Well, Michael, this is what we do. We interview people. You use that information to decide if they're good or bad, telling the truth or lying. We followed the ambassador interview with our regular Africa Update, which gave a very different perspective on Zimbabwe. On June 12th, we did a very in-depth interview with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai before he dropped out of the run-off. We got the bases covered.

And finally today, Paul Pierlot (ph) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania wrote in about a segment on how hip-hop websites were hacked by apparent hate groups.

He wrote, "I'm hearing a lot of reports of racists spewing their ugly noise. It saddens me, but please, please keep the faith. I want to encourage all our listeners of News & Notes to keep our eyes on the big picture. History is about to bust open like a field of wildflowers. I'm surprised almost every day hearing another white workmate, friend and even folks I pass in mall parking lots telling me they are also voting for Barack. Yes, we will have to absorb the sneers and insults of those with shriveled hearts and closed minds, but let us walk in the path of Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin. No, let us rather dance, for springtime is in sight. "

And that's it for letters. Thank you for writing, and please keep your comments coming.

To write us, just log on to npr. org and click on Contact Us. When you get there, you'll see lots of shows to choose from. Make sure you pick News & Notes when you write to us.


And so the world was filled at that time with these microscopic creatures, right?

Yes, these would be very ancient. And we've long suspected that this sort of thing goes back or should go back a long, long way. And people have found the chemical signals, the brassy fool's gold they've found. They've even found the isotopic shifts. But this is, I think, the earliest record where we can see actually turned into this shiny material the fossils themselves. We can see them actually preserved in three dimensions.

And it's new techniques that we have now that we can use to analyze these in three dimensions and start to pick out their relationships. And that's one of the exciting things that's happening at the moment.

Would there be other places around the world where you'd find the same rocks and fossils?


When we say those reductions are temporary, we have to remember that they go until at least 2025. So for most of us out there, regular working folks, seven years of tax reductions is a big deal. We can have that fight again in seven years. I'm sure the Democrats will be promoting increasing taxes in seven years. That's what the Democrats always promote. The Democrat plan today was to increase taxes by over a trillion dollars. So we have to remember what our alternative option was with the other party.

But why make it temporary for individuals who might need that tax relief when corporations, who are doing very well, get a permanent. . .

Yeah, you and I are on the same page. I think that's craziness. I don't like temporary tax reductions. I don't like temporary legislative fixes, generally. I want to see permanent legislative fixes. So I am against the fact that they are temporary, but I'd rather have, as a person who pays these taxes, as a middle-income person - I'd rather have seven years of tax reduction than what the Democrats were proposing, which was a trillion dollars in increased taxes.

I'd like to talk about the political ramifications. By and large, polls show this isn't popular, and it pushes through some very substantial changes in the financial lives of Americans. Do you think that there will be a cost come 2018?


You know, it's the - there's not formal groups that kind of, you know, identify themselves. They don't have a problem with some other towns in the South where there's like, you know, revived Klan groups and such. I'm aware of the SPLC's research and such. But it's more - I think it's less formal than that but it's probably no less prevalent.

One of the things I'd like to ask you, because you're a person who has been writing about this and the photographs have been printed and seen around the country - the role of the media in covering this, does it make it better, does it make it worst?

Well, I think that really depends on, you know, literally what skin you're in, you know?A lot of the - many of the black folks in that town are very happy to see outside attention brought, they hoped that that scrutiny is going to force some changes down there. But by the same token many of the white folks are just outraged and they think that, you know, this is outsiders meddling in their affairs and they ought to just get their nose out of their business. There was the local Methodist preacher the last time I was there a month ago who told me that I was no better than a Christ killer but you know, you just kind of have to have thick skin.

Howard, thank you very much.


Well, Yelena Grigoryeva was an activist. A few years ago, she came out and said that she was a gay woman and began to defend LGBT rights in St.  Petersburg. And the community of LGBT in St.  Petersburg is quite vibrant. They're victims. Almost all of them are victims of violence. They get attacked during their rallies. They receive horrible, nasty threats. And Yelena Grigoryeva, shortly before her death, received a photograph of a knife. So her friends say it cannot be just a coincidence. . .

Yeah.

. . . That she receives a photograph of a knife and then she gets stabbed to death.

Now, a local news site reports that a suspect has been arrested. What is known about the crime and the man who's been arrested?


You know, I heard - I heard myself say that and thought maybe I should rethink that phrase. The reunification of the country would've been another way of saying it.

Well, it's just interesting to me - and I have no opinion on it - there are members of the Vietnamese Diaspora who refer to it as the fall. They refer to the month of April as Black April so there's definitely that camp. There's another camp that says normalizing relations between Vietnam and France and the United States and these kinds of things is good for Vietnam. And I think the thing that I'm most interested in, it's the idea of possibility and how so much can change in 40 years.

Yeah.

You know, I was there, like I said, three weeks ago. And there's tourists from all over the world - there are Russians, you know, they are people in Germany. Who would have thought 40 years ago that this would have been impossible for me and for these Russians and for all these people to be here in Vietnam?


Oh, gosh. Mr.  Lamason, do we know why the whales do this?

We don't know. And there's a lot of theories around. But if you had to design a piece of landscape to capture whales, Golden Bay is pretty much perfect. It's a - quite a closed-in bay. It's got this large spit sweeping around, and the seabed out from there is very shallow for quite some kilometers. And there's a great chance that these whales were coming in here to feed and have made a poor choice about how close they can get in.

And is there anything human beings can or should do to try and help the whales?

Yeah, that's an interesting question. When these whales die, they actually initiate an ecosystem around them and it brings in a lot of wildlife that wouldn't necessarily be around. So people are saying, well, why don't you get out there and stop them stranding in the first place?Well, as I mentioned earlier, they're relying on this area for food. It'll be a little bit like closing the supermarket because you're worried about the shelves falling on people. They need to get in there. And if some of them die, well, that is - that's very sad. But also, there's a lot of other animals that make - you know, take advantage of their carcasses as well. So it's a - it's an interesting question.


Good morning.

Good morning.

What does Oklahoma want?

Well, I mean, really, they're looking for funding. They're looking for as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. I talked with Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, and he's the one who brought the lawsuit. And he told me that taking these companies to court is really the only way the state can fund opioid treatment. I mean, you've got to keep in mind that Oklahoma has the second-highest uninsured rate in the nation. The state hasn't expanded Medicaid. State legislators have really slashed public health funding in recent years. So add on top of that the huge opioid addiction crisis, and you've got very few facilities, and they're almost always full.

So I'm thinking this through from Johnson & Johnson's perspective. I guess if you're a business, you want to kind of get your liabilities, you know, in a predictable - into a predictable place, which might help explain why a couple of other big companies, pharmaceutical companies, settled their lawsuits with the state of Oklahoma. But Johnson & Johnson is going ahead. Why did they not settle the way that other companies have?


It's an interesting question. In the case of the prairie dog system, it, of course, has a dire effect on the prairie dog population in general. And the most dependent species on those is the black-footed ferret, which is a highly endangered weasel-like animal that once was much more abundant on the plains but is now extremely rare.

They eat prairie dogs usually, and so now their food supply is being threatened.

They do, yes. They're entirely dependent on prairie dogs, mostly for food. But they also - ferrets use the prairie dog burrows as shelter, so they're highly linked to the prairie dog system. And the black-footed ferret is directed susceptible to plague itself. So it's not just a matter of losing its prey. It actually probably succumbs to the disease about as quickly as the prairie dogs do.

So what's being done now to keep this from spreading further?


What are his legal and PR teams trying to achieve by releasing audio conversations or snippets of them with Donald trump and apparently claiming that Trump knew in advance of that Trump Tower meeting with a group of Russians?

Well, I have to say, Scott, I think that's pretty much a mystery to a lot of people. Most criminal defense lawyers and former prosecutors can't. . .

. . . That I've spoken to can't make sense of it. It's a very, very unusual situation.

We're getting some bad audio - either that or a Martian craft has landed over your shoulder, so you might want to take a look, in which case we really got a big story to work on.


Whatever the achievements of American technology at every level, is there a central bank game gap between the U. S.  and other nations?

The Federal Reserve in the U. S.  has a few games. They're pretty simple, I would say. They're effective in a way but they are not, I think, as modern. And they do a job but perhaps something that wouldn't entice the future central bankers of tomorrow.

Do you learn something from these games?

I do. I learn a little bit. There's another game that the ECB created called "Top Floor," where you are charged with traveling up a series of elevators to the top floor of the ECB building. I did learn a lot about the interactions between national central banks and the ECB, for what it's worth, in playing this game. So, I suppose that's a job done. Would I rather play "Angry Birds"?Yes, of course. But I would probably not learn as much.


Exactly. I mean, just how it sounds. You know, there's three guys on the court for each team, instead of five. I guess a close parallel might be what they did for the Olympics, bringing in beach volleyball to accompany, you know, regular volleyball. So it's a little bit like that.

And you play outdoors, right?

Outdoors, yep, in some beautiful venues, too, yeah. Here in Amsterdam, we're outside the Rijksmuseum, you know, one of the biggest museums in Amsterdam.

Oh, my gosh. That's a beautiful museum.


The final thing is this. How has both - how have both the culture and the appearance of Harlem changed with this new money and these new properties, newly priced properties?

Well, the culture is even more vibrant, because we have people that have moved in who have the money to contribute to the children's art carnival or the Dance Theater of Harlem or the Harlem School of the Arts. I mean, it's not just myself, it's brokers, other people who have moved in are writing large checks to these organizations, like the Studio Museum in Harlem. They weren't thriving before. Some of the organizations didn't exist before. The culture is only going to continue to be as great as it is and continue.

What you notice, though, is the complexion of the people walking down the street. In the bad old days when I moved up to Harlem, if I wanted to go shopping, you had to get on the subway and go to 42nd Street. Now I just walk down to 125th Street, and everything I want is there. And while I'm walking down the street, I see people from around the world. We get tourists from around the world, in addition to the non-African-Americans who are now residents of Harlem. So the face of Harlem is changing, but the culture is not going anywhere. The non-blacks who moved to Harlem moved there because they want the nightlife that we can offer.

Willie, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your points of view.


Thanks for having me on.

You call this man's screed and his other provocative activity online - you call this booby traps. What do you mean by that?

I mean his goal is to provoke and sow division between the right and the left. A lot of the comments that he put in his manifesto are, essentially, things that he knew would be picked up by the world media and cause the right and left to get to each other's throats. Like, that was part of the goal - is to get people angry and fighting.

And can you give me an example?

Yeah. He brought up Candace Owens, who is a far-right YouTube personality and credited her for his radicalization, which is - cannot be true. He said that she was more extreme than him. This is a man who just shot dozens of people at a mosque. She's not more extreme than him.

He also mentions President Trump.


And what's interesting, I think, is Macron seemed unwilling to walk on eggshells for the American president. And by springing this Iranian visit, he seemed to make it clear that he's not going to shape the summit to avoid triggering someone like Trump. Of course, we have one more day left tomorrow, and we'll see how it goes.

And is there someone with whom the president seemed to get along well?

Yeah, there was - Boris Johnson. Of course, he's the U. K.  prime minister, and they've met on a number of occasions. They have a very natural rapport, and they're big sort of oversized personalities. As you said, they're on the same side with Brexit. And another thing I would say is that Johnson sort of feels that he needs to be cozy with Trump because he's leaving the EU, and he's desperate for a trade deal with the U. S. So it seems like Trump does have a buddy at this summit but still seems a bit distant from the other leaders of the major economies.

That is NPR's Frank Langfitt reporting from the G-7 summit in France.


I met up with Carlos Favela. He's a Border Patrol agent, and he spoke to me in his capacity as vice president of the local union. We talked just a few minutes after new numbers came out from the Department of Homeland Security. They showed a significant drop in border apprehensions in June.

And he said one reason for that is the Migrant Protection Protocols policy, which is often called remain in Mexico. He thinks that asylum seekers know that they may now have to stay in Mexico for months before their day in U. S.  courts. And so many of them are just not coming.

I guess it's a little bit a breath of fresh air for the agents out in the field. The MPP program that has been implemented - those agreements have also helped, actually, with the detention at the Border Patrol stations. So we're seeing less incursions but also less people being detained at the stations, which is a sign of relief because, you know, the Border Patrol doesn't have the resources to hold that many people.

There has been a lot of criticism levied at CBP. What is the biggest misconception about what you men and women do?


Which is - and Fosse - so that gives you a flavor of what these guys were. And Fosse laughs so hard and the, you know, all the tubes are plugged into his nose and the heart machine starts beeping and - I mean, it was a constant party in Fosse's room.

Well, and I'm struck by something you said because I guess he said he was under anesthesia, and began to get some ideas for a film. And he said: Even as I'm dying, I'm working.

Yep. That's the whole story of the guy, right there.

He didn't expect to live past 60, did he?


We've all seen, you know if you've gone to one of these snooty coffee shops - I say that lovingly because I go to them.

But, you know, there are all these machines, and you wonder, well, why do you really have to use this one for this?

Right.

And this video decodes that.


Thank you very much for having me.

And let me begin with the set up for a very old joke: How hot is it?

It's so hot, it's not a joke. That's how hot it is. It's - people always - people come out to me, though, and they ask me - since I've been here, they go, well, you must be used to this, right?I mean, you're from Africa. So, I mean, this must be - no, no. No, this is not weather. This is - I'm used to weather. This is an oven, and I'm not enjoying it. It's very hot. So barely surviving, but I'm glad to be here.

You are wearing a t-shirt that has the words nah mean(ph).


You got it, my friend. They did that, and they're apt to do more. And right now I guess the point we ought to talk about to you and your listeners, understanding that I'm not there, and I'm not a player, a participant, but yet I'm a player, one of the outside groups that finds his way in through cracks and corners and talks to the people over there.

I think they are trying to get something, led by the secretary of the Treasury, who's Geithner. . .

Tim Geithner.

Yeah, he's terrific, I think. Republicans have a wonderful man in Boehner, that Boehner's a straight shooter. Geithner is a very smart guy, and he acts fair to the Republicans. So I would think that he would be able to negotiate as well as anybody. And Tim Geithner, he's - I've talked with him many times before this thing started and occasionally since they've been in closed quarters.


Well, they're very angry, obviously. I mean, in Argentina, they're already facing really very hard times. Inflation there is among the highest in the world. The economy is - you know, they've got this boom-and-bust economy that's right now in such a mess that the government very controversially decided to sign on to this huge $56 billion IMF bailout. There are strikes and protests over President Mauricio Macri's austerity program, regularly.

And right now, Steve, there's a very highly charged political environment - I mean, even more highly charged than usual - because presidential elections are coming up in October. Macri's fighting to keep his job in the face of a remarkable resurgence by the former president, Cristina Kirchner, who's running with her former cabinet chief, this time on a ticket to be vice president, despite a stack of corruption charges against her.

Plenty of debate to come on who can keep the lights on. Philip, thanks so much.

You're welcome.

NPR's Philip Reeves.


Well, it's true. There was a disaster of my own making at the National Book Awards. In my capacity as emcee, when Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award for children's literature, which was a wonderful moment for everyone, but certainly also for me, Jackie is a friend of mine. So after her win, I told a story about her and me. And the story did not go out well and many, many people were very upset by it, and rightfully so.

Yeah. It certainly made me react a little differently when I was reading this book. One of the first signs we get that Errol, the pirate captain, has lost his ability to track is that he falls into racist jokes.

Anyone who's had someone with dementia knows that terrible things often begin to come out of their mouths, which is shocking and mysterious and, of course, very upsetting and hurtful for their families.

Yeah. I think anyone reading this book would decide - not giving anything away - maybe being a pirate isn't the good idea that I thought it was.

It was - if I can convey one message to the people of the world, it's don't try piracy.


My gosh, no, no, no. I mean, you know, Rip Van Winkle goes to sleep for 20 years and doesn't look at his statements, and when he wakes up, his money is worth half of what he started with. And when he went to sleep, he was 40 years old. Now, he's 60. What the heck does Rip Van Winkle do?You know, Rip Van Winkle doesn't have enough life left to get back his money.

So, let me ask you this. I'm going to open my statement now, and what should I do with it?

If you're retired and you are living on your investments, you have no business in the stock market right now, none, zero. If you are not retired, you are contributing money to your investment portfolios, you're actively adding money, and you have the stomach for losses, then you can buy. When you look at GE at $8. 55 a share, when you look at Dow Chemical at seven bucks, the juices do get flowing. You can say to yourself, gosh, I'd really like to own these on the bet that 10, 15 years from now, they'll be higher. But you have to understand that they could all be cut in half before they go higher.

Paul Krsek is managing director and chief investment officer of 5T Wealth Management based in Napa Valley, California. Paul, thank you. It's always great to talk to you.


Abortion. Abortion.

Really?

Because it's such a driving issue, a lot of one-issue abortion voters. The courts are determining what's legal in abortion. We see now that the court has got these new two conservative members to the Supreme Court and the lower courts. That's why you see states now pushing ahead with their tough abortion restrictions because they think that they can get these upheld. So I do think abortion - school prayer. Ronald Reagan played on school prayer when he was running. And these were the kind of things that conservatives vote on. These are important to them.

These are these sort of moral and cultural issues that they are interested in, consumed by to some regard. And so the courts have just been more important to them. You do see Democrats reacting now. There's new groups springing up. Demand Justice is a new group that was started to kind of make Democrats more aware of the potency of the court and the importance and why Democrats should be more interested in voting on it. I do think, in this election, Democrats are going to talk a lot more about the Supreme Court than they have in the past.


You're welcome.

Not to belabor this obvious point, but is this as dangerous as it sounds?

It is. And because it's becoming precariously dangerous situation for the east coast of Florida - meaning it may officially stay offshore but still spread the core of its severe impacts right along the coastline - I think that's something that we should emphasize, is that - and I think it was mentioned off the top of the hour - we need our listeners from our member stations in Miami, WLRN, all the way to Jacksonville, WJCT, to take this seriously, especially if you live east of that I-95 corridor because there is an increasing chance now the core - and we're talking the eye wall - of major Hurricane Dorian will brush the coastline.

That could mean winds well above hurricane strength. That could bring storm surge, storm surge warnings and hurricane warnings in effect. So I think that's what's the most dangerous part of this storm is actually the fact that it may be not coming ashore directly, and residents may not be taking it seriously at this point.

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.


Dual loyalty is something that relates to the potential conflict between clinicians' duties to their patients and their obligations to their employers. When these organizations have sometimes questionable tasks to fulfill, that becomes a very, very serious almost ethical minefield, I would say.

You and I have both been to immigration detention centers. What do you imagine the work will be like?

Well, I think when you talk about any correctional facility, especially immigration detention centers, there are a couple of hats that one has to wear. One is to take care of routine medical issues - so somebody has a headache, somebody has an infection, is vomiting. But also, we're talking about people who are coming with immense trauma, people who may have injuries, people who have suffered from violence. You need to address that in some ways. There's also making sure that there's no spread of contagious diseases, that people are being nourished well. So it's a very big job.

Isn't it important to have the best medical personnel possible in those facilities?Wouldn't you want somebody extremely qualified to be hired for a job like this?


We should note that USA Today, which when it was founded in 1982, said it would never endorse a candidate for president - didn't want to go to that kind of - didn't want to participate in that kind of politics - has not endorsed a candidate but has said, in some departure from their usual policy, Donald Trump is unfit to be president, so don't vote for him.

What's an editorial worth in this age of social media?

You know, we know that people don't read newspaper editorials by and large. And if they ever read one, it's usually something like this in the presidential season. But we know that people read about them and hear about them.

And that's where, in the age of social media, they may actually matter more because people are going to be talking about this wipeout, this refusal of people who, remember, historically, have almost always gone with Republicans, to go with Donald Trump.

OK, now Miss Universe. Did Hillary Clinton set a trap for Donald Trump, which he sprang on himself?

You know, this story could have gone away in 24 hours or 48 hours. It could have had some impact on Monday night and perhaps, then, just gone away. We've heard an awful lot of high impact stories come and go already in this campaign.


I think not quite yet. I mean, there are often these apologies that are issued and I think President Wagner is quite genuine in his apology. And at the same time, the question becomes how do we as a community at Emory understand how we are to move forward as an institution?

Feels like the kind of moment that will be a touchstone for a long time to come.

I hope in a positive way. I think it's opened up some conversations that we've needed to have.

Leslie Harris is an associate professor of history in African-American studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Professor Harris, thank you very much for joining us.


You know what really stands out for me in your book most of all?

Uh-oh.

You love your daughter. You love your grandson. And you love working.

I adore working. I am so - do you know how lucky I am?At this age, I have "Fashion Police. "I have an Internet show "In Bed With Joan. "And I just started something now called "Drunken Celebrity Phone Calls. "It's incredible.


It's nice to be here, Neal. How are you?

I'm good. Thanks. That first phone call - well, just sort of out of curiosity, I assume.

The first call that I made to Alan?Yeah, it was a funny feeling of both, obviously, curiosity and a strange sensation of being crowded in my own skin by another guy who had my same name.

And he turned out to be - well, debonair might be the word.


Coastal Texas did have a couple of days to prepare for this storm. People were urged to leave the area. What's your estimation?Did many people take that advice and get out before Harvey hit?

Well, certainly some did. As I was driving in from Austin and San Antonio yesterday, you could see a fair number of cars, you know, going the other direction. So certainly, there were some people that evacuated. But here at the hotel that we're staying, there are hundreds of residents who are from Corpus Christi who decided to hunker it out and stay the night here. You know, there were no mandatory evacuations ordered for Corpus Christi.

Some are beginning to wonder, you know, was that the best plan of action?Had a mandatory evacuation been ordered, they would have had to evacuate the hospitals. And that, you know, picks up a whole series of logistical issues. So you know, as the Texas governor ordered yesterday, if you feel unsafe, if you feel unsecure then you should flee.

And Russell, what do you see for the next few hours and next few days about when conditions might improve and what people have to contend with?


It's only about $3 billion. So compared to the whole Defense Department, which is, you know, 500 or more billion, or NASA, which is around 16 billion, or something.

A couple of big bombers.

Yeah, one and a half B-2 bombers. That's it. I think DARPA should be inspiring to anyone who wants to create innovative things, come up with new ideas, do things that really make a difference, with a relatively small amount of money and resources.

And what stuff do you think, percentage of stuff, that you actually saw going on?What couldn't you see that they wouldn't let you see inside of DARPA?


How close is it?

It's about three parsecs away, about 12 light-years away, something like that.

So if there is intelligent life on that planet, and I'm just speculating here, it would be possible to communicate with them in real time almost, right, a lifetime, at least one person's lifetime if they could signal back and forth in 12 light-years?

Well, and that's the reason that studying these nearest stars is so interesting. If you have a chance of contacting any intelligent beings on these things, you could have a two-way conversation easily within a lifetime around these nearest stars.


When you marinate after grilling, you actually make a marinade that doesn't touch any of the raw fish or meat.

Got it. OK.  What about people who don't eat meat?There are a lot of people who really are trying to move more toward a plant-based diet. How do you manage that on the grill if you have limited grill space?Because, I mean, it depends on why you're not eating meat. I mean, if you're not eating meat because you have strong ideological reasons, you don't necessarily want that touching. How could you manage that?And what are some things that you should consider for the non-meat eaters?

Yeah. I love grilled vegetables. I love eating vegetarian meals. I'm not super-strict about if meat's been on the grill to then make something with vegetables. But some people don't want them maybe cooking at the same time, where they might touch or come into contact that way. So I would say one of the preparations I really love for summer are grilled salads. So this is like a grilled spin on your classic salads.

And on Bon Appetit, we have a recipe for grilled lettuces with creme fraiche and avocado, which is a spin on, like, a ranch dressing. We have a grilled cob, where some of the elements of the salad get grilled and then tossed together with the other stuff. There is a grilled bread salad, which is kind of like a riff on a Panzanella, a bread salad where you combine it with some grilled vegetables.


What has been the reaction to this from the pollsters at this conference that you're at?

In the hallways here, I was surprised to hear, actually, that academics and pollsters are mostly saying that this effort is overdue. There's general consensus that the traditional exit polls are oversampling Democrats because older voters don't like having to fill out these forms. And they, of course, lean pretty heavily Republican.

Many people I talked to here said that they've been raising alarm bells with the National Election Pool for a decade to no avail. And they see this as a pretty good thing to light a match under those exit pollsters to change. I talked with a consultant to one of those exit polls. And he said that they are actually going to be trying to make changes and that this is part of that.

That's NPR's lead political editor Domenico Montanaro in Denver.


Philippines armed forces pounded militant positions again on Saturday, the fifth-straight day of fighting between government forces and ISIS-linked fighters who have occupied parts of the city of Marawi on the island of Mindanao. A military spokesman says that at least 40 militants have been killed since the fighting began, and at least 13 soldiers have died. We're joined now from Mindanao by Michael Sullivan.

Michael, thanks so much for being with us.

You're welcome, Scott.

You're just back from Marawi. What did you see?

Scott, I saw a ghost town, really. I mean, it was eerie. It's a city of more than 200,000 people. But it just looked as if someone had suddenly just snatched them all away, just plucked them from the street. The only people we saw in the city proper were heavily armed Philippine soldiers trying to flush out militant snipers. And you could hear intermittent gunfire on the streets approaching that part of the city that the militants still control.


Correct.

And is there a difference in spider silk as opposed to the silkworm silk?

There are many similarities between the two, as a family of proteins. There are also some distinct differences. There are many different kinds of both spider silks and silkworm silks. The silk we use for this particular study is really based on a purified version of what's present in the textile world, and we choose that because the infrastructure is there, the supplies are there to really utilize this in a widespread application like vaccine distribution that we're talking about.

So you could use it for more than just vaccines?


Well, as you might imagine, there are a variety of courses of action that the Department of Defense, specifically the commanders in Central Command, have provided to the president and the National Security staff. And they will take a look at those and put those in context vis-a-vis the diplomatic and political actions that are also occurring as this is going on and determine one or another. And they run the entire gamut from, you know, a non-lethal response to more lethal actions. . .

To forceful military response, right.

Yeah, taking out the service to air missile systems that are in the vicinity. Some of. . .

OK.


We get the impression from the reporting of our colleague Adrian Florido in Puerto Rico that this was - the protests that drove out the governor, they were a protest against the governor but really against the whole political system. And the descriptions you've just given of the various positions would seem to back that up. Does anybody have credibility to take the job?

I think there are people that do have the credibility and that have the experience. But I - it's not clear to me that political leadership has heard the message that has been delivered loud and clearly by the thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans that took to the street to let, you know, their distaste and their indignation known.

What do you mean they haven't heard the message - meaning that the political leadership doesn't understand how angry people are?

I think that that could be the case, and it is demonstrated by the fact that there are reports of backroom dealing over who could be that next secretary of state that could take over the governor's position.


Does this book take the position that President Trump is simply wrong about Russia?

No. No, it does not say that. And I would underline that this book is not an anti-Trump book or a pro-anyone book. It's not anti- or pro-anyone. Maybe it's hard to believe in today's Washington, but we actually have no agenda (laughter).

John McLaughlin is a former acting CIA director. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Thank you.


And it's not just exhaustion, Ambassador. It's a belief on all sides that they cannot win on the battlefield.

Yeah. And I think that is beginning to dawn on people. There is this view that somehow if the U. S.  launches air strikes on behalf of the rebels that this could somehow turn the tide. But I think if you're in the military and the Pentagon, you start looking at what exactly your target sets are going to be. You're going to see this as a pretty complex problem and then maybe air strikes are not going to solve it.

There's also the idea of a no-fly zone because the Assad forces have used air strikes on others. And there is no question that could have some impact on the ground, but none of these things are a sure bet. And the only sure bet is that they would - the first step in any of these things is an act of war, whether we like it or not.

And imposing a no-fly zone is an act of war. You mentioned some people who ought to be involved in this conversation. You did not mention a player with a major stake in Syria, and that's Iran.


Journalist Sam Dagher spent years in Syria reporting on war. He also reported on the lives of ordinary Syrians caught in the middle of the fighting. His new book is called "Assad Or We Burn The Country. "It tells the story of Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar and their rule in Syria. The story is told in large part through the Assad family's friendship with another Syrian family, the Tlass family. The Tlasses had helped the father and son keep their grip on power for decades.

I talked to Sam Dagher, and I first asked him about the book's title.

I saw this slogan on the walls of destroyed and deserted towns and neighborhoods. The Assad regime besieged a lot of these towns and neighborhoods in Damascus and elsewhere around the country that had risen up against the regime. The regime forces would go in and do what the regime calls the cleansing of this area. So they would sometimes execute whoever they find in these places, loot all the homes down to the tiles and the copper wire in the wall and burn these homes. And after they're done, they would spray this graffiti on the walls, Assad or we burn the country.

Sam, in this book, you're telling the story of the Assad family, but you're also telling the story of another Syrian family. Tell me about this lost family and their relationship with the Assads.


Well, most recently, we did a research project where we sent psychologists and medical doctors to meet with former detainees at Abu Ghraib in Guantanamo - doing physical exams, psychological exams, X-rays, bone scans, rectal exams - to see if the stories that they had told were actually true. And the doctors that reviewed the research and did the work said that the story was so gross that they could hardly read all of the report. So, it's that kind of funding that had us put out a report called "Broken Laws, Broken Lives," which is being used in the Congress to investigate the violations of human rights to the folks that have been detained. So, that's the kind of work that the JET Foundation funded that we now have lost.

So, you won't have $175,000 going forward. Is there a way to make up that money?

Well, I think its individual. I think there's a lot of folks out there from all sides of the table that want to restore our credibility, and they are the people, I think, that ultimately will fund our work. And if I can find about 175 people to give me 1,000 bucks, we'll be able to continue that critical work.

Frank Donaghue is the CEO of Physicians for Human Rights. Thank you very much.


Hello.

So, John, I've got my iPhone here. I downloaded this ap last night. Let's give it a little bit of a test run, and we should tell our listeners here, there's going to be a bit of an interference with the microphone.

But let's take the example that I just used and give it a shot. So, Thai food, Los Angeles. I say that into my phone. It does a little working and processing, and next thing you know, it's popped up a list of all of the closest Thai Restaurants to me with phone numbers. It's pretty cool. How does this work?

Usually pretty well. It's also one of my nightmare scenarios as a bicyclist that people like you will be driving all over the place looking at your iPhones.


The smart way for communities to deal with the issue like that is to hearken back to what we were talking about with Jennifer Hudson. Make sure your community is a community. Make sure you know your neighbors and what is going on. Make sure you are making a conscious effort to deal with the distance and the attenuation that we have in our communities based on our mobility and technology. So if you know who's there, whose children are where, what's going on and if you have that sense of community, that is the quickest and best way to make sure your community can stay safe.

Judge Toler, great to talk to you. Thank you.

Good to talk to you.

Judge Lynn Toler is the star of TV's "Divorce Court. "She is also the author of "My Mother's Rules: A Practical Guide To Becoming an Emotional Genius" and she joined us from the studios of KJZZ in Tempe, Arizona.


Oh, absolutely not, Scott. That's not - that's the - kind of our problem. Remember that we went from basically a dead start over the last 15 years where we didn't have these capabilities to now having a remarkable capability to collect intelligence and information using these platforms and all these great people. And so we just - as an institution we have to get ahead of that. It's been hard to do as the demand grew so rapidly.

I know they're not in combat, which is its own category to acknowledge and respect, but is it possible for a drone pilot to develop what some people would call post-traumatic stress?

Oh, I think it's beyond possible. I think it's happened. This is one of the kind of second-order effects that we probably didn't anticipate when we first started this work. I don't think there's any question that it's a factor. I don't believe it's an overriding factor. We don't have a great number of people who have manifested these kind of symptoms and problems, but we certainly do have some.

Do drones offer the appearance of risk-free combat?


Part of it was that in four years, there are some voters who believe he was tone deaf, too arrogant, too bossy, not collaborative. But you're right - he raised $30 million over the last four years. The president came in and gave him what everyone called a bro hug, and all of the newspapers endorsed him, including The Chicago Defender. . .

Yeah.

. . . The African-American newspaper. And none of it worked.

Only 34 percent of the voters went to the polls this week. Isn't that usually the kind of election in which a well-financed campaign with a good ground campaign is supposed to win?


Well, I was doing some research at the - looking at the finding aids of the Ransom library in the University of Texas. And they have, like, a great, great, great number of works of Steinbeck over there. And when I did some more research, I looked and I said, oh, my God. This has been tucked away in a vault for 60 years. It was not released in English.

I contacted the Steinbeck estate, and I was lucky enough to get a yes because in my line of work, you can do all your homework, do all your research - and not to mention all the tears - and then you may get a very simple no. But. . .

So it's good when you get the yes.

It is. It is. It's rare but, you know, that's - those are the moments of life with you and - moments of your career which you savor.


Let's turn now to the Bahamas and specifically the northern parts of the Bahamas, where reports are coming in of extensive, unprecedented damage. We have been trying to get through all day with no luck. Phone service is mostly out. The Red Cross is there on the ground, and I want to bring in Steve McAndrew of the Red Cross. He is monitoring the situation from Panama.

Mr.  McAndrew, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

Now, have you been able to get through to your teams in the Bahamas?What are you hearing?


Why the need for this guide?

We know that people are going to be asking themselves is the gift that I'm giving or asking for going to be secure and private?And as you said, most holiday shopping guides are focused on price and performance, and this guide is focused on privacy and security.

It's not just smart speakers, is it?It's a lot of devices that we've quite willingly and comfortably made part of our everyday lives.

That's absolutely right. And we're particularly looking at the area of connected-to gifts because more and more consumer products are connected to the Internet. So one interesting space that we've looked at is this new emerging toy category of drones. I have an 11-year-old who's pretty excited about drones, and it turns out that many of them connect to insecure wireless and therefore can be taken over, both the information they collect but also the device itself. So we think that consumers would want to know information like that when they're considering a drone gift.


And no birthdays, no Christmas, no nothing. And at age 15, I couldn't take it anymore, so I moved in with my real father, but I didn't know he was a pimp. And the transition from living in essentially a middle-class, suburban area, because he sold BMWs and Porsche automobiles, he did very well. Moving from that middle-class area and the. . .

And the picket fences, all the way to the other end of East 14th, where it was like. . .

Cars sliding by, was a huge transition. Going from one spectrum to another. And I was essentially a nerd coming out of knocking on doors and moving into where my brothers and everybody was like, David, we're about to have another party. And like, oh, really?How do I fit in here, you know?

Right, right.


Is Colin Kaepernick, in your judgment, unsigned because of his politics or his performance as a quarterback?

I don't think we can say if it's one or the other. I think what troubled me was that I saw so many people who wouldn't necessarily know the difference between an end zone fade and icing in hockey say automatically without parsing through the situation of his play at all that it has to be racial. And it could be racial. But it's also the type of thing that you could see someone with his skill set at this point in his career trajectory both being in the league and not being in the league.

Can you explain to us why a general manager or coach wouldn't, just in football terms, necessarily snap at the opportunity to sign Colin Kaepernick?

I think you have to ask yourself, can this player, in this case a quarterback, can he help us win?And how do you win in the league right now?It is not 40 years ago when you can win 17 to 10. You have to rack up the offense. And what Kaepernick basically does - his skill set, the best part of it - is he does not throw many interceptions. He had four last year against 16 touchdown passes. That's a really good ratio.


Sure. I won't give you the whole poem. It's rather long. Oh, for a draft of vintage that have been culled a long age in the deep delved earth. Tasting of flora and the country green, dense and Provencal song and sun burnt mirth. Oh, for a beaker full of the warm south, full of the true, the blushful hippocream(ph), with beaded bubbles winking at the brim and purple stained mouth, that I might drink and leave this world unseen. And with thee fade away in the forest dim.

That's very nice indeed. I'm inclined to respond by saying, you know, she should have died hereafter. There would have been time for such a word. You know, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps at its petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools, they waited dust to your death. Out, out brief candle - sorry.

That's pretty wonderful.

Jean Sprackland is one of the poets who've selected verses for schoolchildren in the United Kingdom to recite for a new contest called Poetry By Heart. Thanks very much, Ms.  Sprackland.


All right, Mario. We have to jump in. RushmoreDrive. Give me the skinny.

OK, RushmoreDrive. The skinny is this is a black search engine. And I think it's time for a black search engine. The answer is going - the question is going to be whether or not this will be successful due to advertising. The Pew Internet says that 56 percent of African-Americans now use the Internet, so is there really a need for a black search engine?I put in "Farai Chideya. "I was able to see news about you, videos, your blog posts, images. . .

Scary!

It's comprehensive. It's clean. Hey, you're all over the place, what can I say?I think there's a real need for this. The issue is going to be whether or not they can market it right.


And what kind of station wagon was it?We had a Rambler.

It's an old Ford.

And old Ford, yeah.

Old Ford, you know, with the wood paneling.


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

Sure.

There was a horse, I have seen the video, whose name you had a hard time with.

Yakahickamickadola.


And prosecutors then stepped up and said, we're going to have a no drop policy. In other words, we're going to assume, as often is the case, that the woman is going to ask, hey, don't prosecute him. Let him go. And he says, no, the State of Ohio or the State of Arizona or wherever you are says, this is our charge. This is a crime, and we're going to follow through.

Then it's up to the judiciary. And everyone used to look to the judiciary. Now, you have to be serious and sentence these guys. That in and of itself was not working, because once he was out, you are sending the man and the mindset back to the same home and the same woman with the same mindset. And so the taking it seriously and simply incarcerating was not resolving the problem.

So, what other ways are there?

Now, we are taking a more holistic approach to the problem. It is an approach that tries to sew up the seams of the system. I had a domestic violence group come to me and say, look, Judge, we aren't getting what we need. We are not getting to the women soon enough. You are not getting the men to domestic violence programs well enough or quickly enough.


Absolutely. And the blog that you refer to with Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a blog called Down from the Tower, and it's an ongoing discussion between Melissa and Marc Lamont Hill, who is a professor at Temple. And so, one day, you might click on, and Melissa will have the call and Marc will have the response. One day, he may toss out a question to her. He'll have the call and she'll have the response. And it's a very lively - up to now, it has been a political discussion. But they may take on other things. Politics seems to be dominating the moment.

But I do hope that the site evolves into one where our writers are talking to one another and talking to the Web and to communities that live outside The Root, bringing new information and ideas and, you know, creating a vibrant marketplace for idea.

And I also think one of the things that I like about - I'm glad you pointed out the exchange between Melissa and Marc, because it is debate and it is thoughtful, weighty, witty debate. And it's not…

All right.


He used software to create phony profiles so he could collect answers from thousands of women and analyze them. He divided the women into seven groups based on the questions they chose to answer, then decided which group he found most engaging. And then he answered those questions that they found most compelling. Once he did, his dating life took off.

At first, I was kind of trying to make them like the classic sort of romantic first date to remember, to tell your kids about. And that turned out to not be a good approach.

First dates take time, after all. They create expectation. They can be exhausting. So Chris McKinlay decided to just meet for a cup of coffee and hope that was long enough to detect in person what OkCupid and its algorithms couldn't - if two people felt a spark. Chris McKinlay had 87 first dates. And on the 88th, he met Christine Tien Wong.

It was a real relief when I met Christine and, you know, on the first date. I was saying yes very strongly at a gut level.


You know, it was - I've done a couple of Kickstarter campaigns before with both of my indie films. And I always looked at it more as a way to kind of build a fan base, less so than the actual financing of it all. You know, it kind of allows you to, as a filmmaker, to kind of announce that you're doing something but in, like, a non kind of braggadocious way. And it kind of allows people who, you know, may want to be involved or kind of see the project through to help out. And so it just seemed like a - the obvious first step for us. And it ended up becoming the highest-funded Kickstarter campaign for a short film.

So what is it that you think people are responding to?I have to say that, I mean, look - the little girl is absolutely adorable. The dad has locks, and he's struggling with the hair.

It's just hard for me to describe, but the hair, for anybody who's tried to do little black girl hair, it's very accurate. It kind of has a life of its own.

Yeah.