So you alluded to earlier about the championship coming down. The championship can never come down. That's part of history. You can take a banner down, but you can't take the championship away because there was no performance-enhancing drugs. There was no phony classes. There was no steroids being used, no gambling on the games.

Should college coaches do more than just win?I mean, do they have an obligation to instruct, be good examples for young athletes?

Ninety percent, if not more, of college coaches not only educate their players on the court, they build lifelong friendships. They mentor the young men. They help them get jobs. Unfortunately, the ones that get the most noise are people like myself involved in this scandal that comes across as if college basketball is corrupt. And it's really not. Four years ago, I went on a tremendous rant about shoe companies getting involved in the recruiting business. It's. . .

Yeah, and even as you note in the book, the shoe companies in other ways have been pretty nice to you.


And that's despite the fact that medics there say they need more supplies, they don't have what they need.

Well, again, we have a very long and porous border with eastern Congo. So knowing exactly where cases may come across is always a difficult thing to know. But we, the U. S.  government, as well as WHO and other partners, have been working very assiduously with the government of Uganda over the last 11 months while this outbreak has been going on in eastern Congo to help build their capacity. Supplies are always a challenge in terms of supply chain, moving things where they need to go. But we feel fairly comfortable that the ability to respond and respond quickly exists here in Uganda.

You mentioned this long and porous border. So the first case in Uganda was this 5-year-old boy who reportedly went to Congo, got the virus there then came back to Uganda with his grandmother, and they both passed. How are the borders being handled?Is security being stepped up?

Since the outbreak in DRC in August of last year, we have worked, along with other partners, with the government of Uganda, to establish screening along the border posts.


Let me ask you about what are called battleground states in this coming election. I'll rattle off Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Is there early voting there?Will people take advantage of it?

Absolutely. Florida - it'll be - approximately 40 percent of the ballots will come in early, perhaps a higher number. Half of those will come in early in person. Ohio also has a lot of early voting. Pennsylvania - no. Pennsylvania still only allows for excuse-required absentee balloting. So in Pennsylvania, they still wait until Election Day.

And, Scott, this is going to change the dynamics in those states so that you will expect to see early rallies timed when the early voting period opens up, likely in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina. The candidates' travel schedule will reflect this because they want to follow up that kind of enthusiasm and get people to the polls right away.

And are more people voting early now not because they have to but because they just want to?


Thanks very much for inviting me along.

Could you tell us about these horses and their riders?

Absolutely. These four horses, they're all based on the foreshore of the River Thames, just next to Vauxhall Bridge in central London. And it depicts four large-scale horses, based on the London working horse or the Shire horse. And each one of them has a rider on top and also is a kind of hybrid structure. So it's half horse and half oil pump. And they're also in a very tidal zone, so depending on what time of day you visit them, sometimes they're almost concealed and sometimes they're, you know, completely revealed by the water.

How do you cast sculptures in what amounts to an underwater gallery, not just this installation in the Thames, obviously, but some that you've done all over the world?


Well, I have to say that the information on cannibalism and corpse medicine was probably one of my favorites because it's so particularly horrific. People would drink the blood of gladiators. Egyptian tombs were being pillaged for mummies so that they could grind them up into these cures. They were mixed with myrrh and spices and sold in England. And there was even an import tax at the time because there were so many mummies being imported.

And of course though, many of these really gruesome cures didn't work at all. But some of them can be used today to really do something, to really help medically.

Yes. Maybe not mercury, for instance, but arsenic which we think of as the poison that kings would use to kill each other - arsenic today is used as a current treatment for promyelocytic leukemia. And I think a lot of people would be pretty shocked to hear that. Opium, we know, has a long history and still exists today for good and for bad. A lot of these other things like leeches can be used by some surgeons to help - in post-surgical patients to, you know, reduce swelling so that the surgerized tissues survive. So it is shocking to find that a lot of these things still are alive and well in our pharmacopoeias and in our hospitals.

But a little more delicately used.


Thank you very much for having me.

Can you describe the scene for us in Sana'a now?

The situation in Sana'a at the moment is very insecure and unpredictable. It's very scary, obviously, because the airstrikes come at any time. And now with the fuel crisis that's going on, Yemen is a country that is basically based all its - basics let's say from importing - the food, the fuel, the wheat - everything comes importing and talking about the main things that would allow the people to be alive. And now at the borders - the blockade in the borders - this is creating a huge catastrophe that is ahead of us at the moment.

Oxfam had been pushing to end the fighting, at least to get these shipments into the country. Are you worried about future shipments?


But much more would need to be done to know really when the best time of day would be to eat different kinds of vegetables.

OK. So you started with cabbage. Are there any other veggies that look enticing, so to speak, for you to study or sort of similar to a cabbage cycle?

Well, what we did after we found that this result worked with cabbage, we decided to try to see how broad a phenomenon this might be. We started with other leafy vegetables like spinach and lettuce, and we could show that in the lab, we could re-entrain their circadian rhythms also. And then since those worked, we then went back to the grocery store and bought things like zucchini and blueberries and sweet potatoes and carrots. And of all these we could show could perceive these light-dark signals and reactivate their clock and show rhythmic behaviors.

Mm-hmm. Now, I'm picturing a big head of cabbage. And, you know, cabbage has lots of leaves on it.


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?

Great, Tony, yes.

Here's the first one. Renee Mack Jones(ph) of Atlanta, Georgia, asks this question. I keep hearing people say that this 700 billion dollars in government rescue money is absolutely necessary, and if the government didn't step in and do something, there would have been a global financial meltdown. But there must be some negative side effects to this historically expensive bailout. What are they, and where are the hundreds of billions of dollars coming from when there is such a large deficit already?

Sure. Well, there are two main drawbacks. One is basically the principle that if you bail these folks out, really you're just encouraging them, they need to be punished for their transgressions, and that some feel that what has happened so far really makes them feel that they haven't been spanked hard enough, that they need really some more pain to avoid such problems in the past.


That's absolutely correct. The charges themselves don't go to anything about the collusion aspect. I think one thing that's important to understand, though, some folks don't realize this about cooperation - cooperation's like being a little bit pregnant. You're either cooperating or you're not. You have to be completely in (laughter). And the value of somebody like Manafort for the prosecutors may not necessarily be a smoking gun but rather just the fact that he's so familiar with what happened and they'll be interested in that as well.

Let's turn now to Department of Justice's inspector general report on how James Comey and the FBI handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Mr.  Comey didn't come off well, did he?

He did not come off well at all. I think it had been widely thought that he was not going to come off well, and he really violated some basic protocols at the Justice Department. I mean, I was there with Miss Reno as the attorney general. You're very, very careful about anything that could affect a political election. And then on top of that, he is supposed to simply talk about, are they doing the investigation or not?And he really kind of usurped the authority of the prosecutors in making that statement - no reasonable prosecutor would take on this case. He's not a prosecutor there. He is the director of the FBI.

Yeah. At the same time, what do you think of Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, saying that the Mueller investigation ought to be suspended because of the IG report?


That's a wonderful section that helps us understand how their worlds were shaken up. They were safe, but on the other hand. . .

Well, on the other hand, they were sent all over the country to households who often weren't expecting them and the children themselves didn't know where they were going. They didn't know which town they were going to, who they would be staying with, whether they would be staying with friends or even their siblings. It was extraordinary.

And there were a lot of schemers. There were families who would take them in just because it increased their food coupons.

There were, indeed. And in fact, quite a lot of the research for my book - well, it certainly started with a newspaper called The St.  Albans Advertiser - and I kept on stumbling across scams. I've got one here, actually. This is directly from the newspaper. She has shown considerable ingenuity by her forgeries. Giving a false address and using the names of children that do not exist made the matter very difficult to detect. This was somebody called Doris Evelyn Hart (ph) who was claiming a billeting allowance for six children who weren't staying with her. And this was very common because you got, actually, a decent weekly wage for taking in an evacuated child.


It really is. I don't think that people have an eye on the ground view. We're trying to help people. But helping people macro doesn't really satisfy people micro when it's happening in a neighborhood.

All right, Dr.  Melvo, thank you very much. Always good to hear your points of view.

Thank you, Tony.

That was author and economist, Dr.  Julienne Malveaux. She is also the president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina.


That's what won, finally, the attention of the old man. And only when he was tough did the old man respect him. And I think when his father became incapacitated, Bobby began to resort to who he was as a kid. As a kid, he was - he hung around all the time with African-American kids. Those were his playmates, even in Hyannis. He was - he, you know, Father Feeney - when Father Feeney said no salvation outside the Catholic Church, he railed against that, which was so extraordinary in that very Catholic family.

You know, Ralph Bunche - he insisted that that great African-American statesman get to speak to a integrated audience at UVA when he was in charge of the lecture series down there. There's all kinds of evidence of Bobby in the beginning being a liberal in the best sense of that word. And I think it just came more to life after Jack was gone and after the old man was out of action.

Will American voters these days - and donors and journalists, for that matter - let a public figure change in public the way Robert Kennedy did?

Well, I think the hardest thing for him - and to me, the sweetest part of the book - was his evolution on Joe McCarthy. There's no doubt that he loved the guy. It came through right to the end when he was driving in the car at National Airport. And Kathleen, his young daughter, said he was so stricken by the news that McCarthy had just drank himself to death at Bethesda Naval Hospital that he drove around the airport three times. He was just distraught.


It's been extremely stressful, from anxiety to depression to panic, fear, anger. It's been a full palette of emotions. And I've paid my bills through the month of January. I applied for unemployment. I applied for many, many jobs, everything under the sun, from biotech lab work to retail to a fishing boat. I applied for at least 25 jobs.

The effect was building up on you, I guess.

Right, and just scrambling, panicking. What am I going to do?How am I going to pay my rent February 1?

Yeah, sounds like you enjoy your work.


That's true. And people who are addicted to it are too scared to death to tell anybody, because they're going like, yeah, if I tell somebody I'm addicted to a computer game, I'm going to get laughed out on the street, you know, because so many people haven't seen it or experience it, or they themselves are addicted, so they don't even want to believe that there's such a thing, because they might have to look at their own issue.

Just one quick piece of advice. If you're - you obviously tried to stay in contact with your son. He made it difficult for you, and he's dead. Whether or not some people would argue that it's not the gaming's fault, you think it is. One very small piece of advice for families who are trying to help someone.

I really need to talk to parents and tell them that these games are not glorified babysitters. And I see so many parents so excited because they're teaching their two year old to play games, and by five, they're addicted. You know, it's just heartbreaking to me, because it's like giving their child the drug, and they don't even know what they're doing. They're helping ruin their child's life, because it does affect their brain. It rewires their brain, and it affects how they function in society.

Well, Liz, thank you so much for sharing your story.


I know, I love the analog too, like you know, record players. But anyway. . .

The old school.

The old school, the truly old school. But speaking of the new school, there's this new phone, the T-Mobile Google Phone. It sounds like a bunch of stiff competition to the iPhone. And phones are so trendy now, they're like little, you know, it's like, what kind of phone do you have?It's like, you know, it's like, are we compatible?I don't know.

Like status statement.


Thank you so much for talking with us.

Well, thank you for calling me. This has been a big thrill for me, I can tell you.

Aw, I'm really pleased.

Made my day - made my year.


How are you doing?

Hello, Farai. How are you?

Oh, I'm good. You know, we've run in full tilt here. So, let's start with the Democrats. For months, Senator Clinton had held a comfortable lead over Senator Obama, nationally. All caveats about polls in place. What happened to their relative standing?

Hillary Clinton was over 50 percent in some polls in 2007, and then in - even in January - even after Barack Obama had shocked her in Iowa, she still maintained a 15 to 20-point lead in most polls taken nationally because Barack Obama had not yet been introduced to much of the country, and it was still kind of one-sided contest. But over the last couple of weeks, particularly since the South Carolina win really re-launched to the Obama momentum, he's been not just creeping up, he's been absolutely climbing up, and he has been taking over more and more states. And as a result, now even the national poll is reflecting that this race is too close to call - it's a statistical dead heat.


Yeah. That really happened.

I believe you - popping ibuprofen before going out to dance to stop the pain, wearing high heels all day. You had it bad.

I really did. I was a little bit of a slave to heels, and I don't think I even knew it.

Why is that?Why do you think you like them so much?And obviously you're not the only one. A lot of people like them.


Power went out, so hopefully it will come back out soon.

So, power is already out.

Yeah.

I understand that Johnny White's is a good gathering spot. But what are you going to do for food and water and all that kind of stuff?


And so, finally, what would affect this backlog?What would be the most - in your view, based on your experience - the most effective way to address this backlog - this enormous backlog of cases?

I think, to begin with, any high-volume court system - criminal courts, you know, outside of the immigration system - can only survive when you have - the two parties are able to conference cases, are able to reach pre-case settlements, are able to reach agreements on things. If you could imagine in the criminal court system, if every jaywalking case had to go through a - you know, a full jury trial and then, you know, get appealed all the way up as high as it could go, that system would be in danger of collapse as well. So I think you have to return to a system where you allow the two sides to negotiate things.

And you also have to give the judges - let them be judges. Give them the tools they need to be judges and the independence they need to be judges. And lastly, you have to prioritize the cases.

Before we let you go, I assume that there were different political perspectives at this conference, given that people come from all different sectors of that - of the bar. And I just wondered - and I assume that there are some there who favor more restrictionist methods and some who don't. I was wondering, overall, was there a mood at this conference?


There also seemed to be some significant milestones this week about the ongoing debate over - is this Trump's party now?We saw a lot of well-known intellectuals sort of leave the party. Longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said he quit the Republican Party. Conservative columnist George Will called for Republicans to lose their majorities. And the sad death of Charles Krauthammer also seemed to signal maybe an end of an era here.

I think it is. Charles was a friend and a colleague. And I think his loss isn't just to conservatism in particular, but it's to political discourse in general because Charles was an - a conservative intellectual, not a Republican partisan. There was nothing tribal about him. So that was a really big loss.

Do you think there's any impact for people like Steve Schmidt leaving the party?

You mean impact on him?Well, he's not going to get Republican clients anymore. But. . .

(Laughter).


Oh, absolutely.

You know, like, what are some of the other barbecue don'ts that come up when all of you all get together?

I think hovering is a big one, people who want to jump on the grill before they've been invited to, people who think they're helping out by bringing a side of beef that they figure you have room on the grill to just add that into your menu, any kind of, you know, presumptuous guests.

What about some barbecue do's?Are there some do's that you wish people would do that they perhaps don't think to do?


Well, no. There is no sign of that yet. They cannot do everything the Trump administration wants because, as we've discussed before, we are asking for structural changes that are at the core of the Chinese Communist Party's governance of China. So they - no, they cannot do that.

And they're entering, remember, a very sensitive political season. You've got the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre coming up. They need to look strong. Xi Jinping puts himself forward as sort of the all-knowing, all-powerful leader of China. And he has to seem that it - to be defending the interest of the Chinese people.

So what are the risks to the United States, if continuing to raise tariffs, if it doesn't push China to make a deal?

Well, all of these tariffs cost the American people. President Trump repeatedly says that China is simply transferring money to American coffers. But there are numerous academic studies which indicate that these costs are being borne by the American importers and increasingly by American consumers.

And China is going to be very careful when it retaliates to target consumers in sectors in the United States that are supportive of President Trump. They've already done this in targeting soybeans. They're very deft politically, and that's what they'll continue to do. So they are going to make him politically pay a price. And American consumers will pay as well.


Well, there was a line of thunderstorms that was moving across Oklahoma. And most people were aware of it. But it spun up this brief tornado called a QLCS tornado. These are the specific kinds of tornadoes that happen in these lines of thunderstorms. And they're known for being brief and weak. But they're also known for coming with very little warning.

And this came at night. It only stayed on the ground for just four minutes. It was only 75 yards wide. But it hit right at this point - if you look on either one side or the other side of this 75-yard section, there's a car lot and a boat lot. It hit a motel and a trailer park. So two people died, and it was terrible.

And do you know what the situation is today in El Reno, how they're doing?

Well, they had already activated their severe weather plan. And this town is well-practiced because it was hit just six years ago by the largest tornado on record. They were already dealing with flooding that had happened earlier in the week. The governor of Oklahoma visited today. And President Donald Trump did call Governor Kevin Stitt while he was out and about saying that the nation's prayers were with Oklahoma.

And I imagine everybody who was in this trailer park has had to find somewhere else to stay for the meantime.


You centered your article around a book that came out in May - "The Black Witch" by Laurie Forest. It had some buzz. Kirkus says, quote, "engaging character set in a rich alternative universe with a complicated history - a massive page turner that leaves readers longing for more. "But in March, the buzz took a turn. What happened?

A blogger who had an advanced reader's copy of the book disagreed with the reigning buzz and penned a 9,000 word review decrying it, basically, as an end-to-end mess of unadulterated bigotry. So this blogger disagreed with the premise of the book, which basically centers on a girl becoming enlightened to the fact that she's been indoctrinated into an ideology of racist superiority.

And once she had formed this opinion, she - you know, she wrote her review. And she got online and basically called for the activist crowd on young adult Twitter to boost it. And because of online dynamics being the way they are and because of how fast outrage travels, on Twitter especially, it really just blew up into a huge controversy that lasted for multiple weeks right up until the book released.

Did a lot of people who kind of piled on bother to read the book?


Yeah, that's what's, you know, a little crazy about me because - and that's what my friends point out often. And even in the middle of terrible things happening to me, if there's one little piece of something positive happening, I'll think, yes. And I make these crazy logical leaps, like if some little positive thing happens, I suddenly think that, you know, Tom Cruise is going to star in some movie and it's going to get me, you know, bucket loads of money, and everything's fine. And it's all - they're delusions, but they keep me warm at night.

So this book just screams out to be made into a movie. It's written -no doubt - because of your skills in a very cinematic style. If it gets made into a movie, who do you want to play you?

There are a couple of people. I mean, I would think Terrance Howard would be terrific because he's so handsome, and I would feel like, wow, that's such an idealized version of myself.

And I love - you know, I love Don Cheadle, as well. He's so brilliant, and I would be honored if either one of them would play me.


So in terms of what to do about it, we've said Twitter and Facebook have shut down these accounts, which prompts me to wonder - does shutting down a fake account do that much?Can't the Chinese government, if it's determined to go down this path, just open up two new ones in place of the one that was closed?

It is a cat-and-mouse game, and the companies are constantly trying to get ahead of it. You know, they will try to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence, but it is not a long-term solution. As you said, they can always set up new accounts.

Adam Segal, thanks.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

He is director of digital and cyberspace policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, talking there about the move by Facebook and Twitter. They have shut down hundreds of fake accounts they say were created by the Chinese government.


And how did this start?

Well, about 20 years ago, we were thinking about doing a literary magazine because at the time there weren't too many journals out there for new writers. There weren't many literary journals at all during that time. And so we stumbled upon an idea that we had started with one of our friends from college where he had given me a first line to start a story. And then I would write the story. And then I would send it to him. And I'd give him a first line. And he would start a story. And he would send that back to me. And we did that. And so we decided that we'd open that up to the rest of the world.

How many stories do you typically get?

We run between 300 and 450 submissions in issue.


Correct. It was one of the first ones to come out like that, and so I had no idea it was different from any other game. I just thought it was another game. And he, within three months of playing it, he started - it started affecting his real life negatively. He lost his job. He got evicted from his apartment. By the way, he was 20 years old when he started playing this, so he was an adult. But very quickly it showed negative effects. His personality changed. He started becoming a different person. He became withdrawn, antisocial, depressed. His focus became gaming, and he no longer was concerned about his real life or his future.

When you think about your son, do you think that there were other underlying issues, whether it was depression or some other condition, that caused him to be susceptible to this?I mean, how do you balance that thought out?

I agree with that 100 percent. He had ADD, and from my experience, since 2002, probably 99 percent of the gamers that we've talked to who have problems with gaming have ADD. It seems to make them more susceptible.

Attention deficit.


I mean, imagine you go into the polls believing that migrants, refugees in general, receive much more sort of support than our pensioners and that migrants are violent and rape women and that climate change isn't real. Like, if you actually believe all those things because you have been lied to, I believe that clearly shifts your, at least, voting intention - maybe even stay home 'cause you lost trust in democracy or nearly is altogether. And that is a real threat. It's not just, oh, on the day before the elections, there's a fake news about your voting station. That's not what we're seeing.

What we're seeing is, like, long-term disinformation campaigns with the aim to drive us apart, to deceive us. And as a democracy, we need to stand up and, right now, say, now we vote even more because we believe that democracy's our strength, and we will not be manipulated by this type of behavior.

Christoph Schott, thank you.

Thank you very much. There was a joy.


Mm hmm.

Interracial relationships, though, may still be controversial to some degree. How do you see the difference if you see one between interracial relationships today and the way they were when you were doing Society's Child?

You know, it's a huge difference from my viewpoint. There will always be those people who are just backward and ignorant. There will always be those people. They need somebody to feel superior to. For my point of view, I live in Nashville, Tennessee, there's no way I could have lived in Nashville at 16 in 1966, '67. There's no way that Nashville would have had room for somebody like me then. I see interracial couples all the time in Nashville. I'm a Jew in Nashville. I'm a gay person in Nashville. It's a non-issue in most of the time. That's a huge leap forward.

(Singing) You come to my door, baby, Your face is clean and shinning, black as night. My momma went to answer, You know, that you looked so kind. Now, I could understand the tears and the shame, She called you, boy, instead of your name, When she wouldn't let you inside, When she turned and said, "But, honey, he's not our kind. "She says I can't see you anymore, baby, I can't see you anymore.


Well, there's no doubt about that. So the near-Earth asteroids number about 500,000, but we only know of 9,000. And the reason that they're so interesting, Ira, is because they are actually energetically easier to reach than the surface of the moon. So we've been to the moon many times, and the moon is a great place, which is very worthy of our exploration. But just to give you an idea of how close some of the asteroids are, they're easier to reach than our own moon.

Yeah.

So they're not way out there in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. These are. . .

Right.


Right. We can run through who is to blame for this, but I'd rather talk about what the solution is. The sticking points are on immigration. The president wants to change the system. Are you willing to scrap, for example, the visa lottery where 50,000 visas are given out to individuals from countries who aren't represented. . .

I think we have to look at it in a comprehensive way. But the point right now is just the other day, just the other night, Mitch McConnell understood that he needed 60 votes to continue the - to pass a continuing resolution. And yet he went forward knowing he did not have the 60 votes. So it is time for the Republicans - let's be clear. They control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. They've got to sit down and negotiate and understand they can't get everything they want. . .

Right. But what are you asking for?What are you asking for, exactly?

What we're asking for is three things. We are asking for an annual budget which will provide equally for defense and nondefense spending. We are asking that months and months after these terrible disasters impacted Texas and Florida and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands - that we deal with disaster relief. And we are asking what the American people want. Recent poll had 87 percent of the American people saying that DREAMers should receive, retain their legal status that Trump took away from them. And most of those folks think there should be a path toward citizenship.


And when we returned at the beginning of this year, in the beginning of 2008, we could really see that the sectarian violence was beginning to abate, and that's continued tremendously throughout this year. So we've been able to focus a lot of our efforts on stability operations and infrastructure and just helping with building up the government and the local government forces there. So it's been a really good, positive year, and I think that the soldiers all the way down to the lowest level can see that progress.

And the Status of Forces Agreement, known as SOFA, went into effect today, and that among other things mandates the withdrawal of all U. S.  troops from Iraq by 2011. Are people talking about that?And how is it affecting them?

Well, the SOFA basically states that we will be continuing to work with the Iraqi forces for the remainder of the time that we're here. And it has set a timeline, but our timeline to come home really hasn't changed even according to that. But a lot of the troops now are looking towards the future, knowing that they'll probably wind up going to Afghanistan.

So right now, the schedule of deployments, we don't really know how far out that's going to go, and so people are just sort of looking towards getting our job done here and then heading home to their families.


This was James Maynard at the University of Montreal.

Yeah, James Maynard, he got the current world record, which is 600. And that was very recently. That was November the 19th he announced it. It was all done on the Internet, and at one stage the record was tumbling at about every half-hour. So, mathematics, which usually takes place over months and years, for a period of a few months was going gangbusters fast. And this record was tumbling down. It seems to have settled at 600. It might creep down. I don't think the methods that we've got now will bring us down to 2. But 2 is within grasp. And because this ancient problem about 2 is within grasp, I would say 2 is absolutely the number of the year in mathematics. It's the number mathematicians have been talking about.

Keith, are there implications for this finding for those of us who think it's got nothing to do with us whatsoever should know nevertheless?

You can bet that whenever there's an advance to do with prime numbers, the intelligence community is absolutely on top of it. Because in our knowledge of the prime numbers lies pretty well all of the secret codes that we use for communications around the world. It's all to do with the difficulty of computing some of the things we know theoretically happen in mathematics.


Much like Stuxnet, Flame is also believed to be the handiwork of a nation-state. Why are antivirus experts so concerned about Flame?How does this malware tool, spy kit(ph) and eavesdrop?Who's behind Flame, and who are they targeting, and why is it being compared to Stuxnet?

That's what we're going to be talking about this hour. Our number is 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. My guest is Kim Zetter. She is senior reporter at Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, security and civil liberties. She's currently writing a book about Stuxnet and joins us from Oakland, California. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

Thank you.

What makes Flame different?


And finally, I was going to ask you about that - this - are there other steps that Mexico is trying to take or would like to take to stop this flow of migrants through their country?

Well, the actual border between Guatemala and Mexico is an obvious place if they want to stop people coming through that they could block access. And having more agents down here, whether they're national guard or someone else, I mean, would certainly result in more detentions of migrants. Really, the question right now and the thing that I'm seeing is that the local immigration detention center here is at more than double capacity right now.

So there is definitely a question - if Mexico really does step up the number of migrants it stops here, does it have the resources to take care of them?And then, for those who need protection - those fleeing persecution - do they have the ability and the willingness to protect those people?

That is reporter James Frederick on the Mexican side of the Guatemala-Mexico border. He's actually about 30 miles north of the border at the moment.


The president's reaction, they're happy with, I think. The alt-right - Lana actually - I asked her this specifically - I said, you know, what do you think about Donald Trump?And she said, let's be honest; he's not one of our guys. We've never thought that he was one of our guys.

But the more that he does not disavow the things that they believe in and either tacitly or directly supports them, the better.

Seyward Darby - her article "The Rise Of The Valkyries" is published in the September issue of Harper's Magazine. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

Thank you so much for having me.


I never approached any of the essayists with ideas in mind in terms of what I wanted them to write about. I wanted them to speak to their own truth to whatever they felt was the most poignant experience for them. And that was it for Nada, and Nada wrote so honestly about what she'd experienced. And it was all tied as well into her own career. It wasn't just about losing Anthony. It was about how all of those different threads came together in her life - the Arab Spring.

And that takes me back to the idea of hopelessness because that's Nada's story. She felt that way, and she was speaking to her own truth. And some of the women have similar feelings about the region, where it's almost like, well, this is just - the losses are too steep.

We mentioned resiliency. Are there other themes that connect these essays?

I think identity is a big one. All of them definitely feel very strongly about where they come from. I tend to say there's this idea of a homeland - and it's quite poetic in the Arab world - where, I'm from here. I want to be telling the story. This is the truth of what's happening in my homeland.


Because we are, alas, almost never chased by lions now, our stressors tend to be things that are not actually going to threaten our lives. The jerk at work, traffic, these things are not going to kill us, but they do elevate our stress response in a similar way, but they don't offer us the same opportunity to complete the stress response cycle. So we're walking around with a couple decades of incomplete activated stress response cycles in our bodies that are just waiting for us to go ahead and do the thing we need to do.

Physical activity is the most efficient. Affection is really powerful. One of our favorite recommendations is the 20 second hug. If you hold someone that long, it communicates to your body that you have a person in your life whom you love and trust enough and who loves and trusts you enough to stand this close together. And your chemistry shifts into a state of I have come home, which is the end of the stress response cycle.

At the end of each chapter, you have these little TL;DR recaps - it's internet talk for too long; didn't read. So what is the TL;DR for this conversation?What's the one thing you really want people to take away, Emily?

It's that wellness is not a state of being. It is not a state of mind. It is a state of action.


Yeah. And it was supposed to be this sort of message of unity, right?We're all on the same page with this. And the president sort of flips the script, as he often does. And we're not just seeing this disconnect with Russia.

No. There are so many other examples. Last week, the president tweeted that he wanted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to, quote, "stop this rigged witch hunt" - in other words, the Mueller investigation - "right now. "But Sessions didn't do it. And then his - the president's top lawyers and his press secretary rush out to say, oh, he wasn't giving an command to anyone. And his FBI director Chris Wray has been on the record saying he doesn't think the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt.

Same thing on Iran. President says he talked to the Iranians without preconditions. Hours later, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lays out a whole lot of preconditions. The president threatens to shut down the government over the border wall. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell comes out and says nope. We're not shutting down the government.

And it's not just Trump's administration, right?We also saw this extraordinary message coming from his wife, the first lady.


And how much of the war do you see?

I see a lot of the war. It's everywhere. It's just - it feels like we are back on time where hundred years back where we worry about every single thing. For example, I wake up in the morning and you worry, will I have electricity?These days, it's very cold. We cannot have heaters. Hospitals cannot operate because the shortage of fuel. And then when you go to the supermarkets, the prices have either doubled or tripled. A family that lives near to my parents, a neighbor of theirs, actually lost their child because they simply didn't have a single thing to feed them - no water, no clean water, no food. So it's really, really crazy to believe that you're in the 2018.

Yeah. What happens when you go to the market?What's for sale there?How much does it cost?

I'll just give you a quick example - eggs actually. In the past, we used to buy five eggs with 100 riyals but now just over the past couple of months, you buy one egg with 100 riyal. So it's becoming very hard. People will just lock themselves in their houses. And others who are trying to find a solution, they go out in the streets asking for help, but the rest are just dying inside their houses quietly. Sometimes they boil water and just put some spices on top of it and consider it a meal.


Yeah. Mr. Champagne, is it rough to be - well, look, we've done stories in Englewood. What's it like to be a young man in Englewood now, surrounded, as I don't have to tell you, by a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, sirens all night?

Yeah, correct.

People who are, you know, afraid to walk the street. What's it like growing up that way?

Well, it's tough 'cause you got to know when to come outside, when not to come out; when to go to the store, when not to go to the store. You know, cross the street, go left, go right, you know, either way it go, you get, like, A, shot at or, you know, get jumped, get robbed. It's tough.

Yeah. And a program like this, how does it help you see things differently and what you should do differently?


And what exactly is happening in Tulsa?

Well, so all of this water from upstream that's coming from northeast Oklahoma is heading downstream into Tulsa. They have these aging levees. Many of them were built in the 1940s. The Keystone Dam is releasing huge amounts of water, and that has led to thousands of people being evacuated from their homes in the Tulsa area.

And then if you go down river, as you get closer to Arkansas, some communities, like Braggs and Webbers Falls, have been totally emptied out. One mayor earlier this week told people that if they refuse to evacuate, they should write their identification on their arm.

Wow. I mean, it does sound as though it's just an overwhelmingly awful combination of floods and tornadoes and bad weather. What are people saying as you are out and about interviewing people and, I guess, just talking to your own neighbors?


An appointment like yours will sunset with this presidency. So, what do you plan to do afterwards?

I don't know. You know, government service, my term in government service, the last two years, followed a private-sector career of 24 years. One of the exciting things about being in the government, I think, is when you can move the needle it touches so many people's lives. And prior to this, I ran the Small Business Administration and - which does terrific work, including providing loans for disaster victims, homeowners, not just small businesses. So, I'm very open-minded. You know, I loved working in the private sector, but I just really treasure the opportunity to make an impact through the public sector.

You've mentioned disasters a couple of times, and we are rolling around on the third anniversary of Katrina. The federal government's response was widely criticized. What do you think you've done right in terms of dealing with disasters recently?

Recent history has been very good, whether it be the fires in California or the floods in the Midwest, a number of significant tornado incidents. And what I think has happened well, it really falls into a couple of areas. Number one, I think the response has been rapid. The front-end response has been rapid. Number two, which I don't think is quite as visible to people, is the coordination among government agencies at the federal level, and between the federal and then the state and local levels, has been, I think, much improved.


Does this mean human beings could return and be healthy?

I think our data don't really lend themselves to addressing that specific question for a number of reasons. Humans are much more long-lived than wild animals, so I would be cautious to extrapolate those findings to humans.

How do you explain that this area, that I think most of us consider to be a wasteland, has so much wildlife?

It was well-established that when you create large reserves and protect wildlife from everyday human activities, wildlife, generally, tend to thrive. So our study did not look at any specific health effects of animals. I think that's important to note. But what our study does suggest is that even if there are potential, subtle genetic effects, those effects are greatly overshadowed by the impacts humans have on the environment.


You still give, I gather, motivational speeches and make appearances, don't you?

I do.

What do you say?

People do have to fight and fight hard to get through adversity. And I'm certainly one that's been through a lot in the last two or three years. And I sort of have a Ph. D.  on it right now. And - but I am very upbeat, very positive about the future.

I've got to ask you about one of your former assistants. Andre McGee paid for a woman named Katina Powell to bring in paid escorts for potential Louisville recruits and players between 2010 and 2014. You say in the book this was news to you.

Well, it was news to everyone. It was news to these other - the full-time assistant coaches. That being said, they were women that would look like college kids. They were snuck through a side door mostly. They dressed like college girls. Security didn't see anything out of the ordinary.


Right. How did you feel when you found out about Epstein's death?

It was definitely not a good moment. And it's still not, you know?Even every single time I hear those words, there's a certain amount of anger that shoots through my blood that I can't explain.

What are you angry at?

I'm angry that there's no justice in that, you know?He's not ever going to be here to face the music or to hear the pain that he's caused or the lives that he's destroyed. I mean, after all I've gone through, I finally came forward. And it almost feels all for nothing now, you know?I'm sorry. I'm just, like, getting. . .


Divers finally managed to get into the passenger decks of the ship. And they saw through a window three bodies, but they were unable to actually get in and recover those bodies. They did not find any survivors yet, but they've been trying very hard all week to get in there. They've been dealing with next to zero visibility, very strong currents. Also, they've been trying to pump air into that ship in the hopes that there are some survivors hanging on in air pockets. And because of that, they've got cranes on the scene, but they haven't tried to lift the ferry out of the water yet for fear that it'll further endanger those survivors.

Police have arrested the ship's captain and several crew members. What are the charges?

The charges against the captain are negligence. They're saying that he abandoned the passengers when they needed them. And a lot of people in this country are angry that the captain apparently jumped ship himself while telling the passengers, these high school students, on the boat to stay put and await help. Now the prosecutors say that at the time of the accident, the captain was actually not on the bridge of the ferry. The person taking the wheel was the third mate, who had never navigated some tricky waters where there are a lot of coastal areas and islands. And this was a very young and inexperienced third mate.

The vice principal of the high school where most of the passengers were from committed suicide. He was one of the survivors?


Well, when the storm stops, and they give the all-clear to leave, the first thing will be to see if we even have a car that we can get into because they're expecting flooding in this area. And then we'll go from there - one step at a time.

Well, thank you very much. Susie and Ben Black talking to us from the maternity ward at HealthPark Medical Center. . .

Thank you.

. . . In Fort Myers, Fla.


So, maybe they're taking a loss on the turkey, but the consumer comes in and buys cranberries, buys potatoes, buys a turkey baster, all of these other things.

Prices for avocados drop right before the Super Bowl, too, when a lot of guacamole gets made. But Valentine's Day bucks that price drop trend. Roses are popular for that holiday, and it turns out that roses are fussier than turkeys, which, after all, can be frozen. In economist-speak, roses are supply inelastic.

They all have to be harvested within a very short period of time. They have to be packed and sorted and shipped around the country.

But turkeys can be thrown into a freezer months ahead of time. So, if you're already thinking about what to get for a special someone next February 14th, here's an idea in economic verse. . .


Yeah, you and I are on the same page. I think that's craziness. I don't like temporary tax reductions. I don't like temporary legislative fixes, generally. I want to see permanent legislative fixes. So I am against the fact that they are temporary, but I'd rather have, as a person who pays these taxes, as a middle-income person - I'd rather have seven years of tax reduction than what the Democrats were proposing, which was a trillion dollars in increased taxes.

I'd like to talk about the political ramifications. By and large, polls show this isn't popular, and it pushes through some very substantial changes in the financial lives of Americans. Do you think that there will be a cost come 2018?

No, I think what we're going to see is if the economic effects of this are positive, then it will have positive political ramifications. For the most part - and again, I'm just talking regular people. Regular people vote with their wallets. If the economy continues to improve, and we're seeing robust growth - the last growth number was 3. 3 percent, which is extraordinary higher than anything we saw in the Obama era. If that kind of growth continues, if real job growth continues, if real wage growth continues, we're going to see a wave election for Republicans.

And how do you think the deficit problems will be resolved?How are you hoping that that will be addressed?


Now, again, I spent my life being hassled by white cops. And the first thing I thought was, do you mean to tell me after everything I've been through, that St.  Peter is a white cop?That was the first thing that went through my mind.

Oh, my gosh. Well, that is a clear sign of your sense of humor. Brian, just stay with us. We won't keep you too much longer. Brian Copeland is the author of the book and creator of the production "Not a Genuine Black Man. "

And next on NEWS & NOTES, if you or someone you love is struggling with depression or mental illness, where do you turn?We've got two medical experts with a long history of promoting mental health. Plus, we read from your letters.

I'm Farai Chideya, and this is NEWS & NOTES. This month, we are focusing on the critical issue of mental health. We're also speaking with Brian Copeland, the author of the book and creator of the production "Not a Genuine Black Man. "


Well, the Chinese leadership has continued to see dialogue first with Kim Jong Un. They've had two publicly announced meetings with him. One of them came right in advance of North Korea's announcement that it was going to pursue a satellite launch. We don't know whether that subject was discussed in China. But, you know, the indicator suggests that China is still trying to figure out if there is a way that it can influence the situation in North Korea without taking measures that would enhance instability. The Chinese priority is basically to maintain stability in North Korea.

And so it was - it's willing to prop up that terrible regime if it will prevent that regime's collapse and the horrible situation that might ensue.

I think it's certainly the case that if you're, you know, looking at why North Korea still is there in the middle of this otherwise prosperous region, the hand of China is the critical explainer for why North Korea is still able to survive.

Xi Jinping has been in power just a brief time in Beijing, but in that time, we have seen increased pressure on the Senkaku Islands. These are the disputed islands unoccupied, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. Japan has controlled them for, what, 100 years. China claims them as well. There had been confrontations in the past where patrol boats and fishing boats had exchanged even water canon spray. But this time, a Chinese patrol craft flew over the islands, and that's a different situation.


One of the roles that he may well play is kind of smoothing out the relations between President-elect Obama and his secretary of state to be, Hillary Clinton. The two were once rivals. Can you give an example of how he might go about in mediating, making sure that everything runs smoothly?

Well, I don't think you're going to have to ask that. Senator Hillary Clinton is a real pro. She's a great American. And she will know and understand her role. I just have no qualms about their needing any mediation whatsoever, and I don't think Jim Jones or anyone else will have to do it.

Can you give an example, politics aside, business aside, maybe of a time that you two shared together that just gave you a sense of what he was like?

We made a trip, as I recall, to the Balkans a good number of years ago when he was a one star general, and just sitting with and listening to him tell about the intricacies of situations there. He has a good handle on the problems that that faces.


Yeah. I mean, I don't think they're damaging at all. I think Putin can be quite happy with these results. He had a real problem two years ago after the intervention in Ukraine. Western powers were ignoring and isolating Russia. Obama called the country a regional power. And today, Putin is deciding war and peace in Syria. And, you know, he's being attributed with powers of influencing a U. S.  election. So, in some ways, it makes Russia seem much bigger than it really is.

One thing to keep in mind is that Russians have been told, for some time, that they're at war with the West, not really a shooting war but an information war, sort of a struggle for influence. So there's a widespread perception here that Russia is, itself, the victim of a Western conspiracy. So I think you can say, from the Kremlin's perspective, Russia's just giving the West a taste of its own medicine. More broadly speaking, I think this report really doesn't matter very much here in Moscow. People here are waiting for the inauguration of Donald Trump and nothing else really matters.

NPR's Moscow correspondent Lucian Kim, thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you.