And why do you choose to move to this country and live in Los Angeles and try to make it here when you're, I guess, a big star back in South Africa?

Because you have to grow. It's fun, you know?And I think America was a great choice because we have such a great shared history in terms of South Africa's past and America's past. You know, we both have a history of slavery. We both have a history of black people fighting for their freedom and independence. And then you both - we both have the very sensitive change now in terms of - people have this like it's - in both countries, you see this subtle racism and, you know, they're struggling to deal with raise and people don't know how to deal with it.

I mean, I've seen out here, people don't even want to say the word black. I don't know when black became negative, but now people go, oh, you shouldn't say black. Yeah, we - you say urban, yeah. Baltimore is going to be real urban, Trevor. That's what people tell me.

And I got to Baltimore, and I was expecting, because urban means built up and new, you know. So I got there and I was, whoa, it's not as urban as people told me, you know, and like - but it's very black. I'll tell you that much. So it's interesting to see, you know?


She says that the album's title, "Pleasure," came out of a time when she wasn't feeling much of it.

There wasn't a particular thing. I was in a low-grade - just of confusion. Maybe it was like a what - what direction to go next - like, your compass stops working. It might have been from repetition of touring, from being - you know, having been an adult for long enough to have observed what I was doing as an adult. What - how adulthood was looking on me - you know what I mean?And so I think it was just a confluence of a bunch of different factors - you know what I mean?- that was putting me in a state of mind.

Yeah, I think for those of us that are older, we call it a midlife crisis. We have these crises of confidence (laughter). But I don't think that's what was going through you.

I know.


Thank you.

Why don't we start with a song?

Happily.

(Singing) There's a big white house on a leafy street on a summer's day in 1963. Station wagons parked in the drive with dents in the fender and wood on the side. There's kids and dogs and Instamatic cubes squinting hard in the sun. Not just yet, but one day, too, they'll be chasing what's already gone.

(Singing) You grow up tall and you grow up tough, trying to never admit not feeling good enough, until you find your passion and you find your way. Just trying to make it unscathed through every day. And it seems to happen nearly overnight. Life shows you who you've become. When there's no more mystery in the fading light, you're just chasing what's already gone. Like the line that spells the far horizon, moving with you as fast as you can run. Half your life, you pay it no attention. The rest you can't stop wondering what you should have done instead of chasing what's already gone.


Well, thereafter, we may be singing Christmas carols in the Capitol. It's brinksmanship, of course. They're just trying to get everybody focused and trying to get everybody to actually vote for the basic spending bills, get Congress to do their routine business. It's not routine, though, because Republican leaders can't get enough of their members to vote for spending bills. So they need Democratic votes to get the bills across the finish line. And those come with a price tag, including, for example, the issue of the DREAMers, the. . .

Yeah.

. . . People who were brought here by their parents when the parents came to the country illegally.

And how do they breach the differences between the House and Senate bills, when the promises some Republican Senate leaders made to get the votes of, say, Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona, seem to be no longer - are not contained in the House version?And the House leaders say nope, we're not going to have them.


We're in the last few weeks of the Supreme Court's current term, and justices still have loads of decisions to hand down - two dozen, to be precise. And some of those may come as soon as Monday. We'll bring in NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. Nina, thanks so much for being with us.

My pleasure, as always, Scott.

Twenty-four cases in which there are no decision. I gather a dozen could be of particular interest. Which ones do you most anticipate?

Well, there are three big ones. The first is what I call the cross case. This is a giant cross on public property in Bladensburg, Md. It's a World War I war memorial. And civil libertarians have objected to it because they see the cross as a symbol of Christianity and that it ought to be on private property, maintained with private funds, not taxpayer money. We're going to see what the court does with that. My suspicion is that they're going to let the cross stand. And whatever they write probably will have a lot of impact on religious symbol cases in the future.


I was just going to say, would this result, from their point of view, represented defeat?

Definitely. I mean, definitely that they are in a - they lost some seats, first of all, a couple seats. But also, I think, they are definitely concerned about the rise of Yair Lapid with this issue and Netanyahu's agreement to tackle this issue. Netanyahu had actually agreed last year to take on this issue. He - you'll might remember that he formed a larger coalition with the Kadima party, which at that time was very large, and the promise was that they were going to address the draft issue. And they spent about 70 days in this coalition supposedly working on it but it blew up because Netanyahu would not push it with the ultraorthodox. And so the coalition - that coalition fell apart or the Kadima left.

And now, it - he seems to say he's going to do it now. He talks - talked today about the draft as - or the sharing the burden is kind of the terminology here that (unintelligible) of election, share the burden. He mentioned that as one of three principles on what the new coalition will be formed.

And this is also partly in response to rulings from the Israeli courts.


Yes, yes.

Carla. And they record a song.

OK. Things are starting to click here clearly. What does that recording say about where Stax was going?

Stax is picking up the sound of the street and embracing it. And even though these are white people and black people making the record, there's none of the strife that's outside the door.


You know, it was actually that friends started hearing we were doing this and said, well, have you thought about sharing them?So, about a year ago, I rounded up 10 or 12 people in town, and I said, OK, I'm going to mail you, I'm going to email you a math problem every night. Try it with your kids and tell me what happens. And within days, people were telling me that their kids were starting to bug them for the math problem every night.

Mm-hmm. Give me a sample of a math problem. Give us a math problem sample.

Sure. So, a couple of days ago, we did one on animals that have eight legs. And, you know, how do you walk when you have eight feet without tripping over yourself?So I actually watched a video of a crab walking to see how they do this. There's also a spider video out there. I couldn't bring myself to watch that. That was going to give me nightmares. But I watched the crab one, and there's a pattern.

The four feet on one side go one, three, two, four, and the ones on the other side do the same thing, alternating. So if the pattern is one, five, three, seven, two, six, four eight, and then you do one, five, three again, which leg takes the next step?


Did you get an answer?

We did not. I guess - I suppose an answer in sort we're saying why; we don't know when it's going to be released. And then as we dug into it further, the answer that we really got was it was a White House decision.

You're hearing this from who - from - when you're reaching out to the Pentagon, they're telling you - ask the White House?

Correct. Yes.


So you're comparing yourself in this book to a great revolutionary. And in this book you write: Almost 30 years ago, I tried to write a book I hoped might free my brother from a life sentence in the penitentiary. Everything written after that book - and basically didn't work - everything written after that book worked even less. Are you upset that words can't change more?

Well, I'm upset, and I also know better than to think that they really can. What words change - the power of words is to change the individual's sensibility, to change the individual conscience. And every now and again, there are words which allied or aligned with politics and good luck and external conditions in the world. There are words and phrases and slogans that really can manifest change.

What specifically - if you had to pick a phrase from him, what would it be?

It would be: Make of me a man who questions. Make of me a man who questions. And I would certainly put that on a T-shirt and wear it around.


Good morning, Scott.

You have seen the Saudi statement. What does it tell you about how the kingdom is handling the crisis?

What we see is that for the first time, officially, the Saudis say that Jamal Khashoggi is dead. The account places blame on senior advisers - none of them royals - for a policy that's gone terribly wrong. The Saudis now admit that there's a standing order to bring dissidents back to the kingdom by force, if necessary. But the account lays the blame on these senior security officials who went beyond the order. They killed this dissident journalist. They covered up the murder. Why did the Saudi leadership fail to confirm his death earlier?Bad news travels slowly to the top is how one Saudi defender put it on Twitter. These latest accounts distanced the top leadership and especially the powerful crown prince. But there are so many questions left to be answered.

One of the biggest right in front of us - where is Mr.  Khashoggi's body?


And there are a lot of road riders or mountain bikers or anyone who is more of an enthusiast - they're paying $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 for a bike, and that same percentage price increase will apply to them as well. The bike doesn't get any cheaper because of the tariffs or the kind of bike riding you like to do. So bike prices will probably go up, you know, $1,000 on a $4,000 bike.

How soon do you think that this impact will be felt?

I think it'll be felt by the end of the summer. So anything that's manufactured and delivered after June 1 will cost more to import into the U. S.  And so that price will be seen in these mom and pop shops that rely on sometimes a shrinking consumer base to sell their products to.

And if the price goes up to that degree, what effect is this going to have on these shops?

Well, a bicycle isn't like a gallon of milk, you know?The demand can fluctuate. And so the demand for bicycles will probably go down. We're seeing bike shops close because in some areas, the demand for bicycling is going down. And this is a huge blow if you consider anyone having to sell bikes 25% to 50% increase in price.


He had a very special place in the music pantheon.

He really did, and those people live forever.

Absolutely.

People like Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway and Nat King Cole and Luther Vandross. That's why we say the late, great. And people used to say that about my dad, and I didn't - I only heard it about daddy, you know, the late, great, Donny Hathaway. And I say it about Luther as well. You know, his - it's such a void created that it will never be filled again.


Good to be with you, Scott.

So do you see the governor getting through the weekend?

It's hard to see how he can continue in politics, Scott. The visuals here are a hideous reminder at the very beginning of Black History Month of what passed for college humor not too long ago. Northam may be a changed man today. All indications are that he's been an agent of change and racial healing as a man in the military, a man of medicine in Virginia. And it just is so difficult to see how he can go on now with all these calls from all of his allies for him to step down.

And to repeat, it was in his medical school yearbook, and this must have been some kind of ticking time bomb.


(Soundbite of song "St.  James Infirmary"):

(Singing) I've been down to St.  James infirmary And saw my baby lying there. He was stretched out on a long white pillow. So sweet. So cold. So fair.

Let him go, let him go. God bless him. Wherever he may be. He can look this whole wide world over. And never find a sweet girl like me.

You have done so many different types of music. You have done the Monkeys, you know. What's coming up next for you?I don't know if you've already started work on another album or thought about it, but what direction do you think you're heading in next?


Well. . .

. . . National security officers out there speaking about it?

I could tell you a couple of dozen major news reports that turned out to be false based on the actual report that Robert Mueller issued. So when the president called those stories fake news at the time, you know, folks like you dismissed it, but it turned out he was right.

Now, it does seem like he's dismissing it, and he's being dismissive of it. I'm not sure he completely understands the implications of the impeachment inquiry. I think Nancy Pelosi is the smartest person in Washington right now. And I think she didn't pull the trigger on this without knowing that she had more ammunition in her guns.


She - of all the characters I've written, she's the only one who came to me sort of fully formed. At the start of the book, she's six years old. And to me, she's sort of this very curious, trusting, defiant young girl whose chief attribute is this kind of rebellion against unknowing. She wants to know as much as possible. And the central arc of the book is essentially her life and how her desire to know - her curiosity is sort of used against her during this war.

Sarat is forced to flee with her family, and she ends up in a vast refugee camp where she gets recruited, essentially. She becomes a weapon in this civil war, and she's kind of transformed by hate. She seems like she's not exactly a heroine that you'd read about in "The Hunger Games" but something rather darker.

Yeah. I didn't want to write a book with good guys and bad guys and a clear dividing line between them. The idea behind writing it when I first started had to do with the idea of the universality of revenge. There's no sort of foreign way of suffering - that any of us subjected to enough evil will become evil ourselves.

Is this a book about how someone becomes a terrorist?


One last, I think, pretty blunt question we've got in 40 seconds left - why is President Trump more critical of Alec Baldwin than he is of Vladimir Putin on this week when Putin shows an animated video of Russian missiles smacking Florida?

I, you know - I think if you look at the President Trump style with ISIS as an example - he doesn't like to tip his hand. He was critical of the last administration by declaring departure dates, and so forth and things going on in the Middle East. And I think he's been tougher on Russia and Vladimir Putin than any other administration, at least the last two.

Really?

And so I would say, stay tuned to that. He's pretty predictable in that way.


Everybody else in the theater did. I didn't.

Oh, yeah, right.

Every single person cried except for me.

Oh, yeah, because they were only slicing onions for you?


DR.  GABRIEL FITZPATRICK: Well, all I can say is we too in this area are having some positive news stories from patients who have recovered from of Ebola, but this is not due to any experimental medical treatment which is available. When a patient is admitted here with Ebola, they're given various forms of supportive medical treatment such as anti-malaria treatments or spectrum antibiotics, which can treat chest infections, urinary tract infections. And they're also provided IV hydration if that's required. And these have some effects on reducing the mortality rates associated with Ebola, but there are - I have to say - not a treatment for Ebola.

Seven out of 10 patients that you admit for treatment with Ebola die. It must be going through your mind what have they done there at Emory in Atlanta that we might be able to use here because they seemingly saved two lives there.

In the situation I am working here at the moment, we have no experience with any experimental drugs. And I am not in a position to comment on that because we are here at the invitation of Sierra Leone. And we cannot do things that break the law, only with possibly faced expulsion. So everything we have done is in conjunction with the government of Sierra Leone. And we will continue to do that. But obviously MSF welcomes any new novel treatments. They should be made available as quickly as possible to patients if they're found to be of adequate value.

Dr.  Fitzpatrick, I am told you have a family back in Dublin?


My pleasure, Scott.

Tell us about Don McGahn, if we could. He was the campaign's lawyer, right?

He was. He built a career here in Washington representing a lot of politicians on campaign finance and ethics issues. One of his more prominent clients was Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, a Texan better known as The Hammer.

The Hammer.


NPR's Sylvia Poggioli says the showdown speaks to deeper tensions between populists and liberals, tensions we've seen playing out across Europe. And Sylvia joins me now from Rome. Hey, there.

Hi, there.

So tell us exactly what has unfolded here. This all began back on June 12.

That's right. That's when the captain of the NGO ship Sea-Watch, 31-year-old Carola Rackete, and her crew rescued 53 migrants off the coast of Libya. They decided to head for the closest safe port, which is the Italian island of Lampedusa. But Italy's populist Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has introduced a controversial security decree that bans NGO migrant ships from entering Italian ports. He claims they essentially are in cahoots with human traffickers. But after two weeks on the high seas, the standoff continued.

And just to be clear, Sylvia, they were just circling in the waters out there for two weeks, trying to figure out what to do next.


Qatar would like to improve its relationship with the U. S.  government, which has supported a Saudi-led economic blockade of the small Persian Gulf power. Qatar didn't just hire well-known K Street lobbyists and powerbrokers. It targeted people they believe President Trump listens to - a radio broadcaster, a real estate developer, a commentator and former presidential candidate - and gave them all-expense paid trips to Qatar and, usually, a consulting fee. Qatar's regime believed if it could win over people that President Trump listens to, he might change his mind. Now, that's according to a news story published in The Wall Street Journal by Julie Bykowicz, who joins us now. Thanks very much for being with us.

Thank you.

Tell us how this is done. You begin the story by talking about Alan Dershowitz, whose name doesn't usually come up when you're talking about Qatar.

Sure. He's not an elected official. He's not in the administration. But what Mr.  Dershowitz does bring to the table, at this point, that lobbyists have identified is President Trump really likes this guy. And so other lobbyists have picked up on this, and the two gentlemen that I interviewed for this Qatar story said they identified him as someone that could potentially be influential. What Alan Dershowitz is thinking, perhaps President Trump would begin thinking as well.


Those same streaks are in Europe. We're seeing people who are rebelling against the European Union, the open market, the open borders, who are rebelling against migration and refugees and who have lost out or feel that they have lost out on globalization and trade and are now opposing trade. So the same phenomenon we see here in the United States you also see in Europe. And in that sense, we are having a crisis that really affects Western liberal democracies writ large.

I wonder what you'd say, Mr. Ambassador, to a citizen of Belgium or France who might say now a united Europe is just too bureaucratic and too centralized to protect its population.

Well, I think that is a sentiment you are hearing increasingly in places like Belgium and France that - the problem is that the threat is not just from without but it is also from within. Belgian citizens, people born in Belgium, blew up the metro station and airport, where French citizens born in France who blew up the concert hall and stadium in - last November.

That threat needs to be dealt with not only by the countries themselves but can more effectively be dealt with by the Europeans coming together, sharing intelligence, which is not what they're doing right now, protecting their external borders much better than they have been able to do, rather than each individually trying to deal with this challenge.


And both the Republican, Mark Harris, and the Democrat, Dan McCready, have weighed in on these allegations. What have they said?

So McCready went first. He said on Thursday that Harris has bankrolled criminal activity. That's a reference to a Bladen County political operative who pushed people to vote absentee by mail and then allegedly illegally harvested their ballots.

Now wait. When you say harvested, that means, you know, picking them up, opening them and discarding the ones you don't want?

Well, not necessarily. It definitely means that he picked them up from voters, which is illegal in North Carolina. You know, in this state, once you - it's your mail ballot, and you're responsible for getting it to the mailbox or to the Board of Elections. So this operative kind of went and collected them. We don't know exactly what he did with them.


She's going, this - you know, this mother, she can't leave her calf. We can't get her to go out. And - but you can't be trying to drag out a dead baby as well. Another friend had the exact opposite. The mother had died and the calf was alive and trying to work out how we can save this calf and get it out. And as you can imagine, that is - it's about as hard as it comes.

Oh, gosh. Mr.  Lamason, do we know why the whales do this?

We don't know. And there's a lot of theories around. But if you had to design a piece of landscape to capture whales, Golden Bay is pretty much perfect. It's a - quite a closed-in bay. It's got this large spit sweeping around, and the seabed out from there is very shallow for quite some kilometers. And there's a great chance that these whales were coming in here to feed and have made a poor choice about how close they can get in.

And is there anything human beings can or should do to try and help the whales?


It's called a poor choice. On one innocent New Year's Eve in the early 1980s, I went to a party with all my friends. And justification, rationalization - everybody's doing it. I'm the only kid who's - just has a couple beers and is not doing coke. So you know what?I try it. And you know what happened?I'm not like everybody else. I liked it too damn much. And what it did was take away the split-second timing of being able to hit a major league fastball and to do the geometry that you need to do to run down ground balls and throw accurately. It just took a split second off me. And I had a 10-year career. But I would have been, in my opinion, an all-star-type player a couple years. And the morals - incredibly, the morals and values that my dad instilled in me made me a good cocaine user, so to speak.

I don't understand that at all. The morals your father instilled in you made you a good cocaine user.

Here's how. Here's how. I was never late for a game, never would think about playing a game on coke. I was raised too well to do that. I convinced myself that I was OK.

Painful as it is but also, I think, instructive to those of us who loved your father - could you tell us about the time when he called you up and said, get over here?And it was - your father and your brothers wanted to talk to you about all this.


Am I wrong to see in this novel a theme that the relics we worship are often no more than making a choice among frauds?

You know, Frederick - he had 19,000 of these things.

Yeah.

You know, everything. Frederick was called Frederick the Wise. This was a very learned man. And you think, well, wait, you know, how could he have really thought this was, you know, the - a strand of Jesus's hair or a piece of straw?And the answer is, I suspect he didn't in his heart of hearts, but his - the overriding theology, if you will, was I think he thought that if relics make people more pious, where's the harm?I'm attracted to that notion. If it - if belief in a, you know, a bone leads you to praying to be a better person - how quickly I descend into truism - where's the harm?


But I'm sure that there's something else that you want to share with us. You have your poems about California, poems about the blues.

I've got one. The once called "Who I Am in Twilight. "And it's a poem that is actually emblazoned on the sidewalk. And it's set in stone, as it were, on something called "Poetry Walk" in Berkeley, California. They put down on sidewalk, Addison Street, about a hundred poets', I think, work. So it's fun to go over there and see how posterity works, because always somebody has dropped some pizza on it, mashed out a cigarette on it, or something like that.

So don't live for posterity, live for now. But here it is. "Who I am in Twilight. "

Like John Lee Hooker, like Lightnin' Hopkins, like the blues himself. The Trickster Sonnet, hoedown, the tango, the cante jondo. Like blessed spirituals and ragas, custom-made. Like sagas. Like stories. Like slick, slow, sly, soliloquies sliding into dramas. Like crime and punishment. Like death and birth. Canal Street, New Orleans. Like the easy, erasable, troubled voices a whirling ceiling fan makes in deep summer nights in hot, un-heavenly hotels. Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee. Like the Mississippi River so deep and wide, you couldn't get a letter to the other side. Like Grand Canyon. Like Yosemite National Park. Like beans and cornbread. Like rest and recreation. Like love and like. I know we last. I know our bleeding stops.


Xie xie.

Xie xie. Well, Alonzo Bland, xie xie. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.

Thank you.

Alonzo Bland is living in Tianjin, China. He's at the Aimin Fat Reduction Hospital, hoping to lose 400 pounds.


Well, I was there at the time and I didn't think that Ukraine would take off at all. The first problem was that there were no good economic thinkers at all in Ukraine. All the thinking was really done in Moscow. And the other part was political, that Ukraine came together through a coalition of Ukrainian nationalists in the West who wanted to have an independent state and the old corrupt nomenklatura who wanted to stay in power, and in effect they did.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been camping out in downtown Kiev, calling for change, more of a turn towards the West. What do you make of the protest movement when you have this agreement?Is it the kind of thing that in the West we might see and identify with and therefore maybe exaggerate the strength?

Well, what this is, is not about trade agreement - that's the lesser part. It's about European values. It's about democracy and rule of law. Ukrainians are tired of corruption and poor governance. They want to live as in Europe.

You wrote a book in 2009, "How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy. "


I had a very sobering experience last week. Michigan's Democratic governor was tapped to play the part of Sarah Palin in practice debates with Joe Biden. And while she was out of the state, I wrote a fantastic column whose premise was that Sarah Palin had arrived in Michigan, barged into the vacant governor's office, and decided to see what she could do to whip our mopey little state into shape.

Now, what I was not prepared for was the hundreds of readers who called the Free Press to ask, did the governor of Alaska really crash into the governor's office and take over the state for a day?And I spoke to one woman, and I said, ma'am, isn't this premise a little bit implausible?And she said, Mr.  Dickerson, a lot of what I see on the news doesn't make sense these days, but it all seems to be true.

And I think that's the level of confusion and shock and awe that's out there in our state these days. They really don't know which end is up.

Brian Dickerson is a political columnist for the Detroit Free Press, getting a lot of interesting phone calls and letters. Thank you very much.


Well, all I can tell you is this. When I asked Commissioner Davis that question, he didn't hang up on me. He said the answer that I gave - that I reported - he said absolutely. It's possible that just the feeling that we're over the hump, that we're through this. I mean, it's human nature. You've watched events. They get there early. They're on high alert all the time. Plus, in this particular case, the bomb-sniffing dogs had gone through twice, once in the morning and an hour before the explosions have gone off.

So there was a feeling, there was a reason to feel basically secure that at time. It turned out not, you know, the security was - sense of security was misplaced. But again, I don't think it's an insult at all to what the response and, you know, the courage and all of that happened afterwards to rethink, and, you know, again, to use an overused term, connect the dots about how things were set up, were they followed out as they should've been.

Joan Vennochi, thanks very much for your time today. Appreciate it.

Thank you.


You know, let's just take a look at Los Angeles' demographics. You have people from incredibly wealthy to incredibly poor. You have immigrants, native-born people who've come here from other parts of the U. S. , people, of course, who were born here. How do you think L. A. 's demographics affect the need for public transportation?

Well, clearly there is a very serious need here in the region. We are very geographically dispersed in other words. We have suburbs that extend for miles in every direction. So the need for a broad-based transportation system that depends on a lot of bus service is particularly important in our region. Here in the downtown area, we do have a more extensive rail network that starts in the downtown region and then extends outwards.

But again, that's only the metro services. There are also Metrolink services and Amtrak services that serve more of the Southern California region. So there are lots of transportation choices here, and it would do people that are trying to save money well to look into these services.

Finally, is the federal government supporting the system at all?


Well, let me give you an example. I walked up to some lawmakers in the Great Hall of the People. And they confirmed to me unanimously that they were going to vote in favor of scrapping term limits. And one thing you hear from a lot of Chinese when you ask them is that they say, look. President Xi Jinping is doing a great job. He's getting China lots of respect on the world stage. He's cleaning up corruption at home. He ought to be given a chance to do more. And also, I think it helps to remember that in Chinese political culture, it's basically been the rule of man. And so people feel, let's get a good man, and let's not worry about, if we don't get a good man, what rules are we going to rely on to give him the boot?

You mentioned critics. And there are critics. What are they saying about this?

Well, you don't hear a lot of them because their views are often censored on the Internet. But I think it's safe to say that they feel very gloomy and pessimistic about the current situation. They look into the future - say 10, 15 or even more years - and they just don't see a lot hope for civil liberties, transparent and accountable government or robust civil society. And they just feel that this is a real historic step backwards into the bad, old days.

The bad, old days being China's monarchs of thousands of years?


Absolutely, and we just can't have that. . .

I will just tell you that now. . .

That'd be a security issue. Boy, talking about being slam-dunked after he dunked on the president.

Please don't do that.


I loved her tuna fish sandwiches, her spaghetti and meatballs. . .

Yeah, the tuna fish sandwiches, you write, she put pickle juice in them, you know, just gave it something a little bit different.

And to stretch it out as well, and that's the way I make it. My daughter loves it. That was my first experience of food, but I have great memories of the stuff I love that she made.

The big character though in this book, overarching, I think, everything, at least in the beginning, is a - is South Boston, Southie. It seems to be a fundamental part of who you are. Tell us about Southie.


Well, it's just so different as to be almost unrecognizable to everything else they ever do. Well, first of all, there are over 4,000 credentialed members of the media. I have met many of these people, and I question their credentials. (Soundbite of laughter) But aside from the crush and the demands on their time, it is a weird travel schedule.

For a regular game, there is usually a week between games in the NFL. And a team will arrive in the visiting team's city usually, maybe, a day before the game. Here they arrive almost a week before the game. And that is just to accommodate the fact that the Super Bowl is this huge corporate affair, this huge media affair. So it's interviews and a little bit of practice, and interviews and a little bit of practice. And if a team losses focus, it could really hurt them come Sunday.

It sounds like a pretty intense week. Now, let's say I were a betting woman. Does this kind of hectic schedule favor one team over the other?

Well, you know, even if you weren't a betting woman, even if you were someone with, you know, who lives and dies with the Steelers or who bleeds Cardinals Burgundy - I think there probably are people like that - you might say that the Pittsburgh Steelers might have the edge, because in general, they are the more experienced team, having been to and won a Super Bowl just three years ago.


Well, just briefly, people must be awfully nervous because, of course, there's aftershocks. Well, just briefly, people must be awfully nervous because, of course, there's aftershocks. Well, just briefly, people must be awfully nervous because, of course, there's aftershocks.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And let me just tell you, since I first got here, Renee, I have felt under my feet many, many aftershocks. And let me just tell you, since I first got here, Renee, I have felt under my feet many, many aftershocks. And let me just tell you, since I first got here, Renee, I have felt under my feet many, many aftershocks. And the U. S.  Geological Survey confirms aftershocks are taking place here. And the U. S.  Geological Survey confirms aftershocks are taking place here. And the U. S.  Geological Survey confirms aftershocks are taking place here. I feel maybe. . . I feel maybe. . . I feel maybe. . .

Right. Right. Right.

. . . Every few minutes, and there's been hundreds of aftershocks that are 2. 5 magnitude or higher. . . . Every few minutes, and there's been hundreds of aftershocks that are 2. 5 magnitude or higher. . . . Every few minutes, and there's been hundreds of aftershocks that are 2. 5 magnitude or higher. And as you mentioned, people are nervous. And as you mentioned, people are nervous. And as you mentioned, people are nervous.


See how he do his mom?

Ms.  O'BRIEN: Ira struggles to provide for her large family, working two jobs: as a real estate agent and a licensed massage therapist.

I can't stop. I push myself more now than I ever have. There's times that, especially the summertime, I didn't come home until like 8 o'clock at night sometimes.

So what did you learn from talking to her?


I think everything that I do and I try to do in my life is to thank them because they do so much for me on a daily. And I just want to show them how grateful I am because I truly am grateful. It's, like, a lot of sacrifices going to my quince. A lot of things had to get put on hold. And to be able to, like, have that quince and to be able to do all that - I just wanted to be as thankful as I could during the whole process. And I live for them, basically. Everything I do for them is, like, a hundred percent, kind of.

Matt, this topic was new to you. What did you learn about Latino culture?

O'NEILL: There's so many different facets of a quinceanera, from the baile sorpresa, the surprise dance, to the last doll, to the replacing of the heels - you know, the - giving the first gift of heels. And all those details I hadn't known about quinceaneras or this aspect of Latino culture. But I think the thing that became most clear is that at the core of these ceremonies is familial love, and that's what you see celebrated in each of the four films. And it's a universal aspect of human life. And Latino, Irish, every culture pours so much into their children, and that's what you see through these quinceaneras.

Rosi Alvarez is featured in the new HBO series "A Quinceanera Story" directed by filmmaker Matt O'Neil. Thanks to you both for sharing this project.


Yeah. You know, it's a great question. I think that the core of the problem is that they say that they pursue these weapons out of insecurity. So the logical thing is can the world provide them some sort of security?And in past agreements that I have participated in, we provided them security guarantees and offered to negotiate a peace treaty with them. The problem is I think the security - insecurity that they feel is generated by the regime itself. You know, these sorts of totalitarian regimes never feel secure. And that's the core problem.

Because there's mass starvation. There's mass poverty. There's mass oppression.

Right. And that they - all those things, and that they don't rule by the consent of the legitimacy of the people. And that's the basic problem.

Yeah. China has a role in this?


Yes, there was a peace agreement. But the big part of the peace agreement was that there is no border between Ireland and Northern Island. And that was possible because both Great Britain and Ireland are within the EU.

Can Britain get what they call a soft exit, or are there too many hard feelings for that?

I think on the EU side, there is a lot of willingness to have the soft Brexit. There's not much willingness among the hard Brexiteers to have a soft Brexit because a soft Brexit means that you stay within the customs union. The customs union means that you export and import goods freely. But if you stay within the customs union, you keep the same standards and the same rule book.

This sounds like an awful mess.


Actually, before, I was charging 155. And since the economy has gotten bad, I don't want to take advantage of people. So, I've just felt to lower my prices to make it better for everyone, and it's 125, and it's an hour session, and I do phone or in-person readings. I'm in New York. So, if anyone is in New York, I can do an in-person reading or over the phone.

And you say you channel. What does that mean?What's your technique?

My technique is, I work with guides on the other side and angels who work through me. So, I never say that the information is from me. It's coming from a higher source. And these things are connected to the person, so they really know the person better than they know themselves. And they know what they need to hear or that they want to hear that is best for them to help their soul to live the life that is best for their soul, basically.

Hmm. With all due respect to you and your profession, couldn't someone just be extremely well informed by reading the newspapers, listening to NPR, for example, and figuring out which way the economic winds are blowing and then make predictions and offer advice based on that?


You know, you have to be tough. You have to let them know that, you know, although, yeah, I'm a female, you know, I can punch you in the eye if I have to. Or turn the table over. . .

Or just be as tough as men have to do in certain - have to be in certain situations, so that they can erase the fact that I am a girl and reallylook at me as a professional who is knowledgeable about what I do and can do the deals and deliver. So. . .

Sonia, what about the live music scene?Because I remember going to some hip-hop clubs. I was - you know, this was back when I was much a younger woman, and really enjoying it until some of the violence got out of control. And then I stopped going to some of the venues because too many people were getting shot. How are things here in terms of the live venues?Are they safe?Are they - you know, how is the live music scene doing?

It is so interesting that you would bring that up today because just last night, there were three events that were happening last night. It was R&B Live over at the Lucky Street Lounge. They had Mario, and Marsha from Floetry. There was Estelle over at Sugarhill, that John Legend was presenting, great venues both of them.


Yeah.

And he's been the finance guy. We just don't know that yet. But I think, you know, if it turns out that he is cooperating or does get fuller immunity, he really could turn out to be an enormously important part of this investigation.

After Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and implicated the president, we saw a tweet from President - in an interview, Trump said flipping almost ought to be illegal. Fair to say that the cases couldn't be made without getting people to flip?

Absolutely. I mean, there's no question. And we often see people who are convicted of crimes where there are cooperators - say, you know, you shouldn't be allowed to do this. That itself should be a crime. But the reality is that in order to prove a lot of cases, particularly very serious cases, we need to have someone who's in the room when all the action happens, when the crime happens or who's involved in transactions or murders or whatever who can tell the story. And so it's essential to have that voice.


Burnt hair, desiccated strawberry, armpit, you know (laughter).

Very precise and unusual.

And there's also this new trajectory to incorporate the language of science. So instead of saying that something smells like green bell pepper, sommeliers are now describing it as smelling of pyrazines, which, by the way, is a chemical that is present in both sauvignon blanc and cabernet sauvignon grapes and in green bell peppers. So don't always roll your eyes at the sommelier.

I don't roll my eyes at the sommelier. I've actually always been intimidated by interacting with the sommelier. I wanted to ask you if you would take a moment to sort of teach someone like me. Can you walk me through it?

A lot of us, when we're given the wine list, treat it as a multiple-choice test. We're handed this list of a hundred options. And we have until the sommelier circles back to us to figure out the right answer.

Exactly.


When you say muscle through an agenda, the implication is they've got to twist arms in their own party?

Well, I think the Republican Party is going through change. The more populous, working-class element of the Republican Party is on the ascent. And the tectonic plates within both parties, frankly, are changing as both parties are becoming more tribalized. As you see on the Democratic side, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have a significant and outsized voice in their party just as the House Freedom Caucus and the more populous, working-class wing on the Republican side have an outsized voice.

Ken Spain was managing director of communications at Koch Industries. He's now a partner at the CGCN consultant group. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you for having me.


(Laughing) And the cover of the New York Post a couple days ago, "Don't Let the Door Hit You. "

Yeah. So sensitive is the New York Post. This was a guy whose first year, his nickname was the Man-genius, and that quickly came undone.

Devolved. OK, but what about Mike Shanahan of the Denver Broncos?I mean, he was there for 14 years. He won two Super Bowls. Why was he let go?

It's amazing. For about 10 years, you couldn't say the name Mike Shanahan without saying offensive genius. And I don't know if a lot of people thought that he lost the offensive genius, but there were circumstances to his firing. His team lost its last three games. If you end the season . 500, you know, with eight wins and eight loses, it's better to do it on an uptick than a downtick.


Add to the troubled auto industry a rise in unemployment. Weekly jobless claims benefits are at 16-year high. Wall Street isn't happy either. The Dow Jones Index plummeted below 8,000 yesterday.

To find out how advertising agencies are dealing with the current economic climate, we are joined now by Romi Mahajan. He's the chief marketing officer for the digital ad agency called Ascentium. They manage marketing campaigns for big, big companies, including Microsoft, Nintendo, and AT&T. Welcome to the program, Romi.

Thank you very much, Alex.

Yesterday, General Motors announced that it would review its contracts with ad agencies to see whether or not they should even be renewed. Let's say you were working on a car company advertising campaign. What should they do to actually get American consumers to buy cars?


I think it had to because of the workers and the communities where you had all of these plants. But because it became a 60-percent owner - the U. S.  government owns 60 percent of General Motors as a result of the bankruptcy - they could have straightened that company out, but they were completely hands-off with the post-bankruptcy management. In retrospect, they had to save General Motors. But they could've laid down tougher conditions.

What do you think about when you see some of the accounts in recent weeks about General Motors concealing what seems to have been a major problem which led to injury and death?

Eternal vigilance of the regulator is required. And the auto safety agency fell down on the job. It's just that simple. I think now we're going to get stronger legislation as a result of the GM debacle. A lot of good will come from it, unfortunately because of these fatalities.

Ralph Nader. His new book "Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance To Dismantle The Corporate State. "Thanks so much for being with us.


That work by Nick Holonyak and colleagues went on to be the basis for just about every LED starting back - staring back at you, you know, those little red lights on the little devices?This was the first one. Nick also did pioneering work on other electronic devices, including lasers. And when the Applied - the journal of Applied Physics Letters drew up a list of the five most important papers it had published up to 2006, Nick's name was on two of them. And he's here to talk to us now.

Nick Holonyak is the John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois. He joins us by phone. Welcome back to the program, Nick.

Thanks, Ira. You and I talked about this stuff in Washington when the MIT Lemelson Prize was given. Remember?And so this is our second contact, maybe more.

I'm hopeful we have a lot more to go, and I want you to - let's talk about this 50 - the anniversary.


So Gaspasr got a no. Can you talk about why?What was the reasoning?

Sure. So the applicant's explanation for Gaspasr - they explained that, I am a nurse anesthetist, which would make sense. They use gas. But the DMV commented gas passer. She passes gas - in parentheses - farts.

Ah, OK. So someone decided they weren't buying it. Are there things that they police for, like, hate speech or racism?I mean, how does that work?

Totally, yeah. Unfortunately, they do get a lot of submissions that at least could be interpreted as hate speech, as offensive to certain groups. They try to filter out things that could be seen as maybe references to white supremacy. For instance, the number 88 - in any context, even if it's benign, even if it's completely harmless, they always consistently block out the number 88 because it has a certain symbolism for white supremacy.


A clever grounds crew can mean a difference in close games, can't it?

Oh, definitely. Well a grounds crew can tailor the field in very small ways that might impact the outcome of the game. You know, gone are the days of legendary Kansas City groundskeeper George Toma and his ilk - the (unintelligible). They really would tailor the fields in unbelievable ways. They would tilt the foul lines in a certain way so that bunts wouldn't roll foul. They were harden the turf to make it more difficult for players to slide if they didn't want the opposing team to slide.

Nowadays, uniformity is really something that is mandated by Major League Baseball. But there are still small ways. I visited with Trevor Vance, who's the head groundskeeper for the Kansas City Royals. And this was during 2015 - the year they would ultimately win the World Series. And he talked about how he made the infield play very fast - you know, shorter grass - because they had young, athletic infielders. And they felt that that was an advantage for them because they knew that their guys could get to the ball. And the other team probably couldn't.

There's so much joy in your book. But I have to ask, are there bad memories, if not ghosts, at the New Orleans Superdome?


Well - and I think I'll compete by getting out there, by talking to folks like I always do. I think I've also done more on sort of the original sin of where we are in a post-Citizens United world, getting rid of dark money and the outside influences of dollars. When laws are literally written now to make donors happy, we've got a problem.

We do know that voters are very concerned about health care. We certainly saw that in the midterm elections. And you recently expanded Medicaid in your state - something that you've just mentioned.

We got it reauthorized, yeah.

But you haven't publicly supported single-payer health care. That seems to be a very popular position in the Democratic Party now, along with the Green New Deal. What is your position on single-payer and the Green New Deal?

You bet. You bet. First, starting, like, everyone should have access to health care. And it should be affordable. And that is what I've been working on in Montana, both through Medicaid expansion, through high-risk pools, through other things. And I think that you can get to universal accessibility and affordability in a way that isn't necessarily Medicare for all because you'd be disrupting - I don't know - 155 million people that have employer-sponsored health care. You do it by having a public option, no Medicare buy-in. It's about time when we can negotiate prescription drug prices with the biggest payer, which is Medicare. But it's that corrupting dollars that keep us out of that.


Waiting for the winds to drop down below 50 - sustained winds drop below 50. And at that time we send out all of our first respondents of police, fire, EMS, and our utility companies. Everybody goes out and does damage assessment report in their areas. Report it back to us. We make a priority listing, so we can get power back on if we lost any power. Get the resources back and so we can just bring our people back.

But the winds are above 50 miles an hour, now. So, you don't have anybody out right now?Every body's just hunkered down.

Ninety nine percent of our people are hunkered down. We have a few of our - like the sheriff, he is out, and a few other higher ranking agency people are out, but most - 99 percent of our people are hunkered down in shelters.

So, how long do you really expect that that's going to last?


Absolutely not. In fact, the people of my state should know we are doing everything in our power to defend them. If it comes to a legal fight with the Trump administration, we're prepared to have it. I've had some experience with taking on the Trump administration litigation. We have yet to lose a case yet, and I don't plan on starting with this issue.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson of Washington state, thanks so much.

Oh, thank you, Scott. Have a great day.

And we contacted the Department of Justice for comment on Mr.  Ferguson's remarks about Attorney General Sessions. We have yet to receive a response.


We literally can't get to everyone, but let's begin with Mitt Romney. He memorably said last year - I'm going to quote - "no, no, no, no, no, no" to the idea of running again. What may have changed his mind?

Romney changed his mind about 2016 because of 2014. And he hopes that will help other Republicans forget about 2012. You know, Romney's been crisscrossing the country for other Republican candidates all this past year, and it felt pretty good to him. Those candidates did very well in November.

And Romney looks around, and he sees no great alternatives to Jeb Bush. And he's just not convinced that Jeb Bush can win the nomination and sell the country on another president named Bush. Of course, his own problem is selling other Republicans on another dance with a guy named Romney.

Rand Paul is jetting around everywhere. How does he take advantage of the national network of support, particularly money that his father Ron Paul built up, while departing from his father on some national security issues?His father essentially blamed the policies of the French government for the murders in Paris.


Yeah, he loved it. He totally loved it, because he's not musical. He doesn't play an instrument. So, you know, I think when he's writing, it's a basic, almost like a poetry kind of - he's just writing with a little beat in his head. But when he hears a song of his completely flushed out with melody and instrumentation, it really bowls him over.

MR.  DAN AUERBACH: (Singing) How you were?In my sleep. (Unintelligible) never keep. . .

A number of songs that you've done as half of half of the Black Keys have wound up in films and in TV shows and even video games. The tune "Strange Times" appeared on the radio station in Grand Theft Auto IV. How do you feel about your music winding up in these places?

I think it's cool. I mean, you know, they don't play music much on the radio anymore, you know, not major radio. Getting our music out there anyway possible, it's the way to go, and video games are pretty huge, although I can't really play video games. I don't know. The modern video games kind of - they're too three dimensional. Have you ever played the. . .


And you actually crossed a few lanes of traffic to get out there and check it out.

Yeah.

What did it feel like to be in that no man's land?

Yeah. I know, I felt like Robinson Crusoe. I felt like some postmodern Vasco da Gama, I don't know. The idea to go into this place - obviously completely ludicrous 'cause no one would go across these lanes of traffic, which travel at quite a speed. And so of course I pretended to be like from the Council or some person in authority, you know, classifying the shrubbery. You know, I did my little faux survey and then escaped. But yeah, what a strange feeling and available to all of us 'cause we've all got these places around where we live.


Basically, they give you a lot of freedom. They don't get in your way. The editors encourage in-depth investigative work. They like to hold public officials accountable. They're also willing to go to bat if you need legal help, if you're trying to get records or things like that.

So would you advise young reporters to do what you have done and stick with a local news organization for a decent amount of time?

Yeah. I think at least a year. Sometimes two years is a good point to kind of reconsider your options. We thought that we were just going to be here for a year, but this paper has a history of crusading investigative reporting, strong local journalism. Our late publisher Ned Chilton coined this phrase called sustained outrage, and that's sort of hammering away at an injustice until it's righted.

People who can manage to stay mad for a long time.


Well, let's talk about the forecasting because one of the amazing parts of sort of science of this story was that hours before, the National Weather Service locally issued a warning that there might be a tornado. And it was pretty spot-on, it sounded like.

Yeah. You know, even days before. I mean, with this region was under the gun, we had outlooks noting this particular area would be prone to these types of storms on that particular date. Even that day, as you noted, some of our high resolution models indicated the possibility of tornadic storms. I know the National Weather Service put out some public communications, even warning, I think, somewhere around 11, 11:30, noontime hour that there was a possibility of storms later that afternoon. And even special warnings for schools.

So I want to give out a shout out to the colleagues and members of AMS there working at the National Weather Service and in the broadcast community because they were on top of it from the beginning. And I want to also emphasize that the Weather Service put out warnings 16 minutes before the storm even touched down. The average warning time these days is around 13 to 15 minutes, and that's up from five minutes in 1990. So although to many in the public that doesn't sound like a lot, that's actually above average so - and even more time before the storm reached Moore.

Talking with Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society. I'm Flora Lichtman, and this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. So what accounts for this change, this bettering of our prediction time?


They had psychiatrists on call, they had access to medication and ability to control that population or to deal with that population. They had psychiatrists on call, they had access to medication and ability to control that population or to deal with that population. If you are in a smaller place, you may not have that and you do not have that access, and there's more warehousing and restrictive methods going on because they don't have any other way to deal with them. If you are in a smaller place, you may not have that and you do not have that access, and there's more warehousing and restrictive methods going on because they don't have any other way to deal with them.

So really it depends on where you are, what kind of law that you've violated in order to determine how well the institution where you are is able to deal with whatever difficulty you have. So really it depends on where you are, what kind of law that you've violated in order to determine how well the institution where you are is able to deal with whatever difficulty you have.

Well, Judge Lynn Toler, it's always great to have you on. Well, Judge Lynn Toler, it's always great to have you on. Thanks so much. Thanks so much.

Always good to be here. Always good to be here.


What happens if you and all of your neighbors don't get your corn into the field?Like I say, as you've told me now, you've got like only about a fraction in the ground if what you normally would have at this time of year. Are we going to - forgive me for being selfish about it - are we not going to have corn this summer to go with our barbecues and everything else or what?What's going to happen?

The corn the majority of the Midwest grows goes toward feeding pigs, feeding cows, feeding a lot of different livestock, also goes toward corn oil and ethanol and various products that are on our store shelves. Long story short, we're looking at lower supply, which should increase the price if the demand stays the same.

But before we let you go, I mentioned that you're a fourth-generation farmer. And I presume that you've talked to your parents about the rain situation, the heavy rains. Have they ever seen anything like this before?

No. This is relatively unprecedented. I was talking to a neighbor here the other day about the drought in 2012. And, you know, we had a really short crop in 2012 because it got so hot and so dry. The corn crop didn't amount to anything, but at least we were able to get it in the ground. When you go out into a situation like this where we can't get the seed into the ground, it's worse than a drought for the fact that, you know, you don't even have a chance.


You know, when my father died, I promised him I would try to write this book for him really. And then I quickly realized that I was writing it for the little girl who was angry, you know - I call her the girl in the red cardigan. I have a picture of her, and she's biting her tongue (laughter) all the time, you know - and also to try to trace the ways in which that experience had a long tail, if you like.

I have a section of the book called Aftermath. And my father became an addicted roulette player after he left the Brethren, and that put an enormous strain on the family. My parents divorced. My father ended up in prison when I was 16. He was very, very chaotic. I understand that now, you know. He was impossible, infuriating and wonderful. In the year that I was studying "Macbeth" for my O-levels, he decided I had to see every single production of "Macbeth" that year. So we saw 13 productions.

Oh, wow.

And in most car journeys, he'd be playing me music and reciting poetry. So it was really extraordinary being a daughter of such a man.

Rebecca, I mentioned earlier how I grew up in a very religious family. I don't go to church that much anymore. Actually, I don't go at all. So I'm wondering, for you, where is your faith now?Do you still have it?


Yeah. Now, let me tell you. Again, people in Washington were saying, expedite these cases. Get them done in two weeks, for children who - I will never forget the images - who were sitting on a chair. Their feet were dangling. That's how small they were. And we were going to expedite these cases to have them tell a perfect stranger, in a language or a dialect they don't speak, about the trauma that they were experiencing in their home country, which required them to seek refuge in ours.

And so I got on the phone with managing partners from law firms up and down the state of California and said, let's get pro bono legal services to help these children who otherwise were not entitled to attorneys. All of that to say, one - I disagree with any policy that would turn America's back on people who are fleeing harm. I, frankly, believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for. And so I would not enforce a law that would reject people and turn them away without giving them a fair and due process to determine if we should give them asylum and refuge.

We're in a world with 60 million refugees, and with every reason. . .

Yeah.


But when we compared Cain against other Republican candidates and looked just at people who were supporting Republican candidate, the racial attitudes predicted, strongly predicted preference for the white candidates.

But the test itself isn't a measure of racism.

It is definitely not a measure of racism. We are very clear to emphasize that this measure something that is perhaps unconscious, in any case most people are unaware of it, and it is possessed by a large of the American population, people who do not at all think of themselves as racist. And we don't think they're lying to us when they say they have egalitarian racial beliefs.

Why is it that they're out of touch with their subconscious?This is too big a question to ask, it may take years to answer for any, you know, any person. But do you have any guesses on that?


You know, it would seem intuitively impossible in this environment that the actors would want to go on strike at this point. Just factoring out for a second the economy, there was a devastating writers' strike, and people were just really tired of that by the time it was over. Now, meanwhile, people are watching their savings disappear, it's terrifying out there, and I can't imagine that people would want to go on strike, but you have to bear in mind that a great many members in the Screen Actors Guild don't really work and can vote. So, that might have an effect on the outcome.

You mention the writers' strike that went on for several months. Many folks in the entertainment industry are still recovering from that. So, what would happen if all of a sudden there were SAG strike as well?

Studios can hold out. They're in bad shape. I mean, they're going to be hurt by this environment economically. But that doesn't mean they can't survive for quite a long time with a strike underway. And that means that people would - I mean, it would just be so devastating; people would lose their jobs. And that wouldn't just be the actors; it would be people who support productions. The actors, unlike the writers, they can close down a movie very quickly. So, it would be an immediate and potentially a long-term and the devastating impact not only for the economy here, but for the Screen Actors Guild if it turned out to backfire.

So, Kim, what happens from here?What's the next steps?


Given that judges do have discretion in a lot of cases about, for example, whether or not someone can get a misdemeanor as opposed to a felony, do you think this really is effecting who's in prison right now?

Well, first, you have to realize, the first person who deals with whether there's a felony or a misdemeanor is the prosecutor. And it's prosecutorial discretion as to what they get charged with. A judge has no control over that. Now, they can work out a deal, or, in a preliminary hearing, reduce a charge or whatever. But the prosecutorial discretion is what most people don't see that tends to be skewed a great deal. So, by the time it gets to a judge, a big chasm may have already arisen about the level of charge that's been leveled on a particular individual.

Judge Toler, who's going to fix this?

We all have to fix it. And we have to fix it by being conscious of what's going on before it goes on. When I went to classes after I was elected a judge, I said, if you remember nothing else I tell you today, when you're 18, you vote. And you register to vote because it does make a difference, six votes in my race. We have to be conscious of the judges, one, and number two, I think we have to change judicial education.


I would like to say I have confidence because my experience at NBC with that network and with that company - overall very good. And I have - you know, I hold them in high regard. I do feel that if it was going to be thorough - and you want to find out how that behavior continued for so long unchecked, as they say - then you would have to go back to at least, based on my documentation - that it can go back to the year 2000. So for me, I'm not filing a lawsuit. I am not trying to bring any more shame to him. But I do think that if they really want to get to the root of how this was allowed to happen for so many years, then you would have to come to me and ask how it all started.

Matt Lauer has since released his first statement to The Post. What did you think when you read it?

I thought it was very defensive. I thought - I think he is still feeling sorry for himself. I think that it's really sad if he doesn't view what he did as coercive or an abuse of power.

Have you spoken to Linda Vester, the woman who's made the allegations against Tom Brokaw?


I mean, anything that - any interest rate right now that's pegged to the federal funds rate, which is a key benchmark rate that many, many credit cards, many, many - some types of mortgages - but also many more types of short-term debts are pegged to, you can benefit a whole lot.

The problem is that if you're already in one of these homes, for example, that's - and you're underwater, meaning that you're house is worth less than the mortgage owner, and you've got poor credit or you don't have enough money or enough equity in the house to be able to refinance, then you're going to run it to a proper and you're not going to benefit.

Whether or not they - that helps the economy overall remains to be seen. I mean, the problem with economics statistics is that many times they lag by a couple of months. And so by the time you find out - by the time a recession is declared, you may have already been in one for about a month or two before you - before the rest of the country actually knows ,you know, some grand proclamation that comes from the Federal Reserve or some economists somewhere that we are in a recession.

We're going to talk a little bit more soon with a realtor in Ohio, your state, about the situation there. But last week, Countrywide Financial was subpoenaed by the attorney general of Florida. It's just one of a number of government agencies investigating the largest mortgage lender.


Nice to talk to you, Audie.

So to start, back in 2013, what intention of this legislation - allowing migrant workers to drive legally - what was the need you thought you were meeting?

There are about 1,500 undocumented people, mostly Mexicans, working on Vermont dairy farms. And they are, basically, supporting our dairy industry. And the need was that so many of them were living in the shadows of the barns - really literally. They did not have transportation. They relied on volunteers or their employers to get them to medical appointments or shopping and all sorts of things. And a group called Migrant Justice started working on the issue and started talking to lawmakers. So it was a very sort of innocent kind of idea that, you know, we can be a state that can accept that these people are here supporting our economy, and we want to be able to provide for them in some way.

Now, fast forward many years, and the Vermont DMV has many records - right?- of people in the country illegally; people who have gotten these driver's licenses. So what was your reaction when you learned about the cooperation between ICE and the Vermont DMV?

Well, I feel terrible that we facilitated this law and now it's putting people in jeopardy. And that was not the intent of law at all. And so it's very, very distressing to hear what's been going on. As you probably know, in 2017, the state officially ended this policy. But in the meantime, there have been other sharing of information by DMV, maybe not at the top levels, with ICE officials.


At this point now, those are the two sectors that are continuing to grow, that are continuing to be job engines. And the reason why I stress this is that historically, sectors which grow in downturns are the ones that set the pace for the recovery that comes afterwards. So, if I'm looking out ahead, I would sort of say the fact that these sectors have continued to grow is going to set the pattern for the coming upturn. So, you asked me about other parts of the sector economy that are doing well. It is very difficult to find other parts of the economy. My guess is that the next part that's going to recover is technology, but right now that part is still paddling hard.

OK, we don't want to hear any bad news right now. So…

No bad news. But…

We must end it on an up note.


Absolutely. Marine Le Pen did very well. That was expected. It wasn't a huge shock. She got about 24% of the vote. Macron avoided disaster. He personally invested in the campaign. He got about 22%, so came in, you know, second. But it was clearly a rebuke - a rebuke to him. And the - you know, the top person in Marine Le Pen's party lists said, the president - he turned this vote into a plebiscite, and he got his answer. The people are against him and his policies.

That is NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.

Eleanor, thanks so much.

Michel, good to be with you.


Have you ever seen one of these wrestling matches?Are the wasps easily found and seen?

Unfortunately, I've never seen the show. I can't wait, though. The day that I see a tarantula hawk come in contact with a tarantula I'm going to sit back and enjoy this dance. But you can see the tarantula hawks. They're actually quite common and quite conspicuous on the landscape, particularly throughout the southwest and indeed all the way from California to Virginia.

Do tarantula wasps have interest in humans?

They do not. So as long as you're not explicitly harassing this animal, as long as you're not trying to step on it or grab it, it's going to leave you alone. And, in fact, you can walk right up to them and watch them as they forage and hunt for tarantulas.

Ben Hutchins - invertebrate biologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Ben, thanks so much.


How has technology changed the way that vaccines are made?Is it easier to sort of see responses in living things as they happen now?

Yes, the technology has improved by leaps and bounds. We have, in the case of influenza, now a variety of different ways that we can read out virus neutralization. The traditional way was done using red blood cells, and we would look at the clumping of red blood cells, which is called hemagglutination. And the antibodies to flu would prevent the agglutination of red blood cells.

That was used for decades as the best marker of an immune response. Now we can look with automated assays at neutralization of the virus.

What does that mean?


That's Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of the personal finance website WalletHub. We've heard about credit card debt being a problem for middle and working classes before, but it's now become an issue for the upper-middle class. Papadimitriou says they're in the sweet spot for this type of easy lending.

It is the consumer group that wants to take on some additional debt and also has the income and the assets to justify so.

On top of that, recent numbers show that people approaching retirement age are also accruing larger amounts of credit card debt.

You know, they're away from retirement enough years to feel like, I will make up for it later on. Let me go and make this purchase. And then they end up later on in retirement with credit card debt.


You are so nice for not doing that spoiler alert. But, yes, so many people discuss Israel-Palestine as if its people on a spectrum. But this notion where people say, oh, you know, Israel and Palestine, they disagree. It's not a spectrum. It's metaphysics.

They're in a different reality, whereas, I lived in Jerusalem that had the Temple Mount and a Palestinian neighbor lived in al-Quds that had Haram al-Sharif. Like, literally, we're inhabiting the same space and in a different city with a different extraordinary holy place on the same spot. And, to me, you know, that gets us to the title of this book. I was looking for a space for the no man's land where a moment of understanding might take place.

Is there an affinity between writers and spies?

That's funny. I'm like - I was going to the list. I was like, writers and shrinks, writers and sociopaths. But, yeah, I have a whole list of things. . .


Well, as I said, Israel is certainly prepared to possibly deploy that armored brigade for an offensive mission. And, you know, this - Israeli strikes are continuing, and rockets are also continuing right now. And this is a - quite an escalation between the two sides and really a serious one since the 2014 war. That was a war that lasted many weeks. Dozens of Israeli soldiers and several Israeli civilians died. And on the Palestinian side, more than 2,000 people died, including many civilians and also militants.

With the stakes so high, are there negotiations for a cease-fire, do you know?And can you tell us about those and where they stand?

Well, before this current outbreak of violence, Egypt was mediating between the two sides to prevent such hostilities from returning. And those negotiations were meant to exchange calm on the border for Israel lifting certain restrictions in the Gaza Strip, basically to make life more bearable for people in Gaza. And this conflict certainly puts those negotiations at serious risk.

That's reporter Naomi Zeveloff in Tel Aviv. Naomi, thank you so much.


We can say she grew up. She had a daughter of her own who became curious about family secrets kept from both her and her mother for decades. That daughter is Laura Cumming, and she's the author of "Five Days Gone. "She joins me now from London.

Laura Cumming, welcome.

Thank you.

Start with the kidnapping, which is absolutely central to the book you've written. It was not central to your mother's life. She was only 3. She had no memory of it. And she didn't even learn of it until she was well into middle age. Is that right?


Why, over really a period of 25 years or so, have there been so many misadventures?How do you explain, for example, Iraq?How do you explain the lack of progress after so many years in Afghanistan?Why was the Libyan intervention unsuccessful?And I think the conclusion is is that the United States has focused more since the end of the Cold War not so much on defending against external threats but focusing more on the internal governance of foreign countries and trying to change it.

So rather than maintaining a strong defense in protecting our national interests, we've tended to promote democracy in other countries, we've engaged in nation-building exercises, we've engaged in regime change. And in most of those cases, we've been unsuccessful.

You were the U. S.  ambassador to Germany. Does the United States have - and you know the history - does the United States have no interest in preventing genocide and mass slaughter around the world?

I think genocide is probably the one case where we do have a responsibility. I mean, if it's real genocide and people are - there is mass murder, then I think we have a moral duty to intervene. But the problem is is that how you define that moral duty when it's not clearly genocide, when there's injustice, when there's discrimination, when, for instance, the young girls in Afghanistan can't go to school, that is not genocide.


Reptilian, exactly, and now we know that many species of dinosaurs had feathers or simple filaments that seem to be feather precursors in some cases.

Do your findings come from the relatively recent discovery that some dinosaurs had feathers?Is this sort of, like, the next step?

We are sort of taking the next. In the last 10 years, we've discovered that we can gain insight into the colors of dinosaurs and how they may have used visual signals in important contexts. And so what we wanted to ask is, can we gain insight into the vocal communication that extinct dinosaurs might have had?

Well, so what's next for you in your research?


We argued that six months was way, way too short. You're talking about trying to go into archives, documents, find materials. Unfortunately, this was what was included in the legislation. And we've urged the Polish government to open that deadline - indeed, to open the program to people who never filed claims or for whom no claim - buildings for which no claims were filed.

But the Polish government didn't agree.

Unfortunately not. We're hoping that the Polish government will look again at this issue and make this process easier not only in terms of the deadline but also what documentation is required. Make sure that archives are open and material is accessible because if you have a right and legislation but not the means to enforce it - and particularly for many of the Holocaust survivors and their families, virtually all of whom live outside of Poland, it's very difficult. They don't speak the language. They don't live in the country. To address even the administrative issues is extremely difficult.

And what makes this important, so many years after the terrible events we're talking about - after the crimes we're talking about?

We're facing a situation where, in the next few years, we will be living in a world where there won't be Holocaust survivors. It's a population, obviously, that's very elderly, very sick and passing away very rapidly. So we think it's a matter of justice and morality to address and to conclude this issue before that last of that generation disappears.


Windsor Castle was restored in exactly that timeframe. The day from the fire to the celebration of the reopening of the restored castle was a span of five years. I know people are feeling more positive than they did yesterday because more of the cathedral seems to have survived than seemed possible at the time. And it's a good starting point to think that five years is a reasonable timeframe for the project.

Architect Francis Maude - he's a director at Donald Insall Associates in London.

Thank you for speaking with us.

My pleasure. Thank you.


Science and magic are supposed to be opposites. Science is real, and it's hard, and it's facts-driven. Magic is illusion, and it's make-believe. Two separate worlds. But not for Teller, half of the famous magic duo Penn & Teller. He recently wrote an article for Smithsonian magazine, outlining the secrets that magicians use to manipulate the human mind and how those tricks may be put to use by scientists. At the core of every trick, he wrote, is a cold, cognitive experiment in perception. Does the trick fool the audience?

Well, in this portion of the program, we would like to hear from the magicians out there. What is the trick that proved most difficult for you to master?And if you want to share its secret, what was its secret?Our number is 800-989-8255. Our email address is talk@npr. org. And you can join the conversation on our website. Go to npr. org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION. Teller joins us from NPR member station KNPR in Las Vegas. Teller, thanks very much for joining us.

Happy to be here.

So psychologists talk about the artistic intuition that magicians have, this innate ability honed over time, a lot, a lot of time to grab a person's attention and control it and manipulate it. Are they right about that?Are psychologists on to something in this assessment of what you magicians are really up to?


Yeah. Let me ask, I would think, Sana, that - you've already mentioned that you were surprised that a number of these people were not angry or did not harbor bitterness about having been born to parents who were slaves. But what else was it about them, if there was a thread that seemed to tie them together?

Their parents raised them with hope, the idea that I want your life to be better than mine. And though things aren't the way we were promised, right, with emancipation. Things aren't the way they were promised, that one day they will be, and you'll be ready for it.

You also described them in the book as having immigrant-like expectations. Explain what you meant.

There was this genuine commitment to want to believe in the future, which is phenomenal to think about. There was this belief that everything that happened to me is over. The worst is behind after the Civil War, and I am going to go out and seek a new life in freedom, right?So everything, all of my hopes and dreams, I am going to give that back to the country. There was a genuine commitment to reinvest in the building of what was to be a new America.

Was it a patriotism?


So him and two of his friends were watching Anwar al-Awlaki videos online. And they decided they were going to go join primarily the Taliban. And they traveled to Pakistan. When they got there, they met a number of different connectors and ended up with - actually, with al-Qaida. And al-Qaida realized the benefit of these three Americans that were there. And they sent them back to commit an attack here.

There seems to be real agreement between prosecutors and the judge that Zazi is a changed man. What happened?

Yeah, so when Zazi got picked up in the fall of 2009, he immediately started cooperating. And from then on, for the last 10 years or so, he's cooperated against a number of high-profile trials in the U. S.  - the third in command in al-Qaida, another American and a British operative. He cooperated with law enforcement over 100 times, did interviews there. They described his cooperation as extraordinary, some of the best they've seen in terrorism trials.

Do we know why?


Yeah, I think what Ron said about the end of the day he wants to see all the candidates treated equally. His wish will not be fulfilled is my prediction. As far as I can see, this election is election where Obama is getting all of the scrutiny. Now, when you said media bias, I don't want you to think that this means he's getting all the scrutiny and that scrutiny is positive. He's getting positive scrutiny, he's getting negative scrutiny, and he's getting scrutiny about trivial things that are not normally newsworthy. But my prediction is that the end of the day this is going to be an election where it's going to be about Barack Obama, is he qualified for the job?If he turns out to be, he'll get elected, and if he turns not to be, then McCain will be elected.

All right. Andrew, thank so much.

Great to talk to you, Farai.

Media analyst Andrew Tyndall. He's the publisher of tyndallreport. com, which has been analyzing the network's nightly news coverage for 20 years. And we want to know what you think about the media's coverage of the presidential candidates. Go to our blog at nprnewsandviews. org.


He's had some injuries for most of the last two or three years. He's had a bad shoulder, he has to wrap his elbow a lot, but no injury has caused him to miss a game since September 2001, since he took over the Patriots' quarterback job.

So, is there any suspicion that the injury he sustained yesterday was a result of an unfair hit?

I think some people in the Patriots thought it was, but you know, most of the people I talked to, including a future Hall of Fame safety, John Lynch, who used to play for the Patriots and is a very good friend of Tom Brady's, said there's no way it was a dirty hit. Things happen too quickly on the football field for some guy to say, I'm going to, in a calculating way, aim for Tom Brady's knee and try to put him out for the year. First of all, I think that's vastly overrated. That might have happened in 1968, but it doesn't happen in 2008, because there's too much respect among players to try to intentionally hurt another guy.

So, who is possibly going to fill these gigantic shoes?


Of course that's what somebody would say that. It's oozing with privilege, right?When we look at women's issues, women's rights, this is a scope in which a man should not have any say on. And I think that it's so asinine for people to - men in particular - to think, like, this is a personal issue. This is something that is true in the world. It's - it can only happen to women. Men will never have to face pregnancy ever. And the people who are going to talk about policies and these protections are going to be men.

Is it true that all the people who negotiate these contracts at Nike are men?

They're all men that are - within house at Nike have been and are all men. It's an old boys club. The culture at Nike is - that's - it remains to be an old boys club. And this is the time for it to be exposed. You know, the time is now.

That was Olympian and former USA champion Alysia Montano. Alysia Montano, thank you so much for talking to us.


That's why things spin, hurricanes and. . .

Yeah. . .

. . . spin in one direction.

. . . why everything spins. And it has to do with the fact that the Earth is rotating. So it's a physics problem.

So tell us, describe. . .


Obviously there's some niche that the starfish occupy. Should we be worried if - what we might do to the ecosystem if we get rid of these starfish?

You know, I think it would only be in the dreams of a few people that they might possibly be able to get rid of all of them. What they're trying to do is cut back on the numbers. So they're going to remove as many as they can, but you're still going to have some out there.

And these sea stars are out there on a lot of reefs in the Pacific in low numbers. You can see little trails of white, dead corals that they've left behind as they've gone along feeding, and that will continue to happen. They're not going to get rid of every last one of them.

But the increase in numbers, I mean, you're talking about going onto reefs and having hundreds to thousands times as many starfish on a reef as you normally would see, and that's a big difference.


So the first thing you need to do is call your fund and see, you know, are you going to be covered, are you going to buy into the pool?I have to say, in all my years - and I've been doing this for a ridiculously long amount of time - I was extraordinarily surprised by the collapse of money funds. If you - right now, they are being backed by the government, and I think that's as good as you can get. If you're - again, if you're terrified, you're going to want to go to Treasury bills or you're going to want to go to your local bank

All right, John, hold on for a minute. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back and continue this conversation, and we're going to ask you to answer some questions from some listeners on News & Notes. We'll be right back.

This is News & Notes, I'm Tony Cox. We're back with USA Today's investment columnist, John Waggoner.

John, you've been explaining to us how the ripple effects of Wall Street are hitting the average American, and now we have some questions for you from a few of our listeners. You ready?


Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of people pulling up, dropping off food, blankets, and that's fine. Well, below zero, the food was getting cold as soon as someone set it out there.

Yeah. Well, sounds like you've changed their lives and they've changed yours.

Absolutely. They've definitely changed mine because you don't know until you're either in it or next to it. In these past days (ph) I've been next to it. It's freezing outside. You know, some of them are disabled. We've got children here. We got pregnant women here. No. Let them stay where they're at. We'll bring it to them.

You're very impressive, Candice Payne. I'm so glad we could speak with you.


Bernard Tomic, yes, who really didn't show up. He put the white flag up midway through the second set. It was a very interesting week, considering that you also had Kim Clijsters retiring as well. But Roddick is the interesting here because of where American tennis has gone. Between 1968 and 2002, American men have just dominated tennis. We were winning a major tournament 33 percent of the time - a third of all majors went to Americans - Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, you name it. And since 2003, we've won just one, and it was Andy Roddick back in 2003 at the U. S.  Open.

And so the state of the game has really declined in terms of this country winning major, major championships. And so he was the last one. And the big question's going to be now is who is going to take his mantle. He was a great, great player, and not good enough though in the age of Roger Federer. He was not close enough to the McEnroe-Connors standard and not good enough to compete with Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, but represented the United States very, very well.

Wonder, too, how sports broadcasters will get through a major tournament without cutting to shots of Brooklyn Decker cheering on her husband.

Whatever will we do?


Why does the American Civil Liberties Union defend the rights of Nazis?Membership and donations have boomed since the 2016 election, as the ACLU has taken on a number of high-profile cases challenging Trump administration policies on immigration, deportation and voter suppression. But some supporters of the organization have questioned the ACLU's defense of the free-speech rights of hate groups, especially following their defense of white nationalist rally at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville a couple of weeks ago, when Heather Heyer was killed. A board member of the ACLU's Virginia affiliate resigned, tweeting - what's legal and what's right are sometimes different. I won't be a fig leaf for Nazis.

We're joined now by the national executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero. Mr.  Romero, thanks so much for being with us.

It's my pleasure, Scott. Thank you for having me.

Is the ACLU a fig leaf for Nazis?


Yes, I do. I think General Kelly is right. I think a lot of America is out of touch with those of us who have served and the sacrifices that we've made or seen our colleagues make. And that's a divide that we ought to bridge. But you don't do that by politicizing an incident like this. You do it by taking responsibility for your actions. If you're the president, you say I don't think I said that, if that's what he believes. But if I offended the widow in any way, then I apologize.

Congressman, I - a bit off the central topic we've been talking about - did you know U. S.  forces were operating in Niger?

As a member of the armed services committee, I am aware of it but only very peripherally. This is not something that we have talked about or has been briefed to us extensively at all.

So you think there's more to be known about this mission and about U. S.  operations in that area of the world?


Hey.

Hey, Farai.

So, what are we talking about?

Well, it's a service that HuffingtonPost. com is offering. It's called Fundraece 2008. All you do is enter a street address and the site provides the names, addresses and occupations of the people who live in that area and the candidates they've backed and how much they've given them. And you can search by a person's name or by a company for instance if you want to see how political support breaks down in a place like Halliburton or Google or Bank of America. And it seems like an invasion of privacy. But all this campaign information is public and it's all on the Web. And we have a link to that site on our blog.

Wow, sounds like you can have a neighbor-to-neighbor fight. You don't even have to put the sign out in front…

Exactly.


I want to mention that Mark Bryant of the Gun Violence Archive is remaining with us for this hour to offer context if we need him. And so, Congressman, you unveiled a detailed plan to address gun violence as part of your presidential campaign. You had a chance to talk about some of these issues in the debate that you participated in. Tell us about, if you would, just, like, what's your signature idea here?And tell us why you think that's so important.

You know, the signature principle is we don't have to live this way. And so many of my constituents have been calling and texting and saying that they're afraid to go to public places. They're afraid to take their kids shopping with them - that they're mindful of that now and in ways that they've never been before. And, you know, one of the ways that we could reduce that fear would be to ban and buy back the 15 million assault weapons in America.

You know, many folks have called for an assault weapon ban on future manufacturing and sales, but I don't think that would go far enough. I think we need to get every single weapon of war off the streets. And it's not something - this is not an original idea. You know, Australia did it in the '90s and New Zealand is underway doing it now after their mosque shooting.

Well, advocates of expansive gun rights would argue that the United States is different, and that the right to own a gun is both - is a constitutional right. What do you say about that?


What does it mean to put your hat in someone's ring?Does it mean that you are, for example, trying to lead your constituents that you're trying to lead other people, who are a part of the Congressional Black Caucus or part of Congress?What exactly does you putting your chips on the table mean?

For the past 20-something years, I have been putting out a sample ballot. And if people don't get it at the time that they think they should, my office is inundated with calls. You know, through the media, through your sample ballot operation, I let people know what's on my mind. And I try and let them know why I'm doing what I'm doing and then they make their decision.

Congresswoman, I've had a chance to come to your offices in South Los Angeles and you have a multi-racial coalition of staffers - black, white, Asian…

That's right.


Well, the French have the best intelligence and penetration of their communities in Europe. So there's going to be, as Eleanor said, a search for accomplices. The eight gunmen were killed. Seven of them blew themselves up with suicide belts, and one was shot. And Hollande restricted border access right away last night 'cause there's this concern that suspects or accomplices could escape. So this is actually exactly what happened during the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris earlier this year. You'll recall there was a gunman who took hostages in a kosher market. And police were searching for a woman that was with him. It turns out to be his wife. And as they were searching for her, she suddenly surfaced in Syria with ISIS. So they've put all these travel restrictions in place in hopes of avoiding a repeat of that.

Dina, France bristles with visible security. This is the second major attack in a year. What makes France this target?

Well, there's sort of a perfect storm going on in France. It's the third highest - it has the third highest number of foreign fighters who've gone to Syria from Europe. About 200 of those people have returned to France. And that's just too many people to keep an eye on. I mean, in fact, during the Charlie Hebdo attacks, they said one of the reasons why they stopped watching the Charlie Hebdo attackers was because they thought they had more severe threats that they needed to keep an eye on.

NPR's Dina Temple-Raston, thanks so much.


Well, I think what I heard - and I heard it over the three days - is that the president is not going to let up pressure on Japan, on Prime Minister Abe on trade. Despite the close personal relationship, despite all the pageantry of this visit, it was just at the surface that the president was getting a little irritated with the arguments that Japan has been making on trade.

I think that this is not going to bode well for how this is going to end up. Mr.  Abe doesn't have a lot of latitude to give the president what he wants. But I think they're trying very hard to keep it from bursting the seams, so to speak, on the overall political strategic relationship.

What about on North Korea?As Anthony alluded to there, President Trump contradicted not only his host, the prime minister, but his own national security adviser, John Bolton, on the significance of these recent missile launches from North Korea and whether they violate U. N.  Security Council resolutions. How significant a disagreement is that between Tokyo and Washington?

I think that will be a disappointment for Prime Minister Abe for a couple of reasons. You know, again, President Trump said he was not personally concerned about the tests, still trying to lay out what I think he thinks is the base for a bargain with Kim Jong Un, and that is an economic development strategy by North Koreans that will then mitigate the military challenge.