Right. So X, for example, it's been estimated that costs of apparel and clothing for a family of four could go up by $500 if we put 25 percent tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports as has been threatened. If we not only raise the tariffs on this $200 billion to 25 percent but then go for the remaining 325 billion that haven't had tariffs on them yet, that hits everything - all food, all apparel. And it also hits things like technology and hardware.

We're talking about real money for American consumers. Negotiations do continue today. What do you expect to happen in them?

Well, I still think it's likely that we will get something that is called a deal by the end of June. I think it is more likely than not because President Trump, for political reasons, would also like to get a good deal. The stock market is going to have a strong response today against this. It's going to go down. He won't like that. And we're entering the political season in which he wants stability.

So I think a deal is more likely than not. But it will only be a brief hiatus in this long-term, contentious U. S. -China relationship.


Oh, it smells delicious.
Vegetal.
It's totally vegetal.
(Laughter).


So how did you get on to this story?I mean, were you just curious about vanity plates?Like, what was your thinking about how it happens?

Well, I think vanity plates are kind of everyone's hobby in Los Angeles. It's a very car-centric culture. People regularly talk about the most out-there plates that they see. I was curious about the ones that didn't make it.

Now, is there an official database of dirty words and euphemisms?Or like. . .

What's the yardstick that the DMV uses to say whether something's inappropriate or not?


(Laughter).

. . . Over the last couple weeks being on the road with this. So can I take you with me everywhere I go now, Sacha?

We're glad to hear that. Thank you for that. So you actually start your book with a note to readers. It's about a company that was hiring you to teach leadership. And the man you were talking with told you he wanted to make sure that your presentation was also applicable to men. You had a sassy reply. Would you tell our listeners how you responded to him?

Yeah. I said, good question, but only if you ask that of other male speakers for the women that will be in the audience. You know, and I think that - the reason why I wanted to start the book off with this specific anecdote is because I have to bring light to some of the micro-aggressions or insidious things that men say that women have to take and eat and store away.


I think, in the very early days, it was computer nerds - I mean, you know, technologists - people who were really interested in the technology. And now it's, I think, more just ordinary people who hear about bitcoin, obviously do some reading - have some understanding of how the technology works but, I think, see more of either profit opportunity or just like the idea of it. I think there's a significant political strain behind the appeal of bitcoin - people who don't like the Federal Reserve, don't like big banks, don't like conventional financial institutions.

Don't like taxes?

Don't like taxes - exactly - kind of libertarian-minded people.

Well, what do you think it's going to do?


OK.  (Laughter).

. . . But I do think they played an important role. There obviously were forces at work beyond the control of any policymaker. You know, manufacturing has spread much more evenly across the face of the globe. Prosperity has spread much more evenly across the face of the globe. And that's been a really good thing for billions - with a B - of people, and none of that should be minimized.

But I do think it is the case that economists in the United States and in other developed nations made that process much more painful for the average American, that the policies that they implemented or convinced policymakers to implement had the effect on the whole of concentrating the benefits of globalization in relatively few hands and of leaving many Americans to suffer the consequences.

Well, what do you think should happen now?I mean, economists are pretty firmly installed where they are. They do have the ears of presidents. What do you think should happen?


Well, the Hardings sued when they came to light. And the family wanted to put them away for 50 years so that anybody involved in them would be long gone. So they put them in the Library of Congress and four microfilms in the Ohio Historical Society. The archivist though, who made the microfilms, sent several microfilms out to various people for protective custody. And that's one of the ones that I got a hold of in 2004. But they've been under seal and under a court-order - under seal until actually next week is when they finally come out.

Let me get to the spy-story stuff. Was Carrie Fulton Phillips trying to influence President Harding toward Germany?

Yeah. Well, he was then Senator Harding with the obligation to vote for war or not. And she thought we should stay out. She was extremely pro-German. She was hanging out with a very pro-German crowd, some of whom were spies for sure in New York City. And she had lived in Berlin for three years in the lead-up to the war. So she definitely was trying to convince him not to vote for war. And he eventually writes to her that though it's going to be a really tough thing for their relationship, he's going to vote for war. But that's not long before we actually get involved in the war.

But what about the whole idea that somehow she was some kind of conduit for information to Berlin?


Rubber-faced American was OK but, like, not all NPR executives are clowns.

We all think we're being so original, right?

That's true.

Exactly. So, what's happening, Murray?


Well, yes. As you said, I'm at 17,000 feet in the Atacama Desert. And this place is wonderful for viewing because it's so high, so the - most of the atmosphere is - well, it's not most below us, but a lot of it is below us. And the air is very dry, and the wavelengths that people want to study, the stars and galaxies at - up here, there's very dry air, and the wavelengths are not - they're coming through clear because water vapor absorbs wavelengths that they're interested in, so they want to get as far away from water vapor as they can. So they're up high. And there's other places here besides the Atacama that are in the Andes - very high, very good viewing - or seeing, as they call it in astronomy.

And is that why, as you told us, that half of the world's major telescopes are in Chile?Is that why they're all there?

Well, yeah. It's because it's a great location. And the one I'm at right now is not one of the major telescopes. It's a smaller one. It's called CLASS - the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor. And what it's doing is looking for signals, traces of the earliest moments of the universe that were laid down in something called gravitational waves. Those gravitational waves have a certain property known as a polarization, and it should be possible to see that polarization left behind in the wavelengths that they're studying at CLASS. That's what they're doing here.

So where else have you been on this trip?


(Laughter) Yes, they. . .

That's my pirate.

That was very impressive. I was whisked back to the Caribbean. But we should honor pirates for being pioneers of workers' rights. They were surprisingly progressive in their employment policy. They elected the captains democratically. There was profit-sharing agreements.

And the pirates even had an early version of workers' comp. So some of the pirate booty would go into a common fund to repay the pirates who had lost limbs or eyes. So those peg legs and hooks, they were subsidized. And by the way, I was going to make an argh-bitration joke, but you beat me to it.


Good to be with you.

So we just heard about what this decision means practically speaking, but what about politically?What's the thought process here?

I think the administration does not want too much attention to be paid to the person that they're handling this portfolio to. In other words, they don't want the czar concept. That was something of a media concept. You know, we do love czars. We like our drug czars, our energy czars. So. . .

And what sounds better than car czar?

(Soundbite of laughter) It's perfect. It was irresistible. And that is exactly why they decided to resist it because they knew we couldn't resist it. They wanted this fellow, and they have a person, his name is Ron Bloom. He has been an investment banker. He has been involved in a number of manufacturing, restructuring situations. And they wanted to bring him into the Treasury Department as a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.


Any known observed fall, anything that's of historic interest, naturally just by the news-making aspect of it, has more value to it than what it would otherwise be.

Right.

I believe it's what's called an ordinary chondrite. It's one of the more common types of meteorites. So just in and of itself, it's probably not one of the rare kinds of meteorites that's out there. But yeah, I would be hard put to put a figure. . .

Millions.


I do not believe in curses, but I do believe jerks can earn comeuppance. That night, Cubs fans behaved shamefully and cursed at the club they love into a panic and out of the World Series. Over the years, Steven Bartman has declined comment and turned down all offers to cash in on his notoriety with commercials, books, interviews or appearances. The Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series last year for the first time in 108 years. This week, the club gave Steven Baartman a World Series ring, just like the one they gave their players, with 108 diamonds. A ring like that is not just some public radio tote bag.

Although I do not consider myself worthy of such an honor, Steve Bartman said in a statement, I am deeply moved and sincerely grateful. I humbly receive the ring not only as a symbol of one of the most historic achievements in sports, but as an important reminder for how we should treat each other in today's society. This week, a once-luckless club and a once-defamed fan gave us as much as great athletes do - glimpses of grace.

(Singing) And I run for home. And we win the game. And it's what you'd call a dream. And the sun shines like diamonds.

Brett Rigby. And you're listening to NPR News.


Asa, reading the article, it sounds like you wanted to get off after the first day.

I wanted to get off after about the third day. I realized once we had moved around a bit that the majority of the experience ended up being waiting, rather than getting on trains or riding them. And the other thing I found is that once you're on board, it's very loud. And even though I had expected to be talking to my father on board, it was really difficult to have conversation. We'd have to kind of shout at each other. And so most of the time I was lying. I'd be reading, or listening to music if possible. And the views we saw were incredible. Some of the most beautiful places I've ever been. But you can only take so much of just lying in the same place, especially when it's very loud and you have to wait on hot tracks for a train to come, not knowing if it's going to be there. And I had had about enough of that after the third day.

We should explain you guys slept in motels, too.

Yeah, that is true.


And I want to just warn listeners before we get going there may be some brief descriptions of violence as we chat this out over the next couple minutes. Start with, why now?As we said, the federal government has not carried out an execution for some years now.

Actually, a senior Justice Department official tells me the previous attorney general, Jeff Sessions, launched this effort, put it into motion. But it's actually happening on the watch of his successor, Bill Barr. Barr says the federal government owes it to victims and their families. He points out, even though there haven't been many executions in the federal system, that Justice Departments representing presidents from both political parties have continued to seek capital punishment in court.

Barr says the people on federal death row are the worst of the worst. And he's directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule five inmates for executions, all starting - if it goes to plan - December 9.

And who are these five?What do we know about them?


It is - they take it as good news, but the reality is it's not because the only infrastructure that remains intact is the infrastructure of the former regime and the former ruling party. It's difficult to see how, in a situation where people are fearing for their lives, you can put together a cohesive electoral campaign. Even though the military council says that they will allow observers in, this is a military council that is blocking journalists - that has suspended Al Jazeera, that has suspended other journalists from doing their work. So there's a lot of disbelief that they will allow observers to carry out their job.

Meanwhile, they will just continue to sit-in, to protest, to demand democratic reforms even if they are unlikely.

To resist - that's what we're hearing - that so much blood has been spilled, so many lives have been lost that to turn back now is unthinkable to many of those people we're speaking to on the ground, Rachel.

CNN's Nima Elbagir. She is senior international correspondent with CNN covering Sudan. She joined us from London on Skype. Thank you so much.


His team had not made the playoff for three years, and his defense was awful. Now, you could say, Mike Shanahan, he's supposed to be good at offense. But as the head coach, it's your responsibility. And also, Mike Shanahan was the GM, the general manager of his team. So he was in charge of picking all the players.

Sometimes, when a coach is both the GM and the coach, an owner will say, we're going to strip you of that GM responsibility, and the coach usually chafes. A famous coach, Bill Parcells, once likened it to, they want me to cook the food, but they won't let me buy the groceries.

Romeo Crennel had about a three-sentence statement about his firing. He was the former coach of the Browns. One of the sentences was this. It says it all. I did not win enough games. So I must move on. That's it.

I wonder if Leo Tolstoy could have written that.


So I work in merchandising strategy at Tiffany jewelry company.

Have you spoken to your bosses about what may happen in March if your DACA authorization expires?And you're a manager, too. What are you telling your employees?

So at this point, not everyone on the staff is familiar or knows what my status is just because we don't think it's necessary until we finally get to the point where I'll no longer be able to work here. So my management team - they're extremely supportive. And they're watching the news just like I am. So, you know, when it gets closer to March, I'll have to have a discussion with the team that I have out here. But at this point, we're all just hoping and praying that something changes, that we do get a DREAM Act, that we don't have to deal with this because, you know, there's a potential that I just won't have a job after March 22.

Tolu Aleshinloye is a DACA recipient in Miami. Thank you very much for joining us.


Nick Vlahos, the Peoria Journal Star columnist, points out that in 2015, ConAgra Foods moved its headquarters from Omaha to Chicago. He thinks many executives of what's become a world agricultural industry jet around the globe and just want to live somewhere else, he wrote this week. How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Kuala Lumpur?

Caterpillar will continue to employ about 12,000 people in Peoria, although Nick Vlahos asks, after all the happy horse pucks the company has propagated about its commitment to Peoria, does anybody believe that?But 300 people, executives and support staff will leave town. In one stroke, Peoria will lose many of the people who help enrich a city's institutions.

I hope Caterpillar's executives will enjoy Chicago's many museums, theaters, symphonies, ballets, sports teams and restaurants in all of the flavors of the world. But who will now buy box seats to cheer the Peoria Chiefs or support the Peoria Symphony - now in the middle of its season - the Peoria Children's Museum, the Corn Stalk Summer Theatre, the Peoria Zoo, the Players Theater - now performing "Into The Woods" - and the Peoria Riverfront Museum and its huge glass tank filled with silvery striper, trout, walleye and channel catfish from the Illinois River?

(Singing) Yes, I'm proud to live in Peoria.


I think one of the reasons, Tony, that we're seeing so of many of these come to light has, really, nothing to do with the fact that people are being - that this is happening more often so much as it is the fact that people are just paying attention to it more. You know, you watch the news and somebody says, oh, there's a stolen car ring. Now, all of a sudden, everybody's watching for people breaking into cars. Well, people break into cars every day. But when you hear about it on the news, people start paying attention.

There have always been Ponzi schemes. This is not new. This has been going on forever. It has been happening to investors. It'll continue to go on, but we're just aware of because the Madoff scandal was so large and so visible.

You know, it's funny. I was listening to your description of the Ponzi scheme - as our time is running out - and I couldn't help but think that there must be somebody listening to your description who is saying, wow, the stimulus package, that sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me.

The government covering its own losses by printing more money back, which covers losses in which it prints more money. Hey, you know, you could make that - I'm not going to make that argument, but somebody might.


Let's start with the idea of this weight loss or calories burned. How does this compare to other athletes in other sports?

One of the basic facts was the 1984 World Chess Championship, right?So after five months and 48 games, defending champion Anatoly Karpov had lost 22 pounds. And some people said he looked, like, dead. Chess players were burning calories around the same rate as tennis players and competitive marathon runners. Like, in October 2018, Polard, this company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a tournament and found out that this 21-year-old Russian grandmaster, Mikhail Antipov, had burned 560 calories in two hours, which we found out was roughly what Roger Federer would burn in one hour of singles tennis.

And I talked to Robert Sapolsky. He's been studying primates for a long time now, and he corroborated that fact and said that, you know, chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories in a day by playing a tournament, which is three times that of any human on a regular day.

Now, what did you learn about why?Is it that their brains are just using that much energy, or is there something physiological going on?


I - and I have to ask you in the - I'm afraid - half-minute we have left, do you have any idea, Mr.  Driscoll, how much the NRA has been supported by Russia?Aren't they trying to use the NRA to influence or to promote gun violence or division?

I'm not aware of that thread of the story from where I sit. I know that's been a popular speculation in the media. But I have not seen any evidence of that. But, again, you know, I assume others will look into that and see if there's anything there. But I haven't seen it from where I sit.

Robert Driscoll represents Maria Butina. Thanks so much.

Thank you.


Companies and corporations are in business to make money for themselves, their workers, their stockholders. But can they make too much?Ralph Nader thinks Apple hit that limit earlier this month when it became the first trillion-dollar publicly traded company in the United States. Mr.  Nader wrote a blistering blog post about what Apple is and isn't doing with that money. He joins us now from Connecticut. Mr.  Nader, thanks for being back with us.

You're welcome, Scott.

What's wrong with Apple sitting on all that money?

Well, they just announced earlier this year - a $100 billion stock buyback adding to previous stock buyback without asking the shareholders, institutional and individual, their opinion or even their approval. So the point I was making is it could've been used to increase employees. It could've been used to shore up the pension fund. It could've been used - 2 percent of it, Scott, to double the income of the serf laborers - 1. 3 million Chinese laborers in the contractor that builds the iPhones. It could have had 2 percent of 100 billion to improve the recycling of used computers and phones, which are endangering both the environment and the workers. It could've been put in productive investment. It could've been put in research and development. It could've been sent to cash dividends back to the shareholder, but no.


You know, that's when you've really, really been out there a little too long. But that's kind of what it takes. If you want to try to shake eight million hands, you better be ready mentally as well as physically.

Mayor Bloomberg leaves office a national figure, and reportedly the 10th richest man in America. What's he want to do with the rest of his life?Do you have any inkling?

He's given some clues. I mean, one clue that he's given is that he wants to give away all of his money. That aside from taking care of his family, he wants to spend the last dollar on the day that he dies. And he probably doesn't mean that literally, but his pet causes, which are public health and gun control above all, he really has put quite a lot of money into trying to make sure those views are carried forward. And where this is all supposed to lead, assuming the White House is off-limits, is just not clear. But we do know that Mike Bloomberg would have loved to be president, and if ever a chance comes up in the next few years, he will probably take that shot.

Errol Louis, host of "The Road to City Hall" on NY1, thanks so much.


Meaning it has a comparably sized economy.

It means it has a comparably sized economy. It is narrowing the gap - military gap - especially in the Western Pacific, where it is using asymmetric tactics that can offset things like our aircraft carriers. China is also an education leader. It is becoming a technological leader. And it's the world's biggest trading nation.

So China is on the move all over the world. And the U. S. -China relationship is not anymore just Beijing to Washington. It's being measured in Africa, in South America, at both poles, in cyberspace and outer space.

And is it becoming a more adversarial relationship now because of China's growth, because it suddenly is big enough to really challenge the United States?


And you wrote that during your visit in December, you saw exactly one tourist?

That's right. A single woman who had a list of African countries she wanted to check off apparently with no information about any of them. And one of the ministers told me even the backpackers aren't here. So it is just on - there is nothing to do, there's nothing to see, there's no access to anything, there's no roads, there's no infrastructure. They have a park system which exists in theory. You can imagine a fantastic future for going and seeing things in Sudan because they also have, along with oil and water, they also have animals. They have a huge migration, probably the second biggest in the world.

So there's vast grasslands, a swirling long river section of the Nile through the country, enormous herds, large numbers of elephants, many of the things that people care very deeply about but it's in South Sudan so you can't get to it except with an airplane. And they're hoping that in the future of the country there's room for that to become an asset rather than just a leftover of isolation and war-torn times.

You describe a three-day jaunt to go see what might be too. . .


And how much do we know at this moment in time, this early in the day, about what the damage is up there?

You know, we saw reports. As we were doing live coverage, we saw reports of damage start to trickle in. But, really, right after an earthquake, it is, like, fog of war. No one knows what's going on. Emergency responders are just going out trying to survey the damage. We did hear reports of fires.

We got some calls into our - into KPCC of people telling us that they had fallen. One woman said that she thought maybe she broke her wrist. And there were a lot of people who were just afraid to go back into their houses, which is another big thing with big earthquakes - is that it disrupts people's lives not just for that one moment, but continuously, especially after aftershock after aftershock after aftershock keeps hitting.

All right. Well, we'll be getting updates throughout the morning. And thanks very much for joining us. KPCC's Jacob Margolis, science reporter and host of a podcast called "The Big One: Your Survival Guide. "Thank you, Jacob.


And so the lament is that it's not a beacon for environmentalism, it's not a beacon for greater labor standards or labor protections, but it's something else?

Yeah. I mean, it has turned into this dystopian vision of tech, where, you know, a few people prosper, and everyone else gets kind of poverty wages. Users of the service get pretty good service but kind of at the cost of all of these drivers getting very little from the service, getting very little equity. I think it is a betrayal of what Silicon Valley, you know, said that it stood for, which is creating new ideas that are good for the world at large, not just, you know, a few hundred people on the West Coast.

You know, many would herald Uber as a great American success story, a testament to what capitalism can create - right?- jobs for millions of people in the U. S.  and around the world. And its IPO will make a handful of people millionaires and even billionaires. Isn't that a good thing?

I mean, it's perhaps better than not having it, but I don't think it's fundamentally or sort of objectively a good thing. What would be better is if Uber was a smaller and less valuable company but that less value was sort of more equitably distributed.


Well, it has been a conversation where I think the most important point in the conversation is to get the average Californian to understand that this fiscal crisis is different. And so interacting with people number one, to inform them about the crisis, to talk to them about the impact of cutting education and cutting healthcare, what that means to their daily lives. For example, 800,000 children might have to go without health insurance. Thirty thousand teachers might be laid off unless we are able to close the gap in a way where we bring money to the table, we don't just try to close the gap through cutting programs. Then that's, you know, most important.

What about race relations?And I don't just mean, you know, do we all get along?I mean. . .

We don't.

I mean the long term ability of California to synthesize its role as the biggest diverse state in America and set a path that is hopeful for other parts of the country.


There were a bunch of others, "The Rover Boys," a whole bunch, all out of this little, tiny factory.

Wow. Anything like it around today?

There are a million things descended from it. As far as I know, there's nothing really like it that would center each one on. . .

Yeah.


Well, the size of this scandal involving the Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras is sometimes hard for outsiders to understand. Petrobras is a company that, through the company and its suppliers, encompasses about 10 percent of Brazil's economy.

Yeah, it's huge.

And so what happened was you had these prosecutors who found - almost stumbled into these clues. And they started pulling on this string and saw very quickly that this scandal was connected to almost everything and everyone.

And everybody, yeah.


Well, yeah. That's the thing about everything in life, kind of, is that you kind of have to try certain things out to figure out what you want. So it's like you should always be able to have that moment of, like, figuring out who you are by using a bunch of different things that you've heard already. And then instead of still doing that for your whole career, which I think some people do, you have to take that and, like, digest it and then come out with something that's everything combined. And it's your own thing.

(Singing) Where did you go?I should know. But it's cold. And I don't want to be lonely. So show me the way home. I can't lose another life.

I get that sense of being real is something deeply important.

It's very important for me. I just feel uncomfortable having things be disingenuous. Like, I just have a big thing about honesty and, like, real. . .


When a friend of mine pointed out that her daughter was being targeted by boys at school using a lot of these kinds of memes and words that they were learning from these extremists, I was devastated. And she told me her daughter was getting images of guns in her direct messages and, you're a feminazi and feminazis are - should be eliminated from this Earth. And to a 13-year-old girl, it's really scary.

As a writer, have you figured out why some people find this stuff appealing?

Yeah. I think there's a vulnerable group of boys, and even men, in society that - and I don't know who the forces are online. I don't know if it's malevolent media or just vloggers that want more views, but they've learned that they can target these men and boys. With men, I learned it's a lot of men who are male survivors of sexual assault or men who've been disenfranchised from their economic opportunities, divorced men. These communities target those men and their willingness to believe that society is out to get white men, their willingness to believe that women are all money-grabbing social climbers.

And with boys, I do think neurodivergent boys are being targeted, kids who may have learning difficulties, kids who have - are on the autism spectrum. But it's not just those boys. I think at this age, they're trying to figure out where they fit. They're insecure. They feel like girls have it all. Girls are happy and pretty, and white men are the enemies. And so these right-wing groups are tapping into that shame and feeding it to try and propagandize to them.


So do you think that there should be some kind of accountability that maybe Congress says, OK, yeah, you can have some of this money, but it will mean a change in leadership, Bank of America.

A change in leadership might be good. I think part of the problem here is that now that we've started down this path of every quarter when the bank comes in and says, oops, our bad bets got worse this quarter, we need more money, we've gotten to the point where we can't say no to that. And again, what's most galling about this for anybody who admires a free market in any way is that the idea is that if you're free to make these bets, you're supposed to pay the price for that. And we are still protecting the shareholders of these banks, and we're still protecting the bondholders.

You can say all day long, which is probably true, that we have to protect the customers or the system really is in danger. But you can do that without bailing out the bondholders and shareholders, which is what everybody is so outraged about.

Henry Blodget is the outraged founder and editor of Clusterstock. com. Henry, thanks for talking with us.


You've written that News Inside is your way of not forgetting the people who you left behind when you were released. Explain what you meant by that.

I always say that there's people who become who they are on the inside. They develop into real-life human beings with hopes and dreams and their visions of the world, and they love each other. And they become family even more so than their family on the outside because a person haven't seen his mom, his aunt or uncle on a consistent basis for decades.

But yet a person sees his neighbor in a cell next door on a consistent basis. So bonds are developed. And when some of those individuals eventually go home, it's like losing a family member. Like, I would actually feel pain when someone would leave me. And sometimes some of the men would go in their cell, turn their lights off, and then they were crying tears because they're going to miss the person that was leaving. And when people left me, I always hoped that they wouldn't forget, that they would write me a letter so I can live vicariously through them and dream of what it's like to be free.

So I can't reach everyone in the country with a letter, but I could reach everyone through News Inside. I can curate a particular set of articles that I believe will speak to all those desires that everyone has and hopefully sate those desires in any way that I can.


(Reading) They would ride through the hot, dim woods that sultry, ominous August from the hard ground, littered with spots of sifted sun, on the hills the horses would carry them in a minute to the hollows. There was something terrible about the hollows, deep-bottomed with decaying leaves, smelling of dead water and dark cleavage in insufferable heat. The sound of the horses' feet was like a confused heartbeat on the swampy ground. They both felt it. They used to get off the horses without having said a word and helplessly submerge themselves in each other's arms while the sweat ran down their backs under their shirts. They never talked there. They stood, swaying together, with their booted feet deep in the mulch, holding each other, hot and mystified in this green gloom. From far away in the upper meadows, they could always hear the cicada reaching an unbearable sharpened crescendo.

Lauren Groff, I think I'm fanning myself sitting there, listening to you read.

I mean, you can feel the - just summer love and how dazed she is by desire. And she was writing this - we just looked - in 1934, when not a lot of women were writing this stuff.

Absolutely.


It's a little bit different from my 1980s beater. This, you know, these are handmade pieces of art. And, you know, there are things that were different about it.

One thing that I heard from Justin Claassen, who's an avid cyclist and he's one of the founders of Valid, is that over a long period of time you notice the vibration less. There is some dampening, they say, that bamboo has a sort of natural dampening. So if you're riding really long distances, there - that might be a reason why you would want to go bamboo. But it's - I thought it would be lighter. And it's not actually that much lighter than your run-of-the-mill metal.

Right. Of course, there is the coolness factor, right. . .

. . . to have the only bamboo bike on the block or in Brooklyn. I can put more B's together if I could.


Why they're talking about it is because they feel they have to talk about it. The government of Bangladesh wants the bulk of these people to return. They also would be feeling some domestic pressures in this area, as well. And the government of Burma, I think, is feeling some of the pressure from the international community and feels some need to be responsive. But the real story here is this is horrifying, this discussion, to be taking place right now, given the complete absence of measures in place to ensure safety and security upon return.

As I understand it, the Rohingya, according to this agreement, will be moved from the camps in Bangladesh to a camp in Myanmar where there could be security concerns.

Oh yeah, there are no safeguards in place. There - been no serious discussion of safeguards for return. You have to realize that we're talking about one of the greatest crimes in recent memory - massive abuses, forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of weeks.

There's problems, obviously, with monitoring the situation. The government won't let - of Myanmar - won't let international monitors in. And, in fact, the top U. N.  official responsible for human rights was barred from the country. Is that right?


It depends on who you ask. For the South Koreans who have been really eager to have a successful Olympics and for the president, Moon Jae-in's administration, who has really pushed for better ties to North Korea, this will be a big success for them in terms of getting the North Koreans to participate, to march under the joint flag and to mitigate any potential North Korean provocations that could have happened during the Olympics and ruin the whole atmosphere. But in terms of applying maximum pressure on North Korea and getting them to denuclearize, this is just a minor blip on the radar.

And what do we make of the military parade in North Korea just before?Is that a way of saying we don't mean it, or what?

Absolutely. I think - you know, I've been likening the North Korean participation in the Olympics as kind of like "The Wedding Crashers," where they just storm in, guzzle everybody's champagne, other people's food and then they're going to leave a mess behind. And nothing they've said since Kim Jong Un's New Year's address has suggested that they're going to be talking about their nuclear weapons program at all. In fact, they've not had any pressure from South Korea or anybody in terms of talking about nuclear weapons.

Well - and that brings up a question. And I feel the need to ask it every now and then - why does North Korea want nuclear weapons?What's their overall strategic goal?


When an American missionary was killed on a remote Indian Island last year, people around the world treated it as a punchline. John Allen Chau had been trying to reach members of an isolated and protected tribe to convert them to Christianity. The people of North Sentinel Island had fired arrows at him in warning, and on his third attempt to visit the island, they killed him. In the latest issue of Outside magazine, Alex Perry investigates what led Chau on this mission, and he joins us now. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

Thanks for having me, Ari.

You say there were members of Chau's circle, family and friends of his, who have kept quiet since his death in November. And they only talked to you because you'd had a similar obsession with these islands when you were younger. But you didn't approach the island as a missionary. Tell us about your experience.

No, I was a journalist, a foreign correspondent based in India. And it was one of the first stories I heard when I got to India. This anthropologist I met, Vishvajet Pandya, told me about essentially a Neolithic tribe - or, in fact, several tribes living on these islands. And it was just such a sort of fantastical idea. I became quite obsessed by getting out there and particularly when I heard that one of the tribesmen had spent six months in a hospital and had learned Hindi, so there was a way to communicate.


And he loved to call it the prolate spheroid. But I guess it didn't catch on. But he was also - he was one of the scariest coaches because one of his lines in his pep talks was, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble the football.

Oh.

So, yeah, basically tough love without the love part.

And I understand Edgar Allen Poe has a role in developing modern football?


It's out of sight. It's really high. We have actual concentrations and standards that are somewhere like four, five times lower than that. So, these are all very, very high numbers, even when they're low on the Chinese scale.

It sounds as though you could project things ahead for the beginning of the Olympics. What would you expect?

Well, it's pretty good right now. But I've just been looking at the extended forecast for winds, and the middle of next week, things are going to change quite radically, around the 3rd or the 4th. The big high-pressure system from out over the Pacific is going to kick in, and that's going to produce strong winds coming over the polluted areas to the south of Beijing, and it's going to pick up a lot of pollution. And according to these forecasts, it's going to be a pretty dirty end of next week. And unfortunately, that coincides with the Opening Ceremonies a week from today.

Ken, these are official Chinese numbers that you're working with, and you are sitting there in Rhode Island looking at these. Are the numbers trustworthy?


Sure. I'm glad you mention that. So that is coming through subpoenas to the reporters to reveal the names of their sources. So it's not a direct prosecution of those reporters. But they are - you know, as you mentioned with Judith Miller, it can amount to jail time if the reporter refuses to testify.

So what's happening is that they are being called to testify in the case against the leakers. And when they refuse to do so, they're in contempt of court, and they may face jail time.

That's exactly right. And that is much more acceptable. I should add that under Attorney General Holder - after the James Risen subpoena where James Risen was told he had to testify and refused, the U. S.  government did not push him to testify. They obtained a conviction anyway, and Holder shortly thereafter announced that, under his watch, no reporter would go to jail for doing his job. It remains to be seen whether that same policy would be in place under the Sessions Department of Justice. Everything he's said indicates that he will not follow that policy.

Meaning that he and the Trump administration may indeed prosecute journalists. We've heard Trump himself and other Republicans raising the possibility of prosecuting journalists. Do you think that there is - that that is a possibility?


That's true.

Exactly. So, what's happening, Murray?

Well, you know, I think, just like copper and grain, I mean, I think there are shortages that arise every once in a while in important human commodities. And this is kind of a replay, to me, of when I became a clown. In the late 1960s, a lot of the real great master clowns were getting old and dying off. And so the Ringling Brothers show started the College of Clowns, which lasted until, I think, 1997. And I was in the second class.

You think people maybe react differently to clowns.


You're very welcome.

What made you write this letter?

What I've noticed is that the sidelines has become more venomous. When expletives come across, when parents are yelling you're the worst referee ever because of one bad call that was made - this is outrageous behavior. It's unacceptable on every level.

Is there a particularly egregious incident that sticks in your mind that you could relate to us we might learn from?


You know, we talk a lot about the germs in our bodies and how many there are spread all over the place. But usually they're in our guts that we're talking about it. We haven't talked much about what's going on in our noses. What is happening up there?

That's true, and I think the field of human microbiome research has really, in the last four, five years, really exploded upon the scene and shown us that many niches in the human body are colonized by bacteria, be it our skin, our mucosal surfaces. These are the softer linings that line the nares, the sinuses, the gastrointestinal, the airways and the urogenital tract. And what we're beginning to see is that these linings of the human body are actually home to a diversity of microbes.

And from much of the studies that have come from the gastrointestinal tract, which has been going on a little longer, we've seen certain hallmarks that are associated with health and disease. We know, for example, that when patients have chronic inflammatory disease, one of the characteristics is this loss of diversity. And sinusitis is quite a significant health care issue. And really, to date, much of the microbial studies that have been performed have largely been based on culturing and bacteria, so trying to grow them on agar plates.

Mm-hmm.


Well, they're sort of wrapping up. I mean once the storm makes landfall here then they sort of move on to the next thing. So, you have a lot of media around, but in fact the meteorologists are just checking their figures and sort winding down.

And what details do you have on the storm?How much rain is expected from the hurricane?

Well, the hurricane could drop up to a foot of rain in some areas. It really depends precisely where you are. Especially areas that are to the east and north of the center of the storm - could get very very heavy rainfall.

There have been, kind of, expectations that the storm would be as big, maybe as Katrina, maybe even bigger and a lot of very scary talk from New Orleans fears prompting evacuations. What is the difference between hurricanes Gustav and Katrina?


It's so hard, yeah. . .

But - yeah.

. . . To not be recognized. I know this is one of the things that many people say, is not being recognized by their family members. It's just the worst feeling in the world.

Yeah. And in our case, it wasn't permanent. I mean, I can't imagine the feeling of people for whom this is a constant.


Well, let me ask you this. When you say, you know, lights out, he's pretty much out of sight. Why is Huckabee sticking with the race?

Because there's another spot on the ticket besides this one.

Yes, that is so true. Well, let's look at the demographics on both races, Democratic and Republican. Can we say anything about the trends by race, by first time voter, any trends among voters for the Democratic or Republican races?

By and large the Democratic demographics were what we've seen in the past. In Maryland in particular we saw again where the African—American vote was overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, but he did not do comparably well among whites. Now, we did see a deviation from that in Virginia, which was the largest state that was voting yesterday. And in Virginia we saw for the first time a substantial portion - in fact about half - of the white vote going for Barack Obama. He also won among white men. He did not win white women, but if you look at all men, he carried two-thirds of all men and he carried 60 percent of all women in Virginia.


Oh, yes, it's 63 as we're speaking now. So that's a 33-degree drop from what it was just a few hours ago last night.

But what's the week been like?

You know, hard for people in a country that's not used to heat and doesn't have much air conditioning. The five hottest summers here since 1500 have been - all been since 2000. So you have - do have more people here asking, if I could put it this way, does a chateau have to fall on your head to see that the earth, France included, is getting hotter?

Yeah (laughter) I know you were in Paris during the 2003 heatwave. And that left 15,000 people dead according to estimates. And it's still considered a marker in French history.


And he has gotten some criticism, interestingly, from some of his previously most supportive conservative voices, like Ann Coulter and Alex Jones of InfoWars but also from Congress, who've been asking the same questions as your previous guest, which is, what is the overall strategy for solving the Syrian crisis?So far, the strategy seems to be defeat ISIS and get out. And, wherever possible, make it contrast with President Obama. But the strategy does seem to be very similar to President Obama's - do the bare minimum to save face when chemical weapons are used.

And it is possible that maybe you can't really solve the Syrian problem or even stop Assad from using chemical weapons if you're not willing to risk hitting some Russians because all of Syria's most valuable military assets now are intertwined with Russians in Syria.

So you say that some of his actions have been uncharacteristically un-Trumpian and that they're reminiscent of Obama. But what is Trumpian is that he's been conducting Syria policy over Twitter.

That's right, and he previewed the strikes. He said they were coming fast and smart. The missiles were coming. He then backtracked and said, maybe I haven't decided on a strike. And then, he tweeted something that really got everyone's attention. He said mission accomplished, which are two words that. . .


And tell us a bit about the ocean bed.

It's a bit rockier than the Rockies. It's that sort of terrain. The location they're looking at is at the foot of a huge mountain. That mountain rises about three and a half kilometers. That's about two miles up from the sea floor. So it's on a really quite steep terrain. We don't know whether the seabed there is muddy, silty - in which case things can sink into the seabed - or whether it's rocky. We've got better maps of the moon's surface for this area than we do of the seabed itself. So, you know, if someone said to you, this is on the moon, we could tell you what the terrain was like. We don't really know what it's like here. We don't have detailed maps.

I have a lot of respect for the Royal Australian Navy, but has anybody ever been able to pick up something this deep in the ocean before?

The technology is there, but it's rare. And there isn't - there aren't that many vehicles that can operate at these sorts of depths.


And how much room would you need to store all the information in the world?

So we - I did a quick calculation the other day on the back of an envelope for that one, and I think you could do all the information in the world in one and a half cubic meters. So it would sort of go in the back of your station wagon, I guess.

Wow, I'd be careful about where I was driving if I had. . .

It would be really heavy. It would be bound to the suspension.


Hi Farai. Great to be with you.

Always. So we've been following this situation in Zimbabwe and the situation includes a tainted election and economic collapse. Now the U. S.  has imposed new sanctions, accusing President Robert Mugabe of heading an illegitimate government that sponsors violence. Last week, the president - President Bush - signed an executive order that adds new financial restrictions against individuals and organizations linked to Mugabe's government. So South Africa criticized those new sanctions, saying they could actually obstruct these power sharing talks. What do you think?

Well I think the international community has to use everything in its tool kit to kind of acknowledge what has happened in Zimbabwe and to put pressure for change. I mean, what has happened is just unacceptable. You have had not only the flawed elections of March 29th, but again failed electoral process in June and you know, right now there is this critical period of negotiations, political negotiations that need real pressure and real support. So I think it is important that the international community does everything that it can to say that it is time for a change in Zimbabwe.

Clearly South Africa has had a lot at stake. The quiet diplomacy that we talk about with Mbeki. The quiet diplomacy has, well, brought some results, but not the results needed. And I think the African Union, the Southern African Development Community all have said that more is needed to bring really a chance for peace and also for justice in Zimbabwe.


In Iran, state media are reporting the seizure of another tanker in the Persian Gulf. The ship was reportedly taken by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, and seven crew members were detained. It would mark the third seizure of a foreign ship by Iran in the past two weeks. NPR's Peter Kenyon is following the story from Istanbul, and he joins us now.

Morning.

Hi, Lulu.

What do we know so far about this latest seizure?


Yeah.
And then it. . .
Very briefly.
. . . couldn't start.


We're talking with Stephen Sestanovich, George F.  Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And Russia also faces some serious demographic issues, a dwindling population. The future does not look as rosy as it might have.

The demographic issue has been one that's preoccupied the Russian leadership for some years. There are moments where they seem to think that they - there's been an upturn in the birth rate. But broadly speaking, they're looking at a decline in the population of, you know, starting a decade or so ago, the population has dropped seven or eight million since the Soviet Union collapsed.

And we talked about the future with Vladimir Putin. What about the forgotten man, if you will, the interregnum president, Dmitry Medvedev?

Well, he is an interesting figure in Russian politics. A lot of people joke about him now. He's, well, humiliated really by what Putin did to him in taking his job away and saying, you know, let me drive now. The question is whether Medvedev, who is now going to be given the job of prime minister, will have any real clout in the ability to pursue the agenda that he has tried to make his own over the past four years, which is modernization, reform, ending corruption, reducing the role of the economy - of the state in the economy. Will he stick with those issues?Will he be able to push them through or will he just be a flunky of Putin?


That seems to be the case.

Thanks very much for being with us today.

Thank you so much, Neal. Keep an eye on your belly button.

Rob Dunn is a science writer, a biologist in the Department of Biology at North Carolina State University. He joined us today from Raleigh. Tomorrow, traffic. L. A. 's is legendary, they're trying something new. They have synchronized every traffic light in the city. Join us for an update with Tom Vanderbilt tomorrow right after I go home and take a shower. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.


Yeah, it was highly publicized. Its image got all over the world.

And how - it has a unique design to it. Who designed it and why does it have the shape it has?

That's a really interesting question. There's - it's actually a complicated story. The chief architect was a man named John Graham Jr. , had a large architectural firm. He was mainly known as the man who invented the first really successful shopping mall, which was here in Seattle, Northgate. He had the task of creating the Space Needle. But he - they got stuck on the design. They had a doodle on a napkin. He had a bunch of architects who began looking at a tower-like structure. They were inspired by a tower, a broadcast tower in Germany, in Stuttgart, which had a restaurant on it. And so they knew they wanted an observation deck. But they were kind of open to what else they would do. They thought about putting a planetarium up there and a helicopter pad.

No kidding.


We propose three national sales tax holiday periods in 2009. They would be 10-day periods, including two weekends, and they would occur in March, July, and October. During that time period, the federal government would reimburse the states for any sales tax holiday revenue lost because of these holiday periods.

And do you have a sense of how much money this plan could save consumers?

We estimated approximately $175 for the average family.

And as you mentioned, the way that this would work is that the federal government would reimburse states for any losses that they might incur without the taxes during these periods. But could that work?Where's the federal government going to get that money from when they're already handing out to so many other industries?


And I think right now what we're finding is that, I think this - the technology industry though, Tony, you can't - this country, businesses, the ecosystem cannot function without information technology. So you have companies like HP, Dell, Microsoft, Google, they're all being very creative now or I would say, more creative than I guess that they had to have been in the past to really understand how they can make the largest impact without it affecting their employee work force.

And I think today's times are making people more innovative and the mother - mother's the necessity of innovation and I think it's just making people be more creative now. I'm hoping that the stimulus package with having a chief technology officer in house, with $7. 2 billion going towards - from the stimulus, going towards broadband, with another $19 billion going towards health information records and technology, and health care.

I'm hoping that that is going to, when that money becomes available, make it so that the technology industry can still remain resilient, because largely we have been. I mean, we're not immune from the problems, but we've been pretty resilient throughout. If you look at what's going on throughout the country, technology sector has been doing fairly well.

You know, you mentioned that there was a new chief technology officer and our conversation is coming to a close, but briefly tell us who this person is, if you know, and what you know about his or her background?


Well, the overall energy source for all of this is that big ball that we see every day, the sun.

Oh, that thing.

Yeah, that thing.

But the sun is moderately variable. And every now and then, it'll send out an extra stream, a strong stream of particles that we call the solar wind. And that when that comes along and encounters our planet, we have a magnetic field, and so that acts as sort of a barrier, but it still puts energy in. And when all that energy comes in, it goes into these particles. And then this is one of the mechanisms whereby things get transferred into the very high-energy particles that make the radiation belts.


Well, I'm delighted. I'm absolutely high as a kite. I said yesterday, I'm high as the flag on the Fourth of July, and it's the way I still feel today.

And does this ruling change the way researchers will be able to work?

It has a less of an impact on research, which has never been subject to the enforcement of a patent, than it does on the availability of this approach for patient care. The enforcement of the monopoly on testing by Myriad was in the realm of patient care, that is testing for patients who were referred by their physicians or genetic counselors for sequencing of BRCA1 and 2.

Does this mean that it will open up the realm of other people, other companies, coming up with a test also and maybe drive the price of the test down.


I don't think I have to. I'm a jazz musician. I know what I am. Whether the music you think I'm playing or professing is jazz or not, it's kind of not my problem, you know what I mean?I'm a jazz musician, and this is what I do.

I do conduction, and it doesn't matter whether I do it with classical musicians or jazz musicians or traditional Japanese instruments, Korean instruments, Turkish instruments. It doesn't matter. This is what I do, work with funk musicians or pop musicians. It doesn't matter. I'm still doing - I'm still showing everybody the same sign. This means sustain. This means repeat. This means graphic information. This means this, this, and that.

Some of your newer music, it's recording Nublu Orchestra. It crosses many genres. Let's take a listen to "Downstairs. "

How did you get started on this path?I mean, who were your influences?Who were the musicians that sparked in your imagination that this is a road you might take?


Not defend - or explain it or, like, make a joke out of it. Or. . .

Well, I mean, that's what we - that's what a comedian does anyway. We're just making light of things that are going on. Or we're pointing out an injustice and trying to make it funny. Or we're trying to ultimately entertain. But, you know, sometimes, some comics - you know, they want to be social justice warriors. I don't ever feel like I have to 'cause I'm already multiracial, multiethnic as it is anyway?

What is your background?

Well, I'm just mixed.


Mr.  Bostrom, as I understand it, you have spent a lot of your working life dealing with nuclear war and asteroid strikes and now the prospect of superintelligent machines. How you doing?

Well, I actually also spend some time thinking about the upside of things, like, if things go well, if humanity makes it through this century intact, I think the future for Earth originating intelligent life could be very long and very large and very bright, indeed. We might reach technological maturity in this century, and with that would come the possibility to colonize the universe and to cure cancer and to accomplish many other things that we can only vaguely dream about today. It's worth being really careful and making sure that we don't screw up along the path.

Nick Bostrom is the founder and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and the author of "Superintelligence. "Thanks for speaking with us, Mr.  Bostrom, and I don't mind saying good luck.

Thanks.


A lesser option would be to set up a no-sailing zone around the tankers.

General Deptula, thank you. We have to leave it there. That's Dave Deptula.

Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

All right. Take care, Mary Louise.


Erik Nourrie was in Brazil a while back when he got too close to a wild monkey.

I guess he got a little agitated. I was too close, and he socked me.

There was another monkey attack in an enclosure in Honduras. His wife snapped some photos of that one. Maybe its karma, maybe it's a spiritual test of resilience. But Erik Nourrie says he travels a lot to fun, dangerous spots. So all this happening to one guy makes him the world's unluckiest man. But the fact he survived it all makes him one lucky son of a gun.

You know, I believe God's in control. When it's my time, it's my time. And apparently, the other day, it wasn't my time yet.


Revkin told me about a man named Khaled. He worked at a slaughterhouse that ISIS took control of, leaving him with a choice - stay at the job and work for ISIS or leave and face retaliation.

Khaled, like many residents of Mosul, decided that cooperation was the only way to survive. So he continued working in the slaughterhouse. He claimed that he was never trained. He never received combat training or used a weapon or participated in any military operations on behalf of the group. But nonetheless, three years later, when Iraqi security forces, supported by the international coalition, recaptured Mosul, he was 1 of more than 90,000 people who have been detained on suspicion of association with the group. And he was arrested solely on the basis of testimony from a secret informant who had apparently witnessed him pledging allegiance, even though Khaled insisted that this pledge was involuntary and coerced.

So, you know, during the trial, I saw him explain that his work consisted only of feeding and caring for animals at the slaughterhouse. But nonetheless, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison after a trial that lasted less than 30 minutes. And the judges actually told him that he was lucky to receive such a lenient sentence because the crime for which he was convicted, which was membership in a terrorist group, generally brings capital punishment.

A lot of post-ISIS life is figuring out who was or who was not involved in ISIS and bringing the appropriate perpetrators to justice. This is done mostly through courts?


You know, the study that came out I think is scaring people in thinking that you're going to have to through like a two year master program to learn how to have black kids, if you're white parents. And it's honestly, you could probably knock it out in two hours. It's really not that difficult, there's a few things that you should know. And bringing your kids up in a diverse neighborhood is the most important of that.

And then, you know, if you have friends that are the same race of your kids, you just, you ask them for questions, and it's helpful to have them as a resource, it's something you definitely want to keep next to you when you're raising your kids.

My sister and I made my parents cooler by bringing in some color to the Stigger family. And that's the benefit of it. It is a little more work as parent, but you get so much more out of it. And it definitely helped me and my sister to have the viewpoints of two white people and still have the viewpoints of us as biracial kids.

If you were talking to someone who was, you know, say 10-years-old, what kind of advice would you give that age a person for dealing with an experience like yours?


Well, I can tell you that people like me and organizations like mine will be pushing for in the new year real spending reform, and there's real spending reform to - had across the board. That's from the military industrial complex all the way through the welfare system. Senator Tom Coburn, when he was in the Senate, demonstrated, according to the CBO, over $400 billion of waste and duplicative spending every year. We ought to start there. And I'm hoping that the country can get rational. Both parties can begin to address that stuff beginning in 2018.

Do you think that Republicans will campaign on spending reform anymore?

You know, I don't know whether they will or not. It depends on how hard the grassroots push them. And I hope the grassroots do continue to push them on that.

Is it important to the grassroots to have that still?


They're all priceless.

Exactly.

Tell us about the priceless ones in your collection. How many do you have in your collection?

We have about - in excess of 1,800 different meteorites. If you consider. . .


Before summer slips away, North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann decided to take a day off from work for one last hot-weather canoe trip in upstate New York. With his wife Susan, Brian paddled and trekked through the Ausable Marshes in the Champlain Valley. He sent back this audio postcard.

We've just set out into the Ausable Marshes, this gorgeous delta of marshlands and ox-bows that form here between the Ausable River and Lake Champlain. Already, just a few paddle strokes from the road, it's green and humid.

B.  MANN: The forest along the river is lush with birds. A kingfisher loops from bank to bank. It feels sort of tropical and up in the bow of the canoe, Susan strips down to her swimsuit.

This paddling reminded me of the Louisiana bayou. Not quite as hot.


She does. I'm afraid she is both beautiful and brilliant and clever but also rather naive, and she meets the wrong guy. She isn't. . .

She's naive because she's lonely, Dame Stella.

She's lonely. She is lonely, yes, but she's also - I think she's also naive. I have to say that. I mean, you can be lonely and cautious. But, I mean, she is an example, I think, of somebody who believes in civil liberties, as do I, as do many people. But she also believes, you know, in the need for our intelligence services to have the right powers. And she finds herself, I suppose, torn in the middle of that debate. And, as you say, unfortunately, she falls for the wrong guy whose interests are not hers.

Dame Stella, is MI5 ever worried that you'll just wake up one morning and say, oh, remember when this happened?I think I'll make it a novel.


So there you are standing in the checkout line, that one with a big sign above it that says express, 10 items or less. You notice the basket of the woman in front of you. You silently start tallying. OK, eight or nine items, fine. But wait, she has a six pack under her hand, and under her other arm is a bag of pretzels. And then she's going for that pack of gum. And you're fighting the urge to scream: You had no business in the express line.

If that's you, then John Trinkaus feels your pain. He decided that instead of complaining about it, though, he'd study it. Trinkaus researches not only the express line, but how many people stop at stop signs and the average wait at the doctor's office. My next guest is Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research, and the founder and master of ceremonies for the Ig Nobel Prize. He'll explain the data details and why it's the simple things that count. He joins us from WBUR in Boston. Hi, Marc.

Hello, Flora.

Tell me - give me some other names of his studies, because they're all really funny.


Yeah, because, particularly when you're talking about tipped industries, where if somebody has a bad experience and they leave you zero dollars, that's your rent money. You get paid $2. 13 an hour. And particularly on alcohol-fueled public holiday, it gets even a little sketchier because you never know who's going to have, like, a fight with their friends, and nobody remembers the tip. And it's not that you did anything. It's just that drunk people are less frequently reliable as far as social norms.

You wrote a very successful book a couple of years ago, and now you're a professional writer. What are the holidays like for you now?

Oh, man, I do nothing. It's fantastic. I don't think I'm ever going to have the inclination to do a lot of work around the holidays because, to me, luxury is not doing a whole lot of anything. And it's - it's good to see the kids. That's a huge difference. I never saw the kids near the holidays. My youngest is 3. You know, seeing a 3-year-old on Christmas is pretty amazing - and not having to stress about the bills. The holidays were often the worst times of the year because you have so much extra social expectation and spending that needs to be done. You can be cheery and merry if you're not calculating in the back of your head the nickels.

So tonight, when - when people are out to have a good time, they should remember the servers that they deal with this. This is a living for them.


Well, I'm not sure I can say what is enough. I do know that the Census Bureau has a unique feature to its budget in that it goes up and down in a 10-year cycle. And about this time every decade, this is an issue as the ramp up begins.

So you need to spend more the closer you get to actually counting people?

Absolutely. In the 2010 census that I was involved in, at one point, there were 600,000 employees of the Census Bureau knocking on doors around the country to follow up those who didn't respond on their own.

Well, what would the risks be of a census that is not done well?


So there's a relationship between the velocity of the coffee and the slope that you can generate there. And although the physics are very different in the ocean, you'll establish the same relationship between a pressure gradient or that difference in height and speed of the current. So if the gulfstream slows down, the slope at a sea surface is going to decrease, and water will rise at the coastline.

And what is this due to?

The slowing of the current?Yeah, that's the big question right now. And there's a lot of debate about what will drive those kinds of changes in the climate. Obviously, temperature, you know, it all starts with wind, so how do you - yeah, what could affect the wind field?But it really comes back to the distribution of temperature in the atmosphere and. . .

Global warming?


What if Dr.  Martin King Jr.  were alive today?Would he be proud of America's progress on civil rights?Maybe he'd say we let him down by allowing the activism that fueled his movement to die from neglect. And what would King think of Obama's historic White House bid?Can you tell us anything new about his own assassination?

In his new book, "What Would Martin Say?," Clarence B.  Jones uses King's life and speeches to guess where the late reverend might stand on the Iraq war, affirmative action and black leadership. Jones knew King well. He was one of the reverend's closest advisers. Jones even helped write the famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Clarence Jones, welcome to NEWS & NOTES.

Hi, thank you so much. Glad to be here.


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

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

Well, you know, I want to go to you, Gina, because I understand that there was a reunion at which you two reconnected. Tell me about that, first of all.

Pat and I dated in high school. As a matter of fact, our parents went to the same high school, and we got back together - we dated all through high school, we broke up, of course, and then we got back together at our 10-year reunion.


I think that teenagers - I mean, some were very passionately involved in this. And, you know, teachers do feel things very passionately. It's why they're such a great audience to write for. But others are getting a little bit fed up because these controversies within YA, especially, are dominated by adults, and they're led by adults. So the teens are starting to kind of push back a little bit and saying, you know, this community is supposed to be for us, and you guys are messing it up.

(Laughter) As adults often do mess up things, don't we?

It's true. We ruin everything.

Kat Rosenfield, her article "The Toxic Drama On YA Twitter" is on Vulture. com. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you for having me.


Right.

How do you think the election changed the political landscape in this country, or do you?

Well, it's changed the landscape entirely. All of the talk of the time of Bush's presidency from 2002, when we started, all the way up until Obama's election, things got more and more depressing as time went on. Even though Bush got actually elected in 2004 as oppose to the disputed election in 2000 - still, most of the news was bad news, and we had a steady diet of bad news and flubs in this, and worries about war and worries about domestic policy and civil liberties and civil rights, and it was just bad news. It was like everything was downhill. And the country was depressed, psychologically. And Bush, now that he's gone, you got a breath of fresh air. Everybody is waiting expectantly. People have been happy. They've celebrated. And now the news is always about, you know, what is going now and how is it going to play out, and with most people hoping that it will play out positively after so much depression.

Are you surprised at the level of engagement of what I would arguably say is the black community at large in the political arena, both as voters, as viewers, as readers and particularly, as political pundits.


Well, I just hope that we can make it through. I don't know. We don't know what is in store - you know, the future has for us because we've already - when they cut the shifts back, we've already lost a lot of our business from over there. Now, there's going to be nobody, and we just don't know where it's going to go from there.

And this is a family business, I understand.

Yes, it is. Yes, it's me and my sisters. My father works here. My son's a grill cook. And, you know, we're not a big chain, so we're just really wondering what's going to happen. We're trying really hard to hang in there, but it's pretty scary.

And you say that you've had this business for 15 years.


Well, as you say, an assistive technology, other robotics to make people able to be more on their own. But I imagine that somewhere down the line, you'd like to be able to rejuvenate the arm itself, would you not?

Yeah, exactly. I think for people with locked-in syndrome, such as the two participants in the study - that is, no functional movement of their limbs and unable to speak - a comparatively simpler goal and one that we've published some work on over the past few years would be the simple control of a computer cursor on a screen.

And if one could provide point-and-click control over a cursor 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that would certainly be a useful assistive technology for somebody with severely limited communication.

But just as you said, for somebody with paralysis, somebody who's unable to move their arms and their legs, the real dream for the research is to one day reconnect brain to limb, to take those signals out of the brain, to root them back down to the peripheral nerves in the arm, to stimulate those nerves and to have somebody use their own arm and hand to pick up that coffee again.


Well, there's no secret about this. The chief justice has been very clear. He doesn't want the court to be seen as a partisan institution. The other members of the court, both liberal and conservative, go around saying that this isn't a partisan institution at all. That's the message they want to convey, which is sort of hard at the moment.

But is that possible in this day and age, when we know by their - in their own account, conservative Republicans have tried to win elections so they can win Supreme Court appointments and you have several Democrats running for president now on the issue of enlarging the court?

You know, I wish I knew whether it's even possible anymore to have a Supreme Court that doesn't look partisan. I had always thought you really could. But if you look at the two cases before the court that are overtly partisan, the gerrymandering case and the census case, both would structurally allow Republicans to entrench their power even more than they have in the last decade or two. And I think it gets harder to sell the court as an apolitical institution, which is, as I said, what every member of the Supreme Court still tries to do.

You know, I interviewed Justice Stevens about a month and a half ago for a piece about his new book. And even he, a lifetime Republican, although deemed a Liberal on the court, appointed by President Ford, said it was hard for him to see the current court as apolitical. He said he still has hope, and so do I, but it's difficult.


Thank you, Linda. Happy to be here.

Is it fair to say what I said in this introduction that a Clinton or Sanders win in Nevada could depend on how the Hispanic vote breaks?

You're absolutely right. Here in Nevada, the Latino vote has been decisive in the past several election cycles. We saw it in 2006 in my race for state assembly, where we tripled Hispanic turnout. We saw it in 2008 for the caucuses here for Hillary Clinton to win the popular vote. And then we saw it again in 2012. You know, we saw President Obama get re-elected and win Nevada thanks to the Latino vote.

What do you think is going to move the Hispanic community in Nevada to the polls in 2016?Is it going to be immigration reform?Is it the problem of jobs, new jobs, higher paying jobs?

You know, I believe it'll be a combination of a few different things. You're seeing right now Republican candidates Donald Trump, Rubio, Cruz, even my opponent Cresent Hardy, who have taken a pretty strong stance against immigration. And, you know, Latinos not only care about immigration, we care about every other issue - jobs, health care, education. But immigration usually tends to be the litmus test for candidates. If you support immigration reform with the path to citizenship, then we know that you are welcoming to our Latino community.


I think my career - had before this was 48, and I thought I had a pretty good game in that game. But it turns out it didn't even come close to this one.

I've read you just came from a weekend tournament where you went 11-41 in two games; from the depths to the heights.

Yeah. Yeah. I had a pretty poor shooting weekend. So coming into this game, my coaches and my teammates really wanted to get me going a little bit offensively to get my confidence up before we head into conference play.

And get your confidence up, you made, I think - what was it?More than 50 shots.


And I have to - forgive me - begin by asking, weeks like this bring memories back?

Weeks like this remind me of why a community is so important - that you are responsible for each other as a whole community.

Would you give any advice to counselors who have seen troubled students - students who they think might create trouble - as to what they should do?

Absolutely. You want to talk with parents. You want to make it a part of the conversation. You want to talk with administrators and make sure that the school environment is safe and always possible. You want to make sure that you've created a community among the students where the students - when they see something, they will tell you.


In real terms, it could be all of them. When this rolls out, we have to roll it out very carefully. Anything that is attached to the artwork must do no damage. So it's easy or relatively easy to tag - put the tag on the back of a painting. It's not going to be visible from the front and it's a relatively straightforward process. And I say relatively because the adhesion processes have to be very carefully analyzed. The second stage of this is actually getting into artwork with, for example, contemporary art that is in the form of sculptures. And we have to develop a methodology to apply these tags to non-flat surfaces.

And how expensive is a DNA embed, Mr.  Tenniswood?

So basic costs of the tag will probably be about $150 per piece of art.

Well, big museums can afford that, although some of the large collections that's - that'll be quite a lot of money, won't it?


Well, the state of the free world is at stake as always in college football, as you know. I really feel that the one thing about college football that people do gravitate toward - I'm not a huge college football fan myself - but I feel like what it does to people who really care about it is that it really is a winner-take-all type of thing. You kind of have to win every single game. You lose one game and your national title hopes are dashed. So, when you have a big matchup early and you're just getting started, this is a big game. Well, I think it's a bigger game for Michigan and for Alabama, naturally, because Alabama is defending national championship. They'll be there at the end. But if you're Michigan, this is a good chance early on to show what you've got.

I guess things don't look so great for my Boise State Broncos, right?This is a rebuilding year in Boise.

Exactly. And I was thinking that last night when they lost. I said, oh, well, goodness, Boise State lost one game therefore their entire future has been destroyed, and for - at least there's next year, right?

At least there's next year. Howard Bryant, senior writer at ESPN. com and ESPN the Magazine. Howard, thanks so much. Have a good U. S.  Open.


No, wow.

Well, all right. So, let's get to your best political conversation of the week.

You know, it's about John McCain. Everybody in town just watched as McCain came back, and it was very low key. And not only was it at low key; there was a sense of, you know, sadness about it. There he was; suddenly Joe Lieberman's over arguing with the Democrats and trying to get back in with the Democrats and retain his position, in terms of a leader on the Democratic side, no longer hanging around with John McCain. The right wing of the Republican Party never wanted much to do with John McCain, and so they're not rallying to him; they're not offering him any leadership position. So, John McCain is kind of out there on his own, and everybody is saying, you know, what's to come of John McCain?And the answer is, you know, John McCain will try to be his own man, but the fact is he's a man really without a country in the U. S.  Senate at this moment.

NPR news analyst Juan Williams, always a pleasure.


Well, that is a great question. And the real question here - and the son of the famed Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud this week is actually hedging his bets. He is bringing together on Wednesday an anti-Taliban coalition. They say they're going to fight the Taliban politically and militarily, if necessary - really kind of an indication that the Afghans aren't sure that they can trust the Taliban at all. Leila, while these negotiations have begun going on for nine months, the Taliban have continued to fight on the ground trying to increase their leverage on the battlefield so that they would have more influence at the negotiating table. And so Afghans aren't sure whether this - any peace agreement will mean the fighting is going to stop.

So then what does that mean for Afghanistan's upcoming presidential elections scheduled for later this month?

Well, President Ghani has insisted these elections should go forward. But this week, Abdullah Abdullah, his main contender and his chief executive officer, has said, he's ready to quit the elections for the sake of peace and that kind of throws things into question. So far, we understand the elections are going forward. Election materials are being distributed now as we speak. The elections are only four weeks away. And it - what's really uncertain is whether the Taliban who have vehemently opposed these elections have said that they will attack anything associated with the elections whether they're trying to make this a condition for further talks with the Afghans, which is the next step in this process.

That's reporter Jennifer Glasse in Kabul. Jennifer, thank you.


Joined by David Albright, he's president of the Institute for Science and International Security, speaking with us from Germany. Mr.  Albright, thanks so much for being with us.

Glad to be here.

We're a weekly show, so let let's go back a few days. Before North Korea said it would fire test missiles near Guam, before President Trump said the U. S.  is locked and loaded or vowed fire and fury, there was the news that North Korean had figured out how to put a nuclear bomb on a missile. Now, that's despite talks under the Bush administration or the 1994 deal with the Clinton administration. What's to be done?

Well, I think one is that I think there's time. I mean, the goal, I think, of everybody is to get negotiations going that can lead to denuclearization. People don't want North Korea to have nuclear weapons. It's just too dangerous, and it could cause further proliferation in the region and just constantly create instability that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. So I think the goal is clear. How to get there is very difficult. And the Washington Post story kind of created a shock that somehow we don't have the time, that we're already in the bull's-eye of North Korea's nuclear weapons. As we sit in Seattle or. . .


They have a really good chance. They could pick up as many as a half dozen or more seats. And this is incredibly important for them this year because we're heading into 2020, when there will be a census that will affect redistricting. This is how Republicans sort of got in the really good position that they were in. They won a ton of governors' races in 2010. They controlled redistricting in very important states. So they were able to draw congressional maps to their liking. You know, we've already seen good signs for Democrats when it comes to this. They've flipped a ton of state legislative seats. And so it's a good sign for Democrats. This map is really for them.

What states are you watching heading into this last month of the campaign?I mean, where are the really tight races?

So there's a couple of pickup opportunities for Democrats that look like really sure things - Illinois, New Mexico, Michigan. I say some of the really tight races are Florida and Georgia. Florida is always, you know, the perpetual swing state. Andrew Gillum was sort of the surprise nominee there. He's a progressive.

Yeah - African-American mayor from Tallahassee.


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

Teenagers, many of them. Yeah.

Teenagers - I mean, how young were some of them?

Well, the youngest - records show that the youngest were 11.


Right. I don't think we're at the stage of a full sectarian civil war, but we're certainly moving in the direction of greater sectarianism. The government is pushing this to some extent by doing some ethnic cleansing of villages where there's mixed Alawites and others, and they want to get the Sunnis mostly out.

Should they need to retreat to those regions, they want them fully Alawite.

Well, that's one theory. I think the idea of an Alawite state, where Assad and the Alawites can retreat, is not realistic, it wouldn't work, it wouldn't last. But they have to work out some kind of system, ultimately, where all Syrians can live together, which is how they've always done it.

You don't have a history of sectarian tensions in Syria like you do in some other countries. But you never also had a history of real democracy either. So they've never had a chance to work out a democratic system for power-sharing. The Iraqis are going through the same thing right now, huge demonstrations by Sunnis against the Shiite-led government. The Kurds are more or less on their own in the North.


Well, thanks for having me.

You're at the start of your book tour, maybe midway. You have been saying in interviews you don't think you'll ever coach again.

I don't and I'm basically trying to motivate myself to not only put closure on a career but to get going with something else. I've said for years idleness is the devil's workshop. So I always tied up my day, every minute of the day from 6 a. m.  to late at night with basketball, scouting, recruiting. And now I wake up at 6 o'clock and put on my gym shorts, and there's no place to go.

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


Absolutely. I think some Republicans have. The administration has missed a political opportunity to expand their base. They're speaking to a very small portion of the Republican base, and it's a big missed opportunity for them.

You engaged with President Obama and the Democrats on this issue. Explain how you did that.

I was asked by the State Department to travel to India and Germany and meet with mayors in those countries to talk about what the U. S.  is doing and, in the case of India, to encourage those local mayors to influence President Modi of India to actually come to Paris and sign the agreement. That was up in the air for a long period of time.

You know, what the mayors in India told me, for instance, was that the U. S. 's leadership means a lot. It helps them get to where they want to be, and that's probably my greatest fear with this change, is that some of these countries won't come along. And so my message to those mayors I spoke with in India today would be - simply because the federal government isn't going to make progress, our mayors are going to continue to make progress. We're going to keep our word. We're going to honor the commitments made and continue to improve the air quality and reduce our carbon emissions in each of our cities.


Is this a book about how someone becomes a terrorist?

In part. I talk about this as a sort of - as a Genesis moment for the book. But I remember distinctly I was watching this interview with a foreign affairs expert. And it was in the wake of the - there had been these sort of protests in an Afghan village against the U. S.  military presence in Afghanistan.

And the interviewer's question was something along the lines of, why do they hate us so much?And as part of his answer, this expert noted that sometimes the U. S.  forces have to go conduct these nighttime raids in these villages. And when they do this, they'll sometimes have to hold the women and children up at gunpoint. And they'll tear the places apart. And then he added, you know, in Afghan culture, this sort of thing is considered very offensive.

And I thought, you know, name me one culture on earth that wouldn't consider this sort of thing offensive?And so part of the book is - has to do with this idea that we all suffer the same way, and we become damaged by suffering in the same way regardless of which part of the world we grew up in or what we believe.


And I went into Washington Park on Chicago's south side and met some retired African-American men who were spending their days fishing and who really were living history for me. You know, I had these books, but they would give me the ins and out of the black political machine, the state of race relations in the city. And everything that I was reading in these textbooks seemed dead because they could say exactly the same thing with so much more spirit, and I wanted to find a way to spend time with folks like that instead of just asking them a few questions and hoping they could give me short answers.

They basically told you, okay, I'm glad you talked to us, but talk to some younger guys. So what did you do?

So they sent me to a few neighborhoods. I constructed a survey, and I said okay, let me go see if I can start up some conversations. I went to the Robert Taylor Homes, a very poor public-housing development in Chicago. And I walked into this stairwell, and I met this street gang that was selling drugs in the stairwell, and they wondered who I was, and they thought I was a gang member, and they thought I was a Mexican gang member.

They started calling me Julio, and I administered the survey to them, and they just laughed. And they thought, okay, you must be from another gang because nobody's going to ask stupid questions like this. They kept me there, and I had. . .

You had multiple-choice questions like how do you feel being poor and black?


I fear there could still be a lot of fighting with many, many thousands of men armed to the teeth with no option but to fight or die. It will also threaten the lifeline that 12,000 humanitarian colleagues - our collective lifeline is very fragile to 2 million people in non-government-controlled areas in the north.

Is the deal in effect now?Is there a deadline?

Well, these are decisive days because between now and mid-October, the buffer zone is supposed to be established. That, in a way, will hold back any ground offensive by the Syrian army and allied forces. Presumably, there will be fighting - these groups. Al-Nusra have said that they will not leave their positions. So there will be fighting now first in the buffer zone, possibly, and then later on in other parts of Idlib.

Jan Egeland is secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a special adviser to the U. N. Thanks so much for being with us, sir.


So you just said that hitting hospitals would be the primary target of any military operation. Did I understand you correctly?

That's perfectly correct. When there is an intent to displace people, then hospitals start to get targeted and in a pattern that's very predictable. We've seen it before in Aleppo. In addition to putting those hospitals in underground structures or in caves hospital (ph), we share the location, the coordinates of these hospitals with the U. N.  agencies, with Russia, with the United States, as they both are leading the humanitarian task force in Syria.

So everybody is aware of the locations of those hospitals. And last week for example, going back to what's going on in Idlib, when you have 12 hospitals hit in a small area, when they're struck and they're damaged directly, you realize that this is beyond just collateral damage and beyond just a limited-scale operation.

Are these bombings of medical facilities that you describe causing the health care system, what's left of it, to collapse?


And now it's letter time. Our editor, Sasa Woodruff, is here with me. Hey, Sasa.

Hey, Farai. How's it going?

I'm doing fabulously. So, what are folks saying this week?

Well, our series on race and our discussions on California's measure to ban gay marriage got the most hits this week. Jenny Livingston(ph) in Brooklyn, New York wrote in after hearing one of our discussions about Prop 8. She wrote: As a supporter of the Obama campaign, I was ecstatic about the Obama victory. Then the news the next day about Prop 8 and about other civil rights setbacks for lesbian and gay and transgender families flavored our victory with more than a dash of bittersweet. I like your piece the other day, as I always like your show. But I think it could have gone much deeper. The question I wanted to hear more directly addressed was, is the black community and Americans at large open to seeing gay, lesbian, transgender rights as a civil rights issue?


Wouldn't you like to know?

I would.

They are being very, very discreet, and they're not telling anybody anything. And I think the usual conclusion from that is that they're not doing things with it that we would be pleased about. One of the things that they appear to have done with it is pay out $1. 6 billion in bonuses and other benefits to executives, which obviously is not something that would have gone over very well. From the banks' perspective, obviously, they will say, hey, wait a minute. We don't put the taxpayer money in a particular bucket and then use that to make certain things. It just all goes into a big cash bucket, and obviously, we have to pay our people. But no, we're not going to give you details on that or anything else even though it's your money.

But they are supposed to use it, or at least the intent of the legislation was for them to use it, to loosen the credit squeeze, to ease up credit and to lend to one another.


It's always right to do right. And I basically was in it because I feel the Lord had me in it. It was a work of righteousness which was a work of God. And that's - I think that's why the movement can't be killed - 'cause it's the work of God.

We asked Bishop Woods to take us upstairs at the A. G.  Gaston Motel to the room where he recalls talking to Martin Luther King.

We went upstairs to go to his room.

The stairs of the Gaston are scuffed from rain and time. The windows are boarded. The rooms are bare and dark. It's a little like looking into the wreck of a great, old ship and trying to imagine the people who are now gone and the way they changed our lives.


Yes, ma'am.

So locked down, and what is the forecast for the Christmas shopping season?

It's going to be negative for the first time in many, many, many years. The consumer just can't spend money. Consumer bankruptcies are on the rise. Consumers have 14 trillion in debt, negative saving. They can't pay their credit card bills. They can't pay their home loans. They can't pay their auto loans. The banks are not offering financing. They've got a negative wealth effect from housing to the tune of 8 trillion. The consumer is in lock down. They just don't have money.

Well, any bright spots out there because they do have to spend money on some things. Maybe the dollar stores are doing well?

There's definite bright spots. If you're Wal-Mart, you're doing fine. If you're Costco, you're doing fine. If you're Family Dollar, you're doing fine. If you're Dollar Tree, you're doing fine.