Chris Scheuerman knew that his son was having troubles coping with combat. In March of 2005 while Jason was on leave, he told his father he was scared. Chris Scheuerman told him that was natural, and before leaving him at the airport for his return to Iraq, he reminded Jason to seek help if he was feeling depressed. A month later, after putting a rifle in his mouth, Jason visited an Army chaplain. A few weeks after that, Jason was evaluated by an Army psychologist.

He told me that the psychologist had given him a standardized test and talked to him for about 10 minutes. And after that evaluation, he sent a note back to the command stating that Jason was capable of feigning his illness in order to manipulate his command. That assessment brought much hardship down on my son, and this is after this unit had seen Jason with the muzzle of his weapon in his mouth and did nothing. This is a unit in which a chaplain writes he believed my son to be possessed by demons and obsessed with suicide, and did nothing. On the day that Jason took his life, he was given an Article 15, which in the military, is a non-judicial punishment. They gave him that for being out of uniform. During those proceedings, his first sergeant told him that if he was faking his illness, then he would go to jail and become someone's butt buddy, and Jason talks to that statement in his suicide note.

What does he say?

Basically, paraphrasing it, he speaks that life is not worth living if all he has looked forward to is being in jail and being someone's butt buddy.


Lu was raised in North Carolina as a Jehovah's Witness. When she was 18, she broke with her religion and left home to study cello. On her debut album "Blood," she explores those decisions. She started by writing about the people she left behind - her parents - in the song "Rebel. "

A lot of my parents' life are going to reveal to me later on in my own life. And in the making of this record, I feel I was doing a lot of reflecting on home and on my relationship. . .

Yeah.

. . . With them and the life that your parents lived before they're your parents.


General, do you have to worry about the possibility that even in, at least what so far seems to be uncontested conflict - if that's quite the term of art, I mean, in the air - that some technical problem could bring an F-22 down and then the Syrians or ISIL would have it and give it to the Chinese?

Fortunately, we have a fairly - really reliable aircraft. And so that is an event that would be exceedingly rare. However. . .

It happened to a stealth. I think we all recall that.

Yeah, but those kind of things are very rare when you look at the total number of sorties and missions that we've flown over the last, you know, 25 years.


Good morning.

So why do you think the jury could not make a unanimous decision?

Well, obviously, it was - there was a split. We don't know what the split was because, apparently, that's confidential under Pennsylvania law. But, you know, who knows?Even though jurors are not supposed to speak about other jurors, that may end up leaking out.

The prosecution did not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. On the other hand, the defense also did not get an acquittal. And so this case is going to be tried again. I did represent one - the other accuser who was permitted to testify, Kelly Johnson. And I admire both Kelly and Andrea for their courage in testifying in such a high-profile case. And I've said, you know, we can never underestimate the blinding power of celebrity, but justice will come.


The people in Somalia are suffering in a tremendous way. Actually, last month, the International Red Cross said that the fighting in Somalia that's going on now is the worst in 15 years. The government, the transitional government that was put into power with the help of U. S.  and Ethiopian invasion about 15 months ago has controlled nearly none of the country. They control a small of Mogadishu. The rest of the country is literally falling apart around it.

There is also, actually, in the last month alone 40,000 people had fled the capital. These are urban dwellers who are now literally camped out at roadsides, trying to get U. N. -staffed displacement camps, but really relying on international community for their most basic need. It's a really, really dire situation for the people of Somalia.

What's going to happen with some of these relief organizations?Will they be able to continue to operate in this climate?

We feel for the last 12 months that a couple of things have happen. Several of these organizations have actually put out of the country, organizations like Oxfam, World Division - organizations that are usually are, in times of crisis, the best and both trained do this kind of work. They had because they're worried for the safety of their staff pulled out.


That's essentially what it is, except the other person will never know that you put their name down unless they also put your name down.

OK.

I mean, I make fun of it. I'm probably still going to use it, right?OK (laughter)?

So - well, to that end, though, what kind of feedback are you hearing about this so far from the other countries where it rolled out?And I know it just started here, but - so what are you hearing so far?


…of the entire family. And you've got the ability to sit from that distance and observe natural behavior.

You know, there have been stories written about park rangers and others who have very strong personal connections to these animals. I know that some of them have named them. How does that come about?

Well, the park rangers, in my opinion, are the real heroes of mountain gorilla conservation. They are the guys who are out on a day-to-day basis, doing the work of conservation. And in the case of D. R. C. , they are risking their lives. We probably have lost 120 to 150 guards over the last 15 years in the Congo. And I think it indicates the kind of courage that these guys have, putting their life on the line, protecting animals that they have worked with on a day-to-day basis or, in some cases, decades.

Are there other animals that are also endangered in that area, especially as a result of the finding, in addition to the gorilla?


It turned into sand. We're going to stick with that.

(Laughter).

We atomized the entire thing.

So you get a sense of how this whole thing is going. Obviously, we should then inject alcohol into the situation. For his new show, Brad spent some time around Austin, Texas. So to cap off the visit, we made a cocktail - a paloma made out of a spirit called sotol, distilled from a plant that grows in the Texas desert.


And the president said today that he wants even more tariffs on China. Would it be fair to assume that China might retaliate, and, if so, how?

Yeah. I mean, the president has ordered his staff to draw up paperwork to put tariffs on, you know, another $300 billion in imports, which would mean there would be there tariffs on just about everything China sells to the U. S.  - I mean, clothes, furniture, food products, machinery, you know, intermediate goods that go into manufacturing. And China has said it will retaliate with tariffs of its own. So this would reach really far into the economies of both countries. Just about everything brought into the United States would have this extra cost tacked onto it. These - you know, these are the two largest economies in the world, so this will be a huge deal, both for these countries and for the global economy.

So what do we think will happen if they can't resolve their differences?

You know, who knows?There are some big issues on the table right now. We really can't gloss over them. At the same time, there is a certain amount of posturing going on. You know, President Trump considers himself, you know, a dealmaker. So you have to ask how much of this is just a kind of a negotiating ploy, just posturing. Because both countries are - at the same time they're saying all this, they're also saying the talks will continue.


So if there is somebody out there listening, and I'm sure there are people who are over 70 or over 80, and who have thought, well, I'd like to go back and pick up that extra degree and - but I don't know if it's practical, why would you tell them that it's something that's good to do?

First thing, why would it not be practical?If it's something someone wants and something they had missed all of their lives, and they know as they're getting older that they're getting closer to the end of the line, it is something they want to do before they pass on. You know, you didn't come here to stay and you will perish. So if that's the last thing you wanted to do, then I should do it. But first, I want to remind you that you must have good health, you must have good stamina and the interest has to be there. If the interest is not there, forget about it; you're wasting your time.

And as far as health goes, what's your best advice for how to stay healthy?

First, I would like to say I have never had a headache in my life. I don't take no medications for nothing. All my vital signs are good. You have to pay attention to what you eat, not eat too much fat, watch your salt intake, watch your alcohol intake, stay away from drugs and smoking.


Hi, Lulu. Thanks for having me.

So Bashar al-Assad, the president, it seems has prevailed with Russian and Iranian support. Only one major rebel area remains. Has he won?

Well, it depends how you define victory. He has, for the moment, won the right to stay. And it does seem like the world, in many ways, wants to sort of normalize his presence. But I think it's pretty clear that it's not a victory of any real kind.

And the damage that has been done and that has been wrought does not appear to be facing any kind of true reconciliation or any kind of true reckoning. There's a lack of justice. There's a lack of accountability. And there's the presence of an incredible amount of impunity.

Well, take me into Syria. What are people feeling there now after these eight long years?


You do think it's a violation of the United Nations sanctions.

It does seem to me. The more we see, for example, the fighter aircraft, the MiG, it's clearly a violation.

What do you think is really going on here?Is there more to this than what we've seen?

There could be. You know, they're still searching the ship and all the containers. As you know, initially, the intelligence that the Panamanian government received was that the ship was carrying drugs. And so, if in fact, they continue searching and they find drugs in the ship, people will make an immediate connection that the Cubans were involved in illicit trafficking. And that could be a real game-changer, particular as it relates to relations to the United States and even relationships with the rest of Latin America.


And so the last of this accretion events formed the moon, because accretion, when you have giant planets the size of Mars and Earth hitting each other, it's a pretty messy phenomenon.

But based on news this week, it sounds like that may not be the best theory.

Well, you know, the devil gets down to the details, and when you push these models forward, they start to come apart, and that's kind of the fun thing about science is you're sort of grasping at things, and they - sometimes you get them and hold them in your hand for a while, and they slip away like a fish.

Here we had this notion - and the reason this is so exciting right now is that starting in, you know, the mid-1970s, these sort of back-of-the-envelope calculations said hey, you know, we think planets formed this way, by collisions. We think we can explain the spin of the Earth, which is actually pretty fast if you add in the spin of the moon to the spin of the Earth, you know, that moon's orbiting the Earth, and if you think of it as one single planet, and if you brought all that mass together into one place, it would be equivalent to the Earth spinning with a period of only five hours, so much faster than it is today.


I don't know. I mean, you know, what two-state solution are we talking about?You know, with all these Israeli settlements, with the annexation, with the actions that Israel has taken on a daily basis in Jerusalem, I don't know if the two-state solution is still viable, to be honest with you.

What does this part of the West Bank mean to Palestinians?Can you just paint a portrait of this area for us?

Well, the Jordan Valley has many, many significant aspects. First, it's religious - the Mount of Temptation in my hometown of Jericho where Jesus fasted for 40 days against the temptation of the devil. And the Jordan Valley is the breadbasket of the West Bank and of what would be a future Palestinian state. It's also strategic. It's on the border with Jordan, and it's the only outlet for the Palestinians to the outside world other than Israeli airport and ports.

Right. You mentioned its strategic value. I mean, Israel has been saying all along that, eventually, they would get this strip as part of any peace deal anyway because they need a strategic buffer between Israel and the rest of the Middle East so, say, like, weapons can be passed through. Shouldn't Israel be concerned about securing a buffer?


Unfortunately, under the rule, no.

Robert Strassburger, vice president for vehicle safety at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

The sound to be emitted really has to be instantly recognizable as a motor vehicle in operation.

Mr.  Strassburger worked with the National Federation of the Blind to develop the rules. At first, he says, he told them, but we've worked for 30 years to make cars quiet.


Absolutely. And I think, honestly, it would drive more people away from some of these systems except that, in a couple of these cities, a lot of the folks who ride the subway - that really is the only option. If you're in New York or even in parts of downtown Boston or parts of downtown Chicago, switching over to driving is extremely expensive.

And it also gets in the way of what's an important but also largely overlooked role of public transit in the United States, which is that it's an important social service. Particularly once you get outside of the New York cities and Bostons of the world, transit riders are disproportionately low-income. And this is a way that we move around people who can't afford the typical way of moving around for an American, which is owning a private automobile.

Yeah. Any one or two things you'd like to recommend, professor?

If we look to some other countries, you know - and London is a good example. London has been - has really been dramatically working to upgrade its own system, which is as old - actually, older than New York's. One thing London did that I think, ultimately, a lot of American cities are going to have to at least wrestle with is that they started charging drivers for the congestion they cause.


No, I was never asked. But I did offer in a made-for-TV. No, just kidding (laughter).

Even if you're not helping to prepare Hillary Clinton for the debate, would you give her any advice on how to - if I might put it this way - provoke Donald Trump?

Oh yeah, that's easy. Yeah, I mean, look, Donald Trump has got unlimited number of insecurities. But the No. 1 one thing, I would say, is his insecurity with his intellect. There's a reason why he always refers to where he went to college and, you know, that I'm a smart person.

You know, it may be narcissism. But I think it really reflects an insecurity. And if I was in a debate against him, I wouldn't do it all the time. But I'd pick my spots just to smile and shake my head, you know, and make sure he sees it because that will drive him nuts because it'll be just a passive-aggressive way to question his intellect.


Right. We should mention that Purdue Pharma agreed back in March to pay - I think it was 270 million and settle claims and avoid having to go to a trial like the one you've been sitting in on today.

Correct.

So to focus on Johnson & Johnson's role, I wasn't even aware that they manufactured opioid painkillers. What are the products under scrutiny at this trial?

Yeah, so it's interesting. There's actually two separate businesses that they're looking at from the company. The first is that they actually owned two businesses that they sold by 2016 that processed Tasmanian poppies into narcotic raw materials. And then they also had a company that turned those into active pharmaceutical ingredients that they used, I believe, for their own drugs as well as other companies.


Thank you.

What's your concern?Why did you write this letter?

America is an exceptional country, the best in the world. But we have our blind spots. And in our history, you'll see discrimination against Asian-Americans. We've had the Chinese Exclusion Act, Alien Land Laws and then, in World War II, we interned over 100,000 Americans who happened to be of Japanese descent. And recently, we have a number of Asian-Americans that have been arrested - indicted for alleged spying - and then having all those charges dropped. And this is a long history of discrimination. We want to make sure that this does not keep recurring.

Of course, as I don't have to tell you, it is a fact that Chinese hackers have been accused of stealing intellectual property from U. S.  businesses and breaching U. S.  government systems. That's a concern for you, too?


And taking off on those trade negotiations, this week's economic news was mixed. Economists, as they usually are, are divided about what might be ahead. But it's fair to say that they threw up some cautionary signals, didn't they?

You know, Saturday morning is probably not the best time to talk inverted yield curves, Scott. But. . .

That's why we're here, Ron.

(Laughter).


This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Secretary of State John Kerry has joined world diplomats in Geneva today in hopes of reaching an initial agreement to freeze Iran's nuclear program. His arrival suggests a deal may be within reach this weekend, but it's still not there yet. NPR's Peter Kenyon is in Geneva and joins us now. Peter, thanks so much for being with us.

Hi, Scott.

So, how do we read the tea leaves on this?The talks were supposed to finish yesterday, but now the secretary of state has flown all the way across the Atlantic to join them.

Well, it should be a positive sign, although the very latest comments from British Foreign Secretary William Hague are along the lines, well, the gaps are narrow but they're important and not easy to resolve. So, I think your point that we're not there yet is still very much in play. But I think there's also a high-level presence, which means there's a growing sense of urgency about wrapping up these talks. I mean, this is supposed to be the easy part - a six-month deal that's entirely reversible in just about every respect if something doesn't go right. So, hammering out a lasting comprehensive deal is going to be much harder than this. And if this one takes too long to negotiate, there's a fear the whole diplomatic enterprise could just collapse under pressure. We've already heard from both parties in Congress that more sanctions may come up next month if these talks fail. So, I'd say there is a feeling of some kind of a deadline. Maybe not this weekend but soon.


Story's still unfolding, we understand. What are you hearing?

Well, the evidence is that the Islamic State is behind this. In addition to French President Francois Hollande saying that the attacks were the work of ISIS, the group itself claimed responsibility in an online statement a short time ago. And they say the attacks were a response to French airstrikes in Syria and that France would remain, in their words, a top target as long as it continued its current policies.

This has been independently confirmed by intelligence officials you've been able to talk to.

Well, my understanding is that officials first started to suspect ISIS was behind this late last night. There were some cellphone conversations or texts that the gunmen were exchanging while the attacks were going on. And they mentioned ISIS. And here's why that's important. You remember the Mumbai attacks in 2008 that were - those were attacks on hotels and Jewish centers and a railway station. Well, one of the ways that they traced it back to the perpetrators was by picking up phone conversations between the gunmen and their handlers in Pakistan. The information is still coming in, but it appears that something similar happened here.


The attitude of the West and of Russia towards a crisis like Ukraine is diametrically different. The West is trying to establish the legality of any established border. For Russia, Ukraine is part of the Russian patrimony. A Russian state was created around Kiev about 1,200 years ago. Ukraine itself has been part of Russia for 500 years, and I would say most Russians consider it of Russian patrimony. The ideal solution would be to have a Ukraine like Finland or Austria that can be a bridge between these two rather than an outpost.

Mr.  Kissinger, every time we interview you, we hear from people who object, who say they have no interest in your opinion because of your role during the war in Vietnam, especially the bombing of Cambodia and Laos. How do you answer that?

They should study what is going on. I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did.

Is there not, though, a difference between a drone attack and carpet bombing?


Yeah.

. . . Of having people close who actually are talking to each other. . .

Yeah.

. . . Which is - like, when I was little, I thought they were very best friends. Then I got older and I'm like, oh, they just - they get along. But like. . .


They all talk about the shape of the recession. The conventional wisdom for a while was that we'd have a V-shape recession, which means a downturn and then a bounce back up, just like the letter V.  But I think most of them agree that we're going to get something more like a U-shaped recession and recovery, which means that it could be sort of a long period of no growth before we start to go up again.

There's a term people use, emerging markets - countries, small countries that one would have hoped for in terms of influencing the global economy. What do you think about that - about those countries?

Well, you know, the hope for a while was that the emerging economies would pick up the slack if U. S.  growth slowed down. So I'm talking about countries like Brazil, India, China, Russia. And the theory for a while was that these countries had become decoupled from the U. S.  economy, that they had their own momentum in terms of economic growth. But now I think people are realizing that the decoupling was something of a myth.

Blake Hounshell is the Web editor of Foreign Policy Magazine. Thank you very much.


What I'm going to do next time or in the next few months is I'm going to get storm shutters put in my house. We have no plans on moving, though.

With the electricity restored, the whole family is moving back in today.

And how's baby William doing?

He's doing wonderful. He's eating and sleeping like a champ (laughter). And his big sister is loving her new role, so we're very happy.


Thanks for allowing me to be on your show.

You didn't have kind words for Donald Trump in that interview, but why did you think Democrats who want to impeach him are misguided?

I've sat through impeachment. I understand that it's not a walk in the park. It takes a supermajority to impeach a president, and it's just not going to happen. And I think that we would be better off focusing on health care, the huge, huge amounts of money in politics that is ruining the body politic, climate change, which is sweeping the world.

So what I think you're saying is you need to - the Democrats have to have another message that isn't solely about removing the president.


Sure. So back in 1986, we were releasing a little over 300,000 cubic feet per second. And I know that's a number that's tough to sort of comprehend. So I think the best way it was explained to me - and this is - I kind of like this analogy - is picture 300,000 basketballs going through the dam every second. And so back then, it was 307,000 basketballs, if you will. And now we're doing 275,000.

So - but you're right. We've had this load on the levees for four or five days now, so it's a much longer exposure. And back in 1986, they did experience a breach of the levee at one particular point that was quickly responded to in - through great teamwork with the Corps and the local levee and first responders. So I wouldn't say that there's any threat or any imminent threat to a breach. You know, we're on the spot 24 hours a day, trying to look for indicators. And when we see them, we're, you know, responding almost immediately.

And to be clear, before I let you go, right now, your assessment is that you're not expecting a breach of the levee or of the dam.

That's absolutely correct. We see - you know, I've got just an amazing group of professional engineers out there every day working with the local community, and we see nothing that would lead us to believe that a breach is imminent, either of the levees or of our own infrastructure.


Monica, welcome

Hi, Michel.

So what do we know about what happened?Do we know how many shooters there were?Do we know how many injuries there are?

I spoke to an El Paso police spokesman about an hour ago, and there isn't much that they know at this point. They first got word of the shooting at 10 a. m.  local time, and it happened at an area Walmart. The officer told me there were multiple victims, possibly some fatalities, but no confirmations on exact numbers yet. Police have one person in custody. All they could tell us was that he's male. And at this point, the investigation has moved from the active shooter site to a crime scene investigation. And I've been watching multiple authorities go in and out of the Walmart, including the SWAT team cars parked outside. There's also a mass casualty situation ambulance parked just behind the building.


The incident that I wrote about in the column, I remember it because it was so rare. You know, you'll see some passengers looking at other passengers in perhaps a rude manner - like if you see someone wearing a niqab and other passengers are sort of gaping at them rudely. That happens. But for a passenger to say, this person is suspicious - and, you know, it may be for racist or Islamophobic reasons - it's extremely rare.

Do you recall any stories?

What happened was we were flying from south Florida to JFK. And a middle-aged white women leaned forward, and she whispered to me. She said, there is a man four people behind me in a green shirt, and he is very suspicious. And I immediately thought, this woman might be racist; I also need to take her seriously. So I asked her, what is he doing?Can you describe for me what about him is suspicious?And she just said, you'll see. And so I thought, OK, well then, I must be able to see something. When he came down, he just seemed completely normal. He was not jittery in any way. He was not looking around suspiciously. His clothing was normal. The green shirt was a Green Bay Packers shirt. It was football season. And. . .

As a Bears fan, I would also immediately pick on the Green Bay Packers fan.


Good morning, Lulu.

So it seems a little strange to be talking about why something doesn't matter, but here we are, saying President Trump's budget - which is being released tomorrow - suddenly isn't that important. How did that happen?

Presidents' budgets are always political documents. They're not a piece of legislation, but they do express the president's priorities. And, of course, the cliche is to say that the president's budget is dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. This one is probably dead as a doornail. And the reason is that Republicans and Democrats just passed a massive, two-year spending bill, which raises the caps for domestic and defense spending. And the White House was mostly a bystander in those negotiations. So what the president says in his budget tomorrow will not affect spending very much. Congress probably won't be passing a 2019 budget resolution. The bottom line is, in this instance, Congress seems to be ignoring the president.

Oh, OK. But when the budget comes out tomorrow, the spotlight will probably turn to White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, right?He was famously hawkish on the deficit when he was in Congress. What will he have to say?


Yes.

I just wondered what that photograph brought up for you that made you want to have it as the cover of your album.

That photograph hit me like a ton of bricks. You know, I had - they had sent me about nine pictures, you know, trying to find something for the album. I didn't see the others. That was the only one I saw, and it grabbed me. You know, these little babies standing on the outside. They want to swing. They want to go on the slide.

And it kind of reminded me of my sisters and I. We had that problem when we were growing up. We couldn't go to the beach. We couldn't go to the park. We wanted some grass. Where we lived, we didn't really have any grass. You know, we'd have to play in a vacant lot with dirt and glass. So that photograph grabbed me in the heart and almost brought me to tears. I said, this is the one.

(Singing) Look at us now. Remember when. We've come a long, long way. We tell ourselves stories only we can believe. It's always hard, so hard to leave.

Does singing these songs give you courage?Do you hope it gives other people courage?What do you hope it gives them?


Well, let's put it this way - if we don't fight, we will lose everything. We will lose the rule of law. We will lose the human right. We will lose the way of life that we're used to. We will lose, you know, the freedom we have. But if we fight, that might - you know, there may be a chance. There may be a miracle.

What specifically do you want that you think the government could conceivably deliver?

Well, it's not me want. I think Hong Kong people, after more than three month resistance and facing the police violence, we know that if we don't fight, we will always be under attacked and under encroachment on our freedom.

What do you want from the United States?


Today's verdict concludes Hosni Mubarak's retrial. He'd been convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012. The verdict was overturned on appeal. In the courtroom today, people burst into cheers, but those who protested in his rule say this is a sign Egypt's revolution has been defeated. NPR's Leila Fadel joins us from Cairo. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you.

And what happened in the courtroom?

Well, basically, the judge dismissed the charges against Mubarak; charges of the killing of hundreds of protesters in 2011 who went to the streets to walk against his rule. He was acquitted on separate corruption charges. And he's expected to go free soon. He's currently serving time on a separate corruption case, and he was convicted of three years on that. His minister of interior, who was reviled for brutal police tactics, was also acquainted as were his deputies. And it left a lot of people asking, well, who is accountable for the more than 800 people that were killed in 2011.


Well, I mean, if we - if you think about it, what does 150-year mean?Just to give us a sense, most of our buildings that we designed, most of our bridges tend to have a design life which is 50 years to 75 years. And as engineers, what we work with is we work on probability, and we work in recurrence. So the idea is that if you have a longer window than the probability of having a larger earthquake or a larger wind event, becomes - the event itself becomes larger. And you also have to look at the maintenance of the structure and make sure that it satisfies, yeah, the 150-year design life.

What happens in this particular case, obviously, the one driving aspect of it is the seismic loads that we have in the Bay Area, and what it did is it magnified the ground motion that we're designing it for. We wind up designing for a earthquake that has 1,500 year return period, much like the earthquake that we're - we have in - had in 1906 earthquake.

1906. OK.  Let's get a question from the audience here. Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Yeah. Following up on that comment, how does - what's the process for deciding how strong an earthquake - to design a bridge to expand?


Largely because the Algerian move to split the groups had failed. One of the groups they thought they'd fought off decided to join al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, moving south and trying to occupy the rest of Mali. And that forced the French to intervene earlier than they intended, and they forced the Algerians to attempt, in some way, to help in this process by allowing French over flights over Algeria.

And tell us about the Algerian government's interest here. This government has been - this is a country that's been very quiet compared to its neighbors who have been roiled since the Arab Spring.

Well, Algeria, partly because of the civil war in the 1990s, was able to avoid the worst outcomes of the Arab Spring, in the sense that the regime was able to continue there. And Algeria, too, feels that it should be the dominant power inside the region. It's, therefore, tempted to avoid, allowing other states to intervene in Mali, which is along its southern border. And it's also trying to create a defense force of 25,000 men to try to counter the activities of Islamist groups along its borders. But that really has failed.

And beyond that, too, the Algerians are extremely ambivalent about the French presence there, but they've come to realize that they can't deal with the problem without the French participating too. So all in all, the Algerian government is extremely frustrated, very irritated, embarrassed and now feels that it's got to accept something, which in the past it would never have dreamt of accepting.


But to point out the obvious: the play chess, they don't watch it.

Who would ever in a million years have imagined that anyone would be interested in watching golf on TV?In our poll, golf is considered the most boring sport in America and yet it's incredibly successful on TV. It is indeed considered, in this poll, more boring than chess. But if you think about it, if you know anything about chess, you know that there's a rich, thick history, both of players and personalities and madness and theory that you can talk about on and on and on and on. There's nothing to talk about in golf.

Andrew Paulson speaking with us from London. Thank you very much. Good luck to you and to chess, Mr.  Paulson.

Thank you very much.


The president is given to hyperbole. That's an understatement, or perhaps it's a euphemism. But, no, this shutdown cannot last for months or years because that would disrupt far, far more than we've seen so far - not only national parks or federal paychecks but food stamps, which 38 million Americans depend on, and the IRS. Think tax advice at this time of year and tax refunds, Scott. Tens of millions of Americans count on that tax refund check, and they will not want to wait for it for months or years.

What do you see that might be utterly distinct about this particular shutdown, given it's almost become a way of life in the Capitol?

There's some of the usual posturing to be sure. But it's also unlike previous shutdowns in that both sides seem to be content with the politics of a stalemate. Usually, at least one side seems highly eager to get on with the courtship. But here, we have both playing hard to get. So the longest shutdown was three weeks back in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration, the speakership of Newt Gingrich. By next weekend, we may have broken that record.

Let's talk about the new Congress. Nancy Pelosi - once again speaker. But the difference in appearance between the two sides in that chamber is dramatic.


In terms of the treatment that you had, briefly tell us about it. What worked?What was it that helped you seemingly perhaps the most?

Well, I'd not like to be pompous and have an ego rush here. I think what happened to me is but for the grace of God, I've been able to move forward. And what has happened for me is I've been given some willingness, the willingness to follow directions, the willingness to own the fact that I have caused some very sincere emotional, physical, and spiritual damage to some other people, and then accept a way in which to address those things at the best of my ability. So, I think that the question seems to ask me, what have I done?And that is absolutely be willing to a different direction than the direction I was traveling in.

So, are you now providing treatment for others?And I don't mean that in a clinical sense, but support, help, understanding, perhaps?

I think, what I've been doing is what was so freely given to me, I've been free to give back to others.

You look happy. You're smiling. You look - you seem healthy. And as you look - this is my final question. As you look back on how you fell into the spiral and then how you spiraled out of it, do you recognize triggers now?


And how have the volatile markets affected the pension funds that you're responsible for?

Well, it has definitely had an impact, but like most pension plans, we're extremely well-diversified. But we still are down a little over 20 percent for the fiscal year, which is - started in June 30. But we're down less than the Dow, and less than the S&P, because we're in a fairly diversified portfolio, with just over half of our exposure to the equity market at all. We have an exposure of almost 40 percent to bonds and about 10 percent to real estate.

But as you mentioned, you are down. So, what happens to the city employees who are scheduled to receive their pension now or in the near future?

With San Diego's pension system, like most pension systems around the country, the current environment in any particular month is less important than the one day a year you take a snapshot of our assets and liabilities. And for us, that's June 30th. So, the current economic impact hasn't had any real impact yet, and we won't know what, if any, impact it has on the plan until June 30th, when our actuary will take a snapshot of our assets. The market may have recovered with the new administration and a new economic team and the stimulus measures being talked about in Washington. Who knows where the market will be June 30?But that's the date that will have an impact on our plan and most around the country.


. . . Seas and littoral regions.

So the bottom line here is Iran has now shot a U. S.  plane out of the sky. I'll put to you the same question we just put to Mara Liasson.

Sure.

Any sense of what the U. S.  response will be?


So, over a matter of time you're looking for larger trends. How has the average of all the polls moved over time. And say, Alex.

Yeah?

Did you hear the one about the three pollsters who went duck hunting?

No, I didn't.

So, the three pollsters go duck hunting, and the first one fires and misses the flock of ducks high. And the next one fires and misses the flock of ducks low. And the third pollster shouts, We got them.


I suspect that more than a wee dram has been ingested in Scotland, particularly over the past few months, between people grousing about being under the thumb of London and the U. K. In the end, did a lot of Scots decide they kind of like the English?

I really don't think this is a kind of loving of Britain. I think that we had a double negative affect here rather than a positive embrace of what's British. It was more to do with a fear of how we might mess up if we go it alone, I think. There is just something within the Scottish psyche, I think. It's fairly confrontational, the psychology of the Scots. We tend to not wholeheartedly embrace something and say, you know, oh God, we love being British or we love you or, you know, we'll say, ah, you're not bad. You know, that's a very Scottish expression. I think that's what we've done with England and the rest of the U. K.  You know what; it's not that bad rather than suddenly discovering our Britishness.

Ewan Morrison, author and screenwriter, author of "Tales From The Mall," joining us from Glasgow, Scotland - still the U. K. Thanks very much for being with us.

Thank you for having me.


You put us on this boat. I don't know when I'm going to get off. You flooded the Earth. Everybody else is dead. So explain that. She seems aggravated with God.

Yeah. I think she's so flummoxed by how they've gotten into this position. And why her?And why not others?And what it could mean - all these conversations that he seems to have with other people and not with her. And she - and yet to keep putting her in positions of godliness, where she's in charge of everything. And she has to make sure things survive. And yet she doesn't get to hear his reasoning or know him. And yeah, so I think she's coming from a point of just utter frustration at the start of the book. And then she's learning how to deal with that over the course of it.

I mean this next comment in the nicest way. But this is a very weird and strange book, right?There's supernatural elements. You play with the timeline. We go back and forth from the past to the future. There's an angel. There's a dead woman who makes appearances. Was weirdness what you were after?How did that come to be?

Yeah. That's got to be my favorite word.


Oriental is the most beautiful place, and we are called the sailing capital of North Carolina because we must have 2,500 sailboats and 900 people.

Oriental is a healthy town it sounds like.

Oh, yeah, we're a booming town. And our community is so wonderful. Our churches were all coming together to try to get something solved. Like, there's people that don't have a driver's license, or they've got to have their medicine, so our local church has got a van, and we're going to get people their groceries and medicine. So we have all kind of volunteering to get something going.

When did the Wal-Mart Express move into town?


Thank you. Thank you for saying snot-like. Not a - I don't believe we've had that phrase on our show before. So what is there. . .

It's a first.

What is there about this delightful mucus of the tongue?

Well, we spent a few years studying the frog tongue.


One of the things that struck me is some of the comments by some of the women. They don't necessarily see themselves as beautiful. They did not see in themselves the thing that you saw in them. Did you find that to be common?I'm thinking in particular of the sisters from Switzerland with the red hair who said they'd been made fun of as children because of the color of their hair. And you were drawn to them.

During the project, I did realize that women that I photographed were not confident in their way of being. So whenever I posted their picture on my social media, we got a lot of comments and positive reaction from the people. So the women that I photographed, after that, they realized how beautiful they are. That was extraordinary for them and for me because it gives them confidence.

How did this project change you?

I'm much more confident. I'm much more respectful of what the other women in the world have to go through every day because the life is so difficult in so many parts of the world. And this project was a huge gift in my life. And this is why I'm trying to put it out there in the world for people to understand that the world is extremely beautiful. And we should really appreciate everything that's happening in our life.


So let me ask you because eating the supermodel of the fruit world doesn't sound like necessarily a bad thing. You've written a book about this kind of stuff, "Bet The Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food. "Is food part of the problem?Has it become less nutritious?Is it just good-looking and less good for us?

I think that the argument among the dietitians is that, yes, the higher sugar content is robbing food of a lot of its nutritional value. And I also think there is a tradition in America of somehow seeking perfection through our food, that somehow, if we eat right, we will make ourselves mentally and spiritually better. And so, of course, if we see row after row of perfectly glistening, absolutely gorgeous, completely look-alike apples, we think, yeah. I want that.

But fruit is still good for humans?

Of course, eat like your grandmother told you to eat - is probably the best advice.


Ocasio-Cortez is the democratic socialist, just shy of 30, who unseated a top Democrat in 2018. She's soared to prominence as a critic of the president and sometimes of Democrats. She pushed the party on climate, throwing her sudden fame behind the Green New Deal. And today, she releases anti-poverty proposals. Her bills would open social benefits to all people, even undocumented immigrants. She also calls to change the way the federal government measures poverty. She wants the federal poverty line to be higher in some places than others.

You may be making a certain amount in New York City or in Washington, D. C. , that is enough in other parts of the country, but you are effectively living in poverty, and so we need to account for geographic variation as well.

It seems to me that the things that you like about that proposal are the very things that make it politically difficult.

Absolutely.


Was the jet stream actually screening out the cold air?Do I have that right?

Pretty much. The jet stream is typically the dividing line between the warm tropical air to the south and the cold, Arctic air to the north. And for the most part, it had retreated to close to the Canadian border for large parts of the winter.

Hmm. What about the "Farmers' Almanac"?I have to admit that I like picking it up and looking at it, and I sort of - I'm hesitant to even ask. Is there any science backing it up?

Well, I think the "Farmers' Almanac," they do look at some of the same things that NOAA look at, that AccuWeather looks at, as well as the Capital Weather Gang, when developing their outlooks. At the same time, they're using some more suspect features like sun spots and planetary alignments and things like that, which have never been proven to have any real predictive skill in terms of forecasting the weather in the long range.


Peter Beinart has written an article for The Atlantic in which he says that the hard attitudes of secular people might be harsher than those of religious groups. He joined us from New York City yesterday afternoon. Mr.  Beinart, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. We often tie secularism to young people and to tolerance. Is that misguided?

It can be misguided. To be clear, I'm not talking about secularism per se in the sense that a lot of people I'm talking about do believe in God. But there's that percentage who regularly attend church or another religious institution has declined a lot. And what you see is that conservatives who don't regularly attend church may be more supportive of gay marriage and drug legalization than those who do regularly attend church.

But there's some evidence that they're actually more anti-immigrant and perhaps more racially resentful. And we know that it's - Donald Trump did best among conservatives who don't regularly attend church. In fact, I think that shift is part of the reason that he won the Republican nomination.

Well, there are people both liberals and conservatives who for years have resisted being put - well, here I just called them liberals or conservatives - resisted pigeonholes, saying, look, you know, just because I believe in abortion rights doesn't mean I believe something about an economic issue or vice versa.


And you know, we still have, you know, we have horse farms. We have a couple of dairy farms left. In fact there's one dairy farm, the Ferris Acres Creamery, which people come from miles around it to have their ice cream. It's - they make it there. And you know, and we have hunters. And we have a couple of game, you know, hunting preserves around town. We still are in touch with that part of our tradition.

And does everybody's kids - do everybody's kids go to that particular elementary school?

No. We have, I believe, four elementary schools that feed into an intermediate school. So we have the Sandy Hook Elementary School. We have Hawley School, Middle Gate School, and the Head O'Meadow School. And my children went to the Head O'Meadow School, where I actually was in the graduating class when it first - when we first built that building in 1977. I still remember, I think, we buried some "Star Wars" paraphernalia in the front yard.

A time capsule.


What is your guideline?When do you tell an officer he or she has to start recording?

NOPD policy requires them to record the entire encounter until any police action has ceased. So what we're finding out though sometimes the cameras aren't on. Sometimes they aren't wearing the cameras. And those are clear violations, but then there were also supervisors telling officers things like turn it off during, you know, sensitive matters, but not defining what a sensitive matter could be.

We're also hearing complaints that only parts of interactions are being recorded. That's one of the things we're hearing now. So the misconduct is occurring off-camera, but then they're recording, you know, perfectly professional encounters on camera. So that's one of the things we're also hearing now. And. . .

That's a big complaint and, of course, you wouldn't have any - ironically or incongruously - you wouldn't have a video record of that misconduct, but you would have a video record of them doing it right.


It's not unusual for a new president to shed some of the staff that comes in with him in the first year. You know, people from the campaign, for example, who don't fit in in the new environment. But this is the earliest we've ever seen a chief of staff go. And this many departees at this high level, it's hard to think of an analog in the first six months of any other administration.

OK.  A really big legislative story this week with the Senate failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Is that effort dead as in really, really, really dead?

It is dead for the moment. You know, the president has been tweeting in the last 24 hours about killing the filibuster rule because it's too hard to get to 60 votes. You know, on this bill, all they needed was 50 votes and they could not get to 50 votes. And the real problem here is not process. It's the problem. They don't have consensus on health care. So it looks dead in the Senate, at least for the moment, but it could be revived in the longer run.

And just quickly, we could have started our conversation with North Korea or Russia. The world is out there, isn't it?


I was struck by a phrase in Chris Arnold's piece about the dollar being the bedrock currency for much of the world. Is that jeopardized?

Very much so. Treasury debt is the only risk-free asset in the world. It undergirds the world's financial system, it's in everybody money market's funds. You know, China, among many other countries, buys Treasury bills like crazy - over a trillion dollars. So, if you'd have to start factoring in risk, even if it's political risk, into our debt, you know, two things happen. The rest of the world becomes less enchanted with buying it, and our interest payments - what the government has to pay to issue that debt will rise substantially.

Can I get you to play out your scenario about what happens if October 17 comes and there's no agreement?

I don't think that much will happen on October 17th. I think there's a little wiggle room. What happens on October 17th is the government loses its borrowing authority and it can only pay out the cash it has on hand. However, if we got to the end of the month and the United States missed a bond payment, I believe that you would have an event that is three, four, five, six times worse than the Lehman Brothers of five years ago. Because the banks rely on treasuries to trade with each other overnight. That's how they fund themselves. And if you take away trust in the financial system or U. S.  debt, it will be cataclysmic. The banks will freeze up. There will be no borrowing. It'll be like Lehman. The stock market will go down. It has the potential to be a true out-and-out disaster.


Well, a firing range is where you find gun owners, and usually very responsible gun owners. And it was important for Gabby and I to reach out to like-minded folks like ourselves. I mean, we're both gun owners and we do it responsibly and try to get their opinions on how this affects them.

Now, you have been to Nevada and to Alaska and today we're speaking to you in New Hampshire. These are states whose senators voted against expanded background checks when the people in their state seem to approve of the idea of background checks. What is your message to those senators?

You know, Gabby and I understand the states of Arizona and Texas and their connection to firearms very well. It's important for us to understand other places, places like Nevada and Alaska, Ohio, North Dakota, here in New Hampshire - Maine also. And we'll go to North Carolina as well. So, it's not so much of sending a message to certain members of the Congress but it's really about reaching out to their constituents, so the next time I speak to those members you have a better sense of what their issues are and the things that they have to deal with.

So, what are you hearing from the like-minded people that you meet, people who like to hunt and shoot and own guns?Are you finding the kind of support you'd hope to find?


No doubt it has for those legal scholars and for other people who are actively seeking grounds for impeachment proceedings. It is not likely to change the calculus for the majority of Republicans in the House. And if you need to get a president impeached, you need the Republicans, who are the majority in the House of Representatives.

Speaking of his relations, the president's relations with members of his own party, he took to Twitter to call out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan about the debt ceiling and health care. Is he alienating the very people in the Senate he needs later for legislation to defend him against investigations?

It's going to harden the battle lines, the battle lines that are already there, especially on immigration, especially with regard to the southern border wall. And this is a sensitive time, as we approach the perfect fiscal storm this September. I'm talking about the budget resolution, the spending bills, the federal debt ceiling with the prospect of a shutdown or a credit default. While still remote, perhaps, that threat is quite real.

Another face has been crossed out of the White House staff photo overnight. Counterterrorism Adviser Sebastian Gorka has left the building. But was he a fired man walking, if you please, for the past week or so?


Even though the Jews lived with the Poles for 1,000 years. And today, the history of the Jews and the Jewish experience is not really considered Polish experience.

I'd like to talk about the new Polish law which prohibits using the phrase Polish death camps. What does that mean for you as a guide and as a historian?

I think this is not really the biggest concern that we have regarding this law. There are many organizations. There are many institutions. There are many wonderful people who've been trying to fight against using this expression Polish death camps. The point is, however, that this - and this is what we are really concerned about - that this new law will possibly suppress genuine research and also open discussion about the truth and whether we are allowed to talk about our dark past openly.

What is the truth?What is the truth that you study and that you have talked about?


Mr.  O'HARROW: No one seems to know exactly how much money will be spent through contracts, but it's going to be a considerable amount. When you hand out money quickly without setting up good terms of contracts and without having mechanisms to follow the money as it's spent to ensure that taxpayers get what they're paying for, you're going to have waste, and that's going to be what you'll get at best. At worst you'll have fraud and corruption.

Now, the Democrats who are in charge of this bill, some of whom have written this bill like David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, says we have a lot of monitoring built into this bill, and even so, we need to act very, very quickly because this is an emergency.

We've got more oversight built into this package than any package in the history of man. If money is spent badly, we want to know about it so we can hold accountable the people who made that choice. And guess what. Regardless of what we do, there will be some stupid decisions made.

David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Well, Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post, what do you say to that?


I don't see that this is something that you can avoid. I like the idea that they might have a problem with me liking it. That makes sense. I think, you know, in the West we have - it seems kind of retrograde that I would like it, but you know, insofar as my kids are concerned, I think it's part of a skill set that everybody should have growing up.

It used to be in the purview of the aristocracy, you know, from fencing societies to, you know, Marquis of Queensbury Boxing Rules. These were the pursuits of the upper classes, you know, not even 100 years ago.

So if you were a person fit for society, this is what you did. You know, somebody might counter with well, we no longer duel either. You know, we settle our disagreements, we're guided by the rule of law. You know, I mean, when you're in a bar and a guy is not letting you leave the bar because somehow he's chosen you in this, you know, great moment of flesh meeting flesh that you and him are going to - I mean, there are lots of options, but it would be nice at that point in time probably for you to learn - know how to defend yourself.

Now, there's some people who have never had occasion to need to defend themselves, and to them this might seem to be a very strange pastime, but I don't know many people like that.

All right. Well, Eugene, thanks a lot.


That's an essential mineral.

That's a big left turn for me. OK.

So we're going to - just a little pinch in there. I think that's nice. And then a little ice. And then we'll give it a little shaky-shake (ph), and then I'll pour you a drink here.

It's very pretty.


Yes, they were congenial outdoors as they greeted each other with their wives, and they waved for the cameras, and they walked inside. They spent about an hour together in the Oval Office and then nearly a second hour talking in the residence portion of the White House, which, of course, was being shown to both of the Obamas so that they could get some idea of where they might want to locate themselves and put their children, how they might want to redecorate. And while I think this was a ginger conversation between the two of them, I think it was cordial as well, and there was quite a bit to discuss.

Right, well, this is a ritual. It happens every four years or every eight years, but was there any substance at all?

You know, I believe there was. I believe that, going into the discussion, the White House chief of staff currently, Josh Bolton, was saying that the president really did have a number of things he wanted to convey to his successor about how things are going in certain realms, and I think we're talking foreign policy here largely, but also in terms of the economic crisis and the rescue packages.

And he wanted to have a little bit of a discussion to kind of unburden a little bit of his own thoughts on what we ought to be doing on those fronts and, of course, we can assume the president-elect would have responded. That's why it took some time.


That may be the case, but - I don't have foresight in the future, that could very well be the case. But what we do know now is that there has been a precipitous decline in Harlem's black population. And that decline has taken place over the past two decades, and the main issue has been one of affordability as it is in other inner-city areas - inner-cities across the country. Harlem just mirrors that.

Let me return to one point that you made in terms of certain historical facts. About Harlem never having been a black community, or even built by blacks. Well I beg to differ with that. And Ms.  Suggs really does not have a grasp on her history. We know from the 1600s that the Dutch arrived in Harlem with slaves who helped to build Harlem. That is from the 1600s because we know about the Harlem Reform Church of the 1600s. And just recently, because of the 125th Street rezoning - a major public policy issue that will change the physical landscape of Harlem - we have in one of the public-mandated environmental impact statement the acknowledgment of an African burial ground which is at 125th Street east of Second Avenue from the 1600s.

So blacks have always had a presence in Harlem. They built Harlem, and so their investment - the historical investment - of blacks in Harlem certainly did not begin with the great migration or the Harlem Renaissance. Blacks' presence in Harlem, their - the building of Harlem certainly precedes that and into the 1600s.

Here's my final question. I have less than a minute for your answer. When a neighborhood gentrifies and it becomes more mixed racially and class-wise, is this more about race or about class?


Well, I think that where journalists and correspondents tend to stray into trouble is when they use metaphor. For instance, using words like blank slate. They tend to sort of overlook the fact that there are more than 600,000 people still living here.

Yeah, that's a pretty crowded slate. What about when you see a phrase like urban settlers?

Well, that sets off all kinds of unpleasant associations. You're talking about the process of colonization in a metaphoric sense. And typically, the people who are colonized tend to see their culture and their land and, you know, their identity despoiled.

Putting Detroit on the map.


Man, that's a lot of stuff.

Yeah, a lot of stuff going on and it's all at our blog, nprnewsandviews. org.

Nprnewsandviews - all one word - dot org, right?

That's right.


Oh, there's a sea lion. See its nose coming up right there?

Oh, yeah.

That sea lion's got the same mission we do. We're both looking for salmon. But first, we need that ice to chill the catch.

It gets sprayed down from the dock in a giant tube, enough for two big coolers.


But you're right, the visual representations that she makes are stunning. She has beautiful people dressed very fashionably, speaking in this, you know, very outspoken, opinionated way. And I had just never seen this, and when I looked up some of the references about her, I could find much on her. So I made it my job to gather up all I could find, and ended up writing a book.

You have a picture in the book of her with Duke Ellington in the mid-'50s at a party. That shows - you know, and she's, you know, there on his arm. And so she must have had quite a standing in the community.

Well, she did. She was known for putting on fashion shows in South Side Chicago, where she lived. She was very well-dressed, and, in fact, later, some of her cartoon comic strips would have paper dolls with high fashion in them. So she was very keyed in to the fashion world and to fashionable people.

Her husband, Earl, managed upscale hotels in the South Side, because at this time, entertainers, travelers, businesspeople of color could not get a room in The Loop. So there were several elegant hotels on the South Side, and Earl managed one of those. They lived in the hotel. And I think from there, as well as from her own stature as a cartoonist whose work was read every week coast to coast, she did gain a lot of stature and a lot of friends.


This Thanksgiving week, we've been offering a little respite from all the glum financial news. We have been checking in with people who are doing all right despite the bleak economy. This day after the big turkey feast, we hear from an industry almost guaranteed a boom in business. We're talking about plumbing. Kevin Shaw runs Kevin Shaw Plumbing here in southern California. Welcome to the program.

Glad to be with you.

So I have heard that the day after Thanksgiving, plumbing companies can do as much as 50 percent more in business. Why is that?What is going on the day after?

We see a big increase in the number of people that call us with a plugged-up kitchen sink or maybe the toilet has plugged up. Those are the two big plumbing calls that we'll get today.


Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

What's the mood like in Columbus ahead of tonight's game?

First of all, it's been amazing. We've had great attendance. Our first game was a sell-out. And I think the mood is obviously interested to find out who this next national champion's going to be. Mississippi State has never won a national championship. And obviously, Notre Dame - they are a staple in the Final Four. But it would be just their second national title.

What can we expect tonight between Mississippi State and Notre Dame?What can we see?


I was hugely skeptical of this idea that wine was, as some people say, bottled poetry. And part of what made Morgan such an incredible guide for me is that he was so passionately convinced of wine's ability to make us feel small the way a painting can or a great piece of music.

And I think that we tend to be biased against this idea that wine can exist on the same plane as art, partially because of history. If you go back to Plato and Aristotle, they were really the first to dismiss the senses of taste and smell. They told us that these were the savage, animalistic senses, that they could never provide these sort of soulful insights into the world. And we've really dismissed them ever since.

I want to talk a little bit about the words that are used to describe wine. You know, normally we hear things like dry, oaky, buttery - I kind of understand what those mean. But sommeliers have a much more creative way of describing tasting notes that you might not hear in a restaurant.

Well, you get everything from the more straightforward fruits and vegetables. So it could be pomegranate, raspberry, blackberry, apple, pear, lemon. They can also range to the far more imaginative. There were times where I was sitting in a tasting group and I thought that I was hearing someone read from a Wiccan book of love spells.


I did, yes. My dad worked for a nonprofit. And part of the work that he did is he volunteered to visit women in the federal prison camp in Alderson, W. Va.  - women who hadn't received a visit from family or friends in more than a year. And I would often go along with my dad. So as a very young child, I think it was exciting to me because I got to eat candy out of the vending machines. But those experiences stuck with me.

Well, and they come up here?

They do. So I think, you know, when I started writing "Sugar Run" and started realizing that my character Jodi had spent a significant amount of her life in prison, those impressions that I formed when I was young came back to me. I specifically remember overhearing my dad speaking with women at the Alderson prison who were soon-to-be released. And later as an adult, I realized just how strong their joy was, you know, to be released, but also their fear of what it meant to make a life on the outside.

Did I hear you say, once I realized my character Jodi had spent all these years in prison?


And Happy Thanksgiving to you. This would essentially be an enterprise in which people would put money on terrorist acts.

Well, you know, the prediction markets - markets like political prediction markets, where people risk money on the presidential election, things like that - have been remarkably successful in many different areas. So a little more than a decade ago, the Defense Department thought the idea - why don't we try to do a prediction market that would include all sorts of measures of international instability?- where there'll be a coup, what government might be at risk, where the economy might fall. And it included questions about terrorism as something we might try to predict.

As you said, there was a public outcry. People complained about - this would mean people are earning money from terror attacks. That is, if you bet right in the prediction market, obviously, you'd get a payoff. And so it was dropped.

Well, how does putting money on the chance of something occurring, a terrorist act, improve somebody's sense of judgment in predicting it?


Yes, it is very hard to imagine how it could've been better this past week for Hillary Clinton. She won four of the last five primary states. Then you had the double embrace by President Obama and Elizabeth Warren, which goes a long way toward healing the party after a long nomination fight. And yeah, these had to be the best moments for Hillary Clinton since that first debate last fall and her all-day performance before the House committee investigating Benghazi.

And how much value is the president's endorsement, which did come pretty quickly?

It's absolutely essential as a starting point if you're in the president's party. But as such, it's pretty much a given. So the real question is the degree of enthusiasm and effort that the president's going to put in and how popular the president himself might be. Those kinds of things are often missing or just negative for a nominee. There's a strange relationship, as there was with George W.  Bush and John McCain, or just a tepid one - say, like Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Obama, by contrast, shows every sign of being a dynamo for Hillary Clinton, and that's actually highly unusual. In fact, it's hard to think of a president who's been both popular enough and willing and also able to campaign aggressively for his successor in the last century or so.

Any doubt that when the dust clears Bernie Sanders is supporting Hillary Clinton?


(Laughter) I'd imagine it'd be pretty smelly by that point.

So how did you plot this optimal route?

Yeah, so plotting the route sort of started by picking where exactly we wanted to go. So we sort of sat down and we actually spent a few days, you know, setting out some criteria. So once we chose 50 stops around the U. S. , that's when the algorithm kicked in.

All right, I understand landmarks you have listed like, you know, Statue of Liberty or Lincoln's home in Springfield, Ill.  or Taliesin - Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Wisconsin - C. W. Parker Carousel Museum in Kansas?


And what did the colleges say - the ones that were offering you these football scholarships?Did you talk to them about the possibility of head injuries?And what was their response?

Well, some of the coaches kind of - they kind of shrugged it off. They said, we've only had a couple concussions with our guys over the past years, and we have new helmets and pads that prevent these injuries, and - just trying to kind of downplay it a little bit, you know?

So you've now decided to play basketball, I read. Did you know that basketball was going to give you the same opportunities?

No, I didn't, actually. You know, I thought - you know, it was a possibility. We were kind of going into it blind, hoping we could - you know, my family and I, when I say we - we could get some money.


Our Women's National Team has been so successful over decades since the beginning of the creation of the team, right?And all of these women - we all think that we're the best in the world. Rightfully so - but you can imagine that environment and the standards and the competition and the challenge and the demanding aspects of it. So, having lived inside of this little ecosystem for so many years, I became so accustomed to having those around me push me to become my best self.

So I took a few years off, and I got super unfit, but I needed - my body needed a complete reset. So I started running again, and this whole thing - like, I hate running. I hate every step of it. And I would come home, and I would complain. And eventually, my wife was, like, look - like, you don't have your teammates around you.

And it dawned on me - like, wow. Oh, OK. I see how this works. Suffering and joy is made so much better when you get to do it with people around you that see your best self and hold you to that account.

It's common for professional athletes after they retire to feel like they've lost their identity. What have you done to kind of rebuild who you are?Do you feel like you have an identity again after your pro career?


We're going to set our clock here in our studio for a minute, OK?Please begin, Mr.  MacLeod, in three, two, one. . .

Which country and western singer has the worst hearing?Dolly Pardon. Which country and western singer will let you stay at the house?Kenny Lodgers. I spent a whole year trying to get into classical music. It took the Four Seasons. What's the best way to break up a tractor?A John Deere-alator. What do you call a woman with jam on her head?Marge. Doctor, doctor, I can't stop stealing your furniture. Please, take a seat. My new racehorse can only run in the dark. It's a nightmare. Went to Pete Sampras' restaurant yesterday. Served very quickly. I didn't last long walking on hot coals with the Kings of Leon. My salt's on fire. I heard a sad story about dropping a wedding cake. It ended in tiers. I hoped to complete my new spice rack this morning but I couldn't find the thyme. What did Aladdin have with his cup of tea?Jafar cakes. I went to an earthquake restaurant for lunch. The waiters keep moving your plates. Doctor, doctor, my invisibility meds is wearing off. I'll see you shortly. What do you call a man surrounded by beef stock?Stew. Where's the best play in New York to do multiplication?Times Squared.

Oh. All right. We let you go a little bit over a minute. Sixteen jokes by my count. Some of them were pretty funny.

They're all original jokes, I have to say. I don't think they're particularly good, but they don't have to be good. They only have to be quick.


This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Flora Lichtman, filling in for Ira Flatow this week. Last week, when Hurricane Sandy sent a surge of salty water into cities and towns up and down the East Coast, among the casualties were thousands of research subjects: lab mice. A building at New York University's Medical Center flooded, and thousands of mice and rats that were being used to study cancer, heart disease and all kinds of other medical disorders died.

What does this mean for the researchers who relied upon these animals?Do scientists back up mice?Here to tell us more is Gordon Fishell. He's the associate director of the NYU Neuroscience Institute at New York University here in Manhattan. Welcome to the show.

Pleasure to be here.

How was your lab affected by this?


Yeah. I mean, it may be too far to say that they elected the person. They may have contributed to a groundswell of opposition to, you know, Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, by having those emails released. You know, we don't really know to what extent they actually succeeded in changing how people voted and perceptions of Hillary Clinton. And how do you quantify that?

But you - you know, you do see that there is, you know, a view now within the intelligence community that this was the intention of the Russians. Their intention wasn't - according to the CIA briefing, the intention wasn't just to make us - make them look weak, but actually to help Trump win.

Adam Entous of The Washington Post, thanks so much.

Great to be here. Thank you.


When I met him a couple of months ago, I said, listen. You have fought against Islamic radicalism. And you have saved Benghazi and eastern Libya from the terrorist threat. But if you try to run for office, you will lose all that because Libyans are difficult to govern. And I said to him, do you have any aspirations with that?He says, no. I want to rise above this. So I think he sees a real threat to Libya by the existence of these elements. And unfortunately, the international community and the United Nations, they are supporting a government that has no power. And in the end, that government that has no power is being run by militias.

Some people would counter that, actually, Haftar's forces are also comprised of militias with little ideology, some elements within them are so-called extremists and that he is no better than the forces he's purporting to counter.

I mean, I hate to disagree with this. I mean, Haftar is not perfect. I don't say he's perfect. But he has a Libyan army. They might have started off as militias. But now they are inducted into regular army. And more important, they try to paint Haftar into a warlord. You know, he's not. He has been authorized by the only representative body in the country, which is the Libyan Parliament. And so, please, don't get me wrong. I am not enamored with Haftar. And the last thing I want to see in Libya is another military dictatorship. I don't want to see that.

So why is Haftar making this move to take Tripoli now?


MR. PAGE: OK.

Yesterday, Keith Reid, who is one of our regular economics contributors, said that there could be a new New Deal, meaning the government will create jobs directly. Do you think that's possible?

You know, I tend to - well, it's certainly popular with Democrats, the idea of public works, and it's already worked in Chicago, Obama's adopted home town. Mayor Daley's gotten a long way with that. But I suspect he may be kind of a new frontier kind of president, at least initially, and that's the John F.  Kennedy model, where he raised the morale of the country and rallied people together for joint action to tackle common problems instead of coming out with public works programs.

All right. Clarence, thank you.


They are the best kids in the world. You know, I'm really lazy, so I get up at seven, wake them up, and then go back to sleep for a half hour before I have to wrestle them school. And Chet snuck into my bed and just said, I'm not - you know, just daddy hug me, you know, at six still. And so I spent a half hour just hugging him. So the rest of my day was great because of that.

And Eva thinks that I'm, you know, like The Beatles rolled into one. It's amazing.

Yeah, yeah. What do you think has changed for them as kids from having a single father as opposed to a single mother or as opposed to a couple?How do you think it might have changed their lives?

That's a hard thing to figure out because, you know, when my ex-wife moved out, Chet was only about eight months old, and she moved down the street. So she still was in their life, but I've always been, you know, the primary person for both of them. So it's really the only thing they know.


Four-fifty a month, sorry, I think I missed it. But that would translate to, like, 15 hours a day.

Yeah, yeah.

You're saying yeah, like it's no big deal. I mean, but where does - what drives you?That seems like a lot of time.

It is a lot of time, but, I mean, at the end of the day, why does anyone do anything?It makes me feel alive, and it makes me feel excited about the world, I guess.

There's no ads on Brainpickings, either. Why did you make that decision?


Yes, I think there probably would be. There are certainly places in Australia and potentially in South Africa where one could look. But the number of places where rocks of this age are preserved or well-preserved is rather few. Most of them have got sort of cooked and baked and shoved up and down by mountain buildings and the like.

And so you often have to look inside the interiors of very large and very ancient continents: North America around the margins of Canada; or in Australia, both of which are very ancient continental masses.

So what happened to the smell?Why doesn't the world smell like rotten eggs today?

Well, it's true that these bacteria are still active, and of course if you pass a blocked drain or something like that, you can see that smell, and it's exactly the same activity going on. Bacteria are eating other things, eating algae, eating other bacteria. And the reason you don't smell it is because the creatures that were living at the surface, the fossils that we first saw, were producing oxygen by photosynthesis.


No, that's a good question, but we - the chemical strengthening process actually happens after our immediate customers have cut the parts down to the size, the shape of the parts.

There's a famous story in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs that says he actually came down at one point and demanded that Corning make him some glass for his - any truth to that?

Well, the story, we certainly, we don't comment in detail about the relationship with different customers, but the story is there in the book, and it's true.

Is there other kinds of products, now that you've discovered how popular and ubiquitous the Gorilla Glass could be - any other places we might see it showing up?


Well, that's the thing. Three areas we've looked at - covering about 55 square miles of the jungle - target one, target two and target three. And the first one was target one, and we found these all these archeological features. They covered hundreds of acres, maybe even thousands of acres, and this is gigantic. And then they moved on to target two, and they marked that, and then they moved on to target three. And target three showed even more striking features.

And we've - an archaeologist has been looking at them and a guy named Chris Fisher, who is an archaeologist at the Colorado State University, who's an expert on LIDAR, and he tells us that there is a city in T3 that is comparable in area to the city of Copan. It's absolutely enormous. The track is two square - five square kilometers.

And if these valleys are so remote, how did these civilizations develop in this unforgiving area?

Well, that's the thing. We're only now starting to realize that this so-called virgin or impenetrable jungle in prehistoric times was anything but. It was very heavily settled. There were many thousands of people living in these areas, and it wasn't virgin jungle. It was more like a tended garden. They cleared huge areas for farming. They terraced. They built irrigation canals. They built roads. They built enormous pyramids and structures.


And he - those books served as sort of benchmarks of learning of the time. They were encyclopedias on whatever it was: optics, even music, that kind of thing. And even though they contained many propositions that could then be proven wrong by experiment, which is by the way a pretty valuable service in a way, you know, they were important works that almost all the major figures of that time had to contend with.

You've likened him to a kind of Forrest Gump of the 17th century.

I have, yeah. I mean, well, the thing is - the only difference is that Forrest Gump, you know, was this innocent, naÃ¯ve, you know, sort of - had a kind of pure quality to his character. Kircher was a courtier, a careerist. He was not above fibbing if it suited him to get ahead in his career. But he was, in the way that Forest Gump was, kind of one or two degrees of separation away from so many kind of characteristic moments of the time and also as well as people.

So as I say, you know, born on the eve of a witch hunt, he was kind of thrown around in the turmoil of the 30 Years War. He arrived in Rome in 1633 just months after the Galileo trial. He was in Rome in 1656 for the plague, you mentioned the plague, and. . .

And he survived.


Thanks very much, Sacha.

In her remarks, Ambassador Yovanovitch claims she was told that President Trump had lost confidence in her abilities and there was, quote, "a concerted campaign against me and that the department had been under pressure from the president to remove me since the summer of 2018. "Would you share your thoughts on her claim that the president targeted her before releasing her from the post?

It's an unusual situation for an American ambassador to be removed in any case. It doesn't happen very often. But this is a particularly important case because her central charge in her statement yesterday was that private individuals working with Rudy Giuliani had essentially circumvented her embassy and her position in Ukraine. They'd gone to the White House to make complaints about her that were totally unsubstantiated because she was standing up against corruption in Ukraine. The central point she made yesterday is that government really suffers and our country suffers when private individuals operating for private gain circumvent what is clearly in the interests of the United States.

For anyone who might argue that since the State Department is under the executive branch, the president should be able to fire and hire whomever he wants for whatever reason, how do you feel about that argument?

We serve at the pleasure of the president, so the president, of course, has the right to fire an ambassador. But we're a democratic country, and we're a country of laws. You don't fire an ambassador who is completely innocent. And to have this campaign launched against her, a 33-year veteran of the American Foreign Service - she served her country exceptionally well. I know her.


All over. I was just meeting with a friend. I had served at the U. S.  Embassy in Mexico. She's here with a group of students and professors. I have just met recently a TV crew from Romania. Another one has come in from Serbia. And, of course, of special note, a number of journalists have come in from Kenya, where there's a very very big interest, obviously, for the roots of the candidate Senator Obama.

Well, tell us, what's drawing the other journalists?What is it that they're so fascinated by?

I think it goes back probably to the caucuses in Iowa in January, and it's just grown. Clearly, as the enthusiasm in the United States has grown, I think a lot of them are focusing on the young people so involved, but in general, the U. S.  public so involved in these elections and in these campaigns. And I think, in part, it is, the U. S.  does remain a certain kind of example in terms of democracy.

Well, I mean, is it fair to say that, were Barack Obama not in this race, there wouldn't be as much interest?


Oh yeah.

You know, it's - just, you know, it's that thing, good and evil.

Oh, I've got you. I got you. Now, you just sang the title song from the new CD. One reviewer says about that, the lyrics are inconsequential, what matters is the soul and funk. I don't know if I agree with that. You agree with that?

You know what, I feel like I may have been taken out of context because I said that about one song on this record, called "Emotions. "I said on that song, you know, I mean, you don't really need the lyrics. But for - to put that on a whole album, no, I don't agree with that. I put a lot of time into it (laughing).

Now, you actually - you played with a lot of different folks. You were with Fishbone. You were a member of Miles Davis's band. When was that?


I am getting reports on Twitter. And I'm sure other people are seeing them. People are sending reports directly to me about things that they allege were said in the synagogue, official descriptions of the man. That's nothing we have that's verifiable or has been verified yet.

We have not confirmed those reports. And Twitter, I mean, it's a good source of information, but we can't report it until we confirm it.

It's sometimes a good source of misinformation too, isn't it?Shannon, you're going to be following this story. We have people from our local stations in Pittsburgh who are on the scene. Obviously, there's a great deal of chaos. They will be reporting the story. Thanks for being with us, Shannon Van Sant.

Thank you.


But I neither have a pornographic nor a photographic memory. You know, and I don't have a memory that's particularly better than anybody else's. It's just that I've been able to do it so much over the years. And, you know, in the beginning it was not easy - memorizing the silks and coming up with the names. But now its pretty much second nature.

You've spoken openly about having performance anxiety. Can I get you to talk about that a little?

Sure. Sure. Right now, I've been doing hypnosis for the past couple of weeks. I don't always have to do hypnosis. But if there's kind of a big event coming up, such as this, and I start to feel a little queasy, I'll just go into hypnosis. Sometimes I even resort to the extremes of exercise. And hypnosis really does seem to work.

Can I ask you about a couple of calls for which you are famed?


On Tuesday, Panamanian officials announced they had intercepted a North Korean ship laden with a suspicious cargo of Cuban sugar. Drug enforcement agents, acting on a tip, boarded the ship in the Panama Canal last week and found hidden below the sugar not drugs but missile parts and disassembled fighter planes. When pressed, Cuban authorities said the ship was carrying obsolete defensive weapons to North Korea for repair. Joining us now to fill us in on the history of Cuba's relationship with North Korea is Dr.  Frank Mora. Until very recently, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense. He is now director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. Thank you for joining us.

DR.  FRANK MORA: Great to be here, Linda.

Now, when did North Korea and Cuba first develop a relationship?

It was the 1960s, not long after Fidel Castro declared Cuba being a Marxist-Lenin state, which was in December. And not long after that, the Cuban revolution decided to side with the Soviet Union rather than the Chinese in the Russian-Sino split that had occurred in the '60s. And, of course, North Korea had become a client of the Soviet Union, particularly after the Korean War. And Cuba had gravitated toward the direction. So, there was an immediate connection but it was not much more than a diplomatic-political-ideological relations rather than economic relationship.


What would be the best-case scenario for you if they find which ship it is?What would you like to know?

Well, I'll be a little silly here. I'd like to see giant claw marks and tooth marks on the hull so my novel is justified. I don't know how the ship got there. Since we know from the only - one of the only two notes left - that all of the survivors that abandoned ship and were sledging down toward Canada - so who was sailing the ship?And it didn't have any masts. They store the masts below decks in sails in the winter so that tons of ice don't fall on men working on the deck. How can a few men go back and put up those masts?It's impossible.

Dan Simmons is the author of "The Terror," a fictionalized account of the 1845 Franklin Arctic expedition. Thanks so much.

You're welcome.


So Leslie, what about some splurge wines?

Well, I think in this economy, splurge is a relative term. So what I like to do is tell people to think about makeovers. For example, if they are thinking about spending $100 on a bottle of great champagne, that's wonderful. You can go out and buy Dom Perignon, certainly. Dom Perignon Rose, for example, would set you back a couple hundred dollars. But think about sort of switching that out with another wine. For example, Chandon in Napa Valley is part of the same company that produces Dom Perignon from (unintelligible) in France, and they do a gorgeous wine called Etoile, and it's about $40 for a sparkling wine. So now you've splurged and gotten one of California's best sparkling wines, and it's by the same company that ultimately makes Dom Perignon. So now you've splurged but saved yourself a little Christmas money as well.

Leslie, thank you.

Thank you very much.


The FBI does criminal investigations better than anybody. But again, at some point in time, if you've got a stovepipe there, where the two agencies aren't talking to each other, either in Washington or on the ground you've got a real problem. And there's not an excuse for it, 13, well, 12 years now after 9/11. You know, this is - supposedly should not be rocket science but somehow it becomes that.

And to solve it, is this executive order or is this something Congress has to get involved with?

Well, this is where, you know, the interagency problem gets to be really challenging because, you know, if you look at the Constitution, every head of agency, you know, if the guy on the ground goes all the way up to his head of agency, they only report to the president. So obviously it's got to be something that the executive authority does, and he has got to delegate that authority if he is not willing to sit there and handle every crisis that comes down the pike. He has got to delegate it to somebody on the ground who can say do this thing. I don't care, you know, I don't want you talking to your agency back home. You're working for me, do it. And. . .

Gary Anderson?


Well, this is really interesting. They say they've found evidence that the Sacklers were trying to conceal their wealth in order to avoid paying an appropriate settlement. This is something we've heard even from sources who support the deal on the table, the idea that the Sacklers have worked strategically over the years to drain money out of Purdue Pharma and position those assets all over the world to make them harder to seize. In a statement, Letitia James accused the Sacklers of lowballing victims to skirt a responsible settlement while trying to shield their financial misconduct.

The Sacklers say James and other attorneys general are on a fishing expedition with these suits. They've countersued to squash the investigation. And they also say they're making a good-faith effort now to settle all these lawsuits.

Brian, you cover opioid litigation for NPR. More than 218,000 Americans have died from prescription opioid overdoses. What do you see as the likelihood of communities and families actually getting money or some kind of compensation?

Yeah. I think it's unlikely that it will happen anytime soon, Scott. The legal fight is happening on a lot of fronts right now, so that's going to slow things down. Ohio - just let me give you one example. They've already received tens of millions of dollars in compensation from other drug companies that sold opioid medications and settlements. But because of a legal fight there, none of that money can be spent helping people. It's just sitting in a bank account. And as the money amounts grow here, up into the billions now, the legal fight over who gets all of this cash will likely grow, too.


That is against the law.

This is a BuzzFeed story, not an NPR story. It hasn't been reflected in our reporting. We can't vouch for it. Is this an anecdote or a trend?

Right. Is this an anomaly?It's the real key. I believe this is potentially a trend. Are they the only ones who've done this?Are there other countries who try it?

Are there other Americans other than the ones that you've believed you've uncovered?

And are there other Americans - right.


Well, the regulations that I'm most concerned with are the ones that could be causing issues in getting approvals, new chemistries approved for crops that we grow. Cuts to different agencies could cause approval processes to take longer, which certainly in times where you have different pests and things that need taken care of, whether it's plant pests or, in our case, we have cattle as well, and if there's problems there and we don't have the ability to treat our plants or animals well or with the latest tools - you definitely want things to be safe. But it seems more like it's being pushed to the back burner for political reasons. It's very frustrating as a farmer sometimes when you see needs for things and you know there's fixes coming but regulatory issues are holding them up.

I have to ask, has your business been affected by climate in recent years?

(Laughter) Well, in the agricultural business, everybody's affected by climate. You know, I think anybody that says there's not changes happening is somewhat naive. On the other hand, it's the things that we can do to figure out what things we can do long term to make sure we're, you know, in good position to continue to grow the crops that we have here in the U. S.  and hopefully be profitable in the future and continue to be, you know, the largest producer of food in the world.

Kevin Ross, who grows corn and soybeans and raises cattle in Minden, Iowa, thanks so much for being with us.


We're learning more about the nine people who died Thursday in a shooting attack that shattered the peace in a small town in Oregon. Authorities have released the names of the victims who were murdered at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg. Nine other people were wounded. The shooter died as well. NPR's Tom Goldman has been in Roseburg since the day of the shooting and joins us. Tom, thanks for being with us.

Hi, Scott, my pleasure.

And of course, we usually talk about sports - not today. Oregon's your home.

Not today, indeed. I'm based in Portland, about three, three-and-a-half hours north of here, close enough for me to come here and report on this.


And is there anywhere else, is there another ratcheting up of sanctions that's possible?

I think, you know, it's always possible to do more, but I think this next step will be the biggest change, the biggest increase in terms of what they'll really feel. The Central Bank piece is enormous, basically forces every financial institution in the world to choose between dealing with the American financial institutions and dealing with the Iran Central Bank. Not many people will choose to deal with Iran's Central Bank and that will really hamper their ability to have any kind of exchange in the international system.

Michele Flournoy, thank you very much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Thank you.


Thank you. I know that you've been recently honored with the Outstanding Contribution to Television and Film Award at this year's BAFTA Awards in Scotland. Congratulations.

Well, thank you very much. It took me by surprise.

Really?They took you by surprise and took you all the way there?

Yeah. (Unintelligible) I'm in a very strange position because I'm almost 70 and I - people are giving me sort of good attendance prizes. . .

Well, that's what I call them. Good contribution prizes or something they call them, I don't know, you know, for your outstanding achievement over the years. I think it really means you're getting old, go away.