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The Junior League's Latest Cookbook

NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates talks with Deborah Britton, the Junior League's first African-American president, about the organization's latest cookbook and how the Junior League is keeping up with America's changing tastes. Coconutty Sweet Potatoes (submitted by the Buffalo, NY chapter of the Junior League) Serves 8 Ingredients: 3 (16 ounce) cans sweet potatoes, drained 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup whole milk 2 tablespoons butter 2 eggs 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 cup shredded coconut 1/2 cup chopped pecans 1/2 cup packed brown sugar 3 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons melted butter Directions: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Combine the sweet potatoes, sugar, milk, 2 tablespoons butter, eggs, and vanilla in a bowl; mash until blended. Spoon mixture into a 13x9-inch baking dish. Combine the coconut, pecans, brown sugar, and flour in a bowl; mix well. Stir in the melted butter. Spread the topping over the sweeet potatoes. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until light brown and bubbly.

Awlaki: From San Diego Cleric To Wanted Terrorist

Anwar al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico, educated in Colorado and spent years as a cleric in San Diego and suburban Washington, D.C. But in the past several years, he became a master al-Qaida propagandist whose sermons inspired jihadists worldwide before his death Friday by a U.S. missile on a desert road in northern Yemen. Awlaki's journey from a childhood in Las Cruces, N.M., to the Arabian Peninsula placed him in the cross hairs of U.S. intelligence after he was linked to the failed "underwear bomber," the Fort Hood shooter and the foiled plot to bomb New York's Times Square. "First bin Laden and now al-Awlaki on a completely different continent," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University. "Terrorists around the world must be wondering when their time will come. "If [terrorist leaders] have to devote more time to saving their skins, they've got less time to plan attacks," he told NPR. A Popular Preacher In 1994, Awlaki earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Colorado State University. By his late 20s, he had become an imam and spiritual leader, first in San Diego and later at a mosque in Falls Church, Va., outside Washington. His soft-spoken lectures on Islamic scripture were recorded and distributed internationally, making him a celebrity among English-speaking Muslims around the world. His gently persuasive style, much like bin Laden's, won over many converts. "The non-Muslims say that Islam was spread by the sword ... is that true or not? Let's talk about what happened, and then you can make a judgment," he directed his followers in one audio posting on the Internet. But U.S. counterterrorism officials say Awlaki's subdued manner belied his growing links to the international jihadist movement. The 9/11 Commission's report released in 2004 indicated that Awlaki had met two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers at the Virginia mosque, but the nature of those contacts is unclear. In 2002, Awlaki left the U.S. and spent time in London before arriving back in Yemen two years later, where he continued to distribute lectures and sermons over his now-defunct website, including one entitled "The 44 Ways To Support Jihad." Awlaki was considered a master propagandist for al-Qaida who helped shape the network's Yemeni-based affiliate into what American officials described as the most significant threat to the U.S. homeland. Links To Fort Hood Shooting Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army major accused of gunning down 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, allegedly exchanged up to 20 emails with Awlaki. Hasan initiated the contacts, drawn by Awlaki's Internet sermons, and approached him for religious advice. Awlaki has said he didn't tell Hasan to carry out the shootings, but after the attack, the Yemeni cleric praised the action on his website, lashing out at U.S.-based Muslim groups who condemned the attack and saying, "Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims." Officials also believe Awlaki went beyond his role as a propagandist for al-Qaida and became involved in operational planning for the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula affiliate. Yemeni officials have said Awlaki had contacts with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused would-be Christmas plane bomber, who was in Yemen in 2009. They say they believe Awlaki met with the Nigerian, along with other al-Qaida leaders, in al-Qaida strongholds in the country in the weeks before the failed bombing. The Pakistani-American man who pleaded guilty to the May 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt told interrogators he was "inspired" by Awlaki after making contact over the Internet. But while his value as a propagandist is unquestioned, Awlaki's involvement in the operational side of al-Qaida is murkier. Intelligence gleaned from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan indicates that bin Laden and Awlaki corresponded, but that the Yemeni cleric was not viewed as a leader by the al-Qaida chief. "Al-Awlaki's role [in al-Qaida] has never been that clear," Georgetown's Hoffman said. "If he indeed managed to make this transition from cleric to skilled propagandist to operational leader, that's pretty unique," he said. "But what was his actual role in operations is up for debate." NPR's Dina Temple-Raston contributed to this report, which contains material from The Associated Press

Gordon-Levitt's 'Don Jon' Is An Openhearted Directorial Debut

In phe last decade, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has worked hard to establish himself as a serious actor, and he's been so successful it's easy to forget he came of age in the '90s sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. The guy has comedy chops, and he's exercising them again in a smart new movie he wrote and directed called Don Jon. In it, he plays a prolific seducer named Jon Martello; "Don Jon" is the nickname his pals gave him in the movie's obvious nod to Dons Juan and Giovanni. Those literary namesakes end up in hell, but for this Jon the hell is during sex. He has regular one-night stands, but he's miserable. In voiceover, he complains at length about the missionary position. He hates having to look at women's faces. He can't, he says, "lose himself." So while his conquests slumber he turns on his computer and watches porn. Don Jon is a sex comedy — an inventive and rambunctious one. It's in the syncopated style of (500) Days of Summer, which Gordon-Levitt starred in, but it's funnier and more far-reaching. Its theme is absolutely serious: Jon's porn addiction — I'll spare you the dirty details — isn't just a quirk; it's an outgrowth of the fact that he can't truly be with a woman. Maybe it's not hell, but it's emotional purgatory. Perhaps his ticket to a new life will be Scarlett Johansson as a woman named Barbara Sugarman. She's what his buddies call a "dime" — 10 out of 10. At a club, she dances close but won't go home with him. She won't even give him her name, so he plays detective and finds her and asks her to lunch at an outdoor cafe. Johansson is so fast she's dizzying: She detonates every Jersey-girl diphthong. When Barbara finally gives in to Don Jon, she plays the long game, molding her man, ordering him to go back to college to rise above the "service class." But alas, he can't quit his porn habit, and when Barbara discovers it, she's repulsed. It's not just that she thinks it's for losers. It stands for a string on him she can't pull. Based on zero inside knowledge, I'm guessing the cast of Don Jon was happy on the set. You can tell. Happy actors like to surprise and delight their fellow actors — and themselves. Julianne Moore plays the woman in Jon's college class who sobs outside class over some hidden woe and then settles into her seat and babbles with embarrassing intimacy. It's a rare chance for Moore to merge her gifts for deadpan-motormouth comedy and teary drama, and she's wonderful. Tony Danza and Glenne Headly get a great rhythm going as Jon's parents. There's a lifetime of sitcom precision — and heart — in what Danza does. Rob Brown of Treme gives a lift to his scenes as Jon's romantic adviser, and Brie Larson has a sly cameo as Jon's sister, whose eyes are riveted to her smartphone but who turns out to have peripheral vision. Don Jon has one subversive touch. Jon is a Catholic; he even recites the Hail Mary prayer when he's pumping iron. Every Sunday he goes to Mass with his family and takes confession, where he's absolved for his sex-related sins. But when he fights that addiction, when he changes his behavior, he's upset when there's no change in the number of Hail Marys and Our Fathers the priest commands him to say. Gordon-Levitt seems to be suggesting that Jon's weekly confession was like his other addiction — mechanical, empty — and that sex and religious rituals have no meaning when your eyes and heart are closed. Needless to say, Don Jon the movie is wide-eyed and openhearted. DAVE DAVIES, HOST: The 32-year-old actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes his directorial debut with the comedy "Don Jon," in which he plays a man with an addiction to Internet porn. He also wrote the film, which costars Scarlett Johansson as the woman who tries to help him kick the habit. Film critic David Edelstein has this review. DAVID EDELSTEIN, BYLINE: In the last decade, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has worked hard to establish himself as a serious actor, and he's been so successful it's easy to forget he came of age in the '90s sitcom "3rd Rock from the Sun." The guy has comedy chops, and he's exercising them again in a smart new movie he wrote and directed called "Don Jon." He plays a prolific seducer named Jon Martello. Don Jon is the nickname his pals gave him in the movie's obvious nod to Dons Juan and Giovanni. Those literary namesakes end up in hell, but for this Jon the hell is during sex. He has regular one-night stands, but he's miserable. In voiceover he complains at length about the missionary position. He hates having to look at women's faces. He can't, he says, lose himself. So while his conquests slumber, he turns on his computer and watches porn. "Don Jon" is a sex comedy - an inventive and rambunctious one. It's in the syncopated style of "(500) Days of Summer," which Gordon-Levitt starred in, but it's funnier and more far-reaching. Its theme is absolutely serious. Jon's porn addiction - I'll spare you the dirty details - isn't just a quirk, it's an outgrowth of the fact that he can't truly be with a

Tama, The Cat That Saved A Japanese Train Station, Dies

A calico cat in southeastern Japan has left some big paw prints to fill. Tama, who served as "stationmaster" of the Kishi train station near Wakayama City, died Monday from acute heart failure, according to CNN. She was 16 (about 80 in cat years), the network reports. Tama is credited with saving the train station from financial ruin. Tourists would come to the station to see her hanging out in her office — a converted ticket booth — wearing a railway hat and collar. (A stationmaster is, generally, the human in charge of running the facility.) The railway system's president, Mitsonubu Kojima, said he visited Tama the day before she died and that she "stood up and let out a strong meow." Tama's station is on the outskirts of Wakayama City, according to a CNN report in 2013. Aside from local residents, not many people traveled through the station. The current railway operator selected Tama, who was owned by a local family, as stationmaster in 2007 to try to bring in more travelers. She had a noticeable impact, according to Kyodo News: "The number of passengers on the line jumped to 2.27 million in fiscal 2014 from 1.92 million in fiscal 2005. Photos of Tama and other merchandise also sold well, leading to her appointment to acting president of Wakayama Electric Railway in January 2013." Here's more from CNN's 2013 story: "Kishi station currently houses a Tama-themed cafe, as well as a souvenir shop with items ranging from the usual array of pens, staplers and other supplies, to Kishi Station uniforms. "Tama's cuteness is exploited wherever possible — from the chairs to the cakes in the cafe to the cat-shaped station building itself. "There's also a cat stationmaster apprentice, Nitama, who shoulders some responsibilities for Tama. Sleeping and doing nothing is hard work, you know?" A memorial service reportedly is set for Sunday.

'Raising Victor Vargas'

Sixteen-year-old Victor Vargas (Victor Rasuk) is a lean Romeo with a mop of wild black hair and a habit of licking his chops whenever a pretty girl drifts through his line of sight. Victor belongs to the latest wave of Latino immigrants to New York City, and he splits his time between a cramped tenement apartment ruled by his intractable Dominican grandmother (Atlagracia Guzman) and the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Victor swaggers like toughs twice his age, but his reputation as a player isn't evolving quite as smoothly as he would prefer -- he's sparkly and irresistible, and he can't help still being a kid. As the film opens, he's posing and flexing with goofy glee for "Fat Donna," an appreciative neighborhood girl lolling in bed. But their encounter is not worth consummating for Victor when one of his friends shouts up for him from the street. Raising Victor Vargas tracks how Victor's conception of manhood slowly changes when he falls for a beautiful, wary girl named Judy (Judy Marte) -- "Juicy Judy," as she's called by the boys. Judy is hardened to cocksure junior machos like Victor, and she's secretly heartbroken by her parent's divorce. In their courtship -- proceeding in fits, hisses and starts -- the two both learn to become vulnerable. When Raising Victor Vargas blasted into theaters in January 2003, it melted the hearts of cold film critics wearied of glitzy Oscar bait. Said critics were almost uniformly bewitched by the movie's sweet yet unsentimental glimpse into Victor's world and its confident, intimate portrayal of his family and friends. In particular, the film garnered praise for its gentle authenticity and the clear naturalism of the performers. But audiences didn’t flock to Raising Victor Vargas. With the release of a new special edition DVD, now is the time to catch up. What’s Included: An advantage of the Raising Victor Vargas special-edition DVD is its detailed exploration of the director's methodology. Peter Sollett originally wanted to make a movie about his own Brooklyn boyhood in a neighborhood of Italian and Jewish teenagers --but as he started assembling his project, Sollett became intrigued with developing a story about the largely Puerto Rican and Dominican kids who comprised many of his neighbors in lower Manhattan during the late 1990s. Sollett worked with the actors over a period of years -- hence their grace before his lens. That backstage story is told on a somewhat chaotic commentary track that includes at least four of the actors, Sollett and his casting director/co-writer Eva Vives. It might have worked better had the participants been divided into two commentaries, rather than subjecting viewers to a roomful of often unidentifiable voices veering into merciless detail about, for example, how hot it was on set. Best among the extras is the original short feature filmed two years prior to Raising Victor Vargas that led to its making. Five Feet Tall and Rising stars the same young actors -- Rasuk and Marte -- but they’re even younger... and in Rasuk's case, considerably shorter. In Five Feet Tall and Rising, the pair have yet to blossom into the polished performers of Raising Victor Vargas, but their charm is abundant -- and it seems evident that Marte, at least, never suffered through an awkward age.

Ti West And James Ransone: In A Valley Of Trivia

To director Ti West and actor James Ransone, no amount of money can overshadow integrity. HBO veteran Ransone ("The Wire", "Treme") is adamant he will "back an artist over the money any day." And when triple threat writer-director-editor West is asked which of those three stages of production he would give up if he had unlimited funds, he says he "won't do it! ...That's the price of integrity." In fact, it was during a conversation about integrity during the pair's first meeting that sparked both a successful working relationship, and a friendship. "I met him and then he explained to me how he was very unhappy with a movie he did, so he took his name off of it, and I was like 'alright I want to work with this person,'" Ransone told host Ophira Eisenberg. The rest is history. Ti West has made his mark for absolutely chilling titles like The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, to name a few. He's so good at creating horror films, in fact, that he rarely gets scared anymore. "If a movie scares me, that means it's doing something that I can't quite figure out," he shared with host Ophira Eisenberg. He likened the experience to a magician watching another magician's magic trick: if one stumps the other, it's a "huh" moment. While West is "always looking for that 'huh,'" it doesn't happen as often as he'd like. West's newest project In The Valley of Violence -- a Western in which he wrote a part specifically for Ransone--is an abrupt genre departure for the filmmaker. West admits to Eisenberg that he decided to switch gears after finishing a confrontational, tragic, "bummer" of a horror movie heavily set in realism. "When that was done, I didn't want to do anything having to do with realism," he shared with Eisenberg, "I wanted to do traditional, cinematic, and that to me was a Western." In the spirit of the Western, our VIPs face off in an Ask Me Another showdown! Ophira and Jonathan give clues to an answer with the word "West" in it — first to buzz in with the correct answer wins! HIGHLIGHTS On the job they would have if they lived in the Wild West Ransone: A madam! West: A weird hermit person. James Ransone on the moment he realized acting was his full-time job I got cast in Generation Kill and I had to go to Africa and I was going to live there for about a year... And then I got to set and they handed me a call sheet and I was #2 on it, and I was like 'someone made a mistake...this is too much responsibility for me.' Ti West on discovering there was more than one Indiana Jones film I started to think, did my parents keep this from me or did they not know? Don't know which one is worse. Anyway, later that day I saw it. It was great--monkey brains, the whole thing. Heard on Ti West and James Ransone: In A Valley Of Trivia JONATHAN COULTON: This is NPR's ASK ME ANOTHER. I'm Jonathan Coulton here with puzzle guru Art Chung. Now here's your host, Ophira Eisenberg. (APPLAUSE) OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST: Thank you, Jonathan. Soon, we'll find out which of our contestants, Andrea or Colleen, will be today's big winner. But first, it's time to welcome our special guests. Their new film is called "In A Valley Of Violence." Please welcome director Ti West and actor James Ransone. (APPLAUSE) JAMES RANSONE: Thank you. EISENBERG: Welcome to ASK ME ANOTHER. TI WEST: Thanks for having us. RANSONE: Thanks for having us. EISENBERG: Pleasure. Now, actually, we're going to talk about your new project in a moment. But first, how did you two meet? RANSONE: You want to do this? EISENBERG: James? WEST: No. I'll hear your story first. RANSONE: (Laughter). EISENBERG: All right. We're going to hear your version. WEST: The truth will lie somewhere in between. RANSONE: Yeah. So I got - it was many years ago, I think, in late - I don't know it was, like, 2008 or 2009. And I got a call being like, hey, there's a director that wants to have a general meeting with you. And he lived in New York. And he's like, well, he wants to meet at Cafe Mogador. And I was like, well, that's where I eat breakfast every day. So that sounds fine. (LAUGHTER) RANSONE: And then I met him. And then he explained to me how he was very unhappy with the movie he did. So he took his name off of it. I was like, all right, I want to work with this person. EISENBERG: OK. So you saw him as a little bit of a rebel who had a lot of integrity in his work. And you thought... RANSONE: It wasn't even the rebel. It was the integrity. EISENBERG: It was the integrity. RANSONE: Yeah, I just - I'll back an artist over the money any day of the week. EISENBERG: Nice. Ti, does that coincide nicely? WEST: That sounded great. I'm going to say that it was exactly how it went down. (LAUGHTER) RANSONE: Can you say something nice about me, please? EISENBERG: (Laughter). WEST: And he was great. And Mogador was really great, too. EISENBERG: (Laughter). WEST: Yeah. I mean, he was - I was a fan of his work. And we met. And then we kind of stayed in touch. We became friends, like he said. And now

You Need A Real-ID Or Passport For Domestic Flights Starting Oct. 1

On Oct. 1, 2020, regular driver’s licenses will no longer be accepted to get through airport security for domestic flights or to get access to federal buildings. Travelers will have to get a Real ID-compliant driver’s license or use a passport. Host Jeremy Hobson talks to Jim Gregory, from the Transportation Security Administration, about how — and why — to get a Real ID. Is everyone over 18 required to get a Real ID? No. But if you don't have a passport and you want to fly domestically, you should get a Real ID. Or if you need to access federal buildings, like federal courthouses or nuclear power plants, you'll also need a Real ID or passport. Where do you get a Real ID? Real IDs are issued by state departments of motor vehicles. In some states, AAA issues Real ID to AAA members. You should check your state's DMV website for more information. What documents do I need to bring to get a Real ID? Check your state's DMV website for a complete list of required documents, but minimum requirements include proof of citizenship or lawful status, two proofs of address, documentation showing your full name, date of birth and social security number. When do I need to get a Real ID? On Oct. 1, 2020, the TSA will no longer accept regular driver's licenses for domestic flights, so if you don't have or want to use a passport, you should get a Real ID before Oct. 1. Do all states issue Real IDs? Not yet. Oregon and Oklahoma don't currently issue Real IDs, but are expected to by the summer. Check your state DMV website for more information. What other documents will work to get through airport security for domestic flights, or to access federal buildings or nuclear power plants if I don't get a Real ID? A passport or passport card will work. Other options include aDepartment of Homeland Security issued card like Global Entry, a U.S. Department of Defense ID or a U.S. Merchant Mariner ID. You can find a full list of Real ID-compliant identification here. Julia Corcoran produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Kathleen McKenna. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Cornel West, the Musician?

Public scholar and philosopher Cornel West has teamed up with Prince, Gerald Levert, KRS-One and other musicians on the new CD, <em>Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations.</em>

Tension Over Shooting Sports In Schools

Efforts to recruit kids in high school are paying off, as shooting sports get more popular. That effort comes with some controversy, in part because of the involvement of the NRA.

Peter Sagal Weighs In on Spitzer and 'Vice'

When he's not hosting Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, NPR's weekly news quiz show, Peter Sagal is likely at a casino, a swingers club or visiting a porn-movie set. All investigative research, of course, for his recent book, The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them). Sagal wanted to get a perspective on the indulgences of others and report back to the rest of us. In light of Monday's surprising allegations that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was involved in a prosecution ring, Sagal weighs in on the correlation between power and vice. "It goes back in history that powerful people get to break sexual rules," Sagal says — those in power are "immune from the sexual rules that bind down the poor rest of us." Chapter One Swinging or Dinner Parties Gone Horribly Wrong It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a couple at a swingers club announce that they are there merely to observe, and not actually to swing, everybody loses interest in that couple pretty quickly. "Research?" said one young woman, her enthusiasm for further conversation with Beth and me shrinking and disappearing like that little point of light on old vacuum-tube TVs. "Research?" Well, uh, yeah. Beth and I had been assured by Ross and Rachel, owners of the Swingers' Shack, a private, invitation-only club for participants in what is called the Lifestyle, that it would be just fine if we wanted only to observe, to talk to people. "No pressure," we were told. "It's actually much better than a bar," said Ross, because at a bar, you know, there was anxiety, there were expectations you didn't necessarily want to meet. Here, everything was cool, laid-back ... we, the merely curious, could happily interface with the avidly active. Except the real difference between the Swingers' Shack and a bar is that at a bar somebody you meet might have come just for a drink or to watch a game on TV. Here, you had to bring your own liquor, on which you wrote your name with a Sharpie, and the only TV in the place was showing hard-core porn, adding a sometimes discomfiting bass note of grunts and moans to the peas-and-carrots babble going on around us. No: with apologies to Ross's nice spread of Hershey kisses and a $29.95 chocolate fountain, the only reason people came to the Swingers' Shack was to get it on. Except for us, which we made clear as soon as we had to, which was pretty early in any conversation. And then our interlocutor's eyes would go vacant, and soon he or she would wander off to talk to somebody else. Or, once, a man indicated his boredom with us by idly reaching out and palpating his wife's breast. I don't blame them: this April night was the last party at the Swingers' Shack, maybe for the summer, maybe for the year, maybe forever. There was no time to waste with people like me. But still: in a lifetime in which I've been to all kinds of sexual marketplaces-bars, parties-this was the first time that I was going to get ignored because I wouldn't put out. I had contacted Ross through his website, asking for permission to come interview him, his friends, and his "guests" because of all the varieties of deviant behavior, the Lifestyle seemed the most wholesome. In it, we are told, consenting adult couples ... well, consent. The events at the Shack, like at almost every other club within the swinging community, are for the most part couples only, for various obvious and subtle reasons. And these couples have agreed that each partner can have sex with other people, within whatever confines they've set for themselves, and in each other's presence. It offers all the pleasure, security, safety, trust, and stability of monogamy, without the monogamy. In fact, it sounded perfect, a model of what most men, and many women, would want from their sex lives-not for nothing was Plato's Retreat, the swingers club of the seventies, named after the inventor of the Eternal Ideal. And of course, to my mind, it was utterly impossible. How could stable, happy marriages survive adultery as a hobby? We are told, via their occasional interviews in the press, that swingers or Lifestylers or whatever are no different from you and me ... they meet up to socialize, talk, drink, and dance with their good friends, old and new. And then they have sex with them. Which makes me stop, and consider the various good friends my wife and I have, and then consider how it would be if one of our suburban dinner parties ended with us removing our clothes and performing sexual acts, and I have to put my head between my knees and take deep breaths. Ross told me straight up that he had been the recipient of some bad press, and was a little nervous about opening his club to a writer. We agreed, eventually, that I would first come and interview him and Rachel at the club, which was also their home, and then, if everyone felt good about it, my wife and I (Couples Only!) would attend one of their parties. I asked him via e-mail: "And it's all right if we're there merely to o

Northwestern Rescinds Wright's Honorary Degree

Joseph Epstein, contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, talks about an awkward honorary degree situation at Northwestern University. The university offered and then rescinded a degree to Jeremiah Wright, Obama's controversial former pastor, who made headlines when he made inflammatory remarks about America and race. Epstein's article "What's Up, Doc?" appears in The Weekly Standard. NEAL CONAN, host: Honorary degrees do not enjoy all that much honor. Playwright Neil Simon, upon receiving his honorary degree from Williams College, remarked that the distinction has its limitations. Quote, "Would you let an honorary mechanic fix your Mercedes?" Nevertheless, the tradition that began in the 15th century not only continues, it proliferates. In this week's edition of the Weekly Standard, contributing editor Joseph Epstein wrote about the honorary pickle at Northwestern University, where he taught for 30 years, when the school first offered, and later rescinded, a degree to the now notorious Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Joseph Epstein joins us now from the studios of Northwestern. He's also a recipient of an honorary degree himself from Adelphi University in Long Island. Nice to have you on the program today, Doctor. Mr. JOSEPH EPSTEIN (Contributing Editor, Weekly Standard): Yes, call me doctor once more and I'll punch you out. (Soundbite of laughter) Mr. EPSTEIN: Watch out who you're calling doctor, buddy. CONAN: Of course, we want to hear from those of you in the audience with an honorary degree. What's it worth to you? Our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our blog at npr.org/blogofthenation. So, Joseph Epstein, you're there on the campus. Everybody at Northwestern still talking about the honorary embarrassment? Mr. EPSTEIN: I don't think as much as they did a week or so ago. But the embarrassment is one of those - I suppose we now say in a cliche today - defining moments for honorary degrees. What happened was that someone at Northwestern decided that there's this interesting African-American character who's an activist name Jeremiah Wright. Why don't we give him an honorary degree? After all, everybody's done all the - Maya Angelous, the Bill Cosbys, the John Hope Franklins. Here's an original figure, let's do this. And then lo, Reverend Wright goes and does something silly. Not by saying I love you, but by saying what he said, which everyone knows, that the government caused AIDS to black poor people and so forth and so on. Northwestern found itself, as you say, in a pickle. Deep in the brine of pickle-juice, in fact. And the President decided that he had better withdraw the invitation to Reverend Wright. Saying that graduation is after all a celebratory event and the Reverend's controversial status would somehow explode the celebratory nature of the event into a kind of political awfulness, and they had to withdraw it, which, I think, must have been embarrassing all the way around. CONAN: You pointed out in your piece in the Weekly Standard that there are a couple of institutions, at least, who gave honorary degrees at one point to Robert Mugabe who may regret it now. Mr. EPSTEIN: Exactly. I think what's happened with honorary degrees, it was once rather a grand ritual that has lost its grandeur over the years. I think maybe, you know, the two greatest doctors who were honorary doctors are Dr. Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, who got his for his scientific endeavors, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, who got his for his scholarship, the great dictionary and so forth. Somebody sent me an email after this piece appeared, telling me something I didn't know, and that is in 1792, Oxford offered an honorary doctorate to Joseph Haydn, who in recompense for the doctorate wrote the Oxford Symphony, one of his great, you know, batch of London symphonies. And the next century the University of Breslau did something similar to Brahms, and Brahms wrote the academic festival overture. So that's a case of honorary doctorates paying off very well. CONAN: It's better than the usual 20-minute speech. Mr. EPSTEIN: Exactly, exactly. Now, not everyone who gets an honorary doctorate gives a speech. Having someone famous, I guess, receive an honorary doctorate is a way of getting a speech on the cheap, I should think. CONAN: Yeah, I thought that the honorary doctorate was in fact for finding the most famous person who is willing to give a speech for free. Mr. EPSTEIN: That's it. I see you need to be in research and development here at the university. CONAN: I should be. In fact there's a funny story you tell in your piece about well, somebody who was going to be the commencement speaker, had to pull out at the last minute apparently got sick or something. Somebody called you and offered you the slot. Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes he did and he offered a small fee I should say, to give the commencement speech. And at the end of it he said, and of course we'll toss in an honorary deg

Meditative Chamber Music

Harpist Mariko Anraku and flutist Emmanuel Pahud step out of their respective orchestra jobs to record some chamber music together. Here's their version of the "Meditation" from Massenet's opera <EM>Thais.</EM>

Initial Action Not Major Assault Expected

NPR's Robert Siegel speaks with NPR's Brian Naylor about the surprisingly small scale of the initial U.S. assault on Iraq. Naylor reports on President Bush's warning that Americans should expect casualties in the war.

Feral Cats Neutered and Released

Animal-welfare activists are catching stray cats, having them fixed and turning them loose again. Bryan Kortis of the Manhattan-based Neighborhood Cats talks about a controversial new program for population control.

There's A Talented Group

There's a talented group of young artists making music at the Aspen Music Festivalin Colorado: they're the 12- to 18-year-old musicians of the Starling Chamber Orchestra. On June 18, they gave this performance of a lovely salon piece by Giacomo Puccini: "Crisantemi" (KREE-sahn-TAY-mee -- "Chrysanthemums"). (Dan Ostergren Recordings)

Coalition Contemplates Way Forward In Libya

U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with other international leaders, including Arab ministers, in London Tuesday to discuss the way forward for international intervention in Libya. The meeting came as the U.S turned command of the No-Fly Zone there over to NATO commanders. Last night, President Obama explained his decision to get the U.S involved in televised speech. Host Michel Martin discusses the role of European and Arab countries in the conflict with Washington bureau chief for Al Jazeera International, Abderrahim Foukara and NPR foreign correspondent Philip Reeves.

'Call Me Caitlyn': Bruce Jenner Reveals New Name

Updated at 1:49 p.m. ET Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic gold-medal-winning decathlete who revealed recently that "for all intents and purposes" he is a woman, is now Caitlyn Jenner. The revelation was made in Vanity Fair, which tweeted an image of Jenner on the cover of its July issue. "If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, 'You just blew your entire life,' " Jenner tells the magazine's Buzz Bissinger. Jenner, 65, described to ABC's Diane Sawyer in April a lifelong struggle with gender identity. As NPR's Christopher Dean Hopkins reported at the time: "Jenner told Sawyer that he hoped that being public with his identity and struggle might help change perceptions and increase acceptance of transgender individuals." As ABC's Sawyer noted at that time, the prime-time interview was Jenner's last as Bruce, but Jenner was still most comfortable with male pronouns. That appears to have now changed — as Vanity Fair referred to Jenner using the female pronouns "she" and "her." And, the magazine notes, Jenner says: "I don't really get hung up" about it. Jenner's children and her stepchildren, the Kardashians, have all expressed support for the change. Here's more from Vanity Fair: "Jenner tells Bissinger about how she suffered a panic attack the day after undergoing 10-hour facial-feminization surgery on March 15 — a procedure she believed would take 5 hours. (Bissinger reveals that Jenner has not had genital surgery.) She recalls thinking, 'What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?' A counselor from the Los Angeles Gender Center came to the house so Jenner could talk to a professional, and assured her that such reactions were often induced by pain medication, and that second-guessing was human and temporary."

Peanut Mush In Infancy Cuts Allergy Risk. New Study Adds To Evidence

Parenting can be an angst-ridden journey. And one bump along the road is that horrible feeling that comes over you when you see your baby break out in hives after eating a particular food – say, peanuts — for the first time. (One of my three kids gave me that kind of scare.) The concern is real. Between 1997 and 2008, the incidence of peanut and tree nut allergies nearly tripled, according to one published study. Now, there's a growing consensus about how to prevent peanut allergies in kids who are at high risk. This includes children with a strong family history of food allergies and those with eczema. Last year, a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that high-risk babies who were fed a soupy, peanut-butter mush (starting between 4 and 11 months of age) were about 80 percent less likely to develop a peanut allergy by age 5, compared with kids who were not exposed. "Giving peanuts very early on actually protected them from developing a peanut allergy," says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Previously, parents of high-risk kids had been advised to delay the introduction of peanuts. Now, a new follow-up study involving the same group of children adds to the evidence that, contrary to previous advice, early exposure can be beneficial. Researchers followed the kids for one additional year. The kids were between 5 and 6 years old during this follow-up period. It turned out, these high-risk kids' tolerance to peanuts held up even if they stopped eating peanuts. "A 12-month period of peanut avoidance was not associated with an increase in the prevalence of peanut allergy," the authors write in the paper. This is an important finding, because it wasn't known whether the kids would need to maintain regular weekly consumption of peanuts in order to stave off developing an allergy. "This new study is great because ... it looks like the benefit [of early exposure] is essentially permanent," says Scott Sicherer, a pediatric immunologist and allergy specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Immunologists will continue to study this. Sicherer has helped develop new interim guidance based on the emerging evidence of the benefits of early, rather than delayed, introduction of peanut. "There is now scientific evidence that health care providers should recommend introducing peanut-containing products into the diets of "high-risk" infants early on in life (between 4 and 11 months of age)," the consensus guidance states. But that doesn't mean all parents should just rush in with the peanut mush. The guidance recommends that "infants with eczema or egg allergy in the first 4 to 6 months of life might benefit from evaluation by an allergist" — before they're introduced to peanut-based foods. The evidence from the two studies together represents an important step forward in immunology, says Anthony Fauci. "It's a very important proof of concept," Fauci says. And he says it's possible that early exposure will turn out to be a successful strategy to prevent other allergies as well.

Model Train Clubs Move At High Speed In The 21st Century

Model trains may have a reputation for being dusty old relics. But some clubs around the country are pushing the hobby full speed into the future. Oregon Public Broadcasting&#8217;s Aaron Scott (@aarondavidscott) reports from the Pacific Northwest&#8217;s biggest club. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

A Massive Floating Boom Is Supposed To Clean Up The Pacific. Can It Work?

We humans have deposited a huge amount of plastic in Earth's waters. There are now five garbage-filled gyres in the world's oceans — the largest and most notorious being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with its estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, spread across an area twice the size of Texas. One of the people trying to figure out how to clean up the ocean is Boyan Slat, a 24-year-old Dutch social entrepreneur who has been working to invent a solution since he was 17. His idea — for a giant floating system that would corral the plastic so it can be scooped out — is on the verge of reality. He founded a nonprofit called The Ocean Cleanup and picked up a major environmental award from the United Nations along the way. Tech investors including Peter Thiel and Marc Benioff got behind his go-big ethos; a reported $35 million total has been raised. On Saturday, a vessel that usually tows oil rigs instead towed Slat's giant garbage-catcher some 300 miles offshore from San Francisco Bay. For two weeks, engineers will monitor how the system handles the battering waves in the Pacific before towing it 1,100 more miles to the patch. The system's centerpiece is a nearly 2,000-foot-long plastic tube with a 10-foot skirt attached beneath, forming a U-shaped barrier designed to be propelled by wind and waves. Its aim is to collect plastic as it floats — and then every few months, a support vessel would come by to retrieve the plastic, like an oceanic garbage truck. The plastic would then be transported back to land for recycling. If it works, The Ocean Cleanup plans to deploy a fleet of 60 such devices, which the group projects can remove half the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in five years' time. But will it actually work? Slat doesn't know. His team has changed its concept over time, switching from a moored system to a drifting one, in order to act more like the plastic it's trying to catch. They tested a prototype on the North Sea but say the Pacific will be the real challenge. "We believe that every risk that we can eliminate in advance we have been able to eliminate," he said in a video prior to Saturday's launch. "But that doesn't mean that all risks have been eliminated. Truly, the only way to prove that we can rid the oceans of plastic is to actually go out there and deploy the world's first ocean-cleaning system." The Ocean Cleanup hopes to reduce the amount of plastics in the world's oceans by at least 90 percent by 2040. But many experts on plastic pollution have expressed concerns about whether the project will be effective. For one thing, most of the plastic that ends up in the ocean doesn't end up in these garbage gyres. "Based on the latest math, we think that about 8 million metric tons of plastic is flowing in to the ocean from land around the world," says George Leonard, chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy. And he says that only around 3 percent to 5 percent of that total amount of plastic actually winds up in the gyres. "So if you want to clean up the ocean," Leonard says, "it may in fact be that the open ocean is not the place to look." Part of the issue is that not all plastic is buoyant. A lot of it sinks immediately — and thus won't be captured by this floating boom, said Eben Schwartz, marine debris program manager for the California Coastal Commission. "It would be wonderful if we can clean up the surface of the gyre, but since so much more of the trash in the ocean actually doesn't end up on the surface of the gyre, it's even more critical that we address where it's coming from and try to stop it at its source," Schwartz recently told NPR's Here and Now. Then there's the question of whether the project might cause unintended environmental consequences. Specifically: Can you capture plastics without ensnaring marine life? "We know from the fishing industry that if you put any kind of structure in the open ocean, it will attract a whole community of animals, both large and small, to that particular piece of structure," Leonard says. Fishermen sometimes create fish aggregating devices (FADs) that intentionally create little floating ecosystems to attract fish. "There's a worry that this could become a very large FAD and attract a whole number of larger fish and marine mammals and seabirds that might be impacted by it," he says. Plus, The Ocean Cleanup's system is made of high-density polyethylene, a kind of plastic. So, what if it becomes part of the problem it's trying to solve? "I sort of wonder what kinds of microplastics this thing is going to be generating on its own, assuming that it's even functioning exactly as designed," oceanographer Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association told Wired. And if the boom gets busted in a big storm, well: "If it's shedding nano-size particles and then gets smashed into 200-meter-long pieces, you're really covering the whole size range there." And then there's the worry that a big, expensive project like The Ocean Cleanup diverts

If 'The Expendables' Were Summer Camp, What Would Be On The Activities List?

I don't know about you, but when I watch the trailer for The Expendables (which opens this week), all I can think about is summer camp. Some sort of action-movie, angry line-reading, dirty-faced fantasy camp. I mean, Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke ... come on. That's not a movie. That's Camp Big Dude, on the banks of the Studly River, where all the kids come in as boys and leave as RUUUUUUUHRRR! Every camp, of course, requires organized activities, so I have taken the liberty of suggesting ten activities appropriate for Expendables Camp. 1. Making lanyards out of the severed tendons of your enemies 2. Machine-gunning the straw-filled archery targets 3. Moonlight bear-boxing and marshmallow roast 4. Swimming towards danger 5. Horseback riding, if by "horse" you mean "tank" 6. Capture the flag made out of a torn, filthy tank top 7. Singing "Takin' Care Of Business" as a round 8. Boogie boarding using a raw concrete slab ripped from the floor with your bare hands 9. Throwing clay pots that are reliably harder than the human skull 10. Catching butterflies, giving them something to cry about

Climate Change Brings Changes To Coastal Wetlands' Carbon Absorption

Coastal wetlands can absorb and store carbon even faster than forests do. But new research raises questions about whether that may be changing as the climate warms.

Joe Wambaugh: The Writer Who Redefined LAPD

Morning Edition resumes its Crime in the City series. Joe Wambaugh is treated like a star when he visits the Hollywood police station he helped immortalize. Framed posters of his movies hang on the walls, and when he shows up, he's invited to address the baby-faced officers during roll call. On a recent morning, he takes the opportunity to offer some advice from his book Hollywood Station. "There's a line in there that the sergeant, who I call the Oracle in the book, says that's true," Wambaugh tells them. "It's that doing good police work is the most fun you will ever have in your lives." Wambaugh, now 71, is the son of a police officer. He joined the LAPD in the early '60s, after a stint in the Marines. For 14 years, he worked his way up from patrolman to detective sergeant at Los Angeles' Hollenbeck station. When he wasn't on duty, he wrote two successful fiction novels about the LAPD, The New Centurions and The Blue Knight, both of which were made into movies. Onion Destiny Wambaugh also wrote the best-selling book The Onion Field, which he later adapted for a 1979 movie. It's the true-life story of two LAPD officers who were kidnapped by two suspected robbers and taken to an onion field outside Bakersfield, Calif. That night, one of the cops, Ian Campbell, was murdered. Decades later, Wambaugh stands outside the Hollywood police station, which features sidewalk stars like the ones on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Only rather than movie stars, these stars memorialize cops killed on duty. Wambaugh stops near a star with Campbell's name on it. "I was put on Earth to write The Onion Field. That's how I felt about it," he says. "It was such an emotional experience for me. I took a six-month leave of absence from the police department to write that book. I read 40,000 pages of court transcripts; I interviewed about 63 people and wrote the book in three months. I went back to my detective table at Hollenbeck station, and stayed a cop for another year." Throughout that year, Wambaugh's celebrity grew. Sometimes he was even hounded for autographs by the people he put in handcuffs. The pull of writing eventually trumped police work, and he quit his day job to write and to create, among other works, the hit '70s TV series, Police Story. Bye, Bye Joe Friday With his realistic portrayals of cops, Wambaugh transformed the clean-cut "Joe Friday" image of the LAPD. "Before I came along, Dragnet and Adam 12 were good public relations vehicles for the LAPD. But they didn't attempt ever to tell how the job acts on the cop," he notes. "The cops in those stories were stick figures. There was no third dimension. No inner life to them. No back story to them. We didn't know who they were and what they felt." The cops in Wambaugh's books, and the TV shows and movies they gave rise to, have feelings and flaws. Early on in his writing career, this almost got him fired by the LAPD police chief. Attitudes have changed, however. The current chief of police, William Bratton, warmly embraces him, and his books have become must-reads at the Police Academy. Two Cops And A Bottle Of Rum Hollywood Detective Sgt. Vicky Bynum says it's difficult to get police officers to open up. But she's among the scores of cops Wambaugh has interviewed over the years to collect their stories, which he then fictionalizes. "Joe's thing is to take you out to dinner, and cocktails flow and the stories start to flow also," Bynum says from her detective desk at the Hollywood station. "He's found women more conversant than men. With the guys, it usually takes a few more cocktails." Wambaugh's Los Angeles is populated not only with complex cops, but also wannabe actors and drug-addicted tweakers, wealthy immigrants, gawking tourists and colorful street thugs. He says his characters and plots are unlike most police thrillers, with their flamboyant master criminals or extravagant serial killers. "All of the bad guys or bad women in my stories are ordinary little criminals," he says. Take for instance, characters from Wambaugh's latest books about Hollywood. Costumed celebrity look-alikes greet tourists in front of the famed Mann's Chinese Theater and sometimes get into scuffles. In one scene, Batman fights with Spiderman, and Marilyn Monroe has to call 911. Real-life Detective Brett Goodkin, who helped Wambaugh with his research, says this sort of thing happens all the time in Hollywood. "You do get those calls: suspects dressed as Bart Simpson. And you show up and, sure enough, there's a really angry, high Bart Simpson that wants to fight," says Goodkin. "The majority of street performers have criminal histories, and they get in their little squabbles among themselves." Other scenes in Wambaugh's newest books take place at L.A.'s legendary Farmers Market, where show-biz veterans hang out every morning. The group includes actor/producer Paul Mazursky, artist Charles Bragg and assorted comedians, who kibitz and cavort every morning. When Wambaugh visits, they rib him

Supreme Court: Montana Can't Exclude Religious Schools From Scholarship Program

Updated at 5:53 p.m. ET In a major victory for what advocates call the school choice movement, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively killed state constitutional provisions in as many as 38 states that bar taxpayer aid to parochial schools. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the decision for the court's conservative justices. The court's decision is the latest in a series of recent rulings that have lowered the traditional wall separating church and state by requiring government entities to treat religious and nonreligious institutions more equally, even when that means sending public money to religious institutions. Tuesday's case began in 2015 when the Montana Legislature passed a bill providing a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for individuals who donate to organizations that provide scholarship money to students in private schools. An organization called Big Sky began raising money to fund these scholarships, using the tax credit as an incentive. Of the 13 schools that got scholarship money from Big Sky, 12 were religious schools. Indeed, 70% of all private schools in Montana are religiously affiliated. Ultimately, the Montana Supreme Court struck down the entire tax credit program for all private schools, religious and nonreligious alike. It said the tax credit conflicted with the state Constitution, which bars all state aid for religious education, whether direct or indirect, including tax subsidies such as this one. But in Tuesday's opinion, Roberts said the state court had it backward. "A state need not subsidize private education, but once it decides to do so it cannot disqualify some private schools because they are religious," he wrote. Thus the tax credit created by the Montana Legislature to benefit students attending qualifying private schools, including religious ones, must stand as originally designed. In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rebutted Roberts' argument. She said that because the Montana Supreme Court invalidated the program entirely, it did not discriminate against students attending religious schools at all. Because the state court's "judgment put all private school parents in the same boat—this Court had no occasion to address the matter," Ginsburg wrote. In a separate dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer asked: "What are the limits of the Court's holding?" He feared that the court's logic could lead to extreme consequences in the future, perhaps even a decision requiring states to fund private religious schools even if they would rather use their money to fund public schools exclusively. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also writing separately, called the decision "perverse" for throwing the U.S. Constitution's religion clauses out of balance. As for the conservative wing of the court, all of its members signed on to the Roberts opinion, but several of them wrote separately to express their own views on the subject. Justice Clarence Thomas reiterated his view that the Constitution's ban on the establishment of religion does not apply to the states, except in cases of coercion. Justice Neil Gorsuch urged the court to go further to protect the free exercise of religion. While the majority said that Montana had impermissibly discriminated on the basis of the schools' religious status, Gorsuch said the state , discriminated on the basis of religious activity as well. As an example, he pointed to the lead plaintiff's testimony that "she would like to use scholarship funds to enable her daughters to be taught in school the 'same Christian values' they are taught at home. The court, said Gorsuch, should make it clear that both types of discrimination are unconstitutional. Justice Samuel Alito used his concurrence to recount the troubled history of the so-called "baby Blaine amendments," no-aid provisions in the state constitutions of 38 states that, like the Montana Constitution, prohibit public funds from benefiting religious schools. Such provisions are named after James G. Blaine, who proposed a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1875. While the original amendment failed to pass, variations of it were adopted in most states. Many scholars today view the adoption of these amendments, mostly in the late 1800s, as a bigoted reaction to the mass immigration of Catholics into the U.S., a narrative that Alito embraced wholeheartedly. But many states in modern times have, by referenda, refused to abandon the no-religious aid concept. And Montana's no-aid provision is no relic of the past. The state constitution was completely rewritten in 1972. Mae Nan Ellingson, one of the delegates to the 1972 constitutional convention, said that ultimately the convention adopted the no-aid amendment in part "to protect religious liberty" and that the no-aid provision was "never even a threshold issue." Regardless of their origins, experts on both sides of the issue agreed that the practical effect of Tuesday's decision is to neuter these state constitutional provisions, which u

West Bank Olive Farmers Face an Uneasy Harvest

Palestinian farmers in the West Bank are worried that their annual olive harvest will be disrupted by Jewish settlers living nearby. Israel's high court has ordered the army and police to protect the farmers against settler violence. In recent years, the harvest — a mainstay of the local economy — has been disrupted by sabotage and violent attacks by Jewish settlers living on the hilltops above the orchards. Farmer Bejass Beni Jabr can't let his sheep wander on most of his land because he says the settlers will open fire. "We live in a big prison," he says. "We are surrounded from all sides by settlers. Whichever direction we take, we are going to get shot." This corner of the West Bank, east of the volatile city of Nablus, has been a battleground for years. In 2002, Palestinian gunmen entered the nearby Jewish settlement of Itamar and killed five people. Villagers insisted the gunmen weren't from Yanun. But in the weeks that followed, Jewish settlers burned the Yanun village's generator, defecated in the water supply and severely beat a number of villagers. Yanun briefly gained notoriety as the first village to be almost completely abandoned during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising. Four years later, most of the villagers have returned to their homes. Rashed Maraar keeps chickens in addition to his olive harvest. He says one reason the village has repopulated is the constant presence of Western peace activists who live in Yanun year-round. Some are predicting a big olive crop this year, but Maraar is not optimistic. He says that even if the Israeli army and police obey the court order to prevent violence during the harvest, the damage has already been done: He's been too afraid of settler attacks to tend to his trees all season. "I don't expect my trees to give me a good harvest because I have not taken care of them," he says. Just over the hill from Yanun is the village of Beit Furik, another frequent target for the settlers from Itamar, Elon Morei and their outposts. At the top of the village, on a windswept hillside, Fawzan Nasassiri, 67, waves at some 20 acres of trees that he can't harvest. Nasassiri, whose brother was shot and killed while harvesting his olives near here a few years ago, says he probably won't take the risk this year; he'll let his crop go to waste. "I cry when I think of my land," the farmer says. "It only brings grief to my heart that I cannot get near it. My children and I worked very, very hard to replant the land that they burnt." According to Israeli army figures cited by The Jerusalem Post, about 2,400 olive trees have been burned, uprooted or otherwise destroyed in the West Bank since 2003. This year, under court order to protect the harvest, Israeli authorities have threatened to bar not only the worst known settler offenders but the leaders of liberal Israeli groups that try to help the farmers get their olives harvested. Arik Ascherman, director of one of those groups, Rabbis for Human Rights, says he'd be delighted if the army would do its job and his presence weren't needed, but his group is planning to send volunteers to the West Bank just in case. ANDREA SEABROOK, host: In the West Bank, Palestinian farmers are preparing for the annual olive harvest, a mainstay of the local economy in many villages. The harvest has been disrupted in recent years by sabotage and violent attacks by Jewish settlers living on the hilltops above the orchards. But this year, the Israeli High Court ordered the Israeli Army and police to protect the farmers against settler violence. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports. PETER KENYON: Farmer Bajas Beni Jabr(ph) doesn't break a sweat in the warm, late summer afternoon sun as he shifts his dusty herd of sheep from one corner of his yard to another. The sheep don't seem to mind much, but the sudden movement startles a donkey tethered nearby. (Soundbite of a donkey) KENYON: There's precious little plant life in the immediate circle around Beni Jabr's house in the village of Yanun. Much better grazing land stretches out before him in all directions, along with hundreds of his olive trees that dot the hillsides. But he can't let his sheep wander on most of his land because, he says, the settlers on the surrounding hilltops will open fire. Mr. BAJAS BENI JABR (Palestinian Farmer): (Through translator) We live in a big prison. We are surrounded from all sides by settlers, which every direction we take, we are going to get shot. KENYON: This corner of the West Bank, east of the volatile city of Nablus, has been a battleground for years. In 2002, Palestinian gunmen entered the nearby Jewish settlement of Itamar and killed five people. Villagers insisted the gunmen weren't from Yanun, but in the weeks that followed, settlers burned the village generator, defecated in the water supply, and severely beat a number of villagers. Yanun briefly gained notoriety as the first village to be almost completely abandoned during the second

Songs We Love: Michael McDonald, 'Find It In Your Heart'

Who would doubt that Michael McDonald could still sound groovy and relevant while ushering the musical feel of 1978 into 2017? Only a fool. Within seconds of the opening "oohs" and warm, groovy vibes of McDonald's new song, "Find It In Your Heart," your heart will be overjoyed. The opening notes call up immediate memories of some of his much-beloved Doobie Brothers classics, like "What A Fool Believes" and "Takin' It To The Streets," as well as some of of his incredible harmony singing with Steely Dan on "Peg" and "Bad Sneakers." "Find It In Your Heart" has the all the quintessential ingredients of a McDonald classic: the warm Rhodes, drummer Shannon Forrest's seductive, soulful lock-step playing, Michael Landau's tasty wah-wah guitar licks and George Benson-esque solos, the signature sax solo by Tom Scott — and oh, those sweet, sweet harmonies. The song also proves that, four decades in, McDonald is still a songwriting sophisticate. Wide Open -- his first new studio album since 2008, out Sept. 15 — sees McDonald putting away the R&B songbook, eschewing the covers of his last few records in favor of all-new, original material. The album includes a who's who of excellent players, including bassists Willie Weeks and Marcus Miller, guitarists Warren Haynes and Robben Ford, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and keyboardist David Paich. Both old and new generations of Michael McDonald fans recently came together when he collaborated with Kenny Loggins and jazz-funk bassist Thundercat on the sultry "Show You The Way," from Thundercat's album Drunk. An appearance at Coachella likely brought the singer-songwriter to new audiences whose parents were raised on many of those Doobie and Steely Dan hits. But Wide Open may be the album that makes the kids call their folks and say, "Hey, have you heard of this new artist, Michael McDonald?" Wide Open comes out Sept. 15 via BMG.

Months After Trump Pardon, Ex-Sheriff Arpaio To Run For Senate

Rachel Martin talks to Joe Arpaio, 85, the controversial former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., who is known for his hardline approach on detention and immigration.

From A Performance Saturday

From a performance Saturday at the Sarasota Music Festival, clarinetist Charles Neidich (NEYE-ditch), conductor Paul Wolfe and the Festival Orchestra perform the Introduction, Theme and Variations by Gioacchino Rossini. Recorded at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota. (WUSF, Tampa)

Chris Christie's Surprising Role Model For Minority Outreach

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he can teach national Republicans an important lesson: If they want to appeal to voters beyond their traditional conservative base, they need to go to where those voters are. As he made the rounds of Sunday's Washington talk shows, Christie explained his rationale to Fox News' Chris Wallace: "You know, at the end of the day, Chris, here's what people in Washington, D.C., don't understand," he said. "If you want to win a vote by that kind of margin, if you want to attract the majority of the Hispanic vote, if you want to nearly triple your African-American vote, you need to show up. You need to go into those neighborhoods. You need to campaign in places. "I'll give you a perfect example, Chris. I did a town hall meeting while I was governor about a year and a half ago in the city of Irvington, N.J., in Essex County. I got 4.7 percent of the vote there in 2009. There were more people in the church [where] I did the town hall than voted for me in 2009. That's the way the Republican Party will make itself more relevant to a whole much broader group of folks. And the fact is, that's exactly what Ronald Reagan would have done — and did do — when he was campaigning for president." Really? Reagan did that, some might ask incredulously? Actually, he did. The Reagan many people remember is not the Reagan who did outreach to minority voters. Rather, it was the one who made a 1980 campaign appearance in Philadelphia, Miss., not far from where three young civil rights activists were murdered in 1964, and spoke of supporting "states' rights," a term linked to antebellum slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Reagan is also remembered by some for his use of "welfare queen" as a go-to example of dependency and for not supporting a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, though he eventually signed the legislation into law. And he was something of a dead-ender when it came to supporting apartheid South Africa. But Reagan did indeed make a play for African-Americans in 1980. True, he turned down an invitation to speak to the NAACP that year, but he accepted one from the National Urban League, where he got a polite reception. (According to exit polls that year, Reagan received 14 percent of the black vote and 37 percent of the Hispanic vote, doing somewhat worse with blacks but much better with Hispanics than President Gerald Ford in 1976.) In a little remembered incident during the 1980 campaign, Reagan also visited the South Bronx. That reception was less polite than the urban league's, to put it mildly. He wound up being heckled and reflecting some of that anger right back at the locals. Which helps to explain why politicians, especially those who run for president, tend not to venture into politically hostile territory. There's always the risk it could backfire. Christie had his own such moment. For instance, at a town hall-style meeting at a black Baptist church in Paterson, N.J., earlier this year, Christie responded to a black heckler who repeatedly shouted, "Fix the public schools" by saying, "Yeah, I hear you, boy, I hear you." Some Christie critics posted the video as evidence of the governor's racial insensitivity at best. But many African-American voters gave Christie the benefit of the doubt, finding him guilty of nothing more than using a common exclamation at an awkward moment. That conclusion was most likely aided by Christie's adroit handling of that particular heckler with respect and patience. It helps explain how the governor won 51 percent of the Hispanic vote and 21 percent of the black vote. Christie's argument that such a strategy could work nationally remains to be seen. Christie had the benefit of being a very popular governor during those town hall meetings of which he's so proud. In a presidential race he would have to first make it through primaries that are likely to force him to move rightward. He might be forced to take positions on issues that might make outreach to voters beyond the GOP base more difficult. Also, a presidential candidate's most precious commodity is time. Visiting voters unlikely to vote for you comes at the expense of campaigning among those most likely to vote for you. In a national hunt for 270 electoral votes, especially a race that's close, that could be critical. But if Christie were the GOP nominee, his outreach strategy could force his Democratic counterpart to fight for voters previously thought to be safely in the Democratic Party column. And it's a good day for any presidential campaign when it can get the opposing party's candidate to spend time and money on defense. Meanwhile, Christie is acting on a reality many in his party are still just paying lip service to. While Reagan didn't need minority votes to win the White House, Republicans going forward will increasingly need to attract such voters. In that respect, Christie's ahead of the curve. By the way, the cynical might say that Reagan's South Bronx visit had more to do with underscor

'New Moon' Etiquette: How To Attend A Packed Show Like A Pro

By any measure, this weekend's showings of The Twilight Saga: New Moon are already a big event. Fans all over have packed movie houses and camped out to be first in line to see the second installment in the bloodsucking series. In fact, online ticket seller Fandango has already reported selling out more than 1000 midnight shows last night. How big could it get? The first film took in nearly $70 million in its opening weekend, and some insiders think New Moon's first weekend could top $100 million. If you want to go, you might want to book in advance, because you might otherwise be redirected into a showing of something with no vampires at all. Unfortunately, when it's this crowded, even if you're lucky enough to have a ticket, that doesn't guarantee a smooth moviegoing experience. With this potential for insanity in mind, I sought some advice from film and TV writer Mark Jordan Legan on how to handle the chaos inside the theater. 1. To optimize your seating, arrive early and make nice with the staff. Often, if the line is long, there's a mad rush for seats when the doors actually open. Legan says that if you can, you might try to curry favor with an usher. Maybe you can teach him some hilarious New Moon limerick you've created in your spare time, and "Boom, he might open the other door for you." Maybe even better, you could get a heads-up right before the side door to the theater opens. 2. Run back and straight to the middle as quickly as you can. Legan says that most people are like bad drivers on the freeway who hold up everyone else around them. Avoid them by heading straight for the center middle and staking out ground there. If necessary, feel free to go into a row and start climbing over the seats. The last thing you want is to be stuck in the front row, and you should do whatever it takes -- within reason, of course -- to avoid that outcome. Shushing and texting, after the jump. Read More >> 3. Be civil but forceful when asking people to slide over to free up a pair of seats. Legan acknowledges that this can be tricky, since some people act like you're asking them to "pick up an entire picnic they have on the ground in front of them." Don't be swayed by their reluctance: what's a minor inconvenience for them makes all the difference in your moviegoing experience. 4. Forget shushing. Shushing can evoke "library or Catholic school memories" for your neighbors in the theater, leading to nasty flashbacks and a negative reaction, says Legan. You need to verbalize -- if you're feeling timid, maybe make your companion the bad guy. "My friend here finds your talking very annoying" is a phrase that works well in this instance, provided your friend is willing to have the popcorn directed at his head instead of yours. 5. No texting. Seriously, no texting. Yes, your cell phone may be silenced, but that doesn't mean that huge glowing light isn't annoying people in your row and other rows, and probably your own companion, who is in the best position to kick you, after all. Current theater etiquette requires you to both lower your voice and keep your light emissions to a minimum. To hear the advice Legan gave me about taking my wife to New Moon this weekend, check out the latest What Would Rob Do? podcast below.

Oregon School Boards Students from Remote Areas

In Oregon, a public boarding school houses and educates not the children of the wealthy but kids who live on ranches or other isolated rural communities in the state.

Pacquiao, Mayweather Camps Spar Over Drug Testing

Robert Siegel discusses a welterweight title bout between two of the best fighters in the world with sportswriter Stefan Fatsis.

Thibaudet plays Debussy

A couple of short piano preludes by Claude Debussy begin the hour. We hear pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet play, first, the "Bohemian Dance," followed by "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair."

The Marketplace Report: Grasso Fallout

NPR's Alex Chadwick talks with <EM>Marketplace</EM> correspondent Tess Vigeland about the fallout from the resignation of Dick Grasso, who was the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

Activists In Raqqa, Syria, Use Social Media To Document ISIS Violence

NPR's Kelly McEvers talks to the director and co-founder of "Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently," a group of activists who use social media to document atrocities committed by ISIS.

Fire Destroys Rural Clinic Hit Hard by Katrina

On Jan. 1, Dr. Regina Benjamin's rural health clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala., was destroyed by a fire. The clinic was preparing to reopen after repairs that followed severe damage from Hurricane Katrina. The doctor tells Debbie Elliott what she'll do next.

NPR Music Offers Exclusive 24-Hour 'Fetty Wap' Album Stream

FETTY WAP ALBUM STREAM AVAILABLE NOW EXCLUSIVELY AT NPR MUSIC NOTE: Embed Available With NPR Audio Player September 24, 2015; Washington, DC – For the next 24 hours, Fetty Wap's anticipated new record is available to hear in full at NPR Music as part of the signature First Listen series. The self-titled debut (out Friday) comes in a breakout year for Paterson, NJ rapper Willie Maxwell and includes 20 tracks with chart-topping singles "Trap Queen," "My Way" and "679" in the mix. "There's something burnished and classy in his harmonies," writes Frannie Kelley, the host of NPR Music's hip-hop interviews show Microphone Check. "The melodies aren't fancy, but they sound like they've been here forever, like Jerome Kern, like high heels, like chrome." Read her full write-up now at NPR Music. In addition to Fetty Wap, NPR Music is offering streams of these unreleased albums: Deafheaven's New Bermuda, Eagles Of Death Metal's Zipper Down, Born Ruffians' RUFF, Wavves' V, Autre Ne Veut's Age Of Transparency, and Childbirth's Women's Rights. To hear these records, visit the First Listen series page at NPR.org/Music, where at the end of each week NPR Music publishes a new batch of album previews. Contact NPR Media Relations: Caitlin SandersEmail: mediarelations (at) npr.org

Our Parasites And Vermin Reveal Secrets Of Human History

They look like tiny tubes with stumpy legs. They can nestle snugly into pores, right at the base of small hairs. And there are probably hundreds on your face. We're taking about Demodex folliculorum, the mite that calls your hair follicles home. "Probably if you've ever gotten a gross gunky plug out of a nose pore, that's what it looks like," says Michelle Trautwein, an evolutionary biologist at the California Academy of Sciences. "When you get to know them, they're actually pretty adorable." Trautwein and her colleagues have peeled the mites off microscope slides that they super-glued to their faces. They've scraped the little guys off people's foreheads with the curved end of a bobby pin. They've even ferreted out the insects' DNA from tiny spatulas of face grease." They've probably been with us since the origin of our species," she says. And Trautwein thinks the mites could help answer questions about human migrations through history, perhaps more than genetics or archaeology could alone because of how they're shared among humans. The mites are the latest in a not-so-regal lineage of parasites and vermin that could help pin down how human ancestors behaved and moved across the continents. When archaeological evidence is scant or human genetic data is too messy, sometimes these millennia-old frenemies — from rats to tapeworms — are the next best option. "You don't share them with strangers when you give them a hug hello," she says of the mites. They're mostly shared between sexual partners and members of the same nuclear family. Because of that tight bond, the mites can be a pretty good measure of where people came from. In an exploratory study published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers collected mites from the faces of about 70 people with different origins, most of them living in the U.S., and sequenced the mites' mitochondrial DNA. They found that people from different continents harbor different varieties of mites on their faces. Even generations after a family leaves one geographic region for another, Trautwein and her colleagues found, their descendants can retain those original mite populations. Think of them as family heirlooms. "Basically, as all humans evolved in Africa our mites evolved with us," says Trautwein. "And as populations became isolated they evolved into their own lineages, just like humans did." "They are potentially gross and they do infect us and take things from us, but to understand ourselves, it's a really great potential tool to use," says George Perry, an anthropologist and biologist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved with the study. "It's an amazing, largely untapped area to learn about our own history." Perry's group is researching how tapeworms, which live in the intestines of mammals, could help show when hominins — human ancestors and their relatives — started consistently eating meat. The archaeological evidence is pretty meager — just a few scratched up animal bones from a couple of million years ago. It's assumed that human ancestors first got tapeworms when they domesticated pigs and cows sometime in the last 12,000 years and started routinely eating undercooked meat, which is how the worms would transfer over. But, he says, the three species of tapeworm that currently inhabit humans are actually most similar to those of lions and hyenas. Perry says the similarity suggests that hominins picked them up long before the domestication of herbivores, when they were consistently chowing down on the same animals as lions and hyenas. He's now studying tapeworm adaptations to heat stress to see if it yields hints about when humans started cooking meat. Rodents also have been useful tools in piecing together human travel routes. Rats helped corroborate the hypothesis that indigenous Taiwanese people first colonized Polynesia about 3,000 years ago. There isn't much evidence left of the first generations of people to colonize New Zealand, but there is archaeological evidence of a rat population that arrived on the island and was well established by about 700 years ago. That suggests that humans brought them there on their boats. Lice might take the cake when it comes to vermin that have revealed the most snippets of human history. Scientists have used louse DNA to determine when human ancestors lost their fur and started wearing clothes. Human ancestors picked up pubic lice from gorilla ancestors some 4 million years ago, meaning that by that point the islands of head hair and pubic hair were far enough apart to provide two different environments for their parasite guests. This change suggests to anthropologists that our modern way of regulating body temperature may have come about early in our evolutionary history. (It also suggests some unexpected cavorting between gorilla and human ancestors.) DNA analysis showed that body lice diverged genetically from head lice somewhere between 30,000 and 114,000 years ago, g

No Regrets for Delta Pump Shutdown

Water pumps in the Delta are back on today, but at very low levels. State water and wildlife officials are watching closely to see whether resumed operations at the state pumps are hurting endangered delta smelt. The pumps were shut down for more than a week to protect the tiny fish from getting sucked into them. This crisis is putting momentum behind a list of delta habitat restoration projects that have been gathering dust for years.

Parting Words: On History

Host Andrea Seabrook shares some parting words from poet and author Robert Penn Warren: "Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory. For if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake." ANDREA SEABROOK, host: Now, here's a man who knows a lot about politics, or at least he sounds like he does - John Hodgman. You might have seen him on "The Daily Show" or in these commercials. (Soundbite of TV ad) Mr. JUSTIN LONG (Actor): Hello. I'm a Mac. Mr. JOHN HODGMAN (Author, "More Information Than You Require"): And I'm a PC. SEABROOK: Hodgman is the PC guy. When he is not on TV, Hodgman is an expert. At what? We're not quite sure. But his latest book tackles American presidents, the truth and the fiction. OK, a lot of fiction. And so, I asked him to meet me in a place where we could talk about our nation's executives. We're standing here in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. Mr. HODGMAN: Yeah, what is this? Some sort of museum? SEABROOK: I'm standing here with John Hodgman, who is an expert on many things. His new book is called "More Information Than You Require." Mr. HODGMAN: That is accurate. It is much more than you require. SEABROOK: So, let's start with George Washington. Apparently, according... Mr. HODGMAN: Here, you have the very famous Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. You know, from the beginning, the founding fathers were not sure what the presidency was going to be. John Adams wanted a citizen who had no particular special powers, such as the ability to make things invisible. They were against that. Whereas his rival, of course, Hamilton was very much an authoritarian, and he wanted a president who would be akin to a king and would involve whoever held the position having hemophilia, because that is the royal sign. SEABROOK: Which one was the noted - most noted in your book for being large. Mr. HODGMAN: Oh, Taft. Oh, yes. William Howard Taft. Now, see, here's the thing... SEABROOK: Oh, my goodness. This is a beautiful painting. It has... Mr. HODGMAN: And it's a beautiful painting. He was our 27th president. SEABROOK: He's got a very nice mustache...big, full mustache. Mr. HODGMAN: Well, see, here's the thing - here's the thing about Taft. SEABROOK: Yes, OK. Mr. HODGMAN: You get to Taft, and what do you think? Gigantic fat man. Come on. We all know that he got stuck in his own bathtub. OK. We all know that he had to get a new bathtub, and then he got stuck in that one, because he filled it with cream cheese, and he couldn't eat his way out, and he got stuck again. Fine. We all know that he outgrew his desk in his office, and he had to have a resting slab. And he kept a bowl of live frogs next to him that he would eat as he held Cabinet meetings. We all know that the Oval Office used to be the Round Office until he got in there. Fine. Look, can we just lay off? He wasn't a bad man. SEABROOK: Right. What would be the purpose of using any of this? Mr. HODGMAN: He just happened to be large, and it completely overshadows - his fatness completely overshadows the fact that he has a hilarious mustache. (Soundbite of laughter) SEABROOK: He does have a fine mustache. Mr. HODGMAN: I know, that's why they called him Lardstache. (Soundbite of laughter) SEABROOK: This portrait here of FDR. Mr. HODGMAN: Yeah, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. SEABROOK: It's very interesting. Mr. HODGMAN: A lot of people don't know that that's his name, which is now FDR, that is what it stands for. Yeah. SEABROOK: Oh, really. FDR. Yeah. This portrait of FDR, I should say, is... Mr. HODGMAN: Yes. SEABROOK: ...is quite interesting, they show his hands in several different poses at the bottom of the portrait. Mr. HODGMAN: Yes. This is the famous 1945 portrait of FDR by Douglas Chandler. SEABROOK: He's wearing a cape. Mr. HODGMAN: Yes. He's showing off his famous Batman cape, that he later wore at Yalta. And, of course, at the bottom, you see all of his replacement hands. FDR, you see there, three or four pairs of hands there. FDR had - could replace his hands at will. As you know, he was one of the nine U.S. presidents who had a hook for a hand. And from time to time, you know, when he had to make public appearances, he would replace the hook with a model hand, and these were some of the fake model hands that he used. SEABROOK: I wonder if you could give voters who are little worried about going to polls, about how the voting machine might work or whether their votes will be counted... Mr. HODGMAN: Why would you think I know anything about that? (Soundbite of laughter) SEABROOK: I just... Mr. HODGMAN: I think the main concern that people have with electronic voting machines is that, when they touch the machine, they're going to get a terrible electric shock. SEABROOK: Is that what they're worried about? Mr. HODGMAN: That's the main concern, and that's going to happ

Shani Davis, Shaun White Defend Olympic Gold

Two American men successfully defended their Olympic titles in Vancouver Wednesday night. Shani Davis became the first speedskater to win the men's 1,000 meters twice. Snowboarder Shaun White won the halfpipe. White thrilled the crowd by capping his second run with his signature trick, the risky 3½ twists and two flips of the Double McTwist 1260.

Lieberman Cites Reasons for Supporting McCain

Although he's an independent from Connecticut who caucuses with Senate Democrats, Sen. Joe Lieberman would not rule out an appearance at the Republican Party convention. "I believe in John McCain," Lieberman tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "If he asks me, sure, I'd consider it." But would speaking at the rival party's convention constitute a de facto breach with the Democrats? It would not be as large of a breach as the ruinous effect of political partisanship, Lieberman says. "To me, the partisanship that has grown more bitter and divisive over the years here in Washington is the problem that Washington has to solve before it can solve the problems that people have to worry about every day." Agreeing with McCain on the Iraq War Lieberman notes that he and McCain have worked together on many issues: the creation of the 9/11 Commission, legislation on lobbying and ethics, and on climate change. "He was the first Republican to really step out and do something effective on climate change," Lieberman says of McCain. But perhaps no other area binds the senators more than foreign policy. The two men agree "on almost every aspect," Lieberman says. The Iraq war has been a particularly defining issue for Lieberman, since he says his support of the war cost him the 2006 Democratic primary in his home state of Connecticut. Lieberman went on to win re-election to the Senate anyway, by running as an independent. Looking Ahead to January If the Democrats pick up additional Senate seats in the November election, it's possible that party members may no longer need Lieberman to caucus with them — particularly given that he has campaigned with McCain and could end up as a speaker at the GOP convention. And if that were to happen, it's unclear whether Lieberman would be able to hold on to his leadership positions as chair of the Homeland Security Committee and as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee. But Lieberman sets such thoughts aside. "The first thing that I've decided is that I'm going to do what is right. I'm not going to calculate what effect it will have on me in the future," he says. "I have been a Democrat all my life, and I remain a Democrat. I ask to be judged on my record."

Scooter Sharing On The Seine: Paris Grapples With Influx Of Electric Vehicles

It&#8217;s been more than a year since electric scooters first arrived in Paris. The city&#8217;s mayor recently described the situation on Parisian streets as "not far from anarchy," but the city&#8217;s 20,000 scooters have proved popular among tourists and locals alike. Here & Now&#8216;s Robin Young talks with Recode&#8217;s Kara Swisher (@karaswisher), who took scooters for a ride in Paris. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

What Universe Is This, Anyway?

Let's take a walk on the wild side and assume, for the sake of argument, that our universe is not the only one; let's say there are many others, possibly infinitely many, "out there." The totality of this bizarre ensemble is what cosmologists call the "multiverse," a hypothesis that sounds more mythic than scientific, a conceptual troublemaker that inspires some and outrages others. It all started in the 1980s, when physicists Andrei Linde, from Stanford University, and Alex Vilenkin, from Tufts University, independently proposed that if the universe underwent a very fast expansion early on in its existence — what is called an inflationary expansion — then our universe is not the only one. This inflationary phase presumably happened at one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the supposed beginning of time. You may ask, How come these scientists feel comfortable talking about times so ridiculously small? Wasn't the universe ridiculously dense also? Well, the truth is we don't really have a theory that is able to describe physics under these conditions. What we do have are extrapolations based on what we know today. The supposition here is that we can apply essentially the same physics at energies that are about one trillion times higher than the ones we can probe at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the giant accelerator in Switzerland, housed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Not quite the same physics, but with similar actors. The most popular protagonist of the inflationary expansion is a scalar field, an entity with properties inspired by the Higgs boson, the one discovered at the LHC in July 2012. (The reader will remember the particle with the unfortunate nickname "God particle.") We don't know if there were scalar fields at the cosmic infancy. But it's reasonable to suppose so. When we don't have data, the best that we can do is to build reasonable hypotheses that can be tested by future experiments. Science needs to take risks to advance. This is why everyone got so excited with the recent results from the BICEP 2 group: they claim to have found a clear signature from inflationary expansion, something that would be very difficult to explain in any other way. We discussed the signature itself last week. Today, I want to explore what it has to say about the multiverse, if anything. To see how we model inflation with a scalar field, picture a ball rolling downhill. As long as the ball is at a certain height from the bottom, it will roll down. It has stored energy. At the bottom, we set its energy to zero. We do the same with the scalar field. As long as it is displaced from its minimum, it will fill the universe with its energy. In regions of space large enough, this energy prompts the fast expansion of space that is the signature of inflation. What Linde and Vilenkin did was to add quantum physics to this picture. In the world of the quantum, everything is jittery; everything vibrates endlessly. This is at the root of quantum uncertainty, an idea that flies in the face of common sense. So, back to inflation, as the field is rolling downhill it is also experiencing these quantum jumps, which can kick it either further down or up. Here comes the twist: when a sufficiently large region of space is filled with the field with a certain energy, it will expand with a rate related to that energy. Think of it as a bathtub with water at a given temperature. Different regions of space will have the field at different heights, just as different bathtubs could have water at different temperatures. The result is a plethora of inflating regions, each with its own rate. Very quickly, the universe would consist of myriad inflating regions, that grow unaware of the surroundings: the universe morphs into a multiverse. Further, even within each region quantum fluctuations may drive a sub-region to inflate. The picture, then, is one of an eternally replicating cosmos, filled with bubbles within bubbles. Ours would be but one of them. Welcome to the multiverse! This is all very nice and inspiring. But is it science? To be scientific, a hypothesis needs to be testable. Well, can you test the multiverse? The answer, in a strict sense, is "no." Each of these inflating (or contracting regions, there are also failed universes) is outside our cosmic horizon, the region that delimits how far light has traveled since the beginning of time. As such, we can't see these cosmoids or receive any signals from them. The best that we can hope for is to find some signal that one of our neighboring universes bruised our own space in the past, a sort of cosmic collision. If this happened, we would see some specific patterns in the sky, more precisely, in the radiation left over after hydrogen atoms formed some 400,000 years after the Bang. So far, none of these signals have been found, and the chances are, quite frankly, remote. We are thus stuck with a plausible scientific idea that seems untestable.

U.S.-Backed Kurdish Forces Launch 'Final Push' Against ISIS In Syria

U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces said Sunday they are locked in a fierce battle to take over the final territory controlled by ISIS in eastern Syria. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by U.S. air attacks, have successfully overtaken the terror group, which gained control of large swaths of northeastern Syria in 2014, NPR's Lama Al-Arian reports for our Newscast unit. The assault began on Saturday after almost 20,000 people were evacuated from the ISIS-held area in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour along the Iraqi border, according to SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali. Nearly 600 ISIS fighters remain inside the two villages that comprise the enclave, and many of them are believed to be foreigners, he said. "IS counterattack was foiled at 4 am this morning," Bali tweeted on Sunday morning. "Heaving fighting is going on inside the last village at the moment." Al-Arian reports that despite efforts to help civilians flee the area, hundreds are reportedly still stuck inside. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors human rights abuses in Syria, said SDF forces are moving "cautiously" because of ISIS-planted mines. While Bali is describing the offensive as the "final battle" against ISIS, the extremist group still holds some territory in the area south of Damascus largely controlled by the Syrian government, according to Reuters. ISIS previously controlled a huge section of Syria and Iraq, declaring a caliphate in 2014 and making billions of dollars from oil revenue, extortion and kidnapping. Since 2011, Syria has been embroiled in a violent civil war, which created a safe haven for extremists and allowed ISIS to spread quickly. But the fall of two major cities – Syria's Raqqa and Iraq's Mosul – in 2017 marked the beginning of the group's loss of ground. U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared leader of ISIS, is reportedly alive and suspected to be hiding in Iraq. The weekend offensive by SDF forces comes after President Trump said on Wednesday he expected to announce as early as next week that the U.S.-led coalition had recovered all of the area previously held by ISIS. Trump is moving ahead with his plan to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, despite warnings from U.S. military and security experts that militants in Iraq and Syria could prepare an insurgency if U.S.-led forces back off. The head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, cautioned against a quick withdrawal last week, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee, "the fight against ISIS and violent extremists is not over and our mission has not changed." "The coalition's hard-won battlefield gains can only be secured by maintaining a vigilant offensive against the now-largely dispersed and disaggregated ISIS that retains leaders, fighters, facilitators, resources and the profane ideology that fuels their efforts," Votel added. The withdrawal of U.S. forces could also spell trouble for their closest ally in the region, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), who Turkey considers a terrorist group. The Syrian government has said that the areas controlled by the Kurds would eventually revert to government control. A U.S. official told Reuters that the U.S. military is planning to completely withdraw from Syria by the end of April.

Animation Pairs With Soul-Crushing Isolation In 'Anomalisa'

The new film by Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman uses stop-motion animation to tell a quasi-love story. Critic David Edelstein calls <em>Anomalisa</em><em> </em>amazing — but also creepy and, ultimately, unsatisfying.

Egypt Air Flight #990

The U.S. Coast Guard says it has given up hope of finding any survivors from the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990. Rear Admiral Richard Larrabee says investigators have heard "pings" from one of the Boeing 767's so-called "black boxes" -- either the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder. The Coast Guard has also recovered a "significant" piece of wreckage of the aircraft floating in the water off the coast of Nantucket. U.S. Navy recovery ships are on their way to the crash site, but will not be able to begin operations until late tomorrow. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports from Newport, Rhode Island.

NPR: 05-13-2011 Fresh Air

Stories: 1) Gary Shteyngart: A 'Love Story' In A Sad Future 2) 'Bridesmaids': A Raunchy, Hilarious Chick Flick 3) Early Impulse: A 50-Year Legacy In Jazz

After Escaped Convict Is Shot In New York, Police Hunt For Accomplice

A day after Richard Matt, one of two escaped inmates from a prison in upstate New York was shot and killed by police, a weeks-long manhunt, which has yet to track down accomplice David Sweat, has gone into overdrive. Helicopters, search dogs and hundreds of officers are scouring an area about 30 miles away from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico, speaking at a news conference late Friday, said of Matt's death that authorities would have preferred "to capture them alive." Matt had been "verbally challenged," he said. Authorities "told him to put up his hands. And at that time, he was shot when he didn't comply." A 20-gauge shotgun was found on Matt, though he did not fire on officers, D'Amico said, according to The Associated Press. D'Amico said that a tip from the public was crucial in tracking down Matt. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that a team of federal Customs and Border Protection agents found Matt in the woods near Malone, N.Y., after he fired at a camping trailer and then fled on foot. D'Amico said that although Sweat has yet to be spotted, evidence was found about a week ago indicating he and Matt had burglarized a cabin inside the search area. The New York Times writes: "On Friday night, officers closed in on the other inmate, David Sweat, 35, who was believed to be penned inside a perimeter of law enforcement officers, Superintendent Joseph A. D'Amico of the New York State Police said at the news conference. "The officers had not seen Mr. Sweat, but they believed that he had been near Mr. Matt when Mr. Matt shot at the camping trailer, officials said."

Tech Week: Voice Mail Hang-Ups, Apple Pay And Zuckerberg's Chinese

It's the weekend, which means it's time to look back on the week in technology that was. As your handy NPR One listening app says, here we go... ICYMI Please Do Not Leave Voice Mail: As part of our ongoing #newboom series, Rachel Rood reports on how annoying voice mail is to millennials. If it's important enough, just text me, younger generations say. Online Gaming And Women: The Pew Research Center released its first ever study on online harassment and found that there's one online space where people don't perceive women and men are treated equally — gaming. In light of the ongoing, sprawling #Gamergate crisis, it probably surprises no one. The Big Conversation Apple Pay Debuts: With Apple's new mobile payment system, a major shift away from credit cards and wallets could be happening. But as Aarti Shahani noted on Morning Edition, other vendors have tried this before and failed. iCloud And The Chinese?: A group claims the Chinese government supported an attack against users of Apple's iCloud service, and experts fear it may be a harbinger of more attacks to come. Curiosities BuzzFeed: Facebook Rebukes DEA For Impersonating Woman Online The company isn't happy the Drug Enforcement Administration created a phony Facebook page using a real woman's name, without her knowledge. Wired: New Tablet Case Recognizes Sign Language and Translates It Into Text A California startup is developing a case for tablets that can serve as a virtual interpreter for deaf people. NPR: Mark Zuckerberg Shows Off His Mandarin Chinese Skills During a visit to a Beijing university, the Facebook co-founder and CEO conducted a full Q&A in Mandarin Chinese. It's tonally cringe worthy, but he got a lot of props for his commitment.

Skies Aren't So Friendly For Many Flight Attendants

When JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater grabbed two beers and took an emergency exit slide earlier this week, he became an instant media sensation. He now also faces charges of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment -- but many flight attendants say they know where he was coming from. For veteran flight attendant Alin Boswell, the worst part of his job, by far, is boarding the plane. "Dealing with the bags, dealing with everything that goes on with families separated, whatever is occurring, is the most frustrating part," he says. Since the airlines started charging to check bags, he says, passengers have been trying to stuff as much as they can into the overhead bins. "And when room runs out, room runs out," he says. "We don't design the airplanes. We just work 'em." Reports say it was a fight over carry-on baggage that sent the JetBlue flight attendant over the edge. 'What Has Changed Are Societal Norms' Rene Foss has been a flight attendant for more than 25 years, "and I'm proud to say I haven't blown a chute yet," she says. But she says she's certainly had that I-just-want-out feeling. "My first reaction was, 'Wow. I can't believe somebody has finally done this,' " Foss said by cell phone from the Minneapolis airport, where she was waiting for a flight. Foss' mother was a flight attendant back when they were still called stewardesses. Foss says the job has gotten a lot less glamorous since then -- as has flying. Going through security is a pain, meals aren't free, even free peanuts are hard to come by. And good luck trying to find a pillow. "Sometimes the flight attendant is just the recipient of all the terrible things that have happened throughout the trip, and that's a kind of a tough spot to be in," she says. And she's been in that spot many times. David Castelveter, a spokesman for the airline industry, says full flights and grumpy passengers are nothing new. "I think what has changed are societal norms, and there is a sense of expectation and entitlement by passengers," he says. "Sadly, it has made the challenge for our flight crews more difficult." A Harder Job Since Sept. 11 But it is a customer service business, and dealing with passengers is just part of the job. Veda Shook, the international vice president of the Association of Flight Attendants, is also a working flight attendant. How does she cope? "You just put on a smile and say, 'Yeah, I'll get right back to you,' " she says with a laugh. But seriously, she and others say, the job has gotten a lot harder since the Sept. 11 attacks. Flight attendants have more responsibilities, and many saw their wages and benefits cut as airlines struggled to stay in business. According to the flight attendants union, the average salary is $35,000 a year. For those starting out, it's more like $20,000. Boswell says he works more now, for less pay. "As the work rules changed, that means that you have to work longer days for fewer hours and more days just to get the same hours in," he says. But he still loves the job, because of the flexible schedule and the variety -- different co-workers and passengers all the time. He says he can't wait to get back in the sky to see if maybe, just maybe, the JetBlue "two beers and a slide" incident will inspire the passengers to be a little kinder. SCOTT SIMON, host: Like Sergeant Allen in Chicago, Steven Slater also made news for his displeasure with working conditions this week. He's that JetBlue flight attendant who grabbed a couple of brewskis and took an emergency exit slide straight into media stardom, but now faces charges of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, many flight attendants say that they understand Steven Slater's attitude. Unidentified Woman: Ladies and gentlemen, this will be a full flight. I do see a few roller boards in the upper bins, and the luggage is sticking out. You do need to get up, make sure that that luggage does close. TAMARA KEITH: For veteran flight attendant Alin Boswell, this is by far the worst part of his job - boarding the plane. Mr. ALIN BOSWELL: Dealing with the bags, dealing with everything that goes on with families separated, whatever is occurring, is the most frustrating part. KEITH: He says ever since the airlines started charging to check bags, passengers have been trying to stuff as much as they can into the overhead bins. Mr. BOSWELL: And when room runs out, room runs out. We don't design the airplanes, we just work 'em. KEITH: Reports are, it was a fight over carry-on baggage that sent the Jet Blue flight attendant over the edge. Rene Foss has been a flight attendant for 25 years. Ms. RENE FOSS (Flight Attendant): And I'm proud to say I haven't blown a chute yet. KEITH: But she says she's certainly had that feeling inside, like ahhh, I just want out. Ms. FOSS: My first reaction was, wow, I can't believe somebody has finally done this. KEITH: I caught up with her by cell phone from the Minneapolis airport, wh

War, Terror Threat Keep Nation's Capital on Edge

Security is tight -- and so are nerves -- in Washington, D.C. Government warnings of a heightened threat of terrorism take a toll, and the spirits of spring tourists are dampened by more than the weather. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.

Security Expert: 'ISIS And Al-Qaida Are Competing On A Worldwide Canvas'

Is ISIS expanding its territory into Bangladesh? NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Georgetown University's Bruce Hoffman, about terrorism's global footprint and the increasingly lethal attacks.

Some House Republicans Want To Push Through DACA Measure

NPR's Scott Simon talks to Republican Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado about the effort to force a vote on the Deffered Action for Childhood Arrivals — people brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Stigma And 'Fat Shaming' Can Fuel Depression And Increase Obesity

Two-thirds of American adults are considered overweight or obese, but despite their majority, bias against those with excess weight is common in places like school, the workplace and in the media. The stigma of obesity, researchers have found, has major implications for mental health, sometimes leading to stress, anxiety and depression. And while some believe stigma may act as a motivation tool for those trying to lose weight, studies have linked it to the increased likelihood of behaviors like binge eating. In the fifth and final installment of Here & Now&#8216;s series &#8220;America on the Scale,&#8221; host Jeremy Hobson speaks with Rebecca Puhl, who studies perceptions of obesity and the psychological affects of weight bias. She&#8217;s deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut. Interview Highlights How much of a stigma is there for overweight people? “We live in a society where there are very negative societal attitudes when it comes to individuals who have obesity, and we’ve been studying this for over 15 years now and we see substantial stigma and discrimination. This is a problem that occurs in many different domains of living, it occurs in the context of employment, in medical facilities, educational institutions, in interpersonal relationships with family members and friends and certainly also in the media.” On weight discrimination in the employment context “When we look at employment, we see that weight discrimination happens at virtually every stage of the employment cycle, from getting hired to getting fired. We see inequities in hiring practices where employees who are obese or overweight are much less likely of getting hired even if they have identical or even better qualifications of thinner individuals. And we also see that employees who have obesity are more likely to be fired or terminated from positions because of their weight.” Why do we have those stereotypes? “There are a number of reasons why we have this pervasive bias. One is that we live in a culture that has very stringent socio-cultural ideals of thinness. But we also live in a society that tends to oversimplify the causes of obesity. We believe mistakenly that obesity is simply an issue of laziness or willpower. We do not talk about the much more complex contributors to obesity, many of which are beyond personal control. Because the emphasis is often on personal responsibility, this often perpetuates blame and stigma of individuals. We also see very negative media portrayals being communicated about both children and adults who have obesity, so it’s not surprising we see such negative societal attitudes. The other reason why this remains pervasive is that it remains legal to discriminate on the basis of weight. Currently there are no federal laws that prohibit weight based discrimination in the U.S…There’s one state, Michigan enacted a law back in the 1970s, there are also a handful of local jurisdictions across the country that have passed laws, but for the vast majority of people who experience weight discrimination there is no legal recourse.” What effect does this have on people who are overweight? “We know from multiple studies that children and adults who experience stigma or bullying or discrimination because of their weight, are vulnerable to a range of negative psychological and physical health consequences. These include things like higher rates of depression and anxiety, low self-esteem, poor body image, even increased suicidal thoughts and behaviors. When it comes to physical health consequences we see that individuals who experience weight discriminations or stigma engage in unhealthy eating behaviors like binge eating or increased food consumption, avoidance of physical activity. One reason it’s important to identify and emphasize this is that there tends to be this societal perception that maybe stigma’s not such a bad thing when it comes to obesity, maybe stigma will somehow motivate people to lose weight or provide them with incentive to lose weight. But when we look at the research on this issue, we see the exact opposite is true, that in fact experiences of weight discrimination or stigma is actually reinforcing obesity and risk of weight gain so it’s actually contributing to this issue.” Does the language we use contribute to this issue? “When it comes to language about obesity, there are a lot of different personal preferences that people have. It’s important to identify that there is increasing movement in the field of medicine and public health to be using people-first language with obesity, which involves putting people first rather than labeling them by their disease or disability. This has become common standard for addressing people with different diseases or illnesses. Essentially it involves referring to people who have obesity or are affected by obesity, rather than an obese person.” What should we say if we want to address someone’s health base

Ex-Sen. Daschle: Health Bill A 'Giant Leap Forward'

One of the key players in the Senate's health care battle is actually a former player — Tom Daschle. Guy Raz talks with the former Senate Majority Leader about his role in swaying Nebraska's Ben Nelson and helping round up the 60 votes needed to pass the bill.

The Summer Of Music Documentaries: 'Gimme Shelter'

Discussing Gimme Shelter runs the risk of not discussing Gimme Shelter. The disaster that was the free concert held at the Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969 – enough of a generational buzzkill that it's often held up as the de facto end of the Sixties – has been picked apart so much over the past four decades that that just the very word "Altamont" remains shorthand for impending dread and catastrophe. And it was a catastrophe; you can watch it happening. The Stones promise a free concert without actually hammering out such details as where it will happen. They're still looking even as they're told that a hundred thousand kids are already on their way to San Francisco. One venue pulls out because the guy in charge senses that there are going to be serious problems. Someone else offers Altamont Speedway for the publicity, little realizing that, boy, will he still have that publicity 40 years later. And so forth, until the concert begins and the dominoes start to fall, as may have been inevitable once hippies and Hell's Angels were brought together en masse. So we all know about Altamont. That's history. But what about the movie? In a pre-Altamont press conference about halfway through, Mick Jagger says that the event isn't about the concert, that the concert is just going to be the excuse for whatever happens when everybody shows up. Everybody shows up, after the jump. In a similar way, Gimme Shelter isn't a concert film, except insofar as the central event is a concert and the central figures musicians. The music is largely incidental; it's omnipresent and inextricably linked to the tragic chaos, but the cameras are largely trained on the crowd, rather than the stage. Jefferson Airplane get a little more attention, but that's only because "The Other Side Of This Life" is interrupted twice by the Hell's Angels beating folks onstage (one of whom is Airplane singer Marty Balin, prompting Paul Kantner to shift into full hippie-snark mode). Even when the Stones are playing "Sympathy For The Devil" and especially the fateful "Under My Thumb," it's not the performances that are important. (PLEASE NOTE: The Jefferson Airplane clip is not safe for work, as a result of the fact that sometimes, in the '60s, ladies liked to not wear tops, so much. Or bras, so much. And that made it into the movie at one point, so buyer beware.) It's also not an investigation. Even when, in an echo of Blow-Up, the filmmakers freeze the image and call the Stones' attention to the outline of a gun in Meredith Hunter's hand in the instant before he's stabbed, there's none of the urgency that you'd expect from a probing attempt at untangling what happened in the chaos. So what is Gimme Shelter about, then? As best as I can tell, it's about witnessing. Throughout the film, the Stones are shown watching themselves (in concert footage and press conferences) and listening to themselves (in playback while recording what will become Sticky Fingers). At one point, we're even watching them watching themselves listening to themselves. Early on, the filmmakers ask Jagger for his reaction to Hunter's death, and all he can do is mutter a few variations on "It was horrible." There's probably not anything else to say, really; he looks shell-shocked, as he should be. But it seems awfully important that that this sequence is at the start of Gimme Shelter and not the end. The central fact of Altamont is laid out right from the start, rather than unfolding as the film progresses, and that turns every subsequent scene where the Stones are parked in front of video monitor into a confrontation with what they've wrought. It'd be easy to read all of this as anti-rock 'n' roll propaganda, a testimony to the evil that the music and its purveyors loose into society. But that doesn't account for the fact that directors Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin were chronicling the lead-up to Altamont well before it went irreversibly wrong. And the use of their footage in last fall's rerelease of Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! (the live album recorded at the Madison Square Garden concerts shown here) suggests that they would have been happy to simply capture one of the biggest bands in the world in its onstage element. But that's not the movie they found themselves with. Faced with a series of uncomfortable truths, they not only showed the world what happened and how, they made sure the participants themselves didn't look away. As DJ Stefan Ponek asks of his listeners who were at Altamont, "We want to know what you saw."

Asylum Seeker Stretches The Truth For A Better Life

Robert Siegel interviews writer Suketu Mehta about his recent article in <em>The New Yorker</em> magazine, called "The Asylum Seeker." Mehta follows Caroline, an African immigrant who applies for asylum in the United States. She embellishes her story, saying she had been raped in her home country to make her request for asylum more compelling.

Inside Iran's Revolutionary Court

Ali Shakeri, advisory board member for the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine, was tried in Iran's Revolutionary Court last October. He describes what it was like in a conversation with Melissa Block.

Twitter Files For Initial Public Offering

Twitter announced via Tweet Thursday that it's launching its long awaited initial public offering. It will be the most high profile IPO since Facebook went public last year. But Twitter hopes to avoid the mishaps that's marred Facebook's stock market debut.

Landmark Education Report Confirms that Schools Need More Money

A landmark series of 22 reports examining California's educational system was released this week. The two year, $3 million project, called "Getting Down to Facts," was commissioned by the governor, legislative leaders and the state education department. Many teachers and principals say the reports confirm what they've known all along: Schools with poor and minority students need more money. Educators at one struggling middle school in San Diego say that if it was up to them, they would spend all their money hiring more teachers to meet the needs of their diverse student population.

GM Needs Assistance For Its European Divisions

A top General Motors executive said if European governments don't pony up some aid, the company's European divisions could run out of cash. In addition, hundreds of thousands jobs could be at risk. GM has asked German state officials for billions in bailout funds. GM also has held talks with government in Britain, Spain and Poland.

Back To The '80s, This Time In A Hot Tub

Twentieth-century pop culture has produced some certifiably unlikely designs for the time machine — and if you can accept a blue London police call box or a DeLorean, then a hot tub isn't that much more of a stretch. Once you've cleared that hurdle, every other wild implausibility in Hot Tub Time Machine should make perfect sense. The film's writers revel in the kind of weird science typical of '80s sci-fi comedies from Bill & Ted to Buckaroo Banzai, sending three middle-aged sad sacks — and a tagalong 20-something loser-in-waiting — back to their mid-'80s salad days at a hard-partying ski resort. Once there, a cryptic repairman (the comedically rejuvenated Chevy Chase) hints to them that their only hope of getting back intact is to re-enact exactly what happened to them on the mountain one fateful night 24 years before. (There are no concerns here about that classic time-travel no-no of meeting your past self: In fact the three men seem to have inhabited the bodies of their younger selves, though to each other they still appear to be in their 40s.) The ski-resort setting — and the inclusion of the famous "Where's my two dollars?" line — immediately recall Better Off Dead, one of the angsty teen comedies that John Cusack made in the '80s, and it's those movies that soon prove the most important touchstones here. But if you've ever wondered what might have become of any of Cusack's teen characters, Hot Tub has a jarring revelation in store, one that runs counter to all that wide-eyed romantic idealism: The actor stars here as Adam, a self-centered insurance salesman who is going through a spectacularly petty breakup. Lloyd Dobler would not be pleased. While Cusack gets top billing, and Craig Robinson once again proves his comedic gifts, it's Rob Corddry who owns the movie as Lou, a sex-crazed, alcoholic former metalhead who is far more at home amid the Iron Maiden T-shirts and bulky cassette Walkmans of his past than he is in his troubled present. Some actors might try to build pathos into the character, but for Corddry there's no tragedy, great or small, that can't be played for laughs. Adam's nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) fills out the foursome as the voice of geeky modern-age reason, and it's ostensibly for his benefit that the rest of the group is desperately trying to re-create that long-ago night: In Back to the Future fashion, Jacob is flickering slowly out of existence, and the slightest deviation in the past could blink him out for good. The Back to the Future reference is completed by a brilliant scene-stealing turn from Crispin Glover, the original George McFly, who shows up here as the resort hotel's surly one-armed bellhop. This is a movie made by and for the people who grew up on '80s pop culture; they're all grown up now, so the rating has gone from PG to R, the jokes are necessarily raunchier, and the tone has a darker, more realistic edge. (As realistic as a plot based on Jacuzzi-bound temporal shifts will allow, at any rate.) And though the title and subject matter — as with the notorious Snakes On a Plane — may seem like a plea for instant cult status, Hot Tub does a far better job earning it. It may not be as consistently uproarious or quotable as a movie like The Hangover, but Hot Tub Time Machine admirably turns a potentially one-note joke into a consistently funny package. Better yet, it even manages to engender a twinge or two of heartfelt nostalgia for the most culturally embarrassing of decades.

Christie 'Earnestly Considers' Run, And Declines

For weeks, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fueled speculation that he would run for the GOP nomination for president. He hosted fundraisers and traveled the country speaking with supporters. In a press conference Tuesday, Gov. Christie announced, finally, he will not run.

Fed Announces Lending Plan To Help Coronavirus-Battered Economy

NPR's David Greene talks to David Wessel of the Brookings Institution about the Federal Reserve's plan to boost the economy by expanding its emergency lending programs to provide up to $2.3 trillion.

The View From Belgrade

Daniel talks with a professor in Belgrade about conditions there for Yugoslav citizens. The professor, whose name we are not using to protect his identity, says that even though he dislikes Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, NATO's actions have set democracy in his country back ten years. He says that the bombing must stop.

Chill Out For A Better Workout

Cooling a person's hands while exercising can make for a better workout, especially for people who hate to exercise because it makes them all hot and sweaty. This might help the many, many people who have a hard time keeping up with exercise because it's just plain uncomfortable. Researchers tested the idea with obese women in their 30s and 40s who worked out on a treadmill. The women whose palms were cooled with a device that circulated ice water were able to exercise longer than the women whose palms were exposed to room temperature water. "It works to reduce the sensation of being overly hot and sweaty," says Stacy Sims, an exercise physiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who led the study. "The idea is to allow those people to overcome the initial barriers that heat intolerance produces. It gives them positive affirmation to keep going." Indeed, the women without cooling were more likely to quit, while those with cool palms were more likely to stick it out through the 12-week study. And they got results. The chill group shaved about five minutes off the time to walk 1.5 miles, and lost almost three inches from their waists. They also had lower resting blood pressure. Core cooling has been used for years by elite athletes, and it does seem to help improve their performance and reduce muscle soreness. But experiments with more normal folks on the benefits of cooling have been mixed at best. Before becoming a scientist Sims, 40, was a professional racer in Ironman and Xterra triathlons. She says that elite athletes are prepared to push through feeling hot, tired, and miserable. But those feelings can turn off novice exercisers for good. Overweight and obese people are more likely to overheat, adding to the disincentive. Continue Reading Devices like cooling vests and the handheld device used in this study cool blood as it circulates close to the skin, reducing overall body temperature and heat-related stress. The Stanford researchers used a gizmo called an Avacore Rapid Thermal Exchange, which pumps ice water past the palms while each hand is in a small vacuum chamber. The vaccum is there to maintain blood flow to the hands even though they are cool and clenched. It costs about $4,000, well beyond the reach of everyday exercisers. In the study, the 24 women walked on treadmills while their hands were in the Avacore devices. Some of the women had cold water, some not. They were told that there would be variations in the water temperature, even though there were just two. This is a very small study, so the results might not pan out in real life. But Sims says there's no harm in trying homegrown versions of the chill technique. "If you drink an icy cold drink or hold a frozen bottle, it's helping you with the cooling," Sims says. "Hold the frozen bottle while you're training, and drink the water. It helps your core temperature stay a little colder." She presented the results of her study at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2012 Scientific Sessions in San Diego.

Eulogizing A Groundbreakingly Angry 'American'

"Logic will set you free." That's not much of a punchline, but by the end of his too-short career, comedian Bill Hicks had long since transcended simple joke-telling. It was bits of personal philosophy like that one, often focused on humanity's capacity for complex reasoning and his feeling that Americans were unwilling to use it, that came to typify his increasingly thought-provoking (but still hilarious) act. Perceptions of freedom — and how he believed Americans tend to neither understand nor seek this thing that's so central to our national identity — were a frequent theme that drove his rants about politics, religion, and culture. That kind of material made it difficult for Hicks to become a terribly big star in his own country, which is why it comes as no surprise that the first filmed overview of his life — he died in 1994, at age 32, from pancreatic cancer — should come from two British directors, Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas. While Hicks languished on the small-club circuit back home, he became a major celebrity in the U.K. for articulating his own disappointments in his homeland. Titling the film American is a term of admiration from the Brits here: Hicks' act expressed an aspirational patriotism that mirrored foreign audiences' hopes that the world's most powerful nation might live up to its promise and potential. There's a great deal of promise and potential in the idea of a documentary study of Hicks. Unfortunately, American falls short of anything beyond the ordinary. Part of the problem is the difficulty in resisting the temptation to squeeze the comic's story into the familiar confines of a VH1 Behind the Music-style template. All the familiar beats are there: The prodigious talent rising from humble beginnings. Initial success that came too fast, too soon. A drug- and alcohol-fueled crash that inevitably led, by way of sobering up, to a Phoenix-like rise to even greater artistic heights. The filmmakers attempt to sidestep conventionality with an unusual visual approach that takes photographs from Hicks' past and manipulates them into a cut-and-paste style of animation, illustrating the stories told in voiceover by 10 of Hicks' closest friends and family. But talking heads are still talking heads, whether you can see them or not, and the visual flourishes amount to a fresh coat of paint on the same old house. There are interesting facts here about Hicks' childhood in Houston, becoming a teen comic who could hold his own at an adult comedy club, and the drive for success that led him first to Los Angeles, then back to Houston after he decided to let the world come to him. But there is precious little live footage from these early years, and the voices telling stories while Harlock and Thomas animate conversations, car trips and drug trips begins to get a little dry. Lucky for them, in Hicks they have one of comedy's most charismatic rock-star personalities. His performances after he got clean are well documented, and this footage livens up the second half of the film considerably. It was during this period that he became the legend he's remembered as: a confrontational performer whose anger and indignation were outshone only by his intellect, a comedian who had the courage to challenge audiences to think as they laughed. One of Hicks' friends says that being a great comic is about having your outer voice match your inner voice. In that way, seeing Hicks onstage is a better look at who he was offstage than it might be for many performers. But it still feels like there's a lot missing from this profile. It's heavy on facts, but short on insight — a surface-level look at a performer of extraordinary depth.

The Oscar Winner For 'Best

The Oscar winner for "Best Instrumental Score" for a drama or serious film was a surprise choice last night: it went to Italian composer Luis Bacalov for "Il Postino" - "The Postman." We'll hear two selections: "The Postman's Dreams," and "Milonga Del Poeta." (Miramax/Hollywood MH 62029-2)

In Sentencing Phase, Prosecutors Say Tsarnaev Is 'Unrepentant And Unchanged'

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is "unrepentant and unchanged." That's what a prosecutor told jurors on Tuesday as they weighed whether the 21-year-old convicted in the bombings that killed three people and left 264 others wounded should get the death penalty. NPR's Tovia Smith reports that the prosecution presented jurors with four large portraits of the victims and one photo of Tsarnaev giving the middle finger to a security camera in his jail cell. "This is the unrepentant killer he is," federal prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini said. As we've reported, earlier this month, the jury found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts. Seventeen of them carry the death penalty. CBS News reports that after opening arguments, the prosecution began calling witnesses and victims of the bombing. The network adds: "'I remember hearing just bloodcurdling screams. I just remember looking around, just seeing blood everywhere, sort of like debris falling from the sky,' said Celeste Corcoran, who made her way to the witness stand on two artificial limbs. "She told the jury that the blast hurled her into the air and left her in such excruciating pain that she wanted to die. "'I just remember thinking how awful this was and how this had to stop. This couldn't be real, couldn't be real,' she said." Tsarnaev, according to CBS, was expression-less and did not appear to ever look at the victims.

Trump: U.S. Death Rates Likely To Peak In 2 Weeks

President Trump says the nation's death rate is likely to peak in two weeks, and he says he's extending his 15-day "stop the spread" guidelines until April 30.

Bush: Hold Me Accountable for Outcome in Iraq

At a news conference with reporters at the White House, President Bush offered one of his most sober assessments to date about conditions in Iraq. He insisted that as long as U.S. forces don't leave prematurely, they will win -- and help to establish a stable government. But, Mr. Bush said, Americans who are unhappy with the war can hold him accountable. "We're pressing Iraq's leaders to take bold measures to save their country, and we're making it clear that America's patience is not unlimited," the president said. "Yet we also understand the difficult challenges Iraq's leaders face, and we will not put more pressure on the Iraqi government than it can bear." President Bush said there has been a cycle of sectarian violence that has erupted into what he called a "raging conflict." There will be plenty of tough fighting, he said, and it's the U.S. military's job to prevent an all-out civil war. But Mr. Bush repeatedly refused to speak about what he called hypotheticals -- such as when U.S. troops may leave the country. But he did touch on the issue. "Americans have no intention of taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions," the president said. After expressing his confidence in the Iraqi government and in his own Cabinet, President Bush was asked about accountability in Iraq -- and who would be held responsible if the war plan fails. "It's what the 2004 campaign was about," President Bush said. "If people want to -- if people are unhappy about it, look right to the president." And some voters may do just that in two weeks, when they vote in midterm elections. Polls show a solid majority of Americans unhappy with the war and with the president's handling of it. And some Republicans have been urging Mr. Bush to adjust his Iraq strategy. MELISSA BLOCK, host: President Bush was asked about Prime Minister Maliki's comments today. At a White House news conference, the president insisted that as long as U.S. forces don't leave Iraq prematurely, they will win and help to establish a stable government there. Mr. Bush also said Americans who are unhappy with the war can hold him accountable. NPR's David Greene was in the East Room for the president's session with reporters. DAVID GREENE: It was clear one of President Bush's goals today was to give the young government in Iraq a vote of confidence. His message was Prime Minister Maliki is the head of a sovereign government and will ultimately be responsible for the future of his country. So when Mr. Bush was asked about complaints from Maliki that U.S. forces raided the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad without informing Iraq's government, the president said simply that Maliki had reason to be upset. President GEORGE W. BUSH: The idea that, you know, we need to coordinate with him makes sense to me. And there's a lot of operations taking place, which means that sometimes communications may not be as good as they should be and we'll continue to work very closely with the government to make sure that the communications are solid. GREENE: Maliki also said no one has the right to impose timetables on his government. U.S. officials have been setting benchmarks for when the Iraqis should disband militias and calm down the violence in their country. President Bush spoke of such benchmarks today but said again that Maliki was correct, that no country can order Iraq to do anything. At the same time, though, President Bush had another message, that when it comes to security, Maliki's government isn't getting the job done. President BUSH: We're pressing Iraq's leaders to take bold measures to save their country. We're making it clear that America's patience is not unlimited. Yet we also understand the difficult challenges Iraq's leaders face and we will not put more pressure on the Iraqi government than it can bear. GREENE: At times, Mr. Bush used language that made the situation in Iraq sound dire. He said there has been a cycle of sectarian violence that has erupted into what he called a raging conflict. There will be plenty of tough fighting ahead, he said, and it's the U.S. military's job to prevent an all out civil war. Mr. Bush, though, repeatedly refused to speak about what he called hypotheticals, such as when U.S. troops may leave the country. But he did say this - President BUSH: Americans have no intention of taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions. GREENE: The president vowed to stand with Maliki's government so long as the prime minister continues to make tough decisions, but when asked specifically about what happens if U.S. patience runs out, the president refused to say. He was also asked about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's future amid calls for his resignation. Mr. Bush called Rumsfeld smart, tough and capable and said he's satisfied with the secretary's work. So who, Mr. Bush was asked, would be held accountable for a war plan if it fails? Presid

Bird Ruins Try for World Record in Falling Dominos

OK, so you've spent weeks setting up more than four million dominos, trying to break the Guinness World Record for falling dominos. And then a bird swoops in through a window, smacks one of the dominos, and ... yes, they all begin to go. That's what happened to a team from a Dutch TV company. A system of breaks in the chain stopped the falling dominos at 23,000. The sparrow who's tiny wing wrecked such havoc fared much worse. An exterminator on site shot it.

Kids Entering US Alone Present Challenge For Biden

Thousands of children are coming to the United States in search of a better life, many crossing into the country illegally along the southern border. The Biden administration has so far struggled to provide humane and appropriate shelter. Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at nprpolitics@npr.org.Join the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.

Guys Wait Two Days for Best Buy to Open

With an estimated 132.9 million Americans expected to hit the stores for holiday sales, Michael Villarelli and Rick Terrio have spent the last two days waiting for a Best Buy in Manhattan to open.

Brain Games: Move Objects With Your Mind To Find Inner Calm?

Couch potatoes everywhere, rejoice. New commercial devices, using technology borrowed from the field of neuroscience, are making it possible to control objects with brain power alone. The idea is to help train users to become more focused — and relaxed. EEG headsets, which detect electrical activity in the brain, were once found only in research labs. Today, the technology has become cheaper and easier to use. That's made it possible to connect EEG headsets to other consumer devices. Recently, Johnny Liu, a manager for the San Jose-based company NeuroSky, came into the KQED studio to show off one such pairing: NeuroSky's MindWave Mobile headset, which costs under $100, and a toy called the Orbit brain-controlled helicopter, which retails for $190. The helicopter is about 8 inches wide, with three small propellers, all enclosed in a black, circular cage. Liu strapped on his EEG, short for electroencephalogram, headset to try it out. "I'm driving up my attention level," Liu explained. The more he appeared to concentrate, the higher the helicopter soared, levitating several feet above the tabletop. Then it abruptly crashed into my face. Liu apologized, and then it was my turn. Focus on the helicopter "as if you actually had telekinetic powers," Liu told me. But the helicopter stayed put. The device was designed to train me to concentrate on one single thought as much as possible. Focused attention changes certain electrical patterns inside the brain. The EEG headset picks up those changes and, in turn, drives the helicopter. Finally, I got the helicopter to fly. For about 3 seconds. Another game — this one still in prototype — uses EEG readings to make music. The NeuroDisco, designed by composer and inventor Richard Warp, allows users to "play the brain," as Warp puts it. He fired it up for me recently in the KQED studio. "The beat is quite fast because I'm quite sort of excited," he explained somewhat apologetically. But as Warp focused his mind, the rhythm receded and the notes got closer together. (You can hear the transition in this clip, below.) As with the helicopter, the idea with the NeuroDisco is to train users to change their emotional state using what's called "neurofeedback." That allows you to see how your brain patterns are changing and then try to re-create them. It's a learning process that could train us over time to be more focused or relaxed, its promoters say. Warp, who says he has always been an anxious person, wanted to create an environment where people could become more grounded, more "connected with their internal state." He knows how funny that sounds, though. What about actually meditating, or just taking a walk? Do we really need more technology to help us relax? "You're doing the same thing as a meditator, a Buddhist monk might do," Warp jokes. "But maybe we, in the West, need a device to do it." Beyond meditation, these devices could be used for more than just helping you relax after a hard day. Some scientists see clinical applications ahead. Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, thinks EEG games might one day help kids with attention problems learn to focus better. Imagine, he says, a game that could help kids recognize when they're focusing and help them strengthen that ability. "They put on a mobile EEG cap that helps guide the game so that it's challenging those [mental] processes that need the most help," Gazzaley says. Technology may have made us more stressed and distracted. Maybe one day it'll be able to do the opposite as well.

See The Video: Man Slips Cuffs, Runs From Cops; Now Back In Custody

Here's some compelling video. A WABC-TV photographer was in the right place yesterday when a young man got his hand free from police cuffs and sprinted away. It all happened on Staten Island. According to the New York Post, 22-year-old Naquan Thompson was recaptured about 20 minutes later. The Staten Island Advance says his "desperate run for freedom came to an end after he broke his ankle during a jump down from the north ramp at the (Staten Island Railway station) ferry terminal onto railway property far below, then ended up cornered in a train car, sources said." He had been arrested Monday in connection with a Dec. 13 robbery at a deli. According to the Advance this isn't Thompson's first run-in with authorities (or should that be run-away?): Thompson was also arrested in July for tossing a pit bull puppy at an officer pursuing him when he was spotted driving a stolen 2007 Honda Accord that had been stolen from Sheldon Avenue in Huguenot two days earlier. That case is pending.

Trayvon Martin's Killer Had Been Accused Of Violence In The Past

As national attention continues to be focused on the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., last month and the questions it resurrects about race relations in the U.S., The Orlando Sentinel today adds to what's known about George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old man who pulled the trigger. Painted as "a racist, a vigilante and a murderer" for killing the African-American boy in what Zimmerman claims was self defense, the Sentinel notes that the "embattled neighborhood watchman" has had few defenders so far. A former neighbor in Manassas, Va., says Zimmerman was "a good-enough kid" when he was younger. But, "in 2005 [he] was twice accused of either criminal misconduct or violence." In one case, Zimmerman allegedly pushed a state alcohol agent who was arresting one of Zimmerman's friends. He "avoided conviction by entering a pretrial-diversion program, something common for first-time offenders." In the other case, he was accused by a woman of domestic violence. Zimmerman "responded by filing a petition of his own the following day." Injunctions have kept the cases' outcomes sealed, the Sentinel says. Zimmerman has not been arrested. As we reported Tuesday, though, the local prosecutor is taking the case to a grand jury for it to investigate. Meanwhile, as NPR's Kathy Lohr reported on Morning Edition, tensions remain high in Sanford, where Martin's family and supporters accuse the local police of not being interested in investigating the case because of the boy's race.

The Week In Review from 91.7 WVXU

A look back on the week's biggest local news stories from 91.7 WVXU.

British Prime Minister Survives No Confidence Vote After Defeat Of Brexit Plan

British Prime Minister Theresa May survived a vote of no-confidence in her government on Wednesday, following the resounding defeat of her Brexit plan in parliament on Tuesday.

New Jersey Encyclopedia Makes Debut

An encyclopedia of all things New Jersey hits bookstores Monday, featuring the work of some 800 freelance writers on topics from property redevelopment to the story of tomato cultivation in the state. The project took nine years and was inspired by a similar work in New York. NPR's Robert Siegel talks to Marc Mappen, co-editor of <EM>The Encyclopedia of New Jersey</EM>.

American Freed After Months Of Detention In North Korea

Updated at 1:35 p.m. ET Jeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans held by North Korea, has been released, the White House says. Fowle, 56, who was detained in June, allegedly for leaving a Bible in his hotel room in North Korea, was home today after negotiators secured his release. At the time, North Korean state media said he had "acted in violation of the [North Korean] law, contrary to the purpose of tourism during his stay." State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Washington has tried for months to send a high-level envoy to North Korea to seek release of the three men. White House press secretary Josh Earnest says the Pentagon provided Fowle with a flight home. "While this is a positive decision by the DPRK, we remain focused on the continued detention of Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller and call on the DPRK to immediately release them," Earnest said, referring to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In June, NPR's Frank Langfitt reported that Fowle had "worked repairing streets in Ohio" and entered North Korea in April. The following month, the State Department urged Americans not to travel to North Korea because of the risk of detention. Matthew Miller, 24, entered North Korea as a tourist in early April. State media there said he ripped up his tourist visa and demanded asylum. Miller was sentenced to six years' hard labor last month for committing acts "hostile" to the regime. Kenneth Bae, 45, variously described as a missionary and a businessman, was arrested in 2012 and later sentenced to 15 years' hard labor on charges that included attempted overthrow of the Pyongyang government.

What We Know So Far In NYC Subway Blast

Authorities are investigating what led a suspect to take an explosive device into an underground passageway Monday. NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Kate Hinds, a reporter with member station WNYC.

WMKY Feature Reports

Feature segments from the WMKY newsroom and Morehead State University.

What Obama And Romney Left Out In First Debate

Mitt Romney proved he can go head-to-head with President Obama in the first of three debates. The consensus is that Romney won the night with a performance Republicans hope brings new life to his campaign. NPR's Ron Elving talks about the debate and what the candidates did — and didn't — say.

'Onward': Timid Teen On A Mythic Quest For Elf-Assurance

In the opening minutes of Disney/Pixar's Onward, we are met with various manifestations of loss. There's the film's setting, a world where magic once flourished, and with it, pixies, unicorns, pegasi, elves, ogres, centaurs, mermaids — your standard-issue high-fantasy mythofaunic biome. But even here, in a gimmick the film leans into juuuuust enough, the Industrial Revolution arrived. As automation increased, magic faded. Elves still live in giant toadstools, but said toadstools are now rigidly apportioned into vast, Spielberg-suburban subdivisions and cul-de-sacs. Once-splendid unicorns have gone feral, raiding raid trash cans and hissing at passers-by like peculiarly horsey raccoons. If Middle-Earth had more strip-malls, it'd look something like this. There's also the loss experienced by the elf-family at the film's center: mom Laurel (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her two sons — the younger, anxious Ian (voiced by Tom Holland) and his older, buff, RPG-obsessed brother Barley (Chris Pratt, squarely back in Andy Dwyer mode). It's Ian's 16th birthday, and he's given a gift left to him by his late father, who passed away when Ian was too young to remember him: A wizard's staff. Finally, in these opening minutes, there's still another feeling of loss that manifests in the viewer — that of lost opportunity. The jokes are glib and smarmy, the family dynamics achingly familiar, and as we follow Ian to high school, his every encounter and interaction feels less Disney/Pixar and more Disney Channel — which is to say, too sweet, too cornball, too affected, too faux-contemporary. The average very young child in the audience won't notice; the average parent will start checking the theater's exits. But! On or about the 20-minute mark — not coincidentally, upon the arrival of a manticore called Corey, voiced by Octavia Spencer — the film seems to discover what it is: A testament to the remarkable degree of emotional expressiveness that Pixar's character-animators can imbue into a story. That's not to say that the voice cast isn't solid — they are. But so much of what enlivens Onward has to do with the characters' body language, their facial expressions and their pure, albeit pixelated, physicality. In my screening, the scenes that produced the longest, loudest, deepest bursts of audience laughter — like Corey's interactions with her Chuck E. Cheese-esque doppelganger, or Ian's crossing of a yawning chasm — landed as hard as they did because they were so fully imagined, enfleshed and executed, with such confident, entirely visual, comic timing. I'm pretty sure they would have worked with the sound off. As for the story, it is, fittingly enough, a mythic quest/road movie: Ian, guided by a supportive Barley, must follow clues on a map that will outfit him with the tools he needs to bring their dead father back for a single-day visit. (Ian managed to bring the lower half of his father back in the film's opening minutes — and it's remarkable how much personality a pair of brown trousers and a couple of Florsheims can convey.) It's here that the film's suburban/fantasy hybrid nature coheres most strongly, as when one of the greatest challenges Ian must face is not slaying a beast, rescuing a damsel or finding a treasure, but instead ... merging onto a highway. Pixar's been doing this whole story-structure thing for a while now, so it's no surprise that the various lessons (read: spells) that Ian learns over the course of the film will slot neatly into the film's climax. What is a surprise — and a good one — is how satisfying that climax turns out to be, especially since so many animated films remain content to collapse into noisy spectacle in their closing minutes. (Note: Onward's climax does count as spectacle, and it is noisy — but it has also been carefully crafted to directly reflect the emotional stakes that the filmmakers have been systematically raising over the course of its running time.) The film remains true to its Pixar provenance in its willingness — nay, it's doughty insistence — on playing on viewers' emotions. Which is to say: The film's final moments do not simply attempt to pluck at the heartstrings, they saw away at the heartstrings savagely, with Gwar-like abandon. Prep your kids for this eventuality. And, discreetly, yourself.

Weekly Roundup: Thursday, May 2

The Attorney General William did not show up to testify before the House on Thursday setting up a potential showdown over constitutional powers between the White House and Congress. Plus, the United States weighs whether or not to increase intervention in Venezuela. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, State Department correspondent Michele Keleman, and White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe. Email the show at nprpolitics@npr.org. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.

Review: Alan Jackson, 'Angels And Alcohol'

A word for artists striving to make something timeless: Stop. People live within history. It provides particular tools, collaborators and ideas that even the most blinkered hermit can't really avoid. But if you want to make art that feels timeless, integrating its sources so well that they seem to arise from within, telling stories that resonate across generations, and doing so with a blend of humility and self-confidence that makes striving for trendiness unnecessary, Alan Jackson has some lessons for you. Jackson is a country-music colossus with 25 years in the business, 50 Top 10 hits and 60 million albums sold worldwide. On his 15th studio album, Angels And Alcohol, he sounds just like a dad striving to stay patient, a loving husband who sometimes still looks back on his wild-oats years, and a hard worker proud of the skills he's mastered and the time it took to do so. He's an extraordinary embodiment of a certain kind of ordinary man, and the subtlety with which he occupies the role makes it seem not the least bit old-fashioned. After turning overtly traditional with The Bluegrass Album in 2013, Jackson has now made a record sure to attract accolades like "pure" and "classic." But Angels And Alcohol never seems mired in the past. The first track sets the tone. "You Can Always Come Home" is a rolling ballad that reaches out to a child who's just about to start wandering. The song is comforting, but it leaves room for heartache; any parent who's lived with worries will notice the lyrical turn when Jackson reassures his kid that he'll always be there, "even if you never find your way." Such small acknowledgments of our flawed existence make Jackson's takes on classic themes warmly personal, as does his carefully shaded baritone — his voice always makes room for humor, self-questioning and hope. Angels And Alcohol is full of songs like this, which address country music's favorite themes of love, mistakes and redemption in ways that feel up close and personal. Jackson wrote most of them himself, and they're wonderfully relaxed and gently idiosyncratic, the result of a singer-songwriter's contemplation instead of a Nashville boardroom's direction. The bluegrass-touched "Gone Before You Met Me" puts Jackson in a dream with Tom Sawyer and Jack Kerouac before the smell of coffee brewing wakes him to the domestic life he prefers. The George Jones-inspired "I Leave A Light On" describes how a vigil for lost romance can become almost religious, while the sorrowful title track is a honky-tonk hymn. On the more playful side, Jackson practically begs for answer songs from Reba and Dolly with the randy come-on "You Never Know" (featuring hot fiddle from Hoot Hester) and the not-that-cranky kiss-off "Jim And Jack And Hank." Like every track here, these standouts revel in images every country fan will recognize, with a level of wit and investment that makes them feel utterly right. Musically, Angels And Alcohol sticks to the meat, ma'am: no beats, no AutoTune, just plenty of brilliant playing by Jackson's many friends in the community of seasoned Nashville cats. Among other things, Angels And Alcohol is a great guitar album, featuring an all-star roster that includes Brent Mason and J.T. Corenflos, steel guitarists Jim Vest and Paul Franklin, and Silvertone slide master Robbie Flint, all of whom complement Jackson's cool with plenty of zing. At the center of every perfectly executed song stands that calm presence: Jackson, a man who knows exactly what he means to say, and says it without fuss or apology.

Military, Communists Escape China's Graft Crackdown

Annual reports from "Iron Face" Li Jinhua, the head of China's National Audit Office, paint a scathing picture of endemic, high-level graft and corruption. Dozens of cabinet ministry officials have already been sacked or jailed as a result -- all unimaginable just a few years ago. But despite the popularity and attention the whistleblowing has earned him, Li's power is limited because the military and Communist Party leadership are beyond the grasp of his bean-counting legions.

Congressman Clyburn Reflects On A Life Of 'Blessed Experiences'

South Carolina Representative James Clyburn's new memoir <em>Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black</em> shares lessons learned on his way from the Jim Crow South to a top spot on Capitol Hill.

Saudi Arabia & The Paradox of Plenty

This week in history: Saudi Arabian oil and the creation of Aramco.

What's Your Can't-Miss Summer Blockbuster?

The summer movie season is underway in multiplexes across the country. Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy has details on the rest of the big summer flicks. She's especially excited about Star Trek and Julie & Julia. NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. This summer, while we shiver in multiplex air-conditioning and snack on Snow Caps, a familiar cast of characters comes to town. Some are trying to save the world. (Soundbite of movie, "Terminator: Salvation") Mr. CHRISTIAN BALE (Actor): (as John Connor) This is John Connor. If you're listening to this, you are the resistance. CONAN: Some have world-saving thrust upon them. (Soundbite of movie, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince") Mr. MICHAEL GAMBON (Actor): (as Albus Dumbledore) You're the chosen one, Harry. CONAN: And some are simply trying to make it home in time for a good meal. (Soundbite of movie, "Julie & Julia") Ms. MERYL STREEP (Actor): (as Julia Child) I'm Julia Child. Bon apetit. CONAN: And this weekend, one of the most beloved characters in all the galaxy returns to the big screen just in time to kick a little Romulan butt. (Soundbite of movie, "Star Trek") Mr. JIMMY BENNETT (Actor): (as Young James T. Kirk) My name is James Tiberius Kirk. CONAN: That's right. "Star Trek" is back, and it heads to the big screen tonight at midnight. Director J.J. Abrams, who's been able to put the chic in geek in a number of sci-fi flavored, character-driven pieces that you might have heard of - "Lost" - has taken the Federation back to hipness, and he will join us in a few minutes. And we want to hear from you. What summer movie are you most looking forward to? Our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our Web site. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Lisa Kennedy is the film critic for the Denver Post, and joins us now from a studio in Denver. Nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today. Ms. LISA KENNEDY (Film Critic, the Denver Post): Well, thank you, Neal. It's good to be here. CONAN: And I know - all right, we're not going to - we're going to talk to J.J. Abrams a little bit later, but you've seen "Star Trek." Please, tell me this is terrific. Ms. KENNEDY: You know what? You twisted my arm. It's terrific. CONAN: Oh, great! Ms. KENNEDY: I really - yeah. I just thought it was so fun. Fun. CONAN: Fun. A return to the… Ms. KENNEDY: I know. A word that critics are often, evidently, allergic to - or at least, people imagine we are. CONAN: Especially when they're talking about movie when, you know, if they titled it another way, it would be "Star Trek XI." Ms. KENNEDY: I know. Wasn't that frightening? I was like, oh, what did I miss? (Soundbite of laughter) CONAN: And it's been a long time since this franchise has seen the big screen, and for good reasons. It was a little tired. Ms. KENNEDY: It was tired. It needed a little, like, revitalization. And I think, of course, the funny way to do that is not to take it into its future, but to take it into its past, in a lot of ways. And that's been really fun. And I think that was a worry, right? Is that, oh, these - this is such a beloved group of - you know, such a beloved cast. Can this work? And it rocks. It's just so - it's moving. It's got the action that people love. But it's also just funny. I mean, you know, I always thought that cast was really pretty amusing and sort of bemused by its mission, its five-year, ongoing mission. And I think, you know, J.J. Abrams really pulls off something so lovely because you always want these things to be in the spirit of the original, and that's the trick. Right? So… CONAN: Right. Well, what summer movies are you looking forward to? 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. Andy joins us on the line from Milwaukee. ANDY (Caller): Hi. How are you? CONAN: I'm good, thanks. ANDY: Oh, fantastic movie, absolutely the best "Star Trek" in, like, 27 years, whenever "Wrath of Khan" was. I can't give it to him. I can't say it's number one, but I got to tell you, he achieved the impossible. He made an odd-numbered movie come off like an even-numbered movie. And, you know, every Trekkie knows what I'm talking about when I say that. I saw a free screening Tuesday in Milwaukee, and I've got to tell you, he did some things and he pulled some stuff in there that I think some people could be really ticked off about, but he pulls it off with such panache and such flair. It's like the "Casino Royale" of "Star Trek." He boils all the characters down to their essences, and he creates just a compelling story about the characters. And he's - you know, he's really - tweaks them all. So there's stuff that drag down the series over all this time. It was thrilling, and I think it's going to do really well, and people are going to love it. CONAN: And much easier to take, you would think - as an old fan myself, as you can probably tell - much easier to take this re-cr

Egypt Deploys Military; Protesters Defy Curfew

There was chaos in Cairo on Friday, as anti-government demonstrators clashed with police and security forces in several parts of the city. Cell phone and Internet were cut off shortly before the protests erupted after Friday prayers. For more, host Melissa Block speaks to NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.

'Re-Imagining Sondheim': A Pianist And His Peers Deconstruct The Master

Stephen Sondheim is widely viewed as the greatest living composer in American musical theater. "Send in the Clowns," from the show A Little Night Music, may be his most famous work — and yet you might not recognize the song as reimagined for solo piano by Ethan Iverson of the band The Bad Plus. Iverson's take on the song is part of an eight-year project called Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim From the Piano. Pianist Anthony de Mare commissioned 36 composers from the worlds of classical, jazz, Broadway and more to re-envision Sondheim, releasing the results as a three-disc collection. As de Mare tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, the new iteration of "Send in the Clowns" doesn't alter Sondheim's music so much as disassemble it. "First of all," de Mare says, "the song itself, iconic as it is, it seems so many composers stayed away from it. Ethan grabbed it and said he loved the idea of what the jazz composer Ornette Coleman does: If he takes an established song, he will create some original music to sort of introduce it, and then bring it back periodically. So Ethan did that same thing with this piece, by giving us this kind of opening-bar antiphonal thing that comes back. As he said, it's like being in this club, and there's this brass band on the other side of the wall. And the pianist onstage is trying to play 'Send in the Clowns,' but he keeps being interrupted by this band that keeps coming back." De Mare joined Shapiro at NPR's Washington, D.C., studios to chat about the project — and sat down at the piano to demonstrate how works by Sondheim, Gershwin and Paul Moravec all spring from a common theme. Hear the conversation and music at the audio link.

Algeria Strands Thousands Of Migrants In The Sahara

Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 migrants in the Niger desert in the past 14 months, according to new reports. NPR's Michel Martin talks with AP reporter Lori Hinnant about their plight.

National Story Project

Daniel talks with writer Paul Auster, director of Weekend All Things Considered's National Story Project. A couple of weeks ago, we asked listeners to send in stories -- and we've received about 500 so far. The subject matter has been varied and the quality quite high. Auster reads a section of one story that we received from Fairbanks, Alaska. On the first weekend of every month we'll be reading some of your stories. Send your story to: e-mail: nationalstoryproject@npr.org. Or by post:National Story, P.M.B. 206, 123 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11215 Or call 202-408-5183, anytime, for a recorded announcement giving the address.

Federal College Aid Lags Tuition Costs

Levels of financial aid available to college students have been outpaced by rising tuition fees. The result is that many students are taking on higher amounts of debt -- and some students are being priced out of higher education altogether. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.

Safety Concerns Don't Slow China's Coal Boom

At the Datong coal mine in Chongqing Province, as in mines all over China, they are working around the clock. At least a couple of times a week, (and certainly with an American reporter preparing to join a crew of miners at the coal face) the shift begins with a safety briefing and a chorus of safety slogans, punctuated by the men punching their fists in the air. "I am proud to be a coal miner here," the men chant. "We have only one life to live and safety is the most important thing." Actually, China has the worst coal mine safety record in the world. Only two months ago, 105 men were killed in one mine. Last year, approximately 3,800 miners were killed in accidents. This despite China's claim that it has closed more than 10,000 of the country's most dangerous mines. The first leg of our journey is straight down in the cage. The trip, some 1,200 feet, takes just over a minute. We walk and ride a couple of pommel lifts deeper and about two miles into the mine. It takes almost an hour before we reach a small tunnel, the ceiling of which is supported by steel beams, held in place by thick cylinders, raised by pneumatic power. There is about four and a half feet of headroom; and we crawl, crab-like for about 150 yards. Two members of a three-man crew are operating a gigantic drill. The bit is about 8 to 10 feet long. As the drill chews into the coal face, the third member of the crew holds up a cell-phone-sized device that measures the release of coal gas into the tunnel. When I ask one of the miners whether his wife doesn't resent the fact that he's been forced to work while the rest of China celebrate the recent Lunar New Year's holiday, he laughs and says, "She likes the money." China, which until last year was a net exporter of coal, will, it's estimated, have to import 15 million tons more this year than it sends overseas. The hardest winter in decades and a ravenous economic engine are placing a huge demand on China's coal industry. It's a simple and brutal equation: The country's blistering economy has been growing at 10 percent a year. It's a pace the government is determined to maintain. Last year, the Datong mine produced 1.5 million tons. They've been given a new target of 2.3 million tons annually. The Chinese government is under huge pressure to improve mine safety and to reduce pollution. But 80 percent of China's power is generated by burning coal. China's leadership in Beijing may be less dependent on popular support than their American counterparts in Washington; but they're getting the same message: "It's the economy, stupid." STEVE INSKEEP, host: It's hard to talk about controlling greenhouse gases without also talking about China. That country produces even more tons of carbon dioxide than the United States, and the problem could get worse. China's coal mines are being told they must bring even more coal to the surface. NPR Senior News Analyst Ted Koppel went underground to get this story. TED KOPPEL: At the Datong coal mine in Chongqing Province, as in mines all over China, they're working around the clock. At least a couple of times a week, and certainly with an American reporter preparing to join a crew of miners at the coal face, the shift begins with a safety briefing and chorus of safety slogans, punctuated by the men punching their fists in the air. (Soundbite of men speaking Chinese) KOPPEL: I am proud to be a coal miner here, the men chant. We have only one life to live and safety is the most important thing. Actually, China has the worst coal mine safety record in the world. Only two months ago, 105 men were killed in one mine. Last year, approximately 3800 miners were killed in accidents, this despite China's claim that it has closed over 10,000 of the country's most dangerous mines. The first leg of our journey is straight down in the cage. The trip, some 1200 feet, takes just over a minute. We walk and ride a couple of pommel lifts deeper and about two miles into the mine. It takes almost an hour before we reach the small tunnel, the ceiling of which is supported by steel beams held in place by thick cylinders, raised by pneumatic power. There's about four and half feet of headroom, and we crawl crab-like for about 150 yards. Two members of a three-man crew are operating a giant drill. The bit is about eight or ten feet long. As the drill chews into the coal face, the third member of the crew holds up a cell-phone-size device that measures the release of coal gas into the tunnel. When I ask one of the miners whether his wife doesn't resent the fact that he's been forced to work while the rest of China celebrates the recent Lunar New Year's holiday, he laughs and says she likes the money. China, which until last year was a net exporter of coal, will, it's estimated, have to import 15 million tons more this year than it sends overseas. The hardest winter in decades and a ravenous economic engine is placing a huge demand on China's coal industry. It's a simple

CNN, YouTube Presidential Debate Engages Public - Part IV

In what is considered to be a historic forum, cable network CNN partnered with Internet video giant YouTube to host the first of two Presidential debates in which questions are generated by the general public. In the last of highlights that didn't make the Democratic forum, hear a question about Sen. John Edward's "pretty boy" image.

Talkin' Birds On The Galapagos Islands

Scott Simon talks with Ray Brown, host of <em>Talkin' Birds</em>, who has just returned from the Galapagos Islands, where he hosted a live broadcast about some famous feathered locals.