Sort of the intellectual or business father of this. But he himself did not survive. But the practice did survive. And I want to ask for some distinctions here. You have different terms in the book, slaves, indentured servants and what you call free willers. I'm intrigued by the concept of a free willer. Who were they, and what did they get from essentially putting themselves in servitude?

Well, that's what they got. They put themselves in servitude. They were desperate. They were poor people or people who didn't have enough money to pay for the trip to America. They wanted a new life. They hoped that they would get one in America. And so they signed themselves away, their freedoms away, as indentured servants to pay for their passage. And that would be for anything between three and 11 years, usually. Now most of them, initially, didn't survive more than a couple of years.

The first - the average, I think, lifespan of a new indentured servant in the 1620s was probably two years. So these were - they were called at the time free willers because they went of their free will, and so many others didn't go of their free will. They were sent there. They were sent there in chains. They were sentenced to go there. They weren't free at all. Well, nor were these people. So that's the free willers. They are indentured servants.

What about the relationship of the white indentured servants to the African or African-descendant slaves?How did they get along, and how did the people who were essentially their masters treat them differently, if they did?


So the legislation you're pushing for would require anyone with a sex trafficking conviction to register as an offender in New Mexico. A similar bill recently failed in the state Legislature. Do you think that the Epstein case and the attention that it's getting will flip some votes?Do you think the bill is more likely to pass now?

I think the Epstein case - if there is only one positive that comes from this matter, it's that there will be more awareness that human trafficking and child trafficking is everywhere in every community, and any community can be exploited. It's appalling that the Legislature did not give this bill one hearing last year, much less consider the reform. I think the Epstein case will bring considerable amount of awareness on this issue and the real need to better protect children.

Epstein has not faced charges in New Mexico, but I understand that your office is interviewing people about what took place on his ranch. What can you tell us about that?

We do have an active investigation. We are meeting with survivors and victims involved in that matter. I'm very concerned that there definitely was a course of conduct here in New Mexico within our borders and that we don't leave any stone unturned. And we're also going to be forwarding any federal evidence to the federal authorities in New York.


Were you surprised by these numbers?

Yeah, these numbers are pretty high, and it is surprising, and I think that on one hand they're sort of real because we've seen this change over the last two decades as the rates have slowly gone up, and on the other hand they're inflated a little bit, probably because of the way they were obtained.

These are - the CDC did a study, which is like polling data. They - it's called the National Representative randomized Cross-sectional Survey. And it's - this particular trial supposedly was done with land line and cell phone telephone surveys of all households who have children.

There was a similar study just published a couple weeks ago that was on autism, which showed the rate of autism was two percent of the population, which is also very high and was discussed just in the same way. But these are epidemiological survey data, and they're worth something. We have other data to show that the numbers are indeed going up.


And we shall not - I certainly won't see his like again. He was also incredibly fun. And so that's the thing to try to hold onto.

He wrote a lot of letters by hand, didn't he?

He wrote tons of letters. I bet there are a hundred thousand - hundreds out there signed, all the best, George Bush. Many of them are compiled in a lovely volume he did. His - you know, he was the son of a mother who insisted that he not talk - that one not talk about oneself. He was - so when it came time to write a book after he left the presidency, he didn't. . .

Oh, right.


But you also said let me reassure you, I've seen the quality of that work. In other words, these plans are viable, credible, ready to go?

Yes, I have. I did say that. Part of my job in the Pentagon was the oversight - civilian oversight of military planning, and one of the things that we've, you know, we're charged with is to prepare options for the president no matter the contingency. And certainly, there are very viable plans with regard to contingencies involving Iran. But again, the judgment is at this point that's not where the focus should be.

And as you know, Israel has - well, has plans of its own - contingencies. And I know a large part of your speech was devoted to the idea that they should hold off and reassuring them the United States would take action if necessary and that Israeli action would be counterproductive. More counterproductive than an American strike?

Well, my point to them was we have a shared objective here - preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons and that, you know, any military action really only buys time. It's a delaying action for one to three years. It sets the program back, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability. To do that, you'll need a continued international campaign with sanctions, with negotiations to eventually change their calculus.


Well, social networks and blogs have moved ahead of personal emailing among the most popular online activities. This is according to the Nielsen Company, which monitors consumer behavior. And they say time spent on these social networking sites is growing three times faster than the overall Internet rate. And they say over two thirds of the world's online population now visits social networking and blogging sites. But the issue now is how to fund these sites, right?

Mm hmm.

So, like Facebook, for example, has a huge audience, a growing audience but has very relatively little obvious advertising compared to a site like MySpace, which is cluttered with ads but have seen their audience flatten. So, it's a catch 22 for some of these sites.

Well, speaking of social networks, a hugely popular site, YouTube, is having issues overseas. Tell us about that.


So a medicinal leech is a common name that we use for leeches that feed on humans. . .

Oh.

. . . And have anticoagulants that could be used in modern medicine. Leeches have these anticoagulants in their saliva. So when they bite, that causes the blood to flow and for the blood to stay liquid inside the leech once it's eaten it. And this has been used in medicine for many, many years. It was most popular in the 17, 1800s in Western medicine, and it's even used today in modern medicine. Leeches are approved medical device in the United States, and they're used readily.

Tell me about your collection method. How did you find this three-jawed leech?


Thanks so much for having me on.

Can you tell me a little bit about Nebraska's land and what it means to its residents, the farmers?

Yeah. So Nebraska is in many ways a typical Great Plains state. Because the Missouri River cuts through along the eastern edge of the state, that's where all of the population originally settled. And so you have major industrial centers in south Sioux City and in Omaha. And then you have the capital educational center of Lincoln. But when you travel west of Lincoln, there's almost no one there. The small farming communities have gotten smaller and smaller in the last 50 years. And you can drive for hours essentially seeing only flatlands that are planted to corn and to soybeans and occasionally dotted with hog barns and feedlots for cattle.

Speaking to that disappearing landscape, I'd like you to read a page from your book, page 69.

(Reading) To understand, first remember - Nebraska is a place. It sits square as an anvil in the center of our maps. And yet somehow, everyone manages to forget it exists. Maybe that's because Nebraska is also a land of ghosts, of small towns dwindling to the point where in another generation they might simply cease to exist.

Why are they disappearing?Where are they going?


Our concern is that the technology, regardless of where you buy it from, is just not ready for that. It will lead to bias. It will lead to false identifications. People will be put in the back of police cars when they've done nothing wrong. It seemed to us to be a step too far.

Now, on the other hand, Microsoft has provided the technology to a prison. Microsoft researchers have worked with a Chinese military-run university on AI research that some people fear could be used against China's minorities. So to you, where is the line when it comes to helping governments gain and use these kinds of tools?

We need to look constantly at the technology that's at issue and how it's going to be used. We were comfortable providing facial recognition within a prison because the sample size of people involved is actually relatively small. We could be confident that people would be identified correctly. And there was a societally beneficial goal, namely to actually help keep prisoners safe by knowing who was where and at what time.

More broadly, we've supported basic research, advances in the fundamental frontiers of knowledge. You know, we're not working, for example, with authorities in China to deploy facial recognition services for surveillance. But when you get to the bottom foundation for all artificial intelligence, advances in machine learning and the like, we believe that that's where there are real benefits for people able to work on advancing scientific knowledge more generally.


Wow.

On steroids, that's what Tops in Blue is. And it's serious stuff. It's a lot of fun. There's a little break dancing, a little pop locking. And once again, it's very interactive. It's very much a very different theater experience.

You know, we had on Brian Copeland, who has a very successful one-man show called "Not a Genuine Black Man" and also dealing with some really very harsh realities of his childhood. It strikes me that, you know, that's got to be part of what shaped you as a person who's able to do - what is it?How many characters do you have in the show?

Twenty-three characters.


Really.

But they removed like some G - from what I understand, you can't like ping it for like GPS location. So I believe GPS types of tracking or chips have been removed out of it. So I think it is a stripped down and highly secure BlackBerry.

One of the things and you mentioned this earlier, Mario, that the president wants to do - he wants to put everybody on the Internet who wants access to it, and he's trying to expand it into rural areas.

I'm sorry.


Does either party see political damage in permitting a shutdown?

Nobody wants a shutdown. I do believe that's true, although I do think that on this issue - more than a lot of issues - that passions are really high because it's not just talking about fiscal policy or some other thing. We're talking about human lives. And human lives are at stake, and families are at stake. So it's not going to be an easy puzzle to solve.

NPR's congressional correspondent Susan Davis, thanks so much.

You're welcome.


Michael was 23. He was the son of Nelson, who was the governor of New York at the time. As you said, his father had opened the Museum of Primitive Art. So he was collecting primitive art from the Asmat, who were incredible, beautiful carvers. And he was on a makeshift catamaran in a lot of rough, turbulent water, and they got into trouble. And they ended up drifting. . .

Like, capsized.

. . . a day. And. . .

. . . capsized on this catamaran. He's there with this guy called Rene Wassing, the Dutch anthropologist, and his last words are: I think I can make it.


Thirty years ago today, a democracy movement was snuffed out in China's Tiananmen Square. Tanks opened fire on demonstrators, killing young protesters. This was a pivotal moment in modern Chinese history. And NPR's Deborah Amos covered the crackdown. She joins us to share some of her memories from that time 30 years ago.

Hi, Deb.

Hi there.

So you arrived in the country just after this massacre. Why did the Chinese government allow foreign journalists in?


Have you had any feelers for a plea bargain from Socrates?

We were open to that discussion. And so, if Mr.  Webb and Mr.  Bob Clifford are listening, we're hoping to cut a deal. And it would disappoint the audience, who paid for a show, but I think we'd be willing to talk about perhaps a deferred prosecution agreement.

In our time, I think the key to Socrates wisdom is taken to be that Socrates said he was not the wisest man in Athens, and of course that just confirmed that he was because he was the only man who was aware of his limitations in ignorance. How do lawyers react to that?

Oh, I think there's a lot to be said for that, in that Socrates asked a lot of questions and gave fewer answers. But I think a lot of what happened in the trial of Socrates was interesting history. For example, the people talk about the death penalty, and I think what they miss at the time was that Athenian law required a jury to pick between the two options. So, if the government asked for death and the defendant asked for something different, they couldn't come up with a third option. And so since Socrates put before the jury his request that he be given free meals for life, they really had little choice. Either pay a man convicted of a crime free meals for life or put him death. And so I think part of what will take place next week is to try to put people back in the perspective of the Athenians, where Socrates gave them little choice and had to vote when it came to the penalty phase.


Arthur Thomas took Jeni Stepien's hand as the music at her wedding reception started. He did my father-daughter dance with me and then handed me to my mom, she wrote on Facebook. It was truly the best day of my entire life.

The Department of Health and Human Services says that almost 30,000 people received organ transplants in the United States in 2014. But 22 people a day die, on average, while waiting for a transplant, in part because there's a shortage of organs available.

Charity Tilleman-Dick, an opera soprano who's become a vocal advocate for organ donation, has had two double lung transplants at Cleveland Clinic. She still sings. I'm alive today because a family in Ohio turned their tragedy into a miracle, she told us. Some people say life's not a sprint, it's a marathon. It should be a relay. When you round mortality's final bend, pass the baton. In death, we can give breath. We can give grace. We can give life.

(Singing) Another day, a day of grace, is given us from on high.


Yes.

Have you photographed them?Or have they been clients of yours?

Not paying clients. Yes, I have shot them at a rally in Chicago.

OK.  Not - well, not paying in the sense that you would like to have them as clients or pursue them at one point, or you just are taking pictures of them, as everyone else is doing, when they're out in public?

No, I was part of the campaign. I was heavily involved in fundraising and (unintelligible) and have gone to battleground states, signing up voters. So, yeah, I was there, part of the group, and I shot them because this is something I wanted to do. I wasn't a paid photographer of staff, but yes. Would I like to shoot them as a paid person?Absolutely.

Yeah, I'm guessing the answer to that would be yes. Are you hopeful of that opportunity still?


Exactly, keep looking up, and I can't believe I still pinch myself every time that I get to say those words afterwards. But this is the fellow that would appear on your PBS station, usually late at night, at weird hours, for a minute or five minutes telling you what's up in the sky. He'd sit on the rings of Saturn and point out at Jupiter, and he'd have this very interesting voice. It was great.

And so he passed away a few years ago, and the station has decided to continue the program. We've done a little bit of touching-up to it, but it's called "Star Gazers," and so you might catch us on weird hours on your PBS station, and they're always online at our website, stargazersonline. org, and you can watch any of the shows there, and we'll tell you what's up in the sky and say keep looking up. That's what we always say.

That's it. It's a great show. I've been watching it for years. I used to know Jack for a while, so. . .

Oh, I know, what a great guy. I mean, this is a populizer of astronomy, and I just hope that I can fill his shoes a little bit and get people excited about the stars.


Look, Farai, for years immigrants have been moving into South Africa going back to the apartheid era, to work in the mines, to work in various industries. So, immigration is not new to South Africa. But when you have the level of frustration and the depth of poverty and wealth polarization, it was a time bomb. It was just a matter of when it was going to blow up.

There was a commentary in allafrica. com that said that poverty is at the root of this. Do you agree with that?

Yes. Oh yeah, absolutely, I'd say that I mean there's many roots, and it's very likely that there was a group or grouping that actually incited these pogroms, these attacks, but fundamentally, this is about poverty. This is about frustration. This is about people saying we've been waiting for more than 10 years, for 14 years, for the fruits of our national liberation struggle to come forward, and we're not seeing it.

We're not seeing land distributed the way that it should be. We're not seeing the fundamental changes in water and electricity and other things that we've needed. We've not seen the development of housing on the level that we've needed, and this has just been boiling over.


And now to the Midwest, where heavy rainfall has made growing conditions tough for farmers. One crop in particular - corn - has been hit hard. According to the Department of Agriculture, this is the slowest start to the corn-planting season on record. To hear more about this, we've called Matt Boucher. He's a fourth generation farmer from Dwight, Ill. , where he grows corn as well as soybeans, wheat and cover crops. And in fact, we caught him out in the field, where he's trying to plant. Matt, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.

Well, walk me through the season. What would normally have happened by now, and what has actually happened now?

Well, we're normally completed now. We're moving on to fertilizing corn and maintaining the weed pressures, you know, keeping the weeds out of the field. But right now it's just not the case. We're still planting and trying to get things in and might have some acres we're just not going to be able to get in, no matter what we do.

And why is that?It's just that the ground's been too wet or what?Why is that?


. . . Or the Weinstein sexual scandals or, you know, the shooting in Texas. I mean, it's just, like - it's a continual thing of these events that are just rocking people's lives. And I used to just be a viewer. And I used to just kind of go from one event to another. And now I'm stuck in one of those events because I could list all the things that we've done as a family and all the things - I mean, just like soccer practices. And I haven't missed a day of work. And booster meetings. And we've gone to our dentist appointments and our doctor's appointments. But I still feel like it's day one.

Investigators, as we speak, still haven't come up with anything resembling a motive that we know about.

What bothers me more than the motive or lack of motive is lack of information. Whenever we get a little tidbit of something, we just jump on it because we just have a desire to know. Like, the first week after it happened, I was obsessed with, like, my escape route. Like, I was just looking at Google images, pictures of the event. Like, where did I go?And then my next thing was, I want to know where the shooter went, where he came from. I wanted to see him walking into the hotel, walking out of the hotel. And they haven't released any of that.

Why do you want to see that?


Yes. In fact, by far. And that's why the Senate's version of this tax bill largely prevailed in the negotiations with the House over the last few weeks. Before those began, the Senate vote was just a bare majority before they had that big sit-down with the other chamber. And there were several Republican senators on the fence about it, even as yesterday morning dawned. That would include Bob Corker of Tennessee, Marco Rubio of Florida, Susan Collins of Maine.

But now Corker and Rubio are fully on board. Rubio got some more money for the child tax credit. And Bob Corker was objecting to the deficit increase, which is kind of still there, but he says it won't be, maybe, that bad. And he is, of course, a good Republican and a businessman. And he has to like a lot of what's in this bill.

Is this the bill Republicans feel they need to say that they can govern when they have control of the Senate, the House and the presidency?

Indeed. It shows that they can pass a big and complicated piece of legislation that they promised to pass and do it with just their own majorities in both the House and the Senate. It should satisfy the hardcore support base and the donor class that has been growing restive in recent months since the Obamacare repeal failure. And, of course, the jury is out on how many other people it's going to satisfy, including the wage-earners who voted for Donald Trump last year, believing he would be their champion.


Well, I think people that are overly tied to capitalism and who think that capitalism - and, once again, I speak as a Wharton grad, is the be all and end all of economic systems and that people who are uncomfortable looking at the poor. And there are, you know, not a few Catholics who are like that.

Jim, did the College of Cardinals expect this from the man they chose to be pope?

I don't think so. I think that they expected a person who's holy and came make tough decisions and live simply, but I don't think they expected someone who would shake things up quite this way. And, you know, frankly, most Jesuits who knew him didn't expect this either. But, you know, it shows you once again the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does what the Holy Spirit wants to do.

Father James Martin, who's culture editor of the Jesuit magazine America. Thanks so much. Good holiday to you, Jim.


Shawn Levy, an accomplished biographer and film critic, joins us now. Shawn, thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you.

How does the chateau both fit into and stand above the Hollywood landscape?

Well, physically, it actually stands above the Sunset Strip. It's right on the eastern edge of the strip on a rise, and it's situated at a curve. So if you come toward it from the east - from Hollywood into West Hollywood - it kind of disappears. The road takes you away from it before you quite register it.


But the technical. . .

Let me just jump in. When you say GDP, that's the Gross Domestic Product?

Exactly. So when you see growth going down, you see yourself in a recession. And it's, you know, it's Standard English, frankly. It's not rocket science, but the fact is that the macro numbers, Farai, belie what the micro reality is for so many people.

We've been seeing lay off numbers for over two years. We've seen a 5. 2 percent unemployment rate. All of those things combine to speak to, at least, economic hard times. But the technical definition of a recession is that you have two quarters of GDP going down. Now let's look at the next quarter because right now we don't have that.


Absolutely not. In fact, the art world has been so distracted by ridiculously obscenely high prices that mainly the only art that people are even aware of is art that costs a lot of money. There's a strange exception around Basquiat. No artist of color has ever entered this kind of pantheon of, you know, Picasso, Van Gogh, all of the rest whose work does sometimes sell for over $100 million.

So you know what?I have to make a strange exception to my rule, that in this case, I kind of love that Jean-Michel Basquiat has entered that and broken that barrier. More power to women, more power to artists of color. These lives do matter, and they're going to continue to matter.

Jerry Saltz, senior art critic of New York magazine, and he joined us from New York. Thank you so much.

Thank you. It was a pleasure.


I am - my lips are sealed. But let's just say we are a certain kind of gypsy and we - it's very much like a family. When you've been touring together for six months or more and you're all living on a bus, you become very close and very supportive and close in good ways and bad ways.

But we feel very privileged to be able to do what we do. And the places we get to go, the people we get to meet, the stages we get to perform on, it's a privilege. It really is. It's something we don't ever want to take for granted.

I was, again, thinking back to that song, in that leafy neighborhood you described around Washington, D. C.

Well, actually, I was thinking about where I grew up - the first 10 years of my life - in Princeton, New Jersey, when I was describing that. But you're right, very much, lot of leafy neighborhoods in Washington where I have spent most of my life.


He had a very utopian view of how computers would change work, but he had also a kind of warning. He had a very utopian view of how computers would change work, but he had also a kind of warning.

That's computer scientist Eugene Fiume of Simon Fraser University. That's computer scientist Eugene Fiume of Simon Fraser University. Fiume says that despite his concern about the need for rapid re-education, Asimov was an optimist in his predictions. Fiume says that despite his concern about the need for rapid re-education, Asimov was an optimist in his predictions.

What he predicted was that computers themselves would allow people to become researchers and scientists and artists - this idea of replacing that low-level intellectual work and allowing people to improve themselves by looking at higher level intellectual work. What he predicted was that computers themselves would allow people to become researchers and scientists and artists - this idea of replacing that low-level intellectual work and allowing people to improve themselves by looking at higher level intellectual work.

It's hard to say how many laid-off factory workers have moved on to pick up paintbrushes, but Fiume says that Asimov's 1983 essay envisions how, left to their own devices. . . It's hard to say how many laid-off factory workers have moved on to pick up paintbrushes, but Fiume says that Asimov's 1983 essay envisions how, left to their own devices. . .


Well again, our hearts go out to the Hudson family. I wanted to bring up one more thing though, which is that, you know, Friday night is, in happy terms for a lot of kids, the night of ghouls and goblins. But there are these sex offender registries that reveal that in most of our neighborhoods there are people who have been convicted of crimes, including attacking children.

So Missouri enacted a law restricting convicted sex offenders on Halloween, and convicted sex crime offenders would be prohibited from leaving their homes between 5 P. M.  and 10:30. They would also have to hang a sign on their door that says no candy or treats at this residence. But a federal judge temporarily blocked the curfew for this Friday. The case is still in appeal. So what was it about this law that didn't pass the smell test for the judge?

It was vague and over broad. That's what didn't pass the smell test. What is just cause?They say that they - a sex offender can leave for just cause. So how do you define just cause?Is that a trip to the pharmacy to get some Aspirin, or does it have to be a medical emergency?

And also, they are saying Halloween-related contact with children, does that mean a man - and I believe that was one of the four sex offenders who brought this says, I have a nephew ,or a son or something that's living in my house, does that mean I cannot carve a pumpkin in my own home with my child?


I mean, race is all throughout this conversation in the way people think about it and who the actual players are literally in this case. So Shaun Harper, who is a scholar on diversity in higher education at USC, said that, you know, many of the schools in the Power Five were either officially or effectively segregated for most of their histories. And that has really tangible consequences for the way campus life looks. And so these are conceived as white spaces. Their fan bases are white. Their alumni bases are white. Their cultural spaces are white. And so black students will be players in football and basketball. They'll be on the court and the field but they won't be in the stands.

So you're saying black people will be players. What do those demographics look like?

So most of the players in the money sports, in football and basketball at the Power Five schools, are black. So 56 percent of the basketball players - men's basketball players - are black. Fifty-five percent of the football players are black. But 2. 4 percent of the students at these schools are black men. And so this is -

Only?


They have indeed, but not through Jordan, as far as I know.

And you talked about hedging your bets. Doesn't that risk putting your bets on the wrong side if, indeed, the rebels do topple, which from what you say, the regime believes is only a matter of time. Why don't they put their bets on - with the opposition?

That's a debate that is actually going on inside the country today. As I said, 82 percent of Jordanians are with the uprising, not all of them, however, are with any military intervention against the Syrian regime. This is a very sensitive issue in Arab politics, to be seen as actively working militarily against an Arab regime. Still, as I said, the sentiments of the people in Jordan, not all of them, but the overwhelming majority of them, are with the uprising. And the country, I would expect, the government, will probably have to change its position as developments move. It's a fair question to ask. You know, one day, we'll be able to do so. There are many who have asked the government to take on a sort of a clearer position on the Syrian crisis than it has so far.

How porous is the border?If people wanted to operate across it clandestinely, would they be able to do so?


Now here we are 15 years later. Let's talk about the restructuring efforts that are going on in Rwanda now.

Yeah.

Describe that.

I actually had a chance to be back there this last summer. I was just really impressed. I met with some of my old friends and some new ones. There was a gentleman and his wife who'd been hiding in one of the orphanages that I was bringing food and water to, three months in this tiny little room, six of them, and he's now a high court judge. She's deputy director of Ombudsman, and this Ombudsman program is just huge as far as I'm concerned.


And, of course, a lot of the Democrats are aware of these shortfalls. And there are counties with only one insurance company and counties where it's not clear there are going to be any insurance companies. And some of that's been overblown, but there are real problems. And, of course, any bill, any large program, any law needs to be revisited and amended, and the parties need to get together to do that.

These insults this week flying back and forth between the president and Kim Jong Un - lunatic, frightened dog, dotard. I don't know about you, I had to look that one up.

We all did.

This is this just scenery chewing or are people in official Washington worried it could encourage something more destructive?


The World War II submarine veterans that survived - most people don't know this, but submarine service was the deadliest service to be in during World War II. So these guys wanted to honor all their lost friends. And ironically, they had to use spring floods to actually put it in place, and we're going to have to use spring floods or early summer floods to put it back in place, so full circle, you know?

Yeah. So I'm talking to you, of course, on Memorial Day. You had a whole ceremony planned at the memorial park. What did you all have planned?

Well, another thing that we have on the ground is a piece of the USS Oklahoma, one of the battleships that sunk at Pearl Harbor. And we were actually going to do what we call a tolling for all the people who perished on board the USS Oklahoma. So it's over 400 people. It's a beautiful ceremony. And that's the painful thing is that everybody's off today, but we don't feel complete because we're not doing what we want to do. We're not honoring the people that have given their lives for this country. And it's kind of - I don't know. I don't know how to take it. It's weird.

Well, Brent Trout, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. And we wish you luck in the coming days as you watch what happens with the water there.


I think they have put a scare into people enough that they'd approve almost anything, and that's unfortunate. But I think we rely on our leadership. Cal Rapson, who is our vice president, has been in General Motors his entire life. I worked with Cal when I was here as a president. I think he understands the needs of auto workers, understands what GM can do and what they can't do, and I think, if we follow his leadership along with Ron Getelfinger, we're not going to be in too bad a shape.

You worked at a GM plant for 32 years. What you're seeing right now, how does that compare to what you've seen in the past?There have been troubled times before.

Never have seen anything to this magnitude. Well, my local has gone from 14,000 members to 2,000. When I was here, we were worrying about what was our next product, not worrying about whether we were going to have a product.

And so, for some of the workers that are there now with you at this UAW hall currently employed, what are they talking about?Are they coming up with a plan B in case this doesn't happen and they don't have jobs?


But also, at the moment, there is a decided sense of panic and loss of confidence in the financial system itself, which is actually exacerbating the situation. The scariest thing that's going on at the moment is, essentially, there's a run on the whole of the Western world's banking systems. It's a behind-the-scenes run, but it's a run nonetheless. And this is why you're seeing some extraordinary action by central banks, essentially because they are now the only people in the - around who are willing to fund or finance the banking sector.

If there's a loss of faith in leadership in the U. S.  and Europe, where do you look for world financial leadership now?

Well, I think the interesting thing is, the normal thing - place you would look would be to the finance ministers and the central bank governors of the world and seek to see whether they can come up with some sort of plan or some sort of coordinated action. Everyone is gathering together later this week in Washington on Friday and at the weekend.

And so this is a real test. I don't think they necessarily want it to be a test, but I'm sure it will be seen as a test to see whether the authorities can do more than look at how to stop this happening again in the long term, which is one of things, actually, they were intending the meeting to be about, but actually to try and stop the panic.


I think we typically are having a totally misguided debate about racism in this country.

And in exactly the way you're saying, in that people get accused of racism. They become massively defensive because it's a word that should destroy you. And so you totally resist it, and we're not really discussing policies.

Exactly. And, I mean, obviously if you could express in one minute racist ideas and in the next minute anti-racist ideas, and what we're saying is stop expressing those racist ideas and start recognizing the equality of racial groups, then that's a completely different discussion.

Well, let's talk about the president's remark that set this off, in which he said that four women of color who are in Congress, who are Democrats, should go back where they came from and try to clean up their messed-up countries. We at NPR have been pretty explicit in labeling that as old racist language. Go back where you came from is a thing that's been said by a lot of people for a long time. But you're the scholar. Is that a racist statement?And if so, why is it a racist statement?


That's right, that's right, and we essentially within the DNA give the instructions for that cell to read out the viral protein.

OK, so you put the cell to work, and then what happens?What's the second stage?

Well, then after a few months, we come back and we boost the immune response, and we can do that in one of two ways. We can actually inject the standard inactivated vaccine, the one that you and I get every year in our flu shot, or we can also do it by using a different type of carrier, a viral vector, an adenovirus, that can do the same thing.

In our human studies, we've actually done it with the standard flu vaccine.


No, I think he's wrong about that. I think Assad is one of the main reasons for the growth of ISIS. And that's the message I would have for the Russians now. You know, if they think somehow that backing Assad without any prospect for political transition will succeed, I think they're wrong.

But is there anything in Bashar al-Assad's profile that would suggest if he's able to hold onto power long enough to be part of a solution that then he just, you know, hops a plane for France and says you guys take care of it from now on?

No, nothing at all, and that's precisely my point. You can achieve limited political objectives with support for the opposition and limited military force. But the ultimate political objective of regime change takes a lot more than we have been prepared to do.

One last question. What would the messy solution you're talking about ideally look like in, say, six months?


Yeah, absolutely.

Robo-fish and friends.

It's a great little video up there on our website at sciencefriday. com. It's our video pick of the week and. . .

And you can see this following, the milling about of the robots. One thing that he said that was really interesting to me is, you know, not every fish will follow. And so his next installment - so stay tuned, this could be number three in a few years - is to figure out how personality drives sort of the differences between the fish. It seems that the bolder fish are less apt to follow the robotic fish.


Yeah, South Korea, the Netherlands. We played, you know, the reigning champs, Serbia, and we also played Turkey. So yeah. Yeah, we had a good four games of full play.

I understand the French team looks strong.

They are strong. They're very good. There's a lot of good teams here. I mean, this is the highest level of 3x3 in the - 3 on 3 (ph) basketball there is around the world.

Do you feel you're kind of in on the ground floor of a sport that's going to become more popular around the world?


That's right.

Their due, and they would make great traveling companions, you're saying. You know, we once had a piece of moss - we've done a show on moss before, and we got some samples of moss, and we've just stuck them out on the porch, and they lasted for years all by themselves just sitting there.

They do, they do.

Yeah, it's really interesting. Do they produce anything for humans?I mean if you took them along on the Mars trip, could you eat them?Why would you bring them along to Mars?


Yeah. I always - I was - firstly, I want to say that she was always super generous and warm and very, very affectionate with me. So there was no problem of that kind. But there was - you know, there were certain attitudes. And I think with her, like, there was a kind of desire to shock.

Do you think that's because at least the elder royals are very insular?They're very protected from the rest of society and its headwinds and changes.

Yeah. I think that is true. I think that it wasn't just - I mean, it was colored people, homosexuals, Jews. People would have these very polite manners. And then they would say these rather awful things. You know, it's like, I'm terribly sorry. I don't like Jews very much. You know, you just can't talk like that. So there was certainly a kind of - it was very, very archaic.

Your piece has gotten quite a bit of reaction in the British tabloids. And some of it has not been positive. What's your reaction to the reaction?


He says today's number one threat to American national security is nuclear proliferation and terrorism. His new book, "Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?"examines both the risks and psychology of nuclear terrorism, and says terrorists don't need to have such weapons to perpetrate nuclear terror.

Nuclear terrorism is about the very frightening possibility that terrorists could acquire and employ nuclear weapons. Nuclear terror is about the anticipation of that event. Nuclear terrorism is about terrorists' capabilities, intelligence, evidence, our assessment of the threat. Nuclear terror is about our imagination.

The history of nuclear terrorism can be briefly summarized. Fortunately there hasn't been any. Many would hasten to add yet. But nuclear terror has a rich history, and it's deeply embedded in our popular culture and our policy making circles.

One of the other things you mentioned in the book, among many, is that al-Qaeda might become the world's first terrorist nuclear power without possessing a single nuclear weapon. And I suppose the answer to that is in part what you just were describing.


Pat and Gina are fun, folksy and family oriented. Pat started our chat by telling me how it all got started.

First of all, I was 23 years of age, and I always felt like, even back then, that the best thing I had going for me was my age, and the worst thing I had going for me was my age. Because I was young enough to make mistakes, yet, at the same time, I was going to be young enough to recover from them.

So, you know, it was a very, very gutsy move because he and I, we didn't have a quarter. And I'm sure you're saying, well, how did you open up a restaurant without any money?Well, my grandmother, who was in her 90s, was gracious enough and had enough faith and confidence in us to use her house as collateral, and we took out a small 20,000 dollar loan, opened up a 2,000-square-foot restaurant in 1988.

And, the first day we opened, we were dead broke. We didn't have a cash register. There were so many things that we didn't have that I wouldn't dare try to open up a restaurant in today's time without. But in less than the two years - we leased the building for two years - in two years, not only had we paid my grandmother her money back, but we had saved 40,000 dollars. And we took that money and used it as a down payment and purchased our first restaurant.


Is anyone doing that research?

Well, I have the good fortune of working on an NSF career ward myself, entitled tornado-resilient communities. And we're sort of scratching the surface here, trying to first of all apply what knowledge we know from our wind hazard research here in Florida and all the work that has been done by the emergency management and the building codes here.

But beyond that, I'm working with manufacturers of adhesive products and so on to develop new ways, new, more resistant ways in which we can actually get these buildings held together.

You think some sort of building Super Glue?Is that what you're talking about?


Is this situation just overshadowed by other refugee and humanitarian crises in the world?

I think so. I think its a challenge that, you know, Uganda is the third largest refugee-hosting country in the world now, but I think most people dont realize that. When we think about refugees, we often think about the Syria crisis, which is the world's largest. We think about people who are crossing the Mediterranean. But we're not thinking about the now almost a million people who've crossed this land border into Uganda but have also fled from South Sudan into Kenya and Ethiopia and even into Sudan.

We're also in a situation where the administration has sent very limited aid budgets to Congress. And fortunately because the commitment that Congress continues to show, they've actually rejected those steep cuts to humanitarian aid and provided strong funding - robust funding for humanitarian assistance. But we need to see that funding really get out of the bank accounts in D. C.  and get out to the ground, where it's needed.

Has Uganda been been so welcoming?The international community has thought there's relatively little reason to get involved.


Yes. I mean, the biggest actor in all of this has been the U. N. Refugee Agency. That's the UNHCR. But, you know, the reality is that these organizations can only do so much without international supports. The UNHCR has said that they need $46 million from the international community for their response to the Venezuelan crisis this year alone

Mr.  Ramsey, just a few years ago, Venezuela was booming, wasn't it?

It was. You know, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. But due to a combination of falling oil prices, governmental mismanagement, you know, the situation has gotten extremely bad. There was a study that came out a couple months ago that found that over half of Venezuelans report losing weight in the last year with an average loss of 20 pounds. People are dying of treatable diseases because of a lack of medication.

Do any of the refugees talk about the political situation?


Well, like you were saying, these 737 Max jets - they had an automated system, and it was designed to keep the planes safe, to keep them in the air and avoid stalls, but it malfunctioned. And as many people know, that sent the planes into a nosedive, and two of them crashed, and 346 people were killed. There's, of course, been a lot of scrutiny, ongoing investigations, concerns that the Federal Aviation Administration maybe handed off too much responsibility to Boeing itself without doing proper government oversight.

This report doesn't deal with all of that, and the crash specifically. What this is is interesting. It's a small group of Boeing board members who've themselves been digging into this and looking for ways to improve safety at the company. And they're about to come out with recommendations about how this company could reshape itself in the wake of these devastating crashes.

What can you tell us about what these recommendations - what this report will say?

Well, there's a lot of stuff, but one big thing would be that - to change who the engineers who work on these airplanes actually work on them. Currently, they - many of them report to the business leader for each airplane model that this engineer or that engineer might happen to be working on.


The government is treading a fine line. On one hand, it acknowledges that this is a regime that cannot survive, and that this is a matter of time, only. At the same time, because it's a neighbor and because the borders are still open and there is some trade going on, in addition to other reasons, the government is careful not to take matters, sort of, beyond a certain point. But I think that there is wide consensus in the region that understands that this regime has no chance of survival. The problem and the questions is, how many more people will be killed before it leaves the scene?

Again, Turkey - we know that the Free Syrian Army uses Turkey as a safe haven. Injured are brought back to be treated in medical facilities. The fighters return there to rest and re-equip and then come back. That's a very porous border in that situation. What about Jordan?Is Jordan allowing the Free Syrian Army effectively to operate from its territory?

No. There are no military operations being conducted out of Jordan for the Free Syrian Army. Jordan has received a number of defectors from Syria, including the ex-prime minister of Syria and several army officers who have defected to Jordan. But they have not engaged in any military activity, so far.

Why no?


Well, you know, we've done a bunch of these kinds of stories that run in the body issue. And we've done everything from the importance of the glute to the strange secret ritual of the team shower. And we thought, gosh, we've kind of gone there with every other story. The last thing to explore was pee breaks.

I want to talk about the Tour de France in particular. These guys are on their bikes for hours and hours and hours. But it's the Tour leader wearing a yellow jersey, I might add, who gets to signal - is this right?- when it's time for the riders to pull over for a bit of relief?

It turns out, yeah. One of the greatest honors, according to the riders, of getting the yellow jersey is that you get to control when everybody else who's racing stops for a little bit of a pee break.

Which is extraordinary.


Before we started recording, you were telling me a story about talking to Dr.  King while he was shaving.

Oh. Well, I've been in his room. . .

Yeah.

. . . When he was shaving. I've been in Dr.  Abernathy's room. Dr.  Abernathy would put more lather on his face. And he didn't smell quite as mild as Dr.  King (laughter), you know?I can just - I didn't have no reason to think I could be remembering that - anything like that. I was just a young fella just caught up in the movement. And it was just an honor to be able to just see Dr.  King, as well as to go up to his room with somebody. It wasn't by myself during that time. . .


There's tanks - a row of tanks that stretches from one end of the square to the other. It's clear that that square will have a symbolic meaning to this army for some time to come. We're now moving in front of another long line of soldiers. And as we pass, they lock their eyes on this rickshaw. And they follow us as we move by. We're still moving down the boulevard that's in front of Tiananmen Square. And it's quite remarkable how clean the square is now.

You know, the most memorable thing from that ride was a small, English sign that was hanging from a bridge. And it said, all these things must be answered for. And it was that small flicker of protest that was still there.

And for 30 years since then, the Chinese government has worked hard to erase the memory of what happened in Tiananmen Square that day. How successful has the campaign been?

Pretty successful. Ari, I have met Chinese students who came to the States to study journalism. And for the first time, they read about Tiananmen Square. And I see what happens in their heads. How could I not know about this?They've come to study journalism, and so many of them - I see that mental landscape shift. And they know that they can't be the kind of journalists that they are studying in America. They can't go back to China to do that.


In diapers, exactly. But the London police haven't quite given the final say-so on that yet. But, you know, there will be a lot of protests. That may upset the president. It's controversial, but the government insists, and the diplomats insist, that he's a vital part of nurturing a special relationship, which they insist is very good for the U. K.

Because he's not only going, he's getting literally the royal treatment.

Yeah. I mean, this is as good as it gets if you're a head of state coming to the U. K. It is bells and whistles. It's pomp and circumstance. It's a banquet at Buckingham Palace, although that seems to be being boycotted by Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, also by Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the - of Her Majesty's Opposition, and Vince Cable, the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

But I don't think that's going to take the gloss off it too much for Donald Trump. He's someone who has made it very clear this is what he wants, and we're expecting him to look like he's lapping it up.


Well, it's my pleasure, Scott. Thank you.

Can you recreate for us in a sense, like our town does, a summer day at that house you loved?

Basically, people woke up as early as they could, as close to dawn. Everyone was kind of on their own once the kids got older and could take care of themselves to fix something for breakfast and start the day however they wanted as long as they were busy.

There was no television, barely a radio. And it would be tuned into very infrequently, generally when the Red Sox were playing. And all you got were scratchy sounds anyway. People were left to just, I guess, invite the outdoors into their hearts and their souls.


Yeah. And I had kind of come across this - oh, put that to one side - and once I did look into it, I couldn't put it down because it is dynamite. And it's based primarily - the starting point, the kicking off point is there was a secret cabal of British imperialists and colonialists that wanted to recreate the British Empire. And in 1891, they sat down in a caucus in order to make this happen, they would have to deal with the one emerging power, and that, of course, was Germany. Germany was at that time a rising power, industrialization and evermore world importance. And so the premise of the book is that there was a contrivance from 1891 right through 1914. And it is very, very meticulously documented as to how this was achieved.

Let me ask you about the fiction you've been reading now, including one - a series in which a taxi driver. . .

Oh. . .

. . . Not to my surprise whatsoever, is the hero.


Yeah - no - no, Martians here.

OK.  You've - is it fair - you've gone into Michael Cohen's background extensively. Is it fair to call him a fixer?

You know, I think that he handled a lot of matters for Donald Trump before he was - before he became the president that were difficult and sensitive issues. Michael's role at the Trump Organization was not really that of a lawyer. One Trump Organization - senior Trump Organization official pointed out that when the legal department at the company had a meeting, Michael was not included. He was not part of the legal department. He didn't really practice law there.

In fact, when the government was arguing with Mr.  Cohen's lawyers over issues of whether or not material seized by the government in a search warrant were privileged, the government indicated that an examination of his emails - they previously had a search warrant for his emails that had been secret until it was revealed in the course of that litigation. But that an examination of his emails indicated both that he conducted little to no legal work for President Trump or for The Trump Organization. And it also pointed out that he never emailed with Mr.  Trump. But I think Mr.  Trump is not a big - not a big emailer.


That's correct. Yes, well, the last thing we've heard it was just outside of Port Fourchon, which is at the lower end of LaFourche Parish. So the winds have been picking up a bit and that's what we're getting ready for here. So far, however, we are putting stuff up on the web and we haven't stopped all night.

I hear people on the radio behind you, you must be at a sort of emergency control headquarters or something?

No, no, not us; we're just communicating with our reporters. We have reporters out in different parts of the parish, and we're trying to keep in touch with them as we can, and get what information they're getting as travel with the authorities.

What are you going to do when your internet connection goes down?


Eastern Congo may be the most dangerous place on Earth, and it's getting worse. A rebel army is moving on the biggest city, Goma. Hundreds of thousands of people are running for their lives. This is the region of infamous ethnic killing between the many people who call themselves Hutus and the far fewer Tutsi.

Hez Holland is a correspondent with Reuters. He's been reporting from Goma. He joins us now. Hez, welcome. And remind us, this is also a region of enormous wealth - timber and minerals. People have been fighting over it for a long time.

At least. It's historically been a curse, what with the mineral wealth and, as you said, the timber, has been something that has been fought over for - since the Belgians. It's always been a place where minerals have been extracted and exploited, and the people have always been just pawns in the great game of any kind of colonial power, really.

Well, now, there's this rebel group led by a man named General Nkunda. He is a former Congolese general. And it is moving on the city of Goma. What are you seeing there now?


Well, we - it seemed that this is something that happened fairly recently. Dan Coats had been at odds with the president, seemed like he might be on the way out. So that part of it wasn't such a surprise. And there were reports that Ratcliffe did meet with the president a couple of weeks ago, so he had sort of caught the president's attention. And then Ratcliffe was a very sharp critic of Robert Mueller, suggesting that Mueller had overstepped his bounds in the sort of televised hearing when Mueller went up to Capitol Hill.

So some are saying that almost was sort of an audition for this job because, in just a few days later, the president tweeted that Dan Coats was out and Ratcliffe was in. And then today the president has tweeted again saying, John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the lame-stream (ph) media. And rather than go through months of slander and libel, he's decided to stay in Congress.

What does this mean for the intelligence community?

Well, we'll find out. Dan Coats is still scheduled to leave the job on August 15. Now, by statute, the deputy, Sue Gordon, who's very highly respected - spent well over 30 years in the intelligence community; widely known, widely respected - she's supposed to take over on an interim basis, but it hasn't happened yet. And just within the past hour, Trump said that he might choose her on an interim basis but didn't commit to it.


Possibly more powerful or an offshoot of these, yes. Yeah, there's no doubt. This has been - Flame has, looks like, created probably around maybe 2007, 2008. So you know, we're talking five years ago, and Stuxnet was created a little bit after that. And then you've got Duqu that came out a year after Stuxnet. So these are just three of them, and yeah, there's no doubt that there are others.

And once again you say that for people who are concerned, if you update your Windows, Microsoft has a patch out now too, doesn't it, it should remove it from your PC?

Well, Microsoft's patch is different. Microsoft patches the vulnerabilities that the Flame used to spread on a machine or to get on a machine. But if you have antivirus updates, that's the thing that will prevent you from getting infected as well.

And is there any possibility that this was done by a bunch of hobbyists or people who wanted, you know, to just show that they wanted to get into systems?


And so that - what you're doing now is you're experiencing the retro-nasal olfaction, which is the way that we smell through our mouth as the vapors from the food, the volatile aromas, go back up our sinus cavity and reach our nose through our mouth. That's called retro-nasal olfaction or what I refer to as mouth-smelling.

It's true. You know, we've all done this when we were kids in school, but unless you really do it as an adult and think about it and watch it, it's a whole different reaction. You really do notice the difference. It's - I also, I've also noticed that your sight, you know, what you expect food - years ago, I used to do this show called "Newton's Apple" on PBS, and one of the things that they - they handed me once an ice cream cone with vanilla ice cream in it.

And they said have a taste. And I tasted it, and I could not figure out what was on the cone. And it turned out it was a scoop of mashed potatoes.

Oh, wow. That's a good one.


That's even better than the Dwight Clark catch in the - with San Francisco 49ers.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you know, last year you had, you know, (unintelligible) catching, you had the miracle catch you know by a throw. . .

By David Tyree. But that was kind of a weird that was - the helmet catch, you're talking about.

The helmet catch (laughing). But this was just - I mean, it was perfect, Tony. It was perfect form, the toes and - had it been a millisecond higher, he wouldn't have been able to get anything down. I just think that from Roswell Berger's(ph) throw and hosing the ball, the extra tenth of a second, it - right now that's the most perfect ending play in Super Bowl history.


And I don't know if they ever made the spreadsheet. But the two of them really decided early on that they were committed to this. He also happened to be Swedish, which she said helped. But, you know, really kind of staying on top of it seemed to be the most important thing for couples.

And so what do you think the takeaway is?What needs to happen?

I think the takeaway is more awareness. One of the problems is that we have this idea of the modern involved father. We all know that things have improved a lot since the 1950s. And it's really easy to focus on that rather than to know - and I think most people don't know because they don't look at statistics - that fathers' participation leveled off at 35% around the year 2000. So we go into parenting expecting something like parity. But it doesn't manifest. So our expectations are really not being met. And that leads to a lot of anger.

That was Darcy Lockman, author of "All The Rage: Mothers, Fathers And The Myth Of Equal Partnership. "


Well, I'm going to try to make this as succinct as possible. But it's a complicated game of musical chairs. Next in line to take over the governor's job would be the local secretary of state. But that position has been vacant for the past two weeks because the former secretary of state resigned his position because he was involved in the original leaked chat that led to the governor's resignation.

Oh, the same scandal got the next - the second in line before it got the first guy. OK, go on.

Right. And then it would be Wanda Vazquez's turn. But as we've seen, she's a controversial figure, and she has already expressed her desire that she doesn't want the job. After that, it would be the Treasury secretary's turn. But he's been in his post for less than a month after Governor Rossello fired his predecessor for publicly denouncing corruption schemes within the Puerto Rican Treasury without first consulting with the governor's office. So the problem with the current Treasury secretary is that he's 31 years old and doesn't meet the minimum age requirement to be governor. . .

Wow.


What would be a - and forgive the pun - what would be the holy grail for an Indiana Jones like you?What would be the ultimate?

Well, that would be to go right back to the beginning, you know, to do like a dino brew, you know, sort of a Garden of Eden type of beverage, I guess. And unfortunately in the Paleolithic period, the containers get destroyed. They were probably made out of leather, wood or whatever. So we don't have remnants of any containers from the Paleolithic period.

And that's important because once you have a container like pottery, made of pottery, the liquids get absorbed into that, and it helps to retain the ancient organic materials until the biomolecular archeologists like us comes along thousands of years later.

Do you have any bets of where the cradle of civilization for wine and beer originates?


Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Now, the books were released on inauguration day. I don't know if that was significant or not. Tell us if it was and what inspired these collections?

Well, these collections I have been thinking about for a long time. I've been talking about it with my agent for sometime about doing something like this. The big fear was that, no publisher would be that interested in it because they wouldn't think the collection could be sustained over a period of time doing it every year. But Bantam believed it and so Bantam, we ultimately made a deal with Bantam to do it. The date wasn't really significant. I mean, the date turned out to be significant but we had set the date a long time before and we were just hoping that Obama would win so the date would really have some significance but it was all an accident. It turned out well though.

Now, you're going to - we've had anthologies before obviously. But the new thing about this anthology is that you're going to try to publish it annually. How difficult do you think that is likely to be?


Few years ago, I was fortunate enough to address a convention of political cartoonists in the United States. And they kept pointing out, you know, we used to have a lot of people here. Now we're down to just a few dozen.

I know. And I've been to those conventions. And I'm actually a member of the board of the Association of American Cartoonists (ph). And I've been always struck by their pessimism (ph). But I'm still very positive about the genre. In this world of short attention span, the power of images has never been so big. And it's also a time when the media need to renew themselves.

But we must stop being afraid of offended people because the whole controversy that was triggered a month ago by that cartoon, I think it should have encouraged a discussion, explaining why this cartoon was wrong, how it's run, what is cartooning, and there was no space for that. I think The New York Times had to deal with a huge storm triggered by social media. We need to be able to withstand this and to go back to putting things into perspective.

Patrick Chappatte, editorial cartoonist, thanks so much for being with us.


For conservative groups that are courting Latinos, Trump's remarks are likely to make their work more difficult. Let's turn now to Daniel Garza. He is the president of The LIBRE Initiative, a free market advocacy group founded by the business and political titans Charles and David Koch, specifically to strengthen Republican support among Latinos. Garza also worked in the George W.  Bush administration. And he joins me now from Mission, Texas. Welcome to the program, sir.

Thank you, Lulu. It's a pleasure to be with you.

So I'd like to get your reaction to the president's comments first.

Well, I mean, I felt the president's remarks were counterproductive to trying to resolve, I think, the DACA negotiations. And, of course, I think it entirely inappropriate. Still, I suspect any political fallout will be mitigated by, I think, the booming economy that we're seeing, resulting in record low unemployment for U. S.  Latinos, 3 percent-plus GDP growth and increases in wages because of the tax reform. So, you know, it's - they were not appropriate.

So it seems like Latinos, at this point, might be a tough crowd, though, for Republicans. Immigration constantly polls as one of the main issues for them. And many view Republicans as being on the wrong side of this debate.


. . . They make you very proud.

What can you tell us about Paola Zambrano and Mark Gorman?

Both of these kids were awesome young people. Paola - Paola, you know, died when she was going to be a junior, so she finished two years of high school. And, you know, during her freshman year, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. And we knew it was a serious situation. And we, you know, quite frankly didn't think that she'd be - you know, continue down that road of going to high school because we knew it was terminal.

And, you know, to her credit, she decided she was going to keep coming every day, had great attendance, went through her chemos and her therapies and was a model student for her family and for herself. She was very - a very proud young lady. And she had hopes and dreams beyond high school that unfortunately she was never. . .


And some - I'm trying to blend. I'm trying to be a weevil.

I got you. You know, you talked about singing to your children. Do you suggest singing to pregnant mothers, too?(unintelligible)

Absolutely. Absolutely. They can hear - babies can hear from about six months gestation. This is the way language development begins. This is the way we teach. This is the way we connect, nurture, and love our young. And although we have many devices, many toys that bleep and beep and sing and all of that, it's really important to have that human element. So speaking to, reading to, singing to your very young child is extremely important.

Nnenna Freelon, you are a fantastic talent. We appreciate you coming on News & Notes. Thank you very much.


It's actually rotting their bones from the inside.

It's rotting. Yeah.

I suppose worth noting - the - these were young women at the time that they were employed working in factories. Not. . .

Teenagers, many of them. Yeah.


And now a holiday tradition from the Lone Star state. It's Santa's cousin from the barrio, Pancho Clause. From San Antonio, we're joined now by Rudy Martinez. He is one of many guys through out Texas who takes on the role of Pancho Clause. Merry Christmas, Rudy.

Merry Christmas to you.

So explain for us who is Pancho Clause.

Pancho Clause is Santa's cousin from the South.


One of the points that you make in the book is that there were always competitors to Boas' ideas. In fact, one of his sort of chief antagonists was a person named Grant. What's. . .

Madison Grant, yeah.

Madison Grant, who actually created some of the institutions which continue to survive today as anti-immigrant think tanks.

That's right. On the one hand, Madison Grant - you know, we owe the survival of the American bison to him. We owe so many of the great conservation institutions to him and conservation areas in the American West to him. But he at the same time believed deeply that what he was seeing in New York - he was from New York, living in New York - was the same thing he had experienced in traveling through the American West - that is, he understood what it was like when noble creatures could suddenly be brought down by invading species or their environment changing, and suddenly, the bison, the elk, the wolf were in danger.


Yeah. After the West Africa outbreak, there was this sense that, you know, we're in much better shape. We know more about it. We've got new treatment options. We've got a vaccine that's out there.

But in this one, it really has been this perfect storm. The area that this occurred in is incredibly poor, that had poor health care infrastructure beforehand. It's incredibly volatile; there's these militias that have basically been running that part of the Democratic Republic of Congo for decades. They're vying for control of minerals. And, you know, they have really undermined any governmental institutions that would be there.

And then all these health care workers show up to try to contain the Ebola treatment unit - that Ebola, you know, outbreak, and some of them were attacked, even killed. The World Health Organization yesterday was saying they've documented 198 attacks on Ebola clinics and workers over the last year. So obviously, that's an incredibly high number for attacks on a health response, you know, even in a declared war zone.

Well, I mean, yeah, it is a war zone, but why attack - specifically attack clinics that you know are treating a disease?


Absolutely. Mary was beyond offended. This was after her columns had been a sensation, after the Army-McCarthy hearings. And Mary had to deal with that kind of institutional sexism throughout her career, that she knew she would have to work harder and write better than the men to be a syndicated columnist. But she was also fairly comfortable with the hand she was dealt. She was not a trailblazing feminist in a traditional sense of the word. She figured if she was going to get paid less and have to work harder, she would make the men on the campaign trail damn well carry her bags.

Yeah, Mary's bearers, they were called, right?

Indeed. I don't think a more illustrious group of porters has ever been assembled, that you could find people carrying her typewriter and bag who invariably had won a Pulitzer. And as her cousin once joked, that if the reporters around weren't able to do it, she would make the candidates do so.

I wish I could think of a better opening. Tell me the Lyndon Baines Johnson story, if you could, please.


You're a breast cancer survivor. Your husband passed away. One of your other children was in a serious accident, and yet when you deal with the Imus ordeal, you say I've never felt so powerless in my life. Why did that touch you so much?

You know, Farai, one of the things that maybe people didn't know is that here I had a team of 10 players, and five of those young ladies were freshmen. Less than a year before that, they were sitting on bleachers at a high school graduation. Some of them that came to me had braces on their teeth. They had dreams and aspirations of becoming doctors and psychologists and musicians and all the like.

And here while they had done something that they should be commended for because throughout the year, the year had been a tremendous struggle. They had been pushed to the brink, and yet somehow they survived. And beyond surviving, here they were standing before a national audience and being honored as one of the top two teams in this nation.

And I was so proud of them because I could remember seeing some of them cry or think that they couldn't and then to see their faces on television or USA Today and, you know, this is what it's all about - for us as leaders and as parents and as people that care about our young people - to take them to places that they don't think that they can go, have them accomplish those things, and then with that level of security and confidence, they can take on the world.


. . . if you want to call it better than mud. And those soils actually have very little - they get - they amplify the ground motion, and they have very little resistance in terms of - when compared to bedrock. And the piling of the existing structure is about, you know, 30 meters deep. They're actually timber piles. They're 30 meters deep. And there are many, many, many of those. And that particular foundation is not made to resist the seismic motions that we're dealing with.

The other part of it is the fact that the existing eastern spans have - it's a truss structure. And by default, a truss structure has many connections, many members, unlike a suspension bridge. And thereby retrofitting those members to satisfy the new design codes would require a lot of work, overhead traffic and blocking lanes.

But if you look at your design of your new bridge, it's not - it's almost unlike anything we've seen before. . .

Well. . .


But Dr.  Landreth and his colleagues contend that's not the culprit. The culprit is the earlier forms of deposition, the so-called oligomeric stage that is really causing the damage, or the soluble stage of the processing. And the drug may be effective at that stage, and hence may be efficacious.

But this is all within the world of amyloid. There's a whole other research community out there that talks about other aspects of the Alzheimer's disease process. So while amyloid is likely to be a major player, it may not be the only culprit in the disease.

And so there may be other ways to treat it, too.

Absolutely. I mean, I think one - you may be familiar with the National Alzheimer's Project Act that was signed into law in 2011, and eventually resulted in the first United States national plan for Alzheimer's disease, released about a year ago in Washington. And part of that plan talks about exploring other targets for Alzheimer's disease.


That's where he sees himself as a character through a hole in his room.

I imagined a hole in a wall at the Good Inn where Soldier Boy perceives light and sound coming through this tiny pinhole. Imagine a camera obscura. And as he begins to investigate, he sees not only his own doppelganger, but other people that he recognizes in essentially the same place that he is - an inn, a bedroom, a man, a woman.

The only difference is that there are other people there, people at a tripod, for example, and a camera. And so he is actually seeing the first porn film ever being made, but it's in a parallel universe, if you will. He's attracted to the situation or intrigued by it enough because he's seeing himself and through a little whole in the wall. It doesn't make sense.

Yeah.


. . . they did great animation in this. And I can't imagine having the patience to move these little dots around.

No. It's a. . .

It's coffee granules, I think.

. . . a great visualization. And I should say that we have another video that done in the same animation style. It's part of the series. It's an experiment people can do at home. So. . .


I would love that, and we would absolutely love that.

And watch The Daily Show tonight. I'll be on it.

Oh, absolutely.

Great.


Captain, thanks for coming on the program.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

So as I understand, you began your transition in 2016. And I know a lot of this policy and whether it applies depends on where someone is in that process. Does this policy apply to you?

Well, so any policy that the DOD implements is going to apply to me as a member of the DOD. I think, specifically, I'll be part of the so-called grandfather clause here and be, quote-unquote, "OK" as we move forward. And so maybe not in the specific sense, but I think it applies in general that any time you put a policy in place that affects a specific group of people, i. e. transgender people in this case, it's going to affect me, whether directly or because of the implications and the intention behind it.


Right, I mean, this is going to be the very difficult point that they're going to have to get together with his younger brother and figure that out. I mean, this looks much more like it's going to be something about Islamic radicalization, as opposed to Chechen - sort of nationalism.

And I think when this first happened, we've never had Chechens do this in this country, so everybody assumes it has to do with that. What will be interesting is to see if he was radicalized on the Internet, if he was radicalized during trips to Russia - the older brother did travel to Russia reasonably often; the younger brother didn't - and how that evolution came about.

We will want to know if there were contacts there. The Russians - have they been helpful, in the past?Are they likely to be helpful, in this case?

It's unclear. I would suspect that they're likely to be helpful in this case because they've been making a case that Chechens are very dangerous, and that's why they do what they do in Chechnya. But it's. . .

Which is a very hard line of - some would say brutal repression.


The British travel company Thomas Cook has collapsed. The company coordinates packaged tours, or rather they did coordinate packaged tours. They're going out of business immediately, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded overseas. The British government says getting a total of 150,000 British nationals home will require the biggest peacetime repatriation operation that Britain has ever conducted.

Daniel Thomas is the executive news editor of The Financial Times. He's covering this story from London. Welcome to the program.

Good morning.

How does a 178-year-old company close overnight?


The tech companies cover a whole spectrum of businesses. And I think you'd have to go through the processes and procedures we have in place to look at, are they hurting competition, and are they negatively affecting the prices that consumers pay for their services and their goods.

Well, a lot of research has been done into it. What do you think?Do you think they are?

I think that Amazon, in certain ways, clearly is restraining the creation of businesses. And I think that's an important filter. That's my entrepreneurial filter. I mean, Amazon is able to see which of their vendors are most successful in selling their products. And then if Amazon decides to, they can go and acquire that specific company. That seems like an unfair competitive advantage to many people.

You said that red tape is preventing the creation of businesses. President Trump has famously made deregulation a big part of his pitch to the American people. Does President Trump have a point?Are we an overly regulated society?

When you get rid of all the regulations, as Donald Trump is suggesting, really, we become incredibly vulnerable to what appear to be small decisions, but they become bigger decisions. We need regulation. What I was saying is we don't need red tape, right?While I was governor, we went through 24,500 rules and regulations. And we looked for the red tape that really is not adding regulatory value.


He apologized for the messages and essentially blamed the fact that he worked really long days and often used this group chat to - as he said, you know, relieve stress. That did not sit well with people, obviously. He ended up, like you said, having to ask most of his inner circle to step down. But that has not appeased anyone. The outcry and the demands for his resignation have only grown. Not only from his political opponents - also, essentially everyone within his own party here in Puerto Rico has abandoned him. And now there is talk within the legislature of beginning the process of removing him from office if he doesn't step down on his own.

And has he said that he is considering it?Or what is he saying about that possibility?

No, he's basically dug his feet in and has said he is not going to resign. He said he was, you know, elected governor by the people of Puerto Rico, feels like he has a lot of work to do and intends to continue doing it. A big question is obviously how because he has lost the confidence of everyone within his government, and no one really sees him having the capital needed to govern.

That is NPR's Adrian Florido joining us from San Juan.


But they just talk. They don't really do anything, and they make appeals, and people are fed up with it, so people don't really pay much attention to the Arab League meetings anymore, even if they meet at the summit level. But it's a sign that the leaders are aware that their people are angry and concerned.

And the fact is that Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is an Islamist group that is actively fighting back against Israel, and they're the only people who seem to do this, and popular opinion in the Arab world is very much with them. Not everybody is with them. Some people criticize them, but most people line up, support Hamas in terms of just fighting back against Israel, protecting Palestinians. So there is great tension within the Arab world itself over the situation.

The Arab League is meeting today in Cairo. Do you think it will be as you say, all talk?Or will any action come out of that meeting?

Well, there probably will be some symbolic action. They'll probably send a delegation to the UN Security Council. They'll do something like that. They will ask for possibly a meeting of the Arab summit at the head of state level. But again, it will be more talk, more talk than action, more rhetoric. The facts on the ground won't change very much because of what the Arab leaders are doing, unfortunately.

There is a bit of a perception that Iran's influence is growing in that region. How do you think Arab leaders are responding to that?


That's exactly the concern that advertisers have about this, they use these small data tracking files called, cookies. And by watching where you go on the web they can build a customer profile and decide what kinds of ads to show. Well, the internet advertising bureau which represents a lot of these companies, and web publishers says if this feature becomes widely adopted a lot of sites and especially smaller ones that rely almost entirely on their ad revenue - they won't be able to survive. On the other hand, some analysts are taking note that Microsoft's own future could hinge on web advertising, and this could affect its own business in much the same way.

Other browsers have offered something like this?

That's true, the Firefox browser and Apple Safari browser do offer similar features.

Bob Moon of Public Radio's Daily Business Show, Marketplace - thank you.


No (laughter).

It tastes like the best parts of the sotol have just been elevated.

All right. I can get into that.

I don't know. I'm just making stuff up. It's really yum.


This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

Tornadoes hit Oklahoma City last night. Five people are reported to have died, including a mother and her child. Nearly 90 people are being treated for injuries. The twister touched down in Oklahoma City and in nearby Moore and triggered flash floods and power outages. And, of course, we remember that Oklahomans are still recovering from tornadoes that hit a few weeks ago. Kurt Gwartney is the news director at our member station KGOU in Oklahoma City. He joins us now. Kurt, thanks so much for making time for us on a very busy morning.

You're welcome.

What's the latest news you can give us?


It was. So Apple's lawyers were incredibly practiced and very eloquent. They told a very compelling story for their case, and they told it in terms that were very easy for the jurors to understand. They had lots of well-done slides and pictures illustrating their points, and when they finished speaking, you were convinced that they were in the right.

Samsung, on the other hand, they were - they came across as being defensive a lot of the time and kind of brash sometimes. And their case was also a lot more complicated and involved much more technical terms, and so I think that might have been much harder for jurors to understand.

And so what - what exactly did the jury find?They sort of had a mixed bag of things.

Right, so they found patent infringement for a whole host of Apple's intellectual property in the case. They found 28 cases of infringement for some of the smartphones involved. They upheld Apple's patents on iPhone and iPad design, and now Apple is seeking injunction against eight of those 28 smartphones that were found to be violating Apple's intellectual property.


Sure. Sure.

. . . And two child actors were killed in a horrific helicopter crash. . . . . . And two child actors were killed in a horrific helicopter crash. . .

This is the "Twilight Zone" movie. This is the "Twilight Zone" movie.

The "Twilight Zone" movie, right, in northern Los Angeles County. The "Twilight Zone" movie, right, in northern Los Angeles County. And despite the fact that violations - Landis and the other defendants were acquitted. And despite the fact that violations - Landis and the other defendants were acquitted. No one has actually ever pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter when it comes to a film production. No one has actually ever pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter when it comes to a film production. So from that standpoint, this was an historic development. So from that standpoint, this was an historic development.


Well, most of them are against the government, so many of them see even public health workers as the enemy since they work for the government. And every time there are clashes with the police or with government soldiers, you know, health workers have to wait a day or two or even more for them to get into these villages or territories to treat the people.

Yeah. You know, what struck me when I was reading your article was that the health officials actually think that this outbreak is made much worse because of these militias. It's almost like they've created the problem.

Absolutely. Because every, you know, day or hour of delay, there is the possibility that the virus will spread to someone else and then spreads to the entire village. And that could, you know, spread very dramatically.

So tell us a little bit more. You know, there are also experimental treatments. What kind of progress has been made there?


It's been busy, definitely your traditional day after Thanksgiving where the phone starts ringing earlier in the day, and it just keeps on ringing. We're going to have a lot of people. They're going to have a lot of company over from yesterday and a lot of the people trying to be helpful in the kitchen, and they're going to put those potato peels down the drain and carrot peels and all the stuff that normally wouldn't go down the kitchen sink drain.

Kevin, I've been one of those people before, a few years back. I actually had a busted kitchen sink on Thanksgiving Day, and I couldn't find anyone open that day. By the next day, I was in a panic. Do you get the panicked calls the day after?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know, people, they're going to find out that a lot of the plumbers have not opened and that maybe their regular plumber that they call always is not going to answer their phone or say that they'll get right back to them. They get a voice machine or something.

Because you can capitalize on people's need the day after Thanksgiving, do you charge any more today?


The death toll in Sudan has risen sharply. A doctors group there now says more than 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded when the military fired on a sit-in outside the defense ministry. Pro-democracy protesters want a new government in Sudan. They have been negotiating with the military. In a televised statement, the military said now all agreements are off, and elections will happen within nine months.

Joining us now is Nima Elbagir. She is senior international correspondent with CNN. She was in Sudan not long ago, and she joins us now from London. Thanks so much for being with us this morning.

Good morning, Rachel.

Nima, I understand you're in touch with people in Khartoum. What are you hearing now that this violence has happened?


And he was saying how we, you know, you here have been so fortunate. You've got to help. We need you. And then he pauses, and he says, for example, there's a young man sitting in this church today, my friends in New York, whom I respect. They tell me that this young man, his brain has been touched by God. But this young man told me something about himself, and I had the chance to meet him. His father was a chauffer and a gardener. His mother was a maid and a cook. And I said, oh, lord. I started, like, trying to hide in my seat. But he started really telling the story that was classic of many professionals. If somebody went and work for them, either their parents or grandparents that made it possible for them to have an education.

And then, he paused again. He said, you know, but he has forgotten from where he came. And I thought for a moment — because a - like a video of my mother, particularly when my father came up, and I started to cry. I mean, these tears came down. So I said this service is over. I didn't say a word, I just walked over and talked with my hand and I said, Dr.  King, when do you want me to leave?

Mm-hmm. And then you went onto work on what is Reverend King's most famous or certainly most quoted speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech. Now, today you can hear that speech used in a lot of different contexts. It's, in some ways, become background music for Black History Month, you know?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.


However.

Well, you know, it is a good analogy. It's like, you know, you keep the umbrella around. Once it stops raining, you don't get rid of the umbrella, you keep it in the closet. It's the same with your savings. Even when you're doing well, you still have to put something away for the time that it rains, because guess what, it's always going to rain.

So, what are you going to miss most, do you think, about being on the show and giving advice to the radio audience?

Well, obviously the staff, you know - and you know, I don't want to get so melancholy but I have to tell folks that I have never enjoyed working with a group of people more than I have here at NPR. Really smart, caring people who wanted to produce a segment like this to - you see, I'm getting ready to cry - to really help people. This is the one job, and I've got like 10, that I love getting up to go to. And I'm going to miss the listeners. NPR listeners are the most thoughtful, and I get a ton of email - even from those who disagree with me, it was always in a way that was very respectful. And that says a lot about the people who listen to this program.


Well, I don't (laughter) know if it's going to be forever unique in that way. We have this evidence now of President Trump making calls along these lines. And you get a lot of - I got a lot of criticism. Sometimes for being too soft, sometimes for being too harsh. I'm banned from Russia by Vladimir Putin because we successfully prosecuted an international arms dealer named Viktor Bout. I was personally attacked by President Erdogan of Turkey because we prosecuted somebody that, you know, he had connections to in an indirect way.

I'm glad you mentioned Turkey's president. What happened in a different country, in a different system, when there was a prosecution of someone named Reza Zarrab, and it became a matter of political interest?

So Reza Zarrab was a gold trader, Iranian but also from Turkey, who was being prosecuted along with other folks in Turkey for various, you know, elements of misconduct. And those cases were made to go away because he was politically connected to two people who were close to Erdogan.

What did President Erdogan of Turkey do to make that case go away?

Well, he exercised his power in a country that doesn't have the same constitutional protections that America has. He relieved judges of their duty. He removed prosecutors from office. He shut down media outlets. And the case went away. Literally, the case was made to go away. Now, that is not something we've seen in this country and hopefully we'll never see in this country. And it's harder to accomplish in this country.


They do. The students often say things like, but I just want to fit in. I want to look like everyone else. And the people next to me aren't reading braille, so why should I?

So answer the question. Why should they?I mean, if it's easier to get along without having to rely on braille, tell me why you think it's still important. I'm just wondering if you're having a hard time making the case to parents as well as the students.

It's really not a hard sell to parents because we show them the data. We give them evidence that suggests students, when learning braille, they're more likely to get employment and have greater academic gains as while later in life.

How did you learn braille, by the way?Do you mind if I ask?


Yes, yes, in fact three weeks ago, General Electric came here because they now realize that this is coming with a vehemence and changing - that all the lighting is going to be this. And of course they've got a lot of pride in this, and they could use it for their purposes.

So they came here and filmed one morning. I was pretty rough on them, in a sense, because I said I'm not going to do anything special for you guys. I believe in you, I've worked with you and all that, but just come in here with your stuff and film. And so it's in my drawer here.

It's going to be - you're not giving it to the Smithsonian or anybody like. . .

Hey, Ira, it's a tiny little crystal, and it's hard to believe that a tiny little crystal, you tickle it with a current, and wham, it'll blind you. In other words - I don't really don't know what ought to be done. You know, John Bardeen didn't give his first transistor box to the Smithsonian. It's here in a museum, and I don't know. That's an interesting question: Where should things like that go?


DR.  MEENAKSHI WADHWA: Thanks, Ira.

Let's talk about your collection. How did you get a collection?

So, this is actually part of a great story too. There's a really famous collector, an Arizonan, Harvey Nininger, who had this wonderful collection. He is probably the person who I would say was responsible for bringing up the science of meteorites to the United States. And he had this great passion for meteorites. Actually, in the natural world in general but a great passion for collecting these space rocks. And he did this in the 1930s and '40s, and he had this wonderful collection, probably the best in the world.

And towards the late 1950s, he actually sold - he was basically deciding what to do with it and wanted it to have a life beyond his at some point and he sold half of it to the British Museum.

Wow.


They're placing a lot of their hopes on the Chevy Volt, the electric car that's due out at the end of 2010. What do you think about that, and do you think that that's enough to help the company?

In reading through the General Motors restructuring plan, they talk about it as if it's the next Ford Model T.  I think the language that they use is a fundamental reinvention of the American automobile industry. And, you know, I hope it is, but you have to be skeptical about anything coming out that will fundamentally reinvent the industry, at least at this stage. It's too mature an industry right now.

Is there anything that GM can say when they go before Congress tomorrow and Friday?Is there anything that they should do, do you think, that could save it?

Their objective in going to Congress is not to save the industry. Their objective in going to Congress is to get money from Congress. And if you read through these documents, they are - especially the General Motors document, it is full of really shameless Americanizing, patriotic propaganda. It's geared to getting the money, and that's their objective. And I believe they will come away from Washington with money.