Oil aside, do the two countries have different interests in the region?

Saudi Arabia is particularly worried by the U. S.  trying to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia sees Iran kind of backing groups in Syria and in Lebanon and in Yemen and Iraq. And Saudi is seeing itself as increasingly surrounded. And it, you know, Saudis don't really think the U. S.  understands how deeply concerned it is about regional security and about its own security right now.

We understand that there are activists in Saudi Arabia - human rights activists, activists for women's rights, greater women's rights in Saudi Arabia - who had wanted President Obama and other U. S.  officials to kind of step in and voice their concerns. No indication whatever, that happened. Is there disappointment?

There was. Saudi women that I talked to after the visit said they didn't really expect Obama to kind of endanger the makeup visit by bringing women's rights up or just human rights up. And they said in that sense, the trip met their expectations. Saudi activists say that there is a state crackdown going on - on dissent and free speech - since the Arab Spring uprisings. And they say it's kind of a very dark time in the kingdom for them, and they think the U. S.  is not really doing too much to help them out of it.


Unlike other more indigenous groups to Afghanistan - like the Taliban, which generally tries not to kill civilians, at least as much as possible - ISIS in Afghanistan has done exactly the opposite. Much like their brethren in Iraq and Syria, anybody is game.

How big a threat are they?Have they eclipsed the Taliban?

Well, I think one has to put ISIS in Afghanistan into perspective. They are not a populist movement. They don't have a large support base either among Afghans or a large number of fighters. U. S.  estimates are down in the 2-to-3,000 realm, which is an order of magnitude lower than the Taliban. But what they're willing to do is to conduct high-profile attacks against Afghan and international targets in cities like Jalalabad and Kabul. And that makes them certainly a threat, but it doesn't make them a threat to overthrow the Kabul regime.

Is there coordination between the Taliban, or are they rivals?


I was only able to speak with them very briefly. I did ask the mother - I said, where are you from?And she said, we're from Honduras. And I said, well, how long have you been traveling to get to this place right now?And she looked at me and said, we've been on the road for a month. And I knew at that moment that this point in their journey, which was very emotional for me to see them being detained, for them was just part of a very, very long journey.

You're an award-winning photographer, and you've covered war and chaos. And I should mention that we're friends because we often covered the same things in the Middle East and Latin America. And you've been taking pictures at the border for the last decade. What did you see this past week more broadly?

Having covered this story for the last 10 years, I've seen a lot along the way. But in this case, this last week, it was different because I knew that what happened after these pictures were taken was going to be something very different. Most of us here had heard the news that the administration had planned to separate families. And these people really had no idea about this news. And it was hard to take these pictures, knowing what was coming next.

Yeah. This took a toll on you. You spoke about that in the Getty Images blog.


The strategy, Scott, is really hard to describe in Syria. So in Iraq, there is a clear strategy. You can like it or not, or you can say it's succeeding or not, but it's basically to build up the capacity of the Iraqi security forces to battle ISIL. To help build up more capacity in Sunni areas and the Anbar province. . .

Well, but let me - forgive me, Senator.

Yeah.

I don't want to impersonate the last debate that we just saw, but we've just got. . .


. . . About 30 seconds left.

OK.

Do you think the administration perceives ISIS as a greater threat than the Assad regime in Syria and is making that choice in so many words?

Scott, that's the problem. The Iraq strategy is clear, but the Syria strategy is a muttle (ph) because there's a desire to the defeat ISIL. And we've had some success with the Kurds in the north, but there hasn't been a clear strategy vis-a-vis Assad. These are two problems that are connected, and you can't have a strategy that's just about one. We're hoping for a, you know, a strong outcome to these discussions in Geneva, the restart of a peace discussion about Syria. But we've been pursuing a strategy in Syria that's kind of a half strategy without having a strategy on Assad and the refugee crisis and so many other (unintelligible) for that.


If you like animals, you should check out this video.

And they have all these animals that are - they're flying. They're on - they have them on treadmills. They have - they try to get them off the cabinets inside the lab.

Yeah. I mean, you know, of course, if you're going to get a guinea fowl on the treadmill, it's not that like the guinea fowl is, like, yeah, I'm really looking for a workout. Thank you.

It doesn't necessarily want to be on there, although they do seem sort of OK with it.


Oh, yes. On Friday morning, I was involved in a lockout drill at one of my high schools as I was sitting in a counseling office, talking with a student.

And I guess as a parent, I have learned to be grateful that these drills are held. But I wonder if there are some students who aren't panicked by the drills in and of themselves.

It can be a very scary experience. It's a reality now that our students in our schools are preparing for. So when we do a drill, we don't tell our students they are drills because we need them to take everything seriously. And we want to normalize and help them feel calm during those things. And I've also wondered, what is the impact of doing these drills for our students?

Well, you're a gifted counselor. What do you think it might be?


It's my pleasure, Scott.

You started out in your 40s?

No, I started out professionally in my 40s, but I was acting as a - since I was 9 years old. And as a young man trying to make a living, I was an exterminator, but I was doing community theater for many years before I finally went ahead with it as a professional.

Forgive me. - you were an exterminator?


. . . dominated by one single country.

And this in the context of several deals to construct dams with the power going to China, constructed by Chinese companies and virtually Chinese sovereign states that were constructed to accommodate the workers for these facilities.

Yeah. And this is the way that Chinese work all over the region, and then that's why a lot of countries in the region are fearful to Chinese. They're very generous with their loans. Most of the loans don't require any payback. But they send in their own workers to construct the projects, and then obviously, most of the benefits go back to the Chinese. You see that all over in Southeast Asia.

We're talking with Michael Sullivan, the long-time Southeast Asia correspondent for NPR News, now, a freelance reporter based in Northern Thailand and recently returned from another trip to Myanmar, the country also known as Burma. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And one of the changes, Michael, I have to ask you about censorship in Burma; tightly controlled media for many, many years or decades. Has that begun to loosen up?


Look, I think the president's actually been very clear about the things that he wants. He wants to address border security, he wants to deal with chain migration, and he wants to deal with the lottery. And he's certainly willing to provide legal status for DREAMers. So if those are your four principle points and they've been known for months, there ought to be a way to reach an agreement.

Border security means a wall?

It means border security. The president's acknowledged he's not talking about a wall from sea to shining sea. But it does require physical structures in a lot of places. Back in 2006, Congress actually voted for about twice the amount of physical barriers that we have today - so finishing that off, rebuilding parts of it. But again, as both General Kelly and the president acknowledged, we're not talking about a wall across the entire length of the border. But we are calling for much more intense border security.

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, thanks for joining us.


No, that felt great. Did it make up?I can't go back to my life pre-June 1, 2017, where I'm getting smeared. And as a Muslim, being attacked with the worst anti-Muslim trope you can say is that I'm a Muslim and I'm a terrorist. So it was very painful. It was painful to have friends and family express concerns. It was painful to contact security at Daily Beast and my radio channel to say, hey, we might be visited by white supremacists coming to kill me. And they might kill innocent people I work with. That was all horrible.

But through this all, I've never once questioned doing this. This is the right thing to do. It's the thing we have to do. And I'm happy we got the judgment. And we're going to continue. And I hope it inspires others and gives them a roadmap to say, don't be silent. There are lawyers who will represent you - I'm not kidding - free of charge for this kind of work to make it clear that we're not going to cower from these people. We're going to sue them. We're going to win. We're going to get their money.

That's Dean Obeidallah. He's the host of "The Dean Obeidallah Show" on Sirius XM. He's a columnist for The Daily Beast. And he's a comedian and a former lawyer. Dean, thanks so much for talking to us.

Thanks for having me on, Michel. I appreciate it.


We've been going on the assumption - I suppose largely from movies - that dinosaurs made a big noise. They're such big creatures. Why do you think we're wrong.

Most dinosaur sounds are based on models that are more like lions and tigers and bears. And we know that the two groups of animals alive today that are most closely related to extinct dinosaurs are birds and crocodilians. In fact, birds are living dinosaurs.

So you look at the way birds make noises?

Exactly. That's what we did in this particular study. We looked at one aspect of vocal behavior, which is whether the mouth is open or closed. And we looked at living dinosaurs - birds. We have 10,000 species today. Most of them vocalize, sing with an open mouth. But some birds produce sound with a closed mouth. They actually inflate different structures that allow them to resonate, often at lower frequencies than many other birds. But we also needed to look at alligators and crocodiles as the closest cousins to dinosaurs.


I think it's really important to understand that this is literally part of our human condition, right?We're a pack species. We like other people to like us. We like them to know what we're doing. And we've been doing this for centuries, whether it was commissioning portraits, whether it was sending postcards from our trips, whether it was holding our neighbors hostage and making them watch 10,000 slides from our family vacation. This is part of who we are. It's just a matter of managing it effectively.

If this is an essential part of the human condition, are these fatalities just going to keep happening?

I think so. I think so. There are some measures in place to kind of help with those people who are accidentally finding themselves in the situation of taking risky selfies. I think the more difficult question to ask is, what do we do with those people who are deliberately trying to find that high-risk selfie moment?

I mentioned the U. S.  Forest Service warning against bear selfies and Yellowstone having this safe selfie pledge. What other steps are being taken to try to keep people safe?


Anyway, let's talk about Oprah, her TV show, her magazine, popularity in general taking a hit?Do you think it's because she picked a candidate in this race?

I think, that's probably partially what it is. I mean, she does have a very mainstream audience of women, who - a lot of them supported Hillary Clinton, so I'm sure that has something to do with it. But I also take it just a sign of the time. I mean, she's been dominant for a very long time, and you know, there comes a time when that ends, or it certainly begins to fall off a little bit, and I sort of think it's a combination of both.

I don't think it's just her support of Obama, because if you think about it, she really has not really been out there supporting him since January. She did her thing and she pretty much stepped away from it. But I think that when you combine that with the fact that she's dominated for 20 years, and Ellen now is sort of the popular person with all the celebrity guests, I just think it's time to pass the mantle on some level.

Oprah can pass the mantle anytime and still be a billionaire.


It's a really exciting time for us, Ira, to - it's only five years in, and it's been a tremendous success story for the company. Handsets really have taken off. We're at a point now where almost half of all handsets in the world made are smartphones with some type of touch capability.

And then I'm sure you know of tablet computers, are very exciting, have grown quite magnificently in the last few years. And the market is starting to think about expanding touch interfaces with the different devices. If you think about your laptop computer, for example, or monitors or tabletops, even the front of a refrigerator, there's a lot more applications out there, we feel.

We feel that touch and the interface of touch is only going to grow.

Do you have to design and engineer the glass specifically to be touched as a utility?


The children of Jamal Khashoggi have begun receiving compensation. Khashoggi was the journalist from Saudi Arabia who vanished last year. After initial denials, Saudi authorities now acknowledge he was killed after he walked into a Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The newspaper that once published Khashoggi's columns, The Washington Post, now reports on apparent early moves toward paying blood money to Khashoggi's relations.

Greg Miller reported this story for The Post. Good morning, sir.

Good morning.

What have the children been paid?


But you can actually trace the Denisovan material in some populations but not in others in Island Southeast Asia. It's very easy to see because it's very distinct from modern human DNA. It's kind of like a medical imaging dye, and you can actually see who carries them and who doesn't and what the gene flow and migration patterns were.

Fascinating, David Reich, thank you for taking time to be with us today.

Thank you.

And good luck to you. I know you're going to go out hunting for more fossils, more Denisovans.


This is a shattered, disunited party. And the one thing that they have in terms of cohesion is what seems to be, for the most part, their mutual collective disdain for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Is there an uprising against Speaker Ryan that's already begun?

I think what's going to happen, if - again, if the polls - and we're projecting forward here - those - he's not likely to lose the speakership. The Republicans are likely to retain control. But a number of, quote, unquote, "moderates" or centrists in his caucus are likely to lose. And that means it's Ryan versus what we call the Freedom Caucus - used to be the old Tea Party caucus. So he could come under significant pressure.

Yeah. The numbers aren't necessarily looking his way.


Correct.

So, when you write in your - I'm going back to this - your investment outlook essay, Americans don't really understand Wall Street. They may never understand Wall Street. And then you go on in the next sentence to say, oh, and by the way, yours truly, meaning yourself, is learning every day, discovering every day what Wall Street is. I mean, what the heck are the rules now, and if you don't know, who does?

Well, the rules are changing. The balloon was being expanded, and now, the air has been taken out of the balloon, and so the rules are changing in terms of what becomes a safe and a relatively riskless position in this rapidly de-levering world.

Do you think capitalism is fundamentally changed, and if so, how?


Good to be here.

So we've been hearing about the trade war week after week for months. How do you see that fitting into the broader U. S. -China relationship right now?

What we really see now is long-term contentious relations between the United States and China. This is a major development that is going to be worked out most likely over the course of decades. China is now, essentially, a peer competitor to the United States. . .

Meaning it has a comparably sized economy.


Well, I think anything is possible. It's just impossible with this president. He continues to decide, basically without consultation - from all we can interpret - from advisers or whomever and just decide that this is what I want to do. Sure, he's president. But you would expect the chief executive to listen to his advisers. He said, if I don't get my way, I'm going to shut the government down. He didn't get his way, and we are involved in this shutdown. It's unfortunate, but he asked for it.

I look forward to January 3 coming. And Democrats, at least, can provide the majority leadership in the House to do what we can to try to get the government up and running. It does not include wall funding, but we need to put the tens of thousands of government workers back to work.

That's Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. Congressman, thank you very much.

Thank you.


And, you know, there are many, many different ways to sort of be a poet in America, and some of us work in libraries and some of us work in garages and some of us teach children how to read and some of us work in hospitals. And the thing is just we're passionate about poetry, and I think that's a beautiful thing. We can't be all in one place. We shouldn't be. We have to be scattered about in honor to keep poetry what it has always been.

What are you learning reading all these entries?

Oh, my goodness. I'm learning that the poems that I'm - I've read so far are lush and lyrical and sorrowful and unpretentious and gorgeous and syntactically stunning and well-chiseled. And I can't tell you how many times I've stopped reading to say, how did she or he get her mind and heart around that so beautifully?And so there's some gorgeous books of poems that are out there and that are in this pile this year, and I'm just loving the fact that I'm basically reading poetry all day.

I mean, I've never had the pleasure to have that kind of job before. And when he National Book Award folks called, I thought, oh, this is going to be quite a summer. And it is. I have the books stacked up knee-high, several piles of them. That pile has a label on it, and another pile has another label on it. And I just kind of sit down in the midst of it all and lose myself into that beautiful language.


Hey, Tony.

So, a recent New York Times article detailed Oprah Winfrey's growing influence, I should say, in Saudi Arabia, of all places. What's that about?

Well, yeah. "The Oprah Show" first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004, and it became an instant hit with women 25 and younger in that country, according to the Times. Now, the article reads, in a country where the sexes are separated, Ms.  Winfrey provides many young women with new ways of thinking without striking them, or Saudi Arabia's ruling authorities as subversive. So, you know, Oprah, love her or hate her, is always a flash point for conversation. And on our blog, Jessica writes, it's amazing to see a down to earth black woman from Mississippi appeal to so many different people here in the U. S.  and in other countries. Another reader named Zakita Jones(ph) says, I'm awed at how fast different forms of globalization are taking off and reaching other countries, but Candice James(ph) writes, Oprah works my last nerve. Saudi Arabia can have her!

Speaking of women's issues, another hot topic on our blog this week, women who are choosing to be single mothers. What's been the response?


Oh. . .

. . . equivalent to a nuclear bomb?

Well, it's about - its equivalent - the energy in that explosion is about 10 times the energy in the first atomic bomb. . .

Uh-huh.


Yeah, absolutely. They'll see Dragon doing a loop around the space station. It's a pretty wide loop, so Dragon will still look pretty small from the space station when it's doing that wide loop around the space station. But I mean, just to visualize things, it's like literally imagine you doing a loop around a bullet that's going 12 times faster than something that came out of an assault rifle.

Yeah.

So it's a dodgy affair.

I know. You know, when - and they first tried this in the '60s.


Yes, and we looked especially at people who are most likely to think they are lacking in bias, such as the self-described egalitarians, also political liberals. Our sample, being an Internet sample, is not surprising that it was a majority of liberals. And we found that the implicit race attitudes of these liberals and the egalitarians predicted their warmth toward Republican candidates.

So in other words, many white and non-white voters will unconsciously vote against President Obama because of his race, but when asked, they'll give a reason other than race.

That's very likely. This is very hard to tease apart, and our method works by measuring things that you can't really ask people about because they don't know. And we think it's one of a number of factors that play into determining vote. But it's a strong enough factor so that it can actually affect a significant percentage of the vote.

Among Republican candidates, when you polled them, did you see similar racial attitudes towards Herman Cain?


And this doesn't seem to fit the typical counterfeiter.

No, not at all. You know, most counterfeiters are either drug addicts who are eager to raise a quick buck and there. After a few nights without sleep, they get the bright idea to bleach some $5 bills and scan the image of a 20 and then print the artwork, the imagery of the 20 on that same $5 bank note paper. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have sort of mobsters and thugs, people who are involved in the drug trade or human trafficking, and they are really keen on mass production and, again, a fairly poor quality counterfeit.

Then there is this small group of true craftspeople out there, and a lot of them are really poor when it comes to criminal capabilities, but they are true artists. And, in that sense, Kuhl is right near the top of the heap, as far as talented counterfeiters through history.

Your story details, in fact, two different efforts. The first - well, he found himself in some financial difficulties and spent six months adapting his silkscreen techniques to producing a $100 bill.


I don't think I can get away with that.

Usually, that's the NPR pipeline, isn't it?

Right, exactly. Yeah. You've played a couple games now. How'd they go?

They went well. We played the best team in Poland, actually, in our first game and lost pretty badly. But I played OK. In the second game, we won, which was great. This team was just promoted - the team that I play on - to the first division.


Here's what used to happen in the old days. People would only put 100,000 dollars in Broadway because they knew that was the maximum FDIC insurance. They put a million dollars in Bank of America. They figured, well, I only - because Bank of America only has the same insurance as we do, only a 100,000. So they left 900,000 dollars uninsured because they said, well, that's Bank of America. I'm only worried about Broadway. I'm not worried about Bank of America.

Hudson says the idea of a smaller bank, where you can actually talk face-to-face with the CEO, is starting to have a lot more appeal. As I sat in Paul Hudson's bank, where quotes by Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglass are painted on the walls, where there is no bulletproof glass, it made a lot of sense to me.

Most people have no relationship with their bank. It's the most impersonal relationship they have. I think that's probably why people are so stressed out about what's going on because it's almost like their world order has been disrupted. The way they thought the world rolled is not the way. So now, they're saying, well, if Merrill Lynch isn't safe, what is safe?You know, is anything safe?

Broadway Federal Bank's Paul Hudson says his bank may not have ATMs in every corner of the country, but what he can offer customers is the security of knowing they won't be needing a bailout anytime soon.


I think the sentiment has to change. Two years ago, people were very disappointed about the Occupy Movement that after 71 days, and it came back nothing. But now, the Hong Kong person seems to be - Hong Kong people seems to be much more determined, less (unintelligible). So they have been planting the seed in the heart of the young people.

So this time, we see at the midnight of town, you've got the 300-somethings young peoples being arrested and 80% of them are just 16 to 25 years old. So that's - we haven't been expected. We thought the youngster don't care about politics anymore. But it turns out that those young guys are coming out and becoming the front line. The seed had grown, and they were out.

That is Galileo Cheng. He's a social affairs executive for the Hong Kong Catholic Institution Staff Association. He's been out all day, and he's giving us a report from the front lines of the protests.

Galileo Cheng, thank you so much for talking with us.

Thank you.


Well, I think every writer hopes to bring information to a reader or a viewer. Every artist wants to reach another person through the heart. Something that a novel can do is bring you information in a different way from journalism or all other forms of acquiring information. It brings you inside the mind of another person. So it creates empathy for the theoretical stranger, and that's - it's a fresh avenue, really, for bringing science to a reader, to get to the head via the heart.

Do you have science - we have 30 seconds left. But will we see science in your next book?

Absolutely.

Well, I look forward to it. Thank you for joining us today.


Yes.

What is it like coming and finding a place in New York's theater world?Because it can be very tough to even get a little purchase in it, but it sounds like you have found a place with your off-Broadway version of the play that's very comfortable and fulfilling.

Well, it is definitely - yeah, I have to admit, I wish I could sit here and say I knew it was going to happen this way. I was nervous waiting for that New York Times review to come out. You know what that's like. You know, it was like, OK, you know, am I going to get the theater gods' blessing?Because New York it is what it is; it's the Big Apple. It's the biggest theater market in the world. If you can make it, here you can make it anywhere.

So, this feels really good to have, you know, not just the approval from the critics, but just be able to, you know - I shake everyone's hand who buys the ticket every time I perform my show. I stand at the door as people leave the theater; I shake their hand and look them in the eyes and say thank you. So, I really feel like just because the reviews are great, I still know that it's reaching people, and that's what's important to me.


You know, I give him mixed reviews. I knew Daniel Hahn prior to him becoming chief. I am a former high school teacher. And I worked hand in hand with the police department. And in working with him, I truly, truly believed that he has a good heart and good intentions. But now that he's the chief of police, we have to hold him to the line of accountability and transparency.

Sonia, Stephon's death is the latest of several fatal shootings of black men by police across the country. And some of these killings are not well-known. But they're still happening. What do you feel needs to be done to address this?

You know, I'm of the mind set that our whole policing system needs to be dismantled and abolished. And we need to start over.

And what would that look like?

What that looks like here in Sacramento - what we have done successfully as a BLM organization is we've created community resources, alternatives to police. We have resources in the community that if this were to happen, call these people instead of calling the police.

Some of the protests that have been happening since Stephon was killed have been marches and protests that have filled streets and blocked traffic. Some protests blocked basketball fans from entering a sports arena. How far should the protests go?


Let's clear this up immediately: blonde, lithe, the initials V. P. So, is Vanessa Pierson Valerie Plame?

The great thing about fiction is that you can fix things and make things better. I think Vanessa is a smarter version of where I was. And it's definitely informed by my experiences in the CIA.

Well, that raises another question. So, did you take some top-secret operation and just thinly fictionalize it to this book and, you know, are. . .

. . . are there Russian agents reading this now and saying, oh, this is what we were looking for?


Because banks are saying no, we can't do it?

Banks find the credit cards more profitable than traditional bank loans. Frequently they are able to charge, you know, much higher interest rates. Their interest rates are much more volatile. They can go from a 12 percent rate to a 30 percent rate because of any number of factors that may or may not be beyond the control of consumers and small business owners. You don't get charged for their percent on traditional bank loans.

So, are you getting calls from your membership and are they agitated?What are they saying to you?

I wouldn't say we've been getting a whole lot of calls right now. Mostly because I think - like I said, a lot of small business owners aren't quite sure what to think of the financial bailout. Also, a lot are hunkering down, trying to just weather the storm. And they're focused more on trying to run their business and, you know, make some sort of margin of profit with soaring energy costs and rising health care costs. And now all of this volatility, so they're just trying to, you know, weather through.


Earlier today, U. S.  Secretary of State John Kerry held a joint news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal who told reporters his country can not ignore military intervention from Iran and Hezbollah in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Saudi Arabia already sends arms to the Syrian opposition. The U. S.  also plans to provide light arms to the rebel forces. But the Saudi foreign minister said more is now required. NPR foreign correspondent Deb Amos joins us now from NPR's bureau in Beirut. Nice to have you back one more time.

Very nice to be here.

Everyone knows Saudi Arabia and Iran are sometimes bitter rivals and on opposite sides in Syria. What does it mean for the Saudi foreign minister to speak so bluntly as he stands next to the U. S.  secretary of state?

What is different here is a change in tone. The language was very, very tough today. The Saudi foreign minister talked about genocide by the government of Syria. He talked about an outside invasion. He's talking about the Iranians and Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group here in Lebanon. He says they have a massive flow of weapons, and that that must be stopped. He was asking for a resolution to have an arms embargo on the Syrians, nigh on impossible. What he's talking about, one would guess, is a U. N.  resolution and any resolution that would ban weapons would be certainly vetoed by the Russians and most likely the Chinese. But they were venting, the Saudis today, as John Kerry was there for talks.


That's good. That's a start.

That's good.

But there are also very few issues that could get us at daggers drawn in the short term. You could have a misunderstanding and miscalculation in the South China Sea. Taiwan remains very concerning.

But overall, to date, there are very few areas in which the United States and China are headed toward conflict with each other. And there is great concern in both capitals that it not get there. But between that observation - that we mustn't go to war - and the growing list of complaints against each other, there is insufficient strategic thinking in both capitals.


Basically, in the art markets. I'm not sure how many of them are exactly for sale at this point. I think there are a number of artifacts that are almost too well-known to sell or to sell to anyone, you know, like an - you know, a prominent museum. For instance, the Nimrud Ivories are unlikely to be, you know, publicly available for sale.

What are the Nimrud Ivories?

The Nimrud Ivories, it's a series of these very small beautifully carved ivories from the 9th century B. C. , from the sites of Nimrud. Probably the most famous is something called the lioness attacking, I guess, it's a young man. They were gilded or leafed with gold leaf and in many cases painted. They're just beautiful pieces.

So they're in private hands somewhere?


My father had, you know, good collections of music from Marvin Gaye, Philip Coutre(ph) to Bob Marley. He had it all. And he was a cameraman, and he used the music to do something special with the pictures. You know, while he's playing I would sneak around and just listen. So I think music started for me then.

Were you ever in a situation, Asa, where you were torn between - because you mention your dad had Motown and Marvin Gaye, torn between the American urban music and the more traditional music of Nigeria and in Africa.

That was in, you know. It was between American, the West, you know, influence and then the church music and the street music, traditional music from Nigeria.

Now, let me make sure I heard you clearly. Did you say that it was a sin or that's what was in?


It's far worse than that. The assumption that Social Security numbers were compromised was there at the beginning, but, you know, OPM has sort of slow-rolled how bad this really is. And what has been compromised includes security clearance information, background investigation information for millions of past and present employees across the U. S.  government, including the Pentagon and the intelligence community. This is really, really bad.

And, potentially, how could this information be used?

Well, this is very personal information, as anyone who's ever had a security clearance could tell you. This involves - especially at the higher levels of classification that are needed - very detailed personal information about lifestyle habits, anything you've done wrong - things you probably wouldn't want other people to know about, frankly - if you've had addiction issues, financial problems, marital problems, partner problems.

So it could be used to blackmail a federal employee. . .


You have your camera there with you?

I do. You want a sound effect?

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The speaker has suffered through days of public humiliation at the hands of his fractious troops. But sometimes what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And by surviving all of this, he has probably strengthened what's always been a rather tenuous grip on the speakership. In the end, he did the right thing - we talked about this in the past - and kept government and borrowing authority going forward. And probably he'll have a better weekend this weekend than he had last.

Certainly more free time. I think a lot of people are wondering this weekend: is Senator Ted Cruz a new national figure or a diminished one, after events of this past week?

You could say he's both. Certainly he is new hero of the Tea Party and others who wanted to stop the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, by any means necessary. At the Value Voters Summit, for example, here about a week ago, he absolutely dominated the presidential preference straw poll on social conservatives. But within the establishment of the Republican Party, in the financial community and among party fundraisers, he has come to be regarded as dangerous.

And a hard word and that raises this question. Against what's been the stereotype, the image for many years, Democrats appeared unified over these past few weeks, and the Republicans who looked like they were - what's the old joke they used to make about Democrats - a circular firing squad?What's happened to the two major parties?


I think that, you know, the fantasy genre, it lets you explore all these human emotions and feelings. But now, going back and learning about his passion for language and realizing that each word, name of a place or person, it's steeped in so much history and thought that you realize that the reason these worlds feel so realistic and are easy to disappear into are because of the amount of work he put into it - and building maps so that he could figure out how long it would take a character to travel from this area to this area and if they could reliably be there in the time it needed for the story to work and make sense. And just things that - the depth of his knowledge and creation was incredible.

So last question, I understand that you can speak some Elvish now (laughter) as part. . .

(Laughter).

. . . Of your going into the characters. I was wondering if you could say something for us.


They do, but they won't help much in this case. There's a type of snail that eats them that unfortunately is also popular in the curio trade, but their numbers were never huge. There's some - actually some very small shrimp that will eat them, but, you know, there's only so much they can do.

When you have these outbreaks, the numbers of starfish are so much that it's beyond what any of their predators can do anything about.

And these are not your run-of-the-mill, see-them-on-the-beach five-legged starfish, are they?

No, no, I mean, they look like monsters. If you wanted to - you know, if you were to blow one of these things up really big, you could use it in a sci-fi movie.


Let's go deeper, linguistically into this. When, at the time that I spoke with Reverend Jackson, and this was yesterday, we believed, knowing what we did, we being most of the press, that he had said that Senator Obama had emasculated himself. As it turned out, the phrase was much rougher and much more, you know, I want to blank, blank, blank. Is there a difference between those two ways, neither of them particularly nice, of parsing out lack of manhood?

Well, you know, I actually read that slightly differently. When I heard about the specific comments and the castration and sort of the anger in which it was delivered, even though it was a whisper of. I immediately began to think back historically about, you know, the ways and which powerful black men, or uppity black men were punished.

And it was, you know, the threat of castration was very real in the 19th century. And there's a moment of irony that Jesse Jackson would want to assert his power, his relevance, to Barack Obama's campaign by placing himself over Barack in a sense in suggesting that he is the man and also capable of taking Barack's manhood away.

Coming up this weekend, we have the start of the NAACP's annual convention and although he has not started yet, Ben Jealous is the incoming president. He's 35. He's going to be the youngest president ever of the NAACP. We seem to be seeing a generational shift overall. Is there going to be blood on the floor, metaphorically, as this shift happens?


I must be doing something right. What I thought was funny about it was Sommore is not my real name. So. . .

Right. Right, right, right.

I was like, OK, so you named - you named your kids after my stage name. OK, that's hot.

So, when you think about all the stuff you do about women, you know. When you say, women, we got to catch up. When you talk about sex, when you talk about relationships, what sisters have to go through. I'm assuming that you and your girlfriends are the people who can road test some of the comedy that you talk about.


Anna Sommer Schneider is a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown. This past week, the country's president signed a law that would punish anyone who suggests Poland was complicit in the Holocaust. Critics, including Israel and the U. S.  State Department, say the law will stifle discussion about those atrocities and cover up the role of Poles who killed or denounced Jews during World War II. For Schneider, this debate is personal. In 1977, she was born in the same town as Poland's most infamous concentration camp.

Despite the fact that I was born and raised literally in the shadows of the gas chambers, there was very little information available for me at that time - what Auschwitz really was.

Auschwitz was a taboo topic in her family. And the word Holocaust was not widely used in communist Poland. But as Schneider grew older, she wanted to learn more about what had happened during the war. She got her Ph. D.  in Jewish studies, eventually converted to Judaism. And for the last two decades, she's given tours of Auschwitz. She tells me even today, people see Jews in Poland as others, highlighting a long history of anti-Semitism in the country.

When we teach about Holocaust in Polish classrooms today, we often talk about Jews as strangers who lived in our country.


That's right, Book Club is coming. . .

SCIENCE FRIDAY Book Club has picked the September read, right?

Yep. It's "Flatland. "

Ooh, that's an old one.


Yeah. Despite the ongoing uproar and concern created by the firing of James Comey, you have a lot of bipartisan support for Christopher Wray. He said a lot of the right things this week when it came to what what senators wanted to hear, what they were asking about. He said he would be independent if he ran the FBI. He said he would not pull any punches.

And he was asked several times, what would you do if the president asked you to do something illegal or unethical?He said, first, I would try to change his mind, and if he didn't do that, I would quit. So Democrats seem to hear what they wanted to hear. And there could be a vote on his nomination in the next couple of weeks.

Republicans released a revised health care bill - as popular as the first one was?

Just about, it seems, with the public. But I think where it matters more is, is it more popular within the Republican caucus?And it seems to be a tad more popular right now. But this bill is still right on a danger zone in terms of whether or not it can pass. You have two senators in the Republican caucus saying they're not going to vote for it. They can't lose any other Republican support and still get this bill passed.


I had always written about my mother. I started writing in college in a creative writing class. And some of the first stories I wrote were talking about different disagreements that we had. But what was important was the kind of larger struggles that were embodied in those arguments. I just published an essay about the conception of this book, and I talk about the issue of hair and how the struggle of hair between black mothers and black daughters is fraught with all of these racial tensions that are basically absorbed from the larger culture.

So I had always written about my mother as a way to write about these larger issues and about immigration and gender and motherhood. And during the time that my mother's health took a turn for the worse, I was a grad student at Columbia in their MFA program. And actually, it was the last day of school. And we had our graduation ceremony. And I found out that my mom was, you know, had a few months to live.

So I pretty immediately - because I was done with school - packed my things up. I quit the job that I had and moved back to Philadelphia and basically spent the last six months with her. It was, you know, it's an around-the-clock job. It's very draining. And at the end of the day, the only thing I had time to write were basically one paragraph or sometimes a sentence - reflections. And I just started collecting them in this folder. And I didn't tend to do anything with them, but they all started to fit together in this large story.

I want to have you read from one of those vignettes, Page 31.


So let's note this is the beginning of the idea of America going out into the world to make the world a better place by force when that seems to make sense to Americans. But there's also the identity of the individuals themselves. What did the personnel of the Rough Riders suggest to Americans about who America was?

Well, this is one of the ironies because one of the things that Roosevelt talked about and one of the things that he valued about the Rough Riders was this was not just his idea about American masculinity but also what in his mind was diversity, but within a very narrowly prescribed idea about what diversity was. They were all white. There were a few Native Americans who were in it. But there were - you know, there were no African Americans. There were there a couple of Hispanics.

But it was this idea of, well, that's what America is. And it was a very prescribed, very male, very white identity. And it linked up with, you know, I think a very chauvinistic idea about what we do with our military. I think this is all intertwined.

What do you mean about what we do with our military?


And how does Syria's war spark violence in Iraq?

Yes, it's a bit of a long story, Neal. I won't go into too much detail, but what I will say is that, you know, what happened in Syria, we all know it started as an uprising. It was during the Arab Spring. There were people going to the streets to protest. It took awhile for this to kind of catch on in Iraq. But when it did, it was a wave of protests in mostly Sunni areas. That's because the government in Iraq is controlled now by Shiites, Shiite politicians, different Shiite political parties. And so you saw in many Sunni areas of Iraq people going to the streets to protest, demanding jobs, demanding better treatment, demanding an end to what they see as kind of a police state behavior with their people, they said, you know, unlawful detentions.

And so when you have protests in a country that's already very divided along sectarian lines, the protests are going to get sectarian pretty quickly. And they also got violent. You saw in tandem with these protests were the rise of some violent attacks, and a lot of people attribute these attacks to local insurgent groups like al-Qaida in Iraq. And then you saw sort of Shiite militias, you know, fighting back with their own attacks. And then it basically spiraled out of control.

You mentioned al-Qaida in Iraq. This was a group that was, well, largely defeated by the Sunnis themselves, in cooperation with American and some Iraqi forces as well. But the Sunnis themselves discredited these people.


Elections are indeed important, and that's why Joe Maguire - the top intelligence official in our government - has said that the greatest security threat facing our nation right now is ensuring the integrity of our elections and preventing foreign interference. For the president of the United States to ask the government of Ukraine and now the government of China to interfere in our elections by collecting dirt, opposition research on his political opponents is a violation, first, of the law but also of the very core of what our country stands for, what our democracy is built upon.

And - in half a minute we have left, what in your mind is the obligation of a professional diplomat when they are asked to do that?

When a diplomat encounters something that they believe is immoral or illegal, they need to call it out. That's why the whistleblower laws exist. There are procedures in place for people to object. And if they are not able to get further traction in that way, then they're obliged to resign.

Nancy McEldowney former U. S.  ambassador to Bulgaria and a longtime career diplomat, thanks so much for coming in to see us today.

Thank you.


The latest U. S.  State Department Trafficking in Persons Report names a new country among the world's worst offenders on human trafficking - China. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson criticized China for not taking, quote, "serious steps to end its own complicity in trafficking," including forced laborers from North Korea that are located in China. China now joins Russia, Iran, North Korea and Syria on the bottom of that list. Secretary Tillerson also honored activists from around the world for their efforts to end human trafficking.

Sister Vanaja Jasphine was one of those aid activists to be named a 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report Hero. Sister Jasphine is the coordinator of the Kumbo Diocesan Commission for Justice and Peace in the northwest region of Cameroon, and she joins us now. Sister, thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you.

How big a problem is human trafficking in Cameroon?


After Army Private First Class Brian Orolin returned from Afghanistan in 2011, his wife, Donna, could tell something wasn't quite right. He became paranoid. He suffered constant headaches and would isolate himself in his bedroom with the lights dimmed. And then on November 19, Brian left his wife and two children in Spring, Texas. He has been missing ever since.

At StoryCorps, Donna Orolin remembered the day he returned from Afghanistan.

He was literally the last person off the plane, and he was just so excited to see his daughters. I dressed the girls up and put little bows in their hair with his unit on them. And I put a sign out front that said welcome home, Specialist Orolin. He just couldn't wait to be dad - husband again, but then, things were different.

We used to hold hands all the time before he left. When he came back, he didn't like to be touched, so I had to remind myself to not rub his back, not sneak up behind him and give him hugs. And pretty much his sense of purpose was gone. He would say that he was just going to go away somewhere some day and disappear, and we'd never find him.


Yes.

That's a lot.

It's a small fraction of what could have been if there hadn't been steps taken to move animals from flood-prone areas before the storm. Certainly, it's tragic, but agriculture is a leaky system. It's prone to all sorts of weather-related perils and that's just unfortunately the way it is.

Mark Rice, who's director of the Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center at North Carolina State, thanks so much for being with us.


Well, if you look at San Francisco, San Francisco, the volatile section is the section under $321,000. There really are houses in San Francisco worth less than that, and those are the ones that are really in the foreclosure pipeline. So even in the west, even in these very high-value markets, there are a lot of properties that are going to be affected by this too.

A lot of the foreclosure activity was at the low end because that's where the tremendous wave of credit flowed into the market, enfranchised people, caused the lower end to triple. The lower end is still by and large within that conforming limit.

Karl Case is a professor of economics at Wellesley College and co-developer of the Case-Shiller Home Prices Index. Their latest report is out today. Karl Case, thank you very much.

Pleasure.


One of the things you can buy with bitcoins is illicit products, like drugs, for example. And it has proven to be a particularly attractive application for bitcoin because if you tried to set up a black market for drugs and accept credit card payments, the credit card networks would shut you down right away. But there's nobody who runs the bitcoin network, and so there's nobody the authorities can go to and say, shut down this network or reverse that payment.

I gather bitcoin's created through mining but not, like, chisel and cloud of dust mining. Right?

Yeah. So mining is the term that bitcoin people use for the process that computers use to kind of run the bitcoin network. There's a global shared record of who has made which payments to whom. And the computers that participate in this process get a reward of new bitcoins. Right now, every block, which happens about 10 minutes, you get a reward of 12. 5 bitcoins, which is worth more than $100,000. And they call it mining because you're creating new bitcoins in the process of running the network.

And that takes a lot of energy, I gather.

It does. One recent estimate said that the bitcoin network as a whole consumes about as much energy as the nation of Denmark.


Hello.

Hi. I don't even know where to begin this story. It is so crazy. I guess I'll note Britons who do seem to love a really deliciously gossipy trashy tabloid tell-all, maybe they were overdue for a good scandal.

I have to say we've really, really needed it. Britain is exhausted by Brexit and the constant doom and gloom. So it's no surprise that WAGatha Christie, as you mentioned in the introduction, has broken the Internet today. And the reason why it's called WAGatha Christie is that WAG or WAGs is an acronym commonly used here to refer to the wives and girlfriends of high-profile athletes. And two of the women involved in today's feud are two of the most high-profile WAGs in the country.

OK. The wives or girlfriends in question here are Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy. Who are these two women?


That food has made this humble eatery among the best restaurants in the city, topping the lists of every Houston publication and more recently, after a visit from Anthony Bourdain in 2016, the country.

We'll let you choose what we eat.

OK, wonderful. Thank you.

Creamy chai is set on the table - then vegetable fritters and spicy samosas.


Another interesting way to measure Tunisia's success, or lack thereof, is the number of people who are just fleeing the country by sea.

Right. Exactly. Tunisia was the No. 1 contributor of migrants to Italy - Tunisians, not people from sub-Saharan Africa going through Tunisia. So this is another big issue. You have brain drain. You have - the suicide rate has almost doubled. All these show that people are frustrated. They're angry. They're not seeing the change they thought democracy would bring them or they thought the revolution would bring them.

And a poor economy, youth unemployment - these things can lead to protests, can lead to more political turmoil. What does the future look like for Tunisia?What are you going to be watching as it goes through this government transition?

So this transition has been smooth so far, but they're going to have to do elections on a really short schedule. They only have seven weeks to pull off presidential elections. That's not a lot of time. This is a crucial test for Tunisia to see how the democracy can actually move forward. Are they able to keep up with the constitution, to keep up with the procedures that are in place?


I think there are millennials that are doing fine. I think that when you talk about wealth transfer, what's really interesting is Americans over 62 are 80 percent white. And so when you look at these wealth transfers, white millennials are five times more likely to receive an inheritance than millennials of color. Forty-five percent of millennials are non-white. That's going to exacerbate inequality within the millennial generation. And so we're already seeing this where cities are becoming concentrations of wealth. Cities have better social services, better hospitals, better schools. And it's only the kids whose white parents can get them into those engines of opportunity, that are able to access those better services.

What do you think the responsibility of the boomer generation is at this moment?

I think, really, to think about the ways that their kids have it harder than them. Right now, the growth is going to people primarily who own land, who own homes, who own stock. Those are all people that are disproportionately old. And we need to find ways, systematically, to share those gains with people that are younger.

And I hesitate to ask this, but what is the responsibility of the millennial generation?


Yeah, there's quite a few of them. I looked up a couple. There's one that's e-Cycle. com. The EPA also has a pretty good index for, you know, how to find these places. There's another one called ecyclingcentral. com, where you can look up local things. And I also advise people to talk to their, you know, local landfill or, you know, contact your carrier or the maker of your phone, because I truly believe that that's something that they could, you know, do better, is - at least make it easy when you're getting that new phone to drop off the old one so that it gets recycled or reused.

Or maybe, you know, even on the box where the phone comes in, it has a label already stuck on it for sticking it back in the mail.

Yeah. That would be a phenomenal idea.

Yeah. Well, we sometimes come up with an idea.


I don't know where life would have led Ionel Talpazan if he'd slept on a cardboard box on a corner of, say, Akron or Peoria. But in New York, a famous art figure named Henry Tobler saw an artist in his drawings and wrote about him in scholarly journals. His pictures were included in Manhattan art galleries, and from the 1990s on, Ionel made his way in the world by his art. By the time he died, his works had hung at the American Visionary Art Museum and museums in San Francisco, London, Berlin, Madrid and France. Talpazans were sold in fancy galleries from SoHo to Chelsea. The man who'd slept in a box moved to a New York apartment.

My art shows spiritual technology, something beautiful and beyond human imagination that comes from another galaxy, he once told the Western Folklore journal. So in a relative way, this is like the God. Ionel Talpazan imagined incredible things and made them alive in the eyes of others. In a way, he did escape on his UFO.

(Singing) I wouldn't fool you, but I - I've seen the saucers so many times, I'm almost. . .

Elton John. You're listening to NPR News.


Because he is speaking about African Americans. And he used such derogatory terms. And to even say that not even humans want to live there hurts so many people because he is challenging their very humanity based on the color of their skin. The negativity, the disregard is a problem and should always be addressed and called out.

The statistician Nate Silver tweeted out some facts about Maryland's 7th District, which includes Baltimore and some of the surrounding suburbs. And he says it's the second wealthiest and second most well-educated majority black district in the country. Why do you think President Trump singled out this district?

Facts don't matter for this guy, OK?He sees people of color, and he describes them in the most derogatory terms. So he's hitting back at Cummings or trying to bully him just because he sits on this particular committee that is actually doing their job in investigating some of the things that are - been happening in this current administration.

The House Oversight Committee.


Out of respect, I don't want to go there, out of curiosity I do.

How much are you willing to tell us about how your innocence was stolen from you?

Well, growing up in a Christian family, you would have thought what happened to me would never happen because my mother loved me and she was very much aware of who I am, but I was a very mature little girl. And at 14, I was allowed to have a crush on a man who was 21. And because he was worldly, and had money, and he'd been in the Navy, you know, and I was, like, all little girls seek older men and we go, Oh my God, he's so cute. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

Well, somehow in there my father wasn't watching, my mother was watching very closely and thought she could handle the situation and she allowed this relationship to happen. It should not have happened. I should not have been allowed to date a man, it made me have insecurities at an early age that I should never have had, but a man who could manipulate a little girl's mind and her heart. He was allowed to do things he shouldn't have done.


I did want to ask about your take on U. S.  policy in northeast Syria because back in January, you wrote on your website that it's working. You said that the U. S.  has helped defeat ISIS and prevent its resurgence, and it's done so not solely through direct military engagement, but by assisting a partner force. And I wanted to ask if you think that this assistance is sufficient to keep the threat of an ISIS resurgence in check.

It is sufficient as a foundation because what you see now is local folks holding local towns and working their best to keep them safe. But it is an international problem that requires international investment to help people have water and power and schools that run. And they merit our investment.

That was writer Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, who just returned from a reporting trip in Syria. Gayle, thanks so much for talking to us once again.

Pleasure to join you.


Some might see it that way. Some look at other numbers and are a little less sympathetic to the auto industry. Sometimes, people are critical. They say that union auto workers are paid too much. What, from your perspective, would you tell people who have that opinion, who say, look, guys working for Toyota don't get nearly as much in benefits. You guys should give up some more.

You can only get what you can negotiate from a company, and a company has to have something for you to negotiate it from, and that's basically how we got where we are today. We happen to work for three companies that were far and above - probably most companies in America pay their CEOs huge profits, huge wages. And, you know, we only negotiate our share of that.

Now, if we have to give our share back to save that company, I guess that's something we've got to do, you know. I guess America has to decide if they want an American auto business here in America, or if they want to rely on China to fight a war in the event we have to go to one.

I'm curious, Mr.  Watson. Personally, what's at stake for you?You, I'm sure, still receive benefits from GM. Are you possibly sacrificing some things here, and what would that mean for you?


So it does happen that, in fact, patients interpret these findings as immediately applicable to their condition.

And how do physicians handle that kind of request?

Well, at the risk of trying to be a naysayer and living in an ivory tower, I think you have to be honest with patients and say yes, this is very exciting. It may be important. It may prove efficacious down the road, but I think it's premature to take either an amyloid study or a test tube study and directly translate that to the human model.

There are safety issues. There are ethical issues, and we really don't know whether it's going to be efficacious.

Did some of these reviewers - do I have this right - caution that this drug particularly is a little - has bad side effects?


President Trump hired a personal attorney this week, presumably to give him advice about the Russian investigation. Are others in the White House lawyering up?

A lot of people. In fact, two sources told me this week Don McGahn is going to need a lawyer himself. He's likely to be a witness in whatever investigation there is moving forward in Russia. Even if these folks have no legal jeopardy, it's really expensive and distracting for them to need legal advice. This happened under President Bill Clinton and President Ronald Reagan. It's likely to drag on for a long time.

Don McGahn, to be sure, has defenders in Washington, D. C. , who are very impressed by him. Aren't they?

Yeah. You know, there's been a lot of praise in some circles for the people he's hired to work in the White House, the young lawyers working underneath him - seven former Supreme Court clerks, graduates from Ivy League law schools at the top of their game. And then there's this. It's hard to tell from outside the Oval Office whether Don McGahn is giving President Donald Trump all the right legal advice and President Donald Trump is just ignoring him.


1-800-989-8255 is our number, talking with Annalee Newitz, author of "Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. "Of course you could have a sudden mass extinction like that asteroid that hit us, you know, and wiped out all that life, or something slower that could take a lot longer time to develop. Are there two different strategies for that, surviving that?

Actually, the idea that there is such a thing as a rapid mass extinction is kind of a misnomer. We have - we've all heard about, you know, the dramatic end that the dinosaurs met when an asteroid crashed into the planet. And also now it turns out that there were mega-volcanoes going off at the same time in India. So there was this kind of horrible one-two punch with volcanoes and. . .

The perfect extinction.

Yeah, great Michael Bay movie material, if he were ever to actually make a film that was scientifically accurate.


Underserved communities are neglected from the outside in. You know, we're talking about citizenry that have demonstrated a love for their community, have demonstrated a loyalty to the community and city as a whole, and they are the heart and soul of culture and cuisine for so many decades in New Orleans. And to let that go, means we've lost perspective of what is truly important in the society, and that's the root of what our culture is all about, you know, the intersection between people and life itself. And when we lose the priority of that, then we've lost our way as a city. And so the 9th Ward is emblematic of that. While a lot of the city is thriving, until the 9th Ward comes back, we won't be whole, and that's why we believe we should be there as a company.

A grocery store is not everything a neighborhood needs, but it is one of the things a neighborhood needs.

Mm-hmm.

Do you hope that, alongside the growth of Sterling Farms, will come those other necessities - a better school system, the infrastructure elements of sewage and power and water - everything that the people need to get their community going again?


You have to understand; at this point Mr.  Treviene was in his late 70's. This is a man who is used to building houses and repairing houses, and had been a younger man that might have been a challenge to him. But as an older man who was basically retired before the storm, this was an insurmountable challenge and so much of his story is the story of elderly New Orleanians.

When I looked at his face, it looked literally as if the life just seeped out of it.

That was the feeling that we got sitting there. After he had gone into the house, we sort of sat there and kind of cleaned up a little bit and talk, but there wasn't a whole lot to say.

And he didn't live much longer did he?


But there are some bright spots in the world of retail. We hear about one of them today as part of our series this week, giving you a little break from all that bad economic news. Lisa Olivares manages a kiosk. It's called CCE Headgear. It's at a mall in Fayetteville, North Carolina near Fort Bragg. I recently gave Lisa a call on her cell phone while she was working at the kiosk.

We do custom embroidery. You can either bring in your own items or we provide them for you.

And we're hearing from you on your cell phone at the kiosk now, and we should note that where you are is not too far from Fort Bragg, which is home to the 82nd Airborne Division. And apparently, a lot of the soldiers have been coming home, and how has that affected your business?

Well, I mean, all the economy has been affected, but we're not as bad because luckily, we do do a lot of things for the military. Their wives are still here, so it's constantly them bringing in things that they need to be shipped overseas or just little minor things, things for the babies. It does keep a good flow in, though.


For people who can't see it, can you describe what things look like right now and some - the actions the Corps is taking on a daily basis to address it?

You know, sometimes it is hard to describe. You know, you're driving down roads that were normally - there might be 50 or a hundred yards to the river. Suddenly, the river is, you know, 10 or 15 yards from where your car is or, you know, where you typically are running for physical training is now underwater.

And in terms of the levees themselves, when you walk the levees, you know, typically, where the water might be 20, 25 feet away from the top of the levee, maybe now it's within five or six feet. So when you see what, you know, a couple hundred thousand cubic feet per second of water looks like rolling down the Arkansas River and it's within feet of the bridges, whether they're pedestrian or vehicular, you know, sometime there used to be 20 feet of clearance, it's pretty awe-inspiring.

What are you doing to shore up the levees themselves?And are you inviting residents to help?


No, I'm glad to include them. Is it possible Italy will leave the eurozone, or is that just talk?

It's just talk. It's impossible. Do you remember the Eagles?This one I'm not getting that wrong because the Eagles is as important - "Hotel California. "

Sure.

You can always check out, but you can never leave. That's it.


They are illiterate. We don't have an education system. We don't have a civic education campaign. And so, there's just like a perfect storm of just so many things that makes Haiti so hard to govern. And I think for outsiders, it's very hard for people to understand why it seems to be in a perpetual state of chaos and crisis. But, you know. . .

So, where's the hope?I mean, you know, you must have hope, some flicker of it?

I do have hope. The hope, I think, is that, you know - the hope comes from people like myself. We have 1. 5 million Haitians living outside of Haiti, and a million of them are in the U. S. , the rest are in Canada and France. And, you know, we love the country. We care about what happens there. We are pushing for better policy.

You know, there are a couple of people in Congress who are very good friends of Haiti. Kendrick Meek, for instance, in the U. S.  House, he's from Florida, and before that, his mother was also a congresswoman. So, you know, the Black Caucus is involved.


What are some of the reasons you think more people's families, I guess I should - I almost said why more people are choosing to be cremated. And that might technically be true - but usually after their death.

So cremation is simply cheaper than burial. Of course, when you consider a funeral or a memorial service or celebration-of-life expenses, those are extra. And consumers also report that they see extra value with cremation and that they have more flexibility. To put it bluntly, death, even when it's anticipated, is inconvenient.

We don't want to lose our loved ones. We don't want to drop everything and gather and grieve and do what we need to do. But we must. And we can do that. But as families are spread across the country in various states, it's more and more difficult to bring people together on short notice. Cremation can expand the timeframe of grieving and memorializing your loved one.

Because there's more cremations, more problem to run into with scattering remains?I mean, I know, for example, they're very particular about it in the San Francisco Bay area. And I know from experience you can't get your ashes scattered there in Wrigley Field in Chicago.

That is true. And you might've caught the news where cremated remains were scattered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City at the intermission, which canceled the rest of the production.

I missed that. Oh, my word. Most of us maybe, you know, get some malted milk balls at intermission, not scattered remains. But go ahead, yeah.


There are laws that do govern whether the - whether U. S.  individuals can serve as officers, can enlist in foreign militaries, but it's unclear if they're ever enforced and what the penalties really are because of various Supreme Court decisions. You've seen how Americans have served in the French - well, I've mentioned French Foreign Legion in the article, the Israeli Defense Forces. And these are not mercenaries.

A lot of Americans enlisted in the British Army during World War II.

Sure, right. And these are not - you wouldn't call them mercenaries. But I don't know that there's a distinction if you then join a foreign military just for the money. Now - and by the way, this doesn't apply to people who join ISIS or the Taliban or somebody who fights against the U. S.  or a U. S.  ally.

That really is against the law.


It's great to be with you, Ira. Thank you.

I'm just looking at the abstract of your study, and some of these numbers are amazing. Seventy-two percent, 72 of all Americans think that global warming should be a very high or medium or a priority for the president and the Congress. That crosses all party lines.

It does. It includes 84 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents and 52 percent of Republicans. So yes, there is this difference between Democrats and Republicans. But nonetheless, a majority of Republicans do think that global warming should be a priority for our elected officials.

So why are we all under the impression that there is not this majority?

Ah. Great question. So one of the things that became very clear to us early in our research was that Americans don't speak with a single voice on this issue. And in fact, what we've identified is what we call a global warming's six Americas, that essentially you can look at the country and find that there are six very different communities within the United States, that each respond to this issue in very different ways. One group we call the alarmed. That's only about 12 percent of the public.


Were you there three years ago when Katrina hit?

I was here when it actually hit and I left afterwards.

Wouldn't that have kind of prompted you to get out of the city?Because it was such a disaster there, so many people lost their lives and suffered really terrible, terrible deprivations over days and days.

Yeah and it was - because the levees broke, that happens.


Work on voter registration, voter mobilization, education, coalition building, work together to help end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reinvest in America. Convince young America that they really do have the power to change the course of the country. We must have a renewed and multiracial and multicultural coalition. These are the things that I've revolved my work around, and I intend to be pushing them real hard this summer and fall.

And do you think you'd go out on the stump with him if he wanted you to, or does he want you to?

Whatever proximity he wants. You know, he must make that decision, you know, as to who, you know, that campaign, you know, you have consultants, you have advisors, you have surrogates, you have supporters. I'm a strong supporter and have been so since before he announced, and I will continue supporting because I believe he represents the right side of history for all of America and really for the world.

Well, Reverend Jackson, thank you so much.


Thank you for having me on.

I think a lot of people don't want to hear anything you have to say until I've asked you this question. Are you being used by Vladimir Putin?

(Laughter) No, I don't think so. When people look at this, you know, particularly with Russia in the news as much as it is, there's always this cloud of suspicion that's leveled against anybody who can be, in the most stretched way, associated with Russia. It wasn't my choice to be in Russia.

Most stretched way - you're living there in Moscow. You have been for six years.


And I started recording them, and then over time, it found its audience.

I mean, it found a huge audience. Does it surprise you that what you find interesting so many other people do, too?

Yes and no. It's funny, I was listening about vaccines just now, and in a way, you know, modern medicine has approached this mission of optimizing the life of the body with such methodical rigor, but we haven't necessarily done that about the life of the mind.

And the education system is, in a way, this antiquated universal vaccine model: We think that we can cram it all in a few years of formal schooling, and it's going to protect us for the rest of our lives. But the way I think of learning and creative curiosity is as a kind of immune system against the life of mediocrity.


It was incredibly emotional. I mean, it was nearly midnight on what was supposed to be the last day of session. We filed this bill in February and struggled all session long just to get a hearing. And so for it to come down to the wire in this way, while states were passing these bans all around us, it just became so imperative and so frightening in many ways that what you're seeing there is relief.

That's Kelly Cassidy, Illinois state representative and sponsor of the state's Reproductive Health Act, protecting access to abortion. The bill has passed the Illinois State Legislature and now goes to Governor J. B.  Pritzker, who is expected to sign it.

Thank you very much for being with us.

Thanks much.


That's right. It has a huge box that they call the LiDAR machine which basically can pierce through the jungle's foliage and map whatsoever on the ground underneath.

And this LiDAR machine can penetrate even triple canopy rainforest.

It's absolutely incredible. It strips it out completely. And you can actually see something as small as a meter on a side, sitting on the ground underneath this incredibly dense rainforest.

And this rainforest, it turns out even sites that had been discovered by archeologists before that the LiDAR technique from the air found vastly more than the archeologists ever suspected.


You've lived with HIV your entire conscious life - I mean, as I understand it, that you contracted HIV through blood transfusion when you were an infant in the early 1980s. So do you sense a change in how HIV has been viewed by the broader public and not just by the medical community?I mean, do you remember - I mean, I don't know that most of us kind of as kids think about becoming an organ donor, right?

(Laughter).

But do you remember feeling that the world of possibility has changed for you?

I do think in some places in America things definitely have changed with the science. In places, for example, where I live in the Deep South, there are a lot of long-held stigmatizing beliefs that people still have. And one of the reasons I did decide to go public as a resident of Atlanta was to really push people's perceptions into the 21st century because I couldn't think of any better way to show people that, you know, this isn't the 1980s anymore. You can live a long and healthy life living with HIV. People like me don't bring death, we can actually bring life.


I've gotten almost universally positive feedback. People were really encouraging me and just being much kinder than I would have expected or hoped for. The kinds of people who read it - I don't know. I guess a lot of lawyers, a lot of journalists who keep up with the court.

Yeah. I mean, the Supreme Court is definitely paying attention. You got to visit at the invitation of Justice Neil Gorsuch's clerk, and you shot some hoops on the famed Supreme Court basketball court. Is that true?

That was very nice of that clerk to do. He had seen my blog and then sent me an email asking if I'd ever had a Supreme Court tour before. And yes, I did get to shoot a basket in the highest court in the land. I kind of thought it was a joke. I'd heard about it before, but it's very real. And it took me many tries to make a layup.

So in your blog, you've interviewed - and here's an NPR plug - our own national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. So what kind of articles are you hosting on your site?And who's writing them?


Say that you're 80. . .
OK.
What's Sommore going to be like?
I would probably be like Peg Bundy.


Oh, I come off great. I'm a great character, Dain Ironfoot. I don't have much to do. It's, like, in a cameo role. And I'm not really sure how much I'm allowed to say, but the king dies and I step into his place in a very violent way. But I'm a ruffian, you know. I ride a wild pig and I wear iron shoes and I use an ax as a weapon, and it's - I've got hair down to my waist, and my beard down to my waist and tattooed face, and it's an extraordinarily appearance. It takes two-and-a-half hours to get me ready.

Well, that can't have been fun.

I was the wheel(ph) in a Volkswagen.

I've got so much stuff on.


Sean Flynn describes what he calls the beat-by-beat horrors of those terrifying 198 minutes in the August issue of GQ, and he joins us now from member station WCPN in Cleveland. Good to have you with us today.

Oh, thanks, Neal. It's good to be here.

And you tell the story through the eyes of several witnesses. The first person we meet is a young man named Adrian.

Yeah. Adrian was, you know, oddly enough, he was brand new to a leadership position in the AUF, the youth wing of the Labor Party. He had just been hired 11 days earlier as the district secretary from the town of Skien. And when this first started happening, he didn't recognize this as gunfire. He didn't really know to be afraid. He was curios because people don't shoot each other in Norway. And he was convinced that because of the bombing, this must be some sort of prank, that it was, you know, maybe an exercise that the Labor Party was putting on to try to show these kids what it would be like to live in a warzone.


What has made Megan Rapinoe the standout name for the United States in these games?

Gosh, everything about her, both on the pitch and off. So she scored all four U. S.  goals in these last two games.

Wow.

She has been outspoken throughout her career on human rights and LGBTQ issues. She made headlines for a spicy comment she made earlier this year when she said, there is no bleeping way I'm going to the White House if the team wins the World Cup. And Trump responded with some angry tweets of his own. She is brilliant in play, her strategy, her execution. She is a clear fan favorite. Let me read you (laughter), the headline on Deadspin, on the website Deadspin, when the U. S.  beat host country France in their last game. Here's what they said - "Purple-Haired Lesbian Goddess Flattens France Like A Crepe. "

OK, wow.


Last year, we gave almost $50 million of our internal resources for aid. So between 25 percent and a third of all of our students had enough grant aid from the college for tuition to be free. Why is that possible?Because we have this endowment that we use to underwrite the cost and to provide opportunities for students.

OK.  You have, as you mentioned, an enrollment of 1,700 students with an endowment of 1. 8 billion. That's more than a million dollars per student. The government only wants to take 1. 4 percent in this proposal.

Well, first of all, 1. 4 percent may seem like a small percent, but that is every dollar there - takes dollars away from students. It takes away either from the quality of educational experience or from our ability to offer aid. And we do this as a public good. We do it for students from all over the country. We admit need blind. So we admit students without even considering how much they can pay. And we're able to do that because of these resources, and we're not unique.

Right. But, you know, if you look at something like Harvard and Yale, they have an endowment of a combined $60 billion. I mean, that's an astronomical amount of money. And, in effect, by it being tax free, aren't we the taxpayer subsidizing these elite universities that are hardly hurting for income?I mean, aren't we all paying for it?


I don't even know what to say.

Have you - make sure you've eaten your lunch or your breakfast.

It might be - it's going to be the grossest video you've probably seen all week. But you should still watch it because it's fascinating.

You know how to sell it.


And what's your percentage normally?

Normally, it's around 65 to 70 percent in practice.

It's a little easier when nobody is guarding.

Yeah, a little bit.


I was like, yeah. She's like, what do you talk about?I say, my life, our life. And she's like, so you tell them about us and they pay you.

And she's like, I've never found you entertaining enough to pay you anything.

In fact, I wish you would shut up so - so she was - and my father is even worse. I mean, he's very dry. My mom has all the personality. My father is a - he's Swiss-German, so I mean he's just a combination of. . .

Known so much for their humor.


All right, for more on this story, we're joined now by Leon Fresco. During the Obama administration, he was the deputy assistant attorney general and oversaw all civil immigration litigation on the part of the U. S.  government. Now he's a member of the nonpartisan DHS Advisory Council. Welcome.

Thank you.

So do you agree with the attorney general's reasoning here that there is a legal basis for doing this?

This is a very complicated case. As a legal issue, this is a 50-50 issue, and here's why. There are two clearly established principles of law that are in tension here. The first is if you are outside the United States waiting at a port of entry to get in, that is undisputed that those individuals do not have due process rights that would allow them to ask for a bond if they are detained while we're making a decision whether to let them in or not.


Good to be here, Ira.

So tell us about your change of mind and heart about this issue.

Well, if you had asked me a year ago, I might have said I didn't know whether there was global warming at all. But we had begun a major study, scientific reinvestigation. We were addressing what I consider to be legitimate criticisms of many of the skeptics.

But about nine months ago, we reached a conclusion that global warming was indeed taking place, that all of the effects that the skeptics raised could be addressed, and to my surprise, actually, the global warming was approximately what people had previously said.


So what we do is that when the cases come to my office, we first investigate. Once we know the perpetrator, we try to call or invite the person. If the person refuses, we collaborate with the legal department, issue the warrant of arrest. There, we come to the table of negotiation. If he's ready to negotiate, we try to negotiate and try to resettle the victim. If not, we take the case to the court.

Well, how long can the process take?

It can go three years, four years. It is indefinite.

Sister, you were honored at the White House earlier this week. What role can the United States play in trying to combat human trafficking?


Let's stick with Germany for a moment and look at a disturbing trend in that country. The German government says anti-Semitic crimes were up 20% last year. Over the weekend, the country's top official in charge of fighting anti-Semitism was reported saying he does not recommend Jews wear a kippah, or skullcap, in all parts of the country. Deidre Berger directs the American Jewish Committee's Ramer Institute for German-Jewish relations in Berlin.

Welcome.

Hello.

How did people in Germany respond to these remarks from Felix Klein, who's the man responsible for Germany's efforts to combat anti-Semitism?


Absolutely. You would want the most competent, the most compassionate physician that you can find. But those are not necessarily the physicians that they're trying to hire based on the ad that I was looking at.

As you were talking about dual loyalty. . . .

Yeah.

. . . Is there a specific example you can give us to help listeners understand how this plays out in the real world?


No, he didn't get to see it until it was finished, and by the end, that had ceased to be the main subject. Charlie Fairburn, as you say, is a successful screenplay writer and has had a hit with a film called "Aliens With A Human Heart," which he's not altogether proud of, and so he wants to write something serious before he dies. And he thinks, first of all, he'll write about his immediate situation, but then he decides to write about consciousness studies. But that novel within the novel is wrapped around by a journal that he's writing about his immediate situation.

Tell us what went into the character of Angelique, the compulsive gambler with whom Charlie begins to keep company.

Well, he went into the casino hoping to lose his money in order to become this artist driven by poverty. He's horrified when he ends up much richer than he was at the beginning of the evening. He's sitting at the bar and this - there is Angelique with a symmetrical disappointment. She's lost all her money, and so he gives her his unwanted winnings, and they begin a passionate affair. But all of the incidents in this novel are really an attempt to look into the nature of consciousness.

When you're writing, how do you know when something is funny?


Well, what's your evidence that that can be done?I mean, what is your evidence that you can?

What's the evidence that I could beat Donald Trump?

Yeah.

(Laughter) Well, I think there's 37 people trying to figure out how they can do it right now.


It stores the equivalent of ones and zeroes. We came up with the idea in a bar in Hamburg a few years ago because the institute where I work is - keeps some of the world's big, biological databases. We store the information, we archive the information, and we serve it to research biologists around the world over the Internet for them to do their research.

And the data that's coming to us is increasing exponentially. It's quite a headache for us to keep hold of all of that because our budgets don't increase exponentially.

Yeah, did you actually try this out on some DNA?

Yeah, we tried it out in a real - it's sort of compared to the databases we store, it's a small example, but compared to what people have done before, it's a pretty big example. We wrote a computer program that embodied a code that would convert the zeros and ones from a hard disk drive into the letters that we use to represent DNA, and then we - our collaborators in California were able to actually synthesize physical DNA.

And what did you store in that DNA?


How do you perceive yourself at this point as a business woman, not just a comedienne?Because you used to be an Algebra teacher, you were also a small business owner. I'm sure that there is a whole industry behind what you do, having to deal with your bookings, et cetera. How do you deal with that part of it?

Well, knowledge is the key. I have a degree in Business Administration's, minor in Mathematics. And, unlike most comediennes, I was a business person before I got into this field. I am very aware of my bookings, I'm very aware of my accounting. I'm very aware of how to write jokes. So, it doesn't make it easier but knowledge helps it - helps me understand a lot of different things. So even like times now when we're in a recession, when the country is in a recession, and people aren't coming out to the shows as often the way they used to come - the audiences aren't packed - I, because I understand business, know that, OK, I'll move to smaller venues, I'll come in with a cheaper ticket. But I will still work as an artist. And as an artist, overall, you really want to work.

What makes you laugh?

What makes me laugh - kids make me laugh, and old people make me laugh.


Absolutely. Well, all right politics isn't everything. It just seems like it sometimes. So what else is going on?

Magic Johnson found himself in the center of news again, unwillingly. As most people know, he retired from the NBA after contracting the HIV. But two Minneapolis radio hosts had some fun at his expense. So here's a clip of that.

Unidentified Radio Host #1: What about diseases that are eminently treatable and you can live with for a long, long time quite healthily if you just get some drugs.

Unidentified Radio Host #2: Like Magic Johnson. Like Magic with his faked AIDS.


We do a lunch business. We are in the central business district of Cincinnati. And then we also do some progressively busier dinner period with the theaters at night.

Yeah. So, how is the lunch crowd now?

Well, the lunch crowd is down. We do have a lot of people who used to have business expenses that do not anymore, expense accounts. And downtown Cincinnati, I guess, has experienced its own economic shortfall with businesses moving out of town and what not. So, lunch has seemed to be down a little bit. I am part of a - it's called the Greater Cincinnati Independence of Independent Restaurant Owners - which is a dying breed, anyway - but we're all pretty lamenting the lack of business and just the current climate that we're trying survive in.

So, you are in your mid-40s, I think?


Well, the president really is his own brand. And that's kind of a double-edged sword - right?- for Democrats. You know, there's an opportunity for them to legislate with the president. At the same time, there has been, you know, voter research that has shown that voters don't necessarily view President Trump as a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.

He's really his sort of own brand. And so the question is whether voters are going to want to punish Republicans, you know, for what they may see as the president's inability to perform, if that, in fact, turns out to be the case. Hopefully, there's going to be some legislative victories coming here in the next few months, particularly on taxes.

But, yeah, the president's going to zig, and he's going to zag. And in the meantime, I think the Republicans are going to have to do their best to try to muscle through an agenda. And the big one coming up for them is going to be this debate over taxes.

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


I'm not sure. I think, certainly, if the other leading candidate in the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, had won, she would also be generating a lot of interest. I think it's, at the end of a two-term presidency, you always get an upsurge anyway. But I think you're right. There's no doubt about it. These are historic elections. And for the same reasons that the American public have gotten so engaged in them, probably some of the same reasons are affecting foreign publics.

You know, there have been a lot of memorable phrases that have come out during this election. Maverick is one word that we've heard a lot, and what about lipstick on a pig?How do you explain that phrase, which seems particularly American, or lipstick on a pitbull?

What is fascinating is that, both those terms that you brought up, I know of cases where people here that work with me with journalists on a day to day basis have been asked to help. One was working with German press and the term Maverick and how could they, you know, where does that come from and so on. And we actually have a researcher that works here and can go back and find, you know, the roots of these different phrases. Even - I speak Spanish pretty well, and even lipstick on a pig, I wouldn't even try.

So, I don't know how they go about trying to kind of - I think they go through a longer two-paragraph explanation.


There's a couple of things they have to deliver. I'll give you an example. In Jarabulus, 22,000 refugees are there, and the town is dealing with them. There is no international aid there. And so it is up to the townspeople to care for 22,000 people who have descended on this small farming town. They have to take the money out of their own pockets, buy the tents, bring them bread, make sure they're OK. So there is an international aid component to this. There, of course, is also an arms part to this.

But let me tell you, there were two events over the last couple of days that really mean that the rebels don't need international arms. They took two major bases around Aleppo. And as one commander said, I have never seen so much booty. And these were heavy weapons that were taken from the Syrian army.

You know, analysts in the past couple of days have stopped calling this a stalemate. And they are beginning to recognize that the rebels have made significant gains on the battlefield. And the weapons that they took in these two places will make a major difference in the way that they're able to fight. And it also shows that they are more organized than they've been in the way that they are fighting the regime.

We've also - obviously the opposition forces inside Syria have no air force whatsoever. They have been trying to attack Syrian air bases on the ground to limit Syria's air capabilities that way. Is that beginning to have an effect?


Well, Jackson had come into my E. R. because he had been shot, and an area surrounding the bullet wound - which was still lodged in his leg - appeared infected. And while I was examining him, a medical student handed me a piece of paper that revealed the results of a microbiological test which showed that Jackson had contracted a superbug.

And the terrifying part for him and for our team is that the infection was only treatable with one antibiotic called colistin. And that's a drug that fell out of favor years ago because it was so outrageously toxic. But here we were on the cusp of so much medical advancement, and we were reaching for outdated drugs to treat patients because the bacteria had evolved and mutated in ways that we only had incredibly limited treatment options.

From there, you take us back 100 years to a World War I battlefield in France, a field hospital actually. Tell us why you are connecting these two moments.

Well, I connect those moments because there was a similar situation of a young physician treating a bullet wound. And he was practicing medicine in the days before antibiotics. His name was Alexander Fleming. And he was only using antiseptic fluid and scalpels.


I think that they're at peace with it now. And we're at peace with each other. But that took - you know, that took a lot of time.

So we've already talked a bit about how the cello is this character in your life. And I want to talk about how it functions throughout this album. Let's listen to the song "Poor Fake. "

(Singing) Don't matter where you are, it'll catch right up to you. You can try to resist the feeling, set the canvas in my blues.

So cello, you know, it isn't an instrument I think of playing a huge role in pop songs. But it does play a huge role in this song and throughout other songs on the album.