Lots of people are pretty angry about this, understandably so. Is there any kind of limit or regulation on how much banks can charge their customers?

It depends on the state where you live. Much of this is ruled by state law. But for the most part, no. The basic rules that apply to this is, the bank must at least tell you what the fees are up front. The problem with that is, many studies, including a recent one by the federal government earlier this year, shows that a high percentage of banks simply don't ever tell customers anywhere in the fine print, anywhere in person what the fees are.

It all sounds pretty grim, but I'm wondering if somewhere, there's a bit of a silver lining. If people are going to get charged more for things like overdrafts and bounced checks, do you think people might pay more attention and be more responsible about their money?

I mean, that's the hope, but one of the things - one of the reasons the banks do this isn't necessarily to get people to act better. What they realized a few years ago is that the poorest customers ultimately cost them money. They're literally losing money on people who don't keep a lot of cash in their account but yet call up the customer service line or go to the bank.


There probably should be because the funny thing is, for most players, for most people, you might be able to look at this and say, all this success, the way that the city has embraced him and the team, all of these good things would naturally lead to Kawhi Leonard being more inclined to re-sign in Toronto. And we just don't know that that's the case because he's a famously kind of opaque individual. Nobody knows what Kawhi Leonard is thinking, except Kawhi Leonard, about what he really wants in life and in basketball. The team's really good; that might not be enough.

People are talking about him as being one of the greats, right?You're hearing, like, a Michael Jordan comparison being thrown around. Can he really carry the team to a title against the Warriors, though?

Not alone, I don't think so. The one thing about this Raptors team that people do underrate is that, defensively, this Raptors team is as good as anybody in basketball right now. It's a team with versatility, intelligence, a ferocity, defensively. But to beat the Golden State Warriors, they're going to need more guys to make shots offensively. Kawhi Leonard is great. You need more than one great player to win in any playoff series, much less against a championship outfit like the Warriors.

The NBA has pushed for expansion north for decades. But is the rest of Canada at all interested in this?I mean, is this Canada's team?


What is your heritage?- if I may ask.

I'm Mexican. But I wrote the story for my daughter, who is half Puerto Rican, half Mexican.

And did you have something like a moon ceremony growing up or did you wish you had one?When - what was the inspiration here?

Well, the inspiration began when my own daughter started to ask about her period, about her changing body as she grew into adolescence. And I wanted to reframe the conversation. I wanted to tell a different story to her. You know, my - I never had a moon ceremony. I wanted to have a moon ceremony. But like many women - Mexican women, many Latinx women who enter their periods with a certain amount of shame and silence. And I didn't want that to happen for my daughter. I wanted her to be grounded in our spirituality, our connection to the moon. And so we actually did give my daughter a moon ceremony.


Well, in a way, it was easy to not think about it, let's put it that way. After all, you know, the community had been tremendously traumatized by all this, so we were not in a mental situation to examine it or to think about it that much. I mean, people had to survive. But over the long haul, I do feel that because we had been subjected to something that was so totally outside of our control, one had to really internalize a lot of the, well, gee. You know, why did they do this to us?

And in my particular case, my parents decided that they no longer wanted to stay in this country, you know?So they signed up for what they called a repatriation. My father was not a citizen, so he had decided to go back to Japan. And for me, this was unthinkable. I just could not imagine leaving the home, the country that I knew. I'm very alienated from my parents for a while over this situation. We did not go to Japan, but that's something that will always haunt me because I was blaming my parents for something that was imposed on them, really.

What made you decide that you wanted to protest now at Fort Sill?

Well, some of us just thought, because of our particular history, that we had, you know, the moral authority to go in and say, well, you've done it to us, so don't repeat history.


Well, they do. But what people don't always realize about the Affordable Care Act is it's not just a discrete program in and of itself. It changed other government programs, too, and that includes Medicare.

What was the biggest change for Medicare?

Well, the one that's gotten the most attention is the change to prescription drug coverage. You may have heard about something called the doughnut hole. That's where Medicare would get you a discount on prescriptions but only up to a point. After that, you had to pay full price for drugs until you shelled out around 1,300 bucks. Then Medicaid would help you out again.

Now, some people never really reached that point because when they had to pay full price, they just started skipping some of their prescription meds. So the Affordable Care Act has been phasing out this gap. It saved people on Medicare more than $23 billion. But this program could go away with the repeal of the law.

That could go away, and we should say, once again, that we don't know yet what any replacement will look like. What have you heard among the ideas being proposed that might affect older Americans?

Well, a few members of Congress, Republicans, have circulated their own proposals for replacing the Affordable Care Act. And one thing that comes up in some of them, including in House Speaker Paul Ryan's plan, is a major change to Medicaid. Now, that's known as the program that provides health care for the poor. But it's also the program that pays for long-term care for a lot of older people. In fact, Medicaid pays the bills for most nursing home residents.


Debates can matter. They may not decide the race. Lots of social scientists have told us over and over that they don't. And there's polling evidence that their impact is perhaps limited and temporary. But in the popular imagination, including those of a lot of us journalists, the debates are a dramatic moment. They're a dramatic high point in the campaign. And they come just at the time when people are starting to really pay attention.

And in fact, in some states, even starting to vote.

That is correct. They - a number of states have begun their voting as of the Friday of this past week.

Yeah. Both sides right now claim, oh, you know, we just hope to hold our own. We think the other side is such a better debater.


I can do it either way.

There are two different puzzles. You know, they are the dominant forms of matter and energy in the universe. Roughly speaking, dark matter accounts for about 25 percent of the universe, and dark energy 70 percent with the stuff you and I are made of, weighing in at 4. 5 percent. And, you know, dark matter holds things together. Dark matter holds together our galaxy, and it's the dark energy that's causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. So they're doing very different things. But as you alluded to, they're both big mysteries and who knows?They might be related.

We think that in terms of the puzzles that were at different stages, as long as we're talking about the LHC, one of cosmology's big hopes is that the LHC stands for dark matter factory. Let's see, I guess those letters don't quite work. Maybe in some language they do. But we're hoping that the LHC, after it finds the Higgs, will actually find the dark matter particle so that this mystery that started some 70 years ago with Fritz Zwicky will be finished off and that we will have identified the dark matter. The dark energy is one of those puzzles where, who knows, it could get solved this decade, but my hunch is it will be another 30 years or maybe even longer.

Are you saying that the Large Hadron Collider can actually make dark matter?


Good to still be with you, Scott.

Got your Sharpie ready?

(Laughter).

Let me go on. Congress is coming back to a debate that has raged over firearms. There were a number of mass shootings, and it doesn't seem to have much impact on the debate, has it?


So what do these numbers here in Southern California, what does that mean for the rest of the country?

You know the other kind of metro coastal areas are following a pretty similar pattern. But you know places like Charlotte, North Carolina haven't - places that haven't had the kind of run up that we had in the hot spots probably aren't seeing as large declines because they don't have this part of fall. But the real sort of disaster areas are California and Nevada, Arizona, Florida. You know, New York City has had great appreciation and hasn't seen the large declines now. So that sort of the one the economists are watching next to see, you know, if New York's bubble is - which is sort of been slowly deflating is really going to have a big burst at some point.

Foreclosure seems to be playing a big role in all of this. A new study came out yesterday from the company Realty Track showing that across the country fewer Americans are thinking about buying a foreclosed home. So what might be the effect of this?

Here in southern California people are buying foreclosed homes, especially ones that are sort of decent quality.

I understand that you are currently speaking to us from a home that was foreclosed on. Can you tell us a little about your situation there?


I think we're all thinking about it and working on it, but I just wonder if, you know, do you think that the defendants who've come in to your courtroom have a sufficient social network so that they see other people doing better or improving their lives so that they can even have anything to pattern it on?

Absolutely. And I think that's a huge part of the problem. And what I would do, in my court, I had a program for men and a program for women because, even if I spark something in you with what I say, you're going to go back into an environment where everybody's telling you something else. And I don't have the ability, that constant contact.

So, what I think is, at least, a part of the solution is, when we do something, to take a small group and to stay with them. I stayed with a group of girls for a year at a time for over a decade, and I did see two or three people who called me a couple of years later, Judge, I just want to tell you how well I am doing.

It's not a great answer. It's not the answer everybody wants to hear because it's not a panacea, and it's work intensive while the success rate is low, but I think it's what has to be done.


If there's one politician that you could interview, which one would it be?

I probably would have to say that if there's one person I'd want to interview, it'd probably be President Trump. I think right now would be - to interview most. But, I mean, there's obviously - it's a huge field right now. And I'm definitely hoping that there'll be more than one of the 2020 candidates I'll be able to spend some time with in the next few months.

Gabe Fleisher, writer of the political newsletter Wake Up To Politics and current high school junior. Thank you very much.

Thank you.


And she - my wife went and found the chaplain at Northwestern - a Lutheran chaplain who'd never performed a wedding before. She came to our room and performed the ceremony, just the three of us. It was a lovely, personal, intimate ceremony. And immediately after the ceremony, I took some pain medication and peed in a cup.

Well, that's one way to say l'chaim, isn't it?I made a short list: addiction abuse, adultery, abandonment, imminent incest and just plain old hatred. So is every family is a little bit like the Westons of Osage County?

What we have seen by doing this play is that the story of this family is pretty universal. And the dinner scene alone, in the theater - I can tell you that some people are howling with laughter, and other people are in tears and crawling under their seats. They find it very upsetting to watch because it hits pretty close to home.

"Fiddler on the Roof" with the F word?

That's one way to look at it.


Sure.

But any - is there any other practical dimension to your support right now?

We have an open-door policy. Anybody can come anytime of the day or night that they need help. We have done know your rights training. We disseminate that information with a lot of frequency. So we make sure that people get in their hands the steps they need to take if they should have an encounter with ICE.

Do they have any rights?This is one thing that I'm unclear about because I think - do people have any rights?


No. No.

. . . So many times. Yeah, because they didn't think I was part of the family. Now - I mean, I'm a 30-year-old woman now. . . .

Yeah.

. . . My identity is very clear to me. And I don't have to make it clear to anyone else because I don't think that's important, what anyone else thinks about me or what box they want to put me in. But I will say, for myself, making this record definitely was just a declaration of who I find myself being.


Well, certainly in some cases in expensive cities still need some help but much less help. On a minimum wage of $12 an hour, a couple - two full-time minimum wage workers - would earn $50,000 a year. That certainly doesn't make you affluent, it doesn't make you rich, but you can get by reasonably well on $50,000 a year.

And you don't think jobs will leave the state?

Some jobs, but probably a lot fewer than most people think. There have actually been a lot of recent studies in the last five or 10 years that have turned around the economic sentiment on this issue. In most cases, in nearly all cases, the jobs we're talking about for these workers are in the low-wage service sector. They're non-tradable. They're not subject to foreign competition. They can't be outsourced. Those jobs are exactly the sort of jobs where the employers would simply pass along the extra costs to the consumer. They'd raise prices and keep their workers at a much higher paycheck. Furthermore, the price rises we're talking about are very much smaller than most people would realize. Wal-Mart is America's largest low-wage employer. Three hundred thousand Wal-Mart workers average about $9 an hour. All Wal-Mart would have to do to cover a $12 minimum wage is raise their prices by 1. 1 percent one time. The average Wal-Mart shopper would pay only an extra $12. 50 per year. People wouldn't even notice the price hike.

Well, if the goal is to lift low-wage workers above the poverty level, is $12 an hour really enough?


We begin with history. The slave codes of South Carolina, 1739. A fine of $100 and six months in prison would be imposed for anyone found teaching a slave to read or write, and death is the penalty for circulating any incendiary literature.

Just a couple of minutes later, she concluded with a citation from a mentor, Dr.  Katie Cannon.

Black people, you said, were the only people in the United States ever explicitly forbidden to become literate. I am now officially speechless.

This year, Nikky Finney's on the other side of the National Book Awards, judging the poetry category. She's currently a professor of English at the University of Kentucky, but recently accepted a position at the University of South Carolina. Nikky Finney joins us today from member station WUKY in Lexington. Nice to have you on again.


Hopeful or not, I think the obvious answer is yes, I am a student of Zimbabwe, I am still very hopeful. But we are calling on President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa always been mandated by SADC to meet it in the Zimbabwe crisis, to look seriously in (unintelligible) and move away from this quiet diplomats which is not producing the desired result, and probably as the AU summit sits on Saturday with eight African leaders to take a position on Zimbabwe. The deployment of a peacekeeping mission is now long overdue. The people of Zimbabwe have suffered enough.

Clever, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

You are welcome. Thank you very much.

Clever Bere is president of Zimbabwe's National Student Union. He spoke with us from Harare, Zimbabwe.


Well, one last question about this because there is speculation that this weather may be due to the loss of ice during the summertime at the polar region. Is there any evidence for that being the trigger?

No, that has a lot of other dramatic effects on our climate, but for stratospheric warming events, what we're looking at are very large systems, such as the one that was off of the northeast coast of Japan. Also it's been correlated to sunspot activity. So that's kind of a factor that doesn't affect the troposphere so much, but it does involve some (unintelligible) content action in the stratosphere. So we're seeing a correlation between a solar activity and then these big, very unstable systems late in the season like we saw off the northeast coast of Japan.

All right, well, people always blame stuff on sunspots, so. . .

That's right, it's hard to prove them wrong.


Absolutely. That is something that needs to be considered carefully for Senator Coleman. He's a relatively young man, very successful politician from his time as a mayor of St.  Paul to his time in the Senate, and there's a lot of rhetoric from his legal team right now. But who knows?Once this looks like it starts to get being wrapped up, the senator himself may decide that it's not politically advantageous for him to drag this into a courtroom.

If Norm Coleman were to do that, to say, well, I won't fight it any farther, isn't he in a way disenfranchising and disappointing, to say the least, the people who voted for him?

Well, I suppose that's a risk he would have to take. I think, though, that you look at this numbers, this is so close right now, and that, at some point, somebody's going to have to take that Senate seat. And if Senator Coleman looks at it and decides that this is not going to behoove him, it's not going to further his political career to fight this in court, he might make that decision. And his supporters might be happy that he leaves himself potentially better positioned for another job down the road, maybe the governor of Minnesota or something.

New York Senator Charles Schumer said yesterday that Franken had already won the election. Until recently, Schumer was the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Does that sort of open declaration carry weight there?


What do we know about the synagogue and the surrounding community of Squirrel Hill?

Well, the Saturday service at this synagogue usually starts at about 9:45 a. m. It's a conservative congregation. According to the synagogue's website, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers leads at Saturday's service on most weekends. He's written about gun control before. In July, he posted an essay to the congregation's website, to the synagogue's website, where he said, despite continuous calls for sensible gun control, our elected leaders in Washington knew that it would fade away in time. He says that he was afraid that the status quo on gun control would remain unchanged and shootings would continue. He also lamented that he felt he had to include in his daily morning prayers that God should watch over his wife and daughter and teachers to keep them safe.

President Trump has weighed in on events, hasn't he?

He has. President Trump tweeted this morning that he is watching the events unfold in Pittsburgh, and he warned people to stay away from the area. And he said it looked like there would be multiple fatalities.


Well, what happened on Tuesday was very interesting. During the day on Tuesday, there was a very small protest. They were in the middle of central Baghdad in Tahrir Square. They were very quickly dispersed by the Iraqi security forces, but then a call went out on social media from people's individual accounts to say, let's go back to the square at 3 o'clock. And the numbers surprised everybody. There were thousands of people in the square who reacted to that, and they all had one real message to the government. That was to end corruption and provide jobs and opportunity.

The government were completely surprised by this, and they sent in the Iraqi army and the police with very heavy-handed tactics. They used live fire. They used tear gas. They used rubber-coated steel bullets. Now, there were a number of deaths that day, and then the protests spread to other parts of the country.

So whatever had happened, it struck a chord with very young people. Now, the median age of the protesters, as far as I can work out, is about 20 years old. These are people who don't remember Saddam Hussein, who, you know, barely remember the U. S. -led occupation of Iraq. What they do remember is the last 10 years and the opportunities that have not been given to them.

And as you have been moving around the streets, reporting, trying to talk to them, what specifically do they tell you that they want?


Thursday is our day to look at the world of sports, and the world is, indeed, looking at sports this week by way of the Olympics in Beijing. But what are the prospects for American athletes?Here to help us with that is New York Times sports columnist, Bill Rhoden. Hey, Bill.

Mr.  WILLIAM C.  RHODEN (Sports Columnist, New York Times; Author, "Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete"): The great Tony Cox, how're you doing, man?

I'm doing great. You know what?Here's my question to you about the Olympics. You know, we know that Yao Ming carried the Olympic torch through the gates of the Forbidden City. We know that Michael Phelps, Allyson Felix, are some big stars. We are hoping for things from them. We're hoping for things from the U. S. A.  men's basketball team. Here's my question. Is America really interested in the Olympics?Are people going to watch?

Well, there's always - and just as a caveat, I mean, the Olympics were always sort of my favorite sporting event, because I do think it's - you know, you've got people who've just trained for this one moment for four years. So, that's great. But you know, having covered about four or five of them, you know, sometimes you're over there and you're like, is anybody reading this stuff, you know?


The idea of this is that she - Julie escapes from Paris and ends up in Marseilles, and she joins the opera there, starts singing. And she becomes famous for the first time. . .

I mean, forgive me, we have to ask - how does a duelist on the run become a star of the Paris Opera?

(Laughter) Well, I don't know. She just auditioned for the Marseilles Opera, but then later on after the adventures that she had in Marseilles and Provence, she made her way to Paris with another lover, Thevenard, who was baritone. And he auditioned for the Paris Opera and he said I will only join you if my girlfriend can come, too. And so at the age of 17, she found herself part of one the world's great musical companies. And she became - both of them became stars.

And then there follows what you call the evening of gasps.


Parents never want to let their kids down, but this holiday season, many parents face a sad reality. Empty wallets will mean fewer presents. So how do you talk to your kids about facing a lean holiday season?We pose that question to our regular News & Notes contributor, Judge Lynn Toler, the star of TV's "Divorce Court. "Hi, Lynn.

How are you, Farai?

I'm doing quite well, but there are a lot of folks who are really financially pinched. And for better or worse, we live in a society where people are often judge by things. And kids are no exception. Kids can be really cruel, if you're wearing the wrong brand of sneakers or if you're - you got a toy, but it's the generic toy as opposed to some, you know, over-priced brand name toy. Given how kids act, and given the realities of the moment, and given that gift giving is a part of the holiday season, how do you, if you're a parent, process the needs that you have to deal, with the very real bills, and to deal with the expectations of little people?

Well, I have couple of responses to that. First of all, you give the hit to the persons or the people best able to take it. We as parents - my husband and I may not exchange gifts this year. We may exchange coupons for, I'll give you a coupon for going to a crash-and-smash movie with you, I'll go to a chic movie with you. (unintelligible)


That will vary tremendously among fields, but the simple story is, it'll take awhile. So, even the most wildly optimistic assessment would say that, even if we started drilling now, we won't really see any oil for five years. So, the U. S.  Geological Survey looked at, for example, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and even if we started drilling today, we wouldn't really start to produce significant quantities of oil for a decade.

Robert, I know you're familiar with the ongoing debate about energy resources in this country. What we should do?Drill now?Don't drill now?You're a nonpartisan. You're a scientist. How do you view this argument between, really, the Republicans and the Democrats?

You know, the question for this country, for policy is, how will we ensure that we have energy over the next 20 years?To do that, we have a finite amount of capital that we can invest in the energy industry. It's highly unlikely that investing that money in offshore oil and gas drilling will ensure that we have sufficient supplies of energy 10 and 20 years from now. We've tried that experiment in the past. Despite all those wells drilled, domestic oil and gas production continued to decline. So, in hindsight, that money was not effectively spent.

Robert Kaufmann, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University. Robert, thank you.

Oh, you're welcome.


How did it change me to lose a parent?
Yeah.
Do you have both your parents?
Nope.


But banning food products from Western countries had an immediate effect. And - but there was also a lot of contraband. And so one of the measures against the contraband was incinerating food once it was exposed as contraband. And it - really it was a display of something that I think inspired terror in a lot of people in a country that has known famine and in a country where a lot of people have feared starvation in living memory.

Yeah. We certainly have our own struggles with bigotry in the U. S. But it's hard not to go through your book and not be staggered by the persistence in Russia of anti-Semitism and prejudice against gays. What role does this play?

You know, I actually wouldn't call it prejudice against gays because I think it conveys the sort of impression that it comes from the grassroots, that this is - that the Russian population is homophobic. Not that it isn't. But what we're really talking about is a concerted campaign by the Kremlin over the last five years to single out and target LGBTQI people as, you know, scapegoats in the country, as the chosen other.

Towards the end of your book, you use a phrase that chills me, where you say that in Russia today, quote, "life is a foreign agent. "


Well, the first one was, of course, a really bad jolt that brought down all the buildings; things were swaying. The second one for some reason was - people panicked even more because I guess the memory of the first one was so fresh. Although it didn't kill as many people, and it was technically supposed to be an aftershock of the first one, still it sent people back to the shelters. People were sleeping out in the open again. And then just as things were starting to get back to some sort of normalcy, the panic level suddenly went up again.

Is the ground still shaking every now and then?

Oh, yeah, this is a roller coaster. I mean, it just - we haven't had any big aftershock today, but last night, yesterday morning - and we don't know if the aftershocks are just merging into one, you know, of the first one and the second one.

We're talking you on Skype. Has the world media left at this point?


There are some conversations, some talks. Robert Townsend actually came to the opening, it was like, you know this is a movie, right?You know, this is a movie?You realize this is a movie?I'm like, yeah, I think it is, I think it is.

So, there's conversations about it, but I want people to come out now, and see it in this incarnation, because it's original story telling form. Very much John Leguizamo, I dance in the show, I become 15, 20 different characters, and I actually dip into some other guys. I actually look like the people when I do them. I actually have the elasticity to flip my face up, and be like, wait a minute, he kind of looks like a whole different human being now. The chameleon is here.

All right, on that note, Don, thanks so much.

Thank you so much. Everybody, come on out.


The most significant news, I think on the Republican side, was that two states, Kansas and Louisiana, shot across the bow of John McCain by saying they were not ready to endorse the idea that he was the nominee. Washington State was called for John McCain with some of the vote yet to be counted and not too much of a margin for John McCain. But the state party chairman out there said they had seen enough caucus counting and they were going to away half the state's delegates to John McCain then do the rest in a primary that's coming up in a few weeks.

Now, that's already been protested by the Huckabee campaign, which was hoping to get a sweep, like Barack Obama, of all the events on the ballot on Saturday to the Republicans.

So parse out for us this delegate situation on the Democratic side. What's the state of play right now in terms of who has how many.

Well, it's a big scoreboard and there are a lot of different numbers on it and they do move around a fair amount. But let's start with the ones that are pretty certain that aren't going to change. That's the number of pledged delegates won so far. These are the delegates that are allocated to each candidate on the basis of the results of each primary or caucus. So in this station, where we stand now, Hillary Clinton has 893 from all the states that have voted so far on the Democratic side, and Barack Obama has 952.


I think, it means, that the voters, or the people being polled as voters, don't take their cues from the media, which is not really hard to believe. I think most people absorb a certain amount of media information that they choose from certain sources of media information. They generally tend to go to ones that they find simpatico. They may agree or not agree with a lot of what they hear, but they make up their own minds, and they make up their minds on the basis of things that were in their minds before they went to the media.

Well, Ron. Thanks so much.

My pleasure, Farai.

Ron Elving is NPR's senior Washington editor. He joined us from NPR's headquarters in Washington, D. C.


But shouldn't you at least offer the people you're polling the option of checking that box as one of the issues?

In terms of?

Of, you know, as climate change or renewable energy, things like that. The choice is not even offered on the sheet of things that you - that is on your radar screen.

Yeah. Well, this is actually a really important point, is that when you look at - and I'll just come back to media coverage as an example. You know, for most people, this is an issue that's invisible. I mean, you can look out your window right this moment, and there's CO2 pouring out of tailpipes, out of smokestacks, out of buildings, but you can't see it, and likewise you can't see the impacts unless you know where to look. In fact, the only way most Americans even know about this issue is because of what they've learned about it in the media. They're not reading the peer-reviewed literature. They don't know scientists personally. They're learning about it through the media. And when the media doesn't report this issue, it's literally out of sight and out of mind.


There are, there are trials underway right now of an active vaccine, as well. So again, the scientists have gone back to the drawing board and said gee, when we did that study back in the early 2000s with the active vaccine, what went wrong, what could have caused this inflammatory response. So they've modified the protein now and have been able to develop one that they hope will in fact generate the immune response without the side effects.

Why doesn't Alzheimer's kick in earlier in life for those who are genetically predisposed to it?Why does it wait until you're in your 70s or 80s?

That's a good question, Ira. I mean, it's a million-dollar question as to what are the other aging factors that have to kick in, and basically we don't know the answer to that. But one issue might be, for example, that our immune systems diminish in their effectiveness and ability to perform their work as we age.

So a challenge in using an active vaccine in an older person is that the older person may not be able to generate an antibody response. So if, say, Alzheimer's disease were partly immunologically driven, it may only manifest itself when the person's aging immune system starts to fail or diminish its effectiveness. Then this blossoms. I'm not saying that's the answer, but it's that type of thing.


We literally stumbled into them looking for the largest live coast redwoods. And it was akin to finding a dinosaur that was still preserved laying on its side. So, it was just dumb luck.

So, what do you do?You get a cutting from that tree and then what happens?

Well, we really didn't know at that time and we didn't even know at that time nobody had thought of it or had ever done it. That was two years ago. So, I was with my son Jake, and Jake goes, well, look, dad. Look over here on the other side. And he found some shoots that were green and they were attached to the roots and some of the base of the 35-foot-diameter stump. And he goes why don't we try these?And that's exactly how it was birthed.

So, you planted these cuttings and what'll happen?


Has the storm reached full strength, or is there any possibility that it could intensify?

It likely has reached close to its full strength. It's approaching or moving over the islands now of the Northern Bahamas. And it's also showing signs of going through a eye wall replacement cycle. That will likely occur in the next 24 hours. So the strength is going to fluctuate.

That's another strong point I wanted to make. Just because it weakens a bit in the next 24 to 36 hours does not mean the overall effects or impacts to the state of Florida's coastline will change. You know, whether it's a 3, 4 or 5, it could produce significant damage along the coast. But it will likely fluctuate in intensity over the next 24 to 48 hours, and it probably has reached its peak in intensity at the time.

Could you talk a little bit more about the path that the storm is taking?You were talking about this earlier. It's expected - am I still right?- it's expected to move into the Florida Peninsula Monday morning.


So, I ended up spending the night at the Juvenile Detention Center. And then, the next day, they went to arraign me, which - you are not supposed to get arraigned in the juvenile detention, when you are on that system. It is a whole different procedure. And I was like, what is going on?And they were like, we are going to, we are going to put you over. We are going to charge you as an adult, because of the severity of the crime. And I was like, whoa, you know?So, it was definitely an eye opener.

How it was different in adult prison than juvenile detention?

Oh, it was, it was harsh. I mean, you are in there with grown men, I was only 17, maybe a 160 pounds, you know?It is just was a - it was quite the dramatic change, you know, from the Juvenile Detention Center. I mean, it was whole another world.

And then, when you got out of prison, you were the victim of violence. What happened then?


No problem.

Aren't the British the original soccer hooligans?

Yeah, exactly. And the Russian fans rioting in France right now, for them the inspiration was the English football hooligan scene of the 1970s, '80s and '90s even. They see England as a spiritual home of football hooliganism, as it were.

How does football hooliganism wind up being a source of inspiration?


. . . Strong title. What do you mean by that?

I think it was meant as sort of a nonpartisan way of talking about what's gone on in the confirmation process on Capitol Hill and how both sides have tried to put their thumbs on the scale and try and steer these judicial nominations in the direction they wanted. And so there is bias on it, and it's been bias on both sides, honestly. I know people don't like to talk about both sider-ism these days, but, you know, both parties have had a lot to do with how mucked up the process has gotten.

All right. Well, we'll get to that. But let's start with where you start in the book, where you talk about the importance of a decision that the majority leader Mitch McConnell made - Republican leader - made in February of 2016. What was the decision?

I think this was one of the most consequential decisions in American history, really, as it turned out. We didn't know it that night. But Mitch McConnell is on a - the Senate majority leader is on a vacation in the Caribbean. The news comes out that Justice Antonin Scalia had died. And Mr.  McConnell that evening decided that President Obama, with 11 months left in his term, would not get an appointment to the Supreme Court.


For political directive, sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's not Abraham Lincoln and his team of rivals.

They're like instruction manuals for how to run the government.


Yeah.

. . . Able to meet as she died the start of her junior year.

And Mark Gorman.

Mark Gorman, another very nice kid, unfortunately dying during the first semester of his senior year in - as he got hit by a car coming home. It was on a Friday night and - I should say a Thursday night. And our football team generally gets together every Thursday night. And Mark was a football player to start his career at Bremen and in band and lots of activities. But he decided managering (ph) the football team - being a manager of the football team would be more beneficial to everybody. And he did the manager job as best as he could and as thorough as he could. And the football team kind of elected him on his leadership ability to come speak to the team. . .


Yeah. In fact, if a car is assembled in Canada and shipped to the United States, Americans should realize that about 50 percent of the content of that car is American-made. A carburetor could cross the border up to eight times during the manufacturing process. We have a completely integrated manufacturing process in the automobile industry.

And here, we have something very amazing. We have the labor unions - the head of the AFL-CIO; the industry - head of the automobile manufacturers - each of them; and we have the U. S.  Chamber of Commerce, all coming together and agreeing that auto tariffs would be bad for not only Canada, but also U. S.  jobs. And it would be bad for the U. S. -Canada relationship overall. And so I think that there are a lot of people that do not want to see us go down that road. And it would be very detrimental economically.

So one last yes or no question - do you see an agreement?

I'm the eternal optimist. You know, President Obama said once to me he's a congenital optimist, so I'll go with that.


Yes, and that's a very different situation because the ice sitting on the ocean, when it melts, it doesn't change sea level. If you think of a glass of ice tea and you put your ice cubes in the ice tea, when the ice melts, your ice tea, obviously, doesn't overflow. The ice just - it. . .

There's quite a difference in volume, but not big enough.

Yeah. It basically doesn't - but the melting ice that's floating doesn't matter, but what - but a lot of the ice sitting on Greenland and on Antarctic, the continent of Antarctica, when that ice melts, that does, in fact, add water to the sea. And those are in the long term, likely to drive the sea level rise and could drive the sea level rise by a great deal in the coming decades and centuries.

So is anomalous - I mean, is this - as you said, it's definitely part of a trend. There's no way to argue with it anymore, about the warming and that it's having real effects. How is it going faster than people feared?


Now, the netting, as I understand it, is not expensive - I mean, a scintilla of what a relief pitcher earns annually.

I think that's right, yeah.

But on the other hand, I mean, these modern stadiums that are being built want to get the fans close to the action.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you've been very lucky as a Cubs fan. You've always had Wrigley Field, which is an intimate stadium. And that's what these new stadiums are trying to recreate. Even Yankee Stadium, if you go on their website today, Scott, they actually tout the fact that home plate is 27 feet closer than in the old Yankee Stadium.


The writer Robert Strauss suggests that any new president would have to sink pretty low to meet the level set by the man the title of his book calls "Worst. President. Ever: James Buchanan, The POTUS Rating Game, And The Legacy Of The Least Of The Lesser Presidents. "Robert Strauss joins us now from member station WHYY in Philadelphia. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you very much, Scott.

Fill in some biographical blanks for us. James Buchanan was a Pennsylvanian, a bachelor and a Democrat.

That's all true. He had the greatest resume - at least, the greatest governmental resume - of anybody who's ever run for president. He was a state representative. He was a U. S.  congressman of both houses. He was the ambassador to Great Britain, ambassador to Russia and secretary of state.


And you can do that just out of a gut feeling, or experience or cracking the file?Or how does that work?

Well, it uses statistics. You know, it's kind of a little bit like the whole money ball argument that we hear about baseball. But it goes through the file, and it looks, and it kind of sees that - you could say the noise in the image is not right, and often it's a little too random. It's almost a little bit too perfect, you might say.

And then the statistics comes out, and it says oh, well, you know, it gives you a number, and the number is over a threshold, and you say oh, that's an alarm bell, and I'll look at it.

It must be an interesting history to this whole steganography idea.


Yeah. I do have to ask this. At the same time, don't the Clintons play rough too?There are a number of women who really do feel that they were treated badly by Bill Clinton in a personal and sometimes intimate way. And they felt that the Clintons tried to smear them.

Obviously it is disgraceful to take advantage of an intern or an employee. And he did that. And it was wildly foolish and disgusting. But I wonder, you know - there's a problem that Clinton has and it's this - these things are going to come up. They may even come up in the debates in the fall. What is she going to respond to it?It would be nice if she responded, hell yeah, that's why he spent six months on the couch.

But I don't know that that's something that she has in her. And it's certainly an incredibly sensitive area for Hillary Clinton. And it may be what constricts her in a lot of other ways as a candidate as well.

Joe Klein, he writes a column for Time and, of course, the author of "Primary Colors. "Thanks so much for being with us.


Thanks for being with us, Scott. The president, of course, was in Paris this week. He was president Macron's guest for Bastille Day. There'd been some attention in this country which would affix President Macron as somehow a different figure than President Trump. The two of them seemed to get on very well. There seemed genuine rapport.

That's right. I think if this improves relations, it certainly improved body language when it comes to President Trump in Europe. You know, there were so many images at the G-20 of Trump just looking isolated, big policy announcements put out by every country except the United States. So I think Macron sensed an opening here. He saw that Trump needs a friend, an ally, a wingman - whatever you want to call it - in Europe.

And Trump has a long track record of responding when people show him respect and welcome him. There's certainly nothing more welcoming than a big parade being put on, so this seemed to work. They seemed to get along. The question is, does this get Trump to shift on any of the key policy differences?Starting with climate change, where they could not be any further apart.

There was a phrase in the press conference where he said, well, maybe there will be something with the Paris accords, right?


At the center of this terrific story is a prisoner - prisoner Z he's called - and his guard. Tell us about their relationship.

Yeah. I'm just very interested, you know, fascinated, heartbroken, obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our need to find peace on that front. But, yeah, I get very interested in the weave between both sides that everyone's always like victim and avenger at the same time.

And I thought - to me, in terms of a real and metaphoric idea of it, I thought of this guard and his prisoner and the idea of both of them sort of being trapped together. There is, of course, a guard who is in a better position than a prisoner. But in the end, as the years pass, you know, it sort of becomes vague of who has freedom at all.

I will explain. The guard is Israeli. And prisoner Z is in prison because he is accused of betraying the Israeli state.


James Foley would have turned 41 today. The journalist who was murdered by the Islamic State was known for his reporting on the conflicts of the Middle East. Jim Foley's life will be celebrated in his hometown of Rochester, New Hampshire today. The memorial service is taking place at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Parish. Father Marc Montminy, a close friend of the family, is leading the service. He joins us now. Thanks for being with us.

You're very welcome. It's good to be with you.

What do you remember about Jim Foley?

We remember him as a child. Many people around the world remember him more as an adult 'cause when you're young, you see people from one vantage point. As you get older, they develop and grow into their own person. Jim was always a happy guy. He was also, I felt, very pensive at times. He was a thinker. He was the type of guy who could see things that perhaps other people didn't see as clearly.


Really, the link is, you know, if you strip away the neuroses, maybe. You know what I'm saying?I spend all day being other people - literally transforming. You know, for a book to function, it's not - I can tell the difference between realities. But it has to be a functioning reality. The character has to be real. And I imagine that's exactly what happens for a spy who was, you know, in deep cover.

I just think, yes, I wouldn't make it for a second if I had to do it in front of another person. So if you take the privacy of the room away, maybe that's the link. It's about inhabiting other realities in a convincing - beyond convincing. It has to be more than that. It has to be real for the person.

Nathan Englander, his book "Dinner At The Center Of The Earth. "Thanks so much for being with us.

Oh, truly, thank you.


So on Sept.  5, the Trump administration ended DACA. Anybody whose DACA ended between Sept.  5 and March 5 were able to apply for an extension. Mine, unfortunately, expires on March 22. So I was basically two weeks shy of being able to apply for an extension.

What has been the advice that you've gotten in terms of what needs to happen next or what you can do?

Well, what people don't really realize is my DACA has expired before. You know, it takes quite a while for all of these things to be processed. And so I filled everything out. And my DACA actually expired. And I had to - you know, my employer was not able to employ me. So I had to stop and go on a leave of absence. It was extremely humiliating. And obviously, that disruption to your life is, you know, pretty devastating when you're not getting paid.

On Thursday, President Trump also referred to African nations using a highly offensive term. You are originally from Nigeria. What's your reaction to that?


Well, I want to offer condolences to you and the Virginia Beach community. I'm wondering what you can tell us about how people are holding up. I understand you visited a hospital where some of the people wounded in the shooting are being treated still.

I did. You know, this is - again, it's a horrific tragedy, and our hearts go out to certainly the 12 victims that showed up for work yesterday for the city of Virginia Beach intending to go home. And this tragedy occurred, and they weren't able to. And so there's a tremendous void in their families and our community right now. There's a lot of hurt and healing that needs to take place.

I was able to go to the hospital this morning. My intentions were twofold. I wanted to thank the caregivers, the doctors, the nurses and the administrators. And then also, I was able to speak with one of the patients and the families. And they're just such strong and faithful people and just going through what must be one of the hardest experiences in their lives. They were just very grateful for the care that they were receiving and grateful for the heroic work of the law enforcement agents yesterday.

Inevitably, after each mass shooting, there are calls for tighter gun laws. You introduced a number of gun control bills in Virginia's General Assembly back in January, not even six months ago.


Sarah M.  Broom grew up in a yellow house in New Orleans East, 10 minutes from the French Quarter, the youngest of 12 children. The house was bought by her mother in 1961 and grew into something more than the family's home. It became its hearth and its center. But like many places in New Orleans, the earth below it was already sinking years before Hurricane Katrina hit.

The ground was fragile. And of course, that fragility is the thing I picked up on as a child when we were playing hide-and-go-seek, when we were playing ball in the yard, you know, we came up with all of these stories about the danger of the ground. And that becomes the thing that, in a way, haunts me.

Sarah M.  Broom's debut book is called "The Yellow House," and it's a memoir of a place that was hard in many ways but also indelible in the history of her family.

It was a house that I loved deeply, in fact. And I say that because I feel it's impossible to love any place, and to truly love it, to truly see it for what it is, without taking in all of its complexities and its nuances. And I also feel that way, by the way, about America, which I love deeply and am always interrogating, right?So the house created such complexity of emotion for me because it was the place my mother bought. And the house, at some point, really was in disrepair. It was falling down all around us. And even in those moments, my mother was always trying to fix it back up.


Correct.

And that's the idea?

That's exactly the idea and that's where we are today. So you kind of keep the country in limbo. And you say, as long as there's no election then I get to be president.

Have there been any calls for President Kabila to be investigated, forced to step down, impeached, put on trial for violating the constitution?


Well, we had some great conversations about what it took to play the position. And you know, Bob Watson, who started out as a catcher, was one of the committee members. Phil Niekro, Bert Blyleven and Don Sutton, Pat Gillick, all pitchers, all Hall Famers, were really able to add a lot of insight to what it must have been like.

And the other - one of the main things we talked about was just how they played much shorter schedules in the 1870s. So when you look at career statistics, that's a huge distortion. Deacon White ended up with 2,000 career hits, but he was playing in a - in an average of 40, 50, 60-game schedules a year. So there was no way to generate the kind of career milestones that we look at as benchmarks today. You know, 3,000 hits would be all but impossible. And 2,000 was a terrific accomplishment.

And the number of errors he recorded even as a great defensive catcher would have been, you know, totally unacceptable by today's standards.

Oh, exactly. Yeah. And again, an issue where we had to really sort of look at what - compare him to people from his own era. And when we did that, you know, it became really obvious just how much he stood above his contemporaries.

Are the records from those days good enough that you have reliable accounts of who was good and who was great?


I understand, Mr.  Doyle, that you and other members of the Watergate investigation team still with us - well, you have reunions now and then. And I gather for the first time you had a reunion on the actual anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre. What are the - my 15 year old now says, you know, what's the tea?What went on there?

Three weeks ago, Saturday night October 20, the Watergate Special Prosecution Force held a reunion. It was the 45th anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre. None of the senior leaders are any longer with us. But the young idealists who had been in their 20s back when we began, they all showed up in their 60s and 70s as earnest as ever, as idealistic as ever and still full of hope.

Sorry.

No, I think someone was talking to you, telling you that, I think, we're running out of time. But did you want to make the final point?


But then today, the insurgent leader said he couldn't guarantee the safety of this team because of the fighting that's going on in the city of Slovyansk, and so he released them. And I should say - or I should mention that another Western observer of this team, a Swede, had already been released last weekend for health reasons.

Do we know where they are now?

They've returned to Donetsk here and basically south of Slovyansk where they were being kept for a number of days. And they had some trouble getting here because of the fighting that's going on between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists along the way. The German leader of the team says he and the other former captives' spirits are high.

What is the latest on the fighting?What do we know?It seems to be going on in several locations throughout Ukraine.

It's still continuing to some extent in Slovyansk, but it seems the focus today is on a city south of there about 10 miles called Kramatorsk. I was there yesterday, and I could see the separatists preparing their defenses. They set up tractor-trailers to close off the main road to Ukrainian armored vehicles. And it was also evident that some of these separatists were very professional-looking masked-soldier types with automatic weapons. And I hadn't seen these people before in the area.


I wish I could think of a better opening. Tell me the Lyndon Baines Johnson story, if you could, please.

So during LBJ's administration, Mary was at home in her apartment one night. And she got a call from someone saying that he was with the Secret Service and the president planned to stop by. Mary was immediately convinced that it was one of her colleagues or friends pulling her leg. But when she opened her door and saw two Secret Service men standing by the elevator, she furiously began to tidy up her apartment and prepare for an impromptu visit from the commander-in-chief. Lyndon came in, they had a drink or two and Lyndon professed his great affection for her, Mary, I'm crazy about you, and made clear that he wanted to sleep with her. And in a way that was prototypically Lyndon Johnson, also said, I know you love the Kennedys, and now you should love me, which has to be about the worst pick-up line. . .

(Laughter).

. . . That I've ever heard in my life. And certainly the worst pick-up line for Mary.


Yeah?

. . . Is this important, really, at the end of the day?Or is this all a distraction?

Well, in a lot of ways, this is a distraction from the larger issue, which is the Russia investigation and the concern that Russia's been influencing our elections, right?But in the one side, who was involved or who did what with whom?The real problem is that Russia is attacking our body politics. And we have to come together as Republicans, Democrats and really fight back against that problem because we've got by-elections coming up here in 2018.

Jamil Jaffer is the founder of the National Security Institute. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.


So, for those people that are stuck on that buy-and-hold, we'd suggest to them, look at more market history. If you have a listener who has lost 30 percent in the market in this down cycle, they need the market to compound at seven percent per year for the next six years to get back to even. If they've lost 40 percent, they need eight years at seven percent. You know, frankly, I know elderly people who have been left in this market by people who believed in that buy-and-hold theory, you know, that are now in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. They don't have 11 years left. They will never see their money back.

So, what would you advise for the rest of us?

Well, I would advise a couple of things. One is stop listening to Wall Street platitudes. Wall Street, frankly, doesn't know anything. If they did, they would not have left their clients in for one of the greatest bear markets of all time. Number two, use some of your own judgment and common sense. People with long-term horizons might want to step a toe in the markets, but you have to do it with an open mind that you may lose more money. And if you are not prepared to lose more money, don't go in to the markets. There will be a day when earnings stop going down.

So, we've all heard, don't open, don't even look, at your 401(k) statement; just put it away. You say, no, look at it and rebalance?


Tell me a little bit about the violence. What happened?

The biggest single attack was a suicide bomber here in Kabul. The suicide bomber, trying to get into a polling station, was stopped by a policeman. He detonated his explosive vest outside. In the north, there was shelling in Kunduz. We know that they burned down one polling center outside of Kunduz city. And there's been some irregularities, as well. One local strongman on the outskirts of Kabul brought his armed men in. He's a candidate, and he tried to prevent other people from getting to the polling station. So not by far the cleanest elections. The Afghan government has announced it's arrested a few dozen people for fraud and intimidation. They're trying to make sure that Afghans will have faith in this election.

One of the more hopeful signs, though, this time around is the number of women running, right?Over 400. What will this mean?

They are guaranteed 68 seats in the parliament for each province, but I think the real key has been the number of young people running. As you said, Lulu, there hasn't been parliamentary elections in eight years. The current parliament has been a frustration to many, almost a symbol of the corruption and patronage that has held Afghanistan back. And it was really interesting to see election observers at the polls. There were 400,000 of them - many of them there to support their own candidates to make sure that their candidates got a fair shake in these elections. The fact that so many young people and nonpoliticians were willing to put themselves out there, I think, shows that there's a new generation of Afghans trying to change things.


So California Chrome is supposed to be a little slow out of the gate.

He's all right out of the gate. He's fidgety in it. He's actually a lovely horse disposition wise - loves people, is very tractable. But in the gate he gets really easier to go so he will fidget, fidget, fidget. And one very top trainer, Bob Baffert, who has won his share of Triple Crown races said if he can get out of the gate well, he will win this race.

He has got white homes. And I have read white hooves make a horse vulnerable.

Yes. Well, white hooves does tend to be softer than dark hooves. And his actually point east and west, his front feet, he does not have straight feet. You can see in the starting gate. He's like Charlie Chaplin in there.


Yeah, it's a fine line. There is definitely a vernacular in law enforcement that is regional. On the West Coast, we call them suspects. On the East Coast, I think they call them perps - or maybe that's just the New York or the New England region. . .

Perps, short for perpetrators.

Yeah, short for perpetrator. And for a long time, our crime scene investigators weren't called crime scene investigators. They were crime scene analysts or forensic specialists and whatnot. And just about everybody has now changed their scientific investigations division to be called CSI. 'Cause you got to, you got to answer the phone: CSI, Smith.

Have you had screenwriters, aspiring novelists or actors say to you what kind of person is a cop?Why do they do it?


(Laughter).

So. . .

So I take it you don't like it.

I think it's kind of a joke. I think it has nothing to do with Wall Street.

Well, bullish markets - that sort of thing - yeah?


Well, I think he needs to do a lot of things. We first have to realize that we've got in the pipeline climate change, and we're committed to a few more degrees of warming, kind of, no matter what we do, so we have to have an adaptation strategy. How are we going to protect coast lines against intensified hurricanes?How we're going to deal with the increased fires in the West?What are we going to do with melting glaziers?

We've got to do that regardless of climate policy. To try to control emissions, we have to deal adaptation. The second thing is we have to use our energy more efficiently. We need building codes. So what we're going to have to do is to nationalize the kind of California activities where everybody has to participate and it's not just a random lottery of states values. Then finally, we have to help the brilliant American industry to be able to invent our way out of the problem through cheaper solar machines and better grids for wind machines. And we need incentives. We'll need loan guarantees.

I mean, if we can spend almost a trillion dollars bailing out some greedy people who messed up in an under-regulated environment, how about spending a tenth that much trying to produce green jobs, and at the same time, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and help the environment.

How do you think our current economic situation is going to affect efforts to curb global warming?


So there's always been this open question about why Deutsche Bank lent to Trump when other banks wouldn't. And for investigators, the question is, you know, all the more pressing because Deutsche Bank has really a record of malfeasance and irregularities.

Tell us more about that history, some of the allegations. We mentioned money laundering earlier.

Right. Well, yeah, money laundering - the bank paid fines totaling $630 million in 2017. Regulators said some of its clients moved a huge amount of money, like $10 billion, out of Russia into offshore accounts illegally. And Deutsche Bank basically allowed it to happen. The - and the allegations about money laundering continue. Just recently, in November, the bank's headquarters in Frankfurt were raided by investigators. They were looking at how Deutsche Bank helped set up illegal accounts as part of this big, money laundering - global money laundering scheme.

So add to that Deutsche Bank paid $7. 2 billion for helping set up toxic mortgages before the financial crisis. It paid a big fine for violating U. S.  sanctions against Iran and Syria. So really, the bank has a long record of scandal, to say the least.


. . . He had some important local impact. And that is something that we should not lose sight of - is that the journalists that are being targeted in Mexico are local journalists doing the work that no other news organization, the large news organizations are not doing, which is expose. . .

Yeah.

. . . Corruption, expose crime, expose government negligence in the localities and cities and towns across Mexico, and we are being deprived of those voices.

I gather that cartel violence is also growing in Mexico. Do you see these two facts as related?


Then later on, I ended up having to deal with, really, racism from both sides, from white people, as well as from black people who claimed that I was not really black because of the music I listened to or the way that I speak or some intangible delineation that people make in terms of how you're supposed to behave based upon the color of your skin.

Well, Brian, you know, you went on to basically go about your life and kind of sublimate this incredible pressure. But at some point, it all broke for you. What happened then?

Well, what happened was - I should back up and say that at the time that I wrote "Not a Genuine Black Man," the book and the play, I decided that in order for it to be real and to be true and to be what I wanted it to be, I'd have to be completely naked. And that being the case, I knew that I would have to talk about the darkest moment in my life, which was a very severe period of depression I went through in 1999.

I had - I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently I had suffered depression since childhood, from all of the, you know, strangers driving down the street yelling the N-word, not being included because I was the only black kid and being different. And I'd spent a lot of time isolating and by myself.


Bill M wrote about it - read about it and wrote. Kilpatrick's stays in the news proving all the naysayers right with his childish antics and questionable judgment. He should resign.

And there's also the news that Broadway's "The Color Purple" is closing next month due to slow ticket sales and some people said it was because of singer Fantasia left the show without any thunder after she left.

All right. Just briefly, what do you think about the newsletter?What does that offer people that everything else we do doesn't?We've got the radio show and the blog. But, you know, you put out this great newsletter every day. What's going on with that?

Well, we've got headlines that pertain to African-Americans. We have highlights from the show. And the difference is - it's called Push me (unintelligible). It's a '90s Internet buzz word. And the idea is that you get all these things that you want sent to your inbox every day without having to surf from Web site to Web site. And it's a service that we offer.


I mean, it's pretty scary at the time. It was very intimidating. It just seems like it was completely mental, an attack on a small business for a problem that it's not responsible for.

Well, what do you think of the problem?Because we read that protesters were chanting we want genuinely affordable housing and we want community. I realize it might be hard to keep that separate from the people that smeared stuff on your windows, but how do you feel about that?

I mean, I think that there is problems. There's problems of poverty in the area, and there's bad sides to gentrification, but there's also really great sides to gentrification. What we have done is we have moved into this area - the protests and gentrification in this area. If you wanted to protest gentrification in this area, you probably should've started about 15-20 years ago.

Have you ever had any conversations with any of your critics, your attackers, do you think?


But then again, the Southsider group from Los Angeles, which has essentially a lot of Latino members, will try to exercise dominance in the jails as a message to all African-Americans that there's more of us and we can dominate the situation in the jails and we're going to dominate the situations in the street.

We're talking with L. A.  County Sheriff Lee Baca. Sheriff, is there much difference, as far as racial issues are concerned, between inmates in, let's say, county jail as opposed to state or federal prisons, where the inmates are serving longer terms and there are more of them?

Well, there is a slight difference. You know, the transient nature of the county jails is that inmates have access to each other much easier than in a state prison system, and at the same time, the state prison system is a long-term incarceration and they're more calculated when they're going to do a hit. Whereas in a county jail, they can hit anytime and be spontaneous and virtually disrupt the entire environment in the jail without a real comprehensive plan. Whereas in state prisons, it's more calculated.

Now, in California, particularly in Los Angeles, we have talked a lot about the tensions between Latinos and blacks. We haven't said very much about tensions between blacks and whites or Latinos and whites. How much of that is there?


Brazil is one of the leading producers of two very important crops: soy and corn. But lately, frozen credit has made it nearly impossible for farmers there to afford the basics that they need to grow those crops. Brian Willott farms 2,000 acres of soybeans just outside Bahia, Brazil. He joins us now by phone.

Welcome, Brian, and can you explain for us how the credit situation there in Brazil has affected you and other farmers?

Credit's a big problem right now. No farmer can survive today without credit, and since the credit crunch hit, everyone's credit has either been cut, delayed or more expensive. And it's got everyone here quite worried.

What do you use loans for?How important is it?What do you use it to buy?


Microfauna, can't get enough.

Microflora and fauna.

That's right.

Excuse me, I just thought of - wow, and was this something he started out to do, I mean, as a scientist?


Yes. There are tens of thousands of North Koreans who are hiding in China today. At the peak in the late '90s, early 2000s, there were more than half a million. But in - about 25,000 have made it safely to South Korea where they're living today. And about 140, 150 have come to the United States, and there have been several hundred who've gone to Europe.

And this underground railroad, obviously the phrase we associate with escaped slaves from the South before the Civil War, but the analogy, you say, is apt.

The analogy is very similar. It's a secret network of safe houses and routes - secret routes across the country. It's staffed. It's operated mostly by Christians, similar to the original Underground Railroad, though there are also people who are in it for the money who are involved - brokers and human traffickers. And many of the people who help the North Koreans in China are ethnically Korean. That is they're Korean-Chinese or they're South Korean or there are - they are Americans who are of Korean heritage. I interviewed a number of the rescuers, and their stories are incredibly inspiring. Especially in this Christmas season, you think about these are people who are living their faith by going to a hostile country to help, and helping people that nobody else in the world is prepared to help.

And it's interesting. You tell the story of one of them: Adrian Hong.


Well, it's not as if Senator Gregg didn't know that President Obama is a Democrat and this is a democratic administration.

So, I mean, what was it that changed his mind all of a sudden?

Well, that's an excellent point. I would just add to what you said in - you know, in a very direct fashion, that he clearly knew about the stimulus package. He had recused himself from voting in the Senate as a potential nominee for a commerce secretary position. I think that what really changed it for him had a lot to do with the census issue, Madeleine. And this is the case here that the census is run by the commerce secretary. It comes under his mandate.

And what you heard from black and Latino elected officials in the Congress was great concern that Judd Gregg, who had once voted to eliminate the Commerce Department, said, you know what?We're concerned that he is not going to be open to doing the kind of count that we think is necessary to get a full estimate of the presence of minorities in this country, which of course will influence congressional districts and how they're drawn, influence funding for - especially for social programs. And the argument has long come from minority communities that they have been undercounted.


He does. He even asks for changes.

This is sounding awfully inauthentic to me.

Well, I figured if I could program the personality I might as well make it friendly.

Ken Schwencke of the Los Angeles Times. Thanks so much for being with us.


I'm embarrassed to say I'd never heard of a tardigrade before this story. What are they?

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

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

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


Lauren, can you help us appreciate the reaction of the Spanish public at this point?

Well, the Spanish public has not looked favorably, perhaps unsurprisingly, on this investigation. The royal family's approval ratings are at record lows. King Juan Carlos is 76 years old. He's been in and out of hospitals for the past few years and the most infamous health scare he had was two years ago when he broke his hip while on a very expensive elephant hunting trip in Africa.

The public only found out about his safari when he broke his hip and had to be flown home to Spain. The trip cost several times the average Spaniard's annual salary so that elephant hunt did not go over well here. But in general, this investigation into the princess' finances has served as a sort of reckoning for the country. A few years ago, when Spain's economy was booming, nobody really bothered to examine anyone's finances carefully, from the royals to the construction companies that were building like mad all over Spain to regular people's taxes. And now, everything is being examined and Spaniards are realizing that just like them, even their princess may have been living way beyond her means.

Lauren Frayer in Madrid, thanks so much.


It probably depends on what chapter you're reading at the time. It's probably all of those things!I don't know who decides what goes into what box or what bin or what shelf, you know. For me, it's just about finding a character, finding a story, following, I guess, my heart at what I'm working on at the moment. And it just kind of falls, you know, wherever it may out there after that, you know.

There's been a lot of attention to the whole idea of street lit. And Zane, who's an erotica writer, extremely popular, sells a ton of books. A lot of people are like, well, she just can't write, but there's a lot of sex in it. And there's also a question that some people have raised about whether or not it is good for the race to have books that are explicit about black sexuality out there. So. . .

What race?The human race?

The black race. The black race. And so I bring this up because so often when people, you know, just as you mentioned, the distinctions between the way some people will look at female sexuality and male sexuality and what it's like to have a track record and whether that makes you a bad person. You know, people also look at these distinctions by race and say, oh well, black people are oversexed. That's some people stereotyping. Are you ever afraid that by doing work like this that you're, you know, I don't know, playing into a stereotype?


No. I mean, I can be smaller and leaner with one fewer arms or a leg that I've lopped off. No, I think it's going to be extremely difficult. We can't possibly serve the entire state, especially a state is geographically distributed as we are, by closing entire campuses.

Do you see an impact on enrollment, on students wanting to come to the University of Alaska?

Absolutely. Our enrollment has actually been in decline since 2012, certainly over the last several years because we've taken budget cuts four out of the last five years. There's no question in my mind that some students are opting for other institutions because of uncertainty about our budget. And another big challenge here in Alaska - we have in general very low college-going rates. So another negative aspect of this is young people who decide not to go on at all.

That is University of Alaska President James Johnsen. He was speaking with us there from Fairbanks, Alaska. James Johnsen, thank you for your time.

My pleasure.


Yeah, so a supernova is the explosion of a star. Stars more massive than our sun - about 10 times bigger or more - will end their lives in a huge explosion where the star first collapses and its center gets crushed down to something called a neutron star, which has about the mass of our sun but is about the size of a city. That's the densest material we know. And the rest of the star flies out in an explosion at thousands of miles per second, shining as bright as a billion suns.

Wow. But this supernova that you have observed - that's not what's happening. Now, let me see if I get this right. Its full name is iPTF14hls. Is that right?

That's right. I apologize for that. We don't have a better name.

I was about to say not very snappy. But it stayed bright for almost three years. Describe what you've observed.


Yes. Certain pigments, for instance, fade. Certain pigments can become lighter or darker. You have to see it a little bit like in a hospital. You know, a patient goes in with a problem. There's a lot of different kinds of research done in order to make the proper diagnosis. And then there's a sort of a treatment plan presented. And then the actual operation may not be that extensive. I mean, that is actually the goal - to do as little as possible with the largest effect.

Operation Night Watch is going to be free for the public to see.

To follow, yeah - to follow.

Because there's going to be this glass chamber, people can follow along.


Now, while you are putting all of that together and getting ready to write it, you still have a - have to do your shift with the overnight with the cops, right?

Yeah. That's about once a month. And we actually get - I actually get a break when I'm covering the legislative session, which lasts two months. I actually get a break because the younger reporters - they have to pull a night cop shift at least once a week. So I consider myself lucky.

Well, you have worked there for 18 years.

Eighteen years. Yeah.

I gather that you were not planning to stick around that long, but then you did. Why?


Yeah.

That's unbelievable and 27 of them three-pointers.

Yeah.

That's fantastic. As you looked around, though, people might say, don't your teammates get a little jealous?Might they want to take a shot every once in a while?


Yeah. The numbers aren't necessarily looking his way.

No.

Glenn Thrush is the chief political correspondent of Politico. Thanks so much for being back with us.

Great to be here.


Hobbes wrote about the challenges his generation faces in a December article for Highline, which is put out by the Huffington Post. Its headline, "Millennials Are Screwed," caught our attention this week. And we asked Hobbes to explain his pessimistic prediction.

Healthcare, housing and education are more than five times more expensive than they were for our parents. There are fewer steady jobs. Wages have stagnated since the 1970s. I mean, I can go on and on and on. And so its weird that we're constantly talking about how millennials should do this differently, and millennials should do that differently. But we dont talk that much about - hey, the country around us can do some things differently, too.

So you obviously believe that the baby boomers messed up your life?How did they do that?

Well, I've gotten a lot of emails since the article came out from boomers that are saying, we've fallen off the ladder, too. And if you're 55 years old, there's a lot of discrimination for getting back into the workforce. But what we're seeing is that those impacts are concentrated on the young. So I think there's really three paradigm shifts. The first one is work has become much lower quality, basically - that there's fewer decent jobs now. Many of the jobs that are available are contingent work or sort of have been farmed out to contractors. Many fewer jobs provide things like pension, benefits or health care these days.


What's missing from that?

I mean, a deeper understanding of why Syrians rose up in the first place. I mean, this is a regime that's been in power for 50 years. It has outlasted eight U. S.  presidents since Nixon. Think about that. And Bashar's organizing elections again in 2021, and he intends to run. So there's a chance he will probably outlast Trump, even if Trump wins a second term.

Sam Dagher is author of the book "Assad Or We Burn The Country. "He also contributes to The Atlantic. Sam, thank you so much for being with us.

You're welcome, Noel.


Sure. So sequencing DNA is currently most cost efficient when you sequence a bunch of different samples together. And so, typically, you'll outsource your sequencing to a dedicated sequencing facility or lab. And let's say you want to learn what other people are sequencing. Say you want to get a leg up on some GMO research that people are doing. You could potentially insert malware into the sample that you send to the DNA sequencing facility to exfiltrate some of that data back to you.

How did you guys discover this?

What we try to do here is sort of look at emerging technologies and see if there are any security implications of those emerging technologies and try to get ahead of potential threats before they become actual threats. And so we had a team of people here working on a DNA storage project for using DNA instead of, say, hard drives for long-term storage. And so we had sort of the biological and chemical backgrounds for that as well as security expertise here.

Are there any good reasons to use this?


Ron, tomorrow, President Obama will sign the stimulus bill in Denver, and then it's on to Phoenix, and then, he'll round out the end of the week with a trip to Canada. Why so much travel?

I think he's learning from the last few weeks. When he stayed in D. C. , the economic stimulus package got stalled. When he got back on the road, got back on the stump, the energy in the atmosphere changed quickly. And being the campaign Barack. being in campaign mode, talking back to Washington from out in the country, that worked better than being the Washington Barack Obama talking to the country. He wants this symbolic energy to be flowing in that direction. He wants to be the voice of the people talking to the federal government, not the symbol of the federal government talking to the people.

NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Thanks, Ron.

Thank you.


Thank you.

So boys are broken. What did you mean by that?

I want to clarify that I am not an expert in gender studies. I'm not an expert really in anything, other than maybe '80s music. And so my thoughts are reflective on my experiences and the experiences of people around me and my observations after living 46 years as a dude. What do I mean by boys are broken?I think it means that there is something going on with American men that is giving them the permission and space to commit violence. And one of the main things we focus on correctly is guns and mental health, but I think deeper than that is a problem, a crisis in masculinity.

You wrote in this that the last 50 years redefined womanhood. Women were taught that they can be anything. No commensurate movement for men, who are still generally locked to the same rigid, outdated model of masculinity. And it's killing us. When you say that there's this rigid masculinity, what do you mean by that - that men aren't able to express themselves?

Partially, yeah. I also think that masculinity doesn't have a language in the way that femininity has come to have a language. We understand that femininity can be much more broadly encompassing than masculinity now. When you think of a strong woman, that doesn't rob her of any of her femininity. But when you think of a fragile man, that has the effect culturally, I think, of neutering that guy. And so much of masculinity is rooted in sexuality.


Only that she's been willing to tell her story from the beginning. She testified voluntarily to the Senate intelligence committee in April before all of this. And she's never been hesitant to tell her story. And she'll tell her story if the government asks her to in whatever form they ask her to.

What about U. S.  person No. 1, Paul Erickson, the Republican political operative?He appears throughout the plea agreement. He and your client, I gather, had a romantic relationship. He apparently helped her establish those back-channel relations. Should he be indicted?Do you think he will be?

I mean, that's going to be up to the Department of Justice. I mean, I think if one takes the view the department has - the broad view of the foreign agent statute - there might be some risk there. But I don't think there's going to be any news about that beyond what's been in the statement of the offense.

Are you worried about what happens if your client is sent back to Russia?


Yeah, I mean, I always have someone in mind. I'm not going to tell you people. But. . .

You know, there's always someone in mind when I'm writing. You know, it's all comes from somewhere inside.

Such a big part of that song is your voice, and I'm wondering if there's anything that you strive for when you sing a song like that.

I used to be really nervous when I sang. Like, when I was a kid starting young, 18 and 19, and my dad really had to sort of pushed me to start singing in front of people. Ever since I got out there and really started doing it, the only thing I've ever tried to do is just sort of is be myself, you know, never put on a voice. Sing naturally. And that always seems to work best for me.


I think that's up to the nominee to determine who his vice president will be. Certainly, I think she brings some things to the table that would be great for a team, as I indicated. There are a lot of women out there who would like to see her play some significant role, perhaps as vice president. She obviously went into the rural community, and whipped up some small-town votes.

And so I think she does bring something to the table that would cause her to be considered. And I think she will be considered by Barack Obama. So now they have to get together, and work it out, and see if it works for them.

When you think about this race, you have so many people who are so emotionally invested, both people in the political community but certainly American citizens. What would you say to someone, yourself as a stalwart Democrat, who said, as many people have said, you know what?I'm not going to vote for Obama. I'm going to vote for McCain. I'm a Hillary supporter. I can't stomach voting for Obama.

Well, the first thing I think is that it is time for people to focus on the issues, the core issues of the Democratic Party. What do we stand for?Who do we really represent?And that's how you measure your candidates. I don't think anybody that focuses on the history of the party, and how we have evolved, and what our issues are, and the leadership of our party who could vote for McCain.


Part of that's partisanship, but part of it is that white privilege allows white folks - and I'm white, so I mean, I know a little bit about the way we as white folks are viewed in this country. White folks have the luxury and the privilege of being mediocre. We can be mediocre, it's the same thing I hear everywhere I go when I speak at colleges, and I'm constantly told that the departments who were hiring in a school always say, we're looking for a black person, but we want to get the best black person, and we want to get the best Latino.

I've never heard anyone say, now we want to make sure we get the best white applicant. It's as if they're saying, if it's a person of color, they've got to absolutely be the cream of the crop and even then, we may not view them as that good. If they're a white person, they can be pretty mediocre, like a C student, George W.  Bush, and that's OK.

But if you're, you know, the editor in the Harvard Law Review, and at the top of your class, oh, we don't know about you. You know, to me that's about white privilege.

Well - so, what's changed in how people perceive your message?


Good to be here, Neal.

Weren't we supposed to get this thing right after 9/11, particularly the interagency communication part?

We were sure supposed to. Somewhere along the line things, sort of, broke down and it's obviously disturbing that we haven't come as far as we thought in that time.

As you looked at what happened before the attack in Benghazi, what do you think are the important lessons to be taken away there?


Yeah, exactly. The case of China is interesting because China makes it a practice in its Africa policy to claim non-interference in a country's politics. And that makes it a favorite in places like Sudan and like Zimbabwe, which have some very basic problems. But these African countries also have natural resources that China desires. And so there's this quid pro quo, so to speak.

And Russia, of course, is, you know, perhaps arguably the world's largest supplier of illicit arms, and that's, you know, a connection, as well. And, of course, North Korea has trained some Zimbabwean soldiers and has a good relationship with Mugabe. So you can see there's a connection.

Absolutely. Professor Keller, thank you so much.

Thank you.


You have also done "Celebrity Fit Club" and you had a particular experience with a very tall object. Tell me about how you felt with that.

So they didn't tell me that it was boot camp. And when I found out it was boot camp I didn't know that I would be actually living on the premises in the woods. You take a person that every single weekend I'm standing on five-star hotels and now I'm living in a log cabin with Erin Moran who I grew up watching on TV, on "Happy Days. "So I'm star struck, I'm hungry, and I'm feeling like a girl scout. The day came for me to climb up a tower, and I totally panicked. I thought that I could do it, I wanted to do it, but my mind could not digest it. So here I am, over 35 years old, on TV, no eyebrows, no make-up, stuck in a harness crying with a head rag on.

How embarrassing. How. . .

I love how you mention the head rag because it's like. . .


What's the word that comes to your mind when I say Miles Davis?

Blue. I mean, (laughter) is that lame?I mean. . .

No. Not at all. And I think there's this aura to this album. And it is about blue. And it's also about the other word I was thinking of, which is cool. You know, when we talk about the 1950s - bebop, which had come out of the '40s, has really reached a sort of maturity. And bebop is all about frenetic tempos and, you know, this real sort of virtuosic mastery. Miles Davis cut his teeth on bebop. But with this album, he really makes a concerted effort to move in a different direction. And so he brings all this space and openness and these kind of languid tempos and creates a mood. It's no secret why people love it. It just feels good.

All right. One of those guys who played on that album was John Coltrane. He also put out a classic album in 1959. Let's listen to a little bit of the title track from "Giant Steps. "


What else can you tell us about the suspected shooters?

The authorities have two suspects in custody right now, one 18-year-old man and another juvenile suspect. The 18-year-old was identified as Devon Erickson. He appeared in court earlier today wearing a red prison jumpsuit. He has shoulder-length hair dyed black and purple. The DA is asking for no bond to be set on him right now, but a hearing to file criminal charges against him is set for this Friday afternoon. The other alleged shooter is a 17-year-old person who was also in court today. Parents of the student who died, Kendrick Castillo - they were present at the hearing today as well.

Have authorities said anything about - of the motive behind the shooting?

Right now they're still investigating, and they haven't said whether there was a clear motive or not.


The balance we saw in Kenya was unexpected. Kenya had had a smooth transition from the rule of Daniel arap Moi to the rule of Mwai Kibaki, and it could very well have turned out that we had two, if it wasn't for some electoral rigging and planning on the part of the two different camps to destabilize the country after these elections.

Ghana's had a smooth transition eight years ago and is going to have another election pretty soon, and it's expected that that will be a free and fair election. Benin is a good place to think about, Madagascar, Mauritius. So I think that, you know, it's important to realize that even though it looks like Africans are always at each others' throats surrounding elections, it's not as dire as we might think.

You mentioned that you believe that elections don't equal democracy. How do you distinguish the two of those?

Well, you know, elections are procedures that we find in democracies. But, you know, there has to be a culture of democracy. If you had a free and fair election, there wouldn't be rigging. There wouldn't be ballot-stuffing and intimidation. So democracy has more components than just elections.


It is true that I will confess that I have an incredible fascination for pop-culture stories about the Apocalypse and the end of the world. And, you know, I wanted to see if I were going to write a science book that was basically the equivalent of a giant monster movie, what would that be. Like would be the disaster that I would tackle?

And that was why I decided to look at mass extinctions, which are the worst disaster that can possibly happen to the planet.

Are we headed for one, or are we in the middle of one?And if you're in one, do you know it's happening?

It's a good question. There is evidence that we are headed into what would be the planet's sixth mass extinction. It's hard to know for sure if you're in one because a mass extinction is an event where over 75 percent of the species on the planet die out over a - usually about a million-year period. The fastest it might happen is in hundreds of thousands of years.


And yes, impeachable.

You say, if it's true, what powers does the House have to try to corroborate this claim?

It does have to be corroborated. We can't impeach a president based on, you know, unnamed people speaking to the press, as credible and numerous as these reports may be. So you know, there is an investigation underway already by three House committees into what President Trump may have done with Ukraine. That is going to absolutely heat up in the next couple of weeks. So all I can say is, stay tuned. Fasten your seatbelts. The stakes here are extremely high.

Let me ask you, congressman. There are a number of Democrats and voters who are saying, you know, where is the party's spine in all of this?This is a president who has been, they say, running roughshod over your legislative authority with total impunity. What do you say to that?


My pleasure, Scott.

First, the basics - Secretary Pompeo's attending a meeting about - of about a dozen Asian nations. We know the president likes to negotiate one on one. So what is the multilateral message in Singapore?

So Pompeo was at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. One of his main messages to them is that the U. S.  is not retreating from the region or turning in on itself. And he underlined this by announcing $300 million in new U. S.  government funding for security cooperation in the region and another roughly $100 million for economic and infrastructure projects. Now, observers were quick to note that that's really not very much money compared to China's investments in the region. And it's also a pretty small commitment compared to the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, which the Trump administration pulled out of in its early days. The other main message to Asian governments there was to just keep on enforcing those sanctions against North Korea until they give up their nuclear weapons.

The secretary says that Russia's violating U. N.  sanctions regarding North Korea and that Pyongyang is going back in its commitment to denuclearize, which says essentially the - you know, that summit a few weeks ago we hailed did nothing.


And we actually have a link to how to take the test up on our website at sciencefriday. com. People can try it out for themselves. What other things can you measure with this test besides bias in that way?

It's been very useful in measuring gender stereotypes. For example, it shows that there are strong stereotypes that associate male with science, female with arts, and we found that this is correlated with different countries. The strength of this implicit stereotype, is what we call it, predicts male-female differences in performance on standardized tests that are administered every few years.

There's a gender career stereotype that associates women with family, men with careers, and you'd think that this is something that men would show, but women would reject. Actually, the implicit association test shows that women have this stereotype, this implicit stereotype, even a little more strongly than men. And we found in research, others have found in research, that this stereotype is associated with women experiencing difficulty in the workplace.

It's sort of a force inside their head that gives them a source of conflict or a feeling of discomfort in career situations.

Speaking of inside your head, can you tell anything about people's mental health from the test?