Well, we have very large ones - gorillas are our largest - all the way down to Cotton-top Tamarins, which are probably about a pound.

You've been there for quite a few hours already. How's the day going so far?

My morning has been fairly busy. I went down to our gorilla area. We have a gorilla that has some teeth issues, and we were brushing her teeth. We did a dental rinse on her and getting them ready to go out in their habitat for the day. And I went early this morning to our Mandrill building and was checking the exhibit. We're doing some rehab work and mandrills went out for the first time in several months.

Mandrills is a type of animal?


Yeah.

(Reading) Bridgette McNeal, the Atlanta mother of four, has been on Second Life for just over a decade. Though Bridgette is middle-aged, her avatar is a lithe twenty-something whom she describes as perfect me, if I'd never eaten sugar or had children. When we spoke, Bridgette described her Second Life home as a refuge that grants permission. When I step into that space, I'm afforded the luxury of being selfish, she said, invoking Virginia Woolf. It's like a room of my own.

I mean, there are so many reasons to love this woman. Her real everyday life is so difficult. She's raising two disabled children. What did you feel when you talked to Bridgette McNeal?

I felt so much. The idea of constructing these online selves that we prefer in certain ways to our real selves is really relevant to so many people. And for Bridgette, I was fascinated by her daily life. She's raising four kids, two of whom are autistic teenagers, and there's a lot of joy and meaning in those relationships and also a lot of hard work.


So it's sort of the end of era, then, for all of us who have seen him and visited the Galapagos and got to watch him poke around a little bit. It's sort of the end of an era.

It is definitely the end of an era, and everyone down here on last Sunday, when we got the news, it was a very difficult time for all of us both for the individual Lonesome George and for the fact that we lost this subspecies forever.

It also was an interesting thing here because it kind of reinforced the importance of the work we do and the future and trying to ensure that no other species or subspecies are lost in Galapagos. And the timing itself is interesting, as we have an international workshop planned for next week that is convened by the Galapagos National Park and part-organized by Galapagos Conservancy to discuss the tortoise situation on all of the islands and look at the next 10 years of research and management leading to better tortoise population restoration throughout the archipelago.

Have you been able to restore the populations to any extent?


President Obama says he wants to close the U. S.  detention center at Guantanamo Bay during his final year in office, just as he said he wanted to close it his first year, too. The president and his supporters say Republicans in Congress prevented him from doing that. But a new book presents original essays from 14 lawyers who represented some of the detainees, and many of those attorneys hold the Obama administration responsible, too.

They say that once in power, the administration found it convenient to have a place in which to park people it suspects of being terrorists without charge or trial. Reportedly, there are now about 80 detainees in Guantanamo. The book is "Obama's Guantanamo: Stories From An Enduring Prison. "It's edited by Jonathan Hafetz associate professor of law at Seton Hall. He joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

Great to be here.

Seems to be a lot of disappointment and even some anger in this book.


One sergeant in the Green Berets told you - and this gives you some sense of the intensity of what went on - I've never seen that many rocket-propelled grenades in my career.

That's correct. He's an 11-year veteran of the Green Beret team, so he's pretty much seen it all in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said it was almost, you know, cinematic. This particular attack seemed so highly orchestrated that they just felt like, you know - that they were throwing everything that they could at them.

Why weren't the Afghan military forces in Ghazni able to repel this Taliban attack?

The local forces had communication problems. They weren't able to really strategize about how to beat back the Taliban forces. They were overwhelmed in a lot of ways, despite the fact that they're flush with U. S. -supplied weaponry, at that. There were reports of Afghan military firing on their own forces, as well as American convoys. And there were reports that they had delivered the wrong supplies to police departments that were in desperate need of more ammunition. So really, what it came down to was that they needed the U. S.  Special Forces and Afghan commandos, which is special forces of sorts for the Afghans, to be able to have strategy, to be able to communicate with one another and to be able to act in concert rather than these sort of disparate skirmishes.

That adds up to a pretty damning appraisal of the Afghan military's readiness.


Meanwhile, they put in 40 gigawatts of coal. So renewables are great, but for the developing world, they're still too expensive. And so China and India are going the way they can afford. We can't criticize them for that, and we can't afford to subsidize them. So the switch to natural gas I think is absolutely essential for the next several decades.

All right, thank you very much, it's been enlightening to talk to you, and hope that you'll be back when you've got new data to share with us.

We'd be happy to come back any time, Ira.

Richard Muller, thank you. He's author of "Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines. "He's also senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And we're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about planetary science of another kind, a trip to Mars.


You know, I would say those days coaching were some of the best days of my life. Internally, we were really solid, you know, from the players to the coaches. They were all very supportive. I think the skeptics came, a lot of the times as they do, from the outside looking in. They saw us as being very different, you know, men working with women. And what they didn't realize is that we were more alike than we were different. We were alike in the game and in what we had dedicated to be great. And those guys knew everything about me and my story before I got there, right?Like, they were literally like, coach, we watched your game film. Like, you are a beast off the edge, like - and they couldn't believe that I had played a season against guys, like, getting tackled by guys their size. And there was definitely an energy within the team that it was something very special, and those guys were proud to be a part of history.

There's been a lot of focus on the culture for women in the NFL. I'm thinking particularly of the Ray Rice scandal, and what can be perceived as a tolerance for abuse by male players. Does that make it harder for women, do you think?

Well, you know, I think in - let's like back out of that for a second, right?

OK.


Yeah.

Even the CIA's, like, getting this information. I imagine it's like the details that are the stuff that really make it pop, right?So can you give us an example of some of the details that you get about the personal life and interests of the dignitaries he may meet?

Sure. So as you can imagine, politics is about relationships and personalities. And so every leader has their own lifestyle, their own favorite things to do, their own personal interests. And so we endeavor to find out what those are. So for example, I'll take a meeting that happened between President George W.  Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan. Koizumi was a huge Elvis fan.

(Laughter).

And we learned that, and we knew that. And so the president decided, let's take Prime Minister Koizumi to Graceland. So they flew to Memphis. . .

Wow.


So one of the most famous stories about Julie takes place at a royal ball, at the Palais Royal. She attended in men's clothes. She often dressed in men's clothes, in the way that Katharine Hepburn dressed in men's clothes, not pretending to be a man, just, that was her style. And she saw a young woman on the dance floor, beautiful young woman, and she kissed her. Everyone gasped. And three men, one after another, three noblemen challenged her to a duel. So she said to them, one after another, yes, I'll meet you outside at midnight. Fought them, one after another, beat them all and then returned to the ball.

(Laughter) Just another night at the palace.

As you do, that's right. And, you know, that really sealed her reputation as a wild, uncontained woman who just did not care about any of the protocols.

Yeah. And how important was historical accuracy to you as a novelist?


What's the diet?

Yeah. I mean, are you juicing five minutes an hour or. . .

No, there isn't any particular diet, particular training. I know I made a training video, but it was just a spoof of the Rocky Montage training. So rather than knocking out an opponent, my job was to knock out the kettle.

Oh, my word. Well, you know, I'd vowed to stay away from this, but I have to ask. So you've seen "Guys and Dolls"?


Oh.

. . . You know, for the courts to go through. And maybe this issue will come all the way to the Supreme Court. Car companies, they need at least five years certainty to design a car, and they don't have that. So unless there is an agreement with California, they're going to find themselves dealing with uncertainty, which means, you know, lack of stability for the industry as a whole. It's pretty bad for the companies.

To what degree, is it your impression, automakers see the reduction of pollution as part of their responsibility in this country now?

Well, you know, clearly, what they will tell you is that they care about climate change. But also, they're worrying about competitiveness. Back in 2012, when we set the standards for cars, the U. S.  was ahead of every other country. China is doing better than us now and so is Europe. So companies realize that the way forward is to invest on advanced technologies, like electric vehicles. And if they don't, they're going to stay behind, and they're going to lose the competitiveness in the marketplace.


My pleasure, Scott.

And what seems to be the latest there?

Well, we had a night of very heavy air raids last night and it pushed the death toll from the low 20s up to around 40 - essentially doubling it in one night. We're now in the fourth day of what the Israelis have dubbed Operation Cloud Pillar. Last night, the air raids hit the headquarters of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Some other official houses were targeted. They also hit tunnels running under the border with Egypt, which are used to smuggle in weapons and fuel. Also, some electric power plants were hit, plunging some of southern Gaza into darkness.

And how are Hamas leaders responding?


It took a toll on my self-confidence, my decision making. I think he preyed on the fact that I was very naive. And so for me as being a powerful person, having gone and believed in myself and gotten to the "Today" show and had all of these people, producers, talent believing in me - and then he only seeing the physical side of me and only wanting that out of me. It shattered my confidence. So I couldn't focus on my job at all as I was trying to start my journalism career.

Since you went public with what happened, has anyone at NBC reached out to you?

I have not heard one peep from anyone in management at NBC. Of course, I have heard from several colleagues, staffers at the "Today" show who I knew and used to work with - Ann Curry, dear, dear friend of mine - but no one from management. Nobody has called to ask me questions about how it happened and what our communication for the last 17 years - how we've managed it.

Do you have confidence that NBC can really change its culture with that being true - what you just said - that they haven't even reached out to you?


For most of the dogs, we've probably gone from a ratio of 80% used to be trained on marijuana to now, we've reversed that to where only 20% have any marijuana training on them. So the limiting factor of now having a dog that is trained in marijuana - it is no longer utilized for a probable-cause warrant or sniff. It would probably be changing the role to just locating marijuana, whether it would be in a house or a car, after you've already established probable cause. So it's certainly limited the use of those dogs.

So my understanding is that before this, police dogs weren't trained to differentiate between types of drugs.

No. Now we're just going to go to most of the dogs will not have any marijuana training in them whatsoever. The primary purpose for most of the marijuana sniffs is now administrative - that will be through jails, schools and other types of locations that are federally funded and still illegal. The only thing this will do - it's going to hasten the retirement of those 20% or less that still are marijuana-trained in our state because of the fact that they're not able to utilize them for full functions.

Does this create conflict between state officers and federal law enforcement officers?Because obviously, on the federal level, marijuana is still illegal. And you obviously have federal law enforcement in your state. Is there any conflict there?


The bank says that, you know, it had nothing to do with who the Saudi Committee chose to give money to. And they said that they vetted all of the organizations and individuals against these international lists of designated terrorists and that there were no red flags.

How does it happen that a U. S.  court even has jurisdiction in this?

This is the first case under the Anti-Terrorism Act. And the reason it's being tried here is because again it's a federal - it's a U. S.  federal law. And many of the payments that we're talking about were processed through the New York-based operations of Arab Bank. So in order to clear payments, some of these transactions are routed through branches in the U. S.  And so that's where you get jurisdiction.

Jessica, are there implications for the banking industry in this case?


Only 34 percent of the voters went to the polls this week. Isn't that usually the kind of election in which a well-financed campaign with a good ground campaign is supposed to win?

That's the way it's been rigged for years. For years, the reason Chicago had a municipal election - not a primary - and put it in February when people were too frozen to leave their homes was to guarantee the installation - or reinstallation - of the incumbent. So this goes against all of that conventional wisdom.

Still, Mayor Emanuel just has to get another five percent of the vote. Does this runoff on April 7 look like a real election now?

Yes, it does. And the reason it does is that it's not the only activity and sort of fire burning in the city. We have a record number of runoffs. As you know, we have 50 aldermen. Nineteen of them didn't make it directly into a victory. They are going to runoffs, and they are the insurgents. They are the so-called progressives. They're the people that Emanuel's forces formed a PAC to try to reduce the numbers of. And so there's a lot of activity in wards, and it all speaks to this overall issue of voter discontent.


I didn't think this was going to go so immediately to the sex life of plants. But, apparently, that's where we're headed. I mean, why, though, has modern fruit become as sugary as it has?

Well, one of the main dates to remember here is 1930, which is when the United States passes the Plant Patent Act. And from that point forward, the idea is we're trying to encourage farmers to actually manipulate those plants and to make them sweeter and to make them fatter and also to make them seedless, to take their sex away. In fact, what's happening is that when you actually take the sex drive of a plant away, when you take away its seeds, it actually puts more energy into getting fat and sweet.

When you read about how fruit has impacted these zoo animals, were you surprised?

No, not at all. I mean, as I say, for years now, we've been lobbying these natural varieties of almost everything about them except their sweetness. You look at a watermelon. There is no seedless watermelon that's full of just bright red, luscious fruit. There's nothing like that found in nature. The tomatoes you find in nature are tiny and tasteless. The apples you find in nature are - almost all of them are spitters. People don't realize that everything that we're seeing in the supermarket, they're like superstars. They're like supermodels and elite athletes like LeBron James. That's what we're looking - at the supermarket.


So, if you wanted that kind of information, you certainly could have got it. And we know also that news delivery by old media in those days was much better than it is now. We're used to thinking of newspapers as I think, relatively poky. In those days, newspapers being sort of high-tech, there were lots of more them.

They came more often during the day. They were quite cheap, and there are some relatively reliable studies that show that the average urban-dwelling American probably had read two papers a day.

I wonder about this, how did people in the Great Depression think about the Great Depression especially in the early days, because they didn't have the Great Depression to hearken back to that their parents or grandparents had told them about?

Yeah, well, this is an excellent question. First of all, the thing that they looked back to if they wanted to think back to a time of real hardship, it would have been the depression of the early 1890s, which was about as close to them as the depression is to us, but closer actually. So, in the 1890s, you had upwards of 20 percent unemployment.


So they set up a system of community courts - without lawyers - to sort of repurpose a system that really had only been used for small claims mitigation in traditional Rwanda, called gacaca, and have open, communal - what we might call a town hall - format for trials. And then the idea was to hold people accountable and have a system of punishment. And this system banked very heavily on encouraging confession and rewarding it. But the confessions were supposed to be also verified by the community.

And what was the specific role of the victims or their surviving family members?They had to be there. And then, after verifying a certain account, were they expected to then make a public state of forgiveness or reconciliation?

They weren't necessarily in a position to verify. Many of them knew that so-and-so was always said to have killed their family members. But they weren't direct witnesses because, by virtue of their survival, that usually meant that they were either somewhere else or well-hidden or had escaped or. . .

Not present, yeah.


You know, Salvini's popularity soared to almost 40%, thanks to his anti-immigrant policy. He wanted to take advantage of that to become the next government leader. But yesterday he received a stinging rebuke from Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who accused him of institutional recklessness that can lead to political uncertainty and financial instability. And one opposition leader accused Salvini of creating a climate of hatred that's led to a sharp rise in racist attacks against people of color.

OK. So tell us a little bit more about Salvini 'cause this guy is clearly freaking out the European Union in many ways.

Absolutely. You know, after his nationalist League Party formed this very unlikely alliance with the anti-establishment Five Stars Movement, which is the biggest party in parliament, Salvini quickly took over the government agenda. Five Stars went along with his tough anti-immigrant measures. They even approved his parliamentary immunity when Salvini was investigated for holding migrants hostage while not allowing them to disembark at an Italian port. And Five Stars never complained about Salvini's savage criticism of the European Union and its regulations, which he describes as a ball and chain on Italy's foot.

Italy's one of the EU's largest economies. Like some other populist-led countries, Salvini pushed his government to challenge the whole idea of European integration. And, you know, Salvini has also raised alarms with his language, which critics say echoes that of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Wow.


Yeah. I think - again, after all these years, that's how I've expressed myself. And I always sort of would feel odd when people would describe, you know, singer-song - or what I do, really as confessional. I think that tends to often be said in the same sentence when you talk about singer-songwriters. And I never thought of it as something to confess but rather it's about how you express yourself.

There is those other events in your life. The pulmonary embolism must have scared you to death.

Mm-hmm. Terrifying.

And divorce almost as scary.


. . . Telling people to get the torches and the pitchforks. Look, I don't think that is going to happen. But this kind of precedent is dangerous. And it's really unnerving.

Who's alarmed by the - by Donald Trump's statement on this?Is it just - forgive me - the political chattering class, which, I guess - ostensibly of which we are both members. . .

(Laughter).

. . . And who he, Mr.  Trump, says are helping to rig the election with biased media coverage in any case?


It's just instinct.

It's just instinct.

I'm a photographer. I'm going to take a photograph.

Exactly. I'm thinking it's another person. Like, two people just passed me. I haven't identified him as a shooter until I looked through the lens. I didn't get scared - really scared until it was quiet, and I'm in the corner. And I'm assuming he's advancing at me and he's going to pass me. And I just kept saying to myself - I just kept praying just, please don't pass me; do not see me.

And it wasn't till I heard some voices saying, where did he go?Where did he go?And that's when a police officer across the street came into my field of view. And I could see him, and I was like, relieved, that if he's in the open, then the threat must be gone. So that's when I felt better about it.

You know, after police shot him, you were still working. You were still covering this. There are photos, I'm looking at online, where you are photographing the body on the ground. You were careful not to show his face. That's your training, too.


Was he in uniform?I mean, was this a. . .

He was in plainclothes, just driving in plainclothes.

Not that that makes it any better but still.

Well, at least they weren't dumb enough to go up to a fully uniformed police chief. But, you know, it's one of those things where we got one of the worst crime problems because there is no rhyme or reason to some of the things that are happening. You've got elderly gentlemen being beaten up at gas stations and people being afraid to come out of their homes at 5 P. M. It's not everywhere and it's not every neighborhood but it's enough that it's becoming what people think about living in Detroit.

Rochelle, Halloween's coming up and in Detroit that could mean Devil's Night.


What happens to a city when a whole bunch of its residents get really rich really quickly?A lot of people in San Francisco are worried about that right now. The city's in the middle of a tech IPO boom. Lyft and Pinterest went public earlier this year. Stock in Uber begins trading tomorrow. Other big names plan to follow. And that means thousands of new millionaires in a city that's already one of the least affordable in the country. This week, Gordon Mar, who serves on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, proposed a new payroll tax targeting IPOs. He says the tech boom of the past decade has been good for San Francisco, but there are downsides.

We've seen growing traffic congestion and gridlock on our streets due to the huge influx of new workers here in our city. We've seen a growing housing crisis, housing affordability crisis, to the point where the median rent right now for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,500 a month.

Unbelievable.

Yeah. And then sort of related to this, our homelessness crisis - tens of thousands of our community members continue to live unsheltered on the streets due just to the growing economic divide here in our city.


But there is this some sense that, you know, the administration - others in the administration would like to fast-track it. There is a mechanism for doing that. I mean, do you have a specific message to Democrats?Because, as you know, with such a large - particularly with such a large presidential field, you've got all kinds of different opinions about international trade in that group. Do you know what I mean?So do you have a specific message to them about how to - you would like to see them proceed?

Yeah, we do. Look. NAFTA isn't broken. It's done exactly what it was meant to. It exploited workers in Mexico. It disrupted lives here. It's taken money out of our pockets, and it's put it in the hands of a few billionaires. So the solution just isn't a new NAFTA. It can't be rebranded or a sliver of change. The only answer is a strong enforceable mechanism for raising wages and protecting the rights of working people. This agreement is not yet there. It's no. And if they insist on trying to jam through this inferior, ineffective trade agreement that is nothing more right now than a-little-bit-better-NAFTA, then we would have to oppose it. And I think that we would have enough votes on both sides of the aisle to prevent it from becoming the law of the land.

That's Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. Mr.  Trumka, thanks so much for talking to us once again.

Thanks for having me on, I really appreciate it.


At 18 years old, I moved from Charlotte to the mountains. And I've lived in Appalachia - in Jackson County, N. C.  - ever since. And it's the same thing here. You know, I think poverty - it's the same condition no matter where you're from. You know, I talked a little bit in that essay about that man from Baltimore saying desperation is a way of life.

This was a documentary on the BBC that was talking about poverty in Baltimore.

Yeah. I think anybody I grew up with could have said that. Anybody that I'm friends with now in Hazelwood, Haywood County, could say that. That's the reality of people who have nothing. They all know what it's like to miss a meal or to have the lights turned off or to have to decide - do I make my car payment, or do I pay my health insurance?That's a common theme that bridges the gap all across this country. And the unifying thing about that is poverty.

You also talk about addiction. The opioid crisis, as we know, is enormous right now. And you say that people just want to be listened to. What is the story that we aren't hearing?


Yes, actually nine years ago, April 2007, I collapsed from sleep deprivation and hit my desk on the way down and broke my cheekbone. And that was my wake-up call in terms of changing my own life, understanding the science behind the need for sleep and also looking around and seeing how many millions of us are in similar states of perpetual exhaustion to the point where it becomes the new normal and we don't even notice it.

Isn't there a kind of macho, if you please, attached to lack of sleep or people who feel they only need a little sleep to function?

Oh, absolutely. You know, there is a tremendous braggadocio going on. I mean, I had dinner with a guy recently who bragged that he had only gotten four hours sleep the night before. And I didn't say it, but I thought, did you know this dinner would've been a lot more interesting if you had gotten five?

(Laughter).


Happy birthday NASA. Fifty years old today. Wonder how that feels?A former NASA engineer thinks this now middle-aged agency should try something new. Solve the energy crisis by collecting solar power through a space-based energy system. He's Glenn Smith. He oversaw science and applications experiments for the international space station when he was at NASA. We spoke earlier about his proposal.

You have very large solar cells, solar rays in space, probably 22 thousand miles out, so it circles the earth at the same speed that the earth rotates. It stays above one spot on the earth, and you convert that electric power into microwaves, and you beam it down near cities where large amounts of power are used. Receives it, converts it back to electric energy and feeds it into the existing power grid.

And that wouldn't be dangerous to anyone who got in the way of that ray coming down, or airplanes flying by, or anything?

Well, I've got a lot of questions about that. But here's what we have. The highest power level of the beam is only about one-fifth of the energy density of summer sunlight at noon. One-fifth. Tests have been run on bees and birds twice that level and they haven't found any effects yet.


Yeah. Everyone agrees that our prescription drug costs are too high - both right and left - you know, Democrat, Republican. It's one of the few points of information, points of fact that everyone agrees on. The problem is everyone disagrees on how best to tackle that. And there are a lot of forces that are resisting any change at all.

The bipartisan solution which Senator Klobuchar and Senator John McCain have proposed is allowing prescription drug imports from other countries, so we allow for a global competition in the sense of, you know, if everyone else is getting a better deal than us, why can't we buy our prescription drugs from there the same way we buy our, you know, refrigerators and cars?

Elisabeth Rosenthal, editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News and author of "An American Sickness: How Health Care Became Big Business And How You Can Take It Back. "Thanks so much for being with us.

Thanks for having me.


As you said in your introduction, she did play two definitive Southern belles, Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois. I guess also extraordinary that really, a classic English rose would play these two very famous roles in American literature. And I think both her accents are very convincing in both those films. But a number of her performances do continue into the modern age.

I think her life was relatively short. She died really at 53. But she certainly packed quite a lot in. I mean, she never stopped working, even after bouts of illness. She always was able to come back to work on stage and screen. And I think she really liked to play a variety of roles, and wanted to stretch herself as an actress.

Is there an item in the exhibit you would especially like to draw our attention to?

Well, what's been interesting for me is reading her correspondence with the film director Elia Kazan, who directed the film version of "Streetcar. "And she'd written a very, very long letter to him, really analyzing each scene and putting her thoughts down on paper. It begins with, "I am 5-foot-3 and a half tall in my bare feet, without shoes on" - which is rather sweet.


Well, part of number two is to go and send swarms of Arkyd 300 spacecraft to these high targets that - high value targets. And then after number two, we'll choose the ones that we want to actually extract resources from. And then number three, phase three comes along, which is to go and extract those resources and deliver them to the point of need.

Good luck to you, Eric Anderson. I hope you get a webcam on those asteroids for us to follow along with you.

We will. Don't worry.

All right. Thanks for joining us.


They are the showrunners.

That's right. And they were really, really supportive of it. They really liked it. So that made me feel good. And they really stood up for it. And they basically said, if you don't show it, then we're walking off the show. So the compromise was that a title card was put up, which, you know, may, in the end, have the same impact, or even greater impact than the spot itself. But, of course, personally, I would've liked people to have seen it.

Speaking of your animation, they said, we had concerns with some subject matter in the episode's animated short. This is the creative solution that we agreed upon with the producers. So you're a professional. Do you think this is a creative solution?

You know what?I don't know. I have to be kind of careful with what I say. I can kind of sympathize in a lot of ways with the decision they made 'cause I run my own business, and I'm pretty sort of pragmatic about, you know, decisions that are made. But I think it's just really kind of disappointing, if anything. And I think people would've really liked it.


You know, I think that - I haven't been so inspired to do anything and get so involved since Clinton, you know, when I was working grassroots for that campaign. And for this, you know - I've always kept my work about hip-hop and jazz and the urban experience. My work is really about celebrating urban life. And to me, Obama represents that. He really does celebrate urban life and he's someone that's very relatable.

You have this beautiful picture in your book about a jazz quartet or quin. . .

Quintet.

Quintet. And although you're dealing with the hip-hop sensibility, you also - it's easy to see how it relates to a jazz and blues sensibility. Why did you do that work?


Do you think the Trump administration has achieved that with this action?I mean, do you see them as having a coherent strategy in your view to bring Assad to the table?

No, I don't, and that's the problem. So the strikes were successful in the sense that we follow through on our word. But what now?There doesn't seem to be an answer to some of these larger questions that we were just discussing. Like, where do we go from here?What is our end goal in Syria?What are we doing about the humanitarian situation?Are we going to accept more refugees, or are we going to try to allow people to go back into their homes?Are we going to push for another political - a round of political talks like the ones we had in Geneva or not?These are some of the big questions that I think the administration should be thinking about right now and should be planning for rather than focusing just on the use of chemical weapons and the immediate reaction to that.

Jasmine El-Gamal is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and she joined us from Beirut. Thank you so very much.

Thanks, Lulu.


There have come into being a kind of a Shia-belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire, this time under a Shia label. From a geo-strategic point of view, I consider Iran a bigger problem than ISIS. ISIS is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can become a geo-strategic, permanent reality. I think a conflict with ISIS - important as it is - is more manageable than a confrontation with Iran.

What would you do about ISIS?

They have cut the throat of an American on television. This is an insult to the United States, which requires that we demonstrate that this is not an act that is free. I would strongly favor a strong attack on ISIS for a period that is related to the murder of the American. Then, we have to go into the long-range problem. I think when we're dealing with a unit like ISIS, we should not get into a position where they can lead us by establishing ground forces. But we should set strategic objectives where we thwart any goal they set themselves, which we should be able to do by superior air power. And then if we can enlist other countries or other more local groups to do the ground fighting, we might actually destroy them.

Let me ask you about a couple of other areas of the world. You spent a considerable time in this book writing about what you call the Russian enigma. What's your reading of what Vladimir Putin's Russia wants?


I like a slice of lime, but you don't need it. And by the way, you better also get that lime before the price goes up.

Jacob Gluck, cheers.

Thank you.

He's co-owner of Goza Tequila based in Atlanta, Ga.


There had to be an innovation. Yeah, John Graham was actually building a revolving bar in Honolulu, and they thought, well, let's since they had - Graham wanted a flying saucer shape. And, of course, Washington state had kicked off the whole flying saucer craze with the sighting at Mt. Rainier in 1947 that the press had called flying saucer. But it became this kind of iconic idea of what the future would look like. Well, because it was this circular shape, a revolving restaurant made sense. Graham patented a gearing system that allowed you to turn the entire restaurant of 250 people with a one-horsepower motor.

Wow.

And that was built up in Everett, Washington, just north of Seattle.

With a size that drives a washing machine. It's very small.


So, what do you think is the possibility that Secretary Kerry can accomplish something?What do you think would look like success to him in nine months?

Success, obviously, would be in the form of an agreement reached. And I think that to do so, Secretary Kerry is going to have to enlist the support, the proactive support, of the White House. That is the missing formula so far. Whereas the White House, of course, has offered its generous support, no agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis have been possible. If it involved only the efforts of the State Department and did not invoke at some stage the active participation of the White House, of the U. S.  president himself, what looks to be the case, is that the White House feels that this has a very small chance of success and therefore has given the secretary some general form of support that the parties in the region do not see as enough to sort of push them into an agreement that has that support.

Marwan Muasher oversees research on the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thank you very much.

Thank you.


All right, Lanny, final question, and got to keep this tight. Is it smart or fair for him to stay as the head of Ways and Means?

It's absolutely smart and fair, so long as he's willing to accept the judgment on the merits when the investigation is completed. Now, Congressman Boehner, the Republican minority leader, introduced a censure resolution when there are Republicans on the House Ethics Committee who haven't even had a chance to see the evidence. This is the same John Boehner who has admitted to handing out tobacco money on the floor of the House. That's who is jumping to conclusions, as Ken Spain has done. And by the way, even in your case, there is a difference between indictment and conviction. You can indict a ham sandwich. I wrote a column that said Ted Stevens is an innocent man until he's proven guilty. Well, so is Charles Rangel. We've turned over everything we're going to to the Ethics Committee. We asked the Ethics Committee to investigate Congressman Rangel. Now we have our forensic investigator who's reporting to the Ethics Committee, and then we're going to publish everything, including 20 years of tax returns, and abide by the Ethics Committee judgment. Only Republicans desperate to change the subject as to what has happened in this economy over eight years of Republican gross negligence. . .

All right, Lanny.

Is the word that I heard used, would focus on Charlie Rangel rather than what's going on in mainstream America today.


Oh, gosh. I. . .

Do you have over a thousand?

I can tell you in gigabytes. I have 40 GB of music.

Forty gigabytes. OK, so you're - I mean, you're doing pretty good. I mean, the average person actually carries around 1,700 songs. I had no idea, I don't carry that many songs with me.


Oh, sure. He had extremely high standards for himself, and for his wife and. . .

I guess what I mean is, did you ever look at him across the table and say, don't treat me like Hamid Karzai.

You know what?(Laughter) Richard was - extremely calming influence on me. I've got a pretty quick, Hungarian temper, and he just had such a way of deflating my emotional outbursts. He was actually one of the calmest in-crisis people that I've ever known. And you know, I describe, in the book, being with him when he was negotiating the end of the war in Bosnia, and principally in Dayton.

He put you between - is it Begovich and Milosevic, at dinner.

Yes, and gave me a very easy assignment. He said, make them talk to each other. And of course, you know, a few days before, these two warlords had been trying to gouge out each other's eyes. So that was a challenge.


No, I think this will be about fact. That's why I added a number of authors and historians to this commission. When these monuments were erected, they were to celebrate but also, I think, to intimidate individuals, as well. They were there to continue to convey what I think is, you know, alternative facts and history. At the end of the day, these individuals defended a time and a purpose that would probably have me and my ancestors in bondage. And that should not go untold.

Some, though, would say this is a cop-out. New Orleans has torn down a number of its Confederate monuments. The city of Charlottesville, Va. , voted to sell its statue of Robert E.  Lee. Why not remove these statues?

Well, first I will say that our monuments commission will obviously listen to all sides. They'll listen to those who think that we may be trying to rewrite history. We're going to listen to people who think that we should remove the monuments. My charge to the commission is to tell the whole truth. For some, this was the third rail in Richmond politics - that you can never touch Monument Avenue. And I think that right now this is an opportunity for us and a responsibility for us to write the next new chapter for the city of Richmond.

Levar Stoney, the Democratic mayor of Richmond, Va.  We've been checking in with him throughout his first year in office. And we will be doing so as the year rolls on. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Lulu.


You did it.

Yeah, but I didn't realize the difficulty of doing that because you're not supposed to play the trumpet like that. I need(ph) getting with these saxophone players. I wanted to play like them, so.

You know, 1964, you were like - you were hot, you were on fire. What was it like at that time to be Freddie Hubbard the star, the headliner?

You know, I was there, and I was in a competition - not - you know, a competition with Lee Morgan(ph) and Bill Holland(ph) and Donald Barry(ph), all these guys were there, and it was a test. I mean, every time you played, you were being watched and people compared you with - look at little Lee Morgan. So that competition kind of kept me going, you know. I mean, they made me strive to play better than I would normally.


A crackdown this week on opioid abuse resulted in federal criminal charges against 60 people accused of illegally prescribing and distributing opioids. They include doctors, nurses and pharmacists. One even allegedly traded drugs for sex. That sting focused on Appalachia, one of the areas hardest hit by the opioid epidemic. It's a mostly rural area where access to health care is already a challenge for residents.

So we wanted to know about the impact of this crackdown on both addicts and people who rely on opioids to manage chronic pain. That's something Dr.  Stephen Loyd has been thinking a lot about over the last few days. He's based in Nashville. And he's the state of Tennessee's former assistant commissioner for substance abuse. He's also a former addict, and now works with addiction recovery programs in the Nashville area. Dr.  Loyd, thank you for talking with us about this.

Thanks so much for having me, Sacha.

More than half the people charged in the sting are from Tennessee, where you live. Seventeen of them are doctors. Give us some perspective on what happens when you remove 17 doctors and other health care officials from a rural area that already has a doctor shortage even if those doctors were doing criminal things?


The question that has the most votes so far is this one - why do cockroaches flip over on their backsides when they die?I sprayed Raid into a hole in my wall the other day, and by the next morning, I found six cockroaches laid out on my floor, all flipped over and all very dead.

Good question.

I think that's a good question. That will be a fairly straightforward one to research, I think.

So, Daniel, people are casting their votes now. When are you going to tally them up, and then when are you going to answer that unanswered question?


Right.

You know, she said, he's sort of Ralph Lauren type. Do you like that type?And here I am thinking, like, God, no.

What did she ask you to do?

She didn't tell me to do anything. She just said, just do whatever he asks, and you'll be fine. And again, that's another comment that was made as we were leaving the car as we walked into the house that didn't land right away. But obviously, in hindsight now, that - the comment, you know, landed pretty hard with me.


About six lengths off the lead followed by Homeroom Jester and the trailer is Dolarolarorrarockadockamolahholah.

Hackahmackahdolohrollocolamockahdackahmolahhackahdohkah.

(Laughter).

And yeah.


This is Day to Day. I'm Alex Cohen, and I am not ashamed to admit, this holiday season, some of my dear friends and family members will receive gifts which I previously received from someone else. It's called regifting. And with more on the topic, here's independent producer Vanessa Romo.

Chances are, opening presents around the Christmas tree tomorrow, you'll be surrounded by two types of people, regifters and those who believe regifters should be carted off to an igloo colony. I know which parka-wearing camp I'm in. But what about the rest of the world?Or rather, what about a random sample of coffee shop goers and gym worker outers.

Unidentified Woman #1: I teach etiquette to children and young adults. And regifting is one of my favorite topics.

Unidentified Man #1: Am I a regifter?Well, until five minutes ago, I imagined regifting was regiving a gift, but I wasn't too sure.


Yeah, it did. And when I left, I was so angry at them because I didn't understand. And it wasn't until many years later for me to be able to see where they're coming from.

(Singing) Times have really, really changed, changed.

It feels like the song "Rebel" is a little bit about you, too.

Yeah.


And I finished my first really substantial version of "Copperhead" the same weekend as the Charlottesville protests almost two years ago, the same weekend that Heather Heyer was murdered. And my wife was reading this draft of "Copperhead" at the same time that all this was on the news, so it was very much on my mind.

I mean, my family history - you know, I look back, and I think, OK, this has always been coming. But right now, it feels louder. It feels scarier. But I struggle with the idea that if we somehow hate more, hate louder, hate harder - that's how we're going to win this fight. I think the only thing that can beat away darkness is light. But at the same time, one of the reasons I think this book is important is that we have to have honest conversations about race and class - all of us.

Did you have teenagers in mind as a potential audience for this novel?Would you, for instance, want a high school English class to study "Copperhead?"

When I was writing it, I didn't think of it that way. But I think it's an excellent book for teenagers and college students because there are things to talk about. The point of the book isn't to deliver a moral. It's not out there sort of signaling that, yes, we're all good people. It's saying to teens, hey - your actions have consequences, and you have to think about who you want to be.


I think it may encourage a few big states, as I mentioned, to try to move away a little bit from weighing race and trying to find a way, like this top 10 law, rewarding top graduates, find a way to bring in more minority students but without giving an explicit preference in the admissions policy.

Now some will remember there was another case I think from the University of Michigan that was also broadly about affirmative action. Does the Texas case supplant that, or are we awaiting a decision on the Michigan case, as well?

We're waiting a decision on the Michigan case, as well. That will be argued in the fall. The lower court decided that on a different basis, basically said that they threw out - the lower court threw out a state proposition, a ballot measure that prohibited affirmative action in Michigan. And so that's a different legal issue, and the court's going to hear that case and decide it next year.

Well, a couple of other interesting cases they picked up for next year announced today, one of them McCullen v.  Coakley, which takes on the issue of protestors at abortion clinics. And as I understand it, their case argues that the law in Massachusetts that prohibits them from barring entry to - they have to be a certain distance away from entries to abortion clinics, that violates their right to free speech.


That raises the point - did he wind up being useful to the Qatar regime?

Well, the lobbyists said that they didn't make any specific asks of the people who went to Doha. But they just hoped, and it turns out they were right about this, that these people would say nice things about Qatar and just sort of start to change the conversation that they thought the president might be picking up on through the media that he listens to, the social media that he uses and the people that he has in the White House.

Alan Dershowitz - as an example, he wrote a very glowing column about his visit in The Hill newspaper. And then, people like Governor Huckabee tweeted a couple of nice things about Doha and how lovely it was. The radio host who went over, John Batchelor, actually broadcast from Doha for a week and then spoke very glowingly afterwards in very positive terms, you know, really saying that the U. S.  ought to embrace this country more. And, indeed, when the emir visited the White House in April of this year, which, in and of itself, was a big move, the president seemed very friendly with him, very open to him and called him and his country a friend of the U. S.  And so to these lobbyists' minds, what they did worked.

What are the implications of this new approach in lobbying?I mean, I'm wondering - would Qatar or some other power start trying to get close to the people who are Mar-a-Lago members and might see Mr.  Trump over the relish tray?


Right now, American voters are debating whether to put a black man in the White House. In "Palace Council," a reporter named Eddie Wesley finds himself both professionally and personally connected to race, political violence and murder. I asked Professor Carter how he balances his life as a novelist and a Law Professor at Yale?

I think it was more of an escape. When I'm a law professor, I deal with difficult and even depressing subjects. I teach in areas like law and religion, or integrity and ethics, things like that. Writing novels, for me, writing fiction turns out to be a good balance. I write them mainly as entertainment, it's fun for me to write them, and it seems to be fun for readers to read them. Anyway people keep buying them.

Always good. This book really enters some very heavy research territory. As you flip through "Palace Council," you will see John Kennedy referenced, you will see the Vietnam War referenced, Richard Nixon referenced. Tell us a little bit about the structure of the novel, and why all of these actual people show up?

My first two novels, although they were thrillers, I guess I'd call them campus thrillers. They were both set on a mythical Ivy League campus in New England. This novel is, I guess you'd call it, a historical thriller. It begins in the '60s and runs through the '70s, and it tells the story of a massive conspiracy among families. Some very powerful and shadowy families. Some white, and some black, too, aiming at control of the Oval Office.


I would say that those who have sought to make a story of this initially focused on the decision by Hunter Biden to take this lucrative deal. But starting late last year and really kind of earlier this year in March timeframe, Giuliani and his allies have been pushing allegations that Joe Biden when he was vice president used his office to put pressure on the Ukrainian president at the time to fire a prosecutor who they allege was investigating Hunter Biden and the company that had him on the board.

I looked very closely at this and spoke to officials who were involved in that. And I understand the first example of the questions about whether or not he should have taken this job in the first place. I think that is a legitimate topic to be discussed and suggests questionable judgment that was made by Hunter. But in the case of his father using his office to fire this prosecutor, what I found was to the contrary. That prosecutor was not investigating his son or the company and is merely claiming that he did in retrospect.

Does Hunter Biden still hold this position?

He resigned the position on the board earlier this summer and basically decided that it just wasn't worth the heat for himself and for his father.


Do you think what we've seen over the past couple of weeks represents some kind of tipping point in the way people think about guns?

Probably not, unfortunately. I mean, after - Sandy Hook was about the worst thing that could ever possibly happen. And it didn't substantially change the tone of this debate. What is different is when you mix an ISIS story, which is what we have now, with a gun-control story. Maybe that's what's going to change things.

The idea that people who may not have been able to get on an airplane were able to acquire guns.

Right, right, right. We have zero tolerance for Islamic - Islamic State terrorism. We seem to have a certain level of tolerance for a certain number of school shootings a year. So - I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. And so maybe that's what tips this debate. But I don't see any one incident tipping the debate in the way you're suggesting.


I failed chemistry really disastrously. Kind of tellingly, my father wanted me to take it because he wanted me to be a doctor. And I really didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be a writer and an actor. You know, a lot of people don't know how to break into show business.

(Laughter) But failing chemistry is the way.

First way.

(Laughter) So what prompted you to pick up science journals and read them later on?


Mm-hmm. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR, talking with Anthony Leiserowitz of the - he's the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication at Yale. How can you follow up with this?Can you keep coming up with new polls so we can follow this?

Oh, absolutely. We'll be doing this at least twice a year and, of course, we have lots of other colleagues around the country that are also surveying on this exact same topics.

And will we know if this does move into the - more into the political discourse as well as the public discourse?

Well, I think we'll see it. I mean, first of all, you can see it in the amount of - number of times that the president talks about this, that candidate Mitt Romney talks about this, as well as across the board. I mean, remember, it's not just the presidential election. There are some Senate races and congressional races all over this country. And what we're seeing is that a lot of people are beginning to ask the question about climate change.


Yeah, it is. And there are also quite a few international news networks just outside the courtroom. But you see, the press are allowed in the courtroom. And for myself, I work for the news agency, and we are actually writing down everything that's said in the courtroom and publishing that. So you can't really film or you can't broadcast on television or - and on the radio, but in print and on the Web, everything is published basically.

And what has been the reaction of those who survived the attack and those who are related to the victims?

They've been very calm. They've been - I don't know - there were many speculations in advance what could happen during a trial like this because you should see that 77 deaths in Norway is more than twice the annual death rate and the murder rate in Norway. So 77 victims in one day is something we haven't really thought in our wildest dreams could ever happen. So the - I think the expectations were quite - anything could happen, but what's happened in reality is everything has been very calm. The victims and their families are in the courtroom and in, actually, 17 different courtrooms around the country watching the trial. But it has been very calm in very respectful way of - I mean, how the trial has gone so far.

And what will they do to mark the anniversary?

Actually, I don't know. There's been a lot of speculations, but one thing is certain, it will be all over the country. There will be the - what you say, markings, but how, we don't know yet.


This is an email. We've asked other songwriters to email us and say how much of themselves and their lives do they put in into their lyrics. This is from Luli(ph). I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I have always put my own experiences in my music combined with experiences and emotions I interpret from those around me. One challenge has always been with significant others looking too deeply into my music if, for example, the song is sad or about love. A risk that somebody is going to misinterpret something.

Well, as Eudora Welty so beautifully put it, all serious steering comes from within. So, you know, I think that you can't have your art and not take risks.

And this one is from Mary: My husband passed two years ago at the age of 50. I lost all desire to play, as well as creativity. Only recently have I rediscovered how to put my emotion into my music. My life is definitely reflected in my music. Thank you to all singer-songwriters for giving us a channel through your lives.

How long after these events - obviously, your father passed last year, so not that long before you went into production for this album.

No. I have been writing these songs that became this record for the last few years. And then after dad died, I had a few more songs to write, as you can imagine. And then I went into a studio this past January and recorded the album.


I am. I am. Otherwise I would've been scared to go fishing at the fishing places I was going to. Or I would've been scared to go hang out with my friends at the end of this road in the field, like, you know I'm saying?I didn't think - I didn't have to think about those things. I just got to be me and form my own opinions.

(Singing) See, I'm black. I'm not white, but I'm that. No. No. I'm this, right?I'm one drop of three-fifths, right?

Toward the end, you're questioning. You're like, wait, I'm this?No. I'm that?No. I'm one drop of three-fifths?And it struck me as unusual for you - an unusual way to deliver a song. Do you have questions about your identity?Are there things that, for you, are still not answered?

Well, to me, growing up, I was just an oddity no matter where I went. It was like - you feel me?


Other than describing him as a populist, can you describe his politics to us?

Well, he has a combination of sort of radicalism, and he doesn't want high-speed trains. He want the unemployment benefits for everyone. But also, he said he wants a referendum on the euro - which, of course, is completely the pie in the sky. But these he's got, also, some wise - says some wise things, says, for instance, we have to stop showering political parties with public money.

I know you, in the United States, you have different problems with money and politics. But in Europe, especially in Italy, too much money - public money, our money goes to political parties. He say: Two terms is enough in parliament. And he says things that, actually, sort of people like to hear. And that's why he could share those points. You could leave the populist and the radical things aside and find those things that he share with the Italian Democratic Party - which, by the way, is not that different from your Democratic Party. The big difference, that you have Obama, and in Italy, we have Bersani.

Well, a lot of people are interested in another name that begins with a B, and that is Berlusconi. He left office in disgrace. He is still facing numerous trials, and yet here he is, back, a major player once again.


So right now, we're seeing a retrenching, although I do think that more advertisers should be spending more money online right now and unfortunately, maybe pulling from traditional media because you can track your online advertising much better than you can with your general traditional buckshot type of campaigns.

You talk a lot to us about the opportunities that are out there for entrepreneurs of color, and of course, Russell Simmons has been someone who's been able to do a little bit of everything. He started out in the music industry. He's done you know - he's got for-profit, non-profit, jewelry, you know, home, clothing. . .

Credit card.

Yeah. It's just pretty much everything.


So is a bagel just a bialy with a hole in the middle?

It's very different, and the origins of the bagel are somewhat mysterious. There's a lot of folklore around it and variable legends about how the bagel came to exist. But I have decided that we will never know.

Well, it's one of the great mysteries of life, think of it that way. What made the bagel leap from being just kind of New York street food, you know, or maybe Sunday brunch food, across the country?

So it was really, I think, the Lenders brothers, and Lender's bagels are what I grew up in. I grew up outside of Detroit, Michigan, and I thought they were the greatest thing ever. Like you would get six of them in a little plastic tube. And now, like when I think, the taste was awful, but they were early adopters of refrigeration technology.


EDWARD O.  WILSON: Always a pleasure to be with you, Ira.

Thank you very, very much. This is almost like advice to the lovelorn sort of book, it's advice to would-be scientists. Why did you write this?

Well, 42 years of teaching at Harvard qualified me, and I had learned lot about what brings students into science, whether as professionals or as part of their general education program, and what drives them away. And I saw a lot of the brightest young people, the most qualified, potentially, to be in science and technology turned away because at an early stage in their career at Harvard they were just afraid of mathematics, and they were afraid of the kind of rigors that one experiences in the usual portrayal of scientists as white coat people standing at the blackboard explaining complex equations and other ideas to rapt audiences.

Because you talk about your career and about your work with such passion in your book that I few people would know that a scientist could be as passionate and as successful about their work. And it seems like it's a necessary - or it's something like, almost like continuing to have a childlike curiosity about the world for your whole life.


Yes, sitting out there frozen feet, but it was the best frozen feet I've ever had because of what of happened in front of me. Seeing him take that oath and just seeing the people in that crowd go crazy and all people in wheelchairs would never thought they would see this. Seeing their reaction and seeing the white people their reaction, seeing America and the whole world. I know they will have the same reaction. It's about time.

Here's another quick question for you. I would think, Patti, that UNCF would really stand to be a beneficiary of having someone like Barack Obama in the White House.

That's what I'm saying. And this show airs the same week that this greatness happened to America. And so now people will say, OK, let us help our kids so that they know that they can say I could become the next president.

Here's my last question. I know that you talked a little bit about Jennifer Hudson and she's about to make her first public performance at the Super Bowl.


This is an exceptional decree. It's - it is - if you look at it for face value, it is wholly undemocratic. But they say this is the only way to cut out institutions that are undermining us and get to a point of political stability because every time we take one step forward, it's 10 steps back with this court.

There is a - after so long under dictatorship, and it was certainly not just Mr.  Mubarak but his predecessors all the way back through Nasser and before it had a king and, well, effective British rule before that, there's been one person in charge of Egypt for a very long time.

Yes. And, you know, people wanted that to change. And one of the things we heard a lot of in Tahrir Square today is we didn't oust Mubarak to get an Islamist dictator - oust a secular dictator to get an Islamist dictator. And Morsi was elected, but the idea is to have a democratic process. One of the complaints also about the draft constitution is it gives too much power to the president. And now people are saying, we want to be represented; all of Egypt, not just the Muslim Brotherhood.

Is there any indication that at this point, the president and the Muslim Brotherhood will reconsider?


I'm doing great. Now, let's talk a little bit about Charlie Rangel. He's an icon. He's got this gravelly voice. This slicked back hair. Dapper dresser. And with his reputation as a deal maker he's held onto his seat for 19 terms. So, what are the most important parts of this multifaceted story?

Well there's a lot of issues that have been brought up related to the chairman. But the one that seems to the most teeth is really this issue of his taxes and specifically his ownership of a beach house in the Dominican Republic where he didn't report rental income for about two decades, and he owes taxes on that. And for most people that's a problem. If you are the chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws that's arguably a big problem.

So what is he risking if critics continue to push for him to leave this powerful committee post that he holds?

Well there are few positions in the House, certainly, that are more important than the one that he has and at this point the Democrats seem to be standing by him. Were he to lose that, though, you lose a great deal of influence over tax policy and one of the odd little inner workings of Washington is that a lot of what really affects economic policy right now goes on in tax policy as opposed to elsewhere.


. . . near-Earth objects, and they are very, very useful.

Yeah. What kind of metal?You looking for platinum, gold?What's the holy grail here?

Well, there's lots of different types of asteroids, and each type has a different concentration of different types of elements. So a certain type of asteroid is very high in nickel and iron. Those are useful, ultimately. Another type is very high in water, which is extremely useful. Other volatiles as well, things like methane, which you know better as natural gas.

Let me stop you there for a minute because we have plenty of water on this planet. I mean, do we have to go to an asteroid to mine it?


Earlier this week, a man walked free from a court nearly 30 years after he'd been wrongly convicted of a murder. David McCallum was 16 years old when he was sent to prison along with William Stuckey. Both men were convicted of murder in 1986. William Stuckey died in prison, but Mr.  McCallum continued to fight to clear his own name. In January, his lawyer sent a letter to the Brooklyn District Attorney, Kenneth Thompson, who'd just taken office. The DA looked into the case and decided to reopen it. And since then, he's instituted review of a number of cases from the 1980s and '90s. District attorney Kenneth Thompson joins us from our studios in New York. Mr.  Thompson, thanks so much being with us.

Thank you for having me.

What did you see that led you to move to reopen this case?

What I saw was that there was no evidence linking David McCallum or Willie Stuckey to the abduction and to the murder of Nathan Blenner other than their confessions. And their confessions were very short and they contained false-fed facts. That led me and members of my conviction review team to conclude that the confessions were false.


How was that?

Well, it was astonishing. I think that the grown-ups around us were much too confused themselves to be able to sort of sit down and tell us that when they said that television sets belong to Satan, maybe they hadn't been right. Suddenly, we've got a television set in our house. Suddenly, we've got a radio. . .

Oh, boy.

. . . (Laughter) In our house. And suddenly, we're being taken to go and see "Gone With The Wind" in the cinema.


Maybe in part but certainly not for all of it. I mean, look. You can see how investor might be inspired by the Trump administration, right?He is seen as business-friendly, as is the Republican Congress. They're talking about cutting corporate taxes. They're talking about cutting regulations. So that might make investors more bullish.

But you have so many other factors that weigh on the markets. For example, low interest rates. That might be sending stocks higher. Job creation is steady, like we were saying. And the global economy is doing OK.  And one other thing to emphasize here, Donald Trump does have a lot of economic policies he wants to pass. You know, he's talked about infrastructure. They've talked about overhauling the tax code. Those things haven't happened yet.

Who seems to benefit from the stock market climb right now?

Definitely rich people, I mean, is the short answer. You know, according to data from 2013 - and I find this astounding - the top 10 percent of households in terms of wealth owned 80 percent of the stocks in America. That's a huge discrepancy. And still others, you know, are invested via retirement accounts. So you have some of the middle class that is benefiting, but you have all of those other people that own no stock. They might see some indirect effects.


You mentioned that your narrator offers to help translate this project, the book of collateral damage. This, too, resemble something you've done in real life because you have translated other people's works from Arabic into English. Are you also thinking of that as an act of preservation?

Definitely. Its preservation. It's a creative act. And because the - one of the bright aspects of the history of our species is the exchange and transmitting beauty from one cultural sphere to another. And it's a deliberate act, and if I had more time, I would do more translation.

Given. . .

I also translated my previous novel, "The Corpse Washer" - I translated it from Arabic to English.


This week, during a trip to California, President Trump turned his attention to the homelessness crisis there. Previously, he's criticized the cleanliness of San Francisco's streets. On this trip, he called homelessness in Los Angeles a disaster. And he said, quote, "we're going to get involved very soon on a federal basis if they don't clean up their act," unquote. We wanted to see what the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, had to say about all this. And he is with us now.

Mr.  Mayor, thank you so much for being with us.

Great to be with you, Michel.

President Trump has described the homelessness crisis as a, quote-unquote, "disgrace to our country. "And we know based on data from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority that homelessness is up 16% over the last year in the city of Los Angeles. Based on that, do you agree with the president's description of the problem?


So they believe in the rapture. And unless they stick to Brethren rules and have no contact with the outside world, they'll be left behind in the rapture. So that's essentially them. They're very conservative, very secretive.

So this new leader - when he took over, what kind of things did he change?

He upped all the stakes, really. He decided that the Brethren were not being hardline enough, that they weren't being separate enough. And he enforced the rule that if you had a teenager in your house who had been raised in the Brethren but was not yet breaking bread - i. e. , fully compliant - you couldn't eat with them. You couldn't eat with non-Brethren outside. You couldn't go to the cinema or have radios or television or newspapers.

So effectively, he not only separated off the Brethren from all contact with the outside world - you know, they might have been able before to have worked for non-Brethren. Now they had to work for other Brethren. And there was a great deal more compliance and surveillance as well. There's a lot of mass confessions. There are a lot of punishments for noncompliant behavior.


I won't give away the end of the book, but Jay really evolves in terms of how he feels about the Philippines and what he wants his next moves to be after he discovers what's happened to his cousin. What do you think that character in particular says about the relationship between an immigrant, their country of origin, and then the country that they're expected to eventually go home to when the two-week break is over, the family visit is over?

I think it says that there is this connection, but I think also if you are to foster that connection, kind of make it something meaningful, you want to acknowledge kind of what you don't know. And then two, learn. And doing those things kind of strengthens that connection, and I think one ends up with a stronger sense of who they are, especially somebody with, like, a dual identity. It can kind of lessen or mitigate those feelings of, you know, not being something enough, right?Not being Filipino enough, or not being whatever the second piece of the identity is.

Randy Ribay is author of the novel "Patron Saints Of Nothing. "Randy, thanks so much for coming on.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.


Ms.  LYNNE D.  JOHNSON (Blogger, fastcompany. com): Hi, how are you, Farai?

I'm great so, just quickly describe the video blog post for listeners who've not seen it.

Oh boy.

Well, it's basically something done as parody - described as parody in black face. Probably the most stereotypical depiction of a black person, an imagined black tech blogger with dreadlock wig, and speaking in a slang and talking about a website, called, you know about hos, or something like that. Hos and area codes. And so, a year ago, you know, people found this totally offensive, but it was in the - as you said in the insular web 2. 0 world, in the web community, people on Huffington Post, and PodTech heard some of the backlash and decided to not associate with Loren Feldman.


I like that.

It requires constant boosts and constant sort of shots against that and priming the mind and the creative muscle. And so I think on that level, people relate to having a resource that gives that sort of steady stream of these things in a very small and subtle way and not as formal as education but does enrich lives and enrich sort of our pool of creative resources.

It is a really steady stream. I mean, I read on Brainpickings that it takes 450 hours, maybe more, to keep it alive.

Yeah, I put that number down so people don't think I don't have a life, but it's probably a lot more than that.


Billions of dollars have been spent on trying to create this technology, and only now are we just starting to see batteries alongside solar and wind farms. Do you think this problem can be cracked?And if so, how soon?

Well, in some parts of the U. S. , for example, where solar electricity is already very predictable - in the Southwest, for example - the cost of lithium-ion batteries is already at a point where the combination of solar - generation solar panels and lithium-ion batteries can produce reliable electricity at a cost below that of our conventional fossil-fuel-generated electricity.

But the issue is that not all of the U. S. , and certainly not all of the world, has that level of predictability. That's where the problem becomes much harder.

I know the cost has been prohibitive for a long time, and it's been coming down recently. When do you think this technology will actually be reasonably affordable in a lot of places?


Well, Manafort has a second case. That case is here in Washington, D. C. He pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges. This is a case that was also brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort, in D. C, agreed to cooperate with the government. That cooperation deal collapsed after the special counsel's team essentially said that he lied to investigators about a number of things.

The presiding judge in D. C. , Judge Amy Berman Jackson, agreed with the government. The maximum sentence that Manafort faces here in D. C.  is 10 years. Now, the question that hangs over all of this is whether Judge Jackson here in D. C.  is going to make him serve, whatever sentence she gives him, simultaneously or stagger it. So is he going to get another 10 years in addition to what he got in Virginia?

Any chance of a presidential pardon?

The president has not taken that entirely off the table, but his lawyers say it's not under discussion.


It also follows an advertisement, even more prominent Republicans - Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Laura Bush among them - without their permission necessarily, all sided - quoted as supporting gay marriage in other context, but they are not signatories to this brief.

You know, Neal, I head a conservative judge say a couple of years ago, a line that stuck with me, is that one of the really brilliant things about the gay rights movement is that they took on really essentially conservative goals. That is, they wanted to serve openly in the United States military. Remember that, and how big a fight that was?And they want to marry. Committed couples wanted to marry, and some of them wanted to adopt and raise children. Now if you're conservative, how can you be opposed to something like serving in the military and getting married and raising children?

It's a difficult argument, but do you think - amicus briefs normally are, well, window dressing. Is this going to make a difference?

No, not one amicus brief doesn't make a difference. But I do think it's part of a trend of just a change in thinking and saying that, yes, many Republicans now think, you know, same sex - gay marriage is a good thing. The country's moving that way, and it should be a matter of - it's part of a larger just change in thinking. And I do think that large change in thinking does affect justices.


I think Russia wants what it's always wanted, which is to establish its own security. I suspect that Mr.  Putin, in his heart of hearts, would love to re-establish the borders of the old Soviet Union. And security, to them, consists of trying to defend yourself against everybody else. I think that's what they want. And so they regard all the rest of us with great suspicion and as potential enemies.

You write about people in intelligence looking over their shoulders at what you called the Snowdenistas. How has Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks hacking changed intelligence agencies and security work?

Well, I think it has changed. I think they need obviously, if they're going to be able to keep us safe, to see what their targets - and that is a broad word - are doing online. And yet, obviously, naturally, the civil liberties lobby is interested in our civil liberties and our right to privacy and so there's tension there. And I think that that is very much now a feature of the way intelligence services have to work in Western countries, particularly in my country. And the government is trying to introduce legislation which will actually give them the powers that they now need. But it's a very difficult business to get this right in the face of people's natural concern for their privacy.

Dame Stella, I fell hard for one of your characters in this novel, Jasminder.


And that is how I developed as a scientist. I have - was so totally engaged in this, doing it at a more complex and maybe more sophisticated level, by the time I got to undergraduate studies that I never thought of ever doing anything else.

My last expedition, my last two, I did at the ages of 82 and 83. I went to the South Pacific with a team I led to explore new ant forms never before studied in the island of - of the islands of the Vanuatu Archipelago. It was rugged field work. And then I went to Mozambique to the national park of Gorongosa.

So I'm still doing the same thing but at a bigger - on a larger scale.

Talking with E. O. Wilson, author of "Letters to a Young Scientist". We'll be back with the rest of our conversation after this break. Stay with us. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.


Germany - you want to look out for Germany. They've won two World Cups, too. But the Germans are having some issues. The reigning FIFA world player of the year, Nadine Kessler, she's out after knee surgery. One of their star midfielders broke her leg. Of course, we can't forget about Japan. Japan are ranked fourth, but they're the reigning World Cup champions. A talented young player to keep an eye on is 20-year-old Asisat Oshoala from Nigeria. She just won the BBC's female footballer of the year award. Not so young as the Brazilian team, but the team. . .

But Marta - they've got Marta.

Exactly, they got Marta. She's the best player in the world - FIFA's footballer of the year five times. She's so good she doesn't need a last name, Scott. She's just Marta.

She could balance of Volkswagen on her foot. She's that good.


I think as friends, the guys that were there, we took it a lot harder than anybody else. But yup, I have.

What about life in the United States after you've been in a war zone?When you come back and you put your foot on American soil, I'm sure that there are a lot of emotions. What are some of the different things that happen to you as you ease back into civilian life?

I don't think there's an easing to it. You say put my foot on American soil. As soon as I stepped off that plane in Indianapolis, I fell face forward onto the tarmac and started hugging the ground because I was so happy to be home. I guess the hardest part, especially being a convoy commander on the road, is dealing with traffic out on the expressway. It's kind of scary there because you're constantly scanning the roads, and, you know, you see people up behind you, tailgating you. And me, I get upset because, you know, I'm doing it now. When you talk about it, it flashes through your mind.

You want to push people out of the way because in Iraq, we had total control of the road. We owned the road, and if you got in our way, we'd push you off to the side. But here, at home, you can't do that. That'd be classified as road rage, and I have to watch my attitude when I'm driving, still.


President Trump's declaration of a national emergency along the southern border has been criticized by congressional Democrats, but some Republicans, conservative activists and thinkers are also voicing concerns. James Wallner is with the R Street Institute, a pro-free market conservative research group and joins us in our studios. Thanks so much for being with us.

It's a pleasure.

Do you have reservations or objections?

I think what we've seen over the past couple of days is really the epitome of dysfunction in our government at present. So I say, yes, I have a lot of objections to what we're seeing.

Constitutional?


He kept the Colombian restaurant's painting of a traditional Latin American market scene with a tiny cross perched on the archway. It dominates the whole hall.

So this is the story. In Islam, you can't remove a picture which has a cross in it. That was my wife's understanding. She - that's what she gave me to understand. And she said, don't ever remove this. And then this restaurant became very lucky for us. We - from being hand to mouth, we became self-sufficient. So this proved to be a lucky painting. Plus, this was a colorful painting, and this was all we could afford at the time. So we want to keep it, and we want to keep that cross as long as I'm alive and kicking.

It's a sign of how so many communities have built Houston into what it is today - influencing each other, melding into something unique. Lashkari has applied that to the dishes he serves. His signature chicken curry, cooked in huge metal pots in his sweltering, fragrant kitchen, is made with Mexican tomatillos and cilantro. It's incredibly delicious. And we ate that along with the best saag paneer, a spinach and cheese dish, that I have ever tasted.

We do a lot of fusion right now. This restaurant is famous for its fried chicken. It's fried the Southern way, but it's - the chicken - the raw chicken is marinated with Indian spices. My white gravy is made with cashew nuts and almonds and coconut. So it looks like a white gravy of the chicken-fried steak, but it's totally different.


And I'm sure this was a topic happening this weekend at the Iowa State Fair, where most of the Democratic presidential candidates are. They're hoping to make an impression at the first-in-the-nation caucus. How, Ron, would you assess the Democratic contest right now?

Yes, they all go to the state fair. There seems to be a certain legitimacy that's conferred by posing for pictures with a cow made entirely of butter. The state fair is the unofficial starting gun, as you say, for the Iowa caucuses six months away.

Right now, it's mostly a test of who can be the biggest anti-Trump or who's calling him a racist or who's not calling him a white nationalist or who is or isn't calling for his impeachment. The typical Iowan would probably rather talk about different plans for health care or tariffs on China and China's lack of purchases of some of their products, but talking about Trump gets headlines and brings the cameras.

And China, as you mentioned - the U. S.  has again escalated its trade war with China. The Trump administration labeled China a currency manipulator. That's after China devalued its currency. And that came right after new tariffs the president announced last week. All that has the stock market bouncing around. How is this affecting the presidential race?


Yeah.

And, you know, that's OK.  We don't have to approve of every facet of an artist's life to find their work interesting or significant, but the context does change.

What does that mean for us as viewers?Does it mean that we should stop watching these movies?

Everybody has to make their own choice in that regard. But for me, I look at these things in a purely selfish way, like as a viewer, which is how much extra dramatic information is getting in the way of my enjoying this work. And am I really thinking about the work when I watch it?Or am I thinking about the person who made it and disliking them or just being upset about them in some way?And if the answer's the latter, I probably don't want to watch that anymore.

I want to look at Louis C. K. , in particular. You know, his comedy, actually, was often celebrated because it seemed to address men and their foibles. What did you think of his comedy?And what do you think now?


And then we figured out how to pull aluminum out of its oxides, and now we use it everywhere. And platinum group metals are no different. They're very useful in electronics, microprocessors, medical devices, you name it, catalytic converters, renewable energy. And I would love to see a day - whenever that may be - when the platinum group metals are 100 times cheaper than they are now.

I'm reminded of a "Twilight Zone" adventure where they learned how to make gold and it was worthless. That's another story, but take us through the steps for your plan stage. Where do we go from here, and what are the steps?

Well, it's a three-phase plan. First of all, we have a technology road map that we've developed that lists every bit and every piece of technology that we need in order to go and extract resources from asteroids. We have some of that technology today and others we need to develop. And so we're slowly but surely piecing together, pulling together all the different pieces of technology that we need to have. Number two, we're going to do asteroid prospecting. And so this means that, first, we're going to develop a series of Arkyd 100 spacecraft to go into low Earth orbit and study the nearest asteroids and make sure that we've found, you know, lots of the other interesting ones that are not yet found and look closer at the ones that we do know of.

And number three?


Well, prior to me going to medical school, I was actually a vegetarian. I was a martial artist. And I got exposed to concepts of diet and nutrition as it impacted health, and I got exposed to concepts of energy with respect to martial arts practice. And I really didn't see any of that in my medical school experience. Along with that, I had a just really open-ended approach to looking at medicine.

Being an African-American, I was not one of the good old boys in medical school. So you can either try hard to be a part of that club, or you can say to yourself, well, gosh, maybe there's some other things that can actually be explored. So Chinese medicine - I've explored that. I explored classical homeopathy. I explored nutrition. I explored other, particularly African cultural arts. And out of that, it just opened a whole worldview to me.

Give us some specifics on what African traditional medicine might incorporate into your practice.

At the heart of traditional African medicine is God and the ancestors, OK?So now, you have many Africans that want to take advantage of traditional medicine, but they don't want to acknowledge the roots. So the roots, as I'm saying, is understand your relationship with ancestors in terms of ancestors being a part of the community. The use of divination - on the surface, I mean, we've seen different things, maybe on TV or someone is throwing bones or caraway shells and then makes a pronouncement.


Yes. You know, you will talk to Republicans and Democrats who will make very passionate cases that the other party will be to blame in this shutdown. I think shutdown politics are tricky. For one, we have a recent one in memory. The 2013 shutdown was largely driven by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a member of the Republican Party. Republicans were seen as responsible for that shutdown. They went on to win big in the following midterm elections.

So the idea that being seen as the party that shuts down government will have electoral consequences, I'm not so sure Democrats view it that way.

Yeah. And the last shutdown lasted 16 days.

It lasted 16 days. If this one lasts as long as that, we will also be in a very interesting situation because President Trump's State of the Union address is 10 days from now. And I - my mind. . .


Finally, Ron, lots of talk about Congress releasing the second half of this $700 billion bailout this week. Where do we stand with that?

Quite possible that Congress will get that done this week now that Barack Obama has asked George Bush, has asked the current president, to formally put in a request for that money. Congress has got a lot of questions about how this money is going to be spent, as it has questions about how the first half of the money was spent. So, they're going to resist. There's going to be some pushback. But it's quite possible the release will come this week.

NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Thank you, Ron.

Thank you, Alex.


So Robert Mueller testified. The House adjourned. And yet, the idea of impeaching Donald Trump lives on.

It lives on. And as you said, it is inching forward. I was checking this morning - NPR has an impeachment tracker where we've been tracking every member that comes forward for impeachment - and it's now at an even 100. Although, I should say that before Robert Mueller testified, it was at about 95. So we haven't exactly seen a big groundswell of impeachment following his testimony. I think the Congress reflects, right now, where the country is - there's a bunch of people really for it, a bunch of people really against it and not much moving in one direction or the other. The Congress is largely stuck on the question of impeachment.

How do you think this six-week break will change the dynamics of the situation?What do you think Democrats and Republicans are going to hear from their constituents?And is that going to change how they act when they get back here?

It's really interesting because August recess can be funny things. You know, we do sort of see groundswells sometimes that happen when members are home. Remember; the Tea Party movement in 2010 really started to rise up during the August recess when members were home. I don't think we're going to see something like that along the lines of impeachment, but I do think you would have to see a groundswell of a public opinion change or Democrats going home and realizing that this is not what their constituents want. We don't know the answer to that question yet.


Little Africa was rough. It scared me to death. It produced a sense of claustrophobia. My luck was that I had parents who were college educated. They were community oriented. And for my brothers and I, it was never a question of whether we were going to get out, whether in fact we were going to go to college, but when we were going to get out and where we were going to college. So, I was blessed to have those parents.

Well, professor, when you think about some of the fundamental distinctions that you're making in this book is really the question whether or not black intellectuals have an obligation to majority black communities, particularly ones that are dealing with issues of poverty.

What's you're litmus test for who you consider to be people who were acting on behalf of the broader community?

I think the litmus test is what they say in their own words and to whom they say it, and the way they portray or characterize the black majority. Finally, I guess it would be a great divide. Do they plump down with a very serious and a structural analysis of why some people live in an objection in the United States and elsewhere, or do they opt for a behavioral explanation saying that they're just apathetic and they tend toward bad behavior. And if they would just change their behavior, things would be better for them. So, that's sort of in a nutshell.


What has been done since then?And what still needs to be done to achieve a formal exoneration from the state of Texas for Timothy Cole?

Well there's an enormous amount. The first problem is that the court system in Texas is addicted to convictions and not very up on exonerations. We have created a very political system here in which egos are involved, politics are involved, and it's very, very difficult for judges and prosecutors to ever admit that they've convicted innocent people.

Do you have. . .

Because of that, we are running into a lot of obstacles.


Yeah. I think people are starting to back away from that a little bit because there are enough little pockets where you could get some ice accumulating every summer and not melting out because, basically, you have the wind that pushes that together and piles it up. So you have always have a few places where it's piled up. But on the other hand, that will be a fairly small part of the Arctic, quite a small bit. So it's not - so for practical purposes, the ocean will look ice-free, and the North Pole may be sort of in a large area of no ice at all. Occasionally, right now, there are cracks and there are openings that drift around. And so, sometimes, the North Pole itself is in an ice-free area.

Open water, yeah.

But it could be possible to be in a large area of open water in the coming decades. That's the expectation.

The other enormous area of a white, reflective surface is the ice cap that covers the island of Greenland, the biggest island in the world. And that this summer also had a really powerful melt.


Both the trains slowed. I was standing there with my bag over my shoulder, ready to jump. It was windy. It was cold. It was kind of getting dark. And so they finally lined up the cars correctly, and I was told to run across the loose rocks and jump on to the other train.

The conductor on the other train pulled me on to that car. Once I was onboard, another conductor came through the car, and she said to me, don't get up when we get to Milwaukee. What I heard from her was don't get up, or I will kill you. I did not move the rest of the trip.

So I get to Saint Paul. I'm looking for my brother. He's late. So he gets there, and I ask him, why were you late?And he says, well, I checked the train schedule, and it said it was running behind. Oh, that was because of me.

A travel nightmare with a happy ending from Anne Fleury in Milwaukee. Send us your stories, please. Go to weekendeditionsaturday@npr. org. Click on contact. Put Travel Nightmare at the top of your message.


Well, this obviously has been a really long time in coming for the victims of the crimes in Guatemala, and for their country, as well. I think the victims who had an opportunity to testify in the trial proceedings would say that justice ultimately was not denied, as a result of this really historic outcome, that I don't think anybody expected to happen.

Why?

Well, there has been a really remarkable wave of prosecutions for former political leaders who, in days of yore, would have enjoyed a comfortable retirement and not faced any threat of prosecution. And against that history, in Latin America in particular, many former leaders and other senior officials have faced trial in the last 20 years or so. And it's been a notable phenomenon, and has provided inspiration for countries in other regions of the world, as well.

But Guatemala was the really striking holdout from this pattern. And so while one after another country was able to confront its past, not only through historical confrontations, through truth commissions and other means, but also in court. While that was happening in the region broadly, Guatemala was really almost a poster case for enduring impunity. And there were numerous efforts made over many, many years, led by Guatemalans themselves, but with a lot of support from the international community in many different ways. And despite all these efforts, Guatemala was unable, until recently, to bring past leaders to justice.