Thank you, Sacha. It's good to be here.

So I assume that the past few days have been an emotional roller coaster for Sudan. It finally ousted its leader, but then another autocrat took his place. And that spurred more protests. And suddenly, that person was also gone. How are you feeling now?

Yeah. I mean, it's definitely been - it feels a lot longer than a week, for sure. And you know, we've kind of been dealing with just so many emotions. And you know, I've been feeling very hopeful and then suddenly somewhat doubtful. And then, you know, it's back to just being, you know, persistent and making sure that everything that's happened so far is not lost.

And yeah, I mean, it's definitely been a very emotionally charged, you know, few months and especially just the last week. I mean, I think now morales are high. I think people are still, you know, just sort of keeping their eye on their prize of a full democratic transition to a civilian-led government and not a military-led government.

When the defense minister stepped in, was that viewed as a coup - and not in a good way?


Yeah, of course. I think it's right for the employer to know. But let the person go all the way through the process until the point where they're being offered a job. It creates more momentum towards hiring and more of a chance that that person's actually get a job.

Why do you include in this legislation a provision that would allow felons to vote in every state in the country?

You know, these felony disenfranchise laws - if you go back to some of the state legislative debates that were happening after Reconstruction, they were designed to stop African-Americans from voting. These have racist roots to these laws. And it gets to a point now where you can see the fruit of that poison tree - is that you have some counties in America where 1 out of 4 African-Americans can't vote. And remember; the overwhelming number of charges are for nonviolent drug offenses.

So here, you've served your time, and now you're going to have 10, 20, 40, 50, 60 years more as an adult. And you're told that your citizen rights have been stripped from you?This is a way, I think, that poor people especially - low-income people are being stripped of their democratic power.


People are still there, and people are still very defiant. I think that's really the only word you can use for people who've spent the last month fasting during Ramadan in extremes of heat. And they now say that we will not step down; we will not stand back until this military council has been deposed.

Well, now the military is saying we're going to stall these negotiations. Any agreement that we had settled is off, but we're going to hold elections within nine months. Is that good news for the protesters?

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

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


Vladimir Putin says the U. S.  airstrikes on Syria were an act of aggression. And yet, despite defiant words and claims that U. S.  missiles were intercepted and did little damage, Russia has not retaliated. To help us understand why, we're joined by Angela Stent of Georgetown University. She's also a State Department veteran from the Clinton and Bush administrations. Good morning.

Good morning. Good to be here.

So can you remind us why Russia has interests in Syria at all?And briefly - I know it's a complicated story.

(Laughter) Well, the short version of this. So the Soviet Union and Syria were allies during the Cold War, at the end of the Cold War. So, you know, Russia lost many of its positions in the Middle East, but that relationship with Syria has always been important. Then Putin was horrified by what happened in the Arab Spring, particularly what happened in Libya, and he was determined to shore up, you know, his ally, his partner in Syria. And he went into Syria in September 2015 in a big way - bombing - really to show the United States and the rest of the world that we were trying to isolate Russia after what happened in Ukraine, but Russia was definitely back. Russia also has its own - only warm-water port in Syria and a significant airbase. And it's really used this intervention now in Syria to increase its influence in the Middle East as the U. S.  has withdrawn.


I think it is.
Oh my gosh!
I think it is.
This is a huge day.


You know, it may explain why you're such a good writer. I mean, you are one of the best science explainers. I mean, I've been doing this for a few years, and your book, "Letters to a Young Scientist", I think is the best book you've ever written because it is so much of you, and it is written in such an easy language, and we get you passion, we see your background.

Maybe it's because you talk to yourself that it's easier to write.

Yeah, and lots of students. And I've trained myself in clear explanation in order - when I went in to lecture to - sometimes I had a class of 150 because I taught basic biology, I had to have a device to keep the Harvard students in front of me from starting to read the Crimson.

So you had to come prepared to tell a good yarn, tell a good story or something.


. . . Hitler, basically.

Absolutely. Yes, yes. But they were given - at one point, they were given little medals - the sort of civilian Iron Cross, which they would wear beneath their lapel. And they wore it to conceal beneath their lapel so that when the Germans invaded, they could just turn the lapel and quietly show the invading German army that they were actually sympathizers.

But there was a great, though, deal of ugliness revealed. I mean, what's really nice in the book - these transcriptions that Juliet does - they're printed in 1940s typeface. You can see them as you might have really read them. And though the conversations are sometimes quite boring and sometimes illuminates what they're trying to do - but they're shot through with this virulent hatred of Jews.

It's side by side with this really kind of tedium of their conversations. And then you suddenly - you're almost lulled into not hearing what they're saying. And then you suddenly realize that this hatred is simmering away beneath in their breasts. And they're not - they really could be your neighbor. And I think that's a frightening thing.


From the studios of NPR West, this is Day to Day. I'm Alex Cohen. Scrapping the car czar. President Obama has chosen not to appoint one person to oversee the restructuring of the troubled auto industry. For more on why the president is switching gears we're joined now by Justin Hyde of the Detroit Free Press. And Justin, why did President Obama decide to get rid of this car czar position?

Well, it's becoming clear that the auto industry is probably going to have too many problems for just one person to handle. GM and Chrysler are going to be submitting plans to the administration tomorrow to explain how they deserve the 17. 4 billion that the government has lent them and whether they might be able to receive even more aid in the future.

The Obama administration has several very tough questions to answer about the future of this industry and hundreds of thousands of jobs that are tied into it. It's just going to take more work than one person can give.

So in lieu of a car czar, there will be this Presidential Task Force on Autos. Who will be heading up that group?


That's right. And my experience has taught me that, first of all, the role of the diaspora is very important and what was also called sometimes the reversal of the brain drain, in the case of India, for example. I wish that many Somalis come back to Somalia to contribute to the rebuilding of the country. So I thought I should pitch my message to the community, in this case in Minnesota, and to appeal to their involvement so that we can sustain the progress that was made.

You gave this speech in Minnesota, where I understand your son has just graduated from high school. Congratulations. So what does he think of your advice to come home?

Of course I have made the appeal to him as well.

(Laughter).


President GEORGE W.  BUSH: The question facing the president is not when the problem started, but what did you do about it when you recognized the problem?And I readily concede, I chunked aside some of my free market principles when I was told by chief economic advisers that the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression.

That's George W.  Bush, speaking at his last press conference as the president earlier today. Joining us now to talk about that conference and the week ahead in politics is NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Hi, Ron.

Hello, Alex. Good to be with you.

Good to be with you. And as we just heard, Mr.  Bush spoke of his legacy related to the current economic crisis. He also talked about terrorism, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. What's your take on the overall tone of today's press conference?


More so than Russia, which we seem to hear. . .

It's not even close.

. . . More about.

Not even close. Now, Russia is more tactical. They will spend their time and effort on onesie-twosie to see recruitments of humans in less. . .

Onesie-twosie recruitments.


That's still not always easy, but that's a message that can succeed. If, however, you have a muddled message, if it seems like you're planning on having some retrenchment of a program for no good reason, you're not articulating a good and compelling reason to do it. That tends to be much, much worse.

There is a paradox. The Affordable Care Act has become popular, as we mentioned, but in the same polls when you ask people about Obamacare, they say that they don't like it. Now that Obama is out of office, are people paying more attention to the actual policy and its effect on their lives?

Well, what I'd say is that earlier on, I pointed out to the fact that if you look at surveys, you find that people say that the federal government should insure universal coverage. Now, of course, there are lots of ways to go about doing that. As for Obamacare in particular, it certainly has created some constituencies. But are there ways to change the law that would be broadly popular?I think the answer is yes.

But to do that, you'd really need to have a coherent, unified critique of Obamacare. And that's the big problem for Republicans because if you're looking at Republican objections to Obamacare, they've come from pretty much every direction. People have criticized it for all kinds of reasons that are oftentimes somewhat contradictory. And that means that you don't have a kind of common narrative about, what's the problem here that we're trying to solve?


(Singing) When the night comes. And you lay your weary had to rest. No more trials, no test. When the night comes. . .

That kind of thing.

Dan Auerbach, thank you for putting up with my really (Soundbite of laughter) miserable drumming. My rhythm section was lousy, but you sounded great.

I just felt like I was on "American Idol. "


I can imagine someone being stunned for a moment by being struck by an object, especially at a high speed like that. But I don't understand that because if there was over a minute when the throttle was advanced farther than it should've been and - you know, things happen when you're an engineer. You should be used to them. So I - it doesn't really seem to me like that's a probable cause, but we'll have to wait and see.

I don't have to tell you, Mr.  Hughes, that the crash and the deaths of eight people have set off a debate - those who say the derailment says Amtrak needs more money, others who say Amtrak isn't - is wasting a lot of the money that it gets. Recognizing there are no guarantees, would greater government funding have perhaps meant this derailment wouldn't happen?

It might have. The thing that is important here is Amtrak doesn't have any discretionary money. Every penny they get goes into something that's really important, especially capital money like this. And so I would think that money played some part in it in that when Amtrak has to do large projects, they have to space them out in smaller parts over multiple years. And I don't know the facts in this case, but I do know that that is true with a number of large capital projects. You just can't do them quickly 'cause the funding isn't there.

When you were in charge, Mr.  Hughes, did you find it hard to get funding for Amtrak, a lot of skepticism and doubt?


And tomorrow is going to be my female day.

Right.

We are all of that and it's intertwined and I want us to celebrate our intertwining.

Do you think that economists need to dig in deeper into how these intersections of race and gender play out in the workplace?I mean do you think this is something, obviously there are plenty of people who work on it including you. But does it get enough attention and is there enough impetus to really put into place some of the learning that's happened?


From each other?

Yeah, male and female professionals of color?Do they face different challenges?

I think they do face different challenges. And particularly, I look at women and they can tend to be branded things like too emotional, or not competitive, or not dedicated. Because there are some unique skill sets that women bring that I think really ad value. So for example I find that women are more intuitive, which means for me they can be better forecasters of future trends. They're more nurturing, which means they're better attuned to the needs of their people and really better at developing people, and they actually are better communicators to me. I know that's a surprise to a lot of listeners, but I find that they are more responsive to giving and receiving feedback.

Just quickly, what about men?


What is the biggest need right now?I mean, where are these people going and, specifically, children who may have lost family members?

Yeah. Well, the biggest need in general is everything. They need food, shelter, jerrycans for clean water. You need water trucks with clean water to go there. Imagine that a flooding contaminates everything. That is why diseases are bound to break out. And it's already happening. There is cases of cholera mentioned or reported in Beira.

There is a system where children - where parents can fill in the name of their children that they are missing. And then, you know, that is accessible for aid organizations. And the aid organizations in the field will look for those children and try to get parents and children back together again. If that doesn't happen, children will go into the governmental care while the aid organizations keep looking for relatives where they can live with.

And I understand that even though the floodwaters are now receding, there is a chance for secondary floods. How is the community preparing for that?


So, John, if Lehman's problems spread to other banks, who's next?

Well, a first concern would be Washington Mutual. It's a big mortgage lender. It's under some severe stress right now. Its stock is down today. You have to look at other banks and investment houses with problem loans on their books, like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citibank won't be immune. You know, all these banks are interconnected now, with lots of shared debts and investments that are losing value. This crisis has pretty much changed the business model for big banks, who used to earn profits by investing in loans and mortgages that had been repackaged to essentially spread the risk to everybody.

Many of those investments have now gone south, and the banks are going to have to come up with a new system for raising the capital to lend to borrowers. The thing to watch for now is how the rating agencies, like Standard & Poor's and Fitch, put a value on these banks' futures. As the ratings on banks go down, it becomes more expensive for the banks to borrow the money that they need to cover the bad loans because investors lose confidence, and they want a higher return to fork over their money. And it's that lack of confidence that the government and the industry are fighting in this credit crunch.

Thanks, John. That's John Dimsdale of public radio's daily business show, Marketplace.


Great to be here.

Could you take us back to that moment - 1947, I guess; the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan; and Edwin Land wheels in this mahogany-clad contraption.

That's right. At the very first demonstration, it was at a meeting of a big optical society; and he brought in one of those big-view cameras - the kind you see in pictures from the 19th century; you know, the big wooden thing with a cloth over the head. And they had installed a special back on it, to take prototype instant film. And as the story goes, he pulls a sheet of film out of his camera; and he puts it through a little pair of rollers, to develop it; and 50 seconds later, he peels it off and reveals his own face. And in fact, because they. . .

I feel like I should go (gasps).


You had to actually take the thing apart to change games.

Take out the battery and everything to change games.

That would be a drawback.

That's a drawback. And number two - they didn't have any games. There was, like, two games that were worth playing.


Business casual, if you will.

Yes - something that would be your business suit. And then the casual part of it would be you can take the jacket off, and there's a short-sleeve, button-up shirt underneath.

There have been prototypes developed of these new uniforms. And they've made some adaptations from what the originals look like. Tell me about that.

So they started out with sort of just a straight jacket that kind of hit at the hip. And the feedback was that soldiers really wanted a slightly longer jacket, like, almost, you know, like, a little bit of a skirt coming out from the hip and then a belt. The belt was really important. So the latest update of that has the belt added.


We've seen the symbolism internationally too, haven't we?

We have. And perhaps the best-known example - in a small town in Thailand last month we saw three students who were arrested after protesting last spring's military coup by flashing the three-fingered salute - that's a symbol of District 12, Katniss' district in "The Hunger Games. "And you see things like that all over the world now. You see protesters in various parts of the world who not only wear T-shirts with "Hunger Games" slogans, but also have begun to use that three-finger salute as a symbol of protest not only in Thailand, but I'm told in Ukraine and other places as well.

What are we to make of the fact - I've wondered about this Stephen, the dystopian theme seems so popular as opposed to ethereal ones these days.

Dystopian novels always tend to feature a disaster followed by the good guys versus the bad guys in a very basic Manichaean sense. There's good and there's evil and there's no question about who the good and evil are. And we live in a political era of - where people on the left think everyone on the right is evil, everyone on the right thinks everyone on the left is evil. There's a tendency to paint our enemies as larger-than-life. And that fits perfectly with the general design of the dystopian story.


Well (laughter), I was on Capitol Hill. I was actually at the White House. And President Trump didn't meet with us. He was out of the country. But, you know, honestly, I think it was campaign rhetoric. I'm not asking for a handout. I'm just asking for a helping hand - not only Pennsylvania, but West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama. There's a lot of mines prior to this mine closing that have closed, and you just don't bring coal back. So we need to look outside of the coal industry in the future.

Your region supported Trump this past election. Am I right?

That's correct. You know what?He said the right things. He said, I'm bringing back coal and talked about the Second Amendment, not taking away guns. And that's the big part of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, this corner. And he said the right stuff.

What are people thinking about the president these days?


. . . Exactly correct. And when it comes to hostages, there is a clear U. S.  policy. We do not pay ransom. We do not make concessions. When it comes to political prisoners, it's much more murky.

To your knowledge, was any money given to North Korea in association with the release of Otto Warmbier, however it's characterized?

Not that I'm aware. I would personally be surprised if the Trump administration actually paid that invoice. However, again, when we were negotiating and trying to put the framework together for the release of Otto Warmbier, we were coupling it with a bigger package of bringing back remains of U. S.  servicemen, of helping a little bit with flood-related areas in north North Korea, which was back then hit really hard - not to the North Korean government, but through humanitarian organizations. And that compiles this package of humanitarian interest, mutual humanitarian interest that - it's a bunch of gestures of goodwill that ends up getting with what you want.

What does this week's news tell us about how the Trump administration deals with these types of situations?Because the president likes to suggest that his techniques are very different from that of his predecessors.


Kevin, I imagine doing what you do, you can't have much of an appetite for leftovers on a day like today.

No, I probably will be eating a hamburger or something today.

Well, I wish you a very good day, and thanks for taking the time to speak with us.

Absolutely. Have a great time.


This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Pope Francis issued what's called an apostolic exhortation this week called The Joy of Gospel. And in his exhortation, he upheld church teachings while signaling a new openness to conversation about change. Maybe most notably the pope criticized the way much of the world, including the United States, does business. He warned against what he called an economy of exclusion, arguing that the very structural causes of poverty must be addressed. We turn now to Father James Martin, a noted Jesuit and culture editor of the Jesuit magazine America. He joins us from Philadelphia today. Father Jim, thanks for being with us.

THE REV. JAMES MARTIN: My pleasure.

What's the pope exhorting his church to do?

Well, I would say in this document he's asking us to do three things. Number one, remember the importance of joy. When we preach the Gospel, he inveighs against sourpusses - that's the English translation.


But you say there is a glimmer of hope in that if we do collectively work together, some of these problems can be fixed. What are some of the most important changes you would like to see in terms of public policy?

We have to stop the rollback of EPA policies. Under the Obama administration and earlier administrations, we were starting to make real progress. When the current administration took office, there were only four chlor-alkali plants left. The others had been closed. These spew a great deal of mercury into the atmosphere. They were slated to close. But the EPA under Trump decided not to close these plants. A few days ago, the EPA under Trump decided to stop surprise inspections, which is going to, of course, diminish their effectiveness. So we're rolling back the progress that we had made.

Then we have to re-evaluate the way we test chemicals. In the European Union, you have to test a chemical that's going to be used in or near humans for its effect on human health before you can market it. In this country, we market the chemicals and only began testing after complaints that people have been harmed. And one of the things corporations tend to say is that it's so expensive to do these tests. There are things more important than money. Right now, 23 million IQ points are lost every year in children from exposure to lead. And how do you put a price on that?

That's Harriet Washington, author of the new book "A Terrible Thing To Waste: Environmental Racism And Its Assault On The American Mind. "


The section on that 1,700 mile track is relatively short, but it's absolutely searing. And it begins in a bullock cart.

That's right.

Well, tell us about it if you could.

At that time in the 1930s, that - you had the development of this tension between the Indians who had migrated there and the Burmese who were already there. And in the midst of all of that, we had other tensions that were simmering at a global level, and which eventuated in the second world war. My grandfather was living in 1941 in a town called Okpo, 108 kilometers north of Rangoon. He was running a small grocery shop, essentially.


Well, this was not a deliberate decision of the administration. Just - there were two laws that still exist adopted in the '90s by Congress, which say that if a person becomes a member of any organization international the - it's an automatic suspension of the confidential contribution. So these two laws were triggered by the decision of our general confidence.

Well, I bring up the matter of the debt though because it seems to me any country that was paying its bills would say the United States should be thrown out of UNESCO for owing half a billion dollars.

Well, I will say that to this situation with the suspension, of course, was very unfortunate. And I have raised dozens of times this issue with the U. S.  because, of course, it is not normal that a member of a club does not pay dues. We need this financing very strongly because we implement work and projects in the world. But at the same time, we need also the political commitment of our member states. So at least we had the political commitment. So now, of course, we are losing votes. And this is really deplorable.

UNESCO must have known in July when they declared the old city in Hebron a Palestinian world heritage site that Israel would object because they say that Judaism has a lot of links to Hebron and that this would create problems in the United States.


Well, yeah. As you said, there's 150,000 British travelers, some 350,000 European and international travelers - all need to get home now. This is a huge job for the government. They're chartering planes. Right now there are planes landing, which they've had to charter. Big logistical nightmare, really expensive - cost of 100 million pounds-plus for the government here.

Wow.

So yeah, it's going to be one of those really interesting (laughter) but really complicated things to work out.

Daniel Thomas of the Financial Times. Thanks so much.


There are. It's been a very dry summer. We had the wettest May on record, but then we had the driest June on record. So since June 1, we've only had 0. 06 inches of rain in Anchorage. So everything is turning pretty crispy. And we've got a pretty big fire down on the Kenai, which is blowing smoke into the Anchorage area. And then we've got a fire north in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. And then we've got fires dotted across the state.

Well, northern Alaska has seen dramatic effects of climate change - thawing permafrost, we've seen that decreasing arctic ice. Is this heat wave part of that bigger trend?

I think it is. We're definitely seeing warmer-than-normal conditions. Like, the 90-degree temperature is 25 degrees above our average. Our average for this time of year is 65 degrees. And just in the last 10 days, we had six record-high temperatures. So not just this year, but overall, the trend for Anchorage and all of Alaska is a steady increase and a steady warming.

What is the forecast then for the next, say, few days?


Just market access, kind of where the Chinese government was trying to protect the early start-up of industries in China. And I think now the economy's grown enough that this - many of these things could be opened up again and access could increase for American businesses. It's also information technology, being able to make sure you can move information across boundaries, things like that.

OK. I'm hearing you - I'm hearing a wish list on what you want China to do. But is there anything you want to see from this administration that would help things out for Cummins?

Most importantly for me, I want to see engagement. I think that U. S.  businesses do very well whenever there is any access to foreign markets. We can succeed in markets when we have a chance to compete. And that's really what we want to see with every economy around the world. We'd like to see that with the USMCA, too - the Mexico-Canada agreement, too. We'd like to see that signed and completed. We'd like to see more free trade agreements with other countries.

Have you raised any of these concerns directly with the White House?I know that you sit on the Business Roundtable, which is this pretty powerful organization made up of prominent CEOs like yourself.


Yes. In Los Angeles, we made a commitment a number of years ago to only purchase any new buses into our fleet that would operate on alternative fuels. And what we have today is the largest compressed natural gas bus fleet in the country. And that's doing a lot to help improve our air quality here.

What's the difference between compressed natural gas and regular gasoline in terms of, you know, how it affects the environment?

Well compressed natural gas is a much cleaner fuel.

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


Well I think this is what the Southern African Development Community is all about now, is trying to push forward, to say we can not continue with business as usual in Zimbabwe. There has to be a different way, and a better way, for the people of Zimbabwe.

So clearly there are economic measures that can be put forward by that Southern African Development Community. There are political pressures that can be brought to bear, not only by the Southern African region, but also, you know, by the African Union overall. And it is time to kind of push forward, beyond the quiet diplomacy here, to put pressure to make sure that we don't end up in endless discussions without a resolution to this crisis.

South Africa has also often been a leader in social issues, and now Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said that homophobia is, quote, "A crime against humanity, and every bit as unjust as apartheid. "

First of all, how's that playing on the home front?And secondly, you know, does it clash with some more traditional views that many people have?


Tequila.

Hey, before we go - I go pouring it in, give it a smell, though.

OK.

It's very vegetal.


Well, absolutely. That would be a sin for me. . .

. . . to put inaccurate science into my work. So you're right. And it's true. Even though this transposition or this abrupt shift of the monarch migratory pattern is an invention, I wanted to frame it in a plausible way. And the fact is, one of the manifestations that we're already seeing that's really very straightforward to document is migratory shift in - especially birds. Almost - the great majority of North American bird species have already shifted their migratory patterns and their breeding ranges.

And so I thought this is a sensible beginning place, so that if I could ground this fictional event in real science, that would be - it wouldn't be a sin. It would be both good fiction and good science, if you see what I mean.

I do. Did you have to do a lot of reporting?


Oh, I absolutely see having access to care that you can rely upon to get the care you need is something we need to have across America. But how do you do that?Can you do that with a legislative pen?That was what the Affordable Care Act was trying to mandate. And it just doesn't work. And so what you've got to do is create a marketplace, both health insurance and in health care, that allows for people to access that care in an affordable, reasonable manner.

Are you convinced that high-risk pools are going to be able to cover people who are at risk with continuing and debilitating health conditions?I might add, both you and I have one of those.

Absolutely. I would agree that high-risk pools are going to address the issue in a new way, in a little different way, than what has been done previously in high-risk pools. But also it's going to give the flexibility and innovative opportunity to states to create new products, new ways to treat these issues. And to me, that's something we should be looking forward to rather than, you know, the status quo, no-we-can't-type mindset.

A new way but a reliable way. I mean, can you - there's lot of skepticism that these high-risk pools will do anything but make it unaffordable (ph) for people.


No, he's not. He's a career CBP official. He was already in place when the Trump administration came in. He's not known as an immigration hardliner. As a matter of fact, he's told the Senate that he thought the United States should support governments in Central America to improve economic opportunities there - in other words, to take away the motivation for people to flee. He's also talked about asylum-seekers as vulnerable families, not as scam artists. Sometimes the president describes them that way. But he's not going to have a lot of say in policy. That comes from Trump and his inner-circle of advisers at the White House, particularly Stephen Miller, who has the loudest voice on immigration. . .

Yeah.

. . . Inside the White House.

Now, a lot of people are noticing that McAleenan will be the third acting secretary running a major cabinet department. Interior and Defense are also being run by acting secretaries. And I'm not even including the scores of lower-level acting officials in this administration. Is this as unusual as it seems?


You also call this the start of a new era in America's modern history - in what way?

Well, the Clean Air Act really changed, in many ways, the conception of government's role and gave to the federal government both the power and the responsibility to protect Americans' health. One of the most revolutionary pieces of this very innovatively designed law was a provision which elevated public health as a priority above all others in the setting of air quality standards for the entire country. It put public health over and above corporate profit and cost in determining what amounts of pollution would be allowed in Americans' air.

But that hasn't stopped it from being challenged, right?How has it weathered those challenges?

Well, it's been up and down over the years. And I think what we're seeing right now is a really sort of unprecedented assault on the Clean Air Act and the enforcement of the Clean Air Act by the Trump administration. Obviously, I think, we've all become familiar over the last few years with the idea of climate change denial. But I think what we're now seeing in the Trump years is actually air pollution denial.


In - yes, all of those things. There were royal guards lining a red carpet that extended from Air Force One all the way to the terminal, children with flowers, trumpets, jets flying over with red-white-and-blue smoke trails decorating the sky. And then that was actually only the first arrival ceremony. There was a second arrival ceremony at the royal court, where a band played "The Star-Spangled Banner. "There were bagpipes. The president was awarded a medal, one of the top honors in the country for for people who are not from Saudi Arabia. Now, President Obama. . .

I've seen that on the television images. It looks like the kind of thing a sommelier wears in a classy restaurant.

(Laughter) I don't think I go to those kind of restaurants, Scott.

(Laughter).


I really feel disappointed that a member of the House took the time to attack the people that are contributing to the campaign of President Trump, an attack that we are fueling or helping to fuel hate among Hispanics. In my office, half my personnel is Hispanic. I love Hispanic people. They're family-oriented. My wife - all of us got scared. I said people are going to come to attack us.

But you do know that this is public information.

Yes. But we are not contributing to fuel any hate. We are contributing because we want President Trump to be reelected. I like the job he's doing as president. I love the way he loves America, the same way that I love America. I named my company Great America Companies in 1972 when I first immigrated to America because I felt this was a great place.

President Trump has used the words invasion and killer, according to new statistics, over 500 times when speaking about immigration and immigrants since 2017. That is as president. People see his rhetoric as divisive and specifically when speaking about Latino immigrants. Does that not concern you?


Well, earlier this morning it seemed by Israeli military numbers that rocket fire from Gaza had slowed down a bit, to just half a dozen rockets over a 10 hour period or so. That's compared to nearly 700 since early Tuesday morning. But the steady pace has picked back up again. Israeli strikes on Gaza from planes and from ships off-shore in the Mediterranean are also continuing. In residential areas, and also last night, a Mosque was destroyed as well as a bank used by Hamas - that's the militant Islamic group that Israel blames for the current escalation.

Israeli press reports say there is a cease fire being drafted by a couple of Arab States. Those Israeli reports also say that Israel is open to discuss a cease fire, but claim that Hamas needs some kind of victory in this conflict. But publically, both sides say they're pressing forward with fighting. A Hamas spokesman yesterday mentioned an attack on an Israeli jeep, saying that if a ground war happens, Gaza will be a cemetery for Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he's exploring all options to end this conflict, but he also says that military strikes will continue until Israel can be certain that there's no more rocket fire from Gaza. Whether this will escalate into a ground conflict is still the main question people here are watching.

And what is it like in Gaza right now?


Hey, Geoff.

What's up, Farai?

Well, as you can tell, things are starting to crystallize and solidify in terms of this race. So you've got this endorsement of Barack Obama by Senator Ted Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy. How's that reverberating online?

Well, it's interesting. After Caroline Kennedy's op-ed appeared in The New York Times, searches of her name rose 179 percent, mainly by people over the age of 35 and across the two-thirds of the nation geographically. Now this is according to Yahoo Buzz Index. Now, for Ted Kennedy, his searches went up 248 percent. People were also searching for more about JFK, Maria Shriver and Jacqueline Kennedy.


Well, because there are a number of reasons that a security clearance can be denied. Among them would be foreign contacts, foreign business interests, criminal activity, financial instability, drug and alcohol use. And some of these are very serious. If employees who had the history of these issues - and they weren't properly mitigated, they could be a risk to national security if they received security clearances.

You're saying hypothetically those could be reasons security clearances would be denied. Were they in these cases reasons that they were denied?

Some of them were applicable in different cases, yes.

Is overriding 25 security clearance denials a large number?I have no idea what's normal in this situation.


The economy is the number one issue. And one of the things that makes it very difficult for a candidate to campaign in Ohio is that when they come to Ohio to talk about the economy, they can't just talk about a single aspect. When you talk to folks in the northern part of the state, northeast Ohio which includes Cleveland, and northwest Ohio which includes Toledo, when you're talking about the economy there, oftentimes the discussion is about trade.

When you talk about the economy in southwest Ohio, which is the Cincinnati area, there's much less talk about trade, and more discussion about wages and the salaries that people are making. The southeast area of the state, which is also known in part because of the Appalachian history of that part of the state, has high unemployment. A number of counties in southeast Ohio have double-digit unemployment. Many people in that region are talking about and focused on unemployment, solely as their economic concern.

And what about social issues?We heard in Celeste's piece a woman who is concerned about abortion. We know at least in southern Ohio that there are big concerns about social issues. How do those play out?

When we were looking at this race last fall and in the early spring, we were seeing a lot of issues, economic, social, foreign policy issues. However, once we've gotten into the fall election period here, the economy is overwhelming everything else.

Eric Rademacher, co-director of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio poll. Thank you very much.


I am doing great, but consumer confidence, not so much. It's at its lowest level since the early 1990s. What exactly does that mean?

The Conference Board surveys consumers about what they think is going to happen, about how confident they are. It's important because consumer confidence determines lots of discretionary spending. In other words, if you can buy a car this year or next year and you think the economy is going to turn down or you're worried about your job, you're going to postpone that car purchase. Well, that's a great decision for the Chideya residence, but it might not be for the economy if it's multiplied by thousands or tens of thousands. So people predicate their spending on what they think is going to happened into the economy. It doesn't affect our spending on things like food or things we can't, we have no discretion over - gasoline, perhaps, if you have to commute with your car, other kinds of things.

But there are some things that you'll make decisions - I'm not going to do this now. Some people are holding back from the housing market, although this is a particularly good time to get in, because interest rates are low and because the market is troubled. But some younger people are holding back because they're not so sure what their jobs are going to be like. So when consumer confidence is down, you can expect that spenders are withholding some of their spending.

There's also signs that the cost of imported goods are rising. Is that because of gasoline prices?Or what's driving that?


I think that's a - sometimes an oversimplification. But, you know, there's a bit of a creep factor now, to put it in the plainest terms. You click agree and maybe, you know, ads follow you around the net or - that's sort of the mildest form of these things. But in the sort of worst-case scenario, as you said, you know, your data might be sold in sort of an unethical way. We're all a little bit more wary, at least over here, about that kind of thing.

Over here in contrast to where?

Well, in contrast to other parts of the world. I would say what I saw at CES, which tends to favor big companies like Samsung, like LG, Sony - you know, obviously, are based mostly in Asia - the conversation around privacy there - it hasn't quite penetrated in the same way, at least by my reckoning from what I saw at CES because - I'll give you one example.

LG - they talked very highly about its smart home sort of platform, that all these devices have a connection to the Internet and they're using their sensors to kind of learn your preferences and better tailor what they can do for you. That all sounds good until you kind of realize, well, by definition, what they're doing is profiling you.


So, you've got a lot of expenses. How are you coping with those expenses right now?

Well, the thing is, I'm, you know, it's almost paycheck to paycheck. I don't have much savings. In fact, I have very little savings. We eat in. We don't go out anymore. And as far as buying clothing, forget about that. I haven't bought a decent pair of shoes in months.

Your daughter is getting ready to go to college in a few years. Has she thought about where she wants to go, and have you thought about how you're going to pay for it?

Well, we talk about it every day now. And she just, you know, I don't know how we're going to pay for it, but we are trying to find ways. In fact, I told her that she will have to probably do something, to do work-study, because I will not be able to afford sending her on my type of income in my lifestyle, OK?And I won't ever be able to retire.


Oh, God.

We figured there was a problem.

Long time ago. Listen, if functioning addicts are operating below the radar, I assume that they generally don't want people to know about their addiction. How much of a problem is it for them to maintain their anonymity?

It's frightening. I think that, you know, when you live in quiet desperation and there's always the person that's hiding their alcohol or around the corner drinking what they do, others, with their medications or their pills. They don't want other folks to find out. I mean, it's a quiet illness until finally people do notice. But there's fear around it. I mean, fear of being caught of fear of being tested or ultimately, when the body gives out, secondary complications where physicians will say what are you using, what are you doing for your organs to be giving out like this. So there's ultimately not only denial that's going on, but obviously, a lot of pain that goes with it.


We got hit pretty hard with the recession. And when people aren't making money, they're not spending money.

And they're certainly not eating ice cream.

And they're not eating ice cream. So the more people make, the more they come down here and vacation from all over the world - general improving in the economy. I think there's a lot of confidence in the new administration that's in there. It seems like it's pro-small business, you know?There's a window manufacturer right next to where we're at, and they are swamped right now. And they say the same thing. It's, you know, people are confident. They're not holding onto their money. They're investing it in the economy.

May I ask you, did you vote for President Trump?

I didn't vote Democrat or Republican because I just - I'd had enough of the spatting back and forth. I'm prior military, so I support our president no matter who it is. But I didn't like the personalities of it, so I didn't vote for either one of those two.

Some of the owners that were surveyed were saying that there were some concerns - cost of health insurance, lack of qualified workers. Well, what are the things that you're concerned about right now that may hold back your business?


Let me switch subjects. We are walking on the way to the studio here this morning and two big tour buses came down the street. You're - one of the reason this all worked is you're performing right next door.

Right across the parking lot.

And I wonder, I was talking to Priska Neely, our producer, and said, I wonder if that's Mary Chapin Carpenter. Two big buses touring, pulling equipment trailers behind. Where were you coming in from at 8 o'clock in the morning?

We spent the last two days driving from Arizona.


As we know, the president has been very big on tariffs, right?I mean, he recently tweeted, tariffs are the greatest - one of many tweets like that. What has - what changed here?

This was an amazing turnaround. It was a real victory for the free traders in the White House and for those who argued that it's not good for the president to be in a circular firing squad with our European allies. Instead, he should work with them to pressure China at the WTO about intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers. The other thing that caused this turnaround was the president really needed a win. He was facing a wall of opposition from his own constituents, from Republican members of Congress, from farmers, from people who work in small manufacturing plants.

The other thing that made a big difference, according to a senior White, House official that I talked to, was that the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, came in with a specific deal. He said we're going to buy this many more soybeans, this much more liquefied natural gas. This is a very transactional president. And, apparently, Canada, Mexico, China - none of them have come in with specific deals the way the EU did last week. So the president went from saying privately, I don't need Europe to making a deal.

And how, Mara, will this deal announcement affect his all-important base?


. . . You are from this area - born in D. C. , raised in Maryland and Virginia - the DMV, as we like to say. So what's it like to be back home now that you're blowing up like this?Can you go to, like, the CVS if you want to without being recognized?

Yeah. I definitely can go to the CVS. You know, sometimes people recognize me, sometimes they don't. But it's a beautiful feeling, and I just can't wait to move back eventually.

How did you start singing or how did you realize you could sing?

I don't know. I just was always singing. I didn't know if it was good or not, but my grandma, she told me that I sounded like an angel. And that maybe - perhaps that kept me going. I mean, I always wanted a solo at the church, and they didn't ever give it to me. But eventually they did, and I froze. But then I killed it. And I just feel like that kind of just followed me all throughout my life.


Yeah, yeah. And then tomorrow, let's focus more on the hammer (tapping piano hammers).

That pounds the strings.

Yeah. And then let's focus more on the keys the day after (playing piano).

He did this while explaining why he is returning to compositions he played as a child. Lang Lang is a concert pianist for whom almost no composition seems too difficult.

Yet his latest album, "Piano Book," features much simpler classics, tunes many adults recall trying to play in piano lessons and that Lang Lang played growing up in China.


Do you remember that question about any practical applications?And what did you say?Do you remember what you said?

Yeah, I said practical applications are science fiction, that we just can't make enough antimatter to be useful. It would take longer than the age of the universe to accumulate macroscopic amounts of antimatter to make a weapon or a rocket fuel or something like that. So this is really pure research, right?We're looking at, you know, one or few atoms at a time. There's 10 to the 24th atoms in a macroscopic amount of hydrogen or antihydrogen, so we're just nowhere near there. But it's still a lot of fun.

Yeah. So the answer to the question of a practical application is still absolutely no.

Yeah, nothing has changed there and. . .


And then, on top of that, you've got a set of rules that just make any type of compromise very difficult. And the toughest one there is that any budget or spending plan has to pass by two-thirds of a vote of both the Senate and the Assembly. So, even though the Democrats hold pretty firm majorities in both houses, they can't do it without getting three Republican votes from the Senate and three from the Assembly.

So, it basically has to be a consensus budget. And the governor for his entire term has been totally flummoxed by the fact that it's so difficult to find a middle ground in the legislature to get things done.

Jordan Rau reporting from Sacramento for the Los Angeles Times on California's massive budget deficit facing more than $14 billion shortfall this year. And, Jordan, thank you very much.

You're welcome.


Great to be here as well.

So let's start with the most recent news. This past Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an abortion case out of Louisiana. Can you just briefly explain the central issue in the case and why this is so significant?

Louisiana had passed a statute that required doctors to have admitting privileges before they could perform abortions. And that would result in virtually no abortion facilities in the state. It's similar to what Texas attempted to do several years ago, and the Supreme Court struck down that law in 2016. But this time, the federal appeals court for Louisiana has upheld the law, and the court was sort of forced to take the case.

The question I think for people who both support abortion rights and expansive abortion rights and those who oppose them is whether the court will turn over the precedent set in Roe v.  Wade. Is this case a case that could do that?


Well, it's about four, five, six percent. But we also asked questions about whether or not people would change their minds. You can add an additional about 20 percent of voters who are picking a candidate in the month of September, but are still saying they might change their mind how they're going to vote. When you add those two numbers together, you get almost to a quarter of the electorate in Ohio that could change its mind between now and Election Day.

And the number one issue, as it is in many places in the country, the economy?

The economy is the number one issue. And one of the things that makes it very difficult for a candidate to campaign in Ohio is that when they come to Ohio to talk about the economy, they can't just talk about a single aspect. When you talk to folks in the northern part of the state, northeast Ohio which includes Cleveland, and northwest Ohio which includes Toledo, when you're talking about the economy there, oftentimes the discussion is about trade.

When you talk about the economy in southwest Ohio, which is the Cincinnati area, there's much less talk about trade, and more discussion about wages and the salaries that people are making. The southeast area of the state, which is also known in part because of the Appalachian history of that part of the state, has high unemployment. A number of counties in southeast Ohio have double-digit unemployment. Many people in that region are talking about and focused on unemployment, solely as their economic concern.


That could be jeopardized?

Well, certainly the people putting forth these plans don't think it would be. What they want to do is change Medicaid from a guaranteed benefit to a block grant to states. So a state would get a fixed amount of money from the federal government and decide for itself how to spend it. The idea is that states know their needs better than the feds, and this would give them flexibility.

What critics of this idea worry about is, what happens in an economic downturn when demand on Medicaid goes up?They say states could be left with a sort of Sophie's choice. Do you cut back on services for poor children or for the frail elderly?

I know we've talked about Medicare and Medicaid. Are there proposed changes that would affect older Americans who might buy their own health care coverage?


All right. Let's start with this violence. What are you hearing?A bad night from all sides.

Yeah, the country's just really tense. I mean, overnight, there were four people killed in an area that's opposition heavy. And this morning, we heard accusations that they were shot to death because of their tribe. The police chief says that's just not true and that politicians are using that to incite violence. But either way, the killings have unleashed riots in some parts of Nairobi. People have set cars and buses on fire. And in some other areas, there's looting, and some residents have set up checkpoints where they're asking for ID, basically trying to confirm tribe. So there's running battles right now with police. And a member of Parliament from the opposition party was shot in the leg during one of those confrontations. And that's just likely to inflame tensions even more.

Right. And, of course, this is coming before this very important case before the Supreme Court. This is the second time the Supreme Court is deciding on a very important issue - whether or not to nullify the election again, right?

Yeah. If you remember, this same court threw out the first presidential elections back in August. And they said they found too many irregularities so they ordered new ones. Those were held last month. And now the court is deciding whether that election met the constitutional standards. There's a lot of questions before the court, but the central one has to do with violence. The Kenyan Constitution says that elections have to be held in an atmosphere that is free from intimidation and free from violence. But just before these elections, the opposition leader pulled out of the contest.


They're very abstract. I talked with Heather Heckman, who's at the University of South Carolina Libraries, and they loaned us some of this Vishniac footage. And she was, like, it's almost like avant-garde film because, you know, you look at these oyster larvae pulsating, and you don't know what they are. They're just - but it's really beautiful.

So we talked - so we learn about Vishniac and also sort of figure out how things have changed since the '50s, '60s and '70s, which is when he was doing his work. And we spoke with Wim van Egmond, who's this Dutch photographer who wins all these Nikon Small Worlds contests. I think people who follow this will know his name. But he makes these beautiful, microscopic videos and videos through the microscope and photos, too.

And they're all one-celled creatures?

Not all of them.


Well, I'm here advising Ambassador Vecchio. And Ambassador Vecchio and myself have very fluid communication with members of Congress, with the State Department, with the White House. And we've always radiated and seen with very good eyes that this is a bipartisan issue.

So what does it mean to you when you hear someone like John Bolton, the national security adviser, talking about all options being on the table when it comes to support for Venezuela?Do you have any fears about military intervention?

Well, first of all, we continue to ask for all options on the table because. . .

So you want it. You want that to be a potential.


I've also been impressed by what Germany has done to address their history. And I notice in some spots in Germany, you will have plaques that remember the lives and the death of individual German soldiers. Is there room for that?

There's a room for a commemorating individual soldiers. There's a room for, I think, monument on battlefields. I mean, Gettysburg - people have asked me, what about Gettysburg?Well, you know, people fought and died there. So, yes, I think to the extent that these things are done in places that are not meant to send a message of domination, sure that's appropriate.

If it were up to you, what should be done with a lot of Confederate statues?

I think the Confederate statues should be removed. The notion that removing them means we're getting rid of history or changing history is not true. We will always write about Robert E.  Lee, Grant, the war, but that's - doesn't have to be commemorated, I think, in statues.


The administration position, as I alluded to, is that the number of migrant children apprehended crossing the border without a parent or guardian is at all-time record highs, that this is an emergency situation and that they're having to process so many children that they are out of money for everything which is not - and I'll quote - "directly necessary for the protection of life and safety. "What is your response?

Well, I'd argue that legal counsel is often an issue of life and safety for these children. They have fled horrific, violent conditions in their home countries. And an order of deportation without the opportunity of due process could mean a threat to their life and safety. When we're talking about the numbers of children coming in here, while the numbers may be higher, they're not that substantially higher than they were in 2014. And we were able to continue and actually expand services.

In your view, is this move legal?I mean, is the U. S.  obligated by law to provide these services for unaccompanied minors in federal shelters here?

Absolutely. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act mandates that children be provided with Know-Your-Rights presentations and legal screenings when they are in the custody of ORR.


Right.

There must be some science to this, right?

Yeah. There's actually a little bit of fun science. Egg whites are basically liquid. But they're full of protein?That's why they're good for us. And so when you whip them, you're breaking down those proteins.

And the proteins are usually like little balls that hang out by themselves, but when you whip them, they unfurl, they unfold and they start bonding with each other. And as they bond, they create a structure. And that structure captures air bubbles, and it gives the foam its shape. And we're going to have a nice fluffy cloud as a result.


Indeed, and the longer this regime stays, the bigger this possibility is. I think any solution to the Syrian crisis will have to assure the different communities in Syria, at the top of which are the Alawites of their future in the country. Many Alawites today do not feel that what the Bashar Assad is doing to their country is excusable. At the same time, they are afraid to basically jump the ship and go against him for fear of being, sort of, killed and massacred by the majority Sunnis in the country. And so a political process will have to address the aspirations, the needs, the fears of these different minority communities in Syria.

A political process we've seen very little of. There's nothing going on.

Not much. There is a U. N.  envoy, Mr.  Lakhdar Brahimi, who was both an U. N.  and Arab League envoy, who is trying, you know, to initiate such a process. But given, in my view, the fact that this regime looks at things in Syria as a zero-sum game, there is, indeed, a very little likelihood of the success of the political process.

Marwan Muasher, former foreign minister, deputy prime minister of Jordan, with us from studios at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. Thanks very much for your time.


Yeah. I can imagine.

. . . run me out of the lab on a rail. But they were delighted. They were so imaginative and they were so - well, they're both fiction readers, which helps, so they understand what literature can do, that it's symbolic and how you can sort of tell the truth in a fictional way.

So they - we just have a great time. We spent hours in conversation about this. If it did happen, then what would be the reasons?You know, we sort of backed up and had all of these hypothesis and, you know, Dr.  Brower was even saying, oh, and there's another species of milkweed, and if that range shifted a little too - so we were really - they were very enthusiastically helping me create this imaginary world, which gave me a lot of confidence in the final manuscript because they vetted it for me and they made sure that every degree of temperature was accurate and all the equipment used by the scientists in this novel were, you know, I haven't positioned them upside down. You know, everything, every detail has to be right.

So I really appreciate, not just Dr.  Brower and Dr.  Fink, but all of the scientists who have done a lot of work on monarchs that I relied - on which I relied to get my facts straight.


So the motive question remains fuzzy at this point. We might learn more about that later. In terms of what weapons he used, it was a . 45 caliber handgun. And he had with him several extended ammunition magazines and this device called a sound suppressor. And, you know, he entered the building using his city-issued ID, just using his swipe badge. And officials said, you know, he had done that very act, you know, every single workday for the previous 15 years. He was a longtime employee of the city.

And what will be going on this weekend, Bobby?

So there's going to be a number of memorials families of the victims will be planning here in Virginia Beach. And, you know, I have to say that city officials are talking about really bolstering services for the families who are grieving, who are going to be dealing with the turmoil that is now part of their life for quite some time. And, you know, the city manager told reporters earlier that in just, you know, less than 24 hours since the shooting happened, people have been pouring support into the families in terms of money, in terms of food, in terms of even bringing support dogs that might take their mind off the tragedy for a little bit. So already, he was saying, that the community is rising up in the wake of this terrible tragedy.

NPR's Bobby Allyn in Virginia Beach, thanks so much.


There are some states out there, for example Oregon and Maine, which currently don't have sales taxes throughout the year. Is there anything that you can potentially learn from states that have been doing this for a while?

What we are looking at are states that have had sales - state sales tax holidays. As you may know, there are 17 states plus the District of Columbia that currently have sales tax holidays during the year. And the experience of our retail members with those holidays is that they're very attractive to people. They really do bring people into the stores. It's an exciting time.

You can say, well gee, if the average state sales tax is five, six percent, why would that drive consumers to come into the stores more than a sale advertised at 15 or 20 percent. And it's an interesting psychological phenomenon, but it does seem to drive more traffic. It may be because people just don't like to pay taxes, and they're very excited when there's a period where they won't have to pay taxes to the government.

Rachelle Bernstein is with the National Retail Federation. Thank you, Rachelle.


Tell me a little bit about Riot Games. They're funding a lot of esports events.

Yeah.

What is their role in this?

They are creating a lot of the games. They've been out in front and doing a ton of deals. They did a deal with the Big Ten Network where they sponsor an esports tournament among Big Ten schools, and the winner of that tournament sort of gets a scholarship to one of the Big Ten schools. They're very heavily involved in sort of not only developing the games but also developing the business in total.


It's too late by then.

. . . but I think nobody has tried it with the pickled kind.

OK.  We got a minute left. Tell us about the weekly newspaper column. You talked about a recent one about the laws of stupidity. Quickly, do tell that to us, quickly.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this is something done by an Italian economist about 30 or 40 years ago. His name is Cipolla, and he wrote the little piece to be funny, but it's also quite true. He called it "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity," and these laws boiled down to very few things. One is that there are more stupid people around than anybody will ever estimate accurately. And the other is that there's nothing you can do about them, other than become aware of it. They just are a fact and you better deal with the fact that they're not going to go away, and that there is no point to trying to accommodate them. There's no way you're going to prevent them continuing to be stupid.


It's been an exciting year for developments in space. Just earlier this week, SpaceX successfully landed a 15-story tall section of one of their rockets back on Earth. And joining me to discuss what's been going on off our planet during 2015 is NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. So explain exactly what happened that a part of the rocket returned.

In some sense, this was just another rocket launch for SpaceX. You know, they sent 11 communication satellites into orbit. What really makes this special is what happened to the big first stage of the rocket. Now, normally this would just fall back to Earth. But this time, SpaceX flipped it around and then flew it back to near the launch site and actually landed it. They fired the engines a second time and it sort of floated down onto the pad. It was pretty spectacular to watch.

The space pad looks big when you're looking at it on the Earth. But from space, it must be a tiny dot.

Yeah, I mean SpaceX describes it as trying to shoot a pencil over the Empire State Building, have it turn around and land in a shoebox vertically. That's how hard this is.


Fort Dietrich, Maryland. What did he do there?

Yeah. This is a very secure area which is set up to do research on some of the most dangerous pathogens that are known to man, actually. They have what's called a biosafety level-four containment facility, maybe you've seen pictures of these guys in moon suits, where they deal with these, you know, highly deadly agents.

Bruce Ivins worked there, and his principal role, at least as far as I can tell from looking through the papers he's published - now, this is a very secret place, so you don't get a lot of information out of them - but his role there seems to have been to work on vaccines to protect against anthrax. In particular, he was trying to make a vaccine that would be more robust, that it might help the immune system fight off exposure to anthrax. Of course, the military is very interested in this, because they're worried about anthrax as a bioweapon.

Do we know anything more about why he originally came under suspicion?


But people in India really are angry. I have lived in this country in two different periods for about 15 years. I have never seen anything like this before. You see it in other countries, but you don't often see it in India, where people take to the streets and complain. They want change.

There hasn't been much change. All we've seen so far is the home secretary, the home minister, that's the head of the security services, I suppose, being changed, and nothing else has. The armed forces chief and other people are arguing and doing a blame game as to who's responsible, and people are getting angrier.

They want change in terms of attitudes and actions by the politicians and the bureaucrats. They want visible signs of the corruption, which impedes India's efficient government, to stop, and they also want signs that something is being done to stop further attacks.

Elections in India aren't too far off. Is this a signal that the current government might be in jeopardy?


Well, CCH Pounder, great to talk to you.

Thank you.

CCH Pounder is an actor and gallery owner. Her space in Los Angeles is called the Pounder-Kone Art Space, and she joined me right here in the studios of NPR West in Culver City.

That's our show for today. Thank you for sharing your time with us. To listen to the show or subscribe to our podcast, visit our website nprnewsandnotes. org. To join the conversation or sign up for our newsletter, visit our blog at nprnewsandviews. org.


Thank you.

Eduardo, the group of survivors quickly formed a community, sharing tasks, rotating sleeping positions so everyone would get a chance at a more comfortable spot in the wrecked plane. Can you talk a little bit about that?- those first few days.

Yeah. As you can imagine, it has been the most awful, terrible days of my life. It was awful and long nights. We have a very small space. We were 29 people at the first. And we have no warm clothes (ph), no water. We have to melt snow. It was very difficult because the weather was very cold. And the snow was all over the kerosene of the engines of the plane. We are surrounded with our friends, who died. And that first night was really impossible to describe.

Of course, the aspect of the story that has gained the most notoriety was the decision you all made that in order to survive, you would have to start eating your dead friends. And you didn't flinch from describing this in the book. Fairly early on, you say that hearing your cousin Adolfo say out loud what many were thinking - that you were going to have to eat the bodies - gave you a kind of relief. How so?


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.

But divination is creating a space where you have objects that have a metaphorical representation with respect to elements of a person's life. Divination is something that takes training. And as of all cultures, of course, there's herbal medicine and understanding of diet. But the fundamental premise with African culture is linking everything back, with God and the ancestors being at the central core.

We did an interview with someone who is a spiritual leader in one of the many traditional African spiritual practices. And what you're talking about sounds, in many ways, more like spirituality than medicine. Do you see yourself practicing both, or how, I mean. . . ?


Money.

If you go to Moscow today - I'm not talking about the provinces and I'm not talking about provincial cities, but Moscow, the very center of Moscow - is in some ways Riyadh or a kind of oil-rich capital. That's what Russia is today in terms of its economy at the highest levels. The very high elites, which all congregate in downtown Moscow and have their country homes in - outside, have enormous amount of money. The highest concentration of billionaires in any city in the world is in Moscow of all places, and when I lived in Moscow, you could barely buy a potato or an onion or get a box of matches, and this is reflected in the most glamorous state-controlled theater of all, the Bolshoi.

Just to interrupt our conversation for a moment, we are seeing black smoke emerging from the Vatican, which means there was no pope selected in the most recent vote, so onto tomorrow. But in any case, on back to the Bolshoi Ballet.

And, David Remnick, as you look at the influence of all that money, one of the accomplishments of the Bolshoi, you say, is that it has managed to make itself ideologically independent.


That's British Columbia, the northwest of Canada, right?

Yes. Absolutely, I'm sorry. So then another vehicle that they'd been driving was last seen on July 22. So the manhunt - they already had a few days on everybody. And they were last seen in this community in northern Manitoba. The police, the RCMP poured extensive resources, as you say, but they were not able to be located.

And some other reported sightings - there was a report that may be some men matching the description had been seen at this very isolated dump in a community way up north. Those have not been able to be substantiated. The latest tip is that they've been seen in an area called Kapuskasing in Ontario. But, again, that's still unsubstantiated at this time.

But probably each time a community is mentioned or something, I mean, people must freak out. It's pretty terrifying.


My parents are actually still in Khartoum. We're lucky that they are among the few whose mobile phones still work. There's been a widespread outrage. It just sounds incredibly scary that the city is in a state of paralysis. Activist groups have called for a general strike, and people seem to be sticking to it. Roads are closed off.

And what makes this particularly terrifying is it's not even really the armed forces that people are clashing with. It's a specific paramilitary segment that was regularized as part of the armed forces but used to be an out-of-control militia in Darfur - the Janjaweed militias, the Rapid Support Forces. And that's what's scaring people is that this isn't even a regular force that's taken control of the town.

This means the military is fracturing?I mean, we should say all this happened after protesters demanded the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir. And military there is now in charge of Sudan, but what you are describing is that there is no cohesive military either. Right?

Absolutely. The military as a token is in charge. The head of the military council is a general. But the second in command is head of these forces, the Rapid Support Forces. And everyone I've spoken to on the ground says those are the people that are on the streets. All the videos that we've been sent by eyewitnesses, from the citizens show that it was Rapid Support Force guards that charged the sit-in. And it's incredibly chilling because this is a militia that was accused of war crimes in Darfur. And to have them control the ground in the capital of Sudan is very scary for people right now.


What issues do you think he's emphasizing that have helped?

Well, there's no question that I think the number-one issue is economic inequality, the growing gap between rich - and I'm not going to say poor - but the rich and everyone else. It is not a progressive agenda or a conservative agenda to say, we are dealing in this country now with a kind of inequality that threatens the foundations of our society, and that resonates across the political spectrum.

You know, you can't get through a political conversation these days without mentioning Mr.  Trump. And I bring his name up to you because, on Friday, he took out after hedge funds. He's actually been doing that recently. I have a quote. "The hedge fund guys - they make a fortune; they pay no tax. The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder. "He sounds a lot more like Bernie Sanders than he does the other Republicans.

Well, you know, Scott, I think that Bernie Sanders is having an effect also on the Republican Party. It's not lost on any of these candidates, you know, not Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump.

Speaking as a citizen and from your experience and base of influence, do you think Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state - now under inquiry by the Justice Department and the FBI - is a legitimate campaign issue?


All right. Does this activity now go completely unregulated after Congress sort of blocked this legislation taking force?

So since the privacy rule has been blocked, as, you say, a few things have happened. The companies themselves the Internet service providers, have gone on a campaign. They're reassuring users that they do offer opt-outs. Now, they're not opt-ins, but they're opt-outs. And also they say that they do not and will not sell people's individual browsing history. They might use this history but - to tailor ads - but they do not sell it to third parties. One thing that the angry customers have prompted is interest from lawmakers in a bunch of states - to name a few, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, I randomly picked a bunch of M's - these lawmakers are tackling Internet privacy laws. They're debating them on a state level.

So we may see a change soon. All right. Alina Selyukh, she reports on technology for NPR. Thanks so much.

Thank you.


Yes, we have. We haven't canvassed all video game producers. There are a couple of companies that we've worked with in particular. We approach them, and in some cases they have approached us asking for advice. And in one case, we said, hey, would you like to incorporate this in your game?They thought it was a wonderful idea, so we sat down with them and explained some of the basic concerns and maybe some ways that they might want to approach it.

If video games reflect the fact that the rules of war are often flouted, doesn't just reflect what happens in life?

It may reflect what happens in life. At the same time, because they are flouted, we can't throw up our hands and say it's useless. You know, anything is allowable under war. We have to keep insisting on that and we have to keep pushing the notion that there are laws, even in war, and that they must be respected.

And, Mr.  Barrett, I'm sure there's some people listening who might find this very interesting but say but, you know, why doesn't the ICRC do more about Syria?


Well, not necessarily the DNA. But the DNA is decorated with. . .

Right.

. . . chemical tags. And these are methyl groups, or carbon groups that can be added, or they can disappear to the DNA. And this modifies the way other proteins can interact with the DNA and transmit signals to lead the changes in protein production.

Which is - and which is how your muscles grow if you're exercising.


Companies like Morgan Stanley, UBS, GE Financial, American Express all plan to use this new facility, and industrial companies will probably follow suit. Now, usually, this is not a market that the government has had any role in, at least as a direct lender. It used to be that these IOU's were bought by financial institutions, money market, mutual funds, and the like. The loans weren't too sexy, they weren't very risky, and the interest rate wasn't anything to write home about.

But all that changed after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Holders of commercial paper started worrying that these corporate IOU's weren't so safe, so they stopped buying them. And then perfectly healthy businesses have been since finding it difficult and expensive to get hold of cash. So now, the Fed will become the lender of last resort yet again and try to jump start lending by others.

And then so - and loosen the credit, the credit crunch. And so, is this move - will it be more promising than all the others we've seen so far to try to loosen credit?

You know, in short, the answer is yes, with the caveat of probably. Every economist I've talked to or seen quoted today thinks this is a pretty safe move by the Fed. The government simply has to get financial institutions back to lending money more than a day at a time.


The government said the first round of elections didn't produce a majority. That meant a runoff, but since the runoff plan was announced, locals have died or been beaten in election-related violence. International reporters and diplomats have been detained or expelled, food aid for malnourished people has reportedly been confiscated by the government, and Tsvangirai has faced threats and government detention during his campaigning. In fact, Tsvangirai was just released hours ago from yet another detention. We spoke with the Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, shortly before his latest detention. He shared his perspective on the election, and told us about the work he is doing with the American-based media outlet MTVU.

You have stood for election, seen that the government says that you did not win a majority, been detained, waited for a runoff. What was the moment when you most despaired during this process of the election and the post-election?

I think the most despairing moment was the waiting for the results, when we knew that we had won the election, and that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission was not announcing the result. I think it was the worst moment, of waiting.

How do you think the MDC supporters are doing right now?Have people - there have been widespread beatings, detentions. Do you think that people are still willing whenever the runoff actually happens, to go out and vote?Or are some people going to be too afraid?


What would you say to those people who might say - look, if people are in this country illegally it's the job of ICE to detain them?

Well, there's a couple of things. Number one, ICE does have that responsibility. But motels have a responsibility, too. And that responsibility is that you have to live, number one, by your privacy promises. Motel 6 has a privacy statement. It says we're going to guard your private information. They did not do that here. You cannot do that under our consumer protection laws. And so, that's number one.

Number two, they turned over everybody who was staying at the motel. People stay at motels for all sorts of very private reasons. You could be the victim of domestic abuse fleeing your abuser. Do you want your information turned over to anybody who just happens to walk into that hotel?It's not right. Frankly, it pisses me off, and I'm not going to put up with it.

We of course contacted Motel 6, and they said that in September of last year, they issued a nationwide directive that made it clear that their motels should not voluntarily provide guest lists to ICE. What do you say?


What are we looking at in terms of how quickly they can start working again?

It will depend on the crop. For example, the coffee growers - the arabica bean coffee was being harvested right now. So they're working hard to collect from the ground whatever's left so they can sell it in the market. So we're giving them working capital to be able to pay their payroll, and then we'll start planning for next year's harvesting because it's a one-year crop. On the other end, some of the papaya plantations - growers, they also have bananas and plantains. They have younger trees. So if they cut down the banana trees, in eight, nine months they'll be able to get on their feet.

What does this mean for Puerto Ricans and their access to food?

It means (laughter) that we need to rethink our whole food distribution and supply chain. We're highly dependent in imports. We import 85 percent of our food. And this actually gives us an opportunity to rethink that business model and say, hey, we need to produce more here. We need to have fresh produce, etc. , so that we can have enough supplies inland in case this happens again.


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

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

Very infamous words. . .

. . . George W.  Bush famously used. And he used them the last time we were involved in a Middle East conflict, declared it accomplished. And it turns out it wasn't.


A lawsuit was filed this week in federal court on behalf of a man who moved from Puerto Rico to Southeast Georgia in 2017. He applied for a driver's license after waiting at the required 30 days. The man, Kenneth Caban Gonzalez, says that an inspector from the Georgia Department of Driver Services confiscated his documents and asked him a number of trivia questions such as, who is Roberto Clemente, and what is the name of the frog native only to Puerto Rico?He alleges he also asked trick questions such as, where is Caguas beach?There is no beach in Caguas.

The lawsuit accuses the state of violating the Civil Rights Act by holding residents of Puerto Rico to more stringent requirements than it does transplants from other U. S.  states. The advocacy group Latino Justice is litigating the case along with the Southern Center for Human Rights. And with us now is Gerry Weber. He's a senior attorney at the Southern Center.

Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.


Well, I certainly hope not. I mean, I think the Thanksgiving holiday certainly adds something to our lives. But that being said, the folks who were in the lines at the front of the lines had been there since noon in order to get those $200 flat-screen TVs and such.

Let me ask about the big online sales that people now call Cyber Monday. How have they changed the strategies of actual stores?

Well, we know that retailers that have an online presence actually get a lot more loyalty out of their customers. And so Wal-Mart, Target, Nordstrom, among others, are allowing you to buy online and actually even pick it up in-store.

Now, the advantage to the retailer for buying online but picking it up in-store is to get people into the tents, so that they might see something else?


The Negro National League's last innings came in 1940s, after Jackie Robinson headed for the big leagues. Kadir Nelson's new book, "We Are the Ship" captures black-American baseball at the top of its game. Kadir is an award-winning children's book illustrator. He's collaborated with Will Smith, Spike Lee and Debbie Allen. For "We Are the Ship," he did all of the writing and all of the artwork, and his rich, detailed paintings show Negro-league superstars as if they're posing for the camera or deep in a game of hard ball.

Kadir Nelson joins me now. How are you?

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

So you have done playful children's books. You've illustrated books for young people about historic figures. Tell me about Buck O'Neil.


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

Is the ACLU a fig leaf for Nazis?

No, sir. We are the premier defenders of freedom of speech and racial justice and the rights of all people in the U. S.  For almost a hundred years, our mission has been to defend the rights of everyone, even people we hate. And ultimately, this is about making sure the government never has the authority or the ability to censor speech because it finds it loathsome or disgusting. There are ways for government to regulate speech. It's got to be neutral. There are time, place, manner restrictions that are perfectly appropriate and legitimate. And yet, it can never be because we don't like what folks say.

What about when the marchers are armed, though?Doesn't that make a difference to public safety?


So, you know, is this going to be a situation where states line up basically to sue this lender, and what difference would that make in how this is unfolding?

I think it's going to play out in a number of a ways. Countrywide is - obviously they were the largest non-bank mortgage lender in the country. They were - just sold a few weeks ago to Bank of America for what amount - to pennies on a dollar but many many. Countrywide is by far - was by far the largest player in the subprime crisis in terms of a single mortgage lender. But they weren't the only one. The thing is that Countrywide has become a symbol for how bad this gotten many communities.

And I think if you see a challenge like the one here in Ohio or the one here in Florida proceed with favorable results, you will probably see many other states - especially those where minorities or women or the working class, working poor were hit hard by subprime mortgages - are going to start lining up, and attorneys general are going to be filing suit against Countrywide and many other countries like - companies like Countrywide.

Well, Keith, thanks again.


Housing is just one part of the economy in dire need of help. There's also the banks. Last week, the Treasury Department unveiled its approach to help troubled banks, and Wall Street didn't take so kindly to that plan. Joining us now to discuss what's ahead for the nation's banks is Nobel Prized-winning economist and Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz. Welcome back to the program, and if you could start off by reminding us what this plan entails and what your thoughts are about it.

Well, part of the reason the market reacted so badly was it wasn't sure what it entailed. There were so many gaps that no one is very sure. When aspect of that was that they were going to use private hedge funds and others to buy off the assets from the banks. So they're going to lend money with a (unintelligible), lend money, presumably, to the hedge funds to buy the bad assets off the banks, but the hedge funds won't do this unless there are some reduction in risk, which means the taxpayers are going to wind up paying doubly.

One, you have to compensate the hedge funds for their money and for the risk, and then we wind up bearing the majority of the risk in any case.

And you basically called this a zero sum game?


No, physically, we're - really pretty pathetic. Offhand, I cannot think of an animal which, if your size, let's say 150 pounds, that could not absolutely obliterate you in hand-to-hand or tooth-to-incisor combat. And our dominance in the world is all thanks to this trick of coming up with these codes that enable us to remember what happened yesterday or years ago. And it has a permanence that has a tremendous advantage (laughter). It has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.

Yeah. But you say that speech bedeviled Darwin as a matter of fact.

It did. He could not figure out what it was. He assumed because of his theory that everything evolved from animals, and he didn't even include it in his theory language until he decided that it came from our imitation of the cries of birds. And I think it's misleading to say that human beings evolved from animals. I mean, actually nobody knows whether they did or not. And there are very few physical signs, except for the general resemblance between apes and humans. The big evolution, if you want to call it that, is that this one species, Homo sapiens, came up with this ingenious trick, which is language.

Are you concerned, Mr.  Wolfe, or are you resolutely not concerned that people who don't believe in evolution for religious reasons, not scientific ones, are going to begin to cite your work as some kind of scientific proof?


What are some of the challenges for businesses in addition to your own, as you see it?

Well, first off, it's one thing to put the law in place. But then how do you actually track hours?And when is a person working?If I send an email to one of my employees in the evening or just give them a call to talk about something, now they have to clock in and clock out.

Or if they go to, you know, a trade show, when are they technically working?- versus, when are they not working?There's lots of challenges faced by practically every business out there to some degree.

Now that a judge has halted these rules, do you change yours?What are you going to do?


So along the way, you met a lot of interesting characters. And I want to particularly talk about a sommelier named Morgan Harris. He plays a big role. He's kind of like your wine shepherd. Tell us a little bit about him.

Ah, my wine fairy godmother. I mean, he's just amazing. He was my - he was really my mentor. He had this magnetic passion for wine. I mean, the first time I met him, I basically sat through a 2. 5-hour monologue that was an ode to everything from the great Rieslings of the early 20th century to the $1,200 bottle of champagne he thought would be a religious experience.

So this is a question - because he is this sort of wine evangelist if you will, he believes wines can recontextualize people's places in the universe. First of all, what does that mean?

And second of all - I mean, do you think that wine really has the power that he says it does?


An investigation by the U. S.  Park Police and the FBI found that Mr.  Foster committed suicide. We turn now to Joe Klein. He's a political columnist for Time magazine and, of course, author of "Primary Colors," the 1996 bestseller that featured a charming, philandering rogue of a southern governor and his proud, smart and oft humiliated wife - wonder what inspired that. Is Bill Clinton's personal history a legitimate campaign issue?

No, I don't think so. I mean, we've been through this time and time and time and time again. And there's so many legitimate campaign issues out there. I think that it's kind of a way for Donald Trump to steal a new cycle, as they say these days. I do think that there's an interesting debate going on within the Democratic Party about Bill Clinton's substance of record in the '90s. But that's a different thing.

Tactically, do you see it as a wise campaign issue on Trump's part?

I think people are going to get tired of it. You know, this sort of stuff worked in the Republican primaries. I think that people are entertained by his antics. It remains to be seen whether people are going to vote on him. I mean, you have to understand that we've never seen a candidate like Donald Trump before.


Well, one of the first things you do when you find out somebody who shares your name is say, oh, where's your family from?So I told him my family was Romanian and many had come over after World War II. And he told me when I asked him that his family was indeed descended from a sort of aristocratic Austrian family and that he was clearly not wealthy now. There had once been a family fortune, but as he put it, mother lived too long.

Mother lived too long.

Mother lived too long.

And so this acquaintance blossomed over the years, and so you got to know him a little bit.


Obviously, everything in this book is something that I concluded is accurate and true. That's a process of, do I trust my source?No. 1. And then I, you know, like to hear it a couple of times.

I'm thinking of the famous Watergate stories by Woodward and Bernstein. It was said that their standard was they wanted to hear two sources. Was that your standard?Anything in here is by two sources?

Most everything in here is either by multiple sources or, in some cases, by someone I absolutely trust.

Does the president talk to you anymore?


Now, Steve, everything I've just said has a caveat. OK?As you'd mentioned, yesterday the administration lightened their touch and said American tech firms could keep engaging in existing business with Huawei until mid-August. That's presumably to give some transition or prep time.

Is it really possible that the administration could raise these alarms of Chinese spying through Huawei equipment - that's the scenario they put out - and then just let the business go on?

Sure. That's totally possible. And there would be a precedent for that. Last year, President Trump banned sales to another Chinese phone-maker, ZTE, also citing national security concerns. That basically brought China's president to the bargaining table. And then Trump announced ZTE would pay a billion-dollar fine to do business with America again. So you know, maybe - maybe - the Huawei ban is a move to create leverage. In the last couple of weeks, the Trump administration has increased tariffs on $60 billion worth of Chinese goods, too. China's responded and, you know, tensions are growing.

You have underlined for us how deeply engaged U. S.  companies are already with Huawei, whether it's a small rural phone provider here in the United States or service provider in the United States or whether it's Google operating in Europe. How are tech companies responding?