered an impolite subject - the people I knew lower their voices when referring to a black person.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, you're a mother. When you talk about race to your daughter as she grows, what tone of voice will you use, and what will you tell her?</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): Well, I think I'll use a proud tone of voice to tell her about our African-American history, her family's African-American history. I mean, I grew up in a world that was quite sheltered. And, you know, I really wanted to paint in "One Drop" my evolution from being a sheltered, privileged white girl to, you know, someone I hope of a more sophisticated understanding about the role that racists played in our country.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): So ask Mayweather(ph) if she likes it or not - that's my 15-month-old daughter -she'll know all aspects of her history. And also, the reason why the question, what are you, has mattered.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What about your family? Your brother, your mother, your other white relatives, how have they reacted to the memoir?</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): They've been really supportive and positive. I think they recognized that it's a, you know, there's a legacy that my father left behind that was difficult and confusing. And I think they're glad that I've taken it upon myself to tell the complete story in which it's a story of the history of racial categories in our country and also the story of father's personal choice and how he dealt with that. And I think from my African-American relatives, I hope that there is, you know, some kind of healing that I've chosen to embrace this.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Bliss, thank you so much.</s>Ms. BLISS BROYARD (Daughter of Anatole Broyard; Author, "One Drop"): I appreciate it, Farai. Thank you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Bliss Broyard's memoir is called "One Drop." |
In this week's Snapshot, former Washington Post reporter Patrice Gaines describes meeting a fellow writer who, much like herself, draws her inspiration in the Southern countryside. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: It's Friday and it's Snapshots. That is our little slice of life.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Today, we've got Patrice Gaines. She's a former reporter with The Washington Post, a writing coach and someone who split the nation's capital to head further south. Now, she's met a fellow writer who also draws inspiration from the lay of the land.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): Although I live in Lake Wylie. My post office is in Clover, South Carolina. When I first discovered this, I thought about a novel published in 1990 that left an indelible mark on my life. Here's the aside.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): I was on a plane headed to Los Angeles to visit my friend Bebe(ph). I was deep into the novel "Clover" by Dori Sanders. I was the little girl Clover. My body may have been on a plane, but my consciousness was in an imaginary community in South Carolina. While I was in this euphoric state of reading, I heard a voice say, Patrice, don't be afraid. The plane is going to drop drastically, but you will be okay.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): I turned to look at the guy sitting next to me. Did he hear the voice? Where did the voice come from anyway? I didn't have any answers, but I put down the book and held on to the arms of my seat to brace myself. Strangely, I was not afraid. Within a few minutes, the plane dropped. People screamed. Luggage slid down the aisle. A couple of people cried out loud. I was calm, amazingly calm.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): Once we were stable and everyone had settled down, the pilot explained that we had hit an air pocket. I never forgot this experience or the book I was reading. So once I realized Lake Wylie was in Clover, I set out to find the author, Dori Sanders. It wasn't hard. She's famous in these parts. She is an author and a farmer. My neighbor Martha led me to Dori's produce stand, which sits at an end of a little dusty road, off a two-lane highway, near a sign announcing the town of Filbert.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): I found Dori as I would find her many times in the following days, just in a beat-up straw hat, long pants, and a long-sleeved plaid shirt, clothes to ward off the bugs. Her brother, Arestus(ph), sat in a lawn chair behind her, waiting to pack up any purchase produce for customers. His shiny red tractor was parked beside the stand. I was surprised to find that in the Bible Belt, Dori's stand is open seven days a week, which means even on Sundays.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): But Dori is fond of saying, the tomatoes don't know it's Sunday so they keep getting ripe. I thought to say, Dori, whenever I want stimulating conversation, while eating road dust, or if I want to buy good peaches, corn, okra, or sweet potatoes, while Dori greets a parade of people visiting from all over the country.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): Punks(ph) find their way to Dori's stand. Some had come because of her personality and produce, I came because of my experience on a plane, which made her unforgettable to me. They buy vegetables and fruit and hug her. They buy a book, get it autographed, take a photo with her, then hug her.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): One Saturday, Lisa, from just up the roadways, brought Dori zucchini relish, blackberry jam, and strawberry mousse cake. I was trying to make strawberry jam and it was lightening(ph). I made a mistake. Now you put in on case, Lisa explained, holding up the jar of slushy, red preserves. She brought her daughter Kimberly, 14, who writes fiction and has been showing her handwritten stories to Dori since she was a little girl. On this trip, Dori asked the teenager, sweetheart, type up the story, please? Then Dori says goodbye to them the way she bid farewell to most visitors, goodbye, my darlings.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): I regret that now it is October and the stand will only be open on Saturdays, until it closes sometime before Christmas. Left alone with Dori on this particular Saturday, I asked her something I had been curious about. What is it like to be a farmer and a writer?</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): I don't consider farming an occupation, Dori tells me. That would hinder my writing. Farming serves as a wellspring. I do look across the fields on that beautiful tractor and the landscape of my childhood opens up for me. That is what I write about. I couldn't go to New York and write this, she says.</s>Ms. PATRICE GAINES (Former Reporter, The Washington Post): I understand. When I was 20, I could have partied all over New York City. But now, I am in the Lake Wylie season of my life, where a big Saturday is sitting behind a produce stand off a dusty road, talking to another writer while she sells pumpkins.</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.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: That's NEWS & NOTES. 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 a 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. Next week, Randall Robinson and the future Haiti.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: I'm Farai Chideya. This is NEWS & NOTES. |
The conversation about hospitals in crisis continues with Rob Fuller, chief operating officer for Downey Regional Medical Center in Downey, Calif. Downey Regional is one hospital that is facing bankruptcy or closure within the year. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Downey Regional Medical Center is on King/Drew's list of alternatives for emergency care. But twice this summer, Downey's E.R. got so packed that they had to turn ambulances away.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Rob Fuller is chief operating officer of the Downey Regional Medical Center. Rob, welcome.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): Hello.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So this summer, the emergency care unit at your hospital was so crowded you had to turn ambulances away. That must have been a tough decision. How did you make it?</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): Well, in fact, it was an easy decision once the facts are reviewed because what we go on is patient safety. We have our senior nursing team evaluating the ability of the hospital to see the next patient safely. And it got so crowded on two separate occasions following the closure of MLK Hospital that they determined that there was a risk to the next patient if they were brought in, that the patient would be better off going a few more minutes to a different hospital. And we had to institute what's called code internal triage, and shut the doors for a while.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, you recently asked the city of Downey not to have your hospital listed as an option for paramedics who respond to 911 calls. Why is that?</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): Well we actually asked them to assume jurisdiction over 911 to essentially form a catchment area for us. We are a limited resource. We are a privately held community hospital - non-profit. And we are being asked to assume a patient load that we're just not set up to assume at this point. The county of L.A. currently controls the 911.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): And we are part of the system where we're a receiving hospital under L.A. County, but what we had asked the Downey City Council to do was take a look at whether they could not form their own 911 jurisdiction and make us the receiving hospital for the Downey Fire Department and try to serve well a smaller area than we're currently serving.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, the closing of King/Drew's E.R. is not where all of this started. How have things changed in the past five or 10 years for the hospital in terms of the kinds of patients, the volume of patients that you have to deal with?</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): Well it is gradual. It's not a tsunami that's going to wipe any hospital out. It does take time. But in this area, there was a lot of competition among hospitals that cut margins in our particular area. There used to be seven, large E.R.s and hospitals on the I-105 quarter that runs through south central L.A. - from LAX over towards Downey. And now there are just three hospitals. Four of the hospitals have failed in the last five years.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): You have a very large population in this corridor - largely working-class folks. And many of whom, over the last five years, have lost their health insurance at work, which is exacerbating the problem because they then qualify for Medicall.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): The final kind of economic factor that drives all this is that the Medicall program - Medicaid elsewhere - is driven by some 1970s rules that declare certain hospitals disproportionate share hospitals and others like Downey Regional not. And if you're disproportionate share, you get three or four times the money for serving the same patient, providing the same care than a non-dis hospital does like Downey.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): So money does not follow the patient. Certain hospitals are operationally burdened by the extra patients in the Medicall program, but they are financially okay. Downey Regional, currently, is losing over a thousand dollars a day for every patient they give care that are provided in the Medicall program. And our Medicall days have gone up very, very dramatically in the last three or four years given the hospital closures. As more patients are trying to find a place to go, they find us. With the loss of health insurance at work, and then what hurts our financial situation is that more and more of these Medicall patients who need care have to get hospitalization some place. We're happy to provide it. But we lose a thousand dollars a day doing it. And we're trying to figure out a way to not do that in talks of the stake.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, when you deal with patients - everybody's got a complaint, I know. I've been a cranky patient. Do the patients say, hey, the wait's too long. What's going on? Do they talk to you about this?</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): Well, we have only recently had a severe wait problem at Downey. We had prided ourselves on getting patients back and seen very quickly in relative terms. But in the last month and a half or so, we have not been able to do that. And, yes, we've had some people mention that, gee, I used to get back in an hour. Now, it's taking six hours, you know, at our worst time. And, you know, we can't do much, but kind of manage the expectations.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): So we're telling people, when they first walk into the E.R., that we will treat you in the order of your need, not the order of your arrival. So if someone comes after you, but they are in a much more critical condition then you are -we're going to attend to them first, and we'll get to you second. And it might take a couple of hours. So we're trying to manage the expectations and help the people through that.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): They also know from what's been reported in the papers that other E.R.s in areas such as St. Francis, the waits are almost double that they are at Downey. So, I mean, while we're much worse than we were, we're still not as impacted as some of the other hospitals such as St. Francis, and also, I understand, the counties - Harbor Hospital is also very impacted.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Well, Rob, thanks so much.</s>Dr. ROB FULLER (Chief Operating Officer, Downey Regional Medical Center): You're welcome.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Rob Fuller is chief operating officer for Downey Regional Medical Center in the city of Downey, California. |
Magazine editor and writer Amy DuBois Barnett tells women of color they can have it all in her book, Get Yours! Barnett shares how she became one of the most prominent black women in the magazine industry. | FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Are you still looking for your dream job, new home, and a good man? Journalist Amy DuBois Barnett says women of color should stop waiting and aim straight for what they want. Her new book is called "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More."</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Hey, Amy. How are you?</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): I'm great. Happy to be here.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Yeah. So to be honest, there are enough self-help and motivational books in this world to fill the oceans to the skies. Why did you write one and what makes yours different?</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): You know, I've made it my personal mission and message to help women move their lives forward, and I don't think that we frequently hear the message that success is a mindset. And my book is really all about getting your mind right and preparing yourself to achieve not just in your professional life, but in your personal life. I think that there's so much that women can do if we just walk through the world expecting it to happen. And I'm a living embodiment of that, you know. I always tell people if I can do it, anybody can, because I went through such a down period in my life that we can talk about. And I want to take the lessons that I've learned and spread the formula of success and achievement to as many women as I can.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So let's talk a little bit about your path. You were editor-in-chief of Honey, an urban women's magazine, editor of Teen People, deputy editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar now. That seems like a dream life in and of itself. What - you mentioned a down period in your life, what was that and how did you get through it?</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): You know, when I was 22 years old, my mother passed away. Well, first of all, I had a very awkward growing-up experience. I was not always, remotely attractive. So that was my growing-up teenage years. And then, my mother passed away when I was 22 years old. She was my best friend in the world and it really threw me for quite sometime. And at that time in my life, I was working in an industry that I hated. I was living in a basement apartment. I had no money. I gained 30 pounds. And I just had no clue how I was going to move myself forward, what I was going to do to make a change.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): And one day, I looked around at my life and I realized that nobody was coming to save me. You know, not a family member, no friend, no man, not because they didn't love me but because this is my life, you know. It is our life. We have to take ownership and realize that we alone have responsibility for creating the life that we want.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): So for me, it was really a matter of, kind of, taking ownership and taking responsibility, and it made me do a 180 in terms of how I think about my life. But that was the very awkward situation I went through. And from that moment forward, I started to make decisions based on what makes me happy, not what makes other people happy. And it changed everything I've done since.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: So what would you say was the spark? I mean, you have all these things that going on in your life, but was there a moment that crystallized for you when you said, I'm just not going to take this anymore?</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): You know, it was a very cathartic - it was a moment, you know. It was literally a moment when I was walking around my room and I looked at a picture of my mother and she was very much of a groundbreaker. She was the first African-American woman to run a major research university in the country, and she was an adventurer, and very much my inspiration. And I looked at her and I thought about the fact that she passed away she was 49 years old, and I realized, well, what am I doing? You know, this is my life right now.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): I think so many of us fall into the trap of waiting for life to begin, you know, oh, life will start when I get that man or I get that job or I get that house or whatever it is. But, really, this is life right now, as you and I are talking, as people are listening - this is life. So it's up to us to, kind of, realize that this day and this form(ph) will never happen again and what are we going to do to make it count?</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: You have a lot of celebrities in the book. You've got Sanaa Lathan, Venus Williams, India.Arie. Give me one story that one of them told you that inspires you.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): I love the women in my book. I really have to say. My celebrity role models are just that for me, just women that I think are so successful and so amazing. I love all of their stories, you know, Gayle King was great, Mo'Nique. I think, possibly, my favorite was Sanaa Lathan, who was very intimate and very honest with me and talked about how she used be very afraid. She used to let fear dominate her life. And one time, she got a ticket to go to an event in Hollywood that was honoring very, you know, important women in her industry, and she was afraid to go because she only got one ticket. She would not be able to bring anybody and she thought she will feel out of place and alone and wouldn't know who to talk to.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): And as it turns out, she went to the event, forged all of these new relationships, had an amazing time, and resolved that she would not let fear dictate her life, and that she would be confident that the universe would support risks. And I just think that that's such an important message for all of us, particularly women of color, because we are so frequently don't have faith that if we step out of our comfort zone, we will be supported in the risks that we take. And if you embrace fear as a sign of personal growth, if you recognize that stepping out of your comfort zone is how you become everything your meant to be, then it changes your whole attitude.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Now, you come from a background - you mentioned that your mom was an ace academic. You, yourself, are very well educated. You're talking to celebrities. There are people, people who may pick up your book, who are going to be beaten down in very specific and dramatic ways - maybe on the verge of bankruptcy, losing a home, getting a divorce. Do you think the people can relate to celebrities, to people like you, who've had different kinds of opportunities?</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): Sure. Sure. There is not a single person in the public eye you can look at who has not had their own set of trials and tribulations and obstacles and dramas and things that they've been through to get to where they are today. We are all the same. I think that's a really fundamental lesson, too, in reading my book and listening to the lives of the people that I interview. You now, again, if I can do it, anybody can.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): You know, for a long time, I was unsuccessful in my career. I was overweight. I had no money. I went through a divorce. I lost my mother. You know, this is not a charmed life that I've had. So, you know, I am taking the lessons that I've learned and I'm telling people that this is my life. This is what happened to me, and here is how I pulled myself out of my place of depression and insecurity. And I turned my life around and look what I've achieved, and you can do it, too.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Let's talk about India.Arie. She talks about being spiritually grounded in the music industry and what does she have to offer. Her lyrics have inspired a lot of people, for example.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): Well, I just thought she was amazing, you know. I interviewed her in my, like you said, in the spirituality chapter largely because I appreciate her worldview and her - the generosity of her spirituality. I like the fact that she is very accepting of everybody's forms of connecting with a higher power, which I think is the way to walk through the world.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): You know, I personally believe that the more accepting we are of other people, the more we are ultimately connecting to our higher power. And she talks about how she doesn't necessarily have to talk to God at church or in a spiritual building, but that she does it all the time. She prays all the time. She connects with her higher power all time, but she does it wherever she is. And I think that that is such a valuable lesson, you know, try to connect with your higher power every day, but that does not necessarily mean going to church, nor does that mean judging other people for their specific beliefs.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: What about money? You talk about screw-you money. What's that?</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): That is very important to me, Farai. That is a very key message in my book. I am a big advocate of women protecting themselves and being independent and having their own savings. I really don't like it when we, sort of, you know, wait for a man to come along and rescue us from our bills, or we're waiting for somebody to buy us the car, or the minute we have a few hundred dollars we go out and we buy that expensive bag. You know, it really is not going to help us as women long term if we don't have any means for protecting ourselves and supporting ourselves.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): And when I say screw-you money, I mean that if you are ever in a personal or professional situation that you find uncomfortable, abusive, that you just don't like, you know, your savings, your money, frankly, is your independence. That's your ability to push back from the table or whatever it is and say, you know what, screw you.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Amy…</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): I don't need this, and that is what that money means.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: All right. We're going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much, Amy.</s>Ms. AMY DUBOIS BARNETT (Author, "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More"): Thank very much for having me.</s>FARAI CHIDEYA, host: Amy DuBois Barnett is the deputy editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar magazine, and her new book is "Get Yours: The Girlfriend's Guide to Having Everything You Ever Dreamed Of And More." She joined me from our New York studios. |
Louisiana's governor sent the NFL Commissioner a letter complaining about a missed penalty that New Orleans Saints fans say cost their team a chance to play in the Super Bowl. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: There has been a controversy raging in the NFL since Sunday that has now turned political. Louisiana's governor, John Bel Edwards, has sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell complaining about a missed penalty that New Orleans Saints fans say cost their team a chance to play in the Super Bowl. This letter follows lawsuits, a petition and just general rage about this now infamous no call by referees in the NFC championship game. And let's talk about this with NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Hi, Tom.</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi there, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK. So for people who were not watching that game, remind us what happened and what is causing all this.</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Only one of the most obvious cases of pass interference you'll ever see, and it wasn't penalized. It happened late in the game between the Saints and the LA Rams. A Rams defender blasted a New Orleans receiver before a pass reached the receiver, and there was no flag. And after the game, the Rams defender acknowledged he interfered. The NFL head of officials admitted they blew the call, which, under NFL rules, wasn't reviewable, so they couldn't check replays and see what everyone else in the world saw.</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Now, as a result, the Saints lost a chance to run down the clock and kick a short field goal for the win in the final seconds. Instead, they were forced to kick a tiebreaking field goal with over a minute and a half left. That gave the Rams lots of time to get the ball back, drive down the field, kick the tying field goal, which they did, and then they won in overtime.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So Saints fans are going to want you to answer yes to this question, but I'm going to ask it. Would they have definitely won the game if this penalty had been called?</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: (Laughter) Highly likely, Saints fans, but not certain, David Greene. This is just between you and me. Even if the Saints had run down the game clock and attempted that very short field goal for the win, the kicker could have missed or it might have been blocked. Even with the botched call, the Saints could have won. Yes, the Rams got the ball with lots of time after the Saints went ahead, but, hey, what about that great Saints defense? They could have stopped the Rams from driving down the field, kicking the tying field goal. And then in overtime, the Saints had the ball first and had a chance to win.</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: So now that all Saints fans hate me, I will say, yes, the odds were pretty good that had the penalty been called, the Saints would be playing New England in the Super Bowl February 3.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right. Well, sports fans like me, we just suffer and deal with a bad call. It sounds like in Louisiana I guess you could do lots of things like file lawsuits and get your governor involved. So what - tell us - tell me more about the response here.</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: The governor sent that letter to Commissioner Goodell to make rule changes that allow for expanding use of replay. Otherwise, he said, the integrity of the game will be called into question. Edwards also said Louisiana football fans will move on but will not forget. There are these lawsuits by fans. One of them alleges damages of mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life. I know you've felt that as a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Thanks.</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: (Laughter) Saints fan Matt Bowers has rented billboards in Atlanta, the host city for the Super Bowl, with messages like Saints got robbed. And there's an online petition asking for a rematch this Sunday. As of early this morning, David, the petition had over 680,000 signatures.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK. There's not going to be a rematch. I'm going to predict that right now. But what is the NFL going to do here going forward?</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: What should happen and probably will is replay needs to be expanded. That play should have been reviewed and the call corrected. The league has said subjective penalties like pass interference cannot be reviewed. The NFL, you know, worries that too much replay will slow down games. But if you watch the other conference championship game between New England and Kansas City, which I'm sure you did, there were a bunch of replays during a thrilling fourth quarter, and it didn't take away the excitement at all.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Thank you, Tom.</s>TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: A pleasure, David. |
A suspended Twitter account appears to have help spread video of a controversial encounter between a group of Catholic school boys and a Native American elder. | STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: People outraged by a confrontation in front of the Lincoln Memorial had help in getting outraged. Nobody was harmed as a Native American drummer faced a group of primarily white Catholic school students. But the incident spread on social media, and it was boosted by a single Twitter account that has since been suspended. NPR's Laura Sydell reports Twitter says the account was using misleading information to manipulate the public conversation.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: The video went viral in a number of different ways, but a major player was an account with the handle @2020fight. The video shows a Native American elder banging on a small hand-held drum surrounded by a group of high school boys, some of whom are wearing Make America Great Again hats. One of the boys stands a few feet from the man's face, staring at him with a slight smile. It's a brief moment in a much longer, more complicated situation. The @2020fight account has been in the sights of Rob McDonagh with Storyful, a firm that analyzes social media conversations.</s>ROB MCDONAGH: And I had spotted it before tweeting out very hyperpartisan views very much in Democratic talking points.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: While that in itself didn't necessarily mean anything was wrong, there were other signs.</s>ROB MCDONAGH: What made this account stand out is its high rate of tweets and highly political tweets. You're talking 130-plus tweets a day. And it had a fake profile pic. It was using the profile photo of a Brazilian blogger.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: McDonagh says the account also had over 40,000 followers, but it wasn't verified by Twitter. He says that's unusual for an account with so many followers. According to McDonagh, CNN pointed out the account to Twitter, and it was taken down. Twitter has not disclosed who it believes might be behind the @2020fight account. But Molly McKew thinks it bears the hallmarks of an account designed to spread discord.</s>MOLLY MCKEW: I think this little bit of video content really hit a nerve with a lot of people, and I think that's exactly what it was intended to do.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: McKew is a researcher who's worked for the governments of the countries of Georgia and Moldova, consulting on how to fight Russian disinformation. She says the video hit a nerve with progressives because it looked like a member of a minority group, a Native American elder, was being attacked by a group of white boys with MAGA hats.</s>MOLLY MCKEW: Everybody rushes to their polls (ph) as quickly as possible.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: McKew says she also noticed that @2020fight is followed by accounts she thinks are suspicious. Those accounts retweeted the video and sent it out to more people. Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse University, has studied the way stories like this blow up on social media. Phillips says this situation is a near-perfect model of how social media and the news media end up working together to heighten conflicts between Americans.</s>WHITNEY PHILLIPS: You basically throw a match into some kindling, and then the American people supply the oxygen.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: Then it rises to the top on Twitter, and the professional media notices it.</s>WHITNEY PHILLIPS: And so you have this race to cover the story first, and then once the story has been covered, every publication needs to, you know, publish their own take.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: Including NPR. Phillips says the end result is that a small group that wants to keep Americans fighting amongst themselves is able to leverage social media and manipulate the traditional media. Unfortunately, she says, social media companies like Twitter are ultimately not prioritizing the good of society.</s>WHITNEY PHILLIPS: Sometimes it takes down really offensive content and sometimes it keeps that content up because it is good for their bottom line.</s>LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: Phillips says divisions in our society are real, and the video may have taken off without fake accounts. But she would like to see people look at the source of the information before retweeting. Laura Sydell, NPR News. |
A Unified School District and the teachers' union reach a tentative deal. Competing bills to end the shutdown head to the Senate floor. The FBI Agents Association warns shutdown hampers operations. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: Big news here around LA. Students attending school in Los Angeles today will find something different - teachers in the classrooms.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: A six-day teacher strike is over. The educators were demanding better pay, smaller class sizes and other changes. Support for this deal was overwhelming, although different teachers see different implications for them. NPR asked a few what they thought.</s>JENNIFER LIEBE-ZELAZNY: I am actually pretty excited about our new, tentative agreement.</s>TERESA RIVAS-NASOQEQE: Feeling a little uneasy and not fully satisfied with the agreement.</s>JENNIFER LIEBE-ZELAZNY: We are going to have smaller class sizes. That's big.</s>JESENIA CHAVEZ: For my class setting, the number of students actually increased.</s>TERESA RIVAS-NASOQEQE: But I'm excited in moving forward to see what else we can accomplish as a collective.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Those are teachers Jennifer Liebe-Zelazny, Teresa Rivas-Nasoqeqe (ph) and Jesenia Chavez.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right. Kyle Stokes is the education reporter from member station KPCC and joins me here in our studios at NPR West. Kyle, good morning. You've been covering a six-day strike, and it's over.</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: Oh, boy, I'm tired.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I bet you are. Well - so it sounds like from those voices that there are still some - a lot of questions, but there is a deal. Teachers are going to get back to the classroom. What is in the deal? What are the details here?</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: Well - so the deal includes a raise for teachers. That wasn't a big question. They had been looking for a 6 1/2 percent raise, but they've been - it looked like they were going to accept the 6 percent raise the district has been offering for months. It also looks like the teachers are going to get the hiring of new staff of nurses, of counselors and school librarians that they had been asking for, for instance. The union says that the district will hire enough nurses now to guarantee a nurse in every school five days a week, which is something that not a lot of schools have right now. Coming up in just a few years is when that's going to be in place.</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: The big breakthrough, David, though, was on class sizes, that the district agreed to try and hit some very ambitious targets for reducing class sizes here in Los Angeles schools. But they're going to do it over 3 1/2 years instead of the kind of one-year window that they'd been trying to hit before.</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: The other piece of the class size deal is that the school district gave up the power that it had in the old contract to essentially raise class sizes almost whenever they want because class size reduction is very expensive. And the district felt like they needed this flexibility in order to save money in the event of a fiscal crisis. The district gave that up, and the union found that old provision very toxic. They find that concession to be a huge one.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right. A lot more nurses, guarantees of smaller class size - these things cost money. The district had been saying they don't have the money. Did they come up with more money? What happened?</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: Well - so part of this is still being costed out. It's still not entirely clear how much the entire deal is going to spend. And that's going to be calculated over the next couple of days. But on the class size and staffing pieces, part of the way that the district is going to pay for it is by spreading this out over 3 1/2 years, again, instead of that one-year window we had been talking about before.</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: But what also appears to be happening, David, is that the district is taking what Mayor Eric Garcetti called the leap of faith, that the funding is going to materialize somewhere, that either the state is going to come in down the road with more funding, that maybe local voters are going to raise their own property taxes. It is that leap of faith that seems to be what's going to move forward here. And that's going to be the way that the district is going to make this work is what it appears.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: It feels like a big moment of coming together. Is that what teachers and others involved are saying to you? Or is there still some sort of uncertainty out there?</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: A big moment of coming together, yeah. There's a lot of relief certainly among parents that this is - that this deal is done.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Sure.</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: Teachers obviously feeling very empowered, like they got a lot done with this deal, and some actually, a minority apparently, felt like they maybe could have gotten more. But we saw overwhelming majorities vote in favor of this tentative agreement and look like they're ready to accept it.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right. Strike over in Los Angeles, although teachers in Denver are planning to strike beginning on Monday. So we're going to have to keep our eyes on that. Kyle Stokes from member station KPCC covers education here. Kyle, thanks.</s>KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: This week, the Senate will vote on two bills to end the partial government shutdown.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: That's right, two bills. One of them is backed by Republicans. The other is backed by Democrats. What the bills have in common is that neither is expected to actually pass. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke for the Republican option.</s>MITCH MCCONNELL: The proposal outlined by President Trump is the only one currently before us that can be signed by the president and immediately reopen the government.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that bill has no chance.</s>CHUCK SCHUMER: The president's proposal is one-sided, harshly partisan and was made in bad faith.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK. Now Democrats, then, have backed the same measure that passed the Senate by unanimous consent back in December, a bill that has no funding for a border wall. That one died after President Trump said he wouldn't sign it.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith is following this story. Tamara, good morning.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: How are these bills different, other than one having border funding - border wall funding and the other not?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, that's the big one. But the other difference is, really, one is simply a clean bill to fund the government for a short period of time. It would basically - the Democratic bill basically reopens the government for a couple of weeks to allow negotiations to continue. President Trump's bill, the Republican bill, is based on the remarks that the president delivered over the weekend. It includes wall funding, other border security funds. It also would have a temporary extension for the DACA program for young people known as DREAMers, as well as some other extensions for other immigrant groups. And it makes some pretty significant changes to the way the asylum works. And that, Democrats say, is a poison pill that is built into that measure.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That - it's one of the parts that Chuck Schumer would refer to as being bad faith. So does voting on these two bills, neither of which seems likely to get 60 votes and pass, advance the process in any way?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, sometimes taking votes that fail proves what can pass and what can't pass, and then they can move on. So in that sense, it might advance things. I mean, at least they're voting on something - right? - which they haven't done much of on the Senate side or any of on the Senate side as long as this shutdown has been going on. But does it resolve the underlying problem? No. The underlying problem is that President Trump doesn't want to end the shutdown - that he said he would be proud to own - until he has funding for a border wall. And Democrats say they don't want to start negotiating over a border wall until the government is reopened.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Are lawmakers or the White House feeling increasing pressure?</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: I think that they are. The pain is growing from the shutdown as it continues. Admiral Karl Schultz, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, posted a video last night on Twitter. He says we're five-plus weeks into this government lapse, and your anxiety and your non-pay, you as members of the armed forces should not be expected to shoulder this burden.</s>KARL SCHULTZ: I find it unacceptable that Coast Guard men and women have to rely on food pantries and donations to get through day-to-day life as service members.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: And then he made sure that they knew about assistance that's available. That is not a good look.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: No, hearing a commandant say that this is an unacceptable situation. Tamara, thanks so much.</s>TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That is NPR's Tamara Keith.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Now, the shutdown is also affecting the Federal Bureau of Investigation.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. Thomas O'Connor is the president of the FBI Agents Association. He says that the shutdown is making it more difficult for the agency to do its job to protect the people of the country from criminals and terrorists. It sounds like the shutdown is affecting a lot of important operations at the agency, including going after terrorists, drug traffickers, also gangs.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas is here to tell us more. He's in our studios in Washington. Ryan, good morning.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So how is it that this shutdown affects the FBI?</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Well, according to the FBI Agents Association, the impact of the partial shutdown is pretty significant on them. The association represents around 14,000 active and retired FBI special agents, so they have representation members in all of the field offices across the country. And the group released a report yesterday that outlines how this lack of funding is hindering the FBI's work. It's based off of anonymous comments from members. And they say that it's having an impact on everything from training to operations and investigations. And the kinds of investigations that are taking a hit are serious. We're talking about sex trafficking, crimes against children, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, violent gangs, drug traffickers, everything. The Agents Association also says that this may have a long-term impact on the FBI on its ability to recruit and retain the kind of talent that it needs to do its job.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh, sure, because it's embarrassing to have people not paid. But I want to understand this a little better. I presume that a lot of FBI agents are considered essential personnel. They're not being paid, but they're told to show up to work, meaning they can investigate things. But they're sending word they're unable to investigate even though they're on the job. Why would that be?</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Well, one thing that stands out in this report again and again is agents saying that they no longer have the money to pay confidential sources who are critical to their investigations.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh, who are not necessarily willing to wait till the end of the shutdown to get paid, I suppose.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: When sources aren't getting paid, sources can dry up. Sources can go silent. And these sorts of sources are used in a lot of the work that the FBI does, stuff that I mentioned earlier - the counterterrorism cases, counterintelligence, gang, drugs. One example from the report comes from an agent who says that they're investigating a street gang that's pushing a lot of methamphetamine and heroin. And the agent says that their probe has been undermined because they don't have money to pay their confidential sources. And they also don't have money to make controlled purchases of drugs, which is something that they often use in narcotics investigations. Now...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: I'm just imagining an undercover officer having to stand there and say, listen; I can pay you for this. I just need to wait a couple weeks or maybe a little longer. No, go on, go on. I'm sorry.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: (Laughter) Now, you also have to remember that the FBI doesn't work on its own. It can't do all of what it needs to do in order to carry out investigation on its own. It works closely with state and local law enforcement. The Agents Association says that in some cases that sort of cooperation has been hampered because they can't pay those partners for work on their joint investigations. And they also say that grand jury subpoenas are being delayed because there are no funds for them, and staff at U.S. attorneys' offices are furloughed.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: How are unpaid agents personally affected?</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: It's really hurting them, according to the FBI Agents Association. There are even food banks that have been set up at some of the field offices to try to help people make ends meet.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. Ryan, thanks so much, really appreciate it.</s>RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Thank you.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas. |
Trump tweets he'll delay the State of the Union speech. It's Day 34 of the government shutdown, Ohio voters react to the standoff. In Venezuela, two men argue over who is the rightful president. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: President Trump conceded a small defeat with words that were, for him, fairly measured.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: He said he would delay the State of the Union speech. Days ago, you will recall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would, quote, "suggest" that he delay it because of the partial government shutdown, or else submit the speech in writing. In a rambling letter yesterday, the president said he would do that speech anyway. Pelosi then wrote him again, saying he was disinvited. And on Twitter last night, the president said that is her prerogative. He said no other room besides the House chamber will do, so he will not try to find some alternate venue.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Amid this exchange of messages, protesters stood outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Stop the shutdown. Stop the shutdown. We need a paycheck. We need a paycheck.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: They're chanting, we need a paycheck. The Senate does plan to vote on two bills that would fund the government today, although both are expected to fail.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: NPR lead political editor Domenico Montanaro is with us this morning. Hey, Domenico.</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So President Trump, as we know, not someone who backs down easily, but I guess he didn't really have a choice - right? - if Nancy Pelosi said he is not invited to her House.</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Well, he's always got a choice. But, like you said, he's not somebody who's really known to back down. He's known to escalate rather than take the temperature down. But he did tweet out that he would do the address when the shutdown was over. He said, I'm not looking for an alternative venue because there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House chamber and said he looks forward to doing it in the, quote, "near future." No sign on when.</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: But it's a remarkable moment. And, you know, look; the politics of this - there's a confluence of polling that's been out that's shown his numbers getting worse and worse during the shutdown.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right. So does that mean - because his poll numbers are dropping, is the president bearing the bulk of the political cost of the shutdown?</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: So far, he absolutely is. There were three polls that were out yesterday from The Associated Press, from CBS News and from Fox, by the way, an outlet that the president watches a lot but does good polling. And all of them showed more people blaming the president for the shutdown than Democrats.</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: And the Fox poll, for example, found that three-quarters of people found that the shutdown was more of a problem than the border. And those are numbers that he has to be seeing. In the AP poll, his approval rating was just at 34 percent, which is really a low for him in that poll, down eight points from a month earlier and really bad - doing very badly with independents, 69 percent disapproving of the job he's doing.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Meanwhile, federal workers are expected to miss their second paycheck tomorrow. I mean, people are really suffering in this moment. There is political pressure on both sides. The Senate's got these two bills that they're going to bring up. They're both expected to fail. So where's the opening to end this?</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Well, the president has said, so far, that he's not budging on a wall. Democrats say they have a reason for not caving either. Take a listen to what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said about that yesterday.</s>NANCY PELOSI: There is serious and justified concern that this president would shut down the government anytime he does not get his way legislatively. That is why we must hold the line.</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: And that's a line that you've heard from Democrats all day yesterday. So Democrats, like she said, want to hold the line. The Senate is going to vote this afternoon on these two proposals - one on the president's proposal for the $5.7 billion for a wall for temporary immigrant protections - that's expected to fail - and one from Democrats to simply open the government for a few weeks to negotiate. That's also expected to fail.</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: But a little bit of news here. NPR's Susan Davis reports that Democrats are prepared to make a counterproposal to the president that would spend a significant amount of money on the border, but not on a wall. We'll see if Republicans blink.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK. NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Thanks, Domenico. We appreciate it.</s>DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: You're so welcome.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: All right. So question - what do actual voters across America think of the shutdown?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Past shutdowns have not always had much effect on elections. Republicans shut down the government in 2013 over Obamacare, for example. It was a very unpopular shutdown, but they still won the Senate in 2014. In 2019, though, the shutdown has gone much longer.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Right. NPR's Don Gonyea has been in Ohio this week getting reactions from voters about the standoff. Don, good morning.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Where are you?</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: I'm in Chillicothe. It's about an hour south of Columbus. This is a red part of the state - not deep, deep red, but red. And in Chillicothe, there are precincts that vote Democratic as well. But when you talk to people here, the first thing you notice is that the partisan divide holds.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: So Democrats I talk to say this thing is all on Trump - period. He owns it - that he's chosen a very unpopular path on the shutdown and that polls back that up. And they complain that Trump's demand for funding of the wall leaves just no room to negotiate.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Talk to Republicans, it gets a little more interesting. They're still with Trump, many as much as ever, but it's more complicated. And some will wonder, you know, what the president's plan is here.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What more do they tell you, those Republican voters? I mean, when they say it's more complicated, what does that mean?</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Well, let's meet a few of them. Greg Rouse (ph) - I talked to him downtown yesterday. He's a government worker, but he works for the county. So he is working, but he says he knows people on furlough. He is a bit confused about Trump's strategy to, you know, to double down on the border wall after Republicans lost control of the House.</s>GREG ROUSE: I'm a little bit frustrated, but I'm not sure towards him exactly. I'm still a strong Trump supporter.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: So I also talked to Fran Burdette (ph), who works in a law office in Chillicothe. She voted for Trump in 2016 but is quick to say, not enthusiastically. She does not like the way the president is handling these negotiations.</s>FRAN BURDETTE: I truly believe that we do need a wall if you look at all the statistics, but I don't think this is the right way to do it. The thing that worries me the most is the people that are not getting paid. And these people are living from paycheck to paycheck, you know, especially, like, the Coast Guard and different places, people on food stamps - all that kind of stuff. You know, they need help.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: And I asked Burdette if she still supports Trump, and she said that she does. But then I said, can you look ahead to 2020 a bit for me? Will you be voting for him again? And she gave me a look, and she said, it is way too early to think about whether she's going to do that. So she's, you know, kind of wavering.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Yeah, interesting. I mean, you talked with a cross-section of people there. Are people really thinking about 2020, or are they more like her and saying, you know, just give me some time?</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: They're certainly watching the debate in Washington over the wall very closely. 2020 has crept into their consciousness whether they like it or not. And some are quick to say, hey, I voted for the president, and I'm with him again. But again, there is an awareness that a choice is coming up, and it's going to be on them before they know it.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: And that the shutdown is playing into their calculus, at least a little bit.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Absolutely. Absolutely.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: OK. NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea. Thanks, Don.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: A pleasure.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So there are two people claiming to be the president of Venezuela right now. And as you'd imagine, there's all kinds of chaos as a result.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Nicolas Maduro was re-elected president, but the Socialist government that's been in power for many, many years has been accused of rigging elections and also changing the rules when they lose. And the leader of the legislature, Juan Guaido, has declared himself the interim president.</s>JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: He's saying that he's the national executive in charge of Venezuela. He was speaking to a massive crowd in the capital, Caracas, yesterday. The United States, Canada and much of Latin America have formally recognized him as Venezuela's leader. Now, Maduro, the other leader, responded by expelling U.S. diplomats. But the U.S. has said they will not leave because the legitimate president did not ask them to go.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: All right. NPR's Philip Reeves is in Caracas covering all this. Phil, one country, two presidents. What is happening right now? What are people telling you?</s>PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, what's going on is a major crisis with serious international implications. I want to step back just a second because this is kind of complicated. Venezuela's opposition refuses to recognize Maduro as president because they say his re-election for a second term, which just began recently, was fraudulent. And a lot of people agree with that.</s>PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: So Juan Guaido has declared himself interim president, as you heard. Now, he's head of the National Assembly. That's Venezuela's congress. He says he'll be transitional leader until new, free and fair elections can be held. He's done that with the full support of the U.S., most of Latin America, Canada. And they say he's the president, not Maduro.</s>PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Yet, Maduro is in the presidential palace, and he says this is an attempted coup led by Washington, who wants Venezuela's oil and gas. And he's portraying it as a throwback to the Cold War and another installment in the U.S.' history of supporting coups and other forms of intervention in Latin America.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I mean, where are the people in this moment, Phil? Does Maduro have any actual grassroots support still?</s>PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: He does. It's often said he enjoys the support of about 20 percent of the country. I have no idea how reliable that figure is. But he does have supporters, and they were out on the streets yesterday, summoned there by the ruling Socialist Party, holding counterdemonstrations in answer to the day of national protests called by the opposition.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Are these U.S. diplomats actually going to leave? I mean, the U.S. doesn't recognize Maduro, so Maduro kicked the U.S. diplomats out. What's happening there?</s>PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Yeah. This has become a really critical issue. Secretary Mike Pompeo says Maduro doesn't have the legal authority to break diplomatic relations with the U.S. The U.S. doesn't recognize him as president. It therefore follows the U.S. thinks that Maduro doesn't have the legal authority to throw out its diplomats.</s>PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: But what happens if they don't leave? Maduro controls the streets here, and he controls the security forces so far. And I honestly don't know the answer to that question.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: In just a couple seconds, do you think new elections will be held?</s>PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Very difficult to say at this point. We're really at the beginning of this crisis, and no one really knows how it's going to play out.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Phil, thank you so much. Philip Reeves from Caracas reporting on the political crisis there. |
On his way to Panama, Pope Francis answered reporters' questions. Steve Inskeep talks to Ines San Martin of the Catholic news site Cruxnow about what the pope had to say about refugees. | STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Pope Francis is in Central America. He's in Panama to attend the Catholic Church's World Youth Day. While travelling, the pope was asked about the wall that President Trump wants to build on the border with Mexico. And the pope responded by saying, it is fear that makes us crazy. Ines San Martin of the Catholic news site Crux Now is travelling with the pope. And she's on the line. Welcome to the program.</s>INES SAN MARTIN: Thank you very much.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The pope must have known when he decided to take questions from reporters that somebody was going to ask him about the wall since he was heading to Latin America.</s>INES SAN MARTIN: Yeah. Technically, at this time, the way it works is on the outbound flight to where he's going, the pope doesn't actually take questions. He just greets all of us. And we try to sneak in a question. What happened this time was an Italian journalist who was recently in Tijuana say, you know, I've seen the border. It goes all the way to the ocean - the wall that has already been built. And it's crazy. And the pope said, yes. It's fear that makes us crazy. He actually fielded questions on a lot of issues. But all of them were kind of on the quiet side.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: On the quiet side except for this remark - so he was responding to a view or an opinion that was expressed by an Italian journalist. Was this unusual?</s>INES SAN MARTIN: Not really because I mean, personally, for instance, I told him that an Iraqi bishop, the new archbishop of Mosul, told me that they are waiting for the pope. And the pope said, hey. I'd love to come. It's the bishop who told me not to. So it's not all that unusual that the pope has a comment to say - especially in the past, he's talked about nuclear wars. He's talked about how he will pray for the Korean peninsula. So it's just the - we journalists get together at the end of the papal greeting to exchange what he said or not. Sometimes, journalists decide that it's private. Sometimes, we share it because we want to get the story out.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: How does the pope's remark about the wall fit with his other statements about President Trump over the last few years?</s>INES SAN MARTIN: You kind of expect it. Although, I mean, it's worth noting that the wall the journalist was talking about had been there. It was built before the Trump administration.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Oh, yeah. It's a steel fence. It goes down into the ocean at Tijuana - between Tijuana and San Diego, absolutely.</s>INES SAN MARTIN: Right. But we've heard the pope before say, he who builds walls is not a Christian. He was, of course, referring to Trump because Trump was the question. But he was also referring to what's going on across Europe. We have very Catholic countries, such as Poland, building up fences to keep migrants off the country. So it's definitely aligned to what he said with Trump before. And it's also aligned to what he said about immigration in general.</s>INES SAN MARTIN: We, obviously - you know, Trump right now is in the news because he's the president of the U.S. But when it comes to Pope Francis and migration, being that he's the son of migrants himself, he's always been very - a very strong advocate to - you need - you know, we need to help these people who are fleeing hunger, violence. And when you see, you know, what's happening in Nicaragua right now - I was there in November for two weeks. I understand why people want to flee their country. The problem is, how do we deal with it? How do we address it? How do we help these people?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: What is the Pope's official purpose in being in Panama?</s>INES SAN MARTIN: He is attending, as I said, a Catholic event called World Youth Day, which is a youth gathering that takes place every two or three years in different cities. Last time we had it was in 2016 when he went to Krakow in Poland. That is the official reason for his visit. Obviously, one can understand that the Vatican chose Panama for various reasons, including the fact that it's often seen as a bridge between the north and the south and the west and the southern hemisphere. And he's definitely going to be talking about that during some of his speeches in the next four days.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Ines San Martin is a reporter for Crux Now and is travelling with Pope Francis in Central America. Thanks so much.</s>INES SAN MARTIN: Well, thank you. |
A woman reportedly was arrested for trying to kidnap a kangaroo from a Pennsylvania petting zoo. CBS3 reports police discovered her trying to squeeze the animal into a Honda and drive it to Florida. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: Good morning. I'm David Greene with some advice I had thought was unnecessary. If you're at the petting zoo, no, you can't take the animals. A woman was reportedly arrested for trying to kidnap a kangaroo from the Peaceable Kingdom Petting Zoo in Pennsylvania. CBS3 reports police discovered her trying to squeeze the animal into a Honda and drive it to Florida. She reportedly said the kangaroo was hers, but a court made her surrender it. Can we assume it wasn't a kangaroo court? |
NPR's David Greene talks to Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, about the most-anticipated films for the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: It is a busy week for the movie industry. The Oscar nominations are out, and one of the industry's biggest film festivals kicks off today. Actors, directors, executives and, of course, critics are on their way to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. NPR film critic Kenneth Turan is among them. But before heading to the mountains, he talked with David Greene.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Hi there, Ken.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Hey, David. How you doing?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I'm good. I'm sad to be missing you. I was there with you last year. I'm not going this time, so you'll have to send us stories.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: They're going to miss you. They're asking about you already, Dave.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I'm sure they are. I'm sure. So I want to start with Dr. Ruth, the sex therapist. She has a movie here?</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Dr. Ruth. Well, she didn't make a movie. It's a documentary about her. But she is a trip, as they used to say. You know, she's 90 years old. She's still working. She's still great and funny and lively. But this tells her story. You know, she was a Holocaust refugee. She grew up in another country for - you know, her parents died. She ended up in Israel. She was a sniper for the Haganah.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: She was a sniper?</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Yes. I know.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Wow.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: And she is 4-foot-7. I don't know if that's good or bad for a sniper.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I don't either.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: But just how she got started, how the program caught on, how her personality just has kind of lit people up from the start to today - it's really a treat to be in her presence.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: It's a life that - it sounds like that's a lot to take on for one movie. I mean, there have been a bunch of different lives during her 90 years.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: They really have. That's why it's so interesting. I mean, again, this is one of those things where this is a person you think you know. You say Dr. Ruth, and everyone has a picture.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: And that picture is true, but there's a lot more to it that nobody really has known until now.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And Kenny, what's the name of the Dr. Ruth film?</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: It's called "Ask Dr. Ruth."</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: "Ask Dr. Ruth" - seems appropriate.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK. Someone else I think many people think they know is Mindy Kaling. But it sounds like she's going to be in a film about having a late-night talk show. That sounds fun.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: It's a film about a late-night talk show. It's called "Late Night."</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: And it's a script that she wrote and she stars in. And she co-stars with Emma Thompson. And Emma Thompson plays the woman who's been the host of this late-night talk show for 28 years. And the lines that Mindy Kaling has written for Emma Thompson's character are hysterical. Mindy Kaling plays a diversity-hire intern who comes into an all-male comedy room and has to cope with that and cope with Emma Thompson's show, which is having some difficulties, needs to kind of find a new direction. So it's a very smart film. It's a funny film. It's an unexpected film. I think it's going to be a real crowd-pleaser, a real audience film.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Might learn a lot about what late-night television is like.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: It's not a pretty picture.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: How interesting. But what a rise it's been for Mindy Kaling, too. I mean, from "The Office" to - she had her own show for a while. Now she's writing a film that you say is going to be a crowd-pleaser and probably, I imagine, one that distributors are going to be trying to grab at Sundance.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Yeah. No, I think definitely the distributors are going to be lined up. It's got a key slot on Friday night, and everyone's going to be waiting for this. And you know, bids will be made.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So what else are you excited to go see?</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: You know, there's something called "Maiden" that I really enjoyed. It's a documentary that has already played at Toronto. But sometimes Sundance brings in films that it really likes, even if they've debuted somewhere else.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Oh, interesting.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: And "Maiden" is about the first all-female crew on an around-the-world yacht race. And it's such a heartening story. You know, the women now - it's, like, 30 years after the fact - they talk about the experience. The men who didn't believe that this was possible for an all-women crew, they talk about kind of how foolish they were. It's just a wonderful story. It was - you know, it's one of these against-all-odds documentaries where people fight tremendous obstacles. I just felt so good watching this film. It was just wonderful.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: The fact you're excited to see something again. Or...</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I look forward to the next time I see it.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What's the weather supposed to be like, snow?</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: I'm afraid to look, David (laughter).</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK. Don't look. Just report back. That is Kenneth Turan. Ken, thanks a lot, as always.</s>KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Oh, thank you, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: He reviews movies for the Los Angeles Times and for us here at MORNING EDITION. |
In his new book Prisoner, Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post recounts his time in Iran's notorious Evin prison. He talks with NPR's Rachel Martin about his ordeal. | STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Five hundred forty-four days - that's how long journalist Jason Rezaian was held in Iran's notorious Evin Prison. At the time, he was working for The Washington Post and living in Tehran with his wife, Yegi, who is also a journalist.</s>JASON REZAIAN: We had cultivated this life. I'd been living in Iran for about five years. We'd been married for about 15 months. And it all came crashing down very quickly in a really dramatic fashion that would take many months to make sense of.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: One night on their way to a party, Jason and his wife were stopped in their garage at gunpoint. They were arrested and sent to prison on suspicion of espionage. Jason's wife was released a few months later, but he stayed behind, spending some of that time in solitary confinement. In his new memoir titled "Prisoner," Jason Rezaian lays out the details of his incarceration, the prisoner swap that got him out and what life has been like since. He spoke with Rachel Martin.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Who exactly were your captors?</s>JASON REZAIAN: So the Iranian power structure is broken up into different parts. And one of the most powerful ones is the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Revolutionary Guard Corps is a military force but has become an economic and security force in the country as well. The people that took me were the Revolutionary Guard Corps' intelligence service.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Who sort of work, is it fair to say, on the outside of the mainstream government.</s>JASON REZAIAN: Yes, and not only that, they are outside of the government and above power. So, you know, they have their own section of Evin Prison. This is a section that has no oversight. Nobody has the right to come in and see what's going on inside this prison section and who is in there. So, you know, you were really at the whims of your captors the whole time. And that's a very frightening feeling. But also you feel powerless in a lot of ways.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: What were your interrogation sessions like?</s>JASON REZAIAN: Maddening. I mean, they had hacked into our emails and our social media accounts and, you know, were able to print out some emails. And they would bring them into the interrogation room with captions highlighted, some of my stories that appeared in The Washington Post and the most innocuous things, you know, a story that I had written about baseball or a line that I sent in an email to a friend saying, you know, apologizing for going radio silent for a few days.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Like radio silence...</s>JASON REZAIAN: Yeah.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: It must mean, like, radio intercepts, something nefarious.</s>JASON REZAIAN: Well - and only spies use those type of terms. All of these things were being construed as evidence of my espionage that was so complex and complicated, they had no idea what I had done wrong.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Did you have an understanding of what was happening on the outside to get you free?</s>JASON REZAIAN: Not until about six weeks into it. Up until that point, we had been told that you were reported dead in a car accident, that The Washington Post hasn't said a peep, your family has - you know, they don't have any idea where you are, nobody knows that...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Did you believe that when you heard those messages?</s>JASON REZAIAN: I didn't know what to believe.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Yeah.</s>JASON REZAIAN: Right? But my in-laws were able to come to a court session that we had. I was told by my sister-in-law that John Kerry has spoken about you a couple of times, and The Washington Post is writing about you, and nobody's forgotten about you, and everybody knows you didn't do anything wrong. It was a shot of hope that I hadn't had yet, and it felt pretty good. But it was short lived because, you know, by the end of that day, I was back in my solitary cell and Yegi was as well.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: In the end, you decided to sue the Iranian government, asking a federal judge to impose a billion dollars in damages. Is that purely symbolic? I mean, do you think Iran would ever pay that money?</s>JASON REZAIAN: Iran would not willingly pay that money, but the point is, whether or not Iran will pay that judgment, it's not a symbolic question. The idea is let's make this expensive for them so they don't do it to other people. The Iranian government needs to feel as though, hey, you know what? This isn't worth it.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Do you know how many Americans are being held in Iran right now?</s>JASON REZAIAN: We know of at least six U.S. persons. You know, that includes citizens and dual nationals. Bob Levinson has been missing in Iran for 11 years. The Iranian government contends that they don't know what happened to him. But I find that impossible to believe. Siamak and Baquer Namazi, father and son, businessmen, Xiyue Wang, a Princeton scholar who was there with a valid student visa, Michael White, a Navy veteran who was apparently visiting his girlfriend - and, you know, these are real people.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: May I ask how you navigate life now? I mean, do certain smells or sounds trigger specific memories for you of your time in Evin?</s>JASON REZAIAN: Not so much. I mean, I think about - I still have a very hard time being in situations where people are behind me - right? - where I can't see what the activity is behind me because so much of what I experienced was, you know, under a blindfold. And so many of their interrogations were done with people, you know, behind me.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Voices that were disembodied.</s>JASON REZAIAN: Exactly.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Yeah.</s>JASON REZAIAN: And so that's still an issue for me. You know, I write about the fact that the lights were on 24 hours a day in my cells. And, you know, they're artificial lights, fluorescence, and I'm still incredibly, you know, almost unnaturally sensitive to those kinds of overhead lights in a way that I never was before.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: You had at least a couple different cellmates when you weren't in solitary confinement. Do you know what happened to them?</s>JASON REZAIAN: Yeah. Well, one of them was apparently convicted in a court case I learned later and is spending - I think he's been behind bars for - coming up on eight years now. I don't have any contact with his family, but I learned that through others. The other one who I spent the bulk of my time with was released about two months after I was. And we have a wonderful sort of back and forth over messenger from time to time. He's got two nieces who are very fluent in English who serve as translators. And every once in a while, we'll jump on a FaceTime call. We both put a bunch of the weight that we lost in prison back on, and we joke about that.</s>JASON REZAIAN: And we both look forward to the day that we can meet in a free country and give each other a big hug and reminisce about a really hard time in both of our lives but one in which we both experienced a really unique kind of friendship.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Rachel Martin talking with Jason Rezaian about his new book, "Prisoner." |
Both Republicans and Democrats in Chillicothe, Ohio, are frustrated that negotiations to end the partial government shutdown are stalled, but they are divided about who to blame for it. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The country is in a state of limbo. It is Day 34 of the partial government shutdown, and there are reports the White House is preparing for the possibility that the shutdown could last another two months or longer. Meanwhile, 800,000 federal employees are going to miss yet another paycheck tomorrow. We're going to get two views of the shutdown and the impact it's having. First we head out of Washington, D.C., to the state of Ohio, which is where NPR's Don Gonyea has been talking to folks about the shutdown standoff. Hey, Don.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Where are you exactly in Ohio, and what are you hearing?</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: I am in Chillicothe, Ohio. Columbus is about an hour to the north. This is the part of the state where the map turns red. Maybe not deep, deep, deep red, but red. Though, in Chillicothe, there are precincts that vote Democratic, as well. But people are absolutely watching the shutdown. And the first thing you notice when you ask about it is that the partisan divide holds. You know, we've seen President Trump's poll numbers drop since the shutdown began in December, and Democrats I talked to here say this is all on Trump. His demand for funding the wall leaves no room to negotiate. You talk to Republicans, and it gets a little more interesting. They're still with Trump, but it's more complicated. And some will say Democrats have to come to the table, but they also wonder what the White House plan is here.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I mean, as you allude to, Trump did very well in Ohio. He carried the state easily and was really popular exactly where you are. So it would make sense, I suppose, that supporters are standing by him. Is that across the board?</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: They're standing by him, when you talk to Republicans. But let me introduce you to some people here. Let's start with Beverly Chapman (ph), a high school English teacher. I talked to her at a shopping mall, about a mile from downtown Chillicothe. She is in that category of hardcore Trump supporter, as strong as ever.</s>BEVERLY CHAPMAN: I think he's got us on the right track and he's helping out, and...</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: And she says it's on the Democrats to make the next step toward reaching a deal that could then reopen the full U.S. government.</s>BEVERLY CHAPMAN: They need to get back to the table and start negotiating. You know, I think the Democrats need to work with him.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: So that's the solid-as-a-rock Trump base speaking there. But let me give you a different reaction to what's going on from a Trump voter in Chillicothe. Fran Burdette (ph) works in a law office. She actually says she was a reluctant Trump vote. She just couldn't pull the lever for Hillary Clinton. She told me that she agrees the U.S. needs a wall to keep people from crossing the border illegally, but she does not think it is the thing to shut the government down over.</s>FRAN BURDETTE: But I don't think this is the right way to do it. I mean, you've got to worry about the people first.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: And here's what she means by that.</s>FRAN BURDETTE: Thing that worries me the most is the people that are not getting paid. And these people are living from paycheck to paycheck. You know, especially, like, the Coast Guard and different places. People on food stamps. All that kind of stuff. You know, they need help.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: One more thing about Burdette. She says she still supports Trump. But when I asked her if she's voting for him in 2020, she says it's too early to talk about that.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So there's support for the wall, but not always for the president using the wall as a non-negotiable demand in the shutdown.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Right. And you hear some Trump supporters say they wish there could be normal negotiations absent the shutdown, especially with Democrats now controlling the House. Listen to this exchange I had with county worker Greg Rouse (ph).</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: They could've done this when they had the House and Senate.</s>GREG ROUSE: I agree.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: And now he's trying to do it with the Democrats in control of the House.</s>GREG ROUSE: Yeah. I don't understand what - but (laughter) I don't think they had a very strong Republican House to start with. I don't think Paul Ryan was very good. So yeah, I don't know. That is kind of puzzling.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: So they're sticking with Trump.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Yeah.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: But...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But you can hear the frustration there. NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea.</s>DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Pleasure. |
The U.S. and China are said to be far a part on a trade deal. At the annual World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and China's vice president traded tough words. | STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland was the stage for an argument this week. It was an argument over differing visions of the world held by the leaders of the world's two largest economies. NPR's Gregory Warner was listening from Davos. Hi there, Gregory.</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: I guess we should note part of the U.S. side of this argument was expressed symbolically in that U.S. officials - many of them, anyway - did not show up.</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Right. The entire U.S. delegation canceled their trip because of the government shutdown. But Mike Pompeo - Secretary of State Pompeo addressed the Davos crowd by video link from D.C. And just to set the scene here - it was pretty weird. The main hall in Davos is this huge, blue auditorium, seats over a thousand people. Mike Pompeo's headshot pops up on this giant videotron (ph). He makes a joke about the cold weather in D.C.</s>MIKE POMPEO: You see the Lincoln Memorial to my back. So while I'm not here in person, I at least feel like I'm in Davos with the weather.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK.</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: But then Secretary Pompeo says, look. In terms of China, it's really important for China not to steal technological secrets from American companies that do business there. And he says, quote, "those aren't fair arrangements." So very next day, same blue auditorium, China's vice president Wang Qishan takes the stage. And he's there in person. And when he's asked about that allegation, he responds with a fable.</s>QISHAN WANG: (Through interpreter) There was a story of a devil and a demon. So when the devil is eight inches tall - and the demon might be ten inches tall.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. What's going on there, Gregory?</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: So the story about the devil and the demon did leave a lot of us confused. So I called my colleague Jess Jiang at our Rough Translation podcast. She's fluent in Mandarin. And she explained that this is a reference to a famous line in a classic Chinese novel. And you can paraphrase the line as the bad will always stand taller than the good. So the vice president follows that line with an analogy about policemen and thieves.</s>QISHAN WANG: (Through interpreter) So this is like the relationship between the thief and the policeman. So for 60 percent of the thieves, if they could be caught and things stolen could be recovered, then we'll have significantly fewer thieves. But if there are no thieves at all, I believe that will be too good to be true.</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: So it sounded like he was setting expectations for the trade talks between the U.S. and China next week. It's like he was saying, look. Stopping all theft of American intellectual property, that's going to be too much to demand.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Yeah - and also suggesting if you say the bad will stand taller than the good, he's suggesting that we're going to steal some things. And you're never going to stop all of it. And we're going to win as a result of that (laughter). That's the way I would read that. Is that what the vice president was trying to say as far as you can tell?</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: He definitely talked about that being idealistic. He said that we shouldn't stand in the way of innovation. He said globalization has caused income inequality in the U.S. That is something for the U.S. to deal with, not to scapegoat China. He - you know, he was very defiant about the state of the things right now.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: So did you feel you understood from these two speeches how it is the United States and China are seeing the world differently at this moment?</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Look. I think this whole conference is always a reference on globalization. And in this case, I think the Chinese vice president was specifically saying, look. The tables have turned. Western countries now have more anti-elitism, more nationalism. But developing countries - or in China's case, a more developed country - is pro-globalization. And they see the benefits of that. And they want it to continue.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Gregory, thanks for the update from Switzerland - really appreciate it.</s>GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Thank you, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR's Gregory Warner has been in Davos. He is, of course, also the host of the outstanding podcast Rough Translation. |
One company is helping people in Britain prepare for challenging times. It is selling food rations for 30 days in case Brexit causes chaos. The meals are described as British favorites. | STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. A company is helping Britain prepare for the worst, selling a Brexit Box - food rations for 30 days in case Brexit causes chaos. The meals are described as British favorites - chicken tikka, chili con carne, macaroni and cheese, chicken fajitas. Yes, Britain's voted against foreign influence. And if they are alone at last, they will eat foods associated with India, Italy and Mexico. Apparently, 30 days of bangers and mash will not do. |
David Greene talks to historian Rick Perlstein about Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's rising prominence in the Democratic Party. Her commitment to ideology over process puts her at odds with some Democrats. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be a freshman representative, but she is already making an impact. She has a bigger Twitter following than the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. And she has policy positions to the left of many of her peers in Congress.</s>ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: It's time to remember that universal college education, trade school, a federal jobs guarantee, exploration of a universal basic income were not proposed in 2016. They were proposed in 1940 by the president of the United States.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Now, her commitment to ideology over process and party have put her at odds at times with some veteran Democrats who have encouraged her to take some time to learn the way things work. Rick Perlstein has studied the rise of the American conservative movement, and he is calling Ocasio-Cortez's rise a moment of change for the Democratic Party.</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: I think, in a word, it set the party - or at least the activist faction of this party that's really kind of driving the energy - is much more unapologetic than it has been in the recent past.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What would you say has been apologetic in the Democratic Party, and why do you think the party had gone in that direction?</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: Sure. Let me give you an example. In the middle of the 1970s, the Senator Edmund Muskie, who was basically the Senate's No. 1 environmentalist, introduced amendments to basically require the car industry to have fuel economy standards. And the car industry said, we can't do that; we scientifically and literally cannot do that. And Muskie said, I don't care; do it anyway. And they came back with kind of a counteroffer on a piece of paper. You know, this is our next negotiating position. And one of Muskie's aides folded that piece of paper into a paper airplane and sailed it over the heads of the lobbyists.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter).</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: And basically, he called the bluff. And, you know, he used the power of the environmental movement and the enthusiasm that it had, and he passed fuel economy standards. That kind of lack of apology was something that you really saw kind of receding into the background with the Reagan victory. Immediately, they started becoming, you know, afraid of their own shadow and stopped advancing those kinds of policy gains - not just policy consolidations. You know, the kind of things she's talking about - free college, like we had in the '50s and '60s, you know, postal banking, raising the top marginal tax rates. And, you know, these are opening bargaining positions, and they're going to change the conversation.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: But isn't she saying some of the same things as people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats? Is what she is presenting that brand new in the party?</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: Well, she's part of a movement, right? I mean, she was recruited by veterans of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the Justice Democrats. And the fact is, she's part of a critical mass. You know, a party needs all kinds of people. It needs show horses. It needs work horses. It needs legislative technicians. It needs communicators. And, you know, the fact that she isn't the answer to the alpha and the omega of what the Democratic Party needs - I suspect she'd be the first person to admit that.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So if you put her in a category of people like Elizabeth Warren, like, say, Bernie Sanders, why is she - I mean, have such a following right now?</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: That's a great question.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I mean, a lot of Americans...</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: That's right.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: A lot of Democrats seem - I mean, just they're following her on social media. They seem totally fascinated.</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: That's right. I think every transformative politician in America that I'm aware of has been able to communicate with the public in fresh, new and exciting ways. And her ability to educate people on Twitter, on Instagram about politics in a way that's not just, you know, kind of chewy but actually funny and entertaining - it reminds me of what someone like FDR did on the radio. You know, when he was trying to convince the American public that we needed to pass a lend-lease program - that we basically needed to provide weapons to England so they could defend themselves against the Nazis, he would say things like when your neighbor's house is on fire, you know, you're going to let him run the garden hose from your water supply so your house doesn't catch on fire, right? And everyone's like, oh, that sounds good; that's perfectly reasonable; that's - yeah, I'm for the Lend-Lease Act. That's the kind of communicating that AOC, as she's been known, has been doing on Twitter.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I just want to pause for a second because you are comparing a 29-year-old member of Congress who has literally just started her career in Congress to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: Well, you know, there's a wait-and-see element definitely. But when it comes to communication and the ability to kind of drive people to a message, I think it's very similar to a Roosevelt. It's very similar to a Reagan. It's very similar to a Winston Churchill. Whether she can convert that into a career of accomplishment, you know, that's going to be very exciting for us to watch.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I guess there's a lot to see as her career plays out.</s>RICK PERLSTEIN: Yeah, wait and see.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: That was historian Rick Perlstein talking about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. |
Steve Inskeep talks to Scott Gorman and Sarah Barnes, a husband and wife who have had to make difficult decisions for their family as a result of the government shutdown. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: People affected by the partial government shutdown include Americans fighting wildfires, and Scott Gorman is one of them. He's a fire superintendent with the U.S. Forest Service. He's known as a Hotshot. This is an elite firefighter with long experience who is given the most hazardous tasks. He works here in California, which just went through the worst year for fires in more than a decade. And since the shutdown began in December, Scott Gorman has done his job without being paid. He and his wife Sarah Barnes spoke to Steve Inskeep about their situation.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: We've been extremely busy. When the rain comes, that's usually when we get a break, but it has been nonstop.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: What is the biggest or most challenging fire that you have personally been involved in fighting in the last few years?</s>SCOTT GORMAN: One of my last fires I was on - it was the Delta Fire up in Redding. We initally attacked the Delta, drove down the 5 and immediately started just evacuating people off of the 5 freeway because all these people were going to be impacted. So that one sticks to me the most just because the people's faces and the sense of urgency to get these people out of there as quick as possible.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: What did you mean when you said the people's faces?</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Just them being frightened, really entrusting you with the decisions that you're making for them - not having any answers, and you're there to deliver them.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Sarah Barnes, what's it like for you when this guy says, OK, I'm going off for a few days or weeks to a burn zone; hope I see you again?</s>SARAH BARNES: Well, it's a relief 'cause we get tired of him if he's home too much. But...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: I didn't expect that to go there, but go on.</s>SARAH BARNES: I'm just kidding. So we've been together the whole time he's worked with the Forest Service, and it's just how our lives are. We have two kids. They're 10 and 14. And so when they were littler - you know, when I was holding a newborn and he left, those were times that were much more difficult in some ways. Now it's hard for other reasons. This past season was so intense. I don't even know if he was home a total of two weeks. Scott is a really good firefighter. I don't worry as much about that. It's other things. Rolling rocks scare me 'cause they just come out of nowhere.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Lightning.</s>SARAH BARNES: Lightning (laughter). He was struck by lightning when I was nine months pregnant with our first child. That was a fun story.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Wow.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Yeah. 2004, struck by lightning.</s>SARAH BARNES: He was in a remote part of Arizona. So even if I would have been able to fly with my advanced pregnancy, then I would have had to somehow drive another several hours to get to where he was. So he's fine - no superpowers that we know of.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Oh, that's too bad.</s>SARAH BARNES: Yeah, I know. We were hoping for something (laughter).</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Well, that says a lot about why I like this job. What I witnessed was everybody doing what they had to do to perform and get me and a couple other people out of there to safety. I mean, we not only take care of our own. We treat everybody the same way. We basically stop what we're doing. We run into the face of danger to save people, and we do our damndest to save their homes and property and their animals and livestock. Yeah, it just doesn't end.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Is this shutdown affecting your efforts to prepare for the next fire season?</s>SCOTT GORMAN: It stops so many things. There are a lot of things that we're not out doing at this particular moment. We're not doing any prescribed burning. We're just...</s>SARAH BARNES: Training.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: We're not doing any training. We're basically just sitting and not doing anything to incur more debt. Our windows of opportunity are very small - very small.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: I want to drill down on this because the president of the United States around the time of the Camp Fire was very busy on Twitter repeatedly saying that forests in California are being mismanaged and that that was the reason for the fires. You are now telling me that the shutdown is causing forests not to be properly managed to prevent fires or to reduce the risk of fire.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Yeah. The shutdown has stopped everybody from doing what they need to be doing.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Not to get into your personal finances, but what does a Hotshot firefighter tend to make when working for the U.S. Forest Service?</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Well, it's going to vary. So an entry-level GS-4 is going to make just above minimum wage. And up to mine as a GS-9, the base hours, I'm making roughly 64,000.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Sixty-four thousand dollars a year for a job where you need lots and lots of experience to earn that much, and you're risking your life.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Yes.</s>SARAH BARNES: Yeah.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Experience, qualifications, capabilities - a slide score.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: So what's it mean for your family of four to miss a paycheck?</s>SCOTT GORMAN: A lot goes through my mind. It's taken me a lot to get to where I am now. And I've been providing for my family for that many years - contemplation, looking for another job, which I've already started doing, and then also just thinking how long this is going to go. Not knowing that, it's difficult for me to walk away from something that I've given my life to, basically.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: As a citizen, I suddenly felt really sad when you said you're already looking for another job.</s>SARAH BARNES: It makes...</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Yeah, it makes me - it makes me sad, too. And I'm not the only one affected.</s>SARAH BARNES: Me, too. It's been a commitment that we both made and, by proxy, our kids have made. Anyone who does this kind of work really makes a lot of sacrifices to be able to do it. He's only about four years before he could be eligible for retirement. So, you know, it's pretty devastating for us.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: You got much money in the bank?</s>SARAH BARNES: We have not a lot. This last fire season was so intense. Scott made a fair amount of overtime. We were able to get our savings account up a little bit, but we are already seeing it dwindle down. We talked the other night about what our limit would be as far as how low will the savings get before he decides he's got to go find other work. And that's a hard conversation to have. I was joking with a co-worker that our kids love Top Ramen. So if it comes to where...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: (Laughter).</s>SARAH BARNES: ...We have to eat Top Ramen straight for a few months, everyone will think it's a great thing.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Super cheap meal.</s>SARAH BARNES: Yeah (laughter).</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Those are the adjustments.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: You were saying, Scott, that your fellow firefighters took care of you when you were struck by lightning. And that's part of what you love about the job - is people taking care of each other.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: That's right.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Is your government - is your country taking care of you now?</s>SCOTT GORMAN: I'd like to say that I hope so. I hope so.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Well, Sarah Barnes and Scott Gorman, thanks very much for taking the time to talk.</s>SCOTT GORMAN: Thank you, Steve.</s>SARAH BARNES: You're welcome. Thanks for having us. |
David Greene talks with Michael Wilson of Maryland Hunger Solutions about how the partial government shutdown has affected SNAP benefit recipients, as well as the retailers who sell food to them. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: The partial government shutdown has reached the one-month mark. And the federal food stamp program is now under pressure. More than 40 million Americans participate in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Department of Agriculture says recipients are getting their full February benefits, but what happens beyond that is looking unclear. Michael J. Wilson is director of the nonprofit Maryland Hunger Solutions. He's been trying to help people affected by this navigate a way forward. And he came by our studios in Washington, D.C.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Give me an example of how this partial shutdown has affected someone who uses food stamps.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: MICHAEL J. WILSON: So it's complicated in many ways. First of all, there are rumors and there are things that people don't know. And so they wonder if they're going to get their benefits. If they get their benefits early - in Maryland, benefits for February were dispersed on the 17 and the 18 of January. So some people actually got their February benefits before they got their January benefits.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Oh, that's interesting.</s>WILSON: And the challenge is going to be for folks to be able to use their benefits throughout the end of January, through February and to plan accordingly. February is going to be a tough month for a lot of folks. And nobody knows what March is going to be.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So if a shutdown is really going to cause problems as we look forward into coming weeks and month, what - where is that actually going to hit the hardest? Where does the system get kind of thrown into disarray?</s>WILSON: The money flows from the federal government to the state so that it's dispersed to recipients.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I see, so the money would stop flowing. That's the problem.</s>WILSON: That's...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: The states are actually not getting the money to provide these benefits.</s>WILSON: That's exactly right. So what do you do if you're a state like Maryland? You have 650,000 people who are getting benefits. It's about $73 million a month. It's even bigger in places like California and New York. I mean, how do you address that issue when we've set up this program, people are getting benefits and all of a sudden, you turn off the spigot and there's no more money?</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Is this affecting federal employees? I mean, how many federal employees who might be out of work right now actually rely on food stamps?</s>WILSON: So there are both federal employees who are out of work who rely on food stamps and federal employees who are not out of work. We know that there are low-wage federal employees and federal contractors who actually utilize SNAP.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Can I just make sure I understand this? It's almost like, for many people, a double whammy. I mean, they're out of work, not getting their paychecks and also can't get - potentially - their food stamps.</s>WILSON: That's correct. I know that the Congress has passed and the president has signed legislation saying that people are going to get their back pay. It's been my experience that people need to eat every day. And so waiting for whenever the shutdown ends or whenever it might end doesn't help them feed themselves and their families today.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Is there any message you want to send to people in government who are working on ending this shutdown or not working on ending this shutdown on behalf of all the recipients of food stamps?</s>WILSON: So there's an old African proverb which says, when the elephants fight, the grass suffers. And so there are people who are experiencing poverty who don't really have a dog in this fight, who are wondering about whether they'll be able to feed their kids - if they're disabled, if they're seniors, if they're unemployed. And so it's really unconscionable. Never in the history of the program have people never gotten their benefits. No matter what shutdown happened, no matter what war happened, no matter what recession happened, people have always gotten their benefits. And this is the first time when they've really been threatened about whether or not they'll be able to have food.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Michael J. Wilson is the director of Maryland Hunger Solutions. Thanks so much.</s>WILSON: Thank you. |
NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics, including realizing how much college actually costs, recovering from a traumatic injury and the season's big video games. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. We talked last week about why college costs so much. Elliot Wilcox emailed: I work at a public college in Minnesota, and we've not had a raise in years. The main cause issue in public higher ed is that states across the country have dropped the allocation of tax dollars by vast amounts, and now students have to pay the difference with higher tuition.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. We talked last week about why college costs so much. Elliot Wilcox emailed: I work at a public college in Minnesota, and we've not had a raise in years. The main cause issue in public higher ed is that states across the country have dropped the allocation of tax dollars by vast amounts, and now students have to pay the difference with higher tuition.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Heather Lanier(ph) in Lebanon, Ohio, added: Not too long ago, my husband and I tallied all our undergraduate and graduate school loans, which in total was $75,000. I'm a visiting professor, earning in the low 30,000s, and he's a priest earning just 40,000. We've chosen altruistic professions, doing what we love, but we go to sleep worried about how we'll ever pay off the debt with our low-paying professions.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Heather Lanier(ph) in Lebanon, Ohio, added: Not too long ago, my husband and I tallied all our undergraduate and graduate school loans, which in total was $75,000. I'm a visiting professor, earning in the low 30,000s, and he's a priest earning just 40,000. We've chosen altruistic professions, doing what we love, but we go to sleep worried about how we'll ever pay off the debt with our low-paying professions.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We also had the chance to talk with Mark Kelly, the husband of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, about their history, her recovery and their book together, "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope."</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We also had the chance to talk with Mark Kelly, the husband of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, about their history, her recovery and their book together, "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope."</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We heard from a number of listeners who shared the difficult experience of traumatic brain injury, including Richard Lyn-Cook in Houston. I was shot in the right parietal region 20 years ago while on Christmas break as a sophomore at Yale University. I was initially fully paralyzed, except for my right arm. I still have a limp, but otherwise I'm OK. I can empathize with the difficulty Representative Giffords faces and will continue to face. Because of my injury, I have a deeper level of empathy for patients than I otherwise would have. I think this has made me a better physician. Hang in there, Gabby.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We heard from a number of listeners who shared the difficult experience of traumatic brain injury, including Richard Lyn-Cook in Houston. I was shot in the right parietal region 20 years ago while on Christmas break as a sophomore at Yale University. I was initially fully paralyzed, except for my right arm. I still have a limp, but otherwise I'm OK. I can empathize with the difficulty Representative Giffords faces and will continue to face. Because of my injury, I have a deeper level of empathy for patients than I otherwise would have. I think this has made me a better physician. Hang in there, Gabby.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As the last U.S. troops prepare to leave Iraq, we talked on Thursday about what was achieved and what was lost. I read from one email that began: How easily we forget the events of 9/11. Todd in Iowa complained: Despite having corrected guests and callers on some fairly minor points earlier in the segment, you left unmolested this tiresome and grievously misguided implication that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 attacks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As the last U.S. troops prepare to leave Iraq, we talked on Thursday about what was achieved and what was lost. I read from one email that began: How easily we forget the events of 9/11. Todd in Iowa complained: Despite having corrected guests and callers on some fairly minor points earlier in the segment, you left unmolested this tiresome and grievously misguided implication that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 attacks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Finally, we heard from Teresa Jaquetta(ph) in Muncie, Indiana, after our conversation about the videogames worth buying this holiday season. As a 23-year-old woman, I am pumped about games targeted toward my gender. Games that customize characters like "Skyrim" allow me to have a character I can relate to more. You want to feel like the character you're playing, which I think has turned off most of my female friends from playing games more targeted for men.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Finally, we heard from Teresa Jaquetta(ph) in Muncie, Indiana, after our conversation about the videogames worth buying this holiday season. As a 23-year-old woman, I am pumped about games targeted toward my gender. Games that customize characters like "Skyrim" allow me to have a character I can relate to more. You want to feel like the character you're playing, which I think has turned off most of my female friends from playing games more targeted for men.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you have a correction, comment or question for us, the best way to reach us is by email. The address: talk@npr.org. Please, let us know where you're writing from and give us some help on how to pronounce your name. If you're on Twitter, you can follow us there @totn, or you can follow me @nealconan, all one word.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you have a correction, comment or question for us, the best way to reach us is by email. The address: talk@npr.org. Please, let us know where you're writing from and give us some help on how to pronounce your name. If you're on Twitter, you can follow us there @totn, or you can follow me @nealconan, all one word. |
Without a paycheck, many federal employees affected by the partial government shutdown have had to resort to emergency measures to support themselves and their families. | STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The partial government shutdown is four weeks old. And to make ends meet, unpaid federal workers across this country have been borrowing money or dipping into savings or resorting to emergency measures.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Nate Mook is the executive director of an emergency kitchen in Washington, D.C. It's just a few blocks from the White House. It's run by Michelin-starred chef Jose Andres. They are serving free meals to furloughed workers.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hi. How are you? Good.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Sandwich.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Sandwich. Next.</s>NATE MOOK: When you see hundreds and hundreds of people standing out in the cold, waiting for a hot plate of food and a fresh, hot cup of coffee, it's clear that something is wrong.</s>NATE MOOK: UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What would you like to have today? Mac and cheese, as well?</s>NATE MOOK: There is a sense of community here. People are talking to each other, sharing their stories, you know, making the best of a really tough situation. But clearly, people here are struggling.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Outside, we spoke with Daniel Lewis (ph), who is just starting his career in the federal government in the Department of Agriculture, like his dad. Both are grappling with hard decisions due to the shutdown.</s>DANIEL LEWIS: This was actually the very, very, very first shutdown where a check was missed. And when that happened, I think reality really kicked in to him and says, well, I guess maybe I'm not essential. Maybe if I'm not essential, I could essential my way into retirement. (Laughter). That's how he said it. So with that being said, he did tell me, brace for it. You know, it may be a long ride until the end. But whatever happens, just, you know, continue fighting through it. You got to roll with the punches.</s>DANIEL LEWIS: And it's caused me to have some thoughts, or second thoughts or second doubts - not having a place to go, a lot of unknowns. You know, being a homeowner's kind of frustrating 'cause you don't know when you're going to get your next check and how you're going to pay the bills. It really comes down to that. So right now I'm trying to come up with a backup plan as we speak.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And let's go now to Michigan, where Stephanie Perkins (ph) is planning to rally in downtown Detroit today in support of her fellow furloughed workers.</s>STEPHANIE PERKINS: I work for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And what we do is we investigate discrimination complaints in the private sector in the workforce. And these citizens of the United States who have come to a federal agency seeking help, these people are not being served. Federal employees have absolutely nothing to do with the budget process. We don't have any say in how much goes where, when, how or whatever. So it's ironic to me that we're caught in the middle of this budget issue that we have absolutely nothing to do with.</s>STEPHANIE PERKINS: Most of the people that work for the federal government - in fact, the overwhelming majority of people who work for the government, we're dedicated, patriotic people who want to serve our country, and this is our way of doing it. And to put us out on the street like this over something that we have absolutely no control over, to me, is shameful.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Voices of some furloughed workers. We're on the job, and we'll continue bringing you voices from people affected by the shutdown as it enters a fifth week. |
Trump makes an offer to end the standoff but Democrats rejected it. Catholic high school students in Kentucky face backlash after a video of them went viral. Why fuel theft in Mexico is a big problem. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Fund the wall, and DACA recipients will get three more years of protection.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: That is the deal that President Trump has offered, over the weekend, to end the partial government shutdown. Vice President Mike Pence called this offer, quote, a "good-faith compromise" on "Fox News Sunday."</s>VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: The Senate leadership, Senator McConnell have agreed to bring this bill to the floor on Tuesday.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Even still, it doesn't look like an agreement is on the horizon. As soon as Trump made his announcement, Democrats rejected his offer. And what happens now is the big question as hundreds of thousands of federal employees get ready to miss yet another paycheck.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So we've got NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley with us this morning. Good morning, Scott.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: First, can you just explain in more detail what the president was offering? And why exactly did Democrats find it to be insufficient?</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Sure. Under the president's proposal, Trump would get the $5.7 billion he wants to build a 230-mile stretch of border barrier. And in exchange, he's offering a temporary reprieve from deportation, both of the DACA recipients - that's the young people who were brought to the country as children - as well as several hundred thousand Haitians and Central Americans whose temporary legal status is in danger of running out. Now, we should say, some conservative commentators complain that the president's going too far here. They're calling this an amnesty. But in both cases, the reprieve from deportation would be for just three years, and that's why House Democratic Whip James Clyburn says his party is rejecting the president's offer.</s>JIM CLYBURN: I think it's a non-starter for him to ask for a permanent wall and for us to have a temporary fix.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Now, we should add, in both these cases, Trump would be temporarily fixing a problem that he himself created in rescinding DACA and the temporary legal status. This is a sort of standard Trump bargaining tactic. You do something your negotiating partner doesn't like, and then you offer to stop in exchange for concessions on the other side's part.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So Democrats keep saying, we're not even going to talk to the president until he reopens the government. Only then will we even engage on a conversation about potential border wall funding. But that seems to be a non-starter for the White House. I mean, is the administration even considering doing that?</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: You know, Democrats will sweeten their offer a little bit this week. The House is expected to pass legislation that would reopen the government and include some additional money for border security measures but not the wall. Democrats want to show that, contrary to what the president's been saying, their opposition to wall does not mean opposition to border security. And then on the Senate side, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is stirring himself to action, and they're going to vote on the president's proposal.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: On the surface, Rachel, none of this looks likely to produce a resolution of the shutdown. But the question is going to be, does the president's offer change the blame game? Up until now, Trump and the Republicans have shouldered the lion's share of blame for the shutdown. And only if Trump's offer changes that public perception will Democrats feel any pressure to give ground.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Yeah. And meanwhile, Friday is supposed to be payday for the 800,000 or so federal workers impacted by this shutdown. And I mean, they're anticipating not getting another check. Right?</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: That's right. And obviously, that is a great deal of hardship for those individuals. At the macro level, Rachel, it means that the jobs numbers for January that are going to come out early next month will show those furloughed workers subtracted from the overall employment picture. That will ultimately - that could be the first negative job growth we have seen since 2010. And ultimately, it'll be reversed when the workers get backpay. But it's going to be a temporary stain on what has been a record run of job growth in this country.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: NPR's Scott Horsley for us this morning. Scott, thanks so much.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Did you see this over the weekend? A viral video of a confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial has a whole lot of people seeing what they want to see.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. For some, the video shows a group of white high school students wearing Make America Great Again hats, mocking a Native American protester who's playing a drum.</s>NATHAN PHILLIPS: (Playing drum).</s>UNIDENTIFIED COVINGTON CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: (Chanting) Cov Cath is best.</s>UNIDENTIFIED COVINGTON CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: What?</s>UNIDENTIFIED COVINGTON CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: Cov Cath is best.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Meanwhile, other people saw the Native American activist intentionally walk into the crowd in an act of provocation. As longer videos emerged showing even more perspectives, we're going to try to understand what actually happened there on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the fallout. And to do that, we are joined by Bill Rinehart of member station WVXU in Cincinnati, who's been covering this story. Bill, thanks for being here.</s>BILL RINEHART, BYLINE: Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So these boys are students at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, which isn't far from where you are in Cincinnati. They were in D.C. for the March for Life against abortion rights. And one student in particular, named Nick Sandmann - he was the guy seen in the original video standing face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So Bill, what can you tell us? What are each of these people - what are they saying about what happened?</s>BILL RINEHART, BYLINE: Well, Mr. Nathan Phillips, in a video that circulated Saturday afternoon after the initial videos all on social media, he said he didn't understand what was going on. They were having their march, and suddenly, he felt like he was surrounded by young men and was confused about what the whole interaction was.</s>BILL RINEHART, BYLINE: Now, the young man in question, the one that everyone has seen in the video, he released a statement Sunday evening and says that a lot of what people were saying is untrue. He says they were waiting for buses to pick them up after their attendance at the pro-life ceremonies. And he says, suddenly, there was a group of protesters at the Lincoln Memorial who started harassing them. And one of his classmates got permission from a chaperone to start a school chant. And he says that's when the Native American protesters approached our group.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: We should say that the students also say they're the ones who were vilified by yet another group who was also gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This is a group called the Black Israelites here in D.C. They're known for shouting racist and offensive things, and they were doing that at these particular students. So this is really complicated. But the school has actually come out - the high school where these kids go to school, they have come out and condemned the students. Is that right?</s>BILL RINEHART, BYLINE: They made a statement on Saturday that says (reading) we condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students toward Nathan Phillips specifically and Native Americans in general. They extended apologies to Mr. Phillips, and they said the behavior is, quote, "opposed to the church's teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person."</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Yeah. As you point out, Nick Sandmann, the young man in the video, insists that he was actually trying to defuse the situation - that Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist, actually walked into the crowd and was approaching these students. This is Nick Sandmann's version of events. And the young man says that he was not being confrontational at all. So this is clearly confusing. How are people in the community responding?</s>BILL RINEHART, BYLINE: There are people on both sides, folks who say these kids are - have acted incorrectly, and there are those who say the whole thing has been misunderstood and people should wait till all the facts come out.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Bill Rinehart of member station WVXU. Bill, thanks so much. We appreciate it.</s>BILL RINEHART, BYLINE: Thank you.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: All right. The number of deaths continues to rise in a gas pipeline explosion in Mexico.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Yeah. At least 85 people have been killed, and dozens more are injured and missing. This explosion occurred in Hidalgo, which is about two hours from Mexico City. And it came hours after this pipe ruptured, sending a geyser of fuel into the air, at a spot where people illegally tapped into the pipeline to siphon off fuel. And this is actually not a new problem. Mexico's president has tried to address this fuel theft. But with rising prices and a shortage of fuel, that's proving really challenging.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: NPR correspondent Carrie Kahn joins us on the line from Mexico City. Good morning, Carrie.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What do we know at this point about the explosion? What actually happened? Who's responsible?</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: The exact person who tapped into the pipeline outside the small town in Hidalgo, we don't know. But authorities say they're looking into it. The attorney general says he will not prosecute those who joined in and were helping themselves to the free gas. He says he doesn't want to re-victimize the people. You know, as you said, this spot is a favorite around here for fuel thieves. And that practice is widespread throughout Mexico. Last year, the president says it cost the state oil company, Pemex, around $3 billion a year. And many in towns like this town, where the gasoline pipelines run through, benefit from the practice, either buying cheaper black-market gas or protecting criminal organizations.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: There's also one big question in the investigation - is that police and armed soldiers were called immediately to the gas breach when it occurred. And for two hours, they were on the scene. And they didn't or they couldn't disperse the crowd that, at one point, reportedly grew to 600 to 800 people.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Wow.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: So they just want to get to the bottom of that, why that happened.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I mean, this explosion is obviously horrible. People died. But this bigger problem - significant problem - I don't want to call it bigger. But the fact that people are stealing gas - I mean, clearly, they just can't afford to buy gas. That's - what is Mexico trying to do about that?</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Well, the president has launched a crackdown against what he says is this widespread criminality. He's told the country in the weeks that he's been starting the crackdown, you know, just how deep this corruption has gone to allow this practice to be so widespread. It's gone - you know, he's implicated local officials, gas station owners, even Pemex, the oil company's, top officials. The head of security for the company is being implicated in the practice, you know? But the other answer is these pipelines run through rural, poor regions of Mexico, where poverty is high and opportunity is low. And as you said, you know, like, gasoline is expensive. It's expensive here. It's about $4 a gallon.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Wow.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: And so you know, I talked to people out in Hidalgo before the blast. And they say, you know, salaries are low here. People do what they do to get by. And black-market fuel is cheap, so they buy it.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: All right. NPR's Carrie Kahn for us this morning on this pipeline explosion in Mexico. At least 85 people have been killed, dozens more injured and missing. Carrie, thanks very much for sharing your reporting on this. We appreciate it.</s>CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: You're welcome. |
As the partial government shutdown drags on, Rachel Martin talks to GOP strategist Scott Jennings about the options his party has to move forward and break the stalemate. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I'm Rachel Martin in Washington, D.C., where it is day 31 of the partial government shutdown. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers could miss a second paycheck this Friday, and the urgency is growing to figure out a compromise that will put them back to work. A compromise is what President Trump thought he was offering up over the weekend.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: The deal basically amounts to temporary protections for about a million immigrants at risk of deportation in exchange for funding the president's border wall. Democratic leaders quickly rejected the president's offer. So did immigration hardliners on the other side.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: For its part, Republican leadership is largely on board with the president's plan. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he'll put it up for a vote this week. We're joined now by Scott Jennings, Republican strategist who was an adviser to President George W. Bush. Scott, welcome back to the show.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: Thanks. Good morning.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Good morning. So we reached out to you today in large part because you were the one not that many weeks ago on our show who said DACA; DACA's the solution here; DACA is our way out of this impasse; if the president can give a little on that, then Democrats will give a little on the border wall; and all will be fine. You called it a win for everybody. And it could've been, but it wasn't. So why didn't it work?</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: Well, it hasn't not worked yet. Senator McConnell, the majority leader, is going to put this package on the floor this week. And it seems like the Senate Republicans are largely on board. So the Democrats are actually going to have a chance to vote on this despite what their leadership says.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: Maybe there are a few Democrats who might want to get the ball rolling here. I think what's dumbfounding all the Republicans is in these shutdown scenarios - typically, it's an opportunity for both sides to get things that they want that they might not have otherwise had a chance to get. And so if you're Trump, you want the wall. If you're the Democrats, you've said that you want some policy extractions on immigration issues.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: So why not move this legislative process forward and try to get that? Because they rejected it out of hand on Saturday, I think Republicans right now are thinking, well, maybe the Democrats don't actually want anything other than a political win here, which would be a departure from previous shutdown negotiations.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Although, we should say, the proposal the president made would give temporary reprieve to DACA recipients and immigrants here who are under TPS, the temporary protection status program. These are both programs President Trump moved to shut down. So this is essentially the president offering up a solution to a problem that he caused. Is it not?</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: Well, he's also offering up, essentially, a solution called the BRIDGE Act which was sponsored by several Senate Democrats the last time around. I mean, we can dwell on all the mistakes that have been made by people in this entire immigration debate over time, and certainly the president has made some. But at this moment, with the government shut down, it appears to me the White House is ready to deal. And I think the American people are going to have to ask themselves, why aren't the Democrats ready to deal?</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: This is not a take-it-or-leave-it offer. I think what the White House and what I heard Vice President Pence say over the weekend is this legislative process is a negotiation. So if you're the Democrats, why not take this? And if you have a different idea, OK, throw out your idea. Maybe it flies, and then this whole thing comes to an end. But how do you ever end a shutdown if your initial reaction to every offer is this was made in bad faith, which is what Nancy Pelosi initially said on Saturday?</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Well, I think not only is she saying that it's made on bad faith, but Democrats see it as just getting back to neutral, right? If they view this as a problem the president created, then this is just getting back out of the red - not gaining anything. So do you think the president should consider, for example, offering a pathway to citizenship, which Democrats might be more keen towards?</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: Well, I think the Democrats now have the ball in their court. The president has made an opening offer in a legislative process. That is, essentially, how you negotiate things in our system. And so now it's on the Democrats to come back and say, well, instead of what you said, how about this? It's their turn to move their pieces. The fact that they are unwilling to take a turn grinds the game to a halt. And so I don't know what the White House would do next in offering things except negotiate against themselves, which doesn't seem like a very smart strategic move.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: So I'm hoping that - and I think all Republicans are hoping that if the Senate begins a legislative process this week, Democrats will reconsider their position of not offering any counters to what the president's thrown out. Look, there's an opportunity here to get something if you're the Democrats, and the Republicans have opened the door. Most people I know are really hoping they walk through it.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Well, what do you make of the Democrats' request that the president should just reopen the government first, and then they can negotiate over the wall?</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: The package that they are putting on the floor this week reopens the government immediately. And so the Democrats have said they want the government to open. This opens the government. I think the president and the Republicans have a real...</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Well, they don't want it attached to the border wall funding.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: Well, they (laughter) - and there's a real fear by the Republicans that if they give up on attaching it to the immigration border security issues they've laid on the table, the Democrats will never return to that conversation. So - and I think that's legitimate here.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So the shutdown is the political pawn. That means the federal workers really are the political pawn here.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: Well, I think it means that there's a whole bunch of stuff that the Republicans want to do and a whole bunch of stuff the Democrats want to do. And it's a bit of a game of chicken. And if one side is to leave out what they want at the opening of a negotiation, then there's a real fear that you would never return to it, which is why, I think, the president and the Republicans are right to try to tie all this together.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Republican strategist Scott Jennings. Scott, thanks as always. We appreciate it.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS: I hope it ends soon. Thanks, Rachel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: (Laughter) Indeed. Thanks. |
According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly one percent of U.S. children have some form of autism, 20 times higher than the rate in the 1980s. Alan Zarembo of The Los Angeles Times and clinical psychologist Catherine Lord discuss what's behind the growing number of diagnoses. Read the Los Angeles Times investigative series, "Discovering Autism." | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Nearly one percent of children in the United States have been diagnosed with some form of autism, a number 20 times higher than it was just a generation ago. A series of reports in the Los Angeles Times explores whether this boom is an epidemic of disease or an epidemic of discovery.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The series finds dramatic differences based on income, location and race, and finds that some parents seek a diagnosis to get treatment for a child as early as possible while others struggle with the stigma associated with autism.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you went through an autism diagnosis with your child, tell us about your experience, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Later in the program, ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro joins us to play a couple of songs and take your calls.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But first, Alan Zarembo joins us from member station KPCC in Pasadena. He's a staff writer with the project and investigative team at The Los Angeles Times. His series "Discovering Autism, ran last week. Thanks very much for coming in today.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Thanks for having me, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I wanted to ask you about your finding that those who receive the most services are those who protest the loudest.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Well, that's correct. We found, when we analyzed data from the developmental services system here in California, major, major differences depending on race in terms of the spending on services for these kids. And race really was a proxy for socioeconomics. Parents with the resources to fight were able to do so and had much better success than those who were less equipped.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is, for example you should tell us about Stacey Funk(ph), one of those you describe as a warrior mom.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: I met many, many parents like this, incredibly dedicated parents who have essentially made it their full-time jobs to fight for their children. Often they hire lawyers, professional advocates, and they push for all the help that they can get. It's quite a contrast to many other parents, who simply accept what they're offered, and given the strain on the state budget and on the schools, often what they're offered is far, far less than what these more resourceful parents wind up getting.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So when you look at the differences between the number of cases reported in a place like, oh, say, Orange County in the Los Angeles area and further afield in more remote parts of the state, there are dramatic differences.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Right, well, we have to - you know, there's two kinds of disparities that we found. So what you're referring to here is disparities in diagnosis. We analyzed school district data for every single school district in the state, looking at the proportion of elementary school students who had an autism eligibility for special education, and we found dramatic differences depending on where you go.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: So as you point out, there's a very big split between rural California and urban California. The rate of autism in some school districts in Orange County was as high as three percent or even a little bit more, and we found 130 school districts out of about 1,000 statewide that listed no autistic students.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Many of those were clustered in the Central Valley of California.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And is there...</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: And - I'm sorry.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what explains those differences?</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Well, you know, this was perplexing to me when I first noticed them. I went to experts, and I said is there something in the water in Southern California that is causing this? And really nobody thought so. What we're really seeing here are the signatures of the social forces that determine who gets diagnosed. Awareness is greater in certain places. The label has taken on a broader meaning in certain places; it's used more freely.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Other places seem in a sense trapped in a very old interpretation of autism, which was invariably severe and lifelong. On the whole, the label, though, has expanded enormously, as have efforts to identify children with the disorder. And Southern California, in a sense, is just further ahead than the rest of the state.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: I should add that we also see these differences across the country. When you look at the rates statewide, you see enormous variation. The rate in Minnesota, for example, is 10 times that in Iowa.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You conclude, in fact, that autism, the condition, is not communicable. The diagnosis, however, is.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Exactly. One very interesting study was done by a sociologist from Columbia University who did a spacial analysis of the distribution of autism cases in California, and he found that if you lived very close to somebody else with the disorder, your chances of having your child diagnosed were 16 percent higher than if you lived further away.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: And he did some very interesting tests to look at this hypothesis. He looked at kids who were on opposite sides of a school district boundary and found that in that case the trend didn't hold up. And so what he was able to conclude is that this was really just word of mouth, you know, parents meeting in parks, at school district meetings, and spreading awareness, telling each other about which doctors to see, where to get diagnosed, how to tap into the services that were available for their children.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, let's get some callers in on the conversation. We want to hear your experiences if you've had a child who's been diagnosed with autism, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. We'll start with Pamela Spring - excuse me, Pamela in Spring Lake, Michigan.</s>PAMELA: Hi, thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>PAMELA: I'm calling, I have a now-seven-year-old daughter, and she was diagnosed just about about on her second birthday. Her - she started to kind of act quirky around 15 months, and then by 18 months she had stopped feeding. She was extremely self-injurious. She would have tantrums six hours long, and we couldn't get anyone to listen to us. Even family, they just kept telling us that it was, you know, terrible twos came early and things along those lines.</s>PAMELA: And finally we went to Ann Arbor, and I think I - like you had said earlier - I just yelled loud enough, and finally we were able to get some attention. She got her diagnosis. We don't have a lot of financial means, but I am a very aggressive person, and I think I Googled a lot. So I was able to get her into a lot of different services.</s>PAMELA: We had feeding therapy because she was losing weight and some occupational therapy, sensory integration, and then she got into the school district, which we are fortunate is a very good school district.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And is she doing better?</s>PAMELA: She is doing great. She's in the first grade. She has a para-pro, but she gets pulled out, you know, for little things here and there, but she is in a full - she has a full day of first grade with her para-pro. So she's doing amazing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A para-pro?</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Yes, she has her own aide, basically, that stays with her all day to kind of help guide her. She knows her very well. So if she starts to have a hard day, a hard time, she knows kind of when to pull her out and to reset her, if possible.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But worth the yelling?</s>PAMELA: I'm sorry, what was that?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The yelling turned out to be worth it?</s>PAMELA: Oh yes. Yup, that's something too, the beginning, how it was stated, you know, are we just being sometimes a little hypersensitive? And if a pendulum swings that way for a little while so that people can kind of catch up with, you know, to recognize those signs, then I say you have any question at all, go seek out a professional. Do everything you can, because early intervention made all the difference for her. She is a – she is a new creature.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Pamela, we wish you and your daughter the best. Thanks very much for the call.</s>PAMELA: Thank you so much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joining us now from our bureau in New York is Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist, director of the Institute for Brain Development at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Alan Zarembo spoke with her as part of his series. Nice to have you with us today.</s>CATHERINE LORD: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in one of the pieces he reported, you say many clinicians believe it's more of a tragedy when somebody gets missed than when somebody on the border gets misdiagnosed.</s>CATHERINE LORD: That's correct. I mean, I think that because the interventions are not dangerous, the interventions really build on normal development but try to work with the child's strengths and weaknesses, I think the feeling is if you have any doubt whether this child might have ASD, it's important to go ahead and work with the family and work with the child because we think that some of the things that we see in adults with ASD may be a consequence of the difficulties that they had growing up, which they didn't necessarily have to have, if we can get good intervention and appropriate services.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as Pamela's case suggests, the most effective moment for treatment is early intervention.</s>CATHERINE LORD: That's true, although I think it's very important to realize that later intervention helps too. I mean, I hear the mother in the introduction, and I think that it's - we're not implying that, you know, there's a window, and never again can your child learn. It's just that we think that things cascade, and so if you can get in there early and begin to get good skills, then, for example, a child can go to regular first grade, and that's a very different experience than they might have if they couldn't make it in a regular class.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We should point out, though, this is not something that can be detected with a blood test or with a hammer poke on the knee. It's a behavioral diagnosis, right?</s>CATHERINE LORD: That is absolutely right. I mean, we know this is - autism is caused by something biological, but the reality is we don't know what. And so we have to look at behavior, and that's part of the source of confusion.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do we know exactly which part of the treatment is most effective to - for improvement?</s>CATHERINE LORD: Well, we know elements of the treatment. So we know that keeping kids socially engaged, building on very basic skills like imitation and attending to people, we know that those are particularly important active ingredients. But beyond that, we don't know whether, you know, whether kids need 40 hours or 20 hours, or whether they should play some and rehearse other times.</s>CATHERINE LORD: I mean, we don't have - and it's probably quite different for different kids.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But when you're dealing with social services systems and school systems, yeah, but they tend to be sort of cookie-cutter answers.</s>CATHERINE LORD: Well, I think that's right in some ways and not in others. I think it's right because you have to have a prescription, you have to have a sort of bottom limit of what is enough, and that's, I think, what - partly what Alan is alluding to, is that, you know, there are bottom limits that are specified, but many, many families don't really get that because it's so expensive.</s>CATHERINE LORD: And so the families that actually get what - even the minimal treatments that are appropriate, are the ones who push.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She's with us from our bureau in New York. Also with Alan Zarembo, the Los Angeles staff writer with the project and investigative team who wrote a series called "Discovering Autism" that ran last week in his newspaper.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What are your experiences after your child was diagnosed? 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. Once a child is diagnosed with autism, focus turns to treatment. When Justin received his diagnosis of mild to moderate autism at age two and a half, he started therapy, progressed quickly. His parents pressed his school district for more and more help.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: After just a couple of years, reports Alan Zarembo in the Los Angeles Times, they proudly declared their son recovered. It's what every parent of an autistic child hopes for but rarely a straightforward, easy path.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you've guided your child through an autism diagnosis, we want to hear your story, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Alan Zarembo, a staff writer with the project and investigative team at the Los Angeles Times, is with us from KPCC in Pasadena. His series "Discovering Autism" ran in the paper and online last week. You can find a link at our website. Also with us, Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist who participated in Alan's series. And Alan, I have to ask you, that definition recovered, that's a controversial term.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Very, very controversial. You know, one of the fundamental dilemmas about autism is that early treatment, which is preferable, requires early diagnosis. The problem is that the earlier you're diagnosed, the less stable the diagnosis is. And so when you have kids who recover, sometimes it's very unclear sort of what's the result of the treatment versus what is the result of the natural course of developments.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: You know, this treatment is given at a time when kids are undergoing enormous, enormous change.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Catherine Lord, is it possible that a child who recovers, quote-unquote, in a couple or(ph) three years maybe didn't have autism?</s>CATHERINE LORD: You know, I would be surprised. I think that probably some of it is that 20 years ago a child who was doing things that now we would say are autistic at 18 months, you know, might not be noticed, or people would be mildly concerned but not know what to do.</s>CATHERINE LORD: And if that child got steadily better, from say two to four, then by the time they're four, they wouldn't get a diagnosis. On the other hand, I don't think there are a lot of kids who are 18 months old or two years old who are getting diagnoses of autism who don't have quite marked problems. The question is just: Are there - is there a small group of those kids who really are going to grow out of this?</s>CATHERINE LORD: And that really may be true, but it's not my experience that kids are called autistic when they're little who really don't have problems.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So those numbers you cite, which are sobering, in your series, Alan Zarembo, and sobering for their implications in terms of their impact on the taxpayers of California and by extension the taxpayers of the United States, those numbers are only going up.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: That's right. I mean, I might point out that, you know, in my - in the course of my many months of reporting, I did(ph) meet, you know, children who didn't have problems. But the point I would make is that there's a lot of children who have something wrong with them, and there is not really a clear answer for it. And autism has become such a broad label that it's not a bad one to have to get help for your child, to open the door to services.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: One really interesting survey was done - it was a massive survey done by the federal government a few years ago. It found that 40 percent - it was a survey of parents. It found that 40 percent of kids who were given an autism diagnosis at one point no longer had it. And that's a massive change from the past, when autism, you know, was considered invariably a permanent and severe diagnosis.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: It was really a diagnosis of last resort. So we've seen an incredible shift, a transformation of this label.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Sara(ph), Sara with us from Kerrville, Texas.</s>SARA: Yes, good afternoon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Afternoon.</s>SARA: My son was, I like to think, one of the first children diagnosed with Asperger's. We knew when he was about 18 months to two years that there were some serious problems with his social skills and other things. And he was given every other conceivable diagnosis, pervasive developmental disorder and oppositional disorder.</s>SARA: And we had to literally wait until the day that the diagnostic manual added Asperger's as a diagnosis and on that day went into the doctor and said please change this. So when he was diagnosed, there were no websites, there were no books, and we had to go into the school district and practically teach the teachers what were appropriate ways to deal with my son, who's now 24 and living independently.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, good for him, and I'm sure that was not an easy path.</s>SARA: It was a struggle. The biggest problem we found with schools is that as soon as a program was put in place that was helpful to him, and he was able to function better in school, the first reaction then was to pull those supports. You know, he doesn't need an aide anymore because he's doing so well. So we had to constantly fight with the schools to maintain the services they were giving him rather than to reduce them as he got more successful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, I'm glad he's doing so well, Sara. Thanks very much for the call.</s>SARA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sara mentioned the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Medical Mental Disorders. Here's an email from Yvonne(ph) in Syracuse: I was hoping your guest could talk about rumors the new DSM, about to be published, is going to completely eliminate Asperger's as a form of autism. This seems shocking to me, since the realm of autism is so vast it could use more clarification instead of less. Why would they think this is OK? Catherine Lord, can you help us out?</s>CATHERINE LORD: It isn't that Asperger's is going to be eliminated. The idea is that there will be just one autism spectrum disorder, because the reality is that the distinctions between Asperger's syndrome, PDD-NOS and autism are so variable across different clinicians that it doesn't give you much information.</s>CATHERINE LORD: So what the proposal is for the new DSM-5 is that people who have an Asperger's diagnosis would be included within the range of autism spectrum disorder, and then the point there is that we're asking people to clarify the specifics that are associated or why someone might have gotten that Asperger's diagnosis.</s>CATHERINE LORD: And it might be because of high intelligence or very good verbal skills or milder social deficits or particular circumscribed interests. So we're trying to get people to be more specific about the dimensions within an individual and the strengths and weaknesses rather than put people into these subcategories that turn out to just not mean the same thing to different people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is - in the series we learn that this is a condition that describes everybody from kids with severe communication efforts - can't speak, cannot change their clothes, cannot really do much of anything - to kids who are math whizzes. It is just everybody is different.</s>CATHERINE LORD: Absolutely, and I think we really want to stress that describing how one child or one adult is different from another is absolutely critical. So it's not that we're trying to downplay that at all, but we're saying that it's better to be specific about how they're different than to have a general label like PDD-NOS or even Asperger's, as if it were a scientific diagnosis, because it's just not reliable across different centers and clinics.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Maria(ph), Maria calling from St. Louis.</s>MARIA: Yes, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>MARIA: My daughter is 26 years old, and when she was first diagnosed, she was 24 months, and I was told by a well-respected neurologist in St. Louis to - there's nothing we can do about her. Go home, forget about her. It was like a death sentence back then, and it made me more and more determined to find out what exactly what was wrong with my daughter.</s>MARIA: I decided to read anything and everything that came into my hands, and thanks to a wonderful organization that we have here in St. Louis called Judevine Center for Autism, I was able to attend classes and find out that my daughter did not have a death sentence. Sara(ph) still has autism. Sara still has her days. But I have seen growth in her communication abilities and her social skills, which appear to be somehow impaired, yet it's a pleasure to be around her now these days.</s>MARIA: Back then, I was told there was nothing to do about her, and I'm pretty sure my case is not that unique because I was told I was the cause of my daughter's autism - a refrigerator mother, sort of.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thank goodness that sort of thing is a thing of the past. It couldn't have been easy, though, Maria.</s>MARIA: I'm glad I did not believe them. You know, the label that my daughter has does not define her, you know? She loves peanut butter, spaghetti, music, but she is a person outside of her label, and I am glad I did not dwell into oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I made everything and every effort to this day to keep Sara part of the community and to keep Sara - I don't know how to say it, I mean, just to being her.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thank you very much, we appreciate it.</s>SARA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Alan Zarembo, you go back to the work of one doctor in particular who may be principally responsible for the techniques that aid at least some autistic patients.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Right, his name is Ivar Lovaas. He passed away last year. He was at UCLA, a psychologist who developed what has become the most popular therapy. It's called applied behavior analysis. And essentially what he did was break down the skills of life, the things that we learn without really thinking about them - such as reading a facial expression or identifying colors or looking somebody in the eye - and taught these things through operant conditioning. He published a paper on this in 1987, which really changed forever the way people think about the prospects for children with autism. Many of the children in his study did quite well. There's still a lot to learn, though.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: And, you know, the techniques have evolved quite a bit since his day, but really, what scientists are trying to get their heads around is how best to use this therapy - you know, who should get it for how many hours. And it's a real nightmare for the service providers and the schools that wind up paying for it. You know, autism is - encompasses, as you said, such a broad range of children, that there's often enormous dispute over what any individual child needs.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: And to go back to what we were talking about before, often, what seems to be determining what a child gets is how hard the parents fight once they do have the autism diagnosis. So it's often this, sort of, a very haphazard sort of system that gets children help. And we were able to document that in our stories through data from the California Developmental Service System and in the California schools.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is - you also say there has been - other doctors have had difficulty repeating Dr. Lovaas' results, and in fact a study - perhaps the best study -done by a student of his, found some troubling results that challenged some of his theories.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Well, it appears that the people that do best with this therapy are those who start off with the fewest deficits. So they already have some language. They already have the ability to imitate their peers. And in this study that you're referring to, it was the children who had, in fact, a milder form of autism who had the best outcomes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Catherine Lord, is that changing perceptions?</s>CATHERINE LORD: I think that we're left almost with a, ethical dilemma, and that's partly, you know, who do you treat? And it's very complicated, you know, even in medicine. I mean, I think if someone was is in a little pain, you wouldn't say, well, it's better to give them treatment than someone who's in a lot of pain. But - and I think that's kind of where we are. I mean, we can treat the kids who have the biggest problems, and they make the slowest progress. But I think as a society, we have some commitment to helping them move toward being able to take care of themselves at a very basic level. And those are very, very important things, even though they don't look as good when you add up numbers.</s>CATHERINE LORD: On the other hand, there are kids who, if you do early intervention, really may be independent and do very well as adults. And we want to push them to be as independent as possible. And so I think that it often isn't - it isn't - that isn't the scientific question. It's more a question of just what does that - what is the society's commitment, and then, you know, what kinds of treatment are going to help which children the most. Because sometimes having one structured one-on-one for many, many hours many not be necessary. It may be more important for a child to move into, you know, a regular peer group with some supervision. And so we don't want to get into just very pat recommendations.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about autism diagnoses with Alan Zarembo of the Los Angeles Times and clinical psychologist Catherine Lord. Last fall, we talked about making the world work for adults with autism. You can find that at our website: npr.org. It's also a part of Alan Zarembo's series, the fourth part in his series, "Discovering Austism" that ran last week in The Los Angeles Times. Again, go to npr.org. You can find a link to that. This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. But, Alan Zarembo, we have to point out that this is not just ethics. Resources are involved. The state of California, as we all know, is having tremendous fiscal problems. That's true in many other states, as well. That factors into this, too.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Absolutely. The school district - I could start with the school districts - are in a bind between trimming their budgets and satisfying their obligations under the federal law that guarantees a certain level of help to these students. The law, though, only specifies you have to provide free and appropriate help to these students. So that becomes a matter of great debate, often in a legal setting, as to what is appropriate. Autism has become the leading source of disputes within special education between school districts and parents. Last year, there were about 2,800 disputes filed with the state, a third of them were for autism, even though autism only represents about 10 percent of the total number of children who are in special education in California.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for your time today, Alan Zarembo, appreciate it.</s>ALAN ZAREMBO: Thank you so much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Alan Zarembo with the Los Angeles Times joined us from KPCC, our member station in Pasadena. Catherine Lord, clinical psychologist, director of the Institute for Brain Development at New York Presbyterian Hospital, joined us from our bureau in New York. And thanks to you.</s>CATHERINE LORD: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll end with this email from Jerome in New York - excuse me, in Marysville, Ohio: I'm an American. My wife is Japanese. Both our children were both in Japan. We realized very early our son had some sort of disability. I have learning disabilities, though managed to get my Ph.D. My wife has an MS in educational administration. One of the reasons we decided to relocate to the USA was the lack of services for our son. We lived in Hiroshima, and were told the closest specialist is in Tokyo - an all-day trip just to get there by car or train. In the USA, we still had to fight for services. I think my school district is good, but there was resistance to something they could not quantify.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Finally, the school psychologist told me, with a wink and a nudge, that the best thing to do for us was to get an outside diagnosis. That led to a year-long fight with the insurance company. Finally, I got the diagnosis, then the school district really stepped up to the plate. If the district had asked me to get an outside diagnosis from the very beginning, a lot of grief would have been spared to all of us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As it turned out, he didn't get diagnosed until 14-and-a-half as a high-functioning autistic. He's doing well in school. His social skills are getting better, too. He's had good teachers. I think, though, if it wasn't for my wife and I fighting for him, which is a full-time job, he wouldn't be here doing so well in school, or in life, as he is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks to all of you who emailed and called us. We wish we could have gotten to all of your calls and questions. And thank you. And, again, we recommend you go read that series from the Los Angeles Times. The links are at npr.org.</s>Coming up: Ukulele master Jake Shimabukuro joins us. You won't believe your ears when you hear his cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. |
Israel struck Iranian military targets in Syria, killing at least 11 people. The Israeli military's admission broke precedent, as its spokespersons have avoided revealing military activities in Syria. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: There's been a military confrontation between two longtime sworn enemies, Israel and Iran. According to Israel, Iranian forces in Syria fired a missile. Israel intercepted it, and Israel then struck Iranian targets in Syria. At least 11 were reported killed, including four Syrian troops. NPR's Daniel Estrin joins us from Jerusalem to find out more about what happened. Good morning, Daniel.</s>DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: What can you tell us? What other details do you have?</s>DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Well, all this started on Sunday. Syria said it struck down Israeli missiles targeting a site near the Damascus Airport. Now, Israel's not commenting on that. But then Sunday afternoon, Israel said the Quds force, which is an elite Iranian military force active in Syria, fired a medium-range, surface-to-surface missile toward the Golan Heights, which Israel controls. Israel captured the Golan from Syria about 50 years ago. And there's an Israeli ski site there, and listen to this clip from an Israeli snowboarder. He managed to capture on film Israel intercepting the Iranian missile mid-air.</s>DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: So after that, Iranian missile was shot down. Overnight, Israel said its warplanes struck Iranian military sites in Syria, as well as Syrian aerial defenses that had shot at the Israeli planes.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: I can't get over that scene of a snowboarder (laughter) watching all this transpire in the sky...</s>DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Right.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: ...Above him. How - I mean, this is rare - right? - this kind of military engagement between Israel and Iran.</s>DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Well, it is rare for Iran to fire a missile toward an Israeli target, though it's not the first time Israel says Iranian forces in Syria have targeted Israel. There was - something happened in May where Israel said Iran fired missiles toward Israeli targets. But what we're seeing here, Rachel, is Israel's campaign against Iran coming out of the shadows. It's only been in the last few weeks that Israel has revealed that it has carried out thousands of attacks on Iran, Iranian proxies in Syria and Lebanon in recent years. The big picture here is that Israel is trying to stop Iran from building up its military presence in Syria, which Israel considers to be a direct threat on its border. And what we have seen today is what military officials in Israel call, quote, unquote, "the war between the wars." And there is concern that this kind of thing could escalate into a full-fledged war between Iran and its proxies against Israel.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Wow. So that's what I was going to ask - if this is a one-off, or if this could get worse? And you're saying it could.</s>DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Well, for now, today things are quiet. No more missile attacks, but that Israeli ski site remains closed today. And Israel says it's on alert.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: NPR international correspondent Daniel Estrin joining us from Jerusalem. Daniel, thanks. We appreciate it.</s>DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Thank you, Rachel. |
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still has not announced a host for next month's Oscars ceremony. The nomination front-runners include: A Star is Born, Green Book and Roma. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: The Academy Awards still do not have a host. And it's looking like there may not be one. But this morning in Beverly Hills, the nominations were announced. And Mandalit del Barco from the NPR West team here in LA is here to talk about the actors, directors and producers who got the call this morning. Hi, Mandalit.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Hi, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK, was there history made this morning?</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: There was. And here's a headline, David. "Marvel's 'Black Panther' Becomes The First Superhero Movie To Be Nominated For Best Picture."</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What a moment for the academy.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Yeah. The movie also got nominated for a total of seven. And maybe this is how the Black Panther feels about the Oscars.</s>CHADWICK BOSEMAN: (As T'Challa) What happens now determines what happens to the rest of the world.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: See what you did there.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: (Laughter). Yeah. And, David, there is this also. Thirty years after his seminal "Do The Right Thing," Spike Lee has finally been nominated for best director.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Wow.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Yeah. His "BlackkKlansman" has six nominations, including best picture. "Roma," Alfonso Cuaron's black-and-white film about his childhood in Mexico City, got 10 nominations - best picture, best foreign-language film. Cuaron is up for best director. And his two lead actresses made the list, Marina de Tavira for best supporting actress and first timer Yalitza Aparicio for best actress. And this is also Netflix's first best picture nomination.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK, here we are in 2019, and Netflix is up for best picture. That's amazing. All right. So who else is celebrating?</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: So the 18th-century drama "The Favourite" was also a favorite, with 10 nominations, including all three actresses, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Olivia Colman, as well as best picture. "Bohemian Rhapsody," the Freddie Mercury biopic, is also up for best picture. Rami Malek, who plays Mercury, is up for best actor.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: A lot of fans are going to be happy about that.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Yeah. And the movie got three other nominations. "Green Book" is also up for best picture. And both actors, Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, got nominations. And, as expected, "A Star Is Born" did well. It earned eight nominations for best picture and for its stars Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, as an actor and producer - but not as best director or for any of the songs he co-wrote. The duet they sang in the movie, "Shallow," is up for best original song.</s>LADY GAGA: (Singing) I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in. I'll never meet the ground.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And there is our earworm for the rest of Tuesday.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: (Laughter).</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Yeah, you know, another musical got multiple nominations, "Mary Poppins Returns," although Emily Blunt, who plays her, did not get one. And the animated "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" is a fan favorite and critical darling, so Marvel fans are having their Spidey senses activated.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Sure are. OK, and another big question, who was snubbed this morning?</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Well, as pretty much every year, no women were nominated for best director this time.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Wow, yet again.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Yep. And there were no nominations at all for the hit "Crazy Rich Asians," which is crazy. And our listeners may be disappointed that the Mr. Rogers documentary, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" didn't make the list.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Oh, no.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Yeah. So NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg, who was in it, will not be on the red carpet.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Well, she's always on our red carpet.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: That's true. But, you know, NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg might be on that red carpet. She was in the documentary "RBG," about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And we called Nina this morning to get her reaction.</s>NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: (Laughter) Well, whoopee, that's wonderful for the producers and directors of this movie, who did such a great job in depicting Justice Ginsburg and her work and how it changed the country for all of us.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: What is Nina going to wear at the Oscars? That's my question.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: That's the big question, yes. I'll be there to capture it all for NPR listeners next month.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Fabulous. NPR's Mandalit del Barco here at NPR West. Thanks, Mandalit.</s>MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Thanks, David. |
As Venezuela's president has begun another six-year term, a young politician who heads the opposition-filled National Assembly is seeking international recognition as Venezuela's leader. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Now to Venezuela, where this month President Nicolas Maduro began another six-year term, even though there are all kinds of questions about the integrity of the vote that brought him to power. Numerous countries, including the United States, refuse to recognize his authoritarian regime. As John Otis reports, a young opposition politician is now promising to lead Venezuela back to democracy.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Juan Guaido is the newly elected head of Venezuela's congress, the only branch of government controlled by the opposition.</s>JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: At rallies like this one in Caracas, Guaido has been drumming up support for anti-government protests scheduled for tomorrow.</s>JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: There's also speculation that Juan Guaido will declare himself acting president. Venezuela's constitution states that the head of congress takes over should the presidency become vacant, as the opposition claims it has under Maduro.</s>JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: At the rally, Guaido called for a transitional government that would hold three elections within 30 days. All this is breathing life into Venezuela's beleaguered opposition. Its most prominent leaders have been imprisoned, forced into exile or banned from running for office. Guaido is just 35 and, until this month, was relatively unknown. And he's impressed many Venezuelans. They include Benjamin Scharifker, a leading intellectual and opposition activist.</s>BENJAMIN SCHARIFKER: The pieces are starting to fit together for a peaceful transition in Venezuela.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: But Maduro, who's led Venezuela into food shortages and hyperinflation, is digging in.</s>PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: In a speech, he said, it appears that a group of little boys has taken control of the opposition and is trying to destabilize the country. On Monday, Venezuela's Supreme Court, which is stacked with Maduro allies, declared Juan Guaido and the entire congressional leadership illegitimate.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Last week, security forces briefly detained Guaido. Troops also attacked protesters in 2014 and 2017 in violent clashes that left nearly 200 dead. That has sparked fears of another bloodbath at tomorrow's planned marches.</s>JUAN ANDRES MEJIA: In the recent past, we've seen security forces killed innocent protesters. So what we're worried about, is for that to happen again.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: That's opposition congressman Juan Andres Mejia, who insists that tomorrow's protests will go forward. In addition, the opposition is urging the military to switch sides. The top brass has been showered with perks from Maduro and remains loyal to him. But last week, congress passed an amnesty law for officers who turn against Maduro. Early Monday, dozens of National Guard troops in Caracas did just that after raiding an arms depot.</s>UNIDENTIFIED VENEZUELAN NATIONAL GUARDSMAN: (Speaking Spanish).</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: In this video published on social media, one of the rebel troops urges all Venezuelans to rise up against the Maduro dictatorship. But the mutiny was quickly put down, and 25 of the rebels were arrested. Bruce Bagley, a Venezuela scholar at the University of Miami, says tougher international sanctions may be needed to help force out Maduro. He suggests a halt to purchases of oil, Venezuela's main export.</s>BRUCE BAGLEY: It may well require more severe economic sanctions coordinated - right? - as there were against South Africa with apartheid because, in some ways, this is as dire a situation as South African apartheid.</s>JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Meanwhile, Brazil, Canada and the Organization of American States, have inferred that Guaido is now Venezuela's legitimate head of government. The United States is expected to do the same should Guaido declare himself president. For NPR News, I'm John Otis. |
David Greene talks to David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution, about whether U.S. economic growth can sustain the trade war with China and the government shutdown. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: President Trump tweeted over the weekend, quote, "we have one of the best economies in the history of our country - big GDP, lowest unemployment, companies coming back to the U.S. in big numbers, great new trade deals happening," end quote. There have certainly been positive economic indicators over the past two years, but the economy is also facing some challenges. The Trump administration's trade policy has led to tensions and tariffs with U.S. trade partners, and the record-long partial government shutdown is also complicating the economic outlook now.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: We're joined by David Wessel. He's director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution, a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and also a frequent guest on our program. Good morning, David.</s>DAVID WESSEL: Good morning, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So let me just start with the basics. Are we enjoying one of the best economies in the history of the United States?</s>DAVID WESSEL: Yeah. Actually, the president has a point. Unemployment is nearly at a 50-year low. Inflation is roughly at the Fed's target of 2 percent. Wages are starting to climb. The Federal Reserve said last week that factory production ended the year pretty strong. In fact, if the economy keeps growing through July, this will be the longest we've gone without a recession since we started keeping track in the mid-1800s. But you know, that's not the whole story, as you said. The housing market's looking shaky. The federal budget deficit is soaring. Consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest levels of the Trump presidency.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And I guess the partial government shutdown - we're talking about 800,000 or so workers it's affecting. I mean, does that shutdown really affect the overall economic data for the country?</s>DAVID WESSEL: Absolutely. I mean, first of all, it depresses the economic growth in the first quarter. The president didn't mention that. And it's kind of ironic that he's talking about the GDP numbers, the gross domestic product, because unless the shutdown ends soon, the Commerce Department, which isn't funded, isn't going to be able to put out those new numbers.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Which is an interesting side effect of having a government shutdown. You mentioned the housing market looking shaky, the deficit soaring. Like, is there a way to understand, if we put all those pieces together, what the outlook actually is for the coming months and years?</s>DAVID WESSEL: Yeah. It's kind of an interesting tension. On one hand, the president is right. The incoming data has looked very strong. But there are all sorts of signals and warnings that the near future isn't going to look as good as the recent past. In fact, that's why the Federal Reserve has backed off its plans to raise interest rates in the next few months. You know, Duke University's business school does a survey of chief financial officers. And last month, they found half of them believe we're going to have a recession before the end of this year, and more than 80 percent think we'll have a recession before the end of next year.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Soon.</s>DAVID WESSEL: Today we learned that the Chinese growth is slower than people thought. That's going to hurt our economy. And so there's a lot more talk about recession. I don't think it's necessarily baked in the cake. But the outlook is looking much worse than the recent past.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Let me ask you about one other thing the president said in that tweet. He refers to great new trade deals. And you know, he said something he often says, that companies are coming back to the United States in big numbers. Is that a fair assessment?</s>DAVID WESSEL: Yeah. I kind of enjoyed that. He's signed two trade agreements so far, one with South Korea and the relatively modest changes to the deal we have with Canada and Mexico. He has not cut a deal with Europe yet, and he certainly hasn't cut a deal with China. In fact, the fear is that he's going to - every time there's good news out of the China talks, the stock market goes up. Jobs coming back? Yes, there is what the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing calls a trickle of jobs coming back from companies that might've produced overseas. But the bottom line, probably some of that - it's called onshoring - but not a lot relative to the size of the workforce in our country.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right. David, thanks as always. We appreciate it.</s>DAVID WESSEL: You're welcome.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: David Wessel is director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution, a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, and you hear him here on our program. |
The website The Verge reports the concierge robots couldn't answer questions about places to visit. Bellhop robots were running into each other in hallways. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: Good morning. I'm David Greene, and I am not a robot. NPR is not going the way of a Japanese hotel that began replacing people with robots. The trouble was, they weren't really doing their jobs. The concierge robot couldn't answer basic questions about places to visit. Bellhop robots were running into each other in hallways. The website The Verge reports more than a hundred robots were laid off because they were adding to the workload of the humans they were meant to be replacing. You're listening to MORNING EDITION. |
Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie about Moscow project, BuzzFeed sources say. Secretary of State Pompeo is to meet with his North Korean counterpart. March for Life will kick off its annual rally. | DAVID GREENE, HOST: You might sum up President Trump's message yesterday like this. You mess with my State of the Union address, I'll mess with your trip to Afghanistan.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The White House left little doubt that one act was in reprisal for the other. Pelosi, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, had suggested that President Trump delay a big speech. She said the State of the Union called for intense security work from people who were furloughed or unpaid during a government shutdown.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: The president then personally denied Pelosi's military transport to Brussels and Afghanistan. He sent a public letter about what had been, for security reasons, a secret visit to U.S. troops. Shortly afterward, news reports said the first lady took a government flight to the president's resort in Florida. Other government flights are continuing.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: All this was soon overtaken by other news. BuzzFeed offers a new detail about Michael Cohen, the president's one-time lawyer. Cohen has admitted lying to Congress about the president's business dealings with Russia. And the BuzzFeed report says the president told him to lie.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And let's start there, with congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, who is in our studios in Washington this morning. Hi there, Kelsey.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hey, there.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK, so this is one news report so far. But if true, this is pretty serious.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Yeah, BuzzFeed is citing two federal law enforcement officials who are saying President Trump personally directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about the effort to build a Trump Tower location in Moscow. Now, like you said, NPR has not corroborated this reporting. And BuzzFeed credits the information to two unnamed sources who are said to be involved in the investigation.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Some congressional Democrats, though, immediately responded to the report by calling for further investigation. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said it's about time that special counsel Robert Mueller let Congress know what's in his investigation. And House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff tweeted that Trump may have, quote, "suborned perjury" before the committee and vowed to do what's necessary to get to the truth. Now, Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has dismissed the reporting. And he's told some reporters if you believe Cohen, that he can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Which has been the message from Trump's team about Michael Cohen...</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Right.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: ...This man who President Trump was so close to him in the past, they're now trying to undermine his credibility and - at each step here. Meanwhile, this showdown between the president and House speaker, I mean, what a back-and-forth spat developing between these two.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Oh, yeah, and it was kind of a spectacle at the Capitol, too, because Pelosi was on her way to this flight when the president released this letter saying that he was canceling her trip. So the buses had left the Capitol and had to turn back around and deliver Pelosi back to...</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: It's amazing.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Yeah, and it is - it's a surprising turn of events - right? - because this isn't something that we usually see a president do. He has the right to do it because he controls military airspace and controls her access to a military plane, which we should say is a fairly common way for the speaker of the House to get around because she really does travel with an enormous security detail. And this was a trip to a war zone. Afghanistan is not the kind of place that the speaker of the House is likely to be taking a commercial trip, though the president did give that as an option.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK. This - this moment to have a speaker of the House, a president in a back-and-forth like this, both suggesting that a government shutdown is to blame, but it seems like there's been no movement to end that shutdown - what does all this tell us about the state of U.S. politics today?</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Well, if you were expecting this to be a quick way to end a shutdown, I would say this probably is not it. (Laughter).</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: (Laughter) Probably not the best way to get along and come to a compromise.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: No. And soon afterwards, the House Democrats released another package of spending bills that they want to try to pass to prove that they are making efforts to reopen the government and say it's the president and congressional Republicans who aren't dealing. So we're back at the same place we were just a few days ago.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right, NPR's Kelsey Snell. Thanks, Kelsey.</s>KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Thank you.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right, so North Korea's top negotiator is in Washington, D.C., today.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: His mission is believed to be to arrange a second summit between his boss, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and President Trump. Negotiations with North Korea have been stalled since the last time the two leaders met in a summit in Singapore last June.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And let's turn to NPR's Anthony Kuhn, who is in Beijing. Anthony, good morning.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Good morning, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: OK, so neither officials in Washington nor officials in Pyongyang are confirming that new talks are going to take place. But does that - does it appear that that's the reason that this top negotiator's in Washington?</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Yes, it does. The negotiator's name is Kim Yong Chol. He's a former intelligence chief and vice chief of the ruling party. And last year, he was in Washington also. In May, he handed - delivered a letter from Kim Jong Un to President Trump. And that paved the way for the first-ever summit between the two countries in Singapore. And he's expected to do something like that on this visit. He arrived in D.C. last night. And he's expected to meet with Secretary of State Pompeo and then, possibly, President Trump before departing on Saturday.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: One reason this makes sense is because that analysts generally believe that North Koreans want a second summit. And they think it's the only way to have a breakthrough, is at the presidential level. And so far, they've basically refused working-level meetings, including with Secretary of State Pompeo. Now they seem to want them, probably to work out logistics and an agenda for this meeting.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So am I wrong? It doesn't really seem like there was much of a breakthrough coming out of - or since that last big presidential summit last summer. So what is the point of second - of a second summit? And could there actually be risk involved for the United States in meeting again?</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Sure. Well, you know, the summit produced a very vague agreement, and denuclearization is part of that. But there is no roadmap on how to get there. So that presumably would be the main aim this time. And the speculation in the reports based on anonymous subjects are saying that this roadmap would have some sort of interim goals, such as, for example, a cap on Pyongyang's nuclear programs.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: And in exchange for that, they'd get some sort of sanctions relief, which is what they desperately want. One concern that a lot of observers have is that while this cap could lower tensions in the region, it could also be a step towards tacitly admitting or locking in North Korea as a nuclear weapon state, which is exactly what Kim Jong Un wants.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Well, and the Pentagon has a report out - it came out yesterday - saying that North Korea's nukes are still an extraordinary threat. So, I mean, using that kind of language to set up a new meeting, I mean, how is that going to go?</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Well, it's certainly awkward timing, with Kim Yong Chol arriving in town. North Korea has not responded yet. It's also awkward in that President Trump tweeted after the Singapore summit that North Korea's nukes are no longer a threat. And here the Pentagon is putting it in writing. The report also mentions, though, that, you know, there is an avenue to peace with North Korea, possibly. But that could all go south. And so the U.S. needs to remain vigilant. And they seem to have a point there.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right, we'll see how these talks go with the top negotiator from North Korea in Washington and whether there's going to be another presidential summit. NPR's Anthony Kuhn. We appreciate it, Anthony.</s>ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: You're welcome, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: It's going to be a weekend of marches in Washington, D.C. Abortion rights opponents and activists are in town and will be carrying on marches.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Yeah, the March for Life is today. That's been an annual event for many years. And tomorrow, women from around the country and their allies gather for the Women's March for the third year in a row.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: NPR's Sarah McCammon covers the abortion debate for NPR. She's going to be attending both marches. But first, she is in our studios in Washington. Hi, Sarah.</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Hi, David.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: So these are not just marches to express points of view. I mean, there's a lot at stake for activists on both sides of this debate this year, right?</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Yeah. I mean, just think about how much has shifted since President Trump took office and especially this past year, with a new Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, now on the court. I mean, it was just this past summer that Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, setting up a huge debate over the future of the court. Of course, he was seen as the swing vote on a lot of issues, including reproductive rights.</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: And March for Life has been happening every year for decades, since the '70s, soon after the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide. But this is the first time, David, in decades that a lot of abortion rights opponents see what they feel is an opportunity to really substantially roll back abortion rights and for the court to have a chance to revisit Roe, something they've been working toward for a very long time.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: I mean, even the idea of revisiting Roe, does that have people who are - who are putting together this March for Life feeling emboldened, optimistic?</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Yeah, they're definitely optimistic - cautiously optimistic, I would say. Activists tell me they're not necessarily expecting to see Roe reversed wholesale. But they do see a big opportunity here to advance restrictions on abortion that might not have stood up in the past under previous challenges. Here's Tom McClusky of the March for Life.</s>TOM MCCLUSKY: If you were to ask me, during the 2016 campaign, that President Trump would be the one that would help in putting in these pro-life policies, I probably would have thought you were crazy. But it's certainly a much different scenario now, with both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the bench.</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: And we've heard this a lot from abortion rights opponents. They're happy with President Trump's efforts to restrict public funding for organizations such as Planned Parenthood and to appoint conservative judges.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: And so as optimistic as people are on putting together the March for Life march, how nervous are abortion rights activists at this moment?</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: They're nervous. They're concerned. They're also energized. Tomorrow is the Women's March, which comes at these issues and others from another point of view. And Planned Parenthood is a sponsor. So I would expect to hear a lot about women's reproductive rights this year in particular. I spoke recently with Dr. Leana Wen, the new president of Planned Parenthood.</s>LEANA WEN: This is a time where everything is on the line. I mean, with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we are facing a situation where, within the next year, Roe v. Wade could very well be further eroded or overturned.</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: And with that expectation, David, reproductive rights activists are organizing at the state level, trying to strengthen laws protecting abortion rights and remove restrictions on abortion. They do say they're energized and encouraged by the midterms, when a lot of Democrats, especially a lot of women and others campaigning on issues, including reproductive rights, were elected. And, of course, Democrats took over the House of Representatives.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: You know, one of the things I've learned from your reporting is - is you have to look beyond the Supreme Court when it comes to this debate.</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Absolutely. If Roe v. Wade is weakened or overturned, a lot of the debate will go to the states. The states will have even more power to restrict abortion rights than they do right now. So with all the attention on these big national marches, it's still important to keep an eye on state Houses all over the country.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: All right, NPR's Sarah McCammon, who'll be covering those marches in Washington this weekend. Sarah, Thanks.</s>SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Thank you. |
A comedian, writer, actor, director and producer, Carl Reiner was part of the golden days of television. But these days, he's producing a lot of books. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Carl Reiner turns 97 years old in March. A comedian, writer, actor, director, producer, tweeter - he's a noted critic of President Trump. Reiner was part of the golden days of television, writing for 1950s comedy star Sid Caesar on a team that included Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. He helped create "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and directed Steve Martin's films "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "The Jerk." These days, Reiner's producing lots of books. NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg went to Beverly Hills to talk about the latest one.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Carl Reiner lives on Rodeo Drive - not the glitzy part, the tasteful, still expensive other part. He's lived there since 1961. His longtime wife, Estelle, died there 10 years ago. She and Carl loved going out to the movies. And Estelle was in a movie, "When Harry Met Sally..." directed by their son Rob Reiner. She delivered this iconic line.</s>ESTELLE REINER: (As Older Woman Customer) I'll have what she's having.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Alone now but for a staff of helpers, Carl writes about his favorite films in several books. The newest one, done last year, is called "Approaching Ninety-Six: The Films I Love Viewing And Loved Doing (1951-2017)." He saw his first movie, a silent, at age 4. His parents took him.</s>ESTELLE REINER: And it was "Faust." They couldn't leave me at home, my brother and I, so we sat "Faust" like this (ph).</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: That's some heavy-duty movie to start with. Here's the guy. He's making a deal with the devil. He's selling his soul. I'm surprised you ever went to another movie after that.</s>ESTELLE REINER: (Laughter) I know. Mainly, after that, we went to Marx Brothers movies. And we saw everything.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Everything. He loved them all - silent films, the talkies. "Random Harvest," a 1942 tear-jerker, is his all-time favorite. Loved the musicals, Emma Stone...</s>ESTELLE REINER: She just melts me.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Carl Reiner was in his pajamas when we spoke, one of those little nose things pumping oxygen into him. Just a few days out of the hospital, he was happy to talk and watch Emma's latest film, "The Favourite," on a huge TV screen by his bed.</s>OLIVIA COLEMAN: (As Queen Anne) I know. That was what was so troubling about it, though, the thought that I suddenly did.</s>ESTELLE REINER: This is not Emma, is it?</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: No, this was a bunch of ducks.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: We came to talk movies, and we did - briefly. The 1958 musical "Gigi" prompted his imitation of French star Maurice Chevalier.</s>ESTELLE REINER: (Imitating Maurice Chevalier, singing) Thank heaven for pretty girls. Pretty girls get prettier every day.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: You know, Carl Reiner, you could have a career in show business with that voice.</s>ESTELLE REINER: (Laughter) Yes. Well, I wanted to be an opera singer.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Over and over again, he played his father's 78 rpm records of the great tenor Enrico Caruso, which prompted another musical interlude.</s>ESTELLE REINER: And to this day, (singing in Italian).</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Did you have a big career in opera?</s>ESTELLE REINER: No. The only thing I didn't, I sang a little off-key and a little out of rhythm.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: He switched ambitions after seeing a note in the New York Daily News about free acting lessons with Mrs. Wittenberg (ph).</s>ESTELLE REINER: First day there, she says, we're going to do - all of us, boys and girls - are going to do the death of Ophelia.</s>ESTELLE REINER: (Reciting) There is a willow grows aslant a brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: He's almost 97, and he recites Shakespeare monologues. So thanks to Mrs. Wittenberg, Carl Reiner ended up in all the recent "Ocean's Eleven" through 107 "Ocean's" movies. The original "Ocean's 11" in 1960 starred Frank Sinatra. Carl first saw Sinatra when he and Estelle, just married, went to the 1943 movie "Reveille With Beverly."</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: "Reveille With Beverly"?</s>ESTELLE REINER: We held hands. That's it. That's why he's (inaudible) he is.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Years later, after he knew Sinatra, the singer asked Carl how he got along with his parents. My mother's my biggest fan, Carl said. What about you?</s>ESTELLE REINER: He says, my father never spoke of me.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Sinatra told his story. One time, the famous young singer went looking for his fireman father in a bar. Anthony Martin Sinatra wasn't there. They said he'd had a fight. Some guy had insulted Frank.</s>ESTELLE REINER: He says, he took a bar stool and hit a guy in the head; he defended me.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Frank went over to the firehouse. His dad's locker was open, and Frank saw it was lined with record covers and photos of his son. But Anthony was Old World. He didn't know how to express pride in his only child.</s>ESTELLE REINER: Then he says, I made him sit down and talk to me. And we got it on.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Sinatra and Reiner became friends - not best friends like Carl and Mel Brooks. Lots of Mel's movies are Carl's favorites - "Blazing Saddles," "The Producers," "Young Frankenstein." He and Mel see each other all the time.</s>ESTELLE REINER: Funniest man I know - absolutely the funniest man I know.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: The two met in the 1950s writing TV skits for Sid Caesar's "Your Show Of Shows." A few days after being introduced, Reiner saw Brooks in the writers' room.</s>ESTELLE REINER: I just started talking. I said, we are lucky to have with us today a man who's 2,000 years old. I just said it to him. I said, you knew Jesus, didn't you? He says, wait a minute. Thin lad - right? - always wore sandals, walked around with 12 other guys. They were nice boys.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: And thus, the legendary comedy classic, the "2,000 Year Old Man," was born - totally ad-libbed, not a script in sight. They did it at parties for about 10 years. Then they made a record, invited a bunch of friends in, ad-libbed for two or three hours, cut it down to 47 minutes, handed out vinyls to friends. Cary Grant bought 12 copies and took them to England.</s>ESTELLE REINER: When he came back, he said, she loved it. Who? The queen mother. And I said to Mel, we're home free. The biggest shiksa in the world loved the "2,000 Year Old Man."</s>ESTELLE REINER: (As Interviewer) Sir, could you give us the secret of your longevity?</s>MEL BROOKS: (As 2,000 Year Old Man) Well, the major thing - the major thing is that I never, ever touch fried food.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Carl Reiner was pretty frail at the start of our conversation. But telling his stories, he got more and more animated. After an hour, it was time to leave. On the way out, a staffer handed me a big bag of oranges from Carl's tree - not quite ripe but I loved saying, would you like an orange from Carl Reiner's tree? After a few days, though, the oranges became as sweet as their owner.</s>SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: In Los Angeles, I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News. |
For 31 years, the town of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan Province was home to the tallest moose statue. Until 2015, when Norway stole the title. Moose Jaw is considering how to make its statue taller. | RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Good morning, I'm Rachel Martin. For 31 years, the town of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, had one big claim to fame. It was home to the tallest moose statue in the world - until 2015, when Norway stole the title with a moose statue of their own. The Norwegian moose is less than a foot taller than Mac the moose.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So the city of Moose Jaw is considering how to make him taller, maybe ice skates or just making his antlers bigger. The mayor of Moose Jaw said Canada's national pride is on the line, and we can't lose it to Norway over a moose. It's MORNING EDITION. |
Critics have long derided the world's biggest cities as disorderly, overcrowded and polluted. But in recent years, as the planet's population continues to rise past seven billion and more and more people flock to urban areas, some now argue that cities may hold the key to sustainable growth. Steve Inskeep, host of NPR's Morning Edition and author of Instant City Robert Kunzig, senior environment editor, National Geographic Magazine | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan broadcasting today from National Geographic in Washington, D.C. The chairman of the London County Council described his city as a tumor, an elephantiasis sucking into its gorged system half the life and the blood and the bone of the rural districts. The description dates from the 1880s, but it fairly states the opinions many hold today of places like Karachi, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, New York or Los Angeles.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As Earth's population surpasses seven billion, cities are going to continue to grow whether we like it or not, and you may be surprised to hear more and more experts use words like vibrant, cheap, prosperous and green.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, why does your city work or not? 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: We're also going to take questions from people who have joined us here in the audience at the Grosvenor Auditorium, and thanks very much for coming in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Later in the program, photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair gives us an inside look into the secret world of child brides, but first megacities, and with me onstage is Steve Inskeep, host of NPR's MORNING EDITION, the author of "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi." Steve, thanks very much for being with us.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Honor to be here, Neal, thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And also with us, Robert Kunzig, senior environment editor for National Geographic, author of "The City Solution: Why Cities are the Best Cure for Our Planet's Growing Pains," which appears in the December issue of the magazine. Nice to have you back.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Nice to be here, Neal, thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Steve, elephantiasis, tumor, is that a fair description of the city you wrote about, Karachi?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: You know, on the surface you would say yes because it's a violent city, it has a terrible reputation. It is maybe best known around the world as the place where the journalist Daniel Pearl was killed, as a place where a terrorist attack was launched on Mumbai, India.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: And yet this is a city that when I studied it, I learned first off that it's growing spectacularly. It was about 400,000 just after World War II, and today it's something like 13 million. That is a horrifying number for a lot of people to hear. But one of the major reasons for that growth is that people are moving there.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: The reason they're moving there is because it's a better place to live. They make a choice that it's a better place to live than wherever they were before. It is a place where you can get a job, where you can get an education, where you can find opportunity.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Robert Kunzig, as you wrote about London in the 1880s, that description of elephantiasis and tumor really did apply there, as much then as perhaps it does to parts of places like Mumbai and Karachi.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah, it certainly did, Neal. You quoted the chairman of the London County Council. Another thing he said in a speech once was: I'm always haunted by the awfulness of London. I guess civic leaders weren't obliged to be boosters back then to the same extent.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: But conditions in London in the 1880s were wretched. It was urbanizing very rapidly, gaining about a million people a decade. And those people were fleeing a depressed countryside, and they were finding where they were living were hovels, basically, without - with even fewer of the modern conveniences that you might find in some third world cities today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You also, in your piece, compared London then to a city that's undergone much the same kind of explosive growth as Steve was describing about Karachi and in much the same time frame, Seoul, South Korea.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah, I did. I was trying to get at the - as you said at the beginning, urbanization is a fact. There doesn't seem to be any indication that we can stop it. It's going to continue growing basically because economic development doesn't seem to be possible without it, at least as far as we can tell. So the question becomes: What are we doing with these growing cities?</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: And so I wanted to look, to compare what had happened in the developed world of Europe and North America with an example of what's been going on in Asia. And I picked Seoul basically because on the whole, they seem to have managed it pretty well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet you also describe driving into the city, and you see an almost endless array of soulless - forgive the pun - concrete housing blocks, towers, one after another after another, distinguishable only by the number painted on the side.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: That's right, yes. It's not - that is, to a Westerner driving in, the first impression is not pretty of Seoul. And I think to many Seoulites themselves, I talked to quite a few who were not enamored with their built environment. But it all - if you look at it historically, what those blocks took the place of, I mean, in 1960 there were a few million people living in Seoul, a great many of them in shantytowns.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: So the development has just been astonishing. They've gone from a country that made $100 per capita in GDP in five decades to one that is, you know, ranks up there with European countries as one of the wealthiest in the world.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: So the price has been not the prettiest kind of development, but materially, they are a lot better off.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Steve Inskeep, that kind of prosperity would be a miracle in Karachi, but people there go for the same reason that Robert Kunzig was talking about...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Yeah, I think you can see this in city after city around the world, places that we do think of as nightmares, like Lagos. Edward Glaeser who wrote an excellent book called "Triumph of the City" points out that even though there are water shortages, for example, in Lagos, water, clean water may be more available there than in the countryside.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: In a place like Karachi, I was able to look at the United Nations statistics for people's health, for their education levels, for their income. They're all better in these supposedly nightmare cities than in the countryside. There is a reason that people are moving from villages to the city, the same reason that they - many people moved to cities in the United States in recent decades.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: But I don't want to gloss over the horror that you encounter along the way. I think that there is a terrible human cost that goes along with that progress. There had been instances in which the death rates in rapidly growing cities were so excessive that you needed more immigrants to keep the population from going down.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: You have crime. You have ethnic conflicts. You have terrible struggles with diversity, and that's true in the city that I studied. There are a large number of ethnic groups, religious groups, people speaking different languages, who come together in a city. That can be one of the great strengths of these rapidly growing cities. They can be tremendous centers of idea and innovation, but they can also become centers of conflict and of nightmares, and that is true in some rapidly growing cities, as well as the progress we're describing.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah, if I can just interject, in London it was the same thing in the 19th century. The death rate was so high, if it had not been for people migrating in from the countryside, London would not have been growing at all.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: And this is just pollution, horrible living conditions, long hours...</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: No modern sanitation, no vaccines and so on. And that is one big difference today is that the - it is happening, urbanization is happening faster, even faster today than it did in 19th-century Europe, and it's happening at a much higher population number because they've gotten these improvements in health and sanitation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Steve, you describe in Karachi a riverbed that used to be dry most of the year now runs red as it flows sewage into the harbor.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Yeah, there are little red streams you'll see in some of the streets that are believed to be pollution from tanneries. The Lyari River is not necessarily that color, but the fact that it flows at all most of the year is a little troubling.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes. We want to hear from you about whether your city works, how does it work or not. 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. We'll start with Sharon(ph), and Sharon's calling us from Oklahoma City.</s>SHARON: Hi, thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, go ahead, please.</s>SHARON: Yes, I was born and raised in Oklahoma City, and then I went off to college, and I moved away for job reasons about 18 years ago. Well, last year I moved back, and I can see where - while the city has grown, there's a lot more industry here than there was, there is a decline in the infrastructure, mainly the public transportation, and there's no light rail. There's no public transportation in the suburbs.</s>SHARON: And while there are some areas that are re-gentrifying, there are some areas that are left - and I feel it's purposeful - neglect.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting, Robert Kunzig, you describe the various lurches and fits and starts of urban planning and suburban planning in your article. But I think one of the things that Sharon is talking about is if cities are prospering, they're doing so, they're vastly outstripping the ability of planners to plan for them. And if they're dwindling, they're dwindling faster than planners can deal with either.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: That's right. I mean, I think every city is essentially a tension between these two impulses, between the planned aspect and the extent to which it grows on its own and creates itself. And in the early part of this century, there was a tendency to try to plan a city completely, to try to create utopia, and that didn't do so well.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: But the opposite extreme is just as bad, when cities no longer invest in their basic infrastructure. And I think what planners are learning, and in Seoul they certainly did learn, is you - city governments have to handle a few basic things, like transportation, like the network of parks and so on. That can't just be left to the people or the free market to create.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You say we failed at utopia, yet we sit here in Washington, D.C.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: An interesting example.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: I was born in Washington, D.C., and I think we're a little closer to utopia than we were 50 or even 100 years ago. But...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: It's interesting, Neal, because we brought up Oklahoma City, we brought up an American city in this context. One of the reasons that I got interested in some of the issues surrounding cities around the world was what happens in Washington, where I live now.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: I live in a neighborhood that was a historically black neighborhood. Then there was a riot in 1968. There was tremendous decline. There was a lot of vacant land in the neighborhood. Now it's changing and going a different way, and different kinds of people are coming in.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: And you have this constant churning, this constant change of cities as they grow and this constant mixture of different kinds of people who are challenged to deal with each other's differences. And the way that they deal with those differences and the way that they deal with conflicts over resources, conflicts over real estate, over land, the desire for money, says a lot about where the city is heading.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sharon, how's the job working out for you? Oh, I think Sharon may have left us, our conversation was so riveting.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: But in any case, we are talking about megacities this hour. Places like Oklahoma City, medium-sized cities, are also experiencing a lot of growth in various places around the world. It's not just the Mumbais and the Karachis.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Oh, yeah, but let's think of it as metropolitan areas, not as central cities. Some central cities may decline while the area grows.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about megacities, enormous, crowded places once compared to a cancer. Now some say our urban areas may be the key to a sustainable future. More about that in just a minute. We'll continue talking with NPR's Steve Inskeep, author of "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi"; and Robert Kunzig, senior environment editor for National Geographic whose piece "The City Solution: Why Cities are the Best Cure for Our Planet's Growing Pains" appears in the December issue of the National Geographic magazine. 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. We're broadcasting today from the Grosvenor Auditorium at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. Our guests: Steve Inskeep, host of NPR's MORNING EDITION, author of "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi"; and Robert Kunzig, senior environment editor for National Geographic.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about megacities today and the idea that these may be the hope of a sustainable future. There's also an audience here in the Grosvenor Auditorium, and we're getting questions from them. Why don't we go to the microphone now?</s>JOE OPPENHEIMER: Yes, my name is Joe Oppenheimer(ph), and I wondered - you asked us do our cities work for us. And I was wondering whether we might better phrase that: Who do the cities work for? Because they certainly don't work equally for what we might want to call the wealthy or the powerful and the less powerful and the poor. And I think that might give you more leverage over how to judge whether a city is functioning or not.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hard to find a place where that contrast is more vivid than Karachi, Steve.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Yeah, that's an excellent question that you raise because you get to a question that a lot of people are asking. They will identify themselves by groups, and it may very well be rich and poor and something like income and equality that's been so discussed in the United States in recent months is dramatically on display in a city in the developing world because public services may be so inadequate that the people who can afford their own services live a dramatically better life than those people who cannot.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: There are other kinds of divides that politicians often will take advantage of, between different races of people, between different ethnicities of people, people from different villages. There are a lot of - you could even call them tribal conflicts that show themselves in a city.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: And the way that a city is built can dramatically affect the way different kinds of people are able to live in it. Let me give you one historic example from the United States, from New York City. Robert Caro's great book "The Power Broker" talks about the development of New York and gives the example of Jones Beach State Park, which is in the New York metropolitan area.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: There's an expressway, a highway that was built to go there, and they deliberately, deliberately did the overpasses on that highway too low for a bus to travel to be sure that poor black people from Harlem could not ride the bus to the state park, that only people who could afford cars in the 1950s and '60s could get to that state park.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: That's a particularly egregious example, but we can go around the world and find ways that cities are built now - whether you're talking about gated communities, which are very common around the world - you can find many ways that cities are built to ensure the comfort of the privileged and not to do so much for everybody else. And people then in that city will begin asking questions about why it is so.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet - it's a good point, yet Robert Kunzig, people flock to cities because there is opportunity there. It is not simply the middle class and the wealthy who move to these places. It is people who move to those places, poor, impoverished people, in hopes of making it to the middle class. It is a dream that is unfulfilled for many, but for some it's real.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's no - in general no army that's forcing people to flee into cities. In fact, generally the problem has been it's the reverse, is that people are so afraid of the growth of cities, including the leaders of the city itself, that they try to keep people away.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: But I think you're absolutely right, that the cities do not work as well for poor people as for rich people. That's a problem that permeates the economy. But the - what a city can do is provide some - provide greater opportunity for even the poorest when it's working right.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: I interviewed people in Karachi who had moved from the far northwest of Pakistan, the war-torn border area where the United States is involved, and met this young man named Friti(ph), who was in his early 20s, give or take, and had come to Karachi to get a better education than was available in the countryside and ended up running a wholesale business, textile business in the city with money that was sent by the elders from his village.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: And then more people came down from the village to work there, and they were making only three or four or five dollars a day, but it was a much better living than they could have found in that war-torn area, the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Emily(ph) in Minneapolis: What works? Minneapolis, Minnesotais the number one biking city in the United States. Let's go next to Tom, and Tom's on the line with us from Raleigh in North Carolina.</s>TOM: Thank you, yes. I was recently in Delhi for six months, and it's I guess somewhat similar to Karachi. But I found the public transportation, the metro around Delhi, was really easy to use for a person from America. I mean, there's a hustle and bustle there that's unmatched and as well as - one thing that, you know, most people would take away from India is how dirty it is. There's no real public sanitation department, per se.</s>TOM: I mean, that's my take on Delhi. I mean, it's a wonderful city, and it's very cheap to get around.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's an interesting word you used at the end, cheap, and he's talking about transportation. And Robert Kunzig, that's been the key to the - one of the reasons the cities work so well, when you have populations densely packed, the costs of transportation are remarkably reduced.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: That's right. I mean, cities exist because businesses locate there, and businesses locate there because they can cut their costs. And one of the chief ways they cut their costs is just by reducing the distances between people. Their people can get to work. You can't create a factory if everyone lives 100 miles away, it's that simple.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: But then you need a good transportation system for this to work, and that's really, I think, one of the key ways in which cities that succeed distinguish themselves from those that fail.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And those cities that are densely populated and have good transportation systems, then you don't need to drive. In fact, your article suggests that New York, the most densely populated city in this country, has the - individuals have the lowest carbon footprint of almost anybody in the country.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah, that's right, and it's not rocket science. They - I lived in New York for a long time, and I occupied a lot fewer square feet than I would occupy if I were living in the country or than I did when I lived in France. And I - getting to work was a lot easier by public transportation. So both of those things mean that on - per capita, you use a lot less energy when you're living in a dense city with a good transportation net.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as these cities - well, they're growing whether we like it or not - but this may not be a bad thing, that density as people try to attract people back to downtown areas, to the center city, as it were, that density could turn out to be, as we look toward sustainability, a very good thing.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: It could indeed, and I think that's one of the hopeful trends, maybe one of the few hopeful things about the fact that we're all getting old in this country, is that we seem to be...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Speak for yourself. Steve and I are...</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Not you, not you, right. Developing - aging boomers seem to be rediscovering the central city, and that is - that's a good thing for the planet insofar as that means we're going to reduce - it gives us the chance of reducing our energy consumption.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: And you're not going to force people to live in a smaller home. You're not going to force people to give up their cars necessarily, that's a great challenge, but the - I guess the benefit of a large city, a densely packed city, is it encourages people to want to live that way, to make that tradeoff.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: It is interesting enough, it is lucrative enough, it is exciting enough that people want to be there even if they don't have a McMansion to live in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to Pear(ph), and Pear's with us from Portland.</s>PEAR: Yeah, well, in Portland we had this urban growth boundary for quite a while now, and then four years ago the city commissioned a peak oil task force to make recommendations about what to do as the price of oil goes up. And one of the things is that as the price of oil does go higher, there will be less mechanized farming.</s>PEAR: You will need more people growing food. Now, maybe we can do part of that in the cities, but I think if the oil gets expensive enough, there may be a reversal: People may be migrating out to the countryside just to find a piece of land.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting, the growth boundary, what does the growth boundary consist of?</s>PEAR: Well, it's a - every few years they say that if you drive out to the suburbs from downtown, you will see there will be subdivisions, and then there will be a line. You can just see this line, almost like a fence, and beyond that is open farmland. We have some of the best farmland in the world in the Willamette Valley, and so the subdivisions go up to a certain point, and then it's farmland.</s>PEAR: And every few years they make a few little adjustments, but we've been doing that for quite a while now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There have been previous efforts, Robert Kunzig, to hem cities in with green belts.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah, and not all have been as successful as I gather the caller feels Portland's has been. The - what has happened in London or in Seoul or in other places where they've just essentially drawn a border around the city, with a goal of preserving some greenery, is that the development has just leapfrogged beyond the city.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: And people end up - you don't stop the growth of the city. You just force people to commute longer distances. So in terms of the overall environmental impact, it's not a clear win.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: If I may mention, even in Portland, which is a really interesting example with not just the growth boundary. They've got light rail. They've got a lot of interesting development things going on. Years ago on NPR, we did a series on commuting in America. Portland was one of the places we went. And you can find people, even in Portland, with very, very, very, very, very long commutes. The place has spread regardless of whatever efforts the people have made, although the gentleman is correct. There's some land that has been preserved.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: They don't do it on Segway either.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: No, not exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I have a question on the microphone.</s>PIERRE: The key is T. Boyle(ph), I believe.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes. Well, the American cities were all designed around the automobile.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that's - that may have to be changing too. But anyway, let's go to - thanks very much for the call. We'll go to a microphone here.</s>FRAN ROTHSTEIN: Hi. I'm Fran Rothstein(ph) from Silver Spring, Maryland. I was interested in what you said about people moving to these megacities, being the reason that they are growing so rapidly, and they are so crowded. We know what happened - and one of the reasons people come is because there is the opportunity for education and better health care. We know that women who get educated tend to have fewer children. And I wondered if you could talk about the relationship of megacities to family size and birth rate. Is the fact that people are moving to megacities having a positive impact on family size?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Robert Kunzig, do you know?</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah. I'm really glad you brought that up. I think it is. It's hard to - in all these things that hard to tease out, chicken and egg, but they do seem to go together. In other words, people and cities, as a general rule, have fewer children. And the urbanization of a country goes hand and hand with the industrial development of a country, with the increase in the education level and with the drop in fertility. So if you're worried about population growth, as so many people are, urbanization is something you should applaud as a way of limiting it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: But make no mistake that even though some of those trends may be at work, we're still going to pack a few more billion people on to the planet. I think that India, which is rapidly urbanizing, and the median age is about 25. Pakistan, which is rapidly urbanizing, the median age is about 18. I think there's going to be another couple of generations of kids before some of those trends really, really take effect, although population growth is swelling in a lot of countries.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet, if we can live in dense urban cities, you can put tremendous percentages of the world's population on a very small parcel of land, thereby freeing up the rest of land for people to grow food on.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Yeah. But and it's not like anyone is out there choosing this, right? So it's not like one of us gets to make the decision where we're going to put this extra two billion people. They are going to go where they're going to go, and it is going to be in cities. The next - there are going to be 2 million more people by 2050, and most of them are going to be in cities in Asia and Africa. That's where people are being born. And they're going to choose to live in cities because that's going to be the best place for them to make a living.</s>FRAN ROTHSTEIN: But do you think that the trend toward megacities is going to slow over population and population growth?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It seems to be slowing anyway, whether that's a factor or not. Again, it's the chicken and egg thing. So we'll have to consider that. And Steve and I will be around to see it, since we're ageless. Robert Kunzig is our guest, of National Geographic magazine. He's the author of the article in the December issue, "The City Solution: Why Cities are the Best Cure for Our Planet's Growing Pains." Also with us, NPR's Steve Inskeep, author of "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's go to - excuse me. Let's go to Malcolm. Malcolm with us from Grants Pass in Oregon.</s>MALCOLM: Well, good morning. This is a fascinating subject, and I agree with most of what your guests are saying. I would like to point out, however, that a lot of people, I think, don't move into cities because they think they are a wonderful place to live. They move there because there's perhaps more opportunity. But also, they're moving there, in Oregon at least, because they're being forced to by the rising prices in the rural areas.</s>MALCOLM: I'm on the rural planning commission. We have rules now in my county - and I think this true of most Oregon - where you can't build one house on your farm unless you have over 80 acres. You can't - the minimum lot size for anywhere else is two acres right now. But we've been getting letters from our rural land - or excuse me - the LCD, the Land Development Commission of Oregon saying, we want to raise the minimum lot size in rural areas outside of the urban growth boundary to 20 acres. There's other factors that are being pushed to drive the price up, too, but I won't go into all of them. But the fact is this is getting to where it cost more and more money to live outside the city. So there is this pressure to move people into town. And I think maybe it has gone a little overboard.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: You have an ally, I think, Malcolm, in Ed Glaeser. I think I mentioned earlier the author of "Triumph of the City." He is someone who will argue. And we can argue about it, that a lot of land use restrictions that seem to be environmentally friendly, in his opinion, may not be and cost a lot of money. And rules particularly that say that you can only have one house per acre, or one house per two acres, the thing you said about having an extra house is only allowed if you only have 80 acres is pretty spectacular.</s>MALCOLM: Yeah. Oh, yeah.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: But those kinds of rules, he would argue, make it harder to have a cluster of population, and raise the cost for everyone and make it much harder for people who are not well-off to live in a particular area. He's no fan of those things. He's more of a free market guy. We could argue that - plus...</s>MALCOLM: I'm a fan to some extend. I'm not saying we should throw out all of our planning laws at all. I think they're very useful. I just think that some of them are too extreme, like the 80 acres, like the 20 acres minimum that they're proposing right now.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Well, let me just...</s>MALCOLM: We got a letter from LCDs to that effect at one of our hearings recently.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Let me just make a general statement that I think is true and that is worth bearing in mind in any issue that you're dealing with, in any hometown in America. That any planning that you do, from my study of the history, quite often has unintended consequences. And it's worth bearing in mind the possibility that things do not turn out exactly as you intend.</s>MALCOLM: That's brilliant. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve - Malcolm, thanks very much for the phone call. Email question from Ruth in Wilmington, North Carolina. This is for Steve. Can you tell us what ethnic groups left Karachi and why?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Oh, well, I can. This was a majority Hindu city in 1947, when Pakistan became an independent country. As a majority Muslim country, India was becoming independent at the same time as a majority Hindu country. A couple of hundred thousand Hindus fled the city or were driven out. Within a space of a few months, something like half the population left. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims replaced them, actually, much greater numbers fleeing from India. This was one of the great incidence of mass violence in the history of humanity, may be the greatest of all time, or one of the greatest of all time. And so you had a lot of people, old timers in the city leaving and being replaced by new groups. And there were continual conflicts then between insiders, outsiders, old timers, newcomers and different kinds of people who saw their interests in different ways.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're going to take this over and take a couple of more questions on how does your city work or not. Steve Inskeep is with us from MORNING EDITION, also Robert Kunzig from National Geographic. We'll also talk with Stephanie Sinclair, who spent eight years documenting the secret world of child brides, some as young as 5 years old. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan. We're broadcasting today from the headquarters of the National Geographic in Washington, D.C.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Normally, at this time, we broadcast the Opinion Page. We're at National Geographic today. We'll get to the Opinion Page tomorrow. We're also going to talk with Stephanie Sinclair in just a few moments about images featured in the June issue of National Geographic magazine, "Too Young To Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides."</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But we want to continue our conversation with Robert Kunzig of National Geographic, author of "The City Solution: Why Cities are the Best Cure for the Planet's Growing Pains." And Steven Inskeep of NPR's MORNING EDITION, author of "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi." And let's see if we can get Grace on the line. Grace calling us from Philadelphia.</s>GRACE: Hi. None of the things that happens from growing cities is cities within cities. I come from - I live in Philadelphia, but I come from Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa and we have a couple slums, the biggest being Kibera because there's no affordable housing for the people who come from the countryside, come and live in the city to work for the middle class and the more affluent people. And so, you know, that's - you may not - you may try planning and it may not work out, but sometimes planning of at least affordable housing for people who might be moving into the cities for work might help cities, you know, avoid situations like slums.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Steve Inskeep, there were, in your description of Karachi, these improvised areas; miles and miles and miles of places that are shanty towns.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Yeah. I'm glad that you mentioned Kibera. People describes these areas as slums. And sometimes, they're rather solidly built, sometimes not. In Karachi, there are concrete block houses of varying qualities of construction. But the most important thing to me - the most important theme to me is that they are outside the law. They're often people who grab the land. There may be developers who grab vast plots of land and subdivided them. Everything is being done outside the law. And in Karachi, at least, the police get paid off not to notice that the entire neighborhood exists.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: The electricity has to be stolen by people who are hooked up to the electric power lines. The water may be trucked in rather than being piped in by plumbing. You have people who were living beyond government as we know, beyond public services as we know it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what about the police?</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Well, they're well-paid...</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: ...by the residents. The last time that I checked in Karachi, there was a standard bribe of 5,000 rupees per home lot, which is 50-some dollars, $57, $58. You go to the commander of the local station, you pay that $57 or $58, and he doesn't notice that your home is there and doesn't arrest you. And then your house is legal until the guy is transferred, and then you have to go pay the new commander more money.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Robert Kunzig, in your article, yes, there are the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. There are terribly poorer places in Nairobi, as our caller, Grace, suggests. Yet, these are also places that are - they can be awful, but they could be engines of vibrancy and life.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: They can be, indeed, but I think they would all be better, and we would all be better off if the city governments that are, in a sense, at war with their own people, with people who are coming to live there. Instead, had a change of mindset and just accepted that their cities were going to grow and did some modest amount of planning for it; acknowledge that the territory was going to have to get larger and planned the infrastructure that would be needed to serve these places more adequately.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, that's a question raised by email like Denise. I understand that crowding people into megacities makes sense for an overcrowded planet. Doesn't this have a negative effect on global warming? Shouldn't we be concentrating on reducing population?</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Crowding people into cities does not have a negative effect on global warming because if you accept that the people are going to exist anywhere anyway and the question is where. If - it's better to put them in cities because as I mentioned earlier, they - in general, cities dwellers use less energy per capita. They use less resources. When things are closer together, you build less roads to serve them. You build - your sewer pipes are shorter. Your - everything about your infrastructure is more compact and therefore demands fewer resources.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in terms of reducing the world's population, that may be a goal. It's hard to convince people to do that.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Well, they decide to do it themselves, as the questioner said earlier, when people - it all goes hand in hand: economic development, urbanization, industrial development. People come to the idea themselves that they might like to have two children rather than 10. It's all part of this process. They don't - they can be encouraged by making family planning available, above all, by making education available, and they'll get - they'll reach that conclusion on their own.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One last emailer votes - this is Vince in Baltimore - votes for Toronto. A metropolitan area of 3.5 million - clean, one of the best transit systems, and booming real estate market. Clearly, in another country. So any case, Steve Inskeep, thanks very much for coming over from MORNING EDITION to be with us.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Thanks for the invitation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steve Inskeep's book is "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi." Robert Kunzig, a senior environment editor for National Geographic. In the December issue of the magazine, "The City Solution. Why cities are the best Cure for a Planet's Growing Plains." Thanks very much.</s>ROBERT KUNZIG: Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Coming up, we'll talk with Stephanie Sinclair about the secret world of child brides. Stay with us. |
The GOP presidential hopefuls are airing ads in nearly all of the early voting states. NPR's Ken Rudin, political ad expert Ken Goldstein and Robert Mann, author of Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad that Changed American Politics talk about ads past and present. Read an excerpt from Robert Mann's Daisy Petals And Mushroom Clouds | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. A radio host offers Newt a million to get out of the race, Mitt bets Perry 10 grand, and the payroll tax hangs fire in the Senate. It's Wednesday and time for a...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Edition of the Political Junkie</s>PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.</s>VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?</s>SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.</s>SENATOR LLOYD BENTSON: Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.</s>PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore.</s>SARAH PALIN: Lipstick.</s>GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: Oops.</s>GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: But I'm the decider.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Every Wednesday, political junkie Ken Rudin joins us to recap the week in politics. Start those countdown clocks: Yet another government shutdown looms. The Supreme Court, well, taxes tackle Texas congressional lines, Newt gets it from all sides in Des Moines, which means it's official, he's number one.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now even the Donald won't attend the Trump debate, and the president's negatives reach all-time highs. In a few minutes, we'll speak with political advertising expert Ken Goldstein about this cycle's ads, and we'll check in with Robert Mann on the ad that changed them all. Plus investment scams targeted at the Woodstock generation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But first, political junkie Ken Rudin joins us as usual here in Studio 3A. As usual, we begin with a trivia question. Hey, Ken.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Hi, Neal, okay, well, you know, the latest polls have Newt Gingrich with a sizeable lead in the January 3rd Iowa caucuses, and he's catching up in New Hampshire. But the trivia question here: Who was the first person to lose both the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary and go on to win the presidency?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you think you know the answer, the first person to lose both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary but yet go on to the White House, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. The winner, of course, gets a fabulous political junkie no-prize T-shirt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Ken, we always like to start with actual votes when we can, actual votes yesterday in the U.S. Senate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's right. The vote was 25 to 22. This - if you didn't find this in the newspaper, it's because nobody cared about it, but it is significant in some way. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the former majority whip in the House, briefly majority leader, he was elected vice-chairman of the Republican Conference, Republican Senate Conference Committee, which is the number five position in the Senate.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: What makes this interesting is that the guy he defeated was Ron Johnson, who was from Wisconsin, backed by the Tea Party, backed by Jim DeMint and Rand Paul and Mike Lee and a lot of the Tea Party folks who made a big play after the 2010 elections. And Roy Blunt is not only a Romney guy, he's Romney's number one guy in the Senate, but he's really the establishment, and it just - you know, there was some interesting message that came out of the Republican Conference yesterday in the Senate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Was he the minority leader's choice?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: You mean Mitch McConnell's choice? Well, Mitch McConnell probably, although Mitch McConnell said he had absolutely no involvement at all in this, but Mitch McConnell is kind of an establishment guy. He likes to - he doesn't like to rock the boat. And Johnson and DeMint certainly are the kind of folks who like to rock the boat, and Mitch McConnell's not a fan of that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, the House passed the payroll tax extension. This is what President Obama's been calling for. Though they included what the president says is a poison pill.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, and that poison pill, of course, is a speedy approval of the oil pipeline from Canada...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Keystone XL Pipeline.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, it's trickle-down theory.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: They want the oil to trickle down from Canada into the Gulf states and into Texas, and President Obama says that's absolutely a non-starter, and Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid says this bill is dead on arrival.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But in the meantime, if they don't pass that, then the payroll tax cut evaporates at the end of the year. And they also have to pass this budget thing. There's another government shutdown looming.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: You know something? We had - Neal and I had a talk before this, the show, and we wonder if we should even be talking about this because people - and as we do in Washington, we roll our eyes. These deadlines that are coming that the world is - Henny Penny, the world is coming to an end, and then somehow something gets done, and everybody says phew until the next, you know, two days later when the next crisis ensues. So it's politics as usual in Washington.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: On the other side of the street, the Supreme Court, which has already scheduled five-and-a-half hours of debate on the health care issue, agreed not only to take up Arizona's immigration bill, but now it will also look at the redrawn congressional lines in Texas. A federal court down there said the lines drawn by the legislature...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: The Republican legislature.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The Republican legislature violated the Voting Rights Act and redrew them to - more favorably for the Democrats and Hispanics, and the Supreme Court says wait a minute, they're going to look at that in January.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Exactly. Texas, because of its population growth in the last 10 years, get four new seats. The Republican legislature passed a bill or drew a map that basically had Republicans winning three out of the four. But since most of the gains were in overwhelming Hispanic areas in Texas, this map, this three-court, three-judge panel decided to draw a new map and had three Democratic victories, one Republican. Supreme Court will take it up on January 9.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, we have some callers on the line who think they know the answer to this week's trivia question. And that of course is the last person to lose...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: First person.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: First person, check that, the first person to lose both in Iowa and New Hampshire but yet go on to the White House. 800-989...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And we're talking about the primaries, not the general election.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: 8255. Email is talk@npr.org. Just jump in there wherever you'd like.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll start with June(ph), June with us from Rochester, Minnesota.</s>JUNO: Yes, my - this is Juno Miller(ph). And I think it's George H.W. Bush, Sr.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The president who was known as 41.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, well, George H.W. Bush did lose to Ronald Reagan in the New Hampshire primary, but he beat him in the Iowa caucuses.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So he does not qualify.</s>JUNO: (Unintelligible) Bill Clinton.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Next call?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Next call, let's go next to - this is John(ph), John with us from Waterloo, Iowa.</s>JOHN: I'm going to have to say Bill Clinton.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, you're going to have to say it because you're right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ding, ding, ding.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That was quick. Bill Clinton lost Iowa caucuses 1992 to favorite son Tom Harkin. And then he finished second to Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts in New Hampshire. Of course, he said he was the comeback kid, even though he finished second. But Bill Clinton didn't win, I think, until Georgia primary of that year, and yet if memory serves, he went on to win the election as president.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, John, stay on the line, we'll collect your particulars in exchange for your promise of a digital picture of yourself wearing the about-to-be-mentioned fabulous political junkie no-prize T-shirt. We're going to send you on in whatever size you would like.</s>JOHN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Congratulations. In the meantime, we've had, well, any number of debates. There's another one tomorrow night, but there was one in Saturday's debate in Des Moines where Michele Bachmann tested a new attack line.</s>REPRESENTATIVE MICHELE BACHMANN: If you look at Newt-Romney, they were for Obamacare principles. If you look at Newt-Romney, they were for cap and trade. If you look at Newt-Romney, they were for the illegal immigration problem.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And of course she's conflating two candidates there.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah, I thought Newt-Romney was the coach from Notre Dame.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I've been saving that joke all day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Have you been saving that joke all day? You should tell me that one before.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, yes, and actually, well, of course...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He voted for Reagan.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Just as - the Gipper. Just as the Democrats loved to run against the Dole-Gingrich ticket in 1996, Michele Bachmann is trying to conflate Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney as basically the two candidates standing above her, blocking her chance of winning the Iowa caucuses.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Which is make or break for her. In the meantime, everybody was taking, Michele Bachmann included, swipes at the new frontrunner in Iowa, that is Newt Gingrich, who has pledged himself to be totally positive, aboveboard, and for the most part, he was, for the most part.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, then I would be glad to then listen to him. And I'll bet you $10, not $10,000, that he won't take the offer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that of course a response to Mitt Romney's call for Newt Gingrich to return the $1.6 million he made...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: As a consultant for...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Freddie Mac, which he said was the politicians who were in favor of it should be jailed. But all of this, in general Newt Gingrich has been very positive. He told his - all of his supporters to be positive, as well. Mitt Romney has been on the attack against Newt Gingrich.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, and, you know, we saw that from Romney four years ago, when he went after John McCain and Mike Huckabee as not being ideologically pure. And, you know, but - except what Mitt Romney is saying about Newt Gingrich, there is truth to that. He is an unreliable conservative, and in many ways, attacking the Paul Ryan thing, a lot of things that are right about what Newt - what Romney is saying.</s>MITT ROMNEY: This whole Washington crowd of insiders that stay there, get paid a lot of money there because of their associations, I think it's something the American people are tired of.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Washington insider another one, and that harkens back to the Freddie Mac charge. In the meantime, the polls show that Newt Gingrich, I think comfortably in the lead in Iowa.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, the last I saw, it was something like 40 to 23. That's huge, and that's the biggest margin, the biggest gap between any two candidates, let alone Romney in second place. And of course as we saw in 2008, when Romney was thought to do very well in Iowa, when he lost to Mike Huckabee, his support gradually, quickly diminished in New Hampshire. And so it is very possible that Newt Gingrich, if he wins Iowa, could win New Hampshire.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And there's a little trivia fact about that, as well: Nobody in the history of a contested primary, has ever won Iowa and won New Hampshire and gone on to win the nomination.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, that's an interesting twist on our...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: When there's a presidency.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, the presidency. In the meantime - well, this is going to change everything. Christine O'Donnell came out with an endorsement.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Which candidate?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Oh, I'm sorry, that was a cheap joke. Yes, she did, endorsed him at Salem. No, she didn't do that either, no. But, you know, this was very strange. Yesterday, late afternoon, I got this email from the Romney campaign that says Christine O'Donnell is - last evening - Christine O'Donnell endorses Romney.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Two seconds later, I get an email from the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, saying Christine O'Donnell endorses Romney. It's a very odd - it seems to me odd kind of endorsement to tout, but she was a Tea Party favorite, and she may have cost the Republican Party a seat in the Senate in Delaware. But she, as I said, a Tea Party favorite.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, some other political news. Newt Gingrich fired a staff member in Iowa who described Mormonism as a cult.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: The cult of Mormon, right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Donald Trump canceled the NewsMax debate, which I think only Newt Gingrich had accepted.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And Rick Santorum. I was dying to see that one.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Rick Santorum. And the Obamas - President Obama's negatives, this is doing a bad job, they are at an all-time high.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, not only - it's not only his job performance, his personal popularity, the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll had him 48 favorable, 49 unfavorable. The unfavorability of Barack Obama is similar to what Newt Gingrich's is. Of course Gingrich's positives are like 35 percent compared to the president's 48 percent.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the president in those polls handily leads Newt Gingrich, but it's a statistical tie, within the margin of error, between the president and Mitt Romney.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And that's the argument that the Republicans are going to have to deal with. We've talked about this on the show for a long time: Do you want to go for ideological purity or at least the most conservative candidate? And whether that's Newt Gingrich remains to be seen. Or do you want to go for the one who's most electable? And most polls show that to be Mitt Romney.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're not done with the political junkie yet. Ken Rudin will stay with us. Up next, the former press secretary Robert Mann joins us. That'll be actually a little bit later in the program. We're going to be talking with Ken Goldstein, president of CMAG, a division of Cantor Media who's an expert on political advertising to look at the political ads in this year's race. 800-989-8255. What's the most interesting development on the political advertising front? 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. It's Wednesday, Political Junkie day. Ken Rudin is here as usual. His latest column and that devilish ScuttleButton puzzle are both online at npr.org/junkie. Ken, anyone crack last week's ScuttleButton?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: They did. Matter of fact, a coincidence about this because the answer to last week's puzzle was Bumblebee tuna, and the last button in the puzzle was Charlie from Starkist holding up a can of Starkist tuna. That was my tuna thing. And yet Charlie Slack(ph) of Medina, New York - coincidence - is the winner.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There's no coincidence, there's no coincidence.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, no, I named him on porpoise. I'm so sorry for that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, he will be the thrilled recipient of a Political Junkie no-prize T-shirt. In the meantime, the GOP presidential hopefuls have taken to the airwaves in virtually all states with early primaries or caucuses. Some, like Newt Gingrich, focus on the positive. Others take advantage of their 30 seconds or a minute to fire rhetorical shots at the frontrunners.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're starting to see waves of outside groups begin to weigh in as well. Ken Goldstein is an expert on political advertising. He serves as president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media, and he's on the line with us from New York. Nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: Good to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And has any particular ad stood out to you thus far?</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: I don't think we've necessarily seen that one killer ad that we're going to be talking about many years down the line. I think you're going to end up talking about the daisy commercial a little bit later. So I don't think we've seen the famous ad of 2012 yet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, it's morning in America, but it's still early in the race. Most of these ads seem to be people really introducing themselves to the voters.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, I mean it really is extraordinarily early in the race. But it's also late starting. So at this same time period in 2007 you had 10, 15, 20 times as much money being spent in Iowa, in New Hampshire, not to mention South Carolina and Nevada. And it's really only been in the last week that we're seeing any significant sort of buying in Iowa or New Hampshire.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: And as you said, mostly, although not all, of the campaign advertising is these candidates introducing themselves to voters. But I think the fur is going to begin to fly pretty quickly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Frontrunner Newt Gingrich has just managed to get enough money to get an ad up on the air – this, of course, after his campaign got discombobulated last spring, and almost everybody left, and he was forced to fly commercial, my gosh. But in any case, this is an excerpt from the ad that he's running in Iowa.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: Some people say the America we know and love is a thing of the past. I don't believe that, because working together I know we can rebuild America. We can revive our economy and create jobs, shrink government and the regulations that strangle our businesses, throw out the tax code and replace it with one that is simple and fair.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: We can regain the world's respect by standing strong again, being true to our faith, and respecting one another...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Ken Goldstein, as you listen to that, this is a candidate espousing ideas, sounding positive, certainly about the people in his own party, there's a couple of veiled swipes in there at the president, but that's certainly okay in a Republican presidential primary.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: Sure, you know, absolutely, Gingrich's first effort out of the box to introduce himself to Iowa voters over the air. You know, what remains very interesting to me about TV advertising is, you know, I guess thank goodness because it's been my career, is people love to talk about it, and the media loves to talk about it.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: So you know, Gingrich is also, as he goes up on the air, his ads are getting coverage, and we're talking about Gingrich, and you basically just aired his ad.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Uh-huh. Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Ken, but you know, what's interesting, when I think of an ad for this year, I think of the smoking man in the Herman Cain ad, and everybody in Washington was talking about it. I have no idea what it was about, but I just remember seeing his spokesman, Mark Block, with a cigarette, puffing a cigarette, and everybody saying, wow, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And yet I have no idea of what they were saying about it in a debate. But yet that's the kind of ad - I mean, but that's the kind of ad that people talked about for weeks.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: You know, I think a couple things. There was the famous Mark Block smoking ad that was on the Internet for Herman Cain that certainly got, certainly got a lot of buzz. And we're seeing more Internet-focused advertising. There's a two-minute Ron Paul Internet out there. There's two, three, four-minute ads that the candidates are putting out.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: And we're certainly going to see more of that in 2012, but these folks now are targeting their ads towards a very, very narrow primary or caucus audience in Iowa. But when push comes to shove in 2012, we're going to see massive spending on television because they're going to have to simply get more reach and get more reach among people who aren't necessarily, to use a term you like, political junkies.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: You know, the other interesting thing about that Mark Block - and sort of a lot of fun to watch the smoking person - there's going to be such a huge amount of advertising this cycle from such a huge amount of sources that the challenge for these candidates and groups, even if they have a lot of money, is to get their message to shine through.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: So quality and content is going to be even more important, and how do you somehow break through and get attention, and how does your ad attract free media.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Rick Perry, who's had no trouble attracting free media but not necessarily on the issues that he'd like to focus on, but he's taken up this second round of ads. He's had to reintroduce himself a couple of times because of those debate stumbles. This time, well, he's trying to sound - go a little bit more on the attack.</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.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And he's addressing the president of the United States, but not ashamed to be a Christian - is this a veiled attack on Mitt Romney's Mormonism, do you think?</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: You know, interesting, I don't know. And again, we're - you know, it's a Republican primary electorate. It's in Iowa, where it's going to be a fairly small number of places, and he thinks that this message can carve out support from a particular segment.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: So it's broadcast television, but it's highly targeted towards what are going to be relatively few caucus-goers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Ken, also, do you think perhaps part of the reason why it's such a late start and why they're not putting so much money into ads is that most of the candidates have been relying on debates to make their case?</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: Absolutely. It's been - debates and drama have churned up news cycle after news cycle this fall. So I think we've had - I've lost count - 14 or 15 Republican debates, and there's always a little bit of news coverage the day before the debate and a little bit of news coverage the day of the debate and then a little bit of new coverage after the debate. That's churning up a lot of news cycles.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: And then we've had some drama with various candidates and campaigns that's also churning up news cycle, and it's made it, you know, less necessary for campaigns to go up on the air.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: It's also the case, and it was really only the Perry campaign and the Romney campaign that would have had the serious resources to go up on the air, and you know, the Perry campaign went up, and the Romney campaign initially, either because of debates and drama or because they felt the Perry message wasn't getting through, didn't feel they needed to respond.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: So when those big players were - what was going to be the biggest player was sitting on the sideline, it was going to make it a - not a particularly heavy fall season or Christmas season for folks who own TV stations in Iowa and New Hampshire.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But we know that President Obama and the Democrats are talking about perhaps a billion dollar campaign on his re-election behalf. Republicans are going to have to come up with a lot of money to come close to matching that.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: And they will. So the relative paucity of advertising that we've seen here in 2011 in Iowa and New Hampshire says absolutely nothing about what's going to be just a massive television advertising air war in 2012, not only by the candidates, not only by the parties, but by what's going to be a huge proliferation of outside groups as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And some of those ads are up, not necessarily in the presidential race but in some of the senatorial contests. This is fallout from the Citizens United decision. A group called Crossroads GPS produced this ad.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Look at the damage he did: higher taxes, cutting Medicare spending, embarrassing Nebraska. Ben Nelson so loved Obama when it counted most. Senator, it's time to make it right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you were in doubt, that was an ad against Ben Nelson. These groups, this kind of money is going to be immensely powerful, not just in the primaries, and we're just beginning to see it, but for the next year.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: Sure, these groups are going to be the big story of 2012 - how much they spend, where they spend it, and how their message is going to be coordinated in tune with the candidates who they're spending - whose spending is on their behalf. It really, really is the big story.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: And Crossroads is going to be one of the bigger players in that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: When you look at these groups, who does - who seems to be better armed, the broadly speaking Republican camp or broadly speaking Democratic camp?</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: 2008 was very much an aberration. Typically in presidential elections, typically in competitive elections, each side will end up with a similar amount of resources. The size of their pie will be similar, although the slices might be - might look different. In 2008, Obama, the Democrats had a pretty big advantage. In 2012, I think it's going to be back to what we typically see in a presidential election when both sides are going to have plenty of ammo. Now, it might be the case that on the Democratic side that more of that money is being spent by the Obama campaign or more of that money is being spent by the DNC.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: And on the Republican side, perhaps more of that money is being spent by some of these outside groups, like Crossroads, but no one is going to out-advertise the other. Each side is going to have their say in 2012.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So don't go ahead and sell your stock in those local television stations. They're going to be picking up a lot of ad time.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: Especially if you're in Ohio, Florida or Pennsylvania.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. There is also, in this early cycle, one candidate who's been running an out-and-out attack ad sequence. And that is Ron Paul, the congressman who's planning to retire at the end of this term. Some of them are funny. This one is just an out-and-out attack.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED 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: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: He is demonstrating himself to be the very essence of the Washington insiders.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: It's about serial hypocrisy.</s>REPRESENTATIVE RON PAUL: I'm Ron Paul, and I approve this message.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you expect the gloves to come off even more as this gets down to fewer candidates in the Republican primary.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: I think so. And it's interesting. Ron Paul actually his first ad, I was - I sort of called it the drive-by shooting negative ad. And as you know, I've been studying negative advertising for quite some time, and I think Ron Paul's first ad hit all five or six Republican candidates in one negative ad. And this later one is much more focused on former Speaker Gingrich. Negative advertising in a primary is really interesting. If you remember back towards 2004, the - Gephardt and Howard Dean went after each other in Iowa.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: They were one and two in Iowa. Political consultants call it the Dean-Gephardt murder-suicide in Iowa in 2004. And what happened was they went negative on each other, which then allowed John Kerry and John Edwards to come in one and two in Iowa. So it's going to be very interesting, because it's not negative advertising in what we typically see the general election where it's a two-person or a zero-sum game. That Ron Paul advertising could be benefiting Ron Paul. It could also be benefiting Mitt Romney by taking Newt Gingrich down.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Ken Goldstein, president of CMAG, the division of Kantar Media, an expert on campaign advertising. Of course, political junkie Ken Rudin is with us, as he is most Wednesdays. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Of course, there is some ads up on the other side of the slate. President Obama issued the first official ad.</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It all starts with you, making a decision to get involved, because we've got so much more to do. Call the number on your screen or visit JoinObama.com to let me know you're in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we all remember the Hope and change flood of ads four years ago. We tend not to remember so much that - about half the ads that President Obama - or candidate Obama - ran were negative.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: There was this great moment - and I thought it was a great moment because I study ads - in the 2000 - the last 2008 debate, when John McCain accused Barack Obama of running the most negative campaign ever, and Barack Obama then accused John McCain of running the most negative campaign ever, and they were both sort of right. As a proportion of ads, McCain was the most negative ever, but Barack Obama actually aired more negative ads than positive ads.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: It's just that he aired so many more ads in total than John McCain. I don't think we're going to see very many positive ads from the Democrats this time around. I think it's - in the presidential race. I think it's pretty clear that the campaign they're studying is very much the 2004 Bush campaign. And I would assume their assumption is Barack Obama is well-known, well-liked by some, not well-liked by others, and that their challenge is going to be to try and define the Republican candidate. And the challenge for the Republican candidate is going to be to try and define the Republican candidate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The former speaker, Newt Gingrich, said the - what the campaign he expects is that the president will try to say, look, I may not be so great but look at that other guy. That's pretty much the comparative advertising. And if it's Speaker Gingrich or if it's, for example, Mitt Romney, the two front-runners at the moment, he's going to have a lot of ammunition.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: He's going to have an awful lot of ammunition. Listen, you know, elections in general, and presidential elections, in particular, either about change or no change, rehire the person or not rehire the person. That said, the challenger has to reach a certain threshold level of credibility. And the strategy of the Obama campaign, I think, is to try and make that Republican not meet that threshold level of credibility and partly trying to do that through what's clearly going to be a massive, paid media.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There's another tactic that we haven't talked about yet, and that's sort of the oppo research tactic. You go through everybody's everything, anybody has ever said on tape anywhere, anytime, and try to make it look bad for them. And, well, somebody on the, I think, the Democratic side dug up an old clip of Mitt Romney when he was running for governor of Massachusetts.</s>MITT ROMNEY: I think people recognize that I'm not a partisan Republican, that I'm someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Might actually help him in the general election, maybe not so much in Iowa.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: You know, I think that's a really excellent question. That what we're seeing in advertising is candidates in their own words, and we're in the world now because of the cheap video camera or the - or we have cameras in all of our phones, that nothing, nothing a candidate says is not caught on tape, is not - both video and audio. And so I think we talked a little bit before about how you're going to shine through on your message, and I would expect to see the most effective ads of 2012 be the candidate words being used against him in an ad by an opponent.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Ken, we already saw this on the Republican side, using Barack Obama saying if we keep talking about the economy, we lose. Of course, in the speech where he said that, he was quoting a Republican adviser to John McCain. Accurately or not, everybody has been slinging mud back and forth - but exactly this phenomenon.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah. There are two ways of looking at it. The longer Gingrich versus Romney goes on or whoever the Republican field is, you can make the case that it's worse for the Republican Party, and it damages them in November. But we also saw in 2008, Obama and Hillary Clinton going on for longer than we ever expected, until June, and yet, that didn't seem to hurt the Democratic Party. It seemed to make both Obama and Hillary Clinton better campaigners.</s>KEN GOLDSTEIN: Yeah. I really think that ultimately the length of the Republican campaign will not have much an impact on what happens in the general election. What's going to have an impact on the general election is - we're all saying it - it's what going on with the economy and whether that Republican is able to reach that certain threshold of - level of credibility. And again, remember all the drama in spring of 2008, Democrats - or the Democrats are going to come back, and Hillary Clinton supporters aren't going to vote for Barack Obama.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah. That all changed. Ken Goldstein, president of CMAG at Kantar Media, thanks very much for your time. More with The Political Junkie in just a minute. We'll look at the daisy ad. This is NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Right now, political junkie Ken Rudin is still with us. We mentioned a few minutes ago the ongoing evolution of political ads, an evolution that goes back to one TV commercial from five decades ago that sets the tone for much of what we see today.</s>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: One, two, three, four, five, seven, six, six, eight, nine, nine...</s>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.</s>PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: These are the stakes: To make a world in which all of God's children can live or to go into the darkness. We must either love each other, or we must die.</s>PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: LBJ's famous "Daisy" ad for the 1964 presidential campaign. Here with us in Studio 3A is Robert Mann, longtime press secretary on Capitol Hill. His new book is called "Daisy Petals, Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad that Changed American Politics." Nice to have you with us today.</s>ROBERT MANN: Thank you, Neal. Good to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And that ad, well, I think everybody remembers it. It ran all of once.</s>ROBERT MANN: It did. It ran one time on the night of November 7, 1964, but there are only three networks that day, so 50 million people saw it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think you got the date wrong.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: September.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: September.</s>ROBERT MANN: Yeah. That's what I was going to say. I was going to say...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You said November.</s>ROBERT MANN: Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. You're right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: After the election, it would have been extraordinary.</s>ROBERT MANN: I should know to try to slip something by the political junkie.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yes. It ran just once, but everybody talked about it for, I guess, the next 50 years.</s>ROBERT MANN: Yes, they did. And I show it in my classes at the Manship School at LSU every year, and young people and old people remember it. They see it. They're very familiar with it. But they're not always aware that it showed only one time and had the impact that it did.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: There are so many things that fascinate me about it. And when Neal just played the ad, I still got the same chills I've gotten for - I mean, I'm not 50 years old yet, but if I were that old, I'd - anyway. First of all, one, Johnson never mentions Barry Goldwater's name. He never mentions his opponent's name.</s>ROBERT MANN: No. And, you know, also the spot never shows Johnson's - never shows Goldwater's image nor does it show Johnson's image. It has his name at the end, but it relies on the viewer and the information the viewer had already in his or her head or mind, about Barry Goldwater, and provided context for that information about the reckless talk that Goldwater had engaged in over several years about nuclear weapons and nuclear testing. And it plugged into a narrative that existed about Goldwater and used it in the most creative way that had ever been tried in political advertising and perhaps the most creative way that's ever been done since.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And it wasn't the kind of ad that we were used to seeing. We're used to seeing the I like Ike smiley, happy...</s>ROBERT MANN: That's right.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: ...face. This was pretty negative, pretty brutal.</s>ROBERT MANN: It was. But it - in some ways, it relied on the viewer providing a lot of the negative information because it relied on what they already had. And it was innovative in the sense that it was spot advertising. It was a 60-second spot that came in a time when politicians generally preempted regular programming for 15, 30 minutes and just delivered an abbreviated version of their speech. And this was a new technique.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Spoke directly to the camera.</s>ROBERT MANN: That's right. Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this was - could this be described as really the first negative ad?</s>ROBERT MANN: Well, in some ways, it is. It's certainly the first use of negative advertising in this creative way. It certainly is not the first time that negative politics was used in presidential campaigning, but it was the first time that a presidential campaign decided to go so hard negative. And it was the first of many negative ads that were ran against Barry Goldwater in that campaign. And it was the first spot of that campaign, which was also unusual for a presidential candidate to start a presidential campaign with negatives instead of the kind of soft positives that campaigns like to use first.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Given the outcome of that race, did people draw conclusions about the usefulness of negative advertising?</s>ROBERT MANN: Well, I think they did. And I think they drew a lot of conclusions in that, and one was that it was OK. Not only OK, but advantageous to characterize your opponent before he had a chance to do it himself. So before Goldwater could even think about getting off of the mat, the Johnson campaign had pummeled him week after week after week. So that by the end of that month of September 1964, Goldwater was really without a chance in the election.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: If Goldwater's record made that spot legitimate...</s>ROBERT MANN: Mm-hmm.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: ...why did the Johnson campaign only run it once?</s>ROBERT MANN: Well, I asked that just the other night to one of the creators of the spot, and the answer is simply - there's a number of different answers. But I think one is that it did its job. I mean, they reached 50 million people showing it once. And then the - all three television networks very helpfully played it in its entirety later that week, probably reaching another 50 million people. So it's easy to figure out that, probably 50 million or more saw it that week. That was about 80 percent of the electorate at that time. And they had other spots coming right behind it that made much the same point in a - in just as a creative way. And I think they just felt like it did its job. There's - we have more to come, and we're going to use that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But was there a negative reaction to it?</s>ROBERT MANN: There was a negative reaction to it. There was a negative reaction to it that they wanted, as a matter of fact. They were hoping and praying that the Goldwater people, the Republican...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Cry foul.</s>ROBERT MANN: Yeah. They would cry foul, that the Republicans would scream bloody murder, and they did. The Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate got up on the floor and condemned it. They've - the RNC filed an official complaint about it. And secretly, over at the White House, Lyndon Johnson and his campaign aides were applauding all the way because they wanted Goldwater to say, yes. Indeed, that spot is about me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We tend to forget that Lyndon Johnson was, in many ways, the most media-savvy president up until his time. He was the first, I think, to have the three TV sets...</s>ROBERT MANN: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...with the three network feeds, all - that he could see them all at the same time.</s>ROBERT MANN: Yes, he was. And the creators of the spot, Doyle Dane Bernbach, which was the Madison Avenue firm that produced the spots, remarked that Johnson was probably the best - one of the best clients they ever had because he understood that it was their job to produce the ads. And he was - it was his job to be the candidate. And he didn't really meddle with their work.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: If President Johnson was up 65 to 35 or 68 to, you know, whatever, he had a huge lead in the polls. Was it overkill? I mean, that's, well, you know, with no pun intended though.</s>ROBERT MANN: What's...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: For once.</s>ROBERT MANN: What's interesting is that, at the end of that month, when they had ran that spot and a number of others just pummeling Barry Goldwater, Johnson's numbers actually went down in the Gallup polls about four points. And Goldwater's numbers did not change. And so, my belief is that what those spots did was solidify the image of Goldwater as a reckless person who would get the country into a nuclear war. The image was already there. They just raised the fear and solidified the image of Goldwater as a warmonger.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Robert Mann, thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate it.</s>ROBERT MANN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Robert Mann joined us here in Studio 3A. You can read an excerpt from his new book "Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds," at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Coming up, we'll be talking about investment scams tailored for baby boomers. |
NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics including advising your child's career path, reasons why the U.S. Postal Service is still useful, and what happens when you gossip. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Tuesday and time to read from your comments. Last week, when we spoke with award-winning actor John Lithgow about his memoir, "Drama," and his early career, we asked listeners who worked in the arts if they'd want their children to follow in their footsteps. Wanda Holmgren from Faribault, Minnesota, wrote, my husband and I are both artists and educators, and I would not encourage our two daughters to enter the visual arts field as we have. We're strapped with huge student debts, and we're making small salaries. And Gil Potter from San Francisco emailed, it's not just the arts that parents steer kids away from. My father was a successful lawyer that became a judge, and his only commandment to my life was never to become a lawyer. So I took his advice and studied to become a lighting electrician.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our conversation about whether the post office has outlived its usefulness prompted Rita Moore to write us from Portland. It's worth noting that here in Oregon, we vote only by mail, and with the panic around voting fraud, voting by mail is being considered in a number of other states. I'd rather not have to FedEx my ballot. And Julia Boyle added, my daughters are three and seven and use the postal service regularly. They're too young to have an email account, and their crucial correspondent is thank you notes. Writing or drawing their appreciation when they receive a gift or getting a thank you letter when they have given a gift is very important, and there is no option other than the post office for inexpensively sending letters. The post office has not outlived its usefulness.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Finally, when we talked to Joseph Epstein about his latest book, "Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit," many of you dished some dirt on your gossip experiences. Laura Newton from Tallahassee: Sometimes gossip informs our choices. Hearing people talk about how other women handle infidelity or the serious illness of a child gives me examples of possible choices for handling my own difficulties. And Holly Santiago in St. Cloud, Minnesota, emailed, whenever my grandmother and I gossip, she ends our discussion with, well, everyone is crazy except you and I, and sometimes I wonder about you, winking, of course. It reminds me that our gossip is a form of play. She also says, the less I gossip, the more trustworthy I appear, the more juicy gossip that I hear.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So if you want to share your gossip or have a correction, comment or question for us, you can email 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 you can follow me, @nealconan - all one word. |
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and other first-person shooters are popular. Action-adventure games like Super Mario Land 3D and Batman: Arkham City are in demand. Jamin Warren of Kill Screen Magazine talks about the best video games, and how the industry prepares for the season. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Even hardened gamers can admit to some confusion this holiday season, or maybe just an embarrassment of riches. The latest "Call of Duty" video game racked up a billion dollars in sales in just 16 days last month. That's a day faster than it took "Avatar" to reach the same number at the box office. Other popular shooters like "Battlefield 3" and "Uncharted 3" are on a lot of wish lists, too. And then there's action-adventure games like "Super Mario Land 3D" and "Batman: Arkham City," some classic re-issues, and that's not to mention games for mobile devices.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What video game are you looking to find under your tree this Christmas? 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: Joining us from our bureau in New York is Jamin Warren, founder of Kill Screen magazine. And nice to have you with us.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Hello. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm good. Thanks. So what's driving the interest in video games this year? That $1 billion in just a little over two weeks for "Call of Duty" can't just be from purchases made by hardcore gamers.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Sure. I think you're seeing a wide market penetration of videogame console devices such as the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. All of them have had relatively robust sales, although the PlayStation 3 has lagged. But what's been significant is, in November, it was one of the strongest months for video game sales since February of 2009, which was considered to be the peak for the traditional console market. There's been a slide, but the last three months have been incredibly robust, in part due to tent-pole titles such as "Call of Duty," but, again, also the number of consoles that are out in the market right now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You mentioned the Nintendo Wii. Isn't that getting a little elderly?</s>JAMIN WARREN: It is, actually. That's one of the things that analysts are looking at, is 2011 might be one of the last years for Nintendo Wii in terms of its sales. It's really lagged far behind. And so Nintendo had placed a lot of faith in the Nintendo 3DS, which saw a very high price point, which consumers didn't really like, and it faced a precipitous drop almost immediately. So Nintendo's certainly looking for new options in 2012.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mother of mercy, is this the end of "Zelda"?</s>JAMIN WARREN: I don't think it's the end of "Zelda." In fact, there was a new "Zelda" title that was released called "Skyward Sword" for the Wii, which saw popularity amongst gamers. So, you know, one of the things Nintendo always has is key franchises, such as, you know, the "Super Mario Brothers" franchise, which we saw the release of "Mario Kart 7" and the aforementioned "Super Mario Land" for 3DS.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And those of us who don't pay strict attention to this industry might think the Wii has a monopoly on that sort of participation part, where you - it sees your emotion and you control characters through your body. Not so. There are other ways to do that.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Absolutely. One of the things that's happening in the video game market is you're seeing a rapid expansion in terms of not just the types of titles that are out there, but the types of gamers that are being introduced to titles. Microsoft has something called the Kinect, which is a very amazing little device which picks up all these different articulation joints in the body and doesn't use a controller at all, just uses this sort of "Minority Report"-style swiping in front of the screen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We hope the other aspects of "Minority Report" are not included.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Yeah. All those are excluded.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So I'm told it's a very, very effective device.</s>JAMIN WARREN: It is. It uses speech recognition, and Microsoft is really looking at the Kinect as a way to introduce people who've been turned off by the number of buttons on traditional console controllers. They're seeing it as a gateway device, so to speak, for an audience that may have felt left behind.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is also the relatively newer phenomenon, given the power of smartphones: mobile device games that, well, that seems to have opened a whole new industry.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Absolutely. And for those who don't want to brave lines at Best Buy or GameStop, certainly mobile platforms like the iOS devices allow for a different type of gameplay experience. And, in fact, those often offer lower price points. And certainly the types of games that are coming out, because they're so much less expensive to produce and also to get out to the marketplace, you're seeing a lot of experimentation in that field, as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So do we pay too much attention to those console games?</s>JAMIN WARREN: Well, I think it's just a matter of - there are all different types of game players that are out there, not just, you know, 17-year-old teenagers.</s>JAMIN WARREN: And so I think, you know, one of the problems is that from a sales perspective, a lot of times sales for things like iOS devices aren't made public, so you don't get the kind of figures that you get to release when "Call of Duty" sells $1 billion, for example. But, yeah, there's certainly lots of types of gamers out there, and it's really exciting to see all different stripes of people getting interested in games again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we were talking about the Nintendo Wii. In fact, the Nintendo system that sold the most is the venerable DS.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, handheld devices work really well at the lower price point, allows for, you know, for people who don't want to make the investment in a HD title. And they're really popular, obviously, amongst kids as well. You know, one of the things I've been excited about were the two titles that we talked about earlier - "Super Mario Land," which was one of my favorites. It's an homage to the classic "Mario" franchise. And another one, "Mario Kart 7," for folks out there who might be familiar with the "Mario Kart" franchise.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Again, these are the types of games that you're going to want to play with other people, share your experiences. They're not terribly difficult to pick up and play. And again, that invites a lot of different types of folks to get involved.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Jamin Warren of Kill Screen Magazine about the video games and other digital devices that are likely to find their way under more than a few Christmas trees this season. 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. We'll start with Christopher and - with us from Chittenango in New York.</s>CHRISTOPHER: Yes. Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi. Go ahead, please.</s>CHRISTOPHER: Hi. Longtime listener, first-time caller. I was really interested to hear this stuff about video games. I'm actually really looking forward to "Batman: Arkham City." I've seen a lot of the gameplay videos, and I'm even seeing some of the demos out there. But I've also actually recently purchased the "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," so that - I'm part of that $1 billion there.</s>JAMIN WARREN: And Activision thanks you. Both of those titles are excellent. The thing that's been great about the "Batman" franchise is it certainly always - the dream is to be Batman. And, you know, for a fan such as me, this is the first experience you have where you really feel like you are the Dark Knight. You know, with the "Call of Duty" franchise, one of the interesting things to note is that there is a subscription service that Activision has started to offer alongside of the purchase of the game.</s>JAMIN WARREN: It allows for a free version, which allows for stats tracking and social media integration such as Facebook. But you can also pay for $50 a year and have access to downloadable content. At this point we can start to think about the "Call of Duty" franchise more as a platform than just a game. It's something that comes out every single year. And at this point so many different types of people are playing them. You're able to see these types of services layered on top of them to allow for, you know, further fun further down the line.</s>CHRISTOPHER: It's certainly innovative with them originally just having a platform, like, just a game and then now integrating it to make it a - more of a franchise than just a game.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Absolutely. And at this point the games come out like clockwork. They'll be out every single year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In addition to being Batman, I understand you can be Catwoman too.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Yes. That was something that we discussed as well. There's an additional Catwoman add-on pack that you can play as Catwoman for additional missions. You know, again, one of the joys about playing video games is that you could take these characters that you might have experienced as a kid or as an adolescent and play them out. You get to be those characters, and that's certainly very exciting.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks for the call, Chris.</s>CHRISTOPHER: Thank you. Have a great day.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Catherine in Lansing emails: My daughters want "The Black Eyed Peas Experience" and "Just Dance 3" and something called "Dance Dance Revolution." Most games seem to be targeted at boys. Why is that?</s>JAMIN WARREN: Some of it is a function of marketing. There's always been a large segment of women who have played games, but sometimes their voices haven't always been heard. One of the things that's exciting, again, about the - all the different types of devices that are out there is that it's really opened doors for new types of gamers. Another game that I might add to that category is the "Dance Central" franchise, which is actually my favorite of all of those dance games in that you don't need a controller or anything like that.</s>JAMIN WARREN: You stand in front of your Microsoft Kinect for the 360, and it picks up all the different movements for your body. So there always have been women gamers out there. I really think some of the problems have been more on the marketing side and that the perception is that only boys play games, and that's certainly not the case. And in fact, if you look at who plays iOS games, it's much more heavily weighted towards women than some of the other devices that are out there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go to Carly, Carly calling us from Oakland.</s>CARLY: Hi. I was listening to your show as I was driving up to the local video game place in Oakland. I'm shopping today for my boyfriend and my nephew, and essentially all the games you mentioned are exactly what they want. Are these really good games? Should I be worried of any violence in the "Mario Bros." or anything like that for my nephew?</s>JAMIN WARREN: Oh, certainly not in the "Mario" franchise. You know, one of the things is to talk to the employees of the store, and then check the ratings as well. You know, video games have a rating system and can give you a good rundown. Also sort of - you could sort of look and see what the types of games are. So, certainly a game like "Arkham City," for example, you're playing Batman, but the level of violence sort of varies.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that'll be important, certainly for parents, is talking to the employees and saying, oh, these are the type of - this is the level of, let's say, violence or horseplay that might be acceptable for my child to consume. It involves some dialogue.</s>CARLY: Okay. Thank you so much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good luck.</s>CARLY: Thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A one-word email from David: "Skyrim."</s>JAMIN WARREN: That's really popular in our office. "The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim" series, it's an action role-playing game, kind of set in the fantasy, medieval fantasy universe. And it's one of those titles that when it comes out, there are large swath of productivity that are lost. You know, it's one of these games where you're enveloped in this enormous world. One of the things that people have liked about "Skyrim" is really the attention to details.</s>JAMIN WARREN: The universe that they've - that Bethesda has created is really robust in terms of the graphics and also in terms of the characters. It really feels like it is really a large immersive world. So "Skyrim," perhaps that's the one word that says it's all for fans of that franchise.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Another email. This one from Joe in Anne Arbor: "Star Wars: The Old Republic," exclamation, exclamation point. Can't wait. I gather that's not coming out until, what, the 20th?</s>JAMIN WARREN: Yeah, right. That's out December 20. Yup. You know, the "Star Wars" - that franchise, again, one of the great things about - one of the problems with "Star Wars" has been is that there haven't been the same type of excitement around those releases as compared to "Batman." And so some fans are saying that they think that "The Old Republic," that might be the title that gets people interested in "Star Wars" as a video game universe all over again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Jamin Warren, founder of Kill Screen Magazine, from our bureau in New York. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Chris is on the line, calling from Rochester.</s>CHRIS: Hi, Neal, first-time caller here. Love the show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks.</s>CHRIS: I'm an avid gamer, 30 years old, have been all my life. And I just wanted to say that my eight-year-old daughter will be receiving "Rayman Origins" this year for Christmas. It's sort of a gift to us both because it's a cooperative platform, it's great for kids, and I think we'll have a lot of fun sitting around the living room playing the game together.</s>JAMIN WARREN: That's great that you noted the cooperative aspects of the game. You know, I think that's one of the things that, you know, parents often have trouble with is trying to figure out what types of titles are going to be good for the whole family. And what's great about the "Rayman" franchise is, one, it is the same vein as the "Mario" series. Although people, you know, sadly I don't think - as many people pay attention to that franchise as perhaps they should, but, yeah, that's an excellent, excellent choice. And again, I would pair those with the "Mario" games as well. That's a good pairing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chris, I'm unfamiliar with "Rayman." What are his attributes?</s>CHRIS: Oh, it's a classic franchise from developer, I believe, Michel Ancel , if I got that right. And it's kind of just a nonsensical, cartoony, fun and quirky really beautiful game.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, good luck. And I hope you and your daughter enjoy it.</s>CHRIS: Thanks very much. I think we will. Take care.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much. There's one game that's been getting particularly good reviews and that is involving "Uncharted 3," which stars Nathan Drake.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Absolutely, so the "Uncharted" franchise has been one of my favorites over the last couple years, in part for anyone who grew up with "Indiana Jones," which is lots and lots of people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Like everybody.</s>JAMIN WARREN: That is, it's like everybody. The "Uncharted" franchise you play as Nathan Drake, who is the heir to the explorer, Sir Francis Drake, in search of different treasures from place to place. One of the things that that developer has done so well is really the storytelling in those games are really, really robust. They really create this magical universe.</s>JAMIN WARREN: You know, that's one of the things when you were watching the "Indiana Jones" series, you often felt like, oh, I wish I could be there. I wish I could be that sort of person. And that's really the type of experience that the "Uncharted" franchise has really delivered.</s>JAMIN WARREN: And so, again, in addition to the story, the graphics are incredible. It was one of the marquee titles for the PlayStation 3. And that was the — that was one of the titles was really going to show off what this console could do. But for anyone who likes action-adventure, that's certainly the title. And again, it's one of those games that it's not so profoundly difficult that people can pick up and learn and play along the way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think it's the third iteration in that particular series. Obviously the "Call of Duty" is, I think, the four billionth. Does it matter if you have skipped the first two versions and you start with number three?</s>JAMIN WARREN: No, it doesn't. So for those three games, again, that's something that they've done really brilliantly, as they stand as independent games that are connected with the same characters, but it's not as if you need to go dust off the previous versions of "Uncharted" to play the third one. And frankly, that's something that becomes true of a lot of franchise titles, with a couple exceptions. But for the most part, no matter the number of the series in game, whether it's the third or the fourth game, you don't necessarily need to know what's happened in the previous titles.</s>JAMIN WARREN: Again, that's not true for most games, but you're finding that developers would like to introduce new parties to play these games. So they're not saying, oh, you need to have everything, you need to have everything figured out, have done a ton of research. We just want you be able to pick up and play.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go to Andy, Andy with us from Iowa City.</s>ANDY: Hi. I have a Wii, and I - oh, by the way, great show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you.</s>ANDY: And I was just wondering if - what the best dance game is for a wife on the Wii console.</s>JAMIN WARREN: That's a really good...</s>ANDY: I'll take my answer off the air.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Andy, thanks.</s>JAMIN WARREN: So the "Dance Dance Revolution" franchise is really good. That would be one that I will look for. There's some older dance titles, you know, for the Wii that work really well. But, you know, again, I think one of the things that's been great about dancing games is because they're new technologies, it allows for you to kind of recreate some of these dance movements.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Angelique(ph): I'm a 35-year-old mother of three who still owns her original NES. I am now loyal to my Xbox 360 and love the "Fable" series and very much look forward to "Fable IV" and the time away from my kids to play it.</s>JAMIN WARREN: You know, actually, there was a game that we haven't talked about that I would recommend, is a game called "Bastion." It's one of my favorite titles. It was a smaller title, a downloadable title for the Xbox 360. But the "Fable" franchise was one that was done by kind of a famous game maker named Peter Molyneux. Really, he created this kind of fantasy universe. It's kind of set in days of yore. But this title called "Bastion" is really amazing; it kind of reminds of the old "Zelda" games that you play, this sort of young, faceless man searching for the shards in this universe. One of the most notable things is that the voiceover work in that game is really powerful, really, really evocative. And that's a good in-between title for someone who might like the older-style games, but is looking for something with - looking for something with a new twist. The art style, really incredible. It's the cel-shaded kind of design, very colorful. So I would recommend that title as well, "Bastion."</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there are a couple of classic re-issues rebooted for high-definition. But I was interested, there's apparently a CD out of "The Greatest Video Game Music."</s>JAMIN WARREN: So there is something called "Video Games Live," which is orchestral arrangements of classic video game tracks.</s>JAMIN WARREN: And you - they actually, they perform live. They do a bunch of different dates. It was done by a video game composer named Tommy Tallarico. But, yeah, for fans of video game music, that would be absolutely a place that - that might be a good gift for someone who's a fan of video game music.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jamin Warren, thanks very much for your time today. We hope you get every game you want. I mean, you get them for free under your tree.</s>JAMIN WARREN: I buy them for other people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Jamin Warren joined us from bureau in New York. He's the founder of Kill Screen Magazine. Tomorrow, it's TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. Ira Flatow will be here with a look at the hunt for the elusive God particle and what fresh data reveal about the particle's whereabouts. See you again on Monday. Have a good weekend, everybody. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. |
Donald Berwick resigned as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in December. Berwick explains why he thinks much of the spending in the U.S. health care system is wasted, and the need to reform Medicare and Medicaid to improve coordination of care. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Until the beginning of this month, Donald Berwick served as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dr. Berwick's nomination got caught up in the partisan politics that accompany passage of the health care law, and he took office under a controversial recess appointment. His mission was to make the centers more efficient, to cut costs and to deliver more patient-centered care. On his way out of office, he said that as much as a third of the money spent on Medicare and Medicaid is wasted.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from health care professionals in our audience. Where do we need to go next in the overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website, go to our npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. And Dr. Donald Berwick joins us now from the studios of member station WGBH in Boston. And nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: DR. DONALD BERWICK: Thanks for having me, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we want to talk about the delivery of Medicare and Medicaid services, but let me start with politics. Given your experience, would you recommend to anybody that they join government service?</s>BERWICK: Absolutely. It was maybe the most thrilling part of my whole long career. I loved working there. It was a great privilege. And I'm glad that I had the time I had.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet you were personally attacked by people who should have known better. Your appointment was held up and eventually denied.</s>BERWICK: Oh, the attacks didn't bother me. They didn't make any sense and they kind of - I just tried to ignore them. But the chance to work with Medicare and Medicaid and the great people who work in the federal government was eye-opening and really motivating. And after all, this is a time of such enormous promising change in health care. It was mostly fun.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mostly fun, OK. I think that will be the headline: mostly fun.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As you - because you were only able to serve a truncated term, could you give us - if there was one thing you accomplished, what would it be?</s>BERWICK: Well, you have to give me two things. I mean, internally I tried to focus on the agency, CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. I mean, I tried to tell the people there that not only do they pay bills, but they can really help lead improvement of American health care, which is my lifelong endeavor. They rose to it. It was just amazing to work with them as we discussed patient safety and patient-centered care, much more reliable care, efficiency in care. And you know, we discovered together how we - how Medicare could be - and Medicaid could even be better leaders for improvement of care, which is the point.</s>BERWICK: Externally it was a series of programs that mainly the Affordable Care Act, the new law allowed us to launch a massive national effort on patient safety, for example, the largest ever, which if it works - and I think it will - is going to reduce deaths from infections and other complications in hospitals by tens of thousands in the next couple of years and will also smooth transitions between hospitals and home. We worked a lot on seamless care, coordinated care. We launched the Accountable Care Organization program, which is a kind of technical program within the Affordable Care Act, but what it really means is that people are really going to have doctors and nurses who now can follow them through their journeys through care and experience much better coordinated care.</s>BERWICK: We also worked on prevention. We launched a campaign called the Million Hearts campaign that if it works - and I think it will - is going to reduce heart attacks and strokes in the country by a million over the next four to five years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wanted to get back to patient safety for just a minute. This is an issue that you've been working on in various positions since - well, tell us about the experience of your wife and how that has changed your attitude towards the delivery of medical services.</s>BERWICK: Well, anyone who's been in health care for any substantial period of time has experienced errors in care. They're not intentional. The doctors and nurses, they're really trying to do their very, very best, but the care system was built in a very fragmented and unreliable way. So people get complications. They get infections. They get pressure sores. They get medication mix-ups. So when they go home there isn't good communication with the home about what's going on, you know, what medications they should be on, and as a result people get sicker and costs go up.</s>BERWICK: So patient safety, to me, it's almost - it's like a hallmark issue. Can we really make care as safe as I know it can be? And that will reduce costs and improve quality. And the tantalizing or maybe frustrating thing is we really know how to do it. There are places all over the United States that have reduced infection rates close to zero, that have almost eliminated pressure ulcers, that do very, very fine coordinated care. And at CMS and before that and after it, it seems to me if we know how to do something well, it should happen everywhere. I call it bringing excellence to scale, and that still remains, I think, a big agenda for our country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is that a big part of the waste that you were talking about?</s>BERWICK: Yeah. Waste appears in many forms. In your introduction, you said something I just want to correct. It's not waste in Medicare and Medicaid we're talking about. I think they're actually very efficient programs, if compared to others. It's waste in health care delivery. And Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance and states, they're all sort of shareholders in the health care system. And what that system is wasteful, when it has complications that could be avoided, or when there's failures of coordination or safety issues, or just administrative complexity, well, everybody pays that bill. And it's a mistake to say it's a Medicare and Medicaid problem. It really isn't. It's a health care delivery challenge, and I think we all need to be up to it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One thing that we're all familiar with is that the system seems to reward the administration of tests, whether they're needed or not.</s>BERWICK: Yeah, yeah. The system is rooted in an old tradition of silos of fragmented care that possible - that gets paid when you're in the hospital. The doctor gets paid when he sees you, or she sees you. A lab gets paid when you do a lab test. It's all paying in fragments. And the question is, well, who's paying for what we want, which is health? We want to have our pain controlled. We want to have our healing occur. We want to be able to get back to work. And this outcome-based payment, payment for the results is a much more modern way to think. But it's not the way we're thinking yet.</s>BERWICK: The Affordable Care Act, the new law has a lot of shifts - they call it shifting from volume to value. That just means paying hospitals and doctors and others for the results of what they do so they can focus on those results, instead of having to just turn the wheel all the time in order to make their incomes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to talk with health care professionals about where we need to go next in providing Medicare and Medicaid services. 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. We'll start with Julie, Julie with us from Raleigh.</s>JULIE: Thank you for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>JULIE: And thank you to your guest for your service to our country. I'm an emergency physician. And I'd like to comment on, you know, my perspective on the really incredible and kind of shameful waste that is involved, particularly with Medicaid, you know, as a result of, you know, patients in the emergency department. Unfortunately, you know, we in the emergency department see Medicaid patients, you know, really abusing what has become, you know, their entitlement program. They seem to have no sense of responsibility in terms of, you know, managing costs because they have no co-pay.</s>JULIE: You know, when they have to come to the emergency department, there's no cap on them. And that's - they can receive - we see patients who, you know, are able-bodied and have a vehicle, you know, just for the sake of convenience, calling 911 and taking an ambulance to the emergency department to be evaluated for a cough.</s>JULIE: And certainly, Medicaid, you know, provides primary care providers to all of their patients. I mean, it's - you know, you have to have a primary care provider as a Medicaid recipient. However, you know, if it's just simply inconvenient for one to schedule an appointment with their primary care provider, Medicaid patients come to the emergency department and they get whatever care, how much ever care they want to for free. And it's a big problem, and it's costing our government a lot of money, and it is waste, and it's shameful. So I'd like to hear your guest's comments on that, and how it can be changed, then. And actually, I'm curious why there is no Medicaid co-pay for even $3, $5 for use of the emergency department services.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Dr. Berwick?</s>BERWICK: Well, Julie, thanks. And first, bless you for your work, because, you know, emergency room is an essential part of our system. And I'm sure you're seeing all of the symptoms of care. Everything kind of settles on the emergency department, so I understand what you're seeing. I'm not quite sure I agree with you about the remedy.</s>BERWICK: I took care of Medicaid patients mostly in my career. For the majority of the time, I saw kids. I don't really think the problem of abuse is as widespread as what Julie's referring to. But it - or let me put it this way. I think most people don't intend to abuse the service. They're following the logic. They're going where it's logical to go. If we strengthen primary care for Medicaid patients, if we develop medical homes for them and health homes, if they really have a better place to go, they'll go there. And I think that the symptoms that Julie's talking about are symptoms of the lack of proper structures of health care systems.</s>BERWICK: We have to be very careful with co-payment. A lot of Medicaid patients are very much on the edge, and that co-payment may be the thing that dissuades them from coming in to have a symptom treated in early stages. They get worse. They crash. And suddenly, they're worse off, and we're paying a lot more money. So, yes, of course there can be abuses. But I'm not sure I'd use co-payment as the mainstay. We need to build a stronger primary care system for Medicaid patients, better coordinated care. And we'll see costs fall and quality go up. And I think Julie's practice will make a lot more sense to her.</s>JULIE: Mm-hmm. Well, thank you very much. It just seems to me like, you know, as with any entitlement program, if you give something to someone for free and they have no personal investment in, you know, in terms of, you know, managing the cost of what you have given them, in terms of, you know, managing the cost of their benefit, they just have no incentive to do that. And I really think that, you know, if we're going to continue this program and not bankrupt our country further, we need to consider, you know, introducing some type of incentive to Medicaid patients, you know, (unintelligible) responsibility.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or, as Dr. Berwick suggested, perhaps an alternative, somewhere else to go. Julie, thanks very much for the call.</s>JULIE: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to - this is Leslie, Leslie with us from Orlando.</s>LESLIE: Hi. I just want to say that I believe that CMS is doing a wonderful job in revolutionizing the health care delivery system in our country and providing leadership to the entire health care community. I have a question about the accountable care model. I know that the rules came out about a month and a half ago. And I just wanted to know what your plans were or what CMS' plans were to engage more providers into participating in the structure. I'm very motivated, but I know a lot of the providers that I service are apprehensive because they say they don't think it's going to work. And they also worry about the compensation structure. And I'm just interested to know - and one of the other things that I hear they're mentioning is monopoly, you know, or the potential for monopoly and the liability that comes with that.</s>BERWICK: Well, thanks, Leslie. First of all, your comment, CMS isn't alone, you know. A lot of the things that are going on in CMS are happening in the health care world - the greater health care world. And good example is ACOs, accountable care organizations. It would probably take the rest of our time for me to explain it in detail. But briefly, here's what's going on. Probably, most of us are better off when we're in systems of care that are coordinated - where one doctor talks to another doctor and they coordinate their work, when you go from the hospital to home, somebody to watch - got your back. You know, they're making sure that everything is in order. So we - I think I would argue we want to be in coordinated care. But when we pay for care in fragments, it's not coordinated, because everyone's just focused on what they do.</s>BERWICK: So the traditional way to deal with that in the past 30 or 40 years has been health maintenance organizations, HMOs, which can be good or can be bad. Those are coordinated care systems, but you're kind of locked into them. You have to go to that HMO, or it costs you more money to leave it, so that - that's one of the mainstays in coordination. A lot of people don't like that. Three out of four Medicaid beneficiaries don't want to be in a health plan. They want to go wherever they want.</s>BERWICK: The accountable care organization lets them do that. Providers of care, primary care providers can band together, say, with hospitals, and they say, OK. We'll watch where the patients go. And the patients that come to us, we'll coordinate their care, even though they still can go anywhere they want. And if the costs of their care fall, we get to share some of the savings. It's shared savings. The Medicare trust fund shares, the patient shares, and the provider shares. Of course, then you're worried. Well, are they going to skimp on care? Well, the answer is no, because under the Medicare rule, they're watched really, really closely, 33 different quality measures, a lot of reporting, a lot of special governance rules.</s>BERWICK: So it's a very interesting play for this country, to allow doctors to band together to form accountable care organizations. The patients still can choose to go anywhere they want, but the accountable care organization gets rewarded if the patient chooses to stay with them, and if the costs of care fall and the quality goes up. It's a terrific idea. We'll see if it works. I think it will, but it's a kind of national - it's a big national experiment right now, one that I think is very, very promising. That's what I'd want. I'd want coordinated care, but free choice.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Leslie, thanks very much for the call. We're talking with Dr. Donald Berwick, just left as the head of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>And we have this email from Judith in Grand Junction, Colorado: In another year, I'll be eligible for Medicare. I have a nearly phobic fear of becoming involved in that system. It's a fear of chaos. Currently, I have access to affordable indigent care from the State of Colorado. But when I turn 65, they're going to toss me into the Medicare pool. I'm terrified. Doctors hate Medicare patients. Save me.</s>BERWICK: Well, Judith, first of all, you're lucky to be in Grand Junction, Colorado. That's a really interesting town, where everyone's gotten together to make sure everybody has health care. It's a great story in America. I hope people study Grand Junction. Don't be scared, Judith. Medicare's system really is there for you. There are all sorts of terrific beneficiary support systems. Just try calling 1-800-MEDICARE. Just call the 1-800 number and see what kind of response you'll get. You'll find a person ready to help you and reach out to you. I think you're going to find it a good experience when you become a Medicare beneficiary.</s>BERWICK: Doctors do have some troubles with Medicare. Those are around payment, because Medicare payments are set according to certain rules, and doctors wish that they would pay more. And they're worried right now because under the law, there's an impending decrease in physician's payments. There's a pretty large - luckily, the president and Congress both seem committed to making sure that that dramatic cut in pay does not happen.</s>BERWICK: But, Judith, call back when you're in Medicare, because I think you're going to say it wasn't so bad after all. And after all, what happens to you is going to be much more determined by the health care system you're in, which is a good one in Grand Junction. And you're going to - and nothing's going to change. If you're in good care, you're going to stay in good care.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If I could ask another question of politics: I wonder, from the standpoint of health care reform, what do you see at stake in this upcoming elections in 2012?</s>BERWICK: That's a big horse race, a big horse race. I mean, we all know the major American health care problem at the moment is cost. It's unsustainably costly, double the costs of other countries, rising much faster than the gross national product. So everyone, no matter what side of the aisle they're on, they're looking for ways to reduce cost. The race is between people who think the only way to cut cost is to cut care - that is, you know, to take things away from people, cut back on Medicaid, cut back on Medicare benefits and so on, which really scares me. I don't think that's a good idea. But we'll have to do it if we can't find another way to get costs under control.</s>BERWICK: My way, the way I think we can do it, the way I believe in is to improve care. That's what we've been talking about. If care were more seamless, if it was safer, if it was more - if it followed science more closely, if some of the administrative nonsense went away, if we really fight fraud and abuse. I mean, there's hundreds of billions of dollars of costs that could be reduced while patients get better off, and that's the race.</s>BERWICK: In the presidential election, if people win who say take away the affordable care and go back to the old way, I don't think that's a good plan. And if people win who say, cut back on care, I don't think that's a good plan, either. I think the winners ought to be people that say let's improve care, that that's way - make it more patient-centered. Put the patient in charge, really. Give them power. And I think we'll see things get better. But I don't know. I'm holding my breath.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Doctor Berwick, thanks very much for your time today. And I hope you have a mostly fun time after this, too.</s>BERWICK: Thanks a lot, Neal. I'm sure I will.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Donald Berwick, former administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, with us today from member station WGBH in Boston.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tomorrow, Political Junkie Ken Rudin's back with the latest on the Republican field contending for the country's top job. This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. |
U.S. forces will leave Iraq by January 2012, but with thousands of diplomats and contractors remaining in the country, the U.S. presence will remain strong in the months ahead. Commentator Ted Koppel shares what he observed in a recent reporting trip to Basra, Iraq. Watch Ted Koppel's Iraq report on MSNBC's Rock Center With Brian Williams. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. About 5,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, and they will all leave by the end of this month. Yesterday, President Obama marked the end of the nearly nine-year-long war as a campaign promise kept. He stood beside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday and reflected on the costs and said U.S. troops will leave with their heads held high.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: NPR commentator Ted Koppel recently visited Iraq on assignment for NBC's "Rock Center" with Brian Williams. His report aired last night. His conclusion: The United States is not leaving. The largest U.S. embassy in the world, two huge consulates and more than 16,000 officials and contractors will remain behind.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ted Koppel ran it by U.S. Ambassador Jim Jeffrey.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: I realize you can't go into it in any detail, but I would assume that there is a healthy CIA mission here. I would assume that JSOC may still be active in this country, the Joint Special Operations. You've got FBI here. You've got DEA here. Can you give me sort of a menu of who all falls under your control?</s>JAMES JEFFREY: You're actually doing pretty well, were I authorized to talk about half of this stuff...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you've been in Iraq, what are we leaving behind? Our phone number, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Later in the program, we'll talk with Dr. Donald Berwick, who recently stepped down as the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But Ted Koppel joins us now here in Studio 3A. Nice to have you in the studio.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, it's nice to actually see you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Though the president cheers his accomplishment, you say not so fast.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: I do say not so fast, and I think he knows better. But he's right, he did make the campaign promise to get all the troops out, and all the troops will be out, save 157 who will be guarding the embassy, and a few hundred U.S. military trainers.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: But as you pointed out, 16 to 17 thousand others will be remaining behind, and the extraordinary thing, Neal, is we're hearing echoes now of what we heard nine years ago. You know, we can't have that smoking gun be a mushroom cloud. No one is actually using that particular formulation anymore, but the fear of nuclear weapons.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: The danger of a nation that is supporting terrorism. Oil, which was the great unspoken issue in 2002 and 2003, very much a part of this. The difference, of course, now is that the target is Iran, not Iraq. But the two are very close to one another, and the fact of the matter is that Iran is exercising an enormous influence throughout Iraq.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: And the oil fields, which have under the surface, they have something - I believe it's the second-largest reserves of any country in the world. That's all very close to Iran, and if Iran were to exercise significant political, let alone military, control in that region, together with their own oil and gas, they would have the capacity to wreak havoc on Western economies.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So one of the things we are leaving behind is, despite those 16 to 17 thousand people, a vacuum.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, one hopes that it won't be a vacuum. I mean, I asked the ambassador what would happen in the event of an out and out assault, a frontal assault, on the U.S. consulate that is down in Basra. And I should add parenthetically, Neal, the U.S. consulate down in Basra is rocketed two or three times a week.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: The first thing that happens when you arrive there is they hand you a cup of coffee and they say we've got to give you a security briefing. And the security briefing is brief enough that I can give you here and now: When you hear the alarm, hit the deck face down. Put your hands over your ears, keep your mouth open, cross your legs.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: When you ask how long it is between the time that the alarm goes off and the rockets hit, the answer is, well, not very long. I said, well, what do you mean, 30 seconds? Eventually you realize that you have about two seconds.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That is the most peculiar-looking structure too. To call it a structure is incorrect. There are all of these - seeing it last night on TV - trailers covered by these extraordinary roofs.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: That's exactly right. And the roofs are there for one reason and one reason only, and that's the rocket attacks. The consulate in Basra is hit by rockets two to three times a week on an average week. The rocket attacks can consist of two or three rockets, sometimes 10 or 15 rockets.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Fortunately, rockets are not easily or well-aimed. So they just kind of hit a general area. But these roofs that you reference over the different living centers of the consulate are designed so that they will absorb the impact of flying shrapnel so that people beneath the roofs, at least, will be safe.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: It looks very - I mean, it's almost like a - what's the architect's name, was it Saarinen, who designed the beautiful airport at Dulles in Northern Virginia, it looks rather like that except what you have beneath those roofs are very ordinary trailers, container housing units they call them, CHUs. And it's not a particularly elegant place to live, but at least under those roofs it's reasonably safe.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with commentator Ted Koppel, just back from a visit to Baghdad and Basra. If you've been to Iraq in the uniform or not, give us a call. What do you think we're leaving behind? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. And Richard's on the line calling from Wichita.</s>RICHARD: Yeah, I had a concern with those 16,000 contractors and civilians that we're leaving behind, basically without military protection. Are we setting up for another Iranian hostage crisis? And I don't mean the first one that everybody's forgotten about that was diffused nicely under Ambassador William Sullivan, but the second one that basically started Ted Koppel's fame as the leader of "Nightline," which was essentially to report on the Iranian hostage crisis that brought down a presidency.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, you have a good memory on all accounts. I remember the first hostage-taking. I remember Ambassador Sullivan, and of course I will never forget - Jimmy Carter once said to me that there were only two people in the world who had benefitted from the hostage-taking: the Ayatollah Khomeini and me. And I can't really disagree with him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: August company.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, if you get a chance to pick your company, I would pick otherwise, but your question is very well-founded. That is the fear: What happens if there is something more than just a rocket attack on the consulate down there in Basra? What happens if there is - go ahead, sir.</s>RICHARD: (Unintelligible) army - wouldn't they be perfect pawns for the ayatollah – the ayatollah who heads the Mahdi Army?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The Mahdi Army, you're talking about Mr. Sadr?</s>RICHARD: Yeah, and his goal to have, you know, extraordinary powers and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Muqtada al-Sadr, yes. But Ted?</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Muqtada al-Sadr is - he and his party are now actually coalition partners with the Iraqi prime minister, who stood next to President Obama just yesterday. And it's interesting to point out - I mean your question is right on the money because Muqtada al-Sadr told his followers that when the U.S. troops leave - and this is not the exact formulation but pretty close - that those who remain behind, the U.S. diplomats who remain behind and the contractors who remain behind, should be regarded by his followers as foreign occupiers who must be driven out of Iraq.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: So you're exactly right. The idea of taking hostages I'm sure has occurred to him.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Richard, thanks very much for the call.</s>RICHARD: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to - this is James and James with us from Wisconsin.</s>JAMES: Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my call. What we're really talking about is pulling out from Iraq and then pulling our major influence out of Iraq. And my question is, I'm wondering how much influence are we really pulling out of there? You talk about we're leaving so much behind as far as that 16,000 personnel in the embassy and the CIA influence and all these other influences.</s>JAMES: Now, they've been training the Iraqi military for 10 years now, building them up. Are we pulling out our American troops and really the Iraqis are going to be able to take that place, but they'll still be under the same command and control, American influence that we have had over there? Is our influence really leaving that region?</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: They're - I mean, first of all, there continues to be an American influence in the sense that we have just sold the Iraqis 140 M1A1 tanks. We are in the process - I think the announcement was made just yesterday - of selling I think another 14 F16 fighter jets.</s>JAMES: Yeah, so with our money and our trade and our influence, and really like I say, with the money that we're supporting them and the weapons, and our ground personnel, they're kind of the lower, you know, echelons of the influence there, so they can switch nationalities, pull the Americans out and replace them with the Iraqis, but the power influential structure will still pretty much be in place, won't it?</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, I'd be a little cautious about that. To this day, a good deal of Iran's military hardware is American, dating back to the time that we sold all the advanced weapon systems that we could to the shah of Iran. Weapons are entirely neutral on who operates them. They don't care if they're operated by friends or foes.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: What we have in Iraq today are many, many hundreds, possibly even thousands, of civilian contractors who together with military trainers - the M1A1 tank for example is built by General Dynamics, and the people who are there are General Dynamics personnel who are training the Iraqis.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: But that's - in many respects, that's a purely commercial proposition. The Iraqis over this past year or two have purchased, I think, $7.5 billion worth of weapons, and we have transferred another $2.5 billion under a foreign aid package.</s>JAMES: Okay, thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, James, thanks very much. Yet we have to remember that Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war, a million dead counting both sides, and it was to the surprise of the Iraqis, who started it, that the Arab in Iran did not rise to join their cause but remained loyal to the Iranians, and then it was a surprise to the Iranians that the Shias in Iraq did not rise to their cause when they were ascendant. And yet these two have a bitter history.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: They have a very bitter history, but if you'll recall, Neal, on the front page of yesterday's New York Times there was a photograph of bodies and the remains of people who died during that war, which was back in the 1980s, being exchanged at the border of Iran and Iraq. In a manner of speaking, it was a symbolic way of saying that war is over, we are now friends.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with NPR commentator Ted Koppel about how the country will look once U.S. troops leave Iraq. More in a moment. 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. When Ted Koppel visited Iraq recently on assignment for NBC's "Rock Center with Brian Williams," he spoke with one of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's official spokesmen who assured Koppel that the age-old Sunni-Shiite divide in Iraq is no longer an issue in his national forces.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Koppel then asked several uniformed officers about, some Sunni, some Shiite. At least one did not feel comfortable answering what to him was a sensitive question. Tensions have risen since the arrest of hundreds of former Baathists in the last couple of days. Some Iraqis fear the American withdrawal will leave room for divisions between Sunnis and Shiites to destabilize the country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you've been in Iraq, what are we leaving behind? 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: And I wanted to follow up with you, Ted, on that Shiite-Sunni divide. There was a - to call it a civil war is probably not exaggerating. Back in 2005, 2006, 2007, many, many were dead. And it is the Shiites who are ascendant. The Sunnis, of course, under Saddam Hussein were ascendant. And many fear the withdrawal of the referee, as you will, the Americans, will provide the opportunity for this war to erupt again.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Interestingly enough, back during the height of that fighting, some of the worst of it was down in Basra, that area that we were just talking about.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Very heavily Shiite.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Very heavily Shiite. And Prime Minister Maliki went down there ostensibly to suppress, and indeed ultimately they did suppress, the Shiite forces who were largely supported by the Iranians. But that was done, although not much was made of it at the time, with very heavy U.S. military involvement. And without that U.S. military involvement, I don't think A, Maliki would have gone down and B, would not have been successful.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there is much talk of federalism in Iraq, which is more that constitutional musing. It is the Kurds who want to keep, pretty much, their own autonomy in the northern part of the country, the old...</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Or more. They may want to nationalize altogether.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And then the - in Basra, the southern oil-rich part of the country, they would like to set up their own province much like Kurdistan.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: And the Sunni talking about doing some of the same things in the center of the country. So you're absolutely right. There is that, and I don't think it would take very much for Iraq to blow up again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lets' go next to Gaea(ph), Gaea with us from Tallahassee.</s>GAEA: Yes, thank you for taking my call. I lived in Iran prior to the hostage takeover, and Iran prides itself on not initiating or being the aggressor, but they're very good and very crafty in provoking another nation to engage in war, and then they strike. And I feel that that will happen over the oil in Iraq. I'd like your comments on that.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, I hear what you're saying, and I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I'm not sure how they provoke the Iraqis to do something along the border that will enable Iran then to move into Iraq. That sort of seems a little bit backwards.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: I think the provocations are already ample in that the rockets that are being fired and the militia that are firing those rockets, the rockets are supplied by the Iranians, the militia are trained by the Iranians.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the military officer - U.S. military officers you spoke with, made no bones about this.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Absolutely, absolutely. No, there was a lieutenant colonel down there who had been there for the purpose of facilitating the turnover from the military to the civilians, and he said - I asked him who's the enemy, and he said the enemy, you know, the enemy is clearly Iran, and it's the Iranian-backed militia, and the weapons are coming across the border.</s>GAEA: I see. I was thinking more along the lines of provoking another nation over Iraq.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Which nation did you have in mind?</s>GAEA: Israel or perhaps (unintelligible).</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Ah, I see. Well, you know, that's a very interesting point. I heard a lot of talk among, particularly the U.S. military over there, that they are concerned about - not always concerned in a negative way - but feel that there is a very real possibility that the Israelis will attack Iran's nuclear facilities. And where that would lead, good lord only knows.</s>GAEA: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Gaea, thanks very much.</s>GAEA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to - this is Conrad(ph), Conrad with us from Scottsdale, Arizona.</s>CONRAD: Hi, gentlemen, thank you. I was wondering what the general state of Iraq is to become a sovereign nation, practical things like their electricity and finances and their Chapter 7 sanctions and the hydrocarbon law that's been kind of looming for many years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chapter 7 was of course the United Nations sanctions that were applied to Iraq back in the 1990s up until 2003. They, of course, have been lifted since the U.S. invasion. But the other questions, Ted?</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: I'm so glad you answered that one, Neal.</s>CONRAD: (Unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Pardon me?</s>CONRAD: I don't think it's completely...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I believe you're incorrect. I think they have all been lifted. Go ahead, Ted.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: All right, now, the rest of the question, I'm sorry, I was so focused on - so focused on what I didn't know that...</s>CONRAD: What's the state of them being a sovereign nation, the practical stuff like their economy, I know they have problems with electricity being on 24 hours a day, it's only four or five hours a day, and then just their dinar is basically worthless, and I believe they're using American dollars. So as far as the practicalness of, you know, building roads and just rebuilding the nation.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, the practicality in terms of rebuilding the nation, there are all kinds of volunteers who are willing. And when I say volunteers, I mean governments in addition to our own. The Chinese are there. The Germans are there. The British are there. The French are there.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: There is a whiff of money in the air. Again, I saw an item I think in the paper just this morning in which it may have been President Obama who yesterday made reference to the fact that the Iraqi economy is growing faster than the economy of India. That's quite extraordinary when you think about it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oil helps. Conrad, thanks very much for the call. Here's an email from Ken(ph) in Portland: A lot of talk about Iranian-supported attacks on the consulate in Basra. Does Ted see any danger of outright Iranian invasion of Iraq, from there, threatening Saudi Arabia? Do they have the military capability for something like that? Do you think the U.S. would be willing to redeploy to the region with sufficient force to counter if that happens?</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, first of all, no I don't think the Iranians are going to launch an all-out attack, unless, of course, what one of our earlier callers suggested were to happen, and that is if the Israelis were to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran, then I think all bets would be off, and there's no telling where the Iranians might try to strike back.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: So, you know, the issue of do I think there will be an all-out attack, no. Do I think we have sufficient forces in the region? Certainly CENTCOM believes that it has adequate forces in the region. We have a huge Naval/Marine presence in the Persian Gulf. There is a growing U.S. military presence in Kuwait.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: You have, of course, the naval headquarters in Bahrain, and there are ample U.S. forces in the area for, certainly, an initial response. And if it were just for the rescue of Americans, there would be an awkward moment because when I asked the ambassador, you know, what do we do if people come under direct attack, he said that's the responsibility of the Iraqi government.</s>I asked him: Are you confident that they would respond? And he said yes. I pointed out last night that that is what ambassadors are expected to do, and that is to be polite to their hosts. The military leaders that I interviewed were a little more blunt about it, and they made it quite clear that they think CENTCOM has adequate forces in the region to be able to respond and that they would.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Chris(ph), and Chris is calling us from Fort Bragg.</s>CHRIS: Hey, how are you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good, thanks.</s>CHRIS: Well, thanks for taking my call. I'd like to make the point - well, I just left Iraq a couple months ago, and so I was in an intel position, and so I understand a little bit about the issue. First I'd like to talk about U.S. influence. One of the callers suggested that we might be losing influence by leaving or he asked what we might be losing.</s>CHRIS: So I want to point out that U.S. ground forces really haven't been doing a whole lot outside of their bases for quite some time. I don't know - I mean, at least eight or 10 months since there's been really any kind of, you know, major operations or anything outside of the bases except, you know, maybe a few Special Operations things.</s>CHRIS: So pulling out those forces probably isn't going to lose a whole lot of influence for us. The other thing I want to touch on is - and this kind of goes to the point, you know, would Iran invade Iraq, I think if you really look at it, you can see that Iran has successfully gained a lot of political influence in Iraq. They have a lot of, you know, Iraqi elected officials who are, you know, Shia and very supportive of Iran, and there are a lot of ties already between the Iraqi government and the Iranian government. And so I don't think it makes a lot of sense for them to attack all out anyway. They have quite a bit of political will as it is. So I would say that, you know, I just want to make the point that Iran already has a major influence in Iraq. And by us leaving, we may be giving up a little bit of our, you know, share of influence in that nation. I guess that's the point I would make for now.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Well, I think it's an interesting point, but let me point out to you in return that we still have tens of thousands of troops in South Korea. They haven't engaged in any military action either for almost 60 years. The fact of the matter is they are left there as a sign of U.S. commitment to South Korea. They are left there with the clear understanding that if anything were to happen and North Korea were to attack, that they would be the tripwire that would bring in other U.S. force. The fact that U.S. troops are being pulled out of Iran altogether...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Iraq.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Out of Iraq, I'm sorry. Out of Iraq altogether, I agree with you. They haven't been used in any military fashion for almost a year now. Doesn't matter. The knowledge that they were there was important. The knowledge that they are leaving is also important.</s>CHRIS: OK. I guess, you know, that's a pretty fair point. I would just say, though, that also, you know, Iran has a strong political influence over Iraq and so...</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Oh, I totally agree with you on that. You're absolutely right about that.</s>CHRIS: OK. Well, thank you very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chris, welcome home. Thanks very much for the call.</s>CHRIS: Thanks.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with NPR commentator Ted Koppel, just back from a trip to Iraq on assignment from "Rock Center with Brian Williams" for NBC. His piece aired last night. This is TALK OF THE NATION coming to you from NPR News. And let's see - we go next to - this is Corey(ph) . Corey with us from Phoenix.</s>COREY: Hi. Thanks for having me on your show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead please.</s>COREY: Yes. The question I have for Mr. Koppel in terms of our - what we're leaving behind, I think two questions that we haven't really addressed where I'm hoping that maybe you have some information on how we're addressing it in terms of our legacy. The first is the economic impact of having all of our military leave the country. I was over there twice and I believe what we saw was that it was actually a very large economic impact in terms of what we gave to the local economy.</s>COREY: And I'm wondering if there's a phased economic withdrawal or any kind of stimulus plan for us leaving to alleviate that economic impact. And my second question is in terms of women's rights in Iraq. As something that, of course, is a laudable goal, it is traditionally antithetical to Muslim culture, the idea of women being equal and having the freedom to be at the same level as men. Is that something that we've looked at in terms of revolution down the road, causing possibly the same kind of extremism that came out of the brain drain in the '50s and '60s where a lot of their cultures were Westernized?</s>COREY: And then the pendulum swung the other way and led to a lot of the extremism in the '70s. Have we looked at seeing if there's a possibility for that happening now as we pull out?</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Boy, I don't think that that is one of Iraq's major problems. The fact of the matter is that even under Saddam Hussein, perhaps particularly under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was not a particularly fundamentalist kind of country. It was far more sectarian. And as far as the economic impact of the United States is concerned, you know, the previous caller made the point and made it accurately, as I said, that for the past year or so, Americans have remained almost - I'm talking about the troops - have remained almost entirely on their bases where they are supplied largely by food and material that comes from the United States or from Western Europe. I don't know how much they actually purchased on the local Iraqi market, but I doubt that it will make much of a difference.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There was a lot of reconstruction projects, the provincial reconstruction teams, that sort of aid...</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: But they've been pulled out, and that is - you're absolutely right, Neal, to draw attention to that - that's having an impact.</s>COREY: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. Thanks very much, Corey. Let's see if we go next to one more call. Doug. Doug with us from Kansas City.</s>DOUG: Hi. Thanks for having me on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>DOUG: My question surrounds the historic rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. My understanding is the Saudi Arabian government by and large is very comfortable with an American presence in Iraq to counter Iranian influence in the region. And I wonder if you had any insights into how they feel with us pulling out of the region. Are they going to be significantly concerned with growing Iranian influence in Iraq? And I'll take my comments off the air.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks, Doug.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: It's an interesting question because you're absolutely right. No love is lost between Iraq - between Iran, rather, and Saudi Arabia. And you may recall that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the fear was that that the next step would be that he was going to invade Saudi Arabia. There were some sense of movement of Iraqi troops, but you're talking about Iran and Saudi Arabia. I'm sure the Saudis are concerned about the departure of Americans altogether from Iraq.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Whether the presence that we now have in the Persian Gulf and in places like Kuwait is going to be sufficient to put their minds at ease, I don't know. But let me simply raise one more point that indicates the kind of political influence that Iran has on Iraq right now. We the United States and the Arab League wanted to impose sanctions on Syria because of everything that is happening in that country today. Almost the entire Arab League was willing to go along with it.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: There were only two countries and one faction - Hezbollah in Lebanon, the government of Iran, and interestingly enough the government of Iraq - that refused to go along.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ted Koppel just back from Basra and Baghdad. His report aired on "30" - not "30 Rock" but "Rock Center with Brian Williams."</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm sure I'm not the first person to make that mistake.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: They have better ratings.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, well, you were one of two debuts last night on "Rock Center."</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One of them got a little bit more attention.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But in any case, congratulations on the piece, Ted, and nice to have you back here in Studio 3A.</s>TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: Thank you, Neal. |
More and more hospitals and clinics now offer music therapy as a supplementary treatment for everything from anxiety to Alzheimer's, but its efficacy varies for different conditions. Neurologist Oliver Sacks and several music therapists discuss the science and practice of music therapy. | IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. You know that nice feeling you get when you listen to your favorite tune? What about music that can actually be medical therapy? It does exist. It's prescribed for illnesses from speech disorders to autism, Alzheimer's, even cancer.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Take the case of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. After she was shot in the head earlier this year, one way she learned to talk again was by singing her favorite songs, like this Cyndi Lauper tune.</s>REPRESENTATIVE GABRIELLE GIFFORDS: (Singing) Girls, we want to have fun. Oh, girls just want to have fun.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That was from an ABC special on her recovery. But why is music therapeutic? What effect does it have on the brain if it's used as a treatment for many different conditions? That's what we'll be talking about this hour and listening to because a little bit later in the hour, a certified music therapist is here in our studio to perform live on the show and give you an idea of what music therapy sounds like.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And if you're interested in music therapy, maybe you've tried it, maybe you use it, maybe you're a practitioner, give us a call. Our number is 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. You can also tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I, or join a discussion on sciencefriday.com.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me introduce my guests. Oliver Sacks is a physician and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center here in New York. His latest book is "The Mind's Eye," and he is back with us in our New York studios. Good to have you back, Oliver.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: DR. OLIVER SACKS: Good to be back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thank you for being with us. Connie Tomaino is the executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurological Function at the Beth Abraham Family of Health Services in the Bronx, New York. She's also here in our studios. Welcome, Dr. Tomaino.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Pleasure to be here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And Joke Bradt is an associate professor in the Creative Arts Therapies Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia; she joins us from the studios of WRTI. Welcome to the show, Dr. Bradt.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: DR. JOKE BRADT: Thank you, and thanks for having me.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And we're going to be talking with Connie - what exactly, how do you define music therapy, Dr. Tomaino?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Well, music therapy is the use of music and the components of music to affect function, either cognitive, psychological, physical, most psychosocial and behavioral function, through interaction with a professional music therapist. Many times people assume something to be music therapy, but it really isn't if it isn't provided by a music therapist.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And that's a good point, Dr. Bradt, is it not? It has to be somebody who knows what they're doing, a trained musical therapist.</s>BRADT: Absolutely, and music therapists are actually trained at different levels. They can be trained at a Bachelor's level, Master's or even Ph.D. level. But as Dr. Tomaino just pointed out, it's very important that music is provided by a trained music therapist because music truly plays a primary role in the therapeutic process, to strengthen the client's abilities as well as to address their needs.</s>BRADT: So it's not something peripheral in the session. Sometimes I think people have the misconception that just listening to music, listening to a CD is music therapy. While that certainly can be therapeutic, in music therapy many forms of music interventions are used, such as improvising music, singing, songwriting as well as listening to music.</s>BRADT: But typically we use multiple musical experiences within a session, and we build up different experiences based on what the client is reporting. The discussions that we have following a music experience may lead us then to a very different type of music making.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Sacks, you and Dr. Tomaino have worked together for many years. A lot of your patients had trouble walking or moving - Parkinson's patients, for example. Give us an idea of how music helped some of those patients.</s>SACKS: Well, Connie and I have worked together since 1979, but before that, when I went to our hospital in 1966, there was a large population of people with Parkinson's and great difficulty moving and specifically initiating movement. I wrote about these patients later in "Awakenings."</s>SACKS: They couldn't initiate, but they could respond, and they responded above all to music. At first, when I saw these people who seemed speechless and motionless, zombies, I didn't know if there was anything going on. But when I was told that they could sing and dance, I said you're kidding me. But then I saw it for myself. And music is vital for people with Parkinson's.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And any other neurological diseases?</s>SACKS: And many others, in particular people who have lost expressive language, who have become aphasic, may still be able to sing and even to retain some of the words of a song. You know, whenever I see patients who are aphasic, the first thing I do, whether it's their birthday or not, is to ask them to sing "Happy Birthday." And sometimes they are themselves amazed that language is still there, although maybe embedded in song.</s>SACKS: And - but songs can be a remarkable bridge from music to the restoration of language, and when language is restored, it may be on the other side of the brain, which is very remarkable.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Tomaino, that sounds example like what happened with Congresswoman Giffords, right?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Right. You know, what Dr. Sacks is saying about how well people who have had strokes, who have aphasia, can sing words to songs, even though they can't speak it, what neuroscientists are telling us is that the shared mechanisms, neural networks, that they're shared between speaking words and singing the words.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: What happens when somebody sings a song is the lyrics of that song are so well-preserved that it's easier for them to access those words through song rather than to speak them freely. And so we use the song as a preliminary way to stimulate word retrieval.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: And what some of the neuroscientists are showing us, that there's actually compensatory mechanisms on the right side of the brain that start to build up as somebody starts to recover the use of these words through singing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Are they recovering those words, the music, from a different part of their brain than they would if they were speaking it?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: It's a shared process. So they're singing the words utilizing networks responsible for speech and singing. The areas that have been damaged are the word retrieval mechanisms on the left (unintelligible) area, but singing the word is different from speaking the word. And over time, the singing the word stimulates the recovery of speaking the word but using a different part of the brain to do that, which is amazing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you've noticed this, Dr. Sacks?</s>SACKS: Yes, this is an amazing business. It's quite intensive, and it requires close relationship between a - the patient and the therapist. And it's quite a big investment but a fantastic one because it may prevent one being speechless for the rest of one's life.</s>SACKS: There may be similar shared mechanisms which allow people who stutter to sing fluently.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Brandt, you use it for chronic pain, do you not?</s>BRADT: That's right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tell us about that.</s>BRADT: Patients who live with chronic pain often view their body as the enemy, and the body becomes something that needs to be fixed, something that needs to be avoided. And when I was working with patients with chronic pain initially, I used a lot of instrumental improvisation.</s>BRADT: But very quickly I discovered that when I used voice with them that it was - gave them an opportunity to reconnect with their bodies in a very new and different way, and they were able to build up a positive relationship with their body.</s>BRADT: For example, rather than trying to avoid the body, through singing one can truly feel the vibrations of your voice through your body, and by using different pitches you can use different parts of your body. And people would be surprised how it feels like to feel their body again.</s>BRADT: But more importantly, as they were, or as they are reconnecting with their body, they also are now suddenly being put in a position to reconnect with their emotions. As you - as the listeners may have experienced, when we try to hold back on emotions, let's say at a funeral or when your boss yells at you, very often we feel it in our throat. We get a very tense throat. We may even have a sore throat afterwards.</s>BRADT: And it's because we regulate much of our emotions by holding in our breath or by holding down, literally, our voice, and when you engage in singing, suddenly that gateway is opened, and through singing and deep breathing these patients who really have been trying to stay away from their deep inner feelings are suddenly reconnected with those.</s>BRADT: And so through singing we are able to work through the trauma of living with chronic pain, as well as trying to learn to manage and cope physically with the pain as well as actually we have a lot of fun singing together, harmonizing together. So it gives them a lot of energy and fun and helps them a bit with their fatigue and their often hopeless mood.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It almost sounds like they're taking - they're on drugs.</s>BRADT: Absolutely, and that's the beauty of vocal music therapy is that I'll give patients very specific exercises to take home, and they can just do it. And some patients initially will only do it in the car or in the shower because they don't want their partner to hear them, but very quickly they get comfortable just using singing throughout their day to help them deal with their emotions, as well as with the physical pain.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Does it take the place of medication? You know, can you get the same, you know, effects in the brain without giving them drugs that the singing does?</s>BRADT: I haven't gone that far yet, but definitely what we do know, chronic pain is a huge issue because medical - sorry, medicine is just not enough and often does not bring enough relief to these patients. And so music, together with medicine, can help them manage their pain better.</s>BRADT: And some patients will report that they were able to start reducing their pharmacological intake.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Connie Tomaino, you...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: There's actually some scientific evidence that the experience of pain is gated when somebody is listening to music. There's also been some studies about the elevation of certain neurotransmitters when somebody hears music, just passively listens to music, that is emotionally important to them or stirring to them.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: So those particular songs actually increase serotonin and other types of neurotransmitters that work as an analgesic. So we have a natural mechanism within our body to actually gate pain if we listen to music that's pleasurable.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're going to take a break and come back and talk lots more about music therapy, and actually we have a musician sitting right here next to me. We're going to talk - give a little bit of a demonstration about what kind of musical therapy is in effect and how to do it. Our number, 1-800-989-8255. Sitting here with Oliver Sacks, Connie Tomaino, Joke Bradt, and Andrew Rossetti is going to be joining us right after the break. So stay with us. We'll be right back.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about music therapy and the various ways music can help patients. Talking with my guests Oliver Sacks, Connie Tomaino, Joke Bradt, and I'd like to bring on another guest who can tell us about how some hospital departments are using music therapy and give us a sample of what some stress-relief music therapy sounds like.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Andrew Rossetti is a musical therapist in radiation oncology at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center here in New York. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: Thank you, pleasure to be, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: They created a whole division for musical therapy at the hospital?</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: There is indeed a department, a music therapy department, that has been in place for 19 years.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's that well-accepted - I mean, people don't know about it, but you certainly have known about it for many years then?</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: Sure, that's true.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Give us an idea, you're sitting here with your guitar in hand at our microphone. Give us a sample of what you might play for a radiation patient, for example, to relax. What kind of music would that be?</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: OK, well, this is a little snippet of an intervention that I've been using in the music therapy program in radiation oncology at Beth Israel. And this is directed at patients that are coming in for radiation therapy on their first day, and they're receiving something called simulation, which is not radiation therapy, but it has been reported to be one of the most stressing moments for patients in their entire trajectory of treatment.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: And so we've been targeting state anxiety in this, and this is a protocolized intervention that usually takes about 20 minutes. I know we're not going to have quite that long.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: So it is an induction to altered state. I use suggestion. You're not going to be hearing all of that, just a little snippet of it. And at the end of it, I would use guided imagery, and during that time I'd be teaching patients different techniques that they can use during simulation to feel more comfortable, to be less anxious.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: OK.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: Focus on the music. Focus on the sound. Perhaps let's start off with a deep breath. I see you closing your eyes. If you feel uncomfortable at any time, you can open them. Allow yourself to focus now on the physical sensations of breathing, breathing in, breathing out, noticing how, as you breathe in, air enters your lungs, expanding them, the physical sensations of breathing out.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: Focus now on the chair you're sitting on, on its surface, and allow yourself to settle into that surface.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm so relaxed.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I have the rest of a radio program to do.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That was - and that's very effective.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, and how often do you do this with the patients? Every time they come in for...</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: No, well, this particular - this is part of an intervention that lasts about a half an hour in total. And simulation is a - usually just a one-time experience.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you also play this in the ICU unit, don't you? You play something - you play with the sounds that are going in the ICU unit.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: That's correct. This is something called environmental music therapy, and it's a process that we're using to try and modulate the actual environment in the hospital, which is something that many patients feel to be hostile. And those feelings are something that actually, based on research that's being done now that's starting to come in, that feelings of being in a hostile environment do not actually lead to good medical outcomes.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: So what we're trying to do is modulate the environment, have people feel more safe and comfortable, and the way we do that in fragile environments like an ICU or just waiting rooms where, unfortunately, people may have a long wait before they get treated, these are Petri dishes for anxiety. So this is something we try and address with music.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's see if we can give our listeners an idea of how it would sound and the kind of music you would use to try to tone down the scary, I guess would be the word, the anxious producing - let's listen to the sound of the ICU unit and how you might mask that or modulate that with your music.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you're changing your music as we hear those beeps and chimes going off, to match them.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: Trying to interact with what I'm hearing, not - one of the things that I interact with is the actual ambient sounds, but the other thing is that this intervention is interactive with patients. So ideally I'm trying to read cues and clues from the patients also.</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: But yeah, I'm trying to structure these annoying monitor sounds that we were hearing in the background.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And we talked before about your first - the first music that you played for the patient. How do you decide when that patient needs that music, which patient is a candidate to have that?</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: OK. Sure, well, all of my patients are by referral from the radiation oncologist that I work with on the unit. And they're assessed first off for state anxiety.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And then decide from that. 1-800-989-8255 is our number. We're talking with Oliver Sacks, Connie Tomaino, Joke Bradt and Andrew Rossetti, talking about music therapy. Oliver, you've been doing this for years. You must be very familiar with these kinds of treatments and these patients in a different modality.</s>SACKS: I've had less experience with pain and anxiety as the problem as various hard neurological ones like Parkinson's and aphasia and dementia. Dementia is - can be a huge challenge, and in every chronic hospital and nursing home there are - will be dozens of people who may be confused, disoriented, withdrawn, or very noisy.</s>SACKS: And when a music therapist comes in - I've seen this often with Connie, almost within seconds eyes will fasten on her, and people will cock their heads to listen, and perhaps some will start to sing along, and that is very, very amazing and very important.</s>SACKS: Partly because musical skills and musical sensibility outlast ordinary memory and intelligence, and almost indelible and can be reached even in people who are very demented. And when they listen to music which they know and love, the circumstances and the memories and the feeling which went with that music come back to them and anchor them and animate them. And that's very remarkable.</s>SACKS: I'm sure a lot of these patients also have anxiety, and some have pain and probably several things are addressed at once.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Connie, is there any standardization to what you do? I mean, you do it so well, but how many places around the country know how to do with with the skills that you have?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Sure. Ira, that's the challenge. The field of music therapy, like the field of medicine, is very broad, with many treatments and applications depending on the patient, the need, the environment. Some like to work psychotherapeutically with somebody or work as music and medicine more prescriptively with a musical treatment that would target something like speech recovery or memory enhancement. What's happening around the country is that advanced trainings in specific modalities using music therapy in the NIC unit, for example, or neurologic music therapy or specific applications using a certain model of music therapy for a specific population and specific reasons.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: And if people want to check, the American Music Therapy Association has a lot of different fields or fields of music therapy as applications in music therapy that people can learn more about how music therapy is applied across different populations.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Can you get a degree in music therapy?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Oh, you do.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You can.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Yes, both undergraduate and graduate level. Music therapy is a board-certified profession, where somebody after they have mastered their academic training do 1,200 hours of clinical supervision and then sit for a board exam. And then in several states, like New York state, it is a licensed profession as well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We were talking about right at the beginning that - and you defined musical therapy and Joke Bradt said the same thing that you have to be a trained musical therapist...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Music therapist.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...excuse me - music therapist.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: We're very musical.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: But it's music.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So when you say music therapist, you're not - we're not talking about like Andrew Rossetti playing the guitar here. They - you have to know how to play the guitar. You have to know how to use what he does or...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: You have to know to read the patient...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yes.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: ...so you can manipulate music in real time. That's where music therapy differs from prescribed music listening programs or a musician coming in and playing by bedside because they want to do something nice for the patient.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: There's a lot of excellent musicians who do bedside visits, or programs like that. But music therapists are trained either psychotherapeutically or in music and medicine to use music and the components of music for a very prescriptive reason. And that's why you'll hear music therapists speak differently about their work because of the populations they work with.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Dr. Bradt, you've looked at a lot of clinical trials of music therapy...</s>BRADT: Mm-hmm.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...gold standard evidence for whether the music therapy works. Does that exist?</s>BRADT: That's right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It - what have you found?</s>BRADT: Well, we - together with a colleague of mine, Dr. Dileo of Temple University, we indeed saw the need to look at what evidence is out there and how can we summarize this so that people have a better idea of what the true impact of music therapy is. And we decided to do Cochrane systematic reviews, which is indeed considered the gold standard in evidence-based practice, and basically, we looked or identified randomized controlled trials in medical music therapy, so medical applications of music therapy.</s>BRADT: And we did that with a variety of patient groups. We did a Cochrane review with cancer patients. We did one with cardiac patients, mechanically ventilated patients, people with acquired brain injury and people in end-of-life care. And we found many different things, but I think overall and what Andrew just talked about is that music interventions help patients, medical patients reduce their anxiety. We found a significant impact of music interventions on anxiety in cancer patients and people with heart disease, especially those who had just suffered a heart attack and people on mechanical ventilation.</s>BRADT: In addition to that, we found that music therapy improves quality of life in cancer patients and patients at end of life. Now, these findings were based on just a few trials, but they greatly agreed with each other, so that was an important finding. And then, also important was that we found that music is able to reduce heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure, and these were very important findings for patients such - the heart disease patients or patients on mechanical ventilation because as you can imagine a heart disease patient who is hospitalized experience great anxiety. And this increased anxiety then leads to increase heart rate and so, of course, puts them at a greater risk for a heart attack again. This thing with mechanic...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me just...</s>BRADT: Mm-hmm.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I just have to remind everybody that I'm Ira Flatow, and this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you there.</s>BRADT: No problem. And also with mechanically ventilated patients, these patients experience great discomfort because of the frequent suctioning, the inability to talk, with that comes huge stress and discomfort. And if music can help reduce their anxiety and help reduce heart rate and respiratory rate, reduce their blood pressure, of course, that can only have important health benefits.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me get - let me go to...</s>BRADT: And then...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Before we go to the break, let me go - get a phone call in here if I can. Let me go to Susan(ph)...</s>BRADT: Sure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...in Tempe. Hi, Susan.</s>SUSAN: Hi. How are you?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Hi there.</s>SUSAN: Thanks for bringing attention to this subject. I have a comment and a question. I am - first of all, I am a mother of four boys, small boys. Two of them have autism, and one of those is nonverbal. I don't think anybody understands how important music therapy is to the autism community because of the effect that it has on these nonverbal kids. When I - there is nobody more skeptical of music therapy than me. I'm an airline pilot for a living, so if it doesn't have to do with science, I'm generally not getting it.</s>SUSAN: My son, my 6-six-year-old son, basically did not speak. He would string maybe two words together. That was his idea of a sentence. I walked into a pet store one day, and he sang from beginning to end the song "Slippery Fish." It had seven stanzas. And I - my jaw hit the floor, and I went back to his access liaison with the state, and I said he doesn't speak, yet he sang this song. She goes he needs music therapy. And I looked at her, and I go I am really busy with these four kids. I don't need something that isn't going to be effective. She said it will, trust me.</s>SUSAN: We have had eight different music therapists now. And the reason is, is because of the massive cuts that the music therapists have taken here in the state of Arizona - and I'm talking 40 to 60 percent cuts. The last one who had to quit, she said I make more money at Nordstrom, and the reality is I have to provide for my family. But my child, my nonverbal child, the one that spoke like two words together with his sentence, he speaks, he communicates, he can give us his wants.</s>SUSAN: I mean, he's not talkative. He's not - but the music therapist, she comes twice a week. This has made such a huge difference to our family, to our life, his ability to be educated, to provide self-care. And I mean, there is no one that was a bigger nonbeliever than me, and now, there is no one that is a bigger believer. These people are so, so important.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right...</s>SUSAN: The oldest also had cancer, and we had music therapy for him. And when he was in the hospital, it was amazing. My question is these therapists are so vital...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Susan, let me - can you hang on - I'm going to keep you on. We have to go to a break but hang on...</s>SUSAN: OK.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...and we'll come back...</s>SUSAN: I know.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...with your question, OK? 1-800-989-8255 is our number, talking about music therapy with Oliver Sacks, Connie Tomaino and Joke Bradt, also with us is Andrew Rossetti. We'll be right back after this break. Stay with us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about music to treat anxiety, pain, movement disorders, more with my guests Oliver Sacks, physician and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York; Connie Tomaino, executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurological Function at the Beth Abraham Family of Health Services in the Bronx; and Joke Bradt, she is associate professor in creative arts therapies in the department - assistant professor in the Creative Arts Therapies Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia; Andrew Rossetti, music therapist in the Radiation Oncology Department at Beth Israel Medical Center.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Our number, 1-800-989-8255. When we went to the break, Susan in Tempe was on the line. Are you still there, Susan?</s>SUSAN: I'm still here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You had a - you gave us - you told us a great story about your sons and music therapy helping them out and you - I cut you off when you said you had a question you wanted to ask.</s>SUSAN: My question is that the autism community now has the largest identifiable nonverbal population in our country and is growing. And yet, this service more than speech services or any other services that are provided, you know, either federally or by the state, has had the greatest cuts in funding of anything else. I know it's hard times. But how - I'd like to ask your panel. Since this service is totally vital to the autism community, how do we go about stopping this continued cutting to this service in particular? Because these kids need it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. Let me - thanks for your call and thanks for that - for telling us about your experiences. And have a good holiday season. Thanks for calling.</s>SUSAN: Thank you. You too.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me go around the table. Oliver Sacks, you have any reaction to that?</s>SACKS: I'm - well, my mind goes back to 1973 when I was working at Bronx State Hospital on a ward of young patients, many of them autistic, and I often found that the only way I could connect or communicate with these patients was with music. And I - in fact, I brought my own piano to the hospital. I think it's probably still there. And people would cluster around the piano, people who otherwise I just couldn't access at all. So I have no doubt of the importance of music and music therapy for people with autism. But I can't address the other tormenting question of cutbacks.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Can anybody?</s>BRADT: Could I respond to that, Ira?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Yes, Joke, go ahead.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Joke, go first, then I'll have Connie jump in there.</s>BRADT: Sure. I think, unfortunately, in this era of evidence-based practice where evidence really drives our health care industry, as well as our funding and reimbursement industry, we really need more evidence in terms of randomized control trials that show that this - that music therapy really is effective. We all know it is extremely effective with children with autism, but there are a lot of skeptical minds out there, like the caller was herself initially. Fortunately, we do have one Cochrane review out already, but it only included a few trials.</s>BRADT: But I know that a research group in Norway, led by Christian Gold, just received a huge grant, and they will be doing a humongous randomized controlled trial, including seven different countries, on music therapy with autism. And the U.S. is one of the countries that will be involved with this. And I think that, hopefully, the trial will lead to good outcomes, and indeed, it will be able to show how effective music therapy is with this population. And I think if the outcomes are positive, that it will potentially have a large impact on policymaking related to music therapy services for autism.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Connie?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Yeah. What Joke is saying is definitely the challenge, the need for evidence-based research in the arena of accountable care, which is a big driving force in medical reimbursement these days, unless an agency can show that the treatments that they're applying directly affect function, and cost effectiveness is a big challenge. And that happens whether it's in education, early education, early intervention or in stroke recovery. In some states, for example, traumatic brain injury, Medicaid waivers can be used to pay for music therapy services. But in other states, that's not possible. So even...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Does Medicare cover it?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Medicare Part B for partial hospitalization but not in every aspect and not in every state. So each state also can dictate how those funds get allocated.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you have to have some sort of good studies as Joke was saying to convince people that this is real...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...and does work.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: And I'll say that I was - about half a year ago, I was contacted by an insurance company from New Zealand, asking me to review a large meta-analysis they did for, basically, a summary of the available evidence for stroke patients, as well as autism. And their summary concluded that there was not enough evidence - and, of course, that means, again, randomized control trial outcomes that - so that there was not enough evidence to make them pay for music therapy services for autism.</s>BRADT: And fortunately, I was able to point into a couple of more studies that were relevant, and then told them we cannot just look at these quantitative studies. There are so many other good studies out there, and case studies out there that showed that music therapy is effective.</s>BRADT: So now they concluded that they'll continue to pay on a case-by-case basis. But it was very sad to see that the insurance company, of course, only goes by the available evidence, and will not listen to stories like the caller and be convinced that they should be paying for this service.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, as the population ages and we're seeing more dementia cases, Oliver, and Connie, and Alzheimer's cases, you've said that you've seen patients respond well - Alzheimer's patients respond well to music, correct? I mean...</s>SACKS: Yes. Many, many. And far - and over the years and over the decades. And...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's convincing when you see it.</s>SACKS: It's convincing when you see it. But one should be able to have a - the sort of randomized study which will convince the insurance company or a skeptical medical professional.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Connie?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: You know, now with the advancement in neuroscience research, I think some of the evidence for how and why music works therapeutically is being presented. And I think even their studies show how well the brain responds to music, especially, say, somebody with Alzheimer's disease. When they hear a piece of music that's familiar, a part of the brain that's wide enough is a part of the brain that's still intact and functional. And so as the insurers or government agencies see the evidence through basic sciences, as well as these types of gold standard research studies, we'll have the evidence we need to push forward.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Oliver, why is it that music therapy works for all these different disorders?</s>SACKS: Well, it addresses so many different parts of the brain which may be spared. But it also addresses the person and the self in a very deep, emotional way and does so in the context of a pattern, of a musical pattern, but specifically, say, we know that human beings, unlike chimpanzees, respond to a beat. You see this in children from the age of three or four, that they will move in resonance to a beat. And, say, for people with Parkinson's or whatever, the - they also respond to the beat, and this is crucial. But I endorse what Connie was just saying, that the - that when these careful brain imaging and other objective tests to show what's going on.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Does therapy work in conjunction with other modalities? Do you combine it with other things, music...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Sure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...with visualization, other kinds of - I...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Well, Andrew spoke about guided imagery with music. Many times with co-treat in a rehab setting, for example, we'll co-treat with a speech therapist if that can facilitate how well the patient understands what they need to do. And the music therapist will take cues from the speech therapists about what phrases to use or what targeted words need to be addressed, how the music therapist that - will manipulate the music to allow for that to happen. In physical therapy, occupational therapy, the music therapist will provide the timed music, the rhythmic stimulus to facilitate gait improvement in those patients.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: And then what Andrew was talking about working with the environment and working with the other staff in the unit to really give the patient-centered care that's really needed. And music therapy enhances that very much so.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Andrew, you were saying about how just playing music sometimes makes people feel better. I mean, is there...</s>ANDREW ROSSETTI: Well, yes. I believe that's true. But I also believe that if there is a clinical goal to the way the music's being played, which is one of the reasons why we try and use more live music than pre-recorded, that the benefits can be far greater. You can address any number of things.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: My question about this is: If we are always into preventive medicine and we try to prevent things and - is there - should we be having a dosage of music every day as a preventive medicine...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Well...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...and find it - I mean, should you like - people take supplements, right? They take vitamin supplements or whatever, thinking these are things - possibly should people be taking - I'm just thinking out loud here. Should they be taking some music?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Think of - think about how people are using music every day in their life to get through, you know, people listening to music on the subway on the way to work. I think one of the challenges in the field of music therapy is music is ubiquitous in our life. It's - we're surrounded by it, and we use it ourselves very therapeutically, maybe without knowing it. But we use it to exercise. We use it to get motivated. We use it to go to sleep. And because it's so pervasive, people don't think - they don't think of therapy or music, as a treatment, is a legitimate field. I think that's a challenge the field of music therapy has always been up against, because people say, of course. Of course it's therapy. Of course it's therapeutic. We can all do that.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: What Joke is saying with the research and all the work that the Music Therapy Association is trying to do is to bring the evidence of the field of music therapy where it is important. And, of course, a lot of us are working in preventive care, as well, in wellness programs, designing programs to help people with early Alzheimer's maintain memory function and attention as long as possible, people with Parkinson's disease being able to keep the integrity of their speech and flexibility of movement as long as possible, so they don't need as much medication as they would without the music therapy interventions. So we're very much involved in the wellness efforts, as well as treatment efforts.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And people want to learn more about it. If they want to become - if you want to become a music therapist, what do you do?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: You go to www.musictherapy.org, look up the field of music therapy. Look at the requirements, what universities have programs throughout the United States. There are resources in every state where they can visit music therapists and see the work firsthand.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And - yeah. And that was my next question. If you believe you could benefit or you know someone who could benefit from music therapy...</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Also check...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...where do you go?</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: Go to the same place. You go to - Google music therapists in your state, but go to AMTA, which is the American Music Therapy Association and, like I said, musictherapy.org. You could call their office, find out where music therapists are in your location.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Oliver Sacks, a physician and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. His latest book is "The Mind's Eye." And he's told us he's working on a new book that will be coming out next year. Connie Tomaino is executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function at the Beth Abraham Family of Health Services in the Bronx. Joke Bradt is associate professor in the creative arts therapies department at Drexel University in Philadelphia. And I also want to make sure I get your credentials right. Andrew Rossetti is music therapist in the radiation oncology department at Beth Israel Medical Center. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today.</s>CONCETTA TOMAINO: A pleasure.</s>SACKS: A pleasure to be here.</s>BRADT: A pleasure. Thank you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. |
The cost of college has risen faster than personal income in recent years, a trend some experts warn can not continue. Economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University and Stephen Trachtenberg of George Washington University discuss what colleges should do to reduce the price tag of a college education. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. College tuition and fees rose over 400 percent between 1982 and 2007. Let me repeat that: 400 percent in 25 years. Many students get help from financial aid and scholarships, not to mention their parents.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet college costs spiral faster than anything except maybe health care. We spoke about the burden of college loan debt a couple of weeks ago. Today: Why does college cost so much in the first place? If you work in academia, call, tell us why is attending a four-year college so expensive?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our phone number is 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. Later in the program, the popularity of micro-philanthropy through social media. But first the cost of college. Richard Vedder is distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Nice to have you with us.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Glad to be with you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And would not economic theory suggest with so many colleges out there, the prices should be driving down, down, down?</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Economic theory suggests that if we had free markets in higher education, that might well be the case. But that's not the case because higher education is different than virtually any other sector in the American economy. Everything is different.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: We define an hour as 50 minutes in higher ed. Everyone else calls it - thinks 60 minutes is an hour.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, not psychiatrists, but that's another issue.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Yeah, yeah, I know.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wanted to ask, you wrote an op-ed for CNN.com, "Why Does College Cost So Much," you argued essentially that colleges have absolutely no incentive to reduce costs.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: That's right. Now, there are a few exceptions to that. The for-profit higher education sector is certainly a clear exception, but by and large, most colleges do not get rewards. The presidents of the universities, the senior officials, the key faculty do not get rewarded by being efficient, by teaching more students for the same amount of money or whatever, by using buildings efficiently, six, seven days a week, et cetera. There's no incentive in that for them.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: So there's no great compulsion to reduce costs, and yet spending more money often has rewards. It can help improve your rankings in the magazine rankings that go on by magazines like US News or Forbes. And it is actually beneficial to colleges, or at least it's perceived to be beneficial to colleges, to spend more money: nicer facilities for students so you attract more students, better students, whatever, lower teaching loads for faculty so that they're happy and content and not likely to cause a lot of problems.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: So the job of a university president is to raise a lot of money, tons of money, and distribute it, and not too much attention is placed on lowering the cost to the consumer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In fact you argue that the consumer, the student and then the student's parents, but they come last in a list that includes, you mentioned the faculty, key faculty members are bribed with lower teaching loads. You mentioned alumni, who are in a sense are bribed to make donations to the school through successful sports programs and other things like that, and trustees.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Yes, I think that's right. Remember, colleges and universities don't have the profit motive that compels people in the traditional private sector to cut costs, be efficient, try to get more bang for the buck, as it were. So that is sort of lacking. It's a nonprofit sector, and there's a lot of third-party payments, that is government money and also private, philanthropic money, that comes into universities that reduces the need to depend utterly, solely on the consumer to foot the bills, to pay the freight, as it were.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: So the consumer, although not totally irrelevant in higher ed to be sure, is not as important. Now, I might add there's other consumers besides students in a major university. In research universities, there's a research component and so forth. But by and large, instruction is still the bread and butter of what puts American - the bread and butter of American higher education.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from our members of our audience who work at colleges and universities. Why is the cost of those - education at those four-year institutions so high? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. We'll start with Dennis(ph) and Dennis on the line with us from Rochester, New York.</s>DENNIS: Yes, I teach science and engineering at a couple of private schools, and I also, along with my wife, put six children through college. And so we have a firsthand knowledge of the costs having gone up and also why.</s>DENNIS: And first I'd like to agree with the guest that there's no incentive at all to reduce costs, and I do - and I say that as a comparison with private industry, in which I've seen tremendous cost-cutting over the last two decades.</s>DENNIS: I think a second factor is the physical plants, all the building. It means that the fixed cost of just keeping the university open has gone up a lot. I mean, you don't see buildings being torn down. You just see them being built. That's the second.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It usually has somebody's name on it.</s>DENNIS: Exactly, the money is contributed for, usually for an edifice of some kind. And then I think the third thing is the burgeoning administration. I remember a story, I was talking to a Cornell professor at one time, and he said when he started there, the dean of engineering had two assistants and that when he retired he had 56, there were 56 on the staff. And, you know, that's the kind of - so I think the amount of administration has gone up as quickly as the cost of tuition, which has gone up, since I was in school, by 3,000 percent.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I assume that there was some considerable sticker shock between your oldest going to college and your youngest.</s>DENNIS: Yeah, that's right because there was actually nearly a 20-year difference in their graduation years. And so yes, it was a substantial increase. And we actually handled that by having him find the best state universities, which are still a bargain. And then they go to private universities in grad school, when they, you know, can get teaching assistantships and this kind.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right. If you had one idea to reduce the costs, Dennis, what would it be, every time you have to build a new building, you tear down an old one?</s>DENNIS: Well, I think as long as enrollment is not increasingly, yeah, I think that's a good idea. But also, I believe that they need to really bring in people who know how to analyze us and, you know, do some benchmarking with private institutions, whether it be companies or whatever, and begin to copy that because, you know, one thing they're not saving money on - or they are saving money on is paying the adjunct faculty.</s>DENNIS: You know, more than half, maybe even three-quarters, of all humanities courses are taught by adjuncts, and they hardly get paid anything, so - definitely not teacher salaries.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's as opposed to the tenured professors. Dennis, thanks very much for the call, and our condolences on your loan payments. We appreciate it. He said something very interesting, though, Richard Vedder: As long as they keep the same number of students.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Colleges, to get more prestige, have to be very selective.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Yes, I made the point in the newspaper story that you referred to or the CNN piece that you referred to that colleges are the only institution I know where prestige, where success is often measured by turning customers away.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: We - Harvard is considered a great school because for every student that's admitted, there are about 10 others or more that are not admitted. And so Harvard flourishes by turning students away, that they're viewed as selective, they're viewed as the elite schools, and they get high rankings, whereas if you were to go talk about Wal-Mart or McDonald's or some company like that, the opposite strategy is at work.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: They want all the customers to come. There's no admissions committee to decide who can shop at Wal-Mart. Anyone can shop at Wal-Mart who has the dollars, and so there is a real big difference between higher ed and almost every other sector of the economy, including even medical care in this respect.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I wanted to read one paragraph from your CNN.com piece: Once as department chairman, I successfully battle for more faculty members to do the same amount of work, thus lowering productivity. The result: My faculty evaluated me highly, so I got a nice raise. Where else do the employees get to decide who their bosses will be or how much they will be paid?</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Yeah, think about it, it's true. Talk to the former president of Harvard, a very distinguished gentleman, Larry Summers, a very prominent official in the Obama administration and so forth, former secretary of the treasury, former president of Harvard University.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: He lost his job because the faculty didn't like him, and so in effect, the employees have a strong control over the employer, which - or over the boss, so to speak, the president. So the president, in order to maintain job security, has to appease the faculty. And again, that is a somewhat unique feature.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: By the way, your caller, your last caller, made a very interesting point about physical facilities. Most physical facilities of major universities lie dormant most of the time. They are empty in June, July and August. They are empty on Fridays, on Saturdays, rarely used in the evening. There's very little - a very low rate of physical space utilization.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: And we could enormously expand our offerings and so forth if we just used the space better.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just use the space, and some people have said wait a minute, why do we have those summers off? You could get another semester in there.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Yes, I'm under - it's my understanding, I think Steve Trachtenberg is going to join you - is that correct - in a little bit.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He is, yes, in just a few minutes.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Yeah, well, talk to Steve about that because Steve, as president of George Washington University, a very distinguished university president, one of the nation's premier university presidents, said: Well, gee, we don't really harvest the crops in the summer anymore. Maybe we ought to have three semesters a year, three 15-week semesters rather than two. We could do that in 52 weeks easily.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: And he got blown out of the water by his faculty, but talk to him about that, not me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, he'll join us in just a moment. We're talking with Richard Vedder, distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University; director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity; an adjunct scholar, that means he doesn't get paid very much, at the American Enterprise Institute; and co-author of an opinion piece, "Why Does College Cost So Much" that was published at CNN.com. You can find a link to that piece at our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd like to hear from those of you who work in academe. Why does four-year college cost so much? 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. More than $17,000 a year, that's the average sticker price on a four-year public school. Thinking about a private university? That's nearly $40,000 a year, on average. We're talking today about what's driving those costs higher and higher and what, if anything, can be done to contain them.</s>If you work in academia, tell us: Why does(ph) attending a four-year college so expensive? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>If you work in academia, tell us: Our guest is Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. And joining us now is - from Madrid in Spain - is Stephen Trachtenberg, the aforementioned professor emeritus and University Professor of Public Service at George Washington University. He wrote an op-ed called "College: The Halfway House" last month in the New York Times Room for Debate. Nice to have you with us.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Thank you, it's fun to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you've run an institution of higher learning. How come it seems like nobody tries to make these sorts of economies?</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Well, actually, the distinction between sticker price and actual price I think is very important. And I think it's also important to recognize that probably only a minority of the students enrolled pay the posted price. The rest are discounted considerably with scholarships and all sorts of work study and loans and a variety of things, which means that we get a broad socioeconomic group attending universities.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: And I frankly don't have any problem with Mr. Rockefeller paying full tuition, and I like the idea that working-class kids can come at prices that their parents can afford. So it's a little simplistic to use the data the way it was used at the opening of the show.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Additionally, I think it's important to recognize that the university of today is not the university of 20 years ago. They are continuing to be labor-intensive, but there's an extraordinary amount of technology that is now used on universities, and it doesn't come cheap, and it has to constantly be renewed because it becomes obsolescent very quickly.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: And university education is one of the last hand-made items we have in today's marketplace. You take a course in music at many institutions, the faculty-student relationship can be one-on-one.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Moreover, we provide all kinds of services that weren't provided when I was in college - counseling, for example. We get more and more students who come into the university, they're on one kind of medication or another. This becomes manifest after they're matriculated, we don't know about that before they enroll, and then they need counseling services of one sort or another.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Security services - you can imagine what's gone on on university campuses since the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the first tragedy, now the second, to maintain security, the need to provide daycare programs for the children of faculty, to make it possible for us to recruit women.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: The whole sociology of America has changed. An awful lot of our faculty are now women, and they need to be supported. We need them as part of the faculty, and they need to be supported in distinctive ways. So it's a little bit mindless to say the tuition was this 20 years ago, and it's this now, and how come.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We still see students graduating with tremendous student loan debts.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Yes, and when the economy was good - and you surely can't blame the universities for the state of the economy - those students went out and got jobs and paid those debts off. The reason that we are seeing such a burden now is that the students are graduating and are not finding employment.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Look, tuitions could be a lot lower if we had a national health plan and the universities didn't have to provide the health insurance. We see the same problem, by the way, in the manufacturing of cars in the United States. Cars that we make in the United States are more expensive than they are cars made abroad because you have to build in several thousand dollars in health costs into every American vehicle.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It used to be but not anymore. They renegotiated those contracts because they couldn't compete with competition from overseas. When you - George Washington is one of the most expensive schools in the country. I suspect that was the case when you were there as well. Was any part...</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: I'm the cause of that. I'm personally the cause of that. I'm a believer in high tuition and high discount rate. I think that people who can afford to pay for a quality private education ought to, and some of that money ought to be used to discount the tuition for outstanding students who can't otherwise attend.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So might a more meaningful figure be the average price?</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Well, there's a more meaningful figure. Forty percent of the students pay the list price, and about 60 percent are discounted, to a greater or lesser extent depending on their ability to pay.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Richard Vedder, does Stephen Trachtenberg make valid points, do you think?</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Some of the points that Steve makes are ones I would agree with. We - it is true the sticker price on higher ed is a bit simplistic as a measure of the cost. But of course the true cost of higher education to society, it's not just the cost to the students but the total cost that society pays to run the higher education enterprise.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: In the mid-'60s, when Steve and I were both young and able to get around a little better than we are now, America spent about one percent of its national output on it's a higher education. Today it spends between three and three and a half percent. So even if you look at things in a broader sense, we're spending a lot more.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Now, to be sure, there are more people going to college. One thing I would take some - I would add a little bit to what Steve said, while it is true the recession has aggravated things and caused some job problems for graduates, there's no question about that, we have gotten to a point in society, I think, where by pushing everyone to go into higher education, to go to four-year schools and so forth, we now have a mismatch between the number of college graduates and the number of jobs of the traditional kind reserved for college students, college graduates - managerial jobs, technical jobs, professional jobs.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: And so now we have a world where we have 19,000 parking lot attendants with college degrees in the United States or where nearly one in four airline attendants is a college graduate. Now, there's nothing wrong with having college graduates among airline attendants, but I'm not sure that that's an absolute - that the education itself necessarily is that critical to perform that kind of vocational undertaking.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get a caller in on the...</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: I'd like to think we have a stronger embedded democracy because more people are educated, and again, we have a much broader socioeconomic group attending colleges and universities than we did when Richard and I went to school. And I remember as an undergraduate at Columbia, if there were four persons of color in my class, I was astounded. Today you visit that campus and you see black and Asian and Indian and all sorts of people from all over the world attending and a vast array of socioeconomic groups.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: We have a higher percentage of the population going to universities than we did when we were kids, and many of them come from poor homes and are supported with financial aid, which gets built into the base operating budgets of the universities.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get - I just wanted to give a caller a chance to get in on the conversation.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Oh sure, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Cynthia's on the line with us from Menominee in Wisconsin.</s>CYNTHIA: Hello there. I just couldn't take it anymore. Your first guest, I think he is totally out of touch in what is happening on campus. I retired six months ago from the University of Wisconsin system, and I am a graduate of the system. And to say that our buildings are sitting empty, not at all. To say they are not entirely utilized, not at all.</s>CYNTHIA: We don't leave buildings sitting empty. We don't build buildings to put names on them. The biggest cause of the problem and the cost is the diminished support for education. More and more of the costs have to go to the students. We have a wider and wider diversity of students that need many more support systems to help them compete in a global economy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: When you talk about reduced support, you're talking about state institutions from the legislature.</s>CYNTHIA: Right. When I went to college, I graduated in '72, our tuition was not even $1,000. I'm paying $500 a credit to go to graduate school now. Financial aid has not kept up. The figures are still based on housing costs from the '60s.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We should point out we were talking with Stephen Trachtenberg. The George Washington University is a private institution. Richard Vedder, do the same criticisms that Cynthia raises apply to public institutions?</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Well, first of all, I want to say that I just think that there's some empirics here, empirical evidence here that needs to be examined. Cynthia made the point that financial aid hasn't kept track, kept up. In 1970, roughly, the federal government spent roughly one billion dollars on student financial aid in higher education. Today, if you add student loans and Pell Grants and everything together, it's well over 100 billion dollars.</s>CYNTHIA: OK. Well...</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Now, adjusting for inflation, enrollment increases and everything, it isn't that dramatic of an increase, but it - there certainly has not been a lack of public support for American higher education. It is true in the last few years state legislatures have reduced their support, and there is a problem there, and I would agree with that. But I think the empirical evidence is somewhat different than Cynthia suggests. And I suspect that if you went to - on a typical American university campus today, Wednesday, December 14th, and walked around the corridors of the buildings, you will find that many, many classrooms are empty. In my building, every one's empty because we've already started Christmas break, which will last for several weeks. And I suspect that's true in many other places as well.</s>CYNTHIA: Can I add...</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Well, I think Richard makes a good point. We do not use our facilities as fully as we might. The idea of using the university all year round, 12 months instead of eight, having three, 15-week semesters a year would obviously make our facilities more productive. And, frankly, it would also give professors a chance to earn more money, if they chose to, by teaching more or alternatively, at the very minimum, provide more jobs for Ph.D.s who are desperately seeking employment and finding it daunting in this contemporary market.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Cynthia, you were trying to get in.</s>CYNTHIA: I don't think he understands the complexity of scheduling those classrooms. Professors are being pushed. We look on at education as standing in front of the class. Professors need time to do research to enable them to teach. We don't have teaching assistants teaching our classes. We have professors standing in front of those classes and they have to have time to meet with people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think, Cynthia, you do know that that's not always the case in every school.</s>CYNTHIA: I know, and I think you're generalizing and giving the public the wrong idea because if you're looking at a private school and the research - the Ph.D. schools, the doctoral schools is one thing. But you cannot lump the baccalaureate and master's program schools with the private schools. We are struggling to provide what students need and give them better access. Students are not being sent to school for four-year degree necessarily. They all need post-secondary because at the public school level, they're not getting the employability skills. I'm working on a master's in career and technical service. And this infuriates me because we do so much generalizing and we forget the needs of the student.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Cynthia, thanks...</s>CYNTHIA: ...and needs of society. And if we don't have universities accessible, we're not preparing our students for global economies.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Cynthia, thanks very much for the call. We're talking about the costs of college. Our guests are Richard Vedder, a distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, and Stephen Trachtenberg, professor - president emeritus and university professor of public service at George Washington University. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION FROM NPR News. And let's go to Andrew. Andrew with us on the line from New Orleans.</s>ANDREW: Yes. I'm a graduate assistant, and I just don't think what the - raising of all the costs, that it benefits the students. I'm not going to be able to pursue a Ph.D. because of how much it costs and that I can't get the funding for it, and it just doesn't benefit me to pursue any higher degree because I'm not going to be able to get a job that's going to help pay for my student loans and pay them off because of how expensive it's getting. So no matter how bad I want to go for a Ph.D., I can't afford it because of the rising costs. And there's nothing to benefit me from pursuing these higher degrees because I'll spend all my money in my job, my salary to pay off student loans. And the school that we get to - we also - they raise tuition but also got rid of Fridays.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Andrew, we heard about that. Stephen Trachtenberg, go ahead.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Well, you know, we're going around circles in a way because when we gets that job, he gets the Ph.D., he gets a job, he doesn't want to be a volunteer. He wants to get paid. So he's going to have a salary. And he wants dental benefits. And he wants a laboratory, or he wants other kinds of expensive facilities to assist him in his research and in his teaching. And so in one way or another, the mother's milk of academia turns out to be money. And so you can't on the one hand say I don't want the universities to charge tuition; on the other hand, I want a job at a university and I want to be compensated.</s>ANDREW: Now, do you all find that the higher ed - the Ph.D.s, for me, I'm looking at actually going into the public schools because I'll have more job security. There's no tenure tracks for any of the schools that I've been to. They no longer have tenure, so it makes no sense to teach in the college world, you know? It's more about going back to the high school level because that's where the job security is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That may be overstated somewhat, given recent decisions in several states around the country, Andrew. But thanks very much, and we wish you good luck.</s>ANDREW: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll go to this email from Minda(ph): I work as a tenure track professor in education at a large state university. Most universities use their facilities year round at all times of the day and days of the week. We also offer classes when students sign up for them. The main thing I wanted to say is that higher education is costly because of how our system works. Students expect to have an expert who teaches them, and universities want expert teachers and researchers. This is different from how a K-12 education works in this country, where teachers only teach. If we were to advance scholarship, we need to research. We need time and expertise to do this. This doesn't even take into account all the other services provided by universities - counseling police departments, et cetera.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As faculty, we don't get paid much, no one is getting rich in higher ed. It would make as much, if not more, as a K-12 teacher, and I have a Ph.D. Well, Richard Vedder, this is again, difference between different kinds of schools. One of the things when you were that department head and got permission for your teachers to teach less, presumably that was for research.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: It was, indeed. And I think we - and I'm a great believer in research. I've done a lot myself. I think I've written eight or nine books myself - based largely on lower teaching loads, I might add. But I do think we need to maybe re-assess is all of the research we're doing at the margin having a payoff? Do we really need 21,000 papers written on William Shakespeare in the last 20 years? Maybe - could we have gotten by with 5,000? And so I think even the research function needs to be re-assessed somewhat as we move ahead and try to get costs under control.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Richard Vedder, thanks very much for your time today. Appreciate it.</s>RICHARD VEDDER: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Our thanks as well to Stephen Trachtenberg, president emeritus and university professor of public service at George Washington University. Thanks for staying up late there in Madrid to speak with us.</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Thank you. It's a great opportunity. It's my birthday today, so wish me happy birthday.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Happy birthday. Coming up...</s>STEPHEN TRACHTENBERG: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...social media offers a new way to give and receive. It's changing the world of charity. We'll talk about microphilanthropy next. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. |
Clean, fresh water is an essential element to life — not only do people and animals depend on it, but it also sustains many businesses and agriculture. The majority of the fresh water used worldwide goes to irrigation, and the need is expected to rise with the growing global population. Sandra Postel, freshwater fellow, National Geographic Society Jason Clay, senior vice president of market transformation, World Wildlife Fund | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan. We're broadcasting today from the Grosvenor Auditorium at National Geographic in Washington, D.C. Clean, fresh water is essential to life. People, animals depend on it. So do businesses and industry and agriculture.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Some parts of the world already suffer from scarcity, and as we continue to drink and wash and utilize it and eat - especially eat - reserves are dwindling. Do we have enough to feed seven billion and counting?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear today from farmers. Tell us about your water. Where do you get it? How do you use it? Do you waste it? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email: 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, AP photographer David Guttenfelder on his journey into the exclusion zone around Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. But first, feeding the planet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: With me here onstage at the Grosvenor Auditorium is Sandra Postel. She's a freshwater fellow at National Geographic Society, director of the Global Water Policy Project. Thanks very much for coming in.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: My pleasure, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Sandra, immigration - irrigation has helped greatly with food production. Mesopotamia, thousands of years ago, is where we began urban society, thanks to diversion of water from rivers. It's not a fully sustainable project, though.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Exactly. The - irrigation's been a cornerstone of human civilization, as you say, from the very beginning. You know, if you look at the earliest civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile Valley, the Yellow River Valley in China, you know, these were the beginnings of human civilization exactly because irrigation freed up a number of people in that society to do other things than grow food, to develop mathematics and science and art and all kinds of things.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And we've learned from history that it's important not to be complacent about the sustainability of irrigation, because some of these early civilizations - the one in ancient Mesopotamia, in particular - were brought down in large part because their irrigation practices weren't sustainable.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So if we look out at the world today, we're getting about 40 percent of our food from the 18 percent of cropland that gets irrigation. So it's very, very important to our food security even today. But if you look at what's happening on the ground, where we have irrigated agriculture going on, you see a couple things happening.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: We're experiencing the depletion of groundwater. Rivers are running dry. And as happened in ancient Mesopotamia, salt is building up in the soil. So there are threats there that we need to pay attention to.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Salt building up into the soil. Even fresh water has some salt in it, and as it evaporates year after year after year after year, that salt builds up, and it's not just salt. There's other crud in there, too.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Exactly right. Yeah, you have this buildup of salt in the soil unless you flush the salts out on an annual basis, and that's very hard to do in a very dry climate.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jason Clay is also with us here at the Grosvenor Auditorium, and he's the senior vice president of market transformation at the World Wildlife Foundation. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The correct name of the organization is World Wildlife Fund.] Thanks very much for joining us today.</s>JASON CLAY: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you've written about - well, specifically Africa, but the lessons there apply to this country, too. Irrigation is necessary, yet irrigation is tremendously wasteful, as well as not being necessarily sustainable.</s>JASON CLAY: Today, we use about a liter of water to make each calorie of food on the planet. And we're going to have two billion more people coming along by 2050. They're going to have 2.9 times as much income per capita. They're going to consume, per capita, about twice as much food as we do today because they're going to eat more animal protein. And the question is how we're going to do all of this.</s>JASON CLAY: You know, it's a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. In 1900, we used 90 percent of all the water we used as people to grow food. By the year 2000, we used 70 percent. But the bad news is that we used five times as much water in total, and we simply don't have five times more water to use to grow food. So we're going to have to double-down.</s>JASON CLAY: We've got to figure out how to get twice as much food, twice as many calories, from each drop of water.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the problem being, unfortunately, we can't get more water. There's only a finite amount.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Exactly. There's a finite amount of water on the planet, and, you know, nature's dealt a pretty difficult hand when it comes to water, because exactly where we need to grow food is where it's sunny, but also you don't have water in those sunny places. So we don't always have the water where we need it when we need it.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So it's very, very tricky business to, you know, apply that water and deliver that water at the right times and in the right amounts. And so what you see now is in a lot of the really important food-producing regions of the world like north China, like northwest India, the breadbasket of India, the Western United States, it's in these places where we're having water shortages, and we're having difficulty sustaining the agriculture use of that water because of water shortages.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Droughts we call them, right?</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Well, there's two things. There's water shortages where you have this chronic overuse of water. So you have rivers running dry. You're depleting groundwater on an annual basis. And then it gets worse in times of drought, as we just saw the 10-year big dry in Australia and the droughts in China and that sort of thing. So that's on top of this longer-term trend of water shortage.</s>JASON CLAY: And it's not just people that need water. Every living thing on the planet needs water. We have twelve major rivers globally that don't reach the sea anymore. It's very hard to have freshwater biodiversity when there's no water part of the earth.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Those rivers don't reach the sea because every single drop of water in them has been taken out to use for one purpose or another. Let's see if we can get some callers in on the conversation. We want to hear from farmers today: Where do you get your water? How do you use it? Do you waste it? 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. And we'll start with James, James on the line with us from Charlotte.</s>JAMES: Yes, hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, James.</s>JAMES: Yes, on our family farm, we raise cattle. Well, where they get their water from the creek that runs through the pasture. Well, the city right down the road from us is trying to get us to quit using that water. They don't - they're trying to - they're not - it's not a very - it's turned into, like, a farm-versus-the-city thing. They want that water to not be touched because they're claiming that is part of the watershed, but at the same time, this farm has been there well over 200 years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Part of the watershed, it flows into a reservoir and is used for drinking water?</s>JAMES: It goes into a river, and I think they use that for part of their watershed.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And they'd rather - I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but they'd rather the cattle not mess around in it upstream?</s>JAMES: Correct, correct.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet you've been doing this for 200 years.</s>JAMES: The family's - that's a family farm, been there since before we were even a country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how is this going to work out, do you think?</s>JAMES: Well, we'll just let them drink. You know, I mean, they've got to have their water, so they've got to get it from somewhere. And (unintelligible), so it's, like, a catch-22 or rock-and-a-hard-place thing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I understand what you're saying. Eventually, they may be able to force you to stop that.</s>JAMES: Maybe.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Okay, good luck with that.</s>JAMES: All right, thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we wish you the best. Thanks very much for the phone call. But Jason Clay, that's a tension that goes on around the world as cities continue to develop and as farmers continue to practice their - in their old ways.</s>JASON CLAY: Well, I think as resources become more scarce, there's going to be more competition for them, and money and who can afford to pay is actually going to be part of the issue. It will probably be the case that people in cities will be able to afford to pay more for water than farmers do, and we're already seeing now some of the water rights that exist in places like California for growing agricultural crops being sold to cities, because farmers make more money selling water than they do growing crops and selling it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: More money selling water? That's...</s>JASON CLAY: And that's probably the shape of things to come in many parts of the world, where it's drier.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it's interest, Sandra Postel, reading some of your work, I came across a concept - it may not be original to you - but that trade in crops, sending wheat or corn to a dry place like Saudi Arabia, is essentially trade in water.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: That's right. Grain is the currency by which we trade water around the world. It takes about 1,000 tons of water to make one ton of grain. So the reason a country like Egypt imports more than half of its grain is not because it's short of land. It's because it's short of water.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So as it imports so much grain, it's actually importing 1,000 times that tonnage in water. So we call it virtual water. So you're trading - one of the ways we balance water budgets around the world is by trading grain.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So - and that's not been such a big issue so far. We've been able to do that with the extra grain. The problem that we're beginning to see and get worried about is that you have very large countries that used to be self-sufficient in grain, notably China, with 1.3 billion people, India with 1.2 billion people, Pakistan with nearly 200 million people, now beginning to become so water-short that they can't be food self-sufficient anymore.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And as they begin to look to the international grain market to buy more food, it's going to force prices up. And they'll be able to afford it, but what worries a lot of us is what that means for the people in South Asia and particularly sub-Saharan Africa that are hungry even today. And so that tension is going to worsen.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: You've got over a billion people today who are malnourished, even at food prices and availability today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet, Jason Clay, the situation 50 years ago, we were on the edge of that situation, yet technology in form of the green revolution, solved that problem - or so we thought.</s>JASON CLAY: So we put together a package that included seeds and genetics, water, fertilizers and pesticides and really allowed us to grow agriculture faster in some places, so that we were able to take land out of production, to grow agriculture production faster than the population grew.</s>JASON CLAY: But right now, we don't have any technologies available that actually are growing faster than the population is growing. And so - and it's not just population. It's consumption, too, how much we're consuming, how much animal protein we're consuming.</s>JASON CLAY: If you take our technologies and add them all up, we could actually do this, but we're going to have to be very smart about it and we're going to have to start working on it very quickly. Forty years down the road, just for what some people think of as the peak of population, isn't that long. The peak of consumption, we don't even know when that's going to be. That could be 100 years or 200 years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Are we talking about genetic engineering, here?</s>JASON CLAY: Well, we certainly can't take genetics off the table. But genetic engineering isn't GMOs, and we have to be very clear about that. We can do a lot by selecting traits. We can select traits and markers for productivity, for drought tolerance, disease resistance - actually, for nutrients, too. That would be a novel concept.</s>JASON CLAY: We haven't done that too much yet, but I think we can begin to use 21st-century technology to do that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That takes time, though. GMOs can happen...</s>JASON CLAY: Forty years is not long when it comes to genetics. But if we map the genomes of some of the basic crops around the planet, we can actually double or triple production within that genome. We don't have to be doing GMOs.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Jason Clay, senior vice president of market transformation at the World Wildlife Foundation. He's with us here in the Grosvenor Auditorium at National Geographic, along with Sandra Postel, freshwater fellow at the National Geographic Society. We're talking, well, about water. Do we have enough to feed seven billion mouths and counting? Farmers, tell us about your water: where you get it, how you use it, do you waste it - 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. We're broadcasting today from the National Geographic headquarters in Washington. In Texas, the drought ravishing that state was recently declared the worst in a century. Recent lawsuits stoked debate over the use of fresh water across the Southwest United States, debates that play out all over the world as farmers use more and more water to feed a global population growing rapidly toward eight billion.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear today from farmers. Tell us about your water, where you get it, how you use it, do you waste it. 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: We're going to get questions from the audience here at the Grosvenor Auditorium as well, and thanks, everybody, for coming in. We appreciate it. Let's see if we can get a caller in on the conversation. Let's go next to - this is Gloria(ph), Gloria with us from the Hood River in Oregon.</s>GLORIA: Yes, thank you for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>GLORIA: Well, I have a small farm in the foothills of Mount Hood, and my water comes from the west fork of the Hood River. And you know, that's where I get my water. How do I use it? I grow blueberries and I grow pears. Now, one of the issues that you haven't talked about is pollution.</s>GLORIA: You know, there is effort here to be more careful about what gets into the water, and there are agencies which test it so that we can see if there are chemicals that are getting into it. But one of the other issues that you didn't speak to, and you have talked about how in dry areas even rain builds up salts in soils, but how about fertilization?</s>GLORIA: I've found that fertilization also builds up salt in the soil, and that's one of the big problems in the - you know, the salad basket of California. So, you know, we can do a lot better. And do I waste water? Of course I waste water. But, you know, there are ways that you - you know, there's new technology. You can put in a new irrigation system and all of that stuff.</s>GLORIA: But if you're growing trees that have been there for, you know, 30 to 60 years, you know, and you want to change the irrigation system to drip, well, that might not be such a great idea. You know, yes, we can use 21st century technology to identify better ways to do stuff, but we need to support people like Wes Jackson(ph), who's a geneticist who's trying to develop, you know, a grain which is perennial.</s>GLORIA: We need to support people like Charles Fishman, who wrote "The Big Thirst," and, you know, that's an eye-opener. And he posits that the reason we waste so much water in this United States is because we don't pay attention to it. It comes - you know, you turn on the tap, and it comes out. We flush more water down our toilet than, you know, Great Britain and Canada use, total, you know.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Sandra Postel, you've described the United States as being fairly rich in water resources. But she was describing irrigation systems. A lot of farmers simply flood their fields or run water down the funnels between the furrows, the areas between the furrows. She was talking about drip irrigation. That's a relatively newer system and one that is much more - well, it saves a lot of water.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: It does. We're water-rich as a nation, but we're very water-stressed in the western part of the country, and that's where we have most of our irrigation happening. And you know, the silver lining in all this is that there's so much we can do. As the caller pointed out, there's a waste of water going on, but that's because we haven't really given farmers the incentives they need to really use the most modern and up-to-date technology.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And we haven't provided that opportunity the way we can. So drip irrigation is just one example of - it's the most efficient way we know of to deliver water directly to plants. You're delivering the water directly to the roots of the plant in the amounts of water that the plant needs and not, you know, just spreading the water on the field where it's subject to evaporation and running off and adding to the pollution that Gloria talked about.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And so I think that's one technology that's underused. In this country we've got about seven, eight percent of - or about seven or eight percent of our irrigated land under drip irrigation. Countries like Israel, Jordan that are growing more fruits and vegetables, up over half. So there's a lot that we can do to improve that efficiency.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: But again, farmers are good businesspeople. You know, they're making decisions as to how to use their water, what crops to grow, based on the incentives and the prices that - just like any good business person would - the incentives that confront them.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So there really are challenges to how do we change the incentives to promote, you know, the better use of efficiency technology where and how we grow crops.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund, what about that idea, the image - we turn on a tap, it's there. Of course we use it, and of course we waste it because we don't really think about it.</s>JASON CLAY: Well, I think if we - when resources become more scarce, we're going to start paying more for them. It's going to be either - water's going to be charged, or the taxes to use it or the competition between users are going to change. So we're going to have to figure out how to use water more efficiently.</s>JASON CLAY: But it's not just water, it's soil. It's other inputs. It's land itself. I think there are lots of ways that we can increase efficiency but only if we start to manage and measure it. We've got hundreds of certification programs in the U.S. that look at sustainability of food production. None of them measure productivity, and very few of them actually even measure water at all.</s>JASON CLAY: So as water becomes more scarce, we're going to have to start doing that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go to a question here in the auditorium.</s>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: What role can native planting, especially native edible planting, play in bolstering the food supply while maintaining or managing our water?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Native plants - in other words the local plants that have always been here?</s>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Or anywhere.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or anywhere, okay. Can you help us out with that, Jason?</s>JASON CLAY: Well, one of the projects that we've been involved with is in Africa, where we're trying to identify what the orphan crops are, the kind of neglected crops, the crops that haven't benefitted from modern plant breeding, and what we could do if we map those genomes and begin to select for traits in years rather than decades or centuries so that we could take tree crops and then double or triple or quadruple production.</s>JASON CLAY: We're talking about things like cassava, cocoa yams, peanuts, palm oil, et cetera, all native to Africa and used by those people. And the question is then how do we double-up or triple-up production. We think there's a lot of room to be made for genetics.</s>JASON CLAY: But it's not just about genetics. It's also about how to grow those crops better. We find that anywhere in the world, the best farmers are 100 percent - or excuse me, 100 times more productive than the worst farmers. So how do they do it? What are the practices they use? We need to begin to identify that, document it and spread that around.</s>JASON CLAY: We have 500 million, 800 million cell phones in Africa? Why aren't we using that to spread information like this, SMS texting and messaging, and replace the old extension agent that's 10, 20, 30 years out of date by the time they're 40 or 50 or 60 years old and use cell phones to get immediate information to people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet - I assume the extension service in a lot of places you're talking about in Africa is your father and his brother and maybe your grandfather.</s>JASON CLAY: In the sense that most governments can't afford to pay for extension agents anymore, yes, that's true. But learning about modern techniques from your grandparents isn't exactly the most straightforward way to go forward.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller in on the conversation. Let's go to Jim, Jim with us from Kansas City.</s>JIM: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>JIM: I talked to an ag agent about - in 2000, (unintelligible) Texas before I moved up here. And he said by 2020 we would lose the grain belt because the dust bowl is going to come back and that they had already made contracts with Canada to (unintelligible) the grain they were going to have to buy because their genetic expert said they could not possibly breed a viable crop in just 20 years.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Couldn't - your phone is betraying you, but I think you were talking about the dust bowl returning, and it's been looking like that in parts of Kansas and much of Texas. And Sandra...</s>JIM: (Unintelligible)...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm sorry, really having a hard time hearing you, but we're going to let you go, but we'll pick up your question with Sandra Postel of the National Geographic Society; he's a freshwater fellow here, and that is this idea that, well, obviously climate change is having a tremendous impact in places like Texas, in places like Australia, in places like China and Russia.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Exactly. It's very troubling from a water perspective because what the scientists are saying now is that we're sort of outside. We've moved outside the normal boundaries of variability. So the droughts are likely to get worse, and the floods are likely to get worse, and we've been seeing this. Right, we've seen, you know, these biblical scale floods in Pakistan, last year 20 percent of the country.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: We saw a heat wave in Russia that, you know, produced temperatures in Moscow that they hadn't seen in generations, and it cut their wheat crop by 40 percent.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So we're seeing these extremes, and that's going to spike food prices. We saw in 2008, and again earlier this year, in February 2011, a spiking of food prices like we hadn't seen. And what that does is it creates more hunger. We saw at least another 150 million poor people go hungry, from about 850 million to up over a billion, because of that spiking of food prices.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And also, it also changes the dynamics of the whole food system. And so, you know, this is the kind of thing on top of the demand - the increase in demand for food, again, as more and more countries and people want to consume meat the way we do. You know, we've had a tripling of world population, but a six-fold increase in our meat consumption since 1950. And that trend in demand is happening even as climate change is making the water system much more difficult.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jason Clay?</s>JASON CLAY: The variability isn't just about the productivity either. If you have one year where you have too much water and your crop fails and the next year, you have too little water and your crop fails, what bank is going to lend you money to plant the third crop? I mean, we haven't even begun to come to terms with what some of the climate change issues mean for finance and other sectors.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Jerry(ph): We have a small farm 25 miles north of Denver. One of the cities is offering us to buy our water for 10 times what it was previously worth. In the process, they also force farms into drying up, removing productive farmland from use. So it's six to one and half a dozen in the other, taking away from one hand and giving to the other. Let's get a question from the audience here in Washington.</s>JOEL BREZOIR: Yes, I'm Joel Brezoir(ph). I was wondering, where does desalination fit into the equation of water usage and water need, et cetera, for the future?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sandra Postel, desalination, pumping water out of the ocean, taking the salt out and the other stuff. But it's energy intensive, no?</s>SANDRA POSTEL: It is very energy intensive. It's, you know, we have this image of the vast oceans. If we could just take the salt out, we would have no water problems. And it's a temptation to think that way. The tricky thing is it takes a lot of energy to remove salt from water. Whether you distill it and leave the freshwater behind or you push it through a membrane, which is the more modern way of doing it, it takes a lot of energy. And so desalination is very much a growth industry right now. It's in island countries and desert countries and cities. They're relying a lot on desal(ph) for their drinking water.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: But it's way too expensive to desalt ocean water to grow food. Food prices would just go through the roof. And the other thing about desalination is because it's energy intensive and it's using usually fossil fuels to run the plant, you're contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere to create water. And so you're making those water shortage problems all that much worse. And I think this is part of the issue.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Now we're dealing now with this nexus of water, food, energy and climate problems, and we have to think about solutions that tackle all those at the same time, you know, and not try to solve one problem while making another one worse. That's going to just create a vicious cycle.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jason Clay, is this an area where technology can help us out?</s>JASON CLAY: Well, I think so. I mean, if you imagine, could we actually harness the way wave actions move so that the waves themselves desalinate water, so that we're not using fossil fuels, we're using other sources. I mean, we - I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball any more than any of the rest of you about where we're going to get our water. But rather than hold out for some technology, I would say let's start being more efficient.</s>JASON CLAY: We waste a lot of water. More importantly, a hidden thing is that we waste a lot of food. A third of all the calories we produce on this planet are never eaten by people. They're actually wasted. In developing countries, it's post-harvest losses. We don't have elevators. We don't have granaries. We don't have transportation systems. We don't have refrigeration. In our developed countries, it's more - we have portions that are out of control. We have restaurants that throw away food. We look in our refrigerators and throw away food every week.</s>JASON CLAY: If we could eliminate food waste, we'd have to produce have as much food as we do by 2050. Now, why is that important? Because between now and 2050, we have to produce as much food as we have in the last 8,000 years. That's the challenge before us today. We can't afford to take waste off the table, genetics off the table, technology off the table. None of them are going to get us there by itself. All of them combined, if we will away at them, we can get there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jason Clay, senior vice president of market transformation at the World Wildlife Fund. Sandra Postel is also with us, freshwater fellow at the National Geographic Society, director of the Global Water Policy Project. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there's another question here in the Grosvenor Auditorium.</s>KENNETH ANUM: MY name is Kenneth Anum(ph). I'm sitting here, listening to this, and I'm wondering about Africa. What are we going to do about Africa? Today, there are places in Africa whereby it's dry, and there's water scarcity. And as water scarcity increases, what's going to happen to these places that are already dry?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Jason Clay, you brought a monograph. You've suggested eight ideas. We're not going to have time to go into them all, but he's correctly identified the problem, no?</s>JASON CLAY: Absolutely. I was just in Durban last week at the climate talks, and somebody pointed out that the last eight years in Africa had been hardest or, excuse me, the hottest in record. So we've had records for 150 years. The last eight years have been the top eight in terms of heat. That's going to make it very hard to produce food. We're going to have to look for varieties that require less water, that produce more calories per water that we use. We need to begin to start looking at different kinds of metrics.</s>JASON CLAY: If you talk to farmers, they all talk about how many hectares or how many acres that they're farming, not how many calories they're producing per liter of water, how many calories they're producing per hour of labor. Those are kinds of things that we need to begin to look at. On a finite planet, we've got to manage our resources better, and that means we've got to start counting and measuring and managing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: One of the interesting pieces in your story was an idea called treadle pumps. The mechanical pumps cost $350, the most inexpensive ones. That's huge amount of money for farmers in that part of the world. Instead, treadle pumps were - works pretty much like a StairMaster, and you can pump water up from an aquifer.</s>JASON CLAY: So the question then becomes how many calories does it take to pump the water to produce how many calories? You need to do the math. We live on a finite planet. We got to always do the math.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And one of the - Kenneth makes a really good point that one of the things Africa doesn't have that much of the rest of the world does have is irrigation. So if you look at sub-Saharan Africa, only 4 percent of the crop land is irrigated. And so when those dry times come, there's no ability to use river water or groundwater to irrigate a crop.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And so one of the ideas is to try to invest more in that affordable small-scale irrigation like the treadle pumps, which cost a bit more in Africa, and the idea would not be to treadle forever, but it's an entry point, you know? It gets you out of poverty because you can suddenly be more food self-sufficient, not have those terrible years when the drought hits, and begin to take some crops to market.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: In Bangladesh, where this idea first kicked off, the treadle pump, 1.2 million of those were sold, and a lot of farm families found that to be their ticket out of poverty and toward that next level of income where they could then buy a different kind of pump, where they don't have to work quite so hard. But it's an excellent point.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about the shortage of water in many parts of the world and how we're going to use it to feed seven billion and counting. A couple of more questions when we come back.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're also going to be visiting scenes from Japan's nuclear disaster. The area around the Fukushima plant is off-limits to the news media. We'll talk with a photographer about how he got in, who and what he saw there. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll get to the exclusion zone outside of Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in just a moment, but we wanted to continue our conversation with Sandra Postel, a freshwater fellow at the National Geographic Society, and Jason Clay, senior vice president of market transformation at the World Wildlife Found.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get a caller on the line. This is Cyprus,(ph) Cyprus with us from Fredericksburg in Texas.</s>CYPRUS: Hi. Good afternoon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi.</s>CYPRUS: I'm a - hi. I'm a farmer in Central Texas, one of the drought-stricken and fire-stricken areas, and we grow peaches and a variety of just different vegetables and crops. We actually grow sustainably, so we use drip irrigation. We utilize cover cropping, soil conservation, plant selection and a variety of other sustainable practices to try to conserve our water and build our soil.</s>CYPRUS: Our water source that we use is we have our own private wells that we use and we monitor. I suppose our most troubling issue at this point and question for your experts and audience is on the concern of water privatization versus not. In our case as farmers, we have our own private water, but we are under extreme pressure from our water districts to start putting meters on our own private wells to start charging us and regulating what we use out of our own private water.</s>CYPRUS: In some water districts around Texas, they've already started to do this, where they've started metering private wells. I think some other states in the United States have done the same. Some years ago, there was a city or a town somewhere in South America that privatized their public - or their water, and I think successfully the public opened it back up because it made water too expensive and inaccessible to a lot of the poor people there.</s>CYPRUS: So I guess that's my big concern, is for even those of us that are trying to do our best to use all the technology and best practices, we're still facing possible issues with our private water being restricted.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jason Clay, this is going to be an issue in places other than Texas. Obviously Fredericksburg is, well, the center of the storm, as she mentioned. It's been drought-stricken and fire-hit as well, but this kind of issue, is it public water? Is it private water? Who owns it? Who has access to it? That's the history of the Southwest United States.</s>JASON CLAY: Well, it's a good question. I mean, water moves, and the wells may be on a property, but the aquifers underneath are flowing along states, not just even counties or farms. And so who owns that water? Just because you have a well, do you have unlimited access, et cetera? Are these public goods or are they private goods?</s>JASON CLAY: This is what, I think, water scarcity is going to trigger as a whole debate around this. How do we manage this - the scarce resource when we have multiple entrance through various wells to tap it? And how would we use it? Would we use it for growing peaches? Would we use it for growing calories? Would we use it for growing other things? I mean, those are decisions that we - we're going to have to start managing them a little better and not just have ad hoc decisions, I think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But you can understand, Sandra Postel, the concerns of a farmer. Wait a minute, we're here. The water is here. They never charged us for it before. It's our water.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Yeah. Hats off to the caller for being so sustainable in the way, you know, she and her farmers are - her farm is producing, you know, peaches and the other crops because, in Texas, you have a strong sort of disincentive to be that efficient and that sustainable because they have in Texas what's called the rule of capture, which means that if you own land and you drill a well, like they have done, you can pump as much water from beneath your land as you want to.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: And so there's not a strong - there's a long history there of if you own the land, you own the water and you can pump as much as you want. And as Jason just said, exactly right, it's a common pool under there. So if - as more and more people pump, as you add more straws to that single source of water, it's going to get sucked out faster and faster. And what's the concern now is if you look around the world that all the places where that's happening, so many wells, so many straws in that common pool of groundwater beneath the earth, we're producing something like 10 percent of our food today by over-pumping ground water.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So that's kind of a bubble in the food economy from that over-pumping. We're propping it up with the unsustainable use of water. And like we've learned from the housing bubble, the dot-com bubble, they pop. And we're beginning to see in parts of India, for example, where a lot of these over-pumping has happened, that wells are beginning to run dry or farmers can't afford to keep pumping. And so, that land comes out of production or it goes back to dryland farming, which is less productive.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: So this is a concern globally. We're seeing it locally in the United States here and there, the central valley of California, our fruit and vegetable basket, tremendous over-pumping. But this is a problem globally for the global food economy. It manifests locally, but it's going to translate into more pressure on the food system.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thank you, both, very much for your time today. We appreciate your dropping by and speaking with us. You just heard Sandra Postel, a freshwater fellow at the National Geographic Society. Our thanks as well to Jason Clay, senior vice president of market transformation at the World Wildlife Fund. Appreciate your time.</s>JASON CLAY: Thank you.</s>SANDRA POSTEL: Thanks, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In just a moment, we'll be talking to David Guttenfelder of the Associated Press about the exclusions zone around Japan's stricken nuclear power plant. Stay with us. |
In 1887, Julius Petri invented a simple pair of nesting glass dishes, ideal for keeping specimens of growing bacteria sterile—the 'Petri dish.' Science historian Howard Markel recounts the history of this ubiquitous lab supply, and the serendipitous discovery of the stuff in it, agar. | IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's time for our monthly episode of Science Diction, where we explore the origins of scientific words with my guest Howard Markel, professor of history of medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, also director of the Center for the History of Medicine there. He joins us WUOM. Welcome back, Howard.</s>HOWARD MARKEL: Good afternoon, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We have a very interesting word, or actually lab equipment today.</s>HOWARD MARKEL: That we do. It's my favorite plate. It's the Petri dish.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: The Petri dish. How did that get started?</s>HOWARD MARKEL: Yeah. Well, it was designed by a guy named Petri - Julius Richard Petri, to be exact. He was a military physician. He worked for the German army. And in 1877, he found himself assigned to the Imperial Health Office in Berlin, which was a laboratory ran by Robert Koch. Now, Robert Koch was the Kaiser of bacteriology. He discovered the cause of cholera and tuberculosis and anthrax. So it was sort of like being a bush leaguer suddenly called up to play short stop for the Yankees.</s>HOWARD MARKEL: And in order for Koch to make his discoveries, he had to figure out how to grow not only lots of bacteria, but grow them in a reliable, pure culture technique. And that was a big problem, because a lot of the earlier methods were opened to the air. And, you know, a lot of other germs would join on to the media and grow. And you wouldn't really know what you were dealing with. Some were grown in test tubes. Some were grown in liquor glasses. But...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: By the way, it would seemed like it's a no-brainer to come up with a little piece of glass, you put another piece of glass on top, and you've sealed it off.</s>HOWARD MARKEL: It does, doesn't it? But one of the earlier ways to prevent things from getting in, we - the bacteriology term is schmutz, by the way. But one way to get it from coming in...</s>HOWARD MARKEL: ...was to put a heavy glass bell jar on a glass plate that had some gelatin with bacteria growing. But that was very cumbersome. You know, a bell jar is very heavy, and you're manipulating with one hand. And you've got to get to the microscope and so and so.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right. And you can't put them under the microscope to look through it, either.</s>HOWARD MARKEL: No, you can't. And that's where Petri comes in. He actually designed - familiar to every one who's listening - that glass, flat dish with a cover that fits right over it. And that was terrific, because not only could you keep contaminants from getting in, but you could slide it under the microscope, put it right on the stage of the microscope and view your specimens.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And has it change very much since those...</s>HOWARD MARKEL: Not really. I mean, it's - some are made out of glass, some are made out of polyacrylic or plastic, but it's essentially the same as when Petri wrote his only - it's a 300-word paper that he wrote describing the plating technique.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And so the Petri dish is basically an old instrument that did its job well, and remains the same way it used to look.</s>HOWARD MARKEL: Right. And, you know, we don't really always know who Petri is. But we do know what a Petri dish is, don't we?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And now we know who he is, thanks to you, Howard.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Have a good holiday. Thanks for joining us.</s>HOWARD MARKEL: Happy Holiday to you, Ira.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Howard Markel is professor of history of medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and director of the Center for the History of Medicine there. |
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel died Sunday. The dissident playwright who led the 1989 Velvet Revolution against the communist regime is remembered for artfully weaving theater and politics. Fellow dissident playwright Ariel Dorfman shares how Havel inspired him and how he will be remembered. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and human rights activist who became the conscience of his nation died yesterday at the age of 75. Repeatedly jailed by the communist government, his example and his words inspired human rights activists across Eastern Europe and the world. He emerged as one of the architects of the Velvet Revolution and the unanimous choice of the new parliament as the first president of a free Czechoslovakia. Hope, he once wrote, is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ariel Dorfman joins us now from his home in Durham, North Carolina. He's a professor of literature at Duke. His memoir where he writes about the influence of dissidents like Vaclav Havel is titled "Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile." And, Ariel, nice to have you back on the program.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: It's great to be with you again, Neal, though I'm sorry it has to be for such an occasion.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Me, too. But for all the obituaries I've seen, they list Vaclav Havel, writer and president. Do you think he would have been pleased to see those descriptors in that order?</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: No. I think he would have preferred being called writer. He would have loved being called playwright and writer. But he probably would have thought himself as a moral beacon, a moral authority, which is he always put ethics at the center of politics, which is very different from what most politicians do. And I think he would have put himself - well, he would have probably liked me to say that he was a mischief-maker. He was mischievous personally, impish, you know, almost, shy but impish. But also, he thought that it was up to people like him to make trouble, and that when you make trouble in the world, the world seems superficially at peace with itself, complacent with itself, the world ends up being made turbulent. And I think that's what he did. But he did it in his work, and he did it in his political activism, as well, as human rights activist.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In his speech, his first speech as president, January 1st, 1990, he said: Communism is a monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine whose worst legacy is not economic failure, but a spoiled moral environment. We've become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other. Love, friendship, mercy, humility or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension. They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times - not words we expect from most of our politicians.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: Well, you know what? What's wonderful about what you just read there is his eloquence. And the fact is that when you look at him - because most people - listen. Most people really have no idea about his playwriting at all, right? I mean, I was lucky enough because I was a playwright myself. Joe Papp introduced me to his work very, very early on in my own exile. And his work was, generally, very often about the absurd nature of language, language imposed from above, bureaucratic language. I mean, after all, he was a person who lived and was born in the same city as Franz Kafka, right, as Tom Stoppard.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: So the idea of the absurd, the idea that life ceases to have any meaning if we do not try to break the cliches that surround us - now, this one would say it's exact the opposite of what a politician should do, because politicians, in fact, deals with cliches and slogans all the time with soundbites, with the saying things to - that the great majority of the people will agree with without even understanding what they're really saying.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: So I think what was interesting about his life is that he - it was very ironic that he should become president. And when he became president, he, in fact, was constantly fighting with the politicians, because he felt that the politicians - a lot of the nouveau riche who would become rich after communism fell and became greedy and have sort of a neo-liberal position, like Vaclav Klaus, who had the same first name but not the second name, right?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mm-hmm.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: And so he would fight with his own prime minister constantly about that. And, I mean, I remember very well when, in 1984, General Pinochet came to, -you know, my nemesis came to Czechoslovakia, and Havel didn't want to meet him. He said: He's come here to buy arms. We don't want anything to do with him. Keep him away from me, you know? And the others said, no. We have to have realpolitick. You know, we're trying to sell arms where - and then Havel said, well, we shouldn't be selling arms anywhere. So, you know, this is not a typical politician, because he was not a typical playwright, either. And the truth is that he was an extraordinary man in all senses.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ariel Dorfman, we're talking about the late Vaclav Havel. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we have to remember in that a president of Czechoslovakia, later the Czech Republic, was pretty much a symbolic role, not an executive role. So I wonder, though: did you ever discuss your situations as writers, you and he, his in communist Czechoslovakia, yours after - in Pinochet's Chile?</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: We had a bit of a conversation once when we had dinner with Elie Wiesel in Paris, because we were members of the Academy of Intellectuals, or Thinkers, in Paris. So we would meet once in a while. I was not a close friend of his, but I knew him relatively well. And I also, surely enough, was able to put him in a play of mine, because I have a play which is dedicated to many, many dissident writers and human rights activists. So it's strange to meet your own character, let's say. Right?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I bet.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: In fact, it's something which comes - it would have come out of his own play, right. In his own plays, people meet themselves as characters in their own fiction. So it was like I was in one of his plays, meeting him. But we did talk a little bit about that and about the fact that he echoed something that I think about in memoir, which is that when I left Chile a couple of years after - in other words, it was two or three years after Pinochet had taken in power.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: And I met with Heinrich Boll, who was a Nobel Prize of Literature. And he said something to me that Havel had also - was going to say to me many years later, which is: Watch out for language, because you have to make sure that today your rescue the language with which we'll build the future tomorrow. If you allow the people in power - of the right, of the left, of whatever political sign they, but repressive sign - if these people can repress your language, if they can make you live the lie and believe the lie, believe that you're perfectly moral living a lie, and they corrupt the language, then watch out.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: So we talked a little bit about language in that sense, about how he had always - he - he started out - he didn't start out to become president of any republic or anything of the sort. He started out in order just to write freely. And, of course, he wasn't able to write freely in that regime, just like I wasn't able to write freely in my own regime, you know? So it was very much a talk about language and about how the moral stance is absolutely fundamental, essential. It's the core of any political activity. And, of course, that's not always so in politics.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Is it in writing, though?</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: Is it in writing? Yes. I think, you know - well, one should ask: Is it possible for somebody like Havel to become today - in other words, is it possible - if you look around the world, is it possible for somebody like Havel to become a president, somebody of that stature, and dedicated to the theater like he did? I think it becomes increasingly impossible. But the writing itself brought him to the fact. It happened all over the world, where people start out writing, and then they're not allowed to write the truth of what they're seeing. And they're repressed, or they're put in jail. And then as they become repressed, they become more and more dissident.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: He himself didn't think that he was much of a dissident. He thought, you know, that he was just doing what had to be done. He kept on saying - there were two things. I can remember another thing that he said to me about humor, because I called attention to the fact that, very often, those of us who oppose authoritarianism or repressive regimes, we tend to be very rigid, you know, very formal, very serious. And he said: We much never forget that the humor is very important, because we must never forget we have to be able to laugh at our own selves. So he had that.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: And that's, in fact, in the play that I wrote. That was one of the phrases that I wanted to put in there. I ended up taking it out, but it was something that I've been thinking about for a long time.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ariel, I'm afraid we have to end it there.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it.</s>ARIEL DORFMAN: Thank you so much, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ariel Dorfman joined us from his home in Durham, North Carolina. He's professor of literature at Duke, his memoir "Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile."</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tomorrow, we'll look at some of the people, products and ideas that had good years in 2011. I'm Neal Conan, TALK OF THE NATION, NPR News. |
Two teams of scientists at CERN say they may have glimpsed the long-sought Higgs boson while studying particle collisions. Physicist Joe Incandela discusses how the teams are closing in on data that may prove the theoretical particle, considered a building block for the universe, exists. | IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Scientists have been searching for decades for a subatomic particle called the Higgs Boson. You've heard about it. It's been in the news, and you know, in theory, it explains why and how objects have mass.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But for more than 40 years, after it was first posited, the Higgs Boson remains elusive. This week, two teams of researchers studying trillions of proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider say they've made progress in the hunt for the Higgs. In fact, CERN's director general, Rolf Heuer, said that while the evidence was not definitive, two teams of scientists have narrowed down the Higgs' hiding spot.</s>ROLF HEUER: I think we have made extremely good process by closing in the window of the allowed mass range of the Higgs Boson, but it's still alive inside, and we saw some tantalizing hints today.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And Joe Incandela joins us from CERN in Geneva to help sift through the data and talk about those tantalizing hints that Rolf Heuer was talking about. Mr. Incandela is currently the deputy spokesman for the CMS experiment at CERN, and beginning in January 1, he's going to be the spokesperson for the experiment. He's also physic professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Incandela.</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, thank you, it's my pleasure to be here.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Tell us exactly, you know, sometimes the announcement reminds me of a phrase that someone is a little bit pregnant, you know. He's saying yes and no at the same time.</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, it's - it really comes down to statistics, and the fact that we're at a stage where we're sensitive, fairly sensitive, to begin looking for the Higgs in many areas, but we're not quite at the point where we have enough data to really nail it.</s>JOE INCANDELA: And sometimes I give the analogy of looking through binoculars. We're somewhere between out of focus and completely in focus, you know, that range where things are a little blurry, and you can kind of imagine you see things, but you're not sure exactly what they are.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So what - as a scientist, what did they actually see? They saw some evidence of a mass at a certain energy level.</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, what we were looking for, yes, is let me just say this: We had a range of Higgs masses that we think are possible. We don't know - if we don't know if the Higgs exists, but if it exists, it has to exist in a certain range of masses. And we use the units of the proton mass.</s>JOE INCANDELA: So somewhere between roughly 114 and 600 times the proton mass was open, except for about 20 units around 160 that was ruled out by Ferme Lab in Chicago. So we started looking there. And depending where you're looking, the Higgs kind of manifests itself in different ways, by what it decays to. And so we looked for those kinds of events that looked like Higgs decays, and remarkably, in just one year, that whole 500 GEV range, that 500 times the proton mass range, we've narrowed it down to just 14, 13 or 14 units now.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right, and so you saw evidence of what would be a photon decay there or a photon?</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, we see - we definitely see - one of the things the Higgs can do in the range where we haven't sort of - let me say this: We haven't really ruled it out of everywhere else in this big range, but we have - it's become somewhat less probable or possible that we'd expect to see it there. We still have a lot of work, even in this big range, to really rule it out to a very high degree.</s>JOE INCANDELA: But in this range that's still kind of really very possible, this 15 GEV range or 14 GEV range, that's just right where the Higgs tends to want to decay in the most interesting ways, in many different ways. And one way is to two photons, very energetic photons.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right. And so you saw that?</s>JOE INCANDELA: We see that, but there are many...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But that's not convincing - that's not convincing evidence enough? As you say, there are many ways you could get there.</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, there are many other things that can actually produce two photons, as well.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you need to run more experiments?</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, we need to get more data, and we're going to do that next year. We'll get about maybe five times the data. And then we'll be able to be, I think, much more certain. On the other hand we do see interesting events that could be candidates for the Higgs, and in some cases it's to two photons, sometimes to two Z-particles that then decay to electrons or muons.</s>JOE INCANDELA: And these are rather clean events. And they're quite interesting, for sure.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But they could be caused by something natural, also, something...?</s>JOE INCANDELA: That's right. That's right. So what we have to do is look for the signal over a background, just signal over noise is really the issue. So we need larger statistics to see that what we're seeing is really statistically significant, and we're tantalizingly close to being there. Within the next year, we'll be there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So you run the Large Hadron Collider all winter long, and you collect data?</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, this winter - we're off right now.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You shut down for the winter?</s>JOE INCANDELA: We shut down for much of the winter, and we'll come back up, I think they start re-commissioning the machine in February. We'll go, very likely but not for sure, it'll be decided in January, we'll go up a little bit of a step in energy, and we'll go to more intense beams. And this makes more collisions per unit time.</s>JOE INCANDELA: And so where hoping that whereas this year in some sense we - each experiment had something like 350 trillion proton-proton collisions, next year we'll have something like four or five times that many. And so we should make more of these Higgs, and if there's something there, it will become statistically significant.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So why not wait until it was statistically significant? Why come out with this tantalizing little hint? Is it something to tide us over the wintertime so we can wait for it to power up again in February?</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, it's actually the way we do things at some level. There's a - whenever the machine goes down - or actually more generally, about two times per year, we like to go through our data and understand it as well as we can and present it publicly. And so this is sort of a normal process.</s>JOE INCANDELA: This is a little earlier than usual, it's normally in February or March, but because of the excitement over this search, it was of great interest for us to do this now. And the fact that we narrowed down this range that I told you about, that we've kind of begun to eliminate 490 units of the 500 units of this range, is a huge achievement, actually.</s>JOE INCANDELA: You have to realize that for 30 or 40 years, we've been looking, and it's - you know, we were moving at a snail's pace. But this machine is so fantastic, it allowed us to really make great progress in just one year, and I think the community at large was very excited to see that we've made such progress.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But it's possible you could never get past this stage of - you can continue to run and not come up with anything more statistically significant and not find the Higgs Boson?</s>JOE INCANDELA: No, we will definitely come up with something more statistically significant. We're very confident of that. Now, the thing is that there's a possibility that we don't see it, it's just not there, and the theories are wrong, or at least the standard model version of the Higgs theory is wrong, and it has to be something else.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That would be good, too.</s>JOE INCANDELA: That would be good, too, because, you know, we - we're here as experimentalists. Our job is to really view nature. We're not making any prejudgments about it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I think Steven Weinberg once said our job is not to make physicists happy, or nature is not here to make physicists happy.</s>JOE INCANDELA: That's right, that's right, and that's why we need these experiments.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: OK, well, when do you think we'll get the first data coming in, or we'll have something where you'll be jumping up and down, again, you know, maybe next spring, or will it be another year from now?</s>JOE INCANDELA: Well, we're tentatively targeting having additional results in the summer, probably in July, and we're hoping by that time to have maybe twice as much data as we have now. And then by the end of the year, and perhaps right at the end of the year or shortly thereafter, we'll have another doubling.</s>JOE INCANDELA: So we'll go to four times the data that we have right now, roughly speaking, and at that point we are pretty confident that we'll be able to really focus in on this thing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right. OK, Joe, thank you very much, and good luck to you.</s>JOE INCANDELA: Thank you very much.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We hope to have you back with some more results next year. Have a happy holiday.</s>JOE INCANDELA: All right, same to you.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Joe Incandela is - he joined us from CERN in Geneva. He will become, in January, the official spokesman for the experiment over there. He's also a physics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara |
The number of American children who qualify for free or reduced school lunches has surged in the economic downturn. For many of those children, it may be the first time they fully understand their family's changing economic situation. Joe Wemette, former asst. superintendent, Roseville Schools (Minn.) Katherine Marshall Woods, Psychological Group of Washington Taniesha Woods, National Center for Children and Poverty | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. The Department of Agriculture reports that the number of students receiving free or reduced lunch soared by 17 percent last year. That's up to 21 million. Given the state of the economy, the statistics may come as no surprise, but each new child who qualifies for free lunch means another family fallen out of the middle class.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Many of these kids are experiencing poverty for the first time, and whether the signal comes in the school cafeteria or when they see a parent struggling with the bills, they suddenly realize that they're poor.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If the economy forced you out of the middle class, how did your kids find out? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. The Opinion Page later in the program, the opposition in Russia finds a voice. Can it build a movement?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But first, children and poverty, and we begin with Joe Wemette, the former assistant superintendent for Roseville Schools in Minnesota, and he joins us now from his office there. Nice to have you with us today.</s>JOE WEMETTE: Hi, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this is an incremental story, a slow creep of a slipping economy, but I wonder: Was there a moment when the reality of the new poverty hit you?</s>JOE WEMETTE: Oh, it has been coming gradually. Each year, we've been really aware of the consistency of the trend, but it has been more emphatic in the last five years, I would say.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how does it manifest?</s>JOE WEMETTE: We have - when we look at our trend, we were under 20 percent free and reduced-price lunch count in '02, '03, and if you fast-forward to about six years later, we were up to 29 percent. And right now, Roseville area schools has 44 percent of the students on free and reduced-price lunch.</s>JOE WEMETTE: So it's a really steady and consistent uphill climb toward that. About three percent more kids each year, two to three percent is what we see.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Do kids know that they're on the free lunch program?</s>JOE WEMETTE: It will depend on the family circumstances. I suspect most of the time they do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do other kids know that kids are on the free lunch program?</s>JOE WEMETTE: Hopefully not, but again it'll depend on circumstances. It's not through the district sharing the news, of course, but it depends on kid conversations with each other.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And so there's no tipoff when you're standing in the cafeteria line?</s>JOE WEMETTE: Right. Kids don't exchange money or anything anyway. They all go through the line and enter a number. Everybody enters a number. So there's no tipoff that way to the really best we can manage that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is - there's usually a relationship between poor kids and academic performance. Is that slipping in conjunction with the poverty rates?</s>JOE WEMETTE: We try really hard to avert that correlation, of course, but it's there. We know it is and has been for a long time in the research. But we work really hard to avert that. We get some special resources that help in the form of Title I dollars from the federal government and in the form of compensatory ed dollars from the state of Minnesota. So we are able to do more in those pockets where the poverty is greatest.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And describe for those of us who have not been to Roseville, can you describe what that area's like?</s>JOE WEMETTE: Sure, Roseville is a first-string suburb just north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, population of some over 50,000, I believe, with a student population of about 6,700. We are 57 percent white, 43 percent students of color, and that, like the poverty rate, has been changing incrementally for at least 20 years, I know because I've tracked those statistics.</s>JOE WEMETTE: And so both poverty and diversity have been increasing in the district for quite a while.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Do you see an effect on kids when they are - newly find themselves in poverty?</s>JOE WEMETTE: You know, each of those situations has its own context. It's really hard to generalize. Sometimes it's situational poverty. Sometimes it's generational poverty. So I hate to generalize too much about kids' situations. But each one of those students has their own story.</s>JOE WEMETTE: So sometimes it'll be dramatic, and sometimes it'll be just the way it's been.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just the way it's been, that may be the saddest story of all.</s>JOE WEMETTE: Yes it is, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joe Wemette, thanks very much for your time today.</s>JOE WEMETTE: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joe Wemette, former assistant superintendent of Roseville Schools in Minnesota, with us today from his office there. And we'd like to hear from those of you who have seen your families drop out of the middle class. How did the kids find out? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Katherine Marshall Woods is a clinical psychologist with the Psychological Group of Washington. She focuses on child and adolescent psychology and been kind enough to join us here in Studio 3A. Thanks very much for coming in.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: DR. KATHERINE MARSHALL WOODS: Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I think Joe Wemette is right, it's probably a different story with each kid.</s>WOODS: Absolutely, everyone has their own story to tell, and each person is different and an individual. So the way they cope with the issues that they're facing is also very different.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, your work focuses on kids in transition, I guess that's a kind way to describe it. What have you learned about the moment when kids first realize that their family's poor?</s>WOODS: Well, some kids handle it a lot better than others. Many have already developed specific coping skills that can help them through and actually want to be a very proactive participant in helping their family be able to become more successful.</s>WOODS: Other children have a lot more difficulties handling the transition, and they begin to act out, become delinquent at school and also become very disappointed in their parents, as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, so some see it as a challenge, the Horatio Algers of the world, and some see it as the latest discouragement from a life that has offered them some bad breaks to begin with.</s>WOODS: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How do kids find out?</s>WOODS: Many times parents will sit down with their children and speak with them in age-appropriate manner. Other children begin to see a diminish in their surroundings, in their environment.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: They move from an house to an apartment to another, smaller apartment.</s>WOODS: Exactly, and sadly enough to say, some children find out by their peers, by being made fun of and bullied.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That they're wearing not the right shoes or the right bag or stuff like that. It's very important to kids.</s>WOODS: Exactly, exactly.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's also - I assume there are a lot of kids in this situation, being a single parent increases the odds tremendously that a kid's going to grow up in poverty.</s>WOODS: Yes, actually it does. And specifically, currently right now, the statistics state that there's 8.1 million individual children who live with one parent at least who's unemployed, which then causes a lot of difficulties for that child, specifically it increases their rate of academic troubles.</s>WOODS: Up to 15 percent of those students are then at risk of being retained, so - which also then causes issues for them long, well into their adult life.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If this is your story, if you were one of those parents who saw your family slip out of the middle class, how did your kids find out? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Angela's(ph) on the line calling from St. Louis.</s>ANGELA: Yes, hi. I was calling because yes, my children are on free and reduced lunch in the school district that we're in. I did have to sit them down and talk to them and explain to them that, you know, it's not a crime. It's not horrible. There's nothing wrong with it - sorry, I'm getting emotional because it was kind of two-fold why we had to do this.</s>ANGELA: I'm a full-time student myself, and my husband was transferred with his job in May of 2010, and he's been transferred again since then. So we've stayed in St. Louis, and he's gone to two different states, two different cities, just so he can have a job. And because of that, you know, we don't have that - we're having to pay for two different locations, and one of the concessions we had to do, other than cutting out all the extras, was the children actually qualified for free and reduced lunch.</s>ANGELA: Last school year, they were on reduced. This year, they're on completely free lunch. It's kind of different, I think, in our situation because we are in an economic area where it's lower-middle class to poverty is the main population of our school district. So I would have to say that maybe even 60 percent of all of our students are on some kind of free or reduced lunch program.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you correctly told your children there should be no stigma, but is there?</s>ANGELA: Oh, exactly, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But is there a stigma?</s>ANGELA: There is unfortunately. There is a stigma. When I went to high school, when we moved here to St. Louis, I went to a very affluent neighborhood and a very affluent high school, and that - to have anybody on free or reduced lunch in that school district meant that you were lower class, and you were stupid, and your parents were stupid. So there is a stigma, there really is.</s>ANGELA: But I think in our situation with the district that we're in, there's not as much of a stigma because there are so many struggling families that we all understand.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the kids took it pretty well?</s>ANGELA: Yeah, the kids took it pretty well because, well, like I say, we have a high percentage. So most of their friends were on free and reduced lunch, and, you know, before 2008 or 2010, we would even pack a lunch and send it to school so that some of our children's friends, you know, knew that they were, and they were afraid that they would get picked on because they were getting free or reduced lunch.</s>ANGELA: So, you know, they would - our kids would take them an extra lunch or take them an extra pudding or something, you know, whatever we had extra. And we still have that mindset, and I think because of us bringing up our children that there's no shame in being impoverished. I was extremely impoverished when I was growing up with my parents.</s>ANGELA: We had to go to the food bank and get the - it's back in the old days where you got the giant barrel of food that lasted a month. It was a giant grab bag. You had no idea what was in that government barrel.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Usually government cheese.</s>ANGELA: Yeah, usually government cheese and powdered milk, you know.</s>ANGELA: So, you know, my mother would try to hide the fact that it was powdered milk by putting it in a real milk carton, you know, but, you know, we knew different. And my husband, the same thing. He lived on food stamps for most of his life until he was 12 or 14. So for us, it wasn't - we grew up with it.</s>ANGELA: We knew - we know that there's a way out of it, and it just so happens that right now economically, so many people overstretched themselves for so many years thinking that the bubble was never going to pop, that there was always going to be food in the pantry, and now there's not. So you just have to learn to make concessions. I think...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Angela, I'm just going to say we wish you the best of luck. It sounds like you're doing well, and I hope your husband can find a job in St. Louis.</s>ANGELA: Well, I'm hoping his company can transfer him back to St. Louis. He's got a good job, and the last thing we want to do is see it go away. But the company just announced another layoff of another 37 people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ouch.</s>ANGELA: So yeah, so we're kind of sitting on the fence again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, good luck.</s>ANGELA: Yeah. Well, thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about children and poverty. If the economy forced you out of the middle class, how did your kids find out that money was suddenly tight? 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. Around the country, as layoffs and foreclosures grind on, changed families must regroup. Parents facing hardships caused by the rotten economy have to figure out how to make house payments, how to put food on the table, how to keep the car running.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As they talk with furrowed brows, kids pick up the signals and realize times have changed. If the economy forced you out of the middle class, how did your kids find out? 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: Our guest is Katherine Marshall Woods, clinical psychologist with the Psychological Group of Washington who focuses on child and adolescent psychology. Let's see if we can get another caller on the line. Let's go to Marcella(ph), Marcella with us from Houston.</s>MARCELLA: Hello, how are you doing? Thanks for having me on the call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm well, thank you.</s>MARCELLA: Yes, I realized that - well, my kids found out that we were kind of being pushed out when I - I mean, I work full-time, but I started not being able to have money to pay for their lunch. But I make too much to qualify for any reduced or - food. We moved to a smaller apartment, and winter came around this time, and I couldn't buy anyone winter clothes or anything. They were lacking - I mean, they (unintelligible).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's awful. We think of Houston as one of the warmer places, in summer yes, in winter not so much.</s>MARCELLA: Yeah, we're kind of having a unique time when we had cold periods that came through. I was getting by for a while because I knew I couldn't afford the coats, but it came around cold. So I was like oh gosh, I've got to figure out how we're going to do that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: How are you going to do it?</s>MARCELLA: Well, my son used a coat from a cousin, and the two, the two girls kind of decided - teenagers kind of like to be cute anyway, but they decided they didn't need a coat. I think they just didn't want to bother me to try to get it. I mean, I myself have just used long sleeves and things that I had before but didn't buy anything.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Layers also help, but...</s>MARCELLA: Yeah, that's what we've been - yeah, layers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it sounds like the girls are doing their best to try to help you out.</s>MARCELLA: Well, my two older, my 19- and 17-year-old, didn't - have not been doing well with it because it's more of appearance with teenagers, and the 19-year-old, but he did find a job, but he's in college, but he had to get because I was paying for it. We didn't qualify for any aid. So he did find a job recently. So that's going to help soon.</s>MARCELLA: And the 17-year-old pretty much cried a lot because she didn't have enough clothes and things for school because I couldn't replace. The 14- and the 10-year-old, I noticed that they were watching because a lot of times I would cook and feed them first, and they noticed that I wasn't eating, so then they started asking are you eating.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what did you tell them?</s>MARCELLA: Sorry, just eat when we could. And I do have a lot of family that help.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm sure, Marcella. Family is a great resource in these difficult times. I wish you the best of luck. I hope that things pick up for you.</s>MARCELLA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the phone call. Katherine Marshall Woods, obviously a lot of emotion in her voice, and it's a terrible situation. The kids in that situation, obviously you don't know these individuals, but kids in situations like that, this can leave scars.</s>WOODS: Absolutely, and again it just is telling how she mentioned that her oldest children are having more difficulty being able to cope with it really because it's a change in what they may have known previously. And so they are hopefully relying on the idea that either things can get better and questioning what has happened.</s>WOODS: And because they're older, they are able to question really the specifics and the details of what has happened with their finances, whereas the younger children are more of a protective role of why are you not eating and wondering whether or not that they can really take care of their mom.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Every individual story is different, but is it more positive, do you think, for a parent to sit down with a kid and explain, age-appropriate obviously, or that kids realize it when there's no winter coat or no money for school lunch.</s>WOODS: Well, it's always good to prepare your children for what's happening. We even say if there's a death in the family and a child has never gone to a funeral, you want to talk to them about what they are going to see and what the experience will be like so then they have some sort of way to touch base with what you've stated and what they're experiencing.</s>WOODS: And the same is true when it comes to financial challenges. It's a good idea to be able to sit down with your children, of course in an age-appropriate way, and talk to them about what is currently happening and what specifically may happen in the future and what difficulties the family may experience as a result of what's currently happening.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah, some parents don't want to really admit it to themselves, but it's a hard thing to do.</s>WOODS: True.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Susan(ph). Susan's on the line with us from Medford in Oregon.</s>SUSAN: Hi, (unintelligible) your show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Susan. Thank you.</s>SUSAN: I am both a social worker and a school psychologist in this area. I don't - I think that people, when they think about Oregon, think about lots of green trees and lots of beauty and a national park nearby, Crater Lake National Park. We live in the southern part of the state, right on the California border, which has become pretty much a service area for retirees.</s>SUSAN: Because I worked in the schools, both in this area, in this part of southwest Oregon, and also in a remote high-desert part of Oregon - Oregon's a huge state, it's the ninth-biggest state, and it's very, very big. I'm from New England originally, and you could put New England in one corner of this state, all six states.</s>SUSAN: So I have seen not just hunger in this state, not - certainly obesity, much less obesity in schools than elsewhere, I've worked in schools on the East Coast, as well. But what you see are very thin kids and a great deal of hunger everywhere. We are one of the top hungriest states in the union, Oregon is.</s>SUSAN: And people think about Portland, it's where the jobs are, it's where most of the urban area is, but the rest of the state is very rural, and rural areas are hurting really, really seriously bad.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how do the kids take it when they find out?</s>SUSAN: Kids, in my case, my kid was always on my team. We had a team. We - I'm very proactive. I always talk with kids about money. It's a real fact of life. It's very important to know about it, how to handle it, how to help save it, and if you are a kid who gets an allowance.</s>SUSAN: You know, I work with kids daily, so I do a lot of that kind of thing with kids. You know, it's a fact of life and we mostly ignore it, I'm afraid to say, many families do.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Susan...</s>SUSAN: But what happens when kids learn about it, I think the older ones particularly get extremely upset. I think it diminishes their self-esteem, their self-confidence. I mean teenage, older teenagers, high-school level. I think they get quite depressed, they can.</s>SUSAN: I think younger kids, as your guest was saying, are very protective of parents and - but they're really hurting also. I myself grew up in a very poor home that didn't have enough to eat in New England, outside of Boston, and I remember what it was like.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, thanks for sharing your story, Susan, appreciate the phone call.</s>SUSAN: Okay, thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Taniesha Woods is a senior research associate at the National Center for Children and Poverty. She specializes in teacher development and equity in education and joins us from her office in New York City. Thanks very much for taking the time to be with us today.</s>WOODS: Thank you, thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Earlier we hear Joe Wemette speak about Roseville, Minnesota. Certainly teachers and school districts have their hands full with newly poor students. And what is the best way to approach those kids in their new situation? Clearly their parents have an obligation to explain them to it, but what about the schools?</s>WOODS: Well, I think that there are a couple of things that can take place, and I'm going to speak to it particularly from an early childhood perspective because this is a period that's really critical for children's development and their later school success.</s>WOODS: So there's actually a good amount of research that shows that mental health consultation, which is when a mental health expert who has expertise around children zero to six years of age actually provides support to teachers, to social workers, to health professionals that may not be knowledgeable about children's mental health.</s>WOODS: But this individual that provides the mental health consultation, that really can help to improve children's development, their social and emotional function, their - and also their learning outcome, social and emotional function is related to learning outcomes.</s>WOODS: So that's one of the really important things that can take place in early childhood programs in schools.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Are those kinds of resources available at most schools?</s>WOODS: Well, in early childhood programs, they are available some of the time. I mean, part of the issue is funding, but there are some programs, for example Head Start programming, oftentimes they rely on mental health consultation, and there are other programs, early childhood programs, that when the funding is there, that's something that they can do.</s>WOODS: But it actually can be done with very limited resources. I did some work in upstate New York with a community-based coalition that worked on early childhood initiatives. And what this group was really interested in doing was holding a monthly meeting or every other month, having this early childhood mental health consultant come in, and to talk to the members of their coalition, and then also to - they would invite other stakeholders to attend the meeting. And so if it's done in that manner, it's very cost-effective. But if you actually want to have someone go into a classroom, that actually does require some funding to have that person's time and effort covered.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You were mentioning upstate New York. You're in New York City. How does this problem differ between, well, urban centers and suburbs, and upstate, that's country?</s>WOODS: Well, I mean, I think it's a problem regardless of geographic locale. It's something that has to be addressed. And so some of the issues in terms of urban, rural and suburban, children's mental health and social and emotional development, that's something that really needs to be addressed regardless of where they are in terms of their geographic locale.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And are you seeing a surge in the necessity for these services?</s>WOODS: I would say that it's always been somewhat high, but there have been, in terms - I haven't got data that actually say that there's a surge, but I can speak to it anecdotally. And there have been some increases, as families are experiencing more economic hardship. Parents are more stressed out. So that affects their relationship. And oftentimes, that affects the interaction that parents have with children. And that manifests itself in different ways in the classroom, so you may see children acting out more and having problems in the classroom. So there is a need for the mental health consultation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Taniesha Woods, thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate it.</s>WOODS: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Taniesha Woods, senior research associate at the National Center for Children and Poverty, joined us from her office in New York City. Still with us here in the Studio 3A is Katherine Marshall Woods, who's a clinical psychologist with the Psychological Group of Washington. And when she's talking about those people going into that situation - that's you she was talking about, right?</s>WOODS: It is, actually. Many times, I do go into children's classrooms to be able to provide consultation services. For five years, I actually worked for the District of Columbia Public Schools doing that exact thing, and also worked hand in hand with Head Start in being able to provide consultation services as well as being able to provide psychological testing for children who were at risk of being identified with learning disabilities and emotional disturbance.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about children and poverty. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Let's go next to Margaret(ph). Margaret with us from Northfield in Minnesota.</s>MARGARET: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Margaret.</s>MARGARET: My situation is kind of gone from bad to getting better. We lost our home in - last summer. And our 16-year-old was our youngest at home, really went into a dive. She took the loss of her home very personally and felt that it was something that - she felt it very personally - as if that this was being done to her. And we had wound up with issues with her attendance at school and her grades in trouble. And we moved from a moderately large area to a very, very small town. And we decided that something really serious needed to be done in our daughter's case because we felt like we were losing her. And so we took her to Minneapolis, into the more urban area and had all of us, our whole family, do some work in some of the more hard-hit areas of the - urban areas to give our daughter a little tiny bit of perspective.</s>MARGARET: She was in a really bad self-sadness area, and it was important to try to get her to stop thinking about poor me, and to look at the facts that even though she was losing her home, she still had a place to live, she still had a family that loves her. She had academics and academic opportunities. And she is doing better. And it's still hard. She doesn't like it, but she's motivated to change things. She wants to see why we can't get more schools to look at a dress code, for example. It's one of the things that she's embarrassed about, wearing the same clothes. Well, looking at - trying to look at ways that she can be a little empowered has made it a little bit better. It's still really rough, heading into Christmas. It's really tough for her.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's not going to get easy, but it seems like you've made a real pro-active move to get her engaged and, as you say, give her some perspective.</s>MARGARET: She has to have empowerment because this isn't - the job climate for us and for what businesses we are in is not improving dramatically. Things are not likely to get a whole lot better really soon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Margaret, thanks very much for the call. I know this is hard for you.</s>MARGARET: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Appreciate it. Katherine Marshall Woods, we heard some kids' depression - grades go down. Other kids turn into mini-adults, it seems. Yes, they cope a little bit better, but they lose that childhood too.</s>WOODS: Yes, they do. Unfortunately, they're placed in a very adult-like situation, and many of them cope by becoming, as you mention, mini-adults as well. Actually, the caller mentioned the idea of feeling empowered, which is really important for some children in order to be able to feel like they have some control over some situation in their life and to feel like they have some self-efficacy. And a lot of individuals who begin to go down that road are individuals who actually continue to have specific variables in place that helps them become resilient, like staying in the same academic center or like continuing to stay with their peer groups, having parents that are supportive in bringing them out, giving them perspectives and making it more of a team approach and also remaining cognitively stimulated.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Cognitively stimulated. Do your lessons. So stay in school. Do your homework.</s>WOODS: Yes. Read books. Go to the library and use the resources that they have, the computers, if you are unable to keep your own.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mm-hmm. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it.</s>WOODS: Thank you again.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Katherine Marshall Woods, clinical psychologist with the Psychological Group of Washington, where she focuses on child and adolescent psychology. Coming up: It's the Opinion Page. After protests in Moscow, some Russians hope to end the reign of Vladimir Putin, but Kathryn Stoner-Weiss says that's highly unlikely. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. |
The holidays are often a peak season for scams. In 2011, those swindles go far beyond the suspicious email asking for a helping hand or the bogus charity organization pleading for help. Regulators report a significant rise in the number of baby boomers who are targeted in investment scams. Kelly Greene, Wall Street Journal staff reporter. Read her piece, "Boomers Wearing Bull's-Eyes" | NEAL CONAN, HOST: 'Tis the season for scams. The suspicious email asking for a helping hand, the website that promises a free product in exchange for a credit card number, or the bogus charity. This year, there's been a significant increase in investment scams, Ponzi schemes, fraudulent promissory notes and worthless investment contracts targeting especially at baby boomers. Kelly Greene is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and joins us now from her office in New York. Nice to have you with us today.</s>KELLY GREENE: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And tell us a little bit of a man named Keith Grimes.</s>KELLY GREENE: Keith Grimes is a gentleman who lives outside of Lakeland, Florida. He worked very hard his whole life, worked his way up to being a supervisor in - mainly in quarries in Florida, and saved up close to $500,000. Then he bought a powder-coating business, unfortunately, right before the financial crisis in 2008, but still managed to sell that without taking a loss and had accumulated a nest egg of about $500,000. He was trying to figure out how to move to some land he'd managed to buy earlier in Tennessee and invested it, basically, with the wrong guy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He invested it with a guy who was running, it turns out, a Ponzi scheme. But Keith Grimes wanted to aggressively invest that...</s>KELLY GREENE: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...half million dollars so he would have enough to retire on.</s>KELLY GREENE: Well, and ironically, he thought he was being very conservative because he was investing in a - in what was perceived to be a private equity fund that his stepmother, who was a retired teacher, already had invested in, and which she was introduced to by a local marketer who had been just a really plain vanilla insurance agent in this town who went to church with a bunch of people who invested. This is really typical, you know, the sort of cliche for this is, it's called affinity fraud.</s>KELLY GREENE: But, you know, people - with all of the shenanigans on Wall Street, with all of the volatility in the market, the unpredictability, I think people are beginning to feel more comfortable with someone who is tangible, who lives where they live, even if they know very little about their actual track record or experience.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this scammer was promising, what, 14 percent returns?</s>KELLY GREENE: Yeah, 14 to 24 percent returns. There was a marketer who lived around Lakeland. He was working with a supposedly very experienced and successful trader who was in Sanibel, which is a couple of hours away. And what was not disclosed was that the trader actually had three prior convictions related to investment fraud as well, and...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And declined to comment for your article because, well, you tried to reach him in prison.</s>KELLY GREENE: Right. He was sentenced to more than 19 years in federal prison this past week.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Kelly Greene of The Wall Street Journal about her piece "Boomers Wearing Bull's-Eyes: Postcrisis, Those Over 50 Targeted in Investment Scams; Problem is 'Rampant.'" Boy, they write that like poetry over there at The Wall Street Journal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And why is that investment scammers are targeting baby boomers, do you think?</s>KELLY GREENE: Well, they have the money. They - the thing is baby boomers have the most - of anyone right now, maybe, you know, this people are on the cusp of retirement, this is as much as they're going to have saved. But it's not as much as it was three years ago. And so people, you know, we're still down 15 percent from where the market was in October 2007 or where the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in the late 2007. And so the natural inclination is, if you want to retire and you don't quite have enough to do it, is to try something that will goose your returns just a little bit more.</s>KELLY GREENE: And, you know, OK. We should all probably know better than to think we can easily get a 24 percent return a year right now. But, you know, basically, the way that this particular investment we were just talking about was pitched and that many others have pitched is that its guaranteed. You can't lose your principal. That's a very, very big - a big thing right now, is to tell people that they can't lose their principal even when they really can.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this problem has roughly doubled over the past year, according to some of your sources.</s>KELLY GREENE: Yeah. It was remarkable. There's this group, a national group of the state securities regulators. Those are the public officials in every state. They often work in the Secretary of State's office or with the attorney general or like the banking department. And those are the folks who basically are called in to figure out what happens when people lose their money. You know, they also, if you call them before you invest, will tell you whether someone is actually registered to sell an investment in your state, and whether they've had any troubles in the past.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's no guarantee either, by the way.</s>KELLY GREENE: Yeah. It's true.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But in the meantime...</s>KELLY GREENE: However, in many cases I have written about, that phone call would have prevented losses of hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There is another place you should probably try to avoid and that is the free-lunch seminar.</s>KELLY GREENE: Absolutely.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What - how does that work?</s>KELLY GREENE: Well, what happens is you get this invitation to learn more about how your savings for retirement or a better way to draw a retirement income, something rather vague and seemingly benign. And, you know, when you get a free meal often at a restaurant that you know and you like, and so you go. And typically, what happens is that a lot of concepts are presented, which are logical and attractive and appealing and makes sense to people who know a little bit about investing on their own. And you provide - if you want to learn more, you provide your information, and then you are pitched a very specific investment later.</s>KELLY GREENE: One case that I looked at was in Missouri, where after a series of these seminars, this one insurance agent sold the exact, same kind of equity-indexed annuity to something like - I think it was 36 out of 37 of the people who had come to, like, three or four of these seminars.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's efficient.</s>KELLY GREENE: Yeah, it is.</s>KELLY GREENE: But it's highly unlikely that all those people had exactly the same investment need.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is probably right. But he had the same investment, which was to pad his bank account and leave town as quickly as possible.</s>KELLY GREENE: Well, although he didn't leave. He still is - he tried to stay in business but the state securities commissioner finally issued cease and desist order that prohibits that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The upshot of this is be very careful. I wonder with the retirement money that you get there at The Wall Street Journal, you put that in a pillow under your mattress?</s>KELLY GREENE: Boy, there were a few weeks in 2008 where I considered it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It sounds like a wise investment. It's so volatile that you look for something that does seem to have that air of you're not - you can't lose.</s>KELLY GREENE: Right. That's - it's very appealing to people right now. And, you know, look, the choices out there right now are difficult. They're not appealing. They're not pleasant. You know, interest rates are low. Stocks are risky. The best thing that you can do is diversify.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Diversify, get a little in here and a little in there. And if one thing goes belly up, you're going to be OK anyway.</s>KELLY GREENE: Right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Kelly Greene, thanks very much for your time today.</s>KELLY GREENE: Thanks for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Kelly Greene, a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. She joined us from our bureau in New York. You can find a link to her piece "Boomers Wearing Bull's-Eyes" at our website. I'm not going to read the rest of that poetry. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tomorrow, next year's politically-charged term at the Supreme Court, from immigration to health care. We'll talk about what to look for. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. |
From identifying river deltas to understanding how an aircraft achieves lift, there's a lot of science to keep you busy on an airplane. In Inflight Science, science writer Brian Clegg explores the science and technology of airplanes, and the world as seen from your window seat. Brian Clegg, author, "Inflight Science," Swindon, U.K. Nick Bilton, lead writer, Bits Blog, columnist, The New York Times, San Francisco, Calif. | IRA FLATOW, HOST: This holiday season I'm sure is finding many of us on airplanes, flying around the country. It could take tedious hours of body scans, the crummy back-of-the-seat TV and scary airplane bumps and noises. But if you marvel at nature and technology, though, you can turn this torturous event into a more enjoyable learning experience.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: My next guest has written a book about all the technology that goes into airline travel and the interesting stuff, and there really is, and I can tell you from personal experience, there really is a lot of interesting stuff going on, and you can hear it, you can see it from your window seat, like the wings flapping.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Have you ever watched the wings flapping, and you get scared? Well, don't worry, they are engineered to do that and not to fall off, and that's one of the things you'll learn in this new book by Brian Clegg. He's a science writer and author of "Inflight Science: A Guide to the World From Your Airplane Window." He joins us from Swindon, England. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Hi there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: That's what a lot of people worry about, Brian Clegg, that those wings are going to fall off, right?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: That's right, but in fact they're tested to such incredible tolerances, you can push these wings up on a modern plane, you know, through feet, yards even, out of their normal position, and they'll just spring back.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: They're actually designed, as you say, to flap around a little as you fly because that means they're not taking so much stress. If they were actually totally rigid, they're much more likely to snap off. It'll actually keep you safe.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: It's better to flap than break off.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Yeah,</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, how did you get interested in this topic?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Well, I used to work for an airline. I worked for British Airways for - getting on for 20 years, and obviously there I did a lot of flying, but my background originally is in physics. And it was just a great opportunity to look at all the science that's around you when you're on a flight.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And let's talk about - we have to take a break, but before we go, let's talk about one thing that, you know, that's enjoyable. In the first part of your flight, you're on the runway, and you look out the window, and you see the runway has numbers on it. Do those numbers mean something?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Well, that's right. There at the ends of the runway, it's most obvious, maybe, when you're coming in to land, but these numbers just indicate the direction the runway is in. If you imagine sort of like a 360-degree clock, then you just take the first two numbers of the degrees, so say 100 degrees would be 10, 200 degrees would be 20 or whatever, and the numbers on the runway basically indicate the direction that the runway is pointing in.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow. 1-800-989-8255 if you'd like to talk about the science of flight, the technology, what those wacky noises you hear coming out from under the wings, or the flaps, and all kinds of stuff like that. You can also tweet us, @scifri. Talking with Brian Clegg, author of "Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window."</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And some of the stuff you can see out of the window, on the ground. We'll talk about what there is to see. So your flight doesn't have to be so terrible this holiday season. 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.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: I'm Ira Flatow. You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. We're talking with Brian Clegg, author of "Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window." Our number, 1-800-989-8255. So we started talking about the runway, taking off, and you can learn your compass direction by adding a zero to the runway number, and that'll be the direction you're taking off.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And how long is the runway? Why - how long do runways have to be, Brian?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: It depends, obviously, on the plane you're dealing with. We are talking a significant size with a modern plane. In fact, if you think about it, the way planes have come on over the years, it is quite incredible. Something I like to compare is if you look back to the Wright brothers, I don't know if you've ever seen the Wright brothers flyer in the Air and Space Museum, but the size of the entire flight that the Wright brothers took, originally, is actually shorter than the wingspan of a 747.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: And to get a 747 off the ground, we're talking about a runway that has to be, you know, a significant length. I have to say I don't have the absolutely specific numbers in my head, but I think it's interesting that we've had examples in the past of planes that have actually landed on a runway that was too short for them and then couldn't take off because the length of the runway, you need a longer runway to be able to take off than you do to be able to land.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: And in the early days at Heathrow, we had an American 707 that landed at another airport. They thought it was Heathrow, they landed at the wrong airport, and the runways were just too short to get off.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Still sitting there?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Well, no, what they did is the stripped absolutely everything out of the plane to try to get it off. They took all the seats out. They took anything with weight out. And the legend is - I've never actually seen these - but one of the buildings near the runway, there are actually tire marks on the roof because it was so close.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Oh, no kidding.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: We're talking really, you know, up to three miles long, a modern runway has to be.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, speaking of the weight, you have a story about coins in your book, About the weight on the plane and how important that they didn't think it was, but tell us that story.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Well, that's right. This is really about the weight of passengers. If they had their way, airlines would love to weigh passengers as they get on the planes, but it would be too embarrassing. In fact, they actually used to do it in the very early days of flight. And we just have to then estimate how much passengers are going to weigh, and on the whole, that works pretty well.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: But occasionally, you'll get something that goes a little wrong, and this was a true story. It happened taking off from a German airport. The plane was taking off for a city that had a coin fair on, and a lot of the passengers on the plane were coin dealers, and their favorite coins they didn't want to put in the baggage in the old, they wanted it on their person.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: So they all weighed more than usual because they had their pockets full of coins, and they literally had trouble getting this plane off of the runway. They only just got it off. It counted as an air incident that was basically caused by these coins.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Wow, here's a tweet coming in from Eve(ph). She says: I love turbulence, but I notice it frightens some people. Please let them know it won't break the plane in half.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: That's right. There have been no modern airliners ever brought down by turbulence, small planes yes, occasionally, but a modern airliner, a modern big airplane is not going to be brought down due to turbulence.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: It's not totally trivial. I mean, it is important to strap in, put your seatbelt on when they tell you to because there is a risk, if there's a lot of turbulence, that you might hit your head on the ceiling or something of that kind. But in terms of actually damaging the plane, you can regard it as going on a rollercoaster ride, you know, sit back and enjoy it.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: What great things, if you look out your window, and you look at the ground, what interesting things can you try to pick out? Well, obviously when you're low, you've got some great opportunities to see things you don't normally see. So when you're taking off, when you're landing, it really is a great opportunity to look out there.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: In the nighttime, one little thing you can do is just have a go at estimating the size of the town or city that you're over from the number of streetlights, which, you know, you can get an idea of the streetlights that are down there. But obviously, you can see things like coastlines in a way that you wouldn't normally see them. There's a really good opportunity to see all kinds of things.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: One thing is that old buildings, archeology is essentially being done sometimes from the air because sometimes when you're low down in a plane, you can actually see the pattern in the crops or where buildings used to be, and you can pick out a building you just can't see from the ground. So you can actually discover ancient buildings that you just can't see at all from the ground and things like that.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: So it really is worth, you know, getting over the, oh, I've done it so many times, I'm fed up with it, and looking at it with fresh eyes.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Especially if you fly over a big city, and you get to see, you know, New York or San Francisco or London. You know, people pay 100 bucks to take a helicopter ride just to look at the city, and you're flying over it, well, you've already paid for your fare for a freebie.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Well, that's right, and so many people spend their time, you know, glued to the in-flight entertainment, which is fine, but you really ought to take a look out the window and see what's out there.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: 1-800-989-8255, let's go to Jerry(ph) in Racine, Wisconsin. Hi, Jerry.</s>JERRY: Hi, how are you? Thanks for taking my call.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're welcome.</s>JERRY: First I'd like to give a shout-out to your guest, since he's from Swindon, to the best band in the world from Swindon, XTC. And - but then my question was: Your guest had mentioned a pilot landing at the wrong airport. And I guess that just brought up the question in my mind is how much do the pilots pay attention to looking at the ground and what they see or how much do they rely on GPS or how much has that changed, where they're going and how their path takes?</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Good question: Is GPS basically the basic navigation system now?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: It is, but it's not the only one. I mean, when that thing happened, we're going back to the 1960s. Back then, they relied a lot more on eye and what you could see out of the window. And as it happened, there was a structure on the approach to Heathrow that was very similar to another structure on the approach to this little airport called Norfolk.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: And what they ended up doing in the end was painting on large letters to say this one is the Heathrow one, effectively, so the pilots used it correctly. But these days, yes GPS will be one of the main things that are used, but planes also use what's called inertial navigation, which basically makes use of how the plane turns and twists and effectively keeps track of where you're going from the way the plane turns.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: And that's kind of important because just occasionally, you might lose the GPS, you might have a problem with the GPS, and you've got the backup then. You've also got radio beacons that are used for navigation. So the whole spate of systems that are in there that weren't used so effectively back in the 1960s.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: But could you basically say that on a long flight, you know, a few hours at a high altitude, that pilots have turned on an autopilot and are flying that instead of sitting there for hours at a time?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Well, there's an element of that, but I think what you have to remember is that, you know, they are involved in this. They're up there on the flight, and they're going to be making sure that things are safe. So yes, a fair amount of a flight these days can be done on autopilot, but at the same time, they will be checking out, always keeping an eye on the instruments and also obviously looking for other planes that might be in the area, things of that kind.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's go to Margie(ph) in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Margie.</s>MARGIE: Hey, thanks for having me.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>MARGIE: Here's my question. I had the pleasure of working on the B1 Bomber program at Rockwell in the mid-'80s, and back then, all the old engineers that taught us young pups everything said there's a 15-second rule. And I want to see what you - if you agree with this.</s>MARGIE: The first 15 seconds and last 15 seconds are the most dangerous of the flight. So theoretically, if you make it to 15 seconds off the ground, a plane is supposed to be able to glide, so you lose the engines. A plane should be able to glide safely back to the runway.</s>MARGIE: I wonder if that's true. I've told many people that story, and one of my friends holds other people's hands and counts every time she's on a plane.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: OK, I want to say, by the way, I saw a B1 coming into - we had one come into Heathrow when I was working there, and they are amazing-looking planes. Excuse me, but...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Fifteen seconds...</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Essentially, it's true that the first part of a flight, the last part of the flight, the first, I mean, 15 second, 30 seconds, I wouldn't say it's exactly down to 15 seconds but the first - certainly within the first minute of a flight, the last minute of a flight is the most dangerous.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: It's not really the case of once you pass that, you can just glide down safely. I mean, a modern airliner does not glide particularly well because they're incredibly - a fully loaded 747 is 400 tons, and that isn't going to glide pretty well. But the fact is you are in the most dangerous period there because you have very little time to correct problems.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: When you're further up, you've got time to sort things out. You know, if an engine stalls, you've got time to restart it.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So the higher you are, the safer you are?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Yeah, absolutely.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Most people are afraid of the height, but the higher you are, you're actually safer up there.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Definitely.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Thanks, Margie. 1-800-989-8255 is our number. Lots of people would like to talk about - let's talk about on the approach and the landing, all these different sounds and noises start happening. And give us a progression of the first noises you might hear as you're approaching the landing, and what's going on there.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: I think the thing to be aware of, you know, is that there are mechanical things happening out on the plane, so there will be noises. You have to expect that. The first thing, typically, that's going to happen is - particularly, if it's a night, they're going to turn the lights down, and they do that so that your eyes can get used to it being relatively dark. So if you had to evacuate the plane for any reason, which, of course, is very unusual, then you would have better nighttime vision.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: You will hear things like the flaps starting to go out. So basically these extend the surface area of the wing. And the idea of that is it makes it possible to fly at a lower speed, because obviously you don't want to land at a full cruising speed. A 747, you're cruising at over 500 miles an hour. You want to get it down. And by extending the wings, you make it - it has more drag, so it's not so good for flying when you're cruising. But when you're slowing down, when you want to be landing, you'll hear those flaps going out. If you look out the window, you can actually see them effectively extending the back end of the wing. They make quite a lot of noise.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: The other thing that makes a lot of noise is the undercarriage going down. So you could hear the doors opening, the wheels coming down and locking into place. That all does make quite a bit of noise. And then, of course, as you come down onto the ground itself, you had that little bump, a little screech from the tires, but then you'll get a roar from the engines, usually they're going into reverse thrust. So it's pushing backwards on the plane. And one of the interesting things about planes is that there's loads of physics in there. All your Newton's Third Law and things like that starts coming into it.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: And the engines start operating effectively in the opposite direction, basically just by shoving a screen behind them that sends the blast that's going out of the back of them forwards; that helps slow down the plane. But again, it can sound a little scary but it's not.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let's go get some more call. This one from Thomas in Bettendorf, Iowa. Hi, Tom.</s>TOM: Hi, thanks for taking my call. My wife and I take the trip to New Zealand, that long trek, every couple of years, and I notice the air speed differs from ground speed. And I was just wondering if you can explain the difference between the two.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Good question.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: It's an excellent question, yeah, because it's something that's really important and useful. Basically, a plane is flying through air. And the thing that keeps it up out there is the air itself, it's the air moving over the wings. And so what you're interested in in terms of flying is the air speed, how fast you're moving with respect to the air around you. Now, often there are winds up there. If, for instance, you cross across the Atlantic, between America and Europe, there's really powerful winds up there that can be going as much as 200, 250 miles an hour. And I've been on a 747 crossing the Atlantic where we've actually gone faster than the speed of sound compared with the ground because we're being pushed along by that air.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: So basically the difference between the air speed and the ground speed - the ground speed is just how fast you're going over the ground, how fast you're traveling. The air speed is how fast you're traveling with respect to the air. If the air is going in the opposite direction (unintelligible) the two speeds add together, and the result is effectively you go through that air faster.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Talking with Brian Clegg, author of "Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window" on SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. Of course, if you have that as a headwind, 215 (unintelligible), your ground speed is going to go way down, take you much longer to get there...</s>BRIAN CLEGG: That's right.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...cause you have to fight that wind, right?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: That's right. And you'll find, you know, the time to cross the Atlantic differs - can differ by an hour or two depending upon the direction you're going in. So if you've got those winds with you, obviously what they do going the other way is they don't get into the jet stream, which is what those sort of high-speed winds are called in that particular area. They try to avoid that as much as possible so they don't get that as a headwind. You don't want to have a fight against that; it only operates at a certain height.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: One really interesting thing you can see from an airplane that you can't see from the ground is a rainbow that's a full circle.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: That's right. Naturally, a rainbow is a circle because basically it's coming from a drop of water or set of drops of water. And what it's doing is the drop of water is acting like a prism; it's turning the white light into a rainbow of colors, and that should be circular, around - effectively coming from around the whole drop. But in practice we don't see that because effectively the Earth gets in the way. But when you're up in the sky, you can actually see a whole circle of a rainbow. (Unintelligible) really impressive as you're over clouds because what tends to happen, because you have to have the sun behind you to cause a rainbow, you can actually see a shadow of your plane flying in the middle of the rainbow of the clouds. It looks quite stunning.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. I have seen that once. 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to John in Grants Pass, Oregon. Hi, John.</s>JOHN: Hi. You know, from the ground looking across San Francisco Bay, it sometimes looks like there's a massive amount of fog out there. I was flying out of San Francisco, was able to look down; the entire Pacific Coast was covered in fog, but the Golden Gate provided a notch. And a thin stream of fog came across the bay and impacted the El Cerrito Hills. So from the ground it would have look like a massive fog bank. But from the air you can see it was just a narrow stream pushed through the Golden Gate and across the bay, like a little curtain.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah, it's great stuff that you - thanks for that tip. There's great stuff you can see from air, that you think you're in the middle of a cloud, and the cloud has a height to it.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: That's right. And clouds you can experience in a totally different way when you're up in a plane. Seeing them from above, far from anything else, I think they can look much more impressive. And one of the things about clouds that I came across researching this book, which I think is really kind of neat, is the whole business of cloud nine. I don't know if you've come across this. But basically the idea that if you're on cloud nine, you know, you're happy, you're on top of the world, this was because, originally, there were nine types of cloud in the international classifications of clouds, and they actually added one to make 10.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: So briefly, it was actually cloud 10 that was the highest one. But unusual in science, they decided to be romantic, so they renumbered them. So they went from naught to nine instead of one to 10. So cloud nine was still the highest you could be. You are still on top of the world if you're on cloud nine, which I think is rather nice.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: What a great story. We're going to take a break right now. Our number, 1-800-989-8255, talking with Brian Clegg, "Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window." A great read this holiday to take along with you and into the plane and figure out what's going on there and all the physics about flight and atmosphere and the Earth.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Our number, 1-800-989-8255. You can tweet us, @scifri, @S-C-I-F-R-I. We'll come back and talk more with Brian. We're also going to talk about the questions we've asked before. Why do you have to turn off all those electronic devices on your plane? We've got some interesting answers, so we'll talk about that when we get back. So stay with us.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We're ending up this hour talking about the science of flight with - talking with my guest, Brian Clegg, author of "Inflight Science." Last month, we had the MythBusters on. We talked about cell phones on airplanes, and the MythBusters tried this out, and they concluded this myth - that cell phones do not interfere with airplane navigation systems. But they couldn't get the FAA to let them try an experiment. They wanted to experiment on the airplane. The FAA said no way, you're not going to do that.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Well, someone else has been looking into this. Joining me now is Nick Bilton. He's a lead writer of the Bits blog and a columnist at The New York Times. He's done some of his own investigating into this. He joins us from San Francisco. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Nick.</s>NICK BILTON: Thanks for having me on.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: So what is with all these electronic devices? You've looked into it. What have you concluded?</s>NICK BILTON: Well, you know, one of the things, I think, that's happened is recently we've had more and more incidents of people that have been frustrated when they can't use their Kindles and iPads in airplane mode while they're, you know, taxiing to - on the runway or when they're taking off or actually on descent.</s>NICK BILTON: And, you know, we had an incident last week where Alec Baldwin was, of course, kicked off a plane for playing "Words with Friends" as that flight was delayed. And I've been looking into it recently, and a lot of the rules that apply to the devices that we now - a lot of people use to read content, the rules that were set in place, actually these devices didn't even exist at the time. So there's a lot of curiosities of why these rules still exist, and I don't think the FAA really can answer these questions yet.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: We heard this week that pilots are going to be allowed to use iPads...</s>NICK BILTON: Yeah.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: ...in the cockpit.</s>NICK BILTON: Yes. So the first - actually, ironically, the flight that Alec Baldwin was kicked off was an American Airlines flight, and American Airlines is actually the first airline that is going to be allowing pilots to use iPads instead of flight manuals in the cockpit. And, you know, American Airlines said they've done extensive testing, and the FAA approved it based on this testing.</s>NICK BILTON: But the reality is they're doing exactly what passengers wanted to be doing. And, you know, no one's really - I mean, there probably are people that are arguing for this, but no one's really arguing to be able to have a conversation on their cell phone during takeoff and landing. I think people just want to be able to actually read devices...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>NICK BILTON: ...that are, essentially they're replacements for books and magazines, like Kindles and iPads.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. And if you don't want people to use an iPad with a Wi-Fi, turn the Wi-Fi off on the plane.</s>NICK BILTON: Well, exactly. And, you know, some of the rules that exist, it's really strange. So one of the things that the FAA requires is that we shut down our devices...</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Right.</s>NICK BILTON: ...and then restart them when we reach 10,000 feet. And that rule is actually - it's causing more trouble than they actually really understand because what happens when you restart one of these devices - a lot of the devices we have today - iPhones, iPads and so on - they're not designed to be shut down. They're designed to just go to sleep when you press a little button that tells them to do that.</s>NICK BILTON: And when you shut these things down and they restart, they actually flood the entire device with a lot of electricity that hits every single sensor. And the electromagnetic interference that comes from that is much more drastic than if you had a device that was just turned on in airplane mode during takeoff and landing.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Mm-hmm. And is it a fact that Air Force One on the president's plane, no one is asked to turn off their devices for anything?</s>NICK BILTON: Yes. So I wrote this column a couple of weeks ago saying, you know, that these rules don't make sense for the devices that we use on a daily basis today. And I got, you know, several people, reporters that I work with and from other organizations that said that they, you know, were on Air Force One, and they were never asked to turn off any device. And people were actually on their cell phones during takeoff and landing, and the Secret Service never required anyone to do that.</s>NICK BILTON: And so if, you know, the plane and the Secret Service that carries the president is - the people are allowed to use these devices, well, why can't passengers on regular airlines? And people that I've spoken to, you know, pilots, have said that, you know, they don't even actually understand why the rules exist when it comes to devices that can be turned into airplane mode.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Brian Clegg, did you discover anything at all in your research, doing the book on "Inflight Science" about this?</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Well, I think the problem is that we lump everything together. The fact is a cell phone is totally different from something like a Kindle or an iPad in terms of its potential for causing any problems at all. I mean, there is a small possibility for a cell phone to cause a problem because basically it's a radio transmitter.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: I was actually told, before coming on this radio program, have you got a cell phone near the phone? Turn it off if you have because it could cause interference, and that's the same worry. Basically, a radio transmitter causes electricity to flow in cables, and there is a very small possibility that could genuinely cause a problem. So I can understand why the cell phones.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: As far as the other electronic devices, e-book readers, there really is no reason at all why they shouldn't be used. I can see with MP3 players, maybe they don't want people to have their iPod earphones in while they're doing the flight briefing and safety briefing, that kind of thing. So maybe there's a kind of excuse there.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: And the other thing I've seen said is, with something like a laptop, maybe you don't want people having those loose and handy during takeoff and landing because if you did get in a situation where you get a lot of acceleration, like a crash situation, then they could turn into missiles, effectively. You don't really want to be hit on the back of the head by a 100-mile-an-hour laptop, which I can kind of understand.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Yeah. Let me get a quick call in...</s>BRIAN CLEGG: (unintelligible) at all.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: Let me get a quick call in from Matt in Salt Lake. Hi, Matt.</s>MATT: Hi. Yes. I'm just calling - I'm a professional pilot myself. And one of the biggest problems that we have is when people have their headsets or their cell phones and electronic devices on, it actually comes through our headset, and it creates a lot of problems for us hearing air traffic control, whereas until we're at 10,000 feet, we are told not to talk amongst ourselves. That's myself and the co-pilot.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: And you think that's why that rule is there.</s>MATT: Yeah.</s>NICK BILTON: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that one of the things is that - the - it's like you just said, you know, people are lumping everything together. And the reality is I don't - I can't find anyone that really just wants to be able to talk on their cell phone during takeoff and landing. But I've spoken to hundreds of people that want to be able to read an e-book, and those devices are not transmitting anything to the cockpit or anything. And you can see that by the fact that American Airlines has approved that the pilots actually use these devices during take off and landing. They're not shutting them down until they reach 10,000 feet. They're on the entire time.</s>IRA FLATOW, HOST: All right, Nick. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Brian. Nick Bilton is the lead writer of the Bits blog and columnist of The New York Times. Brian Clegg, science writer and author of "Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window." Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. And happy holidays to you.</s>NICK BILTON: Thank you.</s>BRIAN CLEGG: Thank you. |
Millions of young girls around the world, some as young as five, are forced into marriage every year. The practice is forbidden by international agreements and outlawed in many countries. But many young brides end up in abusive relationships without access to courts or education. Stephanie Sinclair shot the 'Too Young To Wed' feature for National Geographic Magazine. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: For millions of girls around the world, marriage is not an issue of individual choice or a matter of the heart. It's a business agreement between families arranged by elder males. Some girls are forced to marry as young as five. It's forbidden by international agreements, outlawed in many countries, yet the tradition continues. Photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair spent the past eight years investigating the secret world of child marriage all over the world, from India to Yemen, Afghanistan to Nepal and Ethiopia.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Her images were featured in the June issue of National Geographic. And she joins us now from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you back on the program.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Thank you for having me, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Cynthia Gorney wrote an article that accompanied your photographs in the magazine. And she describes a desperation, wanting to rescue one girl, in particular, being married in Rajasthan, in India, at the age of five.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Yeah, that's was Rajani. She's a beautiful young girl who was married with her two older sisters during the same ceremony. And, you know, yeah, that is the overwhelming feeling you have when you're in these situations. But at the same time, you realize that these are cultural issues that are - that happen and have developed because of a necessity. So a lot of it stems from poverty. It stems from wanting to keep families close to each other. And so they have an alliance. And so there are reasons that this - that these traditions started. However, the world has changed so much, and so, you know, that - it's mostly happening in rural areas where development hasn't quite gotten as far along as it has in the cities.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You called it a necessity. Why would you describe it that way?</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Well, I mean, for instance, I mean, these traditions, harmful traditional practices have been around for, you know, thousands of years, so people lived much shorter lives at that time. So, you know, their idea was that you had to have as many children as possible. So as a young girl was, you know, had her first menstruation, you know, they wanted them to have children because they needed them. They needed them to work in the fields and just, you know, because not every child lived at that time, as well - not that they do know, but, you know, it was much more prevalent in the past to have, you know, maternal mortality or infant mortality. And so they had to - this was one of the tactics they used.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I was interested in just the mechanics. The five-year-old was being married to a 10-year-old boy.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Yeah. And this was, I mean, primarily, this was done to - so the family could save money. So they can't afford to have three weddings, and so the two older girls were 13 and 15, I believe. And so Rajani was only five, but the three sisters who are marrying three brothers. And so in that case, you know, they get to have one wedding, and that the grandfather, in Rajani's case, was trying to ensure that his youngest granddaughter would have a safe place to live and be protected by her sisters. Now, I don't believe that - I don't think any of the grooms knew any of the brides, so this was an arranged marriage for both the boys and the girls.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And they were - as you and Cynthia Gorney were waiting their arrival, people are expecting them to arrive in - I think the expression was in high spirits and drunk.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Yes, and that happened. It was actually, I mean, my guess that it is a harmful traditional practice, and there are some really - the festivities were amazing to see. And it was - the outfits were beautiful, but at the same time there is a harmful aspect to this, where, you know, there is underage marriage happening. And they did arrive intoxicated in the evening, but a lot of that was actually because it's held in the middle of the night because it's illegal in India and they had this wedding in secret.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, of course, the five-year-old's name and prospects were not published on the wedding invitation.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: No. And we were - we respected the family's wishes to kind of - we're allowed to use her first name, but we can't say what village she's in and things like that. You know, but that's a - it was, you know, even after working on this issue for so long, I had never seen a wedding like this where the girl - the youngest bride was, you know, really just a child. I mean, there are children in their early teens as well, but there's, you know, when they're, you know, this was a small child. And they woke her up at 4 o'clock in the morning because that's when her final - when her actual ceremony happened was the latest in the evening. And they woke her up at four in the morning, and they just kind of put her gently over her uncle's shoulder and carried her to the wedding. And both she or her young husband, neither of them knew, really, what was going on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting, too, that the women in the village, her relatives, her older relatives, completely in favor of this. I went through this. You will too.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Yeah. I mean, I think because this is happening in the really rural areas, I think that they don't know another option. You know, this is, you know, we were - I was just listening to your previous discussion. I mean, it's similar, you know, this is in the rural areas, so there's not as much education. There is not as much development. And so I think with education, that's really the main thing that stops this issue from, you know, increasing. And basically, the girls need to be educated. The families need to be educated. The community needs to be educated on the downsides of this, which are, you know, increased physical problems, you know, all kinds of issues that can happen to the girl, from fistula to prolapsed uterus to, you know, mental issues that can result - which we saw in Afghanistan.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The - you mentioned the - one of the purposes of this was to have girls start having babies as soon as they are physically able to. Are girls as young as five expected to be sexually active?</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: No. I think that they realize that that isn't going to happen in this - with a five-year-old. However, I did photograph - and it was part of the article - I photographed two young brides who were eight years old, and they were married to husbands, I think, late 20s, early 30s, and they were both - no, one of them was sexually active. The other one was not.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We were talking about this one marriage in this one village in India. There are other places that you've also documented, where there is tradition of abduction and rape prior to marriage.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Yeah. This happens - it happens in several places. Often, again, it's a poverty issue. It's, you know, the families can't afford necessary to pay the dowries involved. And so, you know, like, for instance, it happens in Ethiopia in that way and, you know, the girl might be going to school, which is so ironic because this is the way out of this tradition, but the girl might be going to school and get abducted. And then once she's raped and impregnated, then she's lost so much of her honor that it's very hard - and the family's honor that it's very - the family just kind of, like, OK, you can have her, you know? And it's also a gender disparity issue in that, you know, that there is - that somehow, you know, it's - she's not fighting back. I mean, she has - some of these girls actually have fought back, but the family is not fighting back, culturally, when this happens in certain communities. They just kind of relinquish the girl to her abductor, and that's just because they're just not valued quite the same as men.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Stephanie Sinclair, a contributing photographer with National Geographic, about "Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And there are moments, in fact, when situations like that, which do make headlines around the world. There was one young woman, in particular, I think it was in Yemen.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Yes, Nujood Ali. She is quite a character. I love her to death. She's a really, really strong willed young girl who was married when she was really young, I believe eight years old. And she decided that she was going to - she didn't want to do this anymore. And he - they were sexually active. You know, he did, you know, in - rape her in her words. And she actually has a book out now, with the help of a friend of mine, who did it - who helped her write it. But basically, she went to her, you know, one of her - she had two mothers, because you're allowed to have multiple wives there, so not her biological mother, but the other mother. She went to her and told her what was happening. And she encouraged her to go to the court house, and that's where she met the lawyer, Shada Nasser, who then decided to take her case. And they - and she ended up getting a divorce. And, you know, because I think a lot of times when these - actually, I know that when a lot of times these marriages happen, the families always say that they're not going to touch the girls until they're older. I've heard that in almost every situation I've been in. But that turns out to not be the case, more often than not.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: What is the fate of those girls who do not marry?</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Well, that's the other problem, you know? On a lot of these places, there's not quite enough to do with them. You know, there's few schools, so unlike - for instance, in Yemen, this was a really difficult situation, because the girls, you know, they stay in school as long - until they reach puberty. But the problem is is that there's not a bathroom, a private bathroom for boys and girls, so there's no where for her to really deal with her menstruation in a private space. There is, you know, they don't want - there's no female teachers because the girls aren't educated. So - and the families feel uncomfortable having that a male teacher with a girl who's reached puberty, so it kind of is a vicious circle in that situation, because that there's, you know, not enough girls making it, you know, past primary school, then they can't become teachers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There's a - according again from Cynthia Gorney's article that accompanied some of your photographs, a Hindi term paraya dhan, which refers to daughters still living with their own parents as meaning, someone else's wealth. Stephanie Sinclair, thank you very much for being with us today.</s>STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Thank you for having me and for taking on this issue.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Stephanie Sinclair, contributing photographer with National Geographic. Her images were featured in the June issue of National Geographic magazine: Too Young To Wed, The Secret World of Child Brides. I'm Neal Conan. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. |
The Supreme Court faces a momentous term in 2012. The justices recently added two high-profile cases to its docket, agreeing to weigh-in on Arizona's immigration law and a Texas case on redistricting. They previously agreed to hear a challenge to the Obama administration's health care law. David Savage, Supreme Court correspondent, Los Angeles Times Julie Rovner, health policy correspondent, NPR | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. Over the past month the Supreme Court accepted cases that could affect the presidential election, decide control of the House of Representatives, and settle the tug-of-war between the federal government and the states on immigration.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: On top of an already crowded docket, health care, Texas redistricting and immigration could mean the most momentous Supreme Court term in decades. The issues include the future of President Obama's landmark health care law, the Voting Rights Act, and whether states can enact and enforce their own laws on immigration.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All these cases center on the role and reach of the federal government. If you're following these blockbuster cases and have questions, 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, your thoughts on what was accomplished and what was lost in Iraq. You can email us now. The address again, talk@npr.org. But first the Supreme Court. David Savage, Supreme Court correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, joins us here in Studio 3A. David, always nice to have you with us.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Hi, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And some people are going back to the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's tussles with the court to find an equivalent, an equivalent mass of cases.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes, that predates my time, but this is the best term we've had in quite a while, at least the way it looks. 1992, there were a lot of big cases on abortion and civil rights, but I can't think of one since '92 where there's been so many big national issues before the court.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And is the court - I mean, these cases come up when these cases come up. It's not deliberate that they're all coming up the same year.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: I think that's correct. They had to resolve the heath care case. The law was passed, it was challenged. One federal appeals court said it's unconstitutional, another said it is constitutional. The court had no choice but to take that case and resolve it, essentially now.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: And the immigration cases, you know, these have been percolating along. One state after another - Arizona, Alabama - has passed these laws saying we want to enforce the laws against illegal immigration more aggressively than the federal government is, has. The Obama administration went into court and said you can't do that, this is our job. And so that's the kind of conflict that the court essentially had to resolve too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And one they're going to have to address first comes from Texas. The state legislature, they're getting four new congressional districts, largely because of the dramatic increase in Latino population. They get four new congressional districts. The state legislature drew a map, and in the nature of state legislatures, it's controlled by Republicans, and it favors Republicans.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The courts took a look at it and said, wait a minute, this doesn't accord to the Voting Rights Act.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes, this is a complicated mess, as a lot of redistricting cases are, but you're absolutely right. Texas had 22 Republicans and 10 Democrats in Congress now. They're getting four more seats. The Republicans redrew the map in a way that it looks like it would be 26 Republicans and 10 Democrats. The Voting Rights Act says you can't disadvantage a minority group. The Justice Department, the Obama administration, said this is unfair to Latinos.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Some judges down in Texas said, okay, we're going to redraw the map that's fairer to Latinos. The Texas Republicans came to the Supreme Court and cried foul and said you can't - these judges can't replace our map, and the Supreme Court agreed to step in and resolve that dispute too.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Because of the scheduling of the primary, which may have to be moved in any case, but this one's got to be addressed first.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes, that's right. That's why they're moving pretty quickly on this because the election year is coming up, and that was the sort of complicated legal situation: What do you do when the map is still pending pre-clearance? It's not been formally rejected. It's still pending. The judges down in Texas said, well, we've got to do something because if you want to run for Congress, you've got to know where your district is.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: So they drew these - as I say, this interim map, and Texas objected. They said until our map is struck down, we want to use it, and we want to use it in this election. The reason both parties care, as you said, is that there are four seats that could switch, depending on which map is used.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And depending on your prognostications, four seats one way or the other could mean which party controls the next House of Representatives. There have been a history of interim maps in the state of Texas, though. The courts have intervened there before.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes, this seems to happen about every 10 years. The one thing that's actually - in a big way is different this time is that this is the first time ever, since the Voting Rights Act in '65, where a Democratic administration has been in charge in Washington.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: And so all these Southern Republican-led states don't want to go through the Obama administration. They tried to go around the administration, go to this court, as a way to, as I say, get past the Democratic administration. But it sort of backfired because it slowed down the process. The court has not settled this question, and that's why we're in this sort of interim situation where it's still not settled but the election year is coming upon us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are any number of other big cases but none bigger than health care. Let's bring Julie Rovner into the conversation; she's NPR's health policy correspondent and a familiar voice on this program, as well as every other NPR news program. Julie, always nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Always nice to be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And as David mentioned, four different courts have issued somewhat different opinions on this, and the Supreme Court scheduled, I think, an unprecedented, as far as anybody can tell, unprecedented five-and-a-half hours of argument.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: That's right. It's probably going to stretch over two days, in all likelihood, in March, and they're going to look at four different questions that have to do with this law. First of all, first and I guess most important in the minds of most people: Is this mandate constitutional, this requirement for most people to have health insurance starting in the year 2014?</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: If the mandate is not constitutional, if they decide that Congress overstepped its authority in this requirement, is it severable from the rest of the law, meaning can you take that part out and leave the rest of the law standing? Which, of course, one of the judges, one of the lower court judges, said you could not. Every other judge has said no, you can take it out and leave most of the rest of the law intact.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: There's a third piece that the court is looking at that was in this case out of Florida that the judges took, and that has to do with Medicaid. And this was the only court that looked at that issue, this court in Florida, because it was the only place that it was challenged, is the requirement for this very large expansion of Medicaid, which is going to cover about half of the people who are expected to gain coverage as a result of this law, about 16 million people.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Is that coercive to the states to require states to put these, about 16 million additional, mostly able-bodied adults, on Medicaid? Even though, I might add, the federal government's going to be paying the vast, vast majority of the cost of that. Is that too coercive on the states? And I should also add that in every other case in which this has been tried in the lower courts, lower courts have said no. But the Supreme Court has never said this.</s>And then the last question is: Is it premature to decide all of those other questions? I mean, in fact, one of the appeals courts that looked at this case said it was because they said that the penalty you might have to pay if you don't have health insurance is a tax, and if that is a tax, then there is a law called the Anti-injunction Act that says that you cannot sue until after you've paid the tax, which meant that nobody can take this to court until 2015, which is the first year you would have to pay - anybody would have to pay the tax.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So it gives them an opportunity to punt. David, there is that chance. We keep thinking, oh, they're going to be settling all of these vastly important cases on the, you know, federalism. Nevertheless, you can come out with very narrow decisions on all of these issues and punt entirely on health care.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes, it is possible. I think if they're evenly divided on health care and can't come up with a good solution, there is that possibility of punting. I think one of the interesting things about these cases is that the common theme is these are all red-state cases, states' rights cases, with the Obama administration on the other side.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: That's why they have this real sort of partisan tone to them. The health care case, also in a big-picture way, Julie, I think is interesting because it's - the part of this dispute about what's the nature of the federal government, it's sort of what drove the Tea Party people last year, which is does the federal government have this broad national power to regulate in a way that's in the public interest, or is the federal government - are there real limits on what the federal government can do, and most of these things should be handled by the states?</s>DAVID SAVAGE: There's a common view in Washington and Congress that basically Congress can legislate in the national interest, but there's a lot of people out around the country, particularly in the red states, they really think - Rick Perry's a good spokesman for this view - is that these are states' matters and that the federal government should not be doing this.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: A number of the members of the Supreme Court have a sympathy to that view, which is that we need to put limits on what the federal - it doesn't have all power. And so for the court, I think this is one of those big questions that only comes up every 20 years or so, is are we going to limit the role of the federal government in national regulation?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Should we read a lot into the fact that the case they accepted - we said four cases came up - the one they took was the case where the court threw out the law as unconstitutional, threw out the individual mandate as unconstitutional?</s>DAVID SAVAGE: I think they took that for a couple good reasons. First of all, it was the biggest case. It was the one with the 26 states. It had the Medicaid issue. I think they thought that was the best case because it was the broadest. It hit all the issues.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: And secondly, they do tend to take cases where a lower court declares an act of Congress unconstitutional. So I always thought that's the one they're likely to take. As soon as the court says it's unconstitutional, then the Supreme Court is going to say, okay, that's the case we're going to take.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Julie, we'll be hearing some familiar voices whenever we get to hear the tape, if we ever get to hear the tap.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Yeah, they're saying perhaps by the end of that week we might hear the tape.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh yeah, (unintelligible) be so interesting by then.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: I'll still be interested in it by then.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm sure David will be too.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: But yes, Paul Clemente(ph), long-time important Supreme Court lawyer, is going to be arguing for the states, although in fact the states are really only in this case for the Medicaid part. Those who are arguing on the mandate are representing the National Federation of Independent Business. The states were sort of put out of the case on the mandate part.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: And one interesting quirk that's going to come up is that there are really two individual plaintiffs who are arguing against the mandate, and one of them has apparently gone bankrupt, perhaps no longer going to be in the case.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As we go through that case, the other case, the Texas case, this really touches - some people are saying wait a minute, the Voting Rights Act, 1965, is that still necessary, is that still as important as it once was? The attorney general in a speech this week said, oh yes it is, and that's going to be at the center of that case.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: That's absolutely right. I'd say four or five members of the Supreme Court are of that sort of skeptical view. They almost struck that down a couple years ago, sort of taking the view that this is outdated, we can't continue to have this special treatment for the South.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: And Eric Holder was saying in this speech, here's an example of why the Voting Rights Act is needed, that this big growth in Texas was almost all Latino, the state legislature drew the line, it did not give more representation to Latinos. That's a situation where Washington and the Voting Rights Act needs to step in and say stop.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about the momentous term coming up at the Supreme Court with three particularly partisan cases on the docket, on immigration, voting rights and health care. If you're following these blockbuster cases and have questions, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Our email address is talk@npr.org.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: David Savage of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune is with us, along with Julie Rovner, NPR's health policy correspondent. 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. We're talking about the upcoming term at the Supreme Court, a blockbuster, with a number of decisions expected in the middle of a contentious presidential race. Already, pressure is growing on the justices to allow cameras into the courtroom, something they've resisted for years, for the arguments on the health care law.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's just one case we mentioned. We'll see rulings on states and immigration, redistricting and voting rights, among other issues. If you're following these blockbuster cases and have questions, 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>Our guests: David Savage, who covers the Supreme Court for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune; and Julie Rovner, NPR's health policy correspondent. And let's begin with Mark, and Mark's with us from Florissant in Missouri.</s>MARK: Yes, I think that the - requiring insurance is a good thing, just like seatbelts, driver's license, car seat and driving on the right side of the road.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Julie, a lot of people make that argument, that states require you to have automobile insurance if you're going to drive a car. They force you to wear seatbelts; it's against the law not to. What's the difference between buying auto insurance, collision insurance and the individual mandate in the health care law?</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Well, there's a couple of different things. One, of course, is that those are state laws, and this is a federal law. In the case of auto insurance, you have the option, if you don't want to buy auto insurance, you don't have to have a car. In the case of health insurance, your choice is buying health insurance or not breathing.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: So - and this is the big argument here, you know, the legal argument is this is, you know, they're charging that - this is requiring people to do something, you know, a tax on inactivity. Can you have the opposite? Can you require people to do something? And that is the charge, you know, if they can require people to do this, can they require people to eat broccoli?</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: And there is - the legal arguments are complicated, but what the Justice Department is arguing is that this is not inactivity, that people - that the opposite of having health insurance is not being inactive, that everybody consumes health care and that if you don't have insurance, you simply consume health care at other people's expense, that the people who truly do not consume health care, people like Christian Scientists or the Amish, are in fact excluded from this mandate, that everybody else at some point is going to consume health care.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: If you go into the middle of the street and get run over by a bus, then you're going to be taken to the hospital, and you're going to be - you're going to consume health care, and someone else is going to pay for it. Therefore, you should have to pay for it up front.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's about choice. David Savage, the - not making a choice is a choice, the federal government...</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes, that's right. Julie just stated the argument well is that the government really has to argue, and has argued, that health care is different. It's not like buying broccoli or going to a gym or whatever, that there are federal laws that say if you are injured, or you have some medical emergency, a hospital must treat you.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: And somebody else is going to pay for that if you can't, and it's usually the taxpayer or the hospital or the other people who are insured. So their argument is health care is different, it's unique. That's why we need everybody to pay because we've already got these laws that say if you are hurt, if you have an emergency, we, the society, are going to pay for you. And in that situation, it's only fair for everybody to contribute and pay something.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: It is also - and Mark, thanks very much for the call - it is central to the rest of the law, Julie, because if everybody is in the pool, that allows the government to say all right, insurance companies, you cannot exclude anybody, everybody's paying insurance, so that's your part of this deal. In exchange for that, all these new customers, you are going to have to take everybody, even if they're sick.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: That's right, well, it's central to that part of the rest of the law. Remember the law is much bigger than just that insurance...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As has been pointed out, yes.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: That's right.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So - but that's the essential tradeoff. Is that the part of the if-then-so-what part of the second point that the court's going to be deciding?</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Exactly, that's the if-then-so-what. So that's where the law, where the justices will have to decide. If they decide that this mandate is not allowable under either the Commerce Clause or the general welfare clause of the Constitution, and they were to strike it down, what then would have to fall with it? And in all likelihood, the part that you were saying, the part where insurance companies would be required to take all comers because if everyone doesn't have to be in the insurance pool, then the insurance companies would say that only the sick would sign up because the healthy people wouldn't sign up. And they would go broke.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: And so in all likelihood, that very popular piece of the law that says insurance companies have to take people with pre-existing conditions would probably fall with it. However, the rest of the law - and there's a big, big chunk, there's nine other titles of this law - most of the rest of the law would in all likelihood remain.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Julie, if the court were to say the mandate is unconstitutional, do you think the administration would essentially have to go back to Congress and get them to rewrite part of the law for the insurance companies? I've sort of struggled with that question. What happens if they strike down the mandate? Does the law essentially need to be redone by Congress, or can the administration fix it on its own?</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: It depends. I mean, I think it depends what parts of the law the court were to strike down. It depends who's in Congress and Congress's inclination to want to fix it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll have to see.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Alice(ph), and Alice is with us from Pacifica, California.</s>ALICE: Hi, my question is: What is the - would be the implication of sanctuary cities policy if the court were to rule that, you know, states or localities could not basically follow a different policy from the federal, that it's only federal?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is on the immigration decision. There are sanctuary cities or sanctuary towns that have said we will not pursue people who are - who may or may not be here illegally, we're not going to even ask the question. David, this - would they be covered?</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Well, that's an interesting question, sort of looking at it from the other side because as you know, this case arose because of states and cities that want to more strictly enforce the immigration laws, and the administration is saying you can't do that.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: It is so that if the Supreme Court were to say you've got to follow the federal lead and that's all, that would seem to suggest that cities and states then can't have sanctuary city policies. I suppose all I could say as the lawyers say, well, that's another case. But it sure seems like it would strengthen the argument that cities can't ignore the federal government and create these sanctuary policies on their own because it would be the same thing. It would be conflicting with the federal immigration policy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There - I don't know if this has ever come up in the law, but obviously a lot of places declared themselves nuclear-free zones or nuclear-free cities, or this is obviously, the federal government says I'm sorry, you can't have your own defense policy, you can't have your own foreign policy. This does not have any standing.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: That's right. And I think where the rub really comes in is if cities go out of their way to prevent or block federal enforcement. If they just say it as a matter of we want to welcome and treat people well, that probably doesn't have any legal effect.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: But if they actually try to take steps that in some way block federal enforcement of the immigration laws, that seems like - as I say, if the Supreme Court says you can't do that, cities and states have no authority to adopt immigration policies of their own that differ from the federal policy, it seems like it would create a challenge to some of the sanctuary cities.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And it might come up on the marijuana laws, California for example.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Federalism comes up in all kinds of strange ways. It could be, again, one of the issues in the argument over gay marriage when that comes to the Supreme Court.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Well, all these, Neal - they almost always come down to sort of who decides. Ruth Ginsberg threw out this great line and said almost every Supreme Court case about what should be done really comes down to who should decide it. And they all come down the question of: Are we going to allow the cities and states to make their own policies, or are we going to federalize this and say there's one national policy, and you and the cities and states must follow it?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in the Republican debates, we've been hearing a lot of arguments, again we should not allow the justices of the Supreme Court, eight of them in one case but nine in most calculations, we should not allow unelected judges to make these decisions, they should be left to the legislatures, whether that's Congress or the states.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: That's been a very popular line, particularly on the right, for a lot of years, and it seems like it's not diminished at all. We haven't, at least in my sense, have not had a liberal activist court for quite a while, but that's still a very powerful argument, that we don't want unelected judges making the political decisions for us, the American people.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Alice, thanks very much for the phone call. Let's go next to - this is Ian(ph), Ian with us from Malvern in New York.</s>IAN: Hello, long-time listeners, first-time caller. I love the show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, thank you.</s>IAN: Okay. Well, I just wanted to ask a question, but I want to make a comment first. I think that, you know, as a legal immigrant, someone who has went through the process of immigration, I think there's a lot of us legal immigrants who get frustrated, you know, that when we hear talk about, you know, people who come here illegally, and then they're sort of going to be able to jump the queue but not necessarily supporting what Arizona's done, but maybe understanding where it comes from.</s>And then the last question is: Is it possible that if, you know, if in of if the law gets struck down, will this sort of give some impetus to the federal government to actually deal with this issue in a more resolute way?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, that's - boy, there's question. The interesting fact is that we've seen a sharp reduction in the number of people at least coming across the border. That's not the entirety of the problem. Many immigrants are here illegally because they came on a visa and overstayed their visa. But, David Savage, a court cases, sometimes, inspire, you know, get the - the side that loses seems to gain impetus.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes. That's right. There's frequently a backlash question. Let me say it this way. The Obama administration - the issue really is, in this case, in the end, is what do we do about the estimated 11 million people who are here illegally, and most of them are living peacefully and otherwise are the law-abiding people. The administration has what you could call a targeted enforcement policy. They say we want to round up and deport people who are criminals, drug smugglers, people who are any terrorism threat.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: That's what they've continued to say. We have a targeted enforcement policy, and those are the people we want to deport. And they've actually deported a record number of people in this administration - 400,000 in the past year, an all-time high. At the same time, they don't want to have, at their doorstep, hundreds of thousands of people picked up by local police who are otherwise law-abiding immigrants. And Arizona and a number of - Alabama really want to do a little more to arrest and detain, and perhaps deport, a lot of illegal immigrants.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: And that's really where the rub comes down. The administration really wants a targeted enforcement policy that says we're only going to use our resources to deport bad guys, bad people, people who've done something wrong when they're here, just not illegal immigrants. But they sure have not - this case is not going to settle this question about what do you do about all the millions of illegal immigrants who are living here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's going to have to be settled, sooner or later, at the ballot box, I would think.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Do you know the polls are about even on this, Neal?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yeah.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: That the American public is about evenly divided if you say do you favor stronger enforcement or a path to citizenship. The Pew Center has done a lot of research on this recently, and the public is about evenly divided about what they think is the right approach - stronger enforcement or a path to citizenship. A lot of people say I like both. We should - need stronger enforcement and a path to citizenship.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ian, thanks very much for the call. We're talking about the three cases the Supreme Court tacked on to an already crowded docket. Three cases that touch on major political issues, all of which will be decided in a presidential election year. That includes redistricting in Texas. The congressional lines could affect the control of the House of Representatives. It includes President Obama's health care law. That could be thrown out or affirmed in the middle of the presidential election. And it involves, as we were just discussing, the immigration laws in Arizona.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If that's the case they're taking, it affects immigration laws in many other states, too. Our guests are David Savage of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, NPR's Julie Rovner. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And Marjorie is on the line from Saint Paul.</s>MARJORIE: Yes. A question: do the lawyers arguing this case to the Supreme Court accept ideas or arguments from the general public. My idea is that if somebody - if people endure a calamity like Katrina, they expect that the government, which is the taxpayers, are going to step in and help them out and save them. Isn't a car crash or cancer an individual calamity, and why shouldn't that be shared by all of us taxpayers, if being in a hurricane or a fire is shared? And another question is that Justice Thomas' wife is a - has formed an organization that actually opposes President Obama's health care, and Justice Thomas has said he admires and agrees with everything his wife says. Currently, he is not offered to recuse himself from hearing the case. Is there any way that we can compel him to recuse himself?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: David Savage, Elena Kagan hearing it from the other side that she ought to recuse herself from the health care debate - health care decision as well, but is there any court of appeals?</s>DAVID SAVAGE: No. That's - there is not. This is one these things where the justices get to judge their own situation and whether they stay on the case. I think there's almost no chance that either Justice Thomas or Elena Kagan is going to step aside. There are groups on both sides that think there are good reasons for both of them to step aside. It tends to be the Democrats think Thomas should step aside, and the Republicans think Kagan should step aside, but they're not likely to.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: I think on the issue of his wife, I think for an average person, you'd say, gee, if his wife is running some organization that's strongly opposed to the health care plan, wouldn't that suggest he's not impartial? But the rules are that a judge doesn't have to step aside just because his spouse is interested in some cause or is active in some organization. And I think there's no chance Justice Thomas is going to step aside in this case. The case of Elena Kagan, she was the solicitor general on the day that the health care bill was signed into law.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: And the solicitor general represents the government and the Supreme Court. But very shortly after, just weeks, she was nominated to the Supreme Court, and she says, took no part in the discussion or the defense of the law, and that's been her policy. She said every issue or case that I got involved in - and there were a lot the first term - she stayed out of those cases. But health care came up just as, essentially, she was getting ready to leave, and so she says I'm going to sit on this case. And I don't think there's any chance she's going to change her mind and step aside.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Marjorie, thanks very much for the call. Interestingly, she did recuse herself from the Arizona immigration case, which leaves the possibility of a four-four tie. And, David, as I understand it, that - if that is the decision, it would go back to the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said Arizona's law is unconstitutional.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Yes. A four-four split has the effect of affirming the lower court. The Ninth Circuit said this law - they actually put it on hold. This is a preliminary injunction. They say it cannot go into effect. But, yes, it would have the affect of affirming the decisions that do not allow the law go in - to go into effect. I want to say on the health care, it would be a real disaster, by the way, if there were just eight-member court and there were a four-four split on that one.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mm-hmm.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Because, remember, then we'd have a situation where in one region of the country the law is unconstitutional, another region of the country it's - it is constitutional. That would be a real mess.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And among the other unknowables is the political impact of any of these decisions. Well, I guess, the first one we'll find out about is the Texas redistricting and see how the Supreme Court deals with those congressional lines and who they tend to favor and who might get elected from those new districts in Texas. Julie Rovner, thanks very much for your time today.</s>JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: You're welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, David Savage, as always, a pleasure to have you here in Studio 3A.</s>DAVID SAVAGE: Thanks, Neal. |
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Baghdad Thursday to mark the end of the nearly nine-year-long U.S. mission in Iraq. He told troops, "You will leave with great pride.... Secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to begin a new chapter in history." | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Today in Baghdad, a former - a formal ceremony marked the official end of the war in Iraq. The U.S. flag was lowered, rolled up, encased and wrapped in camouflage to be brought back stateside. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spoke during the ceremony about what we lost and gained.</s>SECRETARY LEON PANETTA: The cost was high - the blood and treasure of the United States, and also for the Iraqi people. But those lives have not been lost in vain. They gave birth to an independent, free and sovereign Iraq.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: With the last troops scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of this month, millions of Americans may be reflecting, today, on the impact of a conflict that lasted almost nine years. You probably know the somber statistics - four and a half thousand American dead, many more thousands injured, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in those same categories. In some ways, we won't know the outcome for years, but today, the question has to be asked: What was accomplished? What was lost? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website, go to npr.org and click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We have this email from Virginia. In answer to the question what was won or lost with the Iraq War, I lost my faith in the U.S. as a positive moral force in the world. I had direct insights into the run-up to the war in July 2002 that indicated that, regardless of the investigations of Hans Blix or others, we were going to war in the spring, period. So I watched my country invade another under false pretenses. The U.S. has pulled its military in harm's way, has drained its coffers fighting unjustified war, has caused the deaths of many civilian Iraqis and destroyed the way of life of many others.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Today, as I watch the sickening pomp and circumstance of victory surrounding the so-called end to this war - and I know that my dear Iraqi friend in Baghdad is at risk for working with Americans - I just feel worse. We also got this from Byron in Tucson, Arizona. Coming of age in the new millennium, my father was gone for most of the time, serving much of the time when I was in high school. To me, it was bittersweet not having my father present for many milestone accomplishments - NHS induction, prom, making varsity tennis, even graduation.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: While we still have my father, he came a different person when he came back, and it's taken years to not hold him responsible for things that were out of his hands. While I feel like I lost my father, I cannot express the new challenges imposed in connecting him with at present - with him, at present. Whenever anyone talks about what was lost in 9/11, I think of the potential dad my father could have been and then think about those who lost their lives. I hope Iraq can recuperate, so I can feel less guilty about the man my father has become.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He won't understand. I just wanted to say that I love my father dearly. It is, of course, going to be difficult to hear Iraqi voices on this question, but we wanted to read to you from some interviews that were done by The New York Times in Baghdad and other places. These are various people in different neighborhoods in Baghdad. This from Atamia, a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, Khalil Ibrahim, 46, government employee. I'm so concerned about the U.S. withdrawal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I am one of those who want them to remain. Many things will gradually deteriorate in Iraq, especially security, which will be affected by Iran's influence once the Americans has gone. America has already taken what it was looking for, but I don't think they achieved all their goals before it withdrew. The benefits that we gained were the elimination of the militias and the bringing of democracy to Iraq. Let's see we get a caller in on the conversation. We'll go to Van, Van on the line with us from Richmond.</s>VAN: Good afternoon. How are you?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm well. Thank you.</s>VAN: Good. Thank you. From what can I tell, the real goal going into Iraq that was accomplished was a sustained American presence in the region. And if you look at "The Grand Chessboard" written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, he predicted back in '94 that that area of Eurasia was going to be a highly contested area because it controls - well, it doesn't control - but it has three-fifths of the world's energy resources. And if a superpower can control that, it can therefore dictate prosperity throughout the globe. So it is the case of American imperialism dressed in something else.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Those calculations have changed somewhat due to discoveries and uses of oil in various places, but still a very large percentage of the world's oil in the Persian Gulf area. Van, thanks very much for the call.</s>VAN: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to - this is Jim, Jim with us from Simsbury in Connecticut.</s>JIM: Hi. How are you? And thank you for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>JIM: The thing that I think we lost is our prestige as reasoned leaders, a great deal of our economic and soft leaderships in the world, our ability to be respected as someone who would not invade another. We looked literally like cowboys going into a fight when we hadn't really settled another one. And so the outcome of both Iraq and Afghanistan is very much in question, simply because when we're not there to support them, who knows what's going to happen? In Iraq's case, Muqtada al-Sadr went over to Iran, where I'm sure he's got further support and so on. When the Americans leave, is he, all of a sudden, persuaded against what he had his people do? We're in an environment where there are tremendous amount of willingness on the part of people to bring faction against faction and destroy these countries.</s>JIM: I speak as the father of four current active military who've watched this very carefully. And I absolutely am convinced that although all of my children are safe and sound - and hopefully they will continue as such - that this country suffered a tremendous lost in our own self-image, as well in the self-image of the world. And we lost the finances that we - that would have stayed us through the mess we're in today, and uncountable horrors on families both Middles Eastern and American.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jim?</s>JIM: Hello?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Oh, you're still there.</s>JIM: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Are you done?</s>JIM: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK. Thanks very much for the call.</s>JIM: Thank you. Bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This email from Steven in San Rafael, California: The widespread PTSD among American soldiers has made me wonder about the mental health of the Iraqi population with all they've been through: the bombings, the huge number of dead and wounded, the millions of displaced individuals. How can the population, as a whole, not be traumatized? I wonder what the effects of this will be on their progress.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get another caller in. This is James, James with us from Scottsdale.</s>JAMES: Good afternoon.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, James.</s>JAMES: My perspective on this is to try to be positive. And I think what our nation has gained was unintended (unintelligible) get out unknowingly on a mission of nation building and basically displaced a very repressive entity that hated us and was dominated by the Baath Party. And I think one of the stories that really hasn't been told that a lot of what we did in Iraq was dismantle the Baath Party. And the Baath Party still exists today in Syria with a lot of the same characteristics as the Baath Party in Iraq.</s>JAMES: And so I just wanted to make that comment. Another thing I think that goes unrecognized is Iraq is bigger than California. I think if more people thought of it in that context, they would realize the enormity of what we undertook to accomplish, and also realize that when our leaders told us that we are going to be in and out of there in a short time, it was unbelievable, very - not (technical difficulties).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: James, your phone line is betraying you, but thank you very much for the call. Appreciate it.</s>JAMES: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Another one of the Iraqi voices, again from Amadiya, interviewed by The New York Times, Hassan Essa, a 49-year-old businessman. I think America accomplished its mission by achieving its goals concerning Iraq's oil, destroying Iraq's infrastructure in order not to be an obstacle to Israel's plans in the future and taking revenge on Saddam. America is less hostile than Iran. I think America will remain in Iraq secretly, and one reason is to move against Iran in the future. That is our hope.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And let's see if we can go to another Iraqi voice, this from Rani Basil, a Christian taxi driver in central Baghdad, Karada District. Iraq will be a great place if the U.S. withdraws, though I do not think the US will leave Iraq because they are about to attack Iran. You can see recently all countries that have a connection with Iran, such as Syria, are witnessing sanctions and are about to change their government. The U.S. government and Army achieved their mission exactly as they wanted and planned. They made all the Iraqis hate each other, and they created sectarianism in our once-united nation. Now the way is clear for them to stay to attack Iran or Syria. I lost my dignity. In 2003 when they occupied Iraq, they raided my house. When I asked the American soldier to stop searching in my wife's clothing closet, he stepped on my head with his dirty foot.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to Caroline, Caroline with us from Anchorage.</s>CAROLINE: Yes. Good morning. Good afternoon. I wanted to mention, first of all, a personal lost. My stepson was killed in Iraq. And the thing I've heard most recently, because of the damages that's done to our country financially, Ted Koppel's report finally explained to me what a trillion is. A trillion dollars is a million dollars a day for 3,000 years. And we managed to squander that money killing people, going in for false reasons within nine years. And that figure of a trillion dollars lost in Iraq - only Iraq, not Afghanistan - cover - does not cover the cost of all the people who come back maimed, the cost of taking care of all of the soldiers that were sent over there. This whole thing has been a disaster.</s>CAROLINE: And as your first caller said, your lady caller, I'd lost faith in this government and faith - almost lost faith in our system. And I have been an ardent watcher and supporter of our government since I was six years old in 1950. And I can't begin to tell you how much damage this illegal war did to this country. Thank you so much for this show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Caroline, we're sorry for the loss of your stepson. Thanks very much for the call. We're talking about - we're talking with listeners today as the United States hauled down its flag and encased it for transport back to the United States in Iraq. The last remaining U.S. soldiers will be out of that country before the end of this month. You're listening TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chris is on the line, Chris calling us from Pittsburg.</s>CHRIS: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>CHRIS: Yeah. I served in Iraq in 2008, 2009. I was part of the last - part of the surge over there. And I was serving in - as an infantry soldier. And, you know, we gained a lot over there, I think. We made - we trained the troops over there. We took out a dictator out of power. And, you know, and we're putting in a democracy. I don't know if that's going to last, but it's up to the Iraqi people to make that last. And hopefully - hopefully, they'll be able to take that on and do good with it. And on top of that, you know, we're advancing a lot of different things, industries in the United States because of lessons learned in Iraq. So hopefully now, you know, with what (unintelligible) doing in Pittsburg with the (unintelligible), you know, might create a whole new industry because of the things we learned out of the war.</s>CHRIS: Remember, after World War II, a lot of things happened in this country. Not to say war's a great thing, but sometimes a lot of positive comes out of it. And just because we spent a lot doesn't mean that, you know, in the future, the things that we learned, you know, we'll be able to gain a lot from it (technical difficulties).</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Chris, thanks for the call. I'm glad you made it back OK.</s>CHRIS: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to - this is Rosie, Rosie with us from Toledo.</s>ROSIE: Hello. Thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>ROSIE: Yeah. My comment is - I've been listening to a lot of the news stories today about, you know, America is the only, last superpower, and how there was an element of hubris getting into this war. And it seems to me that with so much in this country in disarray in education, in finance, that there is going to have be a long soul-searching in order to find out whether A, it's still important to be a superpower, B, there's still the moral authority to call oneself a superpower when you can go into other countries to sort them out, but you can't keep your own country in any form of good shape as a result of spending all that money over there, and whether it's been worth the sacrifice for so many people. So that's my comment.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A lot of people, Rosie, would not measure superpower by moral standards, but by - rather by standards of economic and military power. But I think we get your point.</s>ROSIE: Well, you know, it is the economic power still, and, you know, I mean, in a country where so many people are either on or, you know, below or teetering towards the poverty line, you know, there's a lot of things in disarray in this country. And, you know, coming from a country that was once a superpower and lost that, then, you know, it's - there's a lot to be learned from history. And I don't know whether that has happened. I think it still has to happened.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: OK, Rosie.</s>ROSIE: So...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much. Appreciate it.</s>ROSIE: Ok. Thank you. Bye-bye.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jim in Cincinnati emails: How quickly we forget the events of 9/11. Many of us agreed with President Bush and support to this day the war in Iraq. We likely left too little in place to maintain the freedom we fought so hard to achieve.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can go next to Ken, and Ken's on the line from St. Louis.</s>KEN: Hi. Thanks for having my call here. I was with the initial invasion force when we were in - in 2003, when we went up through Umm Qasr. We were stationed in Umm Qasr to keep security and port security there. And one of the things that I - really astonished me was the men that were working the ports under Saddam Hussein, they wanted to work. They wanted to provide for their families. And even though I haven't talk to these guys since then - we left in August of that year - but that's what they wanted. They wanted freedom. They wanted to work. They wanted to provide for their families. And that's a thing that I will always, always remember.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And we're glad you made it back safe.</s>KEN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken, thanks very much for the call. And let's see if we get one last email in. This is from Mora(ph) in Smyrna, Georgia. Both sons served a total of five tours in Iraq. Knowing my eldest would be one of the first in, I watched in vain waiting for reasoned proof to be presented to the U.N. Security Council to justify our inevitable invasion as a just war. We all know what happened there. I watched my sons lost their innocence, and they and so many other troops sent there to serve lost a great of their soul. A fellow military mom said her son worried he would go to hell for what he did. What good did we do when a generation of young men and women who served fear for their eternal lives?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd like to thank everybody who called and emailed to us today as the U.S. flag came down on the nine-year war in Iraq. More on that later today on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. |
Websites like Kickstarter, Kiva and Giving Tree are changing how people donate money. With what's known as microphilanthropy, individuals, non-profits and even small businesses raise money directly from individual donors. Journalist and author Laura Vanderkam explains how crowd funding works. Read Laura Vanderkam's piece for USA Today, "Microphilanthropy is Changing the Face of Charity" | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Websites like Kickstarter and Kiva give people the opportunity to donate or loan generally small amounts directly to individuals and organizations, usually for a project of some kind. Now that crowd funding model is being applied to charity. It's called microphilanthropy, and it's changing giving, receiving and maybe philanthropy itself.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you've donated on these sites, why? 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: Laura Vanderkam covered this phenomenon for USA Today and joins us from a studio in Philadelphia. Nice to have you with us.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how does this work?</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, basically, if philanthropy is the voluntary promotion of human welfare, then microphilanthropy means doing the same thing on a much smaller scale. So it's about establishing a direct connection between donors and recipients, and donors choose which projects they want to support. So instead of, say, writing a check to a charity that I know does clean water projects in Africa, I can choose the exact well I want to support and learn about the people who'd benefit and hopefully get some updates along the way.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So this was a model that Adopt-A-Child used to be, the program, but this is very specific, and you get to see this site before you begin.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Exactly. There's just so much more information now. My family did an Adopt-A-Child program back in the 1980s, and I used to remember we'd get these very thin sheets of airmail paper in the mail from the child we were supporting, or really the charity we were supporting, had a specific child write us letters. And, you know, you'd wait for these for weeks. I'd write to the child and the child would write back. This would take weeks.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, of course, now, you can get updates on what your international friends are eating for breakfast on Facebook. So there's just so much more immediate information. And so people think, well, why should charity be a black box when nothing else is? We will all learn more about how these things work.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this would seem to eliminate a lot of administrative costs.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, maybe. I mean, the problem is, of course, is that bundling small funds because, with microphilanthropy, you're giving, you know, 25, $50. Bundling small funds has some costs associated with it, but technology does lower that as well. And so because of that, it's not as big an inefficiency as you might think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So if you wrote a check, for example, to the United Way, you have no idea where that money is necessarily going - for good causes, you suspect - but that good cause may be the heating bill at the headquarters.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, certainly that's true. I mean, all nonprofits do have some need for overhead to run their operations. But generally, you know, this is the way professional philanthropy has worked, is that you trust that the experts who are running these philanthropies know what the most urgent causes are, know what is the best use of your money, and you trust that they will see that it gets there.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: And that has worked pretty well, most of the time. There's been some scandals, but mostly it works. But, of course, now these days, people want more information. And so even with established charities - you see places like Goodwill - they now have a calculator on their site showing exactly how many, say, minutes of job search classes a donation of your old Green Day CDs will fund. We just want to know what our donation will buy.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how - who goes and finds these wells or projects in Africa or in Bangladesh?</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, generally, you have on-the-ground nonprofits who do have operational arms doing these projects, and they are just more specific about them online through these massive portals like GlobalGiving. So a small nonprofit that does do work in Africa will post photos of a specific project and ask for donations for those.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: There's a little bit of gray area with all this because, in many cases, the money is going to the broad work of these nonprofits because giving to one specific person, for instance, is usually not a tax-deductible event. So there's some gray area with this, but most nonprofits do follow donor wishes and direct the funds toward the project you say.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the social media sites, those - somebody's got to run those sites. That's not trivial. It's not a corporate headquarters, but it's not trivial.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: No, of course, but the good thing is that, you know, as people share what sort of projects they're supporting, they can get their whole social network involved, and much of this is very grassroots. So if I say I want to give $50 to a particular cause, I can then tell my whole network. Many of these websites, you know, GlobalGiving, DonorsChoose, Modest Needs, Citizen Effect are very much driven by social media. And so I tell all my friends that I thought this was a great project, and maybe many of them will kick in as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I see. So there is a snowball effect, if you will.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Exactly. And so once a project gets a little bit of funding off it, it gets more funding, people say, well, if my friend thought this was a good idea, I bet it's a good idea.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get some callers in on the conversation. We'd like to hear if you've donated through one of these sites, why did you do it? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. We'll start with Alicia(ph), Alicia with us from Rochester, New York.</s>ALICIA: Hi. I think this is a great topic for your program. And I have donated to Kickstarter. I've done breast cancer research online, you know, so that whenever we donate funds for that certain team, they show up on our Facebook page. And I do it for that reason because I think as a kind of middle-income earner, it's good for my friends, who maybe say they don't have money and I can't donate to charity, to see that someone like I can do it because then they say, oh, no amount is small enough, so to speak.</s>ALICIA: And so the other reason I do it is because I get so discouraged when I donate money to Doctors Without Borders or Smile Train or there's something I donate to that had to do with women and micro-financing, and they send me Christmas cards or they send me address labels. And I don't need those. And I want the company or the, you know, nonprofit to save their money and not make those things and send them to me. They're nice thank yous and they're nice enticements, but I think the kind of pride you get on virtual media and social media makes up for those.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Pride. That's an interesting term.</s>ALICIA: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I just wanted to probe that one term a little bit, Alicia, pride.</s>ALICIA: Pardon?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You used the word pride.</s>ALICIA: I did. And I think that's what I mean. You know, if the enticement before was, I mean, who are we kidding if we don't say that social media is a little bit about bragging and a little bit about pride and doing good and a little bit about pride and who you are as a person? And, to me, that's a, you know, better enticement as far as really saving funds for the nonprofits than the calendars or the bag or the coffee mug or the - whatever they use to send and still tend to send. So...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We ought to try that in public radio. Coffee cups, you say? Tote bags?</s>ALICIA: Well, I do. I think if there's a big difference. I think, you know, 20 years ago, it was the coffee mug. It was the embroidered tote bag. But I think FedEx and below, we're satisfied with just a kind of, you know, shout-out on our Facebook page.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Alicia, thanks very much for the call. We appreciate it. And, Laura Vanderkam, that sense of ownership that I think she was talking about, that is much more direct than the - she suggested the check that she may also send to Doctors Without Borders.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Yes. People definitely want to feel a connection with the recipients of their money. They want to know they're doing good. And I think Alicia was getting at something great there with, you know, social media enables us to give in public, that in the past, you know, you write your check privately and maybe your name is in the newsletter of a charity, which is fine. That's great that they do that. But with social media these days, you give and you can tell all the people that you actually care about. And it shows up on their Facebook feed. And that is very fun. And it hopefully encourages other people to get involved as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we go next to Trey(ph), Trey with us Moncks Corner in South Carolina.</s>TREY: Yes, I've given to an artist who's a friend of my brother's. He had some Kickstarter campaigns that he has done just to help get some art projects off the ground. And he's done, you know, little incentives here. You give this much, you get original pieces of artwork from the project and things like that. Most I guess have given because I'd like to see his projects go through. They're generally interesting ideas, and I'd love to see an artist succeed.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That's the Kickstarter project model that we were talking about in the introduction, and that's a little bit different from this - the microphilanthropy charity. But, Laura Vanderkam, it's the same kind of crowd-sourcing or crowd-funding model.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Yes. I mean, it's the same force at work. And technology democratizes things, and it establishes direct connections between people. And so whether that's a donor and a recipient who's got a new well in Africa providing clean water, or whether it's an artist making an album and not having to go through a record company, just crowd-funding it instead, the same force makes transferring small amounts of money more efficient. And it multiplies information, and so it helps us establish direct connections.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And how is it changing the big philanthropies?</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, as I was saying earlier with places like Goodwill now have calculators showing exactly how many minutes of a job search class your donation will fund. And certainly, charities such as the Red Cross or the United Way want to make people feel the same level of connection that these new players like GlobalGiving and DonorsChoose and Modest Needs will do. It's changed the way they've marketed themselves because they realize that donors who feel connected are happy donors, and happy donors are more likely to be more generous in the future.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The scandal a few years ago when the Red Cross was raising money on the appeal for victims of this specific disaster, and it turned out they were using a lot of that money to, well, pay for all kinds of programs, not just that one, this avoids that kind of disconnect.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, to a degree because let's say all nonprofits walk a fine line with this, that giving to one specific person is not a tax-deductible event. And so when you're saying we'll support Geoffrey Lubega(ph) in Uganda and his needs, giving directly to that man is not something that we generally can deduct. So you are funding their programs. And most are very clear about this, but certainly the new ones such as DonorsChoose say, well, we will direct the funds this way.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: I mean, they - I think they do a point system, rather than sheer dollars so it seems even more like you're voting for the cause rather than supporting it particularly with a specific dollar amount. But, you know, it is true people don't like that. They think it seems a bit, you know, untransparent to raise money for general funds, like when the Red Cross was doing that based on the emotional appeal of a certain disaster. We do like to know that our money is going where it is, and I do think that this microphilanthropy revolution has been making the nonprofit sector more transparent. It makes it more accountable as people see where their money is going. And that's a good thing because, I mean, we're in tight times, and if - I think that transparency has helped keep the level of individual giving at a pretty high level, even as some major philanthropy support has declined from foundations.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're speaking with Laura Vanderkam, author and journalist, who wrote a piece called "Microphilanthropy is Changing the Face of Charity" last year in USA Today. She's with us from Philadelphia. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And let's get Christine(ph) on the line, Christine with us from Cincinnati.</s>CHRISTINE: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Christine. You're on the air. Go ahead, please.</s>CHRISTINE: Hi. I wanted to just say that I have donated in the past to CHIVA and to Oxfam, and the reason I enjoyed donating to those organizations so much is because I feel as though not just donating money. I'm donating a way for this person to sustain their lifestyle. You know, it's a gift that kind of keeps on giving if you give them an irrigation system or livestock or something like that. So, for me, it's very satisfying in that regard.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So the specificity, a water pump to allow a farmer to irrigate his soil, that sort of thing.</s>CHRISTINE: Right. Right. Instead of just giving flat out money, and actually giving them more of a way for them to build their, you know, create their life in the fashion they wish through my gift.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do you also get feedback - this is the way we used your gift?</s>CHRISTINE: I do a little bit, but I mostly just trust that I'm probably giving something to someone that really could need - use it and needs it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And thanks very much for the call, Christine. And, Laura Vanderkam, we have to remember that people have different levels of engagement. Everybody - a donor, of course, but different levels of engagement. Some people want that intense connection. Some people, every once in a while is OK.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: And it's good to have it on offer. And, certainly, DonorsChoose, which is an organization that Charles Best, a teacher, founded to fund classroom projects, I believe if you give over a certain amount, about $100, you get thank you letters from the children. And so talk about motivational, that's definitely something that would keep a donor engaged.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Evan, Evan with us from Kansas City.</s>EVAN: Hi, how's it going?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good. Thanks.</s>EVAN: Yeah. I just want to talk about donating to Kickstarter. I actually got involved with a local business through a friend who writes for a beer blog and works for a liquor distributor and involved in the industry. And he told me about a local business that was looking for private funding to start up a local brewery. Being Kansas Citian, we're proud of our local brewery boulevard, but we don't quite have the beer market size that say cities like St. Louis do or Portland who can do their own local beer week.</s>EVAN: So the idea of getting involved in a local business that was going to allow me to start a new Kansas City brewery, expand our beer market and also get involved in a project really meant a lot to me. I spread it around to a lot of friends. I got a ton of people to donate. And ultimately, they barely made their goal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So this was a campaign to get enough money to buy the equipment to get started, what Kickstarter is all about. Was this in a donation or an investment?</s>EVAN: This was a donation. They gave prizes, but actually, it ultimately ended up being an investment because I'm trying to be a home brewer myself. I ended up meeting them. They offered to let my friend and I work with them and teach us how to do stuff, so ultimately it became a life investment for me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Interesting. Evan, thanks very much for the call.</s>EVAN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Laura Vanderkam, we were talking in the context of the charitable donations. We tend to think of there is that gray area when you're talking about projects on Kickstarter that aren't donations to help artists to develop a project or even a brewery in Kansas City.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Well, I love this, that this is changing the lines between things that often you are giving with the goal of creating a community that you want to live in. And sometimes that means helping to fund local businesses that are creating that community, in this case, to have a local brewery. So there's a much gray area between philanthropy and investing. Currently, you can't invest for equity through many of these crowd-funding sites, though there's actually a bill in Congress that would change that at the moment. But, yeah, we view giving often as about, you know, giving to some destitute person or a cause like animal welfare, but it can also be about creating a thriving community. And so that's what Evan was getting at.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And grouping together with your friends, as he said, they barely made their goal, but they did get started, and that's the whole idea of the project. As you look ahead to this, is this the future, at least as far as we can see, for philanthropy?</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: I really think it is because when philanthropy - when charity relies on big donors, you are always subject to the whims and to the market forces that affect us, the donors, so when they have bad years in the stock market, that funding can dry up or if they're focus changes, that funding can dry up. But when you have a broad base of donors and people who are engaged in what you are doing, they are more recession resistant, and so it's a more stable source of funds in the long term.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Laura Vanderkam, thank you very much for your time.</s>LAURA VANDERKAM: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Laura Vanderkam, author of the forthcoming book "All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending." She joined us from Philadelphia. Tomorrow, Gabrielle Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, on their new book together, "Gabby." Join us for that. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. |
The American public, military and the intelligence community were all affected by the Iraq war. Tom Ricks of the Center for a New American Security, retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson and Army veteran Andrew Exum discuss how Americans will remember the war, and what we should learn from it. Read Tom Rick's Foreign Policy post, 'Just What Did We Fight And Bleed For?' | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. With U.S. troops now out of Iraq as of this weekend, it's time to start asking those who served there what they fought and bled for. The historian and long-time defense reporter Tom Ricks posed that question on his blog recently.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: About a million Americans served in uniform over the last nine years, since the U.S.-led invasion. Many others worked in various capacities for the State Department, contractors, news agencies, NGOs. If you've been to Iraq in or out of uniform, what should we remember? 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 playwright and activists on the activist playwright who helped bring down the Iron Curtain, Ariel Dorfman on Vaclav Havel. But first Iraq, and Tom Ricks is now a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security, also writes The Best Defense blog for Foreign Policy, and wrote two histories of the war, "Fiasco" and "The Gamble." He joins us here in Studio 3A. Tom, nice to have you back on the program.</s>TOM RICKS: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I wonder what the reaction was when you posted that question, just what did we fight and bleed for?</s>TOM RICKS: I wrote that column because I did not have a good answer. And it was very heartfelt, but like a lot of heartfelt things, it was kind of inarticulate. I don't know. I was puzzling - I was asking myself what would you say to a vet of the war? And what I came down to was basically welcome home, thank you for answering your country's call.</s>TOM RICKS: But I can't say it was the right thing to do to fight that war. I don't think we really have - will know how the war ends for several years, but it's clear to me it was one of the biggest mistakes in American history. And it was kind of an embarrassment for this country.</s>TOM RICKS: We invaded a country recklessly, on false information, with a notion of preemption. We got a lot of people killed. I'm not sure we did much good. So how do you think about that? I was actually thinking about this another way the other day: What would an Iraq war memorial look like? Eventually we'll have one.</s>TOM RICKS: Now, the Vietnam Memorial is a gash in the ground, like a grave. I think the Iraq War memorial probably would ideally be a dead end into the ground.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'd like to hear from you. If you were in Iraq, in uniform or out, what did we fight and bleed for? 800-989-8255. Email is talk@npr.org. We'll start with Mike, and Mike's with us from Lodi in Wisconsin.</s>MIKE: Hi, good afternoon. I actually - I'm a career Army officer that's been retired for five years, and I'm a career logistician, and I actually concur with the remarks of your guest, I didn't catch his name.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom Ricks.</s>MIKE: But what I remember is, for the most part, most of the places that I was at, I was at four bases in Iraq, and basically it was a very - if you were inside the base, it was like going to work every day, pretty much, except it was pretty hot outside. But if you went outside on a convoy, very scary.</s>MIKE: IEDs killed a lot of people, two of my friends, and just whatever - I'm not sure what you can say to another vet either when he comes home. But people certainly don't - still don't understand how our military is set up because those people that are coming home are not going to be discharged, looking for jobs, President Obama; they're going to probably still have careers in the military.</s>MIKE: So, you know, we're off the hook for that for the most part. That's about all I can say. It's just exciting to be on the program for the first time ever, as many times as I've called, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, congratulations for making it in on the phone; more congratulations, too, for making it back OK. We thank you.</s>MIKE: Yeah, thank you, you're very welcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom?</s>TOM RICKS: I'd say welcome home. I'd also say what I think about - it really struck me when he talked about the heat. When I think about Iraq, the one memory that immediately comes back is the ferocious, mind-bending humid heat of mid-summer there.</s>TOM RICKS: When it was transitioning from the spring, which is very wet, the summer, which can be hot and dry, you get a period in May and June when it's both, about 120 degrees, very humid. Imagine D.C. with the temperature turned up in the summer another 20 degrees.</s>TOM RICKS: It really is the first place I ever really felt I was not thinking clearly a couple of times in the middle of the day, and that's the strongest physical memory I have of the place.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Gary Anderson is a retired colonel in the Marines who served in Iraq as a member of a provincial reconstruction team in Abu Ghraib, outside of Baghdad, and he joins us now by phone. And Gary Anderson, nice to have you back with us, as well.</s>GARY ANDERSON: Good to be back, Tom.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Colonel Anderson, as you - what did we fight and bleed for?</s>GARY ANDERSON: Well, you know, I think I feel a lot - much the same as Tom does. You sit back, and you wonder what, you know, what we actually got out of this thing. I have to kind of personalize it, and I still have a chance to talk to people that I worked with, Iraqis particularly, and, you know, just they're starting to get an almost revisionist feel about it.</s>GARY ANDERSON: They've been without us up in Abu Ghraib for about 14, 15 months now, and they're - it's kind of getting to a point where they're saying, hey, things were a lot better when the Americans were here. So it's a matter of perspective for them, I think. You happen to remember the good things and sometimes forget the bad things.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: When you got there, the situation was bad. You've told us in the past, when you left, it was better.</s>GARY ANDERSON: Yeah, we actually went through the entire - in Abu Ghraib itself - went through the entire - all three faces of the coin - the clear, the hold, and we were getting into the build as I left. And in that respect it was gratifying to see, you know, things start to come along and get better. The question is, you know, did they stay that way, and will they stay that way?</s>GARY ANDERSON: Right now things - people tell me they are in fairly good shape, but that's one slice of Iraq. I can't speak to the rest of the country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are reports of new tensions between the Shia leadership, Nouri al-Maliki and indeed the Sunnis, who provided much of the opposition during the war, much of the insurgency, they also provided the key to unwinding the insurgency. Andrew Exum is with us, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, Army veteran who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Nice to have you back on the program.</s>ANDREW EXUM: Yeah, it's great go be here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what are you going to take away? Why did we fight?</s>ANDREW EXUM: Well, you know, first off, it's an honor to be on a program with - Iraq taught me as a junior officer that sometimes it's best not to listen to the supposed wisdom of your elders, but in this case it's pleasure to serve with two long-time mentors, you know, Gary and Tom.</s>ANDREW EXUM: I think that, you know, for me, when I look at the Iraq War, I think there were lots of reasons to found. Both, you know, I was proud to have been part of the task force that captured Saddam Hussein, and that was - you know, we freed Iraq from this horrible dictatorship.</s>ANDREW EXUM: But in terms of was it worth it, absolutely not. When you look at the trillion dollars that we spent, when you look at – I think - and I apologize if my number is incorrect, but I think 4,483 U.S. servicemen killed in Iraq, and that's, you know, not even counting the just tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties that we saw, just a horrific war.</s>ANDREW EXUM: You know, you think back to the maelstrom of violence in 2005, 2006, 2007, which Tom was a firsthand witness to, and it's hard to say that the war was with it. And in addition, especially for me as also an Afghanistan veteran, the way in which we shifted the vast majority of our military and intelligence resources away from Afghanistan and are now dealing with the aftermath of that decision today.</s>ANDREW EXUM: So I don't take too much away from it positive. I mean, the big strategic lesson for me, you know, in addition this is the strategic lesson of the war in Vietnam as well, don't elect Texans president. But I think that we in the military learned a lot of smaller lessons that we've brought with us to Afghanistan, sometimes incorrectly.</s>ANDREW EXUM: And I've seen a lot of my peers who are still junior officers in the U.S. Army have faith that they're going to take a lot of the lessons that they've learned about these types of engagements, about these types of political wars, and a lot of just hard-won lessons of close-quarters combat that they'll take with them over the course of their military careers.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I really wish I could say our next caller is Rick from Austin, but maybe not.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go to Travis, Travis with us from Quincy, Massachusetts.</s>TRAVIS: Yes, hello, thank you for having me on the program. Briefly, I was there in '05, '06, '07, '08 with the 101st Airborne. I just want to briefly mention that Tom Ricks mentions us, our unit, at the end of his book "Fiasco," and I want to thank him for doing a great service, for writing one of the best books about the war, and it will be considered – it will be considered that.</s>TRAVIS: But I just wanted to make a brief comment. You know, the war is, you know, tragic and was tragic for us on a number of levels, the combat - you know, the combat on the ground, the nature of it and what happened to the Iraqi people. But one thing that's not often talked about is the fact that after Vietnam, political and military culture was such that we had non-interventionist ideologies throughout, you know, and into the '90s.</s>TRAVIS: And one thing that that meant was that during, you know, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Bosnia, et cetera, non-interventionist policies prevented us from helping in terms of hundreds of thousands of, you know, people dying. And one of the tragedies of this war is that yet again, a war of choice, a war in which the secondary justifications don't really stack up when you compare them to Bosnia and the other conflicts with hundreds of thousands killed, one of the other things that's going to happen now is you're going to have - and you saw it to a limited extent in Libya, the opposition there, you're going to have years and decades of non-interventionism, not another Iraq, and humanitarian crises that are justified, you know, our intervention.</s>TRAVIS: And that's a real tragedy, you know, the fact that we could not really help the Iraqi people as much as we should have and the fact that, you know, we didn't do it protecting or defending our country. And I want your guests to comment. I'll take it off the air. Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just a slight correction on the timeline; Rwanda was after the first Gulf War. So there had been successful intervention. But Tom Ricks?</s>TOM RICKS: Travis, welcome home, and thank you for your kind words about my book. It's an honor to have you read it. I disagree with you, though, on the consequences of the war. I'm surprised the extent to which the American people have not kind of gone into an isolationist huddle. We just did intervene, and in a very intelligent way, I think, in Libya.</s>TOM RICKS: We just put a small task force into Central Africa to help coordinate security efforts of small countries there. I think the two great surprises to me of this war are, number one, that we have not recoiled, as we did after Vietnam; and number two, I'm surprised at the shape the U.S. military's in.</s>TOM RICKS: I would have expected, if you had told me 10 years ago what we would put these people through with multiple deployments, with just one percent of society carrying the burden of the war, I would have expected it to shatter the Army, and it hasn't. And I have to attribute that to the great cohesiveness you see in the force today.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Travis, thanks very much for the call. We're talking about what we - the end of the U.S. war in Iraq. If you were there, in uniform or out of uniform, what do you think we should remember about the war? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Retired Colonel Marines Gary Anderson is with us, along with Tom Ricks of the Center for a New American Security. Andrew Exum served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now also works at the Center for a New American Security. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan, TALK OF THE NATION, NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Early Sunday morning, the final convoy from Contingency Operating Base Adder in south Iraq rumbled across the border into Kuwait. It was thankfully a quiet exit from the country the U.S. invaded noisily nine years ago in a shock-and-awe campaign designed to throttle a country with overwhelmingly might.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Now, nearly nine years later, Americans have learned hard lessons about intelligence, warfare and sacrifice. If you've been to Iraq, either as a service member or civilian, what do you want to be sure we remember? 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: Tom Ricks writes the Best Defense blog for Foreign Policy, is with us. Also Colonel Gary Anderson and Andrew Exum, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Gary Anderson, I wanted to turn to you on that last question that we had from a caller. Given that Afghanistan continues, the point Tom Ricks was making about he's surprised that America is not recoiling the way it did after the helicopters took off from the roof of the embassy in Saigon.</s>GARY ANDERSON: Well, I think one thing we've learned something about at this point in time is how to manage one of these things once we've gotten into it. You can make a lot of arguments about the way we got into it, and I would say that about both Afghanistan and Iraq. But once you're into it, trying to figure out the best way to get out and do it in such a way that you have a - you're not literally going out on the skids of helicopters is a real challenge.</s>GARY ANDERSON: And for a while there in Iraq, it looked like we might be headed in that direction. The one thing that strikes me, and I think Andrew said it, is that we have learned a little bit about how to deal with states that are failing or have failed.</s>GARY ANDERSON: And right now, although the Iraqis eventually didn't have the WMD that we thought they did, we've got two very precarious states that we're dealing with, and we were reminded of that when Kim Jong-il died, that we've got two very unstable nuclear states, and if they really start to go south, you have to wonder if we may not have to get involved in that, too.</s>GARY ANDERSON: At least we've got some context, I think, now on how to think about that if we have to, God forbid, if either one of them does go under.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This from Rosa Maria(ph) in Kingston, Rhode Island: Everyone's so happy the troops are coming home. But how many of those joyous celebrations will end with new deployments to Afghanistan? Obviously, there's a drawdown in Afghanistan, as well, Andrew Exum, but new people will be rotating out.</s>ANDREW EXUM: Yeah, that's right. For the conventional forces, they've got about another two years to get through before we really bottom out in Afghanistan. The Special Operations Forces, both our U.S. Army Special Forces, will continue their train and advisory mission. And, you know, the U.S. Navy Seals, the U.S. Army Ranger regiment, and some of our special missions units will still be quit active in Afghanistan and other operating theaters as we go forward.</s>ANDREW EXUM: I want to just touch on something that Tom talked about. He talked about the resilience of the U.S. military, and one of the things that for me as a young veteran is really frustrating, I mean, I very much appreciate the way in which, you know, society is not sensitized to PTSD and to, you know, to what soldiers have gone through in Iraq.</s>ANDREW EXUM: But I worry that, you know, an entire class of veterans have been stigmatized. The reality is that if you go into the all-volunteer force, if you talk to, you know, young junior officers, senior, non-commissioned officers who - you know, veterans of multiple deployments, it's remarkable the degree to which they are doing just fine. And that's the case for most young veterans, as well.</s>ANDREW EXUM: So I think that you can't over-emphasize that. Having said that, it's come at a cost. You know, we have this professional military, but it's largely cut off from the rest of society. So basically just, you know, .5 percent of the, you know, the United States population really has a stake in this war, maybe one percent if you include their families and whatnot.</s>ANDREW EXUM: And that does lead to a worry that I have. You know, Travis, the caller from the 101st Airborne, raised the possibility that we're not going to intervene. I'm actually OK with that. I think we should be a little more humble about using U.S. military power in an expeditionary sense, and we should be more humble about what it can achieve.</s>ANDREW EXUM: That having been said, I completely agree with Gary that we've learned a lot of valuable lessons from both Iraq and Afghanistan, and even though stabilization operations have gone out of vogue in 2011, we'll see if they go back into fashion in 2012 if North Korea collapses.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Here's an email from Mike in Sacramento: I was an enlisted infantry soldier in Iraq from 2006 to 2007. I worked with a Marine rifleman who was there during the initial push in 2003. We to both remember OIF as a sham, a farce, a cruel joke and a waste of time, money and lives. However, when we returned from Iraq, we would have punched you in the face if you'd told us that. We didn't want to believe that the time we'd spent over there was for nothing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: For me, the idea that I'd helped create something good over there held me together for the first few years I was back. Now, however, I am disgusted by the role our country played in destroying the country. My memories of Iraq are smeared with cynicism, bitterness and resentment toward my country's leadership.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Lets' see if we can go next to Jovan(ph), Jovan with us from Little Rock.</s>JOVAN: Hi, I just got back from Iraq this summer, and I was in the Air Force, and just basically my point of view on it was the fact that I really think it depends on the job that you're doing over there. My hat's off to all the Army guys, the Marine guys, because they're boots on the ground, doing a lot of heavy stuff and - versus some of us.</s>JOVAN: I was on an aircraft support position, on a base, so to where I didn't get to see the ugliness of the war. And my interaction with the people that worked on base, the Iraqis that worked on base, was positive. And they liked us. They were nice people. They were good people. And I enjoyed my deployment.</s>JOVAN: But I have a friend in security forces who - he hated it because he was spit on at the jails. He was threatened every day with death threats. So I really think it depends on the job that you had over there. I had a good experience.</s>ANDREW EXUM: So true, that's so true. You know, for me, I think I had it pretty easy in 2003. When I look at my friends who were company commanders during 2007, during the height of the surge. They had a much different and more intense experience than I did.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And put it in a timeframe, as Tom Ricks mentioned earlier. This email from Chris in Grand Rapids: If in five years Iraq is democratic and free, how is that a mistake? We need to wait and see.</s>GARY ANDERSON: He's right. You know, miracles do happen. I just don't see the trend going that direction. I think it's pretty clear, at least in the short term, that we have altered the balance of power in the Middle East not for the better, that Iran is the prime beneficiary of the American foray into Iraq.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jovan, thanks very much for the call. Let's see if we can go next to - this is Jesse(ph), Jesse with us from Norman, Oklahoma.</s>JESSE: Hi, hello?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're on the air, Jesse. Go ahead, please.</s>JESSE: Hi, I just wanted to say I was in the initial invasion in Third ID. I was an artilleryman, and I went back again in 2005. And I want to say that although the war may have been misdirected, and I should have been in Afghanistan, those people now have the opportunity, whether they take it or not, to have freedom and to choose to do what is best for their people. Whether or not they do that remains to be seen. And that, in my opinion, is exactly what's going to determine if my friends that I lost and all of those other people that have sacrificed over there is going to be worth it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Gary Anderson, let me bring you in on that. You experienced that firsthand, working as a civilian with a Provincial Reconstruction Team. Do you think people appreciate the opportunity, and do you think they will be able to seize it?</s>GARY ANDERSON: Well, just the thing that struck me universally between - we had a province that was pretty well evenly split between Sunni and Shia - the two primary minority groups there - was the thing that struck me was the anti-Iranian, anti-Persian tone of both the Sunni and the Shia, which really surprised me.</s>GARY ANDERSON: And there were a whole lot of things that, you know, that contributed to that, but I think in my view in the future, as we move along here, what we are going to see is that no Iraqi politician is going to prosper in the long run if he allies himself too closely to the Iranians.</s>GARY ANDERSON: So to some extent I think there is some hope there that we will establish something that is a bulwark against Iranian expansionism in that part of the world, but I think time will tell. That's just my own personal opinion from one small slice of Iraq itself.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead.</s>ANDREW EXUM: I think Gary's right there. I actually am somewhat surprised by Tom. I think Tom's right to be worried about Iraq, especially given the authoritarian tendencies of Nouri al-Maliki, which have come to the fore just really over the past few days, even more than before.</s>ANDREW EXUM: But I think Gary's also right that the Iraqis - and we learned this the hard way in 2003 - don't particularly like foreign intervention in their country and that they have a very strong sense of what it means to be Iraqi and are not going to just quietly acquiesce to Iranian whims.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Jesse, thanks for the call.</s>JESSE: Thank you very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Email from - this is Champa(ph), from Tucson: We keep talking about how many there gave their lives, both U.S. and Iraqis. We don't mention the upwards of 30,000 injured or permanently disabled. That's a huge loss and cost to our country. And I think everyone would say here, here. John is on the line, John with us from Kalamazoo.</s>JOHN: Yes, I served both in Iraq and Afghanistan - Iraq twice - and I really think both of the wars were an insult to our nation. And really adding insult to injury, when we came home, we had to basically beg and grovel for any help. I know myself was injured because of the anthrax vaccination. I had to beg for transportation, for health care and then groveling on the South Lawn to President Bush to complain about how so many veterans are waiting for disability benefits. And I think that really adds a scar to our nation. I mean, it's really a shame that we had to treat our vets that way. We're just like toy soldiers to them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom Ricks, this has been a continual complaint, yet we hear nothing from politicians, except we have to remember the sacrifices of our veterans who fought so nobly in - for our flag.</s>TOM RICKS: My impression is the Veterans Administration is doing a better job now than it has in the past. But historically speaking, we have never drawn down the military after a war very well. It wasn't so long ago - it was the - 1930 when we had veterans marching and occupying Washington...</s>TOM RICKS: The bonus riots.</s>JOHN: Right.</s>TOM RICKS: ...very much like Occupy Washington, Occupy Wall Street today. The Army chief of staff, Douglas MacArthur, led troops against those veterans in Washington. They burned them out. They burned down their Occupy Washington village of 1930. We have a hard time getting beyond lip service. I was struck that one of the first things that the Pentagon did when they started looking at having to cut its budget was looking at cutting military benefits, especially retirement benefits, which has struck me as a real slap in the face.</s>ANDREW EXUM: Well, I think the Department of Defense does a good job looking after military personnel. I think the Veterans Administration does a - has historically done a poorer job. Although I agree with Tom, I think you've got some great folks over there at the VA that are trying to amend that. You know, George Washington said that a nation will go to war - men will be willing to serve under arms depending on how the veterans of previous wars were treated.</s>ANDREW EXUM: And so I think it's a national security issue that we treat our veterans well because if you're in high school and you see veterans being maltreated on the streets of the United States, you see veterans not being taken cared of when they return, how likely are you going to, you know, enlist in the Marines or the Ranger regiment?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much for the call, John.</s>JOHN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Andrew Exum, you just heard, served as a junior officer in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gary Anderson is retired as a colonel of Marines, served in Iraq as a member of a Provincial Reconstruction Team working for the State Department, and Tom Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, wrote two books about the war in Iraq, "Fiasco" and "The Gamble." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And here's an email from Toby in Berlin, in Germany. What do I want people to remember about the Iraq War? Two words, Abu Ghraib. And I don't think he's referring to the town where Colonel Anderson served but to the scandal that emerged from the prison there. And you could point out other words - Haditha. Yet, of course, there are - any war you unleash troops, there are going to be atrocities. There are going to be your My Lais. There are going to be - Tom Ricks, this is a part of conflict.</s>TOM RICKS: It is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Not to excuse it or it's a...</s>TOM RICKS: The difference is how the institution reacts. There are always going to be war crimes and atrocities. The question is: does the institution react and investigate it and shut it down? Do they change their procedures? It's very striking when you look at Abu Ghraib, that the U.S. military I don't think ever really looked at the leadership flaws that led to it. It's akin to torture by the Bush administration. Sure, torture has occurred in all wars, but this is the first time that our nation ever made it policy to torture people.</s>TOM RICKS: It used to be an aberration that was punished. So it does worry me that we have not really turned over those rocks sufficiently, especially in calling leadership to account for what happened. We punish a lot of soldiers, but the old cynical saying in the Army is different spanks for different ranks. And I think that's what happened with Abu Ghraib.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Email to the same point from Luke. I served with Mr. Exum in Georgia and elsewhere. Please ask him about our loss of moral high ground lay Abu Ghraib, Tillman, enhanced interrogation, domestically the loss of liberty, i.e. the Patriot Act and the new Defense Authorization Act. Is this part of all war?</s>ANDREW EXUM: Yeah. Well, first off, Luke, thanks for getting in touch. I think, you know, in terms of our loss of the moral high ground, you know, Tom is right, and, Neal, you're correct as well that you're always going to have sometimes breakdowns in discipline. You'll have, you know, in the case of Abu Ghraib, you had noncommissioned officers that, quite frankly, weren't doing their jobs, commissioned officers that weren't doing their jobs. The worrying thing is that there's no accountability, is that there was very little accountability at the beginning of the war, not just in terms of the atrocities but in terms of the fact we were actually losing the war.</s>ANDREW EXUM: And you very rarely saw officers relieved. You very rarely saw any type of accountability at the higher ranks. I mean, Donald Rumsfeld had a job until after the 2006 congressional elections. That to me is just absolutely shocking. I think that the United States military can take a tremendous amount of pride in the way in which it has kept its discipline over a decade of fighting. I think there's a lot to be proud of. I think that, you know, incidents like the kill team in Afghanistan, of the Haditha massacre, these are aberrations.</s>ANDREW EXUM: But I think the important thing is because the United States military is held to, frankly, a higher standard than any other military, we have to be seen as being accountable. And that when atrocities take place, you have to see some sort of accountability take place in a transparent way that make sense for not just U.S. voters but, quite frankly, for the world at large.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Gary Anderson, what are the consequences of a lack of accountability, especially at the higher ranks?</s>GARY ANDERSON: It's a very serious thing, and it goes all the way from the top to the bottom. If you don't hold people accountable to standards and you don't hold them rigidly accountable, you're always going to be prone to have that sort of thing happen. And as inexcusable as it is I think the one thing we hopefully have learned and I say that, you know, being no longer in the military but remembering how it was, you've got to be absolutely accountable for everything your people do or failed to do.</s>TOM RICKS: That's right.</s>GARY ANDERSON: Even if you're not there, you have to create the command climate that a certain things just aren't going to happen. And it has got to go all the way to the top, and people have to be held accountable. The Navy does a better job at that than almost any other service. If a ship goes aground, it doesn't matter if the captain was on the bridge or was on a well-deserved sleep break, he's probably going to be relieved because he didn't set the standard of excellence that was needed to avoid (unintelligible). I think if anything comes out of this, we've got to maybe take that Navy standard and apply it all the way across all the services.</s>TOM RICKS: Concur.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking about lessons learned at the end of the U.S. war in Iraq. Tom Ricks, Colonel Gary Anderson - you just heard him there - and Andrew Exum are our guests. More in a minute. We'll also remember Vaclav Havel. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In a few minutes, we're going to be switching subjects and talking about the late Czech leader, Vaclav Havel, who died over the weekend, but we want to continue our conversations about Iraq as U.S. troops exit. Our guests are Tom Ricks, of the Center for a New American Security, wrote "Fiasco" and "The Gamble"; retired Colonel Gary Anderson, served as a - on a Provincial Reconstruction Team at Abu Ghraib, outside of Baghdad; and Andrew Exum served as a junior officer in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and he's now at the Center for a New American Security as well. And let's see if we can get Gia on the line. Gia is with us from Edmond, Oklahoma.</s>GIA: Hi, Neal. How are you doing?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm well. Thank you.</s>GIA: The comment I'd like to have put on the air is the following: My son was born in 2002. My husband and I both are in the military. My husband is active duty, I'm a reservist. We have had a deployment maybe not two boots on the ground but in support of the Iraq War the entire lifetime of my child. It has done nothing but damage him. And I just don't know how to explain to him why mommy and daddy were leaving and the mess that we've got ourselves into. So not only has this war affected the military, it's affected all those Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine children that their parents left continually to fight this war that now we can't tell them why.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Gary Anderson, I know your situation with your son - much older than Gia's - but you ended up being there as a civilian while he was there in the military.</s>GARY ANDERSON: Actually, he was in Afghanistan, but the point is well-made. Of course, my family is a military family. My son is commanding a ship. My - or my son-in-law, I should say. My son is still in the Army. To some extent, and particularly in the professional military families, this is something you sort of come to expect, and it becomes part of the rite of passage and families. But it's a lot tougher for a young family that hasn't experienced that before, and what happens again and again and again. I don't know, to be honest with you, how much psychological effect this is going to have long term on the service as a whole. It's probably too soon to tell.</s>GARY ANDERSON: But I think we really have to rethink some of our personnel policies, particularly how long we'd keep people in theater. I think a year is probably too long. I think the Marines may have it about right, doing seven months. But it doesn't solve the overall problem of separations. It is really a tough problem for families all over the country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And just as - we thought the Guard and reserves after Vietnam, we may have to rethink that again. But, Tom Ricks?</s>TOM RICKS: I do think we have to rethink rotation and the burden we put on such a small segment of society. I actually think the burden on families in many ways is greater than the burden on the service member. It's harder to have somebody deployed than to be deployed frequently. I was once in a kindergarten at Fort Ringgold - Ringgold Elementary School, just outside the front gates of Fort Campbell, Kentucky - and I was interviewing a kindergarten teacher, and she said, you know what it's like to have a 5-year-old running from the playground and say in Mosul just went down over Black Hawk? I mean - I'm sorry - a Black Hawk just went down over Mosul? She said they know what a Black Hawk is. They know where Mosul is. And they know the implications are that mommy or daddy may be dead.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Gia, I hope things - I hope explanations come to mind.</s>GIA: Well, I hope they do too, Neal. I - this will affect, as you talked about, further my children's willingness and everyone else's willingness to go for an all-volunteer force. How much longer is that going to be able to last, especially in the now Iran and North Korea issue which aren't going to go away any time soon?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Or Yemen or Somalia or, well...</s>TOM RICKS: Pakistan.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...Pakistan. Yeah. Thank you, Gia, very much. Appreciate the phone call. Let's see if we can get one more. And Amy is joining us. Amy is with us from Edith, in Oklahoma.</s>AMY: Yes, sir. I was in '06, '07 from the Oklahoma National Guard. We were a transportation company. We were stationed in Mosul, Iraq. We got hit very (unintelligible), even if - on the FOB. I know there were some comments, there wasn't much on the FOB. It was, like, civilians lives, if not on our location. But by no means, we were mortared constantly - not every day, mortar fire. It took out our living quarters at one point.</s>AMY: And then I was a 50-cal gunner, and we did (unintelligible) security. And I felt that we pretty much were there to sustain ourselves. We didn't see the positive side so much, other than the cohesion that our unit found amongst each other, meaning there was a sense of honor and pride that we had with each other. It was a matter - we didn't know. We prayed before we went out. We prayed when we got back in. We only traveled at night. We'd go up near Turkey, Syria borders. But we probably (unintelligible) three different IEDs, six all together, three contacts to my vehicle.</s>AMY: I was - I left two children at home for that tour. I'm very proud of that. And it's interesting to hear what other people's comments were. There was a sense of bitterness, because we got hit so often and so much. And we were trained to fight, and we couldn't fight back. And so it was very aggravating and stressful, and it was hard to explain that back at home, on what was going on.</s>AMY: But now we've been backed for a period of time. We've lost some soldiers to some suicide incidents. And there's still some confusion on what we did, exactly, over there. But there was also a sense of cohesion amongst us, and we're proud. And we - I feel that I hate to think that we went over there for there, but as the years kind of turned out, it kind of seemed that way, that we were fighting for our lives and fighting for ourselves, is what I feel. And I'm home.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And...</s>ANDREW EXUM: Yeah, let me - first off, Amy, thank you so much for your service. I hope that the rest of America heard Amy, the 50-cal gunner, tell her story, because there's a prohibition on, you know, women seeing combat. That prohibition is nonsense and went out the window the moment that Jessica Lynch's convoy was attacked in Iraq. In, you know, this type of counter-insurgency campaign - in a counter-insurgency especially, but just in modern warfare in general, women have seen combat and fought valiantly and, you know, courageously and competently in both Iraq and Afghanistan. So that's the first thing that jumps out there.</s>ANDREW EXUM: The second thing is just, you know, Amy describes going to combat as part of a small unit, the togetherness, the, you know, prayer circles, the - just the cohesiveness while you're there, going through that intense experience as a unit. This is something that, actually, the U.S. military has learned is a lot better than sending people like we did in Vietnam as Individual Augmentees units. That is a recipe for PTSD, doing that, sending people, actually, you know, as part of cohesive units where they experience combat together, deploy together and then deploy back together, that's a much better recipe for success.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Andrew Exum - first of all, Amy, thank you very much for the call. Appreciate it.</s>AMY: Yes, sir.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Andrew Exum, we'd like to thank you for your time today. Tom Ricks and Retired Colonel Gary Anderson, all of them with us - Gary Anderson with us on the phone, Tom Ricks and Andy Exum with us here in the studio. Thanks all very much for your time. In a moment: a playwright-activist on a playwright-activist. Stay with us. |
In Asia's Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and International Risks, Naval Postgraduate School professor James Clay Moltz discusses the potential militarization of fast-growing space programs in China, India, and Japan—and why US military officials are keeping watch. | JOE PALCA, HOST: A couple of decades from now, if there's a party on the moon, it's not certain we'd be invited. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Joe Palca. You might not - we might not even be able to get there. But China, India and Japan might be on the guest list because all three have sent missions to map the moon in recent years and have plans for lunar landers, rovers and bases, too.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: South Korea and Malaysia aren't as far along, but they've put astronauts on the International Space Station. Why not just join up a sort of Asian space organization instead of sending three different rovers? It might be easier, not to mention cheaper, but that's not going to happen, according to my next guest, at least not for now, because regional rivalries are too strong, and so, too, is national pride.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Our space race with the Soviet Union ended peacefully, but can Asia's space-faring countries work together to avoid an escalation of the military use of space? Just one of the questions discussed in my guest's next - my next guest's book, "Asia's Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and International Risks." And let me introduce him. James Clay Moltz is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and he joins us today from the studios of KAZU in Monterey. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Moltz.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: DR. JAMES CLAY MOLTZ: Thank you, glad to be here.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So, I mean, I can kind of understand why countries want to go it alone. There is a lot of national pride to being, you know, the first someplace or having a base or getting into space. But why military? Why is that a concern?</s>MOLTZ: Well, it's certainly a concern, because these countries are ramping up their military budgets. In the past five years, we've seen an anti-satellite test by China. In 2007, we've seen India develop an integrated space cell to begin organizing its military to be active in space. And we've also seen Japan drop a restriction on military uses of space in 2008. Now they're allowed to use space for military purposes.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Is there some reason that space is a more attractive place to carry out military excursions, if you want to say that?</s>MOLTZ: Well, certainly there are many benefits from conducting military space activities, particularly so-called military support activities. This, you know, the gathering of information from space, which we and the Russians and other countries have done for many years.</s>MOLTZ: Obviously, we've also used the GPS system to help drive our ships, to locate troops, to navigate our missiles more effectively to their targets. All of these things have helped our military be more effective and also reduce casualties.</s>MOLTZ: The other side of the equation, though, is the space weapons part, and this is where I think many are concerned that Asia is moving in a dangerous direction. Certainly Japan - or China's decision to destroy a satellite at 525 miles up created 3,000 pieces of large debris that now imperil all of our spacecraft and frankly all of their spacecraft, as well.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: We're talking with Clay Moltz, he's a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and if you want to join the discussion, our number is 800-989-8255. That's 1-800-989-TALK.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So what I'm not clear about is why this military concern would be Asia versus Asia and not Asia versus the United States. I mean, Pakistan and India, of course, are quite - there's a lot of saber-rattling between those two. But otherwise, you don't seem to think of them, I guess South and North Korea, but I guess otherwise it doesn't seem like there's a military strategic need for this. Or is there?</s>MOLTZ: There's quite a bit of rivalry within Asia, and these are very deep-seated geopolitical rivalries. You know, think of China and India, China and Japan that still have lingering issues related to World War II, as you mentioned North and South Korea, Vietnam and China, even lesser rivalries such as Malaysia and Singapore.</s>MOLTZ: These countries are competing with one another. They are watching one another, and frankly, many of them distrust one another. And what we're seeing in Asia today is in contrast to what has evolved in Europe over the past several decades, where the countries of Europe have decided to cooperate in the European Space Agency.</s>MOLTZ: There's collaborative research. There's joint funding of projects. So they don't waste a lot of money duplicating scientific projects. They collaborate in sharing information, and they also have a view that security in space is best done collectively instead of through simple national military activities.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So, I mean, what - are we at a turning point, so to speak? Is this a time when we need to - I mean, even if there's no global consensus on what to do about CO2 emissions, which we might hear about later today, why wouldn't - I mean, it seems sort of get nations to get together and agree that they don't want to use space for weapons? Or maybe I'm wrong about that, too.</s>MOLTZ: Sure, there I think has been a great reduction overall in tension in the last several decades, particularly since the end of the Cold War. I mean, you look at the relationship with Russia now in space. We collaborate very actively with Russia in human space flight. We also in fact use Russian RD-180 engines to launch our Atlas rockets that put some of our military payloads into orbit.</s>MOLTZ: So we cooperate quite extensively. We see similar cooperation, as I mentioned, with Europe. In Asia, though, as these countries have accelerated their space programs, what we've seen is a lack of cooperation, particularly with one another. So we don't see the major powers in Asia cooperating with one another. They cooperated instead, with the major powers to acquire technology; and with lesser powers, to promote their own interests in exporting technologies.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So is there - well, first of all, is there a military response that the U.S. is contemplating, that you know of, or - I mean, not a response in the sense of, you know, doing something proactive, but something that we can do to be prepared for this eventuality?</s>MOLTZ: Certainly the United States is watching these activities with concern, but as you've - if you've followed the U.S. national space policy, recently, in 2010, the emphasis on that space policy is on responsible behavior in space. So what the United States would like to see, I believe, is that these countries would begin to agree to norms of behavior such as debris mitigation, and they would begin to promote more transparency and in general to collaborate much more effectively on common problems in space such as traffic management, which is becoming increasingly difficult to do without countries sharing more information.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So is there a non-military use of space that you think would be a valuable goal to try to get people to engage around?</s>MOLTZ: Well, certainly collaboration in a variety of areas, such as disaster monitoring, such as trying to manage the region's agriculture, prevent deforestation, all of these things are very valuable. In addition, each of the countries can provide more transparency. Where are its activities going on in space?</s>MOLTZ: When it moves a satellite or a spacecraft, it could inform others of this activity so that it doesn't collide with other spacecraft. So these are some of the things. But we also I think are lacking some of the built-in areas of cooperation that existed even in the hostile years of the Cold War.</s>MOLTZ: If you go back to the 1970s, for example, the U.S. and the Soviet militaries said that they would not interfere with each other's national technical means of verification. So in other words, we did not interfere with their military satellites, and they didn't interfere with ours. That kind of cooperation does not yet exist in Asia.</s>MOLTZ: Similarly, we have not seen something like the Apollo-Soyuz Mission in 1975, where these two major space programs cooperated in an unprecedented joint docking and exchange of astronauts and cosmonauts. That sort of thing has not taken place in Asia.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: But would be, you think, a valuable softening of - a good gesture for this situation not to escalate into something not so pleasant?</s>MOLTZ: Absolutely. We have a lot of mistrust in Asia. We also are seeing the three sides in particular but also other countries in Asia competing in areas where it doesn't really make sense. We've seen, since 2007, three lunar mapping missions, by Japan, India and China. This is repetitive. It wastes national resources. It also foments distrust on the political side.</s>MOLTZ: On the military side, again we saw a very clear action-reaction from China's action to destroy its satellite. India reacted. Japan has reacted. This could escalate over time. Now fortunately, it hasn't escalated yet, but we see the trends in terms of the spending in these countries. We see more military activities, and we also see debates.</s>MOLTZ: India, for example, has said that it will match China's anti-satellite capability. We don't want to see a situation where these kinds of destructive tests are repeated, and all spacecraft are put at greater risk.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK, let's invite our listeners to join this conversation and go first to Patrick(ph) in Baltimore. Patrick, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, you're on the air.</s>PATRICK: Thank you so much for having me on. I've been reading a lot in a couple of different science magazines - I think my favorite is The Futurist magazine - about all of the interesting private initiatives that come out of mostly the United States to have a sort of commercial presence in space.</s>PATRICK: And most of those are focused on putting robotic or A.I. intelligence into space as opposed to putting human beings in space. And my understanding is that when you decide to put a human being into space, then, you know, the cost of your project increase just tremendously, and it becomes really inefficient. So I'm wondering if your guest can talk about some of these projects in terms of whether or not they're putting - they're geared towards putting people into space or they're more geared towards putting...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Hardware.</s>PATRICK: ...A.I. entities in space...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Yeah.</s>PATRICK: ...and which is more efficient?</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Good question. Thanks, Patrick. What do you think about that, Dr. Moltz?</s>MOLTZ: This is a very good question, and it emphasizes what is going on within Asia in terms of space competition. China launched its first taikonaut in 2003 on Shenzhou 5.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Taikonaut is their word for...</s>MOLTZ: Is their astronaut.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: ...astronaut. OK.</s>MOLTZ: That's correct. Shortly after, India began a debate about whether it now needed a human spaceflight program, and it has now adopted plans to put its own astronauts into orbit by 2016. Japan has increased its commitment to the International Space Station. It already has had numerous astronauts on the International Space Station. But what we're seeing is a movement of these countries to compete in high-prestige activities like human spaceflight as well as space science.</s>MOLTZ: As I noted before, India has - had not conducted these kinds of activities. It really had focused on space applications for its population. But as it's been stimulated by China, it's moving to spend much more money on things like human spaceflight because it believes the prestige is important. But I would agree with Patrick. In fact, many activities are much more beneficially conducted and more cheaply conducted through robotic activities. Sadly, we have not seen much cooperation either in the human spaceflight area or in joint space science activities to date among the major space powers in Asia.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK. Let's see what Ken in Lumberton, North Carolina, has to say. Ken, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.</s>KEN: Thank you very much for taking my call. My question has to do with the peaceful uses of space, and how can we incentivize all these rival nations to work together? I mean, is there a way we can like funnel the transmission of our data because I know they have - we have a wealth of human spaceflight data they'd love to get their hands on. And hopefully, we have some strings over that data, you know what I mean?</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Sure. Ken, thanks for that call. Go ahead.</s>MOLTZ: It's a good question. One of the problems that we have today is that much of the cooperation has become very politicized. I mentioned the rivalries within Asia, but certainly, there is a concern about China's rise, and U.S. politics have taken on that concern. Congress recently passed legislation that bars NASA from talking to the Chinese about space cooperation. And so this is a very severe limitation. We did not have those kinds of limits during the Cold War on working with the Russians. So that kind of limitation will have to be overcome if we're going to begin to normalize these kinds of exchanges.</s>MOLTZ: Now, one of the areas where we do exchange information is in the areas of space situational awareness. The U.S. Air Force has recently begun to provide information to Asian countries, including China, about when their satellites might collide with other satellites. The reason that we're doing that is that we don't want to see any satellites collide that would create dangerous debris.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: We're talking with Clay Moltz. He's a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, about a space race that's heating up in Asia. I'm Joe Palca, and this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I was just wondering, though, what would a war in space look like? I mean, how would that play out?</s>MOLTZ: War in space could occur with one side using an anti-satellite weapon to destroy another country's spacecraft. The danger of this is multiple, though, for all countries in space. You cannot simply harm one asset in space without harming others. You could destroy, for example, a particular country's satellite, but then, the debris from that collision would spread through space and become, if you will, speeding bullets that could affect all other spacecraft. As I mentioned, China's anti-satellite test has generated 3,000 or more pieces of debris that will orbit the Earth for around 50 years.</s>MOLTZ: And already, we have had to maneuver satellites out of the way of this debris. And so a space war could even make low reaches of space unusable. In other words, there would be so much debris generated if there were multiple attacks on satellites that really all countries would have difficulty conducting much of anything in this region, particularly if you're talking about human spaceflight. You wouldn't want to put people in that area of space.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: All right. Let's take another call now from Paul in Boston, Massachusetts. Paul, you're on the air. Welcome to the program.</s>PAUL: Hi. Good afternoon. You know, I listen to the conversations you have about space exploration often, and I find them interesting, but I'm often frustrated. You know, the most difficult culture to (unintelligible) is the one that we swim in. And a number of years ago, there was an interesting document that went around some U.S. space command sort of laying out the United States' plan for the weaponization of space and domination for markets for trading and those kinds of things, and yet we never hear that conversation because it seems like the conversation is always the U.S. are just coming at this from the purest of intentions and motives. And I think that if I were some of those other countries, I would be very concerned about what the United States is doing from the perspective outside of our culture and our mindset.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Interesting question. Clay Moltz, you would be in a position - do you think other countries look at the United States and think they've got to be prepared to deal with us in the future?</s>MOLTZ: Well, first of all, let me emphasize I'm speaking my personal views as a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. I'm not speaking for the U.S. Navy. Obviously, we are the largest space power in the world today. In the past, we had a few programs that involved weapons tests in space. We stopped our kinetic tests of the anti-satellite weapons in 1985 because of the debris concern. This is something that has been part of U.S. requirements to reduce the amount of debris and also to reduce tests such as missile defense to very low altitudes, so that that debris will de-orbit quickly.</s>MOLTZ: Now, the United States has adapted a policy in the last year about space security that emphasizes new transparency, that emphasizes international cooperation, that emphasizes sharing of data on things like space situational awareness. So I see this as a turning point really for the United States in recognizing that in many regards we are interdependent in space with other countries.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK, Clay Moltz...</s>MOLTZ: And so when you...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but we've...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: ...run out of time for this segment of the show, so I'm sorry, but I think we were getting the idea that things are - this is a good time for things to get better. So thanks very much. James Clay Moltz is the author of "Asia's Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and the International Risks." |
Roughly one-third of Egyptians voted in the country's first round of parliamentary elections, and Islamist parties scored big victories. That's given some liberal Egyptians and observers pause. Ed Husain, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, talks about Egypt's Islamist parties. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: Roughly one-third of Egyptians voted in that country's first round of parliamentary elections, the first since Hosni Mubarak's ouster last spring, and Islamist parties scored big wins. The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, considered Egypt's mainstream Islamic party, announced today it won 40 percent of the votes, while the ultra-conservative Salafists surprised many by winning about a quarter of the vote. Those victories and that of the Salafists in particular leave many liberal Egyptians and foreign observers deeply worried.</s>If you have questions about the way ahead in Egypt, 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>If you have questions about the way ahead in Egypt, give us a call: Ed Husain is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies with the Council on Foreign Relations, just returned from Egypt and joins us now from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you with us today.</s>ED HUSAIN: Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And a piece you wrote in The Atlantic this weekend with the line democracy can be bitter.</s>ED HUSAIN: That's right. I mean, I think we most recently learned that with the 2006 election results in Gaza, where Hamas won, and it now looks as though, here in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood will win. And we all know that the Muslim Brotherhood has many strands within it, but there is a strand within it that sympathizes with al-Qaida's aims, not necessarily its methodology.</s>ED HUSAIN: So the challenge then is for the broader Muslim Brotherhood that wants to be part of the civilized and free world to then contain its more radical extremist elements within it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet you also wrote in The Atlantic that the Salafist vote was a wakeup call. Who's hearing the alarm bells?</s>ED HUSAIN: That's right. I think the Muslim Brotherhood and even the liberal/secular elite in Egypt were taken by a huge surprise. I mean, I saw that on their faces. I heard that in the discussion that I had with people across the board, that their basic question was where did these Salafis come from? I mean, where Egyptians would be in this country for - you know, since birth. And all of a sudden, in the public space and in the election results, you know, tens of thousands of people have voted for Salafis, and Salafis are, all of a sudden, the talk of the town across Egypt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And if you say the Muslim Brotherhood includes strands that support the ideology, if not the methodology, of al-Qaida, the same can be more broadly said about the Salafis?</s>ED HUSAIN: Precisely right. The numbers of people who would more or less be in line with what al-Qaida wants to achieve, not necessarily how it wants to achieve it, are available in greater numbers within Salafi movements than they are within the Muslim Brotherhood.</s>ED HUSAIN: Those within the Muslim Brotherhood are there such as Mahdi Akef, for example, the former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood that I met with, interviewed with earlier in the year. I mean, his basic contention is the al-Qaida is a figment of the West. Al-Qaida, if it exists, is nothing other than a (unintelligible) sincere genuine Muslims. But he is still part of the Muslim Brotherhood by virtue of him being with the brotherhood now for, you know, 60, 65 years.</s>ED HUSAIN: So it's more of a social movement for those people who are of the al-Qaida sympathy mindset within the brotherhood, whereas those within the Salafi movement actually have intellectual as well as creedal convictions that al-Qaida's worldview of trying to create some kind of elusive caliphate is one that's, A, noble and, B, religiously obligatory.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And there is a challenge to the big party winner, the Muslim Brotherhood, from the Salafis, no? They have important disagreements.</s>ED HUSAIN: They have vital, important disagreements, yes, over the kind of Egypt that they want. To the Muslim Brotherhood's credit, though, it's gone out of its way, since the elections and in the run-up to it, to emphasize that it doesn't want to create an Islamic state, but a civil state, that it wants to ensure that women and religious minorities have involvement in political life, that it wants to tackle corruption and it wants to address questions of Egypt's economy and high unemployment records.</s>ED HUSAIN: In contrast, the Salafis have emphasized constantly on social issues such as women must be veiled, that outsiders coming into the country ought to adhere to a certain religious dress code that they wish to impose, alcohol will be banned, women going into university campuses must cover their hair - in other words, you know, issues that are irrelevant to the bread-and-butter issues of Egypt, but irrelevant to the rigid literalist, confrontational mindset that most Salafis adhere to.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And do Salafis, even though they're winning adherence at the polls, do they fundamentally believe in democracy?</s>ED HUSAIN: Well, several of their leading voices have come out in public and said that democracy is un-Islamic, but it's the least of the two evils available out there. And therefore, they will use democracy to advance their aim of creating an undemocratic society. And that's the real problem, that calling democracy what they called kufar(ph) which is very sort of a derogatory term to undermine democracy, saying it's un-Islamic and yet the hypocrisy in using it.</s>ED HUSAIN: But the good news in all this is that the most recent elections contested in Alexandria, the results show that as a result of this kind of extremism in the public domain, one of the leading Salafi voices, Abdel Moneim Shahat, was voted - in the runoff, people came out to vote against him and voted for anyone but the Salafis in order to ensure the Salafis didn't get into parliament in large numbers.</s>ED HUSAIN: And my contention is that we still got several election cycles to run in Egypt. It might well be the case that this kind of international outrage as well as Egyptian awakening against the Salafis might lead to them being further marginalized.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But getting back to the - and that may yet prove to be the case. Getting back to the nature of this movement though, there have been what some people would say bogeyman raised in the West. That this is a fundamentally dangerous group. This is a - no, this is a fundamentally dangerous group. Are the Salafis, some would say, are - well, fundamentalists yes, but fundamentally not dangerous?</s>ED HUSAIN: Well, I'd like to believe that analysis, but my difficulty with that is if we continue to shift the goalpost and say that even among Salafis and Salafis themselves, if they're not a problem, if they're not radical, if they're not extreme, if they're not fundamentalists, then my question is this: Who are the fundamentalists? Who are the extremists that produce al-Qaida and al-Qaida sympathizers? Because we've gone further along the spectrum to say well, no, it's not Islamist. No, it's not the Muslim Brotherhood. No, it's not Jemaah Islamiyah in the Indian subcontinent.</s>ED HUSAIN: And then to even go further as far right as the Salafi movement and say, well, actually, it's not even the Salafi movement, then it begs the question of where does all the extremism, terrorism, radicalism and the bombings come from? And it's got to be set openly, I think, and with conviction that the fundamental problem lies with Salafism as a movement but Salafi ideas of takfir, i.e., excommunication or Salafi beliefs in hakimiyyah, which is creating God's government or Salafi beliefs of Al-Wala wal Bara, which means hatred for Muslims - for non-Muslims and loyalty only to Muslims.</s>ED HUSAIN: These are the kind of ideas underpinned by jihad or violent struggle to bring about these ideas in the real world that create what we call al-Qaida terrorism. So the - if the blame has to be apportioned anywhere, to my mind at least, it must be put thoroughly at the doors of the Salafi movement globally.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You also conclude in your piece that the current elections will lead some Salafists - though they will not win a majority, we don't think, they will persist in their efforts to achieve their aims through the ballot box. Others, you say, though, will become disillusioned with that path.</s>ED HUSAIN: That's right. But I must caveat my answer to this by saying that, yes, Salafi is broadly an ideational problem, but there are Salafis who've gone against that trend, people such as Salman al-Ouda in Saudi Arabia have proven to us that they can also shape democracy and freedom but within their own scriptural reference points. So there's good news that there are some Salafis who have gone the other way in terms of moving towards more pluralistic progressive pathway.</s>ED HUSAIN: But yes, the examples in, say, Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Algeria and also Saudi Arabia illustrate to us that whenever we're seeing Salafi literalism and scriptural rigidity on the rise, there are always their jihadist cousins who become impatient who say that the Salafis aren't being literalist enough and then they talk jihad as a methodology to fight others. That's exactly what Osama bin Laden did. That's exactly what Ayman al-Zawahiri and others have done.</s>ED HUSAIN: So the precedents in these other countries would lead us to believe that perhaps in Egypt - as we saw in the past, let's not forget that Egypt also gave birth to jihadists in the 1980s and the 1970s. That - there is a possibility that if the Salafi experiment in the ballot box goes miserably wrong, then some of them will turn to what they were most comfortable with previously, i.e., jihadist violence.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ed Husain is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, co-founder of the of the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-radicalization think tank. He's the author of the memoir, "The Islamist." He's with us from our bureau in New York. If you have questions about the way ahead in Egypt, 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. We'll start with Matthew, and he joins us from Portage in Michigan.</s>MATTHEW: Thank you, Neal. Thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please.</s>MATTHEW: I was wondering, because the Muslim Brotherhood has - from the first release of the results, has said that it wants to form a more liberal coalition government with other parties, why is the West treating these results with such weariness?</s>ED HUSAIN: Well, I think there's an expectation here in the West, especially here in the United States, that relations with Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood-led parliament or Muslim Brotherhood-led government may not necessarily be the kind of relations that the West and Israel would like to see. That, I think, is at the helm of the concerns to be blunt with you.</s>ED HUSAIN: And to be fair to the Muslim Brotherhood, they've gone out of their way repeatedly to say they aren't in the mood for war as it were. And the Muslim Brotherhood, with all its problems, isn't necessarily Hamas at this stage. So I share your concerns. And I think some of the weariness about the Muslim Brotherhood's victory may well prove to be premature.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Matthew, thank you. We're talking about the way ahead in Egypt. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, which is coming to you from NPR news. There is another force in Egypt, and those were the young secularists who were so prominent in Tahrir Square, what, nine months ago as this revolution began. What happened to them?</s>ED HUSAIN: Excellent question, Neal. I had the good fortune of meeting many of them during my trip to Egypt. And, you know, they will always - people who are highly educated, liberal, elite and urban, their networks did not extend beyond Twitter and Facebook. Eighty percent of Egypt does not have Internet access. Most Egyptians haven't even heard of Facebook or Twitter. So they were an urban phenomenon and, therefore, the focus was on what was going on within, you know, large cities (unintelligible) Alexandria and Cairo.</s>ED HUSAIN: Since the revolution, there's been a huge vacuum in Egypt for leadership, and that vacuum has filled by the traditional power structures that have flourished under Mubarak despite him banning the Muslim Brotherhood. And it seems that, you know, the liberal elite was successful in the revolution but not successful in the election. And with huge amounts of money, resources, messaging, political networks, the Muslim Brotherhood and its various Islamist organizations have successfully filled that vacuum that the revolution has created.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see if we can get another caller on the line. Let's go to Dakah(ph), Dakah with us from Minneapolis.</s>DAKAH: Hi. My name is Dakah, and my question for you is what about Wahabism because I haven't heard you discuss that? And I hear over the news, Islam is Islamist. Islamist is to believe in Islam, and by attacking terrorism and negative groups and fundamentalist Islamist makes almost us feel like we're guilty of something.</s>ED HUSAIN: Yeah, I mean, with all respect, the difficulty in this is Islam is not Islamism, and I know that the word Islam appears in the tag Islamist and, therefore - and I, too, am a Muslim. Muslims tend to feel this, you know, agitation. But the bottom line is that those who advocate extremism and terrorism do so wrongly, granted wrongly, in the name of our religion, and they themselves call themselves this, Islamists. In Arabic, they call themselves Islamiyyin(ph) or Islamiyyon(ph) depending on where it appears in a sentence.</s>ED HUSAIN: So to be fair to them, it's using the terminology that they use to describe themselves with. And, you know, for all the desires of social scientists and others to find terminology that better describes this phenomenon, there's been a failure, and the bottom line is that they call themselves Islamists. We're talking about Islamism and not Islam. In terms of your question to Wahabism, I mean, Salafis are Wahabis and Wahabis are Salafis. It's one and the same thing. They prefer to call themselves Salafis. They see Wahabism as a derogatory term and, therefore, you know, some of us prefer not to use it to be - not to be derogatory to them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is the ideology of the religious parties in Saudi Arabia, the dominant religious parties, today.</s>ED HUSAIN: That's right, and Egyptians Salafis borrow hugely from Saudi Wahabism. And Saudi Wahabism, or modern Egyptian Salafism is essentially one and the same thing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Dakah, thank you very much for the call.</s>DAKAH: Thank (Technical difficulty)</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's see. We go to Tommy, and Tommy's with us from St. Louis.</s>TOMMY: Yeah. Hi there. Great discussion, guys. Just wanted to comment to see if, at all, possibly the secularists in Egypt maybe were caught off guard going up in campaigning against the group that has kind of a built in field program, knowing that everyone goes to mosque, everybody is able to hear that kind of more conservative mentality. I'm wondering if there's any groups internationally that go into areas like Egypt that are transitioning to democracy in order to kind of teach them how to run a campaign because it's quite an undertaking.</s>TOMMY: And if you're brand new to democracy and don't know about everything from, you know, campaigning door to door if that's even a viable option in an area like that or even, you know, retail politics, I mean, everything that goes along with a campaign. Just wondering if there's any groups like that that go into an Egypt and teach them, help them kind of compete against a group that kind of has built in, you know, authority. So I'll listen off air. Thank you very much.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks, Tommy.</s>ED HUSAIN: Thanks, Tommy. Great question. To the best of my knowledge, thus far, there haven't been international groups doing that. But, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood was taught these tactics either. I think it's fair to say a couple of things on this point. First thing, here in the West, we may laud secularists and secularism as being something positive. It's got to be borne in mind that nobody in their right mind would be going to door to door in Egypt advocating secularism just by virtue of the word in Arabic or even in order to have a negative connotation. So even Egypt's secularists refer to themselves as liberals because that has less of a negative connotation.</s>ED HUSAIN: The second point is this, that there's been a huge problem among Egypt's liberals or secularists in defining what they stand for. It's been counterproductive thus far that they've, more or less, gone - attack and constantly in the offensive in saying, we're not Islamists. We're against the Muslim Brotherhood. We don't want more religion in the public space. But that's not a coherent policy in terms of what you stand for and what you offer. So thus far, the problem's been that they've been against something rather than what they stand for. And for as long as they don't have their message and their resources and their networks in place, they're not really in the position to either go door to door or mosque to mosque or hospital to hospital or trade union to trade union as the Muslim Brotherhood's done.</s>ED HUSAIN: Now, the one thing the Muslim Brotherhood can possibly be criticized for - because all these things are political sort of strategies and, you know, good luck to them for doing that, and it rests in the secularists to up their game. But even on election day, we saw Muslim Brotherhood people outside polling stations campaigning for the Muslim Brotherhood. And I think that does go against the grain of democracy and free and fair elections, that only one group, whether it's right or wrong, allowed or not, was outside those polling stations at the expense of other groups being there.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Quilliam Foundation, thanks very much.</s>ED HUSAIN: Thank you, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tomorrow, NPR's Debbie Elliott and Richard Gonzales join us to talk about their series on the economy, Hard Times. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. |
Newt Gingrich has risen to the top of the polls at a pivotal moment. With less than one month until the Iowa Caucuses, he has a double-digit lead in the state. Political junkie Ken Rudin and columnist Michael Gerson talk about how the field of GOP candidates is faring in the final stretch. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Blago repents at his sentencing hearing, Cain calls it quits, and Newt's the new number one. It's Wednesday and time for a...</s>NEWT GINGRICH: Truly stupid...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Edition of the political junkie.</s>PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.</s>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. President Barack Obama test drives some would-be new slogans out in Kansas. The Senate edges toward an extension of a payroll tax cut or maybe not. George Allen and Tim Kaine square off for a debate in Virginia, though neither is quite yet the nominee. And Democrats cheer the new congressional map in ever-purple Colorado.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In a few minutes, columnist Michael Gerson helps us analyze the GOP field just four weeks away from Iowa. Later in the program, JN25BMIAF and the man who connected the dots from Pearl Harbor to Midway. But first, political junkie Ken Rudin joins us as usual here in Studio 3A. And as usual, we begin with a trivia question. Hey Ken, welcome back.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Thank you, Neal. Okay, well, let's see. Just about every poll, and we're going to talking about this later, just about every poll shows that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the clear favorite, at least in the Iowa caucuses. So okay, the question is: Who was the last former House member to win the Iowa caucuses?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you think you know the answer to this week's trivia, the last member of the House of Representatives...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Former.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Former member of the House of Representatives to win the Iowa caucuses, give us a phone call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. The winner, of course, gets a fabulous political junkie no-prize T-shirt. And Ken, just within the last hour, we've heard the verdict on Rod Blagojevich. Well, we knew the verdict quite a while ago, guilty on 18 counts. He will do 14 years in prison.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, he is following the Illinois governor tradition. He's the second consecutive former governor to go to prison, George Ryan of course is also in prison on corruption charges. But, you know, he's been in this hot water since the moment Barack Obama was elected president because Rod Blagojevich decided that he was going to sell - or attempt to sell - the appointment to Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. And he did everything he can in his capacity as governor to do that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And he ended up being on tape by the FBI, and it all turned out to be pretty embarrassing. He said at sentencing today that he is deeply sorry for what he did, but at the time he did not know he was violating the law, though apparently setting an example by saying look, the sentence we gave the previous governor clearly did not deter the next one.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, that's a good point also. But it's interesting that only this week did he and his attorneys admit guilt. All along, he kept saying that he's not guilty of anything, despite the extortion, the bribery and the convictions that happened back a couple of months ago, back in June.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In the meantime, there is a bit of fallout from the Blagojevich scandal, and that involves Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, the House Ethics Committee announced this week that Jackson, the son of the civil rights leader, the long-time congressman from Chicago, would - an investigation on what he did to bolster his own possible appointment to the Obama Senate seat, what he did regarding government funding, government funds to get his appointment.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And so the investigation goes on, and that's, you know, really not good news for Jesse Jackson because one, his district will be redrawn, and it will be redrawn, and it has already invited another candidate, former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, who served one term until she was defeated last year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That new district would include a large part of the district she used to represent.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: It's about 25 percent, but still, you know, the point is, you know, she's running against the ethics scandal, which is, you know, I guess it's a scandal around Jesse Jackson. He's been engulfed by it for the last three years. And he also has - you know, he was also involved in this nightclub woman outside of his marriage that didn't go well for his constituents, as well.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But most of the district is still Jesse Jackson country. It's still an African-American majority district. But again, this is part of the Blagojevich fallout.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in the meantime, if we're talking about redrawn districts, we have a new map for the state of Colorado, and this has always been one of those contentious states, it goes back and forth, back and forth. Democrats are cheering.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: They are cheering because they got what they wanted. Basically, the real story is is that Mike Kaufman, he's a Republican, I guess did two terms. He's the guy who replaced Tom Tancredo when Tom Tancredo left in 2008. Kaufman was in a safe Republican district. Now they've put in more liberal parts of adjoining areas into his district, and now he's going to have a fight on his hands.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I mean, he's the former secretary of state, state treasurer. He's a popular guy, but it's now a far more competitive race than it would have been.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And in the state of Virginia, the two likely candidates for Senate will square off for a debate tonight.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, we thought we were not going to hear the name Kaine anymore, but there's another Kaine. No, actually this afternoon, the debate is this afternoon. And it's Tim Kaine and George Allen.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Former governor.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Both former governors. Of course, George Allen lost his Senate seat to Jim Webb six years ago, and now with Webb retiring, he's looking for a comeback. George Allen, of course, has the macaca incident back from six years, when his whole candidacy fell apart. And Tim Kaine, of course, was the DNC chair and a loyal Barack Obama supporter in Virginia, and I think Obama's numbers, certainly not the same in Virginia as they were in 2008. So both of them have things to overcome.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Both in a dead heat, according to - statistical dead heat according to opinion polls. If Democrats have any hope of holding on to control of the Senate, they'd better win in Virginia.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: But, you know, what's interesting is that they - this debate excluded all the other candidates because they didn't get the required 15 percent in the polls. Now if you think of what the Republicans for president have been doing, I mean, not many of them are getting 15 percent of the polls. But it was kind of an arbitrary decision, I thought, to exclude other candidates because, as you say, neither Kaine nor Allen is the certified nominee as of yet.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's get some people on the line who think they know the answer to this week's trivia question, again the last former member of the House of Representatives to win the Iowa caucuses, 800-989-8255 if you'd like to weigh in, or you can email us, talk@npr.org. And let's go first to - this is Caleb(ph), Caleb with us from Studio City in California.</s>CALEB: Hey, my guess is Poppy Bush in 1980.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That would be the first - Bush 41.</s>CALEB: Correct.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: He was a former member of the House, and he did win the caucuses in 1980, and he is not the most recent.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Nice try, Caleb.</s>CALEB: All right, thanks, guys.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Appreciate it. Let's go now to - this is Iowa City, and Trev(ph) is on the line. Trey(ph), excuse me.</s>TREY: Johnson, I guess maybe not now.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I'm sorry?</s>TREY: Lyndon Johnson.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, actually, when Lyndon Johnson ran for president, there were no such thing as the Iowa caucuses. They kind of began in '72. George McGovern came out of nowhere to do well there, even though uncommitted. But back in the Lyndon Johnson days, there were no Iowa caucuses.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And after Ken Rudin and Neal Conan bring the political junkie out to Iowa next month, there may never be another political caucus, but anyway.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Or political junkie.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thank you very much.</s>TREY: By chance are you going to talk about fast and furious?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Not on the political junkie segment. Well, we're hoping to get a segment on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>TREY: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Thanks very much. Let's go next to - this is Simian(ph), Simian with us from Rochester, New York.</s>SIMIAN: Hi, my guess is Dick Gephardt.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Dick Gephardt from neighboring Missouri.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Dick Gephardt actually did win the Iowa caucuses in 1988. He - one, he was not a former member of Congress...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He was a current member of Congress.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: He was a current member of Congress and of course is no longer - is not the most recent winner.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But good guess, Simian. Thanks very much. Let's try - this is Faun(ph), Faun with us from Tampa.</s>FAUN: Yes, I say Bob Dole.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Bob Dole did win the Iowa caucuses in 1996, again not the most recent former House member.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ooh, but getting closer. Nice try, Faun.</s>FAUN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to - this is - excuse me, wrong button. This is John(ph), John with us from Des Moines.</s>JOHN: I'm going to go with Al Gore.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Al Gore is the correct answer.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ding, ding, ding.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Of course, he was vice president when he was elected - when he won the caucuses in 2000 and a former senator, but he was also a former House member from Tennessee.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this piece of paper just handed me, an email from John H(ph) saying Al Gore. So apparently came in at the same time, so two political junkie no-prize T-shirts will go out this week. John, stay on the line, we'll collect your particulars and send you that wonderful T-shirt in exchange for a promise of your digital image we can post on our Wall of Shame.</s>JOHN: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Congratulations.</s>JOHN: Appreciate it.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: We think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We think.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: That may be held up as collateral for blackmail later. Anyway, we're talking about the presidential campaign coming up, and it was interesting to see President Barack Obama go to Osawatomie in Kansas this week, and he was talking there. It's the same place where, 101 years ago, former President Theodore Roosevelt made his Square Deal speech, and it was a lot of themes that President Obama echoed in his speech yesterday.</s>PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And this of course again part of his effort - well, part of the campaign for sure. He's not going to win Kansas but trying out what seemed to be some campaign slogans.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yes, and I think it's - I don't know how effective it is, but it certainly seems to be winning the day at least in the fact that he's trying to portray the Republican Party as the party of the rich. And when he's talking about the same rules, if the middle class should pay a certain amount of taxes, then the wealthy should pay taxes.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Of course, they do pay taxes, but a lot of the battle that's going on in Congress, like with the payroll tax extension, President Obama is pushing for an extension on a middle-class tax cut to go past the year. But to pay for it, it would put a surcharge on millionaires, people making over a million dollars a year.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: The Republicans say look, we're not going to cut taxes for some and raise it on the others. So they say it's a no deal. But it's a winning - Obama and the Democrats think it's a winning Democrat argument.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In other words, if you oppose this tax cut for the middle class, for everybody, you're only in favor of tax cuts for the rich.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And that's exactly what the Democrats - the Democrats feel that they have the Republicans on the run on this issue, and they might.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, said the Democrats put a bill on the floor calling for taxes on the wealthy to pay for this. They knew it would lose, he says.</s>SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL: So Democrats can have another week of fun and games on the Senate floor while tens of millions of working Americans go another week wondering whether they're going to see a smaller paycheck at the end of the year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But Ken, this does put Republicans on the horns of a dilemma. One Republican crossed the aisle. That's big news these days.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Susan Collins, right. But it also - exactly, it also does because the Republicans are talking about - they've always been talking about they're the party of tax cuts. The Democrats and the Obama administration are the party of higher taxes. But when you have a presidential administration in the Obama administration pushing for a middle-class tax cut, the Republicans are in this bind.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: They say, well, how could we oppose this? I mean, how could we be responsible for this going down to defeat if all these middle-class folks lose their, the tax benefit by two percentage points come December 31.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And if you remember a year ago the scramble to get legislation passed before the end of the congressional session, well, that's going to happen again. There's all kinds of measures that have to come for a vote before the end of the year.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Exactly, and there's no question that President Obama may not win this argument in the Senate, but he may win it as a political argument.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Political junkie Ken Rudin. Up next, a month from Iowa, where are we? Michael Gerson joins us on the shape of the GOP field. We'd like to hear from supporters of Herman Cain: Where do you go now? 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. It's Wednesday. Ken Rudin is back with us. NPR's Political Junkie turned down Donald Trump's debate invitation though. He's saving up his material for his Political Junkie column. And of course that ScuttleButton puzzle, both of those are at npr.org/junkie.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Ken, no puzzle last week while you were away, but you have a winner to announce from two weeks ago?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That's correct. I had a Minnie Mouse pin, a Drink Pepsi button, and a button of two brothers celebrating their birthday on the same date. So when you add them all together, you get the Minnie-soda Twins. Yeah, okay. And anyway, it was Ardona Manis(ph) of Portland, Oregon whose correct answer...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: She gets a political no-prize T-shirt and the - and something that will cure her puns. Mitt Romney still clings to his lead in New Hampshire, but with the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, well, we've been counting down like this for it seems like a couple of years now - the field is dwindling.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Newt Gingrich making inroads in New Hampshire as well, now holds double-digit leads in both Iowa and South Carolina, leads certainly on his mind when he told ABC's Jake Tapper he does not need to bash his primary rivals.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: I don't have to go around and point out the inconsistencies of people who aren't going to be the nominee; they're not going to be the nominee.</s>JAKE TAPPER: You're going to be the nominee?</s>NEWT GINGRICH: I'm going to be the nominee. I mean, it's very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I'm going to be the nominee.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are reports that Herman Cain, with the demise of his campaign, may soon endorse Newt Gingrich. We want to hear from those who supported Cain. Where do you go now? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joining us here in Studio 3A is Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, now an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. Mike, nice to have you back on the Political Junkie.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Great to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And does Newt Gingrich really have a shot?</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Well, he certainly has the poll numbers right now. The problem with his analysis is that Cain had those poll numbers, and Perry had those poll numbers, and all fairly recently. You know, we've had about a third of the Republican electorate that has gone serially to the non-Mitt candidate.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: That's true in Iowa, it's true in South Carolina, and this is now in a different place. Romney's problem, however, though, is while the Washington establishment a few weeks ago, the Republican establishment, seemed to settle on Romney, the Republican electorate has not. And they've gone to one more try here.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Each of those other candidates have kind of wilted under the scrutiny. Gingrich is certainly capable of making mistakes, but we'll see how he does.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Mike, what does the DNC and the White House know that the Republican voters don't know? Because if you listen to - you look at their email every day, it's anti-Romney stuff day in and day out, constantly bashing Mitt Romney, as a flip-flopper or whatever. But they seem to be convinced that it's Romney as the nominee, and yet you don't that with Republican voters in Iowa and South Carolina.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Well, there could be another reason for that, that they fear Romney more. I think that it would be their dream to have Newt Gingrich as an opponent. He's a very skilled person, but he has a lot of baggage, a baggage train, and he also has a, you know, tendency to make exaggerated, blustery statements that we hear all the time.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: So I think that they're, you know, preparing for Romney, probably because he'd be the stronger candidate. That's my guess at this point.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We've heard one of those comments, at least according to a lot of people, just recently, that we have truly stupid child labor laws in this country, and we ought to hire poor young black African-Americans to be janitors at their schools.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Well, it's a perfect example of Gingrich's problem. There's a point in here somewhere, which is it's good to have early work experience. Everyone, you know, you could say that, and that it would make, you know, some sense. But then you say child labor laws are stupid, it's an overstatement. It's like saying that the Congressional Budget Office is inhabited by reactionary socialists, which he also said recently. These are pretty equitable sort of bureaucrats, you know.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: And, you know, he has a habit of overstatement that I think is going to be a drawback in a presidential run.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And a lot of people say, yes, his numbers have been electric, his rise has been electric, his fundraising has been good. Interesting story in your paper this morning on the front page, saying he's just beginning to pay back the debts from last spring when we all buried his campaign, in no small part because he was spending extravagantly on private jets and hotel suites.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Yeah, I think you couple that with the fact that they don't have - the Gingrich campaign is not well-organized in early states. Maybe that doesn't make any difference anymore, but I'm not sure that all the normal rules of politics are suspended in this season, and I think it's a serious challenge. He has money problems, and he has serious organizational problems in early states.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He does have the money, though, to run advertising. He does have his first ads up in Iowa, speaking of an even grander America.</s>NEWT GINGRICH: We can return power to the people and to the states we live in so we'll all have more freedom, opportunity and control of our lives. Yes, working together we can and will rebuild the America we love. I'm Newt Gingrich, and I approved this message.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Michael Gerson, that - we can't ignore Newt Gingrich's strengths. He's a very good debater. He's done very well in these series of debates. Other people didn't. He does have presence on camera. He does have, seemingly, a passel full of ideas every single day.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Well, it's absolutely true. I mean, the Republicans seem to have settled on the two most skilled candidates. I think Romney and Gingrich both have the best political skills. And they're not really too far ideologically from one another. They're not Tea Party. Neither of them comes from a Tea Party background. They're both pretty mainstream internationalists. They're economic conservative without being libertarian.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: The contrast is really a stylistic contrast. I think Republicans, many Republicans in the primaries, like the fact that Gingrich has a very tough criticism of Obama, sometimes over-the-top criticism of Obama.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: And I think that, you know, it's a serious problem that Romney does not inspire a lot of love and loyalty. He seems a respectable candidate but not one that provokes a lot of enthusiasm.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: So, you know, Gingrich has a real shot here. It's not like, in my view, like someone like Cain or even Perry, who turned out to lack basic political skills - the ability to debate, the ability to speak like they know, like, you know, what they're talking about in public. Gingrich has those skills. I think it puts him in a better position.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are those in the Republican Party, though, who choke at the idea of candidate Gingrich. Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn served in the House when he was speaker, Gingrich, and had this to say on Fox News Sunday.</s>SENATOR TOM COBURN: I just found his leadership lacking, and I'm not going to go into greater detail on that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: He didn't have to. That's pretty damning.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: I think a lot of people that worked closely with Gingrich in the House of Representatives are skeptical. And his appeal to Republicans in many ways is not I'm going to be who I used to be, it's I'm going to be something different. I'm going to be more disciplined. I'm going to be - you know, have a different approach to these kind of campaigns.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Now, I don't know if you can change that much in a certain way, because he has been undisciplined. He has said things that embarrass the party and himself. He has done things that, you know, were scandalous. And so he has to make the case, I'm - this is the new Newt and that, you know, things have changed fundamentally.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We want to hear from former Cain supporters – well, they still may be Cain supporters, but they can't support him anymore, he's left the race. Where do you go now? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Paul's on the line calling from Philadelphia.</s>PAUL: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, go ahead, please.</s>PAUL: I'm a 27-year-old conservative from Philadelphia. I was a Cain supporter partly because of his private-sector experience. And to vote for Newt Gingrich doesn't seem to make sense. I'm tending to think I'm going to be a Romney supporter now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Romney supporter. Any particular reason why?</s>PAUL: I do like his business experience. I think he's actually, believe it or not, more consistent on conservative values than Newt Gingrich. It's - I'm tempted by Bachmann, but I think that Romney has a better chance of winning.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: All right, Paul, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it. And let's go next to - this is Chris(ph), and Chris is calling from Fort Bragg in North Carolina.</s>CHRIS: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: You're on the air, Chris, go ahead, please.</s>CHRIS: All right, thank you. Well, yeah, I was a Cain supporter. I'm a soldier in the Army, and I guess what I really liked about Herman Cain was that he was willing to make some kind of major changes to our tax structure. I liked that his 9-9-9 plan might try to, you know, at least take a different angle and maybe wipe out our bad tax code.</s>CHRIS: And so now I'm starting to look at Ron Paul because while he does seem to be a little bit out there, I really feel that he might be able to make the changes like sort of the more drastic changes that I feel we might need due to the economic system.</s>CHRIS: I guess maybe my question for Mr. Rudin is: Does he think that that's a viable option, or what's his take on that?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ron Paul now second in the polls in Iowa.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Well, at least nominally second, very close to Mitt Romney, who could be third, and of course George H. W. Bush finished third in Iowa in 1988 and ended up winning the presidency. It's interesting to go from Herman Cain to Ron Paul because Ron Paul seems to have detailed, specific views on policies going back to his, you know, run for president in 1988 as a libertarian, whereas Herman Cain seemed to be doing it by the seat of his pants.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: I don't know where Libya is. I don't know what Ubeki-beki-beki-stan(ph) - who's this Becky he keeps talking about? It just seems like, you know, Ron Paul represents a certain - obviously, a certain part of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, whereas Herman Cain, I just never thought...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, we...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: ...I never understood it.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mike Gerson, we do talk about the steady numbers of Mitt Romney. They don't go up above 25 percent anywhere...</s>MICHAEL GERSON: That's true.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...but they're all...</s>MICHAEL GERSON: They, generally, go down below 20, although they're a little bit below that now.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So Ron Paul has been building steadily. He's now in a top-tier candidate, you have to say it.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: No, I agree with that. I think Iowa is not a Romney-Gingrich race. I think it's a Romney-Gingrich-Ron Paul and maybe a fourth more conservative candidate like Bachmann or Santorum that's going to get a significant amount of support.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Not Rick Perry? Not Rick Perry?</s>MICHAEL GERSON: I don't think so, although he will maintain some support. I think that they want, you know, religious conservatives are very strong in that process in Iowa. There's a number that will settle on a candidate there. I'm not sure that that's all bad for Romney. I mean, he wants to - if he would have finished second in Iowa, I think they would have taken that early in the process. I mean, he - that was never his strength. I think it's more disturbing what seems to be happening in South Carolina, where Gingrich has a lot of momentum.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: But it's a, you know, I think it's more of a race in Iowa, and, you know, a month is a long time for Gingrich to make some mistakes. I think he's right now - or could be close to his high point in this primary process. And it depends on what he does and how much he loses.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ron Paul has certainly - thanks very much for the call, Chris, by the way. Ron Paul has certainly demonstrated organizational strength in Iowa and other places. And he also has a fair amount of money, and he's running ads in Iowa as well.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What's up with these sorry politicians?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Lots of bark. When it's show time, whimpering...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: ...like little Shih Tzus. You want big cuts? Ron Paul's been screaming it for years. Budget crisis? No problem. Cut a trillion bucks year one. That's trillion with a T. Department of Education - gone. Interior, Energy, HUD, Commerce - gone. Later, bureaucrats.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: That's how Ron Paul rolls. Want to drain the swamp? Ron Paul. Do it.</s>PAUL: I'm Ron Paul, and I approve this message.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ron Paul, as we mentioned, second in the polls in Iowa, very close to Mitt Romney, who is third. Leading those polls is Newt Gingrich. We're talking about where we stand a month out from the Iowa caucuses with Michael Gerson, who's a columnist for The Washington Post, also with us, of course, NPR's political junkie Ken Rudin. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And does Iowa be - will Iowa be the last stand? You'd think Michele Bachmann, for example, has to do well, top-three finish in Iowa or what credibility does she have left?</s>MICHAEL GERSON: I think that's fair. Her roots are there. This is the perfect state for her appeal. I think that's true. I think it's also interesting that Ron Paul has been carrying the anti-Gingrich message the toughest. He had an ad up calling attention to the fact that Gingrich was a consultant for Freddie Mac when he was criticizing politicians that were supporting Freddie Mac, a very tough ad. And so I think that that's probably, you know, maybe helping Romney to some extent as well. And Romney's newest ad when you look at it is talking about how he's been married to one wife for so long. I mean, it's...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Meant to draw an implication there?</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Right.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: It's not a very subtle...</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Newt Gingrich has also been married 42 years but just not to the same (unintelligible).</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Exactly. So, you know, but I do think it's obviously make or break for some of these candidates that are - that have a religious conservative appeal because Iowa is the place where a religious conservative has to emerge.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: There are some, though, interesting column by George Will over the weekend who said Romney to Gingrich from bad to worse. He calls Mitt Romney a conservative of convenience - that familiar flip-flop charge. But had this to say about Newt Gingrich: Newt Gingrich embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive. There is his anti-conservative confidence that he has a comprehensive explanation of and a plan to perfect everything. This is an appeal for yet the last-minute dark-horse candidate to come riding to the rescue when he appeals for a reconsideration of Rick Perry and indeed Jon Huntsman.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: I hear a number of people talking particularly about Huntsman as a possibility, that he's more conservative than his image talks about, but, you know, I don't know. I mean, the Republicans' primary voters do not report being upset about their choices. They don't say that they don't believe it's a weak field. Now, I think objectively it is a pretty weak field compared to what it might have been if people like Mitch Daniels or Mike Huckabee or others have gotten in the race. This would have been a stronger field. But I'm not sure that that too many Republicans are thinking that they want a complete outsider in this race.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Ken?</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: Yeah. I think Mitch Daniels was a strong candidate until he got into the race, and then he would have been ripped apart just like everybody else has been. But I'm writing down all these things we've thought we knew about this process. You need money to compete in Iowa. Newt Gingrich doesn't have money. You need organization. He doesn't have that. You need family values. We talked about that as well. You need the anti-Washington, anti-lobbyist issue, and there's the Freddie Mac thing.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: You have the ethics issue, which is - Republicans are very strongly on. And, of course, Gingrich was reprimanded by the House in 1997. He seems to be violating every possible previous rule on the road to the nomination, and yet, right now, he's the flavor of the month.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: Well, that's assuming that this is not just another balloon candidate that gets popped in this process. I mean, he has a significant number of liabilities. But I go back to it - this - it does indicate something serious about Romney himself in this process. People have serially looked for alternatives. And a large group of voters has been willing to accept whoever has momentum as long as they're not Romney. That I think is a pretty bad sign. That doesn't mean he will be a bad general election candidate, but it means that this could be a long race in this process.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: He will compete in a lot of states and do quite well, and there's proportional representation. He will gain a lot of delegates, but there's going to be, I think, a real race here.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: A war of attrition though - organization, money. Newt Gingrich did not file in time to get on the ballot in Missouri, not a critical state but an indication of his problems.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: No, I think that's true. When I - I was just a month ago in Iowa, and he essentially had no staff in Iowa at that point. You know, I met with someone there that was the Gingrich person and said that they had a lunch with him that day, and that they've never met one another before, the people that were supporting him in the state. You know, he has lost much of his staff to other campaigns, particularly to Perry's campaign. And, you know, I think he has a risk here.</s>MICHAEL GERSON: He has not run an effective campaign. In fact, he's lost a lot of people, and he's ran a rather poor campaign. Now, he's ahead. I think he - the risk is that he'll feel like he's been rewarded for the way that he's run this campaign because I don't think that's, you know, the reason that he is where he is now because he's done something innovative or interesting.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Michael Gerson, columnist for The Washington Post, joined us here in studio 3A, along with, of course, Ken Rudin, our political junkie. And just a reminder, Ken, we're on the road next month to both Iowa and then to New Hampshire as we do The Political Junkie in those states, ahead of those critical balloting contests.</s>KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: And don't forget Saturday debate, Republican debate on "ABC News" from Iowa, big debate on Saturday. |
This spring, millions of college students are joining a workforce battered by a bad economy. Resist the urge to buy a new wardrobe and car, says our personal finance contributor. | MADELEINE BRAND, host: This is Day to Day. I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>ALEX COHEN, host: And I'm Alex Cohen. The end of the school year is rapidly approaching for many college students, and millions of them will be entering the workforce in the next few months.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Here to give new graduates some financial tips is our personal finance contributor Michelle Singletary. Hi, Michelle.</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: Hi. How are you?</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: OK, so if someone's about to graduate from college, what is the number one thing this person should do once they actually get a job?</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: They're not going to want to hear what I have to say. For many of these graduates, especially those with a lot of student loan debt and credit card debt, they probably should move back home with mommy and daddy.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Oh no!</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: And I know they don't want to hear that...</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: They probably don't.</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: But you know, the cost of living is so much across the country, and especially in big cities. And before they sort of venture out, get their own apartment, and set everything up, you know, they probably should take a year or two to kind of stay home and really save up. Now, if you're going to go home and just spend wildly, if I were your parents I wouldn't let you come back. But give yourself some time to really build up some cash reserves before you get out there on your own.</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: The next thing that graduates need to do is get a budget. Now, you say that and people's eyes just glass over, but if you want to start your life out right, financially, you have got to budget. You have got to spend less than you're bringing in so that you can build a cushion for yourself as you go forward in the real world.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: You know a lot of graduates will have a lot of debt on their hands - student loan debt. Should they really begin saving for retirement right away or even thinking about it?</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: Yeah, absolutely! People always ask me, if I'm in debt I shouldn't save, and I shouldn't save for retirement? You absolutely should still build up an emergency fund because if you don't you end up going into debt when life happens, and life will happen. Your car will break down, your roommate may move out, mommy and daddy might kick you out, so you need a cash reserve. But you also should begin to save for your retirement.</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: You have youth and time on your hand. Just waiting ten years you'll have to save so much more than if you start now. Listen, if you're 21 years old, and you start saving just 200 dollars a month from 21 to 65, and that portfolio earns an average of about six percent, you could have more than half a million dollars at retirement.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: So, what else should 20-somethings be doing right away?</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: Well, one thing they shouldn't be doing is buying a lot of things. People, you know, maybe they've driven their hoopdy (ph) through college, or they've had their, you know, ratty clothes, and they get a new a job and they want to buy a whole new wardrobe, they want to buy a new car...</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: You want to curtail your spending. Don't buy that new car. Buy a used car. Don't buy a new wardrobe. Listen, these people have never seen you before. You can match some things together until you build up an emergency fund, and I get this question from graduates all the time. Don't I need this great wardrobe to make this big impression?</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: The only impression you're going to do is make it on your credit card from sliding it through the machine so much! Just don't go out and be a consumer right away. Continue to live like you were as a student until you get your feet solid, financially.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Michelle, thank you.</s>MICHELLE SINGLETARY: You're welcome.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: That's Day to Day's personal finance contributor Michelle Singletary. She also writes The Color of Money column for The Washington Post. |
The campus of Virginia Tech in Roanoke, Va. was on lockdown Thursday after a gunman killed a police officer during a traffic stop, and one other person. Campus officials instructed everyone to stay in a secure place indoors and barred visitors while police continued their search for the shooter. Virginia Tech established a number of security and emergency response measures after the 2007 mass shooting that killed 33 people. Mallory Noe-Payne, intern with NPR member station WVTF in Roanoke provides an update. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. We'll get to "Hard Times" in just a moment, but we want to keep you up to date on developments at Virginia Tech today. The campus there on lockdown after a gunman killed a police officer during a traffic stop. A second person was also killed; that person so far unidentified.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Campus officials have told everyone to stay in a secure place indoors. They've told visitors to stay away. Police continue to search for the shooter. This, of course, a ghastly echo to the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, where 33 people died.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We turn now to Mallory Noe-Payne, a student at Virginia Tech and an intern with NPR member station WVTF in Roanoke, Virginia. She's reporting on the story for that station. Thanks very much for being with us.</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: Hello.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And is there anything you can add to the news that we've already heard?</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: I think that things are just really uncertain. Most students are getting their information from news outlets like this, and then also from the alert system that Virginia Tech sends out. So I think there's just a lot of rumors and uncertainties out there about what's going on.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Have you been able to talk with any of the students?</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: I have. I've talked to students very close to campus. Virginia Tech's campus is right next to downtown. So there's a lot of students. It's the middle of exam season so most people were studying somewhere. And I was able to get in contact with some students whose studies and, even in some case, finals were interrupted.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And what do they tell you?</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: That they're just doing their best to stay calm, get in touch with friends who are on campus and in dorms, and that they're doing their best, also, to get in touch with families and let them know that they're safe.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I assume they're using Facebook, Twitter, that sort of thing?</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: Yeah, I think social media is really playing a huge part in the confusion of information that's going on, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: As we mentioned, there was that awful incident four years ago. There will be relatively few students on campus now who were there then.</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: There will be, but I did actually manage to talk to a master's student who was walking away from campus, who was getting off campus, who was here for those shootings as well. And he said that a lot of time has passed since then, but he was just trying to get away.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Just trying to get away - but the memories must be awful.</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: Yeah, he said that that incident, he said, was actually more surreal than this one was, for him. That was the word he used, surreal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We need to - we'll be, obviously, staying in touch with this story and bringing people up to date. As of yet, nobody knows where the gunman is; could be on campus, could be off campus. Nobody knows?</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: Yeah, I don't think so. The last information I heard via a police scanner was that they were going through building by building, and that they were bringing in federal and state law enforcement as well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And the other question will be: Did the systems that the university put in place after the 2007 incident - how well did they work? And, well, we're going to have to wait for a resolution of this incident to see if there's an answer to that.</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: Yeah, I definitely think that's true. Their system has been a lot updated since that time - the VT alerts - especially in response to the fact that they're currently going through a lawsuit based on how they responded last time, so...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, Mallory Noe-Payne, thanks very much for taking the time to speak with us. And we hope this all ends quickly and without further injury to anybody.</s>MALLORY NOE-PAYNE: Of course, yeah.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Mallory Noe-Payne, an intern with NPR member station WVTF in Roanoke, Virginia, reporting on the story for the station. "Hard Times" coming up. |
Reporting in Science, researchers write of an experiment in which rats worked to open the cages of trapped rats, but not empty or dummy-filled cages. Author Peggy Mason discusses empathy in non-primates, and the value rats place on freeing a companion—about equal to that of a stash of chocolate chips. | JOE PALCA, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Joe Palca, filling in for Ira Flatow. Rats aren't the most well-loved creatures out there. You've got sewer rats, subway rats, the evil rat in "The Nutcracker." Or how about someone calling you a rat?</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Well, not something most of us aspire to, but this next story might burnish rats' reputations just a little bit. A new study found that rats are actually quite willing to come to another rat's aid, freeing a rat trapped in a container. And they're not just doing it for a dose of sugar water or some other reward; they're doing it out of empathy of the other rat's plight, or so the researchers write in their study out this week in the journal Science.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: It makes you wonder if empathy really is a uniquely human capacity. Maybe the roots of empathy go back a lot farther than we thought. What do you think? Give us a call. Our number is 800-989-8255. That's 1-800-989-TALK. If you're on Twitter, you can tweet us your questions by writing the @ sign followed by scifri. And if you want more information about what we're talking about this hour, go to our website at www.sciencefriday.com, where you'll find links to our topic.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: And now let me introduce my guest. Peggy Mason is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago. She's the senior author on the rat study, and she joins us from a studio on campus. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Mason.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: DR. PEGGY MASON: Thanks so much for having me.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So how did you come to do this research? What was the thinking that made you wonder if rats felt empathy?</s>MASON: We knew that rats feel very - or show a very rudimentary form of empathy called emotional contagion. That had been shown. Well, it had been shown that rodents show this about five years ago by Jeff Mogil at McGill University. And we wanted to take it a step further and examine...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So I'm sorry, what is emotional contagion? I'm sorry, I don't recognize that term?</s>MASON: So emotional contagion is one individual mimicking the emotional state of another individual, and an example of that is when one baby cries, all the babies cry.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Mm-hmm. I got it, OK. So you took this a step further. Why don't you describe the experimental setup so that we have a sense of what was happening?</s>MASON: Absolutely. So we had an arena, and in the center of an arena - of the arena was a restrainer. And in the restrainer was one of the rats. And outside of the restrainer, free to roam around, was his cage mate, the free rat. And the restrainer had a door, which can only be opened from the outside. So only the free rat can open the door.</s>MASON: And when we put the two rats into this situation, the free rat immediately goes to the restrainer, climbs all over the restrainer, bites the restrainer, tries to figure out why the cage mate is stuck in there and just focuses all of his activity on this restrainer.</s>MASON: Eventually, these sessions occurred for about an hour a day for 12 days, and by about day six, they figured out how to open the door.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So the rat outside was never shown how to do it but eventually stumbled on how to open the door for the trapped rat?</s>MASON: Exactly, and it was typically an - well, it was accidental. It's not like the rat can look at the door and say: Gee, I see that counterweight, I know if I push here...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Right.</s>MASON: So it's just because the rat is spending so much time at the restrainer because it's so concerned that he accidentally opens it. And that would be one thing, but the important feature is that the next day, he says oh, OK, I remember the door is the place to be. So he goes right for the door, fiddles with it, now instead of taking him 25 minutes to open the door, the next day it takes him 10 minutes.</s>MASON: Moreover, when the door falls over, now the rat, the free rat expects the sound. The first time it falls over, it makes a sound, the rat freezes because oh my God, something unusual has happened. I didn't expect that. I'm afraid. But the second time or the third time, certainly by the third time no longer surprised. So that tells us that by the third time, the rat is intentionally and deliberately opening the door to liberate the trapped cage mate.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Right, and you say empathy. Let's play devil's advocate and say if you had to challenge your own study, what other explanation could you give for this?</s>MASON: Well, we thought the most simple - when all we had was what I've just told you, we thought the most simple explanation was simply that the free rat wanted to play with the trapped rat. That seems like a straightforward reason to open the door. And so we were very worried about that or concerned that that might be the case. So what we did was we put two arenas together, and then instead of putting the restrainer in the middle of one arena, we put the restrainer right up against the divide.</s>MASON: And the door was at the divide. Now the free rat, when he opened the door, the trapped rat was liberated but only into an adjacent arena, and they were not allowed - they couldn't play together. And we did this for almost 30 days, and day after day, the free rat would open the door to liberate the trapped cage mate, even though they never got to play.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Right, OK, and the other explanation that occurred to me, and I heard Nell Greenfield-Boyce's story on NPR this morning, she played this ultrasonic sound that the rats - I don't think it was the right frequency, but, I mean, she played it at a frequency we could hear.</s>MASON: That's right.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: But the rats hear this, I mean, isn't it like, you know, shut that bloody racket up, and I'll let you out so that you'll stop making that screeching noise?</s>MASON: It's an entirely reasonable concern. The reason we don't think that that's what's going on is that we only reported ultrasonic vocalizations in 13 percent of the sessions. So it was very unusual, and certainly rats would open the door in sessions where there were no alarm calls.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK, well, empathy, that's certainly something that people would tend to believe, but let's see what our callers think. Let's go to Logan(ph) in Moultrie, Georgia. Logan, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.</s>LOGAN: Great, good afternoon. Real quick, I was just thinking about a YouTube video that I saw of a dog, I believe it was in Columbia, come to the rescue of another dog that had been hit by a car on the interstate. And that sure seemed like empathy to me.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Well, let's see what Dr. Mason...</s>MASON: Yeah, I agree with you, and I think that the reality is that there are lots of anecdotes - and we see empathy in our pets all the time. But these anecdotes are - probably have a large kernel of truth to them. And yet they don't allow us to understand anything more about empathy. And this is the first time that we've really controlled a situation, and we can prove that this is empathic, helping behavior.</s>MASON: And moreover, now we can use this model to examine what are the neurological, behavioral, genetic, pharmacological mechanisms that give rise to helping behavior.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Hey, Logan, thanks for the call.</s>LOGAN: (unintelligible).</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Appreciate it. So what other emotional states do you think rats might be capable of, I mean, emotional senses that sort of mimic things that we tend to think of mostly as human?</s>MASON: Well, I think they certainly show fear. And...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Well, I would think that most animals - I mean, fear seems pretty...</s>MASON: Fear is very useful. But the empathy is probably derived from the maternal relationship to her offspring. And it's very important for a mother to know how her babies feel, particularly if that mother is a mammal. In the case of mammals, the babies get born, and they're basically helpless. And so if mom doesn't know when the baby is hungry or cold or in some way distressed, then the baby is less likely to grow, develop, survive and thrive.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Interesting. Let's take another call from Max(ph), who's in your same city of Chicago, Illinois. Max, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.</s>MAX: Hello. Yeah, she just actually touched on my point, which was that - you know, I've studied evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics, and it seems to me that any creature that cares for its offspring is capable of empathy. Anything that has a limbic system has to, like, as you said, be sensitive to the needs of their offspring and, you know, its fears, its wants, its desires and its needs.</s>MAX: So yeah, I mean, is there any way that you're differentiating the sort of rat empathy from, you know, basic maternal or, you know, parenting empathy?</s>MASON: Well, yes. These are unrelated male adults. And so the idea is that although empathic helping may have started with the mother-offspring relationship, it has generalized to relationships that go beyond that, to relationships between two adults, between two unrelated individuals and so on.</s>MASON: And I think that the potential benefit of this generalization is that social groups are more cohesive if the members of those social groups are willing to help each other, are sensitive to each other's distress and willing to help.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: And you had a condition in the experiment where you tried to get at this, you know, where the animal had a choice between something tasty and being helpful.</s>MASON: That's right.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Maybe you could describe that.</s>MASON: So we really wanted to understand what the value of helping behavior was to the rat. So we did what we called in the lab the chocolate-versus-pal experiment. And this was one arena, two restrainers. In one restrainer was five chocolate chips, and in the other restrainer was the trapped cage mate.</s>MASON: Now, these rats had been eating chocolate for weeks, and they ate, on average, more than seven chocolate chips. When the free rat is placed into this arena, we didn't know what would happen. But what did happen was that the free rat opened both restrainers in no consistent order. So on one day, he might open the chocolate restrainer first, and on another day, he might open the trapped cage mate restrainer first.</s>MASON: So the result was that there was no difference in the opening times for the restrainers of the two types. And what this told us was that liberating a trapped cage mate is on a par with very yummy chocolate, which was really quite striking.</s>MASON: But even more amazing, and this was the thing that shocked me the most in the entire study, is that the free rat, although there were multiple ways that he could hog all the chocolate chips, he did not. He shared, on average, one and a half chocolate chips with the liberated cage mate.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Well, all I can say is I wouldn't try that experiment on humans because I'm sure they'd leave me trapped. Most of my colleagues would leave me trapped and go for the chocolate and then let me out. But anyway, it's an interesting set of experiments. Thanks for sharing them with us today.</s>MASON: Hey, thanks so much for having me.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Peggy Mason is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago. After the break, we'll be talking about Asia's space race and whether this competition between China, Japan and India could lead to war in space. Stay with us.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. |
Biotech company AquaBounty has not yet received FDA approval for its fast-growing, genetically-modified salmon. Biotechnologist Alison Van Eenennaam and environmental scientist Anne Kapuscinski discuss the food safety and environmental concerns associated with transgenic fish. | JOE PALCA, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Joe Palca. Ira Flatow is away this week. The biotech company AquaBounty Technologies of Waltham, Massachusetts, has developed a genetically modified Atlantic salmon that grows twice as fast as regular salmon. How has it done this? By tinkering with the salmon's genome, adding a growth hormone gene from one fish plus an antifreeze gene from another.</s>The result: fish that grow to market size rapidly. AquaBounty's application to market these bioengineered fish has been under FDA review for 15 years. Last fall, the Food and Drug Administration held a public hearing and convened a panel of experts to review the food safety and environmental risks posed by these salmon. Their conclusion: AquaBounty salmon was safe, as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon.</s>The result: But some scientists and environmental groups have said there are questions about the safety of genetically modified fish remain unanswered. This hour: the science and safety of bioengineered fish. And joining us for this discussion is Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam. She's an extension specialist in animal genomics and biotechnology at University of California, Davis. She was on the FDA's panel of experts that evaluated AquaBounty's proposal last year. She co-authored a piece in Nature Biotechnology about the company's regulatory battle. She joins us from Eugene, Oregon. Welcome, Dr. Van Eenennaam.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: Good afternoon, Joe.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Good afternoon. And also with us is Dr. Anne Kapuscinski. She's a professor of sustainability science and chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College. She has been a scientific advisor to the federal government on several issues relating to genetically modified organisms, and she joins us from Hannover, New Hampshire. Welcome to the program, Dr. Kapuscinski.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Good afternoon, Joe.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Good afternoon. And if you want to weigh in on the science and the safety of genetically modified salmon, give us a call. Our number is 1-800-989-8255. That's 1-800-989-TALK. If you're on Twitter, you can tweet us your question by writing the @ sign followed by scifri, and there's also more information on the website, www.sciencefriday.com, where you'll find links to our topic.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So Dr. Van Eenennaam, let's start with you. You were on this committee that was evaluating. How long did you have to evaluate the company's data saying this food is - this fish is safe to eat and safe to grow and release into the marketplace?</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: So the veterinary medicine advisory committee that looked at all that data had about two weeks prior to the meeting, which was held last September. It was actually released to the committee the same day it was made publicly available on the FDA's website.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: And what sorts of material were available to you?</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: It was about 172-page briefing package, which included information on the safety of the fish from a food consumption standpoint and also information about how the construct was created, whether or not the fish grew faster or not and information also included there on the environmental assessment that the company had done to look at the environmental concerns associated with the fish.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: I guess one thing, just I know environmental concerns are always something that people are concerned about, this fish actually getting out into wild populations, and the way that the product was being regulated through the FDA, it was proposed, and it is proposed, that this particular fish is going to be raised in land-based tanks, so on land in tanks, and it would also be triploid female product, which means that all of the fish would be female so they couldn't interbreed with each other, and also triploid, and triploidy would result in those animals being sterile.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: And so the company tried to have some risk mitigation in place to prevent any possibility of those fish interbreeding with wild populations.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Right, and just finally on this meeting, and this meeting took place last September, 2010, the conclusion of the meeting was that this group said to the FDA we think that this is a product that you could approve for marketing.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: Basically the idea of the veterinary medicine advisory committee was to look at all of the data that the FDA had looked at. The FDA's conclusion was there was a reasonable certainty of no harm from a food safety perspective, and also they looked at the environmental assessment. And basically, the committee was there to look and see if there was anything that they had overlooked.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: And I think the conclusion of the committee was that they agreed with the FDA that there was a reasonable certainty of no harm from food safety perspective and also from the environmental assessment perspective.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: And that reasonable certainty of no harm is one of those terms of art that means, we don't think it's a problem.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: Well, yeah.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: That's basically. I just wanted to make sure people understood that. OK, so you said things looked OK, but Dr. Kapuscinski, I mean obviously you and other scientists think either - well, tell me what you think. Did they not look at the data correctly, or did they not realize that more data was needed or were needed?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Well, I think my main concern was that the kind of data presented had gaps, and the quality of the analysis of the data, especially the statistical analysis, was really quite a low bar. So my main concern is that this application is really setting a precedent, and it's actually an application for a fairly small grow-out facility to raise some of these salmon in an undisclosed location in Panama.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: So this one facility doesn't really represent what's coming down the road. It's really more, you can think of it as sort of putting the camel's nose under the tent. But because it's going to set a precedent, it's really important that the quality of the science be as high as scientific standards would normally expect and that the risk assessment is complete.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: So, I was concerned that there were some problems with small sample sizes, some problems with statistical analysis, and I was even more concerned that there were key parts missing from the risk assessment. It seemed like the approach taken, the risk assessment, wasn't really up to speed with the state of the art risk assessment.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: So there were really three things that I thought were missing. One was the lack of what we would call a failure mode analysis, basically lack of a quantitative analysis of what would - what could go wrong in the multiple confinement system that the company proposed.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: As Alison just explained, they have some biological confinement methods, which I think is a very good thing that they have that, and then they had also a number of physical confinement methods combined with that. The problem is, with confinement systems, there are always possibilities of things going wrong, and their interactions can be complex.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And it's now a pretty standard practice, when you're assessing a technology, that you do a failure analysis. So that was missing. The other part that was missing is, if some of the fish did escape, they didn't really go the next step of answering the question, well, what could happen if they did escape. And one might argue that there would be a very low number of fish escaping, but it doesn't obviate the need to still do that second step of the risk assessment.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And then finally, and in a way the most important, is the risk assessment lacked a formal uncertainty analysis. And this is really important, especially in environmental risk assessment, because there are always going to be scientific uncertainties.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Living organisms and ecosystems where these fish might end up, are very complex. There's a lot of variability. There are always things that the scientists don't fully understand. That doesn't need to paralyze, though, the risk-assessment process. Instead, the state of the art in risk assessment nowadays is that you carry out a formal uncertainty analysis throughout the risk assessment. And you gather the results of that at the end, and you make that part of the conclusions that you had to the decision-makers, so that the decision-makers are much better informed about, really, what are they accepting, and what assumptions are they making if they give an approval or if they give a denial.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: So I think really in a sense I was worried that if this application is approved with these low standards of science and these missing parts of a risk assessment, and it sets the message, the precedent that this is what the U.S. government will expect.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And also, many other countries are actually watching to see what the U.S. government will do because there are other groups around the world developing transgenic fish. That would just be a really unfortunately way too low bar.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: I'm just curious, though, Alison Van Eenennaam said that the expectation was that these fish would all be - the ones that were released or the ones that would leave the breeding facility - were all female and were triploid, meaning they were sterile. Doesn't that mean that they - I mean, if they got out, nothing would happen, they'd live their lives, and then they'd die, and that would be the end of it?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Well, it's - unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. There are two things that we still have to think about. The first one is that there is some low percentage of fish in which the triploid induction which makes them sterile doesn't always succeed. And again because of this one application being fairly small, that low number, you know, it might be anything as low as .1 percent to one percent of the fish not being totally sterile, that low percentage might not be a problem for this particular case.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: But there should have been an actual failure analysis of that, if this is again going to set the model for what you do in the future. So that's the first problem because in future applications you might have much larger numbers of fish, total numbers escaping, especially if this approval ends up triggering a proliferation of genetically engineered salmon being taken up by the salmon farming industry, which is a global industry, a global commodity, then small percentages can add up when you're starting to have operations that raise anything from 500,000 to a million fish in a particular fish farm.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: But then the second issue is if fish escape, and they're sterile, they don't die out immediately. They still live in the ecosystem and interact with other organisms. So again the question of scale becomes important. For this particular application, we were given really no information about the organisms living in the undisclosed - in the river in the undisclosed place in Panama. So it's really hard to know are there other fish in that ecosystem that any escapes could interact with?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: If there are, are they fish that are endangered? We know that freshwater fish species throughout the world are in decline or in a lot of trouble because of other human impacts. So we need to have those kinds of questions at least addressed.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but we have to take a quick break, and I want to make sure that we let Dr. Van Eenennaam get some thoughts in, as well. But stay with us. We're going to go through all this, and hopefully we'll come out of it with some clearer idea, although it's a very complicated issue. So stick around. we'll be right back after a short break.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Joe Palca. We're talking this hour about how a proposal to market genetically modified salmon is raising concerns. My guests are Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam, an extension specialist in animal genomics and biotechnology at the University of California, Davis; and Dr. Anne Kapuscinski, professor of sustainability science and chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: And I think I'd like to ask Dr. Van Eenennaam: You heard some of the concerns about missing data or inadequate date or safety data that she would like to see. How does all that strike you?</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: Well, a couple of points, I think. The FDA made it very clear that this particular approval was for the particular location in Panama that the company was proposing to grow these fish in, which again is an inland tank location.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: And that's an FDA-inspected site, and the FDA has been there and seen that there's multiple levels of physical containment, things like nets and cages and things to stop any fish from escaping there, and also the physical location of where the actual site is has a number of geographical attributes that would prevent those fish from if fish did actually escape from that location from ever reaching the sea.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: There's a number of thermal lethal rivers that the fish would have to get through if they ever were to escape. And so I guess we have to think about risk assessment in terms of there is a potential hazard, that is that the fish escaped, but there's a number of risk mitigation approaches that the company's put into place. And these are numerous and multiple and redundant.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: So let's just talk about the triploid, which I agree is not 100 percent effective. So let's just say we've got .1 percent of the fish that are actually fertile, but then you've got all of these multiple physical and biological containment measures in place to try to reduce the risk of any fish ever escaping down to zero.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: And I think you'll never say zero, but there's a number of multiple factors in place to try to minimize that risk as a result of all of these risk mitigation measures.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: All right, fair enough, but I want - now I want to include our listeners to this conversation because they, I'm sure, will have questions. So let's go first to Luke(ph) in Kansas City, Missouri. Luke, you're on SCIENCE FRIDAY, welcome.</s>LUKE: Hi, my question is that: Why is there so much attention surrounding the genetically modified salmon when we've been consuming, like, modified vegetables and other foods injected with who knows what for years now?</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Interesting question. Maybe Dr. Kapuscinski, you'd like to try that.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Sure. I think that there's that much attention for two reasons. One is this will be the first genetically modified animal approved for widespread commercial production and human food. But secondly, this kind of animal, a fish especially, is not that removed from its wild relatives, and are - have much closer interactions with ecosystem than some of the vegetables that we grow.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Also, we're dealing with a species - Atlantic salmon - that many of the places where it's farmed are also the native range of wild Atlantic salmon, and those are - unfortunately, those wild Atlantic salmon populations are in deep trouble around the world.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: So that's not directly the case for this particular application, as Alison pointed out, but I want to come back to my earlier point that we have to keep thinking about the broader context here. This application is setting the precedent for what would be expected of an applicant to show environmental safety to a reasonable degree in the future.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And if this application is approved, and if the salmon farming industry decides that this is a good product for their business, then it's going to be adopted and farmed in places where there may not be as good confinement and where if the fish escape in some of those places - like eastern Canada, the state of Maine, parts of Europe - where they can escape, interact with wild Atlantic salmon.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Right.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: So, you know, vegetables don't move around as easily.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Right, but there is also the case, at least as Dr. Van Eenennaam said, about they'll need their own applications, and someone will have to decide if their control measures are adequate. But let's go now to Roger(ph) in Commerce, Michigan. Roger, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>ROGER: Hey there.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Hey.</s>ROGER: Yeah, my main concern was, when I hear about genetically modified foods, in general, I hear from a lot of people the complaint about not being safe to eat, which always drive me crazy. It's perfectly safe to eat. My only concern is like what people were talking about earlier, from the genetic diversity and getting involved with wild species.</s>ROGER: But couldn't it be perfectly safe if it was just in a controlled environment, unlike the certain Asian carp where it wasn't in a proper place? If they were raise some place, you know, flood plains, or totally landlocked, away from the ocean. Give an extreme example like Nevada. We have no problem growing it over there and even encouraging it. And I'll take my comments off the air.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Okay, thanks. So the question is, you know, absent the ecological questions, is this fish safe to eat? And are you satisfied, Dr. Kapuscinski, that that question has been answered?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Well, the food safety area is not as much my area of expertise, but I did - I did attend the VMAC...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: That's that meeting, the veterinary...</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Yes, and I heard some of the other comments and read some of them and also actually read the report from the committee. And, you know, some of the concerns that were made that sort of resonated for me based on my having skimmed the food safety section of it was again concerns about small sample sizes and some problems with the statistical analysis.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: So for example, one of the legitimate things to ask about is whether the engineering of these salmon has increased their allergenicity, and the data that was used to conclude the conclusions about that involved only six fish. And even the statistician on the veterinary medicine advisory committee commented that, you know, there could be some ways to improve the statistical analysis.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And there was a paragraph about that in the final report from the chair of that committee. So my concern there is also really about the quality of the science.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Okay, Dr. Van Eenennaam, what about you at this point? Are you more or less satisfied that this is safe to eat, or do you think there's still more to find out?</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: I'm comfortable that it's safe to eat. I guess I will touch on the allergenicity question because that's always an issue with genetically engineered foods. And the concern is that the protein that's being introduced through the genetic engineering would create allergens.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: For example, if you brought, I don't know, a peanut protein into a fish, it might result in an allergen. And that is not the case in the case of the growth hormone that's in the salmon. And so the allergenicity question got down to the question of whether or not people who were allergic to fish would be more likely to be allergic to this particular fish.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And there's really no consensus in the scientific or medical communities regarding the magnitude of an increase in kind of the endogenous allergens, the fish allergens, if you will, That would pose an additional risk to public health. And I think in the absence of knowing what level you're looking for, it's difficult to know what would be the appropriate work to do.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: We don't even know, really, the levels of allergens that are in naturally occurring salmon, and so in the absence of that information, it's difficult to know what levels would trigger a concern. And we didn't see - in that absence of that information, it's difficult to make a determination.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Okay, let's take another call now and this time go to - let's see, how about Jerry(ph) in - no, Brian(ph) in Portland, Oregon. Brian, welcome to the program.</s>BRIAN: Yeah, I had a question about the failure analysis. I read an article about either this fish or a very similar fish, and the article I read is about 10 years ago, and it stated that if some of these fish that grow extra fast were to escape into the wild, within 50 years or something, it would supplant the wild fish because it grows so much faster.</s>BRIAN: And then they would destroy themselves because they would eat so much of the food so quickly, there would be a population collapse. And this is a catastrophic failure, and this is a computer analysis I heard about, again about 10 years ago. I wanted to know if your panel has heard (unintelligible).</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Fair enough, thanks, Brian. What about that, Dr. Kapuscinski, maybe you've heard of this?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: I suspect that the caller is referring to a study that described a theoretical Trojan gene effect. And in this case, I anticipate that Allison and I probably agree.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Wait, excuse me, can you explain what a Trojan gene effect is?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Sure, the idea is that this engineered gene would give a mating advantage to the fish, for example because larger salmon are maybe more successful at competing for a mate. So it would give them a mating advantage that would drive the engineered into a wild population.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: But then there's some other aspect of the gene that causes reduced viability in the offspring, and so over generations, that drives the population to extinction. Now, the problem was that the original model that was used to come up with the theoretical prediction was really very simplistic.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And some geneticists questioned it at that time. Now, we actually have some additional studies that have tried to add some of the things that were left out of that model - for example, the possibility of a evolutionary process; the fact that environmental factors can actually influence the actual traits of a fish, the way the gene gets expressed in the final - things like the final size. So we now have pretty good evidence that all points in the same direction, that the Trojan gene effect is not very likely. However, I don't think that that means then that there's absolutely nothing to worry about. There still are other important ecological effects questions.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK. Dr. Van Eenennaam, do you have anything you'd like to add to that?</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: You know, I mean, I think there's some data that has come out that in this particular fish's case shows that there actually would have reduced reproductive performance, at least the males would, relative to controlled. That's the study that came out this year. But I guess my question is the relevance of that given the proposed containment that's associated with this particular application, and that these fish are not going to be interacting with the environment. The proposal is to have them on - in land-based facilities.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK. Fair enough. Let's now go to Jerry in Ehrhardt, South Carolina. Jerry, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.</s>JERRY: Hi, good afternoon. If you would ask your guest to comment on the origin of the extreme resistance of genetic modification because it does seems to me that for a millennia we've been practicing husbandry with animals. We've been breeding them. We've been grafting plants. And the only objection to me seems to be the speed involved rather than the quality of the product because, ironically, the, excuse me, the European resistance is on the quality and is it safe, where for the layman standpoint it seems like the speed involved is the main thing and not the quality of the result because we've been doing this for generations, for millennia.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Well, thank you for that, Jerry. So the question, basically, is genetic modification is the same as, I mean, the engineering it in the lab is just the faster way of doing the same thing that people have always done in terms of breeding crops that they want or fish that they want or anything that they want. Dr. Van Eenennaam, what about that?</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: Yeah, it's a very interesting question, the level of resistance to this. And I guess one of the things that I think is really important when we're talking about risks is having a look at what the current methods of producing food, in this case salmon, are. And we're comparing, I mean, all of the Atlantic salmon that's farmed is effectively imported into the U.S. And it's raised in net pens in countries like Scotland. And net-pen aquaculture of salmon has its own ecological concerns. There's some pollution concerns. There's some disease concerns. There's actually escapes from most net pens are of those diploid, fertile growth - animals that have been selected for growth just sort of natural breeding ways that are getting out into the wild.</s>ALISON VAN EENENNAAM: And there's certainly some risks associated with that particular approach to aquaculture. And so I think when we're looking at the risks associated with genetic engineering, it's always important to have a look at the risks associated with the current approaches to raising fish. And this particular application, I might argue, is actually a more sustainable approach to raising salmon for aquaculture because you're taking the whole product on land and removing any risks associated with net-pen aquaculture and producing a more efficient, sustainable product for human consumption.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: We're talking about the science and safety of bioengineered fish. I'm Joe Palca. And this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. So, Dr. Kapuscinski, what about that? I mean, is there something special about genetically modified organisms that needs a higher level of scrutiny?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Well, the actual - the reason why people are interested in doing genetic engineering is because it has new powers, and it allows you to actually introduce genes that are either were never in that animal or that are expressed at times that have never been expressed. So it really does have the potential to fundamentally change the biology of the whole organism. It doesn't mean it'll do that all the time, but that potential is there. And I think that's why there's interest in greater scrutiny. So an example with salmon is there's one study with genetically engineered Coho salmon that also had a growth hormone gene added to them that showed that their tolerance of warmer temperatures change, so that they actually grew faster at a warmer temperature than they would have at a colder temperature that's usually the optimal temperature for salmon.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: And with selective breeding, traditional breeding, we hadn't yet seen that with salmon. So that's an example of something new that you can do. In a way, the dilemma is that the very power of genetic engineering that makes it exciting and potentially a very useful tool for some applications also raises some new questions about unexpected effects, which is I think why we're gaining more scrutiny.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So - well, I'm just curious, Dr. Kapuscinski, I mean, in the end of the day, can you imagine a time when you will have enough information to feel comfortable about saying, this particular salmon or any genetically modified animal is safe to bring in to the marketplace?</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: I think if the things that I was saying were missing were addressed, if there was a quantitative failure analysis, if some of the fairly important questions about ecological effects - if fish did escape - were answered, and if you did a good uncertainty analysis so that the overall quality of the signs and the completeness of the risk assessment were there, I would be much more comfortable with it. And the reason I keep pushing on this is I don't think it actually really makes sense to focus only on this one application, because it is such a small scale application. And we know that if it gets approved, it's then going open the door to much larger-scale use of this fish and many other fish farms. So if we, for example, come back to Dr. Van Eenennaam's idea that if you were to shift the farming of salmon from cages to inland facilities, that that would be more sustainable, what we have to ask is, first of all, I don't know if the salmon farming industry would really be willing to do that, but let's say they did. When you shift it to inland, although you are now reducing, greatly reducing the escapes compared to cages, you are going to have much higher energy use and some other uses that...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: I'm sorry. I don't like to cut you off, but...</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: Sure.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: ...I'm afraid we've run out of time for this segment.</s>ANNE KAPUSCINSKI: OK.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: It's one of those topics that's got people very interested and excited, but thank you, Dr. Kapuscinski, for joining us today. She's a professor of sustainable - sustainability science and chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth. And thank you also to Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam, extension specialist in animal genomics and biotechnology at the University of California, Davis.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: After the break, we'll talk to molecular biologist Leslie Leinwand and what she learned about her unusual choice from her - unusual choice for a lab animal: a python. Stay with us. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. |
Presenting at a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, researchers said bedbugs can survive many generations of inbreeding, allowing one pregnant female to cause a building-wide infestation. Biologist Rajeev Vaidyanathan discusses that study, and another on pesticide resistance. | JOE PALCA, HOST: Next up on this program, bedbugs, as you may have heard, are having a renaissance in cities all over the United States, in bedrooms, of course, but also in department stores, office buildings, movie theaters, and they're not cheap to get rid of. My next guest estimates New York City alone spends anywhere from 10 to $40 million a year to control them. What's behind their wild success? One reason, which you hopefully haven't experienced firsthand, is their ability to withstand our most common chemical weapons.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Another has to do with their remarkably strange sex lives. Two topics covered at this week's meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Philadelphia. My next guest is here to report about the bedbug symposium he organized, Rajeev - I'm sorry - Rajeev Vaidyanathan is an associate director of the Vector Biology at SRI International in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He's here in our New York studios. Welcome to the program, SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Vaidyanathan.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: DR. RAJEEV VAIDYANATHAN: Thank you.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So I guess we have to start, you know, we can't leave anybody hanging with this sex business, so tell us, what is it that's interesting about the sex life of bedbugs?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: There's a lot that's interesting about the sex lives of bedbugs. First of all, bedbugs themselves, in the dark, I guess, everything looks like a female bedbug. And so male bedbugs don't really discriminate, and they will attempt to mount and copulate with blood-fed immatures, blood-fed males and blood-fed females. That's just the beginning of it. On top of that, the male bedbugs themselves will penetrate the female's body cavity and will actually try to fertilize from the inside rather than going through an outside.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Ouch.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: The term for sex among bedbugs is known as traumatic insemination.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Yikes. But apart from their proclivities, is there something about their mate selection that's making this problem worse?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: True. Work done by Coby Schal and Ed Vargo at North Carolina State University tested three different hypotheses, basically where are bedbugs coming from and why are there so many of them in the U.S. now. The question was did bedbugs originate from a U.S. population and radiate outward or was there an individual introduction into the U.S. from outside and did that radiate or have there been multiple introductions from multiple sites over time. What Coby and Ed found was that multiple introductions over time account for the diversity in bedbug populations in North America. That's part of it.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: When you look across populations, you'll find a lot of genetic diversity. However, if you look at one population of bedbugs, say, it's one infestation in one apartment, in one building, there's pretty much one grandmother, one Eve that determined that entire infestation. Her sons and daughters mate with one another so there's extreme inbreeding. When they have progeny, those brothers and sisters will mate with one another. And so the degree of genetic diversity within any one bedbug population is very, very low.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: What Coby and his colleagues at North Carolina and collaborators at Rutgers found is that even within an apartment building if you have two populations of bugs, they don't even mate with one another. So you could have line from one grandmother that occupies several apartments. You might have a line from a different grandmother that occupies a separate set. But the two of them don't actually mate with each other. So the degree of genetic diversity - or rather the degree of mating between those two populations is about as much as you'd get between one population in New York and another in Vancouver.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So what are the implications of this for control strategies?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: Absolutely. I think two points that came out at the American Society of Trop Med Hygiene meeting were, one, the degree of inbreeding and, two, the degree of insecticide resistance. Consider that work done by Ken Haynes and colleagues at the University of Kentucky has found that basically every bedbug population that they've looked at - or I should say almost every one they've looked at is highly resistant to the most common class of insecticides that are use for bedbug control.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: Now, if populations that are resistant are only mating with themselves, their progeny only mate with themselves and so on, then there's an extremely conservative selection for those genes which are resistant to insecticides. So these two stories go hand in hand.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: I see. We're talking bedbugs. And if you have a question of if you're itching yourself, give us a call. 800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. What about this idea of inbreeding? Most people think or were taught that inbreeding decreases the vitality of the species. And this doesn't seemed to be the case with bedbugs.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: It doesn't. Frankly, the mechanism is not known. Part of that may well be that inbreeding in this case has a selective advantage in that it's actually choosing for genes, say, for pesticide resistance. But beyond that, frankly, we're not sure.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Hmm. What about your own research? You're doing some interesting work trying to figure out where infestations are occurring.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: That's correct. In a recent symposium, the two major deficits in bedbug research were identified as quick and efficient detection, and effective control mechanisms. So our work at SRI International is focusing on identifying the volatile compounds that are present in bedbug samples that, basically, give you a signature perfume. And if we can identify what the constituents of that signature perfume are, we can use that to enhance our detection of bedbugs. And two, we can also use that to saturate traps and enhance collection and control.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: And I think we have time for one quick question from one of our listeners. Let's go to Eric(ph) in Kansas City. Eric, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.</s>ERIC: Yeah. Howdy. I'm going to Europe here in a few months, and I was wondering if there was anything I can take, I guess, for preventive maintenance for hotels.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Preventive maintenance, a good way to put it. Dr. Vaidyanathan?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: You know, over 40 percent of Americans have changed their behaviors in hotels because of bedbugs. There is no one thing in terms of preventive maintenance. The best thing that - the two best things you can do, really, are: one, kind of check ahead of time on bedbug registry.com. And if you're there, check under the beds for the telltale fecal spots. What I always do - and number two - and when I actually go, I keep my luggage in the bathroom.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Why?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: Because there's a less chance of having bedbugs in the bathroom than actually in the bedroom itself.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Huh. And is there...</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: ...is that a concern that people should have? I mean, as in traveling or just in places where there are infestations?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: In the last 10 years - and this is a very important point you bring up. In the last 10 years, 25 percent of hotels in the United States have had bedbugs - have sprayed for bedbugs. However, that is a very misleading number. Less than 1 percent, in fact, 0.6 percent of all the rooms have had bedbugs in them. That really points to the importance of precise detection.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: If you detect bedbugs in a hotel, and you give off an insecticidal bomb in the lobby, or you indiscriminately spray in every room, it's a waste of money. It's ineffective. And it's really a disastrous PR. It's very important to determine exactly where they are and to target that area.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK. Let's take another call now and go to Maya in Acton, Massachusetts. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.</s>MAYA: Hi. I'm calling to inquire whether I should be concerned when my sister comes to visit from Brooklyn, where her building occasionally has bedbugs.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Huh. OK. What about?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: I think you should be concern that your sister lives in Brooklyn.</s>MAYA: That is a problem.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We're in New York, pal. You're going to walk out of here. You're going to get in trouble.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: No, seriously. Is there any concern - is there anything - well, is there any concern?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: Bedbugs don't travel on an individual. Bedbugs are wingless, and so they're entirely dependent on being carried either on upholstery, on a bed. And occasionally, they do migrate into luggage. It's important to distinguish between detection and infestation. And if there's one bedbug, it's not a big deal. And unfortunately, people do tend to overreact to a single bedbug. However, it's the infestations that can actually lead to bites, to redness and to actually psychological distress. If your sister is coming from Brooklyn, what you might want to try is to take a travel lint roller and go around the outside of the luggage. Anything that's on it you might be able to pick up.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Wow.</s>MAYA: Is her laundry OK? Should I be concerned with her clothing?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: If - you know what?</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: Aesthetically or bedbugs?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: That's right.</s>MAYA: She does laundry at my house, mind you.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: And you know what? That's very good because the two best things to do for actually controlling and reducing bedbug populations in the house are, number one, getting rid of clutter and vacuuming. And number two, drying the clothes on the hottest setting in the dryer. It's not the hot water of the wash, but it's really keeping them in the dryer.</s>MAYA: Dryer.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK. Maya, thanks for that call. What about the, you know, the decision to stop using DDT? Has that taken a weapon away from what might be an effective control strategy?</s>VAIDYANATHAN: I think Ken Haynes from the University of Kentucky made a very good point, that by the time DDT was commonly use for bedbug control, bedbugs were already resistant to it.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: So...</s>VAIDYANATHAN: The first instances were in 1947, 1948. And today, bedbug resistance to insecticides and to DDT in particular has been documented in over 18 countries.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK. I think we have time for one more quick call and go to George in Cincinnati. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.</s>GEORGE: Yeah. Hi. A great show. I enjoy it very much, especially this particular topic. I'm an airline pilot and I'm on the road all the time. And it's a real concern for me with bedbugs. But I wanted to ask, really, two questions. One, can animals, can dogs really detect bedbugs within a residence? And two, if, for instance, you're traveling and you wake up, and you find that you've been beaten and there are bedbugs in the room, what should you do? Should you just destroy everything you have and come home with a clean set of clothes? And I'll take your answer off the air. Thank you.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: OK. Thanks very much.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: Great. So for question number one, yes, there - canines are used to detect bedbugs. Just as dogs have been trained to find bombs or drugs, they can also sniff out bedbugs. The problem with that is that there are a high level of false positives. Sometimes they - you think they detect it when they don't. And it can get really expensive. So although they can be useful, it's not a sustainable long-term solution.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: About your second question. If you do find that you've been beaten, as I mentioned to the previous caller, probably the best thing you can do is, when you get home, wash everything on a hot cycle, and then put it at the hottest setting of your dryer for the longest time, and be careful of the seams of your luggage, which is where the bedbugs will hide.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: All right. Well, I'm afraid we have to leave our bedbug primer there. Rajeev - I'm sorry - Vaidyanathan, is the associate director of vector biology at SRI International in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Thanks very much for joining us.</s>VAIDYANATHAN: It's been my pleasure.</s>JOE PALCA, HOST: I'm Joe Palca, and this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. |
NPR's Neal Conan reads from Talk of the Nation listener comments on previous show topics, including advice for NPR's new CEO, Gary Knell, and the moments when a writer realizes he or she has become a poet. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. Last week, NPR's new president and CEO, Gary Knell, joined us on his first day on the job. Many of you wrote to tell him what you do if you were running NPR.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: I think Gary Knell's focus should be on fostering a love for public radio in our younger generation. I did not start listening to public radio until my 30s. I think it would be great to get high school students to listen to NPR. It might be a good idea to have a show devoted entirely to high school life and the issues that surround it.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: And Paul Stern(ph) emailed from Philadelphia to tell us: I'm a 26-year-old conservative, and I grew up listening to NPR. But I've always got the impression that NPR dislikes me as a conservative. Please ask the new CEO to spend time listening to conservative feedback on the news and commentary shows. Some of us really love NPR and would like to be included in the culture of the network.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: Nikky Finney also joined us last week, fresh off her win at the National Book Awards to talk about what the honor means to her, an also what it means to be a poet.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: Richard Hill from Tijuana, Mexico, emailed: Poetry was a means of doodling during business writing. As a project manager, these short verses were part of my development since childhood. But I think I became a poet when I wrote a comforting verse to my dinner date after she'd received some distressing news. She thanked me, gave me a soft kiss, placed the missive a zippered pocket inside of her purse, and whispered suggestively, let's get dessert.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: When we talked with Judy Blume, a number of librarians wrote to complain when we noted that her books had been banned in a number of school libraries over the years.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: This is from Susan Kaphammer(ph) in Washington State. It should be clarified that school libraries do not ban books, but sometimes requests for reconsideration of materials have resulted in books being removed from library collections. Professional teacher librarians are charged with selecting materials and with upholding freedom-to-read principles. Parents may certainly guide the reading choices of their own children, but the right to limit access for all students should be limited ideally.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: And often, complaints about materials either from within the school or from the outside community engage a comprehensive review process that considers the value of a work in its entirety and its appropriateness for the intended audience. Unfortunately, in some cases, school staff or administration sidestep such a process and allow minority pressure to effectively ban materials. By the way, banning a book is a proven way to increase student interest in it.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: And a correction. During our conversation about the new TLC reality show, "All-American Muslim," our guest said that several companies had pulled their commercials from the show under pressure from outside groups. He mentioned Home Depot, Sweet'N Low and Wal-Mart. A spokesman from Home Depot told us: It's not true that they bought time on the network not for any specific show. Although one of our commercials did appear during an episode, we were not a sponsor, and we did not have any advertising schedule to run on future episodes. The other companies did not respond to our requests for comment.</s>Vanessa in Cleveland offered this suggestion: If you have a correction, comment or a question for us, the best way to reach us is by email. The address: talk@npr.org. Please, let us know where you're writing from and give us some help on how to pronounce your name. If you're on Twitter, you can follow us there, @totn. Or you can follow me, @nealconan, all one word. |
Despite news of terrorist bombings and crackdowns in Syria, two recent books argue the world has never seen so little war and violence. Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Joshua Goldstein, author of Winning the War on War, discuss. Originally broadcast on December 7, 2011. | NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Dozens of bodies dumped on the streets of a Syrian city; suicide bombers explode themselves in mosques on a holy day in Afghanistan; a woman shoots her two children, then herself, in a welfare office in Texas; just a few of the headline stories from a world seemingly afflicted by war and violence.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: But Joshua Goldstein argues that despite Iraq and Afghanistan, Congo and Sudan, the past 10 years have seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years. And Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker goes even further. We may be living in the most peaceful period in the history of our species. Really? And if so, why?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you'd like to challenge the contrarians, 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, Egypt's elections and the rise of the Salafists. But first, winning the war on violence. Joining us now from a studio at Harvard is Joshua Goldstein, professor emeritus of international relations at American University. His book is titled "Winning the War on War." Nice to have you with us today.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Nice to be with you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And just given those headlines, it really is hard to believe that there is measurably less violence this decade than in the past 100 years.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, think about that war that started 70 years ago, World War II. That was a war in which the levels of violence were 100 times higher than the wars today. And if you measure it, the 1990s were double today. The Cold War years were triple.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: So in the United States, we've had a hard decade of war, no doubt about it, and one war is one too many. The things that still happen are heartbreaking and terrible. But overall, the trend is downward. And the big piece of this trend is that the most terrible, destructive wars are between the large national armies with their tank formations and their submarines and airplanes, and nowhere in the world today anymore are two of those large national armies fighting each other head-to-head.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: This is a huge change from history, when they were fighting each other most of the time, and it means that what we're left with are smaller wars, still terrible but smaller, more limited in size and geographically limited civil wars. And that's a big change.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Well, saying that there are fewer war deaths this past decade than at any time in the past 100 years, isn't that another way of indicting the past 100 years and maybe this decade is the anomaly?</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, no, because the past 100 years were - there was a big explosion of violence in the early part of the 20th century, but the 17th century was no picnic either. The Thirty Years' War destroyed a third of the population of Germany, and back through history there have been terrible wars much of the time.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: And even in prehistoric times, as many as a quarter of the men in a society not infrequently died in wars. So it's actually a new thing and something that's developed in the least 60 years and especially the last 20 years. And we can talk about why it is, and Steven Pinker will have more to say about that also, but the big change is that people are finding other ways to solve their problems, not through war, and we're seeing an actual shrinking in the number of people killed worldwide.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We'll get to that, of course, but Steven Pinker joins us now, professor of psychology at Harvard University. His book is "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," and nice to have you back with us.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And you go even further into the past and make a broader assumption, that indeed this is the, probably, the most peaceful period in human history.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Yes, the decline of war that scholars such as Joshua Goldstein have documented is one of a number of historical declines of violence. Others include the plummeting of rates of interpersonal violence, one-on-one homicides, which have fallen by about a factor of 35 since the Middle Ages in every European country for which statistics are available.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Another example is the abolition of cruel and barbaric institutionalized practices like human sacrifice, like chattel slavery, like the use of the death penalty for trivial infractions, the burning of heretics, bear-baiting, the list goes on.</s>STEVEN PINKER: And yet another one is the even more recent targeting of violence on smaller scales directed against vulnerable sectors of the population like racial minorities. So we've seen an elimination of the practice of lynching in the United States, which used to take place at a rate of about 150 a year and fell to zero by 1950. Rates of rape have fallen, rates of domestic abuse. Popularity of spanking and other forms of corporal punishment have gone down.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Even more recently, practices that wouldn't even have been categorized as violence in previous decades, like bullying, have now been targeted for elimination. A few years ago, bullying was just childhood, boys will be boys. Now we've brought it in under the umbrella of violence and sought to minimize it for the first time in history.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Yet we always hear: the 20th century, the most violent, the bloodiest century in human history.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Well, people who make that claim never cite numbers from any century other than the 20th, and as Joshua Goldstein has pointed out, the 17th century with its wars of religion, the 14th century with its Mongol invasions, many other centuries have atrocities that can hold their head high when compared against the 20th century.</s>STEVEN PINKER: The annihilation of native peoples of the Americas and Australia and Africa, the Islamic and Atlantic slave trades racked up horrific death tolls.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein. We're talking about the reduction in violence, measurable over millennia, according to them and certainly over the last 110 years. Really? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Let's turn to Bruce(ph), and Bruce is on the line with us from Gainesville.</s>BRUCE: Hi, I've got a question about all of the blood slaughter that's been going on in Africa over the last decade. I hear about the industrialized nations, the high-tech nations like Europe, all over Europe, the United States, but I don't hear anything about Africa. And I know there's been a lot of bloodshed there. Do you want to comment about that, please?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joshua Goldstein, there's slaughter in places like Rwanda, obviously the ongoing war in Congo. Elections only seem to engender fears of more violence.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, there are fears of more violence in Congo, but the amount of violence is way down. I mean, 10, 12 years ago, there were six foreign armies in Congo. It was considered Africa's first world war. And since the U.N. got there a decade ago, the war has become much more localized.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Now, there are still atrocities going on in some of these eastern provinces, and I don't want to say that's okay, but it's much smaller scale. And across the continent, there's been a big reduction of war in the last decade. Places that - you see, war is more newsworthy. It's - we think about it. It gets our attention.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: But in places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, and you mentioned Rwanda, where there was a terrible genocide 15 years ago, we forget about them once they are at peace, whereas the ones that are still at war, that we're afraid will go back to war, we remember those. And that's why we never acknowledge that we're actually making some progress, even though obviously the work isn't finished.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Bruce? I guess he's left us. Which raises the question: If these are all advances, why are we doing better? And Steven Pinker, you advance several causes, one of them, and this goes back through history, is the evolution of the state.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Yes, probably Hobbes got it right when he said that a leviathan, a third party with a monopoly on the use of - legitimate use of force in a territory, might be among the biggest violence reduction techniques ever invented. When you outsources your revenge to a third party, you're less likely to keep acting on the belief that you're always on the side of the angels and the other guy is always treacherous and evil, and your violence is always justified retaliation, the other guy's violence is always naked, unprovoked aggression.</s>STEVEN PINKER: When you have both sides thinking that, you can get endless cycles of revenge and vendetta and blood feud. When you've got the state and the judicial system meting out the punishments, you can cap the damage after one round.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Now, in the international arena, of course, we don't have a global leviathan, a world government, but Joshua Goldstein points out how the international peacekeepers, which are a kind of soft, rough equivalent, the closest that the world has to an international police force, have, contrary to impressions, been effective.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Effective, Joshua Goldstein?</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Yes, way more effective than people credit. I think there are three big reasons for the decline of war in the international system, one of which is this shift of norms that Steven Pinker has referred to. Things like dueling or human sacrifice just aren't cool anymore.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: The second is the rise of prosperity and interdependence so that you don't get rich by conquering territory anymore, you get rich by trade, and war doesn't work for that.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: But the third, which I focus on primarily, is the rise of the United Nations and peacekeeping, which has given the international community a way to manage and reduce conflicts, not to bring about world peace in one big gulp but to go into war zones where formerly ceasefires would break down more than half of the time.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: But now most of them stick. Ninety percent stick because peacekeepers are able to provide that security. Now, this has been a very - as we all know, a challenging job for the United Nations and one that hasn't always been successful. But over the last decades, the U.N. has gotten better at peacekeeping, has gotten more effective at peacekeeping, and it's really cheap.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: So the average American household pays $700 every month for our military and veterans' benefits, but $2 a month for peacekeeping, so $2 versus $700, and it gets us things that our military can't get us, not to say it can do everything the military does, but $2. So we could be beefing this up a little bit, and it's quite cost-effective.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: The old rule of thumb used to be peacekeepers were good at keeping the peace when both sides wanted the peace kept. What are they doing better now to make more of those situations, as you say, keep the peace more often than not?</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, they've adapted in several ways, and one is that they're more robust now. So they go in with military force that if there's a spoiler trying to bring down a whole peace agreement and throw a society back into war, maybe so that some militia can get diamonds or (unintelligible) or something, the peacekeepers are willing to use force to protect civilians and to make sure that the agreement sticks.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: I mean, they're in Democratic Congo with attack helicopters now, which is not our idea of traditional peacekeepers being neutral and never getting involved in conflict.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Perhaps the recent situation in the Ivory Coast, Cote d'Ivoire, might be an example where they intervened and, well, brought about change and made a very bad situation much better.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: That was an excellent example because the elections there had been - they had driven out the incumbent president, but he was holding on to power. He was beginning to slaughter civilians, and that could have gone right back to another decade of civil war. And that was a terrible war there. But the U.N. with French backing came in and put the rightful owner into power, so to speak, in a pretty robust way, and stabilized the society.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein, who you just heard, about what's driving the decline in war and violence. We'll get to more of your calls in a moment, 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. Two recent books reach similar conclusions about war and violence, that we see less of both than at almost any time in recent history. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's latest book is titled "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." Joshua Goldstein's latest is "Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide."</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: If you'd like to challenge these contrarians, 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. Linda's on the line, calling form Portland.</s>LINDA: Hi.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Hi, Linda, go ahead, please.</s>LINDA: I hate to sound so cheery on such a sad subject, but I'm a cultural anthropologist of Japan, and I teach a course on the anthropology of violence. And one of the questions that I have is whether perhaps the nature of violence in the 20th century and 21st century might be considered qualitatively different for two reasons. One is the use of mass media. In other words, we may be more aware of more violence, but perhaps, you know, as both authors are saying, this is actually a time when we have less violence compared to other centuries.</s>LINDA: On the other hand, I wanted to ask the question about the use of high technology, especially when we look at something like the Holocaust, that the Nazis were very effective in killing six million Jews in the space of a very short amount of time precisely because of the nature of technology.</s>So the question that I have for them is: Could they address the issues of maybe the quantitative and qualitative nature of violence in the 20th century and how you would compare that to previous centuries?</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steven Pinker, why don't you start on quality of violence.</s>STEVEN PINKER: I think the technology has not been a major factor. We've seen in Rwanda that you can rack up hundreds of thousands of deaths in a genocide using nothing more high-tech than a machete. And even during the Holocaust, the majority of Jews did not die in the gas chambers but at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen, just men in trucks with guns who lined people up and then shot them in the back of the neck.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Certainly we have horrific images of nuclear explosions at the end of the Second World War, but there too the number of deaths were a tiny fraction of those that died in the Second World War. And on the whole, I think the motive to kill people is a more powerful determinant of how many people get killed than the means at their disposal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Joshua Goldstein, what about the awareness of violence promulgated by - it seems you can't throw a punch at an Occupy rally without getting captured on a cell phone camera.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, that's right. I agree with Linda that the media has changed our perception of war. And as we're getting more and more coverage of the world, little clashes, skirmishes in the remote parts of the world from us now appear on our televisions, if not our cell phones, and so we're more aware of them, and it seems like the world's getting more and more violent.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, these things and much worse used to happen, and we were just completely unaware of them. So that's a big change that's contrary to the underlying trends but makes it seem as though things are getting worse and worse.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Linda, thanks very much.</s>LINDA: Sure, thank you.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Email from Gary in Campbell, California: How can you talk about world peace without mentioning the D-word, democracy? Joshua Goldstein, is that a factor?</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, I think it is a factor to some extent, and there are multiple causes here. The reason it didn't make my top three list is that the recent peace is also extending to countries that are not democracies, and notably China. China has not had a military battle in 25 years, and that's a remarkable record for a country after centuries of war, civil war and revolution. And China is not a democracy.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: So I can't see that democracy is the full story here. There's something deeper at work here. Now, China is a country that's depending on trade for wealth and where the leaders take their legitimacy from delivering prosperity, and that prosperity is based on trading with the other countries of the world. So war is not a viable path for them to stay in power or to build up their country.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And Steven Pinker, commerce is indeed one of the factors that you cite.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Yes, well, a basic principle of evolutionary biology is that organisms cooperate when they can deliver mutual benefits, reciprocal altruism. And so mechanisms that make it easier and more profitable to trade make other people more valuable alive than dead.</s>STEVEN PINKER: And as Joshua Goldstein pointed out, China has become peaceful as a capitalist country but not as a democratic country, and it's very unlikely, even though much has been written about the rivalry between the U.S. and China, but it's unlikely that they'll fight out this rivalry on the battlefield.</s>STEVEN PINKER: I mean, they make too much of our stuff. We owe them too much money. It would be suicide on both sides to engage in a war, and that's what reciprocal exchange does to people. They may not like each other, but they want to keep each other alive and well.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to Tom. Tom's on the line from San Jose.</s>TOM: Hey, great show, Neal, and thanks for taking my call.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Sure.</s>TOM: Yeah, gentlemen, you made some great points, but I'd like to point out that according to the Lancet, the British medical journal, over a million Iraqi children were killed due to U.S.-backed sanctions back in the '90s. And that's not even counting the current, you know, shock-and-awe type of war that's gone on since, you know, 2003.</s>TOM: And that's over twice as many people killed as American service people were killed in World War II, which was supposedly much more violent than it is today. And of course we have thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at Russia and China and who knows who else. So the statistics could change dramatically in just a matter of minutes, you know, literally, you know, 20, 30 minutes.</s>TOM: So anyway, I think Americans, you know, they just yawned when we heard the statistics about the children dying in Iraq and earlier in the '80s about the, you know, hundreds of thousands killed by, you know, death squads, you know, backed by the CIA and so on. And we go to Vietnam and Korea. You know, we bombed every city in Korea to the ground, even towns and villages completely obliterated.</s>TOM: And there's been no change in American looking at this war-like policy at all, even under Obama. He's just continued, you know, Bush's policies, you know, supporting the military industrial congressional complex, which pretty much has, you know, bought our government the same way the Wall Street bankers have.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom, you've raised a couple of points there. One, Joshua Goldstein, your statistics are based on the deaths directly attributable to war. Would they have included, as Tom mentioned, the numbers of Iraqis who died as the indirect result of economic international sanctions on Iraq back in the 1990s up to 2003?</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: No, that's not included. What I'm looking at is deaths of civilians and military directly from war or violence. And that's easier to measure than the idea of indirect deaths that, you know, because of the Gulf War, then we had sanctions, and then these children went hungry, and you can try to figure out how many people died.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Look, a lot of people have died as an indirect result of war. There's no doubt about it. But these tend to move together. If there's a big war, and a lot of people are dying from bullets and bombs, those populations are also being displaced and malnourished and cholera epidemics begin and so forth. So these two measures, the direct and indirect, it's not that people killed indirectly are less important, but they tend to move together, and the direct deaths is a better way to measure change through time.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: And that's what we care about here. Now, it's a terrible world, and a lot of people, too many are dying horrible deaths. Don't get me wrong, it's horrible out there. But the question is: Is it less horrible than it used to be? And if you look carefully, it is less horrible. That means we're on the right track.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: It's like if you had cancer, and that would be terrible, but if you went to your doctor and found that the treatments were shrinking the tumors, you'd say we're on the right track, let's stay on this track. And in this case we're doing the right things to shrink and manage conflict worldwide, and although there's still terrible wars going on, we should stay on this track and do more of the things that are working, such as U.N. peacekeeping.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom's point, Steven Pinker, the United States still has tens of thousands of troops in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan said to be winding up by 2014, undeclared wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and in the eastern - in the Horn of Africa area, again Somalia. He's right, the United States is involved in more wars than ever.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Yes, but it's completely misleading to say that nothing has changed since Korea. If you simply say wars exist now, wars existed then, well, that's true. But if you look at how many people get killed in the war, there's just no comparison.</s>STEVEN PINKER: You plot the numbers on a graph, and they absolutely plummet. Just, if you take just American civilians - soldiers alone, we're comparing, say, 58,000 in Vietnam to something more like 5,500 in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. That's a factor of 10, and that's two wars over almost a decade.</s>STEVEN PINKER: The same story is true if you look at the number of, say, Koreans killed and Vietnamese killed compared to the number of Iraqis and Afghanis killed. You really have to look at the numbers, and if you go by the headlines, if you go by anecdotes from memory, you're going to get a very misleading impression about how dangerous the world is.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Tom, thanks very much for the call.</s>TOM: Thank you, Neal, it's a great show.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's go next to - this is Steven(ph), Steven with us from Normal, Illinois.</s>STEVEN: Good afternoon, Gentlemen. Great show, Neal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Go ahead, please. Thank you.</s>STEVEN: I just wanted to ask a quick question about the exponential escalation in violence when it comes to the war on drugs. It's a war we've been fighting for about 40 years now, and you look at the tens of thousands of people that have died in Mexico this year, and that number has gone up every year.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I think you're - I think it's about 30,000 total, it's something in that ballpark.</s>STEVEN: Yeah, something like that.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Okay. Would that have been included, Joshua Goldstein?</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: No, that's not a war between politically motivated armed factions. It is included in Steven Pinker's analysis of overall violence and the decline thereof. And it's terrible what's going on in Mexico, 30,000 people killed. But as Steven Pinker mentioned, the Korean War killed a million people directly and several million, you know, indirectly. Vietnam War, a million and a half, people (unintelligible) - and that's not to mention World War II, Pearl Harbor and all that followed it.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: We killed more people in a single night in the bombing raids over Japanese or German cities, in one night than are - have been killed in the Mexico drug or from the get-go until now. And we did it repeatedly night after night. And it wasn't collateral damage. It was deliberate strategy. So we have to remember these historical landmarks to judge whether we're going forwards or backwards. And then we have to rededicate ourselves to keep moving forward. We shouldn't be complacent by any means.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Steven Pinker, I wanted to follow up with you on that. It is important, you said to look at these numbers because it makes the past seem less innocent, the present and maybe the future too less caring.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Yes. The way not to understand the rate and changes in violence is to tick off all the violence that still exists on the earth today. What that shows is that rates of violence have not gone down to zero, and neither Joshua Goldstein or I would say that rates of violence have gone down to zero. What does that mean? That means if you find all the violence that does exist on the earth, you can list them as you did at the beginning of the program. Your callers can phone in with drug violence in Jamaica or terrorism in India. There are lots of examples. That tells you nothing. What you have to do is imagine all the spots on earth that now don't have violence but did have a few years ago and would have if rates of violence continued.</s>STEVEN PINKER: There isn't a war in Angola the way there was a couple of decades ago. If someone isn't shot by a sniper, there isn't a camera crew there announcing 40 people today were not killed by a deranged sniper. All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news. Only when you add those up and put them into the denominator of the fraction can you say anything about the rate of violence and can you say anything about whether the rate has gone up, gone down or stayed the same. Listing examples of violence that still take place proves nothing.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Steven Pinker, Harvard college professor of psychology. And also with us, Joshua Goldstein, a professor emeritus of international relations at American University. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And this email from Michael in Spanish Fork, Utah: Looking at what's going on right now in Europe, one can't help but think that 70 years ago, similar issues were resolved with tanks and airplanes. In my opinion, economic interdependence has done more to mitigate violence than anything else.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Absolutely. The European story is just miraculous after centuries of bringing the world some of its biggest, most bloody conflicts. People there, it's not all economic. That's part of it, but people deliberately set out to integrate the continent, to make the countries dependent on each other and to build a common culture of Europe. And today, that French German border that was fought over with huge fortifications and massive armies crossing back and forth, now that border consists of a single sign by the side of the road that says Germany or France. By the way, you're crossing a border, which barely is a border. And this is remarkable, it's the dog that didn't bark. The thing that didn't happen, the war in Europe, the war in China that we don't pay attention to because it didn't happen, but it is the story, the things that are not happening that could have happened or that in the past would've happened.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Let's try to - oh, I'm sorry. Steven, go ahead</s>STEVEN PINKER: Yeah. And for all the criticism that greed and capitalism and profit and materialism are subject to, we should remind ourselves that they're historically often better than rectifying historic injustices, promoting national or religious supremacy, bringing the kingdom of God to earth, and all kinds of spiritual motives that can do a lot more damage than people just wanting a good material life for themselves.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: An email from Susan(ph) in Davis, California: I was just speaking with daughter last night about tribalism and globalism. It seems as though humans are, by their nature, tribal. I wonder whether, as our worldview shifts to a more global worldview, we become less tribal and territorial. We begin to understand more about the need to co-exist more peacefully. And, Steven Pinker, all that technology we talked about that records all that violence, it also makes it possible for us to see and hear and know about each other.</s>STEVEN PINKER: Yes, it's true. And as a psychologist, I'd be the first to agree that tribalism is a part of our psychology. But what mentally counts as a tribe can be very fluid. It - all of us belong to multiple tribes. We may belong to a particular religion and a particular state and a particular occupational guild, in a university or a club or a corporation and a country and an alliance, and nothing forces the concept of a tribe to coincide, say, within an ethnic group or an actual tribe. And I think the prevalence of media have given rise to virtual tribes, such as, perhaps, the entire global community, ideally, and make it harder to demonize people who may not happen to look like us or speak our language.</s>STEVEN PINKER: And there is a precedent for this because the first wave of media was the rise of print and books in the 18th century, which led to some of the first humanitarian reforms like the abolition of slavery. People read fiction, like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or memoirs like "Frederick Douglass" could see what it's like to be, say, an African-American slave, and they no longer feel like a different tribe. They feel like members of your own tribe. And so I think that global media can have the liberalizing force of elevating people beyond the narrow default concept of tribe to something that's more universal.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And, Joshua Goldstein, you've done yeoman work throughout this broadcast to remind us that terrible things still go on, that nuclear weapons still exist, that these statistics can change in the blink of an eye. What if there was one thing we could continue working on most focally would you recommend that be?</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Well, it's the United Nations, and it comes right out of this tribal issue, tribal identity versus global identity. So the U.N. not only is doing practical good work with peacekeeping and so forth, but it's also our identity as human beings. When I was a kid, we went around with orange boxes, collecting money for UNICEF. It symbolized that we were part of this larger human family, and the whole rise of humanitarian that's happened in my lifetime is remarkable.</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Now one of the myths in the United States is that Americans don't like the U.N. This isn't true. Polls, public opinion polls show that about 80 percent of Americans strongly support the U.N., want us to keep contributing to it. And if there's one thing I would say that we can do and should do, it's to re-up our support for the U.N., to give more resources to peacekeeping, which are always under-funded and trying to do more with less. It would be good to do more with more. And so...</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Joshua...</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: Yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...I have to cut you off. Joshua Goldstein...</s>JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN: That's OK.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: ...joined us from WFCR in Amherst, Steven Pinker at a studio at Harvard. We thank them both. Egypt's elections when we come back. This is NPR News. |
Three months after the tsunami and nuclear disaster struck Japan, AP photographer David Guttenfelder ventured into the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The only non-Japanese photographer allowed in, he captured crumbling reactor buildings and haunting footprints. See David Guttenfelder's photos for National Geographic, 'Scenes From Japan's Devastated Nuclear Plant' | NEAL CONAN, HOST: It's nine months since the nine-point earthquake the - hit off the east coast of Japan. The quake and the tsunami that followed combined to trigger a crisis at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which continues to leak radiation. More than 70,000 people in the surrounding area evacuated. In June, National Geographic sent AP photographer David Guttenfelder to exclusion zone outside the plant.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: In November, he went to the plant itself. His photography is featured in the December issue of National Geographic. David Guttenfelder is chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press and joins us now by phone from his home in Tokyo. Nice to have you with us.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Thank you for having me.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And I know it's very early where you are. We appreciate your getting up so early to speak with us. I know you had a chance to talk with people who lived near the nuclear power plant. Where are they now?</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Well, it's impossible to meet with them inside the nuclear exclusion zone because everyone is gone. The town around the nuclear power plant looks like ghost towns. It's a complete no-man's land and it's blocked off. But I can meet with the people where they're living now. As you said, 70,000 people have left the area. For the first several months, they were living in gymnasiums and living in any kind of public housing they could or with relatives. I found them, you know, squatting on gymnasium floors, living in cardboard boxes, living in small cubicles and hallways.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: And many of them have begun to move out of those facilities, and they're starting to move into temporary housing or joining family members. But the question is really where will these people go? Because there's really no idea whether or not these people will have a chance to go back to their homes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: And they can't go back to their homes. How did you get into the no-go area?</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Well, National Geographic asked me to try to go inside the nuclear exclusion zone. There were really no pictures from inside the zone, and people were wondering what's happening there. There are people who are able to get in and out who have reasons to go into the zone, including a father and son team that I met who were animal rights activists. And they were concerned about the pets, domestic pets that were left behind and some of the farm animals.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: People picked up and took off on the first day, and so all the pets, all the animals, cows - there's even ostriches living in an ostrich farm inside. And these guys decided to go in and try to rescue pets and try to bring them out and I followed them.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: So they tried to rescue pets from the exclusion zone. It's hard to imagine that people left their pets behind, but, of course, there's a panic. There's a well-drilled instinct in the Japanese people when the earthquake hits to head for high ground.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Yes. And also, I think people really thought they were coming back. The government told people at the beginning that the plant was not going to be leaking radiation. They told them just around the three-kilometer area from the plant that those people should pull back. So, you know, people left everything. They took just what they had on their backs, and they thought that they'd be coming back very soon. But then, of course, the power plant exploded. It sent a cloud of nuclear debris over this area the size of Chicago. And people really haven't been able to come back at all.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Some have been able to come back on short government-sponsored trips. They can go in for two hours and bring out things from their home, whatever will fit into a bag. But they were taken by surprise, I think. They didn't think they'd get a chance to come back and take their pets out. So these guys were working with some of the evacuees, identifying their houses sometimes by GPS coordinates. And they were going in unofficially through the mountains, around barricades at night to feed pets, to find people's pets and to bring them out.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: And I followed them. And it started with me trying to show their activities. But overtime, they began to understand what I was trying to do, that I wanted to show, like, a more complete picture of what was happening inside the exclusion zone. And so they became, sort of, invested in what I was doing, and we began working as a team on going in and out of the zone. We also lived inside the zone. We were staying in Gold Gyms or abandoned gas stations or sleeping in our car.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're seeing here in the Grosvenor Auditorium a slideshow of your photographs. If people in the radio audience want to take a look, you could find a link to the photos at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. There's a link there to the photographs, which are astonishing, but it shows people in these protection suits, these white suits that they use to - I hope you were wearing one of those.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: I was wearing one of those, yes.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: Good. What is the health of those who were exposed though during those first few days before the evacuation was complete?</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Well, yes, people were stuck inside for a couple of days. In some cases, people didn't, you know, they had to find out about their situation just by watching the news like everyone else on television, make decisions about whether or not they would take their families out. You know, mayors led whole towns in an exodus out of the zone, so they were - they've spent the first - in some cases, the community spent the first 48 hours sitting in the open; eating, drinking, without protection around very, very high nuclear radiation levels.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: In some cases, they've fled to higher grounds, (unintelligible) instinctively getting away from the reactors and moving into higher ground, which turned out to be a mistake because there was a - those pockets were - had a much higher radioactive level. In this photograph, these are people who are gathering in a gymnasium just outside on the edge of the exclusion zone, and this was part of a program the government was allowing people to go in to reclaim some of the things from their homes. So this would've been the first time they could go back into the exclusion zone.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: They were being briefed on how to protect themselves, how to wear these white hazmat suits. They were given a small bag. The families would get together in the gym and decide together what kinds of things they'd want to bring out. They only had two hours and one bag. So you'd hear a mother and father and children talking about what were their priorities, and the child would say, well, I need my school uniform. And the father would say, well, I need the deed to our land or I need - the wife said, well, we should get my old wedding kimono, and they would go in and wearing masks and the whole suit, gather what they could in the two hours and come back out. And I was able to follow a couple of families, see them do this.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: We're talking with David Guttenfelder, chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press. Again, you can go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. There's a link there to the pictures we're talking about. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Later, you got a chance to go in on a sponsored visit to the zone, to the plant itself. Can you describe today what that is like and what it's like for the men and women who work there? It's still leaking radiation.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Yeah, they finally, a few weeks ago, put together a small trip of journalists, two busloads of journalists. We had to also be briefed on how to wear protective equipment, to carry dosimeters, the meters that register how much radiation you're absorbing, and we were loaded onto buses. I had to put cameras inside plastic bags and seal them. It was very difficult to shoot photos through a bus window with a camera inside a plastic bag, wearing this complete plastic face mask and a respirator. And we entered the grounds of the nuclear power plant and stopped the bus and we could see the unit number four completely blown apart. We stopped and looked at it from a distance.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: And then they said, no, we're going in, and we drove down. We went right along the coast. I mean, the wave came in - at the time of the tsunami, there was a four-story tall wave. There was a seawall that was meant to protect against, you know, waves coming into the - along the coast, but it completely obliterated it. It flooded the nuclear plant. So we drove along between the sea and the plant. We were about 10 feet away from the wall of the building, so our dosimeters were, you know, beeping loudly. It was very high radiation level, and we just drove past.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: We went inside the emergency center, and there are hundreds of people who are still working there. And there are people in Japan who, many of them construction workers, laborers, were going inside every day to try to, you know, solve this problem. They're trying to bring the temperatures down inside the plant, and they say that by Friday that they'll finally reach a cold shut down situation, which means that they'll bring the temperatures down enough and that the plants are no longer leaking enough radiation that they'll begin - they'd be able to begin to start cleaning up the area.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: David Guttenfelder, thanks very much for your time today. That's an amazing description. Appreciate it.</s>DAVID GUTTENFELDER: Thank you very much for having us.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: David Guttenfelder, chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press. He joined us by phone from Japan. Tomorrow, NPR commentator Ted Koppel, just back from Baghdad, on the risks of withdrawal from Iraq.</s>NEAL CONAN, HOST: I'm Neal Conan at the Grosvenor Auditorium at National Geographic. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. |