So these are microorganisms. They're a little under a millimeter in size. They have four legs. And a lot of people think they look like bears, hence the name water bear. They are found everywhere on Earth, from jungles, to the top of the Himalayas, to the Antarctic. And as you had mentioned, they can survive pretty much any sort of environment, from extremely hot temperatures to extremely cold temperatures. They can survive in the vacuum of space. They're pretty much indestructible.

And how did a few thousand of them potentially end up on the moon?

A non-profit organization called the Arch Mission Foundation sent a lunar library to the surface of the moon with the Beresheet lander.

The Beresheet lander. This is an Israeli mission.


Yeah. Well, I learned quite a bit. And the year that I worked at the maximum security federal penitentiary in Atlanta, one of my primary responsibilities was to administer an assessment called it the psychopathy checklist. And psychopathy is a clinical diagnosis for someone who has a natural criminal disposition, someone who receives gratification out of a variety of criminal and risky lifestyle behaviors. And my dissertation was looking at the psychometric properties - when I say psychometric properties, I mean whether or not this test is a fit test, if it's appropriate to use, if it gets the kind of information that we need it to get for a certain populations. And I did an assessment of this instrument on African-American male inmates.

And what prompted me to do that particular study was because the instrument that we were using, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, was originally normed on a Canadian inmate population that had very few African-Americans in it. I guess no African-American as we think of them in the United States, and maybe some Afro-Canadians. And so - but it's widely use in the criminal justice system here in the United States. And so the risk with that, if you're giving assessment to African-Americans, but the norm reference is white Americans, then there are certain risks involve with that.

So you think that there can be a question of whether or not even how we think about these criminal justice issues is reflective of racial differences. But the whole idea of racial differences on any level has been one of the biggest bonfires of world culture, you know.

Right.


. . . in HD glory.

. . . up there at sciencefriday. com on our webpage. You can also take it along with you on your iPad or iPhone or Android. But they run - this is an amazing photo. It's - because this thing is huge. It's very long. The antenna is very, very long.

It is very long. And they run it from base to tip through their mouth. And they do this all the time. And Coby Schal wondered, why are they spending all this time grooming?What are they actually grooming off?And he said there have been a lot of hypotheses about this, but no one had actually tested it. So they did a couple of things that are - it's so funny. So first of all, to test why a cockroach grooms, you have to prevent the cockroach from grooming, which presents an interesting challenge: How do you get the cockroach to cooperate with you?

And they came up with something sort of like one of those dog cones that prevents dogs from scratching. But it's a teeny, tiny antenna cone made from the tip of a pipette that they put on the base of the antenna. So the cockroach can't actually pull it down. So on a cockroach now, they have one antenna that's being groomed and they have this other antenna that the cockroach can't groom anymore. So they can see what happens to the dirty antenna, and they find that all of this gunk starts to accumulate on the antenna.


Oh, absolutely. Liberia is absolutely ripe for tourism from the standpoint of eco-tourism. It's a beautiful country. It has a huge long coastline. It's right on the equator, so it's very lush and green. And that's why we're on the beach as well, to give that feeling of a vacation as well as the tourism opportunity.

What about security?What measures are you taking?

Well, more and more every day, Liberia, including downtown Monrovia and the countryside, is becoming more and more secure as President Sirleaf begins to rebuild the infrastructure. But as far as the hotel, the hotel is a walled-off facility with security guards and one place that people can absolutely feel secure. I have no doubt that people in this property will feel secure, whether they're in their room or whether they take a stroll from their room out to the beach pool or the beach bar. It's a property that will be very attractive, and people can go there confident that they and their property will be secure.

President Sirleaf is expected to host some of the first guests who come to the hotel. And what's your relationship like with her?It seems as if you've cultivated a really good relationship that has allowed you and inspired you to do this project.


Still, you'll remember that more than two dozen Russians have already been indicted this year for conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections. And the message this week is that they are at it again, or maybe they never stopped.

We should remind ourselves - this is so serious. This has to do with the ability of citizens to cast vote, which is the lowest and most important lever of democracy. What's the reaction been like so far in the Capitol?

You know, President Trump has kind of brushed off these new charges. He says there's nothing here to do with his campaign. And he says if there are hackers out there, they probably liked his opponent in 2016, Hillary Clinton, better than him. He was also critical, yesterday, of former President Obama, Trump said, for not doing more in 2016 to deter these attacks back then. Of course, the Obama administration tried to issue a warning, but they say that idea was shot down by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the time.

As for other reactions from the Capitol, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat - the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee - says it's time for Congress to get involved here. He says that social media companies need to commit to work with lawmakers to update laws and better protect against this kind of foreign election interference.


Hi, how are you doing?

How do you do that?

Well, you know, it turns out there are lots of little corners in all the information we see. I mean, we're used to the idea that somehow everything we type in the computer is very exact. You don't type in the right password, the computer gets upset. If you don't type in the right URL, it gets upset.

But it turns out that there's lots of little wiggle room that we don't even realize is there, and that's what steganography uses. We kind of go in, and we exploit things. You can make a color just a little bit more blue, or you can make it a little bit more red. And then if you do that enough times, you can send a signal, and then the computer can piece it all together into a complex message.


This was after years of drift. There is this new energy, this new vigor in this relationship, and there's also enormous excitement, Scott, over the president and the first lady returning to India. The president has this coveted seat at this dazzling display of Indian military hardware during Monday's Republic Day parade, which is actually meant to commemorate the Constitution. And he'll see in a flyover this huge U. S. -made Super Hercules lifter, a testament to the close defense ties between India and the U. S.

And is the president arriving at a time of enthusiasm in India?

Oh, he certainly is. They're here at a very heavy time. The stock market is on this bull run. It's hitting record highs. The IMF predicts that India's growth will actually outpace China's by 2016. So there's this energy here and there's this hope for improving the lives of 1. 2 billion people, but that requires a lot of change. And that's what the president won't necessarily see - the 300 million Indians who don't have electricity, the 600 million who don't have access to clean toilets.

Speaking of energy, should we expect anything concrete out of these meetings?


So how did this all come about, and how did you get involved?

My partner, Josh Farahzad, just about this time last year, you know, he started thinking - well, what if I launched a rocket into outer space?You know, he didn't really know what he was doing. So he started sending emails to pretty much every university rocketry team in the country. And I was doing a launch with the Princeton University Rocketry Club. He saw our livestream, and he had reached out. I guess after that, I spent thousands of hours just working with Josh one-on-one and leading this very, very tremendous team.

And as the team grew to - what?- I guess about 40 people, you're communicating with one another via a Slack channel.

That's right. You know, at some point, we didn't pay for the Slack premium account. So, you know, I think within a month or two, our messages capped at 10,000. So we started losing our data.

Well, what's the big goal here, aside from actually getting a rocket into space?


President Donald Trump had his long-awaited face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin at last week's G-20 summit. Just how the issue of Russian meddling in the November election was addressed is subject to interpretation. And in this country, Congress comes back from recess with health care legislation still looming. So much politics to talk about, so little time - so let's turn to NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.

Good morning, A.

All right. So before we get to Putin-Trump, let's look at the G-20 meeting and what all the countries got out of it.

Well, the big theme of this meeting was how isolated and separate the United States is from the rest of the G-20, the rest of the big economies. It's like there's a G-19, and then there's the U. S. , particularly on climate, trade and immigration. The biggest difference at this meeting was climate. The other 19 leaders agreed that continuing to enact the Paris Agreement on climate change was important. They called the agreement irreversible. Of course, Donald Trump has pulled the U. S.  out of that agreement. So the Europeans and others are going to move forward without the U. S.


Yeah, Phillips Andover Academy. And David Halberstam actually unearthed this better than anybody when David was working on a book on Belichick, "Education Of A Coach. "And Ernie Adams is such a historian that he wanted to meet the great David Halberstam. And I think they traded questions. Every time David would ask Ernie something, Ernie could ask a Vietnam question of the late, great David Halberstam.

Yeah, so what does he do during a game?What does he do for the team?

Well, there's no question. During the games he's up in the booth with a headset and there's an emergency line down to the field with an orange piece of tape that says Ernie. It's a dedicated line for him. And if you see a controversial play or a play where they might dispute or throw the red bag to get a replay, those are carefully selected challenges. And Ernie, I believe, makes all the calls on those, like, this is worth the risk 'cause you lose a time out if you make the challenge and it's upheld. So if you go back - and there's an excellent NFL Films video from the Super Bowl last year and Ernie does speak a little bit in that. And it's pretty clear that he sniffed out the play that Pete Carroll ran from the one-yard line at the end of the game, which Malcolm Butler intercepted to win the Super Bowl. The Patriots had worked on that repeatedly on Friday. . .

Oh, my.


You have done so many different types of music. You have done the Monkeys, you know. What's coming up next for you?I don't know if you've already started work on another album or thought about it, but what direction do you think you're heading in next?

I have no idea. I really don't. I'm still very much inside of this project because you don't leave it just because you finish recording it. You have to begin to think about how to create the live performance of it. So that's a whole other dimension. And so you have to live with this music.

And I always say that the music always ends up so much broader than what you have on the recording because the recording represents the beginning. And once you go out on the road and you play it, and of course, each night, you're going to try to do something different with it, so it just grows and grows and grows until it's time for the next project.

Well, Cassandra Wilson, thank you.


What did it sound like?

(Imitating plane noise) A lot of, you know, you got hundreds of planes, one right after the other. It was very moving and exciting. You know, you wonder what's going to happen. And 'course, then we fly over the channel. You can look out the window and see the silhouettes of the ships. We know it's going to happen now.

That is Les Cruise. He's 95 years old, and he's one of the last surviving veterans of that D-Day mission. These days, he lives outside of Philadelphia. I went to visit him earlier this week.

I'm Noel. It's nice to meet you.


Studios can hold out. They're in bad shape. I mean, they're going to be hurt by this environment economically. But that doesn't mean they can't survive for quite a long time with a strike underway. And that means that people would - I mean, it would just be so devastating; people would lose their jobs. And that wouldn't just be the actors; it would be people who support productions. The actors, unlike the writers, they can close down a movie very quickly. So, it would be an immediate and potentially a long-term and the devastating impact not only for the economy here, but for the Screen Actors Guild if it turned out to backfire.

So, Kim, what happens from here?What's the next steps?

At some point, they can declare an impasse, and the Screen Actors Guild will go to its members and ask for a strike authorization. That requires 75-percent approval of those voting. There certainly are some very high-profile actors - George Clooney, Tom Hanks - who are very opposed to this and who probably would go out there and try to persuade people to vote and vote it down. But with 75-percent approval of those voting, not of the membership, of those voting, that would mean they would have strike authorization and they could initiate a strike.

And if there is a strike, what would that mean for viewers?Does that mean even more hours of reality TV?


Well, I mean, he's basically had to divest himself of things so that there was no conflict with him working for the government, having had been at Goldman. In that respect, he's gotten, you know, some of those conflicts out of the way already.

There's going to be a conflict of interests in this program. I mean, the asset manager that they hire, they're going to have to have experience managing the kind of assets that the Treasury wants to buy. And so they probably will own some of these assets or manage assets for other clients, for pension funds, for other investors. And so there are going to be huge conflicts. And the Treasury is struggling right now with how to make sure those conflicts are as minimal as possible.

Is there another potential problem that Neel Kashkari is not going to be in Washington much longer if there's a change in administrations. And that that'll cause some kind of turbulence, and, for that matter, Secretary Paulson might not be in place come January.

You're right. There is going to be a huge reshuffling. I mean, four months is not a long time, and it's not the best time to be changing shifts. But it happens, and the Treasury is already working on a transition team trying to make sure that they keep the Obama and the McCain campaigns abreast of what they're doing. And then, after November, they plan to work pretty hard with whomever they designate as a Treasury Secretary.


Their main achievement was that they submitted documents to the United Nations, formally joining the Paris climate agreement. And on the occasion President Obama said that some day we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet. President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, called on other countries to follow their example. Now, a lot more countries still have to formally join this agreement for it to take effect. But the U. S.  and China submitted their documents ahead of schedule, and this just means that the commitments that these countries made in Paris can be put into action that much sooner.

This is the first time China has hosted this summit. Does it have a goal in mind as to why it's doing it?

Well, first of all, you know, by hosting this for the first time, to many Chinese it really marks the first time that they've had an equal seat at the rulemaking table since World War II. They feel that they're now the world's second-largest economy, and they want a say that's commensurate with that status. So far, a lot of the rules have been made by the Group of Seven or Group of Eight industrialized nations. China has not been a part of that, and they want a more equitable system represented by the G-20 that does a better job of taking into account the needs of developing nations like itself.

Do we know what's on the agenda?


Well, he's got two possibilities here. These tariffs go up on Friday. Both the U. S.  and the Chinese economy would feel the pain. Markets would respond. And here in China, the timing is not great. China's growth is slowing. The government has stepped in with stimulus to try and cushion the blow. And higher tariffs would put more pressure on China's financial system. That said, the notion of Xi Jinping standing up to an American president plays into this carefully crafted aura of him inside of China as this strongman leader who's willing to fight back against China's biggest global rival. So it could play in his favor.

Now, one thing that has not been on the table during these trade talks is China's interment of millions of Chinese Muslims - Uighurs - something that has concerned human rights groups here in the U. S.  Do you think that there's any chance that this human rights concern will be addressed during these trade talks?

Well, it certainly doesn't seem like it. The State Department has ratcheted up its criticism of China on this issue, but the Commerce Department and the U. S.  trade representative who are handling the trade negotiations don't seem receptive to having this issue be a part of the talks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did seem to separate the two issues in an interview on "Face The Nation" on Sunday, saying the administration has to do more than one thing at a time.

And you were just in Xinjiang last week, right?Tell us what you saw there.


We just have this mythology about America being a melting pot and, you know, welcoming of immigrants. And we have our democratic ideals. And yet the true history is one of racism, of white supremacy. And peoples of color have never been particularly welcomed into this country. A lot of people still don't even know the history of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, so I want to go out of feeling youthful, you know, in my old age. And I think that that's something that I can talk about, you know, educate people. So what else can we do?

Chizu Omori is a writer living in Oakland.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you for allowing me to speak up.


It's not me - it's nothing to do - saying they, you know, they shouldn't be allowed to sing. And if they want to do soul music, I think it's great because, you know, music is universal, it's meant for everybody. So I really don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is, you know, just a lot more attention is paid to artists like that, as apposed to, you know, myself, because there's - you know, I could name loads of them over here that should be out - you know, should be getting the same kind of praise, and don't. I'm just baffled at that.

Now, you do get your props. Vibe Magazine said that your rich, velvety voice warms the inside like a spot of tea. Do you generally try to read the reviews, or. . .

I do actually.

You do?


How are you doing?

I am doing great. So, tell me how you first ended up, how and when you first ended up in a detention center.

Well, the first time I'd have to say, it was about when I was 15 years old, and it was a detention center. It wasn't a boot camp per se. It was a waiting trial, and sometimes they - you know, the juvenile system, sometimes they'll give you a bond, and sometimes they won't give you a bond, so then you're left with no way out, but to be in the detention center, awaiting trial.

So, when you talk about no bond, that means you can't get out. However, I understand that when you were in juvenile detention, you went in and out, but you were never convicted for the things you were sent there for. Why did that happen?How did that play out?


Hey. How you doing, Lulu?

I'm very well. For people who haven't been to Richmond, can you describe Monument Avenue for us?What statues are there?

Monument Avenue is one of the most beautiful stretches of street in the United States of America. I mean, it's tree-lined. It's on the national historic registry. There are statues to Robert E.  Lee. There's a statue to Jeb Stuart, to, you know, Stonewall Jackson. And there's a lonely statue of Arthur Ashe, which I call the only true champion on that stretch of street.

The tennis champion, Arthur Ashe.


It is.

Why do you think that will be effective?I mean, if someone's about to say something cruel (laughter), saying think about it - like, I don't know.

I think it's going to be somewhat effective but not very effective. I actually think that's true of all of the work that we're going to do. All of these problems are not solved by any one solution. They are complicated. I've also seen in the actual data that a minority but a significant minority of people do rewrite their comments, and they rewrite them in a much more pleasant way. Now, do most people rewrite their comments?No - because if you have an intent that's really intense to harass an individual, a polite comment from Instagram is not going to prevent you from doing so.

But sometimes people get caught up in the moment, and a lightweight reminder can actually help them rethink what they're doing or what they're saying. And so it's not supposed to be the solution that we hang our hat on for all of bullying. It's supposed to be one of many tools to try to prevent bullying from happening in the first place.


OK. So let me break down - let me ask you to break down what that means. What is the yield curve, and what does it mean when it's inverted?

So the yield curve represents interest rates at different maturities. So usually, it's the case that a longer-term interest rate has a higher rate than a short-term interest rate. So think of a certificate of deposit at your bank. If you lock your money up for five years, you expect to get a higher rate than, let's say, locking it up for six months.

But in certain rare situations, things get backwards, and it turns out that the long-term interest rate is lower than the short-term rate. And that's called an inverted yield curve. That's exactly the situation we've got right now. And it is a harbinger of bad news.

So unemployment is at a 50-year low. The GDP is growing. Does that have an effect on the yield curve?


This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Flora Lichtman. If you're listening to our program over the radio today, you have Nikola Tesla to thank. Many of the things we take for granted now - electricity, radar, X-ray technology - come from research done by Tesla about a hundred years ago. But even though he's been come - he's come to be known as the father of the electric age, Tesla died penniless and largely forgotten in 1943.

Skip ahead to present time and enter Matthew Inman, creator of the website The Oatmeal. You may have seen and laughed at his comics, and if you haven't, to get a flavor of them, go to our website at sciencefriday. com to see his one about Tesla. Inman partnered with a nonprofit called the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe on a mission to raise money to buy Tesla's lab in Shoreham, New York, and turn it into a museum. And here's the amazing part: they did it. They raised over $1. 3 million from the public to fund a science museum. There's hope yet. Matthew Inman joins me from Atlanta. Welcome to the program and congratulations.

Oh, yeah, thanks for having me.

Who are these people that gave to your campaign?


Ibiza being the Spanish island where this video was filmed.

Exactly - just blathering on and on to a Russian woman who they believed was the niece of a prominent Russian oligarch.

And I'll just insert here that I have not had the opportunity to verify exactly what is being documented on this video. But what it has done is raise all of these questions in Austria about the extent of Russian influence in Austrian politics. Is that right?

Absolutely. And, I mean, it's funny because these are actually fake Russians. This is - these are not necessarily people that were sent from the Kremlin. We don't really know the provenance of the video. Some people believe it's an activist collective. Other people are speculating that some secret services of various countries were involved. But the most important thing to say is that Vice Chancellor Strache hasn't denied any of the assertions.

Right. Well, let me insert a practical question here. Where does this leave the government of Austria?Who's in charge today?


Well, this is where this gets controversial, is that about half the attorneys general in the United States say they will not feel nearly enough pain. Forbes magazine puts their wealth at around $13 billion, and a lot of that money will not be touched by this deal. There's also no admission of wrongdoing here, David. And that angers a lot of people. And remember, the Sackler family, we've seen over the last year, they really - members of the family played a very forward role in bringing OxyContin, but also other opioid medications, into the mainstream. Two hundred and eighteen thousand Americans have died from this prescription opioid epidemic alone. And so the fact that they're not feeling more personal sting here, that's controversial.

Well, and you mentioned a lot of attorneys general are not satisfied with this result. I mean, does that mean they could really keep this going, this could mean that this is not over at all for the Sacklers?

Yeah. So New York Attorney General Letitia James announced, just on Friday, that the Sackler family had wired about a billion dollars to offshore accounts. She talks about Swiss bank accounts. So they're looking for that money, and they say they'll keep piling suits directly to family members.

Well, and we're talking about Purdue Pharma. They actually didn't - I mean, a fairly small producer of opioids, right?There are other drugmakers out there, distributors, pharmacies. Does this bankruptcy impact all of them in some way?


Unidentified Woman #5: Oh, I'm afraid my boyfriend will come back from Iraq and not like the person that he sees, just remember me and all of my quirks through text instead of through reality.

Unidentified Woman #6: I'd rather deny who I was than face my grandma not talking to me anymore.

Unidentified Woman #7: When I'm with the guys, I joke around about checking out other girls with them, but I'm not really joking because I'm gay.

Those secrets were confessed into Martina Castro's microphone. She's a producer based in San Francisco. The "Post Secret" exhibit will be on display in Northern California until April 19th. You can see some of those postcards at our blog, npr. org/daydreaming.


Not a big deal.

It wasn't bothering me, but why not treat it?That's where the trouble began.

So she didn't know the cost of the medication, right?

No. She didn't ask, and the physician assistant didn't tell. So the PA calls in the prescription to a mail-order pharmacy. The mail-order pharmacy calls Anne to say, what's your insurance?She tells them she has really good insurance, and she has a health savings account or health reimbursement account to cover all of those medical costs that her insurance doesn't cover.


(Laughter).

But - so in any event, do you really want to put yourself on the side of people that cut even 3 percent from the Meals on Wheels budget?

Well, from a political standpoint, you're right. But this is the problem for whatever the not-left-of-center crew is, now that it's gotten so diverse in the era of Trump is - who's going to talk about how it works?Back to repealing Obamacare, there is a method going forward that works. It involves using tax credits to let people shop. And their choices drive down prices and create more products that they want to buy. But no one's talk about that because you're trapped in this Trump gravitational conversational field.

Well, we'll have you back. We have to cut the conversation short. Michael Graham is podcast editor for The Weekly Standard.


Can you help us chart out who has said what about whom?

Let me tell you what my friend Nell Minow said. She's a well-known critic of boards and observer of boards, and she said about the HP board: Is there something in the water, in which ostensibly smart people, time after time after time stub their toe?This time around, the CEO, Leo Apotheker, had bought this company, Autonomy, for $11 billion. Leo's been fired and they've written down eight billion of that $11 billion, partly in acknowledgment that the company was never worth what they originally said and partly because they're claiming accounting fraud, although the former CEO of Autonomy is vociferously saying it's not true. It's really unbelievable.

And this isn't the first time the lid's been lifting on HP.

No, it hasn't. You remember the pretexting scandal, where they were trying to track down leaks, the board was trying to track down who was leaking, and they pretexted phone companies to get phone records of reporters?You remember the big fight over Compaq computer where the children of the founders of HP, you know, opposed the deal and eventually had to leave the board?You remember the sex scandal involving Mark Hurd, two CEOs ago?


That's right.

How did the capital - how did the changes strike you since you'd been there a year ago?

A huge sense of despondency - I mean, huge humanitarian suffering, people, again, displaced from their homes - but a sense of resolve that people were committed to defending the capital against what they saw as an aggression but I think a real fear about what can come next for this country. I mean, the social fabric of this country of 6 million has been really torn apart, and it's been worsened also by foreign meddling in the country.

Foreign meddling meaning what?What's going on?


Right. We should just say. . .

And. . .

. . . Four is the guy who drives this big roller that actually does the work of making the road. And Nine, the kind of party guy, is riding this four-wheeler out ahead to look for interference. It's his job to actually look around.

Yeah. But everywhere he goes, he sort of sows chaos and even though he thinks he's doing the right thing by engaging. And - but Four has been, you know, in many similar situations. And he's a veteran of this work. And so he just says, our job is to do the work - touch as few lives as possible in that way, engage as, you know, as little as possible and get out. And. . .


Yes. It makes them incredibly vulnerable. I mean, being an adolescent makes you vulnerable, but being an adolescent on a mission makes you even more so because they have an idea of a life that has not yet been proven to them. And they're willing to risk everything. Their relationships with their families, their futures, their opportunities that they have not yet seen themselves in for an idea that is a romantic notion.

And teenagers have been doing this since the beginning of time. Romeo and Juliet did it. And that myth, you know, writ large over multiple cultures - teenagers are constantly throwing all their eggs in a single basket and hoping for the best. And if anything, I wanted to capture the beauty of the spirit that goes towards this and the ways in which this can disappoint.

Laleh Khadivi, her novel "A Good Country. "Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you for having me.


And then if you go down river, as you get closer to Arkansas, some communities, like Braggs and Webbers Falls, have been totally emptied out. One mayor earlier this week told people that if they refuse to evacuate, they should write their identification on their arm.

Wow. I mean, it does sound as though it's just an overwhelmingly awful combination of floods and tornadoes and bad weather. What are people saying as you are out and about interviewing people and, I guess, just talking to your own neighbors?

Well, people here are well-practiced. When we went into the basement on Saturday night with a tornado warning that hit near our home, our neighbors had their medication already prepared in plastic bags to take into the basement. But this has just been every day for nearly a month. And when you constantly have warnings coming through on your cell phone for floods and tornado watches and thunderstorms, it is hard to not just shut down.

Yeah. Today, of course, is a holiday, Memorial Day. But are schools on track, businesses on track for business as usual tomorrow?


And Gina Perra(ph) in San Mateo, California sent us this. "I'm a 52-year-old white person, and this is one of my favorite shows. So if you think that this show has, quote, limited appeal, think again. Please cancel something else. "

And finally, Joe Bennett in Dallas, Texas chimed in with this. "I'm very disappointed that of all the shows that could be canceled, News & Notes was. It's the only one that is specifically addressing the concerns of African-Americans. As an American with African heritage, I think it is very important to have my issues addressed on the air waves. I'm sure that you will say that the other shows address these issues. However, I disagree in the format in which they do. More often than not, it is addressed not from the African-American perspective. "

And that's it for letters. Thank you so much for your letters and love this week. Please keep your thoughts coming over the next few months.

To write to us, just log on to npr. org and click on Contact Us. When you get there, you'll see lots of shows to choose from. Make sure you pick News & Notes when you write to us, and keep writing to us. We're here with you for three more months.


The economy is humming, but we may be hearing some sputtering as well. The stock market fell 3% this past Wednesday but later made back some of those losses. While in the bond market, a key marker of a coming recession has been playing out. Now the payoff for long-term government debt fell below the yield on short-term debt. So what are we looking for when the bell rings tomorrow?Catherine Rampell writes about economics for The Washington Post, and she joins me now. Welcome.

Good to be here.

So first off, I just want a gut check from you - Wall Street ups and downs, that warning flare in the bond market, but we're also seeing strong consumer spending at the same time. What is your take on these mixed indicators?

I think the story thus far has been there are warning signs out there. Consumers have been the strong point. Up until this week, however, there was a consumer sentiment number that it was at its lowest notching since, I want to say, six or seven months. So that does suggest that consumers may be wavering a little bit. I think the bigger picture, though, is the global risks essentially. So right now, we have something, like, nine major economies around the world either currently in recession or on the verge of recession, and you could imagine that there would be contagion effects.


Right.

It's untrustworthy. It's greasy. But that's a stereotype of Chinese restaurants and Asian food that reflects a lot of stereotypes about the people as well, that they're untrustworthy, that they're dirty, that you don't know if they're going to sneak dog meat into your meal, right?That sort of thing.

Exactly. And also, a lot of those stereotypes about Chinese food that we're talking about are about Americanized Chinese food. You know, like, that it's greasy or overly sweet. We're talking about dishes like lo mein, kung pao chicken, sweet and sour pork. That's not real Chinese food.

Yeah. I mean, it's food that was adapted by the people who started these restaurants, these working class Chinese immigrants, to fit the market they were in, right?When you think about Joyce Chen, for instance, who was this historic really important figure in Chinese-American cuisine, she brought Northern Chinese food to Boston, to New England. And she was often called the Julia Child of Chinese food. She called dumplings Peking ravioli to fit the market. . .


It was pretty openly reported over these past couple of years that Secretary Mattis, General Kelly and Secretary of State Tillerson had a kind of working agreement not to leave President Trump on his own with major decisions. Was this always a little unworkable and even patronizing?I mean, Donald Trump was elected president, after all.

I would be astonished if that rumor were true because that would be an act of real unprofessionalism on all three of their parts. And I think all three of them are more professional than to have engaged in that. Moreover, as the history of it played out, it wasn't true, right (laughter)?So. . .

Another major story that might have been overlooked in a busy week - North Korea said this week it won't denuclearize until U. S.  withdraws forces from South Korea and Japan. Do you have. . .

That has. . .


So when the president says that uninsured individuals who are immigrants are a burden on the health care system, that is not the main cause of the burden of the uninsured. Most of that is citizens, so he is actually incorrect.

Absolutely. The vast majority of uninsured Americans are U. S.  citizens. That is the big challenge we have. We are obviously way more complicated here, and we're looking to make it even more complicated for people to visit the United States, potentially more expensive, and thereby discourage particularly people who are not of means from visiting the United States.

That was Anne Dunkelberg of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, Texas. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lulu.


And just before he died, he recorded what would be his biggest song.

Then comes April of 1968 in Memphis. The sanitation workers are on strike. That brought Martin Luther King, Jr.  to town to speak and to show support, and that was when he was murdered at the Lorraine Motel. It hit people at Stax especially hard.

Yes, because the Lorraine, they had a swimming pool and they had a restaurant that would serve an integrated table, and all the Stax visiting artists would stay at the Lorraine. That was their hangout. So, this horrible event at their second home not far from their own building, it was devastating, just absolutely devastating. Isaac Hayes told me he couldn't write for a year.

I want to talk about a song recorded by the Staple Singers that spoke to the issue of black empowerment.

You consider it one of the most important songs the label ever produced - "Respect Yourself. "

It's a great, catchy pop song with a really deep message - Mavis Staples singing lead and Pops' guitar sound. It sounds like an organ.


(Rapping) Now I don't care what they say about me Because rules were meant to be broken. That's why the world can't forget about me Because rules were meant to be broken.

The lyrics on his new album say don't change, but rapper Lyrics Born has kept his game on the move. He's done mix tape-style compilations and released his own albums and singles. Now the Bay Area stalwart's got a new album called "Everywhere At Once" and it brings elements of funk and R&B into the mix. Lyrics Born, thanks for coming on.

Thank you very much.

So I understand you really launched into music when you were at the University of California, Davis. So when was that and who were you and what was it like?


Well, this administration - officials from this administration have offered very strongly worded commitments to implement - reimplement - sanctions lifted under the Iran nuclear accord and add on more sanctions on non-nuclear areas pursuant to their concerns about ballistic missiles and terrorism.

Would the effect of unilateral sanctions, as you see it, be enough to force Tehran to decide, no, we want to stay in the agreement and maybe even make one that the U. S.  will accept?

Well, that depends on how other countries respond to the U. S.  imposition and reimposition of these nuclear sanctions. Will the international community join the United States?Will they stand back and not directly challenge the United States?I think what Tehran will respond to most is what the Europeans in particular do to challenge the United States and its reimposition of sanctions or not.

And based on your experience, Ms.  Rosenberg, how much do France and the U. K.  and Germany want to be different than U. S.  policy in this regard?


And so - like, for instance, sly, when a person is sly like a fox. There's a Scottish word called slicket(ph), which I love, you know. It's sleek, oily. Slicket - I couldn't vote for him. He's got slicket eyes.

That's nice.

You know, and so I refuse to change it. But I'd rather explain it to you than change it, you know. And Scotland has such lovely words, too, like a turkey, for instance, it's a bubbly jock.

Bubbly jock?I've not heard that.


I'm sorry. Yeah.

So what to do?

OK. There are a couple of solutions. I would first offer the Solomonic solution - take them both out. Or perhaps you would want to put the girl in back of the bull or standing alongside the bull. In fact, Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" begins in the first paragraph with Ishmael wandering down right on this corner, having his nose lead him to water. I'd rather have a sculpture of Melville there. I think the point is most public sculpture is bad because there are too many people involved with making the decision. It's too democratized because of, necessarily, where it goes.

Jerry Saltz is senior art critic for New York Magazine. Thank you very much.


Flora, continue with the. . .

Well, yes. So there are two things going on here. One is there's a bone difference between owls and humans. And this is already known. Owls have the double the number of vertebrae in their necks than we do. They have 14 and we have seven, and more segments gives them more flexibility.

Right.

You imagine, like. . .


You note when Turkey failed to prosecute this man and then your office did prosecute this man that you became a kind of social media hero in Turkey. You got a huge following. Apparently. . .

Yeah. Completely undeserved. As I said, other people had done the work. But I became a symbol. And I say, look, the prosecutors are not saviors. They can't solve everything. It takes an involvement from a lot of other people. It just happens to be the case that it's very easy to put, you know, their hopes and hatreds both, sometimes, in the figure of a prosecutor.

Are people putting too much faith in Robert Mueller?

People should have a lot of faith in Robert Mueller. I have a ton of faith in Robert Mueller. I think, you know, he is not a deity and he should not be put on a pedestal, but there's no one I can think of in the country who could have done this job as honorably as he's doing. And even he has been attacked and dragged through the mud and false accusations made about him. What I'm saying is he's just a lawman acting by the book trying to do what he thinks is correct with a band of really, really smart, I think, honorable people around him.


Well, let's talk about that pivot. We heard that Barack Obama will be speaking with President Bush sometime, perhaps, this week?

He will be. He'll be having lots of conversations with President Bush, with Secretary of Treasury Paulson, Secretary Gates at the Pentagon. These are all conversations he will have. He's got a couple of different tasks. One, of course, is to name his team going forward, but then also to deal with some things that are right in front of him.

There are decisions to be made both - Congress is coming back to hold a session to talk about another stimulus package. And then, of course, there's a meeting at the White House of international leaders, to which Senator Obama has been invited. And so, he already sort of has a to-do list before he's even in office. That goes beyond what presidents traditionally face, which is merely putting together a cabinet and putting together a White House staff.

Yeah, I was going to say, when was the last time this happened, that almost the day after or even the night of his election, he's already planning. He's already governing, in a sense.


I'm fine. How are you?

I'm doing great. So, you know, a lot of us, I think, frankly, almost all of us who are African-American, say, you know what, I need to, you know, each one teach one, lift somebody up, but when you're a judge, you have a very particular role, and it's a role where you are at somewhat of a remove, even though you're facing the defendants, you are not on the same level as them. How do you make sense of what Judge Arrington did?

I understand what Judge Arrington did completely. And I have to tell you why. Though we must be removed, we are nonetheless human. It is the easiest thing in the world to do, is to be removed if you don't care. But if you have the nerve to care, and if you see what we see on a daily basis, his humanity and his caring came together that day and made him do something clearly he shouldn't have done. He knows that. But it was an error of the heart that I find fully condonable.

So, what other ways, you know, you say that you approve of the sentiment, not necessarily of the execution. How else may he have gone about this?


Is Joaquin Guzman, El Chapo, any less of a folk hero to some Mexicans now that he's been recaptured?

That was also a discussion, if Sean Penn's piece was portraying him as a hero. And I don't think that in Mexico we consider El Chapo a hero, not as Pablo Escobar was considered a hero in Colombia back in the '80s. People know that El Chapo is not a hero. People know that he's a criminal, that he has committed murders, that he was one of the most wanted men in the world. So I don't think that people consider him a hero. He's just a character that people are wondering about and are very curious about.

Has the Mexican government tried to spin this story, as we might say?

Yeah, the Mexican government, I think that has been very intelligent in sharing some information with some newspapers, with some TVs, giving a little bit, giving cookies to different media to portray different stories about El Chapo. And I think that what they're trying to do is to actually stop the Mexican people believing that El Chapo is a hero. And they're attacking him where it hurts most to a Mexican man - machismo. So they're actually portraying a drug lord who wasn't able to perform sexually. So they're giving all these details now about El Chapo having surgery to perform better as a lover. But I think that's actually quite a shaming and quite embarrassing for a man in Mexico.


I've been gone for four years, but the organization is carrying on very strong. It's 18 years old now, and this is an organization where almost an entire generation of youth have been raised with a complete consciousness of their history, both black and brown, and the unity in that history. And those are stories that I believe are not told enough. We always focus on the conflict, we know where we don't get along, but we need to promote the examples of where we're working together successfully much more.

You suffered a tragic loss when your daughter was killed in a car accident. How did you pick yourself up and keep doing your work after that?

Well, it was 2006, and you know, you just do. Some people have said to me, how was I able to get over it and continue on?I haven't gotten over anything. It is with me every single day, it is what I think about every morning I wake up, it is what I think about every day before I go to bed. Her presence is very much in my life, and it wasn't just my daughter, it was also my son-in-law as well. And I lost them at the peak of their life. And so I, like millions of other parents, manage. You don't get over it, you just manage.

If you could take your magic wand, and wave it over California, and see what happened in 10 years, what would you be most proud of?


Well, look. Latinos care about the economy. They care about education. They care about health care and national security. So when you weigh those things on a scale, you'd be surprised how much folks embrace the conservative message. In fact, more Latinos self-identify as conservatives than they do as liberals.

Right. Obviously, Latinos are not a monolithic group. Many Cubans, for example, vote Republican because of their particular history. But how do you sell the conservative view at this particular point in time?You may have a powerful economic message. But can that resonate if an entire demographic may feel demonized and under threat?

Look. Latino citizens are smart, mature, educated voters who understand and can disassociate the comments of the president with what, you know, they need for solid policy that is going to make their lives better. I mean, that's what you have to ask yourself at the end of the day, you know, when you vote for some one person or the other, or one party or the other. Will that person make my life better?And that's the calculation that everybody makes. And Latinos do, too. So look. It's up to the candidate. And it's up to the party to sell their message, to market their message. We're a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. And what we advance are principles. And that's what Latinos embrace.

But it's not just the president. The Republican Party and its base has swung to the right on the issue of immigration and how to deal with it. There hasn't been a discussion, for example, of reform, looking at how people can work here legally but rather enforcement, deporting people, building walls.


Let's remind ourselves - Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created in 2010, a independent consumer watchdog. How did it find itself at the center of this drama?

Yes. So it was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act and came in the wake of the financial crisis. And it has been controversial ever since its creation. It was the idea of Elizabeth Warren, now a senator, and it has been a fight every single step of the way. The financial services industry fought it, Republicans in Congress fought it and tried to block it, including for two years not confirming its first director. And their argument is that this agency can overreach and that it's unaccountable. Supporters say that that is very necessary independence. And so that's how it got. . .

Yeah, the point is to be unaccountable, yes.

Exactly. And so this is how you get this agency in the middle of this fight with its current director leaving and trying to set something up to protect it on his way out the door.


I don't know many, but I know they exist - the person that doesn't really want fiction. They want nonfiction. They want something smart to read. I'm thinking more along the lines of, like, Ron Chernow's "Hamilton" that everybody became obsessed with, that read like fiction but was actually the book that's going to impress people that you read this summer.

That's right. There's literally a picture of Lin-Manuel Miranda on the beach reading that, but it's an old. . .

(Laughter).

In any case, yes. So there's a wonderful book that I think actually kind of brings together a lot of our - of our genres. And it's called "Murder By The Book. "It's by Claire Harman. And it's about a murder in Victorian London in which a minor aristocrat is murdered by his valet. Now, it actually does sound like fiction, right?It's nonfiction. But what's so wonderful about it is this guy's defense was that he had read a popular novel, and the book made me do it, which is kind of a wonderful thing if you think about what fiction can do.


Oh wow, so that's what is actually creating that plaque?

Right, so if you can knock out its activity without - of course that's the other question is, what's the downside of it?These are the things we don't know and will take years of testing. But that would be a truly extraordinary way of being able to prevent heart disease.

But you know what?It's never going to be that you have to - that you can't take care of yourself, and you rely on a vaccine or take a medicine. There's always going to be, you know, some interplay between these things.

Thank you, Dr.  Topol, for joining us today.


We normally surveyed the coastline up and down the West Coast. The second year, we went to a joint ocean adventure, the Indian Ocean expedition. And there I went to the Philippines, Jakarta, Malaysia, Singapore, India, West Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka, Penang, Midway, all of the ports between California and India and back.

You also learned to do karate while you were on that ship, right?

I hung out with a bunch of guys from the Islands, Hawaiian guys, and that's where I first heard of Ed Parker. And I started talking to him and the philosophy and how they had to take care of themselves, and we would punch the metal sidings around the quarter deck to toughen up our hands. And of course, they showed me a few things. Why I got started, I was with a bunch of Hawaiian guys, and we were on Waikiki, and there was a little Chinese guy that didn't sail with us, but a couple of - I guess mainlanders were bothering him. And he tried to walk away several times, and they caught up with him. And then it was like, in a flash, and it was over with. All these guys were like on the ground, and I said, what was that?And that was, of course, some kung fu. And Ed Parker teaches kung fu on the streetside.

And Ed Parker went on to become one of the best-known names in martial arts.


She says, look, we've got to do something some investment on sort of global warming issues, energy, independence issues. Let's use the recession to start creating a green economy.

Now, when you look at someone who is no longer in the race, John Edwards, he was often portrayed by supporters and portrayed himself as someone who was going to make ending poverty the center of his campaign. How would his approach have differed from both Senators Obama and Clinton?

Well, actually it turns out at the end of the day, the Edwards approach is fairly similar to sort of a combination of the Clinton and Obama proposals, and that's not surprising. Because John Edwards was the person who came out with a plan first - I thought it was the best plan - and the other candidates fit in in a lot of issues, actually copied John Edwards. In fact, John Edwards was - has truly been a forcing figure during this election, compelling Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both, to be more progressive than they might otherwise have been.

Well, let's talk a little bit about political philosophy. We've talked a bit about trickle-down economics, but then there's also the model of the government getting directly involved. Certainly ending the great depression by creating jobs itself - everything from jobs for writers and artists to road building, infrastructure. That does not seem to be a model that's been followed, certainly not to that extent - in decades. Is that even on the table, the whole prospect of the government actually stepping in and doing job creation itself?


It was quite emotional. I was at the press conference. And I got a glimpse of the entry wounds. And it took me to an emotional place because the whole narrative has lots of holes that they created. One - gun, gun, gun - that they felt threatened. And two - that he was lunging at them.

Is there a new purpose to your protest now that you have this information?

I think that the purpose will stay the same - and that we want the officers fired. So our target right now is the Sacramento city manager because he's responsible. He's the only one within our city government who can fire officers. Our target really isn't the chief of police, although he's complicit in this dynamic because he hasn't come out with a strong enough statement that this is wrong.

Daniel Hahn is Sacramento's first African-American police chief. He was just sworn in last fall. How do you think he's handling the department overall?


Fans of "Judge Parker," a serial created in 1952 that follows the life of small-town judge Alan Parker and his family, will have noticed that Judge Parker's storyline has taken a hard turn. He is in prison and, as of the last strip, recovering from a brutal beating at the hands of other inmates when they found out that he was a judge. It's the latest twist in a plot that's turned the comic strip into a platform for educating readers about the troubling realities of prison life. It's a lot to take on in a few illustrated panels, so we've called up the writer of "Judge Parker," Francesco Marciuliano. He took over the strip in 2016, and he's also the writer of "Sally Forth," another popular syndicated comic.

Francesco Marciuliano, thanks so much for joining us.

Oh, thank you very much.

So we've spoken to you before. And I'm not going to get into all the details about why Judge Parker is in prison because it's a little crazy. But I'm just going to kind of summarize to say that he was, in a way, trapped. He thought he was doing the right thing, and this is what happened. And I just have to ask - you know, where did this come from?Where did you get the idea to follow this storyline?


The bad news in this story involves the main character's family and her country of origin. She is from Haiti. Most of the characters in Danticat's new book of short stories are Haitian-American. They live in New York or Miami, but Haiti is often in their hearts and on their minds. Natural disasters and political disasters have sent many of its people fleeing to the U. S.  Danticat's book of short stories called "Everything Inside" reflects her experiences as an immigrant.

How did your family come to the United States?

My father first came when I was 2 years old. He came on a tourist visa, which he overstayed, and as did my mother. When I - she left when I was 4, and they were undocumented for about eight years. And during that time, we were separated. I stayed in Haiti with my aunt and uncle. And when I was 12, after they had changed their status and were - got their papers, then they were able to send for me and my brother to join them in Brooklyn, N. Y. , in 1981.

I'm sure you've had to tell this story more than once, and I'm sorry to dwell on it. But both as a parent and as a son, to think about so many years away from your parents and especially those particular years, that could not have been easy.


Well, first, it's going to sell a majority stake in its most prized asset, its investment-management division. The bank will also slash its stock dividends and sell off much of its mortgage business. You know, this announcement was triggered yesterday by the collapse of a possible deal with the Korea Development Bank that would have given Lehman some much needed capital. But Lehman's been struggling for awhile. Like Bear Stearns, it's been caught with a lot of bad mortgage debt and investors who've been frustrated that Lehman can't come up with the money to cover that debt. They've driven the bank's stock price down 80 percent this year.

So, this is a big concern on Wall Street and a big concern in the banking industry. What about consumers, should they be concerned as well?

Well, consumers will be feeling the bank's pain, most likely in the form of higher interest rates for credit cards and car loans and mortgages. I talked to Jane D'Arista at the Financial Market Center, and she pointed out that last weekend, when the government announced that it would back up Fannie and Freddie's debts, mortgage rates dropped almost right away.

Ms.  JANE D'ARISTA (Director of Programs, Financial Market Center): We had that lively little bounce there in the mortgage market where the rates went down, and everybody is very hopeful that this will restart the process of making mortgages, therefore getting rid of inventory and therefore protecting the prices of the housing market. But Lehman may take that away.


I know it does.

How you doing, Tony?

I'm doing great. Listen, you heard the conversation we just had with Dave Zirin about the intersection of sports and politics. Do you agree with the basic premise that it's an issue that is ongoing and ever changing?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely, you know, Dave makes great points. What I thought was very interesting, Tony, was before the Olympics, LeBron James was going to become very interested, you know, about slave trade, and slavery in Africa. And he was making some points, saying I really want to do this, I think I'm going to do it, I think I'm going to speak out, and by the time they got to the Olympics, Tony, they had sat on LeBron. And suddenly he had changed his tune, he was well, this is nothing but sports, and we just want to keep it to sports. And to me, once again, it reinforces this whole idea of here you've got this team of multi-millionaires led by LeBron and Kobe, and these guys basically were intimidated. They were intimidated into not saying anything. So yeah, sports is very political by definition, and by the absence of it. It's just a phenomenal contradiction.


It occurred on August 1st, in the late hours of the morning. One Serbian fell, and another (unintelligible) porter fell as well trying to rescue him, and that was the beginning of the fatalities. However, the serac fall, which stranded most of the climbers, didn't occur until quite late in the evening on August 1st.

A serac is a big column of ice, a big sheet of ice. And it fell off the mountain, and that complicated things for a lot of people. What were conditions like?

The weather was completely calm, very cold and clear, which is normal. No wind and as the day began to - as the sun began to rise, the weather was actually better than we could have hoped for. But, of course, things changed. The wind began to pick up the next day as people were stranded, and that complicated the rescue effort.

You were attempting to summit on that day, weren't you?


You know, I think really when it comes to animal agriculture and pork production specifically, we've always been about open and fair markets and open trade. We know that when there's a level playing field and we have an opportunity to be able to compete with other pork producers worldwide, we continue to gain market share because we are good.

When we have tariffs, these retaliatory tariffs, obviously somebody else has an advantage over us. And especially in China here right now, obviously we've got two 25% tariffs that add up to a 50%, along with the 12% that they charge everybody. That's a 62% tariff. Well, that puts us out of the market, makes us uncompetitive.

Well, with this announcement out of the White House, kind of unexpectedly just in the past week, I mean, do you kind of feel like there's a game of chicken going on, and you're caught in the middle?

Well, let's be very realistic. The real issue at first was steel and aluminum tariffs, which the tariffs were put on Mexico. They retaliated against the United States, and our product was at a 20% tariff rate. And really that was worth about $12 per head. And that $12 came out of my and other pork producers' pocket. So that was the first one.


I want to talk about government response, first from President Nicolas Maduro, but also from Venezuela's opposition leader, Juan Guaido.

Well, Maduro's representative in Geneva has called it biased and incomprehensible, this report. But at the same time, the U. N. 's saying the Maduro government yesterday agreed to release 22 prisoners, including two pretty high-profile detainees at the request of Michelle Bachelet, the U. N.  high commissioner for human rights, who's the author of this report. Bachelet does seem to hold out hope of working with the Maduro government because it's allowed her organization for the first time in years to open an office in Venezuela, though we really don't know whether that will lead to anything.

As for the opposition, there've been demonstrations today in Venezuela which were originally about the death in custody of a naval captain. But the U. N.  report is very much also a theme. And Juan Guaido, leader of the opposition, has been talking to a crowd in Caracas, saying that the U. N.  has laid out what he's been saying for a long time now, which is that the Maduro government is a dictatorship.

That's NPR's Philip Reeves speaking from his base in Rio de Janeiro. Philip, thank you.


Well, we are looking at some very basic notions. We're not going to get into all the fine technicalities of the Geneva Conventions. But things like deliberately killing civilians or shooting at ambulances or hospitals or doctors or mistreating prisoners, torture, things like that.

So, for example, somebody - I hate to use the term - player in the game harms civilians, some kind of price could be exacted from the score?

Actually, there are games which do that now. In one game, for example, a company that we've worked with, if you start shooing indiscriminately at civilians, someone from your own side may start shooting at you.

And have you or other officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross spoken with video game producers?


Several of them. I mean, Espanola had only 14 individuals left in the 1960s, and then it was 12 females and two males. A third male was found in the San Diego Zoo and brought back to Galapagos (unintelligible) 1975. And there have now been about 2,000 young tortoises released back to that island through the reproduction program at the tortoise center here on Santa Cruz.

The same holds true for several of the other populations. I would say many of the populations are out of danger. But we're still, given the exploitation from the 1800s, the total tortoise population of Galapagos is still about 10 to 20 percent of the original population. So we have a long way to go to bring them back to the original populations.

A couple of questions tweeted and asked by listeners of the same ilk, saying: Would it be possible to clone him?

OK, this is an interesting thing, and we are trying to save some of Lonesome George's tissues, cells. Cloning in reptiles has really not been developed at all, and we're doing - a few mammals seem to be doing OK, but in general the technology, the methodology to actually clone reptiles is decades away.

So hopefully they will be able to maintain cells as in cryogenics, and who knows in the future, but at the moment, it would be impossible.


So Exclusive Brethren - tell us about who they are and what they believe in.

Well, they started out as the Plymouth Brethren in the 1830s, at a time when there were lots of small groups breaking away from the established church. And they set themselves up to live by the principles of the early Christian church and to worship together and not have priests. It was all very egalitarian. It was very pure.

And within a couple of decades, they started to split. And there was one group that split off from the main group because they thought the main group weren't being strict enough or separatist enough. My family began - I'm fourth-generation Exclusive Brethren. Then in the '60s, the 1960s, just before I was born, a new leader took over and decided that they still weren't strict enough.

(Laughter) Oh, wow.


This got a no.

So the applicant explained when they applied for this. They said, quote, "It has no meaning. I just want to get it because I like it. That's it. "The DMV recognized very quickly - they said 420 - national smoke day - 420 - marijuana. So it's a reference to marijuana and cannabis.

Sorry, Eddi. All right. Here's the next one.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: H-O-T-N-S-X-E. Hot and sexy.


Exactly. And they're all seeing poll numbers where the president's numbers nationally have slipped into the 30s. But when it comes to Republican voters, the president remains strong.

Now, your newspaper, The Washington Post, is reporting this morning that President Trump tried to get Jeff Sessions to drop the charges against Sheriff Arpaio. But he was advised that this would be inappropriate. Is this just another instance of the president being a newbie politician, someone that's kind of just new to the job here?

It's also an example of how the president's not only an outsider trying to intervene in these kinds of legal affairs. But he's been working on this Arpaio pardon for months, going as far as to ask the attorney general, one of his top allies, at least early in the administration to stop the prosecution from moving forward to help Arpaio get off. And this is raising concerns in both parties about the kind of behavior the president has when it comes to criminal justice. Is he doing too much to intervene?That's the question on Capitol Hill.

So not a snap decision. You say he's been working on it for a while.


Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for having me.

Do you still feel a wall wouldn't be effective?

Absolutely. No. I mean, again - and I've said this before - a wall is definitely not going to be statistically significant. And the current existing wall, in fact, has had many issues. In reference to breaching the wall, I know some of the reports out had, existing walls have been breached thousands of times. And again, going back to the price tag that is going to cost the American taxpayer - it's just an incredible amount of money that's just going to be wasted.


In Larry Nassar's statement to the court last year just before he was sentenced, he said he'd been impacted to his inner-most core by the testimony of his victims, including yourself. But he did not apologize. He was, though, sentenced to life in prison. Did you feel resolution walking away from that day?

You know, I did in the sense that Larry will never be able to hurt another child. And I take great comfort in that. That being said, Larry was a symptom of the problem. And that's something, again, that I really wanted to dig into in the book. Larry didn't just magically appear as one of the most prolific predators in campus history, in sports history and in history in general. He didn't magically appear that way. He was enabled and sheltered by powerful organizations, by law enforcement agencies that mishandled or refused to investigate reports of sexual misconduct. And so while we were able to stop Larry, what really remains to be done and the work that has just begun is dealing with the institutions and the dynamics that left him in power.

Rachael Denhollander is an activist and former gymnast. Her book "What Is A Girl Worth?"and her children's book "How Much Is A Little Girl Worth?"are out now. Rachael, thank you so much.

Thank you.


Now it's, I should say this is a demonstration, it's not, you know, there is an actual kill that takes place in the video, but it's not a real kill, it's a demo kill. But what the system that they are playing or working on actually is designed to do and will do when it is deployed is to hunt, and if necessary kill, real targets. It fires missiles, it drops bombs, you can hear the guy talking about the weapons that he has available on one of his drones.

And they didn't just make it feel like a video game, they figured out that there's a sort of a feedback loop that was a problem for the operators, they couldn't kind of sense what was happening. And they hired video gamers to redesign their system for them.

Yeah, they hired real game developers. Because, you know, when you compared what people in the military were using to operate drones to what the latest Xbox or PlayStation system looked like, I mean the screens on this wrap around you so you feel as though you were there. One of the executives Raytheon describes it as projecting your mind into a place where you want it.

You write about watching this demonstration video with your seven year old kind of standing behind you watching this screen, and he gets it right away and he kind of likes it.


How hopeful are you that this outbreak can be contained?

Specifically in Uganda, they are very well-prepared. But the way the response is going in the DRC is very concerning. There's a lot of scale-up and better coordination and closely working with the community. There's a lot of armed groups operating in the area. There's a tax on Ebola workers. NGOs are forced to suspend their programming on a regular basis.

And so it's really important that we gain the trust of the community in the DRC, that people make sure they're starting to bring suspected cases into the clinics because we're still seeing a lot of cases in the communities, which shows that people are not trusting the response, and they're not bringing their loved ones into the clinics for treatment. So in order to stop it spreading, we have to stop it in the source, which is in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kellie Ryan with the International Rescue Committee in Uganda. We reached her by Skype. Kellie, thanks so much.


But these are opposition strongholds. So, again, it reinforced this view that Ebola is being exploited for political gain. It's being used by certain political players to make money. And so what we're seeing is a lot of these messages being circulated that Ebola is a hoax or Ebola is a plot. And people are attributing these messages to local political leaders who presumably feel that their power is being threatened by rivals who are aligned with the fight against Ebola.

So the new U. N.  coordinator, what can they do?

This appointment is a recognition that the U. N.  realizes they need to treat this as much as a political problem as a health problem. And my sources in Congo say that they might need to get pretty radical because you can't just fight this with guns because if you do that, you're just going to play into this narrative that the national government is using Ebola as a way to gain power. You need to spread the message that this is not a political issue, that this is something that, you know, affects everyone.

And so some of the ideas that have been talked about, for example, is just really broaden who gets vaccinated. Normally, you vaccinate people who've had direct contact with someone who has Ebola, which makes sense medically, right?But that just makes people wonder, are the people who are getting vaccinated people who have connections, you know?And why isn't everyone getting vaccinated?


I did.

What's it like?

It's really very beautiful. And I kind of thought to myself when I saw it - he has it in his room and they're sort of in a guest room with a blue bedspread and there are kind of stuffed animals on the bed. It's a very bizarre scene and very Sendak. But I saw it and I thought to myself, who would ever want to own Keats's death mask?And then I looked at it and I realized, like, I know exactly why you would want to own Keats's death mask because in a way, what I was doing in this book was kind of writing death masks.

That urge to preserve the moment - and Annie Leibovitz did it with her famous photographs of Sontag - and Sendak himself drew the people he loved, his partner of many, many years after he died and his family members right before they died. And there's something about capturing that moment in art that I actually do completely understand, both the reason that you'd make Keats's death mask and the reason you'd want to own it.

In the end, Katie, did you come away feeling that you had figured out what, for you, would be a good death, an enviable death?


I don't actually see a need to detain people at all. There are lots of alternatives to detention that have been shown to work. In many cases, people are released on ankle monitors so that the government can keep track of where they are. But once again, I don't think that the government's figures on appearance rates at hearings are accurate.

Mexico has expanded some of the rights of asylum-seekers, non-Mexican asylum-seekers - haven't they?- in recent weeks. Humanitarian visas, work permits, access to legal services, does any of that help?

I know that they have started giving humanitarian visas to individuals who are returned. They are supposed to provide for work authorization. But I understand that a number of our plaintiffs have had trouble finding jobs and also trouble proving that they are entitled to work in Mexico. I think that goes back to the animus against migrants that I spoke of before.

Do you and other groups have an idea of how many people we might potentially be talking about who were asylum-seekers in Mexico?

We don't have an exact number. The government has said that they're going to expand this policy to Texas in the not-too-distant future. And my understanding is that as of Thursday, eight families were returned- eight families comprised of 13 adults and 13 children. And that was just one day.


So we've now been looking at harmless bacteria, so - and we've been using that as a model system. So there's, I think, two major interests. One is a biological one, a microbiological one, is understanding bacteria better. And so it turns out there's also a number of pathogens that wear these coats, and so we would really like to look at what they look like and how they're able to interact with the host. And another interest is that because they are these highly ordered structures - and really the proteins, they assemble themselves, and that's a property that material sciences are interested in. So it's those -both those aspects that are interesting.

If the bacteria have this chainmail that surrounds them, how do nutrients and things get in and out of them?

So it - there you can really compare it like a chainmail. A chainmail is also not just like the armor that we probably know. It is little rings sitting next to each other, and they have holes. The nutrients get across those holes.

And does - do - does the chainmail look the same on all different kinds of bacteria, or are there distinctive patterns on some?Could you say, oh, I recognize that one?


. . . food.

And. . .

And so when someone like Roger has this incredible density of taste buds on his tongue, we call those people super-tasters. Or I refer to them in "Taste What You're Missing" as hyper-tasters. To me, it just sounds a little bit less caped crusader. . .

. . . than a super-taster. But what that means is that that people who have this type of anatomy, in combination with some genetic traits, are much more sensitive to sweetness, sourness. It turns out, they're also more sensitive to the heat that comes from jalapeno chilies, for example. And so. . .


No, he won't be voted on by the entire board, under our system, and I'd be telling you more internal NAACP organizational matters than anyone needs to know. The CEO works for the executive committee, and the executive committee needs to approve his contract, which I'm confident will happen. And when that's done, it's done.

You have been a very strong leader of the NAACP, from the position of chairman of the board. There have been some incredible chairmen - and women, including Myrlie Evers-Williams. But is this organization prepared to have a strong president?You are arguably still, at this point, you know, beyond arguably, the most powerful person at the NAACP, are you ready to split the seat?

I'm ready for Ben Jealous to come on board, and, you know, we have had only, I think, 17 people in this job, over the 99 years we've been in existence - four have been white, several have been women, they come from a variety of backgrounds and professions, but I'm looking forward to Ben Jealous. I think he is going to be among the strongest we've ever had, and may turn out to be the strongest we have ever had.

Give me a moment that you think typifies the direction that the NAACP is going. And what I mean is a personal moment, where you really felt, I'm doing the right thing, for the right reasons.


Well, you summarized it beautifully at the beginning. Dan Peterson is an amateur astronomer, and really he was just, sort of, bent over his telescope looking through the eyepiece when he saw this brilliant flash of light in the cloud top of Jupiter.

And he immediately went onto the Internet and told a forum of amateurs what he had seen. Now, you know, 10 or 20 years ago, if he had made that report, people would have told him oh, you're crazy, you're seeing things. But in this case, another amateur astronomer, George Hall in Texas, happened to be video recording Jupiter at the same time.

He wasn't actually watching the planet with his own eyes, but he was making a video recording. And when he went and looked back at his footage, he found sure enough, there was a flash of light just when Dan Peterson said that he saw it. And most likely what happened was that an asteroid hit Jupiter - and not a huge asteroid, probably an asteroid about 10 meters or 30 feet in diameter - and it would have exploded at about the - with an energy equal to about 10 times our early atomic bomb.

Wow, what is an asteroid doing near Jupiter?


Before there was "Gangnam Style," the dress or the ice bucket challenge, there were other stories that raced around the country. In the 19th century, newspapers throughout the U. S.  were kind of early aggregators. They just helped themselves to each other's stories, so if something juicy turned up in Boston, it would soon find its way into print in Chicago or Kansas City. That's the finding of researchers at Northeastern University. They used computers to search through those old publications for stories that went - sorry, can't avoid saying it - viral. Ryan Cordell is one of those researchers. He joins from the studios of WBUR in Boston. Thanks for being with us.

I'm glad to be here.

What is the 19th century equivalent of a cat perching on the toilet?

Well, we found quite a few of them; a lot of household hints and stories. One of my favorites is a story that purports to be a young man in church who is wooing a young lady by circling passages in the Bible and handing them to her and that they're married a year later as the story says at the end.


That "Breakfast Machine" video has been viewed over a million times since she posted it four months ago. Simone Giertz says she doesn't have an engineering background. She just has a lot of ideas for funny machines, so she taught herself how to build them.

So I get a lot of questions, if I build the projects that I do and I actually intend them to do a good job or if I intentionally make them bad. And I must admit that they are somewhat intentionally bad. I mean, I - but they're really good at being bad, I would say. So, I mean, that's some sort of success maybe.

Success is right. Another video posted at the same time as "The Breakfast Machine" has also racked up over a million views. It's of a robot she calls tThe Wake-Up Machine.

It's an alarm clock with a rubber arm attached to it. So whenever the alarm goes off. . .

. . . The rubber arm starts slapping the person sleeping in the face. To me, the goal of building useless and ridiculous robots is more - I mean, in some way it's, like, a personal goal because I think it's really fun. And I think, like, having fun is super important to create things. But I think overall, like, I think it's a really good way of inspiring people to learn about hardware and about electronics because it can kind of reach people who wouldn't normally be interested in a robotics project.


Now, the beauty of this country, though, is that when you represent those groups, I'd say that they're just really upset with this administration for the things that you pointed out, this is why they get to participate in this process. Now, we have another election. And that's why I believe those who have the boldness and the courage to run for president should also have the boldness and the courage to go to stages that aren't typically their turf.

That is Bob Vander Plaats. He's the CEO of The Family Leader. That's a conservative political organization based in Iowa. He's issued invitations to the top seven polling Democrats to come and speak to his group in July. And he was kind enough to speak to us from Urbandale, Iowa.

Mr.  Vander Plaats, thanks so much for talking to us. Keep us posted about your plans, if you would.

Will do.


Hey there, Lulu.

So I saw on your Twitter feed that you had only run into half the journalists in the Western Hemisphere.

(Laughter).

What is the atmosphere there?


Yeah. It's just pretty much everything.

Yeah.

But overall, is this space open to entrepreneurs of color?This space - meaning online social networking. Is there still room for new innovation?

Yeah. I think that's a great question and it absolutely is. I mean if anything, what we've seen now and what I've been preaching is that we need to start being more niche. More niche-focused is actually the better. So we come from a long way of having these broad sites that would just aggregate a whole bunch of people and just be this commercialized area to now to seeing real value and having super niche sites. It's kind of this whole thing that goes back to this idea of the long tale having fewer people that may be really passionate about a certain thing, than having a lot of people that may not really ultimately be interested.


Well, I am, and I have been watching it this morning. There's video of water rolling over the top of a levee.

That's Industrial Canal in New Orleans.

That's right. Still, wouldn't that make you a little anxious?

Well, it would, but our reporting systems we have, we have monitoring systems throughout the parish on our levees, on our drainage canals, on our pumping stations. Right now all of them are reporting well below flood stages.


It is largely an age distinction. There are younger people who think that our geography has now trumped our history. We are in the world where it's more relevant than the ties we used to have. But for an older generation, those ties are really important, especially when it comes to war, and World War I and World War II, and New Zealand lost more soldiers per the population than most countries in the world. And they died and served under that flag.

Well, what are some of the alternatives that have been proposed?

The prime minister, John Key, here is a big fan of the silver fern. We have a symbol that we use on our sporting outfits. And one of our major teams, which is literally of a plant, a wee fern plant on a black background. For others, though, that's a bit too much like a brand or a logo than really a sovereign flag. There are artists who have come up with sort of designs of white skies and - 'cause, you know, it's also known as (Foreign language spoken) in Maori, the land of the long white cloud. There are Maori, the native people here, have independence flag that are talked about. So, quite a lot of options on the table to be debated.

Who gets to choose?


And after a couple of interviews, she got a job there making about the same salary she received at the bank.

Theresa advises everyone looking for work to, as she puts it, network backwards, reach out to former employers. You might get lucky.

Now, here's a guy after my own heart, Mike Parcialli(ph) of Portland, Oregon. He started a cheap, roundtrip shuttle service taking people from the city up to Mt. Hood for a day of skiing.

Now, listeners. Here's what Madeleine likes about this. Mike runs his shuttle van on waste vegetable oil.


Yeah.

Suffering from schizophrenic paranoia. And the other one says that he was a narcissist, and that it was possible to put him in jail, and not in a hospital.

And as he's been presented in the courtroom, how did he hold up under cross-examination?One thing to read out your own statement on your own behalf, another to face a prosecutor.

He's been - like I said, he's been very self-confident. He's given - his answers are very stable. He speaks very well for himself. And except the fact that his ideology is, to say it weakly, it's very special and it's very extreme. As he says himself, he's a violent extremist. He's a militant, violent extremist, and that's what he wants to be, and he doesn't really try to get away from that fact.


In this piece, you write about a man named Jim Eggers, and he has bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies. Could you tell us about his service animal?Her name is Sadie.

Yeah, Sadie is an African Grey parrot. So she's a pretty small parrot. And she rides around on his back in a backpack, a bright purple backpack, that he's had built around a cage. So, she's in a cage on his back, and he's pretty severely bipolar, and he has these psychotic tendencies, and he is often threatening to attack people or actually attacked people in past. And what Sadie does is she rides around his back, and she can actually sense when he's starting to get upset before he realizes it's even happening. And she'll say, it's OK, Jim. Calm down, Jim. I'm here, Jim. You're all right, Jim. And she'll just do this in a loop, and she'll talk him down.

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, service animals are allowed to go wherever there are human owners are, but as you write, that's been causing some problems. What's been happening there?

People are just used to dogs. They don't associate parrots, horses, monkeys, ferrets, you know, ducks, goats with service animals. So, I think the reaction of a lot of business owners and the general public is often one of suspicion that you're sort of making it up.


Now, the Russian government doesn't get many chances in this context internationally, on the global stage, to do the right thing. I have been criticizing the Russian government while I am here. What more can I do to satisfy you or any of these critics who hold these positions?The reality is there is nothing that will satisfy them because it is their suspicion, it is their skepticism, it is their distrust of the Russian government as an institution which is motivating this.

I mean, do I have to detail for you the ways in which the Putin government has earned (laughter) some suspicion?

No, no. Absolutely not. Again, I agree with you. This (laughter) - look, look; this is why I have been criticizing the Russian government. There's no distance between us on that. I'm not saying Vladimir Putin is an angel. I'm not even saying Vladimir Putin is a decent guy. What I'm saying is you have to understand there doesn't need to be a quid pro quo here for it to make sense.

Edward Snowden. Elsewhere in the program, he talks about his work at the NSA before he leaked classified information and tells us what's keeping him from returning to the U. S.  to face trial.


Struggling yes, and because our ballots were delivered late this time. There was a delay in approval from the State Board of Elections which affected everybody in the state really. Consequently, the printer had to work all weekend to get the absentee ballots to us and he walked in about two o'clock yesterday afternoon. So then of course we had three volunteers yesterday afternoon folding those eight and a half by fourteen ballots and putting them in the - in a sealed envelope that then goes in the pack that we had previously prepared.

We've been hearing that there is a big increase in the number of people who want to vote early this year about a third of all voters nationwide. Are you seeing that where you are, an increase?

Well we don't have early voting in Virginia in the same sense that North Carolina for instance does. In Virginia you have to have a reason, one of the reasons listed on the absentee application for needing to vote absentee.

What are those reasons?


Yes. There's our only two fans in the room. That's great.

It is great, but surely not the reaction that Slat expected when he first dreamed up his plan to clean the ocean. Here's Slat explaining his original concept the first time we spoke in 2016.

I envisioned an extremely long network of floating barriers. They're like curtains floating in the ocean. And because it's in a V shape, the plastic gets pushed towards the center. And that's the spot where we can efficiently extract it from the seawater and store it before shipping it to land for recycling.

Well, as we know, Slat's idea didn't quite work as planned.


Well - so these agents actually do, from my experience, from my research, find themselves connected with the people that they encounter. But for many of them, this job is not necessarily about stopping immigration. This isn't about their dedication to immigration law or their dedication to keeping migrants from crossing the border illicitly or anything like that. This is about economic self-interest. This is about survival.

Because a lot of the Border Patrol agents are recruited from the border areas, and many of the border areas are very economically depressed.

Yeah, exactly. And so we might look at this - and that's, I think, what's so tragic about this kind of broader story, is that the stories of the Latinos who enter immigration law enforcement parallel so strongly the stories of the men and women who are trying to come to this country and willing to do anything to get here in order to provide for their own families.

But Border Patrol is there to enforce the United States' borders, which is important for any country. Borders are places where lots of things happen - some of it criminal. How would you enforce a border then?


Yeah. Yeah, I was. I got given "The Hobbit" to read on the set of "About A Boy," actually - by the directors, the Weitz brothers. So I read that then and really loved it, obviously. It's a magical world to disappear into. And then I was a fan of the films. They came out when - I think I was about 13, 14.

Exact age when this is the good stuff to be reading and watching.

Oh, I was prime, yeah, for that.

(Laughter).


The government sets the interest rates and so the banks can make a lot money. And if you're a Chinese person, you can't really get much of your capital out of the country. So where else are you going to put it?

One of the problems with the banks is that they tend to invest in state-owned enterprises. It's kind of part of their job, and it's less risky. But most of the jobs in China are really produced by private enterprise, as they are here in the United States. And it's much harder for them to get capital. So people are, in many ways, feelings that the economy is out of whack in a number ways and that there need to be some serious changes. The government knows this, but there are now very strong vested interests in state-owned enterprises and the banks. And so getting that done is not going to be easy politically.

And even some of those big industries who are in the, I guess, the equivalent of a China's Pittsburgh, the Steel City, and a couple of vast enterprises there, well, they've gone under.

The over-capacity in the steel is extraordinary, and the debt now is over $400 billion. It's actually owned by steel companies largely to Chinese banks. And it's going to take years to work through that over-capacity.


Absolutely. And, you know, so I asked this about luck too. And he said, yes, well, we have to take what we can get, but it turns out that Comet Ison is headed towards the sun in November. So they're hoping for another batch of data coming up this fall, something to keep an eye out for, he said, because it's going to look really full too, even for us.

For us. That's supposed to be a super comet we'll see with the naked eye up in the sky.

Yeah.

So this comet actually was not gobbled up by the sun. It was - it's made its journey and went back out again.


Do you ever get parents who say, well I don't really like the way you're approaching this, I don't believe that that the way you're approaching this is the best way for my child?Even if they brought their kids or they've had their kids kind of come on a field trip.

We've had very few people who have said that. We have people who have left suggestions of how we can do things better, which we really want. But the focus groups that we conducted with parents before - as we were putting this exhibit together at school sites around the country, it was very clear. They were hungry for us to do something that would allow them to help explain to their children why people look different, what the concept of race is and more importantly, how people of all different backgrounds can get along in the school site.

Give me a very concrete example of something that you have in the exhibit. Describe to us one thing.

We have a wheel, color wheel, and we ask students to find their color on the color wheel. And this is the place where we talk about the history of skin color and why people have different skin color. And it has a lot to do with how humans migrated out of Africa over the, you know, past 20,000, 50,000 years. Anyway, they find themselves, and then they look at ranges of people from around the world who look like them. And it's a big a-ha moment.


Well, it definitely leaves him - I'd say in the immediate sense, it leaves him with a very tarnished reputation. I mean, this is somebody who appeared on the scene in 2015, taking up one file after another, everything from military to economy to oil policy. I mean, he's really collected everything.

He had charmed a lot of people in the United States as somebody who was finally going to change this kingdom from its strict Islamic way of doing things. And this has really taken a lot of the shine off. I think a lot of people have really sort of wondered, you know, is this somebody who's actually - has good enough judgment to wield the kind of power that he's wielding inside this incredibly important country in the Middle East?

Yeah. Well, looking at that, I mean, we are seeing increasingly strident rhetoric coming from Washington on the war in Yemen. The crown prince is very, very involved in that war. What's going on?

When his father became king in 2015, he was soon named defense minister, and the war started right after that. So this has been his war from the beginning. And it's really just been a disaster throughout. I mean, at the beginning, he and other Saudi officials were telling their American counterparts this was only going to last a few weeks.