I've played around with a few of them, and they've been on the toy end of the spectrum. But, you know, it's one of the things where, you know, if you're interested in photography and videography or if you just like, you know, remote control cars or remote control planes, that's really the draw for the consumer at this point. I don't think it's, you know, I don't - I wouldn't say it's, like, a mainstream thing. I'd say this is a big year for it. But, you know, moving forward, it's sort of up in the air as to what the potential use cases are for a consumer.

You said moving forward, didn't you?

I sure did.

I'm sorry for droning on and on about this.


And I think my - like, I never liked the term African-American. I think it's a horrible term because it all-encompassing. It's just African-American, you know?What African?African where?African - you can't just say that, you know?When you look at white Americans, it's very specific. You go, oh, he's Italian-American. Yeah, I'm an Italian-American. And you've got, you know, you've got your Jewish Americans, and you've got your Irish Americans. Everyone's proud of their culture. The African-American, it's just - it's, you know?African where?

Well, for so long nobody really knew where they were from.

But exactly. But I think that the first step to - I guess to finding peace, I find, is knowing where you are from. You know, where you are from determines a lot of who you are. And so for me, you know, Ghanaian American, Nigerian, you'll discover so much in your culture when you know just a little bit about where you're from.

Do you find it interesting that we have a president who is literally African-American?


So, I mean, I think it does definitely set a dangerous precedent, but I think if you're online, realistically, you have to assume that there's a great deal of data being accumulated about everything you do and you have to assume that your privacy always could be jeopardized. I think, you know, that's - from a common sense standpoint, you had to assume this would happen sooner or later.

Just quickly, what should you do if so?

That's a good question. I mean, I don't think there's an easy answer to that. Just be very aware that everything you're doing could be documented. I mean, there's ways you can do things from some other IP address other than your own. I mean, I think - people think of it as something that only matters as far as people stealing copyrighted work, but there's many other ratifications. I mean, people all around the world use things like Google and YouTube, and there have been cases of government entities seeking to use data to go after political dissidents for what they're doing online. . .

All right.


And how long ago was this?

This was in the beginning of 2007.

And then, what happened with these new terms of your loan?

Well, I was pretty upset about my son and real focused on that and sort of trusted a friend of a friend. And the new terms, I didn't find out until much later, were very bad. I have a balloon payment after five years. I paid 20,000 to get into the loan. I have to pay 20,000 to get out of the loan, and my payments are 1,625 a month.


I mean, it's tempting, and certainly we do it in the news business, to look at a figure like $9 billion and say, you know, figure out what that cost per arrest and everything. But I wonder, isn't it in a sense worth, I don't know, a billion dollars a year to the American people to have that deterrent aboard?Because as people in the program have pointed out, if something happens, there's no one else to call upon for help in an airliner.

Well, you could justify almost anything on that basis. But I will tell you that on any cost-benefit analysis, this program does not hold muster. I can tell you also that while a billion dollars might not seem like much money in the whole federal government. . .

Oh, no, it's a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. . .

It's a lot. . .


There are some good ones. And they seem - there are many videos of crazy ants invading electrical boxes almost to the point where it seems like there's some attraction. What is going on here?

Well, it's definitely a point where people come into contact with them a lot because when your power goes out and you want to know why, you find a bunch of ants, that's a good reason to get your video camera.

Their boxes - power boxes are basically really good cavities. So these ants nest in pre-existing cavities. They don't - they do a small amount of digging but they exploit whatever cavities they can find. So that's a reason that they move into electrical boxes and pump switch - switches.

But once they get electrocuted, if you - when I've been collecting these ants in the past, you'll collect them into a vial, and they're all very agitated inside the vial. And they're - when they're agitated, they release something called an alarm pheromone, which is a signal that they used - chemical that they use to communicate with other ants if there's a threat.


Here's another example - property buyouts. So the federal government will sometimes buy properties with federal and local money after a disaster, like floods. And the land gets turned into permanent green space. And in the future, no other homes or businesses or potential lives will be lost there. That's the point of the buyout.

So if they're buying out property, you have to be a property owner to benefit from that. And people with more wealth are generally more often property owners. Is that how this is working?

Mm-hmm. And there have been barriers to property ownership in the U. S.  for various people, various racial groups, as well.

Sure.


Well, she took a very strong stance and decided to convoke a disciplinary meeting at the headquarters of the National Front to reprimand officially and potentially exclude her father from the party he himself created 40 years ago.

She put out a statement that said, quote, "her father seems to have entered a veritable spiral between a scorched-earth strategy and a political suicide. "That's. . .

Yeah.

. . . Not making peace there, certainly.


So I've started shifting to doing a lot more interviews, which I love, and just stories about the major cases that are happening at the Supreme Court right now or that they're going to hear. And that's kind of what the other kids who've joined the blog have been doing as well. And I'm so psyched to have them on. I have five other teenagers who are all just so smart and passionate about the Court. It's been very cool to make friends who are my age who have the same kind of fanaticism that I do.

Why should young people be interested in the Supreme Court?I mean, what's your pitch to them?

High schoolers should care because the Supreme Court is enormously influential in our society. It makes decisions that affect where we can live, what rights we have when we're arrested, who we can marry, how much power a president has and so many other things, I couldn't list them on here. It really matters, so I think that high schoolers should get in the habit of paying attention, just as they might keep up with President Trump's tweets or a contentious Senate debate because it'll serve them well to be civically engaged and to know their rights.

And when you tell that to them, do they listen?


How dependent is El Salvador on the money that comes in from Salvadorans living in the U. S.  and who send it back home?

Remittances are one of the main economy stabilizers of this country. Almost a fifth of our GDP comes from those. So if you see, Scott, in the case of the TPS, when I say it doesn't even make sense for the United States, it's because you have - 90 percent of those that are under the TPS program have formal employment in the United States. They pay their taxes. They have bank loans in the United States to pay for their houses that they are buying. So these are exemplary immigrants, and now you're pushing them to become either illegal aliens or to come back to a country that they can't recognize anymore after two decades.

Carlos Dada of El Faro in San Salvador, thanks very much for being with us.

Thank you, Scott.


Right. And the second issue is the Steele dossier itself. The Republicans charged the FBI was politically motivated and relied on this unverified information from Christopher Steele and that his work can't be trusted because it was ultimately funded by the Democrats. The Democrats now say that the FBI disclosed this in its application to the surveillance court, which was approved by four Republican-appointed judges.

Yes. So OK. So this is the really interesting part of the debate, right?So now what's become clear is the FBI did tell the FISA court that they got this information from a source who was working with a U. S.  political sort of entity that was looking to - that the FBI speculated was looking to discredit a campaign - one - which in this case - the campaign of President Trump. And so now we know what the facts are. So the question is should they had been very clear and say it was the Hillary Clinton campaign that paid for this memo?

That's really the only debate now - was, should they have used the words Hillary Clinton campaign paid for or Democrats paid for it?And so that's a debate. And I think - look. I think that from the context, it will be clear to the FISA court that it was politically motivated, or at least the FBI believed that there was political motivation behind the paying for the dossier or whatever the information that they used the facts from. And so did they have to go that next step?And that's really all the debate is about today. And we're sort of almost - it's like angels dancing on the head of the pin at this point.

(Laughter).


(as Antoine Batiste) Because when it comes to stolen love, Antoine Batiste has always been forced to be the villain. Come on, hit me, my brothers.

That series, of course, set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Pierce's hometown, where he could not help but notice that neighborhoods that gave birth to some of America's best-known cuisine had become virtual food deserts. So now, he's helped establish Sterling Farms, a grocery store with a mission to sell fresh food at affordable prices. And Wendell Pierce joins us now from member station WWNO in New Orleans. And nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.

Always good to be back. Thank you.

And a lot of celebrities will front the money to start a project, but you're immersing yourself in this. So what do you know about running grocery stores?


Yeah. I think a big local newspaper, you know, was kind of like the big local sports team. There's always been hostility toward the big, local paper but I think there was a certain amount of pride in it. And this is our paper. We are a big-time city. I think the Herald spoke more for the community and reflected the community better than any other institution down here could. And now there is no institution to replace that, unless, you know, you talk about sports team or something like that. And I think that's true of many, many cities now.

We talk so much about newspapers. Is journalism going to survive?Has that become DIY?Is this an opportunity for novelists to step in?

You know, novelists have been trying to step in for hundreds of years. And I think the same forces that are sort of working against newspapers probably are also working, to some extent, against books. I just, I don't know. It just feels like everything happens so fast now and everybody, you know, goes on to the next subject so quickly now. Books seem a little archaic, except as entertainment and, you know, as an escape from policy and that sort of thing.

Dave Barry. His new novel, "Insane City. "Speaking with us, of course, from Miami. Dave, thanks so much for being with us.


Yes. Tsar Nicholas tried to seek asylum in Britain. And the British parliament actually was about to grant him asylum, but the king, King George V, vetoed it. And what's interesting is King George V happened to be Nicholas' first cousin. So, as the saying goes, with relatives like that, who needs enemies?

Why did he do that?Do you know?

He was afraid that it would cause a revolution in England as well. So, he said better stay away.

Now, then, of course, we have Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Most of us remember Imelda Marcos for her shoe collection. But I gather that before they left the Philippines, they gathered up a few more things.


Well, so far, they've gotten houses in Jeddah, a city on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. They've also gotten monthly stipends, or monthly payments, of about $10,000 to $15,000 per month.

Although it sounds like, from your reporting, that's just the beginning. You report negotiations for possible larger payments. What would they be?

Yeah. So this is - this happens in sort of two stages. These were payments that were approved by the king late last year for the family. But going forward, you know, there are cases; there are prosecutions underway in Saudi Arabia. When those conclude, there would be an opening for discussions for far more money. And that's where you get into the real sort of blood money situation or scenario. Those could be millions and millions of dollars (inaudible). . .

Now, we should just underline that. I mean, we understand, from civil lawsuits in the United States, the idea of punitive damages. Blood money, I guess, is somewhat similar but also different. This is a way to wipe away a killing rather than the family of the victim having to seek revenge. Is that right?


(Reading) It should be pointed out that the Runyon Street homicides remain under active investigation. This office dismissed the case against Sanford because we were unable to retry the case. This dismissal is not the same as exoneration. It must be emphasized that Vincent Smothers has had several opportunities to testify under oath to exonerate Sanford but each time has refused.

So how do you respond to that?

It's hard to know what to make of that statement. My first response is that the attorney general - so the top prosecutor of the state of Michigan - has found that Davontae Sanford is innocent and has accepted that fact and agreed to award him over $400,000 in compensation. Vincent Smothers has declared that he is guilty and has said in a sworn affidavit that Davontae Sanford had nothing to do with it. My understanding is that none of the people to whom Smothers pointed have been prosecuted or indeed will be prosecuted by Kym Worthy.

Every now and then over the years, I've talked to prosecutors about exoneration cases. And they often say, look, they were legally convicted by a jury. The conviction was upheld on appeal. You can't make the legal system work if it's vulnerable to people showing up years after the fact sometimes, changing their testimony or even confessing - because that can be problematic.


Now for a little news I could use - book recommendations. My Memorial Day weekend starts right after the show. And like most people, I'm looking for summer reads, something to put in my bag next to my SPF 100. Normally I would solicit recommendations on social media. But today I don't have to because WEEKEND EDITION books editor Barrie Hardymon joins me in studio now. Hey, Barrie.

Hi. I also have sunscreen recommendations for later if you want them.

(Laughter) First I want to start off with what I would ask you, is that my favorite kind of summer read is just the frothy page-turner, the one book that everyone's reading that HBO or Netflix is going to turn into a movie or TV show sometime next year.

You want your basic "Gone Girl. "


From the studios of NPR West, this is Day to Day. I'm Madeleine Brand. Iraqi forces took control of Baghdad's Green Zone today. Iraq's leaders celebrated the moment, saying the country's sovereignty has been returned six years after U. S.  forces invaded and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Army Captain Nate Rawlings is here from Baghdad. He's with the First Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division. He's a regular contributor to Day to Day. Happy New Year, Nate.

Happy New Year to you, Madeleine.

Thank you. Well, so how do soldiers there in Iraq - how do they mark the new year?


And all this happened after midnight on Friday, so most people were sleeping. They were caught off guard and unable to escape. Houses, cars and bridges were washed away. And 17 neighborhoods were partially destroyed. And the town hospital and morgue are overflowing. Among the victims is a policeman who was carried away by rushing water when he tried to save a 12-year-old girl from drowning. And then there's the case of the Mocoa mayor, who is a pastor - he's homeless because rocks and mud came into his house and filled it all the way up to the ceiling.

Sounds like a horrific situation. How has the government responded?

President Juan Manuel Santos flew into Mocoa to inspect the town. He sent in the army. The Red Cross is there. There are emergency workers searching for survivors. But one of the problems is that there's no airport in Mocoa, and the main road into the town's been partially washed out. Half of Putumayo state's without power, and the drinking water supply has been totally destroyed. Now there've been some reports of people looting stores for food and water.

Just briefly - you know, we've heard a lot about flooding and landslides in Latin America recently. Peru's also had massive flooding. Do we know why this is happening?


President Obama faces increasing pressure to intervene in Syria, where the civil war has killed an estimated 70,000 people and displaced more than a million more. Artillery, tanks and anti-aircraft fire - and aircraft fire on civilians, and now there are reports that nerve gas has been used as well. The U. S.  would justify any action as a humanitarian intervention to protect civilians, the same ground cited in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq and Libya. And as those instances suggest, the president faced tremendous risks and very little prospect of reward. That's the conclusion of Gary Bass, a professor of politics in international affairs at Princeton University. He's the author of "Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention," and he joins now via Skype from his home in New York. Good of you to be with us today.

Thank you.

And it's hard to talk about this topic without bringing up Syria, where the president is being asked to intervene under pressure to do so.

That's right. And increasingly, people are talking about it. Seventy thousand dead, how can this go on day after day?


But today, the Reverend Al Sharpton, members of Bell's family, and other community leaders are taking these protests one step further. They'll march and stage pray-ins throughout New York City. One of the sites is House of the Lord Church in downtown Brooklyn, led by the Reverend Herb Daughtry. We talked to the reverend yesterday about his plans for the protest.

What we're supposed to do is assemble at various sites around the city and then march to the action site. That is the place where we will submit ourselves, some of us, to an arrest. Hopefully, in so doing, we will tie up the city so that there will be - there would be no movement, no motion. And everybody in the city and indeed across the nation will get the message that we will not stand for policemen, the people we pay to protect us, to kill us.

Reverend, when you talk about blocking things off and shutting things down, does that mean that you will literally block the streets?

Obviously, I don't want to be too specific, but we have assembling points. Points where we tell people to assemble. Here in Brooklyn, it's at our church, the House of the Lord Church. Now, once people have assembled, then we will go to the designated sites of action, where the civil disobedience will take place.

Sean Bell was a young man. Have you been able to reach out to people who are in their 20s or even in their teens to try to get them to join on to this protest?


But that's the idea.

So far, on your video, you show that you can make something that looks like Band-Aid, like cover a cut.

It's like a blob. But it's a really beautiful blob.

It's beautiful. I think it reminded me of flower petals, you know, opening and closing.


Yes. The, quote, unquote - they said my family still stays in Pakistan, and I will inherit a little amount of money when my parents pass away and that my fiance still lives in Pakistan. And these are the reasons that they knew - even my recruiters knew even before I joined the U. S.  military. If they wanted to deny me, they could have denied me at the time of recruitment. But they made me wait two and a half years in limbo. And that impacted my studies a lot.

And I gather this week the U. S.  Army reinstated more than 30 recruits. But were you one of them?

I was not. The memo from the Department of Defense said that all the recruits who got discharged after July 20, they will be reinstated. And I got discharged on July 1. So it does not make any sense why the people after July 20 can get reinstated and not me.

How do you feel?


A lot of destruction, complete devastation - the poultry barns, for example, some of those barns are completely gone. Where the hardest wind gusts hit, it was like Godzilla came and just pulled everything up from the ground. With the banana plantations, you know, you can see when the weakest palm trees fell and broke - when they started feeling the winds because they're leaning one way. And then when the hurricane changed direction, then you see the other one's going to the other side and broken. So you can see the power (laughter) that the hurricane had.

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

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

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


Hey, how are you?

I'm well. So how big a deal is this for companies that - we now know Uber and Lyft are basically synonymous with app-based ride-sharing?

It's definitely something that they're fighting tooth and nail and hoping that they can avoid being called - calling their workforce employees at this point.

I mean, is it just about money for them - which, I guess, isn't insignificant. Uber hasn't exactly been making a profit.


Well, some of their problems - they're doing very badly in the polls - is due to the personality of the Democratic Party leader, Matteo Renzi. He has a very sharp Tuscan wit, which, to non-Tuscans, makes him sound like an obnoxious smart aleck. And he's deeply disliked within his own party. Several members of the leftist old guard accused Renzi of being too centrist. They broke away, and that strongly weakened the party.

Under the party leadership, Italy's economy came out of a very devastating recession. And it has grown in the last five years, not as fast as its European partners. But it's done much better. And the party also passed a landmark civil rights legislation with a civil unions law for same-sex couples, despite the strong influence of the Catholic Church in politics. But, you know, the party's push for structural reforms was strongly resisted by both the right and the left. Italians are essentially conservative. They don't like change. But the populists are really pushing a vision of the past. And they're strongly skeptical of the European Union. And if they came to power, that could further destabilize the EU at a time when the bloc is already dealing with Britain's exit and growing authoritarianism in member states like Poland and Hungary.

Sylvia, thanks very much.

Thank you, Renee.


I think I understand the differences between older and younger generations a little more than your average person. My colleagues and I, again, specialize in talking with large corporations and helping them understand street trends and, you know, more kind of what's going on with regular people. And I think that that's one of the problems with economic and social issues in the world today, is that all these big leaders are meeting at places like Davos, and they're coming up with these amazing plans of action and initiatives.

But then, it's hard to relay the message to a younger generation and speak to them in a language that they understand and that they can relate to. So I'm hoping that maybe I can translate that gap a little bit, and help people understand what's really going on.

Rebecca, when you're there at Davos, who are you most looking forward to talking to, and what questions do you think you might ask?

I mean, there's so many people who are going to be there. Kofi Annan, I would love to talk to him. And I just kind of want to find out what these people think about what's going on in the world and the solutions. But maybe more on laymen's term and have them explain, you know, what young people and what individuals can do to make a difference. What someone can do who's maybe not in a position to mingle and brainstorm with other distinguished people at a convention like Davos.


If you take that vial and set it down next to a trail of crazy ants, rather than fleeing from that plume of odor, they actually turn and head towards the vial. So they seem to be attracted to their alarm pheromones - their alarm pheromone. And so as a result, that's kind of snowballs. So you're getting an ant that's electrocuted, it releases alarm pheromones, more ants to pile on.

That seems odd that they would be attracted to the alarm.

There - it is a little odd, except for - a lot of ants do this. It's part of how ants organize the defensives nests, for example, so if there's an intruder you release alarm pheromones and nest mates know that there's a threat that they need to be defending against.

Hmm. Do they bite?


And a couple of weeks after that, I got a phone call from a Vietnam vet who wanted me to write an obit about a World War II vet who served on a submarine and is basically a hero. And I was so moved by his story. And I realized that this is where I connect. This is where all African-Americans connect to America. I mean, our people have served and have done so much so that people like me can have the opportunities that I have.

So I guess it's a story of - in a way, of me searching for who I am. Searching for my history, searching for my people's history.

Give me an example of one of the stories that you found about a World War II veteran.

Well, one of the veterans I interviewed was a man named Waverly Woodson (ph). And I saw the movie "Saving Private Ryan," and I mean, I thought it was a great movie. But I was really struck by the fact that there were like no black people in it. And I assumed that no African-Americans served on D-Day. But when I started writing the book, I really wanted to find an African-American who served on D-Day, because I soon found that that was not the case.


You know, it'd be nice if we could all hold hands and hug each other and sing "Kumbaya" and it be like that. But fact is, whether we like it or not, our country and virtually every other country in the world has become heavily dependent on satellites. So it's natural that you're going to see warfighting move up into that domain.

We've got to stay ahead of that. Now, hopefully, if we're smart and effective at this, it will have a chilling effect on anybody wanting to try and go there because that's one of the things that we have found keeps war at bay, is when you're the biggest, baddest cat on the block. Nobody wants to bother with you. We are not maintaining that status when it comes to space like we are terrestrially.

Congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.


He already faces charges in Indiana from the secretary of state's office. He likely will face charges in Florida. The Coast Guard Investigative Services now are working with the Pensacola U. S.  attorney's office. They are tallying up the cost of the search for him. That will include manpower hours; that will include two helicopters, a boat and a cutter that they had put into the water. So, he will face a felony charge there, which has not been filed yet, of making a false distress call, and likely will be asked to repay the cost of the search for him.

Carol, has anything been heard from his wife or those who had invested money with him?

We have spoken with one person who had hired him as his financial adviser. It was a former Delta pilot. Apparently, a group of Delta pilots had brought him on board to manage their money. He had lost several thousand - well, thousands of dollars, but I think that is small compared to some of the larger investors.

Carol Robinson of the Birmingham News in Alabama, thank you.


I wrote nothing that of the slightest consequence before I met Sarah. I was a gag man for Fred Allen for five years. In his time, he was the greatest of the radio comedians. And jokes work for what they are but they're ephemeral. They just disappear. And that was the kind of thing I did up until the time that I met Sarah and we married. And I would say my literary career and my mature life both began with her.

And she would read everything that you did, and I gather she wouldn't be shy about telling you to change stuff.

Well, Scott, I used to read the books to her as I wrote them. And I have to tell you, she didn't like "Marjorie" at all at first. I'm not sure she ever got used to it because I couldn't quite conceal the fact that I was sort of falling in love with this imaginary young woman. But she would tell me what she thought. It was almost always right. And I would either get angry because I thought she was wrong and then have to get used to it, or I heard right away that she was right.

May I ask how you're doing without her?


There was a point at which radiation was all the rage for everything.

It was. And it wasn't that long ago. In the early 1900s, Marie Curie had discovered radium. Everybody thought it was the biggest and best thing. So they put it into water, so people would drink radioactive water. It was a treatment called Radithor that was sold all over the place. People could buy their own crocks that were impregnated with radioactive compounds so that when you put water in it, you could drink your own radioactive water at home.

What were they trying to cure?

They thought that it would make them young again and give them youthful vigor. People would take it for aching joints, restoring ill health. I mean, it was all these vague complaints and problems.

The cures didn't really take, right?

Well, no. It didn't help at all because you can't actually use radium to cure hypertension or diabetes or rheumatism. What happens is when you ingest radium like that, unfortunately, one of the places that the body likes to take up that element is in the bones. And so people would get bone cancers, and they would get anemias. And it was pretty deadly.


My God, the gratitude will be endless.

Now it's interesting what you're saying because, you know, your writing is so rooted in the Dominican community of New Jersey, specifically New Jersey is a very, you know, specific group of people. And, you know, the character, Yunior, who you have written about in your books, he's a smart, nerdy, bookish kid who I always think is maybe a little bit like yourself.

And I wonder what it's like to grow up in that community as a bookish kid, as I imagine you were, and then suddenly get an award like this, suddenly be declared a genius, suddenly have the freedom to, as they say, explore whatever you want to explore. Tell me about that journey for you, that personal journey.

Well, I mean, it bears repeating. I'm an immigrant. My father was an undocumented immigrant. I come from a community, a Dominican community that's part of a larger Latino community. And listen, you don't have to be a particularly awake person to know that for the last couple years, immigrants, Latinos and folks who have anything to do with undocumented immigration, have been just demonized by our politicians.


And we're hearing from you on your cell phone at the kiosk now, and we should note that where you are is not too far from Fort Bragg, which is home to the 82nd Airborne Division. And apparently, a lot of the soldiers have been coming home, and how has that affected your business?

Well, I mean, all the economy has been affected, but we're not as bad because luckily, we do do a lot of things for the military. Their wives are still here, so it's constantly them bringing in things that they need to be shipped overseas or just little minor things, things for the babies. It does keep a good flow in, though.

You mentioned the babies. I hear there's been an upsurge in the birth rate there, 50 percent more recently. That's a lot of babies.

Well, the troops came home at the first of the year, and now, everywhere you look, it's women pushing strollers, or they're pregnant.

And so, what kind of stuff are people bringing to you at your kiosk there for these expectant mothers?


No. It's a tie right now at 50/50, which does make it rather tense. But there is no sign yet of a third Republican turning against DeVos. And if it's a tie on the floor next week as we expect it to be, that will be broken by the president of the Senate, who is, of course, Vice President Mike Pence.

A CNN-ORC poll out yesterday gives President Trump a 52 percent - 53 percent disapproval rating. That's the lowest of any new U. S.  president since polling began. Does this make some Republicans in Congress rethink their support for his policies?

No, or at least not yet, not at this point. After last year, we need to remember polls are just polls. And besides, Donald Trump is still very popular among Republicans, and Republican members of Congress care first and foremost about their own voters.

I have to ask you about this finally. The president chose the national - the White House prayer breakfast to unload on Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California, the man who succeeded him as host of "The Apprentice. "The president said, they hired a big, big movie star to take my place. We know how that's turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It's been a total disaster.


So when did it start to go bad?

Well, when they started cutting the shifts back. You know, they had three shifts. And when things started going bad, we started opening at seven o'clock in the morning just to accommodate to the third shift people so that they could come here, have a bite to eat and a drink before they went home.

And then third shift, you know, they did away with that. So then we started - we quit opening up early because of that, and so that really cut back on our business. Then, they got rid of the next shift. They are only one shift. It just like gradually has gotten worse and worse. So now, we're concerned, what about now, when there's going to be nobody.

Was this - I don't know - was this a dream to own your own business, own your own restaurant?


The census is required by the Constitution and federal law. There's really no wiggle room here. Trump did sign this executive order directing all agencies to provide the Commerce Department with U. S.  citizenship and noncitizenship data of everyone living in the U. S. The thing is, though, that that data collection was already under way, or at least some of it was. So it's not clear what this executive order is really achieving.

House voted to limit the president's authority to use the military to strike Iran. What's the significance of that vote?

So this defense bill was really aimed at reining in the president's power to use military force against Iran without approval from Congress. This has been an issue not only with this president, but, obviously, with prior administrations - the question of when a president must get permission to take military action. And Democrats in the House are trying to take some of that authority back and give it back to Congress. Obviously, Trump was on his - very close to striking Iran, according to him, a few weeks ago.

But although the bill passed the House, it did so along party lines, and it's going to have a much harder time in the Senate. You're likely going to see some compromise have to be made for this bill to become law.


Yeah.

And when you see him and you're an American and you see that, you're like I did that. I can't run and hide and say that I don't have some kind of responsibility in that.

Yeah. How long did this take you to write?

You know, originally I tried to write a book actually about an American nurse during the American war there and I worked on that for maybe a couple of years. And I realized that that book I was working on should really just be a memoir. And the truth is that there are memoirs written by American nurses and doctors. And so I went back to Vietnam in 2010. And when I was there, that's when I discovered for the first time this story about a woman named Phan Thi Bich Hang, who is the, quote-unquote, "official psychic of Vietnam. "She was bitten by a rabid dog when she was 5 years old. And when she came out of her coma, she could hear the voices of the dead. And the government actually uses her to help them find the remains of soldiers and other people who are historically prominent in Vietnam.


Absolutely.

. . . Didn't prevent a lethal incident, like in the Laquan McDonald case in Chicago. I mean, even though an investigative journalist had to go and demand the footage, it did result in a conviction, didn't it?I mean, it didn't prevent. . .

Absolutely.

. . . A lethal incident, but it did bring accountability after the fact. So. . .


Thanks for having me.

Let me begin with this. A Libyan general yesterday announced a military takeover that apparently wasn't. So, what happened?

Well, basically, it was a television-only coup. He came on television saying that government is no longer in power, that parliament is no longer in power and their troops have taken the buildings. But on the ground, people were drinking cappuccinos. There were no forces. There is no military to command. And so it became a sort of a source of laughter and derision among Libyans, looking at a country that doesn't even have a military and former military commanders trying to overthrow a government that barely functions.

And what does this tell us perhaps about the state of the Libyan government now and what drives society there?


Good morning, Ira.

Good morning to you. What evidence do you cite?What evidence is there that human intelligence is slowly declining?

Well, you know, there are a few things I'd like to say I guess at the onset, and you referred to them in your introduction, and that is any genetically based decay in intelligence is extremely slow. And so we should never be able to detect it by comparisons to people within generations existing right now on the Earth.

Rather, what we see is what you mentioned, an actual, probably recent, increase in intellectual ability. We know that our students are the brightest in generations. They score higher on tests than students ever have before. They take more complex courses earlier and accomplish more. So there's all these reasons to believe that at least recently what we see is an actual increase in intellectual ability.


I don't have inside knowledge of what happened in the Ukraine matter, but it's clear to me that Yovanovitch was following the instructions that she was given by the State Department and she may have run afoul of whatever scheme Rudy Giuliani and likely the president were trying to play out in Ukraine.

Diplomacy is not a partisan issue between Democrats and Republicans. It's about serving American national interests. And I'm confident that's what Yovanovitch was trying to do.

The letter you and other foreign service professionals signed seemed to express particular concern about the implications, possible implications for replacing Ambassador Yovanovitch might have for the entire foreign service.

That's right. The letter was signed for two reasons; first, because many of the signatories know Yovanovitch, know her to be a person of impeccable integrity, someone who has served for more than three decades - both Republicans and Democrats - and has always done so with great distinction and received numerous awards and accolades for her work. But there's a larger issue here that goes beyond Yovanovitch.


Good morning.

Now, this didn't just break the record. It sounds like it's shattered it.

Yeah, the previous record was 85 degrees, and it hit 90 degrees on July Fourth, which was crazy.

Crazy. Now, when you say the highest previous record was 85 degrees, well, that's not - you know, OK, 85 degrees. But really - really - it's never close to 90 degrees there, right?


Well, I mean, on the one hand, you had - the Manafort indictment does not mention Trump. And - but the guilty plea that was unsealed involving this other campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, does mention Trump. And the greater sort of uncertainty surrounds that guilty plea at this moment because it is a signal that they already have testimony from this person, already have emails and other records showing the extensive contacts of this person with others in the Trump administration. They're basically saying we know more than you guys think we do.

George Papadopoulos - has he been wearing a wire?

That's a good question. I mean, I think it's fair to assume that Trump's lawyers are looking at that question very carefully.

Carter Page and Hope Hicks, according to reports, are going to be questioned. Carter Page has a history with and in Russia, doesn't he?


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

But with this novel, you chose to have someone else translate it into English. Why?

Well, in all honesty, the subject matter of the novel is quite intimate and has a lot to do with my own memories of my home city and what it means also to be an Iraqi living in the U. S.  and watching the - my new country bomb my homeland. So it's very traumatic. So when Jonathan Wright offered - as soon as the novel came out in Arabic, he offered to translate it. I - he's an experienced, excellent translator, so I said, why not, you know?

I think I hear you telling me you could not go through that story twice.


I, Karen Bass. . .

In May, Bass was sworn in as the first black female speaker of California's Assembly. That post has been called the second most powerful in the state behind the governor.

I recently asked Speaker Bass how she's dealing with her rise in profile and her new level of responsibility.

I felt definitely overwhelmed. But, you know, since May, or really since the election in February, I've just had a tremendous amount of support and welcome and good will. So I'm very excited about serving in the role.

You are someone who has certain interests that particularly are important to you. Foster care is one of them. Tell me about foster care.


And now we're going to move on to our broader Africa update. We'll look at upcoming elections on the Comoros Islands why South Africa says Chinese residents can now call themselves black. For more we've got Cassandra Waldon. She's chief of external communications at the United Nations Development Program. Hey Cassandra.

Hi Farai, great to be with you.

Always great to have you on. And let's actually start with another issue, which is the global food crisis. Africa's second most populous country, Ethiopia, is asking for emergency food aid. The government says more than four and a half million people are in desperate need of help because of a drought which struck most of the country earlier this year. So Cassandra, what makes this food crisis different from past ones?

Well I think this one is being exacerbated by the crisis of higher food prices that we've seen across the globe. We see in Ethiopia that you have children, as many as 75,000 kids, who are already acutely malnourished, now finding themselves deteriorating even further because of the drought and the lack of food that is available to them. We see that seasonal rains in Ethiopia have failed completely or are very poor in many parts of Ethiopia, and this is really hurting crop production, it means that farmers can't take care of their livestock. It is just a very devastating situation.


. . . which has its own problems. Arranged marriages are - people are speaking up for them nowadays.

Well, you know, I mean, that that is the time. The woman - he asked the hand of this woman, his late 20s. But this is also because of that, that you can have this kind of melodrama. I mean, "Romeo and Juliet" today, it cannot happen because if the father of Juliet today say to Juliet, you cannot marry Romeo; and she say, I don't care. And she will go out and marry him anyway. And if she marries him, then there is no more love story anymore. You know, they marry; then they had a - lots of children.

You know, imagine Romeo and Juliet and they have like, 12 kids. Who would care about their story, you know?

Romeo and Juliet go to Costco. . .


Thanks for having me, Michel.

So organizers say that there were about a million people protesting today. The police say it's more like a quarter of a million. Still, that is a lot of people in a city of 7 million people. You were out in the streets. What did you see?

The streets were completely packed. It was just jammed - a complete mosh pit. I was out there, and I had just never seen so many people out on the streets before. They were marching through the city's main east-west artery for about two and a half miles from the park to the government headquarters. The head of the crowd started streaming out of the park at around 2:30 in the afternoon. And five hours later, as I was circling back to the start of the march, people were still going strong, and the tail end of the crowd was nowhere to be seen. So that just shows you how many people were joining this march for hours on end.

The issue of extradition is certainly important, but it just isn't something we often see people demonstrating about. And why do you think this sparked such a massive response?


And there were a lot of things we did with George, always trying to recover the Pinta population of tortoises.

But nothing worked out, huh?

Nothing worked out. George was never very interested in any other tortoises. He was pretty much of a loner. And if you think about his life on Pinta, he spent probably the first half of his life alone on that island, and maybe by the time he'd gotten company with other tortoises, he just wasn't too into socializing much anymore.

Now, what made him unique genetically?Why is he the last of his kind?


Smaller splinters of gangs.

Exactly, a small splinter of a gang. And I think that everybody just wants to be the man. Things was a lot different when I was a kid, though. Back then, you could probably ask a kid who they wanted to be when they grew up, and they would probably say a teacher or a doctor. And now, you probably would get something like I want to be like my big homie. I want to be OG. Like, this is the only thing that they're exposed to, so this is all they can aspire to be.

Are you afraid to go out of your apartment?

If I was afraid all the time, I probably wouldn't be in this line of business, which is HugsNoSlugs. I started this movement to try to bring more positivity into the poverty-stricken areas of Chicago. And I see a lot of really good people in these neighborhoods. These people have hearts, too.


Explain what it means that the buyer sees more value in the brand of Sports Illustrated than the magazine itself.

Such a good question. Authentic Brands Group represents a lot of big names, some in sport, like Dr.  J - Julius Erving - Shaquille O'Neal, a lot of icons of culture that have passed - Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley - and some, you know, other sporting figures and brands in culture - Juicy Couture, fashion, the like. And they see. . .

It's a good collection.

It's incoherent, but it's broad. Let's put it that way. They see the ability to do things they think - in live events, in conferences, perhaps in gambling, I guess. Casinos could be branded with - or certain kinds of lotteries could be branded with Sports Illustrated - gaming, presumably - video games and the like. They think that this is a franchise that has a strong name, even if publication of Sports Illustrated is down from its heyday. You know, you think of such an important publication - the journalism of Frank Deford, of Gary Smith, of the photography of Neil Leifer and others - so many impressive works over the years. That's not what these guys are about. These guys want to draw on that intellectual property, maybe sell it, maybe find ways to wrap new products around - that name around new products.


And then there's the hurricane season that starts in the Atlantic tomorrow.

Yeah. And of course, hurricanes are changing as the Earth warms. This is sort of the classic, archetypal climate-affected weather system. They're getting larger and wetter. They're dropping more rain. Think Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017. Think Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas last year. This year, the Weather Service predicts a normal year. I'm putting that in scare quotes. That means two to four major hurricanes. But it only takes one of those hitting the U. S.  to do a lot of damage, so it all adds up to just an enormous amount of flood danger for a lot of Americans.

That's NPR science reporter Rebecca Hersher. Becky, thank you.

Thanks.


Well, tortoises in general in the Galapagos Islands were exploited primarily by the whalers, before that by buccaneers, but whaling logbooks show that there were probably 100,000 to 200,000 tortoises removed from Galapagos in the 1800s. And each island that suffered that exploitation resulted in some with very, very few tortoises, such as Espanola that only had 14 tortoises left, and then Pinta that ended up with only George left on that island.

So it was primarily through exploitation from previous centuries, and then some hunting, perhaps, in the 20th century, but George was all alone up there.

Let me ask you, you said something very interesting before. You said that George had a unique personality. Do tortoises really have personalities?


Well, first of all, you know, with the nurses, every hour, every day are stories about the suffering of patients. And every social problem presents in the hospital. And even with the new mandate of the ACA, which has some positives, obviously, what we're finding is that the quality is decreasing. The premiums are increasing. Patients are cutting their pills in half. The out-of-pocket costs are enormous.

I mean, our health shouldn't be a commodity. And that's what's happened. And so fighting for a single-payer system has become a bedrock issue in this campaign. It's always been a bedrock issue for the nurses nationally. And when we joined with the campaign, Bernie Sanders amplified all of the issues of the nurses.

Hillary Clinton, who served the Obama administration and quotes the president a lot on the stump, says that it's just not practical to expect - in the political landscape today to expect the U. S.  Congress to approve a single-payer health care system. And she wants to expand the Affordable Care Act. That's. . .

Hillary Clinton. . .


There's got to be a point where sooner or later the public is going to say, oh, this is just going too far with some of these technologies.

Well, again, that's why we call, you know, for the engineers to work with the regulators, to make sure that that doesn't happen. I mean, we all want everybody to enjoy sport, and that's why we have to make sure that they are working with them because - you know, and it keeps them interesting.

I mean, one of the other things is you have to think about how sports develop. You know, we have mountain biking that's emerged from road cycling, snowboarding emerged from skiing. So, you know, it's the creation of new sports that is also encouraged.

Let's talk about some of the other technologies in the London Olympics. Let's take bicycling. What's new there?


I gather - at first, you thought this might be a short book. Why?

I thought, and actually, at first, I didn't want to do it when it was proposed to me. And I was even a little bit offended by the fact that someone wants to kind of lump this very, very large region into one book. You know, the Nordics is a geographical region. It's not really a cultural region.

Now, our research team tells us split pea soup is a dish that reaches across the region we're talking about.

It is. One thing that ties the whole region together is the fact that you'll have four very distinctive seasons, and at least one of them, regardless where in the region you are, is going to be a season where you can't really harvest any plant materials for food. So a lot of those dishes that are based on something that can be stored really well through winter like, for example, the dried peas for the split pea soup, they are actually dishes that you can find, if not in the whole region, at least in parts of it.


The proposed bailout of the auto industry, which includes $15 billion in loans and a car czar to oversee the company's business decisions, is being criticized by some people as too much government interference. Malcolm Salter has advised Ford and GM, and he has studied the auto industry for decades. He's a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School. Welcome to the program.

Good to be here.

Well, what do you think of that plan?

I have some very serious questions about oversight, and I think we're moving awfully quickly on this because, obviously, the events are forcing us to do so. But I have some concerns about this so-called car czar. I'm not quite sure I know what it means. I'm not quite sure I know what decision rights the car czar will have.

And if, in fact, the car czar does have decision rights such as reported the Wall Street Journal this morning, which was where they were to review and presumably review all transactions more than $25 million, that seems to me like pretty granular oversight. And the question that I would ask, who has sufficient specific knowledge to make those kind of decisions who really hasn't been involved in the auto industry?


So off I went to Moscow with a couple of colleagues to talk about how intelligence services should work in democracies. And I found myself sitting in the Lubyanka, their headquarters, which over the years had been sort of prison death cell torture chamber, facing a long line of KGB officers and talking to them about democratic oversight and such things. It was certainly one of the strangest events of my working life I think.

(Laughter) Forgive me, but this is a week to ask - do you think they took good notes?Were they paying attention to this democracy?

(Laughter) No, I don't think they were actually. They looked at us with rather hard, cynical eyes. And I wrote somewhere that it seemed to be like two wild animals surveying their prey but not being able to get at them. But I don't think they were particularly interested in all this oversight and democracy stuff, no.

And may I ask you, just based on your experience and the way you survey events, what does Russia want these days?


Well, I think they'll help fill in some of the gaps that the U. S.  commander there, General John Nicholson, talked about in his testimony earlier this year. He needs some more forces to be able to get out with Afghan units as advisers. He needs more forces to do the counterterrorism mission against a Islamic State force there that's growing in strength.

And so it's simply going to be a gap-filler in many respects. I don't think it's going to be some type of a decisive increment of troops, and all of a sudden it's going to turn around the battlefield results and make this a war that we're suddenly winning when those troops get deployed.

And does it strike you, though, that in trying to come up with a new strategy, there are really any more options than have been on the table in past administrations who have been trying hard - and much blood and treasure has been spilled - in trying to answer these very same questions for many, many years now?

I think there's some potential different openings here. You've got a very different president with a very different outlook about American commitments around the world. I think he is going to consider all options, including a zero option, potentially, for Afghanistan.


Yeah, well, in fact, what our(ph) antihydrogen atoms bump into when we release them is gold. The inside of our apparatus is gold-plated, so they're actually hitting gold nuclei. So what happens is the antiquarks in the antiproton finds some quarks in a gold nucleus and annihilate with those. The amount of energy released is about the same, right?You're annihilating the rest mass of the antiproton on the same rest mass of the quarks that make up the nucleus.

So does the gold get changed any way from. . .

Not in any way that you would measure macroscopically, right, but - because we're talking about, we trap one atom at a time, right?So there's no macroscopic effect that you would be able to measure. But for us, that's a microscopically violent event, right?There's a lot of energy released, and we're pretty good at detecting that so we can actually see the energy release when you lose one atom of antihydrogen. By the way, you couldn't do that with hydrogen. If hydrogen hits the wall, nothing happens, right?So this is one way that antimatter is actually fun to work with.

When you shoot that radiation at it to flip it around, does it self-annihilate against the wall?Is that what happens?


As you were growing up, your father wouldn't even let you sit back in a chair.

My father believed the world was divided between those who were mentally and physically strong and those who were weak and lazy. For this, I had to undergo a physical and psychological training.

Can you tell us about those nights in the cellar?

From the age of 6, I had to spend one night a month in the basement meditating on death. I sat on a stool, alone, in the dark, surrounded by rats. And I had a cardigan with small bells on it. I wasn't allowed to let the bells tinkle, as it meant that I was moving. It was one of his exercises.

There are just too many instances of abuse and cruelty to recount - I mean, the way he didn't turn on the heat, the way he made you bathe in his dirty water. He said he gave you his energy that way or something.

Yes. There was a lot of violence in what my father made me do. We could describe it as sadistic. For him, violence was meant to make me stronger and to remind me that life was horrible.


And also they X-rayed them and they put it contrast eyes. And they found this sort of anatomical differences that would allow owls to do this.

One thing that struck you about the video that they sent as well as it struck me.

I think struck you. I'm not sure.

Was that right at the beginning of the video, you watch the video and one of the scientists is there and he's got an owl on his arm. And they're absolutely - they look alike. And now you say people look like their pets. He looks — he's standing still. Both their eyes are facing forward and it looks like - just like his owl.


As I say, I'm not doubting too much that Iran had a hand in this thing. Their motive is I think quite clear. We are in the middle of a signaling process that is going on. The United States is actually cracking down on Iran so that, basically, Iran not only can't sell oil. It can't sell its refined products. And, increasingly, Iran's closed out of international markets for just about anything that they produce.

So we are basically putting Iran under siege, and they're going to try to strike back at some point. So if I were sitting in Iran and thinking about what I could do, making the cost of oil higher for the rest of the world is a pretty interesting way of responding and saying, you can't do this cost-free.

Where do you see this going?Given that you've identified that the administration is engaged in a policy of trying to isolate Iran, diplomatically and economically, to achieve what it would consider better terms in the Iran nuclear deal - so is there any scenario in which you can see this tactic bringing Iran back to the negotiating table?

If the United States wants to do that, they're not going to succeed by just piling on the pressure until Iran collapses. Iran won't collapse. They've been through some very tough times - including a war with Iraq, which was far more dangerous to them than the threats that we're putting against them now - and they didn't crack.


We wanted to learn more about all this, so we've called on Daniel Fessler. He is a professor of anthropology at UCLA, and he is the inaugural director of the Bedari Kindness Institute. And he's with us now. Professor Fessler, thank you so much for talking to us.

Well, thank you for your interest. I'm happy to be here.

I was just looking at your bio, and you say in your own bio - your own university bio that when your colleagues talk about your work, they politely call it eclectic. And I took that to mean that your work is hard to categorize. So I just wanted to ask, you know, how - what is your work, and how does it translate into this task of creating this kindness institute?

So it is indeed eclectic, broad-ranging, you might say. I'm an evolutionary anthropologist. And, in particular, I work on understanding contemporary human behavior, contemporary human health and how the mind works in the contemporary world in light of our species' long history of evolution. And in terms of kindness, an important feature of our species is that we are perhaps the most cooperative animal on the planet. So in no other species do you see cooperation between large numbers of unrelated individuals, or even, in many species, tolerance of large numbers of unrelated individuals.


What about beyond the environment?- because your platform goes well beyond just issues. . .

Yeah.

. . . Of climate. What else do you stand for?

Well, having a clear attitude against racism through our diversity, not flirting with populist parties but confronting them. This is something that the Greens have been always good in. And I think that resonates with the population. And also, the Green Party has always been most pro-European party, longing for United States of Europe as a vision.


Well, you know, performance is really one of making sure you understand and document what's expected of you in your given role. One of the mistakes I see many professionals make, minority or otherwise, is they don't document and understand really what's expected of them.

And so they go throughout the whole year performing at what they may thing is the optimum level, only to get to the end of the year and find out that they've missed a mark. They're not doing one-on-ones or meetings quarterly or monthly with their manager, and so it's really important that if, you're going to track your performance that you understand what's expected, but more importantly that you follow up to make sure that you're on course.

Now, you have these performance evaluations in some cases, and is that a 100 percent of your success?How much are we talking about?

Yeah, I'm a big believer that success in corporate America, that performance really accounts for 50 percent of that. And what I mean by that is if you go back to childhood, most of what we were taught as children was you are rewarded based on how well you performed.


It's kind of laid back and peaceful. That's how we kept it this whole protest. We've been peaceful. And, you know, we're all looking after each other just like we would down in the mine. We got each other's back.

Are you supporting a family?What's it like living without the paycheck that you've been expecting?

Well, it's rough, I mean, you know. But I'm fortunate. It's just me and my wife. Our kids is grown.

You've spent your career working in the coal mines.


Yes. In fact, he displays every symptom of chronic sleep deprivation as described by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine - difficulty processing information, paranoid tendencies, mood swings. The way he made statements that he actually had to retract, like banishing women who have abortion, shows that sleep deprivation is a slippery slope.

You tried to uphold an editorial policy early in the campaign about not covering Donald Trump as a political story but as an entertainment story. Then after, what, a couple - a few weeks or months, you found you couldn't do that.

Well, what happened is that we changed our policy the day that he proposed to ban 1. 6 billion Muslims from this country. The day he made this completely un-American pronouncement, we believe that covering him as a clear and present danger was legitimate.

How many times have you been doing interviews for this book and somebody has pretended to fall asleep on you?


The Fed's dual mission is always the same - to control inflation and encourage full employment. Now, right now, the numbers say that the Fed's done a pretty good job tapping the accelerator and tapping the brake when they've seen fit. But it is not their job to make sure that the president looks good. And so that's a source of real conflict between these institutions.

As we noted, the president has arrived in France for the G-7 meeting. He seems to also be using the occasion to get closer to Russia once more.

And apparently proposing that Russia be brought back into the group, an idea that's already been rejected today by the European Council president. This is one way that Trump uses Vladimir Putin and that relationship to perhaps pressure some of our allies more toward his positions. But it's also at least potentially a way in which Putin can use Trump to weaken the European alliance and advance his own agenda.

Ron, there has been so much violence and death this summer. And we know opinion polls show the American public broadly supports, for example, red flag laws in hopes of averting mass shootings. Congress seems to differ with the American public when it comes to trying to control access to guns.


Yeah. And it really. . .

Maybe, it's social media now.

Right. And that I'm pitiful at. But I think when you have something like a Weinstein Company, or you have Fox Searchlight, you have these big studios that have supported independent filmmaking and tried to create larger platforms for them. If you have those larger companies that have a lot of history backing you, you end up having a better foot in the door. And so I think we are a dark horse (laughter).

Why do you hope people will go to see this film?


Perhaps Thursday night. And he had also mentioned that there - Democrats were, quote, "trying to steal the election" and had sort of mentioned fraud and referred the matter onto the state's version of the FBI called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, known as the FDLE. Well, FDLE, the next day, said, hey, there's no allegation of fraud, that it - they don't even have a complaint.

So far, all of these folks are saying, on the Republican side, hey, there's fraud, it needs to be investigated, while the state investigative agency is like, we're here to investigate. Show us. And so far, there's nothing.

With 20 seconds left, why does this happen a lot in Florida?

Because that's just how we are. I think Tim Russert said Florida, Florida, Florida. Or some people call us Flori-duh (ph). And this is just part of the nature of living here and being a reporter in the Sunshine State.


He is now in Napa State Mental Hospital, he - until he is - can be fit to stand trial. He's been declared unfit to stand trial because of his, you know, he's psychiatrically unable to stand trial at this point. And so he's undergoing compulsory medication to try and get him ready.

And Oikos University, what's happened there, there was something of a decertification.

Yeah. This is a couple months ago, I think, and the school went above - went in front of the regulatory board because the nursing students were passing the statewide nursing exam, like the graduates were passing it at such a low rate. And I think they were put under probation for a while. And I think all of that has been cleared since, though.

And you went back to visit the school a couple of times, and I wonder, you know, the peace park is there, you went to that memorial service and reported five other people were there.


Even bigger than a football field, you know. And we would walk our way across it and everybody who needed to observe this, the staffs, other commanders of supporting elements, fighter squadron commanders, bomber squadron commanders, helicopter commanders, they'd all be gathered around on the sand dunes around watching as we walked our way through it. And we did this repeatedly.

Did anybody in your experience rehearse what would happen after you closed in on Baghdad?

Yes, as a matter of fact, my boss at Camp Pendleton during a war game that we had in June of 2002. And on the first day of the war game - this is really about how does a battle unfold?We were looking at Iraq, of course. And he said - he pulled out the entire planning staff that usually is playing the next day or the next week's fight. And he said, you're going to concentrate on the post-combat phase. He said, I'm not getting enough guidance on it. I want to know what we're going to do when the fighting is done.

Although I get the impression from your book and from having covered the war in Iraq as a journalist that the United States reached a point where there had been no plan, where people had not rehearsed it a thousand times, where on a very high level it was not clear at all what the United States wanted to do in Iraq and how the United States wanted to achieve it.


Yeah - African-American mayor from Tallahassee.

Yes. So this is sort of a test of whether real progressive candidates can win in these sort of purplish states. And so that's going to be a really - you have a Trump ally there in Ron DeSantis. It's going to be, I think, a really close race still. Next door in Georgia, another woman trying to make history - Stacey Abrams would be the first African-American woman ever elected governor.

Right.

And that's a state that is changing. Has it changed enough?That's a really big question. And then there's sort of a handful of surprising opportunities for Democrats in the Midwest and in the Sun Belt. Nevada and Ohio - those were always sort of toss-ups. But then Democrats have real chances to flip some places - really ruby-red territory - like Kansas, South Dakota, maybe even Oklahoma.


We have what are called the three amigos. And the three amigos are Secretary Perry, again, Ambassador Volker and myself. And we've been tasked with sort of overseeing the Ukraine-U. S.  relationship.

ORDOÑEZ: And mind you that all this is happening even as Trump and his officials are in the process of ousting the U. S.  ambassador to the Ukraine, who Trump recently called bad news.

What kind of reputation has Sondland built during his brief time as a diplomat?

ORDOÑEZ: You know, in some ways, Sondland is kind of like Trump. He's a businessman. He made his name in the hotel industry. People I spoke to said he has kind of a similar brash personality - a wheeler, a dealer, someone with a lot of confidence. He's kind of a larger-than-life character. When he hosted an Independence Day celebration in Brussels, he actually brought in Jay Leno as entertainment.


So, this isn't someone who is just - and forgive a homey analogy for our listeners - this isn't someone who is just the Michael Jordan of Indian cricket. This is somebody who is the Michael Jordan times five, six or ten.

Probably yes, exactly. All - the Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig all combined. I don't know which other icons to come with from which sport that Americans relate to. And he somehow managed to be uncontaminated by scandal, by controversy in a sport that's been laden with examples of both. And his rise, in a sense, became tied up with or almost emblematic of India's own rise to ascension on the world stage. When Sachin Tendulkar made his debut for India in 1989 at the age of 16, India was still a developing country, a poor country, one with lots of problems, a semi-closed economy, that still called itself socialist. All of these problems. And then India liberalized in 1991 with the end of the Cold War and the major change in financial calculations and political philosophy in the country, and that coincided with Sachin's rise. So, India rose and Sachin rose, and he leaves just as our economy has also begun to tank a bit over the last year or two.

Shashi, what happens to a star of this magnitude in the retirement?Any idea?

Well, amusingly enough, my government nominated him to our Upper House. We have an Upper House that's weaker than your Senate.

You know, Shashi, let me simply interject: very few things are weaker than our Senate at the moment, but go ahead.


And then the women also said they wanted their jacket to look like that. They wanted to wear a male tie, which is unusual. Usually women wear, like, kind of a little crosshatch-looking tie. But they wanted to wear a long, male tie. And they wanted a pencil skirt.

Were the women and the men in the military polled about this?

Yeah. From different ranks, they had people come in and look at the uniforms or hats, you know, sent the prototypes to them and said, what do you like?Is this comfortable?And what would you like to see?

So they get some sartorial input.


Why reform?What has been wrong with the bail system up to this point?

It is extremely unfair. Essentially, what you're doing is taking people who have zero dollars and asking them to pay you dollars to preserve their own liberty. In New York, it's something like 45,000 people per year are detained on bail. And of those, 85 percent have a bail that they can't afford to pay, even though it's less than $500. And we have to keep in mind that in New York City, the cost of jail is something like $400 - at least $400 a day, so the math quickly does not add up.

Which is why I'm wondering, you know, why does the system do it this way?How does the system benefit from the current way of asking for bail?

I think that it's kind of a version of inertia. I think, you know, the idea was that the most important thing we have in our society and culture is money, so if you take that away from somebody or threaten to take it away from them, then you can compel them to do what you want them to do, which is to return to court. And then we have an industry that this set up - often, you know, in any downtown area, you see the bail bondsmen is right next-door to the court. And so we have an industry that has a lot of entrenched interest to keep the current system alive and well.


Sure, thanks for having me.

It wasn't so long ago that rich Russians were strutting a little. What's happened?

Well, just what you described. There's been fall in the oil prices, which has had a big effect on the ruble; exacerbated by the sanctions, in my view, and suddenly a confident Putin and a confident Russia is no more. I think growth is next to zero by the end of the year and many people are predicting negative four - maybe even negative 5 - percent economic contraction next year.

Does anyone in Russia say - are they bold enough to now say in public that invading Crimea doesn't look like such a smart move?


The narrower strike, I think, on chemical weapons, there probably would be - would have been a favorable vote because most - this is a - this has nothing - in a sense, it's not Syria. We're against chemical weapons wherever and however they're used. So that kind of strike, I think, has a justification in international law and in history. But it's the idea of a - intervening in this tragic civil war, I think, is a much broader question.

A while ago, Senator King, you were among those people in the Senate who supported greater support for Syrian rebels in the hope that they might be able to overturn the Assad regime. How do you feel about that now?Has the time for that opportunity passed?Does a strike like this promote that or have got nothing to do with it?

I don't think it has much to do with, as I say, the overall calculus on the battlefield in the civil war. And I'm afraid you may be right. Clearly, the momentum at this point is with Assad. The critical moment was when Russia came in in support of the Assad regime. And then you add Iran, Hezbollah and the other support that they're getting, all you'd have to do is look at the map. Two years ago, the opposition controlled a great deal of the country. And now, that territory is narrowing. And the fight now, this alleged chemical attack, took place in the Damascus suburbs.

So what should the U. S.  strategic goal be as far as you're concerned?


What put this story into your mind?

Well, I was researching a, you know, just a short magazine piece on the media's infatuation with lists. And I stumbled across this, to me, arresting factoid that there was a - someone named Frederick of Saxony who lived in the early 16th century, but he had a collection of holy relics. This collection of holy relics numbered 19,013. The second thing I found out was that Frederick of Saxony was Martin Luther's employer. And it sort of, you know, took off from there. But I - the - there was the relic collection that - and I - as I looked into that, it had marvelous things - a strand of Jesus's beard, a piece of straw from the holy manger - I'm not making this up - a vile of the Virgin Mary's breast milk. I mean, these were among the items in this collection.

In fact, the book opens with a scene at the Basel Relic Fair.

Yeah, it was a - it opens - they - a trade fair and Dismas notes that there are two adjacent booths, each offering a complete crown of thorns for sale.


I think that with that time, you just need to map it out and make sure that you stay busy. Because if you don't, there's a lot of other elements, you know, inside, that could possibly corrupt you. And you might not only lose your freedom, you might end up losing your life. So you've got to be really careful while you're in there.

Now your song "It's Real" deals with a really heavy topic: AIDS.

Right.

Let's take a listen.


Governor, let me have you answer your own question. Why are fewer businesses being created?

There are a combination of reasons behind the reduction in business creation. One is that we - like any enterprise - and government is an enterprise - we've had more and more kind of red tape. And sometimes that bureaucracy is excessive and makes it harder for people - the successful employees in somebody else's company - makes it harder for them to take a leap and start their own business.

But I also think a big part of it is we have a consolidation of just two or three companies dominate that industry, right?There - 84% of all the hardware sales are from two companies. So starting a neighborhood hardware company is almost out of the question. People don't think they have a chance.

The question of whether or not certain companies are monopolies has come up again and again throughout the course of this campaign. Would you break up the big tech giants - Facebook and Amazon - as Elizabeth Warren has said she would do?


And it's in Kuwait where you have thousands of people now for the last three months, four months, have been out in the street demonstrating. Again, they're not calling for the overthrow of the regime, but they're publicly calling out the emir's name, saying we will not let you run an autocratic system and abuse power. They want more representation, the more equitable representation of parliament, less corruption and more citizen involvement or engagement in public life.

They haven't articulated their demands very clearly, but these are - this is what they're talking about. They just want to feel that they're not, they're not simply living in a shopping mall where they can go and buy six cell phones and have no other rights. They have rights more than material rights, that's what they're saying.

So Kuwait is fascinating because it's wealthy, the government gives them everything, and they're still out there demonstrating for political change. And I think these sentiments run throughout the whole region, including Saudi Arabia and other places, to some extent. None of them are revolutionary in the monarchies, but none of the citizens of these countries either will accept total and permanent acquiescence in the existing power structure.

I know you're on your way from here back to the airport and back home, and I don't mean to send you there early, but a report today from the Bulgarian investigation into that terrible bombing, and, well, clearly that's going to be a development that's going to be - we're going to keep an eye on.


Do you remember some of the people you were able to help?

I do, yeah. There was a couple in particular who kind of lived in a - not assisted living, but it was designated for elderly couples. And they needed help. I mean, they had almost three feet of water in their home. So you couldn't get there by boat necessarily. And you couldn't get there by lifted Jeep, either. So the only option was to go in with an inflatable kayak. And the husband had just had heart surgery, so it was really difficult getting them out. You know, they needed to bring all their medications and everything.

But we just brought the inflatable kayak into their house and got them out the best way we knew how. The front entrance of their neighborhood was completely blocked off by water. There was a gate entrance. You couldn't even get in, so we had to bust down a fence to the back of the neighborhood to bring them out, so. And that flooding. . .

And let me - you - these were strangers to you. You didn't know who they were.


Please tell us, what are your feelings, in the wake of Charlottesville, about the statues of your ancestor?

Well, I'm a pastor. And one of the things that I automatically go to is this is a form of idolatry, very plain and simply. We have made an idol of Robert Edward Lee. We have made him an idol of white supremacy. We have made him an idol of nationalism and of bigotry and of hate and of racism. And that's unacceptable. And not only as a person of goodwill but as for me as a Christian, I can no longer sit by and allow my family's name to be used as hate-filled speech.

Pastor, I'd like to note that you have, since you have come out publicly and talked about this, been receiving threats. Can you tell me what's been going on?

Yeah. Well, the message boards are lit up with people saying that people who are speaking out against white supremacy, including myself, should be taken care of, whatever that means. And it's been hard. I mean, I'm a 24-year-old. I'm a pastor. I'm not a violent person. I don't condone violence in any form. And so to see that there are people who wish to be violent against me and my family, against my church community is terrifying.


Thanks, Michel.

Now, you've been reporting along the border all day. What have you seen?

Well, I was at the actual border this morning. It's a river that divides Mexico and Guatemala. And there was no presence of authorities there. So there are these inflatable rafts that carry people and goods across the river, and they were traveling without a problem across the river. So I saw several groups of migrants cross this morning. But things change as you move north on highways here.

So I'm currently at a highway checkpoint. There's about a dozen Mexican migration officers, as well as Mexican Army and Mexican police. And they're stopping every van and bus that comes by here and checking it for undocumented migrants.

So tell us a little bit more, if you would, about what happens to travelers who arrive at those checkpoints.


Yeah. They're like, oh, my God. Make that face again. That's so funny. But it's not like that. And the reason I talked about it and shared when I did was because there started to be all these compilations of my tics that were made by the fans, which they just thought it was, like, goofy Billie is making a bunch of faces. And they're funny. Let's make a video about it, which is, of course, out of love. And they think that's funny. And they didn't - they don't know, you know?

O'CONNELL: Especially if they think you're doing them on purpose, then it's totally out of love.

They think I'm doing it on purpose. But I felt almost, like, attacked in a way, which was kind of stupid. But it's something like I've lived with my whole life and, like, not been open about because I didn't want it to label me, you know?

Sure, you don't want the whole - that to be the second sentence of every every paragraph about you.


God, I know, the torment of it. You know, it's weird to be an artist who works really slow. I mean, we have a country that does not like people to take the time. We have a country that even its artists are on the punch-clock. So someone like me really stands out, you know. But you've got to do what you've got to do. And hopefully I can just finish it, forget how long it takes. As long as I can finish the darn thing, I'll be grateful.

Yeah, the last book took - I know it was sort of a painful process for you, wasn't it, this most recent book?

But, you know, that process gets lost. No one remembers it. No one - and that's what's the best part about being artist. There's all the sweat you break, all the dust you raise, all the sort of things, all the internal emotional timbre that goes in the work. No one will remember. That's the best part. All that's left is the actual work.

And, you know, my books, I try to keep the sweat off the books. So people read it, and they're like wow, this feels like this was effortless. That's a great - for me, more than anything, that's the best part of this. My work, that what I put into it doesn't show on the page. That's, like, great.


The attorney general says they're all murderers who preyed on children and the elderly. The first is named Daniel Lewis Lee. He's a member of a white supremacist group who killed a family of three people. The next is another inmate. He stabbed a grandmother, then drove with her granddaughter for 30 miles before killing the granddaughter very brutally too. The Justice Department says all five of these men have exhausted their appeals, so it says there are few, if any, legal hurdles to executing them later this year and early next year.

I'm thinking most violent crimes are - tend to be prosecuted by the state - right?- not the federal government. How do you even land on federal death row?

There has to be some kind of federal connection in the case. There are about 60 people on federal death row right now. Many of them killed somebody on federal land or inside a federal prison. For others, there were murders as part of a drug crime or a broader federal conspiracy.

Now, the last person executed in the federal system in 2003 killed an Army private. Before that, the most prominent was probably Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death in 2001 for his role in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. Now, some other well-known people on death row right now in the federal system include Dylann Roof, who shot nine people at the AME Church in Charleston, S. C. , and Jahar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of crimes related to the Boston Marathon bombing.


They survived, but it's not like they were back at a comfortable hospital stateside within a few weeks is it?

No, their reward for surviving was Japanese captivity. And you know, what lay ahead for them was famously fictionalized in the movie "The Bridge On The River Kwai," the so-called Burma-Thailand Railway, which was a - it was a war crime, really. These POWs were set to work for the Japanese, building this railroad through the jungle up in Burma and Thailand. And it was a case, literally, of the survivors in some sense envying the dead. 20 percent of the survivors would die in captivity. And so out of that 1,100-man crew, fewer than 300 came home.

It seems good here to remember the words that President Roosevelt said after the sinking, quote, "our enemies have given us the chance to prove that there will be another USS Houston and yet another USS Houston, if that becomes necessary. And still another USS Houston, as long as American ideals are in jeopardy. "

Well, he spoke those words, I believe, it was on Memorial Day, 1942. The president had a special relationship with this ship and its crew. Four times during the '30s he took world cruises on the Houston. It got to the point where when he called the Navy Department and said, bring the boat around, the admirals on duty knew exactly which ship he meant; he meant the Houston.


OK. So it's clear that this poll is showing there is broad support out there for at least some changes. So how much guidance should Congress take from a poll like this to do something?

Well, you know, whether Congress will do anything actually is very much up in the air. And there's a real sense of urgency for Congress to act, especially among Democrats and some Republicans, after this summer because we saw so many mass shootings. . .

Right.

. . . I mean - Dayton, El Paso, Odessa, Texas. But here's the thing. This all comes down to President Trump. Congressional Republicans are not going to take a risk passing anything that could be seen by groups like the NRA as anti-gun, unless President Trump comes out and gives them political cover, which he hasn't yet. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not exactly going to bring anything to the floor unless he knows that President Trump is definitely going to sign this. And it's kind of risky of a move for Republicans if they don't come out for these things because, you know, the NRA was outspent for the first time in 2018 by groups that want to see these restrictions in place.


Well, I would imagine that if you can survive all that stuff, right, and you can be zapped with radiation, frozen to almost to almost absolute zero, you can dry up or you go into some sort of. . .

It's called the tun phase. They sort of shrivel up, became desiccated, and then they can just survive all of these things, and then be brought back to life.

And they just wait for the right moment to. . .

You just - a drop of water, I think, will do it.


It was really expensive. It was the most expensive substance on Earth at the time. We're talking about equivalent of 2. 2 million dollars for a single gram.

Wow. And in 1917, of course, with World War I cranking up, there was huge military demand for watches that you could see in the dark and dials that you could see in the - in the dark.

That's right. And as you said, this is when the book opens, so shortly before America joined the First World War. And once they did, of course, join that global conflict, there was this huge boom to the radium industry. Soldiers needed watches, and people needed it for the planes and the trucks and so on. And so the dial painters, who were the radium girls - they were employed to paint all these dials with luminous radium paint. And they were taught to lip point, so to put their brushes between their lips to make a fine point for the detailed handiwork.

To actually put the brush with the radium paint into their mouth.


She let you know.

She let me know, I know. She was born with a perfectly normal heart. So for a whole variety of reasons, it was really special to meet her. You know, going through IVF, it's a very planned and purposeful pregnancy. Like, you're really (laughter) we really had to be committed to the idea that we wanted to be parents. So we're really happy it worked out the way it did.

You know, you reached out. What did you want people to know from your story?

Yeah. That's a good question. I've been asking myself because I haven't talked about my infertility experience very often. But I just had this impulse. There's a lot of taboos around infertility. There's a lot of taboos around talking about being a new mother in any other way besides in glowing terms. And now that I am a new mom and I'm working with other new families, I realize how stressful it is and how normal it is. In the event that someone out there can relate, that's what would be my hope.


So for example, you - there is a - one kind of solution perhaps that could work to stop jihadist mass killings, another kind of solution that could work to stop mass killings involving mental illness. And then with some like the Los Vegas shooting, where we still mysteriously don't have a motive, you know, you're more in the dark as to what could have been done in that particular case.

Jeannie Gaffigan, the comedy writer and producer who has been publicly battling a brain tumor and happens to be a person of faith, this week tweeted, I'm living proof that prayer works. She's feeling better now. But it also takes enormous effort along with prayer, sometimes a lifetime of struggle and dedication. Do you agree with that?

Oh, absolutely. I believe - you know, there's a scriptural principle that faith without works is dead. In other words, you should pray and you should act. But I think the main criticism that many of these Twitter activists are offering is that they're saying, don't say thoughts and prayers. Say what I want you to say. And in a political environment where there's sharp polarization and very different ideas about how to respond to a crisis, that's just never going to happen. And besides, what use is an activist tweet anyway?

David French of National Review, thanks so much for being with us.


Yeah. They considered all kinds of things. And - but they were stuck on coming up with a design that was really a wow design. So John Graham hired as a consultant a professor from the University of Washington named Victor Steinbrueck. He's known locally in Seattle as architect-activist who saved the Pike Place Market. But he was a designer, and he worked on the Space Needle design.

He got stuck. And one day, he was sitting in his home office and he saw - he had a beautiful abstract sculpture by a California artist named David Lemon, and it was feminine figure in complete abstract, reaching up to the sky with this narrow waist and then this tripod legs. And it was called "The Feminine One. "And he went, aha, OK, there is a unique shape for a tower.

Wow. If you have a question you want to ask Knute, get up there on our microphones and you can ask it. Where there any engineering innovations that were required to get this to be built?Anything about the revolving restaurant, anything like that?

Well, it was interesting because at that time, there were no revolving restaurants.


Perhaps the most interesting part of it is the number of loose ends that we have. On one hand, Secretary Pompeo said there was no doubt Iran was responsible for the whole thing. And he listed a whole series of things that he said Iran had been doing, one of which was apparently an unknown militia in Iraq and the other was action by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

So maybe Iran really was responsible for the attacks on the tankers. But I think the fact that Pompeo chose to blame them for absolutely everything that's going on in the region that we don't like is a pretty good indication that the United States really is on a kind of propaganda campaign against Iran. But that doesn't solve the problem.

I was going to ask about the Iran side of this. So just, you know, for the sake of argument, what would Iran's motive be - if these attacks detected - what would be their motive?

As I say, I'm not doubting too much that Iran had a hand in this thing. Their motive is I think quite clear. We are in the middle of a signaling process that is going on. The United States is actually cracking down on Iran so that, basically, Iran not only can't sell oil. It can't sell its refined products. And, increasingly, Iran's closed out of international markets for just about anything that they produce.


Yeah. They made clear that their problems with these laws are not about abortion per se, but about interference in the doctor-patient relationship, which is true. And that is their complaint. I would point out that there have been a number of other abortion laws or abortion regulations that they have not been so outspoken on that would have equally interfered with the doctor-patient relationship.

For a little more context, though, how influential is the American Medical Association at this point?

Well, they're still pretty influential in that people see that name and think, oh, the AMA - they represent doctors. But the AMA has represented a smaller percentage of doctors over the years. It is not quite as big and powerful as it used to be. But still, the brand carries some weight, and it carries some weight in Washington and in state capitals.

Doesn't it carry weight precisely because people see it as apolitical?And is this jeopardizing that?


Now to address this, there are a number of policy proposals on the table. They're called push and pull incentives, which can entice these companies to stay in the antibiotic business. A push incentive might be something where you go to a company that's making billions of dollars and say we'll cut your corporate tax rate if you promise to invest some of those profits into new antibiotics. This is a sure-fire way to get more money into the pipeline. However, many people recoil at the idea of giving a tax break to a multi-billion dollar company.

We started our conversation talking about the patient you referred to as Jackson - a gunshot wound, you had some difficult choices to make with him in terms of treatment. How did it work out for him?

Well, without giving away too much, he does - his story does have a happy ending. But it does not involve antibiotics. And I think that his case is emblematic of the fact that we're increasingly shifting away from the typical model of using antibiotics to treat infections. And there is an array of new treatment options that are coming out - things like bacteriophages and CRISPR-based gene-editing techniques, where we can use a molecular scalpel to modify a strand of nucleic acids to create a new treatment that will cure patients.

But what I want readers to appreciate is how difficult it will be to bring those discoveries into your local hospital based on the current financial model. In many cases, it simply will never happen because the challenges of getting a drug approved by the FDA are so formidable that companies just don't want to go there.